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Sun MCA-3000 Modular Computer Analyzer

dduesing

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2024
Messages
116
I am going to refurbish a SUN engine analyzer. I have completed the initial cleanup of residual dust and grime and replaced the old CRT with a flat screen monitor and a new graphics card. That part works. At power on it shows the following...Screenshot (2).png

After a few moments it shows the following.
Screenshot (3).png

I am in the process of taking pictures of the boards that make up the system. I will post them as soon as I get the pics taken.
 
Here are some initial pictures of the component boards of the system
20240112_180253.jpg20240112_180423.jpg20240112_180527.jpg20240112_180538.jpg
 
More board Pictures. Originally when I first got the machine there was a loose hard drive inside not hooked up to anything except a controller card that was not plugged in, and the power was not applied to the hard drive. This grouping of picures includes a 20240112_182020.jpg20240112_182033.jpg20240112_182141.jpg20240112_182221.jpg20240112_182307.jpg20240112_182316.jpg20240112_182339.jpg20240112_182415.jpg20240112_182415.jpg20240112_182424.jpg
 
The last of the boards on the computer side of the MCA-3000. Some of the others I have found online to describe what they are, but this one is a bit of a mystery. Here are the pictures.
20240114_052835.jpg20240114_052856.jpg20240114_052919.jpg20240114_052949.jpg
 
I will spend some time now cleaning edge connector fingers, replacing 2032 batteries and cleaning up the buss board that all these fit onto. Some boards seem to have some rust which would suggest humidity rather than getting wet some other way. The fact that the MCA-3000 can at least start up without a black screen is encouraging. Looking forward to plugging these all back in the cage and see what happens. Picture of drawer that contains the what I call the buss board.20240114_055233.jpg
 
When I get the "computer" running properly, I can see if the interfaces that it connects to will come alive. Picture from the front of the MCA-3000 showing interface cards and in the back, the power supply.20240114_055320.jpg20240114_055313.jpg
 
Pardon the wall of text here but I'll try and answer whatever questions you have already made. If I missed something just ask again and I'll try to answer it. :)

So in your first picture everything looks good. It passes self-test and then tries to check to see if the floppy drives are present. I can visible see two drives are installed but for some reason it doesn't like them and responds with an error.
Because this is a clone of an IBM PC, it was traditional that if an IBM computer could not boot from anything it would drop to ROM BASIC. Clones were not licensed to use ROM BASIC, so a cloned BIOS would naturally look for it, fail to find it and return the error you are seeing. This is completely normal.
You however also have a hard disk controller installed. (the WDXT-GEN board, or the WD1003-WA2 board. whichever one was originally in the machine since I think you mentioned you bought another controller at a swap meet?) The system doesn't seem to give a fixed-disk error so I suspect if this machine has not been used in quite a while that the battery that stores the system boot settings (as well as the parameters for what types of floppy drives and what hard drive is installed, if any) has drained and that is why you have errors with the floppy drive and it doesn't see a hard drive.

The coin cell CR2032 on the Everex card will not be that battery. This is the battery for the real-time clock. Not entirely required to be good but CR2032 cells are something you can buy at a dollar store.
The actual "Computer" judging from your photos will be the long card with the "ASSY 150-0004819". I see your RAM. I see your BIOS ROM and I see what looks to be your CPU with an empty socket for a math-co-processor. I do not however see a battery. I do however see a black/red pair of wires running off somewhere. Is that connected to a battery?
The giant pink-label 3.6v Tadiran battery however will however be a battery you need to pay attention to. Much like my MEA 1500 that battery at the minimum stores the configuration parameters for the analyzer and the calibration data for the gas analyzer if equipped. If it's dead it needs to be replaced or it will never save its calibration and self-calibration data every time you turn the machine off. That is a specialty battery I do not have any suggestions on where you can easily go and buy one. Personally I would convert that to a more common 3.6v "Macintosh" type battery that Apple used in their computers through to the 2000's as they are still somewhat easy to find online and at most specialty battery stores.

I know in the previous thread you mentioned you were trying to get the hard drive to work because it might still boot to the analyzer without needing floppies. These early 2-cable hard disks are very annoying to work with because it was mentioned, you cannot pull the drive from one machine, plug it into another and move files across like anything else in the last 30 years. It's not a security thing but the technology at the time wasn't really adaptive and once a hard drive was formatted and used on one controller card, it was tied to that card until you formatted the drive on whatever the next controller card was you wanted to use it with. You would need to transplant both the drive and the card over to your other machine to work with its contents. Even then you run into all sorts of nonsense with hardware conflicts with modern disk controllers and....it's just messy. For the sake of troubleshooting, just assume the drive is stuck in the analyzer.
Likewise, these controllers and drives are not like any sort of a modern computer device and are not automatically detected or configured, so just because the controller is plugged in and the drive is spinning does not mean (in most cases) the system will just know "hey there's a disk there, let's try to start from it" like it would with a floppy drive.
(Okay, in really, really special cases where the controller is hard-coded to one type of drive and the BIOS is hard-coded to try and boot from a controller if its present that works, but lets assume the MCA 3000 is not that smart)
You don't need to configure anything on the drive or the controller card to add it back to the system. You/we just need the make and model of the drive so that we can setup (remember how it was saying to press F1 if hardware setup was required? We have to go into that menu) the analyzer to know that a fixed disk is installed and what "type" it is. Then after a restart (remember to change those batteries) it should know a drive is there and try to boot from it, if it can and if we're lucky and the analyzer was put away in a working state, it will work without touching any jumpers, wires or switches.
 
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Continuing on...
Your hard drive is a Kalok KL-320. This is an early 20mb 3.5" form factor hard drive and don't fret if the drive turns out to be dead. Kalok has a reputation for making some of the worst hard drives in history. Here is the specification on that drive, which will be important because the parameters we will need to re-add it to the machine are here:
Code:
K L - 3 2 0    KALOK
NO MORE PRODUCED                                      Native|  Translation
                                                      ------+-----+-----+-----
Form                 3.5"/SLIMLINE         Cylinders     615|     |     |
Capacity form/unform    21/   26 MB        Heads           4|     |     |
Seek time   / track  48.0/15.0 ms          Sector/track   17|     |     |
Controller           MFM / ST412           Precompensation   300
Cache/Buffer               KB              Landing Zone      615
Data transfer rate    0.625 MB/S int       Bytes/Sector      512
                      0.625 MB/S ext
Recording method     MFM                            operating  | non-operating
                                                  -------------+--------------
Supply voltage     5/12 V       Temperature *C         4 55    |    -40 68
Power: sleep              W     Humidity     %         8 80    |      5 90
       standby       11.0 W     Altitude    km    -0.305  3.048| -0.305  9.144
       idle               W     Shock        g        10       |     40
       seek               W     Rotation   RPM      3600
       read/write         W     Acoustic   dBA        40
       spin-up            W     ECC        Bit
                                MTBF         h      44000
                                Warranty Month
Lift/Lock/Park     NO           Certificates

Now, in the event we cannot use this drive again, because the computer in the MCA 3000 is just a PC clone (and more to the point it's a PC clone on a single board with what we call a "passive" ISA backplane) we can probably use a modern drive substitution that was designed for these older machines. The XT-IDE is one such product that replaces the original drive and the controller with a new controller and boot ROM that lets you use modern disk or even flash memory devices. If we get to that point I know there are quite a few members here on the forum who can help you beyond me. :)


As for Sun distributing the diagnostic routines on floppy disks, there's a couple options but they all rely on if someone else has already archived their disks. I do see stacks occasionally show up on ebay but I've never come across an online archive of them. You can continue using whatever floppies you have once we reconfigure the system to see the floppy drives again or you can replace the floppy drives with a GoTek floppy drive emulator, which again replaces physical diskettes with virtual disks either on an SD memory card or a USB stick. We can get to that later as well.


In my personal opinion though, once you have the system working again at the very least from floppy disks I would strongly recommend you look into the feasibility of a GoTek. An automotive maintenance environment is very, very dirty as to what most floppy drives are expected to be used in.

On a tangent, I am somewhat jealous you found an MCA 3000. I have an MEA 1500 which is the model below yours. The hardware is a lot simpler and it doesn't have an entire PC running the thing which means there's a lot less to go wrong, but you can apparently with the flip of a switch turn the MCA 3000 into a full DOS PC with a color display and full keyboard.
 
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I saw your early posting when I first came to the forum, that you had some experience with SUN engine analyzers. Here is what is going on with me. I restored a 1978 MG Midget with my grandson (now 17) for his first car. We are at the point where we need to get it smogged in California. I asked a local British Car Repair shop if they could help me with that. They could indeed, but it might take some doing even though they had good standing with the local testing facility. The owner of the British Car Repair shop said he had always wanted to get an Engine Analyzer to help set cars up before he had to go through several trips to the Smog Check before cars eventually passed. That got me thinking. If I could find an analyzer cheap enough and get it working, he could use it to check out my grandsons Midget and get it to pass the smog check all the easier. I found a SUM MCA-3000 near me on Craigslist for $100. I asked the repair shop guy if I got it working if he would take that in exchange for getting my grandsons car to pass smog check so we could get it registered. He agreed. I bought the analyzer, and he helped me get it to my house. I tore into the project with gusto. Did a thorough cleaning, plugged it in and turned it on. It didn't blow up and there was no smoke. Fans whirred, lights blinked, the CRT had a display on it...but it didn't start the program. I hooked up with a British Race car Driver who owned a MCA-3000 and was very encouraging and helpful to the point where he could no longer answer technical computer questions. The analyzer I got had two floppies hooked up and that's all. I subsequently found a hard drive just sitting in the back of the machine, not hooked up and connected to a card by two flat ribbon cables. The British race car driver said that he had installed a hard drive in his analyzer and used it to boot and run programs on it. When he didn't know how to answer my questions about error messages that came up on my screen, that's when I found this forum. In my discussions up to now (which you can read if you'd like) I have decided to ditch the old Kalok drive and interface card and get another hard drive under the advice of famicomaster2. I purchased an HD and an interface card on Ebay, and they are on the way.



That said, I now have to download the second of two disks that activate the SUN analyzer when turned on. They would normally be put in the floppy drives A & B and allow selection of the test to be performed by the analyzer. I have one of the two discs required and am pursuing getting a copy of the second disc. The aim is to eventually not use the floppy drives at all and use the hard drive to automatically boot the system up. If and when I get that done, I turn the analyzer over to the British Car repair shop for them to own, and we get this MG project put to bed. I enjoy challanges and this project has been a lot of fun. Hopefully the folks on this forum will help me get to my goal. You have experience or knowledge of these types of machines, and I am certain your advice will be invaluable.
 
Nice. I am going to copy paste your posting and add my responses in red as I see things that will help answer further questions.

So in your first picture everything looks good. It passes self-test and then tries to check to see if the floppy drives are present. I can visible see two drives are installed but for some reason it doesn't like them and responds with an error.
Because this is a clone of an IBM PC, it was traditional that if an IBM computer could not boot from anything it would drop to ROM BASIC. Clones were not licensed to use ROM BASIC, so a cloned BIOS would naturally look for it, fail to find it and return the error you are seeing. This is completely normal.
Nice to know.
You however also have a hard disk controller installed. (the WDXT-GEN board, or the WD1003-WA2 board. whichever one was originally in the machine since I think you mentioned you bought another controller at a swap meet?) The system doesn't seem to give a fixed-disk error so I suspect if this machine has not been used in quite a while that the battery that stores the system boot settings (as well as the parameters for what types of floppy drives and what hard drive is installed, if any) has drained and that is why you have errors with the floppy drive and it doesn't see a hard drive. I will address the battery issue further on in this thread.

The coin cell CR2032 on the Everex card will not be that battery. This is the battery for the real-time clock. Not entirely required to be good but CR2032 cells are something you can buy at a dollar store.
The actual "Computer" judging from your photos will be the long card with the "ASSY 150-0004819". I see your RAM. I see your BIOS ROM and I see what looks to be your CPU with an empty socket for a math-co-processor. I do not however see a battery. I do however see a black/red pair of wires running off somewhere. Is that connected to a battery?
Indeed I replaced that battery with a 2032 and was able on startup to get into the place where I could change date and other settings like floppy and HD types (which I played with early on). Since, the setting have held. I was curious because the place where the red black wires were, the battery that was on at that location was a large Tadiran battery probably the size of 4 AA cells would be in a pack, but 7 volts or so. I replaced that with the 2032 and it seems to work. Wonder why such a large battery?
The giant pink-label 3.6v Tadiran battery however will however be a battery you need to pay attention to. Much like my MEA 1500 that battery at the minimum stores the configuration parameters for the analyzer and the calibration data for the gas analyzer if equipped. If it's dead it needs to be replaced or it will never save its calibration and self-calibration data every time you turn the machine off. That is a specialty battery I do not have any suggestions on where you can easily go and buy one. Personally I would convert that to a more common 3.6v "Macintosh" type battery that Apple used in their computers through to the 2000's as they are still somewhat easy to find online and at most specialty battery stores. I put a voltmeter to that battery, and it read 3.6V and I could see that the backside of the through hole legs of the battery had been resoldered at some time in the past.

I know in the previous thread you mentioned you were trying to get the hard drive to work because it might still boot to the analyzer without needing floppies. These early 2-cable hard disks are very annoying to work with because it was mentioned, you cannot pull the drive from one machine, plug it into another and move files across like anything else in the last 30 years. It's not a security thing but the technology at the time wasn't really adaptive and once a hard drive was formatted and used on one controller card, it was tied to that card until you formatted the drive on whatever the next controller card was you wanted to use it with. You would need to transplant both the drive and the card over to your other machine to work with its contents. Even then you run into all sorts of nonsense with hardware conflicts with modern disk controllers and....it's just messy. For the sake of troubleshooting, just assume the drive is stuck in the analyzer.
We will soon be in sync, as I sent a longwinded dissertation before I discovered you had sent me this. In it I describe what I have decided to do with the old Kalok drive and the controller card(s)
Likewise, these controllers and drives are not like any sort of a modern computer device and are not automatically detected or configured, so just because the controller is plugged in and the drive is spinning does not mean (in most cases) the system will just know "hey there's a disk there, let's try to start from it" like it would with a floppy drive.
(Okay, in really, really special cases where the controller is hard-coded to one type of drive and the BIOS is hard-coded to try and boot from a controller if its present that works, but lets assume the MCA 3000 is not that smart)
You don't need to configure anything on the drive or the controller card to add it back to the system. You/we just need the make and model of the drive so that we can setup (remember how it was saying to press F1 if hardware setup was required? We have to go into that menu) the analyzer to know that a fixed disk is installed and what "type" it is. Then after a restart (remember to change those batteries) it should know a drive is there and try to boot from it, if it can and if we're lucky and the analyzer was put away in a working state, it will work without touching any jumpers, wires or switches.
The F1 setup is somewhere I spent some time early on. I eventually found a description of the Kalok HD that told me it was a type 2, but when I changed that setting ...nothing. I fully suspect and don't want to deal with the fact that it is not something I would rely on in the future.
 
Doing some research I was able to pull up Sun's old document on how the hard drive was configured. IT also does mention a CD-ROM but in your photos I did not see that installed and for now lets disregard any mention about it.

(I have also attached it to the post, in case Snap-On removes the download)

On page 6 it wants you to specify a drive type, but the Kalok drive you have is not on that list. If we look at the drive specifications above we see the drive has 615 cylinders, 4 heads and 17 sectors per track with a write precompensation of 300.

At around the mid to late 80's we began to define disk drives by a Drive Type Number. There was a list of commonly used Cylinder/Heads/Sectors (C/H/S for short) that meant if you knew the drive type the controller would fill in the rest of the parameter information for you.

So if we look for 615/4/17 on the table:

Code:
                   Write   Land                       Write   Land
     Type Cyls Hds PreComp Zone Size    Type Cyls Hds PreComp Zone Size
     ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀    ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀
      0   (no fixed disk installed)     17   977   5  300      977  42M
      1   306   4  128     305   10M    18   977   7  0ffffH   977  59M
      2   615   4  300     615   21M    19  1024   7  512     1023  62M
      3   615   6  300     615   32M    20   733   5  300      732  31M
      4   940   8  512     940   65M    21   733   7  300      732  44M
      5   940   6  512     940   49M    22   733   5  300      733  31M
      6   615   4  0ffffH  615   21M    23   306   4  0        336  10M
      7   462   8  256     511   32M    24   612   4  305      663  22M
      8   733   5  0ffffH  733   31M    25   306   4  0ffffH   340  10M
      9   900  15  0ffffH  901  117M    26   612   4  0ffffH   670  21M
     10   820   3  0ffffH  820   21M    27   698   7  300      732  43M
     11   855   5  0ffffH  855   37M    28   967   5  488      977  42M
     12   855   7  0ffffH  855   52M    29   306   4  0        340  11M
     13   306   8  128     319   21M    30   611   4  306      663  21M
     14   733   7  0ffffH  733   44M    31   732   7  300      732  46M
     15   reserved (see notes)          32  1023   5  ffffH   1023  46M
     16   612   4  0       663   21M    (33-255 reserved, see notes)

...the Kalok KL-320 should be a Type 2 drive. So just remember that when following the instructions.
 

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I was curious because the place where the red black wires were, the battery that was on at that location was a large Tadiran battery probably the size of 4 AA cells would be in a pack, but 7 volts or so. I replaced that with the 2032 and it seems to work. Wonder why such a large battery?
Some of these earlier computers had a CMOS memory (battery backed memory specifically for storing boot and disk information) consumed far ore power than a CR2032 can deliver over an extended period, so on occasion a set of larger batteries were used that rounded up to around the same voltage. In the MEA 1500 I replaced the two button-sized 3 batteries with a pair of low-drain 3V lithium cells that should last another...20 or 30 years.

I put a voltmeter to that battery, and it read 3.6V and I could see that the backside of the through hole legs of the battery had been resoldered at some time in the past.
Okay good. That battery is still healthy. Do not remove it or you'll wipe your calibration.

The F1 setup is somewhere I spent some time early on. I eventually found a description of the Kalok HD that told me it was a type 2, but when I changed that setting ...nothing. I fully suspect and don't want to deal with the fact that it is not something I would rely on in the future.
Heh. Okay then you got to this step before me and already have a result then. :) You can also try type 6. Different write precompensation, but if we just want to see if we can READ the drive to boot that won't matter.
 
Now, in the event we cannot use this drive again, because the computer in the MCA 3000 is just a PC clone (and more to the point it's a PC clone on a single board with what we call a "passive" ISA backplane) we can probably use a modern drive substitution that was designed for these older machines. The XT-IDE is one such product that replaces the original drive and the controller with a new controller and boot ROM that lets you use modern disk or even flash memory devices. If we get to that point I know there are quite a few members here on the forum who can help you beyond me. :) I considered using an emulator early on but they were more technical and more expensive than I wanted to deal with. I think I (we) can achieve the same result with old school technology just fine...I hope.


As for Sun distributing the diagnostic routines on floppy disks, there's a couple options but they all rely on if someone else has already archived their disks. I do see stacks occasionally show up on ebay but I've never come across an online archive of them. You can continue using whatever floppies you have once we reconfigure the system to see the floppy drives again or you can replace the floppy drives with a GoTek floppy drive emulator, which again replaces physical diskettes with virtual disks either on an SD memory card or a USB stick. We can get to that later as well. My Machine came with what appears to be a complete set of SUN floppy data discs...save one, the important one. Originally the machine would be turned on with two discs in the floppy drives. One was the master disc, and the second allowed communication with the I/O cards in the card rack at the front of the analyzer. Those cards are hooked to all the probes hanging from the pivoting arm on the top of the analyzer.

On a tangent, I am somewhat jealous you found an MCA 3000. I have an MEA 1500 which is the model below yours. The hardware is a lot simpler and it doesn't have an entire PC running the thing which means there's a lot less to go wrong, but you can apparently with the flip of a switch turn the MCA 3000 into a full DOS PC with a color display and full keyboard.
At the suggestion of my British car racing guy, I have changed out the old CRT for a flat screen 5:4 ratio that fits exactly into the window used by the CRT. I got a driver card recommended by my car driver friend and that all seems to light off and works fine. Any displays you have seen are on that flat screen. When it starts up, I can see that it will display in color when I see the monitor identification at its startup.


Looking forward to our future conversations!
 
Doing some research I was able to pull up Sun's old document on how the hard drive was configured. IT also does mention a CD-ROM but in your photos I did not see that installed and for now lets disregard any mention about it.

(I have also attached it to the post, in case Snap-On removes the download)

On page 6 it wants you to specify a drive type, but the Kalok drive you have is not on that list. If we look at the drive specifications above we see the drive has 615 cylinders, 4 heads and 17 sectors per track with a write precompensation of 300.

At around the mid to late 80's we began to define disk drives by a Drive Type Number. There was a list of commonly used Cylinder/Heads/Sectors (C/H/S for short) that meant if you knew the drive type the controller would fill in the rest of the parameter information for you.

So if we look for 615/4/17 on the table:

Code:
                   Write   Land                       Write   Land
     Type Cyls Hds PreComp Zone Size    Type Cyls Hds PreComp Zone Size
     ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀    ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀
      0   (no fixed disk installed)     17   977   5  300      977  42M
      1   306   4  128     305   10M    18   977   7  0ffffH   977  59M
      2   615   4  300     615   21M    19  1024   7  512     1023  62M
      3   615   6  300     615   32M    20   733   5  300      732  31M
      4   940   8  512     940   65M    21   733   7  300      732  44M
      5   940   6  512     940   49M    22   733   5  300      733  31M
      6   615   4  0ffffH  615   21M    23   306   4  0        336  10M
      7   462   8  256     511   32M    24   612   4  305      663  22M
      8   733   5  0ffffH  733   31M    25   306   4  0ffffH   340  10M
      9   900  15  0ffffH  901  117M    26   612   4  0ffffH   670  21M
     10   820   3  0ffffH  820   21M    27   698   7  300      732  43M
     11   855   5  0ffffH  855   37M    28   967   5  488      977  42M
     12   855   7  0ffffH  855   52M    29   306   4  0        340  11M
     13   306   8  128     319   21M    30   611   4  306      663  21M
     14   733   7  0ffffH  733   44M    31   732   7  300      732  46M
     15   reserved (see notes)          32  1023   5  ffffH   1023  46M
     16   612   4  0       663   21M    (33-255 reserved, see notes)

...the Kalok KL-320 should be a Type 2 drive. So just remember that when following the instructions.


I saw this in my research and had saved a copy on my computer also. At one time I was considering a CD transplant for an old machine I have sitting around...but then I came to my senses. Why do I need yet another problem. Are you familiar with the acronym KISS? Keep It Simple Stupid! I remind myself of that a lot.
 
I considered using an emulator early on but they were more technical and more expensive than I wanted to deal with. I think I (we) can achieve the same result with old school technology just fine...I hope.
Understandable. They have a learning curve and even I have never used them yet.

My Machine came with what appears to be a complete set of SUN floppy data discs...save one, the important one. Originally the machine would be turned on with two discs in the floppy drives. One was the master disc, and the second allowed communication with the I/O cards in the card rack at the front of the analyzer. Those cards are hooked to all the probes hanging from the pivoting arm on the top of the analyzer
Okay so then you really need to either find another copy of the diskette or get the machine running off the hard drive. I don't have anything here, sorry or else I would share them. :/

At the suggestion of my British car racing guy, I have changed out the old CRT for a flat screen 5:4 ratio that fits exactly into the window used by the CRT.
I didn't even notice you had swapped out the CRT. Looks good!
 
Some of these earlier computers had a CMOS memory (battery backed memory specifically for storing boot and disk information) consumed far ore power than a CR2032 can deliver over an extended period, so on occasion a set of larger batteries were used that rounded up to around the same voltage. In the MEA 1500 I replaced the two button-sized 3 batteries with a pair of low-drain 3V lithium cells that should last another...20 or 30 years.


Okay good. That battery is still healthy. Do not remove it or you'll wipe your calibration.


Heh. Okay then you got to this step before me and already have a result then. :) You can also try type 6. Different write precompensation, but if we just want to see if we can READ the drive to boot that won't matter.

I am going to bail on the Kaylok. In a previous post I explained.
 
Understandable. They have a learning curve and even I have never used them yet.


Okay so then you really need to either find another copy of the diskette or get the machine running off the hard drive. I don't have anything here, sorry or else I would share them. :/


I didn't even notice you had swapped out the CRT. Looks good!
You may find this site of interest. It is in German, but translators work fine. It is how I met the British race car driver that has an MCA-3000 and uses it to dial in his race cars still today. Nice guy. I have not figured out how to download anything from the site, but there is a good discussion on disc emulators.
 
You may find this site of interest. It is in German, but translators work fine. It is how I met the British race car driver that has an MCA-3000 and uses it to dial in his race cars still today. Nice guy. I have not figured out how to download anything from the site, but there is a good discussion on disc emulators.
Oops...http://www.fette-vette.de/sun-3000-downloads.html
 
Ah, I see it now. You bought a Western Digital Caviar 21600 and a Goldstar CA8390. If you need the specs for both you will need these:


I cannot help you configure the drive in the analyzer but if you start having weird issues with the floppy drives you may need to disable the floppy controller on the Goldstar card because it might be fighting with the floppy controller that is already in the analyzer.
 
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