Model II/16 cards questions

[pski]

It's possible we need to tweak the patch some more. I probably only tested the PAL patch successfully with the 6000, Dog Ear board and DREM combination. You may be the only other person to attempt using this patch! Congratulations!!!

The format succeeding means nothing as the diskutil format does not show errors. It will happily tell you it formatted even though every track crapped out. Ask me how I know this.

 

[pski]

BTW, as we discuss I am formatting a 1024 cyl 8 head 3.2 HD image on my DREM.

 

[Tibs]

BTW, as we discuss I am formatting a 1024 cyl 8 head 3.2 HD image on my DREM.

View attachment 45986

I'm reading through the Xenix 3.x supplement, and I swear its like reading Frank's writing, but anyway - I need to make sure the cards are in the right order, and I still may have HD:12 needed on the drive, as well as a few other.

That by the way is a great guide, best I have seen for these machines.

I'll go through that and let you know. Since I know 1.3.5 formatted and installed, I know its working from that perspective on that version. I will do my diligence on the hard drive bulletins, I need to get them done anyway for completeness. I have a feeling that interface level or a few other things might be doing it. You can tell its sending something to the drive that pisses is off, the select like drops and the controller stops responding. Even a reboot doesnt fix it (Well that one bulletin made sure of that)

I'll also see if I can figure out whats wrong with the 6mhz smaller board, as I still have a feeling there is something not stirring the cool aid right there but thats just me being paranoid.

 

[pski]

One big advantage of the DREM is it's detailed MFM operation log. It allows you to instantly see if there are problems with formatting, writing, etc. It is superior in this aspect to the DG emulator which did not log every HD command the last time I checked.

 

[NF6X]

Interesting. I hadn't paid much attention to DREM because I already have a DG emulator. I might have to get a DREM to play with. It could use an updated FDD header board with a 50 pin connector, though!

 

[pski]

Interesting. I hadn't paid much attention to DREM because I already have a DG emulator. I might have to get a DREM to play with. It could use an updated FDD header board with a 50 pin connector, though!

Sounds like an NF6X custom product!

 

[kb2syd]

I've been wanting to purchase a DREM but I have not seen them offered in quite some time.

 

[dittman]

I've been wanting to purchase a DREM but I have not seen them offered in quite some time.

I emailed them asking about availability before I bought mine. They run in batches and they let me know when they'd have the next batch available to put on eBay.

 

[Tibs]

Ok, I have done all the due diligence I can.

No matter what I do, no matter what hard drive controller (bulletins are all good, even tried an original Tandon drive) it will not get past the first step of makefs using 3.2.0. Just craps out the drive. I've got 1.3.5 running fine and dandy booting off the drive and I'm playing with that right now and its something. Kind of nice that things like ls, more, pwd, mount, man and even makefs, sync, shutdown all work. Feels very Solarisish. Just wish I had 3.x.

I suspect its the dog eared card doing this with 3.2.0. The short 6mhz card is not working so I'm going to have to troubleshoot that some. One thing on that, there is a bulletin about changing the PAL to make it more reliable, but unless the security fuse was blown on a good one I guess thats off the plate. I'd actually like to do the short card tech bulletins before digging deeper, and thats a show stopper right there.

The donor Model II had the CTC crap out today, and half the 68000 ram was bad in that machine. I'm suspecting it got a good jolt of juice somewhere along the way to do that much damage. Good news is with the CTC replaced (temporarily while I wait on a new one) everything checks out on the Z80 side.

I'm going to have to get replacement RAM, and from what I've read it sounds like its the same exact refresh thing that the Model 4s use on the 256k cards. Going to go ahead and order the RAM for the 1MB card I got from the guy in Atlanta. I need that slot back.

 

[Tibs]

Lol I wish I knew why. It installed 3.2.0 after I put the 1meg board in. It had 512k before with two full boards.

Go figure....

 

[pski]

Lol I wish I knew why. It installed 3.2.0 after I put the 1meg board in. It had 512k before with two full boards.

Go figure....

so you were able to install 3.2 with the dog eared board successfully?

 

[Tibs]

Yep. Only change since last trying was replacing the two 256k board with a 1meg board so I could get my graphics back in. So wait that’s two changes. Added graphics card back in too.

 

[pski]

Very cool, I’m glad to see the 3.2 6Mhz patch working on another machine. This helps to confirm its viability. Even Frank Durda debated the advantage of the DMA burst mode years after he left Tandy.

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#...6000$20differences/comp.sys.tandy/20oamtdYT0A

I think the only way to properly test the merits of the burst modification is to run a test suite comparison using an unmodified short 6Mhz card with a patched 3.2 installation and a PAL upgraded short 6Mhz card with a unpatched 3.2 installation in an otherwise identical machine.

 

[Tibs]

Very cool, I’m glad to see the 3.2 6Mhz patch working on another machine. This helps to confirm its viability. Even Frank Durda debated the advantage of the DMA burst mode years after he left Tandy.

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#...6000$20differences/comp.sys.tandy/20oamtdYT0A

I think the only way to properly test the merits of the burst modification is to run a test suite comparison using an unmodified short 6Mhz card with a patched 3.2 installation and a PAL upgraded short 6Mhz card with a unpatched 3.2 installation in an otherwise identical machine.

Yes, I read that thread, good stuff.

I'm curious why it started working though. I only moved the 64K ram down a slot so I could put the Graphics board in once the 1 Meg card and 68000 were in.

Have you tried the patched version, or even unpatched on a machine with two smaller RAM cards to make it meet the minimum of 512K? The tech series said it was a legitimate combination.

Of course, going back up to the new guys thread, perhaps slot 6 (three from the left) isnt working so great and thats where the 68000 card was sitting before. Now the 64k card is there. I ran diagnostics for a bit after fighting with that bracket and using my magnet screw picker 10 times to get the little nut back out of the case. I don't know if I ever want to take that thing off again....grrrrr

 

[shank]

If you were able to format with 3.2 with a 1 meg memory card, but not 2 512 cards, i'd suspect you have a problem with one of the 512 meg cards; marginal ram perhaps (or card order). glad it works with the 1 meg board, though... I don't recall any back doors into finding root passwords; we did get that question, but reformat and reinstall was our answer. The first think I'd do would be to look at the voltages directly on the cards with a scope and make sure they meet spec... Don't forget -12V.

The TBs always supersede the info in the Service Manuals. SMs came out with the product (well, usually), to get the field techs off to a good start, but the SMs were rarely updated, or errata produced. The TBs and N&J is where to go for definitive info. Also, If a mod applied to one machine is not called out in the TBs for another similar, than it doesn't apply, e.g., Mod 12 mlb mods applying to Mod II cpu pcbs...

Also, check N&J for card order. This is important and I don't recall the proper order at the moment, but it's in N&J. Wrong order is enough to cause all sorts of things to not work.

Card cages go bad, too. Parts stocked the backplanes and there was use on them.

Frank did not write any Technical Bulletins or any of the Technical Support documentation, like the XENIX Information series of booklets. We were all young, gearheads, and you had to have a sense of humor to work with this equipment--maybe we all sounded alike.

 

[pski]

Also, check N&J for card order. This is important and I don't recall the proper order at the moment, but it's in N&J. Wrong order is enough to cause all sorts of things to not work.

Very good advice. Always suspect the card order when you have a problem. I recently encountered this when using the bernoulli drive in my 6000. It just did not want to work. It turns out I did not have the interface card in the correct slot as this particular card needs to be the last card in the z80 interrupt chain to work correctly. And the z80 interrupt chain cards need to be in consecutive slots (no empty slots in between).

 

[Tibs]

I decoded the error message. 0449 is Undefined for the first part, and the second part decoded to Error, Data Request, Ready.

 

[shank]

i posted an earlier reply that hasn't come out of moderation yet, but i should never post without coffee... i talked about 512 boards, but we only made the 256 and the 1 meg memory boards. bob snap made 512 meg boards out of the 256 cards by piggybacking memory chips... they worked, mostly, but we didn't support them--if they were in the machine we didn't care. usually, with the system 3 xenix we would run either the 1 meg memory board or 3 256 meg cards. apologies for my confusion.

 

[pski]

i posted an earlier reply that hasn't come out of moderation yet, but i should never post without coffee... i talked about 512 boards, but we only made the 256 and the 1 meg memory boards. bob snap made 512 meg boards out of the 256 cards by piggybacking memory chips... they worked, mostly, but we didn't support them--if they were in the machine we didn't care. usually, with the system 3 xenix we would run either the 1 meg memory board or 3 256 meg cards. apologies for my confusion.

Interesting, Tandy notes and jumpers references a 512K board though. Maybe it was a later or rare option?

 

[Tibs]

Interesting, Tandy notes and jumpers references a 512K board though. Maybe it was a later or rare option?

No, I think they made a 256k and a 1MB and you can configure them half full as 128K and 512K from my interpretation. I have only used Tandy parts/cards. Good point though on the order of the cards. I have it exactly like the N&J and Tech Series say.

Update, today I decided to test one of my ST-251-1s, this one had Xenix 1.3.5 on it. When I say test it, I mean I just plugged that drive in instead of the original Tandon 602SE (12 Megger) to the controller. Formatted fine, found the expected bad tracks in the 700 range, as soon as the floppies were set to high speed, a few seconds later that error above appeared again and the drive/controller went offline. Reconnected the 12er back up and everything works again, so uh, I'm leaving it alone for now.

I have a feeling there is something with my ST 251-1s (I have four not in use right now), this controller, this interface and X 3.2 not getting along. I do have a Microscience 45MB Drive I could try, I'm going to run out of space if I install the developer kit on this little 12 Meg drive.