22 Mar
1998
22 Mar
'98
8:19 a.m.
On Mar 22, 7:16, Doug Spence wrote:
Subject: Re: Kaypro: 81-149C vs. 81-232
Well, I've repeated what I did the other night. I plugged the Kaypro II
into the Kaypro 2's drives, and vice versa. Just the ribbon cable, not
the power. Whichever machine was plugged into the Kaypro II's drives was
able to boot, the machine plugged into the 2's drives just sits there with
the bootup message and eventually beeps and says "I cannot read your disk"
(or similar).
I don't know much about Kaypros, but is it possible that one of the sets of
drives is 40-track and the other is 80-track? Or that one set is single-sided
and the other is double-sided? When you start up the machine and it tries to
boot, does a light come on, on the disk drive (which would indicate that the
drive is being accessed)?
Anyway, the only other thing I could try is to make
drive B in the 2 think
that it's drive A, to see if I can boot from there. Does anyone know how
these drives decide which one's A and which one is B? And can I switch
their identities without removing the drives from the metal housing? I
don't have the proper screwdriver to remove the drives.
Usually there's a set of jumpers, or sometimes a small DIL switch pack, which
select one of four disk addresses. They may be labelled DS0, DS1, DS2, DS3 or
perhaps D1, D2, D3, D4. D0=A and D1=B. You just need to switch the jumper
settings. Even if they're not labeled, you should find that all but one of the
jumpers (the drive select jumper) in one drive match the jumpers in the other
drive (of the ame pair).
If you open up the drive case and tell us what the make and model number of the
actual drive mechanism is, someone can probably tell you the jumper settings
and whether the drive is 40/80 or SS/DS.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
22 Mar
22 Mar
10:18 a.m.
On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, Pete Turnbull wrote:
On Mar 22, 7:16, Doug Spence wrote:
Unfortunately, Pete, very few of the full high floppy drive makers were
considerate enough to mark them that way. That pretty much came about
when they went to Berg jumpers for selection.
Subject: Re: Kaypro: 81-149C vs. 81-232
Well, I've repeated what I did the other night. I plugged the Kaypro II
into the Kaypro 2's drives, and vice versa. Just the ribbon cable, not
the power. Whichever machine was plugged into the Kaypro II's drives was
able to boot, the machine plugged into the 2's drives just sits there with
the bootup message and eventually beeps and says "I cannot read your disk"
(or similar).
I don't know much about Kaypros, but is it possible that one of the sets of
drives is 40-track and the other is 80-track? Or that one set is single-sided
and the other is double-sided? When you start up the machine and it tries to
boot, does a light come on, on the disk drive (which would indicate that the
drive is being accessed)?
Anyway, the only other thing I could try is to
make drive B in the 2 think
that it's drive A, to see if I can boot from there. Does anyone know how
these drives decide which one's A and which one is B? And can I switch
their identities without removing the drives from the metal housing? I
don't have the proper screwdriver to remove the drives.
Usually there's a set of jumpers, or sometimes a small DIL switch pack, which
select one of four disk addresses. They may be labelled DS0, DS1, DS2, DS3 or
perhaps D1, D2, D3, D4. D0=A and D1=B. You just need to switch the jumper
settings. Even if they're not labeled, you should find that all but one of the
jumpers (the drive select jumper) in one drive match the jumpers in the other
drive (of the ame pair). If you open up the drive case and tell us what the
make and model number of the
actual drive mechanism is, someone can probably tell you the jumper settings
and whether the drive is 40/80 or SS/DS.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
- don
donm(a)cts.com
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj
visit the "Unofficial" CP/M Weg site at http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm
with Mirror at http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm
10:54 a.m.
New subject: GPIB + disk drives
I could use a quick tutorial on GPIB as it applies to computer device
interfacing.
I want to read an external hard disk that belongs to a GRiD w/a GPIB
interface. I recently picked up at National Instruments GPIB-PC-II card,
found the drivers on their web site, and stuck the thing in my Toshiba
T5200 (a nice little box that should hit classic status some time soon).
The card and low-level drivers seem to work great, but I can't find any
higher-level drivers that know how to talk to this drive (or any drive,
for that matter). Do drives that talk GPIB all talk the same way? If so,
any idea where I might be able to find an MS-DOS driver that sits on top
of the GPIB driver I've installed?
Should I give up on this approach and simply pull the drive out of the box
and see if I can talk to it with an MFM controller? It's a 10MB 5.25"
drive from around 1982, so I'm assuming it's a Seagate.
-- Doug
10:25 a.m.
New subject: GPIB + disk drives
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23 Mar
23 Mar
4:18 a.m.
New subject: GPIB + disk drives
At 12:25 AM 3/23/98 +0000, you wrote:
No, HP uses at least three different "standard" command sets for drives
and countless non-standard ones. I have a LARGE book from HP that gives
file conversion programs for some instruments (not even
computers/calculators or anything else) and there are probably well over a
hundred formats described in it.
If so,
It could be almost anything. I've seen Seagate 225s in some drive boxs
but large Quantum drives in other box with the same model number!
I could use a quick tutorial on GPIB as it applies to computer device
interfacing.
GPIB ~ IEEE-488 ~ HPIB...
The original IEEE-488 standard only specified the _hardware_ of the
interface - signals, timing, etc. It meant that two devices could be
plugged together without the magic smoke leaking out, data could flow,
but they needn't understand each other.
Certainly later HPIB standards specified things like the ASCII character
set would be used for text, and that numbers would be sent as normally
read - most significant digit first if sent in ascii.
The command sets for particular devices AFAIK were never specified. HP
had a whole lot of them for their own peripherals, but other
manufacturers were free to do what they wanted.
[Reading GRID drive]
> The card and low-level drivers seem to work great, but I can't find any
> higher-level drivers that know how to talk to this drive (or any drive,
> for that matter). Do drives that talk GPIB all talk the same way?
Not at all, alas. HP drives probably use the CS/80 command set, or the
cut-down Amigo command set. Commodore PET drives had their own commands
which made extensive use of extended secondary addresses. Other
manufacturers probably did their own thing.
Tony's right, many manufacturers didn't implement the full set of HP-IB
commands/functions. If you look at many HP-IB devices, you find a codes
like SH 0, AH 1, DC 2, etc printed near the HP-IB port. The letters are
the abbreviation for different command or functions and the number gives
the capability level for that function. 0 always means no capability. But
full capability is 1 for some functions like Source Handshake (SH) or it
may be as high as 8 for others. You'll have to get the specification from
IEEE or HP or another manufacturer to understand the codes.
any idea where I might be able to find an MS-DOS
driver that sits on top
of the GPIB driver I've installed?
HP sold a driver to use some of the smaller HP disk and tape units with
an MS-DOS machine. Probably absolutely no use for this problem, though.
>
> Should I give up on this approach and simply pull the drive out of the box
> and see if I can talk to it with an MFM controller? It's a 10MB 5.25"
> drive from around 1982, so I'm assuming it's a Seagate.
Alas MFM controllers are equally non-standard at the format level. So
it's not at all certain that a PC controller could make sense of the data
on this drive.
MFM would definitely *NOT* make sense of the data! The formats are
completely different! There is no FAT table on HP drives and when you
format them, you tell the system how many files to allocate on the drive
and it creates that many directory entries, so the number of dir entries
isn't even constant! PLUS many of the drives are partioned by hardware
control.
You might be able to use the drive but you'll have to LL format it and
start from scratch.
Joe
-- Doug
-tony
5:36 a.m.
New subject: GPIB + disk drives
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22 Mar
22 Mar
8:18 p.m.
On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, Pete Turnbull wrote:
I'm afraid it's not that easy. I did pull out the flashlight and take
some good close looks inside the drives tonight, though, and I think I
know how it determines the drive number now.
At the back of the main circuit board, just in front of where the ribbon
cable connects to it, there is a 14-pin chip with a label "1F" beside it.
In drive A, there is an empty 16-pin socket beside it, with "2F" written
on the circuit board beside it. Drive B has something IN this socket - a
BLUE 16-pin chip.
Just in case it was simply a matter of a missing part in drive A of the
Kaypro 2, I inspected the Kaypro II's drives, and they were identical.
There's a blue 16-pin chip sitting in the socket of drive B, and not in
drive A. That along with the "2F" labelling seems to be pretty clear.
Now the problem is swapping that "chip" from one drive to the other. I
don't think I should even make the attempt without first getting the
drives out of the machine. Which means I need an appropriately-sized
6-sided screwdriver. :/
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
I don't know much about Kaypros, but is it
possible that one of the sets of
drives is 40-track and the other is 80-track?
I don't know enough about Kaypros myself to answer this one.
Or that one set is single-sided and the other is
double-sided?
Both machines have single-sided drives. And the boot disk I'm using is
definitely single-sided, because I duplicated it using TeleDisk with side
0 only, and the copy boots up and runs WordStar just fine.
When you start up the machine and it tries to boot,
does a light come on,
on the disk drive (which would indicate that the drive is being accessed)?
Yes. The light for drive A comes on, and the motors for both drives come
on.
I get the same response out of the machine whether I use the Kaypro boot
disk or an MS-DOS disk. But it is paying enough attention that it
immediately tells me "I cannot read your diskette" when I insert a
cleaning disk. :) [which makes cleaning a bit difficult]
Also, just for the hell of it (and it's probably a Bad Thing(tm)) I nudged
the head forward when the machine was off, to see if it would move when
power was applied. And it did move back to its usual position.
Anyway, the
only other thing I could try is to make drive B in the 2 think
that it's drive A, to see if I can boot from there. Does anyone know how
these drives decide which one's A and which one is B? And can I switch
their identities without removing the drives from the metal housing? I
don't have the proper screwdriver to remove the drives.
Usually there's a set of jumpers, or sometimes a small DIL switch pack, which
select one of four disk addresses. They may be labelled DS0, DS1, DS2, DS3 or
perhaps D1, D2, D3, D4. D0=A and D1=B.
23 Mar
23 Mar
5:05 a.m.
On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Doug Spence wrote:
I'm afraid it's not that easy. I did pull out the flashlight and take
some good close looks inside the drives tonight, though, and I think I
know how it determines the drive number now.
At the back of the main circuit board, just in front of where the ribbon
cable connects to it, there is a 14-pin chip with a label "1F" beside it.
In drive A, there is an empty 16-pin socket beside it, with "2F" written
on the circuit board beside it. Drive B has something IN this socket - a
BLUE 16-pin chip.
The BLUE chip is a terminating resistor array and should be installed in
the last drive on the ribbon cable - the B drive. Leave it there.
It is possible that the 14pin socket is the drive selector. If so, it
should not be completely empty. There might be a wire jumper or two
inserted, but what I would expect you to find is a 'chip(?)' that looks
something like this:
________________________
| |
| \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ |
| /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ |
|______________________|
New and unused, the points that I have shown would join to make a pin
to pin connection. One uses a small screwdriver or Xacto knife or such
to cut through and open the connection. For drive selection, only one or
two be making a connection.
On Sun, 22 Mar 1998, Pete Turnbull wrote:
No, that is not a problem.
I don't know much about Kaypros, but is it
possible that one of the sets of
drives is 40-track and the other is 80-track?
I don't know enough about Kaypros myself to answer this one.
Or that one set is single-sided and the other is
double-sided?
Both machines have single-sided drives. And the boot disk I'm using is
definitely single-sided, because I duplicated it using TeleDisk with side
0 only, and the copy boots up and runs WordStar just fine.
When you start up the machine and it tries to
boot, does a light come on,
on the disk drive (which would indicate that the drive is being accessed)?
Yes. The light for drive A comes on, and the motors for both drives come
on.
I get the same response out of the machine whether I use the Kaypro boot
disk or an MS-DOS disk. But it is paying enough attention that it
immediately tells me "I cannot read your diskette" when I insert a
cleaning disk. :) [which makes cleaning a bit difficult]
Also, just for the hell of it (and it's probably a Bad Thing(tm)) I nudged
the head forward when the machine was off, to see if it would move when
power was applied. And it did move back to its usual position. Anyway, the only other thing I could try is to make
drive B in the 2 think
that it's drive A, to see if I can boot from there. Does anyone know how
these drives decide which one's A and which one is B? And can I switch
their identities without removing the drives from the metal housing? I
don't have the proper screwdriver to remove the drives.
Usually there's a set of jumpers, or sometimes a small DIL switch pack, which
select one of four disk addresses. They may be labelled DS0, DS1, DS2, DS3 or
perhaps D1, D2, D3, D4. D0=A and D1=B. Just in case it was simply a matter of a missing part
in drive A of the
Kaypro 2, I inspected the Kaypro II's drives, and they were identical.
There's a blue 16-pin chip sitting in the socket of drive B, and not in
drive A. That along with the "2F" labelling seems to be pretty clear.
Now the problem is swapping that "chip" from one drive to the other. I
don't think I should even make the attempt without first getting the
drives out of the machine. Which means I need an appropriately-sized
6-sided screwdriver. :/
What you need is what is called an Allen Wrench. They come in all shapes
and sizes. Your friendly local hardware store or electronic shop should
be delighted to sell you one or a set.
- don
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
donm(a)cts.com
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj
visit the "Unofficial" CP/M Weg site at http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm
with Mirror at http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm
28 Mar
28 Mar
8:42 p.m.
On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Don Maslin wrote:
<snip>
Good. It seemed like the only way of knowing if the drive was even making
an attempt to read the disk. Apart from its reaction to the cleaning
disk, that is. :)
OK. That makes sense. The blue thing was the only difference I could see
between drives from my restricted viewing window.
Yeah, I've located precisely 40, in my father's toolbox, seemingly from
two identical sets. But none are the proper size.
It seems doubtful for an American product, but could these screws be
metric? Most tools in this house are still Imperial. :)
Also, just for
the hell of it (and it's probably a Bad Thing(tm)) I nudged
the head forward when the machine was off, to see if it would move when
power was applied. And it did move back to its usual position.
No, that is not a problem. At the back of
the main circuit board, just in front of where the ribbon
cable connects to it, there is a 14-pin chip with a label "1F" beside it.
In drive A, there is an empty 16-pin socket beside it, with "2F" written
on the circuit board beside it. Drive B has something IN this socket - a
BLUE 16-pin chip.
The BLUE chip is a terminating resistor array and should be installed in
the last drive on the ribbon cable - the B drive. Leave it there. It is possible that the 14pin socket is the drive
selector.
It isn't. The cover article of the September 1984 issue of 80 Micro,
entitled "Drive Ways", has photos of Tandon drives that appear identical
to the ones in my Kaypros. The "DIP shunt for drive select" is in a
14-pin package, plugged into a 16-pin connector, just in front of the
14-pin chip I can see from the back of the drives.
I won't know if these drives have the "DIP shunt" or the thing you
describe until I get the drives out of the metal box.
<snip>
I don't
think I should even make the attempt without first getting the
drives out of the machine. Which means I need an appropriately-sized
6-sided screwdriver. :/
What you need is what is called an Allen Wrench. They come in all shapes
and sizes. Your friendly local hardware store or electronic shop
should
be delighted to sell you one or a set.
Now I have to go looking. :)
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
29 Mar
29 Mar
8:39 a.m.
On Sun, 29 Mar 1998, Doug Spence wrote:
<snip>
OK. That makes sense. The blue thing was the only difference I could see
between drives from my restricted viewing window.
True, as the DIP shunt is probably about 1.5" into the metal box.
<snip>
No, they are US standard. The wrench is 7/64", I believe.
- don
donm(a)cts.com
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj
visit the "Unofficial" CP/M Weg site at http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm
with Mirror at http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm
At the
back of the main circuit board, just in front of where the ribbon
cable connects to it, there is a 14-pin chip with a label "1F" beside it.
In drive A, there is an empty 16-pin socket beside it, with "2F" written
on the circuit board beside it. Drive B has something IN this socket - a
BLUE 16-pin chip.
The BLUE chip is a terminating resistor array and should be installed in
the last drive on the ribbon cable - the B drive. Leave it there. It is possible that the 14pin socket is the drive
selector.
It isn't. The cover article of the September 1984 issue of 80 Micro,
entitled "Drive Ways", has photos of Tandon drives that appear identical
to the ones in my Kaypros. The "DIP shunt for drive select" is in a
14-pin package, plugged into a 16-pin connector, just in front of the
14-pin chip I can see from the back of the drives.
I won't know if these drives have the "DIP shunt" or the thing you
describe until I get the drives out of the metal box. What you need
is what is called an Allen Wrench. They come in all shapes
and sizes.
Yeah, I've located precisely 40, in my father's toolbox, seemingly from
two identical sets. But none are the proper size.
It seems doubtful for an American product, but could these screws be
metric? Most tools in this house are still Imperial. :) Your friendly
local hardware store or electronic shop should
be delighted to sell you one or a set.
Now I have to go looking. :)
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
23 Mar
23 Mar
5:13 a.m.
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28 Mar
28 Mar
9:04 p.m.
On Mon, 23 Mar 1998, Tony Duell wrote:
I believe it is a Tandon drive.
I am unable to view the main circuit boards of the drives because they're
in a metal box, but if 1E is directly in front of 2E, then yes, I believe
I'll find the jumpers there. I've found labeled photographs of a Tandon
drive in an old issue of 80 Micro.
<snip>
At the back of
the main circuit board, just in front of where the ribbon
cable connects to it, there is a 14-pin chip with a label "1F" beside it.
In drive A, there is an empty 16-pin socket beside it, with "2F" written
on the circuit board beside it. Drive B has something IN this socket - a
BLUE 16-pin chip.
Sounds a little like a Tandon drive, although those normally had the
jumper in location 1E (or at least the schematics I have show it there). The 14 pin 'chip' is the jumper pack. Alas the
schematics I've found show
a _16_ pin jumper at location 1E with the following functions :
1-16 Enable head load on drive selected
2-15 Drive select 0
3-14 DS1
4-13 DS2
5-12 DS3
6-11 Mux (drive _always_ enabled)
7-10 Not used
8-9 Eanable head load on motor on
The photos show a 16-pin socket, filled with a 14-pin "DIP shunt", with
only four switches in it, corresponding (I think) to DS0-DS3.
I've also found a later version of the drive with
a 14 pin jumper at
location 'U8'. It has the following functions
1-14 Enable head load on drive selected
2-13 Drive select 0
3-12 DS1
4-11 DS2
5-10 Mux (drive _always_ enabled)
6-9 DS3
7-8 Eanable head load on motor on
How similar in appearance are these two drives? The one in 80 Micro (#56,
Sept. 84) appears identical to the drives I have, at least as far as my
limited viewing window allows me to see.
At any rate, once I manage to remove the drives from their housing, I'll
find the jumper blocks.
<snip>
There are 3 common '6-sided' screwdrivers :
Allen hex - a true hexagonal tip, which come in inch and metric sizes
This is the one I need. Possibly in metric sizes as none of the imperial
ones I have fit.
Torx - looks like a 6-cycle 'sine wave'
wrapped around a circle. This one
is common in computer equipment
And quite annoying. :)
Bristol Spine - has 6 _square_ splines (sometimes only
4). This one is
common in Friden machines, and in some IBM stuff.
I don't think I've ever seen this one.
Thanks again!
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
29 Mar
29 Mar
1:53 a.m.
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