On Jan 10, 11:10, Andrew Davie wrote:
> First question: there are two drives, and each has a set of jumper pins.
> The pins are labeled..
>
> DS 0
> 1
> 2
> 3
> MX
> MS
> H M
> H C
>
> The top drive, on which the red LED lights when I power the drive, has
> jumpers across DS1 and HC. I am guessing that this drive is the second
> drive, and that the two jumpers that fell out of the casing belong on the
> second drive. That should be, I'm guessing, DS0 and mmmh... HM? Can
> anybody enlighten me on this?
Probably DS0 (Drive Select 0) and all other links the same as the other
drive (so HC, rather than HM -- that determines the behaviour of head
loading w.r.t. drive select/motor on/some other condition)
> Second question: Powering the Sorcerer (I thought I didn't have a
monitor,
> but the VIDEO IN on my VCR works nicely - it shows up well on my TV)
exibits
> some strange behaviour. What's trying to come up on screen is "EXIDY
> STANDARD MONITOR" and a few lines after that. But it simply stops after
the
> second or third character. Repeated efforts see it stop in different
> places - sometimes you see the whole lot, and it's actually usable for a
few
[...]
> I found a homebrew cartridge for this machine, and when its plugged in,
the
> wordprocessor it contains appears to work fine - everytime - with no
> apparent problems.
> So, the question is, what's wrong with the monitor?
Did you have a BASIC cartidge plugged in? If that were so, and it were
faulty, it might well interfere with what happens after a cold start.
If not, it could be a faulty monitor PROM. I can't remeber at what point
the monitor checks for a cartridge and hands over control, but it could be
that one of the monitor PROMs is faulty. That might only be visible when
no other cartridge ius fitted, and the CLI part of the monitor is executed.
> Third question: Assuming I actually get the machine powering up
correctly,
> and that the drive I have isn't missing some vital component - it will be
> time to insert a disk. Can anybody tell me how to actually use a drive
with
> the Sorcerer system? I'm afraid it's going to be some arcane "GO C800"
or
> something like that, from the monitor. I think I might need someone with
> documentation!
That's how they usually work, but there are lots of different Sorcerer disk
formats/systems. We'd need to know more about the specific disk system you
have. Usually the bootstrap is quite small, and in the area you mention;
you could probably find the start of the bootstrap code just by DUmping
memory and looking for it.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Received on Sun Jan 10 1999 - 07:24:24 GMT