[Coco] My coco hates me :-(

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 16 March 2009, Willard Goosey wrote:
>On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 02:13:40PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>> And where is that pack addressed?  I don't know where mine is ATM because
>> I have moved it from its original address, else I wouldn't have to ask.
>
>Stock, ff68-ff6b
Ok.

>> Or has bit rot played with the /t2 descriptor & crc checking is turned
>> off?
>
>No, I just checked, all kernal modules in memory have good crcs.
>
>> The other possibility that just came to mind is an IRQ clash, you
>> may want to check that, the rs-232 pack should probably have a
>> higher priority setting since the drive has a buffer while the
>> rs-232 pack does not.  And obviously a different address for the IRQ
>> service routine.  irqs, and of course xmode should be able to
>> display this.
>
>Humm.  I'm not sure the IDE board even uses an interrupt.  It doesn't
>show up in the listing from irqs.  After iniz'ing t2, /T2 has priority
>0A.  The only strange thing is that irqs reports the port as being
>FF69.

I believe that is the status register.

>The only weirdnes about the RS-232 pak *I* know of is that I've got a
>smartwatch in its ROM socket.  I'm not using the smartwatch clock
>module, though, just the regular software clock.  So, the only time
>the smartwatch gets poked is when I run a seperate program to read
>it.  Those utilities are from the Glenside Y2K patch set, and as far
>as I know they properly restore the MPI settings?

Unknown to me as I haven't used them.

>Maybe the serial pak's DC-to-DC power converter is dying, and pulling
>enough +5 to flake out everything else on the MPI bus?  And that shows
>up as hard-drive problems because that's the device that gets used
>more than any other?

Maybe, but generally when it starts sucking extra power, its remaining life is 
in minutes.  It is a small package & doesn't take much to cook it.  Long since 
removed from mine (for exactly that reason, I was clearing the smoke from the 
room) and runners to the edge connector to pick up mpi power substituted.

>This seems like a possibility to me because, when I put the rs-232 pak
>back in slot 0, my CoCo couldn't even read its boot disk to boot
>NitrOS-9  until I'd removed the Speech/Sound pak from slot 1...
>Possibly because the floppy control (fd502 shorty, stock) was getting
>starved for power?

Make sense also that the psu in the MPI may be headed south, bad electrolytics 
maybe?  Again, not a problem here, no psu components in my MPI, the whole rig 
is running on an old old AT power supply using those 4 pin flat plug trailer 
connectors, for more than a decade now.  That would starve it, without cooking 
that little aztec supply in the rs-232 pack.  OTOH, it wouldn't hurt to look 
at the labels on that little tin box in the rs-232 pack, for heat 
discoloration evidence.  Covering all the bases. :)

>Willard


-- 
Cheers, Gene
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