Victor 9k / Sirius 1 Software

[1302L]

Everyone I've seen myself is a TM100-4, although they're not using the standard TM100 control board. I'd be very interested if it's a different model.

Hi,

As soon as I'll find a little bit more time I am going to disassemble the Victor and post pictures of the floppy drive as well as the HDD.
On Friday I tried some other other new DSDD disks, the Victor didn't like these as well, bringing the DSDD Disk content to a DSHD Disk, the Victor immediately booted.

Getting back to the HDD issue, I tried SHOWSTAT from the HD field service Disk today, it gave some detailed information about the disk, please see pictures attached, any comment on this, as well as my last post about the HDD is highly appreciated, also for the disassembly of the machine, what to look for especially.

Thanks and best regards,

Martin.

 

[pdevine]

Hi,

As soon as I'll find a little bit more time I am going to disassemble the Victor and post pictures of the floppy drive as well as the HDD.
On Friday I tried some other other new DSDD disks, the Victor didn't like these as well, bringing the DSDD Disk content to a DSHD Disk, the Victor immediately booted.

Getting back to the HDD issue, I tried SHOWSTAT from the HD field service Disk today, it gave some detailed information about the disk, please see pictures attached, any comment on this, as well as my last post about the HDD is highly appreciated, also for the disassembly of the machine, what to look for especially.

Thanks and best regards,

Martin.

Hi Martin,
Given the errors you've been encountering when trying to read and write the hard drive, I think you'd probably be better off in the long run if you try to reformat the hard drive at a low level. That will erase everything on the drive, so I suggest you try to back up everything from the hard drive you're interested in recovering before you do that. Doing the low-level format should help route around any bad sectors on the drive. The SHOWSTAT command gives you all the drive configuration information about the disk. It's the information you enter into factoryf.exe, which is the low-level reformatting tool. You'll need values from the output of showstat in order to successfully run factoryf. Again, this will result in a blank drive, so only do this if you have everything off the hard drive that you want to retain. I've attached the hard drive manual here which has the instructions on how to do what I'm describing. If you do decide to erase the hard drive, you'd then need to copy the operating system back over. The steps at a high level are:
1) Run showstat and capture all the information about the drive configuration. You've already done that step.
2) run factoryf and do a low-level format of the drive. This takes quite a long time to run. Like an hour or two. It's going through the drive section by section and validating it's able to retain information. If it's not it marks the section as unusable.
3) You reboot the machine when the above command finishes, and boot off a floppy disk.
4) Run hdsetup to partition the now-blank hard drive. This sets it up for DOS to be able to use the disk.
5) run sys to copy the DOS from the floppy disk to the newly formated and partitioned hard drive.
6) If all the above goes well you have a new system with a working hard drive.

Let me know if any of this doesn't make sense or if you have any questions.

Paul

 

[1302L]

Dear Paul,

many thanks for these instructions.

I would like to set up the HDD new and discard the content of the HDD.

By reading the Hard Drive Setup Manual, I think my first mistake was to boot the Victor into a HDD - DOS instead of using the non_HDD - DOS initially
=> Any hints which version of your collection on the archive is best suited for that? Maybe this is the key to success as the Victor seems to lock up as the HDD Version is used in first place.

I wasn't aware of the FACTORYF - Shift-F4 - Key Combination to enter the HDD data manually as well.

As soon as I have figured out, which non _HDD DOS I shall use I will try these steps according to the Instructions.

Best,

Martin.

 

[pdevine]

Martin,
You're reminding me how much of this I've forgotten. This version of the OS https://archive.org/details/victor9k-original-floppy-ms-dos-2-93-disk-1 is floppy-disk only. If you boot from it the operating system won't see the HD at all. You can use that to boot and run factoryf from the command line. Now that you're reminding me, I'm forgetting which of the steps above need you to boot from the floppy-only version of the operating system and which need the HD-version of the operating system. Definitely factoryf will be need to be run from the floppy version. I believe the hdsetup will as well IIRC. When running sys to copy the OS, you'll need to boot with the HD version of the operating system so the HD is available to copy the data to.

In terms of HD version of the operating system, the latest version is 3.1. You can find it here: https://archive.org/details/ms-dos-3.1-for-victor-9000. It uses slightly more RAM than the 2.x versions. The 3.1 version has more smarts about trying to decide between the floppy and the hard drive when booting. The 2.1 version for HD is https://archive.org/details/MS-DOS-2-11-2-92. With the 2.1 HD version if the hard drive is not present or not working the HD version of the OS will just hang during the boot cycle trying to bring up the HD. With 3.1 it should timeout on the hard drive and keep booting from the floppy as if the HD is not present. This is not 100% reliable, but definitely better than the 2.1 version.

Some of these OS's are the American and some of them are the UK version. There's slight variations in spelling, but most noticeably the date entry formats differ. MM-DD-YYYY for the American/Domestic and DD-MM-YYYY for the UK/British. It trips me up sometimes when going back and forth between the versions. I don't have every OS in both localized formats.

if you run into questions feel free to reach out.

 

[1302L]

Thanks Paul!
I will set up the disks tonight (CET) and give feedback asap.

Lately I was talking to my father about the Victor and trying to bring it to life again. He was quite amused and told me that one of the purposes of the machines in his department had been to send Testing Data from the German Mercedes - Benz HQ in Stuttgart to Mercedes - Benz of North America (Ann Arbor and Los Angeles) and to the EPA and CARB long before a public internet existed, they did this via a modem and this worked fine from roundabout 1980 - 1989 with the Victors / Siriuses. My fathers position at MB was to negotiate with the US authorities about the emission standards for MB Passenger cars sold in the US in order to allow MB to sell the cars on these markets (EPA/CARB) for the forthcoming years.

Best,

Martin.

 

[1302L]

Hi Paul,
unfortunately no luck with the Floppy DOS Disk and FACTORYF.
I was able to go through all the steps on FACTORYF, but in the end an error message was displayed: Track 0 is bad
Please see pictures attached.
Maybe the HDD itself is in bad shape and needs replacement?
Best regards,
Martin.

 

[pdevine]

Hi Paul,
unfortunately no luck with the Floppy DOS Disk and FACTORYF.
I was able to go through all the steps on FACTORYF, but in the end an error message was displayed: Track 0 is bad
Please see pictures attached.
Maybe the HDD itself is in bad shape and needs replacement?
Best regards,
Martin.

That's unfortunate. It's strange that it's saying Track 0 is bad, as the data that's shown in showstat comes from track 0. Your entires for the configuration of factoryf definitely match the data that was in showstat. I'm thinking the drive itself maybe having issues. I have an old version of RaSCSI that Fozztexx put together that I'm using in place of an old drive. It's been working well for me, but I don't think it'll work with the latest version. RaSCSI became PiSCSI and they've changed the code quite a bit.

 

[Gary C]

Yes, great to meet you too! Well, as we expected the floppy drive was also faulty along with the controller. Good news is that it's all working fine now after swapping in the spares. DMA card also checks out good! I'm passing by the museum at some point next weekend so will drop it back off then.

Cheers,
Dave

Thank you for your work.

Now back in service.

I did have a hiccup as I tried one of the disks I had written and contaminated the heads, but after a clean it worked fine again.

We really could do with a Gotek style device.

 

[1302L]

That's unfortunate. It's strange that it's saying Track 0 is bad, as the data that's shown in showstat comes from track 0. Your entires for the configuration of factoryf definitely match the data that was in showstat. I'm thinking the drive itself maybe having issues. I have an old version of RaSCSI that Fozztexx put together that I'm using in place of an old drive. It's been working well for me, but I don't think it'll work with the latest version. RaSCSI became PiSCSI and they've changed the code quite a bit.

Hi Paul, thanks, I will disassemble the Victor now and will have a good look inside, will post some pics of the HDD and The Floppy drive. Also I will look for another HDD, maybe i'll find one which works, apart from The HDD Issue the Victor seems to be in good working order, but a cleanup of the floppy drive can't do no harm.
Best, Martin.

 

[Moonferret]

Thank you for your work.

Now back in service.

I did have a hiccup as I tried one of the disks I had written and contaminated the heads, but after a clean it worked fine again.

We really could do with a Gotek style device.

No problem at all. The faulty drive & controller are on my repair to-do pile.

A Gotek style device would be great but don't think that would be an easy task on the Sirius. Much easier to get some sort of hard drive / flash storage since it has the DMA card.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[BradC]

Hi Paul, thanks, I will disassemble the Victor now and will have a good look inside, will post some pics of the HDD and The Floppy drive. Also I will look for another HDD, maybe i'll find one which works, apart from The HDD Issue the Victor seems to be in good working order, but a cleanup of the floppy drive can't do no harm.
Best, Martin.

Do you have a copy of the HD Field test disk from Paul's archive?

hd-field-service-v3-2-v3-2 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

archive.org

There is documentation for it in Chapter 5 of the Hard Disk Subsystem manual that Paul posted here:

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/victor/victor9000/Victor_9000_Sirius_1_Hard_Disk_Subsystem.pdf

 

[1302L]

Hi Brad,
thanks for this, no I haven't tried this one, will create the disk and try the diagnosis according to the documentation.
Best,
Martin.

 

[1302L]

Sorry,
is there a chance to get the .img - file of this disk? I downloaded the torrent and it didn't contain an . img.
Thanks in advance,
Martin.

 

[1302L]

I have disassembled the Victor tonight.

Please have a look at the pictures, The Floppy Drive is a Tandon TM100-4, the HDD is a Miniscribe III, Mod. 3012.

Please also have a look at the Boot ROMs, seems they aren't original anymore (?)

I have also attached pictures of the Drive Controller, HDD Controller and Main Board, any comments are highly appreciated, also hints what to do next.

Cheers,

Martin.

 

[BradC]

The Victor 9000 Universal Boot ROMs were an update that allowed the system to booth from floppy, hard disk, or network. You can get more detailed information on page 234 of this document. Copies of these ROMs became readily available though Victor User groups and many people installed them into their systems. These are probably the best ROMs for your system.

 

[pdevine]

Sorry,
is there a chance to get the .img - file of this disk? I downloaded the torrent and it didn't contain an . img.
Thanks in advance,
Martin.

Martin,
Apologies for that. I clearly made a mistake in leaving out a number of files on that upload. I just added the .zip file that contains the .img file along with the flux recordings.

Paul

 

[pdevine]

I have disassembled the Victor tonight.

Please have a look at the pictures, The Floppy Drive is a Tandon TM100-4, the HDD is a Miniscribe III, Mod. 3012.

Please also have a look at the Boot ROMs, seems they aren't original anymore (?)

I have also attached pictures of the Drive Controller, HDD Controller and Main Board, any comments are highly appreciated, also hints what to do next.

Cheers,

Martin.

Thanks for posting photos Martin. That all looks like the standard kit, in quite good condition. I agree your ROMs have likely been upgraded. Those look like the "Universal ROMs." They're described in the Dealer Guide as:

SUBJECT: UNIVERSAL BOOT PROMS [P/N 106168-01, FE (5H) and P/N 106170-01,

New eproms have been developed which allow the mainframe to load a bootstrap from either the floppy or the 10 MB hard disk, or the network, if so equipped. Universal Boot Proms also provide a diagnostic routine which loops the 8088 if a hardware error is encountered during the boot.

A system equipped with Unversal Boot Proms will display different icons during the boot. The memory test symbol M will appear, followed by the memory size in Kilo-bytes. The device (and device number) that is being polled for the bootstrap is displayed, and a new icon for the network will appear if a network board is installed on the mainframe.

 

[1302L]

Martin,
Apologies for that. I clearly made a mistake in leaving out a number of files on that upload. I just added the .zip file that contains the .img file along with the flux recordings.

Paul

Many Thanks Paul, I was able to download it now.

 

[1302L]

Thanks for posting photos Martin. That all looks like the standard kit, in quite good condition. I agree your ROMs have likely been upgraded. Those look like the "Universal ROMs." They're described in the Dealer Guide as:

The Victor 9000 Universal Boot ROMs were an update that allowed the system to booth from floppy, hard disk, or network. You can get more detailed information on page 234 of this document. Copies of these ROMs became readily available though Victor User groups and many people installed them into their systems. These are probably the best ROMs for your system.

Hello Brad and Paul,
thanks for this information!
As mentioned, being an automotive engineer with quite limited abilities in the function of microcomputers and testing, I think, now as we discovered a system in good shape it would be best to give the victor to some professional to give it a thorough checkup, but where to go in Europe / Germany, the only ones I've found here during a quick search had been these guys:
https://www.classic-computing.org/
I will write them and see what they say.

Two questions regarding HDD and DOS 3.1

Is it possible to insert a bigger HDD than the original 10MB HDD? This might give the chance for a bigger variety of items available, as these old HDDs seem to be quite costly (+300€) I don't want to make a mistake.

So, with the universal boot ROMs, the System must be capable of booting with DOS 3.1 my last attempts didn't work, I will clean the heads of the Floppy drive now, maybe it will work then.

Best,

Martin.

 

[BradC]

Two questions regarding HDD and DOS 3.1

Is it possible to insert a bigger HDD than the original 10MB HDD? This might give the chance for a bigger variety of items available, as these old HDDs seem to be quite costly (+300€) I don't want to make a mistake.

So, with the universal boot ROMs, the System must be capable of booting with DOS 3.1 my last attempts didn't work, I will clean the heads of the Floppy drive now, maybe it will work then.

Hi Martin,

Up to MS-DOS 3.3 I believe the biggest hard disk you can format is 32mb. (This is a limitation of the FAT12 and FAT16 file allocation table formats.) I'm pretty sure it is possible to get a 20mb MFM hard disk to work with a Victor. I have a vague recollection that 30mb might be possible as well. (FWIW, 10mb was a lot of storage in those days-- especially when augmented by floppies holding 1.2mb. I was able to keep every program I regularly used on my hard disk system along with the data for day to day usage.)

The trick to setting up any new hard disk with the Victor is knowing the number of heads and cylinders for configuring the disk. It's been long enough now that I don't remember the details of doing it, but there is a program you run where you enter the disk configuration and I believe it does a low level format of the disk. Look for programs called "factoryf" and "super factoryf". (I think the latter might be the one needed to set up larger disks.) You probably will also want to get a copy of the Victor Hard Disk Tool Kit (which, as I remember, has different versions for DOS 1.25 and 2.11.)

Paul has posted images of disks that contain a lot of messages from Victor 9000 online communities. (Search for "PARTI" and/or "Unison" in his uploads.) It'll be a bit of a slog, but there is likely to be information hiding in those somewhere about setting up hard disks (and other Victor maintenance topics).

I *think* the Victor 9000 with the Universal ROMs should be able to boot DOS 3.1. Can your system boot from either a DOS 1.25 or 2.11 floppy? If so, than you might want to make sure you have the Victor 9000 version of DOS 3.1 and not the Vicki (or some other) version. While the 9000 and he Vicki can read and write each other's disks, they need to boot from their own version.