Rich,
Hmmm... let's see if I understand you correctly. You have a TRS-80
Model I with EI and floppy drive and when you turn the system on, the
screen fills with random garbage? I have one sitting here in my office
and that appears to be normal behavior if there is no bootable disk in
drive 0 when the computer is turned on or reset. Try holding down the
BREAK key and hitting reset button to enter ROM BASIC.
As I recall, if the EI is connected then the system checks the BREAK key
and jumps to BASIC if it's pressed, otherwise it reads the first sector
>from the disk and executes it. All this happens before video RAM is
initialized so the screen is filled with trash.
Hope this helps,
- Doug
At 11:18 AM 8/19/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Now you can push LOAD to get the tape drive to scan for the load
>point. If it just keeps going and going then there is a problem with
>the light/sensor assembly.
It could also mean that you wound the tape onto the take-up reel past the
load point, or that the tape didn't have one (i.e., it was cut/broken off.)
Try re-loading the tape, after checking for the load point thingy (a little
silver piece of something on the tape.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
Message text written by INTERNET:classiccmp@u.washington.edu
>BTW, what's the correct name for that series of connectors? We tend to
call them 'Amphenol Connectors' in the UK (while realising that Amphenol
make a wide range of different connectors). I've also seen them called
'Centronics Connectors' (after the common use for the 36 pin one I guess),
IEEE (or IEEE-488) connectors (after the common use for the 24 pin one)
and 'Telco Connectors'. I think the last is what HP call them.<
They are generically called "Centronics connectors" in the U.S., being 36
pin, 24 pin, or whatever. The HP connectors are called IEEE-488, since
that is the standard they follow; never heard them called "Telco
connectors" by HP or anyone else.
Gil Parrish
I purchased a batch of old micros which included 3 Apples, 1 ][E and two
that are not identified. The motherboards are longer than on the "E" and
extend under the keyboard. The keyboard has a white key labled upr and lwr
case, pwr. in the lower left corner, and the rear of the case has U shaped
cutouts instead of the type of openings on the "E" and "+".
I havent been able to find "Apple" on the case or motherboard but the
power supply seems identical to that in the "E" and "+". Can anyone suggest
what I have?
Thanks
Charlie Fox
While scouring the garage sales this weekend I found 2 old video games,
an Atari Pong and a Magnavox Odyssey. They both work, and I could NOT
pass them up at the sellers asking price! Hopefully someone else collects
these older games. If anybody knows of a list or web site I would
appreciate the info.
P.S. My T/S 1000 hasn't been sold yet, I guess it is not yet a
collectors piece.
Regard, David Quackenbush dhq(a)juno.com
Re: the 9-track thread on the HP 7970:
Mention has been made that it seems to have an HPIB interface. I ran into
the same thing with an HP7974 drive that I acquired from Teltone here in
Washington state.
However, I also found that the HPIB interface consisted of a removable
cage with three cards and its own power supply. Once this subassembly was
removed, the drive itself appeared to be a standard Pertec interface. I
have yet to actually try it, but a pair of 50-pin card-edge connections
sure look like Pertec to me.
I will let the group know once I get a chance to actually try it.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272)
(Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin2(a)wizards.net)
http://www.wizards.net/technoid
"Our science can only describe an object, event, or living thing in our own
human terms. It cannot, in any way, define any of them..."
At 05:55 AM 8/19/97 +0000, you wrote:
> drive alignment for various disk drives (not even close to ready yet).
Something to mention is to make copies of disks created on drives you plan
to realign before realigning them. That is, if drive A is out of alignment
and disk A was created on Drive A, make a copy of disk A (in drive A) onto
disk B in Drive B (where drive B is a known, well aligned drive.)
Otherwise, when you get all your drives working fine, you won't be able to
read any of the disks created when they were out of whack.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
sinasohn(a)crl.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
Does anyone else find this hilariously funny?
> ----------
> From: Tim Shoppa
> Reply To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 1997 5:29 PM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: Re: What's an M7165?
>
> > What's an M7165?
>
> One half of a KDA50. The other half is a M7164.
>
> Tim.
>
Tony Duell <ard(a)odin.phy.bris.ac.uk> wrote:
> > Sounds like HP-IB all right. Note that not all 7970s are.
>
> It's a fairly safe bet IMHO that anything HP after about 1975 with that
> connector is HPIB. There are probably exceptions, but I've not come across
> many (any?)
Any time I've seen that connector on HP gear it was for HP-IB. And
the 7970s that aren't HP-IB don't have that connector. Instead I
think they have a card-edge connector or something to mate with a
card-edge connector (on the end of a long cable that you're supposed
to drag back to the interface in the CPU cabinet).
The 7970 is not a new drive; HP made and sold them for a number of
years. The first HP 3000 I ever saw (a series II) had one, and that
was in 1977. I'm pretty sure there was some way to hook it up to a
2100 (stand-alone, or in an instrument controller or 1000/2000
configuration) as well.
The HP 3000 series II and series III did not use HP-IB. The first
HP-IB 3000s were the series 30 and 33. When HP started shipping new
HP-IB peripherals that were bigger/better/faster[1] they also had the
"Starfish" for the series III. That was a small card cage mounted in
its own 19" cabinet, reportedly due to UL certification requirements,
which provided a GIC (General I/O Channel aka HP-IB interface) and
somehow interfaced it to the series III.
At a previous place of employment, we had a series III when I started.
It eventually (1984) got upgraded to (box swapped for) a series 64,
which supported HP-IB somewhat more directly. We had had a Starfish
on the III, but had only used it for a 7933 disc -- the 7970E tape
drives were hooked up to a MAGNETIC TAPE INTERFACE card in the III.
Part of the upgrade was the removal of some interface electronics from
the bottom of the "master" 7970E and its replacement with some new
interface electronics that spoke HP-IB. There was a similar
replacement for the 7925 disc drive too.
> BTW, what's the correct name for that series of connectors? We tend to
> call them 'Amphenol Connectors' in the UK (while realising that Amphenol
> make a wide range of different connectors). I've also seen them called
> 'Centronics Connectors' (after the common use for the 36 pin one I guess),
> IEEE (or IEEE-488) connectors (after the common use for the 24 pin one)
> and 'Telco Connectors'. I think the last is what HP call them.
Doggone if I know. We always called them HP-IB connectors. So did
the HP CEs. We were pretty much a 3000 shop with not much non-HP
equipment outside of the modems and furniture, certainly nothing else
that tried to use that connector. Well, we did for a while have a
Univac 1004 RJE station, but we never tried to plug it into the 3000
and I can't remember ever trying to do much with it other than feed it
paper when it ran out.
-Frank McConnell
[1] the ones I am thinking of are the 7933 disc drive (404MB washing
machine), 7976A tape drive (6250BPI 9-track, streaming and
start-stop, OEM'd from someone else (STC I think)), and 2680A laser
printer; I think these were the only peripherals supported for
connection via Starfish
<Yes, I'd realised that. I was planning on making a circuit that triggered
<off the index pulse and recorded 'bursts' of (say) 250kHz pulses on the
<disk. A bit of logic would let me record a track offset towards the edge
<of the disk, twiddle the micrometer to move the head to the same offset
<towards the spindle and then record bursts between the ones I'd just put
<down. Now align the target drive so that both types of burst are replayed
<at the same amplitude.
doesn't work, you need the narrower write head. What you will see is
the additive components of the signals where the head overlaps the tracks.
The can be the sum or the signals, if not in sync there will also be
differences due the phases at a given instant. Also do not discount the
effects of the tunnel erase portion of the head slicing off the adjacent
offset tracks.
<The older SA800's used entirely standard logic, so it's not worth taking
<parts from an old one. SA850's used custom chips in the read/write
<circuit, and later SA800's (according to my service manual) used one big
<custom chip :-(. I guess then you have to get spares from old drives.
Sometimes it's easier to swap a known board that troubleshoot.
<Getting _new_ 8" drives is next-to-impossible, and if you use a
True but, there are used and then there are USED. The later being one thats
seen umpty years of 24x7.
<The less said about that SA400 the better....
Yep!
Allison
