NorthStar Advantage

This is one of my prized possessions and one of my earliest computers - along with my Tandy 1400FD and my IBM XT/286 Model 5162. This computer was my first daily driver. It was loaned to me by my FIL just before I got married in 1987. Eventually it became our business computer for word processing and writing contracts along with my FIL’s IBM PC/XT.  My FIL used the IBM PC/XT for the company database and for word processing, and for games after hours at home. I used this Advantage with Wordstar and wrote installation contracts and printed them out on a daisy wheel printer. I also used this Advantage to dial in to Bulletin Boards through a 1200 baud modem to learn about computers and software.

In about 1990 I purchased my first IBM compatible PC, a Tandy 1400FD portable from Radio Shack. I used both the Advantage and the Tandy 1400FD at the same time. We sometimes used the Advantage for text based games and we used the 1400FD for CGA games on a Goldstar CGA CRT monitor. Eventually I converted all my contracts and database files over to the 1400FD and stopped using the Advantage as my daily driver. It was put into storage sometime in the early 1990’s. 

Fast forward to 2023. Now I have several “old computers”, some of them being in the “Vintage” category. I now dabble in the retro computer hobby and frequent places like the VCF forums where other vintage computer enthusiasts participate in sharing their experiences with others like me who have a lot of old computers. Up until this year (2023) I have been working mostly with IBM PC Compatibles from the XT all the way up to the current iCore series and from DOS up to Windows 11. But I have been keeping my eye on old pre-IBM systems like the NorthStar Advantage and Commodore PET, and several other systems from the late 70’s and into the mid-80’s. I knew I had my old Advantage in storage but I was hesitant to bring it into my lab and power it on. I was afraid the electrics may be too old and fail upon power up. But after reading some VCF forum posts about the Advantage and Horizon I decided it was finally time to put my Advantage on the work bench and clean it up and get it ready for a power up.

—--

12/25/23

I pulled the Advantage from storage a few days ago. I then proceeded to break it down and clean it up. I started by taking off the top cover, which included the CRT and the fan. The inside of the computer was fairly clean. But the outside of the case was polluted with mouse debris. I removed all the parts attached to the motherboard and then I used a vacuum blower to remove all the dust and then I inspected the surface of the motherboard and cleaned it with IPA. I also blew out the dust from the case and the disk drives and from around the CRT. I then cleaned the keyboard and the external of the case. Now that the machine was cleaned I reassembled everything and replaced the top of the case. Now to power it on.

I plugged in a power cable and plugged into a power strip. When I turned on the power strip the computer beeped! I had the switch in the ON position. I had not expected to turn it on yet but it was a relief to not hear a bang or a failure to power up. I turned the power switch off and got ready to try it again while I could watch the front panel and screen.

Now I turned on the power switch and watched the front panel and screen. I was expecting to see a light blink on the floppy since this is common on my PC Compatibles. But the floppy light did not come on. However, the computer beeped once and the screen came on with a prompt to Load System. The light on the Caps Lock key was also on. I put in a disk in the floppy and then hit “Enter”. Nothing happened. 

I powered down again and then tried again. Same thing. No light on the floppy, the screen says Load System, and the Caps Lock key is lit. But when I try to hit the “Enter” or “Return” keys nothing happens.

I pressed each key on the keyboard. The only key that gets a response is the U key. It shows briefly on the screen and there is a beep. No other keys get a response. The screen remains at the Load System prompt.

I think the keyboard is bad. I have read that this type of keyboard has a foam that needs to be replaced after several years.

What I don’t know is if this is expected behavior. Will the computer continue to prompt for the “Load System” until it receives a correct key press from the keyboard? Is it normal to not have a light on the floppy until after the keyboard press is accepted?

It looks like I will have to rebuild the keyboard before I can go any further. But at least the power supply did not blow up yet.

—--

12/26/23

Ok, as it turns out this computer does not light up the floppy until after you hit the <Return> key after the screen says “Load System”. Since the keyboard is unresponsive I never saw the floppy light come on.

I am in the middle of restoring the keyboard. While I had it apart I plugged in the keyboard PCB and turned on the computer. I got the beep but the screen did not show the “Load System” prompt. I placed one of the foam and foil pieces on the <Return> pad on the PCB. The screen then showed “Load System”. I put in a floppy with CP/M. I pressed on the foam and foil with a pencil eraser and the computer proceeded to boot to CP/M. It works! 

I also see the hard disk light blinking (with the cover removed. I will have to see if I can move the light out to the front panel).

Now I have to finish repairing the keyboard so I can test the hard drive.

—--

01-15-24

The Foam and Foil kit arrived a few days ago. Today I finished cleaning the keyboard and installed the new set of foam and foil contacts. I reassembled the keyboard and tested it. Only some of the keys were working. I could get some keys to respond by hitting them several times or pressing really hard, or wiggling the key as I pressed. It is clearly not fixed. However, I was able to get the floppy drive to boot CP/M and I was able to start WordStar. But so far I have not been able to activate the hard drive.

I took the keyboard apart again and took only the PCB portion and plugged it back into the machine. I powered it on and used a pencil and a foam and foil piece to touch each key pad. They all worked. So, it appears the problem is with the keys or the alignment. Or maybe the foam is not quite thick enough? I am going to try and modify a few of the foam and foil pieces and see if I can make a better connection. I will try the D, I, R, and Enter keys first.

Now, to figure out how to change the way the foil contacts the PCB pads. I am thinking maybe I can try gluing half of another pad onto the top of the pad that gets clipped in to the key. This would make the pad thicker and maybe allow a better “press” down on the PCB.

OK, I did try gluing a half of another foil and foam piece onto the top of the installed foam piece. It is difficult and messy. I used some IPA to clean the foil that was glued on since it was hard to not get a little glue on the foil piece. I did the D, I, R, and the Return keys. I put the keyboard back together and tested. This did definitely help. The four keys (D,I,R, Return) are now reliable. I tested them several times and they always work. So, making the foam thicker helps. I also tested all the other keys. Most of them did work but some still did not work unless I pressed very hard. This seems to confirm that we need a thicker foam. I am going to check with Tex Elec and see what they say about providing a thicker foam.

—--

1-21-24

I noticed that the hard drive did not seem to spin up. I could not hear the platters spinning. The indicator light is blinking in a pattern. One long blink, then three triple blinks (three rapid blinks with a very short pause followed by three rapid blinks then very short pause then three rapid blinks). 

When I put in the CP/M disk that says it is for the HD boot it boots CP/M but then hangs. If I put in the regular CP/M disk it also boots and then goes to the A> prompt. If I enter “HDBOOT” I can hear the diskette being accessed and then it hangs again. The hard drive is not loaded.

I took off the PCB from the hard drive and checked the flywheel. It did seem to be stuck. I was very careful not to turn it against it’s will. Then I grabbed the hard disk and gave it a quick twist. This seems to have freed up the platters. I can now touch and turn the flywheel. I reassembled the hard drive and plugged it back in to the Advantage. Now when I power on I can hear the drive spin up and I can hear the platters spinning. I tried booting again from the CP/M diskettes and it does the same thing. It hangs. The blink pattern is the same, One long blink immediately followed by a triplet of three rapid blinks. I am going to leave the system on for a couple of hours and try again. Maybe it needs to spin for a while.

I noticed that there was a stepper motor that was in what seemed to be a home position. I wondered if this stepper was moving but when the hard drive was installed I could not see it. I turned the drive over and connected the indicator light and moved the bracket into a place where it would touch any electrical parts of the drive. When I turned on the computer the stepper motor did not turn and I got the same results.

I decided to try and “encourage” it by using a small screwdriver to very carefully turn it. It was stuck and with a little bit of encouragement I was able to get it to turn. When I turned it on again it did move this time but I still got the same results, it hangs. I powered down and used the small screwdriver to again carefully turn the motor shaft. It was sticky and I stopped and reversed direction and it stuck again. I stopped again and reversed and kept doing this until I could turn it all the way around several times without it sticking. Then I turned it straight up, which is out of the home position. Then I turned it back on. This time it turned all the way around in both directions and landed in the home position and the LED stayed on steady with no blinks. Progress!

Next, I loaded the regular CP/M diskette and ran HDBOOT. It loaded and responded with a message. It seems to be finding the drive but it is not set up. Let’s try the diskette that says “CP/M HD Boot”. Power down. Power on. Put in the CP/M HD Boot diskette and hit Return. It booted and ran HDBOOT. This time it did not hang. It started to find the hard drive but then reported an error. So, the hard drive is now working (kind of) but I need to set it up correctly. I may not be able to save the existing structure and data. Need to do more research about how to troubleshoot hard drives in CP/M. But we made progress!

—--

1-22-24

I read about a Hard Drive Supplement disk that has a diagnostic routine for troubleshooting the hard drive. I found a copy on the internet and downloaded it. But I don’t yet know how to get it onto a floppy for the Advantage.

I knew I had a box in my storage area that had a bunch of N* stuff. This morning I dug into that corner of the storage area and found the box labeled N*. I went through all the binders in that box and one of them had the Hard Drive Supplement disk inside the back cover. Hopefully it is a working disk.

When going through my N* disks and through this box of N* documents I came across a few disks that say “GDOS” and “GBASIC”. I’m not sure but I think these are the Advantage version of North Star DOS that is available for the Horizon. I can’t remember ever using anything besides CP/M on this Advantage, except maybe the ACCPAC accounting system, which I think launched from NS DOS. I have to do some reading on GDOS to see if it includes everything I need for setting up the hard drive. Obviously, I did this years ago when I upgraded the Advantage from a two floppy system to a hard drive system. I just can’t remember the procedures. I was hoping I would find some notes in my own handwriting but so far I have not found anything except the GDOS and the Hard Drive Supplement disk.

I still have to finish the keyboard before I go too far into setting up the hard drive. I don’t want some typo to mess things up. I have an email into TexElec about some different foam and foil replacement pieces. Hopefully they will be able to send something in the next week or so.

—--

2-05-24

Good news. I completed the keyboard repair successfully. The ¼” foam and foils that TexElec sent me worked good. I had a small issue with the space bar - I had it on backwards. Once I reset it to the correct orientation it works fine. I also had a flakey “T” key so I replaced the foam and foil piece for that key and it also now works fine.

Now onto the Hard Drive.

I found the original paperwork for the hard drive kit and I re-read all the instructions. But each time I tried booting from the Hard Drive Supplement Disk I got an error. It said I needed to enter the correct code from the label on the drive. I looked on all the labels on the hard drive and I could not find any code that worked. But then I remembered reading about the paper label that was supposed to be attached to the back of the Advantage that had the skip list copied from the hard drive. I looked on the back of the Advantage and found that the label had a place for the “Code” and it was written as MS20E, in my handwriting. So, I tried booting from the Hard Drive Supplement Disk again and this time after the error message I entered “MS20E”. 

It worked! I got past the error and the program was now seeing the drive. Unfortunately it was saying that it was going to reformat and lose all the data. Oh well. I can live with losing the data from the drive. I have it all on floppies. So I went ahead and entered the necessary responses to the prompts and after I hit Return it started the low level format process. After some time the hard drive light started blinking and I got messages to the screen about it formatting and errors, etc. The light continues to blink and I can hear the drive platters spinning and the heads moving. It is taking a long time but it seems to be working on formatting the hard drive. Hopefully it will finish and I will be able to set up the hard drive with new drive letters. If it crashes I will then consider going back to the two floppy setup, or maybe get a Gotek drive.

So, it appears that I now have my Advantage back. After I finish setting up the drives I will try to get the serial port set up and use a cable to transfer files to my PC. I used to do this a long time ago so I am sure I can figure it out again. I may also try to set up a printer again.

Bad news. The hard drive seems to have crashed. It did not get through the format correctly and now the drive is blinking a code of 1101. That code is identified as “D” in the manual for the drive on Stason. That document says Code D is “seek error during burn-in or recal”. When I recycle the power the drive does spin and the stepper motor goes back and forth several times but it always ends up with the same blinking code of 1101. I don’t know how to proceed from here. Probably a dead drive (not surprising after 30 years).

Now, when I try to boot the Hard Drive Supplement Disk it hangs. I don’t get the error message any more. I will do some more reading and maybe continue to try to troubleshoot this hard drive. If I can’t get it to work I’ll just put the original floppy drive back in it’s place.

I read everything I had in my N* library, which is all the manuals including the Technical Manual, GDOS and GHDOS, and the Hard Drive Installation Manual and the Hard Disk Supplemental Manual, and I could not figure out how to get the hard drive working. I believe it is dead. So, I took out the hard drive and installed the second floppy drive. I wasn’t sure if I could figure out how to make sure the system would recognize the second floppy as Drive 2, or Drive B. But I just decided to put it in and try it. I booted into CP/M and was able to access the second drive as Drive B:. Drive B: is on top and Drive A: is on the bottom. That is fine with me and it will be easier to keep drive A: on the bottom in case I end up putting a hard drive back in. For now, I am back to a two-floppy system. Time to close up the case and do a final cleanup and start using this old machine for some WordStar.

—--

02/18/24

I have been reading about options for transferring files between the Advantage and other systems. One option is a GoTek. Another is to use a python script and the built-in monitor program using a serial cable connection.

But I think I may have the software I need already on floppies for the Advantage. There is a video that shows a guy connecting his Eagle II to a PC using a communications program. I used to connect to bulletin boards using the IMP24 program. Maybe I can figure out how to use that?

Here is the YouTube video that shows this being done

“So you have a CP/M machine, how do you get software onto it?”

Someone recommended Modem7 on CP/M and Procomm on PC. I think I have both of those.

Someone recommended IMP245 on CP/M and {COMMO} v5.5 on PC. I have IMP.

MEX also may work.

/QUOTE

“Smiple. Get (and set up) a copy of IMP245 (which I b'lieve was the

last version Irv Hoff wrote before he died) on the CP/M box, run a null

modem cable between a serial port on the CP/M system and a serial port of

the PC, get a copy of {COMMO} v5.5 or above for the PC (it used to be avail

from most BBSs -- it's prob free for the download from PC oriented archive

sites), log to the disc/user area on the CP/M-80 box, log to a suitable dir

on the PC, invoke "send *.*" on the CP/M box and stand well back.”

With the (necessary) caveat that it MUST have a system specific
insert added, IMP245.COM was about the best thing going for CP/M-80. It
could easily do what you want -- transfer files at high speed using YMODEM
("If it's batch, it's YMODEM" according to Chuck Forsberg, the author) to
the serial port. (For instance, a transfer could be initiated by logging to
the appropriate user area on the CP/M-80 system and saying "send *.*"). Go
to one of the CP/M archive sites and search for IMP.COM. There should also
be a large CP/M library of the system spefic inserts, and you could likely
find the one for your system -- or one close enough that you could modify it
to match the specs of your system.

Like the rest of the CP/M comm pgms, however, IMP suffered from the
"chicken or egg?" problem: given that there was no common disc format, the
only way to get a copy was to download it somehow, which presupposed the
existance of a comm pgm already, and if you had one already, why do you need
to download one?

I never got into CP/M-86, so I've no hard info on comm pgms for it.
I suspect there were versions of Irv Hoffs IMP (Improved Modem Program) that
were for CP/M-86. I simply don't know. However, if you have a decent CP/M-80
comm pgm and if your CP/M-80 system can read the CP/M-86 floppies (they do

not have to be executable), you can transfer them. ASCII or binary. As far
as the transfer protocol can see or cares, it's all bits. And as they say,
"Bits are bits." <grin>

Null-modem file transfers typically can use the highest baud rate
which the slowest serial port is capable. I've done *.* YMODEM/null-modem
transfers at 19.2kbps, and whoa!

On a system that uses MS-DOS (or DR-DOS) the only comm pgm worthy of

the name is {COMMO}. It's shareware (or it was -- I believe Fred Brucker,

the author, has released it into the public domain), it was really easy to

install and configure, and it could do ZMODEM without an external protocol

driver (plus it had support for using an external protocol such as GSZ or

HSLINK if desired). Setting it up to do such a transfer (in either direction)

would be extremely simple. It could also do straight XMODEM, 1k XMODEM, and

YMODEM if you wanted. COMMOxx.ZIP was the archive name, it had really

comprehensive documentation, it was NOT crippled in any way, and had a

built-in macro that could be used for installation/setup if needed.

/QUOTE

Check out Wimodem 232 Pro

—--

Okay, I tried connecting to my old IBM XP box using Hyperterminal. I was able to finally make the connection.

At first I was getting an error. I found I had the serial port already setup for a direct connection. I deleted that setting and rebooted. When I again tried to start Hyperterminal it would not start. I quit the IMP program that was running on the Advantage and then the Hyperterminal started up. I set the serial port to 9600, 8, N, 1 with Hardware flow control. Then I restarted the IMP program on the Advantage and then started the terminal mode. I typed in a few characters and it showed up on the XP box. It works! I typed in the Hyperterminal and it also showed on the Advantage. We’re now communicating. Now I need to try transferring a file.

I found a disk labeled IMP245 for Direct Connect. I had already set this up years ago when I was connecting the Advantage to my Tandy 1400FD. This disk is bootable and is set to run IMP through the AUTO.COM program.

—--

Now, to try and copy some files from the N* and put them in an archive that can be downloaded for other N* users.

—--

Links to software sources

http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/cdrom/CPM/IMP/

This link has IMP244. My system has IMP245.

https://deramp.com/downloads/north_star/advantage/Software/

—--

01/13/25

Today I was finishing setting up my old PC’s with Laplink to my Gateway 2000. When I finished that I decided to try and get the Advantage communicating to the 486DX4-100, which sits right above it on the shelf. I had already done this with my IBM ThinkCentre Pentium 4 using XP and Hyperterminal as mentioned above. I was thinking I could use ProComm Plus on this 486 but then I decided to try Norton Commander. NC has a Terminal Emulation mode so I set it up with an ANSI terminal on COM4 at 9600,8,N,1. Then I connected the old serial cable I had created years ago for use with my Tandy 1400FD, along with the Null Modem adapter I made for this purpose. I connected a serial modem cable to the 25-pin serial port on the back of the 486 and then connected the modem cable to the Null Modem adapter.

After NC was ready on the 486 I booted the Advantage with my IMP disk setup for Direct Connection. I entered Terminal mode in IMP and typed on the keyboard. It was echoed on the 486! It works! I had to make a couple of settings on the 486 side to improve the communication (it was double echoing at first) and then I tested sending a Binary File from IMP to NC. It worked! So, there is no need for ProComm Plus or the Hyperterminal. I can move files using Norton Commander Terminal Mode and IMP.

So, my path for copying files for the Advantage for uploading to the Internet Archive is from IMP to Norton Commander on the 486 and then Laplink to the Gateway 2000. Then I can use FTP to move to my Windows 7 or 10 server where I can upload to the Internet.