On 20 Mar 99 at 21:56, Doug Spence wrote:
>
> Talking to myself again...
>
>
> On Sun, 14 Mar 1999, Doug Spence wrote:
>
> > I'm hoping that they'll let me take it home in pieces. I might go in to
> > buy it, and grab the motherboard and leave the rest of the hulk for later.
> > Later in the week I'll go back for the drives, etc. It can all be
> > disassembled with a single screwdriver, so I hope they let me do something
> > like that.
>
> Actually, because of the grounding wires which are connected with
> straight-blade screws, I'd need two screwdrivers to disassemble the
> machine. :)
>
> I went back on Tuesday to have a look, and I decided not to buy the
> machine. After some pleading I was finally allowed to have a look under
> the hood, and the machine has empty sockets in exactly the same places as
> the one I brought home, so either those sockets are supposed to be empty,
> or these AES machines had a common failure mode and parts were donated to
> keep something else alive.
>
> When powered up, the machine at the Salvation Army store exhibited the
> same behaviour as mine, too. Nothing on the screen, but the floppy drives
> would spin for about 40 seconds and stop.
>
> I wasn't able to check to see if the drive heads tried seeking. Mine
> don't.
>
> The only difference between the SA machine and the one I brough home is
> that the SA machine's keyboard connector isn't cracked, the SA machine is
> even dustier and grimier than mine, and the SA machine has only 128K
> instead of 192K on the motherboard.
>
> I think the video hardware must be kaput, _or_ it's not supposed to put
> anything on the screen until it boots up. In which case, maybe the disk
> drive is hosed because it doesn't seek. I have a drive in a Kaypro that's
> like that.
>
> I managed to swap the main video chip into the AES from an old display
> card for the IBM-PC (an HD46505SP form a Monograph Visionary card from
> Interface Technologies Inc.). No difference, except that this one seemed
> to run a little cooler.
>
> At least all of the parts in the AES 7100 seem to be common. No custom
> hardware to worry about.
>
> I just found out from my brother that one of his high school teachers used
> to work at AES Data Inc. as a programmer! So maybe I can locate him and
> find out more. If I'm lucky, he'll still have some disks, or know where I
> can find some.
>
> --
> Doug Spence
> ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca
> http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
>
Hi Doug. Do you know if AES stands for Automatic Electronic Systems ?
Received on Sat Mar 20 1999 - 22:33:32 GMT