11 Jan
2007
11 Jan
'07
7:42 a.m.
If it wasn't obvious, the underlying subject of
this part of thread
is how to deal with the lack of a Victor 9000 boot floppy.
If you need a Victor 9000 boot floppy I can supply one.
Contact me off-list with a postal address.
were those dos services? I have a few books out in the
shed, maybe I
should just look it up! I had envisioned a scheme by which I could
hack onto the bios so a blank floppy could be formatted in a V9000,
and subsequently the date/image from a normal floppy could be
transferred to it (I have a whole boatload of images for the machine,
but I'm not quite sure how they created the image of a boot
floppy...or why if it can't be created w/o a bootable V9000).
The "universal" boot ROM is supposed to have a serial bootstrap capability.
I haven't burned one to try in my Victor yet, but had considered using it
for something like vtserver or ADT. I haven't seen docs on the protocol,
but I expect you could reverse-engineer it from the boot ROM disassembly.
Unfortunately the lack of any decent documentation for this machine could
make the rest of the job a real PITA.
I've seen mention of a Hardware Technical Reference for the Victor.
If anyone has a copy I'd be interested in hearing from you.
Regards,
--
Eric Josephson <ericj at speakeasy.org>