Date : Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:10:18 +0100
From : bbcmailinglist@... (Ian Wolstenholme)
Subject: happy bunny
It looks like only 3 of the 4 FileStores have sellotape holding the drive door
flaps on!
The FileStore is quite easy to break into if you don't know any of the
passwords. There is some good advice on Rick Murray's Econet pages,
which is how I got into my E01 back in 2002.
If you open the door flap and then power it on, you will be put into
maintenance mode 0. You need to log in using the FileStore's user
name saved in its CMOS RAM. This will almost certainly be SYST,
unless the teachers changed it. If not, Rick Murray's pages have
some info on resetting the CMOS RAM.
Then you can put a blank floppy in and format it using
*FSFORMAT <drive number (4 or 5)> <disc name eg MASTER)
After that you can go into user mode with *FSMODE U and log
onto the disc, which will have a password file with SYST as the
privileged user.
The E01 has the same hard disc interface as a BBC Micro, in
other words, it's the 1MHz bus, so you can plug any BBC
compatible hard disc unit into the back of the FileStore E01
and use it. Similarly, you can plug an E20 into a Beeb, although
you'll only be able to read the ADFS bit at the beginning.
The E20 has an Acorn Winchester Host Adapter connected straight to a
Rodime SCSI hard disc, there's no Winchester Controller bridge
board, it's one of the few devices that use an Acorn-compatible
SCSI drive.
Best wishes,
Ian
----- Original Message -----
From: Rob [mailto:robert@...]
To: bbc-micro@...
Sent: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:38:43 +0100
Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] happy bunny
2009/7/16 Alex Taylor <zeem.uk@...>:
> 2009/7/15 Michael Foot <mjfoot@...>:
>
>> I take them apart first too, just to check for obvious issues.
>
> after - on dismantling I found a staple on the motherboard :-(
>
I think I'll definitely pull things apart and clean them out - having
got everything inside now - pictures at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40265619 at N06/sets/72157621390994963/
- it's obvious that in the nearly 20 years these have been in storage,
they have suffered a little. The floppy drives have suffered worse- a
few bits of obvious rust on the cases of a couple, and the double
cumana drive has all the paintwork bubbling up through corrosion
underneath, but I'm not worried too much as I've got plenty of drives!
The fix screws on the Model B had rusty washers, but inside it looked
fine, if somewhat dusty. No spiders, yet, surprisingly..
All in all, a nice range of kit and software, plus lots of docs on how
the network was set up (5 nets, pity no bridges came through) and
troubleshooting guides, instructions how to fire up the fileservers,
how to log on and select the menus, etc. A very interesting snapshot
of how econet was in use in the school. Three of the drives still had
floppies still in them! Almost as if they were all swept up and
thrown out while the kids were still sat at them!
I think it's also worth preserving the fileserver data as-is. What
would be the best way of imaging the drives, before I try and fire up
the servers themselves? I've got a couple of scsi cards I can pop in
a PC to connect them up to - would it be as simple as firing up a *nix
system and dd'ing it off, or are we going to get the same issues with
sector sizes we do with Beeb discs?
Cheers,
Rob
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