> Hi folks:
>
> I recently got two Osborne 1 computers. The first one (blue case) had a
> dead power supply -- I fed +5/+12 DC power into the battery connector
> and was able to bring it to life, but had no software to test it
> further. This one has a double-density option board inside (and drives
> I presume), as well as the optional modem.
>
> I also got a second osborne (early beige case), which came with software
> and manuals. This one has a keyboard that seemed to have a stuck key.
> Turns out that the keyboard matrix has many shorts, not only
> row-to-column, but also row-to-row and col-to-col. It is a flex-circuit
> soft of design, and it appears to have a silk-screened or deposited
> metallization pattern for the matrix. There is an insulating layer of
> some sort and then a second metal layer. Anyway, it seems that the
> insulation between layers has failed where some traces cross. It'll be
> a mess to fix, if even possible. Anyone else have this problem on an
> early keyboard?
>
Uh-Oh ! I picked up a beige Osborne 1 last summer. It's in my
lengthening To-Do queue. I booted it at the time but it had a problem
not recognising the keyboard. I simply figured it was likely a cable
fault. Now I wonder if there may be larger problems with the
keyboard. What was your methodology to check the k-b ? I don't
want to open mine up now to do a visual inspection, lest I be
captured by the "fix-it" bug and neglect more pressing tasks.
Lawrence
> So I plugged the later keyboard into the early unit, and was able to
> boot cp/m. I tried to copy the original cp/m disk to a new one, but
> copy had read errors on a couple of tracks. I could see some
> visibly-crappy spots on the disk surface too, but it did boot fine, and
> the utils seemed to run ok. So I formatted a new disk, copied just the
> system, and then pip'd the files over. Hmm, no errors on file reads
> with pip -- does that make sense, since copy previously found bad
> tracks? After booting and running off the new disk, it seems that all
> command files are working, with the possible exception of movcpm (which
> seems to hang the machine, though I am not sure how it works).
>
> So I finally got the original disks copied, and learned a bit about the
> machine in the process.
>
> I fired up the later (double-density) model, but it would not boot from
> the single-density disk. Should the DD drive be able to read the SD
> disk? The drive was making an odd noise, so it may be drive-related.
> Is there a way to boot from drive B? Can I swap the drives, and if so
> are there master/slave jumpers, or terminations that need to move as
> well? On the early machine, there was a diagnostic mode in rom (ctrl-D
> at the boot screen, I think it was), but the newer unit does not respond
> to that. Were diagnostics removed from later roms?
>
> I swapped the working power supply from the old unit into the new
> machine (yes, I know about the different jumper/harness connections).
> It worked fine.
>
> Then, I put the non-working power supply into the early unit, and it
> started working! I think the original power supply problem in the newer
> machine may have been an intermittant in the fuse/voltage-selector
> gizmo, which tells the PS whether to expect 115 or 230 -- in the early
> unit, this gets hard-coded by the jumper wire on the PS board. Crazy
> frickin' computers.
>
> Then I accidentally cracked the brightness trimpot on one, as I put
> things back together. Tacked a temporary pot in place while I look for
> a replacement. I shouldn't try to do this stuff at 2 in the morning, I
> guess.
>
> Well, that was sort of an FYI ramble, but any thoughts appreciated.
> Does anyone have double-sided software for sale or trade?
>
> thanks,
>
> gil smith
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ;-----------------------------------------------------------
> ; vaux electronics, inc. 480-354-5556
> ; http://www.vauxelectronics.com (fax: 480-354-5558)
> ;-----------------------------------------------------------
lgwalker_at_mts.net
bigwalk_ca_at_yahoo.com
Received on Tue Nov 19 2002 - 16:19:00 GMT