>Do they have a parts list somewhere on the Web?
I never found one. I had to call Tandy's RSU and deal with some REALLY
dumb and uncaring people. They do not have all the parts and the mother
board I bought was a used board (I worked though).
>>I bought a new mother board (only to later find out that my old one
>>just lacked memory) and a technical reference manual (what a waste
>>of money).
>
>That bad, huh? :)
If I cared about all the ROM's memory locations and the hard drive blah
blah buffer address, the hardware reference would be GREAT!!! But, since I
only want HARDWARE things like the pin-outs for the COM1 modem connector,
this 'HARDWARE' reference manual is useless.
>>What are you trying to find out?
>
>For the 1520, for starters, I'd like to know how to get the darn thing
>to work without a hard drive connected. And I'd like to know which hard
>drives I can use with the thing, and how to get it to recognize the
>drive.
Okay, here's what I have learned:
1) EVERYTHING is auto-detected by the bios at startup. Hence, if you have
an A: floppy, it'll find it.
2) You can have:
(1 100Mb hard-disc (Conner CP3104) and 1or2 EXTERNAL floppies)
-or-
(1 20or40Mb hard-disc and 1 internal 3.5" floppy and an external floppy)
-or-
(2 internal 3.5" floppies)
***WARNING*** If you use the CP3104 (100Mb), you cannot use a battery.
The Grid books said that the start-up currrent is too much for battery use.
(I have tried to use the battery and I can tell you it doesn't work with
the 100Mb.)
3) Other HDs... OH MY GOD!! WHAT A PAIN! The interface board's spacing
(IDE connector & power connector) is made to the spacing of the OEM drive.
I have forced other drives on and off without damage though. When I used a
SEAGATE drive, the computer wouldn't come up so, I swapped a CONNER drive
in and it came up but gave me a
BOOT DISK ERROR.
HARD DISK GUYS, explain this:
I put the GRiD's CONNER CP3104 (100MB drive) in K6 Desktop and I could not
get DOS to load onto it. I put it in a 486 machine (IDE not EIDE) and DOS
loaded fine.
I put a 402Mb Conner drive into thr GRiD and forced the geometry using a
setup program and I kept getting a BOOT DISK ERROR. WHY?????
>I'd also like to know what was available for the ROM sockets
>located under the trapdoor above the keyboard.
It's on the back side of the video card with a printed message that
basically says "if you're a user, don't plug anything in here". I assume
that it is a Video Card ROM.
>Oh yeah, and while we're at it, what about the "external peripheral"
>connector on the back.
I've got the pin-outs... I need to type those damned things in... That's
the external drive (A&B) connector.
>And the specs for the CMOS battery.
This battery is available from Tandy for $15.00. I bought one and I
haven't bothered to install it yet. It's a axial leaded, 1/2AA, Lithium
battery, 3.6V (Tandy Part#:10586378). This battery mounts on the top of the
right-most edge of the PCB under the keyboard.
>And whether
>I can still get battery packs for the machine, and how to recharge them.
Yes, sorta. You can still get the batteries (10.8V (I know), 1800mAH(?)).
Now, your GRiD has a weird slot with four contacts at the end but, the
batteries are just C cells heat shrunk together with three wire leads. You
have to make a casing with contact pads to put the batteries in. I cannot
find anywhere that sells the batteries in the weird GRiD casing. ****AGAIN
if you use the CP3104, you cannot use the battery.
Other issues:
1) The memory is SIPP and you can only use 256 or 1M chips. The slots are
ALTERNATING!!! So, if you use only 4 SIPPs, you skip the 1st, 3rd, 5th &
7th slots.
2) The memory is smaller than normal. I had to get the small 256K (the 1Ms
were too tall) SIMMs, add pins then trim the edges down.
3) The power: 10-20V DC (I use a Dell 18V adapter plugged into the power
connector on the back). (center pin is +)
4) COM1 is for the internal modem and is not useable for anything else
(unless you can figure out the mother-board pin-outs).
5) The 100Mb drive uses a different interface board (internally) than the
20/40Mb/floppy drive laptop.
6) Note: there is a set of 16bit ISA slots (using a weird connector of
course) behind the internal battery contacts (I have the pin-outs if you
want but, I have no clue about where to get a mating connector).
7) To use external floppies, you need to do a bit of splicing magic with
the I/O connector and a floppy drive connector.
8) On the I/O connector there are two power pins that were intended to
supply power to the drive. It was later decided that this was a bad idea
so, the GRiD external floppies have a little circuit that makes the +12V
and +5V for the drive.
Ive got M$DOS on my GRiD and I have found it to be a useful little laptop.
>Regarding the Compass, I'd like to know what the machine expects to talk
>to via the GPIB connector, and how it does so (what commands it uses).
>Also whether GRiD-OS, GRiDVT100, and GRiDWrite are in ROM, or on the
>Bubble device (seems to be the latter for GRiDVT100 and GRiDWrite, but
>I'm not sure about the OS). And I'd like to know what the pinouts for
>the weird serial connector on the back.
No clue about the compass.
Arfon
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Received on Mon Jun 07 1999 - 15:40:01 BST