Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

2020-09-26 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
On 9/26/20 5:22 AM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: On 9/25/20 10:38 AM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote: If the Adaptec 2940 BIOS seems to detect the disk I wonder what would happen if DOS was set up on the system and ASPI8DOS.SYS was loaded. Would the Adaptec 2940 and ASPI driver respect the

Re: Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

2020-09-23 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
On 9/23/20 8:54 PM, Grant Taylor via cctech wrote: On 9/23/20 12:51 PM, Michael Engel via cctech wrote: Do you know if is there another OS which would make it easier to change crucial SCSI parameters in the driver (config) or maybe a specialized tool that could help me to image the disk

Disabling SCSI parity checking to dump disk on ACB4000 MFM-SCSI adapter?

2020-09-23 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
Hi, still working on backing up the Tektronix 440x disks. My current problem is that the ACB4000 SCSI-to-MFM adapter doesn´t support SCSI parity. I finally managed to find a PCI SCSI controller (Adaptec 2940) and a Pentium 4 PC with PCI slots and installed OpenBSD 6.7. I disabled parity

Tektronix 440x photos

2020-09-19 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
I managed to take some pictures of our Tektronix Smalltalk machines today: https://multicores.org/pictures/Tektronix_440x/ Both 4404s are identical, including the firmware versions in the EPROMs. The 4406 is a bit harder to disassemble, this will take some more time. All of the photos inside

Re: SPARCstation ELC Installation and repair guide

2020-09-15 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
Hi, > On 15 Sep 2020, at 20:24, Rico Pajarola via cctech > wrote: > > Does anyone have the Sun SPARCstation ELC Installation and repair guide? > > I have a few naked ELC boards and I'd like to know what that edge connector > does (presumably power and video) and if feasible build something

Looking for a TI technical report on Explorer virtual memory

2020-09-15 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
Hi, first, a big "thank you" to all of you who support me with my attempt to get our Explorers and Xerox Stars to run again. I´ll head down to the basement in the afternoon to see if I can build a system that is able to image the Explorer not-quite-SCSI disks (according to the documentation,

Re: Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)

2020-09-14 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
Another update on the Explorer mouse... > On 14 Sep 2020, at 21:39, Michael Engel via cctech > wrote: > > So it should be easy to build one in case I can't find the original one. It > seems that there was > also a later non-optical mouse version that looked similar to early

Re: Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)

2020-09-14 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
Hi Josh, whow, seems it's my lucky day :) - thanks a lot for the offer! > On 14 Sep 2020, at 18:00, Josh Dersch wrote: > > I've restored a Star/1108 (and wrote a Star emulator) and am in the middle of > an Explorer restoration, I'm happy to help out where I can. > > I'd recommend picking up

Re: Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)

2020-09-14 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
cal mouse, terminated in > a two row IDC connector. > > If desired, I can take internal pictures and send along the pinout. Let me > know. > >> On Sep 14, 2020, at 09:01, Josh Dersch via cctech >> wrote: >> >> On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 6:35 AM Michael En

Care and feeding of some Lisp machines (TI Explorer and Xerox Star)

2020-09-14 Thread Michael Engel via cctech
Hi, for a planned exhibition, I am thinking of restoring two of the machines to working state again that are in storage here for decades: - A TI Explorer ("Sperry" labeled) and - A Xerox Star (no idea if ours actually ran Interlisp or one of the other OSes for the Star/Dandelion) There is