New rest-home resident: An Exidy Sorcerer

Or perhaps more useful, when switching ON! (sorry..typo) Terry (Tez) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Stewart" <terry at webweavers.co.nz> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011 1:22 PM Subject: Re: New rest-home resident: An Exidy Sorcerer >> I must get mine set up again. From where I am sitting I can see the fornt >> side of the S100 expansion unit... > > Nice. I would love an expension unit for the Sorcerer but is was hard > enough to actually find the computer itself here in New Zealand. I think > it will have to remain one of those wistful thoughts. > > I've decided to have a crack at fixing this BASIC ROM-PAC over the next > few months. This is probably a good opportunity to actually LEARN about > burning EPROMS and I'm sure I'm going to need to do so if I want to keep > my 70's and 80's computers going for the next 20 years. > > It's going to be a big learning curve for me as my knowledge is still > fragmented in this area. Also it's likely to be a slow project as there > are lots of competing activities at the moment. However, hopefully you > guys can assist if I need to ask what (to you) might seem stupid > newbie-type questions. > > Of course I'm only ASSUMING it's the ROMS. There is not much else in the > case though apart from a few caps and a logic chip or two. Is there any > quick technique to determine if it IS the ROMS and if so if any particular > ROM is faulty? > > One way that comes to mine with the Sorcerer is to somehow prevent the > ROM-PAC from autostarting, then peer into the memory locations the ROM-PAC > occupies (with the inbuilt monitor) to see if any of the memory seems > messed up (with repeating patterns etc.). If NONE of the memory locations > appear accessible this would indicate it might be something OTHER than the > ROMS yes? (as it's unlikely all 4 ROMS would have developed a fault). Is > this a reasonable approach to start off? > > > Anyway...I'll report any progress. > > Terry > > >