Date   : Fri, 15 Mar 1996 14:52:11 GMT
From   : jsr4 <jsr4@...>
Subject: Cambridge workstation- info needed

Hi to all,

Ok so this isn't strictly bbc-micro related, but then the 
Camby Workstation was half B+ and I don't know where else
to post (tried various Acorn newsgroups without much 
luck)

I've got a Cambridge workstation which someone gave me 
for free. The monitor was fried, and it had no floppy
or hard disk either initially, just empty bays. 
I figure *someone* on this list must have such a machine 
or know someone who has. :)

I fixed the monitor, so that's done. Added a floppy drive 
ripped from one of my XT's, that works ok. Hard drive-
threw in a 21Mb MFM (*think* it was a Tandon) as I figured 
these machines probably had 10Mb drives originally and so 
the geometry of the 21Mb was likely to be overkill and not 
result in the workstation destroying it due to wrong 
parameters.

Right, here's where the questions and problems start. I actually
got the machine with 5 panos disks, which is amazing 
considering the state of the machine itself. No manuals. 
Panos disks include the setup disk, Lisp, Fortran, C, and Pascal.
(I think! 4 languages and the setup disk anyway). I gather 
from talking to someone that there should be 7 at least though, 
and I'm probably missing a Panos install disk and a Welcome
disk.

Also, I need to get the hard drive formatted somehow. I was also 
told there should be an ADFS utils disk, with a formatter on it.

The machine also seems to have 4Mb on the 32016 board in two
rows of 16*44256 chips... but I've only ever heard of 1Mb 
boards with 32 chips, and 4Mb boards with 128 chips (!) - plus 
I boot from the Panos setup disk and it only says 1Mb on startup 
(maybe it just needs configuring though?)

So, anyone got one of these machines? Disk sets they could lend
or copy? Manuals that could be photocopied? Be nice to get this
thing running properly...
Anyone know the history of the machine itself?

(While I'm at it, is the internal Adaptec board SCSI with a 
SCSI->MFM converter bolted to it? Hmm.... possibilities... :)

Right, knowing my luck this bounce or just simply die when I
send it... fingers crossed... ;)

cheers!

Jules