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Outbound (Laptop) Exploration Thread

ScutBoy

Well-known member
I believe the answer to all three of your questions are "Yes", though I don't think we see how big the Silicon disk is anywhere - you'll have to check and make sure - the icon is generic. I believe the max is 4MB, though.

Just a note about the Silicon disk - it will drain your battery (including the oddball "backup" battery) in just a couple days if not kept on the A/C adapter. Don't ask me how I know this :)
 

CTB

Well-known member
Are images of the Outbound software available online anywhere. This is all I have and there isn’t any formatting software.
F8212D26-F5CE-4E82-828B-C12202D17298.jpegE05594BE-8952-4200-8BFF-B5AB2F34999E.jpeg03A553A3-4683-474E-8A81-1A3619ADB01A.jpeg
 

ScutBoy

Well-known member
Was there a specific Outbound disk tool? I don't remember one, but it's been a long time. Don't know why you couldn't use Lido or similar.
 

trag

Well-known member
This is what mine drive looks like so it is hard to see if anything was modified on the actual drive mechanism.
I think I took the metal can off of my floppy drive at some point and found some rework wires.

However, I'm going to recommend taking all my remembrances with a grain of salt. Still stinging over thinking the SCSI adapter had a 85C30 on board.
 

trag

Well-known member
Was there a specific Outbound disk tool? I don't remember one, but it's been a long time. Don't know why you couldn't use Lido or similar.

I don't think there was. However, after installing the System one needed to run the Outbound Installer utility.

I remember being able to run that with the Outbound installer on a disk connected by LocalTalk. So you might try running it on your Silicon drive.

How would that help?

Well, your hard drive is not showing up for one of two reasons. Either there's a hardware problem -- failed/disconnected hard drive, or the Laptop doesn't know about the hard drive for some reason. The installer seems to autodetect internal floppy vs internal hard drive and the size of the hard drive. Then for just a moment it flashes up this message, "Writing to EEPROMs" or something like that. So running the installer might tell the laptop about the hard drive.

There are a couple of 64Kbit EEPROMs on the Outbound motherboard that store oddball non-Mac settings. They get written when that installer runs -- at least for some settings.

Again, IIRC, the CP2064 and CP2084 are supported drives. The Laptop only supports 20, 40, 60, and 80 MB drives. You can't use just any IDE drive.

I've seen some of those models in which the gasket between the casing halves had turned to goo. Others are fine.

Most folks don't remember, but in the old days, computers didn't autodetect the hard drive parameters. They had to be entered into the Setup (CMOS) settings by hand. If you knew what you were doing, you changed the settings with the drive sitting on the desk next to you (settings printed on drive label) and then installed the drive. If you were everyone else, you installed the drive and then discovered you needed the info off the label to get it to work.

Point is, as far as I can guess, the Laptop 125 only supports certain sets of hard drive parameters.

There was a guy who was going to try to hack in support for other drives, but I never heard anything further from him. That was back in the 90s.
 

trag

Well-known member
Outbound Software 1.3 disk image. Read the README on the disk.
 

Attachments

  • Outbound Systems.img.bin
    483.4 KB · Views: 4

trag

Well-known member
I spent some time last night reading the datasheet for the WD37C65C which is a floppy controller chip. It accepts floppy commands from the host and translates them into head movement and such on the floppy device.

So there's a command set that it supports. Which made me wonder, does SWIM support the same command set?

The NEC765 (from which the 37C65 derives) is sort of the great grandpappy of all floppy controllers. So Apple might have copied the command set.

If they don't use the same command set, then I'm going to guess, with very little evidence, that the 27C256 EPROM on the external floppy controller is there as a command translator. By programming the contents properly, you can set it up so that you take in the incoming Apple Floppy Command, send it to the EPROM as an address. And out pops the equivalent NEC765 floppy command on the data pins.

Evidence against is that the internal floppy adapter appears to completely lack the EPROM. Hmmm?

I'm beginning to wonder if the internal floppy adapter doesn't support 1.44MB floppies and only 800K. The internal uses a 37C65B instead of a 37C65C and the B only supports 1/2 the data rate of the C, 500Kb/s vs. 1Mb/s.

Another thing that has always puzzled me is that both devices have a W92C32 Data Separator on the board. Both the 37C65B and the 37C65C have an internal 92C32 already. So why is an external one required? I suspect something to do with supporting 800K disk operation, but I don't know.
 

Attachments

  • 37C65C.pdf
    1.6 MB · Views: 2
  • 37C65C+.pdf
    2 MB · Views: 2
  • WD92C32.pdf
    176.4 KB · Views: 2

cheesestraws

Well-known member
In the thread about cable pinouts, @unity posted some extremely useful information.

Firstly, the pinout for the Plus cable from the machine to the laptop:


but secondly, photos of the Plus board:


This is simpler than the SE board, and the principle of operation I suggested above is much more obvious here.

At the bottom we have eight 8-bit latches/flipflops. This makes 64 bits. Half of these, at a guess are doing to be for the address bus, half for the data bus. These ones all have tristate outputs, which are presumably being used to multiplex the buses down the cable. But the tristate inputs are shared among all the outputs of the chip. So presumably there are eight data/address pins on the connector (or perhaps 16, but this seems a little high?).

There's a couple of hex flipflops further up which presumably sit on some of the control lines. But these don't have tristate outputs: there's a separate tristate buffer for half of the latches, as far as I can see. So what multiplexes the other 6? Are they just not multiplexed? If not, why bother with the latching? It is a mystery.

Tons of inverters for no clear reason. Perhaps for funsies.

I'm assuming at this point then that the programmable logic chip in the top left (I assume it's programmable logic; the one on the SE card is) is pretty much just coordinating the output enable pins of all the tristate stuff.

But this is all incomplete: how does data get back?

A neat design.
 

unity

Well-known member
"Evidence against is that the internal floppy adapter appears to completely lack the EPROM. Hmmm?"

The external floppy interface is seemingly very different from the internal. After all that external connector is used for the SCSI target disk mode, floppy drive, Mac host card - and potentially other devices planned that we never saw. Outbound CD drive anyone? Outbound pocket portable hard drive? So I wonder if this is part of the reason? After all, it's not just a floppy port. But this is above my pay grade, I have no clue. LOL On a side note, I have no looked to see if uploaded but I do have an external floppy drive manual for the Outbound. Its short and useless though.

"I'm beginning to wonder if the internal floppy adapter doesn't support 1.44MB floppies and only 800K. The internal uses a 37C65B instead of a 37C65C and the B only supports 1/2 the data rate of the C, 500Kb/s vs. 1Mb/s."

Page 4-1 of the Outbound User guide says the internal supports up to 1.44mb, including DOS/PC floppies.
 

Bolle

Well-known member
@cheesestraws sent me his card to dump the single PLD that's on there - a Samsung CPL20R8, which luckily didn't have its security fuse blown.

Content of the attached JEDEC file should translate to:

Code:
chip outbound PAL20R8

CLK=1 i2=2 i3=3 i4=4 i5=5 i6=6 i7=7 i8=8 i9=9 i10=10 i11=11 GND=12
/OE=13 i14=14 ro15=15 rf16=16 rf17=17 rf18=18 rf19=19 rf20=20
rf21=21 rf22=22 i23=23 VCC=24

equations

/rf22 := i4 * /rf20 * /i8 * i9 * rf16 * /i14
    + /rf22 * /rf20
rf22.oe = OE
/rf21 := i2 * i3 * rf21 * /rf20 * rf16
    + /i10
    + i23
rf21.oe = OE
/rf20 := i2 * /i3 * rf17 * /i9 * /i11 * i14
    + i2 * /i3 * i9
    + i2 * /i3 * /i9 * /i14
    + i2 * /i3 * /rf20
rf20.oe = OE
/rf19 := i2 * /i3 * i5 * /i6 * rf17 * /i9 * /i11 * i14
    + i2 * /i3 * i5 * /i6 * i9
    + i2 * /i3 * i5 * /i6 * /i9 * /i14
    + i2 * /i3 * /i5 * /rf20 * /i6
    + i2 * /i3 * /rf19
rf19.oe = OE
/rf18 := i2 * /i3 * i5 * /i7 * rf17 * /i9 * /i11 * i14
    + i2 * /i3 * i5 * /i7 * i9
    + i2 * /i3 * i5 * /i7 * /i9 * /i14
    + i2 * /i3 * /i5 * /rf20 * /i7
    + i2 * /i3 * /rf18
rf18.oe = OE
/rf17 := /i11
rf17.oe = OE
/rf16 := rf20
rf16.oe = OE
/ro15 := /rf22 * /i4 * /rf20 * i8
ro15.oe = OE

The rest of the card consists of standard 74-series logic, so it should be possible now to figure out what it's doing exactly.
 

Attachments

  • OutboundLaptopDockSE.jed.zip
    620 bytes · Views: 1

CTB

Well-known member
"Evidence against is that the internal floppy adapter appears to completely lack the EPROM. Hmmm?"

The external floppy interface is seemingly very different from the internal. After all that external connector is used for the SCSI target disk mode, floppy drive, Mac host card - and potentially other devices planned that we never saw. Outbound CD drive anyone? Outbound pocket portable hard drive? So I wonder if this is part of the reason? After all, it's not just a floppy port. But this is above my pay grade, I have no clue. LOL On a side note, I have no looked to see if uploaded but I do have an external floppy drive manual for the Outbound. Its short and useless though.

"I'm beginning to wonder if the internal floppy adapter doesn't support 1.44MB floppies and only 800K. The internal uses a 37C65B instead of a 37C65C and the B only supports 1/2 the data rate of the C, 500Kb/s vs. 1Mb/s."

Page 4-1 of the Outbound User guide says the internal supports up to 1.44mb, including DOS/PC floppies
Mines has an SE rom which only supported 800K. How could the Outbound support 1.44M?
 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
How could the Outbound support 1.44M?

Same way as it supports IDE hard drives. There's an extra driver in a flash ROM for them. The Outbound's floppy controller and floppy drive are totally different from an SE's anyway, so the driver from the SE ROM is unlikely to be entirely helpful.
 
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