The 820, is, I think, my favourite CP/M machine. They can be twitchy
though, often stemming from dirty contacts on various cards.
The floppy drive is a Shugart. So, as a matter of fact is the hard
drive. The little 5-1/4's suck, they cripple the machine.
I might have some Xerox manuals somewhere. They might be buried deep,
though. Want me to look? WordStar runs very nicely on the 820. I used
it for a number of years. Most common printer I've seen with it is the
diablo 620.
On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Glen Goodwin wrote:
Greetings to all --
About a year ago, Joe Rigdon very kindly gave me a number of old machines
(thanks, Joe!), among them a Xerox 820. At the time he gave it to me, the
unit didn't power up, but today I finally found the time to give it a
second look. After I reconnected a loose lead inside the box it came to
life! This is my only machine with 8" disk drives, so I'm interested in
finding a good use for it.
I could use some help from the list members, though. I found *no*
technical data via Google, and have *no* real docs for this beast. After
poking at the 820 for a bit, here's where I'm at:
--> The "B" drive is faulty. Disk initialization fails, and it will not
consistently read disks created on the "A" drive. Any pointers on
replacement drives? Even if a thorough cleaning revives this drive, I'd
like to obtain a spare.
--> Assuming I can't revive the "B" drive or find a replacement, how can
I
duplicate diskettes? The CP/M utilities all seem to want two drives in
order to do their job.
--> Two of the boot diskettes which I have boot up a pretty normal looking
version of CP/M 2.2, with a normal "A>" prompt, but another diskette
displays the following upon boot:
"Good Day! ZCPR 2.04 SYSTEM READY"
and the prompt is "A0>" (obviously user group 0). What is this
"ZCPR"?
--> Some of the utilities on the boot diskettes (FMT, for example) refer to
hard disk drives. What's involved in attaching a hard drive to this
system?
--> The flimsy "User Manual" which I have states that the RS232 port may be
configured to attach to a terminal or to a modem. How?
--> Lastly, does anyone have any documentation on this thing? If you can
part with it, I'd be glad to pay a fair price.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. Although this system
doesn't appear to be special or unique, it does seem to be a sort of nice,
friendly critter, and I'd like to put it into use.
Later --
Glen
0/0
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?
And if not now, when?
-- Pirkei Avot
M. K. Peirce
Rhode Island Computer Museum, Inc.
Shady Lea, Rhode Island
"Casta est quam nemo rogavit."
- Ovid