resurrecting a Zilog System 8000

Hi, as someone might remember, I've got some Zilog System 8000 equipment and over the last days I've started resurrecting it. I thought - maybe someone feels interested in the story as well ;) 2 days ago I've built my "custom" frontpanel (just a transition solution) with the remaining stuff I had at home. The "original-like" push button I tried to get in my local electronic distributor was out of stock. So I reused an old circuit board, 11+40 ohm resisitor to get the needed 51 ohm and so on... ;-) The final version will contain the "original-like" push buttons, the LED banks and so on. It will be mounted then at the same position where the original panel sits. When it is then hidden behind the front door it will look nearly like the original one. At least, thats the plan. Until then: http://pics.pofo.de/gallery/v/S8000/Repair/P1070180.JPG.html http://pics.pofo.de/gallery/v/S8000/Repair/P1070181.JPG.html After this was done, I've used an old PC-AT PSU for supplying the required power to the backplane ("POWERFAIL" cable ignored): http://pics.pofo.de/gallery/v/S8000/Repair/P1070182.JPG.html And then put back all together, huck up a nulmodem cable to my PC and - yeah The firmware got loaded and the usual START message was printed: http://pics.pofo.de/gallery/v/S8000/Repair/P1070183.JPG.html http://pics.pofo.de/gallery/v/S8000/Repair/P1070186.JPG.html Pressing the NMI/START switch on my glamorous frontpanel brings up an immediate FATAL ERROR: S8000 Monitor 1.2 - Press START to Load System P *** ERROR #0000 *** FATAL ERROR [ Reading the hardware ref. manual - this means no external RAM - of course, I still don't have the 1MB dynamic memory board. :( Connecting the WDC board to the bus leads to a non-startable system having the BUSACK LED on the CPU board permanently on - probably the WDC is broken and spams the system BUS... But at least this was my first step which was done OK I guess ;) -- Oliver Lehmann http://www.pofo.de/ http://wishlist.ans-netz.de/