Exidy Sorcerer

[Olie O]

Hi there, new to the forum and vintage computers after having just unearthed a Sorcerer 2 with the FDS configuration in question so I thought I'd share. I have the main unit with PSU/controller and the second without the PSU. The main unit is labelled DP6400 and the second is a DP6401-2. Both contain identical Micropolis 1015-2 drives and are connected with the 34 pin and 4 pin cables. One thing I notice is that the Exidy branding on the drives don't match, maybe a clue that it was a later addition?

 

[twolazy]

Been a while but if I recall correctly, the 6401-2 is an addon drive, so is daisy changed after the 6400... I havent messed with Atari stuff in 20 years so memory is a tad fuzzy, but I do remem you cant use the -2 by itself, have to have the 6400.

 

[daver2]

First of all, as this is your first post, welcome to VCFED.

Thanks for sharing your photographs. So the second drive without the PSU does exist in reality!

Have you got it working yet? Or is that to come?

Dave

 

[exidyboy]

Well there you go. I was wrong. Thanks Ollie
Possibly not a product ever distributed in Australia. The Sorcerer itself might be a Netherlands build because the keycap colours are inverted to compared to most machines. I'd be interested in a photo of the compliance plate on the back of the system unit itself.

 

[Olie O]

Have you got it working yet? Or is that to come?

Thanks for the welcome Dave. The machine is working and I've been able to load games from wav files. The drives seem to spin up, but I haven't been able to get them to read any of the disks I found, still looking into that. Aside from needing to replace a bulging cap on the power supply, it looks to be in pretty good shape.

I'd be interested in a photo of the compliance plate on the back of the system unit itself.

Here you go. Same thing was on the bottom of the main drive unit. Interesting about the Netherlands build possibility. It was purchased here in the US as it was the first computer my grandfather bought for his real estate/insurance business.

 

[exidyboy]

Thanks for the photos Ollie.
It would be a shame to risk those disks while you fault-find your drive. There is very little Sorcerer software on disk currently preserved.
As these drives are 100TPI the only way to read the disks is with a working 100TPI drive. You can't archive the disks with a standard 96TPI drive.
Ideally you would be testing the drive and system with known good disks that can be sacrificed to the cause.
Can you list or provide images of the disk labels?

 

[dutchacorn]

Of course, you'd need a working CP/M disk to format a blank disk to the 100 TPI format. So it's a bit of a bootstrap situation.

If you have a set of disks, chances are that there is more than one copy of a CP/M system disk.

The cool thing about having a dual drive setup like this is that it is relatively simple to replace one of the drives with a standard 96 TPI format (or better; a Gotek) and copy the files to the more archive friendly format.