[Techtoolslist] Rebuilding a Fluke 9100A with a CF hard drive replacement after both a hard disk and floppy drive failure

[John Robertson]

techtools-steve wrote:

> This is a carry over from the vector list discussion...

>

> I have a Fluke 9100A that died earlier this year.  As bizarre as it 

> sounds, the floppy drive caught fire with one of the components 

> burning all the way through the floppy pcb before I could cut the 

> power.  I pulled the dead floppy from the unit and the 9100 worked for 

> another 2 weeks before the hard drive failed.  I then had not one but 

> two difficult to replace components which needed to be sourced.

>

> I was unable to find an original CANON MD350 floppy drive but came 

> across the info on iobium.com for converting a TEAC FD235GH. 

> Unfortunately, I was also unable to locate a TEAC floppy drive but the 

> technical description and 9100 schematics were sufficient to 

> successfully convert both a SAMSUNG SFD-321B (B=black face place) and 

> SONY MPF920-1 floppy for use in the 9100.  I then located a used 40 MB 

> Quantum SCSI hard drive and a CF to SCSI adapter with a 128 MB card 

> which satisfied all of my storage requirements.   Finally, I pulled 

> the V3.0 roms and installed a fresh set of V6.0 eproms at U46 and U47 

> and modified the jumpers to accommodate the larger eproms.

>

> Several weeks were spent trying to get the V6 software to install 

> which always ended with an "Error 205 loading /dd/rom/LEVEL1" on the 

> SYS2 diskette.  Initially I believed this might have been a 

> comparability issue with the replacement floppy drive I hacked 

> together or the version of TELEDISK I had used to create the floppies 

> so I put the Fluke up on the shelf until I had more info. Now I just 

> read something John posted about V6 images being corrupted so thought 

> it worth pulling the Fluke down and trying to load an earlier version 

> of the Fluke software.

>

> I reformatted the CF "SCSI drive" with the SERVICE 1.4 utility and 

> proceeded to load the V4 software from the

> archive using the 

> /TTL/Test_Equipment/Fluke/9100A/System_DiscsRV4/SYSTEM4_1.zip media.  

> This worked and I can boot V4 from the CF drive successfully but need 

> to load the programmer and UUT disks.

>

> The SYSTEM4_1.zip file did not contain any disk images beyond the 

> basic SYS1, SYS2, USR1 and USR2 so I'm at a loss to what I should 

> download and install next.  Is there a specific version of the 

> programmer and UUT images I must match or are these optional disks 

> interchangeable between software versions?  A pointer to the next 

> appropriate image files would be greatly appreciated!

>

>

Has anyone had success adding a second SCSI drive to the base 9100A/FT 
system? I can't seem to find a reference in the manual about this, 
although it does talk about using the SCSI buss to add additional 
storage, etc. to the machine.

Trying to see if I can copy the SCSI 6.1 drive directly to CF using the 
ACARD interface plugged into the rear of my 9100A/FT (68030).

Thanks,

John :-#)#