On Tue, Jan 24, 2023 at 7:47 PM Will Cooke via cctalk <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On 01/24/2023 11:09 AM CST Tony Duell via cctalk <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > > > > A couple of questions if anyone has experience of this machine : > > > > 1) There is a 5 pin DIN socket for connecting an external video > > monitor. The signals seem to be TTL-level separate syncs at European > > TV rates (15625Hz horizontal, 50Hz vertical) and separate (not > > composite) 4-level analogue video. > > > > I believe Philips sold a 12" monitor to connect there. What was the > > model number? Is a service manual availabe? > > > > Has anybody linked other monitors to that socket? > > > > In the US in the late 80s and 90s, there were a crap ton of similar monitors > (without case) sold on the surplus market. I had one. I believe they were > mostly Mitsubishi / Panasonic. Most of them were 9" with a lesser number of > 12". They had an edge connector for the power, ground, H sync, V sync, and > video inputs. Of course, in the US, they were 15750 / 60 Hz sync. I can > only guess what their original purpose was, but they were easy to connect to > a PC RGB video card (four resistors got you 16 gray shades.) So that > interface wasn't too uncommon. Perhaps there is/was something similar > available on the other side of the pond?
Quite common, over here too. The interface is normally a 10 pin 0.156" edge connector carrying the signals you mention along with ground, +12V and (often) 3 wires to the brightness control. In fact the VT100 terminal has such a monitor PCB inside it. The internal monitor of the P2000C is similar, it has a header connector with +12V, ground, syncs, video on it. Oddly it's a Mitsubishi unit, for all Philips were making suitable CRTs, flyback transformers, etc at the time. > Maybe the reason you can't find any trace of the Philips add-on is for the > same reasons you suggest -- marketing realized it was of little value prior > to releasing it. > > > > 2) There is a 50 pin card edge for a SASI interface. I think the > > Philips hard disk unit used the Xebec S1410 controller. I've > > downloaded the user manual for that from bitsavers which at least > > gives me the command set. > > > > Does anyone have experience of a SASI-flash memory interface? Any > > recomendations for things to look at? Or should I design my own, it > > doesn't appear too hard? > > > > I have an Ampro Little Board Plus, which is a single-board Z80 computer the > size of a 5 1/4" disk drive. The "plus" means it has a SCSI interface. A > couple of years ago I was planning to build a flash disk for it and dug > through a lot of specs and bios code. Original SCSI was almost identical to > SASI and they were often interchangeable. The protocol is rather simple, as > you stated. What I found in the Ampro bios code was that for reading and > writing only about 4 commands were used. Another small number were used for > formatting. I think, iirc, there were two types of read and two types of > write. I never got around to building the thing, but it should be pretty > simple. I would also be rather surprised if no one else has done it. But if > you have the P-2000 bios code, you could take a look. I suspect it would be > very similar to the Ampro code. Alas there is no source of either the CBIOS or the boot ROM in any of the P2000C manuals and I suspect such source was never released. But it should be possible to kludge up something to do the SASI handshake and see just what does come out of that port when I try to boot from a hard disk or whatever. -tony
