New PCBs arrived, building them for two Virtual 2315 Cartridge Facilities in final form

PCBS FROM FAB ARRIVED

I had what I believe are the final versions of the 2310 Interface Board, Power Distribution Board and the dress faceplate. The faceplate was a purely cosmetic remake. The 2310 Interface Board added a relay and changed the circuits for lighting the 1130 console Unlock lamp. The Power Distribution Board had additional terminal connections to improve the wiring to the time relay that keeps the Virtual 2315 Cartridge Facility (V2315CF) powered up from the battery after the 1130 system power drops. 

BUILDING THE FINAL VERSIONS OF THE TWO BOARDS

I believed I had all the components on hand in order to assemble two final versions of the two PCBs, one set for the Vintage Computer Federation InfoAge museum's 1130 and one for the System Source Museum's 1130 I had previously restored. 

I had almost completely built the boards but discovered I was missing a couple of screw terminal parts. A four wire block is used on the 2310 Interface Board, but one of the two boards is missing the block. Both of the Power Distribution Boards are missing 10 wire blocks. I expect a shipment from Digikey with the 10 wire blocks by Monday. I had to put in an order for the 4 wire block, as I clearly messed up. 

A BIT OF WORK LEFT TO COMPLETE ON THE BOARDS

In addition to the screw terminal blocks, I have to insert 24 gold plated pins into one of the 2310 Interface Boards - the cable from the IBM 1130 controller logic plugs into these pins. Then, I have to solder in the wire harness whose end plugs into the 13SD internal disk drive of the 1130. I ran out of time today to finish this work up - plus I am short the terminal blocks. 

FINISHING UP PYTHON UTILITY PROGRAMS FOR USERS OF V2315CF

I wrote some short programs under Python that deal with the virtual cartridge image files. The V2315CF format for a cartridge image has a header which includes a cartridge identifier and a text description. IBM 1130 software uses a cartridge identifier, consisting of four hex digits, which can be any value between 0x0001 and 0x7FFF. 

Program convert1130.py will take a disk image in the format used with the IBM 1130 simulators, requests a cartridge identifier and description from the user and produces a new file in the V2315CF format. 

Program convert2315.py opens a disk image from the V2315CF and produces a disk file in the format to be used by the IBM 1130 simulators. It lists the header information on the input file while doing the conversion. 

Program listcartridges.py is pointed at a folder on a PC. It will look at all files in that folder that are in the V2315CF file format, listing the file name, cartridge identifier and description for each valid file. 

Program showsector.py will open a V2315CF disk image file then ask the user for the cylinder, head and sector that they want to display. The program lists the 321 hex words of the sector.