Crashed

A picture of the back of the Cifer computer. The top cover has been removed showing the back of the dead hard disk and the CRT.

A picture of the back of the Cifer power supply. The case is black with a large yellow warning triangle showing dangerous voltages inside. The supply provides 1.1 amps (RMS) at 230v.a.c.

A picture of the low voltage side of the power supply. There are eight terminals for various voltages, ground and two not connected.

The Retro gods giveth, and the Retro gods taketh away.

The Cifer is dead. I suspect the power supply. The Gotek wouldn't turn on, the screen stayed resolutely dark, and the power supply was making unexpected noises (no magic smoke though).

Sad face. 😔

A picture of the Torch Triple X OpenTop desktop system in colour. The kernel window is open and displaying the kernel version as 2.11 with 1 megabyte of memory available.

A picture of a small green circuit board. It has two integrated circuits and three cables emerging from the back. These are video in from the Torch, SCART out to the TV and USB power in which drives the chips on the circuit board.

Another Torch Triple X success. Yay! My heath-robinson SCART lead now works properly.

The picture quality is TERRIBLE but that's likely down to me using two CD4011s to combine HSync and VSync. But it's proper colour!

Once I get some more time (2027 maybe?) I'll try and improve it..
#torchtriplex

A picture of the OpenTop windowing system. A terminal window is open showing a series of commands that created a new node for the attached Gotek drive and then mounted the Gotek successfully.

Oh. That was easy.

I took the unix file from the original Torch XXX system (which is a later version) and copied it to the OpenTop image.

Reboot.

Run 'mknod' as per the pic and the Gotek is just there, ready to mount... Crikey.

#torchtriplex

OK. So, I'm going to be a Grandad.

Which is nice. 😁

A picture of Harry, judging me for enjoying a tasty snack while failing to provide him with a tasty snack.

#FeelGoodFriday

when you accidentally become important at work

So mine is a Torch Triple X which is a 68010 based Unix workstation. It was launched about 1985. This particular one was used in a fire service control centre at some point. 🙂

A picture of the Torch Triple X computer on a desk next to an old HP laptop. Both computers are displaying a terminal window.

The Torch has been granted special permission to enter the dwelling within Crashed Towers...

Those Executels look very cool, I'll give you that!

A picture of a TV on a very messy workbench showing the kernel window of the Torch Triple X as it boots up.

A picture of a TV showing the startup screen of the Torch Triple X as it starts to boot up.

A picture of a TV on a very messy workbench showing the startup screen of the Torch Triple X as it boots up.

Torch Triple X success! Sort of.

Can't get the SCART connection to work - I just get a black screen.

But then I wondered about monochrome composite. And, after a bit of research (not chatGPT) I cobbled together some resistors on my cobbled together Vsync generator and, boom. There you go. 😁

A picture of a small circuit board containing two 14 pin integrated circuits. A grey cable is connected to the right hand side of the board which is the main cable to link to the back of the Torch.

Working on a thing for the Torch. A Hsync and Vsync combiner circuit so I can use a SCART telly.

Of course I don't have any CD4077s with the required XNOR gate and I'm too lazy to order any. But I do have CD4011s which are quad NAND gates. Five NAND gates make an XNOR gate. Yay! 😁

Excellent use of the Soldering Position Utility Device.

A picture of a laptop screen showing a text file in the nano text editor. The text file says that it is only present on a disk image on the Gotek floppy disk emulator.

A picture of the Torch Triple X monitor. It shows a terminal window with the results of a 'cat' command on the file 'sowasi.txt'. The file contents are the same as the text in the Linux terminal, proving that the floppy disk image on the Gotek has been mounted on the Torch.

The Torch TXXX plot thickens. A disk image I have allows the floppy drive to be mounted but it uses SCSI ID 1, LUN 2.

In other words, the Gotek is accessible. So far, read only, but it proves it's possible. Hmmm....

A picture of a laptop screen showing the contents of a text file. It says 'Hello. This is a file created on a Linux machine and copied to a blank floppy image for the Torch Triple X. I had to take a valid floppy image and delete all the files. This was originally the Limpet test disk from Adrian at Binary Dinosaurs.'

A picture of the Torch Triple X screen showing a shell window and the contents of a text file. It says 'Hello. This is a file created on a Linux machine and copied to a blank floppy image for the Torch Triple X. I had to take a valid floppy image and delete all the files. This was originally the Limpet test disk from Adrian at Binary Dinosaurs.'

This is the Linux command to mount the Torch floppy disk images. This works on valid format disks but not cpio archive created disks.

Been toying with the Torch Tx floppy's. Finally accepted that without re-compiling Unix it's unlikely the Gotek will ever work other than for Key Disk duty.

But I got a blank disk image that works great on the BlueSCSI. Had to remove files from an existing image which was mounted in Linux.

Wish I could come along to this one but it's a bit too far from Crashed Mansions (and I'm booked elsewhere this weekend too). 🙁

I shall have to paddle up to the shed and have another go at installing Unix on the Torch to cheer myself up. 😁

A picture of parts of an 8 pin din connector and a SCART connector. The SCART connector has red, green, blue, white and black wires coming out of the back. In the foreground is the end of a grey cable with smaller wires coming from the end of different colours.

Thought I'd have a go at building a SCART lead for the Torch Triple X. Turns out, it outputs separate Vsync and Hsync signals which need to be combined somehow...

CD4077 as a hack perhaps? 🤔

Nothing is ever easy (which is why it's fun). 🙂

One of the few games I bought (rather than being gifted - obviously 🏴‍☠️😛). I'd seen the Amiga version and I wasn't expecting much but I was blown away at what the speccy could manage.

I'm having to restrain Mrs Crashed from putting the decorations up... 🫣

Special shout-out to those of us who couldn't give two squits about halloween.

Here's a picture of a ladybird instead.

PS - Proud to be a grumpy old man.

The most annoying thing I find as I get older, is being on a train and someone is bashing away at their laptop as if they were defusing a nuclear crisis. If you didn't finish it before 5 then it can wait till tomorrow. Switch off FFS and give everyone else (i.e. me) some peace on the journey home.

The Torch unix install script is very primitive.

There's no media checking, it extracts the floppy contents to the hard disk and doesn't check what disk. Once it's copied, it just sits and waits for the next one but does not check which disk it is.

So I think I'm stuck doing it the long way. 🫣

A screenshot of a Linux terminal showing the listing of a set of files from one of the Torch Unix disks.

A screenshot of a Linux terminal showing the text of a file used to format a Torch floppy disk.

So, I managed to work out how to use cpio without destroying my Linux installs. Did it on a virtual machine this time. 😁

That means I can extract all the files from the Torch Unix disks. Yay! They're all basically cpio archives so this doesn't work to get files out of the boot disk or limpet test.

So I tried this and it did pick up the first disk image in the folder but when I removed the SD and reinserted it it still kept looking at the first one.

Is there something else I'd need to do, or could it just be a Torch specific quirk? 🤔

City Snickers

The front of the Torch Triple X with the lid removed. An SD card is stuck into the top of the floppy drive panel and a grey usb stick is inserted underneath into the Gotek.

My SD card arrangement with the extension in the floppy panel at the front, was very useful for this as I didn't have to disturb the BlueSCSI at all.

Those boards are freakin' awesome. It happily accepted me pulling the card out and sticking it back without a whimper. Brilliant pieces of kit. 😁

Take out SD card.

Delete FD20.img

Copy disk 2 with filename FD20.img and reinsert. (Forgot to say that for disk 1 - you need to put the SD card back into the BlueSCSI. Duh.)

Type 'l' and press enter

Repeat for all 15 disks...