igt Double Diamond Mine

[Stayouttadabunker]

I tried to re-enact the problem with my machine.
I did it so well I got all the same error messages as he did and more!. 
The "COM problem" was easy...all I did was disconnect one end of the 3-gray wired COM harness.
"Loss of Operating System" was simply to throw in a RFA card in the side slot to re-load up the Operating files for LCD computer.

I was in contact with scott's NLG friend iamwally this morning....they live close by each other.
I showed him how to hook up an Vision LCD to a old desktop computer ATX to power it up on a bench.
He can easily load up the RFA100.28 I sent him to a fresh CF card and run the program on scotts LCD computer.
Then he can take it back and put it in his cabinet, throw in the BGM card and boot up with that.

Totally agree with you guys with having bad Compact Flash cards.
I have a few of those as well.
Never store them with the pin holes facing up.
I also have extra LCD computers to play with and some have bad pins in the PCMCIA slots.
Accidentally, I found out that the side slot can be used for both the RFA and BGM cards.

See some notes I've made...>>>

[qbert]

What is the current status?
Are you still having the communication issue?

[Iamwally]

Ok so trying to help Scott out.  He sent me the monitor and his pcmcia cards.  Hooked up on bench with atx power supply and confirm the computer sees the pcmcia cards but comes up with operating system
Not found.  So it would seems that the OS needs to be loaded back onto the internal flash drive.  Trying to go about figuring out how to do that or even if it can be done!🤣. Anyone with experience in this area please let me know.  I was under the assumption that the RFA card would do just that but it would seem that the computer doesn’t actually boot off the pcmcia card only the internal flash.  Maybe that is actually the question, how do you make the computer boot off the pcmcia card?  Because if it did I am fairly certain it would restore the OS to the internal flash drive.🤷‍♂️🤔

Thank you,

Iamwally

[Iamwally]

Ok so made a cable and hooked up a keyboard…trying to get into the bios of this little computer….unfortunately it’s password protected…..any ideas of what it might be?

Thanks

Iamwally

[Stayouttadabunker]

I did this about 14 years ago...haha 
Go to link below...>>>

http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=7309.75

[Iamwally]

Hahaha!!!  Thanks for that!!! Was searching all around and didn’t find that!!!

[Iamwally]

So I got keyboard hooked up, got into the bios, located a 3 1/2” diskette drive and cable to hookup as a: drive to boot off of.  Only problem is it seems
That the bios won’t hold the settings I go in and change disk a: to 1.44mb disk drive and then save settings and exit.  Yet as soon as the machine reboots the disk a: is still set to none.🤷‍♂️. Any ideas as it seems I am not able to save bios settings.

Thank you,


Iamwally

[Iamwally]

Ok booting up off a floppy now!  So progress!  I wonder if someone can do me a favor or actually 2 small favors.

1  Can someone post a pic of the whole board of a working lcd cpu board without the pcmcia cards installed

2 Can someone post a video of the bootup of a working one with the J1 jumper installed and no pcmcia cards installed

Thank you,

Iamwally

[Iamwally]

Ok I feel like I am getting closer and closer daily to figuring how to fix this little monster🤞🤣. Anyway, I have attached a photo and circled 4 things that I would love to know what they are.  If someone knows please fill me in.  Also is there any actual documentation floating around out there about these little computers?

Thanks,

Iamwally

[Iamwally]

Just so everyone knows I came up with an interesting solution.   It seems somehow the lcd flash boot drive either died or got corrupted and after spending a whole bunch of time trying to revive it unsuccessfully I came up with a better albeit different solution. 

I gave up on the internal drive …. I used a cf card in a pcmcia adapter as the c: drive ….. made a dos 6.22 boot disk and used it to format the c: drive with /s to make it dos bootable ….then rebooted with RFA card in second slot ….changed over to d: and ran igtupdt.bat…..then took RFA card out and put BGM card in second slot and voila!!!  So now it runs the OS off the top pcmcia slot and the BGM card runs in the side slot.

If anyone needs more in depth details PM me and we can discuss it further.

Thank you,

Iamwally

[Stayouttadabunker]

omg...I haven't played with DOS commands in 14 years.... 
Glad you fixed it finally.