I have several boards labeled 5160 64/256K old style sys on the sealed
static bag and 1503334 on the board. Another has 50008?2 on the etch.
Any info would be useful. If you are interested in any of them please
contact me off list.
Thanks, Paul
On Sat, Mar 10, 2018 at 7:24 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Thu, 8 Mar 2018, Ali wrote:
Howzbout the Fischer? diagnostic ROM, thta came
with a hard-wired
configured serial port, that could perform some
tests on a system that
did NOT boot to the point of video.
Now that does sound interesting. Tell us more uncle Fred ;).
Not much to tell, and I don't know much.
I think that it was Todd Fischer.
He supplied a ROM, and a serial board that was hard configured for a
terminal (can't run software to configure a serial card if the machine
won't boot!). It therefore did not rely on the video working.
He also had been selling cases and power supplies for 5.25" drives at the
conputer swaps.
I really enjoyed the P.O.S.T. cards. In debugging code, I could insert a
simple output to a port of the value of a variable, with minimal disruption
of any of the rest of the code.
A friend pointed out that most diagnostic software, including many memory
tests, etc. would not run if there actually WAS a fault, such as bad RAM in
Bank0. So, as a joke, he wrote a "DIAGNOSTIC PROGRAM", that put "It
works!"
on the screen. "If you get the message, then it means that everything is
at least sorta working. If you do not get the message, then something is
wrong." Later, he changed it to "friendlier message", and had it say,
"Hello, world".