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Newbie questions about the Northstar Advantage 8/16

In the interim, try wearing some rubber finger cots or gloves with foil discs inside to emulate key presses.
(i.e. use the rubber glove to keep the foil disc electrically isolated from the keyboard PCB.)
 
seaken said:
BTW, there was a paper taped to the side of the cabinet that reminded me of the software loaded on the 20MB hard drive. From that paper it reminds me that the communications software I used back then was IMP245.
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If you find that IMP245 binary intact, and if it's allowed to be shared, I'd love to give it a try.
 
I hope I will get full access to the NorthStar after I fix the keyboard. I also have IMP245 on floppy. But I will have to re-learn how to manage the Hard Sector disks. I think I got it off a BBS originally. But now I will have to figure out how to transfer it using my current selection of PC's. I'm sure I'll get some guidance on how to do it from someone here on VCF. Right now I'm not quite sure how to get it to you.

Seaken
 
seaken said:
I hope I will get full access to the NorthStar after I fix the keyboard. I also have IMP245 on floppy. But I will have to re-learn how to manage the Hard Sector disks. I think I got it off a BBS originally. But now I will have to figure out how to transfer it using my current selection of PC's. I'm sure I'll get some guidance on how to do it from someone here on VCF. Right now I'm not quite sure how to get it to you.

Seaken
Click to expand...
There are tools for copy to/from PC apparently, but since I bought that DREM, I can shuffle files around with an SD card. I'm in the Portland, OR area - you wouldn't happen to be nearby would you? :)
 
ElectricLab said:
There are tools for copy to/from PC apparently, but since I bought that DREM, I can shuffle files around with an SD card. I'm in the Portland, OR area - you wouldn't happen to be nearby would you? :)
Click to expand...
Nope, I'm in NY State, Mid-Hudson Valley. I did grow up in Seattle though. Not that it will help now!

Seaken
 
Thanks to this thread by @retrobecanes, and participation by @ElectricLab and others, I am happy to report that my Advantage is back to life!

I ordered a foam and foil kit from TexElec and installed the new foam and foils. But I ended up with a keyboard that only had about half the keys working. I contacted Sara at TexElec and she was kind enough to send me another set that was a little thicker, at 1/4". I used those and now all the keys work great. For this Advantage the slightly thicker foam made the difference. Great service by Sara at TexElec! I highly recommend them.

I was not able to get the hard drive to work, which is not too surprising after 30 years. So, I took out the hard drive and re-installed the second floppy drive. I wasn't sure if I had to reverse the address header or not. I decided to just put it in and try it. It works fine. I now have Drive 2 (or Drive B in CP/M) on top and Drive 1 (Drive A:) remains in the bottom position. I am fine keeping it set up this way in case i decide to put a hard drive in the top position again. For now I am back to a two floppy NorthStar Advantage.

I have all the manuals and I have Graphics DOS (and Graphic DOS for Hard Disk) and Graphics Basic and Graphics CP/M. Now I need to start relearning how to use the software and transfer some files. Thanks to @VERAULT I have a few more Hard Sector disks that I traded him for. Now I am considering a purchase of a Greaseweasle to image some diskettes.

Thanks again to this thread for the inspiration to finally get out the Advantage and plug it in!

Seaken
 
I've been doing some reading and viewing and trying to decide what were my best options for transferring files between this Advantage and my more modern PC's so that I can share some of my software, such as the aforementioned IMP245 above. I have been considering a Gotek or the DREM? (not sure if I have that spelled correctly) but then I watched some videos that I had watched before where a serial cable was used to connect an old CP/M machine to a PC.

I knew I had used the serial connection on this Advantage to connect to BBS's using a modem. In some of my reading it was suggested that I could use either Modem7 or IMP245 to connect to either Procomm Plus or COMMO on the PC. I wondered if I didn't already have what I needed to transfer files. So, tonight I went and found some cables in one of my drawers that I knew I had stored away. One was a serial cable I used to connect the Advantage to my old 1200 baud modem and one was a Null Modem box I had made up a long time ago and finally I had a 9-pin to 25-pin patch cable to allow me to use the serial port on my old IBM XP machine.

I plugged it all in between the serial ports on both machines. Then I tried see if I could make a connection using Hyperterminal on the XP box and IMP245 on the Advantage. After some fiddling I was finally successful in making a connection!

I had forgotten I had done this direct connection before between this Advantage and my Tandy 1400FD. I found a disk labeled "IMP245 for Direct Connection" and used it to start the Advantage. It was already setup to the correct port at 9600 baud. I set Hyperterminal to the same 9600 and 8N1 with hardware flow control and started the terminal wiindow. Then I started the terminal on IMP and typed some text. It showed up on the Hyperterminal! I typed into the Hyperterminal and it showed up on the Advantage! We're connected!

So, I am getting closer to being able to transfer some files. I will try to copy some files tomorrow and if I am successful I will offer to make some files available as mentioned earlier in the thread.

Seaken
 
I mentioned above that I was thinking about using a Greaseweasel to image some of my N* disks. But I am not sure I can do that with the hard sectored disks and I don't have a working 360K drive on any of my old PC's. I think I would be better off using a Gotek and writing directly to the Advantage drives.

I am not sure how I may "image" a disk from the N*. That may be an option for me with a Greaseweasel, I am not sure. What do you all think? What hardware will I need to have to "image" my N* hard sectored disks?

In the meantime I will try to at least move files onto my PC and then copy them into an archive, maybe a ZIP or ARC file.

Seaken
 
I managed to figure out how to copy over files from my NorthStar Advantage disks to a file on my PC. I was not able to figure out how to use IMP245 in batch mode with HyperTerminal for XP. I ended up copying using the one-at-a-time method. The files are not large so it didn't take too much effort for one disk.

I have not figured out how to upload to an archive like the Internet Archive yet. But if anyone is interested in the IMP245 modem program I have it saved to my Google drive in Zip and 7z formats. You can PM me and I can give you access or email you directly.

IMP is the only disk I have finished so far. I am still trying to figure out how to image entire disks.

For the IMP245.ZIP file (or .7z) you will need to extract the files to your modern PC and then figure out a way to get it onto your Advantage. If you have a Gotek or other similar device it should be fairly easy. Or you can use serial cables.

Seaken
 
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