Gary C
Veteran Member
Exciting month
Daver2 arranged for some equipment from work to be picked up from the station by various interested parties. Arrived at the building to see a pile of DEC equipment (apparently it was much bigger earlier).
Took home a Microvax3300 and a microvax II. Maybe this time I wont blow up the PSU on the 3300 (labelled 240V, actually 110V) and then I can use it to diagnose the first unit and eventually have two working 3300's.
Last week met PG31 who had three Alpha machines for me plus a VT420. Rather an interesting pile is now keeping my 911 company in its garage.
The MZ-80K has been taking up most of my time recently. The faults have been PSU caps and a corroded track on the floppy interface card that was hidden under a chip. Fun time diagnosing and fixing it and it was good to have to use the tools I have been building up over the year. This to me is what it is all about.
As it presents a Shugart 34 pin interface, attaching a Gotek has been really easy. The flashfloppy software is actually really good and very flexible. Being able to define a custom geometry was really useful but I was surprised that there was virtually no information on the web about using a Gotek with an MZ80K. I suppose the disk drives were fairly rare (as they cost more than the computer to add) and I now think I was VERY lucky to secure an I/O unit with the disk and printer interface for my machine, especially for less than £30 (it failed to sell first time round on ebay and I was the only bidder second time around). Just wish I could find a matching drive box as I dont know were to mount the gotek. I might put it inside the I/O unit with a custom made side panel.
Fortunately, the software on tape is easily converted to disk by loading a masterboot program into the computer first which then handles the formatting of the disk and the copying of the program.
Daver2 arranged for some equipment from work to be picked up from the station by various interested parties. Arrived at the building to see a pile of DEC equipment (apparently it was much bigger earlier).
Took home a Microvax3300 and a microvax II. Maybe this time I wont blow up the PSU on the 3300 (labelled 240V, actually 110V) and then I can use it to diagnose the first unit and eventually have two working 3300's.
Last week met PG31 who had three Alpha machines for me plus a VT420. Rather an interesting pile is now keeping my 911 company in its garage.
The MZ-80K has been taking up most of my time recently. The faults have been PSU caps and a corroded track on the floppy interface card that was hidden under a chip. Fun time diagnosing and fixing it and it was good to have to use the tools I have been building up over the year. This to me is what it is all about.
As it presents a Shugart 34 pin interface, attaching a Gotek has been really easy. The flashfloppy software is actually really good and very flexible. Being able to define a custom geometry was really useful but I was surprised that there was virtually no information on the web about using a Gotek with an MZ80K. I suppose the disk drives were fairly rare (as they cost more than the computer to add) and I now think I was VERY lucky to secure an I/O unit with the disk and printer interface for my machine, especially for less than £30 (it failed to sell first time round on ebay and I was the only bidder second time around). Just wish I could find a matching drive box as I dont know were to mount the gotek. I might put it inside the I/O unit with a custom made side panel.
Fortunately, the software on tape is easily converted to disk by loading a masterboot program into the computer first which then handles the formatting of the disk and the copying of the program.