rrezaian@austral.UUCP (Russell Rezaian) (03/28/91)
I have a few machines made by a company called OSM, located in CA. The machines are ZEuS 3s and a ZEuS 4, these are multi user CP/M systems. They will support most of the MP/M calls, and will even allows background precesses, but work using mutliple CPUs in a networked configuration. The master provides file system services, print spooling and a few other neat features. I am very fond of these computers, but I have a few problems with the ZEuS 3s. The copy of the os (M.U.S.E.) I have for them only supports 306 cyl 6 head 15meg hard drives, these are impossable to find. Further the systems are now starting to get flaky on boot. One will only boot if an 8 inch floppy is attached, the other (The one I had all my imporatant data on) refuses to boot at all now... If anyone out there has ever heard of these machines, PLEASE mail me, if anyone has any information on what happened to the company, or any people who were involved with it PLEASE mail me. I am lloking for newer versions of the OS (I have 4.1 for the 3s and 4.7 or 8 for the 4) or at least versions of the sysgen that will support other hard drives. If anyone has schematics, or patch information for the BIOS, again I would be most thankful... I am looking for anything I can find. These are really nice machines, I want to be able to keep using them if at all possible. Any help would be wonderful! Thanks. -- +-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Russell Rezaian | amiganet.chi.il.us!austral!rrezaian | | P.O. Box 479 | | | Naperville, Il. 60566-0479 | "One is best punished for one's | | USA | Virtues." Nietzsche. | +-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
wilker@gauss.math.purdue.edu (Clarence Wilkerson) (03/29/91)
Sorry, no experience with Zeus MP/M type stuff. However, on the subject of disk drives, any St-506 innerface drives I've used will cheerfully allow you to use them at less than full capacity. So if the number of logical heads is less than or equal to number of physical head, and same for cylinders, almost any other drive should replace the ones you have. For example, Seagate ST251 's have 6 heads, and 820?? cylinders, and are going new for about $250. Unfortunately, the cheaper bargain drives such as ST225 only have four heads and would not plug right in. If the drive controller is SCSI, then the operating system may think it reading a certain track and sector, but actually eventually asks for an absolute sector number, so if the scsi controller has set the correct parameters the operating system would not know what it has physically. Poke around under the hood and see what kind of hard disk controller is there? Clarence
rrezaian@austral.UUCP (Russell Rezaian) (04/03/91)
In article <9046@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> wilker@gauss.math.purdue.edu (Clarence Wilkerson) writes: >Sorry, no experience with Zeus MP/M type stuff. >However, on the subject of disk drives, any St-506 >innerface drives I've used will cheerfully allow you to >use them at less than full capacity. So if the number of >logical heads is less than or equal to number of physical >head, and same for cylinders, almost any other >drive should replace the ones you have. For example, >Seagate ST251 's have 6 heads, and 820?? cylinders, and >are going new for about $250. Unfortunately, the cheaper >bargain drives such as ST225 only have four heads and would >not plug right in. > >If the drive controller is SCSI, then the operating system >may think it reading a certain track and sector, but actually >eventually asks for an absolute sector number, so if the >scsi controller has set the correct parameters the operating >system would not know what it has physically. > >Poke around under the hood and see what kind of hard disk >controller is there? >Clarence > > I did a little checking, the controller is labeld WD1000 (like how many othert hard drive controllers...) the cable connecting it to the system is NOT a standard SCSI, the interface might still use a similar protocol, but I doubt it. We do have the pretty common looking large brown cermic chip at the bottom, but it isn't labeled coherently, there are what looks like a couple o Western Digital PALs floating around, as well as a few other PALs. I have been able to substitute other drives, and that did work, sort of... The only problem s that is it painfull to end up using 15 megs of a 40 meg drive... I would sooner dissassemble the sysgen and re-engineer the bios than waste that much space... Thanks for your ideas though, I might end up doing that anyway... -- +-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+ | Russell Rezaian | amiganet.chi.il.us!austral!rrezaian | | P.O. Box 479 | | | Naperville, Il. 60566-0479 | "One is best punished for one's | | USA | Virtues." Nietzsche. | +-------------------------------+---------------------------------------+