reassembled. Fixed many things. Broken wire to reset button, tabs shorted to case... no wonder it was wonky. Keyboard connector was broken. Countless screws missing.

And the logic analyzer parts... holy moly.

Either this was a prototype or someone was doing some hacking. The IDC cable connecting it to the motherboard wasn't crimped with pin 1's on the same wire... nor matching the pin 1's on the boards. There's an intermediate board, too... which has a 74F00... so determining the proper orientation of the cable meant plugging it in in four different ways and verifying which connected grounds bettween boards properly while also connecting to the 7400... And checking that its 5v was coming from whichever board it was supposed to be connected to. Oy! (Because apparently the ribbon cable doesn't connect the two boards' 5v... a friggin jigsaw puzzle.

Then the cables to the "pods"... they have two different branded IDC connectors.

And the final indicator (that I recall) that it was either a prototype or a hack job is the interboard cable is excessively long and written on: "CABLE FOR LOGIC ANALYSER BOARD TESTING"

Oh, right, also the power cable had an unnecessary extension.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things.

Oh yeah, it's crammed in there so tight that even though it *looks* like you should be able to remove the mobo with only its attached screws... nope. The modem jack hits the pod connectors... meaning you have to remove the mobo and logic analyzer boards to remove either. Similar elsewhere... you have to remove all floppy drives as a unit to remove one. Despite the fact they look like they could just slide right outthe front. Oy! Did I mention the absurd keyboard cable?! But I hear that's the case for all kaypros. Weird.

--------

Laking my entire toolbox... Used some tricks learnt around HaD. Bottoms of pop bottles are indeed quite handy for storing screws. Also heatshrink via soldering iron works surprisingly well.

This one was my own idea, born of trying to contain solder flecks and desoldered parts... now leaving my "workbench" in a state I'd feel only slightly uncomfortable eating dropped peas off of when it's in dinner-table mode (mostly because it's bare wood with a grippy-mat).

Do all the solderin' in a shallow cardboard box. Keep everything solder-related inside. Store for later.

------

In my earlier endeavors with this thing I spent quite a bit of time running the original diskette round in circles and sliding the read/write heads of drive a: back n forth over it, trying to get a good read on every sector... months. Plugged into an old 486. After finally acquiring what I think to be all the sectors *with matching CRCs* I used that same drive to make duplicate disks...

Oh yeah... remember *way back* at the start of this project I was shocked that I turned it on for what might well have been the first time in twenty years... ten unused in my possession. .. and found that it booted right up and ran the programs... despite the fact the disk was clamped between those heads all that time (nevermind transports!)...

Well now that drive... that same drive... is damaging every disk I put in it. Don't see anything wrong with it... and it boots fine the first time, only causing problems after a track-seek is necessary... thankfully CP/M (?) Is small enough to boot from a single track, and i figured that out soon enough that I still have one bootable disk. But Not a disk with the logic analyzer software.

So... you see my workbench/dinner table... I ain't bouts to cram a desktop PC, monitor, and keyboard in this space just to make some disks while also battling whatever's causing my drive to make coasters... nevermind having to use that same drive in both systems (or fix both drives?). Nevermind a limited supply of 5.25in disks, questionable in their remaining quality in the first place.

I've a few plans of attack. The best solution, probably, and likely easiest, is to invest in one of those SD card floppy drive emulators.

Barring that on account of... what...? Keeping it original as possible? Money? Making do with what i've got? I dunno... barring that...

There's a weird thing i read that 1.44mb 3.5in floppy drives can be put in place of 360k 5.25in drives in PC's whose bioses only support 360k drives... they can only be used with 720k disks (and can access the full 720k! Apparently it's not about size, but about baud rate), but ive done it and much to my surprise it works. *plausibly* the same is true in the kaypro, which has a different controller, but uses compatible "360k" drives.

Then: I won't likely be able to use a 3.5in USB floppy drive with my laptop to make the disks because writing 400k to a "360k" disk requires low level controller commands that are usually accessed via the ISA bus... so am pretty sure that utilities for disk imaging like this require direct access to the controller.

Thought: I've a couple "ancient" laptops with 3.5in drives... often their bioses even allowed choosing the drive type. (I remember since it seemed weird, when the drives were built in and certainly there was no room to replace it with a 5.25). So maybe I could even hook the 360k drive in-place. Some did it via the parallel port... not sure i have one like that... or just use the 3.5in drive, if that works... though kinda spoils the vintage.

I thought I had another course of action, but I forget.