lauren@Rand-Unix (12/13/82)
Greetings. Well gang, the venerable old hardware on which I do all MARC development has finally undergone a major breakdown. It did this to me once before (over a year ago) but spontaneously recovered before I could track down the cause. This time I suspect I'm not going to be so "lucky". The primary symptom is that the Morrow M10 hard disk is not operating properly, but I have strong reasons to believe that something(s) much more fundamental are actually amiss. I am trying to avoid a full reformat of the M10 if at all possible. There is no money to buy new equipment. I no longer have access to a fast scope, and am getting close to burning out on trying to fix this monster by myself. MARC development has stopped (extremely close to distribution) until the hardware is back in a reasonable state -- it is impossible for me to continue work on my floppies, since MANY complex assemblies and compilations are involved -- they would simply be far too time consuming on floppies (the MARC source is highly modular, and I'm paying for that now!) I'm not so sure I trust the floppies right now, either. The (basic) hardware involved is: IMSAI mainframe (the one with all the pretty lights) 2 OLD microbyte 32K static memory boards (fry an egg on the heat sinks) Ithica Audio Z-80 (4Mhz) CPU Tarbell single-density disk controller (Persci 270 drives) Morrow M10 hard disk and controller Misc. I/O boards If there's anybody in the L.A. area who thinks they have a prayer of dealing with this equipment, and would care to (quickly!) help me get the system fully operational again, I would VERY MUCH appreciate it if you'd get in touch with me as soon as possible. Please contact me by netmail or at Vortex on (213) 645-7200. A free copy of the distributed MARC, and other goodies, to anyone who can help me with this problem! Thanks much. --Lauren--