Rade "Watson" ?????

[bubbo]

Hi everybody 1st post for ages .

Dug out my old project yesterday and got it running to a point.

The main board is beautifully made , Every chip is socketed .
All various ares of computer are silk printed indicating what part of
the copmputer they are .

On the PCB in the middle is printed: "RADE SYSTEMS LTD "
On the keyboard case is printed : " WATSON "

Apart from that I have no other clues .
The computer is Z80 with a 6845 crt controller.
4k of screen ram in the form of 2 x TMS4016.
64k of ram TMS4164 .

The eprom is 2532 and is labelled V1.41.
Now it boots to the front screen : V1.41
LOAD DISK.

I have 2 x 5.25 FDD BUT NO DISCS.
HAS ANYBODY HEARD ABOUT THIS COMPUTER.?
DOES ANYBODY HAVE ANY INFO.?
ANY CLUES TO HOW TO GET SOME BOOT DISCS?

Thanks
Brian

 

[krebizfan]

It may help the identification process if you post some pictures of the board and rest of the system. Electronics and Wireless World of Jan 1984 has a short section (pages 71 and 72) regarding Rade Systems Rader 150 which was a single board Z-80 computer with 64k of RAM. No pictures so won't be able to determine how your system resembles that one.

 

[bubbo]

Will post some pics later .
Just found date of manufacture on pcb as 1981

 

[kyodai]

Afaik a small British company that built these handy home computers. Z80 based - as you already noticed. Originally came with CP/M. You'll obviously need a CP/M disk to boot it. Pretty rare machine, like many of these system from "Garage companies" in the early 1980s.

 

[bubbo]

Hope somebody may trecognise some of the pics.
Not very up on CPM .
But have some Kaypro 5.25 CPM 2.2 discs , Would trhes boot my machine or not.
Is it worth a try.

Brian

 

[krebizfan]

Could you post the model of the floppy drives just to make sure the Kaypro disks aren't completely incompatible? Issues like hard sectors versus soft or single versus double sided could prevent the disks from being read.

The board looks familiar. I hope someone else can recognize the original design that influenced Rade. The layout is unusually clean for a small company in 1981.

Do you have anything that can read the ROM? Might provide insights.

As to trying the Kaypro disks, I would wait a day or two to see if anyone can better determine what the system does. I believe booting the Kaypro disks won't damage anything but might crash if Rade laid out the memory differently. Don't do this with your only copy of Kaypro disks. Low risk, no better ideas = try it and see what happens.

Rade Systems only sold a few hundred machines a year. I found a reference to them having 250,000 pound revenue in peak years. Multiple floppy drives per unit for an industrial computer means the price was high. Don't discard that board. You may have the last one left.

 

[kyodai]

Since the Kaypro II has similar hardware it might be worth a shot. The original Kaypro II came with single sided 191KB 5.25 Inch floppy drives, if your Wade has the same drive type then it should boot from the disk.

 

[bubbo]

I have mislaid or re-used the floppy drives as I took the mahine to bits when it did not work.
I bought it about 5years ago . The monitor I got with it did not work and had components or glas rattling about so
unfortunately I binned it.
I probablu have on of the drive sleft and will try the disks .
I have master and working copies so will only try the working copies.
I have dissasembled the rom and had a work through the start .
The satck poinetr is loaded as FF60H
@0024H theer is a routine whu=ich I think is clear the screen aso the screen resides at 4000H
And is 07FFH long by my calculation that is 2K . Although theer 2 x 2K static ramds in gthe video area of the PCB.

Let you know what happens later.

Brian

 

[bubbo]

I have triued the Kaypro CPM disks but no joy.
The Computer is reading from the FDD . But the disk is obviously the
wrong format.
I have tried severla disk drives and 40 / 80 track.


Have attached 5 pics
Pic 1 Mains in / out + fan I think this sat at the bottom of the PC
Pic 2 Main cct board and FDD housing inside
Pic 3 main cct board front view 2 vslots for FDD
Pic 4 Loading error from Kaypro CPM 2.2 disk
Pic 5 Loading erreors as it first appears from loading it can be any 5.25 disk .

I will have to scour my boxes and den to find the original disk drives but fear I may have got rid of them .
The only thing I can remebr was that they were black fronted and the data cable connection was to fingers
etched on the PCB of the FDD.

Brian

 

[kyodai]

Well either the disk is the wrong format or the drive. Maybe the Wade used hard-sectored disks? Or the Kaypro had a different number of sectors per Track?

 

[krebizfan]

You may want to create a new thread in the CP/M area. Other members have considerable experience customizing CP/M for specific hardware and could perhaps assist. They may not have seen this thread.