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Grid Compass 1101 only boots 50% of the time

It's just a plain ordinary DOS install. I'm going to have to get a floppy up and running before I can copy anything interesting to it.

Thanks for the serial info. I think I was able to find the connectors on mouser and digikey for $90 - $130, and radwell had a couple on ebay for about the same. I'm not entirely sure though.

For example, https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/itt-cannon-llc/2DE19S/20525062. https://www.ebay.com/itm/313304752303. https://www.ebay.com/itm/317500639363. I don't know if these are the male, the female, or something else. The price was too ridiculous for me to put much more thought into it.

Scott
 
smbaker said:
Turns out the problem is that I'm an idiot. I forgot to check the position of the voltage selector switch. It was set to 220V.
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You are not alone in this... :) I am joining...


Maxwell Smart: "Of course! That old with AC vottage select! That's the second time I've fallen for it this year.
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Serial connector. I am still planning to remove original ITT Cannon and substitute Sub-D 15HD (VGA connector) for daily experiments.
 
Okay, the voltage switch is something I'd of never though of...and I've been bitten a few times by it as well being in the 230v position.... >_>
Alright, that explains the symptoms exactly, so I'll admit I was very much wrong with my diagnosis.
 
If I wanted to run CCOS on this instead of DOS, do I need to pull the motherboard and replace the ROM? If so, which part number for the ROM, and is it socketed?

Thanks,
Scott
 
@smbaker

The operating system is stored in bubble memory. You need to boot from some external disk, make a backup of MS-DOS (we don't have this version...), and then format the bubble memory and copy GRiD-OS to it.

If you have neither a floppy drive nor a hard disk, then you can wait a little for the blackgpib. Due to personal circumstances and the troubles with my location, the project has been delayed. But I already have a batch of pico based boards on my desk that are supposed to work. I plan to test them soon, finish them, and send them to USA to techknight at least.
 
Ah, I see where I was confused now -- when it boots it says "Grid Compass MS-DOS BIOS Version A". I had assumed that as a BIOS message, this meant it was in ROM, but this must be the second stage that's loaded.

My drive arrived today. It's a 2107. The tempest version.

Scott
 
Conventional Memories said:
Ohh no, that package wouldn't survive my delivery driver.

I would start by opening it up and looking for loose connectors, cracked solder around the PSU connector and remove the RTC battery.
An intermittent problem like that is weird. I have seen the bubble memory get corrupted on these from sitting in storage for decades, but i would expect a more consistent crash from that, at least around the same time into the boot sequence.

There is a soft reset on these, curious if it is functional enough for that to go trough. CODE + SHIFT + CTRL (on left side) and - (minus)

The noise is not normal, they don't make any noise except for the whine from the high voltage EL display.
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Can you verify the reboot sequence? The computer is working now, but I've never been able to soft reboot it. Let me make sure I'm hitting the right keys.

Also, I've received my floppy drive, and have written DOS (with FORMAT A: /S followed by COPY *.* A:) so as soon as I can image the floppy, I ought to be able to get you that copy of 2.00 B.
 
smbaker said:
Can you verify the reboot sequence? The computer is working now, but I've never been able to soft reboot it. Let me make sure I'm hitting the right keys.

Also, I've received my floppy drive, and have written DOS (with FORMAT A: /S followed by COPY *.* A:) so as soon as I can image the floppy, I ought to be able to get you that copy of 2.00 B.
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I wonder if greaseweazle supports Compass disks. I know the format is proprietary so you cant browse it or anything, but you might be able to get a flux dump.

The bubble memory in mine has corruption, it all works except for the 1 program necessary to shovel files back and forth over serial or whatnot, throws an error on run.
 
@techknight

No, GRiD uses the standard IBM floppy disk format. So if a person formats and copies files, they can easily read them with anything.

What is proprietary to GRiD is its own file system for GRiD OS and the protocol for communicating with external drives.
 
If it did in fact launch less than 8 months after the 5150 and had been development for several years already there was not yet a clear idea if the market wanted the IBM PC to become the standard. Once it became apparent that everyone was cloning the PC/XT and software was being written to take direct advantage of their hardware, they had to retool for PC compatibility or suffer the fate of everyone else.
 
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