I thought the
'full disk' controller was the 8" one (which was
essentially the same as the normal 380Z controller), and that the one
with the on-board Z80 was the Intellegent Disk Controller. But I could
well be wrong.
Hmm... I've only seen schematics for two different disk controllers -
There are only 2 boards. The 8" controller is the same as the
non-intellegent 5.25" one. There are notes on the schematic for the link
settings for the FDS (== 8") and MDS (== 5.25") versions.
Far as I know, the former board is FM only and can put
about 70KB on a
The 1771 is certainly FM (single density) only.
disk, whilst the latter one can do MFM and gets about
240KB on a disk.
I've not seriously looked at those schematics yet...
Much as the
RAM expansion board is the same PCB as the CPU board,
but you leave off the CPU and buffers, etc.
Actually, info on the various PAL chips would be handy; RML didn't half
THere were no PALs in the original set of boards (CPU, VDU, hi-res, disk,
etc). WHat there were -- and were to excess -- were small bipolar PROMs.
Those were often colour-coded.
I will have to check, but I may well have dumps of some of those somewhere.
That's
what the service manual implied. I have a 480Z (one of the older
metal-cased ones), but no disk unit for it.
Aha, I've got a 480Z disk unit here - never tried it as I need to sit
down and figure out the cable wiring which puts a bit of extra time on
the task.
It would be useful to know the protocol that the 480Z uses to talk to the
disk unit. From what I remember, though,, it uses the serial chips in
synchronous mode, which means finding another machine that could act as a
disk server would not be totally trivial.
It does seem that there were a few different
keyboards, but I'm not sure
how they differed internally. Far as I know, they all talked the same
protocol to the CPU though.
They did. 7 bit ASCII code and a strobe line. That much is documented in
the Infroation File.
I think hacking a PC keyboard to work with a 380Z would spoil the
machine though :-) I'd rather use a period terminal and drive things
COnsidering my Infromation File is dated November 1981, a PC keyboard
_is_ period :-)
that way. Hitting a key on the terminal at system
start should be enough
to wake things up and tell the 380Z to use the terminal as input rather
than the usual keyboard. Can't remember if there's a way of telling it
Are you sure about that? I've never seen it documented anywhere.
what device to use as output, though...
I'll double check regarding tapes. I've got
about half of Bletchley's
Thanks. But absoutely no hurry -- this is very much a 'to do sometime'
project, and it's been on the list for many years!
-tony