KLund1
Veteran Member
I now have a this machine. It powers up fine. Passes its mem test. It has a NEC Vic20 cpu installed. It will not boot from the MicroScience HH-1050 HD. That is probably expected. It has been sitting in cold dry storage for 20 years. I cleaned up the FD (head clean and greased the head rails) and reseated all the boards with socketed IC's, dusted where needed. The usual.
I first tried to boot without the HD card installed. Nothing. I get the "insert system disk and hit any key". I swapped the original drive to known working FD's, both 1.2M and 360K. I get the same thing. I swapped cables, same thing.
I pulled out the FDC764A from the Mem/FD card, and installed a known good FD card. Same message. Oh, the disks are also know good. I was trying several DOS 3.3 disks, and a couple IBM 5160 diagnostics I got from the ever helpful MinusZeroDegees!!
Just to check myself (I need to do this often!) I swapped around drives, cards, cables to possibly find a working combo. Nothing, same message every time.
One thing I noticed is that the drive head never moved from it's outside start to any other track. Every drive behaved the same way. Is this a BIOS problem?
Are there some proprietary disks that this early clone needs to use?
I was also looking for any documentation on this machine and found little online. Anyone have a link to manuals, service guides, etc? I think is similar to a Kaypro 16 in design but not quite the same(Y/N)
Thanks!
I first tried to boot without the HD card installed. Nothing. I get the "insert system disk and hit any key". I swapped the original drive to known working FD's, both 1.2M and 360K. I get the same thing. I swapped cables, same thing.
I pulled out the FDC764A from the Mem/FD card, and installed a known good FD card. Same message. Oh, the disks are also know good. I was trying several DOS 3.3 disks, and a couple IBM 5160 diagnostics I got from the ever helpful MinusZeroDegees!!
Just to check myself (I need to do this often!) I swapped around drives, cards, cables to possibly find a working combo. Nothing, same message every time.
One thing I noticed is that the drive head never moved from it's outside start to any other track. Every drive behaved the same way. Is this a BIOS problem?
Are there some proprietary disks that this early clone needs to use?
I was also looking for any documentation on this machine and found little online. Anyone have a link to manuals, service guides, etc? I think is similar to a Kaypro 16 in design but not quite the same(Y/N)
Thanks!