Help on Morrow Decision I - docs or direct experience?

From: Robert Stek <r.stek_at_snet.net>
Date: Sun Jul 18 16:23:54 2004

My last S-100 I purchsaed before caving in to an IBM clone was the Morrow
Decision I. I loved its ability to handle N* hard-sectored as well as
soft-sectored 5" disks as well as 8" drives, and of course a huge 15 MB hard
drive I had salvaged from my Horizon. Alas I sold it before moving back to
the US from Canada. I now have a Decision I (with a more industrial metal
case, locking key-switch plus built-in Fujitsu hard drive and more
"sophisticated" MB) and Allison Parent was kind enough to get the switching
PS going again for me, and I finally tried hooking it up to a Televideo
terminal. There are 4 ports on the "MB" - 3 standard 25 pin D-connectors
and 1 15 pin, all coming off the back of the MB. Upon booting, it sounds
like the HD is loading, but I get no response, not even garbage, from any of
the 3 25 pin connectors. (And I don't have a 15 pin connector right now to
make an adapter, so chances are that the 15 pin connector is the 'master'
serial port while the other three are for the multi-user Micronix which
apparently this Decision I was set up for (I also found some hand-written
labels on one of the boards referencing "M*nix") or are parallel ports.

Anyway, this is not the Decision I that I had some familiarity with. Is
there anyone out there who knows this machine who could help me get it up
and running again? I have the docs for the Z80 CPU, the Disc Jockey DMA
controller, the hard drive controller and the 256k memory card, but not for
the 'advanced' MB (I don't know enough circuitry to figure out what the heck
all the extra stuff is - obviously some serial ports or maybe a combination
of serial and parallel). I don't even know at this point if this unit can
be made to run plain vanilla CP/M (or preferably ZCPR) (I found some web
references to Micronix having to "transfer" files from a CP/M disk over to
Micronix before they could be used.) I don't even know if there are any
specific "features" which would prevent me from running CP/M on this unit. I
also have some Morrow 5" and 8" diskettes with CP/M and CBIOS files for
various combinations of 5" and 8" configuartions off the the DJ DMA board.

At this point ANYTHING anyone can tell me about the Micronix Decision I
would be helpful. Thanks.

Bob Stek
Saver of Lost Sols
(...and other stuff)
Received on Sun Jul 18 2004 - 16:23:54 BST