This afternoon, I hauled home an IBM System/36 - PC (5364), complete
with dedicated IBM PC (5150), Monitor, KB, cables and an IBM 4224
printer, but no documentation, all from my local Farmer's Insurance
agent. The system is complete, including the "Farmers Master System
Diskette". The components are badged "Farmers Insurance Group 5280Z".
Googling indicates that these systems were fairly common.
The system boots to the Service Control Menu, then continues the IPL to
a IPL Sign On menu.
Does anyone know the Service password or the Backup Service password for
the Service Control Menu? Does anyone know another way into this system?
I am an absolute neophyte on this system, so any help, warnings, war
stories, etc. would be appreciated.
Thank you,
Martin Marshall
I guess this might be slightly OT, and maybe a little bit of a rant,
though lots of Diamond products are easily 10 years old or older...
I just found out today that the massive archive of drivers and firmware
that was on the the Diamond ftp server [ftp://ftp.diamondmm.com/] is gone.
I didn't have the bandwidth to mirror it, but I sure hope someone here got
a copy when I recommended months back (Modem/Supra thread) that someone
archive it.
The support page for Diamond products
[http://www.diamondmm.com/support/diamond/] formerly contained links to
files on the ftp server. It now has the following posted:
S3 or Diamond Brand Support
We no longer support customer service or warranty claims on any of our
legacy products sold under the former S3 or Diamond brand. As we no
longer manufacture these products, and have not for some time, our
customer care and warranty claim call volumes related to these products
are extremely low. Because of this, we made the decision to discontinue
support for these products. If you are experiencing problems with your
Diamond or S3 legacy product please contact an independent repair
professional. We appreciate your understanding in this matter and hope
that this change does not inconvenience you greatly.
The above statement seems totally ludicrous, as how is "an independent
repair professional" (which I think I more than qualify for) supposed to
support these products without the files that were available on the ftp
site?
I put in a call to their technical support staff at (206) 515-1400, and
when I selected option '5' for diamond products, it referred me back to
the above support url, claiming that support files were available on the
website. The phone system then hung up, and I called back again selecting
the Supra support and 'other' products...same thing. I finally got someone
on the line by selecting Supra support and the first and only product the
phone system mentioned. I think it was option 4 and 1. Talk about a
nightmare.
Turns out, they've suddenly had a massive influx of calls from other
slightly annoyed customers who still support and use all this "obsolete
hardware." Personally, I don't see how hardware can be "obsolete" if it
works and does exactly what you need it to. They also seemed to have no
clue that older versions of firmware and such are very important when
maintaining and supporting these things. The ftp server formerly contained
nearly every version that had been released. Now its all gone. Some of
these products were only a couple of years old too. If other hardware
forums haven't had info about this yet, they probably will soon...
If anyone else wants to call and ask questions, the phone number above
should get you though to someone. I've asked them about returning the ftp
site to its former state, as that would seem to be the best solution for
everyone right now.
-Toth
Going to kids garage sale or goodwill....or grab it here...
Its a dual floppy 8088 10mhz laptop.
I am not into x86 boxes
Worked last timed I tried it out.
You supply power supply...
Offers welcome. Trade - not interested in cash (...):
72 pin parity ram, sun sparc 20 cpu module(s)...
Claude
http://computer_collector.tripod.com
On May 27, 21:37, John Honniball wrote:
> vassilip(a)dsl.cis.upenn.edu wrote:
> > So when the BBC + Torch arrived, the genious who was responsible
for
> > assembling the kit, promptly added a mains plug to the power cable
> > and plugged it in, feeding 240V AC to the +5 and +12V rails.
>
> Same thing happened at my Uni when one of the Prime operators took
> home a BBC for the holidays. She had an external disk drive for it,
> that plugged into the BBC's power underneath the machine (not at
> all obvious). So, she went ahead and fitted a mains plug to the
> three-core cable that fed the drive. Usual release of magic smoke...
Ah, yes, that would be one of those drives suplied by a company who
figured that you don't really need two 0V lines, and 3-core mains flex
is cheap.
I can add another to the "240-into-5 doesn't go" list. I ran the
repair and engineering department for a large Acorn dealer/distributor.
One Saturday, a customer with his son bought a BBC B, Torch Z80 with
disk pack, and a high-res Microvitec monitor; well over UKP1000 in
those days. He was back on the Monday, looking very sad. His son had
connected everything together before finding that the "mains plug"
didn't fit. When he changed it, the fuse blew, so he replaced it and
tried again :-(
He was very nice about it, quite philosophical, and so we tried quite
hard to rescue what we could, and find second-hand parts. We salvaged
one of the two drives. We repaired the monitor. We found a spare BBC
B board -- the original was deemed unrepairable. The disk pack PSU was
a write-off, but we got the original Beeb PSU back from the shop. The
Z80 board didn't look healthy, and he let us keep that too.
Eventually, we stripped every IC and some other damaged parts off the
board, fitted sockets everywhere, repaired several tracks with quite a
lot of wire-wrap wire and epoxy, and it became a test bed. The Z80 got
similar treatment, except it didn't need track repairs, and we turned
it over to a teenager who was with us for work experience. We thought
it would be good (de)soldering practice. He was delighted when he
ended up with a clean board, and even more so when the fully-socketed
version worked at the the end of it, so I suppose some good came of it
all -- he'd apparently been something of a problem to the college
tutors before he discovered there was something he could actually
achieve.
Those Torch Z80's were a royal pain. After that incident, we told the
shops not to take out or replace the BBC supply under any
circumstances, and eventually Torch stopped the practice of replacing
the original PSU. The Beeb SMPSU was perfectly capable of running a
fully-expanded machine with a Torch processor, so using Torch's rather
inferior (but more powerful) unit was not a good idea.
The Torch Z80 board is about Eurocard size, fitted with a short 40-way
ribbon cable, and was supposed to be mounted in the lid of the BBC B,
using four PCB mounts of the type that have self-adhesive pads. They
used to fall off after a while. Now you might think that's just
irritating (it's certainly awkward to fit correctly) but it's more than
that. When it falls, it tends to short things out. Unfortunately, the
regulation on Torch PSUs is very poor when they crowbar, and when the
5V rail comes back after it's shut down, it tends to overshoot -- by
about 4 volts, according to our scope. TTL doesn't like 9V. I've seen
at least two Beebs destroyed that way.
One of them looked fine, but didn't work -- something of a puzzle, as
the owner had replaced the original Acorn PSU and we didn't know he had
been using the Torch one. It just went "tick-tick-tick", as they do
when they're shorted, or as in this case, detect over-current. So we
put it on a bench supply, thinking either to blow off a faulty
capacitor or maybe find a hot chip. No, but it drew 9 amps (a Beeb
usually takes about two) and after a little while it was obvious
several LS TTL chips were cooking. So we removed them. Back on the
PSU, still several amps over normal. A few more hot chips after a
short while. And so it went on, until all that was left was the NMOS
(all of which still worked). Another expensive repair.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
>From: "Peter Turnbull" <pete(a)dunnington.u-net.com>
---snip---
>
>Not from a capacitor as a whole, but if you look inside the "black
>box"... The discussion was about electrolytic capacitors. Of course
>they have an insulator (the oxide on the aluminium foil anode) but they
>also have an electrolyte (which is the cathode), and indeed wouldn't
>(don't) work without it. It's the ability of the electrodes to conduct
>electrons that give the capacitor its ability to store them.
>
>--
>Pete Peter Turnbull
The other trick of the electrolytic is that the aluminum is
slightly etched first before forming. This greatly increases
the surface area and gives a higher capacitance per square
inch of foil.
I have a radio that was made in the 50's. I brought the
capacitors in it up slowly. I've checked them on my
bridge and they are all above 45% of the labeled value.
The radio works fine.
Dwight
On May 25, 20:19, William R. Buckley wrote:
> Steve Leach said:
>
> > If you could humor my electronic ignorance, what exactly
> > is a tantalum cap and how does it differ from a normal
> > capacitor? I was never before aware that there could be
> > more to a capacitor than plates (or foil) and an
> > electrolyte. How can a capacitor have a polarity?
>
> Not an electrolyte, an insulator. It is the inability to
> conduct electrons which gives the capacitor its ability to
> collect electrons.
> [...] Now, by being ionic, these electrolytes
> are well suited to the conduction of electron flow. This
> is most definately not the kind of behavior which you wish
> to obtain from a capacitor.
Not from a capacitor as a whole, but if you look inside the "black
box"... The discussion was about electrolytic capacitors. Of course
they have an insulator (the oxide on the aluminium foil anode) but they
also have an electrolyte (which is the cathode), and indeed wouldn't
(don't) work without it. It's the ability of the electrodes to conduct
electrons that give the capacitor its ability to store them.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
This reminds me of a true story regarding a BBC microcomputer.
This was in the early 80s when a company called Torch produced
an auxiluary processor for the BBC (I think so that it could run
CP/M programs).
Anyway the Torch was an external box that contained its own PSU and
connected via a ribbon cable with the BBC micro, which served as
the keyboard/display peripheral for the Torch.
Early BBCs had problems with their own PSU (it overheated), so the
Torch people removed the PSU from the BBC and used another cable to
supply power *to* the BBC from the Torch box. Unfortunately, they
used a cable that looked like a power cable.
So when the BBC + Torch arrived, the genious who was responsible for
assembling the kit, promptly added a mains plug to the power cable
and plugged it in, feeding 240V AC to the +5 and +12V rails.
I looked at that mainboard afterwards and a lot of tracks had melted!
**vp
> From: "Mike Ross" <mross666(a)hotmail.com>
> IBM made a bunch of printer terminals based around the Selectric typewriter
> - 1052, 2740, 2970 etc. Look in any old copy of BYTE, and you'll also find
> several vendors were selling 3rd party terminals based around IBM
> Selectrics, often converted for ASCII/RS-232c operation, as teletype
> alternatives.
>
> Where have they all gone? (I appreciate, from what I've heard, that many
> folks who used them in anger would reply 'I don't know, I don't care, good
> riddance!') Early DECwriters are not uncommon. Teletypes are (almost) ten a
> penny, ASR33s show up frequently enough on ebay, I have several.
>
> But the only Selectric based unit I've *seen* in over ten years of
> collecting is a 2970 Reservation Termainal (see
> http://www.corestore.org/2970-1.jpg ) which I was offered a year or so ago.
> It needs a fair bit of TLC, and it's a print-only device; it can receive
> data from a host and print it, but not send anything back from the keyboard.
>
> I'd love to get a bidirectional equivalent to use as an 'authentic' terminal
> for a 360 emulator I work with... any clues? Can anyone recommend a
> Selectric repair shop? No way I want to try to fettle something THIS
> mechanically-intimidating myself!
Look at my sig...you'll see where they've all gone :) I have a
dozen or so Selectric, Selectric II, and Selectric III typewriters,
mostly in various states of sticky disrepair.
Actually, I don't have any Selectric terminals, although I do have a
Selectric Memory Typewriter. My brother worked at a Byte Shop in the
late 70s, and recalls having either converted a Selectric or making a
conversion work.
I do have a manual from 1962 titled "IBM Customer Engineering Manual of
Instruction, I/O Printer, (Modified IBM Selectric), which shows the
glorious workings of this fascinating machine...the manual has lots of
text and diagrams explaining the Selectric mechanism, but not much in
the way of photos showing the solenoid mechanisms.
We were thinking a few years ago of trying to rig up a homebrew
conversion of one of my typewriters, but never got round to it. But I
did (in 1999?) see a conversion kit sell on ebay...and I was foolish
enough to not buy it.
--
Jim
Visit the Selectric Typewriter Museum!
http://www.mindspring.com/~jforbes2
Subject: RE: Where have all the Selectrics gone?
Date: Sun, 25 May 2003 00:36:49 -0400
Reply-To: cctech(a)classiccmp.org
>Are these based on a Selectric?
>http://www.govliquidation.com/auction/view?auctionId=206563&convertTo=USD
Yes!!!! Exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Good catch! You can tell
they're the 'I/O Selectric' by the extra-deep chassis, compared with a
standard Selectric typewriter... no idea what interface they might be, but
what the hell...
Guess it's a bid on all 35 of them, or none at all... anyone else in with me
for some?
Mike
http://www.corestore.org
