3 Feb
1998
3 Feb
'98
11:57 p.m.
Allison,
Somehow I missed this message.
At 05:05 PM 2/2/98 -0500, you wrote:
<>They may work muost just pull the 360k drives from an XT.
<
< Aren't SA 400's single density? XT drives are Double Density. Yes,
<they'll probably work but the media wouldn't be interchangable.
Sa400 would do FM (single density) and MFM (double density). the 360k
drive also do single density.
Do you mean that XT drive will run SD whn run off of a SD controller and
the disks will be compatable? They would be great. I knew a XT drive
would read and write but I thought the disks would be incompatible with a
disk from a SA 400.
It's the 1.2m 5.25" drives that are weird.
Yes, 17 sectors and odd number of tracks. The track spacing is 1/2 of
that of the 180 and 360K drives and the first track is in a different
location.
< Do you have the old NS* software that will run on the Alrair?
By default yes.. and no. The stuff will run on an altair but the IO
which is personalized for my NS* with it's two serial ports. there
is no way I can personalize it for the altair as I have no clue of the
IO (serial boards used and their addreses). The NS* motherboard
(backplane) has two serial ports and a parallel port plus a few
other useful things so their configurations were easier to be certain
of.
Just tell me where it expects them to be and I'll set mine to that
address. I have 2 serial on one card and 1 serial and 1 parallel on another.
You need to track down a set of NS* manuals or copies.
Not a problem. I have a bunch of them, just no software.
FYI: NSdos requires a minimum 16k of ram starting at 2000h it does not
use ram below 2000h (or care). Also it assumes the ports start at 00
and the port devices are 8251s with hard jumpered baud rates.
RAM is not a problem. The 8251s are. One of my boards is a MITS 2-SIO
and it has a 6850. The other is a Jade Computer Products JP/S-1 card. It
has two strange chips on it. The logo on the ICs looks like an integral
sign running through a circle. The number on the is TR 1602-B. Do you know
anything about this card? I have no docs on it.
BTW I also have a couple of Vector Graphics 8K Static RAM memory
boards. Do you have any info on them?
If you are going to configure an altair you need manuals, more manuals
I have manuals, manuals and more manuals. But still don't have manuals
for everything. Biggest problem is I don't have the software.
and it doesn't hurt to be able do digital design to
understand what they
did.
Been there, done that, got the degree (two of them in fact)
You see the docs with early altairs were not amoung the best. Most
of what you may need to know often had to be extracted
from the printsets
by understanding the logic.
I wish all manuals were that "bad". I'd rather have schematics or logic
diagrams instead of the trash they print now.
then you have the non-altair boards plugged
in that manuals are very handy for too. If the boards
require extra or
specific software (some terminal interface or video display boards) the
hadware and software manuals may be needed.
Yes, I know.
Joe
Allison