Adventures with an Amstrad PC1512 - The Display adapter

The display adapter is CGA but has access to a pallette of 16 colours but software has to be written to access it. The only software I have found that will work with it is GEM although not the version shipped with the PC1512. The driver can be found here on John Elliots site.

Adventures with an Amstrad PC1512 - The Monitor

The monitor is CGA only although it can display the extra 16 colours provided by the display adapter (more on that another time). It has non-standard connectors (good old Amstrad) and will only work with a PC1512 and it is impossible to connect any other type of monitor to it so you're stuck with it (the PC1640 is upgradeable - sort of).

Adventures with an Amstrad PC1512 - The Mouse

It seems that the mouse on the PC1512 is non-standard. The port it is connected to is NOT a serial port (despite looking like one) and only the Amstrad mouse can be used. It seems compatible with most programs except DOSSHELL and Windows 3.0 (yes, you can run Windows 3.0 but more on that later) both by MS. However, all is not lost as a serial mouse can be plugged into the serial port at the back (with a 25 pin to 9 pin converter) and run with an MS driver. However, the only mouse I have found that will work (PS/2 mice with 9 pin converters DON'T work) has a switch underneath marked MS/PC and works fine in MS mode (this is the same mouse I use with an Amstrad PCW16 strangely) with both DOSSHELL and Windows 3.0 (watch this space).

Adventures with an Amstrad PC1512

I've just got hold of an Amstrad PC1512 (been after one for ages) and I'll be playing with it over the coming weeks so watch out for more info on this blog soon...

Problems Reading MSDOS disks on an Amiga A1200

I was having difficulty reading DOS disks on an Amiga A1200. I could get it to mount the disk but not read it. After much head scratching I discovered the following file was missing in the L directory:-

CrossDOSFileSystem

It seems that version 3.1 of AmigaOS doesn't have this file. However, all is not lost as version 3.0 does. Transferring from the Workbench disk of version 3.0 (show All files first) to my HD cured the problem. I have no idea if this is just my (genuine) copy of 3.1 has this problem. Moral of the story is hold on to your version 3.0 disks, they may come in handy...

AOL on PCLinuxOS

Still having problems with the eciadsl driver for the Voyager 105 modem I use to access AOL broadband. It generally hangs first time Linux is booted with the message:-

[EciAdsl 4/5] Connecting to provider...

If CTRL-C is pressed and the driver restarted then it starts fine. The problems seems to be that ppp (or pppd) cannot use channel zero and subsequent restarts uses another channel number usually greater than zero. There have been several fixes published on the web but none of them seem to help. I have thus come up with a fix of my own although it isn't very pretty it does seem to work. So login as root and find the following file:-

rc.local

and add the line:-

eciadsl-start

and save it. Log back in as your normal user name then open your home folder and show all hidden files. Go into the .kde/autostart folder and create a shell script as follows:-

#!/bin/sh

konsole -e /usr/bin/eciadsl-stop
konsole -e /usr/bin/eciadsl-start

and save it. Give it permission to execute. Reboot Linux.

This has the effect of attempting to start the eciadsl driver once Linux has booted which will fail. When KDE loads the script will auto start, close the driver and restart it. This should have the effect of starting the driver with a channel number greater than zero. It isn't a perfect solution but it does seem to work. Hopefully an upgrade to ppp or pppd in the not too distant future will make this unnecessary.

Website/s now gone

Just a quick note to say that links on this blog to my websites will now no longer work as the companies I use have both decided to stop providing web space services. Great! I am thinking of using other ways of getting content onto the web such as blogs (like this one), social networking sites or possibly Youtube. Oh well...such is life.