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Victor 9k / Sirius 1 Software

pdevine said:
@1302L That's actually not an audio out card but an audio in card. All the Victor's and Sirius 1's shipped with a speaker. The expectation was that you'd hear any sound via the built in speaker. That's a microphone in port that's used for recording audio into the Victor. There's already documentation for it on bitsavers here http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/victor/victor9000/Victor_9000_Audio_Tool_Kit_II.pdf, and the software for it is here: https://archive.org/details/victor9k-audio-toolkit. The speaker came built-in but the microphone input was extra. I believe the thinking went that only a small select few would be making audio files, while many would be consuming it.
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Hi Paul,
many thanks for this information.
I looked for for the pin - Port on the Main Board on my HDD Victor, but at the place where it is is on the newly purchased there's no place to put it, I don't want to damage anything so I refused to try if it fits in another place.
Cheers,
Martin.
 
djg said:
Didn't print too many lines. Did you get a directory or did you get an error? I think you showed DIR worked previously. Also did you previously get X98 (Bad Hard Disk Label) when trying to boot or did you get some other error?

Where did the emulator image you are using come from?

This thread is mixing several things so getting unwieldy to track. We may want to start a separate thread.

Also the files you attached only have some of the emulator output. Did you use the script command which should have had all or did you capture some other way? If some other way is this all the output related to the commands you ran?

Bad thing is the low seek times went away so debug output doesn't show what I was hoping to see. If you can find any way of triggering the low seek times that's what I was hoping to see.

Did the L command trying to read single sector work for any sector address? Did it work with the previous software version? What error is reported if it doesn't work?
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Hi djg, thanks, you're right, I will open a new thread for the emulation discussion..

Best,

Martin.
 
I can't see it having been brought up anywhere, but "Issue" was the biggest Sirius 1 user group that I remember. The owner got into some bother and is, unfortunately, now at His Majesty's Pleasure as they say. Issue used to produce a ton of software and hardware for the S1/V9K.

Here is a link to a lot of their downloads:
 
Good day Victor 9000 party.

I am joining the Victor party by accident... Found a Victor 9000 box and monitor for cheap and decided to give it a try. Everything after that was more expensive :) Of course now this nonstandard keyboard is needed. Then I found a cable-cut keyboard for double the price of the main piece. With the help of @NeXT (THANKS!) I recovered the pinout and was able to (maybe) repair the keyboard. Now, some nice guy from ebay who is also here (but I dont know who he is @westveld ?) is shipping me boot disks. Maybe this thing will be working soon. As it does have a miniscribe inside, I would love to get that one back to running of course.

(1) Anybody know if I need to "instruct" the machine to boot from it with a keypress, dip switch or the like? Upon boot I get the disk prompt which I can not satisfy so far.

(2) Any smart ideas how to revive an inop miniscribe? I hear hairdryers for heat, oil and stuff... I haven't inspected it visually yet but would be nice to get ideas.

(3) And for reference here are my serial info

s-l1600.webp

Thank you
 
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DrAlis said:
(but I dont know who he is @westveld ?) is shipping me boot disks. Maybe this thing will be working soon. As it does have a miniscribe inside, I would love to get that one back to running of course.
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It is me :)

He has 512K ram, so setup for MS-DOS 3.1 makes sense, I think.

I don't have any machines with a hard drive, so I'm not much help there.

@pdevine - what would he need for setting up a physical drive?
Would the latest versions I have of FDFORMAT.EXE and HDSETUP.EXE be good?
 
HOT NEWS! (Indeed!) I took the Miniscribe 3012 with 10 MB out and inspected it. Found nothing bad on all components I saw. Decided to notch the stepper motor and the spindle a little. No luck. Heated it up and notched the spindle a little. No luck. More notching this time during power up. SPIN UP!!! More power cycles and stepper workouts later it BOOTS FROM HDD LIKE ITS 1984!!

I am very happy and there comes the next problem...

No keyboard input possible. I checked the wiring with the one provided by @NeXT.
It is consistent and I have continuity.
 
I think it has a 384 kB RAM and HDD Controller as the 2 expansion boards. Some impressions attached.

IMG_4522.jpeg

View attachment IMG_4505.jpeg

I uploaded 6 images. I have no clue why one comes inline one as link and four as attachments - sorry :)
 

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Hi all,

@DrAlis , nice you#d like to bring another Victor back to life :-), according to the type (462?) it‘s the same machine as mine with one DS DD Floppy and a 10MB Miniscibe MFM HDD, and yes, a few picture from around and inside the machine would be great!

@westveld , in addition to the programs you mentioned; I would recommend FACTORYF:EXE or maybe a floppy-copy of the Hard Disl Utilities as there are some other pieces of software as well.

The procedure how to set up the HDD is mentioned in the Victor-Hard-Disk Emu - Thread:
Post in thread 'Victor 9000 / Sirius 1 Hard Disk Emulation'
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...us-1-hard-disk-emulation.1246676/post-1366441

BTW: My own Miniscribe HDD was toast and after buying three other disks from ebay which didn’t work either I switched to @djg ‘s HDD emulator which is an awesome device!

@westveld Do I recall it right, that on at least one of your disks Kermit is on as well? This might be a good idea for file transfers without writing disks with Greaseweazle.

Good luck and have fun!

Martin.
 
DrAlis said:
I think it has a 384 kB RAM and HDD Controller as the 2 expansion boards. Some impressions attached.

View attachment 1313624

View attachment 1313623

I uploaded 6 images. I have no clue why the all come up differently :)
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Hi again, great news! :-) -Awesome

Regarding the Keyboard: I think we all went through the replacement process of the foam pads of the Keytronics Keyboard, you can order them e.g. at Texelec or from ebay. Most likely the conductive material in your keyboard foam pads disappeared.

And yes, it seems to have 384kB of RAM, 128kB on the extension card, the other one is the DMA card in Slot 1.

Best,

Martin.
 
Thanks Martin, but shouldn't some keys work at least? I get dead nothing from this thing. I scoped the keyboard connector. No pulse on it. My high is around 4.6V which should be fine. On J1 inside the keyboard I have after booting

1: high
2: low
3: low
4: high (!!!)
5: high (!!!)
6: high (!!!)
7: high

!!! marks my concern as according to my shitty schematics skills they could be the following:

4: NOT KBACK
5: NOT KBRDY
6: KBDATA

I have a 3.4 Mhz signal on one of the two quartz legs.
So it has power but does not say it is ready.
That´s my max electronics skills. It ends right there :)
I will need help by someone with more skills here
 
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If useful I can take pictures of the expansion cards next time I take it apart.

Ideas on keyboard appreciated of course. i bought the keyboard from a different source then the computer and monitor, so there are chances it does not fit or is broken anyway. but it looked fine except for the severed cable.

we need to get the keyboard working to find out what gems are on that original hard drive, right?
 
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DrAlis said:
Thanks Martin, but shouldn't some keys work at least? I get dead nothing from this thing. I scoped the keyboard connector. No pulse on it. My high is around 4.6V which should be fine. On J1 inside the keyboard I have after booting
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I've had a few of these that were completely dead but worked fine with new foam + foil.
I was surprised!

If you disassemble the keyboard, just touching the contacts where the pads hit should type the key

See here for a photo of one like it: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/compaq-portable-i-corroded-keyboard.57223/
More photos: https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?t=20038
 
Westveld was faster than me!
:) Yes, it is possible that all keys are dead, but as stated above, just put your finger on one ‘key-place’ on the bare PCB then something should happen.
Mine has been dead completely as well, but the ‘capacitive touch-method’ worked.
I guess you have an interesting day then…! :)
Good luck!
 
Thanks @westveld. Quite a long and interesting read here and at deskthority. It is strange that the keys feel totally normal. You wonder what design advantage the foam inside had.

Can someone point me to the source of the keypads and/or hard drive emulation solution please? It seems the platforms are fencing off US sellers from my searches from the EU as I find nothing. The internet was so much better in 1999...
 
@1302L it definitely was a interesing and rewarding day. you guys helping me AND getting it to boot was a big and long needed sense of achievement. i love the vintage computing hobby but it has a lot of frustration in stock also. so today is a good day. thanks :)

i will open it up in a future day. i expect like when i last opened up an ibm model f that the first thing that happens is 250 small parts are falling out in a big random pile...
 
@DrAlis Welcome to the Victor club. I'm glad you were able to get your machine to boot.

@westveld I agree with @1302L add a factory.exe to that list and you're golden. I usually use the version from here: https://archive.org/details/ed-s-disks-factoryf-super-sf4

Replacing the foam pads is a big annoying in the number of them but super easy in terms of each one. I had several of the keyboards where the foam had turned into a sticky messy non-foam. I agree with @1302L the MFM emulator is much easier to work with that a real drive at this point. Though I do miss the sound of a real disk moving.
 
Thanks for the club welcome. Already feels pretty exclusive.

So foam pads are ordered. I will try my fingers on the pcb in the next couple of days as a test and then hope for the best.
 
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