AW: CGA card (Mitsubishi Electric) with 192K RAM?

[Fred Cisin]

On Mon, 7 Sep 2020, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
> Progress! I started looking everything over again, picking stuff apart, 
> reassembling etc. - eventually happening to notice quite by chance how rough 
> the very end of the hard disk control cable felt as I pushed the connector 
> back onto the drive. Out with the loupe, and sure enough - the cable cut 
> wasn't particularly clean across the entire width, and there was a single 
> strand of wire just long enough to bridge across two of the conductors.
>
> Now I'm getting "system file not found or disk read error", which although 
> disappointing is at least far more sane. I'll have to rustle up a floppy boot 
> disk and see if I can get any access that way.
>
> I have no idea of this machine's history - I don't even know where I got it. 
> Maybe those are factory cables, maybe not. Maybe previous owners goofed 
> around with the system over the years, maybe the drive itself is non-original 
> even (and contains nothing relevant to the video board, even if it was 
> bootable). After doing an initial PSU test the other day, I did strip it down 
> to bare minimum - just system board and video - so it's possible the drive 
> cable wasn't shorted prior to my disturbing things.

Yep!
Floppy boot seems like the next step.

Got an IBM "Advanced Diagnostics" floppy to try?


Just to add to the confusion and misery, . . .
If the controller is bad, . . .
XT controllers tended to NOT be interchangeable, even between various OEMs 
of Xebec!
Some HDDs would not work when connected to a different controller.
You would expect that a drive LLF with one controller would work with 
another, or at least another one from same OEM, without redoing the LLF.
I don't know what the incompatability was.  Possibly different sector 
numbering? That MIGHT be solvable by swapping the ROM?
That was mostly fixed by the time of the 5170/AT WD controllers.