cczdvh@clan.nott.ac.uk (David Valentine-Hagart) (04/19/91)
From: cczdvh@clan.nott.ac.uk (David Valentine-Hagart)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc,comp.sys
Subject: Sirius 1 pc.
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Organization: Cripps Confusing Centre, University of Nottingham
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I hve just aquired (gratis) an old & venerable piece of pc technology
namely a Sirius 1 micro. From the bootup messages I can tell it
is running MS-DOS 1.25aH !!! with an I/O subsystem version 2.71.
256K of ram and command version 2.01. Other messages tell me the
keyboard is british02 and the char set is british01, it also has
one parrallel port and two 25 pin serial? ports on the back..blah.blah.
So far so good, *but* because it was free (you guessed :-> )
I don't have any docs .
Can anyone give me some info on this machine, most importantly :
1. What is the disk format/size... a DS/DD 48tpi floppy formatted ok
on this machine but could not be read on a modern 360K MS-DOS drive
(oh woe).
2. Assuming I can surmount problem 1. can anyone provide/point me in
the direction of an upgrade to the OS, Dos 2.xx f'rinstance & any
runnable software.
But seriously folks.. any help would be *seriously* appreciated .
David Valentine-Hagart aka. rest home for retired pc's .
Email me on cczdvh@uk.ac.nott.vme
^^^
eMail....cczdvh@uk.ac.nott.ccc.vme....dww@math.fu-berlin.de (Debora Weber-Wulff) (04/19/91)
cczdvh@clan.nott.ac.uk (David Valentine-Hagart) writes: > >1. What is the disk format/size... a DS/DD 48tpi floppy formatted ok > on this machine but could not be read on a modern 360K MS-DOS drive > (oh woe). > Ah yes, the old Sirius! Well, in those days, computer companies thought it was kind of cool to devise their own floppy formats so that you had to buy more of their systems in order to pass software on (Apple, for example). The bright folks down in the Sirius lab came up with a brilliant way to stuff more information on a floppy by *changing the speed* of the disk drive as the head moves! The disk spinned faster when trying to access the outer tracks than it did when accessing the inner ones (or was it the other way around?). When loading a long file that was in an interesting layout on the floppy, it often sounded like the floppy was preparing for takeoff! My hacker friends, proud of their program to read 100 different formats, never really got past reading Sirius directories - too much hassle. So good luck on finding any Sirius software! I have a program in German for doing a doctor's bills, but that probably won't help much! -- Debora Weber-Wulff snail: FU Berlin, ZI Fachdidaktiken, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, W-1000 Berlin 33 email: weberwu@inf.fu-berlin.de, dww@math.fu-berlin.de