JC8080
Well-known member
I have actually had this machine for a couple years, the conquest is the controller board I just picked up from eBay that brought the machine back to life.
When I bought the machine the internal drive did not work. When I first took it apart to inspect it I found that a resistor on the MiniScribe drive board (not the HyperDrive daughterboard) had failed and done some damage to the PCB. I also did not like how the spindle turned by hand, it made some noises that a hard drive generally should not. The drive is a HyperDrive 8425 MFM drive, after quite a bit of searching I purchased one from @mgmac that he had been using with an Amiga. I put the drive in, crossed my fingers, and... no dice. There was no disk activity, and the HyperDrive utility could not see the drive.
After working with a friend to do some troubleshooting, it was determined the controller board had likely failed. I kept my eye out for one for quite a while, finally one popped up on eBay. It was a HyperDrive 20 controller out of a Plus, and the controller and Plus LB came together. The Plus controller is a newer version than my original board, it is dated 1986 vs 1985 and has a considerably different layout. I installed it and powered up, the drive did it's normal startup routine, but nothing more. I went into the HyperDrive utility and tried the format command, and sure enough the drive came to life and works great.
I also looked at the serial number and this machine started life as a 128k. Previously I thought it had a logic board swap to 512k, but looking more closely I found it has the original 128k board with some mods to bring the total RAM to 512k.
Sorry for the poor quality photos, the lighting was terrible so I had do a bit of enhancement to make the photos usable. The machine is not nearly as yellow in person, though it does have a bit of yellowing on the sides towards the front of the case. The screen works great, I just couldn't get a good photo of it, so it looks very dim in the photos.
The very last photo is the non-working daughterboard, the photo above that is the new working board.
When I bought the machine the internal drive did not work. When I first took it apart to inspect it I found that a resistor on the MiniScribe drive board (not the HyperDrive daughterboard) had failed and done some damage to the PCB. I also did not like how the spindle turned by hand, it made some noises that a hard drive generally should not. The drive is a HyperDrive 8425 MFM drive, after quite a bit of searching I purchased one from @mgmac that he had been using with an Amiga. I put the drive in, crossed my fingers, and... no dice. There was no disk activity, and the HyperDrive utility could not see the drive.
After working with a friend to do some troubleshooting, it was determined the controller board had likely failed. I kept my eye out for one for quite a while, finally one popped up on eBay. It was a HyperDrive 20 controller out of a Plus, and the controller and Plus LB came together. The Plus controller is a newer version than my original board, it is dated 1986 vs 1985 and has a considerably different layout. I installed it and powered up, the drive did it's normal startup routine, but nothing more. I went into the HyperDrive utility and tried the format command, and sure enough the drive came to life and works great.
I also looked at the serial number and this machine started life as a 128k. Previously I thought it had a logic board swap to 512k, but looking more closely I found it has the original 128k board with some mods to bring the total RAM to 512k.
Sorry for the poor quality photos, the lighting was terrible so I had do a bit of enhancement to make the photos usable. The machine is not nearly as yellow in person, though it does have a bit of yellowing on the sides towards the front of the case. The screen works great, I just couldn't get a good photo of it, so it looks very dim in the photos.
The very last photo is the non-working daughterboard, the photo above that is the new working board.
