Morrow Design - Micro Decision MD11

I picked up this interesting Z80 based computer from a fellow collector as untested. I was happy to find that it was in perfect working order and even the hard drive is fully functional.

Work done:

Exterior inspection:

The exterior case was in fair condition, the case is somewhat warped and there were a few scuff marks:

Front

On the back there are two 25 pin auxiliary RS-232 ports to connect either a serial printer or modem, one RS-422 port, a parallel printer port and another RS-232 port for the console.

As far as I can find, the RS-422 functionality was never implemented in software

Back

Interior inspection:

Inside, the system was remarkably clean, especially considering there is a fan installed:

Inside

Drives removed

Power supply

Now that the computer was fully apart, the first step was inspecting and testing the power supply.

Power supply

Everything looked healthy, no physically leaking capacitors or explosive Rifa's. Next I tested all the voltage rails and everything was set for a first power on.

Logic board

The logic board is quite compact for the amount of features it contains, aside from the Z80 CPU and 128K of RAM it also contains a floppy and MFM hard drive controller as well as the controllers for the terminal and other peripherals.

Also included is a 40 pin expansion bus which breaks out most of the CPU bus, which unfortunately never seems to have been used.

Logic board

Logic board back

Hard drive

Morrow calls this by its older name, a Winchester drive. It's an 11 megabyte model, which gives this computer it's model name. It was made by Computer Memory and uses a standard MFM interface.

HDD

HDD back

HDD bottom

I initially started the drive separately from the computer, just to see if it would spin up and seek.

Floppy drive

The floppy drive is a double-density, double-sided (360K) model made by Shugart, using their original interface.

Floppy top

Floppy bottom

Floppy drive side

Initially it was a bit noisy and although it did work properly, after some lubrication it was perfect.

Terminal interface

To interface with the computer, you have to connect an RS-232 terminal to the Terminal interface. The following are the default settings: 9600 Baud, 7 data bits, 2 stop bits, no parity, full-duplex (no local echo).

When the computer boots, it automatically starts a 'Copilot' program, which allows for easily starting built-in programs and utilities, as well as exiting to the standard CP/M prompt.

Pilot