Outbound Laptop documentation?

[cheesestraws]

Does anyone have service manuals/information for the Outbound Laptop (note, not the notebook)?

I picked one up recently (thread to follow), but the floppy drive isn't working and I've not historically had the best luck with the 'take all the screws out, hope it falls to bits' method with laptops (or, perhaps rather, putting them back together has historically proved a challenge)

 

[ScutBoy]

I don't have the service manual, only the owners manual.

I also have non-functional floppy for the Outbound. In my case was a failed belt. If your drive buzzes but the disk isn't read, it's probably this.

I put a new belt in and it worked for a day, then then belt must have stretched, because it would no longer rotate the diskette.

I replaced the belt again, and now it won't move the heads at all. Not sure what I did to make that happen.

The disk drive is from Citizen. Apparently failed belts are common with these. The drive mechanism is fairly common, but the interface changed depending on the machine. I put it away in disgust a while back (and use Localtalk to move files in/out) but I would like to get it working again eventually.

There is a YT video on belt replacement on the Citizen drives I reviewed to do that part of it.

 

[cheesestraws]

I also have non-functional floppy for the Outbound. In my case was a failed belt. If your drive buzzes but the disk isn't read, it's probably this.

Thanks!  It makes a loud buzzing noise but nothing seems to actually happen, so this sounds quite plausible.

Do you by any chance have any notes as to how to get the thing out, or is it just a 'remove all screws that look plausible, try to remember where they go back' job?

I put it away in disgust a while back (and use Localtalk to move files in/out) but I would like to get it working again eventually. 

Does yours have a hard disc, then, or do you use the "silicon disk"?

 

[ScutBoy]

Thanks!  It makes a loud buzzing noise but nothing seems to actually happen, so this sounds quite plausible.

Do you by any chance have any notes as to how to get the thing out, or is it just a 'remove all screws that look plausible, try to remember where they go back' job?

Does yours have a hard disc, then, or do you use the "silicon disk"?

"Loud buzzing" is exactly the symptom mine had

I don't remember it being particularly hard to get the drive out of the case. I think it's fairly straightforward. If it will help I can pull mine out and check.

It was more difficult to get the belt on correctly. I removed the drive motor for the belt to get things threaded.

My Outbound has both a hard disk and the "silicon disk". The silicon disk is just more 30 pin SIMMs inserted into the other bank, so if you have the RAM, it can make things a lot easier, as long as you don't totally lose battery power, either through discharge or having to remove them for any reason. The silicon disk can be set as the boot volume, so it gives you some options.

 

[ScutBoy]

Pretty sure this is the video I referenced for the belt replacement:

 

[cheesestraws]

Thankyou very much!  I'll have a go.

 

[cheesestraws]

In my case was a failed belt. If your drive buzzes but the disk isn't read, it's probably this.

Sorry, quick followup question: do you know what size of belt yours needed?

 

[ScutBoy]

Sorry, quick followup question: do you know what size of belt yours needed?

Sorry, no. I bought a set of assorted sizes from eBay and experimented until I found one that fit.

"50PCS Universal Mix Cassette Tape Machine Belt Assorted Common Flat for Recorder"

There's tons of similar listings, and they're all pretty cheap.

 

[Franklinstein]

Those Citizen floppy drives are a total pain. They were designed to be super tiny and as such they use a belt because apparently motor technology at the time was not advanced enough to build a direct-drive unit small enough to go in one of these. Or maybe it was just too expensive. Either way, these drives were used in a few different super-slim computers such as the DEC HiNote Ultra CT475's floppy dock. The belt is an unusually small flat belt, not round or square, which makes it difficult to source. I never tried very hard to find a replacement for my old HiNote's drive.

Is this for the internal floppy for your Laptop? Mine has the hard drive option and I don't have the external drive to compare. I know the later Notebook series uses Epson floppy drives and they're much more reliable.

 

[cheesestraws]

Is this for the internal floppy for your Laptop?

Yup.  My laptop does not have a hard drive so getting the FDD working is probably kind of important.

Either that or seeing if I can get it working with custom ROMs (I'm guessing not)

 

[Franklinstein]

Right, that makes sense. The hard drives internal to the Laptop are on a relatively standard ATA interface so we could probably figure something out to get you a Flash-based solution in there, or rig up a period-correct 2.5" hard drive to go in there if you prefer the actual whirrs and clicks. I don't know if the original PrarieTek HD in mine even works anymore so I may have to explore this option in the future.

Do you not have a Mac ROM SIMM for yours? Or do you mean loading the machine with the Outbound supplementary ROMs from diskette? Do you have the external floppy drive? I'm curious if that uses the same Citizen mechanism. I hope not.

 

[cheesestraws]

The hard drives internal to the Laptop are on a relatively standard ATA interface so we could probably figure something out to get you a Flash-based solution in there

Yeah, I was wondering whether the ATA controller was on the logic board or on a daughterboard like the floppy controller is.  There is a connector on the logic board with the hard disc would go, but it seemed to have a funny number of pins, IIRC.  I'll dig it out later and have a look.  There would probably be room for, say, an ATA -> SD adapter, if I knew what the pinout was.

Do you not have a Mac ROM SIMM for yours? Or do you mean loading the machine with the Outbound supplementary ROMs from diskette?

I have the Mac ROM SIMM.  I meant using a ROM with a built in ROMdisc to boot from, like in original ROMinator.  Is the pinout for the ROM SIMM slot known?  I worry that this would fight with the Outbound ROM, though.

Do you have the external floppy drive? I'm curious if that uses the same Citizen mechanism. I hope not. 

I don't.  So at the moment I am reliant on one citizen floppy drive with a disintegrated belt, which is irritating because it's basically the only thing wrong with this.

 

[cheesestraws]

Sorry, no. I bought a set of assorted sizes from eBay and experimented until I found one that fit.

The belt is an unusually small flat belt, not round or square, which makes it difficult to source. I never tried very hard to find a replacement for my old HiNote's drive. 

The good news is that I've found exactly the right replacement belt.

The bad news is that my floppy drive still doesn't work, but it fails in a different way, so I'm going to give up for the evening now and revisit when I'm feeling less fed up.

The hard drives internal to the Laptop are on a relatively standard ATA interface

At least as far as where the GND pins are, it looks like a standard 44-pin ATA pinout just on a larger physical header.  Does this sound right to you?  I've got a spare ATA <-> SD card adapter in a drawer that came with a different laptop so if I can get a cable sorted I might try that out...

 

[ScutBoy]

What's the symptom on your floppy now? After I replaced the belt on mine, it worked that night. Then after sitting for a week, the belt must have stretched, since it would not spin the disk any more.

I put on another belt, but when I tried the floppy, it make a very faint click noise and didn't spin, move heads, or anything. I fiddled with it for a bit, and then put it away in a huff, and haven't pulled it out since

With the silicon disk and Localtalk I can boot and move just about anything I need on/off the HD. Getting the SCSI target stuff would be yet another way to do that.

 

[cheesestraws]

What's the symptom on your floppy now?

It makes all the right noises, chugs etc, but nothing happens; it won't boot from any of several known-good boot discs.

I'm going to try to rig up a CF card internally as a "hard disc" in the next week or so, see if I can get that working.  So long as I can get that working, I'm not so worried about the FDD, I only really need the HD to boot from.  As you say, the rest can be done with the silicon disc and the network.

 

[trag]

I don't think the CF card will work but it's worth a try.   The supported hard drive configurations are built into the Outbound Firmware.   There's a pair of little 64Kbit Flash chips on the logic board.

When one runs the software "Installer" one of the first things it does is check the configuration and flash those chips with software to support with the floppy drive or the appropriate sized hard drive.

Are you old enough to remember setting cyclinder, heads, sectors (?) or something like that on PCs when installing a hard drive?   It's basically that process, slightly automated and with a very limited set of choices.   20, 40, 60 and maybe 80 MB hard drives are supported.

The 2.5" Connor drives in those sizes seem to work. In think the model numbers were 2044, 2064, 2084.  It's been so many years since I've looked at this stuff.

There is no circuitry in the hard drive cable/connector.   It's just a cable and perhaps a board to arrange the wires/provide the correct size connector.

 

[cheesestraws]

I don't think the CF card will work but it's worth a try.

Ah, that's annoying.  Still, I've got plenty of other machines awaiting solid state-ifying, so if it doesn't work in the laptop, I haven't lost anything .

When one runs the software "Installer" one of the first things it does is check the configuration and flash those chips with software to support with the floppy drive or the appropriate sized hard drive. 

This is the configuration reflasher thingy?  Do you know where it gets the information for the in-play configuration from?

Are you old enough to remember setting cyclinder, heads, sectors (?) or something like that on PCs when installing a hard drive?   It's basically that process, slightly automated and with a very limited set of choices.   20, 40, 60 and maybe 80 MB hard drives are supported. 

That makes sense.  I was wondering whether there was something like that involved...

 

[trag]

This is the configuration reflasher thingy?  Do you know where it gets the information for the in-play configuration from?

Depending on which you mean, it does some auto-detection to see what's installed.   As far as whatever parameters it saves, that seems to be purely contained in the application.

In theory, we should be able to hack that thing to provide support for additional drives beyond what was originally supported.    I remember a message from someone who had hacked it to the extent of manually setting the configuration for his Outbound from the available choices, rather than letting the installer detect it.   Unfortunately I can't remember if that was an old email, Usenet posting or other.

 

[cheesestraws]

@ScutBoy here is a rather mangled disk image of the Outbound Software disk.  The system folder isn't blessed any more and the file metadata is probably all ahoo but the actual applications (including the SCSI emulator) seem to be intact (the disk I got with my Outbound is slightly damaged).  It's a DC6 image.

View attachment Software Outbound.img

edit: sorry, the misunderstanding was mine.  I'd uploaded the manual for the SCSI emulator, and thought I'd uploaded the software as well but this was just apparently a fabricated memory.  It's here now, anyway.