On 2014-07-19 6:08 PM, Enrico Lazzerini wrote:
> I managed to find a bios for an IBM 5170 AT 286 Type1 Mainboard. It is
> here: 30aprile1989 (list here:
> http://ibm-pc.org/firmware/ibm/5170/5170.htm)
> In practice I have manually added the number of cylinders, heads, and sect
> / trk that allow the machine to recognise a disk IBM 250MB. At this point
> regularly boots DOS.
> But I wish to program these data permanently in the bios. Does anyone know
> what program to use and give me the procedure? I tried with BIOSUTL, but
> the new EPROM do not boot the machine.
> With BIOSUTL i made what follow: read actual BIOS, you can add new disk
> geometry parameters at free 47 position, then you have to recalculate bios
> checsum, then BIOSUTIL devides BIOS into EVEN and ODD file so i can finally
> program them into two 27256 150nS eprom.
> Thank you
> Enrico
>
I have done this before manually, I did not use the position 47 but
rather altered one of the existing table entries, but that should not
make any difference as long as the parameters in the table are correct.
Did you check the output from this BIOSUTIL to make sure that the table
entry looks correct? Other than that the only other important thing is
to make sure the checksum is correct, I seem to recall that the
algorithm used to checksum the ROM expects the last byte (word?) to roll
the sum over to 0, but it is a long time since I did this and I may not
be remembering this correctly, nor do I remember if the AT does the sum
in bytes or words. What happens when you try to boot the new ROM? Do
you get any response from it? If you get nothing two things come to
mind, the BIOS image you downloaded is no good or you interchanged the
high and low byte ROMs. If the checksum is wrong it will post an error
message, if it seems to do its memory check ok but won't boot off the
disk that might suggest that you are not pointing at the correct drive
table entry or some parameter in the table is not correct. If it was me
I would not be downloading a ROM image off the web I would just dump my
existing BIOS and make whatever changes where necessary to it.
Paul.
Had a cool day in Illinois today and my crew brought down boxes of parts
including:
M7744 RX02 controller
M7745 RX02 R/W
H7110 LA120 ps
M7081 LA120 pwr/logic bd
LA36 and LA180 pwr and logic boards, encoder motors, heads, numeric
kybds, etc
add on logic and option boards for the LA36- these are getting hard to
find...
I have a few LA36s which have been upgraded to 120cps and plan on restoring
them to original configuration
There are boxes to go through yet.
They are close to 6 or so VAX 11/780 pwr supplies. if someone is interested
in them I can try to have them pulled tomorrow.
Found some VT 100 or 101 pwr supplies ,and more logic boards.
Feel free to contact me off list with offers. 61853, IL
Thanks, Paul
I managed to find a bios for an IBM 5170 AT 286 Type1 Mainboard. It is
here: 30aprile1989 (list here:
http://ibm-pc.org/firmware/ibm/5170/5170.htm)
In practice I have manually added the number of cylinders, heads, and sect
/ trk that allow the machine to recognise a disk IBM 250MB. At this point
regularly boots DOS.
But I wish to program these data permanently in the bios. Does anyone know
what program to use and give me the procedure? I tried with BIOSUTL, but
the new EPROM do not boot the machine.
With BIOSUTL i made what follow: read actual BIOS, you can add new disk
geometry parameters at free 47 position, then you have to recalculate bios
checsum, then BIOSUTIL devides BIOS into EVEN and ODD file so i can finally
program them into two 27256 150nS eprom.
Thank you
Enrico
I need an ISO if someone can spare a copy. Need to load up a system for
some testing.
Sparc 32 bit. media. I have a lot of intel, but low on Sparc stuff.
Also am going to give some Tadpoles a run with it, hopefully.
thanks
Jim
Dear Phillip,
I came across your correspondence regarding an interface card to the PDP8
Omnibus.
Did anything come of this and if so, are there any cards left?
Stephern Laurence, Preston, UK
(Owner of 4 non-working PDP8s but I hope to get them going!)
--
Using Opera's mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
On 18 Jul 2014, at 20:45 , Chuck McManis <chuck.mcmanis at gmail.com> wrote:
> So you could put one, two, or even a
> hundred DEL characters at the end of the line and it wouldn't matter
> semantically.. So those DEL characters became a way of providing a safe
> 'delay' that would allow a machine without any flow control to accurately
> read in the paper tape.
I'm pretty sure that some of the 8-bit microcomputer systems used NULs for this exact purpose, when loading data through the serial port; specifically, I think I heard about NUL padding for the UK-101 and KIM-1.
I'm looking for a technical manual for a GNT model 4604 paper tape punch/reader. I have a scanned brochure which includes helpful information such as DIP switch settings, but I'd also like to find more detailed documentation, particularly including its handling of control characters and escape sequences, so that I can write a utility that talks to it.
I can do basic I/O already, but I think it may have other features that I would like to use.
If anybody can help me find an original, photocopy or scan, I'd appreciate that.
For reference, I found the brochure here:
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/telex/santec/gnt4606/files/gnt4604_brochure.pdf
There are pictures of the very similar GNT 4606 here:
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/telex/santec/gnt4606/index.htm
I'll probably post about the machine on my web page eventually.
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/
I recently bought a few punched paper tapes from an eBay seller. They were said to have been from an IMSAI system, and I found BASIC source code on them.
Except for the leaders at both ends consisting of NULs, the rest of the bytes on each tape have the most significant bit set. As I understand it, Teletype model 33 ASR units are conventionally configured with MARK parity keyboards when used with PDP-8 systems, and I gather that it's conventional to encode PDP-8 source code tapes with MARK parity. I'm guessing that the same convention was used on the IMSAI, or at least was used by the original creator of these tapes.
I just received a GNT model 4604 tape punch/reader yesterday, and today I got it working after making a few repairs. Then, I set to work reading in these tapes and converting the raw binary images (which I saved separately) to plain ASCII text by clearing the MSBs, and dropping any NUL and DEL characters. One tape included a splice which the creator marked with red ink. Each line was terminated by the sequence CR-LF-DEL-DEL.
I presume that the two DELs after each line were there to give a 33 ASR (or similarly slow printer) time to return the carriage before the next line starts printing.
Here is my question: Is it conventional and/or important to include the two DELs after each line when creating a source tape which is to be read in to a BASIC interpreter, or is that just an artifact of how the tapes were created (i.e., by printing source code out to a 33 ASR printer)? I ask because I want to know if I should include the DELs if I ever create new tapes from the extracted text files.
The tapes were marked with 1976 dates, and were named:
STRTRK
DIET
BLUFF
I'll share their contents on my web site soon, and I'll also try running them in a BASIC interpreter sometime.
--
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/