Recent content by dvanaria

I've tried several more attempts using ImageDisk to write floppies that will boot in the Mostek machine, without luck. I've also tried several different drives in the Mostek now, also without luck. I'm getting that consistent error ("READ ERR STAT=10 PORT=11") regardless of the hardware or...

Ah, I hope its that simple. It's strange because the label on the floppy drive doesn't have the specific model number on the tag (after the dash in "M4854-" there aren't any specific model id numbers). I looked online and at some point I found conflicting information, some said it was a 48 tpi...

I tried running ImageDisk again with double-step enabled, but limited to 40 cylinders. I'm still getting that same error. It is trying to read/boot the floppy though because if I don't have a floppy in the drive the computer will try to boot off the hard disk (resulting in the "missing...

Thank you Larry. I just posted the pin definitions I have in the manual that came with the computer (the board is actually the MDX-FLP2), and here is a photo here also:

And here are the pin definitions from the FLP2 manual:

The 5.25" drive in the Mostek is jumpered as Drive 1 (the actual jumper is on DS0, on a DS0 to DS3 range of jumpers). I took some more pictures of the ribbon cable and made a diagram of how it is wired. The red wire is lined up with pin 1 on the floppy controller card: The middle...

Going down the rabbit hole a bit further, I've tried writing some 360 K floppies using ImageDisk on an old 486 PC that has a good 360 K floppy drive, but now I'm stuck wondering if my Mostek FDD and FDC are even setup or working correctly, because I'm getting read errors no matter what disk I...

I bought this wonderful system off Craigslist a few weeks ago from someone who worked at Mostek in the early 80s as a product manager. He was given this machine which he listed as a "Mostek Development System". It is a prototype that was made by Mostek around 1984 (or 1983) as they were trying...

Locally on craigslist, I just found 2 of these systems, complete with the 8" external floppy drive and the detached daisy wheel printer. The individual systems consist of the original keyboard, cpu, and monitor. Does anyone know the rarity or resale value of these items? I don't have any room...

I have a model 5154 display hooked up to an EGA card in an IBM AT (model 5170) that used to be working fine, but now the whole image on the screen seems to have drifted slightly to the left, causing the first column of characters to be cut-off and distorted a bit (the half of that column that...

I'm building a system based off an Am386DX-40 with a motherboard (VIP M319P1 TAM/40-P1) which has 64 KB of L2 cache installed on it. A strange problem: when launching certain programs (like Wolfenstein 3D), the computer immediately reboots (no error screen or warnings). Through trial and...

Does anyone know if disabling the COM and Parallel ports on a Super I/O card (via jumpers on the board) actually frees those IRQs and i/o addresses to be used by something else? I've tried disabling those devices on the board and during the post it reports no Com ports found, no LPT1 port...

I have a 386-era motherboard (VIP M319P1 TAM/40-P1) which came with an Am386DX-40 processor, 64 K of L2 Cache (speed is 20 ns), and has eight ISA expansion slots on it. There is also 4 MB of main memory (speed is 70 ns). There are 3 crystal oscillators on the motherboard that I can see: KTS38...

One of the only things I don't like about running older PCs (386 and 486 era) is the noise of the fans. I like playing games with the sound card hooked up to speakers, but the fans are often so loud in these types of cases it kind of takes away from the fun a bit, even with a tower case sitting...

I have an AT-clone (286 based, 6/10 MHz turbo) which has 640 KB of memory installed directly on the motherboard (as far as I can tell). The model is DTK PTM-1000 V2. Bank 0 has two rows of 9 chips, each chip is labeled "8744 B USA MT 1259-12" Bank 1 has two rows of 9 chips, each labeled...