On Thu, 17 Jun 1999, Marvin wrote:
>
> As I recall, Bob Marsh at VCF 1.0 indicated that the SOL-20 had only been
> advertised and not produced. I am confused now. Last night, I pulled out the
> SOL to fire it up and see if it worked or not. In looking at the nameplate,
> it says "SOL Terminal Computer Model No. 10".
Seems like that should be the other 'way round. The SOL-20 was the
production machine, and the lesser equipped SOL-10 may not have been
produced. Altho...
> As an aside, the screen is filled with "90909090...". In skimming the manual
> last night, I didn't see any reference to this as it sounds like there
> should be a short Company notice appear on the screen.
Thet is what you will see if the CPU starts executing RST7 commands and
stack fills the video memory... Usually caused by a bad/missing
'Personality Module', failure in the power-up jump logic, a mis-addressed
memory board on the S-100 buss (overlaying the PM), or something jamming
the memory bus.
The 'normal' start up prompt for SOLUS (the resident monitor) is a clear
screen with a ">" in the upper left corner.
> I might add that the
> personality module has an eprom for the N* Disk controller and another one I
> haven't identified yet along with a switch on the back (to switch between
> the two?) Any help would be much appreciated!
A not uncommon mod... the usual (more or less) command to invoke the
loader (at least on the ones we did) was "BO" ("BOOT" if you prefer, tho
the monitor only parses the first two characters).
The other EPROM may be the standard SOLUS (or almost anything else) B^}
-jim
---
jimw_at_computergarage.org
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Received on Thu Jun 17 1999 - 11:10:53 BST