Acorn haul - Master 512, Win 120 Hard Drive, Co-Proc

[Higgy]

I managed to get hold of a nice Acorn haul: BBC Master 512 (has Intel 80186 proc add-on), Winchester 120 with 20mb! hard drive, ANC06 Co-processor, Dual floppy drive and CUB 1451 monitor.

Master 512:

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Acorn_3.jpg

I went to change the RIFA caps in the PSU but this one (looked brand new) did not have any, so I just changed the start-up (? I've heard it referred to as this) 200uF cap.
Master seems to work well and the Intel Co-Proc is also detected. I just happened to change some batteries on our garage door, so I took out the ancient Duracells and fitted the old garage door 3.6v battery (with original diode+resistor) for the battery back-up.

Winchester 120 - 20mb hard drive + ANC06

Acorn_1.jpg

The Winchester is a beast, sounds great with mechanical spinny index thing doing something. I will have to post an internal pic if anyone is interested. And it powered up! Well until Snap, Crackle & Pop + nasty smell after a minute of so. I took it apart and the controller boards looked ok, so stripped the PSU. There are 3 RIFA caps fitted and the larger cap went BANG. The PSU has 2x MOLEX HD connectors (god they must be an old spec!) and 5V on spade connectors. I used the RIFA from the Master and got correct voltages out, so I screwed it back together and connected it to the Master. After reading up what to do I managed to read the HD and navigate to some folders, seems like I need the ANC06 connected and then run Pandora/Panos OS to run what is on the HD.

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ANC06 - I've not powered this on, after the Winchester RIFA incident I took apart the PSU and can see 2 x RIFA's. So not going to risk it. But as mentioned above, I think I need this to run the HD programs. The PSU just outputs 5V so I might be able to rig up another PSU for testing.

CUB 1541 - came with no leads. 2 6-PIN DIN plugs turned up today, so I will see if I have time to make up a Video lead (I've been using my BBC-SCART cable) I think the CUB has an internal jumper for RGB as Analogue or TLL so I might investigate that then I can make a Female SCART-6 PIN DIN and plug my other stuff into it.

Must have been quite an expensive set-up back in the day.

[rubber_jonnie]

Dude, that is a really nice haul!

[stephen_usher]

Indeed! I've never seen an Acorn BBC Winchester interface before.

[Higgy]

Got all the power supplies sorted now.
The ANC06 works and 1Mb memory detected. So that is all hardware working.
A friend came over and we were trying to run the software on the Harddrive. The Harddrive has a !Panos dir for Pandora OS but we could not get anything to run.
My hope was that once Pandora OS booted it would be obvious what to run off the Harddrive. But there might have been disks involved, but I am never going to know.

[JezC]

Probably worth asking over on the stardot forum if you've not already - other than knowing this is very similar to the Nat Semi 32016 second processor that's about my limit!

[rubber_jonnie]

Got all the power supplies sorted now.
The ANC06 works and 1Mb memory detected. So that is all hardware working.
A friend came over and we were trying to run the software on the Harddrive. The Harddrive has a !Panos dir for Pandora OS but we could not get anything to run.
My hope was that once Pandora OS booted it would be obvious what to run off the Harddrive. But there might have been disks involved, but I am never going to know.

I'd agree with @JezC and suggest you get over to stardot if you've not already done so. Very helpful pace.