Tom - Thanks for jogging my memory. I tried to send you some $$ and you refused.... Enough time had passed my memory was fuzzy :S

If I put the RW rom back in the disk it does seem to function, however the device name is all ?? ?? ?? ?? blocks. It also has the wrong number of blocks, more than 2600, so the BLU read write test goes past the end of the disk.

I haven’t tried formatting it in the office system, I’ll see what happens.

On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 6:22 AM Tom Stepleton <stepleton@gmail.com> wrote:

just for the record, I didn't sell anybody a Z8 :-)

I sent one to Jason for free, with the idea that the Lisa community ought to have a few of these things floating around, shared among us as needed.

I still have several more Z8s and will ship to others who require them, but in general I hope we might try to share unusual parts that we use for diagnostics and service from time to time. I guess they aren't making any more of them. You can see a similar thing in that excellent YouTube video series where curiousmarc et al. repair a Xerox Alto---they borrow components from the Living Computer Museum in Seattle to help guide their repair.

Call me silly or crazy but I think we can do it...

(and well, okay, maybe they still make Z8s :-)

--Tom

On Sun, Apr 1, 2018 at 5:45 PM, compu_85 <perkins.jason@gmail.com> wrote:
Tom was kind enough to sell me one of the piggyback Z8 chips, and I tracked down some 4k EPROMs. Time for some adventures with Profile formatting!

Here's what I've got:
Lisa 2/5, 2/10, 2 port card
BLU 0.90
Piggyback 4k Z8, M2732A EPROMs
TL866A USB programmer
2x working 5M Profile assys
1x working 10M Profile assy
1x non working Profile assy (used with an Apple ///, was able to extract an image, has many bad sectors)
1x PC Seagate ST506 mechanism (unknown condition, but quiet bearings. An early mechanism, from 1982)
Here's what I tried:
Wrote the 2k 5mb profile formatting .BIN file from Patrick's archive(found here: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/apple/disk/profile/firmware/ ) to the EPROM. I copied all the data from x0000 to x07FF and pasted it at x0800, which filled to x0FFF
Installed on the socketed Z8. Upon power up the head seeks to track 0
Attempted low level format in BLU. The LLF proceeds normally.
After removing the jumper when prompted, the spare table scan starts.
When the spare scan gets to the last track, it bombs out with status 00000003, 00000002, or 00000001.
Using the built in port on the 2/5 and a port on the 2 port card in the 2/5 didn't make a change
Swapping the disk mechanism into a known working 5M Profile didn't make a change
Using the PC disk mechanism - which had the same part number stepper motor as the Apple disk mechanism - gave the same results
Moving the track 0 sensor would make the status error come up as 00000001 more frequently. I elongated the mounting holes for the sensor and moved it a fair bit in both directions.
For giggles I tried the 10mb formatter software with the 5mb disk mechanism. Of course the stepper hits the end stop before it finishes formatting. BLU did give a counter for the track it was working on, which it didn't do with the 5mb firmware.
Any suggestions for what I should try next? I suppose it's possible I have 2 bad 506 mechanisms, but I'm reluctant to try formatting one of the working profile 506s and have that fail too.

I wonder if it's time to build a UsbWidEx...

Thanks!

-Jason

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