> I just took a look at the docs for the Series 5 Altos computers and
> there is a repair ticket for a Mitsubishi M4853 Disk Drive. The floppy
> disk summary docs indicate that drive is a 5.25, HH, 720K, 96
> TPI drive.
Ok, not GCR, but I suppose similiar to drives used
in the Sanyo MB550 (or whatever that silver incompatible
was called).
> The CP/M version with my Altos 580 is 2.2 Licensed from Digital Research
> by Lambda Software (4 disks.) Each of the six disks I have are labeled
> double sided, double density, soft sectored. Of the two other disks, one
> is for the 580-20 and is labeled MPM/CPM for Altos 580-20, the other
> Altos Diags for model 580-x.
>
> Hope this helps!
Can you make copies for Doc?
Regards,
-doug q
>
> Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
> >
> > > IIRC the Floppy on an Altos 580 is DSQD.
> >
> > Am I correct that while different from standard
> > DSDD, they are *not* GCR drives?
> >
> > What other machines might carry these drives, can I
> > hook one up to a standard PC controller in a box
> > running DOS, and then duplicate the disks?
> >
> > > I had one that had the CMI hard drive replaced with a
> Seagate ST225. So I
> > > know they will take similar configured Hard Drives. I
> think they will take
> > > 10, 15 and 20 Meg HDs.
> >
> > This is good to know, ST225s still pop up from time to time...
> >
> > -dq
>
In a message dated 3/17/02 9:22:55 AM Pacific Standard Time,
dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com writes:
> Am I correct that while different from standard
> DSDD, they are *not* GCR drives?
I don't think they are GCR but someone more knowledgeable than I will have to
answer that. My understanding is that they are the same as a 360 drive with a
head that is half the width so they can deal with 80 tracks instead of 40.
>
> What other machines might carry these drives, can I
> hook one up to a standard PC controller in a box
> running DOS, and then duplicate the disks?
>
>
The answer to this is yes. For many years I kept an IBM PC (8088) clone with
DSDD, DSQD drives and my EPROM programmer. IIRC I used the 3 1/2 inch 720K
disk driver for the DSQD and it worked for my purposes of making disks for
various systems. I used Media Master (sorry Fred) and PCDOS 3.3.
Many systems of the MPM era used DSQDs, some single user computers like the
Kaypro 4, too.
The Intel 310s used DSQDs also. This is where most of mine came from. I still
have a few 310s and DSQDs.
Paxton
Astoria, OR
> > > If California Digital is still in business, I believe the
> > > boxed CP/M they were (are?) selling is for the Xerox 820...
> >
> > That is certainly possible, Doug. However, the one that they were
> > selling a while back (for $9.95, IIRC) was for the Xerox 1800 terminal
> > less "laptop". Whether it is directly compatible with the 810, I do not
> > know.
>
> This purchase was circa 1985...
>
> But that's the right price... I'll just have to look at
> the disks when I get home again...
<sigh>
You're right, Xerox 1800...
:(
-dq
Bleh. MDR's mailserver is down, and I can't get in to fix it till
Monday.
Well, the Altos 580 ended up costing me $5 and "a future favor".
Tyler couldn't find any of the floppy disks for it.
It looks fine inside, except that the case fan was unplugged from the
PSU. After finding the power header & plugging it in, I understand
that.
It does speak VT100, on RS232 port "JC" (Thanks, Andreas!) and boots to
"Boot Monitor v7.03". Passes system tests, and attempts to boot from
the hard drive. The activity light on the floppy drive comes on and
stays on.
I don't think the hard drive, a CMI CM-5619, is powering up at all.
If it is it's incredibly quiet....
Anyway, I don't have any way to test the system. I did find an
archive of MP/M II for it, but the zip file isn't in any image format.
Does anyone have the install disks, and the Diagnostics/utilities
disk, or disk images? And a way to create the disks on a Linux box?
They are DD/DS floppies, right?
Does this thing care what MFM disk it has?
More junkyard fun....
Doc
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From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com>
>> IIRC the Floppy on an Altos 580 is DSQD.
>
>Am I correct that while different from standard
>DSDD, they are *not* GCR drives?
DSQD generally means 80 track two sided drives such as
TEAC FD55F or G and double density encoding. Typically
they store around 800k.
FYI that can mean hard or softsectored as that is controller
not drive dependent.
>What other machines might carry these drives, can I
>hook one up to a standard PC controller in a box
>running DOS, and then duplicate the disks?
Kaypro with Advent turborom, AmproLB, Micromint SB180
to name a few.
>This is good to know, ST225s still pop up from time to time...
St225, ST251 and related drives are fairly common.
Allison
> >This is good to know, ST225s still pop up from time to time...
>
> St225, ST251 and related drives are fairly common.
Love the ST251. Any drive that still works after opening
it up and blowing dust out of it with human breath is a
wonder of engineering...
-dq
My work on the emulator for the HP2100 and 21MX computer systems (and all applicable peripherals and interface cards) is reaching a point soon where I would like to solicit someone to help me with compilation testing on various unix platforms. I am doing the development and testing on FreeBSD, so of course I know it will work there. I am hoping that some list members can provide me with remote access to different unix platforms so I can make sure that it will compile correctly. I would like to make sure it will work on Sun, Linux, and HP-UX as well. I have access to quite a few HP-UX machines, but not Linux or Sun. Being a staunch FreeBSD bigot, I have no desire to install Linux myself. The emulator depends heavily on the implementation of fork(), execl(), and SYSV IPC mechanisms such as message queues. I have heard that there are some differences in the implementation of fork() on Linux for example.
At the outset I wanted very badly to allow it to work on DOS/Windows platforms, but later in the design phase it became apparent for a variety of reasons that this simply isn't feasible, unless someone knows of a way to use SYSV IPC stuff there.
If anyone can allow me remote access to these type of machines, please contact me offlist.
Regards,
Jay West
On 2002-03-17 classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org said to kees.stravers(a)iae.nl
>> Get a VAXstation 2000, also called RD MFM disk
>> formater. The VS2k has a MFM disk formater in ROM.
>Will that work with any MFM drive geometry or only the
>four RDxx types that mVAXes like?
It will work with many drives. For the details see
http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/vax/vs2khw.html
Kees.
--
kees.stravers(a)iae.nl My site about the DEC VAX computer
Geldrop, The Netherlands http://www.vaxarchive.orghttp://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/ is now back up, soon to be fully
Member of Insomniacs Anonymous restored!
Net-Tamer V 1.08.1 - Registered
Hello,
I have recently got an IBM 6091-19 monitor and figured I could use it with
my HP 715/80 workstation but it doesn't work. Setting different video modes
in the HP's boot monitor does not do very much either. The best I get is a
partly readable but vertically diverted (sorry, I don't know how to
describe this properly) picture. Looks like it cannot sync. Do you have any
suggestions?
Thomas
PS: I also tried the switch on the monitor to no effect.
--
Thomas S. Strathmann http://pdp7.org
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.