Redstone Computers Turbo XT

[Caluser2000]

Got my Hdd update for my Redstone ready to go. Locally made XT-IDE card, 2.1 BigFoot drive with ribbon cable. The original MFM hdd was dead when I got it a while ago. Long over due for replacement. The BigFoot should be ample storage. If that goes tits up I have plenty of replacement drives. It has a EGA monitor and video card so was worth keeping. Interesting that it came with two manuals. Usually they're the first things to get lost. Came with a 360k 5.25" A: drive and 720k 3.5" B: drive. I already had a high density 8-bit ISA fdd card stripped from another system. Removed the original fdd controller and replaced it with the HD one. Pulled the 360k drive and fitted a beige 1.2meg fdd so it currently boots to HD media. Currently I have DRDos 6 and MS Dos boot disks in that format. Haven't decided which I'll install yet. At one time I had tons of software on 5.25" media but I lent them out and never got them back. I've got an Amstrad Adlib clone or Media Vision Thunderboard sound card I could fit to it. Have some odd looking serial mice that wouldn't look out of place.



Other than the above a few updates could be on the cards. A V20 cpu, an 8-bit NIC with RJ45 ethernet port and math co-pro come to mind just because. Might swap the beige fdd with a black one which came out of a 286 I found while having a clean up. Software wise other than Dos I'll put on XTree Gold and Checkit for sure. A computer with a colour monitor cannot go without having some sort of Graphical User Interface so I'll throw GeoWorks Ensemble Pro 1.2 on just for giggles. It'll look dandy in 16 colours. mTCP will go in once I acquire a suitable NIC. Of course I can also add an external BackPack parallel port CDRom drive if I needed to.

 

[Caluser2000]

Got around to fitting the BigFoot into the Redstone pretty straight foward. Fit the XT-IDE card, fit the drive, attach cables and boot the system up using a suitable boot disk, create the partitions, format them making sure you sys the primary. I did all that using an MS Dos 6 boot floppy. I then proceeded to install DRDos 6 on the system then GeoWorks making sure both floppies a functioning correctly. So all fine and dandy.

 

[Caluser2000]

Found a nice MS serial mouse in my stash that works well with GeoWorks. So all fine and dandy.

It's good that this system has a flip top for easy access just like my original 286/12. I also noticed I'd fitted the Amstrad Adlib clone sound card to the beast at some stage. I doesn't have any joystick ports but I have a two port card if needed.

While I was waiting for all the software to be installed I had a gander through my stash of ISA cards. Half the stuff I forgot I had. Found my Media Vision Thunderboard and Sound Blaster cards. Also found a 16-bit ISA memory card with 2megs of dips on it with space for another 2megs. It was fitted in 286 I scrapped. Need to ID so I can find out a bit more info about it. I'll make a thread about it in the hardware section.

 

[Caluser2000]

I was doing an inventory of my Acorn stuff and found a 5.25" to 3.5" fdd mounting assy.God knows why it was there. Any now I can fit a 1.44 meg fdd to the old girl. Welcome to the 1990s.