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Altos 886 restoration (some questions/help needed)

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SunDown79

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So i have started work on a newly acquired Altos 886 system and have cleaned out a lot of dust as much as I thought was needed.
Its looking a lot better inside already now and perhaps not 100% its ok for now.

Next thing I cleaned, included the heads, was the floppy drive but that seems to have died. It damaged a test floppy I put in it so I am marking the drive as a write-off for now.
Now I was wondering if I could use a HXC floppy emulator, probably I suppose but has anyone done that ?

And second related question, does anyone have images for a 886 from which it can boot or even better from which I can install the system ?

Third question about floppies, what format does it use ? 80 track I am guessing but does it use 256bytes/16 sectors like some of the more exotic things that ran on 5xx systems if I am correct or does it use standard 512bytes/9 sectors ?

Grts, Stefan.
 
Alright, so I fixed the harddisk and it boots into Xenix 3.2f.
Didn't know the password but tried a few common ones and it was as easy as repeating the prompt ;)

Have also connected a HxC floppy emulator which seems to detect the 886 and visa versa.
Now I have to see if I can use the booting harddisk to create any other bootable media! (help appreciated)

If anybody wants it I can record the system booting and upload it to vimeo or youtube.
 
> I can record the system booting and upload it to youtube


Get your priorities straight
The first thing you should do is make an image copy of the hard disk
 
I agree but don't have any way to copy the harddisk, unless you know any other way then using an MFM emulator ?
 
it would be tedious, but since you have simulated floppies working you can copy every block
of the full raw disk using dd with the count and skip options on the full raw disk device in /dev

this assumes you've figured out the root password

be VERY careful not to mix up if= and of= if you do this
 
Hi Stefan,

I can image that MFM disk for you when I visit, I have a working MFMreader. AFAIK Roland also has one...
Pls. do not put too much usage on the disk before it is imaged....
 
Ah that might be a good option yes, I would love to get it going now but I suppose I'll just have to put it in a dark corner (so it won't stare at me too much) and leave it alone ;)
 
The disk in question has now been imaged, but as it also contains a company's ledger I will not be able to post it online.....
We will need to prune the relevant parts from it....which is difficult as I do not have an Altos886

Jos
 
Well as by chance I also have an mfm emulator now and the image came from my system with the help from Jos and thus I have a 886 and I could see if I could clean it up and then post the resulting image. Its just when.....
 
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