intel mds 225

Adrian Stoness said the following on 9/21/2011 8:50 PM: I've got several of them. Love those old "blue boxes"! As for anything before running it, probably not. There is a three-position switch on the back panel. One position is diagnostics and will tell the firmware to run some tests. I would do that before trying to boot it, just to see if it finds anything wrong. There can be a few configurations of that hardware. The internal 8" drive can be single density or double density. It depends on what is controlling it. If the ribbon cable to the drive goes to the back plane board (called the IOC board) then the drive will operate in single density mode. If that ribbon cable makes its way to a two-board set in the cardcage, then likely it will operate in double density mode. ISIS-II is the operating system and will have to be in the density that the drive operates in. The standard 225 had a single-density internal drive, but there were options available. Whether the options were installed would not have been reflected in any labeling on the outside, including the model number. The standard cpu on the 225 was a board wtih an 8085 cpu with 64k of ram. That was the only board in the multibus cage, unless options were purchased and installed. Open the cardcage under the monitor and tell me what you see for multibus boards plugged in. With that info I can probably tell you more definitively what you have. Dave