So these 3 Superbrains followed me home...

[zippysticks]

Nice one.

Great to seem them working again.
Nice to see the hard disk boot option from that SB1 ROM too.

 

[Witchy]

The original PSU is a little flaky so I've ordered new caps for its output side to hopefully keep the 5v rail a bit more stable.

Tonight I hooked up the 2nd chonky PSU that was used for the 12V supply to the HDD and that works well. I haven't managed to sort an SB1 boot disk yet but the images I have will boot off a Gotek and the NORMAL.COM routine puts the screen back to useability. It was trying to build a boot floppy that showed the flakiness of the original PSU. Back onto that next week once the new caps are in!

 

[Witchy]

Result! Even though the new caps were TINY compared to the originals they're the same rating and higher temperature capability so now I have a nice crisp bright display which doesn't fade. I also managed to create a copy of a boot disk and booted off floppy for the first time last night, so I reassembled the machine aaaaand...it stopped reading the disk. No surprise reallyl, given the age of the media. Hopefully I can find some that last longer than a few hours!

 

[JonB]

Great going Witchy!

Your is much the same as mine, with that honking great toroidal stepdown transformer. In fact I'd venture to say it is the same model as mine looks identical. I think you have the ACT boot ROM too (again, as mine). Do you know which HDD interface board it came with? Mine's an ACT one with the additional buffer board.

 

[alan8086]

Any chance of a picture of the HDD interface? Have any of you SB owners come across the S100 bus interface that was an optional extra? I had one many years ago but it is, alas, no more.

Congrats Witchy - these machines don't get much coverage, great to see some interest in them!

 

[Witchy]

Congrats Witchy - these machines don't get much coverage, great to see some interest in them!

Cheers :mrgreen: These definitely deserve more coverage, I mean, just LOOK at them. Bloody lovely things.

Unfortunately I only know one bloke who had an HD interface and it went a couple of years ago, or he held onto it and forgot he had it, who knows.

Now I'm having a weird thing where I'll FORMAT, SYSGEN and PIP a new boot floppy which works the same night for several restarts and reads. Next night it refuses to boot at all.

 

[JonB]

Any chance of a picture of the HDD interface? Have any of you SB owners come across the S100 bus interface that was an optional extra? I had one many years ago but it is, alas, no more.

Take a look at this thread : http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?57124-S-u-p-e-r-b-r-a-i-n. I pictured my ACT 5MB HDD interface when I first got the Brain.

Here's a better picture (click to enlarge):



..and the little buffer board (or latch?) that goes between the interface and SB I expansion port:




Yes, it's a genuine ACT HDD interface as advertised in periodicals of the day, and the BIOS code to support it is on one of the Maslin disks. This one might even work. I had it moving the head of my HDD, but I could not retrieve any data (neither could another machine, so I think my HDD is toast - maybe I should try a format).

 

[Witchy]

..and the little buffer board (or latch?) that goes between the interface and SB I expansion port:

I still have that fitted under the keyboard, I left it in because there's no point taking it out.

 

[JonB]

So is yours an ACT unit then?

 

[alan8086]

Thanks for the shots - things of beauty!

 

[alan8086]

I still have that fitted under the keyboard, I left it in because there's no point taking it out.[/COLOR]

I have the same board on my Micronex Pixelplotter. Always thought it was acting as an address so the SB could 'find' it?

 

[Witchy]

So is yours an ACT unit then?

It was, I still have the BIOS installed too which is why it asks to boot from floppy with 'F' or any other key to boot from HDD.

Struggling with Kermit today, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that my serial port is dead since anything I do with it serially just crashes the machine.