# research accociate



## fjjeffers (Nov 15, 2004)

I have an old Motorola Exorset 110 that runs an equally old but still working fine and very expensive instrument. The XDOS operating system is on a 5 1/4 floppy disk. I have only that disk with no back up disks and I am getting worried. I would like to make several backup system disks but appartently this computer will no longer format new disks and perhaps the second drive is not working. I can't find anyone who knows how to copy this disk. What would you suggest I do besides shoot the computer and start over for $100K.


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## angel (Dec 2, 1998)

Might be a long shot but where are you located? There are members here from all over the world and I'd be willing to bet money that some still have some old 5 1/4" drives still sitting around.


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## Guest (Nov 16, 2004)

What is your question? Will the instrument work on a computer with a 3 1/2" floppy drive? Will it work with a CD-ROM? Do you want to copy the software from a 5 1/4" disk to another media format?


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## fjjeffers (Nov 15, 2004)

Hi,
Thanks for the quick reply! I am in Carlsbad CA about 25 miles north of San Diego. 
I have gone around and around about this quite a few times. I sent the disk to one company that said "Floppy Disk Copying" and they did not have a clue how to do it. It is in XDOS which I understand is "similar" (??) to MDOS. Everything is working fine but everything is also on a floppy disk that is about 20 years old.....!


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## fjjeffers (Nov 15, 2004)

Hi,
The simplest solution to my problem is to make a (physical and data) duplicate of this 5 1/4 floppy disk. The computer is firmly wired into the instrument and it would be a major job to install another computer. It might be easier and even cheaper to scrap the whole thing and buy a new instrument. All I really need is a few backup 
5 1/4 disks. Everything else is fine.


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## rdunne (Jan 5, 2005)

I also have an issue related to the Exorset 110 albeit somewhat different from your situation and was wondering if you might be of some assistance.

We have a number of legacy instruments incorporating embedded firmware that were developed on the Exorset. Unfortunately, even though we have the source code on 5 1/4" XDOS formatted media, we no longer have access to the Exorset and are unable to provide incremental upgrades to the various instruments.

The advent of the PC in the mid-80's prompted me to develop an application running on the Exorset that would transfer the contents of an Exorset 5 1/4" resident "*.sa" file to the serial port. The serial port would be connected to a PC which would capture the data stream and redirect to a text file.

I was wondering if you might consider migrating some of our XDOS source files to a PC. We would, of course, compensate you for the trouble.

Please advise at your earliest convenience.


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## fjjeffers (Nov 15, 2004)

I am not a computer person but I understand that the probable reason that we can't make our own copies of our system disk on the 110 (which of course has two drives) is that the system disk somehow will no longer allow us to format a blank 5 1/4 disk. If you have a 5 1/4 Exorset 110 system disk that will enable us to make a copy, that would perhaps solve our problem.
I don't see any reason why we can't use your ".sa" disk to transfer your system stuff to a PC, as long as the system problem can be fixed. Give me a call. 

Fred Jeffers 760 918 9007


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## rdunne (Jan 5, 2005)

Fred, thank-you for the reply.

I have in my possession the original Motorola system disks including the XDOS operating system , Basic-M, utilities, etc.. I also have one backup set of the aforementioned files.

Please forward your shipping address to fax number 905-944-9629 and I will ship our backup of the XDOS operating system.

I will not do this immediately pending the completion of an attempt to mount a 5 1/4" disk drive on Linux. We are attempting to configure the floppy disk controller (encoding, bytes/sector, sectors/cluster, clusters/track, etc.) which, hopefully, will allow direct read/write access.

Kind regards.


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## fjjeffers (Nov 15, 2004)

Hi,
I will also fax the address but it is: Fred Jeffers
2300 Faraday Avenue
Carlsbad, CA 92008

I look forward to recieving the disks. I will of course be very happy indeed to do your copying job when we are up and running.
THANKS!

Fred Jeffers


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## fjjeffers (Nov 15, 2004)

Hi,
It has now been several weeks and I have not heard from you about the Exorset system disks. I hope that progress is being made?

Fred


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## Pb-Guy (Feb 14, 2005)

Dear Fred,

We have a complete Moto Exorset 110 system complete with manuals, etc. We use it a few times a month to program/modify MC1468705G2S uP's in one of our older test and measurement instruments. If you have not been able to obtain a system disk, I can send you one. When you first boot our Exorset 110, it reports running EXORBUG 1.5 and after launching XDOS it reports running XDOS 4.13. If you think this would work for your system, reply to [email protected]. Regards, Pb-Guy


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## fjjeffers (Nov 15, 2004)

Hi PB-Guy
Our Motorola system is also Exorbug1.5 and XDOS 4.13!! I would be overjoyed if you could send me a copy of your system disk! Thank you VERY MUCH! How can I repay you?

Fred Jeffers
Cummins Allison
2300 Faraday Ave.
Carlsbad CA 92008


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## Pb-Guy (Feb 14, 2005)

Dear Fred,

Give me a couple of days to get around to this, as I guess I'm the resident expert on the Exorset 110 development station, which my technicians fondly refer to as "The Dinosaur". Also, I just picked up 40 5.25" DD/DS disks on eBay for $5.50, what a deal.

In the meantime, boot up your Exorset, do XDOS, and do DIR: 0 and email me the list of files with extensions on your system. I'll compare them to ours. If there is anything missing, I can go back to our OEM Motorola disks and pull off the files to make an exact copy of what you have now. For instance, the RASM05.CM on our disk is a compiler program for the 1468705G2S microprocessor, which you probably don't need.

You mention that your second drive may not be working. The read/write head on the right-side data drive on ours got seriously stuck once. I opened it up and applied some lubricant on the guide rails. It has worked great for several years. What happens when you do DIR: 1 on your system?

Pb-Guy



fjjeffers said:


> Hi PB-Guy
> Our Motorola system is also Exorbug1.5 and XDOS 4.13!! I would be overjoyed if you could send me a copy of your system disk! Thank you VERY MUCH! How can I repay you?
> 
> Fred Jeffers
> ...


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