OPD: Computer One floppy interface recreation.

[XorA]

It does make you wonder where all this old hardware ended up - someone must have a bit of it stashed away somewhere

Unfortunately it is probably in recycling/landfill as house clearance companies only resell the easy stuff!

[Pr0f]

Very likely this is the case - and the original equipment producers rarely want to give you any information - although Zilog did find me a very old tech article for one of their boards for the EZ80 - so some of them keep good archives.

I am surprised ICL don't have more info stashed away...

[stephen_usher]

I am surprised ICL don't have more info stashed away...

ICL don't exist any more. First STC bought them and then sold the rump they hadn't ruined to Fujitsu decades ago.

[Pr0f]

It was Fujitsu I approached for information on the ICL OPD about 3 years ago, as one of my colleagues used to work for ICL many moons ago and gave me a contact there - but they don't keep archives of anything older than a few years - it seems not many companies do this anymore - so there is a wealth of lost information that will probably never be recovered now.

[NormanDunbar]

There used to be a scan of the "OPD Advanced User Guide" at http://classic-micros.com/iclopd/advancedops/index.html years ago, but it is like a Norwegian Blue Parrot, no more!

I have searched but no joy on finding anything relevant, other than dead links. Even archive.org is lacking in anything. I wish I'd kept the docs I got from ICL when I was a mainframe Tech Support "guru", back in the day.


Cheers,
Norm.

[stephen_usher]

I made up a board...

It's a bit tall...

Promisingly the system sees the card and gives the BAD CAPSULE error, as it should if there's an invalid (or non-existant) ROM.

As suspected, the clock circuit just doesn't work. So, I'm going to have to hack together one based upon one of the reference circuits I can find on-line.

[stephen_usher]

Actually, I'll just buy a crystal oscillator can and use that.

[twellys]

I see Ebay have got 6 x ICL OPD books if that helps?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305321860448

[stephen_usher]

Thanks.
Unfortunately they're just user guides and not the technical documentation, which was classed as a company secret by ICL, so only a poorly scanned copy with pages missing exists,

[RWAP]

Thanks.
Unfortunately they're just user guides and not the technical documentation, which was classed as a company secret by ICL, so only a poorly scanned copy with pages missing exists,

Have you looked at the field notes etc on https://www.rwapsoftware.co.uk/oneperde ... _info.html