[Coco] (no subject)

[Bill Pierce]

Here's one for the techies...
 I just aquired a complete Coco 3 system as below:
Coco 3
Disto 2 meg board
AT Keyboard interface
MPI
J&M No-Halt controller
2 x 5 1/4 floppies w/case & PS
1 3 1/2 floppie w/case & PS
Burke & Burke XT HD 2 x 20 meg  - no ROM, no Hyper I/O software for RSDOS
CM-8 monitor
tons of other stuff

Here's the problem... When I first hooked up the system, everything seemed to work. I could boot OS9 from a floppy
I couldn't seem to find the original floppy to boot the HD.
I called the original owner to ask about the boot disk and he didn't seem to remember what he did with it but insisted it was in the disks
I started to try booting all the disks I recieved and before I could get through about 7 or 8, the floppy drive quit reading
It does a lot of "head banging" but ends in I/O Error
I tried switching the 2 -  5 1/4 drives and changed the jumpers. the 2nd drive did the same.
This was tried with & without the MPI and with the J&M pak as well as an FD-502 controller. All same results.

At this same time, the "i" key quit working. All other keys seem to work fine, just the "i"
The AT Keyboard interface has a sort of boot up sequence it runs on power-up, gives the choice of 
booting OS9 Lv 1, OS9 Lv 2, exit to Basic, and a couple of others.
This function runs it's course and it tries to boot but will not read the OS9 boot disk.
Same results when exiting to Basic and typing DOS. Also will not read an RSDOS disk

Could these 2 problems be related or are they seperate problems?

Could I correct the "i" problem by pulling the AT interface? If so, could I just "clip the 2 wires connected to the motherboard
and re-insert the old Coco keyboard.
The only wires connected from the interface are 1 wire going somewhere in the top left hand side (near PS) under the Disto board, the other is soldered to the last resister in the top right hand side of the board. There is also a ground wire soldered to the the ground plane. Would it be OK to just clip the wires leaving length for future reconnection?

Any ideas?  I have 2 old coco3s I am willing to trash if needed.

Thanx

Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Bill Pierce
ooogalapasooo at aol.com