20 May
2012
20 May
'12
4:47 a.m.
Hi,
Did you ever figure out you dilemma regarding your lack of Ohio Scientific floppy media?
I'm basically in the same place having a disk system, but no floppies. I've even
tried 'building' a floppy using disk images found on the net, but the process
seems almost impossible and I ultimately failed.
I've been requesting in various places and forums for anyone who can make me some
copies of their working media, but no one has replied. this is certainly a sad state of
affairs, and I worry that if too much more time passes then we may loose all working
media.to ravages of time and may loose the ability to make new OSI floppies.
I have also been helping develop a paddle board that will basically allow OSI users to
replace their old and dying original drives with something more modern like a 3.5"
disk drive. We have the first prototypes of the board in but I have thus far failed to get
it working and need to do some further troubleshooting.
In the future I really would like to build a database of software and disk images and find
some way for diskless OSI users to bootstrap and create working floppies.
Anyway, excuse the rant
Cheers
Phil
28 May
28 May
3:40 a.m.
I dug into my storage and finally located a c4p-mf which I obtained years ago. Through a
separate transaction I finally obtained a box of diskettes labeled OSI.
After all these years I tried starting the machine. There seems to be garbage on the
screen which clears when hitting the break key. Unfortunately I don't seem to have a
menu after that.
Therefore I haven't risked inserting any of the floppies in the machine.
If I can get this machine working I'd be glad to make copies of the media.
I guess my next step will be to open the machine and reset the components in the sockets
unless anyone else has any suggestions.
Best Regards,
George Rachor
Hillsboro, Oregon
george at rachors.com
On May 20, 2012, at 4:47 AM, Philip Lord wrote:
Hi,
Did you ever figure out you dilemma regarding your lack of Ohio Scientific floppy media?
I'm basically in the same place having a disk system, but no floppies. I've even
tried 'building' a floppy using disk images found on the net, but the process
seems almost impossible and I ultimately failed.
I've been requesting in various places and forums for anyone who can make me some
copies of their working media, but no one has replied. this is certainly a sad state of
affairs, and I worry that if too much more time passes then we may loose all working
media.to ravages of time and may loose the ability to make new OSI floppies.
I have also been helping develop a paddle board that will basically allow OSI users to
replace their old and dying original drives with something more modern like a 3.5"
disk drive. We have the first prototypes of the board in but I have thus far failed to get
it working and need to do some further troubleshooting.
In the future I really would like to build a database of software and disk images and
find some way for diskless OSI users to bootstrap and create working floppies.
Anyway, excuse the rant
Cheers
Phil
11:45 a.m.
After all these years I tried starting the machine.
There seems to be
garbage on the screen which clears when hitting the break key.
Unfortunately I don't seem to have a menu after that.
Not that I know anythign about this machine, but my first question is :
What do you get o nthe screen after pressing BreaK ? A totally blank
screen? Some characters (if so, ehat are thy, and do you get the same
thing every time you turn the machien o nand press Break?)
-tony
3:40 p.m.
I need to find a more suitable monitor but before hitting the break key I see a screen
full of "]" characters. Once I press the break key those characters disappear
and the screen looks blank to me.
George
george at rachors.com
On May 28, 2012, at 11:45 AM, Tony Duell wrote:
After all
these years I tried starting the machine. There seems to be
garbage on the screen which clears when hitting the break key.
Unfortunately I don't seem to have a menu after that.
Not that I know anythign about this machine, but my first question is :
What do you get o nthe screen after pressing BreaK ? A totally blank
screen? Some characters (if so, ehat are thy, and do you get the same
thing every time you turn the machien o nand press Break?)
-tony
3:56 p.m.
On closer examination the character displayed on power up is "I" and not
"]".
George Rachor
george at rachors.com
On May 28, 2012, at 3:40 PM, George Rachor wrote:
I need to find a more suitable monitor but before
hitting the break key I see a screen full of "]" characters. Once I press the
break key those characters disappear and the screen looks blank to me.
George
george at rachors.com
On May 28, 2012, at 11:45 AM, Tony Duell wrote:
After all
these years I tried starting the machine. There seems to be
garbage on the screen which clears when hitting the break key.
Unfortunately I don't seem to have a menu after that.
Not that I know anythign about this machine, but my first question is :
What do you get o nthe screen after pressing BreaK ? A totally blank
screen? Some characters (if so, ehat are thy, and do you get the same
thing every time you turn the machien o nand press Break?)
-tony
31 May
31 May
12:03 p.m.
On closer examination the character displayed on power up is "I" and not
"]".
George Rachor
The behavior you describe is normal.? The power-up garbage composition is irrelevant.? The
key is that the screen fully clears when you hit "break".? That means the video
generation circuitry, video RAM, system clock, CPU, bootstrap ROM, and bus drivers (on
both boards) are all working.
Your machine (if configured for disk) should display "H/D/M?" at the top of the
screen.? If you are using a monitor with lots of overscan, this could be off the screen.?
Perhaps you could try fiddling with the vert knob to see if it's there off the top of
the screen.
Or, you could try powering up the disk drive (without a disk in it), and hit "D"
after the screen clear.? You should hear a sound from the drive that will set your teeth
on edge, but is really the head seeking to track 0.? It should last less than a second.?
If you get that, you may want to try a backup disk in the drive (Usually the brown disk in
the OSI OS distribution was designated as a "working" disk, and is basically a
backup.)
Good luck,
Dave
29 May
29 May
10:57 a.m.
I need to find a more suitable monitor but before hitting the break
key I see a screen full of "]" characters. Once I press the break key
those characters disappear and the screen looks blank to me.
Havign the same character in all oclations is not, I think, a good sign.
I thoght the power-up screen should be essentially random chracters,
certainly not all the saem.
This suggests to me a problem with the video RAM or addressing to said
RAM, and in fac the machien is displaying the same RAM location in all
positions on the screen.
-tony
4370
days inactive
4381
days old
6 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
dfnr2＠yahoo.com -
george＠rachors.com -
lord_philip＠mac.com