9 Jan
2003
9 Jan
'03
4:28 p.m.
Hello, all:
Scott has made much progress in repairing my N* machine. Well,
calling it a N* is a stretch since the only thing N* about it is the
motherboard, case and disk controller.
Anyway, I'm having diskette issues. I have two theoretically good
single-density controllers and disk drives, and Don Maslin made replacement
boot disks for me. These disks don't boot, although the controller attempts
to access them. It may be that the replacement SD disks were made from a DD
controller, but I don't know for sure.
So, I have two choices -- obtain SD boot diskettes made with an SD
controller or get a N* DD controller (MDS-AD|AD2|AD3). Any other thoughts or
recommendations appreciated. Thanks.
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
/************************************************************/
9 Jan
9 Jan
4:52 p.m.
New subject: Northstar Computer, was Re: S100 spares needed - repairs almost done
"Richard A. Cini" wrote:
Anyway, I'm having diskette issues. I have two theoretically good
single-density controllers and disk drives, and Don Maslin made replacement
boot disks for me. These disks don't boot, although the controller attempts
to access them. It may be that the replacement SD disks were made from a DD
controller, but I don't know for sure.
So, I have two choices -- obtain SD boot diskettes made with an SD
controller or get a N* DD controller (MDS-AD|AD2|AD3). Any other thoughts or
recommendations appreciated. Thanks.
I have a similar problem with three of my N* computers, and finally
decided to find out what was going on. The DC voltages were okay and
there only appeared to be about .2 VAC ripple on the line; I think that
is okay. By doing board swaps, I found out the CPU and MDS cards were
good and the disk light would come on w/o any memory installed.
Interesting! One of the memory cards appears to be bad. Doing board
swaps to a good machine and everything works. I am down to one of two
things, either the motherboard has some problems, or the memory card is
bad. I was using 64K RAM boards, and since I didn't pull out the docs to
double check, it is possible the "bad" ram card had the E800 segment
turned on (that is the location of the N* boot routines.) Yes, I did
swap disk drives also in the process.
Did I mention that I heard a couple of "pops" on the CPU card when
apparently the tantalum caps shorted and exploded :). One of the CPU
cards had a trace burn off when the cap went.
7:03 p.m.
On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Richard A. Cini wrote:
Hello, all:
Scott has made much progress in repairing my N* machine. Well,
calling it a N* is a stretch since the only thing N* about it is the
motherboard, case and disk controller.
Anyway, I'm having diskette issues. I have two theoretically good
single-density controllers and disk drives, and Don Maslin made replacement
boot disks for me. These disks don't boot, although the controller attempts
to access them. It may be that the replacement SD disks were made from a DD
controller, but I don't know for sure.
That is correct, Rich. They were created on the DD controller and
booted it nicely. I am now exploring getting media that was made on a
SD controller and will try to duplicate it on a SD controller that I
found that I have.
- don
So, I have two choices -- obtain SD boot diskettes
made with an SD
controller or get a N* DD controller (MDS-AD|AD2|AD3). Any other thoughts or
recommendations appreciated. Thanks.
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
/************************************************************/
7866
days inactive
7867
days old
2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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donm＠cts.com -
marvin＠rain.org -
rcini＠optonline.net