Orac from 1983 - problems with storing programs

[candle]

I have a question concerning cassettes for my Orac from 1983 on the forum. Thanks for the answers. It seems that it is impossible to find such cassettes at a reasonable price.

The next step is then to try to connect to a PC ( RS323) for storing and reloading.
I have tried several programs, but not found a working solution.
Has anybody found a program working? If You also have the settings for the parameters it would be good.

Since I have both 386 and 486 machines a DOS program could be of interest, I could dedicate one machine for the Orac.
But of course Windows is the most convenient solution.

Orjan

[Denford Admin]

Try the old DOS industrial text editor (and comms) from here:

https://denfordata.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=256

Does anyone know if there was a protocol involved when talking to these tape drives I seem to remember the old Heidenhain tape drives used control characters for end of block, start of block etc..
I think the problem with newer software will be getting it to pause transmission while the old hardware deals with the data.

It might be worth trying to monitor what goes on when a tape drive is working normally
- I have my own little windows app which lets you 'tap' into an RS232 line - plug one end into COM1: and the other into COM2:, the software then transfers data in/out from each com port, logging and time stamping what characters were transferred and when
Its a bit of a lash up, but it does the job well when you've got the ports all setup.
Download the RS232 serial sniffer here: https://www.denfordata.com/downloads/dos/sniffer.zip

[Mr Magoo]

A few tips that might help...

- Orac COMMS settings are...
Baud = 2400
Parity = ODD
Data Bits = 7
Stop Bits = 1

- Orac serial comms was designed to run with Paper Tape. It expects to recieve exactly what it sent out (including all it's control character stuff for start-of-page, end-of -page etc)

So you need a communication package that just saves all serial traffic to a file (Industrial Text Editor only works if each NC block is on a single line and can't do this).

I've used a couple of DOS products before (one called XTalk, another called Mirror) but there are plenty out there.

I've also used this batch file to send a correctly formated file from disk to an orac in the past (many years ago )

Code: Select all

@echo off
rem Use this batch file to send programs produced by
rem the Denford Universal Post Processor to Orac.
rem Change the com port as necessary.
if "%1"=="" goto nofilename
echo Sending file %1 to Orac
mode com1:2400,o,7,1
copy %1 com1 /b
goto end
:nofilename
echo You must specify a filename to send
:end

Re: Admins comments about the tape drive and similarities with a Heidenhain drive, he's barking up the wrong tree (young bugger's never had the pleasure of working on an Orac). It's connected to the Orac's processor card (possible even to the processors bus), so no chance of replacing it. I don't think admin realised the Orac has a regular serial port at the back to link to your PC