7 Jun
1999
7 Jun
'99
8:40 a.m.
Do they have a parts list somewhere on the Web?
I never found one. I had to call Tandy's RSU and deal with some REALLY
dumb and uncaring people. They do not have all the parts and the mother
board I bought was a used board (I worked though).
I bought a new
mother board (only to later find out that my old one
just lacked memory) and a technical reference manual (what a waste
of money).
That bad, huh? :) What are you
trying to find out?
For the 1520, for starters, I'd like to know how to get the darn thing
to work without a hard drive connected. And I'd like to know which hard
drives I can use with the thing, and how to get it to recognize the
drive. I'd also like to know what was available for the
ROM sockets
located under the trapdoor above the keyboard.
It's on the back side of the video card with a printed message that
basically says "if you're a user, don't plug anything in here". I
assume
that it is a Video Card ROM.
Oh yeah, and while we're at it, what about the
"external peripheral"
connector on the back.
I've got the pin-outs... I need to type those damned things in... That's
the external drive (A&B) connector.
And the specs for the CMOS battery.
This battery is available from Tandy for $15.00. I bought one and I
haven't bothered to install it yet. It's a axial leaded, 1/2AA, Lithium
battery, 3.6V (Tandy Part#:10586378). This battery mounts on the top of the
right-most edge of the PCB under the keyboard.
And whether
I can still get battery packs for the machine, and how to recharge them.
Yes, sorta. You can still get the batteries (10.8V (I know), 1800mAH(?)).
Now, your GRiD has a weird slot with four contacts at the end but, the
batteries are just C cells heat shrunk together with three wire leads. You
have to make a casing with contact pads to put the batteries in. I cannot
find anywhere that sells the batteries in the weird GRiD casing. ****AGAIN
if you use the CP3104, you cannot use the battery.
Other issues:
1) The memory is SIPP and you can only use 256 or 1M chips. The slots are
ALTERNATING!!! So, if you use only 4 SIPPs, you skip the 1st, 3rd, 5th &
7th slots.
2) The memory is smaller than normal. I had to get the small 256K (the 1Ms
were too tall) SIMMs, add pins then trim the edges down.
3) The power: 10-20V DC (I use a Dell 18V adapter plugged into the power
connector on the back). (center pin is +)
4) COM1 is for the internal modem and is not useable for anything else
(unless you can figure out the mother-board pin-outs).
5) The 100Mb drive uses a different interface board (internally) than the
20/40Mb/floppy drive laptop.
6) Note: there is a set of 16bit ISA slots (using a weird connector of
course) behind the internal battery contacts (I have the pin-outs if you
want but, I have no clue about where to get a mating connector).
7) To use external floppies, you need to do a bit of splicing magic with
the I/O connector and a floppy drive connector.
8) On the I/O connector there are two power pins that were intended to
supply power to the drive. It was later decided that this was a bad idea
so, the GRiD external floppies have a little circuit that makes the +12V
and +5V for the drive.
Ive got M$DOS on my GRiD and I have found it to be a useful little laptop.
Regarding the Compass, I'd like to know what the
machine expects to talk
to via the GPIB connector, and how it does so (what commands it uses).
Also whether GRiD-OS, GRiDVT100, and GRiDWrite are in ROM, or on the
Bubble device (seems to be the latter for GRiDVT100 and GRiDWrite, but
I'm not sure about the OS). And I'd like to know what the pinouts for
the weird serial connector on the back.
No clue about the compass.
Arfon
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