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Victor 9k / Sirius 1 Software

@DrAlis : Your RAM-Extension Board looks similar to mine, then you should see 768kB of RAM during startup of the Victor. As I am having a 256kB - MB as well, pleae have a look at my dip settings.

My Machine being a dual use (Victor&IBM) - ‚PlusPC‘ shows just 640kB in ‚I-Mode‘. I think this is the maximum what early MS-DOS in IBM Machines is able to address. Once again, the Victor is superior! :)

1767439297540.jpeg
 
yes we both have switches 1,2 and 4 turned on - rest off. i think mine shows 640kB on the bottom during boot up. i guess at this time it does not know if it is going to run dos or cpm.

i have 56 of 64 extension ram populated. so i have 704kB of ram.
it shows 640kB on boot up.
on my ibm pc that would mean my highest 64kB bank has at least one bad bit. so it disregards the highest 64kB bank.

on the other hand, i just realized the Victor does not have a parity chip, so it might not realize...

in my ram extension picture you also see one odd (not the same as its group of 8) ram chip that might have been replaced.

does yours show 768kB on boot?
how many ram chips do you have open/populated? (or picture of entire card)

then i will just stick some more in and replace the highest bank.
 
@DrAlis As you have less Chips on your card, have you tried dip switches 1,2,3 on? Looks weird that not all sockets on your card are occupied, maybe someone has cannibalized the card?

Did you run RAMTEST? (If you have it)?

Yes mine shows 768kB on startup. regardless of MS-DOS or CPM operation, your Victor is able t utilize the full amount of RAM and does not have the 640kB - Limit like the period IBM machines. regarding CP-M the amount of RAM used differs from version to version, but under MS-DOS it uses all RAM available up to 896kB which is the Victor9k maximum is utilized.

My extension card hast as many Chips as yours if it would be fully occupied.
DrAlis said:
then i will just stick some more in and replace the highest bank.
Click to expand...
Worth giving it a go!
 
I'll leave the dip bank as is and repopulate. apparently the current setting does no harm despite likely having less ram installed than desired.
 
1302L said:
By looking over and over again on my pics I took before disassembly and the wiring diagrams, I think I found a mistake:
On Connector J13 on the floppy controller board, the first pin must be omitted, I connected the first Plug also to the first pin and subsequently the other plugs and pins weren’t connected correctly as well.
Mea culpa… I hope I didn't damage anything!
This I think, solves the FD issue, I will see it tonight. I am not very sure if this solves the HDD problem as well.
Keep you updated… :)
Click to expand...

I was stunned. @1302L : We have some very similar elements of our journey. I should have read the first 14 pages of this thread more thoroughly early... I noticed the odd first pin unused at the FDD connector luckily right away. Also the DD/HD seems a deja vu... Thanks for bearing with me :)
 
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@DrAlis Thank you.

I am more than happy to return the things I have learned from the kind and patient folks here in this Forum, I am still thankful to them, otherwise I wouldn't have got my V9K back to life.
:)
 
Keytronic refurb question to all: My new foam pads arrrived. So i picked the residual plastic filmpads out and the remaining foam or better foam dust. I figured the best way to get rid of the foam residue would be a toothbrush. It cleaned halfway nice but in the end I noticed the keys seemed to go less smooth. This could be a logical consequence of the foam dust getting inbetween the moving key parts. Maybe I should have done all the work right side up... Now what?

Should I give the key / spring assembly a bath before putting the foam replacements in?

Should I lube each key? (Oh no...)

Bonus question: Does the remaining plastic fimpad on the lower part of the key assembly stay there and I just stick it on top or does it need to be removed too?

Any other tricks?
 
Oh well... I guess I just found Adrian's video on it. Seems he took the entire "foam sandwich" out. I just took the bottom disk out and scubbed the foam residue around... But then my replacement foamies are to stick and not to click, so I am wondering to stick them directly or on the old grubby clip plate.
 
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I have disaaembled the whole Keyboard, also each Key (pulled the springs carefully a littly bit apart to gain more restoring force) and gave each a thorough cleanup, Removed also the lower plasics and put the new ones in afterwards.No lubrication was neccessary.
 
I might give it a bath, no electronics on it. Just plate and springs who could rust. but should be fine if i dry it fast enough. asked the pad seller and he said he stuck the new foampad with his on the old cleaned lower plastic discs without removing them. i will need to do something because many keys are not sliding smoothly now.
 
I’ve had a few that needed a full cleaning, so I scrubbed the keys and backplate as a unit after removing all the foam bits with dish soap and water, then shook the water out and put it in front of a fan, and turned it every so often for 8 or so hours. Those worked well, didn’t need lube.
 
The part, where the sping is contained, will probably stay full of water / humidity which won’t dry fast enough. I would refrain from doing so. If you want to finish the job quick, just give them a thorough clean and put the new pads on. :-)
Best,
Martin
 
thanks - that is valuable input. i might be too lazy to take it completely apart, especially since i find the keys not to come off as nicely as ie the model fs. i took 2 keys completely apart and already almost lost 2 springs. also there are different spring sizes and my eyesight makes this exercice less fun also. so likely the @westveld unit clean approach shying short of the more thorough @1302L approach . i will leave the discs in for now, because if i mess it up i can easily take them out and get new foam. the water will be pretty nicely locked in the keys and with -10C temperature drying will not happen in the sun... will report

as i think about it the disks will further impede drying...
 
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1302L said:
The part, where the sping is contained, will probably stay full of water / humidity which won’t dry fast enough. I would refrain from doing so. If you want to finish the job quick, just give them a thorough clean and put the new pads on. :-)
Best,
Martin
Click to expand...
Good point, not everyone is doing this with forced-air heat, in the winter, in Michigan :)
 
lord those pads look flimsy af on there. impossible to stick them center perfect. the metallic surface deforms during each keytravel. i hope they still work.
 
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keyboard in fine order! puh, this foam work is fun for very special people... i did put it in the bathtub before and keys moved easily afterwards. no water trapped with metal contact as far as i can see.

so all working but the floppy so far!

i bought 100+ nos dd disks. i did some more cleaning and new disks are unscratched after format.

however they still do not work.

i am still waiting for @1302L floppies . @westveld the /m option is not recognized unfortunatel
 

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for archeology: it contains a list of all software victor compatible according to authors, instructions on how to install an ibm hercules graphics card into the victor. also i found a combined graphics and text screen mode. and i had a full house in the kniffel game against the machine...
 

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ok now here is something crazy. format fails. copy fails. but after copy the filename is in the directory with 0 bytes and 0 bytes free

so the drive aint all bad
 

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could it be as simple as a bad / incompatible format program? the format program is dos 1.x and ver returns dos 2.11...
 
Good news! So the floppy disks arrived. Turns out I can boot from them! And even better I can format a disk without errors!

Hurray! Seems the format issues stemmed from a miss-match of different DOS versions between I suppose the command.com or msdos.sys and the format.com or respectively now it is a format.exe...

So now the next challenge would be to get the unique software out of the machine and give it a good install.

It turns out there is no way I know to copy more than one files. Copy just does one. No xcopy. Anybody knows what backup.exe does?
Also I don't seem to have a syscopy on my boot disk. Any way to get my hdd dos up to 3.3?

Additional difficulty comes from the fact that I can boot of the new floppy but some files are unreadable. Including config.sys and many others.

Kermit however seems to run but my cable has not yet arrived... I wish there would be a norton commander or similar.

Any good ideas on how to copy more than one file?
How to best proceed to get a complete and working dos install without wiping the hdd?
 
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