kit posting, what I'm working on

[Brian D. Botton]

Hello Netlanders,

  I've been away since my last postings, around Nov 6th, so I decided it was
time to send them out again.  I was very surprised at what had been going on
over the last 5+ weeks.  I can only hope it will die quickly.

  I have two machines at home, one mine, the other borrowed from work.  Last
April my machine started having memory problems in low memory, i.e., the area
of memory that the diagnostic disk doesn't check because it that's where it
get loaded.  The technical reference manual talks about a memory diagnostic
ROM as well as a monitor ROM.  If anyone out there has either one of these,
please let me know, I'd like to make a copy of them.
  Finally I've decided I need to get my machine going, I can't keep a borrowed
machine forever.  So what I plan on doing is writing a low memory diagnostic
routine to place in ROM.  What I plan on doing is using a terminal hooked up
to the RS-232C port for I/O, which is a lot easier to do then bit twiddle the
screen to create characters.  It also takes a lot less code to implement.
  What I've been thinking of doing is this, the tech manual describes the
boot process fairly detailed, so I was thinking of combining the two into one
ROM.  After a reset/power on, the ROM would wait 5 seconds for any key to be 
pressed.  If a key is pressed, the diagnostics would be run with I/O to a
terminal, otherwise the normal boot would progress.  The diagnostics would
allow exhaustive testing of the memory management unit and the bottom 256k of
RAM.  The rest of the RAM and system would be checked with the normal
diagnostics disk.  The purpose of the ROM diagnostics is to make sure you can
trust the diagnostics loaded from floppy, which I cannot.
  I am looking for suggestions for addition to the ROM.  As it sits now, the
ROM uses only ~4k out of a possible 32k.  What would you like to see?  Is it
worth the trouble to put a monitor program in so you can hack at the lowest
level?  How about being able to tell the system to boot from a different
disk then drive 0?  I'm wide open for suggestions, and possibly some help.
  Of course it goes without saying that the source for the ROM will be posted,
even if I don't go any further them the memory tests.  And I'll offer the
programmed ROMs for sale at a fair price.  Please let me know what you think
and want/need in such a ROM.

  Now for the rest of the kit news.  I am in the process of putting together
another set of vidpal kits.  All the parts are in stock, except the PC boards.
My vendor shipped them to me last week, but UPS seems to have lost them, so
I'll be getting a new shipment in a few days.  I have two kit orders that have
been waiting for the parts to arrive and I'll ship as soon as I can, hopefully
by Saturday.  What follows you may have seen before, if you haven't, then it
should answer your questions.  If there are any, please feel free to e-mail
to me.  BTW, if you aren't running Mgr and do program developement, you are
doing things the hard way.  The little time it takes to get Mgr up and running
is well worth it.  And best of all, you can still us UA, either seperately or
from within an Mgr window.

Hope to hear from you,
Brian

laidbak!botton or
laidbak!bilbo!brian


******************************************************************************

  This is my standard blurb covering the kits I am selling.  If you have a
question that isn't covered by this blurb, feel free to send me e-mail.  I
will try to respond as quickly as possible, but my new wife and I are still
very busy, ;-).

VIDPAL KIT - $25
  This kit contains a PC board, a programmed PAL, a capacitor, a socket, 66
pin sockets, ~1 inch of wire wrap wire, and complete instructions.
  What this kit does is it allows you to access the video ram of you 3B1/7300
directly from any user process.  The significance of this is you can now write
your own window manager with a lot less hassle.  The reason I came up with this
kit was because Brad Bosch and I wanted to run Mgr on our 3B1's and we didn't
want to write a new wind.o for Mgr.
  Vidpal is a little daughter board that is placed between the 68010 and the
mother board which intercepts and modifies the supervisor signal.  The PAL
checks to see if you are addressing the video ram, and if you are, the
supervisor signal is forced active.  This means the memory management PAL will
not cause a bus error because it thinks your are in kernel mode.  The vidpal
PAL makes sure that ONLY the video ram is made accessible, otherwise you would
loose all hardware protection.
  One of my design goals was there had to be NO modifications to the mother
board, and the daughter board allows this.  The kit requires a modest amount
of soldering skill and for your machine to be mostly disassembled.  Most
people will find that it isn't difficult to assemble and install.

SECOND HALF OF VIDPAL KIT - $15
  I used to sell only part of the vidpal kit for $10.  For those people who
purchased the partial kit, I have what I call the second half of the kit
available.  This kit includes all the rest of the components that you had to
order on your own to complete the partial kit.  THIS KIT IS ONLY FOR THOSE
OF YOU WHO ORDERED PARTIAL KITS, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.  If you don't have
a vidpal kit and would like one, order the full kit mentioned above.

P5.1 UPGRADE KIT - $6
  I am selling copies of the Convergent P5.1 upgrade kit.  This kit includes
a programmed PAL, a high quality socket, a capacitor, and instructions which
include several diagrams.  You will have to provide about 10 feet of wire wrap
wire and soldering tools.
  The P5.1 upgrade allows you to use hard disk drives, such as the Seagate
ST-4096, that have more than 8 heads.  To get more then 1025 cylinders you will
need a WD2010x chip, which I am NOT selling.  There have been several
discussions on the net about this topic, so I will refer you there.
  This kit is more difficult to install then the vidpal kit, but it is not out
of the reach of most people.  You will have to take your machine almost
completely apart, but it isn't hard to do.  There ARE some alternatives to
this kit.  ICUS Software (Lenny and GIL) sells instructions on making a board
that allows two hard disk drives to be accessed by your computer while giving
you more then 8 heads.  While the P5.1 kit doesn't interfere, it is a no-op as
far as their kit is concerned.  Also, John Bly Milton has a board that will let
you access 4 hard disk drives with more than 8 heads and 2 floppy disk drives.
>From what I understand, you will need to do most of the P5.1 upgrade, but if
you are going to use his board, don't bother getting the P5.1 kit from me.

EXTENDED DIAGNOSTICS DISK - $1 or $2
  If you are going to format a hard disk drive with more then 8 heads and/or
more then 1024 cylinders, you need to get a copy of the extended diagnostics
floppy disk.  I am providing copies of this disk for a modest fee.

MGR - $0
  Mgr is a great little window manager that is relatively easy to install and
works quite well.  As many of you know, it is still in beta, but don't let that
stop you.  It really is quite solid and is beta mainly because the device
drivers need to have their install scripts cleaned up, along with some minor
details.  If you like having windows similar to what you have on a Sun, this is
what you are looking for.
  There are a couple of things you should know about this package.  First, it
uses the public domain pseudo ttys package that has been posted to the net, so
if you have pseudo ttys from elsewhere, ethernet board and starlan?, you will
need to do a little reconfiguring; Brad does provide the necessary guidelines.
Also, Mgr will not compile with gcc, at least not the version that Brad has,
but works just fine with the stock cc.  Both of us have 3.51/3.51m systems so
we cannot test Mgr with anything earlier.  As long as you have a flexnames
compiler FROM AT&T you shouldn't have any problems.
  To get a copy of Mgr, use anonymous ftp to max.physics.sunysb.edu,
129.49.21.100.  You need only the main file, the patch files are for people
with earlier releases.

ORDERING INFO
  The kits cost the following:

	vidpal				$25
	second half of vidpal		$15
	P5.1				$6
	extended diagnostics disk	$1 with P5.1 or vidpal kit
					$2 if ordered alone

  Send a mailing label and a check in US funds to my NEW ADDRESS:

	Brian D. Botton
	1748 Paddington Ave.
	Naperville, IL. 60563-2028

--
     ...     ___	     ***
   _][_n_n___i_i ________  *******		Brian D. Botton
  (____________I_I______I_I_______I		laidbak!botton  or
  /ooOOOO OOOOoo  oo oooo  oo   oo		laidbak!bilbo!brian