Another early Columbia Data Product 1600 on eBay

[SomeGuy]

I noticed another seemingly early CDP 1600 on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Col...ultDomain_0&hash=item1c54b11007#ht_1466wt_752
(Again, I already have a CDP1600)

They don't show if it is functional or what is inside, but it looks to be in good physical condition.

This one is a bit odd though. First of all, I noticed that this does not have the grill air vents on the front. Mine and all the brochure pictures I have seen have the air vents. Also the one one eBay I mentioned previously had a lower SN (if that means anything) and also had the air vents.
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?46736-Possibly-early-CDP-1600-on-eBay

The picture of the back shows this is a 1600-1, which would not have included a hard drive, but this one apparently was upgraded. The faceplate makes it look like a possible 3.5" hard disk (SCSI or 8-bit IDE perhaps?)

From the picture of the back it looks like it still has its CGA card.

 

[HoJoPo]

Actually, though it's hard to read, the label on the back reads 1600-4/110 (look closely at the fifth picture, the others have too much glare). It's a PC XT clone with 10 meg hard drive, one of their later models. That explains the case difference.

I'll take better pictures when it gets here.

Here's a link to a PC-Magazine article on the 1600-4: http://books.google.com/books?id=e-gI2W-3JwkC&pg=PA122

Wow... this should have a really odd hard drive controller in it. Hopefully it still works. They used a SBC with Z-80 and dedicated 64k RAM for the hard drive controller, connected to a dedicated parallel interface inside the system.

 

[SomeGuy]

Congrats. Good to see someone here grabbed it.

It still looks like a "1" to me. I am aware of the 1600-4 models, however the few pictures I have seen of them show them with the front ventilation grill, and a full height faceplate. Reportedly some of those early ones may indeed have very odd controllers.

Either newer or older, if it has a different BIOS it would be good to archive the BIOS, and get it on Modem7's site. Newer ones may enable VGA, and older ones may contain who-knows what secrets about how they made themselves compatible.

 

[HoJoPo]

Received it today. I HATE PACKING PEANUTS! Anyway, USPS didn't mangle it, but I used a couple feet of tape to capture all of the bits of peanuts on and in the system. It's a 1600-1 model. I don't have a keyboard for it yet, I should have one next week.

System powered up, beeps, but only shows a 40 column cursor on the screen. I pulled the WD-1002S MFM controller from the system, and then it boots up, asks to test the memory, then goes to the MPC-BIOS screen (version 4.33). It doesn't run the floppy drive, so either something is strapped for the hard drive, or the floppy is inop. The CDP locks up just the controller installed, no drive connected, so it's definitely a bad MFM controller.

I took an XT-IDE card from my Tandy 1000HX, and it will boot the XT-IDE BIOS, but doesn't boot, just loops. I have an older XT-IDE v1 card in my Tandy 1000TX, I'll pull it and try it once the keyboard is here.

There is an old, 6 bank (x8) serial IO/memory expansion/clock card in it, with no RAM (I assume it would use 4164s). There's also a three bank memory expansion card, with 4164s in it, for 192k. Without the keyboard, I can't run the memory test, so I don't know yet how much memory the system is seeing or what condition it is in.

This should be a reviveable system. It does have the original CDP video card in it, for now it's hooked up to a 19" TV over composite (80 column video is sharp, no color).

I have another WD MFM controller around, from the hard card (bad drive) that was in my 1000TX. So the hard drive may be usable.

 

[SomeGuy]

Actually, if you flip DIP switch S2-6, you can control the system using a serial terminal (at 19200-7-N) connected to the "console" serial port. That should let you run the memory tests. You should also be able to enter the rom monitor by pressing ESCAPE at the "test memory" prompt. If you can get DOS to boot, you can even use most DOS CLI tools from there. How cool is that?

(Note that it uses female DB25 ports, instead of the typical male DB25, but a simple adapter fixes that.)

Annoyingly, I don't have the MPC user manual, but here is a page about that someone else posted: http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=18883&d=1401387478

Although not the case with many early clones, the 1600 should work fine with any "XT/8088" compatible keyboards.

I hope it wasn't the packing peanuts that zapped stuff.

What kind of hard drive was in it?

 

[HoJoPo]

Hard drive is a Tandon TM 262 (21 MB). It doesn't spin up, though checking the voltages, it may be protecting itself. 5V is 6.6V, 12V is 15.6V. So I need to do some work on the power supply and verify all the voltages...

I connected up a serial console using a null-modem DB25 male to DB9 female cable, and I can see the output with S2-6 on, but it doesn't respond when I try to type "Y" for the memory test. I know the cable is good, I used it with my Raspberry PI and Apple ///. I'm using a hardware serial port on a Dell Latitude D630, and I know the serial port on my laptop is good, I use it for my Cisco lab.

I think first I'll focus on fixing (or gutting / replacing) the power supply, then on getting a keyboard to test it further. I don't want to damage anything with the overvoltage. I have a modern switching supply that will fit inside the power supply housing, so it would still look stock.

Once I have the keyboard and power, I'll open a new thread in the PC and clones forum, for further troubleshooting.