N* Horizon help

[Theodore (Alex) Evans]

I have been fortunate enough to have been given a NorthStar Horizon. I
am fairly familiar with older computer systems and did what tests I
could without any disks. The unit appears fully functional as far as I
have been able to test it, but I have no disks for it. My system is
configured with the original Northstar CPU card and double density
floppy controller along with a third party 64k ram card. It has two
double sided double density floppy drives. As a result I am looking for
a few things: boot media, hard sectored floppy disks, and/or a punch to
convert soft sectored disks to hard sectored.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

Alex

[John Garza]

On 12/10/2011 04:53 PM, Theodore (Alex) Evans wrote:
> I have been fortunate enough to have been given a NorthStar Horizon. I

Alex,

It's worthwhile to do the "usual" to Horizons
1) replace electrolytic and tantalum capacitors
2) clean the drive heads, and all moving mechanical parts, with very
light lube on the drive rails.

As for media, try these guys:

http://www.cadigital.com/media.htm


Also, below is a post from Doug Coward to cctalk that describes the
process of making a hard sectored disks (long)----

Have fun with your new Horizon!

-John

//====================================================

Making hard sectored disksMaking hard sectored disks
Doug Coward dcoward at pressstart.com
Wed Dec 3 09:59:32 CST 1997
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Here is the instructions for making the disks.
Keep in mind as you read this that one of my personal mottos
is that if I could write I'd be a writer.
Some of the directions are clearer if you are actually doing
it as you read them.

.............. CUT HERE .................................

PROCEDURE FOR CREATING HARD SECTORED FLOPPY
DISKS FROM SOFT SECTORED FLOPPY DISKS
by Doug Coward

For some time now I've thought about the possiblity of
creating my own hard sectored mini-floppies so that I
would not have to rely on being able to find disks at
surplus and thrift shops as they became more and more
scarce. It seem to me that the only difference between
a hard sectored disk and a soft sectored disk should be
the number of index holes. So I tried making 3 disks
and they worked.
So far this technique has only been used to create double
density 10 sector hard sector disks but there is no reason
I can think of that would keep this same technique from
working to create single density or 16 sector disks.
Currently, I don't own a Wang or any other computer that
would use a hard sectored 8" diskette, so I will not be
able to test this procedure on the larger diskettes. When
I have more time, I plan to try and use the pieces of an
old floppy disk drive to build a "punching gig" to make
the process of punching the index holes easier.

MATERIALS NEEDED
1 1/8" round hand operated paper punch
1 Soft sectored 5 1/4" floppy disk
1 Hard sectored 5 1/4" floppy disk to use as a template.
1 Plain piece of white paper
2 Pieces of 1/2" wide x 1/2" long clear adhesive tape.

The normal index holes from my measurements appear to be
between 3/32" and 4/32". So I decided to use a 1/8" punch
which will make the holes oversize by about 1/64" but
should not make any great difference. Most paper punches
are 1/4" so you will need to go to a large office supply
store to find this punch (like Office Max). The punch I
purchased had a plastic piece over the "female" jaw of the
punch to catch the material punched out. This I removed so
that I could see through the "female" jaw of the punch to
center the punch on the index hole.

PROCEDURE
The difficult part of punching the disk is guaranteeing
the placement of the holes. That is why I use a hard sectored
disk as a template.

1. With the two pieces of tape ready, take and rotate each
diskette in its jacket until an index hole is visible
in the center of the index hole aperture in the jacket.
2. Place the hard sectored disk on top of the soft sectored
disk so that the two visible index holes line up.
3. While holding the diskettes together, insert 3 finger tips
of one hand through the hub opening applying a slight
outward pressure to align the hubs of the two disks.
If the index holes are not aligned
go back to step 1. If they are slightly out of alignment
use the point of a pin or any object that can be inserted
through the two index holes and wiggled to realign the
index holes.
4. With the hubs and the index holes aligned, firmly pinch
together the two diskettes with your other hand, at the
hub. Remove your 3 fingers out of the hub.
5. While still pinching the diskettes together, apply 1 piece
of tape to the diskettes at the hub so that the tape
wraps around through the hub opening and sticks to both
diskettes BUT NOT THEIR JACKETS. Apply the other piece
of tape across the hub opening from the first piece of
tape in the same manner.
6. At this point the two diskettes should have their hub
openings and one index hole perfectly aligned. Also
they should be securely taped together but still be able
to rotate in their jackets. It's important that the
jackets be more or less aligned with each other while
punching the holes or you can finish with some extra
holes in the "new" diskette's jacket. You can, if you
need to, use a small piece of tape across the edge of
the two jackets in one corner to keep them aligned.
7. Now you're ready to punch some holes. Holding the two
diskette jackets in one corner with one hand, insert
2 fingers of the other hand into the hub opening and
rotate the diskettes until an index hole in the top
diskette (the hard sector template disk) appears in
the center of the index hole aperture of the jacket.
Hold the diskettes "template disk up" so that the
index hole aperture is on the other side of the hub
opening from you (away from you).
8. Insert the piece of plain white paper between the
diskettes from the side closest to the index aperture
until you can see the paper through the index hole in
the diskette. This is to make the index hole more visible.
9. Now with the jackets aligned, and the index hole (with the
paper visible) in the center of the index aperture, insert
the paper punch through the hub opening so that the
"female" jaw is positioned above the index hole and the
"male" jaw positioned below the index hole. You will
have to bend the diskettes slightly to get a clean punch.
As you slowly close the jaws of the paper punch you
will be able to sight through the "female" part of the
punch and line up the punch exactly to the existing index hole.
This is where the plain white paper really helps to see
that index hole.
PUNCH THE HOLE.
10. Repeat steps 7,8,9 until you have punched all of the holes.
Remember to keep rotating the diskettes in the same direction
after punching each hole.
Reposition the paper before punching each hole. When done,
peel the tape off carefully, most diskettes today don't
have a hub reinforcement ring and the hub opening can
be stretched or distorted. If you are careful the template
disk over and over again.

.............. CUT HERE .................................



=========================================
Doug Coward dcoward at pressstart.com
Senior Software Engineer
Press Start Inc.
Sunnyvale,CA

Curator
Museum of Personal Computing Machinery
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum
=========================================