21 Jun
2014
21 Jun
'14
3:41 a.m.
On Thu Jun 19 10:28:44 CDT 2014, Zane Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
If you burned your own PAL yourself and you didn't secure the PAL (or
does a PAL16L8 even have a security fuse?) then even if the known PAL
Fuse Map was lost I would assume that it could just be read back from
the PALs on the boards you have, along with dumping the firmware
EPROMs as well.
-Glen
The person that burned the PAL's is the person that had the fire.
Zane
I have had some progress in this matter:
I got a reply to the letter I sent to folks at tdsys.com. The gentleman had
forwarded to the designer of the Viking series of adapter boards and to the
lady that was working with configuration of products. He had not yet go a
reply from them.
I also checked how the address decoding PAL is connected and I now
understand that it has two outputs, connected to another PAL chip and then
16 inputs. These 16 inputs are the 4 jumpers and also BDAL02-BDAL12 and
also the BBS7 signal. Looks quite reasonable being an address decoding
chip. I more or less presume that the reason for two outputs is that one is
for disk and one is for tape. I have to verify that by reverse engineer the
actual content of the PAL using a small arduino board.
You mention that there is a special way of accessing the configuration
menu. It make sense since when I examine the board more carefully I
discover a small serial EEPROM that might be used for storing the
configuration. It would be really interesting to get more info about how to
access this secret menu! Anyone else out there that knows about this?
I have the cab kit for it. It has a DB25 connector as well as a 50 pin male
IDC connector. But there is also pads for a 10 pin connector that seems to
be for the second serial port. What is the use for this second serial port?
The board has a Signetics SCN2681 DUART chip so it definitely has two
serial ports.
Regarding versions of the firmware. My firmware is 4.0 :
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/96935524/Datormusuem/Viking_Q_B_A4.0.bin
Zane, Pontus: What is your version?
Mattis Lind
On Jun 19, 2014, at 8:14 AM, Glen Slick <glen.slick
at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 7:53 AM, Zane Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com>
wrote:
>>
>> Yes, yes, and yes. I did this 15+ years ago, you're making me feel
old. :-(
>>
>> You need the following:
>> 1. A high enough version of the EPROM
>> 2. A PAL Fuse Map for burning a PAL that will allow the board to act as
a
QDT controller (Disk and Tape)
>> 3. A special cable that allows you to connect
a Serial Terminal
>> 4. Instructions on how to get into the hidden menu to configure the
board
>>
>> I should have #4, but I have no clue as to where it is. The person I
knew
that had #2 lost that data in a fire years ago. I seem to recall
hearing about someone jury-rigging #3, I used the pr\
oper cable and bulkhead plate.