• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Victor 9000 Boot Disks

E

EagleTG

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 19, 2015
Messages
231
Location
Near Allentown, PA
Hi all. Recently picked up a Victor 9000 and need some boot disks/software for it. From what I've seen about the floppy drives on these guys, there really is no way to write these disks on anything but another Victor 9000.

Soooo... That said, I'd like to ask if anyone has access to a Victor 9000 and can copy some disks for me OR happens to have some Victor 9000 compatible stuff laying around that they want to part with.

I saw there was a guy offering boot disks on the forum, but his user profile indicates that he hasn't been active on the forum since 2015. I might shoot a PM on the off chance that he'll get an email notification regarding the PM.

Can anyone help? I would mostly like the DOS disks, but also would be interested in CP/M-86 disks.

Also, posting this in the "Other" section as it's not really a PC clone nor is it really a CP/M machine. :D
 
Anyone?

Additionally, if anyone has one of these machines, do you know if it's expected to get any video display prior to the system loading the boot disk? Can someone explain the boot process? I'd imagine something should show up on the screen based around POST or standard BIOS events. Surprisingly, my efforts in finding a video of one of these booting have been in vain. I will rectify that if/when I get this one working. :)

Thanks!
 
I had a pair of these machines many years ago. In the UK they were sold as the Sirius 1. You are right about the disks, variable speed and almost impossible to copy on anything but the original hardware.

Upon power up, you should get an indication of how much RAM is installed at the bottom of the screen and a small flashing disk symbol. Drive A should be spinning.

Cheers,
Dave
 
There is some information about the Victor 9000 floppy disk format here: http://www.discferret.com/wiki/Victor_9000_format

Not only is it variable bit rate, but also GCR. That article doesn't say, but it sounds like the drives and media are at least standard 48TPI. If that is the case, then it may be possible for a Kryoflux to read and duplicate a flux image of a disk using a standard floppy drive. (Similar to how it can read/duplicate Macintosh 400K/800K variable bit rate disks in a 1.44mb drive)

Unfortunately, off hand I don't know of any place that has archived disk images.
 
Good info Moonferret, thanks!

I hadn't even thought of Kryoflux or Diskferret. Good call SomeGuy. :) Yeah, this machine is very cool, but there's so little out there about it (like you said, including disk images). Maybe I'll mess with these if/when I ever get a (few?) disks to play with.
 
The 9000 disks are 96 tpi, not 48. I'm a little surprised that nobody checked bitsavers. There's a wealth of documentation on the Victor here, including a rather detailed technical reference manual.

I've got at least one 9000 floppy, but I couldn't tell you what was on it.

Also, this guy has schematics and he might be a good starting point toward getting boot floppies. , and there's this site that might be of some use.

Although Victor was in Scott's Valley, CA, they never did find much of a market in the US, but instead sold in Europe mostly as the Sirius. Why the name change? Therein lies a pretty ugly story.

"Victor" was a name used widely in the US (witness the maker of photographic lighting, the RCA Victor corporation, etc.), but Victor early on was determined to eliminate any sort competition as they had purchased the bones of the company known for the Victor Comptometer. They started out by suing a TV and Appliance dealer on the east coast who had been using that name for more than 30 years. Yeah, like that--lawyer-crazy; pick on the small guys first--burn through that easy VC money.

Eventually, Victor found that they couldn't play the same game overseas, so they called the thing "Sirius". Fortunately, the rise of IBM and compatibles eventually put them out of business--they filed Chaper 11 in 1984, not a year after their initial IPO--which was probably intended to bail out the VCs after the way the wind was blowing was pretty clear. Typical Silicon Valley capitalism.

After that, they got passed around, among other things, selling Far East PC clones, but eventually ending up being sold to Tandy--but the computer business only. The original Victor calculator division survives as Victor Technology LLC.

Life is strange.
 
Last edited:
I have two Victor 9000s. One has dual floppies and one has a single floppy and hard drive. The hard drive boots perfectly but my floppy drive doesn't work properly in that unit :( I have two or three disks but have not been able to make a proper copy yet because I have another issue with the dual floppy unit. When I try to start a copy, I see some artifacts on screen and the computer freezes. I am hoping it's just bad memory. It has been one of those... "I'll get to it" projects but I'll see if I can get to it later in the week.
 
Awesome, thanks Snuci, no rush. As the person I got the Victor from said to me upon pickup "That computer's been waiting over 30 years to find you". :)

RobertTX, I found that site previously. So much good info over there. I might try sending the site curator a note, as a few of the pages seem to ask the visitor to do-so.
 
Ah, those bitsavers PDFs are not OCRed, no wonder they weren't turning up in Google searches. Not that much information out there about these machines indexed by Google at all.

So the 600K, or sometimes "612K" disks are actually single-sided 80 tracks 96TPI using (low density) variable bit rate GCR. And even more confusingly they also sold double-sided "1.2mb" drives, but these are not high density disks, they are closer to "Quad Density". They would have used Quad Density rated media, although like Quad Density drives, decent quality Double Density media should usually work perfectly.

So to archive and duplicate these, use Kryoflux and a standard IBM AT compatible 1.2mb high density drive, but set it to low density.

Anyway, I did come across this:
http://freecode.com/projects/cw2

Apparently this program for the Catweasel controller supports Victor 9000 formats. Which again suggest they can be read via a "normal" floppy drive with the right controller.

Also this interesting bit:
http://ftpmirror.your.org/pub/misc/...640/files/019Z/LPNEWS.ZIP-contents/LPNEWS.TXT
This describes ports of Lotus 1-2-3 to different platforms and describes the Victor 9000 port as

VICTOR TECHNOLOGIES

* Victor 9000 (1-2-3 Port)
* Requires DOS 1.25, Victor BIOS Version 2.61
* Minimum of two floppy drives, or one floppy drive and one hard disk.
Floppies may be single-sided.
* Programmer's keyboard only.
 
The one thing that I note is that the Sirius/Victor BIOS is loaded at boot--that is, it's not ROM-resident. Something like the Sanyo MBC-500 series.

Don't expect to find much software, other than generic DOS stuff for this machine. Everything is different--no IBM PC compatibility.

If you'd like, I can dig out a 9000 floppy and see what's on it. I do have a Debian system connected to a CW Mk. 4 available.
 
A dude named Jonathan in the Philly area figured out how to create a boot disk. I even have the procedure in a set of old e-mails somewhere. I figured there had to be a way, but he did all the work. The last time I heard from him he was on the MESS forums, bannister.org or some such. He and/or another fellow in the Seattle area sent me boot disks years ago, but I had problems with both 9ks, and that was before I acquired a Vicki. You could try tracking him down or do it yourself. I‘ll try and look up how he did it and report back.

Basically as I think about it, it involves creating a small program in assembler, putting that on a disk (IBM format), which will format a disk in drive b: (Vic 9k format) and write boot files to the disk, which at one time could be scarfed off the net. This assumes a Vic can read/boot from and IBM formatted disk, which I assume can't be the case. So therfore it must be more involved. If there are no bios disk services available at bootstrap that represents another obstacle. Let me look.

forums.bannister.org
 
If you have no luck with making disks, I do have a Sirius 1 , and although I am in the UK, if waiting is not a problem I could dig out my machine ,hopefully the keyboard has not given up. ( it has the foam/mylar contact pads) I could copy what sys disks I have and post them over if nessesary? PM me if I can help.

.....Harry
 
Hi, If you mean the " Vicki portable " yes it was available in the uk, infact I have one working, and one not working, the one site, and very helpful chap who I am sure can help with any info, would be .... Home of the ACT Sirius 1 and Victor Computers (UK) His website has much info , and certainly worth spending time checking out the various operating systems, software, disks drives, etc. etc. that were configured or available for the victor/sirius machines. I do have a few disk's that came with my machines, but it was many years ago, I would have to check out what I have, and perhaps see if things still work. Making some backups should be no problem . let me know.
Hope this helps, ...Harry
 
Thanks for the continuing help, all.

Harry, I've been on that site ( http://www.actsirius1.co.uk/ ) and there is some excellent information on there. In one section, the curator of the site seems to indicate that they will help with copying disks. I've shot an e-mail over to the address listed on the site. We'll see if they are still offering any of those services. So far haven't heard back, but not really in a huge rush.

I do appreciate the offer of helping with copies of the disks you have. I will wait to see if I hear back from the guy(s) at ActSirius1.co.uk or some of the other members of the VCFed forum that used to indicate they would provide copies of these disks. If I don't hear back from anyone in a bit, I'll send you a PM. I just don't want to make you go through the work if you aren't already set up for it. :)

Based on the boot process descriptions earlier in this thread, I am relatively certain my machine has some sort of POST/early boot process issue as I don't see the memory count on boot. I have confirmed that the monitor seems to be working (shows raster if I crank the internal brightness control). I'm hoping to get some more time to work on it shortly. If/when I get past the current issues it's having, the acquisition of floppies to boot it will become more important.

Tipc, I am slightly fascinated by the possibility of a basic bootloader that would allow streaming of disks (reminds me of the ADTPro bootloader, or maybe even the FastLynx bootstrapper). Interestingly I'm in the Philly area too. I'll head over to the forum and see if I can find him. If you happen to dig up any info, I'm all ears.

I am also considering putting this out on CCTech/Talk as I think that's a slightly different audience than the VCFed group.
 
Hi, Just to let you know,when I first switch on my sirius 1 ,I only get a flashing arrow next to the small f/disk icon, in the middle of the lower part of the screen, no memory count is shown, this seems normal ,and depends on what roms are fiitted, the left hand disk drive is spinning, with the red light on waiting for its disk.
Whereas when the vicki portable is switched on, (if I recall,) I do get a capital M next to its memory count, next to the same flashing arrow and f/disk icon. if you have nothing on screen at all ,not so good, best of luck ...

...Harry
 
Something else to find for the Sirius 1/VICTOR 9000 is the Unix Alpha release. This was developed by Victor Technologies early on as a proof-of-concept. It was about 10-12 diskettes (1.2MB each) that had to be installed on the 10MB internal hard-drive and you needed the 512KB memory expansion. But it provided a working Unix System V setup.

It is possible to search for the implementor of the floppy-drive device driver for the Unix for this machine, but he didn't keep any of his work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top