27 Sep
1998
27 Sep
'98
7:47 p.m.
On Sun, 27 Sep 1998, John Lawson wrote:
> > 2) A Jonos Escort portable, running CP/M
3.0.
I've not had the time yet to take the case
apart. This particular
Escort has only a 1/2 ht HD and matching Syquest removable cartridge
drive. There is a banner screen on boot-up that lists drives A: - G:,
it calls out A: as a 'Syquest 5 Mb' and also B: the same. C: - F:
are called out as 'Sony' and G: says '8 subsystem'. There are no
floppies physically with the system, and BIOS issues the expected
complaints upon trying to access these letters.
C: - F: would suggest that they had a whole bank of floppy drives on it!
And the G: '8 subsystem suggests another floppy controller. None of any
size presently installed, I take it.
What concerns me is the Syquest cart drive, and what
data may be
lurking thereon. BIOS says bad things about 'Data table not found'
and also 'controller error'. The cart drive does spin up and a
pattern of access can be heard (the same each time), but no joy as
far as CP/M is concerned. I don't intend to format the cartridge
until I can come up with some blank/recyclable ones that I can back
up the HD to.
Most likely, both HDs are off of the same HD controller as the early
Syquests were ST-506 interface. So, since the fixed drive boots, it is
more likely that the Syquest is the problem rather than the controller.
I think that a very early move should be to open it up and see what is
connected to what, cleaning connections as you go.
A question for anyone who might know is: are the
current Syquest
carts still compatible with this unit? (c. 1983) If not.. has
anyone some old ones they'd like to sell/trade?
I seriously doubt it! The cartridges are, as I'm sure you know, factory
formatted to lay down servo tracks that the drive can follow. You should
not perform a low level format on the cartridge. Check it with FDISK and
see if it will recognize it.
Sysquest made their early drives in 5mb and 10mb capacities. The problem
that I always had was that I wasn't smart enough to tell the 5s from the
10s and they were not interchangeable. There were no obvious markings to
differentiate them.
Also: One key is broken on the keyboard; the upper
right
corner > one. What is it's function?
Sorry, not a clue.
- don