Date   : Mon, 27 Jul 1992 09:04:38 GMT
From   : destroyer!ubc-cs!unixg.ubc.ca!kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca!access.usask.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!ciit85.ciit.nrc.ca!orban@gumby.wisc.edu
Subject: Fun with Osborne hardware

Hi fellow netters,

I have an Osborne IB, with the double density drives. It served me
well, mainly doing word processing on it.
As the built in monitor is too small on it, I hooked up a PC monitor to
it. I have heard about the 80 column conversion, and as I had the 
technical manual to the machine, I designed and built a conversion.
It worked all right, except due to the longer lines the display
slowed down, and the screen was flickering, so I converted it back.
Has anyone tryed that? Was it flickering? Would I need another monitor
with a longer persistance phosphor? I take, you would not speed up 
the machine, mainly because of the disk drives.
I had problems with my disk drives. They would fail after about 2 ~ 3
hours of use. Turning the machine off and letting it cool dawn would help.
First I installed a fan, into the back of the machine, where the handle
is. This helped a bit, but every now and then the disk drives still failed.
Finally, I redesigned the floppy interface, with a single chip PLL
data separator and PC disk drives, doing away with the Osborne data
separator board and drives. Unfortunately it does not boot (nothing
works at first). I would need to write short routines to test the
different functions of the floppy controller/drive. And here comes the
catch: I have a later style monitor program in the Osborne, which does
not have the test mode, where you could dawn-load test programs into the 
RAM and run it. I would need to have an older monitor, or the source
listing on a computer to modify it. 
Anyone has any of those?
Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks, Peter
--
Peter Orban                           | preferred: orban@ciit85.ciit.nrc.ca
National Research Council of Canada   | or: orban@nrcamt.nrc.ca