HoarseHorace
New Member
I recently got a ZWL-183-92 and am trying to get it running. When booting up, it gives the following error.
+++ DISK ERROR: Drive not ready! +++
The hard drive makes a normal loading type sound then turns off quickly. It sounds like it's starting to spin up then just stops after a second or two. I wasn't able to get the floppy to do anything until I switched to a 16.5V power supply (negative pin). For whatever reason, the manual and back of the unit say +12V, although the power brick for the unit (according to the PN on the back) is 16.5V.
I was able to get it to attempt to boot from floppy (esc. at boot, command: b 0) but is sounds really bad. I'll probably have to take it apart and see if I can get it working. The wheel on the bottom spins freely, so that's nice.
I noticed that the floppy drive only gets +5V power, and I think typical ones get +5V and +12V. Will a off-the-shelf regular floppy work in this system?
Also, every ~30 seconds or so it beeps 3 times.
I've visually inspected the board and didn't see any problems, and tested quite a few of the caps with nothing appearing to be blown. I am concerned that one or both of the EPROMs may be degrading. Does anyone have a eprom dump?
Some other threads about this issue suggested it was a bad Dallas RTC. I haven't found the RTC, let alone a Dallas one.
Is there any sort of SD/CF card replacements for these 26 pin JVC drives? I know about drem (https://www.drem.info/) but $270 is pretty steep.
Reference Material (for posterity)
Owners Manual: https://archive.org/details/Z180PCSeriesLaptopComputersOwnersManualZenithDataSystems1987
JVC HDD Interface (1/3): https://knm.org.uk/blog/2017/04/the-jvc-26-pin-hard-disk-interface-part-1/
JVC HDD Interface (2/3): https://knm.org.uk/blog/2017/04/the-jvc-26-pin-interface-part-2/
JVC HDD Interface (3/3): https://knm.org.uk/blog/2018/09/the-jvc-26-pin-interface-part-3/
External 5.25" Floppy PN: ZA-180-54 or ZA-180-8
+++ DISK ERROR: Drive not ready! +++
The hard drive makes a normal loading type sound then turns off quickly. It sounds like it's starting to spin up then just stops after a second or two. I wasn't able to get the floppy to do anything until I switched to a 16.5V power supply (negative pin). For whatever reason, the manual and back of the unit say +12V, although the power brick for the unit (according to the PN on the back) is 16.5V.
I was able to get it to attempt to boot from floppy (esc. at boot, command: b 0) but is sounds really bad. I'll probably have to take it apart and see if I can get it working. The wheel on the bottom spins freely, so that's nice.
I noticed that the floppy drive only gets +5V power, and I think typical ones get +5V and +12V. Will a off-the-shelf regular floppy work in this system?
Also, every ~30 seconds or so it beeps 3 times.
I've visually inspected the board and didn't see any problems, and tested quite a few of the caps with nothing appearing to be blown. I am concerned that one or both of the EPROMs may be degrading. Does anyone have a eprom dump?
Some other threads about this issue suggested it was a bad Dallas RTC. I haven't found the RTC, let alone a Dallas one.
Is there any sort of SD/CF card replacements for these 26 pin JVC drives? I know about drem (https://www.drem.info/) but $270 is pretty steep.
Reference Material (for posterity)
Owners Manual: https://archive.org/details/Z180PCSeriesLaptopComputersOwnersManualZenithDataSystems1987
JVC HDD Interface (1/3): https://knm.org.uk/blog/2017/04/the-jvc-26-pin-hard-disk-interface-part-1/
JVC HDD Interface (2/3): https://knm.org.uk/blog/2017/04/the-jvc-26-pin-interface-part-2/
JVC HDD Interface (3/3): https://knm.org.uk/blog/2018/09/the-jvc-26-pin-interface-part-3/
External 5.25" Floppy PN: ZA-180-54 or ZA-180-8