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

[John Robertson]

John Robertson wrote:

> 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 :-#)#

>

> ___________

Ah, should review the reorganized 
directories...9100A-016_DiskBackup_PN846295_1988.pdf (opps!).

Now to see if I have the install disc or if it is on the system to start 
with...the only backups on TTL are from 6.0 and 4.x (BACKUP-3.TD0).

If this works I'll post a followup (or if not).

John :-#)#