paul@athertn.Atherton.COM (Paul Sander) (10/17/89)
Hi all,
I recently bought a Sider D2 and installed it in my ][ Plus. But there seems
to be some sort of contention problem.
The disk would not format properly (i.e. the format would run for 4 minutes,
then hang) until I removed all of my other cards that had a ROM that switched
into the $C800-CFFF address space. When I re-installed my SmartTerm, I find
that when I try to boot from the Sider, the SmartTerm does not really start
up, but it does switch to 80-column mode, and part of what appears to be a
memory image of an Applesoft program appears on the top three lines of my
screen. As the SmartTerm has switched to 80-column mode, I cannot see the
SiderWare main menu that is displayed on the 40-column screen.
The last time I did anything with it, I tried just powering everything up and
letting it sit for a while to see what happens. Here is what happened:
1) Booting ProDOS from Sider and letting it sit for a while, the Disk ][
drive motor turned on and stayed on. My prefix was set to /HARD1/.
2) Booting ProDOS from floppy and letting it sit for a long time did not
exhibit the problem above. My prefix was set to /USERS.DISK/.
3) Booting ProDOS from floppy and setting my prefix to /HARD1/ and letting
it sit for a while, the floppy drive motor turned on again.
Sounds crazy, doesn't it? By the way, the controller and the drive are
installed according to the instruction manual.
Does anyone know what the problem might be? Some ideas that occurred to me
are: a) The Sider ROM searches for the Sider controller by looking for
a signature in the IO space (not likely); b) there is a timing problem that
is causing other cards to be erroneously enabled (I know that the Apple //e
timing is subtly different from the ][ Plus); c) as there have been a number
of revisions to the Sider, there is a 65C02 instruction buried deep somewhere
that is doing something wrong.
I called the manufacturer's (First Class Peripherals) tech support number in
Carson City, and got a Mother Bell referral to their sales office number in
Santa Clara. The Santa Clara receptionist referred me to another number in
the Chicago area. This did not instill confidence in this company. I
called the Chicago number and talked to someone there, and he had never heard
of such a problem, but said he'd talk to guy who wrote the software and get
back to me.
Has anyone had similar experience, or have any insight into this problem?
Any help would be appreciated. As I intend to follow this up, any insight
will be helpful since this seems like a really strange problem.
Many thanks in advance...
--
Paul Sander (408) 734-9822 | If you must describe both quantity and
paul@Atherton.COM | quality of someone else's code, try
{decwrl,pyramid,sun}!athertn!paul | "awful lot."tribby@hpindwa.HP.COM (David Tribby) (10/17/89)
/ paul@athertn.Atherton.COM (Paul Sander) / 10:42 pm Oct 16, 1989 / > > I recently bought a Sider D2 and installed it in my ][ Plus. But there seems > to be some sort of contention problem. > Are you sure your ][+ has a late enough revision to be compatible with the Sider? When I called FCP about buying a Sider back in '85, they wouldn't sell me one because my '81 ][+ was not new enough. Make sure your mother board revision is late enough to support the Sider. --Dave Tribby - - - - - ARPA: tribby%hpda@hplabs.HP.COM UUCP: hplabs!hpda!tribby
paul@athertn.Atherton.COM (Paul Sander) (10/23/89)
In article <36410012@hpindwa.HP.COM>, tribby@hpindwa.HP.COM (David Tribby) writes: > / paul@athertn.Atherton.COM (Paul Sander) / 10:42 pm Oct 16, 1989 / > > > > I recently bought a Sider D2 and installed it in my ][ Plus. But there seems > > to be some sort of contention problem. > > > Are you sure your ][+ has a late enough revision to be compatible with the > Sider? When I called FCP about buying a Sider back in '85, they wouldn't sell > me one because my '81 ][+ was not new enough. Make sure your mother board > revision is late enough to support the Sider. I bought my ][ Plus in 1980, but the motherboard is a Rev 7, which is the latest revision I know of before the //e came out. In any case, the person who sold me the drive knew that I had a ][ Plus, and he said that it should work fine. The guy at tech support also made no comment like "well, of course it doesn't work with ][ Plus" so I don't suspect the motherboard as much as the controller. -- Paul Sander (408) 734-9822 | If you must describe both quantity and paul@Atherton.COM | quality of someone else's code, try {decwrl,pyramid,sun}!athertn!paul | "awful lot."