cczdvh@clan.nott.ac.uk (David Valentine-Hagart) (04/18/91)
I have 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 ^^^ ps. The address of the manufacturer Victor Technologies, Scotts Valley Calif. ...whither they now ??? eMail....cczdvh@uk.ac.nott.ccc.vme....
tedk@cbnewsc.att.com (ted.g.kekatos) (04/19/91)
In article <1991Apr17.203351.23757@cs.nott.ac.uk> cczdvh@clan.nott.ac.uk (David Valentine-Hagart) writes: |I have 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. The Sirius-1/Victor 9000 (same machine) was a fine machine for its day. It was introduced slightly before the IBM-PC. Therefore it is not PC-compatible. The last version of MS-DOS available was 2.11. There where keyboard for several dozen markets. The disks are not compatible with anything else. The drive is custom and used variable speed motor. The single sided drive formats to about 700K and the double sided formats to 1.4M. The drive uses DS/DD disks. The machine was manufactured by Sirius Tech in California for Victor Business Machines. Victor sold them in the US and Sirius sold them elsewhere. Later, Sirius bought out Victor and changed its American operation to Victor Tech. The whole operation filed chapter 11, bankrupt and re-structure. They later manufactured PC-compatibles in the US and Europe. I have tons of software, tons of manuals, technical manuals, service manuals, two working machines, and have been using mine until about 1/1/91. The software is "old" compared to today's PC software. You may telephone me. 9am to 5pm Central time. Ted G. Kekatos Amateur Radio N9IXE Packet: N9IXE @ WB9MJN.IL.USA.NA INTERNET: tedk@i88.isc.com UUCP: ..!att!ihlpl!tedk 708.979.0804 AT&T Bell Laboratories, Indian Hill, IH-6T-206 2000 North Naperville Road. Naperville, Illinois. 60566 USA
gtoye@hp835.mitek.com (Gene Toye) (04/19/91)
In article <1991Apr17.203351.23757@cs.nott.ac.uk> cczdvh@clan.nott.ac.uk (David Valentine-Hagart) writes: >I have just aquired (gratis) an old & venerable piece of pc technology >namely a Sirius 1 micro. ... > I remember that system fondly. It was the first MS-DOS system I used. In the US it was called the Victor 1000. Although MSDOS, it is NOT IBM PC compatable. There were special versions of programs for it. It had many advantages over the PC in that the character set was soft and could be changed with a included utility. Same for the keyboard key mapping. You could (and some applications did) have custom keyboard and character set mappings for each application you ran. It also had logical hard disk volumes long before IBM thought of anything more than C:. >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). As memory serves, they used a variable speed drive to get more storage from DD medium (a la Macintosh). Not a PC compatable format. Have you noticed that the tone made by the drive changes as it steps through the tracks? >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. I seem to remember that they made it to 2.11 and then the line was discontinued due to Victor going bankrupt (driven out by lack of PC compatability I think). I wish I could help you more but the company I worked for at that time is out of business as well. > >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 > ^^^ >ps. The address of the manufacturer Victor Technologies, Scotts Valley > Calif. ...whither they now ??? > eMail....cczdvh@uk.ac.nott.ccc.vme.... They went bankrupt, then came back selling PC clone hardware, and I think they may have gone bankrupt again. Haven't seen any of their stuff around in a long time. Good luck finding stuff for your machine. -- Gene Toye, Software Engineer gtoye@hp835.mitek.com OpenConnect Systems, 2033 Chennault Drive, Carrollton, TX 75006 214/308-0454 DISCLAIMER: My employer had no idea I was going to say that.