JonnyGators
Experienced Member
My pursuits to get these machines up and running as they should, with full use of their clock cards, continues to be a challenge.
At this point I have 4 of these machines, the latest one I acquired being a rusty heap, with a dead power supply, which I bought to investigate the contents of the MFM drive. I've confirmed the controller and cables to be good, but the drive consistently produces a 1701 error on boot, and checking the documentation the jumpers seem to all be set correctly. Not sure where to go from there.
I have managed to buy 3 replacement batteries for the computers, and soldered them onto the 3 working ones - but they do little good without a functioning clock card.
We have determined the chip for it to be a Motorola MC146818. I've found plenty of documentation on the inner working of the chip - which isn't helpful without an app. (I suppose if I were a programmer I could use that data to make my own, but I'm not.)
We've found this site - https://m.blog.naver.com/bjpower/221689180546 - which seems to have some good details about the functionality of this, and apps.
Using the apps on there, I have gotten to a point where I can use the executable to set the date and time on the real time clock, power down the computer, power it on, run the app again, and when it's asking me to update the time it shows that it has held onto the current date and time. But - it doesn't set the software date and time. So I still need a command that will do that, so I can set that in the autoexec.bat.
It seems from the above site, such an app was written, and put in a 7z file, which can be downloaded.....but is password protected, and no password was mentioned on the site. Rather malicious of the guy to do that.
So, that's where I'm stuck at the moment.
But maybe Werner Erhard could fix it.
At this point I have 4 of these machines, the latest one I acquired being a rusty heap, with a dead power supply, which I bought to investigate the contents of the MFM drive. I've confirmed the controller and cables to be good, but the drive consistently produces a 1701 error on boot, and checking the documentation the jumpers seem to all be set correctly. Not sure where to go from there.
I have managed to buy 3 replacement batteries for the computers, and soldered them onto the 3 working ones - but they do little good without a functioning clock card.
We have determined the chip for it to be a Motorola MC146818. I've found plenty of documentation on the inner working of the chip - which isn't helpful without an app. (I suppose if I were a programmer I could use that data to make my own, but I'm not.)
We've found this site - https://m.blog.naver.com/bjpower/221689180546 - which seems to have some good details about the functionality of this, and apps.
Using the apps on there, I have gotten to a point where I can use the executable to set the date and time on the real time clock, power down the computer, power it on, run the app again, and when it's asking me to update the time it shows that it has held onto the current date and time. But - it doesn't set the software date and time. So I still need a command that will do that, so I can set that in the autoexec.bat.
It seems from the above site, such an app was written, and put in a 7z file, which can be downloaded.....but is password protected, and no password was mentioned on the site. Rather malicious of the guy to do that.
So, that's where I'm stuck at the moment.
But maybe Werner Erhard could fix it.
