Re: Sider (Xebec/Datamac SASI) drive and UCSD Pascal 1.1 (Apple Pascal)

[msg <msg@cybertheque.org>]

Thanks Wayne for your help.

> >
> > We need to locate whatever installation software is necessary
> > to permit Apple UCSD Pascal 1.1 to recognize the Pascal
> > volumes on a Sider drive
> 
> If you need the Pascal installation and
> utilities instructions I can get those from an earlier manual.
> 

I would really appreciate getting the earlier Pascal instructions;
there is nothing on the D4 diskettes (from your site) which
describes or controls the installation of Pascal onto the
drive.  One can set up the Pascal partition and format (zero)
the four volumes (with either your D4 software or our earlier
Xebec V2 software but I didn't find a program to 'patch' Pascal 1.1
to permit it to recognize the drive.

The Pascal 'backup' diskette (number 5 in your set) contains Pascal
1.3 versions of SYSTEM.APPLE SYSTEM.PASCAL SYSTEM.LIBRARY and a
SYSTEM.STARTUP which is a backup/restore utility for Sider firmware
versions newer than what we have. This program will run on our
system but declares the firmware too old and shows no Sider on line;
the menu describes vanilla backup and restore operations and doesn't
give a clue as to whether a 'restore' would 'patch' Pascal to
recognize the Sider volumes.

Our hope is to restore a collection of software rescued from a failing
20MB drive onto a new drive (for a high-end graphics workstation ca.
1984);
all files from the old drive's DOS3.3 and four PASCAL volumes were saved
to floppies.  I would like to salvage the Pascal boot loader from the
old
drive; anyone have a sector editor which would work on the Sider? I
tried
connecting the drive to an IBM-PC/SCSI system with a SCSI low level
inspection
program; not having access to our SASI specifications at the moment I
can't
say why but only one-quarter of the total logical blocks on the drive
are
visible to the inspector.

Note that the D4 Sider software refers to SCSI and not SASI drives.

Anyone have any earlier 'Siderware'?

Regards,

Michael Grigoni
Cybertheque Museum

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