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Victor 9000

Introduction

The Victor 9000 was an 8088 machine released in 1981. The machine could run both MS-DOS as well as CPM/86. While using MS-DOS and an 8088 chip, it was not IBM compatible. The Victor utilized a unique floppy drive controller, its own interrupt table, and memory layout. The Victor 9000 could utilize up to 896KB RAM, and shipped in a floppy drive configuration with two floppies or a hard-drive configuration that only had a single floppy drive.

Chuck Peddle designed the machine and was the CEO of Victor Technologies, He was also the engineer behind the 6502 microprocessor which unleashed the affordable personal computing revolution of the 80's. The 6502 processor ran inside Apple IIs, Commodore 64s, and a variety of other low-cost computers of the time.

Applied Computer Techniques sold the Victor 9000 in Europe as the ACT Sirius 1. The Sirius 1 was the same machine simply rebranded for the European market. Because IBM had difficulty meeting the supply needs of the American market, the IBM-PC was not available in Europe for the initial few years of its release. Without IBM as a serious competitor the ACT Sirius 1 was the top selling computer in Europe during the early years of the computing revolution.

Applesauce Support

Disk Types

The Victor 9000 stores data in an usual manner. The disks have a variable number of sectors per track, utilize a constant linear velocity, and spin at different speeds in various zones on the disk. The disks encode data using a Group Coded Recording [GCR] format that's an evolution of that used in the Commodore 64. The tracks on the first and second side do not spin at the same rate. The computer organizes the tracks logically with 0-79 on the first side and then tracks 80-159 on the second. This differs from many other computers which interleave tracks between side one and two.

Zone Table

ZONE NUMBER LOWER HEAD TRACKS UPPER HEAD TRACKS SECTORS PER TRACK ROTATIONAL PERIOD (MS) RPM
0 0-3 unused 19 237.9 252
1 4-15 0-7 18 224.5 267
2 16-26 8-18 17 212.2 283
3 27-37 19-29 16 199.9 300
4 38-47* 30-39* 15 187.6 320
5 48-59 40-51 14 175.3 342
6 60-70 52-62 13 163.0 368
7 71-79 63-74 12 149.6 401
8 unused 75-79 11 144.0 417

* The documentation for the Victor lists Zone 4 as ending with Track 48 on side 1 and track 40 on side two. This is incorrect. The above table reflects disks analyzed from various machines and matches the assembly code in the floppy driver. Various written documents contain this documentation bug.

GCR Table

Input Hex IO Encoded Binary IO Encoded Hex
0 01010 0x0a
1 01011 0x0b
2 10010 0x12
3 10011 0x13
4 01110 0x0e
5 01111 0x0f
6 10110 0x16
7 10111 0x17
8 01001 0x09
9 11001 0x19
A 11010 0x1a
B 11011 0x1b
C 01101 0x0d
D 11101 0x1d
E 11110 0x1e
F 10101 0x15

Reading and writing the following Victor 9000 disk types is supported:

File Systems

Victor 9000 MS-DOS Victor 9000 CPM/86
DOS 1.x Single-Sided/Double-Sided
DOS 2.11 Single-Sided/Double-Sided
DOS 3.1 Single-Sided/Double-Sided 		CPM/86 Single-Sided

Disk Image Formats

The following disk image formats are supported:

Victor 9000
IMG
5.25“ Drives
Panasonic JU-475
YE-Data YD-380
Teac FD-55GFR

General Information

Drive Information

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Emulators

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