Finished restoring my GridCase 1520

[kobura]

I finished restoring my Gridcase 1520 with modern storage upgrades!

• I patched 10/25/89 BIOS for any HDD and fast access, thanks to @Dagwood for his rombuster program!
• Gotek floppydrive emulator
• Startech IDE to CF adapter for HDD. 32 MB in there for now. Running Grid MS-DOS 3.2.
• WiModem232 Pro
• New RTC battery (I had 3 mainboards and this is the only one without the Dallas integrated RTC/CMOS)
• I found a like new case that was originally a dual floppy. I swapped in a working mainboard and used an HDD + Floppy backpane for it. That way I can access the CF card!
• I swapped in a flawless plasma screen into the like new case. The original was one of the smaller plasma screens that had a defect.

I had 3 Grids that I used to build this. One mainboard refused to recognize the cf adapter. The second had a Dallas CMOS/RTC chip that I replaced, but stopped booting after awhile because of errors writing to CMOS. The third mainboard is an early revision with separate battery for RTC and works great.

It was quite a journey to get this machine like this, but the result is beautiful in my opinion.

 

[Qbus]

Cool, I have a 1530, 1550 and couple Gridcase three systems and like playing around with them. is that the red plasma or amber tempested display? I have a 1550 that the LCD carped out on and replaced it wit red plasma and like that. Are you running internal power supply or powering the system be DC?

 

[cb01854]

What did you use for the face-plates? The face-plate of the CF card "slot" is especially great and looks like Grid made it.

 

[kobura]

Cool, I have a 1530, 1550 and couple Gridcase three systems and like playing around with them. is that the red plasma or amber tempested display? I have a 1550 that the LCD carped out on and replaced it wit red plasma and like that. Are you running internal power supply or powering the system be DC?

It's the red plasma from another a 1520. One of the internal power bricks I have was still working, so I can power it with that.

What did you use for the face-plates? The face-plate of the CF card "slot" is especially great and looks like Grid made it.

The CF card bracket came with the StarTech adapter: https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/35baycf2ide. And yes, I thought it matched really well! I originally had it in a case that had HDD where the side was covered and I couldn't access the CF card. The dual floppy cases had an opening on the bottom, I was able to mount this in place of the bottom floppy.

 

[NaughtCanine]

A screen pulled from a 1520 you say...

It's the red plasma from another a 1520. One of the internal power bricks I have was still working, so I can power it with that.

The CF card bracket came with the StarTech adapter: https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/35baycf2ide. And yes, I thought it matched really well! I originally had it in a case that had HDD where the side was covered and I couldn't access the CF card. The dual floppy cases had an opening on the bottom, I was able to mount this in place of the bottom floppy.

Does that mean there's a 1520 corpse about? I'd quite like that, if there is. The industrial design is unmatched in my opinion and I intend to use a GRiD keyboard and case to build a PC with, but finding nonfunctional models is proving tricky.

 

[FGrid]

Very nice setup.
Could you maybe at some point in the future post your flashfloppy cfg file and jumper settings on the gotek?

 

[kobura]

A screen pulled from a 1520 you say...

Does that mean there's a 1520 corpse about? I'd quite like that, if there is. The industrial design is unmatched in my opinion and I intend to use a GRiD keyboard and case to build a PC with, but finding nonfunctional models is proving tricky.

Hey sorry, I don't have another empty case.

Very nice setup.
Could you maybe at some point in the future post your flashfloppy cfg file and jumper settings on the gotek?

Yes! I forgot what worked and didn't take a pic. I'll have to open up to take a look. I'll do that this weekend and post my ff.cfg

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

Hey, would you mind sharing patched 10/25/89 BIOS? RomBuster only has example file for for 03/11/89 BIOS and my GRiD came with 10/25/89.

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

Seriously, the location of connectors on FDD/IDE HDD backplane in 1520 is insane.
HDD is upside down, floppy connectors are somewhere on the top so they do not fit GOTEK. Urgh, more stuff from Amazon and more waiting.

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

Well, I created my own patch for 10-25-89 BIOS. Here it is. I haven't tested it yet though since new EPROMs are still in the mail.

 

[Dagwood]

Well, I created my own patch for 10-25-89 BIOS. Here it is. I haven't tested it yet though since new EPROMs are still in the mail.

Good job. I did a quick look and only found one issue... on line 100 the value $9763 should be $97DD otherwise it will overwrite part of Int18h which displays messages related to boot errors (like "strike F1 to rety boot"). I attached an updated .byt file but haven't tested it. I also peeked at the ASM patches and they appear good as well. Please let us know if it works!

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

Ah, I didn't realize that was a patch. I thought it was part of drive geometry table.
Thank you!

 

[Dagwood]

Ah, I didn't realize that was a patch. I thought it was part of drive geometry table.
Thank you!

It's the location of a drive geometry in the 3/11/89 BIOS but in 10/25/89 that location contains code. Overwriting that code with a geometry could result in sadness. I think you did fantastic pulling all that together.

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

Well I messed up return from ReadSectors. Now fixed. See attached