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Victor 9k / Sirius 1 Software

Does anyone know much about the disk part of the bios that gets loaded? Can it be switched out with a different one?
I’m assuming that’s the difference between Vicki and Victor bootable disks. I don’t think I’ve seen a bootable CP/M 86 disk for the Vicki, although I’ve not caught up with all of Paul’s uploads yet
 
westveld said:
Does anyone know much about the disk part of the bios that gets loaded? Can it be switched out with a different one?
I’m assuming that’s the difference between Vicki and Victor bootable disks. I don’t think I’ve seen a bootable CP/M 86 disk for the Vicki, although I’ve not caught up with all of Paul’s uploads yet
Click to expand...
Hi Matt,

We have the BIOS source code for DOS 1.25 and 2.11 for the Victor 9000. The disks are in Paul's uploads. (I think there were copies in the disks you got from me as well.)

Yes, there are differences in the hardware for the 9000 and the Vicki, which is why they need different BIOS code. By the time the Vicki was released, CP/M was really fading and I don't think they ever released a version of CP/M for it. The source code for many versions of CP/M is available here if someone wants to get ambitious. :)
 
Hi,
many thanks once more for the input!
I have bought now a working NEC D5126 MFM HDD with 20 MB Space. As soon as the HDD arrives I will reassemble the Victor, being very curious if the HDD will work then, fingers crossed that the HDD controller has no shot.. :) The HDD is shipped from Italy, so it may take a few days.

BTW: Any comments on the Floppy disk drive unit? Until now it just accepted DSHD Disks, each DSDD was rejected with Error 04/05.

Best,

Martin.
 
Hi,
I am expecting the new HDD to come tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
Currently the HDD is formatted with DR DOS 6.0, please find seller pictures attached.
Shall I do anything with the HDD before I install it in the Victor?
Thanks and best regards,
Martin.
 

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1302L said:
Hi,
I am expecting the new HDD to come tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.
Currently the HDD is formatted with DR DOS 6.0, please find seller pictures attached.
Shall I do anything with the HDD before I install it in the Victor?
Thanks and best regards,
Martin.
Click to expand...
Hi Martin,
As long as you have the information on the parameters you need to enter into Factoryf, I don't think you need to do anything to the drive before you put it into the Victor. Glancing through the photos it looks like you have what you need, but I suggest you double-check the factoryf configuration screens and make sure you know all the values to enter before you erase the new HD. Just in case you need to boot the existing install to try and get the information off the drive.

Going back to your earlier question about the disks, DSDD disks should work in the machine. I'm wondering if you have a bad batch of disks. If you look at this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floppy_disk_formats the Victor was designed for what's shown in the diagram as 5 1⁄4 inch quad density disks. They're 80 track disks instead of 40 track disks. If you look at the Coercivity column, the big difference is the magnetic force that needs to be applied to the disk to flip the bits. The HD disks are expecting a stronger magnetic force than the victor will produce. In practice I've used HD disks with a fair bit of success, as you're seeing. On paper they're not going to store the data well in the long run, meaning the bits might fade over time. In addition if you ever write the HD disk on a machine designed for them, the Victor likely won't be able to overwrite the information as its signal will be too weak to change the bits set by the stronger drive. But for short term use to write a disk with the fluxengine and get data on and off your Victor, if the HD disks are working then you'll likely not have any troubles so long as you know they're not going to store well potentially.
 
Hi Paul,

thanks for your reply.
Yes, I have the necessary parameters to feed FactoryF:
stason.org

Hard Drive: NEC: D5126 20MB 5.25"/HH MFM ST506

Manufacturer: NEC model: D5126 capacity: 20MB, physical size: 5.25in/HH , interface: MFM ST506 , hard driver specs and jumper settings, layout and features
stason.org stason.org

Best thanks also for the information about the disks. 300 Oersted is not very much :)

Initially I thought it was a bad batch of disks as well, first I bought some DSDD Disks, didn't work at all, then I purchased a pack of new Sony DSHD disks, those are working very well with the GW V4 and can be read by the Victor, afterwards I tried another pack of DSDD and DSHD disks, they did not work either.
So my suspicion goes to the drive. In the course of the disassembly I cleaned the heads of floppy drive carefully with an alcohol - swab and lubricated it, so I am curious if the drive might 'digest' the other disks now as well.

Another thing I will try is to setup a connection between my PC and the Victor via Kermit, but one after the other.

Cheers,

Martin.
 
1302L said:
Hi Paul,

thanks for your reply.
Yes, I have the necessary parameters to feed FactoryF:
stason.org

Hard Drive: NEC: D5126 20MB 5.25"/HH MFM ST506

Manufacturer: NEC model: D5126 capacity: 20MB, physical size: 5.25in/HH , interface: MFM ST506 , hard driver specs and jumper settings, layout and features
stason.org stason.org

Best thanks also for the information about the disks. 300 Oersted is not very much :)

Initially I thought it was a bad batch of disks as well, first I bought some DSDD Disks, didn't work at all, then I purchased a pack of new Sony DSHD disks, those are working very well with the GW V4 and can be read by the Victor, afterwards I tried another pack of DSDD and DSHD disks, they did not work either.
So my suspicion goes to the drive. In the course of the disassembly I cleaned the heads of floppy drive carefully with an alcohol - swab and lubricated it, so I am curious if the drive might 'digest' the other disks now as well.

Another thing I will try is to setup a connection between my PC and the Victor via Kermit, but one after the other.

Cheers,

Martin.
Click to expand...
Kermit can be a useful tool. It allowed me to bootstrap a bunch of stuff over to my Victor before we had the greasewezle or Applesauce to help write disks. Kermit works well but is very slow, like 20 minutes for a few files. The disk writing is much faster. Cleaning the drives definitely helps!

Good luck with it and let us know how it goes.
 
Hello all,
as the HDD arrived yesterday, I assembled the Victor today. Unfortunately the worst case occurred, the Victor doesn’t work:
With the power switched on, the ventilator and the HDD are becoming audible, no CRT output, no Floppy Disk reaction, no reaction when a disk is inserted.The front floppy LED does not come on and the motor doesn’t move.
I quadruple checked my disassembly photos if I have made a mistake with the cabling, so far I count’t find a fault and it seems that everything is put together as it was before.
- Did I damage the boards by accident? - Although being very careful with the components.
- Would it make sense to put the old HDD in again?
Any help would be highly appreciated, thanks in advance!
Best regards,
Martin.
 
1302L said:
Hello all,
as the HDD arrived yesterday, I assembled the Victor today. Unfortunately the worst case occurred, the Victor doesn’t work:
With the power switched on, the ventilator and the HDD are becoming audible, no CRT output, no Floppy Disk reaction, no reaction when a disk is inserted.The front floppy LED does not come on and the motor doesn’t move.
I quadruple checked my disassembly photos if I have made a mistake with the cabling, so far I count’t find a fault and it seems that everything is put together as it was before.
- Did I damage the boards by accident? - Although being very careful with the components.
- Would it make sense to put the old HDD in again?
Any help would be highly appreciated, thanks in advance!
Best regards,
Martin.
Click to expand...
At least disconnect the cables from the "new" hard drive and see if it will power on.
The drive may have be shorting the bus somehow or drawing too much power.
 
Also check the floppy cable, I believe there are 2 headers on the mainboard it would fit - it needs to go to the one in the center, not near the slots.
Doesn't seem to fry anything if you get it wrong, though :)
 
Hi,
I did what westveld advised and pulled the cables from the HDD.

As I did this, I was getting a CRT output on startup, please see picture attached.
But the floppy isn’t working, it buzzes one time, then it keeps quiet, also when you insert a disk, I made a short video of the sequence:

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So this tells at least that the processor and the boot roms are doing something, but what to do now. (?)
Thanks for any input!
Best regards,
Martin.
 

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That image of the floppy drive with the 1 next it is the normal boot up indicator. It means it's attempting to boot from the floppy drive. If it were trying to boot from the hard drive you'd see a cylinder in place of the floppy icon. Generally if something goes wrong with the boot after you see the floppy icon then you get an X with a number next to it and that number is the error code. This may display briefly and then disappear depending on what the error condition is.

I agree with Westveld that the hard drive sounds like there's something not working with it. You were able to boot this machine from the floppy once, correct?
 
Hello and thanks again.

Yes, I saw the cylinder icon as well before disassembly. So the machine is trying to access the floppy disk and then halts, as the drive is not responding well. No Error code is displayed, just the clock, the system seems to wait if something happens.
Did you have the chance to watch the short video? This is with unplugged HDD and the Floppy drive buzzing once and then nothing happens anymore.And yes, I was able to boot the machine on floppy before I disassembled it.

Would it make sense to get the floppy drive out once more and check the cabling? The floppy controller is connected correctly with the main board.
If anyone has the pinout of the different power source plugs (2xHDD, Main Board, Floppy board) I could check if there is sufficient power, or otherwise power the unit with an external PC Power source I am using for the GW Floppy drive.

Thanks for any input in advance!

Best regards,

Martin.
 
Last edited:
By looking over and over again on my pics I took before disassembly and the wiring diagrams, I think I found a mistake:
On Connector J13 on the floppy controller board, the first pin must be omitted, I connected the first Plug also to the first pin and subsequently the other plugs and pins weren’t connected correctly as well.
Mea culpa… I hope I didn't damage anything!
This I think, solves the FD issue, I will see it tonight. I am not very sure if this solves the HDD problem as well.
Keep you updated… :)
 

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Last edited:
1302L said:
By looking over and over again on my pics I took before disassembly and the wiring diagrams, I think I found a mistake:
On Connector J13 on the floppy controller board, the first pin must be omitted, I connected the first Plug also to the first pin and subsequently the other plugs and pins weren’t connected correctly as well.
Mea culpa… I hope I didn't damage anything!
This I think, solves the FD issue, I will see it tonight. I am not very sure if this solves the HDD problem as well.
Keep you updated… :)
Click to expand...
Good catch!
Also on the other end by the power connector there is a skipped pin (at least on mine)
On mine, I've bent those unused pins down a bit, so it reminds me to get it right :)
drive-conn.jpg
 
Good news!
The Victor is running again! :)

At least the floppy drive… But this is super smooth and quiet now after lubrication and cleanup.

HDD is not running, getting error message that I should check the hardware and the cabling.
Unfortunately my pictures aren’t so clear on this, is anybody able to provide me with a picture of the ribbon cabling between the xebec controller and the HDD itself? The two ribbon cables, do I need to twist them anyhow?

I disassembled the machine once more to get access to the HDD ribbon cables and solve defective contacts of the CRT and the Keyboard sockets, sometime they fail.

Cheers,

Martin.
 
Martin,
Glad to hear you got the floppy drive working again. I have a few pictures of my hard disk setup. I'll enclose them here. These are from a while ago. I can take new pictures if these aren't what you need. The important part is to line up pin 1 on both sides of the connection. On the photo of the xebec card the red arrows point to pin 1 on the various connectors. Make sure on the hard drive and the DMA card that connects to the motherboard you also orient Pin 1 to the correct spot. Generally the cable has a colored stripe on the pin 1 side. On the rainbow cables pin 1 is the brown wire. In terms of the electrical power for the hard drive, this manual explains what the molex power connections should be outputting. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/victor/victor9000/Victor_9000_Sirius_1_Hard_Disk_Subsystem.pdf

Let me know if you have more questions.

IMG_7521.jpegIMG_3606.jpegIMG_3605.jpegIMG_3604.jpegIMG_3601.jpeg
 
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