GRIDCASE 1520

From: Kevin Andres <kandres_at_epssecurity.com>
Date: Thu Sep 4 07:48:01 2003

Guys,

        You are right on. I sent some info to Jim privately. I still have a plasma GRIDCASE 1520 running on
my bench, using DOS to exercise some obsolete equipment that I repair. The Cmos battery is gone so it
can't remember its hard drive type, but as long as I can boot to floppy or the ROM it runs fine. I just don't
see putting the time into the battery issue right now. It was limited, 1520 anyway, to 40M tops as I recall,
the accessable COM port was 2 instead of 1, the internal modem used COM1. The BIOS is machine code
and was NOT user accessable. The closest you could get was a utility called GRIDSCAN, which would show
the various settings, but you couldn't change them.
        The startup routine would get so far and you hit "F" for floppy, "H" for hard drive, "E" for external pack.
The machine would look for ROM (2 slots) at reboot, so if you were lucky enough to have the DOS 3.3 ROM
then it would come up in DOS and you could go from there.
        I had used it in the field a lot. It has a metal case and is near indestructible. Plus the equipment I
used it on was usually located in dark areas, so the plasma display was nice.
        Also in reference to the water damaged manual, the professionals suggest nothing for after the
fact restoration from adherence. They claim freezing it at -15 to hold then freeze drying seems to be the
answer. Look at www.mcfoa.org/disasterplan.pdf . Sounds like its time to make coffee!


                                                                Kev
Received on Thu Sep 04 2003 - 07:48:01 BST