Intel MDS (Microcomputer Development System)

From: A.R. Duell <ard12_at_eng.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Sun Mar 23 16:22:02 1997

> Yep. I've gone through many of these at work (in the 70s) and they
> always fail the same board. It has lots of analog circuitry on it and I
> suspect it is that part of it.

I wonder if it's something as simple as the read PLL failing to lock. That
should be easy to fix.

I have a spare of one of the boards (a mad friend gave it to me along with
some UPP personality boards), but I have no idea if it works, and anyway,
I think it's the digital board with the 3000 stuff on it.

BTW, I am working from memory here, and I've not looked at the schematics
for a couple of months, so don't be suprised if I start talking
nonsense...

> The fault is very non-specific. When trying to boot it just returns a
> disk read failure. At that point the rom monitor is the only thing in
> charge and it is small. I thing it just says "error". I may try it

Sure. I wondered if you'd tried doing any fault-tracing yet.

> again so I can be more specific. When we used them at work they were on
> a service contract, so I never had to mess with them. Just isolate
> which board was bad.

Fortunately, I've never had to battle with service contracts.
Board-swapping never seemed satisfactory to me - until you've found the
fault you can never be sure that you've swapped the right board. And if
you've found the fault you might as well solder in a new component.

> Dave Mabry dmabry_at_mich.com

--
-tony
ard12_at_eng.cam.ac.uk
The gates in my computer are AND,OR and NOT, not Bill
Received on Sun Mar 23 1997 - 16:22:02 GMT

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