My new toys: Apollo and Osborne 1

From: Wouter de Waal <wrm_at_ccii.co.za>
Date: Fri Oct 29 07:11:16 1999

Hi all

Scored some nice new toys, an Osborne 1, and two Apollo
workstations, a 3000 and a 3500, with one mono monitor.

The 3000 has the following boards:

Clearpoint memory card, 72 x 4256 chips (8M?)
8496 rev 01 (4M memory)
8157 Rev 03 (19" mono video adaptor)
7831 rev 0, 5885 rev 4, 5891 rev 4 (Ring Adaptor board set)
Western digital MFM/floppy controller (I think)

and a MFM 86MB drive, and a floppy (The floppy is loose,
don't know if it's original. NEC FD1155C. 1.8 degrees/step
stepper, so it's 80 track, probably 720K, or 800, whatever.

I also have the monitor that goes with this machine.

The 3500 has the following:

9988 rev 3 memory card (no idea of it's size)
3com ethernet card
9016 (RGB video adaptor)
WD7000 scsi/hdd controller
tape drive
unknown

Unfortunately I don't have the RGB cable or the monitor.

Questions:

* Can I use the mono display adaptor in the 3500? Can I run one
  of these boxen without a display card, or do they check like
  peecees?

* How ISA compatible is the ISA bus? Can I stick a VGA card in
  there and expect it to work (OK, I know I'll have to write
  the code (port the VGA BIOS) but I mean electrically? Or
  an IDE controller?

* Where can I find memory maps, circuit diagrams, whatever?

* How rare are these beasts? I gather they're common? Any
  objections to me ripping out all the cards and the boot
  rom, sticking vmebug in the socket, and an IDE drive in
  the bay, and playing with the thing?

re the Osborne 1 : where do I find a boot disk image, what
format is it, and how can I write one on a peecee? ISTR a
program that writes all these formats, I'll probably have
to go dig up a 360k floppy drive, yes?

Thanks

Wouter

 
Received on Fri Oct 29 1999 - 07:11:16 BST