Re: Ampro Littleboard

On Sat, 09 Jul 2005 04:10:56 GMT, "R. Steve Walz" <rstevew@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>William Meyer wrote:
>>
>> nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> >
>> > Likely the baud rate switch (or software ) on the terminal is munged
>> > or a broken ground wire in the cable.
>>
>> Perhaps. I need to hook up the terminal to Hyperterminal, and verify
>> that it's still alive, too.
>-----------------
>Just take a paper clip, unbend it, and stick it in the DB25 in pins
>2 and 3 of the terminal port. That will loop it back to itself.
>
>
>> > I fired mine up last night and got an ugly surprize, a 75188 died, no
>> > terminal IO as a result. easy fix.
>------------------------------------------
>It might also be the DART IC. A simple fix as well.
>But more likely it's a baudrate/dataframe error in the terminal setup.
>
>
>> > As to reading the disks on a PC. First you will need a disk program
>> > that knows kaypro format. Also match the disk drive to the media.
>> > By that I mean make sure your using a 48 or 96 tpi drive to match the
>> > media you have. Usual Ampros I've seen have 48tpi (40 track) 5.25
>> > floppies on them, most PCs that have 5.25 floppies are of the later
>> > 96tpi (80 track).
>>
>> Mine are all 96tpi disks. I've tried 22DISK, but so far no luck, and no
>> clue as yet whether I'm fighting bad media.
>-------------------------------------------
>You should first install the Ampro Monitor ROM found on my site:
>
>http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public/Roms/ampro/amprmntrLBZ80-1A.bin
>
>That will let you analyze it.
>
>
>> > I happen to use 3.5" floppies on mine (gives me 781k per drive)
>> > so I can rom DOS a program that allows me to read/write 720k
>> > dos floppies for file transfer.
>>
>> I tried to set up AMPROCPM, but it apparently uses a 16 bit driver that
>> Win2K doesn't like at all, and I don't have a Win9X installation on the
>> machine...
>>
>> Bill
>------------------------------------
>Worry about that later.
>Use a DOS boot floppy with AmproCPM on it:
>
>http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public/Ampro/amprocpm.zip
>
>Ampro's are really easy to fix, not that much to 'em!
>
>-Steve

Hi Steve,

The DART chip is likely ok.

Over the years I've played with a lot of the ampro boards in embdded
systems and they are generally reliable and rare is a MOS device
failure. Clock osc cans, RS232 drivers are frequently the likely
problem with those. For a while AMPRO had some bad sockets
(RN sidewipe I believe) that would get flaky and require a tedious
hunt and remove.

The 75188/75189 (rs232 level converters) are notorious for failure.
Out of 20 some machines I play with frequently that use them I've
replace one or more in all. I have a few tubes of 1488s and 1489s on
hand for just that reason.


Allison
.

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