Cifer 1887 G c.1983 - CP/M / UNIX machine

[Crashedfiesta]

Another acquisition. This time I've been given a Cifer Series 1 model 1887 G. It's a CP/M based machine that also has (apparently) the capability to run an early version of UNIX. I haven't switched it on yet for unsurprising reasons that the pictures should make clear.

It also comes with a massive amount of documentation including:

Technical manual
Maintenance manual
UNIX manual
Sales leaflets and prices
About 70 to 80 5 1/4 inch disks

Pics attached..

The previous owner told me that the last time he turned it on it did actually boot, which was a nice surprise, until there was a *pop* and magic smoke started to drift out of the case (which was a less nice surprise). I think the reason for that is clear... Just need to order the new caps before attempting any switch on.

 

[commodorejohn]

Now I'm just curious about the turntable add-on...!

 

[whartung]

It's a CP/M based machine that also has (apparently) the capability to run an early version of UNIX.

That's a generous way of looking at it.

Apparently, from the brochure scans, it had the ability of taking a 68000 processor card. The innovation (again according to the flyer) is you have a smart terminal, with its own processor, a "smart" floppy I/O subsystem (with apparently quite a bit of cache), and then the bases Z80 system. The 68000 could be bolted on and, I assume, it would run XENIX.

Everything is connected via the IEEE-488 bus, which is "ok". It's not a great bus by any stretch. It's flexible for sure, but not that fastest thing on the planet.

I don't know enough about the TRS-80 Model II to say how different those two machine are, but that's the closest thing I can think of similar to this one.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I've got some Cifer floppies in my archives, but I don't recall what conclusions I drew from them.

 

[Crashedfiesta]

Now I'm just curious about the turntable add-on...!

Sadly, it didn't come with one of those. Given the size of the unit I'd need a bigger desk.

 

[DantatUK]

I picked up a red 1887-G at an general auction a few months ago. Loved the look of it. I did manage to get it to power up but without any documentation and lack of information on the web I was unable to get past what I assume is the terminal window (I know nothing about this sort of thing, its a learning curve !). I could really do with the technical manual, any ideas where I could get a digital copy of it? I can't get around to working on it yet, but would love to know how it get into the micro side of it. It appears to have its original hard drive and floppy.

 

[Crashedfiesta]

I picked up a red 1887-G at an general auction a few months ago. Loved the look of it. I did manage to get it to power up but without any documentation and lack of information on the web I was unable to get past what I assume is the terminal window (I know nothing about this sort of thing, its a learning curve !). I could really do with the technical manual, any ideas where I could get a digital copy of it? I can't get around to working on it yet, but would love to know how it get into the micro side of it. It appears to have its original hard drive and floppy.

I have original maintenance and technical manuals. I intend to scan them but it might take a while as I only have a fairly basic flatbed scanner..

I might start doing it chapter by chapter and see how much I can get done reasonably quickly (while maintaining my sanity!).

 

[DantatUK]

Wow, that would be amazing. Scanning isn't much fun ! Thanks

 

[Crashedfiesta]

I've scanned Chapter 1 but I'll DM you @DantatUK

 

[DantatUK]

@Crashedfiesta Thanks so much, sorry I can't reply to DM's yet as I am a moderated user and haven't done enough posts. Scans are brilliant, looks like i'm going to have to do some real research to understand it all. Your very kind to have sent me the copy. Thanks again. Daniel

 

[ajacocks]

@DantatUK you can receive and participate in DM conversations, just not start them.

- Alex

 

[DantatUK]

@ajacocks That's great, thanks for the heads up

 

[Crashedfiesta]

Hey @DantatUK, check your DMs. Just need to do Chapter 3, Chapter 7 and the Index.

Then it's on to the Maintenance Manual which is freakin' huge! There's about the same number of pages plus loads of A3 sheets with schematics and part lists. I'm going to need a bigger scanner...

 

[DantatUK]

@Crashedfiesta After receiving the first 'tranche' of chapters from you I had to dig the old girl out to see if the floppy drive would respond to the commands. Unfortunately no luck. Then after several attempts the keyboard stopped responding at all. It wouldn't reboot from the keyboard and still doesn't respond. I made a replacement keyboard cable for it when I got it as the other was damaged and it worked fine. I will have to try and discover what would cause a non responsive keyboard. Ah the fun of it all.

 

[Crashedfiesta]

The keyboard uses the dreaded 'conductive disk on foam' construction as the key switches, with a spring under the key cap. It's possible the foam has disintegrated underneath which would lead to progressive random key failures.

The fun is in the fixing. 😁

 

[Crashedfiesta]

Power supply is fixed but on startup there were a few issues:

1) No hard disk spin up
2) Garbage on screen
3) CRT display slowly fades away

The hard disk is a full height Rodime series 200. It reported a fault of 'drive not up to speed'. I realised that the flywheel underneath was seized and after a bit of gentle rocking it, it now spins up with the most terrifying sound imaginable. Not sure it'll actually be recoverable.

For the garbage on the display, I first removed the extra boards, one by one. Nothing changed all the way through to the last board which is effectively the 'main' board so I was confident the fault was there. I tried swapping some chips (Z80A plus support chips) as well as re-arranging the static RAM chips (there are five 2kb chips). This still didn't change anything. There is also 64kb dynamic RAM on the board made up of 8 x 4164s. After a session of chip testing I found a broken 4146. Replacing this fixed the display issue.

The apparent side effect of fixing this is that it now seems the CRT is more stable and stays bright and sharp. Nice.

The cursor blinks and the device indicates it's in 'LOCAL' mode. Sadly, it looks like either the keyboard isn't working or something else is locking up the machine at startup. But that's for another day.

I also found this is unit DOES have the 68000 board to allow it to support UNIX.

This one is proving to be fun.

 

[Crashedfiesta]

So I managed to fix the keyboard on this thing. The full story is here and here. But here's a summary. I poked at it with my finger and changed a couple of chips. Now it works.

Slightly more seriously I was probing various chips on the keyboard and realised a couple of things. For one thing, the power to this is provided as -12V i.e. the + is connected to GND and the -ve is connected to 12V to maintain compatibility with previous models (apparently). This meant that when I probed it and attached the earth clip to GND I was creating a dead short through the oscilloscope to ground for the 12V supply. Fortunately I knew something was wrong fairly quickly due to the almost literal scream from the power supply... The second thing I found was a signal that changed if I shorted the key pads with one of the keystalks (there's a youTube link in my blog to see that).

From this I deduced that this could be simply a dead logic chip on the board. And I found that touching the legs of IC6 or IC7 prompted garbage to appear on screen as if it had come from the keyboard. So I replaced IC6 and IC7 but it still didn't work so I replace IC5 too and that fixed the keyboard. With this victory I went on to the hard disks. Following the instructions to 'Press F6, enter W10' gave nothing. But eventually I found pressing 'Ctrl' and 'Disc' asked for a disk to be inserted.

To cut a long story short, I got the Cifer to boot CP/M from floppy, and it just worked, straight out of the box.

I still have problems with the Winchester disks. One makes an ungodly noise but still happily gets to the 'drive ready' steady light, the other is much quieter and quicker to reach 'drive ready'. But neither appears to work with the Cifer complaining that the IEEE bus is not active. This lead me to think that maybe the IEEE control board needed some attention so, in the process of re-seating the chips on the board, I broke a pin of the Z80 CPU. Doh.

And that's as far as I have got, but the basic Cifer computer hardware seems to be fully working. It's not particularly useful without a hard disk but there is still a chance one or both of the units I have might still actually work.

Apologies to @DantatUK as I've still not scanned section 3 or 7 of the maintenance manual. Coming soon though!

 

[DantatUK]

@Crashedfiesta Its looking great, well done. Maybe my keyboard has the same issue, all keys appeared to be working until one moment then no response. One thing that did perplex me was after you sent me the manual I tried 'Ctrl' and 'Disc' but this did not do anything. I don't have much time to look at it at the moment so no worries with the other chapters.

 

[Crashedfiesta]

When you get a chance (and if you get the keyboard fixed!) try F6 first. The 'ITL' at the bottom should change to 'CIF'. Then do Ctrl+Disc.

If you dismantle the keyboard you'll find it's fairly straightforward. The main PCB has about 12 chips across the top. With the keyboard plugged in and the power on try poking at the back of the chips. If it's a similar fault to mine you'll see garbage appear on screen. Fortunately most of the chips are still available and relatively cheap. 😁

 

[MrImprovement]

Congratulations! Is it a "luggable" similar to the KayPro series of machines?