M6000 – Soluce

This article is a follow up of my reseach on the M6000: https://radix-studio.fr/blog/2022/03/10/going-deeper-on-the-m6000/

So, after many attempts and experiments I was able to boot my M6000 and bring it back to life!

Soluce:

Use this procedure if your unit crashes during boot (front panel never turns green + floppy disk drive is never accessed).

For the impatients, here is the soluce (see below for the how and why):

• Write the M6bv20.ins on a DOS Formatted (FAT32) floppy disk and rename the file to « dumpfile.bin »
• Find a 1MB or 2MB SRAM Flash PCMCIA Type 1 (the SRAM characteristic is essential, a simple PCMCIA flash adapter won’t do the trick)
• Find a working M6000 unit (ask a nearby studio, this is litellary a 20 seconds manipulation)
• Insert the floppy disk and the PCMCIA card on the working unit (unit is ON)
• Go into « Frame > System > Main > Card » and press « Dump binary file to card ». The floppy disk is read and dumpfile.bin is written on the pcmcia flash card.
• Now eject the floppy disk and extract the PCMCIA card.
• Turn your faulty M6000 off
• Set the internal DIP switches to OFF OFF ON ON ON ON ON ON
• Insert the PCMCIA card and turn the unit ON
• The Front panel led will turn orange then green after a few seconds (around 10s)
• Turn the unit off and extract the PCMCIA card
• Set the internal DIP switches to their default values: ON ON OFF OFF OFF OFF ON ON
• Turn the unit ON
• That’s it!

After this procedure, your unit should properly boot (front panel led is green) and access the floppy disk drive during boot. If you still have issues, think about reflashing the main software (write S6KAppl.M6K and m6kboot.ctl on a floppy and boot on it).