DEV-TOOLSApril 26, 20261 min read7 views

QNX on the Commodore 900 – Raiders of the lost hard drive [video]

A fascinating look into the restoration of a rare 1984 Commodore 900 prototype, involving digital archaeology and complex reverse-engineering.

Raiders of the lost hard drive

Track: RetrocomputingRoom: UB4.136Day: SundayStart: 15:20End: 15:35- Video only: ub4136 - Chat: Join the conversation!

In 1984 Commodore introduced the C900, a budget Unix workstation with an obscure Zilog Z8000 processor. Unfortunately, when hey bought the Amiga, the Commodore 900 project was canceled and today only a few dozen prototypes exist.

A few years ago I happened to get one of these prototypes. Without a working power supply, monitor, keyboard and with the hard drive giving a mysterious 0xFF error, I was left puzzling on how to make the machine run.

This talk documents my successful effort to bring the machine back to life. It is a continent-spanning tale of digital archaeology, which included, among others, disassembling the Z8000 BIOS, reverse-engineering the keyboard interface and figuring out the hard disk low level format. After I figured out how to make the machine run, I have helped two other Commodore 900 owners with the same problems to make their machines fully working.

Speakers

| Michal Pleban |

Source: Hacker News

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