5 Apr
2010
5 Apr
'10
11:28 a.m.
On Sun, 4 Apr 2010, Steven Hirsch wrote:
I am working at bringing up a N* Horizon system and
have some questions. At
present, I don't have any system software and am attempting to determine
basic functionality.
The box currently has a Z80-A CPU card, HRAM64 memory card and an MDS-AD3
hard-sectored floppy controller (others have been removed temporarily). There
are two built-in SA-400 SS 5.25" drives.
Other cards that came with the unit include a Compupro bus terminator, A
Morrow Disk Jockey 2D/B 8" controller and a Morrow HDCA-4A hard disk
controller. Unfortunately, the 8" Morrow hard disk emitted some magic smoke
at power up and I have not done any further troubleshooting yet. Anyone know
anything about Memorex 8" drive mechanisms?
At power up, the system tries to boot the first floppy drive, then gives up
after 10-15 seconds. I take this as a sign that some life exists. Then, I
connected a PC running ProComm Plus to the left serial port, but cannot get
any reponse or output there.
So, problem 1:
Where are baud rate settings documented? I can find pinouts for assigning
signals on the DB25 connector, but not a mention of baud rate.
Is it possible to obtain any sort of monitor prompt in the absence of a
booted system? Doesn't the floppy controller have some sort of ROM monitor
on-board?
Any tips for getting a terminal connection operational? I have played with
handshake signals a bit, and it sure looks like both parties have the
necessary lines in the necessary states for communication to occur.
Following up my own post: I did find the baud rate jumper hiding in plain
sight on a different page of the backplane manual.
I've also concluded that there is no reason to expect a monitor prompt
from the system, seeing as there is no monitor ROM. I
did not realize
that the disk controller PROM is only a rudimentary bootstrap
loader :-).
I'm planning to populate the EPROM option on the CPU card and install a
copy of Dave Dunfield's little transfer program to see if I get things
running.
Still do need some information on the Memorex drive mechanism. It was
sold as a Morrow M-20 disk system, but I cannot find a shred of
information on the drive itself.
Steve
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