exidysorcerer.net

I went through the process of reverse engineering this from pictures and explaining how I think it could work. I didn't make any, but you theoretically could build one.

https://abzman2k.wordpress.com/2024/02/ ... rogrammer/

Back in the 80s someone in SCUA gave me an EPROM burner for my Sorcerer. I hadn't seen it many years and assumed it had gone missing during a house move sometime in the 90s, However after the death of my Dad last year my brother has been going through stuff and came across some Sorcerer material that I had not seen in a very long time but which my parent's had safely squirrelled away.

This mains powered burner and the cassette pictured below were found in a box:



I wondered if this device might be a clone of the Arrington burner and use the same software. Why re-invent the wheel?
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this appears to be the case.
As per the photo there are two 1200baud versions and one 300baud version on the tape which I have put in my new "cave" in the file repository.

The signal is quite degraded but on my Sorcerer II, with the volume high enough, I can load one of the 1200baud version at 47 seconds without error. I made these screenshots in MAME using a modified version of the recording made by Digitalker. You can actually "burn" an EPROM in MAME because the emulation just reads and writes FF from the parallel port which has nothing connected although watch your ears as you will hear a buzzing sound through the (currently) mandatory COVOX audio interface plugged into the parallel port in the MAME driver.

that's super cool. I never expected to see that software. I don't know that it's practical to use a sorcerer as a 2716 programmer, but it's great to have it preserved.

Can I see inside that box? I wonder if it used the same PCB, just repackaged.

Abzman wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2024 1:54 pm Can I see inside that box? I wonder if it used the same PCB, just repackaged.

Yes I'll take some photos of the insides once I'm back from a work trip in a couple of weeks.