8 Jul
2007
8 Jul
'07
1:13 p.m.
I have a Victor 9000 I'm restoring here, and I have a few questions:
1. Where do the two plugs for the 5 1/4 drive heads connect? This system
has the Universal bios, a 10MB winchester HDD with DOS 3.1x and the
later 1.44MB GCR/MFM floppy installed, but I can only seem to get one of
I've only got data on the older GCR-only controller board. On that PCB,
the hard connecoters are :
J15 (Drive A, lower head)
J16 (Drive A, upper haed)
J17 (Drive B, lower head)
J18 (Drive B, upper head)
Note that upper and lower heads have the plugs wired in the reverse order
from each other. If in doubt, find the grounded pin on
the PCB and
connect the head cable so that that pin goes to the screen (shield) of
the cable.
the drive heads working (using catweasel on PC to dump
a 'formatted'
disk afterwards results in clear data spikes on one side and the other
side blank, and format.exe won't format disks properly unless given the
/1 1-sides flag)
2. The victor 9000 does NOT say anything when I turn it on. I know the
Sirius 1 did, but I'm not sure the Victor does. Is this normal, or does
DOes ,it? I don't remember mine saying anything.
the system need the HC-55564 delta modulation chip
replaced?
I'd start by probing around the 6852 synchronous serial chip at loaction
U11B. That's the chip that drives the delta modulator/demodulator chip.
Check that data is actually being sent to said chip. Also check the
'mute' line (inverted from CB2 of the 6522 at U15L) is not stuck asseted.
3. Does anyone have a schematic or service manual for
the victor
9000/sirius 1 anywhere?
I have my own hand-drawn scheamtic of the twin-floppy GCR-only machine.
Alas I have no scanner, and after the antics on another forum, I am less
inclinded to be so free with such information in the future anyway.
I also discovered that both of the victor keyboards I have need
re-foaming between the contact discs and key plungers, which is gonna be
IIRC, it's a standard Keytronics mechanism. At one time (quite recently)
you could buy the mylar + foam assemblies, and they weren't that
expensive. I am toid that's no more, though.
Of course the Keytronics keyboard turned up in all sorts of machines. You
might find a PC clone keyboard that uses the same parts and where the
foam is still good.
-tony