• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Victor 9k / Sirius 1 Software

Hi 1302L (Martin) and all others in this thread. I am like many always late to the party.

Around what must be 12 years ago I got given a Sirus 1; and went though the recreating a boot floppy pain !

Now at 72, fine details have gone, but I had a vague recog a few of the early ones of this machine use Hard Sectored disks not Soft sector.

Anyways, a little over 2 years ago I got headhunted to come back to work and that along with trying to finish a house reno and tidying up and down sizing my massive collection, has left me almost no spare time to enjoy my Vintage computer and test equipment collection.

In the last 4 months I was rearranging my workshop and storage area and moved a lot of bits including 3 extra Compete Sirus 1 computers that I have purchased along with 1 full set of documentation and bunch floppy's about 5 years ago.
They have not been powered up and I am 95% certain I am going to put them up for sale in the new year (less the docs and disks, that will stay with my original machine)

Anyways I don't feel I can assist at time as I am so time poor. But ask anyways.

regards
David
Melbourne
Australia
 
here are a few pics from my Sirus

ZhvdFCO.jpg


r3VHQho.jpg


xXAPL2i.jpg


wxUm1SI.jpg


USXa50M.jpg
 
Nice @inotarobot, welcome to the conversation. Excited to see photos of your collection.

As an aside, I'm trying to create an archive of all the Victor software. What I've collected so far can be seen here: https://archive.org/details/@pauldevine I see you have some French versions of CP/M and Basic. I'd love to add those to the collection if you were game to get me a copy. Happy to pay for the disks, postage, and shipping.

Glad to see another Victor still getting used.
 
Hi Paul,
that's great, thanks, I just wrote a pm to David and asked if it is possible to purchase on of his emulators. Would be really great and big fun to have a reliable HDD in The Victor!

Adrian's video gave me a good overview of this great device, I just hope, I won't get a Tarantula with my shipment! :)
Best,

Martin.
 
Hi everyone,
In the meantime I was able to buy an Emulator from @djg.
I have to buy the Beagle Bone Board separately over here which was no problem.
So now I am waiting for the shipment in order to get the magic happen, I just hoper my XEBEC and DMA Card are Ok.
Best,
Martin.
 
inotarobot said:
Hi 1302L (Martin) and all others in this thread. I am like many always late to the party.

Around what must be 12 years ago I got given a Sirus 1; and went though the recreating a boot floppy pain !

Now at 72, fine details have gone, but I had a vague recog a few of the early ones of this machine use Hard Sectored disks not Soft sector.

Anyways, a little over 2 years ago I got headhunted to come back to work and that along with trying to finish a house reno and tidying up and down sizing my massive collection, has left me almost no spare time to enjoy my Vintage computer and test equipment collection.

In the last 4 months I was rearranging my workshop and storage area and moved a lot of bits including 3 extra Compete Sirus 1 computers that I have purchased along with 1 full set of documentation and bunch floppy's about 5 years ago.
They have not been powered up and I am 95% certain I am going to put them up for sale in the new year (less the docs and disks, that will stay with my original machine)

Anyways I don't feel I can assist at time as I am so time poor. But ask anyways.

regards
David
Melbourne
Australia
Click to expand...
Hi David,

a warm welcome to the conversation also from my side!

I am absolutely fascinated how responsive and experienced the members of this forum are! I would have never got so far without them!

Also great to see your Sirius collection! :)

Cheers from Germany!

Martin.
 
Yes that prior pic was taken 2 years ago in my workshop - Bungalow room that's 2.3m wide and 6m long . That pic shows part of my collection thats located across the one 2.3m wide end

add the pic below is of part of my collection on the one long wall

MthXTSj.jpg
 
Hi David,
thanks for the pictures, this is a quite impressive collection!
Softwarewise it would be great if you could find a way to (digitally) forward your disks to Paul, I benefitted so much of his archive And I trust other people as well.

@all:
Paul’s Archive BTW:
Is there any recommendation of the best spreadsheet and word processing software for the Victor/S1?
I am quite curious what your favourites amongst Paul’s collection are.

Cheers,

Martin.
 
David,
You have a very nice collection! That's super impressive.

Martin,
My favorite is definitely Word Perfect. I have some more version of that I need to upload still. I think there's a version up there already but I might be remembering wrong. The other classic is of course WordStar.

Paul
 
1302L said:
Hi David,
thanks for the pictures, this is a quite impressive collection!
Softwarewise it would be great if you could find a way to (digitally) forward your disks to Paul, I benefitted so much of his archive And I trust other people as well.

@all:
Paul’s Archive BTW:
Is there any recommendation of the best spreadsheet and word processing software for the Victor/S1?
I am quite curious what your favourites amongst Paul’s collection are.

Cheers,

Martin.
Click to expand...

For Word Processing the real standout is WordPerfect. Very powerful, very flexible.
 
Hi,
thanks, I just fetched the WordPerfect Image and it‘s awesome! :)
Any thoughts on the spreadsheet side?

As the MFM Emulator is arriving soon:
Will it be possible to have a section on the ‚hard disk‘ where I can put Paul`s Disk Images, and if yes, how am I getting the images on the Emu HDD?
Although my Floppy Drive is now much quieter and smoother after cleaning and lubricating it, it is quite unreliable in regards to reading and especially writing data, so I‘m in search for a workaround to get the disk image data directly on the Emu HDD.

Cheers,

Martin.
 
Hi Martin, The disk image ends up as a file on an SD card. Theoretically you could write data into the file on the SD card, but you'd have to follow the format the Victor expects for the data. @FozzTexx wrote a program to update Floppy images from a modern machine https://gitlab.com/FozzTexx/vtools / https://www.insentricity.com/a.cl/2...ble-speed-disks-with-a-fixed-speed-12mb-drive. I think you could adapt that to work with the hard drive images. So far I've just been putting things on floppies and copying them over using the Victor.
 
1302L said:
Will it be possible to have a section on the ‚hard disk‘ where I can put Paul`s Disk Images, and if yes, how am I getting the images on the Emu HDD?
Click to expand...
I think you are referring to disk images of floppies but with 8 pages of discussion I may have missed something. What could you do with actual floppy images on the hard drive? Or is the question of extracting the files from the floppy images and putting them on the hard drive image?

The emulator file is the raw MFM data stream so is not a good format for trying to do anything with other than emulate a disk drive. I have a tool mfm_util which can convert the emulator image to a raw sector image of the disk which I call extracted data file. I have another tool ext2emu that will convert the extracted data file back to an emulator image. I have a Sirius Victor 9000 image here. That format isn't currently supported by ext2emu but a closely related format is so won't be too hard for me to add support for if you need it. http://www.pdp8online.com/mfm/

My tools don't support doing anything at the file system level. Since I had the image around and it looked like DOS I tried my normal tools for working with DOS disk images and they weren't able to process it. Somebody else will need to figure out what need to change with either the tool pdevine linked to or normal DOS filesystem tools. The images are here http://www.pdp8online.com/mfm/images/Victor_9000_Disk_Images.zip.
 
pdevine said:
Hi Martin, The disk image ends up as a file on an SD card. Theoretically you could write data into the file on the SD card, but you'd have to follow the format the Victor expects for the data. @FozzTexx wrote a program to update Floppy images from a modern machine https://gitlab.com/FozzTexx/vtools / https://www.insentricity.com/a.cl/2...ble-speed-disks-with-a-fixed-speed-12mb-drive. I think you could adapt that to work with the hard drive images. So far I've just been putting things on floppies and copying them over using the Victor.
Click to expand...
Hi Paul,
thanks for the link, I will look into this, sounds quite interesting. I am sure, that there is a way to get the files without floppy drive to the Emu HDD.
BTW what about using Kermit for the transfer, this may take a while... :)
Best,
Martin.
 
Hi djg,
the Emu Board is arriving today, impressive delivery time! :)
Yes, I am referring to the disk images of the floppies, and yes, the discussion is getting huge, the information provided here is overwhelming good!

As Paul's Zip - Files are also containing the files in Victor format as 'de-facto' file my idea was to bring these to the emulated HDD.

Using ext2emu will be a great help if I am getting stuck with opportunities Paul mentioned.

May it's possible to send the files from a recent machine to the Victor via Kermit. And the workaround by creating a floppy disk image and copying the data from the Victor Floppy to the Emu HDD is working as well, maybe I'll have to try it several times.

Will also try your disk images to get started.

Now I'll wait for the Beagle Bone Board to arrive and start doing the necessary preliminary work to get the new hardware in the Victor.

Best thanks,

Martin.
djg said:
I think you are referring to disk images of floppies but with 8 pages of discussion I may have missed something. What could you do with actual floppy images on the hard drive? Or is the question of extracting the files from the floppy images and putting them on the hard drive image?

The emulator file is the raw MFM data stream so is not a good format for trying to do anything with other than emulate a disk drive. I have a tool mfm_util which can convert the emulator image to a raw sector image of the disk which I call extracted data file. I have another tool ext2emu that will convert the extracted data file back to an emulator image. I have a Sirius Victor 9000 image here. That format isn't currently supported by ext2emu but a closely related format is so won't be too hard for me to add support for if you need it. http://www.pdp8online.com/mfm/

My tools don't support doing anything at the file system level. Since I had the image around and it looked like DOS I tried my normal tools for working with DOS disk images and they weren't able to process it. Somebody else will need to figure out what need to change with either the tool pdevine linked to or normal DOS filesystem tools. The images are here http://www.pdp8online.com/mfm/images/Victor_9000_Disk_Images.zip.
Click to expand...
 
Gary C said:
Had ours running Spacewar today

Its sat next to an IBM PC and a PC/XT and it just blows them away ;)

Love it :)
Click to expand...
Hi Gary,
that's great to hear! One of my favorites too! :)
Did you try Talking Startrek?
Best,
Martin.
 
HDD Emulation Board arrived, BBB should arrive in the next days, many thanks to djg for the fast shipping and answering all my questions, I am afraid, there are more to come. 😊
 

Attachments

  • IMG_3131.jpeg
    IMG_3131.jpeg
    1.3 MB · Views: 7
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top