Update: My Z2 (Re: Cromemco boot disk maker & images are available)

Normally following up on one's own message is probably a bit of bad taste, however, this appeared to be the last message of the thread, and I have an update. FYI, I did manage, earlier this spring, to try and bring up my Z-2, but so far not so good. I got the power on (and measured it for general reasonableness). Once I hooked it up, it immediately blew a power filter capacitor on one of the floppy drives (this was not really a shock -- I had re-formed the main electrolytics, but didn't do that on each board or drive), which I replaced. So, I thought I might test the Z-2's floppy controller and CPU in my Altair chassis. I did get that running, but then I got distracted -- it was an obvious chance to snag the images of all of its disks (Micropolis-I, Micropolis-II and 8"), which I did, though the old beast was a little cranky from time to time. (Long ago I had written an imaging program I called "XMT" which used a little protocol I developed to transfer files and disk images reasonably reliably. All I had to do was write up the PC side. Uses a serial port). The system is not saying anything, but I was also short on docs, so after a few hours I kind of gave up on it for a while late in April / early in May. HOWEVER: I just stumbled on a big box full of stuff that came with my Cromemco. (Happy, happy, joy, joy). I had had the inkling that I had some stuff for the Z-2, but this spring I was looking just for a little floppy box. Today I am doing some cleaning, as things had gotten pretty out of hand in the finished part of my basement. After I got that cleaned up to the point where there were some electonic hardware things (PIC programmer, parts for a PIC project, etc.) that I wanted to put onto a shelf, I turned my attention to a shelf I had stuck some stuff on while we had some work done on our house *last* summer (over a year ago). On top of that shelf was a "copier paper box" chock full of manuals, doc -- and floppies -- all for the Z2!. So, now I guess I'll have to get motivated later this fall (probably late October before I can get to it) and find out what is making the Z2 unhappy and get it working again. Docs will make it a lot eaiser. ;^) And, of course, I may well still need the CDOS image -- I don't know if the two boxes of 5" floppies I have for it are any good (though my recovery of old Altair floppies was well over 95%, and most of the ones that were bad I knew were bad years ago -- my basement is cool and dry so things tend to keep remembering). The moral of the story: House cleaning is a good idea once in a while. 8^) At 10:09 AM 4/30/2005 -0500, Jay Jaeger wrote: --- Jay R. Jaeger The Computer Collection cube1 at charter.net