AES 7100 - Interesting and unique machine!

    Hi Folks!


    I wanted to share a very interesting machine I got as part of my latest haul, the AES 7100 (Model 203), which is a rebrand of the French Alcatel 7100.

    Now, there is not a lot of information out there, except from some folks in this forum, hence my registration!


    154047-aes-7100-full-view-jpg


    It was designed as a "Digital Typewriter", but it is quite a potent machine, with its Z80 CPU and 3 Z80-PIO chip, 256kb RAM and 2 floppy drives

    154050-main-board-jpg


    Some units came with single head, mine came with Dual head Micropolis 1115-VI drives.

    I have serviced them, calibrated RPM, head alignment, Index sensor checked etc, and drives are both GOOD now.

    154051-micropolis-1115-vi-jpg



    I was lucky enough to get a box of AES Hard Sectored Floppies with it, unfortunately, they all seem to have lost their magnetic flux overtime, and none of them are able to get the machine boot.

    154048-diskettes-jpg


    And that's where things get tricky, the machine seem to only support the Hard Sectored disks, that have 16 sector + 1 Index hole.

    154049-floppy-hs-jpg


    mister-freeze Introduced me to this place, as there could be a solution to burn a new OS for this machine.

    Possibly some special adapter on KryoFlux / GreaseWeazle? I have a lot of drives as well, including "true" 360Kb drives that can be hard configured for 300/360RPM.

    At this point I found that READING hard sectored worked, but all my floppies lost their flux and can't be used to boot the machine.


    That's where I'd like to get in touch with some folks who have experience with this (maybe gpospi).

    I am looking for ANY image and advice to BURN the OS on a floppy.


    Alternativelly:

    As I mentioned in one of the local groups:
    I considered porting a ROM from another Z80 machine, I tried disassembling the embedded main ROM but it seems it is so limited (4k half filled, so 2k really) that it will make the task very complicated.
    - At the hardware level because it will be very hard to expand the ROM addressing range without hardware mod, quite impossible without schematics and don't feel ready to reverse engineer the whole board
    - At the software level because it seems the rest of the BOOT code "seem" to be fetched from the BOOT floppy, which will be hard to also develop, especially if the hard sectored control is done at the hardware level.


    So here it is, my current progress on this machine! If there is an appetite to have the Manuals digitized and archived, please let me know, I could help doing that for legacy and the community as well!

    Hi, we have imaged boot disks using "Fluxcopy": FLUXCOPY: Projekt für Hard- und Software zum Kopieren von hard-sektorierten Disketten

    First you need to build the FluxTeen board, then you may write back the images to a physical disk and boot the machine. Where are you located? Within Europe I could send you a FluxTeen PCB that you need to populate with components.

    gpospi I can help with overseas shipping if necessary. I could make a copy of a OS-Disk for AnalogThinker too but I can´t test it, since my AES 103 needs another System as we already figured out.

    AnalogThinker Please keep in mind that gpospi s machine has a german keyboard layout . So I expect the system will only run with language-related limitations. We had the same issue when we provided a system disk for PhilA for the AES 103



    BTW you should have two system disks that need to be booted sequentially (label should be "AES System disk 1", "AES System disk 2" or similar). Normally when you insert disk 1, the system will start loading and eventually write something like "AES System Disk 1 loading, Copyright AES Inc." on the screen (see https://forum.classic-computin…attachment/145477-a3-jpg/). This will take a while, then it will ask to insert disk 2 (or try loading disk 2 from the second drive). If disks are wrong/not readable, the screen will fill with 0/1/2 as shown on your first picture.

    BTW you should have two system disks that need to be booted sequentially (label should be "AES System disk 1", "AES System disk 2" or similar). Normally when you insert disk 1, the system will start loading and eventually write something like "AES System Disk 1 loading, Copyright AES Inc." on the screen (see https://forum.classic-computin…attachment/145477-a3-jpg/). This will take a while, then it will ask to insert disk 2 (or try loading disk 2 from the second drive). If disks are wrong/not readable, the screen will fill with 0/1/2 as shown on your first picture.