Help please -- ADAM peripherals

The Evener · January 17, 2016

Hi all,

About twenty years ago I acquired a number of peripherals and a large stash of floppies from an ADAM user. I never used the peripherals although I did see some of them in action at the seller's house, and I hoped you could confirm a few things:

I think I have a ADAM MIB2 Parallel/Serial Card, but it is attached to another board, which l think is a memory expander. Has anyone seen this set-up before?

I also have two ADAM disk drives that have been modified as the face plates are not the standard kind. It made me think that perhaps it would a double-sided conversion, and I did find a number of double-sided disks in the collection. Have others seen double-sided conversions with a similar cosmetic look?

Finally, I have a card that I believe plugs into the Expansion Port, which in turn provides a through port for Expansion, plus other connector pin-outs that allow use of a parallel printer I assume. The board is from Hi Tek Research and has "Coleco ADAM RS-232 Option" on the board.

Thanks for your help!

LoTonah · January 17, 2016

I could be wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen a beige 360Kb floppy drive, especially as a half-height. I think you have two 1.44Mb drive there. Whether they work in that capacity would depend on the controller, I bet.

Wish I would just stumble across a collection like this. *sigh*

adamcon · January 17, 2016

Hi all,

About twenty years ago I acquired a number of peripherals and a large stash of floppies from an ADAM user. I never used the peripherals although I did see some of them in action at the seller's house, and I hoped you could confirm a few things:

I think I have a ADAM MIB2 Parallel/Serial Card, but it is attached to another board, which l think is a memory expander. Has anyone seen this set-up before?

I also have two ADAM disk drives that have been modified as the face plates are not the standard kind. It made me think that perhaps it would a double-sided conversion, and I did find a number of double-sided disks in the collection. Have others seen double-sided conversions with a similar cosmetic look?

Finally, I have a card that I believe plugs into the Expansion Port, which in turn provides a through port for Expansion, plus other connector pin-outs that allow use of a parallel printer I assume. The board is from Hi Tek Research and has "Coleco ADAM RS-232 Option" on the board.

Thanks for your help!

NICE "collection" you picked up. Pic #1 is an MIB2 for MIcroInnovations paired with an Orphanwre memory expander which appears to be a handwired upgraded 256k to possibly a 512k. Pic #2 are 2 Coleco 160k disk drives which have been upgraded to double sided 320 disk drives; the reason they look different on the locking mechanism is that both drive mechs are from different manufacturers - they both work the same as the original 160k drive mechanisms. Pic # 3 does look like a parallel interface for a printer, and it is for the ADAM from Tek Research, although the cable seems to be in the wrong place. THAT may be a treasure in itself.

NIAD · January 18, 2016

Adamcon knows his s^^t!

#1 - Micro Innovations MIB2 with Orphanware 512K Memory Expander. The ME was probably a 256K card that was latter upgraded to 512K by piggybacking the memory chips and then performing a lot of wire patching.

#2 - 5 1/4" DS-DD FDD Upgrades. They could be 320K (E&T Software, Adam's House, Adamlink of Utah) or 360K (Orphanware). The people that performed these drive upgrades used whatever drive mechanics that they could get the cheapest and that's why you see some with black bezels and some with beige bezels.

#3 - Very rare Parallel and Serial Interface seeing as everyone preferred the internal Parallel and Serial Interface cards that were cheaper and didn't clutter-up your desk.

Edited January 18, 2016 by NIAD