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Lanier Model 103 "No Problem" word processor

In the meantime I could get my AES 103 running again. The +5V and -15V rail has been dead.
Phil's detailed report and his reverse-engineering here helped me a lot in repairing the power supply (Thanks PhilipA ).

The following shows you that your hardware is ok:
After power on there is no boot-up message at first. The Screen remains dark. But you should hear a continuous beep. This is the prompt to insert the system disk.
When inserting any floppy disk, a screen filled with ones should appear.
This is the error message for a missing boot disk.

Furthermore, there is now even a way to copy existing hardsectored AES floppies with a special Fluxbased Tool.

PhilipA Were you able to finish your hardware repair in the meantime ?

PaddyIreland said:
I have boot disks for the AlphaPlus 12, and 14. I have a complete Alphaplus 12. The Alphaplus 14 disks also boot the 7100. I also have boot disks for the 7200 and 7300. As well as CPU's.
Click to expand...

What I can say for sure is that the bootdisk from the 7100 does not work on the 103. The 7100 is Z80 based.
The text disk from the 7100, on the other hand, can be used.
 
PhilipA said:
Bjørn,

If you did ever get the disks, let me know. Apparently if you can boot the machine there's a utility to copy the disks in the software on them.

Thanks


Phil
Click to expand...

Sorry, they never got back to me. My 103 is still collecting dust, and it was showing "1" when I tried booting it with a generic floppy. Unfortunately, the last thing that happened was that the internal 5V fuse blew, and changing it didn't help. I guess there is a capacitor that shortcircuits the thing. Haven't fixed it since the software still is MIA.

- Bjørn
 
I need to troubleshoot this again. I get no beep nor any sync on the vdu when I power it up.
power supply is still good though!

I would love to get a copy of the boot disc- that alone would be worth the effort to get the FluxEngine to read it correctly and be able to reproduce the discs without having to have an original.

Most of the power supply problems I had were down to the big smoothing capacitors going bad.

Test points for voltage are:
0V : capacitor nut directly above main board Molex plug.
+5v : capacitor nut next to 0v (below R54)
+12v : capacitor nut left of c14 (above floppy power molex)
-12v : left leg of cr33 (c47 side)
+15v : nut right of r67 -15v : right leg of R111

-15v supply derives the -12v so you need that working for the ram to work.

​​​​ See: smoothing capacitors.

​​​​​
 
I threw the VDU and CPU boards in the freezer for a few minutes then tried again.

Bleep blee bliip crackle pop *clunka clunka clunka*

Got a bad chip somewheres.


Update, briefly, putting a regular soft-sector floppy disc in the top drive made the drive go haywire and the trash on the screen (I have the blanking line disabled) changed, so that's highly promising.
 
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PhilipA said:
I would love to get a copy of the boot disc- that alone would be worth the effort to get the FluxEngine to read it correctly and be able to reproduce the discs without having to have an original.
Click to expand...

The AES 103 Disks could be copied with a new tool called "FLUXCOPY" together with a Teensy-based Hardware named "FLUXTEEN".
Details can be found here (but sorry, only in German Language):
https://forum.classic-computing.de/...pieren-von-hard-sektorierten-disket/&pageNo=1
 
PhilipA said:
I threw the VDU and CPU boards in the freezer for a few minutes then tried again.

Bleep blee bliip crackle pop *clunka clunka clunka*

Got a bad chip somewheres.


Update, briefly, putting a regular soft-sector floppy disc in the top drive made the drive go haywire and the trash on the screen (I have the blanking line disabled) changed, so that's highly promising.
Click to expand...

Sounds good. So it seems your ROM is beeing processed.
Normally you should hear a constant beep tone after powering up without disks inserted. The beep tone should stop when inserting a floppydisk.
 
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It's still very unhappy. I hooked up my logic analyzer to the buffers and there's a lot of random junk going on where it shouldn't so I still have a hardware problem.

​​​​​ But, cooling the board causes it to marginally improve so that's a start.

Phil
 
Uhh there are strange things happening in your machine. Better call an exorzist.
Normally the headload activity of the Drive should not be so unstable. What if you powerup without a disk? Do you have a beep from the speaker instead of the drive´s headload then ?
The Machine seems to be resetted in an unstable way. Did you monitor your pcb voltages (ripple) and your reset-line while powering up ?
 
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That activity is only present after freezing the CPU board. The screen was unstable because for that video I had also frozen the video board and the moisture was on the connector block from the condensation. Once it dried I tried just freezing the CPU board again and achieved similar results.

I'm working on testing the socketed chips, moving the 8080 i/o buffers (8216) about caused different behavior.

Phil
 
...and yes, the power supply is working well. All voltages are stable.
i did not watch the reset line though.

I can poke all the rails with a scope tonight.
 
Between times I took a look at the FLUXCOPY project which is designed to copy these hard-sector discs.
Reading up, I decided to see how well synchronized the two drives (2 different Shugart models) in the AES were. The manual says to put a strobing lamp underneath the drive and set the speed of the motor such that the stripes do not move (same as a record player).
That's all good and fine but it's not particularly accurate so I got one set so it looked as static as it could be, then measured the tach pulses on the comparator input, coming in from the motor. That measured at 580Hz so I set both the drives to 580Hz. That has synchronized the pair.

Looking at it, I should be able to write a disc image with the drive that is intended to read it, so that rather puts the sync issues out of the window, but at least I know what the tach signal is set to if that ever changes.

--Phil
 
PhilipA said:
Between times I took a look at the FLUXCOPY project which is designed to copy these hard-sector discs.
Reading up, I decided to see how well synchronized the two drives (2 different Shugart models) in the AES were. The manual says to put a strobing lamp underneath the drive and set the speed of the motor such that the stripes do not move (same as a record player).
That's all good and fine but it's not particularly accurate so I got one set so it looked as static as it could be, then measured the tach pulses on the comparator input, coming in from the motor. That measured at 580Hz so I set both the drives to 580Hz. That has synchronized the pair.

Looking at it, I should be able to write a disc image with the drive that is intended to read it, so that rather puts the sync issues out of the window, but at least I know what the tach signal is set to if that ever changes.

--Phil
Click to expand...
'52 Pontiac?
 
PhilipA said:
That's all good and fine but it's not particularly accurate so I got one set so it looked as static as it could be, then measured the tach pulses on the comparator input, coming in from the motor. That measured at 580Hz so I set both the drives to 580Hz. That has synchronized the pair.
Click to expand...

Depending on your light source (I use an NE-2H run off the AC line), it's quite accurate. ISV tolerance for data separators tends to run to almost +/- 20%. Disk speed can be affected by the physical disk itself--some floppies exhibit more "drag" than others.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Depending on your light source (I use an NE-2H run off the AC line), it's quite accurate. ISV tolerance for data separators tends to run to almost +/- 20%. Disk speed can be affected by the physical disk itself--some floppies exhibit more "drag" than others.
Click to expand...

Agreed, and particularly ones that drag unevenly per rotation. I'm guessing as has been mentioned that this is not too wildly critical on this format being a there's 16x more synchronization points per revolution than a soft sector disc.
 
I just ordered some P8216 equivalent chips (KM589AP16) which will hopefully work... They're due some time in August because they're coming in from Tomsk in Russia.

I guess sit back and wait now.
 
Nope. Listed as available, not available. Sent refund.

That sucks.


Edit: Bought some more expensive ones (400% the cost) from that there Hong Kong. They're National Semiconductor ones, same as what's in the machine now.
 
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