SAM comes out of the loft after 25 years and he only damn well works!

OMG you guys and gals, how amazed am I to find this site!

OK so SAM came down this morning. SCART lead into a TV, expecting a big bang and magic smoke when SAMs PSU is plugged in (nope) - but the old chap only went and fired up first time. He lives with all 512K of RAM! OK so the two (Citizen) drives are not playing yet, but I've two new belts on order, so lets see. Tried to read my MasterDOS and MasterBASIC floppy's in the PC and they don't read - so really glad to see not only the disk images but also the manuals here - how fantastic! Also great to see SC_Assembler here, so I'll be downloading that... 29 years ago SAM, SC and some homebrew hardware was responsible for helping me get my Elec Eng degree through both allowing me to write the assembler for my final year project, but also, using PCGs "The DTP Pack" which they ported to SAM, for letting me write my final year project dissertation in the comfort of my halls of residence room, rather than having to traipse down to the University Computer Centre every freezing cold northern-UK morning to write the thing.

Let's see how SAM goes in the coming days and if I can breathe any life into the floppy drives!

Great work!!!

Awesome

Dan Dooré Wed, 01/22/2020 - 08:43

Good news all round then :)

I also wrote my dissertation in WordMaster for similar reasons :P

Now that it's down you might want to join the Sam Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/20486797963/ which is where most people hang out.

As for the getting everything working, I would seriously consider getting a Gotek rather than trying to mess around with floppies - Colin (https://www.samcoupe.com/) sells a suitable interface to make it plug-and-play.

If you want to get the drives working then check out the Sam Drive section here on belt replacement but you might still have leaky capacitors on them that will thwart you - aforementioned Colin or Mutant Caterpiller/Ian Gledhill can help with that if you're not keen.

Only other thing would be to perform the Reflection fix if not already done and update the Serial Numbers page and add a person page for yourself :-)

Two floppies up and running!

kgallen Wed, 01/22/2020 - 11:32

Two new belts arrived (per the eBay suggestion I found here somewhere... yes, the Drive link you shared above). They are now fitted and both floppy drives are working again! I was able to read my MasterDOS and MasterBASIC disks plus Sam Juggler Demo disk no problem :-) I find that amazing - I thought 25 years in the loft with all of the temperature extremes you see in such places would have corrupted them for sure, but clearly not!

I will look into some of those other mods - also some extra decoupling cap as the screen does jump around when the drives are accessed (using SAM SCART to SCART on the LCD TV).

Thanks for all those links above, I'll have more of a browse around here now that the old fella is working nicely!

Cheers,

Kevin

(ps I've added my machine to the Serial Numbers page - assume a mod has to approve/publish it? Ah ok, I see, I have to change it from Draft to Published... done now!)

Another regular user of PCG…

David Fri, 01/24/2020 - 07:27

Another regular user of PCG DTP here... although I used the Spectrum version + the SD Software utility Specmaker. Great package... even if it didn't really use the best of SAM. Incidentaly is it available at all?

Have a Search: “Trinity” as my second drive. Certainly glad I did as it's very handy for me!

Glad to see your SAM back in action!