Apricot & G4IDE

From: Adrian Graham <agraham_at_ccat.co.uk>
Date: Thu Dec 7 05:08:12 2000

> Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2000 19:56:14 -0000
> From: "Adrian Graham" <witchy_at_i12.com>
> Subject: Weekend's finds
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> I don't know if this'll work since I'm posting from home, but
> I just thought

Woo - it worked :)

> My guess is that the DC output is the standard pinout (say for an
> external drive), and is +5V and +12V. But I would think the

It sure is.

> ports. I
> would guess (again) that the DC input is +12V, +5V, -12V and
> maybe -12V.

Pity the guy I got it from is purely a box shifter, ie he parks up at a boot
sale and shifts loads of boxes of rubbish from his van! You then have to
sift.....
Odd that I can find no mention of this machine on the web at all (via
google) apart from memory expansion sites and one particular site that told
me it was a 386 clone.

> Those chips are all standard 4000-series CMOS (the 4040 and 4060 are
> counters, I forget what the 4087 is). Drawing out the
> schematic should take < 1 hour...

I can scan it and mail it to you :)

> is some kind of amateur radio/weather (?) analogue-type fax image
> decoder, and has nothing to do with modern fax sent over
> telephone lines.

You're right - I've had 2 replies so far both saying the same thing.

> Are there any connectors on the PCB (other than the edge
> connector to the ZX81)?

No - there must've been another board that plugged into the '81 then this
board finished it all off....he might be there again next week so I'll have
a good rummage.

> ------------------------------
Pete Turnbull:

> Did you get a monitor with it? Apricot monitors of that
> vintage came in
> two types, colour and monchrome, and contained the power
> supply for the
> machine. What exactly are the connectors on the box? The
> ones I remember
> had a sort of plstic clip around the monitor video/power connector.

It's got the apricot monitor, mono by the looks of things, and I thought the
same thing since the back of the machine has a port labelled 'Apricot
Monitor connector' as well as another monitor connector. If I'm right in
thinking the monitor powers the box then the box is dead :( 'Tis an easy
matter to check for voltages on the monitor lines though.

> Given the callsign 'G4IDE', I'd expect this is something like
> an interface
> to a weather fax receiver used by a radio ham.

4th reply saying the same thing, so I've got to find the same bloke and see
what else he's got....

cheers both!

> ------------------------------
Received on Thu Dec 07 2000 - 05:08:12 GMT