At 23:45 13/07/97 GMT, you wrote:
>>GPIB = General-Purpose Interface Bus. Aka IEEE-488, and very similar to
>HPIB (= Hewlett-Packard Interface bus). HP were the company who designed it,
>but it turns up on all sorts of machines.
>
>It's an 8-bit parallel interface using a 24 pin connector. 8 pins are ground,
>8 are data, 3 are handshake, and 5 are bus control/management. It was
>originally designed to link up lab equipment (DVMs, counters, digital 'scopes,
But also for interfacing Analytical Instruments (Spectrophotometers, Gas
Chromatography etc.) for chemical laboratory, where HP is still one of the
most important developing company, and where GPIB is still used.
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I saw an interesting relic in the thrift store the other day...and IBM PC
"Expansion Chassis" (I believe that's what it was called). It was
basically an IBM PC case with two full height hard drives instead of
floppy drives. It's model number was 5161 (if I recall correctly).
Didn't bother with it, even though it is kinda unique.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
Ok, saw three things of interest today.
First, I saw a set of boxes from some Scottish company. One was called
the PAM computer and simply had some red LED displays on the front to
display numbers. Another was FINANCIAL ANALYSER and another still was,
oh, forgot. Weird. Anyone ever heard about these? They seemed to be
boxes for doing calculations, or displaying results of formulas?
Also saw and picked up this Convergent computer thingy. Pretty cool. It
has modules that plug together. One is the PROCESSOR module, then
there's the EXPANSION DISK module. The boxes which make up this
"computer" fit together via this bus and then there's this lever you use
to lock the boxes together. Seems I forgot to pickup the Processor
module (paid for it but forgot to get it). I also saw some dumb
terminals for this system at a thrift shop (they are gone now). Anyone
have any info on this?
Lastly, I saw this pretty awesome looking Morrow computer which seemed to
be of a portable ilk. At first when I saw it from afar it looked like
one of those phony props you see in furniture stores. When I got up
close I realized it was an actual computer with this funky wide screen
built in (it was about 4" high by 8" wide) and two floppy disks. The
proprietor of the place I was at made me put it back because apparently
it has all the store's financial records back a few years. I offered to
copy all the data off for him and pay him good for it but he flat-out
refused. Very frustrating. I plan on bugging him about it everytime I
go back.
Sam
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass
:> Technology PMOS NMOS
This is wrong. both are N-channel silicone gate NMOS.
:> # of Instructions 69 70
What this doesn't tell is that the F8 had a very weak instruction set.
doing something like xoring a byte was tedious to say the least. The
8080 instruction set was far more general.
The F8 was aimed at the market that the 8048 and 8051 would later
dominate, IE: single chip MPUs of general application.
Also april '78 KILOBAUD had an article speculating on how to use a VB
system as a cheap graphic peripheral.
Allison
I may have a chance to get a NCR Model 1203-6000 (it's about one step
>from abandonment). It appears to work and run both CP/M-80 and MS-DOS.
On the serial number sticker it lists its manufacturer as NCR GmbH- am I
to assume this may mean it is of German origin?
My questions are, has anybody heard of this machine? Does anyone have any
info on it? Is it even a classic?
Thanks,
Richard Schauer
rws(a)ais.net
Sam Ismail <dastar(a)crl.com> writes:
> Lastly, I saw this pretty awesome looking Morrow computer which seemed to
> be of a portable ilk. At first when I saw it from afar it looked like
> one of those phony props you see in furniture stores. When I got up
> close I realized it was an actual computer with this funky wide screen
> built in (it was about 4" high by 8" wide) and two floppy disks.
A Morrow Pivot. Portable, battery-operated MS-DOS machine; I'm not
sure how IBM-compatible it is. Made by Vadem in Milpitas, OEMd by
Morrow as the Pivot, Zenith as something (think they sold a bunch to
the IRS), Osborne as the Osborne 3.
Keep your eyes open, there are others out there. I've seen one at
Halted in Santa Clara but as usual for Halted they were asking a
bogus price for it, something like $100.
-Frank McConnell
Rich Cini wrote:
> My Datamaster Troubles...
> Well, I'm reviving my Datamaster. Last year, it worked fine (I at least
> could get into Basic). This year, I can't even get it to boot. I have no
> manuals for the darned thing, so I have no idea what the numbers on the screen
> during the POST mean. I have one reverse-highlighted number: "09" and I'm
> assuming that this is a hardware failure code.
> I have the "Diagnostic" diskette, but since I think that the floppies are
> not working (or the diskette is now bad), it's useless.
I must admit, I haven't booted mine recently. It is just about visible
under the pile of junk in that part of my computer room...
I can, however, easily get at the manuals. The service manual is not
much use, I'm afraid, but I can look up the diagnostic codes for you. I
shall try and do this this evening, and post it tomorrow, but I can't
promise anything.
Philip.
Whilst in a self-induced trance, Stacy C. Morang happened to blather:
>On Tue, 24 Jun 1997, Roger Merchberger wrote:
>> H-120-1. I'm assuming this is the model number.
>It is.
Uh... Update, folks! (and I gotta name this thing now... how about
"Heather"... 8-) Get it?!?
It boots! Did I mention that it came with one floppy disk stuck in the
bottom drive? This floppy was a boot floppy! And it still works! Joy! ;-)
>> Something tickled in my brain about those floppies, so as I lumbered around
>> in the dark in my newly-begun clean-ish basement (Eeeeek!) I found my old
>> non-working Atari 810 disk drive... and the mechs looked almost exact!
>> Would these happen to be the same mechanically, would anyone know?
>
>Probably not, the Z (or H) used standard SA-455? 360K ibm pc style drives
You're right, but they seem to format to only 320K (8 sectors/track, not 9)
with the DOS I do have, which is listed in the stats of the machine I
listed below... The broken drive *does* work! It's only the door that's
broken, so I sacrificed my Atari 810 (which was dead anyway) and the garage
door from it is exact! Yiippee!
>Top, I think. (I have one, but I only got it for the Winchester drive
>card).
Whaddya did with the rest? A few spare parts might be nice (or a color
tube, if yours had it... ;-)
>That is the monitor rom, and certain keys should do something more
>interesting, like
>
>C - color bars (if you have color video, otherwise b&w bars)
>B - boot prompt, pressing the right combo of numbers and fkeys selects
>the boot drive.
>
>D - dump memory
I don't doubt your memory, but I think this is a (prolly earlier) version
of the monitor rom... specs to follow. I fat-fingered *all* the keys on it,
and here's what works:
B -- boots. Accepts parameters of: 0, 1, 2, 3, and that tells it what
floppy to boot from. Plain B assumes floppy 0, which is top. Thanks! All
else beeps with invalid parameter, except "S", which appears to do nothing.
Would this be boot from the serial port, perchance?
V -- Version of the monitor rom, which is Version 1.02.
Nothing else worked...
>It will boot off of CP/M, MP/M, UCSD P-System, Concurrent CP/M, MS-DOS
>and others. If you find a generic version 1 or maybe 2 ms-dos it might
>boot, pc specific PC dos won't.
This thing came with a Version 1 Dos... here's the specs of the boot:
Z-DOS / MS-DOS BIOS Release 1.00 Version 1.02
Z-DOS / MS-DOS Release 1.00 Version 1.25
(C)Copyright 1982, Zenith Data Systems
Z-DOS / MS-DOS Command Release 1.00 Version 1.19
>The machine has an 8088 and an 8085 processor, and uses the appropriate
>one for the os in question.
I've pulled 'er apart to fix the floppy, and to clean the keyboard & all.
Sure enough, it has a NEC 8085A plastic, and an Intel 8088
like-eprom-whatever-you-call-it case. It presently has 128K RAM in it!
Questions:
1. Whilst it's all apart, does anyone want me to snap pictures? I can...
2. How high can this rascal go in memory? I located 3 banks (9 each --
parity) of 64kx1 300ns DRAM, two of which are populated. Mathmatically,
that works to: 128K RAM. The third bank is empty. Can I pop in 9 more chips
without setting any jumpers/dipswitches? How about bigger DRAMS? (prolly
not... but it's worth an ask!) Still, 192K is still pretty good for a
machine from '82!
(also, on the question of jumpers... anyone have a tech-like manual for
this thing I could get a copy of... or at least a copy of the important
pages?)
3. The video board which is based on the Motorola 68A45P video chip,
presently has 64K onboard for *just* the green section of the board. This
rascal can handle 192K Video Memory!!! Funky! ;^> (that is, if I'm reading
the boards right.... but CHKDSK doesn't return the added video memory, so
that'd seem correct.) Does the board support any form of graphics? I tried
the standard basic commands (ZBasic was on the floppy) but it seemed only
to work in text.
For this thing having 2 Intel-based processors, I'm surprised with the
amount of Motorola logic in this rascal! Prolly a 3rd of it is Moto,
including the 74 series chips! All of the important support chips, like the
video processor, the PIA's & UARTS, and all that jazz seem to be Moto.
Well folks, I havta say: This is one *sweet* machine! :-)
>I'm not sure what the licensing requirements are, however, I do have
>several OS's for the machine - I'm sure something can be worked out.
Did Heath/Zenith bundle an OS with the disk systems? If so, wouldn't I own
a license to own a copy of the included OS, as I own the machine? I'm not
sure how stuff like that works, especially on the old stuff.
>You're welcome, pity I'm so far behind in the mail...
>-stacy
No prob... I'm behind as well, as you can plainly see!
>So long, and keep your stick on the ice.
Ohhh, brrrr! I hope yer' talkin' Hockey!!! ;^>
Thanks again, and have a good weekend!
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger Merchberger | If at first you don't succeed,
Programmer, NorthernWay | nuclear warhead disarmament should *not*
zmerch(a)northernway.net | be your first career choice.
>> I have a few WD-1000 host adaptors, and I need to get some
>> information about them. Western Dig. is of not much help-- their web
>> site dosen't carry docs from that far back.
>>
>> I used to have a chart delineating what controller card was what, but
>> I've since lost it. There aren't PeeCee host adaptors; rather they
>> are the same footprint as a 5.25' floppy drive (actually, one is
>> bigger).
>
>I'm pretty sure that these aren't host adapters; I think they're
>controllers in the traditional SCSI sense. (i.e. you sandwich
>them between the SCSI bus and a MFM or ESDI drive.)
Somewhere I have docs on the WD1002-05 which, IIRC, has a WD1000-compatible
hardware interface. The exception is that the WD1000 supplies a WAIT signal
and the WD1002 doesn't.
"The WD1002-05 has been designed to interface to a Host processor via a
parallel port or CPU bus configurations. The specific signals are compatible
with the WD1000/WD1001 series of Winchester-only controller boards. With the
inclusion of the WD1015, the previous WAIT signal is no longer necessary,
but has been provided for compatability; status information is always
available to the Host for monitoring command progress. When the Busy bit
is set, no other status bits are valid."
The host connector is a 40 pin connector. Of this, all even pins are grounds.
The other pins are:
1 -15 : DAL0 through DAL7 respectively
17-21 : A0 through A2, respectively
23 : CS
25 : WE
27 : RE
29 : Pulled up on the WD1002; this is probably WAIT on the 1000.
31, 33: Not connected
35 : Interrupt request
37 : DMA request
39 : Reset
I suspect the interrupt request, DMA request, and Reset ar all asserted high;
the photocopied manual section I have doesn't make this clear.
The WD1002 is programmed like an IDE controller with an 8-bit data register.
I suspect the WD1000 is as well.
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu
> As I have no username/password, I can't shut it down right!
> How do I shut down VMS without losing the harddisk?
> Can I just power it off?
OK, a few things about VMS.
To break into VMS, boot it /1 like this:
>>> b/1
It will give you a SYSBOOT> prompt, at which time you tell it to use
the console for the startup command file:
SYSBOOT> set/start=opa0:
SYSBOOT> continue
Then it'll boot farther and give you a $ prompt. What I usually do here
is this:
$ spawn
<<< spawning SYSTEM_1 message >>
$ @sys$system:startup
This executes the startup file. When the startup file exits, you get the
$ prompt back. At that point, you can:
$ spawn
$ set def sys$system:
$ mc authorize
UAF> set system/password=whatever
UAF> ^Z
$
At this point, you can either shut the system down:
$ @sys$system:shutdown
[[[ you can punch return to all the questions ]]]
and power cycle the system or just hit the power switch. Unlike Unix,
VMS doesn't eat the disk if the power goes out unexpectedly; normally, you'll
want to shut it down with the shutdown command, though (what happens if any
files are open is that blocks allocated to those files are marked as
allocated in the bitmap but not recorded as belonging to those files in
the directory; if you just turn the power off, you'll essentially lose
space on the mounted disks that have open files).
The next time you boot, the system will remember that it wants to use the
console as the startup command file, so you'll have to do the "conversational
boot" again and set it back:
>>> b/1
SYSBOOT> set/start=sys$system:startup.com
SYSBOOT> continue
Roger Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu
