Apricot F1 - help, please!

From: Kai Kaltenbach <kaikal_at_MICROSOFT.com>
Date: Thu Feb 12 18:28:51 1998

Amazingly enough, there is a ton (relatively) of F1 stuff on Apricot's UK
web site file library...

Kai

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Duell [SMTP:ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, February 12, 1998 10:27 AM
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
> Subject: Re: Apricot F1 - help, please!
>
> >
> > Having just obtained a 1984 Apricot F1 computer (and a lovely looking
> > machine they are!) I find I can only get to the ROM boot stage.
> Onscreen, I
> > have Aprictot F1, a floppy icon, a chip icon, a hand pointing down, an
> arrow
>
> I have an Apricot F1 Technical Manual here, mainly because it's the only
> thing that I've found that's at all relevant to the Apricot PC which I
> have.
>
> > pointing up, and thats about it. The arrow and hand are flashing.
> > When I place disks in the drive, it spins for a bit and places an X and
> a
> > number on the screen. Numbers I've seen are 4, 8 and 99. So... any
> proud
>
> OK, here's the error table from Appendix A of the manual :
>
> Boot ROM Error codes :
> 20 ROM checksum test
> 22 SIO register test
> 25 RAM test
> 28 Floppy Controller test
> 29 CTC clock chip test
> 33 Clock interrupt test
> 35 Drive 0 test (can it step correctly?)
>
> Disk Error codes :
> 2 Drive not ready, or disk removed during boot
> 4 CRC error, corrupt sector
> 6 Seek Error, unformatted or corrupt disk
> 7 Bad media, corrupt media block
> 8 Sector not found, unformatted or corrupt disk, bad load address in label
> 11 bad read, corrupt data field on disk
> 12 disk failure, disk hardware or media fault
> 99 Non-system disk. Not a valid boot disk
>
> I assume you are using an Apricot boot disk. This machine, while based on
> the 8086 and running MS-DOS, is certainly not a PC-clone. According to
> the manual, this machine uses double-sided 80 track 720K disks (my,
> older, machine uses single-sided disks).
>
> I don't know if boot disks for other Apricot machines will work. The
> hardware is somewhat different (the F1 doesn't have the 8089 'I/O
> coprocessor' (a fancy DMA chip) that's fitted on the PC).
>
> If you are using an Apricot boot disk, I'd firstly try a different one,
> and then suspect disk drive or disk controller problems. The Apricot uses
> a Western Digital 2797 disk controller. There's a few tweakers associated
> with this chip as well.
>
> > Any help appreciated.
> > Cheers
> > Andrew
> >
> >
>
> -tony
Received on Thu Feb 12 1998 - 18:28:51 GMT