sparkdrummer Posted December 14, 2015 Share Posted December 14, 2015 Thanks to an unbelievable effort by Marc Hull My Myarc MPES/50 is a fully functional unit. I purchased this thing years ago from Ebay and it has never worked. I checked some stuff periodically through the years but with my meager skills never had any success getting it working. Shipped to Marc and he fixed it. Marc felt that it probably suffered a lightning strike or some similar bad event. From what he told me it would be easier to state what chips were okay than which ones were toast. The PAL chips weren't hurt, Thank goodness. This gizmo is kinda weird, It will only format a disk to 1280 sectors (DS/DD). This was TI's "standard" as I understand it and I guess at the time Myarc followed suit. Thanks again Marc!!!!! 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+arcadeshopper Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 that thing is HUGE does it plug directly into the console? awesome you got it working! Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfernalKeith Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 Might be the first actual photo of one of those I've seen outside a drawing in a Myarc ad. Awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Hatter Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 Marc does some nice work. He fixed up a Horizon 256k RAMdisk for me a couple years ago. Probably more solid now than when it was originally manufactured. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shift838 Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 yes Marc knows quite a bit! He also helped me on one of my HRD to help me identify the issue. Which was just a simple resistor issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 My boys have one of these attached to their play machine. Normally they attach directly to the console, but the one my boys are using was modified at some time before I got it to add a four foot flex cable between the two. That cable is a bit unstable, so I will probably remove it now that I have found a good source of the proper 44-pin connectors. I have another one that wasn't modified, so I can verify that there are at least three of these in the wild when counting the one that started this thread (and I provided Marc some ID data on some of the chips that were unidentifiable in that one too). I'm really glad he was able to get it working! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willsy Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 Nice job Marc! Where the hell are ya? We miss ya dude! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted December 15, 2015 Author Share Posted December 15, 2015 Thanks for the help to Marc, Ksarul! Another funky thing - I did a dsrscan of this thing and all that shows is the rs232. No floppy controller at 1100 as expected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickyDean Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 DSC00456.JPG Thanks to an unbelievable effort by Marc Hull My Myarc MPES/50 is a fully functional unit. I purchased this thing years ago from Ebay and it has never worked. I checked some stuff periodically through the years but with my meager skills never had any success getting it working. Shipped to Marc and he fixed it. Marc felt that it probably suffered a lightning strike or some similar bad event. From what he told me it would be easier to state what chips were okay than which ones were toast. The PAL chips weren't hurt, Thank goodness. This gizmo is kinda weird, It will only format a disk to 1280 sectors (DS/DD). This was TI's "standard" as I understand it and I guess at the time Myarc followed suit. Thanks again Marc!!!!! Yeh, I felt the same way when I got one of my HFDC's functional the night before last. Bring it on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 Interesting arrangement on the other side too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 Thanks for the help to Marc, Ksarul! Another funky thing - I did a dsrscan of this thing and all that shows is the rs232. No floppy controller at 1100 as expected. I don't think the floppy resides at $1100 on the MPES although I'm not positive. MM could not find anything @ $1100. In fact I couldn't latch the CRU bits there. I think everything resides at the RS232 address. Kind of a combined I-O address. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted December 15, 2015 Share Posted December 15, 2015 It was probably where they started with the concept of the Master DSR that they later used in the Geneve. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted December 16, 2015 Share Posted December 16, 2015 Nice job Marc! Where the hell are ya? We miss ya dude! Gracias k. Keeping my head down and avoiding trouble for a change . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
budz2355 Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Wow I never knew this existed! I knew about corcomps version of the peb, but never this.... That is awesome!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 I was messing around while testing a new XB 2.7 Suite cartridge this weekend and on a lark, loaded a few programs that I hadn't tested much before. It was either the CorComp Diagnostic or Fred Kaal's DM2000, but one of those had an option to scan the DSR's for a list of active device names at each of the CRU addresses present. A whole slew of devices shows up at the proper address for the RS-232, so our conjecture that this thing used a master DSR is definitely confirmed. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 . Fred´s DU2K (Disk-Utility2000) has this feature, I used it on all cards and hardware I have, to read out (& document) the DSR´s / CALLs (in a list ) a really great tool, download the latest version here: http://www.ti99-geek.nl/ E/A-5-Start: Press 1: Press 3: Example: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted January 5, 2016 Author Share Posted January 5, 2016 I have found that some disk usage software will not work properly with it or not at all. Rapid copy, Advanced diagnostics and even Myarcs own DMIII. The corcomp diagnostics will test memory but it finds no disk system when asked. Pretty screwy huh? It's still a pretty neat system though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted January 5, 2016 Share Posted January 5, 2016 Assuming that tools like Diag or RapidCopy are programmed very "close" to DSRs, this sounds somehow "normal", especially regarding the DSR´s thing (better: the Not-DSRs) Can you check the DSRs with the DU2K-Util from Fred ? Maybe this is somehow interesting..... (but I think this won´t show up more, but who knows....) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted January 5, 2016 Author Share Posted January 5, 2016 I'm pretty certain that Ksarul probably used Fred's DU2K when he checked the dsr's as noted above. I don't think the corcomp diagnostics has that feature. I used dsrscan when I checked my unit and all that showed up was the rs232. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Schmitzi Posted January 5, 2016 Share Posted January 5, 2016 yeah, and there is a new version of DU2K..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickyDean Posted January 5, 2016 Share Posted January 5, 2016 I know that "it's alive!" feeling, This New Year's eve as I was setting on the couch testing my Geneve, that still has the swan on the screen(eprom .98, I believe)15 minutes before the new year. I found that back in the 90's, sometime before I packed it away, that one of the dram chips had been plugged in with two legs touching and so when I found that and took it into my computer room, I found a living breathing machine, ready to be used and upgraded. Yep, a wonderful feeling. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Ksarul Posted January 5, 2016 Share Posted January 5, 2016 It was DU2K I used--and the result was very interesting. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sparkdrummer Posted January 5, 2016 Author Share Posted January 5, 2016 Speaking of Gennys, I've got to find the time to hook one of mine up again. They both had made the trip to Cecure Electronics back in the day (probably worked on by Tim) and some mods were made but I don't remember what. I'll have to dig them out of their boxes and check em out. I remember they have a sticker on the outside clamshell stating what was done. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RickyDean Posted January 5, 2016 Share Posted January 5, 2016 It was DU2K I used--and the result was very interesting. . . Sounds like screenshot time. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.