Pied Piper Communicator

Mike, Slightly Yellowed

This is going to be a bit of a rambling collection of info as I work on one of my most interesting computers!

I have an "Archives PC" which was an Australian rebrand of the Pied Piper Communicator, a fairly generic CP/M system from 1982.

Here's some general info on a few pages out there:
http://oldcomputers.net/pied-piper.html
https://nosher.net/archives/computers/pcw_1983-10_010_piedpiper
https://vintagecomputer.ca/stm-pied-piper-computer/

Mine does mostly work!

The external floppy drive is a bit flaky - in fact it's the original internal one that I swapped over to get it to boot. The power supply makes me nervous, though, and ib want to swap that out before turning it on again.

I have turned up a lot of info on these machines though. Schematics and ROM source code are kicking around out there and I think it's not too much of a stretch to say that if anything doesn't work I've got enough information to build a whole new one.

Anyway, more posts will come as more happens!

Mike, Slightly Yellowed

Here's a copy of the 4K system ROM from my Pied Piper.

https://drive.chinwag.org/s/cM7bjf2HNqcsGRb

There's another copy of one out there, I think in one of the first post links, but it's got a lower part number than mine - STM 20000172-00.

Mike, Slightly Yellowed

I've uploaded every bit of documentation I've found, plus ROM dumps (those I've found, plus the possible later version from my machine) to the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/pied-piper-communicator-1

I'll update that page if I find anything new!

Mike, Slightly Yellowed

My Pied Piper Communicator/Archives PC has a new power supply that smells a lot less like capacitors and scorching. Need to replace the power socket on the back and finish rewiring it all, then I can turn it on again for the first time in a few years!

Mike, Slightly Yellowed

I did a double take yesterday when I realised that the apparently-plastic case of the computer was conductive when I was checking I had continuity from the new power supply ground to a few contact points. There's a reference to this on a now-deleted page that got scooped up by archive.org though. Going to add the text here so it's searchable again.

In order to pass FCC radiation testing the casing had to be coated with a copper layer on top of the plastic. Then paint is applied over the copper. Paint adhesion problem was a major concern. For the early Pipe Pipers tarnished copper showing through the paint was a major after sale headache.

Kenny Tam, in a comment on old-computers.com

Mike, Slightly Yellowed

I've posted the notes I made about how we ended up with a Pied Piper Communicator with "Archives PC" branding on it over at my blog here: https://bremensaki.com/2024/10/06/the-archives-pc/

Not sure if it's going to be worth putting any of that info into a video, we'll see how it goes when I start editing things!

Mike, Slightly Yellowed

Here's some more of Archives Computers (Australia) from Australian Personal Computer, February 1982. I'll transcribe the article a bit later and add the details to the blog post.