Hi Guys and Girls
O yes, I do recognise those machines. Not that one specific but generic. The machines shown by Roland are not assembled/modified by me, as I didn't use those powersupplies, and I didn't mount the HD controller beneath the monitor.
Lets give some comments on the pictures.
1st, yes that's a car boot. (Hmmm the sticker on the SB... think I have seen that one before... I'm in doubt now)
2nd; Again a boot, but than shown as option on the screen (I wonder whether that one wobbles, due to screen controllerchip set at 60hz by default).
3rd: Looks like the machine was used for Dbase classroom. (can you also access a second partition, if available? Maybe there's the software deployed where you're looking for)
4th: The back site, with extra PWR supply mounted behind floppy and HD (some metal was removed to give space to the HD), and controller hided beneath monitor
5,6 : The ACT controller with connectors for 2 HD's.
7th: The IO addressing board between SB and ACT controller, probably set to IO 0C hex. (The SB has all relevant data- address- read- write- i/o select lines etc routed to a connector at the back of the board.
8th: The SB bootprom, with a mod to read 1st sector of HD instead of 1st sector from the floppy.(selectable)
Intertec Superbrain was available in several flavours during it's existence. Standalone with floppies was the default.
Compustar is also an Intertec machine. The base is a more or less stripped Superbrain. They were available with or without floppies.
The diskless machines did boot from the networkdrive with a special bootprom installed in the SB.
The Compustar network was an parallel bus network, with 2 (wrist)thick cables to the machine (twice a DB25 connector), a daisy chain network. The largest disk was a Control-Data 96MB enclosure. 80MB solid, and 16MB removable platter. The Compustar "cluster-controller" was a separate box connected between network and diskunit.
As far as I know Compustar "network" was installed at 3 locations in NL.
During those days there were several suppliers who had external storage manufactured for the SB. The one I know, and worked closely together with, was Corvus ( Hey "Modesto M.. 3rd", might you ever read this; I still have good memories on working together and our endless Pizza conversations in Munich and the Sil Valley! (btw, is there a M.. 4th by now?) ). They could deliver external storage (5MB~20MB with a stack of 4 drives it could be expanded to 80MB max.) for Apple, Xerox, Osborne etc etc. They were even able to share the HD between the different opsys machines by the use of an mux connected to the HD enclosure. The "network" was flatcable based. Max range approx 40mtrs per machine. Once came the occassion that the distance was not enough, so I developed a small amplifier box to extend to 3 times the normal length with the use of 2 boxes.
Here's a pic of the 5MB Corvus I still have. It sounds like a boeing 747 at start up,
(hmm, upload doesn't work. I will try later in another post)
Corvus later on delevoped the Omninet. A 2 wire twisted pair network, speed 1mb/s, max distance (i'm not sure) 120mtr, 150 Ohm terminated. It was not available for SB, but was merely introduced as THE network for IBM-PC and Apple's back in the good old 80's. Also in those Corvus days: Interfaces (Omninet transporters) for IBM ISA, IBM Microchannel, Apple.The Corvus Concept (a propietary system. beautiful A4 computer, booted from external HD (flatcable or Omninet) or from ~10 floppies), The Concept has also been available as Unix workstation. The Mirror (a VHS recorder used as backup system. (make sure it was set to black/white recording)), The Bank (a ~250MB 100 track endless tape omninet backup system), CMux (flatcable multiplexer), CPS (Corvus Print server. A beautiful small box serving 3 printers. 1 par, 2 serial. Bit difficult to setup. But once operational: A charm). Omninet drives: 5 1/4"" from 5Mb to 128MB. More Omnidrives could fit in the same network.
A bit more info on:
http://www.corvusmuseum.com/
I still have the Constellation software for Apple and for IBM.
I recall Corvus never reached the "real" commercial ethernet era, it went broke.... Or?
Back to the Superbrain.
The Superbrain was sold all over the world.
We merely served the NL and Belgium market, with extra in depth knowhow as a selling tool. Such as modifying the opsys for Azerty keyboard, HD modifications. Corvus setup. Extensive Compustar knowledge. In house repairs for mainboard, video, power, floppy etc etc.
Static discharge was one of the most common things, which were the reason the machine "hangs". Mostly shown with flashing random characters at the screeen. It was very sensitive. We even tried to spray the inside cabinet with electrical conduct material, and have it connectwed to ground. It worked...... more or less. Another issue was the head-load at CDC or spinup at Tandon floppy drives. Exchanging floppies from one to another machine could also give "bad sector" messages. Good head alignment was essential (done with special cats-eye floppy). Somewhere in my brain is a file which tells me about a mod to the flop controller and the bootprom to allow for a delay before accessing the data...
To make this post come to an end
There is still software available for the SB. I have a huge collection of SW and documentation.
A few months ago I wanted to get rid of all the stuff I have on the attick. I do not need all that old stuff anymore. If I want to see something old I look in the mirror.
So I posted the SB with all Hw and SW belongings up for auction at Marktplaats.
Oscar showed to be a really serious collector, so we made a nice deal.
While re-assembling the SB something went wrong. I shortcircuited the powersupply +12V to gnd. Dead!
Also the Rodime 6MB HD was noisy (NOISY). A friend has taken care of that in his clean-room. Sounds like new again.
Taking the SB apart again and doing some measurements there were a few parts blown in. Replacing a zener, opto-coupler and a scr made the SB work again.
Doing some tests the memory appeared to have some problems. Small programs runs fine, larger won't load. I expect something is wrong in Ras/Cas.
I will have it back on the bench later, as now we have family from abroad and summer holidays are coming.
Hooking up Saleae logic analyzer will show where to go from there. Anyway I have done tracing many many times in all kind of HW, so it will be solved eventually.
That's it for now.
I will try to load some pics in a next post.
Ton Hekstra
"AND-0FH" Hard/Software Solutions