luis@oakhill.UUCP (Luis Basto) (03/20/86)
With the current trends of inexpensive hard disks it seems quite worthwhile to upgrade an older system. I'd like to find out about the possibility of adding more disk storage to a Kaypro 10. The options are: 1. Remove the present 10Meg disk (after dumping it on lots of floppies of course). Replace it with a 20Meg or larger disk. The physical requirements should be similar. The only changes I envision are modifying the BIOS and re-assembling and re-installing the system. 2. Keep the current 10Meg disk. Add an external 10M, 20M, or whatever size disk with its own enclosure and power supply. Here I'm not sure if there is another port that can connect to an external disk. The disk controller board should be able to control two drives though. The software mods should also be quite similar to 1 above. Questions: 1. Has anybody done such an upgrade? If so, what are your trials and tribulations? 2. Are the schemes above possible or are there other options? 3. Can the disk controller in the 10 address more than 10Meg? The machine's warranty had long expired and neither Kaypro nor dealers are very interested in supporting the 10 anymore so an upgrade such as this should not make the system any less maintainable than it already is. Thanks for any comments or suggestions. Luis Basto
JFORREST@SIMTEL20.ARPA (Jim Forrest) (03/23/86)
ADVENT Products (1-800-821-8778) (1-800-521-7182 in California) offers a Turbo Rom, 20 megabyte hard disk and mounting hardware for slightly over $800 (maybe less by now). The 20 meg mounts internally and your present 10 megabyte plus the 20 megabyte add-in format to 33 megabytes. If your Kaypro 10 has the 50 pin cable running to near the center of the main board, instead of the edge of the board you will need a kit costing 8 or 9 dollars additional. If you have a Legacy clock you will need to run one wire from the Legacy chip to the Turbo Rom chip. Installation is easy, according to those I have talked to that installed. Mine is on order. The Turbo Rom includes ZCPR1, lets you format diskettes with 256 directory entries rather than standard 64, lets you interface directly with several other types of diskettes, including XEROX, Epson, etc., and also does much more, like write to disk 6 times faster, etc. Advent also offers a 10 meg add-in, or a 32 meg replacement. Jim -------