Chris Hafner
Member
I just picked up a Kaypro 4/84 and an Osborne 1A and have not had much luck finding complete users guide scans online. I've found technical manuals and pieces of the users guides, but this is my very first experience with these machines or CP/M at all, and so what I'm looking for is pretty much what a brand new, computer-illiterate user would have wanted to know back in the early '80s. Pretty much - what sort of behavior would you expect out of these machines at startup?
First, the Kaypro. It starts up to the request to insert the bootable disk in drive A:, and the A: drive light is on. I put the disk in, and it spins ... and spins ... and spins. Setting aside the strong possibility that I wrote the image incorrectly - I'm more curious about the behavior. Is it expected that the Kaypro would just spin the disk forever, even if it doesn't like it as a bootable disk? I would have thought it would spin for a bit and then kick back a non-bootable disk error and stop until you try another disk. Also, is it normal that it would automatically start scanning the disk without even a keystroke to prompt it?
The reason I'm curious - I've used a cleaning disk to try to make sure the heads are clean, and I've been cranking out a few boot disks from Dave Dunfield's site, using his Kaypro 4/84 images, a 360KB drive, and his disk imaging software. Since it's reasonably complicated, I'm guessing I'm going to go through quite a few iterations of the settings in the software before hitting upon the magic combination, which I'm fine with. I just want to make sure I understand the machine's startup behavior and whether I can trust it to recognize a good boot disk when I eventually figure out how to produce one.
On the Osborne - I get the Osborne's version of the screen, but I don't get a drive light and even with a disk inserted, the door closed, and after hitting enter, the disk doesn't spin. I basically get no drive activity. Common sense would suggest that in normal behavior if I insert the disk and hit enter as suggested, the drive would at least try to read the disk, so I'm guessing I need to open 'er up and check the connections, etc. But I'm just not sure what the normal behavior is.
If anybody could take pity on the newbie and let me know what these machines typically do and don't do at startup, it'd help me enormously in understanding what's wrong (if anything) and when I'll know if I've got it fixed. Any advice would be much appreciated!
Cheers,
Chris Hafner
First, the Kaypro. It starts up to the request to insert the bootable disk in drive A:, and the A: drive light is on. I put the disk in, and it spins ... and spins ... and spins. Setting aside the strong possibility that I wrote the image incorrectly - I'm more curious about the behavior. Is it expected that the Kaypro would just spin the disk forever, even if it doesn't like it as a bootable disk? I would have thought it would spin for a bit and then kick back a non-bootable disk error and stop until you try another disk. Also, is it normal that it would automatically start scanning the disk without even a keystroke to prompt it?
The reason I'm curious - I've used a cleaning disk to try to make sure the heads are clean, and I've been cranking out a few boot disks from Dave Dunfield's site, using his Kaypro 4/84 images, a 360KB drive, and his disk imaging software. Since it's reasonably complicated, I'm guessing I'm going to go through quite a few iterations of the settings in the software before hitting upon the magic combination, which I'm fine with. I just want to make sure I understand the machine's startup behavior and whether I can trust it to recognize a good boot disk when I eventually figure out how to produce one.
On the Osborne - I get the Osborne's version of the screen, but I don't get a drive light and even with a disk inserted, the door closed, and after hitting enter, the disk doesn't spin. I basically get no drive activity. Common sense would suggest that in normal behavior if I insert the disk and hit enter as suggested, the drive would at least try to read the disk, so I'm guessing I need to open 'er up and check the connections, etc. But I'm just not sure what the normal behavior is.
If anybody could take pity on the newbie and let me know what these machines typically do and don't do at startup, it'd help me enormously in understanding what's wrong (if anything) and when I'll know if I've got it fixed. Any advice would be much appreciated!
Cheers,
Chris Hafner
