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Osborne 1 screen flash

I've ordered myself a couple of Goteks. In the meantime, I guess I'll pull one of the floppy drives out and give it a good clean and maybe start soldering the replacement keyboard.

It's been so long since I took the thing apart, I might have trouble remembering how everything goes back together. This is not one of those that you see with the two part case. I had to slide the guts out and there's some weird placed screws, plus all the motherboard/daughterboard connectors. I did take a few pics so I hope they'll help.
 
nelgin said:
But this is what you've all been waiting for....If anyone finds this useful, feel free to buy me a beer if you're ever in the north Dallas area ;)
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Thank you very much!!! I'm going to flash and test on my OCC 1. There's a manual for the OZROM as well on archive.org.

Incidentally, the OZROM came out of a company in Irving, TX.
 
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nelgin said:
I've ordered myself a couple of Goteks. In the meantime, I guess I'll pull one of the floppy drives out and give it a good clean and maybe start soldering the replacement keyboard.

It's been so long since I took the thing apart, I might have trouble remembering how everything goes back together. This is not one of those that you see with the two part case. I had to slide the guts out and there's some weird placed screws, plus all the motherboard/daughterboard connectors. I did take a few pics so I hope they'll help.
Click to expand...
I pulled it apart on my YouTube channel ... I started following the Osborne technical manual telling how to disassemble but it started deviating from what I had. Turned out to be pretty simple.

But, yes, getting it back together ... let's see. I'm going to try the Gotek install today ... I've got a spare three-digit Gotek that I'd earlier added a rotary encoder to and already flashed with FF. So will probably put it back together in the video as well.

I might also try out your OZROM ... either burn to a spare 2732, or combine with OCC v1.44 in a 2764 with a switch to select which 4KByte bank to use. But, only if making the daughterboard manually isn't too much effort ... otherwise will whip up a design and get it fabbed (a few weeks). Yes, no doubt there already is a 2732-to-2764 one designed, but I need the practice.
 
nelgin said:
I've ordered myself a couple of Goteks. In the meantime, I guess I'll pull one of the floppy drives out and give it a good clean and maybe start soldering the replacement keyboard.

It's been so long since I took the thing apart, I might have trouble remembering how everything goes back together. This is not one of those that you see with the two part case. I had to slide the guts out and there's some weird placed screws, plus all the motherboard/daughterboard connectors. I did take a few pics so I hope they'll help.
Click to expand...
Oh ... and, of course, will probably need to 3D print some sort of adaptor to hold the Gotek at the correct position. I'm not worried about that at the moment, but will need to do it before closing the Osborne up finally.

www.thingiverse.com

Full Height 5.25" to single, dual 3.5" floppy & HDD adapters by redrum69

I haven't tested these out yet. I plan on printing it soon to install a "Gotek" floppy emulator in an Osborne 1 vintage computer. It should work with any full height 5.25" drive bay, and any 3.5" standard floppy drive.2 STL's, one for single drive, and one for dual!
www.thingiverse.com www.thingiverse.com
 
Got the Gotek working as Drive B: ... which is actually DS0 ... so had to jumper my Gotek as S0. Also, I needed to use single density disk images as I don't have the DD upgrade, so sourced those in IMD format and converted to HFE.

But I got it to boot ... [SHIFT]["] to switch Drive B: to Drive A: and boot.

Video here if interested ... next will be switchable BIOS v1.44 and OZROM.
 
My simple 2732-to-2764 adaptor so you can have two BIOS ROMs installed and switch between them via A12 pin. Whether this will be on any interest or use ... don't know. I have ten (same cost as five) sample PCBs on their way if anyone wants one.

Looks like we would need the accompanying OZROM utilities disk to use some of that ROM's features? Don't suppose your machine came with one @nelgin ?

Screenshot 2024-08-23 at 12.49.12 PM.png
 
Unfortunately the system didn't come with any disks other than some Chess disk so it's not likely that I have it.
 
nelgin said:
Unfortunately the system didn't come with any disks other than some Chess disk so it's not likely that I have it.
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Worth checking! We had a AU$100M Powerball draw last night ... one person (or syndicate) won it. Wasn't me. If it were then I'd probably start buying up all the Osborne 1s on Ebay to try to track down the disk for the community :)
 
Or you could just send a message to every Osborne seller on Ebay and ask them? It'd be cheaper and faster :)
 
nelgin said:
Or you could just send a message to every Osborne seller on Ebay and ask them? It'd be cheaper and faster :)
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BUT I WANT OSBORNES!

Okay, okay, that's actually a good idea. I was actually wondering also if there was some way to tell whether an Osborne had the DD upgrade installed because I'd like to get one - possibly BIOS ROM version > 1.40? I know you could remove the front fascia and peek at the motherboard ... anyway, off topic.
 
nelgin said:
It's been so long since I took the thing apart, I might have trouble remembering how everything goes back together. This is not one of those that you see with the two part case. I had to slide the guts out and there's some weird placed screws, plus all the motherboard/daughterboard connectors. I did take a few pics so I hope they'll help.
Click to expand...

I watched my disassembly video again to figure out how to put it back together, because it'd been only a week but none of it made sense. Wasn't too difficult.
 
@nelgin thank you gain for posting the OZROM. I flashed on my OCC1 and correctly identified a bad 4116 chip that had prevented it from booting. You're in North Texas? Are you on the Facebook DFW Retrocomputing group? We have a get together coming up in October.

(now back to the thread, sorry for the hijack).
 
booboo said:
@nelgin thank you gain for posting the OZROM. I flashed on my OCC1 and correctly identified a bad 4116 chip that had prevented it from booting. You're in North Texas? Are you on the Facebook DFW Retrocomputing group? We have a get together coming up in October.

(now back to the thread, sorry for the hijack).
Click to expand...

You're welcome. No, I'm not. I'll check out the group. Thanks.
 
Looks good ! :) Makes me wonder how much fun and actual use this would have been back in the 80s... :)

I mean, I did have the fun and did lots of things like dual-boot and custom ROMs and the like, but it was all on a ZX Spectrum. I could never afford a nice PC like the Osborne back in the early 80s.
 
cj7hawk said:
Looks good ! :) Makes me wonder how much fun and actual use this would have been back in the 80s... :)

I mean, I did have the fun and did lots of things like dual-boot and custom ROMs and the like, but it was all on a ZX Spectrum. I could never afford a nice PC like the Osborne back in the early 80s.
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Like JiffyDOS on the VIC, you lose some functionality as they had to stay in the 4KByte size.

But the RAM tester in the OZROM has already flagged one of my RAM chips as suspect ... it wrote 00000000 and got back 00001000 ... apparently the chip in location B24 is the suspect.

 
clueless_engineer (Brett) said:
But the RAM tester in the OZROM has already flagged one of my RAM chips as suspect ... it wrote 00000000 and got back 00001000 ... apparently the chip in location B24 is the suspect.
Click to expand...
This is the #1 reason I had been hunting for this ROM for a while... Is dead simple to run a RAM test anytime you want to, and the diagnostic location (at least in my case) worked very well.

Oh, and very nice dual ROM project!
 
I just assembled one of @clueless_engineer (Brett)'s adapter boards that he was nice enough to send me. After flashing the combined ROMs, I can now switch between the stock ROM and the OZROM using an external rocker switch I had laying around that perfectly fit recessed in one of the floppy storage trays. Neat!

PXL_20241007_213617743.jpg PXL_20241007_213651956.jpg PXL_20241007_223420171.jpg PXL_20241007_231459196.jpg

PXL_20241007_232909339.jpg
 
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