Date   : Sun, 12 Feb 2006 18:37:32 +0000
From   : Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...>
Subject: Re: B+ 64k won't respond to keyboard, Econet fitted

Mike wrote:
>> Mike wrote:
>>> Just done the check on an old ACW motherboard I have here.
> Jules wrote
>> You don't have any non-standard 32016 software do you? (Yes, I collect
> Acorn
>> Business Computer stuff too - told you I was interested in oddball Acorns!
> :-)
> 
>  I got two ACW workstation boards froma a guy who'd scrapped them.

Not in Sheffield? The ones that Qudos used to use wound up at a resale place 
there, then vanished (presumed scrapped).

 > Thay were fitted with 'Acorn ACW DFS' ROMs

Hmm, can't remember what my pair have now.  I need to photograph them sometime 
anyway, will dig them out sometime in the next few days.

 > He'd actually wanted the hard discs, though these were Xebec SASI drives,

Not ST506/412 with an Adaptec SASI bridge board? I've never seen an ACW with 
real SCSI drives before.

> I've got the 32016, in a home made case. It's a 1Meg RAM model, and looks 
 > like the one from the Cheese wedge case, not like the other ACW's I've
 > seen on the web.

Interesting. My first ACW is like that (serial num 10) and it's the only one 
I've come across fitted with the 1MB board before now. All the others had the 
much larger 4MB boards.

> I'm worried he may have scrapped an early one, though this was about 10 years
> ago.

Hard to tell really; ACWs are all pretty individual and generally seem to be 
made from whatever Acorn had to hand - I've seen all sorts of differences.

> Has anybody got a 32016 circuit diagram?

Possibly; I've got the ACW service manual but can't remember if the 32016 
schematics are in there. Will have a look.

> I wonder what the spare chip space was for

MMU we think...

It may have purely been intended for the planned XENIX port to the Acorn 
hardware, rather than generally intended for Panos.

 > and if I can upgrade the RAM,there are links, and I think
> there may have been 1Meg Chip that went in the same socket as the 256K,
> (remembering upgrading 286 PC's).

Hmm, the small boards usually take either 256KB or 1MB, and that's what the 
links are for - whilst the larger boards take 1MB or 4MB.

> I beleive that there was some symbolic algebra software, and a few compilers
> bootstrapped in with BCPL. I've heard of an early version of SPICE, compiled
> with FORTRAN, and some finite element stuff. I'll see what I can find out.

I *might* have SPICE on disk for the ACW. I'm pretty sure that Graham Toal 
over in the US has it if not.

> I have got a spare new and unused set of Panos discs, still in the
> shrinkwrap, all part from the Welcome disc

Aha, yep, I found a couple of sets too - and *possibly* the source code to 
Panos (providing disks are readable and haven't been wiped!), which will be 
interesting to see :-)

cheers

Jules