I had not connected your handle with the comm program. I used qmodem, myself, on my IBM 5155 and 5150, many years ago. It was a great program.
Thanks very much for creating it!
- Alex
Thanks very much for creating it!
- Alex
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Kicking around a Tava PC
- Thread starter SomeGuy
- Start date
HoJoPo
Veteran Member
Usagi Electric has a video coming out soon on troubleshooting the Centurion/EDS PC clone which used a Faraday FE 6400 motherboard. He has a dump of the V1.9 BIOS for that board, and his system boots! (after some repair)
Note, that you must have the floppy controller and drive connected or the BIOS just sits at a blinking cursor. It doesn't throw any errors or do much of anything if the memory test fails (may not even display the cursor) or the floppy/boot drive isn't available. If the drive is connected, it will seek and then boot from the floppy. If you have a bootable device like an XT-IDE or something else that displays an option ROM message, you'll probably get more on screen.
Note, that you must have the floppy controller and drive connected or the BIOS just sits at a blinking cursor. It doesn't throw any errors or do much of anything if the memory test fails (may not even display the cursor) or the floppy/boot drive isn't available. If the drive is connected, it will seek and then boot from the floppy. If you have a bootable device like an XT-IDE or something else that displays an option ROM message, you'll probably get more on screen.
HoJoPo
Veteran Member
The Usagi Electric video on the EDS/Centurion Faraday 5150 clone is available here:
SomeGuy
Veteran Member
Is that 1.9 BIOS posted somewhere?
Also, very weird advanced CRT monitor. Absolutely amazing that something like this would have a built-in test that would display an actual image without a video card connected.
Also, very weird advanced CRT monitor. Absolutely amazing that something like this would have a built-in test that would display an actual image without a video card connected.
HoJoPo
Veteran Member
Usagi posted it on his Github. https://github.com/Nakazoto/CenturionComputer/blob/main/EDS PC/EDSPCBIOS19.BIN
The beginning of the BIOS says "6400rev1.9", so it is a Faraday FE 6400 BIOS.
The monitor is an RGB Display Corporation RGB-1400PC. Page 151 of this PDF has some information on it: https://vintageapple.org/apple_ii/pdf/Apple_II-IIe-IIc_Expansion_Guide_1985.pdf
And here's a PC Magazine article that mentions it: https://books.google.com/books?id=vQDibG12bVcC&pg=PA333&lpg=PA333&dq="1400PC"+RGB+display+corporation&source=bl&ots=FklMyH-uXD&sig=ACfU3U20wA7fLpDiWYw_4NwVkfT3Ej8Ezw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwifjrSzqYiGAxWoAjQIHffRCMYQ6AF6BAgmEAM#v=onepage&q="1400PC" RGB display corporation&f=false
RGB Display Corporation is still in business, still based in Grass Valley, CA. They do displays for casinos / gambling machines, and sheet metal fabrication / powder coating.
The EDS PC uses a custom chassis made by Centurion with a generic plastic face plate, Ken Romaine just talked about it on the Usage Electric discord in the episode discussion channel. Explains the key switch to power it on/off.