Swapmeet finds

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_netcom.com>
Date: Sun Sep 27 18:43:31 1998

On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, Don Maslin wrote:

> On Sat, 26 Sep 1998, John Lawson wrote:
>
> **** snip ****
>
> > 2) A Jonos Escort portable, running CP/M 3.0.
> >
> > This cute little box came from NASA, and has a Syquest drive
> > alognside the 1/2 height HD.. the Syquest is unfortunately dead,
> > and/or the cartridge is blank. The HD, however is *full* of Stuff,
> > including WordStar, which is how I found out what who made this box,

  (edit)
>
> John, the only one that I have been exposed to had two 3.5" SSDD drives -
> Sony, IIRC, the old ones that did not open the slide on the disk - and no
> hard disk. It was based on the STD bus, so hardware mods should have
> been easy. Yours may have a later floppy, I'd guess. Rather nice little
> package.
>
> I would be interested to hear what HD controller they used.
>
> - don


  I've not had the time yet to take the case apart. This particular
Escort has only a 1/2 ht HD and matching Syquest removable cartridge
drive. There is a banner screen on boot-up that lists drives A: - G:,
it calls out A: as a 'Syquest 5 Mb' and also B: the same. C: - F:
are called out as 'Sony' and G: says '8 subsystem'. There are no
floppies physically with the system, and BIOS issues the expected
complaints upon trying to access these letters.

  What concerns me is the Syquest cart drive, and what data may be
lurking thereon. BIOS says bad things about 'Data table not found'
and also 'controller error'. The cart drive does spin up and a
pattern of access can be heard (the same each time), but no joy as
far as CP/M is concerned. I don't intend to format the cartridge
until I can come up with some blank/recyclable ones that I can back
up the HD to.

  A question for anyone who might know is: are the current Syquest
carts still compatible with this unit? (c. 1983) If not.. has
anyone some old ones they'd like to sell/trade?

  Also: One key is broken on the keyboard; the upper right corner
one. What is it's function?

  Cheers

John
Received on Sun Sep 27 1998 - 18:43:31 BST