Axe to Grind

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu Jul 17 16:35:17 1997

In message <150A878A7B7E_at_ifrsys.com> classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu writes:
> Guys:
>
> Thanks to everyone who submitted information on my *controller*
> cards. I got pretty much everything I need to know on the -05 cards,
> but the -TB1 is still a problem. WD implied over the phone that this
> was custom made. OK. It is currently mounted in a Radio Shack
> cabinet with a Tandon 15Mb drive. Any Ideas?

Have you tried Tandy/Radio Shack National Parts? At one time they sold service
manuals for all their computer stuff, and such manuals almost always contained
schematics/data on the 'bought-in' parts -- things like PSUs, drives, monitors,
etc.

IIRC if the stock number for the device was 26-abcd, then the service manual
was MS260-abcd. At least in the UK, they were available to the general public.

There may also have been a Technical Manual (which would have had a different
stock number), but I doubt it.

Talking of Tandy stuff, I bought a second-hand Model 4 last weekend. Does
anyone know where to get a Technical Manual for this machine? What I
really need is a list of Supervisor Calls, Docs on the I/O ports, and
a schematics of the CPU board. I believe I have a 'gate array' board - there's
a 40 pin chip with a Tandy custom number next to the Z80A.

I'd be quite happy to buy the entire technical manual if it's still available
anywhere, but I do already have the Model 3 manual, so I don't need any info
on the disk drives/controller, RS232 board, PSU, or monitor.

Anyway, with this machine I got a Cummana hard disk unit. Cummana were a UK
company who later went on to make disk drives for the Acorn BBC micro. This
unit contains a Shugart 612 disk (any ideas?) a Western Digital controller
(I can't remember the number, but it is a standard card), a PSU, and a little
address decoder/interface board.

Maybe you have an original Tandy version of that.



> Jeff

-tony
Received on Thu Jul 17 1997 - 16:35:17 BST