Apricot & G4IDE - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

7 Dec 2000

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  Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2000 19:56:14 -0000
 From: "Adrian Graham" &lt;witchy(a)i12.com&gt;
 Subject: Weekend's finds

 Hi Folks,

 I don't know if this'll work since I'm posting from home, but 
 I just thought 
Woo - it worked :)

...
  My guess is that the DC output is the standard pinout
(say for an 
 external drive), and is +5V and +12V. But I would think the  
It sure is.

...
  ports. I 
 would guess (again) that the DC input is +12V, +5V, -12V and 
 maybe -12V. 
Pity the guy I got it from is purely a box shifter, ie he parks up at a boot
sale and shifts loads of boxes of rubbish from his van! You then have to
sift.....
Odd that I can find no mention of this machine on the web at all (via
google) apart from memory expansion sites and one particular site that told
me it was a 386 clone.

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  Those chips are all standard 4000-series CMOS (the
4040 and 4060 are 
 counters, I forget what the 4087 is). Drawing out the 
 schematic should take < 1 hour... 
I can scan it and mail it to you :)

...
  is some kind of amateur radio/weather (?)
analogue-type fax image 
 decoder, and has nothing to do with modern fax sent over 
 telephone lines.  
You're right - I've had 2 replies so far both saying the same thing.

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  Are there any connectors on the PCB (other than the
edge 
 connector to the ZX81)? 
No - there must've been another board that plugged into the '81 then this
board finished it all off....he might be there again next week so I'll have
a good rummage.

...
  ------------------------------ Pete Turnbull:

...
  Did you get a monitor with it?  Apricot monitors of
that 
 vintage came in
 two types, colour and monchrome, and contained the power 
 supply for the
 machine.  What exactly are the connectors on the box?  The 
 ones I remember
 had a sort of plstic clip around the monitor video/power connector. 
It's got the apricot monitor, mono by the looks of things, and I thought the
same thing since the back of the machine has a port labelled 'Apricot
Monitor connector' as well as another monitor connector. If I'm right in
thinking the monitor powers the box then the box is dead :( 'Tis an easy
matter to check for voltages on the monitor lines though.

...
  Given the callsign 'G4IDE', I'd expect
this is something like 
 an interface
 to a weather fax receiver used by a radio ham. 
4th reply saying the same thing, so I've got to find the same bloke and see
what else he's got....

cheers both!

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