From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Tue Nov 1 05:24:45 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Witchy) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 11:24:45 -0000 (GMT) Subject: An interesting VAX based project Message-ID: <3199.135.196.233.27.1130844285.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Folks, I may be installing a 6640, 6660, star coupler and HSJ40s next week with 'a shedload of disks'. The size of the shed hasn't been quantified :) Can anyone remember the rules for star couplers before I go reading all the docs? I haven't done anything with these for nigh on 10 years and can only remember basics like CI cable positioning and macro bends etc..... I know I've got a 6660 at work here for a memory refresher but no SC. TIA! -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection? From jbglaw at lug-owl.de Tue Nov 1 05:31:55 2005 From: jbglaw at lug-owl.de (Jan-Benedict Glaw) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 12:31:55 +0100 Subject: An interesting VAX based project In-Reply-To: <3199.135.196.233.27.1130844285.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> References: <3199.135.196.233.27.1130844285.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: <20051101113155.GZ27184@lug-owl.de> On Tue, 2005-11-01 11:24:45 -0000, Witchy wrote: > I know I've got a 6660 at work here for a memory refresher but no SC. Awesome... MfG, JBG -- Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de . +49-172-7608481 _ O _ "Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg _ _ O f?r einen Freien Staat voll Freier B?rger" | im Internet! | im Irak! O O O ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(NEW_COPYRIGHT_LAW | DRM | TCPA)); From huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Tue Nov 1 06:18:17 2005 From: huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au (Huw Davies) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 23:18:17 +1100 Subject: An interesting VAX based project In-Reply-To: <3199.135.196.233.27.1130844285.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> References: <3199.135.196.233.27.1130844285.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: On 01/11/2005, at 10:24 PM, Witchy wrote: > Folks, > > I may be installing a 6640, 6660, star coupler and HSJ40s next week > with > 'a shedload of disks'. The size of the shed hasn't been quantified :) > > Can anyone remember the rules for star couplers before I go reading > all > the docs? I haven't done anything with these for nigh on 10 years > and can > only remember basics like CI cable positioning and macro bends > etc..... Well there's not really much more to it than that. If you're lucky you have the newer CI cables which are thinner and much lighter than the originals. Given that you've only got three nodes, just run the two sets (A and B) of the CI cables (transmit and receive for a total of four) to the correct ports in the star coupler - they will be labeled. There are some configuration jumpers on the CI boards but they are likely to be in the default settings. ISTR that they could be set to use both paths simultaneously to get twice the throughput but as the CI based cluster I used to manage had HSC-50s and older VAXen, I couldn't take advantage of this. I'm not sure if the HSJ40 can - over to someone else perhaps for a definitive answer.... Remember, star couplers don't require power and were probably the most reliable device Digital ever produced! Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green" From henk.gooijen at oce.com Tue Nov 1 01:05:00 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 08:05:00 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24DA@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Hi all, I finally got juice on the main power line connection in my museum. I am connecting my machines bit by bit, after 2 years of inactivity. I have found the following problem with my 11/34C. (I will keep the description short, and tell only the end result) The console of the 11/34C (11/34A plus cache option) shows weird (=wrong) behaviour. It was working fine! The display shows "000000", and the RUN LED is off. If I press the 'LSR' button, the 'SR DISP' LED goes on. However, if I press any of the numerical buttons, '1-6', a digit in the display only flashes very brief. I cannot say what the digit was. It looks like the M7859 has developed a problem. To make things more weird the following happens if I start with pressing the 'CLR' button and then the numerical buttons. 1) press CLR (display stays at "000000") 2) press e.g. 6 (some of the rightmost digit segments briefly flash) 3) press 6 again (1st and 2nd of the right display flashes) 4) press 6 again (1st, 2nd and 3rd of the right display flashes) The first leftmost three displays remain "000" and do not show any sign of changes. Pressing 6 after the first 3 times, repeats the flashing of some segments in the three rightmost displays. So, I have the impression it has the problem to do with the M7958. AFAIK, the entry of the digits, for example the numeric entry '165020' does *not* need the UNIBUS, but only sets up an internal register. The 'LAD' button, and 'DIS AD' will start a UNIBUS cycle (to access a memory location). Correct? BTW, the voltage on the CPU backplane (DD11-PK) is 5.08 V. and the +15 and -15 read +/-15.x V. (Can't remember the exact value). I have an other 11/34 with an M7958, but never powered up that box. I took that M7859 and installed it in the 11/34C. The display stays dark. According to the M7859 doc, that basically means that the board is dead. So much for board swapping. Sorry, could not resist to try an easy success. I don't have other spare M7859 ... If you are interested, I can tell the steps I did before I stumbled on this M7859 (?) problem ... Anybody seen this display / console panel behaviour on the 11/34 ? Any clues ? All input is appreciated ! thanks, - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From allain at panix.com Tue Nov 1 09:29:39 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 10:29:39 -0500 Subject: mitch miller contact info? References: <00d101c5dea0$f9128000$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> Message-ID: <002901c5def9$3cf5eca0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> His old (~y2000) eBay ID seems to have been replaced, with what I don't have for you, but his website is still running: http://www.keyways.com/ . John A. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 1 10:56:25 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 08:56:25 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions Message-ID: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that there's plenty of applicable knowledge here. Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our incoming Linux server. Basically, it connects with the DSL modem and contains IP masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and fetchmail/procmail/qmail tasks (SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has for the last 5 or 6 years. Built like a tank. I'm wondering if something a little less power-hungry might be preferable, however. Are there any low-power alternatives for the job that anyone can recommend? Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 1 10:09:01 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:09:01 +0000 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that there's > plenty of applicable knowledge here. > > Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our incoming > Linux server. Basically, it connects with the DSL modem and contains IP > masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and fetchmail/procmail/qmail tasks > (SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has for the > last 5 or 6 years. Built like a tank. Would an offering from one of the various UNIX vendors be a possibility? Sun / SGI / HP or something? I'm thinking that getting away from any kind of Intel CPU would be a good place to start, plus of course you don't need any kind of framebuffer then either (unlike a PC) and can just use a serial console on the (very rare) occassions when you'd need to be physically at the machine. Cut memory to bare minimum too as that's probably a major culprit of current draw. If the machine's not doing any logging to local disk then you can eliminate the hard drive too - just boot it across the LAN on your secure interface from another server somewhere. Heck, something like an old Sun SPARC 20 is probably even on topic :) cheers Jules From tshoppa at wmata.com Tue Nov 1 11:21:09 2005 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:21:09 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions Message-ID: The VIA C3 based motherboards (usually in a mini-ITX form factor) certainly meet the "low-power" part of the needs. An EPIA 800 (C3 @ 800MHz, about the same computing power as the Pentium III you've currently got, more if you stay away from FP operations!) and modern IDE hard drive tick along at about 25-30W power consumption. A small RAID array of IDE drives will bring the power consumption up a few notches (add about 10-15W peak for each additional drive). There are rack-mount mini-ITX systems available, see for example http://www.caseoutlet.com/ My EPIA 800 webserver hosting about two dozen virtual domains (most but not all of them classic computing related) has survived a couple of slashdottings in the past 3 years without breaking a sweat :-). Tim. From allain at panix.com Tue Nov 1 11:25:11 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 12:25:11 -0500 Subject: AUI crossover? References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> I am playing around with networking again, and realized I have a lot of AUI transcievers of different types, and only one AUI hub. Question is, can two AUI-male connecting converters be connected together with an appropriate cabelling, like you can do with RJ45/10bT, or must a person always use a hub/repeater box? here's my notes, looks doable any problems? 3 TX+ 5 RX+ 6 +12v return 10 TX- 12 RX- 13 +12v John A. hope I'm not messing up the terminology too much. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Nov 1 11:28:41 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 17:28:41 -0000 (GMT) Subject: AUI crossover? In-Reply-To: <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <6342.195.212.29.92.1130866121.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> > I am playing around with networking again, > and realized I have a lot of AUI transcievers > of different types, and only one AUI hub. > Question is, can two AUI-male connecting > converters be connected together with an > appropriate cabelling, like you can do with > RJ45/10bT, or must a person always use a > hub/repeater box? Apparently you can, by crossing over TX and RX. I haven't tried this, I only read it somewhere. Gordon. From lcourtney at mvista.com Tue Nov 1 11:42:44 2005 From: lcourtney at mvista.com (Lee Courtney) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 09:42:44 -0800 Subject: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? In-Reply-To: <4366C23B.9020305@hachti.de> Message-ID: Philipp - Don't have the docs, but would be very interested in a set. Also have a 7978 I'd like to understand self-test codes for. If someone should have docs please reply on list. TIA, Lee Courtney > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Philipp Hachtmann > Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 5:18 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? > > > Hi folks, > > I have recently got a HP 7978 9-track tape drive with HPIB (IEEE 488, > GPIB) interface. > Now I'm looking for documentation. Does anybody have documentation for > that drive? Would be glad to hear from your....Thanks. > > Any experience with interfacing these monsters to modern PCs?? I think > of writing a linux driver for it...... > > Best regards, > > Philipp :-) From pkoning at equallogic.com Tue Nov 1 11:45:57 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 12:45:57 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17255.43477.223568.610811@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: Chuck> This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me Chuck> that there's plenty of applicable knowledge here. Chuck> Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as Chuck> our incoming Linux server. Basically, it connects with the Chuck> DSL modem and contains IP masquerading, DNS caching, firewall Chuck> and fetchmail/procmail/qmail tasks (SpamAssassin included). Chuck> It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has for the last 5 or 6 Chuck> years. Built like a tank. Chuck> I'm wondering if something a little less power-hungry might be Chuck> preferable, however. Are there any low-power alternatives for Chuck> the job that anyone can recommend? How about an old laptop? UPS built-in... :-) paul From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 11:56:57 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:56:57 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4367AC69.7090809@gmail.com> Jules Richardson wrote: >> This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that there's >> plenty of applicable knowledge here. >> >> Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our incoming >> Linux server. Basically, it connects with the DSL modem and contains IP >> masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and fetchmail/procmail/qmail tasks >> (SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has for the >> last 5 or 6 years. Built like a tank. > > > Would an offering from one of the various UNIX vendors be a possibility? > Sun / SGI / HP or something? I'm thinking that getting away from any > kind of Intel CPU would be a good place to start, plus of course you > don't need any kind of framebuffer then either (unlike a PC) and can > just use a serial console on the (very rare) occassions when you'd need > to be physically at the machine. I would suggest the RS/6000 B50. Peace... Sridhar From pkoning at equallogic.com Tue Nov 1 11:57:44 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 12:57:44 -0500 Subject: AUI crossover? References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <17255.44184.701194.796251@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "John" == John Allain writes: John> I am playing around with networking again, and realized I have John> a lot of AUI transcievers of different types, and only one AUI John> hub. Question is, can two AUI-male connecting converters be John> connected together with an appropriate cabelling, like you can John> do with RJ45/10bT, or must a person always use a hub/repeater John> box? John> here's my notes, looks doable any problems? 3 TX+ 5 RX+ 6 +12v John> return 10 TX- 12 RX- 13 +12v You missed the Collision wires, and therein lies the trouble. There are two issues. One is that an AUI based Ethernet was half duplex (just like 10Base2). If you just cross over rx/tx you have a full duplex setup. If the NIC is full duplex capable that MAY work, but depending on the NIC it may not be full duplex capable. The other issue is that 8u02.3 compliant NICs will expect the collision signal to assert briefly after each packet. That is the Collision Test (SQE test, see 802.3 section 8.2.2.2.4). DEC NICs, for example, generally implement this. I *think* this is a warning, so if the driver doesn't treat it as an error you'll probably be ok. You said you have lots of transceivers. So why do you want crossover? Just hook the AUIs to their coax and wire up a classic Ethernet that way. Or did you mean AUI based NICs? (For that matter, what's an "AUI Hub"? I know AUI repeaters, and I know AUI transceivers.) paul From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Nov 1 12:12:08 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 13:12:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: AUI crossover? In-Reply-To: <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <200511011813.NAA02855@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Question is, can two AUI-male connecting converters be connected > together with an appropriate cabelling, like you can do with > RJ45/10bT, or must a person always use a hub/repeater box? I once tried to do this kind of "crossover" AUI, and never did manage to make it work. I suspect it has something to do with AUI being a half-duplex interface and expecting to hear on the RX wires the signal it's transmitting on the TX wires. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 1 12:17:38 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 10:17:38 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <17255.43477.223568.610811@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <17255.43477.223568.610811@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511011017380114.1012339B@10.0.0.252> On 11/1/2005 at 12:45 PM Paul Koning wrote: >How about an old laptop? UPS built-in... :-) Interesting idea, but I don't have a lot of faith in a laptop holding up under a 24x7x365 operating schedule. They're not built for that type of operation and I think that heat buildup would eventually do them in. --Chuck From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Nov 1 12:13:24 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 13:13:24 -0500 (EST) Subject: AUI crossover? In-Reply-To: <17255.44184.701194.796251@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> <17255.44184.701194.796251@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511011826.NAA02922@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > You missed the Collision wires, and therein lies the trouble. > There are two issues. > One is that an AUI based Ethernet was half duplex (just like > 10Base2). It's not entirely fair to contrast AUI and 10base2 this way, as if they were comparable things. AUI is the interface between the host and the transceiver; 10base2 is one of various possibilities for the medium on the other side of the transceiver. Contrasting AUI with 10base2 is a bit like contrasting RS-232C with POTS phone service (just as the one applies to different sides of a transceiver, the other applies to different sides of a modem). > The other issue is that 8u02.3 compliant NICs will expect the > collision signal to assert briefly after each packet. That is the > Collision Test (SQE test, see 802.3 section 8.2.2.2.4). Some will. Many don't care. I think I have even seen a few that object if they *do* get that signal. I have some transceivers which have switchable SQE and have done a little experimenting.... > You said you have lots of transceivers. So why do you want > crossover? Just hook the AUIs to their coax and wire up a classic > Ethernet that way. Perhaps there's no co-ax at ready hand? If the transceivers use 10base5 this seems reasonably likely. > (For that matter, what's an "AUI Hub"? I know AUI repeaters, and I > know AUI transceivers.) In my experience, the term is used colloquially to refer to an AUI multiport transceiver box, especially one that is capable of running without a real transceiver attached. (A multiport transceiver is a device that has multiple - typically 8 - AUI connections suitable for connecting to hosts and one AUI connection suitable for connecting to a real transceiver. As far as the hosts are concerned it looks like multiple transceivers on the same medium. Some of them demand having a real transceiver on the transceiver port; some have a switch that lets them run without, and some of the newest auto-sense.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 1 12:35:59 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 10:35:59 -0800 Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs Message-ID: <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> I used to have a big stockpile of write enable/protect stickon tabs for diskettes but it's gradually getting whittled down to a precious few dozen. Does anyone have any suggestions on where more can be obtained? Note that these have to be the removable opaque BLACK tabs. (I've got a bunch of 3M clear red tabs that don't work at all on some drives.) Cheers, Chuck From zmerch at 30below.com Tue Nov 1 12:47:14 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 13:47:14 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511011017380114.1012339B@10.0.0.252> References: <17255.43477.223568.610811@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <17255.43477.223568.610811@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051101133639.03a5d978@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Chuck Guzis may have mentioned these words: >On 11/1/2005 at 12:45 PM Paul Koning wrote: > > >How about an old laptop? UPS built-in... :-) > >Interesting idea, but I don't have a lot of faith in a laptop holding up >under a 24x7x365 operating schedule. Depends on the age/build quality of said laptop. There are a lot of low-power laptops that don't get too hot with 100% duty cycles, my Fujitsu Lifebook P2120 (933 Mhz Crusoe / 512Meg RAM) is certainly fine with it - sits *comfortably* on my lap whilst recompiling Linux. [[ Yea, the whole Linux, glibc, gcc, all libraries, X, etc. ;-) ]] While kewl [[ and somewhat unique, now that Transmeta quit makin' CPUs :-( ]] certainly offtopic. I think there are some ontopic Panasonic Toughbooks which should be able to handle anything, but wouldn't be fast enough for your needs. > They're not built for that type of >operation and I think that heat buildup would eventually do them in. Again, some are. Some are designed to wick away that heat thru the operator's legs, :-) but the CPU should be fine, as long as the fan works fine & the cooling grates are clear. For your setup, I doubt the CPU is the bottleneck anyway, unless your SpamAssassin is getting hit *hard*, and if it is, you should be looking for quite a bit more of an upgrade than what you have now. I wouldn't try it with just 'any' laptop, but a little research first should find several models of laptop that could /potentially/ suit your needs. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch at 30below.com Hi! I am a .signature virus. Copy me into your .signature to join in! From allain at panix.com Tue Nov 1 13:03:00 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:03:00 -0500 Subject: AUI crossover? References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252><4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk><04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> <17255.44184.701194.796251@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <064301c5df16$e1a09800$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> > You said you have lots of transceivers. So why do you want crossover? Modern 10bT only system to a length of 10b2 coax, and back. Just 2 10bT/10b2's would do, but as I said everything I have is AUI. I also have a 10bFL to AUI setup here too. > what's an "AUI Hub"? I know AUI repeaters, Hub =!= Repeater? Just my clumsiness John A. > hope I'm not messing up the terminology too much. From mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Tue Nov 1 13:05:48 2005 From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us (Mike Loewen) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:05:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 1 Nov 2005, Lee Courtney wrote: > Don't have the docs, but would be very interested in a set. Also have a 7978 > I'd like to understand self-test codes for. > > If someone should have docs please reply on list. Does this help? http://bitsavers.vt100.net/hp/tape/07980-90030_88780Svc_Oct91.pdf http://bitsavers.vt100.net/hp/tape/88780-90010_UsersMan_May90.pdf Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://ripsaw.cac.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ From RMeenaks at olf.com Tue Nov 1 13:13:26 2005 From: RMeenaks at olf.com (Ram Meenakshisundaram) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:13:26 -0500 Subject: Looking for the following Atari Start Volume 2, No. 2 Disk Message-ID: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD0D6@cpexchange.olf.com> http://www.atarimagazines.com/startv2n2/diskinstructions.html Does anyone have a copy? The archive on the website is NOT correct as it is really a duplicate of startv1n2... Thanks, Ram From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 13:17:51 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:17:51 -0500 Subject: Oracle for VMS Message-ID: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> Hi. Anyone know what is the newest version of Oracle Database that will run on VAX/VMS? Peace... Sridhar From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 1 13:18:00 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:18:00 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions Message-ID: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions > Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:09:01 +0000 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Chuck Guzis wrote: >> This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that there's >> plenty of applicable knowledge here. >> >> Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our incoming >> Linux server. Basically, it connects with the DSL modem and contains IP >> masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and fetchmail/procmail/qmail tasks >> (SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has for the >> last 5 or 6 years. Built like a tank. I wonder if you even need a P200 for that. I used to manage a networks that had a 486dx/66 doing all but SpamaAssassin. For the rate it had to handle on the DSL port (actually fractional T1 256kb/S) it never seemed to be working hard. The PS in it was only 200W and nowhere was it ever stressed. It's claim to fame was running at room temp over a weekend in the summer with both PS and CPU fan siezed without melting or even getting upset. Also an older 500mb-1gb drive will use less power than a newer fast spinning drive. Or better yet netboot it and only keep a floppy. Pull all the IO you don't need and run the video at 640x480x256 as a further power reduction. Use a monitor (or KVM switch) as you don't need a monitor save to check on it. Allison From bdwheele at indiana.edu Tue Nov 1 13:23:28 2005 From: bdwheele at indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:23:28 -0500 Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs In-Reply-To: <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> References: <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <1130873008.13237.15.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> Its not pretty, but I've used electrical tape in the past. Brian On Tue, 2005-11-01 at 10:35 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I used to have a big stockpile of write enable/protect stickon tabs for > diskettes but it's gradually getting whittled down to a precious few dozen. > > Does anyone have any suggestions on where more can be obtained? Note that > these have to be the removable opaque BLACK tabs. (I've got a bunch of 3M > clear red tabs that don't work at all on some drives.) > > Cheers, > Chuck > > From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 13:26:44 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:26:44 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <4367C174.5050406@gmail.com> Allison wrote: >>>This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that there's >>>plenty of applicable knowledge here. >>> >>>Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our incoming >>>Linux server. Basically, it connects with the DSL modem and contains IP >>>masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and fetchmail/procmail/qmail tasks >>>(SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has for the >>>last 5 or 6 years. Built like a tank. > > > I wonder if you even need a P200 for that. I used to manage a > networks that had a 486dx/66 doing all but SpamaAssassin. For the rate it > had to handle on the DSL port (actually fractional T1 256kb/S) it never > seemed to be working hard. The PS in it was only 200W and nowhere was > it ever stressed. It's claim to fame was running at room temp over a > weekend in the summer with both PS and CPU fan siezed without melting > or even getting upset. Indeed. I have a Pentium 150 doing all the above (including SpamAssassin) plus Squid. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 1 13:32:58 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 11:32:58 -0800 Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs In-Reply-To: <1130873008.13237.15.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> References: <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> <1130873008.13237.15.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> Message-ID: <200511011132580159.10572BDA@10.0.0.252> On 11/1/2005 at 2:23 PM Brian Wheeler wrote: >Its not pretty, but I've used electrical tape in the past. Eew--gets gummy if you forget and leave it on too long! I'd rather that the adhesive dry out and the tab fall off! --Chuck From spc at conman.org Tue Nov 1 13:20:54 2005 From: spc at conman.org (spc at conman.org) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:20:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <4367C174.5050406@gmail.com> from "Sridhar Ayengar" at Nov 01, 2005 02:26:44 PM Message-ID: <20051101192055.1CF8EDCDCC0@mail2.inovasys.net> > > > I wonder if you even need a P200 for that. I used to manage a > > networks that had a 486dx/66 doing all but SpamaAssassin. For the rate it > > had to handle on the DSL port (actually fractional T1 256kb/S) it never > > seemed to be working hard. The PS in it was only 200W and nowhere was > > it ever stressed. It's claim to fame was running at room temp over a > > weekend in the summer with both PS and CPU fan siezed without melting > > or even getting upset. > > Indeed. I have a Pentium 150 doing all the above (including > SpamAssassin) plus Squid. Up until late 2003/early 2004 I was using a 486 with 32M RAM for serving up a dozen websites and handing email (along with a few mailing lists). Didn't want to use anything written in Perl on it, but other than that, it ran fine. And at home I'm using a 486 with only 20M RAM (and a 500MB harddrive) for my firewall/NAT in addition to running named and squid (email is passed on to a AMD 586 on the home network). -spc (That is, it was until power was lost last week due to some stormy weather we had ... ) From melamy at earthlink.net Tue Nov 1 13:35:20 2005 From: melamy at earthlink.net (Steve Thatcher) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:35:20 -0500 (GMT-05:00) Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs Message-ID: <18639924.1130873721338.JavaMail.root@elwamui-norfolk.atl.sa.earthlink.net> seems like you could use one of Avery's small labels and put a rectangular piece of foil on part of the sticky side. You should be able to "cover" the slot and have a label that stays in place. -----Original Message----- From: Brian Wheeler Sent: Nov 1, 2005 2:23 PM To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Subject: Re: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs Its not pretty, but I've used electrical tape in the past. Brian On Tue, 2005-11-01 at 10:35 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I used to have a big stockpile of write enable/protect stickon tabs for > diskettes but it's gradually getting whittled down to a precious few dozen. > > Does anyone have any suggestions on where more can be obtained? Note that > these have to be the removable opaque BLACK tabs. (I've got a bunch of 3M > clear red tabs that don't work at all on some drives.) > > Cheers, > Chuck > > From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 13:37:45 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:37:45 -0500 Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs In-Reply-To: <18639924.1130873721338.JavaMail.root@elwamui-norfolk.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <18639924.1130873721338.JavaMail.root@elwamui-norfolk.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <4367C409.5010409@gmail.com> Steve Thatcher wrote: > seems like you could use one of Avery's small labels and put a rectangular piece of foil on part of the sticky side. You should be able to "cover" the slot and have a label that stays in place. I've done this before. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 1 13:41:16 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 11:41:16 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <4367C174.5050406@gmail.com> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4367C174.5050406@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200511011141160290.105EC5A8@10.0.0.252> On 11/1/2005 at 2:26 PM Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >Indeed. I have a Pentium 150 doing all the above (including >SpamAssassin) plus Squid. I've also got RealPlayer broadcasting the BBC on the same box, so maybe a 150 might be a bit underpowered. The Compaq replaced an old HP Vectra PI-166 tower that I gave up on after it kept choking on disks larger than 8 GB. But the Vectra was a great old machine with no ugly little CPU cooling fan... Cheers, Chuck From bdwheele at indiana.edu Tue Nov 1 13:45:21 2005 From: bdwheele at indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:45:21 -0500 Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs In-Reply-To: <200511011132580159.10572BDA@10.0.0.252> References: <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> <1130873008.13237.15.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> <200511011132580159.10572BDA@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <1130874321.13237.17.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> On Tue, 2005-11-01 at 11:32 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/1/2005 at 2:23 PM Brian Wheeler wrote: > > >Its not pretty, but I've used electrical tape in the past. > > Eew--gets gummy if you forget and leave it on too long! I'd rather that > the adhesive dry out and the tab fall off! > > --Chuck > I _did_ say it wasn't pretty :) From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 1 14:49:04 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:49:04 Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs In-Reply-To: <200511011132580159.10572BDA@10.0.0.252> References: <1130873008.13237.15.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> <1130873008.13237.15.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051101144904.0eff0e6a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 11:32 AM 11/1/05 -0800, Chuck wrote: >On 11/1/2005 at 2:23 PM Brian Wheeler wrote: > >>Its not pretty, but I've used electrical tape in the past. > >Eew--gets gummy if you forget and leave it on too long! I'd rather that >the adhesive dry out and the tab fall off! I'm with you. I HATE electrical tape! It's the nastiest stuff they ever invented! I don't even own a roll of the stuff. Joe From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 1 14:17:18 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:17:18 -0800 Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051101144904.0eff0e6a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <1130873008.13237.15.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> <1130873008.13237.15.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> <3.0.6.16.20051101144904.0eff0e6a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <200511011217180350.107FC31F@10.0.0.252> Avery has some 1.5x0.5" silver foil labels at about $50 per 100 sheets of 100, but I don't think they're removable once affixed. From quapla at xs4all.nl Tue Nov 1 14:27:41 2005 From: quapla at xs4all.nl (quapla at xs4all.nl) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:27:41 +0100 (CET) Subject: Oracle for VMS In-Reply-To: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> References: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> Message-ID: <9256.62.177.191.201.1130876861.squirrel@62.177.191.201> Well, Searching metalink, there was nothing usefull to be found. Personally, I guess 8.1.7 was the last release on VAX OpenVMS. Ed > > Hi. > > Anyone know what is the newest version of Oracle Database that will run > on VAX/VMS? > > Peace... Sridhar > From pkoning at equallogic.com Tue Nov 1 14:33:08 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 15:33:08 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <17255.53508.539464.167025@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: Allison> Also an older 500mb-1gb drive will use less power than a Allison> newer fast spinning drive. Or better yet netboot it and only Allison> keep a floppy. Pull all the IO you don't need and run the Allison> video at 640x480x256 as a further power reduction. Use a Allison> monitor (or KVM switch) as you don't need a monitor save to Allison> check on it. Good comments. My wirewall etc. is a Linux box, 486/66, with a 400 MB drive. No other I/O, no floppy, it boots from the hard drive. The one drawback is that the drive is so old it doesn't support software controlled spindown, so it spins all the time. That may actually help its reliability... but I've been meaning to change it. Perhaps I'll replace it with my old HP desktop that ate two CDROMs in a row (which still work fine on other machines). paul From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 14:38:19 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:38:19 -0500 Subject: Oracle for VMS In-Reply-To: <9256.62.177.191.201.1130876861.squirrel@62.177.191.201> References: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> <9256.62.177.191.201.1130876861.squirrel@62.177.191.201> Message-ID: <4367D23B.8060407@gmail.com> quapla at xs4all.nl wrote: > Well, > > Searching metalink, there was nothing usefull to be found. > Personally, I guess 8.1.7 was the last release on VAX OpenVMS. That new, huh? Then I might be able to find it on OTN, no? Peace... Sridhar From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Nov 1 14:44:08 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 12:44:08 -0800 Subject: Oracle for VMS In-Reply-To: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> References: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> Message-ID: >Hi. > >Anyone know what is the newest version of Oracle Database that will >run on VAX/VMS? > >Peace... Sridhar Oracle RDB 7.0.8.2 was released on 22SEP05 is the newest database to run on VAX, the RDB 7.1 series is Alpha only. For Oracle Database itself, I think you're looking at either 7 or 8. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From quapla at xs4all.nl Tue Nov 1 14:44:33 2005 From: quapla at xs4all.nl (quapla at xs4all.nl) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:44:33 +0100 (CET) Subject: Oracle for VMS In-Reply-To: <4367D23B.8060407@gmail.com> References: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> <9256.62.177.191.201.1130876861.squirrel@62.177.191.201> <4367D23B.8060407@gmail.com> Message-ID: <24025.62.177.191.201.1130877873.squirrel@62.177.191.201> I doubt it. Only 9.2 can also be downloaded, and it does not list VAX/VMS as a part of the list. Ed > quapla at xs4all.nl wrote: >> Well, >> >> Searching metalink, there was nothing usefull to be found. >> Personally, I guess 8.1.7 was the last release on VAX OpenVMS. > > That new, huh? Then I might be able to find it on OTN, no? > > Peace... Sridhar > From marvin at rain.org Tue Nov 1 14:55:55 2005 From: marvin at rain.org (Marvin Johnston) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:55:55 -0800 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF Message-ID: <4367D65B.14DF9CD2@rain.org> A friend of mine has a number of Macintoshs that he says work. If anyone wants to buy one, let me know and I can bring it (them) up. He wants $20.00 each for them and that includes the keyboard and mouse. The ones I saw were the Mac SE, Mac SE/30, Mac Classic, and Mac Plus. He has a Mac 128K but it has been modified (the back is for a Mac 512K, and I don't know what board is installed.) From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Tue Nov 1 14:58:14 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 20:58:14 +0000 Subject: DEC HZ54 service manual In-Reply-To: <3199.135.196.233.27.1130844285.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: Folks, I'm struggling with getting an HZ54 and HZ53 running again after many years in storage. The user guide is on Paul Williams' excellent repository but aside from explaining the startup it doesn't go into any more detail. The HZ54 contains 2x200mb memory boards and an RZ25 (~500mb) and faults shortly after the disk spins up, this I guess is normally the point it would populate the memory boards with the disk contents. At this point I'd suspect the disk but the HZ53 does exactly the same thing. If I just plug the RZ25 into a VAX it works fine. Anyone have a service manual or know how these units work? Cheers! -- Adrian/Witchy Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - must set up a sig again :) From rdonoghue at ppsparts.com Tue Nov 1 15:14:45 2005 From: rdonoghue at ppsparts.com (Roger Donoghue) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:14:45 -0500 Subject: DEC FOR SALE? Message-ID: I am looking to rebuild my DEC product menu. Anyone selling RD53-A's or RA81's & 82's? Peace, -Roger From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Nov 1 15:15:39 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 13:15:39 -0800 Subject: Oracle for VMS In-Reply-To: <4367D23B.8060407@gmail.com> References: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> <9256.62.177.191.201.1130876861.squirrel@62.177.191.201> <4367D23B.8060407@gmail.com> Message-ID: At 3:38 PM -0500 11/1/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >That new, huh? Then I might be able to find it on OTN, no? I really think RDB is going to be your only realistic choice. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Nov 1 15:20:24 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 13:20:24 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <4367AC69.7090809@gmail.com> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <4367AC69.7090809@gmail.com> Message-ID: At 12:56 PM -0500 11/1/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >I would suggest the RS/6000 B50. How much power does that use? Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From arcarlini at iee.org Tue Nov 1 15:22:33 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:22:33 -0000 Subject: DEC HZ54 service manual In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <003801c5df2a$67229fb0$5b01a8c0@pc1> Adrian Graham wrote: > The HZ54 contains 2x200mb memory boards and an RZ25 (~500mb) and > faults shortly after the disk spins up, this I guess is normally the > point it would populate the memory boards with the disk contents. At > this point I'd suspect the disk but the HZ53 does exactly the same > thing. > > If I just plug the RZ25 into a VAX it works fine. > > Anyone have a service manual or know how these units work? No idea about a service manual. Some of these units (like the HSJs) have a battery somewhere that goes flat. Once it's gone flat, reviving the unit is "interesting". All this is from half-remembered usenet posts rather than any semblance of direct experience, so take with a pinch of salt. No idea about a service manual - don't recall seeing one ever. Sorry. Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 1 15:33:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 13:33:01 -0800 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF In-Reply-To: <4367D65B.14DF9CD2@rain.org> References: <4367D65B.14DF9CD2@rain.org> Message-ID: <200511011333010839.10C516F2@10.0.0.252> On 11/1/2005 at 12:55 PM Marvin Johnston wrote: >A friend of mine has a number of Macintoshs that he says work. If anyone >wants to buy one, let me know and I can bring it (them) up. He wants >$20.00 each for them and that includes the keyboard and mouse. The ones >I saw were the Mac SE, Mac SE/30, Mac Classic, and Mac Plus. He has a >Mac 128K but it has been modified (the back is for a Mac 512K, and I >don't know what board is installed.) You know, collecting systems with the Apple logo on them may not be such a bad idea. I figure it'll be only a couple of years before Apple sells its computer systems business to some Chinese concern, while maintaining ownership of the software. After all, the iPod field is much bigger (with better profit margins) for Apple than are personal computers. --Chuck From vax9000 at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 15:33:34 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:33:34 -0500 Subject: DEC FOR SALE? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11/1/05, Roger Donoghue wrote: > I am looking to rebuild my DEC product menu. Anyone selling RD53-A's or > RA81's & 82's? I may have access to some RA81 or 82 or 90. Not sure whether they are still there. vax, 9000 > > Peace, > > -Roger > > From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Nov 1 15:33:31 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 13:33:31 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: At 8:56 AM -0800 11/1/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: >I'm wondering if something a little less power-hungry might be preferable, >however. Are there any low-power alternatives for the job that anyone can >recommend? A VIA Mini-ITX system is the best choice, they might not have a lot of CPU power, but it's hard to beat them on power consumption. A good second choice would probably be a Pentium M based system (they're starting to become available in something other than laptops). At 12:45 PM -0500 11/1/05, Paul Koning wrote: >How about an old laptop? UPS built-in... :-) I'd be concerned with reliability. This is something that has to run 24x7. Jules Richardson wrote: >Would an offering from one of the various UNIX vendors be a >possibility? Sun / SGI / HP or something? I'm thinking that getting >away from any kind of Intel CPU would be a good place to start, plus >of course you don't need any kind of framebuffer then either (unlike >a PC) and can just use a serial console on the (very rare) >occassions when you'd need to be physically at the machine. Do any of them offer anything that is low power? As for not needing any kind of framebuffer, under OpenBSD I don't really need it with the HP Pentium III system I'm using. Though it was a bit worrisome the other night when there was nothing on the console and it took forever to come up (it was fsck'ing the disk as the power had gone out). Noise is the real reason I'm using the Pentium III, it's a *LOT* quieter than the SparcServer 5/110 that I was using. The Sparc was louder than the two 3-drive JBOD boxes running 10k RPM SCSI drives sitting above it (they're hooked to an OpenVMS server). Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Nov 1 15:31:08 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:31:08 GMT Subject: AUI crossover? In-Reply-To: "John Allain" "Re: AUI crossover?" (Nov 1, 14:03) References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> <17255.44184.701194.796251@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <064301c5df16$e1a09800$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <10511012131.ZM22252@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 1 2005, 14:03, John Allain wrote: > > You said you have lots of transceivers. So why do you want crossover? > > Modern 10bT only system to a length of 10b2 coax, and back. > Just 2 10bT/10b2's would do, but as I said everything I have is > AUI. I also have a 10bFL to AUI setup here too. Ah, I wondered if it might be something like that. I've tried it with three or four different AUI transceivers, and never found a pair that worked back-to-back. The problem, as others have noted, is the collision pair. The cheapest easiest way to do what you want (convert 10baseT to 10base2 or similar) is to buy a small secondhand 10baseT hub that has a suitable AUI (sometimes (mis)labelled "10base5") or 10base2 port, often described as an "uplink". Have a look on eBay. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From rdonoghue at ppsparts.com Tue Nov 1 15:46:10 2005 From: rdonoghue at ppsparts.com (Roger Donoghue) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:46:10 -0500 Subject: DEC FOR SALE? Message-ID: Let me know if they are available and what condition they are in. Maybe we can work something out. Thank you for your response. -----Original Message----- From: 9000 VAX [mailto:vax9000 at gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 4:34 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: DEC FOR SALE? On 11/1/05, Roger Donoghue wrote: > I am looking to rebuild my DEC product menu. Anyone selling RD53-A's or > RA81's & 82's? I may have access to some RA81 or 82 or 90. Not sure whether they are still there. vax, 9000 > > Peace, > > -Roger > > From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 1 15:22:41 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:22:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: AUI crossover? In-Reply-To: <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> from "John Allain" at Nov 1, 5 12:25:11 pm Message-ID: > > I am playing around with networking again, > and realized I have a lot of AUI transcievers > of different types, and only one AUI hub. > Question is, can two AUI-male connecting > converters be connected together with an > appropriate cabelling, like you can do with > RJ45/10bT, or must a person always use a > hub/repeater box? No, AFAIK you need a repeater to handle the collisons, etc. I have a 2 port repeater somewhere (2 female AUI connectors to link to 2 transceivers), and it's remarkably complciated inside. There's a state machine type of thing with the state table in RAM, and a Z80 + ROM to boot that. Probably about 50 chips all told. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 1 15:27:13 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:27:13 +0000 (GMT) Subject: AUI crossover? In-Reply-To: <200511011826.NAA02922@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> from "der Mouse" at Nov 1, 5 01:13:24 pm Message-ID: > > You said you have lots of transceivers. So why do you want > > crossover? Just hook the AUIs to their coax and wire up a classic > > Ethernet that way. > > Perhaps there's no co-ax at ready hand? If the transceivers use Surely wiring some 50 ohm BNCs to a bit of cable is not that much of a problem :-). I prefer the solder type. Crimp ones are fine, and the connections are reliable _if you use the right crimp tool and die_. If you don't have the right tool, you'll have more success with the solder type, which can be fitted with a normal soldering iron. > 10base5 this seems reasonably likely. It violates some bit of the spec from what I rememebr, but I've never had any problems putting N-to-BNC acapters on 10 base 5 transceives with N connectors on them. Or replacing the beesting with a BNC socket and adding a T piece for that type of 10base5 transceiver. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 1 15:14:01 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:14:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24D6@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> from "Gooijen, Henk" at Oct 31, 5 10:11:35 am Message-ID: > > Hi all, > > I finally got juice on the main power line connection in my museum. > I am connecting my machines bit by bit, after 2 years of inactivity. > I have found the following problem with my 11/34C. > (I will keep the description short, and tell only the end result) > > The console of the 11/34C (11/34A plus cache option) shows weird > (=wrong) behaviour. It was working fine! > The display shows "000000", and the RUN LED is off. > If I press the 'LSR' button, the 'SR DISP' LED goes on. However, > if I press any of the numerical buttons, '1-6', a digit in the > display only flashes very brief. I cannot say what the digit was. > It looks like the M7859 has developed a problem. > To make things more weird the following happens if I start with > pressing the 'CLR' button and then the numerical buttons. > 1) press CLR (display stays at "000000") > 2) press e.g. 6 (some of the rightmost digit segments briefly flash) > 3) press 6 again (1st and 2nd of the right display flashes) > 4) press 6 again (1st, 2nd and 3rd of the right display flashes) This suggests it is correctly counting the digits you enter (or shifting them into a register), but is not displaying them correctly. And it is only updating the bottom 8 bits. As you probably know, the console is controlled by an 8008 microprocessor. Of course it's an 8 bit device. Maybe some 'carry' is not working correctly. Alas DEC didn't publish a source listing (or even a binary dump) of the console firmware in the printset. This is going to make troubleshooting a little harder, since you probably don't know what it should be doing. It is clearly running a program, and that program is reading the keyboard and scanning the display. So it is somewhat correct. > > The first leftmost three displays remain "000" and do not show any > sign of changes. > Pressing 6 after the first 3 times, repeats the flashing of some > segments in the three rightmost displays. What does it do if you press 4 repeatedly? Does it flash the bottom 3 or bottom 2 digits? If it's only updating the bottom 8 bits, you see, then only 2 digits will flash from 0. > > So, I have the impression it has the problem to do with the M7958. > AFAIK, the entry of the digits, for example the numeric entry '165020' > does *not* need the UNIBUS, but only sets up an internal register. > The 'LAD' button, and 'DIS AD' will start a UNIBUS cycle (to access a > memory location). Correct? I think so. > > BTW, the voltage on the CPU backplane (DD11-PK) is 5.08 V. and the > +15 and -15 read +/-15.x V. (Can't remember the exact value). > > I have an other 11/34 with an M7958, but never powered up that box. > I took that M7859 and installed it in the 11/34C. The display stays > dark. According to the M7859 doc, that basically means that the board > is dead. So much for board swapping. Sorry, could not resist to try > an easy success. I don't have other spare M7859 ... You may find the totally dead board easier to debug. At least you can check for a clock at the 8008, and for activity on the internal bus to the firmware ROM, etc. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 1 15:15:45 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:15:45 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Waht is an MC1806 ? In-Reply-To: from "CRC" at Oct 31, 5 00:10:14 am Message-ID: > This is the short description: > > Part Number =3D MC1806P > Description =3D 2-Input AND-Function Logic Gate Thanks, (and thanks to others who've offered me data. This really is a great list!). An AND gate makes sense now that I've realised that the 9830 has active high data output lines and active low data input lines on the I/O bus (!). This gate needs to be a non-inverting type where the output can be forced low -- that is an AND gate. -tony From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Tue Nov 1 15:49:12 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:49:12 +0000 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF In-Reply-To: <200511011333010839.10C516F2@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 1/11/05 21:33, "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > You know, collecting systems with the Apple logo on them may not be such a > bad idea. > > I figure it'll be only a couple of years before Apple sells its computer > systems business to some Chinese concern, while maintaining ownership of > the software. After all, the iPod field is much bigger (with better profit > margins) for Apple than are personal computers. It's a lot more finite though, surely? I read this week that at one of these industry functions that happen every so often a top CEO told a silicon.com reporter that Apple were poised to sell to Dell before the end of the year! *ducks and runs* A From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Nov 1 15:52:59 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:52:59 GMT Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: Jules Richardson "Re: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions" (Nov 1, 16:09) References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 1 2005, 16:09, Jules Richardson wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that there's > > plenty of applicable knowledge here. > > > > Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our incoming > > Linux server. Basically, it connects with the DSL modem and contains IP > > masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and fetchmail/procmail/qmail tasks > > (SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has for the > > last 5 or 6 years. Built like a tank. > > Would an offering from one of the various UNIX vendors be a possibility? > Sun / SGI / HP or something? I'm thinking that getting away from any > kind of Intel CPU would be a good place to start, plus of course you > don't need any kind of framebuffer then either (unlike a PC) and can > just use a serial console on the (very rare) occassions when you'd need > to be physically at the machine. > > Cut memory to bare minimum too as that's probably a major culprit of > current draw. > > If the machine's not doing any logging to local disk then you can > eliminate the hard drive too I disagree with a few points there. Firstly, SpamAssassin is very resource-hungry. It works best with a fair amount of memory. It also tends to be very slow - I've seen it take 4-10 seconds *per message* on a slow machine. That might not matter on a machine handling a very small amount of mail, of course. Then you can't really have your incoming-mail handler run diskless, because if you do, something else will have to run 24/7 to store the mail. Better to have just one machine. But find a modern slow drive rather than an old slow drive; slow drives use less power than fast ones, but modern ones use less than older ones. Laptop drives are often pretty low-power. However, many of the Sun/SGI/HP type of machine might run more quietly since they don't need big fans for CPU and PSU. They also don't need a framebuffer as Jules said, *and* no keyboard. But they will tend to be slow, and you'll have fun trying to doing all the IP masquerading firewally stuff on anything but Linux or BSD, which is going to be more trouble than it's worth on most of the above. FWIW, I think Tim's suggestion (mini-ITX) is amongst the best. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pkoning at equallogic.com Tue Nov 1 15:57:47 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:57:47 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17255.58587.389675.459622@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Zane" == Zane H Healy writes: Zane> Jules Richardson wrote: >> Would an offering from one of the various UNIX vendors be a >> possibility? Sun / SGI / HP or something? I'm thinking that >> getting away from any kind of Intel CPU would be a good place to >> start, plus of course you don't need any kind of framebuffer then >> either (unlike a PC) and can just use a serial console on the >> (very rare) occassions when you'd need to be physically at the >> machine. Zane> Do any of them offer anything that is low power? At one time I was planning to take my StrongArm 110 eval board and make it do something like this. That certainly should be low power. Hm. I wonder if a PDA with a flashdisk would serve... :-) paul From pkoning at equallogic.com Tue Nov 1 15:59:53 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:59:53 -0500 Subject: AUI crossover? References: <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <17255.58713.870335.116212@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Tony" == Tony Duell writes: >> I am playing around with networking again, and realized I have a >> lot of AUI transcievers of different types, and only one AUI hub. >> Question is, can two AUI-male connecting converters be connected >> together with an appropriate cabelling, like you can do with >> RJ45/10bT, or must a person always use a hub/repeater box? Tony> No, AFAIK you need a repeater to handle the collisons, etc. Tony> I have a 2 port repeater somewhere (2 female AUI connectors to Tony> link to 2 transceivers), and it's remarkably complciated Tony> inside. There's a state machine type of thing with the state Tony> table in RAM, and a Z80 + ROM to boot that. Probably about 50 Tony> chips all told. Sounds like a DEREP, which I think is the first Ethernet repeater. DEC box, roughly the size of the 3U routers of the time. State machine with lots of discrete components sounds about right. Z80 to boot it is puzzling, what is there to boot? DEREPs were not manageable, you just turn them on and they would work. paul From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Tue Nov 1 16:05:22 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:05:22 +0000 Subject: DEC HZ54 service manual In-Reply-To: <003801c5df2a$67229fb0$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: On 1/11/05 21:22, "a.carlini at ntlworld.com" wrote: > No idea about a service manual. Some of these units (like > the HSJs) have a battery somewhere that goes flat. Once > it's gone flat, reviving the unit is "interesting". All > this is from half-remembered usenet posts rather than > any semblance of direct experience, so take with a > pinch of salt. Interesting you should say that - both of these had dead leaked batteries so I rebuilt one battery pack using new nicads but left the other one alone; I'd already decided that if the batteries were toast the drive wouldn't be happy. Pity about the service manual, I want to know why the internal drive is set to ID 6 and what the termination etc should be set to. Cheers A From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Tue Nov 1 16:43:20 2005 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 14:43:20 -0800 Subject: AUI crossover? In-Reply-To: References: <04c901c5df09$37d17220$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: > I am playing around with networking again, > and realized I have a lot of AUI transcievers > of different types, and only one AUI hub. > Question is, can two AUI-male connecting > converters be connected together with an > appropriate cabelling, like you can do with > RJ45/10bT, or must a person always use a > hub/repeater box? AUI->10bT media converters have been falling from the sky like rain here, as have 10bT hubs and switches. (That means less than a few buck per interface). Cat-3/4/5/5e/[6/7] is a whole lot less expensive than the the AUI quad STP cables and quite possibly cheaper than RG58. I tend to covert to 10[00]bT at the device and have a hub or switch per room with uplink to the main switch. The only exception is 10b2 which I run native to hubs with BNC uplink ports. Fortunately I haven't yet needed to deal with thicknet in the house... Eric From doc at mdrconsult.com Tue Nov 1 16:54:34 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 17:54:34 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511011141160290.105EC5A8@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4367C174.5050406@gmail.com> <200511011141160290.105EC5A8@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4367F22A.70904@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/1/2005 at 2:26 PM Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > >>Indeed. I have a Pentium 150 doing all the above (including >>SpamAssassin) plus Squid. > > > I've also got RealPlayer broadcasting the BBC on the same box, so maybe a > 150 might be a bit underpowered. The Compaq replaced an old HP Vectra > PI-166 tower that I gave up on after it kept choking on disks larger than 8 > GB. But the Vectra was a great old machine with no ugly little CPU cooling > fan... You might want to look at a Soekris system. www.soekris.com They're not the right answer for every need, but they're some of the slickest x86 systems I've ever seen. Doc From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 1 15:55:29 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:55:29 +0000 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <4367E450.2030301@yahoo.co.uk> Pete Turnbull wrote: > On Nov 1 2005, 16:09, Jules Richardson wrote: > >>Chuck Guzis wrote: >> >>>This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that > > there's > >>>plenty of applicable knowledge here. >>> >>>Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our > > incoming > >>>Linux server. Basically, it connects with the DSL modem and > > contains IP > >>>masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and fetchmail/procmail/qmail > > tasks > >>>(SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has > > for the > >>>last 5 or 6 years. Built like a tank. >> >>Would an offering from one of the various UNIX vendors be a > > possibility? > >>Sun / SGI / HP or something? I'm thinking that getting away from any >>kind of Intel CPU would be a good place to start, plus of course you >>don't need any kind of framebuffer then either (unlike a PC) and can >>just use a serial console on the (very rare) occassions when you'd >>need to be physically at the machine. >> >>Cut memory to bare minimum too as that's probably a major culprit of >>current draw. >> >>If the machine's not doing any logging to local disk then you can >>eliminate the hard drive too > > I disagree with a few points there. Firstly, SpamAssassin is very > resource-hungry. It works best with a fair amount of memory. It also > tends to be very slow - I've seen it take 4-10 seconds *per message* on > a slow machine. Yes, I went and missed the Spamassassin point in the original message :( It probably does change things unfortunately as it means that a much more powerful machine's needed than otherwise, and memory requirements go up too. > That might not matter on a machine handling a very small amount of > mail, of course. Of course if a seperate server's on site running as a mail store and distribution hub then it might make sense to run spamassassin there rather than on the firewall machine, and keep the firewall as cut to the bone as possible (this is what I do back home, although my mailserver box also doubles as my fileserver) > However, many of the Sun/SGI/HP type of machine might run more quietly > since they don't need big fans for CPU and PSU. They also don't need a > framebuffer as Jules said, *and* no keyboard. Plus the cases are very small form-factor compared to a typical PC offering, and you get a NIC built-in (although that's probably true of all minature PC motherboards these days too) > But they will tend to be > slow, and you'll have fun trying to doing all the IP masquerading > firewally stuff on anything but Linux or BSD, which is going to be more > trouble than it's worth on most of the above. Yep, I'd definitely stick Linux or BSD on one rather than the 'proper' OS just for convenience sake. > FWIW, I think Tim's suggestion (mini-ITX) is amongst the best. I suppose it depends on how much is available to spend - used Suns and the like can be had for free, versus a certain amount for a mini-ITX board (I've not found people throwing out the latter just yet, although give it a couple of years...) Mind you, I suppose it's harder to find extra NICs for a Sun/SGI/whatever versus a PC... cheers Jules From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 1 17:02:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:02:46 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <200511011502460866.111741FF@10.0.0.252> On 11/1/2005 at 9:52 PM Pete Turnbull wrote: >However, many of the Sun/SGI/HP type of machine might run more quietly >since they don't need big fans for CPU and PSU. They also don't need a >framebuffer as Jules said, *and* no keyboard. But they will tend to be >slow, and you'll have fun trying to doing all the IP masquerading >firewally stuff on anything but Linux or BSD, which is going to be more >trouble than it's worth on most of the above. Hmmm, the Compaq Deskpro was built at a time when Compaq seemed to care about quality. The PSU fan isn't one of those 4" screamers, but a slower 4.5" very quiet model. The expansion card backplane is plugged into the motherboard and pulls out from the chassis for easy card servicing. There are air intake holes at the bottom rear of the machine so that the airflow first passes over the motherboard and actually makes some sort of sense and keeps the floppy drive and CD pretty clean. No annoying little cheap fan on the CPU heatsink either. Maybe I can't do MUCH better than that. Are 5.25" IDE drives any more reliable than the 3.5" models? I've got a few old Quantum units--the largest is about 8 GB, but I'm using a 3.5" Maxtor in the box right now. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 1 17:19:22 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:19:22 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions Message-ID: <0IPA00FH0U1KXH3A@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:02:46 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/1/2005 at 9:52 PM Pete Turnbull wrote: > >>However, many of the Sun/SGI/HP type of machine might run more quietly >>since they don't need big fans for CPU and PSU. They also don't need a >>framebuffer as Jules said, *and* no keyboard. But they will tend to be >>slow, and you'll have fun trying to doing all the IP masquerading >>firewally stuff on anything but Linux or BSD, which is going to be more >>trouble than it's worth on most of the above. > >Hmmm, the Compaq Deskpro was built at a time when Compaq seemed to care >about quality. The PSU fan isn't one of those 4" screamers, but a slower >4.5" very quiet model. The expansion card backplane is plugged into the >motherboard and pulls out from the chassis for easy card servicing. There >are air intake holes at the bottom rear of the machine so that the airflow >first passes over the motherboard and actually makes some sort of sense and >keeps the floppy drive and CD pretty clean. No annoying little cheap fan >on the CPU heatsink either. > >Maybe I can't do MUCH better than that. > >Are 5.25" IDE drives any more reliable than the 3.5" models? I've got a >few old Quantum units--the largest is about 8 GB, but I'm using a 3.5" >Maxtor in the box right now. > >Cheers, >Chuck I have a Dell 466 pizza box thans near dead silent (no cpu fan and PS fan is slow speed). Only problem is it's 486DX/66. The other cead silent one is a Modular Systems box (486/50) with a 700mb 2.5" drive inside. What 1.2A at 12V gets you is 10Bt, SVGA, Parallel, Serial all in a box 5"x3"x11". Add one monitor, PS2 mouse, PS2 Keyboard and go. Even knows how to netboot. Also a AT&T Globalist 620 pizza box. Only p100 but quiet. Allison From doc at mdrconsult.com Tue Nov 1 17:20:56 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 18:20:56 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511011502460866.111741FF@10.0.0.252> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <200511011502460866.111741FF@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4367F858.40602@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Hmmm, the Compaq Deskpro was built at a time when Compaq seemed to care > about quality. The PSU fan isn't one of those 4" screamers, but a slower > 4.5" very quiet model. The expansion card backplane is plugged into the > motherboard and pulls out from the chassis for easy card servicing. There > are air intake holes at the bottom rear of the machine so that the airflow > first passes over the motherboard and actually makes some sort of sense and > keeps the floppy drive and CD pretty clean. No annoying little cheap fan > on the CPU heatsink either. > > Maybe I can't do MUCH better than that. Probably not. If the Soekris boards don't have enough juice, the mini-ITX Eden boards would be the next step up. Some of the mini-ITX cases use wall-wart PSUs, so it's conceivable that your disk would be the only moving part. > Are 5.25" IDE drives any more reliable than the 3.5" models? I've got a > few old Quantum units--the largest is about 8 GB, but I'm using a 3.5" > Maxtor in the box right now. The failure rate on the Quantum "Bigfoot" series was spectacular, and they're slow as dirt. A fast (5400rpm) 2.5" IDE disk will draw very little power, generate a tiny amount of heat, and perform reasonably well. Conversion kits to attach to a 40-pin ribbon & power run about $12-15. Doc From lbickley at bickleywest.com Tue Nov 1 17:34:31 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 15:34:31 -0800 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511011534.31581.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Tuesday 01 November 2005 13:14, Tony Duell wrote: --snip-- > As you probably know, the console is controlled by an 8008 > microprocessor. Of course it's an 8 bit device. Maybe some 'carry' is not > working correctly. > > Alas DEC didn't publish a source listing (or even a binary dump) of the > console firmware in the printset. This is going to make troubleshooting a > little harder, since you probably don't know what it should be doing. It > is clearly running a program, and that program is reading the keyboard > and scanning the display. So it is somewhat correct. DEC did publish it in a "rare" version of the KY11 Maintenance Manual. It contains the complete 8008 listing. I put a copy at my website - available by anonymous ftp to bickleywest.com in the "dec" directory. Grab it while you can :-) Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From lbickley at bickleywest.com Tue Nov 1 17:45:25 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 15:45:25 -0800 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem In-Reply-To: <200511011534.31581.lbickley@bickleywest.com> References: <200511011534.31581.lbickley@bickleywest.com> Message-ID: <200511011545.25214.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Tuesday 01 November 2005 15:34, Lyle Bickley wrote: > On Tuesday 01 November 2005 13:14, Tony Duell wrote: > --snip-- > > > As you probably know, the console is controlled by an 8008 > > microprocessor. Of course it's an 8 bit device. Maybe some 'carry' is not > > working correctly. > > > > Alas DEC didn't publish a source listing (or even a binary dump) of the > > console firmware in the printset. This is going to make troubleshooting a > > little harder, since you probably don't know what it should be doing. It > > is clearly running a program, and that program is reading the keyboard > > and scanning the display. So it is somewhat correct. > > DEC did publish it in a "rare" version of the KY11 Maintenance Manual. It > contains the complete 8008 listing. > > I put a copy at my website - available by anonymous ftp to bickleywest.com > in the "dec" directory. Before somebody jumps down my throat and teeters on my wishbone, it really isn't all that "rare". I just checked and found a copy at: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp11/1134/KY11-LB_MaintMan.pdf Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com Tue Nov 1 18:52:49 2005 From: nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com (nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 16:52:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: Various sales flyers and catalog pdfs Message-ID: <20051102005250.4196.qmail@web81008.mail.yahoo.com> Continuing to add PDF documents to the site. I've added several old sales flyers and such. PET flyer in http://www.trailingedge.com/cbm8/ Electric Pencil, Sol Extended BASIC, Sol Helios, Vector MZ, Vector MZ Word Processor and Whatsit Database flyers in http://www.trailingedge.com/cpm/ Interact and Odyssey 2 flyers in http://www.trailingedge.com/misc/ OSI Challenger Line and OSI C2-8P flyers in http://www.trailingedge.com/osi/ Tandy 10, TRS-80 Model 2 and (one of my favorite ones) the TRS-80 Computer Catalog RSC2 in http://www.trailingedge.com/trs80/ The earliest RSC I've seen online recently was RSC6. Anyone seen RSC1 or others? David From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Nov 1 18:55:37 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 19:55:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs In-Reply-To: <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> References: <200511011035590999.102303CD@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511020057.TAA05138@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Does anyone have any suggestions on where more [write protect/enable > stickers] can be obtained? Note that these have to be the removable > opaque BLACK tabs. Surely it's easy enough to take small white sticky-tabs such as can be found at pretty much any office-supply store (at least around here) and liberally blacken them with a black felt-tip pen? /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From chenmel at earthlink.net Tue Nov 1 19:38:41 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 20:38:41 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 14:18:00 -0500 Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: Re: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions > > Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 16:09:01 +0000 > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > > >Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> This may be appropriate for another list, but it seems to me that there's > >> plenty of applicable knowledge here. > >> > >> Right now, we're using an older Compaq Deskpro P3-600 box as our incoming > >> Linux server. Basically, it connects with the DSL modem and contains IP > >> masquerading, DNS caching, firewall and fetchmail/procmail/qmail tasks > >> (SpamAssassin included). It runs 24x7 with no problem, as it has for the > >> last 5 or 6 years. Built like a tank. > > I wonder if you even need a P200 for that. I used to manage a > networks that had a 486dx/66 doing all but SpamaAssassin. For the rate it > had to handle on the DSL port (actually fractional T1 256kb/S) it never > seemed to be working hard. The PS in it was only 200W and nowhere was > it ever stressed. It's claim to fame was running at room temp over a > weekend in the summer with both PS and CPU fan siezed without melting > or even getting upset. > > Also an older 500mb-1gb drive will use less power than a newer fast > spinning drive. Or better yet netboot it and only keep a floppy. Pull > all the IO you don't need and run the video at 640x480x256 as a further > power reduction. Use a monitor (or KVM switch) as you don't need > a monitor save to check on it. > I am in the middle of replacing the battery in a NVRAM on a Sparc IPC that I plan to use as a router/firewall. I bought a retail copy (gotta support the effort every few years by doing so) of OpenBSD that's now running on it. The small 'lunchbox' Sparcs are perfect for such a role, with a second ethernet port on an SBUS card. It's a rather light-duty Sparc, but by running on a fairly foreign architecture instead of a common Intel box I'll miss out on all but the most determined crackers. Any suggestions of a better battery (cheaper, mostly) to 'strap on' to Sun NVRAMs? I am going to use AAA lithiums on this machine, which should last forever, but they're a bit pricey. -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From chenmel at earthlink.net Tue Nov 1 19:44:48 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 20:44:48 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <4367E450.2030301@yahoo.co.uk> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <4367E450.2030301@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <20051101204448.6cb98882.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:55:29 +0000 Jules Richardson wrote: > Pete Turnbull wrote: > > > FWIW, I think Tim's suggestion (mini-ITX) is amongst the best. > > I suppose it depends on how much is available to spend - used Suns and > the like can be had for free, versus a certain amount for a mini-ITX > board (I've not found people throwing out the latter just yet, although > give it a couple of years...) > When people start throwing out mini-ITX boards it will be because they have 'expired' as they are commodity-PC stuff and not built-to-last. A Sparc IPX that is ten years older then them will still be chugging along, most likely. > Mind you, I suppose it's harder to find extra NICs for a > Sun/SGI/whatever versus a PC... > I got several Sbus ethernet cards for the price of shipping and a little bit from a list member here recently. -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From jpero at sympatico.ca Tue Nov 1 14:43:55 2005 From: jpero at sympatico.ca (jpero at sympatico.ca) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 20:43:55 +0000 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051102014236.OYZS16985.tomts36-srv.bellnexxia.net@wizard> > At 8:56 AM -0800 11/1/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > >I'm wondering if something a little less power-hungry might be preferable, > >however. Are there any low-power alternatives for the job that anyone can > >recommend? > > A VIA Mini-ITX system is the best choice, they might not have a lot > of CPU power, but it's hard to beat them on power consumption. A > good second choice would probably be a Pentium M based system > (they're starting to become available in something other than > laptops). > > At 12:45 PM -0500 11/1/05, Paul Koning wrote: > >How about an old laptop? UPS built-in... :-) > > I'd be concerned with reliability. This is something that has to run 24x7. > > Jules Richardson wrote: > >Would an offering from one of the various UNIX vendors be a > >possibility? Sun / SGI / HP or something? I'm thinking that getting > >away from any kind of Intel CPU would be a good place to start, plus > >of course you don't need any kind of framebuffer then either (unlike > >a PC) and can just use a serial console on the (very rare) > >occassions when you'd need to be physically at the machine. > > Do any of them offer anything that is low power? As for not needing > any kind of framebuffer, under OpenBSD I don't really need it with > the HP Pentium III system I'm using. Though it was a bit worrisome > the other night when there was nothing on the console and it took > forever to come up (it was fsck'ing the disk as the power had gone > out). > > Noise is the real reason I'm using the Pentium III, it's a *LOT* > quieter than the SparcServer 5/110 that I was using. The Sparc was > louder than the two 3-drive JBOD boxes running 10k RPM SCSI drives > sitting above it (they're hooked to an OpenVMS server). > > Zane ITX by VIA is GOOD. Get everything to start off on one board except memory, drive(s), case and power supply. Remember, ITX mounting points and ATX power supply plug are same for microATX, ATX cases so use one locally and put ITX in it. Alteratively, any PIII socket 370 running 133 bus have some spunk. PIII 533/133 cpu is 14W. Cooler than a Pentium 233mmx that rated at 17W. There is a link that details many CPUs for power consumpation ratings, warning: it is a looong web, all text, no graphics, give it a minute to load. http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm Cheers, Wizard From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 1 19:58:50 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 01:58:50 +0000 (GMT) Subject: AUI crossover? In-Reply-To: <17255.58713.870335.116212@gargle.gargle.HOWL> from "Paul Koning" at Nov 1, 5 04:59:53 pm Message-ID: > Tony> I have a 2 port repeater somewhere (2 female AUI connectors to > Tony> link to 2 transceivers), and it's remarkably complciated > Tony> inside. There's a state machine type of thing with the state > Tony> table in RAM, and a Z80 + ROM to boot that. Probably about 50 > Tony> chips all told. > > Sounds like a DEREP, which I think is the first Ethernet repeater. > DEC box, roughly the size of the 3U routers of the time. No, it's not a DEC product. I forget who did make it (something is saying 'BICC networks') thought. From what I rememebr, it's a 2U case, could be rackmounted. There's one PCB flat inside, and a little SMPSU box. > > State machine with lots of discrete components sounds about right. > Z80 to boot it is puzzling, what is there to boot? DEREPs were not OK, maybe 'boot' is the wrong word. I meant to load the state machine RAM. > manageable, you just turn them on and they would work. -tony From mokuba at gmail.com Tue Nov 1 20:14:01 2005 From: mokuba at gmail.com (Gary Sparkes) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:14:01 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511011017380114.1012339B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/1/05 1:17 PM, "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > On 11/1/2005 at 12:45 PM Paul Koning wrote: > >> How about an old laptop? UPS built-in... :-) > > Interesting idea, but I don't have a lot of faith in a laptop holding up > under a 24x7x365 operating schedule. They're not built for that type of > operation and I think that heat buildup would eventually do them in. > > --Chuck I've got an Omnibook 6100 running Win2k3 for a router/dns box (cellular connection), and it's got a 73 day uptime since a service pack 1 reboot =] From davebarnes at adelphia.net Tue Nov 1 20:41:03 2005 From: davebarnes at adelphia.net (David Barnes) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:41:03 -0500 Subject: Oracle for VMS In-Reply-To: <24025.62.177.191.201.1130877873.squirrel@62.177.191.201> References: <4367BF5F.9010200@gmail.com> <9256.62.177.191.201.1130876861.squirrel@62.177.191.201> <4367D23B.8060407@gmail.com> <24025.62.177.191.201.1130877873.squirrel@62.177.191.201> Message-ID: <85EE5DC0-4B6E-4C4C-8ABD-4EAC6DF73647@adelphia.net> Last version of Oracle for VAX (not Alpha) VMS was 7. something... I think 7.1 You can still run 9.2.0.5 (9I release 2) on AlphaVMS and 10g is on its way.. David Barnes davebarnes AT adelphia DOT com OpenVMS , Tru64 , Solaris , Linux , OS X , SGI Irix On Nov 1, 2005, at 3:44 PM, quapla at xs4all.nl wrote: > > I doubt it. > Only 9.2 can also be downloaded, and it does not list VAX/VMS > as a part of the list. > > Ed > > > >> quapla at xs4all.nl wrote: >> >>> Well, >>> >>> Searching metalink, there was nothing usefull to be found. >>> Personally, I guess 8.1.7 was the last release on VAX OpenVMS. >>> >> >> That new, huh? Then I might be able to find it on OTN, no? >> >> Peace... Sridhar >> >> > > > From news at computercollector.com Tue Nov 1 21:30:41 2005 From: news at computercollector.com (Computer Collector Newsletter) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 19:30:41 -0800 Subject: Arrived early for VCF, anyone around tonight? Message-ID: Well, I arrived here a day early (long story)... anyone want to grab dinner or a beer tonight and talk classic tech? I'm staying in Mountain View, will be online all night. - Evan - Evan Koblentz Freelance technology writer (www.snarc.net) Visit the Computer Collector Newsletter at http://news.computercollector.com From jwest at classiccmp.org Tue Nov 1 21:32:02 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:32:02 -0600 Subject: DEC FOR SALE? References: Message-ID: <006501c5df5d$fddaba90$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> I have a fair number (about eight) RA81's, some in a full DEC rack of RA81's with cables. I'd love to get rid of some, maybe the rack too. Jay ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Donoghue" To: Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 3:14 PM Subject: DEC FOR SALE? >I am looking to rebuild my DEC product menu. Anyone selling RD53-A's or > RA81's & 82's? > > Peace, > > -Roger > > From jwest at classiccmp.org Tue Nov 1 21:33:40 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:33:40 -0600 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <17255.53508.539464.167025@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <007401c5df5e$3873cc00$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> We've done several headless 'embedded' systems using the via micro boards and been quite happy with them. Perfect for the kind of application you describe. Jay From vp at cs.drexel.edu Tue Nov 1 21:45:25 2005 From: vp at cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 22:45:25 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions Message-ID: <20051102034525.D35FC200CFD8@mail.cs.drexel.edu> "Zane H. Healy" wrote: > As for not needing any kind of framebuffer, under OpenBSD I don't really > need it with the HP Pentium III system I'm using. Though it was a bit > worrisome the other night when there was nothing on the console and > it took forever to come up (it was fsck'ing the disk as the power had > gone out). why not use a serial console? OpenBSD supports this. For accessing the serial consoles of my machines, I use conserver (available on the ports collection) which has the benefits of (a) keeping a log of everything that appears on the serial port (even if you are not connected), (b) allows connections to the serial port over the network, and (c) allows multiple r/o connections to the same serial port (so you can monitor what's going on from many points). **vp From RMeenaks at olf.com Wed Nov 2 04:20:24 2005 From: RMeenaks at olf.com (Ram Meenakshisundaram) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 05:20:24 -0500 Subject: ATTENTION: Atari GURUs.... Message-ID: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD10E@cpexchange.olf.com> Hi, Quick question, is there any way to use an atari ST cartridge (which in this case is a hardware box that connects via the cartrige slot) in a PC? I know there are several people who dump ROM cartridges so that it can be used in an emulator, but I want to actually CONNECT the cartridge into the PC and use the hardware via an emulator. Is this possible? Any "bridges" available out there? Thanks, Ram From bv at norbionics.com Tue Nov 1 10:55:08 2005 From: bv at norbionics.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Bj=F8rn_Vermo?=) Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2005 17:55:08 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> On 24 Oct, 2005, at 01:04, woodelf wrote: > Allison wrote: >> >> What else is out there that's not wintel, fast enough and can address >> a large memory that runs a fairly current UNIX. That also assumes >> the software that can P&R the FPGA is available as source. >> > P&R is mostly sorting is my guess. However my designs view point for > open source > is being able to keep the computer system capable of bootstaping > itself. Looking at the > latest version of red-hat I find it hard to do any real development > work as everything > is becoming too interconnected with every thing else. > Apple comes to mind. You can pick up a G4 really cheap these days. Whether you want to run BSD (OS X) or Linux is a matter of taste. IBM have some PPc development systems (Walnut if I recall right) which can run both Linux and QNX, but I have no idea how to get one or what they sell for. -- -bv From tequilizer at gmx.net Tue Nov 1 14:22:37 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:22:37 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4367CE8D.9030503@gmx.net> >> There is another difference, the 9845C were shipped with colored >> functions keys ;-) >> > > What, all different colours, to indicate the colour that the text (or > whatever) will appear on the monitor? The HH Tiger did that. > > Exactly. Makes the C look a little bite more colorful. >> Thanks, I'm glad my PSU is still working. I've had enough trouble with >> the 9845A PSU, which is only as half as complex, although the functional >> > > When you say 'half as somplex', do you mean it only has one main chopper > circuit, not the 2 that are used in the 9845B Opt 200? > > I have never seen a 9845A, but from what I've heard it's very different > to the B or C. To the extent that both processor modules are on one PCB, > and there's a bus switching board alongside it. > Yes and no. The mainboards connectors and the output voltages of the PSU are the same. Even the mechanical PSU assembly is the same, with the difference that it doesn't have LED power-good indicators (there's no built-in voltage testing circuit) but dedicated measure points instead which can be accessed during operation. The A model PSU is identical to that of the low-end B-models, as described in the B/C service manual, with one simple internal power supply, one single chopper or "pre-regulator", which has a single loop-back from the 5V output for pwm-style regulation. The output from the chopper is fed into two separated regulators and from there to one assembly each, one for the higher voltages, an another for the lower voltages/higher currents. Protection circuits exist but are not as elaborated as for the newer PSUs. And be aware of those yellowish noise suppression capacitors, one of those was in my HP floppy drive and exploded shortly after power-up. Did not make severe damage, but I've exchanged them all in the PSUs, just in case. Another difference towards the low-end B models is indeed the combined PPU/LPU CPU board, but there are lots of other "enhancements" of the B model (all boards but the printer circuits and the I/O backplane have been reengineered). The integrated peripherals and the keyboard have not changed. > There are 2 expansion slots in the monitor. One is for the lightpen > controller. THe other is for an arbitrary video expansion board. I have > neither option, so there are no schematics. > > The color monitor has just enough space for one additional board, the light pen controller. Since I don't have the controller board, I currently don't care much about a light pen, although it would be nice to see how it works. However I got a working graphics 9111A tablet, thats ok for now. Even a hopefully working 8"-floppy. So data transfer would be (theoretically) possible as well. When I get one of those &#$?*-9845 working. >> home-brew startup fixure? I guess the only signals which are really >> important are the NP and the NL signals. The first resets the address >> registers of the alpha circuit and grabs the fist word from the crt >> buffer in block 1, the other probably initiates another PPU bus >> arbitration for grabbing one complete line of text from the crt buffer >> in block 1. Maybe in absence of a crt the alpha circuit makes some kind >> of continuous bus capture and the whole system hangs. And maybe the >> mainframe can run even without crt when NP and NL are both pulled up to >> logical 1. Two resistors would then be enough. >> >> Another probably important signal is the HALT-signal, from which the PPU >> knows it's the PPU and not the LPU, and which is generated by the alpha >> circuit but probably triggered by the NP signal. >> >> > > First problem (for you, at least). I drew all this out long before seeing > an HP manual, so I didn't use the HP names. And several of the signals > disappear into the PPU hybrid so it's almost impossible to work out what > they actually do there. I have now seen the HP boardwapper guide for the > monitor, but I couldn't easily work out the translation between my names > and HP's. > In case I get a copy of the schematics, I will try to help. Actually, first of all, I'll try to build up a fixture replacement, the appropriate signal lines should not be too hard to identify. Then see what happens. By the way, if the HP guys were clever, they have placed checksums into the ROMs, thats another thing which I'm going to verify. Today I had a look at HPs website, if you like, try http://partsurfer.hp.com/cgi-bin/spi/main, say "9845B" at "by model number or name", than hit the search button, click on "DESKTOP COMPUTER" and then select a part list for all parts... -- Ansgar From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 2 02:00:02 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 09:00:02 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24DD@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> > This suggests it is correctly counting the digits you enter > (or shifting them into a register), but is not displaying > them correctly. And it is only updating the bottom 8 bits. Yes, I got that feeling too. That is why I am puzzled, because the 8008 'seems' to execute its program ... sort of. > Alas DEC didn't publish a source listing (or even a binary > dump) of the console firmware in the printset. This is going > to make troubleshooting a little harder, since you probably > don't know what it should be doing. It is clearly running a > program, and that program is reading the keyboard and > scanning the display. So it is somewhat correct. Well, in the Maintenance Manual of the KY11-LB that I have *is* the 8008 software, there is even a chapter that describes the 8008 instruction set (IIRC, I skipped that chapter). > What does it do if you press 4 repeatedly? Does it flash the > bottom 3 or bottom 2 digits? If it's only updating the bottom > 8 bits, you see, then only 2 digits will flash from 0. I will check that tonight! I remember that pressing the '7' key does not have any effect at all. No display flash, nothing. > > AFAIK, the entry of the digits, for example the numeric > > entry '165020' does *not* need the UNIBUS, but only sets up > > an internal register. The 'LAD' button, and 'DIS AD' will > > start a UNIBUS cycle (to access a memory location). Correct? > > I think so. Ok. I am working on a theory. My first step (already done) is to minimalize the system. It is now just the PSU (...) and the DD11-PK backplane. I removed the cache and FP11 option. The backplane now only holds the 2 CPU boards, and the M9312, M9302, the SLU and the KY11-LB. All other slots have in position C-D a G7273 grant-cont card. The symptoms are still the same, btw. The theory is as follows. If the KY11-LB does not do UNIBUS accesses when just the keypad is used, you could have the KY11-LB the *only* board in the backplane via an extender to make measurements to pins easy ... Going to the attick to get the printset from the big pile! Since I removed all boards, thus unplugged several flat cables, to clean the BA11K thoroughly, it might have developed a problem in the wiring. Perhaps the printset will give insight in this strange behaviour. > > BTW, the voltage on the CPU backplane (DD11-PK) is 5.08 V. and > > the +15 and -15 read +/-15.x V. (Can't remember the exact value). Come to think of it ... I did not check ACLO and DCLO. I will ahve to see if the KY11-LB uses them or not! > > I have an other 11/34 with an M7958, but never powered up that box. > > I took that M7859 and installed it in the 11/34C. The display stays > > dark. According to the M7859 doc, that basically means that > > the board is dead. So much for board swapping. Sorry, could not > resist to try an easy success. I don't have other spare M7859 ... > You may find the totally dead board easier to debug. At least > you can check for a clock at the 8008, and for activity on > the internal bus to the firmware ROM, etc. The KY11-LB manual says that this is the hardest to solve case :-) But then, that was for a field engineer ... I assume that the board was simply swapped and continue from there. I have put the 'dead' KY11-lB back in the box where it came from, but added a label to it saying "DEAD ??". For later ... :-) > -tony Thanks Tony. I will test the keypad response. Ah, I remember one more thing. Pressing the 'LSR' button does turn on the 'SR DISP' LED. One more thing that makes it like it is working, almost ... thanks, I will post updates! - Henk, PA8PDP This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From rdonoghue at ppsparts.com Wed Nov 2 07:01:01 2005 From: rdonoghue at ppsparts.com (Roger Donoghue) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 08:01:01 -0500 Subject: DEC FOR SALE? Message-ID: I am interested in all you have. Let me know your final count and your asking price. What City and state are you located? Thank you for your response. -Roger -----Original Message----- From: Jay West [mailto:jwest at classiccmp.org] Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 10:32 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: DEC FOR SALE? I have a fair number (about eight) RA81's, some in a full DEC rack of RA81's with cables. I'd love to get rid of some, maybe the rack too. Jay ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Donoghue" To: Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 3:14 PM Subject: DEC FOR SALE? >I am looking to rebuild my DEC product menu. Anyone selling RD53-A's or > RA81's & 82's? > > Peace, > > -Roger > > From vax9000 at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 07:46:56 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 08:46:56 -0500 Subject: DEC FOR SALE? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11/2/05, Roger Donoghue wrote: > I am interested in all you have. Let me know your final count and your > asking price. What City and state are you located? Thank you for your > response. I will visit the warehouse today. I will take some pictures for you. I am in Cleveland, Ohio. There are a T505 and an OEM PDP11/73 too. vax, 9000 From rdonoghue at ppsparts.com Wed Nov 2 07:56:48 2005 From: rdonoghue at ppsparts.com (Roger Donoghue) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 08:56:48 -0500 Subject: DEC FOR SALE? Message-ID: Sounds great. Thank you. I look forward to your pictures. -----Original Message----- From: 9000 VAX [mailto:vax9000 at gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 8:47 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: DEC FOR SALE? On 11/2/05, Roger Donoghue wrote: > I am interested in all you have. Let me know your final count and your > asking price. What City and state are you located? Thank you for your > response. I will visit the warehouse today. I will take some pictures for you. I am in Cleveland, Ohio. There are a T505 and an OEM PDP11/73 too. vax, 9000 From curt at atarimuseum.com Wed Nov 2 08:24:28 2005 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 09:24:28 -0500 Subject: ATTENTION: Atari GURUs.... In-Reply-To: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD10E@cpexchange.olf.com> References: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD10E@cpexchange.olf.com> Message-ID: <4368CC1C.8060400@atarimuseum.com> Well, its been done in reverse, such as with the Ethernec module, it adds a few mulitplexed lines with some simple TTL's and gives an Atari ST through its cartridge slot an ISA 8bit slot, then you plug an NE2000 compat. ethernet card into it, load up the STing drivers in MINT and you're networking with an ST. I don't know if it honestly would be worth the time to try and build something in reverse so such a narrow purpose. Have you tried to just read the rom's on the cart, then do a copy rom1.bin /b + rom2.bin /b + rom3.bin /b + rom4.bin /bin = stcart.bin /b There aren't many ST carts as it is, so this would probably be the better route to go. It's what we've been doing for years with Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, 800/XL/XE carts.... Curt Ram Meenakshisundaram wrote: >Hi, > >Quick question, is there any way to use an atari ST cartridge (which in >this case is a hardware box that connects via the cartrige slot) in a >PC? I know there are several people who dump ROM cartridges so that it >can be used in an emulator, but I want to actually CONNECT the cartridge >into the PC and use the hardware via an emulator. Is this possible? >Any "bridges" available out there? > >Thanks, > >Ram > > > > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.7/156 - Release Date: 11/2/2005 From gilcarrick at comcast.net Wed Nov 2 09:16:19 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 09:16:19 -0600 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF In-Reply-To: <200511011333010839.10C516F2@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> ... > You know, collecting systems with the Apple logo on them may > not be such a bad idea. > > I figure it'll be only a couple of years before Apple sells > its computer systems business to some Chinese concern, while > maintaining ownership of the software. ... And the latest models will just be Intel boxes which will also run Windows. ;) Gil From jrkeys at concentric.net Wed Nov 2 09:30:33 2005 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 09:30:33 -0600 Subject: Last Chance on Ergo Brick computer Message-ID: <006801c5dfc2$5f37d070$58406b43@66067007> I take it that no one has a extra Ergo Brick computer that they would like to sell to this law firm that contacted me looking to buy mine. I only have the one and do not want to sell it to them or anyone. There is a big patent suit going on and they need to open up one to see how a certain part works to help them (or hurt them) in the law suit. Please contact me offline at jrkeys at concentric.net. Thanks From teoz at neo.rr.com Wed Nov 2 09:37:41 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 10:37:41 -0500 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gil Carrick" To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 10:16 AM Subject: RE: FS: Macs for VCF > ... > > You know, collecting systems with the Apple logo on them may > > not be such a bad idea. > > > > I figure it'll be only a couple of years before Apple sells > > its computer systems business to some Chinese concern, while > > maintaining ownership of the software. > ... > > And the latest models will just be Intel boxes which will also run Windows. > > ;) > > Gil > No they will be pieces of expensive "art" that just happen to have an Intel part crammed in them somewhere and run Windows when no Mac zealots are around to see it. Apple still makes most of its cash on hardware sales and little on software, so I don't see them getting rid of the hardware line any time soon. Sooner or later we will see some other fruity labeled Mac knockoffs from Asia just like in the good old Apple 2 days (why buy the company when you can just rip them off). Personally only the 68K Macs are collectable to me. I need to find a spare IIfx before the last ones are ground into plastic picnic table tops or end up in some hoarders storage shed. From jrkeys at concentric.net Wed Nov 2 09:47:03 2005 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 09:47:03 -0600 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <008801c5dfc4$ad2081e0$58406b43@66067007> I have the TAM and a Cube in my collection plus 3 or 4 Black Mac TV's. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Teo Zenios" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 9:37 AM Subject: Re: FS: Macs for VCF > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gil Carrick" > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > > Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 10:16 AM > Subject: RE: FS: Macs for VCF > > >> ... >> > You know, collecting systems with the Apple logo on them may >> > not be such a bad idea. >> > >> > I figure it'll be only a couple of years before Apple sells >> > its computer systems business to some Chinese concern, while >> > maintaining ownership of the software. >> ... >> >> And the latest models will just be Intel boxes which will also run > Windows. >> >> ;) >> >> Gil >> > > No they will be pieces of expensive "art" that just happen to have an > Intel > part crammed in them somewhere and run Windows when no Mac zealots are > around to see it. Apple still makes most of its cash on hardware sales and > little on software, so I don't see them getting rid of the hardware line > any > time soon. Sooner or later we will see some other fruity labeled Mac > knockoffs from Asia just like in the good old Apple 2 days (why buy the > company when you can just rip them off). > > Personally only the 68K Macs are collectable to me. > > I need to find a spare IIfx before the last ones are ground into plastic > picnic table tops or end up in some hoarders storage shed. > > > > > > > > > From teoz at neo.rr.com Wed Nov 2 09:51:22 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 10:51:22 -0500 Subject: Mini Jumpers for 68 pin SCSI drives References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> Anybody know of a cheap source for mini jumpers for SCSI HD's? I looked in my parts box and I have quite a few of the normal sized jumpers but none of the minis and need a dozen or two for a SCSI tower I am working on. The drives I am using are all factory set to ID 6 (IBM drives) and don't have any jumpers at all on ID select pins. I assume that once you jumper the apropriate pins it will overide the factory settings? The SCSI tower has the normal sized ID select cabled and they are too large to fit the drives so I need to do it via jumpers. From wh.sudbrink at verizon.net Wed Nov 2 09:55:34 2005 From: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net (Bill Sudbrink) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:55:34 -0500 Subject: Last Chance on Ergo Brick computer In-Reply-To: <006801c5dfc2$5f37d070$58406b43@66067007> Message-ID: Are you reading your email? I've sent two messages. Email me if interested: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Keys > Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 10:31 AM > To: cctalk at classiccmp > Subject: Last Chance on Ergo Brick computer > > > I take it that no one has a extra Ergo Brick computer that they > would like > to sell to this law firm that contacted me looking to buy mine. > I only have > the one and do not want to sell it to them or anyone. There is a > big patent > suit going on and they need to open up one to see how a certain > part works > to help them (or hurt them) in the law suit. Please contact me > offline at > jrkeys at concentric.net. Thanks > From teoz at neo.rr.com Wed Nov 2 09:59:40 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 10:59:40 -0500 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> <008801c5dfc4$ad2081e0$58406b43@66067007> Message-ID: <005f01c5dfc6$6f339fa0$0500fea9@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keys" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 10:47 AM Subject: Re: FS: Macs for VCF > I have the TAM and a Cube in my collection plus 3 or 4 Black Mac TV's. > ----- Original Message ----- Do you like them for the hardware or the packaging? From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Nov 2 10:03:00 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 11:03:00 -0500 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF In-Reply-To: <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <200511021103.00507.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Wednesday 02 November 2005 10:37, Teo Zenios wrote: > I need to find a spare IIfx before the last ones are ground into > plastic picnic table tops or end up in some hoarders storage shed. Were you not around when I posted that I've got a pair of IIfx's available, a few months ago, on the list? They're still available, $10 each, assuming they both still work. :) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From jrice54 at vzavenue.net Wed Nov 2 10:11:59 2005 From: jrice54 at vzavenue.net (James Rice) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:11:59 -0600 Subject: Mini Jumpers for 68 pin SCSI drives In-Reply-To: <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <4368E54F.9000401@vzavenue.net> Teo Zenios wrote: >Anybody know of a cheap source for mini jumpers for SCSI HD's? I looked in >my parts box and I have quite a few of the normal sized jumpers but none of >the minis and need a dozen or two for a SCSI tower I am working on. > >The drives I am using are all factory set to ID 6 (IBM drives) and don't >have any jumpers at all on ID select pins. I assume that once you jumper the >apropriate pins it will overide the factory settings? The SCSI tower has the >normal sized ID select cabled and they are too large to fit the drives so I >need to do it via jumpers. > > > > > > > Fry's usually carries them. They run around $4 a bag of 20 or so. -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers From jrkeys at concentric.net Wed Nov 2 10:16:16 2005 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 10:16:16 -0600 Subject: FS: Macs for VCF References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net><002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game><008801c5dfc4$ad2081e0$58406b43@66067007> <005f01c5dfc6$6f339fa0$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <00a601c5dfc8$c2100450$58406b43@66067007> Both reasons, I use them both here in my home right next to my PC and iMAC (233). ----- Original Message ----- From: "Teo Zenios" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 9:59 AM Subject: Re: FS: Macs for VCF > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Keys" > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 10:47 AM > Subject: Re: FS: Macs for VCF > > >> I have the TAM and a Cube in my collection plus 3 or 4 Black Mac TV's. >> ----- Original Message ----- > > Do you like them for the hardware or the packaging? > > > From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 10:18:24 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:18:24 -0500 Subject: Mini Jumpers for 68 pin SCSI drives In-Reply-To: <4368E54F.9000401@vzavenue.net> References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> <4368E54F.9000401@vzavenue.net> Message-ID: <4368E6D0.2080203@gmail.com> James Rice wrote: > Teo Zenios wrote: > >> Anybody know of a cheap source for mini jumpers for SCSI HD's? I >> looked in >> my parts box and I have quite a few of the normal sized jumpers but >> none of >> the minis and need a dozen or two for a SCSI tower I am working on. >> >> The drives I am using are all factory set to ID 6 (IBM drives) and don't >> have any jumpers at all on ID select pins. I assume that once you >> jumper the >> apropriate pins it will overide the factory settings? The SCSI tower >> has the >> normal sized ID select cabled and they are too large to fit the drives >> so I >> need to do it via jumpers. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > Fry's usually carries them. They run around $4 a bag of 20 or so. The store John Boffemmyer used to work for had 10 for 70 cents. Peace... Sridhar From wh.sudbrink at verizon.net Wed Nov 2 10:33:57 2005 From: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net (Bill Sudbrink) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:33:57 -0500 Subject: Last Chance on Ergo Brick computer In-Reply-To: <006801c5dfc2$5f37d070$58406b43@66067007> Message-ID: Hi, Received your message and replied off list. If you don't get it, my mail to you is being blocked somewhere. Sorry for bothering the rest of classiccmp with this. Bill > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Keys > Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 10:31 AM > To: cctalk at classiccmp > Subject: Last Chance on Ergo Brick computer > > > I take it that no one has a extra Ergo Brick computer that they > would like > to sell to this law firm that contacted me looking to buy mine. > I only have > the one and do not want to sell it to them or anyone. There is a > big patent > suit going on and they need to open up one to see how a certain > part works > to help them (or hurt them) in the law suit. Please contact me > offline at > jrkeys at concentric.net. Thanks > From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 10:42:40 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:42:40 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200511020842400388.14E19886@10.0.0.252> On 11/1/2005 at 8:38 PM Scott Stevens wrote: >Any suggestions of a better battery (cheaper, mostly) to 'strap on' to Sun >NVRAMs? I am going to use AAA lithiums on this machine, which should last >forever, but they're a bit pricey. Why not just some plain old AA alkalines? You should get a couple of years (i.e. shelf life)out of each set. --Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 11:10:56 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:10:56 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions Message-ID: <0IPC0029I7N8QN34@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:42:40 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/1/2005 at 8:38 PM Scott Stevens wrote: > >>Any suggestions of a better battery (cheaper, mostly) to 'strap on' to Sun >>NVRAMs? I am going to use AAA lithiums on this machine, which should last >>forever, but they're a bit pricey. > >Why not just some plain old AA alkalines? You should get a couple of years >(i.e. shelf life)out of each set. > >--Chuck > Why not use a 2032 3V lithium coin cell? They are cheap and small too. For that backup use they should last years. Allison From teoz at neo.rr.com Wed Nov 2 11:13:29 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 12:13:29 -0500 Subject: Mini Jumpers for 68 pin SCSI drives References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> <4368E54F.9000401@vzavenue.net> <4368E6D0.2080203@gmail.com> Message-ID: <093101c5dfd0$beffe480$0500fea9@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sridhar Ayengar" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 11:18 AM Subject: Re: Mini Jumpers for 68 pin SCSI drives > The store John Boffemmyer used to work for had 10 for 70 cents. > > Peace... Sridhar What store was that? From GFisher at tristonecapital.com Wed Nov 2 11:12:35 2005 From: GFisher at tristonecapital.com (Gary Fisher) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 10:12:35 -0700 Subject: What are your favorite electronic/computer surplus stores in the Bay area Message-ID: <8F18A9D87E3D3A479C61925B9CD77601074389@calgary2.tri-stone.tristonecapital.com> Hi Everyone, I'm coming in to Mountain View this Friday (from Calgary, Canada) for VCF 8.0 and I was wondering what are people's favorite computer/electronic surplus stores to visit. I remember a tread about it many months ago but I'll be damned if I can't find it. Many thanks! Gary Fisher This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete this e-mail and destroy any copies. Any dissemination or use of this information by a person other than the intended recipient is unauthorized and may be illegal. Unless otherwise stated, opinions expressed in this e-mail are those of the author and are not endorsed by the author's employer. From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 2 10:18:59 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:18:59 +0000 Subject: Mini Jumpers for 68 pin SCSI drives In-Reply-To: <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <4368E6F3.5040208@yahoo.co.uk> Teo Zenios wrote: > Anybody know of a cheap source for mini jumpers for SCSI HD's? I looked in > my parts box and I have quite a few of the normal sized jumpers but none of > the minis and need a dozen or two for a SCSI tower I am working on. Urgh, yeah - been there, done that. FYI, there seem to be two flavours of mini jumpers too - some with the same profile as a normal sized jumper, and others which are very flat (often seen in WD or Quantum drives IIRC). I have a feeling they're not the same pin spacing... I always make a point of pulling them off any drives I scrap, and I can *still* never find any when I need them! :) cheers Jules From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 2 11:33:11 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:33:11 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> Message-ID: <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> Bj?rn Vermo wrote: > > Apple comes to mind. You can pick up a G4 really cheap these days. > Whether you want to run BSD (OS X) or Linux is a matter of taste. > IBM have some PPc development systems (Walnut if I recall right) which > can run both Linux and QNX, but I have no idea how to get one or what > they sell for. I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( From mokuba at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 11:40:25 2005 From: mokuba at gmail.com (Gary Sparkes) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:40:25 -0500 Subject: Usenet services? In-Reply-To: <4368E6F3.5040208@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: Looking for a decent usenet service... Any good free servers? From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 11:44:44 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:44:44 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPC00BPM97KXX3B@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: woodelf > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:33:11 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Bj?rn Vermo wrote: > >> >> Apple comes to mind. You can pick up a G4 really cheap these days. >> Whether you want to run BSD (OS X) or Linux is a matter of taste. >> IBM have some PPc development systems (Walnut if I recall right) which >> can run both Linux and QNX, but I have no idea how to get one or what >> they sell for. > >I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( > Why not? I've done it a few times. Ok, the first was only a state machine, does that count? Allison From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 11:55:34 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 09:55:34 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <0IPC0029I7N8QN34@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPC0029I7N8QN34@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511020955340288.15245611@10.0.0.252> On 11/2/2005 at 12:10 PM Allison wrote: >Why not use a 2032 3V lithium coin cell? They are cheap and small too. >For that backup use they should last years. Tangentially OT: I've got a friend who owns some rental property. When a tenant moves out, he replaces all of the smoke detectors as a matter of routine. Because he doesn't want to be bothered with replacing batteries, he equips all of them with 9v lithiums. I've arranged for him to give me the castoffs, if they've been installed for only a year or so (which is quite common). I've got the batteries installed in everything from my garage door openers and metronomes to my DVM. Great stuff and best when you get it for nothing. One even serves as backup for my lawn sprinkler system's clock. From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 12:05:59 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:05:59 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> On 11/2/2005 at 10:33 AM woodelf wrote: >I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( Actually, there are some poor demented souls who do--and not from FPGAs.. http://members.iinet.net.au/~daveb/simplex/simplex.html http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/Mk1/Architecture.htm http://mycpu.mikrocontroller.net/index.htm http://timefracture.org/D16.html http://tripu.triphoenix.de/Main_Page http://people.freenet.de/dieter.02/index.htm http://cpuville.4t.com/index.htm Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built his own CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing? (It'd have to be over 20 years ago). Cheers, Chuck From teoz at neo.rr.com Wed Nov 2 12:10:28 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 13:10:28 -0500 Subject: Usenet services? References: Message-ID: <095801c5dfd8$b4eae4b0$0500fea9@game> http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php Not exactly free but decent service for newsgroups with 5GB downloads at $2.95 a month (no long term contracts either) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Sparkes" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 12:40 PM Subject: Usenet services? > Looking for a decent usenet service... > > Any good free servers? > > From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Nov 2 12:12:41 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 13:12:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( > [...] > Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built > his own CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing? I dunno about that, but I once did just that. I took a digital hardware design course, and as a term project I breadboarded a little 4-bit computer. (I think the whole class did likewise, but it was long enough ago that memory is fuzzy.) Only 16 words of memory, and 4-bit words at that, with 4-bit opcodes - not a terribly powerful machine, but an extremely instructive one to build. All TTL; the most complicated building block was a 4-bit ALU chip, a 74181 I think. We also used what were easily the nicest breadboards I've ever used. Real sockets for the chips, with socket pins brought out to jacks that were basically miniature banana plug sockets; the wire connectors were matching miniature banana plugs, and in particular were stackable the way banana plugs are. All the connectors were gold-plated. The bench unit the thing plugged into provided power, clock (frequency settable from maybe 1Hz-50KHz, with a pushbutton for manual single pulses), a bank of maybe 16 switches and 16 LEDs...a really pretty setup that was a positive joy to use. Never seen anything nearly so nice since. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 2 12:44:19 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:44:19 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43690903.8070603@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/2/2005 at 10:33 AM woodelf wrote: > > >>I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( >> >> > >Actually, there are some poor demented souls who do--and not from FPGAs.. > > > I'm using a CPLD ... does that make me half demented? I am also not building a Forth or Risc cpu ... I want my front panel and blinky lights and octal bits. When I was talking about scratch, I was talking about a linux box - console driven. >Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built his own >CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing? (It'd have to be over 20 >years ago). > > > I think there was two in byte. A four bit one and a later 32? bit one. Sigh I miss Killobyte for hardware. >Cheers, >Chuck > > Also a TTL computer will be at the Vintage Computer Festival this year. Anybody know how the valve computer a few years back is progressing? From mamcfadden at cmh.edu Wed Nov 2 12:58:19 2005 From: mamcfadden at cmh.edu (McFadden, Mike, A) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 12:58:19 -0600 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions( wandering farther ) Message-ID: Chuck wrote >Tangentially OT: > >I've got a friend who owns some rental property. When a tenant moves out, he replaces all >of the smoke detectors as a matter of routine. Because he doesn't want to be bothered >with replacing batteries, he equips all of them with 9v lithiums. I've arranged for him >to give me the castoffs, if they've been installed for only a year or so (which is quite >common). I've got the batteries installed in everything from my garage door openers and >metronomes to my DVM. Great stuff and best when you get it for nothing. One even serves >as backup for my lawn sprinkler system's clock. > Actually many smoke detectors have two 9 volt batteries one for the detector and one for the light. Since the light is rarely used the battery is basically new. Most people replace both batteries. I volunteer at a recycling center, we take household batteries, I have a little handheld tester and when things are slow I test the "donated" batteries. I have several shoe boxes full of batteries. I give the scouts some of the batteries, they camp every month all year. We had a donation last month of 4 cases of batteries that were date expired 2 months ago, new never opened, they still work great. It's amazing what is discarded. One side affect of recycling in a small town is everyone knows I also recycle/collect computers. They appear on my door step or are dropped off at the monthly recycling. One of my neighbors called up and offered me 2 PDP-11/70's and a VAX 11/785 from an engineering film. My wife was not very happy about the space they filled in the garage. Mike From bert at brothom.nl Wed Nov 2 13:04:52 2005 From: bert at brothom.nl (Bert Thomas) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 20:04:52 +0100 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions( wandering farther ) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43690DD4.6070703@brothom.nl> McFadden, Mike, A wrote: > One side affect of recycling in a small town is everyone knows I also > recycle/collect computers. They appear on my door step or are dropped > off at the monthly recycling. One of my neighbors called up and offered > me 2 PDP-11/70's and a VAX 11/785 from an engineering film. My wife was > not very happy about the space they filled in the garage. What is an engineering film? Bert From rcini at optonline.net Wed Nov 2 13:07:37 2005 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:07:37 -0500 Subject: Mac disks needed Message-ID: <000e01c5dfe0$b0aec800$6501a8c0@bbrk0oksry5qza> All: Does anyone have a working copy of the original MacTerminal (one disk) and disk 2 of the Microsoft Basic Interpreter that maybe they can make a StuffIt archive of? I'm doing some playing around today on my day off and discovered that my disks are bad. Thanks again! Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ /************************************************************/ From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 13:16:58 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:16:58 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <436910AA.6000800@gmail.com> der Mouse wrote: >>>I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( >> >>[...] >>Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built >>his own CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing? > > > I dunno about that, but I once did just that. I took a digital > hardware design course, and as a term project I breadboarded a little > 4-bit computer. (I think the whole class did likewise, but it was long > enough ago that memory is fuzzy.) Only 16 words of memory, and 4-bit > words at that, with 4-bit opcodes - not a terribly powerful machine, > but an extremely instructive one to build. All TTL; the most > complicated building block was a 4-bit ALU chip, a 74181 I think. We had to do something similar in our hardware design course. We had a choice. We could actually etch boards and solder sockets, breadboard it or simulate it. We had sixteen banks of sixteen locations, four bits each. And we didn't have branch instructions. Only relative jumps. Most (all but 5?) students simulated it. I breadboarded. (I hadn't yet learned soldering then.) One guy soldered it. Probably made a pretty good souvenir. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 13:23:28 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:23:28 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions( wandering farther ) In-Reply-To: <43690DD4.6070703@brothom.nl> References: <43690DD4.6070703@brothom.nl> Message-ID: <43691230.8070300@gmail.com> Bert Thomas wrote: > McFadden, Mike, A wrote: > >> One side affect of recycling in a small town is everyone knows I also >> recycle/collect computers. They appear on my door step or are dropped >> off at the monthly recycling. One of my neighbors called up and offered >> me 2 PDP-11/70's and a VAX 11/785 from an engineering film. My wife was >> not very happy about the space they filled in the garage. > > > What is an engineering film? It's the film leftover in a bathtub after you fill it with engineers and then drain it. 8-) Peace... Sridhar From bdwheele at indiana.edu Wed Nov 2 13:31:56 2005 From: bdwheele at indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:31:56 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436910AA.6000800@gmail.com> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <436910AA.6000800@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1130959916.1221.50.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 14:16 -0500, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > der Mouse wrote: > >>>I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( > >> > >>[...] > >>Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built > >>his own CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing? > > > > > > I dunno about that, but I once did just that. I took a digital > > hardware design course, and as a term project I breadboarded a little > > 4-bit computer. (I think the whole class did likewise, but it was long > > enough ago that memory is fuzzy.) Only 16 words of memory, and 4-bit > > words at that, with 4-bit opcodes - not a terribly powerful machine, > > but an extremely instructive one to build. All TTL; the most > > complicated building block was a 4-bit ALU chip, a 74181 I think. > > We had to do something similar in our hardware design course. We had a > choice. We could actually etch boards and solder sockets, breadboard it > or simulate it. We had sixteen banks of sixteen locations, four bits > each. And we didn't have branch instructions. Only relative jumps. > > Most (all but 5?) students simulated it. I breadboarded. (I hadn't yet > learned soldering then.) One guy soldered it. Probably made a pretty > good souvenir. > > Peace... Sridhar I took a hardware class where we (each team of 2 students) had to build a PDP-8 using PALs, some 74xx chips, a bit of Static RAM, and a ton of wire wrapping. The final exam consisted of the instructor breaking each machine in 5 different ways and we 3 hours to fix it. That was a pretty cool class. I hear they use FPGAs now in the class...kids these days. Brian From rdonoghue at ppsparts.com Wed Nov 2 13:37:59 2005 From: rdonoghue at ppsparts.com (Roger Donoghue) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 14:37:59 -0500 Subject: DEC FOR SALE? Message-ID: Hi Jay, I am only interested in the RA81 & RA82 HDA's. I can send you the appropriate packaging and inserts for them. Please see below the drive spec I require. Thanks again. 1. Up to rev (M8 or higher) 2. Are shipped with the heads locked 3. Function correctly Regards, -Roger -----Original Message----- From: Jay West [mailto:jwest at classiccmp.org] Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 10:32 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: DEC FOR SALE? I have a fair number (about eight) RA81's, some in a full DEC rack of RA81's with cables. I'd love to get rid of some, maybe the rack too. Jay ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Donoghue" To: Sent: Tuesday, November 01, 2005 3:14 PM Subject: DEC FOR SALE? >I am looking to rebuild my DEC product menu. Anyone selling RD53-A's or > RA81's & 82's? > > Peace, > > -Roger > > From lbickley at bickleywest.com Wed Nov 2 13:41:12 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 11:41:12 -0800 Subject: Need Fujitsu 2311/2312 Service Manual... Message-ID: <200511021141.12985.lbickley@bickleywest.com> Bitsavers has copies of the Fujitsu 2321/2322, 2331/2333, etc. Service/Operaions Manuals available - but none for the Fujitsu 2311/2312. A PDF file would be super - but if you only have hard copy, I'll be glad to pay shipping both ways - and make sure Al gets to scan it for bitsavers.org. I'm trying to retrieve whatever software/information I can from the Fujitsu 2312 that was used in TSX Plus's development lab - and the drive manual would be a great help. It's my understanding that the license key generator software is on this drive. Hopefully, when I am ready to "release" TSX Plus, it will not be necessary to use it - but if it is, I want to release the key generator as well. Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 13:42:00 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:42:00 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <1130959916.1221.50.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <436910AA.6000800@gmail.com> <1130959916.1221.50.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> Message-ID: <43691688.6070604@gmail.com> Brian Wheeler wrote: > On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 14:16 -0500, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >>der Mouse wrote: >> >>>>>I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( >>>> >>>>[...] >>>>Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built >>>>his own CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing? >>> >>> >>>I dunno about that, but I once did just that. I took a digital >>>hardware design course, and as a term project I breadboarded a little >>>4-bit computer. (I think the whole class did likewise, but it was long >>>enough ago that memory is fuzzy.) Only 16 words of memory, and 4-bit >>>words at that, with 4-bit opcodes - not a terribly powerful machine, >>>but an extremely instructive one to build. All TTL; the most >>>complicated building block was a 4-bit ALU chip, a 74181 I think. >> >>We had to do something similar in our hardware design course. We had a >>choice. We could actually etch boards and solder sockets, breadboard it >>or simulate it. We had sixteen banks of sixteen locations, four bits >>each. And we didn't have branch instructions. Only relative jumps. >> >>Most (all but 5?) students simulated it. I breadboarded. (I hadn't yet >>learned soldering then.) One guy soldered it. Probably made a pretty >>good souvenir. >> >>Peace... Sridhar > > > I took a hardware class where we (each team of 2 students) had to build > a PDP-8 using PALs, some 74xx chips, a bit of Static RAM, and a ton of > wire wrapping. The final exam consisted of the instructor breaking each > machine in 5 different ways and we 3 hours to fix it. That was a pretty > cool class. > > I hear they use FPGAs now in the class...kids these days. Do they still use the -8 architecture? Peace... Sridhar From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 2 12:38:55 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:38:55 +0000 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions( wandering farther ) In-Reply-To: <43691230.8070300@gmail.com> References: <43690DD4.6070703@brothom.nl> <43691230.8070300@gmail.com> Message-ID: <436907BF.40008@yahoo.co.uk> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Bert Thomas wrote: >> What is an engineering film? > > It's the film leftover in a bathtub after you fill it with engineers and > then drain it. If you wait for it to dry it'll just peel right off in one long strip... From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 2 13:51:47 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:51:47 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <1130959916.1221.50.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <436910AA.6000800@gmail.com> <1130959916.1221.50.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> Message-ID: <436918D3.7090601@jetnet.ab.ca> Brian Wheeler wrote: >I took a hardware class where we (each team of 2 students) had to build >a PDP-8 using PALs, some 74xx chips, a bit of Static RAM, and a ton of >wire wrapping. The final exam consisted of the instructor breaking each >machine in 5 different ways and we 3 hours to fix it. That was a pretty >cool class. > > > What type of 8 did you model and did you leave out any features like extended memory? >I hear they use FPGAs now in the class...kids these days. > > > I grumble that the FPGA's now days have built in hardware features that hide real logic slowdowns like external memory or slow ripple carry. >Brian > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 13:55:18 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:55:18 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPC00BWXF94XZIB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:05:59 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/2/2005 at 10:33 AM woodelf wrote: > >>I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( > >Actually, there are some poor demented souls who do--and not from FPGAs.. > >http://members.iinet.net.au/~daveb/simplex/simplex.html >http://www.homebrewcpu.com/ >http://www.holmea.demon.co.uk/Mk1/Architecture.htm >http://mycpu.mikrocontroller.net/index.htm >http://timefracture.org/D16.html >http://tripu.triphoenix.de/Main_Page >http://people.freenet.de/dieter.02/index.htm >http://cpuville.4t.com/index.htm > >Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built his own >CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing? (It'd have to be over 20 >years ago). > >Cheers, >Chuck Ego a 16bit machine September 1985. There was another article whose focus was microprogramming vs sequential machine control and that used the TOY1 archetecture. There were others described in TCJ Dave Brooks simplex III comes to mind. There are others. Allison From bdwheele at indiana.edu Wed Nov 2 13:54:46 2005 From: bdwheele at indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:54:46 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <43691688.6070604@gmail.com> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <436910AA.6000800@gmail.com> <1130959916.1221.50.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> <43691688.6070604@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1130961286.1221.56.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 14:42 -0500, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Brian Wheeler wrote: > > On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 14:16 -0500, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > > >>der Mouse wrote: > >> > >>>>>I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( > >>>> > >>>>[...] > >>>>Wasn't there an article a looong time ago about a fellow who built > >>>>his own CPU from TTL parts in BYTE or Microcomputing? > >>> > >>> > >>>I dunno about that, but I once did just that. I took a digital > >>>hardware design course, and as a term project I breadboarded a little > >>>4-bit computer. (I think the whole class did likewise, but it was long > >>>enough ago that memory is fuzzy.) Only 16 words of memory, and 4-bit > >>>words at that, with 4-bit opcodes - not a terribly powerful machine, > >>>but an extremely instructive one to build. All TTL; the most > >>>complicated building block was a 4-bit ALU chip, a 74181 I think. > >> > >>We had to do something similar in our hardware design course. We had a > >>choice. We could actually etch boards and solder sockets, breadboard it > >>or simulate it. We had sixteen banks of sixteen locations, four bits > >>each. And we didn't have branch instructions. Only relative jumps. > >> > >>Most (all but 5?) students simulated it. I breadboarded. (I hadn't yet > >>learned soldering then.) One guy soldered it. Probably made a pretty > >>good souvenir. > >> > >>Peace... Sridhar > > > > > > I took a hardware class where we (each team of 2 students) had to build > > a PDP-8 using PALs, some 74xx chips, a bit of Static RAM, and a ton of > > wire wrapping. The final exam consisted of the instructor breaking each > > machine in 5 different ways and we 3 hours to fix it. That was a pretty > > cool class. > > > > I hear they use FPGAs now in the class...kids these days. > > Do they still use the -8 architecture? > > Peace... Sridhar Yes. That was one of the few courses where I kept the book :) It was still listed last year: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/classes/b441/index.html Brian From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 2 13:56:28 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 14:56:28 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <436910AA.6000800@gmail.com> <1130959916.1221.50.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> <436918D3.7090601@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <17257.6636.895381.501916@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "woodelf" == woodelf writes: woodelf> I grumble that the FPGA's now days have built in hardware woodelf> features that hide real logic slowdowns like external memory woodelf> or slow ripple carry. Not if you connect them to real external memory -- which still is much slower than the logic, just as it has been for the past 40 years or more. paul From allain at panix.com Wed Nov 2 14:00:33 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 15:00:33 -0500 Subject: Arrived early for VCF, anyone around tonight? References: Message-ID: <008b01c5dfe8$165b0e00$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> > I'm staying in Mountain View, will be online all night. Probably too late, but if I were in your situation, the things I'd attempt would be to - try and see if Wierd Stuff at least is open past 7pm - go to Computer Literacy and shop books, - find decent homemade mexican food for dinner - See what unique local computer magazines they have at the MegaChainBookStore Enjoy, John A. area resident 1986-1990 From bdwheele at indiana.edu Wed Nov 2 14:03:11 2005 From: bdwheele at indiana.edu (Brian Wheeler) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:03:11 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436918D3.7090601@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> <200511021823.NAA20029@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <436910AA.6000800@gmail.com> <1130959916.1221.50.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> <436918D3.7090601@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <1130961791.1221.64.camel@wombat.dlib.indiana.edu> On Wed, 2005-11-02 at 12:51 -0700, woodelf wrote: > Brian Wheeler wrote: > > >I took a hardware class where we (each team of 2 students) had to build > >a PDP-8 using PALs, some 74xx chips, a bit of Static RAM, and a ton of > >wire wrapping. The final exam consisted of the instructor breaking each > >machine in 5 different ways and we 3 hours to fix it. That was a pretty > >cool class. > > > > > > > What type of 8 did you model and did you leave out any features like > extended memory? > I don't know which model in particular we built... As I recall, we were limited to 4K words. As for I/O, we had the switches/leds and a serial terminal. The board we built them on had all of the switches and LEDs mounted, but not wired up. The serial port was also wired (1488/1489), but no connection to the area where we were building the cpu. I hated that we couldn't take that home after the class! Since IOT was fully implemented, I suppose we could have built peripherals as needed. The 2nd semester of the class was based around the 6809. The projects then usually consisted of making a floppy interface (along with driver changes for Flex) or project-of-your-own-making. I build a memory pager which would let you swap 1K chunks in and out of the address space to a bank of 256K. Brian > >I hear they use FPGAs now in the class...kids these days. > > > > > > > I grumble that the FPGA's now days have built in hardware features that hide > real logic slowdowns like external memory or slow ripple carry. > > >Brian > > > > > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 2 14:24:07 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:24:07 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <0IPC00BWXF94XZIB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPC00BWXF94XZIB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43692067.5000102@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >Ego a 16bit machine September 1985. There was another article whose >focus was microprogramming vs sequential machine control and that used >the TOY1 archetecture. There were others described in TCJ Dave Brooks >simplex III comes to mind. There are others. > > > Toy I had forgotton. Since TJC is now defunct are there any on-line copies of it I have read the simplex web site. >Allison > > From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 14:38:24 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:38:24 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <0IPC00BWXF94XZIB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPC00BWXF94XZIB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511021238240454.15B96D5F@10.0.0.252> On 11/2/2005 at 2:55 PM Allison wrote: >Ego a 16bit machine September 1985. There was another article whose >focus was microprogramming vs sequential machine control and that used >the TOY1 archetecture. There were others described in TCJ Dave Brooks >simplex III comes to mind. There are others. Hmmm, my recollection is of an 8-bit machine pre-1985. I recall that it was benchmarked against a 4MHz Z80A. My first attempt at building a semiconductor computer was back in the late 1960's. Using RTL (no DIPs, just TO-86 flat packs), I managed to get a 12-bit ALU and accumulator done before I lost interest. I recall using a lot of diodes to save on logic costs. I think I still have a couple of the Fairchild 8-bit (1x8) addressable latch in a TO-100 package that were going to form the basis of my register file. I believe it required a 7v clock. Anyone remember the Moto mw RTL "experimenter's pack" that was sold back then? That's when electronics companies still thought that appealing to the hobbyist was worthwhile... Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 14:54:57 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:54:57 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <43690903.8070603@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511021005590944.152DE4FC@10.0.0.252> <43690903.8070603@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511021254570061.15C892B4@10.0.0.252> On 11/2/2005 at 11:44 AM woodelf wrote: >Also a TTL computer will be at the Vintage Computer Festival this year. >Anybody know how the valve computer a few years back is progressing? Any analog computers? I recall fooling with such a beast made by Heathkit many years ago. Capacitors, inductors, resistors and patch cords, all on banana plugs and a pretty good-sized tabletop box with a bunch of (vacuum-tube) op-amps and a clock. Add a 'scope or an X-Y recorder and you're in business! I recall that Argonne National Labs had a hybrid computer that they'd developed and were very proud of at around the same time. From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 14:57:52 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:57:52 -0500 Subject: Circuit Diagram Message-ID: <43692850.8060607@gmail.com> Does anyone have a decent, clear and bold softcopy circuit diagram of a three-phase rectifier suitable for a poster? Peace... Sridhar From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 15:13:11 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:13:11 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPC001LTIUXXA0C@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:38:24 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/2/2005 at 2:55 PM Allison wrote: > >>Ego a 16bit machine September 1985. There was another article whose >>focus was microprogramming vs sequential machine control and that used >>the TOY1 archetecture. There were others described in TCJ Dave Brooks >>simplex III comes to mind. There are others. > >Hmmm, my recollection is of an 8-bit machine pre-1985. I recall that it >was benchmarked against a 4MHz Z80A. Not in byte or KB. Though there was an 8080 in 2900 form that was faster than a real 8080. >My first attempt at building a semiconductor computer was back in the late >1960's. Using RTL (no DIPs, just TO-86 flat packs), I managed to get a >12-bit ALU and accumulator done before I lost interest. I recall using a >lot of diodes to save on logic costs. I think I still have a couple of >the Fairchild 8-bit (1x8) addressable latch in a TO-100 package that were >going to form the basis of my register file. I believe it required a 7v >clock. Sounds like some of the old PMOS stuff. The nicest one I've done in TTL was a Harvard machine 8bit instructions and 4bit data path. Not fast nor exotic though I wasn't trying for speed it was likely limited the most by the 2716 eproms and 2112 mods rams. It was practical in that it was a fairly rich instruction set. Harvard machines can really simplify the data paths. >Anyone remember the Moto mw RTL "experimenter's pack" that was sold back >then? That's when electronics companies still thought that appealing to >the hobbyist was worthwhile... > >Cheers, >Chuck Still have bits of the mW RTL from moto and also their ECL bits as well. Did a lot of playing with those parts back when. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 15:15:34 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:15:34 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPC00BMIIYVY0MB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: woodelf > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:24:07 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>Ego a 16bit machine September 1985. There was another article whose >>focus was microprogramming vs sequential machine control and that used >>the TOY1 archetecture. There were others described in TCJ Dave Brooks >>simplex III comes to mind. There are others. >> >> >> >Toy I had forgotton. >Since TJC is now defunct are there any on-line copies of it I have read >the simplex web site. Dave Brooks has the simplex story on his site (along with the P112). There is also a web ring for homebrew CPUs, quite a bit of diversity out there but PDP-8 is common along with minimalist machines for teaching. However the most interesting is the Block 1 AGC (apollo guidence computer). Allison From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 15:24:47 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:24:47 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <0IPC001LTIUXXA0C@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPC001LTIUXXA0C@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511021324470073.15E3E2DE@10.0.0.252> On 11/2/2005 at 4:13 PM Allison wrote: >Sounds like some of the old PMOS stuff. My recollection was that it was DTL. Vcc was 5v, the clock was 7v p-p. Ran hot as a pistol. From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 2 16:46:43 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 17:46:43 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> Message-ID: <20051102174643.616ba922.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 17:55:08 +0100 Bj?rn Vermo wrote: > > On 24 Oct, 2005, at 01:04, woodelf wrote: > > > Allison wrote: > >> > >> What else is out there that's not wintel, fast enough and can address > >> a large memory that runs a fairly current UNIX. That also assumes > >> the software that can P&R the FPGA is available as source. > >> > > P&R is mostly sorting is my guess. However my designs view point for > > open source > > is being able to keep the computer system capable of bootstaping > > itself. Looking at the > > latest version of red-hat I find it hard to do any real development > > work as everything > > is becoming too interconnected with every thing else. > > > > Apple comes to mind. You can pick up a G4 really cheap these days. > Whether you want to run BSD (OS X) or Linux is a matter of taste. > IBM have some PPc development systems (Walnut if I recall right) which > can run both Linux and QNX, but I have no idea how to get one or what > they sell for. You can also run a real BSD (not OS X) on a G4 Mac. Just wanted to clarify that. > > -- > -bv > -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 2 16:51:36 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 17:51:36 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511020842400388.14E19886@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511020842400388.14E19886@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051102175136.48ae9c95.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:42:40 -0800 "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > On 11/1/2005 at 8:38 PM Scott Stevens wrote: > > >Any suggestions of a better battery (cheaper, mostly) to 'strap on' to Sun > >NVRAMs? I am going to use AAA lithiums on this machine, which should last > >forever, but they're a bit pricey. > > Why not just some plain old AA alkalines? You should get a couple of years > (i.e. shelf life)out of each set. > > --Chuck > > The lithium batteries I installed were marked 'Best if used by the year 2020' on the packaging. And they will probably last nearly that long, as they are much larger the the original battery potted in the NVRAM module, and the CMOS backup/clock application draws VERY little current. Also, Alkaline batteries run the risk of leaking nasty substances on my beautiful Sun hardware. I don't think Lithium batteries have that problem. -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 2 16:55:25 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 17:55:25 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511020842400388.14E19886@10.0.0.252> <20051102175136.48ae9c95.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <17257.17373.309844.359790@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stevens writes: Scott> .... Also, Alkaline Scott> batteries run the risk of leaking nasty substances on my Scott> beautiful Sun hardware. I don't think Lithium batteries have Scott> that problem. I wouldn't bet on that. As a rule of thumb, all batteries contain nasty chemicals. Which ones depends on the battery. But if you assume all are nasty you will only rarely be mistaken. paul From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 2 17:01:50 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:01:50 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <0IPC0029I7N8QN34@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPC0029I7N8QN34@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051102180150.6aec8128.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:10:56 -0500 Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: Re: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions > > From: "Chuck Guzis" > > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:42:40 -0800 > > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > > >On 11/1/2005 at 8:38 PM Scott Stevens wrote: > > > >>Any suggestions of a better battery (cheaper, mostly) to 'strap on' to Sun > >>NVRAMs? I am going to use AAA lithiums on this machine, which should last > >>forever, but they're a bit pricey. > > > >Why not just some plain old AA alkalines? You should get a couple of years > >(i.e. shelf life)out of each set. > > > >--Chuck > > > > Why not use a 2032 3V lithium coin cell? They are cheap and small too. > For that backup use they should last years. > > Allison That's probably what I should do. I even have a number of scrap motherboards with the 2032 size battery holder on them. That will superglue nicely on top of the NVRAM module. It's a bother reprogramming the NVRAM contents (you lose the MAC address, etc.) and I want a quasi-permanent solution, which the bigger AAA batteries represents. But it gets expensive putting a $5 pair of AAA lithium batteries in each machine when you have a lot of Sparcs. (the NVRAM FAQ says "it's best just to spend the $20 on a new NVRAM," but that's from an era when these Sun boxes were Big Bux and people didn't have a pile of them to maintain. $20 multipies out to a big number here, and just buying another 48c02 module sets me up for another $20 sooner than I'd want) Backup batteries in general is a topic worth pondering with 'vintage' computer hardware. -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 2 17:05:18 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:05:18 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions( wandering farther ) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20051102180518.7ada0e1e.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Wed, 2 Nov 2005 12:58:19 -0600 "McFadden, Mike, A" wrote: > Chuck wrote > >Tangentially OT: > > > >I've got a friend who owns some rental property. When a tenant moves > out, he replaces all >of the smoke detectors as a matter of routine. > Because he doesn't want to be bothered >with replacing batteries, he > equips all of them with 9v lithiums. I've arranged for him >to give me > the castoffs, if they've been installed for only a year or so (which is > quite >common). I've got the batteries installed in everything from my > garage door openers and >metronomes to my DVM. Great stuff and best > when you get it for nothing. One even serves >as backup for my lawn > sprinkler system's clock. > > > Actually many smoke detectors have two 9 volt batteries one for the > detector and one for the light. Since the light is rarely used the > battery is basically new. Most people replace both batteries. I > volunteer at a recycling center, we take household batteries, I have a > little handheld tester and when things are slow I test the "donated" > batteries. I have several shoe boxes full of batteries. I give the > scouts some of the batteries, they camp every month all year. We had a > donation last month of 4 cases of batteries that were date expired 2 > months ago, new never opened, they still work great. > > It's amazing what is discarded. > > One side affect of recycling in a small town is everyone knows I also > recycle/collect computers. They appear on my door step or are dropped > off at the monthly recycling. One of my neighbors called up and offered > me 2 PDP-11/70's and a VAX 11/785 from an engineering film. My wife was > not very happy about the space they filled in the garage. > > I once worked at a place where the main product used a 9 volt battery. One day I was bored and connected end-to-end about 100 semi-discharged batteries. That was a DANGEROUS voltage source as I found out when we were checking it out. A lot voltage and a substancial peak current behind it. The wire didn't just arc, it caught fire. The foolish things one does when young... > Mike > -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From gkicomputers at yahoo.com Wed Nov 2 17:07:19 2005 From: gkicomputers at yahoo.com (steve) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 15:07:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: Circuit Diagram In-Reply-To: <43692850.8060607@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20051102230719.61133.qmail@web51614.mail.yahoo.com> --- Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > Does anyone have a decent, clear and bold softcopy > circuit diagram of a > three-phase rectifier suitable for a poster? > > Peace... Sridhar > did you try google images "three-phase rectifier", seems to be a wide variety available, take your pick __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 2 17:16:11 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:16:11 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <0IPC00BMIIYVY0MB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPC00BMIIYVY0MB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051102181611.6e478acc.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:15:34 -0500 Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > > From: woodelf > > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:24:07 -0700 > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > > >Allison wrote: > > > >>Ego a 16bit machine September 1985. There was another article whose > >>focus was microprogramming vs sequential machine control and that used > >>the TOY1 archetecture. There were others described in TCJ Dave Brooks > >>simplex III comes to mind. There are others. > >> > >> > >> > >Toy I had forgotton. > >Since TJC is now defunct are there any on-line copies of it I have read > >the simplex web site. > > Dave Brooks has the simplex story on his site (along with the P112). > > There is also a web ring for homebrew CPUs, quite a bit of diversity > out there but PDP-8 is common along with minimalist machines for teaching. > > However the most interesting is the Block 1 AGC (apollo guidence computer). > Depending on how much 'from scratch' people feel is necessary, it's also interesting to roll your own computer using an off-the-shelf processor (or multiples). I have a simple 8088-based SBC design wired up and waiting for motivation to put together some test firmware. The main thing that has kept me from bringing it up is the difficulty in getting x86-based machine language development tools going. I'm used to little 4 and 8-bit assemblers where you can plop down a few ORG statements and have it all resident in a ROM, and almost all the x86 asm tools start from the assumption you are running on DOS and have no direct control of the memory map. Z80 designs are also fun and easy. And I still have those tubes of 6100 processors. . . Certainly using a micro is by no means as cool as making your own machine from small and medium-scale logic, though. I think it would be neat to build one using discrete transistors. Not as difficult as a valve-based design, but just as deep into the circuitry. -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 17:15:54 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:15:54 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions Message-ID: <0IPC00DOPOJFV6M0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions > From: Scott Stevens > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:01:50 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:10:56 -0500 >Allison wrote: > >> > >> >Subject: Re: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions >> > From: "Chuck Guzis" >> > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 08:42:40 -0800 >> > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >> > >> >On 11/1/2005 at 8:38 PM Scott Stevens wrote: >> > >> >>Any suggestions of a better battery (cheaper, mostly) to 'strap on' to Sun >> >>NVRAMs? I am going to use AAA lithiums on this machine, which should last >> >>forever, but they're a bit pricey. >> > >> >Why not just some plain old AA alkalines? You should get a couple of years >> >(i.e. shelf life)out of each set. >> > >> >--Chuck >> > >> >> Why not use a 2032 3V lithium coin cell? They are cheap and small too. >> For that backup use they should last years. >> >> Allison >That's probably what I should do. I even have a number of scrap motherboards with the 2032 size battery holder on them. That will superglue nicely on top of the NVRAM module. > >It's a bother reprogramming the NVRAM contents (you lose the MAC address, etc.) and I want a quasi-permanent solution, which the bigger AAA batteries represents. But it gets expensive putting a $5 pair of AAA lithium batteries in each machine when you have a lot of Sparcs. (the NVRAM FAQ says "it's best just to spend the $20 on a new NVRAM," but that's from an era when these Sun boxes were Big Bux and people didn't have a pile of them to maintain. $20 multipies out to a big number here, and just buying another 48c02 module sets me up for another $20 sooner than I'd want) > >Backup batteries in general is a topic worth pondering with 'vintage' computer hardware. > I've done the DS1287 replace the battery gig more than a few times on PCs. A 2032 will outlast the original by many years. The real trick is having a copy of the CMOS contents on other than the affected system just in case. Allison From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 2 17:19:41 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:19:41 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <17257.17373.309844.359790@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511020842400388.14E19886@10.0.0.252> <20051102175136.48ae9c95.chenmel@earthlink.net> <17257.17373.309844.359790@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Wed, 2 Nov 2005 17:55:25 -0500 Paul Koning wrote: > >>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stevens writes: > > Scott> .... Also, Alkaline > Scott> batteries run the risk of leaking nasty substances on my > Scott> beautiful Sun hardware. I don't think Lithium batteries have > Scott> that problem. > > I wouldn't bet on that. > > As a rule of thumb, all batteries contain nasty chemicals. Which ones > depends on the battery. But if you assume all are nasty you will only > rarely be mistaken. > > paul > But don't lithium batteries contain just lithium, which is all gone by the time the battery discharges? An alkaline or carbon-zinc battery starts oozing as a rule within a few years. The AAA lithium battery presumably doesn't run the risk of that until at least 2020. Does anybody know more they can contribute on the topic? -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Nov 2 17:26:41 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:26:41 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <17257.17373.309844.359790@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200511021826.41142.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Wednesday 02 November 2005 18:19, Scott Stevens wrote: > But don't lithium batteries contain just lithium, which is all gone > by the time the battery discharges? An alkaline or carbon-zinc > battery starts oozing as a rule within a few years. The AAA lithium > battery presumably doesn't run the risk of that until at least 2020. No. A battery with just one metal (or even no electrolyte) wouldn't work too well. As proof, I pulled a CR2032 out of a machine today, and it had some green crust forming on the battery. The batteries were in machines that were about 10 years old. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 17:31:01 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:31:01 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: Scott Stevens > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:16:11 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> However the most interesting is the Block 1 AGC (apollo guidence computer). >> > >Depending on how much 'from scratch' people feel is necessary, it's also interesting to roll your own computer using an off-the-shelf processor (or multiples). I have a simple 8088-based SBC design wired up and waiting for motivation to put together some test firmware. The main thing that has kept me from bringing it up is the difficulty in getting x86-based machine language development tools going. I'm used to little 4 and 8-bit assemblers where you can plop down a few ORG statements and have it all resident in a ROM, and almost all the x86 asm tools start from the assumption you are running on DOS and have no direct control of the memory map. > >Z80 designs are also fun and easy. And I still have those tubes of 6100 processors. . . I have z80s, 8085s, 6100s and 6120s, 1802s, T11s(PDP-11), 9900s, 6800s, 6809s, 804x, 805x to name a few to play with. I tend to zero in on Z80, 1802, 6100 and 8039(8048) as being interesting. Each of those has some aspect of computing that it handles elegantly and other parts that are plain dirty. >Certainly using a micro is by no means as cool as making your own machine >from small and medium-scale logic, though. I think it would be neat to >build one using discrete transistors. Not as difficult as a valve-based >design, but just as deep into the circuitry. It is. Often it's really just trying to understand the genie with 40 pins. For me it was started by my contact with the PDP-8I. It just seemed so buildable. While I've not built one of TTL other have. So I've done 4bitters and 8 bitter in TTL and one day I'd like to try something bigger. Valves are harder due to power, heat and most importantly size. A few hundred miniature duo-triodes will fill several racks. Allison From spc at conman.org Wed Nov 2 17:32:47 2005 From: spc at conman.org (spc at conman.org) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:32:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <20051102181611.6e478acc.chenmel@earthlink.net> from "Scott Stevens" at Nov 02, 2005 06:16:11 PM Message-ID: <20051102233247.7538ADCDCD6@mail2.inovasys.net> It was rumored that The Great Scott Stevens once said: > > Depending on how much 'from scratch' people feel is necessary, it's also > interesting to roll your own computer using an off-the-shelf processor (or > multiples). I have a simple 8088-based SBC design wired up and waiting > for motivation to put together some test firmware. The main thing that > has kept me from bringing it up is the difficulty in getting x86-based > machine language development tools going. I'm used to little 4 and 8-bit > assemblers where you can plop down a few ORG statements and have it all > resident in a ROM, and almost all the x86 asm tools start from the > assumption you are running on DOS and have no direct control of the memory > map. Have you looked at Nasm? It's an x86-based assembler and one of the formats it supports (for output) is a pure-binary format. Free, source code (in C) available and should compile cleanly on anything with at least an ANSI C compiler. It uses the Intel mnemonics and while not 100% source compatible with MASM, it's pretty easy to use. -spc (I've used it from time to time ... ) From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 17:56:30 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:56:30 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPC00AL5QF2WE42@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: spc at conman.org > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:32:47 -0500 (EST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >It was rumored that The Great Scott Stevens once said: >> >> Depending on how much 'from scratch' people feel is necessary, it's also >> interesting to roll your own computer using an off-the-shelf processor (or >> multiples). I have a simple 8088-based SBC design wired up and waiting >> for motivation to put together some test firmware. The main thing that >> has kept me from bringing it up is the difficulty in getting x86-based >> machine language development tools going. I'm used to little 4 and 8-bit >> assemblers where you can plop down a few ORG statements and have it all >> resident in a ROM, and almost all the x86 asm tools start from the >> assumption you are running on DOS and have no direct control of the memory >> map. > > Have you looked at Nasm? It's an x86-based assembler and one of the >formats it supports (for output) is a pure-binary format. Free, source code >(in C) available and should compile cleanly on anything with at least an >ANSI C compiler. It uses the Intel mnemonics and while not 100% source >compatible with MASM, it's pretty easy to use. > > -spc (I've used it from time to time ... ) Interesting. I've used a few 8086 assemblers and none were out of control but it was handy running them under dos. An alaternate is Smallc or microC for 8088 project that are slighly larger than a monitor program. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 17:56:09 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:56:09 -0800 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511020842400388.14E19886@10.0.0.252> <20051102175136.48ae9c95.chenmel@earthlink.net> <17257.17373.309844.359790@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200511021556090694.166E7980@10.0.0.252> On 11/2/2005 at 6:19 PM Scott Stevens wrote: >But don't lithium batteries contain just lithium, which is all gone by the >time the battery discharges? An alkaline or carbon-zinc battery starts >oozing as a rule within a few years. The AAA lithium battery presumably >doesn't run the risk of that until at least 2020. > >Does anybody know more they can contribute on the topic? I believe that primary lithium cells use thionyl chloride as the electrolyte--and it's plenty corrosive. I suggested AA alkaline cells with the idea of putting them in a battery holder EXTERNAL to the box. If they leak, you get goop on your floor and desk, but your system's safe. Personally, I hate the idea of anything liquid inside my computer. Liquids belong on the outside, preferably sitting in a cup or glass--or in the operator. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 18:13:45 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:13:45 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> On 11/2/2005 at 6:31 PM Allison wrote: >Valves are harder due to power, heat and most importantly size. A few >hundred >miniature duo-triodes will fill several racks. I used to buy old mil-surplus boards that each contained six wired-in subminiature (Raytheon CK something or the other) dual triodes--no sockets, the tubes were equipped with wire lead bases and were about the size of those suminiature tubes in the old Motorola Pixie radio. At the time, I wasn't that interested in computers, but the triodes made for some great VHF circuits. What surprises me about the home-built computers from scratch is the lack of imagination when it comes to architecture. Most are basically one-address-cum-accumulator designs. It would seem that larger register files are much easier to build nowadays and would open up the door to some 2 and 3-address designs. I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small computer. Divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12 bits. An instruction could use 6 bits for opcode and 3 register addresses out of a 64 register file... Variable word length, dataflow, all sorts of possibilities--why be limited by implementing something that resembles an already existing machine? But then why go to the trouble of wiring the thing up? Write a simulator--it'll probably run faster anyway. Cheers, Chuck From kth at srv.net Wed Nov 2 18:23:36 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:23:36 -0700 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511020842400388.14E19886@10.0.0.252> <20051102175136.48ae9c95.chenmel@earthlink.net> <17257.17373.309844.359790@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <43695888.8040300@srv.net> Scott Stevens wrote: >On Wed, 2 Nov 2005 17:55:25 -0500 >Paul Koning wrote: > > > >>>>>>>"Scott" == Scott Stevens writes: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> >> Scott> .... Also, Alkaline >> Scott> batteries run the risk of leaking nasty substances on my >> Scott> beautiful Sun hardware. I don't think Lithium batteries have >> Scott> that problem. >> >>I wouldn't bet on that. >> >>As a rule of thumb, all batteries contain nasty chemicals. Which ones >>depends on the battery. But if you assume all are nasty you will only >>rarely be mistaken. >> >> paul >> >> >> >But don't lithium batteries contain just lithium, which is all gone by the time the battery discharges? An alkaline or carbon-zinc battery starts oozing as a rule within a few years. The AAA lithium battery presumably doesn't run the risk of that until at least 2020. > > > Where would the lithium go? Batteries are (usually) not radioactive transformations. Discharging batteries is (usually) just a chemical reaction. The formula changes, but the base atoms remain the same. >Does anybody know more they can contribute on the topic? > > From kth at srv.net Wed Nov 2 18:26:42 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:26:42 -0700 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511021826.41142.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <17257.17373.309844.359790@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511021826.41142.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <43695942.6060806@srv.net> Patrick Finnegan wrote: >On Wednesday 02 November 2005 18:19, Scott Stevens wrote: > > >>But don't lithium batteries contain just lithium, which is all gone >>by the time the battery discharges? An alkaline or carbon-zinc >>battery starts oozing as a rule within a few years. The AAA lithium >>battery presumably doesn't run the risk of that until at least 2020. >> >> > >No. A battery with just one metal (or even no electrolyte) wouldn't >work too well. > >As proof, I pulled a CR2032 out of a machine today, and it had some >green crust forming on the battery. The batteries were in machines >that were about 10 years old. > > Green crud usually means copper oxide. Sounds like the battery container was corroding. Could be due to leaked chemicals from the inside, but could be also caused by moisture. >Pat > > From sieler at allegro.com Wed Nov 2 18:27:31 2005 From: sieler at allegro.com (Stan Sieler) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:27:31 -0800 Subject: Apple II APEX OS manual posted (Update) In-Reply-To: <20051026062452.67156.qmail@web81005.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051026004124.29941.qmail@web81003.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4368E8F3.9831.204BF411@localhost> Re: Subject: Apple II APEX OS manual posted (Update) > I've now placed all of the rest of my Apex and related > doc there as well. > > http://www.trailingedge.com/apple2/ Oooh...thank you, thank you, thank you! I've been looking for info about Apex and XPL0 for a number of years (including posts on classiccmp some years back :) thanks! Stan -- Stan Sieler sieler at allegro.com www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 2 18:32:16 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:32:16 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPC003PWS2OO3L5@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:13:45 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/2/2005 at 6:31 PM Allison wrote: > >>Valves are harder due to power, heat and most importantly size. A few >>hundred >>miniature duo-triodes will fill several racks. > >I used to buy old mil-surplus boards that each contained six wired-in >subminiature (Raytheon CK something or the other) dual triodes--no sockets, >the tubes were equipped with wire lead bases and were about the size of >those suminiature tubes in the old Motorola Pixie radio. At the time, I >wasn't that interested in computers, but the triodes made for some great >VHF circuits. Ah 5899 5636 and 6111 come to mind. I have a bunch and have build radios around them. >What surprises me about the home-built computers from scratch is the lack >of imagination when it comes to architecture. Most are basically >one-address-cum-accumulator designs. It would seem that larger register >files are much easier to build nowadays and would open up the door to some >2 and 3-address designs. That would be an area where performance can be found with even simple instruction sets. >I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small computer. >Divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12 bits. An instruction could use 6 bits >for opcode and 3 register addresses out of a 64 register file... > >Variable word length, dataflow, all sorts of possibilities--why be limited >by implementing something that resembles an already existing machine? one word... SOFTWARE. >But then why go to the trouble of wiring the thing up? Write a >simulator--it'll probably run faster anyway. A friend suggested that sims are just software on a bloated wintel box. Eh, nice for creating software for the iron. Me, I'd rather fight with the iron and have something that has heft and is real. Allison From dholland at woh.rr.com Wed Nov 2 18:48:02 2005 From: dholland at woh.rr.com (David Holland) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 19:48:02 -0500 Subject: SGI.... Message-ID: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> Damn... :-( http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2005/november/nyse.html David From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 18:55:52 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:55:52 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <0IPC003PWS2OO3L5@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPC003PWS2OO3L5@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511021655520963.16A52608@10.0.0.252> On 11/2/2005 at 7:32 PM Allison wrote: >Eh, nice for creating software for the iron. Me, I'd rather fight with the >iron and have something that has heft and is real. Oh, you want real, get an abacus. How much heft does an electron have anyway? :) From sieler at allegro.com Wed Nov 2 18:59:08 2005 From: sieler at allegro.com (Stan Sieler) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 16:59:08 -0800 Subject: Computer speedometers In-Reply-To: References: <200510191418490751.2F6FD4AD@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4368F05C.24927.2068E32C@localhost> Re: > > Has anyone done a similar thing with their vintage systems? On the 8080, The PA-RISC based HP 3000s have a "speedometer" built-in to the MPE/iX operating system. The older models have a LED display that usually shows FxFF, with "x" alternating between "F" and a value in the range 0..9,A which indicates (when multiplied by 10) the CPU's percent busy. Thus, F2FF means "CPU is 20% busy". (The alternating between FxFF and FFFF gave the user a means of knowing whether or not the OS had frozen, otherwise one couldn't tell if a constant FxFF was meaningful :) The newer models lost the LED display, sigh, but the info is available at the operator's request ... in which case it will be displayed on the 25th line (the "status line") of the operator console. (On topic, because the 3000/930 was released in 1986.) -- Stan Sieler sieler at allegro.com www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html From sieler at allegro.com Wed Nov 2 19:18:56 2005 From: sieler at allegro.com (Stan Sieler) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:18:56 -0800 Subject: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? In-Reply-To: References: <4366C23B.9020305@hachti.de> Message-ID: <4368F500.4276.207B067C@localhost> > Don't have the docs, but would be very interested in a set. Also have a 7978 > I'd like to understand self-test codes for. > > If someone should have docs please reply on list. I'll bring the diag/docs manual I've got to VCF, to loan it to Al, if he's interested in it. Stan -- Stan Sieler sieler at allegro.com www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html From sieler at allegro.com Wed Nov 2 19:21:54 2005 From: sieler at allegro.com (Stan Sieler) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:21:54 -0800 Subject: HP 9133 (Matthews, Phil) In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051020084842.3adf04a6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <002001c5d462$145a6880$6501a8c0@Wayne> Message-ID: <4368F5B2.5418.207DBDEB@localhost> Re: > >> old HP computers. I have been tasked to replace the HP 9133 > >A 9133 is a hard disk/floppy disk combo drive - there's no CPU. The CPU A few HP 9133 drives I know about... 9133D 1986 14 MB w/3.5" double sided 9133H 1986 20 MB w/3.5" double sided 9133L 1988 40 MB w/3.5" double sided 9133V 1984 4 MB w/3.5" single sided (hard drive: 4.6 MB) 9133V/ 1984 4 MB w/3.5" single sided /010 (hard drive: 4.8 MB) 9133V/ 1984 4 MB (see 9133V above) /004 (4 partitions of 1.5 MB) 9133XV 1984 14 MB w/3.5" single sided 270 KB (9121 compat) Stan -- Stan Sieler sieler at allegro.com www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html From sieler at allegro.com Wed Nov 2 19:50:22 2005 From: sieler at allegro.com (Stan Sieler) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:50:22 -0800 Subject: Interex membership list for sale In-Reply-To: <20051027032457.2A29D200D019@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Message-ID: <4368FC5E.7499.2097CDFA@localhost> Re: > A California bankruptcy court will sell Interex's membership database to the The mailing list ostensibly had about 100,000+ names on it. There were 3 bidders: #1 (Genisys), #2 anonymous, and #3 anonymous. Bidding started at about $15,000, and ended with an anonymous buyer getting it for $65,000. At that point, the successful bidder's identity was revealed. Quick...who'd pay that much? Nope...not IBM (my first guess). HP. Yes, HP paid $65,000 for a list of their own EX-customers! I hope that HP isn't going to try to pull a fast one like "credit the $65,000 against the money Interex owes us", because that would mean they're getting 1-for-1 on the money owed them, where other creditors will end up getting far far less per dollar owed :) But, the way this is being handled by "the court", it wouldn't surprise me :( -- Stan Sieler sieler at allegro.com www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 2 19:31:49 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 01:31:49 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <4367CE8D.9030503@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 1, 5 09:22:37 pm Message-ID: > >> There is another difference, the 9845C were shipped with colored=20 > >> functions keys ;-) > > > > What, all different colours, to indicate the colour that the text (or=20 > > whatever) will appear on the monitor? The HH Tiger did that. > > > > Exactly. Makes the C look a little bite more colorful. RIght... I assume, BTW, you've worked out how the 'keyswitches' on the 9845 work. It is possible to carefully dismantle one (or two, since the arrow keys are different) -- I had to do this when I was figuring out how the whole machine worked. > > >> Thanks, I'm glad my PSU is still working. I've had enough trouble with= > =20 > >> the 9845A PSU, which is only as half as complex, although the function= > al=20 > >> =20 > > > > When you say 'half as somplex', do you mean it only has one main choppe= > r=20 > > circuit, not the 2 that are used in the 9845B Opt 200? > > > > I have never seen a 9845A, but from what I've heard it's very different= > =20 > > to the B or C. To the extent that both processor modules are on one PCB= > ,=20 > > and there's a bus switching board alongside it. > > =20 > Yes and no. The mainboards connectors and the output voltages of the PSU=20 > are the same. Even the mechanical PSU assembly is the same, with the=20 Is this the PSU that's shown in the boardswapper manual? It doesn't give much detail (for some odd reason you replace the complete PSU, not just the faulty board...), but there are a couple of pictures of it. > The color monitor has just enough space for one additional board, the=20 > light pen controller. Since I don't have the controller board, I=20 > currently don't care much about a light pen, although it would be nice=20 I don't have one either. It would be nice to find for completeness (if only to 'complete' the schematics), but.... It's clear the light pen was fairly hardware-intensive. Many of the video timing signals, including the outputs from the horizontal counter on the text PCB, go to the light pen controller. > to see how it works. However I got a working graphics 9111A tablet,=20 > thats ok for now. Even a hopefully working 8"-floppy. So data transfer=20 A 9885? I have a few of those.... My 9845B came with a 3rd party mass storage ROM module. I am told this allows the use of HPIB disks (probably Amigo protocol). The main use of it so far has been due to the fact that it was a little PCB with normal chips on it, not an HP hybrid. Very useful for figuring out what the ROM module connections are. > would be (theoretically) possible as well. When I get one of those=20 > &#$=A7*-9845 working. > > they actually do there. I have now seen the HP boardwapper guide for th= > e=20 > > monitor, but I couldn't easily work out the translation between my name= > s=20 > > and HP's. > > =20 > > In case I get a copy of the schematics, I will try to help. Actually,=20 I've heard from Dave recently, he claims to have scanned said diagrams. Probaby time to pester him again :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 2 19:45:12 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 01:45:12 +0000 (GMT) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24DD@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> from "Gooijen, Henk" at Nov 2, 5 09:00:02 am Message-ID: > > Alas DEC didn't publish a source listing (or even a binary > > dump) of the console firmware in the printset. This is going > > to make troubleshooting a little harder, since you probably > > don't know what it should be doing. It is clearly running a > > program, and that program is reading the keyboard and > > scanning the display. So it is somewhat correct. > > Well, in the Maintenance Manual of the KY11-LB that I have > *is* the 8008 software, there is even a chapter that describes > the 8008 instruction set (IIRC, I skipped that chapter). Oh, right... That makes things a little easier. Do you have a logic analyser? If so, then I would try looking at the 8080 address bus. See what bit of the program it's executing, see if it does the right things when you press the keys, etc. If you don't have a logic analyser, a trick that's helped many times before is to connect an n-bit comparator to the address bus, with the otuer input from switches. You can use that to see if the processor ever accesses a particular address (e.g. to see if a particular routine is being executed). > Ok. I am working on a theory. > My first step (already done) is to minimalize the system. It is > now just the PSU (...) and the DD11-PK backplane. I removed the > cache and FP11 option. The backplane now only holds the 2 CPU > boards, and the M9312, M9302, the SLU and the KY11-LB. > All other slots have in position C-D a G7273 grant-cont card. > The symptoms are still the same, btw. > The theory is as follows. If the KY11-LB does not do UNIBUS > accesses when just the keypad is used, you could have the I am pretty sure it doesn't do UNIBUS accesses when you type in a number. Firstly, it doesn't know when you've finished the number (until you press onoe of the other keys), and secondly, the number you type in may well not be data for the current addresss -- it might be a new address, or a value to put into the Switch Register. I wonder, though, if the thiog needs signals from the arbiter to work properly. I can't see why it would, but maybe if one of the bus lines is in the 'wrong' state it gets very confused. -tony From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 2 20:19:52 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:19:52 -0500 Subject: Interex membership list for sale In-Reply-To: <4368FC5E.7499.2097CDFA@localhost> References: <20051027032457.2A29D200D019@mail.cs.drexel.edu> <4368FC5E.7499.2097CDFA@localhost> Message-ID: <20051102211952.1516ad4a.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:50:22 -0800 "Stan Sieler" wrote: > Re: > > > A California bankruptcy court will sell Interex's membership database to the > > > The mailing list ostensibly had about 100,000+ names on it. > > There were 3 bidders: #1 (Genisys), #2 anonymous, and #3 anonymous. > Bidding started at about $15,000, and ended with an anonymous > buyer getting it for $65,000. At that point, the successful bidder's > identity was revealed. > > Quick...who'd pay that much? > > > Nope...not IBM (my first guess). > > > HP. > > Yes, HP paid $65,000 for a list of their own EX-customers! > > I hope that HP isn't going to try to pull a fast one like "credit > the $65,000 against the money Interex owes us", because that would mean > they're getting 1-for-1 on the money owed them, where other creditors > will end up getting far far less per dollar owed :) > But, the way this is being handled by "the court", > it wouldn't surprise me :( > > Sounds like HP paid $65K to keep anybody else from getting a list of their own ex-customers. Which seems like a reasonable thing to do, really. And it's chump-change for HP. > > -- > Stan Sieler > sieler at allegro.com > www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html > -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From hachti at hachti.de Wed Nov 2 20:23:45 2005 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 03:23:45 +0100 Subject: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436974B1.2070207@hachti.de> Hello, > http://bitsavers.vt100.net/hp/tape/07980-90030_88780Svc_Oct91.pdf > http://bitsavers.vt100.net/hp/tape/88780-90010_UsersMan_May90.pdf > Does this help? No, sorry. I have an 7978B tape. That's a drive with a front door. +ph From hachti at hachti.de Wed Nov 2 20:24:28 2005 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 03:24:28 +0100 Subject: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? In-Reply-To: <4368F500.4276.207B067C@localhost> References: <4366C23B.9020305@hachti.de> <4368F500.4276.207B067C@localhost> Message-ID: <436974DC.5070206@hachti.de> Hello, > I'll bring the diag/docs manual I've got to VCF, to > loan it to Al, if he's interested in it. Hm.... How will I get a copy? I live in Germany.... +ph From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 20:26:26 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:26:26 -0500 Subject: Circuit Diagram In-Reply-To: <20051102230719.61133.qmail@web51614.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051102230719.61133.qmail@web51614.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <43697552.70408@gmail.com> steve wrote: > > --- Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > >>Does anyone have a decent, clear and bold softcopy >>circuit diagram of a >>three-phase rectifier suitable for a poster? >> >>Peace... Sridhar >> > > did you try google images "three-phase rectifier", > seems to be a wide variety available, take your pick I couldn't find one high enough resolution. Peace... Sridhar From Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com Wed Nov 2 20:30:32 2005 From: Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com (Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:30:32 EST Subject: TRS-80 Mod 16 Message-ID: <24e.dd798.309ad048@wmconnect.com> Help needed on TRS-80 Mod 16. I am getting a TRS-80 Mod 16 but no keyboard > wonder if it will work till I find one for > the Mod 16. > Thanks for any help, Al DePermentier > > From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 20:30:45 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:30:45 -0500 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> Message-ID: <43697655.8080302@gmail.com> David Holland wrote: > Damn... :-( > > http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2005/november/nyse.html Maybe they should have done a reverse swap. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 2 20:36:41 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:36:41 -0500 Subject: Interex membership list for sale In-Reply-To: <4368FC5E.7499.2097CDFA@localhost> References: <4368FC5E.7499.2097CDFA@localhost> Message-ID: <436977B9.1090300@gmail.com> Stan Sieler wrote: > HP. > > Yes, HP paid $65,000 for a list of their own EX-customers! > > I hope that HP isn't going to try to pull a fast one like "credit > the $65,000 against the money Interex owes us", because that would mean > they're getting 1-for-1 on the money owed them, where other creditors > will end up getting far far less per dollar owed :) > But, the way this is being handled by "the court", > it wouldn't surprise me :( I would guess it would be so none of their competitors wouldn't get a list of their customers. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 2 20:44:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:44:46 -0800 Subject: TRS-80 Mod 16 In-Reply-To: <24e.dd798.309ad048@wmconnect.com> References: <24e.dd798.309ad048@wmconnect.com> Message-ID: <200511021844460784.1708D77F@10.0.0.252> A mod 4 keyboard should work just fine. On 11/2/2005 at 9:30 PM Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com wrote: >Help needed on TRS-80 Mod 16. I am getting a TRS-80 Mod 16 but no >keyboard >> wonder if it will work till I find one for >> the Mod 16. >> Thanks for any help, Al DePermentier From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 2 19:41:29 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 01:41:29 +0000 Subject: Circuit Diagram In-Reply-To: <43697552.70408@gmail.com> References: <20051102230719.61133.qmail@web51614.mail.yahoo.com> <43697552.70408@gmail.com> Message-ID: <43696AC9.8030700@yahoo.co.uk> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > steve wrote: > >> >> --- Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> >> >>> Does anyone have a decent, clear and bold softcopy >>> circuit diagram of a three-phase rectifier suitable for a poster? >>> >>> Peace... Sridhar >>> >> >> did you try google images "three-phase rectifier", >> seems to be a wide variety available, take your pick > > I couldn't find one high enough resolution. I doubt you'll be able to find one poster-sized on the 'net as they'll all likely be in bitmap format (GIF / TIFF / JPEG), rather than a vector format which will scale to large paper sizes without loss of quality. Your best bet would be to find a free graphics package for your OS of choice and draw your own - Gimp will probably do it under Linux, and I think Paint Shop Pro can be downloaded as a free trial still for Windows (and will certainly handle vectors). No idea what's available for the Mac I'm afraid... cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 2 19:48:21 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 01:48:21 +0000 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... Message-ID: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> OK, so there goes that irritating Intel jingle on yet another commercial for a product featuring one of their chips - thus ensuring that I'll make darn sure I shop around for alternatives before ever considering one of their chips. It did make me think though; has computing history been littered with ads containing trademark features which are so annoying (in an audio or visual sense), or is this a recent thing? (For some reason the 'Playstation noise' isn't nearly as grating...) cheers Jules From ken at seefried.com Wed Nov 2 20:54:54 2005 From: ken at seefried.com (Ken Seefried) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:54:54 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions( wandering farther ) In-Reply-To: <200511022259.jA2Mx2bi084963@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511022259.jA2Mx2bi084963@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <43697BFE.4020004@seefried.com> From: Sridhar Ayengar > Bert Thomas wrote: >> McFadden, Mike, A wrote: > > > > ... from an engineering film. >> >> What is an engineering film? > > > It's the film leftover in a bathtub after you fill it with engineers and > then drain it. Funny...I thought it was what you skimmed off when you boiled a big pot full of engineers. At least...that's what the cajuns told me... HooooooWeeee...I gar-un-teeee! Ken From lbickley at bickleywest.com Wed Nov 2 20:55:53 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:55:53 -0800 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> Message-ID: <200511021855.54150.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Wednesday 02 November 2005 16:48, David Holland wrote: > Damn... :-( > > http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2005/november/nyse. >html It was bound to happen, given their financials - but it is very sad, nevertheless. Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Nov 2 21:21:12 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 22:21:12 -0500 Subject: Circuit Diagram In-Reply-To: <43696AC9.8030700@yahoo.co.uk> References: <20051102230719.61133.qmail@web51614.mail.yahoo.com> <43697552.70408@gmail.com> <43696AC9.8030700@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511022221.12320.pat@computer-refuge.org> Jules Richardson declared on Wednesday 02 November 2005 20:41: > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > steve wrote: > >> --- Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >>> Does anyone have a decent, clear and bold softcopy > >>> circuit diagram of a three-phase rectifier suitable for a poster? > >>> > >>> Peace... Sridhar > >> > >> did you try google images "three-phase rectifier", > >> seems to be a wide variety available, take your pick > > > > I couldn't find one high enough resolution. > > I doubt you'll be able to find one poster-sized on the 'net as they'll > all likely be in bitmap format (GIF / TIFF / JPEG), rather than a > vector format which will scale to large paper sizes without loss of > quality. > > Your best bet would be to find a free graphics package for your OS of > choice and draw your own - Gimp will probably do it under Linux, and I > think Paint Shop Pro can be downloaded as a free trial still for > Windows (and will certainly handle vectors). No idea what's available > for the Mac I'm afraid... Perhaps a vector-based drawing program, like xfig for example, would work better. ;) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 2 20:27:15 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 02:27:15 +0000 Subject: Circuit Diagram In-Reply-To: <200511022221.12320.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <20051102230719.61133.qmail@web51614.mail.yahoo.com> <43697552.70408@gmail.com> <43696AC9.8030700@yahoo.co.uk> <200511022221.12320.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <43697583.5080804@yahoo.co.uk> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > Jules Richardson declared on Wednesday 02 November 2005 20:41: >>Your best bet would be to find a free graphics package for your OS of >>choice and draw your own - Gimp will probably do it under Linux, and I >>think Paint Shop Pro can be downloaded as a free trial still for >>Windows (and will certainly handle vectors). No idea what's available >>for the Mac I'm afraid... > > Perhaps a vector-based drawing program, like xfig for example, would work > better. ;) Oh, shush! :) Actually, I've never used xfig. I'd always assumed (for some reason) that it was a graphing tool, rather than a drawing program. I'll have to take a look when I get back home to non-Windows land :) cheers Jules From doc at mdrconsult.com Wed Nov 2 21:44:46 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 22:44:46 -0500 Subject: Interex membership list for sale In-Reply-To: <4368FC5E.7499.2097CDFA@localhost> References: <4368FC5E.7499.2097CDFA@localhost> Message-ID: <436987AE.5000100@mdrconsult.com> Stan Sieler wrote: > Re: > > >>A California bankruptcy court will sell Interex's membership database to the > > > > The mailing list ostensibly had about 100,000+ names on it. > > There were 3 bidders: #1 (Genisys), #2 anonymous, and #3 anonymous. > Bidding started at about $15,000, and ended with an anonymous > buyer getting it for $65,000. At that point, the successful bidder's > identity was revealed. > > Quick...who'd pay that much? > > > Nope...not IBM (my first guess). > > > HP. > > Yes, HP paid $65,000 for a list of their own EX-customers! > I have to wonder if that isn't pure proactive damage control on the part of HP. Even if they burn that list (figuratively speaking), $65,000 is dirt cheap compared to the cost of a single nuisance suit blaming HP for letting someone's contact info out. Even with HP this far back up the chain, something like that could easily happen. Doc From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Wed Nov 2 21:52:28 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:52:28 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: Okay, I'm going to try and take another crack at replacing the flyback on my VT100. A few months ago I almost did, and chickened out. I'm very very afraid to do so, as the idea of trying to discharge the CRT scares me very much. The terminal has been off and disconnected from power for at least 2-3 months now. This is what I've learned so far from reading: Put one hand in your back pocket. Use an insulated screwdriver with alligator clips on either end, one to the screwdriver blade, one to the frame (VT100 service manual says the frame right above the CRT is where you should ground to). Place the screwdriver under the anode cap and touch the metal connection underneath. Wait till the crackling stops. Remove the anode cap. Can anyone reassure me that this is a semi-safe procedure? Has anyone done this sort of thing before? Thanks Julian From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 2 22:11:47 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 04:11:47 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <20051103041147.35637.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > Can anyone reassure me that this is a semi-safe procedure? It's safe, much safer than not doing it. > Has anyone done this sort of thing before? Lots of times. I connect the croc clip directly to the aquadag connection, usually an uninsulated wire or spring stretched across the back of the tube, this is the other end of the capacitor formed by the tube. You may not hear any discharge, there may be none, but poke the end of the screwdriver into the hole that the HT cap clips into and keep it there until you lift the cap and visually confirm that it has connected. I did a load of scrap monitors like this recently and the only ones that had any residual charge were the ones that I'd powered that day to see if they were worth saving. Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Nov 2 22:13:22 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 23:13:22 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511022313.22463.pat@computer-refuge.org> Wolfe, Julian declared on Wednesday 02 November 2005 22:52: > Okay, I'm going to try and take another crack at replacing the flyback > on my VT100. A few months ago I almost did, and chickened out. I'm > very very afraid to do so, as the idea of trying to discharge the CRT > scares me very much. The terminal has been off and disconnected from > power for at least 2-3 months now. > > > > This is what I've learned so far from reading: > > > > Put one hand in your back pocket. Use an insulated screwdriver with > alligator clips on either end, one to the screwdriver blade, one to > the frame (VT100 service manual says the frame right above the CRT is > where you should ground to). Place the screwdriver under the anode > cap and touch the metal connection underneath. Wait till the > crackling stops. Remove the anode cap. > > > > Can anyone reassure me that this is a semi-safe procedure? Has anyone > done this sort of thing before? Yeah, I've replaced CRTs and flybacks before. A better idea is to place a current-limiting resistor in series with the alligator clip to ground (twist one lead around the screw driver, and tape it on, attach the allegator clip to the other lead). 100k to 1M ohm should do the trick, and hold it on the metal part of the anode cap for 5 seconds or so. Not using the resistor will still discharge the tube, but it runs the risk of damaging it. If you have the tube powered off for a couple days, the charge will most likely be quite dissipated. In fact, having it off that long means it's unlikely to have any charge on the tube at all, but it's still best to still discharge it, just in case. Of course, I've worked on monitors live before. Trick there is to stay clear of the PSU and HV parts alltogether, and use insulated tools. Once you do it once or twice, you'll start feeling a bit more comfortable doing it. It isn't a good idea to *replace* the flyback with the terminal live, but you'll probably need to have the power on when you adjust the screen/focus controls on the new flyback you install. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 2 22:26:26 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 04:26:26 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <20051103042627.36970.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > A better idea is to place a current-limiting resistor in > series with the alligator clip to ground Not really. You'd need to use an HV resistor, it's unlikely that anything else will survive discharging a tube without being damaged. Not much good when you go to use it a second time. > Not using the resistor will still discharge the tube, but > it runs the risk of damaging it. Not really, any tube can stand very many such discharges without harm. Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com From lcourtney at mvista.com Wed Nov 2 22:59:57 2005 From: lcourtney at mvista.com (Lee Courtney) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 20:59:57 -0800 Subject: Computer speedometers In-Reply-To: <4368F05C.24927.2068E32C@localhost> Message-ID: Stan, IIRC the PA-RISC HP3000s display DEAD on the LED display if the system had crashed. Lee Courtney MontaVista Software 1237 East Arques Avenue Sunnyvale, California 94085 (408) 328-9238 voice (408) 328-9204 fax Yahoo IM: charlesleecourtney > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Stan Sieler > Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 4:59 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: Computer speedometers > > > Re: > > > Has anyone done a similar thing with their vintage systems? > On the 8080, > > The PA-RISC based HP 3000s have a "speedometer" built-in to the > MPE/iX operating system. > > The older models have a LED display that usually shows FxFF, with "x" > alternating between "F" and a value in the range 0..9,A which indicates > (when multiplied by 10) the CPU's percent busy. > Thus, F2FF means "CPU is 20% busy". (The alternating between > FxFF and FFFF gave the user a means of knowing whether or not the > OS had frozen, otherwise one couldn't tell if a constant FxFF was > meaningful :) > > The newer models lost the LED display, sigh, but the info is available > at the operator's request ... in which case it will be displayed on > the 25th line (the "status line") of the operator console. > > (On topic, because the 3000/930 was released in 1986.) > -- > Stan Sieler > sieler at allegro.com > www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html > From news at computercollector.com Wed Nov 2 23:18:40 2005 From: news at computercollector.com (Computer Collector Newsletter) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:18:40 -0800 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: That's an interesting question. Mike Nadeau, expert on vintage computer advertising, are you reading this? -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Jules Richardson Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 5:48 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: That darn Intel jingle... OK, so there goes that irritating Intel jingle on yet another commercial for a product featuring one of their chips - thus ensuring that I'll make darn sure I shop around for alternatives before ever considering one of their chips. It did make me think though; has computing history been littered with ads containing trademark features which are so annoying (in an audio or visual sense), or is this a recent thing? (For some reason the 'Playstation noise' isn't nearly as grating...) cheers Jules From lcourtney at mvista.com Wed Nov 2 23:19:13 2005 From: lcourtney at mvista.com (Lee Courtney) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:19:13 -0800 Subject: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? In-Reply-To: <4368F500.4276.207B067C@localhost> Message-ID: THanks Stan. If Al isn't interested in scanning (which I'd be surprised if he wasn't) I will. Lee Courtney MontaVista Software 1237 East Arques Avenue Sunnyvale, California 94085 (408) 328-9238 voice (408) 328-9204 fax Yahoo IM: charlesleecourtney > -----Original Message----- > From: Stan Sieler [mailto:sieler at allegro.com] > Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 5:19 PM > To: Lee Courtney; General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only > Subject: RE: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? > > > > Don't have the docs, but would be very interested in a set. > Also have a 7978 > > I'd like to understand self-test codes for. > > > > If someone should have docs please reply on list. > > I'll bring the diag/docs manual I've got to VCF, to > loan it to Al, if he's interested in it. > > Stan > -- > Stan Sieler > sieler at allegro.com > www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html > From marvin at rain.org Wed Nov 2 23:46:11 2005 From: marvin at rain.org (Marvin Johnston) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:46:11 -0800 Subject: "Mold" on/in Monitor Screens Message-ID: <4369A423.AE1FE87D@rain.org> I was getting a Soroc IQ-135 ready for VCF and noticed the "mold" on the outside edges of the screen between the CRT and the outside glass shield. Someone on the list wanted a sample (can't remember who) to do an analysis to find out if it was indeed mold. I now have samples if there is anyone who can do an analysis of the stuff. In looking at it, my guess is that it is not a function of something living (plant or otherwise) but rather a crystallization taking place in what appears to be a silicon based substance (RTV?) It looks like it would be relatively easy albeit time consuming to separate the CRT from the cover glass. Does anyone know what material was originally used? From nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com Wed Nov 2 23:54:09 2005 From: nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com (nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:54:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: Apple II APEX OS manual posted (Update) In-Reply-To: <4368E8F3.9831.204BF411@localhost> Message-ID: <20051103055410.71874.qmail@web81006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Glad someone enjoyed it. :) I bought the full Apex/XPL0 package years ago for my Apple II and have been meaning to put the doc up for a long time. Wife got me a new scanner a while back and I finally got around to it. Now I'm scanning some old TRS-80 newsletters. David --- Stan Sieler wrote: > Re: > Subject: Apple II APEX OS manual posted > (Update) > > > I've now placed all of the rest of my Apex and > related > > doc there as well. > > > > http://www.trailingedge.com/apple2/ > > Oooh...thank you, thank you, thank you! > > I've been looking for info about Apex and XPL0 for a > number of > years (including posts on classiccmp some years back > :) > > thanks! > > Stan > -- > Stan Sieler > sieler at allegro.com > www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html > > From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Thu Nov 3 00:00:20 2005 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 07:00:20 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> > > What surprises me about the home-built computers from scratch is the > lack > of imagination when it comes to architecture. Most are basically > one-address-cum-accumulator designs. It would seem that larger > register > files are much easier to build nowadays and would open up the door to > some > 2 and 3-address designs. The reason is the effort it takes...... Ask anybody who actually made a CPU ( I myself did a 12 bit TTL based, single address single accumulator machine). The real effort is actually building and debugging the unit. There is only so much time you have.... > > I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small > computer. Much too big to actually build in TTL. In 1974 Elektor magazine started a series of DIY articles that described an extensible ( 12 bit or 16 bit width ) three address, clockless computer. TTL based, with a shiftregister based memory. (6 or 8 512x2 shiftregisters .) An expensive extra wasa 2102 based RAM. The machine did hardware multiply and divide + Instructions were build into the address map .i,e, address XX is the adder, adress yy is a shift and so on.. The start of this series actually predates the Mark8 computer ! Jos Dreesen From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 00:41:42 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 22:41:42 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> References: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> Message-ID: <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 7:00 AM Jos Dreesen wrote: >Much too big to actually build in TTL. Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words, fewer than 400 transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about 40 watts, exclusive of I/O: http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-p.html The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me that one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way. We're not doing this for speed, right? Cheers, Chuck From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Thu Nov 3 02:43:54 2005 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 09:43:54 +0100 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <4367AC69.7090809@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20051103094354.114f5752.jkunz@unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 13:20:24 -0800 "Zane H. Healy" wrote: > >I would suggest the RS/6000 B50. > How much power does that use? IIRC I measured my B50 at around 50 W. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Thu Nov 3 02:48:39 2005 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 09:48:39 +0100 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051103094839.36f0ba74.jkunz@unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 08:56:25 -0800 "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > I'm wondering if something a little less power-hungry might be > preferable, however. Are there any low-power alternatives for the job > that anyone can recommend? Motorola PowerStack II. 300 MHz PPC 604e, without disks 40 W. An old SPARC like an IPX or SS5 is good to at saving power too, but SpamAssassin will kill it. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 3 03:23:40 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:23:40 +0000 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4369D71C.9040002@gjcp.net> Jules Richardson wrote: > > OK, so there goes that irritating Intel jingle on yet another commercial > for a product featuring one of their chips - thus ensuring that I'll > make darn sure I shop around for alternatives before ever considering > one of their chips. Someone probably gets about $10 every time that is played... Gordon. From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 3 03:43:52 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 03:43:52 -0600 Subject: 11/34a issues Message-ID: <001801c5e05b$1a621b10$6401a8c0@dementium> Okay, so I FINALLY worked out my BA11-K power supply issues and got everything sorted out and installed again. However, I'm back to where I started when I got this thing (which I never got past) - I turn it on, the display comes up at 173536. However, whenever I try to EXAM anything, it displays 000000 and the BUS ERR light comes on. I can clear, but I get that BUS ERR no matter what I do. I haven't got a serial console connected to it yet - I got this info by going through the 11/34 diagnostics in the manual. Here's my setup: BA11-K box DD11-PK backplane UNIBUS layout: A B C D E F M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 1 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 2 M9301 M9301 M7800 M7800 M7800 M7800 3 H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A 4 blank blank blank GRANT blank blank 5 H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A 6 blank blank blank GRANT blank blank 7 M7850 M7850 M7859 M7859 M7859 M7859 8 M9302 blank blank GRANT blank blank 9 I've tried switching some boards around, no help. All grant cards are installed where you could read FLIP CHIP from the processor side. I have NO idea what's wrong. Is the memory possibly bad? That's the only thing I could think of. Any help, as always, would be much appreciated. TIA Julian From philpem at dsl.pipex.com Thu Nov 3 03:56:20 2005 From: philpem at dsl.pipex.com (Philip Pemberton) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:56:20 GMT Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> In message <43696C65.30004 at yahoo.co.uk> Jules Richardson wrote: > OK, so there goes that irritating Intel jingle on yet another commercial > for a product featuring one of their chips - thus ensuring that I'll > make darn sure I shop around for alternatives before ever considering > one of their chips. Heh. I haven't actually bought an Intel chip since the days when the Pentium P-100 was top of the range. "MMX? Back in my day we didn't have none of your MMX crap. We didn't have keyboards either! Had to enter all the instructions in binary! On pushbutton switches! Why, if you lifted your finger before you hit the STORE button, you'd have to start over!" (yeah, sure, Grampa...) I've been using AMD chips in my machines for a good few years - my firewall box has a K6-II/450 running at 400MHz (damn motherboard), my testbench box (the one I use for testing rootkits and doing damage assessments) has a K6-II/500 running at 500MHz. My main machine has a 3GHz Athlon64. Biased? Who, me? > It did make me think though; has computing history been littered with > ads containing trademark features which are so annoying (in an audio or > visual sense), or is this a recent thing? (For some reason the > 'Playstation noise' isn't nearly as grating...) There are others.. Those damn "eSure" adverts make me want to pick up the TV and smash it into little bits... Later. -- Phil. | Acorn RiscPC600 SA220 64MB+6GB 100baseT philpem at philpem.me.uk | Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxe R2 512MB+100GB http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Panasonic CF-25 Mk.2 Toughbook ... Tagline Lotto: ??????????<- Scratch here for prize. From Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com Thu Nov 3 06:13:06 2005 From: Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com (Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 07:13:06 EST Subject: TRS-80 Mod 16 Message-ID: <66.631e8b63.309b58d2@wmconnect.com> Something is missing my message was: > , I am getting a TRS-80 Mod 16 but no keyboard but I have a Mod II keyboard > and wonder if it will work till I find one fof the Mod 16. > Thanks for any help, Al DePermentier Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 06:25:05 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:25:05 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPD0026GP2JGFS1@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: Jos Dreesen > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:00:20 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > >> >> What surprises me about the home-built computers from scratch is the >> lack >> of imagination when it comes to architecture. Most are basically >> one-address-cum-accumulator designs. It would seem that larger >> register >> files are much easier to build nowadays and would open up the door to >> some >> 2 and 3-address designs. > >The reason is the effort it takes...... >Ask anybody who actually made a CPU ( I myself did a 12 bit > TTL based, single address single accumulator machine). >The real effort is actually building and debugging the unit. > There is only so much time you have.... >> >> I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small >> computer. > >Much too big to actually build in TTL. > > >In 1974 Elektor magazine started a series of DIY articles that described >an extensible ( 12 bit or 16 bit width ) three address, clockless >computer. >TTL based, with a shiftregister based memory. (6 or 8 512x2 >shiftregisters .) >An expensive extra wasa 2102 based RAM. >The machine did hardware multiply and divide + >Instructions were build into the address map .i,e, address XX is the >adder, adress yy is a shift and so on.. > >The start of this series actually predates the Mark8 computer ! > > > Jos Dreesen With current generation MSI TTL functions the highest parts consuming section the ALU is reduced to a few peices. Registers with tristate outputs are easy now. Those things were not easy to find back in 1973-4. The whole point and problem solution of serial machines was flipflops were 6 trasistors each and a logic gate could be one transistor and many diodes. Now a 4 bit multifuction arithmetic slice is 74181 (transistor and diode equivelent may have numberd in hundreds). Another area that was tedious to the max was memory. In 1974 the 2102 was a over 10 dollar part and you needed 8 for a byte parallel ram. By 1980 1kx8 parts could be had for 3 dollars. Now 32kx8 parts are cheap with far larger available. So building a memory system is simplified as well. So building a larger machine is not as daunting a task as in 1974 or even 1980. Even without FPGAs. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 06:39:27 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 07:39:27 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPD00K9YPQGDA50@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 22:41:42 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/3/2005 at 7:00 AM Jos Dreesen wrote: > >>Much too big to actually build in TTL. > >Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words, fewer than 400 >transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about 40 >watts, exclusive of I/O: > >http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-p.html > >The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me that >one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way. >We're not doing this for speed, right? > >Cheers, >Chuck As they say in some parts "it depends". ;) I can think of three reasons to build a machine. Recreate a system that is scarce or unobtainium such as the Apollo Block One. Speed here is possibly important to understanding what it's limitiations or capabilities were. Experiment with an archetecture that may exist but is not a chip. Some speed would be nice here as you may end up running real code. Or just to build a computer that one can completely understand why and how it works. Here speed is not essential, slow may aid is seeing all the bits work in real time. It would be hard to beat commercial hardware. However there is little reason for not pushing the logic some if you plan to run an OS on it. At the other extreme the ability to go glacially slow is a good debug tool (all them lights don't hurt either). Allison From holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de Thu Nov 3 07:08:04 2005 From: holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:08:04 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <436A0BB4.8010503@ais.fraunhofer.de> woodelf wrote: > Bj?rn Vermo wrote: > >> >> Apple comes to mind. You can pick up a G4 really cheap these days. >> Whether you want to run BSD (OS X) or Linux is a matter of taste. >> IBM have some PPc development systems (Walnut if I recall right) >> which can run both Linux and QNX, but I have no idea how to get one >> or what they sell for. > > > I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( > About thirty years ago, when I was pretty much younger :-), I built a classical TTL computer (with 74181 ALUs etc.) almost from scratch, basically from schematic fragments from the TTL databook and TTL cookbook and some electronics magazines; well - if it were really from scratch, then even so "highly integrated chips" like the 74181 were prohibited as well. Looking back, this had almost all characteristics of a real computer. There are two aspects IMHO why this does no longer happen today: - what was a known magazine in the past, would today perhaps realistically called "Un-Popular Electronics", the knowledge of electronics from the ground up is dying out; and with the continuing "digitalization" of technology, it is an ever increasing hurdle to get started - the classical AM detector radio I built as a newbie will nowadays no longer attract anyone - you can get a gadget which is better by several magnitudes for a fraction of the expenses you'd have for soldering your thing. - The tools you have are too user friendly (!); i.e. you could rather easily click something together, be it software or VHDL code for an FPGA without ever needing to understand what is really going on. The "soul of a new machine" guys that traced glitches with a logic analyzer in a large wire-wrapped TTL graveyard are gone - such a machine had the necessary wow factor. No surprise when a VAX in an FPGA - see subject - is not really interesting. It is possible - that's it. But what does one gain? It is like solving a 10000 pieces puzzle; spend time and don't learn really much. When Hillary climbed the Mount Everest 50 years ago, it was something new, extraordinary. When tourist nowadays use sort of stairways to reach the top (okay, it's not *that* extreme now), it is just uninteresting. But standing on the top, is still a challenge and an experience for the individual. However, what we lost now is a sense of wonder - that small ALU based TTL circuit was built by myself, and I did it, and it is irrelevant that some idiot could download a digital simulator and click the same circuit together on a PC screen. I guess this is what makes the difference between a real PDP-11 with some ridiculous 5MB storage disks compared to a SIMH emulator running on a 3GHz Pentium. Watch the blinkenlights. Holger From emu at ecubics.com Thu Nov 3 07:25:23 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 06:25:23 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436A0BB4.8010503@ais.fraunhofer.de> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> <436A0BB4.8010503@ais.fraunhofer.de> Message-ID: <436A0FC3.6090102@ecubics.com> Holger Veit wrote: > [... lot before ... ] > When Hillary climbed the Mount Everest 50 years ago, it was something > new, extraordinary. When tourist nowadays use sort of stairways to reach > the top (okay, it's not *that* extreme now), it is just uninteresting. > But standing on the top, is still a challenge and an experience for the > individual. However, what we lost now is a sense of wonder - that small > ALU based TTL circuit was built by myself, and I did it, and it is > irrelevant that some idiot could download a digital simulator and click > the same circuit together on a PC screen. I guess this is what makes the > difference between a real PDP-11 with some ridiculous 5MB storage disks > compared to a SIMH emulator running on a 3GHz Pentium. > Watch the blinkenlights. Well said !!! From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 07:47:05 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:47:05 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPD00LV9SV5QTL0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: Holger Veit > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:08:04 +0100 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only > >woodelf wrote: > >> Bj?rn Vermo wrote: >> >>> >>> Apple comes to mind. You can pick up a G4 really cheap these days. >>> Whether you want to run BSD (OS X) or Linux is a matter of taste. >>> IBM have some PPc development systems (Walnut if I recall right) >>> which can run both Linux and QNX, but I have no idea how to get one >>> or what they sell for. >> >> >> I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( >> >About thirty years ago, when I was pretty much younger :-), I built a >classical TTL computer (with 74181 ALUs etc.) almost from scratch, >basically from schematic fragments from the TTL databook and TTL >cookbook and some electronics magazines; well - if it were really from >scratch, then even so "highly integrated chips" like the 74181 were >prohibited as well. Looking back, this had almost all characteristics of >a real computer. > >There are two aspects IMHO why this does no longer happen today: >- what was a known magazine in the past, would today perhaps >realistically called "Un-Popular Electronics", the knowledge of >electronics from the ground up is dying out; and with the continuing >"digitalization" of technology, it is an ever increasing hurdle to get >started - the classical AM detector radio I built as a newbie will >nowadays no longer attract anyone - you can get a gadget which is better >by several magnitudes for a fraction of the expenses you'd have for >soldering your thing. >- The tools you have are too user friendly (!); i.e. you could rather >easily click something together, be it software or VHDL code for an FPGA >without ever needing to understand what is really going on. The "soul of >a new machine" guys that traced glitches with a logic analyzer in a >large wire-wrapped TTL graveyard are gone - such a machine had the >necessary wow factor. No surprise when a VAX in an FPGA - see subject - >is not really interesting. It is possible - that's it. But what does one >gain? It is like solving a 10000 pieces puzzle; spend time and don't >learn really much. >When Hillary climbed the Mount Everest 50 years ago, it was something >new, extraordinary. When tourist nowadays use sort of stairways to reach >the top (okay, it's not *that* extreme now), it is just uninteresting. >But standing on the top, is still a challenge and an experience for the >individual. However, what we lost now is a sense of wonder - that small >ALU based TTL circuit was built by myself, and I did it, and it is >irrelevant that some idiot could download a digital simulator and click >the same circuit together on a PC screen. I guess this is what makes the >difference between a real PDP-11 with some ridiculous 5MB storage disks >compared to a SIMH emulator running on a 3GHz Pentium. >Watch the blinkenlights. > >Holger Ah, for the adventure of it all. Well put. Another extreme is those that seem to be interested in building usable minimalist machines with TTL using the fewest packages. Allison From GFisher at tristonecapital.com Thu Nov 3 07:51:43 2005 From: GFisher at tristonecapital.com (Gary Fisher) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 06:51:43 -0700 Subject: What are your favorite electronic/computer surplus stores in the Bay area Message-ID: <8F18A9D87E3D3A479C61925B9CD77601010C44@calgary2.tri-stone.tristonecapital.com> Thanks to all who replied to me, I going to have a busy Friday.! For the benefit of all my fellow lurkers, here is a website many mentioned as a great place to start looking for surplus electonics stores (and was in some earlier cctalk messages a few months back, shame on me!) http://www.bluefeathertech.com/technoid/calswapindex.html Gary Fisher This e-mail and any attachments may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail, delete this e-mail and destroy any copies. Any dissemination or use of this information by a person other than the intended recipient is unauthorized and may be illegal. Unless otherwise stated, opinions expressed in this e-mail are those of the author and are not endorsed by the author's employer. From dave04a at dunfield.com Thu Nov 3 08:04:55 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 09:04:55 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <20051103140453.YOJQ14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> Scott, >I have a simple 8088-based SBC design wired up and waiting for motivation to >put together some test firmware. The main thing that has kept me from bringing >it up is the difficulty in getting x86-based machine language development tools >going. I'm used to little 4 and 8-bit assemblers where you can plop down a few >ORG statements and have it all resident in a ROM, and almost all the x86 asm >tools start from the assumption you are running on DOS and have no direct control >of the memory map. My ASM86 assembler is a "bare metal" assembler, it uses ORG, and outputs Intel (or Motorola) hex format download records (which can be converted by my HEXFMT into a pure binary file if that is your preference). It does not assume any OS, and does not require any special/weird setup sequences - just translates instructions into opcodes. ASM86 is a simple command line .EXE, runs under DOS up, does not require any installation or other such stuff - very easy to get going. I also have two 8086 debuggers that go with it: HDM86 is a "Hardware Debug Monitor" it gives you basic read/write/dump, but the nice thing about it is that it need NO memory - as long as you have the ROM and UART working, you can run it (even if you don't have the UART working, you can use it's polling to debug, so all you really need to get started is the ROM). Takes about 1.25k of ROM MON86 is a much more powerful monitor, which features all the goodies, memory and register dump/edit, breakpoints, single-step, disassembler, lots more... (It does need 160 bytes of RAM and about 3k of ROM). These tools should be all that you need to get your 8088 system up and running, and I'll be happy to send them to ya - contact me off-list if you would like them. I also have a decent disassembler for the 8086 instruction set which will let you define memory areas/types, build symbol tables for you etc. Also for "bare metal", but it doesn't sound like you will need this as you are writing "all new" code. In case you are also a 'C' programmer, I also have a 8086 "bare metal" version of my Micro-C compiler - much of what I said about the assembler applies to this (in fact, the C compiler produces assembly source which it them runs through the ASM86 assembler). FWIW, I have similar assemblers for a couple dozen other small processor architectures, as well as monitors, disassemblers and C compilers for many of them. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 3 08:44:13 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 09:44:13 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions References: <0IPA003RIIVCO520@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <20051101203841.5c77705f.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511020842400388.14E19886@10.0.0.252> <20051102175136.48ae9c95.chenmel@earthlink.net> <17257.17373.309844.359790@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20051102181941.703a893c.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <17258.8765.378263.536244@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Scott" == Scott Stevens writes: >> As a rule of thumb, all batteries contain nasty chemicals. Which >> ones depends on the battery. But if you assume all are nasty you >> will only rarely be mistaken. >> >> paul >> Scott> But don't lithium batteries contain just lithium, which is all Scott> gone by the time the battery discharges? No. I don't know the battery chemistry (actually, I'm pretty sure there are at least 2 or 3 different ones). But as a rule, a battery contains 3 parts: two electrodes, and an electrolyte. One electrode is consumed as the battery discharges, the other is inert. The electrolyte carries electrons and ions around, and participates in the consuming. In a classic carbon/zinc battery, the cathode is zinc, which is consumed; the anode is a carbon rod; and the electrolyte is some sort of acidic paste. Also, the cathode material isn't "all gone" when the battery is discharged. Some of it is generally left in its original form. And the rest is still around in another form, for example ions in the electrolyte (i.e., a metal salt). Usually it's the electrolyte you have to worry about, since that's almost by definition a caustic material. In some cases, like lithium batteries, you *also* have to worry about the cathode material since that is rather reactive, and flammable. paul From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 3 08:49:26 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 09:49:26 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: Chuck> What surprises me about the home-built computers from scratch Chuck> is the lack of imagination when it comes to architecture. Chuck> Most are basically one-address-cum-accumulator designs. It Chuck> would seem that larger register files are much easier to build Chuck> nowadays and would open up the door to some 2 and 3-address Chuck> designs. Chuck> I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a Chuck> small computer. Divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12 bits. An Chuck> instruction could use 6 bits for opcode and 3 register Chuck> addresses out of a 64 register file... Some Philips minis had 24 bit words. I worked on one, can't remember the model number. P2400? P9200? Psomething anyway. It had 8 sets of 8 registers, one for each interrupt level, so there wasn't any context saving overhead. No interrupt vectors either; you'd simply load the interrupt handler start address into the PC of that level. But still, a boring architecture by your definition: registers plus one memory address, plus an index bit. If you're going to go the 3 address route, it sounds like you're well on your way towards reinventing the CDC 6000 architecture. And of course that would be a fine thing to do -- if you're going to explore computer architectures, what better path to take than the one first walked by the foremost computer architecture genius of the 20th century? paul From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 3 09:53:48 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:53:48 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> References: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436A328C.8000409@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words, fewer than 400 >transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about 40 >watts, exclusive of I/O: > >http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-p.html > >The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me that >one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way. >We're not doing this for speed, right? > > > That is interesting reading. Are there any of the large 48 bit processors still around? Also TTL and memory is easy to use in 4 bit sizes, a odd size like 18 bits is not so easy to work with. From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 3 10:04:58 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 11:04:58 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <436A328C.8000409@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> <436A328C.8000409@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <436A352A.8020803@gmail.com> woodelf wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words, fewer than 400 >> transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about 40 >> watts, exclusive of I/O: >> >> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-p.html >> The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me that >> one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way. >> We're not doing this for speed, right? >> >> >> > That is interesting reading. Are there any of the large 48 bit > processors still around? > Also TTL and memory is easy to use in 4 bit sizes, a odd size like 18 > bits is not so > easy to work with. How does parity memory work? Must one use the extra bit for parity or could one use it as a ninth data bit? Peace... Sridhar From nico at FARUMDATA.DK Thu Nov 3 10:19:36 2005 From: nico at FARUMDATA.DK (Nico de Jong) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 17:19:36 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers References: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch><200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> <436A328C.8000409@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <001001c5e092$624ba9a0$2101a8c0@finans> ----- Oprindelig meddelelse ----- Fra: woodelf Til: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Sendt: 3. november 2005 16:53 Emne: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Chuck Guzis wrote: >Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words > >http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-p.html > > > That is interesting reading. Yes, and all that for only about 91.000 USD. Was the input rate for the Flexowrite limited by the flexowriter itself, or by the PB250 ? When I was a PTT telex operator, I had no problems with 8 chr/second (50 bps on a Siemens 5-bit teletype), but there were some girls in Frankfurt/main who could type faster then our tape transmitters. Suppose they used some electronic version of the T100, as the mechanical version just couldnt run faster as 50 bps, IIRC Nico From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 10:18:42 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:18:42 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 9:49 AM Paul Koning wrote: >If you're going to go the 3 address route, it sounds like you're well >on your way towards reinventing the CDC 6000 architecture. And of >course that would be a fine thing to do -- if you're going to explore >computer architectures, what better path to take than the one first >walked by the foremost computer architecture genius of the 20th >century? ...or one could use a MIPS chip... To me, the genius (and unrecognized at the time) of the 6600 architecture was Cray's discarding the idea of a "condition code" in the IBM sense, wherein the state of a result is actually divorced from the result itself. The 6600 had no compare instruction, nor condition codes. To compare registers X1 and X2 and branch on the result, one would subtract them and test (via branch) the contents of the result register. Three addresses and no condition codes gave a huge amount of flexibility to placement of instructions in the stream. The 15-bit instruction length for the bulk of instructions didn't hurt either. I recall spending many hours hand-timing loops for the 6600 to get to that magic goal of getting one issue per cycle--and even better if the loop could be fully contained in the "stack" (a 10-word local instruction cache). But I don't have rose-colored glasses either. The "call" (return jump) instruction implementation was an abomination because it actually stored the return address as a jump instruction in program memory, rather than putting it in a register. There was no simple way to save all registers (the actual code to do so was a marvel of arcane coding). There was no PC-relative addressing for jumps. I still wonder about the utilitiy of the "count the 1's" instruction. I could go on... I know this seems ridiculous with today's fast CPUs and the amount of bloatware around, but getting tight code was a mark of pride back in those days. I miss that. Cheers, Chuck From arcarlini at iee.org Thu Nov 3 10:31:02 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 16:31:02 -0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <001f01c5e094$03e68db0$5b01a8c0@pc1> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I still wonder about the utilitiy > of > the "count the 1's" instruction. I could go on... Apparently one of the US three-letter-agencies asked for some modifications to (IIRC) the proposed PDP-10 instruction so that it would do whatever they wanted a tad more quickly. counting-1s was (again, IIRC) one of those requested additions. According to a talk I saw on the web a few years ago now, by one of the guys in charge of P3 (or P4), people still ask "can I have such-and-such" an instruction! Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 10:32:49 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:32:49 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <001001c5e092$624ba9a0$2101a8c0@finans> References: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> <436A328C.8000409@jetnet.ab.ca> <001001c5e092$624ba9a0$2101a8c0@finans> Message-ID: <200511030832490573.19FEEDA6@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 5:19 PM Nico de Jong wrote: > Was the input rate for the Flexowrite limited by the flexowriter itself, >or by the PB250 ? I had only a short time on a PB250. Compared to other small systems of the time, such as the IBM 1620, it wasn't all that slow. But you could corrupt memory by banging on the side of the machine--those magnetostrictive delay lines were very sensitive to mechanical shock. Cheers, Chuck From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 3 10:35:17 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 11:35:17 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers References: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> <436A328C.8000409@jetnet.ab.ca> <001001c5e092$624ba9a0$2101a8c0@finans> Message-ID: <17258.15429.642730.174919@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Nico" == Nico de Jong writes: Nico> Yes, and all that for only about 91.000 USD. Was the input rate Nico> for the Flexowrite limited by the flexowriter itself, or by the Nico> PB250 ? When I was a PTT telex operator, I had no problems Nico> with 8 chr/second (50 bps on a Siemens 5-bit teletype), but Nico> there were some girls in Frankfurt/main who could type faster Nico> then our tape transmitters. Suppose they used some electronic Nico> version of the T100, as the mechanical version just couldnt run Nico> faster as 50 bps, IIRC That makes sense. 8 cps is 80 wpm assuming 5 character average word length (which is the English convention at least when talking about Morse code). 80 wpm is a respectable rate but there are lots of good typists that can do better. The fastest I have ever seen is 134 wpm, which is well beyond what an ASR33 can do, never mind those old 5-bit machines. paul From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 10:36:55 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:36:55 -0800 Subject: TRS-80 Mod 16 In-Reply-To: <66.631e8b63.309b58d2@wmconnect.com> References: <66.631e8b63.309b58d2@wmconnect.com> Message-ID: <200511030836550409.1A02ADEF@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 7:13 AM Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com wrote: >> , I am getting a TRS-80 Mod 16 but no keyboard but I have a Mod II >keyboard >> and wonder if it will work till I find one fof the Mod 16. A mod II keyboard will work just fine--I've got one on the mod 16 I have here. You may want to paint it to match, however... Cheers, Chuck From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 3 10:40:57 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 11:40:57 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17258.15769.850401.260463@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: Chuck> On 11/3/2005 at 9:49 AM Paul Koning wrote: >> If you're going to go the 3 address route, it sounds like you're >> well on your way towards reinventing the CDC 6000 architecture. >> And of course that would be a fine thing to do -- if you're going >> to explore computer architectures, what better path to take than >> the one first walked by the foremost computer architecture genius >> of the 20th century? Chuck> ...or one could use a MIPS chip... Chuck> To me, the genius (and unrecognized at the time) of the 6600 Chuck> architecture was Cray's discarding the idea of a "condition Chuck> code" in the IBM sense, wherein the state of a result is Chuck> actually divorced from the result itself. That's useful indeed, though there were plenty of other machines back then where this was true. I believe the more significant innovations were the extensive parallelism and the quantity of registers. Chuck> But I don't have rose-colored glasses either. The "call" Chuck> (return jump) instruction implementation was an abomination Chuck> because it actually stored the return address as a jump Chuck> instruction in program memory, rather than putting it in a Chuck> register. ... True. Again, something that was conventional back then. Chuck> I still wonder about Chuck> the utilitiy of the "count the 1's" instruction. The rumor has it that the NSA asked for it. Certainly that makes sense. It was also used extensively in the PLATO system. If you want to do fuzzy matches (i.e., accept misspellings for words), a nice way to do that is to encode the words in a clever way, XOR the intended word with the supplied one, bitcount the difference, and accept it if the number of bits that differ is less than N. Chuck> I know this seems ridiculous with today's fast CPUs and the Chuck> amount of bloatware around, but getting tight code was a mark Chuck> of pride back in those days. Sure was. 600 timesharing terminals on a pair of 10 MHz processors is pretty slick. (Come to think of it, over 9000 timesharing terminals on a single Alpha-based descendant of that system is mighty impressive, too.) paul From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 10:46:39 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:46:39 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <001f01c5e094$03e68db0$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <001f01c5e094$03e68db0$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <200511030846390505.1A0B9789@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 4:31 PM a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: >Apparently one of the US three-letter-agencies asked >for some modifications to (IIRC) the proposed PDP-10 >instruction so that it would do whatever they wanted >a tad more quickly. counting-1s was (again, IIRC) one >of those requested additions. ...and then there are the machines whose designers freely gave in to such requests. The CDC Star-100 is one such. You need an instruction, you've got it. BCD arithmetic (to 65K digits), masked byte key searches, approximate compare instructions, etc. etc., they were all there. Very few people knew the entire instruction set (there were modifier bits for many instructions and the effects of those could range from subtle to downright bizarre). One of the big changes in the 100C from the original 100 was the reduction in size of the instruction set--I know of no other machine where later models actually de-implemented on a wholesale basis whole classes of instructions. The other improvement was the incorporation of a scalar arithmetic unit, so that scalar operations weren't effectively executed as 1-element vectors. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 10:54:48 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:54:48 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <17258.15769.850401.260463@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> <17258.15769.850401.260463@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511030854480373.1A130D28@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 11:40 AM Paul Koning wrote: >The rumor has it that the NSA asked for it. Certainly that makes >sense. ...and perhaps accounts for why the instruction that was so fast on the 6600 also was one of the slowest on the 6400. Clearly, it was implemented with a view toward the high-end customers. I'd pretty much only seen it used as part of some fancy hashes and for counting bits in allocation tables. >It was also used extensively in the PLATO system. If you want to do >fuzzy matches (i.e., accept misspellings for words), a nice way to do >that is to encode the words in a clever way, XOR the intended word >with the supplied one, bitcount the difference, and accept it if the >number of bits that differ is less than N. Of course, on the Star-100, we already had an instruction to do fuzzy matches. >Sure was. 600 timesharing terminals on a pair of 10 MHz processors is >pretty slick. (Come to think of it, over 9000 timesharing terminals >on a single Alpha-based descendant of that system is mighty >impressive, too.) Wasn't the standard Plato hookup 2000 baud? My last exposure to the terminals was back when they still had plasma screens. Very cool, those--I wonder if there are any still around. Cheers, Chuck From kth at srv.net Thu Nov 3 11:05:32 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 10:05:32 -0700 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <436A435C.1000709@srv.net> Jules Richardson wrote: > > OK, so there goes that irritating Intel jingle on yet another > commercial for a product featuring one of their chips - thus ensuring > that I'll make darn sure I shop around for alternatives before ever > considering one of their chips. > Another jingle to embed in your brain. http://eclectech.co.uk/mindcontrol.php Hip hip hip horay! > It did make me think though; has computing history been littered with > ads containing trademark features which are so annoying (in an audio > or visual sense), or is this a recent thing? (For some reason the > 'Playstation noise' isn't nearly as grating...) From jcwren at jcwren.com Thu Nov 3 11:03:32 2005 From: jcwren at jcwren.com (J.C. Wren) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:03:32 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update (CDC song) In-Reply-To: <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436A42E4.7030804@jcwren.com> Do you remember the CDC song? "I/O, I/O, it's off to disk we go! Put CIO in RA+1, I/O, I/O..." Then there was the ever-popular "See Figure 1" diagram for their philosophy on defaults. --jc Chuck Guzis wrote: [snip] > >...or one could use a MIPS chip... > >To me, the genius (and unrecognized at the time) of the 6600 architecture >was Cray's discarding the idea of a "condition code" in the IBM sense, >wherein the state of a result is actually divorced from the result itself. >The 6600 had no compare instruction, nor condition codes. To compare >registers X1 and X2 and branch on the result, one would subtract them and >test (via branch) the contents of the result register. Three addresses and >no condition codes gave a huge amount of flexibility to placement of >instructions in the stream. The 15-bit instruction length for the bulk of >instructions didn't hurt either. I recall spending many hours hand-timing >loops for the 6600 to get to that magic goal of getting one issue per >cycle--and even better if the loop could be fully contained in the "stack" >(a 10-word local instruction cache). > [snip] From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 3 11:12:15 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 12:12:15 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> <17258.15769.850401.260463@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030854480373.1A130D28@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17258.17647.900167.158709@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: >> Sure was. 600 timesharing terminals on a pair of 10 MHz >> processors is pretty slick. (Come to think of it, over 9000 >> timesharing terminals on a single Alpha-based descendant of that >> system is mighty impressive, too.) Chuck> Wasn't the standard Plato hookup 2000 baud? My last exposure Chuck> to the terminals was back when they still had plasma screens. Chuck> Very cool, those--I wonder if there are any still around. 1200 baud, but the output encoding was such that the best case text plotting speed was 180 characters per second. Yes, there are still some working PLATO plasma panel terminals around. And for that matter there are still working PLATO systems around (one "real" and one running on an emulator). paul From jcwren at jcwren.com Thu Nov 3 11:12:17 2005 From: jcwren at jcwren.com (J.C. Wren) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:12:17 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <001f01c5e094$03e68db0$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <001f01c5e094$03e68db0$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <436A44F1.8020302@jcwren.com> "count the 1's" was added at the request of the Atomic Energy Commission (or proxied through them) for nuclear blast simulations. --jc a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: >Chuck Guzis wrote: > > >>I still wonder about the utilitiy >>of >>the "count the 1's" instruction. I could go on... >> >> > >Apparently one of the US three-letter-agencies asked >for some modifications to (IIRC) the proposed PDP-10 >instruction so that it would do whatever they wanted >a tad more quickly. counting-1s was (again, IIRC) one >of those requested additions. > >According to a talk I saw on the web a few years ago now, >by one of the guys in charge of P3 (or P4), people still >ask "can I have such-and-such" an instruction! > >Antonio > > > From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Thu Nov 3 11:08:01 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 12:08:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <001f01c5e094$03e68db0$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <001f01c5e094$03e68db0$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <200511031716.MAA05495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> I still wonder about the utilitiy of the "count the 1's" >> instruction. It's one of those "if you need it not much else will do but if you don't you generally can't imagine what it's good for" things. It's possible to generate bitcount with lg(N) mask-mask-shift-add cycles, where N is the number of bits in a word, but that's slow compared to a dedicated count-bits instruction. The most plausible use for it, offhand, seems to me to be when working with error-correcting codes; XOR + bitcount gives you the Hamming distance between two codewords quickly. > According to a talk I saw on the web a few years ago now, by one of > the guys in charge of P3 (or P4), people still ask "can I have > such-and-such" an instruction! The nerve of them! Expecting what people want to actually matter to the processor designers! My own preferred instruction would be what I've thought of as "ALU". It would take 6 (32-bit) or 7 (64-bit) input operands and one output operand; one of the input operands gives the truth table for a boolean function which is applied bitwise across the other inputs. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 3 11:16:17 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 12:16:17 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update (CDC song) References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> <436A42E4.7030804@jcwren.com> Message-ID: <17258.17889.822729.990619@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "J" == J C Wren writes: J> Do you remember the CDC song? "I/O, I/O, it's off to disk we go! J> Put CIO in RA+1, I/O, I/O..." Eek. It's amazing to me that still to this day lots of people do not know that circular buffers are the way to do inter-processor communication without interlocking. For example, RTLinux did (perhaps still does) have to disable interrupts for its IPC, because it uses queue structures that aren't interrupt-safe, rather than CIO style buffers that are. In systems like that, the penalty for not knowing the right technology is pretty steep. paul From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 11:18:21 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:18:21 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update (CDC song) In-Reply-To: <436A42E4.7030804@jcwren.com> References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> <436A42E4.7030804@jcwren.com> Message-ID: <200511030918210649.1A289DB6@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 12:03 PM J.C. Wren wrote: >Do you remember the CDC song? > >"I/O, I/O, it's off to disk we go! Put CIO in RA+1, I/O, I/O..." Heck, I can probably remember most of the PPU overlay names and what they did. The first time I ever heard the term "virus" in relation to computer software was when some idiot submitted a job that repeated called RSJ. For a time, I worked on a transaction system on the Cybers, where system calls were done exclusively with XJ instructions and not RA+1 stores. Made much more sense when your system was CMTR based--and on this particular system (swaps were done to ECS), exactly where RA was for any given job could change very rapidly. But then, 7000 SCOPE did much the same thing, didn't it? Cheers, Chuck From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 3 11:26:21 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 12:26:21 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update (CDC song) References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> <436A42E4.7030804@jcwren.com> <200511030918210649.1A289DB6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17258.18493.306277.989253@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: Chuck> On 11/3/2005 at 12:03 PM J.C. Wren wrote: >> Do you remember the CDC song? >> >> "I/O, I/O, it's off to disk we go! Put CIO in RA+1, I/O, I/O..." Chuck> Heck, I can probably remember most of the PPU overlay names Chuck> and what they did. Ok, let's test that. 1LT? :-) (I've been doing battle with that particular one recently...) Chuck> For a time, I worked on a transaction system on the Cybers, Chuck> where system calls were done exclusively with XJ instructions Chuck> and not RA+1 stores. Made much more sense when your system Chuck> was CMTR based--and on this particular system (swaps were done Chuck> to ECS), exactly where RA was for any given job could change Chuck> very rapidly. But then, 7000 SCOPE did much the same thing, Chuck> didn't it? Before my time... I worked on PLATO when it ran on 6000 series NOS. paul From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 11:49:15 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:49:15 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update (CDC song) In-Reply-To: <17258.18493.306277.989253@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <0IPC0055TP8MTIT5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511021613450602.167E9606@10.0.0.252> <17258.9078.644566.876495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511030818420912.19F20264@10.0.0.252> <436A42E4.7030804@jcwren.com> <200511030918210649.1A289DB6@10.0.0.252> <17258.18493.306277.989253@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511030949150483.1A44E72E@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 12:26 PM Paul Koning wrote: >Ok, let's test that. 1LT? UGH! That was the long "stranger" tape driver overlay to 1MT. Ugly beast, too--and an exercise in futility. 30 years ago, I spent entirely too much time trying to make it run for some stupid benchmark. This was back on the 607's. You had to read the tape and write to CM at the same time. Lose your place in the pyramid and you had to backspace to the beginning of the record and try all over...and over...and over...again. >Before my time... I worked on PLATO when it ran on 6000 series NOS. Since the PPU's on the 7000 had hard-wired buffer areas in CM, they couldn't access all of CM. So the burden of the OS fell on the CPU. 7000 SCOPE used a very clever system of staggered RA's and overlapping FL's for different levels of privilege. So, the job supervisor task had an FL that included itself and the FL of the job it was supervising, but its code and RA was placed immediately below the job, so it had unrestricted access to the job's FL. Same sort of idea for the buffer and I/O managers. Very clever implementation before protection "rings" got the credit for the idea. Good luck with 1LT--there's been much hair left on the floor from folks who worked on that thing. Cheers, Chuck From arcarlini at iee.org Thu Nov 3 11:57:38 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 17:57:38 -0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511031716.MAA05495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <002c01c5e0a0$1592ab50$5b01a8c0@pc1> der Mouse wrote: >> According to a talk I saw on the web a few years ago now, by one of >> the guys in charge of P3 (or P4), people still ask "can I have >> such-and-such" an instruction! > > The nerve of them! Expecting what people want to actually matter to > the processor designers! Now, now. If you ask a hundred different TLAs what they most need added to the ISA to best help them infringe people's liberties you'll get one hundred different answers :-) I think the original context (from memory, I cannot find the talk on the web right now) was folks asking for "favourite instruction" to be added in P4. The answer was along the lines of "OK, but the increased complexity will affect the projected yield by %X which will increase costs by $GIGABUX so you need to guarantee to purchase $GIGABUX worth of processors for the first N years". Folks then learn to make do. Seriously, if you need pop(N) or whatever, you can implement it today and in a year (or two) from now you'll be running as fast as you thought you would have been with pop(N). I suppose now that clock speed acceleration is declining, that may no longer be true, but multiple cores should offset that (once we figure out how to use them). Or maybe all these TLAs are now leaning on the GPU manufacturers and that's why we are beginning to see these APIs for ATI and NVIDIA cards so that they can help out with those physics simulations ... Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 12:13:17 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 13:13:17 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPE003AT56R3WF1@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: Sridhar Ayengar > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 11:04:58 -0500 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >woodelf wrote: >> Chuck Guzis wrote: >> >>> Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words, fewer than 400 >>> transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about 40 >>> watts, exclusive of I/O: >>> >>> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL61-p.html >>> The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me that >>> one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way. >>> We're not doing this for speed, right? >>> >>> >>> >> That is interesting reading. Are there any of the large 48 bit >> processors still around? >> Also TTL and memory is easy to use in 4 bit sizes, a odd size like 18 >> bits is not so >> easy to work with. > >How does parity memory work? Must one use the extra bit for parity or >could one use it as a ninth data bit? > >Peace... Sridhar Parity required an extra bit to stor the parity so that it could be compared on read. That bit may or may not have been part of the data path logic. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 12:21:31 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 13:21:31 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPE003E85KG9B50@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: Paul Koning > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 11:40:57 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: > > Chuck> On 11/3/2005 at 9:49 AM Paul Koning wrote: > >> If you're going to go the 3 address route, it sounds like you're > >> well on your way towards reinventing the CDC 6000 architecture. > >> And of course that would be a fine thing to do -- if you're going > >> to explore computer architectures, what better path to take than > >> the one first walked by the foremost computer architecture genius > >> of the 20th century? > > Chuck> ...or one could use a MIPS chip... > > Chuck> To me, the genius (and unrecognized at the time) of the 6600 > Chuck> architecture was Cray's discarding the idea of a "condition > Chuck> code" in the IBM sense, wherein the state of a result is > Chuck> actually divorced from the result itself. > >That's useful indeed, though there were plenty of other machines back >then where this was true. I believe the more significant innovations >were the extensive parallelism and the quantity of registers. A lot of those ideas were result of experimental machines that preceeded them. TX2 came to mind as it had fast registers and core. Other ideas embodied were dual ALU, it could be used as 18bits or two 9bit alu. While the machine was a test bed to transistor logic it was also a system archetecture test bed as well. >Sure was. 600 timesharing terminals on a pair of 10 MHz processors is >pretty slick. (Come to think of it, over 9000 timesharing terminals >on a single Alpha-based descendant of that system is mighty >impressive, too.) > > paul I remember the BOCES LIRICS (LI NY) PDP-10 system in 1971 running around 500users at anyone time. Used to run a lot of idle cycles even them. Allison From arcarlini at iee.org Thu Nov 3 13:08:04 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 19:08:04 -0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPE003AT56R3WF1@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <002f01c5e0a9$ec0bac50$5b01a8c0@pc1> Allison wrote: > Parity required an extra bit to stor the parity so that it could be > compared on read. That bit may or may not have been part of the data > path logic. But on the memory chips, that bit must have been readable for the system hardware to do its comparions. I guess that the memory could send back a GO/NO_GO signal but supplying the parity bit must be easier and cheaper? There was a spate of "fake parity" memory around some time in the 90s. Quite why it was cheaper to add a chip that always supplied "correct" parity rather than simply using additional memory was something that I never understood. But if you end up with one these "fake parity" memories it may well cause your 9-bit machine some issues!! Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From zmerch at 30below.com Thu Nov 3 13:25:47 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:25:47 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <002f01c5e0a9$ec0bac50$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <0IPE003AT56R3WF1@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051103141935.01be8650@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that a.carlini at ntlworld.com may have mentioned these words: >There was a spate of "fake parity" memory around some time in >the 90s. Quite why it was cheaper to add a chip that always >supplied "correct" parity rather than simply using additional >memory was something that I never understood. Think of it this way: Memory - lots of transistors per cell == $$ Fake Parity - only a few transistors[1] to fake it == less $$. The fake parity chip was something like less than 1/10 the cost of a memory chip, so if you could add (admittedly non-working) parity memory for a 1% increase in cost compared to real parity at 12.5% increase in cost... yea, my math ain't perfect, neither is my grammar - you get the picture. ;-) That's why most Americans are happy with Butt^H^Hd Light. :-/ [[Blech!]] Laterz, Roger "Life's too short to drink cheap beer" Merchberger [1] relatively speaking, of course. -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me zmerch at 30below.com. | SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 3 13:29:16 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:29:16 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <002f01c5e0a9$ec0bac50$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <002f01c5e0a9$ec0bac50$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <436A650C.5080304@jetnet.ab.ca> a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: >There was a spate of "fake parity" memory around some time in >the 90s. Quite why it was cheaper to add a chip that always >supplied "correct" parity rather than simply using additional >memory was something that I never understood. But if you >end up with one these "fake parity" memories it may well >cause your 9-bit machine some issues!! > > > Well for my 9 bit machine, I am using 16k x 1 and 16k x 4 static ram chips to give me 64kb of memory out of 256kb of total ram. As far as I know I the fake parity chips were dynamic ram. I hope to have 16k of ram for the OS and 48k for user programs. However the first goal is to finish the hardware design and debug it for me.This is turning into a wider 6800 style processer, but still a small system. >Antonio > > From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 3 14:04:24 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 14:04:24 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <200511022313.22463.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: You were dead on about this Pat. Absolutely NOTHING happened. I sat there with the screwdriver for about 3 or 5 minutes and nothing happened, then I took the anode cap off. However, I had my vet tech friend there in case I needed CPR or any other sort of medical assistance (she's trained in basic human medicals too) And Pat, you're also dead on about the controls, I had to readjust those twice before when the flyback was going in a hurry, and had to do it live, but I was a lot less scared of that - I knew as long as I stayed way from the CRT I would be fine. It's funny, my particular life's experiences have pretty much told me that if I have some sort of safety net with me, I never need it ;) Thanks again to everyone who offered assistance. Julian -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Finnegan Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 10:13 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT Wolfe, Julian declared on Wednesday 02 November 2005 22:52: > Okay, I'm going to try and take another crack at replacing the flyback > on my VT100. A few months ago I almost did, and chickened out. I'm > very very afraid to do so, as the idea of trying to discharge the CRT > scares me very much. The terminal has been off and disconnected from > power for at least 2-3 months now. > > > > This is what I've learned so far from reading: > > > > Put one hand in your back pocket. Use an insulated screwdriver with > alligator clips on either end, one to the screwdriver blade, one to > the frame (VT100 service manual says the frame right above the CRT is > where you should ground to). Place the screwdriver under the anode > cap and touch the metal connection underneath. Wait till the > crackling stops. Remove the anode cap. > > > > Can anyone reassure me that this is a semi-safe procedure? Has anyone > done this sort of thing before? Yeah, I've replaced CRTs and flybacks before. A better idea is to place a current-limiting resistor in series with the alligator clip to ground (twist one lead around the screw driver, and tape it on, attach the allegator clip to the other lead). 100k to 1M ohm should do the trick, and hold it on the metal part of the anode cap for 5 seconds or so. Not using the resistor will still discharge the tube, but it runs the risk of damaging it. If you have the tube powered off for a couple days, the charge will most likely be quite dissipated. In fact, having it off that long means it's unlikely to have any charge on the tube at all, but it's still best to still discharge it, just in case. Of course, I've worked on monitors live before. Trick there is to stay clear of the PSU and HV parts alltogether, and use insulated tools. Once you do it once or twice, you'll start feeling a bit more comfortable doing it. It isn't a good idea to *replace* the flyback with the terminal live, but you'll probably need to have the power on when you adjust the screen/focus controls on the new flyback you install. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 14:15:30 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:15:30 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPE00FCVAUFVIW2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: "a.carlini at ntlworld.com" > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 19:08:04 +0000 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >Allison wrote: > >> Parity required an extra bit to stor the parity so that it could be >> compared on read. That bit may or may not have been part of the data >> path logic. > >But on the memory chips, that bit must have been readable for the >system hardware to do its comparions. I guess that the memory could >send back a GO/NO_GO signal but supplying the parity bit must >be easier and cheaper? Actually the system does not have to see the parity bit. Only the result of comparing the stored (at write time) parity in the 9th bit with the result of the read parity hardware. If there is a difference there was a "hit". So the rest of the system gets the data and the interrupt system sees the parity if there is a fail. There is no need (in most if not all) to actually read and write the parity bit as that is a memory subsystem task (hardware). PDP-11 Qbus ram is of the case where parity is stored as a 9th bit but is not directly accessable by the CPU. In the extreme is the ECC ram where there are many bits per byte/word to store a coded form of the data (hamming or other compression) so that the ECC hardware can "repair" corrupted data. >There was a spate of "fake parity" memory around some time in >the 90s. Quite why it was cheaper to add a chip that always >supplied "correct" parity rather than simply using additional >memory was something that I never understood. But if you >end up with one these "fake parity" memories it may well >cause your 9-bit machine some issues!! If it were a real 9bitter it certainly would. In the case of PCs it was a matter of satisfying a motherboard configuration rather than real "bits". Allison From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 3 14:26:45 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:26:45 +0000 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436A7285.2070605@gjcp.net> Julian Wolfe wrote: > It's funny, my particular life's experiences have pretty much told me that > if I have some sort of safety net with me, I never need it ;) Which is why I have about 100kg of tools in the boot of my car *all the time*. And spare spare spare sound cards and the like... Gordon. From acme_ent at bellsouth.net Thu Nov 3 14:53:14 2005 From: acme_ent at bellsouth.net (Glen Goodwin) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:53:14 -0500 Subject: TS computers (was PalmOS no more?) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436A78BA.6060503@bellsouth.net> Sellam, I think you must be mistaken. The TS2048 was never produced. Here's a snip for you from one of the many TS history pages : Timex recognized that a 48K Spectrum would not continue being competitive in North America for long without changes being made. They developed two computers that were to be North America's debut of the Spectrum. One was called the TS2048 and the other the TS2068. The TS2048 was basically a 48K Spectrum w/ Kempston joystick and the advanced video modes of the TS2068 (see below). The TS2068 was a completely different computer with the Spectrum as its roots. Timex decided to only sell the TS2068. [end snip] If you have a TS2048, it must be a prototype, and is undoubtably rare. Jack Boatwright has posted a photo of a prototype TS2048 here: http://www3.outlawnet.com/~jboatno4/ts2048.jpg Glen 0/0 Vintage Computer Festival wrote: > On Fri, 7 Oct 2005, Glen Goodwin wrote: > > >>Cameron Kaiser wrote: >> >>>As far as T/S units, there's the 1000 (ZX-81), the 1500 (81 on roids), the >>>2048, basically a 48K ZX Spectrum with better video >> >>Cameron, have you ever seen a US-made TS2048? To my knowledge they >>never made it into production. > > > I found mine in a local thrift store. I don't know where it was made > though. > From zmerch at 30below.com Thu Nov 3 14:59:19 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:59:19 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <436A7285.2070605@gjcp.net> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051103155645.03a74338@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Gordon JC Pearce may have mentioned these words: >Which is why I have about 100kg of tools in the boot of my car *all the time*. Which is why I like my Chevy Avalanche. I can keep about 50kg of tools organized, hidden, and locked - so I can still fit a wife & kids in my truck! ;-) [[ I tend to be messy if I have less room for tools than my paranoia requires... ;-) ]] > And spare spare spare sound cards and the like... Dang... sounds like you had an IRQ conflict there. ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Bugs of a feather flock together." sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Russell Nelson zmerch at 30below.com | From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 3 15:00:22 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 15:00:22 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <436A7285.2070605@gjcp.net> Message-ID: And then you hang on to those spare spare spare sound cards for awhile, and all-of-a-sudden they're worth oodles of cash, like my Game Blaster card ended up being. And the woman-folk have the nerve to call this stuff junk! ;p -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gordon JC Pearce Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 2:27 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT Julian Wolfe wrote: > It's funny, my particular life's experiences have pretty much told me that > if I have some sort of safety net with me, I never need it ;) Which is why I have about 100kg of tools in the boot of my car *all the time*. And spare spare spare sound cards and the like... Gordon. From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 3 15:04:17 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 15:04:17 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT (now Being Prepared) In-Reply-To: <436A7285.2070605@gjcp.net> Message-ID: And, forgot to add, I now keep a fire extinguisher in the trunk of my car ever since the engine of my 81 firebird caught fire 3 years ago - IN THE CULVERS DRIVE THROUGH! It was actually sort of funny in retrospect Drive through guy: "Welcome to Culvers, what can I get for you today?" Me: "A ****ING FIRE EXTINGUISHER!" I can't say I miss that car too much with all the trouble it caused. Anyway, back on topic... -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gordon JC Pearce Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 2:27 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT Julian Wolfe wrote: > It's funny, my particular life's experiences have pretty much told me that > if I have some sort of safety net with me, I never need it ;) Which is why I have about 100kg of tools in the boot of my car *all the time*. And spare spare spare sound cards and the like... Gordon. From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Thu Nov 3 15:19:17 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 16:19:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <002c01c5e0a0$1592ab50$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <002c01c5e0a0$1592ab50$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <200511032125.QAA06787@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >>> According to a talk I saw on the web a few years ago now, by one of >>> the guys in charge of P3 (or P4), people still ask "can I have >>> such-and-such" an instruction! >> The nerve of them! Expecting what people want to actually matter to >> the processor designers! > Now, now. If you ask a hundred different TLAs what they most need > added to the ISA to best help them infringe people's liberties you'll > get one hundred different answers :-) Certainly. But you can't learn about the three that are wanted by a nontrivial fraction of the userbase without listening to them all. I didn't say they had to actually implement all - or even any - of those suggestions. But not even being interested in the suggestions is just plain lunacy. > Seriously, if you need pop(N) or whatever, you can implement it today > and in a year (or two) from now you'll be running as fast as you > thought you would have been with pop(N). And you have the nerve to preface that with "seriously"?! You could say the same about pretty much any software thing - simulate it and let Moore's Law speed it up. Some of us aren't willing to wait a year (or two) per feature to run it at a decent speed. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Thu Nov 3 15:26:53 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 16:26:53 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <002f01c5e0a9$ec0bac50$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <002f01c5e0a9$ec0bac50$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <200511032130.QAA06821@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > There was a spate of "fake parity" memory around some time in the > 90s. Quite why it was cheaper to add a chip that always supplied > "correct" parity rather than simply using additional memory was > something that I never understood. Because fake parity needs just 2*lg(N)-1 XOR gates (N being the number of data bits per word), one of them being NXOR if odd parity is used; real parity needs 2^M memory cells (M being the number of address lines). For any memory configuration that made it out of the lab, fake parity is orders of magnitude less complicated a chip - and correspondingly cheaper. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 12:22:34 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 18:22:34 +0000 (GMT) Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 3, 5 01:48:21 am Message-ID: > > > OK, so there goes that irritating Intel jingle on yet another commercial > for a product featuring one of their chips - thus ensuring that I'll > make darn sure I shop around for alternatives before ever considering > one of their chips. I avoid Intel chips for a much more practical reason -- they often have some of the most amazing misfeatures you'll ever see.... The worst, by far, has to tbe the 8255 parallel chip. That was clearly designed by soembody who didn't think what he was doing. For those of you who've not read the data sheets, any write to the mode control register clears all output port lines to 0. Doing anything to the output registers when writing to the mode control register is bad enough. But setting them to 0 is about the worst thing that could be done. On reset, all port lines are inputs (sensible, it avoids a possible contention). Rememebr a TTL input floats high, so TTL inputs connected to port lines will appear to be logic 1. Then you write to the mode control register, and all lines you want to be outputs will be logic 0. Then you write to the ports to set them to the right values. You have to design a circuit that can cope with the steady 1 after reset and the 0 after writing to the mode control register. Sensible poarallel interface chips (Motorola, Rockwell, etc) let you initialise the output registers and then set the mode/direction. In otehr words you can keep a port line effecrtively at logic 1 throughout the initialisation. But yes, that jingle is so darn annoying... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 12:36:05 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 18:36:05 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: from "Wolfe, Julian" at Nov 2, 5 09:52:28 pm Message-ID: > > Okay, I'm going to try and take another crack at replacing the flyback on my > VT100. A few months ago I almost did, and chickened out. I'm very very > afraid to do so, as the idea of trying to discharge the CRT scares me very > much. The terminal has been off and disconnected from power for at least > 2-3 months now. Well, glass [1] is an excellent insulator and could hold a charge for 3 months _but_ it is very likely the CRT has discharged either through leakage in the EHT rectifier diode (built into the flyback in this unit), or through the beam current when the thing was last used. The worst case for the CRT to hold a charge is if the EHT side (flyback, etc) keeps working and there is no beam current due to the grid being very -eve or the heater going out, or... There is then nothing to discharge the CRT. [1] The capacitor you are discharging consists of aquadag layers on the inside aod outside of the CRT flare. The CRT glass envelope is the dielectric. > > > > This is what I've learned so far from reading: > > > > Put one hand in your back pocket. Use an insulated screwdriver with More particularly, work one haned, keep the other hand well away from the unit and anything that's earthed. The most dangerous current path is up one arm and own the other. It is normal to keep your left hand in your pocket. Some say it's because your heart is on the ledt side, I personally do it because I am right-handed. > alligator clips on either end, one to the screwdriver blade, one to the > frame (VT100 service manual says the frame right above the CRT is where you > should ground to). Place the screwdriver under the anode cap and touch the You should connect to the CRT earth. I seem to rmemeber on a VT100, that's a spring contact on the yoke with a white wire/faston clip. The idea is to ensure that the discharge current doesn't flow through anything it shouldn't > metal connection underneath. Wait till the crackling stops. Remove the > anode cap. > > > > Can anyone reassure me that this is a semi-safe procedure? Has anyone done > this sort of thing before? It's safe for _you_, but I wouldn't do it that way. The high initial current could damage the CRT (burn the conenction between the anode conneector and the internal aquadag layer), and more particularly could damage IC's all over the terminal. The first thing I'd do is take out the logic board(s) and PSU. That gets all the delicate ICs out of the way. I would also use a discharge resistor. Take a 1M resistor (or if you prefer 10 100k resistors in series if you're worried about the voltage rating), connect one end to the CRT earth, the other to the screwdriver blade [2]. Carry on as above, but hold the screwdriver in contact with the anode conenctor for a minute or so. If you're worried, repeat the process with no resistor just to be sure. [2] Don't do what I did once when inebriated [3] and connect both the chassis and screwdriver to the same end of the resistor, thus not having it in-circuit [3] Why was I working on a monitor when drunk? Well, it was my 21st birthday, one of the presents was a non-working FTS-88 computer. Of course I started to repair it ASAP. The charge stored in a normal-size CRT -- particularly a monochrome one -- is not likely to be dangerous in itself to anyone without heart problems. But it will make you jump, you might then drop the CRT with very unpleasant results. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 12:42:35 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 18:42:35 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <200511022313.22463.pat@computer-refuge.org> from "Patrick Finnegan" at Nov 2, 5 11:13:22 pm Message-ID: > Yeah, I've replaced CRTs and flybacks before. As, of course, have I. > > A better idea is to place a current-limiting resistor in series with the > alligator clip to ground (twist one lead around the screw driver, and > tape it on, attach the allegator clip to the other lead). 100k to 1M > ohm should do the trick, and hold it on the metal part of the anode cap > for 5 seconds or so. Not using the resistor will still discharge the > tube, but it runs the risk of damaging it. Agreed. Actually, I have a Heathkit EHT probe. It's just an 800M resistor and a microammeter in series. I connect the ground lead of that to the CRT earth, then hold the probe end on the anode connector for a minute after the meter has got to 0. That seems pretty reliable. > > If you have the tube powered off for a couple days, the charge will most > likely be quite dissipated. In fact, having it off that long means it's The semiconductor rectifiers used in computer monitors, etc will leak enough to discharge the CRT. Watch out if you work on old TVs with valve rectifiers, they are much less leaky. > unlikely to have any charge on the tube at all, but it's still best to > still discharge it, just in case. > > Of course, I've worked on monitors live before. Trick there is to stay > clear of the PSU and HV parts alltogether, and use insulated tools. I once had the 30kV EHT in a colour monitor arc over to my fingers. Suffice it to say I then used langauge that I would not repeat on this list :-) If you're working on a 'live' unit, don't work alone. Have somebody nearby who knows how to turn off the power if things go wrong. And rememebr that (at least in Europe), the mains is a lot more dangerous than the RHT due to the former's much lower impedance. Don't take great care to avoid the (generally well insulated) EHT and then put your hand on a live heatsink in the SMPSU. > Once you do it once or twice, you'll start feeling a bit more > comfortable doing it. It isn't a good idea to *replace* the flyback > with the terminal live, but you'll probably need to have the power on > when you adjust the screen/focus controls on the new flyback you > install. Actually, in a VT100 the presets are all on the video bard. It's still worth rememebring there's about 800V on some of them, so use a well-insulated screwdriver to tweak them. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 13:20:30 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 19:20:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: 11/34a issues In-Reply-To: <001801c5e05b$1a621b10$6401a8c0@dementium> from "Julian Wolfe" at Nov 3, 5 03:43:52 am Message-ID: > I've tried switching some boards around, no help. > > All grant cards are installed where you could read FLIP CHIP from the > processor side. I am not sure that's right. The tracks -- the edge fingers that are shorted together -- should be on towards the left side of the machine (front panel towards you, backplane at the bottom, of course). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 13:29:45 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 19:29:45 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436A0BB4.8010503@ais.fraunhofer.de> from "Holger Veit" at Nov 3, 5 02:08:04 pm Message-ID: > > There are two aspects IMHO why this does no longer happen today: > - what was a known magazine in the past, would today perhaps=20 > realistically called "Un-Popular Electronics", the knowledge of=20 > electronics from the ground up is dying out; and with the continuing=20 > "digitalization" of technology, it is an ever increasing hurdle to get=20 > started - the classical AM detector radio I built as a newbie will=20 > nowadays no longer attract anyone - you can get a gadget which is better=20 Hmm... There are plenty of books on making simple valve radios still being written and sold (I bought a couple last week). OH, it's a small market, but somebody other than myself must find it interesting. However, I don't see much interest in spending a long time soldering up somebody else's design. All that proves is that you can solder and/or wire-wrap. To me the interesting part is in the design. Yes, I enjoy spending many hours designing anf building digital circuits (TTL, I don't have anything to run FPGA tools on [1]). But I like to think of a bit of design, wire up 10 or so chips, get that working, then add a bit more, and so on. It's the stuff I learn while doing it that's interesting, not the end result. [1] I did use FPGA tools at work about 10 years ago on what were then high-end PCs. A moderately complicated circuit would take overnight to compile. And you had to do it again if you made a change. And hope the ever-helpful clearners didn't turn your PC off that night. Personally, for 'incremental prototyping' I find TTL a lot easier and quicker. It's also easier to debug -- a logic analyser and 'scope beat any simulation program I've ever seen. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 13:33:42 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 19:33:42 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436A0FC3.6090102@ecubics.com> from "e.stiebler" at Nov 3, 5 06:25:23 am Message-ID: > > Holger Veit wrote: > > > [... lot before ... ] > > > When Hillary climbed the Mount Everest 50 years ago, it was something > > new, extraordinary. When tourist nowadays use sort of stairways to reach > > the top (okay, it's not *that* extreme now), it is just uninteresting. > > But standing on the top, is still a challenge and an experience for the > > individual. However, what we lost now is a sense of wonder - that small > > ALU based TTL circuit was built by myself, and I did it, and it is > > irrelevant that some idiot could download a digital simulator and click > > the same circuit together on a PC screen. I guess this is what makes the > > difference between a real PDP-11 with some ridiculous 5MB storage disks > > compared to a SIMH emulator running on a 3GHz Pentium. > > Watch the blinkenlights. > Well said !!! Somewhat OT, but anyway... One of my other interests (it has been for much longer than I've been interested in computers) it horology -- clocks, etc. One day I will make a mechanical clock from scratch, probably to my own design. It will, I know, be a poor timekeeper. A $5 quartz clock will be a lot better. But there is a certain joy in actually making it oneself. Others certainly feel likewise, there are a number of people who make mechanical clocks, there are plenty of books on the subject. I feel the same way about desgining and making a processor. Do it for fun. You are not going to make a faster Pentium at home. Period. You might well make something with a strange architecture or instruction set. You _will_ learn a heck of a lot by doing it, though. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 13:53:29 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 19:53:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <436A352A.8020803@gmail.com> from "Sridhar Ayengar" at Nov 3, 5 11:04:58 am Message-ID: > > How does parity memory work? Must one use the extra bit for parity or > could one use it as a ninth data bit? Genuine parity memory does, indeed, store 9 bits, and you can use it as 9 bit wide RAM. Certainly some of the old 30 pin SIMMs were genuinely 9 bits wide. There was a hrrible thing called fake parity memory. It stored 8 bits and calaculted the parity bit on a read (ignored the incoming parity bit on a write) to keep the memory controller happy. Of course you can't store 9 bits in that type of device. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 14:07:19 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 20:07:19 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <436A7285.2070605@gjcp.net> from "Gordon JC Pearce" at Nov 3, 5 08:26:45 pm Message-ID: > Which is why I have about 100kg of tools in the boot of my car *all the > time*. And spare spare spare sound cards and the like... As I've said before, whenever I demonstrate one of my classic computers, I take along enough tools and test gear [1] to repair it should it fail. That, of course, is the best way to ensure it doesn't fail [1] Of course I have the schematics, etc with me too. If I'm demonstrating a machine, somebody is going to start asking nasty questions :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 14:10:44 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 20:10:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: from "Julian Wolfe" at Nov 3, 5 02:04:24 pm Message-ID: > And Pat, you're also dead on about the controls, I had to readjust those > twice before when the flyback was going in a hurry, and had to do it live, > but I was a lot less scared of that - I knew as long as I stayed way from > the CRT I would be fine. Hmm.. A little knowledge can be dangerous. The EHT -- the 15kV to the final anode -- is pretty well insulated when the terminal is in operation. The flyback is potted, there's a well-insulated lead to the anode connector, then the connector itself. It's pretty hard to touvh it by accident. But the 'screen' and 'focus' controls set the voltages of 2 of the electrodes in the gun. Typically there will be a few hundred volts on them. And those voltages are on the PCB tracks, on the terminals of the presets, and so on. No, they're unlikely to be fatal, just unpleasant. But they are much easier to touch by accident. -tony From arcarlini at iee.org Thu Nov 3 16:15:47 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 22:15:47 -0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511032125.QAA06787@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <004801c5e0c4$25b2e4e0$5b01a8c0@pc1> der Mouse wrote: > Certainly. But you can't learn about the three that are wanted by a > nontrivial fraction of the userbase without listening to them all. This was Intel, so even the NSA/CIA/FBI/EFF all put together are not going to amount to anything more than noise compared to the number of CPUs that Microsoft can help ship. Adding features to something as crufty as ix86 (much of the talk seemed to be about bending over backwards - while blindfolded - to try and keep up some semblance of backwards compatibility) has a dollar, time (to market) and performance cost. Saving the world comes a distant second to keeping ahead of AMD! Other things not to ask for: "Can we have instruction X, and keep it secret: it'll be our competitive advantage" >> Seriously, if you need pop(N) or whatever, you can implement it today >> and in a year (or two) from now you'll be running as fast as you >> thought you would have been with pop(N). > > And you have the nerve to preface that with "seriously"?! Apparently, yes :-) > You could say the same about pretty much any software thing > - simulate it and let Moore's Law speed it up. Some of us aren't > willing to wait a year (or two) per feature to run it at a decent speed. You aren't willing to pay the costs of having your pet instructions added to ix86 either, I'll wager! Actually I think the speaker's point was mostly that adding instruction X almost never lead to the supposed performance benefits, especially given the complex pipelined nature of the processor. To say nothing of the work required to get the instruction properly supported (and optimised etc.) by the required compiler(s). I presume that the guy knew what he was talking about as he'd managed to get P3 (or P4, whatever) out the door and managed his processor managed to survive in a world where RISC was supposed to be performance king. Most importantly of all, he'd managed to avoid being mired in the Itanium fiasco, so I was willing to cut him a fair amount of slack. Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From arcarlini at iee.org Thu Nov 3 16:31:15 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 22:31:15 -0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511032130.QAA06821@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <004901c5e0c6$50604500$5b01a8c0@pc1> der Mouse wrote: > Because fake parity needs just 2*lg(N)-1 XOR gates (N being the > number of data bits per word), one of them being NXOR if odd parity > is used; real parity needs 2^M memory cells (M being the number of > address lines). For any memory configuration that made it out of the > lab, fake parity is orders of magnitude less complicated a chip - and > correspondingly cheaper. But the 9th memory chip already exists and costs thruppence (with discounts for bulk) whereas a parity chip needed to be designed and built and still come in cheaper. Maybe there was one conveniently around (there would have to be an implementation just to do the actual parity checking in the system, but that could have been buried somewhere in a PC chipset chip somewhere). Obviously it must have been worth someone's while, I just remember being a little surprised that this sort of chicanery could be made to pay off (at least for a short while). Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 3 16:32:42 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 16:32:42 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Understood, and yes I respect the voltage those things put out. That is the reason I use a long plastic adjuster for this and not a screwdriver. However, the good part about those adjustments is that you do not have to directly work with high voltage like you do on a freshly turned-off flyback, only avoid it. In any case, I'm very careful and methodical about it, and that's what counts. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 2:11 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT > And Pat, you're also dead on about the controls, I had to readjust those > twice before when the flyback was going in a hurry, and had to do it live, > but I was a lot less scared of that - I knew as long as I stayed way from > the CRT I would be fine. Hmm.. A little knowledge can be dangerous. The EHT -- the 15kV to the final anode -- is pretty well insulated when the terminal is in operation. The flyback is potted, there's a well-insulated lead to the anode connector, then the connector itself. It's pretty hard to touvh it by accident. But the 'screen' and 'focus' controls set the voltages of 2 of the electrodes in the gun. Typically there will be a few hundred volts on them. And those voltages are on the PCB tracks, on the terminals of the presets, and so on. No, they're unlikely to be fatal, just unpleasant. But they are much easier to touch by accident. -tony From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 3 16:34:23 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 16:34:23 -0600 Subject: 11/34a issues In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Yeah, that's how they are. FLIP CHIP is actually printed IN REVERSE on one side of the card and if you look at it from the right hand side of the box (i.e. right hand being to the right of the console) you would see FLIP CHIP through the card in correct directioned text. i.e. the traces are on the "slot 9" side. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 1:21 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: 11/34a issues > I've tried switching some boards around, no help. > > All grant cards are installed where you could read FLIP CHIP from the > processor side. I am not sure that's right. The tracks -- the edge fingers that are shorted together -- should be on towards the left side of the machine (front panel towards you, backplane at the bottom, of course). -tony From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 3 16:34:21 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 22:34:21 +0000 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051103155645.03a74338@mail.30below.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20051103155645.03a74338@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <436A906D.4070309@gjcp.net> Roger Merchberger wrote: > Rumor has it that Gordon JC Pearce may have mentioned these words: > >> Which is why I have about 100kg of tools in the boot of my car *all >> the time*. > > > Which is why I like my Chevy Avalanche. I can keep about 50kg of tools > organized, hidden, and locked - so I can still fit a wife & kids in my > truck! ;-) OT, but I drive a 1991 Citro?n XM. I can fit all of my tools in, a comprehensive set of spares (including 5l of hydraulic fluid), and still squeeze a couple of cases in. If I fold down the back seats I can fit an LA36, a stack of manuals, and all the aforementioned tools, and still see out the back window. Fitting my PDP11 rack in there was no biggie. Now if I could get my girlfriend to let me buy a CX Break I could keep a Smart Coupe in the back as a spare... Gordon. From Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com Thu Nov 3 16:42:08 2005 From: Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com (Alwrcker82 at wmconnect.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 17:42:08 EST Subject: TRS-80 Mod 16 Message-ID: <22a.4af565.309bec40@wmconnect.com> Thanks Chuck I didn't want to blow anything up. Al.... From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 3 16:46:08 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 16:46:08 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <436A906D.4070309@gjcp.net> Message-ID: Yeah, with all the hauling of crap I've been doing, I'm kicking myself for not buying the station wagon (Magnum) version of my Charger. Thankfully though, I was able to break down the H9612 into its component parts and fit it in the car. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gordon JC Pearce Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 4:34 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT Roger Merchberger wrote: > Rumor has it that Gordon JC Pearce may have mentioned these words: > >> Which is why I have about 100kg of tools in the boot of my car *all >> the time*. > > > Which is why I like my Chevy Avalanche. I can keep about 50kg of tools > organized, hidden, and locked - so I can still fit a wife & kids in my > truck! ;-) OT, but I drive a 1991 Citro?n XM. I can fit all of my tools in, a comprehensive set of spares (including 5l of hydraulic fluid), and still squeeze a couple of cases in. If I fold down the back seats I can fit an LA36, a stack of manuals, and all the aforementioned tools, and still see out the back window. Fitting my PDP11 rack in there was no biggie. Now if I could get my girlfriend to let me buy a CX Break I could keep a Smart Coupe in the back as a spare... Gordon. From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 3 16:50:07 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 22:50:07 +0000 Subject: Apple Lisa XENIX Message-ID: Folks, While looking for the Lisa PASCAL workshop for one of my site visitors I discovered the 7-disk floppy set for Lisa XENIX Anybody want? It's only 1.2mb. I don't have the means of easily writing 400k floppies so I'll not be putting it on my Lisa any time soon.....hmm...wait a minute....I've just spotted a Mac Classic on the floor.....and an LCII. *thinks* Cheers Adrian @ BinaryDinosaurs From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 17:22:03 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:22:03 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511031522030946.1B759835@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 7:53 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >There was a hrrible thing called fake parity memory. It stored 8 bits and >calaculted the parity bit on a read (ignored the incoming parity bit on a >write) to keep the memory controller happy. Of course you can't store 9 >bits in that type of device. Of course you can, as long as the bits you're storing agree with the parity of the 8 bits... :) From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 17:32:44 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:32:44 -0800 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511031532440683.1B7F5F10@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 6:22 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >The worst, by far, has to tbe the 8255 parallel chip. That was clearly >designed by soembody who didn't think what he was doing. For those of you >who've not read the data sheets, any write to the mode control register >clears all output port lines to 0. For what it is and WHEN it was developed, the 8255 is a pretty good device. There are still new products made that use it (very popular in the data acquisition area). I can't think of any other single parallel interface chip from the 70's that's still puffing along. I wish the thing was faster. The NEC 82C55AC variant is good to 10 Mhz, but that's pretty slow when you're talking about a PCI bus. There are precious few of the really good peripheral chips from the early days of the microprocessor that are still as useful. The Signetics 2651 USART, maybe? Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 17:39:45 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:39:45 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPE00KLXKASE2D2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:22:03 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/3/2005 at 7:53 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > >>There was a hrrible thing called fake parity memory. It stored 8 bits and >>calaculted the parity bit on a read (ignored the incoming parity bit on a >>write) to keep the memory controller happy. Of course you can't store 9 >>bits in that type of device. > >Of course you can, as long as the bits you're storing agree with the parity >of the 8 bits... > >:) If you ask me the real horror of parity memory is it only tells you disaster happend just as your about to crash. It offers little to system reliability and data integrity that real ECC can provide. Like Tim O' said years ago it's all a plot to sell more ram. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 17:45:34 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:45:34 -0500 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... Message-ID: <0IPE00HERKKHK8P0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: That darn Intel jingle... > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:32:44 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/3/2005 at 6:22 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > >>The worst, by far, has to tbe the 8255 parallel chip. That was clearly >>designed by soembody who didn't think what he was doing. For those of you >>who've not read the data sheets, any write to the mode control register >>clears all output port lines to 0. > >For what it is and WHEN it was developed, the 8255 is a pretty good device. > There are still new products made that use it (very popular in the data >acquisition area). I can't think of any other single parallel interface >chip from the 70's that's still puffing along. Z80 PIO. However the 8255 is of the 8080/8085/z80/ and general Intel lineup and due to that also the most widely multiply sourced. It's ugly but what comes in to do better? >I wish the thing was faster. The NEC 82C55AC variant is good to 10 Mhz, >but that's pretty slow when you're talking about a PCI bus. D72055 the last version of the part hit 12mhz. If your going on PCI why bother and just put a gate array to work. >There are precious few of the really good peripheral chips from the early >days of the microprocessor that are still as useful. The Signetics 2651 >USART, maybe? Well there are plenty of 8251, 8253, 8259 around, then there are the 2681s and (gag) 8250 series. Not many but then what do you need after lots of ram? Allison From kth at srv.net Thu Nov 3 18:16:33 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:16:33 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPE00KLXKASE2D2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPE00KLXKASE2D2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <436AA861.9080504@srv.net> Allison wrote: > If you ask me the real horror of parity memory is it only tells you > disaster > >happend just as your about to crash. It offers little to system reliability >and data integrity that real ECC can provide. Like Tim O' said years ago >it's all a plot to sell more ram. > > >Allison > > > Parity depends on if you would prefer a crash to silently generating incorrect results. ECC tries to hide the errors, but can still cause a crash if too many bits change. From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 18:17:54 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:17:54 -0800 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <0IPE00HERKKHK8P0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPE00HERKKHK8P0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511031617540707.1BA8B8FD@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 6:45 PM Allison wrote: >Z80 PIO. 16 measily bits of I/O in a 40 pin package. :( What a waste of real estate. >D72055 the last version of the part hit 12mhz. If your going on PCI >why bother and just put a gate array to work Mostly laziness. I could probably also just buy a PCI data acquisition board, if I didn't want Mode 2 I/O (which I do). >Well there are plenty of 8251, 8253, 8259 around, then there are the 2681s >and (gag) 8250 series. Well, the 8259's a CPU support chip, and I tend to think of the 8253/54/57/37 the same way. The 51's a peripheral chip that's had its share of warts, however. The 8250 is a ridiculous National product that can't do sync in a single-channel 40 pin package yet. The Z80 SIO and the Intel 8274 are essentially the same chip that should have probably been made part of the PC instead of the 8250. Speaking of which--I've got a bunch of Z80 DART chips. I've been told that these are really derated Z80 SIO chips. Will they do synchronous I/O or has that part been disabled? I can't find my databook for the things any more. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 18:21:06 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:21:06 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <436AA861.9080504@srv.net> References: <0IPE00KLXKASE2D2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <436AA861.9080504@srv.net> Message-ID: <200511031621060445.1BABA5F5@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 5:16 PM Kevin Handy wrote: >Parity depends on if you would prefer a crash to silently generating >incorrect results. (Insert favorite (perhaps apocryphal) Seymour Cray quote here) >ECC tries to hide the errors, but can still cause a crash if too many >bits change. We used to call it SECDED for exactly that reason. But if you're suddenly encountering multiple bit errors where you had no errors previously, you've got bigger problems. Cheers, Chuck From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 3 18:46:29 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 00:46:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <20051104004629.75900.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > If you ask me the real horror of parity memory is it only tells > you disaster happend just as your about to crash. And 1/9th of the time it's a false positive. Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 3 17:45:42 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 23:45:42 +0000 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436AA126.3010107@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: >> >>OK, so there goes that irritating Intel jingle on yet another commercial >>for a product featuring one of their chips - thus ensuring that I'll >>make darn sure I shop around for alternatives before ever considering >>one of their chips. > > > I avoid Intel chips for a much more practical reason -- they often have > some of the most amazing misfeatures you'll ever see.... Oh, sure. But most people's experience with Intel these days is in buying a CPU for their PC. If the choice then comes down to Intel or AMD - where there's likely not a lot to choose between the two on average when all factors are taken into account - I find it interesting that I'd go for the AMD guys on the grounds that they have the less-irritating advertising. It just made me wonder if computing history has been littered with cases where the advertising might have swayed things (after all, there were probably a lot of 8-bit micros around once where it was difficult to make a choice between them. Or S100 systems. Or PC clones...) I guess it's only recently (relatively) that computer-related ads have been commonplace on mainstream TV though. In the olden days they would have been magazine ads and much easier to skip over if at all annoying! cheers Jules Maybe it's a new thing, though... From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 19:01:38 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:01:38 -0500 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... Message-ID: <0IPE00B9YO38LQ61@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: That darn Intel jingle... > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:17:54 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/3/2005 at 6:45 PM Allison wrote: > >>Z80 PIO. > >16 measily bits of I/O in a 40 pin package. :( What a waste of real >estate. But long lived. >>D72055 the last version of the part hit 12mhz. If your going on PCI >>why bother and just put a gate array to work > >Mostly laziness. I could probably also just buy a PCI data acquisition >board, if I didn't want Mode 2 I/O (which I do). I used 8155s but then again I also use 8085s which work nicely with it. >>Well there are plenty of 8251, 8253, 8259 around, then there are the 2681s >>and (gag) 8250 series. > >Well, the 8259's a CPU support chip, and I tend to think of the >8253/54/57/37 the same way. the 53 (timer),54(Timer), 57(DMA) and 37(better DMA) are not strongly related to any specific CPU and work fine with Z80, 808x even 8048. >The 51's a peripheral chip that's had its share of warts, however. 8251 is wartly enough but ok. The Leading Edge Model D XT clone used it rather than the icky 8250. > The 8250 is a ridiculous National product that >can't do sync in a single-channel 40 pin package yet. The Z80 SIO and the >Intel 8274 are essentially the same chip that should have probably been >made part of the PC instead of the 8250. 8274 is the intel branded NEC D7201, and it's not essentually a Z80 sio it's IS a SIO save for it supports 8080/8085/8088 interrutpts instead. Even the register addresses and functions are the same save those for the interrupts. >Speaking of which--I've got a bunch of Z80 DART chips. I've been told that >these are really derated Z80 SIO chips. Will they do synchronous I/O or >has that part been disabled? I can't find my databook for the things any >more. > >Cheers, >Chuck > DART is Async only, still a good part. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 19:11:30 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:11:30 -0800 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <0IPE00B9YO38LQ61@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPE00B9YO38LQ61@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511031711300551.1BD9CA55@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 8:01 PM Allison wrote: >8274 is the intel branded NEC D7201, and it's not essentually a Z80 sio >it's IS a SIO save for it supports 8080/8085/8088 interrutpts instead. >Even the register addresses and functions are the same save those for >the interrupts. Someone once told me (could be urban legend) that the same guy designed both chips--once for Zilong and then for Intel.. Cheers, Chuck From frustum at pacbell.net Thu Nov 3 20:49:47 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:49:47 -0600 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> Chuck Guzis, With all of your well informed tales, I thought I'd have a go and google you -- and I see that you are the author of anadisk. It hasn't been discussed here in a while, but in the past the legal status of using anadisk (and teledisk) for non profit (hobbyist) uses has been in debated. NTI's web site says: This software can be used to hide data and to duplicate copy protected diskettes. Because of this, distribution of the software is restricted and not made available to the general public. Can you clarify: what is the scoop? Was there an earlier version that had a liberal use policy, or has it always been a no-no to use? If there was such a version, what is the most recent legal version to use? It is funny that the list has the authors of xenocopy (fred cisin), anadisk (chuck guzis), and the up-n-comer imagedisk (dave dunfield). I wonder why the author of teledisk isn't here. :-) Thanks. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 3 21:12:31 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 22:12:31 -0500 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... Message-ID: <0IPE00DZHU5CFIY2@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: That darn Intel jingle... > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:11:30 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/3/2005 at 8:01 PM Allison wrote: > >>8274 is the intel branded NEC D7201, and it's not essentually a Z80 sio >>it's IS a SIO save for it supports 8080/8085/8088 interrutpts instead. >>Even the register addresses and functions are the same save those for >>the interrupts. > >Someone once told me (could be urban legend) that the same guy designed >both chips--once for Zilong and then for Intel.. > >Cheers, >Chuck Definately urban legend. If only because it was licensed to Intel from NEC who designed it. Early intel 8272s were old NEC mask. I even cleaved an early Intel marked ceramic part for a customer to prove it. The design came from NEC Japan. Stuff you learn by being there. Allison From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 19:30:36 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 01:30:36 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511031522030946.1B759835@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 3, 5 03:22:03 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/3/2005 at 7:53 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > >There was a hrrible thing called fake parity memory. It stored 8 bits and > >calaculted the parity bit on a read (ignored the incoming parity bit on a > >write) to keep the memory controller happy. Of course you can't store 9 > >bits in that type of device. > > Of course you can, as long as the bits you're storing agree with the parity > of the 8 bits... Yeah, ad I can store 16 bits per location if the high byte is the same as the low byte :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 19:36:29 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 01:36:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <200511031532440683.1B7F5F10@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 3, 5 03:32:44 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/3/2005 at 6:22 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > >The worst, by far, has to tbe the 8255 parallel chip. That was clearly > >designed by soembody who didn't think what he was doing. For those of you > >who've not read the data sheets, any write to the mode control register > >clears all output port lines to 0. > > For what it is and WHEN it was developed, the 8255 is a pretty good device. Oh come on. It's broken. Fundamentally. For one thing you can't arbitratily set the direction of individual port lines (virtually all other parallel chips let you do that). And that write-to-mode-register-clears-outputs is ridiculous. Even at the time it was designed the latter should have been realised to be a very bad idea. In fact I still wonder why they did it (setting all outputs high would have been mildly more sensible). > There are still new products made that use it (very popular in the data > acquisition area). I can't think of any other single parallel interface I suspect only because it was trivial to link to the ISA bus. Linking up a 6821 (approximate contemporary) was more work. > chip from the 70's that's still puffing along. > > I wish the thing was faster. The NEC 82C55AC variant is good to 10 Mhz, > but that's pretty slow when you're talking about a PCI bus. > > There are precious few of the really good peripheral chips from the early > days of the microprocessor that are still as useful. The Signetics 2651 > USART, maybe? I can think of plenty that would be more useful if they were still being made. The 6522 would come high up the list. -tony From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 3 21:39:34 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:39:34 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436AD7F6.4000804@jetnet.ab.ca> Tony Duell wrote: >Yeah, ad I can store 16 bits per location if the high byte is the same as >the low byte :-) > > > What you want is the 25120 write only memory. http://www.ganssle.com/misc/wom1.jpg http://www.ganssle.com/misc/wom2.jpg >-tony > > From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 19:48:28 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 01:48:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <200511031617540707.1BA8B8FD@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 3, 5 04:17:54 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/3/2005 at 6:45 PM Allison wrote: > > >Z80 PIO. > > 16 measily bits of I/O in a 40 pin package. :( What a waste of real > estate. Well, there are 2 handshake lines for each port from what I remember. So that's 20 pins. Add another 8 for the host-side data bus and two for power, and you've accounted for 30 pins. That leaves 10 for register select, read/write, etc. Since there's no common package between 30 and 40 pins, it seems reasonable to me. > can't do sync in a single-channel 40 pin package yet. The Z80 SIO and the > Intel 8274 are essentially the same chip that should have probably been > made part of the PC instead of the 8250. I thiought there was an IBM I/O card for the PC with an 8274 on it. One of thr two synchonous ones mentioned in the TechRef. No, I've not seen it. > > Speaking of which--I've got a bunch of Z80 DART chips. I've been told that > these are really derated Z80 SIO chips. Will they do synchronous I/O or > has that part been disabled? I can't find my databook for the things any > more. >From what I remember, they are pin compatible with one version of the SIO (rememebr the SIO had 41 pins, really ;-)), and have the same register allocation. I was told they were actually SIOs that had failed on the synchronous side, but I don't know if that logic was disabled or just not used. In any case the Z80 peripherals are very easy to link to the Z80, and harder to link to something else (there's no Wr/ pin, the chip assumes that an I/O cycle without Rd/ and without M1/ is a write, that sort of thing). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 3 19:52:35 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 01:52:35 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <436AD7F6.4000804@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Nov 3, 5 08:39:34 pm Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > > >Yeah, ad I can store 16 bits per location if the high byte is the same as > >the low byte :-) > > > > > > > What you want is the 25120 write only memory. > http://www.ganssle.com/misc/wom1.jpg > http://www.ganssle.com/misc/wom2.jpg Yeah, I've got a reprint of the data sheet in the back of the lab manual for TAoE. More seriously, I have a machine with 16K * 48bit words of memory that can be written under program control, but which can't be read back by said program. This memory has nothing to do with any peripheral device..... -tony From pat at computer-refuge.org Thu Nov 3 22:13:18 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 23:13:18 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511032313.19073.pat@computer-refuge.org> Tony Duell declared on Thursday 03 November 2005 20:52: > > Tony Duell wrote: > > >Yeah, ad I can store 16 bits per location if the high byte is the > > > same as the low byte :-) > > > > What you want is the 25120 write only memory. > > http://www.ganssle.com/misc/wom1.jpg > > http://www.ganssle.com/misc/wom2.jpg > > Yeah, I've got a reprint of the data sheet in the back of the lab > manual for TAoE. > > More seriously, I have a machine with 16K * 48bit words of memory that > can be written under program control, but which can't be read back by > said program. This memory has nothing to do with any peripheral > device..... Is it, say, a microcode store, on maybe a PERQ of some sort? Yes, I do pay attention to what people talk about alot on here. :) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 22:19:35 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:19:35 -0800 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200511032019350069.1C85F957@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 8:49 PM Jim Battle wrote: >Chuck Guzis, > >With all of your well informed tales, I thought I'd have a go and google >you -- >and I see that you are the author of anadisk. ...and a bunch of other stuff, including TeleDisk, CopyQM, 22Disk, etc. The status of TeleDisk and AnaDisk and CopyQM is entirely up to NTI Armor who has owned them since mid-1999. I can't contribute much else, as I'm under an NDA as part of the terms of sale. Hope that helps--or not. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 22:20:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:20:46 -0800 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 8:49 PM Jim Battle wrote: >With all of your well informed tales, I thought I'd have a go and google >you -- >and I see that you are the author of anadisk. You probably also discovered that I play the tuba. Yeah, I know, it's a vice, but nobody's perfect. Cheers, Chuck From cisin at xenosoft.com Thu Nov 3 23:13:04 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 21:13:04 -0800 (PST) Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> On Thu, 3 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > You probably also discovered that I play the tuba. > Yeah, I know, it's a vice, but nobody's perfect. I stopped playing the tuba 40 years ago. My hearing is way too bad to subject anybody to listening to it. OTOH, my sister is a professional concert French Horn player. I still hold all the IP assets for XenoCopy, etc. I won't be releasing them to PD, at least for a while, but I'll upgrade any copies that anybody on the list has to the last outdated version from the 90's without manual for free. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 23:18:32 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:18:32 -0800 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511032118320726.1CBBF3AF@10.0.0.252> On 11/4/2005 at 1:36 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Oh come on. It's broken. Fundamentally. > >For one thing you can't arbitratily set the direction of individual port >lines (virtually all other parallel chips let you do that). And that >write-to-mode-register-clears-outputs is ridiculous. I'll concur with the mode-register write operation as being silly, but apparently it doesn't get in the way for too many people. And setting the direction of I/O pins in groups of 8 or 4 is apparently not a stopper for most people. 24 bits of mode 0 I/O is pretty cool, no? Consider what the alternatives were back in--what was it--1974? (anyone have an exact date?). You needed parallel I/O, you used an 8212. The 8255 was a pretty substantial step forward. It's pretty amazing that it's still around more than 30 years later. >I suspect only because it was trivial to link to the ISA bus. Linking up >a 6821 (approximate contemporary) was more work. I've seen 8255's hooked to 6800's. Also trivial to interface there, as well as Z-80 and a host of other CPUs. >I can think of plenty that would be more useful if they were still being >made. The 6522 would come high up the list. Nothing wrong with a 6522--I've used them myself and found them darned useful. But 8255's are easy to obtain and simple to interface to. Trivia time: Anyone notice that in the PC BIOS listing for the printer port routines, the 8255 is mentioned in a comment? See line 3082 in the listing. Wonder if this means that the original intent was to use an 8255, but changed later? Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 23:22:11 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:22:11 -0800 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200511032122110552.1CBF4A6E@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 9:13 PM Fred Cisin wrote: >I still hold all the IP assets for XenoCopy, etc. >I won't be releasing them to PD, at least for a while, >but I'll upgrade any copies that anybody on the list has to the last >outdated version from the 90's without manual for free. The purchase terms for AD, TD, 22D and CQ allow us to upgrade existing customers to whatever we had as of mid-1999. We can do that via email at no charge. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 3 23:27:58 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:27:58 -0800 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200511032127580879.1CC4971B@10.0.0.252> On 11/3/2005 at 9:13 PM Fred Cisin wrote: >I stopped playing the tuba 40 years ago. >My hearing is way too bad to subject anybody to listening to it. I took up the tuba in 1997, being a nearsighted piano player since I was a kid. My wife encouraged me to take up an instrument that I could be more "sociable" with. I'm still nearsighted, but since then, I've also learned double bass and am setting my sights on learning viola this year. Just another noise to torment the dogs... Are musically-minded people still as commonplace in the computer business as they once were? Cheers, Chuck From nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com Fri Nov 4 01:11:35 2005 From: nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com (nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 23:11:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: Apple II CP/A OS & Language Manuals & TRS80 1979 Newsletters In-Reply-To: <20051103055410.71874.qmail@web81006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20051104071135.27330.qmail@web81010.mail.mud.yahoo.com> This time I've added manuals for the CP/A OS, EASMD and BASIC language from OSS for the Apple II. I was such a nut for alternate languages and operating systems for my Apple II back then. Also added three Radio Shack microcomputer newsletters from 1979. http://www.trailingedge.com/apple2/ http://www.trailingedge.com/trs80/ David From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Fri Nov 4 01:30:04 2005 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 08:30:04 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > > Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words, fewer than 400 > transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about > 40 > watts, exclusive of I/O: So that is 3000 separate components that need to be handled. A 100 TTL packages is probably easier to handle. But yes, a computer without IC's has the higher geek factor. > The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me > that > one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way. > We're not doing this for speed, right? No, but I suspect that for most classes of DIY TTL computers it is actually more complex to make a bitserial machine than a 8 or 12 bit parallel machine. None of the publicised DIY machines is bitserial... I still have a couple of 74hc181. One of these days.... Jos From ak6dn at mindspring.com Fri Nov 4 02:33:57 2005 From: ak6dn at mindspring.com (Don North) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 00:33:57 -0800 Subject: M9312 boot/console PROM archive In-Reply-To: <001c01c5a068$b25a9150$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> References: <001c01c5a068$b25a9150$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> Message-ID: <436B1CF5.4010602@mindspring.com> I've posted a web page that has M9312 PROM images in Intel HEX format as well as commented source and assembly listings of all the well-known devices, both boot and console. Two 'new' images are also included, a revised version of the 'DD' TU58 boot device that allows for a non-standard CSR assignment (the original DEC PROM is very broken in this regard) and a new 'ZZ' device boot PROM that runs the M9312 CPU and memory diagnostics continuously (useful for basic CPU/MEMORY check with no other peripherals). A pointer to the tool set is also provided. I'm still looking for *any* form of image for the TMSCP boot 23-E39A9; if anyone has one of these and can forward the bits (or a real device; I will return it!) I can process it, and we'll have a virtually complete set of all the major devices. Don North ak6dn _at_ mindspring _dot_ com Jay West wrote: > I found one of the rom images I put up was a bad prom. Another one > read consistently but didn't match two other sources. The images have > been replaced. Affected images : 752A9, 248F1, 616F1. I replaced them > after getting multiple other images and comparing, so I'm confident > the ones up now are all correct. > > I'd like to post source listings for the boot programs. Anyone got a > program to re-arrange the bits correctly, then disassemble? > > Jay > From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Fri Nov 4 02:44:23 2005 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 09:44:23 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <20051102181611.6e478acc.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <0IPC00BMIIYVY0MB@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <20051102181611.6e478acc.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <20051104094423.5b609f64.jkunz@unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> On Wed, 2 Nov 2005 18:16:11 -0500 Scott Stevens wrote: > The main thing that has kept me from bringing it up is the difficulty > in getting x86-based machine language development tools going. I'm > used to little 4 and 8-bit assemblers where you can plop down a few > ORG statements and have it all resident in a ROM, and almost all the > x86 asm tools start from the assumption you are running on DOS and > have no direct control of the memory map. http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/as/index.html \begin{cite} AS is a portable macro cross assembler for a variety of microprocessors and -controllers. Though it is mainly targeted at embedded processors and single-board computers, you also find CPU families in the target list that are used in workstations and PCs. \end{cite} -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de Fri Nov 4 04:19:01 2005 From: holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 11:19:01 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436B3595.2080207@ais.fraunhofer.de> Tony Duell wrote: >>There are two aspects IMHO why this does no longer happen today: >>- what was a known magazine in the past, would today perhaps=20 >>realistically called "Un-Popular Electronics", the knowledge of=20 >>electronics from the ground up is dying out; and with the continuing=20 >>"digitalization" of technology, it is an ever increasing hurdle to get=20 >>started - the classical AM detector radio I built as a newbie will=20 >>nowadays no longer attract anyone - you can get a gadget which is better=20 >> >> > >Hmm... There are plenty of books on making simple valve radios still >being written and sold (I bought a couple last week). OH, it's a small >market, but somebody other than myself must find it interesting. > > I should not write postings multi-threaded :-( The argument actually mixes up two ideas; the first is that an AM detector is too mediocre to most people nowadays who are accustomed to FM stereo sound or even 5.1/6.1/7.1/whatever sound even with cheapest receivers. The second point emphasizes on the "digitalization" issue: in the near future there won't be any analogue AM or FM transmissions/transmitters any more; even SW band migrates to DRM now - so success won't be reached anymore with the a variable cap, a coil, a diode, a high-owmed head phone and a reasonable long wire as the antenna. Surely there will be high integrated circuit modules that decode all the stuff, but electronics hobby is not really interesting when reduced to adding a battery to a black box. >However, I don't see much interest in spending a long time soldering up >somebody else's design. All that proves is that you can solder and/or >wire-wrap. To me the interesting part is in the design. Yes, I enjoy >spending many hours designing anf building digital circuits (TTL, I don't >have anything to run FPGA tools on [1]). But I like to think of a bit of >design, wire up 10 or so chips, get that working, then add a bit more, >and so on. It's the stuff I learn while doing it that's interesting, not >the end result. > > Of course. Building some gadget from a kit is just part of learning the usage of the tools. I did this in the very beginning, as almost every newbie, but after a while changed to own experiments. >[1] I did use FPGA tools at work about 10 years ago on what were then >high-end PCs. A moderately complicated circuit would take overnight to >compile. And you had to do it again if you made a change. And hope the >ever-helpful clearners didn't turn your PC off that night. Personally, >for 'incremental prototyping' I find TTL a lot easier and quicker. It's >also easier to debug -- a logic analyser and 'scope beat any simulation >program I've ever seen. > >-tony > > Unfortunately, many of the more interesting TTLs are now no longer easily available (you find lots of octal drivers and registers, but almost none of ALUs, multifunction chips, RAMs - even the classical 7490,7491,7492,7493 combo of counters for any purpose is reduced to 7490/7493 - noone needs to divide by 6 ('92) any more - you don't build digital clocks in TTL) - you have to seek for them in specialized mail-order shops. This is no issue for us old farts who play with such stuff for long time, but it is another hurdle for starters. A kit with all parts is much easier to acquire - but then, agreed, soldering is not the fun part of that hobby. Isn't there more than soldering kits? Sure there is, but things become complicated very fast. This wasn't the case in the 70s and 80s when I began. Regards Holger From vcf at siconic.com Fri Nov 4 04:36:45 2005 From: vcf at siconic.com (Vintage Computer Festival) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 02:36:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: New Bounty: Atari SuperGraphics or 3-D Display System & Game Tool ($$$) Message-ID: Currently looking for 3-D Display System & Game Tool (by Bill Budge) which also had an Atari version (by Paul Lutus). The Atari version may have also been called Atari SuperGraphics. Anyone have it? Contact me ASAP (directly via e-mail). I need it soon :) Thanks! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ] From nico at FARUMDATA.DK Fri Nov 4 06:00:25 2005 From: nico at FARUMDATA.DK (Nico de Jong) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 13:00:25 +0100 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net><200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252><436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net><200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252><20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> <200511032127580879.1CC4971B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <001401c5e137$57488af0$2101a8c0@finans> On 11/3/2005 at 9:13 PM Fred Cisin wrote: Are musically-minded people still as commonplace in the computer business as they once were? Probably. I know a lot of people who play second fiddle :-) Mostly to their wives... Nico From ploopster at gmail.com Fri Nov 4 07:38:03 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 08:38:03 -0500 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <200511032127580879.1CC4971B@10.0.0.252> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> <200511032127580879.1CC4971B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436B643B.4090902@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/3/2005 at 9:13 PM Fred Cisin wrote: > > >>I stopped playing the tuba 40 years ago. >>My hearing is way too bad to subject anybody to listening to it. > > > I took up the tuba in 1997, being a nearsighted piano player since I was a > kid. My wife encouraged me to take up an instrument that I could be more > "sociable" with. > > I'm still nearsighted, but since then, I've also learned double bass and am > setting my sights on learning viola this year. Just another noise to > torment the dogs... > > Are musically-minded people still as commonplace in the computer business > as they once were? I took operatic singing lessons for thirteen years. I'm a large-range tenor. Still sing sometimes. Thinking about singing seriously for the first time in a few years. Peace... Sridhar From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Nov 4 07:50:44 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 13:50:44 -0000 (GMT) Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <436B643B.4090902@gmail.com> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> <200511032127580879.1CC4971B@10.0.0.252> <436B643B.4090902@gmail.com> Message-ID: <36333.195.212.29.92.1131112244.squirrel@www.gjcp.net> > Chuck Guzis wrote: >> Are musically-minded people still as commonplace in the computer >> business >> as they once were? You should have a look at the population of the music software IRC channels. I hang about in #lad and #ardour on freenode, where there is a very broad range of people with different musical interests and abilities. For my part, I started off as a guitarist, learned to play bass as well, found that from those two it was an easy jump to the 'cello, and have dabbled in synthesizers for many years too. Oh, and bagpipes ;-) Gordon. From doc at mdrconsult.com Fri Nov 4 08:13:44 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 09:13:44 -0500 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <200511032127580879.1CC4971B@10.0.0.252> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> <200511032127580879.1CC4971B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436B6C98.6010208@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/3/2005 at 9:13 PM Fred Cisin wrote: > > >>I stopped playing the tuba 40 years ago. >>My hearing is way too bad to subject anybody to listening to it. > > > I took up the tuba in 1997, being a nearsighted piano player since I was a > kid. My wife encouraged me to take up an instrument that I could be more > "sociable" with. > > I'm still nearsighted, but since then, I've also learned double bass and am > setting my sights on learning viola this year. Just another noise to > torment the dogs... > > Are musically-minded people still as commonplace in the computer business > as they once were? Probably. At least among the geeks I know it is. I played violin (parents' choice) and steel guitar (my choice) as a teenager, but after high school my lifestyle was too mobile to keep up with instruments. I love singing, too, and when I worked in the West Texas oilpatch, my crewmates always told me I should sing tenor. Tenor twelve miles down the road, they meant. :) Doc From pkoning at equallogic.com Fri Nov 4 09:09:17 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 10:09:17 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers References: <0IPE00KLXKASE2D2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <436AA861.9080504@srv.net> Message-ID: <17259.31133.438000.261495@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Kevin" == Kevin Handy writes: Kevin> Allison wrote: >> If you ask me the real horror of parity memory is it only tells >> you disaster >> happend just as your about to crash. ... Kevin> Parity depends on if you would prefer a crash to silently Kevin> generating incorrect results. Kevin> ECC tries to hide the errors, but can still cause a crash if Kevin> too many bits change. Correct. And all error checking codes will fail to detect certain errors. Which is the right answer depends on what kind of errors you consider likely enough to worry about, and what recovery you require. paul From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 4 09:21:10 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:21:10 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPF002J1RVKGF96@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: Paul Koning > Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:09:17 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>>>>> "Kevin" == Kevin Handy writes: > > Kevin> Allison wrote: > >> If you ask me the real horror of parity memory is it only tells > >> you disaster > >> happend just as your about to crash. ... > > Kevin> Parity depends on if you would prefer a crash to silently > Kevin> generating incorrect results. > > Kevin> ECC tries to hide the errors, but can still cause a crash if > Kevin> too many bits change. > >Correct. And all error checking codes will fail to detect certain >errors. > >Which is the right answer depends on what kind of errors you consider >likely enough to worry about, and what recovery you require. > > paul There is also the matter of fault tolerence. Parity doen't provide that unless the OS can map out the offending bank and the offending bank isn't in a critical location. ECC can keep you going if you have a stuck bit but it's up to the user/maintence to fix asap. Allison From cheri-post at web.de Fri Nov 4 09:32:32 2005 From: cheri-post at web.de (Pierre Gebhardt) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 16:32:32 +0100 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk Message-ID: <993417125@web.de> > I'm still nearsighted, but since then, I've also learned double bass and am > setting my sights on learning viola this year. Just another noise to > torment the dogs... Wow, double bass, I'd like to play that one! :) > > Are musically-minded people still as commonplace in the computer business > as they once were? > Well yeah, playing bass guitar and piano, composing classical music. Last piece was for orchestra, the current one I'm writing is for piano and cello. Didn't somebody say on the list that he plays the cello? Anyhow, lots of people how are envolved in science/engineering share music as a passion as well. Regards, Pierre __________________________________________________________________________ Erweitern Sie FreeMail zu einem noch leistungsst?rkeren E-Mail-Postfach! Mehr Infos unter http://freemail.web.de/home/landingpad/?mc=021131 From spedraja at ono.com Fri Nov 4 09:33:08 2005 From: spedraja at ono.com (SP) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 16:33:08 +0100 Subject: Searching for PickOs (early version), Oasis/Theos, UCSD Pascal and Prokey References: <0IPF002J1RVKGF96@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <008401c5e155$0e9fca70$1602a8c0@ACER> Hello. I'm cleaning all my PC-XT, PC-AT, and MCA machines. I should like to know if someone has this software available (with documentation if possible): * Prokey (early keyboard macros programming software) * PickOS for PC (early versions to use in PC-XT or AT) * Oasis/Theos (multiuser system appeared in the early ALTOS machines) * UCSD Pascal... the interpreter announced here some time ago is good, but I should like to obtain one copy of the OS for PC. Contact off-list if consider it opportune. Thanks and Greetings Sergio From marvin at rain.org Fri Nov 4 09:56:09 2005 From: marvin at rain.org (Marvin Johnston) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 07:56:09 -0800 Subject: Musical Geeks, was Re: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk Message-ID: <436B8499.93EA0616@rain.org> I've been playing classical piano for quite a few years and started taking lessons about 15 years ago from someone who was good. We became friends as well, and I'd still be taking lessons if she hadn't died 5 years ago (89 years old.) It would be nice to have the time to learn to sight read :). On 11/3/2005 at 9:13 PM Fred Cisin wrote: >I stopped playing the tuba 40 years ago. >My hearing is way too bad to subject anybody to listening to it. I took up the tuba in 1997, being a nearsighted piano player since I was a kid. My wife encouraged me to take up an instrument that I could be more "sociable" with. I'm still nearsighted, but since then, I've also learned double bass and am setting my sights on learning viola this year. Just another noise to torment the dogs... Are musically-minded people still as commonplace in the computer business as they once were? Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 4 11:19:25 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:19:25 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPF002J1RVKGF96@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPF002J1RVKGF96@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <436B981D.1040606@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >There is also the matter of fault tolerence. Parity doen't provide that >unless the OS can map out the offending bank and the offending bank >isn't in a critical location. ECC can keep you going if you have a >stuck bit but it's up to the user/maintence to fix asap. > > > But does any software even consider being able to be rolled back from a check point nowdays? With a well designed virtual memory system ( no gui stuff I guess ) a process that takes several days? or more to process needs to interuptable and saveable. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 4 11:30:13 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:30:13 -0700 Subject: Ot: Xtal radio In-Reply-To: <436B3595.2080207@ais.fraunhofer.de> References: <436B3595.2080207@ais.fraunhofer.de> Message-ID: <436B9AA5.5050200@jetnet.ab.ca> Holger Veit wrote: >> > I should not write postings multi-threaded :-( The argument actually > mixes up two ideas; the first is that an AM > detector is too mediocre to most people nowadays who are accustomed to > FM stereo sound or even > 5.1/6.1/7.1/whatever sound even with cheapest receivers. Hey around here Am or FM is all crappy music, so even the $4.99 radio sounds good. > The second point emphasizes on the "digitalization" issue: > in the near future there won't be any analogue AM or FM > transmissions/transmitters any more; even SW band migrates > to DRM now - so success won't be reached anymore with the a variable > cap, a coil, a diode, a high-owmed head phone > and a reasonable long wire as the antenna. Surely there will be high > integrated circuit modules that decode all the stuff, but > electronics hobby is not really interesting when reduced to adding a > battery to a black box. > Xtal radio is making a come back. http://www.schmarder.com/radios/index.htm /* some modern sets that work real well */ http://www.crystalradio.net/ /* a nice site */ /* you know you have been programing in C too long today .. */ :) From spedraja at ono.com Fri Nov 4 11:59:37 2005 From: spedraja at ono.com (SP) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 18:59:37 +0100 Subject: Nixdorf BA80/84 References: <436B3595.2080207@ais.fraunhofer.de> <436B9AA5.5050200@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <00d101c5e169$85d5bc80$1602a8c0@ACER> Hi again. I've just begin to review my Nixdorf 8870. Works, but it don't has any terminal available. I should like to obtain one BA80/84 terminal, or one cable to connect the the Nixdorf to one PC using Kermit (it has BA80 emulation support). I am not sure about the RS232 connector of the Nixdorf, this is the reason. All information (or items like these) will be welcome. Thanks Sergio From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 4 12:09:09 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:09:09 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPF002XJZNHGFU6@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: woodelf > Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:19:25 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>There is also the matter of fault tolerence. Parity doen't provide that >>unless the OS can map out the offending bank and the offending bank >>isn't in a critical location. ECC can keep you going if you have a >>stuck bit but it's up to the user/maintence to fix asap. >> >> >> >But does any software even consider being able to be rolled back from a >check point nowdays? >With a well designed virtual memory system ( no gui stuff I guess ) a >process that takes several >days? or more to process needs to interuptable and saveable. I think VMS and a few of the real OSs do but PCs nah. Allison From alanp at snowmoose.com Fri Nov 4 12:11:28 2005 From: alanp at snowmoose.com (Alan Perry) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:11:28 -0800 Subject: disk space for manuals and how complete is manx Message-ID: <436BA450.6060105@snowmoose.com> I have finally gotten around to scanning my manuals for my VAX 11/750. However, the web hosting company for my domain has low disk space limits compared to the size of the scanned manuals. Is there somewhere that I can put the scanned manuals where people can get to them? Also, I have been using manx to determine what manuals need to be scanned. Are the references to online docs on manx complete as far as what manuals are available online? alan From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 4 12:32:04 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:32:04 -0800 Subject: Ot: Xtal radio In-Reply-To: <436B9AA5.5050200@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <436B3595.2080207@ais.fraunhofer.de> <436B9AA5.5050200@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511041032040900.1F92791E@10.0.0.252> On 11/4/2005 at 10:30 AM woodelf wrote: >> The second point emphasizes on the "digitalization" issue: >> in the near future there won't be any analogue AM or FM >> transmissions/transmitters any more; even SW band migrates >> to DRM now - so success won't be reached anymore with the a variable >> cap, a coil, a diode, a high-owmed head phone >> and a reasonable long wire as the antenna. Surely there will be high >> integrated circuit modules that decode all the stuff, but >> electronics hobby is not really interesting when reduced to adding a >> battery to a black box. I hear you! I was a big SWL addict, but a lot of broadcasters have discontinued SW broadcast in favor of satellite or internet feeds. I don't blame them--SW is capricious at best when it comes to reception, but deserting the SW broadcast bands is still pretty sad. At home, since I'm hooked 24/7 to the net, I feed the same stuff (and more) to the home FM receivers that I used to listen to on SW. Stereo, yet. I've still got about a dozen tunnel diodes in my hellbox that I've never used. Maybe it's time to build a little receiver using one just for the heck of it. Somewhat related, there's an interesting site that talks about building your own negative-resistance devices from odds and ends: http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/ Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 4 18:44:28 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 00:44:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511032313.19073.pat@computer-refuge.org> from "Patrick Finnegan" at Nov 3, 5 11:13:18 pm Message-ID: > > More seriously, I have a machine with 16K * 48bit words of memory that > > can be written under program control, but which can't be read back by > > said program. This memory has nothing to do with any peripheral > > device..... > > Is it, say, a microcode store, on maybe a PERQ of some sort? Of course. The processor can write to the control store, it can execute the control store's contents as microinstructions, but it can't read it back as 48 bit words. Of course at the hwardware level the control store is being read when the instructions are executed, the RAMs do have conventional data outputs, etc. I should have made it more difficult by specifying I had a 24 bit machine wit said 16K*48 bit memory. Firstly some people would probably have assumed that there was significance in the fact that the memory width was twice the word size (there isn't, all classic-PERQs have 48 bit wide microcode), and secondly, most PERQs are 20 bit machines, the 24 bit one is moderately uncommon (to put it mildly) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 4 18:49:33 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 00:49:33 +0000 (GMT) Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <200511032118320726.1CBBF3AF@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 3, 5 09:18:32 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/4/2005 at 1:36 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > >Oh come on. It's broken. Fundamentally. > > > >For one thing you can't arbitratily set the direction of individual port > >lines (virtually all other parallel chips let you do that). And that > >write-to-mode-register-clears-outputs is ridiculous. > > I'll concur with the mode-register write operation as being silly, but > apparently it doesn't get in the way for too many people. And setting the I have long since realised that the worse a chip is, the more liklely it is to become popular :-). Same applies to most other things, actually. > direction of I/O pins in groups of 8 or 4 is apparently not a stopper for > most people. 24 bits of mode 0 I/O is pretty cool, no? Personally, I'd rather have the 20 I/O lines you get from a 6522.... > > Consider what the alternatives were back in--what was it--1974? (anyone > have an exact date?). You needed parallel I/O, you used an 8212. The 8255 > was a pretty substantial step forward. It's pretty amazing that it's > still around more than 30 years later. My experience is that if you have an application where there's a fixed direction (and no need for the handshake modes of the 8255), it's simpler to use the '574 for output and '541 for input. If you want a versatile solution, you might as well use one of the better I/O chips. The 8255 is somewhat 'in the middle' -- more complex than it needs be for simple applications, but not complicated enough for some of the more difficult ones. > I've seen 8255's hooked to 6800's. Also trivial to interface there, as > well as Z-80 and a host of other CPUs. In a moment of maddness I once linked an 8255 (hey, it was in the junkbox...) to the 6809 bus of a CoCo. I got so upset by the misfeatures of that chip I went and got a 6522 (which is, of course, trivial to link to the 6809) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 4 19:09:08 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 01:09:08 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436B3595.2080207@ais.fraunhofer.de> from "Holger Veit" at Nov 4, 5 11:19:01 am Message-ID: > >Hmm... There are plenty of books on making simple valve radios still > >being written and sold (I bought a couple last week). OH, it's a small > >market, but somebody other than myself must find it interesting. > > > > > I should not write postings multi-threaded :-( The argument actually > mixes up two ideas; the first is that an AM > detector is too mediocre to most people nowadays who are accustomed to > FM stereo sound or even COnsiderign the terrible row made by those infernal MP3 players in cellphones that I seem to hear everywhere now, I can't believe many of the younger generation care about sound quality at all. > 5.1/6.1/7.1/whatever sound even with cheapest receivers. The second > point emphasizes on the "digitalization" issue: > in the near future there won't be any analogue AM or FM > transmissions/transmitters any more; even SW band migrates THis ia a great pity, and actually, given the number of cheap radios around, I wonder if it will ever happen. I can't believe the public will accept having to replace doxens of sets. > Of course. Building some gadget from a kit is just part of learning the > usage of the tools. I did this in the very beginning, > as almost every newbie, but after a while changed to own experiments. I do still occasionally build kits. I do it if I want the end result, and by building the kit (a) I know it's been built properly and (b) I get a schematic. For example by bench PSU was built from a kit. Yes, I could design one, but actually, the kit was no more expensive than buying the bits separately. > Unfortunately, many of the more interesting TTLs are now no longer > easily available (you find lots of octal > drivers and registers, but almost none of ALUs, multifunction chips, > RAMs - even the classical > 7490,7491,7492,7493 combo of counters for any purpose is reduced to > 7490/7493 - noone > needs to divide by 6 ('92) any more - you don't build digital clocks in > TTL) - you have to seek for > them in specialized mail-order shops. This is no issue for us old farts > who play with such stuff for > long time, but it is another hurdle for starters. A kit with all parts > is much easier to acquire - but then, Waht somebody needs to do (and it can't be me for obvious reasons) is to select some CPLDs/FPGAs where the download protocol is documented (that is, you can progam the chip, given the binary file, without a proprietary programmer), and use the tools (that's why it can't be me) to make some useful logic functions -- things like an bit universal shift register, bit ALU, counters, even JK flip-flops, gates, etc. Make the binary files available for free download. Anyone wanting to experiment with logic and not wanting to use the horrible CAD tools under an even worse OS, can then program up some chips with the appropriate files and use the resulting devices like the TTL of old. -tony From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 4 20:28:09 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 18:28:09 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511041828090554.21465250@10.0.0.252> On 11/5/2005 at 1:09 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Waht somebody needs to do (and it can't be me for obvious reasons) is to >select some CPLDs/FPGAs where the download protocol is documented (that >is, you can progam the chip, given the binary file, without a proprietary >programmer), and use the tools (that's why it can't be me) to make some >useful logic functions -- things like an bit universal shift >register, bit ALU, counters, even JK flip-flops, gates, etc. Make the >binary files available for free download. Hey, nobody did it with PALs, why would they do it with something more complex? From gilcarrick at comcast.net Fri Nov 4 20:49:45 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 20:49:45 -0600 Subject: disk space for manuals and how complete is manx In-Reply-To: <436BA450.6060105@snowmoose.com> Message-ID: <200511050300.jA530SLA061965@keith.ezwind.net> If you get no other taker, we have lots of space. Gil A. G. (Gil) Carrick, Director The Museum at CSE University of Texas at Arlington Department of Computer Science & Engineering Box 19015, 471 S Cooper Street Arlington, TX 76019 817-272-3620 http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/ > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Alan Perry > Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 12:11 PM > To: cctech at classiccmp.org > Subject: disk space for manuals and how complete is manx > > > I have finally gotten around to scanning my manuals for my > VAX 11/750. > However, the web hosting company for my domain has low disk > space limits compared to the size of the scanned manuals. Is > there somewhere that I can put the scanned manuals where > people can get to them? > > Also, I have been using manx to determine what manuals need > to be scanned. Are the references to online docs on manx > complete as far as what manuals are available online? > > alan > From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Fri Nov 4 22:13:19 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 22:13:19 Subject: FA: IBM DISPLAYWRITER SYSTEM MANUALS AND DISKS, VINTAGE Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051104221319.3ebfe16c@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Ebay Item number: 8717977665. Located in England :-( Joe From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 4 20:21:27 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 02:21:27 +0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436C1727.8090901@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: >>5.1/6.1/7.1/whatever sound even with cheapest receivers. The second >>point emphasizes on the "digitalization" issue: >>in the near future there won't be any analogue AM or FM >>transmissions/transmitters any more; even SW band migrates > > > THis ia a great pity, and actually, given the number of cheap radios > around, I wonder if it will ever happen. I can't believe the public will > accept having to replace doxens of sets. Well UK terrestrial analogue TV's getting canned in what, five years? So far there seems to be no outcry whatsoever, yet I'm amazed that people aren't up in arms about having to fork out for a new set (or several, in the case of most households), or at least a cable box and having to sign up for cable TV. I expect it's way too late to stop the switch-off too, as the cable / satellite people will be in bed with the Government by now and of course the Government are convinced that digital-everything is the way forward for our society... Personally I like my 4 channels (Cambridge uni's astronomy forbid us from receiving channel 5 up around Cambridge) when compared to cable. Cable might have way more choice, but the programming quality's a lot poorer, there are way more adverts, and the broadcast quality isn't up to much compared to analogue either with signal drop-outs all over the place... >>Of course. Building some gadget from a kit is just part of learning the >>usage of the tools. I did this in the very beginning, >>as almost every newbie, but after a while changed to own experiments. > > I do still occasionally build kits. I do it if I want the end result, and > by building the kit (a) I know it's been built properly and (b) I get a > schematic. For example by bench PSU was built from a kit. Yes, I could > design one, but actually, the kit was no more expensive than buying the > bits separately. I find the building is 99% of the fun and the using is 1%, no matter what the gadget. I'm just a sucker for seeing how things work (whether done well or not) regardless of what they are... cheers Jules From trixter at oldskool.org Fri Nov 4 22:03:27 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 22:03:27 -0600 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? Message-ID: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org> I won this disk in an auction: "IBM Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library | Diagnostics | v2.02" ...only to find that it had been reformatted and filled with someone's Turbo C homework assignments (argh!). Does anyone have this diskette image available for download? I'd like to restore it to the original diskette to make it whole again. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Fri Nov 4 22:26:44 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 22:26:44 -0600 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <993417125@web.de> References: <993417125@web.de> Message-ID: <436C3484.4090700@oldskool.org> Pierre Gebhardt wrote: > > Well yeah, playing bass guitar and piano, composing classical music. Last piece was for orchestra, > the current one I'm writing is for piano and cello. > Didn't somebody say on the list that he plays the cello? > Anyhow, lots of people how are envolved in science/engineering share music as a passion as well. Yes, although I'm surprised more people on this list who are musically inclined never got into electronic music (both composing and designing software/hardware). At least, most of the people who have spoken up haven't said so. I sang concert choir for a long time throughout school and was eventually invited to sing a John Rutter piece at Carnegie Hall, a moment I will never forget. Dropped singing altogether once I hit college though. But what I have always loved is coaxing music out of computer that were never meant to do it. Music Construction Set is a high point of my childhood -- 4 seperate voices (using Pulse-Width Modulation, I guess?) out of the 5150 speaker. Using such a pure instrument -- where each voice is exactly the same timbre -- really helped me appreciate classical music, for example. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From pcw at mesanet.com Fri Nov 4 22:31:25 2005 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 20:31:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 5 Nov 2005, Tony Duell wrote: > >> Unfortunately, many of the more interesting TTLs are now no longer >> easily available (you find lots of octal >> drivers and registers, but almost none of ALUs, multifunction chips, >> RAMs - even the classical >> 7490,7491,7492,7493 combo of counters for any purpose is reduced to >> 7490/7493 - noone >> needs to divide by 6 ('92) any more - you don't build digital clocks in >> TTL) - you have to seek for >> them in specialized mail-order shops. This is no issue for us old farts >> who play with such stuff for >> long time, but it is another hurdle for starters. A kit with all parts >> is much easier to acquire - but then, > > Waht somebody needs to do (and it can't be me for obvious reasons) is to > select some CPLDs/FPGAs where the download protocol is documented (that > is, you can progam the chip, given the binary file, without a proprietary > programmer), and use the tools (that's why it can't be me) to make some > useful logic functions -- things like an bit universal shift > register, bit ALU, counters, even JK flip-flops, gates, etc. Make the > binary files available for free download.> > Anyone wanting to experiment with logic and not wanting to use the > horrible CAD tools under an even worse OS, can then program up some chips > with the appropriate files and use the resulting devices like the TTL of old. > > -tony > I think that most if not all of the ISP (In System Programmable) CPLDs have documented download protocols so that they can be reprogrammed by microcontrollers. Xilinx even has a smaller binary varient of SVF files (XSVF) just for this purpose. Only problem is most of the newer, easy to program parts are in surface mount packages, though PLCC 44s are not too bad. A Xilinx 9536XL in that package is about a dollar, a 9572XL about $2. I Believe someone has made a complete CPU (but no memory) in a chip somewhat smaller than the 9536... Peter Wallace From chenmel at earthlink.net Fri Nov 4 22:42:56 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 23:42:56 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20051104234256.24ceda15.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Fri, 4 Nov 2005 20:31:25 -0800 (PST) "Peter C. Wallace" wrote: > On Sat, 5 Nov 2005, Tony Duell wrote: > > > >> Unfortunately, many of the more interesting TTLs are now no longer > >> easily available (you find lots of octal > >> drivers and registers, but almost none of ALUs, multifunction chips, > >> RAMs - even the classical > >> 7490,7491,7492,7493 combo of counters for any purpose is reduced to > >> 7490/7493 - noone > >> needs to divide by 6 ('92) any more - you don't build digital clocks in > >> TTL) - you have to seek for > >> them in specialized mail-order shops. This is no issue for us old farts > >> who play with such stuff for > >> long time, but it is another hurdle for starters. A kit with all parts > >> is much easier to acquire - but then, > > > > Waht somebody needs to do (and it can't be me for obvious reasons) is to > > select some CPLDs/FPGAs where the download protocol is documented (that > > is, you can progam the chip, given the binary file, without a proprietary > > programmer), and use the tools (that's why it can't be me) to make some > > useful logic functions -- things like an bit universal shift > > register, bit ALU, counters, even JK flip-flops, gates, etc. Make the > > binary files available for free download.> > > Anyone wanting to experiment with logic and not wanting to use the > > horrible CAD tools under an even worse OS, can then program up some chips > > with the appropriate files and use the resulting devices like the TTL of old. > > > > -tony > > > > I think that most if not all of the ISP (In System Programmable) CPLDs have > documented download protocols so that they can be reprogrammed by > microcontrollers. Xilinx even has a smaller binary varient of SVF files (XSVF) > just for this purpose. > > Only problem is most of the newer, easy to program parts are in surface mount > packages, though PLCC 44s are not too bad. A Xilinx 9536XL in that package is > about a dollar, a 9572XL about $2. I Believe someone has made a complete CPU > (but no memory) in a chip somewhat smaller than the 9536... > An interesting development that I have noted is people selling modern FPGA chips on salvaged boards on eBay, i.e. the chip all soldered onto a card and ready for hobbyists to fool with. I am talking about 'salvage' boards, meaning in at least several instances it looked like the area of the board with the FPGA on it had been cut out with a tinsnips. The FPGA and board was salvaged from some bigger project. In many designs, there is a hole-per-pad zone surrounding the whole FPGA for testing purposes, and the chips can be 'recycled' in this fashion pretty easily. It gives people who want to fool with these chips an easy way to get at them without needing to do any fine-pitch SMD soldering. Sort of the poor-mans 'development board' (i.e. the more pricey eval boards that Xilinx and Altera sell) -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From pcw at mesanet.com Fri Nov 4 23:21:59 2005 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 21:21:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <20051104234256.24ceda15.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <20051104234256.24ceda15.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Scott Stevens wrote: > On Fri, 4 Nov 2005 20:31:25 -0800 (PST) > "Peter C. Wallace" wrote: > >> On Sat, 5 Nov 2005, Tony Duell wrote: >>> >>>> Unfortunately, many of the more interesting TTLs are now no longer >>>> easily available (you find lots of octal >>>> drivers and registers, but almost none of ALUs, multifunction chips, >>>> RAMs - even the classical >>>> 7490,7491,7492,7493 combo of counters for any purpose is reduced to >>>> 7490/7493 - noone >>>> needs to divide by 6 ('92) any more - you don't build digital clocks in >>>> TTL) - you have to seek for >>>> them in specialized mail-order shops. This is no issue for us old farts >>>> who play with such stuff for >>>> long time, but it is another hurdle for starters. A kit with all parts >>>> is much easier to acquire - but then, >>> >>> Waht somebody needs to do (and it can't be me for obvious reasons) is to >>> select some CPLDs/FPGAs where the download protocol is documented (that >>> is, you can progam the chip, given the binary file, without a proprietary >>> programmer), and use the tools (that's why it can't be me) to make some >>> useful logic functions -- things like an bit universal shift >>> register, bit ALU, counters, even JK flip-flops, gates, etc. Make the >>> binary files available for free download.> >>> Anyone wanting to experiment with logic and not wanting to use the >>> horrible CAD tools under an even worse OS, can then program up some chips >>> with the appropriate files and use the resulting devices like the TTL of old. >>> >>> -tony >>> >> >> I think that most if not all of the ISP (In System Programmable) CPLDs have >> documented download protocols so that they can be reprogrammed by >> microcontrollers. Xilinx even has a smaller binary varient of SVF files (XSVF) >> just for this purpose. >> >> Only problem is most of the newer, easy to program parts are in surface mount >> packages, though PLCC 44s are not too bad. A Xilinx 9536XL in that package is >> about a dollar, a 9572XL about $2. I Believe someone has made a complete CPU >> (but no memory) in a chip somewhat smaller than the 9536... >> > > An interesting development that I have noted is people selling modern FPGA > chips on salvaged boards on eBay, i.e. the chip all soldered onto a card and > ready for hobbyists to fool with. I am talking about 'salvage' boards, > meaning in at least several instances it looked like the area of the board > with the FPGA on it had been cut out with a tinsnips. The FPGA and board > was salvaged from some bigger project. > > In many designs, there is a hole-per-pad zone surrounding the whole FPGA for > testing purposes, and the chips can be 'recycled' in this fashion pretty > easily. It gives people who want to fool with these chips an easy way to > get at them without needing to do any fine-pitch SMD soldering. Sort of the > poor-mans 'development board' (i.e. the more pricey eval boards that Xilinx > and Altera sell) Interesting, and you also get the power planes and bypassing done for you. Another thing I have have seen is people getting large de-balled BGA FPGAs cheap from EBay and soldering bypasses and wires to the pads where the balls used to be (upside down BGA breadboard) > > > -- > http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html > Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 4 23:27:05 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 21:27:05 -0800 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org> References: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <200511042127050119.21EA202A@10.0.0.252> On 11/4/2005 at 10:03 PM Jim Leonard wrote: >I won this disk in an auction: > >"IBM Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library | Diagnostics | v2.02" I've got 1.02, if that's any help. This is the disk that one often finds tucked away in the back of the reddish 3-ring binder labele "IBM Personal Computer Guide to Operations" that accompanied every PC. Most of the time, the books were never opened, so the disks can often be found, still in the back pocket of the book, never touched. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 5 00:27:15 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 23:27:15 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511041828090554.21465250@10.0.0.252> References: <200511041828090554.21465250@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436C50C3.6020608@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/5/2005 at 1:09 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > > > >>Waht somebody needs to do (and it can't be me for obvious reasons) is to >>select some CPLDs/FPGAs where the download protocol is documented (that >>is, you can progam the chip, given the binary file, without a proprietary >>programmer), and use the tools (that's why it can't be me) to make some >>useful logic functions -- things like an bit universal shift >>register, bit ALU, counters, even JK flip-flops, gates, etc. Make the >>binary files available for free download. >> >> > >Hey, nobody did it with PALs, why would they do it with something more >complex? > > Yes I think you can still do that with the orginal PAL's that they don't make. If I remember right the early pals were programmed as 512x8 fuse roms. The fuse map was a one-to-one mapping as you have with the logic diagram. The Cypress semiconductor data book has programing information on their PAL's but the data book is from the 90's. From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Wed Nov 2 10:00:32 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 08:00:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: Good source for write-protect/enable tabs Message-ID: <200511021600.IAA28453@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "der Mouse" > >> Does anyone have any suggestions on where more [write protect/enable >> stickers] can be obtained? Note that these have to be the removable >> opaque BLACK tabs. > >Surely it's easy enough to take small white sticky-tabs such as can be >found at pretty much any office-supply store (at least around here) and >liberally blacken them with a black felt-tip pen? > Hi der Mouse You might be surprised, even that may not be enough. I've done that once and it wasn't enough. You need to remember that many drive use infrared LED's that shine right through things we would think were opaque. I find what works best is simply use a small piece of aluminum foil and a slightly larger piece a clear tape. One could even make up a batch of them and put then in a handy place. Dwight From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Wed Nov 2 10:42:05 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:42:05 -0500 Subject: Mini Jumpers for 68 pin SCSI drives In-Reply-To: <4368E6D0.2080203@gmail.com> References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> <4368E54F.9000401@vzavenue.net> <4368E6D0.2080203@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6.2.5.4.2.20051102113814.03172b00@boff-net.dhs.org> MOC (Microcomputer Office Connections and) Consulting, Ltd. in Wappingers Falls, NY, USA. I don't know what is carried there any more or even if it is still in business. Haven't worked there in over 2 years and I heard they went through restructuring. Even their web site has been up and down and redone a few times now. www.mocconsulting.com The pathetic part is that whoever is doing the site is just reusing and resizing images I legally obtained from manufacturers years ago for the new site. Figures... -John Boffemmyer IV At 11:18 AM 11/2/2005, you wrote: >James Rice wrote: >>Teo Zenios wrote: >> >>>Anybody know of a cheap source for mini jumpers for SCSI HD's? I looked in >>>my parts box and I have quite a few of the normal sized jumpers but none of >>>the minis and need a dozen or two for a SCSI tower I am working on. >>> >>>The drives I am using are all factory set to ID 6 (IBM drives) and don't >>>have any jumpers at all on ID select pins. I assume that once you jumper the >>>apropriate pins it will overide the factory settings? The SCSI tower has the >>>normal sized ID select cabled and they are too large to fit the drives so I >>>need to do it via jumpers. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>Fry's usually carries them. They run around $4 a bag of 20 or so. > >The store John Boffemmyer used to work for had 10 for 70 cents. > >Peace... Sridhar -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.7/156 - Release Date: 11/2/2005 From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Wed Nov 2 10:48:24 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:48:24 -0500 Subject: Mini Jumpers for 68 pin SCSI drives In-Reply-To: <4368E6D0.2080203@gmail.com> References: <200511021526.jA2FQpbg099826@keith.ezwind.net> <002c01c5dfc3$5cac7530$0500fea9@game> <004e01c5dfc5$4f51a7f0$0500fea9@game> <4368E54F.9000401@vzavenue.net> <4368E6D0.2080203@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6.2.5.4.2.20051102114706.0312c128@boff-net.dhs.org> ... Did you try NewardinOne (Newark Electronics) or Allied Electronics or even Mouser Electronics? I'm quite sure at least 2 of them have the jumpers. -John Boffemmyer IV At 11:18 AM 11/2/2005, you wrote: >James Rice wrote: >>Teo Zenios wrote: >> >>>Anybody know of a cheap source for mini jumpers for SCSI HD's? I looked in >>>my parts box and I have quite a few of the normal sized jumpers but none of >>>the minis and need a dozen or two for a SCSI tower I am working on. >>> >>>The drives I am using are all factory set to ID 6 (IBM drives) and don't >>>have any jumpers at all on ID select pins. I assume that once you jumper the >>>apropriate pins it will overide the factory settings? The SCSI tower has the >>>normal sized ID select cabled and they are too large to fit the drives so I >>>need to do it via jumpers. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>Fry's usually carries them. They run around $4 a bag of 20 or so. > >The store John Boffemmyer used to work for had 10 for 70 cents. > >Peace... Sridhar -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.7/156 - Release Date: 11/2/2005 From pep731 at optonline.net Wed Nov 2 13:57:15 2005 From: pep731 at optonline.net (Frank Cartieri) Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:57:15 -0500 Subject: Sharp PC7000 Message-ID: <000601c5dfe7$9ffaa450$d300a8c0@homelm2xnpnhxe> DID YA EVER PICK UP THAT PC7000 COMPUTER? IF SO I HAVE ONE BUT I LOST ORIGINAL DOS DISK. IF POSSIBLE I NEED A COPY FOR IT'S DIAGNOSTIC PROGRAM WHICH IS ON THE DISK (PCDIAG2) From trag at io.com Wed Nov 2 14:37:50 2005 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 14:37:50 -0600 Subject: Cypress CY7C371U Info/Datasheet In-Reply-To: <200511021800.jA2I0AR4081137@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511021800.jA2I0AR4081137@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: There are 10s of thousands of these CPLDs on the market at reasonable prices (<$1 each) and I might like to use them to build some of my projects of expansion cards for older machines. However, I can not find a datasheet which mentions the 'U' variant of the CY7C371. I found a datasheet for the CY7C371 and CY7C371L. And Cypress only has the sheets for the newer CY7C371i version (in-system-programmable). But none of these mentions the U variant. I would hate to pick up the U variant only to discover that it is OTP or something. Anyone have info or a datasheet for the U variant? Is there a secret/obscure link on Cypress's website that leads to datasheets for obsolete parts? As far as I can tell, once it's obsolete they yank all support from their site. Sigh. I like Samsung's more enlightened approach, where datasheets for memory discontinued years ago are still available--so far. Thank you for any helpful or humorous information. Jeff Walther From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 2 15:00:06 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 22:00:06 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem - first measurement results Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE21E1@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Tony wrote: > This suggests it is correctly counting the digits you enter (or shifting > them into a register), but is not displaying them correctly. And it is > only updating the bottom 8 bits. > As you probably know, the console is controlled by an 8008 > microprocessor. Of course it's an 8 bit device. Maybe some 'carry' is not > working correctly. > > What does it do if you press 4 repeatedly? Does it flash the bottom 3 or > bottom 2 digits? If it's only updating the bottom 8 bits, you see, then > only 2 digits will flash from 0. Indeed, pressing the "4" only flashes the last two digits! How did you know that ?! Anyway, here are the results of this evening. I write down everything, so you can read the good and the bad things I found ... First the BA11K box configuration. slot position board(s) -------------------------------- 1 A - F M8266 2 A - F M8265 3 C - D G7273 4 A-B C-F M9312,M7859 5 C - D G7273 6 C - D G7273 7 C - D G7273 8 C - D G7273 9 A-B C-D M9302,G7273 Next, the response on the display from the keypad. I always started with pressing "CLR", then repeatedly the same key. The rightmost (lsb) display is called "A", the one next to it is called "B", the leftmost (msb) display is called "F". button display reaction (1st time, 2nd, 3rd, etc) -------------------------------------------------------- 0 nothing to see 1 nothing to see 2 A , B , C , C , C, etc. 3 A , B , C , C , C, etc. 4 A , B , B , B , B, etc. (as Tony predicted!) 5 A , B , B , B , B, etc. 6 A , B , C , C , C, etc. 7 nothing to see LSR SR DISP LED goes on The LAD, DIS AD, EXAM, and DEP keys seems to give no response. However, if I pressed LSR, and the SR DISP LED is on, pressing any key will turn of that LED. Even the CNTRL key ...! The printset was my lead, so I started from the beginning: the flat cable from the console to the M7859 module. All 20 wires check out OK, so one problem source eliminated. 3rd page of the printset. I checked the +5V and GND faston, and measured a clean 5.15 V. 4th page of the printset. Here are all keypad switches and the console LEDs connected to the flat cable. The switches are grouped connected to NAND gates (8881), and 4 gates are stobed by a signal "READ x H", where "x" is 1,2,3,4,5. They form a scanned matrix as follows: signal | J1 #6 J1 #7 J1 #8 J1 #9 ---------+--------------------------------------- READ 1 H | START BOOT CONT HLT/SS READ 2 H | CNTRL 3 6 DEP READ 3 H | INIT 2 5 EXAM READ 4 H | 0 1 4 7 READ 5 H | CLR LSR LAD DIS AD The "READ x H" signal is derived from the pins 18 (READ 1 H) thru pin 13 (READ 5 H) on connector J1, via 7404 inverters, and they all have the following wave form: <---- 22 msec ----> _____ _____________________ | | | | | | |____| |__ --> <--- 4 ms I didn't check the timing relation between the "READ x H" signals. The signals on the combined output of the 8881's have the following wave form: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] ________ __ __ __ __ __________ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |_____| |_____| |_____| |_____| |_____| The number between the square brackets indicates the "READ x H" signal. So when "BOOT" is pressed the low signal during the time interval [1] goes logic high. Likewise, when I press the EXAM key time interval [3] goes logic high. So, keypad scanning looks OK to me, as the X-Y matrix works fine. 5th page of the printset. Pin 19 of the connector J1 carries 5,04 V. That's OK. This page shows the six 7-segment displays with the 7447 decoder, the mentioned 7404 inverters for the scanning matrix signal, and the "DRIVE xL" which are also derived from connector J1, pins 18 thru 13, via a buffer 7417. Since "READ x H" is OK, I assume that "DRIVE x L" is also OK ... it must be, otherwise the six 7-segment displays would not be lit ! Last 3 signals are the display values (3-bit) to the 7447 input A, B, and C. On connector J1 pins 12, 11, and 10 respectively. As always, the last thing to check should have been the first! These 3 signals are continously 0 V. That explains why the display always shows "000000". I can see a short positive pulse when a key of the keypad is pressed. This leads me to the following (early) conclusions. 1) the keypad is scanned. All "X" signals of the matrix (READ x H) are OK, and all "Y" signals of the matrix (the 8881 outputs) are all valid, and give the correct information when a key is pressed. 2) When a key is pressed it is momentarily shown on the display, but then the value returns to all zero. I can not see the value, so it could be any garbage ... 6th page of the printset. This shows the component layout of the M7859 module. Noteworthy is the connector J1, top left. This is the pinning when viewed at the component side of the module: ________________________________________ | #19 . . . . . . . . #1 card edge | #20 . . . . . . . . #2 | | card edge Further, from the diagrams (up till now) I see the the following pins on J1 (console) are connected to these pins on J1 (M7859). J1 ---> J1 (console) (M7859) ------------------------------------------------- 20 A GND 19 B +5V 18 C SCAN 1 L (READ/DRIVE 1) 17 D SCAN 2 L (READ/DRIVE 2) 16 E SCAN 3 L (READ/DRIVE 3) 15 F SCAN 4 L (READ/DRIVE 4) 14 H SCAN 5 L (READ/DRIVE 5) 13 J SCAN 6 L (READ/DRIVE 6) 12 K NUM 1 H (A input 7447) 11 L NUM 2 H (B input 7447) 10 M NUM 3 H (C input 7447) Tomorrow I will dive into the diagram of the M7859 ... Any hints or comments on this scribbling are welcome ! - Henk. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Wed Nov 2 16:26:26 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 14:26:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: What are your favorite electronic/computer surplus stores in the Bay area Message-ID: <200511022226.OAA05786@ca2h0430.amd.com> > >Hi Everyone, > >I'm coming in to Mountain View this Friday (from Calgary, Canada) for VCF 8.0 and I was wondering what are people's favorite computer/electronic surplus stores to visit. I remember a tread about it many months ago but I'll be damned if I can't find it. > >Many thanks! > >Gary Fisher > Hi Gary On my list for the Sunnyvale area are HSC, Anchor Electronics, WeirdStuff, and of course Fry's electronics. Dwight From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Wed Nov 2 16:31:46 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 14:31:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: Arrived early for VCF, anyone around tonight? Message-ID: <200511022231.OAA05947@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "John Allain" > >> I'm staying in Mountain View, will be online all night. > >Probably too late, but >if I were in your situation, the things I'd attempt would be to > - try and see if Wierd Stuff at least is open past 7pm > - go to Computer Literacy and shop books, > - find decent homemade mexican food for dinner It is too bad that El Faro in old town Sunnyvale hasn't re-opened as they originally stated. They were one of the better places and not just for good margarita's. I think they had earthquake retrofit issues :( Dwight > - See what unique local computer magazines they have > at the MegaChainBookStore > >Enjoy, >John A. >area resident 1986-1990 > From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Wed Nov 2 17:56:32 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 15:56:32 -0800 (PST) Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <200511022356.PAA08327@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Allison" ---snip--- >>Depending on how much 'from scratch' people feel is necessary, it's also interesting to roll your own computer using an off-the-shelf processor (or multiples). I have a simple 8088-based SBC design wired up and waiting for motivation to put together some test firmware. The main thing that has kept me from bringing it up is the difficulty in getting x86-based machine language development tools going. I'm used to little 4 and 8-bit assemblers where you can plop down a few ORG statements and have it all resident in a ROM, and almost all the x86 asm tools start from the assumption you are running on DOS and have no direct control of the memory map. Hi Of course you could learn Forth and use a program called TCOM that runs under FPC. Both are in the public domain. While FPC is specifically to run on a PC, TCOM can be used to target most any processor and memory arrangement. TCOM was originally written to create small *.COM files from Forth source but it became quickly obvious that one could us it as a basic target compiler. There are several examples of doing just that that are also available. I've used it to create both assembly and Forth code for Z80's and 186/188's. I mostly use it to bring up a Forth interpreter on some other machine but it could be used to create most any application as well. To do much useful work at using it as a target compiler/assembler, one does need to have a good understanding of Forth in general and some inside familiarity with FPC as well. For many of the more familiar processors, someone has already written an assembler that runs under TCOM. Since these are just Forth based assemblers, it doesn't take much to create an assembler for some specific processor, as long as one knows the machine code for it. Dwight From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Wed Nov 2 18:20:17 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 16:20:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <200511030020.QAA09026@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Chuck Guzis" ---snip--- > >I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small computer. >Divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12 bits. An instruction could use 6 bits >for opcode and 3 register addresses out of a 64 register file... Hi My thought is to make a variable word length processor using a single bit ALU. Of course, I've been thinking in terms of a relay based machine. Dwight From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Wed Nov 2 21:52:15 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:52:15 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F107A1B9C@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Okay, I'm going to try and take another crack at replacing the flyback on my VT100. A few months ago I almost did, and chickened out. I'm very very afraid to do so, as the idea of trying to discharge the CRT scares me very much. The terminal has been off and disconnected from power for at least 2-3 months now. This is what I've learned so far from reading: Put one hand in your back pocket. Use an insulated screwdriver with alligator clips on either end, one to the screwdriver blade, one to the frame (VT100 service manual says the frame right above the CRT is where you should ground to). Place the screwdriver under the anode cap and touch the metal connection underneath. Wait till the crackling stops. Remove the anode cap. Can anyone reassure me that this is a semi-safe procedure? Has anyone done this sort of thing before? Thanks Julian From henk.gooijen at oce.com Thu Nov 3 01:26:54 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 08:26:54 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24E0@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Tony wrote: > Do you have a logic analyser? If so, then I would try looking > at the 8080 address bus. See what bit of the program it's > executing, see if it does the right things when you press the > keys, etc. Yes, I have a Biomation D250 I got from Edward recently. However, I think I am not yet out of all options to pull out the "big gun". First I must hjave a look at the printset to see how the keyboard scanning works, but I suspect that the signals are generated by the 8008. Makes sense to me ... If I am lost, I will pull the D250 out (and the manual, because I will need to study/learn how to use the beast). > If you don't have a logic analyser, a trick that's helped > many times before is to connect an n-bit comparator to the > address bus, with the otuer input from switches. You can use > that to see if the processor ever accesses a particular > address (e.g. to see if a particular routine is being executed). I used that method to detect why my homebrew 68010 did not work. I was used to 680x devices, so I programmed the 68010 software to set up the stackpointer at the highest RAM location. Big mistake! It should have been highest minus 1 (even address aligmnent!), but that's another story. Btw, the 68010 works fine :-) > I am pretty sure it doesn't do UNIBUS accesses when you type > in a number. > Firstly, it doesn't know when you've finished the number > (until you press onoe of the other keys), and secondly, the > number you type in may well not be data for the current > addresss -- it might be a new address, or a value to put into > the Switch Register. Yes, that is what I was thinking too. > I wonder, though, if the thiog needs signals from the arbiter > to work properly. I can't see why it would, but maybe if one > of the bus lines is in the 'wrong' state it gets very confused. Ha, this sounds interesting. Although I removed most of the cards out of the backplane, there are still a few that could hurt if the arbiter fails, because of wrong bus lines IF they play in this scheme. Again, I must dive deeper into the M7859 diagram. thanks Tony! - Henk. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From henk.gooijen at oce.com Thu Nov 3 05:22:24 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 12:22:24 +0100 Subject: 11/34a issues Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24E4@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Hi Julian, you have at least response from the console ... never mind :-) When you press EXAM (or DEP) the M7859 must do a UNIBUS access. Grant problems will turn on BUS ERR, so there lies you first point of interest to check out. You say "I get that BUS ERR no matter what I do". Please tell exactly what "no matter ..." actions are. I have no experience with core based 11/34's, so I can not tell anything more about your board placement. The manual will tell! However, (not sure), if you have some G7273's, replace the G727's and put the G7273 in position C-D. BTW, I am not sure of "All grant cards are installed where you could read FLIP CHIP from the processor side". I am not near my 11/34. If "FLIP CHIP" is in the etch on the side where the 4 BR contacts are, then they might be installed wrong in the slot! AFAIR, it should be like this (seen from above towards the backplane, I can check that this evening): slot X slot 2 slot 1 <[most right] __ M8265 M8266 | | position | | | | | | D | | | | | | ........... | | | | | | | | | | ----> | | | | | | |_| G727 | | | | this side | | | | has the | | | | contact | | | | fingers - Henk, PA8PDP. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Julian Wolfe > Sent: donderdag 3 november 2005 10:44 > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: 11/34a issues > > Okay, so I FINALLY worked out my BA11-K power supply issues > and got everything sorted out and installed again. > > However, I'm back to where I started when I got this thing > (which I never got past) - I turn it on, the display comes up > at 173536. However, whenever I try to EXAM anything, it > displays 000000 and the BUS ERR light comes on. > I can clear, but I get that BUS ERR no matter what I do. I > haven't got a serial console connected to it yet - I got this > info by going through the > 11/34 diagnostics in the manual. > > Here's my setup: > > BA11-K box > DD11-PK backplane > > UNIBUS layout: > A B C D E F > > M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 1 > M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 2 > M9301 M9301 M7800 M7800 M7800 M7800 3 > H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A 4 > blank blank blank GRANT blank blank 5 > H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A 6 > blank blank blank GRANT blank blank 7 > M7850 M7850 M7859 M7859 M7859 M7859 8 > M9302 blank blank GRANT blank blank 9 > > I've tried switching some boards around, no help. > > All grant cards are installed where you could read FLIP CHIP > from the processor side. > > I have NO idea what's wrong. Is the memory possibly bad? > That's the only thing I could think of. > > Any help, as always, would be much appreciated. > > TIA > Julian This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From henk.gooijen at oce.com Thu Nov 3 07:19:23 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 14:19:23 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24E6@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Holger Veit > Sent: donderdag 3 november 2005 14:08 > To: On-Topic Posts Only > Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > > woodelf wrote: > > > Bj?rn Vermo wrote: > > > >> > >> Apple comes to mind. You can pick up a G4 really cheap these days. > >> Whether you want to run BSD (OS X) or Linux is a matter of taste. > >> IBM have some PPc development systems (Walnut if I recall right) > >> which can run both Linux and QNX, but I have no idea how > to get one > >> or what they sell for. > > > > > > I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( > > > About thirty years ago, when I was pretty much younger :-), I > built a classical TTL computer (with 74181 ALUs etc.) almost > from scratch, basically from schematic fragments from the TTL > databook and TTL cookbook and some electronics magazines; > well - if it were really from scratch, then even so "highly > integrated chips" like the 74181 were prohibited as well. > Looking back, this had almost all characteristics of a real computer. > > There are two aspects IMHO why this does no longer happen today: > - what was a known magazine in the past, would today perhaps > realistically called "Un-Popular Electronics", the knowledge > of electronics from the ground up is dying out; and with the > continuing "digitalization" of technology, it is an ever > increasing hurdle to get started - the classical AM detector > radio I built as a newbie will nowadays no longer attract > anyone - you can get a gadget which is better by several > magnitudes for a fraction of the expenses you'd have for > soldering your thing. > - The tools you have are too user friendly (!); i.e. you > could rather easily click something together, be it software > or VHDL code for an FPGA without ever needing to understand > what is really going on. The "soul of a new machine" guys > that traced glitches with a logic analyzer in a large > wire-wrapped TTL graveyard are gone - such a machine had the > necessary wow factor. No surprise when a VAX in an FPGA - see > subject - is not really interesting. It is possible - that's > it. But what does one gain? It is like solving a 10000 pieces > puzzle; spend time and don't learn really much. > When Hillary climbed the Mount Everest 50 years ago, it was > something new, extraordinary. When tourist nowadays use sort > of stairways to reach the top (okay, it's not *that* extreme > now), it is just uninteresting. > But standing on the top, is still a challenge and an > experience for the individual. However, what we lost now is a > sense of wonder - that small ALU based TTL circuit was built > by myself, and I did it, and it is irrelevant that some idiot > could download a digital simulator and click the same circuit > together on a PC screen. I guess this is what makes the > difference between a real PDP-11 with some ridiculous 5MB > storage disks compared to a SIMH emulator running on a 3GHz Pentium. > Watch the blinkenlights. > > Holger Actually, I don't need to comment on this. Being a HAM radio amateur, I did built a diode detector with a high-impedance headphone and a varco plus coil. The experience *I made that*, and the first time you hear a radio station are unforgettable impressions. To add to your last sentence: I agree, but I have built something that sits "in between". I use the SIMH software, but *added* a real blinkenlight console! See my website. I do have several real PDP-11 models, but the blinkenlight SIMH is fun too (well, sort of). Perhaps most of the fun was building it ... - Henk, PA8PDP. > > This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Thu Nov 3 07:25:04 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:25:04 -0500 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> Message-ID: <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> 'Woot' Phil =) AMD is good. Intel (at least lately) sucks. Only crappy downside: because instructions, cache, etc are not exactly the same, I cannot use AMD stuff on my classic PS/2 computers, etc =/ I remember some of those pre-pentium, flip-switch machines. Had 2 at my college that they got rid of before I left in '97-'98. ...Wanting to smash the TV comes from wanting to find the f***ing V-Chip (AKA V-SHIT) and yank it out. Damned thing sometimes censors shows that I never put settings on (never set it to block out anything with any ratings and yet it sometimes blocks shows NC-17, R, etc). Goddamned quality for you. Now, to fix the tv since it only displays a horizontal line now (started doing it a few weeks ago). Sigh, if it wasn't for the sharper picture, I would have stayed with my older tv. At least that bastard worked for 15 years before I got any issues with it. -John At 04:56 AM 11/3/2005, you wrote: >In message <43696C65.30004 at yahoo.co.uk> > Jules Richardson wrote: > > > OK, so there goes that irritating Intel jingle on yet another commercial > > for a product featuring one of their chips - thus ensuring that I'll > > make darn sure I shop around for alternatives before ever considering > > one of their chips. > >Heh. I haven't actually bought an Intel chip since the days when the Pentium >P-100 was top of the range. "MMX? Back in my day we didn't have none of your >MMX crap. We didn't have keyboards either! Had to enter all the instructions >in binary! On pushbutton switches! Why, if you lifted your finger before you >hit the STORE button, you'd have to start over!" (yeah, sure, Grampa...) > >I've been using AMD chips in my machines for a good few years - my firewall >box has a K6-II/450 running at 400MHz (damn motherboard), my testbench box >(the one I use for testing rootkits and doing damage assessments) has a >K6-II/500 running at 500MHz. My main machine has a 3GHz Athlon64. > >Biased? Who, me? > > > It did make me think though; has computing history been littered with > > ads containing trademark features which are so annoying (in an audio or > > visual sense), or is this a recent thing? (For some reason the > > 'Playstation noise' isn't nearly as grating...) > >There are others.. Those damn "eSure" adverts make me want to pick up the TV >and smash it into little bits... > >Later. >-- >Phil. | Acorn RiscPC600 SA220 64MB+6GB 100baseT >philpem at philpem.me.uk | Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxe R2 512MB+100GB >http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Panasonic CF-25 Mk.2 Toughbook >... Tagline Lotto: ??????????<- Scratch here for prize. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.7/159 - Release Date: 11/2/2005 From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Thu Nov 3 13:43:01 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 11:43:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: TTL parts Message-ID: <200511031943.LAA32118@ca2h0430.amd.com> Hi I have a bunch of what I believe are TTL parts. They all have inhouse numbers that start with 55xxx. Does anyone know what 'house' these belong to and is there a table anywhere to translate them to standard TTL names( a few do shouw both names ). These seem to be someones spare parts bins. They are all unused. Dwight From VITOKORLAONE at aol.com Thu Nov 3 15:53:15 2005 From: VITOKORLAONE at aol.com (VITOKORLAONE at aol.com) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 16:53:15 EST Subject: Latest find : IBM display writer Message-ID: <1fb.14df997d.309be0cb@aol.com> Hi! Got any ideas where I could find 1 of these machines. Used to write on 1 and believe it or not, I miss the 1 I had. Thanks Jerry From rmay635703a at yahoo.com Thu Nov 3 16:39:55 2005 From: rmay635703a at yahoo.com (Ry May) Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 14:39:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: OT? Need IBM XT keyboard & IBM Mono/CGA/EGA 5151 monitor mine is dead Message-ID: <20051103223955.21931.qmail@web34506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I enjoy retrocomputing on my old IBM 5150 but sadly my trusty 5151 is dead as is my 5152. I am using a terribly screen burnt amber "1998" monitor. I have both EGA and MDA IBM adapters so I can use any screen type. If anyone around wisconsin has some extra 9pin monitors Monochrome, color or whatever or knows of a good source I would be thankfull. Also my IBM XT keyboard is pretty much dead as well. I am willing to boot some cash if needed and travel to pickup if your local. For my other projects I need some 1mx4 20pin dipp memory and a Quantum Prodrive 50pin scsi 270mb hard drive (it must be that exact model) I can't seem to find a source of that stuff either. My site displaying my old photography computers from the 80's is here http://www.colortron.tk but someone here says it has non-worksafe popups, my suggestion use Mozilla, though the popups seemed to all be for either vonage when I checked. I am looking for any information on INnovion (the company that made the units) and their older Computer Photo systems from the early 70's. The original Apollo VP1 used a 4 bit processor and printed photos in 8pt text on oversized paper. I used to be able to get old pcs from computer recycling places but they have all closed shop, if anyone here knows of some wisconsin based companies that recycle old pcs and would let someone take a few post a line. My hobby is getting harder to support without parts :( On a plus note although retro computing is getting a little less common at least uncreativelabs.org is back :) Thank You For Any Info Ryan --------------------------------- Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click. From henk.gooijen at oce.com Fri Nov 4 02:31:09 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 09:31:09 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24E9@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Hi all, I don't know why, but my mails seem to delay at least 30 hours before they appear on the list. I have sent an update on my troubleshooting findings and a reply on Julian's e-mail about the Flip Chips, *all* yesterday (writing this e-mail Friday morning ...). Anyway, here are my new findings, and conslusions. On diagram KY-4, I checked the address decoder E34, and the 74154. As expected, the outputs KY4 LD REG 0H and KY4 LD REG 1H are active (otherwise keypad scanning and the display would not work at all). The address decoder also puts out select signals to the RAM and the 'KY ROM 2 EN L'. At first, I did not see any pulses on the output 'KY4 ROM 1 EN L', and I thought "AHA"! Too early, but that's OK! I grabbed the 8008 code source listing and checked. ROM 2, E33/E39 on page KY-2 are almost continuously addressed, because the monitor program loop sits in these 2 ROMs (address range 000-777 octal). Checking the listing, I see that the first code in ROM 1, E3/E21, is the processing of the LSR button, and the code comment actually says "turn on SR DISP". When I press the LSR button, both ROM 1's are addressed. My conclusion is that all 4 ROMs are OK, as is the address decoder (which is also a ROM) and the 74154 (all with the associated logic). On page KY-1, the 8008 state output lines, S0, S1, and S2, go to a 7442 decoder. The documentation explains the decoded states, and mentions that pin 2 of the 7442 ('KY1 STOP L') is asserted when the 8008 crashes (in fact, when the 8008 executes a HALT instruction, which is octal 0, or 1, or 377). When STOP L is activated, the 8008 will restart itself. I scoped pin 2, and can say that 'STOP L' is never asserted. That means that the 8008 is continuously executing its program, without any restarts. The clock signal at TP1 is a nice square wave with a duty cycle of approx 50%, cycle time a bit more than 1 uSec. >From the above I conclude that more parts are functioning correctly: - the 8008 CPU + clock and power-up/restart logic - the transceivers E16/E17 that buffer the multiplexed addr/data bus - the 2 RAMs (E11/E27) - the 4 ROMs (E3/E21/E33/E39) - the address latches (E5/E4) because they buffer the ROM addresses - address decoder ROM (E34) - "register" selector 74154 (E48) It is time to find out why only the 3 lsb displays flicker brief when I press a button, and why the msb 3 displays do not react at all. I also saw that sometimes the RUN LED is turned on. Pressing the CNTRL (only that button!) the BUS ERR LED goes on (???). Normally CNTRL must be used in conjunction with another button ... Pressing CLR makes BUS ERR turn off. Also, I noted that at some point the display showed "666666", but I can not change the value. For now, I am not too worried about this. I contribute this behaviour to the less-than-perfect contacts, now that the M7859 is on top op 2 dual width extender boards (so that I can probe pins of the ICs on the M7859). Again, any comments or hints are highly appreciated! - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Fri Nov 4 09:23:12 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:23:12 -0500 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <436B6C98.6010208@mdrconsult.com> References: <0IO000ECGLUFSEG2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200510071755190876.49F6E484@10.0.0.252> <436ACC4B.6030400@pacbell.net> <200511032020460232.1C870F51@10.0.0.252> <20051103210911.K57634@shell.lmi.net> <200511032127580879.1CC4971B@10.0.0.252> <436B6C98.6010208@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <6.2.5.4.2.20051104102151.03137db8@boff-net.dhs.org> Heh, yeah, my singing voice makes dogs cry 5 blocks away. I used to play Alto and Tenor Sax. Might pick it up again sometime in the future when I get time and money. That part though, is scarce nowadays. -John Boffemmyer IV At 09:13 AM 11/4/2005, you wrote: >Chuck Guzis wrote: >>On 11/3/2005 at 9:13 PM Fred Cisin wrote: >> >>>I stopped playing the tuba 40 years ago. >>>My hearing is way too bad to subject anybody to listening to it. >> >>I took up the tuba in 1997, being a nearsighted piano player since I was a >>kid. My wife encouraged me to take up an instrument that I could be more >>"sociable" with. >>I'm still nearsighted, but since then, I've also learned double bass and am >>setting my sights on learning viola this year. Just another noise to >>torment the dogs... >>Are musically-minded people still as commonplace in the computer business >>as they once were? > > Probably. At least among the geeks I know it is. > > I played violin (parents' choice) and steel guitar (my choice) as > a teenager, but after high school my lifestyle was too mobile to > keep up with instruments. > > I love singing, too, and when I worked in the West Texas > oilpatch, my crewmates always told me I should sing tenor. > > Tenor twelve miles down the road, they meant. :) > > > Doc -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/161 - Release Date: 11/3/2005 From tequilizer at gmx.net Fri Nov 4 14:34:00 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 21:34:00 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436BC5B8.7000705@gmx.net> > Is this the PSU that's shown in the boardswapper manual? It doesn't give > much detail (for some odd reason you replace the complete PSU, not just > the faulty board...), but there are a couple of pictures of it. > > Yes, it is the one in the boardswapper guide. In this special case, it is a "complete assembly exchange" guide. >> The color monitor has just enough space for one additional board, the=20 >> light pen controller. Since I don't have the controller board, I=20 >> currently don't care much about a light pen, although it would be nice=20 >> > > I don't have one either. It would be nice to find for completeness (if > only to 'complete' the schematics), but.... > > It's clear the light pen was fairly hardware-intensive. Many of the video > timing signals, including the outputs from the horizontal counter on the > text PCB, go to the light pen controller. > > The light pen itself is a fairly simple piece of hardware, but the controller of course needs all information to determine the current position of the crt beam (which is not that easy in case the screen is dark, they used a workaround with a moving cursor for that). >> to see how it works. However I got a working graphics 9111A tablet,=20 >> thats ok for now. Even a hopefully working 8"-floppy. So data transfer=20 >> > > A 9885? I have a few of those.... > No, I've got one of the double-sided double-drive 9895A. > My 9845B came with a 3rd party mass storage ROM module. I am told this > allows the use of HPIB disks (probably Amigo protocol). The main use of > it so far has been due to the fact that it was a little PCB with normal > chips on it, not an HP hybrid. Very useful for figuring out what the ROM > module connections are. > > The 3rd party ROM is probably more useful than the original HP ROM, since it should support the newer amigo-drives as well, not only the drives up to 9895A (as does the original ROM). > I've heard from Dave recently, he claims to have scanned said diagrams. > Probaby time to pester him again :-) > > -tony > > > Thank you for the hint, I'll try again :-) --Ansgar From richard.beaudry at gmail.com Fri Nov 4 20:16:32 2005 From: richard.beaudry at gmail.com (Rich) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 02:16:32 +0000 Subject: I'm getting out: Components Available, Part 2 (RAM/EPROM/etc.) In-Reply-To: <200510252227.06649.richard.beaudry@gmail.com> References: <200510252227.06649.richard.beaudry@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200511050216.32607.richard.beaudry@gmail.com> Hello all, For many reasons, which I don't care to detail, I'm getting out of the "business" of vintage computing (In fact, I'm no longer subscribed, so don't reply to the list, because I won't get it). 95% of my collection has been sold, given away, or dumped, and I only have a few more items, plus the components listed below. I am offering these components to the best offer, plus shipping from MA, USA, Zip Code 01473. I *strongly* prefer PayPal, but will take USPS Money Order (*no other payment methods, please*). These components have been stored cool and dry, but are untested. Also, many of them have *not* been stored in anti-stat drawers, so please keep that in mind. I will ship on anti-stat foam if posible, or wrapped in foil if I am unable to put them in anti-stat foam. Vast majority of date codes are in the 80's and some 90's. I'm not sure what a lot of these even do, and I don't have datasheets, so you're on your own identifying them :-) I'll keep the bidding open until 11/8, midnight, my time. If you are interested, please contact me *off-list* (richard.beaudry at gmail.com) with offers, and let me know your ZIP or country, so I can estimate shipping. I will let the final list of people know on 11/9 (or thereabouts) by email what they can get. Here's the list: Qty. Item. 2 WD 8250PL-00 1 MT8804AE 1 SMC FDC9229BT 1 Inmos IMS1420P10L 1 Reticon R5632 1 MC6850P 1 GI ER-3400 5 Integrated Devices (?) 6116 8 NEC D4016C-2 5 Fairchild MB8416A-15 6 HMS HM3-2064-5 12 Sony CXK5864PN-12L 1 TI SBP9989NJ (64-pin DIP, same size as 68000) 80 Signetics (?) 74F373N 3 Hitachi HM62256P-12 1 MCM 6064 P10 1 MCM 6064 P12 6 ST "Zeropower RAM" MK48Z02B-20 8 ISSI IS61C64A-20N (skinny-DIP cache RAM) 9 MT 5C2568-20 (skinny-DIP cache RAM) 8 Intel D2147-3 2 Intel D2149H-3 12 Intel D2149H-2 1 AMD AM9149-55DC 175 OKI M41256-10 50 ceramic case 2764 EPROMs, Intel, AMD, Hitachi, Fairchild -- All used, w/ stickers covering windows 4 Intel D27128A, used w/ stickers 1 Intel D27128A-2, used w/ sticker 2 Intel D27128A-3, used w/ stickers 1 Intel D2716, used 1 AMD AM27128A-15DC, used w/ sticker 23 mixed ceramic 27C256, used w/ stickers 4 AMD AM27C512-250DC, used w/ stickers 8 AMD AM27C512-120DC, appear to be NOS 70 mixed-vendor 6264 62 Toshiba TMM2016P 36 MT1259-12 81 mixed-vendor 4164 56 mixed vendor ceramic 2732, all used w/ stickers 107 mixed-vendor 2114 3 25-pin right-angle PCB mount connectors, male 3 25-pin right-angle PCB mount connectors, female Thanks, Rich B. From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Fri Nov 4 22:21:25 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 23:21:25 -0500 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org> References: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <6.2.5.4.2.20051104232011.0317aa58@boff-net.dhs.org> weren't these specific to the hardware that the diskette would come with? for instance, an IBM PS/2 9595A, 5155, etc? -John Boffemmyer IV At 11:03 PM 11/4/2005, you wrote: >I won this disk in an auction: > >"IBM Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library | Diagnostics | v2.02" > >...only to find that it had been reformatted and filled with >someone's Turbo C homework assignments (argh!). Does anyone have >this diskette image available for download? I'd like to restore it >to the original diskette to make it whole again. >-- >Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ >Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ >Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/161 - Release Date: 11/3/2005 From Bob at BRADLEE.ORG Thu Nov 3 07:49:22 2005 From: Bob at BRADLEE.ORG (Bob Bradlee) Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 08:49:22 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200511031359.jA3DxQXF025119@keith.ezwind.net> You got it, I spent several years servicing CRT devices both TVs and monitors Don't bother with the resistor, you want to hear the crack of discharge ! It is the sound of success, If I don't hear a crack, I hold the short until I have completely removed the anode to be sure. You are only discharging the capacitor formed by the metallic coating on the inside and outside of the glass. A very primitive glass capacitor charged to around 20kv. The anode is isolated from the working end of the tube and will not heart anything but you if you don't discharge it. BTW: one hand in the back pocket was what Uncle Sam they taught us in radar school in the late 60's early 70's. Now there was some big tube with a lot of crack :) I wonder how much crack my 38" wide screen CRT TV will make when I have to work on it some day :) Have fun, but respect the electrons .... they can bite :) Bob On Wed, 2 Nov 2005 21:52:28 -0600, Wolfe, Julian wrote: >Okay, I'm going to try and take another crack at replacing the flyback on my >VT100. A few months ago I almost did, and chickened out. I'm very very >afraid to do so, as the idea of trying to discharge the CRT scares me very >much. The terminal has been off and disconnected from power for at least >2-3 months now. > >This is what I've learned so far from reading: > >Put one hand in your back pocket. Use an insulated screwdriver with >alligator clips on either end, one to the screwdriver blade, one to the >frame (VT100 service manual says the frame right above the CRT is where you >should ground to). Place the screwdriver under the anode cap and touch the >metal connection underneath. Wait till the crackling stops. Remove the >anode cap. > >Can anyone reassure me that this is a semi-safe procedure? Has anyone done >this sort of thing before? > >Thanks >Julian From bv at norbionics.com Fri Nov 4 06:56:06 2005 From: bv at norbionics.com (=?utf-8?Q?Bj=C3=B8rn_Vermo?=) Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 13:56:06 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IOU001TL2QAM291@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <435C16F6.5010400@jetnet.ab.ca> <8de758aaca427e3c585f6c8b108f5819@norbionics.com> <4368F857.1030205@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:33:11 +0100, woodelf wrote: > Bj?rn Vermo wrote: > >> >> Apple comes to mind. You can pick up a G4 really cheap these days. >> Whether you want to run BSD (OS X) or Linux is a matter of taste. >> IBM have some PPc development systems (Walnut if I recall right) which >> can run both Linux and QNX, but I have no idea how to get one or what >> they sell for. > > I guess nobody even considers building a computer from scratch. :( > I have not done that after Intel announced the 4004, although it would be fun. By scratch I assume you mean designing the CPU, not using an existing processor. In this case I had the impression that the idea was to actually get something done, and a custom design seems a rather inefficient way to accomplish it. In any case, you would obviously have to port the OS as well, so it would not be "a computer which runs UNIX" as I understand it - until after the port was made. If I were to make a new computer design, I would in any case want to develop it together with a new operating system. UNIX has led to commodity systems at the cost of interesting design in my opinion. -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/ From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Sat Nov 5 01:21:52 2005 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 08:21:52 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > Waht somebody needs to do (and it can't be me for obvious reasons) is > to > select some CPLDs/FPGAs where the download protocol is documented (that > is, you can progam the chip, given the binary file, without a > proprietary > programmer), and use the tools (that's why it can't be me) to make some > useful logic functions -- things like an bit universal shift > register, bit ALU, counters, even JK flip-flops, gates, etc. Make > the > binary files available for free download. > > The problem with this is of course that the CPLD and even more the FPGA's will be obsolete and unobtainum long before the TTL parts are really gone. You can still buy a 74ls181., but try a 10 year old FPGA... My other problem with FPGA's is that they mostly come in non-hobbyiest packages. Jos From spc at conman.org Sat Nov 5 01:38:30 2005 From: spc at conman.org (Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 02:38:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511030020.QAA09026@ca2h0430.amd.com> from "Dwight K. Elvey" at Nov 02, 2005 04:20:17 PM Message-ID: <20051105073830.9BAF773029@linus.groomlake.area51> It was thus said that the Great Dwight K. Elvey once stated: > > My thought is to make a variable word length processor using > a single bit ALU. Of course, I've been thinking in terms of a relay > based machine. The CM-1 (Connection Machine) was just such a beast, although with that you had 65,536 1-bit CPUs, each with 4096 bits of memory. -spc (Interesting machine, and certainly on topic ... ) From trixter at oldskool.org Sat Nov 5 01:51:31 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 01:51:31 -0600 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <200511042127050119.21EA202A@10.0.0.252> References: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org> <200511042127050119.21EA202A@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436C6483.5000401@oldskool.org> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've got 1.02, if that's any help. This is the disk that one often finds The exact diskette I'm trying to replace has this fully: IBM (logo) 1502212 Personal Computer Hardware Reference Library -------------------------- Diagnostics Version 2.02 (C) Copyright IBM Corp. 1981, 1982, 1983 Since yours is 1.02 I am assuming it was 5150 whereas mine probably used to be 5160. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From Useddec at aol.com Sat Nov 5 02:38:28 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 03:38:28 EST Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: Hi Julian, I have a huge inventory of DEC parts, including VT100 parts if you need any. Are you in Illinois? I'm in the Champaign area, and can give you some tech info. Thanks, Paul From frustum at pacbell.net Sat Nov 5 02:39:41 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 02:39:41 -0600 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <20051105073830.9BAF773029@linus.groomlake.area51> References: <20051105073830.9BAF773029@linus.groomlake.area51> Message-ID: <436C6FCD.7010407@pacbell.net> Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Dwight K. Elvey once stated: > >> My thought is to make a variable word length processor using >>a single bit ALU. Of course, I've been thinking in terms of a relay >>based machine. > > > The CM-1 (Connection Machine) was just such a beast, although with that > you had 65,536 1-bit CPUs, each with 4096 bits of memory. > > -spc (Interesting machine, and certainly on topic ... ) that's baby stuff! :-) UNC worked for many years on a chip architecture called pixel planes. they developed a few generations of custom VLSI chips for it. anyway, everything inside was bit serial and was controlled by SIMD instructions. one chip controlled a 128x128 group of ALUs, and each ALU had something like 2 kbits of DRAM. sure, that is only 16K processors -- but that was just one chip. they had 256 or so of these chips on a board, and had 16 or so boards in a rack, and their system had something like 6 racks. the SIMD'ness was only local to a chip -- they didn't have all the ALUs in the system driven by one instruction stream! because of the scale of the thing, they had to worry about clock skew, as all of these boards were communicating over a token ring bus (not IBM's token ring -- their own). their solution was interesting. their backplane boards had a clock plane that was driven from one side, and the other side was unterminated. they picked their geometry and frequency such that they would set up a standing wave and the antinodes of the wave were coincident with where each board was plugged in. although it was primarily used for graphics, there were some attempts at using it for more general computation. anyway, I saw it (pixel planes 5) in operation at siggraph in 93 I think. they were giving away buttons saying "I saw it!", referring to the fact it was doing 2M phong shaded triangles in real time. It was amazing for the time, but now single GPU chips crank out 100x that many triangles that have much more complex shading. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sat Nov 5 03:57:48 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 09:57:48 +0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436C1727.8090901@yahoo.co.uk> References: <436C1727.8090901@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <436C821C.6070507@gjcp.net> Jules Richardson wrote: > Well UK terrestrial analogue TV's getting canned in what, five years? So > far there seems to be no outcry whatsoever, yet I'm amazed that people > aren't up in arms about having to fork out for a new set (or several, in > the case of most households), or at least a cable box and having to sign > up for cable TV. At least this time around we have satellite TV. When the 405-line VHF service was turned off in the 1980s, huge areas of the north of Scotland lost their TV coverage altogether for anything up to two years. Gordon. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sat Nov 5 04:20:59 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 10:20:59 +0000 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <436C878B.4050609@gjcp.net> John Boffemmyer IV wrote: > 'Woot' Phil =) > AMD is good. Intel (at least lately) sucks. Only crappy downside: > because instructions, cache, etc are not exactly the same, I cannot use > AMD stuff on my classic PS/2 computers, etc =/ > I remember some of those pre-pentium, flip-switch machines. Had 2 at my > college that they got rid of before I left in '97-'98. > ...Wanting to smash the TV comes from wanting to find the f***ing V-Chip > (AKA V-SHIT) and yank it out. Damned thing sometimes censors shows that > I never put settings on (never set it to block out anything with any > ratings and yet it sometimes blocks shows NC-17, R, etc). Goddamned > quality for you. Now, to fix the tv since it only displays a horizontal > line now (started doing it a few weeks ago). Sigh, if it wasn't for the > sharper picture, I would have stayed with my older tv. At least that > bastard worked for 15 years before I got any issues with it. /me googles v-chip... wtf? I don't think you could sell a TV with that over here... Gordon. From fritz_chwolka at t-online.de Sat Nov 5 02:20:08 2005 From: fritz_chwolka at t-online.de (Fritz Chwolka) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 09:20:08 +0100 (CET) Subject: disk space for manuals and how complete is manx In-Reply-To: <436BA450.6060105@snowmoose.com> Message-ID: <1EYJHT-1vG04O0@fwd28.sul.t-online.de> On Fri, 04 Nov 2005 10:11:28 -0800, Alan Perry wrote: > >I have finally gotten around to scanning my manuals for my VAX 11/750. >However, the web hosting company for my domain has low disk space limits >compared to the size of the scanned manuals. Is there somewhere that I >can put the scanned manuals where people can get to them? > >Also, I have been using manx to determine what manuals need to be >scanned. Are the references to online docs on manx complete as far as >what manuals are available online? > >alan > I got the EK-KC750-TM-002.pdf EK-KC750-TM-CN2.pdf EK-KC750-UG-002.pdf files and stay them here http://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/rechner/dec/manuals/decimages/ info.html Thanks for it. Mit freundlichen Gruessen Fritz Chwolka From fireflyst at earthlink.net Sat Nov 5 08:29:44 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 08:29:44 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Yes, I'm in IL. Are you a business? I probably need a VT100 power supply, as I found out it wasn't just the flyback that blew. Let me know what you have. Julian -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2005 2:38 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT Hi Julian, I have a huge inventory of DEC parts, including VT100 parts if you need any. Are you in Illinois? I'm in the Champaign area, and can give you some tech info. Thanks, Paul From pechter at gmail.com Sat Nov 5 08:39:59 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 09:39:59 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436CC43F.5000103@gmail.com> Julian Wolfe wrote: >Yes, I'm in IL. Are you a business? > >I probably need a VT100 power supply, as I found out it wasn't just the >flyback that blew. > >Let me know what you have. > >Julian > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com >Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2005 2:38 AM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT > >Hi Julian, > >I have a huge inventory of DEC parts, including VT100 parts if you need any. > >Are you in Illinois? I'm in the Champaign area, and can give you some tech >info. > >Thanks, Paul > > > > > Check the capacitor and diode on the video board first. They often fry. Bill From shirsch at adelphia.net Sat Nov 5 08:40:29 2005 From: shirsch at adelphia.net (Steven N. Hirsch) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 09:40:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: Apple II APEX OS manual posted (Update) In-Reply-To: <20051103055410.71874.qmail@web81006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20051103055410.71874.qmail@web81006.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 2 Nov 2005 nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com wrote: > Glad someone enjoyed it. :) > > I bought the full Apex/XPL0 package years ago for my > Apple II and have been meaning to put the doc up for a > long time. Wife got me a new scanner a while back and > I finally got around to it. Looks interesting. Any idea where I can download the software? From bshannon at tiac.net Sat Nov 5 08:49:58 2005 From: bshannon at tiac.net (Bob Shannon) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 09:49:58 -0500 Subject: HP 1000/2000 cache on ePay References: <434745B2.1070505@thegeekslair.org> Message-ID: <003101c5e218$3275a370$0100a8c0@screamer> I purchesed the HP 1000 F-series computer and floatingpoint processor from eBay. The equipment arrived on 10/31, very well packaged in a single large box. Sheet foam insulation had been carefully cut to size, enclosing the processor boxes and accessories. The condition of the equipment was very good, no shipping dammage what so ever. The front panel was in perfect shape, no broken keys, etc. The machine was very complete, and the seller included the power controller cable that runs between the CPU and FPU, as well as the ribbon cable for the micro-programmed peripheral port. After some careful investigation and documentation of the machines configuration, I discovered that the memory system had been messed up (the seller had described this). After some initial checkout, I fired up the CPU and verifed that it (correctly) failed the power-on self test diagnostics due to the misconfigured memory system. I added two high-speed memory array boards from a 2113 E-series, reset some jumpers and the machine passed power-on self test, the DMS, SIS, FFP, and hardware floating point mircocode diagnostics. I currently have 256K of fault control memory installed, but I'll probably upgrade this soon. I did have to asjust the locking bar on the front panel, and there is a little cosmetic work to do, and of course I'll have to set up the machines I/O configuration to my liking. I'll be upgrading one of my 2113 rack mounted systems with the F-series machine after I complete the cosmetic work and evaulate a fan or two that seems to be a little louder than it should be. Overall I'm delighted with the machine, and I think I paid a very reasonable price. Yet another smooth deal from eBay, and at long last I have the F-series machine I've been looking for for over 15 years. I highly reccomend buying vintage gear from Finlay McMartin, who sells under the name "gold-snipper". He understands what he's selling, and does a great job. From philpem at dsl.pipex.com Sat Nov 5 08:55:59 2005 From: philpem at dsl.pipex.com (Philip Pemberton) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:55:59 GMT Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: In message ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > > For what it is and WHEN it was developed, the 8255 is a pretty good device. > > Oh come on. It's broken. Fundamentally. Hell yeah. I'll take a 6522 VIA over an 8255 any day. > I can think of plenty that would be more useful if they were still being > made. The 6522 would come high up the list. Haven't heard of the Western Design Center then? http://www.wdesignc.com/ It's Bill Mensch's company - still making the 65C02 and 65C22 after what, 25 years? I've got a few of their chips here - the 65C02 is fun to play with. Learned a lot about microprocessors with a combination of reading databooks, feeding it code and watching what it did on a logic analyser. Good little chip. Later. -- Phil. | Acorn RiscPC600 SA220 64MB+6GB 100baseT philpem at philpem.me.uk | Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxe R2 512MB+100GB http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Panasonic CF-25 Mk.2 Toughbook (A)bort (R)etry (W)ire up to a Tesla Coil and watch it glow like a lightning bug. From philpem at dsl.pipex.com Sat Nov 5 09:02:22 2005 From: philpem at dsl.pipex.com (Philip Pemberton) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 15:02:22 GMT Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <436AA126.3010107@yahoo.co.uk> References: <436AA126.3010107@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <7e1f18c54d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> In message <436AA126.3010107 at yahoo.co.uk> Jules Richardson wrote: > - where there's likely not a lot to choose between the two on average > when all factors are taken into account - I find it interesting that I'd > go for the AMD guys on the grounds that they have the less-irritating > advertising. Hm, I've never seen an AMD advert on TV. Or in any other form of mainstream media for that matter. I have, however, read a lot of comparative reviews that put the Pentium 4 against the AthlonXP and Athlon64, and the AMD chips tend to do better (in clockspeed-for-clockspeed tests). Not to mention the cost factor. > I guess it's only recently (relatively) that computer-related ads have > been commonplace on mainstream TV though. In the olden days they would > have been magazine ads and much easier to skip over if at all annoying! I stopped reading PC magazines over a year ago. I switched my PCPlus subscription for a Circuit Cellar sub, saved ?35 a year and haven't looked back. ?5.95 an issue is a really crap deal, especially when 90% of the content is advertising. Circuit Cellar is similar, but seeing as it's only $15 (IIRC) a year, I'll put up with the adverts. After all, that's what the "Next Page" button in Acrobat Reader is for :) Later. -- Phil. | Acorn RiscPC600 SA220 64MB+6GB 100baseT philpem at philpem.me.uk | Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxe R2 512MB+100GB http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Panasonic CF-25 Mk.2 Toughbook ... A closed mouth gathers no feet From arcarlini at iee.org Sat Nov 5 09:12:05 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 15:12:05 -0000 Subject: disk space for manuals and how complete is manx In-Reply-To: <1EYJHT-1vG04O0@fwd28.sul.t-online.de> Message-ID: <002b01c5e21b$49a08c60$5b01a8c0@pc1> Fritz Chwolka wrote: > I got the > > EK-KC750-TM-002.pdf > EK-KC750-TM-CN2.pdf > EK-KC750-UG-002.pdf > > files and stay them > here > > http://oldcomputers.dyndns.org/public/pub/rechner/dec/manuals/decimages/ > info.html I have the VAX-11/750 Handbook and a Systime 750 manual which I'll get put up somewhere in the next few days. (If I've s aid this before, I actually intend to get it done this time :-)) Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From Watzman at neo.rr.com Sat Nov 5 09:41:44 2005 From: Watzman at neo.rr.com (Barry Watzman) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 10:41:44 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT (Bob Bradlee) In-Reply-To: <200511051440.jA5EeKbu021247@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <001901c5e21f$6d5ea570$6401a8c0@barry> As someone who has worked on TV's since the 1960's, and who worked as an engineer in TV stations for many years, I think you are being paranoid and getting far too worked up over nothing. Connect an alligator clip from the metal blade of a (normal) screwdriver (with a plastic handle) to ground (normally, chassis ground is also grounded to the aquadag conductive coating on the outside of the CRT). Stick the blade under the 2nd anode cap and touch the actual 2nd anode connector. Yes, use only one hand. There may or may not be a spark, which you may or may not hear. Leave it connected for a second or two, wait a second or two and do it again or even 2 more times. If you want to use a resistor in series with the ground lead, fine, I rarely do and have never damaged anything (and many of the CRTs I've worked on are a lot bigger and have a lot more voltage than any monochrome computer monitor), but it's not a bad idea. However, don't go overboard on the value of the resistor. You do not want "tens or hundreds of megohms", it would take too long to discharge the voltage. There is only about 10,000 volts or so on a 9" to 12" monochrome CRT (compared to more like 30,000 volts on a large screen color CRT), so a one megohm resistor will limit the current to 10 ma. If you do use a resistor, always do a final discharge without a resistor. Also, if the unit has not been powered up in weeks or months, there probably isn't anything there to begin with, although this would depend on the design and components of the individual unit in question. From tpeters at mixcom.com Sat Nov 5 10:05:35 2005 From: tpeters at mixcom.com (Tom Peters) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 10:05:35 -0600 Subject: Estate stuff- must go Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051104182550.0b5eaec8@localhost> With the sad passing of Don S last year, one of the founders of the Wisconsin Computer Society in the 70's, his window finds she must finally begin the process of disposing of a basement full of stuff. Don was a life-long experimenter and user of computing equipment which has mostly found its way into the classification of "classic." Don and I used/programmed DEC PDP-11 and Altos CP/M and MP/M machines together at more than one job. Here's a list of items that must go. Ideally, a small number of people would take this collection, so as to not divide it all up and make shipping/pickup complicated. If the person who wants the Altos computer wants the disks, I will probably fish out all the Altos, MP/M and application (not the Milenium Systems disks) and bundle that with the computer. The drive cabinet can go separately. Anything I suspect is DEC-related can go separately. The Millenium stuff is probably a separate item as well, unless someone wants all of it. If there's no interest in this collection as large units, it will go in smaller chunks to whomever wants it. She's not looking for money for this material, but can't bear any costs, so S&H is on you, plus some $$ for packing materials. Local pickup would be much, much better. Estate of Don S. Photos are available for a few items: http://my.athenet.net/~uuhhuu/altos/ Content listing based solely on written or printed labels, may be inaccurate, no further information (e.g. version numbers) is available. ?Assy? = Assembler Hardware: http://my.athenet.net/~uuhhuu/altos Altos Z80 based computer, CP/M, MP/M or ?, 208k memory, dual 8? Floppy, serial, parallel, etc. Second Altos cabinet, dual Shugart 801 floppy drives, fan, and power supply only. No motherboard. Was used in a rack for DEC drives. Manuals Manual, Shugart 1610-4 Intelligent Disk Drive Controller MP/M II Programmer?s Guide (photo) MP/M II User?s Guide (photo) MP/M II System Guide (photo) Digital Research CP/Net Network Reference Manual (photo) Link-80 Operator?s Guide Digital (DEC) Logic Handbook 1970 Manual: Adaptec ACB-4000 Series Disk Controller Eight-Inch Floppy disks on East wall shelves Utilities (shareware) dBase II Ashton-Tate ZIP CP/M modem programs PL1 BASIC 80 Supercalc V1.12 9250 Diagnostic LK Link Parsing Util Turbo Tutor Pascal MT+ MP/M 1.14 (Millenium Systems) Wordstar (Millenium Systems) Z80 assembler (Millenium Systems) MP/M 1.16 (Millenium Systems) MP/M 1.16 + Wordstar 2.10 + MSI Utils (Millenium Systems) 6809 Assy + 8048 Assy + Z8000 Assy + MSI util (Millenium Systems) Z80 Assembly (Millenium Systems) Convert.com + Convert.prl (Millenium Systems) 9516 software release (Millenium Systems) 9520 demo programs (Millenium Systems) 9520 diagnostic (Millenium Systems) Pascal Mt+ (Millenium Systems) CP/M (Millenium Systems) Wordstar ver 3.0 Wordstar 950 (possibly for Televideo 950?) CP/M (Millenium Systems) ZAS.COM + ZLK.COM + Z8TINS (Millenium Systems) 6800/6802 Assy (Millenium Systems) UCSD PASCAL SA 120-1 Alignment Diskette (Shugart?) Utils Wordstar 3.0 + Mailmerge + Spellstar Supercalc ISIS V4.2 System TCS Accounting (9 disks) Adventure Eight-Inch Floppy Disks on North Wall Shelves Altos Diagnostic (2 disks) MP/M (Altos) CP/M 2.02 Box of approx 80 disks, some RX01, some CP/M or MP/M, e.g. games, utils, Zork, JRT Pascal, etc. Box of approx 40 disks, mostly CP/M MP/M, e.g. dBase II, Modem 7, BDS C 1.44, user group software, terminal programs, terminal programs, ALGOL, FORTH, BASIC, Fortran, Tiny C, Mp/M, Dazzler, PALASM Osbourn Accounting CP/M 2.24 DEC disks, probably RX01: TECO etc (black cardboard box) CP/M + Wordstar Altos CP/M 2.24 Turbo for Altos dBase II Altos Diagnostic Executive 1.10 (original disk! pink box) RT-11 boot disk (DEC) Pascal CP/M-86 Wordstar-86 Mailmerge-86 Spellstar-86 Jade Computer Products Double-D Disk Controller CP/M 2.2 [Love] Men like to pursue an elusive woman, like a cake of wet soap in a bathtub - even men who hate baths. --Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531 From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 5 10:23:04 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 08:23:04 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511050823040228.2442B202@10.0.0.252> On 11/5/2005 at 8:21 AM Jos Dreesen wrote: >The problem with this is of course that the CPLD and even more the >FPGA's > will be obsolete and unobtainum long before the TTL parts are really >gone. >You can still buy a 74ls181., but try a 10 year old FPGA... ...and DIP-based TTL (and CMOS) is more "harvestable". Before I toss out an old board with lots of DIPs on it, I think really hard about getting out the propane torch and removing the chips on it. If the chips are SMT, it goes into the trash without a second thought. A friend, after retirement, has made a small career of working on Ruffatti pipe organs. Instruments made in the 70's and 80's rely on a bunch of TTL and an MPU (I think it's 8086, but not sure) for the adjustable combination stop mechanism. The outfit that designed it for Ruffatti and did the programming is long gone, not having left any documentation. Fortunately, the logic's made of standard parts, the MPU has a well-documented instruction set and it's not hard to get a probe on pins to figure out what's going on--and one can purchase replacements. I shudder to think of what would have happened if these things had been FPGAs. An instrument like this can have a life of several hundred years and go more than 100 years between renovation. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 5 10:56:52 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 11:56:52 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPH00JXNQYOJWX9@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: "Dwight K. Elvey" > Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:56:32 -0800 (PST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>From: "Allison" >---snip--- >>>Depending on how much 'from scratch' people feel is necessary, it's also >interesting to roll your own computer using an off-the-shelf processor (or >multiples). I have a simple 8088-based SBC design wired up and waiting for >motivation to put together some test firmware. The main thing that has kept me >from bringing it up is the difficulty in getting x86-based machine language >development tools going. I'm used to little 4 and 8-bit assemblers where you >can plop down a few ORG statements and have it all resident in a ROM, and almost >all the x86 asm tools start from the assumption you are running on DOS and have >no direct control of the memory map. Not from me, you misquoted. However I also have built using: 8008,8080,8085,8088,80C188 8048/9,8051 Z80, Z180, Z280, Z8000, 6800, 6809, 6502,65C02 1802 SC/MP (8a-500 8a600) TI9900, T11 (pdp-11), 2900 bitslice, raw TTL And a assortment of NEC single chips (uCom4, uCOM8) One addball I'm considering is taking an 8749 and programming it to emulate another processor. With it's IO and internal eprom it's possible to treat it as a microprogrammed system to emulate other hardware. Speed would be low but for example emulating an 8008 (20uS instruction time) should be near real time using an 11mhz 8749. Of course the goal could be to emulate something else or create a new thing. >Hi > Of course you could learn Forth and use a program called TCOM >that runs under FPC. Both are in the public domain. Never played much with FORTH, may have to change that. Allison From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Nov 5 11:00:02 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 12:00:02 -0500 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.4.2.20051104232011.0317aa58@boff-net.dhs.org> References: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org> <6.2.5.4.2.20051104232011.0317aa58@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <436CE512.7030305@gmail.com> John Boffemmyer IV wrote: > weren't these specific to the hardware that the diskette would come > with? for instance, an IBM PS/2 9595A, 5155, etc? The one he's talking about would be specific to the 5150, I believe. Peace... Sridhar From tpeters at mixcom.com Sat Nov 5 11:06:11 2005 From: tpeters at mixcom.com (Tom Peters) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 11:06:11 -0600 Subject: Estate stuff- must go In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051104182550.0b5eaec8@localhost> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051105110546.0c074ff8@localhost> I should have mentioned that this collection is located in Milwaukee, WI. At 10:05 AM 11/5/2005 -0600, you wrote: >With the sad passing of Don S last year, one of the founders of the >Wisconsin Computer Society in the 70's, his window finds she must finally >begin the process of disposing of a basement full of stuff. Don was a >life-long experimenter and user of computing equipment which has mostly >found its way into the classification of "classic." Don and I >used/programmed DEC PDP-11 and Altos CP/M and MP/M machines together at >more than one job. > >Here's a list of items that must go. Ideally, a small number of people >would take this collection, so as to not divide it all up and make >shipping/pickup complicated. If the person who wants the Altos computer >wants the disks, I will probably fish out all the Altos, MP/M and >application (not the Milenium Systems disks) and bundle that with the computer. > >The drive cabinet can go separately. Anything I suspect is DEC-related can >go separately. The Millenium stuff is probably a separate item as well, >unless someone wants all of it. If there's no interest in this collection >as large units, it will go in smaller chunks to whomever wants it. > >She's not looking for money for this material, but can't bear any costs, >so S&H is on you, plus some $$ for packing materials. Local pickup would >be much, much better. > >Estate of Don S. >Photos are available for a few items: http://my.athenet.net/~uuhhuu/altos/ >Content listing based solely on written or printed labels, may be >inaccurate, no further information (e.g. version numbers) is >available. ?Assy? = Assembler > >Hardware: http://my.athenet.net/~uuhhuu/altos > >Altos Z80 based computer, CP/M, MP/M or ?, 208k memory, dual 8? Floppy, >serial, parallel, etc. >Second Altos cabinet, dual Shugart 801 floppy drives, fan, and power >supply only. No motherboard. Was used in a rack for DEC drives. > >Manuals > >Manual, Shugart 1610-4 Intelligent Disk Drive Controller >MP/M II Programmer?s Guide (photo) >MP/M II User?s Guide (photo) >MP/M II System Guide (photo) >Digital Research CP/Net Network Reference Manual (photo) >Link-80 Operator?s Guide >Digital (DEC) Logic Handbook 1970 >Manual: Adaptec ACB-4000 Series Disk Controller > >Eight-Inch Floppy disks on East wall shelves > >Utilities (shareware) >dBase II >Ashton-Tate ZIP >CP/M modem programs >PL1 BASIC 80 >Supercalc V1.12 >9250 Diagnostic >LK Link Parsing Util >Turbo Tutor >Pascal MT+ >MP/M 1.14 (Millenium Systems) >Wordstar (Millenium Systems) >Z80 assembler (Millenium Systems) >MP/M 1.16 (Millenium Systems) >MP/M 1.16 + Wordstar 2.10 + MSI Utils (Millenium Systems) >6809 Assy + 8048 Assy + Z8000 Assy + MSI util (Millenium Systems) >Z80 Assembly (Millenium Systems) >Convert.com + Convert.prl (Millenium Systems) >9516 software release (Millenium Systems) >9520 demo programs (Millenium Systems) >9520 diagnostic (Millenium Systems) >Pascal Mt+ (Millenium Systems) >CP/M (Millenium Systems) >Wordstar ver 3.0 >Wordstar 950 (possibly for Televideo 950?) >CP/M (Millenium Systems) >ZAS.COM + ZLK.COM + Z8TINS (Millenium Systems) >6800/6802 Assy (Millenium Systems) >UCSD PASCAL >SA 120-1 Alignment Diskette (Shugart?) >Utils >Wordstar 3.0 + Mailmerge + Spellstar >Supercalc >ISIS V4.2 System >TCS Accounting (9 disks) >Adventure > >Eight-Inch Floppy Disks on North Wall Shelves > >Altos Diagnostic (2 disks) >MP/M (Altos) >CP/M 2.02 >Box of approx 80 disks, some RX01, some CP/M or MP/M, e.g. games, utils, >Zork, JRT Pascal, etc. >Box of approx 40 disks, mostly CP/M MP/M, e.g. dBase II, Modem 7, BDS C >1.44, user group software, terminal programs, terminal programs, ALGOL, >FORTH, BASIC, Fortran, Tiny C, Mp/M, Dazzler, PALASM >Osbourn Accounting >CP/M 2.24 >DEC disks, probably RX01: TECO etc (black cardboard box) >CP/M + Wordstar >Altos >CP/M 2.24 >Turbo for Altos >dBase II >Altos Diagnostic Executive 1.10 (original disk! pink box) >RT-11 boot disk (DEC) >Pascal >CP/M-86 >Wordstar-86 >Mailmerge-86 >Spellstar-86 >Jade Computer Products Double-D Disk Controller CP/M 2.2 > > > > > > > > > > >[Love] Men like to pursue an elusive woman, like a cake of wet soap >in a bathtub - even men who hate baths. --Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) >--... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... >tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) >"HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters >43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc >WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531 > [Manners] If a man has good manners and is not afraid of other people he will get by, even if he is stupid. --David Eccles --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531 From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 5 11:29:08 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 10:29:08 -0700 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436CEBE4.3000505@jetnet.ab.ca> Philip Pemberton wrote: >Haven't heard of the Western Design Center then? http://www.wdesignc.com/ >It's Bill Mensch's company - still making the 65C02 and 65C22 after what, 25 >years? > > !!!Arg The serial chip is only 4 MHZ. The other chips are super fast for low power stuff. 14 Mhz @ 5 volts for a 6502 and the PIA. ( Run your Apple 1 14 x faster :D ) >I've got a few of their chips here - the 65C02 is fun to play with. Learned a >lot about microprocessors with a combination of reading databooks, feeding it >code and watching what it did on a logic analyser. Good little chip. > > > I notice they sell a 16bit cpu. Was that the one in the Apple 3? >Later. > > From holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de Sat Nov 5 11:33:12 2005 From: holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 18:33:12 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436CECD8.1070503@ais.fraunhofer.de> Tony Duell wrote: [...] >>point emphasizes on the "digitalization" issue: >>in the near future there won't be any analogue AM or FM >>transmissions/transmitters any more; even SW band migrates >> >> > >THis ia a great pity, and actually, given the number of cheap radios >around, I wonder if it will ever happen. I can't believe the public will >accept having to replace doxens of sets. > > > The roadmap for that is already present here in Germany, and I think also in the US. This is IMHO driven by the request to close the "analogue gap" that still allows to make private copies without continuous cash flow. The market forces behind this will force us to throw away all our receivers without any shrug of their shoulders - besides, if you have to buy new equipment (and maybe even renew it/upgrade it every year, it will produce incredible revenues. Your maybe expensive B&O receiver set will become obsolete at a simple click of someone's fingers. One just has to sell the right trojan horse to the unwashed masses: "digital" is cool, is new, is great, and will give you much better sound or videos you ever even imagined in your dreams (there is some small drawback, but don't take it too serious)....it's absolutely great, isn't it? >>Unfortunately, many of the more interesting TTLs are now no longer >>easily available (you find lots of octal >>drivers and registers, but almost none of ALUs, multifunction chips, >>RAMs - even the classical >>7490,7491,7492,7493 combo of counters for any purpose is reduced to >>7490/7493 - noone >>needs to divide by 6 ('92) any more - you don't build digital clocks in >>TTL) - you have to seek for >>them in specialized mail-order shops. This is no issue for us old farts >>who play with such stuff for >>long time, but it is another hurdle for starters. A kit with all parts >>is much easier to acquire - but then, >> >> > >Waht somebody needs to do (and it can't be me for obvious reasons) is to >select some CPLDs/FPGAs where the download protocol is documented (that >is, you can progam the chip, given the binary file, without a proprietary >programmer), and use the tools (that's why it can't be me) to make some >useful logic functions -- things like an bit universal shift >register, bit ALU, counters, even JK flip-flops, gates, etc. Make the >binary files available for free download. > >Anyone wanting to experiment with logic and not wanting to use the >horrible CAD tools under an even worse OS, can then program up some chips >with the appropriate files and use the resulting devices like the TTL of old. > > > Do you really believe a newbie will be able in the beginning to select among Lattice, Mach, Altera, Xilinx, etc. programmable circuits where even the datasheet has to be read twice to understand whether this is a CPLD, EEPLD, FPLD, FPGA, with NOR/NAND/Antifuse program cells or external boot PROM, with almost uncomparable figures of the transistor equivalents, and whatever marketing invents in order to increase market share and to distiguish the basically same ideas? And then select the one circuit which has a cheap starter-kit, hopefully open-source tools for a not worse OS, and finally is not a dead horse that hasn't been delisted some time ago? Probably now, after MSEE degree and PhD, I would be able to find out after some time, but I won't expect the 13 year old boy (who built that TTL scrap computer 30 years ago) to come to a decision today. If I were to start now, I'd be not too different from the horde today - have my playstation or the pee-cee and would edonkey or kazaa MP3 files as everyone, eventually study for MBA, but surely not EE. It's so bad. :-( Holger From fireflyst at earthlink.net Sat Nov 5 12:17:55 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 12:17:55 -0600 Subject: Estate stuff- must go In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051104182550.0b5eaec8@localhost> Message-ID: I'll come and get any DEC stuff that's there. What's there for DEC-related goods? -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tom Peters Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2005 10:06 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Estate stuff- must go With the sad passing of Don S last year, one of the founders of the Wisconsin Computer Society in the 70's, his window finds she must finally begin the process of disposing of a basement full of stuff. Don was a life-long experimenter and user of computing equipment which has mostly found its way into the classification of "classic." Don and I used/programmed DEC PDP-11 and Altos CP/M and MP/M machines together at more than one job. Here's a list of items that must go. Ideally, a small number of people would take this collection, so as to not divide it all up and make shipping/pickup complicated. If the person who wants the Altos computer wants the disks, I will probably fish out all the Altos, MP/M and application (not the Milenium Systems disks) and bundle that with the computer. The drive cabinet can go separately. Anything I suspect is DEC-related can go separately. The Millenium stuff is probably a separate item as well, unless someone wants all of it. If there's no interest in this collection as large units, it will go in smaller chunks to whomever wants it. She's not looking for money for this material, but can't bear any costs, so S&H is on you, plus some $$ for packing materials. Local pickup would be much, much better. Estate of Don S. Photos are available for a few items: http://my.athenet.net/~uuhhuu/altos/ Content listing based solely on written or printed labels, may be inaccurate, no further information (e.g. version numbers) is available. ?Assy? = Assembler Hardware: http://my.athenet.net/~uuhhuu/altos Altos Z80 based computer, CP/M, MP/M or ?, 208k memory, dual 8? Floppy, serial, parallel, etc. Second Altos cabinet, dual Shugart 801 floppy drives, fan, and power supply only. No motherboard. Was used in a rack for DEC drives. Manuals Manual, Shugart 1610-4 Intelligent Disk Drive Controller MP/M II Programmer?s Guide (photo) MP/M II User?s Guide (photo) MP/M II System Guide (photo) Digital Research CP/Net Network Reference Manual (photo) Link-80 Operator?s Guide Digital (DEC) Logic Handbook 1970 Manual: Adaptec ACB-4000 Series Disk Controller Eight-Inch Floppy disks on East wall shelves Utilities (shareware) dBase II Ashton-Tate ZIP CP/M modem programs PL1 BASIC 80 Supercalc V1.12 9250 Diagnostic LK Link Parsing Util Turbo Tutor Pascal MT+ MP/M 1.14 (Millenium Systems) Wordstar (Millenium Systems) Z80 assembler (Millenium Systems) MP/M 1.16 (Millenium Systems) MP/M 1.16 + Wordstar 2.10 + MSI Utils (Millenium Systems) 6809 Assy + 8048 Assy + Z8000 Assy + MSI util (Millenium Systems) Z80 Assembly (Millenium Systems) Convert.com + Convert.prl (Millenium Systems) 9516 software release (Millenium Systems) 9520 demo programs (Millenium Systems) 9520 diagnostic (Millenium Systems) Pascal Mt+ (Millenium Systems) CP/M (Millenium Systems) Wordstar ver 3.0 Wordstar 950 (possibly for Televideo 950?) CP/M (Millenium Systems) ZAS.COM + ZLK.COM + Z8TINS (Millenium Systems) 6800/6802 Assy (Millenium Systems) UCSD PASCAL SA 120-1 Alignment Diskette (Shugart?) Utils Wordstar 3.0 + Mailmerge + Spellstar Supercalc ISIS V4.2 System TCS Accounting (9 disks) Adventure Eight-Inch Floppy Disks on North Wall Shelves Altos Diagnostic (2 disks) MP/M (Altos) CP/M 2.02 Box of approx 80 disks, some RX01, some CP/M or MP/M, e.g. games, utils, Zork, JRT Pascal, etc. Box of approx 40 disks, mostly CP/M MP/M, e.g. dBase II, Modem 7, BDS C 1.44, user group software, terminal programs, terminal programs, ALGOL, FORTH, BASIC, Fortran, Tiny C, Mp/M, Dazzler, PALASM Osbourn Accounting CP/M 2.24 DEC disks, probably RX01: TECO etc (black cardboard box) CP/M + Wordstar Altos CP/M 2.24 Turbo for Altos dBase II Altos Diagnostic Executive 1.10 (original disk! pink box) RT-11 boot disk (DEC) Pascal CP/M-86 Wordstar-86 Mailmerge-86 Spellstar-86 Jade Computer Products Double-D Disk Controller CP/M 2.2 [Love] Men like to pursue an elusive woman, like a cake of wet soap in a bathtub - even men who hate baths. --Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531 From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 5 12:19:51 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 10:19:51 -0800 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <436CEBE4.3000505@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <436CEBE4.3000505@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511051019510551.24ADA3E4@10.0.0.252> On 11/5/2005 at 10:29 AM woodelf wrote: >I notice they sell a 16bit cpu. Was that the one in the Apple 3? Aren't there two versions of that chip? One that has nice fancy bankswitching instructions and another that doesn't, but is pin-compatible with the 6502? Cheers, Chuck From Useddec at aol.com Sat Nov 5 12:28:41 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 13:28:41 EST Subject: Estate stuff- must go Message-ID: <1d4.48995c84.309e53d9@aol.com> Hi, I can pick up any DEC items. Is there a list available? Thanks, Paul From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 5 12:34:56 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 10:34:56 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436CECD8.1070503@ais.fraunhofer.de> References: <436CECD8.1070503@ais.fraunhofer.de> Message-ID: <200511051034560391.24BB7263@10.0.0.252> On 11/5/2005 at 6:33 PM Holger Veit wrote: >Do you really believe a newbie will be able in the beginning to select >among Lattice, Mach, Altera, Xilinx, etc. programmable circuits where >even the datasheet has to be read twice to understand whether this is a >CPLD, EEPLD, FPLD, FPGA, with NOR/NAND/Antifuse program cells or >external boot PROM, with almost uncomparable figures of the transistor >equivalents, and whatever marketing invents in order to increase market >share and to distiguish the basically same ideas? .. Well, at least someone seems to be trying to make the technology more accessible: http://www.fpga4fun.com/ Cheers, Chuck From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Nov 5 13:06:34 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:06:34 -0500 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <436D02BA.2000003@gmail.com> John Boffemmyer IV wrote: > 'Woot' Phil =) > AMD is good. Intel (at least lately) sucks. Only crappy downside: > because instructions, cache, etc are not exactly the same, I cannot use > AMD stuff on my classic PS/2 computers, etc =/ You *are* aware that many of the processors in PS/2's aren't Intel, right? Many of them are IBM 386's and 486's, from back when IBM had rights to the designs. There are some differences between the IBM parts and the Intel parts. And my PS/2 Server 95A is quite happy running with an AMD Socket 7 chip. (K6-III?) Peace... Sridhar From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sat Nov 5 13:58:44 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 13:58:44 -0600 Subject: Apple Lisa XENIX Message-ID: LC[x] and Classic both use the SuperDrive/3.5HD floppy mechanism, Lisa 3.5" uses the SSDD Apple 400k (hacked up from the standard 360k so Apple wouldn't have to redo the ROMs when they dropped Twiggy). a 800k external drive can be plugged into the classic, possibly (other compact Macs take it, as does the IIcx/ci), or a non-FDHD SE, original II, or <= Mac Plus machine come standard with 800k (or 400k) drives. Reminder for people who don't work with Macs much - stuff gets written to disk (When a System 6 disk is put in a System 7 Mac, the desktop file is immediately recreated) without the explicit intervention of the operator. If this is done on a SuperDrive Mac, and the disk is then put back in a 400/800k Mac, it won't be able to read/mount the disk. Write protect all 800k floppies if you use them in a 1.4 MB Mac. From stevew at ka6s.com Sat Nov 5 14:37:11 2005 From: stevew at ka6s.com (stevew) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 12:37:11 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU Message-ID: <200511051237.11157.stevew@ka6s.com> "Dwight K. Elvey" Wrote: >Hi >My thought is to make a variable word length processor using >a single bit ALU. Of course, I've been thinking in terms of a relay >based machine. >Dwight Hi Dwight, Having helped design a variable word length computer (B1000 series machines (B1955, B1965), I'm of the opinion that it isn't a useful construct. Burroughs justified the idea by saying they ran "microcode" on the hardware. It was really a basic machine language just like any other computer. The only real difference was that all the compilers compiled down to intermediate languages which were run on interpreters. It didn't yield very good performance even though the hardware wasn't that slow for it's era. There are a couple of interesting side effects of the choices they made. They needed to have a variable word length rotate capability, and also chose to address memory on bit boundaries. If you had a 13 bit word length, then memory delivered 13 bit elements to you (wasting alot of bandwidth in the process since it was organized by 32...) You also need the ability to pull off the carry bit from any particular point in the ALU. If I were the Burroughs architect, I wouldn't have gone to those extremes knowing what I know now. Steve Wilson From chenmel at earthlink.net Sat Nov 5 16:05:32 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 17:05:32 -0500 Subject: Apple Lisa XENIX In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20051105170532.1be9c090.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sat, 5 Nov 2005 13:58:44 -0600 compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > LC[x] and Classic both use the SuperDrive/3.5HD floppy mechanism, Lisa 3.5" uses the SSDD Apple 400k (hacked up from the standard 360k so Apple wouldn't have to redo the ROMs when they dropped Twiggy). a 800k external drive can be plugged into the classic, possibly (other compact Macs take it, as does the IIcx/ci), or a non-FDHD SE, original II, or <= Mac Plus machine come standard with 800k (or 400k) drives. > > Reminder for people who don't work with Macs much - stuff gets written to disk (When a System 6 disk is put in a System 7 Mac, the desktop file is immediately recreated) without the explicit intervention of the operator. If this is done on a SuperDrive Mac, and the disk is then put back in a 400/800k Mac, it won't be able to read/mount the disk. Write protect all 800k floppies if you use them in a 1.4 MB Mac. > Windows pulls crap like that as well. My computer at work has something seriously wrong with the floppy drive where it corrupts any disk that it writes to but can read a floppy safely. I have to copy protect disks before plugging them in the machine or they are instantly unreadable (the disks usually contain data in log files created on machines down in the lab on plain DOS machines, while the machine up in the cubicle runs W2000). Windows 'insists' on modifying something in the directory of any disk it first encounters, having to do with 'long filenames.' Be aware of this when putting any vintage DOS diskettes into the drive of a modern machine. > -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com Sat Nov 5 16:08:26 2005 From: nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com (nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 14:08:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: Apple II APEX OS manual posted (Update) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20051105220826.80245.qmail@web81004.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I have my original disks still around but don't know of any place online where they are currently available. Don't have an Apple set up at the moment I can make use of to copy them. In the process of getting the collection cleaned up and organized so it might be a little while yet. Lots of work left to do in my storage space as well as the house before I can really get back into the swing of things. --- "Steven N. Hirsch" wrote: > Looks interesting. Any idea where I can download > the software? ----- "When the mind is free of any thought or judgement, then and only then can we know things as they are." David Williams From hachti at hachti.de Sat Nov 5 16:09:50 2005 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 23:09:50 +0100 Subject: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436D2DAE.9030108@hachti.de> > THanks Stan. If Al isn't interested in scanning (which I'd be surprised if > he wasn't) I will. Cool.... Now my drive's power supply has collapsed while I was programming the first instructions on the hpib bus :-( I could use a schematic of the power supply...... +ph > Lee Courtney > > MontaVista Software > 1237 East Arques Avenue > Sunnyvale, California 94085 > (408) 328-9238 voice > (408) 328-9204 fax > Yahoo IM: charlesleecourtney > > >>-----Original Message----- >>From: Stan Sieler [mailto:sieler at allegro.com] >>Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 5:19 PM >>To: Lee Courtney; General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only >>Subject: RE: HP 7978 9-track tape drive - docs? >> >> >> >>>Don't have the docs, but would be very interested in a set. >> >>Also have a 7978 >> >>>I'd like to understand self-test codes for. >>> >>>If someone should have docs please reply on list. >> >>I'll bring the diag/docs manual I've got to VCF, to >>loan it to Al, if he's interested in it. >> >>Stan >>-- >>Stan Sieler >>sieler at allegro.com >>www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html >> From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 5 16:17:16 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:17:16 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511051237.11157.stevew@ka6s.com> References: <200511051237.11157.stevew@ka6s.com> Message-ID: <200511051417160155.2586FE52@10.0.0.252> On 11/5/2005 at 12:37 PM stevew wrote: >"Dwight K. Elvey" Wrote: >>Hi >>My thought is to make a variable word length processor using >>a single bit ALU. Of course, I've been thinking in terms of a relay >>based machine. You might as well make it decimal, too, Dwight. That way you can use the 8-4 and 8-2 combinations to mark the end of a word... :) (I guess it's been done!) Cheers, Chuck From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sat Nov 5 16:28:36 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 16:28:36 -0600 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511051417160155.2586FE52@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511052239.jA5Md5Xo078848@keith.ezwind.net> ... > You might as well make it decimal, too, Dwight. That way you > can use the > 8-4 and 8-2 combinations to mark the end of a word... :) > > (I guess it's been done!) Kinda. The IBM 1401, 1440, 1410, but they used an extra bit in each (6 bit) called a word mark rather than blow off a digit. It was designed to hold alphabetic info as well as doing decimal math. Gil > Cheers, > Chuck > > From beclassic at att.net Sat Nov 5 16:26:25 2005 From: beclassic at att.net (bill bailey) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 17:26:25 -0500 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? References: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org><200511042127050119.21EA202A@10.0.0.252> <436C6483.5000401@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <003001c5e257$fe4e3ea0$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> Mine is 2.05, item 1502367. Came with a 5150. I might be able to locate a blank and make a copy. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Leonard" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2005 2:51 AM Subject: Re: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > I've got 1.02, if that's any help. This is the disk that one often finds > > The exact diskette I'm trying to replace has this fully: > > IBM (logo) 1502212 > Personal Computer > Hardware Reference Library > -------------------------- > Diagnostics > > Version 2.02 (C) Copyright IBM Corp. 1981, 1982, 1983 > > Since yours is 1.02 I am assuming it was 5150 whereas mine probably used to be > 5160. > -- > Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ > Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ > Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 5 16:59:31 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 15:59:31 -0700 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511052239.jA5Md5Xo078848@keith.ezwind.net> References: <200511052239.jA5Md5Xo078848@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <436D3953.1060207@jetnet.ab.ca> Gil Carrick wrote: >... > > >>You might as well make it decimal, too, Dwight. That way you >>can use the >>8-4 and 8-2 combinations to mark the end of a word... :) >> >>(I guess it's been done!) >> >> > >Kinda. The IBM 1401, 1440, 1410, but they used an extra bit in each (6 bit) >called a word mark rather than blow off a digit. It was designed to hold >alphabetic info as well as doing decimal math. > >Gil > > Umm what about the sign bit? Bytw this 2000 not 1950 so we can use ascii encoding. :) From tpeters at mixcom.com Sat Nov 5 17:23:20 2005 From: tpeters at mixcom.com (Tom Peters) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 17:23:20 -0600 Subject: Estate stuff- must go In-Reply-To: <1d4.48995c84.309e53d9@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051105172149.0b4c9e78@localhost> At 01:28 PM 11/5/2005 -0500, you wrote: >I can pick up any DEC items. Is there a list available? Only the few disks listed in the original post. Odds are they are RX01 for RT-11. There was some kind of compressed format too, hopefully these aren't that format. [Praise] The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working. --Albert Einstein --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531 From bpope at wordstock.com Sat Nov 5 17:51:11 2005 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 18:51:11 -0500 (est) Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <436CEBE4.3000505@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Nov 5, 05 10:29:08 am Message-ID: <200511052351.SAA24464@wordstock.com> And thusly woodelf spake: > > I notice they sell a 16bit cpu. Was that the one in the Apple 3? Don't you mean the Apple IIgs? If so it is a 65816, which is also in the SuperCPU for the C64 and is clocked at 20Mhz. Cheers, Bryan From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 5 17:54:51 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 15:54:51 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511052239.jA5Md5Xo078848@keith.ezwind.net> References: <200511052239.jA5Md5Xo078848@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <200511051554510902.25E05786@10.0.0.252> On 11/5/2005 at 4:28 PM Gil Carrick wrote: >... >> You might as well make it decimal, too, Dwight. That way you >> can use the >> 8-4 and 8-2 combinations to mark the end of a word... :) >> >> (I guess it's been done!) > >Kinda. The IBM 1401, 1440, 1410, but they used an extra bit in each (6 bit) >called a word mark rather than blow off a digit. It was designed to hold >alphabetic info as well as doing decimal math. Yeah, I know (I've been there and can even remember a bit of autocoder). 7080 or 1620/1710, which is what I had in mind when I wrote the above. 1620 used 5 bits (the 6th bit was parity and not addressable by program control, although it was displayed and mentioned in the manuals). 82 was a record mark--84 was a numeric blank, 842 was a group mark (used for disk operations, mostly). The 1 bit didn't matter to the hardware for those characters. That flag bit on the 1401 and 1620 always seemed like a great waste of resources. It was handy for the math tables (You don't really want to do your math by lookup tables, do you?) to denote a carry, but I suspect that much less than 20 percent of the digits in memory had a word mark set. So, let's see--you really have 6 undefined characters at your disposal. 82, 821, 84, 841, 842 and 8421. Forget about addressing by the high-order position (i.e. record addressing) for the time being. Let's see what can be done with just 4 bits: A 5 digit number could be encoded as (82)99999 if positive; or (821)99999 if negative, addressed by LSD. You could keep numbers in 10's complement, instead of sign-magnitude. That still leaves you with 84, 842, 841, 8421 for other record types and devious schemes. As far as ASCII goes, you've got 100 possibilities, which should be enough for upper and lower case and a healthy dose of punctuation with a few control characters. Cheers, Chuck From Bob at BRADLEE.ORG Sat Nov 5 10:30:03 2005 From: Bob at BRADLEE.ORG (Bob Bradlee) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 11:30:03 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT (Bob Bradlee) In-Reply-To: <001901c5e21f$6d5ea570$6401a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <200511051640.jA5Ge7sc073801@keith.ezwind.net> Not sure how I ended up on the subject line ? I too was making the same point, it just takes a day or two for posts to make it through the moderator :( I admit the first time I discharged a fully charged CRT, I jumped and dropped the screwdriver when it cracked about the time I started to lift the rubber cap. Once I knew what to expect it became a game to guess how big a crack or to control the screwdriver and see how long I could make it crackle before it went dead. PS: neo.rr.com ???? I am here on the west side of Columbus ohio and have no clue where neo is ? Bob On Sat, 5 Nov 2005 10:41:44 -0500, Barry Watzman wrote: >As someone who has worked on TV's since the 1960's, and who worked as an >engineer in TV stations for many years, I think you are being paranoid and >getting far too worked up over nothing. ....... From CHFROEHLICH at gmx.at Sat Nov 5 11:07:01 2005 From: CHFROEHLICH at gmx.at (CHFROEHLICH at gmx.at) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 18:07:01 +0100 (MET) Subject: TI59/58 Diagrams aviable Message-ID: <16745.1131210421@www57.gmx.net> Hello Spike, I found your beautiful schematics from the TI59 several years ago on the Internet. I would aks you to send me a link or a copy of this page. It would be very useful for me. Thank you very much in advance Christof from Austria -- Highspeed-Freiheit. Bei GMX superg?nstig, z.B. GMX DSL_Cityflat, DSL-Flatrate f?r nur 4,99 Euro/Monat* http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Sat Nov 5 13:26:59 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 14:26:59 -0500 Subject: That darn Intel jingle... In-Reply-To: <436D02BA.2000003@gmail.com> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> <436D02BA.2000003@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6.2.5.4.2.20051105142002.0317d690@boff-net.dhs.org> impressive. a LOT of people on the ps/2 groups are saying only the ibm/intel chips work and rarely do others in the ps/2 machines. k6-III was/is the AMD mobile technologies socket 7 chip. it had more cache and added functions for power saving, etc over the standard k6 series. it also allowed for more speed (maxed out at 575mhz instead of 550mhz of the k6-2). there were a few claims of a k6-III stock chip rated at 600mhz back in '99, but I never saw it. most likely, it was a k6-III 550mhz overclocked to 600mhz with a better heatsink/fan. -John Boffemmyer IV At 02:06 PM 11/5/2005, you wrote: >John Boffemmyer IV wrote: >>'Woot' Phil =) >>AMD is good. Intel (at least lately) sucks. Only crappy downside: >>because instructions, cache, etc are not exactly the same, I cannot >>use AMD stuff on my classic PS/2 computers, etc =/ > >You *are* aware that many of the processors in PS/2's aren't Intel, >right? Many of them are IBM 386's and 486's, from back when IBM had >rights to the designs. There are some differences between the IBM >parts and the Intel parts. > >And my PS/2 Server 95A is quite happy running with an AMD Socket 7 >chip. (K6-III?) > >Peace... Sridhar -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/161 - Release Date: 11/3/2005 From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Sat Nov 5 19:04:48 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 19:04:48 Subject: Latest find : IBM display writer In-Reply-To: <1fb.14df997d.309be0cb@aol.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051105190448.419f0b96@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 04:53 PM 11/3/05 -0500, you wrote: >Hi! > >Got any ideas where I could find 1 of these machines. No, but you can get the Display Write software for the PCs. (I don't know how similar it is to an orginal Display Writer). Joe Used to write on 1 >and believe it or not, I miss the 1 I had. >Thanks >Jerry > From trixter at oldskool.org Sat Nov 5 19:05:27 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 19:05:27 -0600 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <003001c5e257$fe4e3ea0$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> References: <436C2F0F.702@oldskool.org><200511042127050119.21EA202A@10.0.0.252> <436C6483.5000401@oldskool.org> <003001c5e257$fe4e3ea0$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> Message-ID: <436D56D7.3080300@oldskool.org> Michael Brutman came through for me (thanks Mike!) but thanks for your offer all the same. bill bailey wrote: > Mine is 2.05, item 1502367. Came with a 5150. I might be able to locate a > blank and make a copy. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jim Leonard" > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2005 2:51 AM > Subject: Re: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? > > > >>Chuck Guzis wrote: >> >>>I've got 1.02, if that's any help. This is the disk that one often > > finds > >>The exact diskette I'm trying to replace has this fully: >> >>IBM (logo) 1502212 >>Personal Computer >>Hardware Reference Library >>-------------------------- >>Diagnostics >> >>Version 2.02 (C) Copyright IBM Corp. 1981, 1982, 1983 >> >>Since yours is 1.02 I am assuming it was 5150 whereas mine probably used > > to be > >>5160. >>-- >>Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) > > http://www.oldskool.org/ > >>Want to help an ambitious games project? > > http://www.mobygames.com/ > >>Or check out some trippy MindCandy at > > http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 5 18:42:29 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 00:42:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: OT? Need IBM XT keyboard & IBM Mono/CGA/EGA 5151 monitor mine is In-Reply-To: <20051103223955.21931.qmail@web34506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> from "Ry May" at Nov 3, 5 02:39:55 pm Message-ID: > > I enjoy retrocomputing on my old IBM 5150 but sadly my trusty 5151 is Do you feel like having ago at repairing the 5151 monitor? I have schematics, and it's a very simple circuit. In fact the most difficult part is getting inside the thing. (Prise off the little caps at the front corners of the top grille. Put the monitor face down. Free the cables fron the 'hook' on the bacb section of the case. Undo the 2 screws under those caps, the 2 screws on the bottom that go in from the back. Peel off the sticky paper on the bottom, undo the 4 screws on the back half of the case _NOT_ the 2 on the front part. These 6 screws hold a bracket inside that holds the mains transfromer, if you remove all 6 screws it fals onto the CRT!. Lift off the case). > dead as is my 5152. This is a thinly disguised Epson printer, of course. Again I have schematics if you want to attempt a repair. > Also my IBM XT keyboard is pretty much dead as well. I am willing to In my experience logic faults are rare in these keyboards. If it's totally dead, I'd suspect the cable. At least one of my IBM keyboards has been fitted with a new DIN plug. If odd keys don't work, you might find dismantling the thing and cleaning the PCB helps. I can talk you through this. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 5 18:45:38 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 00:45:38 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <436BC5B8.7000705@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 4, 5 09:34:00 pm Message-ID: > > > > Is this the PSU that's shown in the boardswapper manual? It doesn't give > > much detail (for some odd reason you replace the complete PSU, not just > > the faulty board...), but there are a couple of pictures of it. > > > > > Yes, it is the one in the boardswapper guide. In this special case, it > is a "complete assembly exchange" guide. Yes, and I'm not sure why. The PSU in the Opt 200 machines (at least) is very modular, and it should be possible to isolate the faulty board with a few simple tests. Amazingly the manual does give a strip-down procedure for the printhead. If you've never taken one of those apart, you should do so. The construction is very interesting. > > It's clear the light pen was fairly hardware-intensive. Many of the video > > timing signals, including the outputs from the horizontal counter on the > > text PCB, go to the light pen controller. > > > > > The light pen itself is a fairly simple piece of hardware, but the Oh, OK, I wasn't clear. I meant the 'light pen option' -- that is the pen and the controller PCB. The pen itself is simple. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 5 18:50:33 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 00:50:33 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436C1727.8090901@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 5, 5 02:21:27 am Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > >>5.1/6.1/7.1/whatever sound even with cheapest receivers. The second > >>point emphasizes on the "digitalization" issue: > >>in the near future there won't be any analogue AM or FM > >>transmissions/transmitters any more; even SW band migrates > > > > > > THis ia a great pity, and actually, given the number of cheap radios > > around, I wonder if it will ever happen. I can't believe the public will > > accept having to replace doxens of sets. > > Well UK terrestrial analogue TV's getting canned in what, five years? So > far there seems to be no outcry whatsoever, yet I'm amazed that people > aren't up in arms about having to fork out for a new set (or several, in I suspect most of the General Public don't realise what is involved (or that they'll have to buy a settop box for every TV and VCR that they own). > the case of most households), or at least a cable box and having to sign > up for cable TV. Well, when it happens, I for one will simply give up television (and I won't miss it at all). I know several others people who intend to do the same.... > > I expect it's way too late to stop the switch-off too, as the cable / > satellite people will be in bed with the Government by now and of course > the Government are convinced that digital-everything is the way forward > for our society... I've come to the conclusion, based on digital TV, digital photography, digital radio, etc, that when 'digital' is applied to a consumer product, the result is a reduction in quality. > Personally I like my 4 channels (Cambridge uni's astronomy forbid us > from receiving channel 5 up around Cambridge) when compared to cable. > Cable might have way more choice, but the programming quality's a lot > poorer, there are way more adverts, and the broadcast quality isn't up > to much compared to analogue either with signal drop-outs all over the > place... Yep. A digital signal does not degrade gracefully. And there are far too many channels (and very few quality programmes). > I find the building is 99% of the fun and the using is 1%, no matter > what the gadget. I'm just a sucker for seeing how things work (whether > done well or not) regardless of what they are... Of course. I can't think of anything I own that I've not pulled apart (generally within the first day of owning it). I like to see how it works (and that it's been assembled properly). And I have been known to work out how some uncodumented device works, at least enough to be able to repair it. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 5 19:03:24 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 01:03:24 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: from "Julian Wolfe" at Nov 5, 5 08:29:44 am Message-ID: > > Yes, I'm in IL. Are you a business? > > I probably need a VT100 power supply, as I found out it wasn't just the > flyback that blew. The PSU rarely fails, and if it does, it's one of the nicest SMPSUs to repair since all the control circuitry is on the 'isolated side', the drive to the chopper transistor being transformer coupled. Very often one of the diodes on the vidoe board fails -- one of the diodes that rectifies the output from the flyback transformer to produce the CRT voltages. This is often the reason that the flyback fails in the first place. I would look at those first. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 5 18:33:23 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 00:33:23 +0000 (GMT) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem - first measurement results In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE21E1@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> from "Gooijen, Henk" at Nov 2, 5 10:00:06 pm Message-ID: > > What does it do if you press 4 repeatedly? Does it flash the bottom 3 or > > bottom 2 digits? If it's only updating the bottom 8 bits, you see, then > > only 2 digits will flash from 0. > = > > Indeed, pressing the "4" only flashes the last two digits! > How did you know that ?! Call it a very lucky guess. Since the 8008 is an 8-bit device, and we know it's not updating the full 16 or 18 bit word correctly, it would be logical to guess that the carry had failed between the low 8 bits and the next 8 bits. Now thin what happens when you try to enter 444444... > Next, the response on the display from the keypad. I always > started with pressing "CLR", then repeatedly the same key. > The rightmost (lsb) display is called "A", the one next to it > is called "B", the leftmost (msb) display is called "F". > = > > button display reaction (1st time, 2nd, 3rd, etc) > -------------------------------------------------------- > 0 nothing to see > 1 nothing to see Interesting, the LSB is being lost somewhere (that would explain why 1 does nothing, why 5 behaves as 4, etc). What sort of RAM is on this board (I can't be bothered to find the prints tonight ;-)), do you know if it's good. I've found old SRAM to be notoriously unreliable. [...] > Last 3 signals are the display values (3-bit) to the 7447 input > A, B, and C. On connector J1 pins 12, 11, and 10 respectively. > As always, the last thing to check should have been the first! > These 3 signals are continously 0 V. That explains why the display > always shows "000000". I can see a short positive pulse when a key > of the keypad is pressed. > = > > This leads me to the following (early) conclusions. > 1) the keypad is scanned. All "X" signals of the matrix (READ x H) > are OK, and all "Y" signals of the matrix (the 8881 outputs) are > all valid, and give the correct information when a key is pressed. > 2) When a key is pressed it is momentarily shown on the display, but > then the value returns to all zero. I can not see the value, so > it could be any garbage ... Since I haev a logic analyser 'to hand', I would start looking at those 3 inputs to the '47. Where do they come from on the M7859? An output port on the 8008? Do we know that port is latching correctly? Or more likely, the 8008 is writing the wrong values to it -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 5 19:14:22 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 01:14:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <200511050823040228.2442B202@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 5, 5 08:23:04 am Message-ID: > ...and DIP-based TTL (and CMOS) is more "harvestable". Before I toss out > an old board with lots of DIPs on it, I think really hard about getting out > the propane torch and removing the chips on it. If the chips are SMT, it > goes into the trash without a second thought. Why? Although the manufacturers don't recomend it, I've had no problems removing and re-using SOICs, PLCCs, etc. > > A friend, after retirement, has made a small career of working on Ruffatti > pipe organs. Instruments made in the 70's and 80's rely on a bunch of TTL > and an MPU (I think it's 8086, but not sure) for the adjustable combination > stop mechanism. The outfit that designed it for Ruffatti and did the > programming is long gone, not having left any documentation. Fortunately, > the logic's made of standard parts, the MPU has a well-documented > instruction set and it's not hard to get a probe on pins to figure out > what's going on--and one can purchase replacements. I shudder to think of > what would have happened if these things had been FPGAs. An instrument > like this can have a life of several hundred years and go more than 100 > years between renovation. I am sure most of us here would much rather repair a board of TTL than something based around essentially undocumented parts. That's one reason I stick to classic computers, of course. -tony From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 5 21:21:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 19:21:01 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511051921010726.269D14BC@10.0.0.252> On 11/6/2005 at 1:14 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Why? Although the manufacturers don't recomend it, I've had no problems >removing and re-using SOICs, PLCCs, etc. Sigh--one of the many facets of aging. Even with a good strong loupe, they're just too small to handle easily. It's very frustrating. I can handle a PLCC (stick it in a socket), but SMT caps and resistors and SOIC are just too small for me to work with. Heck, I need the loupe just to read data sheets. :( Cheers, Chuck From huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Sat Nov 5 22:01:19 2005 From: huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au (Huw Davies) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 15:01:19 +1100 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPF002XJZNHGFU6@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPF002XJZNHGFU6@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <60F8AAB9-F406-4B6F-BE35-FD033E27EE6B@kerberos.davies.net.au> On 05/11/2005, at 5:09 AM, Allison wrote: >> But does any software even consider being able to be rolled back >> from a >> check point nowdays? >> With a well designed virtual memory system ( no gui stuff I >> guess ) a >> process that takes several >> days? or more to process needs to interuptable and saveable. > > I think VMS and a few of the real OSs do but PCs nah. As good as VMS is (and it is) it doesn't support process checkpointing "out of the box" but depending on the application it's not too hard to code. Of course this is true for other operating systems too. Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green" From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 5 22:17:18 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 20:17:18 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <60F8AAB9-F406-4B6F-BE35-FD033E27EE6B@kerberos.davies.net.au> References: <0IPF002XJZNHGFU6@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <60F8AAB9-F406-4B6F-BE35-FD033E27EE6B@kerberos.davies.net.au> Message-ID: <200511052017180580.26D09AE9@10.0.0.252> On 11/6/2005 at 3:01 PM Huw Davies wrote: >As good as VMS is (and it is) it doesn't support process >checkpointing "out of the box" but depending on the application it's >not too hard to code. Of course this is true for other operating >systems too. I suspect the supercomputer users still are capable of checkpointing. Codes that run for days are not uncommon. From kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com Sun Nov 6 00:23:54 2005 From: kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com (Bruce Lane) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 22:23:54 -0800 Subject: M9312 boot/console PROM archive In-Reply-To: <436B1CF5.4010602@mindspring.com> References: <001c01c5a068$b25a9150$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> <436B1CF5.4010602@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <200511052223540768.2710E8C9@192.168.42.129> Hi, Don, *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 04-Nov-05 at 00:33 Don North wrote: >I've posted a web page that has >M9312 PROM images in Intel HEX format as well as commented source and >assembly listings of all the well-known devices, both boot and console. I tried to get to these this evening. Your web site address seems to be rerouting to something called 'slowdeath.com,' and is demanding a password to get any farther than the front page. Please advise. Thanks much. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?" From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 6 00:42:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 22:42:01 -0800 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes Message-ID: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a date code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, tops. Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? Cheers, Chuck From electo at iinet.net.au Sat Nov 5 18:18:30 2005 From: electo at iinet.net.au (Glen Graham) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 11:18:30 +1100 Subject: hp 10391b inverse assembler Message-ID: <000001c5e267$9df4eb70$0401010a@electookc542c0> Hi George My Name is Glen Graham I am also looking for a copy of 10391B Inverse Assembler Files Did you ever do any good finding a copy? I you did can you please pass on the information. I have included a copy of files that you may be interested in Operating system files for 2/ HP1650B 3/ HP1660A 4/ HP16500B 5/ HP16500C 6/ LIF Utility Software (very handy) use this program in DOS to convert the files into LIF format This is the format that the equipment uses except the 16500B/C units they use DOS files To load software into 16500B/C use these instructions Double-click the executable file and unzip the contents to a folder on your hard drive. 1. You will need five blank floppy disks to complete this step. Label the floppies 1, 2, 3, 4, and PVTEST. In Windows Explorer, copy the contents of the DISK1 folder to the disk labeled 1. Repeat for the remaining folders. Note that it is not necessary to copy the DEMO folder in the 16500C file set to the 16500C for proper operation. 2. Boot your 16500B/C from Disk 1 (insert the disk into the floppy drive and turn on the power). 3. Copy all the files from Disk 1 and the rest of the disks you created into the logic analyzer's \SYSTEM directory. To do this, start in the System window, click Configuration, and select Flexible Disk. Then enter the command Copy file: *.* type: DOS to: \SYSTEM on: Hard Disk and click Execute. Click Continue if you are prompted to overwrite any files. 4. Remove the last floppy disk from the drive and cycle power on the 16500B/C. The analyzer will now boot from the new operating system files you just copied. -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: README.TXT URL: From lbickley at bickleywest.com Sun Nov 6 01:14:17 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Sat, 5 Nov 2005 23:14:17 -0800 Subject: M9312 boot/console PROM archive In-Reply-To: <200511052223540768.2710E8C9@192.168.42.129> References: <001c01c5a068$b25a9150$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> <436B1CF5.4010602@mindspring.com> <200511052223540768.2710E8C9@192.168.42.129> Message-ID: <200511052314.17393.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Saturday 05 November 2005 22:23, Bruce Lane wrote: > Hi, Don, > > *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** > > On 04-Nov-05 at 00:33 Don North wrote: > >I've posted a web page that has > >M9312 PROM images in Intel HEX format as well as commented source and > >assembly listings of all the well-known devices, both boot and console. > > > > I tried to get to these this evening. Your web site address seems to be > rerouting to something called 'slowdeath.com,' and is demanding a password > to get any farther than the front page. I went there last night to download source w/o problem - and tested the site tonight again after this message w/o problem. Feels like the issue is not at Don's site - but perhaps your (Bruce) DNS. Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sun Nov 6 05:07:10 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:07:10 +0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436DE3DE.3040103@gjcp.net> Tony Duell wrote: > I've come to the conclusion, based on digital TV, digital photography, > digital radio, etc, that when 'digital' is applied to a consumer product, > the result is a reduction in quality. One point I'd take issue with is about digital photography. Go and compare photos taken with an el-cheapo point-and-shoot digital camera and an equivalent 35mm compact. *Then* tell me there's not *some* improvement ;-) Gordon. From huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Sun Nov 6 05:25:48 2005 From: huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au (Huw Davies) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 22:25:48 +1100 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: On 02/11/2005, at 8:52 AM, Pete Turnbull wrote: > FWIW, I think Tim's suggestion (mini-ITX) is amongst the best. A good choice if you want to use something new. I used to use an old Digital Multia (alpha based) running Linux to do this sort of thing. Quiet and certainly on topic. For something more recent perhaps one of the HP/Compaq "Windows terminal" devices that are supported with Linux. ISTR these are StrongARM based. Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green" From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sun Nov 6 06:13:47 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 07:13:47 -0500 Subject: OT: Lowest-power small server solutions In-Reply-To: References: <200511010856250567.0FC7D811@10.0.0.252> <4367931D.7070902@yahoo.co.uk> <10511012152.ZM22307@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <20051106121347.513B9BA40FD@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Huw Davies wrote: > > On 02/11/2005, at 8:52 AM, Pete Turnbull wrote: > > > FWIW, I think Tim's suggestion (mini-ITX) is amongst the best. > > A good choice if you want to use something new. I used to use an old > Digital Multia (alpha based) running Linux to do this sort of thing. > Quiet and certainly on topic. For something more recent perhaps one > of the HP/Compaq "Windows terminal" devices that are supported with > Linux. ISTR these are StrongARM based. > > Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au > Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the > Australia | air, the sky would be painted green" > Keep in mind that for me (and many others) the mini-ITX isn't just a suggestion, it's an implemented solution that's hosting hundreds of GBytes of web content/mirrors on a few dozen virtual domains and also mail/mailing-list stuff. While the Multia isn't the most power-sucking computer out there (it's really quite good) it cannot beat the 25W that the mini-ITX server draws. For contrast (and some on-topicness) the mini-ITX server replaced an Alphaserver 2100 with two 7-drive RAID arrays. And it has much more CPU and disk space than that box did too, while drawing about one-thirtieth the power. I do not at all miss booting the 2100 into Windows NT just to configure the EISA RAID controllers! Tim. From m_thompson at ids.net Sun Nov 6 06:28:03 2005 From: m_thompson at ids.net (M Thompson) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 07:28:03 -0500 Subject: M9312 boot/console PROM archive In-Reply-To: <436B1CF5.4010602@mindspring.com> References: <001c01c5a068$b25a9150$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> <436B1CF5.4010602@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.0.20051106072715.035d7500@155.212.1.107> The crew at RCS/RI has a bunch of 11/34s with DDCMP boot roms. At 03:33 AM 11/4/2005, you wrote: >I've posted a web page that >has M9312 PROM images in Intel HEX format as well as commented >source and assembly listings of all the well-known devices, both >boot and console. > >Two 'new' images are also included, a revised version of the 'DD' >TU58 boot device that allows for a non-standard CSR assignment (the >original DEC PROM is very broken in this regard) and a new 'ZZ' >device boot PROM that runs the M9312 CPU and memory diagnostics >continuously (useful for basic CPU/MEMORY check with no other peripherals). > >A pointer to the tool set is also provided. > >I'm still looking for *any* form of image for the TMSCP boot >23-E39A9; if anyone has one of these and can forward the bits (or a >real device; I will return it!) I can process it, and we'll have a >virtually complete set of all the major devices. > >Don North >ak6dn _at_ mindspring _dot_ com > >Jay West wrote: > >>I found one of the rom images I put up was a bad prom. Another one >>read consistently but didn't match two other sources. The images >>have been replaced. Affected images : 752A9, 248F1, 616F1. I >>replaced them after getting multiple other images and comparing, so >>I'm confident the ones up now are all correct. >> >>I'd like to post source listings for the boot programs. Anyone got >>a program to re-arrange the bits correctly, then disassemble? >> >>Jay Michael Thompson E-Mail: M_Thompson at IDS.net From chenmel at earthlink.net Sun Nov 6 08:30:26 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 09:30:26 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436DE3DE.3040103@gjcp.net> References: <436DE3DE.3040103@gjcp.net> Message-ID: <20051106093026.6bfc5332.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:07:10 +0000 Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > Tony Duell wrote: > > > I've come to the conclusion, based on digital TV, digital photography, > > digital radio, etc, that when 'digital' is applied to a consumer product, > > the result is a reduction in quality. > > One point I'd take issue with is about digital photography. Go and > compare photos taken with an el-cheapo point-and-shoot digital camera > and an equivalent 35mm compact. *Then* tell me there's not *some* > improvement ;-) > > Gordon. At that level of photography, it is the lens that limits the quality. And the lens quality of the cheap point-and-shoot digital cameras is about the same as that on the cheap film cameras. Perhaps the fact that many shots on the digital camera often disappear silently, never being printed, is an improvement. -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From aw288 at osfn.org Sun Nov 6 08:38:47 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 09:38:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <20051106093026.6bfc5332.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: > At that level of photography, Please KILL this thread NOW, as we JUST HAD IT. Talk about computers. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From aw288 at osfn.org Sun Nov 6 09:02:17 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 10:02:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: DECjunk, Arkansas Message-ID: Forwarded: > From: William Donzelli [mailto:aw288 at osfn.org] > Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 8:01 AM > To: Don Reaves W5OR > Subject: RE: National SW-54 bites the big one > > > What should I do with my PDP-11/24, PDP-11/03-L, and RL02 bits? > > Send me a buyer/trader as I need to get them off my carport > before winter. > > No racks, no interconnect cables, just the units as they > were removed from > > the rack years ago. > > > > If I must I'll put them on 'bay, as a precursor to carting > them to the > > smelter. > > Can I post this to another list? From doc at mdrconsult.com Sun Nov 6 09:31:51 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:31:51 -0600 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436E21E7.4010903@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright > awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a date > code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going > and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, > tops. > > Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? Look in the Yellow Pages for used office supply or office liquidation dealers. There's an office supply surplus here in Austin that I cruise at least monthly for NOS floppy media. I've bought various formats 5.25" disks there in the shrinkwrap for $0.25 to $1.00 a box, IBM-branded 2MB (1.44MB) floppies for $3.00/100, and recently about 6 10-disk boxes of DSDD 3.5" for $0.50 each. Doc From henk.gooijen at oce.com Sun Nov 6 02:20:27 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 09:20:27 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem - first measurement results Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE21EE@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Tony wrote: > Interesting, the LSB is being lost somewhere (that would explain why > 1 does nothing, why 5 behaves as 4, etc). > > What sort of RAM is on this board (I can't be bothered to find the > prints tonight ;-)), do you know if it's good. I've found old SRAM > to be notoriously unreliable. Interesting, I had not thought of that, may be a stuck bit. I must have a better look at the program code listing. Checking out the RAM is a bit difficult. It consists of two 4-bit chips with separate data IN and data OUT pins, type 86586 (?). If the 8008 uses the RAM for storage of variables, I guess that I can safely say that the RAM (plus associated circuitry to read/write) must be OK. > Since I have a logic analyser 'to hand', I would start looking at those > 3 inputs to the '47. Where do they come from on the M7859? An output > port on the 8008? Do we know that port is latching correctly? Or more > likely, the 8008 is writing the wrong values to it. Page KY-4 has all the decode logic. There is a second post to this list on its way, posted Friday morning ... it's now Sunday morning ... The signal KY4 READ INPUT 5L from the 74154 is used on page KY-3 to enable 8093 AND gates to read the scan matrix lines. The signal KY4 LD REG 0H via a 7404 from the 74154 is used on page KY-6 to enable a 74175 latch of which the outputs drive the scan matrix. Likewise, KY4 LD REG 1H drives the 3 NUM lines for the 7447. Before I go on writing long stories here, I think it is best to wait for the e-mail from last Friday to appear here. Thanks for working with me Tony, it helps keeping focussed ... - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From tequilizer at gmx.net Sun Nov 6 02:52:33 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:52:33 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436DC451.9030402@gmx.net> > My 9845B came with a 3rd party mass storage ROM module. I am told this > allows the use of HPIB disks (probably Amigo protocol). The main use of > it so far has been due to the fact that it was a little PCB with normal > chips on it, not an HP hybrid. Very useful for figuring out what the ROM > module connections are. > Did you ever try to connect your machine to one of the earlier 5,25"-amigo-drives (like the 82901 or the 9135A)? These drives should be supported by your 3rd party ROM, and have the charme they should be able to read disks produced by a standard 5,25" PC drive in combination with the Teledisk utility from www.hpmuseum.net, where a couple of nice 98x5 software archives is provided as well. The transfer alternative is a crude procedure decribed at the said site. -Ansgar From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 6 09:56:47 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 10:56:47 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update Message-ID: <0IPJ000SVIYN75L9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update > From: William Donzelli > Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:38:47 -0500 (EST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" I posted that the EGO homebuilt comnputer was in 1985 and there was another article on the TOY. Well I found it. BYTE January 1987, Phil Koopman Microcoded vs Hardwired Control The deisgn is a 16bit fairly minimal machine that could actually run real code if built. The article does not fully discuss the the total machine but the control logic is covered. The rest is almost obvious. Likely chip count for the entire machine could be under 60 TTL peices if octal latches and Tristate gates plus the 74181s were used. If GALs were used the likely chip count could be smaller. TOY itself was 16 bits, 4 bit instruction and 12 bit address, Single accumulator. The ALU was 74181 so the basic arithmetic and logical instructions are native to that chip and the remainder are jmpz (jump if zero) and load (put value in Acc) and Store (save Acc at location). Oddly enough 4 no-ops, so theres room for instruction set improvement. A machine like this goes far to demystify how computers work. An aside to all this is one of the annoying things when I was studying computers early one (3++ decades ago) was "computer books" would endlessly detail logic at the gate and flipflop level. Maybe discuss arithmetic and sequential logic. They never quite cross the line to how these blocks form computers. It wasn't until the PDP-8 handbooks that there was a connection of the ideas of sequential logic controlling arithmetic and logical blocks. Allison From ploopster at gmail.com Sun Nov 6 10:00:27 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:00:27 -0500 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <436E289B.8090901@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright > awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a date > code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going > and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, > tops. > > Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? I tend to use IBM-branded media. Works just ok. But making sure to store them vertically definitely increases their lifespan significantly. Peace... Sridhar From Mvpearson1 at aol.com Sun Nov 6 10:01:49 2005 From: Mvpearson1 at aol.com (Mvpearson1 at aol.com) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 11:01:49 EST Subject: Unusual Analog Computer Message-ID: <22a.825dd5.309f82ed@aol.com> Hi All, I wonder if anyone here could help us. We have an analog computer in our collection that was built by LAN-Electronics in England in the mid-1960's. It has a number of unusual features including a phone dial on the front of each of the patchboards (for data entry?) and some very small inputs for the patchcords (the patchcords for the PACE TR-10 or TR-20 are way too big). Anyone have any information on this or any ideas about the computer? We'd appreciate the help. You can find pics of it at www.earlycomputers.com. thanks, Michael From teoz at neo.rr.com Sun Nov 6 10:02:11 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 11:02:11 -0500 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <436E21E7.4010903@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <018101c5e2eb$7ba91e40$0500fea9@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doc Shipley" To: Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 10:31 AM Subject: Re: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > > I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright > > awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a date > > code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going > > and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, > > tops. > > > > Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? > > Look in the Yellow Pages for used office supply or office liquidation > dealers. > > There's an office supply surplus here in Austin that I cruise at > least monthly for NOS floppy media. I've bought various formats 5.25" > disks there in the shrinkwrap for $0.25 to $1.00 a box, IBM-branded 2MB > (1.44MB) floppies for $3.00/100, and recently about 6 10-disk boxes of > DSDD 3.5" for $0.50 each. > > > Doc I think the best grade of disks went to professional duplicators. Since floppies are pretty much obsolete these kind of places tend to sell their stock for pennies to get them out of the way. I found one such duplicator ditching 360K floppies on ebay for very little a few years ago (something like $12 for 500 green 360K disks still in the shrink-wrap). Ofcourse they tend to just have the floppies themselves and not the box and label found in retail packaging. I found a decent deal on Mac formatted 1.44 floppies earlier this year on ebay, and they seem to be reliable so far. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 6 10:09:57 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:09:57 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem - first measurement results Message-ID: <0IPJ00AJEJKLKV7E@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: help - 11/34 console problem - first measurement results > From: "Gooijen, Henk" > Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:20:27 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > >Tony wrote: > >> Interesting, the LSB is being lost somewhere (that would explain why >> 1 does nothing, why 5 behaves as 4, etc). >> >> What sort of RAM is on this board (I can't be bothered to find the >> prints tonight ;-)), do you know if it's good. I've found old SRAM >> to be notoriously unreliable. > = > >Interesting, I had not thought of that, may be a stuck bit. >I must have a better look at the program code listing. Checking out >the RAM is a bit difficult. It consists of two 4-bit chips with >separate data IN and data OUT pins, type 86586 (?). >If the 8008 uses the RAM for storage of variables, I guess that I can >safely say that the RAM (plus associated circuitry to read/write) must >be OK. > >> Since I have a logic analyser 'to hand', I would start looking at those >> 3 inputs to the '47. Where do they come from on the M7859? An output >> port on the 8008? Do we know that port is latching correctly? Or more >> likely, the 8008 is writing the wrong values to it. > = I'd consider that the 8008 is getting bad input data from a bad scan line which it will output or that it's outputing correctly and the data is corrupted after output due to bad latch or other hardware. >Page KY-4 has all the decode logic. There is a second post to this list >on its way, posted Friday morning ... it's now Sunday morning ... >The signal KY4 READ INPUT 5L from the 74154 is used on page KY-3 to >enable 8093 AND gates to read the scan matrix lines. = > >The signal KY4 LD REG 0H via a 7404 from the 74154 is used on page KY-6 >to enable a 74175 latch of which the outputs drive the scan matrix. >Likewise, KY4 LD REG 1H drives the 3 NUM lines for the 7447. > = > >Before I go on writing long stories here, I think it is best to wait >for the e-mail from last Friday to appear here. >Thanks for working with me Tony, it helps keeping focussed ... > = > >- Henk, PA8PDP. One likely possibility is not ram as a prblem but a I/O port that has a stuck bit. Or the control for that port is stuck. This is most likely if the basic fuctions are there (8008 program runs) but some parts of the data used to control the 11/34 or display it's status is not correct. FYI the 8008 can be single stepped if you pull the "READY" line each cycle and just look at the bus with a simple logic probe or clip. Allison From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sun Nov 6 10:15:02 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 10:15:02 -0600 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <436D3953.1060207@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511061627.jA6GRVpt094315@keith.ezwind.net> ... > Kinda. The IBM 1401, 1440, 1410, but they used an extra bit > in each (6 bit) called a word mark rather than blow off a digit. It was > designed to hold alphabetic info as well as doing decimal math. That should have said "in each byte (6 bits)..." > Umm what about the sign bit? Since the decimal digits only took 4 bits and the word mark was a 7th bit there were two bits to carry the sign. This machine was actually designed to be an off-line card reader/ punch/ print processor using tapes to offload the biger 7094 type machines. So it was very card oriented. The other two bits represented the "zone" punches off the card. I can't remember which combination(s) was considered a negative number, but it was the same for any machine reading cards. The instruction to read a card was "R" and it read into a fixed location (0, IIRC). The instructions were also variable length, varying from 1 to 8 bytes long. An instruction could leave off the addresses (indicated by a word mark on the next byte) and the addresses would be inferred to continue from the previous instruction. The 1401 machine had 16KB MAX. memory, so saving a 3 byte address was a big deal. Gil From alberto at a2sistemi.it Sun Nov 6 10:43:14 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 17:43:14 +0100 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > There are 2 protection circuits. One is a current sensor, there's a > current transformer in series with the chopper transformer primary > winding. The other is a set of voltage sensors. > > Whatever you do, don't disable any of the trips. If there really is > something wrong, the results would be spectacular!. > > Do you get any voltage appearing on any of the outputs? Even for that > half-second? Today I have dedicated another time to this power supply :) The SG3524 is correctly powered, it receive about 8V to its power pin and give 5V on the reference output. The sawtooth signal is present and good, like the oscillator output. The inhibit pin is not active. When I switch on the power supply, voltages on the outputs make a little pulse, but of less then one second. I'm workingo on :) Alberto ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From mbbrutman at brutman.com Sun Nov 6 11:05:40 2005 From: mbbrutman at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:05:40 -0600 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <200511060326.jA63QdLY028601@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511060326.jA63QdLY028601@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <436E37E4.1070405@brutman.com> I wasn't able to get Jim version 2.02, but 2.05 was close enough. I have images of the following if anybody needs them: Diagnostics 2.05 Diagnostics 2.23 Advanced Diagnostics 2.20 Diagnostics PC AT 1.00 Diagnostics PC AT 1.02 Diagnostics PC AT 2.06 As an IBM employee I feel responsible for keeping these old machines running. ;-) Mike From kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com Sun Nov 6 11:04:40 2005 From: kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com (Bruce Lane) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:04:40 -0800 Subject: M9312 boot/console PROM archive In-Reply-To: <200511052314.17393.lbickley@bickleywest.com> References: <001c01c5a068$b25a9150$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> <436B1CF5.4010602@mindspring.com> <200511052223540768.2710E8C9@192.168.42.129> <200511052314.17393.lbickley@bickleywest.com> Message-ID: <200511060904400993.295B90EE@192.168.42.129> I've just run some more checks, and the fault does not appear to be in my DNS, or any of the local DNS boxen. The fact that you were able to access it OK last night, Lyle, appears to have been a temporary condition. The IP address of www.AK6DN.com comes back as 64.202.167.129. However, a reverse lookup of that same IP address returns this: ip-64-202-167-129.secureserver.net. Plugging the IP directly into a browser returns a generic Internet search page. A domain lookup for ak6dn.com reveals that he's drawing DNS from 'jomax.net' (owned by GoDaddy Software), and that the DNS boxen involved are 'park1.jomax.net' and 'park2.jomax.net.' Both servers are responding to ping as of 08:57 PST on Nov. 6th, but neither one appears to be answering DNS queries. This is what I got when I tried. willy: {6} nslookup www.ak6dn.com park1.jomax.net *** Can't find server name for address 64.202.165.106: Non-existent host/domain *** Default servers are not available willy: {7} nslookup www.ak6dn.com park2.jomax.net *** Can't find server name for address 64.202.167.145: Non-existent host/domain *** Default servers are not available willy: {8} My conclusion is that GoDaddy is having some sort of trouble with their DNS, and that the problem should clear up as soon as they get it corrected. I will take the liberty of notifying them that there appears to be an issue (the fact that I've got my domains registered with them should help). Keep the peace(es). *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 05-Nov-05 at 23:14 Lyle Bickley wrote: >On Saturday 05 November 2005 22:23, Bruce Lane wrote: >> Hi, Don, >> >> *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** >> >> On 04-Nov-05 at 00:33 Don North wrote: >> >I've posted a web page that has >> >M9312 PROM images in Intel HEX format as well as commented source and >> >assembly listings of all the well-known devices, both boot and console. >> >> >> >> I tried to get to these this evening. Your web site address seems to be >> rerouting to something called 'slowdeath.com,' and is demanding a >password >> to get any farther than the front page. > >I went there last night to download source w/o problem - and tested the >site >tonight again after this message w/o problem. Feels like the issue is not >at >Don's site - but perhaps your (Bruce) DNS. > >Cheers, >Lyle >-- >Lyle Bickley >Bickley Consulting West Inc. >Mountain View, CA >http://bickleywest.com > >"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?" From kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com Sun Nov 6 11:12:11 2005 From: kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com (Bruce Lane) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:12:11 -0800 Subject: PAGING: Wai-Sun Chia Message-ID: <200511060912110572.29627110@192.168.42.129> Wai-Sun, I've been trying to get hold of you, but have not gotten any response (it's possible that your mail may have bounced due to our spam filtering). I have received the Data I/O conductive pad that you wanted. Do you still need it? If your return mail is bouncing, try my backup address of kc7gr (at) qsl dot net. Thanks much. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?" From kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com Sun Nov 6 11:19:15 2005 From: kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com (Bruce Lane) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:19:15 -0800 Subject: M9312 boot/console PROM archive In-Reply-To: <436DBABF.3020702@mindspring.com> References: <001c01c5a068$b25a9150$6500a8c0@HPLAPTOP> <436B1CF5.4010602@mindspring.com> <200511052223540768.2710E8C9@192.168.42.129> <436DBABF.3020702@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <200511060919150574.2968E95F@192.168.42.129> Hi, Don, Thank you! The alternative address path you provided worked just fine. I apologize for an erroneous initial assumption that GoDaddy's DNS was screwed up. My new conclusion is that my browser is not understanding the redirection you mention. Good thing I didn't fill out a trouble ticket just yet. ;-) Thanks again. *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 06-Nov-05 at 00:11 Don North wrote: >Bruce, are you still seeing this problem? If so, what browser/OS are you >using? >I've used Firefox, Netscape8, IE6 on WinXP and Win2K, and Safari on the >Mac. > >The background is that www.ak6dn.com is not a top level website, but hosted >in a subdirectory (ie, www.ak6dn.com/blah... => >www.slowdeath.com/AK6DN/blah...). >References to www.ak6dn.com are redirected via an HTTP 'Location: ...' >directive. >If your browser does not grok this it could be an issue. > >If you are still having problems, you can get there by the alternate >path using: > http://www.slowdeath.com/AK6DN/PDP-11/M9312/ >instead. As you note going direct to http://www.slowdeath.com is another >beast altogether... > >Don > >Bruce Lane wrote: > >>Hi, Don, >> >>*********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** >> >>On 04-Nov-05 at 00:33 Don North wrote: >> >> >> >>>I've posted a web page that has >>>M9312 PROM images in Intel HEX format as well as commented source and >>>assembly listings of all the well-known devices, both boot and console. >>> >>> >> >> >> >> I tried to get to these this evening. Your web site address seems to be >rerouting to something called 'slowdeath.com,' and is demanding a password >to get any farther than the front page. >> >> Please advise. Thanks much. >> >> >>-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >>Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, >>Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com >>kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m >>"If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with >surreal ports?" >> >> >> >> >> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?" From chenmel at earthlink.net Sun Nov 6 11:18:17 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 12:18:17 -0500 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <436E37E4.1070405@brutman.com> References: <200511060326.jA63QdLY028601@dewey.classiccmp.org> <436E37E4.1070405@brutman.com> Message-ID: <20051106121817.28935d15.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:05:40 -0600 "Michael B. Brutman" wrote: > > I wasn't able to get Jim version 2.02, but 2.05 was close enough. > > I have images of the following if anybody needs them: > > Diagnostics 2.05 > Diagnostics 2.23 > Advanced Diagnostics 2.20 > Diagnostics PC AT 1.00 > Diagnostics PC AT 1.02 > Diagnostics PC AT 2.06 > Is one of those Diagnostic floppies the one that would contain the PC-AT setup program to configure and designate hard drive type? If so, I should get ahold of a copy of one, for when I (eventually) revive the IBM-AT that I got at auction over a year ago and have sitting there waiting attention. I know that there are third-party setup utilities that would also work, but I am scrupulously trying to keep that machine 'stock IBM' where possible. (to the point that I waited until I found an IBM Monochrome display because it has an IBM EGA card in it that I intend to jumper for Monochrome VGA mode when I bring it up.) > > As an IBM employee I feel responsible for keeping these old machines > running. ;-) > > > > Mike > -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From CCTalk at catcorner.org Sun Nov 6 11:29:50 2005 From: CCTalk at catcorner.org (Kelly Leavitt) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 12:29:50 -0500 Subject: DECjunk, Arkansas Message-ID: <3572C311B2DB4C418DAB189F1F190799A336B7@mail.catcorner.org> > -----Original Message----- > From: William Donzelli [mailto:aw288 at osfn.org] > Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 10:02 AM > Forwarded: > > > From: William Donzelli [mailto:aw288 at osfn.org] > > Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 8:01 AM > > To: Don Reaves W5OR > > Subject: RE: National SW-54 bites the big one > > > > > What should I do with my PDP-11/24, PDP-11/03-L, and RL02 bits? > > > Send me a buyer/trader as I need to get them off my carport > > before winter. > > > No racks, no interconnect cables, just the units as they > > were removed from > > > the rack years ago. > > > > > > If I must I'll put them on 'bay, as a precursor to carting > > them to the > > > smelter. > > > > Can I post this to another list? > > > Who has it? Where in Arkansas? Based on the call sign, I'd guess it was Don Reaves in Little Rock, but I'd like to verify before contacting him. Kelly From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sun Nov 6 11:34:09 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 17:34:09 +0000 Subject: Unusual Analog Computer In-Reply-To: <22a.825dd5.309f82ed@aol.com> References: <22a.825dd5.309f82ed@aol.com> Message-ID: <436E3E91.9010701@gjcp.net> Mvpearson1 at aol.com wrote: > Hi All, > I wonder if anyone here could help us. We have an analog computer in our > collection that was built by LAN-Electronics in England in the mid-1960's. > It has a number of unusual features including a phone dial on the front of each > of the patchboards (for data entry?) and some very small inputs for the > patchcords (the patchcords for the PACE TR-10 or TR-20 are way too big). Anyone > have any information on this or any ideas about the computer? We'd appreciate > the help. You can find pics of it at www.earlycomputers.com. > thanks, > Michael > Re the "missing" letters on the dial - my GPO Type 706 phone has the same letters. It's a UK thing. Gordon. From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 6 11:35:25 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:35:25 -0800 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <436E37E4.1070405@brutman.com> References: <200511060326.jA63QdLY028601@dewey.classiccmp.org> <436E37E4.1070405@brutman.com> Message-ID: <200511060935250533.29AB49BE@10.0.0.252> Email me offlist if you want the 1.02 diagnostics image to add to your collection. Now that I know where I put it, it's pretty easy. I'm not certain, but I believe it's a 160K (8 sector) format. Cheers, Chuck On 11/6/2005 at 11:05 AM Michael B. Brutman wrote: >I wasn't able to get Jim version 2.02, but 2.05 was close enough. > >I have images of the following if anybody needs them: > >Diagnostics 2.05 >Diagnostics 2.23 >Advanced Diagnostics 2.20 >Diagnostics PC AT 1.00 >Diagnostics PC AT 1.02 >Diagnostics PC AT 2.06 > > >As an IBM employee I feel responsible for keeping these old machines >running. ;-) > > > >Mike From mbbrutman at brutman.com Sun Nov 6 11:46:31 2005 From: mbbrutman at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:46:31 -0600 Subject: Anyone have IBM Diagnostics diskette? In-Reply-To: <200511061738.jA6HcKes034754@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511061738.jA6HcKes034754@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <436E4177.3000608@brutman.com> Yes, the diagnostics disks are used for CMOS setup on the AT. 'DEBUG' from DOS can also be used, but that's a little too (warning - bad pun alert .. ) hard core for me. The Advanced Diagnostics that I mentioned is for the PC and XT, and came with the hardware maintenance and service manual. It has the low level format routine for the 10MB XT hard disk, which is useful if your controller doesn't have an onboard routine to do it. (I'm not sure which ones do and don't.) The regular Diagnostics disk are for the PC and XT, and are also a good test of clone compatibility. Do not run them on a PCjr. :-) Mike From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 6 11:55:19 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 09:55:19 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511061627.jA6GRVpt094315@keith.ezwind.net> References: <200511061627.jA6GRVpt094315@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <200511060955190089.29BD8012@10.0.0.252> On 11/6/2005 at 10:15 AM Gil Carrick wrote: >Since the decimal digits only took 4 bits and the word mark was a 7th bit >there were two bits to carry the sign. This machine was actually designed >to be an off-line card reader/ punch/ print processor using tapes to offload >the biger 7094 type machines. So it was very card oriented. The other two >bits represented the "zone" punches off the card. I can't remember which >combination(s) was considered a negative number, but it was the same for >any machine reading cards. Not sure if spooling was the designed purpose of the 1401, but there was an official IBM acronym for the 1401-7090 type combination. But there were plenty of standalone 1401's. The 11 punch would be the negative sign indicator, changing 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. to J, K, L, M. On the earlier decimal machines, ABCDEFGHI is followed immediately by JKLMNOPQ. When EBCIDIC was introduced, the card code mapping was preserved, leading to annoying gaps in the alphabetic collating sequence (e.g. A=C1, B=C2, but J=D1, K= D2, with CA-D0 unassigned). IMOHO, this is one of the strong points of ASCII--alphabetics are contiguous in the code. The 12 punch (the next row toward the top of the card) was used for ABCDEFGHI in combination with 1-9 numeric punches. The 0 punch (the next row toward the bottom of the card from the 11 row) was used for STUVWXYZ (0-2, 0-3, etc). I suspect that card code (12 positions per column) was one of the reasons behind the proliferation of binary machines with words that were a multiples of 12 bits in the 1950's and 1960's. Cheers, Chuck From kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com Sun Nov 6 12:04:17 2005 From: kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com (Bruce Lane) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 10:04:17 -0800 Subject: Announcement: Firmware archiving/programming Message-ID: <200511061004170796.29922529@192.168.42.129> Fellow ClassicCmp folk, I would like to extend an offer to those who do not have device programming equipment, or who have device programmers that do not handle a specific type of device (such as bipolar PROMs) that you may need to read or program. Specifically, for owners/users of classic systems, I will program whatever device(s) you need done (within reason -- let's not dump 50 of the things on me at once, please) at no cost other than postage. The only restriction I'm going to put on this is that you be the actual owner of the system or device that needs the programmed chip. Please don't try to re-sell my service to others. I would also like to ask for contributions to a growing FTP archive. Just as one example, firmware from Dilog or Emulex controller boards. If you have such controllers, or others, and would like to see the firmware made available to those who may have damaged memory or logic devices on their boards, please consider loaning me said EPROMs (or PROMs, or PALs, or whatever) so that I can read and archive them. Any devices mailed in for archiving will be returned to their original owner at no charge whatsoever. One final word: Due to spammers and other network abusers, and worm-infested machines, I've had to install some fairly heavy spam filtering on our mail servers. Large chunks of Comcast, Shaw, PacBell/SBC, and RoadRunner IP netspace, just to name a few, are blocked for E-mail traffic, as are big patches of Europe and the Pacific Rim countries. If any message you happen to send to me bounces, please try my alternate address of kc7gr (at) qsl dot net. Worst case, put in a brief 'Page' for me on the group. Thanks much. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?" From fireflyst at earthlink.net Sun Nov 6 12:24:55 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 12:24:55 -0600 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <018101c5e2eb$7ba91e40$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <000801c5e2ff$632bcd40$6401a8c0@dementium> Sort of makes me wonder if the suppliers of newly-produced 8" diskettes are as bad - but for ~$10 per disk, they'd better be! -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Teo Zenios Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 10:02 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes ----- Original Message ----- From: "Doc Shipley" To: Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 10:31 AM Subject: Re: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > > I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright > > awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a date > > code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going > > and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, > > tops. > > > > Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? > > Look in the Yellow Pages for used office supply or office liquidation > dealers. > > There's an office supply surplus here in Austin that I cruise at > least monthly for NOS floppy media. I've bought various formats 5.25" > disks there in the shrinkwrap for $0.25 to $1.00 a box, IBM-branded 2MB > (1.44MB) floppies for $3.00/100, and recently about 6 10-disk boxes of > DSDD 3.5" for $0.50 each. > > > Doc I think the best grade of disks went to professional duplicators. Since floppies are pretty much obsolete these kind of places tend to sell their stock for pennies to get them out of the way. I found one such duplicator ditching 360K floppies on ebay for very little a few years ago (something like $12 for 500 green 360K disks still in the shrink-wrap). Ofcourse they tend to just have the floppies themselves and not the box and label found in retail packaging. I found a decent deal on Mac formatted 1.44 floppies earlier this year on ebay, and they seem to be reliable so far. From aw288 at osfn.org Sun Nov 6 14:41:42 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 15:41:42 -0500 (EST) Subject: DECjunk, Arkansas In-Reply-To: <3572C311B2DB4C418DAB189F1F190799A336B7@mail.catcorner.org> Message-ID: Oops, I did not include his contact: w5or at comcast.net Contact him, not me. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sun Nov 6 15:04:51 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 15:04:51 -0600 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511060955190089.29BD8012@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511062115.jA6LFLwg098385@keith.ezwind.net> ... > Not sure if spooling was the designed purpose of the 1401, > but there was an > official IBM acronym for the 1401-7090 type combination. > But there were plenty of standalone 1401's. SPOOL actually means Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On-Line, so that is not the correct term to use in this case. That refers to using a disk drive as a buffer for record oriented I/O devices so that program execution is separated from the slower I/O devices. The 1401 was an off-line system for card to tape input & tape to punch/print output. But you are definitely correct that the 1401 sold way beyond IBM's expectations. Once a few people got a look at it and saw how easy it was to program it took off like a rocket. IIRC they sold in the thousands, most with only card & print. There was no official OS that I ever saw, but several I/O packages. ... Gil From hachti at hachti.de Sun Nov 6 15:17:14 2005 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 22:17:14 +0100 Subject: HP7879B tape again Message-ID: <436E72DA.8090107@hachti.de> Hello folks, somebody has uploaded some useful information about these drives to bitsavers - thank you! There is only a kind of technical overview manual for my drive at the moment. But I still and urgently need the schematics for the 7978 drive. My power supply has broken down and I cannot get it back working. I also don't know how to repolace it because I don't know where to connect +/-12V and power good etc.... Thank you very much! Philipp :-) P.S.: Shouldn't my Honeywell software be hosted on bitsavers, too? From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 6 15:24:28 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 13:24:28 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511062115.jA6LFLwg098385@keith.ezwind.net> References: <200511062115.jA6LFLwg098385@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <200511061324280087.2A7CF9DC@10.0.0.252> On 11/6/2005 at 3:04 PM Gil Carrick wrote: >SPOOL actually means Simultaneous Peripheral Operations On-Line, so that is >not the correct term to use in this case. That refers to using a disk drive >as a buffer for record oriented I/O devices so that program execution is >separated from the slower I/O devices. The 1401 was an off-line system for >card to tape input & tape to punch/print output. Mostly a matter of sneakers and one's concept of time. :) But what I can't recall was IBM's term for the 1401-7090 setup--there was one, I'm sure. And you're correct that it was quite prevalent--I used such a setup at Purdue. IIRC, the 7090 (actually 2 of them) were turned into frontends for the CDC 6500 that was later acquired. PUFFT, anyone? Cheers, Chuck From aw288 at osfn.org Sun Nov 6 16:23:15 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 17:23:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511060955190089.29BD8012@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > Not sure if spooling was the designed purpose of the 1401, but there was an > official IBM acronym for the 1401-7090 type combination. But there were > plenty of standalone 1401's. The 1400 series was specifically designed to clear out a bunch of the older, hard to maintain, unit record equipment. Use as an effective sidekick for some of the 7000 series was a happy surprise for IBM. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 6 17:19:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 15:19:46 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511061519460043.2AE687FF@10.0.0.252> On 11/6/2005 at 5:23 PM William Donzelli wrote: >The 1400 series was specifically designed to clear out a bunch of the >older, hard to maintain, unit record equipment. Use as an effective >sidekick for some of the 7000 series was a happy surprise for IBM. Ironic, in the sense that I knew of several trade schools who were still teaching how to program a 407 accounting machine and 514 reproducing punch plugboards long after most 1401's had hit the scrap pile. I think a lot of places kept the 407's around just to do 80-80 listings. The 407 was a pretty neat box for a piece of unit record equipment. Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 6 17:10:10 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 23:10:10 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP7879B tape again In-Reply-To: <436E72DA.8090107@hachti.de> from "Philipp Hachtmann" at Nov 6, 5 10:17:14 pm Message-ID: I asusme there's nothing of use on http://www.hpmuseum.net/ ? That has some stuff on larger (than handheld) HP computers and peripherals. > But I still and urgently need the schematics for the 7978 drive. My I sould be suprised if any published manual contained full schematics. By that period, HP comptuers were 'repaired' by board-swapping. If you're lucky there will be _some_ useful info in the boardswapper guide, like pinouts or testpoints. I hate to say this, but you may be reduced to producing your own schematics. It can't be that difficult, I've managed to do it a few times. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 6 16:45:29 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 22:45:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 5, 5 10:42:01 pm Message-ID: > > I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright This is a common moan here. I've noticed it too -- as I am fond of pointing out, about 20 years ago I bought some 5.25" disks for my TRS-80 model 1. THose disks cost me (then) \pounds 3.00 each, and my Model 1 stored 88K on them (single sided, 35 cylinders, single density). Thing is, those disks are still readable. I wish I could pay that sort of price _now_ for a 3.5" disk and get something that I could read back again in years time. My data is worth a lot more than that. (Oh and don't tell me to use CD-Rs or DVDs, or whatever. I've yet to find such devives with an HPIL interface (for example)). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 6 16:48:22 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 22:48:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <436DC451.9030402@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 6, 5 09:52:33 am Message-ID: > Did you ever try to connect your machine to one of the earlier > 5,25"-amigo-drives (like the 82901 or the 9135A)? These drives should be Not yet. I do have an dual 5.25" HPIB drive (I forget the model number), I should dig it out and try it. How are you getting on with sorting out your machine? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 6 16:51:48 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 22:51:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <436DE3DE.3040103@gjcp.net> from "Gordon JC Pearce" at Nov 6, 5 11:07:10 am Message-ID: > One point I'd take issue with is about digital photography. Go and > compare photos taken with an el-cheapo point-and-shoot digital camera > and an equivalent 35mm compact. *Then* tell me there's not *some* > improvement ;-) Hmm... Problem is that reasonable digital compact cameras seem to cost as much as a 35mm ZLE. And the latter certainly produces better results. I have yet to see any digital phootgraph that I consider contains adequate detail (this is not the same as sharpness, which can be fiddled). Of course I am compearing them to medium and large format film (but then again, any one of my medium or large format cameras cost me a lot less that any reasoable digital camera). I can see advantages to digital cameras if you need the results ASAP, or if you want to send them across the world quickly. But that's not what I want to do. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 6 16:57:07 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 22:57:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: <0IPJ000SVIYN75L9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 6, 5 10:56:47 am Message-ID: > An aside to all this is one of the annoying things when I was studying > computers early one (3++ decades ago) was "computer books" would endlessly > detail logic at the gate and flipflop level. Maybe discuss arithmetic and > sequential logic. They never quite cross the line to how these blocks form Ues! Or else you got books that treated the processor as a black box. In fact there were/are people who believe there's something magical about a processor, that it can't be understood in terms of gates and FFs. Nonsense, of course. I remembrr when I got my first mini (a Philips P850), I sat down with the techncial manual and started to understand how that processor worked. It all became clear very quickly. > computers. It wasn't until the PDP-8 handbooks that there was a connection > of the ideas of sequential logic controlling arithmetic and logical blocks. A similar thing happened to me concerning telephone exchanges. Plety of books explained relays and selectors. They would then give a sort-of block description of a large exchange, with no detail. It all made no sense to me. And then I got the well-known book 'Telephony'. This contains some actual scheamtics for (electromechanical) exchanges, explaining what the relays do and why. At last it all made a lot of sense. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 6 17:03:28 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 23:03:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: from "Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi" at Nov 6, 5 05:43:14 pm Message-ID: > > > There are 2 protection circuits. One is a current sensor, there's a > > current transformer in series with the chopper transformer primary > > winding. The other is a set of voltage sensors. > > > > Whatever you do, don't disable any of the trips. If there really is > > something wrong, the results would be spectacular!. > > > > Do you get any voltage appearing on any of the outputs? Even for that > > half-second? > > Today I have dedicated another time to this power supply :) > > The SG3524 is correctly powered, it receive about 8V to its power pin and > give 5V on the reference output. > The sawtooth signal is present and good, like the oscillator output. > The inhibit pin is not active. OK, I've looked at mu schemaitcs. I am asusming this supply is the same as the one you have. The 3524 supply, at least at startup comes from the mains transformer T5 on the mainboard. C21 (470uF) is the smoothing capacitor for that. Now, the 3524 is oscillating, but I assume it's producing no output to the the driver transsitors Q5 and Q6, right? There seem to be 3 possibilites 1) The 3524 is defective 2) It's shut down. The shutdown pin is driven from the SCR CR11 on the 1144-01E PCB. That takes inputs from the current sense circuit and the overvoltage shutdown. Since you say that the shutdown pin is not asserted (do check this at the 'other' side of R11, 6k8), I think this is not the problem weeither. 3) The other way to shut down a 3524 is via the comp pin (compensation). This is actually the output of the error amplifier, of course. In this supply, IC2a (LM339) can clamp this pin to ground. It appears this occurs if the startup voltage is not high enough (the inputs to this chip ateh te reference voltage form the 3524 and a potted-down version of the supply to that chip). -tony From hachti at hachti.de Sun Nov 6 19:29:07 2005 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 02:29:07 +0100 Subject: HP7879B tape again In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436EADE3.6020508@hachti.de> Hi, > I asusme there's nothing of use on http://www.hpmuseum.net/ ? Don't think so.... :-( >>But I still and urgently need the schematics for the 7978 drive. My > I sould be suprised if any published manual contained full schematics. For the 7970 tape drive there ARE the full schematics on bitsavers... So I think it should be possible to get the complete 7978B docs, too. > By that period, HP comptuers were 'repaired' by board-swapping. If you're > lucky there will be _some_ useful info in the boardswapper guide, like > pinouts or testpoints. You are too pessimistic :-) I hope to find good documentation of everything I need. > > I hate to say this, but you may be reduced to producing your own > schematics. It can't be that difficult, I've managed to do it a few times. But there is one small problem: I don't have the time to do that for an old switching power supply. And by the way I'm not very good in repairing switching power supplies. These devices scare me a bit..... +ph From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sun Nov 6 22:45:03 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 22:45:03 -0600 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200511070456.jA74uMZR004897@keith.ezwind.net> ... > The 1400 series was specifically designed to clear out a > bunch of the older, hard to maintain, unit record equipment. > Use as an effective sidekick for some of the 7000 series was > a happy surprise for IBM. This site says otherwise. http://simh.trailing-edge.com/i1401.html I am sure I have read it elsewhere as well. The IBM archive just says it was used for both, but gives no design objective. I was on the user side, so I have no special information. It would be interesting to hear from an insider. Gil > > William Donzelli > aw288 at osfn.org > > From vax9000 at gmail.com Mon Nov 7 00:19:05 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 01:19:05 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed Message-ID: Hi list, After some non-sleeping nights the QBUS MSCP SCSI controller is now usable except that it is still controlled by the PC. I installed NetBSD 1.5.2 and ran "cp base.tgz /dev/null", and the speed tested was 840KB/s. I am wondering how fast those commercial controllers are. I would appreciate it if those of you who own those boards could let me know. The design goal is to approach the fastest. Thank you. http://www.mscpscsi.com vax, 9000 From healyzh at aracnet.com Mon Nov 7 01:16:48 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 23:16:48 -0800 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >Hi list, > After some non-sleeping nights the QBUS MSCP SCSI controller is now >usable except that it is still controlled by the PC. I installed >NetBSD 1.5.2 and ran "cp base.tgz /dev/null", and the speed tested was >840KB/s. I am wondering how fast those commercial controllers are. I >would appreciate it if those of you who own those boards could let me >know. The design goal is to approach the fastest. I believe the CMD controllers are supposed to be the fastest, something else to consider is that the Q-Bus itself is only something like 3.5MB/Sec (does anyone happen to remember the exact numbers). If I can find the time, I can run a test under RT-11 on my PDP-11 (Viking QDT). Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From Useddec at aol.com Mon Nov 7 01:22:46 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 02:22:46 EST Subject: Looking for DEC VT340's or parts in any condiction, + Tech manual, prints, etc Message-ID: <97.6c012ece.30a05ac6@aol.com> Hi, I'm looking for VT340's and parts. Any out there? Thanks, Paul useddec at aol.com From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 7 01:36:30 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 23:36:30 -0800 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511062336300577.2CAD50DE@10.0.0.252> On 11/6/2005 at 10:45 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Thing is, those disks are still readable. I wish I could pay that sort of >price _now_ for a 3.5" disk and get something that I could read back >again in years time. My data is worth a lot more than that. ...and most of my 8" floppies are readable error-free after between 25-30 years. >(Oh and don't tell me to use CD-Rs or DVDs, or whatever. I've yet to find >such devives with an HPIL interface (for example)). CD-R's are going the way of floppies--there seems to be a drive toward the cheapest price, regardless of quality or lack thereof. I submitted to temptation after finding a coupon redeemable at the local Office Depot that would reward me with a spindle of 100 CD-Rs for what amounted to $0. What miserable trash they were--after awhile I determined that my time was worth more than the trouble and went back to Mitsui CD-Rs. What I'd like a straw poll on is who makes the best new 3.5" D2HD floppies. Imation, Maxell, Sony, Nashua, Verbatim....? HP-branded floppies used to be pretty good. I just recovered an operating diskette for an X-ray machine that had parts of the medium so worn that you could see through it. I think we got what was needed, though. FWIW, I think the machine was powered by something very akin to a Ampro Little Board... Cheers, Chuck From henk.gooijen at oce.com Sun Nov 6 10:03:40 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 17:03:40 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE21EF@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Tony wrote: > Do you have a logic analyser? If so, then I would try looking at the 8080 > address bus. See what bit of the program it's executing, see if it does > the right things when you press the keys, etc. I have, it's a Biomation K100-D. When I first set it up Sunday afternoon, and turned the LA on, the screen moves vertically. So I had to get the LA in good working order first! As I have the operator & service manual, the location of the vertical freq. adjustment was quickly found. The screen is now steady. I connected the pod B, 8 data inputs to the ROM address lines A0-A7, and gave it a manual trigger to capture all it sees. At first I got too much detail (address repeats several times), but after setting the clock of the LA to sample at 10 ?s I got almost always consecutive addresses. That depends on the length of the instruction. Anyway, I see the addresses 60-110 (octal) in the correct order and see the address jump at 101 to the address 335 (a subroutine). I see the complete execution of the subroutine and the return. Indeed going to address 105. That means the stackpointer and the memory must be OK! ReturnPC stored in RAM, and retrieved correctly. However, I can not check everything. Need to connect pod A, and have 8 more data input lines to measure interesting things. And trigger facilities! It's time to read the user manual of the LA, to do advanced measurements. I still haven't got a clue what's going wrong ... - Henk. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From henk.gooijen at oce.com Sun Nov 6 11:06:41 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 18:06:41 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem - first measurement results Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE21F1@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Allison wrote: > I'd consider that the 8008 is getting bad input data from a bad scan line > which it will output or that it's outputing correctly and the data is > corrupted after output due to bad latch or other hardware. > > One likely possibility is not ram as a prblem but a I/O port that has a > stuck bit. Or the control for that port is stuck. This is most likely > if the basic fuctions are there (8008 program runs) but some parts of > the data used to control the 11/34 or display it's status is not correct. > > FYI the 8008 can be single stepped if you pull the "READY" line each > cycle and just look at the bus with a simple logic probe or clip. Thanks for the good input Allison! I hooked a logic analyzer to the address lines A0-A7 on one of the program ROMs, and simply sampled the data without any trigger. With the display in octal mode, I can see the executed address sequence. The 8008 executes the main loop and calls SHFT1 *and* returns to the correct PC. That means that the ROM, RAM (to store the return address) and associated circuits must be OK. Thanks for the tip, but I hope (after studying the LA usage) that cycle stepping will not be needed. Now that I have the LA set up (first time use!), and checked the program execution, I will refocus on the scan matrix. With the 'scope, I had 2 time traces at best, with the LA I can have 16, thus *all* signals for the keyboard and the display (because scan keyboard drive == common display drive). I will post any progress! - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Sun Nov 6 19:18:31 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2005 17:18:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) Message-ID: <20051107011831.66920.qmail@web61018.mail.yahoo.com> I forget. What does a single vertical line in the middle of a display indicate? It might be something entirely different from an image that collapses into a horizontal line, but I seem to remember one of them representing a definitive component failure. If it makes a difference, the unit is a compact Mac, a Classic I think. Can any (and all) *new* display components still be had for such a unit. Substitutes? Reasonable facsimiles? Yo thanks. __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From tequilizer at gmx.net Mon Nov 7 01:39:09 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 08:39:09 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436F049D.1090600@gmx.net> Tony Duell wrote: >> Did you ever try to connect your machine to one of the earlier >> 5,25"-amigo-drives (like the 82901 or the 9135A)? These drives should be >> > > Not yet. I do have an dual 5.25" HPIB drive (I forget the model number), > I should dig it out and try it. > > How are you getting on with sorting out your machine? > > -tony > > > Slowly but steadily. I'm currently figuring out some bus & connector pinouts, especially around the A34 alpha control logic assembly. Most signals are identified, but there are some minor differences between the B and C models, which have to be solved. You should always know what you do before getting serious... --Ansgar From cheri-post at web.de Mon Nov 7 03:25:12 2005 From: cheri-post at web.de (Pierre Gebhardt) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 10:25:12 +0100 Subject: HP7879B tape again Message-ID: <996349952@web.de> > > By that period, HP comptuers were 'repaired' by board-swapping. If you're > > lucky there will be _some_ useful info in the boardswapper guide, like > > pinouts or testpoints. > You are too pessimistic :-) I hope to find good documentation of > everything I need. Optimism is important, but unfortunately in the past, losts of machines came up but no reasonable service documentation are at least without full schematics published. Or they were never published later on, as companys were in business to shortly. ONYX and Plessey come directly to my mind. I've never seen documents of Emulex boards as well. Maybe somebody can correct me, that would be nice to hear. Pierre ______________________________________________________________________ XXL-Speicher, PC-Virenschutz, Spartarife & mehr: Nur im WEB.DE Club! Jetzt gratis testen! http://freemail.web.de/home/landingpad/?mc=021130 From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Nov 7 03:26:06 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 09:26:06 -0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update In-Reply-To: References: <436DE3DE.3040103@gjcp.net> from "Gordon JC Pearce" at Nov 6, 5 11:07:10 am Message-ID: <36184.195.212.29.92.1131355566.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> >> One point I'd take issue with is about digital photography. Go and >> compare photos taken with an el-cheapo point-and-shoot digital camera >> and an equivalent 35mm compact. *Then* tell me there's not *some* >> improvement ;-) > > Hmm... Problem is that reasonable digital compact cameras seem to cost as > much as a 35mm ZLE. And the latter certainly produces better results. But entry level digital cameras are definitely better than entry level 35mm cameras. > I have yet to see any digital phootgraph that I consider contains > adequate detail (this is not the same as sharpness, which can be > fiddled). Of course I am compearing them to medium and large format film > (but then again, any one of my medium or large format cameras cost me a > lot less that any reasoable digital camera). I'm not sure you're comparing like with like here - did you buy the medium or large format cameras new? Look at the new price for these compared to the new price for a good digital SLR - there's not a lot of difference. > I can see advantages to digital cameras if you need the results ASAP, or > if you want to send them across the world quickly. But that's not what I > want to do. Or if you value convenience above quality, for instance if you don't plan on publishing 4 foot posters of your holiday photos. Most people simply don't need the quality that you can get with medium format, or even good 35mm for that matter. They certainly don't want to spend the time learning how to use the equipment. It's much the same as the way that most people don't need a Volvo FL12 truck to go to the shops. Gordon. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Nov 7 05:49:46 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 11:49:46 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Where "That darn Intel jingle..." came from... In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.4.2.20051105142002.0317d690@boff-net.dhs.org> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> <436D02BA.2000003@gmail.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051105142002.0317d690@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <15836.195.212.29.75.1131364186.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/tiny-music-makers-pt-1-intel-inside.html Interesting reading. Gordon. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 7 06:31:30 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 07:31:30 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem - first measurement results Message-ID: <0IPL009R4446K730@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: help - 11/34 console problem - first measurement results > From: "Gooijen, Henk" > Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 18:06:41 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > Cc: "Gooijen, Henk" > >------_=_NextPart_001_01C5E2F4.74FC0C20 >Content-Type: text/plain; > charset="iso-8859-1" >Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > >Allison wrote: > = > >> I'd consider that the 8008 is getting bad input data from a bad scan line= > >> which it will output or that it's outputing correctly and the data is >> corrupted after output due to bad latch or other hardware. >> >> One likely possibility is not ram as a prblem but a I/O port that has a >> stuck bit. Or the control for that port is stuck. This is most likely >> if the basic fuctions are there (8008 program runs) but some parts of >> the data used to control the 11/34 or display it's status is not correct.= > >> >> FYI the 8008 can be single stepped if you pull the "READY" line each >> cycle and just look at the bus with a simple logic probe or clip. > >Thanks for the good input Allison! >I hooked a logic analyzer to the address lines A0-A7 on one of the program >ROMs, and simply sampled the data without any trigger. With the display in >octal mode, I can see the executed address sequence. The 8008 executes the >main loop and calls SHFT1 *and* returns to the correct PC. That means that >the ROM, RAM (to store the return address) and associated circuits must be = >OK. Ok rom for sure and may be on the ram. The 8008 has an internal push down stack that is 8 deep for call/return. Allison From toresbe at ifi.uio.no Sun Nov 6 13:45:57 2005 From: toresbe at ifi.uio.no (Tore S Bekkedal) Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 20:45:57 +0100 Subject: Short review of $550 power cord plus a new SWTPC 6800 In-Reply-To: <12610.195.212.29.75.1130071020.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> References: <4359F290.722FC909@cs.ubc.ca> <20051022121015.F77551@shell.lmi.net> <6.2.3.4.2.20051022142448.051c2dd0@mail> <435AF5D6.6070604@gmail.com> <12610.195.212.29.75.1130071020.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> Message-ID: <1131306357.3875.8.camel@fortran.babel> 2005-10-23 (?) ? 13:37 +0100 ? gordonjcp at gjcp.net ????????: > > John Foust wrote: > > One of my machines has a "Turbo" button that changes from "HI" to "LO". > > It does make a noticeable difference in speed. Probably inserts a > > bunch of NOPs in or something. Comes in handy when I'm trying to play > > older games. > On older machines it did actually change the clock speed. One of the memories I have from my first school in Norway were being thrown out from the computer room for (unknowingly) violating the rule, and I quote: "The Turbo switch must be turned OFF to preserve the hardware." The computer teacher really did believe that using the Turbo button would cause the computers to wear down faster. And yes, there was a (very!) noticeable slowdown when the Turbo button was off. This was a 486 running Windows 95. -toresbe From kenacms at pindar.net2net.net.au Mon Nov 7 04:48:02 2005 From: kenacms at pindar.net2net.net.au (Ken) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 21:48:02 +1100 (EST) Subject: Modcomp Mini Photos In-Reply-To: <1490.70.185.179.173.1130738396.squirrel@webmail2.pair.com> from "Jeff Davis" at Oct 30, 2005 09:59:56 PM Message-ID: <200511071048.jA7Am2Ce003318@pindar.net2net.net.au> > > A while back (month and a half) I put out notice for a Modcomp needing rescue > at my local university surplus (UC-Santa Barbara, California). Someone has > saved it and is in the process of arranging pickup. I promised photos to the > list and here they are: > > http://www.soupwizard.com/temp/modcomp/ > > Jeff > > > Thats a great save. Looks at first glance like a ModcompII. The circuit boards are great.. From the labelling it was one of Johnson Controls JC80 Air Conditioning and Control systems which used Modcomps as the processors. At least it would have clean air. We had a JC80 system here in Sydney Australia which ran the airconditioning for the Sydney Opera House through to at least 1996 or so. It used Modcomp Classics 78xx but what you've got there is earlier than that. I have a range of Modcomps in my collection, ranging from 7870's through to 9230's in the proprietary range, and 9820/30/40's in the Motorola VME based systems, dating from an association in Australia with Modcomp. NASA used to and probably still has a lot of them for uses ranging from the Deep Space Tracking Network to the Shuttle launches.. Modcomp made a VME emulator of the ModcompII for NASA, to replace the orginal computers delivered in the seventies, because it was easier to replace the Shuttle launch systems with an emulator than to rewrite and recheck all the launch code.. Cheers Ken Kirkby Terrigal Australia. From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Mon Nov 7 07:27:08 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 08:27:08 -0500 Subject: Where "That darn Intel jingle..." came from... In-Reply-To: <15836.195.212.29.75.1131364186.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> <436D02BA.2000003@gmail.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051105142002.0317d690@boff-net.dhs.org> <15836.195.212.29.75.1131364186.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> Message-ID: <6.2.5.4.2.20051107082534.031a3da8@boff-net.dhs.org> great goddamnit, now you helped spread that evil viral corporate noise and made my cat pee herself, feel better now (accidentally clicked the stupid sound link where it immediately played the said intel jingle)? heh. -John Boffemmyer IV At 06:49 AM 11/7/2005, you wrote: >http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/tiny-music-makers-pt-1-intel-inside.html > >Interesting reading. > >Gordon. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/162 - Release Date: 11/5/2005 From aw288 at osfn.org Mon Nov 7 08:41:35 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 09:41:35 -0500 (EST) Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511070456.jA74uMZR004897@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: > This site says otherwise. > > http://simh.trailing-edge.com/i1401.html > > I am sure I have read it elsewhere as well. > > The IBM archive just says it was used for both, but gives no design > objective. > Check out the (more or less) official history books on IBM put out by MIT press. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From Watzman at neo.rr.com Mon Nov 7 08:57:44 2005 From: Watzman at neo.rr.com (Barry Watzman) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 09:57:44 -0500 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) In-Reply-To: <200511071446.jA7Ek9V4046102@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <004201c5e3ab$9c93eca0$6401a8c0@barry> Re: " What does a single vertical line in the middle of a display indicate?" This is a symptom that is normally never seen. It would, in theory, indicate loss of horizontal deflection. The problem is that loss of horizontal deflection in virtually all monitors also causes loss of high voltage, which keeps you from seeing ANYTHING. [The high voltage is obtained from the horizontal output transformer ("flyback" transformer) in virtually every TV set and monitor made.) One possibility: If the horizontal deflection yoke was open, there could be a loss of horizontal deflection while you still had output from the horizontal output transformer. Usually, an open yoke would shut down the horizontal output and high voltage, but it's the only way I can think of that you might get loss of horizontal deflection and still have high voltage. From alberto at a2sistemi.it Mon Nov 7 09:06:17 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 16:06:17 +0100 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > 2) It's shut down. The shutdown pin is driven from the SCR CR11 on the > 1144-01E PCB. That takes inputs from the current sense circuit and the > overvoltage shutdown. Since you say that the shutdown pin is not asserted > (do check this at the 'other' side of R11, 6k8), I think this is not the > problem weeither. I was in error, the 3524 is shutdowned (lessical correct? :)) After a short time (during this outputs are available) the signal on R11 goes high, blocking 3524 Now I try to understand if is current overload or voltage protection circuit that become active. Alberto ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From dave04a at dunfield.com Mon Nov 7 09:14:11 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:14:11 -0500 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) Message-ID: <20051107151409.GTFR29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> At 09:57 07/11/2005 -0500, you wrote: >Re: " What does a single vertical line in the middle of a display indicate?" > >This is a symptom that is normally never seen. > >It would, in theory, indicate loss of horizontal deflection. The problem is >that loss of horizontal deflection in virtually all monitors also causes >loss of high voltage, which keeps you from seeing ANYTHING. [The high >voltage is obtained from the horizontal output transformer ("flyback" >transformer) in virtually every TV set and monitor made.) > >One possibility: If the horizontal deflection yoke was open, there could be >a loss of horizontal deflection while you still had output from the >horizontal output transformer. Usually, an open yoke would shut down the >horizontal output and high voltage, but it's the only way I can think of >that you might get loss of horizontal deflection and still have high >voltage. I have a MAC Plus with the same symptom - seemed odd to me as well, so I asked a local guy who used to repair monitors. He didn't think it was that odd, here is what he responded with (I haven't had time to look further at it yet): >#2 - I've got a Mac Plus which displays a thin VERTICAL line - I've not >seen this before, because since it has HV, the horizontal oscillator must >be running! - any guesses? This obviously has separate circuits for EHT and horizontal drive/deflection, and the deflection circuit has a bad drive component or bad solder joint. Usually the HOT goes due to high ESR caps in the primary side of the transformer driving the HOT, or the solder joints go bad because of the high drive currents and heat. Also check the flyback transformer (actually, all) solder joints with a 10x loupe. You really need an ESR meter and to go through all the electrolytics on the board. I regret selling mine a few years back; that was an invaluable piece of test gear. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From allain at panix.com Mon Nov 7 09:36:49 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:36:49 -0500 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes References: <200511062336300577.2CAD50DE@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <004201c5e3b1$12335e00$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> > I determined that my time was worth more than the trouble and went > back to Mitsui CD-Rs. > What I'd like a straw poll on is who makes the best new 3.5" D2HD > floppies. Most important to me is to determine the best CD-R made and how to obtain them. They are useful for archiving images of those diskettes, for example. And much much more... The Mitsui name does come up alot here, next is how to obtain them. John A. From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 7 09:47:37 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 10:47:37 -0500 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <004201c5e3b1$12335e00$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> References: <200511062336300577.2CAD50DE@10.0.0.252> <004201c5e3b1$12335e00$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <436F7719.9020402@gmail.com> John Allain wrote: >>I determined that my time was worth more than the trouble and went >>back to Mitsui CD-Rs. >>What I'd like a straw poll on is who makes the best new 3.5" D2HD >>floppies. > > > Most important to me is to determine the best CD-R made and > how to obtain them. They are useful for archiving images of those > diskettes, for example. And much much more... > The Mitsui name does come up alot here, next is how to obtain them. http://www.mam-a.com/ Look for the online store link. Peace... Sridhar From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Mon Nov 7 09:55:41 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 10:55:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: Short review of $550 power cord plus a new SWTPC 6800 In-Reply-To: <1131306357.3875.8.camel@fortran.babel> References: <4359F290.722FC909@cs.ubc.ca> <20051022121015.F77551@shell.lmi.net> <6.2.3.4.2.20051022142448.051c2dd0@mail> <435AF5D6.6070604@gmail.com> <12610.195.212.29.75.1130071020.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> <1131306357.3875.8.camel@fortran.babel> Message-ID: <200511071557.KAA13578@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > "The Turbo switch must be turned OFF to preserve the hardware." > The computer teacher really did believe that using the Turbo button > would cause the computers to wear down faster. This is not *totally* wrong. Running faster generally means running hotter, which shortens lifespan. (Now, whether this effect was significant compared to all the other things also affecting lifespan, that's another story. :-) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From asholz at topinform.de Mon Nov 7 10:18:22 2005 From: asholz at topinform.de (Andreas Holz) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:18:22 +0100 Subject: Calling Fred van Kempen! In-Reply-To: <1123943982.7684.2.camel@fortran> References: <20050811000204.D66D8183BF6@bitsavers.org> <1123943982.7684.2.camel@fortran> Message-ID: <436F7E4E.3060600@topinform.de> pdp11.nl and microwalt.nl are not reachable. Whats the matter with Fred? Andreas >On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 17:02 -0700, Al Kossow wrote: > > >>Several other people have been trying to contact Fred >>and not having any luck. >> >> > >He's usually on IRC, though (in #classiccmp on Freenode) > >I'll tell him about it when he comes back. > >-toresbe > > > > From allain at panix.com Mon Nov 7 11:26:21 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 12:26:21 -0500 Subject: Calling Fred van Kempen! References: <20050811000204.D66D8183BF6@bitsavers.org><1123943982.7684.2.camel@fortran> <436F7E4E.3060600@topinform.de> Message-ID: <03a401c5e3c0$60d31780$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> > pdp11.nl and microwalt.nl are not reachable. > Whats the matter with Fred? I think it's BiPolar disorder. No wait, that's Ethan. Doesn't Fred work in NL _and_ in California? He must have severe BiCoastal issues. John A. From nico at FARUMDATA.DK Mon Nov 7 11:43:55 2005 From: nico at FARUMDATA.DK (Nico de Jong) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 18:43:55 +0100 Subject: Calling Fred van Kempen! References: <20050811000204.D66D8183BF6@bitsavers.org><1123943982.7684.2.camel@fortran><436F7E4E.3060600@topinform.de> <03a401c5e3c0$60d31780$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <002701c5e3c2$d3672500$2101a8c0@finans> ----- Oprindelig meddelelse ----- Fra: John Allain Til: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Sendt: 7. november 2005 18:26 Emne: Re: Calling Fred van Kempen! > pdp11.nl and microwalt.nl are not reachable. > Whats the matter with Fred? Doesn't Fred work in NL _and_ in California? Yes, but that shouldnt affect his web sites, in principle Nico From vcf at siconic.com Mon Nov 7 11:53:15 2005 From: vcf at siconic.com (Vintage Computer Festival) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 09:53:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: VCF photos please Message-ID: Once again, I was too busy to take photos at the VCF of all the exhibitors :( Hopefully someone took nice ones with the exhibitor standing in front of the exhibit, but I'll take whatever you have. Please contact me if you have any. P.S. I'm unsubscribing from the CC list so any communications should come directly to me. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ] From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 7 12:33:38 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 10:33:38 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511071033380682.2F06F0E7@10.0.0.252> On 11/6/2005 at 5:23 PM William Donzelli wrote: >The 1400 series was specifically designed to clear out a bunch of the >older, hard to maintain, unit record equipment. Use as an effective >sidekick for some of the 7000 series was a happy surprise for IBM. I think the reality here is somewhere between "yes they did" and "no they didn't". There was never a 1401 setup was even remotely competitive with a small DP operation that used unit-record equipment. A quick perusal of the numbers shows that the lease cost of a 1401 with tape, printer and punch was in no way competitive with the lease cost for a simple set of unit record equipment (407, 519, 082). A single 1401 could be much faster and do more complex operations than the unit record equipment, but the old stuff was very robust and economical. However, for the larger DP customers, a 1401, owing to its use of tape (handling fewer trays of punched cards) and faster I/O (the 1403 printer was a comparative speed demon to the 407 printer) was a very attractive alternative for a big roomful of unit record equipment. What is more significant, it was extremely attractive as a replacement for earlier business computers, such as the vacuum-tube 650. (The 1401 could simulate 650 code). On the other hand, it meant a lot of retraining--many shops kept some of the UR equipment, such as the 082 for sorting, since it didn't necessitate re-punching cards after sorting (there are some operations that UR equipment does better). IBM was actively trying to upgrade their customer base from UR to computer for a long time. I recall that a friend in the late 60's was excited that his employer, a small Chicago area manufacturer, had just upgraded from UR equipment to a 360/20 on the advice of an IBM SE. Lots of interesting new stuff and new tricks to perform. He thought it was wonderful. Every morning, the DP head would deliver a thick bundle of paper to the president, summarizing the state of the corporate accounts. Of course, the president simply filed it without reading--he already knew, through interaction with the sales department, how things stood. But the new equipment required taking on extra employees and was a lot more expensive. After awhile, the push to add more equipment started and the president began to wonder why, since business hadn't increased all that much, why more of the corporate overhead was dedicated to DP operations. IBM was holding a seminar for prospective customers in the area, so the president (without telling the DP manager) attended. He laid out the extent of his operation as if he'd had no EDP at al to one of the SE's and received the reply that some unit record equipment should do the job just fine. He asked if perhaps a computer may not be a better choice and the sales guy replied, no, your operation isn't large enough to justify it. The 360/20 was out of the door two months later. The extra employees followed shortly thereafter. The point of this is that even during the 60's, IBM was still actively recommending and leasing UR equipment. Cheers, Chuck From beclassic at att.net Mon Nov 7 11:49:41 2005 From: beclassic at att.net (bill bailey) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 12:49:41 -0500 Subject: IBM PC, CGA monitor, etc References: Message-ID: <000e01c5e3c3$d607f220$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> Just when I think no one here uses IBM PC's, I see a little activity. I want to find a home for my 5150 and a few other items. Prefer a collector rather than ebay, but I would still hope to get a nominal consideration in return. I'm in South Carolina. [] IBM PC (5150) set up as a clone XT. It has a 10mb hard drive and dual half-height floppies. Three original manuals with disks: DOS (3.00 or 3.30?), Guide to Operations (2.05) and Basic. Keyboard is original. Not sure what kind of video interface, but the CGA monitor works fine on it. [] IBM CGA monitor (5153). [] Visual 1083 - Commuter. This description mentions an LCD display, but that is not a part of mine. No disks, but it boots with the DOS from the IBM. http://www.thepcmuseum.net/details.php?RECORD_KEY%28museum%29=id&id(museum)=262 [] nice AT-style desktop box and 15" SVGA monitor (will either be Sony or Mag). I raided the box for the QDI motherboard, but I have another (name?) and a Pentium 200 that previously worked in this box. Not sure whether I'll keep the 6 meg hard drive. Couple of keyboards. [] box of miscellaneous I/O boards + modem . . . mostly from Boca for 16-bit ISA. [] maybe some software for PC - Clipper, Wordperfect?? - I'll be checking. I can take pics and send emails if needed and will try to firm up answers to some questions I raised for myself. I can answer on this board if someone wants an answer that way. bill From jim at g1jbg.co.uk Mon Nov 7 13:29:37 2005 From: jim at g1jbg.co.uk (Jim Beacon) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 19:29:37 -0000 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) References: <004201c5e3ab$9c93eca0$6401a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <005e01c5e3d1$979dd320$0200a8c0@ntlworld.com> From: "Barry Watzman" > Re: " What does a single vertical line in the middle of a display indicate?" > > This is a symptom that is normally never seen. > > It would, in theory, indicate loss of horizontal deflection. The problem is > that loss of horizontal deflection in virtually all monitors also causes > loss of high voltage, which keeps you from seeing ANYTHING. [The high > voltage is obtained from the horizontal output transformer ("flyback" > transformer) in virtually every TV set and monitor made.) > > One possibility: If the horizontal deflection yoke was open, there could be > a loss of horizontal deflection while you still had output from the > horizontal output transformer. Usually, an open yoke would shut down the > horizontal output and high voltage, but it's the only way I can think of > that you might get loss of horizontal deflection and still have high > voltage. Not in modern monitors! (in fact not for about 15 years in most "computer" monitors) The horizontal deflection is now normally divorced from EHT generation, due to the large number of horizontal frequencies that the monitor must accept. The EHT unit of a modern(ish) monitor has more in common with the RF EHT generators of 1950s projection TVs, than of anything more modern. Jim. From RMeenaks at olf.com Mon Nov 7 13:39:29 2005 From: RMeenaks at olf.com (Ram Meenakshisundaram) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 14:39:29 -0500 Subject: Databooks on EBAY (Belgium) Message-ID: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD254@cpexchange.olf.com> Here is a lad who is selling about 300 databooks for 5Euros per book: From RMeenaks at olf.com Mon Nov 7 13:40:33 2005 From: RMeenaks at olf.com (Ram Meenakshisundaram) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 14:40:33 -0500 Subject: Databooks on EBAY (Belgium) Message-ID: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD255@cpexchange.olf.com> sent it too soon, sorry.. Item #7559862560 > -----Original Message----- > From: Ram Meenakshisundaram > Sent: Monday, November 07, 2005 2:39 PM > To: 'cctech at classiccmp.org' > Subject: Databooks on EBAY (Belgium) > > > Here is a lad who is selling about 300 databooks for 5Euros per book: > > From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 7 13:41:33 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 14:41:33 -0500 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard Message-ID: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> I have this dead XT here, and I wanted to replace its motherboard with a newish ATX beastie. Anyone know where I might be able to find some pointers? Peace... Sridhar From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 7 13:56:11 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:56:11 -0700 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> References: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> Message-ID: <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > I have this dead XT here, and I wanted to replace its motherboard with > a newish ATX beastie. Anyone know where I might be able to find some > pointers? > > Peace... Sridhar GOOD LUCK! the power supply needs to be replaced for a ATX at the very least and that would be a very custom job for you. From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 7 14:07:54 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:07:54 -0500 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <436FB41A.1090207@gmail.com> woodelf wrote: > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> >> I have this dead XT here, and I wanted to replace its motherboard with >> a newish ATX beastie. Anyone know where I might be able to find some >> pointers? >> >> Peace... Sridhar > > > GOOD LUCK! the power supply needs to be replaced for a ATX at the very > least and that would be a > very custom job for you. I am well aware of this. That part is easy. I was more concerned about the motherboard mounting. Peace... Sridhar From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Mon Nov 7 14:15:14 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 20:15:14 +0000 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 7/11/05 19:56, "woodelf" wrote: > GOOD LUCK! the power supply needs to be replaced for a ATX at the very > least and that would be a > very custom job for you. Not really, there's enough room inside an XT case to gut the original power supply and make cables that will connect to a modern PSU that's put somewhere else in the case or even inside the remains of the original one. As for mounting the motherboard, a template can be made from an existing ATX case for the mounting screws...if I had a spare dead XT I might have a go at that myself :) A From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 7 14:17:01 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:17:01 -0700 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FB41A.1090207@gmail.com> References: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> <436FB41A.1090207@gmail.com> Message-ID: <436FB63D.1080107@jetnet.ab.ca> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > I am well aware of this. That part is easy. I was more concerned > about the motherboard mounting. > I have been known to hack at XT cases but as for a new motherboard I am at loss to just how it will fit. Secondly will a new PC run old software if you need to do so? > Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 7 14:34:02 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:34:02 -0500 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FB63D.1080107@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> <436FB41A.1090207@gmail.com> <436FB63D.1080107@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <436FBA3A.4030100@gmail.com> woodelf wrote: > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> >> I am well aware of this. That part is easy. I was more concerned >> about the motherboard mounting. >> > I have been known to hack at XT cases but as for a new motherboard I > am at loss to just It'll fit. The motherboards are roughly the same size and shape. The only problem will be the mounting plate and the connector panel. > how it will fit. Secondly will a new PC run old software if you need to > do so? I don't need it to. This is going to be a newish gaming box when I'm done. I have properly working vintage hardware for running old software. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 7 14:36:45 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 15:36:45 -0500 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <436FBADD.5080102@gmail.com> Adrian Graham wrote: > On 7/11/05 19:56, "woodelf" wrote: > > >>GOOD LUCK! the power supply needs to be replaced for a ATX at the very >>least and that would be a >>very custom job for you. > > > Not really, there's enough room inside an XT case to gut the original power > supply and make cables that will connect to a modern PSU that's put > somewhere else in the case or even inside the remains of the original one. The PS is fried in this machine also, so I was planning on mounting the guts from a newish power supply inside the housing for the original. The PS I'm going to be using is significantly smaller than the original. > As for mounting the motherboard, a template can be made from an existing ATX > case for the mounting screws...if I had a spare dead XT I might have a go at > that myself :) So would you suggest installing metal standoffs with nuts through new oversized punched holes, or would you suggest drilling/tapping holes and installing the standoffs directly? Or something else? Peace... Sridhar From dave04a at dunfield.com Mon Nov 7 14:40:28 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 15:40:28 -0500 Subject: LF: Docs/info on Teletek 64K S-100 RAM card Message-ID: <20051107204027.LFHW29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> Acquired this card with no docs. It bears the "TELETEK" logo on the front and back along with "(C)1981 rev2 0601-0112" on the back. I don't have any other model information. Top 1/2 of card has two regulators with heat sinks on the left, and two rows of 16 16k DRAMs each extending to the right side. Bottom 1/2 of the card has mostly TTL, an AMD2964B (40 pin), three TTL delay line devices, one open "jumper socket", and jumpers sprinkled around, with a row of 14 jumpers at the lower right hand corner. (All views described looking at component side with S-100 connector at the bottom. Anyone got one of these cards? Any info on jumper settings etc. would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From arcarlini at iee.org Mon Nov 7 14:45:05 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 20:45:05 -0000 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> Message-ID: <002b01c5e3dc$3151c580$5b01a8c0@pc1> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > I have this dead XT here, and I wanted to replace its motherboard > with a newish ATX beastie. Anyone know where I might be able to find > some pointers? You'll have to swap the PSU and you'll have to find a mobo that can be mounted in the box given the alignment of the mounting holes etc. and you'll need to find a way of getting the mobo connectors to the outside world. Without checking in detail, I think you'll have to virtually destroy the XT case to make the mobo and PSU fit. Are XTs far enough along the modern development curve that they cannot be fixed? I thought that the trend towards no-schematics-all-in-a-chipset machines was somewhere in the 386/486 era. Or are XTs still so common that you have no hope of trading the dead one for a modern case? Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 7 14:52:13 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:52:13 -0800 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FBA3A.4030100@gmail.com> References: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> <436FB41A.1090207@gmail.com> <436FB63D.1080107@jetnet.ab.ca> <436FBA3A.4030100@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200511071252130108.2F85CF20@10.0.0.252> A lot depends on the board, of course, but IIRC, the power supply in an ATX box has more clearance for the board to slip under. It's those connectors that will probably give you fits. The mounting holes should be very close--if it's not a perfect match, you can always use some extra nylon PC board standoffs at critical points. It may be more trouble than it's worth. ATX has been out for so many years that I'd probably just look around for a recycled PC with the case I wanted. Cheers, Chuck From aw288 at osfn.org Mon Nov 7 14:56:06 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 15:56:06 -0500 (EST) Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511071033380682.2F06F0E7@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > I think the reality here is somewhere between "yes they did" and "no they > didn't". Pages 465 thru 479 of "IBMs Early Computers" holds the story. Required reading. The roots of the 1401 project, called SPACE, goes back to the RAMAC days, apparently. > A single 1401 could be much faster and do more > complex operations than the unit record equipment, but the old stuff was > very robust and economical. Remember, however, that the unit record equipment was starting to show it age. Being electromechanical in nature, failures went up over time, just like an old car. Fixing the things was mostly on IBMs dime. > IBM was actively trying to upgrade their customer base from UR to computer > for a long time. I recall that a friend in the late 60's was excited that > his employer, a small Chicago area manufacturer, had just upgraded from UR > equipment to a 360/20 on the advice of an IBM SE. Lots of interesting new > stuff and new tricks to perform. He thought it was wonderful. The "fake" S/360 was the second attempt to kill off the old stuff. S/3 was the third and final stab, and it pretty much worked (although 083s were in use until the very end). > The point of this is that even during the 60's, IBM was still actively > recommending and leasing UR equipment. I would think that was the exception rather than the rule. Certainly they would have wanted to lease or sell more 1401s than the older systems. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 7 15:04:50 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 16:04:50 -0500 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <002b01c5e3dc$3151c580$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <002b01c5e3dc$3151c580$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <436FC172.2080304@gmail.com> a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >>I have this dead XT here, and I wanted to replace its motherboard >>with a newish ATX beastie. Anyone know where I might be able to find >>some pointers? > > > You'll have to swap the PSU and you'll have to find a mobo that > can be mounted in the box given the alignment of the mounting > holes etc. and you'll need to find a way of getting the mobo > connectors to the outside world. > > Without checking in detail, I think you'll have to virtually > destroy the XT case to make the mobo and PSU fit. > > Are XTs far enough along the modern development curve that > they cannot be fixed? I thought that the trend towards > no-schematics-all-in-a-chipset machines was somewhere in > the 386/486 era. > > Or are XTs still so common that you have no hope of trading > the dead one for a modern case? Probably none of the above. *This* particular XT is probably beyond repair. There are scorch marks galore and the motherboard is cracked from the cardslots forward. Ragged remains of traces are sticking out. Sadly, it looks like it was quite abused in its day. Peace... Sridhar From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Mon Nov 7 15:19:13 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:19:13 +0000 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FBADD.5080102@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 7/11/05 20:36, "Sridhar Ayengar" wrote: > > The PS is fried in this machine also, so I was planning on mounting the > guts from a newish power supply inside the housing for the original. > The PS I'm going to be using is significantly smaller than the original. This idea's appealing to me more and more, purely because I know I can do it :) > So would you suggest installing metal standoffs with nuts through new > oversized punched holes, or would you suggest drilling/tapping holes and > installing the standoffs directly? Or something else? It depends on the available height from the base of the case as to whether a standard backplate from an ATX case could be used instead...if I wasn't using my PC for its sole purpose of watching TV right now I'd strip it down and check. Failing that, direct standoffs would do. Cheers A From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Nov 7 15:43:55 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 13:43:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: Short review of $550 power cord In-Reply-To: <1131306357.3875.8.camel@fortran.babel> References: <4359F290.722FC909@cs.ubc.ca> <20051022121015.F77551@shell.lmi.net> <6.2.3.4.2.20051022142448.051c2dd0@mail> <435AF5D6.6070604@gmail.com> <12610.195.212.29.75.1130071020.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> <1131306357.3875.8.camel@fortran.babel> Message-ID: <20051107134041.D65104@shell.lmi.net> On Sun, 6 Nov 2005, Tore S Bekkedal wrote: > "The Turbo switch must be turned OFF to preserve the hardware." > The computer teacher really did believe that using the Turbo button > would cause the computers to wear down faster. And yes, there was a > (very!) noticeable slowdown when the Turbo button was off. This was a > 486 running Windows 95. Does it run out of computrons quicker? Or does the higher speed create more thermal problems resulting in a higher probability of getting a leak and losing the compressed smoke that it runs on? Rejumpering to reverse the switch action is a handy way to deal with such regulations. From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Mon Nov 7 15:47:34 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:47:34 +0000 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <002b01c5e3dc$3151c580$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: On 7/11/05 20:45, "a.carlini at ntlworld.com" wrote: > Without checking in detail, I think you'll have to virtually > destroy the XT case to make the mobo and PSU fit. One check in detail later with an XT and an ATX motherboard it's looking like you're right - PSU is in the wrong place......but what about the mini-ITX? People have been shoehorning those boards into the Commodore SX64, Vic-20 and other classics.... Www.mini-itx.com - check the PC in a Sega MegaCD case :) A From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 7 15:49:51 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 13:49:51 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511071349510079.2FBA903F@10.0.0.252> On 11/7/2005 at 3:56 PM William Donzelli wrote: >Remember, however, that the unit record equipment was starting to show it >age. Being electromechanical in nature, failures went up over time, just >like an old car. Fixing the things was mostly on IBMs dime. Which is why the customer resistance to change was such a tough nut to crack--and why IBM met with only mediocre success with the 1401 in replacing UR equipment. I don't deny that IBM's plan all along was to replace the UR with the 1401; just that the reality wasn't achieved for a number of good reasons, cost being one of them. The timing of the introduction of the S/3 was perfect--we'd just put a man on the moon and the old 1940's vintage UR equipment did seem kind of klunky. Smaller cards, cartridge drive, fast printer, very clean appearance, it was the right product for the right time. Cheers, Chuck From classiccmp at vintage-computer.com Mon Nov 7 16:01:26 2005 From: classiccmp at vintage-computer.com (Erik Klein) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 14:01:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: DEC Alphaserver for sale Message-ID: <41281.127.0.0.1.1131400886.squirrel@www.vintage-computer.com> I have a Digital Equipment Corporation AlphaServer 1000 4/266 for sale. The price is negotiable, but I'd really like to get around $100 for it if possible. This unit has a StorageWorks SCSI expansion chassis as well as a ton of manuals - mostly VMS. It comes with the owners manual and VMS CDs. The unit worked perfectly when pulled from service but we had to junk the drives in order to protect sensitive data thereon (per previous threads.) The unit takes common SCSI drives, however, so getting it going will be a snap. All of the drive caddies for both the system unit and the StorageWorks cabinet are present. Here's the rub - the unit is heavy, Especially with all of the manuals, so this is a pick-up only deal in San Jose, CA. I don't have any time to pack and ship this beast. Please email me directly with offers. Thanks! -- Erik Klein www.vintage-computer.com www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum The Vintage Computer Forum From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 7 15:05:32 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:05:32 +0000 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FBA3A.4030100@gmail.com> References: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> <436FB41A.1090207@gmail.com> <436FB63D.1080107@jetnet.ab.ca> <436FBA3A.4030100@gmail.com> Message-ID: <436FC19C.7050504@yahoo.co.uk> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > woodelf wrote: > >> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> >>> >>> I am well aware of this. That part is easy. I was more concerned >>> about the motherboard mounting. >>> >> I have been known to hack at XT cases but as for a new motherboard >> I am at loss to just > > > It'll fit. The motherboards are roughly the same size and shape. The > only problem will be the mounting plate and the connector panel. IIRC, there are raised metal sections welded to the base of the XT case, and it's into these that the plastic standoffs for the motherboard sit. If I'm misremembering, ignore me... Anyway, get yourself an angle grinder and slice right down the middle of the raised metal sections from front to back. Hammer the remains flat, so you've got a roughly flat bottom to the case. Then, get yourself a scrap ATX tower case (free from all sorts of sources) and chop the bit of metal out of that which normally holds the ATX motherboard standoffs (I expect nearly all of them unbolt, no chopping required). After making a few strategic holes in the bottom of the XT case, you should be able to bolt that assembly in the right place so that the rear cut-outs for the cards line up with a fitted motherboard properly. You'll then be able to mount any ATX motherboard that the original sacrificial ATX case would take. As for the PSU, good idea of someone's regarding mounting it inside the original PSU - you'll want to keep that big red power switch! :-) Connector panel - if the engineering stacks up (XT card slot holes don't get in the way), I'd be tempted to cut out the whole relevant part of the aforementioned sacrificial ATX case out and mount *that* inside the XT case, bolting it to a suitable cut-out that you can make in the back of the XT's case. Lot easier than trying to cut lots of neat socket holes in the XT's steel. The alternative would be to desolder the connectors from the ATX board and relocate them via cables to brackets scavenged from relevant ISA cards (soundcard, I/O card etc.) - but I don't know what your chances of getting the parallel port socket off an ATX board without damaging anything would be! Normally I wouldn't agree with chopping an old machine apart, but it is just a PC and not something particularly interesting... cheers Jules From cheri-post at web.de Mon Nov 7 16:40:59 2005 From: cheri-post at web.de (Pierre Gebhardt) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 23:40:59 +0100 Subject: Fujitsu M2436 real tape docs on bitsavers Message-ID: <997345067@web.de> Hey folks, The Fujitsu M2436 manuals are now online on bitsavers. You can find them in the Fujitsu folder M243X as well as in the univac folder: BT3200 disk drives. They are just relabeled Fujitsu drives. IBM relabeled them as well as we found out on a recent discussion. Regards, Pierre ______________________________________________________________ Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS! Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193 From Dawn.Goodloe at GoldsmithGroup.com Mon Nov 7 10:46:34 2005 From: Dawn.Goodloe at GoldsmithGroup.com (Dawn Goodloe) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 11:46:34 -0500 Subject: Available IBM 5360 Message-ID: Hello, I did a search for the IIBM 5360 and you came up. I have one sitting in my warehouse and was wondering if it has any value? Thank you, Dawn Dawn Goodloe Shipping and Recycling Coordinator 317-545-4747x33 317-710-0386 cell www.goldsmithgroup.com www.usedprinters.com From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Mon Nov 7 16:32:47 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 16:32:47 -0600 Subject: Need a black 1.2MB floppy drive Message-ID: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F10819A47@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Hey, does anyone here have a black 1.2MB floppy drive? I'm going to make it a permanent addition to my current PC for data transfer to/from my pdp-11 and DECmate. From jharriman at waff.com Mon Nov 7 12:34:39 2005 From: jharriman at waff.com (Harriman, JT) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 12:34:39 -0600 Subject: TI 99/4A Power Supply Message-ID: <1E2418515B7C4A4AB7943D3F1523AA6901B14789@waff-mail01.raycommedia.com> Good afternoon Can you tell me if the TI 59 calculator requires a DC or AC wall-wart? Thanks JT From robert.maxwell at creationtech.com Mon Nov 7 15:03:19 2005 From: robert.maxwell at creationtech.com (Robert Maxwell) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 16:03:19 -0500 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) Message-ID: <3A85BC648C544B49B68DC1A6C4D8BCB3961513@ctrex.creationtech.com> Chris, I hope I'm safe in assuming that this is a CRT monitor... otherwise, disregard the following: (1) a vertical line means no horizontal deflection, but (2) a visible line means there is high voltage on the CRT, meaning the horizontal oscillator is buzzing merrily along. Chances are that the horizontal deflection coil on the yoke is open. If you're lucky, a wire may have broken running to the electromagnet-thingy clamped on the neck of the tube - if not, getting a replacement yoke depends on how much support you can get from Apple. Alternatively, find a similar monitor that died of a different problem and mug it for the replacement. Chances are that the display will look distorted, since each yoke has little permanent magnets glued to it that linearize that particular yoke for its CRT. This is the issue even for a brand-new yoke. Bob Maxwell From doug at stillhq.com Mon Nov 7 17:56:45 2005 From: doug at stillhq.com (Doug Jackson) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 10:56:45 +1100 Subject: UCSD P-Syytem for PC - RE: cctalk Digest, Vol 27, Issue 12 In-Reply-To: <200511041800.jA4I04QY010202@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <20051107235646.USKG3168.omta02ps.mx.bigpond.com@lap86> Hi, I seem to remember that I have a copy of the UCSD p-System for a PC. I also have a z-80 cross-assembler for that environment. I'll have a look in the storage room tonight and see if I can find the media. From memory, it was distributed on 5.25", 360K floppies. What are the re-distribution rules? I believe that UCSD still exists, so it is probably not abandonware. Regards Doug Jackson From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 7 18:48:47 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 19:48:47 -0500 Subject: TI 99/4A Power Supply Message-ID: <0IPM00MEE28SUAJ2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: TI 99/4A Power Supply > From: "Harriman, JT" > Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:34:39 -0600 > To: > >Good afternoon > > > >Can you tell me if the TI 59 calculator requires a DC or AC wall-wart? > > > >Thanks > > > >JT The 99/4a is AC the 59 is DC Allison From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 7 17:57:58 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 23:57:58 +0000 (GMT) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE21EF@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> from "Gooijen, Henk" at Nov 6, 5 05:03:40 pm Message-ID: > > Do you have a logic analyser? If so, then I would try looking at the 8080= > > > address bus. See what bit of the program it's executing, see if it does > > the right things when you press the keys, etc. > = > > I have, it's a Biomation K100-D. When I first set it up Sunday afternoon, Amazingly that's what I have... I didn't get the pods with mine, but a bit of work and some 10124 TTL-ECL translators got the thing useable with TTL level signals [...] > That depends on the length of the instruction. Anyway, I see the addresses > 60-110 (octal) in the correct order and see the address jump at 101 to the > address 335 (a subroutine). I see the complete execution of the subroutine > and the return. Indeed going to address 105. That means the stackpointer > and the memory must be OK! ReturnPC stored in RAM, and retrieved correctly.= Be careful!. I have in the back of my mind the idea that the 8008 has an internal (8-ish level) return stack and doesn't use RAM for this. So you could still have RAM problems. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 7 18:08:30 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:08:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) In-Reply-To: <20051107011831.66920.qmail@web61018.mail.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Nov 6, 5 05:18:31 pm Message-ID: > > I forget. What does a single vertical line in the > middle of a display indicate? It might be something The obvious answer is 'loss of horizontal deflection' ;-) > entirely different from an image that collapses into a > horizontal line, but I seem to remember one of them > representing a definitive component failure. If it In 99% of fixed-frequency (not multi-sync) monitors and TVs, the horizontal deflection system also generates the high voltages for the CRT. So that most failuers in the horisontal deflection circuit will remove the high voltages and you will get a totally dark screen. About all that will remove the deflection and not kill the high voltage is an open-circuit in the yoke or its coupling components. In fact in some monitors even this will mess up the circuit enough to seriously reduce the high voltage. Note that in multi-sync monitors the horizontal deflection and high voltage circuits are nearly always seperate (this goes back even to things like the IBM5154 EGA monitor which could do 2 different scan rates). With those, many component failures can kill the deflection but not the HV. And in almost all monitors the vertical deflection system is a seperate circuit. If that fails you get a horizontal line (the screen will not be blanked unless there's a protection circuit). > makes a difference, the unit is a compact Mac, a > Classic I think. Can any (and all) *new* display Ah... In the Mac Plus there are very common causes of this. Either a burnt contact on the yoke connector or a defective coupling capacitor. IIRC that's a 3.9UF _non polarised_ component, near the yoke connector. > components still be had for such a unit. Substitutes? Again, all I've worked on is the Mac Plus. Almost all the components on the 'analogue board' (PSU and monitor) are standard. The transformers, of course, were custom made (although I think I've seen flybacks listed somewhere). The R's and C's are standard. So are the trnasistors from what I remember. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 7 18:12:09 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:12:09 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP7879B tape again In-Reply-To: <436EADE3.6020508@hachti.de> from "Philipp Hachtmann" at Nov 7, 5 02:29:07 am Message-ID: > > Hi, > > > I asusme there's nothing of use on http://www.hpmuseum.net/ ? > Don't think so.... :-( > > >>But I still and urgently need the schematics for the 7978 drive. My > > I sould be suprised if any published manual contained full schematics. > For the 7970 tape drive there ARE the full schematics on bitsavers... So That's interesting... I will take a look. > I think it should be possible to get the complete 7978B docs, too. Hmmm... I've found some HP manuals contain schematics, some for closely-related devices do not. And before you ask, I don't have any 'large' HP tape drives, so schematics will not be appearing on the HPCC CD-ROM. > > > By that period, HP comptuers were 'repaired' by board-swapping. If you're > > lucky there will be _some_ useful info in the boardswapper guide, like > > pinouts or testpoints. > You are too pessimistic :-) I hope to find good documentation of > everything I need. I've found it often takes less time to trace out schematics than to play telephone tag round the manufacturers only to be told they're not available. It's certainly less stressful and more interesting (and you learn a lot more about the device). > > > > > I hate to say this, but you may be reduced to producing your own > > schematics. It can't be that difficult, I've managed to do it a few times. > But there is one small problem: I don't have the time to do that for an > old switching power supply. And by the way I'm not very good in If I can manage the 9845B supply, you can do this one :-). > repairing switching power supplies. These devices scare me a bit..... Well, they're not too bad when they're turned off. I would check the mains smoothing capacitors (likely to be a couple of 200V units at a few hundred uF's each) with a voltmeter to make sure they're discharged before diving in. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 7 18:47:35 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:47:35 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: from "Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi" at Nov 7, 5 04:06:17 pm Message-ID: > > > 2) It's shut down. The shutdown pin is driven from the SCR CR11 on the > > 1144-01E PCB. That takes inputs from the current sense circuit and the > > overvoltage shutdown. Since you say that the shutdown pin is not asserted > > (do check this at the 'other' side of R11, 6k8), I think this is not the > > problem weeither. > > I was in error, the 3524 is shutdowned (lessical correct? :)) > > After a short time (during this outputs are available) the signal on R11 > goes high, blocking 3524 > Now I try to understand if is current overload or voltage protection circuit > that become active. Whatever you do, don't try disabling any of the shutdown circuits.... The results can be spectacular and expensive. There are 3 possible shutdowns (undervolage, overvoltage, overcurrent) which are diode-ORed together onto the gate of CR11 (the shutdown SCR I mentioned in the last message). I would look at the 1068-01A voltage limit PCB. There are 2 transistors on that board. Q3002 is cut off (collector goes high) if there's an overvoltage. Q3001 is cut off if there's an undervoltage for too long (R3024 and C0001 act as a delay on this signal). I think I would check C3001, in case it's shutting the PSU down before it's properly started. Then look at the collectors of Q3002 to see if the thing is detecting an overvoltage. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 7 18:50:34 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:50:34 +0000 (GMT) Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) In-Reply-To: <20051107151409.GTFR29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> from "Dave Dunfield" at Nov 7, 5 10:14:11 am Message-ID: > I have a MAC Plus with the same symptom - seemed odd to me as well, so I asked > a local guy who used to repair monitors. He didn't think it was that odd, here I hate to say this, but you might want to suspect his comments in future! > is what he responded with (I haven't had time to look further at it yet): > > > >#2 - I've got a Mac Plus which displays a thin VERTICAL line - I've not > >seen this before, because since it has HV, the horizontal oscillator must > >be running! - any guesses? > > This obviously has separate circuits for EHT and horizontal > drive/deflection, and the deflection circuit has a bad drive component or The Mac Plus has one output stage which drives the flyback transformer (EHT and other CRT voltages) and also drives the horizontal yoke. Trace out the schematic if you don't trust me :-) But there is a very common problem with the Mac Plus that I mentioned in another message. The coupling capacitor fails and/or the contact on the yoke connector burns. IIRC the coupling capacitor was originally a non-polarised electrolytic, I normally fit a film capacitor there. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 7 18:26:27 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:26:27 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <436F049D.1090600@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 7, 5 08:39:09 am Message-ID: > Slowly but steadily. I'm currently figuring out some bus & connector > pinouts, especially around the A34 alpha control logic assembly. Most I am not sure what that board is (I have my own names for all the PCBs, since I worked it out long before I saw the boardswapper guide). What I call the 'video interface PCB' -- the board in the left hand mainframe cardcage that connects to the monitor is supposed to be the same for both the 98770 colour monitor and 98780 enhanced mono monitor. Certainly the one in my machine sends 15 bits per character up to the monitor (7 ASCII code bits, 1 chracter set select bit, 4 attibute bits, 3 colour bits, the last 3 are not connected on the monitor backplane PCB in my machine). I asusme you have some idea what that board contains. There are 2 80-character (15 bits per char) buffer memories. One is read out to the text display board in the monitor, while the other is loaded from the mainframe's memory. There are 2 address counters on the PCB, one for rerading, the other for writing (it is not one per memory). And of course cotnrol logic. The board connects to an internal bus on the PPU card -- basically the address/data bus of the PPU hybrid -- and therefore talks to memeory via the buffers on the PPU card. > signals are identified, but there are some minor differences between the > B and C models, which have to be solved. You should always know what you > do before getting serious... 'My' schemaitcs do show pinouts of all the connectors. OK, my names, not HP, but at least it's a start. -tony From aw288 at osfn.org Mon Nov 7 19:08:46 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 20:08:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511071349510079.2FBA903F@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > Which is why the customer resistance to change was such a tough nut to > crack--and why IBM met with only mediocre success with the 1401 in > replacing UR equipment. That is true. Mainframers, as you know, are still hard to change in their ways. According to the book, the 7070 team were the first ones to grab hold of a 1401 as a sidekick, and the 7090 team shortly thereafter. This was while the 1401 was still in the prototype stage. > The timing of the introduction of the S/3 was perfect--we'd just put a man > on the moon and the old 1940's vintage UR equipment did seem kind of > klunky. Smaller cards, cartridge drive, fast printer, very clean > appearance, it was the right product for the right time And with it, a return to the good old days of completely incompatible lines of machines (S/3 to S/32 to S/34 and on and on). I think the little cards, while cool, are actually sort of dumb. They should have killed the cards off at the start. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 7 19:40:54 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:40:54 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511071740540594.308E18CD@10.0.0.252> On 11/7/2005 at 8:08 PM William Donzelli wrote: >And with it, a return to the good old days of completely incompatible >lines of machines (S/3 to S/32 to S/34 and on and on). > >I think the little cards, while cool, are actually sort of dumb. They >should have killed the cards off at the start. They never did make a big dent in the punched card world, did they? Darned silly encoding too--BA8421 for the basic character set and the completely separate C and D rows if you needed 8 bit encoding. I wondered if the US Treasury would keep up with the times by shrinking our dollar bill by half (I know that Hollerith's dollar was bigger). It seems that typical governmental intelligence came into play however, and they got it backwards--around 1980, they kept the physical size the same, but halved its value. :) While the S/3 instruction set bears certain similarities to the S/360, I've wondered what IBM's logic was for making it so different from the S/360. I doubt that it was technical--the 360/20 was far more brain-dead than the S/3 and customers still used them, in spite of the crippled instruction set. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 7 19:47:26 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:47:26 -0800 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511071747260868.3094150B@10.0.0.252> On 11/7/2005 at 11:57 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Be careful!. I have in the back of my mind the idea that the 8008 has an >internal (8-ish level) return stack and doesn't use RAM for this. So you >could still have RAM problems. Exactly--and they're 14 bits (not 16) wide--and overflow and underflow are not checked for. It's sometimes easier just to think of it as 8 14-bit P-counters, with the CALL and RET simply incrementing and decrementing the pointer to the appropriate P-counter (with CALL performing a jump to load the current P-counter). Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 7 20:31:32 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:31:32 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <0IPM005SH7007DE2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 17:47:26 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/7/2005 at 11:57 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > >>Be careful!. I have in the back of my mind the idea that the 8008 has an >>internal (8-ish level) return stack and doesn't use RAM for this. So you >>could still have RAM problems. > >Exactly--and they're 14 bits (not 16) wide--and overflow and underflow are >not checked for. It's sometimes easier just to think of it as 8 14-bit >P-counters, with the CALL and RET simply incrementing and decrementing the >pointer to the appropriate P-counter (with CALL performing a jump to load >the current P-counter). > >Cheers, >Chuck Well save for wrap around. The stack on 8008 is strictly address and as already said 14bits (the 8008 only addresses 16k!!) and 8 levels deep. It was a challenge programming it to figure out where you came from and also not blow the stack. Still it beat the design we had before it as that was around 220 pcs of TTL sequential logic. The interrupt/reset logic was pretty strange too. Allison From aw288 at osfn.org Mon Nov 7 21:06:07 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 22:06:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: <200511071740540594.308E18CD@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > They never did make a big dent in the punched card world, did they? And to add to that, later S/3s could be fitted with 80 column card devices! > While the S/3 instruction set bears certain similarities to the S/360, I've > wondered what IBM's logic was for making it so different from the S/360. I > doubt that it was technical--the 360/20 was far more brain-dead than the > S/3 and customers still used them, in spite of the crippled instruction > set. The S/3 line was...special. I think the bizzare instruction set of the S/3 stems from the the need for the machine to deal with characters - RPG and such - almost exclusively. FORTRAN was offered but it must have really sucked. There are only 30 or so instructions in the whole set, yet a number of them are for complex string handling (kind of inpressive for a non-microcode machine to do string inserts, actually). There are no simple byte level instructions - everything that goes thru the ALUs are strings, basically. Everything is a string. Thw world is a string to an S/3. And yes, the S/3 is a real variable word length machine! Yes, you can add two 569 byte integers with one instruction! William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 7 22:10:54 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 20:10:54 -0800 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511072010540391.31176B1A@10.0.0.252> On 11/7/2005 at 10:06 PM William Donzelli wrote: >...There are no simple >byte level instructions - everything that goes thru the ALUs are strings, >basically. Everything is a string. Thw world is a string to an S/3. Well, yes, there are a couple of byte-level instructions--the immediate ones (MVI, CLI, SBN, SBF) and the very limited register instructions (you have to be able to manipulate the index registers somehow!) (L, ST, A, LA). But yeah, the instruction set is nothing short of bizarre and it'd be pretty hard to carry out much useful work using only the index registers! Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 7 22:18:21 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 20:18:21 -0800 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output In-Reply-To: <0IPM005SH7007DE2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPM005SH7007DE2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511072018210909.311E3F34@10.0.0.252> On 11/7/2005 at 9:31 PM Allison wrote: >Well save for wrap around. The stack on 8008 is strictly address and >as already said 14bits (the 8008 only addresses 16k!!) and 8 levels deep. >It was a challenge programming it to figure out where you came from and >also not blow the stack. Still it beat the design we had before it as >that was around 220 pcs of TTL sequential logic. I always wondered why a carry or borrow from the stack pointer couldn't have at least generated a branch to some known location. It may not have exactly told you where your code went bonkers, but it'd be better than letting the program run wild! How many micros used a local stack? The Natoinal PACE is the only other one that comes to mind, but at least it had a "stack about to overflow" interrupt and a way to access the stack directly. Were you a Datapoint employee? Cheers, Chuck From jwest at classiccmp.org Mon Nov 7 23:04:08 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 23:04:08 -0600 Subject: M4 data 9914's Message-ID: <0ae001c5e421$d9a8f6f0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> There's some M4 data 9914 tape drives on ebay, but the guy only wants to sell them in a group of 4 (ie, lots o money). Anyone want to go in together and buy the lot of 4 and split them up? They appear to be pertec units, but I just need one for parts so that doesn't matter. Contact me off-list if interested! Jay From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Nov 8 00:29:16 2005 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 22:29:16 -0800 Subject: HP7879B tape again Message-ID: <50bbf27773ac10485e1f332884a4629a@bitsavers.org> > For the 7970 tape drive there ARE the full schematics on bitsavers... the 7970 series was built by HP, the 7879 is was OEM-ed from STC . I may have an STC manual somewhere, though it will take some digging. They weren't particularly reliable even when they were new. fwiw By the mid 80s, almost none of HP's 'service' manuals had schematics. From fmc at reanimators.org Tue Nov 8 00:44:43 2005 From: fmc at reanimators.org (Frank McConnell) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 22:44:43 -0800 Subject: HP7879B tape again In-Reply-To: <50bbf27773ac10485e1f332884a4629a@bitsavers.org> (Al Kossow's message of "Mon, 7 Nov 2005 22:29:16 -0800") References: <50bbf27773ac10485e1f332884a4629a@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <200511080644.jA86ihOR049998@lots.reanimators.org> Al Kossow wrote: > > For the 7970 tape drive there ARE the full schematics on bitsavers... > > the 7970 series was built by HP, the 7879 is was OEM-ed from STC . Are you sure? The 7976 was an STC drive, brought in because HP didn't have a 6250 BPI drive and this was starting to hurt sales by 1983 or so. I understood the 7978 to be HP's design. -Frank McConnell From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Mon Nov 7 20:08:06 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:08:06 -0500 Subject: XT Case with Modern Motherboard In-Reply-To: <436FC19C.7050504@yahoo.co.uk> References: <436FADED.8030207@gmail.com> <436FB15B.5040601@jetnet.ab.ca> <436FB41A.1090207@gmail.com> <436FB63D.1080107@jetnet.ab.ca> <436FBA3A.4030100@gmail.com> <436FC19C.7050504@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <6.2.5.4.2.20051107210526.031b2b60@boff-net.dhs.org> Sridhar, I've done this numerous times with AT's for clients in the past. XT's it sounds, are a little more complicated. Jules and the rest of the gang are on the right path with having to mount the ATX mounting tray in it. If you need help though, I do have a 20k rpm dremel kit with cut-off wheels to make short work of the backside of the case to make room for the ATX ports (ps/2, serial, parallel, etc). -John Boffemmyer IV At 04:05 PM 11/7/2005, you wrote: >Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >>woodelf wrote: >> >>>Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >>> >>>> >>>>I am well aware of this. That part is easy. I was more >>>>concerned about the motherboard mounting. >>>I have been known to hack at XT cases but as for a new motherboard >>>I am at loss to just >> >>It'll fit. The motherboards are roughly the same size and >>shape. The only problem will be the mounting plate and the connector panel. > >IIRC, there are raised metal sections welded to the base of the XT >case, and it's into these that the plastic standoffs for the >motherboard sit. If I'm misremembering, ignore me... > >Anyway, get yourself an angle grinder and slice right down the >middle of the raised metal sections from front to back. Hammer the >remains flat, so you've got a roughly flat bottom to the case. > >Then, get yourself a scrap ATX tower case (free from all sorts of >sources) and chop the bit of metal out of that which normally holds >the ATX motherboard standoffs (I expect nearly all of them unbolt, >no chopping required). > >After making a few strategic holes in the bottom of the XT case, you >should be able to bolt that assembly in the right place so that the >rear cut-outs for the cards line up with a fitted motherboard >properly. You'll then be able to mount any ATX motherboard that the >original sacrificial ATX case would take. > >As for the PSU, good idea of someone's regarding mounting it inside >the original PSU - you'll want to keep that big red power switch! :-) > >Connector panel - if the engineering stacks up (XT card slot holes >don't get in the way), I'd be tempted to cut out the whole relevant >part of the aforementioned sacrificial ATX case out and mount *that* >inside the XT case, bolting it to a suitable cut-out that you can >make in the back of the XT's case. Lot easier than trying to cut >lots of neat socket holes in the XT's steel. > >The alternative would be to desolder the connectors from the ATX >board and relocate them via cables to brackets scavenged from >relevant ISA cards (soundcard, I/O card etc.) - but I don't know >what your chances of getting the parallel port socket off an ATX >board without damaging anything would be! > >Normally I wouldn't agree with chopping an old machine apart, but it >is just a PC and not something particularly interesting... > >cheers > >Jules -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/162 - Release Date: 11/5/2005 From tequilizer at gmx.net Tue Nov 8 00:30:23 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:30:23 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <437045FF.9030208@gmx.net> Tony Duell wrote: >> Slowly but steadily. I'm currently figuring out some bus & connector >> pinouts, especially around the A34 alpha control logic assembly. Most >> > > I am not sure what that board is (I have my own names for all the PCBs, > since I worked it out long before I saw the boardswapper guide). > > What I call the 'video interface PCB' -- the board in the left hand > mainframe cardcage that connects to the monitor is supposed to be the > same for both the 98770 colour monitor and 98780 enhanced mono monitor. > Certainly the one in my machine sends 15 bits per character up to the > monitor (7 ASCII code bits, 1 chracter set select bit, 4 attibute bits, 3 > colour bits, the last 3 are not connected on the monitor backplane PCB in > my machine). > > I asusme you have some idea what that board contains. There are 2 > 80-character (15 bits per char) buffer memories. One is read out to the > text display board in the monitor, while the other is loaded from the > mainframe's memory. There are 2 address counters on the PCB, one for > rerading, the other for writing (it is not one per memory). And of course > cotnrol logic. The board connects to an internal bus on the PPU card -- > basically the address/data bus of the PPU hybrid -- and therefore talks > to memeory via the buffers on the PPU card. > Yes, and they implemented the whole control logic in TTL (ROM based state machine). The state machine is one of the more complex works, since it uses both ROM tables and 16-bit multiplexer and a couple of gates/counters/latches. Maybe the multiplexer is used primarily for the access control of the PPU bus. I'm currently looking for the signal lines between the board and the CRT. Besides the 15 character code/character attribute lines and the power lines there are up to 7 lines which are dedicated for status/control information. You say there are 3 lines which are not connected to the 98780 monitor backplane, can you tell me which they are or anything about the estimated purpose of the lines you found? --Ansgar From henk.gooijen at oce.com Tue Nov 8 01:55:36 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 08:55:36 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24F8@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Tony wrote: > > I have, it's a Biomation K100-D. When I first set it up > > Sunday afternoon, > > Amazingly that's what I have... I didn't get the pods with > mine, but a bit of work and some 10124 TTL-ECL translators > got the thing useable with TTL level signals > > [...] > > Be careful!. I have in the back of my mind the idea that the > 8008 has an internal (8-ish level) return stack and doesn't > use RAM for this. So you could still have RAM problems. > > -tony Making your own pod...! Again, points earned Tony! Chapeau! :-) Jim already told me that the 8008 uses an internal stack, but I am now not so sure that the RAM is OK, so I will connect the other 8 LA probes to the databus, to see what is taken out of the RAM to put on the displays. Yesterday evening was short. Much to do ... but I managed to look at the matrix signals. It sort-of looks OK, but I admit that I must make some better measurements to be 100% sure that it is not there where my problem lies. The outputs of the 8881's (on page 4, KY11-LB console board) look as described before, and that is also what I see on the inputs of the 8093 (page KY-3). But taking samples on the outputs is more work, as that is the databus (input). So I see a lot of pulses are on those lines, and it needs more setup work to find out if a stuck bit is messing things up. It is not likely a problem of a stuck bit on the address or data bus, because that would corrupt the program execution of the ROM code. I still have the feeling that there is no problem with the RAM, ROM, CPU, 3-state transceiver, and the decoding logic. This evening I hope to check out (thoroughly) the keypad circuits. thanks for the input! - Henk. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From henk.gooijen at oce.com Tue Nov 8 01:57:19 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 08:57:19 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24F9@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Allison wrote: > Well save for wrap around. The stack on 8008 is strictly > address and as already said 14bits (the 8008 only addresses > 16k!!) and 8 levels deep. > It was a challenge programming it to figure out where you > came from and also not blow the stack. Still it beat the > design we had before it as that was around 220 pcs of TTL > sequential logic. > > The interrupt/reset logic was pretty strange too. > > Allison I am glad that DEC threw away the 220 ICs design, and put in the 8008 :-) - Henk. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From krisford at earthlink.net Tue Nov 8 01:27:16 2005 From: krisford at earthlink.net (Kris Ford) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 01:27:16 -0600 Subject: Heath ET-3400 Trainer Simulator SW Message-ID: <000001c5e435$d915a080$1601a8c0@neo> I was wondering if you ever found that software? I would like to have a copy too. Kris Ford krisford at earthlink.net From henk.stegeman at shell.com Tue Nov 8 03:41:58 2005 From: henk.stegeman at shell.com (Stegeman, Henk HJ SITI-ITIBHW5) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 10:41:58 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> Hi Jos, I fully agree with you. Building your own CPU is really an exciting project. I took me more then 3 months to debug my 110 TTL CPU with 256 words of micro code of 48 bits. See: http://www.anysystems.nl/hjs22.html for some pictures and the reference card. I build this CPU & IO unit in 1976. A liitle bit younger then the Elektor machine :-). Do you still have the Elektor machine ? Regards Henk Stegeman. Netherlands > > What surprises me about the home-built computers from scratch is the > lack > of imagination when it comes to architecture. Most are basically > one-address-cum-accumulator designs. It would seem that larger > register > files are much easier to build nowadays and would open up the door to > some > 2 and 3-address designs. The reason is the effort it takes...... Ask anybody who actually made a CPU ( I myself did a 12 bit TTL based, single address single accumulator machine). The real effort is actually building and debugging the unit. There is only so much time you have.... > > I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small > computer. Much too big to actually build in TTL. In 1974 Elektor magazine started a series of DIY articles that described an extensible ( 12 bit or 16 bit width ) three address, clockless computer. TTL based, with a shiftregister based memory. (6 or 8 512x2 shiftregisters .) An expensive extra wasa 2102 based RAM. The machine did hardware multiply and divide + Instructions were build into the address map .i,e, address XX is the adder, adress yy is a shift and so on.. The start of this series actually predates the Mark8 computer ! Jos Dreesen From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 8 06:36:10 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:36:10 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <0IPM00MC2YZLUAS3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 20:18:21 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/7/2005 at 9:31 PM Allison wrote: > >>Well save for wrap around. The stack on 8008 is strictly address and >>as already said 14bits (the 8008 only addresses 16k!!) and 8 levels deep. >>It was a challenge programming it to figure out where you came from and >>also not blow the stack. Still it beat the design we had before it as >>that was around 220 pcs of TTL sequential logic. Well my 8008 experience predates DEC and the TTL horror was pre 8008! I'll say it this way. The 8008 was a ground breaking micro. From a programmers perspective it wasn't too bad but from a hardware designers and debug perspective it was nasty. It was enough to be a micro but as feature free as one can get. However for the time it was pushing the limit for integration at around 5000 transistors in Pmos. The number of chips with limited internal stacks would amaze you. The 8048/9 series is a fairly well known one, TMS1000 4 bitters, NEC uCOM4 4 bitters, NEC uCOM75 series, National COPs and even the PIC all come to mind. And in every one them if you exceed the stack something falls off the bottom. Stack red zone hardware is truly a big machine thing. >I always wondered why a carry or borrow from the stack pointer couldn't >have at least generated a branch to some known location. It may not have >exactly told you where your code went bonkers, but it'd be better than >letting the program run wild! How many micros used a local stack? The >Natoinal PACE is the only other one that comes to mind, but at least it had >a "stack about to overflow" interrupt and a way to access the stack >directly. > >Were you a Datapoint employee? NEC and DEC but never Datapoint. Allison From stanb at dial.pipex.com Tue Nov 8 07:20:45 2005 From: stanb at dial.pipex.com (Stan Barr) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 13:20:45 +0000 Subject: TI 99/4A Power Supply In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 07 Nov 2005 12:34:39 CST." <1E2418515B7C4A4AB7943D3F1523AA6901B14789@waff-mail01.raycommedia.com> Message-ID: <200511081320.NAA08516@citadel.metropolis.local> Hi, Harriman, JT said: > > Can you tell me if the TI 59 calculator requires a DC or AC wall-wart? If you mean the one with the led display and the card reader, it needs 6.2V AC. (at least my TI 58 does...) -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com The future was never like this! From tshoppa at wmata.com Tue Nov 8 07:50:59 2005 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 08:50:59 -0500 Subject: (no subject) Message-ID: From tshoppa at wmata.com Tue Nov 8 07:52:24 2005 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 08:52:24 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed Message-ID: >From a post I made to the PDP-11 newsgroups in the previous millenium: The benchmarks were done under RT11FB 5.7 doing 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 block-at-a-time READW's and WRITW's to 16384-block data files. A KDJ11B (PDP-11/73) CPU with 2 Megabytes of Clearpoint non-PMI memory was used for the bencharmks. With the SCSI controllers a Barracuda 7200 RPM ST15230N drive was used; with the RQDX3 a RD52 drive was used. Here are the peak data rates measured for read and write 64 blocks-at-a-time: Read Write ---------- ---------- Andromeda SCDC 2.298 MB/s 1.131 MB/s CMD CQD440 2.397 MB/s 1.525 MB/s CMD CQD220 1.418 MB/s 0.882 MB/s CMD CQD220A 2.088 MB/s 1.409 MB/s DEC RQZX1 1.379 MB/s 1.097 MB/s Viking QDT 0.846 MB/s 0.704 MB/s DEC RQDX3 0.164 MB/s 0.161 MB/s From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 8 08:27:47 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:27:47 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed Message-ID: <0IPN00HYG45LDDU2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: MSCP SCSI controller speed > From: "Tim Shoppa" > Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 08:52:24 -0500 > To: > >>From a post I made to the PDP-11 newsgroups in the previous >millenium: > >The benchmarks were done under RT11FB 5.7 doing 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, >32, and 64 block-at-a-time READW's and WRITW's to 16384-block >data files. A KDJ11B (PDP-11/73) CPU with 2 Megabytes of Clearpoint >non-PMI memory was used for the bencharmks. With the SCSI >controllers a Barracuda 7200 RPM ST15230N drive was used; with >the RQDX3 a RD52 drive was used. > > >Here are the peak data rates measured for read and write 64 >blocks-at-a-time: > > > Read Write > ---------- ---------- >Andromeda SCDC 2.298 MB/s 1.131 MB/s >CMD CQD440 2.397 MB/s 1.525 MB/s >CMD CQD220 1.418 MB/s 0.882 MB/s >CMD CQD220A 2.088 MB/s 1.409 MB/s >DEC RQZX1 1.379 MB/s 1.097 MB/s >Viking QDT 0.846 MB/s 0.704 MB/s >DEC RQDX3 0.164 MB/s 0.161 MB/s > >From using the RQDX3 on PDP-11 and microVAXII against the Viking QDT and CMD220 I can say the RQDX is glacially slow. Allison From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 09:10:23 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:10:23 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Does anyone know what's happened (or supposed to happen) with Don Maslin's SW collection? Joe From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 09:35:54 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:35:54 Subject: Nicolet 4094 Digtial Storage Scope? Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108093554.3aff8212@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> I went scrounging again last weekend and came home with this. It looks like this one from an old Ebay auction. . It has two HH floppy drives and it is DIGITAL storage so it's somewhat on topic. Does anyone know anything about these? I've figured out some controls but I don't have a clue what others do. I'm also trying to figure out how to use the disk storage and recall function. I inserted a 360k MS-DOS disk and it displays E7 and it also says ERR if I try to store or recall anything so I don't think it likes that format and it doesn't seem to be capable of formatting it's own disks. Does anyone have any idea what format it's looking for? Joe From hachti at hachti.de Tue Nov 8 08:45:40 2005 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 15:45:40 +0100 (CET) Subject: HP7879B tape again In-Reply-To: <200511080644.jA86ihOR049998@lots.reanimators.org> References: <50bbf27773ac10485e1f332884a4629a@bitsavers.org> <200511080644.jA86ihOR049998@lots.reanimators.org> Message-ID: <39618.217.10.50.85.1131461140.squirrel@webmail.hachti.de> >> the 7970 series was built by HP, the 7879 is was OEM-ed from STC . I have a HP7978B drive... > Are you sure? The 7976 was an STC drive, brought in because HP didn't > have a 6250 BPI drive and this was starting to hurt sales by 1983 or > so. I understood the 7978 to be HP's design. On the power supply's pcb I find an etched HP logo.... So why should the rest be oem? Btw: When the psu was still working my machine came up with no error in self test... Is ist possible that not every commercially available tape hat an eot mark? Regards, Philipp :-) From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 09:46:44 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:46:44 Subject: Fujitsu M2436 real tape docs on bitsavers In-Reply-To: <997345067@web.de> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108094644.0faf2a38@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 11:40 PM 11/7/05 +0100, you wrote: > >Hey folks, > >The Fujitsu M2436 manuals are now online on bitsavers. >You can find them in the Fujitsu folder M243X as well as in the univac folder: BT3200 disk drives. >They are just relabeled Fujitsu drives. >IBM relabeled them as well as we found out on a recent discussion. Someone should create brief lisings under IBM and Univac catagories stainge that their drives are actually Fujitsu drives and redirecting the reader to the Fujitsu folder. Joe > >Regards, > >Pierre >______________________________________________________________ >Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS! >Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193 > > From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 10:02:24 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:02:24 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 10:45 PM 11/6/05 +0000, you wrote: >> >> I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright > >This is a common moan here. I've noticed it too -- as I am fond of >pointing out, about 20 years ago I bought some 5.25" disks for my TRS-80 >model 1. THose disks cost me (then) \pounds 3.00 each, and my Model 1 >stored 88K on them (single sided, 35 cylinders, single density). > >Thing is, those disks are still readable. I wish I could pay that sort of >price _now_ for a 3.5" disk and get something that I could read back >again in years time. My data is worth a lot more than that. > >(Oh and don't tell me to use CD-Rs or DVDs, or whatever. I've yet to find >such devives with an HPIL interface (for example)). Hmmm. I have a couple of HP-IB MO drives and a HP-IL to HP-IB converter. I wonder??? Joe > >-tony > > From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 09:59:48 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:59:48 Subject: Old disks. was RE: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <000801c5e2ff$632bcd40$6401a8c0@dementium> References: <018101c5e2eb$7ba91e40$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108095948.0fafa4fc@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 12:24 PM 11/6/05 -0600, you wrote: >Sort of makes me wonder if the suppliers of newly-produced 8" diskettes are >as bad - but for ~$10 per disk, they'd better be! FWIW I just sold a big box of 8" floppy disks for the DEC MINC computer. They were all dated in the late '70s and up to about 1980. I was concerned weather or not they were still readable but I got this from the buyer yesterday. If I can still read 8" disks after 25 years why the %(*&&^*&^% can't they make 3.5" disks that are still readable after 2 weeks?! "So far, I haven't found a single disk that isn't readable. Interestingly enough, though, when I first booted a copy of the MINC demo and tried to run programs, I kept getting "TRAP TO 10", an illegal instruction trap. Hm. As was often done, my MINC was "upgraded" with an 11/23 CPU (M8186). Reviewing the documentation, I saw several places where instructions had changed between the 11/03 (M7270) and 11/23. I rooted about my shop and, lo! I had an 11/03 CPU. I replaced the board, and everything worked fine. Well, almost everything. I tried running a couple of the graphics programs, and no joy. Digging further, I discovered that the MINC BASIC graphics routines are expecting a VT105 terminal (I'm using a VT420). Hm. There's a VT125 on eBay.... :-) (I might just rewrite something like Kermit to grok the VT105 escape codes, too.) Thanks so much for putting these up on eBay! I'd been trying to find them for a long time without so much as a glimmer of recognition. Cheers -- Ian " Joe > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Teo Zenios >Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 10:02 AM >To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >Subject: Re: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Doc Shipley" >To: >Sent: Sunday, November 06, 2005 10:31 AM >Subject: Re: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes > > >> Chuck Guzis wrote: >> >> > I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright >> > awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a >date >> > code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going >> > and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, >> > tops. >> > >> > Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? >> >> Look in the Yellow Pages for used office supply or office liquidation >> dealers. >> >> There's an office supply surplus here in Austin that I cruise at >> least monthly for NOS floppy media. I've bought various formats 5.25" >> disks there in the shrinkwrap for $0.25 to $1.00 a box, IBM-branded 2MB >> (1.44MB) floppies for $3.00/100, and recently about 6 10-disk boxes of >> DSDD 3.5" for $0.50 each. >> >> >> Doc > >I think the best grade of disks went to professional duplicators. Since >floppies are pretty much obsolete these kind of places tend to sell their >stock for pennies to get them out of the way. I found one such duplicator >ditching 360K floppies on ebay for very little a few years ago (something >like $12 for 500 green 360K disks still in the shrink-wrap). Ofcourse they >tend to just have the floppies themselves and not the box and label found >in retail packaging. > >I found a decent deal on Mac formatted 1.44 floppies earlier this year on >ebay, and they seem to be reliable so far. > > > > > From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 10:05:37 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:05:37 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <436E289B.8090901@gmail.com> References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108100537.3287360a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 11:00 AM 11/6/05 -0500, you wrote: >Chuck Guzis wrote: >> I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright >> awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a date >> code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going >> and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, >> tops. >> >> Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? > >I tend to use IBM-branded media. Works just ok. > >But making sure to store them vertically definitely increases their >lifespan significantly. I wonder why that would make a difference? Joe > >Peace... Sridhar > From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 09:12:59 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:12:59 -0500 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <4370C07B.3020102@gmail.com> Joe R. wrote: > At 10:45 PM 11/6/05 +0000, you wrote: > >>>I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright >> >>This is a common moan here. I've noticed it too -- as I am fond of >>pointing out, about 20 years ago I bought some 5.25" disks for my TRS-80 >>model 1. THose disks cost me (then) \pounds 3.00 each, and my Model 1 >>stored 88K on them (single sided, 35 cylinders, single density). >> >>Thing is, those disks are still readable. I wish I could pay that sort of >>price _now_ for a 3.5" disk and get something that I could read back >>again in years time. My data is worth a lot more than that. >> >>(Oh and don't tell me to use CD-Rs or DVDs, or whatever. I've yet to find >>such devives with an HPIL interface (for example)). > > > Hmmm. I have a couple of HP-IB MO drives and a HP-IL to HP-IB converter. > I wonder??? Also, I know for a fact that there are HP-IB CD-ROM drives because I have one. Peace... Sridhar From vax9000 at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 09:14:14 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 10:14:14 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11/8/05, Tim Shoppa wrote: > >From a post I made to the PDP-11 newsgroups in the previous > millenium: >... > Here are the peak data rates measured for read and write 64 > blocks-at-a-time: > > > Read Write > ---------- ---------- > Andromeda SCDC 2.298 MB/s 1.131 MB/s > CMD CQD440 2.397 MB/s 1.525 MB/s > CMD CQD220 1.418 MB/s 0.882 MB/s > CMD CQD220A 2.088 MB/s 1.409 MB/s > DEC RQZX1 1.379 MB/s 1.097 MB/s > Viking QDT 0.846 MB/s 0.704 MB/s > DEC RQDX3 0.164 MB/s 0.161 MB/s > Thank you. After analyzing the Qbus activity diagram I conclude that my controller won't be fast. There are several reasons. 1. The overhead of 53C90A chip is significant. I may try 53C94/96 later. 2. The ISA DMA is slow for the getpkt(), putpkt(), getdesc() and putdesc() functions. 80188XL won't be faster. 3. The 80386-16 is slow in executing the MSCP code written in C. 80188XL won't be faster. To improve 1, I need a faster SCSI chip, or need to integrate it into the CPLD. To improve 2, I need a small cache to speed up the DMA, or need a faster microprocessor. To improve 3, I need a faster microprocessor, and I may need to rewrite the code in assembly language. So the conclusion is, with the corrent design, the controller won't be fast. I am reluctant to rewrite it in assembly language because I don't want to divert too much away from the SIMH code. I may improve the code to speed it up a little bit, maybe to 400kB/s. I am happy that it can beat RQDX3. vax, 9000 From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 09:14:17 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:14:17 -0500 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051108100537.3287360a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <3.0.6.16.20051108100537.3287360a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <4370C0C9.5030102@gmail.com> Joe R. wrote: > At 11:00 AM 11/6/05 -0500, you wrote: > >>Chuck Guzis wrote: >> >>>I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright >>>awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a date >>>code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going >>>and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, >>>tops. >>> >>>Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? >> >>I tend to use IBM-branded media. Works just ok. >> >>But making sure to store them vertically definitely increases their >>lifespan significantly. > > > I wonder why that would make a difference? I really have no idea, but I've proven it to my own satisfaction. Peace... Sridhar From mmaginnis at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 09:14:35 2005 From: mmaginnis at gmail.com (Mike Maginnis) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 08:14:35 -0700 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/5/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright > awful. I've got a "work diskette" that's a Verbatim Datalife with a date > code of sometime in 1997. Like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going > and going. Newly-purchased media seems to last about 3 months of use, > tops. > > Are there any sources for good reliable NEW media? > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > Have you looked at http://www.floppydisk.com ? - Mike From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 8 09:20:06 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:20:06 -0800 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output In-Reply-To: <0IPM00MC2YZLUAS3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPM00MC2YZLUAS3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511080720060751.337C1685@10.0.0.252> On 11/8/2005 at 7:36 AM Allison wrote: >NEC and DEC but never Datapoint. Darn--I've wondered about a design link between Datapoint and Beehive terminals. The Beehive design resembled the Datapoint more than trivially--it used no static ram, but rather dynamic shift registers as screen and working memory for the 8008. Since that was a pretty formidable design for its time, I wondered if Beehive had recruited Datapoint talent to do it, since DP would have had the best knowledge of the wiorkings of the 8008. Cheers, Chuck From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 10:23:03 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:23:03 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <4370C07B.3020102@gmail.com> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108102303.13a7c74c@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 10:12 AM 11/8/05 -0500, you wrote: >Joe R. wrote: >> At 10:45 PM 11/6/05 +0000, you wrote: >> >>>>I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright >>> >>>This is a common moan here. I've noticed it too -- as I am fond of >>>pointing out, about 20 years ago I bought some 5.25" disks for my TRS-80 >>>model 1. THose disks cost me (then) \pounds 3.00 each, and my Model 1 >>>stored 88K on them (single sided, 35 cylinders, single density). >>> >>>Thing is, those disks are still readable. I wish I could pay that sort of >>>price _now_ for a 3.5" disk and get something that I could read back >>>again in years time. My data is worth a lot more than that. >>> >>>(Oh and don't tell me to use CD-Rs or DVDs, or whatever. I've yet to find >>>such devives with an HPIL interface (for example)). >> >> >> Hmmm. I have a couple of HP-IB MO drives and a HP-IL to HP-IB converter. >> I wonder??? > >Also, I know for a fact that there are HP-IB CD-ROM drives because I >have one. I have one too but it's not CD-R or CD-RW. FWIW I've been lucky enough to find several HP-IB drives that use Bernoulli disks, MO disks and other rewriteable media. :-) Joe > >Peace... Sridhar > From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 09:37:15 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:37:15 -0500 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051108102303.13a7c74c@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <3.0.6.16.20051108102303.13a7c74c@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <4370C62B.1060300@gmail.com> Joe R. wrote: > At 10:12 AM 11/8/05 -0500, you wrote: > >>Joe R. wrote: >> >>>At 10:45 PM 11/6/05 +0000, you wrote: >>> >>> >>>>>I've noticed that what passes for 3.5" blank media nowadays is downright >>>> >>>>This is a common moan here. I've noticed it too -- as I am fond of >>>>pointing out, about 20 years ago I bought some 5.25" disks for my TRS-80 >>>>model 1. THose disks cost me (then) \pounds 3.00 each, and my Model 1 >>>>stored 88K on them (single sided, 35 cylinders, single density). >>>> >>>>Thing is, those disks are still readable. I wish I could pay that sort of >>>>price _now_ for a 3.5" disk and get something that I could read back >>>>again in years time. My data is worth a lot more than that. >>>> >>>>(Oh and don't tell me to use CD-Rs or DVDs, or whatever. I've yet to find >>>>such devives with an HPIL interface (for example)). >>> >>> >>> Hmmm. I have a couple of HP-IB MO drives and a HP-IL to HP-IB converter. >>>I wonder??? >> >>Also, I know for a fact that there are HP-IB CD-ROM drives because I >>have one. > > > I have one too but it's not CD-R or CD-RW. FWIW I've been lucky enough > to find several HP-IB drives that use Bernoulli disks, MO disks and other > rewriteable media. :-) My point is that if the goal is to back up machines which only have an HP-IL interface for archival purposes, one could use floppies to get the data onto a machine that would have the ability to write the data onto a CD. It then wouldn't be particularly difficult to read that CD in an HP-IL-only machine. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 8 09:39:32 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:39:32 -0800 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511080739320307.338DDF79@10.0.0.252> On 11/8/2005 at 8:14 AM Mike Maginnis wrote: >Have you looked at http://www.floppydisk.com ? No, but I just did. What does that have to do with "reliable"? There are sellers on eBay selling surplus duplicator stock for less. To make it very clear--I don't care if the disk performs well on the first write or read. I tend to re-use a lot of my stock over and over again and it seems that most new disks don't tolerate this very well. However, older "brand names" disks do. Why is this? What modern "brand names' perform well under hard use? Cheers, Chuck From mmaginnis at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 09:43:38 2005 From: mmaginnis at gmail.com (Mike Maginnis) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 08:43:38 -0700 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <200511080739320307.338DDF79@10.0.0.252> References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <200511080739320307.338DDF79@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/8/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/8/2005 at 8:14 AM Mike Maginnis wrote: > > >Have you looked at http://www.floppydisk.com ? > > No, but I just did. What does that have to do with "reliable"? There are > sellers on eBay selling surplus duplicator stock for less. > > To make it very clear--I don't care if the disk performs well on the first > write or read. I tend to re-use a lot of my stock over and over again and > it seems that most new disks don't tolerate this very well. However, older > "brand names" disks do. > > Why is this? What modern "brand names' perform well under hard use? > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > > Sorry, I should have been more clear. I've used them in the past - over the several hundred floppies I've purchased from them in the past few years, I've had a low (<10 per 100) failure rate. - Mike From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 8 11:07:17 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:07:17 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed Message-ID: <0IPN00HFQBJEDDH3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: MSCP SCSI controller speed > From: 9000 VAX > Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 10:14:14 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 11/8/05, Tim Shoppa wrote: >> >From a post I made to the PDP-11 newsgroups in the previous >> millenium: >>... >> Here are the peak data rates measured for read and write 64 >> blocks-at-a-time: >> >> >> Read Write >> ---------- ---------- >> Andromeda SCDC 2.298 MB/s 1.131 MB/s >> CMD CQD440 2.397 MB/s 1.525 MB/s >> CMD CQD220 1.418 MB/s 0.882 MB/s >> CMD CQD220A 2.088 MB/s 1.409 MB/s >> DEC RQZX1 1.379 MB/s 1.097 MB/s >> Viking QDT 0.846 MB/s 0.704 MB/s >> DEC RQDX3 0.164 MB/s 0.161 MB/s >> > >Thank you. After analyzing the Qbus activity diagram I conclude that >my controller won't be fast. There are several reasons. >1. The overhead of 53C90A chip is significant. I may try 53C94/96 later. >2. The ISA DMA is slow for the getpkt(), putpkt(), getdesc() and >putdesc() functions. 80188XL won't be faster. >3. The 80386-16 is slow in executing the MSCP code written in C. >80188XL won't be faster. > >To improve 1, I need a faster SCSI chip, or need to integrate it into >the CPLD. To improve 2, I need a small cache to speed up the DMA, or >need a faster microprocessor. To improve 3, I need a faster >microprocessor, and I may need to rewrite the code in assembly >language. > >So the conclusion is, with the corrent design, the controller won't be >fast. I am reluctant to rewrite it in assembly language because I >don't want to divert too much away from the SIMH code. I may improve >the code to speed it up a little bit, maybe to 400kB/s. I am happy >that it can beat RQDX3. > >vax, 9000 Considering the major Qbus SCSI controllers do not have near the speed of a slow 386 cpu, speed is not the issue. I'd have to look but I think none used anything faster than maybe a 10mhz 68000. While the 53C90 does have large overhead it's also not quite the bottleneck. I would look first at the code. First place I'd peek at is to see what the code overhead is. Also Qbus transfers can be block mode DMA for best speed but watch the length as memory says 4words per block were a maximum to avoid bus timout errors. ISA does not have this problem but it's fairly slow for 8bit moves (1meg Byte/S). As to beating a RQDX thats easy consider that the MFM drives are 5mbits/S range(.625k bytes/S burst) rate and slow seeking combined with no local caching more than a sector or two. Also the CPU was a T-11 at a mere 7.5mhz. I've considered hacking a SCSI controller for Qbus once. The approach on paper was a PCI PC system board with a Adaptec2900 series controller with a parallel adaptor to Qbus. That was focused on building as little hardware as possible becuase the real task was software. The item worked out were software as in PC level code that didn't require a bootable OS (rom resident would be a winner). However the Qbus side was sorted down to a M7941 parallel line unit (PIO) or M7950 (DMA) with a driver based on one of the removable non-MSCP cartridge disks (RK, RL or RM). I quit after realizing that I didn't have a 290x SCSI board nor wished to program PCs. That and someone gave me a CMD SCSI adaptor. ;) Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 8 11:11:44 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:11:44 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <0IPN00A8BBQTJGP4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 07:20:06 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/8/2005 at 7:36 AM Allison wrote: > >>NEC and DEC but never Datapoint. > >Darn--I've wondered about a design link between Datapoint and Beehive >terminals. The Beehive design resembled the Datapoint more than >trivially--it used no static ram, but rather dynamic shift registers as >screen and working memory for the 8008. Since that was a pretty formidable >design for its time, I wondered if Beehive had recruited Datapoint talent >to do it, since DP would have had the best knowledge of the wiorkings of >the 8008. > >Cheers, >Chuck That was technology of the era. hasiltine H1000 and H2000 terminals and I think the VT05(hard memory test) did as well. Static rams were expensive and small and since screen ram was by nature circular as part of the raster scan it makes sense to keep the whole mess as shift registers. Never worked much with terminals printing systems were more my thing. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 8 11:53:15 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 09:53:15 -0800 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: References: <200511052242010778.275517F6@10.0.0.252> <200511080739320307.338DDF79@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511080953150730.34084FAF@10.0.0.252> On 11/8/2005 at 8:43 AM Mike Maginnis wrote: >Sorry, I should have been more clear. I've used them in the past - >over the several hundred floppies I've purchased from them in the past >few years, I've had a low (<10 per 100) failure rate. Just trying to toss a few ideas around here... I wonder if the situation has degraded to the point where there are only one or two suppliers of the bulk (sheet) medium, so it may well be more of the same thing regardless of brand. There used to be very visible differences in coatings--some were almost translucent, where others were opaque and color (light brown to almost black) varied. I don't notice that any longer. For those of you using VHS cartridges, has the quality of those also deteriorated over what was available 20 years ago? A couple of the duplicator supply places that I called about media could only tell me that their stuff arrived in boxes labeled either "Made in China" or "Made in Taiwan". Cheers, Chuck From toresbe at ifi.uio.no Tue Nov 8 10:55:23 2005 From: toresbe at ifi.uio.no (Tore S Bekkedal) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:55:23 +0100 Subject: Fujitsu M2436 real tape docs on bitsavers In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051108094644.0faf2a38@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108094644.0faf2a38@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <1131468923.19570.5.camel@fortran.babel> On Tue, 2005-11-08 at 09:46 +0000, Joe R. wrote: > At 11:40 PM 11/7/05 +0100, you wrote: > > > >Hey folks, > > > >The Fujitsu M2436 manuals are now online on bitsavers. > >You can find them in the Fujitsu folder M243X as well as in the univac > folder: BT3200 disk drives. > >They are just relabeled Fujitsu drives. > >IBM relabeled them as well as we found out on a recent discussion. > > Someone should create brief lisings under IBM and Univac catagories > stainge that their drives are actually Fujitsu drives and redirecting the > reader to the Fujitsu folder. And perhaps also the Memorex relabel. Pierre: Merci and danke! :) From cheri-post at web.de Tue Nov 8 12:32:08 2005 From: cheri-post at web.de (Pierre Gebhardt) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 19:32:08 +0100 Subject: Fujitsu M2436 reel tape docs on bitsavers Message-ID: <998573994@web.de> > > Someone should create brief lisings under IBM and Univac catagories > > stainge that their drives are actually Fujitsu drives and redirecting the > > reader to the Fujitsu folder. > And perhaps also the Memorex relabel. > Yes, that a nice idea. > Pierre: Merci and danke! :) I only contributed the BT3200 documents, not the actual Fujitsu manuals, which certainly are of big help! Though the full schematics are still missing... will be scanned during next year when I'm getting back to Germany so that the complete set will be online. Tore, you'll have to wait a little bit in case you want to repair your broken drives if it's an electronic problem... Al, thanks once more for your amazing efforts on maintaining bitsavers! Regards, Pierre __________________________________________________________________________ Erweitern Sie FreeMail zu einem noch leistungsst?rkeren E-Mail-Postfach! Mehr Infos unter http://freemail.web.de/home/landingpad/?mc=021131 From charlesmorris at direcway.com Tue Nov 8 13:20:20 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (charlesmorris at direcway.com) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 14:20:20 -0500 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) Message-ID: Semi-OT: I have 13 arcade games in my basement, most non-working when I got them. The video monitors in some of them are mounted "sideways" (long axis of the tube is vertical). These old units (early 1980's) all have the HV generated from the horizontal deflection, naturally. So a thin white line running vertically is actually a loss of *vertical* deflection. Just to further confuse things :) -Charles From allain at panix.com Tue Nov 8 13:44:05 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 14:44:05 -0500 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? References: <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> I think the issue is when not what. >From the standpoint of the owners (his wife), nothing was supposed to happen. It's a careful waiting game that unfortunately I cannot help because I neither live there anymore nor do I have their contact number. A year and two months by... it would be a good time for her & our mutual friends to try contacting again. John A. (hint: supply number, and I'll try calling) From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 8 14:19:15 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:19:15 -0800 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511081219150283.348DF859@10.0.0.252> n 11/8/2005 at 2:20 PM charlesmorris at direcway.com wrote: >Semi-OT: I have 13 arcade games in my basement, most non-working when I >got them. The video monitors in some of them are mounted "sideways" (long >axis of the tube is vertical). These old units (early 1980's) all have the >HV generated from the horizontal deflection, naturally. So a thin white >line running vertically is actually a loss of *vertical* deflection. >Just to further confuse things :) >-Charles Seems to me back then there was at least one vendor of a vector-scanned (as opposed to rasterized) game. Or at least the product announcement was made--I don't think I ever saw one up close. Cheers, Chuck From allain at panix.com Tue Nov 8 14:30:02 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 15:30:02 -0500 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) References: <200511081219150283.348DF859@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <011601c5e4a3$32d5c600$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> > Seems to me back then there was at least one vendor of a vector-scanned > (as opposed to rasterized) game. Or at least the product announcement > was made--I don't think I ever saw one up close. Never saw one? What a shame. The BattleZone emulator for Atari Home Machines was a good substitute, better was the Vectrix/Vectrex, also a home machine from the 80's which was an actual vector machine architecture. John A. From blkline at attglobal.net Tue Nov 8 14:34:09 2005 From: blkline at attglobal.net (Barry L. Kline) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:34:09 -0500 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) In-Reply-To: <200511081219150283.348DF859@10.0.0.252> References: <200511081219150283.348DF859@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43710BC1.5040106@attglobal.net> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Seems to me back then there was at least one vendor of a vector-scanned (as > opposed to rasterized) game. Or at least the product announcement was > made--I don't think I ever saw one up close. > I think that's "Battle Zone", where you drive a tank. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Nov 8 14:44:23 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 20:44:23 +0000 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) In-Reply-To: <200511081219150283.348DF859@10.0.0.252> References: <200511081219150283.348DF859@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43710E27.9090404@gjcp.net> Chuck Guzis wrote: > n 11/8/2005 at 2:20 PM charlesmorris at direcway.com wrote: > > >>Semi-OT: I have 13 arcade games in my basement, most non-working when I >>got them. The video monitors in some of them are mounted "sideways" (long >>axis of the tube is vertical). These old units (early 1980's) all have the >>HV generated from the horizontal deflection, naturally. So a thin white >>line running vertically is actually a loss of *vertical* deflection. >>Just to further confuse things :) >>-Charles > > > Seems to me back then there was at least one vendor of a vector-scanned (as > opposed to rasterized) game. Or at least the product announcement was > made--I don't think I ever saw one up close. > > Cheers, > Chuck Battlezone, Asteroids, Gravitar, Star Wars, could be any of them. As an aside, have a look for lasermame - now *that* I want to try. Gordon. From Gary.Messick at ngc.com Tue Nov 8 14:55:51 2005 From: Gary.Messick at ngc.com (Messick, Gary L (Space Technology)) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 12:55:51 -0800 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) Message-ID: <2F52145AAA91AD49BD47CC685800F70F0151A9B9@XCGC3006.northgrum.com> > Seems to me back then there was at least one vendor of a > vector-scanned (as opposed to rasterized) game. Or at least > the product announcement was made--I don't think I ever saw > one up close. > > Cheers, > Chuck Wells-Gardner or some such manufactured a color vector monitor for the Atari game Tempest. It had problems with some heat and some caps. Most Tempest games have had their monitors "Re-Cap'd." From alberto at a2sistemi.it Tue Nov 8 14:57:30 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 21:57:30 +0100 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I think I would check C3001, in case it's shutting the PSU down before > it's properly started. Then look at the collectors of Q3002 to see if the > thing is detecting an overvoltage. The under voltage protection is always active :( When power is applied, the collector of Q3001 goes high (about 4.5V) immediatly, after about 0.5 seconds, the SCR is fired and the power supply enter in protection mode. During the short time of outputs presents, I have check the value (with scope, multimeter in not enough fast) but they are of the correct value (+5, +12, -5, -12) but I ignore the tolerance of the under voltage protection. Maybe IC3001 or IC3002 defective ? Thanks a lot ! Alberto ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 8 15:16:42 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 13:16:42 -0800 Subject: monitor question (problem diagnosis) In-Reply-To: <43710E27.9090404@gjcp.net> References: <200511081219150283.348DF859@10.0.0.252> <43710E27.9090404@gjcp.net> Message-ID: <200511081316420093.34C29051@10.0.0.252> On 11/8/2005 at 8:44 PM Gordon JC Pearce wrote: >Battlezone, Asteroids, Gravitar, Star Wars, could be any of them. > >As an aside, have a look for lasermame - now *that* I want to try. No, not arcade-type games, but small-screen personal ones. I'm old enough to remember the Atari "Pong" and Race Car setups at Andy Capp's in Sunnyvale (good soup there). Vectrex was the one I was thinking of, thanks! http://www.classicgamecreations.com/vectrex-info.html Cheers, Chuck From mmaginnis at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 15:20:33 2005 From: mmaginnis at gmail.com (Mike Maginnis) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 14:20:33 -0700 Subject: HP-85B tapes Message-ID: Anyone have one or two tapes they'd be willing to part with, or let me borrow briefly? I've got two of these machines and no tapes to go with, so I don't have a way to test the drives. Contact me off-list if you can help out or suggest a source. Thanks. - Mike From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 8 15:02:48 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 21:02:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP7879B tape again In-Reply-To: <39618.217.10.50.85.1131461140.squirrel@webmail.hachti.de> from "Philipp Hachtmann" at Nov 8, 5 03:45:40 pm Message-ID: > On the power supply's pcb I find an etched HP logo.... So why should > the rest be oem? As a counterexample, the DEC RK03 was OEMed (a Diablo Model 30), but the PSU (H734) was a DEC design. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 8 14:36:51 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 20:36:51 +0000 (GMT) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24F8@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> from "Gooijen, Henk" at Nov 8, 5 08:55:36 am Message-ID: > > Making your own pod...! Again, points earned Tony! Chapeau! :-) Well, back when I got that instrument, _any_ LA was expensive. The only way I could afford one was to get one missing the pods. And I'd done a fair amount of ECL work for my Ph.D, so when I found the inputs were actually differential ECL signals, it didn;t worry me too much. -tony From fireflyst at earthlink.net Tue Nov 8 15:47:18 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 15:47:18 -0600 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: Just curious, what does he(now his wife) have that's so important? -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Allain Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 1:44 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Don Maslin SW collection? I think the issue is when not what. >From the standpoint of the owners (his wife), nothing was supposed to happen. It's a careful waiting game that unfortunately I cannot help because I neither live there anymore nor do I have their contact number. A year and two months by... it would be a good time for her & our mutual friends to try contacting again. John A. (hint: supply number, and I'll try calling) From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 8 15:00:07 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 21:00:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> from "Joe R." at Nov 8, 5 10:02:24 am Message-ID: > >(Oh and don't tell me to use CD-Rs or DVDs, or whatever. I've yet to find > >such devives with an HPIL interface (for example)). > > Hmmm. I have a couple of HP-IB MO drives and a HP-IL to HP-IB converter. > I wonder??? Well, the software is going to be a big problem. Most calculators are not going to recognise a device on the wrong side of an 82169 converter as a mass storage device. And said device is not going to talk the Modified Filbert Protocol that the calculator is expecting anyway. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 8 15:44:47 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 21:44:47 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <437045FF.9030208@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 8, 5 07:30:23 am Message-ID: > > > Yes, and they implemented the whole control logic in TTL (ROM based > state machine). The state machine is one of the more complex works, > since it uses both ROM tables and 16-bit multiplexer and a couple of IT's not as bad as it looks. The 2 ROMs form a 16 word * 13 bit table (3 outputs of U34, 1816-1397 are not wired, the A4 input of both ROMs is tied to logic 0). The ROMs are addressed by a '163 counter. It can be parallel loaded from 4 of the ROM outputs, the load is controlled by that '150, the select inputs of that are the same signals as the ROM address lines. > gates/counters/latches. Maybe the multiplexer is used primarily for the > access control of the PPU bus. I'm currently looking for the signal > lines between the board and the CRT. Besides the 15 character > code/character attribute lines and the power lines there are up to 7 OK, here's a pinout from the schematic. Rear of machine, looking down into the edge connector on the 98770-66534 board MonAck/ --( )-- WrFull/ MonStb --( )-- DD15 Gnd --( )-- MonClrAddr/ Gnd --( )-- +5V MD(6) --( )-- +5V MD(7) --( )-- +5V MD(4) --( ) N/C MD(5) --( )-- -Vm MD(2) --( )-- -Vm MD(3) --( )-- +Vm MD(0) --( )-- +Vm MD(1) --( )-- Gnd MD(9) --( )-- Gnd MD(8) --( )-- MD(12) MD(11) --( )-- MD(13) MD(10) --( )-- MD(14) DA14 --( )-- Gnd Gnd --( )-- Init/ Where : +Vm = +18V monitor supply from mainframe PSU -Vm = -18V monitor supply from mainframe PSU DA14, DD15 are 2 blanking/control signals (derrived, sortof, from address 14 and data 15), mainframe to monitor Init/ = mainframe reset signal (to monitor) MocAck/ = Vertical timing signal from monitor text PCB MonStb = Charater strobe from monitor text PCB WrFull/ = Buffer full (to monitor text PCB) MonClrAddr/= Clear buffer memory address (end of line) from monitor text PCB MD(n) = 15 bit date word to monitor text PCB 0...6 == Ascii code 7 = chracter set seelct (or alternatively, 0..7 = character code :-)) 8 = cursor at this location 9 = inverse video 10 = blink 11 = underline 12..14 = colour select (not used on mono monitor) You really need the schematics :-) For reference the other monitor connector, on the 09845-69555 Printer Driver PCB is just the PPU I/O bus : Rear of machine, looking down into connector PA(2) --( )-- +5V PA(3) --( )-- +5V PA(0) --( )-- +12V STS/ --( )-- -12V PA(1) --( )-- Flg/ DMAR/ --( )-- Dout/ IOSB/ --( )-- Gnd IRH/ --( )-- Gnd IC(1) --( )-- IOD(1) Int/ --( )-- IOD(0) IC(2) --( )-- IOD(3) IOD(14) --( )-- IOD(2) IOD(15) --( )-- IOD(5) IOD(12) --( )-- IOD(4) IOD(13) --( )-- IOD(7) IOD(10) --( )-- IOD(6) IOD(11) --( )-- IOD(8) Gnd --( )-- IOD(9) Where the signals are just unbuffered versions of the signals on the I/O slots (same as a 9825, for example). > lines which are dedicated for status/control information. You say there > are 3 lines which are not connected to the 98780 monitor backplane, can > you tell me which they are or anything about the estimated purpose of > the lines you found? Is the above of any help? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 8 15:53:17 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 21:53:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: from "Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi" at Nov 8, 5 09:57:30 pm Message-ID: > > > I think I would check C3001, in case it's shutting the PSU down before > > it's properly started. Then look at the collectors of Q3002 to see if the > > thing is detecting an overvoltage. > > The under voltage protection is always active :( Ah... > When power is applied, the collector of Q3001 goes high (about 4.5V) Well, it shoud be until the PSU gets going :-). > immediatly, after about 0.5 seconds, the SCR is fired and the power supply > enter in protection mode. I presume that delay is that 47uF capacitor charging up. So that's probably not defective. > During the short time of outputs presents, I have check the value (with > scope, multimeter in not enough fast) but they are of the correct value (+5, > +12, -5, -12) but I ignore the tolerance of the under voltage protection. > > Maybe IC3001 or IC3002 defective ? Or the transistor is open-circuit? Still, you're now down to one simple-ish stage that presumably you can debug. Incidentally, I should get a copy of the schematics to Dave at the weekend for scanning. -tony From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Nov 8 16:15:35 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:15:35 +0000 Subject: PDP11/73 bootstrap ROMs Message-ID: <43712387.2070709@gjcp.net> Well, I've run into an interesting problem with my PDP11/73. One of the boot ROMs (the low byte) has gone phut - just reads back 0377 at all addresses. I've proved it's the ROM that's at fault. Is there a particular "favourite" boot ROM for the PDP11? I'm not sure quite what mine was - it is used with a Baydel multifunction card (LTC, console SLU and boot) and displayed a "COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE" logo (the machine originally came from Aberdeen College of Agriculture), and had the option to boot a few different devices, including RL02, RX02 and MSCP. I can get it to boot by typing in a loader in octal, after hitting BREAK. Gordon. From fireflyst at earthlink.net Tue Nov 8 16:18:38 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 16:18:38 -0600 Subject: 11/34a issues In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24E4@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Message-ID: Is there any good way to test the unit piece by piece? Also, I noted in the manual, it says BUS ERR only denotes a bus error on the console, not on the processor, whatever that means. I have now confirmed that my grant cards are in correctly (facing the correct direction). When is it exactly that I need a grant card? Do I need them whenever position D isn't occupied? Or is there a stipulation to that? I'm thoroughly confused. Mind you, I have not yet connected a console to it. Maybe I'll do that tonight. Henk (or anyone else) if you can offer further assistance with this, I'd really appreciate it. TIA Julian -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gooijen, Henk Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 5:22 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: 11/34a issues Hi Julian, you have at least response from the console ... never mind :-) When you press EXAM (or DEP) the M7859 must do a UNIBUS access. Grant problems will turn on BUS ERR, so there lies you first point of interest to check out. You say "I get that BUS ERR no matter what I do". Please tell exactly what "no matter ..." actions are. I have no experience with core based 11/34's, so I can not tell anything more about your board placement. The manual will tell! However, (not sure), if you have some G7273's, replace the G727's and put the G7273 in position C-D. BTW, I am not sure of "All grant cards are installed where you could read FLIP CHIP from the processor side". I am not near my 11/34. If "FLIP CHIP" is in the etch on the side where the 4 BR contacts are, then they might be installed wrong in the slot! AFAIR, it should be like this (seen from above towards the backplane, I can check that this evening): slot X slot 2 slot 1 <[most right] __ M8265 M8266 | | position | | | | | | D | | | | | | ........... | | | | | | | | | | ----> | | | | | | |_| G727 | | | | this side | | | | has the | | | | contact | | | | fingers - Henk, PA8PDP. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Julian Wolfe > Sent: donderdag 3 november 2005 10:44 > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: 11/34a issues > > Okay, so I FINALLY worked out my BA11-K power supply issues > and got everything sorted out and installed again. > > However, I'm back to where I started when I got this thing > (which I never got past) - I turn it on, the display comes up > at 173536. However, whenever I try to EXAM anything, it > displays 000000 and the BUS ERR light comes on. > I can clear, but I get that BUS ERR no matter what I do. I > haven't got a serial console connected to it yet - I got this > info by going through the > 11/34 diagnostics in the manual. > > Here's my setup: > > BA11-K box > DD11-PK backplane > > UNIBUS layout: > A B C D E F > > M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 1 > M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 2 > M9301 M9301 M7800 M7800 M7800 M7800 3 > H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A 4 > blank blank blank GRANT blank blank 5 > H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A 6 > blank blank blank GRANT blank blank 7 > M7850 M7850 M7859 M7859 M7859 M7859 8 > M9302 blank blank GRANT blank blank 9 > > I've tried switching some boards around, no help. > > All grant cards are installed where you could read FLIP CHIP > from the processor side. > > I have NO idea what's wrong. Is the memory possibly bad? > That's the only thing I could think of. > > Any help, as always, would be much appreciated. > > TIA > Julian This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From pat at computer-refuge.org Tue Nov 8 16:20:44 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 17:20:44 -0500 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511081720.44509.pat@computer-refuge.org> Julian Wolfe declared on Tuesday 08 November 2005 16:47: > Just curious, what does he(now his wife) have that's so important?= Google for "Don Maslin" and CP/M. Pat > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Allain > Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 1:44 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: Don Maslin SW collection? > > I think the issue is when not what. > > >From the standpoint of the owners (his wife), nothing was > > supposed to happen. It's a careful waiting game that unfortunately > I cannot help because I neither live there anymore nor do I have their > contact number. A year and two months by... it would be a good time > for her & our mutual friends to try contacting again. > > John A. > (hint: supply number, and I'll try calling) -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From alberto at a2sistemi.it Tue Nov 8 16:29:53 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 23:29:53 +0100 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Well, it shoud be until the PSU gets going :-). Right > I presume that delay is that 47uF capacitor charging up. So > that's probably > not defective. Yes, is this delay. I have change the capacitor with a new one, to be sure of this delay ... but with no effect > > Maybe IC3001 or IC3002 defective ? > > Or the transistor is open-circuit? The transistor (tested with multimeter) seem to be good (the two junctions are ohmnicalli corrected) I can try to substitute it. Now I haven't the board near me, I not remember if is a standard NPN > Still, you're now down to one simple-ish stage that presumably you can > debug. Yes , the only question is : what is the tolerance of these protections ? > Incidentally, I should get a copy of the schematics to Dave at the > weekend for scanning. They are good ! very good. I'm writing a little page with information on how to repaire this power supply, and can complete. Thanks Alberto ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From fireflyst at earthlink.net Tue Nov 8 16:35:12 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 16:35:12 -0600 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: <200511081720.44509.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: Ahh, I see now. Thanks. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Finnegan Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 4:21 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Don Maslin SW collection? Julian Wolfe declared on Tuesday 08 November 2005 16:47: > Just curious, what does he(now his wife) have that's so important?= Google for "Don Maslin" and CP/M. Pat > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Allain > Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 1:44 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: Don Maslin SW collection? > > I think the issue is when not what. > > >From the standpoint of the owners (his wife), nothing was > > supposed to happen. It's a careful waiting game that unfortunately > I cannot help because I neither live there anymore nor do I have their > contact number. A year and two months by... it would be a good time > for her & our mutual friends to try contacting again. > > John A. > (hint: supply number, and I'll try calling) -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From doc at mdrconsult.com Tue Nov 8 16:35:40 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:35:40 -0500 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <4371283C.7040907@mdrconsult.com> John Allain wrote: > I think the issue is when not what. >>From the standpoint of the owners (his wife), nothing was > supposed to happen. It's a careful waiting game that unfortunately > I cannot help because I neither live there anymore nor do I have their > contact number. A year and two months by... it would be a good time > for her & our mutual friends to try contacting again. > > John A. > (hint: supply number, and I'll try calling) Do you guys actually read CC? Tom Peters just last week posted a list of hardware and disks being offered by his widow, as a start to putting his collection back in the hands of collectors. IIRC, Tom took responsibility for handling he situation nearly a year ago, and said then that a barrage of questions/offers/requests to the family would be counter-productive. It seems to me that with his strategy beginning to bear fruit, interfering now would be even more counterproductive. My $0.02, and my own recollection of events. I'm willing to be corrected. Doc From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 8 17:12:50 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 23:12:50 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: from "Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi" at Nov 8, 5 11:29:53 pm Message-ID: > > > Maybe IC3001 or IC3002 defective ? > > > > Or the transistor is open-circuit? > > The transistor (tested with multimeter) seem to be good (the two junctions > are ohmnicalli corrected) > I can try to substitute it. Now I haven't the board near me, I not remember > if is a standard NPN I think it is just a standard NPN transistor. From what I remember, it had a non-standard 'house number', but something like a 2N3904 will probably work. > > > Still, you're now down to one simple-ish stage that presumably you can > > debug. > > Yes , the only question is : what is the tolerance of these protections ? As yuo know, there are 8 comparators on this board, 4 for overvoltage and 4 for undervoltage (no, it's not, IIRC, one chip for overvoltage, etc). You can trace back the sircuit from the base of the each of the 2 transistors to find out which comparators are for each function. I think what I might do next is get a spare comparactor chip of the same type (LM339) and connect the power and ground pins to the power and ground pins of the chip on the board (I am not _sure_ they both have the same power and ground connections, check this!). Then link the inputs -- right way round -- to each of the 4 comparators in the undervoltage circuit in turn. Put a suitable pull-up resistor (to the comparator power connection on the output). See if any one of the 4 undervoltage comparators appears to have an output that's always low (remember, a low output from the comparator will cut off the transistor and therefore trigger the SCR). You may find one of the output voltages is not coming up properly. -tony From arcarlini at iee.org Tue Nov 8 17:27:06 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 23:27:06 -0000 Subject: BBC Covers Digital Dark Ages In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <00b601c5e4bb$f024fba0$5b01a8c0@pc1> BBC's Newsnight programme has just covered the problem (often discussed here) of the rapid rate of turnover of new media (tapes, floppies, VHS, DVD ...). The executive summary: "Keep copying to newer media" I just walked in and caught the end. Available for 24hrs from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm Best wait 30 mins or so to let them put up the latest programme. It's pretty much the last piece in the programme. Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 17:33:48 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 23:33:48 +0000 Subject: 11/34a issues In-Reply-To: References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF24E4@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Message-ID: On 11/8/05, Julian Wolfe wrote: > When is it exactly that I need a grant card? Do I need them whenever > position D isn't occupied? Or is there a stipulation to that? In order for devices to be able to have their interrupt request seen by the CPU, the "grant chain" must be preserved. Unlike an Amiga or PC or other architecture that has IRQ-like lines that a card pulls true to request an interrupt, on the Unibus and Qbus, each peripheral is responsible for keeping each BR signal connected (there are several grant chains on each bus, not just one) so that each card behind it can be "seen" by the CPU. To request attention from the CPU, a particular card breaks that connection. If, prior to the interrupt being serviced, another card closer to the CPU also breaks the connection, then the closer card will be serviced first. Any card to the rear will not be seen until it is the front-most card with the interrupt chain broken. The consequence of this technique is that if there is no card in the slot, then a passive device, a "grant card" must be installed, to preserve the chain past the "empty" slot to any cards that are installed further away from the CPU. You can easily see what the grant card does by inspecting one - it bridges two adjacent pins in the same slot, and _that_ is what keeps the chain intact. On the Unibus (not Qbus), to make things a little more complicated, in a different part of the backplane is the DMA request pin - NPR (Non-Processor Request). Because originally, it was expected that a DMA device would be an entire backplane, the NPR signal is chained across a DD11DK backplane with wire-wrap wires, requiring a single-slot DMA device, an RL11, say, to have the NPR jumper removed from the bottom before it will be able to request the bus. When removing such a peripheral, one must either replace the NPR wire manually on the pin-side of the backplane, _or_ use a more modern dual-height grant card that grants _both_ the interrupt chains _and_ NPR. If you really have an empty 11/34 backplane, save for CPU and mem, I'd check your NPR wires, too. If they are missing, you will need a larger grant card, not the tiny, square, single-height G727 cards. I'd tell you exactly what pin to check, but I don't have that info right here... visually inspect a dual-height grant card and see where the one lone jumper is on the other slot - that will tell you where the NPR wire goes. If you don't have any dual-height grant cards, I'd recommend tracking down one or two - they are as useful while debugging as an extender card - you can pull a DMA peripheral and not have to fiddle with the backplane. Since I used to work for a place that _made_ dual-height grant cards, we *always* loaded our Unibus backplanes with them - we never had to worry if slots 4 and 6 had the NPR wire out - we just jumpered all 9 slots. Naturally, if you lack a pile of dual-height grant cards, that won't work for you, but it was an easy thing back in the day. -ethan From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 8 17:57:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:57:01 -0800 Subject: BBC Covers Digital Dark Ages In-Reply-To: <00b601c5e4bb$f024fba0$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <00b601c5e4bb$f024fba0$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <200511081557010753.355556C7@10.0.0.252> On 11/8/2005 at 11:27 PM a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: >BBC's Newsnight programme has just covered the problem >(often discussed here) of the rapid rate of turnover of >new media (tapes, floppies, VHS, DVD ...). Earlier this year in August, the BBC also ran a segment on CD decay: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3940669.stm Cheers, Chuck From pat at computer-refuge.org Tue Nov 8 18:14:50 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 19:14:50 -0500 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: <4371283C.7040907@mdrconsult.com> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> <4371283C.7040907@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <200511081914.50541.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Tuesday 08 November 2005 17:35, Doc Shipley wrote: > Do you guys actually read CC? > > Tom Peters just last week posted a list of hardware and disks > being offered by his widow, as a start to putting his collection back > in the hands of collectors. > > IIRC, Tom took responsibility for handling he situation nearly a > year ago, and said then that a barrage of questions/offers/requests > to the family would be counter-productive. It seems to me that with > his strategy beginning to bear fruit, interfering now would be even > more counterproductive. > > My $0.02, and my own recollection of events. I'm willing to be > corrected. Doc, I believe that you may be mixing up dead Dons that were into classic computing. :) Don Maslin (as opposed to "Don S" that Tom posted about) lived in CA, not WI. :) You got most of it right, but are combining stories I believe. Anyways, the Altos stuff (at least) that Tom Peters is giving out will be saved and archived publically. You have my word on that. :) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 18:46:54 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 18:46:54 Subject: HP-85B tapes In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108184654.1a07ded0@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> The first thing that you need to do is to check the tape drive wheel and see if it's gummy! If you put a tape in with a gummy wheel you'll ruin it because the gummy material will stick to the tape and then it will be wound up between layers of the tape. Then the next time that you use the tape the gummy material will rip the magnetic media off the tape! Usually they're so far gone that the "rubber" is melting and running. If it's not obviously bad then use your finger or the eraser end of a pencil and press it to see if it's soft. You should not be able to leave a permanent dent in it. If it's soft or runny then don't put a tape in it unless you're willing to ruin it. BTW the old 40Mb tapes for the early tape drives (like the Irwin drives) for PCs will work in those drives. You can find those around the trift stores, surplus stores and hamfests. You can format them on the HP-85 using the INITIALIZE command. Oh! And DEC CompacTapes will work in it too. Joe At 02:20 PM 11/8/05 -0700, you wrote: >Anyone have one or two tapes they'd be willing to part with, or let me >borrow briefly? I've got two of these machines and no tapes to go >with, so I don't have a way to test the drives. > >Contact me off-list if you can help out or suggest a source. > >Thanks. > >- Mike > > From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 18:50:12 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 18:50:12 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: References: <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108185012.3af72efa@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 03:47 PM 11/8/05 -0600, you wrote: >Just curious, what does he(now his wife) have that's so important? You haven't been around long have you? Don had disks for EVERY CPM machine that you can imagine! He was THE source for OS disks for all the odd CPM machines that were sold over the years. If Don didn't have it then it was very likely that it didn't exist! Losing his collection would be a real blow to this hobby! Joe > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of John Allain >Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 1:44 PM >To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >Subject: Re: Don Maslin SW collection? > >I think the issue is when not what. >>From the standpoint of the owners (his wife), nothing was >supposed to happen. It's a careful waiting game that unfortunately >I cannot help because I neither live there anymore nor do I have their >contact number. A year and two months by... it would be a good time >for her & our mutual friends to try contacting again. > >John A. >(hint: supply number, and I'll try calling) > > > From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 18:52:13 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 18:52:13 Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.6.16.20051108100224.0faf4c00@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108185213.1a0702e2@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 09:00 PM 11/8/05 +0000, you wrote: >> >(Oh and don't tell me to use CD-Rs or DVDs, or whatever. I've yet to find >> >such devives with an HPIL interface (for example)). >> >> Hmmm. I have a couple of HP-IB MO drives and a HP-IL to HP-IB converter. >> I wonder??? > >Well, the software is going to be a big problem. Most calculators are not >going to recognise a device on the wrong side of an 82169 converter as a >mass storage device. And said device is not going to talk the Modified >Filbert Protocol that the calculator is expecting anyway. Bummer! I'd been thinking for years about trying that. Oh well it's a good thing that I have plenty of 9114 and HP-IL cassette drives. Now if I could just find a GOOD source of those darned tapes! Joe > >-tony > From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 8 19:29:07 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 19:29:07 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: <4371283C.7040907@mdrconsult.com> References: <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051108192907.3a772996@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 05:35 PM 11/8/05 -0500, you wrote: >John Allain wrote: >> I think the issue is when not what. >>>From the standpoint of the owners (his wife), nothing was >> supposed to happen. It's a careful waiting game that unfortunately >> I cannot help because I neither live there anymore nor do I have their >> contact number. A year and two months by... it would be a good time >> for her & our mutual friends to try contacting again. >> >> John A. >> (hint: supply number, and I'll try calling) > > Do you guys actually read CC? Yes I do. Do you? The collection that he offered came from someone in Wisconsin not California. The original owner ("Don S") was the founder of some computer club and not Don Maslin. Here's the description: "With the sad passing of Don S last year, one of the founders of the Wisconsin Computer Society in the 70's, his window finds she must finally begin the process of disposing of a basement full of stuff. Don was a life-long experimenter and user of computing equipment which has mostly found its way into the classification of "classic." Don and I used/programmed DEC PDP-11 and Altos CP/M and MP/M machines together at more than one job." Joe > > Tom Peters just last week posted a list of hardware and disks being >offered by his widow, as a start to putting his collection back in the >hands of collectors. > > IIRC, Tom took responsibility for handling he situation nearly a year >ago, and said then that a barrage of questions/offers/requests to the >family would be counter-productive. It seems to me that with his >strategy beginning to bear fruit, interfering now would be even more >counterproductive. > > My $0.02, and my own recollection of events. I'm willing to be >corrected. > > > Doc > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 8 18:36:13 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:36:13 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> Message-ID: <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> Stegeman, Henk HJ SITI-ITIBHW5 wrote: >The reason is the effort it takes...... >Ask anybody who actually made a CPU ( I myself did a 12 bit > TTL based, single address single accumulator machine). >The real effort is actually building and debugging the unit. > There is only so much time you have.... > > >>I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small >>computer. >> >> > >Much too big to actually build in TTL. > > Well everybody likes 12 bits... http://www.cray-cyber.org/hardware/Hardware.php Forget TTL, go tubes! From mmaginnis at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 19:08:51 2005 From: mmaginnis at gmail.com (Mike Maginnis) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 18:08:51 -0700 Subject: HP-85B tapes In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051108184654.1a07ded0@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108184654.1a07ded0@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: Thanks for the tips! I'll make sure it's clean tonight. - Mike On Tue, 08 Nov 2005 18:46:54, Joe R. wrote: > The first thing that you need to do is to check the tape drive wheel and > see if it's gummy! If you put a tape in with a gummy wheel you'll ruin it > because the gummy material will stick to the tape and then it will be wound > up between layers of the tape. Then the next time that you use the tape the > gummy material will rip the magnetic media off the tape! Usually they're so > far gone that the "rubber" is melting and running. If it's not obviously > bad then use your finger or the eraser end of a pencil and press it to see > if it's soft. You should not be able to leave a permanent dent in it. If > it's soft or runny then don't put a tape in it unless you're willing to > ruin it. > > BTW the old 40Mb tapes for the early tape drives (like the Irwin drives) > for PCs will work in those drives. You can find those around the trift > stores, surplus stores and hamfests. You can format them on the HP-85 using > the INITIALIZE command. Oh! And DEC CompacTapes will work in it too. > > > Joe > > At 02:20 PM 11/8/05 -0700, you wrote: > >Anyone have one or two tapes they'd be willing to part with, or let me > >borrow briefly? I've got two of these machines and no tapes to go > >with, so I don't have a way to test the drives. > > > >Contact me off-list if you can help out or suggest a source. > > > >Thanks. > > > >- Mike > > > > > > From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 8 19:41:14 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:41:14 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511081741140687.35B4C00E@10.0.0.252> On 11/8/2005 at 5:36 PM woodelf wrote: > Well everybody likes 12 bits... > http://www.cray-cyber.org/hardware/Hardware.php > Forget TTL, go tubes! Wow, now that's ambitious! Makes me wonder, though. Around the time the transistor was in its ascendancy, the vacuum-tube business came up with a couple of innovations. One was the nuvistor--an almost transistor-sized tube; and the other was a low-voltage tube used in automobile receivers that were specified for 12.6 volts on the plate (e.g. 12AE7 dual triode). These would be coupled with a solid-state driver and power amplifier for a auto radio with no vibrator supply. The first would seem to make the scale of a digital computer more attractive; the second would seem to substantially reduce the power requirements. To anyone's knowledge were either of these two components ever used in digital applications? Cheers, Chuck From chenmel at earthlink.net Tue Nov 8 21:20:06 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 22:20:06 -0500 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: <200511081914.50541.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> <4371283C.7040907@mdrconsult.com> <200511081914.50541.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <20051108222006.5f7f1bd9.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Tue, 8 Nov 2005 19:14:50 -0500 Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Tuesday 08 November 2005 17:35, Doc Shipley wrote: > > Do you guys actually read CC? > > > > Tom Peters just last week posted a list of hardware and disks > > being offered by his widow, as a start to putting his collection back > > in the hands of collectors. > > > > IIRC, Tom took responsibility for handling he situation nearly a > > year ago, and said then that a barrage of questions/offers/requests > > to the family would be counter-productive. It seems to me that with > > his strategy beginning to bear fruit, interfering now would be even > > more counterproductive. > > > > My $0.02, and my own recollection of events. I'm willing to be > > corrected. > > Doc, I believe that you may be mixing up dead Dons that were into > classic computing. :) Don Maslin (as opposed to "Don S" that Tom > posted about) lived in CA, not WI. :) > > You got most of it right, but are combining stories I believe. > > Anyways, the Altos stuff (at least) that Tom Peters is giving out will > be saved and archived publically. You have my word on that. :) > Any update on the 'Altos stuff' that some of us are working on? You mentioned awhile back that you might have Altos 586 system diskettes. I noticed another 586 on eBay last week, but not with anything but the box. I am in correspondence with a few other people struggling to image/restore-from-image some of the Altos 586 images now newly in circulation. > Pat > -- > Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ > The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org -- http://sasteven.multics.org/MacSE30/MacSE30.html From doc at mdrconsult.com Tue Nov 8 21:43:23 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:43:23 -0500 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: <200511081914.50541.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> <4371283C.7040907@mdrconsult.com> <200511081914.50541.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <4371705B.8060407@mdrconsult.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Tuesday 08 November 2005 17:35, Doc Shipley wrote: >> >> My $0.02, and my own recollection of events. I'm willing to be >>corrected. > Doc, I believe that you may be mixing up dead Dons that were into > classic computing. :) Don Maslin (as opposed to "Don S" that Tom > posted about) lived in CA, not WI. :) > > You got most of it right, but are combining stories I believe. I stand corrected. Wrong Don. > Anyways, the Altos stuff (at least) that Tom Peters is giving out will > be saved and archived publically. You have my word on that. :) I'm pouting. You already have an 8000! Doc From mbbrutman at brutman.com Tue Nov 8 21:54:22 2005 From: mbbrutman at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 21:54:22 -0600 Subject: Keytronic KB5151jr for PCjr In-Reply-To: <200511060326.jA63QdLY028601@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511060326.jA63QdLY028601@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <437172EE.6050603@brutman.com> Does anybody have one of these keyboards? It's a full sized extended keyboard with separate cursor and numeric areas. (Dont' confuse it with the 5150jr, which looks more like a PC keyboard.) I'm interested because there apparently was a bug in the keyboard eprom that caused confusion between the numeric keypad and the cursor keypad. Keytronics shipped a fix, and I'd like to get a clone of the fixed eprom. Mike From allain at panix.com Tue Nov 8 22:00:01 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 23:00:01 -0500 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? References: <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <008101c5e49c$cb25a440$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> <4371283C.7040907@mdrconsult.com><200511081914.50541.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4371705B.8060407@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <003901c5e4e2$0fbb4480$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> > I stand corrected. Wrong Don. An-y-way, If anybody on the list is managing the Don.[M] connection, give me or the list an eMail saying how its going and I won't recontact where you did. John A. From aw288 at osfn.org Tue Nov 8 22:35:19 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 23:35:19 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511081741140687.35B4C00E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > The first would seem to make the scale of a digital computer more > attractive; the second would seem to substantially reduce the power > requirements. To anyone's knowledge were either of these two components > ever used in digital applications? The answer is "no". As far as I know, no Nuvistors were computer rated. This is not a surprise for a couble of reasons. One, Nuvistors intended to be incredibly high quality amplifiers for things like test equipment and receiver front ends - basically with all of the parameters that a tube doing digital work need not be. Two, Nuvistors really did not gain too much in the space saving category over the computer rated submini dual triodes in use at the time. These latter tubes were well proven, and more reliable than Nuvistors (the culprits being the sockets). Running tubes at low plate voltages was not really an innovation - engineers had always done this, and many normal tubes will actually work at a quarter rated plate voltage or less. Purpose built low voltage tubes never took off too well - ther really is not a huge advantage in the power department, as the big share of the power bill was always the filament. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 8 23:13:03 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 21:13:03 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511082113030564.3676AB00@10.0.0.252> On 11/8/2005 at 11:35 PM William Donzelli wrote: >Running tubes at low plate voltages was not really an innovation - >engineers had always done this, and many normal tubes will actually work >at a quarter rated plate voltage or less. I had a few of those submini dual triodes, wire leads and all. I seem to remember a code practice oscillator built around a 6SL7 with nothing but a 6.3vac filament transformer for power (out of an old ARRL handbook, maybe?). It put out enough to be heard in headphones. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 8 23:30:54 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:30:54 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511082113030564.3676AB00@10.0.0.252> References: <200511082113030564.3676AB00@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4371898E.2010801@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/8/2005 at 11:35 PM William Donzelli wrote: > > > >>Running tubes at low plate voltages was not really an innovation - >>engineers had always done this, and many normal tubes will actually work >>at a quarter rated plate voltage or less. >> >> > >I had a few of those submini dual triodes, wire leads and all. > > > The 6418 tube runs 1.25 volts @ 10 ma. You can't beat that for low power. :) In some ways today is good time to play with tubes ... you can get them cheap compared to the past era's. From news at computercollector.com Tue Nov 8 23:33:53 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:33:53 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 report (long!) Message-ID: <005101c5e4ef$2c875330$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Here's my report on VCF 8 along with updates from the Intel Museum, History San Jose collection, Computer History Museum, new DEC accessories, and more: http://www.snarc.net/c-events.htm#vc8 Sorry, I didn't take any photos. ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From vax9000 at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 23:35:00 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:35:00 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511081741140687.35B4C00E@10.0.0.252> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511081741140687.35B4C00E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/8/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/8/2005 at 5:36 PM woodelf wrote: > > > Well everybody likes 12 bits... > > http://www.cray-cyber.org/hardware/Hardware.php > > Forget TTL, go tubes! > > Wow, now that's ambitious! > > Makes me wonder, though. Around the time the transistor was in its > ascendancy, the vacuum-tube business came up with a couple of innovations. > One was the nuvistor--an almost transistor-sized tube; and the other was a > low-voltage tube used in automobile receivers that were specified for 12.6 > volts on the plate (e.g. 12AE7 dual triode). These would be coupled with a > solid-state driver and power amplifier for a auto radio with no vibrator > supply. > > The first would seem to make the scale of a digital computer more > attractive; the second would seem to substantially reduce the power > requirements. To anyone's knowledge were either of these two components > ever used in digital applications? It is funny that I am a tube fan too. The 12.6 volt tubes won't save you any power; On the contrary, they sucks much more power than normal tubes. Because they need a lot of current to heat the cathode to emit more electrons; and they have a positive first grill to 'pull' electrons out from cathode. Nuvistors are not good to use for homebrew computers either, because they are expensive. Months ago I saw a board with 10+ nuvistors. I didn't buy it ($9.99) because I was not small-tube fan. I checked the second hand price at that time and it was significantly higher than those sub $1 tubes. vax, 9000 From brother_cadfael at sbcglobal.net Wed Nov 9 00:11:28 2005 From: brother_cadfael at sbcglobal.net (Brian H.) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 22:11:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: New HP E2310A LogicDart Probes on eBay Message-ID: <20051109061129.63528.qmail@web81805.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Someone on this list mentioned that used LogicDart's are often missing the probes. I just saw these on ebay. # 7561285645 HP LogicDart Handheld Logic Analyzer Probes New E2310A Brian From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Nov 9 00:22:35 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 01:22:35 -0500 Subject: Don Maslin SW collection? In-Reply-To: <20051108222006.5f7f1bd9.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <3.0.6.16.20051108091023.32dff0f6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> <200511081914.50541.pat@computer-refuge.org> <20051108222006.5f7f1bd9.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200511090122.35940.pat@computer-refuge.org> Scott Stevens declared on Tuesday 08 November 2005 22:20: > Any update on the 'Altos stuff' that some of us are working on? You > mentioned awhile back that you might have Altos 586 system diskettes. > I noticed another 586 on eBay last week, but not with anything but the > box. I am in correspondence with a few other people struggling to > image/restore-from-image some of the Altos 586 images now newly in > circulation. I haven't had time lately to go find them (someone else has them in their posession), and probably won't get around to doing that until after Thanksgiving. I haven't forgotten :) just really busy lately. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Tue Nov 8 11:41:21 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 09:41:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <200511081741.JAA18509@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Allison" > >> >>Subject: Re: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output >> From: "Chuck Guzis" >> Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 20:18:21 -0800 >> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >> >>On 11/7/2005 at 9:31 PM Allison wrote: >> >>>Well save for wrap around. The stack on 8008 is strictly address and >>>as already said 14bits (the 8008 only addresses 16k!!) and 8 levels deep. >>>It was a challenge programming it to figure out where you came from and >>>also not blow the stack. Still it beat the design we had before it as >>>that was around 220 pcs of TTL sequential logic. > >Well my 8008 experience predates DEC and the TTL horror was pre 8008! > >I'll say it this way. The 8008 was a ground breaking micro. From a >programmers perspective it wasn't too bad but from a hardware designers >and debug perspective it was nasty. It was enough to be a micro but as >feature free as one can get. However for the time it was pushing the >limit for integration at around 5000 transistors in Pmos. > >The number of chips with limited internal stacks would amaze you. The >8048/9 series is a fairly well known one, TMS1000 4 bitters, NEC uCOM4 >4 bitters, NEC uCOM75 series, National COPs and even the PIC all come >to mind. And in every one them if you exceed the stack something falls >off the bottom. Stack red zone hardware is truly a big machine thing. Hi I thought I might add that many current day DSP chips also have internal stacks. Of course the Forth chip, the NC4000 used external stacks but had 3 busses to handle them so that one could have all being active at one time. Two were stacks and one was for instruction/data. The 2100 family DSP by ADI has a limited internal stack as well but it seems like I remember it would generate an interrupt if it overflowed. Most tools for these have a method of indicating if the code your running has a combination of main flow and interrupts that would cause an overflow. Although, it doesn't seen so, the worst case is predictable. Dwight > >>I always wondered why a carry or borrow from the stack pointer couldn't >>have at least generated a branch to some known location. It may not have >>exactly told you where your code went bonkers, but it'd be better than >>letting the program run wild! How many micros used a local stack? The >>Natoinal PACE is the only other one that comes to mind, but at least it had >>a "stack about to overflow" interrupt and a way to access the stack >>directly. >> >>Were you a Datapoint employee? > >NEC and DEC but never Datapoint. > > >Allison > > From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Tue Nov 8 11:54:29 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 09:54:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <200511081754.JAA18847@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Chuck Guzis" > >On 11/8/2005 at 7:36 AM Allison wrote: > >>NEC and DEC but never Datapoint. > >Darn--I've wondered about a design link between Datapoint and Beehive >terminals. The Beehive design resembled the Datapoint more than >trivially--it used no static ram, but rather dynamic shift registers as >screen and working memory for the 8008. Since that was a pretty formidable >design for its time, I wondered if Beehive had recruited Datapoint talent >to do it, since DP would have had the best knowledge of the wiorkings of >the 8008. > >Cheers, >Chuck > Hi All I know is the Datapoint keyboards were not easy to use while the Beehive's used the Hall effect keys from Microswitch. Dwight From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Tue Nov 8 12:29:03 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 10:29:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: Nicolet 4094 Digtial Storage Scope? Message-ID: <200511081829.KAA19915@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Joe R." > > I went scrounging again last weekend and came home with this. It looks >like this one from an old Ebay auction. >. >It has two HH floppy drives and it is DIGITAL storage so it's somewhat on >topic. Does anyone know anything about these? I've figured out some >controls but I don't have a clue what others do. I'm also trying to figure >out how to use the disk storage and recall function. I inserted a 360k >MS-DOS disk and it displays E7 and it also says ERR if I try to store or >recall anything so I don't think it likes that format and it doesn't seem >to be capable of formatting it's own disks. Does anyone have any idea what >format it's looking for? > > Joe > > Hi Joe I've thought about getting one of those. They usually go cheap on ebay. One possible guess is that they use hard sectored disk. I doubt they use any specific OS. If you have a program that has access to the controller chip on your PC, you might try formatting different sector sizes. Of course, it might actually use FM or MFM. It might even be 1.2M. Have you looked at the drives to see what they are intented for? Dwight From gcarrick at cse.uta.edu Tue Nov 8 12:52:31 2005 From: gcarrick at cse.uta.edu (A. G. Carrick) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 12:52:31 -0600 Subject: anadisk/teledisk/xenocopy/imagedisk In-Reply-To: <436C3484.4090700@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <200511081902.jA8J2kRV044878@keith.ezwind.net> ... > I sang concert choir for a long time throughout school and > was eventually invited to sing a John Rutter piece at > Carnegie Hall, a moment I will never forget. Dropped singing > altogether once I hit college though. ... I would like to recommend the Barbershop Harmon Society. I, too, quit singing formally after college. About 6 years ago I took it up again. I love singing close harmony. There are over 800 chapters in the US and some international affiliates as well. Here is the web site with a "find a chapter" link. http://www.spebsqsa.org/ASP/clw.asp If you join, tell them I sent you. I get an atta-boy. Give it a try. You have nothing to lose except all your leisure time which you are presently wasting on old computers who don't appreciate your true talents. ;) Gil > Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) > http://www.oldskool.org/ > Want to help an ambitious games project? > http://www.mobygames.com/ > Or check out some trippy MindCandy at > http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From yeyeshitozen at yahoo.com Tue Nov 8 13:48:15 2005 From: yeyeshitozen at yahoo.com (skonto merdeka) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 11:48:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: SN76477N Message-ID: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> Hi, I'm just wondering where you bought your SN76477 chip? any info would be highly appreciated.i'm trying to build a noise maker. thanks! yeyeshito __________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From vax9000 at gmail.com Tue Nov 8 23:23:01 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:23:01 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: <0IPN00HFQBJEDDH3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPN00HFQBJEDDH3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On 11/8/05, Allison wrote: > Considering the major Qbus SCSI controllers do not have near the speed of a > slow 386 cpu, speed is not the issue. I'd have to look but I think none used > anything faster than maybe a 10mhz 68000. > > While the 53C90 does have large overhead it's also not quite the bottleneck. You are right. Those two are not the bottleneck. I measured the actual execution time when run "dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null" (photo attached). NetBSD 1.5.2 moves 16kB a time. The measured time is: 4.75ms MSCP-pre-DMA overhead 0.4ms SCSI overhead 7ms DMA of 16kB 4.2ms MSCP-post-DMA overhead 31ms idle time What kills the speed is the 31ms idle time. I blame NetBSD for that. The calculated speed is 16kB/(4.75+0.4+7+4.2+31)ms=338kB/s, which is the same as reported by the "dd" command (267s to move 80.9MB). If there is no idle time, the speed would be 16kB/(4.75+0.4+4.2)=978kB/s. It beats CQD220. Thats how much the current design can do. Since it's 2/3 of the fastest CQD440, I am not going to change the design. I need to test later with the DEC OS to conform this theory though. > > I would look first at the code. First place I'd peek at is to see what the > code overhead is. Also Qbus transfers can be block mode DMA for best speed > but watch the length as memory says 4words per block were a maximum to avoid > bus timout errors. ISA does not have this problem but it's fairly slow for > 8bit moves (1meg Byte/S). > > As to beating a RQDX thats easy consider that the MFM drives are 5mbits/S > range(.625k bytes/S burst) rate and slow seeking combined with no local > caching more than a sector or two. Also the CPU was a T-11 at a mere 7.5mhz. > > I've considered hacking a SCSI controller for Qbus once. The approach > on paper was a PCI PC system board with a Adaptec2900 series controller > with a parallel adaptor to Qbus. That was focused on building as little > hardware as possible becuase the real task was software. The item > worked out were software as in PC level code that didn't require a > bootable OS (rom resident would be a winner). However the Qbus side > was sorted down to a M7941 parallel line unit (PIO) or M7950 (DMA) with > a driver based on one of the removable non-MSCP cartridge disks (RK, RL > or RM). I quit after realizing that I didn't have a 290x SCSI board > nor wished to program PCs. That and someone gave me a CMD SCSI adaptor. ;) > You are lucky. Nobody gives me CMD card. But from now on I probably will not need one any more. vax, 9000 From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 9 01:38:23 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 08:38:23 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- first LA output Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2500@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Tony wrote: > > > > Making your own pod...! Again, points earned Tony! Chapeau! :-) > > Well, back when I got that instrument, _any_ LA was > expensive. The only way I could afford one was to get one > missing the pods. And I'd done a fair amount of ECL work for > my Ph.D, so when I found the inputs were actually > differential ECL signals, it didn;t worry me too much. > > -tony Ah. Ok then. I never worked with ECL, so that is totally unknown territory for me. You had a jump start then :-) I continued working on the 11/34 console board. Made a few new measurements (display and keypad). I am still figuring out what I have seen. I am a bit reluctant to remove an IC from the board, put in a socket and a new IC, just to find out that I overlooked something and the replaced IC was not bad. I have the impression that the strobe pulse to latch the 74175 that outputs the 3-bit code to the 7447 display driver is issued at a way to low rate. I seldom see this pulse, but expect it to see quite often as it must for multiplexing the display ... To support this repair I will write up a webpage with the LA pictures. I will mention the URL here. Very soon ... thanks for all input so far, - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 9 01:40:44 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:40:44 -0700 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> skonto merdeka wrote: >Hi, >I'm just wondering where you bought your SN76477 chip? > >any info would be highly appreciated.i'm trying to >build a noise maker. > > FireCrackers work well! >thanks! > > Unicorn Electronics may have a few in stock. They are about $20 each. http://www.unicornelectronics.com/ From patrick at vintagecomputermarketplace.com Wed Nov 9 01:42:15 2005 From: patrick at vintagecomputermarketplace.com (Patrick) Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2005 23:42:15 -0800 Subject: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2500@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2500@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Message-ID: <4371A857.4060807@vintagecomputermarketplace.com> http://www.vintagecomputermarketplace.com/view.cfm?ad=2062 From news at computercollector.com Wed Nov 9 01:48:00 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 02:48:00 -0500 Subject: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly In-Reply-To: <4371A857.4060807@vintagecomputermarketplace.com> Message-ID: <007501c5e501$e92a7910$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Err, that's Pittsburgh. Big difference. Far away. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 2:42 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly http://www.vintagecomputermarketplace.com/view.cfm?ad=2062 From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 9 01:52:54 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 08:52:54 +0100 Subject: 11/34a issues Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2501@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Hi Julian, Ethan gave a very good description of the BR (4-5-6-7) and the NPR wires. As he mentioned, try getting G7273's, and not just 2. I have 10 of them, and currently (in the 11/34 with problems), I removed all not needed boards in the CPU backplane. Then you need 6 of those G7273 *if* you are not sure in which slot the NPR wire is cut on the backplane. If you are sure that the NPR wire is intact, you can put in a simple G727, but you will find out soon why they are called knockle-busters. So I prefer G7273's. BTW, the NPR wire runs from pin CA1 to pin CB1, so that is position C. The G7273 goes into positions C-D, the small G727 goes into position D. If you need more info, ask. But there are a lot of people on this list that sure know more than I do! I have no experience with a core-based 11/34, but if the core is Ok, that does not matter if it is core-based or DRAM-based memory. One thing though, the core-11/34 has a different power supply brick installed. +20V is my guess, but then again, no experience with core-11/34's. I see from you board description that youi have an M7800 installed in the third slot. I assume that it is the console. You must check (at least) 2 things. 1) the jumpers/DIPswitches. Is it configured for console? 2) check the components near the BERG connector. Do you see 1448/1449? AFAIK, depending short loops on the BERG plug you make an RS-232 or a 20 mA current loop connection ... needless to say that a standard RS-232 connection on a term inal will not work with a 20 mA loop fromn the M7800 ... I have (at home) a note that uses the keypad to get a character on the screen (via the console configured board) and read a character on the 11/34 display when you hit a key on the keyboard of the terminal. It is simple, you should be able to figure it out yourself :-) - Henk, PA8PDP. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Julian Wolfe > Sent: dinsdag 8 november 2005 23:19 > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: RE: 11/34a issues > > Is there any good way to test the unit piece by piece? > > Also, I noted in the manual, it says BUS ERR only denotes a > bus error on the console, not on the processor, whatever that means. > > I have now confirmed that my grant cards are in correctly > (facing the correct direction). > > When is it exactly that I need a grant card? Do I need them > whenever position D isn't occupied? Or is there a > stipulation to that? > > I'm thoroughly confused. > > Mind you, I have not yet connected a console to it. Maybe > I'll do that tonight. > > Henk (or anyone else) if you can offer further assistance > with this, I'd really appreciate it. > > TIA > Julian > > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Gooijen, Henk > Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2005 5:22 AM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: RE: 11/34a issues > > Hi Julian, > > you have at least response from the console ... never mind > :-) When you press EXAM (or DEP) the M7859 must do a UNIBUS access. > Grant problems will turn on BUS ERR, so there lies you first > point of interest to check out. > > You say "I get that BUS ERR no matter what I do". > Please tell exactly what "no matter ..." actions are. > > I have no experience with core based 11/34's, so I can not > tell anything more about your board placement. The manual will tell! > However, (not sure), if you have some G7273's, replace the > G727's and put the G7273 in position C-D. > > BTW, I am not sure of "All grant cards are installed where > you could read FLIP CHIP from the processor side". I am not > near my 11/34. If "FLIP CHIP" is in the etch on the side > where the 4 BR contacts are, then they might be installed > wrong in the slot! > AFAIR, it should be like this (seen from above towards the > backplane, I can check that this evening): > > slot X slot 2 slot 1 <[most right] > __ M8265 M8266 > | | position | | | | > | | D | | | | > | | ........... | | | | > | | | | | | > ----> | | | | | | > |_| G727 | | | | > this side | | | | > has the | | | | > contact | | | | > fingers > > - Henk, PA8PDP. > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Julian Wolfe > > Sent: donderdag 3 november 2005 10:44 > > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > > Subject: 11/34a issues > > > > Okay, so I FINALLY worked out my BA11-K power supply issues and got > > everything sorted out and installed again. > > > > However, I'm back to where I started when I got this thing (which I > > never got past) - I turn it on, the display comes up at 173536. > > However, whenever I try to EXAM anything, it displays > 000000 and the > > BUS ERR light comes on. > > I can clear, but I get that BUS ERR no matter what I do. I haven't > > got a serial console connected to it yet - I got this info by going > > through the > > 11/34 diagnostics in the manual. > > > > Here's my setup: > > > > BA11-K box > > DD11-PK backplane > > > > UNIBUS layout: > > A B C D E F > > > > M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 M8266 1 > > M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 M8265 2 > > M9301 M9301 M7800 M7800 M7800 M7800 3 > > H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A 4 > > blank blank blank GRANT blank blank 5 > > H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A H222A 6 > > blank blank blank GRANT blank blank 7 > > M7850 M7850 M7859 M7859 M7859 M7859 8 > > M9302 blank blank GRANT blank blank 9 > > > > I've tried switching some boards around, no help. > > > > All grant cards are installed where you could read FLIP > CHIP from the > > processor side. > > > > I have NO idea what's wrong. Is the memory possibly bad? > > That's the only thing I could think of. > > > > Any help, as always, would be much appreciated. > > > > TIA > > Julian This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 9 01:58:00 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 08:58:00 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2502@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Hi all, just a short question, I have seen so much that I start doubting everything :-( After you pressed the CLR key on the 11/34 console (to get a clear start point), if you *only* press the CNTRL key, nothing should happen, right? [ on my 11/34, when I press CLR (release it), the press the CNTRL key (only that one), the 7-segment displays go all OFF, and when the are on again, they show the value that was in them before I pressed CNTRL. Also, BUS ERR goes on. ] I checked the signals. That the displays go blank is logical, because the DRIVE1 thru DRIVE6 signals remain '1' for 400 ms. But that is the result ... what is the cause ...? - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From curt at atarimuseum.com Wed Nov 9 02:07:58 2005 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 03:07:58 -0500 Subject: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly In-Reply-To: <4371A857.4060807@vintagecomputermarketplace.com> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2500@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> <4371A857.4060807@vintagecomputermarketplace.com> Message-ID: <4371AE5E.3060904@atarimuseum.com> If anyone wants to chip in, I'd be willing to hire NA Vanlines to pickup and transport the equipment here to my in Putnam, NY. I would love a spare 4K and if anyone would be interested in some of the RA80's we could definitely work something out. Let me know. Curt Patrick wrote: > http://www.vintagecomputermarketplace.com/view.cfm?ad=2062 > > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/162 - Release Date: 11/5/2005 From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Wed Nov 9 02:19:46 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:19:46 +0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4371B122.5070203@gjcp.net> woodelf wrote: > Stegeman, Henk HJ SITI-ITIBHW5 wrote: > >> The reason is the effort it takes...... >> Ask anybody who actually made a CPU ( I myself did a 12 bit >> TTL based, single address single accumulator machine). >> The real effort is actually building and debugging the unit. >> There is only so much time you have.... >> >> >>> I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small >>> computer. >>> >> >> >> Much too big to actually build in TTL. >> >> > Well everybody likes 12 bits... > http://www.cray-cyber.org/hardware/Hardware.php Forget TTL, go tubes! They can't calculate the difference between 926kB and 926MB though - look at those filesizes! Either they've got that wrong or NTL have given me one hell of an upgrade overnight. Gordon. From holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de Wed Nov 9 02:32:22 2005 From: holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:32:22 +0100 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4371B416.9060204@ais.fraunhofer.de> woodelf wrote: > Stegeman, Henk HJ SITI-ITIBHW5 wrote: > >> The reason is the effort it takes...... >> Ask anybody who actually made a CPU ( I myself did a 12 bit >> TTL based, single address single accumulator machine). >> The real effort is actually building and debugging the unit. >> There is only so much time you have.... >> >> >>> I've always thought that 24 bits is a nice word size for a small >>> computer. >>> >> >> >> Much too big to actually build in TTL. >> >> > Well everybody likes 12 bits... Which is what I don't understand from my experiences with my own CPU long ago. 16 bit would be okay and maybe even more bits, but I decided against classical 4, 8 or 12 bits those days, although these sizes were quite popular then for "real" CPUs. The point is that I didn't want to have sophisticated instruction decoding logic, this disallowed multiple word instructions. I knew about microprogramming, of course, but this were out of reach because of lacking facilities to burn PROMs (I was a pupil then). For memory addresses and immediate operands, this meant a single instruction should hold enough address or data bits. With 12 bits you are restricted to too few possible instructions or too few address bits (4 bit instruction or 8 bit address/immediate data was not enough for my ambitious plans. 16 bit were suitable even if it required two "load immediate" instructions (for the low and the high byte). However the first architecture had 16 bit instructions but an 8 bit data path only (except the separate 12 bit address increment/index logic). Holger From aek at bitsavers.org Wed Nov 9 05:08:14 2005 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 03:08:14 -0800 Subject: Don S. == Don Senzig Message-ID: "Don S." is Don Senzig, one of the founding members of the Wisconsin Computer Society, which had its first meeting on a cold Saturday afternoon in January, 1976. AFAIK, there are still monthly meetings, though it is down to a dozen or so folks that have known each other now for over thirty years. I try to make it to them when I'm out there. Don was a close friend, and is missed. He and Dorothy hosted the meetings at their house for many, many years. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 06:13:42 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 07:13:42 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPO000K0SLRVH10@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: 9000 VAX > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:35:00 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 11/8/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> On 11/8/2005 at 5:36 PM woodelf wrote: >> >> > Well everybody likes 12 bits... >> > http://www.cray-cyber.org/hardware/Hardware.php >> > Forget TTL, go tubes! >> >> Wow, now that's ambitious! >> >> Makes me wonder, though. Around the time the transistor was in its >> ascendancy, the vacuum-tube business came up with a couple of innovations. >> One was the nuvistor--an almost transistor-sized tube; and the other was a >> low-voltage tube used in automobile receivers that were specified for 12.6 >> volts on the plate (e.g. 12AE7 dual triode). These would be coupled with a >> solid-state driver and power amplifier for a auto radio with no vibrator >> supply. >> >> The first would seem to make the scale of a digital computer more >> attractive; the second would seem to substantially reduce the power >> requirements. To anyone's knowledge were either of these two components >> ever used in digital applications? > >It is funny that I am a tube fan too. > >The 12.6 volt tubes won't save you any power; On the contrary, they >sucks much more power than normal tubes. Because they need a lot of >current to heat the cathode to emit more electrons; and they have a >positive first grill to 'pull' electrons out from cathode. Space charge tubes llike 12AD6, 12ek6 for automobile radio service. I've run common tubes like 6u8 and 12at7 at 12V on the pate with good results. >Nuvistors are not good to use for homebrew computers either, because >they are expensive. Months ago I saw a board with 10+ nuvistors. I >didn't buy it ($9.99) because I was not small-tube fan. I checked the >second hand price at that time and it was significantly higher than >those sub $1 tubes. Nuvisters were ceramic metal tubes developed for VHF and UHF recieving. They are mostly triode designs though there were tetrodes. I have a reciever I built that uses one for the RF amp and another in an osc. Small, lower noise but there are glass tubes that are similar. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 06:27:48 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 07:27:48 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed Message-ID: <0IPO00L35T99NH20@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: MSCP SCSI controller speed > From: 9000 VAX > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:23:01 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >You are right. Those two are not the bottleneck. I measured the actual >execution time when run "dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null" (photo >attached). NetBSD 1.5.2 moves 16kB a time. The measured time is: > >4.75ms MSCP-pre-DMA overhead >0.4ms SCSI overhead >7ms DMA of 16kB >4.2ms MSCP-post-DMA overhead >31ms idle time > >What kills the speed is the 31ms idle time. I blame NetBSD for that. You need a real time or single user os to get better results. Plain old dos might do far better or maybe a custom kernal tuned for this use. >> nor wished to program PCs. That and someone gave me a CMD SCSI adaptor. ;) >> > >You are lucky. Nobody gives me CMD card. But from now on I probably >will not need one any more. It was a lot of years ago, pre epay inflation. That and I got a broken BA123 microvax with it. Allison From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 9 06:37:22 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 13:37:22 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2503@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> I have made a webpage that shows the progress till now (little). It has pictures of the signals seen on the logic analyser. The first part describes the first developments, the last part is sort-of where I am now ... see www.pdp-11.nl/pdp11-34a/cpu/options/m7859/troubleshoot.html Any input is welcome! - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 07:29:59 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:29:59 -0500 Subject: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly In-Reply-To: <4371AE5E.3060904@atarimuseum.com> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2500@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> <4371A857.4060807@vintagecomputermarketplace.com> <4371AE5E.3060904@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <4371F9D7.9000301@gmail.com> Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > If anyone wants to chip in, I'd be willing to hire NA Vanlines to pickup > and transport the equipment here to my in Putnam, NY. I would love a > spare 4K and if anyone would be interested in some of the RA80's we > could definitely work something out. Let me know. I didn't know you were in Putnam. Whereabouts? I'm in Poughkeepsie. Peace... Sridhar From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Wed Nov 9 08:31:14 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:31:14 Subject: Nicolet 4094 Digtial Storage Scope? In-Reply-To: <200511081829.KAA19915@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051109083114.3edf6428@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 10:29 AM 11/8/05 -0800, Dwight wrote: >>From: "Joe R." >> >> I went scrounging again last weekend and came home with this. It looks >>like this one from an old Ebay auction. >>. >>It has two HH floppy drives and it is DIGITAL storage so it's somewhat on >>topic. Does anyone know anything about these? I've figured out some >>controls but I don't have a clue what others do. I'm also trying to figure >>out how to use the disk storage and recall function. I inserted a 360k >>MS-DOS disk and it displays E7 and it also says ERR if I try to store or >>recall anything so I don't think it likes that format and it doesn't seem >>to be capable of formatting it's own disks. Does anyone have any idea what >>format it's looking for? >> >> Joe >> >> > >Hi Joe > I've thought about getting one of those. They usually >go cheap on ebay. > One possible guess is that they use hard >sectored disk. I doubt they use any specific OS. If you >have a program that has access to the controller chip on >your PC, you might try formatting different sector sizes. >Of course, it might actually use FM or MFM. It might even >be 1.2M. Have you looked at the drives to see what they >are intented for? No, not yet. I've been having too much fun playing with it. It really works great! I do intend to open it up and see what kind of drives and drive controller IC it uses. BTW Grumpy Ol Fred found a message on the net that said that it used a proprietaty 720k format so I'll try a DSQD disk in it. FWIW I also found message on the net that indicatd that the probes for these need more capacitance compensation than most probes provide so a "standard" set of probes may not work perfectly on it. Some brands of probes and some older Tektronix probes do have adaquete adjustment and do work fine. Right now I'm using a set of probes from one of my other scopes and I don't want to mess with their adjustment so I'm just putting up with the distortion. I'll find an extra set of probes and try to adjust them and dedicate them to this scope. Joe > > > > From James at jdfogg.com Wed Nov 9 07:58:33 2005 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 08:58:33 -0500 Subject: VCF questions Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5979@sbs.jdfogg.com> Sorry for my ignorance - Who runs the VCF events? Do they have guest speakers? I ask because I attended a presentation by Doug McIlroy, an early computer pioneer with Bell Labs, and Thompson/Ritchie's manager. He's made significant contributions to both Unix and Multics, among other things and he has some great stories to tell about the early days and the development of Unix. His presentation was focused on personal experiences and the people he's known, but I believe he can also get very technical (he is currently an adjunct professor at Dartmouth). After the presentation I spoke for a time with Doug. He was amazed that there exists a community interested in the preservation and restoration of old computers and their software. I explained a few things about the community and some of their projects and he was interested in the idea of the VCF. He said he'd consider an opportunity to speak at the VCF or similar venues in the North East and Mid Atlantic regions. Would there be an interest in having Doug present, does the VCF have space in their program for speakers? Some info on Doug - http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McIlroy http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/ -James From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 08:00:58 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:00:58 -0500 Subject: Nicolet 4094 Digtial Storage Scope? Message-ID: <0IPO00LJOXKJO780@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Nicolet 4094 Digtial Storage Scope? > From: "Joe R." > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:31:14 +0000 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >At 10:29 AM 11/8/05 -0800, Dwight wrote: >>>From: "Joe R." > FWIW I also found message on the net that indicatd that the probes for >these need more capacitance compensation than most probes provide so a >"standard" set of probes may not work perfectly on it. Some brands of >probes and some older Tektronix probes do have adaquete adjustment and do >work fine. Right now I'm using a set of probes from one of my other scopes >and I don't want to mess with their adjustment so I'm just putting up with >the distortion. I'll find an extra set of probes and try to adjust them and >dedicate them to this scope. > > Joe Probe compensation is a trivial thing and it's nominally done whenever a probe is used with a scope when it's use was unknown. The range of adjustment is usually enough that any proble works with any scope. I've only had rare problems with this and usually with elcheapo probes. Some probes have higher capacitance for example 1x and long cable 10x probes. It's not a bad thing only something to be aware of as SOME circuits and measurements are sensitive to the capacitance and results may vary. Usually it's very high impedence or fast HF designs that are most likely to show this. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 08:02:46 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:02:46 -0500 Subject: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly Message-ID: <0IPO000UPXNIWM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly > From: Sridhar Ayengar > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:29:59 -0500 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: >> If anyone wants to chip in, I'd be willing to hire NA Vanlines to pickup >> and transport the equipment here to my in Putnam, NY. I would love a >> spare 4K and if anyone would be interested in some of the RA80's we >> could definitely work something out. Let me know. > >I didn't know you were in Putnam. Whereabouts? > >I'm in Poughkeepsie. > Good grief! I'd been in the Putum and Patterson area a couple of times this year to visit friends. It's only 3 hours from here. Allison From Richard.Cini at wachovia.com Wed Nov 9 08:07:36 2005 From: Richard.Cini at wachovia.com (Cini, Richard) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 09:07:36 -0500 Subject: VCF questions Message-ID: Not to speak for Sellam or Evan, but the East Coast offshoot of the Vintage Computer Festival is scheduled for Saturday, May 13. Unless something has changed since the original announcement email, it is supposed to be held at the InfoAge Learning Center in Wall, N.J. Take a look at http://www.vintage.org. VCF does indeed have a speaker program. I would say that the location of the event in NJ and the "vintageness" of the speaker might make for a nice presentation...but that's just me. Rich -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of James Fogg Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 8:59 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: VCF questions Sorry for my ignorance - Who runs the VCF events? Do they have guest speakers? I ask because I attended a presentation by Doug McIlroy, an early computer pioneer with Bell Labs, and Thompson/Ritchie's manager. He's made significant contributions to both Unix and Multics, among other things and he has some great stories to tell about the early days and the development of Unix. His presentation was focused on personal experiences and the people he's known, but I believe he can also get very technical (he is currently an adjunct professor at Dartmouth). After the presentation I spoke for a time with Doug. He was amazed that there exists a community interested in the preservation and restoration of old computers and their software. I explained a few things about the community and some of their projects and he was interested in the idea of the VCF. He said he'd consider an opportunity to speak at the VCF or similar venues in the North East and Mid Atlantic regions. Would there be an interest in having Doug present, does the VCF have space in their program for speakers? Some info on Doug - http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McIlroy http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/ -James From pechter at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 08:11:38 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:11:38 -0500 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4372039A.70108@gmail.com> Just another mention of how this would be a great thing for the East Coast offshoot in Monmouth County, NJ. Bill Cini, Richard wrote: >Not to speak for Sellam or Evan, but the East Coast offshoot of the Vintage >Computer Festival is scheduled for Saturday, May 13. Unless something has >changed since the original announcement email, it is supposed to be held at >the InfoAge Learning Center in Wall, N.J. > >Take a look at http://www.vintage.org. VCF does indeed have a speaker >program. I would say that the location of the event in NJ and the >"vintageness" of the speaker might make for a nice presentation...but that's >just me. > >Rich > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of James Fogg >Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 8:59 AM >To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >Subject: VCF questions > >Sorry for my ignorance - >Who runs the VCF events? >Do they have guest speakers? > >I ask because I attended a presentation by Doug McIlroy, an early >computer pioneer with Bell Labs, and Thompson/Ritchie's manager. He's >made significant contributions to both Unix and Multics, among other >things and he has some great stories to tell about the early days and >the development of Unix. His presentation was focused on personal >experiences and the people he's known, but I believe he can also get >very technical (he is currently an adjunct professor at Dartmouth). > >After the presentation I spoke for a time with Doug. He was amazed that >there exists a community interested in the preservation and restoration >of old computers and their software. I explained a few things about the >community and some of their projects and he was interested in the idea >of the VCF. He said he'd consider an opportunity to speak at the VCF or >similar venues in the North East and Mid Atlantic regions. > >Would there be an interest in having Doug present, does the VCF have >space in their program for speakers? > >Some info on Doug - >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/biography >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McIlroy >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/ > > > -James > > > From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 07:38:35 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:38:35 +0000 Subject: valid classiccmp email addresss? Message-ID: <4371FBDB.8070600@yahoo.co.uk> I just noticed that Al (and occasionally a few others) send email to 'classiccmp at classiccmp.org' rather than the usual cctalk / cctech addresses. Is that a valid address? It's obviously working, I just don't filter on it in my mail client and was wondering whether I should be or not! :-) (IIRC that was the list address prior to the cctalk/cctech split a while back, but I assume Jay might be ditching it one day if so) cheers Jules From Hans.Franke at siemens.com Wed Nov 9 08:51:56 2005 From: Hans.Franke at siemens.com (Hans Franke) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 15:51:56 +0100 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5979@sbs.jdfogg.com> Message-ID: <43721B1C.28739.72948E95@localhost> Am 9 Nov 2005 8:58 meinte James Fogg: > Sorry for my ignorance - > Who runs the VCF events? Well, our well known friend Sallam Ismail does the main VCF in California (as it happened to be on the last weekend - *1). Evan Koblenz is the executing director of the next VCF in the US, VCF East, a one day event on May 13th. As for myself, I try to get the VCFe (Europe) runnin, next year, as an extended 3 day show, Apr 29/30 and May 1st. > Do they have guest speakers? Yes, we do. I guess, Even will be eager to get the contact established. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 9 08:58:19 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 09:58:19 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511081741140687.35B4C00E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17266.3723.899567.406423@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: Chuck> ... the other was a low-voltage tube Chuck> used in automobile receivers that were specified for 12.6 Chuck> volts on the plate (e.g. 12AE7 dual triode). These would be Chuck> coupled with a solid-state driver and power amplifier for a Chuck> auto radio with no vibrator supply. Chuck> ... the second would seem to substantially reduce Chuck> the power requirements. To anyone's knowledge were either of Chuck> these two components ever used in digital applications? I doubt it for the 12 volt tube case. For car radios they make sense, for the reasons you gave. (I built a radio for our camper using those, as a boy scout project. Tubes for the RF/IF stages, a very early (1971 or so) op amp as AF preamp, and totem pole transistor AF final amp.) But I don't think the electrical parameters were all that good, given the unusually low anode voltage. And I don't see any reason for the power consumption to be less. Lower voltage, sure, but the current may go up in proportion. And the filaments were still the usual, which accounts for a fair chunk of the power. paul From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 08:02:57 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:02:57 +0000 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> Message-ID: <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> David Holland wrote: > Damn... :-( > > http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2005/november/nyse.html Lack of responses to this probably indicates peoples' feelings toward SGI these days unfortunately - they ceased being a cool company five years ago :-( Of course if they're going to implode I hope someone can save archives of software + docs from the days when they *did* make decent machines! cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 08:14:14 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:14:14 +0000 Subject: Bell & Howell (De Grafe Video Presentation) Message-ID: <43720436.4070509@yahoo.co.uk> A bit more info's arrived on the De Grafe system resold by Bell and Howell which I mentioned on the list a few weeks back... The machine's circa 1986 and is a large desktop system, comprising main unit, small screen, tablet and keyboard. Cost 21,000 pounds when new. Capable of 4096 colours at 16 transparency levels simultaneously from a palette of 16M (in 1986!), with 768 points per line horizontal resolution (no idea of vertical, but as it's for TV type use I expect in the region of 500 - 600) Capable of real time digitising from four mixable inputs. Genlock capability with RGB input and PAL + NTSC output. It sounds rather awesome - can't wait to get hold of the hardware and see how it's constructed (I wonder if it's totally custom, or based around something like an S100 chassis. Whatever, it must have some serious silicon in there to be able to shunt that much data around at TV quality) cheers Jules From allain at panix.com Wed Nov 9 09:46:18 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 10:46:18 -0500 Subject: SGI.... References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <003901c5e544$bf2a89a0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> > Of course if they're going to implode I hope someone can save archives > of software + docs from the days when they *did* make decent machines! There's a joke in there somewhere. The leading history archive center building was donated by SGI to Computerhistory.org, now all the boxes they moved out of Moffett field they may have to move right back in. John A. From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 09:48:23 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 15:48:23 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Bell & Howell (De Grafe Video Presentation) Message-ID: <20051109154823.24548.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > with 768 points per line horizontal resolution (no idea of > vertical, but as it's for TV type use I expect in the > region of 500 - 600) 576 for a full frame, 288 per field. Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 09:46:52 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 10:46:52 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: Paul Koning > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:58:19 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: > > Chuck> ... the other was a low-voltage tube > Chuck> used in automobile receivers that were specified for 12.6 > Chuck> volts on the plate (e.g. 12AE7 dual triode). These would be > Chuck> coupled with a solid-state driver and power amplifier for a > Chuck> auto radio with no vibrator supply. > > Chuck> ... the second would seem to substantially reduce > Chuck> the power requirements. To anyone's knowledge were either of > Chuck> these two components ever used in digital applications? > >I doubt it for the 12 volt tube case. For car radios they make sense, >for the reasons you gave. (I built a radio for our camper using >those, as a boy scout project. Tubes for the RF/IF stages, a very >early (1971 or so) op amp as AF preamp, and totem pole transistor AF >final amp.) This is somewhat off topic. To directly answer it however... The additional components of the power supply (vibrator or transistor driven) are overhead and high drain even for auto use as efficientcy is at best 80%. 12V plate voltage car radio tubes were a considerable savings in drain by deleting the HV supply. The heater power required for the 12V vs the more usual high voltage cousins is the same or only slightly higher, some cases it was lower depends on the specific tube. the real difference was generating the HV had a standing 10W load that the tubes maybe used less than 70% of. > >But I don't think the electrical parameters were all that good, given >the unusually low anode voltage. And I don't see any reason for the >power consumption to be less. Lower voltage, sure, but the current >may go up in proportion. And the filaments were still the usual, >which accounts for a fair chunk of the power. Correct. The transconductance is lower and the lower max plate current means lower power and overload thresholds. For computers that also translates to slower switching speeds. For AM car radio use it's acceptable but for higher performing radios it really is problematic. The serious limitation for tubes has always been the heat and power from the filament rather than the heat and power used for functional circuits. Computers suffered using them as heat removal and protecting other components from that heat were the issues. Never minding even with 135A 6.3V filiments used in the subminis say two hundred of them is a mere 27.A @ 6.3V or 162W of power and no small issue with bussing around that kind of power. when you consider they may run at 100V on the plate and maybe 2ma (.2W) and that same 200 (assuming all conducting the same) is only 40W power dissapated. It's the heaters that are at issue. Transistor systems removed the heater power and lowered the per device dissapated power by a typical factor of 5 so 200 transistors were running in the 8-10W range. The latter is important as now heat is less an issue and power distribution simplified. With heat being less an issue more compact and modular systems are easier to design and assemble. After transistors the second evolution in computers was packaging. Allison From allain at panix.com Wed Nov 9 10:00:14 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:00:14 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2503@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Message-ID: <010401c5e546$aca9ae80$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> > Any input is welcome! Don't ignore the possibility that the panel is mechanically misaligned. That is, that the keypad isn't causing the keyswitches to be depressed properly. It just takes ~8 phillips head screws to find out IIRC. I had two of these panels, one with this problem that was realignable. John A. From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 9 10:07:00 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 17:07:00 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2507@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Ok. I might check ... But is it possible that 2 years of non-use, and never any mechanical change/adjustment can cause this misalignment? Further, I never removed the PCB from the metal front, always removed the whole panel from the chassis (1 screw at each side). And the buttons all worked a week ago, I could enter any number and every number button stroke showed in the display ... so, removing the PCB now is perhaps not the first thing I would do right now. But I will keep it in mind! tnx, - Henk, PA8PDP. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Allain > Sent: woensdag 9 november 2005 17:00 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour > > > Any input is welcome! > > Don't ignore the possibility that the panel is mechanically > misaligned. > That is, that the keypad isn't causing the keyswitches to be > depressed properly. It just takes ~8 phillips head screws to > find out IIRC. I had two of these panels, one with this > problem that was realignable. > > John A. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 9 10:12:28 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:12:28 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43721FEC.3050000@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >After transistors the second evolution in computers was packaging. > > > No, I think Automatic wire wrapping was the big difference untill the 70's. Then it was the dip packaging of the transistors in the form of SSI and MSI. >Allison > > From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 08:24:56 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:24:56 +0000 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <43721B1C.28739.72948E95@localhost> References: <43721B1C.28739.72948E95@localhost> Message-ID: <437206B8.4090405@yahoo.co.uk> Hans Franke wrote: > Am 9 Nov 2005 8:58 meinte James Fogg: >>Sorry for my ignorance - >>Who runs the VCF events? > > Well, our well known friend Sallam Ismail does the main VCF Surely that's his lesser-known brother, Sellam? ;-) From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 9 10:22:02 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:22:02 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed References: <0IPO00L35T99NH20@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <17266.8746.229071.331709@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: >> Subject: Re: MSCP SCSI controller speed From: 9000 VAX >> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 00:23:01 -0500 To: >> "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >> >> You are right. Those two are not the bottleneck. I measured the >> actual execution time when run "dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null" >> (photo attached). NetBSD 1.5.2 moves 16kB a time. The measured >> time is: >> >> 4.75ms MSCP-pre-DMA overhead 0.4ms SCSI overhead 7ms DMA of 16kB >> 4.2ms MSCP-post-DMA overhead 31ms idle time >> >> What kills the speed is the 31ms idle time. I blame NetBSD for >> that. Allison> You need a real time or single user os to get better Allison> results. Plain old dos might do far better or maybe a Allison> custom kernal tuned for this use. All you need is an application, or OS, that can queue up multiple transfers. I thought the buffered I/O in Unix would take care of that. Certainly if you do single I/Os and wait for the answer each time, things will be slow, but the OS isn't really at fault then. paul From Hans.Franke at siemens.com Wed Nov 9 10:27:06 2005 From: Hans.Franke at siemens.com (Hans Franke) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 17:27:06 +0100 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <437206B8.4090405@yahoo.co.uk> References: <43721B1C.28739.72948E95@localhost> Message-ID: <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> Am 9 Nov 2005 14:24 meinte Jules Richardson: > Hans Franke wrote: > > Am 9 Nov 2005 8:58 meinte James Fogg: > >>Sorry for my ignorance - > >>Who runs the VCF events? > > Well, our well known friend Sallam Ismail does the main VCF > Surely that's his lesser-known brother, Sellam? ;-) Nah, that's a typical case of american officials writing non-English names ... Even the Brits can do better here .) Hans -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 9 10:34:10 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:34:10 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers References: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <17266.9474.409878.807043@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: Allison> After transistors the second evolution in computers was Allison> packaging. True, at least in high end computers. Cray understood packaging -- as far back as the CDC 6600 (1964) there is serious magic and serious engineering in the packaging. On the other hand, DEC computers, while nice architecturally, don't show anything interesting in the way of packaging. (A good way to look at it is that you could fit a whole CDC 6000 series mainframe in a box not much bigger than the PDP-6 general registers module, which are roughly contemporary.) paul From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 9 10:36:25 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:36:25 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers References: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <43721FEC.3050000@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <17266.9609.339033.451448@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "woodelf" == woodelf writes: woodelf> Allison wrote: >> After transistors the second evolution in computers was packaging. >> woodelf> No, I think Automatic wire wrapping was the big difference woodelf> untill the 70's. Then it was the dip packaging of the woodelf> transistors in the form of SSI and MSI. Allison is right. Look at the CDC 6600 (1964). Skilled packaging is one of many pieces of excellent engineering that made it possible. paul From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 10:39:17 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:39:17 -0500 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> References: <43721B1C.28739.72948E95@localhost> <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> Message-ID: <43722635.90108@gmail.com> Hans Franke wrote: > Am 9 Nov 2005 14:24 meinte Jules Richardson: > > >>Hans Franke wrote: >> >>>Am 9 Nov 2005 8:58 meinte James Fogg: >>> >>>>Sorry for my ignorance - >>>>Who runs the VCF events? >>> >>>Well, our well known friend Sallam Ismail does the main VCF >> >>Surely that's his lesser-known brother, Sellam? ;-) > > > Nah, that's a typical case of american officials writing > non-English names ... Even the Brits can do better here .) Actually, isn't the preferred Arabic spelling Salaam? Peace... Sridhar From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 10:41:18 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:41:18 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPP00F1E4ZP1J40@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: woodelf > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:12:28 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>After transistors the second evolution in computers was packaging. >> >> >> >No, I think Automatic wire wrapping was the big difference untill the 70's. >Then it was the dip packaging of the transistors in the form of SSI and >MSI. They were later and significant however, Go back and study TX2 (Lincoln labs Clark, Olsen, Best and Mitchell ca1956). Their inovation was packaging into modules of standardized circuit (chips would shrink this) modules and then integrating them into modular subsystems (ALU, memory and IO). There were also logical enhancements on the archetecture level as well. The lessons of the TX2 were applied directly to DEC logic modules that would evolve to FlipChips. Automatic wire wraping and IC were the next and nearly concurrent waves and served to greatly lower cost. By then we were well into the 60s. Allison From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 9 10:42:54 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:42:54 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <4371B416.9060204@ais.fraunhofer.de> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <4371447D.2060603@jetnet.ab.ca> <4371B416.9060204@ais.fraunhofer.de> Message-ID: <4372270E.7050902@jetnet.ab.ca> Holger Veit wrote: > woodelf wrote: > >>> >> Well everybody likes 12 bits... > > > Which is what I don't understand from my experiences with my own CPU > long ago. 16 bit would be okay and maybe even more bits, but I decided > against classical 4, 8 or 12 bits those days, although these sizes > were quite popular then for "real" CPUs. The point is that I didn't > want to have sophisticated instruction decoding logic, this disallowed > multiple word instructions. I knew about microprogramming, of course, > but this were out of reach because of lacking facilities to burn PROMs > (I was a pupil then). I thought that is why they went to 16 or 18 bits word length for the small machines.. > For memory addresses and immediate operands, this meant a single > instruction should hold enough address or data bits. With 12 bits you > are restricted to too few possible instructions or too few address > bits (4 bit instruction or 8 bit address/immediate data was not enough > for my ambitious plans. 16 bit were suitable even if it required two > "load immediate" instructions (for the low and the high byte). However > the first architecture had 16 bit instructions but an 8 bit data path > only (except the separate 12 bit address increment/index logic). > The current 18 bit computer I a building using CPLD's has a 128 cell CPLD for the 9 bit slices and a 128 cell CPLD for the CONTROL unit. The biggest pain is byte swapping for character data, another 84 pin CPLD for memory. The 5 th CPLD is a glue chip with the IDE Interface , 8 bit I/O buss for the 6821's and 6850's and a 128 x 18 bootstrap rom. I suspect if the design was done in TTL the control section would be 1/3 with the other 2/3's data path for about 300 SSI chips. > Holger The fun part of this design is I am doing the cpu structure as monolithc cpu in a 48 pin package and the memory bus swap buffer as a undefined 48 pin package. This design is about just after the z80 or 6809 came out but before the 16 bit cpu's with large memory addressing. The next version could be real TTL with a MMU and dynamic memory. ( 64k and 256k chips -- no 16k chips from the 70's era ) From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 10:45:39 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:45:39 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed Message-ID: <0IPP00CEO56Y1PB0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: MSCP SCSI controller speed > From: Paul Koning > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:22:02 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > Allison> You need a real time or single user os to get better > Allison> results. Plain old dos might do far better or maybe a > Allison> custom kernal tuned for this use. > >All you need is an application, or OS, that can queue up multiple >transfers. I thought the buffered I/O in Unix would take care of >that. > >Certainly if you do single I/Os and wait for the answer each time, >things will be slow, but the OS isn't really at fault then. > > paul True. However a RT OS has better known and predictable latency. There is also the issue of OS overhead for process control. Another way this could be improved even in the Netbsd case is to implement LRU caching so that when the IO request appears the need to hit the device for a transfer is defered. If the buffer is large the likelyhood of a cache hit is high and the idel time process can be writeback and read ahead. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 10:49:14 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:49:14 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPP00C8B5CYOI70@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: Paul Koning > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:34:10 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: > > Allison> After transistors the second evolution in computers was > Allison> packaging. > >True, at least in high end computers. Cray understood packaging -- as >far back as the CDC 6600 (1964) there is serious magic and serious >engineering in the packaging. > >On the other hand, DEC computers, while nice architecturally, don't >show anything interesting in the way of packaging. > >(A good way to look at it is that you could fit a whole CDC 6000 >series mainframe in a box not much bigger than the PDP-6 general >registers module, which are roughly contemporary.) > > paul Ah and 1964 is nearly 8 years after TX2. True for later generations. However CDC6000 was more specialized packaging where the PDP6 was a whole lot of flipchips and limited specialized packaging. Neither are right or wrong only differing goals and approach. Allison From Hans.Franke at siemens.com Wed Nov 9 11:02:53 2005 From: Hans.Franke at siemens.com (Hans Franke) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:02:53 +0100 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <43722635.90108@gmail.com> References: <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> Message-ID: <437239CD.30721.730C7009@localhost> Am 9 Nov 2005 11:39 meinte Sridhar Ayengar: > Hans Franke wrote: > > Am 9 Nov 2005 14:24 meinte Jules Richardson: > >>Hans Franke wrote: > >>>Am 9 Nov 2005 8:58 meinte James Fogg: > >>>>Sorry for my ignorance - > >>>>Who runs the VCF events? > >>>Well, our well known friend Sallam Ismail does the main VCF > >>Surely that's his lesser-known brother, Sellam? ;-) > > Nah, that's a typical case of american officials writing > > non-English names ... Even the Brits can do better here .) > Actually, isn't the preferred Arabic spelling Salaam? Jup, that's another one. It seams to depend what area they're from. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From news at computercollector.com Wed Nov 9 11:16:24 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 12:16:24 -0500 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5979@sbs.jdfogg.com> Message-ID: <001601c5e551$50dadec0$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> James, Everything everyone else said about this matter is true. (Who thought we'd ever see the day?) Please contact me off-list with Doug's contact info. (Probably best to use my personal email address, evan947 at yaho.com, rather than the CCN address.) While you're at it, being vaguely local, check out our sponsoring club: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/. We formed early this year online and became incorporated last week. - Evan -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of James Fogg Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 8:59 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: VCF questions Sorry for my ignorance - Who runs the VCF events? Do they have guest speakers? I ask because I attended a presentation by Doug McIlroy, an early computer pioneer with Bell Labs, and Thompson/Ritchie's manager. He's made significant contributions to both Unix and Multics, among other things and he has some great stories to tell about the early days and the development of Unix. His presentation was focused on personal experiences and the people he's known, but I believe he can also get very technical (he is currently an adjunct professor at Dartmouth). After the presentation I spoke for a time with Doug. He was amazed that there exists a community interested in the preservation and restoration of old computers and their software. I explained a few things about the community and some of their projects and he was interested in the idea of the VCF. He said he'd consider an opportunity to speak at the VCF or similar venues in the North East and Mid Atlantic regions. Would there be an interest in having Doug present, does the VCF have space in their program for speakers? Some info on Doug - http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_McIlroy http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/ -James From lbickley at bickleywest.com Wed Nov 9 11:32:49 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 09:32:49 -0800 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <003901c5e544$bf2a89a0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <003901c5e544$bf2a89a0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Wednesday 09 November 2005 07:46, John Allain wrote: > > Of course if they're going to implode I hope someone can save archives > > of software + docs from the days when they *did* make decent machines! > > There's a joke in there somewhere. > The leading history archive center building was donated by SGI to > Computerhistory.org, now all the boxes they moved out of Moffett > field they may have to move right back in. The Computer History Museum purchased the building directly from SGI. See: http://www.computerhistory.org/bldg/ Some of us here in Silicon Valley have been collecting and preserving SGI boxes and software for a very long time. I have at least one of every system that SGI produced from the "lowly" PI to the "mainframe" Onyx Infinite Reality with Sirius Video - and much additional optional hardware and its associated software. AFAIK, I have a copy of just about all of the software that they SGI produced from IRIX to specialized graphics software for specialized hardware and networking. The largest repository of SGI documentation outside of SGI itself is: http://futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/sgi.html This site is owned by Ian Mapleson. Ian and I have known each other for years - and I have offered - and Ian has agreed that I will be hosting the U.S. mirror of his site (which is in the process of being setup as I write). So, yes, many of us who know SGI well have been proactive for years in preserving everything SGI we can get our hands on. Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 9 11:37:02 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:37:02 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPP00C8B5CYOI70@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPP00C8B5CYOI70@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511090937020794.001C65C0@10.0.0.252> On 11/9/2005 at 11:49 AM Allison wrote: >True for later generations. However CDC6000 was more specialized >packaging where the PDP6 was a whole lot of flipchips and limited >specialized packaging. Automated wire-wrapping is less expensive than other methods, but doesn't give one the leve of control that other methods afford. It now seems incredible on what amounts to a 10 MHz mainframe, but wire length was a big part of the CDC 6600 design puzzle. I recall a friend telling me that his first assignment on his job at CDC was to take Cray's 6600 prototype and measure each coil of twisted pair to which had been attached a tag that said "tune" in preparation for actually manufacturing the thing. The old 6000-series taper-pin backplanes were a deep maze of wiring hanging here and there and the nanosecond-per-foot rule was an important part of the 6600 design. CDC continued to use taper-pin style backplanes long after other firms were using machine-wrapped backplanes, mostly, I suspect because of the ability to optimize propogation delays--and still retain the use of standardized "cordwood" logic modules. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 11:46:18 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:46:18 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPP001VR800BLX0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:37:02 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/9/2005 at 11:49 AM Allison wrote: > >>True for later generations. However CDC6000 was more specialized >>packaging where the PDP6 was a whole lot of flipchips and limited >>specialized packaging. > >Automated wire-wrapping is less expensive than other methods, but doesn't >give one the leve of control that other methods afford. depends on what your trying to control. Costs would be one dimension. ;) >It now seems incredible on what amounts to a 10 MHz mainframe, but wire >length was a big part of the CDC 6600 design puzzle. I recall a friend >telling me that his first assignment on his job at CDC was to take Cray's >6600 prototype and measure each coil of twisted pair to which had been >attached a tag that said "tune" in preparation for actually manufacturing >the thing. Not to confuse propagation delay with with clock rate. It's important as any of those delays could be critical path. However areas like ALU and memory were often the bottleneck. > The old 6000-series taper-pin backplanes were a deep maze of wiring >hanging here and there and the nanosecond-per-foot rule was an important >part of the 6600 design. CDC continued to use taper-pin style backplanes >long after other firms were using machine-wrapped backplanes, mostly, I >suspect because of the ability to optimize propogation delays--and still >retain the use of standardized "cordwood" logic modules. > >Cheers, >Chuck Every manufacturer seems to have their own favorite technology for packaging and interconnecting. Even for packaging there are more generations that appeared. Another example was DCC D112 a TTL PDP-8 but with a very differnt form factor and packaging. It however was not the first. I think it was CDC160(I should check) that helped to start that many years before. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 9 11:46:07 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:46:07 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511090946070938.0024B737@10.0.0.252> On 11/9/2005 at 10:46 AM Allison wrote: >The serious limitation for tubes has always been the heat and power >from the filament rather than the heat and power used for functional >circuits. So whatever happened to tunnel cathodes? It was a very hot topic in the 60's. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 11:53:26 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:53:26 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPP0065D8BXNQ21@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 09:46:07 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/9/2005 at 10:46 AM Allison wrote: > >>The serious limitation for tubes has always been the heat and power >>from the filament rather than the heat and power used for functional >>circuits. > >So whatever happened to tunnel cathodes? It was a very hot topic in the >60's. Not much after that. An idea that came too late in the game. If anything there were more unique designs in the gated beam, sheet beam and segmented cathode (power tubes) that evolved. Allison From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 12:02:26 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:02:26 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <17266.9474.409878.807043@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <17266.9474.409878.807043@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <437239B2.2080208@gmail.com> Paul Koning wrote: > Allison> After transistors the second evolution in computers was > Allison> packaging. > > True, at least in high end computers. Cray understood packaging -- as > far back as the CDC 6600 (1964) there is serious magic and serious > engineering in the packaging. Indeed. I used to work for the equipment engineering group that developed the equipment supporting IBM's multilayer ceramic copper interconnect packaging manufacturing process. It's an interesting process. Peace... Sridhar From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Wed Nov 9 12:18:46 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 13:18:46 -0500 Subject: WTB: DEC VR201 monitor and LK201-AA keyboard Message-ID: <97EB7FC6-22F3-46AD-8327-E5773E98FB68@xlisper.mv.com> Does anyone have a DEC VR201 monitor and/or LK201-AA keyboard they'd like to sell? It would be great if I could find one in the NH/MA area so that I can pick it up. The monitor could be kind of expensive to ship. I need these for a DECmate III+. I don't need the word processing keyboard as I expect to use this machine to run OS/278. Thanks, David Betz From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 9 12:21:12 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 13:21:12 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers References: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <200511090946070938.0024B737@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17266.15896.162733.560006@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: Chuck> On 11/9/2005 at 10:46 AM Allison wrote: >> The serious limitation for tubes has always been the heat and >> power from the filament rather than the heat and power used for >> functional circuits. Chuck> So whatever happened to tunnel cathodes? It was a very hot Chuck> topic in the 60's. You mean tunnel diodes, a.k.a., Esaki diodes? They were a passing fad. paul From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 9 12:22:21 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 10:22:21 -0800 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <003901c5e544$bf2a89a0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> <200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com> Message-ID: <200511091022210563.0045E1F1@10.0.0.252> On 11/9/2005 at 9:32 AM Lyle Bickley wrote: >The Computer History Museum purchased the building directly from SGI. >See: http://www.computerhistory.org/bldg/ That seems to fit the SGI pattern--buy it, then sell it. Did SGI sell the plumbing and fixtures with the building or were they soldt off to a third party beforehand? :) From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 9 12:27:21 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 13:27:21 -0500 Subject: SGI.... References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <003901c5e544$bf2a89a0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> <200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com> <200511091022210563.0045E1F1@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17266.16265.684405.571203@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chuck" == Chuck Guzis writes: Chuck> On 11/9/2005 at 9:32 AM Lyle Bickley wrote: >> The Computer History Museum purchased the building directly from >> SGI. See: http://www.computerhistory.org/bldg/ Chuck> That seems to fit the SGI pattern--buy it, then sell it. Could be worse. There's the Lucent pattern: buy a company. Buy another just one like it. Then run both into the ground, and shut them down. paul From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 9 12:35:56 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 10:35:56 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <17266.15896.162733.560006@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <0IPP008JA2H0CA80@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <200511090946070938.0024B737@10.0.0.252> <17266.15896.162733.560006@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511091035560144.00524FE6@10.0.0.252> On 11/9/2005 at 1:21 PM Paul Koning wrote: >You mean tunnel diodes, a.k.a., Esaki diodes? They were a passing >fad. No--that's a different animal and was quite real. The idea of the tunnel cathode was to use electron tunnelling to form a heaterless cathode. There was also some talk about p-n junction cathodes at about the same time. BTW, the last time I saw a tunnel diode in a serious application was not that long ago--it was used in a ultra-low-power broadband RF sniffer for use around explosives. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 11:38:00 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 17:38:00 +0000 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <003901c5e544$bf2a89a0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> <200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com> Message-ID: <437233F8.5060406@yahoo.co.uk> Lyle Bickley wrote: > On Wednesday 09 November 2005 07:46, John Allain wrote: > >>>Of course if they're going to implode I hope someone can save archives >>>of software + docs from the days when they *did* make decent machines! >> >>There's a joke in there somewhere. >>The leading history archive center building was donated by SGI to >>Computerhistory.org, now all the boxes they moved out of Moffett >>field they may have to move right back in. > > > The Computer History Museum purchased the building directly from SGI. > See: http://www.computerhistory.org/bldg/ > > Some of us here in Silicon Valley have been collecting and preserving SGI > boxes and software for a very long time. It's good to hear. It's a relatively hard brand to get hold of in the UK, plus boxes usually show up stripped of memory and hard disk (and of proprietary keyboards in the case of older models). A few years back the company I was working for at the time did a few projects in partnership with SGI because it was 'showcase' type work; I used to hear tales of obselete kit getting thrown out at SGI and even the employees weren't allowed to rescue it from the crusher. > I have at least one of every system > that SGI produced from the "lowly" PI to the "mainframe" Onyx Infinite > Reality with Sirius Video - and much additional optional hardware and its > associated software. Wow, that's pretty awesome. They did some very cool stuff - I was in the game too late to see the earlier stuff and only worked with the Origin 200 / 2000 hardware. At the museum we've gained a 4D/25, pair of Indigos, various Indys and an Indigo2 - but I'd love to get hold of some of the larger / older systems. It's not much to show for a company who's name lots of people have heard of. (I haven't, however, tried contacting SGI UK directly in a museum capacity and see if I can resuce anything - which might be worth a try) > AFAIK, I have a copy of just about all of the software > that they SGI produced from IRIX to specialized graphics software for > specialized hardware and networking. I'm glad someone's got it - even if it is presumably copyrighted to hell and back right now! :) > The largest repository of SGI documentation outside of SGI itself is: > http://futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/sgi.html Initial glance and that looks like a useful resource! It might be worthwhile for Ian to contact Weta Digital in NZ (Lord of the Rings fame) - they had a *huge* amount of SGI hardware when I saw it a few years ago and their machine room was most impressive (lots of blue ;) They may well be interested in supplying some details / photos though for posterity. Might make for an interesting article / feature. (unfortunately according to http://www.top500.org/sublist/Site.php?id=2343 it looks like they might have gone the IBM route in the last couple of years) cheers Jules From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 12:43:29 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 12:43:29 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000901c5e55d$7abb6d70$6401a8c0@dementium> Well, you were right. Something did blow on the VT100 video board, and in a bad way. It looks very much like it was that diode you speak of, cause there's a huge burnmark on the board at the contact points of the diode. If that's not an "I died" indicator, I don't know what is. Can anyone tell me what diode to buy to replace it? I'm thinking of getting a replacement video board, and then replacing the diode on that, just in case it took something else with it. The whole "y" trace has a brownmark around it that the diode was connected to, and that has a big cap next to it. All in all, this has been a lot easier than I thought to work on. Thanks for all your help, Tony, and everyone else too! -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: Saturday, November 05, 2005 7:03 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT > > Yes, I'm in IL. Are you a business? > > I probably need a VT100 power supply, as I found out it wasn't just the > flyback that blew. The PSU rarely fails, and if it does, it's one of the nicest SMPSUs to repair since all the control circuitry is on the 'isolated side', the drive to the chopper transistor being transformer coupled. Very often one of the diodes on the vidoe board fails -- one of the diodes that rectifies the output from the flyback transformer to produce the CRT voltages. This is often the reason that the flyback fails in the first place. I would look at those first. -tony From Useddec at aol.com Wed Nov 9 13:13:58 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 14:13:58 EST Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <209.de1a189.30a3a476@aol.com> Hi, I have the logic board, power supply, and what we used to call the "monitor board" in stock. I worked on a lot of these when I worked for Digital. I now deal in DEC parts. Thanks, Paul From healyzh at aracnet.com Wed Nov 9 13:15:48 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 11:15:48 -0800 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: At 2:02 PM +0000 11/9/05, Jules Richardson wrote: >Lack of responses to this probably indicates peoples' feelings >toward SGI these days unfortunately - they ceased being a cool >company five years ago :-( My pair of O2's (a lowly R5k 180Mhz (the crappy one), and R12k 270Mhz) are probably the most impressive machines I own (including my dual 2Ghz G5 PowerMac). When I got the first one, the R5k, I was *totally* blown away (I'd been the SysAdmin for a couple of SGI systems years ago, but never really got to play with them). Having said that, they're somewhat unfriendly to hobbyists, and they've pretty much killed off what made them cool, the MIPS range and IRIX. I don't know what it would have taken, but I can't help but think that they should have spent some resources porting IRIX to Itanium, rather than spending all that effort on Linux. I'd love to get a nice SGI Octane2 or Tezro, but I sure can't justify the expense! It would make more sense to spend the money on either a Sunblade 1000, or building a good Linux box. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 13:17:26 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 13:17:26 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <209.de1a189.30a3a476@aol.com> Message-ID: <000d01c5e562$38d75900$6401a8c0@dementium> How much are you asking for the monitor board? -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:14 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT Hi, I have the logic board, power supply, and what we used to call the "monitor board" in stock. I worked on a lot of these when I worked for Digital. I now deal in DEC parts. Thanks, Paul From brad at heeltoe.com Wed Nov 9 13:17:42 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:17:42 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:22:02 EST." <17266.8746.229071.331709@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511091917.jA9JHgRX007602@mwave.heeltoe.com> Paul Koning wrote: > >All you need is an application, or OS, that can queue up multiple >transfers. I thought the buffered I/O in Unix would take care of >that. er, ah. I think that's why they created "async i/o" in unix (I first saw it in solaris). I don't think bsd will read-ahead in a file, but I may be wrong. Writes will certainly buffer up and overlap but I don't think reads will. Each read will block until it completes (ignoring the buffer cache). After it completes nothing will happen until another read occurs. I think this is modulo the basic i/o size (page size in bsd?) but still true. "dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null" will read, slowly. I would be interesting to see how long (in comparison) these two took: dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null bs=16k count=1000 dd if=/dev/zero of=blah.null bs=16k count=1000 I suspect the write will be faster, and reflect the true speed of the i/o. if I'm all wet please correct me. things have changed in the flow from 2.9,2.11,*bsd->sunos->solaris->freebsd->netbsd->linux :-) Modern *nix's are more proactive and blur the line between vm pages and file buffer blocks (which is good). (can you mmap a file in bsd? if you can then you could simulate read-ahead by just peeking at a byte 16k ahead of where you are copying from. but I don't think you can mmap files in bsd. too bad. everything should be in your local address space :-) -brad From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 13:20:43 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:20:43 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <0IPP00FJ3CDD1VR0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:43:29 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >Well, you were right. Something did blow on the VT100 video board, and in a >bad way. It looks very much like it was that diode you speak of, cause >there's a huge burnmark on the board at the contact points of the diode. If >that's not an "I died" indicator, I don't know what is. > >Can anyone tell me what diode to buy to replace it? I'm thinking of getting >a replacement video board, and then replacing the diode on that, just in >case it took something else with it. The whole "y" trace has a brownmark >around it that the diode was connected to, and that has a big cap next to >it. Check the diode first as often they survive. If it didn't it may be the 1A 1000V device (1n4007 will work) at CR102. The cap is correct value (22uf) but about half the required working voltage so it shorts after a long time. I forget if it was C102 or c103 and the working voltage should be at least 100V but not more than 160V. or so memory says. Allison From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 13:22:25 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:22:25 -0500 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 2:02 PM +0000 11/9/05, Jules Richardson wrote: > >> Lack of responses to this probably indicates peoples' feelings toward >> SGI these days unfortunately - they ceased being a cool company five >> years ago :-( > > > My pair of O2's (a lowly R5k 180Mhz (the crappy one), and R12k 270Mhz) > are probably the most impressive machines I own (including my dual 2Ghz > G5 PowerMac). When I got the first one, the R5k, I was *totally* blown > away (I'd been the SysAdmin for a couple of SGI systems years ago, but > never really got to play with them). > > Having said that, they're somewhat unfriendly to hobbyists, and they've > pretty much killed off what made them cool, the MIPS range and IRIX. I > don't know what it would have taken, but I can't help but think that > they should have spent some resources porting IRIX to Itanium, rather > than spending all that effort on Linux. > > I'd love to get a nice SGI Octane2 or Tezro, but I sure can't justify > the expense! It would make more sense to spend the money on either a > Sunblade 1000, or building a good Linux box. Why not get an Onyx2? They've come down in price a lot. I was thinking of picking one up myself. Peace... Sridhar From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 13:23:35 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:23:35 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <0IPP007DSCI4CV81@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:17:26 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >How much are you asking for the monitor board? > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com >Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:14 PM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT > >Hi, > >I have the logic board, power supply, and what we used to call the "monitor >board" in stock. I worked on a lot of these when I worked for Digital. I >now >deal in DEC parts. > >Thanks, Paul > Make sure it's the correct one. There are three versions for the differing monitors. The monitor portion were made for DEC to spec and could be Ball brothers, Moto or I forgot. Allison From mokuba at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 13:23:47 2005 From: mokuba at gmail.com (Gary Sparkes) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 14:23:47 -0500 Subject: CP/M Archive Message-ID: I've *finally* gotten to putting the stuff online, I just gave up on my ideals of having a pretty design and actually started doing work :) I've got disk images from two systems online now, and more to follow as I find/receive them. http://www.classiccmp.org/cpm/ should work for that From Useddec at aol.com Wed Nov 9 13:25:02 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 14:25:02 EST Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <6d.515e6b85.30a3a70e@aol.com> In a message dated 11/9/2005 1:20:38 PM Central Standard Time, fireflyst at earthlink.net writes: Hi, $50, but I think there are two different vendors who made this part for DEC. Thanks, Paul From Useddec at aol.com Wed Nov 9 13:34:17 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 14:34:17 EST Subject: WTB: DEC VR201 monitor and LK201-AA keyboard Message-ID: <20f.df2ddc6.30a3a939@aol.com> Hi David, I Should have them both in stock, but will have to pull them out and test them. I have two VT or Wt78's in stock, and possible a few Decmates. Maybe even some software. Thanks, Paul From pete at dunnington.plus.com Wed Nov 9 13:37:30 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 19:37:30 GMT Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: Jules Richardson "Re: SGI...." (Nov 9, 17:38) References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <003901c5e544$bf2a89a0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> <200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com> <437233F8.5060406@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <10511091937.ZM11348@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 9 2005, 17:38, Jules Richardson wrote: > Wow, that's pretty awesome. They did some very cool stuff - I was in the > game too late to see the earlier stuff and only worked with the Origin > 200 / 2000 hardware. At the museum we've gained a 4D/25, pair of > Indigos, various Indys and an Indigo2 - but I'd love to get hold of some > of the larger / older systems. It's not much to show for a company who's > name lots of people have heard of. Hmm... my Origin2000 *might* be looking for a home, and so might one other at York. That would make a 32-CPU 2-rack machine (both have the necessary router boards and I have the Craylink cables) plus some peripherals. Interested? Do you want an O2 or two? There might be some moderately large Challenge machines available too. > Lyle Bickley wrote: > > The largest repository of SGI documentation outside of SGI itself is: > > http://futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/sgi.html > > Initial glance and that looks like a useful resource! It's well known, and I can confirm that Ian is very helpful. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pete at dunnington.plus.com Wed Nov 9 13:46:51 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 19:46:51 GMT Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: Sridhar Ayengar "Re: SGI...." (Nov 9, 14:22) References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> Message-ID: <10511091946.ZM11366@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 9 2005, 14:22, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Zane H. Healy wrote: > > I'd love to get a nice SGI Octane2 or Tezro, but I sure can't justify > > the expense! > Why not get an Onyx2? They've come down in price a lot. I was thinking > of picking one up myself. I suspect it's not the purchase price, but the electrickery costs. Just one module out of my O2K -- which is essentially the same machine as an Onyx2 but without the graphics pipelines -- eats more than a typical PDP in my collection. They make excellent hair driers and space heaters though. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From healyzh at aracnet.com Wed Nov 9 14:04:00 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 12:04:00 -0800 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> Message-ID: At 2:22 PM -0500 11/9/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >Why not get an Onyx2? They've come down in price a lot. I was >thinking of picking one up myself. I for one don't have room for one. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From lbickley at bickleywest.com Wed Nov 9 14:09:06 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 12:09:06 -0800 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <437233F8.5060406@yahoo.co.uk> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com> <437233F8.5060406@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511091209.06846.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Wednesday 09 November 2005 09:38, Jules Richardson wrote: > Lyle Bickley wrote: ---snip-- > > Some of us here in Silicon Valley have been collecting and preserving SGI > > boxes and software for a very long time. > > It's good to hear. It's a relatively hard brand to get hold of in the > UK, plus boxes usually show up stripped of memory and hard disk (and of > proprietary keyboards in the case of older models). Fortunately, I live and work in Mountain View - about 5 minutes from sgi's headquarters. The combination of easy access to sgi directly and some large sgi brokers in the immediate area helps. Some brokers and scrappers have literally given me free sgi gear. Unfortunately, it's getting more and more difficult to find the older systems - particularly high end graphics - as most have been scrapped by both sgi and brokers over the years. The "server" class systems are still relatively abundant (Challenge, Origin, etc.). > A few years back the company I was working for at the time did a few > projects in partnership with SGI because it was 'showcase' type work; I > used to hear tales of obselete kit getting thrown out at SGI and even > the employees weren't allowed to rescue it from the crusher. That was certainly true for a period of time - sgi was concerned about older (obsolete) gear competing with newer gear - and scrapped a lot a stuff. I suspect some of the gear I have was "supposed" to have been scrapped... Later on (way too late), sgi realized they had a gold mine in their older gear - and began selling older stuff at reasonable prices from their huge warehouse here in Mountain View. They still do so... > > I have at least one of every system > > > > that SGI produced from the "lowly" PI to the "mainframe" Onyx Infinite > > Reality with Sirius Video - and much additional optional hardware and its > > associated software. > > Wow, that's pretty awesome. They did some very cool stuff - I was in the > game too late to see the earlier stuff and only worked with the Origin > 200 / 2000 hardware. At the museum we've gained a 4D/25, pair of > Indigos, various Indys and an Indigo2 - but I'd love to get hold of some > of the larger / older systems. It's not much to show for a company who's > name lots of people have heard of. They're larger systems have simply awesome graphics - I've benchmarked modern PC based NVIDIA, ATI etc. vs an Onyx Infinite Reality and the sgi will overall whip the PC stuff. Of course, the price-performance ratio is a "bit" different ;-) > (I haven't, however, tried contacting SGI UK directly in a museum > capacity and see if I can resuce anything - which might be worth a try) > > > AFAIK, I have a copy of just about all of the software > > > > that they SGI produced from IRIX to specialized graphics software for > > specialized hardware and networking. > > I'm glad someone's got it - even if it is presumably copyrighted to hell > and back right now! :) It is copyrighted, bigtime... > > The largest repository of SGI documentation outside of SGI itself is: > > http://futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/sgi.html > > Initial glance and that looks like a useful resource! > > It might be worthwhile for Ian to contact Weta Digital in NZ (Lord of > the Rings fame) - they had a *huge* amount of SGI hardware when I saw it > a few years ago and their machine room was most impressive (lots of blue ;) > I pass that on to him. Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Nov 9 14:14:03 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 12:14:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <437239CD.30721.730C7009@localhost> References: <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> <437239CD.30721.730C7009@localhost> Message-ID: <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> > > >>>Well, our well known friend Sallam Ismail does the main VCF > > >>Surely that's his lesser-known brother, Sellam? ;-) > > Actually, isn't the preferred Arabic spelling Salaam? No, those are NOT the letters that are used in the Arabic spelling. But that may, indeed, be the canonical anglicization, or English transliteration. > Jup, that's another one. It seams to depend what > area they're from. 6+ years ago, he spelled it differently: On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: > straightforward. The simulator simply steps through the code space you > give it based on simulated clocking and executes the instructions as > would the actual CPU. However he wants to spell it, he does a hell of a job with VCF. I'm unhappy about missing it again this year. (may all college administrators get what they deserve) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred From allain at panix.com Wed Nov 9 14:20:36 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 15:20:36 -0500 Subject: SGI.... References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home><200511090932.50254.lbickley@bickleywest.com><437233F8.5060406@yahoo.co.uk> <200511091209.06846.lbickley@bickleywest.com> Message-ID: <0f1601c5e56b$0bd99f40$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> I am getting seriously teased. I used SGI's off and on from 1988 to 1994. I saw an original SGI at the Siggraph 1984. I was even a informal system manager for a year. Still, I own no such system. Anybody having an SGI in the northeast area they don't care much for anymore, give me a note. John A. From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 14:26:28 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 15:26:28 -0500 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> References: <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> <437239CD.30721.730C7009@localhost> <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <43725B74.9060008@gmail.com> Fred Cisin wrote: >>>>>>Well, our well known friend Sallam Ismail does the main VCF >>>>> >>>>>Surely that's his lesser-known brother, Sellam? ;-) >>> >>>Actually, isn't the preferred Arabic spelling Salaam? > > > No, those are NOT the letters that are used in the Arabic spelling. > But that may, indeed, be the canonical anglicization, or English > transliteration. That is, of course, what I meant. As my own name is a transliteration from Sanskrit to English. >>Jup, that's another one. It seams to depend what >>area they're from. > 6+ years ago, he spelled it differently: > On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: > >>straightforward. The simulator simply steps through the code space you >>give it based on simulated clocking and executes the instructions as >>would the actual CPU. I think that was him going by a nickname, no? > However he wants to spell it, he does a hell of a job with VCF. > I'm unhappy about missing it again this year. > (may all college administrators get what they deserve) I'll be at VCFE this year, I think. I missed it last year, but I was at VCFE 1.0. Peace... Sridhar From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 14:26:37 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 14:26:37 -0600 Subject: WTB: DEC VR201 monitor and LK201-AA keyboard In-Reply-To: <20f.df2ddc6.30a3a939@aol.com> Message-ID: What are your hours, Paul? I may want to come down one of these days very soon and do some shopping, if that would be OK. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:34 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: WTB: DEC VR201 monitor and LK201-AA keyboard Hi David, I Should have them both in stock, but will have to pull them out and test them. I have two VT or Wt78's in stock, and possible a few Decmates. Maybe even some software. Thanks, Paul From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 13:26:42 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:26:42 +0000 Subject: CP/M Archive In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43724D72.2070600@yahoo.co.uk> Gary Sparkes wrote: > I've *finally* gotten to putting the stuff online, I just gave up on my > ideals of having a pretty design and actually started doing work :) That sounds familiar :) From news at computercollector.com Wed Nov 9 14:42:21 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 15:42:21 -0500 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <43725B74.9060008@gmail.com> Message-ID: <005701c5e56e$15ebdef0$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> >>> I'll be at VCFE this year You mean next year. :) -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Sridhar Ayengar Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 3:26 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: VCF questions Fred Cisin wrote: >>>>>>Well, our well known friend Sallam Ismail does the main VCF >>>>> >>>>>Surely that's his lesser-known brother, Sellam? ;-) >>> >>>Actually, isn't the preferred Arabic spelling Salaam? > > > No, those are NOT the letters that are used in the Arabic spelling. > But that may, indeed, be the canonical anglicization, or English > transliteration. That is, of course, what I meant. As my own name is a transliteration from Sanskrit to English. >>Jup, that's another one. It seams to depend what area they're from. > 6+ years ago, he spelled it differently: > On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: > >>straightforward. The simulator simply steps through the code space >>you give it based on simulated clocking and executes the instructions >>as would the actual CPU. I think that was him going by a nickname, no? > However he wants to spell it, he does a hell of a job with VCF. > I'm unhappy about missing it again this year. > (may all college administrators get what they deserve) I'll be at VCFE this year, I think. I missed it last year, but I was at VCFE 1.0. Peace... Sridhar From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 13:41:20 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:41:20 +0000 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> References: <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> <437239CD.30721.730C7009@localhost> <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <437250E0.9050502@yahoo.co.uk> Fred Cisin wrote: > 6+ years ago, he spelled it differently: > On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: You know, I remember that name from the days when I first joined the list. I don't think I ever made the connection that they were the same person :) > However he wants to spell it, he does a hell of a job with VCF. From what I hear, yup! > I'm unhappy about missing it again this year. Me too, given that I'm a few thousand miles closer than normal! cheers Jules From Useddec at aol.com Wed Nov 9 14:50:20 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 15:50:20 EST Subject: WTB: DEC VR201 monitor and LK201-AA keyboard Message-ID: <25.6c4352e4.30a3bb0c@aol.com> Hi David, I don't have a store, just a LOT of DEC parts. Send me a list of what you need and I'll check on it. I have one of the largest PDP8 selections around. Where are you located? Feel free to call me at 217-586-5361 between 10 AM and 8:30 PM Chicago time. Thanks, Paul From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 14:51:58 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 15:51:58 -0500 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <005701c5e56e$15ebdef0$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> References: <005701c5e56e$15ebdef0$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: <4372616E.3060503@gmail.com> 'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: >>>>I'll be at VCFE this year > > > You mean next year. :) I suspect if you count Chinese, Hindu, Inca, Hebrew, etc. New Years Days, you could arbitrarily set the New Year to begin whenever you want. In this case, I chose today. 8-) Peace... Sridhar From news at computercollector.com Wed Nov 9 14:56:21 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 15:56:21 -0500 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <4372616E.3060503@gmail.com> Message-ID: <005901c5e570$0b28d390$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> My new year (Rosh Hoshanah) begins in September and sometimes October.... So, yeah, it is this year! -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Sridhar Ayengar Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 3:52 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: VCF questions 'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: >>>>I'll be at VCFE this year > > > You mean next year. :) I suspect if you count Chinese, Hindu, Inca, Hebrew, etc. New Years Days, you could arbitrarily set the New Year to begin whenever you want. In this case, I chose today. 8-) Peace... Sridhar From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 15:02:35 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 15:02:35 -0600 Subject: WTB: DEC VR201 monitor and LK201-AA keyboard In-Reply-To: <25.6c4352e4.30a3bb0c@aol.com> Message-ID: Sorry, this is Julian. I didn't reply to one of my own posts, oops. But I'll do that ;) -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 2:50 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: WTB: DEC VR201 monitor and LK201-AA keyboard Hi David, I don't have a store, just a LOT of DEC parts. Send me a list of what you need and I'll check on it. I have one of the largest PDP8 selections around. Where are you located? Feel free to call me at 217-586-5361 between 10 AM and 8:30 PM Chicago time. Thanks, Paul From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 14:17:29 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:17:29 +0000 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <43725959.1060908@yahoo.co.uk> Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 2:02 PM +0000 11/9/05, Jules Richardson wrote: > >> Lack of responses to this probably indicates peoples' feelings toward >> SGI these days unfortunately - they ceased being a cool company five >> years ago :-( > > > My pair of O2's (a lowly R5k 180Mhz (the crappy one), and R12k 270Mhz) > are probably the most impressive machines I own (including my dual 2Ghz > G5 PowerMac). Pretty much all of their stuff is impressive! (barring the last handful of years). Very good quality, and some pretty slick software too... > Having said that, they're somewhat unfriendly to hobbyists, and they've > pretty much killed off what made them cool, the MIPS range and IRIX. Yep, Sun seemed to get it right and actually encourage individuals to use their software and hardware. SGI on the other hand remained pretty elitist about things (perfectly within their right to do so I guess, it's just a shame) > I > don't know what it would have taken, but I can't help but think that > they should have spent some resources porting IRIX to Itanium, rather > than spending all that effort on Linux. Maybe they were paying royalties to various people on every copy of IRIX sold, or the codebase had just got too ragged after so many years and a ground-up rewrite was needed anyway to keep performance up on modern hardware... I suppose there are all sorts of reasons. I don't know why, I don't feel so bad about losing IRIX to Linux, providing the SGI toolset's all still there. NT-on-SGI is another matter, same with non-MIPS hardware... Trivia: what was the downhill skiing game available on the Indy? It featured some sort of egg-shaped character and I think was probably an OpenGL demo. I vaguely remember it entertaining people at my old work... cheers Jules From sb at thebackend.de Wed Nov 9 16:03:14 2005 From: sb at thebackend.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Sebastian_Br=FCckner?=) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 23:03:14 +0100 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> Message-ID: <43727222.1030205@thebackend.de> Zane H. Healy schrieb: > At 2:22 PM -0500 11/9/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> Why not get an Onyx2? They've come down in price a lot. I was >> thinking of picking one up myself. > > I for one don't have room for one. I don't have room anymore either since I put a Challenge XL in the only room I have for computers. Apart from the amount of electricity it eats (I of course can't keep it running full time) the power supplies keep dying. If I remember correctly I already blew four or five and since I only have a few more spares and not enough knowledge of electronice to fix them I am a bit worried... I know that those machines are supposed to run continuously but it can't be quite normal that every other time I power it up one of the supplies dies. Any hints? Is there a way to fix those things or to prevent them from blowing up altogether? cheers Sebastian From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 16:33:32 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 17:33:32 -0500 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <43727222.1030205@thebackend.de> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> <43727222.1030205@thebackend.de> Message-ID: <4372793C.7050401@gmail.com> Sebastian Br?ckner wrote: >>> Why not get an Onyx2? They've come down in price a lot. I was >>> thinking of picking one up myself. >> >> I for one don't have room for one. > > I don't have room anymore either since I put a Challenge XL in the only > room I have for computers. > > Apart from the amount of electricity it eats (I of course can't keep it > running full time) the power supplies keep dying. If I remember > correctly I already blew four or five and since I only have a few more > spares and not enough knowledge of electronice to fix them I am a bit > worried... > > I know that those machines are supposed to run continuously but it can't > be quite normal that every other time I power it up one of the supplies > dies. Any hints? Is there a way to fix those things or to prevent them > from blowing up altogether? Are you sure that you've wired your premises electrics correctly? That could cause power supplies to keep blowing. Do you have enough power supplies for the boards and other options you have installed in the system? That could be doing it too. Or if you had a boardset with an unfused short in it or something, although I would think there's probably fuses in the backplane or something. Peace... Sridhar From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 16:51:13 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 16:51:13 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <0IPP00FJ3CDD1VR0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: Yep, you know your stuff Allison. C102 and 103 are both 50v caps according to the schematic. Should I replace them with equivalent electrolytic 100v caps? I'm not an electrician, but I've built working stuff with a soldering iron when given the right parts. If I can build this into a better VT100 and not have to open it again for a good long time, it'll be worth my time and trouble now. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:21 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:43:29 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >Well, you were right. Something did blow on the VT100 video board, and in a >bad way. It looks very much like it was that diode you speak of, cause >there's a huge burnmark on the board at the contact points of the diode. If >that's not an "I died" indicator, I don't know what is. > >Can anyone tell me what diode to buy to replace it? I'm thinking of getting >a replacement video board, and then replacing the diode on that, just in >case it took something else with it. The whole "y" trace has a brownmark >around it that the diode was connected to, and that has a big cap next to >it. Check the diode first as often they survive. If it didn't it may be the 1A 1000V device (1n4007 will work) at CR102. The cap is correct value (22uf) but about half the required working voltage so it shorts after a long time. I forget if it was C102 or c103 and the working voltage should be at least 100V but not more than 160V. or so memory says. Allison From sb at thebackend.de Wed Nov 9 17:02:15 2005 From: sb at thebackend.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Sebastian_Br=FCckner?=) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:02:15 +0100 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <4372793C.7050401@gmail.com> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> <43727222.1030205@thebackend.de> <4372793C.7050401@gmail.com> Message-ID: <43727FF7.2000108@thebackend.de> Sridhar Ayengar schrieb: > Sebastian Br?ckner wrote: >> I know that those machines are supposed to run continuously but it >> can't be quite normal that every other time I power it up one of the >> supplies dies. Any hints? Is there a way to fix those things or to >> prevent them from blowing up altogether? > > Are you sure that you've wired your premises electrics correctly? That > could cause power supplies to keep blowing. Well... that could be the cause. I'm running the machine off a 16A fuse although it is designed for 25A IIRC. Of course the fuse could blow on power up but I didn't expect that to do any damage to the power supplies... maybe that was a very bad idea(tm)? > Do you have enough power supplies for the boards and other options you > have installed in the system? That could be doing it too. Or if you > had a boardset with an unfused short in it or something, although I > would think there's probably fuses in the backplane or something. After losing supplies with the original configuration (24 CPUs, ~18 SCSI channels, 1.5GB RAM) I stripped the machine to a fairly minimal configuration (something like 4 cpus, 512mb ram, no extra scsi). The problem didn't go away. Once it boots (and doesn't blow as soon as I turn it on) it runs without problems. And since it worked in that exact configuration for years for the previous owner (continuously powered on though) I expect it to be fully working. He also said that he often had to replace the power supplies after power cuts, so it might just be normal... Sebastian From williams.dan at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 17:04:16 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 23:04:16 +0000 Subject: Software find Message-ID: <26c11a640511091504x10f3c4b5h@mail.gmail.com> I got some interesting bits today : For the 380z Sbas, bcpl (4 disks), txed, zasm, cp/m 2.2 and 1.4 and Wordstar. For the Nimbus Windows 1.01 (Which I've never seen), write 2.0, various version of RM basic and Msdos 3.05. I'd like to see windows booted up the earliest version I've seen is 2.x (can't remember). Dan From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 17:23:21 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:23:21 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <0IPP00A32NLPWEO0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 16:51:13 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >Yep, you know your stuff Allison. C102 and 103 are both 50v caps according >to the schematic. Should I replace them with equivalent electrolytic 100v >caps? I'm not an electrician, but I've built working stuff with a soldering >iron when given the right parts. Perfectly reasonable thing to do. Look for other stressed parts while there. >If I can build this into a better VT100 and not have to open it again for a >good long time, it'll be worth my time and trouble now. I've done a few of them and never seen them fail. Considering that the original lasted typically 2 years at 100% power on you can see it should last. FYI: the original problem was a 50V part in a circuit that had 70+ Volt spikes. Part was simply mis spec'ed. I remember seeing 5 refrigerator (large ones) boxes full of failed boards due to that error. Allison >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Allison >Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:21 PM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > >> >>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> From: "Julian Wolfe" >> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:43:29 -0600 >> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >> >>Well, you were right. Something did blow on the VT100 video board, and in >a >>bad way. It looks very much like it was that diode you speak of, cause >>there's a huge burnmark on the board at the contact points of the diode. >If >>that's not an "I died" indicator, I don't know what is. >> >>Can anyone tell me what diode to buy to replace it? I'm thinking of >getting >>a replacement video board, and then replacing the diode on that, just in >>case it took something else with it. The whole "y" trace has a brownmark >>around it that the diode was connected to, and that has a big cap next to >>it. > >Check the diode first as often they survive. If it didn't it may be >the 1A 1000V device (1n4007 will work) at CR102. The cap is correct value >(22uf) but about half the required working voltage so it shorts after a >long time. I forget if it was C102 or c103 and the working voltage should >be at least 100V but not more than 160V. or so memory says. > >Allison > > > > From classiccmp at vintage-computer.com Wed Nov 9 17:35:46 2005 From: classiccmp at vintage-computer.com (Erik Klein) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 15:35:46 -0800 (PST) Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <56482.127.0.0.1.1131579346.squirrel@www.vintage-computer.com> I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 pictures. There are no descriptions yet (any help would be appreciated - let me know if you recognize folks, items or whatnot) but I'll hopefully get to them soon. Enjoy! http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcf8.shtml -- Erik Klein www.vintage-computer.com www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum The Vintage Computer Forum From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 16:32:54 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 22:32:54 +0000 Subject: Software find In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511091504x10f3c4b5h@mail.gmail.com> References: <26c11a640511091504x10f3c4b5h@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <43727916.7@yahoo.co.uk> Dan Williams wrote: > I got some interesting bits today : > > For the 380z Sbas, bcpl (4 disks), txed, zasm, cp/m 2.2 and 1.4 and Wordstar. > For the Nimbus Windows 1.01 (Which I've never seen), write 2.0, > various version of RM basic and Msdos 3.05. > I'd like to see windows booted up the earliest version I've seen is > 2.x (can't remember). Hmm, RM Windows would be interesting. I've got an RM laptop with 2.x on it, but maybe 1.01 would run on it too. I *think* I have copies of all those 380Z disks, but I'll check when I get back to the UK... cheers Jules From alberto at a2sistemi.it Wed Nov 9 17:41:43 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:41:43 +0100 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I think what I might do next is get a spare comparactor chip of the same > type (LM339) and connect the power and ground pins to the power and > ground pins of the chip on the board (I am not _sure_ they both have the > same power and ground connections, check this!). Then link the inputs -- > right way round -- to each of the 4 comparators in the undervoltage > circuit in turn. Put a suitable pull-up resistor (to the comparator power > connection on the output). I have found the voltage under threshold isolating one by one the output of the four comparator (desoldering the pin) and there is two voltage out of range : +12V is 11V and -12V is 10V. In fact the two comparator of the two voltage, if connected, shut down the power supply. I have test the power supply without the two comparator output connected, and it work , with load ... but I have tested it for a short time, no more than 20-30 sec, I'm afraid of dangerous effect :) Tomorrow I try to undestand how these voltages are low. Alberto. ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 9 17:48:00 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 15:48:00 -0800 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> On 11/9/2005 at 12:40 AM woodelf wrote: >Unicorn Electronics may have a few in stock. They are about $20 each. >http://www.unicornelectronics.com/ "Holey Moley!" to quote Homer Simpson. $20 for this chip? I may still have one of these (picked up out of a Radio Shack clearance bin). If I can find it, you can have it for $5 (I'm sure I didn't pay more than that for it). Give me a few days to look. Does anyone need any of the GI AY-3-8910 sound chips? I've got about 4 of those, too. I'm not going to use them. What else is desirable in terms of old silicon? I've got tons of old 4116 and 4164 DRAM and no place to put it. Cheers, Chuck From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Nov 9 17:58:19 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 23:58:19 +0000 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <56482.127.0.0.1.1131579346.squirrel@www.vintage-computer.com> Message-ID: On 9/11/05 23:35, "Erik Klein" wrote: > I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 pictures. There > are no descriptions yet (any help would be appreciated - let me know if > you recognize folks, items or whatnot) but I'll hopefully get to them > soon. I know this is subjective and opinion based, but....wow..... http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/elisabeth.jpg Not that it's my favourite machine or anything :) A From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 9 18:07:54 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 17:07:54 -0700 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43728F5A.6020301@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >"Holey Moley!" to quote Homer Simpson. $20 for this chip? I may still >have one of these (picked up out of a Radio Shack clearance bin). If I can >find it, you can have it for $5 (I'm sure I didn't pay more than that for >it). Give me a few days to look. > > > "oooohhhhh! a donut just lieing there" here's my quote ... I don't set the prices. Did anybody build any real projects from radio shack? I picked up a few gated FF's and nand gates but never got farther than that. >Does anyone need any of the GI AY-3-8910 sound chips? I've got about 4 of >those, too. I'm not going to use them. > >What else is desirable in terms of old silicon? I've got tons of old 4116 >and 4164 DRAM and no place to put it. > > > Just looking at the photos of VCF 8, and grumbles that I can't read the print on the "difference engine 2". How come you never get real projects from children's toys? >Chuck > > What extra chips. !? I 'll take input LS nands and FF's and some OC gates .. Even more if they are free. :) . From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 18:12:10 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 18:12:10 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <0IPP00A32NLPWEO0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: The whole situation makes a lot of sense now too. I wonder if the cause of this wasn't a weak cap. They do "dry out" after sitting for a long time like that anyway, which I believe this one had. Usually with old monitors, I try to leave them on if possible, and just turn the brightness and/or contrast down so they don't burn in. That's what I've done with the VT220 I have and it seems to be much happier as a result...and bonus with the VT220, because it has its own built in screen saver. I wish everything I owned was built like this. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 5:23 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 16:51:13 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >Yep, you know your stuff Allison. C102 and 103 are both 50v caps according >to the schematic. Should I replace them with equivalent electrolytic 100v >caps? I'm not an electrician, but I've built working stuff with a soldering >iron when given the right parts. Perfectly reasonable thing to do. Look for other stressed parts while there. >If I can build this into a better VT100 and not have to open it again for a >good long time, it'll be worth my time and trouble now. I've done a few of them and never seen them fail. Considering that the original lasted typically 2 years at 100% power on you can see it should last. FYI: the original problem was a 50V part in a circuit that had 70+ Volt spikes. Part was simply mis spec'ed. I remember seeing 5 refrigerator (large ones) boxes full of failed boards due to that error. Allison >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Allison >Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:21 PM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > >> >>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> From: "Julian Wolfe" >> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:43:29 -0600 >> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >> >>Well, you were right. Something did blow on the VT100 video board, and in >a >>bad way. It looks very much like it was that diode you speak of, cause >>there's a huge burnmark on the board at the contact points of the diode. >If >>that's not an "I died" indicator, I don't know what is. >> >>Can anyone tell me what diode to buy to replace it? I'm thinking of >getting >>a replacement video board, and then replacing the diode on that, just in >>case it took something else with it. The whole "y" trace has a brownmark >>around it that the diode was connected to, and that has a big cap next to >>it. > >Check the diode first as often they survive. If it didn't it may be >the 1A 1000V device (1n4007 will work) at CR102. The cap is correct value >(22uf) but about half the required working voltage so it shorts after a >long time. I forget if it was C102 or c103 and the working voltage should >be at least 100V but not more than 160V. or so memory says. > >Allison > > > > From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 9 17:13:23 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 23:13:23 +0000 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <56482.127.0.0.1.1131579346.squirrel@www.vintage-computer.com> References: <56482.127.0.0.1.1131579346.squirrel@www.vintage-computer.com> Message-ID: <43728292.7000801@yahoo.co.uk> Erik Klein wrote: > I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 pictures. nice pics. Obvious observation: did nobody truck in any big stuff? It looks to all be home micro / desktop class stuff. The only larger item seems to be: http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/debic.jpg what the hell is that!? :-) Display data looks like some form of RedHat Linux-a-like booting up... cheers Jules From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 9 18:27:06 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:27:06 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <0IPP009XIQJWELZ0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:12:10 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >The whole situation makes a lot of sense now too. I wonder if the cause of >this wasn't a weak cap. They do "dry out" after sitting for a long time >like that anyway, which I believe this one had. Like I said DEC made a truckload of these with a 50V cap where a 75V or higher cap should have been used. Most died in the first two years. Those that werent used much lasted decades, but failure was enevitable due to an undervoltage part. >Usually with old monitors, I try to leave them on if possible, and just turn >the brightness and/or contrast down so they don't burn in. That's what I've >done with the VT220 I have and it seems to be much happier as a result...and >bonus with the VT220, because it has its own built in screen saver. There were s a few issues with those too, but they were overall good. >I wish everything I owned was built like this. DEC tried, often succeeded. Allison > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Allison >Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 5:23 PM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > >> >>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> From: "Julian Wolfe" >> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 16:51:13 -0600 >> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >> >>Yep, you know your stuff Allison. C102 and 103 are both 50v caps according >>to the schematic. Should I replace them with equivalent electrolytic 100v >>caps? I'm not an electrician, but I've built working stuff with a >soldering >>iron when given the right parts. > >Perfectly reasonable thing to do. Look for other stressed parts while >there. > >>If I can build this into a better VT100 and not have to open it again for a >>good long time, it'll be worth my time and trouble now. > >I've done a few of them and never seen them fail. Considering that the >original lasted typically 2 years at 100% power on you can see it should >last. >FYI: the original problem was a 50V part in a circuit that had 70+ Volt >spikes. >Part was simply mis spec'ed. I remember seeing 5 refrigerator (large ones) >boxes full of failed boards due to that error. > > >Allison > > > >>-----Original Message----- >>From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >>On Behalf Of Allison >>Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:21 PM >>To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> >>> >>>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >>> From: "Julian Wolfe" >>> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:43:29 -0600 >>> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" >> >>> >>>Well, you were right. Something did blow on the VT100 video board, and in >>a >>>bad way. It looks very much like it was that diode you speak of, cause >>>there's a huge burnmark on the board at the contact points of the diode. >>If >>>that's not an "I died" indicator, I don't know what is. >>> >>>Can anyone tell me what diode to buy to replace it? I'm thinking of >>getting >>>a replacement video board, and then replacing the diode on that, just in >>>case it took something else with it. The whole "y" trace has a brownmark >>>around it that the diode was connected to, and that has a big cap next to >>>it. >> >>Check the diode first as often they survive. If it didn't it may be >>the 1A 1000V device (1n4007 will work) at CR102. The cap is correct value >>(22uf) but about half the required working voltage so it shorts after a >>long time. I forget if it was C102 or c103 and the working voltage should >>be at least 100V but not more than 160V. or so memory says. >> >>Allison >> >> >> >> > > From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Wed Nov 9 18:26:46 2005 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 16:26:46 -0800 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> References: <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> <437239CD.30721.730C7009@localhost> <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: On 11/9/05, Fred Cisin wrote: > > > 6+ years ago, he spelled it differently: > On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: > > straightforward. The simulator simply steps through the code space you > > give it based on simulated clocking and executes the instructions as > > would the actual CPU. > > However he wants to spell it, he does a hell of a job with VCF. > I'm unhappy about missing it again this year. > (may all college administrators get what they deserve) I've only missed one (west coast) VCF. Sellam did a hell of a job again this year. I'm sure I'll have time in the next 12 months to get an exhibit together for next year. (I say that every year.) Regarding names, I keep on half expecting Sellam start his VCF presentation with "Call me Ishmael" or "Call me Sam". (Both are from opening lines of good books, one famous, one less so.) If I had his name, I couldn't resist the joke. Unfortunately, no one would laugh at "Call me Eric." Until they looked at me, that is. Eric From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 18:31:17 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:31:17 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <43728292.7000801@yahoo.co.uk> References: <56482.127.0.0.1.1131579346.squirrel@www.vintage-computer.com> <43728292.7000801@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <437294D5.2040409@gmail.com> Jules Richardson wrote: > Erik Klein wrote: > >> I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 pictures. > > > nice pics. > > Obvious observation: did nobody truck in any big stuff? It looks to all > be home micro / desktop class stuff. The only larger item seems to be: > > http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/debic.jpg > > what the hell is that!? :-) Display data looks like some form of RedHat > Linux-a-like booting up... It might be a beowulf cluster. Peace... Sridhar From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Wed Nov 9 18:36:26 2005 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 16:36:26 -0800 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: References: <4372316A.14416.72EBAD31@localhost> <437239CD.30721.730C7009@localhost> <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: On 11/9/05, Eric J Korpela wrote: > > > > On 11/9/05, Fred Cisin wrote: > > > > > > 6+ years ago, he spelled it differently: > > On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: > > > straightforward. The simulator simply steps through the code space you > > > give it based on simulated clocking and executes the instructions as > > > would the actual CPU. > > > > However he wants to spell it, he does a hell of a job with VCF. > > I'm unhappy about missing it again this year. > > (may all college administrators get what they deserve) > > > I've only missed one (west coast) VCF. Sellam did a hell of a job again > this year. I'm sure I'll have time in the next 12 months to get an exhibit > together for next year. (I say that every year.) > > Regarding names, I keep on half expecting Sellam start his VCF > presentation with "Call me Ishmael" or "Call me Sam". (Both are from opening > lines of good books, one famous, one less so.) If I had his name, I couldn't > resist the joke. Unfortunately, no one would laugh at "Call me Eric." Until > they looked at me, that is. > And as far as anglicised names go, if their owners want them, fine. If they don't, that's their choice, too. If my name were really Erkki, I'd still call myself Eric. Especially since I can't pronounce Erkki. Besides, there's at least one other internetworked Erkki Korpela. I'm more unique as Eric. Athough there's another Eric in Pennsylvania, he doesn't seem to have an internet presence. (Eat your heart out Eric Smith. :) ) Eric From dholland at woh.rr.com Wed Nov 9 18:37:47 2005 From: dholland at woh.rr.com (David Holland) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:37:47 -0500 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <1131583067.15159.8.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> On Wed, 2005-11-09 at 14:02 +0000, Jules Richardson wrote: > David Holland wrote: > > Damn... :-( > > > > http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2005/november/nyse.html > > Lack of responses to this probably indicates peoples' feelings toward > SGI these days unfortunately - they ceased being a cool company five > years ago :-( Yeah, unfortunately, though I thought it was longer ago than that they tried the WinNT route. That's when I think they really started taking the wrong turn. (IMO) > > Of course if they're going to implode I hope someone can save archives > of software + docs from the days when they *did* make decent machines! I like most of their MIPS boxes. My most impressive box is a Crimson in a converted PowerSeries frame. I find it fairly interesting the Crimson is 3x bigger, and 3x quieter than my Linux PC. (Of course, I think it uses about 9x the electricity.) Would still like to find a Onyx "deskside" w/ an IR boardset. (A properset of Crimson skins would be nice too. hint, hint. :-) ) David > > cheers > > Jules From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 9 18:44:39 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 16:44:39 -0800 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <43728F5A.6020301@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> <43728F5A.6020301@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511091644390968.01A3E28A@10.0.0.252> RS's collection of IC's was always very strange. Simple TTL, a little CMOS and then some high-integration devices like the 76477. Same for discretes. Part of getting old is not remembering things. Today I was looking for something (A Cipher 525 tape drive) that I bought NOS years ago and left in its original box. I thought I'd found it, opened the box and discovered a Sinclair ZX80 with the "A Course in BASIC Programming" book. The problem is that I don't remember getting this thing--I'm sure I didn't buy it. Maybe Dave McGlone tossed it in when we were swapping junk years ago. (P.S. I did find the Cipher and discovered that I bought two of them). I don't know if it works, since I don't know the polarity of the 9vdc adapter. Either way, is this just common trash or is this actually worth something?. My wife suggested that I throw it out; she figures that if I didn't even know that I had it after all these years, that I certainly don't need it now. Cheers, Chuck From news at computercollector.com Wed Nov 9 18:56:16 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 19:56:16 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <43728292.7000801@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <008d01c5e591$8f41cd00$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> That's an original Google server from Boris Debic (who works at Google). Not truly vintage in my opinion, but still quite interesting. >>> did nobody truck in any big stuff? I think the working Babbage machine replica counts as big stuff! Alas, it's true, VCF was light on Big Iron this year. But for those who haven't ever attended, don't let that scare you off. This year was just a fluke. I promise Big Iron at VCF East next spring!! -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jules Richardson Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 6:13 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: VCF 8.0 Pictures Erik Klein wrote: > I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 pictures. nice pics. Obvious observation: did nobody truck in any big stuff? It looks to all be home micro / desktop class stuff. The only larger item seems to be: http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/debic.jpg what the hell is that!? :-) Display data looks like some form of RedHat Linux-a-like booting up... cheers Jules From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 9 18:18:46 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:18:46 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reliable 3.5" DSHD diskettes In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051108185213.1a0702e2@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> from "Joe R." at Nov 8, 5 06:52:13 pm Message-ID: > Bummer! I'd been thinking for years about trying that. Oh well it's a > good thing that I have plenty of 9114 and HP-IL cassette drives. Now if I > could just find a GOOD source of those darned tapes! I'd settle for a source of good tapes ;-). Most of them have got pressure pad preoblems by now, alas. This can be cured (I wrote an article in the HPCC journal about doing this), but I am not sure how long-lived the result is. Personally, I only use the 82161 tape drive to read tapes that somebody else gices me. I don't use it as a serious mass storage device for my own programs. -tony From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 19:04:57 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 19:04:57 -0600 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511091644390968.01A3E28A@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: Yes but I try not to knock them too much. I love it when they put those pin-configurable RJ45 to DB25 adapters on sale for $1.49 - they're absolutely awesome for hooking up terminals and whatnot. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 6:45 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: SN76477N RS's collection of IC's was always very strange. Simple TTL, a little CMOS and then some high-integration devices like the 76477. Same for discretes. Part of getting old is not remembering things. Today I was looking for something (A Cipher 525 tape drive) that I bought NOS years ago and left in its original box. I thought I'd found it, opened the box and discovered a Sinclair ZX80 with the "A Course in BASIC Programming" book. The problem is that I don't remember getting this thing--I'm sure I didn't buy it. Maybe Dave McGlone tossed it in when we were swapping junk years ago. (P.S. I did find the Cipher and discovered that I bought two of them). I don't know if it works, since I don't know the polarity of the 9vdc adapter. Either way, is this just common trash or is this actually worth something?. My wife suggested that I throw it out; she figures that if I didn't even know that I had it after all these years, that I certainly don't need it now. Cheers, Chuck From chd_1 at nktelco.net Wed Nov 9 19:09:46 2005 From: chd_1 at nktelco.net (Charles H. Dickman) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:09:46 -0500 Subject: DEC backplane repair Message-ID: <43729DDA.602@nktelco.net> What is the best way to fix a wire wrapped backplane? I have a pdp-11/40 with a short to ground in one of the backplane runs. I probed the backplane with a wooden stick and with some wire tyes and the short went away. I have a pretty good idea which segment of wire is the problem. I have probed the area again and I can't get it to come back. So, what should I do? 1. Be happy it is working. Note the problem in my log book. Wait for it to happen again. 2. Replace that run in the backplane. I figure I will have to replace most of the run because this segment is on the lowest wrap level and in the middle of the run, so I have to replace this one and the ones on either side. I have done some wire wrapping, but this thing is very intimidating. Replacing the wire is easy, but I am afraid that taking out the old ones will create another problem. These backplanes have the wires pretty taught and they are pulled over square edged pins. How fragile is the backplane wiring? If you have a PDP-11/40 then the KM11 is your friend. I have been troubleshooting this problem for a while, but after I handbuild a KM11 (from Tony Duell's notes), the problem was obvious. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 9 18:33:15 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:33:15 +0000 (GMT) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2502@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> from "Gooijen, Henk" at Nov 9, 5 08:58:00 am Message-ID: > just a short question, I have seen so much that I start > doubting everything :-( > After you pressed the CLR key on the 11/34 console > (to get a clear start point), if you *only* press the > CNTRL key, nothing should happen, right? Right. The CNTRL key is a bit like a shift key, and should do nothing on its own. To answere one of your other posts, I would expect data to be written ot the display latch quite frequently (of the order of ms) _but_ the write pulse will be narrow (a few us at most), and if you've got the analyser set up to sample for long enough to display several display scans, you might well miss some of the write pulses because they occur between analyser samples. I think the K100D has 'gltich capture' for just this sort of problem, try selecting it for the input you use for the write pulse. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 9 19:01:56 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 01:01:56 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: from "Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi" at Nov 10, 5 00:41:43 am Message-ID: > I have found the voltage under threshold isolating one by one the output of > the four comparator (desoldering the pin) and there is two voltage out of > range : +12V is 11V and -12V is 10V. In fact the two comparator of the two > voltage, if connected, shut down the power supply. Do you have anough load on the _+5V_ supply? Remember, these supplies regulate the 5V output (that's the one that's fed back to the error amplifier on the 3524 chip), and the other outputs follow along. If you don't give the 5V supply enough load, the supply doesn't have to 'work very hard', and the other outputs tend to be low. Alos check the output capacitors. A dried up one will cause all sorts of problems. -tony From pechter at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 19:16:27 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:16:27 -0500 Subject: VT100 video board repair. In-Reply-To: <0IPP00FJ3CDD1VR0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPP00FJ3CDD1VR0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43729F6B.2030509@gmail.com> I believe that you can get by with a fairly wide range of diodes and caps if you just readjust the video after throwing the cap and diode in. If I remember correctly the diode was 50v -- and should be at least 100 as you say. I think I used a 47uf once since I had the right voltage on the shelf at Radio Shack. The good news is I think the thing's still working. Bill Allison wrote: >>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> From: "Julian Wolfe" >> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 12:43:29 -0600 >> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" >> >>Well, you were right. Something did blow on the VT100 video board, and in a >>bad way. It looks very much like it was that diode you speak of, cause >>there's a huge burnmark on the board at the contact points of the diode. If >>that's not an "I died" indicator, I don't know what is. >> >>Can anyone tell me what diode to buy to replace it? I'm thinking of getting >>a replacement video board, and then replacing the diode on that, just in >>case it took something else with it. The whole "y" trace has a brownmark >>around it that the diode was connected to, and that has a big cap next to >>it. >> >> > >Check the diode first as often they survive. If it didn't it may be >the 1A 1000V device (1n4007 will work) at CR102. The cap is correct value >(22uf) but about half the required working voltage so it shorts after a >long time. I forget if it was C102 or c103 and the working voltage should >be at least 100V but not more than 160V. or so memory says. > >Allison > > > > > > From pechter at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 19:17:41 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:17:41 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <0IPP007DSCI4CV81@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPP007DSCI4CV81@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43729FB5.7070903@gmail.com> If I remember correctly there's a later varient which worked with the different ones. IIRC most were Ball Brothers. Bill Allison wrote: >>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> From: "Julian Wolfe" >> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:17:26 -0600 >> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" >> >>How much are you asking for the monitor board? >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >>On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com >>Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:14 PM >>To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >>Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> >>Hi, >> >>I have the logic board, power supply, and what we used to call the "monitor >>board" in stock. I worked on a lot of these when I worked for Digital. I >>now >>deal in DEC parts. >> >>Thanks, Paul >> >> >> >Make sure it's the correct one. There are three versions for the differing >monitors. The monitor portion were made for DEC to spec and could be >Ball brothers, Moto or I forgot. > >Allison > > > From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Nov 9 19:18:36 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 20:18:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <43725959.1060908@yahoo.co.uk> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43725959.1060908@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511100121.UAA16131@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Yep, Sun seemed to get it right and actually encourage individuals to > use their software and hardware. As in, the way the transform engine on the cg6 is documented? As in the way the cg14 is even less well documented? (In particular, so badly documented that while I have reason to think opening it up to userland opens security holes, I have no idea just what they are or how to avoid them - or how to use hardware in question.) Or have I just managed to miss the documents in question every time I've gone looking? I would *love* this to be the case.... (Of course, this is not to say that SGI isn't worse than Sun.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 9 19:33:17 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 17:33:17 -0800 Subject: DEC backplane repair In-Reply-To: <43729DDA.602@nktelco.net> References: <43729DDA.602@nktelco.net> Message-ID: <200511091733170408.01D06639@10.0.0.252> On 11/9/2005 at 8:09 PM Charles H. Dickman wrote: >2. Replace that run in the backplane. > >I figure I will have to replace most of the run because this segment is >on the lowest wrap level and in the middle of the run, so I have to >replace this one and the ones on either side. How about just clipping either side of the wire and adding a wrap on top, leaving the bottom wraps in place? Is there room to do this? From chd_1 at nktelco.net Wed Nov 9 19:49:02 2005 From: chd_1 at nktelco.net (Charles H. Dickman) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:49:02 -0500 Subject: DEC backplane repair In-Reply-To: <200511091733170408.01D06639@10.0.0.252> References: <43729DDA.602@nktelco.net> <200511091733170408.01D06639@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4372A70E.9070705@nktelco.net> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/9/2005 at 8:09 PM Charles H. Dickman wrote: > >>. Replace that run in the backplane. >> >>I figure I will have to replace most of the run because this segment is >>on the lowest wrap level and in the middle of the run, so I have to >>replace this one and the ones on either side. >> >> >How about just clipping either side of the wire and adding a wrap on top, >leaving the bottom wraps in place? Is there room to do this? > > > A good suggestion that had not occurred to me. Unfortunately, I have a difficult time even seeing the wire, let alone actually cutting it. I can imagine unwrapping it and then tugging it out, but I don't have a snippers small enought to cut it out. -chuck From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 19:55:19 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 19:55:19 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <43729FB5.7070903@gmail.com> Message-ID: Mine is what's described as a "Digital" board. It looks very similar to the Ball Brothers unit. The flyback used is the same as the Elston one though. Weird stuff. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Bill Pechter Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 7:18 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT If I remember correctly there's a later varient which worked with the different ones. IIRC most were Ball Brothers. Bill Allison wrote: >>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> From: "Julian Wolfe" >> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:17:26 -0600 >> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" >> >>How much are you asking for the monitor board? >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >>On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com >>Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:14 PM >>To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >>Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> >>Hi, >> >>I have the logic board, power supply, and what we used to call the "monitor >>board" in stock. I worked on a lot of these when I worked for Digital. I >>now >>deal in DEC parts. >> >>Thanks, Paul >> >> >> >Make sure it's the correct one. There are three versions for the differing >monitors. The monitor portion were made for DEC to spec and could be >Ball brothers, Moto or I forgot. > >Allison > > > From dave04a at dunfield.com Wed Nov 9 20:06:07 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 21:06:07 -0500 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N Message-ID: <20051110020606.LNJI14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> >Today I was looking for something (A Cipher 525 tape drive) that I bought >NOS years ago and left in its original box. I thought I'd found it, opened >the box and discovered a Sinclair ZX80 with the "A Course in BASIC >Programming" book. The problem is that I don't remember getting this >thing--I'm sure I didn't buy it. Maybe Dave McGlone tossed it in when we >were swapping junk years ago. (P.S. I did find the Cipher and discovered >that I bought two of them). > >I don't know if it works, since I don't know the polarity of the 9vdc >adapter. Either way, is this just common trash or is this actually worth >something?. My wife suggested that I throw it out; she figures that if I >didn't even know that I had it after all these years, that I certainly >don't need it now. The ZX80 is the immediate predecessor of the ZX81/Timex-1000, which are VERY common. The ZX80 isn't quite so common, but I think there should be lots around - although I've not stumbled on another one lately. I'm pretty sure the adapter is the same as the ZX81/T1000 - and if you take a look inside it's just a series linear regulator (7805) and it should be pretty easy to figure out the polarity - if you want, I can dig mine out and measure it. Don't toss it - Mines in sad shape (previous owner drilled holes to mount switches, broke the corner off the cabinet and lost the original integer ROM after upgrading to the FP rom) - I've been keeping a lookout for a better specimen, however as noted above I haven't run across one yet. I'd be happy to give it a better home than the dustbin. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From ingrammp at earthlink.net Wed Nov 9 20:45:47 2005 From: ingrammp at earthlink.net (mike ingram) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 19:45:47 -0700 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <43727222.1030205@thebackend.de> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> <43727222.1030205@thebackend.de> Message-ID: It might just be weak power supplies. There was a recall issued by SGI about the Challenge XL power supply, I remember our SGI tech dropping by to replace the PS on our Challenge XL . The machine ran 24/7 on a UPS for years and we were always very worried about turning the darn thing off. Mike On Nov 9, 2005, at 3:03 PM, Sebastian Br?ckner wrote: > Zane H. Healy schrieb: > >> At 2:22 PM -0500 11/9/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> >>> Why not get an Onyx2? They've come down in price a lot. I was >>> thinking of picking one up myself. >>> >> I for one don't have room for one. >> > > I don't have room anymore either since I put a Challenge XL in the > only room I have for computers. > > Apart from the amount of electricity it eats (I of course can't > keep it running full time) the power supplies keep dying. If I > remember correctly I already blew four or five and since I only > have a few more spares and not enough knowledge of electronice to > fix them I am a bit worried... > > I know that those machines are supposed to run continuously but it > can't be quite normal that every other time I power it up one of > the supplies dies. Any hints? Is there a way to fix those things or > to prevent them from blowing up altogether? > > cheers > Sebastian > From vax9000 at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 20:57:20 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 21:57:20 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: <200511091917.jA9JHgRX007602@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <17266.8746.229071.331709@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511091917.jA9JHgRX007602@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: On 11/9/05, Brad Parker wrote: > > Paul Koning wrote: > > > >All you need is an application, or OS, that can queue up multiple > >transfers. I thought the buffered I/O in Unix would take care of > >that. > > er, ah. I think that's why they created "async i/o" in unix (I first > saw it in solaris). I don't think bsd will read-ahead in a file, but I > may be wrong. > > Writes will certainly buffer up and overlap but I don't think reads > will. Each read will block until it completes (ignoring the buffer > cache). After it completes nothing will happen until another read > occurs. I think this is modulo the basic i/o size (page size in bsd?) > but still true. > > "dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null" > > will read, slowly. I would be interesting to see how long (in comparison) > these two took: > > dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null bs=16k count=1000 16384000 bytes transferred in 21 secs (780190 bytes/sec) > dd if=/dev/zero of=blah.null bs=16k count=1000 16384000 bytes transferred in 35 secs (468114 bytes/sec) > > I suspect the write will be faster, and reflect the true speed of the i/o. It is the opposite. strange. > > if I'm all wet please correct me. things have changed in the flow from > 2.9,2.11,*bsd->sunos->solaris->freebsd->netbsd->linux :-) Modern *nix's > are more proactive and blur the line between vm pages and file buffer > blocks (which is good). > > (can you mmap a file in bsd? if you can then you could simulate read-ahead > by just peeking at a byte 16k ahead of where you are copying from. but > I don't think you can mmap files in bsd. too bad. everything should be > in your local address space :-) > > -brad > > From vax9000 at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 21:06:06 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 22:06:06 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: References: <17266.8746.229071.331709@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511091917.jA9JHgRX007602@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: On 11/9/05, 9000 VAX wrote: > > > > dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null bs=16k count=1000 > 16384000 bytes transferred in 21 secs (780190 bytes/sec) > > dd if=/dev/zero of=blah.null bs=16k count=1000 > 16384000 bytes transferred in 35 secs (468114 bytes/sec) > > > > I suspect the write will be faster, and reflect the true speed of the i/o. > It is the opposite. strange. OK, maybe you are right. The write operation should be faster. The OS latency there is smaller. It was my controller that slowed down the write operation. I need to take a look to find out why. vax, 9000 From vax9000 at gmail.com Wed Nov 9 21:16:55 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 22:16:55 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: References: <17266.8746.229071.331709@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511091917.jA9JHgRX007602@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: On 11/9/05, 9000 VAX wrote: > On 11/9/05, 9000 VAX wrote: > > > > > > dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null bs=16k count=1000 > > 16384000 bytes transferred in 21 secs (780190 bytes/sec) > > > dd if=/dev/zero of=blah.null bs=16k count=1000 > > 16384000 bytes transferred in 35 secs (468114 bytes/sec) > > > > > > I suspect the write will be faster, and reflect the true speed of the i/o. > > It is the opposite. strange. > > OK, maybe you are right. The write operation should be faster. The OS > latency there is smaller. It was my controller that slowed down the > write operation. I need to take a look to find out why. The read operation used block mode DMA and the write operation used burst mode DMA (slower). It seems there is more debugging work to do. vax, 9000 > > vax, 9000 > From patrick at vintagecomputermarketplace.com Wed Nov 9 21:21:04 2005 From: patrick at vintagecomputermarketplace.com (Patrick/VCM SysOp) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 19:21:04 -0800 Subject: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly In-Reply-To: <007501c5e501$e92a7910$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> References: <007501c5e501$e92a7910$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: <4372BCA0.8010409@vintagecomputermarketplace.com> My bad, sorry folks! --Patrick 'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: > Err, that's Pittsburgh. Big difference. Far away. > > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Patrick > Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 2:42 AM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Vax 4000 on VCM needs rescue in Philly > > http://www.vintagecomputermarketplace.com/view.cfm?ad=2062 From jwest at classiccmp.org Wed Nov 9 21:33:39 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 21:33:39 -0600 Subject: valid classiccmp email addresss? References: <4371FBDB.8070600@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <02ae01c5e5a7$8b066b40$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Jules wrote.... > I just noticed that Al (and occasionally a few others) send email to > 'classiccmp at classiccmp.org' rather than the usual cctalk / cctech > addresses. It's the original list address, before the cctalk/cctech views of the same list were implemented. It's still there as a valid entry to the list. > Is that a valid address? It's obviously working, I just don't filter on it > in my mail client and was wondering whether I should be or not! :-) > > (IIRC that was the list address prior to the cctalk/cctech split a while > back, but I assume Jay might be ditching it one day if so) Well, actually, perhaps just the opposite. It is possible that the cctech/cctalk views of the list will be rejoined back in to classiccmp. I've been thinking seriously about that for some time. First, bear in mind, they are the same list. Any post that is on-topic to EITHER list, is automatically copied to the other. So, you don't miss anything on-topic on either list from the other. They actually function as one combined list. However, any off-topic posts to cctalk are scubbed (manually) before reaching cctech. At this time there are about 5 or 6 wonderful listmembers who do this every day, the cctech people owe them a lot of sincere thanks. It's time consuming and quite frankly a pain. It's a pain for them, and it's a pain for me too with regards to list configuration & setup. The pain has grown as the list has grown too. I would have to be slightly more strict in moderation of a combined list (with regards to off-topicness) than the cctalk people would want, and perhaps slightly less strict in moderation than the cctech people would want. Perhaps there would be a happy medium. I'm not ready to say this change is imminent, but, since Jules made the classiccmp at classiccmp.org observation, I thought I'd bring it up that I've been giving it serious thought. Regards, Jay From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 9 22:10:49 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 21:10:49 -0700 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <008d01c5e591$8f41cd00$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> References: <008d01c5e591$8f41cd00$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: <4372C849.4020003@jetnet.ab.ca> 'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: >I think the working Babbage machine replica counts as big stuff! > > How can it be a working replica --- You need a small steam engine to turn the crank :D It counts as OLD iron not BIG iron. It looks impressive to me from the photo. The 'Magic' computer dis not look as impressive but it is nice to see a TTL computer at the show. Ben alias woodelf. From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 00:13:50 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:13:50 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <43729FB5.7070903@gmail.com> Message-ID: <002101c5e5bd$eba313c0$6401a8c0@dementium> Well Well Well. On closer inspection, it is very clear that the cap is what blew (it's exploded and blackened on one end) is at C439, and the diode is CR408. The diode description in the maintenance print is aggravatingly overwritten by the entry above it as it ran over. The cap is a 75MFD, 6V, +75-10% Electrolytic cap Where should I go from here? -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Bill Pechter Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 7:18 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT If I remember correctly there's a later varient which worked with the different ones. IIRC most were Ball Brothers. Bill Allison wrote: >>Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> From: "Julian Wolfe" >> Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:17:26 -0600 >> To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" >> >>How much are you asking for the monitor board? >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >>On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com >>Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 1:14 PM >>To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >>Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT >> >>Hi, >> >>I have the logic board, power supply, and what we used to call the "monitor >>board" in stock. I worked on a lot of these when I worked for Digital. I >>now >>deal in DEC parts. >> >>Thanks, Paul >> >> >> >Make sure it's the correct one. There are three versions for the differing >monitors. The monitor portion were made for DEC to spec and could be >Ball brothers, Moto or I forgot. > >Allison > > > From vax9000 at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 01:05:34 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 02:05:34 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: <200511091917.jA9JHgRX007602@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <17266.8746.229071.331709@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <200511091917.jA9JHgRX007602@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: On 11/9/05, Brad Parker wrote: >... > will read, slowly. I would be interesting to see how long (in comparison) > these two took: > > dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null bs=16k count=1000 > dd if=/dev/zero of=blah.null bs=16k count=1000 > > I suspect the write will be faster, and reflect the true speed of the i/o. Now both r/w are working with block mode DMA. The read speed is now 780190 bytes/sec, the write speed 963764 bytes/sec. It conforms your analysis. The board now beats Viking QDT, but is still slower than other boards. Maybe it will be a little bit faster with RT11. There can be small improvements when I clean up the code too. But I don't expect it to be faster than CMD CQD220. What I can say is it is quite usable. Thank you guys for helping me about the speed issue. The next step is to port the C under DOS code to 80188XL. best wishes, vax, 9000 >... From tequilizer at gmx.net Wed Nov 9 01:32:51 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:32:51 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4371A623.30407@gmx.net> > OK, here's a pinout from the schematic. > > Rear of machine, looking down into the edge connector > on the 98770-66534 board > > MonAck/ --( )-- WrFull/ > MonStb --( )-- DD15 > Gnd --( )-- MonClrAddr/ > Gnd --( )-- +5V > MD(6) --( )-- +5V > MD(7) --( )-- +5V > MD(4) --( ) N/C > MD(5) --( )-- -Vm > MD(2) --( )-- -Vm > MD(3) --( )-- +Vm > MD(0) --( )-- +Vm > MD(1) --( )-- Gnd > MD(9) --( )-- Gnd > MD(8) --( )-- MD(12) > MD(11) --( )-- MD(13) > MD(10) --( )-- MD(14) > DA14 --( )-- Gnd > Gnd --( )-- Init/ > > Where : > +Vm = +18V monitor supply from mainframe PSU > -Vm = -18V monitor supply from mainframe PSU > > DA14, DD15 are 2 blanking/control signals (derrived, sortof, from address > 14 and data 15), mainframe to monitor > > Init/ = mainframe reset signal (to monitor) > > MocAck/ = Vertical timing signal from monitor text PCB > > MonStb = Charater strobe from monitor text PCB > > WrFull/ = Buffer full (to monitor text PCB) > > MonClrAddr/= Clear buffer memory address (end of line) from monitor text PCB > > MD(n) = 15 bit date word to monitor text PCB > > 0...6 == Ascii code > 7 = chracter set seelct (or alternatively, 0..7 = character code :-)) > 8 = cursor at this location > 9 = inverse video > 10 = blink > 11 = underline > 12..14 = colour select (not used on mono monitor) > > Indeed pretty helpful. Matches to what I've found out. Here it is with relation to the boardswapper guides: NP/=MonAck/ --( )-- WrFull/=FLB/ NW/=MonStb --( )-- DD15=GS Gnd --( )-- MonClrAddr/=NL/ Gnd --( )-- +5V I6=MD(6) --( )-- +5V CS=MD(7) --( )-- +5V I4=MD(4) --( ) N/C I5=MD(5) --( )-- -Vm I2=MD(2) --( )-- -Vm I3=MD(3) --( )-- +Vm I0=MD(0) --( )-- +Vm I1=MD(1) --( )-- Gnd IV=MD(9) --( )-- Gnd CUR=MD(8) --( )-- MD(12)=RDA UL=MD(11) --( )-- MD(13)=GRA B=MD(10) --( )-- MD(14)=BLA AS=GS/=DA14 --( )-- Gnd Gnd --( )-- Init/ where NP = New Page (=> load start address + AS + GS from block 0 at address 600000 into address register) NL = New Line (=> read one line from crt buffer into line buffer) NW = New Word (=> provide next character+attribute data to monitor) AS = Alpha Select (=> enable alpha display, used as GS/ for switching between alpha and graphics on the monochromes) GS = Graphics Select (=> enable graphics display on the 9845C only, where alpha & graphics can be displayed simultaneously) FLB = Full Line Buffer For the 9845C, the +5V triggers the power-on procedure for the 98770A monitor. For the 98780A, maybe the DA14 line is used to switch between a blinking/nonblinking cursor, identified as CURS signal. I assume that the MD12-14 lines are the ones that are not connected in that 98780A. Quite interesting the INIT/-signal is looped through to the monitor. > You really need the schematics :-) > > Yes, Dave Colver told me the CD is almost finished. -- Ansgar From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Wed Nov 9 09:36:23 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 10:36:23 -0500 Subject: Bell & Howell (De Grafe Video Presentation) In-Reply-To: <43720436.4070509@yahoo.co.uk> References: <43720436.4070509@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051109103502.033ae8a0@boff-net.dhs.org> Sort of like the concepts put into use (and even shown as example by female character late into the film) in the movie 'Rising Sun' with Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes. -John Boffemmyer IV At 09:14 AM 11/9/2005, you wrote: >A bit more info's arrived on the De Grafe system resold by Bell and >Howell which I mentioned on the list a few weeks back... > >The machine's circa 1986 and is a large desktop system, comprising >main unit, small screen, tablet and keyboard. Cost 21,000 pounds when new. > >Capable of 4096 colours at 16 transparency levels simultaneously >from a palette of 16M (in 1986!), with 768 points per line >horizontal resolution (no idea of vertical, but as it's for TV type >use I expect in the region of 500 - 600) > >Capable of real time digitising from four mixable inputs. Genlock >capability with RGB input and PAL + NTSC output. > > >It sounds rather awesome - can't wait to get hold of the hardware >and see how it's constructed (I wonder if it's totally custom, or >based around something like an S100 chassis. Whatever, it must have >some serious silicon in there to be able to shunt that much data >around at TV quality) > >cheers > >Jules -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/163 - Release Date: 11/8/2005 From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Wed Nov 9 19:15:38 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:15:38 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: References: <56482.127.0.0.1.1131579346.squirrel@www.vintage-computer.com> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051109200709.033641d8@boff-net.dhs.org> Simply just biased because of the following: 1- hot geeky blonde girl (most would stop here) 2- Ghirardelli chocolates (in picture) 3- did I mention #1? 4- a very, very nice Apple Lisa =) -John Boffemmyer IV At 06:58 PM 11/9/2005, you wrote: >On 9/11/05 23:35, "Erik Klein" wrote: > > > I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 pictures. There > > are no descriptions yet (any help would be appreciated - let me know if > > you recognize folks, items or whatnot) but I'll hopefully get to them > > soon. > >I know this is subjective and opinion based, but....wow..... > >http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/elisabeth.jpg > >Not that it's my favourite machine or anything :) > >A -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/163 - Release Date: 11/8/2005 From Mark.Brennan at ie.fujitsu.com Wed Nov 9 07:07:13 2005 From: Mark.Brennan at ie.fujitsu.com (Brennan Mark) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 13:07:13 -0000 Subject: Strange request. Message-ID: <2ACC3F56AA17DD4290D82232B02E569F538796@wwmessm11> Hi, My name is Mark Brennan, I am a systems engineer with Fujitsu in Ireland and I have a request I am looking for some help with. My request is some what strange to say the least. Since I joined Wang Computer in 1988 I have been collecting Product Brochures on various computer systems it started of with Wang Vs server systems. For the last few years I have been trying to collect old product/info/fact/marketing brochures on various computer systems with very little luck, as in the future I hope to set-up a web site with details and overviews of them. I have managed to collect some information on, DG/HP/Wang/Netframe/NCR/Tandem/DEC/Sequent/SGI/Siemens-Fujitsu/Pyramid/Apoll o/Cray/KSR/Ncube/ICL/Compaq etc, I was wondering whether or not you may have or know where I maybe able to get my hands on any old product brochures/fact sheets etc on any of the HP systems/servers, I know that my request is at best strange but any help would be great. Anything that is sent to me I will copy and return the originals it people still need them that is. Regard and thanks again markb. Mark Brennan System Engineer System Services FUJITSU Fujitsu House, South County Business Park, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland Tel: +353 (0) 1 2076900 Mobile: +353 (0) 87 2222326 Fax: +353 (0) 1 2161863 E-mail mark.brennan at ie.fujitsu.com Web: http://ie.fujitsu.com/ Fujitsu Services Limited, Registered in England no 96056, Registered Office 26, Finsbury Square, London, EC2A 1SL This e-mail is only for the use of its intended recipient. Its contents are subject to a duty of confidence and may be privileged. Fujitsu Services does not guarantee that this e-mail has not been intercepted and amended or that it is virus-free. From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Wed Nov 9 18:21:11 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 16:21:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: SGI.... Message-ID: <200511100021.QAA28133@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Sebastian Br?ckner" > >Sridhar Ayengar schrieb: >> Sebastian Br?ckner wrote: >>> I know that those machines are supposed to run continuously but it >>> can't be quite normal that every other time I power it up one of the >>> supplies dies. Any hints? Is there a way to fix those things or to >>> prevent them from blowing up altogether? >> >> Are you sure that you've wired your premises electrics correctly? That >> could cause power supplies to keep blowing. > >Well... that could be the cause. I'm running the machine off a 16A fuse >although it is designed for 25A IIRC. >Of course the fuse could blow on power up but I didn't expect that to do >any damage to the power supplies... maybe that was a very bad idea(tm)? > >> Do you have enough power supplies for the boards and other options you >> have installed in the system? That could be doing it too. Or if you >> had a boardset with an unfused short in it or something, although I >> would think there's probably fuses in the backplane or something. > >After losing supplies with the original configuration (24 CPUs, ~18 SCSI >channels, 1.5GB RAM) I stripped the machine to a fairly minimal >configuration (something like 4 cpus, 512mb ram, no extra scsi). The >problem didn't go away. > >Once it boots (and doesn't blow as soon as I turn it on) it runs without >problems. And since it worked in that exact configuration for years for >the previous owner (continuously powered on though) I expect it to be >fully working. He also said that he often had to replace the power >supplies after power cuts, so it might just be normal... > >Sebastian > Hi One thought. If it uses transformers anywhere, connected to the AC ( even switchers often do this for initial voltages ), you need to put a MOV on the input leads. The problem is ( and I've actually seen this ) that when you cut the AC, the core holds some energy. Since it can't pass this to the input leads ( you know, that 90 degree phase thing ), it causes the voltage to spike on the secondaries. Many negative regulators could not handle the spike. Second thought. If it is using switchers, make sure you are providing the right AC voltage. Many of the older switchers would actually run on 120V when setup for 220V, for a short time. They would eventually blow in a minute or so. The problem is that with the lower voltage, the switcher would be running too long a duty cycle. This would smoke the transistor because there would either be some overlap or the cores would saturate. In either case, it would blow the supply. Dwight From henk.gooijen at oce.com Thu Nov 10 02:03:40 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:03:40 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2508@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Tony wrote: > > just a short question, I have seen so much that I start doubting > > everything :-( After you pressed the CLR key on the 11/34 > > console (to get a clear start point), if you *only* press the > > CNTRL key, nothing should happen, right? > > Right. The CNTRL key is a bit like a shift key, and should do > nothing on its own. > > > To answere one of your other posts, I would expect data to be > written ot the display latch quite frequently (of the order of ms) > _but_ the write pulse will be narrow (a few us at most), and if > you've got the analyser set up to sample for long enough to display > several display scans, you might well miss some of the write pulses > because they occur between analyser samples. I think the K100D has > 'gltich capture' for just this sort of problem, try selecting it for > the input you use for the write pulse. > > -tony Ok, so the CNTRL key behaviour analysis is a good point to start with. Yesterday evening I checked the latch that gives the NUM 1-2-3 signals, and the buffer that is behind it. The in- and output signals are OK, although it is *constantly* '110', which matches the display value "666666". On the LA (set to sample at 1 msec) I did see *one* pulse on the CLK pin of the latch. My guess yesterday evening was, that is not correct as just *one* pulse in 1000 msec is way to low for a good refresh rate, just as you say Tony. It did not occur to me that the single pulse was "by luck" detected by the LA. If the LA sees *one*, I should see more, I'd guess. I do remember that I had to turn up the brightness control of the scope to see the thin CLK pulses ... I will put a picture on the webpage tomorrow. The battery of the camera is recharging. Your initial remark about a failing RAM chip is still in the picture, as the value to display is taken from the first 3 locations of the RAM. BTW, the operator/maintenance manual has an error in the memory allocation. It shows that the first byte is for the display, but it is actually the first 3 bytes. So the rest of the picture can not be correct either ... The assembler source listing proves this. Every time a digit must be set on the output port, the 3 memory locations are shifted 3 bits. That means with 6 digits, that at the end the total shifted bit count is 18. The code corrects the value in the 3 memory locations by shifting 6 bit positions when the complete 6 digit number is sent to the output port. I am getting tempted to install the totally dead M7859, and have a look at it, with the new knowledge build up from this module. May be its is just a defective 8008, but I am afraid that if I get the dead M7859 working, this weird defective one will end up on the pile of things "I must do, when I get the time" ... But I will first inspect the two RAM chips! 4-bit data in, 4-bit data out, 4 address bits, one select pin and one clock pin (the WE* pin is tied to GND). Should be possible to see it all with the 16 channels and make a conclusion of the RAM's condition. You might have been correct from the beginning, Tony! thanks, - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From henk.gooijen at oce.com Thu Nov 10 02:09:23 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:09:23 +0100 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2509@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" which promotes her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) If I ever go to a VCF (in Germany), I must hire one of those girls you see on the bonnet at car shows. It will not matter what old stuff I exhibit, *my* stand will be visited most! :-) - Henk, PA8PDP. BTW. Thanks for sharing the pictures! Nice to see. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Boffemmyer IV > Sent: donderdag 10 november 2005 2:16 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: VCF 8.0 Pictures > > Simply just biased because of the following: > 1- hot geeky blonde girl (most would stop here) > 2- Ghirardelli chocolates (in picture) > 3- did I mention #1? > 4- a very, very nice Apple Lisa =) > -John Boffemmyer IV > > At 06:58 PM 11/9/2005, you wrote: > > >On 9/11/05 23:35, "Erik Klein" > wrote: > > > > > I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 > > > pictures. > > > There are no descriptions yet (any help would be > > > appreciated - let > > > me know if you recognize folks, items or whatnot) but > > > I'll hopefully get to them soon. > > > >I know this is subjective and opinion based, but....wow..... > > > >http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/elisabeth.jpg > > > >Not that it's my favourite machine or anything :) > > > >A This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 10 03:46:23 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:46:23 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <20051110020606.LNJI14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> References: <20051110020606.LNJI14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> Message-ID: <437316EF.1070508@gjcp.net> Dave Dunfield wrote: >>Today I was looking for something (A Cipher 525 tape drive) that I bought >>NOS years ago and left in its original box. I thought I'd found it, opened >>the box and discovered a Sinclair ZX80 with the "A Course in BASIC >>Programming" book. The problem is that I don't remember getting this >>thing--I'm sure I didn't buy it. Maybe Dave McGlone tossed it in when we >>were swapping junk years ago. (P.S. I did find the Cipher and discovered >>that I bought two of them). >> >>I don't know if it works, since I don't know the polarity of the 9vdc >>adapter. Either way, is this just common trash or is this actually worth >>something?. My wife suggested that I throw it out; she figures that if I >>didn't even know that I had it after all these years, that I certainly >>don't need it now. Positive to tip, assuming it's the same as the ZX81, with a 3.5mm mono jack. Don't throw it out - there are very few of these left and even fewer working. Gordon. From r.mueller at fz-juelich.de Thu Nov 10 04:42:34 2005 From: r.mueller at fz-juelich.de (r.mueller) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:42:34 +0100 Subject: DAQsuite for Quatech ISA cards needed Message-ID: I have arranged to buy a Quatech DAQ1602 card for the ISA bus. However, the company no longer supports the card and as too often happens, the resellers do not bother to deliver the software or handbooks. Is there anyone out there who has DaqSuite, the normal CD supplied with the card? I would be glad to cover your costs if you can help me to get this card running. Incidentally, if you have ANY card which was delivered with DaqSuite, the CD probably includes what I need. Quatech seems to have included their whole product line on the same CD and the CD was supplied on request to owners of the company's products. Unfortunately for me, the product line has been sold to another company and that company does not supply the card I have. Indeed, one other company continues to sell some products from the Quatech product lineup, but not the 1602. I would greatly appreciate help in obtaining a copy of the CD (even over the Internet, if that is easier!) Sincerely, Bob Mueller From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 06:12:45 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 07:12:45 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <0IPQ00KLON7T9CR0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour > From: "Gooijen, Henk" > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:03:40 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Tony wrote: > >> > just a short question, I have seen so much that I start doubting >> > everything :-( After you pressed the CLR key on the 11/34 >> > console (to get a clear start point), if you *only* press the >> > CNTRL key, nothing should happen, right? >> >> Right. The CNTRL key is a bit like a shift key, and should do >> nothing on its own. >> >> >> To answere one of your other posts, I would expect data to be >> written ot the display latch quite frequently (of the order of ms) >> _but_ the write pulse will be narrow (a few us at most), and if >> you've got the analyser set up to sample for long enough to display >> several display scans, you might well miss some of the write pulses >> because they occur between analyser samples. I think the K100D has >> 'gltich capture' for just this sort of problem, try selecting it for >> the input you use for the write pulse. >> >> -tony > >Ok, so the CNTRL key behaviour analysis is a good point to start with. > >Yesterday evening I checked the latch that gives the NUM 1-2-3 >signals, and the buffer that is behind it. The in- and output signals >are OK, although it is *constantly* '110', which matches the display >value "666666". On the LA (set to sample at 1 msec) I did see *one* >pulse on the CLK pin of the latch. My guess yesterday evening was, >that is not correct as just *one* pulse in 1000 msec is way to low >for a good refresh rate, just as you say Tony. It did not occur to me >that the single pulse was "by luck" detected by the LA. If the LA sees >*one*, I should see more, I'd guess. I do remember that I had to turn >up the brightness control of the scope to see the thin CLK pulses ... >I will put a picture on the webpage tomorrow. >The battery of the camera is recharging. > >Your initial remark about a failing RAM chip is still in the picture, >as the value to display is taken from the first 3 locations of the >RAM. BTW, the operator/maintenance manual has an error in the memory >allocation. It shows that the first byte is for the display, but it >is actually the first 3 bytes. So the rest of the picture can not be >correct either ... The assembler source listing proves this. Every >time a digit must be set on the output port, the 3 memory locations >are shifted 3 bits. That means with 6 digits, that at the end the >total shifted bit count is 18. The code corrects the value in the >3 memory locations by shifting 6 bit positions when the complete >6 digit number is sent to the output port. > >I am getting tempted to install the totally dead M7859, and have a >look at it, with the new knowledge build up from this module. May be >its is just a defective 8008, but I am afraid that if I get the dead >M7859 working, this weird defective one will end up on the pile of >things "I must do, when I get the time" ... >But I will first inspect the two RAM chips! 4-bit data in, 4-bit data >out, 4 address bits, one select pin and one clock pin (the WE* pin >is tied to GND). Should be possible to see it all with the 16 channels >and make a conclusion of the RAM's condition. You might have been >correct from the beginning, Tony! Never seen a dead 8008. I thought I'd killed one (at $180 then!) by installing it backward and then tossed it on the floor in the engineering lab. some days later after pulling from the bottom of my shoe I tried it again and it was still alive. The ram however is definately suspect. But I've seen IO messups with 8008 and with scanned displays and keyboards are harder to look at. It would be goof if you could run a different program and see it's results. We used a set of ROMs all different to test. They were short programs that would either loop or do something and halt. For example we had one that would write (this was a time display) 00:00:00 then increment all the displays without doing anything else. Another would write a 8 tot he last display and halt. the most useful ones were those that would repeatedly loop input or output to a port. Very handy as back (1973) then logic analysers were not to be had and a 15mhz dual trace scope was the usual tool. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 06:25:48 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 07:25:48 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <0IPQ00I66NTK7241@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:13:50 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >Well Well Well. > >On closer inspection, it is very clear that the cap is what blew (it's >exploded and blackened on one end) is at C439, and the diode is CR408. The >diode description in the maintenance print is aggravatingly overwritten by >the entry above it as it ran over. > >The cap is a 75MFD, 6V, +75-10% Electrolytic cap > >Where should I go from here? Well thats a horse of a differnt color. CR408 is a 1A 400V diode (1n4006 should do) the cap is what it is. and should be replaced. The easy test is replace the diode and cap and see if it works. if cr408 or R478 get hot (not warm) then other problems exist. Allison From henk.gooijen at oce.com Thu Nov 10 06:25:03 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:25:03 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF250C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Allison wrote: > Never seen a dead 8008. I thought I'd killed one (at $180 then!) > by installing it backward and then tossed it on the floor in the > engineering lab. some days later after pulling from the bottom > of my shoe I tried it again and it was still alive. Amazing, but I will not try to repeat it to test your story :-) > The ram however is definately suspect. But I've seen IO > messups with 8008 and with scanned displays and keyboards are > harder to look at. This weekend I will check the RAMs! > It would be goof if you could run a different program and see > it's results. > We used a set of ROMs all different to test. They were short > programs that would either loop or do something and halt. For > example we had one that would write (this was a time display) > 00:00:00 then increment all the displays without doing > anything else. Another would write a 8 tot he last display > and halt. the most useful ones were those that would > repeatedly loop input or output to a port. Very handy as > back (1973) then logic analysers were not to be had and a > 15mhz dual trace scope was the usual tool. I checked the contents of the ROMs (from the listing). They are quite filled, there is no room to show a clock on the display. Would be fun, because once the 11/34 runs, the display is not very exciting any more ... Pity that the ROMs are soldered on the board. It would be quite a hack (but certainly possible!) to enable an other set of ROMs to run e.g. the clock software. But then there is also the difficulty to get the proper (blank) ROMs. But it is a fun idea to keep in mind ... The RAM timing traces will be up on Monday! thanks, - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From Hans.Franke at siemens.com Thu Nov 10 06:31:18 2005 From: Hans.Franke at siemens.com (Hans Franke) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:31:18 +0100 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <005901c5e570$0b28d390$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> References: <4372616E.3060503@gmail.com> Message-ID: <43734BA6.7799.773A281E@localhost> Am 9 Nov 2005 15:56 meinte 'Computer Collector Newslette: > My new year (Rosh Hoshanah) begins in September and sometimes October.... > So, yeah, it is this year! Yeah, but that'll be VCF East 3.0 Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From Hans.Franke at siemens.com Thu Nov 10 06:31:18 2005 From: Hans.Franke at siemens.com (Hans Franke) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:31:18 +0100 Subject: VCF questions In-Reply-To: <43725B74.9060008@gmail.com> References: <20051109115959.I97746@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <43734BA6.2119.773A28BA@localhost> Am 9 Nov 2005 15:26 meinte Sridhar Ayengar: > Fred Cisin wrote: > > 6+ years ago, he spelled it differently: > > On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, Sam Ismail wrote: > I think that was him going by a nickname, no? Jup, he was going by Sam since school time until about VCF 2.0. You know how kids act if there's a class-mate with a 'strange' name... Grus sH. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 07:16:51 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 08:16:51 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <0IPQ00H5NQ6M5470@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour > From: "Gooijen, Henk" > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:25:03 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Allison wrote: > >I checked the contents of the ROMs (from the listing). They are >quite filled, there is no room to show a clock on the display. >Would be fun, because once the 11/34 runs, the display is not >very exciting any more ... >Pity that the ROMs are soldered on the board. It would be quite >a hack (but certainly possible!) to enable an other set of ROMs >to run e.g. the clock software. But then there is also the >difficulty to get the proper (blank) ROMs. >But it is a fun idea to keep in mind ... Well it does not have to be a clock. It happend the product I was working on was a time code display for video tape where the display could be time or number of frames. Besides the display system for PDP-11 is likely OCTAL. ;) >The RAM timing traces will be up on Monday! Actually a common 2716 or later device is fine for that. Disable the on board and use an adaptor. A fast 8008 was 10us instrcution time so rom speed will not be an issue. If I were doing it now I'd make an adaptor and use a 2816 (EEPROM) with a simple bit of logic to load stuff. Not a lot of space is needed Small loops to write to ram and display it are maybe 20-50 bytes. Allison From henk.gooijen at oce.com Thu Nov 10 07:44:52 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:44:52 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF250D@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Allison wrote: > Well it does not have to be a clock. It happend the product > I was working on was a time code display for video tape where > the display could be time or number of frames. > > Besides the display system for PDP-11 is likely OCTAL. ;) True, but the latch that outputs the 3 bits for the 7447 has a fourth output which could be used! Take that 4th output to the 7447 'D' input (which is now connected to GND) and you can display an "8" or a "9". But I am drifting off-topic -- the console must work for starters :-) - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 07:58:08 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 08:58:08 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <0IPQ00HVOS3F51B0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour > From: "Gooijen, Henk" > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:44:52 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Allison wrote: > >> Well it does not have to be a clock. It happend the product >> I was working on was a time code display for video tape where >> the display could be time or number of frames. >> >> Besides the display system for PDP-11 is likely OCTAL. ;) > >True, but the latch that outputs the 3 bits for the 7447 has >a fourth output which could be used! Take that 4th output to >the 7447 'D' input (which is now connected to GND) and you >can display an "8" or a "9". But I am drifting off-topic -- >the console must work for starters :-) > >- Henk, PA8PDP. The whole point of the clock thing is simple code to make a repeated operation that traces esily with scope or logic analyser. Allison From waisun.chia at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 08:25:26 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:25:26 +0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: Hello, Anybody have a ISO copy of the last version of Ultrix (4.5?) for the DECstation 500/2xx ? Somehow NetBSD isn't satisfying enough.. :-) From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 10 07:33:52 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:33:52 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <20051110020606.LNJI14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> References: <20051110020606.LNJI14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> Message-ID: <43734C40.50209@yahoo.co.uk> Dave Dunfield wrote: >>Today I was looking for something (A Cipher 525 tape drive) that I bought >>NOS years ago and left in its original box. I thought I'd found it, opened >>the box and discovered a Sinclair ZX80 with the "A Course in BASIC >>Programming" book. The problem is that I don't remember getting this >>thing--I'm sure I didn't buy it. Maybe Dave McGlone tossed it in when we >>were swapping junk years ago. (P.S. I did find the Cipher and discovered >>that I bought two of them). >> >>I don't know if it works, since I don't know the polarity of the 9vdc >>adapter. Either way, is this just common trash or is this actually worth >>something?. My wife suggested that I throw it out; she figures that if I >>didn't even know that I had it after all these years, that I certainly >>don't need it now. > > > The ZX80 is the immediate predecessor of the ZX81/Timex-1000, which are > VERY common. The ZX80 isn't quite so common, but I think there should > be lots around - although I've not stumbled on another one lately. They're actually pretty rare (even rarer if you can find a working one in a box!) and seem to change hands for a significant amount of money when complete (sort of like a UK equivalent of the Altair in terms of ridiculous prices :) In terms of monetary value against size / weight they're probably one of the most expensive machines around. I really don't know *why* that's the case, but there you go... Anyone know how many were built? I would have thought a lot - yet ZX81's seem to outnumber them 50:1 these days... > Don't toss it - Mines in sad shape (previous owner drilled holes to > mount switches, broke the corner off the cabinet and lost the original > integer ROM after upgrading to the FP rom) Our existing one's in much the same way - someone mounted a DB25 connector into the case (actually half into the case; it's sticking out and held there with lots of glue). Plus the machine's dead. I am however picking up a working boxed one in a couple of weeks (no idea of cosmetic condition yet, but the current owner strikes me as someone who takes care of stuff) cheers Jules From Hans.Franke at siemens.com Thu Nov 10 08:47:22 2005 From: Hans.Franke at siemens.com (Hans Franke) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:47:22 +0100 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2509@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Message-ID: <43736B8A.17879.77B6BC54@localhost> Am 10 Nov 2005 9:09 meinte Gooijen, Henk: > There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" which > promotes her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) > If I ever go to a VCF (in Germany), I must hire one of those > girls you see on the bonnet at car shows. It will not matter > what old stuff I exhibit, *my* stand will be visited most! :-) I have to see that ... your booth at VCFe 6.0 is reserved :) Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From henk.gooijen at oce.com Thu Nov 10 08:52:46 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:52:46 +0100 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2511@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> > Am 10 Nov 2005 9:09 meinte Gooijen, Henk: > > > There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" > > which promotes her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) > > If I ever go to a VCF (in Germany), I must hire one of those > > girls you see on the bonnet at car shows. It will not matter > > what old stuff I exhibit, *my* stand will be visited most! :-) > > I have to see that ... your booth at VCFe 6.0 is reserved :) > > Gruss > H. > -- > VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen > http://www.vcfe.org/ Yes, I am giving it serious thoughts! Do you provide the girlz, Hans? Would be an BIG incentive! :-) On display I can have: 1) SIMH connected to homebrew PDP-11/40 console running RT11 2) Homebrew pdp8/e running (slow) OS/8 or DMS 3) PDP-11/03, a real one for a change :-) decoding HAM radio RTTY 4) SIMH connected to a *real* PDP-11/70 console but items 3 and 4 are "under development" ... - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 08:56:57 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:56:57 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <008d01c5e591$8f41cd00$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> References: <008d01c5e591$8f41cd00$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: <43735FB9.30405@gmail.com> 'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: > That's an original Google server from Boris Debic (who works at Google). > > Not truly vintage in my opinion, but still quite interesting. > > >>>>did nobody truck in any big stuff? > > > I think the working Babbage machine replica counts as big stuff! > > Alas, it's true, VCF was light on Big Iron this year. But for those who > haven't ever attended, don't let that scare you off. This year was just a > fluke. > > I promise Big Iron at VCF East next spring!! I know *I'll* be bringing big iron. Peace... Sridhar From Hans.Franke at siemens.com Thu Nov 10 09:10:46 2005 From: Hans.Franke at siemens.com (Hans Franke) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:10:46 +0100 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2511@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Message-ID: <43737106.12503.77CC25F5@localhost> Am 10 Nov 2005 15:52 meinte Gooijen, Henk: > > Am 10 Nov 2005 9:09 meinte Gooijen, Henk: > > > There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" > > > which promotes her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) > > > If I ever go to a VCF (in Germany), I must hire one of those > > > girls you see on the bonnet at car shows. It will not matter > > > what old stuff I exhibit, *my* stand will be visited most! :-) > > I have to see that ... your booth at VCFe 6.0 is reserved :) > Yes, I am giving it serious thoughts! > Do you provide the girlz, Hans? Would be an BIG incentive! :-) Well, we usualy employ one official hootie for VCFe, although I'm not shure for next year. > On display I can have: > 1) SIMH connected to homebrew PDP-11/40 console running RT11 > 2) Homebrew pdp8/e running (slow) OS/8 or DMS > 3) PDP-11/03, a real one for a change :-) decoding HAM radio RTTY > 4) SIMH connected to a *real* PDP-11/70 console > but items 3 and 4 are "under development" ... Hmmm... One of them would already make a great add omn to the traditional DEC wall. Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 09:28:58 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:28:58 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <0IPQ0020SWATQSE0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: VCF 8.0 Pictures > From: "Hans Franke" > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:10:46 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Am 10 Nov 2005 15:52 meinte Gooijen, Henk: >> > Am 10 Nov 2005 9:09 meinte Gooijen, Henk: >> > > There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" >> > > which promotes her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) >> > > If I ever go to a VCF (in Germany), I must hire one of those >> > > girls you see on the bonnet at car shows. It will not matter >> > > what old stuff I exhibit, *my* stand will be visited most! :-) > >> > I have to see that ... your booth at VCFe 6.0 is reserved :) > >> Yes, I am giving it serious thoughts! >> Do you provide the girlz, Hans? Would be an BIG incentive! :-) > >Well, we usualy employ one official hootie for VCFe, although >I'm not shure for next year. Well for one, I insist that you also have a supply of beefcake for us geeky girls. Fair is fair! ;) >> On display I can have: >> 2) Homebrew pdp8/e running (slow) OS/8 or DMS Howbout a 6120 homebrew running OS8? The trick was real DEC style IO rather than PIEs and cruft that leads up to os78 and os278. >> 3) PDP-11/03, a real one for a change :-) decoding HAM radio RTTY I've used the -11 for RTTY display. You only need a modem to decode the tones though having spilt screen, upper for incomming and lower for outgoing text. I'd like to see PSK31 software for the -11. Allison From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 09:34:40 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:34:40 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > Hello, > Anybody have a ISO copy of the last version of Ultrix (4.5?) for the > DECstation 500/2xx ? > Somehow NetBSD isn't satisfying enough.. :-) I have one... somewhere... How soon do you need it? FWIW, I don't find Ultrix that satisfying. Peace... Sridhar From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 10 08:33:46 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:33:46 +0000 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <200511100121.UAA16131@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43725959.1060908@yahoo.co.uk> <200511100121.UAA16131@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <43735A4A.3070203@yahoo.co.uk> der Mouse wrote: >>Yep, Sun seemed to get it right and actually encourage individuals to >>use their software and hardware. > > Or have I just managed to miss the documents in question every time > I've gone looking? I would *love* this to be the case.... > > (Of course, this is not to say that SGI isn't worse than Sun.) The latter sentence was more my point - I'm sure Sun could do a lot more too (after all, full schematics of all their older systems would sure be nice :) But Sun do seem to have freely allowed people to dispose of their hardware rather than trying to take it all back and crushing it, and put some pretty useful info on their website, and made an effort to allow people to easily get hold of copies of their OS - quite different from SGI's approach. Which is a pity when there used to be things like the SGI 'Antics and mayhem' web pages around - at one point it was obviously a very liberal company to work for... cheers J. From waisun.chia at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 09:44:18 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:44:18 +0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/10/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > > Hello, > > Anybody have a ISO copy of the last version of Ultrix (4.5?) for the > > DECstation 500/2xx ? > > Somehow NetBSD isn't satisfying enough.. :-) > > I have one... somewhere... > > How soon do you need it? FWIW, I don't find Ultrix that satisfying. Take your time...perhaps in a week? Well, I have plenty of modern systems running *BSD, so what's the point of running a modern *NIX on a vintage system? From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 09:55:45 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:55:45 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> Message-ID: <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > On 11/10/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >>Wai-Sun Chia wrote: >> >>>Hello, >>>Anybody have a ISO copy of the last version of Ultrix (4.5?) for the >>>DECstation 500/2xx ? >>>Somehow NetBSD isn't satisfying enough.. :-) >> >>I have one... somewhere... >> >>How soon do you need it? FWIW, I don't find Ultrix that satisfying. > > > Take your time...perhaps in a week? > Well, I have plenty of modern systems running *BSD, so what's the > point of running a modern *NIX on a vintage system? It might take longer than that. I'm in the process of moving. The problem is that Ultrix doesn't *feel* all that different from NetBSD. Peace... Sridhar From waisun.chia at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 09:59:43 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:59:43 +0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/10/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> > > Take your time...perhaps in a week? > > Well, I have plenty of modern systems running *BSD, so what's the > > point of running a modern *NIX on a vintage system? > > It might take longer than that. I'm in the process of moving. > Not a problem. Whenever you have the first chance.. > The problem is that Ultrix doesn't *feel* all that different from NetBSD. I wouldn't know that until I've checked it out, wouldn't I? Now you've gone and spoiled it..:-) From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 10:32:12 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:32:12 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4373760C.5060805@gmail.com> Wai-Sun Chia wrote: >>>Take your time...perhaps in a week? >>>Well, I have plenty of modern systems running *BSD, so what's the >>>point of running a modern *NIX on a vintage system? >> >>It might take longer than that. I'm in the process of moving. >> > > Not a problem. Whenever you have the first chance.. > > >>The problem is that Ultrix doesn't *feel* all that different from NetBSD. > > > I wouldn't know that until I've checked it out, wouldn't I? > Now you've gone and spoiled it..:-) Sorry 8-P It's really too bad that DEC never released a version of VMS for DECstation. I'd be all over that. Peace... Sridhar From williams.dan at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 10:39:12 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:39:12 +0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <4373760C.5060805@gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <4373760C.5060805@gmail.com> Message-ID: <26c11a640511100839o2641ece9l@mail.gmail.com> > It's really too bad that DEC never released a version of VMS for > DECstation. I'd be all over that. > > Peace... Sridhar > The 3000/ 300, 400, 500 and 500x all run Openvms Alpha. Up to which version I don't know, but I would assume current. Dan From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 10:49:54 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:49:54 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511100839o2641ece9l@mail.gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <4373760C.5060805@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100839o2641ece9l@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <43737A32.5080704@gmail.com> Dan Williams wrote: >>It's really too bad that DEC never released a version of VMS for >>DECstation. I'd be all over that. >> >>Peace... Sridhar >> > > The 3000/ 300, 400, 500 and 500x all run Openvms Alpha. Up to which > version I don't know, but I would assume current. That's fine for Alphas, but DECstations are MIPS. Peace... Sridhar From Hans.Franke at siemens.com Thu Nov 10 10:54:15 2005 From: Hans.Franke at siemens.com (Hans Franke) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:54:15 +0100 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <0IPQ0020SWATQSE0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43738947.24160.782AE5C2@localhost> Am 10 Nov 2005 10:28 meinte Allison: > > From: "Hans Franke" > >Am 10 Nov 2005 15:52 meinte Gooijen, Henk: > >> > Am 10 Nov 2005 9:09 meinte Gooijen, Henk: > >> > > There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" > >> > > which promotes her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) > >> > > If I ever go to a VCF (in Germany), I must hire one of those > >> > > girls you see on the bonnet at car shows. It will not matter > >> > > what old stuff I exhibit, *my* stand will be visited most! :-) > >> > I have to see that ... your booth at VCFe 6.0 is reserved :) > >> Yes, I am giving it serious thoughts! > >> Do you provide the girlz, Hans? Would be an BIG incentive! :-) > >Well, we usualy employ one official hootie for VCFe, although > >I'm not shure for next year. > Well for one, I insist that you also have a supply of beefcake > for us geeky girls. Fair is fair! ;) Beefkake? well, Leberk?s-sandwitches are available all day at the VCFe food court, and of course we can add some meatloaf for the traditional dinner if you want :) Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From brad at heeltoe.com Thu Nov 10 10:54:42 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:54:42 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 09 Nov 2005 22:16:55 EST." Message-ID: <200511101654.jAAGsgEk003806@mwave.heeltoe.com> 9000 VAX wrote: >On 11/9/05, 9000 VAX wrote: >> On 11/9/05, 9000 VAX wrote: >> > > >> > > dd if=syssrc.tar of=/dev/null bs=16k count=1000 >> > 16384000 bytes transferred in 21 secs (780190 bytes/sec) >> > > dd if=/dev/zero of=blah.null bs=16k count=1000 >> > 16384000 bytes transferred in 35 secs (468114 bytes/sec) >> > > >> > > I suspect the write will be faster, and reflect the true speed of the i/ >o. >> > It is the opposite. strange. >> >> OK, maybe you are right. The write operation should be faster. The OS >> latency there is smaller. It was my controller that slowed down the >> write operation. I need to take a look to find out why. > >The read operation used block mode DMA and the write operation used >burst mode DMA (slower). It seems there is more debugging work to do. I didn't want to get into caching, but what the heck. It's quite possible that once you "read" the file it will be in the block cache. So you may get skewed results - cached blocks won't come from the device. The first read should be ok, however. The simplest thing is to read/write the "raw" device (not the block device) which will be uncached. This, of course, runs the risk of trashing any file system if there is one (when writing). Please be careful. -brad From news at computercollector.com Thu Nov 10 10:55:53 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:55:53 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <0IPQ0020SWATQSE0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <002701c5e617$9da0bb00$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> >>> beefcake Well, Hans eats LOTS of beek and cake... unless you meant something else... So, yes, there was a pretty girl at VCF. People should get over that. What impressed me most was her knowledge of the Apple Lisa. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 10:29 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: VCF 8.0 Pictures > >Subject: RE: VCF 8.0 Pictures > From: "Hans Franke" > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:10:46 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Am 10 Nov 2005 15:52 meinte Gooijen, Henk: >> > Am 10 Nov 2005 9:09 meinte Gooijen, Henk: >> > > There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" >> > > which promotes her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) If I >> > > ever go to a VCF (in Germany), I must hire one of those girls you >> > > see on the bonnet at car shows. It will not matter what old stuff >> > > I exhibit, *my* stand will be visited most! :-) > >> > I have to see that ... your booth at VCFe 6.0 is reserved :) > >> Yes, I am giving it serious thoughts! >> Do you provide the girlz, Hans? Would be an BIG incentive! :-) > >Well, we usualy employ one official hootie for VCFe, although I'm not >shure for next year. Well for one, I insist that you also have a supply of beefcake for us geeky girls. Fair is fair! ;) >> On display I can have: >> 2) Homebrew pdp8/e running (slow) OS/8 or DMS Howbout a 6120 homebrew running OS8? The trick was real DEC style IO rather than PIEs and cruft that leads up to os78 and os278. >> 3) PDP-11/03, a real one for a change :-) decoding HAM radio RTTY I've used the -11 for RTTY display. You only need a modem to decode the tones though having spilt screen, upper for incomming and lower for outgoing text. I'd like to see PSK31 software for the -11. Allison From williams.dan at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 11:07:03 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:07:03 +0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <43737A32.5080704@gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <4373760C.5060805@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100839o2641ece9l@mail.gmail.com> <43737A32.5080704@gmail.com> Message-ID: <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> On 10/11/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Dan Williams wrote: > >>It's really too bad that DEC never released a version of VMS for > >>DECstation. I'd be all over that. > >> > >>Peace... Sridhar > >> > > > > The 3000/ 300, 400, 500 and 500x all run Openvms Alpha. Up to which > > version I don't know, but I would assume current. > > That's fine for Alphas, but DECstations are MIPS. > > Peace... Sridhar > The Decstation 3000 range where Alphas, they had a 21064 chip. Dan From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Thu Nov 10 06:29:38 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 07:29:38 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2509@OVL-EXBE01.oceven lo.oce.net> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2509@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051110072701.0336ea70@boff-net.dhs.org> And why is the brunette girl in the background making 'steering wheel - driving motions' that seems to make the much taller older gentleman next to her seem very concerned? Hehe. Please let it not be one of those 'hey, listen to this story about how I first came across classic computers... so after the car went over the curb into the store front...' Grin. -John Boffemmyer IV At 03:09 AM 11/10/2005, you wrote: >There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" which >promotes her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) >If I ever go to a VCF (in Germany), I must hire one of those >girls you see on the bonnet at car shows. It will not matter >what old stuff I exhibit, *my* stand will be visited most! :-) > >- Henk, PA8PDP. > >BTW. Thanks for sharing the pictures! Nice to see. > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Boffemmyer IV > > Sent: donderdag 10 november 2005 2:16 > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > Subject: Re: VCF 8.0 Pictures > > > > Simply just biased because of the following: > > 1- hot geeky blonde girl (most would stop here) > > 2- Ghirardelli chocolates (in picture) > > 3- did I mention #1? > > 4- a very, very nice Apple Lisa =) > > -John Boffemmyer IV > > > > At 06:58 PM 11/9/2005, you wrote: > > > > >On 9/11/05 23:35, "Erik Klein" > > wrote: > > > > > > > I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 > > > > pictures. > > > > There are no descriptions yet (any help would be > > > > appreciated - let > > > > me know if you recognize folks, items or whatnot) but > > > > I'll hopefully get to them soon. > > > > > >I know this is subjective and opinion based, but....wow..... > > > > > >http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/elisabeth.jpg > > > > > >Not that it's my favourite machine or anything :) > > > > > >A > >This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of >the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, >confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. >If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible >for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are >hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of >this communication is strictly prohibited. >If you have received this communication in error, please notify the >sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. >Thank you for your cooperation. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/165 - Release Date: 11/9/2005 From slasor at jfs.go-plus.net Thu Nov 10 06:43:40 2005 From: slasor at jfs.go-plus.net (slasor) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:43:40 -0000 Subject: Switch-Mode PSU Failure Modes, Repairs, & Parts Substitutions Message-ID: <000601c5e5f4$7203f4d0$a594183e@down> Hi, I have 3 Patriot book pc psu's which I want to get repaired. regards J.F.Slasor From bpope at wordstock.com Thu Nov 10 11:16:58 2005 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:16:58 -0500 (est) Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20051110072701.0336ea70@boff-net.dhs.org> from "John Boffemmyer IV" at Nov 10, 05 07:29:38 am Message-ID: <200511101716.MAA14171@wordstock.com> And thusly John Boffemmyer IV spake: > > And why is the brunette girl in the background making 'steering wheel > - driving motions' that seems to make the much taller older gentleman > next to her seem very concerned? Hehe. Please let it not be one of > those 'hey, listen to this story about how I first came across > classic computers... so after the car went over the curb into the > store front...' Grin. That is probably none other then Jeri Ellsworth whose new Hummer driving game just came out... It is based on her 64DTV but uses its extended capabilities. Cheers, Bryan From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 10 11:22:23 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:22:23 -0700 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour In-Reply-To: <0IPQ00KLON7T9CR0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPQ00KLON7T9CR0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437381CF.7020506@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >>Subject: RE: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour >> From: "Gooijen, Henk" >> >> >>I am getting tempted to install the totally dead M7859, and have a >>look at it, with the new knowledge build up from this module. May be >>its is just a defective 8008, but I am afraid that if I get the dead >>M7859 working, this weird defective one will end up on the pile of >>things "I must do, when I get the time" ... >>But I will first inspect the two RAM chips! 4-bit data in, 4-bit data >>out, 4 address bits, one select pin and one clock pin (the WE* pin >>is tied to GND). Should be possible to see it all with the 16 channels >>and make a conclusion of the RAM's condition. You might have been >>correct from the beginning, Tony! >> >> > >It would be goof if you could run a different program and see it's results. >We used a set of ROMs all different to test. They were short programs that >would either loop or do something and halt. For example we had one that would >write (this was a time display) 00:00:00 then increment all the displays >without doing anything else. Another would write a 8 tot he last display >and halt. the most useful ones were those that would repeatedly loop input >or output to a port. Very handy as back (1973) then logic analysers were >not to be had and a 15mhz dual trace scope was the usual tool. > > > Well if you are going to hack the 8008 you need the right tools. Check here for a 8008 link I just found yesterday. > http://www.jkearney.com/8008/ PS. Does anybody have docs about Hal Chamberlin's homewbrew computer. Hal 4096? A search on the web turned up nothing, From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 11:23:52 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:23:52 -0800 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <43734C40.50209@yahoo.co.uk> References: <20051110020606.LNJI14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> <43734C40.50209@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511100923520668.0536AD3E@10.0.0.252> I had a go at hooking the thing up today. Tip is indeed +, and a 500 ma supply seems to be adequate. Modulator output is on channel 2 (a really strange choice for the USA, as 3 or 4 is more customary). It runs a few simple programs, but I'm not overly patient with the miserable display (particularly on a color set) and the funny keyboard. So I guess it works. This thing seems to be made in the same way that the Sinclair LED wristwatch I once had was--CHEAP is the biggest consideration. Overall, it's in very good condition, with a "33" scrawled on the bottom in orange magic marker. Usually discoloration from age on the case from age and the tip of the front (operator's) left corner of the case is upturned slightly, probably from storage. Perhaps with a little heat, it can be coaxed flat, but I'm not going to try. So what's a fair asking price for this thing? All I've got is the BASIC book and the ZX80 itself. I really don't want to eBay it. Cheers, Chuck From allain at panix.com Thu Nov 10 11:26:11 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:26:11 -0500 Subject: Strange request. References: <2ACC3F56AA17DD4290D82232B02E569F538796@wwmessm11> Message-ID: <00d401c5e61b$d8fea640$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> > ... Tandem/DEC/Sequent/SGI/Siemens-Fujitsu/Pyramid ... Mark, I have a pretty damn good set of DEC brochures. I could scan and CD-R for interested groups and individuals. Best Wishes on your project, John A. From news at computercollector.com Thu Nov 10 11:36:14 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:36:14 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20051110072701.0336ea70@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <005e01c5e61d$40ce2920$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> That's just Jeri Ellsworth, C-64 heroine extraordinaire... she's as much of a geek as any of us. http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/lisa2.jpg -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Boffemmyer IV Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:30 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: VCF 8.0 Pictures And why is the brunette girl in the background making 'steering wheel - driving motions' that seems to make the much taller older gentleman next to her seem very concerned? Hehe. Please let it not be one of those 'hey, listen to this story about how I first came across classic computers... so after the car went over the curb into the store front...' Grin. -John Boffemmyer IV At 03:09 AM 11/10/2005, you wrote: >There is a second picture of the "hot geeky blond girl" which promotes >her to "hot geeky blond 'nice legs' girl" :-) If I ever go to a VCF (in >Germany), I must hire one of those girls you see on the bonnet at car >shows. It will not matter what old stuff I exhibit, *my* stand will be >visited most! :-) > >- Henk, PA8PDP. > >BTW. Thanks for sharing the pictures! Nice to see. > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Boffemmyer > > IV > > Sent: donderdag 10 november 2005 2:16 > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > Subject: Re: VCF 8.0 Pictures > > > > Simply just biased because of the following: > > 1- hot geeky blonde girl (most would stop here) > > 2- Ghirardelli chocolates (in picture) > > 3- did I mention #1? > > 4- a very, very nice Apple Lisa =) > > -John Boffemmyer IV > > > > At 06:58 PM 11/9/2005, you wrote: > > > > >On 9/11/05 23:35, "Erik Klein" > > wrote: > > > > > > > I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 > > > > pictures. > > > > There are no descriptions yet (any help would be appreciated - > > > > let me know if you recognize folks, items or whatnot) but I'll > > > > hopefully get to them soon. > > > > > >I know this is subjective and opinion based, but....wow..... > > > > > >http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/vcf8/elisabeth.jpg > > > > > >Not that it's my favourite machine or anything :) > > > > > >A > >This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the >addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential >or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. >If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for >delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby >notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this >communication is strictly prohibited. >If you have received this communication in error, please notify the >sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. >Thank you for your cooperation. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.12.8/165 - Release Date: 11/9/2005 From pat at computer-refuge.org Thu Nov 10 11:41:20 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:41:20 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> References: <43737A32.5080704@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200511101241.20932.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Thursday 10 November 2005 12:07, Dan Williams wrote: > On 10/11/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > Dan Williams wrote: > > >>It's really too bad that DEC never released a version of VMS for > > >>DECstation. I'd be all over that. > > >> > > >>Peace... Sridhar > > > > > > The 3000/ 300, 400, 500 and 500x all run Openvms Alpha. Up to > > > which version I don't know, but I would assume current. > > > > That's fine for Alphas, but DECstations are MIPS. > > > > Peace... Sridhar > > The Decstation 3000 range where Alphas, they had a 21064 chip. No, those were "DEC 3000"s. DECstations (3000/5000/etc) were all MIPS. And, from what I've heard, at least one reason that DEC made Alpha, and didn't port VMS to the MIPS architecture, is because they'd have to make a lot of changes to VMS, because of its security model, in order to make it work with MIPS. Aparently, MIPS just didn't work enough like a VAX CPU to easily port VMS to it. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 11:41:38 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:41:38 -0800 Subject: Ampex Megastore ISA card? Message-ID: <200511100941380501.0546F0A6@10.0.0.252> I've found an Ampex Megastore ISA card that interfaces via a 50-pin header. I've got the software for it, but no manuals, so I don't know what it's supposed to connect to--it doesn't seem to be SCSI. Any ideas? Cheers, Chuck From arcarlini at iee.org Thu Nov 10 11:42:00 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:42:00 -0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <001e01c5e61e$0f9afcb0$5b01a8c0@pc1> Dan Williams wrote: > On 10/11/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> Dan Williams wrote: >>>> It's really too bad that DEC never released a version of VMS for >>>> DECstation. I'd be all over that. >>>> >>>> Peace... Sridhar >>>> >>> >>> The 3000/ 300, 400, 500 and 500x all run Openvms Alpha. Up to which >>> version I don't know, but I would assume current. >> >> That's fine for Alphas, but DECstations are MIPS. >> >> Peace... Sridhar >> > The Decstation 3000 range where Alphas, they had a 21064 chip. > > Dan I'm reasonably sure that you are thinking of the DEC 3000 series, which were all Alphas. The DECstatiosn were almost all MIPs, the rest were PCs! Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 11:53:59 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:53:59 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <0IPR00K6K30GRDY0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: VCF 8.0 Pictures > From: "Hans Franke" > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:54:15 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> >Well, we usualy employ one official hootie for VCFe, although >> >I'm not shure for next year. > >> Well for one, I insist that you also have a supply of beefcake >> for us geeky girls. Fair is fair! ;) > >Beefkake? well, Leberk?s-sandwitches are available all >day at the VCFe food court, and of course we can add >some meatloaf for the traditional dinner if you want :) > >Gruss >H. Beefcake: young men with fine bodies. ;) The sandwitches are for eating while watching. ;-) Allison From arcarlini at iee.org Thu Nov 10 11:53:51 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:53:51 -0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511100923520668.0536AD3E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <001f01c5e61f$b6f74440$5b01a8c0@pc1> Chuck Guzis wrote: > So I guess it works. This thing seems to be made in the same way > that the Sinclair LED wristwatch I once had was--CHEAP is the biggest > consideration. Certainly was! Mind you, they worked and I could *almost* have afforded one back then, so in some ways CHEAP was useful. > So what's a fair asking price for this thing? All I've got is the > BASIC book and the ZX80 itself. I really don't want to eBay it. I have no idea about fair, and you are on the wrong side of the pond for it to be worth my while trying to con you out of it (although, if you're willing to pick up the shipping, do let me know :-)), but the last couple I saw on ebay went for about ?200 or so. Back in the dot-com boom I saw one go for ?400. Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 11:55:03 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:55:03 -0800 Subject: More old stuff Message-ID: <200511100955030608.0553399A@10.0.0.252> Does anyone have any use for some Fujitsu MB8107 DRAM chips? From what I can determine, these are the same as the TI TMS4060 4Kx1 "midi size" 22-pin DIPs. I've also got some Intel 2111-4 SRAM. Cheers, Chuck From pcw at mesanet.com Thu Nov 10 12:01:05 2005 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:01:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: Ampex Megastore ISA card? In-Reply-To: <200511100941380501.0546F0A6@10.0.0.252> References: <200511100941380501.0546F0A6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've found an Ampex Megastore ISA card that interfaces via a 50-pin header. > I've got the software for it, but no manuals, so I don't know what it's > supposed to connect to--it doesn't seem to be SCSI. > > Any ideas? > > Cheers, > Chuck > > At one time Ampex marketed something called Megastore that was bulk core memory used as a disk replacement (large latency (for core) but high bandwidth) Peter Wallace From pcw at mesanet.com Thu Nov 10 12:05:56 2005 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:05:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: More old stuff In-Reply-To: <200511100955030608.0553399A@10.0.0.252> References: <200511100955030608.0553399A@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Does anyone have any use for some Fujitsu MB8107 DRAM chips? From what I > can determine, these are the same as the TI TMS4060 4Kx1 "midi size" 22-pin > DIPs. > > I've also got some Intel 2111-4 SRAM. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > That brings back memories! Once wirewrapped a 32M byte RAM card for my Technico 9900 card using MB8107s salvaged from bad Amdahl cards. Last of the unmuxed DRAMS I think... Peter Wallace From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 10 12:07:04 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:07:04 -0700 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <0IPR00K6K30GRDY0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPR00K6K30GRDY0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43738C48.40800@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >Beefcake: young men with fine bodies. ;) > > > Oh you must mean the older men moving all the BIG iron. >The sandwitches are for eating while watching. ;-) > > > > Will anybody be making a documentry of the VCF's for people that can't make it out like myself , or for historical reasons? From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 12:17:21 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:17:21 -0800 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <001f01c5e61f$b6f74440$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <001f01c5e61f$b6f74440$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <200511101017210485.0567A37A@10.0.0.252> On 11/10/2005 at 5:53 PM a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: >I have no idea about fair, and you are on the wrong side of the >pond for it to be worth my while trying to con you out of it >(although, if you're willing to pick up the shipping, do let >me know :-)), but the last couple I saw on ebay went for about >?200 or so. Back in the dot-com boom I saw one go for ?400. I don't know if this would be particularly valuable to someone on the other side of the pond--it's the USA NTSC model, not the European PAL version. Cheers, Chuck From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 10 12:17:36 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:17:36 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations References: <43737A32.5080704@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> <200511101241.20932.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <17267.36544.47094.502086@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Patrick" == Patrick Finnegan writes: Patrick> No, those were "DEC 3000"s. DECstations (3000/5000/etc) Patrick> were all MIPS. Patrick> And, from what I've heard, at least one reason that DEC made Patrick> Alpha, and didn't port VMS to the MIPS architecture, is Patrick> because they'd have to make a lot of changes to VMS, because Patrick> of its security model, in order to make it work with MIPS. Patrick> Aparently, MIPS just didn't work enough like a VAX CPU to Patrick> easily port VMS to it. Maybe. But I wonder what could be missing that Alpha has and MIPS doesn't that is so critical. Supposedly, the only reason MIPS has supervisor mode is that DEC insisted on having it added. paul From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 12:16:21 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:16:21 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <0IPR00HJ441QMCV0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour > From: woodelf > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:22:23 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >> >> >Well if you are going to hack the 8008 you need the right tools. >Check here for a 8008 link I just found yesterday. > >> http://www.jkearney.com/8008/ > Haveing done two commercial designs with the part I have most of that including a copy of the MARK-8 article. Never like the part it was just on the cusp of 60 ICs for s system using it or 150 ICs or so to do it from the ground up. Much prefered the 8080 and better yet 8085 and Z80s. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 12:25:26 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:25:26 -0800 Subject: More old stuff In-Reply-To: References: <200511100955030608.0553399A@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511101025260256.056F0905@10.0.0.252> On 11/10/2005 at 10:05 AM Peter C. Wallace wrote: >That brings back memories! (double-entendre intended?) >Once wirewrapped a 32M byte RAM card for my Technico 9900 card >using MB8107s salvaged from bad Amdahl cards. Last of the unmuxed DRAMS I >think... I believe you're right--12 address lines, 1 data in and 1 data out line. The 4060's were also used on the old MITS Altair 4K DRAM card. Miserable things--they had a tendency to change contents when RESET was toggled. 3-supply chips at that +12, +5 and -5 if memory (!) serves. Cheers, Chuck Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 12:27:11 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:27:11 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPR00K6X4JS2062@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations > From: Paul Koning > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:17:36 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>>>>> "Patrick" == Patrick Finnegan writes: > > Patrick> No, those were "DEC 3000"s. DECstations (3000/5000/etc) > Patrick> were all MIPS. > > Patrick> And, from what I've heard, at least one reason that DEC made > Patrick> Alpha, and didn't port VMS to the MIPS architecture, is > Patrick> because they'd have to make a lot of changes to VMS, because > Patrick> of its security model, in order to make it work with MIPS. > Patrick> Aparently, MIPS just didn't work enough like a VAX CPU to > Patrick> easily port VMS to it. > >Maybe. But I wonder what could be missing that Alpha has and MIPS >doesn't that is so critical. An advantage over VAX. At that point in time it was considered but the forward planning people already had strong feeings that the VAX killer machine was to be next generation and generally that meant larger address (more than 32bits). >Supposedly, the only reason MIPS has supervisor mode is that DEC >insisted on having it added. I'd heard that. Never able to verify it. Allison From news at computercollector.com Thu Nov 10 12:27:29 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:27:29 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <43738C48.40800@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <009401c5e624$69148210$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Videography volunteers are welcome at East 3.0. (Jason Scott will probably attend, but to give a speech or exhibit.) -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of woodelf Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 1:07 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: VCF 8.0 Pictures Allison wrote: >Beefcake: young men with fine bodies. ;) > > > Oh you must mean the older men moving all the BIG iron. >The sandwitches are for eating while watching. ;-) > > > > Will anybody be making a documentry of the VCF's for people that can't make it out like myself , or for historical reasons? From jim at jkearney.com Thu Nov 10 12:32:26 2005 From: jim at jkearney.com (Jim Kearney) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:32:26 -0500 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour References: <0IPR00HJ441QMCV0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <015401c5e625$19912c10$0500a8c0@jkearney.com> > >> http://www.jkearney.com/8008/ > > > > Haveing done two commercial designs with the part I have most of that > including a copy of the MARK-8 article. Never like the part it was just > on the cusp of 60 ICs for s system using it or 150 ICs or so to do it I've got a hugely simpler design that uses the 8008: http://www.jkearney.com/tiny8demo/ The display devices are slightly anachronistic, but the state and address decoding in this design is pretty slick, I think. Jim From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 10 11:28:08 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:28:08 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511101017210485.0567A37A@10.0.0.252> References: <001f01c5e61f$b6f74440$5b01a8c0@pc1> <200511101017210485.0567A37A@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43738328.4080601@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/10/2005 at 5:53 PM a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: > > >>I have no idea about fair, and you are on the wrong side of the >>pond for it to be worth my while trying to con you out of it >>(although, if you're willing to pick up the shipping, do let >>me know :-)), but the last couple I saw on ebay went for about >>?200 or so. Back in the dot-com boom I saw one go for ?400. > > > I don't know if this would be particularly valuable to someone on the other > side of the pond--it's the USA NTSC model, not the European PAL version. Of course it's possible that makes it more valuable to a UK Sinclair collector because it's even rarer. Collectors often work in mysterious ways... But yes, prices are silly - I mean 200 to 400 pounds for something the size of a piece of toast seems a little crazy :-) Actually, there can't be many NTSC versions on the USA side of the pond. Presumably the machines didn't sell nearly as well in the US as they did in the UK. But whether they're collectable to US people is another matter... cheers Jules From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 12:38:11 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:38:11 -0800 Subject: Ampex Megastore ISA card? In-Reply-To: References: <200511100941380501.0546F0A6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511101038110074.057AB470@10.0.0.252> On 11/10/2005 at 10:01 AM Peter C. Wallace wrote: >At one time Ampex marketed something called Megastore that was bulk core >memory used as a disk replacement (large latency (for core) but high >bandwidth) Apparently, Ampex used the term "Megastore" for a bunch of different things. Googling around, I found this information (in German): http://zxspectrum.de/Literatur/Zeitschriften/mc/mc_03_85_Inhalt/mc0385S102/m c0385s102.html Apparently, the PC Megastore was a 20 MB hard drive packaged with a backup streamer. I suspect that the 50-pin header might be SASI, but that's just a guess. Cheers, Chuck From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 12:48:40 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:48:40 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <4373760C.5060805@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100839o2641ece9l@mail.gmail.com> <43737A32.5080704@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <43739608.5060804@gmail.com> Dan Williams wrote: > On 10/11/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >>Dan Williams wrote: >> >>>>It's really too bad that DEC never released a version of VMS for >>>>DECstation. I'd be all over that. >>>> >>>>Peace... Sridhar >>>> >>> >>>The 3000/ 300, 400, 500 and 500x all run Openvms Alpha. Up to which >>>version I don't know, but I would assume current. >> >>That's fine for Alphas, but DECstations are MIPS. >> >>Peace... Sridhar >> > > The Decstation 3000 range where Alphas, they had a 21064 chip. Wrong. The DEC 3000 range were alphas. The DECstation 2100/3100, 5100, 5400, 5500 and 5000-series were MIPS. Peace... Sridhar From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 12:49:10 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:49:10 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511101017210485.0567A37A@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 18:17, "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > I don't know if this would be particularly valuable to someone on the other > side of the pond--it's the USA NTSC model, not the European PAL version. They're easily swappable like the ZX81 is - a new xtal, modulator and a link swap is all that's necessary I think.... A From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 12:52:29 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:52:29 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <001f01c5e61f$b6f74440$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 17:53, "a.carlini at ntlworld.com" wrote: > I have no idea about fair, and you are on the wrong side of the > pond for it to be worth my while trying to con you out of it > (although, if you're willing to pick up the shipping, do let > me know :-)), but the last couple I saw on ebay went for about > ?200 or so. Back in the dot-com boom I saw one go for ?400. Typical epay prices for ZX80s range from about ukp75 for a fairly battered example (dirty, stained case, broken corners etc) through ~ukp120 for a clean one with manual and PSU to about ukp200 for a good condition boxed one. There's occasionally a bidding war when a pristine white one appears in its shipping box - remember there was no retail box - and the price can still hit well over ukp300. Mine was ukp10 but it didn't have its manual :oD A From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:02:27 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:02:27 +0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 17:07, "Dan Williams" wrote: > The Decstation 3000 range where Alphas, they had a 21064 chip. Not quite, alphas were never christened 'DECstations' - that moniker was reserved for the MIPS-powered DECstation 2100, 3100, 5000 etc that only ran Ultrix MIPS. The DEC 3000-300LX, 400, 500, 600 and 900 (?) were Alpha powered machines using the same TURBOChannel bus as the top-end MIPS DECstation 5000 range. Somewhere in my DEC CD collection I've got OSF/1 T1.0 for MIPS boxen but can't find it ATM. Bah. Ultrix VAX was a different codebase I think, certainly for binaries. I've got CDs for 4.2, 4.4 and 4.5 and they *may* be downstairs. I've got to rifle through the whole lot for VAX VMS 7.1 for my VAX 6660 installation next week so I'll have a look for the Ultrix ones too. (The only load media on this big-iron VAX is a TZ887 tape library so I'm going to install VMS onto the boot disk by plugging it into a VAX 3100-90 with a BA350 storage shelf then all I have to do is put that disk into the 6660's HSJ50-powered storage array and boot it......try doing THAT on any other OS :oD VMS is VMS is VMS.....) A From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:04:33 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:04:33 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <43738328.4080601@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 17:28, "Jules Richardson" wrote: > Actually, there can't be many NTSC versions on the USA side of the pond. > Presumably the machines didn't sell nearly as well in the US as they did > in the UK. But whether they're collectable to US people is another > matter... I know that around 70,000 machines were made but that figure obviously isn't broken down into UK/US machines. The kit machines had instructions for either side of the pond, as did the ZX81. A From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 13:06:52 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:06:52 -0800 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511101106520766.0594F976@10.0.0.252> I'll post photos a bit later, but would USD$ 100 be out of line for a good-condition ZX80 and book (but no PSU or original box)? Cheers, Chuck From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:06:36 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:06:36 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511100923520668.0536AD3E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 17:23, "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > So what's a fair asking price for this thing? All I've got is the BASIC > book and the ZX80 itself. I really don't want to eBay it. The last 2 US based ZX80s went for about $80 and $120 I think, but one had a shipping box. Of course, ebah is the only international tool I can use for pricing, YMMV, caveat emptor etc :) A From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:11:24 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:11:24 +0000 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <56482.127.0.0.1.1131579346.squirrel@www.vintage-computer.com> Message-ID: On 9/11/05 23:35, "Erik Klein" wrote: > I've just finished putting up a quick page for my VCF 8.0 pictures. There > are no descriptions yet (any help would be appreciated - let me know if > you recognize folks, items or whatnot) but I'll hopefully get to them > soon. Hi Erik, Can I host a copy of the Lisa 1 picture on my Binary Dinosaurs museum site please? I'm massively impressed to see one still running in 2005! And no, it's not because there's a blonde in the picture - I live with one of those so I'm all sorted ;) A From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:14:10 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:14:10 +0000 Subject: Software find In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511091504x10f3c4b5h@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 9/11/05 23:04, "Dan Williams" wrote: > For the 380z Sbas, bcpl (4 disks), txed, zasm, cp/m 2.2 and 1.4 and Wordstar. > For the Nimbus Windows 1.01 (Which I've never seen), write 2.0, > various version of RM basic and Msdos 3.05. > I'd like to see windows booted up the earliest version I've seen is > 2.x (can't remember). I've got 2 Nimbus' but no monitor for either of them, though there's another machine plus a monitor waiting for me in north wales if I can ever get over there to pick it up (or Lee D. can if I can get the address :o)) Wouldn't mind seeing windows 101 myself, though it's just a glorified DOSSHELL running on top of DOS 5. 'ugly' doesn't do it justice! A From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 13:15:02 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:15:02 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPR00GVM6RI0OK1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations > From: Adrian Graham > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:02:27 +0000 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >(The only load media on this big-iron VAX is a TZ887 tape library so I'm >going to install VMS onto the boot disk by plugging it into a VAX 3100-90 >with a BA350 storage shelf then all I have to do is put that disk into the >6660's HSJ50-powered storage array and boot it......try doing THAT on any >other OS :oD VMS is VMS is VMS.....) > >A I've done that for years using RD54s and then SCSI disks, easiest way to do a VMS install for 20 systems. Do it once then clone the drive, doent matter what the system varient was so long as it can interface to the drive. Beat the tar or hackup out of using TK50. Allison From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 10 12:17:33 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:17:33 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511101106520766.0594F976@10.0.0.252> References: <200511101106520766.0594F976@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43738EBD.5090908@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I'll post photos a bit later, but would USD$ 100 be out of line for a > good-condition ZX80 and book (but no PSU or original box)? My gut feeling was about 50 pounds, which presumably works out around 80 USD (ish ;) *Possibly* a few bucks less due to lack of PSU, but personally I don't really consider unregulated wall-wart PSUs to contribute much to the value of a machine. As it's incomplete anyway (no box) it probably doesn't matter. Having said all that, I don't personally consider EBay a useful resource of fair prices for things. If that's taken into account, you could probably raise the asking price a fair bit! cheers J. From healyzh at aracnet.com Thu Nov 10 13:31:38 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:31:38 -0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: At 11:59 PM +0800 11/10/05, Wai-Sun Chia wrote: >On 11/10/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > The problem is that Ultrix doesn't *feel* all that different from NetBSD. > >I wouldn't know that until I've checked it out, wouldn't I? >Now you've gone and spoiled it..:-) Personally I bought the DECstation I have somewhere specifically to run NetBSD, not that I could tell you where that system is at the moment. Something to consider about Ultrix is that it is quite old at this point, and doesn't get any updates. NetBSD does. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 13:35:30 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:35:30 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4373A102.70500@gmail.com> Adrian Graham wrote: > (The only load media on this big-iron VAX is a TZ887 tape library so I'm > going to install VMS onto the boot disk by plugging it into a VAX 3100-90 > with a BA350 storage shelf then all I have to do is put that disk into the > 6660's HSJ50-powered storage array and boot it......try doing THAT on any > other OS :oD VMS is VMS is VMS.....) I load my big-iron VAXen by MOP booting them directly from the VMS CD using an Infoserver. I suppose you could use NetBSD mopd to do something similar, but it's much easier with the Infoserver, which is designed specifically for that purpose. If you can get your hands on an Infoserver, I highly recommend it. Peace... Sridhar From jim at g1jbg.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:37:37 2005 From: jim at g1jbg.co.uk (Jim Beacon) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:37:37 -0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers References: Message-ID: <002101c5e62e$34982f00$0200a8c0@ntlworld.com> From: "William Donzelli" > Running tubes at low plate voltages was not really an innovation - > engineers had always done this, and many normal tubes will actually work > at a quarter rated plate voltage or less. Purpose built low voltage tubes > never took off too well - ther really is not a huge advantage in the power > department, as the big share of the power bill was always the filament. > I have a couple of valve (tube) radio circuits with an HT (B+) voltage of only 3V. Mullard made a range of valves designed for 12V anode, and 12V heater use (intended for car radios in the late50s - they were used as the RF and IF stages, driving a Germanium power transistor (usually OC16) as the AF ouput. Jim. From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:45:08 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:45:08 +0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <0IPR00GVM6RI0OK1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 19:15, "Allison" wrote: >> (The only load media on this big-iron VAX is a TZ887 tape library so I'm >> going to install VMS onto the boot disk by plugging it into a VAX 3100-90 >> with a BA350 storage shelf then all I have to do is put that disk into the >> 6660's HSJ50-powered storage array and boot it......try doing THAT on any >> other OS :oD VMS is VMS is VMS.....) >> >> A > > I've done that for years using RD54s and then SCSI disks, easiest way to do > a VMS install for 20 systems. Do it once then clone the drive, doent matter > what the system varient was so long as it can interface to the drive. > > Beat the tar or hackup out of using TK50. Yup, and it's good to watch people's faces when they don't believe that such behaviour is possible. I also had some fun last week with someone who'd been 'educated' in the ways of Windows 'clusters' - it took him several minutes to come to terms with a filesystem that was accessible by any machine in the cluster *at the same time* and one that was set up in minutes. He wanted to know why such a filesystem wasn't everywhere and I couldn't honestly answer him other than saying 'cost'. A From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 13:50:52 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:50:52 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4373A49C.3090804@gmail.com> Adrian Graham wrote: > On 10/11/05 19:15, "Allison" wrote: > > >>>(The only load media on this big-iron VAX is a TZ887 tape library so I'm >>>going to install VMS onto the boot disk by plugging it into a VAX 3100-90 >>>with a BA350 storage shelf then all I have to do is put that disk into the >>>6660's HSJ50-powered storage array and boot it......try doing THAT on any >>>other OS :oD VMS is VMS is VMS.....) >>> >>>A >> >>I've done that for years using RD54s and then SCSI disks, easiest way to do >>a VMS install for 20 systems. Do it once then clone the drive, doent matter >>what the system varient was so long as it can interface to the drive. >> >>Beat the tar or hackup out of using TK50. > > > Yup, and it's good to watch people's faces when they don't believe that such > behaviour is possible. I also had some fun last week with someone who'd been > 'educated' in the ways of Windows 'clusters' - it took him several minutes > to come to terms with a filesystem that was accessible by any machine in the > cluster *at the same time* and one that was set up in minutes. He wanted to > know why such a filesystem wasn't everywhere and I couldn't honestly answer > him other than saying 'cost'. It's not cost. It's stupidity, unfortunately. Peace... Sridhar From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:53:41 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:53:41 +0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <4373A102.70500@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 19:35, "Sridhar Ayengar" wrote: > I load my big-iron VAXen by MOP booting them directly from the VMS CD > using an Infoserver. I suppose you could use NetBSD mopd to do > something similar, but it's much easier with the Infoserver, which is > designed specifically for that purpose. > > If you can get your hands on an Infoserver, I highly recommend it. No problem getting an infoserver, I must admit slight embarrassment at not remembering that, also in not remembering that the infoserver was the recommended load device for the 6xxx series VAXen. I hope my infoserver isn't at work since I'm not going to be back there till next Thursday.... Ah, a slight problem in that my DELNI *is* at work along with my AUI-BNC transceivers and I know I won't be able to fuss around with netbooting things on the corporate network - I'd have to create an AUI or thinwire network to do it. Thanks for the reminder though :) A From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 13:47:13 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:47:13 -0500 Subject: Software find Message-ID: <0IPR00E33895GFT0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Software find > From: Adrian Graham > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:14:10 +0000 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 9/11/05 23:04, "Dan Williams" wrote: > >> For the 380z Sbas, bcpl (4 disks), txed, zasm, cp/m 2.2 and 1.4 and Wordstar. >> For the Nimbus Windows 1.01 (Which I've never seen), write 2.0, >> various version of RM basic and Msdos 3.05. >> I'd like to see windows booted up the earliest version I've seen is >> 2.x (can't remember). > >I've got 2 Nimbus' but no monitor for either of them, though there's another >machine plus a monitor waiting for me in north wales if I can ever get over >there to pick it up (or Lee D. can if I can get the address :o)) > >Wouldn't mind seeing windows 101 myself, though it's just a glorified >DOSSHELL running on top of DOS 5. 'ugly' doesn't do it justice! > >A Then again so was V3.11. It was dos. Allison From waisun.chia at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 13:56:21 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 03:56:21 +0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/11/05, Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 11:59 PM +0800 11/10/05, Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > >On 11/10/05, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > > The problem is that Ultrix doesn't *feel* all that different from NetBSD. > > > >I wouldn't know that until I've checked it out, wouldn't I? > >Now you've gone and spoiled it..:-) > > Personally I bought the DECstation I have somewhere specifically to > run NetBSD, not that I could tell you where that system is at the > moment. Something to consider about Ultrix is that it is quite old > at this point, and doesn't get any updates. NetBSD does. There are people running Unix V6 on their 11/40...err..so what's your point? :-) Or have you forgotten what which list you're in? :-) From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 10 14:01:12 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:01:12 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <43738328.4080601@yahoo.co.uk> References: <001f01c5e61f$b6f74440$5b01a8c0@pc1> <200511101017210485.0567A37A@10.0.0.252> <43738328.4080601@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4373A708.4010104@gjcp.net> Jules Richardson wrote: > But yes, prices are silly - I mean 200 to 400 pounds for something the > size of a piece of toast seems a little crazy :-) You want to talk about silly, look at the price of Roland TB-303s on eBay. I saw a broken one sell for ?400 the other day. And to think, back when I was in school, before the early days of acid house, I passed one up, boxed, used once, for ?25. Because I just wasn't into synthesizers then. Bah. Gordon From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 13:51:50 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:51:50 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPR00HBJ8GT54R1@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations > From: Adrian Graham > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:45:08 +0000 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Yup, and it's good to watch people's faces when they don't believe that such >behaviour is possible. I also had some fun last week with someone who'd been >'educated' in the ways of Windows 'clusters' - it took him several minutes >to come to terms with a filesystem that was accessible by any machine in the >cluster *at the same time* and one that was set up in minutes. He wanted to >know why such a filesystem wasn't everywhere and I couldn't honestly answer >him other than saying 'cost'. > >A That and MOP load were wonderful. I've tried to do diskless client under winders (95 through NT4/server) and no one can say how it's done but all said it could be. Gah! Who was it that had the signline of something like: Don't you wish you could buy now what DEC had then. Allison From williams.dan at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 14:17:12 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:17:12 +0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <43739608.5060804@gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <4373760C.5060805@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100839o2641ece9l@mail.gmail.com> <43737A32.5080704@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> <43739608.5060804@gmail.com> Message-ID: <26c11a640511101217g436e8620s@mail.gmail.com> > > Wrong. The DEC 3000 range were alphas. The DECstation 2100/3100, 5100, > 5400, 5500 and 5000-series were MIPS. > > Peace... Sridhar > I think I could be going mad, I was sure I used to have a decstation Alpha. I looked on the web and they are not even in the same case. Dan From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 14:01:27 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:01:27 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Switch-Mode PSU Failure Modes, Repairs, & Parts Substitutions In-Reply-To: <000601c5e5f4$7203f4d0$a594183e@down> from "slasor" at Nov 10, 5 12:43:40 pm Message-ID: > > Hi, > I have 3 Patriot book pc psu's which I want to get repaired. You don't give us much to go on :-) What are they doing? In general you'll either get mo outputs at all, or a supply that's tripping. It will 'tweet' about once a second. If you get that, connect a voltermeter (or better a 'scope) to each output in turn and see if one of them is not coming up at all (if so, then suspect shorted secondary-side components on that output). If it's totally dead, look at the mains fuse. If it's shattered/blackened, you have a major short on the primary side. Check the rectifier diodes and chopper transistor, etc. If it's gently blown, replace it and try again. If it's OK and the supply seems dead, suspect a startup failure. Often there's a high-value resistor from the +ve side of the mains smoothing capacitor to some point in the control circuit to get it going. That resistor (may be 2 in series) often fails open-circuit. And don't overlook the obvious. I've just spend some considerable time debugging a very complex HP SMPSU (on 6 PCBs, with 5 chopper transistors, etc -- the supply in a 7245A printer/plotter), only to find the fault was that an intneral cable wasn't plugged in properly. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 14:13:38 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:13:38 +0000 (GMT) Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511100923520668.0536AD3E@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 10, 5 09:23:52 am Message-ID: > So I guess it works. This thing seems to be made in the same way that the > Sinclair LED wristwatch I once had was--CHEAP is the biggest consideration. Exactly. And don't care if it works properly, or if it's convenient to use. Remember Sinclair once sold a scientific calculator that gave you 3 accureate significant figures if you were lucky! I really don't understand the love of Sinclair products. IU'd much rather have nad use something DEC or HP, or one of the many other companies that didn't cut every possible corner and then some impossible ones. But then collectores are often strange. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:46:52 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:46:52 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <4371A623.30407@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 9, 5 08:32:51 am Message-ID: > Here it is with relation to the boardswapper guides: > > NP/=MonAck/ --( )-- WrFull/=FLB/ > NW/=MonStb --( )-- DD15=GS > Gnd --( )-- MonClrAddr/=NL/ > Gnd --( )-- +5V > I6=MD(6) --( )-- +5V > CS=MD(7) --( )-- +5V > I4=MD(4) --( ) N/C > I5=MD(5) --( )-- -Vm > I2=MD(2) --( )-- -Vm > I3=MD(3) --( )-- +Vm > I0=MD(0) --( )-- +Vm > I1=MD(1) --( )-- Gnd > IV=MD(9) --( )-- Gnd > CUR=MD(8) --( )-- MD(12)=RDA > UL=MD(11) --( )-- MD(13)=GRA > B=MD(10) --( )-- MD(14)=BLA > AS=GS/=DA14 --( )-- Gnd > Gnd --( )-- Init/ > > where > > NP = New Page (=> load start address + AS + GS from block 0 at address > 600000 into address register ) > NL = New Line (=> read one line from crt buffer into line buffer) > NW = New Word (=> provide next character+attribute data to monitor) Well, my names were'd too ridiculous, then, considering I worked them out before seeing the boardswapper guide. > AS = Alpha Select (=> enable alpha display, used as GS/ for switching > between alpha and graphics on the monochromes) > GS = Graphics Select (=> enable graphics display on the 9845C only, > where alpha & graphics can be displayed simultaneously) Are you sure that doesn't also apply to the 98780 enhanced mono monitor? The text and graphic systems are pretty much seperate on that monitor, OK, there is one video timing chain (on the text PCB) that provides timing signals to the graphics board too, but the graphics unit has its own memory, video shift register, etc. The outputs are combinded by a fairly complex mixer circuit on the interface PCB in the monitor. There is no good reason why the 2 can't be displayed at the same time. > Quite interesting the INIT/-signal is looped through to the monitor. Well, I guess the ciorcuitry needs the power-on reset, etc. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:53:39 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:53:39 +0000 (GMT) Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2508@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> from "Gooijen, Henk" at Nov 10, 5 09:03:40 am Message-ID: > > Tony wrote: > > > > just a short question, I have seen so much that I start doubting > > > everything :-( After you pressed the CLR key on the 11/34 > > > console (to get a clear start point), if you *only* press the > > > CNTRL key, nothing should happen, right? > > > > Right. The CNTRL key is a bit like a shift key, and should do > > nothing on its own. > > > > > > To answere one of your other posts, I would expect data to be > > written ot the display latch quite frequently (of the order of ms) > > _but_ the write pulse will be narrow (a few us at most), and if > > you've got the analyser set up to sample for long enough to display > > several display scans, you might well miss some of the write pulses > > because they occur between analyser samples. I think the K100D has > > 'gltich capture' for just this sort of problem, try selecting it for > > the input you use for the write pulse. > > > > -tony > > Ok, so the CNTRL key behaviour analysis is a good point to start with. Well, it's a definite fault. I would guess the firmware is doing the wrong thing (I can't see how a hardware fault in the keyboard or display could do this). > But I will first inspect the two RAM chips! 4-bit data in, 4-bit data What are the RAMs? From the description, they sound like the little TTL RAMs that DEC also used for register storage on some of the '11 CPUs -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 13:55:37 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:55:37 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <0IPQ00I66NTK7241@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 10, 5 07:25:48 am Message-ID: > CR408 is a 1A 400V diode (1n4006 should do) Is there any reaosn not to use a 1N4007 here as well? I generally don't buy the other IN400x's as I've yet to find an application where too high a PIV is a problem. -tony From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 14:25:39 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:25:39 -0500 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4373ACC3.8050704@gmail.com> Tony Duell wrote: >>So I guess it works. This thing seems to be made in the same way that the >>Sinclair LED wristwatch I once had was--CHEAP is the biggest consideration. > > > Exactly. And don't care if it works properly, or if it's convenient to > use. Remember Sinclair once sold a scientific calculator that gave you 3 > accureate significant figures if you were lucky! > > I really don't understand the love of Sinclair products. IU'd much rather > have nad use something DEC or HP, or one of the many other companies that > didn't cut every possible corner and then some impossible ones. But then > collectores are often strange. For me, it's more nostalgia. It was the first computer that was "all mine". Before that I just used all of my father's hardware. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 14:27:39 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:27:39 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511101217g436e8620s@mail.gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <4373760C.5060805@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100839o2641ece9l@mail.gmail.com> <43737A32.5080704@gmail.com> <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> <43739608.5060804@gmail.com> <26c11a640511101217g436e8620s@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4373AD3B.8030808@gmail.com> Dan Williams wrote: >>Wrong. The DEC 3000 range were alphas. The DECstation 2100/3100, 5100, >>5400, 5500 and 5000-series were MIPS. >> >>Peace... Sridhar >> > > I think I could be going mad, I was sure I used to have a decstation > Alpha. I looked on the web and they are not even in the same case. The low end DEC 3000's (the 300 and the 400) are in the same case as the DECstation 5000/20, /25, /33 and /50. Same 12.5MHz TurboChannel too, I believe. Otherwise, they're all different. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 14:38:28 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:38:28 -0800 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511101238280702.05E8D4E4@10.0.0.252> On 11/10/2005 at 8:13 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >I really don't understand the love of Sinclair products. IU'd much rather >have nad use something DEC or HP, or one of the many other companies that >didn't cut every possible corner and then some impossible ones. But then >collectores are often strange. I wonder if there's a collector's market for Muntz TVs? I suspect that you probably had a version of "Madman Muntz" on your side of the pond. In a nutshell, Muntz sold sets that were stripped to their very minimum parts count. His tuners didn't have AFC, but neither did they have a manual tuning adjustment--they were set at the factory. If you had a problem, you called one of his service people to tweak the tuning. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 14:43:47 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:43:47 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <0IPR002D3AVERSA0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:55:37 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> CR408 is a 1A 400V diode (1n4006 should do) > >Is there any reaosn not to use a 1N4007 here as well? I generally don't >buy the other IN400x's as I've yet to find an application where too high >a PIV is a problem. > >-tony That is true but I gave him the spec for the diode that was there. As is the 4006 is a 600V device. Hey around here anytime I need a 1A diode it's a 1N4007 as I buy them 100 at a time cheap. They make good varactors an passable HF low VHF PIN diodes. Allison From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 15:04:46 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 10:04:46 +1300 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <43728F5A.6020301@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> <43728F5A.6020301@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 11/10/05, woodelf wrote: > Did anybody build any real projects from radio shack? When I was 13, I built the "Simon" project that was in Byte and attached it to a PET (4 independent CMOS dual NAND oscillators hooked to 4 output pins with 4 input buttons hooked to the remaining 4 pins on the PET's 6522). All the parts were purchased at Radio Shack except for the PET connector. Total part count was 4 each of a 4001, a variable resistor, a cap, an LED, and a pushbutton, all stuffed onto a longish breadboard. -ethan From healyzh at aracnet.com Thu Nov 10 15:19:47 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:19:47 -0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: At 3:56 AM +0800 11/11/05, Wai-Sun Chia wrote: >On 11/11/05, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > Personally I bought the DECstation I have somewhere specifically to >> run NetBSD, not that I could tell you where that system is at the >> moment. Something to consider about Ultrix is that it is quite old >> at this point, and doesn't get any updates. NetBSD does. > >There are people running Unix V6 on their 11/40...err..so what's >your point? :-) >Or have you forgotten what which list you're in? :-) My point would be that you're more likely to have that DECstation on a network than someone is likely to have their PDP-11 running V6 Unix. Besides, I have no desire to run old versions of Unix, I'd just as soon run a supported version (almost said new version, but I still use Solaris 8). Also, I don't run Unix on my PDP-11's, as there are plenty of interesting OS's that won't run on anything else. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 15:29:37 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:29:37 +0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <4373AD3B.8030808@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 20:27, "Sridhar Ayengar" wrote: > The low end DEC 3000's (the 300 and the 400) are in the same case as the > DECstation 5000/20, /25, /33 and /50. Same 12.5MHz TurboChannel too, I > believe. Otherwise, they're all different. Sort of correct, the 3000-300LX is in a similar case to the 5000/20 etc but the 3000-400 is in a unique box. You're right about the turbochannel though. A From doc at mdrconsult.com Thu Nov 10 15:33:21 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:33:21 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures In-Reply-To: <0IPQ0020SWATQSE0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPQ0020SWATQSE0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <4373BCA1.7010301@mdrconsult.com> Allison wrote: > Well for one, I insist that you also have a supply of beefcake > for us geeky girls. Fair is fair! ;) Ahem. Aging, bald, bespectacled, spreading geek men aren't beefcake enough for ya? Doc From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 15:39:26 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:39:26 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <0IPR002D3AVERSA0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: Are these two parts something I can buy at RS? I don't want to have to drive 20 miles to the nearest real component store if possible. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 2:44 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT > >Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:55:37 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> CR408 is a 1A 400V diode (1n4006 should do) > >Is there any reaosn not to use a 1N4007 here as well? I generally don't >buy the other IN400x's as I've yet to find an application where too high >a PIV is a problem. > >-tony That is true but I gave him the spec for the diode that was there. As is the 4006 is a 600V device. Hey around here anytime I need a 1A diode it's a 1N4007 as I buy them 100 at a time cheap. They make good varactors an passable HF low VHF PIN diodes. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 15:50:20 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:50:20 -0500 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <0IPR00KYUDYBQN02@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:39:26 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >Are these two parts something I can buy at RS? I don't want to have to >drive 20 miles to the nearest real component store if possible. > Well a 1n4007 at RS may still be possible, likely 2 for 1.99. I buy them 500 for $15 from JDRmicrodevices. Can never have enough spares. The cap I'd likely hunt around for a junk radio or computer monitor chassis and pull it from there. Allison >>> CR408 is a 1A 400V diode (1n4006 should do) >> >>Is there any reaosn not to use a 1N4007 here as well? I generally don't >>buy the other IN400x's as I've yet to find an application where too high >>a PIV is a problem. >> >>-tony > >That is true but I gave him the spec for the diode that was there. >As is the 4006 is a 600V device. > >Hey around here anytime I need a 1A diode it's a 1N4007 as I buy >them 100 at a time cheap. They make good varactors an passable >HF low VHF PIN diodes. > >Allison > From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Thu Nov 10 15:50:10 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:50:10 -0500 Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller Message-ID: <5001047D-37A4-44F0-A6F3-4B9288C60ACF@xlisper.mv.com> I finally got a drive select plug for my RL01 drive and would like to try connecting it to my 11/73 but I find that the cable that is supposed to plug into the RLV12 controller isn't keyed so it can go in either way. How do I tell what the correct orientation is for this cable? I'm assuming that if I plug it in backwards I'll fry the controller and/or drive. The only markings on the end of the cable that connects to the controller are the manufacturers name "Berg" and the letters A and B near one end and VV and UU near the other end. How should this cable be inserted into the RLV12? Also, assuming I get this straightened out, what should expect to happen on power up? Should the 11/73 automatically boot from the RL01? I have an MXV11A boot board installed. Or do I get a console prompt and have to select the boot device on the console? Thanks, David From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 10 15:46:33 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:46:33 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <0IPR00EOEDS0GC71@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: VCF 8.0 Pictures > From: Doc Shipley > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:33:21 -0500 > To: General at mdrconsult.com, "Discussion at mdrconsult.com":On-Topic and Off-Topic > Posts > >Allison wrote: > >> Well for one, I insist that you also have a supply of beefcake >> for us geeky girls. Fair is fair! ;) > > Ahem. Aging, bald, bespectacled, spreading geek men aren't beefcake >enough for ya? > > > Doc Well, you old farts look at the girls. What's ya think us girls are doin? Allison From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 10 14:49:53 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:49:53 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4373B271.9000205@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: > I really don't understand the love of Sinclair products. IU'd much rather > have nad use something DEC or HP, or one of the many other companies that > didn't cut every possible corner and then some impossible ones. But then > collectores are often strange. I suppose the name Sinclair is closely tied to the early days of the home computer boom, and at least in the UK people will think of his products before the likes of Commodore or Apple. Plus as Sridhar said, one of his machines was often the first that many of us owned (it was in my case, which was why I hung onto my Sinclair collection for a long time after I really needed the space it took up :) Plus Sinclair always had that whacky mad scientist air about him which makes his stuff appealing. I suppose the thing about Sinclair stuff is that it was cheap - but it was obviously cheap, so you knew pretty much what you were getting. Compare to machines with similar capabilities of the time and quite often they weren't really much better in terms of what users wanted - but the packaging was a lot slicker and hence the price was a lot higher... cheers Jules From pat at computer-refuge.org Thu Nov 10 16:01:58 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:01:58 -0500 Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller In-Reply-To: <5001047D-37A4-44F0-A6F3-4B9288C60ACF@xlisper.mv.com> References: <5001047D-37A4-44F0-A6F3-4B9288C60ACF@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <200511101701.58442.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Thursday 10 November 2005 16:50, David Betz wrote: > I finally got a drive select plug for my RL01 drive and would like to > try connecting it to my 11/73 but I find that the cable that is > supposed to plug into the RLV12 controller isn't keyed so it can go > in either way. How do I tell what the correct orientation is for this > cable? I'm assuming that if I plug it in backwards I'll fry the > controller and/or drive. The only markings on the end of the cable > that connects to the controller are the manufacturers name "Berg" and > the letters A and B near one end and VV and UU near the other end. > How should this cable be inserted into the RLV12? "A" should be near the end of the connector labelled "1" or "A". :) And, no, you're not going to fry anything if you hook the cable up backwards. DEC generally did a good job of engineering things to be fault tolerant, unlike some other companies. I've misconnected the cable to my RL02s a few different ways trying to get it going initially -- I don't have an authentic DEC cable, and didn't feel justified in spending much money on a cable to connect a drive that cost me $5 to a machine that cost me at most $20. I eventually spent $10 on buying a terminator from a dealer, once I realized that I needed one, and decided that it wasn't worth my time to try and build one myself. :) Yeah, I'm a cheap bastard. That's why I have so much jun^W^Wmany machines. I was careful, and asked the list about the chances of killing things first though. It's always good to get confimation you're not doing something too stupid or dangerous first, from people that know what they're doing. :) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From Useddec at aol.com Thu Nov 10 16:09:53 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:09:53 EST Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller Message-ID: <195.4b854b17.30a51f31@aol.com> Hi David, I don't type very well, but I can talk you through this on the phone. Is there a good time to call you or would you prefer to call me? It won't matter to my phone bill. Thanks, Paul From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 16:11:15 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:11:15 -0600 Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller In-Reply-To: <5001047D-37A4-44F0-A6F3-4B9288C60ACF@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: Hmm, firmware based 11s seem to vary as far as how they respond on bootup. My 11/23plus gives me "MEMORY TEST"(15 second pause)384KW. START? Then I type DL at the prompt and it boots from the RL02. On an 11/73, I assume you'd still have native RL0x support, so, perhaps you'd still have the "START?" prompt? If you want to boot it manually, i.e. if it doesn't have native RL support, you can enter an RL02 bootstrap when the console is in ODT mode. This is what I have to do for certain magtapes or all MSCP devices, because the 23+ doesn't have MSCP support built in to the firmware. Now secondly, I know you can configure a CPU to autoboot a certain device. That, I'm sure they carried over from the 23+ on to later machines. You need the 11/73 processor manual and the RLV12 manual. Get those and you should be able to figure it out. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of David Betz Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 3:50 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller I finally got a drive select plug for my RL01 drive and would like to try connecting it to my 11/73 but I find that the cable that is supposed to plug into the RLV12 controller isn't keyed so it can go in either way. How do I tell what the correct orientation is for this cable? I'm assuming that if I plug it in backwards I'll fry the controller and/or drive. The only markings on the end of the cable that connects to the controller are the manufacturers name "Berg" and the letters A and B near one end and VV and UU near the other end. How should this cable be inserted into the RLV12? Also, assuming I get this straightened out, what should expect to happen on power up? Should the 11/73 automatically boot from the RL01? I have an MXV11A boot board installed. Or do I get a console prompt and have to select the boot device on the console? Thanks, David From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 16:26:45 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:26:45 -0600 Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I forgot to note that I am rather lucky, and all of my RL02 cables have a green "THIS SIDE UP" sticker on the connector. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Julian Wolfe Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 4:11 PM To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' Subject: RE: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller Hmm, firmware based 11s seem to vary as far as how they respond on bootup. My 11/23plus gives me "MEMORY TEST"(15 second pause)384KW. START? Then I type DL at the prompt and it boots from the RL02. On an 11/73, I assume you'd still have native RL0x support, so, perhaps you'd still have the "START?" prompt? If you want to boot it manually, i.e. if it doesn't have native RL support, you can enter an RL02 bootstrap when the console is in ODT mode. This is what I have to do for certain magtapes or all MSCP devices, because the 23+ doesn't have MSCP support built in to the firmware. Now secondly, I know you can configure a CPU to autoboot a certain device. That, I'm sure they carried over from the 23+ on to later machines. You need the 11/73 processor manual and the RLV12 manual. Get those and you should be able to figure it out. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of David Betz Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 3:50 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller I finally got a drive select plug for my RL01 drive and would like to try connecting it to my 11/73 but I find that the cable that is supposed to plug into the RLV12 controller isn't keyed so it can go in either way. How do I tell what the correct orientation is for this cable? I'm assuming that if I plug it in backwards I'll fry the controller and/or drive. The only markings on the end of the cable that connects to the controller are the manufacturers name "Berg" and the letters A and B near one end and VV and UU near the other end. How should this cable be inserted into the RLV12? Also, assuming I get this straightened out, what should expect to happen on power up? Should the 11/73 automatically boot from the RL01? I have an MXV11A boot board installed. Or do I get a console prompt and have to select the boot device on the console? Thanks, David From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 16:34:03 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:34:03 +0000 Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller In-Reply-To: <5001047D-37A4-44F0-A6F3-4B9288C60ACF@xlisper.mv.com> References: <5001047D-37A4-44F0-A6F3-4B9288C60ACF@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: On 11/10/05, David Betz wrote: > I finally got a drive select plug for my RL01 drive and would like to > try connecting it to my 11/73 but I find that the cable that is > supposed to plug into the RLV12 controller isn't keyed so it can go > in either way. How do I tell what the correct orientation is for this > cable? Look at the connector - there is no enforced keying, true, but most Bergs I've seen have a pair of sub-mm-wide grooves that parallel the connector pins - those grooves are on the same side as the occasionally-seen keying notch. So... looking at the connector on the controller end, I'd expect to see a 2mm ^ 2 notch in the middle of the connector... that side (up) would go with the grooved side of the cable. > I'm assuming that if I plug it in backwards I'll fry the controller and/or drive. Nope. DEC stuff is nice and robust that way. The only markings on the end of the cable > that connects to the controller are the manufacturers name "Berg" and > the letters A and B near one end and VV and UU near the other end. > How should this cable be inserted into the RLV12? If you have markings on the connector, then it's much easier... I don't have an RLV12 in front of me, but the standard blue DEC Berg PCB connector has pin markings embossed into the face of the plastic, does it not? If not, then start by aligning the A-side of the connector with the left side of the connector on the controller as you look at it (perhaps it's marked with a pin-1 indicator, or perhaps the PCB has a square pin) In any case, try what looks like the right choice, and if your FAULT light is still powered on, flip the connector and the FAULT light should be off (when both the drive and the CPU are on). -ethan From spedraja at ono.com Thu Nov 10 16:34:34 2005 From: spedraja at ono.com (SP) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:34:34 +0100 Subject: Xerox 820 5.25 CP/M disks References: <200511100955030608.0553399A@10.0.0.252> <200511101025260256.056F0905@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <005701c5e646$ecad5990$1602a8c0@ACER> Hello. This is for CP/M gurus: How can I do one CP/M bootable disk for the Xerox 820 ? I own the files, but not one image disk, and I must do the work in one PC. Of course, if someone has these disks in bootable form and could do one copy it would be great. Greetings Sergio From pete at dunnington.plus.com Thu Nov 10 16:31:13 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:31:13 GMT Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: mike ingram "Re: SGI...." (Nov 9, 19:45) References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> <43727222.1030205@thebackend.de> Message-ID: <10511102231.ZM14766@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 9 2005, 19:45, mike ingram wrote: > It might just be weak power supplies. There was a recall issued by > SGI about the Challenge XL power supply, I remember our SGI tech > dropping by to replace the PS on our Challenge XL . The machine ran > 24/7 on a UPS for years and we were always very worried about turning > the darn thing off. Interesting. I've just been offered a Challenge L, disfunctional due to faulty PSU. AFAIK that's just a half-size version of the XL, effectively. If I get it, where should I start? -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 16:45:29 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:45:29 -0800 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <0IPR00KYUDYBQN02@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPR00KYUDYBQN02@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511101445290511.065D1C9E@10.0.0.252> On 11/10/2005 at 4:50 PM Allison wrote: >The cap I'd likely hunt around for a junk radio or computer monitor >chassis and pull it from there. Largely OT: Another place to look is in the bases of compact fluorescents-incandescent lamp substitutes. In the US, you can usually find a couple of 22 or 33 ufd @ 200v caps, a bunch of diodes and miscellaneous small caps, a small toroid and two TO-220 power transistors of the MJE13005 variety. The latter can be very useful for deflection or switching PSU replacements as they're rated at 4A/300-400v with a t(f) of less than a microsecond. Cheers, Chuck From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 10 16:46:08 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:46:08 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511101238280702.05E8D4E4@10.0.0.252> References: <200511101238280702.05E8D4E4@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4373CDB0.7020407@gjcp.net> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/10/2005 at 8:13 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > >>I really don't understand the love of Sinclair products. IU'd much rather >>have nad use something DEC or HP, or one of the many other companies that >>didn't cut every possible corner and then some impossible ones. But then >>collectores are often strange. > > > I wonder if there's a collector's market for Muntz TVs? I suspect that > you probably had a version of "Madman Muntz" on your side of the pond. Alan Sugar, probably. Gordon. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 16:54:04 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:54:04 +0000 Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11/10/05, Julian Wolfe wrote: > I forgot to note that I am rather lucky, and all of my RL02 cables have a > green "THIS SIDE UP" sticker on the connector. I almost wrote that as well, but I figured David's fell off at some point in the past. -ethan From info at fki.be Thu Nov 10 16:58:40 2005 From: info at fki.be (First Kart-Inn) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:58:40 +0100 Subject: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale Message-ID: <184101c5e64a$4a969c80$6401a8c0@dimitri> Hi everyone on this list! My name is Dimitri Kokken and I live in Brussels, Belgium. I am the owner of an indoor go-kart centre and I am (was?) a passionate collector of home computers. But...I decided to sell them all. Of course, I was looking for a way to "promote" the sale of my entire old home-computer collection, over 570 different ones, and one of the largest HOME-COMPUTER collections in the world (there are indeed larger COMPUTER collections, but not like this one I think). Anyway...while searching the net I found out about this mailing list and decided to "enlist" :) About the sale of my collection...I thought it all over very carefully if I was going to do it or not, but there are more reasons I can think of to do it, than not. Some of the most important ones are : * The passion I had collecting old home computers has kind of "faded away"...and when the passion's gone... * I am now the proud father (since 15 months) of a daughter and our second saw the light of day a week ago and almost all of my spare time is spent playing with her (and once nr. 2 is old enough : them)...those with kids will understand what I mean. * We (my wife and I) started building a house and that always costs a lot of money...so, if I can earn some extra with this sale that's nice, it's a bonus so to speak (sale or no sale, we have the funds to build the house, it's just nice to have "more than you need" for unforeseen circumstances, which occur quite often apparently when building) * I also am the owner of an indoor go-kart centre and that also takes a lot of time...business is going very well, thus : more work (no, I'm not complaining). If you're a buyer and want to pick up the computers here in Brussels a free kart-ride is (of course) included. How am I selling this lot? Well...of course I thought about Ebay, but I just don't like to pay that many fees (who does?) Then I got the (very kind) offer from the webmaster of MO5.COM to make an auction site "? la" Ebay...he did this in a record time (3 days or so). So now I have all 530+ comps (40+ were sold in one lot to a bidder) on sale at www.mo5.com/dimitrisales/ and some 140 people are already placing bids on the comps. The auctions will all end on Sunday the 4th of december, giving everyone plenty of time to bid and think about how much they're willing to spend on their "fave" computer. There are some real "gems" in the collection, the one which received the highest bid untill now (and probably till the end) is the ORIGINAL GOLDEN C64 WITH COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUE!!! But that's just one of the many nice comps. up for grabs I'd say...it all depends on what you fancy, are you a CBM freak, an Atari lover or....??? If you want to see some pics of the collection you can go here : http://users.pandora.be/F-242/Computers/NewPics-25-10-05/ http://users.pandora.be/F-242/Computers/Computer-List-Dimitri-with-picture-links.htm or http://users.pandora.be/F-242/Computers/Computer-List-Dimitri-with-picture-links.xls contain the entire list of my collection, direct links to many of the comps can be found there as well. Well, that's about it...I have made a FAQ on how to bid/pay/get the comps and also lots of other questions are answered in there as well. This FAQ can be found at the www.mo5.com/dimitrisales/ site. So, if you're curious about all this, or (even better for me) are looking for something in particular, go and check it out, you won't regret it. Kind regards, Dimitri Kokken From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 10 15:54:55 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:54:55 +0000 Subject: Switch-Mode PSU Failure Modes, Repairs, & Parts Substitutions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4373C1AF.3010509@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: >>Hi, >>I have 3 Patriot book pc psu's which I want to get repaired. > > > You don't give us much to go on :-) Maybe that was a statement of intent, not an ask for help ;) From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 17:03:56 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:03:56 +0000 Subject: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale In-Reply-To: <184101c5e64a$4a969c80$6401a8c0@dimitri> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 22:58, "First Kart-Inn" wrote: > > Hi everyone on this list! > > My name is Dimitri Kokken and I live in Brussels, Belgium. I am the owner of > an indoor go-kart centre and I am (was?) a passionate collector of home > computers. I know there's more than me on this list who's watching Dimitri's sale but let me be the first to say it's a real sale and not a scam; some excellent Russian home computer clones are there but I don't have much of a hope of buying them I don't think :) A From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Thu Nov 10 17:07:21 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:07:21 -0500 Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller In-Reply-To: References: <5001047D-37A4-44F0-A6F3-4B9288C60ACF@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <3A0E7210-31DC-4DC9-88ED-EBF8A0CCEFFC@xlisper.mv.com> Okay, thanks to all of your help (and Julian's and Patrick's) I now have the RL01 drive connected to the 11/73 and the fault light goes off when I power on both units. Now I just have to figure out how to boot the RL01! On Nov 10, 2005, at 5:34 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 11/10/05, David Betz wrote: >> I finally got a drive select plug for my RL01 drive and would like to >> try connecting it to my 11/73 but I find that the cable that is >> supposed to plug into the RLV12 controller isn't keyed so it can go >> in either way. How do I tell what the correct orientation is for this >> cable? > > Look at the connector - there is no enforced keying, true, but most > Bergs > I've seen have a pair of sub-mm-wide grooves that parallel the > connector > pins - those grooves are on the same side as the occasionally-seen > keying notch. > > So... looking at the connector on the controller end, I'd expect to > see a 2mm ^ 2 notch in the middle of the connector... that side (up) > would go with the grooved side of the cable. > >> I'm assuming that if I plug it in backwards I'll fry the >> controller and/or drive. > > Nope. DEC stuff is nice and robust that way. > > The only markings on the end of the cable >> that connects to the controller are the manufacturers name "Berg" and >> the letters A and B near one end and VV and UU near the other end. >> How should this cable be inserted into the RLV12? > > If you have markings on the connector, then it's much easier... I > don't have an RLV12 in front of me, but the standard blue DEC Berg PCB > connector has pin markings embossed into the face of the plastic, does > it not? If not, then start by aligning the A-side of the connector > with the left side of the connector on the controller as you look at > it (perhaps it's marked with a pin-1 indicator, or perhaps the PCB has > a square pin) > > In any case, try what looks like the right choice, and if your FAULT > light is still powered on, flip the connector and the FAULT light > should be off (when both the drive and the CPU are on). > > -ethan > From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Thu Nov 10 17:09:15 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:09:15 -0500 Subject: Connecting a BC80M cable to a RLV12 controller In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Yeah, mine was missing. As it turns out, it was easy to line up the AB on the connector with the markings on the board connector. That worked and the drive now seems to be connected correctly. Now to figure out how to configure the MXV11 bootstrap... On Nov 10, 2005, at 5:54 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 11/10/05, Julian Wolfe wrote: >> I forgot to note that I am rather lucky, and all of my RL02 cables >> have a >> green "THIS SIDE UP" sticker on the connector. > > I almost wrote that as well, but I figured David's fell off at some > point in the past. > > -ethan > From info at fki.be Thu Nov 10 17:15:21 2005 From: info at fki.be (First Kart-Inn) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:15:21 +0100 Subject: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale References: Message-ID: <185601c5e64c$9f934920$6401a8c0@dimitri> Well...Adrian, nice to hear that, although...how do you know I'm not a crook? Not that I am of course, but did we ever do business before? Oh...and for those not 100% certain of my honesty, I think my Ebay feedback might help...100% positive feedback and 444 (nice nr. isn't it) different people gave their opinion about me. My name on Ebay is ChaosDM Dimitri ----- Original Message ----- From: "Adrian Graham" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 12:03 AM Subject: Re: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale > On 10/11/05 22:58, "First Kart-Inn" wrote: > > > > > Hi everyone on this list! > > > > My name is Dimitri Kokken and I live in Brussels, Belgium. I am the owner of > > an indoor go-kart centre and I am (was?) a passionate collector of home > > computers. > > I know there's more than me on this list who's watching Dimitri's sale but > let me be the first to say it's a real sale and not a scam; some excellent > Russian home computer clones are there but I don't have much of a hope of > buying them I don't think :) > > A > > > > > From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 17:25:47 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:25:47 +0000 Subject: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale In-Reply-To: <185601c5e64c$9f934920$6401a8c0@dimitri> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 23:15, "First Kart-Inn" wrote: > Well...Adrian, nice to hear that, although...how do you know I'm not a > crook? Not that I am of course, but did we ever do business before? > Oh...and for those not 100% certain of my honesty, I think my Ebay feedback > might help...100% positive feedback and 444 (nice nr. isn't it) different > people gave their opinion about me. My name on Ebay is ChaosDM You have Bo Zimmermann and others singing your praises, that's enough for me. A From info at fki.be Thu Nov 10 17:36:24 2005 From: info at fki.be (First Kart-Inn) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:36:24 +0100 Subject: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale References: Message-ID: <189301c5e64f$908a3a30$6401a8c0@dimitri> Ah...ok I see, yeah...Bo is a great guy...very honest as well. Dimitri ----- Original Message ----- From: "Adrian Graham" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 12:25 AM Subject: Re: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale > On 10/11/05 23:15, "First Kart-Inn" wrote: > > > Well...Adrian, nice to hear that, although...how do you know I'm not a > > crook? Not that I am of course, but did we ever do business before? > > Oh...and for those not 100% certain of my honesty, I think my Ebay feedback > > might help...100% positive feedback and 444 (nice nr. isn't it) different > > people gave their opinion about me. My name on Ebay is ChaosDM > > You have Bo Zimmermann and others singing your praises, that's enough for > me. > > > A > > > > > From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 17:50:22 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:50:22 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <200511101445290511.065D1C9E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: I have a few things I'd like to share with those who've been following this thread: First, a question: Will this work as a replacement cap? It took me a while to find this: https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G9173&variation=& aitem=14&mitem=24 Secondly, apparently my old VT100 outlasted someone's VT101 with the same problem by 12 years: Newsgroups: comp.terminals Path: cs.utk.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.cac.psu.edu!usenet From: BJJ at ECL.PSU.EDU (Bryan J Jensen) Subject: Re: VT101 video woes... Date: 23 Jul 1993 05:00:39 GMT Organization: Penn State Engineering Computer Lab Lines: 15 Message-ID: <22nr9n$orj at genesis.ait.psu.edu> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: ecl.psu.edu In-Reply-To: adam at owlnet.rice.edu's message of Sat, 17 Jul 1993 04:33:15 GMT In adam at owlnet.rice.edu writes: > I have a lovely old VT101 sitting here that I inherited. > ... I get nada on the video. The video board is the one to the side of the CRT with all the pots. On the video board, The 75uF, 6V capacitor C439 and its neighbor, diode CR408, have a real bad habit of burning up. The Flyback transformer or Horizontal Output Transistor sometimes go bad too, of course, as they seem to in any monitor. I forget where the transistor is. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 4:45 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT On 11/10/2005 at 4:50 PM Allison wrote: >The cap I'd likely hunt around for a junk radio or computer monitor >chassis and pull it from there. Largely OT: Another place to look is in the bases of compact fluorescents-incandescent lamp substitutes. In the US, you can usually find a couple of 22 or 33 ufd @ 200v caps, a bunch of diodes and miscellaneous small caps, a small toroid and two TO-220 power transistors of the MJE13005 variety. The latter can be very useful for deflection or switching PSU replacements as they're rated at 4A/300-400v with a t(f) of less than a microsecond. Cheers, Chuck From williams.dan at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 17:51:54 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:51:54 +0000 Subject: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale In-Reply-To: References: <184101c5e64a$4a969c80$6401a8c0@dimitri> Message-ID: <26c11a640511101551u15e3197bt@mail.gmail.com> On 10/11/05, Adrian Graham wrote: > On 10/11/05 22:58, "First Kart-Inn" wrote: > > > > > Hi everyone on this list! > > > > My name is Dimitri Kokken and I live in Brussels, Belgium. I am the owner of > > an indoor go-kart centre and I am (was?) a passionate collector of home > > computers. > > I know there's more than me on this list who's watching Dimitri's sale but > let me be the first to say it's a real sale and not a scam; some excellent > Russian home computer clones are there but I don't have much of a hope of > buying them I don't think :) > > A > > > I've bid on a few as well, I've only heard good things from other people. Dan From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 17:52:30 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:52:30 -0800 Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 In-Reply-To: <4373B271.9000205@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4373B271.9000205@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> On 11/10/2005 at 8:49 PM Jules Richardson wrote: >I suppose the name Sinclair is closely tied to the early days of the >home computer boom, and at least in the UK people will think of his >products before the likes of Commodore or Apple. I don't know--if I were a collector (and I'm not--the junk just accumulates here without me trying), I'd be looking for not-very common items. Like a National Semi Starplex, or one of the AMC amZ8000 development systems. Or that Durango F-85 that I can't seem to give away. Nice expensive boxes that didn't see a lot of production. How about a People's Computer right out of Berkeley? Wood case with a brass nameplate. I passed one of those up some years back--but they were real. Why fool with the ones that enjoyed 5- and 6-digit production numbers? Reminds me of a co-worker a long time ago when the US Treasury decided to change the penny to its current design. He spent years collecting Indian-head pennies by going to the bank and filtering change (then re-rolling it and exchanging it). He proudly told me one day that he had over 100,000 of the things and was going to clean up in the coins market. He never did--100,000 of anything isn't particularly rare--and I suspect there were still millions of the things still in circulation or sitting in jars in cupboards... Cheers, Chuck From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 10 18:02:31 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:02:31 +0000 Subject: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511101551u15e3197bt@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 10/11/05 23:51, "Dan Williams" wrote: >> I know there's more than me on this list who's watching Dimitri's sale but >> let me be the first to say it's a real sale and not a scam; some excellent >> Russian home computer clones are there but I don't have much of a hope of >> buying them I don't think :) >> >> A >> > I've bid on a few as well, I've only heard good things from other people. > Can people please ignore the double negative that I put into my earlier post :) A From pete at dunnington.plus.com Thu Nov 10 18:05:18 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:05:18 GMT Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) "Re: ZX80 - was: SN76477N" (Nov 10, 20:13) References: Message-ID: <10511110005.ZM15073@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 10 2005, 20:13, Tony Duell wrote: > > So I guess it works. This thing seems to be made in the same way that the > > Sinclair LED wristwatch I once had was--CHEAP is the biggest consideration. > > Exactly. And don't care if it works properly, or if it's convenient to > use. Remember Sinclair once sold a scientific calculator that gave you 3 > accureate significant figures if you were lucky! That would be the one that took longer to calculate the sine of an angle than it took to open Chambers 6-figure tables and look it up, as I was reminded at our recent Open Day (we had a few such things on display along with real computers, micros, and calculators). Having said that, I was quite upset when my Sinclair Cambridge Memory calculator began to misbehave a couple of years ago, and eventually died altogether. It was a nicer shape and size than any other simple calculator I've owned, great for one-handed operation. I have an "ordinary" Sinclair Cambridge, and a Scientific as well, but they're not as nice to use. The memory version seems to be relatively rare, and the last two I saw on eBay went for moe than I'd consider sensible. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 18:37:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:37:01 -0800 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511101637010730.06C3397D@10.0.0.252> Should work just fine, as long as an axial lead cap will fit. Cheers, Chuck On 11/10/2005 at 5:50 PM Julian Wolfe wrote: >I have a few things I'd like to share with those who've been following >this >thread: > >First, a question: Will this work as a replacement cap? It took me a >while >to find this: >https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G9173&variation= & >aitem=14&mitem=24 From chenmel at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 18:37:00 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:37:00 -0500 Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 In-Reply-To: <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> References: <4373B271.9000205@yahoo.co.uk> <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051110193700.29c2072b.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:52:30 -0800 "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > On 11/10/2005 at 8:49 PM Jules Richardson wrote: > > >I suppose the name Sinclair is closely tied to the early days of the > >home computer boom, and at least in the UK people will think of his > >products before the likes of Commodore or Apple. > > I don't know--if I were a collector (and I'm not--the junk just accumulates > here without me trying), I'd be looking for not-very common items. Like a > National Semi Starplex, or one of the AMC amZ8000 development systems. Or > that Durango F-85 that I can't seem to give away. Nice expensive boxes > that didn't see a lot of production. > > How about a People's Computer right out of Berkeley? Wood case with a > brass nameplate. I passed one of those up some years back--but they were > real. > > Why fool with the ones that enjoyed 5- and 6-digit production numbers? > Reminds me of a co-worker a long time ago when the US Treasury decided to > change the penny to its current design. He spent years collecting > Indian-head pennies by going to the bank and filtering change (then > re-rolling it and exchanging it). He proudly told me one day that he had > over 100,000 of the things and was going to clean up in the coins market. > He never did--100,000 of anything isn't particularly rare--and I suspect > there were still millions of the things still in circulation or sitting in > jars in cupboards... > Must have been a long, loooong time ago. The US Treasury stopped making Indian-head cents in 1909. Or did you mean the 'change in design' that happened in 1959 when the reverse was changed? Or the design change in 1983 when the coins stopped being made of bronze (with an actual bullion value near the worth of one cent) to bronze-plated zinc (uh, US Mint: places like Germany near the end of WWII were minting their coins out of zinc. Take a hint.) Yikes. Topic drift. Some things are valuable because they are rare. And some collectors revere things mostly if they are rare. Then, some people just want one of each design of some category of thing and a few examples just _happen_ to be rare. In my humble opinion, a hobby category becomes fairly tedious and boring when it becomes a matter of 'rarity for the sake of rarity' for a significant part of the hobby's community. Collection-based hobbies where the publisher/producer of an item specifically limits the number just to _produce_ rareties (i.e. anything at all that has 'Collector's Edition' printed prominently on the original packaging) are the worst. But other people float their boats the way they like, I guess. I make some spending money myself from time to time manipulating the 'scarcity' phenomenon on eBay so I shouldn't cast stones. Who's going to win the SYM-1 up for bid on eBay right now, BTW? > Cheers, > Chuck > > From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 18:49:36 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:49:36 -0600 Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <200511101637010730.06C3397D@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: Yeah, it's actually an axial cap on the board now. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 6:37 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Discharging a VT100 CRT Should work just fine, as long as an axial lead cap will fit. Cheers, Chuck On 11/10/2005 at 5:50 PM Julian Wolfe wrote: >I have a few things I'd like to share with those who've been following >this >thread: > >First, a question: Will this work as a replacement cap? It took me a >while >to find this: >https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/prodinfo.asp?number=G9173&variation= & >aitem=14&mitem=24 From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 18:55:19 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:55:19 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT In-Reply-To: <0IPR002D3AVERSA0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 10, 5 03:43:47 pm Message-ID: > > > > >Subject: Re: Discharging a VT100 CRT > > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > > Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:55:37 +0000 (GMT) > > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > > >> CR408 is a 1A 400V diode (1n4006 should do) > > > >Is there any reaosn not to use a 1N4007 here as well? I generally don't > >buy the other IN400x's as I've yet to find an application where too high > >a PIV is a problem. > > > >-tony > > That is true but I gave him the spec for the diode that was there. > As is the 4006 is a 600V device. Sure... But it 1-off quantities there's little, if any, difference in the price between the 1N4006 and 1N4007, and it's simpler to always get the higher voltage part. > > Hey around here anytime I need a 1A diode it's a 1N4007 as I buy > them 100 at a time cheap. They make good varactors an passable > HF low VHF PIN diodes. Indeed. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 18:56:51 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:56:51 +0000 (GMT) Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <4373ACC3.8050704@gmail.com> from "Sridhar Ayengar" at Nov 10, 5 03:25:39 pm Message-ID: > > I really don't understand the love of Sinclair products. IU'd much rather > > have nad use something DEC or HP, or one of the many other companies that > > didn't cut every possible corner and then some impossible ones. But then > > collectores are often strange. > > For me, it's more nostalgia. It was the first computer that was "all > mine". Before that I just used all of my father's hardware. I prefer to get all the computers I dreampt of using back then, but no way could I afford (PDP11s, HPs, etc). Not the machines I tried to use and had no end of problems with. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 19:09:06 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:09:06 +0000 (GMT) Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <10511110005.ZM15073@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> from "Pete Turnbull" at Nov 11, 5 00:05:18 am Message-ID: > > On Nov 10 2005, 20:13, Tony Duell wrote: > > > So I guess it works. This thing seems to be made in the same way > that the > > > Sinclair LED wristwatch I once had was--CHEAP is the biggest > consideration. > > > > Exactly. And don't care if it works properly, or if it's convenient > to > > use. Remember Sinclair once sold a scientific calculator that gave > you 3 > > accureate significant figures if you were lucky! > > That would be the one that took longer to calculate the sine of an > angle than it took to open Chambers 6-figure tables and look it up, as That's the one. A totally useless 2-level stack RPN thing (!). > I was reminded at our recent Open Day (we had a few such things on > display along with real computers, micros, and calculators). > > Having said that, I was quite upset when my Sinclair Cambridge Memory > calculator began to misbehave a couple of years ago, and eventually Somewhere I haev a Cambridge Univerasl. Same case, 9V battery (with the 'power bulge' on the battery cover so you can't put it down on the table...). It gives random wrong answers, whether that's a fault or by design I don't know. > died altogether. It was a nicer shape and size than any other simple > calculator I've owned, great for one-handed operation. I have an I find the best machines to use 1-handed are the HP Woodstock series (HP2x). The HP21 is very common second-hand, has essentailly the same features as the Sinclair Scientific, but they're useable. Of course I won't even consider a calculator for serious use if it's not RPN/RPL. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 19:14:29 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:14:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511101238280702.05E8D4E4@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 10, 5 12:38:28 pm Message-ID: > I wonder if there's a collector's market for Muntz TVs? I suspect that > you probably had a version of "Madman Muntz" on your side of the pond. In Probalby the nearest equivalent is Alan Sugar (Amstrad). Their products are also cheaply made (but tend to work better than Sinclair!), and I am sure some people collect them. Amstrad, of course, sold PC near-compatibles where the PSU was in the monitor (one SMPSU for the monitor and computer), where the real-time clock battery was a set of 4AA cells that fitted into the top of the system unit (with no cover -- the cover was the monitor base), a laptop which was wider than a PDP11 (seriously, it's got a full-size 102 key keyboard. and other similarly 'interesting' products. Still, for some reason I acturally prefer them to Sinclair's offerings. It may well be because my first computer as a Sinclair (MK14), and I had so many problems with it (both from the manual and the ridiculous design) that I never want to suffer one of his products again. -tony From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 19:17:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:17:01 -0800 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511101717010019.06E7D53F@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 12:56 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >I prefer to get all the computers I dreampt of using back then, but no >way could I afford (PDP11s, HPs, etc). Not the machines I tried to use >and had no end of problems with. I always wanted to use a Burroughs B5000, but I haven't seen many on eBay lately... Cheers, Chuck From dwight.elvey at amd.com Thu Nov 10 19:08:00 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:08:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: SYM-1 was Collecting, was: ZX80 Message-ID: <200511110108.RAA26982@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Scott Stevens" > ---snip--- > >Who's going to win the SYM-1 up for bid on eBay right now, BTW? > > >> Cheers, >> Chuck >> >> > Hi A lot of SYM-1's seem to be showing up lately. Most with only the 2 2114's so I'd suspect that these are mostly unused or little used( most anyone would want the full complement of RAM ). There are a number of nice software things available for these on the web, including the ROM based BASIC. I'm off and on trying to restore an even rarer item connected with the SYM-1. I have a board called the FDC-1. This was a floppy controller card for the SYM-1 ( not made by Synertek ). I still don't know if the software I got for the original OS is correct or not. On Dallas' web page, he has a updated OS that is nice but I'd like the klunky original OS. The other item that is a little rare for the SYM-1's is the KTM-2 keyboards/monitor driver. These were a nice addition to the SYM-1. The KTM-2 came in a 40 and 80 column version. If you have the newer 40, it can be upgraded to the 80 column. Both of these items are rarer than the SYM-1 itself and I've not seen either show up on ebay ( but I may have miss them ). Last but not least is the SYM-2. This is an newer but reduced SYM-1 with an onboard regulator for +5. Dwight From zmerch at 30below.com Thu Nov 10 19:23:27 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:23:27 -0500 Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 In-Reply-To: <20051110193700.29c2072b.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> <4373B271.9000205@yahoo.co.uk> <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051110201347.03a8cc00@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Scott Stevens may have mentioned these words: >On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:52:30 -0800 >"Chuck Guzis" wrote: > > > > > Why fool with the ones that enjoyed 5- and 6-digit production numbers? Because they're still "kewl"? Maybe it's an early serial number, maybe it was the first one you owned, maybe it was owned by someone special, maybe you just like the way it looks... It's tough to rationalize collecting things to others who may not have similar ideals. > > Reminds me of a co-worker a long time ago when the US Treasury decided to > > change the penny to its current design. He spent years collecting > > Indian-head pennies by going to the bank and filtering change (then > > re-rolling it and exchanging it). He proudly told me one day that he had > > over 100,000 of the things and was going to clean up in the coins market. He might've if they were all in uncirculated (or at least almost-uncirculated) condition... > > He never did--100,000 of anything isn't particularly rare Depends on how many survived! >Must have been a long, loooong time ago. The US Treasury stopped making >Indian-head cents in 1909. Or did you mean the 'change in design' that >happened in 1959 when the reverse was changed? Or the design change in >1983 when the coins stopped being made of bronze (with an actual bullion >value near the worth of one cent) to bronze-plated zinc Uh, you mean copper-plated zinc. ;-) And in 1943, zinc-plated steel, and in 1944, brass, not bronze. ;-) > (uh, US Mint: places like Germany near the end of WWII were minting > their coins out of zinc. Take a hint.) Uh, and aluminium (France, the vichy issues), and many other metals as well. What hint is to be taken? As long as the cost of the material is less than the cost of the finished product & it's abundant, what's the beef? >But other people float their boats the way they like, I guess. Yup. I've looked thru a lot of rolls myself... ;-) Laterz, "Merch" -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me zmerch at 30below.com. | SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 10 19:27:01 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:27:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 In-Reply-To: <20051110193700.29c2072b.chenmel@earthlink.net> from "Scott Stevens" at Nov 10, 5 07:37:00 pm Message-ID: > Yikes. Topic drift. > > Some things are valuable because they are rare. And some collectors > revere things mostly if they are rare. Then, some people just want one > of each design of some category of thing and a few examples just > _happen_ to be rare. > > In my humble opinion, a hobby category becomes fairly tedious and > boring when it becomes a matter of 'rarity for the sake of rarity' for a I tend to use the term 'Stamp Collector' for such computer collectors. They are the sort of people who rarely look beyond the outside case -- they'll spend time and money to track down some varient with an odd external feature, even though it's the same inside. Or they'll ignore varients where there are significant (and interesting) internal changes. The other thing about such people is that they tend to not bother about anything but the procrssor (keyboard/processor for home computers, of course). They don't grab the peripherals (particularly not 3rd party peripherals) or software. Great pity. Those bits are often more interesting. I am not a collector, at least not in the normal sense. Yes, I have some pretty rare stuff. And some very common stuff. But in gneeral if I've actively looked for someting, it's becuase I am interested in some desing feautre of it (of course if somebody's throwing something out, I have this habit of rescuing it, which is how I ended up with things like a C64...) -tony From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Thu Nov 10 20:35:37 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:35:37 Subject: Computer Link Corporation gizmo? Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051110203537.108f5410@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Does anyone have any idea what this is? . The "sticks" sticking out to the left are long skinny mirrors. Each one can rotate +/- 45 degrees by means of the knobs on the right side. One side of the rotating mirror shows a number such as "1", when you rotate it it shows "2", etc etc. This is the second one of these that I've found but the first was all busted up. Joe From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 19:40:04 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:40:04 -0600 Subject: Computer Link Corporation gizmo? In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051110203537.108f5410@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: I think it's for inspecting disk packs for blemishes. The device mounts on a table-like thingy, and you spin the disks and turn the knobs so you can inspect the disk surface. At least that's how I THINK it works. I've never actually used one myself. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Joe R. Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 8:36 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Computer Link Corporation gizmo? Does anyone have any idea what this is? . The "sticks" sticking out to the left are long skinny mirrors. Each one can rotate +/- 45 degrees by means of the knobs on the right side. One side of the rotating mirror shows a number such as "1", when you rotate it it shows "2", etc etc. This is the second one of these that I've found but the first was all busted up. Joe From teoz at neo.rr.com Thu Nov 10 19:40:56 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:40:56 -0500 Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 References: <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> <4373B271.9000205@yahoo.co.uk> <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> <5.1.0.14.2.20051110201347.03a8cc00@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <00a201c5e660$f6617c40$f25d1941@game> Are you sure he wasn't referring to Wheat cents? Indian Head pennies were discontinued in 1908, would be very rare to find one in circulation unless you are VERY VERY old. The only items made in mega numbers that are worth much tend to be something popular and never taken out of the original packaging (unused mint state). Very few people tend to buy something and never take it out of the box. There were probably hundreds of thousands of Joe DiMaggio's rookie baseball cards made, but the odds of one making it to this date in mint condition with perfect centering are rare so the card is worth money. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Merchberger" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 8:23 PM Subject: Re: Collecting, was: ZX80 > Rumor has it that Scott Stevens may have mentioned these words: > >On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:52:30 -0800 > >"Chuck Guzis" wrote: > > > > > > > > Why fool with the ones that enjoyed 5- and 6-digit production numbers? > > Because they're still "kewl"? Maybe it's an early serial number, maybe it > was the first one you owned, maybe it was owned by someone special, maybe > you just like the way it looks... It's tough to rationalize collecting > things to others who may not have similar ideals. > > > > Reminds me of a co-worker a long time ago when the US Treasury decided to > > > change the penny to its current design. He spent years collecting > > > Indian-head pennies by going to the bank and filtering change (then > > > re-rolling it and exchanging it). He proudly told me one day that he had > > > over 100,000 of the things and was going to clean up in the coins market. > > He might've if they were all in uncirculated (or at least > almost-uncirculated) condition... > > > > He never did--100,000 of anything isn't particularly rare > > Depends on how many survived! > > >Must have been a long, loooong time ago. The US Treasury stopped making > >Indian-head cents in 1909. Or did you mean the 'change in design' that > >happened in 1959 when the reverse was changed? Or the design change in > >1983 when the coins stopped being made of bronze (with an actual bullion > >value near the worth of one cent) to bronze-plated zinc > > Uh, you mean copper-plated zinc. ;-) > > And in 1943, zinc-plated steel, and in 1944, brass, not bronze. > > ;-) > > > (uh, US Mint: places like Germany near the end of WWII were minting > > their coins out of zinc. Take a hint.) > > Uh, and aluminium (France, the vichy issues), and many other metals as > well. What hint is to be taken? As long as the cost of the material is less > than the cost of the finished product & it's abundant, what's the beef? > > >But other people float their boats the way they like, I guess. > > Yup. I've looked thru a lot of rolls myself... ;-) > > Laterz, > "Merch" > > -- > Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me > zmerch at 30below.com. | > SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers > From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Thu Nov 10 19:56:52 2005 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim stephens) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:56:52 -0800 Subject: Computer Link Corporation gizmo? In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051110203537.108f5410@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <3.0.6.16.20051110203537.108f5410@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <4373FA64.6050306@msm.umr.edu> Joe R. wrote: > Does anyone have any idea what this is? > > what julian says is correct. However there is a unit for allowing you to mount a pack and remove it's cover and spin it that is missing. since this is for 14" platters, the unit should be about 16 to 20 " on two sides, and about 12" high. The one I saw looked like a large typewriter case with a carrying handle, and had a lot of material for cleaning and probing in various compartments as well. There was also a lighting source, that would allow you to light up the surface for viewing. Also a viewing microscope was available to do close up inspections. Jim From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 10 20:26:06 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 20:26:06 -0600 Subject: Computer Link Corporation gizmo? In-Reply-To: <4373FA64.6050306@msm.umr.edu> Message-ID: Wasn't one of these either listed here on classiccmp or on ebay quite recently? Like, the whole kit? -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of jim stephens Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 7:57 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Computer Link Corporation gizmo? Joe R. wrote: > Does anyone have any idea what this is? > > what julian says is correct. However there is a unit for allowing you to mount a pack and remove it's cover and spin it that is missing. since this is for 14" platters, the unit should be about 16 to 20 " on two sides, and about 12" high. The one I saw looked like a large typewriter case with a carrying handle, and had a lot of material for cleaning and probing in various compartments as well. There was also a lighting source, that would allow you to light up the surface for viewing. Also a viewing microscope was available to do close up inspections. Jim From aw288 at osfn.org Thu Nov 10 20:29:50 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:29:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPP00C8B5CYOI70@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > Ah and 1964 is nearly 8 years after TX2. And the TX-2 folks learned a lot from the military about packaging... William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From waisun.chia at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 21:28:09 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:28:09 +0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/11/05, Zane H. Healy wrote: > My point would be that you're more likely to have that DECstation on > a network than someone is likely to have their PDP-11 running V6 Unix. Nah. I won't put it on the net. I just want to feel/experience the native OS which this machine came with. That's all. > > Besides, I have no desire to run old versions of Unix, I'd just as > soon run a supported version (almost said new version, but I still > use Solaris 8). Also, I don't run Unix on my PDP-11's, as there are > plenty of interesting OS's that won't run on anything else. Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. Running Unix on PDPs would be so..anti-climax.. From waisun.chia at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 21:34:57 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:34:57 +0800 Subject: DEC Microfiche alert in eBay Message-ID: Al? Looks like something up your alley... One Large Box with THOUSANDS of DEC Microfiche! PDP VAX Item number: 8721884019 From waisun.chia at gmail.com Thu Nov 10 21:37:47 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:37:47 +0800 Subject: DEC Microfiche alert in eBay In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Just noticed that this is from our very own JoeR! :-) On 11/11/05, Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > Al? Looks like something up your alley... > > One Large Box with THOUSANDS of DEC Microfiche! PDP VAX > Item number: 8721884019 > From healyzh at aracnet.com Thu Nov 10 23:29:47 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:29:47 -0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: At 11:28 AM +0800 11/11/05, Wai-Sun Chia wrote: >On 11/11/05, Zane H. Healy wrote: >> My point would be that you're more likely to have that DECstation on >> a network than someone is likely to have their PDP-11 running V6 Unix. > >Nah. I won't put it on the net. I just want to feel/experience the >native OS which this machine came with. That's all. Ah, OK then :^) Put that way, that's something I can understand. > > Besides, I have no desire to run old versions of Unix, I'd just as >> soon run a supported version (almost said new version, but I still >> use Solaris 8). Also, I don't run Unix on my PDP-11's, as there are >> plenty of interesting OS's that won't run on anything else. > >Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. >Running Unix on PDPs would be so..anti-climax.. I'm almost shocked you agree, I realize my stance on the subject isn't always the most popular. Still when you can run some variant of Unix on just about every hardware platform out there, why run it on platforms that have unique OS's available. My one exception to this has been running Unix on some of my Alpha's in the past, although these days I'd only use them for OpenVMS. I think another part of it for me is that I like to run Unix on nice fast systems with lots of bells and whistles (though oddly enough everything except XEmac's and Firefox tend to be character based, so I don't really need a lot of speed except for surfing) :^/ Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 10 23:43:50 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 21:43:50 -0800 Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 In-Reply-To: <00a201c5e660$f6617c40$f25d1941@game> References: <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> <4373B271.9000205@yahoo.co.uk> <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> <5.1.0.14.2.20051110201347.03a8cc00@mail.30below.com> <00a201c5e660$f6617c40$f25d1941@game> Message-ID: <200511102143500106.07DC1B30@10.0.0.252> On 11/10/2005 at 8:40 PM Teo Zenios wrote: >Are you sure he wasn't referring to Wheat cents? Indian Head pennies were >discontinued in 1908, would be very rare to find one in circulation unless >you are VERY VERY old. You're right--it was wheat heads. Cheers, Chuck From news at computercollector.com Fri Nov 11 00:24:55 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:24:55 -0500 Subject: Sony guy at VCF? Message-ID: <01d101c5e688$a24a5b90$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> At the show last meet, I met a Sony employee who stopped at my exhibit, and I really need to contact him -- but I can't find his business card. Does anyone remember such a person? ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: >> http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >> http://www.marchclub.org >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Fri Nov 11 01:03:03 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:03:03 -0600 Subject: Challenge XL power supplies Message-ID: Looked at the manuals: systems with one or two cardcages ship with 2-phase 220v power supplies, 3 card-cage models ship with 3-phase 208v power supplies From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Thu Nov 10 11:48:43 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:48:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: VT100 video board repair. Message-ID: <200511101748.JAA15877@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Bill Pechter" > >I believe that you can get by with a fairly wide range of diodes and >caps if you just readjust the video after throwing the cap and diode in. > >If I remember correctly the diode was 50v -- and should be at least 100 >as you say. > ---snip--- Hi Just as a rule of thumb, the diode needs to be rated at least 2 times the output voltage for an AC input. This is not overrating! It actually needs to stand off that much reverse voltage. Some pulsed AC supplies, such as switchers may not need that high of a voltage because the voltage is not symmetric, on both polarity swings. If you want to overrate the diode, go to 3 to 4 times the voltage out. 2 times is not overrating, that is the normal operation level. Dwight From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Nov 10 12:05:19 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:05:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: Software find In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511091504x10f3c4b5h@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20051110180519.40187.qmail@web61022.mail.yahoo.com> o man, I'm in the states Dan, and I've wanted a Nimbus for some time now. I hope you'll make the stuff available. The best thing to do is make copies of the disks immediately (actual "disk copy's" to new blanks - to insure the boot sector is transferred, prior to playing with them. The old media can crap itself right in the middle of a read. Don't mean to insult your intelligence, just that some people are necessarily aware. Thanks. --- Dan Williams wrote: > I got some interesting bits today : > > For the 380z Sbas, bcpl (4 disks), txed, zasm, cp/m > 2.2 and 1.4 and Wordstar. > For the Nimbus Windows 1.01 (Which I've never seen), > write 2.0, > various version of RM basic and Msdos 3.05. > I'd like to see windows booted up the earliest > version I've seen is > 2.x (can't remember). > > > Dan > > __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From tequilizer at gmx.net Thu Nov 10 15:30:39 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 22:30:39 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4373BBFF.3040901@gmx.net> Tony Duell wrote: >> Here it is with relation to the boardswapper guides: >> >> NP/=MonAck/ --( )-- WrFull/=FLB/ >> NW/=MonStb --( )-- DD15=GS >> Gnd --( )-- MonClrAddr/=NL/ >> Gnd --( )-- +5V >> I6=MD(6) --( )-- +5V >> CS=MD(7) --( )-- +5V >> I4=MD(4) --( ) N/C >> I5=MD(5) --( )-- -Vm >> I2=MD(2) --( )-- -Vm >> I3=MD(3) --( )-- +Vm >> I0=MD(0) --( )-- +Vm >> I1=MD(1) --( )-- Gnd >> IV=MD(9) --( )-- Gnd >> CUR=MD(8) --( )-- MD(12)=RDA >> UL=MD(11) --( )-- MD(13)=GRA >> B=MD(10) --( )-- MD(14)=BLA >> AS=GS/=DA14 --( )-- Gnd >> Gnd --( )-- Init/ >> >> where >> >> NP = New Page (=> load start address + AS + GS from block 0 at address >> 600000 into address register >> > ) > Here's a small typo, the frame buffer is located in block 1 (PPU memory). >> NL = New Line (=> read one line from crt buffer into line buffer) >> NW = New Word (=> provide next character+attribute data to monitor) >> > > Well, my names were'd too ridiculous, then, considering I worked them out > before seeing the boardswapper guide. > > >> AS = Alpha Select (=> enable alpha display, used as GS/ for switching >> between alpha and graphics on the monochromes) >> GS = Graphics Select (=> enable graphics display on the 9845C only, >> where alpha & graphics can be displayed simultaneously) >> > > Are you sure that doesn't also apply to the 98780 enhanced mono monitor? > The text and graphic systems are pretty much seperate on that monitor, > OK, there is one video timing chain (on the text PCB) that provides > timing signals to the graphics board too, but the graphics unit has its > own memory, video shift register, etc. The outputs are combinded by a > fairly complex mixer circuit on the interface PCB in the monitor. There > is no good reason why the 2 can't be displayed at the same time. > > Maybe you're right. In fact, although (according to the boardswapper) the 98780 and the 98770 have slightly different overall video timings, both use one single scan raster for alpha & graphics with just different viewable areas. This is not the case for the standard mono crt. So maybe the parallel operation of alpha & graphics works for the 98780, too. The color crt enables both displays during initialization (CONTROL+STOP, thats what the INIT signal is for) and afterwards switches back to normal alpha only. Maybe the 98780 behaves in a similar manner. However, I think I got all I need in order to make a first try for some substitute for the startup fixture. See how it works :-) --Ansgar From dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com Thu Nov 10 15:43:39 2005 From: dwight at ca2h0430.amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:43:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: Discharging a VT100 CRT Message-ID: <200511102143.NAA21703@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk > >> CR408 is a 1A 400V diode (1n4006 should do) > >Is there any reaosn not to use a 1N4007 here as well? I generally don't >buy the other IN400x's as I've yet to find an application where too high >a PIV is a problem. > >-tony > Hi The only issue I know of is slightly slower commutation time. Not even noticeable for 50Hz or 60Hz. Dwight From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Nov 10 18:33:01 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 16:33:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: need Atari 520 STFM's in any condition Message-ID: <20051111003301.99833.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> found one in the trash. Am sure it isn't working, though I haven't quite gotten it to the power-on stage. Looking for *reasonably priced* ST (and this could mean anything in that series) stuff in general, working or not. Come to think of it, ain't even got the mouse (I believe this one had an internal p/s and floppy drive). __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Fri Nov 11 01:32:11 2005 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:32:11 -0800 Subject: Early Unix, was Re: Ultrix for DECstations References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: <437448FC.A549A130@cs.ubc.ca> Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > > Besides, I have no desire to run old versions of Unix, I'd just as > > soon run a supported version (almost said new version, but I still > > use Solaris 8). Also, I don't run Unix on my PDP-11's, as there are > > plenty of interesting OS's that won't run on anything else. > > Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. > Running Unix on PDPs would be so..anti-climax.. On the other hand, it would be neat, historically, to have an 'original'/early Bell Labs UNIX running on the period PDP model, but I suppose/gather such a version no longer exists (before wider release, or before all the variant spinoffs, or before say ~1976). What is the oldest version (year) of UNIX available or known to be still existant? From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 11 01:58:06 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:58:06 -0700 Subject: Early Unix, was Re: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <437448FC.A549A130@cs.ubc.ca> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <437448FC.A549A130@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <43744F0E.1080407@jetnet.ab.ca> Brent Hilpert wrote: >On the other hand, it would be neat, historically, to have an 'original'/early >Bell Labs UNIX running on the period PDP model, but I suppose/gather such a >version no longer exists (before wider release, or before all the variant >spinoffs, or before say ~1976). > >What is the oldest version (year) of UNIX available or known to be still existant? > Source code or executable code? Don't ask me , ask them! http://minnie.tuhs.org/PUPS/ The 5 th edition seems to be the earliest complete version. Also the C language has changed a good bit between version #1 and #5 too. From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Fri Nov 11 02:34:55 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 08:34:55 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 11/11/05 01:14, "Tony Duell" wrote: > system unit (with no cover -- the cover was the monitor base), a laptop > which was wider than a PDP11 (seriously, it's got a full-size 102 key > keyboard. and other similarly 'interesting' products. You mean the PPC512 and PPC640? Quite interesting design really - a PC1512 or 1640 motherboard stuck in a clamshell case with a 7 inch LCD screen and full size keyboard. The 640 had twin floppies too. Also ran on batteries though I can't remember how long they lasted. > Still, for some reason I acturally prefer them to Sinclair's offerings. > It may well be because my first computer as a Sinclair (MK14), and I had > so many problems with it (both from the manual and the ridiculous design) > that I never want to suffer one of his products again. >From what I've been told you can blame NatSemi for the design of the MK14, not Science of Cambridge - it was a rehash of the SC/MP reference design board.....can anyone verify that? A From gehrich at tampabay.rr.com Fri Nov 11 03:05:48 2005 From: gehrich at tampabay.rr.com (Gene Ehrich) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 04:05:48 -0500 Subject: how do I change e-mail address ??? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051111035930.04cd2ac0@tampabay.rr.com> I would like to change my e-mail address for this Classic Computers list. I looked up the old faq. Are these the commands to use UNSUBSCRIBE CLASSICCMP OLD.Address SUBSCRIBE CLASSICCMP NEW.Address and do I send them to: cctalk at classiccmp.org From henk.gooijen at oce.com Fri Nov 11 03:14:01 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 10:14:01 +0100 Subject: how do I change e-mail address ??? Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2518@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Hello Gene, that is exactly what I did a few days ago. Note that the *new* address must be approved by admin, and that takes time ... In my case half a day, so pretty fast. I did it via the classiccmp website's links. If you don't want to miss any posts, it is perhaps clever to subscribe with the new address before you unsub the old one! BTW, you are notified that your new e-mail address is pending after you register the new address. IMHO it would have been more clever to notify this pending approval some place else than *after* you actually register for the new e-mail address. - Henk, PA8PDP. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gene Ehrich > Sent: vrijdag 11 november 2005 10:06 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: how do I change e-mail address ??? > > I would like to change my e-mail address for this Classic > Computers list. I looked up the old faq. > > Are these the commands to use > > UNSUBSCRIBE CLASSICCMP OLD.Address > > SUBSCRIBE CLASSICCMP NEW.Address > > and do I send them to: > cctalk at classiccmp.org This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Nov 11 03:24:18 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 09:24:18 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <26c11a640511100907s7252937ah@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2413.195.212.29.67.1131701058.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> > (The only load media on this big-iron VAX is a TZ887 tape library so I'm > going to install VMS onto the boot disk by plugging it into a VAX 3100-90 > with a BA350 storage shelf then all I have to do is put that disk into the > 6660's HSJ50-powered storage array and boot it......try doing THAT on any > other OS :oD VMS is VMS is VMS.....) > > A That's pretty much how I install "modern" free Unixes on a few machines, particularly ones like laptops with no removable media or ones that can't boot from CD. Gordon. From Useddec at aol.com Fri Nov 11 03:24:41 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 04:24:41 EST Subject: Batteries and UPS's Message-ID: <25a.c105ed.30a5bd59@aol.com> Hi, I have a large quantity of un-used 2 volt cells, used (but still working well!) 12 volt batteries, and a selection of 12V, 24, and 48V battery back ups. Some of this can be delivered in IL and IN, and WI. I use some of these items with my work in solar and wind energy. Thanks, Paul From williams.dan at gmail.com Fri Nov 11 03:54:12 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 09:54:12 +0000 Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: References: <200511101238280702.05E8D4E4@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <26c11a640511110154t535e44cfq@mail.gmail.com> On 11/11/05, Tony Duell wrote: > Probalby the nearest equivalent is Alan Sugar (Amstrad). Their products > are also cheaply made (but tend to work better than Sinclair!), and I am > sure some people collect them. > I collect the z80 Amstrads. All I need now is a 664, I have all the rest including the German and Spanish machines. Dan From sb at thebackend.de Fri Nov 11 04:07:46 2005 From: sb at thebackend.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Sebastian_Br=FCckner?=) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:07:46 +0100 Subject: SGI.... In-Reply-To: <10511102231.ZM14766@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> References: <1130978882.20187.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <43720191.1080603@yahoo.co.uk> <43724C71.3010407@gmail.com> <43727222.1030205@thebackend.de> <10511102231.ZM14766@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <43746D72.5090204@thebackend.de> Pete Turnbull schrieb: > On Nov 9 2005, 19:45, mike ingram wrote: > >>It might just be weak power supplies. There was a recall issued by >>SGI about the Challenge XL power supply, I remember our SGI tech >>dropping by to replace the PS on our Challenge XL . The machine ran >>24/7 on a UPS for years and we were always very worried about turning >>the darn thing off. > > > Interesting. I've just been offered a Challenge L, disfunctional due > to faulty PSU. AFAIK that's just a half-size version of the XL, > effectively. If I get it, where should I start? As far as I heard from the previous owner it's a problem of only the XL. Smaller machines use different power supplies. Since I never had a L I can't verify this though. If anyone got a spare L in Germany I'd love to try it :-) Sebastian From Ladyelec at aol.com Fri Nov 11 05:58:37 2005 From: Ladyelec at aol.com (Ladyelec at aol.com) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 06:58:37 EST Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <249.d68445.30a5e16d@aol.com> In a message dated 11/10/05 4:59:59 PM Central Standard Time, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org writes: > Ahem. Aging, bald, bespectacled, spreading geek men aren't beefcake > >enough for ya? > > > > > > Doc > > Well, you old farts look at the girls. What's ya think us girls are doin? > > > Allison Looking at the sons of Aging, bald, bespectacled, spreading geek men ! Isa From henk.gooijen at oce.com Fri Nov 11 06:01:12 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:01:12 +0100 Subject: help - 11/34 console problem -- CNTRL key behaviour Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2519@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Tony wrote: > > Ok, so the CNTRL key behaviour analysis is a good point > > to start with. > > Well, it's a definite fault. I would guess the firmware is > doing the wrong thing (I can't see how a hardware fault in > the keyboard or display could do this). > > > But I will first inspect the two RAM chips! > > What are the RAMs? From the description, they sound like the > little TTL RAMs that DEC also used for register storage on > some of the '11 CPUs > > -tony If my eyes read it correct, the RAMs are DEC 85S68. A Google search shows that it was made by National Semiconductor and that it is a 64-bit static RAM. My eyes are still good :-) I did not find a datasheet, unless you order and pay for it! The schematic is clear enough to figure things out ... - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 11 06:11:01 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 07:11:01 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <0IPS00CREHSJNWN2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: VCF 8.0 Pictures > From: Ladyelec at aol.com > Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 06:58:37 -0500 (EST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >In a message dated 11/10/05 4:59:59 PM Central Standard Time, >cctalk-request at classiccmp.org writes: > >> Ahem. Aging, bald, bespectacled, spreading geek men aren't beefcake >> >enough for ya? >> > >> > >> > Doc >> >> Well, you old farts look at the girls. What's ya think us girls are doin? >> >> >> Allison > >Looking at the sons of Aging, bald, bespectacled, spreading geek men ! >Isa Ah, it's been a while since I've heard that one. Allison From henk.gooijen at oce.com Fri Nov 11 06:11:24 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:11:24 +0100 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251A@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Allison wrote: > >> On display I can have: > >> > >> 2) Homebrew pdp8/e running (slow) OS/8 or DMS > > Howbout a 6120 homebrew running OS8? The trick was real DEC > style IO rather than PIEs and cruft that leads up to os78 and os278. I don't have a 6120. The heart of my homebrew pdp8/e is a 6809! > >> 3) PDP-11/03, a real one for a change :-) decoding HAM radio RTTY > > I've used the -11 for RTTY display. You only need a modem to > decode the tones though having spilt screen, upper for > incomming and lower for outgoing text. That is exactly what I intend to write. Not too difficult, I will document this project on my website. I am combining the actual *use* of a PDP-11 for something, learn to write PDP-11 assembler, and program ESC sequences for a VT220. Not just simple "hello", but a project with a goal. > I'd like to see PSK31 software for the -11. I have not looked into the details of all new digital transmission modes that HAMs use (for example with MixW), but without any knowledge, I wonder if a PDP-11 would be fast enough ... any idea about that, Allison ? - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 11 06:39:32 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 07:39:32 -0500 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <0IPS0022FJ43RRN2@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: VCF 8.0 Pictures > From: "Gooijen, Henk" > Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:11:24 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Allison wrote: > >> >> On display I can have: >> >> >> >> 2) Homebrew pdp8/e running (slow) OS/8 or DMS >> >> Howbout a 6120 homebrew running OS8? The trick was real DEC >> style IO rather than PIEs and cruft that leads up to os78 and os278. > >I don't have a 6120. The heart of my homebrew pdp8/e is a 6809! Ah, the 6120 is the PDP-8 on cmos core of the DECmate-III. Thats different from an emulation. >> >> 3) PDP-11/03, a real one for a change :-) decoding HAM radio RTTY >> >> I've used the -11 for RTTY display. You only need a modem to >> decode the tones though having spilt screen, upper for >> incomming and lower for outgoing text. > >That is exactly what I intend to write. Not too difficult, I will >document this project on my website. I am combining the actual >*use* of a PDP-11 for something, learn to write PDP-11 assembler, >and program ESC sequences for a VT220. Not just simple "hello", >but a project with a goal. Should be fun. It's fairly straightforward. Think ring buffer for incomming and long buffer for outgoing as the system tends to be half duplex mostly recieve. RT-11 is an ideal OS for this. >> I'd like to see PSK31 software for the -11. > >I have not looked into the details of all new digital transmission >modes that HAMs use (for example with MixW), but without any >knowledge, I wonder if a PDP-11 would be fast enough ... >any idea about that, Allison ? this is off topic and maybe outof band for this forum: The real problem is doing the base band audio processing currently it's done with PCs and sound cards. The modulation is narrow (200hz or less) band QPSK at around 31 baud or so. The usual reciever is SSB so the challenge is that the audio stream is 500-2500hz bandwidth and multiple converstaions can take place so digital filtering is done to seperate and detect the signals. Seems to require a P200 or faster. But I haven't dug deep enough. I have asked one question around but no one has answered and that is what if the reciever (radio) was narrow selectivity (say 300hz) so that only one data stream could be heard, would that simplify the filter/detect/decode process enough for a much slower processor? Allison From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Fri Nov 11 07:39:14 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 07:39:14 Subject: Computer Link Corporation gizmo? In-Reply-To: References: <3.0.6.16.20051110203537.108f5410@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051111073914.3bfffae2@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 07:40 PM 11/10/05 -0600, Julian wrote: >I think it's for inspecting disk packs for blemishes. The device mounts on >a table-like thingy, and you spin the disks and turn the knobs so you can >inspect the disk surface. Aw, that makes sense. Thanks. Joe > >At least that's how I THINK it works. I've never actually used one myself. > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Joe R. >Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 8:36 PM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: Computer Link Corporation gizmo? > > Does anyone have any idea what this is? >. The "sticks" >sticking out to the left are long skinny mirrors. Each one can rotate +/- >45 degrees by means of the knobs on the right side. One side of the >rotating mirror shows a number such as "1", when you rotate it it shows >"2", etc etc. This is the second one of these that I've found but the first >was all busted up. > > Joe > > > > From henk.gooijen at oce.com Fri Nov 11 06:51:00 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:51:00 +0100 Subject: VCF 8.0 Pictures Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251B@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Allison wrote: > RT-11 is an ideal OS for this. Just what I thought! :-) > >> I'd like to see PSK31 software for the -11. > > > >I have not looked into the details of all new digital transmission > >modes that HAMs use (for example with MixW), but without any > >knowledge, I wonder if a PDP-11 would be fast enough ... > >any idea about that, Allison ? > > > this is off topic and maybe outof band for this forum: > The real problem is doing the base band audio processing > currently it's done with PCs and sound cards. The modulation > is narrow (200hz or less) band QPSK at around 31 baud or so. > The usual reciever is SSB so the challenge is that the audio > stream is 500-2500hz bandwidth and multiple converstaions can > take place so digital filtering is done to seperate and > detect the signals. Seems to require a P200 or faster. But I > haven't dug deep enough. I have asked one question around > but no one has answered and that is what if the reciever > (radio) was narrow selectivity (say 300hz) so that only one > data stream could be heard, would that simplify the > filter/detect/decode process enough for a much slower processor? > > Allison Yes, indeed going off topic, but it was sort-of relevant as it dealt with the possibility in combination with a PDP-11 ... but thanks Allison. Your last question calls for some investigation. I hope nobody jumps on this bandwagon, but I guess one brief reply will not hurt the list. Anyway, it is more on topic than some recent threads I've seen here ... [pse no flames]. "Close all hailing frequencies, Uhura". - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From wh.sudbrink at verizon.net Fri Nov 11 09:04:47 2005 From: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net (Bill Sudbrink) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 10:04:47 -0500 Subject: Early Epson laptop available... Message-ID: in Columbia, Maryland. Running Windows 3.1. Like new with original box, etc. If interested, email me and I'll give you the guy's phone number. Bill Sudbrink From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 11 08:35:29 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:35:29 +0000 Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 In-Reply-To: <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> References: <4373B271.9000205@yahoo.co.uk> <200511101552300323.069A76C2@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4374AC31.60905@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/10/2005 at 8:49 PM Jules Richardson wrote: > > >>I suppose the name Sinclair is closely tied to the early days of the >>home computer boom, and at least in the UK people will think of his >>products before the likes of Commodore or Apple. > > > I don't know--if I were a collector (and I'm not--the junk just accumulates > here without me trying), I'd be looking for not-very common items. Me too - but people often get tied to a particular manufacturer for nostalgia reasons. Funnily enough, I used to collect Sinclair stuff - but got bored because there just aren't that many different types out there (I wasn't into calculators) and by and large his designs aren't *that* interesting (except as an exercise in how to cut corners) So the Sinclair stuff sat on the shelf and I started collecting interesting hardware from all sorts of manufacturers, without any particular focus. Then I ran out of space and realised that doing that was something of a never-ending job :) So all the Sinclair stuff went to good homes, as did a lot of my other random bits of hardware, and I started collecting Acorn stuff instead - because there's a huge hardware range it's enough to keep my interest, but it's not quite the open-ended "collect anything interesting" job. Of course I ended up seriously collecting Torch and Research Machines stuff too (mainly by accident :) - but items from three manufacturers is enough that I've got lots of cool stuff to mess around with, yet at the same time I can properly worry about preservation and knowledge-gathering issues. Of course I also got involved with the museum too, so I can go and play around with a *far* larger collection of diverse hardware than would be possible at home whenever I want... cheers Jules From david_comley at yahoo.com Fri Nov 11 13:32:45 2005 From: david_comley at yahoo.com (David Comley) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:32:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: Help identifying a Motorola transistor (in HP 7908 PSU) Message-ID: <20051111193245.92139.qmail@web30614.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I have been trying on and off for a while to map out the schematic for the PSU of an HP7908 disc/tape unit. There's a transistor I can't identify on the board and I am wondering whether anyone can ID this thing for me. The markings show "239" and then the batwings, and then below that it says "4-456". Same problem for a number of the diodes that are labeled "GE010673". Thanks - Dave __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From dj.taylor at starpower.net Fri Nov 11 13:43:14 2005 From: dj.taylor at starpower.net (Douglas Taylor) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:43:14 -0500 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <200511061004170796.29922529@192.168.42.129> References: <200511061004170796.29922529@192.168.42.129> Message-ID: <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> While I, like a lot in this group, tinker with old computers, I have started another project that involves more than old computers. Hope this is close to being on topic, some of you may find it interesting. I purchased parts of a Nicolet Fourier Transform Spectrometer with the goal of putting together a working Michaelson Interferometer. What I have is the beamsplitter/moving mirror portion (essentially the optical/mechanical portion of a Michaelson Interferometer) and the electronics which controlled the moving mirror, counted laser fringes and triggered the A/D. What I don't have is circuit schematics that tell me how to connect power to these parts and what voltages, and how to cable the electronics to the interferometer portion. Any tips on how to efficiently reconstruct circuit diagrams from inspection of the electronics? There are two cards, with standard TTL and analog parts. The printed circuit has a design date of 1985, while the IC's have 88-89 dates. Doug From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Nov 11 13:53:19 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 19:53:19 +0000 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> References: <200511061004170796.29922529@192.168.42.129> <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> Message-ID: <4374F6AF.2060803@gjcp.net> Douglas Taylor wrote: > What I don't have is circuit schematics that tell me how to connect > power to these parts and what voltages, and how to cable the electronics > to the interferometer portion. > > Any tips on how to efficiently reconstruct circuit diagrams from > inspection of the electronics? There are two cards, with standard TTL > and analog parts. The printed circuit has a design date of 1985, while > the IC's have 88-89 dates. Well, you could start by tracing out the power pins from the chips, and working out what they connect to. Obviously the TTL will want 5v (possibly at quite a high current). The analogue supply voltages would be more difficult, but have a look at the voltage ratings of power decoupling capacitors - that will give you an "absolute maximum" idea. The "real" voltage will probably be somewhat less. Gordon. From pkoning at equallogic.com Fri Nov 11 13:53:10 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:53:10 -0500 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics References: <200511061004170796.29922529@192.168.42.129> <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> Message-ID: <17268.63142.51246.568061@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Douglas" == Douglas Taylor writes: Douglas> What I don't have is circuit schematics that tell me how to Douglas> connect power to these parts and what voltages, and how to Douglas> cable the electronics to the interferometer portion. Douglas> Any tips on how to efficiently reconstruct circuit diagrams Douglas> from inspection of the electronics? There are two cards, Douglas> with standard TTL and analog parts. The printed circuit has Douglas> a design date of 1985, while the IC's have 88-89 dates. The only way I can think of is to take a large piece of paper, draw the components (ICs, etc.), then trace each etch on the PCB. You might use a felt tip pen to put a dab of color on each pin whose connection you have marked on your drawing. paul From news at computercollector.com Fri Nov 11 14:12:09 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:12:09 -0500 Subject: Sony guy at VCF? In-Reply-To: <01d101c5e688$a24a5b90$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: <005001c5e6fc$32b3abf0$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Nevermind, found it. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of 'Computer Collector Newsletter' Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 1:25 AM To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' Subject: Sony guy at VCF? At the show last meet, I met a Sony employee who stopped at my exhibit, and I really need to contact him -- but I can't find his business card. Does anyone remember such a person? ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: >> http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >> http://www.marchclub.org >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From info at fki.be Fri Nov 11 14:15:06 2005 From: info at fki.be (First Kart-Inn) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:15:06 +0100 Subject: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale References: <189301c5e64f$908a3a30$6401a8c0@dimitri> Message-ID: <029c01c5e6fc$9bd6cd60$6401a8c0@dimitri> Talking about Bo...currently he's the highest bidder for the "rarest" (love the word) item in the collection, the Commodore 64 GOLD. Wondering if his bid will stick till the end! Dimitri ----- Original Message ----- From: "First Kart-Inn" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 12:36 AM Subject: Re: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale > Ah...ok I see, yeah...Bo is a great guy...very honest as well. > > Dimitri > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Adrian Graham" > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 12:25 AM > Subject: Re: 570+ Old Home Computers for Sale > > > > On 10/11/05 23:15, "First Kart-Inn" wrote: > > > > > Well...Adrian, nice to hear that, although...how do you know I'm not a > > > crook? Not that I am of course, but did we ever do business before? > > > Oh...and for those not 100% certain of my honesty, I think my Ebay > feedback > > > might help...100% positive feedback and 444 (nice nr. isn't it) > different > > > people gave their opinion about me. My name on Ebay is ChaosDM > > > > You have Bo Zimmermann and others singing your praises, that's enough for > > me. > > > > > > A > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > From kth at srv.net Fri Nov 11 14:29:25 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:29:25 -0700 Subject: LA210 Schematics Message-ID: <4374FF25.5030207@srv.net> Are the LA210 printer schematics/tech info available anywhere? I have one that will print a few lines, then go through some kind of reset (printing, lights go off, come back on, loss of text, repeat) Self-test print fails after a few lines in like manner. Prints a few lines, resets, and stops printing. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 11 14:32:28 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:32:28 -0500 Subject: LA210 Schematics Message-ID: <0IPT00C9S506O6B4@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: LA210 Schematics > From: Kevin Handy > Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:29:25 -0700 > To: "'General Discussion": "On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > > >Are the LA210 printer schematics/tech info available anywhere? I have hardcopy buried somewhere I think. No B size scanner though. >I have one that will print a few lines, then go through some kind >of reset (printing, lights go off, come back on, loss of text, repeat) > >Self-test print fails after a few lines in like manner. Prints a few >lines, resets, and stops printing. You likely have a bad PS. Especially if it does it during self test. Easiest starting point is to check operating voltages. If during printing they drop or go flakey it's the PS. The fact that it prints at all says most of the logic is solid and working. Allison From gkicomputers at yahoo.com Fri Nov 11 14:36:16 2005 From: gkicomputers at yahoo.com (steve) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 12:36:16 -0800 (PST) Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> Message-ID: <20051111203616.74788.qmail@web51606.mail.yahoo.com> --- Douglas Taylor wrote: Any tips on how to efficiently reconstruct circuit > diagrams from inspection > of the electronics? There are two cards, with > standard TTL and analog > parts. The printed circuit has a design date of > 1985, while the IC's have > 88-89 dates. > Power is easy, just ohm out the connector pins with the known power input pins of the standard TTL/analog parts, likewise with ground. The control signals are the hard part, even drawing out the schematic by following the pcb traces may not tell you the information you need, you have have a bunch of input and output gates and have no idea which goes where unless you understand what the circuit is trying to do. What I have done in the past is to figure out the power first, hook up the power and then activate the device (whatever input controls it had) and monitor all the control signals with a logic analyzer. If I had a general idea what the device was suppose to do the purpose of control signals became pretty obvious without even looking at the circuit details (like if I hit a reset button I would see a pulse on one control line, that must be the reset line, or if I saw a constant pulse train I knew it was a clock, or if I saw one pulse then a bunch of random data on a bunch of pins it was probably a read signal and a data bus). Once I figured out generally what was going on I would look at the other device and figure out that it must have a clock input, reset input, read/write inputs and data lines and figure out pretty quickly where it hooks up. __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From kth at srv.net Fri Nov 11 15:10:54 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:10:54 -0700 Subject: LA210 Schematics In-Reply-To: <0IPT00C9S506O6B4@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPT00C9S506O6B4@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437508DE.5050801@srv.net> Allison wrote: >>Subject: LA210 Schematics >> From: Kevin Handy >> Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:29:25 -0700 >> To: "'General Discussion": "On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" >> >> >>Are the LA210 printer schematics/tech info available anywhere? >> >> > >I have hardcopy buried somewhere I think. No B size scanner though. > > > >>I have one that will print a few lines, then go through some kind >>of reset (printing, lights go off, come back on, loss of text, repeat) >> >>Self-test print fails after a few lines in like manner. Prints a few >>lines, resets, and stops printing. >> >> > >You likely have a bad PS. Especially if it does it during self test. > >Easiest starting point is to check operating voltages. If during >printing they drop or go flakey it's the PS. The fact that it >prints at all says most of the logic is solid and working. > >Allison > > > > One of the reasons I want some kind of schematic. So I can know what voltage levels should be where, and if I find a flakey line, which parts produce it. The power supply is a largish block with several wires, and iirc there is a "Power Ok" buried in it somewhere. From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Fri Nov 11 15:26:07 2005 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:26:07 -0800 Subject: Early Unix, was Re: Ultrix for DECstations References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <437448FC.A549A130@cs.ubc.ca> <43744F0E.1080407@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <43750C70.B189B604@cs.ubc.ca> woodelf wrote: > > Brent Hilpert wrote: > > > >What is the oldest version (year) of UNIX available or known to be still existant? > > > Source code or executable code? Don't ask me , ask them! > http://minnie.tuhs.org/PUPS/ The 5 th edition seems to be the > earliest complete > version. Also the C language has changed a good bit between version #1 > and #5 too. Neat.. that pretty much covers it. I liked the last part of the following quote: "If you have a historical bent, then you can run 5th, 6th or 7th Edition Unix. These tend to be limited in the hardware that they support. I'd recommend that you use one of the PDP-11 emulators for these systems, as it will give you less heartache then trying to install it on a real -11, and you probably will get frustrated by these old systems anyway." For anyone else interested, the above links to an article on the early development: http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/unix.html And Ritchie provides some of his notes from 1972, with mention of the DEC hardware supported: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/notes.html From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Fri Nov 11 15:26:57 2005 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:26:57 -0800 Subject: Help identifying a Motorola transistor (in HP 7908 PSU) References: <20051111193245.92139.qmail@web30614.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <43750CA2.B3B36796@cs.ubc.ca> David Comley wrote: > > I have been trying on and off for a while to map out > the schematic for the PSU of an HP7908 disc/tape unit. > There's a transistor I can't identify on the board and > I am wondering whether anyone can ID this thing for > me. The markings show "239" and then the batwings, and > then below that it says "4-456". Same problem for a > number of the diodes that are labeled "GE010673". Partial help: "4-456" is probably a short version of the HP house number, the more complete number is likely "1854-0456". If there's no manual for the 7908 on bitsavers, a (tedious) route is find an HP manual for similar equipment (from the same period and which has a chance of using the same part) and scan the parts lists for the partial number. Real-world example: While working on the power supply for an HP 2116, I came across a transistor stamped "3-063". The schematic and parts lists in the HP manual showed it to correlate to HP house number "1853-0063". The parts list then cross-ref'd this to Motorola MJ2268. If I recall, on the occasions when I've run across this in HP equipment from the late-60s/early-70s, the unstated prefix has been "185x". I don't know for sure whether it could be another prefix or not. From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Fri Nov 11 15:31:16 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:31:16 -0500 Subject: MSV11-LK (M8059-KF) Message-ID: Does anyone have documentation on the jumper settings for an MSV11-LK memory module? I have two and want to make sure they are configured correctly. Thanks, David From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Fri Nov 11 15:48:36 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:48:36 -0600 Subject: QIC-02 on IRIS questions Message-ID: <227245d6d6774780a557fee82f95a585@valleyimplants.com> Still working with the IRIS- the power supply seems to be working now (replaced 4 paper capacitors with polyester film), low ripple so I think I'm going to risk firing up the computer. On to the Cipher tape drive with a damaged drive roller (the goo problem). I'd like to get the original drive working eventually, but for now I want to make sure I can back up the disks (if the stickers are to be believed, it has GL2-W 2.2 on one). The tape controller is the standard Multibus Data Systems Design integrated ST-506/floppy/QIC-02 controller, and I don't have much experience with QIC-02. I have Wangtek 1/2 ht QIC-24 and QIC- 150 drives, and the manual for the -24. Is it likely that one or the other will work with the DSD controller? What jumpers would I need to look at? Is there a better way to backup this machine (don't have any other ST-506 interfaces). I want to be able to do a backup first thing. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 11 16:34:08 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:34:08 -0500 Subject: QIC-02 on IRIS questions Message-ID: <0IPT0077DAMYM1J1@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: QIC-02 on IRIS questions > From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com > Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:48:36 -0600 > To: > >Still working with the IRIS- the power supply seems to be working now (replaced 4 paper capacitors with polyester film), low ripple so I think I'm going to risk firing up the computer. On to the Cipher tape drive with a damaged drive roller (the goo problem).=0D=0A I'd like to get the original drive working eventually, but for now I want to make sure I can back up the disks (if the stickers are to be believed, it has GL2-W 2.2 on one). The tape controller is the standard Multibus Data Systems Design integrated ST-506/floppy/QIC-02 controller, and I don't have much experience with QIC-02. I have Wangtek 1/2 ht QIC-24 and QIC- 150 drives, and the manual for the -24.. Is it likely that one or the other will work with the DSD controller? What jumpers would I need to look at? Is there a better way to backup this machine (don't have any other ST-506 interfaces). I want to be able to do a backup first thing.=0D=0A=0D=0A Why not srape off the goo and slide (force) some thick wall vinyl tubing over the new clean hub? I've done this with TU58s and PC QIC drives. FYI: the real trick is after you get it on the hub it needs to be trimmed to the right width. Allison From ingrammp at earthlink.net Fri Nov 11 16:41:59 2005 From: ingrammp at earthlink.net (mike ingram) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:41:59 -0700 Subject: 9 track tape drives available Message-ID: <7812D5AD-C832-44EE-A14E-6F2BC8175A2B@earthlink.net> All I have three SCSI 9-track tape drives that I'd like to make available for free. They're 6250/1600/800 capable, rackmountable ( but I don't have the slides ), and all three I believe are working. I last used one of them about 3 years ago. They are "front loaders" about 1 foot high, about 36 inches deep... the tapes autothread and mount up, but it's handy to be able to get to the top of the entire unit just in case the autothreading feature doesn't quite work. SCSI interface uses 50pin Centronics connectors. These drives worked well on SGI and SUN machines, I've never tried one on anything else. In any event they're located in Tucson, AZ, and are yours for the taking... I have no idea how much it would cost to ship these fellows, they're pretty heavy. Mike From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 11 17:05:28 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:05:28 -0800 Subject: QIC-02 on IRIS questions In-Reply-To: <227245d6d6774780a557fee82f95a585@valleyimplants.com> References: <227245d6d6774780a557fee82f95a585@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <200511111505280950.0B95C622@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 3:48 PM compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > I'd like to get the original drive working eventually, but for now I want to make sure I can back up the disks (if the stickers are to be believed, it has GL2-W 2.2 on one). The tape controller is the standard Multibus Data Systems Design integrated ST-506/floppy/QIC-02 controller, and I don't have much experience with QIC-02. I have Wangtek 1/2 ht QIC-24 and QIC- 150 drives, and the manual for the -24. Is it likely that one or the other will work with the DSD controller? What jumpers would I need to look at? Is there a better way to backup this machine (don't have any other ST-506 interfaces). I want to be able to do a backup first thing. There are businesses that will refurb pinch From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 11 17:14:58 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:14:58 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> References: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437525F2.7070600@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words, fewer than 400 >transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about 40 >watts, exclusive of I/O: > >The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me that >one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way. >We're not doing this for speed, right? > > > Not really that much, it is registers that hog all the logic gates. I guess you would save only about 1/3 of your logic gates. >Cheers, >Chuck > > I got playing around with 74xx logic and the best I can do for my CPU design is about 36 chips for a two bit slice. Now who sells 3-input NAND's and Gated J/K F/F's cheap like they did in the 70's? And lots and lots of 14 pin Sockets! From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 11 17:15:38 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:15:38 -0800 Subject: QIC-02 on IRIS questions In-Reply-To: <227245d6d6774780a557fee82f95a585@valleyimplants.com> References: <227245d6d6774780a557fee82f95a585@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <200511111515380646.0B9F13C2@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 3:48 PM compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: >Still working with the IRIS- the power supply seems to be working now >(replaced 4 paper capacitors with polyester film), low ripple so I think >I'm going to risk firing up the computer. On to the Cipher tape drive with >a damaged drive roller (the goo problem). There are businesses who will rebuld rollers: http://www.terrysrubberrollers.com/ From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 11 17:19:50 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:19:50 -0800 Subject: QIC-02 on IRIS questions In-Reply-To: <227245d6d6774780a557fee82f95a585@valleyimplants.com> References: <227245d6d6774780a557fee82f95a585@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <200511111519500929.0BA2ED3D@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 3:48 PM compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: >Still working with the IRIS- the power supply seems to be working now >(replaced 4 paper capacitors with polyester film), low ripple so I think >I'm going to risk firing up the computer. On to the Cipher tape drive with >a damaged drive roller (the goo problem). Let's try that again (I have no idea what happened on my previous post): There are businesses that will rebuild pinch rollers: http://www.terrysrubberrollers.com/ Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 11 17:29:29 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:29:29 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> Message-ID: <43752959.8050509@jetnet.ab.ca> Stegeman, Henk HJ SITI-ITIBHW5 wrote: >Hi Jos, > >I fully agree with you. Building your own CPU is really an exciting project. >I took me more then 3 months to debug my 110 TTL CPU with >256 words of micro code of 48 bits. > > > I have been trying since I was about 12. Now I am a old GEEK and still trying to save my pennies up parts. I can never get a clean TTL design under about 300 chips for the data path and 150 for the control unit. >See: http://www.anysystems.nl/hjs22.html for some pictures and the >reference card. > > This is a nice CPU. > > >>What surprises me about the home-built computers from scratch is the >>lack >>of imagination when it comes to architecture. Most are basically >>one-address-cum-accumulator designs. It would seem that larger >>register >>files are much easier to build nowadays and would open up the door to >>some >>2 and 3-address designs. >> >> I would bit slice would be better for that route, it is lot of instruction types that add up with multi-address opcodes. > >In 1974 Elektor magazine started a series of DIY articles that described >an extensible ( 12 bit or 16 bit width ) three address, clockless >computer. >TTL based, with a shiftregister based memory. (6 or 8 512x2 >shiftregisters .) > > Living in Canada I was Computer deprived .... I'll read the DIY stuff now and maybie build it in 20 years :) From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Fri Nov 11 18:05:04 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 18:05:04 Subject: Help identifying a Motorola transistor (in HP 7908 PSU) In-Reply-To: <43750CA2.B3B36796@cs.ubc.ca> References: <20051111193245.92139.qmail@web30614.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051111180504.1a470be2@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 01:26 PM 11/11/05 -0800, Brent wrote: >David Comley wrote: >> >> I have been trying on and off for a while to map out >> the schematic for the PSU of an HP7908 disc/tape unit. >> There's a transistor I can't identify on the board and >> I am wondering whether anyone can ID this thing for >> me. The markings show "239" and then the batwings, and >> then below that it says "4-456". Same problem for a >> number of the diodes that are labeled "GE010673". I would guess that those are GE parts and that that is a GE PN. > >Partial help: > >"4-456" is probably a short version of the HP house number, >the more complete number is likely "1854-0456". You're exactly right! IIRC 1854-xxxx are PNP transistors and 1853-xxxx (same as 3-xxx) are NPN transistors. If you need to cross reference it to a commercail part try Spere's HP cross reference . > >If there's no manual for the 7908 on bitsavers, a (tedious) >route is find an HP manual for similar equipment (from the >same period and which has a chance of using the same part) >and scan the parts lists for the partial number. > >Real-world example: While working on the power supply for an HP 2116, >I came across a transistor stamped "3-063". The schematic and parts >lists in the HP manual showed it to correlate to HP house number >"1853-0063". The parts list then cross-ref'd this to Motorola MJ2268. > >If I recall, on the occasions when I've run across this in HP equipment >from the late-60s/early-70s, the unstated prefix has been "185x". >I don't know for sure whether it could be another prefix or not. Not that I've seen. Nearly every transistor that I've seen in HP stuff uses this abbreviation. A FEW use the complete PN. I've never seen this abbreviation on other HP parts but that doesn't mean it's not used. Joe > From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 11 17:51:35 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:51:35 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <43752959.8050509@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <43752959.8050509@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511111551350868.0BBFFE68@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 4:29 PM woodelf wrote: >I would bit slice would be better for that route, it is lot of >instruction types >that add up with multi-address opcodes. I'd think that this would be quite the reverse. Aren't most RISC architectures 3-address? Ostensibly this is because the instructions are simpler and easier to execute in a single cycle. Am I missing something? Cheers, Chuck From alberto at a2sistemi.it Fri Nov 11 17:54:09 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:54:09 +0100 Subject: HP 3000 boot problem In-Reply-To: <43752959.8050509@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: I have a boot problem with a modern HP 3000 of a friend of mine, a HP3000 937 LX The system display the two disk connected, with address 52.0.0.0.0.0. etc and 56.2.0.0.0.0 say that there are 8 banks of memory for 128 mb of ram ... but don't boot and say Failed Inizialiting INIT_STATE = 4 See the photo of console : http://www.retrocomputing.net/parts/hp/hp3000_937lx/HP01.jpg any idea ? Thanks Alberto ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From alberto at a2sistemi.it Fri Nov 11 18:03:17 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:03:17 +0100 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Do you have anough load on the _+5V_ supply? Remember, these supplies > regulate the 5V output (that's the one that's fed back to the error > amplifier on the 3524 chip), and the other outputs follow along. If you > don't give the 5V supply enough load, the supply doesn't have to 'work > very hard', and the other outputs tend to be low. I have loaded all the outputs : on +5 the load is about 3A. I have try to increase the load, but no effect. > Alos check the output capacitors. A dried up one will cause all sorts of > problems. All the electrolitic capatitors were replaced, was the first thing I do. Without undervoltage protection for +12 and -12 the power supply work, with load, I've tested it. But isn't a solution bypass the protection :((( I don't want . Alberto ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 11 18:04:37 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:04:37 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511111551350868.0BBFFE68@10.0.0.252> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <43752959.8050509@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511111551350868.0BBFFE68@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43753195.4060304@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/11/2005 at 4:29 PM woodelf wrote: > > > >>I would bit slice would be better for that route, it is lot of >>instruction types >>that add up with multi-address opcodes. >> >> > >I'd think that this would be quite the reverse. Aren't most RISC >architectures 3-address? Ostensibly this is because the instructions are >simpler and easier to execute in a single cycle. > > > Yes, but this is 3 address only for the register file. >Am I missing something? > >Cheers, >Chuck > > >. > > > From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 11 18:25:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:25:01 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <437525F2.7070600@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <1D908CB3-4C2F-11DA-B09F-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> <200511022241420594.17E1BF3B@10.0.0.252> <437525F2.7070600@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511111625010262.0BDE97FA@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 4:14 PM woodelf wrote: >I got playing around with 74xx logic and the best I can do for my CPU >design >is about 36 chips for a two bit slice. Now who sells 3-input NAND's >and Gated >J/K F/F's cheap like they did in the 70's? And lots and lots of 14 >pin Socket You can't get much cheaper than plain scavenging from old boards. Get your torch out! Ebay occasionally has large wirewrap prototyping boards up for auction. That might be just the ticket.eg., http://cgi.ebay.com/AUGAT-72-Pin-Gold-Wire-Wrap-Card-Breadboard_W0QQitemZ756 2252605QQcategoryZ4660QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Cheers, Chuck From beclassic at att.net Fri Nov 11 16:22:27 2005 From: beclassic at att.net (bill bailey) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:22:27 -0500 Subject: MSV11-LK (M8059-KF) References: Message-ID: <002f01c5e70e$6bca36e0$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> David - Maybe Ashley Carder can locate the copy he got from me with the 11/23. bill bailey ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Betz" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 4:31 PM Subject: MSV11-LK (M8059-KF) > Does anyone have documentation on the jumper settings for an MSV11-LK > memory module? I have two and want to make sure they are configured > correctly. > > Thanks, > David From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 11 18:31:21 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:31:21 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <43753195.4060304@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <6A15E72BE8E3D44494D6BDAF3C388E0E0449F774@rijpat-s-346.europe.shell.com> <43752959.8050509@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511111551350868.0BBFFE68@10.0.0.252> <43753195.4060304@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511111631210999.0BE4673B@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 5:04 PM woodelf wrote: >Yes, but this is 3 address only for the register file. Yes--and that's what I was referring to. Other instructions, such as jumps and branches are pretty much the same, regardless of architecture. You need only one instruction to enter an immediate value into a register. Or you could map the register file to memory (like the TI 990) and not even need that instruction. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 11 18:33:12 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 19:33:12 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: woodelf > Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:14:58 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Chuck Guzis wrote: > >>Consider the very old Packard Bell PB250--22 bit words, fewer than 400 >>transistors and 2500 diodes, 63 instructions. Power consumption about 40 >>watts, exclusive of I/O: >> >>The trick, of course, is to use bit-serial methods. It seems to me that >>one could greatly simplify construction of a homebrew machine that way. >>We're not doing this for speed, right? >> >> >> >Not really that much, it is registers that hog all the logic gates. >I guess you would save only about 1/3 of your logic gates. > >>Cheers, >>Chuck >> >> >I got playing around with 74xx logic and the best I can do for my CPU design >is about 36 chips for a two bit slice. Now who sells 3-input NAND's >and Gated >J/K F/F's cheap like they did in the 70's? And lots and lots of 14 >pin Sockets! > > 74LS10 dip .25 at ea .17 at Q25 |74F10 dip .19 at ea .14 at Q25 |74HCT10 dip .25 at ea .18 at Q25 JDRmicrodevices.com Even at a buck a chip if your only using 36 of them thats not painful. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 11 18:46:13 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 19:46:13 -0500 Subject: MSV11-LK (M8059-KF) Message-ID: <0IPT00HYLGR0MA86@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: MSV11-LK (M8059-KF) > From: "bill bailey" > Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:22:27 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >David - Maybe Ashley Carder can locate the copy he got from me with the >11/23. > >bill bailey > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "David Betz" >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 4:31 PM >Subject: MSV11-LK (M8059-KF) > > >> Does anyone have documentation on the jumper settings for an MSV11-LK >> memory module? I have two and want to make sure they are configured >> correctly. >> >> Thanks, >> David If you can find a copy of the 1982 DIGITAL Microcomputers and Memories handbook page 506. You should really have a copy of than and any of the other pulp handbooks DEC did. FYI: the module is M8059 as some may reference from that rather than MSV11-LK. The trailing suffix covers parity vs nonparity and 128k VS 256K (jumper info applies to all MSV11-xx). Allison From trash3 at splab.cas.neu.edu Fri Nov 11 19:42:45 2005 From: trash3 at splab.cas.neu.edu (joe heck) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:42:45 -0500 Subject: MSV11-LK (M8059-KF) In-Reply-To: <002f01c5e70e$6bca36e0$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> References: <002f01c5e70e$6bca36e0$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> Message-ID: <43754895.1040902@splab.cas.neu.edu> I already wrote David that I have a copy of the jumpers, they are also in the Realtime Component Products Handbook frim 1985. Joe Heck bill bailey wrote: > David - Maybe Ashley Carder can locate the copy he got from me with the > 11/23. > > bill bailey > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "David Betz" > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 4:31 PM > Subject: MSV11-LK (M8059-KF) > > > >>Does anyone have documentation on the jumper settings for an MSV11-LK >>memory module? I have two and want to make sure they are configured >>correctly. >> >>Thanks, >>David > > From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 18:57:06 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:57:06 +0000 (GMT) Subject: ZX80 - was: SN76477N In-Reply-To: from "Adrian Graham" at Nov 11, 5 08:34:55 am Message-ID: > > On 11/11/05 01:14, "Tony Duell" wrote: > > > system unit (with no cover -- the cover was the monitor base), a laptop > > which was wider than a PDP11 (seriously, it's got a full-size 102 key > > keyboard. and other similarly 'interesting' products. > > You mean the PPC512 and PPC640? Quite interesting design really - a PC1512 > or 1640 motherboard stuck in a clamshell case with a 7 inch LCD screen and Not quite. The chips, including the Amstrad gate arrays are pretty much the same, but the mechanical layout is different. The PPC has 2 boards stacked one on top of the other, with a strange DIN41612-like connector (but longer, I think 40 pins in a row) between them. > full size keyboard. The 640 had twin floppies too. Also ran on batteries AFAIK both models could take 2 drives and the internal modem option card. I have a PPC640, 2 drives, modem, etc, And the service manual + programming reference. > though I can't remember how long they lasted. IIRC it's 10 C cells, and they don't last that long. I normally run mine off a 12V bench supply. > > > Still, for some reason I acturally prefer them to Sinclair's offerings. > > It may well be because my first computer as a Sinclair (MK14), and I had > > so many problems with it (both from the manual and the ridiculous design) > > that I never want to suffer one of his products again. > > >From what I've been told you can blame NatSemi for the design of the MK14, > not Science of Cambridge - it was a rehash of the SC/MP reference design > board.....can anyone verify that? Well, it's probably related to the NatSemi design in that it's a simple SC/MP system. But I can't beleive NatSemi used '157s as latches (surely that should have been '175), for example. The rumour I heard was that it was based on a final year undergraduate project at Cambridge University (which in turn was probably influenced by the NatSemi reference design).. MK14 would have been the correct format for a userid at Cambridge at that time I think. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 18:41:15 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:41:15 +0000 (GMT) Subject: VT100 video board repair. In-Reply-To: <200511101748.JAA15877@ca2h0430.amd.com> from "Dwight K. Elvey" at Nov 10, 5 09:48:43 am Message-ID: > Just as a rule of thumb, the diode needs to be rated > at least 2 times the output voltage for an AC input. Assuming there's a capactor on the output side of the diode (e.g. the smoothing capacitor of a power supply), that will charge to the peak voltage of the AC input. On the next half cycle, the cathode of the diode will be at that voltage above ground, while the anode will be at -ve the same voltage. Therefore you get twice the AC peak voltage across the diode. And note that it's the peak and not RMS voltage you have to consider. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 18:45:28 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:45:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <4373BBFF.3040901@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 10, 5 10:30:39 pm Message-ID: > > Are you sure that doesn't also apply to the 98780 enhanced mono monitor? > > The text and graphic systems are pretty much seperate on that monitor, > > OK, there is one video timing chain (on the text PCB) that provides > > timing signals to the graphics board too, but the graphics unit has its > > own memory, video shift register, etc. The outputs are combinded by a > > fairly complex mixer circuit on the interface PCB in the monitor. There > > is no good reason why the 2 can't be displayed at the same time. > > > > > Maybe you're right. In fact, although (according to the boardswapper) > the 98780 and the 98770 have slightly different overall video timings, > both use one single scan raster for alpha & graphics with just different > viewable areas. This is not the case for the standard mono crt. So maybe Yes. In the 98780, there is one video timing chain, physically located on the text (alpha) PCB. It's the traditional chain of counters, decoded by AND gates, used to control JK's to provide various timingt signals (you need the schematics, OK :-)) Many of the signals are passed across the monitor backplane to the procesor (graphics) PCB, but there is no complete timing chain on that PCB. The only board that provides syncs to the analogue section is the text PCB, and from what I rmember, tbere are no control inputs to that timing chain depending on whether it's in text or graphics mode. I was under the impression that the 98770 (colour) and 98780 (enhanced mono) were pretty similar to the user apart from the obvious difference. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 19:54:04 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:54:04 +0000 (GMT) Subject: LA210 Schematics In-Reply-To: <437508DE.5050801@srv.net> from "Kevin Handy" at Nov 11, 5 02:10:54 pm Message-ID: > >Easiest starting point is to check operating voltages. If during > >printing they drop or go flakey it's the PS. The fact that it > >prints at all says most of the logic is solid and working. > > > >Allison > > > > > > > > > One of the reasons I want some kind of schematic. > > So I can know what voltage levels should be where, and if I find There pretty much has to be a +5V line for the TTL, microprocessor, etc. You can find that from data sheets on some of the ICs. I'd start by checking the voltage between that and logic ground (found on the gnd pin of similar ICs). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 18:50:22 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:50:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 In-Reply-To: <00a201c5e660$f6617c40$f25d1941@game> from "Teo Zenios" at Nov 10, 5 08:40:56 pm Message-ID: > The only items made in mega numbers that are worth much tend to be something > popular and never taken out of the original packaging (unused mint state). Anything that I get in that state won't remain in that state for long :-). I find it very unpleasant not to use a classic computer (or other electronic, mechanical, etc device). I think I've mentioned before that I once bought a still-in-shrink-wrap HP71B service manual. That manual is moderately rare anyway (only normally issued to service centres). Of course the first thing I did with it was rip off the wrapping and start reading it. I had (and have) no interest in it as an investment, I want to learn how the 71B works and how to repair it. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 19:28:07 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:28:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Collecting, was: ZX80 In-Reply-To: <4374AC31.60905@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 11, 5 02:35:29 pm Message-ID: > > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 11/10/2005 at 8:49 PM Jules Richardson wrote: > > > > > >>I suppose the name Sinclair is closely tied to the early days of the > >>home computer boom, and at least in the UK people will think of his > >>products before the likes of Commodore or Apple. > > > > > > I don't know--if I were a collector (and I'm not--the junk just accumulates > > here without me trying), I'd be looking for not-very common items. > > Me too - but people often get tied to a particular manufacturer for > nostalgia reasons. I'm not really a collector (at least not a 'stamp collector' :-)) but as a hardware hacker, I tend to be interested in unusual/clever hardware designs. Not just processors, peripherals can often be very interesting too. That's why I have a few PERQs (very unusual CPU), and like HP stuff. HP (at least in the 70's and early 80s) did some very intereting stuff, and it was always very well put together. I have little interest in yet-another-home-computer-with-corners-cut. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 19:33:46 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:33:46 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Help identifying a Motorola transistor (in HP 7908 PSU) In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051111180504.1a470be2@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> from "Joe R." at Nov 11, 5 06:05:04 pm Message-ID: > > At 01:26 PM 11/11/05 -0800, Brent wrote: > >David Comley wrote: > >> > >> I have been trying on and off for a while to map out > >> the schematic for the PSU of an HP7908 disc/tape unit. > >> There's a transistor I can't identify on the board and > >> I am wondering whether anyone can ID this thing for > >> me. The markings show "239" and then the batwings, and > >> then below that it says "4-456". Same problem for a 4-456 is almost certainly an abreviated HP house code. The full version would be 1854-0456. From that first part of that (1854), it's almost certainly a silicon NPN device (1853 would be silicon PNP, 1855 an FET, 1850 germanium PNP and 1851 germanium NPN, I think). Amazingly it's in the equivalents list I have. It crosses to a TIP41A. Would that make sense? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 20:11:58 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 02:11:58 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP7245A ROM problems? Message-ID: I am working on an HP7245A thermal printer/plotter. I have a home-made schematic of this unit, and have read the service manual for the -B version on hpmusuem.net OK, a bit of history. It was given to me because the previous owner couldn't get it to work and suspected a PSU problem. In fact I don't think there's much wrong with the PSU (off-load, all outputs are correct), I think the logic side was trying to drive one of the motor windings hard on, and that was tripping the PSU. Currently, I've got it in bits. I've removed all the mechanical side. I have the backplane, 4 internal logic boards, HPIB interface and PSU plugged together. I've also got the the ribbon cable plugged into the I/O PCB and to the front control panels. I am trying the self-tests. I am assuming they are similar to the ones in the -B model, and that all test LEDs on (77(8)) is a pass, for example. And that the tests are in the same order and do the same things. Test 1 (processor board buffers) seems to pass Test 2 (ROM) doesn't, see below Test 4 (RAM) passes, even though the darn thing uses 2114s Tests 5,6,7, (interrupts) seem to pass too Test 10 (HPIB) passes. And I see little flashes from the 'addressed' LEDs on the back, so I think it is doing something to the HPIB card. OK, back to test 2. This would seem to be a ROM checksum test. It fails with error 54(8). It's certainly looking at the ROMs on the ROM/RAM (memory) PCB), if I pull that board it fails with a different code (which, if the codes are the same as the -B version would indicate that the lowest ROM on the ROM/RAM board had failed, which makes sense as it's not there when I pull the board). Now for the problem. if the the codes are the same, then 54(8) is 'ROM 60 LSB failed). ROM 60 (assuming that's the high digits of the octal address, which makes a lot of sense) is a ROM that's not present in the -A model (the -B has more ROM, since it can do raster dumps). The ROMs are AM9216s. These seem to 2K*8 devices, with 2 chip select lines (at least one of which has mask-programmable polarity) and need a +12V supply (although not a -ve supply as well). Does anyone have a service manual for the -A model and can look up this error code for me. And assumign it is a ROM failure, does anyone have a ROM dump, or a dead machine I can get a chip (or board) from? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 19:47:00 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:47:00 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> from "Douglas Taylor" at Nov 11, 5 02:43:14 pm Message-ID: > > > While I, like a lot in this group, tinker with old computers, I have > started another project that involves more than old computers. Hope this > is close to being on topic, some of you may find it interesting. > > I purchased parts of a Nicolet Fourier Transform Spectrometer with the goal > of putting together a working Michaelson Interferometer. What I have is What fun! [...] > Any tips on how to efficiently reconstruct circuit diagrams from inspection > of the electronics? There are two cards, with standard TTL and analog > parts. The printed circuit has a design date of 1985, while the IC's have > 88-89 dates. Good luck! I've traced out a fair few schematics over the years, so can possibly give you a few hints. Firslty, difficulty of reverse-engineering depends on the complexity of the components. Easiest first, it goes like this : Large LSI chips that are known (e.g. microprocessors, LSI I/O devices). These can essentially only be used in one way, so yu can identify a lot of signals from one chip (like address and data buses) TTL gates and flip-dlops. Harder. A NAND gate could be doing a million different things (it could be half of an SR, too...). Disvretes. Even harder. A transistor might not even be a digital function (it might be part of a power regulator even on an essentially digital board, for example). Do not pick the HP9100 as your first reverse-engineering project :-) Unknown/custom LSI parts. Painful. You don't know what the pins are. If you can power the thing up you can make some good guesses as to some of them by examining the signals (I did this for some of the HP calculator chipsets, I did know roughly what signals to expect, I just had to find out which was on each pin). Assuming you know what all the ICs are, start by indentifying the power and ground rails (shouldn't be too hard on a board of TTL). Do watch out for chips not powered from the main rails, though. Make a list of all the ICs and the sections in them. It will look something like this : U1 a b '74 U2 a b c d e f '04 U3 '163 U4 a b c '10 Then, as you draw out each gate/chip, cross it off the list. That way you'll know what you've not done, and conversely you'll not draw out the same stuff twace. If the ICs are house-coded and you know the equivalents, you put the standard number on the list. If necessary, list the transistors (and even R's and C's) too. If there are no 'U1' etc numbers on the board, you have to assign them. Either sketch out the layout of the board and write a number for each chip, or stick labels on the actual ICs. I normally do the latter -- the local stationary shop sells sticky lables numbered 1-160 (3 times over in different colours) about 6mm in diameter. They sitck nicely onto most ICs. Make sure you have data on all the chips. A TTL databook is essential, often asking here will get pointers to info (it's worked for me in the past :-)). Use any info you have about external connections to identify signals. Not a lot of help in your case, but if, say, you're doing an ISA card, obviously use the slot pinout. This way you'll get a schematic of the board. How much help that is in linking up to the mechanical/optical side is another matter. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 19:49:48 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:49:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> from "Douglas Taylor" at Nov 11, 5 02:43:14 pm Message-ID: > of the electronics? There are two cards, with standard TTL and analog > parts. The printed circuit has a design date of 1985, while the IC's have > 88-89 dates. One thing I forgot to mention in my last message. Get a good continuity tester. 'Good' means one that is not fooled by diode junctions (and preferably not by low-ish resistors), one that doesn't supply enough voltage or current to damage anyting, one that beeps, and one that beeps quickly (you want to be able to 'stroke' a probe along a line of pins to see if a given connection goes to any of them). The continiuty beeper in my old Fluke 85 is fine, for example. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 11 19:51:34 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:51:34 +0000 (GMT) Subject: LA210 Schematics In-Reply-To: <4374FF25.5030207@srv.net> from "Kevin Handy" at Nov 11, 5 01:29:25 pm Message-ID: > > Are the LA210 printer schematics/tech info available anywhere? Probably not a lot of help for this fault, but the digital side is pretty similar to the LA100. > > I have one that will print a few lines, then go through some kind > of reset (printing, lights go off, come back on, loss of text, repeat) > > Self-test print fails after a few lines in like manner. Prints a few > lines, resets, and stops printing. This sounds very much like a PSU problem. I would start by seeing if any/all of the PSU outputs drop when it's doing a self-test. It may be something as simple as a dried-up capacitor in the PSU. -tony From david_comley at yahoo.com Fri Nov 11 20:20:14 2005 From: david_comley at yahoo.com (David Comley) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 18:20:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: Help identifying a Motorola transistor (in HP 7908 PSU) In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051111180504.1a470be2@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <20051112022015.73352.qmail@web30601.mail.mud.yahoo.com> > > > >Partial help: > > > >"4-456" is probably a short version of the HP house > number, > >the more complete number is likely "1854-0456". Sounds plausible. 1854-0456 appears to cross reference to a TIP41A which is NPN and a TO-220 package. I'd expect to see an NPN device in the part of the circuit where this is being used and the package matches what's on the board. Thanks ! Dave __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Fri Nov 11 20:31:31 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:31:31 -0600 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <8743e2e47af9496ea74ef6d3ddb2301a@valleyimplants.com> I've seen several references to using torches to remove DIPs from PCBs. Are there any specific things to keep in mind to avoid heat damage &cet? Are you talking propane plumber's blowtorches? From dave04a at dunfield.com Fri Nov 11 20:42:31 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:42:31 -0500 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics Message-ID: <20051112024230.FDDA29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> >One thing I forgot to mention in my last message. Get a good continuity >tester. 'Good' means one that is not fooled by diode junctions (and >preferably not by low-ish resistors), one that doesn't supply enough >voltage or current to damage anyting, one that beeps, and one that beeps >quickly (you want to be able to 'stroke' a probe along a line of pins to >see if a given connection goes to any of them). A useful trick I sometimes use when I have trouble following a connection (especially those which "disappear" into a multi-layer board). If you just can't figure out where a signal goes - cut squares of tinfoil, and press them against sections of the board with a firm sponge (something with enough give to let the foil seat against all the pins). Then using a good continuity tester such as Tony describes, you can quickly cover large areas to quickly narrow down where exactly a signal is located. (use foil squares sized as needed). Obviosuly you do not want the board powered at all - insure that caps are discharged, batteries removed etc. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 11 21:15:30 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:15:30 -0500 Subject: LA210 Schematics Message-ID: <0IPT008JANNS9G12@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: LA210 Schematics > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:54:04 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> >Easiest starting point is to check operating voltages. If during >> >printing they drop or go flakey it's the PS. The fact that it >> >prints at all says most of the logic is solid and working. >> > >> >Allison >> > >> > >> > >> > >> One of the reasons I want some kind of schematic. >> >> So I can know what voltage levels should be where, and if I find > >There pretty much has to be a +5V line for the TTL, microprocessor, etc. >You can find that from data sheets on some of the ICs. I'd start by >checking the voltage between that and logic ground (found on the gnd pin >of similar ICs). > >-tony Easier than that Tony. Pick a voltage on any line and when it start printing see if it changes when the printer fails. No need to know what the correct voltage is when it prints because it is likely correct at that time. However if the printing stops and the voltage does too then there is a clue. FYI: LA210 has a main logic with everything and a power supply unit of the switching variety. I do believe there is a power Ok signal from that supply. I believe it's derived on the logic board. How if I knew which DEC prints box of the four it's in I could go further. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 11 21:19:37 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 22:19:37 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <0IPT00BGJNUN86U3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: removing parts from PCBs > From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com > Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:31:31 -0600 > To: > >I've seen several references to using torches to remove DIPs from PCBs. Are there any specific things to keep in mind to avoid heat damage? Are you talking propane plumber's blowtorches? Dang, thats one long line! Yes, work fast. Myself I torch the bottom and use a spring loaded chip extractor. That and a pliers or tiny screwdriver to straighten any bent pins keeping it in the board. Success rate to date is 99% (board was known bad before salvage). Allison From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 11 23:03:39 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:03:39 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <8743e2e47af9496ea74ef6d3ddb2301a@valleyimplants.com> References: <8743e2e47af9496ea74ef6d3ddb2301a@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <200511112103390455.0CDDAEE6@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 8:31 PM compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: >I've seen several references to using torches to remove DIPs from PCBs. Are there any specific things to keep in mind to avoid heat damage &cet? Are you talking propane plumber's blowtorches? Yes, I hold the board component-side down and flame it from above--a lot of components will simply drop out of the board once the solder has melted--do this out-of-doors as the fumes from the epoxy or phenolic can be pretty noxious. Keep the flame moving. Sometimes just tapping the board will cause quite a few components to to fall out. DIPs usually require a pair of needle-nosed pliers or small screwdriver to remove. Some invert the arrangement and do it component side up with the fame from below. I'm not convinced that one method is any better than the other. An old propane barbeque grill might also be another approach. Another might be to use a heat gun. Leave the oxyacetylene torch in the shop--it's way too hot. You won't get everything--small 1/8w resistors and small bypass caps don't tolerate heat very well, but you're after the expensive stuff, after all, right? Cheers, Chuck From trixter at oldskool.org Fri Nov 11 23:35:38 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 23:35:38 -0600 Subject: Where "That darn Intel jingle..." came from... In-Reply-To: <15836.195.212.29.75.1131364186.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> References: <43696C65.30004@yahoo.co.uk> <9d6ef4c34d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051103081808.03112380@boff-net.dhs.org> <436D02BA.2000003@gmail.com> <6.2.5.4.2.20051105142002.0317d690@boff-net.dhs.org> <15836.195.212.29.75.1131364186.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> Message-ID: <43757F2A.3090700@oldskool.org> gordonjcp at gjcp.net wrote: > http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/tiny-music-makers-pt-1-intel-inside.html > > Interesting reading. More interesting was the "novelty yodeling song" he created long before the jingle; always wondered who did that. In fact, that song makes me feel simultaneously way too old and way too young at the same time: Too old in that the last time I heard that song was at my high school graduation (half my life ago!) -- and too young in that I'm sure I'm the only one on this list who has heard it ;-) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 12 00:12:46 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 23:12:46 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >74LS10 dip .25 at ea .17 at Q25 |74F10 dip .19 at ea .14 at Q25 |74HCT10 dip .25 at ea .18 at Q25 > >JDRmicrodevices > > I plan to get then from unicorn electronics, about the same pricing. >Even at a buck a chip if your only using 36 of them thats not painful. > > > The quick logic alu design is about 20 TTL per bit and I am planning 18 bits wide... say 50 ents each for a 74XX gate that is $10 per bit. Rounding that to 20 bits that is $200 for the logic. Good sockets are $.50 so about $200. Not knowing PCB layout say a square inch per chip ... 20 sq inches @ 75 cents a inch ... $300 for the PCB's ... That is where my money is going. OH well I have all next year for that project, but I have two goals for the ALU and Control so I can have feel for what the 60's Computers were like size wise. 1) 14 pin DIPS. 2) 7400 logic. > >Allison > > I can get a 200 watt PC power supply ... 5 volts @ 20 amps that I hope is ample ... PS. As for getting 7400 off scrap boards, if I had the scrap boards I would most likely try to get the scrap item working again. :D From chenmel at earthlink.net Fri Nov 11 19:51:20 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:51:20 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511112103390455.0CDDAEE6@10.0.0.252> References: <8743e2e47af9496ea74ef6d3ddb2301a@valleyimplants.com> <200511112103390455.0CDDAEE6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051111205120.6d0f0cc1.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:03:39 -0800 "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > On 11/11/2005 at 8:31 PM compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > > >I've seen several references to using torches to remove DIPs from PCBs. > Are there any specific things to keep in mind to avoid heat damage &cet? > Are you talking propane plumber's blowtorches? > > Yes, I hold the board component-side down and flame it from above--a lot > of components will simply drop out of the board once the solder has > melted--do this out-of-doors as the fumes from the epoxy or phenolic can be > pretty noxious. Keep the flame moving. Sometimes just tapping the board > will cause quite a few components to to fall out. DIPs usually require a > pair of needle-nosed pliers or small screwdriver to remove. > > Some invert the arrangement and do it component side up with the fame from > below. I'm not convinced that one method is any better than the other. > An old propane barbeque grill might also be another approach. Another > might be to use a heat gun. Leave the oxyacetylene torch in the > shop--it's way too hot. > > You won't get everything--small 1/8w resistors and small bypass caps don't > tolerate heat very well, but you're after the expensive stuff, after all, > right? > To add my comment- I always use one of those 'chip puller' tweezers made of stamped sheet metal. Get a grip on the chip before applying the heat so it's exposed to as little as possible. Be CAREFUL about breathing any of the nasty smoke that may kick in if the board material burns. A face mask isn't a bad idea. I bolt the board in a Black&Decker 'benchmate' so its pointing up in the air. I don't usually bother to try to salvage two leaded passives. Move fast, and plan the zones you will be heating, as the 'side heat' moving up and around on the board means you'll be pulling lots of chips in sequence once things start to melt. We used to get all our DRAM this way back when the 256K parts were 'big bucks' (in the $7 apiece range for parts that had been salvaged this way.) I used to frequent a surplus store that sold a lot of RAM salvaged this way. A few times when I went in, there was an employee behind the counter 'cleaning up' parts stripped this way by dipping them in a well-regulated and fluxed solderpot. A solderpot is another way of accomplishing this kind of stripping, I used to have a small one and recovered a lot of SRAM parts off little module boards they were mounted on by trimming the boards down to fit in the pot, floating the board on the molten solder and lifting the chip off. If you can find a big solderpot to float in this is a better method than the torch. If you have a medium solderpot and the boards you're salvaging off are bipolar (not ESD sensitive stuff) you can cut the board into sections that will fit onto the solder surface. I salvaged a bunch of stuff just this summer using the torch method. From some scrap communications hardware (big card cages full of boards, one board for each channel). If you have a lot of the same board to 'strip' it goes fast once you have a routine down and know which parts you're keeping and which you're ignoring. If you frequent surplus gear auctions, the kind of equipment with good salvagable chips falls in the 'haul it away after paying $5 for a whole skid full of it' category. From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 01:06:09 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 23:06:09 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> On 11/11/2005 at 11:12 PM woodelf wrote: >PS. As for getting 7400 off scrap boards, if I had the scrap boards I >would most likely try to get the scrap item working again. :D There are plenty of junk boards that have no particular useful function. I've got a bunch of ISA cards that I salvaged. All were old models of a gizmo that appeared to a PC as a monochrome adapter, but which translated the CPU writes to video memory to serial codes to a VT-220 type terminal. Why would anyone want to do this? Dunno--it wasn't fast and all of these boards lack the PROMs that would make them work in any case. But they've got lots of LSTTL, some 4x16K DRAMs and a Z80A, Z80 CTC and a Z80 DART, all in sockets. Perfect scrap items. Cheers, Chuck From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Fri Nov 11 23:21:26 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:21:26 -0500 Subject: HP 3000 boot problem In-Reply-To: References: <43752959.8050509@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051112002006.033c9340@boff-net.dhs.org> You typed that erroneously. It should read: Failed Inizialiting INIT_STATE = -4 (as per the picture of the readout on the monitor you have in the link). -John Boffemmyer IV At 06:54 PM 11/11/2005, you wrote: >I have a boot problem with a modern HP 3000 of a friend of mine, a HP3000 >937 LX > >The system display the two disk connected, with address 52.0.0.0.0.0. etc >and 56.2.0.0.0.0 >say that there are 8 banks of memory for 128 mb of ram ... >but don't boot and say > Failed Inizialiting INIT_STATE = 4 > >See the photo of console : >http://www.retrocomputing.net/parts/hp/hp3000_937lx/HP01.jpg > >any idea ? > >Thanks > >Alberto > >------------------------------------------------------ >Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it >A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it >Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 >28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 >Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum >http://www.retrocomputing.net >ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli >------------------------------------------------------ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 11/11/2005 From thomas.seidel at gmail.com Fri Nov 11 09:23:17 2005 From: thomas.seidel at gmail.com (Thomas Seidel) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:23:17 +0100 Subject: INCAA - PIT Message-ID: <3eaba6ef0511110723v5ff554abs@mail.gmail.com> Hi, a colleague just picked up the board of an "INCAA PIT" and handed it over to me. Looks like a programmable interface converter, it has two DB25 connectors and a 6800 CPU. The two ROMs are labelled "PIT 1985" and there is a bit of RAM (SRM2064 & TMM2016) . What is the box doing? Are there any manuals available? It's possible to program the CPU via the DB25 connector? Any hints? TIA, --Thomas From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sat Nov 12 03:38:39 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 04:38:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511120944.EAA06204@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > There are plenty of junk boards that have no particular useful > function. Doubtless true, but... > I've got a bunch of ISA cards that I salvaged. All were old models > of a gizmo that appeared to a PC as a monochrome adapter, but which > translated the CPU writes to video memory to serial codes to a VT-220 > type terminal. ...this does *not* qualify! Argh! > Why would anyone want to do this? So you can take a peecee with a BIOS not supporting serial console and hook it up to a multi-serial-port gadget for remote console access, of course. I believe there's a company making those gadgets right now (PC Weasel, I think they call it - it took a while before I twigged to the difference between that and the kind of weasel used to read "odd" disks - catweasel, I think it's called). That they have a market indicates that this is not "no particular useful function", even today. > Dunno--it wasn't fast and all of these boards lack the PROMs that > would make them work in any case. Well, I suppose what's done is done. But taking a board that needs nothing but a PROM to be a highly useful gadget and blowtorching it to turn it into a pile of spare parts is the sort of thing that makes me wince when I hear of it, akin to that time I mentioned I was looking for the SBus card part of an xbox (the Sun SBus extender, not the game console) and someone said something like "oh dear, just two weeks ago I acrapped a dozen of them". /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From nico at FARUMDATA.DK Sat Nov 12 04:26:37 2005 From: nico at FARUMDATA.DK (Nico de Jong) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:26:37 +0100 Subject: INCAA - PIT References: <3eaba6ef0511110723v5ff554abs@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <002201c5e773$907529e0$2101a8c0@finans> >----- Oprindelig meddelelse ----- >Fra: Thomas Seidel >Hi, > a colleague just picked up the board of an "INCAA PIT" and handed it over to > me. Looks like a programmable interface converter, it has two DB25 > connectors and a 6800 CPU. The two ROMs are labelled "PIT 1985" and there is > a bit of RAM (SRM2064 & TMM2016) . What is the box doing? Are there any > manuals available? It's possible to program the CPU via the DB25 connector? > Any hints? I was an INCAA distributor around 1990 (didnt sell much, as the marked couldnt see the benefits). There was a number of models, such as COM: to 3780, SDLC, 3270, etc. The way I remember it, one of the DB25 plugs doubled as data input and programming port, so you could modify the standard behaviour through some tables. Sadly enough, I have no specific data on the INCAA line left Nico From alberto at a2sistemi.it Sat Nov 12 05:21:54 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:21:54 +0100 Subject: HP 3000 boot problem In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20051112002006.033c9340@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: > You typed that erroneously. It should read: > Failed Inizialiting INIT_STATE = -4 (as per the picture of the > readout on the monitor you have in the link). you are right :) sorry for the mistype :) ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From bshannon at tiac.net Sat Nov 12 07:51:03 2005 From: bshannon at tiac.net (Bob Shannon) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 08:51:03 -0500 Subject: SN76477N References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com><4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <001901c5e790$282fdf20$0100a8c0@screamer> I'd be interested in getting the AY-3-8910's. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chuck Guzis" To: Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 6:48 PM Subject: Re: SN76477N > On 11/9/2005 at 12:40 AM woodelf wrote: > >>Unicorn Electronics may have a few in stock. They are about $20 each. >>http://www.unicornelectronics.com/ > > "Holey Moley!" to quote Homer Simpson. $20 for this chip? I may still > have one of these (picked up out of a Radio Shack clearance bin). If I > can > find it, you can have it for $5 (I'm sure I didn't pay more than that for > it). Give me a few days to look. > > Does anyone need any of the GI AY-3-8910 sound chips? I've got about 4 of > those, too. I'm not going to use them. > > What else is desirable in terms of old silicon? I've got tons of old 4116 > and 4164 DRAM and no place to put it. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > From arcarlini at iee.org Sat Nov 12 08:05:38 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:05:38 -0000 Subject: Automatic book scanner In-Reply-To: <001901c5e790$282fdf20$0100a8c0@screamer> Message-ID: <008501c5e792$2a660e20$5b01a8c0@pc1> While following a discussion on /. I came across this interesting book scanner: http://www.kirtas-tech.com/ Only 1200 pages/hour but it looks like you can load it up and let it scan a whole batch. Which is just as well as I suspect it is not that cheap! Anyone ever seen one in action? Any idea when they'll be starting to throw them out :-) Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From blairrya at msu.edu Sat Nov 12 08:50:24 2005 From: blairrya at msu.edu (Ryan Michael Blair) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 09:50:24 -0500 Subject: HP 3000 boot problem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi writes: > I have a boot problem with a modern HP 3000 of a friend of mine, a HP3000 > 937 LX Hello Alberto! I have a 3000/922 at home that I've had for a while now, though I lack MPE/iX media to get it running. I was just curious if you had copies of MPE/iX 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, or 7.x that I could take a copy of to get my 3000 running? Thank you, -R From blairrya at msu.edu Sat Nov 12 08:57:27 2005 From: blairrya at msu.edu (Ryan Michael Blair) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 09:57:27 -0500 Subject: HP 3000 boot problem In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Ryan Michael Blair writes: > Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi writes: > >> I have a boot problem with a modern HP 3000 of a friend of mine, a HP3000 >> 937 LX Sorry, meant to be private :| -R From chenmel at earthlink.net Sat Nov 12 09:15:51 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:15:51 -0500 Subject: Automatic book scanner In-Reply-To: <008501c5e792$2a660e20$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <001901c5e790$282fdf20$0100a8c0@screamer> <008501c5e792$2a660e20$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <20051112101551.3c547279.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:05:38 -0000 "a.carlini at ntlworld.com" wrote: > While following a discussion on /. I came across > this interesting book scanner: > > http://www.kirtas-tech.com/ > > Only 1200 pages/hour but it looks like you can > load it up and let it scan a whole batch. Which > is just as well as I suspect it is not that cheap! > > Anyone ever seen one in action? Any idea when > they'll be starting to throw them out :-) > It certainly looks somewhat more 'humane' to the books than many of the big scanning operations that libraries have unleashed on their collections. In many cases, books or publications are guillotined (the back of the binding just sliced off) and the individual pages scanned, then the original books are reduced to pulp. There are even cases where the return from sale and disposal of said materials are used to justify the expensive of making the mediocre digital images. This is barbaric, and processes like this should be regarded as vandalism, not the preservation of libraries. I have done similar things in the past, when I was enthralled with the fetishistic notion that 'digital image copies' were the way to go. I sliced and scanned a bunch of my early Circuit Cellar INK volumes. Now I have some mediocre PDFs on aging CDs somewhere and wish I had the original magazines back. This kind of thing is why some of us aren't very enthusiastic about projects like the big Google "Make bad scans of the entire world's book" project. Ultimately, the project will be handed off to mediocre middle managers, to rip and shred much of our historical record. This 'page turner' method looks interesting and somewhat hopeful, but there are numerous books on my bookshelves that have to be read with VERY gentle hands, which machines like this will doubtless still be unleashed at by uncaring library bureaucrats. > Antonio > > -- > > Antonio carlini > arcarlini at iee.org > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 09:34:33 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:34:33 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPU001NALVDWST0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: woodelf > Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 23:12:46 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >The quick logic alu design is about 20 TTL per bit and Must only be using 7400 and 7404s doing it the hard way. As far back as '68 ALU blocks were availble, sure they cost $4 each then but the chip savings was there. >I am planning 18 bits wide... say 50 ents each for a 74XX gate that >is $10 per bit. >Rounding that to 20 bits that is $200 for the logic. Good sockets are >$.50 so >about $200. Not knowing PCB layout say a square inch per chip ... 20 >sq inches >@ 75 cents a inch ... $300 for the PCB's ... That is where my money >is going. >OH well I have all next year for that project, but I have two goals >for the ALU >and Control so I can have feel for what the 60's Computers were like >size wise. >1) 14 pin DIPS. 2) 7400 logic. Likely you'll never build it. Moving up just one step integreation wise is the 7483 (it equivilent is PDP8 era) full adder. That alone will cut the ALU chip count. My fun was not replicating the archetecture in an acient way but using the most MSI TTL parts I could get to replicate it in a moden way. IE: can I build a TTL PDP-8 with 1kx4 MOS ram in minimum TTL count for everything else. One can simplify that to working replica rather than exact replica. The difference is 2 'ls273 for a 16 bit register or 8 LS74s. But it goes further with fewer sockets, pins and wires, power and debug time. That also relects reliability once working as used parts are going to be a bit shakey untill (re)infant mortaility is again worked out from removal stresses. That may be minor but with a 200-400 peice TTL system you would be surprized unpleasently with how bad bring up can be if there is any uncertanty in the parts used. When I did the 200 peice TTL system it was 1972 into 73 and we were using the then common silicone plastic TTL aka the gray plastic and those were not reliable. That system took over a month to debug between wiring errors, timing errors (races and spikes) and new but partially dead chips. and after it was working for about three months after it was cranky when hot till we weeded out a few more bad actors. One thing I'd suggest for those building something greater 50 TTL is lots of LEDs to indicate the state or status of a block of logic plus the ability to slow the clock if possible to near DC so you can watch it do stuff without a fast logic analyser. It's a great fault finding tool. >I can get a 200 watt PC power supply ... 5 volts @ 20 amps that I >hope is ample PS. As for getting 7400 off scrap boards, if I had >the scrap boards I would most likely try to get the scrap item working >again. :D Theses days free PC power supplies (usually free scrap AT form factor) and cheap brick form factor switchers make 20A at 5 volts a trivial deal. Allison From dj.taylor at starpower.net Sat Nov 12 09:58:48 2005 From: dj.taylor at starpower.net (Douglas Taylor) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:58:48 -0500 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: References: <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> Message-ID: <6.0.1.1.0.20051112105305.01b7de80@pop.starpower.net> Thanks for the hints, I was uncertain whether to use a continuity tester, but it sounds safe. The circuit boards are multi-layer and from what I can see, looking at one side you can see writing on the layer below that says either +5 plane or ground plane depending on which side you are looking at. I have never seen this before, the buried ground and +5 buss, is this normal? Some pictures of the device are at: http://users.starpower.net/dj.taylor/ BTW: I love the 'non-causal' nature of the list here, I get answers to my post before it even appears! Doug At 08:49 PM 11/11/2005, you wrote: > > of the electronics? There are two cards, with standard TTL and analog > > parts. The printed circuit has a design date of 1985, while the IC's have > > 88-89 dates. > >One thing I forgot to mention in my last message. Get a good continuity >tester. 'Good' means one that is not fooled by diode junctions (and >preferably not by low-ish resistors), one that doesn't supply enough >voltage or current to damage anyting, one that beeps, and one that beeps >quickly (you want to be able to 'stroke' a probe along a line of pins to >see if a given connection goes to any of them). > >The continiuty beeper in my old Fluke 85 is fine, for example. > >-tony From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 10:55:43 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 08:55:43 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511120944.EAA06204@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> <200511120944.EAA06204@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200511120855430592.0F699777@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 4:38 AM der Mouse wrote: >...this does *not* qualify! Argh! So, let's look at what I have--old models (not production, but scrapped prototypes). They didn't work very well and were never the finished product (I've got one of those). They work only with 4.77MHz PCs and only with VT-220 type terminals--and only in text mode. With no BIOS and no schematics, how on earth is it useful doing anything with them other than scrapping them? I suspect that the original producer would have scrapped them for parts if it could have done so economically. Worth of electronic (or any other) stuff is not intrinsic--things are worth something only if they can meet some need--either utilitarian or emotional. If it has no value, maybe it's best to find something that it will be good for. I can use the chips; the solder will go into the scavenging box that I use for brass instrument repair. Basically, the only thing left is the old depopulated PCB and I've even cut those up to use as dividers in storage bins. If no one wants the Durango that I've got, I know that it's got a very expensive 48v DC motor with precision encoder that I can use for something else. The boards have lots of nice LSTTL and someone will doubtless be willing to pay bucks for the 100 tpi Tandon floppy drives. The heavy gague aluminum chassis can go to the smelter to make beer cans. The thing is loaded with useful Torx-head screws. I've got some spare PCB's for it and they may meet the torch very soon if I can't find a taker. The case being HD structural foam will have to be landfill, but there are no heavy metals there at least. I've got two of these and don't need a second one. Why should I assume the burden of keeping a second around? That's what's called a white elephant. I used to get upset when I'd find an old tuba used as a garden planter or fountain or had holes drilled in it to hang it in a restaurant. But not any more--the instruments were being put their best use by their owners as they saw it. It's all just man-made stuff, after all--if the best use of a clarinet is as a tomato stake, so much the better that it stays out of the waste stream. Since I'm not a collector, I view anything that I do that keeps things, either in entirety or in pieces, out of the landfill as a worthy purpose. It isn't as if there's nothing around that can better perform the same function as the original. Modern PCs run faster, have better displays and printing and lots more storage. Cheers, Chuck From healyzh at aracnet.com Sat Nov 12 11:30:44 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 09:30:44 -0800 Subject: Automatic book scanner In-Reply-To: <008501c5e792$2a660e20$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <008501c5e792$2a660e20$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: At 2:05 PM +0000 11/12/05, a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: >While following a discussion on /. I came across >this interesting book scanner: > >http://www.kirtas-tech.com/ > >Only 1200 pages/hour but it looks like you can >load it up and let it scan a whole batch. Which >is just as well as I suspect it is not that cheap! If anyone knows how much one of these systems is, I'd really appreciate knowing, as I know a library that might be interested in one. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 12 11:49:26 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:49:26 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPU001NALVDWST0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPU001NALVDWST0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43762B26.9050007@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >Must only be using 7400 and 7404s doing it the hard way. As far back >as '68 ALU blocks were availble, sure they cost $4 each then but the >chip savings was there. > > I was thinking 7401's ( 2 input OC Nands) and 7414's ( hex schmitt trigger). >Likely you'll never build it. > True, but the chalenge is there. PS if I add as many displays as you say I need this will at least look impresive. > Moving up just one step integreation wise >is the 7483 (it equivilent is PDP8 era) full adder. That alone will cut >the ALU chip count. > > > This is 18 bits ... 2 or 3 or 6 or 9 is needed here, not 2 or 4 or 8 or blah! 16 :) >My fun was not replicating the archetecture in an acient way but using the >most MSI TTL parts I could get to replicate it in a moden way. IE: can I >build a TTL PDP-8 with 1kx4 MOS ram in minimum TTL count for everything >else. One can simplify that to working replica rather than exact replica. > > > The 8 reduces well for modern chips but the lack of a TTY or a high speed punch/reader and a dumb terminal is what is preventing me from build a 8 in 3 CPLD's. >The difference is 2 'ls273 for a 16 bit register or 8 LS74s. But it goes >further with fewer sockets, pins and wires, power and debug time. That >also relects reliability once working as used parts are going to be >a bit shakey untill (re)infant mortaility is again worked out from >removal stresses. That may be minor but with a 200-400 peice TTL system >you would be surprized unpleasently with how bad bring up can be if there >is any uncertanty in the parts used. > > > I plan to get new parts, but this TTL design will be slower version the CPLD cpu I am building, I am going backwards here since other the IDE drive and moden ( 90's ) memory don't want to have rely on M$ if I want to make a hardware change. ( Ok not quite true as I'll be using windows for PCB and CAD work ). >When I did the 200 peice TTL system it was 1972 into 73 and we were using >the then common silicone plastic TTL aka the gray plastic and those were >not reliable. That system took over a month to debug between wiring >errors, timing errors (races and spikes) and new but partially dead chips. >and after it was working for about three months after it was cranky when >hot till we weeded out a few more bad actors. > > > This is making me think twice to goto LS. Now what I need help is with the J/K flip flops (TTL). 7473 -- "Do not change J/K while the clock is high." But I want to STOBE J/K when the clock is high for a D F/F. Will this work in practice? >One thing I'd suggest for those building something greater 50 TTL is lots >of LEDs to indicate the state or status of a block of logic plus the ability >to slow the clock if possible to near DC so you can watch it do stuff >without a fast logic analyser. It's a great fault finding tool. > > PS. I got a $5 brick for this years project. :) >Theses days free PC power supplies (usually free scrap AT form factor) >and cheap brick form factor switchers make 20A at 5 volts a trivial deal. > > > > No wait the brick err door stop is the old PC. >Allison > > From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 12:04:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:04:46 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <43762B26.9050007@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPU001NALVDWST0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <43762B26.9050007@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511121004460389.0FA8CE44@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 10:49 AM woodelf wrote: >This is making me think twice to goto LS. Now what I need help is with >the J/K flip flops (TTL). >7473 -- "Do not change J/K while the clock is high." But I want to >STOBE J/K when the clock is >high for a D F/F. Will this work in practice? According to my databooks, "The J and K inputs must be stable one setup time prior to the HIGH-to-LOW clock transition for predictable operation". So, yes, you can change J and K while the clock is high--you just have to build in some settling time. My databook says this is 0 ns for the TTL part and 20 ns for the LSTTL part. Why not use 107's? Better output drive and "corner" power connections. Cheers, Chuck From vp at cs.drexel.edu Sat Nov 12 12:29:42 2005 From: vp at cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:29:42 -0500 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong Message-ID: <20051112182942.E48C3200EC02@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Pictures from the Smithsonian http://users.starpower.net/dj.taylor/Vax1.JPG VAX MINICOMPUTER Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX minicomputer, first introduced in 1976, provided enough processing power for complex design problems, but at a much lower cost than had previously been available. This meant that individuals engineers could have the fill use of a computer without having to share it with their colleagues. The VAX became the workhorse or aerospace engineering. The model displayed here, a MicroVAX II was introduced in 1985. Museum people! Oh well! They can obviously read, but cannot understand. Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then its not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives visitors who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to what a mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* with a VAX (I'll even ignore the minor business of emulating a small part of the instruction set :-), but is not a VAX. At the University of Pennsylvania here in Philadelphia they have a VLSI version of the ENIAC (some student project) but no-one in their right mind would show that microprocessor next to a sign that says here is a picture of ENIAC. **vp From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 12:36:17 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:36:17 -0800 Subject: Brands you never hear much about Message-ID: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> Still prowling through my junk and I discovered that I'd kept the prototype of the terminal that I did for the Fortune Systems 68K Unix box. (Basically a Z80 unit that I don't recall much about--though I've still got source code somewhere). At one time, FS was a hot prospect with a few major Unix names on the payroll. But I've never heard of anyone collecting the boxes. Any reason for this? Cheers, Chuck From aek at bitsavers.org Sat Nov 12 12:57:25 2005 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:57:25 -0800 Subject: LA210 Schematics Message-ID: <7f104dd5fa4da97552e96068cb1bd4f5@bitsavers.org> > Are the LA210 printer schematics/tech info available anywhere? http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/terminal/MP02007-01A1_LA210.pdf From fireflyst at earthlink.net Sat Nov 12 13:05:28 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:05:28 -0600 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong In-Reply-To: <20051112182942.E48C3200EC02@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Message-ID: You'd think a place like the Smithsonian would have a nice 11/780 with lots of disk drives and terminals and things. And geez, they could have at least got the date right. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Vassilis Prevelakis Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 12:30 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong Pictures from the Smithsonian http://users.starpower.net/dj.taylor/Vax1.JPG VAX MINICOMPUTER Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX minicomputer, first introduced in 1976, provided enough processing power for complex design problems, but at a much lower cost than had previously been available. This meant that individuals engineers could have the fill use of a computer without having to share it with their colleagues. The VAX became the workhorse or aerospace engineering. The model displayed here, a MicroVAX II was introduced in 1985. Museum people! Oh well! They can obviously read, but cannot understand. Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then its not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives visitors who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to what a mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* with a VAX (I'll even ignore the minor business of emulating a small part of the instruction set :-), but is not a VAX. At the University of Pennsylvania here in Philadelphia they have a VLSI version of the ENIAC (some student project) but no-one in their right mind would show that microprocessor next to a sign that says here is a picture of ENIAC. **vp From arcarlini at iee.org Sat Nov 12 13:15:02 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:15:02 -0000 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong In-Reply-To: <20051112182942.E48C3200EC02@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Message-ID: <009301c5e7bd$631c4740$5b01a8c0@pc1> Vassilis Prevelakis wrote: > Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then its > not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives visitors > who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to what a > mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* with > a VAX (I'll even ignore the minor business of emulating a small part > of the instruction set :-), but is not a VAX. I'd not call the MicroVAX a mini, but it *is* a VAX. The architecture was subsetted to allow some latitude in implementation, but user mode code did not need to worry about that: the instructions still worked. A VAX, is a VAX, is a VAX. Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sat Nov 12 13:23:23 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:23:23 -0600 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: Two-leaded passives are easy to get with a soldering iron and a pair of curved-nose hemostats (check with friends in the medical profession- those and dental tools (picks, explorers) are really convienient to have- if you're extremely lucky you'll find someone who's getting rid of a unit- they have air/water syringes (great for blowing out small stuff) and high-speed air turbine "dremel" type things- tres useful). Just clamp the hemostat to one lead, touch a small soldering iron to the back, pull, same with other lead. They're cheap new, but sometimes I don't want to go out to get them. SMTs are a bit harder, but I've done them, too. From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sat Nov 12 13:28:29 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:28:29 -0600 Subject: R-E 68000 PC articles that were mentioned Message-ID: <7a239e74e7c74e86bafd4306b2b5bc8d@valleyimplants.com> A while back the Radio-Electronics series of articles on making your own 68000-based PC was mentioned as a possible scan candidate. Anybody know what direction that went? I'd be interested in seeing them- I have 2 of the issues but not the whole set (bit before my time) On the same vein- I have a book called "Build your own Z-80 computer" by Steve Ciarcia. Is this the sort of thing that would have some interest in an e-version? Is there a fast way to scan bound materials without butchering them? From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sat Nov 12 13:30:42 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:30:42 -0600 Subject: continuation of R-E 68000 pc post Message-ID: <7055d59dcd3a42edb5be19b4c5e18757@valleyimplants.com> The Rest of the Story: inexpensively- does Al have that capability or does he only do ring-bound stuff that you can take apart? From f5inl at wanadoo.fr Sat Nov 12 13:36:34 2005 From: f5inl at wanadoo.fr (Frederic BOSSU) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:36:34 +0100 Subject: === IBM 5110 / 5120 terminator === Message-ID: Hi ! Could anyone give me the REAL pin assignment of the terminator used on the IBM 5110 / 5120 systems ? Has anyone build such a terminator ? I tried to build one and I'm fed up with getting always the same error : I can obtain the file list (using basic command UTIL DIR,D80 or UTIL DIR,D40) but 5 seconds after giving me the file list, the systems blocks, the promt disappeared and I must restard all... No led is lightning on the pannel...Sometimes I get the 24 or 26 error code (''diskette error...''is only said in my reference manual : what a help !). Very strange diagnostic... Thanks for your help ;-) Fred. From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sat Nov 12 13:36:17 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:36:17 -0600 Subject: how sloppy are speed tolerences in QIC drives Message-ID: <830c498da6da467a87cbe2fc9668ceae@valleyimplants.com> I'm trying the vinyl tubing approach in replacing the drive roller, since it sounds like it would be difficult to slide in a different QIC drive when I need to use tape (no one suggested tips on that). How "sloppy" can the drive roller dimensions be? is there a feedback loop for speed regulation that interfaces directly to the tape, or does it rely soley on the stepper motor and parts dimensions? I think I'm about 1/32" too large, but it could be bigger, since it's hard to measure goo, not more than 1/8th, though. From aek at bitsavers.org Sat Nov 12 14:00:23 2005 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:00:23 -0800 Subject: R-E 68000 PC articles that were mentioned Message-ID: <216adbf4b5628d7340ff766ec5c1052c@bitsavers.org> >I have a book called "Build your own Z-80 computer" by Steve Ciarcia. >Is this the sort of thing that would have some interest in an e-version? I'm sure Mr Ciarcia would be interested if this were put on line, but not in a good way. >Is there a fast way to scan bound materials without butchering them? It is MUCH less expensive to find a second sacrificial copy of the types of bound documents that classiccmp-ers would be interested in than the cost of something like a Kurzweil book scanner. The Mustek Opticbook USB scanner is OK for book scanning, but is isn't particularly fast. From rcini at optonline.net Sat Nov 12 14:16:57 2005 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:16:57 -0500 Subject: R-E 68000 PC articles that were mentioned In-Reply-To: <7a239e74e7c74e86bafd4306b2b5bc8d@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <009601c5e7c6$0863db70$6501a8c0@bbrk0oksry5qza> The way I deal with bound printed matter is to bring it to work and copy it. I did the complete AIM manuals and a stack of MICRO magazines this way (although I haven't started scanning the MICROs yet), as well as any BYTE articles I've been asked to copy. Then what I do is take the Xerox copies and run them through the automatic document feeder on my 5200C scanner. If someone can come up with all of the issues for the R-E 68000 project and send them to me, I'll volunteer to copy and scan it. Even better is if someone could come up with actual PCB artwork that we could have made into boards. Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ /************************************************************/ -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 2:28 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: R-E 68000 PC articles that were mentioned A while back the Radio-Electronics series of articles on making your own 68000-based PC was mentioned as a possible scan candidate. Anybody know what direction that went? I'd be interested in seeing them- I have 2 of the issues but not the whole set (bit before my time) On the same vein- I have a book called "Build your own Z-80 computer" by Steve Ciarcia. Is this the sort of thing that would have some interest in an e-version? Is there a fast way to scan bound materials without butchering them? From aek at bitsavers.org Sat Nov 12 14:24:41 2005 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:24:41 -0800 Subject: Fortune Systems (Brands you never hear much about) Message-ID: <8ec01c75e27b80bdf7268b0c25770e9c@bitsavers.org> >But I've never heard of anyone collecting the boxes. Any reason >for this? Probably the same reason no one saved Onyx or old Corvus 68k Unix boxes. The Fortune was somewhat more interesting in that they made an attempt to package a 68K unix box as a biz desktop, but this all happened at the time that AT-class machines took over the world. A friend of mine who came from Bell Labs had one, and wasn't very happy with what they had done with it if you actually wanted to use it for programming. There are a few people who still have systems made the SUN Multibus CPUs (Callan, Forward Tech, et al) I picked up some of the Fortune boards as they showed up in the mid 80's in surplus places, but got rid of them since they really weren't that interesting, and were pretty much impossible to get docs on. From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Nov 12 13:22:16 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:22:16 +0000 Subject: Brands you never hear much about In-Reply-To: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> References: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437640E8.4070101@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > Still prowling through my junk and I discovered that I'd kept the prototype > of the terminal that I did for the Fortune Systems 68K Unix box. > (Basically a Z80 unit that I don't recall much about--though I've still got > source code somewhere). > > At one time, FS was a hot prospect with a few major Unix names on the > payroll. But I've never heard of anyone collecting the boxes. Any reason > for this? I'm somewhat annoyed about that as we were offered one (a Fortune 32:16) about a year ago and somewhere along the lines wires got crossed and it was never chased up properly. Unfortunately it was offered via a phone call, so I don't even have contact details (all email offers of stuff come via me, so I keep records of those!) in order to give the person a prod and see if they kept it. If it was anyone on this list who offered it to us and you still have it available, shout :) According to the details I have in the same batch was also a "Sinclair calculator" (no idea what flavour), an Oric 1, and "large disk drive". The first two would have been nice to have too. Hopefully they at least went to good homes rather than the tip! In a way we don't exactly need any more UNIX hardware - but at the same time the Fortune box is a less-common CPU and a less common system altogether, which could have justified it... cheers Jules From nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com Sat Nov 12 14:34:59 2005 From: nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com (nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:34:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: Fortune Systems (Brands you never hear much about) In-Reply-To: <8ec01c75e27b80bdf7268b0c25770e9c@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <20051112203459.90074.qmail@web81007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I have a couple of Fortune systems and some doc but they're incomplete so I have done much with them yet. If I ever find enough stuff to get them working I will. We looked at Fortune years ago when my dad's company was looking for a multi-user system for the office. Kind of liked it at the time but the picked an Altos instead as the company seemed a bit more stable. --- Al Kossow wrote: > >But I've never heard of anyone collecting the > boxes. Any reason > >for this? > > Probably the same reason no one saved Onyx or old > Corvus 68k Unix boxes. > > The Fortune was somewhat more interesting in that > they made an attempt > to package a 68K unix box as a biz desktop, but this > all happened at the > time that AT-class machines took over the world. > > A friend of mine who came from Bell Labs had one, > and wasn't very happy > with what they had done with it if you actually > wanted to use it for > programming. > > There are a few people who still have systems made > the SUN Multibus CPUs > (Callan, Forward Tech, et al) > > I picked up some of the Fortune boards as they > showed up in the mid 80's > in surplus places, but got rid of them since they > really weren't that > interesting, and were pretty much impossible to get > docs on. > > > ----- "When the mind is free of any thought or judgement, then and only then can we know things as they are." David Williams From fireflyst at earthlink.net Sat Nov 12 14:39:34 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:39:34 -0600 Subject: Power connectors? Message-ID: Hey does anyone know where I can buy 3 prong Molex connectors, particularly those used to connect a QBUS box to a DEC power bus, and the one that goes from a cable to the power bus connector? I can't find them anywhere on Molex or AMP's web site. From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sat Nov 12 14:46:28 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:46:28 -0500 (EST) Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <6.0.1.1.0.20051112105305.01b7de80@pop.starpower.net> References: <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> <6.0.1.1.0.20051112105305.01b7de80@pop.starpower.net> Message-ID: <200511122049.PAA08334@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > The circuit boards are multi-layer and from what I can see, looking > at one side you can see writing on the layer below that says either > +5 plane or ground plane depending on which side you are looking at. > I have never seen this before, the buried ground and +5 buss, is this > normal? Yes. They often aren't marked as such, but when the board has enough layers to do it, having dedicated ground and power planes (which are mostly copper, rather than mostly space the way other planes typically are) is usual. I'm not enough of a PCB design person to explain why beyond waving my hands and talking about how the capacitance gives better transient response. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 14:57:32 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 12:57:32 -0800 Subject: Fortune Systems (Brands you never hear much about) In-Reply-To: <20051112203459.90074.qmail@web81007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20051112203459.90074.qmail@web81007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200511121257320455.1046FAB6@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 12:34 PM nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com wrote: >I have a couple of Fortune systems and some doc but >they're incomplete so I have done much with them yet. >If I ever find enough stuff to get them working I >will. We looked at Fortune years ago when my dad's >company was looking for a multi-user system for the >office. Kind of liked it at the time but the picked >an Altos instead as the company seemed a bit more >stable. The company was hyped quite a bit with a healthy (for those days) dose of startup capital; my impression of the firm from my position as a contractor was that an awful lot of money was wasted just fooling around with things not directly related to product development. I believe that their entry system target price was $5000, not bad in those days. But the PC, although not a Unix box, was sufficient to do it in. One very rare item from this company would be their color graphics terminal. I've only seen a prototype, but someone told me that it had actually made it into production. IIRC, Bill Joy was on contract to FS during most of the firm's existence. Cheers, Chuck From doc at mdrconsult.com Sat Nov 12 14:57:42 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:57:42 -0500 Subject: Fortune Systems (Brands you never hear much about) In-Reply-To: <20051112203459.90074.qmail@web81007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20051112203459.90074.qmail@web81007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <43765746.6090103@mdrconsult.com> nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com wrote: > I have a couple of Fortune systems and some doc but > they're incomplete so I have done much with them yet. > If I ever find enough stuff to get them working I > will. We looked at Fortune years ago when my dad's > company was looking for a multi-user system for the > office. Kind of liked it at the time but the picked > an Altos instead as the company seemed a bit more > stable. I have a bunch of peripherals for the Fortune 32:16, including terminal and keyboard, maybe some documentation, and a full set of software disks. The disks had been stored wet when I got them, and are very warped. I'd be surprised if they're readable as-is, but you *might* be able to pull the media out of the covers and get some of the data off them. They came to me as part of a carload of other stuff, and I've never had the system unit, so none of it is known-good. You're welcome to all of it for the price of shipping, but you have to take all of it. If you want I'll make a list and estimate shipping costs next weekend. Doc From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sat Nov 12 14:49:21 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:49:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511120855430592.0F699777@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> <200511120944.EAA06204@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511120855430592.0F699777@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511122057.PAA08372@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >>...this does *not* qualify! Argh! > So, let's look at what I have--old models (not production, but > scrapped prototypes). They didn't work very well and were never the > finished product Those help - but neither was clear to me from your post. You said they were "old models of [the device]", and as I hope everyone here knows, "old models" != "nonworking", and definitely != "unwanted". > With no BIOS and no schematics, how on earth is it useful doing > anything with them other than scrapping them? The same could be said of much of the hardware which is salvaged and then made workable again. As for "how", well, schematics can be traced from boards - I've done it in simple cases and others here have done it in much more complex cases - and, that aside, just because you don't have suitable ROMs doesn't mean nobody does. (Perhaps nobody in fact does, and what you've now said makes that seem more plausible, but based on what you said before, I saw no reason to think that.) > I suspect that the original producer would have scrapped them for > parts if it could have done so economically. Lots of hardware producers scrap things that we (FSVO "we") find eminently worth salvaging. > I've got two of these and don't need a second one. Why should I > assume the burden of keeping a second around? That's what's called a > white elephant. Sure, but to dissect it for parts before even checking if anyone else has any use for it? That's something I regularly dealers reviled for doing. > It isn't as if there's nothing around that can better perform the > same function as the original. Modern PCs run faster, have better > displays and printing and lots more storage. As anyone on this list should know, performing the same function, even if actually done (and depending bus compatability, even the modern analog - a PC Weasel - may not perform the same function), does not mean that nobody wants the older version. Again, what you've now said makes that seem less likely (but still not impossible). /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From doc at mdrconsult.com Sat Nov 12 15:03:37 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:03:37 -0500 Subject: Fortune Systems (Brands you never hear much about) In-Reply-To: <200511121257320455.1046FAB6@10.0.0.252> References: <20051112203459.90074.qmail@web81007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200511121257320455.1046FAB6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437658A9.1090305@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/12/2005 at 12:34 PM nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com wrote: > > >>I have a couple of Fortune systems and some doc but >>they're incomplete so I have done much with them yet. >>If I ever find enough stuff to get them working I >>will. We looked at Fortune years ago when my dad's >>company was looking for a multi-user system for the >>office. Kind of liked it at the time but the picked >>an Altos instead as the company seemed a bit more >>stable. > > > The company was hyped quite a bit with a healthy (for those days) dose of > startup capital; my impression of the firm from my position as a contractor > was that an awful lot of money was wasted just fooling around with things > not directly related to product development. I believe that their entry > system target price was $5000, not bad in those days. When I got the Fortune stuff I mentioned in my earlier post, I did some research. Almost all the references I found were newsgroup posts bemoaning the quality of both the 32:16 and of Fortune's customer service. Nobody seemed surprised that Fortune didn't last. > One very rare item from this company would be their color graphics > terminal. I've only seen a prototype, but someone told me that it had > actually made it into production. Now that I've offered to give it away, that's probably the terminal I've got. :\ No matter, though - it's useless too me sitting in my garage. Doc From Useddec at aol.com Sat Nov 12 15:06:45 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:06:45 EST Subject: Power connectors? Message-ID: <104.6d7c6304.30a7b365@aol.com> Hi, I might have a few, but what exactly are you trying to connect? Are they the white ones with only the outer two pins used, or the brown ones with the locking tabs? Thanks, Paul From fireflyst at earthlink.net Sat Nov 12 15:38:46 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:38:46 -0600 Subject: Power connectors? In-Reply-To: <104.6d7c6304.30a7b365@aol.com> Message-ID: On one end it's a locking tab, on the other it's a plain molex connector, like that of a PC power supply, but with 3 prongs instead of 4. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 3:07 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Power connectors? Hi, I might have a few, but what exactly are you trying to connect? Are they the white ones with only the outer two pins used, or the brown ones with the locking tabs? Thanks, Paul From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 15:46:45 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:46:45 -0500 Subject: how sloppy are speed tolerences in QIC drives Message-ID: <0IPV00CXO33LI744@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: how sloppy are speed tolerences in QIC drives > From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:36:17 -0600 > To: > >I'm trying the vinyl tubing approach in replacing the drive roller, since it sounds like it would be difficult to slide in a different QIC drive when I need to use tape (no one suggested tips on that). How "sloppy" can the drive roller dimensions be? is there a feedback loop for speed regulation that interfaces directly to the tape, or does it rely soley on the stepper motor and parts dimensions? I think I'm about 1/32" too large, but it could be bigger, since it's hard to measure goo, not more than 1/8th, though.=0D=0A=0D=0A Well, the TU58 servos off the motor and I found it tolerent of at least 1/16" variation. If the drive servos of the data then tolerences are far greater. Allison From beclassic at att.net Sat Nov 12 13:41:20 2005 From: beclassic at att.net (bill bailey) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:41:20 -0500 Subject: Visual Technology - off brand Message-ID: <005601c5e7c1$2c8bf000$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> This Company's products are also scarce on the web - maybe they were just "another clone" (although luggable). A year or so ago I located a prior employee who gave some background, including that he might still have the schematics. They were made 1984-86. I've had no interest in the Visual 1083 I want to place, but I'm hoping a touch of off-brand discussion might change that. -------------------- my earlier post: I want to find a home for my 5150 and a few other items. Prefer a collector rather than ebay, but I would still hope to get a nominal consideration in return. I'm in South Carolina. [] IBM PC (5150) set up as a clone XT. It has a 10mb hard drive and dual half-height floppies. Three original manuals with disks: DOS (3.00 or 3.30?), Guide to Operations (2.05) and Basic. Keyboard is original. Not sure what kind of video interface, but the CGA monitor works fine on it. [] IBM CGA monitor (5153). [] Visual 1083 - Commuter. This description mentions an LCD display, but that is not a part of mine. No disks, but it boots with the DOS from the IBM. http://www.thepcmuseum.net/details.php?RECORD_KEY%28museum%29=id&id(museum)=262 [] nice AT-style desktop box and 15" SVGA monitor (will either be Sony or Mag). I raided the box for the QDI motherboard, but I have another (name?) and a Pentium 200 that previously worked in this box. Not sure whether I'll keep the 6 meg hard drive. Couple of keyboards. [] box of miscellaneous I/O boards + modem . . . mostly from Boca for 16-bit ISA. [] maybe some software for PC - Clipper, Wordperfect?? - I'll be checking. I can take pics and send emails if needed and will try to firm up answers to some questions I raised for myself. I can answer on this board if someone wants an answer that way. bill From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 12 15:28:31 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:28:31 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <20051112024230.FDDA29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> from "Dave Dunfield" at Nov 11, 5 09:42:31 pm Message-ID: > Obviosuly you do not want the board powered at all - insure that caps are > discharged, batteries removed etc. Whether you use the 'foil square shorting probes' method or not, you want to remove any any sources of power, like batteries, before starting. Desolder soldered-in NiCds, etc. Also remvoe any components that will test as shorts and will therefore confuse you. Low-value resistors (how low depends on your tester, probably < 10 ohms), inductors, transformers, etc.In the case of 2-terminal axial components, you just need to desolder one end and lift it from the PCB. And make a diagram of what goes where and which way round :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 12 15:33:43 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:33:43 +0000 (GMT) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 11, 5 11:06:09 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/11/2005 at 11:12 PM woodelf wrote: > > >PS. As for getting 7400 off scrap boards, if I had the scrap boards I > >would most likely try to get the scrap item working again. :D Me too. I've got piles of obscure boards that I'd like to get going again sometime. Most have no real practical function, but are part of the history of computing/electronics. About the only thing I'll raid for parts are no-name clone PC motherboards and cards.. And those are not a good source of standard TTL, alas. > > There are plenty of junk boards that have no particular useful function. > I've got a bunch of ISA cards that I salvaged. All were old models of a > gizmo that appeared to a PC as a monochrome adapter, but which translated > the CPU writes to video memory to serial codes to a VT-220 type terminal. Now that sounds unusual enough to be very interesting. Put it this way, if I had something like that I'd be trying to track down a dump of that missing ROM. I would not be raiding it for parts. -tony From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 15:53:23 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:53:23 -0500 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong Message-ID: <0IPV00KZP3ENTC05@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong > From: "Vassilis Prevelakis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 13:29:42 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > >Pictures from the Smithsonian > http://users.starpower.net/dj.taylor/Vax1.JPG > > VAX MINICOMPUTER > > Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX minicomputer, first introduced > in 1976, provided enough processing power for complex design problems, > but at a much lower cost than had previously been available. This > meant that individuals engineers could have the fill use of a > computer without having to share it with their colleagues. The VAX > became the workhorse or aerospace engineering. The model displayed > here, a MicroVAX II was introduced in 1985. > > >Museum people! Oh well! They can obviously read, but cannot understand. >Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then >its not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives >visitors who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to >what a mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* >with a VAX (I'll even ignore the minor business of emulating a small >part of the instruction set :-), but is not a VAX. Get over it. Like Antonio said, its a VAX, one archetecture multiple implmentations that act the same. The fact that the VAX ranged from the .5 cu/Ft MicroVAX2000 to the 9000 false floor heavyweight is relevent. If the mini thing were real it's actually a "superminicomputer". But if size is a factor then the VAX 9000 was anything but mini. We didn't call the 9000 a mainframe but it was huge for it's time. Allison From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 12 15:39:36 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:39:36 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <6.0.1.1.0.20051112105305.01b7de80@pop.starpower.net> from "Douglas Taylor" at Nov 12, 5 10:58:48 am Message-ID: > > Thanks for the hints, I was uncertain whether to use a continuity tester, > but it sounds safe. I must have traced out over 100 boards in my life. I've always used a continuity tester (firstly a homebrew one, then the Fluke 85), and have never damaged anything. The chips on the boards have been a mix of TTL (plain, L, H, LS, S, F, HC, HCT at least), 4000-series CMOS, NMOS and PMOS LSIs, bipolar and FET-based analogue, etc (not all on the same board, of course ;-)). AFAIK I've never damaged a single chip. I would be wary if there were tunnel diodes on the board (from what I've read, those are easy to damage), but I doubt that will be the case on your boards. > > The circuit boards are multi-layer and from what I can see, looking at one > side you can see writing on the layer below that says either +5 plane or > ground plane depending on which side you are looking at. I have never seen > this before, the buried ground and +5 buss, is this normal? Yes, it've fairly normal to have the signal traces on the outside layers and the power/ground planes inside. -tony From aw288 at osfn.org Sat Nov 12 16:00:10 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:00:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511112103390455.0CDDAEE6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > Yes, I hold the board component-side down and flame it from above--a lot > of components will simply drop out of the board once the solder has > melted--do this out-of-doors as the fumes from the epoxy or phenolic can be > pretty noxious. Keep the flame moving. Sometimes just tapping the board > will cause quite a few components to to fall out. DIPs usually require a > pair of needle-nosed pliers or small screwdriver to remove. I use a solder pot, filled, so the miniscus (sp?) allows me to just place the board on the rim of the pot, and all the pads melt nicely. It took me some time to fine tune the setup, but it works very well. I may never go back to the torch. Another thing I do is to heat the board up a little before I do the pulls. This lessens the thermal shock (although most chips that come out easy using the solder pot method can actually be picked up in seconds). On a side note, yesterday I actually saw a real, honest to goodness, square orange logo'd Sun-1. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sat Nov 12 16:00:57 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:00:57 +0000 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong In-Reply-To: <009301c5e7bd$631c4740$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <009301c5e7bd$631c4740$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <43766619.2080305@gjcp.net> a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: > Vassilis Prevelakis wrote: > > >>Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then its >>not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives visitors >>who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to what a >>mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* with >>a VAX (I'll even ignore the minor business of emulating a small part >>of the instruction set :-), but is not a VAX. > > > I'd not call the MicroVAX a mini, but it *is* a VAX. The > architecture was subsetted to allow some latitude in > implementation, but user mode code did not need to > worry about that: the instructions still worked. > > A VAX, is a VAX, is a VAX. Of course, of course, And no-one can talk to a VAX of course, That is, of course, unless the VAX is the famou "G$E%GK$?5 AGW?3y3yh NO CARRIER From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 16:05:56 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:05:56 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPV00HE83ZJCYR0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: woodelf > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:49:26 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>Must only be using 7400 and 7404s doing it the hard way. As far back >>as '68 ALU blocks were availble, sure they cost $4 each then but the >>chip savings was there. >> >> >I was thinking 7401's ( 2 input OC Nands) and 7414's ( hex schmitt >trigger). > >>Likely you'll never build it. >> >True, but the chalenge is there. PS if I add as many displays as you say >I need this >will at least look impresive. > >> Moving up just one step integreation wise >>is the 7483 (it equivilent is PDP8 era) full adder. That alone will cut >>the ALU chip count. >> >> >> >This is 18 bits ... 2 or 3 or 6 or 9 is needed here, not 2 or 4 or 8 >or blah! 16 :) So throw away the excess bits. It's still cheaper. Also there is a Single full adder TTL part the 7480. >>My fun was not replicating the archetecture in an acient way but using the >>most MSI TTL parts I could get to replicate it in a moden way. IE: can I >>build a TTL PDP-8 with 1kx4 MOS ram in minimum TTL count for everything >>else. One can simplify that to working replica rather than exact replica. >> >> >> >The 8 reduces well for modern chips but the lack of a TTY or a high >speed punch/reader and a >dumb terminal is what is preventing me from build a 8 in 3 CPLD's. Well the punch is ahrd but a HS reader is trivial to build AS it's been done many times. as to putting it CPLD or FPGA, yes you could but I'm saying/staying in TTL with available SSI and MSI functions it's possible to be chip count reasonable. >>The difference is 2 'ls273 for a 16 bit register or 8 LS74s. But it goes >>further with fewer sockets, pins and wires, power and debug time. That >>also relects reliability once working as used parts are going to be >>a bit shakey untill (re)infant mortaility is again worked out from >>removal stresses. That may be minor but with a 200-400 peice TTL system >>you would be surprized unpleasently with how bad bring up can be if there >>is any uncertanty in the parts used. >> >> >> >I plan to get new parts, but this TTL design will be slower version the >CPLD cpu I am building, >I am going backwards here since other the IDE drive and moden ( 90's ) >memory don't want >to have rely on M$ if I want to make a hardware change. ( Ok not quite >true as I'll be using >windows for PCB and CAD work ). I have nearly 30 IDE drives all under 500mb I can build around. Its easy to make them look like a RK05 or whatever to a PDP-8 databreak interface. What MS does next year or even lsat years does not impact me at all. >>When I did the 200 peice TTL system it was 1972 into 73 and we were using >>the then common silicone plastic TTL aka the gray plastic and those were >>not reliable. That system took over a month to debug between wiring >>errors, timing errors (races and spikes) and new but partially dead chips. >>and after it was working for about three months after it was cranky when >>hot till we weeded out a few more bad actors. >> >> >> >This is making me think twice to goto LS. Now what I need help is with >the J/K flip flops (TTL). 7473 -- "Do not change J/K while the clock is high." But I want to >STOBE J/K when the clock is high for a D F/F. Will this work in practice? The clock change for 7474 is postive side and 7473 is negative going side. That only a start, their logically differnt animals. Also some types of D ff can have a metastable state (both outputs high or low) under some cases! >>One thing I'd suggest for those building something greater 50 TTL is lots >>of LEDs to indicate the state or status of a block of logic plus the ability >>to slow the clock if possible to near DC so you can watch it do stuff >>without a fast logic analyser. It's a great fault finding tool. >> > >PS. I got a $5 brick for this years project. :) > >>Theses days free PC power supplies (usually free scrap AT form factor) >>and cheap brick form factor switchers make 20A at 5 volts a trivial deal. >> >> >No wait the brick err door stop is the old PC. Ah foo. Allison From fireflyst at earthlink.net Sat Nov 12 16:12:20 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:12:20 -0600 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong In-Reply-To: <43766619.2080305@gjcp.net> Message-ID: Well in any case, they could have chosen a much better example, it's all yellowed and nasty, and they're making it worse with that fluorescent light. I bet it's just a VAX chassis someone threw in the dumpster from this list. There's probably not even anything in it, except a broken TK50. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gordon JC Pearce Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 4:01 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: > Vassilis Prevelakis wrote: > > >>Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then its >>not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives visitors >>who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to what a >>mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* with >>a VAX (I'll even ignore the minor business of emulating a small part >>of the instruction set :-), but is not a VAX. > > > I'd not call the MicroVAX a mini, but it *is* a VAX. The > architecture was subsetted to allow some latitude in > implementation, but user mode code did not need to > worry about that: the instructions still worked. > > A VAX, is a VAX, is a VAX. Of course, of course, And no-one can talk to a VAX of course, That is, of course, unless the VAX is the famou "G$E%GK$?5 AGW?3y3yh NO CARRIER From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sat Nov 12 16:12:57 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:12:57 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511122213.RAA09779@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I use a solder pot, filled, so the miniscus (sp?) allows me to just "meniscus". /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 16:16:54 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:16:54 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPV00BGX4HT0G61@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:33:43 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> >> On 11/11/2005 at 11:12 PM woodelf wrote: >> >> >PS. As for getting 7400 off scrap boards, if I had the scrap boards I >> >would most likely try to get the scrap item working again. :D > >Me too. I've got piles of obscure boards that I'd like to get going again >sometime. Most have no real practical function, but are part of the >history of computing/electronics. > >About the only thing I'll raid for parts are no-name clone PC >motherboards and cards.. And those are not a good source of standard TTL, >alas. > >> >> There are plenty of junk boards that have no particular useful function. >> I've got a bunch of ISA cards that I salvaged. All were old models of a >> gizmo that appeared to a PC as a monochrome adapter, but which translated >> the CPU writes to video memory to serial codes to a VT-220 type terminal. > >Now that sounds unusual enough to be very interesting. Put it this way, >if I had something like that I'd be trying to track down a dump of that >missing ROM. I would not be raiding it for parts. > >-tony There are tons of mostly unidentifyable boards with usable parts or we know what they are and maybe they even work but heck there's a stack of 100 in the corner with good parts for salvage. Examples of salvage to me XT clones that were never rare, 386 and 486 boards with salvageable parts. A sharp TV with a dead red drive from a doitall chip is junk for stripping. Non-salvage items, things I keep and fix like my uVAX ADVICE as it's an in circuit emulator for the uVAX chip so it both maybe the last in existance and unusual. There is junk and not. The junk is there to make the not junk work. One can have too much junk, rarely! Allison From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 16:16:15 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:16:15 -0800 Subject: Fortune Systems (Brands you never hear much about) In-Reply-To: <437658A9.1090305@mdrconsult.com> References: <20051112203459.90074.qmail@web81007.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200511121257320455.1046FAB6@10.0.0.252> <437658A9.1090305@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <200511121416150923.108F0AEB@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 4:03 PM Doc Shipley wrote: > When I got the Fortune stuff I mentioned in my earlier post, I did >some research. Almost all the references I found were newsgroup posts >bemoaning the quality of both the 32:16 and of Fortune's customer >service. Nobody seemed surprised that Fortune didn't last. Well, let's face it, Unix on a what--8 or 12 Mhz 68K isn't the best solution in the world. It wasn't until support for virtual memory was added to 68K systems and Unix that a real workhorse was possible. Heaven knows, there were plenty of 68K systems being paraded around as being Unix-capable. In about 1985, the firm I was with decided to add to the VAX 11/750 they had. I wanted to simply add another 750, but was overruled by a department manager who claimed that a Plexus 68K box was more economical and just as efficient--using, as evidence, some phonied-up benchmark results. What a miserable experience that was--so slow it was almost useless. So, I guess the Fortune terminal that I've got is more torch-scavenging material--it's got a nice power supply. Cheers, Chuck From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sat Nov 12 16:16:52 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:16:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511122213.RAA09779@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <200511122213.RAA09779@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200511122217.RAA09830@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> I use a solder pot, filled, so the miniscus (sp?) allows me to just > "meniscus". *BLUSH!* I was *sure* I'd sent that privately. My apologies to everyone for the noise, and especially to the sender for saying so publicly something that I really should have kept private. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 16:21:39 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:21:39 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <0IPV00KVQ4PRTE35@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs > From: William Donzelli > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:00:10 -0500 (EST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > >I use a solder pot, filled, so the miniscus (sp?) allows me to just place >the board on the rim of the pot, and all the pads melt nicely. It took me >some time to fine tune the setup, but it works very well. I may never go >back to the torch. That is by far the best method and also excellent for board you really don't want to cook (as in ones you fix). I've used that trick on PCs I wanted that had bad DALLAS DS1287 clock/cmos chips. Its easier then to sand off the epoxy to access the dead battery for replacement. Allison From nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com Sat Nov 12 16:32:41 2005 From: nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com (nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:32:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: Fortune Systems (Brands you never hear much about) In-Reply-To: <43765746.6090103@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <20051112223241.54441.qmail@web81009.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Yes, thanks. I'll contact you off list. I'd like to get these system boxes I have up and running. David --- Doc Shipley wrote: > nospam212-cctalk at yahoo.com wrote: > > I have a couple of Fortune systems and some doc > but > > they're incomplete so I have done much with them > yet. > > If I ever find enough stuff to get them working I > > will. We looked at Fortune years ago when my > dad's > > company was looking for a multi-user system for > the > > office. Kind of liked it at the time but the > picked > > an Altos instead as the company seemed a bit more > > stable. > > I have a bunch of peripherals for the Fortune > 32:16, including > terminal and keyboard, maybe some documentation, and > a full set of > software disks. The disks had been stored wet when > I got them, and are > very warped. I'd be surprised if they're readable > as-is, but you > *might* be able to pull the media out of the covers > and get some of the > data off them. They came to me as part of a carload > of other stuff, and > I've never had the system unit, so none of it is > known-good. > > You're welcome to all of it for the price of > shipping, but you have > to take all of it. If you want I'll make a list and > estimate shipping > costs next weekend. > > > Doc > ----- "When the mind is free of any thought or judgement, then and only then can we know things as they are." David Williams From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 16:36:36 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:36:36 -0800 Subject: Visual Technology - off brand In-Reply-To: <005601c5e7c1$2c8bf000$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> References: <005601c5e7c1$2c8bf000$0300a8c0@sc.rr.com> Message-ID: <200511121436360779.10A1ABE3@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 2:41 PM bill bailey wrote: > Visual 1083 - Commuter. This description mentions an LCD display, but >that is not a part of mine. No disks, but it boots with the DOS from the >IBM. I had a 1083 in here sometime back when for *somethng* I was working on--can't recall what anymore--it did not have an LCD display--that may have been optional. IIRC, it was a PC sort-of-compatible; i.e., at the BIOS level, but the low level port interface was quite different. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 16:51:22 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 14:51:22 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511122057.PAA08372@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> <200511120944.EAA06204@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511120855430592.0F699777@10.0.0.252> <200511122057.PAA08372@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200511121451220713.10AF3090@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 3:49 PM der Mouse wrote: >> With no BIOS and no schematics, how on earth is it useful doing >> anything with them other than scrapping them? > >The same could be said of much of the hardware which is salvaged and >then made workable again. As for "how", well, schematics can be traced >from boards - I've done it in simple cases and others here have done it >in much more complex cases - and, that aside, just because you don't >have suitable ROMs doesn't mean nobody does. (Perhaps nobody in fact >does, and what you've now said makes that seem more plausible, but >based on what you said before, I saw no reason to think that.) Okay, I'll make a deal you can't resist. Anybody wants these things, all they have to do is come up with a BIOS PROM for these things and pay shipping. The manufacturer was Tripas Technologies. Bet there are no takers. Tripas was one of those flash-in-the-pan-horribly-underfunded Silicon Valley startups. The Valley was full of them in the 80's. Firms like these helped keep firms like Halted in business. >Sure, but to dissect it for parts before even checking if anyone else >has any use for it? That's something I regularly dealers reviled for >doing. I offered it for free, along with a 14" 40 MB HPIB hard disk that went with it. A couple of tickles, but no serious interest. Too bad--I've got a fairly good selection of engineering documentation as well as loads of software for it. Revile me if you want, but I feel no moral imperative to be a warehouse for unwanted obsolete stuff. The trouble is that when you get down to the PC era, there were so many brands that flickered in and out of existence that there's just no point to accumulating a lot of stuff that pretty much all did the same thing. I can reel off names like Preis and MAD that almost no one remembers for their unremarkable products. Cheers, Chuck From alberto at a2sistemi.it Sat Nov 12 16:57:16 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:57:16 +0100 Subject: HP 3000 boot problem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I have a 3000/922 at home that I've had for a while now, though I lack > MPE/iX media to get it running. I was just curious if you had copies of > MPE/iX 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, or 7.x that I could take a copy of to get my 3000 > running? The HP3000 is of a friend, not mine, but I can ask him about the OS. Allow a couple of weeks :) Alberto. ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From mokuba at gmail.com Sat Nov 12 16:57:50 2005 From: mokuba at gmail.com (Gary Sparkes) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:57:50 -0500 Subject: DEC 3000-300x firmware upgrade Message-ID: I've got a DEC 3000-300X (ALPHA! ALPHA!) that I want to run VMS 7.3 on, but I need to do a firmware update. I have a bootp boot image file, but I've not a clue how to set up what I need to do to run it. Anyone able to point me in a good direction? From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Nov 12 15:57:50 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:57:50 +0000 Subject: Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4376655E.3000409@yahoo.co.uk> Julian Wolfe wrote: > Well in any case, they could have chosen a much better example, it's all > yellowed and nasty, and they're making it worse with that fluorescent light. So given the choice, what lighting *is* good? I'm just thinking that we might have to replace lighting at the museum one day - so maybe keeping other options in mind is a good idea, providing they're not horribly expensive.... > I bet it's just a VAX chassis someone threw in the dumpster from this list. > There's probably not even anything in it, except a broken TK50. Hmm, not so sure. We certainly wouldn't want to fleece the public by putting an empty machine on display without *saying* it was just a case, even if the public never got to see the insides (although of course we *want* people to ask and be interested in machine innards as well as outside appearance!) I expect most museums are the same though - even if the item's stuck in a glass case, it still seems wrong for it to just be a shell rather than a complete system unless explicitly stated as such to the public. cheers Jules From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 17:03:55 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:03:55 -0800 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <200511121503550004.10BAAB34@10.0.0.252> I just found an unused bare S-100 backplane PCB marked "EXP-4 Rev. 2" and "(C) 1975, IMS Assoc. Inc.". I'm assuming that it's for the IMSAI 8080, but am not certain. I've also discovered a bare Polymorphic Systems backplane from about the same time. I'll throw in the 4 edge connectors that were taped to it. It has pads for rectifiers, caps and what looks like a regulator on it. Let me know if you're interested. Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 12 17:02:44 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:02:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: More on my HP7245A problem Message-ID: I've been doing some more fiddling with that HP7245A printer/plotter. On the ROM/RAM board there are 8 9216s, arranged to give an 8K*16 program storage space. And also 4 off 82S123 PROMs arranged to give 64words*16, probably for some kind of parameter storage. Those last 4 chips are socketed. Test 02 does appear to be the ROM test (as on the -B model). On my machine it seems to access all the program ROMs and the first pair of 82S123s. It then gives up with error 54(8). I have rpelaced the sockets (with nice turned-piu ones), no change. By swapping the ROMs around, I think I've discovered that the test is a simple cheacksum, independant of the address.In particular, if I swap round the 2 sets of PROMs (in the test mode), it fails with error 56(8). And if I put them back in the right sockets, and then swap round the 2 ROMs in the low bank, it fails with code 53(8) This leads me to guess that the error codes (in octal) are : 53 : U15 (PROM A MSB) 54 : U10 (PROM A LSB) 55 : U16 (PROM B MSB) 56 : U11 (PROM B LSB). And that U10 is genuinely the problem in my machine (i.e. not the socket, PCB traces, or address decoder, all of which I have checked anyway). Curiously, all 4 PROMs have the same HP part number, but I suspect that's the code for a blank chip, and that the contents of each chip is different. OK, it's a long shot, but does anyone have a dead 7245A that they can pull these ROMs from? Or any idea as to what the contents should be? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 12 17:14:10 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:14:10 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Sorry to post this to the list (5155 PSU diagrams) Message-ID: Sorry to bother the whole list with this... Can the chap who wants the schematics for the IBM 5155 PSU (Portable PC) please contact me (or Dave Colver directly (secretary at hpcc.org)). He tells me they're scanned (and about 1.7Meg). -tony From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 17:24:26 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:24:26 -0800 Subject: AHA 3985 SCSI RAID adapter, NIB Message-ID: <200511121524260946.10CD777A@10.0.0.252> PCI interface, SCSI-2 (not wide SCSI). Still shrink-wrapped. Let me know if you're interested. I'm thinking $50 would be fine. Cheers, Chuck From aw288 at osfn.org Sat Nov 12 17:37:37 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:37:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <0IPV00KVQ4PRTE35@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > That is by far the best method and also excellent for board you really > don't want to cook (as in ones you fix). One of the tricks is to get a solder pot the right size - just big enough for a 40 pin DIP. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From alberto at a2sistemi.it Sat Nov 12 17:38:10 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:38:10 +0100 Subject: Sorry to post this to the list (5155 PSU diagrams) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Can the chap who wants the schematics for the IBM 5155 PSU (Portable PC) > please contact me (or Dave Colver directly (secretary at hpcc.org)). > He tells > me they're scanned (and about 1.7Meg). Great !!! I hope with schematics to repair my unit. Please send me :)) Then I'm thinking to take some pictures of the main signals with scope. Alberto. From aw288 at osfn.org Sat Nov 12 17:40:51 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:40:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong) In-Reply-To: <4376655E.3000409@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: > So given the choice, what lighting *is* good? > > I'm just thinking that we might have to replace lighting at the museum > one day - so maybe keeping other options in mind is a good idea, > providing they're not horribly expensive.... I have a book, called "the Care of Art Objects" (I forget the author) that outlines all of this. Lots of interesting content in that book - things you would never know (like why oak shelves should never be used in archives) - but then again these folks actually plan on keeping things as close to forever as possible. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 17:47:18 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:47:18 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <0IPV00K6K8OHTEB5@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Collectables? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:03:55 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >I just found an unused bare S-100 backplane PCB marked "EXP-4 Rev. 2" and >"(C) 1975, IMS Assoc. Inc.". I'm assuming that it's for the IMSAI 8080, >but am not certain. > >I've also discovered a bare Polymorphic Systems backplane from about the >same time. I'll throw in the 4 edge connectors that were taped to it. It >has pads for rectifiers, caps and what looks like a regulator on it. > >Let me know if you're interested. I'm building a small 4 board s100 system, the usual Z80, Memory, IO and disk. The Polymorphic sounds nice for that project. The IMS is too big if it's their usual more than 12 slot backplane. I'd take both though depending on price. Allison From vp at cs.drexel.edu Sat Nov 12 17:54:52 2005 From: vp at cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:54:52 -0500 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong Message-ID: <20051112235452.06190200EC6F@mail.cs.drexel.edu> "a.carlini at ntlworld.com" wrote: > > Vassilis Prevelakis wrote: > > Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then > > its not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives > > visitors who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to > > what a mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* > I'd not call the MicroVAX a mini, but it *is* a VAX. Actually I agree, I got carried away in my original posting. My main objection is the mini designation. The uVAX is not a mini. In the early 80s IBM produced a set of ISA cards for their original PC. These cards implemented a large subset of the IBM 370 architecture and the PC could boot some 370-compatible OS (I do not recall which one). The called it the IBM PC/370. It was a 370 but I wouldn't call it a mainframe, nor would I place a card next to it saying IBM 370 MAINFRAME [...], and this is the model PC/370 produced in (say) 1984. **vp From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 12 17:55:10 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:55:10 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPV00HE83ZJCYR0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV00HE83ZJCYR0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437680DE.5040407@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >>This is 18 bits ... 2 or 3 or 6 or 9 is needed here, not 2 or 4 or 8 >>or blah! 16 :) >> >> > >So throw away the excess bits. It's still cheaper. Also there is a >Single full adder TTL part the 7480. > > > I just did that with the LS design ... dropped down from 40 to 26 chips for 2 bits. Oh wait I was to buy FOOD today ... not doodle on quad paper. :) >Well the punch is ahrd but a HS reader is trivial to build AS it's >been done many times. > > > I guess I'll just have to use a ON-LINE punch then... >as to putting it CPLD or FPGA, yes you could but I'm saying/staying in >TTL with available SSI and MSI functions it's possible to be chip count >reasonable. > > > >I have nearly 30 IDE drives all under 500mb I can build around. Its >easy to make them look like a RK05 or whatever to a PDP-8 databreak >interface. What MS does next year or even lsat years does not impact >me at all. > > But my CPLD software allways needs a new download ... >Ah foo. > > > PS. with the MATURE LS line of products, who knows what will be produced in 5 years. >Allison > >. > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 17:58:29 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:58:29 -0500 Subject: Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong) Message-ID: <0IPV001IT97317R0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong) > From: William Donzelli > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:40:51 -0500 (EST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> So given the choice, what lighting *is* good? >> >> I'm just thinking that we might have to replace lighting at the museum >> one day - so maybe keeping other options in mind is a good idea, >> providing they're not horribly expensive.... > >I have a book, called "the Care of Art Objects" (I forget the author) that >outlines all of this. > >Lots of interesting content in that book - things you would never know >(like why oak shelves should never be used in archives) - but then again >these folks actually plan on keeping things as close to forever as >possible. > >William Donzelli >aw288 at osfn.org Well for computers especially those with exposed and unshuttered EPROMS any exposure over time to UV light _may_ be problematic. Generally speaking UV is har on a lot of things and florescents are fairly rich in UV, some more than others. That and it tends to distort color rendition if cheap lamps are used. Allison From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 12 18:00:53 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:00:53 -0700 Subject: Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong) In-Reply-To: <0IPV001IT97317R0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV001IT97317R0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43768235.1080207@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >>Subject: Re: Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong) >> From: William Donzelli >> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:40:51 -0500 (EST) >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >> >> >>>So given the choice, what lighting *is* good? >>> >>>I'm just thinking that we might have to replace lighting at the museum >>>one day - so maybe keeping other options in mind is a good idea, >>>providing they're not horribly expensive.... >>> >>> >>I have a book, called "the Care of Art Objects" (I forget the author) that >>outlines all of this. >> >>Lots of interesting content in that book - things you would never know >>(like why oak shelves should never be used in archives) - but then again >>these folks actually plan on keeping things as close to forever as >>possible. >> >>William Donzelli >>aw288 at osfn.org >> >> > > >Well for computers especially those with exposed and unshuttered EPROMS >any exposure over time to UV light _may_ be problematic. Generally speaking >UV is har on a lot of things and florescents are fairly rich in UV, some >more than others. That and it tends to distort color rendition if cheap >lamps are used. > > > Now if you want a neat lamp ... somebody made a sulfur lamp ... you zap the globe with microwaves and you get daylight... nice idea for the hard to light big indoor areas. >Allison > >. > > > From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Sat Nov 12 18:16:50 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Witchy) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:16:50 -0000 (GMT) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <0IPT00BGJNUN86U3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPT00BGJNUN86U3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <1694.192.168.0.3.1131841010.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> On Sat, November 12, 2005 3:19 am, Allison said: >> > Myself I torch the bottom and use a spring loaded chip extractor. > That and a pliers or tiny screwdriver to straighten any bent > pins keeping it in the board. I'm right in assuming this technique requires a bit of practice? :) There's me spending half an hour warming up the Leister blower when all I need to do is get the soldering torch from my toolkit? Not sure how well that would go down at work :D -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection? From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 18:24:55 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:24:55 -0500 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong Message-ID: <0IPV006VZAF6DWP4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Smithsonian gets it wrong > From: "Vassilis Prevelakis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:54:52 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >"a.carlini at ntlworld.com" wrote: >> > Vassilis Prevelakis wrote: >> > Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then >> > its not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives >> > visitors who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to >> > what a mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* > >> I'd not call the MicroVAX a mini, but it *is* a VAX. > >Actually I agree, I got carried away in my original posting. > >My main objection is the mini designation. The uVAX is not a mini. > >In the early 80s IBM produced a set of ISA cards for their original >PC. These cards implemented a large subset of the IBM 370 architecture >and the PC could boot some 370-compatible OS (I do not recall which >one). The called it the IBM PC/370. It was a 370 but I wouldn't >call it a mainframe, nor would I place a card next to it saying >IBM 370 MAINFRAME [...], and this is the model PC/370 >produced in (say) 1984. > >**vp Your still skating on thin ice. The whole concept of a mini was that a mini was not a maxi. there was never a clear delineation and those that got the term like the PDP-8 were minis because they were distinctly smaller that most peoples perception of computer at that time (multiple 6ft high racks.). By 1985 that idea meant a MicroVAX was a mini and the VAX was the big fella. But by then we called the little ones micros and the big guys something else other than minicomputers. Sorta like for the last 15 or so years PC universally applies to personal computer and it's implied that it is wintel. But from about 1970ish to around 1981 PC meant Personally owned Computer and it could be anything! For example I was offered a Cincinatti Millichron CM2000 in 1973 for $2000 (price of a new truck) and if I'd done that it would have been my first PC even though the box was 19Wx11Hx28D and it weighed at least 80 pounds without the ASR33. So terms like mainframe, mini are sometimes hard to pin down.During the '70s the mid 60's idea of mini became smaller and machines like the VAX and Eclipse were called superminis. But that left the desktop Novas and PDP-8/e/f/m to be called what? Micro was easier as it really had to contain the core processor on one or very few chips that were LSI or VLSI. So without wrapping the timeframe context around the words there is considerable drift in what the images it conveys. For context when minicomputer was first coined and applied a womans skirt was calf length and a miniskirt was, well, too short safely to bend over without risk. But even that industry had the micromini. ;) Allison From chenmel at earthlink.net Sat Nov 12 18:27:33 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:27:33 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPV00BGX4HT0G61@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV00BGX4HT0G61@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051112192733.65e012bf.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:16:54 -0500 Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:33:43 +0000 (GMT) > > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > > >> > >> On 11/11/2005 at 11:12 PM woodelf wrote: > >> > >> >PS. As for getting 7400 off scrap boards, if I had the scrap boards I > >> >would most likely try to get the scrap item working again. :D > > > >Me too. I've got piles of obscure boards that I'd like to get going again > >sometime. Most have no real practical function, but are part of the > >history of computing/electronics. > > > >About the only thing I'll raid for parts are no-name clone PC > >motherboards and cards.. And those are not a good source of standard TTL, > >alas. > > > >> > >> There are plenty of junk boards that have no particular useful function. > >> I've got a bunch of ISA cards that I salvaged. All were old models of a > >> gizmo that appeared to a PC as a monochrome adapter, but which translated > >> the CPU writes to video memory to serial codes to a VT-220 type terminal. > > > >Now that sounds unusual enough to be very interesting. Put it this way, > >if I had something like that I'd be trying to track down a dump of that > >missing ROM. I would not be raiding it for parts. > > > >-tony > > There are tons of mostly unidentifyable boards with usable parts or we > know what they are and maybe they even work but heck there's a stack > of 100 in the corner with good parts for salvage. > > Examples of salvage to me XT clones that were never rare, 386 and 486 > boards with salvageable parts. A sharp TV with a dead red drive from > a doitall chip is junk for stripping. Non-salvage items, things I > keep and fix like my uVAX ADVICE as it's an in circuit emulator for > the uVAX chip so it both maybe the last in existance and unusual. > > There is junk and not. The junk is there to make the not junk work. > One can have too much junk, rarely! > XT and XT clone motherboards are becoming increasingly rare. 286 and 386 motherboards are falling into that class rapidly. 486 motherboards are still around but gradually becoming rare, too. What I have lying around in big annoying quantities at this point in time is all Pentium and Pentium II motherboards. And actually, most of them are 'lying around' because they've become defective and due to the finer pitch and custom-chip construction are unservicible. All the XT hardware I still have is either working or easily repairable. Full AT hardware, i.e. motherboards before the 'Baby AT' generation, is close to being 'key' as far as scarcity. The hardware of that era was a magnitude of scale more expensive than the huge fleet 'Baby AT' that came after it. And much of it was built like a Sherman Tank, as compared to the disposable humvee quality of the Baby AT era hardware. Early and slow (less than 16 MHz) full AT '386 motherboards are quite rare now. (aside- yes, in the eyes of the military the Humvee, like the Jeep before it, is a cheap throwaway transport) And oddly, at this point in time, people like me find ourselves with far more middle-era Sun Microsystems hardware than we can use. Those nice little lunchbox Sparcs and Pizza Box systems are plentiful and you can cart them off in whatever quantity they are available at surplus gear auctions. They used to be the star item at said auctions. There are historical books now that show all the wonderful architecture that has been destroyed, i.e. the 'Lost Twin Cities' book and video series highlights some marvelous buildings that were demolished in the name of 'progress.' Time rolls on, and what's missed sorely 20 years after is always whatever was knocked down. This also remains the case with old computer gear. Nobody imagined ten years ago that anybody would have any use for a 8 MHz full-AT 80386 motherboard, so nobody kept any. Ummm. Same as it ever was. From ak6dn at mindspring.com Sat Nov 12 18:31:46 2005 From: ak6dn at mindspring.com (Don North) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:31:46 -0800 Subject: Power connectors? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43768972.5060705@mindspring.com> Mouser (www.mouser.com) carries these; search for 'amp commercial mate-n-lok' or see latest catalog p.993 They have the 6P, 15P PDP-11 backplane compatible versions, and the 3P version you want, both flavors M/F. The 6P are 1-480273-0 / 1-480276-0, the 15P are 1-480323-0 / 1-480324-0, the 3P are 1-480304-0 / 1-480305-0 I suspect you can't find the original AMP part numbers because they have changed several times over the years. Don North Julian Wolfe wrote: >On one end it's a locking tab, on the other it's a plain molex connector, >like that of a PC power supply, but with 3 prongs instead of 4. > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com >Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2005 3:07 PM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: Re: Power connectors? > >Hi, > >I might have a few, but what exactly are you trying to connect? > >Are they the white ones with only the outer two pins used, or the brown ones > >with the locking tabs? > >Thanks, Paul > > > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 18:48:13 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:48:13 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers Message-ID: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > From: Scott Stevens > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:27:33 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:16:54 -0500 >Allison wrote: > >> > >> >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers >> > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) >> > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:33:43 +0000 (GMT) >> > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >> > >> >> >> >> On 11/11/2005 at 11:12 PM woodelf wrote: >> >> >> >> >PS. As for getting 7400 off scrap boards, if I had the scrap boards I >> >> >would most likely try to get the scrap item working again. :D >> > >> >Me too. I've got piles of obscure boards that I'd like to get going again >> >sometime. Most have no real practical function, but are part of the >> >history of computing/electronics. >> > >> >About the only thing I'll raid for parts are no-name clone PC >> >motherboards and cards.. And those are not a good source of standard TTL, >> >alas. >> > >> >> >> >> There are plenty of junk boards that have no particular useful function. >> >> I've got a bunch of ISA cards that I salvaged. All were old models of a >> >> gizmo that appeared to a PC as a monochrome adapter, but which translated >> >> the CPU writes to video memory to serial codes to a VT-220 type terminal. >> > >> >Now that sounds unusual enough to be very interesting. Put it this way, >> >if I had something like that I'd be trying to track down a dump of that >> >missing ROM. I would not be raiding it for parts. >> > >> >-tony >> >> There are tons of mostly unidentifyable boards with usable parts or we >> know what they are and maybe they even work but heck there's a stack >> of 100 in the corner with good parts for salvage. >> >> Examples of salvage to me XT clones that were never rare, 386 and 486 >> boards with salvageable parts. A sharp TV with a dead red drive from >> a doitall chip is junk for stripping. Non-salvage items, things I >> keep and fix like my uVAX ADVICE as it's an in circuit emulator for >> the uVAX chip so it both maybe the last in existance and unusual. >> >> There is junk and not. The junk is there to make the not junk work. >> One can have too much junk, rarely! >> > >XT and XT clone motherboards are becoming increasingly rare. 286 and 386 motherboards are falling into that class rapidly. 486 motherboards are still around but gradually becoming rare, too. > >What I have lying around in big annoying quantities at this point in time is all Pentium and Pentium II motherboards. And actually, most of them are 'lying around' because they've become defective and due to the finer pitch and custom-chip construction are unservicible. All the XT hardware I still have is either working or easily repairable. > >Full AT hardware, i.e. motherboards before the 'Baby AT' generation, is close to being 'key' as far as scarcity. The hardware of that era was a magnitude of scale more expensive than the huge fleet 'Baby AT' that came after it. And much of it was built like a Sherman Tank, as compared to the disposable humvee quality of the Baby AT era hardware. Early and slow (less than 16 MHz) full AT '386 motherboards are quite rare now. (aside- yes, in the eyes of the military the Humvee, like the Jeep before it, is a cheap throwaway transport) > >And oddly, at this point in time, people like me find ourselves with far more middle-era Sun Microsystems hardware than we can use. Those nice little lunchbox Sparcs and Pizza Box systems are plentiful and you can cart them off in whatever quantity they are available at surplus gear auctions. They used to be the star item at said auctions. > >There are historical books now that show all the wonderful architecture that has been destroyed, i.e. the 'Lost Twin Cities' book and video series highlights some marvelous buildings that were demolished in the name of 'progress.' Time rolls on, and what's missed sorely 20 years after is always whatever was knocked down. This also remains the case with old computer gear. Nobody imagined ten years ago that anybody would have any use for a 8 MHz full-AT 80386 motherboard, so nobody kept any. > >Ummm. Same as it ever was. Save for the INboard386 (38616 for AT processor replacement) and the SIIG3000 bick thats a real 5mb, IDE disk and floppy 386/16 powered system I keep as it's plain handy! It not only does VGA but RS170 video. I do have a small footprint 386/25 (or 8mhz with turbo jumper off) board I keep as its plain cute and works too. Nope nobody kept them. ;) Allison From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 18:50:34 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:50:34 -0800 Subject: More stuff for the collectors Message-ID: <200511121650340567.111C517E@10.0.0.252> I found an old Quadram quadboard in my junk collection. This is a 256K (41256 DRAM) add in board for the 5150. Also includes a serial port (8250), a parallel port (8255) and a clock (some small 19-pin OKI chip). The board bears a copyright of 1982 and the chips have date codes in early 1983, so this is a very early critter. To my recollection, this was usable only on the 4.77MHz motherboards, but I could be mistaken. The original "wide" PC mounting bracket has been replaced with a conventional narrow one, so this board has probably seen duty in a clone. I can populate the board with DRAMs if necessary. I think I may even have a software diskette and manual for it, but I'm not completely certain. Let me know if you're interested. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 19:05:22 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:05:22 -0800 Subject: More stuff for the collectors In-Reply-To: <200511121650340567.111C517E@10.0.0.252> References: <200511121650340567.111C517E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511121705220523.1129DE13@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 4:50 PM Chuck Guzis wrote: >I found an old Quadram quadboard in my junk collection. This is a 256K >(41256 DRAM) add in board for the 5150. ...make that "4164". And I found the diskette. Cheers, Chuck From aw288 at osfn.org Sat Nov 12 19:21:16 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:21:16 -0500 (EST) Subject: IBM 5315 on Ebay Message-ID: ITS THE MEAT GRINDER! How many poor CEs got their tie stuck in this? Ebay number 7561176298. One of these days I need to get me one of these. Tasty! William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Sat Nov 12 19:28:59 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Witchy) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 01:28:59 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong In-Reply-To: <009301c5e7bd$631c4740$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <20051112182942.E48C3200EC02@mail.cs.drexel.edu> <009301c5e7bd$631c4740$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <1827.192.168.0.3.1131845339.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> On Sat, November 12, 2005 7:15 pm, a.carlini at ntlworld.com said: > I'd not call the MicroVAX a mini, but it *is* a VAX. The > architecture was subsetted to allow some latitude in > implementation, but user mode code did not need to > worry about that: the instructions still worked. > > A VAX, is a VAX, is a VAX. I'll prove that (again) on monday when I boot a 6660 using a system disk I created last night using a uVAX 3100-90 :) -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection? From aw288 at osfn.org Sat Nov 12 19:30:23 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:30:23 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511090937020794.001C65C0@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > It now seems incredible on what amounts to a 10 MHz mainframe, but wire > length was a big part of the CDC 6600 design puzzle. Somewhat related news... While at Georgia Tech the other day on a road trip, I found out their old CDC Cyber 180 bit the dust about two years ago. I think at some point this list was notified that the machine was still around but doomed, and some , like myself, got onto a mailing list to know when the machine went to surplus. Well, it skipped that step. A machine I would have killed for... William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From chenmel at earthlink.net Sat Nov 12 19:34:29 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:34:29 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:48:13 -0500 Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > > From: Scott Stevens > > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:27:33 -0500 > > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > > >On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:16:54 -0500 > >Allison wrote: > > > >> > > >> >Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers > >> > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > >> > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:33:43 +0000 (GMT) > >> > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> > > >> >> > >> >> On 11/11/2005 at 11:12 PM woodelf wrote: > >> >> > >> >> >PS. As for getting 7400 off scrap boards, if I had the scrap boards I > >> >> >would most likely try to get the scrap item working again. :D > >> > > >> >Me too. I've got piles of obscure boards that I'd like to get going again > >> >sometime. Most have no real practical function, but are part of the > >> >history of computing/electronics. > >> > > >> >About the only thing I'll raid for parts are no-name clone PC > >> >motherboards and cards.. And those are not a good source of standard TTL, > >> >alas. > >> > > >> >> > >> >> There are plenty of junk boards that have no particular useful function. > >> >> I've got a bunch of ISA cards that I salvaged. All were old models of a > >> >> gizmo that appeared to a PC as a monochrome adapter, but which translated > >> >> the CPU writes to video memory to serial codes to a VT-220 type terminal. > >> > > >> >Now that sounds unusual enough to be very interesting. Put it this way, > >> >if I had something like that I'd be trying to track down a dump of that > >> >missing ROM. I would not be raiding it for parts. > >> > > >> >-tony > >> > >> There are tons of mostly unidentifyable boards with usable parts or we > >> know what they are and maybe they even work but heck there's a stack > >> of 100 in the corner with good parts for salvage. > >> > >> Examples of salvage to me XT clones that were never rare, 386 and 486 > >> boards with salvageable parts. A sharp TV with a dead red drive from > >> a doitall chip is junk for stripping. Non-salvage items, things I > >> keep and fix like my uVAX ADVICE as it's an in circuit emulator for > >> the uVAX chip so it both maybe the last in existance and unusual. > >> > >> There is junk and not. The junk is there to make the not junk work. > >> One can have too much junk, rarely! > >> > > > >XT and XT clone motherboards are becoming increasingly rare. 286 and 386 motherboards are falling into that class rapidly. 486 motherboards are still around but gradually becoming rare, too. > > > >What I have lying around in big annoying quantities at this point in time is all Pentium and Pentium II motherboards. And actually, most of them are 'lying around' because they've become defective and due to the finer pitch and custom-chip construction are unservicible. All the XT hardware I still have is either working or easily repairable. > > > >Full AT hardware, i.e. motherboards before the 'Baby AT' generation, is close to being 'key' as far as scarcity. The hardware of that era was a magnitude of scale more expensive than the huge fleet 'Baby AT' that came after it. And much of it was built like a Sherman Tank, as compared to the disposable humvee quality of the Baby AT era hardware. Early and slow (less than 16 MHz) full AT '386 motherboards are quite rare now. (aside- yes, in the eyes of the military the Humvee, like the Jeep before it, is a cheap throwaway transport) > > > >And oddly, at this point in time, people like me find ourselves with far more middle-era Sun Microsystems hardware than we can use. Those nice little lunchbox Sparcs and Pizza Box systems are plentiful and you can cart them off in whatever quantity they are available at surplus gear auctions. They used to be the star item at said auctions. > > > >There are historical books now that show all the wonderful architecture that has been destroyed, i.e. the 'Lost Twin Cities' book and video series highlights some marvelous buildings that were demolished in the name of 'progress.' Time rolls on, and what's missed sorely 20 years after is always whatever was knocked down. This also remains the case with old computer gear. Nobody imagined ten years ago that anybody would have any use for a 8 MHz full-AT 80386 motherboard, so nobody kept any. > > > >Ummm. Same as it ever was. > > Save for the INboard386 (38616 for AT processor replacement) and the SIIG3000 > bick thats a real 5mb, IDE disk and floppy 386/16 powered system I keep as > it's plain handy! It not only does VGA but RS170 video. I do have a small > footprint 386/25 (or 8mhz with turbo jumper off) board I keep as its plain > cute and works too. > > Nope nobody kept them. ;) > One of the virtues of some of the 'full AT' motherboards was that they didn't use custom VLSI chips. I mean boards like the IBM PC-AT and it's clones. It was all done using standard TTL and the regular Intel family 8xxx LSI chips. I am not sure if there were any 80386 motherboards made with this similar construction, but if there were, these are the boards I refer to, that have largely disappeared, and are 'classic, servicible forever' hardware, the kind the Tony likes. Hmm, I just pulled off the shelf my copy of the 'Compaq Deskpro 386 Technical Reference Manual' and the schematic shows that it indeed used the 'classic' LSI architecture. It has two 8259's, an 8254, two 8237's. All standard stuff except for a few small PALs. Is this particular tech ref manual very common? It gives complete schematics for a '386 class machine. I remember latching onto it back in the day specifically because of that. I should really try to track down a machine to go with the docs. The first Deskpro 386 has historical merit, because it was THE first desktop '386 system (IBM at the time was foundering in their proprietary PS/2 stuff) As we have said, most of that stuff is scrapped now. From dave04a at dunfield.com Sat Nov 12 19:39:56 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:39:56 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <20051113013955.SUNE29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> At 15:03 12/11/2005 -0800, you wrote: >I just found an unused bare S-100 backplane PCB marked "EXP-4 Rev. 2" and >"(C) 1975, IMS Assoc. Inc.". I'm assuming that it's for the IMSAI 8080, >but am not certain. > >I've also discovered a bare Polymorphic Systems backplane from about the >same time. I'll throw in the 4 edge connectors that were taped to it. It >has pads for rectifiers, caps and what looks like a regulator on it. > >Let me know if you're interested. Hi Chuck, I have interest in the IMS backplane - I have an IMSAI 8080 front panel, which I plan to build into a functional machine, and I'd like to use as many IMS parts as I can find. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Nov 12 18:45:23 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:45:23 +0000 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <1694.192.168.0.3.1131841010.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> References: <0IPT00BGJNUN86U3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <1694.192.168.0.3.1131841010.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: <43768CA3.7040201@yahoo.co.uk> Witchy wrote: > On Sat, November 12, 2005 3:19 am, Allison said: > >>Myself I torch the bottom and use a spring loaded chip extractor. >>That and a pliers or tiny screwdriver to straighten any bent >>pins keeping it in the board. > > > I'm right in assuming this technique requires a bit of practice? :) Not for ICs, no. I've found with things like IDC connectors it's a bit trickier as it's hard to keep the heat even across the whole socket and not damage it (plus such sockets tend to be at the edges of boards and so the heat 'spills over' to the top-side and damages the socket) Of course the chips tend to be the important bit. I do often salvage capacitors and diodes from boards too though, just to make sure I've got a useful supply in the parts box. If I've got a large board I tend to use the camping gas stove as it spreads the heat nicely across large sections of board. Do in a well ventilated area obviously, PCBs tend to produce nasty fumes! cheers Jules From ak6dn at mindspring.com Sat Nov 12 20:01:51 2005 From: ak6dn at mindspring.com (Don North) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:01:51 -0800 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed on UNIBUS In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43769E8F.5030507@mindspring.com> 9000 VAX wrote: >On 11/8/05, Tim Shoppa wrote: > > >>>From a post I made to the PDP-11 newsgroups in the previous millenium: ... >>Here are the peak data rates measured for read and write 64 blocks-at-a-time: >> >> Read Write >> ---------- ---------- >>Andromeda SCDC 2.298 MB/s 1.131 MB/s >>CMD CQD440 2.397 MB/s 1.525 MB/s >>CMD CQD220 1.418 MB/s 0.882 MB/s >>CMD CQD220A 2.088 MB/s 1.409 MB/s >>DEC RQZX1 1.379 MB/s 1.097 MB/s >>Viking QDT 0.846 MB/s 0.704 MB/s >>DEC RQDX3 0.164 MB/s 0.161 MB/s >> >> And for yucks on a UNIBUS 11/44 running 2.11BSD dd bs=16384 count=1000: >>EMULEX UC-18 0.585 MB/s not tested target is ST32550N >> 0.245 MB/s not tested targer is RRD43 CDROM >> >> From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 20:03:58 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:03:58 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200511121803580008.115F8270@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 8:34 PM Scott Stevens wrote: >> Nope nobody kept them. ;) Not true. I keep one of everything. An XT, an AT, a 386, a 386SX, a 486, and several flavors of Pentium I. So if I need to run Topview, I've got a system that will do it. Of course, I could also just emulate an XT on a more modern system. The rule of thumb for the computer industry has been "better faster cheaper". I paid almost $3000 for a bare-bones 5150 with 64K, one disk drive (single-sided) and a monochrome display adapter. What will that $3000 buy now (adjusted for inflation)? If the violin industry ran the way the computer industry did, a Stradivarius would just be a quaint old violin that no one wanted to play because it sounded so awful. But sometimes old is better. I play a tuba made in 1915 and own several that are over the century mark. These are exceptional instruments that modern manufacturers have tried to reproduce with only fair success. And there are terrible old tubas that deserve nothing more than to be disassembled and used for parts. I don't think of the PC business as being particularly noteworthy from the aspect of groundbreaking technology and design effort. A couple of guys down in Boca Raton put together a box on the cheap for IBM using available (not even leading edge) technology. There wasn't a chip in the PC that I hadn't heard of before. The work that was required to engineer the System/360, Burroughs B5000, CDC 6600 or even the VAX was really noteworthy and deserves our respect. Certainly we should at least do our best to preserve the knowledge of how these systems were built. Some of the more innovative Apple and Sun hardware represents some brilliant minds at work. But the PC? Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 20:07:56 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:07:56 -0800 Subject: Collectables? In-Reply-To: <0IPV00K6K8OHTEB5@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV00K6K8OHTEB5@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511121807560802.11632739@10.0.0.252> Let me be clear on the IMS backplane--it's not a 12-slot model, but a 4-slot version. It appears to be factory-engineered this way and a glance at the rails in my Altair 8800 appears to say that this was intended for incorporation into a MITS box and not the IMS box. Connection is obviously the MITS wire-by-wire method, not the IMS edge connector. I hadn't realized that IMS made add-ons for the MITS boxes, but here you have one. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 20:30:58 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:30:58 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <0IPV00CIKG98NUC8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Collectables? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:07:56 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Let me be clear on the IMS backplane--it's not a 12-slot model, but a >4-slot version. It appears to be factory-engineered this way and a glance >at the rails in my Altair 8800 appears to say that this was intended for >incorporation into a MITS box and not the IMS box. Connection is obviously >the MITS wire-by-wire method, not the IMS edge connector. > >I hadn't realized that IMS made add-ons for the MITS boxes, but here you >have one. > >Cheers, >Chuck Ah, IMS and IMSAI are not the same people. I have a number of IMS boards and they were also a s100 systems supplier, decent stuff too. IMS Corp. >>> IMS IMS Asoc Inc >>> IMSAI Two different companies. IMS was a bit later time frame and did produce upgrades for Altair. In fact just about everyone produced upgrades of one form or another. Typically backplanes, power supplies, RAM, CPU and of course FDC were often seen. About the only part not commonly upgraded in an Altair was the front pannel though that could be done as well. Allison From dave04a at dunfield.com Sat Nov 12 20:35:27 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:35:27 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <20051113023526.LDWG14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> At 18:07 12/11/2005 -0800, you wrote: >Let me be clear on the IMS backplane--it's not a 12-slot model, but a >4-slot version. It appears to be factory-engineered this way and a glance >at the rails in my Altair 8800 appears to say that this was intended for >incorporation into a MITS box and not the IMS box. Connection is obviously >the MITS wire-by-wire method, not the IMS edge connector. > >I hadn't realized that IMS made add-ons for the MITS boxes, but here you >have one. Ah... I hadn't realized that. I assumed it was a 22-slot backplane from an IMSAI 8080 - I was going to pull apart the IMSAI and check the number... Both of my 8800's have 12 slots installed, so I could still use the board, although chances are I wouldn't actually install it (neither Altair is full, and 16 slots would be pushing it anyway for the 8800's power supply). Let me know what you want for it, and if reasonable, and nobody else has a better use we can talk further. [I suppose with the front-panel, and the right cards (CPU, 64K RAM, disk and serial I/O in three cards) I could build a "very short" IMSAI with it - it would even be kinds cute] Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From dave04a at dunfield.com Sat Nov 12 20:40:36 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:40:36 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <20051113024035.TIDC29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> >Ah, IMS and IMSAI are not the same people. I have a number of IMS boards >and they were also a s100 systems supplier, decent stuff too. > >IMS Corp. >>> IMS >IMS Asoc Inc >>> IMSAI Ah (he echos) - I hadn't clued into this either, but yes, there are two IMSs (confused the heck out of me the first time I ran into IMS (corp.) boards) - this makes sense (I also had not heard of IMS (IMSAI) making Altair 4-slot backplane boards). >Two different companies. IMS was a bit later time frame and did produce >upgrades for Altair. In fact just about everyone produced upgrades of >one form or another. Typically backplanes, power supplies, RAM, CPU and >of course FDC were often seen. About the only part not commonly upgraded >in an Altair was the front pannel though that could be done as well. Really? I don't recall ever seeing a third-party front panel on an Altair (at least not a commercially produced one) - who made one, and are there any links to photos anywhere? Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 20:46:26 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:46:26 -0800 Subject: Collectables? In-Reply-To: <0IPV00CIKG98NUC8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV00CIKG98NUC8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511121846260473.11866561@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 9:30 PM Allison wrote: >Two different companies. IMS was a bit later time frame and did produce >upgrades for Altair. In fact just about everyone produced upgrades of >one form or another. Typically backplanes, power supplies, RAM, CPU and >of course FDC were often seen. About the only part not commonly upgraded >in an Altair was the front pannel though that could be done as well. ...and if memory serves, for a time IMS also offered trade-in deals for owners of MITS 8800 systems. Having used (but not owned) both, I liked the IMSAI a lot better as regards quality of construction than the MITS. Eventually all of my cards wound up in an Integrand Systems no-blinking lights box with a many-slot actively-terminated motherboard. But I still have the MITS box. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 20:54:07 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:54:07 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <0IPV00H2MHDGCUD1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Collectables? > From: Dave Dunfield > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:40:36 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >>Ah, IMS and IMSAI are not the same people. I have a number of IMS boards >>and they were also a s100 systems supplier, decent stuff too. >> >>IMS Corp. >>> IMS >>IMS Asoc Inc >>> IMSAI > >Ah (he echos) - I hadn't clued into this either, but yes, there are two >IMSs (confused the heck out of me the first time I ran into IMS (corp.) >boards) - this makes sense (I also had not heard of IMS (IMSAI) making >Altair 4-slot backplane boards). > > >>Two different companies. IMS was a bit later time frame and did produce >>upgrades for Altair. In fact just about everyone produced upgrades of >>one form or another. Typically backplanes, power supplies, RAM, CPU and >>of course FDC were often seen. About the only part not commonly upgraded >>in an Altair was the front pannel though that could be done as well. > >Really? I don't recall ever seeing a third-party front panel on an Altair >(at least not a commercially produced one) - who made one, and are there >any links to photos anywhere? > >Regards, >Dave >-- Godbout had one that was hex keyboard and multi digit numeric led diplays rather than toggle switches. There was also the 8800B FP which was very different from the A version in implmentation. The 8800 (and A) FP was a nightmare of oneshots and was wired to the backplane with a bundle of wires (can you say rinngggg!) plus an wire connection to the CPU card as well. Allison From chenmel at earthlink.net Sat Nov 12 20:54:08 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:54:08 -0500 Subject: Collectables? In-Reply-To: <0IPV00CIKG98NUC8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV00CIKG98NUC8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051112215408.5bf82b18.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:30:58 -0500 Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: Re: Collectables? > > From: "Chuck Guzis" > > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:07:56 -0800 > > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > > >Let me be clear on the IMS backplane--it's not a 12-slot model, but a > >4-slot version. It appears to be factory-engineered this way and a glance > >at the rails in my Altair 8800 appears to say that this was intended for > >incorporation into a MITS box and not the IMS box. Connection is obviously > >the MITS wire-by-wire method, not the IMS edge connector. > > > >I hadn't realized that IMS made add-ons for the MITS boxes, but here you > >have one. > > > >Cheers, > >Chuck > > Ah, IMS and IMSAI are not the same people. I have a number of IMS boards > and they were also a s100 systems supplier, decent stuff too. > > IMS Corp. >>> IMS > IMS Asoc Inc >>> IMSAI > > Two different companies. IMS was a bit later time frame and did produce > upgrades for Altair. In fact just about everyone produced upgrades of > one form or another. Typically backplanes, power supplies, RAM, CPU and > of course FDC were often seen. About the only part not commonly upgraded > in an Altair was the front pannel though that could be done as well. > > One of the things that historical preservationists can easily miss is that the history and pedigree of every single item added to upgrade an old system like an Altair adds rich history and interest to the system. Every tweaked, hacked, and upgraded (well, some of them anyway) system should have significant merit in and of itself. In that early era of Personal Computing, everything was always half-homebrew anyway. Points like that are missed by people of a 'Collectable' mindset who migrate over from different hobbies. Then again (off-topic drift to illustrate point begins here) there are people like me who sometimes prefer to collect items with a provenance. For example, I have a marvelous old Spanish 8 Reals coin. A 'Piece of 8' that is the size of the US Dollar. It is badly worn, so worn that the date is gone, and it's slightly bent, and was bent early enough in it's life that there are deep wear patterns on one side. I bought it at a coin show. I walked up to a dealer table, saw it, and inquired about price. The dealer threw it onto a scale and sold it to me for bullion value. In other words, to some collectors, it is worth nothing, as it's not a pristine 'collectable.' But as that particular coin is what evolved into a 'Siver Dollar' in the US, and because it dates from the early 1800s, it's likely that it circulated in the US as a 'silver dollar' for many years. It has enough wear that it's been handled by thousands of people. It has, needless to say, a lot richer history than a similar coin in mint condition that has sat in some rich collector's cabinet for aprox. 200 years. Yet it has 'melt value' collector's worth according to the established 'dealer' network. I'm so glad there are people who think differently than me, so I can get stuff like that coin for almost nothing. (end of off-topic drift) From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 20:56:53 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:56:53 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511121856530224.118FF5A0@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 8:30 PM William Donzelli wrote: >While at Georgia Tech the other day on a road trip, I found out their old >CDC Cyber 180 bit the dust about two years ago. I think at some point this >list was notified that the machine was still around but doomed, and some , >like myself, got onto a mailing list to know when the machine went to >surplus. Well, it skipped that step. Ah, that IS sad. :( I have a soft spot in my heart for the 60-bit architecture. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 21:10:07 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:10:07 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <0IPV009D0I44F660@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Collectables? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:46:26 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/12/2005 at 9:30 PM Allison wrote: > >>Two different companies. IMS was a bit later time frame and did produce >>upgrades for Altair. In fact just about everyone produced upgrades of >>one form or another. Typically backplanes, power supplies, RAM, CPU and >>of course FDC were often seen. About the only part not commonly upgraded >>in an Altair was the front pannel though that could be done as well. > >....and if memory serves, for a time IMS also offered trade-in deals for >owners of MITS 8800 systems. Having used (but not owned) both, I liked the >IMSAI a lot better as regards quality of construction than the MITS. >Eventually all of my cards wound up in an Integrand Systems no-blinking >lights box with a many-slot actively-terminated motherboard. But I still >have the MITS box. > >Cheers, >Chuck Original topic: I'd like to get that Polymorphic to build a small system. I'm thinking Cpro CPUZ, Cpro Disk1A, Interfacer-II and Ram22. That will build a z80, floppy interfaced, 256k with enough parallel IO to do an IDE. Current topic: Yes, IMSAI did offer a trade in. I'd used both and prefered the IMSAI. IMSAI was better built hands down but hit the scene about 6months after MITS. That and the PE article was visibility that IMSAI didn't initally get. That's why when you an IMSAI it's more likely to be working than an Altair 8800 (plain or A version). The 8800B was much improved but way later. However I was fast on the draw and have a very early Altair which I learned a lot about how to not engineer things. I hate oneshots as a result. Hence the comments on mods. Mine was so power short that with 12k ram parallel IO and a 88ACR casette board the +8volt line was really 7.5...barely. I rewound the transformer so that would run a reasonable complement of cards. Mine has every mod but the FP as a result. The FP would have been next if I didn't GO NS* as the switches from toggling in the boots were getting really tired. That speaks for why after two years and a few months when the North*Star box was available I was right on it. On a related note I've been doing some 1802 coding and that 1977 NS* box is still running Avocets 1802 assembler under cp/m. Still kicking after 27+ years. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 21:14:16 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:14:16 -0800 Subject: ZX80 for sale Message-ID: <200511121914160825.119FE230@10.0.0.252> Here are some photos: http://www.sydex.com/zx80.html First USD $75 takes it. Thanks, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 21:16:29 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:16:29 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <0IPV00BP8IEQ86O6@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Collectables? > From: Scott Stevens > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:54:08 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >I'm so glad there are people who think differently than me, so I >can get stuff like that coin for almost nothing. Yep! The history of many of my systems sorta odd. Many of the key ones have been with me for years and some are like new but many are modified, expanded, tweeked and a few I still use on regular basis as they are known systems. If they have vices, I've known the specific details for more years than PCs have existed. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 21:18:07 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:18:07 -0800 Subject: Collectables? In-Reply-To: <0IPV00H2MHDGCUD1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV00H2MHDGCUD1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511121918070092.11A36311@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 9:54 PM Allison wrote: >different from the A version in implmentation. The 8800 (and A) FP was >a nightmare of oneshots and was wired to the backplane with a bundle of >wires (can you say rinngggg!) plus an wire connection to the CPU card >as well. Miserable white stranded wire. The CPU card connected to the FP as well through a molex header with the same cheap white wire. I built my 8800 in a weekend, and the wire from the FP to the MB took the longest. Anything to save a buck here and there. Lots of corners skipped on the 8800. So much for quality construction of "old stuff'! :) The Integrand has a power supply that one could arc-weld with. Cheers, Chuck From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sat Nov 12 21:20:00 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:20:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200511130323.WAA11649@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> [one-long-line formatting botch repaired manually -dM] > I am not sure if there were any 80386 motherboards made with this > similar construction, but if there were, these are the boards I refer > to, that have largely disappeared, and are 'classic, servicible > forever' hardware, the kind the Tony likes. I just had a look at the one 386 board I still have around. It's heavy on the 74-series logic, but it has about 15 chips that I suspect of being PALs. (I can't read the markings without removing sticky labels with dot-matrix printing. But a few of the labels are applied slightly off-centre one way or another, and what I can see is consistent with part numbers beginning "PAL".) The board worked last time I tried to use it, IIRC, which would have been within the last year or so. Make of that what you will. :-) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 21:40:32 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:40:32 -0800 Subject: Collectables? In-Reply-To: <0IPV009D0I44F660@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV009D0I44F660@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511121940320266.11B7E9A7@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 10:10 PM Allison wrote: >Original topic: I'd like to get that Polymorphic to build a small system. > >I'm thinking Cpro CPUZ, Cpro Disk1A, Interfacer-II and Ram22. That will >build a z80, floppy interfaced, 256k with enough parallel IO to do an >IDE. It's yours as a bare board for USD $10 and with 6 nice new gold-plated connectors $20. Shipping extra. I seem to recall that Polymophic tied the data in and data out together on their boards, but the MB doesn't show that. >Current topic: Yes, IMSAI did offer a trade in. ...and that 4 slot expansion board is indeed labeled "IMS Assoc. Inc.". I used to have the IMSAI floppy disk system too, but that wasn't engineered nearly as well as the CPU box. One small power supply for each Calcomp floppy with some blinkin LED's on a small front panel. I retired the IMSAI FDC and Calcomps (the stepper motors eventually both shorted out). Replaced the drives with Siemens double-sided units and used Don Tarbell's FDC. Much improvement. I used that setup until I retired the system. The MITS 4K DRAM boards got replaced with some SSM SRAM (lots of 2102's) boards. The CPU was a Z80 board of uncertain vintage. I suppose the whole mess could be replaced with a Rabbit CPU and a one-chip FDC. >On a related note I've been doing some 1802 coding and that 1977 NS* >box is still running Avocets 1802 assembler under cp/m. Still kicking >after 27+ years. The 1802 was barely capable as a CPU. The only redeeming thing was that it was static CMOS and could be run down to a DC clock rate. But that was true of the IM6100, too, wasn't it? Were there any hobbyist systems built around the Fairchild 9440 almost-Nova chip? Cheers, Chuck From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sat Nov 12 21:33:45 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:33:45 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511121451220713.10AF3090@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> <200511120944.EAA06204@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511120855430592.0F699777@10.0.0.252> <200511122057.PAA08372@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511121451220713.10AF3090@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511130347.WAA11787@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Okay, I'll make a deal you can't resist. Anybody wants these things, > all they have to do is come up with a BIOS PROM for these things and > pay shipping. The manufacturer was Tripas Technologies. What bus are they for? What kind of ROM socket do they have (I'm assuming the ROM is socketed)? >> Sure, but to dissect it for parts before even checking if anyone >> else has any use for it? That's something I regularly dealers >> reviled for doing. > I offered it for free, along with a 14" 40 MB HPIB hard disk that > went with it. Good. That makes me feel significantly better. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From aw288 at osfn.org Sat Nov 12 21:53:17 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:53:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511121856530224.118FF5A0@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > Ah, that IS sad. :( I have a soft spot in my heart for the 60-bit > architecture. Cyber 180 'taint 60 bit - it was the kludge that gave CDC 64 bits. The 180s had a super-kludge to emulate the 60 bit machines, including a schizo OS. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 21:56:08 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:56:08 -0800 Subject: ZX80 for sale In-Reply-To: <200511121914160825.119FE230@10.0.0.252> References: <200511121914160825.119FE230@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511121956080482.11C632BF@10.0.0.252> ...it's gone! Thanks, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 22:00:00 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:00:00 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511130347.WAA11787@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> <200511120944.EAA06204@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511120855430592.0F699777@10.0.0.252> <200511122057.PAA08372@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511121451220713.10AF3090@10.0.0.252> <200511130347.WAA11787@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200511122000000546.11C9BD3F@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 10:33 PM der Mouse wrote: >> Okay, I'll make a deal you can't resist. Anybody wants these things, >> all they have to do is come up with a BIOS PROM for these things and >> pay shipping. The manufacturer was Tripas Technologies. > >What bus are they for? What kind of ROM socket do they have (I'm >assuming the ROM is socketed)? The ROM is socketed and I believe was a 27128. ISA 8-bit bus. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 22:01:55 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:01:55 -0800 Subject: Collectables? In-Reply-To: <20051113023526.LDWG14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> References: <20051113023526.LDWG14871.orval.sprint.ca@smtp.sprint.ca> Message-ID: <200511122001550030.11CB7C73@10.0.0.252> Hi Dave, If Allison doesn't take the PM board, I can offer it too, but right now I'll sell the IMSAI MB for the same $10. Cheers, Chuck From mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Sat Nov 12 22:03:41 2005 From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us (Mike Loewen) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:03:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: IBM 029 or 129 In-Reply-To: <200511122000000546.11C9BD3F@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPT00K0CG5BTEY1@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <437587DE.6010109@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511112306090600.0D4DD3CC@10.0.0.252> <200511120944.EAA06204@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511120855430592.0F699777@10.0.0.252> <200511122057.PAA08372@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511121451220713.10AF3090@10.0.0.252> <200511130347.WAA11787@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511122000000546.11C9BD3F@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: I just saw a IBM 129 keypunch go by on Ebay, so I know there's still a few out there. :-) For sentimental reasons, I would love to add either an 029 or 129 keypunch to my collection. Does anyone where one might be available? Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://ripsaw.cac.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 22:10:12 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:10:12 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511122010120355.11D31320@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 10:53 PM William Donzelli wrote: >> Ah, that IS sad. :( I have a soft spot in my heart for the 60-bit >> architecture. > >Cyber 180 'taint 60 bit - it was the kludge that gave CDC 64 bits. The >180s had a super-kludge to emulate the 60 bit machines, including a >schizo OS. I remember sitting at the design briefing in 1976 and saying "Forget the 64 bits, the customers will still run it in 6000 emulation mode." And I believe that was largely true. It may be a 180 to you, but it's a 6000-series machine to me. CDC already had a 64 bit machine when that thing came out. They didn't need another one. Cheers, Chuck From pechter at gmail.com Sat Nov 12 22:13:32 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:13:32 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4376BD6C.40003@gmail.com> I'd like to find an Ultrix CD for Vaxstations... Be kind of interesting to compare it with NetBSD/OpenBSD... Bill Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > >> Hello, >> Anybody have a ISO copy of the last version of Ultrix (4.5?) for the >> DECstation 500/2xx ? >> Somehow NetBSD isn't satisfying enough.. :-) > > > I have one... somewhere... > > How soon do you need it? FWIW, I don't find Ultrix that satisfying. > > Peace... Sridhar > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 12 22:31:05 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:31:05 -0700 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511121803580008.115F8270@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511121803580008.115F8270@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4376C189.5010903@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >Some of the more innovative Apple and Sun hardware represents some >brilliant minds at work. But the PC? > > > Brilliant Marketing... not hardware. >Cheers, >Chuck > > From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 22:57:07 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:57:07 -0800 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <4376C189.5010903@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511121803580008.115F8270@10.0.0.252> <4376C189.5010903@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511122057070303.11FE0704@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 9:31 PM woodelf wrote: >Brilliant Marketing... not hardware. Not even! IBM had the idea that they were going to offer a "Home Computer"; witness the casette tape connection and the 16K minimum memory increment on the 5150. They were shocked when businesses started ordering them--and why was that? Because of the blue sky that years and years of mainframe equipment sales had gotten IBM. Customers were fairly certain that IBM wasn't due to go out of business any time soon. So purchasing a PC was a pretty safe deal. Honestly, I don't think that IBM had a clue at the outset. I think they half expected the PC to be the disaster that the 5000 was, so they didn't put much money into R&D. I can remember going to the IBM regional sales office to order 3 of them and the people there had never even seen one. --Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 23:05:10 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:05:10 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <0IPV004HKNFUU5D5@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Collectables? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:18:07 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/12/2005 at 9:54 PM Allison wrote: > >>different from the A version in implmentation. The 8800 (and A) FP was >>a nightmare of oneshots and was wired to the backplane with a bundle of >>wires (can you say rinngggg!) plus an wire connection to the CPU card >>as well. > >Miserable white stranded wire. The CPU card connected to the FP as well >through a molex header with the same cheap white wire. I built my 8800 in >a weekend, and the wire from the FP to the MB took the longest. Ah you did the full pluge assembly too. Friday evening to monday morning. I looked horrible going to work. BUT IT RAN! >Anything to save a buck here and there. Lots of corners skipped on the >8800. So much for quality construction of "old stuff'! :) It was poooor. >The Integrand has a power supply that one could arc-weld with. Integrand made one of if not the best crates around for power and cooling. I have the PS from one that was a spare. Good supply. Allison From recycler at swbell.net Sat Nov 12 23:14:43 2005 From: recycler at swbell.net (Patrick Jankowiak) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:14:43 -0600 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <4374F6AF.2060803@gjcp.net> References: <200511061004170796.29922529@192.168.42.129> <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> <4374F6AF.2060803@gjcp.net> Message-ID: <4376CBC3.6090401@swbell.net> I've started working on my small pile of SAIC V2-LC computers, but run into some snags with the disk drives. For those that do not know of them, these are OEM-for-military portable computers with a 386 or 486 processor. The hard disk is generally a Conner CP30204 IDE drive, enclosed in a special case. The drive is the same dimensions as the common IDE drive used in PCs today. The 3.5" form factor, and about 3/4" tall. The Conner CP30204 has the following specs: size = 212 MB CYL = 683 Heads = 16 Sectors = 38 WP = 0 LZ = 683 One necessary feature of this kind of drive is a an additional small 3-pin connector for power, on the opposide end of the IDE connector from the usual PC-style 4-pin connector. I have seen this only on Conner drives. Might be on others, don't know. Herein lies the issue.. Me needs more of these or similar drives (small sizes up to 500MB perhaps, (due to DOS or 486 limitations). They need to have the small 3-pin power connector, and that's the issue. I dug through all my 3.5' IDE drives, and found only one 120MB one, and it's kaput.. The computer looks like this, shown with the disk drive case in front of the machine and the 'ac adapter' to the left: http://itweb.salisbury.edu/~rafantini/IMAGES/saic4.jpg In any case, I am looking for either cased or naked drives. I have 6 machines and two 'good' hard drives. If anyone has an IDE drive with the aforementioned small 3-pin connector, please let me know. I'm willing to take a shot. -Also looking for 4 or 8 meg 30-pin simms for same. I have managed to cram windows 95 onto one of these little beasts, and it is quite nice, even if slow. Please! reply to my e-mail address, so i can be sure to receive any messages timely. Thank you very kindly, Patrick From recycler at swbell.net Sat Nov 12 23:22:14 2005 From: recycler at swbell.net (Patrick Jankowiak) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:22:14 -0600 Subject: SAIC V2-LC computers, need hard drives In-Reply-To: <4376CBC3.6090401@swbell.net> References: <200511061004170796.29922529@192.168.42.129> <6.0.1.1.0.20051111141919.01b7bdb0@pop.starpower.net> <4374F6AF.2060803@gjcp.net> <4376CBC3.6090401@swbell.net> Message-ID: <4376CD86.8050103@swbell.net> I've started working on my small pile of SAIC V2-LC computers, but run into some snags with the disk drives. For those that do not know of them, these are OEM-for-military portable computers with a 386 or 486 processor. The hard disk is generally a Conner CP30204 IDE drive, enclosed in a special case. The drive is the same dimensions as the common IDE drive used in PCs today. The 3.5" form factor, and about 3/4" tall. The Conner CP30204 has the following specs: size = 212 MB CYL = 683 Heads = 16 Sectors = 38 WP = 0 LZ = 683 One necessary feature of this kind of drive is a an additional small 3-pin connector for power, on the opposide end of the IDE connector from the usual PC-style 4-pin connector. I have seen this only on Conner drives. Might be on others, don't know. Herein lies the issue.. Me needs more of these or similar drives (small sizes up to 500MB perhaps, (due to DOS or 486 limitations). They need to have the small 3-pin power connector, and that's the issue. I dug through all my 3.5' IDE drives, and found only one 120MB one, and it's kaput.. The computer looks like this, shown with the disk drive case in front of the machine and the 'ac adapter' to the left: http://itweb.salisbury.edu/~rafantini/IMAGES/saic4.jpg In any case, I am looking for either cased or naked drives. I have 6 machines and two 'good' hard drives. If anyone has an IDE drive with the aforementioned small 3-pin connector, please let me know. I'm willing to take a shot. -Also looking for 4 or 8 meg 30-pin simms for same. I have managed to cram windows 95 onto one of these little beasts, and it is quite nice, even if slow. Please! reply to my e-mail address, so i can be sure to receive any messages timely. Thank you very kindly, Patrick From recycler at swbell.net Sat Nov 12 23:23:05 2005 From: recycler at swbell.net (Patrick Jankowiak) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:23:05 -0600 Subject: [Fwd: Re: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics] Message-ID: <4376CDB9.5060109@swbell.net> sorry about the off topic regardig the other computers... Patrick From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 12 23:26:33 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:26:33 -0800 Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller Message-ID: <200511122126330493.1218FA32@10.0.0.252> I've got a Wangtek DC-300 tape drive (model 54590) and a controller with a 5.25" footprint. The controller has a 50-conductor edge connector keyed the same way as the drive connector, so I'm assuming that the drive is connected there. The controller also has a 50 pin male header. I believe the controller is also a Wangtek model WT05ZK. It's got an 8085A-2 on it, as well as the usual support chips (8257 DMAC AM9128 PIC). Chip dates are 1984. What's the interface to the controller? SASI? Anyone know what the command set might be? Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Nov 12 22:23:19 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 04:23:19 +0000 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511121803580008.115F8270@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511121803580008.115F8270@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4376BFB7.80004@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > The rule of thumb for the computer industry has been "better faster > cheaper". I paid almost $3000 for a bare-bones 5150 with 64K, one disk > drive (single-sided) and a monochrome display adapter. What will that > $3000 buy now (adjusted for inflation)? A sh*t PC, but some support arrangement to keep replacing bits as they break? :-) > But sometimes old is better. I play a tuba made in 1915 and own several > that are over the century mark. These are exceptional instruments that > modern manufacturers have tried to reproduce with only fair success. And > there are terrible old tubas that deserve nothing more than to be > disassembled and used for parts. I'm like that with cars - I hate modern vehicles, not only from a design point of view but because of the investment car manufacturers have made in technology. OK, so the technology works - until the point that it doesn't, when failures tend to be rapid, catastrophic and costly. I'd rather have simple technology that might make a vehicle more tiring to drive, but where I at least know what it's doing at any moment in time and I can fix it at the roadside using materials to hand if needs be. I'm much the same with computers - I'd rather it be simple but well-engineered such that I can understand the processes involved and dive in to fix stuff myself if it does go wrong. Hardware hasn't been like that for what, 20 years? Software does fair a little better though so long as you stick clear of anything by you-know-who... > Some of the more innovative Apple and Sun hardware represents some > brilliant minds at work. But the PC? Indeed. Proof that you can make the public buy junk if you have a big enough name. Heck, look at Windows - it's crud, but it's not even *cheap* crud. Proof that it's not a case of "must produce junk in order to keep the cost low". Have a big enough name and you can peddle anything to the masses at any price and they'll still lap it up. cheers Jules From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 23:29:34 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:29:34 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <0IPV009W0OKIF6J0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Collectables? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:40:32 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/12/2005 at 10:10 PM Allison wrote: > >>Original topic: I'd like to get that Polymorphic to build a small system. >> >>I'm thinking Cpro CPUZ, Cpro Disk1A, Interfacer-II and Ram22. That will >>build a z80, floppy interfaced, 256k with enough parallel IO to do an >>IDE. > >It's yours as a bare board for USD $10 and with 6 nice new gold-plated >connectors $20. Shipping extra. I seem to recall that Polymophic tied the >data in and data out together on their boards, but the MB doesn't show >that. 6??? I thought it was four slots. It's a deal, I'll get you you off line. >I used to have the IMSAI floppy disk system too, but that wasn't engineered >nearly as well as the CPU box. One small power supply for each Calcomp >floppy with some blinkin LED's on a small front panel. I retired the IMSAI >FDC and Calcomps (the stepper motors eventually both shorted out). >Replaced the drives with Siemens double-sided units and used Don Tarbell's >FDC. Much improvement. I used that setup until I retired the system. The >MITS 4K DRAM boards got replaced with some SSM SRAM (lots of 2102's) >boards. The CPU was a Z80 board of uncertain vintage. > >I suppose the whole mess could be replaced with a Rabbit CPU and a one-chip >FDC. Yep but not near as fun or noisy. >>On a related note I've been doing some 1802 coding and that 1977 NS* >>box is still running Avocets 1802 assembler under cp/m. Still kicking >>after 27+ years. > >The 1802 was barely capable as a CPU. The only redeeming thing was that it >was static CMOS and could be run down to a DC clock rate. But that was >true of the IM6100, too, wasn't it? Yes the CMOS 6100 and 6120 wer static. The 1802 still has a following. It's a bizzare part, dumber than an 8048, almost one step down from a PDP8 but none the less useful and people are still using it! Its attractive feature was romless with simple front pannel could be built until I did it with and 8035 and fewer parts. The DMA was nice but hard to use and killed CPU bandwidth. Yet I have three working flavors of it and the first was an ELF built off the PE article when it appeared. Come to think of it in the homebrew computer hobby the Z80, 6502, 1802, and maybe the 6809 are the top players to this day. >Were there any hobbyist systems built around the Fairchild 9440 almost-Nova >chip? Oh, the microFlame. Never saw a hobbiest system of one. I think the only customers that ever saw one were military contractors. Tried to buy one and got blown of by the fairchild rep. I do have a die in lucite paperweight for that effort from one of their promotions. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 23:42:46 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:42:46 -0500 Subject: SAIC V2-LC computers, need hard drives Message-ID: <0IPV00BAGP6I86Y6@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: SAIC V2-LC computers, need hard drives > From: Patrick Jankowiak > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:22:14 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >I've started working on my small pile of SAIC V2-LC computers, but run into >some snags with the disk drives. > >For those that do not know of them, these are OEM-for-military portable >computers with a 386 or 486 processor. The hard disk is generally a Conner >CP30204 IDE drive, enclosed in a special case. The drive is the same >dimensions as the common IDE drive used in PCs today. The 3.5" form factor, >and about 3/4" tall. > >The Conner CP30204 has the following specs: > >size = 212 MB >CYL = 683 >Heads = 16 >Sectors = 38 >WP = 0 >LZ = 683 > >One necessary feature of this kind of drive is a an additional small 3-pin >connector for power, on the opposide end of the IDE connector from the >usual PC-style 4-pin connector. I have seen this only on Conner drives. >Might be on others, don't know. > I have two connors one21mb, one 43mb and the other 400. Also the seagate ST3096 85mb has that same connector (I think thats when seagate absorbed connor. Sorry they are not for sale. There is nothing special about that connector that the regular 4pin can be used with an adaptor. Laptops used the threepin for space reasons only, smaller connector. >In any case, I am looking for either cased or naked drives. I have 6 >machines and two 'good' hard drives. If anyone has an IDE drive with the >aforementioned small 3-pin connector, please let me know. I'm willing to >take a shot. > >-Also looking for 4 or 8 meg 30-pin simms for same. I keep the 4megs or larger parts. I'm swiming in the 1meg 30pins. >I have managed to cram windows 95 onto one of these little beasts, and it >is quite nice, even if slow. The 400mb Connor ran w95b with 8mb ram in a 386/25 the system with NE2000 NIC was used for a printserver! I for one am not surprized. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 12 23:44:28 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:44:28 -0500 Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller Message-ID: <0IPV00C1PP9CNVT8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:26:33 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >I've got a Wangtek DC-300 tape drive (model 54590) and a controller with a >5.25" footprint. The controller has a 50-conductor edge connector keyed >the same way as the drive connector, so I'm assuming that the drive is >connected there. The controller also has a 50 pin male header. I believe >the controller is also a Wangtek model WT05ZK. It's got an 8085A-2 on it, >as well as the usual support chips (8257 DMAC AM9128 PIC). Chip dates are >1984. > >What's the interface to the controller? SASI? Anyone know what the >command set might be? > >Cheers, >Chuck It might be QIC, QIC02 or QIC24 and definately not SASI or SCSI though they existed at the time. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 00:00:06 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:00:06 -0800 Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller In-Reply-To: <0IPV00C1PP9CNVT8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV00C1PP9CNVT8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511122200060988.1237B369@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 12:44 AM Allison wrote: >It might be QIC, QIC02 or QIC24 and definately not SASI or SCSI though >they existed at the time. Allow me to clarify: The interface from the controller to the host is what I'm asking about, not the interface from the controller to the drive, which I'm almost certain is QIC-02 or some variety thereof. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 00:04:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:04:01 -0800 Subject: Collectables? In-Reply-To: <0IPV009W0OKIF6J0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPV009W0OKIF6J0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511122204010636.123B4800@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 12:29 AM Allison wrote: >Oh, the microFlame. Never saw a hobbiest system of one. I think the only >customers that ever saw one were military contractors. Tried to buy one >and got blown of by the fairchild rep. I do have a die in lucite >paperweight for that effort from one of their promotions. I got the same treatment from the TI rep when I asked about the I2L version of the 9900. Must have also been meant for the military. Shame--I liked the instruction set on the Nova a lot more than the PDP8. Cheers, Chuck From fmc at reanimators.org Sun Nov 13 00:34:24 2005 From: fmc at reanimators.org (Frank McConnell) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:34:24 -0800 Subject: Brands you never hear much about In-Reply-To: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> (Chuck Guzis's message of "Sat, 12 Nov 2005 10:36:17 -0800") References: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511130634.jAD6YOO3094658@lots.reanimators.org> Chuck Guzis wrote: > At one time, FS was a hot prospect with a few major Unix names on the > payroll. But I've never heard of anyone collecting the boxes. Any reason > for this? Fortune Systems was something of a pioneer in the area of unbundling things previously considered to be standard parts of Unix, like the C compiler. They were explicitly building something that wasn't a Unix hacker's machine, so owners weren't expected to be rebuilding the kernel or writing software, so the C compiler didn't need to be there. So the C compiler could be a separate product, and even better it could be charged for! They also had a reasonably effective copy-protection scheme. Uninstalled Fortune software on distribution media was encrypted using a key known to Fortune and to Fortune's installation program. When you installed software from the distribution media, the software would be decrypted and then re-encrypted using a key based on the motherboard serial number for storage on the hard disk (so you couldn't just copy the executables from your system to some other system: installed software only ran on the system on which it had been installed); and of course the installer marked the distribution medium as "installed" so you couldn't just go install it again somewhere else. The end result of this, 20 years later, is that you may be able to get a Fortune 32:16, but getting it to do something interesting can be more of a challenge than it really needed to be, and when you're done you have a 68000 Unix box, maybe a little bit weirder than everyone else's. -Frank McConnell From news at computercollector.com Sun Nov 13 00:34:51 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 01:34:51 -0500 Subject: More VCF coverage Message-ID: <000801c5e81c$5ad5da60$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=11044167 ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: >> http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >> http://www.marchclub.org >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From Bob at BRADLEE.ORG Sat Nov 12 10:25:51 2005 From: Bob at BRADLEE.ORG (Bob Bradlee) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 11:25:51 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <8743e2e47af9496ea74ef6d3ddb2301a@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <200511121636.jACGa5im039129@keith.ezwind.net> I have cleaned of numerous boards over the years with a torch. If I have several boards to do I work on them in rotation to allow them to cool between heatings. I work in small zones, grasping it firmly away from the heat. I first heat the board and hitting it on the table parts side up. This causes most of the solder in the holes and on the topside of the board to "flow" through the board and onto the cardboard leaving fairly clean holes and pins if I do it right. A second pass of heat followed by a sharp rap on the table, parts side down, will make a nice little pile of parts to pick up once they are cool. The trick is to get it hot enough for the solder to flow and let inertia carry the solder out of the holes, when the board makes a sudden stop against the edge of the bench. To remove the parts that did not fly off in the previous impact, an inspection a pin straighten if required and a second quick heating followed by a sharp deceleration component side down will liberate all but the most stubborn of chips. The board will continue to hold heat far longer than the parts, so let it cool before working on other zones. This works best if you are going for selected parts on a number of boards and don't care about the other junk on the card. While doing this I have a good solder sucker and some solder-wick on hand for the stubborn ones. A small collection of hand tools come in handy for bent over pins and forceful removal of disobedient parts. I have a favorite screwdriver that has been bent into a mini prybar that gets under chips and pops the last hold of stuck pins quite nicely. Hope this helps, If I remember, I will take a few pictures next time I do it and put them on the website somewhere. It is more of an art than a science. It takes a bit of practice to get the correct heat and edge banging necessary to achieve the desired results. Without injury or undesirable damage. Don't forget to use a cardboard target to wrap the edge of the board on ! It provides a small amount of shock absorbing and quickly becomes covered with solder spray. For those of you lucky enough to still have good vision, find some glasses and keep it. I have a set of old computer glasses that I use because they have a nice focal point so I can see the solder flow for heat control. My reading glasses put my face way too close for comfort ! Unless you are a welder or get of on stinging little burns this in not a t-shirt activity. I de-soldered 3,000+ 4116 dram chips from some large Storage cards in the early 80's tested and sold them in sets as 16k upgrades for apple/pet/trs80/ect... at an early computer show in the Chicago Area. That brings back some old memories, hours of de-soldering testing and cleaning chips, took them to the show sold them cheep and sold out in 4 hours. Turned the booth over to a friend sell some of his junk for the second day and never looked back. Any of the old timer around here know what happened to Terry of Midwest Micro Lombard fame ? I am willing to bet he still has his Apple 1 :) I only had one set, slip through testing, I sent the guy a replacement and a spare, and counted one more happy camper :) Last thought, Radio shack has a nice butane torch that works well for one chip at a time. For larger areas a self lighting propane torch with a stand is best. Cut up a heavy cardboard box as a bench cover it does make a mess. l8tr Bob Bradlee On Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:31:31 -0600, compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: >I've seen several references to using torches to remove DIPs from PCBs. Are there any specific things to keep in mind to avoid heat damage &cet? Are you talking propane plumber's blowtorches? > From csmuseum at cse.uta.edu Sat Nov 12 15:08:32 2005 From: csmuseum at cse.uta.edu (Director) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 15:08:32 -0600 Subject: Orphaned OS thoughts In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A045C1C@sbs.jdfogg.com> Message-ID: <000b01c5e7cd$3f888270$60026b81@Gils6240> I've got a box of it around here somewhere, but I'm not sure what all is in it. Did you need something or were you just curious? > -----Original Message----- > From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of James Fogg > Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 8:09 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Orphaned OS thoughts > > While reading an old resume, I came across something I forgot > about. I used to admin some 3Com 3+ and 3+/Open systems. 3Com > made the hardware (beefed up PC stuff) and wrote or owned the OS. > > Anybody know what became of 3+/Open? > > > > -James > > James Fogg > JD Fogg Technology Consulting > 18 Watershed Lane > Wilmot, NH 03287 > (603) 724-2243 > www.jdfogg.com > > > From signal30 at sympatico.ca Fri Nov 11 16:21:26 2005 From: signal30 at sympatico.ca (signal30) Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 17:21:26 -0500 Subject: Commodore stuff for goodbye... (and one OT item...) Message-ID: <000601c5e70e$41eaea40$6500a8c0@oemcomputer> Do you still have the stuff? I'm interested From gcarrick at cse.uta.edu Sat Nov 12 16:48:18 2005 From: gcarrick at cse.uta.edu (A. G. Carrick) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 16:48:18 -0600 Subject: Variable Word length CPU In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <001a01c5e7db$31e39660$60026b81@Gils6240> The story I hear was that the System/3 was built by a CE in his home using salvaged parts and adopted by IBM as a product. I have no references to prove it. If so, then there was no logic to the decision. The 360 was just way too big a design to strip down as the comments on the model 20 show. The sys 3 was for really small offices. IMHO the most bizarre thing was the twinax cabling. That line and some Wang systems were the only ones I ever saw. Not being a hardware guy I have no idea if there is any advantage for twinax over coax. Gil ... > > While the S/3 instruction set bears certain similarities to > the S/360, > > I've wondered what IBM's logic was for making it so > different from the > > S/360. I doubt that it was technical--the 360/20 was far more > > brain-dead than the > > S/3 and customers still used them, in spite of the crippled > > instruction set. > > The S/3 line was...special. ... > There are only 30 or so instructions in the whole set, yet a > number of them are for complex string handling (kind of > inpressive for a non-microcode machine to do string inserts, > actually). There are no simple byte level instructions - > everything that goes thru the ALUs are strings, basically. > Everything is a string. Thw world is a string to an S/3. > > And yes, the S/3 is a real variable word length machine! Yes, > you can add two 569 byte integers with one instruction! > > William Donzelli > aw288 at osfn.org > From jlewczyk at his.com Sat Nov 12 17:12:21 2005 From: jlewczyk at his.com (John Lewczyk) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:12:21 -0500 Subject: INCAA - PIT Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 16:23:17 +0100 >From: Thomas Seidel >Subject: INCAA - PIT >To: cctech at classiccmp.org >Hi, > >a colleague just picked up the board of an "INCAA PIT" and handed it over to >me. Looks like a programmable interface converter, it has two DB25 >connectors and a 6800 CPU. The two ROMs are labelled "PIT 1985" and there is >a bit of RAM (SRM2064 & TMM2016) . What is the box doing? Are there any >manuals available? It's possible to program the CPU via the DB25 connector? >Any hints? > >TIA, >--Thomas I googled "INCAA PIT" and found this link which is a list of documents avaible which includes "INCAA, PIT Users Manual, 1984, KP10" http://web.ukonline.co.uk/apricale/nonfic.html From tequilizer at gmx.net Sat Nov 12 17:14:54 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:14:54 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4376776E.2040409@gmx.net> I tried to pull those monitor signals high, however the effect is the same. Guess I have to look closer at the memory defects. One way to go is to use a dedicated test rom or one of the exerciser cartridges. The test rom was used by the service personnel only, and therefore will be hard to find. However I recently acquired a system 45B/C exercise cartridge. The tape contains a couple of memory checks among other tests and supports autostart. Since I assume you've got a running system, can you tell me whether the system tries to launch the autost program from a 9845 tape before, during or after the power-on memory test (in case the "auto st" key is latched, a tape is inserted and the system is being switched on)? If the program is read from tape _after_ the power-on test has been completed, I'll have to find another way. --Ansgar > Yes. > > In the 98780, there is one video timing chain, physically located on the > text (alpha) PCB. It's the traditional chain of counters, decoded by AND > gates, used to control JK's to provide various timingt signals (you need > the schematics, OK :-)) > > Many of the signals are passed across the monitor backplane to the > procesor (graphics) PCB, but there is no complete timing chain on that > PCB. The only board that provides syncs to the analogue section is the > text PCB, and from what I rmember, tbere are no control inputs to that > timing chain depending on whether it's in text or graphics mode. > > I was under the impression that the 98770 (colour) and 98780 (enhanced > mono) were pretty similar to the user apart from the obvious difference. > > -tony > > > From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Sat Nov 12 21:46:53 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:46:53 -0500 Subject: AHA 3985 SCSI RAID adapter, NIB In-Reply-To: <200511121524260946.10CD777A@10.0.0.252> References: <200511121524260946.10CD777A@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051112224037.0335cf40@boff-net.dhs.org> Details from adaptec.com (http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/techspecs.jsp?sess=no&language=English+US&cat=%2FProduct%2FAHA-3985&prodkey=AHA-3985): Data Transfer Rate: 30 MBytes/sec SCSI synchronous data rate(10 MBytes/sec per channel) Device Support: Up to 7 SCSI devices per channel External Connector(s): 50-pin high-density SCSI connector - Channel A Internal Connector(s): 50-pin SCSI connector - Channel A 50-pin SCSI connector - Channel B 50-pin SCSI connector - Channel C System Bus Interface: 32-bit PCI Local Bus System Requirements: An 80486DX or Pentium computer that complies with PCI Rev 2.0 and a motherboard BIOS that supports PCI-to-PCI bridges A 64-KByte BIOS and multiple interrupts, and an available full-length PCI slot that supports bus mastering and PCI Int B Package Includes: AHA-3985 MultiChannel PCI-SCSI RAID Adapter Adaptec RAID and driver software for NetWare Adaptec CI/O Single Server Software Sytron ProServe CX Lite tape backup software for NetWare Device support for hard disk, removable, MO, CD-ROM tape, and DAT drives and scanners Two internal, 5 position SCSI ribbon cables with active termination Supported Operating Systems: Novell NetWare 3.10 Novell NetWare 3.11 Novell NetWare 3.12 Novell NetWare 4.0 Novell NetWare 4.01 Novell NetWare 4.10 Novell NetWare 4.11 Novell NetWare 4.12 Novell NetWare 4.20 This item is most definitely for Novell NetWare only (from the details). I guess this item is useful and of value if you use a NetWare server... -John Boffemmyer IV At 06:24 PM 11/12/2005, you wrote: >PCI interface, SCSI-2 (not wide SCSI). Still shrink-wrapped. Let me know >if you're interested. I'm thinking $50 would be fine. > >Cheers, >Chuck -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 11/11/2005 From pat at computer-refuge.org Sun Nov 13 01:15:58 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 02:15:58 -0500 Subject: FPGA VAX update, now DIY TTL computers In-Reply-To: <200511121803580008.115F8270@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPV00GRHBHZ0SD9@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <20051112203429.1329efaa.chenmel@earthlink.net> <200511121803580008.115F8270@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511130215.59052.pat@computer-refuge.org> Chuck Guzis declared on Saturday 12 November 2005 21:03: > On 11/12/2005 at 8:34 PM Scott Stevens wrote: > >> Nope nobody kept them. ;) > > Not true. I keep one of everything. An XT, an AT, a 386, a 386SX, > a 486, and several flavors of Pentium I. So if I need to run > Topview, I've got a system that will do it. Of course, I could also > just emulate an XT on a more modern system. > > The rule of thumb for the computer industry has been "better faster > cheaper". I paid almost $3000 for a bare-bones 5150 with 64K, one > disk drive (single-sided) and a monochrome display adapter. What > will that $3000 buy now (adjusted for inflation)? Adjusting for inflation, that's about $7000 from the chart I looked at. An IBM 9110-510B (RS/6000 p5-510) w/2 POWER5s 2GB RAM, 2x73GB SCSI disk comes in at $7150, which I'd call "Close enough". That machine is probably a bit better engineered for the time than your 5160, though somewhat less hackable (of course, most modern machines are less hackable than their older counterparts). Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 01:27:08 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:27:08 -0800 Subject: AHA 3985 SCSI RAID adapter, NIB In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20051112224037.0335cf40@boff-net.dhs.org> References: <200511121524260946.10CD777A@10.0.0.252> <6.2.5.6.2.20051112224037.0335cf40@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <200511122327080404.12875F7F@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 10:46 PM John Boffemmyer IV wrote: >Details from adaptec.com >This item is most definitely for Novell NetWare only (from the >details). I guess this item is useful and of value if you use a >NetWare server... Well, you do get some DOS RAID support: "...The AHA-398x is intended primarily to support disk arrays on systems operating under NetWare 3.11, 3.12, or 4.xx. However, it also supports SCSI hard drives and CD-ROM drives operating under MS-DOS 5.0 or above. Limited disk array functionality is supported under DOS, including RAID 5 operation with a failed drive.1 The DOS support also allows you to install NetWare from a CD-ROM drive attached to the AHA-398x. (The DOS-based NetWare installation program is usually distributed on CD-ROM.) The AHA-398x package includes NetWare software drivers. It also includes drivers needed to operate CD-ROM drives under NetWare and DOS. The drivers are on a disk labeled AHA-3980/3985 Drivers and RAID Utilities." I suspect that Windoze NT and Linux will simply see this adapter as 3 2940-type SCSI adapters and use the OS native RAID support. In fact, the ASPI driver for the AHA-2940 works just fine with this board. Cheers, Chuck From brushman at esper.com Sun Nov 13 01:25:34 2005 From: brushman at esper.com (Jimmy D) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 02:25:34 -0500 Subject: New here... Message-ID: <000a01c5e823$704fbb20$dbe19c44@esper.com> Hi, by the standards of what I've seen here, I'm a computer novice, but probably no less zealous! I've got a few questions: Is this starting a new thread? And, how do I respond to a specific thread? I've got an operating HP7596A, and a parts plotter (not 7596A) that's pretty much picked over,but I wanted to respond to the question/thread about the HP7345A. Thanks for any help. From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 01:34:28 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:34:28 -0800 Subject: Brands you never hear much about In-Reply-To: <200511130634.jAD6YOO3094658@lots.reanimators.org> References: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> <200511130634.jAD6YOO3094658@lots.reanimators.org> Message-ID: <200511122334280770.128E17A0@10.0.0.252> On 11/12/2005 at 10:34 PM Frank McConnell wrote: >They also had a reasonably effective copy-protection scheme... >From the sound of it, it seems like a customer had to buy ALL of their software from Fortune. That's pretty sneaky! Cheers, Chuck From brushman at esper.com Sun Nov 13 01:51:40 2005 From: brushman at esper.com (Jimmy D) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 02:51:40 -0500 Subject: More on my HP7245A problem Message-ID: <001c01c5e827$15f87460$dbe19c44@esper.com> I have an HP plotter that's been seriously picked over. I bought it after it was parted out, just to get the pinch rollers. I've looked it over and can't find a model number anywhere, as a lot of the outer casing is gone. There is a little handwritten sticker in the bottom that says a few numbers, initials and 7580. That sounds familiar, but it's been months since I bought it, and can't remember. The servo(?) motors are still there, and a few small boards near them, but the bigger ones are all gone. If you could point me where to look, it might have the parts. From healyzh at aracnet.com Sun Nov 13 02:05:58 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:05:58 -0800 Subject: New here... In-Reply-To: <000a01c5e823$704fbb20$dbe19c44@esper.com> References: <000a01c5e823$704fbb20$dbe19c44@esper.com> Message-ID: >Hi, by the standards of what I've seen here, I'm a computer novice, >but probably no less zealous! I've got a few questions: >Is this starting a new thread? >And, how do I respond to a specific thread? I've got an operating >HP7596A, and a parts plotter (not 7596A) that's pretty much picked >over,but I wanted to respond to the question/thread about the >HP7345A. >Thanks for any help. Welcome to the list. Of course you realize that we're all quite mad here :^) Yes, this is starting a new thread. As for replying, just hit reply on whatever email client you're using while reading the message you wish to reply to. This is a mail list, and the email client should handle directing it to cctalk at classiccmp.org with the appropriate subject header. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From brushman at esper.com Sun Nov 13 02:29:45 2005 From: brushman at esper.com (Jimmy D) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 03:29:45 -0500 Subject: HP7596A Message-ID: <002e01c5e82c$67e827c0$dbe19c44@esper.com> I'm in the sign business, so most of what's being discussed here is beyond me, but I do have a fascination with old plotters and computers. I have an operating HP7596A. I saw a posting about that model in the archives. This is what I've learned about it: Cable must be specific for that model. Pin#20 is critical, without it, you get buffer overflow. I bought a CD from ebay that has 3 manuals on it. Real handy. I already had the paperback user's manual, but the other two are more detailed about error codes and maintenance. I was surprised to see that Windows98 still had a driver for that old plotter, but the friend that told me about it said there is a better driver from Winline. I was told that the Roland company copied some of the technology for their sign plotters from HP, so much so that the pens are interchangeable. All I know is that the pens I bought for the HP fit perfectly in the Roland (pnc1100), and I didn't need to buy a swivel knife for the HP, as the one from the Roland fit in it. Now I can cut as well as draw with the HP. But don't get any bright ideas about newfound wealth from the sign trade. Ha! SATURATED market. Somewhere, but I can't remember, maybe hidden in the HP site, is an interchange list, that tells what parts are interchangeable with other models. Real handy for buying off ebay. I bought this plotter from a HUGE place that was being built near Crossville Tenn. USA. They said they have the ability to break down and recycle computer parts. They put whatever looks useable up for sale. Worth looking into? From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sun Nov 13 02:55:59 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 08:55:59 +0000 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <43768CA3.7040201@yahoo.co.uk> References: <0IPT00BGJNUN86U3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <1694.192.168.0.3.1131841010.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> <43768CA3.7040201@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4376FF9F.5000204@gjcp.net> Jules Richardson wrote: > Witchy wrote: > >> On Sat, November 12, 2005 3:19 am, Allison said: >> >>> Myself I torch the bottom and use a spring loaded chip extractor. >>> That and a pliers or tiny screwdriver to straighten any bent >>> pins keeping it in the board. >> >> >> >> I'm right in assuming this technique requires a bit of practice? :) > > > Not for ICs, no. I've found with things like IDC connectors it's a bit > trickier as it's hard to keep the heat even across the whole socket and > not damage it (plus such sockets tend to be at the edges of boards and > so the heat 'spills over' to the top-side and damages the socket) I use a hot air paint stripper to heat up the solder side, component side down, and then tap it against either my wooden workbench or stainless steel kitchen sink to get all the chips out. I got about a meg of 41256s out of scrap boards like that once, and doubled the memory in my second ever PC. Gordon. From vp at cs.drexel.edu Sun Nov 13 04:24:12 2005 From: vp at cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 05:24:12 -0500 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure Message-ID: <20051113102412.56187200D528@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Tequi Lizer wrote: > However I recently acquired a system 45B/C exercise > cartridge. The tape contains a couple of memory checks among other tests > and supports autostart. Are you sure the tape you have is working? Original HP tapes from the 70s and early 80s are no longer working. For more info read this article which is a summary of an earlier discussion thread on this list. http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/forum.cgi?read=81293#81293 **vp From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 08:37:57 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:37:57 -0500 Subject: Collectables? Message-ID: <0IPW002HPDYCRR39@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Collectables? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:04:01 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/13/2005 at 12:29 AM Allison wrote: > >>Oh, the microFlame. Never saw a hobbiest system of one. I think the only > >>customers that ever saw one were military contractors. Tried to buy one >>and got blown of by the fairchild rep. I do have a die in lucite >>paperweight for that effort from one of their promotions. > >I got the same treatment from the TI rep when I asked about the I2L version >of the 9900. Must have also been meant for the military. > >Shame--I liked the instruction set on the Nova a lot more than the PDP8. > Nova appealed to me as it had a pdp-8 feel but 16 bit. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 08:40:37 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:40:37 -0500 Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller Message-ID: <0IPW00B2FE2R04Z2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 22:00:06 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/13/2005 at 12:44 AM Allison wrote: > >>It might be QIC, QIC02 or QIC24 and definately not SASI or SCSI though >>they existed at the time. > >Allow me to clarify: > >The interface from the controller to the host is what I'm asking about, not >the interface from the controller to the drive, which I'm almost certain is >QIC-02 or some variety thereof. > >Cheers, >Chuck If not sasi/scsi it could be "host" as in the hard disk bridge boards. Host interface is IDE of the time as it's a register interface with re/, wr/, a few address lines, data and reset more or less. Makes it generic. Allison From vax9000 at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 09:14:10 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:14:10 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed on UNIBUS In-Reply-To: <43769E8F.5030507@mindspring.com> References: <43769E8F.5030507@mindspring.com> Message-ID: On 11/12/05, Don North wrote: > And for yucks on a UNIBUS 11/44 running 2.11BSD dd bs=16384 count=1000: > > >>EMULEX UC-18 0.585 MB/s not tested target is ST32550N > >> 0.245 MB/s not tested targer is RRD43 CDROM Thank you. I came up a way to speed up the controller. It is overlapped execution, just like what CVAX chips do. When the controller is busy with current SCSI request, it at the same time ending the previous request and preparing the next request. The speed may be doubled. I will do this only when I have time. cheers, vax, 9000 From shirsch at adelphia.net Sun Nov 13 10:46:15 2005 From: shirsch at adelphia.net (Steven N. Hirsch) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:46:15 -0500 (EST) Subject: Fortune Systems (Brands you never hear much about) In-Reply-To: <8ec01c75e27b80bdf7268b0c25770e9c@bitsavers.org> References: <8ec01c75e27b80bdf7268b0c25770e9c@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, Al Kossow wrote: > > But I've never heard of anyone collecting the boxes. Any reason > > for this? > > Probably the same reason no one saved Onyx or old Corvus 68k Unix boxes. A Corvus _Unix_ box? What was the model designation for this beast? I have a Corvus Concept 68k with shelves full of manuals and lots of software. None of it seems to be Unix-y. Just curious... Steve From aek at bitsavers.org Sun Nov 13 11:08:37 2005 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:08:37 -0800 Subject: Corvus (was Fortune Systems) Message-ID: A Corvus _Unix_ box? What was the model designation for this beast? I have a Corvus Concept 68k with shelves full of manuals and lots of software. None of it seems to be Unix-y. -- Do you have the service manual for the Corvus Omnidrive? I've been trying to find that for the bitsavers archive for a while now. Corvus took the basic Concept hardware and added a SUN-style MMU to the memory board and tried to sell it with Unisoft Unix as a first try at a Unix computer. This machine didn't have a bitmapped display. There were several iterations of the design (Frank McConnell may remember all of them). The two that probably sold the most were to Valid Systems as the SCALDstation, and to Unisys. From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 11:13:21 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:13:21 -0800 Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller In-Reply-To: <0IPW00B2FE2R04Z2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPW00B2FE2R04Z2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511130913210368.14A011A9@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 9:40 AM Allison wrote: >If not sasi/scsi it could be "host" as in the hard disk bridge boards. >Host interface is IDE of the time as it's a register interface with >re/, wr/, a few address lines, data and reset more or less. Makes >it generic. If it helps, I believe that these came out of a Tektronix 6800 "smart terminal" box. (Another brand that you never seem to hear about--the storage tube display was sort of unusual). Cheers, Chuck From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sun Nov 13 11:22:23 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:22:23 -0600 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <2c250219dd704fca9f5e5a7a6f01361f@valleyimplants.com> All the talk about building a mini from TTL got me thinking about homebuild micros, and what one would look like if I decided to build one (been playing with my IMSAI, too, which probably accounts for some of it) RISC would be out, due to difficulty of assembly coding, and 8086 seems a bit dull. Z-8000, TMS9900, and RCA1802 seem unavailable, and 6120 doesn't have many registers. Looks like the best available ideas from an ease-of building and obtaining would be Z-80 (or variant), 6809, or 68000 (close to top in complexity, esp. if a front panel is wanted). 6502 could also be a possiblity. I suppose either native IDE or another system serving as a storage server would be the way to go, the IDE could either connect to a old drive or a smallish CF card, and flash firmware would probably be best, or EEPROM. SRAM seems to be the way to go for smaller systems. Just wondering what the thoughts of the list would be for specs of a "new" hobbyest micro. From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 11:28:39 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:28:39 -0800 Subject: Corvus (was Fortune Systems) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511130928390088.14AE1281@10.0.0.252> So, in the firmament of micro Unix systems, where does Onyx (or Onyx+IMI) fit into the picture? Just another Unix box or something unusual? Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 11:52:53 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:52:53 -0800 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <2c250219dd704fca9f5e5a7a6f01361f@valleyimplants.com> References: <2c250219dd704fca9f5e5a7a6f01361f@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <200511130952530689.14C4448A@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 11:22 AM compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > Just wondering what the thoughts of the list would be for specs of a "new" hobbyest micro. How about one of the Rabbit boards? You could build something to scale for a dollhouse! "Sort-of" Z80, 256K of RAM and a bunch of flash, lots of I/O lines and RS-232, all on something about half the size of a playing card. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 13 12:04:38 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:04:38 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <2c250219dd704fca9f5e5a7a6f01361f@valleyimplants.com> References: <2c250219dd704fca9f5e5a7a6f01361f@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <43778036.2030204@jetnet.ab.ca> compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: >All the talk about building a mini from TTL got me thinking about homebuild micros, and what one would look like if I decided to build one (been playing with my IMSAI, too, which probably accounts for some of it) > > RISC would be out, due to difficulty of assembly coding, and 8086 seems a bit dull. Z-8000, TMS9900, and RCA1802 seem unavailable, and 6120 doesn't have many registers. > > Looks like the best available ideas from an ease-of building and obtaining would be Z-80 (or variant), 6809, or 68000 (close to top in complexity, esp. if a front panel is wanted). 6502 could also be a possiblity. > > I suppose either native IDE or another system serving as a storage server would be the way to go, the IDE could either connect to a old drive or a smallish CF card, and flash firmware would probably be best, or EEPROM. SRAM seems to be the way to go for smaller systems. > > Just wondering what the thoughts of the list would be for specs of a "new" hobbyest micro. > > The biggest thing I can think of is you only have two sizes of computer today ... 16 bits or 32 bits of addressing. You can only get the 16 machines easly and resonable source of a OS. The 68000 yes still works best with 64k addressing. Oddly the only micocomputer chip I like ( other than the 6800/6809) is National Semiconductor's 16032 is another chip that you could never get. From cheri-post at web.de Sun Nov 13 12:07:45 2005 From: cheri-post at web.de (Pierre Gebhardt) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:07:45 +0100 Subject: ONYX - was Re: Corvus (was Fortune Systems) Message-ID: <1005850004@web.de> Hello all, as far as I know, Onyx delivered the first microcomputer ever in combination with a Unix called ONIX. The name of the system was C8000 or C8002, don't remember well. I own such a box but the documentation is missing. Maybe somebody else could explain, why they went out of business quite qickly. What I've been knowing so far is that documents are near to non-existing. :-( I have lots of tapes with the original ONIX on, but my system is bad. Does somebody else have such a *working* beastie? Or boards they wish to trade/sell? In my opinion, the software needs to be saved, in the case that tapes are still readable!!! Regards, Pierre > So, in the firmament of micro Unix systems, where does Onyx (or Onyx+IMI) > fit into the picture? Just another Unix box or something unusual? > > Cheers, > Chuck > > ______________________________________________________________ Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS! Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193 From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 12:51:07 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:51:07 -0800 Subject: ONYX - was Re: Corvus (was Fortune Systems) In-Reply-To: <1005850004@web.de> References: <1005850004@web.de> Message-ID: <200511131051070842.14F995A9@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 7:07 PM Pierre Gebhardt wrote: >as far as I know, Onyx delivered the first microcomputer ever in >combination with a Unix called ONIX. >The name of the system was C8000 or C8002, don't remember well. >I own such a box but the documentation is missing. >Maybe somebody else could explain, why they went out of business quite >qickly. >What I've been knowing so far is that documents are near to non-existing. >:-( We had an Onyx system in the lab, but it's hard to remember much about it. Z8000-type machine, I believe. Used a DC-300 (600?) style tape for backup. Corportate headquarters were on North First Street near Trimble Road in San Jose, IIRC. Onyx went downhill pretty fast after they acquired IMI and changed their name to Onyx+IMI. IMI was an early hard disk manufacturer. Maybe someone remembers their black plastic shoebox-sized drive that worked as an Apple ][ add-on (maybe an ad in Byte around 1980 would show a good picture of it). IIRC, it was mapped to something like 50 floppies to the Apple. What was unusual to me was the use of a closed-loop servo positioner rather than the more common stepper. One rather interesting thing was that it wouldn't operate very well if it was too far off the horizontal. Cheers, Chuck From pechter at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 13:02:21 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:02:21 -0500 Subject: DEC backplane repair In-Reply-To: <4372A70E.9070705@nktelco.net> References: <43729DDA.602@nktelco.net> <200511091733170408.01D06639@10.0.0.252> <4372A70E.9070705@nktelco.net> Message-ID: <43778DBD.40205@gmail.com> One tip -- cuticle nippers... Small, pointy and sharp... just get the right wire the first time. Bill Charles H. Dickman wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> On 11/9/2005 at 8:09 PM Charles H. Dickman wrote: >> >>> . Replace that run in the backplane. >>> >>> I figure I will have to replace most of the run because this segment >>> is on the lowest wrap level and in the middle of the run, so I have >>> to replace this one and the ones on either side. >>> >> >> How about just clipping either side of the wire and adding a wrap on >> top, >> leaving the bottom wraps in place? Is there room to do this? >> >> >> > A good suggestion that had not occurred to me. Unfortunately, I have a > difficult time even seeing the wire, let alone actually cutting it. I > can imagine unwrapping it and then tugging it out, but I don't have a > snippers small enought to cut it out. > > -chuck > > > From pechter at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 13:09:13 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:09:13 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <0IPR00HBJ8GT54R1@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPR00HBJ8GT54R1@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43778F59.5040409@gmail.com> Allison wrote: >>Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations >> From: Adrian Graham >> Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 19:45:08 +0000 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >>Yup, and it's good to watch people's faces when they don't believe that such >>behaviour is possible. I also had some fun last week with someone who'd been >>'educated' in the ways of Windows 'clusters' - it took him several minutes >>to come to terms with a filesystem that was accessible by any machine in the >>cluster *at the same time* and one that was set up in minutes. He wanted to >>know why such a filesystem wasn't everywhere and I couldn't honestly answer >>him other than saying 'cost'. >> >>A >> >> > >That and MOP load were wonderful. I've tried to do diskless client under >winders (95 through NT4/server) and no one can say how it's done but all >said it could be. Gah! > >Who was it that had the signline of something like: > >Don't you wish you could buy now what DEC had then. > >Allison > > > > You remembered. 8-) d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now! pechter-at-gmail.com From pechter at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 13:17:09 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:17:09 -0500 Subject: Was Ultrix for DECstations -- now SunOS for Sparc2 In-Reply-To: References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> Message-ID: <43779135.7080706@gmail.com> Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 3:56 AM +0800 11/11/05, Wai-Sun Chia wrote: > >> On 11/11/05, Zane H. Healy wrote: >> > Personally I bought the DECstation I have somewhere specifically to >> >>> run NetBSD, not that I could tell you where that system is at the >>> moment. Something to consider about Ultrix is that it is quite old >>> at this point, and doesn't get any updates. NetBSD does. >> >> >> There are people running Unix V6 on their 11/40...err..so what's your >> point? :-) >> Or have you forgotten what which list you're in? :-) > > > My point would be that you're more likely to have that DECstation on a > network than someone is likely to have their PDP-11 running V6 Unix. > > Besides, I have no desire to run old versions of Unix, I'd just as > soon run a supported version (almost said new version, but I still use > Solaris 8). Also, I don't run Unix on my PDP-11's, as there are > plenty of interesting OS's that won't run on anything else. > > Zane > > If you've got the Sparc2 box like an IPX, SLC, ELC or Sparcstation 2 (I've got some with the Sparc-up upgrade) you really don't do too well on Solaris 2.x... SunOS 4.1.4 with the y2k patches and the updated tcp wrappers and portmapper is secure enough and works well. Turn ftp, telnet off and use OpenSSH and scp and you're set. I've been pretty pleased with the reliability of the older Sun Stuff. I also have an UltraSparc 1E /170 and an Ultra5 that work well. I have (somewhere) a cd with SunOS's patches for y2k and the public security patches for the OS through 2000. The y2k stuff was minimal -- nroff macros, date commands and some diag stuff. I'd love to get some more ethernet ports on the ultra's and make them firewalls under Solaris or Linux. The old Spar2 stuff, unfortunately, doesn't hold enough ram in the box to run the newer Solaris 7 (2.7) stuff. I still would like to have an Ultrix drive in my Vaxstation along with a VAX/VMS 5 and OpenVMS 7.2... BIll From shirsch at adelphia.net Sun Nov 13 13:51:07 2005 From: shirsch at adelphia.net (Steven N. Hirsch) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:51:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: Corvus (was Fortune Systems) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 13 Nov 2005, Al Kossow wrote: > > A Corvus _Unix_ box? What was the model designation for this beast? I > have a Corvus Concept 68k with shelves full of manuals and lots of > software. None of it seems to be Unix-y. > > -- > > Do you have the service manual for the Corvus Omnidrive? > I've been trying to find that for the bitsavers archive for a > while now. I believe I do, but it's not accessible at the moment due to home destruction, err, construction. > Corvus took the basic Concept hardware and added a SUN-style MMU > to the memory board and tried to sell it with Unisoft Unix as a > first try at a Unix computer. This machine didn't have a bitmapped > display. > > There were several iterations of the design (Frank McConnell may > remember all of them). The two that probably sold the most were > to Valid Systems as the SCALDstation, and to Unisys. Cool. I'll keep my eyes open for these. From healyzh at aracnet.com Sun Nov 13 14:29:47 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:29:47 -0800 Subject: Was Ultrix for DECstations -- now SunOS for Sparc2 In-Reply-To: <43779135.7080706@gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <43736D81.2070209@gmail.com> <43779135.7080706@gmail.com> Message-ID: At 2:17 PM -0500 11/13/05, Bill Pechter wrote: >If you've got the Sparc2 box like an IPX, SLC, ELC or Sparcstation 2 >(I've got some with the Sparc-up upgrade) you really don't do too >well on Solaris 2.x... > >SunOS 4.1.4 with the y2k patches and the updated tcp wrappers and >portmapper is secure enough and works well. Ah, SunOS 4.1.4, if I had a use for such a system, I'd be tempted, I did like SunOS! Though realistically, unless I needed SunOS for some specific reason, I'd simply load OpenBSD on the system. >I've been pretty pleased with the reliability of the older Sun Stuff. >I also have an UltraSparc 1E /170 and an Ultra5 that work well. I still have a Sun Sparc 10 in production at work, and had a Sparc 2 in production until a few months ago as the standby system. Sadly sometime next year, I'm supposed to replace the 10 with a newer system, and retire it. I've also got some Ultra 2's running Solaris 2.6 and 8 that are still in production, though the ones running 2.6 will hopefully be retired December 31st. >I'd love to get some more ethernet ports on the ultra's and make >them firewalls under Solaris or Linux. The old Spar2 stuff, >unfortunately, doesn't hold enough ram in the box to run the newer >Solaris 7 (2.7) stuff. Use OpenBSD, it's seriously lightweight, you could even use a Sparc 2 for a firewall, and have plenty of RAM free as long as you've got at least 64MB (I'm lucky enough to have 96MB in my Sparc 2). I ran a Sparc 5 with a quad card as a firewall for a few years using OpenBSD, and it's still there for emergency use, just waiting to be turned back on. >I still would like to have an Ultrix drive in my Vaxstation along >with a VAX/VMS 5 and OpenVMS 7.2... I'd personally like to have an early version of Ultrix (V1 or V2) as well as VAX/VMS 4.x for one of my MicroVAX II's. But then that would just be to play, as there is no way I'm using a MicroVAX II for serious work (though I do have a MicroVAX III that is built for specific job). The MicroVAX III actually had some version of VAX/VMS 4 on it when I got it, but the RD53 died before I could run a backup :^( Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From jplist at kiwigeek.com Sun Nov 13 14:32:09 2005 From: jplist at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:32:09 -0600 (CST) Subject: Information requested on Vector Graphics machine Message-ID: Greetings folks; So last night during the tornado watch in Iowa I was muddling about in my basement with my wife (Seated listening to the radio) and rediscovering the treasure trove of Good Stuff I have stored down there. I came across a Vector Graphics machine that I've had for a few years now and not even poked a serious look at. This Vector Graphics machine is not an all-in-one like the ones I seem to have found online, but in two desktop style chassis', one containing the S100 cardcage and cards, and the other a rather large MFM hard disk. I am totally unfamaliar with this machine, and google seems to be providing me with few well descriptive pages on what the machine is and about the Vector Graphics company. What I do know: The machine is Z80 based on a "ZCB" single board computer which sits in the S100 bus. It also has a hard disk/floppy drive controller board, what appear to be three memory boards and three "FlashWriter II"s which, all share one wire in common with a memory board (A big question mark over that one). Alas some philistine couldn't be bothered unplugging the unit from whatever it once hooked to, and snipped both the ribbon cables to the drive chassis as well as a ribbon cable that lead to an unknown device (possibly a specialised graphics display). Replacing the cabling isn't a problem, of course, but whatever the blue ribbon cable goes to definitely did not come included. All information greatfully received; Pictures of the poor thing (and copious asian beetles) here: http://www.kiwigeek.com/misc/VectorGraphics-front.jpg http://www.kiwigeek.com/misc/VectorGraphics-hdd.jpg http://www.kiwigeek.com/misc/VectorGraphics-top.jpg My thanks; JP From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 14:38:23 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 12:38:23 -0800 Subject: Information requested on Vector Graphics machine In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511131238230479.155BC8E4@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 2:32 PM JP Hindin wrote: "Vector Graphics" If you're googling around for information, something to keep in mind was that the name of the firm was "Vector Graphic" (singular). Cheers, Chuck From tpeters at mixcom.com Sun Nov 13 15:05:21 2005 From: tpeters at mixcom.com (Tom Peters) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 15:05:21 -0600 Subject: SAIC V2-LC computers, need hard drives In-Reply-To: <0IPV00BAGP6I86Y6@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051113145250.0b915820@localhost> At 12:42 AM 11/13/2005 -0500, you wrote: > > > >Subject: SAIC V2-LC computers, need hard drives > > From: Patrick Jankowiak > > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:22:14 -0600 > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > >-Also looking for 4 or 8 meg 30-pin simms for same. I have some 30-pin simms I haven't ever bothered to ID. I have 3 like this: , each with 9 chips KM41C1000BJ-7 on them, (1m fast page mode, I think) and a buncha these: 3 chips, 2 HM514400ALS7 and a HM511000AJP7 and some more 3 chip simms of similar design. Probably not worth much to anyone. ...the ancient Greeks, wrote in legend of a terrible container in which all the evils of the world were trapped. How prophetic they were. All they got wrong was the name. They called it Pandora's Box, but they meant Baldrick's Trousers. --Blackadder --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB ADDRESS http//www.mixweb.com/tpeters 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W, Elevation 815', Grid Square EN53wc WAN/LAN/Telcom Analyst, Tech Writer, MCP, CCNA, Registered Linux User 385531 From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 15:16:28 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 13:16:28 -0800 Subject: Atari ST Ephemera Message-ID: <200511131316280233.157EA572@10.0.0.252> More prowling around yields more stuff... I've discovered that I've got the full set of developer's documentation for the Atari ST (regular and Mega) from around 1988 or so. This is a thick hunk of paper--I kept it in 2 3-inch binders and one 1 1/2" one. It includes Volume 1, No. 1 and No.2 of the "Atari Forum" newsletter. It's got lots of stuff about programming under GEM and TOS, datasheets for the various components, engineering documents, Q&A's for developers, etc. IOW, everything a ST software developer might ever need. I don't think that I ever did anything with this after I unpacked it. The material is in pristine condition. I don't think that the NDA that I signed as part of this deal is in effect, so I believe that I can pass it on without fear of whoever now owns the Atari IP and licenses getting their revenge on me. Is this worth anything or is this curbside recycling material? Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 13 12:37:25 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:37:25 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <4376776E.2040409@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 13, 5 00:14:54 am Message-ID: > > I tried to pull those monitor signals high, however the effect is the I thouhgt at least one of them (end-of-frame, probably) had to be a pulse signal of about the right frequency. > Since I assume you've got a running system, can you tell me whether the > system tries to launch the autost program from a 9845 tape before, > during or after the power-on memory test (in case the "auto st" key is > latched, a tape is inserted and the system is being switched on)? If the > program is read from tape _after_ the power-on test has been completed, > I'll have to find another way. Hmm... There's no way I can get to the 9845 to power it up until I've got various other things off the bench :-(. And I think my tape drives need new rollers (too many projects, too little time :-)). At a guess, I would assume it looked at the tape drives only after it had got the memory test completed, alas. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 13 12:51:01 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:51:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller In-Reply-To: <0IPV00C1PP9CNVT8@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 13, 5 00:44:28 am Message-ID: > >I've got a Wangtek DC-300 tape drive (model 54590) and a controller with a > >5.25" footprint. The controller has a 50-conductor edge connector keyed > >the same way as the drive connector, so I'm assuming that the drive is > >connected there. The controller also has a 50 pin male header. I believe > >the controller is also a Wangtek model WT05ZK. It's got an 8085A-2 on it, > >as well as the usual support chips (8257 DMAC AM9128 PIC). Chip dates are > >1984. > > > >What's the interface to the controller? SASI? Anyone know what the > >command set might be? > > > >Cheers, > >Chuck > > It might be QIC, QIC02 or QIC24 and definately not SASI or SCSI though > they existed at the time. I was under the impression that QIC24 (like QIC11) was a tape format, and not an interface standard. The interface between the drive and the controller is probably QIC36. The host interface on the controller is probably QIC02 I would not be suprised if the edge connector on the controller was the host interface and the header for the drive. I am pretty sure one of my controllers is like that. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 13 13:03:42 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:03:42 +0000 (GMT) Subject: More on my HP7245A problem In-Reply-To: <001c01c5e827$15f87460$dbe19c44@esper.com> from "Jimmy D" at Nov 13, 5 02:51:40 am Message-ID: > If you could point me where to look, it might have the parts. > I would be very suprised, alas if the same chips were used in any other HP product (put it this way, the 7245B is different according to the service manual). The 7245 is a somewhat odd product (AFAIK the idea was never carried on). It's a thermal printer -- there's a srocket-feed mechanism for thermal paper driven by one stepper motor and a second stepper that moves an 12-dot printhead across the paper to print chracterers. What makes is unusual is that there's a thirteenth element in the head and the paper mechanism is designed to run both ways. It will act as a pen plotter, rolling the paper back and forth and runing the head across to draw lines, etc. Mechanically it's farily simple. Electronically, it's not. Thre are 5 boards of logic: Processor, using an HP custom 16 bit microprocessor, which was also used in some other printersd of the time. There are self-test swtiches and LEDs on this board, and enough ROM to get the thing started. In fact you can run the first test with just the processor board (and PSU) plugged into the backplane. ROM/RAM I/O (printhead drivers, beeper, switch/LED interface, etc) Motor control. Very complicated, it's got a 4*4 register file chip (input data), the output of which is sign-extended to 8 bits (!), then fed into a full adder + accumulator regiters circuit. The output of that is fed to a couple of PROMs that seem to be waveform lookup tables, then to a DAC. The output of that DAC goes to 4 sample-and-hold circuits, then to active filters, then to the driver transistors on the PSU chassis. The clocks for all that lot come from a counter chain, decoded by another PROM. HPIB Interface. Remarkably hardware intensive, for example, HPIB commands are hendled in hardware, not passed to the processor. Only data is passed to the processor). These all plug into a backplane that fits in the bottom of the case. There is an SMPSU that fits in on the right hand side with another 5 PCBs in it, and a mains rectifier/smoothing capacitor board at the back. Mine doesn't work. From fiddling with the self-test switches on the processor board (based on the instructions for the 7245B), checking signals, etc, I am pretty sure the first problem is the chip U10 on the ROM/RAM PCB. This is an 82S123 ROM (32*8 bits), I have no idea what it should contain. And I susepct the 7245A was the only device to use this PROM programmed this way. -tony From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 16:13:38 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:13:38 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPW0062EZ1PDVC7@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations > From: Bill Pechter > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:09:13 -0500 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>Who was it that had the signline of something like: >> >>Don't you wish you could buy now what DEC had then. >> >>Allison >> >> >You remembered. 8-) > >d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now! >pechter-at-gmail.com Thankyou for that! Some of the things I was used to at DEC I still haven't found a PC version that is close. If there ever was one that would be VAXNotes, really great collaboritive tool. Anyone ever do a wintel editor (NOT WORD) that had a single key for advance cursor one word? Allison From pechter at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 16:21:11 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:21:11 -0500 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong -- the 11/35 on display In-Reply-To: <20051112182942.E48C3200EC02@mail.cs.drexel.edu> References: <20051112182942.E48C3200EC02@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Message-ID: <4377BC57.7060502@gmail.com> Vassilis Prevelakis wrote: >Pictures from the Smithsonian > http://users.starpower.net/dj.taylor/Vax1.JPG > > VAX MINICOMPUTER > > Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX minicomputer, first introduced > in 1976, provided enough processing power for complex design problems, > but at a much lower cost than had previously been available. This > meant that individuals engineers could have the fill use of a > computer without having to share it with their colleagues. The VAX > became the workhorse or aerospace engineering. The model displayed > here, a MicroVAX II was introduced in 1985. > > >Museum people! Oh well! They can obviously read, but cannot understand. >Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then >its not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives >visitors who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to >what a mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* >with a VAX (I'll even ignore the minor business of emulating a small >part of the instruction set :-), but is not a VAX. > >At the University of Pennsylvania here in Philadelphia they have a VLSI >version of the ENIAC (some student project) but no-one in their right >mind would show that microprocessor next to a sign that says here is a >picture of ENIAC. > >**vp > > > I'm remembering my first thought on seeing their 11/35 setup in the museum (supposedly doing some kind of monitor/real-time control of a space launch. It was... "Wrong light pattern for RT11, RSTS/E, RSX11, and IAS... must have an 8085 or a rom with a counter doing some light sequencing. The wife thought I was a major geek and no one else would notice. The mailing list here had a number of others who saw that display and said the same thing. I just smiled to know there's a couple of us out there. I'm not opposed to an 11/35 front panel used like this in a display... Just wished it had an authentic light pattern. Running the 11/35 full up under glass would have problems with heat and power. Bill From pechter at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 16:23:02 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:23:02 -0500 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong In-Reply-To: <009301c5e7bd$631c4740$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <009301c5e7bd$631c4740$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <4377BCC6.50708@gmail.com> a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: >Vassilis Prevelakis wrote: > > > >>Hello?? The label says its a *MICRO*VAX, and if its a uVAX, then its >>not a mini. Also, calling the baby-sized uVAX a mini gives visitors >>who may have never seen a mini-computer the wrong idea as to what a >>mini-computer looks like. Sure I'll accept that its *compatible* with >>a VAX (I'll even ignore the minor business of emulating a small part >>of the instruction set :-), but is not a VAX. >> >> > >I'd not call the MicroVAX a mini, but it *is* a VAX. The >architecture was subsetted to allow some latitude in >implementation, but user mode code did not need to >worry about that: the instructions still worked. > >A VAX, is a VAX, is a VAX. > >Antonio > > > > I'm not sure the 11/725 and 11/730 and MicroVaxI weren't 11/34A's with delusions of grandeur. 8-( Bill From jce at seasip.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 13 13:07:27 2005 From: jce at seasip.demon.co.uk (John Elliott) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:07:27 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: from "cctech-request@classiccmp.org" at Nov 13, 2005 12:00:51 Message-ID: Paul Koning writes: : The only way I can think of is to take a large piece of paper, draw : the components (ICs, etc.), then trace each etch on the PCB. You : might use a felt tip pen to put a dab of color on each pin whose : connection you have marked on your drawing. If you've got a digital camera, take pictures of both sides of the PCB, and you can then draw on the pictures using a graphics program. -- John Elliott From sickler2 at cavenet.com Sun Nov 13 12:22:19 2005 From: sickler2 at cavenet.com (George Sickler) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:22:19 -0800 Subject: Tandy 1400 LT Message-ID: <000601c5e87f$2f470000$42a60ecf@f9n8b5> HI , i hope this is a ok adress , i think that 4 yrs is a bit much i bought a tandy 1400 lt and it works fine ... when i try to format a disk , i get a 360 not the 720 ???? , i have and old ibm lt that willl make 720 that the tandy will use ok , so what gives thanks george -------------- next part -------------- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 11/11/05 From thomas.seidel at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 15:06:58 2005 From: thomas.seidel at gmail.com (Thomas Seidel) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:06:58 +0100 Subject: Infos needed: INCAA - PIT Message-ID: <3eaba6ef0511131306r16b7d044t@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, A colleague just picked up the board of an "INCAA PIT" and handed it over to me. Looks like a programmable interface converter, it has two DB25 connectors and a 6800 CPU. The two ROMs are labelled "PIT 1985" and there are two RAMs (SRM2064 & TMM2016) . What is the box doing? Are there any manuals available? It's possible to program the CPU directly via the DB25 connector? Any hints? TIA for your help, --Thomas From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 16:42:02 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:42:02 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX004920D0U437@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: semi-homemade micro > From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:22:23 -0600 > To: > >All the talk about building a mini from TTL got me thinking about homebuild >micros, and what one would look like if I decided to build one >(been playing with my IMSAI, too, which probably accounts for some of it) >=0D=0A Using RTF?? >RISC would be out, due to difficulty of assembly coding, >and 8086 seems a bit dull. >Z-8000, TMS9900, and RCA1802 seem unavailable, and 6120 doesn't >have many registers.=0D=0A The 1802s are available as is the 6120 (spare time gizmos has kitted both). (Harris makes the 1802 and 6120.) old 1802 can be salvaged from EFjohnson made VHF mobile radios of early 80s vintage and 6120s from defunct DECmateII/IIIs. Bob Armstrong [Spare time gizmos] has both the ELF2k and Embedded ELF (1802) with an option for IDE/compactflash disk to run ELF OS. The 6120 has IDE interface and even a front pannel option. they aren't 100% kits but all the seamingly unobtainium [PCboard, PALS/GALS, PROMS and CPU] are covered. Z8000 can be found but takes a bit of hunting. The easiest source for 9900s is an old 99/4 console thats munged. the 6120 (PDP-8 with EMA) is a great programming machine. Minimal junk to get in the way and it has the PDP-8a dual stacks as well. >Looks like the best available ideas from an ease-of building and >obtaining would be Z-80 (or variant), 6809, or 68000 (close to >top in complexity, esp. if a front panel is wanted). >6502 could also be a possiblity.=0D=0A >I suppose either native IDE or another system serving as a storage >server would be the way to go, the IDE could either connect to a >old drive or a smallish CF card, and flash firmware would probably >be best, or EEPROM. SRAM seems to be the way to go for smaller >systems.=0D=0A IDE is a easy interface for most micros and it's been put on 1802, 6120, 6502, 6809, Z80(family), 8085, TI9900, Z8000, 68000 and likely I've forgotten a few dozen. One you didn't mention is the T-11 (base pdp-11 40 pin chip) as these can be salvaged from VT240/241 terminals, HSC50s, RQDX1/2/3 controllers and a few other DEC boards. Interface is 8085ish and that and 32k of ram would be a PDP11, the IO is tough as if you wish to run DEC OS you must simulate DEC devices (some are easy). >Just wondering what the thoughts of the list would be for specs >of a "new" hobbyest micro.=0D=0A=0D=0A First off any cpu is reasonable. Depends on preferences, what you have and maybe phase of the moon. Same for level of complexity. At one end you have the COSMAC ELF with 256bytes of ram and rudimentary front pannel simple and inexpensive. At the other extreme some of the Z80 flavors like the P112 (everything including the kitchen sink). Then there is do you want a bus or no, expansion or no, fully loaded or just minimal. I consider 1802 8085, z80, 6502 and 6800/6809 all very easy to use and interface. Even the TI9900 is not to bad if you have the clock generator chip [9904]. Believe it or not the 68000 is fairly straight forward and only bit worse than 6809. the Z8000 is hardest of the ones mentioned as the bus is more complex. For most a front pannel adds significant complexity, notable exception is 8035 (8048) and 1802. If I'm doing Z80, I pretty much expect to run a language in rom or OS such as CP/M. with those in mind the must haves are: Z80, z180, Z18x RAM at least 32k (more is good) boot rom 2 serial ports Console and link to PC for download. 1 Parallel port for printer some kind of mass storage (Floppy, IDE, CF, Flashram) However you really asking an open question with no direction given. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 16:48:46 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:48:46 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: woodelf > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:04:38 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > >>All the talk about building a mini from TTL got me thinking about homebuild micros, and what one would look like if I decided to build one (been playing with my IMSAI, too, which probably accounts for some of it) >> >Woodelf mutters: >The biggest thing I can think of is you only have two sizes of >computer today ... 16 bits or 32 bits of addressing. Uhm, what about 12bit[OS8 srt-8]? There are few othter word lenths than those that are not unobtainium. >You can only get the 16 machines easly and resonable source of a OS. Explain that from your perspective. >The 68000 yes still works best with 64k addressing. >Oddly the only micocomputer chip I like ( other than the 6800/6809) is >National Semiconductor's 16032 is another chip that you could never get. T-11 regular instruction set of the PDP-11. Not too hard to find. Z8001 and Z8002s I have a few of. Z280, theres an interesting varient of Z80 with 24bit MMU that looks like the DEC PDP11 MMU (even I&D!). So you have to be a bit more descriptive. Allison From pechter at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 17:01:20 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:01:20 -0500 Subject: Was Ultrix for DECstations -- now DEC advances In-Reply-To: <0IPW0062EZ1PDVC7@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPW0062EZ1PDVC7@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <4377C5C0.7090900@gmail.com> Allison wrote: >>Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations >> From: Bill Pechter >> Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 14:09:13 -0500 >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> >>Allison wrote: >> >> >> >>>Who was it that had the signline of something like: >>> >>>Don't you wish you could buy now what DEC had then. >>> >>>Allison >>> >>> >>> >>> >>You remembered. 8-) >> >>d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now! >>pechter-at-gmail.com >> >> > > > Came up with that one night thinking about DEC's UDA-50, HSC50 and clustering. DEC always had stuff that was easy for the end user. Not always for the programmer (TKB taskbuilder comes to mind...) TKB had more options than EMACS had special keystrokes. I never did get along much with RSX as more than a user. Coding under RT11 was great and RSTS/E Basic Plus was slick. Multiuser Basic on RT11 was slick. I had 4 terminals off a PDT11/150 supplying different functions... Program input on one, console on another, monitor of memory on a third, serial printer on another. In 60kb of memory. There's a PDT11/150 selling on Ebay now. I thought about it but the storage was too limiting. Rumor has it some hacker at DEC took the signals off the bus and was working on a hard disk that would look like an RK or something like an RL. Would've been nice. Didn't need the memory management if I had faster disks to play with stuff like sysgen. I see echos of DEC ideas everywhere. Seems interesting that the SATA Drives are kind of similar to RA8x's, right down to the Red cable. SATA, Serial SCSI... Fiber Channel attach drives... seems like '85 to me. Only took 15 years for the industry to catch up. I saw IBM's Sysplex as an attempt to do similar stuff. Most new clusters can't come close to the single system image shared system disks DEC did in '85. Upgrade one disk image and you get all the With some SATA hot swap backplanes and some drive sleds -- it's not too bad a NAS device for a little bit of money... But still not dual-attached and clustered. Once you get into stuff like SAFE-T dual attach SCSI (IIRC the acronym) or the SATA version you're talking money. >Thankyou for that! Some of the things I was used to at DEC I still haven't >found a PC version that is close. If there ever was one that would be >VAXNotes, really great collaboritive tool. > >Anyone ever do a wintel editor (NOT WORD) that had a single key for advance >cursor one word? > > > Hell. I want a Decmate box just for WPS... I've got WPS-80... but I'd love gold-key word processing on Windows... One time I tried getting SmallEDT up on CP/M 80...to give me EDT on CP/M. After hacking it up to get the number of characters in identifier labels down to what my compiler would handle I got something bigger than the TPA. Not being a C coder... I gave up for a while. I'd like to try to do it again. No mouse needed. Quick Response. I was once looking to map something like it out of WordStar or vi. The wife was amazed how easy WPS was to learn for an untrained novice at the keyboard. Wordstar was hell and WordPerfect required all the special keyboard overlays... >Allison > > > > > Bill From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 13 17:18:41 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:18:41 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >Uhm, what about 12bit[OS8 srt-8]? There are few othter word lenths >than those that are not unobtainium. > > > Well what about them? >>You can only get the 16 machines easly and resonable source of a OS. >> >> > >Explain that from your perspective. > > > My perspective is things that I have seen in my past other than DEC or IBM or other BIG IRON. That was mostly 8080's , Z80's and other items advertised in BYTE. CP/M was the only one that I know of that you could get source for to adapt to your computer. Once the PC arrived open source vanished. Sure linux is open source but who can read or adpt the several meg of source to a small machine. Minux was a nice try but it lacked a C Compiler. Small C went a DEAD end route as you could only use it if you bought the out of print books. >>The 68000 yes still works best with 64k addressing. >>Oddly the only micocomputer chip I like ( other than the 6800/6809) is >>National Semiconductor's 16032 is another chip that you could never get. >> >> > >T-11 regular instruction set of the PDP-11. Not too hard to find. >Z8001 and Z8002s I have a few of. Z280, theres an interesting varient >of Z80 with 24bit MMU that looks like the DEC PDP11 MMU (even I&D!). > > > Yes I know I keep forgeting the 11 but I got forced into using PC's so only now do I have the time and a tiny amount a money for classic computers. >So you have to be a bit more descriptive. > >Allison > > From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Nov 13 16:29:29 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:29:29 +0000 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4377BE49.3000206@yahoo.co.uk> John Elliott wrote: > Paul Koning writes: > : The only way I can think of is to take a large piece of paper, draw > : the components (ICs, etc.), then trace each etch on the PCB. You > : might use a felt tip pen to put a dab of color on each pin whose > : connection you have marked on your drawing. > > If you've got a digital camera, take pictures of both sides of the PCB, > and you can then draw on the pictures using a graphics program. Duh, good plan :) Previously I've tried sticking boards on the scanner, but it doesn't cope well with the upperside due to raised chips - the image ends up out of focus and difficult to work with. Using a camera is a much better idea - stick it on a tripod and make marks on the desk below where the PCB is. Flip the PCB over for the reverse side and line it up against the marks, and in theory it should line up perfectly in a graphics package (once one of the image pair is flipped) Slight lens distortion shouldn't matter as the critical thing is that the image pair are crisp and in focus... I don't know why I'd not though of that before, but it's a great tip and far better than the scanner approach... cheers :) Jules > From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Nov 13 16:34:27 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:34:27 +0000 Subject: Atari ST Ephemera In-Reply-To: <200511131316280233.157EA572@10.0.0.252> References: <200511131316280233.157EA572@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4377BF73.3090300@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > More prowling around yields more stuff... > > I've discovered that I've got the full set of developer's documentation for > the Atari ST (regular and Mega) from around 1988 or so. This is a thick > hunk of paper--I kept it in 2 3-inch binders and one 1 1/2" one. It > includes Volume 1, No. 1 and No.2 of the "Atari Forum" newsletter. > > It's got lots of stuff about programming under GEM and TOS, datasheets for > the various components, engineering documents, Q&A's for developers, etc. > IOW, everything a ST software developer might ever need. > > I don't think that I ever did anything with this after I unpacked it. The > material is in pristine condition. > > I don't think that the NDA that I signed as part of this deal is in effect, > so I believe that I can pass it on without fear of whoever now owns the > Atari IP and licenses getting their revenge on me. > > Is this worth anything or is this curbside recycling material? *possibly* to a hard-core Atari geek. But it's more likely useful stuff to a museum (the assumption being that it's obvious via the web say that the museum has it). It might sit on a shelf for years before anyone asks about it, but at least it's there for safe-keeping and might be relevant to someone's project one day. Better that than for it to get thrown out and for someone to find years down the line that it was the last surviving copy! Sometimes stuff like this also gives a nice insight into the way a company works and how they produced their products too, which might be relevant to a future museum display which focuses on that manufacturer (I hang onto equivalent stuff from Acorn for that reason; it's nice to see where some of their ideas and concepts came from and when they were first thought of). Masses of work to plough through stuff like that of course, but at least it's saved for a rainy day when someone wants to do so. cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Nov 13 16:44:01 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:44:01 +0000 Subject: Smithsonian gets it wrong -- the 11/35 on display In-Reply-To: <4377BC57.7060502@gmail.com> References: <20051112182942.E48C3200EC02@mail.cs.drexel.edu> <4377BC57.7060502@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4377C1B1.5060804@yahoo.co.uk> Bill Pechter wrote: > I'm not opposed to an 11/35 front panel used like this in a display... > Just wished it had an authentic light pattern. Running the 11/35 full > up under glass would have problems with heat and power. I'd at least expect them to say it's a simulation and not the real thing. I'd expect museums not to pull a stunt like that. Simulation's perfectly acceptible if there are legitimate reasons for not having an original, but they should tell the public as such. cheers Jules From bpope at wordstock.com Sun Nov 13 17:53:32 2005 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:53:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: Atari ST Ephemera In-Reply-To: <200511131316280233.157EA572@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051113235332.3B0E257E93@mail.wordstock.com> > > More prowling around yields more stuff... > > I've discovered that I've got the full set of developer's documentation for > the Atari ST (regular and Mega) from around 1988 or so. This is a thick > hunk of paper--I kept it in 2 3-inch binders and one 1 1/2" one. It > includes Volume 1, No. 1 and No.2 of the "Atari Forum" newsletter. > > It's got lots of stuff about programming under GEM and TOS, datasheets for > the various components, engineering documents, Q&A's for developers, etc. > IOW, everything a ST software developer might ever need. > > I don't think that I ever did anything with this after I unpacked it. The > material is in pristine condition. > > I don't think that the NDA that I signed as part of this deal is in effect, > so I believe that I can pass it on without fear of whoever now owns the > Atari IP and licenses getting their revenge on me. > > Is this worth anything or is this curbside recycling material? You should get it scanned and put on the web! :) Cheers, Bryan From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 17:57:31 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:57:31 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX009FG3USF4F3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: woodelf > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:18:41 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>Uhm, what about 12bit[OS8 srt-8]? There are few othter word lenths >>than those that are not unobtainium. >> >> >> >Well what about them? What do you mean by "Well what about them?"? >>>You can only get the 16 machines easly and resonable source of a OS. >>> >>Explain that from your perspective. >> >My perspective is things that I have seen in my past other than DEC or >IBM or other BIG IRON. >That was mostly 8080's , Z80's and other items advertised in BYTE. CP/M >was the only one >that I know of that you could get source for to adapt to your >computer. Once the PC arrived >open source vanished. Sure linux is open source but who can read or >adpt the several meg >of source to a small machine. Minux was a nice try but it lacked a C >Compiler. Small C went >a DEAD end route as you could only use it if you bought the out of print >books. Really! theres more stuff about smallC than ever on line. Maybe back then life was hard but now with the 'net and Google I'm getting to try and use those things that back then were either too exotic or hard to find and maybe even too expensive [especially hardware]. Even Minix has evolved (V3.x now). >>>The 68000 yes still works best with 64k addressing. >>>Oddly the only micocomputer chip I like ( other than the 6800/6809) is >>>National Semiconductor's 16032 is another chip that you could never get. >>> >> >>T-11 regular instruction set of the PDP-11. Not too hard to find. >>Z8001 and Z8002s I have a few of. Z280, theres an interesting varient >>of Z80 with 24bit MMU that looks like the DEC PDP11 MMU (even I&D!). >> >Yes I know I keep forgeting the 11 but I got forced into using PC's so >only now do I have the time and a tiny amount a money for classic computers. My last employer went downhill as did my job with it so I have time and very little expendable cash. However with junk, spares and imagination I achieve a lot with near nothing. PCs I find costly and less productive. Maybe I'm more of the do it and don't tell me how it's hard person. I'd be dangerous if I had gobs of cash and free time converge. >From scrap and salvage I'm building a lot of stuff around here from 6M VHF SSB radios to really oddball 1802 systems. Want to try an emulation project? take a 8048 or 49, strap EA (uses external rom then) and write a program to make port 0 and some latches and stuff on the bus port look like a version of your favorite CPU of any word length. Sure it will be slow (8049 @11mhz run instructions at 1.3us) but different! hang ram rom and IO even front pannel on the emulation and you have anything you can imagine and fit in 4k or eprom and 128bytes of internal ram (8049). Those 8048s and 49s are common and easily found in keyboards (LK201 has the faster better 8051!) and is a cool old cpu to work with. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 18:09:34 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:09:34 -0500 Subject: Was Ultrix for DECstations -- now DEC advances Message-ID: <0IPX004O84EVU077@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Was Ultrix for DECstations -- now DEC advances > From: Bill Pechter > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:01:20 -0500 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >>>d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN. Don't you wish you could still buy it now! >>>pechter-at-gmail.com >> >Came up with that one night thinking about DEC's UDA-50, HSC50 and >clustering. With 8 uVAX of vatious types LAVC is really nice. Still cant do that with a PC. >DEC always had stuff that was easy for the end user. Not always for the >programmer (TKB taskbuilder comes to mind...) TKB had more options than >EMACS had special keystrokes. TKB was strange and wonderful. >I never did get along much with RSX as more than a user. Coding under >RT11 was great and RSTS/E Basic Plus was slick. RT-11 is my favorite PDP-11 OS and I have it for all my 11s. RSTS/E is one I used and liked. >Multiuser Basic on RT11 was slick. Never used it. Would have liked to. >I had 4 terminals off a PDT11/150 >supplying different functions... Program input on one, console on >another, monitor of memory on a third, serial printer on another. In >60kb of memory. There's a PDT11/150 selling on Ebay now. >I thought about it but the storage was too limiting. I have a PDT11/130 (tu58 in a vt100). sloooow. Fun! >Rumor has it some hacker at DEC took the signals off the bus and was >working on a hard disk that would look like an RK or something like an RL. I can believe it. IDE is a simple interface and can be made to look like most anything with a brain dead 8048. My favorite small 11 is a BA11VA shoebox with 11/23, 256kb ram, DLV11J and MRV11(boot proms) with a TU58 emulator (8051 and for 128kx8 rams) that is faster than the real tu58 and run RT-11 XM with bas RT11 in VM: >>Thankyou for that! Some of the things I was used to at DEC I still haven't >>found a PC version that is close. If there ever was one that would be >>VAXNotes, really great collaboritive tool. >> >>Anyone ever do a wintel editor (NOT WORD) that had a single key for advance >>cursor one word? >> >Hell. I want a Decmate box just for WPS... I have a DMIII for that reason runs OS278 and WPS. >I've got WPS-80... but I'd love gold-key word processing on Windows... ME TOO! >One time I tried getting SmallEDT up on CP/M 80...to give me EDT on CP/M. Yucky. For CP/M I have VEDIT and thats as clost to EDT ot VAXedt as you can get. In command mode the same teco macros run. It's configurable so a VT100 keypad does the expected EDT stuff. Never got the PC version but it was supposed to be the same thing. >The wife was amazed how easy WPS was to learn for an untrained novice at >the keyboard. Wordstar was hell and WordPerfect required all the >special keyboard overlays... My partner also like WPS still and uses PCs all day. She was also a former digit and learned the DM/wps first and found the PC was crude. Allison From chenmel at earthlink.net Sun Nov 13 18:07:59 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:07:59 -0500 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <4377BE49.3000206@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4377BE49.3000206@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <20051113190759.292ef5d1.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:29:29 +0000 Jules Richardson wrote: > John Elliott wrote: > > Paul Koning writes: > > : The only way I can think of is to take a large piece of paper, draw > > : the components (ICs, etc.), then trace each etch on the PCB. You > > : might use a felt tip pen to put a dab of color on each pin whose > > : connection you have marked on your drawing. > > > > If you've got a digital camera, take pictures of both sides of the PCB, > > and you can then draw on the pictures using a graphics program. > > Duh, good plan :) Previously I've tried sticking boards on the scanner, > but it doesn't cope well with the upperside due to raised chips - the > image ends up out of focus and difficult to work with. > Depending on the depth of field of the scanner you use, you can get very good results scanning 'objects' that are 3-d. I have a scanner at work (that I got at a auction for $1) that has really good depth, that I often use instead of a camera to 'photograph' items. Just lay them on the glass and scan. Many of the cheaper and newer scanners have terrible depth of field. Probably the cheap optics. The older-generation Hewlett-Packard scanners, which you can get cheap these days (and which require a SCSI controller) are usually pretty good. From chenmel at earthlink.net Sun Nov 13 18:11:13 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:11:13 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <0IPX004920D0U437@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPX004920D0U437@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051113191113.4f40fb1b.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:42:02 -0500 Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: semi-homemade micro > > From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com > > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:22:23 -0600 > > To: > > > >All the talk about building a mini from TTL got me thinking about homebuild > >micros, and what one would look like if I decided to build one > >(been playing with my IMSAI, too, which probably accounts for some of it) > > >=0D=0A > > Using RTF?? > > >RISC would be out, due to difficulty of assembly coding, > >and 8086 seems a bit dull. > >Z-8000, TMS9900, and RCA1802 seem unavailable, and 6120 doesn't > >have many registers.=0D=0A > > > The 1802s are available as is the 6120 (spare time gizmos has kitted both). > (Harris makes the 1802 and 6120.) old 1802 can be salvaged from EFjohnson > made VHF mobile radios of early 80s vintage and 6120s from defunct > DECmateII/IIIs. > (echoing a sentiment expressed here earlier) Perfectly good DECmateIIs?? I have 6100s, too, if you want a scaled back version. The 6100 is a great 'easy' first processor to use- all static CMOS with very lax timing requirements for the clock signal. 12 bits, though. And, of course, the PDP-8 instruction set. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 13 18:19:15 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:19:15 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <0IPX009FG3USF4F3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPX009FG3USF4F3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <4377D803.4080305@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >What do you mean by "Well what about them?"? > > > Tell me more about them! Non 8 bit word length computers. >Really! theres more stuff about smallC than ever on line. Maybe back >then life was hard but now with the 'net and Google I'm getting to try >and use those things that back then were either too exotic or hard to >find and maybe even too expensive [especially hardware]. Even Minix >has evolved (V3.x now). > > > All my small C stuff is stored safe in my bitbucket. It has too many 8080 design gotya's to generate code for the cpu design I have now. I don't have register to regsister addressing and indexing from the A register. > > >My last employer went downhill as did my job with it so I have time and >very little expendable cash. However with junk, spares and imagination >I achieve a lot with near nothing. PCs I find costly and less productive. >Maybe I'm more of the do it and don't tell me how it's hard person. I'd >be dangerous if I had gobs of cash and free time converge. > > > Out here all the junk is dead PC's. :( >Want to try an emulation project? take a 8048 or 49, strap EA >(uses external rom then) and write a program to make port 0 and >some latches and stuff on the bus port look like a version of >your favorite CPU of any word length. Sure it will be slow >(8049 @11mhz run instructions at 1.3us) but different! hang >ram rom and IO even front pannel on the emulation and you have >anything you can imagine and fit in 4k or eprom and 128bytes >of internal ram (8049). Those 8048s and 49s are common and >easily found in keyboards (LK201 has the faster better 8051!) >and is a cool old cpu to work with. > > > That is a nice idea! >Allison > > > >. > > > From kenziem at sympatico.ca Sun Nov 13 18:29:35 2005 From: kenziem at sympatico.ca (Mike) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:29:35 -0400 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511131929.35175.kenziem@sympatico.ca> On November 13, 2005 6:18 pm, woodelf wrote: > Allison wrote: > that I know of that you could get source for to adapt to your > computer. Once the PC arrived > open source vanished. Sure linux is open source but who can read or > adpt the several meg > of source to a small machine. Linux supported CPU's Intel 386SX/DX/SL, 486SX/DX/SL/SX2/DX2/DX4, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III (regular and Xeon versions), Pentium 4, and Celeron, i960, IA-64, 8086, 8088, 80286 AMD 386SX/DX, 486SX/DX/DX2/DX4, K5, K6, K6-2, K6-3, and Athlon AMD's 64-bit Opteron and Athlon64 processors, as well as the mobile Athlon64 (or Turion64), Cyrix 386SX/DX, 486SX/DX, 5x86, 6x86, and MediaGX are all supported. IDT Winchip C6-PSME2006A Transmeta Crusoe processor MIPS 34K, 4K/4KE, ADMtek MIPS32 SoS, AMD Alchemy MIPS32 SoC family, ATI XILLEON, Broadcom SB-1 family, Broadcom MIPS32 SoC family, Emulators IDT RC32300 RISCore family, Lexra, MIPS 24K core family, NEC VR4100 family, Philips Poseidon PR31x00 family, R10000, R12000, R14000, R2000, R3000, R4000, R4400, R4600, R4700, R5000, R5900, R6000, R8000, RM5200 family, RM7000 family, RM7900 family, RM9000 family, Texas Instrument AR7 family, Toshiba TX39XX family, Toshiba TX49XX family Motorola 68030, 68040, 68328, ColdFire 5206e, 5307, 5407, MC68EN302 and MC68EN360, QUICC, Freescale i.MX21 PowerPC, PowerPC64 ARM, stongarm, Hitachi SuperH, SH, H8S-2148 and H8S-2149, h8300, SH7044, SH7206, SH4-102, SH4-103, SH4-201, SH4-202, SH5-101, SH5-103, ST40RA (formerly ST40STB1), ST40GX1 SPARC, UltraSPARC v850 processors Axis ETRAX Compaq Alpha AXP IBM zSeries and S/390 HP PA-RISC Dec Vax CRIS Emotion Engine (SONY Playstation 2) http://playstation2-linux.com/ TMS320 Digital Signal Processor (Texas Instrument) http://www.dsplinux.net/ ITRON Atmel AT91: AT91M40400, AT91M40800, AT91R40807, AT91M40807, AT91M42800, AT91M55800, AT91M63200, AT91M40400, AT91RM9200. http://www.tldp.org/FAQ/Linux-FAQ/kernel.html#what-ports-to-other-processors-are-there http://www.uclinux.org/ports/ http://www.klinux.org/en/platforms.html From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 13 18:39:16 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:39:16 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <200511131929.35175.kenziem@sympatico.ca> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511131929.35175.kenziem@sympatico.ca> Message-ID: <4377DCB4.4040809@jetnet.ab.ca> Mike wrote: >On November 13, 2005 6:18 pm, woodelf wrote: > > >>Allison wrote: >>that I know of that you could get source for to adapt to your >>computer. Once the PC arrived >>open source vanished. Sure linux is open source but who can read or >>adpt the several meg >>of source to a small machine. >> >> > >Linux supported CPU's > >Intel 386SX/DX/SL, 486SX/DX/SL/SX2/DX2/DX4, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, >Pentium III (regular and Xeon versions), Pentium 4, and Celeron, i960, IA-64, >8086, 8088, 80286 > > I said small machine --- is a small machine a 386? Can you tell me how much memory GNU C uses to compile itself? No wait that is listed a memory test! Linux is nice , but I am looking at small systems right now! From chenmel at earthlink.net Sun Nov 13 18:40:18 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:40:18 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20051113194018.7f60ba5d.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 16:18:41 -0700 woodelf wrote: > Allison wrote: > > >Uhm, what about 12bit[OS8 srt-8]? There are few othter word lenths > >than those that are not unobtainium. > > > > > > > Well what about them? > > >>You can only get the 16 machines easly and resonable source of a OS. > >> > >> > > > >Explain that from your perspective. > > > > > > > My perspective is things that I have seen in my past other than DEC or > IBM or other BIG IRON. > That was mostly 8080's , Z80's and other items advertised in BYTE. CP/M > was the only one > that I know of that you could get source for to adapt to your > computer. Once the PC arrived > open source vanished. Sure linux is open source but who can read or > adpt the several meg > of source to a small machine. Minux was a nice try but it lacked a C > Compiler. Minix has a C compiler. And you don't have to buy Andrew Tannenbaum's book to get it anymore. And there are many, numerous other small and 'free' OSes out there. uCOs, for example. Open source didn't 'vanish' when the PC arrived. What happened was the field exploded, and suddenly there were so many different directions to take with things that a small tight community was no longer possible. With the dozens, hundreds of tools people were using in the MS-DOS era to develop programs for the PC, it no longer was possible for everybody to share the same codebase. From trixter at oldskool.org Sun Nov 13 18:49:13 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:49:13 -0600 Subject: Automatic book scanner In-Reply-To: <008501c5e792$2a660e20$5b01a8c0@pc1> References: <008501c5e792$2a660e20$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <4377DF09.1040708@oldskool.org> a.carlini at ntlworld.com wrote: > While following a discussion on /. I came across > this interesting book scanner: > > http://www.kirtas-tech.com/ Watching the video, I have to say this is the coolest invention I have seen in the last half decade. The constant 110 degrees and page flatteners are tres cool. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 19:33:32 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:33:32 -0800 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4377D803.4080305@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPX009FG3USF4F3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <4377D803.4080305@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511131733320453.1669FE80@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 5:19 PM woodelf wrote: >>Want to try an emulation project? take a 8048 or 49, strap EA >>(uses external rom then) and write a program to make port 0 and >>some latches and stuff on the bus port look like a version of >>your favorite CPU of any word length. Sure it will be slow >>(8049 @11mhz run instructions at 1.3us) but different! hang >>ram rom and IO even front pannel on the emulation and you have >>anything you can imagine and fit in 4k or eprom and 128bytes >>of internal ram (8049). Why not something like an Atmel ATMega? Fast and cheap. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 19:35:51 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:35:51 -0800 Subject: Atari ST Ephemera In-Reply-To: <4377BF73.3090300@yahoo.co.uk> References: <200511131316280233.157EA572@10.0.0.252> <4377BF73.3090300@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511131735510437.166C1D64@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 10:34 PM Jules Richardson wrote: >Sometimes stuff like this also gives a nice insight into the way a >company works and how they produced their products too, which might be >relevant to a future museum display which focuses on that manufacturer >(I hang onto equivalent stuff from Acorn for that reason; it's nice to >see where some of their ideas and concepts came from and when they were >first thought of). Masses of work to plough through stuff like that of >course, but at least it's saved for a rainy day when someone wants to do >so. I'd like to give it to someone that will eventually scan it--and even better if they're a 501(c)3. I know that the ST was more popular in Europe than in the USA, so perhaps there's someone out there that will see this. Cheers, Chuck From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Sun Nov 13 19:48:04 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:48:04 Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller In-Reply-To: <200511130913210368.14A011A9@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPW00B2FE2R04Z2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <0IPW00B2FE2R04Z2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051113194804.33078932@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 09:13 AM 11/13/05 -0800, you wrote: >On 11/13/2005 at 9:40 AM Allison wrote: > >>If not sasi/scsi it could be "host" as in the hard disk bridge boards. >>Host interface is IDE of the time as it's a register interface with >>re/, wr/, a few address lines, data and reset more or less. Makes >>it generic. > >If it helps, I believe that these came out of a Tektronix 6800 "smart >terminal" box. Are you sure that wasn't Tektronix 4051 COMPUTER that you took them out of???? I wasn't aware of any Tektronix "terminals" with a tape drive and a 6800 CPU. (Another brand that you never seem to hear about--the >storage tube display was sort of unusual). But cool! It was amazing to watch it draw characters. And then they'd stay there until you pressed the ERASE key! Joe > >Cheers, >Chuck > > > From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Sun Nov 13 19:50:39 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:50:39 Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller In-Reply-To: <200511122126330493.1218FA32@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051113195039.3307f0f0@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 09:26 PM 11/12/05 -0800, you wrote: >I've got a Wangtek DC-300 tape drive (model 54590) and a controller with a >5.25" footprint. The controller has a 50-conductor edge connector keyed >the same way as the drive connector, so I'm assuming that the drive is >connected there. The controller also has a 50 pin male header. I believe >the controller is also a Wangtek model WT05ZK. It's got an 8085A-2 on it, >as well as the usual support chips (8257 DMAC AM9128 PIC). Chip dates are >1984. > >What's the interface to the controller? SASI? Anyone know what the >command set might be? If that came out of a Tektronix 4051 then Mike Haas has the pinouts for it along with the 4051 schematics. Joe > >Cheers, >Chuck > > > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 20:00:54 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:00:54 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX004B79KEU2J7@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: Scott Stevens > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:11:13 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:42:02 -0500 >Allison wrote: > >> > >> >Subject: semi-homemade micro >> > From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com >> > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 11:22:23 -0600 >> > To: >> > >> >All the talk about building a mini from TTL got me thinking about homebuild >> >micros, and what one would look like if I decided to build one >> >(been playing with my IMSAI, too, which probably accounts for some of it) >> >> >=0D=0A >> >> Using RTF?? >> >> >RISC would be out, due to difficulty of assembly coding, >> >and 8086 seems a bit dull. >> >Z-8000, TMS9900, and RCA1802 seem unavailable, and 6120 doesn't >> >have many registers.=0D=0A >> >> >> The 1802s are available as is the 6120 (spare time gizmos has kitted both). >> (Harris makes the 1802 and 6120.) old 1802 can be salvaged from EFjohnson >> made VHF mobile radios of early 80s vintage and 6120s from defunct >> DECmateII/IIIs. >> > >(echoing a sentiment expressed here earlier) Perfectly good DECmateIIs?? No I mean defunct ones or as I found a few as just the main board from DMII/III as salvage (no case PS or ??). Good ones work and you use them as is and enjoy them. Besides a working DM runs OS278 and WPS both useful! >I have 6100s, too, if you want a scaled back version. The 6100 is a >great 'easy' first processor to use- all static CMOS with very lax >timing requirements for the clock signal. 12 bits, though. And, >of course, the PDP-8 instruction set. PDP-8 interuction set reminds me how programming can be fun. Enough of the things needed to write practical code but not one drop more. That and you can remember the whole instruction set and it's opcodes! I have a base 6100 machine, Intersil super sampler with with 4kram and the monitor, (rom can be dropped after loading ram low). Allison From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 20:02:27 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 18:02:27 -0800 Subject: Wangtek DC-300 drive and controller In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051113194804.33078932@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <0IPW00B2FE2R04Z2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <0IPW00B2FE2R04Z2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <3.0.6.16.20051113194804.33078932@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <200511131802270630.16847855@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 7:48 PM Joe R. wrote: > Are you sure that wasn't Tektronix 4051 COMPUTER that you took them out >of???? I wasn't aware of any Tektronix "terminals" with a tape drive and a >6800 CPU. It was the 405i--I got the drive and controller from a friend at Tek. Terminal, computer, whatever--it was a long time ago. > But cool! It was amazing to watch it draw characters. And then they'd >stay there until you pressed the ERASE key! I remember using a Tek storage-tube terminal with two columns of 80 (I think) characters. You could write, but not rewrite characters. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 20:10:27 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:10:27 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX001INA0B17L3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: woodelf > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:19:15 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>What do you mean by "Well what about them?"? >> >> >> >Tell me more about them! Non 8 bit word length computers. I think there is a 22bit forth machine out there and ofcourse people have done FPGA PDP10 and I also heard once someone doing an 18bit PDP7. >All my small C stuff is stored safe in my bitbucket. It has too many >8080 design gotya's to generate code for the cpu design I have now. >I don't have register to regsister addressing and indexing from the >A register. And that stopped you? really I have a SmallC compiler that produced ok 8080 code. By OK it's as good as an 8080 can do. >Out here all the junk is dead PC's. :( Thats largely what we have here these days. However 386 and 486 board have nice cache rams some TTL and the like. That and I find in piles. >>Want to try an emulation project? take a 8048 or 49, strap EA >>(uses external rom then) and write a program to make port 0 and >>some latches and stuff on the bus port look like a version of >>your favorite CPU of any word length. Sure it will be slow >>(8049 @11mhz run instructions at 1.3us) but different! hang >>ram rom and IO even front pannel on the emulation and you have >>anything you can imagine and fit in 4k or eprom and 128bytes >>of internal ram (8049). Those 8048s and 49s are common and >>easily found in keyboards (LK201 has the faster better 8051!) >>and is a cool old cpu to work with. >> >That is a nice idea! Everyone has done the PC emulating whatever. Why not take a single chip micro and use that to emulate another micro as hardware? Same idea maybe slow but for a lot of things speed is not the whole world. I did it on paper for PDP8 and it was possible using an 11mhz 8049 to come within 1/10 the speed of a real 8. I guess a 36bit machine could be done as well (though really slow.). Also a front pannel could be programmed into it as well (maybe a speed hit). Any cpu that gets an instruction from memory and then executes it can be emulated that way. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 20:15:23 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:15:23 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX0012CA8K17M3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: Mike > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:29:35 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On November 13, 2005 6:18 pm, woodelf wrote: >> Allison wrote: >> that I know of that you could get source for to adapt to your >> computer. Once the PC arrived >> open source vanished. Sure linux is open source but who can read or >> adpt the several meg >> of source to a small machine. > >Linux supported CPU's >Dec Vax In rumor only! However Linux (or elks) on TI9900, PDP-11, Z80, 6502, 6800 and 6809 seems to be missing. For those you have CP/M, OS9, and others but not linux. However the Z80 there is UZI-unix. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 20:20:19 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:20:19 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX008UPAGS6T15@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 17:33:32 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/13/2005 at 5:19 PM woodelf wrote: > >>>Want to try an emulation project? take a 8048 or 49, strap EA >>>(uses external rom then) and write a program to make port 0 and >>>some latches and stuff on the bus port look like a version of >>>your favorite CPU of any word length. Sure it will be slow >>>(8049 @11mhz run instructions at 1.3us) but different! hang >>>ram rom and IO even front pannel on the emulation and you have >>>anything you can imagine and fit in 4k or eprom and 128bytes >>>of internal ram (8049). > >Why not something like an Atmel ATMega? Fast and cheap. That would work too. I picked 8049 or 8051 series as they are also cheap often found in useless equipment and tools to work with them are free and I have a coffee can full of them. ;) At the other extreme a PIC might do a it too. The idea remains no differnt than using a PC to emulate Xyz save for a smaller machine IE: a chip maybe slower and embeddable. The side benefit is the "microcode" can have a debugger built in. Allison From waisun.chia at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 20:31:19 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:31:19 +0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <0IPW0062EZ1PDVC7@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPW0062EZ1PDVC7@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On 11/14/05, Allison wrote: > > > > Anyone ever do a wintel editor (NOT WORD) that had a single key for advance > cursor one word? > Well back then, whenever I was away from my VAXcluster, and was forced to use MS-DOS for something or another I used to use something called "sedt" (nicknamed "sad editor") which was a EDT clone on DOS. Anybody remembered that? As fro a single key cursor advance command, there's always the plethora of vi clones (elvis, vim, etc.) for Wintel... Heck, in fact for those masochists there's a version of teco (yes the one which you used on the PDP-8!) for *NIX written in 'C'! :-) If you used it often enough you may even be pissed off enough to reinvent emacs again! From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 20:43:02 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:43:02 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPX000VBBIML0R1@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations > From: Wai-Sun Chia > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:31:19 +0800 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 11/14/05, Allison wrote: >> > >> >> Anyone ever do a wintel editor (NOT WORD) that had a single key for advance >> cursor one word? >> > >Well back then, whenever I was away from my VAXcluster, and was forced >to use MS-DOS for something or another I used to use something called >"sedt" (nicknamed "sad editor") which was a EDT clone on DOS. Anybody >remembered that? I may still have it. Didn't like it and it had "issues". >As fro a single key cursor advance command, there's always the >plethora of vi clones (elvis, vim, etc.) for Wintel... First choice when all else fails, vi. >Heck, in fact for those masochists there's a version of teco (yes the >one which you used on the PDP-8!) for *NIX written in 'C'! :-) If you >used it often enough you may even be pissed off enough to reinvent >emacs again! VTECO was a nice thing. EMACS was not. My favorite for the CP/M world is VEDIT which was configurable video editor with a drop to command (like vi) that understood TECO command there. Very small too. Allison From waisun.chia at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 20:42:45 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:42:45 +0800 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <0IPX0012CA8K17M3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPX0012CA8K17M3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On 11/14/05, Allison wrote: > > > >Linux supported CPU's > > >Dec Vax > In rumor only! > Well, NetBSD iit is not. But to say it is just a rumor doesn't do justice of the work some of the hackers there are contributing. Disclaimer: I have no relationship with them. Extracted from the FAQ: http://linux-vax.sourceforge.net/newfaq/newfaq.html 2.1 What is the current status? Kernel The kernel boots and works, in a somewhat basic fashion, on a subset of VAX systems. We currently know that we boot to shell on the following VAXen: * VAXstation 3100m30 (KA42 CPU) * VAXstation 3100m38 (KA42 CPU) * VAXstation 3100m76 (KA43 CPU) * VAXstation 4000/60 (KA46 CPU) We have, in the past, at least partially booted on the following: * VAXstation 3500 (KA650 CPU) * VAXstation II/GPX (KA630 CPU) * MicroVAX 3400 (KA640 CPU) * VAXserver 4000-200 (KA660 CPU) * VAXstation 3100m85 (KA55 CPU) We have drivers for the console, ethernet and SCSI on the; * VAXstation 3100m76 (KA43 CPU) * VAXstation 3100m38 (KA42 CPU) * VAXstation 4000/60 (KA46 CPU) (not SCSI yet) and works in progress for the SCSI and ethernet on the * VAXstation 4000/60 (KA46 CPU) * VAXstation 3100m85 (KA55 CPU) From vax9000 at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 20:42:55 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:42:55 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <0IPX0012CA8K17M3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPX0012CA8K17M3@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On 11/13/05, Allison wrote: > >Dec Vax > In rumor only! I am on the linux-vax mailing list. They are able to boot into user land. vax, 9000 From waisun.chia at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 20:48:28 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:48:28 +0800 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4377DCB4.4040809@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511131929.35175.kenziem@sympatico.ca> <4377DCB4.4040809@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 11/14/05, woodelf wrote: > >Linux supported CPU's > > > >Intel 386SX/DX/SL, 486SX/DX/SL/SX2/DX2/DX4, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, > >Pentium III (regular and Xeon versions), Pentium 4, and Celeron, i960, IA-64, > >8086, 8088, 80286 > > > > > I said small machine --- is a small machine a 386? > Can you tell me how much memory GNU C uses to compile itself? > No wait that is listed a memory test! > Linux is nice , but I am looking at small systems right now! > Well, depends on how small is small... Is a Motorola Dragonball small (M68EZ328)? uclinux runs on that. Or how about H8? Check out http://www.uclinux.org for a MMU-less variant.. If your "small" must be 8-bit, then there's always uCos, and a bunch of other RTOSes... From wh.sudbrink at verizon.net Sun Nov 13 20:50:14 2005 From: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net (Bill Sudbrink) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:50:14 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <0IPX000VBBIML0R1@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: Allison wrote: > First choice when all else fails, vi. Can't resist... really, when _ALL_ else fails, ex. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 20:53:21 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:53:21 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX00K6SBZTT8L7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: Wai-Sun Chia > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:42:45 +0800 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 11/14/05, Allison wrote: >> > >> >Linux supported CPU's >> >> >Dec Vax >> In rumor only! >> > >Well, NetBSD iit is not. But to say it is just a rumor doesn't do >justice of the work some of the hackers there are contributing. >Disclaimer: I have no relationship with them. > >Extracted from the FAQ: >http://linux-vax.sourceforge.net/newfaq/newfaq.html > This is fairly recent as last I looked (2 years ago) the page was mostly blank. NetBSD is a differnt animal. Still the list of systems like Z80 and some where there used to be a proposed ELKs for never seems to have happend. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 20:59:45 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:59:45 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPX00K0ICAGT7D8@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Ultrix for DECstations > From: "Bill Sudbrink" > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:50:14 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Allison wrote: > >> First choice when all else fails, vi. > >Can't resist... really, when _ALL_ else fails, ex. Did you mean ED??? That loathsome excuse for a tool! I'd rather hurt myself before using that. Scratch that. Every time I've used it, I did hurt myself. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 21:02:51 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:02:51 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPX00BQ5CFN04V4@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: Wai-Sun Chia > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:42:45 +0800 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 11/14/05, Allison wrote: >> > >> >Linux supported CPU's >> >> >Dec Vax >> In rumor only! >> > >Well, NetBSD iit is not. But to say it is just a rumor doesn't do >justice of the work some of the hackers there are contributing. >Disclaimer: I have no relationship with them. > >Extracted from the FAQ: >http://linux-vax.sourceforge.net/newfaq/newfaq.html Yes! Finally. I'd been looking at the linix will be on VAX for over 10 years and it's finally comming around. Now an ELKS kernal for Z80 maybe... please. Allison From waisun.chia at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 21:03:24 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:03:24 +0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <0IPX00K0ICAGT7D8@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPX00K0ICAGT7D8@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On 11/14/05, Allison wrote: > > > > > >Can't resist... really, when _ALL_ else fails, ex. > > Did you mean ED??? That loathsome excuse for a tool! > I'd rather hurt myself before using that. Scratch that. > Every time I've used it, I did hurt myself. Did you hurt yourself using ed or ex? :-) Just to clarify... From wh.sudbrink at verizon.net Sun Nov 13 21:10:41 2005 From: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net (Bill Sudbrink) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:10:41 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <0IPX00K0ICAGT7D8@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: Allison wrote: > Bill Sudbrink wrote: > >Allison wrote: > > > >> First choice when all else fails, vi. > > > >Can't resist... really, when _ALL_ else fails, ex. > > Did you mean ED??? That loathsome excuse for a tool! > I'd rather hurt myself before using that. Scratch that. > Every time I've used it, I did hurt myself. Uh, no, I meant ex, the line level editor that runs under vi. When you can't even get vi to run right (termcaps messed up or, in one case I experienced, most control characters being filtered/screwed up between me and the system I was trying to edit a text file on) give ex a try. From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 21:17:50 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:17:50 -0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 10:10 PM Bill Sudbrink wrote: >Uh, no, I meant ex, the line level editor that runs under vi. >When you can't even get vi to run right (termcaps messed up >or, in one case I experienced, most control characters being >filtered/screwed up between me and the system I was trying to >edit a text file on) give ex a try. Wonder if TECO was ever ported to Linux? From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 21:19:34 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:19:34 -0800 Subject: Tandy 1400 LT In-Reply-To: <000601c5e87f$2f470000$42a60ecf@f9n8b5> References: <000601c5e87f$2f470000$42a60ecf@f9n8b5> Message-ID: <200511131919340031.16CB0FAB@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 10:22 AM George Sickler wrote: >HI , i hope this is a ok adress , i think that 4 yrs is a bit much i >bought a tandy 1400 lt and >it works fine ... when i try to format a disk , i get a 360 not the 720 >???? >, >i have and old ibm lt that willl make 720 that the tandy will use ok , >so what gives >thanks george Have you tried format a: /n:9/t:80 --Chuck From waisun.chia at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 21:31:22 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:31:22 +0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/14/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/13/2005 at 10:10 PM Bill Sudbrink wrote: > > >Uh, no, I meant ex, the line level editor that runs under vi. > >When you can't even get vi to run right (termcaps messed up > >or, in one case I experienced, most control characters being > >filtered/screwed up between me and the system I was trying to > >edit a text file on) give ex a try. > > Wonder if TECO was ever ported to Linux? > I just said that it is, if you've read my reply a couple of posts back. Anyway, here you go. Knock yourself out! :-) It runs on DOS, NT/2K/XP?, *nix, and poised to replace vi as the standard Unix editor. :-0 http://almy.us/teco.html From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 21:33:43 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:33:43 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPX004BFDV3U2S7@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Ultrix for DECstations > From: "Bill Sudbrink" > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:10:41 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Allison wrote: >> Bill Sudbrink wrote: >> >Allison wrote: >> > >> >> First choice when all else fails, vi. >> > >> >Can't resist... really, when _ALL_ else fails, ex. >> >> Did you mean ED??? That loathsome excuse for a tool! >> I'd rather hurt myself before using that. Scratch that. >> Every time I've used it, I did hurt myself. > >Uh, no, I meant ex, the line level editor that runs under vi. >When you can't even get vi to run right (termcaps messed up >or, in one case I experienced, most control characters being >filtered/screwed up between me and the system I was trying to >edit a text file on) give ex a try. OH! Yes I've done that with good success. ED (CP/M {ED}, DOS{EDLIN}) is their very unadorned line editors designed to inflict pain. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 21:39:17 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:39:17 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPX000J8E4DKRV1@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Ultrix for DECstations > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:17:50 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/13/2005 at 10:10 PM Bill Sudbrink wrote: > >>Uh, no, I meant ex, the line level editor that runs under vi. >>When you can't even get vi to run right (termcaps messed up >>or, in one case I experienced, most control characters being >>filtered/screwed up between me and the system I was trying to >>edit a text file on) give ex a try. > >Wonder if TECO was ever ported to Linux? I'd wonder what TECO wasnt ported to. Then there are editors that while not TECO understand TECO macros at the command level. Allison From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sun Nov 13 21:42:54 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:42:54 -0600 Subject: Information requested on Vector Graphics machine In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <005d01c5e8cd$82128a40$6a01a8c0@Gils6240> We have a boatload of VG stuff from a long time ago reseller. Lots of docs and probably some someftware. Unfortunately, we only have it checked in to the museum & have not attacked it. Look on the back & see if you can find a model number. Most of their systems were S-100 bus and related and were used in normal business applications. The attached device was most likely a floppy or parallel printer. A graphics terminal is unlikely, I think. You can probably tell more by looking for marks on the card it attaches to, the cable or the connector. One of them appears to have some writing on it. Gil > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of JP Hindin > Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 2:32 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Information requested on Vector Graphics machine > > > Greetings folks; > > So last night during the tornado watch in Iowa I was muddling > about in my basement with my wife (Seated listening to the > radio) and rediscovering the treasure trove of Good Stuff I > have stored down there. ... From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 13 21:48:19 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:48:19 -0700 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43780903.6010206@jetnet.ab.ca> Bill Sudbrink wrote: >Allison wrote: > > > >>First choice when all else fails, vi. >> >> > >Can't resist... really, when _ALL_ else fails, ex. > > > I hate vd ... er vi. I like le myself. t.com for dos. Right now I am using edit in XP. It comes with windows but for some reason they don't push 80x24 text displays. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Nov 13 21:56:53 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:56:53 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPX00K3PEXPT8Q7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations > From: woodelf > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:48:19 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Bill Sudbrink wrote: > >am using >edit in XP. It comes with windows but for some reason they don't push >80x24 text displays. I'd forgotton that beast. For laughs I opened a dos box on the NT4 system and typed edit... lo and behold it's there! Allison From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 21:59:08 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 19:59:08 -0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511131959080797.16EF4BD2@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 11:31 AM Wai-Sun Chia wrote: >I just said that it is, if you've read my reply a couple of posts back. >Anyway, here you go. Knock yourself out! :-) >It runs on DOS, NT/2K/XP?, *nix, and poised to replace vi as the >standard Unix editor. :-0 Sorry, the out-of-order posts on this list can get to be confusing, particularly if you're not following a topic closely. --Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 13 22:11:18 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:11:18 -0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <43780903.6010206@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <43780903.6010206@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511132011180568.16FA6E67@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 8:48 PM woodelf wrote: >I hate vd ... er vi. I like le myself. t.com for dos. Right now I >am using >edit in XP. It comes with windows but for some reason they don't push >80x24 text displays. I'm still using a WYSIWYG text editor that I copied from an issue of Microcomputing. It's been modified and ported to a number of platforms; it's very small (just shy of 12K in x86 and smaller in x80). The last change I made to the version that I'm currently using was to support long file names in Windoze. I''m guessing a bit, but I suspect that I've been using it in excess of 25 years. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 13 22:13:28 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:13:28 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511131929.35175.kenziem@sympatico.ca> <4377DCB4.4040809@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <43780EE8.3060702@jetnet.ab.ca> Wai-Sun Chia wrote: >Well, depends on how small is small... >Is a Motorola Dragonball small (M68EZ328)? uclinux runs on that. Or >how about H8? >Check out http://www.uclinux.org for a MMU-less variant.. > >If your "small" must be 8-bit, then there's always uCos, and a bunch >of other RTOSes... > > > For myself a C style compiler would be nice, but I am developing a 18 bit computer here. Ok today I am mostly answering email on the list. Unix #1 would be great to port but that is still AT&T code with all the software rights to it since the basic PDP 11 only had 24Kb of memory. http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/hist.html >. > > For current 8 bit wide machines you have a lot of software but most of looks to be cross development stuff. That is my complaint but I can understand it since windows and macs and unix came to take the majority of the software used. From wayne.smith at charter.net Sun Nov 13 22:39:46 2005 From: wayne.smith at charter.net (Wayne Smith) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:39:46 -0800 Subject: === IBM 5110 / 5120 terminator === In-Reply-To: <200511122211.jACMB4Io040052@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <000701c5e8d5$7152ff70$6701a8c0@Wayne> > Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:36:34 +0100 > From: "Frederic BOSSU" > Subject: === IBM 5110 / 5120 terminator === > To: > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Hi ! > > Could anyone give me the REAL pin assignment of the > terminator used on the IBM 5110 / 5120 systems ? > > Has anyone build such a terminator ? > > I tried to build one and I'm fed up with getting always the > same error : I can obtain the file list (using basic command > UTIL DIR,D80 or UTIL DIR,D40) but 5 seconds after giving me > the file list, the systems blocks, the promt disappeared and > I must restard all... No led is lightning on the > pannel...Sometimes I get the 24 or 26 error code (''diskette > error...''is only said in my reference manual : what a help !). > > Very strange diagnostic... > > Thanks for your help ;-) > > Fred. > I have scanned the two pages from the 5120 MIM that address the pinouts. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any trouble reading this - the pages did not scan that well. http://webpages.charter.net/jpepperman/5120InterfaceCable.pdf -W From pechter at gmail.com Sun Nov 13 22:39:17 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:39:17 -0500 Subject: teco for Linux In-Reply-To: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437814F5.5030704@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/13/2005 at 10:10 PM Bill Sudbrink wrote: > > > >>Uh, no, I meant ex, the line level editor that runs under vi. >>When you can't even get vi to run right (termcaps messed up >>or, in one case I experienced, most control characters being >>filtered/screwed up between me and the system I was trying to >>edit a text file on) give ex a try. >> >> > >Wonder if TECO was ever ported to Linux? > > > > > > Well... not Linux -- but Unix in general. Hit google for teco and Unix and source and you hit a number of versions. Pete Siemsen had one http://sunsite.tus.ac.jp/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/teco/tecoc-146/ This directory contains TECO-C, a version of TECO written in C. It was written in C so the author could move comfortably from VAX/VMS to various other machines, including MicroVaxes, which couldn't execute TECO-11 prior to VMS 5.0 because they don't support PDP-11 compatibility mode. TECO32, distributed with v5.0, solved this problem. And there are others... http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sources/editors/teco.php http://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/usenet/comp.sources.unix/volume9/teco/ From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sun Nov 13 23:01:01 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:01:01 -0600 Subject: SunOS for SPARC 2 Message-ID: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> Sun still has them(patches for SunOS)- just a bit difficult to get at http://access1.sun.com/patch.y2k/ will get you y2k and security patches back to "Solaris SPARC 1.0" as they call it I'm running 4.1.3_U1 with all patches-not on a public network- is that O.K.? What bennies are in 4.1.4? From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sun Nov 13 23:04:40 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:04:40 -0600 Subject: ULTRIX on DECstations Message-ID: People who are interested in putting ULTRIX on their DECstation/VAX might want to look at the resources put up at http://www.xanthos.se/~joachim/, especially the page at http://www.xanthos.se/~joachim/linx.html, possibly work out some cooperative to conserve bandwidth, . . . From fmc at reanimators.org Sun Nov 13 23:43:13 2005 From: fmc at reanimators.org (Frank McConnell) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:43:13 -0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: (Bill Sudbrink's message of "Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:50:14 -0500") References: Message-ID: <200511140543.jAE5hDDD024114@lots.reanimators.org> Bill Sudbrink wrote: > Allison wrote: >> First choice when all else fails, vi. > > Can't resist... really, when _ALL_ else fails, ex. ex is in /usr/bin. When _ALL_ else fails, /usr/bin is offline. Thus, when _ALL_ else fails, ed, which is in /bin. And don't forget about cat and echo (also in /bin). -Frank McConnell From lists at dso.ath.cx Mon Nov 14 00:08:50 2005 From: lists at dso.ath.cx (tcccp) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:08:50 +0100 Subject: teco for Linux In-Reply-To: <437814F5.5030704@gmail.com> References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> <437814F5.5030704@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20051114060850.GA20891@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> Hi guys! TECO runs fine with Linux on G3/500 PowerPC processors! Never had any problems compiling/using it. It just kicks ass O:-) Lukas -- DECADENCE IS: USING A CORDLESS PHONE TO HOOK IT UP TO YOUR ACOUSTIC COUPLER ASCII Ribbon campaign against /"\ e-mail in gratuitous HTML and \ / Microsoft proprietary formats X / \ From fmc at reanimators.org Mon Nov 14 00:13:37 2005 From: fmc at reanimators.org (Frank McConnell) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:13:37 -0800 Subject: Brands you never hear much about In-Reply-To: <200511122334280770.128E17A0@10.0.0.252> (Chuck Guzis's message of "Sat, 12 Nov 2005 23:34:28 -0800") References: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> <200511130634.jAD6YOO3094658@lots.reanimators.org> <200511122334280770.128E17A0@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511140613.jAE6Db7W024637@lots.reanimators.org> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/12/2005 at 10:34 PM Frank McConnell wrote: > >>They also had a reasonably effective copy-protection scheme... > > From the sound of it, it seems like a customer had to buy ALL of their > software from Fortune. That's pretty sneaky! As I understand it, it was a bit more careful than that. Fortune offered this as a service -- if you wanted this sort of copy protection for your software, Fortune could do it for you. But if you didn't, the binaries coming out of ld were unencrypted and could be copied to other 32:16s where they would work OK. The other side of more careful is that if you were running an encrypted executable, when it got swapped out the swapper would encrypt the code on the way to the swap disk and decrypt it on the way back in. I guess they weren't too worried about winning the benchmark game. -Frank McConnell From fireflyst at earthlink.net Mon Nov 14 00:17:40 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:17:40 -0600 Subject: Atari ST Ephemera In-Reply-To: <200511131316280233.157EA572@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <000c01c5e8e3$1e9f3e20$6401a8c0@dementium> I'm part of a small (and still proudly going) Atari-only user group in Chicago. I'd be happy to scan that stuff and make it available on our web site at http://www.scatarians.org. If you want to send it to me for archival, let me know. Thanks Julian -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 3:16 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Atari ST Ephemera More prowling around yields more stuff... I've discovered that I've got the full set of developer's documentation for the Atari ST (regular and Mega) from around 1988 or so. This is a thick hunk of paper--I kept it in 2 3-inch binders and one 1 1/2" one. It includes Volume 1, No. 1 and No.2 of the "Atari Forum" newsletter. It's got lots of stuff about programming under GEM and TOS, datasheets for the various components, engineering documents, Q&A's for developers, etc. IOW, everything a ST software developer might ever need. I don't think that I ever did anything with this after I unpacked it. The material is in pristine condition. I don't think that the NDA that I signed as part of this deal is in effect, so I believe that I can pass it on without fear of whoever now owns the Atari IP and licenses getting their revenge on me. Is this worth anything or is this curbside recycling material? Cheers, Chuck From tequilizer at gmx.net Sun Nov 13 17:50:21 2005 From: tequilizer at gmx.net (Tequi Lizer) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:50:21 +0100 Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4377D13D.2000507@gmx.net> > > Hmm... There's no way I can get to the 9845 to power it up until I've got > various other things off the bench :-(. And I think my tape drives need > new rollers (too many projects, too little time :-)). > For all those 9845 user's, a roller shop would really roll ;-) > At a guess, I would assume it looked at the tape drives only after it had > got the memory test completed, alas. > > -tony > > > The same for me, I'll be busy during the next two weeks. Let's see whether the new HPCC CD will be out then. --Ansgar From csmuseum at cse.uta.edu Sun Nov 13 21:31:01 2005 From: csmuseum at cse.uta.edu (Director) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:31:01 -0600 Subject: local demolition of SAGE building In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <005c01c5e8cb$db2fdf80$6a01a8c0@Gils6240> Per your reply, I am reminding you of my interest in a submini tube for our museum. Gil ... > > I used to have a handful of those submini tubes but I can't > find one > > now. If anybody has a spare, even a dead one, that they > could send us > > it would be nice to have one on display. Right now the only > tube era > > parts we have are a core plane and an IBM tube circuit with > a bunch of > > miniature tubes - mostly > > 9 pin. The rectifier had been replaced at some point with a solid > > state component that plugged in a 9-pin socket. > > I have a few - remind me later to send one. > > William Donzelli > aw288 at osfn.org > > From gcarrick at cse.uta.edu Sun Nov 13 21:46:54 2005 From: gcarrick at cse.uta.edu (A. G. Carrick) Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 21:46:54 -0600 Subject: IBM 029 or 129 Message-ID: <005e01c5e8ce$14de09d0$6a01a8c0@Gils6240> This auction was some time ago, but this guys sells all kinds of Unit Record stuff. I think he is in Texas. Gil > -----Original Message----- > From: Lafley77517 at aol.com [mailto:Lafley77517 at aol.com] > Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2004 1:02 AM > To: gilcarrick at comcast.net > Subject: Re: Question for seller -- Item #2784239371 > > As a general rule older IBM keypunch machines cost more and > are in worst condition. I can sell you a 1971 129 keypunch > in good working condition for $2,000.00 plus shipping or a > 1949 24 or 26 keypunch would cost you $3,000.00 and may not > be in as good condition. A 1965 29 keypunch would be > somewhere in between. > > Thanks for asking, > > Duwayne Lafley > From Useddec at aol.com Mon Nov 14 01:02:15 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 02:02:15 EST Subject: local demolition of SAGE building Message-ID: <1e0.48ece85f.30a99077@aol.com> Hi, I missed that one- Which SAGE is being demolished? I used tok in one of them. Thanks, Paul From Useddec at aol.com Mon Nov 14 01:38:37 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 02:38:37 EST Subject: Was Ultrix for DECstations -- now DEC advances Message-ID: <9b.6cbc406f.30a998fd@aol.com> Hi, Did you want a DECmate I, II , or III? Thanks, Paul From henk.gooijen at oce.com Mon Nov 14 02:06:51 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:06:51 +0100 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Allison wrote: > Everyone has done the PC emulating whatever. Why not take a > single chip micro and use that to emulate another micro as > hardware? Same idea maybe slow but for a lot of things speed > is not the whole world. > I did it on paper for PDP8 and it was possible using an 11mhz > 8049 to come within 1/10 the speed of a real 8. I guess a > 36bit machine could be done as well (though really slow.). > Also a front pannel could be programmed into it as well > (maybe a speed hit). Any cpu that gets an instruction from > memory and then executes it can be emulated that way. 1/10 the speed of a real PDP8? Really? That is fast indeed! My emulation of a PDP8, running on a 68B09 (at 2 MHz) gets to approx 1/60 of the real thing. I measured that by running some diagnostics. The diag says "bell rings after approx 5 seconds), and timed how long it took on my 68B09... I am sure that when I remove the front panel code things run faster. The front panel requires time to update. But running the emulation without the front panel is no fun. - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 14 02:10:12 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:10:12 -0800 Subject: Brands you never hear much about In-Reply-To: <200511140613.jAE6Db7W024637@lots.reanimators.org> References: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> <200511130634.jAD6YOO3094658@lots.reanimators.org> <200511122334280770.128E17A0@10.0.0.252> <200511140613.jAE6Db7W024637@lots.reanimators.org> Message-ID: <200511140010120768.17D525B2@10.0.0.252> On 11/13/2005 at 10:13 PM Frank McConnell wrote: >The other side of more careful is that if you were running an >encrypted executable, when it got swapped out the swapper would >encrypt the code on the way to the swap disk and decrypt it on the way >back in. I guess they weren't too worried about winning the benchmark >game. All of that seems to be pretty paranoid for the time. How many 68K Unix systems were around that could even use the stuff? They must have thought that they'd cover the world in their boxes. I'm trying to recall--this was before AT&T got really predatory in their Unix per-user-license pricing wasn't it? Basically, you paid your money and they sent you a tape that would work on a PDP-11, right? Cheers, Chuck From bert at brothom.nl Mon Nov 14 04:23:15 2005 From: bert at brothom.nl (Bert Thomas) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:23:15 +0100 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <43786593.5060804@brothom.nl> > of source to a small machine. Minux was a nice try but it lacked a C > Compiler. Small C went Minix does not only include a C compiler, it now even includes the sources of its C compiler. The compiler is called the ACK compiler, short for Amsterdam Compiler Kit. From version 3 onwards, drivers are supposed to run in userland. This has to lead to an extremely reliable OS. There are lots of (other) improvements made to version 3. Bert From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 14 06:17:47 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:17:47 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <0IPY006YK24DDW39@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Ultrix for DECstations > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 20:11:18 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/13/2005 at 8:48 PM woodelf wrote: > >>I hate vd ... er vi. I like le myself. t.com for dos. Right now I >>am using >>edit in XP. It comes with windows but for some reason they don't push >>80x24 text displays. > >I'm still using a WYSIWYG text editor that I copied from an issue of >Microcomputing. It's been modified and ported to a number of platforms; >it's very small (just shy of 12K in x86 and smaller in x80). The last >change I made to the version that I'm currently using was to support long >file names in Windoze. I''m guessing a bit, but I suspect that I've been >using it in excess of 25 years. > >Cheers, >Chuck Never saw the article, likely before I was getting Microsystems. Is the source for the 8080/z80 version anywhere on line? Allison From jbglaw at lug-owl.de Mon Nov 14 06:35:05 2005 From: jbglaw at lug-owl.de (Jan-Benedict Glaw) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:35:05 +0100 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <0IPX00BQ5CFN04V4@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPX00BQ5CFN04V4@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051114123505.GB31862@lug-owl.de> On Sun, 2005-11-13 22:02:51 -0500, Allison wrote: > >Extracted from the FAQ: > >http://linux-vax.sourceforge.net/newfaq/newfaq.html > > Yes! Finally. I'd been looking at the linix will be on VAX > for over 10 years and it's finally comming around. If you like, you'd work on the web pages. I try to update the "News" page every now and then, but I admit I regulary forget about it... MfG, JBG -- Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de . +49-172-7608481 _ O _ "Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg _ _ O f?r einen Freien Staat voll Freier B?rger" | im Internet! | im Irak! O O O ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(NEW_COPYRIGHT_LAW | DRM | TCPA)); From jbglaw at lug-owl.de Mon Nov 14 06:36:44 2005 From: jbglaw at lug-owl.de (Jan-Benedict Glaw) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:36:44 +0100 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <0IPX00K6SBZTT8L7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPX00K6SBZTT8L7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051114123644.GC31862@lug-owl.de> On Sun, 2005-11-13 21:53:21 -0500, Allison wrote: > >http://linux-vax.sourceforge.net/newfaq/newfaq.html > > This is fairly recent as last I looked (2 years ago) the page > was mostly blank. :-) Sometimes, we actually don't forget to update the News page. MfG, JBG -- Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de . +49-172-7608481 _ O _ "Eine Freie Meinung in einem Freien Kopf | Gegen Zensur | Gegen Krieg _ _ O f?r einen Freien Staat voll Freier B?rger" | im Internet! | im Irak! O O O ret = do_actions((curr | FREE_SPEECH) & ~(NEW_COPYRIGHT_LAW | DRM | TCPA)); From psand at mac.com Mon Nov 14 07:06:24 2005 From: psand at mac.com (Per Sandstrom) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:06:24 +0100 Subject: SunOS for SPARC 2 In-Reply-To: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> Nice to find someone who still runs SunOS 4.1.x out there... compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > I'm running 4.1.3_U1 with all patches-not on a public network- > is that O.K.? What bennies are in 4.1.4? Quoting from the Solaris 1.1.2 (SunOS 4.1.4) cardboard box: "Solaris 1.1.2 includes the following features: - Integrated support for the performance enhanced Sun HyperSPARC(TM) CPU module on MBus, uniprocessor SPARCstation 10 and SPARCstation 20 series systems - Integrated improvements to support SPARCstation 5, including audio support and cg6 framebuffer support - A software upgrade from SunOS 4.1.x to SunOS 4.1.4 and an updated version of OpenWindows containing over 75 of the latest OpenWindows bug fixes - Integration of over 100 key operating system bug fixes to the Solaris 1.1.1 version B release" Even though it officially only supports uniprocessor MBus machines, I run 4.1.4 on a SS10 with 2 x 142 MHz hyperSPARCs. It works like a charm and feels quicker than anything else. Per From CPUMECH at aol.com Mon Nov 14 07:58:42 2005 From: CPUMECH at aol.com (CPUMECH at aol.com) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 08:58:42 EST Subject: LA210 Schematics Message-ID: <230.137c80e.30a9f212@aol.com> Repaired quite a few of these. Change the large electrolytic caps in the power supply. They're probably dead. From jrice54 at blackcube.org Mon Nov 14 08:21:54 2005 From: jrice54 at blackcube.org (James Rice) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 08:21:54 -0600 Subject: SunOS for SPARC 2 In-Reply-To: <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> Message-ID: <43789D82.6090204@blackcube.org> Per Sandstrom wrote: > Nice to find someone who still runs SunOS 4.1.x out there... > > compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > >> I'm running 4.1.3_U1 with all patches-not on a public network- is >> that O.K.? What bennies are in 4.1.4? > > > Quoting from the Solaris 1.1.2 (SunOS 4.1.4) cardboard box: > > > > > Is there a crossreference chart between SunOS version numbers to Solaris versions? I'm a bit confused as to exactly what fits where. -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 14 08:40:01 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:40:01 -0500 Subject: DEC 3000-300x firmware upgrade In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4378A1C1.2000108@gmail.com> Gary Sparkes wrote: > I've got a DEC 3000-300X (ALPHA! ALPHA!) that I want to run VMS 7.3 on, but > I need to do a firmware update. I have a bootp boot image file, but I've not > a clue how to set up what I need to do to run it. Anyone able to point me in > a good direction? http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/html_single/DHCP.html Peace... Sridhar From pkoning at equallogic.com Mon Nov 14 08:47:42 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:47:42 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs References: <0IPV00KVQ4PRTE35@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <17272.41870.56000.331396@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: >> Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs From: William Donzelli >> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:00:10 -0500 (EST) To: >> "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >> >> >> I use a solder pot, filled, so the miniscus (sp?) allows me to >> just place the board on the rim of the pot, and all the pads melt >> nicely. It took me some time to fine tune the setup, but it works >> very well. I may never go back to the torch. Allison> That is by far the best method and also excellent for board Allison> you really don't want to cook (as in ones you fix). I would think the best -- if you can find the machinery -- is standard rework tools. It seems the standard tool nowadays is a hot air machine with nozzles shaped to fit the part to be removed. If you can find a surplus one (new ones are pretty expensive) that would be worth grabbing... paul From pkoning at equallogic.com Mon Nov 14 08:59:40 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:59:40 -0500 Subject: MSCP SCSI controller speed on UNIBUS References: <43769E8F.5030507@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <17272.42588.42000.726034@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "9000" == 9000 VAX writes: 9000> On 11/12/05, Don North wrote: >> And for yucks on a UNIBUS 11/44 running 2.11BSD dd bs=16384 >> count=1000: >> >> >>EMULEX UC-18 0.585 MB/s not tested target is ST32550N >> 0.245 >> MB/s not tested targer is RRD43 CDROM 9000> Thank you. I came up a way to speed up the controller. It is 9000> overlapped execution, just like what CVAX chips do. What does CVAX have to do with it? Overlapped execution has been a standard way to get high speed I/O for a very long time. Almost all computers support it (weirdos like the IBM 1620 excepted). paul From wh.sudbrink at verizon.net Mon Nov 14 09:21:20 2005 From: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net (Bill Sudbrink) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:21:20 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <200511140543.jAE5hDDD024114@lots.reanimators.org> Message-ID: Frank McConnell wrote: > Bill Sudbrink wrote: > > Allison wrote: > >> First choice when all else fails, vi. > > > > Can't resist... really, when _ALL_ else fails, ex. > > ex is in /usr/bin. When _ALL_ else fails, /usr/bin is offline. Thus, > when _ALL_ else fails, ed, which is in /bin. And don't forget about > cat and echo (also in /bin). Yea, you're right. The only reason I was on this at all is because, from time to time, I have to work in OMVS under TSO using a 3270 emulator. I just can't get vi usable in this... environment? configuration? circumstance? whatever, so I fall back to ex. From jrice54 at vzavenue.net Mon Nov 14 09:31:46 2005 From: jrice54 at vzavenue.net (James Rice) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:31:46 -0600 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <17272.41870.56000.331396@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <0IPV00KVQ4PRTE35@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <17272.41870.56000.331396@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <4378ADE2.6050002@vzavenue.net> Paul Koning wrote: >>>>>>"Allison" == Allison writes: >>>>>> >>>>>> > > >> Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs From: William Donzelli > >> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:00:10 -0500 (EST) To: > >> "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> > >> > >> > >> I use a solder pot, filled, so the miniscus (sp?) allows me to > >> just place the board on the rim of the pot, and all the pads melt > >> nicely. It took me some time to fine tune the setup, but it works > >> very well. I may never go back to the torch. > > Allison> That is by far the best method and also excellent for board > Allison> you really don't want to cook (as in ones you fix). > >I would think the best -- if you can find the machinery -- is standard >rework tools. It seems the standard tool nowadays is a hot air >machine with nozzles shaped to fit the part to be removed. If you can >find a surplus one (new ones are pretty expensive) that would be worth >grabbing... > > paul > > > > I picked up a Hakko 850 in primo condition for $125 on eBay. -- www.blackcube.org The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers From brad at heeltoe.com Mon Nov 14 09:34:13 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:34:13 -0500 Subject: (pdp8) anyone assemble focal on {u,li}nix? Message-ID: <200511141534.jAEFYDVw001520@mwave.heeltoe.com> Has anyone successfully assembled pdp-8 focal with one of the unix pal's? I was fooling around and grabbed the focal sources and pal. I had to fix a few minor things but I got it to assemble. But it doesn't run. Just curious if anyone else had tried this. I suppose I could fire up tss/8 and run pald :-) Does tss/8 run on any of the emulators? (but then, hmm.. how to get the output back off the virtual disk) ok, os/8 might be a better choice... is focal known to build cleanly there? -brad From curt at atarimuseum.com Mon Nov 14 09:41:14 2005 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:41:14 -0500 Subject: Atari ST Ephemera In-Reply-To: <000c01c5e8e3$1e9f3e20$6401a8c0@dementium> References: <000c01c5e8e3$1e9f3e20$6401a8c0@dementium> Message-ID: <4378B01A.90205@atarimuseum.com> Much of the ST dev docs are already up in the Atari Museum in the Document Archives: www.atarimuseum.com Curt Julian Wolfe wrote: >I'm part of a small (and still proudly going) Atari-only user group in >Chicago. I'd be happy to scan that stuff and make it available on our web >site at http://www.scatarians.org. > >If you want to send it to me for archival, let me know. > >Thanks > >Julian > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis >Sent: Sunday, November 13, 2005 3:16 PM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: Atari ST Ephemera > >More prowling around yields more stuff... > >I've discovered that I've got the full set of developer's documentation for >the Atari ST (regular and Mega) from around 1988 or so. This is a thick >hunk of paper--I kept it in 2 3-inch binders and one 1 1/2" one. It >includes Volume 1, No. 1 and No.2 of the "Atari Forum" newsletter. > >It's got lots of stuff about programming under GEM and TOS, datasheets for >the various components, engineering documents, Q&A's for developers, etc. >IOW, everything a ST software developer might ever need. > >I don't think that I ever did anything with this after I unpacked it. The >material is in pristine condition. > >I don't think that the NDA that I signed as part of this deal is in effect, >so I believe that I can pass it on without fear of whoever now owns the >Atari IP and licenses getting their revenge on me. > >Is this worth anything or is this curbside recycling material? > >Cheers, >Chuck > > > > > > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 11/11/2005 From pechter at gmail.com Mon Nov 14 10:08:44 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:08:44 -0500 Subject: SunOS for SPARC 2 In-Reply-To: <43789D82.6090204@blackcube.org> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> <43789D82.6090204@blackcube.org> Message-ID: <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> James Rice wrote: > Per Sandstrom wrote: > >> Nice to find someone who still runs SunOS 4.1.x out there... >> >> compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: >> >>> I'm running 4.1.3_U1 with all patches-not on a public network- is >>> that O.K.? What bennies are in 4.1.4? >> >> >> >> Quoting from the Solaris 1.1.2 (SunOS 4.1.4) cardboard box: >> >> >> >> >> > Is there a crossreference chart between SunOS version numbers to > Solaris versions? I'm a bit confused as to exactly what fits where. > It's Something like: Solaris 1.x -> SunOS 4.1.something. SunOS 4.1.3 = OpenWindows = Solaris 1.1.1 SunOS 4.1.2 = OpenWindows = Solaris 1.1.2 SunOS 5.1 = Solaris 2.1 SunOS 5.2 = Solaris 2.2 SunOS 5.3 = Solaris 2.3 SunOS 5.4 = Solaris 2.4 SunOS 5.5 = Solaris 2.5 SunOS 5.6 = Solaris 2.6 SunOS 5.7 = Solaris 2.7 SunOS 5.8 = Solaris 2.8 SunOS 5.9 = Solaris 9 Solaris 5.10? = Solaris 10? OpenSolaris x = ? From pechter at gmail.com Mon Nov 14 10:11:17 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:11:17 -0500 Subject: Brands you never hear much about In-Reply-To: <200511140010120768.17D525B2@10.0.0.252> References: <200511121036170478.0FC5A956@10.0.0.252> <200511130634.jAD6YOO3094658@lots.reanimators.org> <200511122334280770.128E17A0@10.0.0.252> <200511140613.jAE6Db7W024637@lots.reanimators.org> <200511140010120768.17D525B2@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4378B725.80506@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/13/2005 at 10:13 PM Frank McConnell wrote: > > > >>The other side of more careful is that if you were running an >>encrypted executable, when it got swapped out the swapper would >>encrypt the code on the way to the swap disk and decrypt it on the way >>back in. I guess they weren't too worried about winning the benchmark >>game. >> >> > >All of that seems to be pretty paranoid for the time. How many 68K Unix >systems were around that could even use the stuff? They must have thought >that they'd cover the world in their boxes. > > More than you'd think could run it since most used the Unisoft port as the starting point so if it wasn't hardware specific you'd probably be lucky. At worst it was a recompile and relink. >I'm trying to recall--this was before AT&T got really predatory in their >Unix per-user-license pricing wasn't it? Basically, you paid your money >and they sent you a tape that would work on a PDP-11, right? > > > That's a bit earlier. I think System III was out and SysV was pretty much coming by this time. Actually, SysV barely ran on a PDP11 and you really needed a Vax to do anything. >Cheers, >Chuck > > > > Bill From vp at cs.drexel.edu Mon Nov 14 10:31:29 2005 From: vp at cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:31:29 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations Message-ID: <20051114163129.BEFD82010422@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Allison wrote: > I'd forgotton that beast. For laughs I opened a dos box on the NT4 system > and typed edit... lo and behold it's there! Even EDLIN is still there! (at least in NT 4.0 and Win2k). **vp From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 14 10:43:56 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:43:56 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <20051114163129.BEFD82010422@mail.cs.drexel.edu> References: <20051114163129.BEFD82010422@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Message-ID: <4378BECC.7040804@gmail.com> Vassilis Prevelakis wrote: > Allison wrote: > >>I'd forgotton that beast. For laughs I opened a dos box on the NT4 system >>and typed edit... lo and behold it's there! > > Even EDLIN is still there! (at least in NT 4.0 and Win2k). And in XP too. Peace... Sridhar From vcf at siconic.com Mon Nov 14 10:41:09 2005 From: vcf at siconic.com (Vintage Computer Festival) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 08:41:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: Seeking to buy early 4004, 8008 and 8080 Message-ID: I'm seeking early Intel 4004, 8008 and 8080 chips. The earliest runs had no date codes, so I'd like specimens with no date codes which will at least confirm they are from the 1971-1974 timeframe (Intel began stamping chips with date codes in 1974). This is for a project I'm working on, and I am only interested in a sale (sorry, no trades). If you want me to read your message, please send replies directly to me. Thanks! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ] From a.macdonald+classiccmp at slitesys.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 14 10:48:22 2005 From: a.macdonald+classiccmp at slitesys.demon.co.uk (Alistair MacDonald) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:48:22 +0000 Subject: SunOS/Solaris naming (was Re: SunOS for SPARC 2) In-Reply-To: <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> <43789D82.6090204@blackcube.org> <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4378BFD6.3090300@slitesys.demon.co.uk> Bill Pechter wrote: > James Rice wrote: [...] >> Is there a crossreference chart between SunOS version numbers to >> Solaris versions? I'm a bit confused as to exactly what fits where. >> > It's Something like: > [...] > SunOS 5.7 = Solaris 2.7 This was officially known as Solaris 7 and marked the change in the naming (yet again) Alistair From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 14 11:08:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:08:46 -0800 Subject: Atari ST Ephemera In-Reply-To: <4378B01A.90205@atarimuseum.com> References: <000c01c5e8e3$1e9f3e20$6401a8c0@dementium> <4378B01A.90205@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <200511140908460077.19C23937@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 10:41 AM Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: >Much of the ST dev docs are already up in the Atari Museum in the >Document Archives: > > >www.atarimuseum.com Can you point to a specific URL? I see no ST pecific technical documents up in the archives. Just documents for the 2600, 5200, etc. Cheers, Chuck From pspan at amerytel.net Mon Nov 14 11:04:13 2005 From: pspan at amerytel.net (Phil Spanner) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:04:13 -0600 Subject: DEC Boards Message-ID: <001d01c5e93d$7037a920$0a01a8c0@airstreamcomm.net> Good morning to all, I am finally starting to scrap out my Telcom equipment. Here is a list (so far) of a few of the boards available: 20 ea M7270 processors 5 ea M8045 memories 3 ea M8028 RX 02 int. 2 ea SMS 8" disk int. PN # 0003770-0001 2 ea M8186 processors I would assume condition to be BAD. Most of these boards have been sitting around for 10 years without power. I am going to price the boards out at $ 2.00 each to cover shipping and handling. If you are only interested in one board then I will probably charge more. If no one is interested in the boards, into the scrap box they will go.... Phil From psand at mac.com Mon Nov 14 11:11:51 2005 From: psand at mac.com (Per Sandstrom) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:11:51 +0100 Subject: SunOS for SPARC 2 In-Reply-To: <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> <43789D82.6090204@blackcube.org> <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4378C557.4020005@mac.com> There is a pretty good SunOS-Solaris version chart at http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/solaris/versions/ James Rice wrote: > Is there a crossreference chart between SunOS version > numbers to Solaris versions? I'm a bit confused as to > exactly what fits where. Slow user acceptance of Solaris 2 forced Sun to maintain the original BSD-based SunOS in parallell until November 1994. Solaris 1.0 = SunOS 4.1.1 + OpenWindows V2 (1990) Solaris 1.0.1 = SunOS 4.1.2 + OpenWindows V2 (1991) Solaris 1.1 = SunOS 4.1.3 + OpenWindows V3 (1992) Solaris 1.1.1 = SunOS 4.1.3_U1 + OpenWindows V3 (1993) Solaris 1.1.2 = SunOS 4.1.4 + OpenWindows V3 (1994) When the final SunOS 4.1.4 version was released, Solaris 2 was already at its fourth revision (Solaris 2.3). OpenWindows V1 was never bundled with SunOS, AFAIK. Per From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 14 11:30:12 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:30:12 -0800 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <0IPY006YK24DDW39@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPY006YK24DDW39@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511140930120754.19D5DB59@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 7:17 AM Allison wrote: >Never saw the article, likely before I was getting Microsystems. Is >the source for the 8080/z80 version anywhere on line? Heck, I don't even remember what it was called. I can dig up my oldest source (8080 under CP/M) from my archives and email it to you. I'm not sure how close it is to the original, however. Cheers, Chuck From dwight.elvey at amd.com Mon Nov 14 11:32:31 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 09:32:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <200511141732.JAA04614@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Allison" > >> >>Subject: removing parts from PCBs >> From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com >> Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 20:31:31 -0600 >> To: >> >>I've seen several references to using torches to remove DIPs from PCBs. Are there any specific things to keep in mind to avoid heat damage? Are you talking propane plumber's blowtorches? > >Dang, thats one long line! > >Yes, work fast. > >Myself I torch the bottom and use a spring loaded chip extractor. >That and a pliers or tiny screwdriver to straighten any bent >pins keeping it in the board. > >Success rate to date is 99% (board was known bad before salvage). > >Allison Hi I've used peanut oil and a fry pan. Then wash the parts in detergent to remove the oil. You need to wear gloves and goggles as safety gear. Hot peanut oil in your eye is not something I'd like to even think about. Make sure that the assembler didn't bend the corner leads of the ICs. If they did, you'll need to straighten them before the oil, using a soldering iron. It just seems to me that the oil method is a little more controlled than a torch. Dwight From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 14 12:01:39 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:01:39 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511141732.JAA04614@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511141732.JAA04614@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <200511141001390969.19F2A75B@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 9:32 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > I've used peanut oil and a fry pan. Then wash the >parts in detergent to remove the oil. You need to wear >gloves and goggles as safety gear. Hot peanut oil >in your eye is not something I'd like to even think about. > Make sure that the assembler didn't bend the corner leads >of the ICs. If they did, you'll need to straighten them >before the oil, using a soldering iron. > It just seems to me that the oil method is a little more >controlled than a torch. That's downright scary--oil fires are nasty. And burns from oil that hot (I've had them from cooking) take a long time to heal. I've heard plenty about the big 30-quart propane-fired turkey fryers catching fire. I'm not so sure that I'd like to try your method, although it sounds interesting. Is synthetic automotive oil flammable at desoldering temperatures? When I'm removing the bottom bow cap of a large tuba, I simply put the entire bow on an old propane barbeque grill that has the bottom rack lined with firebrick. No direct flame and the result is that in a few minutes of heating the big assembly falls apart. I may try the same setup to desolder an old board to see if it fares any better than a torch. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 14 12:09:41 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:09:41 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <200511140930120754.19D5DB59@10.0.0.252> References: <0IPY006YK24DDW39@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <200511140930120754.19D5DB59@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4378D2E5.90907@bellatlantic.net> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/14/2005 at 7:17 AM Allison wrote: > > >>Never saw the article, likely before I was getting Microsystems. Is >>the source for the 8080/z80 version anywhere on line? > > > Heck, I don't even remember what it was called. I can dig up my oldest > source (8080 under CP/M) from my archives and email it to you. I'm not > sure how close it is to the original, however. > > Cheers, > Chuck Thanks, that will do nicely. Allison From billdeg at degnanco.com Mon Nov 14 12:21:59 2005 From: billdeg at degnanco.com (Degnan) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:21:59 -0500 Subject: VCF questions Message-ID: James, Yes Doug might be perfect. The Mid Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists (MARCH) is in the planning stages for the VCF East to be held next spring. Please contact me off list so that I can get you in touch with the powers that be who arrange speakers for this event. Here is a link for more info on the VCF East: http://www.vintage.org/2006/east/ Bill D > >Sorry for my ignorance - >Who runs the VCF events? >Do they have guest speakers? > >Would there be an interest in having Doug present, does the VCF have >space in their program for speakers? > -- E N D -- From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 12:28:00 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:28:00 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Message-ID: <4378D730.2000501@jetnet.ab.ca> Gooijen, Henk wrote: >1/10 the speed of a real PDP8? Really? That is fast indeed! >My emulation of a PDP8, running on a 68B09 (at 2 MHz) gets to >approx 1/60 of the real thing. I measured that by running some >diagnostics. The diag says "bell rings after approx 5 seconds), >and timed how long it took on my 68B09... >I am sure that when I remove the front panel code things run >faster. The front panel requires time to update. But running >the emulation without the front panel is no fun. > > > Having got a new PC ... 2 GHZ??? who knows the real speed. I have tried Spare time gizmos - pdp 8 emulator ( A minor bug -- with windows how do you get the bell to sound ?). I was running some sort of diagnostics and had the RTC displayed and for about 10 minutes of real time, the clock advanced a hour. That must be at least 6x faster than the real thing on this computer. >- Henk, PA8PDP. > > From allain at panix.com Mon Nov 14 12:32:34 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:32:34 -0500 Subject: Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong) References: <0IPV001IT97317R0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <43768235.1080207@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <038701c5e949$d91d7d00$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> >>>>So given the choice, what lighting *is* good? Natural white seems to be worse in traditional flourescents, but newer corrected bulbs are available. Expensive stores and some art galleries like to use high temperature point sources, like 12V50w reflector lamps. They may be among the whitest, and can be used either in quantity for an almost daylight look, or sparingly, to allow the blinkenlights to be prominent. John A. From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Mon Nov 14 12:38:15 2005 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim stephens) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:38:15 -0800 Subject: SunOS for SPARC 2 In-Reply-To: <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> <43789D82.6090204@blackcube.org> <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4378D997.9010002@msm.umr.edu> Bill Pechter wrote: > > Solaris 1.x -> SunOS 4.1.something. > > SunOS 4.1.3 = OpenWindows = Solaris 1.1.1 > SunOS 4.1.2 = OpenWindows = Solaris 1.1.2 > SunOS 5.1 = Solaris 2.1 > SunOS 5.2 = Solaris 2.2 > SunOS 5.3 = Solaris 2.3 > SunOS 5.4 = Solaris 2.4 > SunOS 5.5 = Solaris 2.5 > At some point around 5.2 I think Sun fancied keeping the last digit in line with the date, with a major turn per year. Then that fell out of vogue as the selling point they had to grasp on to was that they were more "sable" and easier to support than turning the product with new "features" as all were doing. They pretty much threw in the towel with 2.6 with the "compile once, run forever" pledge on the binaries, so you didn't have to recompile the planet each time they turned Solaris. Jim From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 13:12:55 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 12:12:55 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <43786593.5060804@brothom.nl> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> <43786593.5060804@brothom.nl> Message-ID: <4378E1B7.10203@jetnet.ab.ca> Bert Thomas wrote: >> of source to a small machine. Minux was a nice try but it lacked a C >> Compiler. Small C went > > > Minix does not only include a C compiler, it now even includes the > sources of its C compiler. The compiler is called the ACK compiler, > short for Amsterdam Compiler Kit. > Well I *had* the 1st book. No compiler source!! I have not looked at it for a long time. Any how my stack on this homebrew is strange. It builds up from nnn0000 (octal) and is only 4kb max. If you figure the ACK compiler can handle that I might consider porting it. Oh yah a stack frame is only about 48 words. > From version 3 onwards, drivers are supposed to run in userland. This > has to lead to an extremely reliable OS. There are lots of (other) > improvements made to version 3. > I guess I may need to buy a new book! :) > > Bert > > . > From paulrsm at buckeye-express.com Mon Nov 14 13:20:30 2005 From: paulrsm at buckeye-express.com (Paul R. Santa-Maria) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:20:30 -0500 Subject: R-E 68000 PC articles Message-ID: <380-2200511114192030294@buckeye-express.com> The Radio-Electronics articles were written by Peter Stark. His web site has pretty much the same information that was in the articles. See http://www.users.cloud9.net/~stark/ and click on the "PT68K" and "68000 Hardware Course" links. -- Paul R. Santa-Maria Monroe, Michigan USA From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 14 12:17:22 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:17:22 +0000 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511141001390969.19F2A75B@10.0.0.252> References: <200511141732.JAA04614@ca2h0430.amd.com> <200511141001390969.19F2A75B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4378D4B2.50504@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/14/2005 at 9:32 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > > >>I've used peanut oil and a fry pan. Then wash the >>parts in detergent to remove the oil. You need to wear >>gloves and goggles as safety gear. Hot peanut oil >>in your eye is not something I'd like to even think about. >>Make sure that the assembler didn't bend the corner leads >>of the ICs. If they did, you'll need to straighten them >>before the oil, using a soldering iron. >>It just seems to me that the oil method is a little more >>controlled than a torch. > > > That's downright scary--oil fires are nasty. And burns from oil that hot > (I've had them from cooking) take a long time to heal. True, but it is no less risky than normal cooking with oil - plus it'd give a much more even heat than a torch. Might give that a try sometime. Cooking oil is probably cheaper than torch gas too :) My only caution would be that gold/ceramic ICs tend to have markings printed on with an ink that detergent will remove quite nicely (made that mistake once when cleaning a PCB, won't be doing it again :) Other components seem to survive such cleanings quite happily though. cheers Jules From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 14 13:30:29 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:30:29 -0500 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <4376BD6C.40003@gmail.com> References: <43736890.6060102@gmail.com> <4376BD6C.40003@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4378E5D5.6070905@gmail.com> Bill Pechter wrote: > I'd like to find an Ultrix CD for Vaxstations... > > Be kind of interesting to compare it with NetBSD/OpenBSD... I don't believe I have one for VAX. I just have the MIPS version. Peace... Sridhar From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Nov 14 13:33:01 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:33:01 -0600 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4378D730.2000501@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> <4378D730.2000501@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4378E66D.6030500@pacbell.net> woodelf wrote: ... > Having got a new PC ... 2 GHZ??? who knows the real speed. > I have tried Spare time gizmos - pdp 8 emulator ( A minor bug > -- with windows how do you get the bell to sound ?). > I was running some sort of diagnostics and had the RTC displayed > and for about 10 minutes of real time, the clock advanced a hour. > That must be at least 6x faster than the real thing on this computer. If a 2 GHz (give or take) x86 CPU emulates a pdp 8 at 6x, it means either the code is inefficient, or the code contains a speed regulator that doesn't work properly. The original PDP-8 took 10 clocks at 1 MHz to execute one instruction, a 2 GHz CPU has 20 million cycles to interpret one instruction. So at 6x realtime, the program is using 3.2 million cycles to interpret one instruction. Most likely speed and efficiency weren't goals of the emulator, so I bring this up not to discredit the program's author but rather to say: don't use that data point as anything but a lower limit on what kind of horsepower it would take to use a micro to emulate a PDP-8. I imagine an AVR device at 20-40 MHz should be able to emulate a PDP-8 at real time. From stanb at dial.pipex.com Mon Nov 14 13:04:10 2005 From: stanb at dial.pipex.com (Stan Barr) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 19:04:10 +0000 Subject: (pdp8) anyone assemble focal on {u,li}nix? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:34:13 EST." <200511141534.jAEFYDVw001520@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <200511141904.TAA17420@citadel.metropolis.local> Hi, Brad Parker said: > > Has anyone successfully assembled pdp-8 focal with one of the unix pal's? > > I was fooling around and grabbed the focal sources and pal. I had to > fix a few minor things but I got it to assemble. But it doesn't run. > > Just curious if anyone else had tried this. > > I suppose I could fire up tss/8 and run pald :-) Does tss/8 run on any > of the emulators? I've run it using simh, but not actually _used_ it at all. >(but then, hmm.. how to get the output back off the > virtual disk) Aye, there's the rub... > > ok, os/8 might be a better choice... is focal known to build cleanly there? It's supplied in bin tape format with Bernhard Baehr's PDP-8e emulator for the Mac and I've run it, under os/8, to the point of loading and running the supplied Towers of Hanoi program but I don't know enough about focal to comment further. Focal needs some patching to run on the emulator as it apparently expects interrupt driven i/o, but Mr Baehr supplies a patch. -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com The future was never like this! From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 14 13:53:02 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 14:53:02 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPY004Q3N71QFM1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: Jim Battle > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:33:01 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >woodelf wrote: > >.... >> Having got a new PC ... 2 GHZ??? who knows the real speed. >> I have tried Spare time gizmos - pdp 8 emulator ( A minor bug >> -- with windows how do you get the bell to sound ?). >> I was running some sort of diagnostics and had the RTC displayed >> and for about 10 minutes of real time, the clock advanced a hour. >> That must be at least 6x faster than the real thing on this computer. > >If a 2 GHz (give or take) x86 CPU emulates a pdp 8 at 6x, it means either the >code is inefficient, or the code contains a speed regulator that doesn't work >properly. It's inefficient, there was no goal to be efficient only useful and interesting. >The original PDP-8 took 10 clocks at 1 MHz to execute one instruction, a 2 GHz >CPU has 20 million cycles to interpret one instruction. So at 6x realtime, the >program is using 3.2 million cycles to interpret one instruction. An 8e series was around 1.5uS core cycle time and some instructions took a few cycles. However it's timing at the macro level is easy. FETCH, execute as needed. So to fetch a 12bit word and decide one of 8 major actions is pretty light on code to do. The next step execute is tempered by addressing but thats a minor calculation. OPR instructions you need more decisions and they have a distinct sequence. Then the IOT, again it's all decided by the device but for codes like 6000Q-6007Q and a few others the path is already set. EMA adds overhead in all cases. >Most likely speed and efficiency weren't goals of the emulator, so I bring this >up not to discredit the program's author but rather to say: don't use that data >point as anything but a lower limit on what kind of horsepower it would take to >use a micro to emulate a PDP-8. I imagine an AVR device at 20-40 MHz should be >able to emulate a PDP-8 at real time. That may be possible. Keep in mind this type of emulation is almost like building a microcode sequencer. An alternate approach is a more hardware (ACC, Link, MQ, MAR, IR ALU and shifter) and use a micro like 8048(or whatever) to controls the loads and all and not execute arithmetic logical or register ops in the micro. Speed there could exceed the 6100/6120 series cmos parts as the micro is decoding instructions and controling events rather than calculating. the differnce is your approaching the real thing hardware wise but leaving out a lot of control logic (sequential or microded hardware). Allison From ak6dn at mindspring.com Mon Nov 14 14:01:06 2005 From: ak6dn at mindspring.com (Don North) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 12:01:06 -0800 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4378E66D.6030500@pacbell.net> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> <4378D730.2000501@jetnet.ab.ca> <4378E66D.6030500@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <4378ED02.10303@mindspring.com> Doing some math, 2GHz/100KHz is 2000MHz/0.1MHz or 20,000. At 6X the cycle count is then 20K/6 = 3333 (not 3.3M). One would think it takes well less than 3000 X86 instructions to emulate a PDP-8 instruction (assuming one instr per clock). Jim Battle wrote: > woodelf wrote: > > ... > >> Having got a new PC ... 2 GHZ??? who knows the real speed. >> I have tried Spare time gizmos - pdp 8 emulator ( A minor bug >> -- with windows how do you get the bell to sound ?). >> I was running some sort of diagnostics and had the RTC displayed >> and for about 10 minutes of real time, the clock advanced a hour. >> That must be at least 6x faster than the real thing on this computer. > > > If a 2 GHz (give or take) x86 CPU emulates a pdp 8 at 6x, it means > either the code is inefficient, or the code contains a speed regulator > that doesn't work properly. > > The original PDP-8 took 10 clocks at 1 MHz to execute one instruction, > a 2 GHz CPU has 20 million cycles to interpret one instruction. So at > 6x realtime, the program is using 3.2 million cycles to interpret one > instruction. > > Most likely speed and efficiency weren't goals of the emulator, so I > bring this up not to discredit the program's author but rather to say: > don't use that data point as anything but a lower limit on what kind > of horsepower it would take to use a micro to emulate a PDP-8. I > imagine an AVR device at 20-40 MHz should be able to emulate a PDP-8 > at real time. > > > From dwight.elvey at amd.com Mon Nov 14 14:05:30 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 12:05:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs ?JUNK MAIL? 4 Message-ID: <200511142005.MAA08900@ca2h0430.amd.com> Hi I don't recommend using an open flame with the oil. I used an electric fry pan. I don't think peanut oil has as low a flash point as many other oils. That is why it was selected by someone before me for this purpose. It holds up to higher temperatures than most oils. Of course, one should do this outside in a safe area. One should have a CO2 extinguisher for oil fires or one rated for them. Don't spray with water if a fire starts. It would be better to just let it burn up. I used some tongs and screw drivers to remove the parts. I generally cut the boards into smaller pieces and don't completely submerge parts in oil. I watch the temperature to make sure it is just hot enough to melt solder but not hotter. As was mentioned. The oil is really nasty and popping parts out of boards always splatters some. I used both a full face shield, goggles, gloves and covering for my arms. I use the same stuff I use for working with a large solder pot that we used at a previous company to solder PC boards by dip soldering. The oil is a little nastier because to will penatrate cloth easily. Solder will also if it is moving fast enough but at least it doesn't just soak though. Dwight >From: "Jules Richardson" > >Chuck Guzis wrote: >> On 11/14/2005 at 9:32 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: >> >> >>>I've used peanut oil and a fry pan. Then wash the >>>parts in detergent to remove the oil. You need to wear >>>gloves and goggles as safety gear. Hot peanut oil >>>in your eye is not something I'd like to even think about. >>>Make sure that the assembler didn't bend the corner leads >>>of the ICs. If they did, you'll need to straighten them >>>before the oil, using a soldering iron. >>>It just seems to me that the oil method is a little more >>>controlled than a torch. >> >> >> That's downright scary--oil fires are nasty. And burns from oil that hot >> (I've had them from cooking) take a long time to heal. > >True, but it is no less risky than normal cooking with oil - plus it'd >give a much more even heat than a torch. Might give that a try sometime. >Cooking oil is probably cheaper than torch gas too :) > >My only caution would be that gold/ceramic ICs tend to have markings >printed on with an ink that detergent will remove quite nicely (made >that mistake once when cleaning a PCB, won't be doing it again :) Other >components seem to survive such cleanings quite happily though. > >cheers > >Jules > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 14:14:09 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:14:09 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4378ED02.10303@mindspring.com> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> <4378D730.2000501@jetnet.ab.ca> <4378E66D.6030500@pacbell.net> <4378ED02.10303@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <4378F011.70001@jetnet.ab.ca> Don North wrote: > Doing some math, 2GHz/100KHz is 2000MHz/0.1MHz or 20,000. At 6X the > cycle count is then 20K/6 = 3333 (not 3.3M). > One would think it takes well less than 3000 X86 instructions to > emulate a PDP-8 instruction (assuming one instr per clock). > I would say it takes a few instructions since you have to mask for 12 bit words, and remember the PC is running windows and all sorts of other stuff. The point is the emulation is at least 6x faster or more compared to the original. Faster may not allways be better for emulation. > Jim Battle wrote: From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 14 14:35:40 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 12:35:40 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs ?JUNK MAIL? 4 In-Reply-To: <200511142005.MAA08900@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511142005.MAA08900@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <200511141235400474.1A7FA770@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 12:05 PM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: >Hi > I don't recommend using an open flame with the oil. >I used an electric fry pan. I don't think peanut >oil has as low a flash point as many other oils. I believe that peanut oil has a flash point around 600F; 60/40 solder flows at about 370F, so there's a pretty good safety margin, but the oil will start smoking at temperatures around 450F. Silicone oil might be a better choice (it's used a lot in commercial heat baths), but it's not inexpensive. If you're using an electric fry pan and can control temperature, I wonder if plain old white sand might be another alternative. It's cheap, non-corrosive and non-flammable--and won't spatter. Thermal transfer isn't as good as oil, but maybe it's sufficient. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 14 14:45:54 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 15:45:54 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPY001VIPN4HDR1@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: woodelf > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:14:09 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Don North wrote: > >> Doing some math, 2GHz/100KHz is 2000MHz/0.1MHz or 20,000. At 6X the >> cycle count is then 20K/6 = 3333 (not 3.3M). >> One would think it takes well less than 3000 X86 instructions to >> emulate a PDP-8 instruction (assuming one instr per clock). >> >I would say it takes a few instructions since you have to mask for 12 >bit words, and remember the PC is running windows and all >sorts of other stuff. The point is the emulation is at least 6x faster >or more compared to >the original. Faster may not allways be better for emulation. With a machine wider than 12 bits the mask is a single instruction AND. The content of the subfields are more difficult than that but most of x86s handle bits fairly well. Allison From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 14:46:56 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:46:56 -0700 Subject: removing parts from PCBs ?JUNK MAIL? 4 In-Reply-To: <200511141235400474.1A7FA770@10.0.0.252> References: <200511142005.MAA08900@ca2h0430.amd.com> <200511141235400474.1A7FA770@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <4378F7C0.6020905@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >If you're using an electric fry pan and can control temperature, I wonder >if plain old white sand might be another alternative. It's cheap, >non-corrosive and non-flammable--and won't spatter. Thermal transfer isn't >as good as oil, but maybe it's sufficient. > > > Sure and with the UV lamp you have kicking around for EPROM you can have a BEACH on your Bench. Be a geek stud muffin today. :) >Cheers, >Chuck > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 14 14:50:35 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 15:50:35 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs ?JUNK MAIL? 4 Message-ID: <0IPY0081YPUX6VI1@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs ?JUNK MAIL? 4 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 12:35:40 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/14/2005 at 12:05 PM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > >>Hi >> I don't recommend using an open flame with the oil. >>I used an electric fry pan. I don't think peanut >>oil has as low a flash point as many other oils. > >I believe that peanut oil has a flash point around 600F; 60/40 solder flows >at about 370F, so there's a pretty good safety margin, but the oil will >start smoking at temperatures around 450F. > >Silicone oil might be a better choice (it's used a lot in commercial heat >baths), but it's not inexpensive. Solder and silicone oils are bad juju. That would result in a solderability problem. Myself the oil/fry pan is just duplication a solder pot with a meniscus (sp??) with the handicap of the oils nasty behavour and post removal cleaning needs. The solder pot is somewhat safer if attention is paid to spilling. It also has usefulness in reloading the board if needed (heat and drop part in holes). Allison From brad at heeltoe.com Mon Nov 14 16:31:18 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:31:18 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:33:01 CST." <4378E66D.6030500@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> Jim Battle wrote: > >The original PDP-8 took 10 clocks at 1 MHz to execute one instruction really? I'm probably off, but at a cocktail party I would would have said that some instructions took 8 clocks (f0,f1,f2,f3,e0,e1,e2,e3) and some took 12 (f0-f3, d0-d3, e0-d3). That's according to a recent look at the "blue book", but I may have misunderstood. I did write up some verilog which uses those states and it seems to be (mostly) correct, but it's done all debugged yet. -brad From charlesmorris at direcway.com Mon Nov 14 17:38:06 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:38:06 -0600 Subject: Trouble with RL02. Message-ID: I'm trying to get my RL02 working with my 8/A. Thanks Tim R. for lending me a cable and terminator! After finding a cold solder joint at the 8.2 MHz oscillator on the RL8A, I thought I had it licked... the master clock would start and stop if I pressed the oscillator's case. Now there is a steady 4.100136 MHz clock at the ribbon cable connector to the logic board inside the drive. The power supply voltages on the board are all within spec. The problem is that not only does the Fault light still stay on, the ready light (that illuminates the "Unit 0" plug) is also on. According to the manuals this is not supposed to be possible since the ready light only comes on when track 0 has been found, and the heads are still locked home :( ??? The Load button has a very dim bulb, near end of life, but it does light after the slow 15-second disk rotation. Pushing the Load button does nothing (disk does not spin, Fault and Ready still lit). Examination of the state machine lines shows that it is in state 0 (Load Cart) but the input to it (DL5 ERR STATE COMD L) is also asserted. When turning the spindle by hand (from the access port underneath the drive, with a cartridge in place) I can get a signal of at most 0.2 volt p-p. This doesn't produce any pulses from pin 1 of the LM393 amplifier. If I ground the "Raw Sec Pls Return" then I can get a very noisy pulse train. When it's "inching" in startup mode it is maybe 10 mv p-p which is way below the spec in the manual and nothing comes out of the amp. Is this sensor hall-effect or is it just a coil? DEC went out of their way to run 5 volts to it, so I assume it's a transistorized unit? More importantly, anyone got a spare? :) thanks Charles From chenmel at earthlink.net Mon Nov 14 17:38:39 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:38:39 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4378E1B7.10203@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> <43786593.5060804@brothom.nl> <4378E1B7.10203@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20051114183839.5ded7c1f.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 12:12:55 -0700 woodelf wrote: > Bert Thomas wrote: > > >> of source to a small machine. Minux was a nice try but it lacked a C > >> Compiler. Small C went > > > > > > Minix does not only include a C compiler, it now even includes the > > sources of its C compiler. The compiler is called the ACK compiler, > > short for Amsterdam Compiler Kit. > > > Well I *had* the 1st book. No compiler source!! I have not looked at > it for a long time. > Any how my stack on this homebrew is strange. It builds up from > nnn0000 (octal) and > is only 4kb max. If you figure the ACK compiler can handle that I might > consider porting > it. Oh yah a stack frame is only about 48 words. > > > From version 3 onwards, drivers are supposed to run in userland. This > > has to lead to an extremely reliable OS. There are lots of (other) > > improvements made to version 3. > > > I guess I may need to buy a new book! :) > It's not licence-bound to a book the way earlier versions were. You can download Minix from their website at no cost at all. http://minix1.hampshire.edu/ or http://www.minix3.org/ From chenmel at earthlink.net Mon Nov 14 17:48:37 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:48:37 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4378E66D.6030500@pacbell.net> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> <4378D730.2000501@jetnet.ab.ca> <4378E66D.6030500@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20051114184837.55eafd33.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 13:33:01 -0600 Jim Battle wrote: > woodelf wrote: > > ... > > Having got a new PC ... 2 GHZ??? who knows the real speed. > > I have tried Spare time gizmos - pdp 8 emulator ( A minor bug > > -- with windows how do you get the bell to sound ?). > > I was running some sort of diagnostics and had the RTC displayed > > and for about 10 minutes of real time, the clock advanced a hour. > > That must be at least 6x faster than the real thing on this computer. > > If a 2 GHz (give or take) x86 CPU emulates a pdp 8 at 6x, it means either the > code is inefficient, or the code contains a speed regulator that doesn't work > properly. > > The original PDP-8 took 10 clocks at 1 MHz to execute one instruction, a 2 GHz > CPU has 20 million cycles to interpret one instruction. So at 6x realtime, the > program is using 3.2 million cycles to interpret one instruction. > Well, probably on said modern PeeCee, you could run eight or ten instances of the emulator without bogging the machine down. What degree of 'nice' (I know it doesn't exist in windoze, just wondering about the equivalent thing) does the emulator run at? The PC probably still has all the dancing, flashing foolishness that gatesware implies running in addition to the emulator. From chenmel at earthlink.net Mon Nov 14 17:51:21 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:51:21 -0500 Subject: Seeking to buy early 4004, 8008 and 8080 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20051114185121.72808a4d.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 08:41:09 -0800 (PST) Vintage Computer Festival wrote: > > I'm seeking early Intel 4004, 8008 and 8080 chips. The earliest runs had > no date codes, so I'd like specimens with no date codes which will at > least confirm they are from the 1971-1974 timeframe (Intel began stamping > chips with date codes in 1974). > > This is for a project I'm working on, and I am only interested in a sale > (sorry, no trades). > > If you want me to read your message, please send replies directly to me. > > Thanks! > You aren't reading the list anymore?? > -- > > Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org > > [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] > [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ] > From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Nov 14 17:53:19 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:53:19 -0600 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <4378ED02.10303@mindspring.com> References: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF251C@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> <4378D730.2000501@jetnet.ab.ca> <4378E66D.6030500@pacbell.net> <4378ED02.10303@mindspring.com> Message-ID: <4379236F.5060500@pacbell.net> Don North wrote: > Doing some math, 2GHz/100KHz is 2000MHz/0.1MHz or 20,000. At 6X the > cycle count is then 20K/6 = 3333 (not 3.3M). > One would think it takes well less than 3000 X86 instructions to emulate > a PDP-8 instruction (assuming one instr per clock). eh, what is three orders of magnitude between friends. :-( nevertheless, the point was there are thousands and thousands of cycles at 2 GHz to do a straight-forward interepreter. the ratio of host to emulated instructions I used for my AVR estimate was 200-400 per emulated instruction, which is probably overkill because if you are using an AVR, you are also probably hand coding things, so the count doesn't have to be nearly so high. From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Nov 14 17:57:08 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:57:08 -0600 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <43792454.20007@pacbell.net> Brad Parker wrote: > Jim Battle wrote: > >>The original PDP-8 took 10 clocks at 1 MHz to execute one instruction > > > really? > > I'm probably off, but at a cocktail party I would would have said that > some instructions took 8 clocks (f0,f1,f2,f3,e0,e1,e2,e3) and some took > 12 (f0-f3, d0-d3, e0-d3). > > That's according to a recent look at the "blue book", but I may have > misunderstood. I did write up some verilog which uses those states and > it seems to be (mostly) correct, but it's done all debugged yet. > > -brad > > I'm no PDP-8 expert. My source was this web page: http://fixedreference.org/en/20040424/wikipedia/PDP-8 "The PDP-8 was a 12-bit computer with 4096 words of memory. It had only eight instructions, one full register, the accumulator (AC), and a single-bit register, the link (L) bit. The machine operated at a clock rate of 1 MHz, and took 10 clocks for each instruction, so that it ran at 0.1MIPS." From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 14 17:39:01 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:39:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: HP 9845 C with 280 option startup failure In-Reply-To: <4377D13D.2000507@gmx.net> from "Tequi Lizer" at Nov 14, 5 00:50:21 am Message-ID: > For all those 9845 user's, a roller shop would really roll ;-) I am going to have to work out an easy way to do this sort of drive -- after all, I have 9815, 9825, 9831, 9877, 85, 9845 and DEC TU58 all in need of that sort of repair. > The same for me, I'll be busy during the next two weeks. Let's see > whether the new HPCC CD will be out then. V2 of the HPCC scheamtics CD was released last night. This one corrects errors in the Integral schematics and adds the 9845B (Opt 200), 98780, Paintjet, 82153 (HP41 Wand), 37201 (HPIB extender), 7245A printer/plotter and 59405 (HPIB interface for the 9830). -tony From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 14 18:16:03 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:16:03 -0800 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <43792454.20007@pacbell.net> References: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> <43792454.20007@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200511141616030559.1B496941@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 5:57 PM Jim Battle wrote: >>"The PDP-8 was a 12-bit computer with 4096 words of memory. It had only >eight >instructions, one full register, the accumulator (AC), and a single-bit >register, the link (L) bit. The machine operated at a clock rate of 1 MHz, >and >took 10 clocks for each instruction, so that it ran at 0.1MIPS." Time to add some commentary to the wiki, methinks. IIRC, the cycle time of the original straight 8 was 1.5 usec. Instruction times in cycles is given here: http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/refcard/65.html From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 14 18:27:53 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 19:27:53 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPY00KJVZX1TCJB@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: Jim Battle > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:57:08 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Brad Parker wrote: > >> Jim Battle wrote: >> >>>The original PDP-8 took 10 clocks at 1 MHz to execute one instruction >> >> >> really? >> >> I'm probably off, but at a cocktail party I would would have said that >> some instructions took 8 clocks (f0,f1,f2,f3,e0,e1,e2,e3) and some took >> 12 (f0-f3, d0-d3, e0-d3). >> >> That's according to a recent look at the "blue book", but I may have >> misunderstood. I did write up some verilog which uses those states and >> it seems to be (mostly) correct, but it's done all debugged yet. >> >> -brad >> >> > >I'm no PDP-8 expert. My source was this web page: > >http://fixedreference.org/en/20040424/wikipedia/PDP-8 > >"The PDP-8 was a 12-bit computer with 4096 words of memory. It had only eight >instructions, one full register, the accumulator (AC), and a single-bit >register, the link (L) bit. The machine operated at a clock rate of 1 MHz, and >took 10 clocks for each instruction, so that it ran at 0.1MIPS." That just doesn't sound right. The 8E which I'm most familiar with is considerably faster than that. Though the 8S would be slower. I dont consider wikipedia expert here. Doug Jones and a slew of others have far more complete and accurate sites. Though the DEC handbooks are not to be trifled with either. Allison From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Nov 14 18:27:27 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 00:27:27 +0000 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <200511141616030559.1B496941@10.0.0.252> References: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> <43792454.20007@pacbell.net> <200511141616030559.1B496941@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43792B6F.3090006@gjcp.net> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/14/2005 at 5:57 PM Jim Battle wrote: > > >>>"The PDP-8 was a 12-bit computer with 4096 words of memory. It had only >> >>eight >>instructions, one full register, the accumulator (AC), and a single-bit >>register, the link (L) bit. The machine operated at a clock rate of 1 MHz, >>and >>took 10 clocks for each instruction, so that it ran at 0.1MIPS." > > > Time to add some commentary to the wiki, methinks. > > IIRC, the cycle time of the original straight 8 was 1.5 usec. Instruction > times in cycles is given here: > > http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/refcard/65.html That seems to line up with the PDP8 manual I have. Gordon. From zmerch at 30below.com Mon Nov 14 18:32:19 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 19:32:19 -0500 Subject: Seeking to buy early 4004, 8008 and 8080 In-Reply-To: <20051114185121.72808a4d.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051114192904.03c30ba8@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Scott Stevens may have mentioned these words: >On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 08:41:09 -0800 (PST) >Vintage Computer Festival wrote: > > > [snippety] > > > > If you want me to read your message, please send replies directly to me. > > > > Thanks! > > >You aren't reading the list anymore?? This was his first post since he mentioned he was unsubbing from classiccmp... and... ... if you assume what he posted was true, it was pointless to ask him the question here, as he's not here anymore!!! ;-P You might wanna ask him directly... ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me zmerch at 30below.com. | SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers From marvin at rain.org Mon Nov 14 18:56:35 2005 From: marvin at rain.org (Marvin Johnston) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:56:35 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <43793243.EA9A8F33@rain.org> A much better alternative to peanut oil is fusing or reflow oil used in the printed circuit industry (used most probably in the smaller shops.) It runs $84.30/gallon according to information on the DalPro website. While they seem to have the supplies necessary to make PCBs, their prices are ... high. I would try a local printed circuit manufacturer to see if I could get some their first. My guess is that it shouldn't be more than about $8.00/gallon. http://www.dalpro.net/Page.html BTW, peanut oil used to be used for reflow many many moons ago and was replaced at least 25 years ago with synthetic oils. > On 11/14/2005 at 9:32 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > > > I've used peanut oil and a fry pan. Then wash the > >parts in detergent to remove the oil. You need to wear > >gloves and goggles as safety gear. Hot peanut oil > >in your eye is not something I'd like to even think about. > > Make sure that the assembler didn't bend the corner leads > >of the ICs. If they did, you'll need to straighten them > >before the oil, using a soldering iron. > > It just seems to me that the oil method is a little more > >controlled than a torch. > > That's downright scary--oil fires are nasty. And burns from oil that hot > (I've had them from cooking) take a long time to heal. > Is synthetic automotive oil flammable at desoldering temperatures? > > Cheers, > Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 18:59:53 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:59:53 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <43793309.2080800@jetnet.ab.ca> Brad Parker wrote: >Jim Battle wrote: > > >>The original PDP-8 took 10 clocks at 1 MHz to execute one instruction >> >> > > > Well that number now that I think about it is way off, from memory speeds in the PDP -8 Faq. The handbook lists the pdp-8/e as 1.2 us for jump and operate instructions. 2.6 us for memory instructions.+1.2 us for indirect.+1.4 us for auto-indexed. A 5 mhz clock looks to be used. I/O seem to have a variable time but 2.6us is the general speed listed. >really? > >I'm probably off, but at a cocktail party I would would have said that >some instructions took 8 clocks (f0,f1,f2,f3,e0,e1,e2,e3) and some took >12 (f0-f3, d0-d3, e0-d3). > > > I downloaded a PDP-8 maintance manual (pdf) once and give the full details of every time state. The machines of that era of tightly coupled to the core-memory cycle. >That's according to a recent look at the "blue book", but I may have >misunderstood. I did write up some verilog which uses those states and >it seems to be (mostly) correct, but it's done all debugged yet. > >-brad > > PS. Finds tinyfoot note. PDP-8,PDP-8/I 1.5 us memory cycle. PDP-8/L 1.6 us PDP-8/S 8us From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 19:02:27 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:02:27 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <20051114183839.5ded7c1f.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> <43786593.5060804@brothom.nl> <4378E1B7.10203@jetnet.ab.ca> <20051114183839.5ded7c1f.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <437933A3.3000306@jetnet.ab.ca> Scott Stevens wrote: >It's not licence-bound to a book the way earlier versions were. You can download Minix from their website at no cost at all. > >http://minix1.hampshire.edu/ > >or > >http://www.minix3.org/ > > But I like the book, note I lost my copy a few years ago. Hard copy is nice. From pechter at gmail.com Mon Nov 14 19:04:38 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:04:38 -0500 Subject: Trouble with RL02. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43793426.40400@gmail.com> Been a long time but I'm remembering that you could get something like that if the RL11 cable was reversed... anyone remember if my memory's dropped too many bits. Bill Charles wrote: >I'm trying to get my RL02 working with my 8/A. Thanks Tim R. for >lending me a cable and terminator! > >After finding a cold solder joint at the 8.2 MHz oscillator on the >RL8A, I thought I had it licked... the master clock would start >and stop if I pressed the oscillator's case. Now there is a steady >4.100136 MHz clock at the ribbon cable connector to the logic >board inside the drive. The power supply voltages on the board are >all within spec. > >The problem is that not only does the Fault light still stay on, >the ready light (that illuminates the "Unit 0" plug) is also on. >According to the manuals this is not supposed to be possible since >the ready light only comes on when track 0 has been found, and the >heads are still locked home :( ??? > >The Load button has a very dim bulb, near end of life, but it does >light after the slow 15-second disk rotation. Pushing the Load >button does nothing (disk does not spin, Fault and Ready still >lit). Examination of the state machine lines shows that it is in >state 0 (Load Cart) but the input to it (DL5 ERR STATE COMD L) is >also asserted. > >When turning the spindle by hand (from the access port underneath >the drive, with a cartridge in place) I can get a signal of at >most 0.2 volt p-p. This doesn't produce any pulses from pin 1 of >the LM393 amplifier. If I ground the "Raw Sec Pls Return" then I >can get a very noisy pulse train. When it's "inching" in startup >mode it is maybe 10 mv p-p which is way below the spec in the >manual and nothing comes out of the amp. > >Is this sensor hall-effect or is it just a coil? DEC went out of >their way to run 5 volts to it, so I assume it's a transistorized >unit? More importantly, anyone got a spare? :) > >thanks >Charles > > > > > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 14 19:15:21 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:15:21 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro Message-ID: <0IPZ008PK244MQF2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: semi-homemade micro > From: woodelf > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:02:27 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Scott Stevens wrote: > >>It's not licence-bound to a book the way earlier versions were. You can download Minix from their website at no cost at all. >> >>http://minix1.hampshire.edu/ >> >>or >> >>http://www.minix3.org/ >> >> >But I like the book, note I lost my copy a few years ago. Hard copy is nice. > It is. I have the version that came with 2.02 on CD. Excellent book and reference. Worth the price. Whats nice about it I can read the text, look at the code, run it if I care to and borrow ideas. Allison From ken at seefried.com Mon Nov 14 19:37:02 2005 From: ken at seefried.com (Ken Seefried) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:37:02 -0500 Subject: Lights (was: Re: Smithsonian gets it wrong) In-Reply-To: <200511150034.jAF0Y2kR081668@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511150034.jAF0Y2kR081668@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <43793BBE.30707@seefried.com> From: "John Allain" >>>>>>>>>So given the choice, what lighting *is* good? >>>> >>>> > >Natural white seems to be worse in traditional fluorescents, but newer >corrected bulbs are available. > >Expensive stores and some art galleries like to use high temperature point >sources, like 12V50w reflector lamps. They may be among the whitest, and >can be used either in quantity for an almost daylight look, or sparingly, to >allow the blinkenlights to be prominent. > For many requirements like this (aquariums, hydroponics, etc), the lighting of choice is high-Kelvin Metal-Halide lighting. With bulbs over 150W, you can get 10,000 K bulbs, and at 175W and above, you can get 14,000 K. Bulbs go to 1000W and more. All of these are very bright & very, very blue-white. If you are more interested in "natural Sun-like" spectrum, there are numerous choices in VHO florescent bulbs, again in the aquarium & hydroponics world. These are *totally* different than the florescent bulbs you get at the local hardware store. Pretty much anything you get at, say, Home Depot, even the "aquarium bulbs" or "grow bulbs", will be noticeably inferior from a spectrum perspective. Stick to the hydroponic or aquarium stores. Ken From ken at seefried.com Mon Nov 14 19:49:30 2005 From: ken at seefried.com (Ken Seefried) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:49:30 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511150034.jAF0Y2kR081668@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511150034.jAF0Y2kR081668@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <43793EAA.4020606@seefried.com> From: "Chuck Guzis" On 11/14/2005 at 9:32 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > >>> I've used peanut oil and a fry pan. > > > >That's downright scary--oil fires are nasty. And burns from oil that hot >(I've had them from cooking) take a long time to heal. > >I've heard plenty about the big 30-quart propane-fired turkey fryers >catching fire. I'm not so sure that I'd like to try your method, although >it sounds interesting. > Indeed. It's a clever idea, to be sure. For me, I've spent a good bit of time around everything from pans to very large buckets of boiling oil (wife is from New Orleans, I had to learn to keep her happy). Having had to triage a folks who weren't very experienced with oil (hint: your turkey, catfish, etc., should patted as dry as possible and MUST NOT STILL BE FROZEN...and the flame does not have to be maxed out), I would suggest sticking to heat guns and propane torches...at least when they burn you you can drop them and the worst of it stops. That's not true with oil..it really likes to stick to you and everyone else in the room. Messing around with hot oil if you're not an expert and there are other options is *not* my first choice. YMMV... Ken P.S. - Watching someone drop a mostly frozen turkey in a vat of vigourously boiling peanut oil was a deeply disturbing experience... From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 19:55:58 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:55:58 -0700 Subject: Lights In-Reply-To: <43793BBE.30707@seefried.com> References: <200511150034.jAF0Y2kR081668@dewey.classiccmp.org> <43793BBE.30707@seefried.com> Message-ID: <4379402E.80408@jetnet.ab.ca> Ken Seefried wrote: > From: "John Allain" > >>>>>>>>>> So given the choice, what lighting *is* good? >>>>>>>>> >>>>> >>>> >> >> Natural white seems to be worse in traditional fluorescents, but newer >> corrected bulbs are available. >> >> Expensive stores and some art galleries like to use high temperature >> point >> sources, like 12V50w reflector lamps. They may be among the whitest, >> and >> can be used either in quantity for an almost daylight look, or >> sparingly, to >> allow the blinkenlights to be prominent. >> > > For many requirements like this (aquariums, hydroponics, etc), the > lighting of choice is high-Kelvin Metal-Halide lighting. With bulbs > over 150W, you can get 10,000 K bulbs, and at 175W and above, you can > get 14,000 K. Bulbs go to 1000W and more. All of these are very > bright & very, very blue-white. > Green Green . I want green! . The sun is green ... ears are pointed ... > If you are more interested in "natural Sun-like" spectrum, there are > numerous choices in VHO florescent bulbs, again in the aquarium & > hydroponics world. These are *totally* different than the florescent > bulbs you get at the local hardware store. > > Pretty much anything you get at, say, Home Depot, even the "aquarium > bulbs" or "grow bulbs", will be noticeably inferior from a spectrum > perspective. Stick to the hydroponic or aquarium stores. > Well all I got in Canada is the standard bulb fixtures. I got the screw in florescent bulbs to save on power but I don't like the color spectrum. I want daylight everywhere but I can't change the fixures. Any Ideas? > Ken From waisun.chia at gmail.com Mon Nov 14 19:56:31 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:56:31 +0800 Subject: SunOS/Solaris naming (was Re: SunOS for SPARC 2) In-Reply-To: <4378BFD6.3090300@slitesys.demon.co.uk> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> <43789D82.6090204@blackcube.org> <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> <4378BFD6.3090300@slitesys.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: On 11/15/05, Alistair MacDonald wrote: > Bill Pechter wrote: > > James Rice wrote: > [...] > >> Is there a crossreference chart between SunOS version numbers to > >> Solaris versions? I'm a bit confused as to exactly what fits where. > >> > > It's Something like: > > > [...] > > SunOS 5.7 = Solaris 2.7 > > This was officially known as Solaris 7 and marked the change in the > naming (yet again) > > Alistair > Yeah. That's correct: SunOS 5.x = Solaris x where x = 7, 8, 9, 10 before this: SunOS 5.y = Solaris 2.y where y = 4,5,6 of course the BSD-based classic: SunOS 4.x where 4.1.4 was the last version Hope I didn't misinterpret anything. :-) (there sould be a couse just to understand SunOS's versioning convention) From waisun.chia at gmail.com Mon Nov 14 20:07:48 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:07:48 +0800 Subject: SunOS for SPARC 2 In-Reply-To: <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> <43788BD0.9080003@mac.com> <43789D82.6090204@blackcube.org> <4378B68C.4060204@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/15/05, Bill Pechter wrote: > James Rice wrote: > > > Solaris 5.10? = Solaris 10? Should be: SunOS 5.10 = Solaris 10 > OpenSolaris x = ? If you download the Solaris Express communitiy build you'll see: SunOS 5.11 (!!!) = OpenSolaris From chenmel at earthlink.net Mon Nov 14 20:28:39 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 21:28:39 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <437933A3.3000306@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IPX00KNM0O8TDN7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <4377C9D1.3060602@jetnet.ab.ca> <43786593.5060804@brothom.nl> <4378E1B7.10203@jetnet.ab.ca> <20051114183839.5ded7c1f.chenmel@earthlink.net> <437933A3.3000306@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20051114212839.1cf65f7f.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:02:27 -0700 woodelf wrote: > Scott Stevens wrote: > > >It's not licence-bound to a book the way earlier versions were. You can download Minix from their website at no cost at all. > > > >http://minix1.hampshire.edu/ > > > >or > > > >http://www.minix3.org/ > > > > > But I like the book, note I lost my copy a few years ago. Hard copy is nice. > I agree. Tannenbaum's book is on my shelf. But the old Prentice-Hall license requiring you to buy a copy of the book to use Minix is gone. From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Mon Nov 14 20:50:15 2005 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 18:50:15 -0800 Subject: Software find In-Reply-To: References: <26c11a640511091504x10f3c4b5h@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/10/05, Adrian Graham wrote: > Wouldn't mind seeing windows 101 myself, though it's just a glorified > DOSSHELL running on top of DOS 5. 'ugly' doesn't do it justice! > I think you mean DOS 3.2. At least windows v1.0x could multitask well behaved (i.e. i/o through BIOS) text mode applications. (On my V30 machine I used to compile in the background while playing C-robots in the foreground on an 800x600 interlaced display). Multitasking had to wait for windows 3.0to reappear, and then you needed a 386. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 20:51:05 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 19:51:05 -0700 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43794D19.9030005@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/9/2005 at 12:40 AM woodelf wrote: > > > >>Unicorn Electronics may have a few in stock. They are about $20 each. >>http://www.unicornelectronics.com/ >> >> > >"Holey Moley!" to quote Homer Simpson. $20 for this chip? I may still >have one of these (picked up out of a Radio Shack clearance bin). If I can >find it, you can have it for $5 (I'm sure I didn't pay more than that for >it). Give me a few days to look. > >Does anyone need any of the GI AY-3-8910 sound chips? I've got about 4 of >those, too. I'm not going to use them. > >What else is desirable in terms of old silicon? I've got tons of old 4116 >and 4164 DRAM and no place to put it. > > > Surfing the web to find a datasheet on 4116's, I came across Future-Bot Components. http://www.futurebots.com/chip.htm Their prices are steep. $250 for a 8008 ... What a rip-off $60 each around 1975. God! $250 for a 4004 too. Don't even ask about 1103's. For anybody wanting to build a computer you still can get them parts, with out the hassle of epay... :) >Cheers, >Chuck > > > Now back to looking for that datasheet ... I was wondering about the cycle time of the slower 16k Drams. From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 14 21:39:18 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 19:39:18 -0800 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <43794D19.9030005@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> <43794D19.9030005@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511141939180888.1C037CFA@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 7:51 PM woodelf wrote: There are the profiteers, definitely! I was surprised to see a fellow offering DC-600 carts for about $94 the each--and they're not even hard to find for less than $15 new. Speaking of old stuff, who still has a library of Kilobaud from around 1976-1979 to research an article? Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 21:49:54 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:49:54 -0700 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511141939180888.1C037CFA@10.0.0.252> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> <43794D19.9030005@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511141939180888.1C037CFA@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43795AE2.1070807@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/14/2005 at 7:51 PM woodelf wrote: > >There are the profiteers, definitely! I was surprised to see a fellow >offering DC-600 carts for about $94 the each--and they're not even hard to >find for less than $15 new. > >Speaking of old stuff, who still has a library of Kilobaud from around >1976-1979 to research an article? > > > If you find it on-line let me know. I want to read them. Note most local libraries that may have had a copy may have tossed them out years ago for space reasons. >Cheers, >Chuck > > From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Mon Nov 14 07:12:53 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 08:12:53 -0500 Subject: local demolition of SAGE building In-Reply-To: <1e0.48ece85f.30a99077@aol.com> References: <1e0.48ece85f.30a99077@aol.com> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051114081030.033ca748@boff-net.dhs.org> I had brought it up actually. It was (has been gone for a little while now) the one located at Stewart International Airport/Air National Guard Base - New Windsor/Newburgh, NY (boasts two of the larger airstrips in the US, #3 or #4 for landing the space shuttle, etc, etc.) It is also home to the 105th. -John Boffemmyer IV At 02:02 AM 11/14/2005, you wrote: >Hi, > >I missed that one- Which SAGE is being demolished? I used tok in one of them. > > >Thanks, Paul -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 11/11/2005 From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Mon Nov 14 13:02:42 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:02:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20051114190242.56323.qmail@web61012.mail.yahoo.com> I don't know what a solder pot is exactly, but at one point I was contemplating fabricating a sort of U shaped thing to bolt onto the end of a solder iron (albeit a hefty one). Either sheet brass or copper would suit the purpose. You can find that sort of stuph at many hobby shops and even hardware stores (look for a rack full of stuph with the name "K & S", sheets, tubing, etc.) You would need a different "thing" for each size chip you wanted to desolder. If the ic is known bad, you don't have to worry about cooking it, though you have to be careful with the lans on the circuit board. --- William Donzelli wrote: > > That is by far the best method and also excellent > for board you really > > don't want to cook (as in ones you fix). > > One of the tricks is to get a solder pot the right > size - just big enough > for a 40 pin DIP. > > William Donzelli > aw288 at osfn.org > > __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu Mon Nov 14 15:11:17 2005 From: wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu (Martin Scott Goldberg) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 15:11:17 -0600 (CST) Subject: Grid 1520, 2 Data I/O 212's In-Reply-To: <4378F011.70001@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Nov 14, 2005 01:14:09 PM Message-ID: <200511142111.jAELBIpt000957@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> Hey all, just rescued a grid 1520 laptop (looks like it has an addon batterypack on the top) and two Data I/O 212's (one of them includes a small data card plugged in to the side). I have no need for them, so whoever wants them just needs to pay shipping. I'm always looking for stuff in trade as well though if anyone wants to go that route. ;) Marty From wittkamper at cox.net Mon Nov 14 15:18:58 2005 From: wittkamper at cox.net (Andrew & Katie Wittkamper) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:18:58 -0500 Subject: Zapping Laptop batteries Message-ID: Hello, Saw your post on cctech mailing list about zapping laptop batteries. I have an HP laptop battery that I would like to try to zap. Can you give me details on how it's done? Thanks, Andy From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 14 22:23:30 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:23:30 -0800 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <43795AE2.1070807@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> <43794D19.9030005@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511141939180888.1C037CFA@10.0.0.252> <43795AE2.1070807@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511142023300217.1C2BF151@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 8:49 PM woodelf wrote: >If you find it on-line let me know. I want to read them. Not likely--IDG purchased the print rights when Kilobaud closed down. Their policy is to permit online access when Hell (and I don't mean the town in Michigan) freezes over. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 14 23:11:40 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 22:11:40 -0700 Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <200511142023300217.1C2BF151@10.0.0.252> References: <20051108194815.86364.qmail@web52402.mail.yahoo.com> <4371A7FC.7040403@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511091548000160.017002B3@10.0.0.252> <43794D19.9030005@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511141939180888.1C037CFA@10.0.0.252> <43795AE2.1070807@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511142023300217.1C2BF151@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43796E0C.3090807@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >Not likely--IDG purchased the print rights when Kilobaud closed down. >Their policy is to permit online access when Hell (and I don't mean the >town in Michigan) freezes over. > > > I take it management must be making $$$$ from all the stuff stored in the vault! Even with the % to the devil to make sure HELL is HOTTER than umm HELL. >Cheers, >Chuck > > Strange, both killobaud and byte are long gone, yet because of the web more people seem to know about classic systems than when the magizines were making money. From trag at io.com Mon Nov 14 23:24:33 2005 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:24:33 -0600 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511150446.jAF4kUQi092332@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511150446.jAF4kUQi092332@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2005 21:03:39 -0800 >From: "Chuck Guzis" >On 11/11/2005 at 8:31 PM compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > >Yes, I hold the board component-side down and flame it from above--a lot >of components will simply drop out of the board once the solder has >melted--do this out-of-doors as the fumes from the epoxy or phenolic can be >pretty noxious. Keep the flame moving. Sometimes just tapping the board >will cause quite a few components to to fall out. DIPs usually require a >pair of needle-nosed pliers or small screwdriver to remove. > >Some invert the arrangement and do it component side up with the fame from >below. I'm not convinced that one method is any better than the other. >An old propane barbeque grill might also be another approach. Another >might be to use a heat gun. I use the heat gun approach. I have a Milwaukee heat gun I bought at Home Depot with adjustable temperature from 100 - 1000 degrees F. I use something between 600 and 900 depending on my application. If I want to remove a component from a board and reuse the board, (e.g. remove soldered down PROM for reprogramming) I cover the surrounding components in modeling clay. This may or may not provide any protection from heat, but it does keep them from blowing away. The first time I tried desoldering with a heat gun, I found that all the surface mount passives (resistors & caps) surrounding the target chip were randomized. For big surface mount chips I like to use Chip Quik desoldering alloy, which will lower the melting point of the solder on the board. If I preapply Chip Quik, I can usually use the 600F setting for a minute or two to loosen a chip. I've successfully done this on chips as large as 208 pin QFPs. Jeff Walther From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 01:48:14 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:48:14 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: References: <200511150446.jAF4kUQi092332@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <200511142348140515.1CE761AA@10.0.0.252> On 11/14/2005 at 11:24 PM Jeff Walther wrote: >For big surface mount chips I like to use Chip Quik desoldering >alloy, which will lower the melting point of the solder on the board. >If I preapply Chip Quik, I can usually use the 600F setting for a >minute or two to loosen a chip. I've successfully done this on chips >as large as 208 pin QFPs. Jeff, unless the thermostat on your heat gun is faulty, you should be able to go much lower than 600F, shouldn't you? 60/40 solder flows at about 370F. It seems to me that I've also seen special desoldering rigs that use hot air and a special nozzle to better focus the airstream. Thanks for the tip on Chip Quik; from the MSDS, it appears to be a Tin-Indium alloy. Cheers, Chuck From alberto at a2sistemi.it Tue Nov 15 04:28:48 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:28:48 +0100 Subject: HP 3000 boot problem - updates In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I have a boot problem with a modern HP 3000 of a friend of mine, a HP3000 > 937 LX > See the photo of console : > http://www.retrocomputing.net/parts/hp/hp3000_937lx/HP01.jpg On the backplane board of the 3000, there is a DS1287, battery backed real time clock. It has datecode 9125, maybe battery dead. Does anyone know if this chip on the 3000 is used only for the clock or it store any system parameter ? Alberto ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Nov 15 04:58:35 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:58:35 -0000 (GMT) Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <200511141616030559.1B496941@10.0.0.252> References: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> <43792454.20007@pacbell.net> <200511141616030559.1B496941@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <26951.195.212.29.83.1132052315.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> > On 11/14/2005 at 5:57 PM Jim Battle wrote: > >>>"The PDP-8 was a 12-bit computer with 4096 words of memory. It had only >>eight >>instructions, one full register, the accumulator (AC), and a single-bit >>register, the link (L) bit. The machine operated at a clock rate of 1 >> MHz, >>and >>took 10 clocks for each instruction, so that it ran at 0.1MIPS." > > Time to add some commentary to the wiki, methinks. > > IIRC, the cycle time of the original straight 8 was 1.5 usec. Instruction > times in cycles is given here: > > http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/refcard/65.html I dug out the code for my original PDP8 emulator, which was written in assembler on an 8MHz 8086 PC. In order to give the CPU a chance to actually execute some instructions between interrupts from the emulated teletype, I bumped a counter every time I went round the main loop. I found that about 100 instructions gave a suitable (maybe a bit slow) 10cps terminal speed. That suggests to me that about 1000 instructions per second is possible on a slowish machine. Gordon. From cc at corti-net.de Tue Nov 15 05:12:57 2005 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:12:57 +0100 (CET) Subject: SunOS for SPARC 2 In-Reply-To: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> References: <40f58b3423df4c8682feebce6fbf8baa@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 13 Nov 2005 compoobah at valleyimplants.com wrote: > I'm running 4.1.3_U1 with all patches-not on a public network- is that > O.K.? What bennies are in 4.1.4? Modern stuff... We still have a SUN4/260 running 4.1.1 on its original internal ESDI harddisk, and it's running since 1987. The machine IS connected to the internet, e.g. there's OpenSSH running etc. And there are no kernel or stability problems I'm aware of. Christian From williams.dan at gmail.com Tue Nov 15 06:18:45 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:18:45 +0000 Subject: Ultrix on Simh Message-ID: <26c11a640511150418h142e2c5fs@mail.gmail.com> All this talk of Ultrix made me decide to give it a go. After wasting time and then working out none of the machines I have here support Ultrix, I decided Simh was the way to go. After a couple of hours of messing about and checking google, I discovered that Ultrix installs on RZ disks and Simh doesn't support them. Which is probably why the cd has been sitting in a box for a couple of years. About to give up I found a page which shows how to change the installation program to support RA disks. If anyone wants to give it a go : http://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2004-November/001090.html It says it works on 4.3, but it worked on my 4.5 disk. It's installing now. Dan From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 06:20:48 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:20:48 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <0IPZ005W4WX1N7N3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs > From: Chris M > Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 11:02:42 -0800 (PST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > >I don't know what a solder pot is exactly, but at one Solder pot is a ceramic cup usually about 2" across and about 2" deep with a heating element around it. Filled with solder and the usual use is to tin stripped leads. >point I was contemplating fabricating a sort of U >shaped thing to bolt onto the end of a solder iron >(albeit a hefty one). Either sheet brass or copper >would suit the purpose. You can find that sort of >stuph at many hobby shops and even hardware stores >(look for a rack full of stuph with the name "K & S", >sheets, tubing, etc.) You would need a different >"thing" for each size chip you wanted to desolder. If >the ic is known bad, you don't have to worry about >cooking it, though you have to be careful with the >lans on the circuit board. I've done that, you really need a heavy heater to do the job and it's still possible to cook the part and or the board. I've been stripping boards and TV chassis (back when they were tube) for 40+ years. Allison > >--- William Donzelli wrote: > >> > That is by far the best method and also excellent >> for board you really >> > don't want to cook (as in ones you fix). >> >> One of the tricks is to get a solder pot the right >> size - just big enough >> for a 40 pin DIP. >> >> William Donzelli >> aw288 at osfn.org >> >> > > > > >__________________________________ >Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. >http://farechase.yahoo.com From waisun.chia at gmail.com Tue Nov 15 06:29:04 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 20:29:04 +0800 Subject: Ultrix on Simh In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511150418h142e2c5fs@mail.gmail.com> References: <26c11a640511150418h142e2c5fs@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On 11/15/05, Dan Williams wrote: > All this talk of Ultrix made me decide to give it a go. After wasting > time and then working out none of the machines I have here support > Ultrix, I decided Simh was the way to go. After a couple of hours of I assume that you're talking about Ultrix on the Vax, right? Would you be able to put the Ultrix .iso out for downloading? From wmaddox at pacbell.net Tue Nov 15 06:34:03 2005 From: wmaddox at pacbell.net (William Maddox) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 04:34:03 -0800 Subject: B205 console replica on eBay Message-ID: <4379D5BB.90703@pacbell.net> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4792658721 --Bill From pkoning at equallogic.com Tue Nov 15 08:46:55 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:46:55 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs References: <20051114190242.56323.qmail@web61012.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Chris" == Chris M writes: Chris> I don't know what a solder pot is exactly, but at one point I Chris> was contemplating fabricating a sort of U shaped thing to bolt Chris> onto the end of a solder iron (albeit a hefty one). That should work; I've seen things like that. A solder pot is a pot full of molten solder. Think of a crockpot or a soup mug with an electric heater in the bottom. Insert bars of solder and let them melt. I never understood what those things are meant to be used for; they show up in tool catalog but never with any explanation. Is component removal the "official" reason for them? Or tinning wires? paul From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 15 08:54:02 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:54:02 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <20051114190242.56323.qmail@web61012.mail.yahoo.com> <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <4379F68A.4020007@gmail.com> Paul Koning wrote: > That should work; I've seen things like that. > > A solder pot is a pot full of molten solder. Think of a crockpot or a > soup mug with an electric heater in the bottom. Insert bars of solder > and let them melt. > > I never understood what those things are meant to be used for; they > show up in tool catalog but never with any explanation. Is component > removal the "official" reason for them? Or tinning wires? They work really well for tinning leads. Peace... Sridhar From dmabry at mich.com Tue Nov 15 08:56:46 2005 From: dmabry at mich.com (Dave Mabry) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:56:46 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <20051114190242.56323.qmail@web61012.mail.yahoo.com> <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <4379F72E.6030503@mich.com> Paul Koning wrote: >>>>>>"Chris" == Chris M writes: >>>>>> >>>>>> > > Chris> I don't know what a solder pot is exactly, but at one point I > Chris> was contemplating fabricating a sort of U shaped thing to bolt > Chris> onto the end of a solder iron (albeit a hefty one). > >That should work; I've seen things like that. > >A solder pot is a pot full of molten solder. Think of a crockpot or a >soup mug with an electric heater in the bottom. Insert bars of solder >and let them melt. > >I never understood what those things are meant to be used for; they >show up in tool catalog but never with any explanation. Is component >removal the "official" reason for them? Or tinning wires? > > paul > > > > > > I use one to make scuba diving weights from lead I collect at shooting ranges and from tire dealers. Never used one for anything to do with electronics, but I'm sure there must be a good reason to use it in this field. Dave From vp at cs.drexel.edu Tue Nov 15 09:10:57 2005 From: vp at cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:10:57 -0500 Subject: 9915A in a blinking decorative lights display Message-ID: <20051115151057.902A1200DD27@mail.cs.drexel.edu> http://www.series80.org/HP-9915A/blinkenlichts.html **vp From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 15 10:06:27 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:06:27 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <4378D4B2.50504@yahoo.co.uk> References: <200511141001390969.19F2A75B@10.0.0.252> <200511141732.JAA04614@ca2h0430.amd.com> <200511141001390969.19F2A75B@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051115100627.4197c81c@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 06:17 PM 11/14/05 +0000, Jules wrote: > >My only caution would be that gold/ceramic ICs tend to have markings >printed on with an ink that detergent will remove quite nicely (made >that mistake once when cleaning a PCB, won't be doing it again :) Other >components seem to survive such cleanings quite happily though. Speaking of gold/white ceramic ICs. I found a stash of NOS RCA 1801 CPUs last week. Some of them were stored in that nasty black antistatic foam that disintegrates with age and the ICs are now fused with the foam. I've tried to pull a couple of them out and some of the legs broke off of them. Does anyone know a way to dissolve the foam or anothe rway to get the ICs out without damaging them? Luckily many of the CPUs are still in their original RCA packages so they're PRISTINE! Joe From pkoning at equallogic.com Tue Nov 15 09:30:04 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:30:04 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs References: <200511141001390969.19F2A75B@10.0.0.252> <200511141732.JAA04614@ca2h0430.amd.com> <3.0.6.16.20051115100627.4197c81c@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <17273.65276.740821.214918@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Joe" == Joe R writes: Joe> At 06:17 PM 11/14/05 +0000, Jules wrote: >> My only caution would be that gold/ceramic ICs tend to have >> markings printed on with an ink that detergent will remove quite >> nicely (made that mistake once when cleaning a PCB, won't be doing >> it again :) Other components seem to survive such cleanings quite >> happily though. Joe> Speaking of gold/white ceramic ICs. I found a stash of NOS RCA Joe> 1801 CPUs last week. Some of them were stored in that nasty Joe> black antistatic foam that disintegrates with age and the ICs Joe> are now fused with the foam. I've tried to pull a couple of them Joe> out and some of the legs broke off of them. Does anyone know a Joe> way to dissolve the foam ... Don't know if it will help here, but I keep a bottle of lacquer thinner around the garage. It dissolves lots of stuff -- it's the best thing I have found for removing adhesive labels of all kinds (other than benzene which is hard to get these days). It also attacks most types of plastic, so it isn't suitable for cleaning them. But it might be good for dissolving one. If that doesn't work, try acetone. Usually, if a plastic is soluble at all, it will be soluble in one of those two. (Hm, not always -- vinyl requires something special. Look at the ingredients list on a waterbed patch kit. Hexane? Something like that.) paul From bv at norbionics.com Tue Nov 15 06:26:59 2005 From: bv at norbionics.com (=?utf-8?Q?Bj=C3=B8rn_Vermo?=) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:26:59 +0100 Subject: Lights In-Reply-To: <4379402E.80408@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511150034.jAF0Y2kR081668@dewey.classiccmp.org> <43793BBE.30707@seefried.com> <4379402E.80408@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 02:55:58 +0100, woodelf wrote: > Ken Seefried wrote: ... >> > Green Green . I want green! . The sun is green ... ears are pointed ... > Cheap, low-grade fluorescent tubes are green. They are quite unnatural, but give the highest light output for a given electrical input. I can see it every morning from the windows of the main post office in Oslo. The room where mail is sorted by robots and humans rarely go is lit by that kind of tubes. It is very different from the other floors in the same building, and does not look too nice to me. >> If you are more interested in "natural Sun-like" spectrum, there are >> numerous choices in VHO florescent bulbs, again in the aquarium & >> hydroponics world. These are *totally* different than the florescent >> bulbs you get at the local hardware store. >> >> Pretty much anything you get at, say, Home Depot, even the "aquarium >> bulbs" or "grow bulbs", will be noticeably inferior from a spectrum >> perspective. Stick to the hydroponic or aquarium stores. >> > Well all I got in Canada is the standard bulb fixtures. I got the screw > in florescent bulbs to save on power > but I don't like the color spectrum. I want daylight everywhere but I > can't change the fixures. Any Ideas? > People who need to evaluate colours often use neodym/praseodym (a.k.a. didymium) lightbulbs. They have pinkish bulbs, and give a light which is very daylight-like even at modest power. I got some which were made in Finland (by Airam if I recall right). They seem to be rare and hard to get. As for screw-in fluorecents, they come in at least three different colour grades. The most natural-looking are of course also the most expensive. -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/ From bv at norbionics.com Tue Nov 15 06:37:29 2005 From: bv at norbionics.com (=?utf-8?Q?Bj=C3=B8rn_Vermo?=) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:37:29 +0100 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <43793243.EA9A8F33@rain.org> References: <43793243.EA9A8F33@rain.org> Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 01:56:35 +0100, Marvin Johnston wrote: > > A much better alternative to peanut oil is fusing or reflow oil used in > the printed circuit industry (used most probably in the smaller shops.) > It runs $84.30/gallon according to information on the DalPro website. > While they seem to have the supplies necessary to make PCBs, their > prices are ... high. I would try a local printed circuit manufacturer to > see if I could get some their first. My guess is that it shouldn't be > more than about $8.00/gallon. > > http://www.dalpro.net/Page.html > > BTW, peanut oil used to be used for reflow many many moons ago and was > replaced at least 25 years ago with synthetic oils. > > At those prices I would rather try ricinus oil. It does not even burn in the cylinder when you use it as lubrication for high performance two-stroke engines. -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/ From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 09:53:30 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:53:30 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051115100627.4197c81c@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <200511141001390969.19F2A75B@10.0.0.252> <200511141732.JAA04614@ca2h0430.amd.com> <200511141001390969.19F2A75B@10.0.0.252> <3.0.6.16.20051115100627.4197c81c@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <200511150753300529.1EA3AB6E@10.0.0.252> On 11/15/2005 at 10:06 AM Joe R. wrote: > Speaking of gold/white ceramic ICs. I found a stash of NOS RCA 1801 CPUs >last week. Some of them were stored in that nasty black antistatic foam >that disintegrates with age and the ICs are now fused with the foam. I've >tried to pull a couple of them out and some of the legs broke off of them. >Does anyone know a way to dissolve the foam or anothe rway to get the ICs >out without damaging them? Luckily many of the CPUs are still in their >original RCA packages so they're PRISTINE! I'd first try soaking the mess in acetone (available at any hardware store); if that didn't work, try some methylene chloride, which will dissolve most anything that's dissolvable. You can get it (or at least liquid paint strippers that contain it) at most good paint stores. Follow precautions printed on the container. Fumes from either of these are nasty. Methylene chloride is murder on your skin and eyes and is a class 3 carcinogen. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 09:55:23 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:55:23 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> References: <20051114190242.56323.qmail@web61012.mail.yahoo.com> <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511150755230022.1EA562DA@10.0.0.252> On 11/15/2005 at 9:46 AM Paul Koning wrote: >I never understood what those things are meant to be used for; they >show up in tool catalog but never with any explanation. Is component >removal the "official" reason for them? Or tinning wires? One of the very few good ways to tin litz wire that I know of involves a solder pot. Cheers, Chuck From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Nov 15 11:21:10 2005 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:21:10 -0500 Subject: 1975 H-P Catalog Message-ID: <01C5E9DF.3121BA80@MSE_D03> Anybody want a 1975 H-P Electronics Instruments and Systems catalog? 572 pages, hard cover, mostly test equipment with abt 25 pages of calculators, computers (HP 21MX & 2000 series) & peripherals. Pictures, model numbers, descriptions & prices. $20. + S&H mike From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Nov 15 11:07:37 2005 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:07:37 -0500 Subject: Kilobaud & R-E Message-ID: <01C5E9DF.3036BE40@MSE_D03> I've got an incomplete collection of 77-82 Kilobauds; what are you looking for? Also, someone was looking for the R-E 68000 articles; if you didn't find what you needed on the Web, any idea which issues they were in? mike ------------------- Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 19:39:18 -0800 From: "Chuck Guzis" ...Speaking of old stuff, who still has a library of Kilobaud from around 1976-1979 to research an article? Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 10:27:00 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 08:27:00 -0800 Subject: Lights In-Reply-To: References: <200511150034.jAF0Y2kR081668@dewey.classiccmp.org> <43793BBE.30707@seefried.com> <4379402E.80408@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511150827000098.1EC2553B@10.0.0.252> On 11/15/2005 at 1:26 PM Bj??rn Vermo wrote: >> Green Green . I want green! . The sun is green ... ears are pointed ... Well, there's always low-pressure sodium vapor (turns everything yellow). :) Any fluorescent lamp is going to have a very jagged spectral output and will photograph badly, which limits you to incandescent lighting. For photography, you can't beat standard photoflood lamps. >People who need to evaluate colours often use neodym/praseodym (a.k.a. >didymium) lightbulbs. They have pinkish bulbs, and give a light which is >very daylight-like even at modest power. I got some which were made in >Finland (by Airam if I recall right). They seem to be rare and hard to get. I've seen them on eBay, but they're usually pretty expensive. I've also wondered about the useful lifetime of the bulb. If you're looking for floodlamps, you can get standard edison-base floods (e.g. R40 size) with a blue coating that will shift the spectrum a bit toward the blue. These are marketed as "Grow Lights" and quite reasonably priced. I suspect that plain halogen flood lighting (available in edison base) would be fine for most viewing applications. Search on eBay for "halogen bulb" for some ideas. Cheers, Chuck From billdeg at degnanco.com Tue Nov 15 12:13:04 2005 From: billdeg at degnanco.com (Degnan) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:13:04 -0500 Subject: Visual Technology - off brand Message-ID: Visual Computer Inc. made the "Commuter" (model 1083), and this was a portable with an LCD display. Visual Technology, Inc. is a different computer company, and they made a model called the 1050. -Bill >This Company's products are also scarce on the web - maybe they were just >"another clone" (although luggable). A year or so ago I located a prior >employee who gave some background, including that he might still have >the schematics. They were made 1984-86. > >I've had no interest in the Visual 1083 I want to place, but I'm hoping >a touch of off-brand discussion might change that. > -- E N D -- From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 12:55:33 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:55:33 -0700 Subject: Lights In-Reply-To: References: <200511150034.jAF0Y2kR081668@dewey.classiccmp.org> <43793BBE.30707@seefried.com> <4379402E.80408@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <437A2F25.3080208@jetnet.ab.ca> Bj?rn Vermo wrote: > > People who need to evaluate colours often use neodym/praseodym > (a.k.a. didymium) lightbulbs. They have pinkish bulbs, and give a > light which is very daylight-like even at modest power. I got some > which were made in Finland (by Airam if I recall right). They seem to > be rare and hard to get. > > As for screw-in fluorecents, they come in at least three different > colour grades. The most natural-looking are of course also the most > expensive. > We got the " made in china " grade here. I never knew about the green fluorensent bulbs before. From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Tue Nov 15 12:02:46 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:02:46 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <4379F72E.6030503@mich.com> References: <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> <20051114190242.56323.qmail@web61012.mail.yahoo.com> <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051115120246.41173978@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 09:56 AM 11/15/05 -0500, Dave wrote: >> >> Chris> I don't know what a solder pot is exactly, but at one point I >> Chris> was contemplating fabricating a sort of U shaped thing to bolt >> Chris> onto the end of a solder iron (albeit a hefty one). >> >> >I use one to make scuba diving weights from lead I collect at shooting >ranges and from tire dealers. Never used one for anything to do with >electronics, but I'm sure there must be a good reason to use it in this >field. LOL! I use one to melt down diving weights and other scrap lead to cast bullets with. Different strokes for different folks! joe From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 15 09:19:49 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:19:49 +0000 (GMT) Subject: 9915A in a blinking decorative lights display In-Reply-To: <20051115151057.902A1200DD27@mail.cs.drexel.edu> from "Vassilis Prevelakis" at Nov 15, 5 10:10:57 am Message-ID: > > http://www.series80.org/HP-9915A/blinkenlichts.html Yes, I saw it when you posted a message about it to MoHPC. A few years back I ran my Newtonsday [1] lights from a PERQ PERQlink port. Just buffered the data output lines and fed them to LEDs. A bit of pascal to produce the patterns and a bit of microcode to write values to the port completed the project. Somewhat more recently I wrote a Datafile (HPCC club magazine) article of HP calculator controled Nwetonsday lights, using either an HP41 + HPIL + GPIO interface or an HP48 + ARD's I2C interface. HPCC can probably provide copies of that article for anyone who's mad enough to want to try it. I also know of somebody who patched RT11 to write the idle lights display not to the switch register address but to the address of a 'spare' DR11 card. The output of that was buffered and used to flash 16 LEDs aranged in sone tinsel around the top of the rack. [1] As an agnostic I see no particular reason to celebrate Christmas. As a physicist I see a good reason to celebrate the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton. He was born 25/12/1642 -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 15 09:06:55 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:06:55 +0000 (GMT) Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <0IPZ008PK244MQF2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 14, 5 08:15:21 pm Message-ID: [Minix] > >But I like the book, note I lost my copy a few years ago. Hard copy is nice. > > > > It is. I have the version that came with 2.02 on CD. Excellent book and > reference. Worth the price. Whats nice about it I can read the text, > look at the code, run it if I care to and borrow ideas. Seconded. I bought the first edition of the book (red cover) and a Minix 1.5.10 (I think) on 360K floppies distribution) about 15 years ago, and the second edition (with the CD-ROM) somewhat later. I am not really a programmer, but I learnt a lot about operating systems from that book, and from fiddling with the code. It's one of those books, like TAoE, that I would seriously recomend everyone here should read. Sure it doesn't cover everything, and you may not agree with all the methods in it, but at least you'll learn enough to understand other books on the subject. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 15 09:09:41 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:09:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: SN76477N In-Reply-To: <43794D19.9030005@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Nov 14, 5 07:51:05 pm Message-ID: > God! $250 for a 4004 too. Don't even ask about 1103's. Oh well, I'll not be upgrading the memory in my 9830, then... My HP9830 has one fully-populated RAM board (4K words) and one half-populated one (2K words). It appears I could add another 32 1103 chips + a couple of buffers and some discretes and bring it up to a total of 8K words. But 1103s are not easy to find (at an affordable price...) -tony From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 13:34:22 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:34:22 -0800 Subject: 8008? Message-ID: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll entertain reasonable offers. Cheers, Chuck From aw288 at osfn.org Tue Nov 15 13:42:19 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:42:19 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: > That should work; I've seen things like that. > > A solder pot is a pot full of molten solder. Think of a crockpot or a > soup mug with an electric heater in the bottom. Insert bars of solder > and let them melt. > > I never understood what those things are meant to be used for; they > show up in tool catalog but never with any explanation. Is component > removal the "official" reason for them? Or tinning wires? In the old days, they were used to solder wires in electric gear and even houses - this was before the wirenut came into common use. Somewhere around here I have a solder pot on a gimballed 2 foot handle, so you could do the connections in the ceiling fixtures. OSHA? Who needs 'em. I have to say that I think using oil for removing parts in just plain INSANE. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From uban at ubanproductions.com Tue Nov 15 13:48:00 2005 From: uban at ubanproductions.com (Tom Uban) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:48:00 -0600 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115134714.023afea8@mail.ubanproductions.com> I don't know what it's worth, but you could always use it to build Jim Kearney's Tiny8: http://www.jkearney.com/tiny8demo/ I did and I love it... --tom At 11:34 AM 11/15/2005 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: >So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll >entertain reasonable offers. > >Cheers, >Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 13:51:51 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:51:51 -0500 Subject: 8008? Message-ID: <0IQ0001K4HSOH6H5@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: 8008? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:34:22 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll >entertain reasonable offers. > >Cheers, >Chuck Last time I bought one they were $180 for the 10uS (-1) part. Thats was November of 1973. ;) By summer of 1976 that was down to $19.95. They are worth what people will pay now. Allison From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 13:53:24 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:53:24 -0700 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> References: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437A3CB4.30705@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll >entertain reasonable offers. > >Cheers, >Chuck > > Well what does the buyer need it for? Most people here want it blinking lights not collecting dust. In 1975 a candy bar was about 15 cents, today it is a $1.00 That is a about a 6:1 price change , so a $60 8008 could be up to $360 for a fair market price today, how ever many people are use too -- it is outdated so carry it away for $1. Myself would not pay more than $100 considering how easy it is possable to damage it. From zmerch at 30below.com Tue Nov 15 14:20:21 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:20:21 -0500 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <437A3CB4.30705@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051115151644.03cdbe98@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that woodelf may have mentioned these words: >Chuck Guzis wrote: > >>So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll >>entertain reasonable offers. > In 1975 a candy bar was about 15 cents, today it is >a $1.00 That is a about a 6:1 price change , so a $60 8008 could be up >to $360 for a fair market price today, how ever many people are use too -- >it is outdated >so carry it away for $1. Myself would not pay more than $100 considering >how easy it is possable to damage it. Your analogy only works if 8008s are still made today, as the $1.00 candy bar is an upgraded version of the one in 1975[1]. So, would you be willing to pay a buck for a candy bar made in '75? I didn't think so... ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger [1] ; not to mention, the candy bars I prefer are about $2.50 each; I'd much rather eat 1 Lindt bar compared to 2.5 Hershey bars... Life's too short to drink cheap beer. You can quote me on that one. ;-) -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch at 30below.com Hi! I am a .signature virus. Copy me into your .signature to join in! From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 14:20:19 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:20:19 -0500 Subject: 8008? Message-ID: <0IQ000DK7J438O65@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: 8008? > From: woodelf > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 12:53:24 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Chuck Guzis wrote: > >>So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll >>entertain reasonable offers. >> >>Cheers, >>Chuck >> >> >Well what does the buyer need it for? Most people here want it blinking >lights not collecting dust. In 1975 a candy bar was about 15 cents, >today it is >a $1.00 That is a about a 6:1 price change , so a $60 8008 could be up >to $360 for a fair market price today, how ever many people are use too >-- it is outdated >so carry it away for $1. Myself would not pay more than $100 considering >how easy it is possable to damage it. Damage it?? Those 10u PMOS devices are far more resiliant than current parts. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 14:21:15 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:21:15 -0500 Subject: 8008? Message-ID: <0IQ000KHZJ5NTEYE@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: 8008? > From: Tom Uban > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:48:00 -0600 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" , > cctalk at classiccmp.org > >I don't know what it's worth, but you could always use it to build >Jim Kearney's Tiny8: > >http://www.jkearney.com/tiny8demo/ > >I did and I love it... > That is a really nicely done minimal parts 8008 system. I plan to copy it once I find the displays. Allison From uban at ubanproductions.com Tue Nov 15 14:58:37 2005 From: uban at ubanproductions.com (Tom Uban) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:58:37 -0600 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <0IQ000KHZJ5NTEYE@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> At 03:21 PM 11/15/2005 -0500, Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: Re: 8008? > > From: Tom Uban > > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:48:00 -0600 > > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > , > > cctalk at classiccmp.org > > > >I don't know what it's worth, but you could always use it to build > >Jim Kearney's Tiny8: > > > >http://www.jkearney.com/tiny8demo/ > > > >I did and I love it... > > > >That is a really nicely done minimal parts 8008 system. I plan to copy it >once I find the displays. I think that they are available from BG Micro. --tom >Allison From kth at srv.net Tue Nov 15 15:17:08 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:17:08 -0700 Subject: teco for Linux In-Reply-To: <20051114060850.GA20891@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> <437814F5.5030704@gmail.com> <20051114060850.GA20891@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> Message-ID: <437A5054.7010802@srv.net> tcccp wrote: >Hi guys! > >TECO runs fine with Linux on G3/500 PowerPC processors! Never had any >problems compiling/using it. It just kicks ass O:-) > > Lukas > > > Do any versions run the vtedit macro? Last time I tried, none would. From alberto at a2sistemi.it Tue Nov 15 15:34:53 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:34:53 +0100 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Alos check the output capacitors. A dried up one will cause all sorts of > problems. All the capacitors of this power supply were replaced, all semiconductor tested, various control done .... but the problem remain the same : the outputs are a few low , sufficent to trigger under voltage protection. With under voltage protection disabled, it work without problem with a hard load. Now: it's correct to adjust the trimmer R18 to obtain correct outputs ? I'm not able to understand what i changed in this supply, maybe the sign of the time :) Alberto. ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 15:48:12 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:48:12 -0800 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115134714.023afea8@mail.ubanproductions.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115134714.023afea8@mail.ubanproductions.com> Message-ID: <200511151348120062.1FE86597@10.0.0.252> Hmmm, obviously I've touched on a humorous topic. Okay, a tie tac it is. Anyone want any old external modems? I've got three USR Couriers; different models: One's the HST Dual Standard, another is the V.34 Dual Standard and the last is the V.Evertying. The V.34 has had a software upgrade, so it operates identically to the V.Everything. Let me know. Cheers, Chuck From madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com Tue Nov 15 15:48:25 2005 From: madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com (Madcrow Maxwell) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:48:25 -0500 Subject: PDP-8 OS/8 Disk Image Problems Message-ID: <8dd2d95c0511151348v6f13e5fbo5479bef51d1768ca@mail.gmail.com> I've recently started to play with the PDP-8 using the excellent SIMH emulator and I've come across a problem: none of the PDP-8 OS/8 disk images that I've found seem to allow me to use DECtapes. As all the games I've found (mostly smallish BASIC programs) seem to come on DECtape/DECtape images. Does anybody know where to find a disk with proper drivers. I tried to rebuild the OS, but BUILD couldn't find the proper drivers either. Actually, I have my doubts as to whether BASIC even works, as it seems to not even want to run the little 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD." 20 END example that I cooked up. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 15:57:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 13:57:01 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> On 11/15/2005 at 2:42 PM William Donzelli wrote: >I have to say that I think using oil for removing parts in just plain >INSANE. Yeah, Fluorinert FC-70 is what you want--boils at 419F; high heat transfer characteristics; about $100 for 100 ml... Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 16:05:43 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:05:43 -0700 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051115151644.03cdbe98@mail.30below.com> References: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> <5.1.0.14.2.20051115151644.03cdbe98@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <437A5BB7.1030806@jetnet.ab.ca> Roger Merchberger wrote: > Rumor has it that woodelf may have mentioned these words: > Forget this rumor stuff. I said that! I have a mouth ample for both my feet. > Your analogy only works if 8008s are still made today, as the $1.00 > candy bar is an upgraded version of the one in 1975[1]. > > So, would you be willing to pay a buck for a candy bar made in '75? I > didn't think so... ;-) > I am not willing to spend $.05 on Candy Bar. Wait that was 1966 prices. :) > Laterz, > Roger "Merch" Merchberger > > [1] ; not to mention, the candy bars I prefer are about $2.50 each; > I'd much rather eat 1 Lindt bar compared to 2.5 Hershey bars... Life's > too short to drink cheap beer. You can quote me on that one. ;-) I like to value for my food $1.00 , but somedays like today I cheat and buy greasy food! I went to order "Operating Systems Design and Implementation" Second Edition from the local bookstore and found it out of print. (Minix 2) so now I am having a greasy pizza. Ben alias woodelf From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 16:08:04 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:08:04 -0700 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> Message-ID: <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> Tom Uban wrote: > > I think that they are available from BG Micro. > A quick look at the PDF catalog says NO. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 16:16:53 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:16:53 -0700 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/15/2005 at 2:42 PM William Donzelli wrote: > > > >>I have to say that I think using oil for removing parts in just plain >>INSANE. >> >> > >Yeah, Fluorinert FC-70 is what you want--boils at 419F; high heat transfer >characteristics; about $100 for 100 ml... > > > Is that the stuff in Cray's? Now we know why they are so much! From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 16:26:41 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:26:41 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> On 11/15/2005 at 3:16 PM woodelf wrote: > >Is that the stuff in Cray's? Now we know why they are so much! A relative, but not the same stuff. Cray used Fluorinert F-77, which boils at about 203F. Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 15 12:44:38 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:44:38 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: from "Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi" at Nov 15, 5 10:34:53 pm Message-ID: > > > Alos check the output capacitors. A dried up one will cause all sorts of > > problems. > > All the capacitors of this power supply were replaced, all semiconductor > tested, various control done .... > but the problem remain the same : the outputs are a few low , sufficent to > trigger under voltage protection. > With under voltage protection disabled, it work without problem with a hard > load. > Now: it's correct to adjust the trimmer R18 to obtain correct outputs ? I think that would be OK. While it's a bad idea to randomly make adjustments, you are not doing that. You have a fairly clear idea of what's going on, and what that trimmer adjusts. I'd try twaaking it to see if you can get the voltages within range. -tony From uban at ubanproductions.com Tue Nov 15 16:36:15 2005 From: uban at ubanproductions.com (Tom Uban) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:36:15 -0600 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> At 03:08 PM 11/15/2005 -0700, woodelf wrote: >Tom Uban wrote: > >> >>I think that they are available from BG Micro. >A quick look at the PDF catalog says NO. > > I reviewed my old BGMicro orders and found it to be LED1059, which is no longer available. --tom From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 16:36:12 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:36:12 -0700 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/15/2005 at 3:16 PM woodelf wrote: > > > >>Is that the stuff in Cray's? Now we know why they are so much! >> >> > >A relative, but not the same stuff. Cray used Fluorinert F-77, which boils >at about 203F. > > > So what is wrong with cheap water? I guess - inert - says it all. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 16:41:04 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:41:04 -0700 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <437A6400.3090208@jetnet.ab.ca> woodelf wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> On 11/15/2005 at 3:16 PM woodelf wrote: >> >> >> >>> Is that the stuff in Cray's? Now we know why they are so much! >>> >> >> >> A relative, but not the same stuff. Cray used Fluorinert F-77, which >> boils >> at about 203F. >> >> >> > So what is wrong with cheap water? I guess - inert - says it all. and then again ... they may have needed the magic 203 degree point. Any water in the chips or plastic used would stay liquid! From chenmel at earthlink.net Tue Nov 15 17:06:26 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:06:26 -0500 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <437A5BB7.1030806@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> <5.1.0.14.2.20051115151644.03cdbe98@mail.30below.com> <437A5BB7.1030806@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20051115180626.0b2ee3b6.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:05:43 -0700 woodelf wrote: > Roger Merchberger wrote: > > > Rumor has it that woodelf may have mentioned these words: > > > Forget this rumor stuff. I said that! I have a mouth ample for both my > feet. > > > Your analogy only works if 8008s are still made today, as the $1.00 > > candy bar is an upgraded version of the one in 1975[1]. > > > > So, would you be willing to pay a buck for a candy bar made in '75? I > > didn't think so... ;-) > > > I am not willing to spend $.05 on Candy Bar. Wait that was 1966 prices. :) > > > Laterz, > > Roger "Merch" Merchberger > > > > [1] ; not to mention, the candy bars I prefer are about $2.50 each; > > I'd much rather eat 1 Lindt bar compared to 2.5 Hershey bars... Life's > > too short to drink cheap beer. You can quote me on that one. ;-) > > I like to value for my food $1.00 , but somedays like today I cheat and > buy greasy food! > I went to order "Operating Systems Design and Implementation" Second > Edition from the local > bookstore and found it out of print. (Minix 2) so now I am having a > greasy pizza. I just looked on abe.com and have found about a half dozen copies of the first edition available for under $2. I see one book dealer has the second edition new with sealed CD-ROM for $15.21. I can't imagine why ANYBODY would buy books new without first going to abe.com. I think I'm about to order one of those $1 first editions, I only have the second. > Ben alias woodelf > > From chenmel at earthlink.net Tue Nov 15 17:15:17 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:15:17 -0500 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> References: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051115181517.287c2f02.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:34:22 -0800 "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll > entertain reasonable offers. > If you look on eBay you'll discover people seem to be willing to pay quite a bit for them. Nearly three figures in some instances. From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Tue Nov 15 17:16:32 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:16:32 -0600 Subject: Possible regulator problem in 11/34 Message-ID: Well, I was working on my 11/34 last night, and I noticed when I flipped it on its side that the power regulator H745 does not have its red light on. Does that mean the other two H744s are problematic, or does it mean that the H745 is the problem, or is this all normal? Opinions please! :) Thanks Julian From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 17:24:52 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:24:52 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511151524520648.2040E73F@10.0.0.252> On 11/15/2005 at 3:36 PM woodelf wrote: >So what is wrong with cheap water? I guess - inert - says it all. Well yes, but remember that Honeywell tinkered with direct water cooling a bit back in the 70's. I think they used a copper diaphragm between the water and the chip to conduct heat. I know they had problems with algae growing in the tubing and that certain algicides had the problem of corroding copper. IIRC, this was an ECL implementation of an earlier machine that didn't do much better than 1.5x the original in performance. As a product, a disaster. Here's a paper on direct immersion cooling: http://www.electronics-cooling.com/Resources/EC_Articles/MAY96/may96_04.htm Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 15 13:43:33 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:43:33 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Possible regulator problem in 11/34 In-Reply-To: from "Wolfe, Julian" at Nov 15, 5 05:16:32 pm Message-ID: > > Well, I was working on my 11/34 last night, and I noticed when I flipped it > on its side that the power regulator H745 does not have its red light on. > Does that mean the other two H744s are problematic, or does it mean that the > H745 is the problem, or is this all normal? > > Opinions please! :) On these DEC power bricks, the LED (originally a filament bulb) is simply connected to the output (with a series resistor, of course). It should be on when the supply is operating. If it's not, then either the PSU brick has problems, there's a short on the output, or (of course) the bulb/LED has failed. I would grab a voltmeter and check the voltage at the backplane. And then, if necessary, look at the printset to debug the regulator brick. -tony From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Tue Nov 15 17:28:40 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:28:40 -0600 Subject: Panel question Message-ID: I'm trying to mount the front panel on my 11/34, but I've run into a problem: I have no mounting brackets. What do the brackets look like form mounting to a BA11-K, and does anyone here have any extras? Secondly, was there a H964x style beige panel with black vents that would go on the non-covered portion of the 11/34a's BA11-K? I seem to remember seeing that sort of thing on some 11/44s and 11/24s. Again, any advice would be appreciated Julian From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 17:59:40 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:59:40 -0700 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511151524520648.2040E73F@10.0.0.252> References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151524520648.2040E73F@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437A766C.7020001@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/15/2005 at 3:36 PM woodelf wrote: > > >Well yes, but remember that Honeywell tinkered with direct water cooling a >bit back in the 70's. I think they used a copper diaphragm between the >water and the chip to conduct heat. I know they had problems with algae >growing in the tubing and that certain algicides had the problem of >corroding copper. IIRC, this was an ECL implementation of an earlier >machine that didn't do much better than 1.5x the original in performance. >As a product, a disaster. > > So did anybody know about heat pipes? From charlesmorris at direcway.com Tue Nov 15 18:04:48 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:04:48 -0600 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued Message-ID: Thanks to W. Donzelli's post, I just drove 4 hrs. (each way, 40-50 mph wind gusts!) to Little Rock AR and rescued the following items: DEC 11-40(?) open rack with two huge fans, an RL02 drive complete with pack, a PDP-11/03-L and a PDP-11/24. Both 11's appear to be complete and fully populated with cards (I know something about 8's but very little about 11's). Sadly, all the interface cables were cut/discarded during the salvage :( Anyhow I've got way too many projects already (including my PDP-8/A and currently nonworking RL02). I will probably keep the 11/03 for a "someday" project. Is anyone interested in the PDP-11/24? Make me an offer. I'll sell it reasonably priced to a good home. I can take some pics tomorrow. It's *really* heavy though so shipping might be expensive (from zip 65775). If no one here wants it, I'll put it on the bay, since the donor explicitly told me he wouldn't mind if I did. He just wanted to get it out of his garage... thanks Charles From ddl-cctech at danlan.com Tue Nov 15 18:07:00 2005 From: ddl-cctech at danlan.com (Dan Lanciani) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:07:00 -0500 (EST) Subject: Model 26 tty available Message-ID: <200511160007.TAA25204@ss10.danlan.com> Located in Gloucester. Anybody interested? Dan Lanciani ddl at danlan.*com From tradde at excite.com Tue Nov 15 18:07:46 2005 From: tradde at excite.com (Tim) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:07:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: Panel question Message-ID: <20051116000746.CBB8F1E44A@xprdmailfe24.nwk.excite.com> --- On Tue 11/15, Wolfe, Julian < ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU > wrote: From: Wolfe, Julian [mailto: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU] To: info-pdp11 at village.org, cctalk at classiccmp.org Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:28:40 -0600 Subject: Panel question I'm trying to mount the front panel on my 11/34, but I've run into aproblem: I have no mounting brackets. What do the brackets look like formmounting to a BA11-K, and does anyone here have any extras?Secondly, was there a H964x style beige panel with black vents that would goon the non-covered portion of the 11/34a's BA11-K? I seem to rememberseeing that sort of thing on some 11/44s and 11/24s.Again, any advice would be appreciated. ------------ I thought I had an extra, and was going to look at it. Seems like I must have sent it off to someone. It's not like the older clip on panel types. It is screwed to a bracket. If no one else comes forward I'll remove the one from my 11/34 and look. As to the other panel, mine is simply a 1/2 DEC black panel screwed in from the front above the programmer panel. Tim R _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web! From fireflyst at earthlink.net Tue Nov 15 18:08:34 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:08:34 -0600 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued In-Reply-To: Message-ID: 11/24 is split I&D UNIBUS, right? If so, I'd like some details as to what it's equipped with in the box. Thanks Julian > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Charles > Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 6:05 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued > > Thanks to W. Donzelli's post, I just drove 4 hrs. (each way, 40-50 > mph wind gusts!) to Little Rock AR and rescued the following > items: > > DEC 11-40(?) open rack with two huge fans, an RL02 drive complete > with pack, a PDP-11/03-L and a PDP-11/24. > > Both 11's appear to be complete and fully populated with cards (I > know something about 8's but very little about 11's). Sadly, all > the interface cables were cut/discarded during the salvage :( > > Anyhow I've got way too many projects already (including my > PDP-8/A and currently nonworking RL02). I will probably keep the > 11/03 for a "someday" project. > > Is anyone interested in the PDP-11/24? Make me an offer. I'll sell > it reasonably priced to a good home. I can take some pics > tomorrow. It's *really* heavy though so shipping might be > expensive (from zip 65775). If no one here wants it, I'll put it > on the bay, since the donor explicitly told me he wouldn't mind if > I did. He just wanted to get it out of his garage... > > thanks > Charles > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 18:17:15 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:17:15 -0500 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued Message-ID: <0IQ0002E1U2YRSOI@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> I thought the 11/24 was the 11/23 chipset (F-11) mated to Unibus rather than the Qbus. Allison > >Subject: RE: DEC "Junk" rescued > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:08:34 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >11/24 is split I&D UNIBUS, right? If so, I'd like some details as to what >it's equipped with in the box. > >Thanks >Julian > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >> On Behalf Of Charles >> Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 6:05 PM >> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >> Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued >> >> Thanks to W. Donzelli's post, I just drove 4 hrs. (each way, 40-50 >> mph wind gusts!) to Little Rock AR and rescued the following >> items: >> >> DEC 11-40(?) open rack with two huge fans, an RL02 drive complete >> with pack, a PDP-11/03-L and a PDP-11/24. >> >> Both 11's appear to be complete and fully populated with cards (I >> know something about 8's but very little about 11's). Sadly, all >> the interface cables were cut/discarded during the salvage :( >> >> Anyhow I've got way too many projects already (including my >> PDP-8/A and currently nonworking RL02). I will probably keep the >> 11/03 for a "someday" project. >> >> Is anyone interested in the PDP-11/24? Make me an offer. I'll sell >> it reasonably priced to a good home. I can take some pics >> tomorrow. It's *really* heavy though so shipping might be >> expensive (from zip 65775). If no one here wants it, I'll put it >> on the bay, since the donor explicitly told me he wouldn't mind if >> I did. He just wanted to get it out of his garage... >> >> thanks >> Charles >> > > From chd_1 at nktelco.net Tue Nov 15 18:20:37 2005 From: chd_1 at nktelco.net (C. H. Dickman) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:20:37 -0500 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <43793309.2080800@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> <43793309.2080800@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <437A7B55.9040705@nktelco.net> woodelf wrote: > Well that number now that I think about it is way off, from memory > speeds in the > PDP -8 Faq. The handbook lists the pdp-8/e as 1.2 us for jump and > operate instructions. > 2.6 us for memory instructions.+1.2 us for indirect.+1.4 us for > auto-indexed. A 5 mhz clock > looks to be used. I/O seem to have a variable time but 2.6us is the > general speed listed. For the pdp-8/e, it is actually a 20MHz clock driving a 28 bit shift register from which 4 timing states are generated. The memory cycle is 1.2us. From fireflyst at earthlink.net Tue Nov 15 18:28:06 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:28:06 -0600 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued In-Reply-To: <0IQ0002E1U2YRSOI@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: Oh wait, that's the 11/44 I'm thinking of. Never mind. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Allison > Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 6:17 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: RE: DEC "Junk" rescued > > I thought the 11/24 was the 11/23 chipset (F-11) mated to Unibus rather > than > the Qbus. > > Allison > > > > > >Subject: RE: DEC "Junk" rescued > > From: "Julian Wolfe" > > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 18:08:34 -0600 > > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > > > > >11/24 is split I&D UNIBUS, right? If so, I'd like some details as to > what > >it's equipped with in the box. > > > >Thanks > >Julian > > > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk- > bounces at classiccmp.org] > >> On Behalf Of Charles > >> Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 6:05 PM > >> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued > >> > >> Thanks to W. Donzelli's post, I just drove 4 hrs. (each way, 40-50 > >> mph wind gusts!) to Little Rock AR and rescued the following > >> items: > >> > >> DEC 11-40(?) open rack with two huge fans, an RL02 drive complete > >> with pack, a PDP-11/03-L and a PDP-11/24. > >> > >> Both 11's appear to be complete and fully populated with cards (I > >> know something about 8's but very little about 11's). Sadly, all > >> the interface cables were cut/discarded during the salvage :( > >> > >> Anyhow I've got way too many projects already (including my > >> PDP-8/A and currently nonworking RL02). I will probably keep the > >> 11/03 for a "someday" project. > >> > >> Is anyone interested in the PDP-11/24? Make me an offer. I'll sell > >> it reasonably priced to a good home. I can take some pics > >> tomorrow. It's *really* heavy though so shipping might be > >> expensive (from zip 65775). If no one here wants it, I'll put it > >> on the bay, since the donor explicitly told me he wouldn't mind if > >> I did. He just wanted to get it out of his garage... > >> > >> thanks > >> Charles > >> > > > > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 15 18:30:08 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:30:08 -0700 Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <437A7B55.9040705@nktelco.net> References: <200511142231.jAEMVIql031827@mwave.heeltoe.com> <43793309.2080800@jetnet.ab.ca> <437A7B55.9040705@nktelco.net> Message-ID: <437A7D90.4090902@jetnet.ab.ca> C. H. Dickman wrote: > > For the pdp-8/e, it is actually a 20MHz clock driving a 28 bit shift > register from which 4 timing states are generated. The memory cycle is > 1.2us. Now if DEC used that clock speed for marketing, I'd bet they would of sold more 8's. That is a fast clock. Hmm 200 Mhz would give you a .120 us and 2000Mhz .012 us :D From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 15 18:48:22 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:48:22 -0800 Subject: What's an MB8907? Message-ID: <200511151648220451.208D5803@10.0.0.252> I discovered a couple of these (ceramic carrier, 16 pin DIP) Fujitsu MB8907F. My databooks and an online search shows nothing. What is it? Cheers, Chuck From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Tue Nov 15 18:56:03 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:56:03 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! Message-ID: <145E4B67-5B46-4459-914F-81920CE0ECFE@xlisper.mv.com> I got my PDP-11/73 booting by connecting an RX02 drive to the system and using an RT-11 boot floppy. I've convinced myself that the 1.5mb of memory (two M8059s and a third party card) works and that the KDJ11-A CPU is working as well as the multi-function boot card (M8047) and the RX02 drive and controller (M8029). Unfortunately, I still can't access the RL01 drive. RT-11 sees the controller card but if I type "DIR RL0:", there is no indication that the drive is even accessed. The disk seems to spin up and the ready light comes on on the drive but I don't seem to be able to access the drive from RT-11. I've also tried using a scratch pack and typing "INIT DL0:" but that doesn't work either. Does anyone have any idea what might cause this kind of behavior? Also, can anyone make me a bootable RX02 disk with the RL01 diagnostics on it? I can supply the blank disk? Thanks, David From aw288 at osfn.org Tue Nov 15 20:19:19 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 21:19:19 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511151524520648.2040E73F@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > Well yes, but remember that Honeywell tinkered with direct water cooling a > bit back in the 70's. IBM did as well, but I do not know the specifics. Their early 80s water cooling technology, however, is well documented (Sci American, for one). Someone found that a better way to cool is with a Slurpee mixture. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From jim at jkearney.com Tue Nov 15 20:35:15 2005 From: jim at jkearney.com (Jim Kearney) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 21:35:15 -0500 Subject: 8008? References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com><5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> Message-ID: <006101c5ea56$6142c520$0500a8c0@jkearney.com> > I reviewed my old BGMicro orders and found it to be LED1059, which > is no longer available. There don't seem to be any ready sources for this particular display, but I found that Osram apparently took over Siemens' opto products and *still* lists an very similar device, the PD353x series: http://catalog.osram-os.com/catalogue/catalogue.do?catGroupOid=0000000000024e2600080023&favOid=0000000000024e2600080023&act=showProductGroups I should locate some of these and do a Tiny-8 PCB run, but I also am lacking 8008's ;-( Jim From jcwren at jcwren.com Tue Nov 15 20:48:15 2005 From: jcwren at jcwren.com (J.C. Wren) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 21:48:15 -0500 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <006101c5ea56$6142c520$0500a8c0@jkearney.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com><5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <006101c5ea56$6142c520$0500a8c0@jkearney.com> Message-ID: <437A9DEF.1090702@jcwren.com> Could always program an AVR to be a 8008. Or if you're really ready to puke on your shoes, a PIC. --jc Jim Kearney wrote: >>I reviewed my old BGMicro orders and found it to be LED1059, which >>is no longer available. >> >> > >There don't seem to be any ready sources for this particular display, but I >found that Osram apparently took over Siemens' opto products and *still* >lists an very similar device, the PD353x series: > >http://catalog.osram-os.com/catalogue/catalogue.do?catGroupOid=0000000000024e2600080023&favOid=0000000000024e2600080023&act=showProductGroups > >I should locate some of these and do a Tiny-8 PCB run, but I also am lacking >8008's ;-( > >Jim > > > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 21:18:48 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:18:48 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! Message-ID: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! > From: David Betz > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:56:03 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >I got my PDP-11/73 booting by connecting an RX02 drive to the system >and using an RT-11 boot floppy. I've convinced myself that the 1.5mb >of memory (two M8059s and a third party card) works and that the >KDJ11-A CPU is working as well as the multi-function boot card >(M8047) and the RX02 drive and controller (M8029). > >Unfortunately, I still can't access the RL01 drive. RT-11 sees the >controller card but if I type "DIR RL0:", there is no indication that Ah thats... dir DL0: the RL02 is accessed by the DL: driver. is there a DL.sys on the disk? >the drive is even accessed. The disk seems to spin up and the ready >light comes on on the drive but I don't seem to be able to access the >drive from RT-11. I've also tried using a scratch pack and typing >"INIT DL0:" but that doesn't work either. Does anyone have any idea >what might cause this kind of behavior? Also, can anyone make me a >bootable RX02 disk with the RL01 diagnostics on it? I can supply the >blank disk? Assuming the interrupt grant is good (no empty slots between the cpu and the RLV controller. the cables are good and connected correctly. No fault light and When the load bitton is in you get spin up and a white load lamp. It should work. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 21:29:55 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:29:55 -0500 Subject: 8008? Message-ID: <0IQ10088G3006MN6@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: 8008? > From: "Jim Kearney" > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 21:35:15 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> I reviewed my old BGMicro orders and found it to be LED1059, which >> is no longer available. > >There don't seem to be any ready sources for this particular display, but I >found that Osram apparently took over Siemens' opto products and *still* >lists an very similar device, the PD353x series: > >http://catalog.osram-os.com/catalogue/catalogue.do?catGroupOid=0000000000024e2600080023&favOid=0000000000024e2600080023&act=showProductGroups > >I should locate some of these and do a Tiny-8 PCB run, but I also am lacking >8008's ;-( > I have an 8008 and HDSP2132 (8 char version). Wire wrap and a software patch will have to do. The 8008 appeard in one place thats common the 11/34 KY11 programmers pannel. Possibly others. I may not duplicate the design exact;y as you did it. Rather than memory mapped I may implement IO ports. However looking at your design there there some design simplifications that hadn't occured to me last 8008 project (1974). It's pretty cool and saves a carload of chips. Most people back then were implementing multiple busses (address, ram data, IO in, IO out, interrupt instuction) and thats a lot of chips. The MCS-8 is a really good example of getting carried away with multiple busses. I hadn't looked at that chip in years and that was a different perspective. You could create a CPU, memory and IO card set. Allison From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Tue Nov 15 21:32:43 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:32:43 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <7ADE11AC-E5E4-4FA4-B22B-6305ADE468C0@xlisper.mv.com> Yes, you're right. I did type DL not RL. That was a typo in my message. Yes, the DL.SYS driver is on the boot disk (RX02), there are no empty slots between the CPU and the RL controller. The slots are filled as follows: KDJ11-A MSV11-LK MSV11-LK National Semiconductor memory board (1mb) RLV12 M8029 (RX02 controller) MXV11 No fault light (and it isn't burned out), the white load light (with the "0" on it) lights. So, I suppose that means that the cables are probably bad? BTW, I have the cable plugged into the top connector on the RL01 and the terminator on the bottom. Is that correct? On Nov 15, 2005, at 10:18 PM, Allison wrote: >> >> Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! >> From: David Betz >> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:56:03 -0500 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >> >> I got my PDP-11/73 booting by connecting an RX02 drive to the system >> and using an RT-11 boot floppy. I've convinced myself that the 1.5mb >> of memory (two M8059s and a third party card) works and that the >> KDJ11-A CPU is working as well as the multi-function boot card >> (M8047) and the RX02 drive and controller (M8029). >> >> Unfortunately, I still can't access the RL01 drive. RT-11 sees the >> controller card but if I type "DIR RL0:", there is no indication that > > Ah thats... > > dir DL0: > > the RL02 is accessed by the DL: driver. is there a DL.sys on the disk? > >> the drive is even accessed. The disk seems to spin up and the ready >> light comes on on the drive but I don't seem to be able to access the >> drive from RT-11. I've also tried using a scratch pack and typing >> "INIT DL0:" but that doesn't work either. Does anyone have any idea >> what might cause this kind of behavior? Also, can anyone make me a >> bootable RX02 disk with the RL01 diagnostics on it? I can supply the >> blank disk? > > Assuming the interrupt grant is good (no empty slots between the > cpu and > the RLV controller. the cables are good and connected correctly. > No fault > light and When the load bitton is in you get spin up and a white > load lamp. > > It should work. > > Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 22:03:52 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:03:52 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! Message-ID: <0IQ100N394KK3B43@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! > From: David Betz > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:32:43 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Yes, you're right. I did type DL not RL. That was a typo in my >message. Yes, the DL.SYS driver is on the boot disk (RX02), there are >no empty slots between the CPU and the RL controller. The slots are >filled as follows: > >KDJ11-A >MSV11-LK >MSV11-LK >National Semiconductor memory board (1mb) >RLV12 >M8029 (RX02 controller) >MXV11 I'd pull the MXV11 and the National card them bump every one up. >No fault light (and it isn't burned out), the white load light (with >the "0" on it) lights. Thats a good sign. >So, I suppose that means that the cables are probably bad? BTW, I >have the cable plugged into the top connector on the RL01 and the >terminator on the bottom. Is that correct? I don't think which is which matters as it's a parallel pass through and the drive select plug is the determining factor. >From RT-11 a show dev: or Resorc /A Should list the devices the system knows of. It may be possible that one of the cards is not passing intgrant. If the system doesnt show the RL02 either grant chain is broken or the controller is not there. Which controller? Two board set or later single board m8061 one? The controller (RLV12) must be address at 17774400 (q22), 774400 (q18). The vector is 160. Allison From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Tue Nov 15 22:08:40 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:08:40 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <0IQ100N394KK3B43@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ100N394KK3B43@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <096BA673-D51B-456C-BE95-0B3CAB702768@xlisper.mv.com> I can't pull the MXV11 because it has the bootstrap and my console port. I did try it without the NS memory board but that didn't work either. In fact, RT-11 seems happy with that board as it reports the correct total amount of memory (1.5mb). I have the single quad board RL01/02 controller. Here's the result of "SH DEV": .SH DEV Device Status CSR Vector(s) ------ ------ --- --------- DY Resident 177170 264 LD Installed 000000 000 SL Installed 000000 000 VM Installed 177572 250 NL Installed 000000 000 DL Installed 174400 160 On Nov 15, 2005, at 11:03 PM, Allison wrote: >> >> Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! >> From: David Betz >> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:32:43 -0500 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >> >> Yes, you're right. I did type DL not RL. That was a typo in my >> message. Yes, the DL.SYS driver is on the boot disk (RX02), there are >> no empty slots between the CPU and the RL controller. The slots are >> filled as follows: >> >> KDJ11-A >> MSV11-LK >> MSV11-LK >> National Semiconductor memory board (1mb) >> RLV12 >> M8029 (RX02 controller) >> MXV11 > > I'd pull the MXV11 and the National card them bump every one up. > >> No fault light (and it isn't burned out), the white load light (with >> the "0" on it) lights. > > Thats a good sign. > >> So, I suppose that means that the cables are probably bad? BTW, I >> have the cable plugged into the top connector on the RL01 and the >> terminator on the bottom. Is that correct? > > I don't think which is which matters as it's a parallel pass through > and the drive select plug is the determining factor. > >> From RT-11 a > show dev: > or > > Resorc /A > > Should list the devices the system knows of. It may be possible that > one of the cards is not passing intgrant. If the system doesnt show > the RL02 either grant chain is broken or the controller is not there. > > Which controller? Two board set or later single board m8061 one? > > The controller (RLV12) must be address at 17774400 (q22), 774400 > (q18). > The vector is 160. > > > > Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 15 22:26:38 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:26:38 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! Message-ID: <0IQ100KA05MITEMG@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Make sure the CSR and vector of RLV12 is as described. I'm not sure of the next step without powering my system and at the moment I have two S100 crates in the way (testing). Allison > >Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! > From: David Betz > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:08:40 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >I can't pull the MXV11 because it has the bootstrap and my console >port. I did try it without the NS memory board but that didn't work >either. In fact, RT-11 seems happy with that board as it reports the >correct total amount of memory (1.5mb). I have the single quad board >RL01/02 controller. > >Here's the result of "SH DEV": > >..SH DEV > >Device Status CSR Vector(s) >------ ------ --- --------- > DY Resident 177170 264 > LD Installed 000000 000 > SL Installed 000000 000 > VM Installed 177572 250 > NL Installed 000000 000 > DL Installed 174400 160 > >On Nov 15, 2005, at 11:03 PM, Allison wrote: > >>> >>> Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! >>> From: David Betz >>> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:32:43 -0500 >>> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >>> >>> >>> Yes, you're right. I did type DL not RL. That was a typo in my >>> message. Yes, the DL.SYS driver is on the boot disk (RX02), there are >>> no empty slots between the CPU and the RL controller. The slots are >>> filled as follows: >>> >>> KDJ11-A >>> MSV11-LK >>> MSV11-LK >>> National Semiconductor memory board (1mb) >>> RLV12 >>> M8029 (RX02 controller) >>> MXV11 >> >> I'd pull the MXV11 and the National card them bump every one up. >> >>> No fault light (and it isn't burned out), the white load light (with >>> the "0" on it) lights. >> >> Thats a good sign. >> >>> So, I suppose that means that the cables are probably bad? BTW, I >>> have the cable plugged into the top connector on the RL01 and the >>> terminator on the bottom. Is that correct? >> >> I don't think which is which matters as it's a parallel pass through >> and the drive select plug is the determining factor. >> >>> From RT-11 a >> show dev: >> or >> >> Resorc /A >> >> Should list the devices the system knows of. It may be possible that >> one of the cards is not passing intgrant. If the system doesnt show >> the RL02 either grant chain is broken or the controller is not there. >> >> Which controller? Two board set or later single board m8061 one? >> >> The controller (RLV12) must be address at 17774400 (q22), 774400 >> (q18). >> The vector is 160. >> >> >> >> Allison From gtulloch at shaw.ca Tue Nov 15 23:23:53 2005 From: gtulloch at shaw.ca (gtulloch at shaw.ca) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:23:53 -0600 Subject: Information requested on Vector Graphics machine In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Gil: The Flashwriter II boards are meant to connect to a "Mindless Terminal" ie basically a keyboard and CRT, all of the smarts were on the board. I have a Vector MZ with Flashwriter II and Mindless terminal, which is slightly different than the ZCB in that the CPU board and IO were on seperate boards. With the right ROM the ZCB works with a serial terminal as well, I have some images that might work. Documentation on most of what you have should be at http://www.hartetechnologies.com/manuals/Vector%20Graphics/ If you have any questions let me know... Regards, Gord ----------------------------------------------------- Gord Tulloch (www.gordtulloch.com) RASC Winnipeg Centre cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org wrote on 13/11/2005 02:32:09 PM: > What I do know: The machine is Z80 based on a "ZCB" single board computer > which sits in the S100 bus. It also has a hard disk/floppy drive > controller board, what appear to be three memory boards and three > "FlashWriter II"s which, all share one wire in common with a memory board > (A big question mark over that one). > > Alas some philistine couldn't be bothered unplugging the unit from > whatever it once hooked to, and snipped both the ribbon cables to the > drive chassis as well as a ribbon cable that lead to an unknown device > (possibly a specialised graphics display). > Replacing the cabling isn't a problem, of course, but whatever the blue > ribbon cable goes to definitely did not come included. > From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 00:45:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:45:01 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511152245010905.21D3DC4A@10.0.0.252> On 11/15/2005 at 9:19 PM William Donzelli wrote: >> Well yes, but remember that Honeywell tinkered with direct water >cooling a bit back in the 70's. I got to see the Honeywell setup when the prototype was still being worked on. A friend worked at the old GE plant in Phoenix and gave me a tour. The machine was sort of a throwback to the 1940's--it was literally a walk-in unit with things in free-standing racks with plastic water tubing all over the place. There were still quite a few GE machines around the place then. But I think indirect water cooling (as a heat transfer medium) goes back as far as SAGE. Speaking of Honeywell, does anyone collect the pre-GE 16-bit minis? Cheers, Chuck From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 16 01:15:59 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:15:59 +0100 Subject: Panel question Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2521@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> > --- On Tue 11/15, Wolfe, Julian < ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU > wrote: > From: Wolfe, Julian [mailto: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU] > To: info-pdp11 at village.org, cctalk at classiccmp.org > Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:28:40 -0600 > Subject: Panel question > > I'm trying to mount the front panel on my 11/34, but I've run > into aproblem: I have no mounting brackets. What do the > brackets look like formmounting to a BA11-K, and does anyone > here have any extras?Secondly, was there a H964x style beige > panel with black vents that would goon the non-covered > portion of the 11/34a's BA11-K? I seem to rememberseeing > that sort of thing on some 11/44s and 11/24s.Again, any > advice would be appreciated. > > ------------ > > I thought I had an extra, and was going to look at it. Seems > like I must have sent it off to someone. It's not like the > older clip on panel types. It is screwed to a bracket. If > no one else comes forward I'll remove the one from my 11/34 and look. > > As to the other panel, mine is simply a 1/2 DEC black panel > screwed in from the front above the programmer panel. > Tim R As far as I can remember (at work now) they have the following shape, the bracket is drawn in front of the box. The "s" is a hole in the bracket. The flange (at both sides) at the front side of the box has also a (bigger) hole. You put in a screw (s) from the rear side of the flange, through the bracket and tighten the screw on the front panel. See the figure. F=front panel, B=bracket, BA=box. Making such a bracket from a strip of aluminium should not be too difficult. F B BA ___ __ ____ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | this part is | | / / | the BA11K box | | | | | / | s | | | <---screw from here | | | | | | | \ \ | | | | | | | | | | | \____| |_| |_____ - Henk, PA8PDP. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From Bob at BRADLEE.ORG Tue Nov 15 09:13:43 2005 From: Bob at BRADLEE.ORG (Bob Bradlee) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 10:13:43 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <17273.62687.821301.831958@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511151523.jAFFNuke010673@keith.ezwind.net> As a kid I used one to melt lead to make little toy army men from some molds my dad brought back from a trip to england. Then I found a bullet mold and used it to make canon shot for a brass cannon I made on a friend dad's lathe. Canon, mold, solderpot and powder all got taken away and thrown out , but we did have a lot of fun before getting caught :) Most PCB's were produced by passing them over a wave of solder formed in a big solder pot of sorts :) Tinning stranded wire was the official reason for its existence .... I remember a production/shop rule that stated all stranded wire must be tinned or have an end put on it, if it was to be connected to a screw tab. The QA people would raise hell if we didn't and send it back for rework. Bob On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:46:55 -0500, Paul Koning wrote: >>>>>> "Chris" == Chris M writes: > Chris> I don't know what a solder pot is exactly, but at one point I > Chris> was contemplating fabricating a sort of U shaped thing to bolt > Chris> onto the end of a solder iron (albeit a hefty one). >That should work; I've seen things like that. >A solder pot is a pot full of molten solder. Think of a crockpot or a >soup mug with an electric heater in the bottom. Insert bars of solder >and let them melt. >I never understood what those things are meant to be used for; they >show up in tool catalog but never with any explanation. Is component >removal the "official" reason for them? Or tinning wires? > paul From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 15 10:38:50 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 08:38:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: Scanning was Re: R-E 68000 PC articles that were mentioned In-Reply-To: <7a239e74e7c74e86bafd4306b2b5bc8d@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <20051115163850.30288.qmail@web61019.mail.yahoo.com> > Is there a fast way to scan bound > materials without butchering them? Yes indeed. Get a cheap 1.0 - 2.0 megapix digital camera that has a threaded lense (i.e screws in and out to vary the focal length). Dismantle the thing and remove the "fixture" that limits the degree of variance (usually from 3' to infinity) - you need to be able to get good focus between 18" - 24". It REALLY helps to be able to use additional storage (sd or flash card). And it also helps to have a stand of some sorts, if you're "scanning" a whole book or whatever. For short manuals and magazines, it's not necessary. I have an Aiptek Pencam SD (1.2mp) and a Digitrex DSC-2100 (2.0 mp). Neither is probably available anymore retail, but e-bay probably has bargains. For the most convenience, you need the mem card, stand, and some kind of foot switch (frees the hands to flip pages). I haven't tried it yet, but you could probably just solder a couple of wires to the switch contacts and run wires to something you can actuate with your big toe under the table. You'd be able to "scan" a whole textbook in probably under and hour. The Digitrex has a tendency to smear a picture if you presumably *avoiding the use of another word* jar it while snapping. I only payed $19 for 3 new ones, so I guess I can't complain. A nice steady stand would alleviate the problem presumabably. This won't produce the resolution you'd get with a flatbed scanner, but text is totally readable. If this can be done with more expensive digital cameras, I wouldn't know, I only own cheapos. The were actually 2 sets of 68k projects in RE. The first one, really a non project, was an article aimed to see if there was any interest in something that was designed in Europe. I have the first (probably) only installment *somewhere*. Someone developed a board, and I guess many of these were homebrewed (school-brewed?) over yonder. Then again, maybe the actual project that appeared later was based on this design. Anyone know? __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 15 11:12:18 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:12:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? Message-ID: <20051115171218.22568.qmail@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> This winter I'd like to try and build the RE Robot Brain board (80188) that appeared in Radio Electronics contemporary with the 68k articles. I have on hand an approximately 4' x 2.5' sheet of double clad circuit material, and I could cut the size I needed from that. But it got me to thinking (uh oh). Wouldn't it be fun to build a REALLY big motherboard. You could put all sorts of uP's on it, ala the Dimension 68000. You could put the kitchen sink on it (literally). More then likely you could build something so powerful, you could throw out your Terragigahertz Pentium whatever system, and heat your home at the same time. And probably the surrounding neighbors home's too. You might even cripple the power grid. It would be like sort of a black hole for electrons. Has anyone built a really big motherboard? __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Nov 15 11:31:49 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:31:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: Automatic book scanner In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20051115173149.97255.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> I had the idea to build something like this a while ago. In theory *my design* would work acceptably, a few missed pages here and there. But for the amount of time you're saving, I think it would be a non issue. I'll look into it further. I might need some help with the electronics, albeit very simple (like me ;). --- "Zane H. Healy" wrote: > At 2:05 PM +0000 11/12/05, a.carlini at ntlworld.com > wrote: > >While following a discussion on /. I came across > >this interesting book scanner: > > > >http://www.kirtas-tech.com/ > > > >Only 1200 pages/hour but it looks like you can > >load it up and let it scan a whole batch. Which > >is just as well as I suspect it is not that cheap! > > If anyone knows how much one of these systems is, > I'd really > appreciate knowing, as I know a library that might > be interested in > one. > > Zane > > > -- > -- > | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems > Administrator | > | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS > Enthusiast | > | | Classic > Computer Collector | > +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ > | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role > Playing, | > | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer > Museum. | > | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ > | > __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From rob at fergusonlabs.com Tue Nov 15 11:50:40 2005 From: rob at fergusonlabs.com (Robert Ferguson) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 09:50:40 -0800 Subject: Looking for early XENIX stuff Message-ID: <9CAEEBA2-45CC-4FA2-930C-62C8C27A8859@fergusonlabs.com> Hi folks, I'm looking for XENIX installation disks, documentation, and other assorted paraphernalia for both the Apple Lisa and the Altos 586 series of machines. Actually, any early (pre-1985) XENIX stuff is of interest to me, but those two machines are the ones I'm working on at the moment. If you have anything that you'd be willing to either copy or let go, let me know off-list, and we can work out the details. If there's interest, I'll summarize what I find to the list. Thanks very much, Rob Ferguson rob at ferguson labs dot com From Bob at BRADLEE.ORG Tue Nov 15 14:05:29 2005 From: Bob at BRADLEE.ORG (Bob Bradlee) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 15:05:29 -0500 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511152015.jAFKFhkM015874@keith.ezwind.net> Sell it on ebay :) Expect between $100 to $150 for it on a good week. Then again a 56 chip collection/set including a 4004 and an 8008 went for $99 in a bad week. There is a BIN for around $175 IIRC ... Bob Bradlee On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:34:22 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: >So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll >entertain reasonable offers. >Cheers, >Chuck From tcpdumb at dso.ath.cx Tue Nov 15 15:17:54 2005 From: tcpdumb at dso.ath.cx (tcpdumb at dso.ath.cx) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:17:54 +0100 Subject: teco for Linux In-Reply-To: <437A5054.7010802@srv.net> References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> <437814F5.5030704@gmail.com> <20051114060850.GA20891@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> <437A5054.7010802@srv.net> Message-ID: <20051115211754.GB8846@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> Hi! Erm..I could check that for you if you can send me the macro with some usage hints. Thus spake Kevin Handy: $! tcccp wrote: $! $! >Hi guys! $! > $! >TECO runs fine with Linux on G3/500 PowerPC processors! Never had any $! >problems compiling/using it. It just kicks ass O:-) $! > $! > Lukas $! > $! > $! > $! Do any versions run the vtedit macro? $! Last time I tried, none would. $! -- DECADENCE IS: USING A CORDLESS PHONE TO HOOK IT UP TO YOUR ACOUSTIC COUPLER ASCII Ribbon campaign against /"\ e-mail in gratuitous HTML and \ / Microsoft proprietary formats X / \ From ics65 at sbcglobal.net Tue Nov 15 16:33:26 2005 From: ics65 at sbcglobal.net (George Wiegand) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:33:26 -0500 Subject: DEC RK07K DC disk drive packs Message-ID: <005b01c5ea34$98813250$38ecda45@ics63szde1vn50> Hello DEC community, How much of a market is there for sealed in box DEC RKO7K DC disk packs? Thanks, George Wiegand ICS65 at SBCglobal.net Vintage Data General Computer Enthusiast From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Tue Nov 15 16:37:19 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 16:37:19 -0600 Subject: Possible regulator problem in 11/34 Message-ID: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F1094BBFC@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Well, I was working on my 11/34 last night, and I noticed when I flipped it on its side that the power regulator H745 does not have its red light on. Does that mean the other two H744s are problematic, or does it mean that the H745 is the problem, or is this all normal? Opinions please! :) Thanks Julian From johnny.billquist at softjar.se Tue Nov 15 17:09:52 2005 From: johnny.billquist at softjar.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:09:52 +0100 Subject: Possible regulator problem in 11/34 In-Reply-To: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F1094BBFC@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> References: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F1094BBFC@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Message-ID: <437A6AC0.70501@softjar.se> Very hard to tell. I have often had regulators that didn't light up, but still worked. Don't know if there was something bad with them anyway. Johnny Wolfe, Julian wrote: > Well, I was working on my 11/34 last night, and I noticed when I flipped > it on its side that the power regulator H745 does not have its red light > on. Does that mean the other two H744s are problematic, or does it mean > that the H745 is the problem, or is this all normal? > > Opinions please! :) > > Thanks > > Julian > > ---------- > To unsubscribe (or subscribe) from (to) this list, send a message to > info-pdp11-request at village.org, with the first line of the message > body being "unsubscribe" or "subscribe", respectively (without the quotes). > -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 2005-11-11 From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Tue Nov 15 17:28:27 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 17:28:27 -0600 Subject: Panel question Message-ID: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F1094BC64@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> I'm trying to mount the front panel on my 11/34, but I've run into a problem: I have no mounting brackets. What do the brackets look like form mounting to a BA11-K, and does anyone here have any extras? Secondly, was there a H964x style beige panel with black vents that would go on the non-covered portion of the 11/34a's BA11-K? I seem to remember seeing that sort of thing on some 11/44s and 11/24s. Again, any advice would be appreciated Julian From Bob at BRADLEE.ORG Tue Nov 15 21:51:32 2005 From: Bob at BRADLEE.ORG (Bob Bradlee) Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:51:32 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200511160401.jAG41kG3024134@keith.ezwind.net> 370 mod 168 used a water chiller. Big ugly water jackets, but they worked :) Bob On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 21:19:19 -0500 (EST), William Donzelli wrote: >> Well yes, but remember that Honeywell tinkered with direct water cooling a >> bit back in the 70's. >IBM did as well, but I do not know the specifics. Their early 80s water >cooling technology, however, is well documented (Sci American, for one). >Someone found that a better way to cool is with a Slurpee mixture. >William Donzelli >aw288 at osfn.org From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 16 01:30:42 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:30:42 -0700 Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? In-Reply-To: <20051115171218.22568.qmail@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051115171218.22568.qmail@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <437AE022.80500@jetnet.ab.ca> Chris M wrote: >This winter I'd like to try and build the RE Robot >Brain board (80188) that appeared in Radio Electronics >contemporary with the 68k articles. I have on hand an >approximately 4' x 2.5' sheet of double clad circuit >material, and I could cut the size I needed from that. > > umm the fun robot brains are small - http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbolt/e-index.html#inhoud From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 16 01:42:39 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:42:39 +0100 Subject: PDP-8 OS/8 Disk Image Problems Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CF2523@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Hi, I used the following entry lines and successfully copied DECtapes. set df enable att dt0 os8.tu56 att dt1 os8drv.tu56 att ..... (what ever other drive you use) Then it is striaght forward: boot dt0, and access dt1. The "tape names" (os8.tu56 and os8drv.tu56) should be substituted by the names of the files that you use, of course :-) I don't know much of pdp8's, there are others that know a lot more! success, - Henk, PA8PDP > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Madcrow Maxwell > Sent: dinsdag 15 november 2005 22:48 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: PDP-8 OS/8 Disk Image Problems > > I've recently started to play with the PDP-8 using the > excellent SIMH emulator and I've come across a problem: none > of the PDP-8 OS/8 disk images that I've found seem to allow > me to use DECtapes. As all the games I've found (mostly > smallish BASIC programs) seem to come on DECtape/DECtape > images. Does anybody know where to find a disk with proper > drivers. I tried to rebuild the OS, but BUILD couldn't find > the proper drivers either. > > Actually, I have my doubts as to whether BASIC even works, as > it seems to not even want to run the little > > 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD." > 20 END > > example that I cooked up. This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Wed Nov 16 01:55:30 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 07:55:30 -0000 (GMT) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511151524520648.2040E73F@10.0.0.252> References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151524520648.2040E73F@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <46037.195.212.29.75.1132127730.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> > On 11/15/2005 at 3:36 PM woodelf wrote: > > >>So what is wrong with cheap water? I guess - inert - says it all. > > Well yes, but remember that Honeywell tinkered with direct water cooling a > bit back in the 70's. I think they used a copper diaphragm between the > water and the chip to conduct heat. I know they had problems with algae > growing in the tubing and that certain algicides had the problem of > corroding copper. IIRC, this was an ECL implementation of an earlier > machine that didn't do much better than 1.5x the original in performance. > As a product, a disaster. Of course plain ordinary automotive antifreeze is a corrosion inhibitor and toxic enough to prevent algae growing... Gordon From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 02:28:32 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 00:28:32 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <46037.195.212.29.75.1132127730.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151524520648.2040E73F@10.0.0.252> <46037.195.212.29.75.1132127730.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> Message-ID: <200511160028320502.22329F8C@10.0.0.252> On 11/16/2005 at 7:55 AM gordonjcp at gjcp.net wrote: >Of course plain ordinary automotive antifreeze is a corrosion inhibitor >and toxic enough to prevent algae growing... As I understand the Honeywell scheme, it was intended that the machine simply use non From andyh at andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk Wed Nov 16 02:46:38 2005 From: andyh at andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk (Andy Holt) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:46:38 -0000 Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? In-Reply-To: <20051115171218.22568.qmail@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000301c5ea8a$41ea7cc0$655b2c0a@w2kdell> I think the largest PCB I've seen is that for the Whitechapel workstation - tho' the boards for the Gould 9000 and Honywell L66 come fairly close. I suppose some old mainframes might have their entire "engineers panel" on one PCB. I suspect that very few boards were made that are wider than a standard 19" rack. Andy From bert at brothom.nl Wed Nov 16 03:08:15 2005 From: bert at brothom.nl (Bert Thomas) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:08:15 +0100 Subject: Minix (was: Re: semi-homemade micro) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <437AF6FF.6080104@brothom.nl> Tony Duell wrote: > [Minix] > > >>>But I like the book, note I lost my copy a few years ago. Hard copy is nice. >>> >> >>It is. I have the version that came with 2.02 on CD. Excellent book and >>reference. Worth the price. Whats nice about it I can read the text, >>look at the code, run it if I care to and borrow ideas. > > > Seconded. I bought the first edition of the book (red cover) and a Minix > 1.5.10 (I think) on 360K floppies distribution) about 15 years ago, and the > second edition (with the CD-ROM) somewhat later. I am not really a > programmer, but I learnt a lot about operating systems from that book, > and from fiddling with the code. > > It's one of those books, like TAoE, that I would seriously recomend > everyone here should read. Sure it doesn't cover everything, and you may > not agree with all the methods in it, but at least you'll learn enough to > understand other books on the subject. I'm not sure if it's out yet, but very soon the 3rd edition will be available, so if you consider buying the book make sure you buy the 3rd edition. As lots has changed to minix I assume that the new book will reflect those changes. Bert From dave04a at dunfield.com Wed Nov 16 02:13:04 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:13:04 +0000 Subject: Looking for early XENIX stuff In-Reply-To: <9CAEEBA2-45CC-4FA2-930C-62C8C27A8859@fergusonlabs.com> Message-ID: <20051116121855.TOTQ14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> > Hi folks, > > I'm looking for XENIX installation disks, documentation, and other > assorted paraphernalia for both the Apple Lisa and the Altos 586 > series of machines. Actually, any early (pre-1985) XENIX stuff is of > interest to me, but those two machines are the ones I'm working on at > the moment. I have some of the Altos 586 Xenix disks posted on my site. I also have a complete set of early Xenix for the NABU 1600, which is a Canadian built 8086 computer (not a PC). Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From jim at jkearney.com Wed Nov 16 07:15:12 2005 From: jim at jkearney.com (Jim Kearney) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:15:12 -0500 Subject: 8008? References: <0IQ10088G3006MN6@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <00d701c5eaaf$c6b7d540$0500a8c0@jkearney.com> From: "Allison" > I have an 8008 and HDSP2132 (8 char version). Wire wrap and a software > patch will have to do. Sounds like you're set, then! > I may not duplicate the design exact;y as you did it. Rather than memory > mapped I may implement IO ports. However looking at your design there > there some design simplifications that hadn't occured to me last 8008 > project (1974). It's pretty cool and saves a carload of chips. Most > people back then were implementing multiple busses (address, ram data, > IO in, IO out, interrupt instuction) and thats a lot of chips. The MCS-8 Yes. The use of supporting components a bit newer than the CPU made this design possible. I was able to avoid a bus because the load on the CPU data pins is much lower than the old banks of 1101's etc; and having RAM and EPROM that were slightly faster than the CPU dramatically simplified the state decoding. The use of memory-mapped I/O also simplifies the state decoding a fair bit, too. A PROM or a PAL could fully decode the state without too much effort, but I wanted to avoid programmed parts other than the EPROM. Jim From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 07:51:05 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:51:05 -0500 Subject: 8008? Message-ID: <0IQ1000H3VR47SG1@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: 8008? > From: "Jim Kearney" > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:15:12 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > >From: "Allison" >> I have an 8008 and HDSP2132 (8 char version). Wire wrap and a software >> patch will have to do. > >Sounds like you're set, then! It's in the queue after an 1802 and 8048 project. >Yes. The use of supporting components a bit newer than the CPU made this >design possible. I was able to avoid a bus because the load on the CPU data >pins is much lower than the old banks of 1101's etc; and having RAM and Officially the bus load on the cpu is still high but past experience shows it works. Intel would have you believe the bus drive of the chip is near zero. Since I'd like to do IO I'll have to be aware of the bus load as I go but I dont expect to have problems. FYI: The clock circuit you used is almost exactly the one I did back in '74. Intel rep said "it might work but its out of spec.". Compared to the 4 one shots they show it was a vast improvement and lower parts count. I tried the oneshot deal and vowed never to go there again. Allison From allain at panix.com Wed Nov 16 08:08:21 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:08:21 -0500 Subject: Automatic book scanner References: <20051115173149.97255.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <003d01c5eab7$345dbb80$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Chris M said: > I had the idea to build something like this a while > ago. In theory *my design* would work acceptably, a > few missed pages here and there. But for the amount of > time you're saving, I think it would be a non issue. > I'll look into it further. I might need some help with > the electronics, albeit very simple (like me ;). If you want simple electronics, look into the Microchip PIC line, with TIP 120's to compensate voltages for the motors. John A. From allain at panix.com Wed Nov 16 08:15:10 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:15:10 -0500 Subject: Scanning was Re: R-E 68000 PC articles that were mentioned References: <20051115163850.30288.qmail@web61019.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <005301c5eab8$27c60ca0$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> > > Is there a fast way to scan bound > > materials without butchering them? > Yes indeed. Get a cheap 1.0 - 2.0 megapix digital > camera that has a threaded lense (i.e screws in and This list is nuts (not really) about getting At Least 300 dpi image scans of printed material for later OCR. That would make a need for about 5Mpx for books, 8Mpx for magazines. Luckily even those cameras are starting to get cheap. John A. From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 16 08:24:01 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:24:01 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs References: <200511151357010558.1FF079E0@10.0.0.252> <437A5E55.7050100@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511151426410088.200BA0E3@10.0.0.252> <437A62DC.80205@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <17275.16641.621102.733416@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "woodelf" == woodelf writes: >>> Is that the stuff in Cray's? Now we know why they are so much! >>> >> A relative, but not the same stuff. Cray used Fluorinert F-77, >> which boils at about 203F. woodelf> So what is wrong with cheap water? I guess - inert - says woodelf> it all. Water is not inert, especially not when hot. paul From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 16 08:33:03 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:33:03 -0500 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued References: <0IQ0002E1U2YRSOI@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <17275.17183.912828.697485@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: Allison> I thought the 11/24 was the 11/23 chipset (F-11) mated to Allison> Unibus rather than the Qbus. Correct. >> 11/24 is split I&D UNIBUS, right? Nope... paul From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 16 08:44:37 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:44:37 -0500 Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? References: <20051115171218.22568.qmail@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> <000301c5ea8a$41ea7cc0$655b2c0a@w2kdell> Message-ID: <17275.17877.272807.299987@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Andy" == Andy Holt writes: Andy> I think the largest PCB I've seen is that for the Whitechapel Andy> workstation - tho' the boards for the Gould 9000 and Honywell Andy> L66 come fairly close. Andy> I suppose some old mainframes might have their entire Andy> "engineers panel" on one PCB. Andy> I suspect that very few boards were made that are wider than a Andy> standard 19" rack. I've seen boards substantially bigger than that, in high end telecom gear (n * 10 Gb/s switches). Those were meant to sit vertically in a card cage, perhaps 30 inches tall. One board I saw was full of big IC, most of them with 1000 pins or more (back in 2001). The "little ones" had "only" 600. The backplane was a monster too, 32 layers I think. The company is gone now. paul From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 08:47:19 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:47:19 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <0IQ1008R4YCTV2Z0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs > From: Paul Koning > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:24:01 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>>>>> "woodelf" == woodelf writes: > > >>> Is that the stuff in Cray's? Now we know why they are so much! > >>> > >> A relative, but not the same stuff. Cray used Fluorinert F-77, > >> which boils at about 203F. > > woodelf> So what is wrong with cheap water? I guess - inert - says > woodelf> it all. > >Water is not inert, especially not when hot. > > paul The real problem with water is not it's conductivity. High power tube transmitters have used distilled water in the past as it's a really poor conductor if kept clean. DEC experimented with water cooling too. The Aquarius project was a water cooled VAX. Too many headaches with leakage, heat transfer to the environment and installation issues. Systems like that use a chiller and heat exchanger to cool the closed loop water system. Those are costly and difficult to install. Murder if it should leak in a computer room. Then there is an efficientcy problem as you end up using power to move heat which adds heat.. With all that, the circuits they were trying to cool were getting more power efficient. So by time they worked out wet cooling air cooling was again attractive or at least far easier. It's still packaging. ;) Allison From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 16 08:51:50 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:51:50 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs References: <0IQ1008R4YCTV2Z0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <17275.18310.490848.136076@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: Allison> The real problem with water is not it's conductivity. High Allison> power tube transmitters have used distilled water in the Allison> past as it's a really poor conductor if kept clean. Allison> DEC experimented with water cooling too. The Aquarius Allison> project was a water cooled VAX. Too many headaches with Allison> leakage, heat transfer to the environment and installation Allison> issues. Systems like that use a chiller and heat exchanger Allison> to cool the closed loop water system. Those are costly and Allison> difficult to install. Murder if it should leak in a Allison> computer room. Then there is an efficientcy problem as you Allison> end up using power to move heat which adds heat.. Allison> With all that, the circuits they were trying to cool were Allison> getting more power efficient. So by time they worked out Allison> wet cooling air cooling was again attractive or at least far Allison> easier. I remember that episode. The result was "Aridus" :-), now known as the 9000. Allison> It's still packaging. ;) Yes. And if your circuit density isn't all that high, air cooling works fine. That's why Cray actually had to solve these problems, and did back in the early 1960s (CDC 6600), because he DID build things that could not sanely be cooled any other way. I don't ever remember hearing of leak problems in our Cybers... paul From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Nov 16 08:55:13 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 03:55:13 +1300 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 11/16/05, Julian Wolfe wrote: > 11/24 is split I&D UNIBUS, right? No, as others have pointed out... it will run RSTS fine, RT-11, and 2.9BSD as well, but not 2.11BSD. I have one with a KT-24(?) memory extension and a meg or so of RAM (the 11/24 has a 22-bit address bus, if you have the extra card to use the 4 extra address bits). The CPU itself, though, is an F-11 chip, same as the 11/23. -ethan From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 08:57:11 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:57:11 -0500 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued Message-ID: <0IQ100KEYYTATBKH@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: DEC "Junk" rescued > From: Paul Koning > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:33:03 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: > > Allison> I thought the 11/24 was the 11/23 chipset (F-11) mated to > Allison> Unibus rather than the Qbus. > >Correct. > > >> 11/24 is split I&D UNIBUS, right? > >Nope... > > paul Funny thing about PDP-11 system models. Even number for the most part are unibus like 11/34 or 11/44 (11/05, 11/35 exception) and odd number like 11/03, 11/23 are qbus. I&D for Chipset CPUs didn't start untill the J-11. The F11 gave us user/system register sets and the MMU. The unibus J11 was the 11/84 I believe. F11 machines are a good workhorse 11s. As far as my data goes all of the chip (F11 and J11) cpus on unibus are faster by some amount as there isn't the multiplxed address/data bus transaction. Though I believe the real reason was to preserve the unibus IO investment and generally higher IO transaction rate that unibus devices enjoyed. Allison From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Nov 16 09:05:42 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 04:05:42 +1300 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <7ADE11AC-E5E4-4FA4-B22B-6305ADE468C0@xlisper.mv.com> References: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <7ADE11AC-E5E4-4FA4-B22B-6305ADE468C0@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: On 11/16/05, David Betz wrote: > No fault light (and it isn't burned out), the white load light (with > the "0" on it) lights. That's a very good sign. > So, I suppose that means that the cables are probably bad? It's possible. I've had problems with RL/RK cables that have been bent too many times. > BTW, I > have the cable plugged into the top connector on the RL01 and the > terminator on the bottom. Is that correct? It doesn't matter - there's about 2 cm of 40-pin ribbon cable connecting the two, but it really doesn't matter which one takes in the signals and which one has the terminator. Swap them if you feel unsure. I suppose you could test the terminator to ensure it's not defective. Additionally, I suppose you could have a problem with some of the drive or controller electronics, but I don't recall that being a common issue - when either the boards in the drive or the controller were bad somehow, I remember things really didn't work (the board not showing up in memory, the FAULT light not going out, etc) Check the Berg end of the controller cable - make sure you don't have any disloged pins or wires that are pulling out of the crimp pins... those ends are somewhat fragile (compared to IDC-type flat cables), and I've seen some mechanical abuse. Also, if any part of the cable as been doubled-over hard (like to "dress" them in a cabinet), you might try a light massage of the elbow of the crimp. I have one particular cable someone folded over tight that I splinted with a bit of plastic and some tie wraps to keep it from re-flexing at the same point - if you bent that particular cable over about 45 degrees at the old flex point, I don't recall the symptoms, but I know it broke something. -ethan From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Wed Nov 16 09:06:07 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:06:07 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <0IQ100KA05MITEMG@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ100KA05MITEMG@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: I checked the CSR and vector jumpers and they seem to be set correctly. I guess I need to figure out how to make a bootable 8" XXDP disk with the RL01 diagnostics on it before I can get much further. On Nov 15, 2005, at 11:26 PM, Allison wrote: > Make sure the CSR and vector of RLV12 is as described. > > I'm not sure of the next step without powering my system and > at the moment I have two S100 crates in the way (testing). > > Allison > > >> >> Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! >> From: David Betz >> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:08:40 -0500 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >> >> I can't pull the MXV11 because it has the bootstrap and my console >> port. I did try it without the NS memory board but that didn't work >> either. In fact, RT-11 seems happy with that board as it reports the >> correct total amount of memory (1.5mb). I have the single quad board >> RL01/02 controller. >> >> Here's the result of "SH DEV": >> >> ..SH DEV >> >> Device Status CSR Vector(s) >> ------ ------ --- --------- >> DY Resident 177170 264 >> LD Installed 000000 000 >> SL Installed 000000 000 >> VM Installed 177572 250 >> NL Installed 000000 000 >> DL Installed 174400 160 >> >> On Nov 15, 2005, at 11:03 PM, Allison wrote: >> >>>> >>>> Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! >>>> From: David Betz >>>> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 22:32:43 -0500 >>>> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >>>> >>>> >>>> Yes, you're right. I did type DL not RL. That was a typo in my >>>> message. Yes, the DL.SYS driver is on the boot disk (RX02), >>>> there are >>>> no empty slots between the CPU and the RL controller. The slots are >>>> filled as follows: >>>> >>>> KDJ11-A >>>> MSV11-LK >>>> MSV11-LK >>>> National Semiconductor memory board (1mb) >>>> RLV12 >>>> M8029 (RX02 controller) >>>> MXV11 >>> >>> I'd pull the MXV11 and the National card them bump every one up. >>> >>>> No fault light (and it isn't burned out), the white load light >>>> (with >>>> the "0" on it) lights. >>> >>> Thats a good sign. >>> >>>> So, I suppose that means that the cables are probably bad? BTW, I >>>> have the cable plugged into the top connector on the RL01 and the >>>> terminator on the bottom. Is that correct? >>> >>> I don't think which is which matters as it's a parallel pass through >>> and the drive select plug is the determining factor. >>> >>>> From RT-11 a >>> show dev: >>> or >>> >>> Resorc /A >>> >>> Should list the devices the system knows of. It may be possible >>> that >>> one of the cards is not passing intgrant. If the system doesnt show >>> the RL02 either grant chain is broken or the controller is not >>> there. >>> >>> Which controller? Two board set or later single board m8061 one? >>> >>> The controller (RLV12) must be address at 17774400 (q22), 774400 >>> (q18). >>> The vector is 160. >>> >>> >>> >>> Allison > From brad at heeltoe.com Wed Nov 16 09:12:02 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:12:02 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:51:50 EST." <17275.18310.490848.136076@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <200511161512.jAGFC2Ho017988@mwave.heeltoe.com> Paul Koning wrote: > >I don't ever remember hearing of leak problems in our Cybers... I remember a 6400 that would occationally be down when the chiller broke - I seem to recall a little sign in the job entry window which said something like "city water"... not sure why they did that to be honest, but I think they would sometimes run the tap through the machine. (I should ask one of the old operators, if I can find her :-) -brad From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 09:13:16 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:13:16 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <0IQ100HX7ZK20RO2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs > From: Paul Koning > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:51:50 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >I remember that episode. The result was "Aridus" :-), now known as >the 9000. Also short lived as CMOS got faster.. > Allison> It's still packaging. ;) > >Yes. And if your circuit density isn't all that high, air cooling >works fine. > >That's why Cray actually had to solve these problems, and did back in >the early 1960s (CDC 6600), because he DID build things that could not >sanely be cooled any other way. The difference is that Cray was pushing tech harder than most and enjoyed the unique position of faster than most by alot could justify the cost and complexity. To do that they had to be smaller (the old 1ns/ft problem) and that was a heat vs volume issue. Refigeration was the only way out. They would revisit that again with the XMP. However over time the same scene tended to play out. Those that pushed and resorted to exotic cooling would be pushed out. Also those exoticly cooled machines tended to not find a second market making them scarce faster. >I don't ever remember hearing of leak problems in our Cybers... Likely not. If there was it would be a really bad scene. I bet any shutdown for more than minutes would have been viewed quite severely. My view of that period was large systems ran 24/7 and all maintenence was to be closely scheduled. I bet the CEs were also checking the loop and maybe running a pressure hold test on occasion to assure integrity. But the designers had to have paid close attention to things like assembly repair, vibration and what not to insure it worked as expected planned. Remins me of the mainframe mini joke I'd heard years ago. Minis have power switches, mainframes have BIG RED BUTTONS (emergency power off). Allison From aw288 at osfn.org Wed Nov 16 09:23:57 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:23:57 -0500 (EST) Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? In-Reply-To: <17275.17877.272807.299987@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: > I've seen boards substantially bigger than that, in high end telecom > gear (n * 10 Gb/s switches). Those were meant to sit vertically in a > card cage, perhaps 30 inches tall. Convex boards are pretty damn big, as well. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Wed Nov 16 09:23:49 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:23:49 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: References: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <7ADE11AC-E5E4-4FA4-B22B-6305ADE468C0@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <07B0A5D4-C3F8-4290-B8DC-0CA342360DAF@xlisper.mv.com> > Check the Berg end of the controller cable - make sure you don't have > any disloged pins or wires that are pulling out of the crimp pins... > those ends are somewhat fragile (compared to IDC-type flat cables), > and I've seen some mechanical abuse. Okay, that's at least part of the problem. The red wire that connects near the end of the connector marked AB is broken. Looks like it will be difficult to fix since part of the connector seems to be glued together as well as tie wrapped together. From aw288 at osfn.org Wed Nov 16 09:27:05 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:27:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <0IQ1008R4YCTV2Z0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > Then there is an efficientcy problem as you end > up using power to move heat which adds heat.. I think that is a minor issue. Even a relatively small pump will move the coolant around enough. The flow is generally not all that fast, nor is the temperature gradient. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From aw288 at osfn.org Wed Nov 16 09:33:01 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:33:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <0IQ100HX7ZK20RO2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > Likely not. If there was it would be a really bad scene. I bet any > shutdown for more than minutes would have been viewed quite severely. I only remember an IBM 3081 that had a very bad meltdown due to a hose break or something, and the system could not shot down fast enough. Generally, a loss in pressure would throw the machine into a check state and do a really fast shutdown. > Remins me of the mainframe mini joke I'd heard years ago. Minis have power > switches, mainframes have BIG RED BUTTONS (emergency power off). BIG RED PULLS, actually... William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 09:46:42 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:46:42 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs > From: William Donzelli > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:27:05 -0500 (EST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> Then there is an efficientcy problem as you end >> up using power to move heat which adds heat.. > >I think that is a minor issue. Even a relatively small pump will move the >coolant around enough. The flow is generally not all that fast, nor is the >temperature gradient. > >William Donzelli >aw288 at osfn.org It's the pumps that are connected with the chiller or fans if they used a direct radiation to air I was refering too. The pump for the local loop may be small or not depending of the length of the loop and diameters. Water cooling had one less obvious avantage. You can dump the waste heat outside the building or at least outside the computer room. Allison From holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de Wed Nov 16 09:49:55 2005 From: holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:49:55 +0100 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <437A3CB4.30705@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511151134220566.1F6DE0AF@10.0.0.252> <437A3CB4.30705@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <437B5523.401@ais.fraunhofer.de> woodelf wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll >> entertain reasonable offers. >> >> Cheers, >> Chuck >> >> > Well what does the buyer need it for? Most people here want it blinking > lights not collecting dust. In 1975 a candy bar was about 15 > cents, today it is > a $1.00 I am not sure I would pay $1 for a candy bar from the year 1975, at least not for consumption ;-) SCNR > That is a about a 6:1 price change , so a $60 8008 could be up > to $360 for a fair market price today, how ever many people are use > too -- it is outdated > so carry it away for $1. Myself would not pay more than $100 considering > how easy it is possable to damage it. I think the 8008 logic would fit into a larger CPLD today. So even if one would like to have some hardware for the blinkinlights, it could be affordable to reengineer it in the same style like the 6120 or 1802 systems at sparetimegizmos. This is closest to the look and feel of the real thing, in comparison to some simulator software on a PC. IMHO, you only need a real 8008 for displaying an original board into a show case, or for real nostalgic feelings; but then, the whole enterprise is not complete without "original" TTLs timestamped XX75 and original power supplies, etc. Holger From aw288 at osfn.org Wed Nov 16 09:51:20 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:51:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > It's the pumps that are connected with the chiller or fans if they used > a direct radiation to air I was refering too. At nightime and about a third of the year, those fans do not have to work hard, if at all. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 09:52:48 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:52:48 -0500 Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <0IQ200DO21DX8TA8@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs > From: William Donzelli > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:33:01 -0500 (EST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> Likely not. If there was it would be a really bad scene. I bet any >> shutdown for more than minutes would have been viewed quite severely. > >I only remember an IBM 3081 that had a very bad meltdown due to a hose >break or something, and the system could not shot down fast >enough. Generally, a loss in pressure would throw the machine into a check >state and do a really fast shutdown. I can see some might melt if there was cooling loss. I was thinking about execs screaming about millions of dollars of computers idle for other than requried scheduled maintenace. I read a story about a 709 that had a room chiller leak. Seems the raised floor and cable troughs were floating and it kept on ticking. Apparently there was some unwillingness to shutdown as the just was near complete and it would take days to repair/restart. >> Remins me of the mainframe mini joke I'd heard years ago. Minis have power >> switches, mainframes have BIG RED BUTTONS (emergency power off). > >BIG RED PULLS, actually... I know but, the joke didn't work as well with that. ;) Allison From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Nov 16 09:52:05 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 04:52:05 +1300 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> Message-ID: On 11/16/05, Tom Uban wrote: > I reviewed my old BGMicro orders and found it to be LED1059, which > is no longer available. Hmm... I might have a couple of those I ordered some time ago - the idea was that since I was having problems finding the correct model of ASCII LED display (DL1416?) for one of my AIM-65s, perhaps it would be easier to hack the ROMs to use something I could find easily. I've been thinking about the tiny-8008 project for some time - I may have to scrape together the parts and give it a go - I can always borrow an 8008 from my pile of 11/34 spare parts. Of course, as soon as I do that, I'll have to rig something up for a 4004... ;-) I think it wouldn't be too hard to make a 4004-based digital clock, at least in terms of the programming. -ethan From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 16 09:58:03 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:58:03 +0000 (GMT) Subject: removing parts from PCBs Message-ID: <20051116155803.9650.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > The real problem with water is not it's conductivity. High power > tube transmitters have used distilled water in the past as it's a > really poor conductor if kept clean. They still do as it's harmless, you can make it on site and it's cheap. Resistivity of > 10Mohm/cc is practical, > 20Mohm/cc is doable and < 2Mohm/cc is too poor to use. It's strange to watch water cascade out from behind the panels of a transmitter and wonder if there's enough water left to finish the transmission. Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com From pkoning at equallogic.com Wed Nov 16 09:59:49 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:59:49 -0500 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued References: <0IQ100KEYYTATBKH@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <17275.22389.469628.280319@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Allison" == Allison writes: Allison> F11 machines are a good workhorse 11s. As far as my data Allison> goes all of the chip (F11 and J11) cpus on unibus are faster Allison> by some amount as there isn't the multiplxed address/data Allison> bus transaction. Though I believe the real reason was to Allison> preserve the unibus IO investment and generally higher IO Allison> transaction rate that unibus devices enjoyed. I thought it was the other way around, because Qbus has burst mode DMA which Unibus does not have. But I don't remember specific data. paul From aw288 at osfn.org Wed Nov 16 10:00:05 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:00:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <0IQ200DO21DX8TA8@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > I can see some might melt if there was cooling loss. I was thinking about > execs screaming about millions of dollars of computers idle for other than > requried scheduled maintenace. They do (reminded of the time AOl went down for hours and hours)... William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 16 10:35:48 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:35:48 -0700 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437AF6FF.6080104@brothom.nl> References: <437AF6FF.6080104@brothom.nl> Message-ID: <437B5FE4.5080104@jetnet.ab.ca> Bert Thomas wrote: >> >> >> Seconded. I bought the first edition of the book (red cover) and a >> Minix 1.5.10 (I think) on 360K floppies distribution) about 15 years >> ago, and the second edition (with the CD-ROM) somewhat later. I am >> not really a programmer, but I learnt a lot about operating systems >> from that book, and from fiddling with the code. >> It's one of those books, like TAoE, that I would seriously recomend >> everyone here should read. Sure it doesn't cover everything, and you >> may not agree with all the methods in it, but at least you'll learn >> enough to understand other books on the subject. > > > I'm not sure if it's out yet, but very soon the 3rd edition will be > available, so if you consider buying the book make sure you buy the > 3rd edition. As lots has changed to minix I assume that the new book > will reflect those changes. > That is exactly why I did not buy the 3 ed. Minux has been re-wrtten from a 8088 to a 386+ in the 3rd ed. 8 meg of ram min is needed, 16 recomended. I was buying the book for ideas for a small computer I building. ( hardware real soon ... ) that I have to write since I have a unque instruction set and word length. This version of the computer will have 64kb of memory of 12k to 16kb I want to save for the OS. > Bert From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 10:45:33 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:45:33 -0800 Subject: Cooling and leaks; was: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511160845330521.23F9A799@10.0.0.252> On 11/16/2005 at 10:46 AM Allison wrote: >Water cooling had one less obvious avantage. You can dump the waste heat >outside the building or at least outside the computer room. At CDC Sunnyvale, we had a big cooling tower that handled both the chilled water for the computers as well as the HVAC for the building. When I first came to Sunnyvale, I remember that the first thing that I saw of the building (sitting in the middle of an onion field) was the big vapor plume. I can't ever remember seeing a water leak in the machine room. The Bryant 6603 disks (and one very memorable 808 drive) would leak hydraulic fluid, however. Made a terrible mess. By far, the worst problem was construction that was going on in the area. It would cause the power to go out at unexpected times. Bringing a machine back up after a power failure in those days was a major chore taking hours and sometimes days. Normally, machines were never powered down, except for moving or major maintenance. As I remember it, both CDC and Cray used the same guy to design their refrigeration--and he wasn't an employee of either firm, but a guy who used to work for Amana. Cheers, Chuck From zmerch at 30below.com Wed Nov 16 10:54:47 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:54:47 -0500 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Ethan Dicks may have mentioned these words: >I've been thinking about the tiny-8008 project for some time - I may >have to scrape together the parts and give it a go - I can always >borrow an 8008 from my pile of 11/34 spare parts. I've been thinking of building my own 6809 project (I have four AVR projects and a couple serial ports on a Linksys router I need to build first, tho)...[1] Originally I was going to design and build my own buss structure / backplane ( I was thinking 80 pins - 40-pin IDE headers are bog-easy to find... ;-) something that could expand to a 16-bit CPU.... First card would be a fully buffered CPU, next card might be 256K or 512K RAM, 3rd card might be a small LED/LCD display (2x40 or somesuch) and of course, one card full'o'blinkinlights... ;-) My question: Would I be better to do that, or should I center it around an existing buss, like VME or somesuch? >Of course, as soon as I do that, I'll have to rig something up for a >4004... ;-) I think it wouldn't be too hard to make a 4004-based >digital clock, at least in terms of the programming. I've been wanting to build a digital thermostat. "Why spend $50 on one from the local hardware store, when I can build one for $100!" ;-) Naw, besides, the prebuilt thingies don't give enough 'programmability' for my tastes. Having started out with the 6809, personally I find it hard to get excited about 4-bit CPUs, myself... ;-) [[ Altho I did have at one time that Radio Shack single-TI-chip-4-bit computer trainer thingy... ]] Ah well, back to work. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger [1] I just got the latest (non-CVS) tarball of PCB compiled on my new Linux From Scratch 6.1 install on my laptop - I'm ready to start designing things. -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate." SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein zmerch at 30below.com | From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Nov 16 10:57:03 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:57:03 -0600 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437B5FE4.5080104@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <437AF6FF.6080104@brothom.nl> <437B5FE4.5080104@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <437B64DF.5060306@oldskool.org> woodelf wrote: > That is exactly why I did not buy the 3 ed. Minux has been re-wrtten > from a 8088 to a 386+ Crap -- just confirmed this, and Intel-2.0.2 is the last branch that will work on 8088 (2.0.3 and 2.0.4 require more than 640K mainboard so they'll only work on 1MB 286 or later). -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 16 11:18:27 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:18:27 -0700 Subject: homebrew 'puter project In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <437B69E3.6000107@jetnet.ab.ca> Roger Merchberger wrote: > > I've been thinking of building my own 6809 project (I have four AVR > projects and a couple serial ports on a Linksys router I need to build > first, tho)...[1] > You may be better off splitting it into two cards -- cpu and memory and console. A second board for I/O and a optional third for blinking lights. Don't forget Henk has a 6809 cpu that has great blinking lights. It emulates a pdp 8. http://www.pdp-11.nl/ From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 11:22:48 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:22:48 -0800 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <200511160922480078.241BC3E1@10.0.0.252> On 11/16/2005 at 11:54 AM Roger Merchberger wrote: >Originally I was going to design and build my own buss structure / >backplane ( I was thinking 80 pins - 40-pin IDE headers are bog-easy to >find... ;-) something that could expand to a 16-bit CPU.... > >First card would be a fully buffered CPU, next card might be 256K or 512K >RAM, 3rd card might be a small LED/LCD display (2x40 or somesuch) and of >course, one card full'o'blinkinlights... ;-) Why have a backplane at all? That much RAM is what, one or maybe two chips? Better than a backplane/bus, why not just a good I/O connection? A nice serial hookup maybe? More than fast enough for blinking lights and LCD displays. Why burden the CPU-to-memory datapath with yucky bus interface hardware? Cheers, Chuck From charlesmorris at direcway.com Wed Nov 16 11:31:04 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:31:04 -0600 Subject: RL02 cont'd Message-ID: I think I've found the problem with my RL02 drive. Tracing back through the fault detector logic, the Clock Error Detector output is set. Backing up to the entrance, the 4.1 MHz system clock is coming in correctly on the two 75107 line receiver differential input pins (E61 1 and 2) but no clock is coming out of it... no clock -> no operation -> Fault light on :) Hope they aren't unobtainium parts! Meanwhile Tim Radde also has pointed out something else important I'd overlooked, namely that the pack cover has to be put upside down over the pack (when installed) in order to activate the cartridge interlock switch. (I had somehow missed this line in the instruction manual despite what I thought was a careful reading of the text) :P so it would have been a problem sooner or later anyway. -Charles From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 16 11:45:23 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:45:23 -0700 Subject: RL02 cont'd In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <437B7033.4010707@jetnet.ab.ca> Charles wrote: >I think I've found the problem with my RL02 drive. Tracing back >through the fault detector logic, the Clock Error Detector output >is set. Backing up to the entrance, the 4.1 MHz system clock is >coming in correctly on the two 75107 line receiver differential >input pins (E61 1 and 2) but no clock is coming out of it... no >clock -> no operation -> Fault light on :) >Hope they aren't unobtainium parts! > > $.59 for the 75107 http://www.unicornelectronics.com/ From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 11:47:36 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:47:36 -0800 Subject: RL02 cont'd In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511160947360848.24327B64@10.0.0.252> On 11/16/2005 at 11:31 AM Charles wrote: >I think I've found the problem with my RL02 drive. Tracing back >through the fault detector logic, the Clock Error Detector output >is set. Backing up to the entrance, the 4.1 MHz system clock is >coming in correctly on the two 75107 line receiver differential >input pins (E61 1 and 2) but no clock is coming out of it... no >clock -> no operation -> Fault light on :) >Hope they aren't unobtainium parts! You may want to double check the strobe (enable) inputs on the 107s (pins 5 (A side) 6 (common) and 8 (B side)). All must be high for there to be output. If the 107's are bad, try to scavenge the 107B parts, as the inputs have better protection than the A parts. Cheers, Chuck From zmerch at 30below.com Wed Nov 16 11:56:40 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:56:40 -0500 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511160922480078.241BC3E1@10.0.0.252> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116124116.03c57bb8@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Chuck Guzis may have mentioned these words: >On 11/16/2005 at 11:54 AM Roger Merchberger wrote: > > >Originally I was going to design and build my own buss structure / > >backplane ( I was thinking 80 pins - 40-pin IDE headers are bog-easy to > >find... ;-) something that could expand to a 16-bit CPU.... > > > >First card would be a fully buffered CPU, next card might be 256K or 512K > >RAM, 3rd card might be a small LED/LCD display (2x40 or somesuch) and of > >course, one card full'o'blinkinlights... ;-) > >Why have a backplane at all? That much RAM is what, one or maybe two >chips? How else could you pull a 6809 card, stick in a 68K card, and still use the same RAM / keyboard / etc.? Or pull out one ROM card (say, running OS-9) and put in another, running something else. ;-) >Better than a backplane/bus, why not just a good I/O connection? A nice >serial hookup maybe? Expandability - I eventually want to be able to build D/A \ A/D hardware, keybaord interface(s), dual serial interfaces, I/O ports, maybe a floppy interface, etc... Modularity can be a wonderful thing sometimes... I have this weird tendency to over-engineer stuff... ;-) However, that has served me well over the years; at least I don't have to *re-do* most of the stuff I've done. >More than fast enough for blinking lights and LCD displays. Why burden the >CPU-to-memory datapath with yucky bus interface hardware? Dunno enough about 68Ks (yet) but 6800/6809 CPUs only have memory-mapped I/O, so all that's needed is to buffer the lines (unless you're feeling particularly foolhardy, like on the CoCo) and address decoding. Not exactly a *lot* of hardware, as it were... Besides, a secondary reason for building this is to put it in a plexiglas/lucite case so it'll work as a functional display piece - I've been doing some volunteer work with the local schools about "how computers actually work" - A single board with an AVR & a few LEDs just doesn't seem so impressive (or fun!) ;-) 'Course, with my track record, it'll prolly not happen until I retire, but what the heck... a guy can dream, right? ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate." SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein zmerch at 30below.com | From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 12:14:12 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:14:12 -0800 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116124116.03c57bb8@mail.30below.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116124116.03c57bb8@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <200511161014120974.244AD641@10.0.0.252> On 11/16/2005 at 12:56 PM Roger Merchberger wrote: > >>Why have a backplane at all? That much RAM is what, one or maybe two >>chips? > >How else could you pull a 6809 card, stick in a 68K card, and still use >the >same RAM / keyboard / etc.? Or pull out one ROM card (say, running OS-9) >and put in another, running something else. ;-) I know I'm probably suffering from something akin to USB-itis, but even "slow" serial busses are pretty darned fast now and I really like not having to lots of traces for bus transceivers, etc. I'd be sore tempted to just hang on a USB controller to whatever CPU card I was building and forget about a backplane. I know--it wouldn't be suitable for display in a nice lucite case with plenty of blinking lights! Which reminds me of something that happened within a couple of months of getting my Altair 8800 going. I'd very carefully toggled in someone's 12K BASIC interpreter and gotten it to run and actually execute some small programs. Way cool, I thought. So I invited a co-worker over during the lunch hour to see what I'd accomplished. His reaction was one of unabashed scorn. "THAT'S A COMPUTER?" said he. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE WORKING ON SOMETHING MORE THAN A TOY." The words still sting today. I imagine that if I'd had a 40hp MG set in my living room, or a few CDC 607 tape drives he might have been more open-minded. I suppose he had a point. What I'd spent on getting that Altair and SWTP TV Typewriter going would have bought a big hunk of a Porsche 914 back then. If I were to build a system from chips today, I'd probably relegate all of my I/O devices to some commodity interface, using single-chip microcontrollers where some particular intelligence was required. Leave the CPU free for the heavy computational lifting. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 16 12:18:32 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:18:32 -0700 Subject: homebrew 'puter project In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116124116.03c57bb8@mail.30below.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116124116.03c57bb8@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <437B77F8.90208@jetnet.ab.ca> Roger Merchberger wrote: > s it were... > > Besides, a secondary reason for building this is to put it in a > plexiglas/lucite case so it'll work as a functional display piece - > I've been doing some volunteer work with the local schools about "how > computers actually work" - A single board with an AVR & a few LEDs > just doesn't seem so impressive (or fun!) ;-) Well how do they work ... :) I think a simple cpu design that is flowcharted with multi-colored leds ( say red for 1's green for 0's ) where the data walks from gate to gate in the alu. Say 32 words of memory for program memory ( loaded from rom ), and 16 words of ram, and few hands on I/O devices for the people using the project. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 12:34:19 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:34:19 -0500 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? Message-ID: <0IQ20008E8V37HK2@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:14:12 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >If I were to build a system from chips today, I'd probably relegate all of >my I/O devices to some commodity interface, using single-chip >microcontrollers where some particular intelligence was required. Leave >the CPU free for the heavy computational lifting. > >Cheers, >Chuck Unless it gets crzy I tend to do that. Create a parallel interface with a protocal to talk over it to a slave and let the slave do the grunt work. Did that back around 81 for the first time using 8085 and 8035 and found it nice to have a limited IO on the host yet get good performance. Now with AVR, PIC and others it's pretty reasonable. Just let it interrupt the host when there's something for it or when done. Allison From gkicomputers at yahoo.com Wed Nov 16 12:35:35 2005 From: gkicomputers at yahoo.com (steve) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 10:35:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116124116.03c57bb8@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <20051116183535.51843.qmail@web51608.mail.yahoo.com> --- Roger Merchberger wrote: > Expandability - I eventually want to be able to > build D/A \ A/D hardware, > keybaord interface(s), dual serial interfaces, I/O > ports, maybe a floppy > interface, etc... Modularity can be a wonderful > thing sometimes... > That's nice but there is one problem.... > 'Course, with my track record, it'll prolly not > happen until I retire yep that's the problem! A point design is a joy to design and build, quick and much cheaper too __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 16 12:35:19 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:35:19 +0100 Subject: homebrew 'puter project Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE2214@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> ... and to put oil on the fire, I am thinking about redoing the 6809 part, and replace it by a 68000 at 10 MHz. Maybe a single board with just enough I/O ports (not PIT 68230 IIRC, but simple octal latches) for the pdp8/e console and RAM plus EPROM on board. But as said: I am *thinking* about it. I probably first start figuring out if rewriting the pdp8/e emulator 6809 code into 68000 assembler, making use of all the registers will give the speed increase to compete with the real pdp8/e. I have my doubts. BTW, I have built mid-1995 a simple 68000 design. I could scan it. 64-pin 68000, 2x2764, 2xTC5565, 6800 plus glue logic *and* address and data bus buffers on a single Eurocard. It was modular, as the bus allowed extra cards for PIA's, RAM, EPROM, etc. The above mentioned new design idea is probably loading the CPU a little, because I don't intend to use buffers. Time is the big enemy here! - Henk, PA8PDP. ________________________________ Van: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org namens woodelf Verzonden: wo 16-11-2005 18:18 Aan: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Onderwerp: Re: homebrew 'puter project Roger Merchberger wrote: > > I've been thinking of building my own 6809 project (I have four AVR > projects and a couple serial ports on a Linksys router I need to build > first, tho)...[1] > You may be better off splitting it into two cards -- cpu and memory and console. A second board for I/O and a optional third for blinking lights. Don't forget Henk has a 6809 cpu that has great blinking lights. It emulates a pdp 8. http://www.pdp-11.nl/ This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From zmerch at 30below.com Wed Nov 16 13:18:39 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:18:39 -0500 Subject: homebrew 'puter project In-Reply-To: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE2214@OVL-EXBE01.oceven lo.oce.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116140725.03ac1d00@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Gooijen, Henk may have mentioned these words: >... and to put oil on the fire, I am thinking about redoing the 6809 part, >and replace it by a 68000 at 10 MHz. Maybe a single board with just >enough I/O ports (not PIT 68230 IIRC, but simple octal latches) for >the pdp8/e console and RAM plus EPROM on board. >But as said: I am *thinking* about it. >I probably first start figuring out if rewriting the pdp8/e emulator 6809 >code into 68000 assembler, making use of all the registers will give >the speed increase to compete with the real pdp8/e. >I have my doubts. If you wanted to do something to make it go faster but not cause you to rewrite everything, you could replace the Moto6809 with a Hitachi 6309 - code / clock / pin compatible with the 6809, but if you set it to "non-compatible mode," has access to extra registers, fewer cycles for most instructions, not to mention a hardware divide & some 32-bit math instructions. It'll also clock at 3 to 4 Mhz (for the CMOS part - the 63C09) so you could see quite a speed increase for not a lot of work... One downfall: they ain't cheap (altho cheaper than an 8008! ;-) and can be tough to find if you don't know where to look. I do, tho. ;-) Browze on over to http://www.cloud9tech.com/ - they keep 'em in stock there, $31 each. Great guys, and are still supporting the CoCo! Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me zmerch at 30below.com. | SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers From dave04a at dunfield.com Wed Nov 16 09:12:54 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:12:54 +0000 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> References: Message-ID: <20051116191917.ZVEU14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> > I've been thinking of building my own> > 6809 project (I have four AVR > projects and a couple serial ports on a Linksys router I need to build > first, tho)...[1] Just to let you know about it - you might want to check into my CUBIX project. CUBIX is the homegrown operating system that I originally developed for my 6809 Portable machine. It is easily portable, comes up on minimal hardware, and gives you over 100 system calls, and a number of applications including several text editors, assembler, debugger, APL interpreter, 8080 simulator, lots of utlities and plenty more. The original machine it was developed for was a homegrown portable with 6809E CPU, 6845 video controller, parallel keyboard, couple of 6551 uarts and a 765 diskette controller. Details and photos of this machine (and the mainboard) are on my site. I've also built the system as a bus oriented device, and had PCBs made for the main boards (great lab/prototyping system). This is one of the easiest ways to get a fullly functional 6809 system up and running. You can build a CUBIX system on quite a small card, using just a handful of chips. All you really need is the 6809 CPU, some RAM, 8K ROM**, serial port (I like the 6551 for it's built in baud rate generator), and a diskette controller (I usually use a 765). I've wirewrapped systems in just a couple of hours, and I know sevral others who have done it as well. Since the enture CUBIX OS fits in the 8K boot rom, RAM requirements are very low - Also, the internal commands include FORMAT and DOWNLOAD, which lets you format a diskette and download the applications and utilities to it (very easy to bootstrap). There's a 6809 simulator that run CUBIX on my site if you would like to check it out. Also some sample schematics, as well as full source code and documentation for the OS and all related applications/utilities. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Nov 16 13:31:55 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:31:55 +1300 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051116124116.03c57bb8@mail.30below.com> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20051115145814.04876eb0@mail.ubanproductions.com> <437A5C44.7030409@jetnet.ab.ca> <5.2.0.9.0.20051115163534.04794c38@mail.ubanproductions.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116114012.01bdae20@mail.30below.com> <200511160922480078.241BC3E1@10.0.0.252> <5.1.0.14.2.20051116124116.03c57bb8@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: On 11/17/05, Roger Merchberger wrote: > Dunno enough about 68Ks (yet) but 6800/6809 CPUs only have memory-mapped > I/O, so all that's needed is to buffer the lines (unless you're feeling > particularly foolhardy, like on the CoCo) and address decoding. Not exactly > a *lot* of hardware, as it were... The 68000 is like the 6800/6809 in that regard... no special I/O bus or instrunctions, just memory decoding, and a lot of MOVE instructions, -ethan From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 16 12:45:08 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 18:45:08 +0000 Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? In-Reply-To: <000301c5ea8a$41ea7cc0$655b2c0a@w2kdell> References: <000301c5ea8a$41ea7cc0$655b2c0a@w2kdell> Message-ID: <437B7E34.7050506@yahoo.co.uk> Andy Holt wrote: > I think the largest PCB I've seen is that for the Whitechapel workstation Seconded. The Acorn M4 board is around the same size - I should compare them sometime and see which is the larger. > I suppose some old mainframes might have their entire "engineers panel" on > one PCB. It doesn't 'feel' right counting those somehow though. Maybe to qualify it should be a self-contained board with CPU/mem/IO (mind you, the O/P asked about *homebrew* boards I believe, not commercial :-) Either way, that'd rule out such as my NCR Tower (main board is about 1m x 30cm, so poss. bigger than the Whitechapel in surface area - but the memory and IO are all on seperate cards via a backplane) which is reasonably impressive (the main board is at least twice as thick as the average PCB too) > I suspect that very few boards were made that are wider than a standard 19" > rack. Not sure, but above a certain size there are handling issues. I presume it wouldn't take much to break tracks due to flexing on larger boards. cheers Jules From charlesmorris at direcway.com Wed Nov 16 13:55:10 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:55:10 -0600 Subject: RL02 cable problem Message-ID: <2c3nn198n7i7m8pdne85qv6r6b0fbp2gfv@4ax.com> I found (a) problem, probably (the) problem, after several hours of board-level debugging trying to figure out the Fault indicator... the fancy original DEC ribbon cable is bad at the Berg end where it plugs into the controller! With the board in the card extender, which is the only way to allow the cable to move and reproduce the problem, I flexed the ribbon cable to about 45 degrees above the board. Lo and behold... the Fault lamp went out :) I am now making a Berg-Berg cable and will install it from inside the drive compartment. This will obviously help but I'll post when (if) it's running. ;) Interesting that this same discussion is taking place on cctalk with someone else's "new" RL02... -Charles From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 14:06:02 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:06:02 -0800 Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? In-Reply-To: <437B7E34.7050506@yahoo.co.uk> References: <000301c5ea8a$41ea7cc0$655b2c0a@w2kdell> <437B7E34.7050506@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511161206020331.24B136AE@10.0.0.252> >Not sure, but above a certain size there are handling issues. I presume >it wouldn't take much to break tracks due to flexing on larger boards. On the very large boards that I've seen, there are usually stiffeners (metal bars) either screwed or soldered to the board for support. This results in a board that's far more rigid than an unsupported board half the size. Cheers, Chuck From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Nov 16 14:07:40 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:07:40 +0000 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <200511140543.jAE5hDDD024114@lots.reanimators.org> Message-ID: On 14/11/05 05:43, "Frank McConnell" wrote: > ex is in /usr/bin. When _ALL_ else fails, /usr/bin is offline. Thus, > when _ALL_ else fails, ed, which is in /bin. And don't forget about > cat and echo (also in /bin). $gods, you've just reminded me of happy days editing BSD disklabels using ed on ultrix.....customers used to look on in awe* :) Cheers A *or was it pity...hmmm.... From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Wed Nov 16 14:10:42 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:10:42 -0500 Subject: RL02 cable problem In-Reply-To: <2c3nn198n7i7m8pdne85qv6r6b0fbp2gfv@4ax.com> References: <2c3nn198n7i7m8pdne85qv6r6b0fbp2gfv@4ax.com> Message-ID: That's probably me. Mine is an RL01 but the cable is probably the same. I wish *I* knew how to make my own new cable! I'm going to try to reconnect the one wire I know is broken in mine. On Nov 16, 2005, at 2:55 PM, Charles wrote: > I found (a) problem, probably (the) problem, after several hours > of board-level debugging trying to figure out the Fault > indicator... the fancy original DEC ribbon cable is bad at the > Berg end where it plugs into the controller! > > With the board in the card extender, which is the only way to > allow the cable to move and reproduce the problem, I flexed the > ribbon cable to about 45 degrees above the board. Lo and behold... > the Fault lamp went out :) > > I am now making a Berg-Berg cable and will install it from inside > the drive compartment. This will obviously help but I'll post when > (if) it's running. ;) > > Interesting that this same discussion is taking place on cctalk > with someone else's "new" RL02... > > -Charles > From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 14:13:15 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:13:15 -0800 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: <0IQ20008E8V37HK2@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ20008E8V37HK2@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511161213150744.24B7D3B4@10.0.0.252> On 11/16/2005 at 1:34 PM Allison wrote: >Unless it gets crazy I tend to do that. Create a parallel interface with >a protocal to talk over it to a slave and let the slave do the grunt work. >Did that back around 81 for the first time using 8085 and 8035 and found >it nice to have a limited IO on the host yet get good performance. Now >with AVR, PIC and others it's pretty reasonable. Just let it interrupt >the host when there's something for it or when done. Of course, since a PC has all of the I/O support needed, one could simply let it be the I/O servicer. That way, if a problem with the homebrew box came up, the homebrew hardware could be emulated on the PC. One could even cut down on construction and debugging time by simply sticking the necessary components into a prototyping PCB, skipping the nasty wiring stage just adding an illuminated LED on the board (blink if you want) and emulate the whole lashup on the PC. Sort of like sitting behind the wheel of a car with the engine turned off, saying "vroom, vrooooom". :) --Chuck From jim at g1jbg.co.uk Wed Nov 16 14:14:52 2005 From: jim at g1jbg.co.uk (Jim Beacon) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:14:52 -0000 Subject: Model 26 tty available References: <200511160007.TAA25204@ss10.danlan.com> Message-ID: <00e701c5eaea$678455e0$0200a8c0@ntlworld.com> Is that Gloucester UK? If so, I'm interested. Jim. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Lanciani" To: Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 12:07 AM Subject: Model 26 tty available > Located in Gloucester. Anybody interested? > > Dan Lanciani > ddl at danlan.*com > From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 14:15:23 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:15:23 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? Message-ID: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> Most of the PCI prototyping boards that I've seen are either outrageously expensive or absolutely bare (i.e. no interface logic at all)--and still not that inexpensive. Does anyone know of a reasonable (<$100) PCI prototyping kit with a reasonable amount of interface logic built on? Cheers, Chuck From henk.gooijen at oce.com Wed Nov 16 15:07:13 2005 From: henk.gooijen at oce.com (Gooijen, Henk) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:07:13 +0100 Subject: homebrew 'puter project Message-ID: <447524F844B59D48B8F7AE7F560935EE02CE221A@OVL-EXBE01.ocevenlo.oce.net> Yep, Roger, I know! I have the 6309 here, and guess where I bought it :-) AFAIK Cloud 9 is the only source. There will probably be others that sell this chip, but Cloud 9 is the only source I know of. I never bother with the chip selling sites that want your (e-mail) information, you say what you want, and they will give you a quote ... yeah, but I only want *one* not 1000! The downside of the 6309 is just what you say: to squeeze speed out of it, you must go into native mode. Many 4-cycle instructions execute in 3 cycles, so roughly you gain approx. 25%. You pay that by an expensive chip, and to make full use of the native mode, you must drop 6809 code, or write it in conditional assembly. I will use the 6309 instead of the 68E09 one day! Given the time, I enjoy writing the 68000 code from the 6809 so one day I might start this project. It is pure software to me, because as I said, I have built a 68000 modular system 10 year ago. It is still in the attick ... - Henk, PA8PDP. ________________________________ Van: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org namens Roger Merchberger Verzonden: wo 16-11-2005 20:18 Aan: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Onderwerp: RE: homebrew 'puter project Rumor has it that Gooijen, Henk may have mentioned these words: >... and to put oil on the fire, I am thinking about redoing the 6809 part, >and replace it by a 68000 at 10 MHz. Maybe a single board with just >enough I/O ports (not PIT 68230 IIRC, but simple octal latches) for >the pdp8/e console and RAM plus EPROM on board. >But as said: I am *thinking* about it. >I probably first start figuring out if rewriting the pdp8/e emulator 6809 >code into 68000 assembler, making use of all the registers will give >the speed increase to compete with the real pdp8/e. >I have my doubts. If you wanted to do something to make it go faster but not cause you to rewrite everything, you could replace the Moto6809 with a Hitachi 6309 - code / clock / pin compatible with the 6809, but if you set it to "non-compatible mode," has access to extra registers, fewer cycles for most instructions, not to mention a hardware divide & some 32-bit math instructions. It'll also clock at 3 to 4 Mhz (for the CMOS part - the 63C09) so you could see quite a speed increase for not a lot of work... One downfall: they ain't cheap (altho cheaper than an 8008! ;-) and can be tough to find if you don't know where to look. I do, tho. ;-) Browze on over to http://www.cloud9tech.com/ - they keep 'em in stock there, $31 each. Great guys, and are still supporting the CoCo! Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me zmerch at 30below.com. | SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers This message and attachment(s) are intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or agent thereof responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and with a "reply" message. Thank you for your cooperation. From charlesmorris at direcway.com Wed Nov 16 15:32:25 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:32:25 -0600 Subject: And finally the end of the RL02 story Message-ID: <2j8nn1lei4poglfllnv6fuu0ldh8oj29rf@4ax.com> I made my own ribbon cable, removed the drive's input connector and hooked everything up (making sure all the A pins of the Berg connectors aligned with the stripe). Crossed my fingers and powered up the system. Guess what... same error, Fault and Ready lamps lit again, Load lamp out. Crap! But all was not lost. Once again I checked for system clock and it was not on the correct pins any more. I counted from each end of the header cable (attached to the drive board connector) and noticed the clock signals were on the 13th and 14th pin from the end. That's M and N at the drive logic board end, confirmed by the schematic, but the clock is on pins HH and JJ at the RL8A end which just happens to be the 13th and 14th pin from the other end! So - although the 40 pin cable is a "straight through" (pin for pin), it turns out one end has to be reversed I flipped the Berg connector over at the RL8A and everything now works :) It is definitely inverted though, the black stripe on the ribbon cable is in the "wrong" place for the RL8A end now. I let it spin with the heads locked out for a while to remove all the dust I probably stirred up. It operateds without any funny noises (can't even hear it over the 8/A fans) and the Ready lamp now lights after pushing the Load button and waiting for spin-up, which is proper behavior. Then I keyed in the 10-word get-status program from the manual and it returned the proper status words (head over track 0, no error bits set) and can tell if the cover's open, the write protect switch is pushed, etc. Now all I need is software :) -Charles From vax9000 at gmail.com Wed Nov 16 15:55:06 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:55:06 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/16/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Most of the PCI prototyping boards that I've seen are either outrageously > expensive or absolutely bare (i.e. no interface logic at all)--and still > not that inexpensive. > > Does anyone know of a reasonable (<$100) PCI prototyping kit with a > reasonable amount of interface logic built on? Altera MAX II kit? Last time I check it was $150 but you get a CPLD and other logic on board too. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 15:58:12 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:58:12 -0500 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? Message-ID: <0IQ2005CEIAUNCS9@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:13:15 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/16/2005 at 1:34 PM Allison wrote: > > >>Unless it gets crazy I tend to do that. Create a parallel interface with >>a protocal to talk over it to a slave and let the slave do the grunt work. >>Did that back around 81 for the first time using 8085 and 8035 and found >>it nice to have a limited IO on the host yet get good performance. Now >>with AVR, PIC and others it's pretty reasonable. Just let it interrupt >>the host when there's something for it or when done. > >Of course, since a PC has all of the I/O support needed, one could simply >let it be the I/O servicer. > >That way, if a problem with the homebrew box came up, the homebrew hardware >could be emulated on the PC. One could even cut down on construction and >debugging time by simply sticking the necessary components into a >prototyping PCB, skipping the nasty wiring stage just adding an illuminated >LED on the board (blink if you want) and emulate the whole lashup on the >PC. > >Sort of like sitting behind the wheel of a car with the engine turned off, >saying "vroom, vrooooom". > >:) > >--Chuck ;) I reject that for only one reason. The PC is too big and power hungry. I'm up for gutting an old laptop and using the battery, keyboard and display. Oh and the hinge. :) Allison From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 16:11:27 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:11:27 -0800 Subject: homebrew 'puter project (was: 8008? In-Reply-To: <0IQ2005CEIAUNCS9@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ2005CEIAUNCS9@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511161411270482.252409CD@10.0.0.252> On 11/16/2005 at 4:58 PM Allison wrote: >I reject that for only one reason. The PC is too big and power hungry. >I'm up for gutting an old laptop and using the battery, keyboard and >display. Oh and the hinge. :) I've got to admit that some of the FPGA kits are tantalizing. XESS has a $200 board that includes VGA, keyboard and parallel port as well as a bunch of prototyping outputs, all based on the XC3S1000 FPGA. They throw in tools and sample applications. More than enough there for just about any microcomputer CPU you'd care to tinker with. And the I/O issues largely solved. And it's got a 7-segment LED, 4 DIP switches and 2 pushbuttons on it! Sigh. Hardware design isn't what it used to be. Maybe that's for the best. Cheers, Chuck From jcwren at jcwren.com Wed Nov 16 16:34:07 2005 From: jcwren at jcwren.com (J.C. Wren) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:34:07 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437BB3DF.1020508@jcwren.com> Don't know about cheapest, but it's one. I doubt you'll find anything under $100 simply because making small runs of PCI cards is expensive (multi-layer, beveled slot edge, none-rectangular route). Google has a number of hits for "pci fpga prototype". Somewhere I swear I saw a PCI card that had a minimal FPGA for the bus interface, and a reasonable prototyping area. It struck me as odd that someone would want to use 0.1" centered proto area, since there are very few chips one would want to use on a PCI bus that are available in DIP. --jc Chuck Guzis wrote: >Most of the PCI prototyping boards that I've seen are either outrageously >expensive or absolutely bare (i.e. no interface logic at all)--and still >not that inexpensive. > >Does anyone know of a reasonable (<$100) PCI prototyping kit with a >reasonable amount of interface logic built on? > >Cheers, >Chuck > > > > From jcwren at jcwren.com Wed Nov 16 16:38:24 2005 From: jcwren at jcwren.com (J.C. Wren) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:38:24 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437BB4E0.3040803@jcwren.com> Here's the one I was thinking of. But it's still $400. --jc Chuck Guzis wrote: >Most of the PCI prototyping boards that I've seen are either outrageously >expensive or absolutely bare (i.e. no interface logic at all)--and still >not that inexpensive. > >Does anyone know of a reasonable (<$100) PCI prototyping kit with a >reasonable amount of interface logic built on? > >Cheers, >Chuck > > > > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 16 17:05:16 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:05:16 -0700 Subject: homebrew 'puter project In-Reply-To: <200511161411270482.252409CD@10.0.0.252> References: <0IQ2005CEIAUNCS9@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <200511161411270482.252409CD@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437BBB2C.20904@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >I've got to admit that some of the FPGA kits are tantalizing. XESS has a >$200 board that includes VGA, keyboard and parallel port as well as a bunch >of prototyping outputs, all based on the XC3S1000 FPGA. They throw in >tools and sample applications. More than enough there for just about any >microcomputer CPU you'd care to tinker with. And the I/O issues largely >solved. > > > The problem is all the I/O is Do it yourself. Fpga's tend to have strange characteristics that can make life intersesting. They can really slowdown if have a unlucky design. >And it's got a 7-segment LED, 4 DIP switches and 2 pushbuttons on it! > >Sigh. Hardware design isn't what it used to be. Maybe that's for the >best. > > > That goes for the electronic kits now days, you often don't see something you would be proud of building. >Cheers, >Chuck > From alberto at a2sistemi.it Wed Nov 16 17:43:50 2005 From: alberto at a2sistemi.it (Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:43:50 +0100 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I think that would be OK. While it's a bad idea to randomly make > adjustments, you are not doing that. You have a fairly clear idea of > what's going on, and what that trimmer adjusts. As soon as I touched the trimmer, I discover the problem !! The cursor was instable !! The outputs voltages changes only posing the screwdriver on the trimmer. Now, with a new trimmer (a good Beckman) the voltage in full adjustable in the range. I have tested this power supply with various load and the regulation on 5V and 12V is good. I'm writing a web page with all your notes, my experience, photo, schematic and data sheets. Thanks a lot ! Alberto ------------------------------------------------------ Alberto Rubinelli Mail : alberto at a2sistemi.it A2 SISTEMI Web : www.a2sistemi.it Via Costantino Perazzi 22 Tel 0321 640149 28100 NOVARA (NO) - ITALY Fax 0321 391769 Il mio museo di vecchi computers/My old computers museum http://www.retrocomputing.net ICQ : 49872318 Skype : albertorubinelli ------------------------------------------------------ From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 16 18:21:40 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:21:40 -0800 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511161621400421.259B3D8E@10.0.0.252> On 11/17/2005 at 12:43 AM Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi wrote: >As soon as I touched the trimmer, I discover the problem !! The cursor was >instable !! Congratulations! One of life's hard-learned lessons: On old equipment, pots, switches, sockets and connectors are not your friends. Cheers, Chuck From ddl-cctech at danlan.com Wed Nov 16 18:26:38 2005 From: ddl-cctech at danlan.com (Dan Lanciani) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:26:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: Model 26 tty Message-ID: <200511170026.TAA06365@ss10.danlan.com> Sorry, that's Gloucester, Massachusetts, USA. :) Dan Lanciani ddl at danlan.*com From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 16 18:29:03 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:29:03 +0000 (GMT) Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued In-Reply-To: <0IQ100KEYYTATBKH@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 16, 5 09:57:11 am Message-ID: > Funny thing about PDP-11 system models. Even number for the most part > are unibus like 11/34 or 11/44 (11/05, 11/35 exception) and odd number > like 11/03, 11/23 are qbus. I thought all machines ending in 5 (05, 35, 45, 55) were Unibus. >From what I've read (and I've seen a manual with a sketch of one), there were going to be 11/09 and 11/39 machines. These would have been 'packaged' versions of the 11/04 and 11/34 (much as the 11/10 is a packaged version of the 11/05). In the end, I don't think DEC ever shipped a machien with that nameplate, they were all marked 11/04 or 11/34 as appropriate. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 16 18:32:40 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:32:40 +0000 (GMT) Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <07B0A5D4-C3F8-4290-B8DC-0CA342360DAF@xlisper.mv.com> from "David Betz" at Nov 16, 5 10:23:49 am Message-ID: > > > Check the Berg end of the controller cable - make sure you don't have > > any disloged pins or wires that are pulling out of the crimp pins... > > those ends are somewhat fragile (compared to IDC-type flat cables), > > and I've seen some mechanical abuse. > > Okay, that's at least part of the problem. The red wire that connects > near the end of the connector marked AB is broken. Looks like it will Are you sure it's not supposed to be? One of the 'corner pins' is used to provide power for the terminator (sourcde by the RL drive that the terminator is plugged into) and is not bused between drives or to the controller. I would at least check this wire is used before worrying about it. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 16 18:38:07 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:38:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437B5FE4.5080104@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Nov 16, 5 09:35:48 am Message-ID: > That is exactly why I did not buy the 3 ed. Minux has been re-wrtten > from a 8088 to a 386+ > in the 3rd ed. 8 meg of ram min is needed, 16 recomended. I was buying BLETCH!!! That means it wouldn't run on this PC (too little RAM), for all I am running an old version of linux with no problems. The reason I bought Minix in the beginning was that it would run on my PC/XT machine (the only PC I had at the time). And I learnt a fair bit about OSes and enough C to be dangerous by playing about with it. 8MB and a 386 is not a small machine! > the book for ideas for a small > computer I building. ( hardware real soon ... ) that I have to write > since I have a unque instruction > set and word length. This version of the computer will have 64kb of > memory of 12k to 16kb I want > to save for the OS. Feel like porting Unix V6 (as in the Lions Book)? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 16 18:13:44 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:13:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: semi-homemade micro In-Reply-To: <437A7D90.4090902@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Nov 15, 5 05:30:08 pm Message-ID: > > C. H. Dickman wrote: > > > > > For the pdp-8/e, it is actually a 20MHz clock driving a 28 bit shift > > register from which 4 timing states are generated. The memory cycle is > > 1.2us. > > Now if DEC used that clock speed for marketing, I'd bet they would of > sold more 8's. That is a fast clock. And they could have claimed the 11/45 was a 33MHz machine (that is the frequency of the master clock crystal). It always amused me that my 11/45 had the same clock frequency as 386 PCs some 25 years later. Of course as _we_ all know, clock speed is not a particularly useful way of determining the speed of a machine. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 16 18:48:53 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:48:53 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: from "Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi" at Nov 17, 5 00:43:50 am Message-ID: > > > I think that would be OK. While it's a bad idea to randomly make > > adjustments, you are not doing that. You have a fairly clear idea of > > what's going on, and what that trimmer adjusts. > > As soon as I touched the trimmer, I discover the problem !! The cursor was > instable !! > The outputs voltages changes only posing the screwdriver on the trimmer. Now yuo know why HP (and others) didn't put trimmers in their PSUs (or anywhere else that they could avoid). They had select-on-test resistors, or resistors that you clipped out to set the voltage. Typically you'd start with all the resistors installed (giving the minimum output voltage), measure that voltage and look at a table in the service manual that told you which resistors to cut out. The big advantage, of course, was that you didn't get contact problems later on. > Now, with a new trimmer (a good Beckman) the voltage in full adjustable in > the range. > I have tested this power supply with various load and the regulation on 5V > and 12V is good. > > I'm writing a web page with all your notes, my experience, photo, schematic > and data sheets. All I ask is that my name remains somehow associated with the schematics. -tony From marvin at rain.org Wed Nov 16 19:13:21 2005 From: marvin at rain.org (Marvin Johnston) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 17:13:21 -0800 Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? Message-ID: <437BD931.B9DA9979@rain.org> The biggest circuit board I've ever seen was on the order of 2 feet x 3 feet. Not sure of the actual dimmensions except this thing was LARGE. I was thinking at the time that it would have needed to be drilled using more than one head of the NC drilling machine (along with the associated alignment)! > contemporary with the 68k articles. I have on hand an > approximately 4' x 2.5' sheet of double clad circuit > material, and I could cut the size I needed from that. > But it got me to thinking (uh oh). Wouldn't it be fun > to build a REALLY big motherboard. You could put all From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 16 19:16:12 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:16:12 -0500 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: References: <437B5FE4.5080104@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20051116201612.1ba77898.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:38:07 +0000 (GMT) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > > That is exactly why I did not buy the 3 ed. Minux has been re-wrtten > > from a 8088 to a 386+ > > in the 3rd ed. 8 meg of ram min is needed, 16 recomended. I was buying > > BLETCH!!! > > That means it wouldn't run on this PC (too little RAM), for all I am > running an old version of linux with no problems. > > The reason I bought Minix in the beginning was that it would run on my > PC/XT machine (the only PC I had at the time). And I learnt a fair bit > about OSes and enough C to be dangerous by playing about with it. > > 8MB and a 386 is not a small machine! > It is small for any 'modern' version of Linux. Most 'distros' now are being built with compile options that don't even allow it to run on a regular 386. There isn't the same problem for Net or OpenBSD. Probably one of the reasons I like the BSDs more than Linux: the fact that they support as 'equal' all those old architectures 'keeps them honest' and keeps the install system from by default installing a horrendous amount of bloat. I have the same basic compliment of binaries, built from the same source tree, on a little old Sparc IPX and on a Pentium III system. Early versions of Linux are reaching the age where they are 'technically' on topic here. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 19:34:33 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:34:33 -0500 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued Message-ID: <0IQ200DT4SBD8J8A@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: DEC "Junk" rescued > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:29:03 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> Funny thing about PDP-11 system models. Even number for the most part >> are unibus like 11/34 or 11/44 (11/05, 11/35 exception) and odd number >> like 11/03, 11/23 are qbus. > >I thought all machines ending in 5 (05, 35, 45, 55) were Unibus. What about the 11/34m 11/44, 11/60! >>From what I've read (and I've seen a manual with a sketch of one), there >were going to be 11/09 and 11/39 machines. These would have been >'packaged' versions of the 11/04 and 11/34 (much as the 11/10 is a >packaged version of the 11/05). In the end, I don't think DEC ever >shipped a machien with that nameplate, they were all marked 11/04 or >11/34 as appropriate. > >-tony The package machines were the PDT11 series (models 110, 130 and 150 were all cousinns of the 11/03) and the Pro350(f11 cpu) and PRO380(J11 cpu). Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 19:37:45 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:37:45 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ200JJYSGPS0U0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:38:07 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> That is exactly why I did not buy the 3 ed. Minux has been re-wrtten >> from a 8088 to a 386+ >> in the 3rd ed. 8 meg of ram min is needed, 16 recomended. I was buying > >BLETCH!!! > >That means it wouldn't run on this PC (too little RAM), for all I am >running an old version of linux with no problems. > >The reason I bought Minix in the beginning was that it would run on my >PC/XT machine (the only PC I had at the time). And I learnt a fair bit >about OSes and enough C to be dangerous by playing about with it. > >8MB and a 386 is not a small machine! > >> the book for ideas for a small >> computer I building. ( hardware real soon ... ) that I have to write >> since I have a unque instruction >> set and word length. This version of the computer will have 64kb of >> memory of 12k to 16kb I want >> to save for the OS. > >Feel like porting Unix V6 (as in the Lions Book)? > >-tony Earlier versions are still available all the way back to 1.5 on line. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 16 19:44:05 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:44:05 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ200G0JSRAFDY4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: Scott Stevens > Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:16:12 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:38:07 +0000 (GMT) >ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > >> > That is exactly why I did not buy the 3 ed. Minux has been re-wrtten >> > from a 8088 to a 386+ >> > in the 3rd ed. 8 meg of ram min is needed, 16 recomended. I was buying >> >> BLETCH!!! >> >> That means it wouldn't run on this PC (too little RAM), for all I am >> running an old version of linux with no problems. >> >> The reason I bought Minix in the beginning was that it would run on my >> PC/XT machine (the only PC I had at the time). And I learnt a fair bit >> about OSes and enough C to be dangerous by playing about with it. >> >> 8MB and a 386 is not a small machine! >> > >It is small for any 'modern' version of Linux. Most 'distros' now are being built with compile options that don't even allow it to run on a regular 386. There isn't the same problem for Net or OpenBSD. Probably one of the reasons I like the BSDs more than Linux: the fact that they support as 'equal' all those old architectures 'keeps them honest' and keeps the install system from by default installing a horrendous amount of bloat. I have the same basic compliment of binaries, built from the same source tree, on a little old Sparc IPX and on a Pentium III system. > >Early versions of Linux are reaching the age where they are 'technically' on topic here. FYI: third edition is actually a very recent release maybe a few months old. Since it's on line and all older version ar still available and the license is far more relaxed than before. Allison From dj.taylor at starpower.net Wed Nov 16 20:01:37 2005 From: dj.taylor at starpower.net (Douglas Taylor) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 21:01:37 -0500 Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: References: <6.0.1.1.0.20051112105305.01b7de80@pop.starpower.net> Message-ID: <6.0.1.1.0.20051116204403.01be27f0@pop.starpower.net> Thanks to all who responded, it is real food for thought. To sum up, my project is to extract wiring diagrams from 2 boards. The first has about 25 TTL ICs and about a dozen op amps, lots of resistors and capacitors, etc. On the first board only the IC's are numbered, the resistors and capacitors and diodes are not. The second board only has a few components but all the parts are numbered, which is good. However, the second board has a large A/D convertor from 1985 that I know nothing about, it has no markings but I think it is an Analog Solutions model. I will proceed by following some of the wisdom from the group: 1. If I can, put sticky labels on the IC's with diagrams of the functions, some of the IC's are, e.g., quad and gates, number the IC's and the gates individually. Is it possible to print on some kind of Avery sticky paper? Will I be able to see that small? 2. Label all resistors and capacitors, R1 C1 .... 3. Label all connectors also, J1 pin 2 .... 4. Oh, almost forgot, get data sheets on all the IC's. 5. Use a large sheet of paper for drawing. 6. Continuity tester is a must. I'll post progress to my web space. Doug At 04:39 PM 11/12/2005, you wrote: > > > > Thanks for the hints, I was uncertain whether to use a continuity tester, > > but it sounds safe. > >I must have traced out over 100 boards in my life. I've always used a >continuity tester (firstly a homebrew one, then the Fluke 85), and have >never damaged anything. The chips on the boards have been a mix of TTL >(plain, L, H, LS, S, F, HC, HCT at least), 4000-series CMOS, NMOS and >PMOS LSIs, bipolar and FET-based analogue, etc (not all on the same >board, of course ;-)). AFAIK I've never damaged a single chip. > >I would be wary if there were tunnel diodes on the board (from what I've >read, those are easy to damage), but I doubt that will be the case on >your boards. > > > > > The circuit boards are multi-layer and from what I can see, looking at one > > side you can see writing on the layer below that says either +5 plane or > > ground plane depending on which side you are looking at. I have never > seen > > this before, the buried ground and +5 buss, is this normal? > >Yes, it've fairly normal to have the signal traces on the outside layers >and the power/ground planes inside. > >-tony From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 17 00:13:44 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:13:44 -0800 Subject: Question for the antique gear restorers Message-ID: <200511162213440343.26DD8EDA@10.0.0.252> I've got a system here that had gray foam rubber used as a sound deadener. Well, after 24 years, it's toast--you touch it and it's gone. No surprise, right? What do you folks use to replace the stuff (assuming that I don't want to put someone through this in 20 more years)? Adhesive-backed wool felt? Cheers, Chuck From Useddec at aol.com Thu Nov 17 00:43:04 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 01:43:04 EST Subject: Did someone have a pdp11/24? Message-ID: <25d.15204c7.30ad8078@aol.com> Hi, I thought I saw someone say they picked one up in a lot of equipment, but must have lost it. Thanks, Paul From jim.walter at btopenworld.com Wed Nov 16 03:05:51 2005 From: jim.walter at btopenworld.com (JIM WALTER) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 09:05:51 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Honeywell DSP-6 Last Call Message-ID: <20051116090551.84530.qmail@web86405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Hi there, Do you know the model number or can you give me the part number of the CPU. Thanks, Jim. From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Wed Nov 16 06:23:11 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 07:23:11 -0500 Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? In-Reply-To: <000301c5ea8a$41ea7cc0$655b2c0a@w2kdell> References: <20051115171218.22568.qmail@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> <000301c5ea8a$41ea7cc0$655b2c0a@w2kdell> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051116071753.033dc008@boff-net.dhs.org> Also, the circuit main boards for scanning electron microscopes used to be boards over 2ft in width and length. I know now, that many of those same boards are scaled down to much smaller sizes to be rack mounted next to other scientific gear in labs. My brother received one that was determined to be defective beyond repair from his professor when he was at college for microprocessor design and engineering at R.I.T. in Rochester, NY. He unfortunately lost it in his move to Buffalo, NY after he lost interest in microchips (I know, sacrilege) and took up Linguistics at SUNY Binghamton, NY and now on to Buffalo University, NY. I think he still has some various odds and ends, but nothing significant because of storage (or lack thereof). -John Boffemmyer IV At 03:46 AM 11/16/2005, you wrote: >I think the largest PCB I've seen is that for the Whitechapel workstation - >tho' the boards for the Gould 9000 and Honywell L66 come fairly close. > >I suppose some old mainframes might have their entire "engineers panel" on >one PCB. > >I suspect that very few boards were made that are wider than a standard 19" >rack. > >Andy -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.3/172 - Release Date: 11/15/2005 From Hans.Franke at mch20.sbs.de Wed Nov 16 07:19:35 2005 From: Hans.Franke at mch20.sbs.de (Hans Franke) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 14:19:35 +0100 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <8743e2e47af9496ea74ef6d3ddb2301a@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <437B3FF7.22858.5EB0258@localhost> Am 11 Nov 2005 20:31 meinte compoobah at valleyimplants.com: > I've seen several references to using torches to remove > DIPs from PCBs. Are there any specific things to keep in > mind to avoid heat damage &cet? > Are you talking propane plumber's blowtorches? Any kind will do it. Still, it's only a solution if you don't have an electrc heat gun, and need it done right away. Or if you realy don't care about the environment, especialy the one you are about to inhale. Just keep in mind that a torch will not only get the solder runnin', but also burns away all the stuff that's inside the boards, and the 'strange matter' that has been gathered over the years on the boards ... all this will form a quite interesting mixture to inhale. Also a torch gives you a rather hard to controll heat distribution, while it's easy to get this done with a heat blower. In the mid 80s, I salvaged hundreds of 256k chips from old boards, and it's been a matter of minutes to get that done with a blower. Just fix one end in a vice , heat the backside and let the board vibrate a bit.. the chips will come out right away. We're living in an age with enormus energies right in our hands ... Gruss H. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From Hans.Franke at mch20.sbs.de Wed Nov 16 08:39:40 2005 From: Hans.Franke at mch20.sbs.de (Hans Franke) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:39:40 +0100 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <17275.16641.621102.733416@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <437B52BC.1002.6345382@localhost> Am 16 Nov 2005 9:24 meinte Paul Koning: > >>>>> "woodelf" == woodelf writes: > >>> Is that the stuff in Cray's? Now we know why they are so much! > >> A relative, but not the same stuff. Cray used Fluorinert F-77, > >> which boils at about 203F. > woodelf> So what is wrong with cheap water? I guess - inert - says > woodelf> it all. > Water is not inert, especially not when hot. Just add tea and a teaspoon - definitly not inert :) SCNR H. -- VCF Europa 7.0 am 29/30.April und 01.Mai 2006 in Muenchen http://www.vcfe.org/ From brendle at ems.psu.edu Wed Nov 16 10:06:18 2005 From: brendle at ems.psu.edu (Jeff Brendle) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 11:06:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: References: <0IQ100HX7ZK20RO2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <2735.128.118.196.20.1132157178.squirrel@128.118.196.20> I think that wasn't true here at Penn State ... there was a "big red button" in an older computer lab (willard for anyone who's been here) that had at one point, many many years ago, been the home for the campus mainframe (according to the rumor). Now, I don't know >when< that was, or >what< was running there "way back when". By the time I worked the lab, it would've been '89 or something & we were doing IBMs (S/370 gear like the 43xx/30xx series running MVS & VM/CMS) for years but not in that building. There was a dedicated Computer Building by then & satellite labs scattered around the place. Wouldn't even know where to find out the history of this, not too many old-timers around to ask. In any case, our 'big red button' -- it was right at the door, near the light switch, but protected somewhat from accidental activation by a drilled out block of wood. I was told that was done so with one quick push, when you needed to do it, you could make your way to the door, feel the switch & the whole place could shut down instantly. I never tried it to see if it still worked. I figured the people using it as a PC & terminal lab at that time would've minded my little experiment (to say nothing of my bosses). -j William Donzelli said: >> Likely not. If there was it would be a really bad scene. I bet any >> shutdown for more than minutes would have been viewed quite severely. > > I only remember an IBM 3081 that had a very bad meltdown due to a hose > break or something, and the system could not shot down fast > enough. Generally, a loss in pressure would throw the machine into a check > state and do a really fast shutdown. > >> Remins me of the mainframe mini joke I'd heard years ago. Minis have >> power >> switches, mainframes have BIG RED BUTTONS (emergency power off). > > BIG RED PULLS, actually... > > William Donzelli > aw288 at osfn.org > > -- Jeff Brendle Desktop Support Supervisor Penn State - College of E & M S From Bob at BRADLEE.ORG Wed Nov 16 11:48:20 2005 From: Bob at BRADLEE.ORG (Bob Bradlee) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 12:48:20 -0500 Subject: Can anyone identified these old water chillers ? In-Reply-To: <200511160845330521.23F9A799@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511161758.jAGHwlvY038037@keith.ezwind.net> I have been attempting to identify some early CPU coolers, At first I was led to believe they were off of an IBM system, I have not found any IBMers that could identify them. I am now thinking they may have been fabricated for any water chilled system, they may have been a retrofit for an air cooled system in a water chiller enviroment. >From the size of the feed lines, this was a low pressure high volume chiller, and there were between 30 and 40 of these hanging on the system doors. Here is a link, if anyone recognize them, I am sure Lew (the owner) would love to know as would several others who are equally baffled. http://www.ibm-collectables.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album07 Bob Bradlee On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:45:33 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: >On 11/16/2005 at 10:46 AM Allison wrote: >>Water cooling had one less obvious avantage. You can dump the waste heat >>outside the building or at least outside the computer room. >At CDC Sunnyvale, we had a big cooling tower that handled both the chilled >water for the computers as well as the HVAC for the building. When I first >came to Sunnyvale, I remember that the first thing that I saw of the >building (sitting in the middle of an onion field) was the big vapor plume. >I can't ever remember seeing a water leak in the machine room. The Bryant >6603 disks (and one very memorable 808 drive) would leak hydraulic fluid, >however. Made a terrible mess. >By far, the worst problem was construction that was going on in the area. >It would cause the power to go out at unexpected times. Bringing a machine >back up after a power failure in those days was a major chore taking hours >and sometimes days. Normally, machines were never powered down, except >for moving or major maintenance. >As I remember it, both CDC and Cray used the same guy to design their >refrigeration--and he wasn't an employee of either firm, but a guy who used >to work for Amana. >Cheers, >Chuck From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Nov 16 15:20:08 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 21:20:08 +0000 Subject: Looking for early XENIX stuff In-Reply-To: <9CAEEBA2-45CC-4FA2-930C-62C8C27A8859@fergusonlabs.com> Message-ID: Hi Rob, You obviously missed my discovery of a couple of weeks ago :) I've attached it onto this message; hope you can make use of it! I'm going to try and install it onto a spare ProFile I've got lying around, assuming I've got an old Mac capable of writing 400k disks.... Cheers A On 15/11/05 17:50, "Robert Ferguson" wrote: > Hi folks, > > I'm looking for XENIX installation disks, documentation, and other > assorted paraphernalia for both the Apple Lisa and the Altos 586 > series of machines. Actually, any early (pre-1985) XENIX stuff is of > interest to me, but those two machines are the ones I'm working on at > the moment. > > If you have anything that you'd be willing to either copy or let go, > let me know off-list, and we can work out the details. If there's > interest, I'll summarize what I find to the list. > > Thanks very much, > Rob Ferguson > rob at ferguson labs dot com > > > From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 16 18:35:49 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:35:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437B5FE4.5080104@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20051117003550.28446.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> > >> Seconded. I bought the first edition of the book > (red cover) and a > >> Minix 1.5.10 (I think) on 360K floppies > distribution) about 15 years > >> ago, and the second edition (with the CD-ROM) > somewhat later. IINM, the first edition was yeller, and had no media. I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it was numero uno. The source code of course is printed in the book. And I thought 3 editions were already released? __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 16 18:39:36 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:39:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: what's the world's biggest circuit/motherboard? In-Reply-To: <437AE022.80500@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20051117003936.29577.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> umm but they're not classic, or at least vintage as would be the case with an 80188. --- woodelf wrote: > umm the fun robot brains are small - __________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From bert at brothom.nl Thu Nov 17 03:09:11 2005 From: bert at brothom.nl (Bert Thomas) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:09:11 +0100 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <437C48B7.2090303@brothom.nl> Tony Duell wrote: >>That is exactly why I did not buy the 3 ed. Minux has been re-wrtten >>from a 8088 to a 386+ >>in the 3rd ed. 8 meg of ram min is needed, 16 recomended. I was buying > > > BLETCH!!! > > That means it wouldn't run on this PC (too little RAM), for all I am > running an old version of linux with no problems. > > The reason I bought Minix in the beginning was that it would run on my > PC/XT machine (the only PC I had at the time). And I learnt a fair bit > about OSes and enough C to be dangerous by playing about with it. > > 8MB and a 386 is not a small machine! Oh it will run on your machine. But you have to tweak it somewhat. The whole idea behind moving drivers to userland is to make a very minimal kernel. The kernel is only a 8k of code or something like that. Obviously it needs some ram as well, but that also depends on the number of processes you want to be able to have in memory. I checked with Tanenbaum last night and he thinks it won't work on a 8086 anymore: >> I doubt it runs on 8086s any more. Should work on 386s but I don't know if anyone has tried. If memory is tight, it will be necessary to tweak the system and reduce the FS cache. The third edition of the book will be out in a month. I would indeed suggest waiting for it. << So this should help getting it to work on your machine. ;-) Bert From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 17 03:16:21 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:16:21 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: References: <437B5FE4.5080104@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Nov 16, 5 09:35:48 am Message-ID: <12809.195.212.29.75.1132218981.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> > The reason I bought Minix in the beginning was that it would run on my > PC/XT machine (the only PC I had at the time). And I learnt a fair bit > about OSes and enough C to be dangerous by playing about with it. Yes indeed > 8MB and a 386 is not a small machine! 8MB and the equivalent of a 386 is getting to be pretty close to a single chip these days. > Feel like porting Unix V6 (as in the Lions Book)? I quite fancy porting Minix to the PDP-11, but I'm sure it's been done before. Gordon. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 06:06:48 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:06:48 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ3009Y8LKYDM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:16:21 +0000 (GMT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> The reason I bought Minix in the beginning was that it would run on my >> PC/XT machine (the only PC I had at the time). And I learnt a fair bit >> about OSes and enough C to be dangerous by playing about with it. > >Yes indeed > >> 8MB and a 386 is not a small machine! > >8MB and the equivalent of a 386 is getting to be pretty close to a single >chip these days. > >> Feel like porting Unix V6 (as in the Lions Book)? > >I quite fancy porting Minix to the PDP-11, but I'm sure it's been done >before. > >Gordon. Minix on PDP11, Not that I know of. It would be interesting. Allison From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 17 06:30:47 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:30:47 +0000 Subject: Question for the antique gear restorers In-Reply-To: <200511162213440343.26DD8EDA@10.0.0.252> References: <200511162213440343.26DD8EDA@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <1132230647.1682.17.camel@weka.localdomain> On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 22:13 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've got a system here that had gray foam rubber used as a sound deadener. > Well, after 24 years, it's toast--you touch it and it's gone. No surprise, > right? > > What do you folks use to replace the stuff You could always take the easy route if it's purely sound deadening and not bother :) For the usage patterns on a collected machine it's less of an issue; it's not like the system's running 24x7, and the extra noise might not be such a problem. Of course it's worth thinking about construction and determining whether the material was also there as a heat barrier or an anti-vibration measure. > Adhesive-backed wool felt? I don't know for sure - but that sounds sensible. What it'll do after 20 years is anyone's guess. I know the stuff they use in cars seems to have a lifetime of 20 years or so before it starts to break down (although it's not total disintegration like the foam used in computers) Of course 20 years down the line there might be other issues in keeping the machine operational anyway, such as random IC failure through normal decay (rather than usage cycles). If the material needs to be replaced again in 20 years it's perhaps no big deal anyway! cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 17 06:34:07 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:34:07 +0000 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: <200511161621400421.259B3D8E@10.0.0.252> References: <200511161621400421.259B3D8E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <1132230847.1682.22.camel@weka.localdomain> On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 16:21 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/17/2005 at 12:43 AM Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi wrote: > > >As soon as I touched the trimmer, I discover the problem !! The cursor was > >instable !! > > Congratulations! > > One of life's hard-learned lessons: On old equipment, pots, switches, > sockets and connectors are not your friends. pots normally seem to be OK though *until you touch them*, as the wiper still has good contact until it's moved onto a corroded spot. Personally I've found it unusual to find one that's failed without even being touched. (sockets and connectors seem much more prone to vibration or heat- related movement, and of course switches always live with some of their contacts exposed to corrosion anyway) cheers Jules From brad at heeltoe.com Thu Nov 17 07:59:03 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:59:03 -0500 Subject: pdp-11 microcode source files? Message-ID: <200511171359.jAHDx3rL028052@mwave.heeltoe.com> Just curious, Does anyone have source files for any of the PDP-11 microcode? I know the 11/44 microcode is on bitsavers, but it's pdf. I'm curious if anyone has source files for the 44, 45 or 70. -brad From aw288 at osfn.org Thu Nov 17 08:27:01 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:27:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: Question for the antique gear restorers In-Reply-To: <200511162213440343.26DD8EDA@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > I've got a system here that had gray foam rubber used as a sound deadener. > Well, after 24 years, it's toast--you touch it and it's gone. No surprise, > right? At least it does not turn to a sticky mess like some foam. > What do you folks use to replace the stuff (assuming that I don't want to > put someone through this in 20 more years)? Adhesive-backed wool felt? You can buy sheets of new foam of various grades and thicknesses, then chop it to fit. Use an electric carving knife for custom fits. The modern stuff os very likely far more stable over the years. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 17 08:33:02 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:33:02 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <17276.38046.480000.896299@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "9000" == 9000 VAX writes: 9000> On 11/16/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> Most of the PCI prototyping boards that I've seen are either >> outrageously expensive or absolutely bare (i.e. no interface logic >> at all)--and still not that inexpensive. >> >> Does anyone know of a reasonable (<$100) PCI prototyping kit with >> a reasonable amount of interface logic built on? 9000> Altera MAX II kit? Last time I check it was $150 but you get a 9000> CPLD and other logic on board too. If you don't want to mess with CPLDs or FPGAs, there's PLX, which makes a variety of PCI to xxx interface chips. For modest performance, there's PCI to ISA (alternatively, to a "generic" bus), PIO mode only. paul From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 17 09:20:58 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:20:58 -0700 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <20051117003550.28446.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051117003550.28446.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <437C9FDA.2050302@jetnet.ab.ca> Chris M wrote: >IINM, the first edition was yeller, and had no media. >I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it >was numero uno. The source code of course is printed >in the book. And I thought 3 editions were already >released? > > > Well my copy did have media. Just too many moves with no storage. I checked the minux 3 faq and and it says 4 meg of ram needed, the web blurb says 8 and all want 16 meg.I guess you could compile it for a smaller system. Did not early 386's only have 2 or 4 meg ram? From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Thu Nov 17 09:21:07 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:21:07 -0500 Subject: Berg connector repair Message-ID: <74691D0E-037E-4312-A095-B37FC4DA82BF@xlisper.mv.com> I have a wire that is broken on the Berg connector that plugs into my DLV12 controller for my RL01 drive. How do I remove one of the pins from the Berg connector so that I can reattach the broken wire? Is it possible to repair these connectors or do I have to replace it? From allain at panix.com Thu Nov 17 09:28:11 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:28:11 -0500 Subject: Did someone have a pdp11/24? References: <25d.15204c7.30ad8078@aol.com> Message-ID: <006101c5eb8b$859bf820$5f25fea9@ibm23xhr06> Useddec at aol.com said: > I thought I saw someone say they picked one up in > a lot of equipment, but must have lost it. I've sent you two requests off-list, Paul. So far you haven't responded to either. Can't be good for business. ??? John A. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 17 09:31:01 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:31:01 -0700 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <0IQ3009Y8LKYDM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ3009Y8LKYDM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437CA235.2060606@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >Minix on PDP11, Not that I know of. It would be interesting. > > > Well I think Minix #1, would be easy to port, but why? You got real unix. It just proves how effective code on the 11 could be. Too bad you can't buy a pdp-11 cpu chip for $2.49 like a 8088. I take it is still rather pricy to put together a basic 11. Any body know how much? >Allison > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 09:46:59 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:46:59 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ3007O7VRVM1QL@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: woodelf > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:20:58 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Chris M wrote: > >>IINM, the first edition was yeller, and had no media. >>I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it >>was numero uno. The source code of course is printed >>in the book. And I thought 3 editions were already >>released? >> The second edition had V2 Minix on CDrom with it. It ran on 8088s and there was a small memory version. >Well my copy did have media. Just too many moves with no storage. >I checked the minux 3 faq and and it says 4 meg of ram needed, >the web blurb says 8 and all want 16 meg.I guess you could >compile it for a smaller system. Did not early 386's only >have 2 or 4 meg ram? Minix 3 is bigger. Most 386s were either small as in 1-4meg or could go to 16-32m. My inboard 386 has 1mb of onboard plus potential expansion to 4meg. But my SIIG 3000 has 5meg of 30pin simms in it. A 386/33 mini AT board I have will take 8 30 pin simms or 32meg max. I have 8meg in it. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 09:47:51 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:47:51 -0500 Subject: Berg connector repair Message-ID: <0IQ300834VTB6XPB@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Berg connector repair > From: David Betz > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:21:07 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >I have a wire that is broken on the Berg connector that plugs into my >DLV12 controller for my RL01 drive. How do I remove one of the pins >from the Berg connector so that I can reattach the broken wire? Is it >possible to repair these connectors or do I have to replace it? I've done both. However it's easier to replace the whole connector depending of the particular style. Allison From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 17 09:51:55 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:51:55 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437CA235.2060606@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IQ3009Y8LKYDM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <437CA235.2060606@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <1884.195.212.29.83.1132242715.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> > Allison wrote: > >>Minix on PDP11, Not that I know of. It would be interesting. >> >> >> > Well I think Minix #1, would be easy to port, but why? You got real > unix. > It just proves how effective code on the 11 could be. Too bad you can't > buy > a pdp-11 cpu chip for $2.49 like a 8088. I take it is still rather pricy > to put together > a basic 11. Any body know how much? I just paid about ?30 for some PDP11/03 boards, CPU, MXV11 and some kind of serial card (can't remember the exact type). I had a BA23 lying around empty, and an RQDX3. Now I need some media... Alternatively, anyone got an RXV21, RL02 cable and terminator they can sell me? Gordon. From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Thu Nov 17 09:54:45 2005 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:54:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: Sun-1 Revival Message-ID: <20051117155445.56146.qmail@web31411.mail.mud.yahoo.com> A few years back, I was lucky enought to get the opportunity to exchange an (equally rare) Unix workstation for a Sun-1. The Sun-1 was in great shape, with everything intact, except it is missing the CPU card. This is 100U, so its not the very first Sun-1 with a 68000, rather it uses the later 68010 board which was common in lots of other systems (Sun-2, etc). Despite all this, and having looked for a few years now - I'm still unable to track down a multibus Sun CPU card. So if anyone out there has a spare, or a board that needs repair, etc. Let me know! Any 68010 multibus Sun card would do. Many thanks Ian. __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Thu Nov 17 10:01:22 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:01:22 -0500 Subject: RL01/RL02 cables (was Re: Minix) In-Reply-To: <1884.195.212.29.83.1132242715.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> References: <0IQ3009Y8LKYDM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <437CA235.2060606@jetnet.ab.ca> <1884.195.212.29.83.1132242715.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> Message-ID: <283DC7FA-2B1E-4B77-84C8-9870D0E7B110@xlisper.mv.com> I'm in the market for an RL01/RL02 cable myself. It seems mine is broken. In fact, if anyone in the NH/MA area has one they could loan me for a short time, I could at least verify that the RL01 drive and controller work before putting more effort into finding a replacement cable or trying to fix the broken one. Anyone in the MA/NH area have an RL01/RL02 cable they could loan me (or sell me)? From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 17 10:08:58 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:08:58 -0700 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <1884.195.212.29.83.1132242715.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> References: <0IQ3009Y8LKYDM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <437CA235.2060606@jetnet.ab.ca> <1884.195.212.29.83.1132242715.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> Message-ID: <437CAB1A.4000300@jetnet.ab.ca> gordonjcp at gjcp.net wrote: >I just paid about ?30 for some PDP11/03 boards, CPU, MXV11 and some kind >of serial card (can't remember the exact type). I had a BA23 lying around >empty, and an RQDX3. Now I need some media... > > > Well what about a whole set ? A lot of people like myself can't be mix-ing and matching part. I just want to pen the box and plug it in if I were to buy one. PS A small HD would be nice too. I got a terminal already From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 17 10:18:13 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:18:13 -0800 Subject: Question for the antique gear restorers In-Reply-To: <1132230647.1682.17.camel@weka.localdomain> References: <200511162213440343.26DD8EDA@10.0.0.252> <1132230647.1682.17.camel@weka.localdomain> Message-ID: <200511170818130492.2906F9D2@10.0.0.252> On 11/17/2005 at 12:30 PM Jules Richardson wrote: >You could always take the easy route if it's purely sound deadening and >not bother :) For the usage patterns on a collected machine it's less of >an issue; it's not like the system's running 24x7, and the extra noise >might not be such a problem. It's in the carriage box of a dot-matrix printer. Definitely sound-deadening, as I've seen the same model, only earlier production, without foam. I'll just clean the old stuff off and otherwise leave things alone. Better bare metal than another round of some deteriorating substance later. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 10:23:43 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:23:43 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ3007IFXH30UP2@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: woodelf > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:31:01 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>Minix on PDP11, Not that I know of. It would be interesting. >> >Well I think Minix #1, would be easy to port, but why? You got real unix. >It just proves how effective code on the 11 could be. Too bad you can't buy >a pdp-11 cpu chip for $2.49 like a 8088. I take it is still rather pricy >to put together a basic 11. Any body know how much? If you can find a defunct VT240 or 241 box the CPU in there is T-11 (40 pin basic PDP11) which was used on the Falcon card. I'd bet a DC310 can be had cheap if you can find a source. For PDP11s there are three catagories. Unibus machines, large and more complex. Qbus machines (11/03, 11/23 series) smaller more common and easier to work with. Packaged system PDT11/150 (11/03 with 2 8" floppies) or Pro3xx (11/23 or J11 chips with floppy and hard disks). The PDT11/150 if could is a compact system and removes hardware from the picture as its a bounded system. The PROs are bounded but do have option boards. The Qbus systems are most often seen un bounded PDP-11s and are easily configured. The last 3 PDP-11/23s I got were free as in "Here, take it". However if you want a SCSI card or maybe any disk controller those can be harder as those are most often first things stripped. For example I found a microPDP11 with the disks removed as they were MFM and fit PCs of the day. The RQDX controllers are often stripped for Qbus VAXen (microvaxII). Larger disks are like RL02 or RX02 get seperated and "lost" or rescued in preference to the whole system. But a basic box, cpu, memory and serial cards are common and cheap to free. A PC with the right code can simulate TU58 tape and provide a working system that runs RT-11. With a bit of creativity and a Qbus parallel IO card and the PCs infamous and useful printer port a faster parallel disk simulation is doable. Most small PDP11s (11/03, 11/23, 11/23b) have ODT (Octal Debugging Tool) in microcode or local rom so a terminal can be your front pannel making it easy to load a small boot program. If that weren't enough there are a pot load of PDP11 sims that you could develop on till hardware lands on you. Now Minux on PDP11. Minix is not unix, the look to the user the same but internally there is almost no commonality. Unix on PDP11 requires a disk and later versions require the bigger/later 11s that have I&D. Minix once loaded is entirely memory resident and uses relatively small space for itself. For PDP11 I'd expect a 8kW version that runs useful stuff in 24kW (pdp11s without MMU (LSI-11 [11/2 and 11/03]) would not be out of the question due to code efficientcy of the -11. If later CPUs (11/23, 23b, 73 for Qbus) are used then 256kb or 4mb are possible with MMU. An -11 with 256k is a very repectable machine running any OS. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 10:28:05 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:28:05 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ300HUQXOD0RG7@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:51:55 +0000 (GMT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> Allison wrote: >> >>>Minix on PDP11, Not that I know of. It would be interesting. >>> >>> >>> >> Well I think Minix #1, would be easy to port, but why? You got real >> unix. >> It just proves how effective code on the 11 could be. Too bad you can't >> buy >> a pdp-11 cpu chip for $2.49 like a 8088. I take it is still rather pricy >> to put together >> a basic 11. Any body know how much? > >I just paid about ?30 for some PDP11/03 boards, CPU, MXV11 and some kind >of serial card (can't remember the exact type). I had a BA23 lying around >empty, and an RQDX3. Now I need some media... > >Alternatively, anyone got an RXV21, RL02 cable and terminator they can >sell me? > >Gordon. Terminator not required save for those with boot proms on them. However a bootable 11/03 only needs memory, console and RX01/2 and the willingness to use ODT to enter about 30 words of boot code by hand. The RQDX will need the distribution board to breakout the floppy and HD connection from the 50pin cable. If you find prints it's something that can be wire wrapped (it's only connectors). The boot for MSCP disks is also possible to hand enter. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 10:37:00 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:37:00 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ300H59Y37CQ9H@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: woodelf > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:08:58 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >gordonjcp at gjcp.net wrote: > >>I just paid about ?30 for some PDP11/03 boards, CPU, MXV11 and some kind >>of serial card (can't remember the exact type). I had a BA23 lying around >>empty, and an RQDX3. Now I need some media... >> >> >> >Well what about a whole set ? A lot of people like myself can't be >mix-ing and matching >part. I just want to pen the box and plug it in if I were to buy one. Why not? generally building Qbus PDP11s is like the proverbial chinese menu. One from column A one from B and One from C. You need a Qbus box there are three common ones. A cpu there are 4 common cheap ones. Memory Various and second sources. Serial IO one will do (or more) gobs of choices. Common choices are DLV11F (single line) or DLV11J four line. OR MXV11 (two serial and ram on one card) The crunch item is storage as it's often big or if reasonably current like anything SCSI not common hence expensive. >PS A small HD would be nice too. I got a terminal already And you want it delivered configured for free. Allison From bkr at WildHareComputers.com Thu Nov 17 10:47:18 2005 From: bkr at WildHareComputers.com (Bruce Ray) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:47:18 -0700 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> <17276.38046.480000.896299@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <01a401c5eb96$9320f6c0$367cfea9@newhare> Another (cheaper) PCI prototyping board is available from Quancom: www.Quancom.com PCIPROTO - PCI Prototype Card with PCI Decoder chip http://www.quancom.com/qprod01/eng/pb/pci_prototype_card.htm No experience [yet] with it, just found it in our own internal investigations. Bruce ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Koning" To: Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 7:33 AM Subject: Re: Cheapest PCI prototyping? >>>>>> "9000" == 9000 VAX writes: > > 9000> On 11/16/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> Most of the PCI prototyping boards that I've seen are either > >> outrageously expensive or absolutely bare (i.e. no interface logic > >> at all)--and still not that inexpensive. > >> > >> Does anyone know of a reasonable (<$100) PCI prototyping kit with > >> a reasonable amount of interface logic built on? > > 9000> Altera MAX II kit? Last time I check it was $150 but you get a > 9000> CPLD and other logic on board too. > > If you don't want to mess with CPLDs or FPGAs, there's PLX, which > makes a variety of PCI to xxx interface chips. For modest > performance, there's PCI to ISA (alternatively, to a "generic" bus), > PIO mode only. > > paul > From brad at heeltoe.com Thu Nov 17 10:47:40 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:47:40 -0500 Subject: RL01/RL02 cables (was Re: Minix) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:01:22 EST." <283DC7FA-2B1E-4B77-84C8-9870D0E7B110@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <200511171647.jAHGleXx003234@mwave.heeltoe.com> David Betz wrote: > >Anyone in the MA/NH area have an RL01/RL02 cable they could loan me >(or sell me)? I can't sell you mine, but you can borrow it. I know it worked about 6 months ago with my RL02. I have a working RL02. I may actually have something else which may work in my box-o-cables. I'm in Arlington if you want to stop by, pretty much any day 9-6 but you should call ahead as I be an en-ga-neer and you know how those types can be :-) -brad Brad Parker Heeltoe Consulting +1-781-483-3101 http://www.heeltoe.com From healyzh at aracnet.com Thu Nov 17 10:55:55 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:55:55 -0800 Subject: pdp-11 microcode source files? In-Reply-To: <200511171359.jAHDx3rL028052@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200511171359.jAHDx3rL028052@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: At 8:59 AM -0500 11/17/05, Brad Parker wrote: >Just curious, > >Does anyone have source files for any of the PDP-11 microcode? > >I know the 11/44 microcode is on bitsavers, but it's pdf. I'm curious >if anyone has source files for the 44, 45 or 70. Would that be on Microfiche? Still I don't think I've seen Microcode source files for any of the hardware. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From emu at ecubics.com Thu Nov 17 11:06:03 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:06:03 -0700 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437CB87B.4080901@ecubics.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > Most of the PCI prototyping boards that I've seen are either outrageously > expensive or absolutely bare (i.e. no interface logic at all)--and still > not that inexpensive. > > Does anyone know of a reasonable (<$100) PCI prototyping kit with a > reasonable amount of interface logic built on? You don't get anything or $100. But the board the PCI-Core from Opencores was made on (memec insight) is around $200, and even a nicer one (from avnet, actually, memec is part of avnet in the meantime) is just 300-400. Both have some sram/dram, v24, and some usefull stuff too. From brad at heeltoe.com Thu Nov 17 12:01:00 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:01:00 -0500 Subject: pdp-11 microcode source files? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:55:55 PST." Message-ID: <200511171801.jAHI11Cc006525@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Zane H. Healy" wrote: > >Would that be on Microfiche? Still I don't think I've seen Microcode >source files for any of the hardware. I ment in a text file. It's published for the 11/44. I sort of assumed it would be for the 11/45 and 11/70 also, but I may be wrong. -brad From Useddec at aol.com Thu Nov 17 12:01:01 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:01:01 EST Subject: Did someone have a pdp11/24? Message-ID: <22c.194e190.30ae1f5d@aol.com> Hi John, They could be lost in my AOL span filters. Is there a # I can call you? Thanks, Paul From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 17 12:29:07 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:29:07 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <437CB87B.4080901@ecubics.com> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> <437CB87B.4080901@ecubics.com> Message-ID: <200511171029070376.297ED06D@10.0.0.252> On 11/17/2005 at 10:06 AM e.stiebler wrote: >You don't get anything or $100. But the board the PCI-Core from >Opencores was made on (memec insight) is around $200, and even a >nicer one (from avnet, actually, memec is part of avnet in the meantime) >is just 300-400. Both have some sram/dram, v24, and some usefull stuff too. Sigh. It's about what I thought. I'm just looking for faster data transfer than what ISA will get me. Not much faster--about 4 MB/sec. Ideas? Cheers, Chuck From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 17 12:36:37 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:36:37 +0000 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437CAB1A.4000300@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IQ3009Y8LKYDM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <437CA235.2060606@jetnet.ab.ca> <1884.195.212.29.83.1132242715.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> <437CAB1A.4000300@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <437CCDB5.5070500@gjcp.net> woodelf wrote: > gordonjcp at gjcp.net wrote: > >> I just paid about ?30 for some PDP11/03 boards, CPU, MXV11 and some kind >> of serial card (can't remember the exact type). I had a BA23 lying >> around >> empty, and an RQDX3. Now I need some media... >> >> >> > Well what about a whole set ? A lot of people like myself can't be > mix-ing and matching > part. I just want to pen the box and plug it in if I were to buy one. > > PS A small HD would be nice too. I got a terminal already That is pretty much a whole set. Oh, I didn't mention the two opto-isolated I/O cards I got from eBay too, they should be fun! I got (from a bloke in Australia, just beating a chip collector) on eBay the following: M8047, M8043 and M7270. The M7270 is a cpu, and the M8047 has some memory, bootstrap ROMs and two SLUs on board. I could build a very nice portable RT-11 machine just with that! Wonder what the current draw is? Gordon. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 17 12:41:22 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:41:22 +0000 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <0IQ300HUQXOD0RG7@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ300HUQXOD0RG7@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437CCED2.2020704@gjcp.net> Allison wrote: >>Subject: Re: Minix >> From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net >> Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:51:55 +0000 (GMT) >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >>>Allison wrote: >>> >>> >>>>Minix on PDP11, Not that I know of. It would be interesting. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>>Well I think Minix #1, would be easy to port, but why? You got real >>>unix. >>>It just proves how effective code on the 11 could be. Too bad you can't >>>buy >>>a pdp-11 cpu chip for $2.49 like a 8088. I take it is still rather pricy >>>to put together >>>a basic 11. Any body know how much? >> >>I just paid about ?30 for some PDP11/03 boards, CPU, MXV11 and some kind >>of serial card (can't remember the exact type). I had a BA23 lying around >>empty, and an RQDX3. Now I need some media... >> >>Alternatively, anyone got an RXV21, RL02 cable and terminator they can >>sell me? >> >>Gordon. > > > Terminator not required save for those with boot proms on them. However > a bootable 11/03 only needs memory, console and RX01/2 and the willingness > to use ODT to enter about 30 words of boot code by hand. Actually, I meant the RL02 terminator. I have been entering bootstrap code by hand since one of my bootstrap ROMs went pins-up a couple of weeks ago - you may remember I posted asking about favoured boot ROM images? Not to mention entering quite a lot of code into ODT by hand when I first got my 11/73 and *nothing* would play nicely... Originally the Baydel multipurpose card could boot pretty much any common QBus mass storage. > The RQDX will need the distribution board to breakout the floppy and HD > connection from the 50pin cable. If you find prints it's something > that can be wire wrapped (it's only connectors). The boot for MSCP > disks is also possible to hand enter. Got the breakout board, in the BA23. Haven't played with it yet though. Gordon. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 17 12:43:23 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:43:23 +0000 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <0IQ300H59Y37CQ9H@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ300H59Y37CQ9H@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437CCF4B.8000706@gjcp.net> Allison wrote: > > And you want it delivered configured for free. # Please, Mr Compat-a-biiiiliteeee :-) Love that song... Gordon From emu at ecubics.com Thu Nov 17 12:51:53 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:51:53 -0700 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511171029070376.297ED06D@10.0.0.252> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> <437CB87B.4080901@ecubics.com> <200511171029070376.297ED06D@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437CD149.2020601@ecubics.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/17/2005 at 10:06 AM e.stiebler wrote: > > >>You don't get anything or $100. But the board the PCI-Core from >>Opencores was made on (memec insight) is around $200, and even a >>nicer one (from avnet, actually, memec is part of avnet in the meantime) >>is just 300-400. Both have some sram/dram, v24, and some usefull stuff > > too. > > Sigh. It's about what I thought. I'm just looking for faster data transfer > than what ISA will get me. Not much faster--about 4 MB/sec. > > Ideas? What do you like to attach to it ? From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 13:06:14 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 14:06:14 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ4009DE4ZXDKQ1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: Gordon JC Pearce > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:36:37 +0000 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >woodelf wrote: >> gordonjcp at gjcp.net wrote: >> >>> I just paid about ?30 for some PDP11/03 boards, CPU, MXV11 and some kind >>> of serial card (can't remember the exact type). I had a BA23 lying >>> around >>> empty, and an RQDX3. Now I need some media... >>> >>> >>> >> Well what about a whole set ? A lot of people like myself can't be >> mix-ing and matching >> part. I just want to pen the box and plug it in if I were to buy one. >> >> PS A small HD would be nice too. I got a terminal already > >That is pretty much a whole set. Oh, I didn't mention the two >opto-isolated I/O cards I got from eBay too, they should be fun! > >I got (from a bloke in Australia, just beating a chip collector) on eBay >the following: M8047, M8043 and M7270. > >The M7270 is a cpu, and the M8047 has some memory, bootstrap ROMs and >two SLUs on board. I could build a very nice portable RT-11 machine >just with that! > >Wonder what the current draw is? > >Gordon. M7270 +5V at 1A +12V at .22A M8043 +5V at 1A +12V at .25A 4 serial ports M8027 +5V at 1.2A +12V at .1A 2 serial ports, MXV11AC 32kb ram +Eprom The M7270 is the LSI11/2 CPU (16bit address) and the MXV11 multifunction card are a near complete system on two cards. You would only need a Tu58 equiventlt on the secod serial port to boot or some disk (RXV21) to have a system in three boards. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 17 13:12:18 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:12:18 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <437CD149.2020601@ecubics.com> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> <437CB87B.4080901@ecubics.com> <200511171029070376.297ED06D@10.0.0.252> <437CD149.2020601@ecubics.com> Message-ID: <200511171112180621.29A659F9@10.0.0.252> On 11/17/2005 at 11:51 AM e.stiebler wrote: >What do you like to attach to it ? A couple of 175 ips tape drives. Cheers, Chuck From Useddec at aol.com Thu Nov 17 13:12:25 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 14:12:25 EST Subject: Minix Message-ID: <20c.e9dbab6.30ae3019@aol.com> Hi Gordon, I have the RLV21, and I'll have to look for the cable and terminator. Where are you located? Thanks, Paul From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 13:15:41 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 14:15:41 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ400HP35FO0T08@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: Gordon JC Pearce > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:41:22 +0000 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Actually, I meant the RL02 terminator. I have been entering bootstrap Only needed for RL02. Not the RX02 as mentioned. >code by hand since one of my bootstrap ROMs went pins-up a couple of >weeks ago - you may remember I posted asking about favoured boot ROM >images? Not to mention entering quite a lot of code into ODT by hand >when I first got my 11/73 and *nothing* would play nicely... > >Originally the Baydel multipurpose card could boot pretty much any >common QBus mass storage. Like the bdv11 (m8012). >> The RQDX will need the distribution board to breakout the floppy and HD >> connection from the 50pin cable. If you find prints it's something >> that can be wire wrapped (it's only connectors). The boot for MSCP >> disks is also possible to hand enter. > >Got the breakout board, in the BA23. Haven't played with it yet though. Floppy disk can be RX50 or TEACFD55GFR. If the controller is RQDXXX1 or 2 the disk will be RX50 or only one side of Teac (RX33). If RQDX2 depending on ROM rev it will be RX50 and or RX33 (800k). You can bet on RX50 compatability in all cases which is single sided 80track 10 SPT. To use the teac you may require nonstandard jumpers [compared to RX33] on the drive to make it look and act like RX50 to older RQDXn though it does work fine. The hard disk is st412(10mb), ST225(20mb), st250(40mb), Quantum D540 (30mb). However they must be formatted with either xxdp or deom a system that can such as uVAX2000 (for RQDX3 only). Allison From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 17 14:00:28 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:00:28 +0000 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <0IQ4009DE4ZXDKQ1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ4009DE4ZXDKQ1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437CE15C.4080209@gjcp.net> Allison wrote: > M7270 +5V at 1A +12V at .22A > M8043 +5V at 1A +12V at .25A 4 serial ports > M8027 +5V at 1.2A +12V at .1A 2 serial ports, MXV11AC 32kb ram +Eprom > > The M7270 is the LSI11/2 CPU (16bit address) and the MXV11 multifunction > card are a near complete system on two cards. You would only need a Tu58 > equiventlt on the secod serial port to boot or some disk (RXV21) to have > a system in three boards. Yeah... I haven't got the manuals kicking about just now (or rather I do but I've got a ton of things to do before digging them out) but that sounds "doable". Say 30 watts all in - about the same as a decent laptop. A card with a bit more RAM, and maybe a PIC and a CF card to emulate MSCP, and it's done. Just a little bigger footprint than my Libretto, too... Gordon. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 17 14:12:30 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:12:30 +0000 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <20c.e9dbab6.30ae3019@aol.com> References: <20c.e9dbab6.30ae3019@aol.com> Message-ID: <437CE42E.3090307@gjcp.net> Useddec at aol.com wrote: > Hi Gordon, > > I have the RLV21, and I'll have to look for the cable and terminator. Where > are you located? > > Thanks, Paul > Scotland. Where are you? Is shipping likely to be a problem? Gordon. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Nov 17 14:15:33 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:15:33 +0000 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <0IQ400HP35FO0T08@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ400HP35FO0T08@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437CE4E5.2040009@gjcp.net> Allison wrote: >>Subject: Re: Minix >> From: Gordon JC Pearce >> Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:41:22 +0000 >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> >>Actually, I meant the RL02 terminator. I have been entering bootstrap > > > Only needed for RL02. Not the RX02 as mentioned. Bah, I'm a moron. Of course I meant the RLV12. >>code by hand since one of my bootstrap ROMs went pins-up a couple of >>weeks ago - you may remember I posted asking about favoured boot ROM >>images? Not to mention entering quite a lot of code into ODT by hand >>when I first got my 11/73 and *nothing* would play nicely... >> >>Originally the Baydel multipurpose card could boot pretty much any >>common QBus mass storage. > > > Like the bdv11 (m8012). Would the ROMs work? Are there dumps of them? >>>The RQDX will need the distribution board to breakout the floppy and HD >>>connection from the 50pin cable. If you find prints it's something >>>that can be wire wrapped (it's only connectors). The boot for MSCP >>>disks is also possible to hand enter. >> >>Got the breakout board, in the BA23. Haven't played with it yet though. > > > Floppy disk can be RX50 or TEACFD55GFR. If the controller is RQDXXX1 or 2 > the disk will be RX50 or only one side of Teac (RX33). If RQDX2 depending > on ROM rev it will be RX50 and or RX33 (800k). You can bet on > RX50 compatability in all cases which is single sided 80track 10 SPT. > To use the teac you may require nonstandard jumpers [compared to RX33] on > the drive to make it look and act like RX50 to older RQDXn though it > does work fine. Got an RX50, not got any (known-good) RX50 media. I seem to recall that normal 5.25" DD floppies are a no-no, but I can't remember why. > The hard disk is st412(10mb), ST225(20mb), st250(40mb), Quantum D540 (30mb). > However they must be formatted with either xxdp or deom a system that can > such as uVAX2000 (for RQDX3 only). Yes, I've been reading up on this. Apparently you can modify XXDP to handle different formats, too. I *think* I might have an ST225. Gordon. From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Thu Nov 17 07:51:04 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:51:04 Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: <1132230847.1682.22.camel@weka.localdomain> References: <200511161621400421.259B3D8E@10.0.0.252> <200511161621400421.259B3D8E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051117075104.1327b100@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 12:34 PM 11/17/05 +0000, you wrote: >On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 16:21 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> On 11/17/2005 at 12:43 AM Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi wrote: >> >> >As soon as I touched the trimmer, I discover the problem !! The cursor was >> >instable !! >> >> Congratulations! >> >> One of life's hard-learned lessons: On old equipment, pots, switches, >> sockets and connectors are not your friends. > >pots normally seem to be OK though *until you touch them*, as the wiper >still has good contact until it's moved onto a corroded spot. Personally >I've found it unusual to find one that's failed without even being >touched. The monitors in the Intel MDS systems frequently have the exact same problem. Move them slightly and the problem disappears! Joe > >(sockets and connectors seem much more prone to vibration or heat- >related movement, and of course switches always live with some of their >contacts exposed to corrosion anyway) > >cheers > >Jules > > From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Thu Nov 17 14:35:29 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:35:29 +0000 Subject: Looking for a GraphOn 235 keyboard Message-ID: Hi, I have this GraphOn 235 next to me that arrived some time ago without a keyboard. It appears to take a handset jack (_not_ an RJ11, but similar), so unless it _happens_ to be compatible with an LK201-type keyboard, I'd have nothing to go on it. I've been googling on it, but not finding any technical docs, only "how to use" instructions for various universities. I _know_ it emulates a Tek 4014 (among other things), so docs of that nature aren't getting me anywhere. Anyone have any hard technical docs on something like this, or at least know something about its keyboard? Internally, it's driven by a 68000, but without disassembling the ROMs and reverse-engineering the memory map, I can't tell much about how it works. Thanks for any pointers, -ethan From teoz at neo.rr.com Thu Nov 17 14:41:28 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:41:28 -0500 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? References: <200511161621400421.259B3D8E@10.0.0.252> <200511161621400421.259B3D8E@10.0.0.252> <3.0.6.16.20051117075104.1327b100@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: <00e001c5ebb7$494e7bf0$0500fea9@game> As some of you might recall I was looking for drivers for my Tokamac II FX PDS card on my mac IIfx. Well I found the drivers from the original company founder. I read in Macworld (and had it confirmed from the company contact) that you need a PAL chip on the IIfx reprogrammed (or replaced?) because Apple screwed up BUS mastering on the IIfx and nobody caught on at the time because those types of cards were rare. Well I have found another person who has the same card AND the PAL chip needed on his unit but is having other problems getting his setup to work. What I want to know is are PAL chips somewhat like eprons in getting programmed or is there some other process involved? Does anybody know of a way to get a pre programmed chip dumped so it can be duplicated or do you need the original chip (or code) to do this? If I can be duplicated does anybody here have equipment to do it? I just want to get this card running being thats its rare and a cool upgrade for a cool machine. Does anybody here have any experience with a IIfx running a Tokamac II FX upgrade processor? From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 14:42:26 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:42:26 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ400GSG9G8AHNL@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: Gordon JC Pearce > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:15:33 +0000 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Got an RX50, not got any (known-good) RX50 media. I seem to recall that >normal 5.25" DD floppies are a no-no, but I can't remember why. The regular brown media works fine, the problem is 10 512byte sectors per track and 80 tracks. Not a normal PC format, though it can do it. John Wilsons putr does it if memory is working today. If you format them on an -11 you need XXDP as RT-11 doesnt. If the uVAX2000 has RX50 or RX33 it can format floppies as well as RQDX3 Compatable hard disks. All from the console test software So a minimal uVAX2000 (without any OS) can be a useful applience. I keep one around with longer cables for that reason. >> The hard disk is st412(10mb), ST225(20mb), st250(40mb), Quantum D540 (30mb). >> However they must be formatted with either xxdp or deom a system that can >> such as uVAX2000 (for RQDX3 only). > >Yes, I've been reading up on this. Apparently you can modify XXDP to >handle different formats, too. I *think* I might have an ST225. St225 is RD31, a standard format. Allison From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Thu Nov 17 15:12:03 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:12:03 -0500 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <0IQ400GSG9G8AHNL@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ400GSG9G8AHNL@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <204CA704-7851-4828-8449-E96EF40CE2A4@xlisper.mv.com> Do you know if a PC controller for an MFM drive can format an ST225 sufficiently that RT-11 can use it? I figure it would get the high level format wrong but wouldn't the low level format be okay? Can't RT-11 handle the high level formatting? From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 17 14:45:21 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:45:21 +0000 (GMT) Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued In-Reply-To: <0IQ200DT4SBD8J8A@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 16, 5 08:34:33 pm Message-ID: > > > > >Subject: Re: DEC "Junk" rescued > > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:29:03 +0000 (GMT) > > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > > >> Funny thing about PDP-11 system models. Even number for the most part > >> are unibus like 11/34 or 11/44 (11/05, 11/35 exception) and odd number > >> like 11/03, 11/23 are qbus. > > > >I thought all machines ending in 5 (05, 35, 45, 55) were Unibus. > > What about the 11/34m 11/44, 11/60! A statement does not imply its converse! All machines ending in 5 are Unibus. Not all Unibus machines end in 5. There are, of course, those ending in 0 (11/10, 11/20, 11/40, 11/50. 11/60. 11/70), those ending in 4 (11/04, 11/24, 11/44, 11/84, 11/94), etc. > > >>From what I've read (and I've seen a manual with a sketch of one), there > >were going to be 11/09 and 11/39 machines. These would have been > >'packaged' versions of the 11/04 and 11/34 (much as the 11/10 is a > >packaged version of the 11/05). In the end, I don't think DEC ever > >shipped a machien with that nameplate, they were all marked 11/04 or > >11/34 as appropriate. > > > >-tony > > The package machines were the PDT11 series (models 110, 130 and 150 > were all cousinns of the 11/03) and the Pro350(f11 cpu) and PRO380(J11 cpu). No, you misunderstood me. From what I rmemeber, the only difference between an 11/05 and an 11/10 was what came with it. The 11/05 was a bare CPU. The 11/10 came with things like the paper tape software kits, etc. The latter is what I refered to as a 'packaged system'. Probably not the right terminiology. Anyway, I have seen sort-of references to the 11/09 and 11/39, which would have been the same CPU as the 11/04 and the 11/34, but configured for the end user. No electrical or mechnaical differences. AFAIK, though, DEC never actually sold a machine with an 11/09 or 11/39 anmeplate. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 17 14:55:00 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:55:00 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Reverse Engineering 15 yr old electronics In-Reply-To: <6.0.1.1.0.20051116204403.01be27f0@pop.starpower.net> from "Douglas Taylor" at Nov 16, 5 09:01:37 pm Message-ID: > > Thanks to all who responded, it is real food for thought. To sum up, my > project is to extract wiring diagrams from 2 boards. The first has about > 25 TTL ICs and about a dozen op amps, lots of resistors and capacitors, > etc. On the first board only the IC's are numbered, the resistors and > capacitors and diodes are not. The second board only has a few components > but all the parts are numbered, which is good. However, the second board > has a large A/D convertor from 1985 that I know nothing about, it has no > markings but I think it is an Analog Solutions model. > > I will proceed by following some of the wisdom from the group: > > 1. If I can, put sticky labels on the IC's with diagrams of the functions, > some of the IC's are, e.g., quad and gates, number the IC's and the gates I don't think that's essential. Maybe it's because I can remember most of the common TTL (and other) ICs and their pinouts, and only have to look up the more obscure ones, but anyway. Much more important is the abiliity to uniquely identify each IC (and other major components) on the board, giving each one a U1, U2, U3... number. You may need to add labels to do that. > individually. Is it possible to print on some kind of Avery sticky > paper? Will I be able to see that small? > > 2. Label all resistors and capacitors, R1 C1 .... Not so important. I never, for example draw out decoupling capacitors unless there are very good reasons for doing so (e.g. it's a single capacitor on a derrived power line, output of a potential divider) > > 3. Label all connectors also, J1 pin 2 .... If you draw out connectors, be cosistent as to how you do it. For example, I always draw edge connectors looking into the socket. Drawing 2 mating connectors as mirror images drives me mad!. For complete units, I often put arrows on the connectors showing the orientation -- pointing, say, to the back and left of the machine. All such references refer to the unit in the normal operating position (again, be consistent about this). > > 4. Oh, almost forgot, get data sheets on all the IC's. > > 5. Use a large sheet of paper for drawing. Actually, I find it better to stick to A4 (or equivalent) paper and not try to pack too much on a page. It makes copying/scanning a lot easier, it also makes the schematic easier to follow since it's divided up into functional blocks. Of course this means you have to think a lot when drawing it out in the first place (which is no bad thing!) > > 6. Continuity tester is a must. Yes. I have been known to make copies of IC pinouts or connector pinouts (e.g. the ISA slot pinout if I'm working on PC stuff) and pin them up over the bench where I'm working. And have at least 4 databooks open at once. You don't waht to have to keep on stopping to look stuff up :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 17 15:04:03 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:04:03 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IBM 5155 Power supply schematics or info In-Reply-To: <1132230847.1682.22.camel@weka.localdomain> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 17, 5 12:34:07 pm Message-ID: > > On Wed, 2005-11-16 at 16:21 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 11/17/2005 at 12:43 AM Alberto Rubinelli - A2 Sistemi wrote: > > > > >As soon as I touched the trimmer, I discover the problem !! The cursor was > > >instable !! > > > > Congratulations! > > > > One of life's hard-learned lessons: On old equipment, pots, switches, > > sockets and connectors are not your friends. > > pots normally seem to be OK though *until you touch them*, as the wiper > still has good contact until it's moved onto a corroded spot. Personally > I've found it unusual to find one that's failed without even being > touched. I can't beleive you've never had a VT220 with horizontal hold problems. If you get that fault, the cure for 99% of them is to pull the cover, twiddle the horizontal hold preset back and forth a few times, re-set it to the original position, and give it a try. Most of the time you'll get a good picture again. The fact hat the 'right point' is still at the original setting seems to prove it's not something else drifting in the terminal. It's bad contacts at that preset. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 17 15:06:13 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:06:13 +0000 (GMT) Subject: pdp-11 microcode source files? In-Reply-To: <200511171359.jAHDx3rL028052@mwave.heeltoe.com> from "Brad Parker" at Nov 17, 5 08:59:03 am Message-ID: > > > Just curious, > > Does anyone have source files for any of the PDP-11 microcode? > > I know the 11/44 microcode is on bitsavers, but it's pdf. I'm curious > if anyone has source files for the 44, 45 or 70. The flowcharts for the 11/45 microcode, with the ROM address for each state (and the binary dumps of the PROMs) are in the printset, if that's any use... I've never seen the source listings in machine-readable form, though. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 17 14:40:04 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:40:04 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <20051117003550.28446.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Nov 16, 5 04:35:49 pm Message-ID: > > > >> Seconded. I bought the first edition of the book > > (red cover) and a > > >> Minix 1.5.10 (I think) on 360K floppies > > distribution) about 15 years > > >> ago, and the second edition (with the CD-ROM) > > somewhat later. > > IINM, the first edition was yeller, and had no media. You might be right. The first 'minix book' I bought was certainly red, and came with no mefia. The source code to much of the OS (kernel, drivers, etc) was printed in the book. I bought a MInix installation kit seperately. It came in a 'software size' 3 rignt binder with a lot of 5.25" 360K floppies inside. And the manual pages for the standard programs, etc. IIRC that kit cost me somewhat over \pounds 140.00 (back in about 1992). -tony From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 15:24:38 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:24:38 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ400DHHBEK8P8D@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: David Betz > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:12:03 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Do you know if a PC controller for an MFM drive can format an ST225 >sufficiently that RT-11 can use it? I figure it would get the high >level format wrong but wouldn't the low level format be okay? Can't >RT-11 handle the high level formatting? NO, on the PC controller. Tried it and no success with any RQDXn version as I have all three (and flavors of each at that). Reminder. RQDX1 and 2 use one format and RQDX3 uses a different format. No idea of the spcifics only that they do not interchange. Allison From doc at mdrconsult.com Thu Nov 17 15:24:03 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:24:03 -0500 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <204CA704-7851-4828-8449-E96EF40CE2A4@xlisper.mv.com> References: <0IQ400GSG9G8AHNL@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <204CA704-7851-4828-8449-E96EF40CE2A4@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <437CF4F3.3090907@mdrconsult.com> David Betz wrote: > Do you know if a PC controller for an MFM drive can format an ST225 > sufficiently that RT-11 can use it? I figure it would get the high > level format wrong but wouldn't the low level format be okay? Can't > RT-11 handle the high level formatting? Much easier, in my opinion, just to do it in XXDP. I have the Winchester standalone (zrqch0?) from XXDP modified** to boot from VTserver v2.x. If you want to try that, check out the system requirements for VTserver and remind me next week and I'll send you the fixed standalone utility. I've used it on ST225, ST251, RD53 and RD54 disks. Doc ** according to J. Engdahl's excellent instructions From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Thu Nov 17 15:31:36 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:31:36 -0500 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437CF4F3.3090907@mdrconsult.com> References: <0IQ400GSG9G8AHNL@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <204CA704-7851-4828-8449-E96EF40CE2A4@xlisper.mv.com> <437CF4F3.3090907@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: Wow! That's great. I hadn't thought of using VTserver. I'll download it and see if I can get it working. I guess that means I'll have to switch my MXV11 over to TU58 boot though. On Nov 17, 2005, at 4:24 PM, Doc Shipley wrote: > David Betz wrote: >> Do you know if a PC controller for an MFM drive can format an >> ST225 sufficiently that RT-11 can use it? I figure it would get >> the high level format wrong but wouldn't the low level format be >> okay? Can't RT-11 handle the high level formatting? > > Much easier, in my opinion, just to do it in XXDP. I have the > Winchester standalone (zrqch0?) from XXDP modified** to boot from > VTserver v2.x. If you want to try that, check out the system > requirements for VTserver and remind me next week and I'll send you > the fixed standalone utility. I've used it on ST225, ST251, RD53 > and RD54 disks. > > > Doc > > ** according to J. Engdahl's excellent instructions From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 17 15:37:10 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:37:10 -0800 Subject: Fastest NSC800? Message-ID: <200511171337100668.2A2AFA8B@10.0.0.252> Did National ever make a version of the NSC800 that ran faster than 4 MHz? If so, where can I get one? Cheers, Chuck From doc at mdrconsult.com Thu Nov 17 15:40:22 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:40:22 -0500 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: References: <0IQ400GSG9G8AHNL@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <204CA704-7851-4828-8449-E96EF40CE2A4@xlisper.mv.com> <437CF4F3.3090907@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <437CF8C6.4060906@mdrconsult.com> David Betz wrote: > Wow! That's great. I hadn't thought of using VTserver. I'll download it > and see if I can get it working. I guess that means I'll have to switch > my MXV11 over to TU58 boot though. Here's the link to Mr. Engdahl's instructions: http://home.alltel.net/engdahl//xxdp.htm The files he links to on his site aren't there, and IIRC, I had to twiddle some of the memory addresses in Ersatz-11 to make it work, but the basic info there is correct. As I said, I have both the fixed utility and the VTserver config I used, but they're on a laptop in Texas and I'm on a laptop in Grorgia right now. :) Doc From Useddec at aol.com Thu Nov 17 15:42:22 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:42:22 EST Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued Message-ID: <210.e6f4105.30ae533e@aol.com> Hi, As I recall, the 11/05, 11/15, 11/35 and maybe 11/45 were what DEC referred to as the "OEM" versions of the 11/10, 11/20, 11/40, and 11/50. Paul From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 15:41:11 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:41:11 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ400H1RC64CZ0J@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: David Betz > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:31:36 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Wow! That's great. I hadn't thought of using VTserver. I'll download >it and see if I can get it working. I guess that means I'll have to >switch my MXV11 over to TU58 boot though. Easier way is to hit halt or break and use odt to load by and the tu58 boot. Saves messing with a jungle of wirewrap posts on the MXV. Allison > >On Nov 17, 2005, at 4:24 PM, Doc Shipley wrote: > >> David Betz wrote: >>> Do you know if a PC controller for an MFM drive can format an >>> ST225 sufficiently that RT-11 can use it? I figure it would get >>> the high level format wrong but wouldn't the low level format be >>> okay? Can't RT-11 handle the high level formatting? >> >> Much easier, in my opinion, just to do it in XXDP. I have the >> Winchester standalone (zrqch0?) from XXDP modified** to boot from >> VTserver v2.x. If you want to try that, check out the system >> requirements for VTserver and remind me next week and I'll send you >> the fixed standalone utility. I've used it on ST225, ST251, RD53 >> and RD54 disks. >> >> >> Doc >> >> ** according to J. Engdahl's excellent instructions From brad at heeltoe.com Thu Nov 17 15:45:17 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:45:17 -0500 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:41:28 EST." <00e001c5ebb7$494e7bf0$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <200511172145.jAHLjHEr028471@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Teo Zenios" wrote: > >What I want to know is are PAL chips somewhat like eprons in getting >programmed or is there some other process involved? depends. old original pals were fuse-link and hence OTP (one time programmable). At some point "GALS" came along which could be erased and reprogrammed (they are more like eeproms in their technology as I recall). In most cased you could replace a PAL with a GAL, as long as the speed of the part was correct. What's the part? if it's something like a 16L8 or a 22V10 then you should have no problem. It is possible to 'program' a pal such that it can't be read. If your pal has had this done you are out of luck. If it hasn't you should have not problem reading the contents. >Does anybody here have any experience with a IIfx running a Tokamac II FX >upgrade processor? I actually had one and did some things with it but it was such a long time ago that I have no recollection, sorry. I do remember it ran a demo very quickly (I think it did fractals on the screen). I don't remember having to replace a pal, however. And I used it on a IIfx. -brad From doc at mdrconsult.com Thu Nov 17 15:45:58 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:45:58 -0500 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437CF8C6.4060906@mdrconsult.com> References: <0IQ400GSG9G8AHNL@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <204CA704-7851-4828-8449-E96EF40CE2A4@xlisper.mv.com> <437CF4F3.3090907@mdrconsult.com> <437CF8C6.4060906@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <437CFA16.9060404@mdrconsult.com> Doc Shipley wrote: > As I said, I have both the fixed utility and the VTserver config I > used, but they're on a laptop in Texas and I'm on a laptop in Grorgia > right now. :) Err, that'd be *Georgia*. Doc From Useddec at aol.com Thu Nov 17 15:48:01 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:48:01 EST Subject: Minix Message-ID: <23f.19c4c37.30ae5491@aol.com> Illinois- Overseas can ship mail, Fed-Ex or DHL. Still looking for the terminator and cable. From fireflyst at earthlink.net Thu Nov 17 15:50:16 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:50:16 -0600 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued In-Reply-To: <210.e6f4105.30ae533e@aol.com> Message-ID: The 11/15 is where that started, not 11/05, but otherwise I think you're right. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com > Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 3:42 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: DEC "Junk" rescued > > Hi, > > As I recall, the 11/05, 11/15, 11/35 and maybe 11/45 were what DEC > referred > to as the "OEM" versions of the 11/10, 11/20, 11/40, and 11/50. > > Paul From pkoning at equallogic.com Thu Nov 17 16:07:26 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:07:26 -0500 Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued References: <210.e6f4105.30ae533e@aol.com> Message-ID: <17276.65310.129336.23841@localhost.localdomain> >>>>> "Julian" == Julian Wolfe writes: Julian> The 11/15 is where that started, not 11/05, but otherwise I Julian> think you're right. >> As I recall, the 11/05, 11/15, 11/35 and maybe 11/45 were what DEC >> referred to as the "OEM" versions of the 11/10, 11/20, 11/40, and >> 11/50. Yes, the 11/15 did it first since it was the 11/20 relabeled. And the 11/05 is another example. But the 11/45 is not. I don't even remember the designation 11/50; certainly the 11/45 was a regular end user system. There isn't any 11/50 mentioned in the PDP-11 Architecture Handbook. (Then again, neither is the 11/55, and that designation is real, though not particularly common. And it isn't an OEM 11/60, but rather a bipolar memory version of the 11/45.) paul From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Thu Nov 17 16:08:15 2005 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 14:08:15 -0800 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <0IQ1008R4YCTV2Z0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ1008R4YCTV2Z0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: While I don't use a water immersion system, my main system has a water cooled processor, motherboard, hard drive and graphics card. Actually it's automotive windshield washer fluid, 30% methanol, with an added surface tension reducer. A methanol mixture has a lower viscosity and better wetting properties than water alone, so it runs better through the hoses and transfers the heat better. The drawback of low viscosity is that a methanol mixture will leak even when water doesn't. I like a quiet machine, so I keep the pump and reservior in the garage, where I allow things to be a bit noisier. My next step in my quest for quiet will be to attempt to build a sealed oil filled power supply with a heat exchanger to transfer the heat to the water. I'm also thinking of soldering copper tube to the SDRAM heat sinks. It would probably be cheaper just to buy a noise cancelling headset. Yes, this does violate the 10 year rule. Eric On 11/16/05, Allison wrote: > The real problem with water is not it's conductivity. High power > tube transmitters have used distilled water in the past as it's a > really poor conductor if kept clean. > > DEC experimented with water cooling too. The Aquarius project was > a water cooled VAX. Too many headaches with leakage, heat transfer > to the environment and installation issues. Systems like that use > a chiller and heat exchanger to cool the closed loop water system. > Those are costly and difficult to install. Murder if it should leak > in a computer room. Then there is an efficientcy problem as you end > up using power to move heat which adds heat.. > > With all that, the circuits they were trying to cool were getting more > power efficient. So by time they worked out wet cooling air cooling > was again attractive or at least far easier. > > It's still packaging. ;) > > > Allison > > From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 17 16:13:56 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:13:56 +0000 (GMT) Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <00e001c5ebb7$494e7bf0$0500fea9@game> from "Teo Zenios" at Nov 17, 5 03:41:28 pm Message-ID: > > As some of you might recall I was looking for drivers for my Tokamac II FX > PDS card on my mac IIfx. Well I found the drivers from the original company > founder. I read in Macworld (and had it confirmed from the company contact) > that you need a PAL chip on the IIfx reprogrammed (or replaced?) because > Apple screwed up BUS mastering on the IIfx and nobody caught on at the time > because those types of cards were rare. > > Well I have found another person who has the same card AND the PAL chip > needed on his unit but is having other problems getting his setup to work. > > What I want to know is are PAL chips somewhat like eprons in getting > programmed or is there some other process involved? Does anybody know of a Well, physically, a true PAL (as opposed to a GAL or similar) is programmed like a fusible link PROM. There are little 'fuses' on the chip that you burn out when you program it. However, there is one important difference between a programmable logic device (PAL, GAL, CPLD, etc) and a memory (PROM. EPROM, Flash, etc). And that is that when you read a memory, you are effectively reading out the programmed pattern directly. When you use a logic device you are not Therefore, PALs (etc) have a 'programming mode'. You get to it by, normally, 'overvoltaging' one of the pins. In this mode, the other pins on the chip select a particular fuse, and enable you to program or read it. The exact method varies from device to device and manufacturer to manufacturer, and often was not available without an NDA (although the methods for the first PALs were published in the data sheets). This, in general is the only way to read out the contects -- the programming -- of the chip. In nromal mode, you can attempt to solve it as an unknown logic circuit, but rememebr there might be feedback terms or internal D-types (depending on the PAL) which will give sequential as opposed to combinatiorial behaviour. And there is some bad news. There is a 'security fuse' in most, if not all, PALs. If that has been programmed, there is no (official) way to read out the fusr map. You can only use the device in normal, not programming, mode. It's a sort of copy-protection. If you know the device type and manufactuer and have a programmer that supposts that _exactly_, it won't hurt to try to read it out. But don't be suprised if you get a file of all 0's or all 1's. -tony From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 17 16:19:04 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:19:04 -0700 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <0IQ300H59Y37CQ9H@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ300H59Y37CQ9H@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437D01D8.7010803@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: > >And you want it delivered configured for free. > > > yes ! Free is good. I even want it shipped. But say other than ebay ( something I can't use because stupid scammers useing my email address ) how much is a PDP - 11 cpu, dual serial card, 64kb of memory and working mass storage that can be reasionable shipped? > >Allison > > PS and even a power supply and bootstrap rom . Front panel is not needed. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 17 16:20:32 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:20:32 +0000 (GMT) Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <200511172145.jAHLjHEr028471@mwave.heeltoe.com> from "Brad Parker" at Nov 17, 5 04:45:17 pm Message-ID: > In most cased you could replace a PAL with a GAL, as long as the speed > of the part was correct. The main exception being the PALs with XOR terms (16X4, etc IIRC). > > What's the part? if it's something like a 16L8 or a 22V10 then you > should have no problem. > > It is possible to 'program' a pal such that it can't be read. If your For the record, this applies to GALs too. I _think_ you can still 'bulk erase' and re-use GAL that's been protected, but you can't read out the programming pattern. -tony From alanp at snowmoose.com Thu Nov 17 16:20:19 2005 From: alanp at snowmoose.com (Alan Perry) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 14:20:19 -0800 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <200511172120.jAHLKdeP041581@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511172120.jAHLKdeP041581@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <437D0223.9030500@snowmoose.com> >>Chris M wrote: >> >> >> >>>IINM, the first edition was yeller, and had no media. >>>I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure it >>>was numero uno. The source code of course is printed >>>in the book. And I thought 3 editions were already >>>released? >>> >>> I have my copy of the book of the first edition in front of me and the cover is yellow/pale tan. It is copyrighted 1987 and my copy is from the second printing. It was printed for the US market. It came with no media; a page inside the book describes the four media distributions (three different floppy options and a 9-track tape option) with their ISBN numbers so you could order them from Prentice-Hall. I remember seeing a red cover version of the book. I think it was when I was working in Germany in 91-92, but that was too long ago for me to remember the details. alan From Useddec at aol.com Thu Nov 17 16:33:43 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:33:43 EST Subject: DEC "Junk" rescued Message-ID: <127.6885ede5.30ae5f47@aol.com> Sorry, I was going in numerical order, not production year. Paul From teoz at neo.rr.com Thu Nov 17 17:00:14 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:00:14 -0500 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? References: Message-ID: <016e01c5ebca$adf31f80$0500fea9@game> So if I have the original code and know what chip it needs to be programmed on I might be in luck, otherwise there is little hope? Are PAL's or GALs expensive to get? Do people here have access to programmers? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" To: Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 5:13 PM Subject: Re: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? > > > > As some of you might recall I was looking for drivers for my Tokamac II FX > > PDS card on my mac IIfx. Well I found the drivers from the original company > > founder. I read in Macworld (and had it confirmed from the company contact) > > that you need a PAL chip on the IIfx reprogrammed (or replaced?) because > > Apple screwed up BUS mastering on the IIfx and nobody caught on at the time > > because those types of cards were rare. > > > > Well I have found another person who has the same card AND the PAL chip > > needed on his unit but is having other problems getting his setup to work. > > > > What I want to know is are PAL chips somewhat like eprons in getting > > programmed or is there some other process involved? Does anybody know of a > > Well, physically, a true PAL (as opposed to a GAL or similar) is > programmed like a fusible link PROM. There are little 'fuses' on the chip > that you burn out when you program it. > > However, there is one important difference between a programmable logic > device (PAL, GAL, CPLD, etc) and a memory (PROM. EPROM, Flash, etc). And > that is that when you read a memory, you are effectively reading out the > programmed pattern directly. When you use a logic device you are not > > Therefore, PALs (etc) have a 'programming mode'. You get to it by, > normally, 'overvoltaging' one of the pins. In this mode, the other pins > on the chip select a particular fuse, and enable you to program or read > it. The exact method varies from device to device and manufacturer to > manufacturer, and often was not available without an NDA (although the > methods for the first PALs were published in the data sheets). > > This, in general is the only way to read out the contects -- the > programming -- of the chip. In nromal mode, you can attempt to solve it > as an unknown logic circuit, but rememebr there might be feedback terms > or internal D-types (depending on the PAL) which will give sequential as > opposed to combinatiorial behaviour. > > And there is some bad news. There is a 'security fuse' in most, if not > all, PALs. If that has been programmed, there is no (official) way to > read out the fusr map. You can only use the device in normal, not > programming, mode. It's a sort of copy-protection. > > If you know the device type and manufactuer and have a programmer that > supposts that _exactly_, it won't hurt to try to read it out. But don't > be suprised if you get a file of all 0's or all 1's. > > -tony > From zmerch at 30below.com Thu Nov 17 17:14:00 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:14:00 -0500 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <016e01c5ebca$adf31f80$0500fea9@game> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051117180506.03acda58@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Teo Zenios may have mentioned these words: >So if I have the original code and know what chip it needs to be programmed >on I might be in luck, otherwise there is little hope? >Are PAL's or GALs expensive to get? Do people here have access to >programmers? I have a programmer that can do older PALs and/or GALS -- not enough brains to actually use it, tho.[1] Older PALs/GALs/PEELs can be had pretty cheaply at www.bgmicro.com (It's a US company, dunno what's available worldwide, tho they might ship worldwide... you'd have to ask them) - maybe someday I'll actually be able to figure out how to program some of those critters. Hope this helps, Roger "Merch" Merchberger [1] I do know how to use my programmer for EPROMs, but I've never programmed a PAL/GAL before. -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers _??_ zmerch at 30below.com (?||?) If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead _)(_ disarmament should *not* be your first career choice. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 17 17:21:35 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:21:35 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQ400D80GTF8TIE@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: woodelf > Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:19:04 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >> >>And you want it delivered configured for free. >> >> >> >yes ! Free is good. >I even want it shipped. ah, reading impaired? > >But say other than ebay ( something I can't use because stupid scammers >useing >my email address ) how much is a PDP - 11 cpu, dual serial card, 64kb >of memory >and working mass storage that can be reasionable shipped? > >> >>Allison >> >> >PS and even a power supply and bootstrap rom . Front panel is not needed. Ok it's very obvious you know nothing of PDP-11s. First, 64kb of memory. PDP11s have memory mapped IO so the TOP 8kb of memory is IO space. Typically a loaded PDP11 without MMU is 24-28kW of ram (words as its a 16bitter). Now with all that been said about models, boards and busses. You expressed no wish other "I want one.". Well lets all drop a 11/70 mid sized system on you. Figure about 500 pounds and 3 6ft racks plus a few washing machine sized disks. Got a spare room with air conditioning. Don't forget you need a 220V 30A drop for that. Oh, too big. Ok how about an microPDP11 on about 30" deep, 27" tall and 8" wide. Runs on 120V maybe 4-5a max. Oh weighs in around 60pounds with a single hard disk of 30mb. Should easily cost more to ship than buy. Shipping will cost a bomb due to both size and weight. The disk should be removed and packed seperately. Not a lot of those around but a great find. Next down is a BA-11VA box about 4x11x13" and only four bual width slots. Shipable and likely cheap. The trick is using a 11/23 cpu, MXV11 and MRV11 to get over 256k of ram, two serial ports and boot roms in three boards. Of course theres still no mass storage and RX02 is abou 50 pound rack mount or at least table top sized. The RQDX3 is an other one board solution but the BA11VA doesnt support a distribution board or power for the drives so it's not easily used. RL02 is a quad width, not usable in that box. Maybe too small a box. So thats cheap and common usually the BAll-S. Recognizable by the three toggle switches on the front. had plenty of bus and power for most Qbus boards. No disk bays and generally meant for rack mounting. So usually you want one of these in a rack of the 48" or taller. Then disks like RX02 and RL02 are easily mounted. Not shippable except by freight. The good news is of all PDP11s they are most common and often free. Try your local university. Can't give cost for a reason, soon as you ask the price is what traffic will support. Suppliers exist for used DEC boards and systems. Prices are what they are. Local to me, (less than 10 miles from DEC home central) aka, The Greater Maynard Area PDP11 systems are common, and usually free if you haul. Allison From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Thu Nov 17 17:25:38 2005 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim stephens) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:25:38 -0800 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <016e01c5ebca$adf31f80$0500fea9@game> References: <016e01c5ebca$adf31f80$0500fea9@game> Message-ID: <437D1172.9000708@msm.umr.edu> Teo Zenios wrote: >So if I have the original code and know what chip it needs to be programmed >on I might be in luck, otherwise there is little hope? >Are PAL's or GALs expensive to get? Do people here have access to >programmers? > > > If you have a chip which you doubt is functional, it may still read out it's fuse map. The fuse map of say a 22L10 or such may be perfectly readable even if the device is not playing in the circuit. One thing that went bad on them was the capability to fully drive the loads in circuit to ttl valid regions. IIRC this would be < .7 for low, or > 2.2 for high. (for the sake of argument). When you pull the part and put it in a programmer, the loading is much more friendly, and the programmer may well pull a copy of the fuse map unless the security fuse(s) are blown as mentioned by tony D. For historys sake, the PAL's were programmed originally with a tool called PALASM, and later by lots of other tools. The fact that the security fuse could be blown meant that you had to have a way to determine if your device was functional. This was supplied in a proper environment by supplying a "model" which would flip the lines according to function of the device and test it, after the device was programmed, to show that it was good. Most engineers I ever worked with, and in the organizations I saw, few things were ever done but to save the PALASM source, (or whatever source) and the binary fusemap. If the engineer ever bothered to use the model and simulation features, and specify that, I never saw it. They usually would blow a pal, test it in the circuit, and when it worked, save the source and ship the fusemap out as the only thing to manufacture by. Anyway to connect back up, what is malfunctioning, and why do you think the pal's are bad? I didnt see a reason why that is suspected, or how you could have found that out. I must assume you have a schematic to have figured that out. Jim From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 17 17:33:45 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:33:45 +0000 (GMT) Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <016e01c5ebca$adf31f80$0500fea9@game> from "Teo Zenios" at Nov 17, 5 06:00:14 pm Message-ID: > > So if I have the original code and know what chip it needs to be programmed > on I might be in luck, otherwise there is little hope? If you have the original, working, chip, it's worth sticking it into a programmer that supports that chip and manufacturer and trying to read it. Some manufactuerers did not copy-protect their PALs. For example, all the PALs in the VAX 11/730 CPU are readable (for all they're the key to the design). All PALs in every PERQ I've seen (including the AGW3300) are readable. All PALs in the Torch XXX -- apart from those on the (3rd party?) 68020 kludgeboard -- are readable. But then again, most PALs on clone ISA boards are protected. If the original chip is a HAL, you are out of luck. HAL == Hard Array Logic, it's a mask-programmed equivalent to a PAL. I've never found one that can be read out, I suspect the circuitry simply isn't there. -tony From news at computercollector.com Thu Nov 17 17:42:38 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:42:38 -0500 Subject: OT: User group directory? Message-ID: <001301c5ebd0$9916cb60$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Hey folks, I used to have a link to some national web site which listed computer user groups by region. Can't find it now. Anyone know the link? ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: >> http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >> http://www.marchclub.org >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 17 17:45:05 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:45:05 -0700 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <0IQ400D80GTF8TIE@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQ400D80GTF8TIE@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437D1601.1020104@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >Ok it's very obvious you know nothing of PDP-11s. First, 64kb of memory. >PDP11s have memory mapped IO so the TOP 8kb of memory is IO space. Typically >a loaded PDP11 without MMU is 24-28kW of ram (words as its a 16bitter). > > > So what is 8k between friends. If the truth be known the only thing a know about a 11 is that they are nice machines. >Now with all that been said about models, boards and busses. You expressed >no wish other "I want one.". Well lets all drop a 11/70 mid sized system on >you. Figure about 500 pounds and 3 6ft racks plus a few washing machine >sized disks. Got a spare room with air conditioning. Don't forget you >need a 220V 30A drop for that. > > > I got stairs ... no comment :) >Oh, too big. Ok how about an microPDP11 on about 30" deep, 27" tall and >8" wide. Runs on 120V maybe 4-5a max. Oh weighs in around 60pounds with >a single hard disk of 30mb. Should easily cost more to ship than buy. >Shipping will cost a bomb due to both size and weight. The disk should >be removed and packed seperately. Not a lot of those around but a great find. > > yep... I figure a good 1500 miles of shipping from the USA, but then I don't need overnight express. >So thats cheap and common usually the BAll-S. Recognizable by the three >toggle switches on the front. had plenty of bus and power for most Qbus >boards. No disk bays and generally meant for rack mounting. So usually >you want one of these in a rack of the 48" or taller. Then disks like >RX02 and RL02 are easily mounted. Not shippable except by freight. The >good news is of all PDP11s they are most common and often free. Try >your local university. > > If I had one, I could of snagged one already from there. >Allison > > From fryers at gmail.com Thu Nov 17 18:12:19 2005 From: fryers at gmail.com (Simon Fryer) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 00:12:19 +0000 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: References: <0IQ1008R4YCTV2Z0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: All, On 11/17/05, Eric J Korpela wrote: [water chilling a PC] > It would probably be cheaper just to buy a noise cancelling headset. The Sony noise cancelling headset is pretty good at cancelling out fan and 7200rpm seagate baracuda noise - but not perfect. I am envious of your chilled water setup. I have been planning something similar for many years but haven't quite got to the point of building the chiller plant yet. > Yes, this does violate the 10 year rule. Simon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is the utility of the final product." Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh From emu at ecubics.com Thu Nov 17 18:25:30 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:25:30 -0700 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511171112180621.29A659F9@10.0.0.252> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> <437CB87B.4080901@ecubics.com> <200511171029070376.297ED06D@10.0.0.252> <437CD149.2020601@ecubics.com> <200511171112180621.29A659F9@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437D1F7A.4010508@ecubics.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/17/2005 at 11:51 AM e.stiebler wrote: > > >>What do you like to attach to it ? > > A couple of 175 ips tape drives. > Then get the old memec/insight PCI eval board (spartan xc2s200?). Should do the job just fine. From tractorb at ihug.co.nz Thu Nov 17 19:16:51 2005 From: tractorb at ihug.co.nz (Dave Brown) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:16:51 +1300 Subject: removing parts from PCBs References: <0IQ1008R4YCTV2Z0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <00b201c5ebdd$c165c820$7900a8c0@athlon1200> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Simon Fryer" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 1:12 PM Subject: Re: removing parts from PCBs > All, > > On 11/17/05, Eric J Korpela wrote: > > [water chilling a PC] > >> It would probably be cheaper just to buy a noise cancelling >> headset. > > The Sony noise cancelling headset is pretty good at cancelling out > fan > and 7200rpm seagate baracuda noise - but not perfect. > > I am envious of your chilled water setup. I have been planning > something similar for many years but haven't quite got to the point > of > building the chiller plant yet. > >> Yes, this does violate the 10 year rule. Agreed- You guys obviously need something like this-- http://www.cdt.com.au/prod.asp?prod=SYSM30 DaveB, NZ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.3/173 - Release Date: 16/11/2005 From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 17 19:19:12 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:19:12 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <437D1F7A.4010508@ecubics.com> References: <200511161215230899.24B9C84E@10.0.0.252> <437CB87B.4080901@ecubics.com> <200511171029070376.297ED06D@10.0.0.252> <437CD149.2020601@ecubics.com> <200511171112180621.29A659F9@10.0.0.252> <437D1F7A.4010508@ecubics.com> Message-ID: <200511171719120514.2AF63F5C@10.0.0.252> On 11/17/2005 at 5:25 PM e.stiebler wrote: >Then get the old memec/insight PCI eval board (spartan xc2s200?). Should >do the job just fine. ...and there's the rub. I might be better off simply putting together a dedicated non-PC controller and just spool the data over USB. 9 track tapes don't hold that much after all--and I'll be streaming pretty much from BOT to EOT on both read and write. I need to think about this. Thanks, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 17 19:49:27 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 01:49:27 +0000 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <437D3327.4060106@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: > If you know the device type and manufactuer and have a programmer that > supposts that _exactly_, it won't hurt to try to read it out. Presumably there are all sorts of 'standard' formats for storing read-out PAL information, so: 1) What's the most sensible format to use, and 2) Is it possible for a PAL to fail reading in such a way that the data you get out is junk - but not *obviously* junk to the user? (if I go around backing PALs up I'd like to know for sure that the backups are good - but obviously testing them at backup time by writing a new device for every single one isn't much of a solution! :) cheers Jules From brad at heeltoe.com Thu Nov 17 19:47:09 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:47:09 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 17 Nov 2005 17:19:12 PST." <200511171719120514.2AF63F5C@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511180147.jAI1l9cf008679@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Chuck Guzis" wrote: >On 11/17/2005 at 5:25 PM e.stiebler wrote: > >>Then get the old memec/insight PCI eval board (spartan xc2s200?). Should >>do the job just fine. > >...and there's the rub. I might be better off simply putting together a >dedicated non-PC controller and just spool the data over USB. 9 track >tapes don't hold that much after all--and I'll be streaming pretty much >from BOT to EOT on both read and write. I'm confused (sorry). Are you trying to build a PCI board with a Pertec interface? I would think it would be easier to find a small qbus-11, put an 11/73 cpu in it with a built in ethernet and run 2.11bsd. You can image the tapes and rcp the images to a linux box. pertec interface qbus boards are not hard to find. but then again, it would be fun to make a pci board with a pertec interface... :-) -brad From charlesmorris at direcway.com Thu Nov 17 20:24:12 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:24:12 -0600 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? Message-ID: Today I was hooking up my homebrewed driver board to the M-series connector on the back of my Tally 420PR tape punch (interfaces to my 8/A and . Fortunately, before I inserted the eight data pins into the connector body it occurred to me that Tally and DEC might not interpret the holes in the same order. And indeed they don't! The paper tape has five holes on one side of the sprocket hole and three on the other. Typical DEC terminology is Bit 1 = MSB and Bit 8 = LSB. Is that in fact how DEC labeled it? Is the MSB on the outside of the 5-hole side or the 3-hole side? Which hole on the tape is which? Even more interestingly, Tally labels their punch pins as follows: (* is the sprocket hole) 8 7 6 1 2 * 3 4 5 and I confirmed this by actual test. So much for consistency -Charles From swtpc6800 at comcast.net Thu Nov 17 20:43:34 2005 From: swtpc6800 at comcast.net (Michael Holley) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 18:43:34 -0800 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? Message-ID: <000e01c5ebe9$e340a8a0$0300a8c0@downstairs2> As mentioned in other post you need the correct programmer to read the PAL fuse pattern. You must specify the exact manufacture and part number to configure the programmer or you can ruin the PAL. Around 1985 I did an experiment on decoding the logic of PALs with the security fuse programmed. This used just TTL levels to apply test patterns to the inputs and read the outputs. For registered devices you would also apply the clock. You would develop large truth tables that could be reduced to provide equivalent logic equations. I used the test vector feature on a Data I/O Logic Pack but you could build a simple test fixture to apply inputs and read the output levels. This process should work with simple PALs, 22V10s and 16V8s.Combinatorial devices like the 16L8 are easy to decode. Apply all possible inputs and read the outputs. You will need to treat I/O pins as inputs and determine if the pin is tri-state. Registered devices such as the 16R8 require a bit of work. Apply an input and clock it through all possible states, Eight registers would require up to 256 clocks. Some devices power up in a known or repeatable state, early devices power up in a random state. Suppose a device powers up to all zeros, from that state you need to find all possible next states by applying various inputs. Reset the part, go to a known state and try input pattern 1 and record the output. Repeat with input pattern 2 and so on. The idea is to build a state table with all inputs and transitions. A logic reduction program such as Espresso will simplify these large tables to minimized equations. I used Data I/O's ABEL program to do this. This method will only work on devices where the feedback is from the pin so there are no hidden registers. These PALs have the output enable controlled by a pin so you can always read the register state. Some devices allowed the registers to be preloaded to a known state to speed testing. These make it simple to get to each state to find the transitions to the next state. You must have the correct programming algorithm to use the feature or you could ruin the device. I did this experiment 20 years ago and don't have any more information on it. Michael Holley www.swtpc.com/mholley From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Nov 17 20:45:01 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 19:45:01 -0700 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <437D402D.2040106@jetnet.ab.ca> Charles wrote: >Today I was hooking up my homebrewed driver board to the M-series >connector on the back of my Tally 420PR tape punch (interfaces to >my 8/A and . Fortunately, before I inserted the eight data pins >into the connector body it occurred to me that Tally and DEC might >not interpret the holes in the same order. And indeed they don't! > >The paper tape has five holes on one side of the sprocket hole and >three on the other. Typical DEC terminology is Bit 1 = MSB and Bit >8 = LSB. Is that in fact how DEC labeled it? > >Is the MSB on the outside of the 5-hole side or the 3-hole side? >Which hole on the tape is which? > >Even more interestingly, Tally labels their punch pins as follows: >(* is the sprocket hole) > >8 7 6 1 2 * 3 4 5 > > > For the pdp-8 tty punch/reader channels 8 7 6 5 4 * 3 2 1 >and I confirmed this by actual test. So much for consistency > > > > mind you as long as you only punch/read your own paper tapes does it matter? :D >-Charles > > > From allain at panix.com Thu Nov 17 20:48:44 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:48:44 -0500 Subject: PCMCIA cases References: <22c.194e190.30ae1f5d@aol.com> Message-ID: <00e501c5ebea$9c0e88c0$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Boy, here's some minutia. Anybody know where to get empty plastic cases for PCMCIA cards? TIA, John A. From Tim at Rikers.org Thu Nov 17 21:34:09 2005 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:34:09 -0700 Subject: 1975 H-P Catalog In-Reply-To: <01C5E9DF.3121BA80@MSE_D03> References: <01C5E9DF.3121BA80@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <437D4BB1.8090905@Rikers.org> I'll take it if you still have it. M H Stein wrote: > Anybody want a 1975 H-P Electronics Instruments and Systems > catalog? 572 pages, hard cover, mostly test equipment with abt > 25 pages of calculators, computers (HP 21MX & 2000 series) > & peripherals. Pictures, model numbers, descriptions & prices. > > $20. + S&H > > mike From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 00:01:27 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:01:27 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511180147.jAI1l9cf008679@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200511180147.jAI1l9cf008679@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <200511172201270925.2BF8A7C9@10.0.0.252> On 11/17/2005 at 8:47 PM Brad Parker wrote: >I'm confused (sorry). Are you trying to build a PCI board with a Pertec >interface? Yes, basically--and one that will handle arbitrarily long records (i.e. much greater than 64K). I've built an ISA Pertec adapter that will do this, but it's too slow to keep up with a faster drive. I've also built a PCI version of a sort that uses a PCI card with 2 82C55's on it, but again, it's not quite fast enough. I was under the impression that the qbus cards had the 64K record size limitation. Cheers, Chuck From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Nov 17 10:49:36 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:49:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: wanted stuph (mostly Big Blue) Message-ID: <20051117164936.49301.qmail@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> IBM 3196 terminal, preferably color, similarly #'ed models might be...similar, not sure. Might consider one of *those* IBM DisplayWriter IBM 5520 IBM 5120 IBM System 23/Datamaster IBM RT stuph Mindset computer, Canon AS-100, Atari PC2, Victor 9000, Zenith Z-100/120, Atari ST series units and parts, maybe an Atari 130XE. Kind of have a hankering for an Amiga 2000 or later *box*. Located in NJ, or PA, or LI, depends on the day of the week. Could possibly trade some groovy stuph. Pickups possible. __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Nov 17 17:23:48 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:23:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20051117232348.83746.qmail@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> > You might be right. The first 'minix book' I bought > was certainly red, > and came with no mefia. The source code to much of > the OS (kernel, > drivers, etc) was printed in the book. Well I should hope it came w/no mafia. O mefia. Well I wouldn't want a book that came with that either...whatever it is. LOL LOL > I bought a MInix installation kit seperately. It > came in a 'software > size' 3 rignt binder with a lot of 5.25" 360K > floppies inside. And the > manual pages for the standard programs, etc. IIRC > that kit cost me > somewhat over \pounds 140.00 (back in about 1992). > > -tony It very well could have been printed in different colors. A red one...hmmm. Possible collectible? Mine is yellow, and in pristine condition save for the blanking razor slit on the spine. Didn't see any first editions on Amazon, but the 2nd (white) wasn't exactly cheap. Mine was a buck on Epay ;) __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From phillipmilks at netzero.com Thu Nov 17 21:37:33 2005 From: phillipmilks at netzero.com (phillipmilks at netzero.com) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 03:37:33 GMT Subject: I8008 Micro-computer Message-ID: <20051117.193832.4687.108029@webmail54.nyc.untd.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From ics65 at sbcglobal.net Thu Nov 17 12:38:27 2005 From: ics65 at sbcglobal.net (George Wiegand) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 13:38:27 -0500 Subject: Anyone near Norfolk,VA. Message-ID: <002001c5eba6$19ff56f0$8acada45@ics63szde1vn50> Anyone near Norfolk, Va. that can check out a government auction at (7829 Seventh St., SDA 202, Norfolk, VA 23511) to see if 2ea. Data General items really exist, before 5pm tomorrow the 18th.? Thanks for your time, George Wiegand Vintage Data General Computer Enthusiast From brad at heeltoe.com Fri Nov 18 05:20:20 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 06:20:20 -0500 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 18 Nov 2005 01:49:27 GMT." <437D3327.4060106@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511181120.jAIBKKkE030926@mwave.heeltoe.com> Jules Richardson wrote: >Tony Duell wrote: > >1) What's the most sensible format to use, and jedec files. it's a standard. >2) Is it possible for a PAL to fail reading in such a way that the data you >get out is junk - but not *obviously* junk to the user? (if I go around >backing PALs up I'd like to know for sure that the backups are good - but you'll know. I think it will read all ones. And it's possible to back out some crude verilog automatically for smaller pals. I think Icarus verilog has a tool to do this. I recall doing it for a simple 16L8. -brad From jdavis at soupwizard.com Fri Nov 18 01:38:06 2005 From: jdavis at soupwizard.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:38:06 -0800 Subject: Sun-1 Revival In-Reply-To: <20051117155445.56146.qmail@web31411.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <20051117155445.56146.qmail@web31411.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <437D84DE.8080403@soupwizard.com> Hi, I have a Sun 2/120 in storage that I got from someone who had it in storage for 7 or 8 years - I have no idea if it works. My plan is to eventually pull the power supply and bench check it before applying power to the boards. Where are you located? I'm in Santa Barbara, California. I haven't had much luck find parts or much info about these early machines either. Jeff silvercreekvalley wrote: >A few years back, I was lucky enought to get the >opportunity to exchange an (equally rare) Unix >workstation for a Sun-1. The Sun-1 was in great >shape, with everything intact, except it is missing >the CPU card. > >This is 100U, so its not the very first Sun-1 with >a 68000, rather it uses the later 68010 board which >was common in lots of other systems (Sun-2, etc). > >Despite all this, and having looked for a few years >now - I'm still unable to track down a multibus Sun >CPU card. > >So if anyone out there has a spare, or a board that >needs repair, etc. Let me know! Any 68010 multibus >Sun card would do. > >Many thanks > >Ian. > > > > > > >__________________________________ >Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 >http://mail.yahoo.com > > From brad at heeltoe.com Fri Nov 18 05:35:24 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 06:35:24 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:01:27 PST." <200511172201270925.2BF8A7C9@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511181135.jAIBZO8c031543@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Chuck Guzis" wrote: >On 11/17/2005 at 8:47 PM Brad Parker wrote: > >>I'm confused (sorry). Are you trying to build a PCI board with a Pertec >>interface? > >Yes, basically--and one that will handle arbitrarily long records (i.e. >much greater than 64K). I've built an ISA Pertec adapter that will do >this, but it's too slow to keep up with a faster drive. I've also built a >PCI version of a sort that uses a PCI card with 2 82C55's on it, but again, >it's not quite fast enough. Ah. I'd love to see the schematics - are they on the web? >I was under the impression that the qbus cards had the 64K record size >limitation. Probably so. What's the maximum block size? If you don't mind discussing it, I'd be interesting to know why you want such big blocks - are the tapes 'preexisting' and you just want to read them, or do you want to create tapes with huge blocks? (if so, why?) Also, what's the aggregate data rate in bytes/second? I assume you want to 'stream' so the drives don't rock back and forth. You might be able to get by with one of those little SAM7's cpu's. They have a usb interface but it's only usb 1.1. Not much interal ram, however (<64k). Now that I think about it I'm skeptical since you'd have to buffer from the tape and feed out 64 byte bulk packets - pretty tight timing wise. I suspect the $200 pci bus solution might be your best bet cost wise, but I would think you'd have to have at least a little fifo to buffer as you arbitrate and burst onto the pci bus. Depending on the cpld/fpga you might be able to use internal ram and do it all with some simple verilog/vhdl. On the read side I think I'd just double buffer and have two registers in the pci card, one for each buffer, and then status & count for each one. Very simple. Writing should be the same, again, with the fifo's which allow you the dma to run ahead. -brad From wmaddox at pacbell.net Fri Nov 18 06:47:03 2005 From: wmaddox at pacbell.net (William Maddox) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 04:47:03 -0800 Subject: Motorola Intergrated Circuit Data Book, 1968, eBay Item number: 8723261842 Message-ID: <437DCD47.6080301@pacbell.net> I have a copy of this one -- definitely worth owning. http://cgi.ebay.com/Motorola-Intergrated-Circuit-Data-Book-1968_W0QQitemZ8723261842QQcategoryZ1247QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem eBay: Motorola Intergrated Circuit Data Book, 1968 (item 8723261842 end time Nov-20-05 17:53:19 PST) --Bill From pkoning at equallogic.com Fri Nov 18 09:02:51 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:02:51 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? References: <200511171719120514.2AF63F5C@10.0.0.252> <200511180147.jAI1l9cf008679@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <17277.60699.866220.675765@localhost.localdomain> >>>>> "Brad" == Brad Parker writes: Brad> "Chuck Guzis" wrote: >> On 11/17/2005 at 5:25 PM e.stiebler wrote: >> >>> Then get the old memec/insight PCI eval board (spartan >>> xc2s200?). Should do the job just fine. >> ...and there's the rub. I might be better off simply putting >> together a dedicated non-PC controller and just spool the data >> over USB. 9 track tapes don't hold that much after all--and I'll >> be streaming pretty much from BOT to EOT on both read and write. Brad> I'm confused (sorry). Are you trying to build a PCI board with Brad> a Pertec interface? Brad> I would think it would be easier to find a small qbus-11, put Brad> an 11/73 cpu in it with a built in ethernet and run 2.11bsd. Brad> You can image the tapes and rcp the images to a linux box. Brad> pertec interface qbus boards are not hard to find. Or some other OS, and copy the data with DECnet. Linux supports DECnet, after all... paul From dave04a at dunfield.com Fri Nov 18 05:16:47 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:16:47 +0000 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted Message-ID: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> Hi Guys, I've just posted another update to my ImageDisk program to my site. The main improvement is that I have added a new program called BIN2IMD which allows you to create .IMD images from raw binary sector dumps (such as you can get from many other formats, emulators or just by "taking apart" another format image). It's pretty flexible, and can make mixed format disks etc. ussing sets of rules you give it telling which sectors from the binary file go to what tracks/sectors on the disk. This is essentially the opposite function to the /B option I added to IMDU in the last release. I have used it to make physical disks from binary images sources which were not previously .IMD format, and it has proven very useful. Also, since ImageDisk is getting quite mature, I have added a manual, separate from the help files. Feedback appreciated. I have also made some minor cosmetic fixes, spelling corrections, and improved the file selection manual entry mode in ImageDisk so that you can directly access files from other paths. For anyone who doesn't already know: ImageDisk is a program for archiving and restoring soft-sector floppy disks to image files using the PC floppy controller hardware. It is compatible with any format which can be read/written by the PC hardware (including mixed mode/density formats). The image file format is fully documented, allowing you to access the data from the diskette by other means if you need to. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de Fri Nov 18 09:41:50 2005 From: holger.veit at ais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:41:50 +0100 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051117180506.03acda58@mail.30below.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20051117180506.03acda58@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <437DF63E.9060805@ais.fraunhofer.de> Roger Merchberger wrote: > Rumor has it that Teo Zenios may have mentioned these words: > >> So if I have the original code and know what chip it needs to be >> programmed >> on I might be in luck, otherwise there is little hope? >> Are PAL's or GALs expensive to get? Do people here have access to >> programmers? > > > I have a programmer that can do older PALs and/or GALS -- not enough > brains to actually use it, tho.[1] > > Older PALs/GALs/PEELs can be had pretty cheaply at www.bgmicro.com > (It's a US company, dunno what's available worldwide, tho they might > ship worldwide... you'd have to ask them) - maybe someday I'll > actually be able to figure out how to program some of those critters. > They do ship worldwide, payable via credit card, but be aware that you might have additional costs at your local customs. Interestingly, this happened to me only once in four cases... Holger From kth at srv.net Fri Nov 18 09:53:55 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 08:53:55 -0700 Subject: teco for Linux In-Reply-To: <20051115211754.GB8846@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> <437814F5.5030704@gmail.com> <20051114060850.GA20891@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> <437A5054.7010802@srv.net> <20051115211754.GB8846@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> Message-ID: <437DF913.6050401@srv.net> tcpdumb at dso.ath.cx wrote: >Hi! > >Erm..I could check that for you if you can send me the macro with some >usage hints. > > Here is vtedit from RSTS/E 10.1. I think it is complete. I don't know if it is OS specific or not. Includes the 'doc' file, the compressed '.tec' version, and the uncompressed '.tes' version. >Thus spake Kevin Handy: >$! tcccp wrote: >$! >$! >Hi guys! >$! > >$! >TECO runs fine with Linux on G3/500 PowerPC processors! Never had any >$! >problems compiling/using it. It just kicks ass O:-) >$! > >$! > Lukas >$! > >$! > >$! > >$! Do any versions run the vtedit macro? >$! Last time I tried, none would. >$! > > > From pkoning at equallogic.com Fri Nov 18 10:49:43 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:49:43 -0500 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? References: Message-ID: <17278.1575.697556.816836@localhost.localdomain> >>>>> "Charles" == Charles writes: Charles> Today I was hooking up my homebrewed driver board to the Charles> M-series connector on the back of my Tally 420PR tape punch Charles> (interfaces to my 8/A and . Fortunately, before I inserted Charles> the eight data pins into the connector body it occurred to Charles> me that Tally and DEC might not interpret the holes in the Charles> same order. And indeed they don't! Charles> The paper tape has five holes on one side of the sprocket Charles> hole and three on the other. Typical DEC terminology is Bit Charles> 1 = MSB and Bit 8 = LSB. Is that in fact how DEC labeled it? Charles> Is the MSB on the outside of the 5-hole side or the 3-hole Charles> side? Which hole on the tape is which? DEC PDP-11 era terminology is bit 0 is LSB, bit 15 is MSB. The PDP-10 numbering is the reverse (bit 0 MSB). The only one I can think of that labeled the MSB bit 1 is IBM... Anyway, in the usage I have seen, the paper tape rows are numbered sequentially with the LSB at the outside edge of the 3-row side. Certainly that's how it shows up in DEC PDP11 papertape interfaces (so the outside edge 3-row hole translates to the LSB, bit 0, in the data once it shows up in the CSRs or in memory). paul From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 11:01:41 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 09:01:41 -0800 Subject: Motorola Intergrated Circuit Data Book, 1968, eBay Item number: 8723261842 In-Reply-To: <437DCD47.6080301@pacbell.net> References: <437DCD47.6080301@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200511180901410818.2E552112@10.0.0.252> On 11/18/2005 at 4:47 AM William Maddox wrote: >I have a copy of this one -- definitely worth owning. > >http://cgi.ebay.com/Motorola-Intergrated-Circuit-Data-Book-1968_W0QQitemZ87 23261842QQcategoryZ1247QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem >eBay: Motorola Intergrated Circuit Data Book, 1968 (item 8723261842 end >time Nov-20-05 17:53:19 PST) Better to find a second or third edition (brown cover)--it's at least twice the size and contains everything that's in the old one plus a lot of new (for then) ICs. --Chuck From pkoning at equallogic.com Fri Nov 18 11:02:11 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 12:02:11 -0500 Subject: teco for Linux References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> <437814F5.5030704@gmail.com> <20051114060850.GA20891@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> <437A5054.7010802@srv.net> <20051115211754.GB8846@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> <437DF913.6050401@srv.net> Message-ID: <17278.2323.746430.158730@localhost.localdomain> >>>>> "Kevin" == Kevin Handy writes: Kevin> Here is vtedit from RSTS/E 10.1. I think it is complete. I Kevin> don't know if it is OS specific or not. Looks like something stripped off your attachments... And no, it's not OS specific, though it is tied to the PDP11/VAX flavor of TECO. (It won't run on TECO-10 or TECO-8.) paul From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 11:44:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 09:44:01 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511181135.jAIBZO8c031543@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200511181135.jAIBZO8c031543@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <200511180944010199.2E7BE088@10.0.0.252> On 11/18/2005 at 6:35 AM Brad Parker wrote: >Ah. I'd love to see the schematics - are they on the web? No, I did those on pencil and paper. Brutally simple, actually--mostly receivers and drivers, with latches for holding data and status. Most of the smarts are in software. With the PCI version, I got wise and moved the line interface to a separate card so I don't have to redo that part of the job as my design evolves. >What's the maximum block size? My design goal is 1MB blocks. That should cover all eventualities. >If you don't mind discussing it, I'd be interesting to know why you want >such big blocks - are the tapes 'preexisting' and you just want to read >them, or do you want to create tapes with huge blocks? (if so, why?) The tapes are preexisting--I don't know exactly how long the blocks are (for the obvious reason that I can't read them without data loss) but the block size seems to be in the area of 256K or so. Ideally, I'd like to make copies as well as read them. >Also, what's the aggregate data rate in bytes/second? I assume you want >to 'stream' so the drives don't rock back and forth. The data rate is about 1.1MB/sec from what I've been able to determine. I'd like a bunch of headroom. I'd tried a 16-bit ISA interface (16 bits at a toss) using PIO, but even with interrupts disabled, I was still losing a byte now and then, which leads me to suspect that I'm running on the edge. Peformance on varies wildly between host machines with older Pentiums generally doing better than 486, Celeron or P3/P4 systems. The code's 32-bit running under a DOS extender (not Windoze). The ideal solution would be a double-buffered bus-mastering DMA setup. But I'm getting a little weary of fighting the PC bus battle. If I moved the whole setup out of the PC box, using a small processor board with a small hard disk and interfacing via USB or TCP/IP, I'd have a permanent solution that should work with any host machine. Even with today's smallest hard disks, I could hold the contents of many tapes on one. At least that's the way I'm leaning. Cheers, Chuck From fireflyst at earthlink.net Fri Nov 18 12:05:53 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 12:05:53 -0600 Subject: wanted stuph (mostly Big Blue) In-Reply-To: <20051117164936.49301.qmail@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: I have an Atari 1040ST and two monitors I'm looking to get rid of. (One color, one mono) Shoot me an email if you're interested. It all works great. Julian > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Chris M > Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 10:50 AM > To: talk > Subject: wanted stuph (mostly Big Blue) > > IBM 3196 terminal, preferably color, similarly #'ed > models might be...similar, not sure. Might consider > one of *those* > > IBM DisplayWriter > > IBM 5520 > > IBM 5120 > > IBM System 23/Datamaster > > IBM RT stuph > > Mindset computer, Canon AS-100, Atari PC2, Victor > 9000, Zenith Z-100/120, Atari ST series units and > parts, maybe an Atari 130XE. Kind of have a hankering > for an Amiga 2000 or later *box*. > > Located in NJ, or PA, or LI, depends on the day of the > week. Could possibly trade some groovy stuph. Pickups > possible. > > > > __________________________________ > Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. > http://farechase.yahoo.com From kth at srv.net Fri Nov 18 12:21:50 2005 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:21:50 -0700 Subject: teco for Linux In-Reply-To: <17278.2323.746430.158730@localhost.localdomain> References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252> <437814F5.5030704@gmail.com> <20051114060850.GA20891@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> <437A5054.7010802@srv.net> <20051115211754.GB8846@monolith.hacktivismo.lan> <437DF913.6050401@srv.net> <17278.2323.746430.158730@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <437E1BBE.3090703@srv.net> Paul Koning wrote: >>>>>>"Kevin" == Kevin Handy writes: >>>>>> >>>>>> > > Kevin> Here is vtedit from RSTS/E 10.1. I think it is complete. I > Kevin> don't know if it is OS specific or not. > >Looks like something stripped off your attachments... And no, it's >not OS specific, though it is tied to the PDP11/VAX flavor of TECO. >(It won't run on TECO-10 or TECO-8.) > > Oops. Didn't mean to post it to list. Was trying to reply direct, and missed. I suspect that the necessary commands to handle the video, that vtedit needs, hasn't been implemented on any C version of teco. From brad at heeltoe.com Fri Nov 18 12:17:00 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:17:00 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 18 Nov 2005 09:44:01 PST." <200511180944010199.2E7BE088@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511181817.jAIIH0V1029933@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Chuck Guzis" wrote: >On 11/18/2005 at 6:35 AM Brad Parker wrote: > >>Ah. I'd love to see the schematics - are they on the web? > >No, I did those on pencil and paper. Brutally simple, actually--mostly >receivers and drivers, with latches for holding data and status. I've just never looked into pertec. Is it ttl? It would be interesting to see what signals you have to wiggle and how the data goes across. I'm curious how you figured all that out. >My design goal is 1MB blocks. That should cover all eventualities. yowza - that's huge. I've never heard of anything writing blocks that big. Mind if I ask *what* wrote them? >The data rate is about 1.1MB/sec from what I've been able to determine. >I'd like a bunch of headroom. I'd tried a 16-bit ISA interface (16 bits at >a toss) using PIO, but even with interrupts disabled, I was still losing a >byte now and then, which leads me to suspect that I'm running on the edge. Interesting. Seems like 1MByte/sec might be an ISA maximum (http://www.evaluationengineering.com/pctest/articles/e707data.htm) Using a 32 bit dos extender seems like the way to go - a hard loop. But once you go to disk all bets are off. I can see how that might end up being a loose. I wonder if you just added a fifo to cover the time interrupts might steal... you could do that in a cpld these days. yea, ok, sorry. I just had to say it. >The ideal solution would be a double-buffered bus-mastering DMA setup. yes, on pci. but I think you'd still need a fifo to cover the arbitration. >If I moved >the whole setup out of the PC box, using a small processor board with a >small hard disk and interfacing via USB or TCP/IP, I'd have a permanent >solution that should work with any host machine. Even with today's >smallest hard disks, I could hold the contents of many tapes on one. Well that makes sense. If you used something like a BrightStar IPEngine, you'd have a PPC which will run linux next to a nice FPGA which has some SRAM next to it. With that you could easily make an interface which would pull all the data and you could stream it over ethernet using tcp so you would not loose any data. You shouldn't need a disk. But for the same money you could buy a nice pci card with an fpga. I'd go with an IPEngine style solution but that me :-) Thanks for letting me kibitz. Very interesting. I'd enjoy hearing more about the actual pertec interface. -brad From emu at ecubics.com Fri Nov 18 12:28:16 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:28:16 -0700 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511181817.jAIIH0V1029933@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200511181817.jAIIH0V1029933@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <437E1D40.9050304@ecubics.com> Brad Parker wrote: > > I've just never looked into pertec. Is it ttl? It would be interesting > to see what signals you have to wiggle and how the data goes across. > > I'm curious how you figured all that out. probably reading the manuals ? ;-) > yowza - that's huge. I've never heard of anything writing blocks that > big. Mind if I ask *what* wrote them? We did sometime pretty bg block directly via DMA fro a data acquisition system >>The data rate is about 1.1MB/sec from what I've been able to determine. 6250*175 ? >>I'd like a bunch of headroom. I'd tried a 16-bit ISA interface (16 bits at >>a toss) using PIO, but even with interrupts disabled, I was still losing a >>byte now and then, which leads me to suspect that I'm running on the edge. > > Interesting. Seems like 1MByte/sec might be an ISA maximum without a small buffer for sure ... > I wonder if you just added a fifo to cover the time interrupts might > steal... you could do that in a cpld these days. yea, ok, sorry. I > just had to say it. Just in case, with an FPGA you get the FIFO closer by ;-) > >>The ideal solution would be a double-buffered bus-mastering DMA setup. > yes, on pci. but I think you'd still need a fifo to cover the arbitration. PCI/FPGA/SDRAM. You can read in the whole tape in locally ;-) > >>If I moved >>the whole setup out of the PC box, using a small processor board with a >>small hard disk and interfacing via USB or TCP/IP, I'd have a permanent >>solution that should work with any host machine. Even with today's >>smallest hard disks, I could hold the contents of many tapes on one. > > > Well that makes sense. If you used something like a BrightStar > IPEngine, you'd have a PPC which will run linux next to a nice FPGA > which has some SRAM next to it. With that you could easily make an > interface which would pull all the data and you could stream it over > ethernet using tcp so you would not loose any data. You shouldn't need > a disk. USB is to slow for this, you need at least USB2. And then, you dont get to many cheap small controllers with USB2. Or you just go backwards to the idea before, get an 8051 with USB, a FPGA&SDRAM, read in the whole tape, and transfer it slowly over ... Cheers From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 12:36:12 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:36:12 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511181817.jAIIH0V1029933@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200511181817.jAIIH0V1029933@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <200511181036120562.2EABA86A@10.0.0.252> On 11/18/2005 at 1:17 PM Brad Parker wrote: >I've just never looked into pertec. Is it ttl? It would be interesting >to see what signals you have to wiggle and how the data goes across. It's single-ended OC TTL with 220/330 termination. Very "dumb" interface with no handshaking--just strobes from the drive. On read, the drive presents data and says "here it is" and on write the drive says "I'm grabbing the data that you've hopefully set up already". Commands basically involve asserting a number of signals corresponding to what you want to do and then pulsing the "IGO" line for at least a microsecond. Status lines take two forms--one type is static (e.g. write enabled), the other is pulsed during the course of an operation (e.g. there was a parity error on that frame). You even have to furnish the parity bit for writes. There is a brief description of the signals in the back of one of the Overland data drive manuals and I think I've seen another document on the web. Well, like I say, I want to stew on this one awhile. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 18 13:46:29 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 19:46:29 +0000 Subject: Anyone have Practical Computing, December 1978? Message-ID: <437E2F95.2010808@yahoo.co.uk> ... apparently (according to a letter in a later issue that I'm looking at) they did a review of the RML 380Z - I'd be rather grateful for a scan of the article if anyone has a copy of that issue (and a scanner :) cheers Jules From dwight.elvey at amd.com Fri Nov 18 13:44:47 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:44:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: 8008? Message-ID: <200511181944.LAA31910@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Scott Stevens" > >On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:34:22 -0800 >"Chuck Guzis" wrote: > >> So what's an 8008 chip worth? I've got one that I don't need. I'll >> entertain reasonable offers. >> > >If you look on eBay you'll discover people seem to be willing to pay quite a bit for them. > >Nearly three figures in some instances. > Hi There is some variation based on the date code as well. Some are worth more than others. Dwight From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 14:52:09 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 12:52:09 -0800 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511181944.LAA31910@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511181944.LAA31910@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <200511181252090581.2F281FC6@10.0.0.252> On 11/18/2005 at 11:44 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > There is some variation based on the date code as well. >Some are worth more than others. >Dwight What's odd is that th 4004's are going for very little, even though they're an "older' MPU. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 15:01:19 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:01:19 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511181036120562.2EABA86A@10.0.0.252> References: <200511181817.jAIIH0V1029933@mwave.heeltoe.com> <200511181036120562.2EABA86A@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511181301190512.2F3083F0@10.0.0.252> It occurred to me that maybe I'm trying to shoot a duck with a howitzer. A 16-bit ISA implementation with FIFO should have enough moxie to sustain the data rate I'm looking at using DMA transfers. Normally, this would limit one to 128K transfers, but the 8237 DMAC has the auto-initialize function, so I should be able to pull data out of the DMA buffer fast enough to handle any length record. Circular buffering of a sort. A 512 word FIFO would allow for almost a millisecond of latency, so even if I had to do without autoinitialize, I should be able to, even under Windoze (perish the thought!). This would simplify design and implementation tremendously. Whatcha think? Cheers, Chuck From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Fri Nov 18 15:13:09 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:13:09 -0600 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup Message-ID: Alright, I'm getting ready to make my 11/23+ available online for people to play with, but I'm a bit stumped as far as how I should attach the serial lines to my Ethernet network. Now, I have a Sun server running Solaris 10 which I was able to connect a couple serial lines to and then tunneled that through a telnet port, but I'd rather not do that...with the setup I'm thinking of, we're talking about a whole lot of cable running into that box. Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to this, so feel free to correct me. As always, any help is appreciated Julian From arcarlini at iee.org Fri Nov 18 15:40:48 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:40:48 -0000 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <003501c5ec88$bf4bf220$5b01a8c0@pc1> Wolfe, Julian wrote: > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal > server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis > that would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? The early DECservers use LAT (not DECnet) for ethernet connectivity and MOP to downline load. The later DECservers do support telnet (and bootp/tftp to load an image). So what do you have? Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Nov 18 15:48:19 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:48:19 +0000 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <437E4C23.4040704@gjcp.net> Wolfe, Julian wrote: > Alright, > > I'm getting ready to make my 11/23+ available online for people to play > with, but I'm a bit stumped as far as how I should attach the serial lines > to my Ethernet network. Haha, that's just the problem I ran up against :-/ > Now, I have a Sun server running Solaris 10 which I was able to connect a > couple serial lines to and then tunneled that through a telnet port, but I'd > rather not do that...with the setup I'm thinking of, we're talking about a > whole lot of cable running into that box. Yup, I had two lines although that was only one cat5 cable > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal > server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that > would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? I'm eventually going to get back to writing a serial port-to-ssh port program. Haven't done it yet though. Gordon. From wh.sudbrink at verizon.net Fri Nov 18 15:52:30 2005 From: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net (Bill Sudbrink) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:52:30 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal > server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that > would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? > > I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to this, so feel free to correct > me. > > As always, any help is appreciated Don't know about the DECserver stuff, but as for a terminal server, I've had good luck with a Xylogic Micro Annex XL that I got on ebay. It was completely misconfigured when I got it, but there are instructions on the internet for it as well as firmware (I did a complete firmware reload on mine). It will tftp boot itself and reload its flash. From news at computercollector.com Fri Nov 18 16:06:27 2005 From: news at computercollector.com (Computer Collector Newsletter) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:06:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: OT: Computer Collector homepage might be down for a bit Message-ID: <20051118220627.34010.qmail@web31805.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Switching my site to a different hoster, so there will probably be some downtime and/or oddities tonight and tomorrow. - Evan Koblentz ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From James at jdfogg.com Fri Nov 18 16:14:26 2005 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 17:14:26 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E59D6@sbs.jdfogg.com> > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a > terminal server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my > PDP-11 chassis that would be great, but isn't the Ethernet > port DECnet-only? Livingston Portmasters can be had cheap on epay. From dwight.elvey at amd.com Fri Nov 18 16:18:24 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:18:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: Fastest NSC800? ?JUNK MAIL? 4 Message-ID: <200511182218.OAA03611@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Chuck Guzis" > >Did National ever make a version of the NSC800 that ran faster than 4 MHz? >If so, where can I get one? > >Cheers, >Chuck > Hi I'm not sure if it was faster but they did put is in a small module with Forth on ROM and some I/O. I think they called the series RA2000 or something like that. I have a couple of these modules someplace. Dwight From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Fri Nov 18 15:52:42 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:52:42 -0500 (EST) Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <437E4C23.4040704@gjcp.net> References: <437E4C23.4040704@gjcp.net> Message-ID: <200511182223.RAA27333@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I'm eventually going to get back to writing a serial port-to-ssh port > program. Haven't done it yet though. Quite a while ago, I wrote a program specifically designed for handling serial consoles connected to another machine's serial port. It's not all you want, but it's a lot of it. See ftp.rodents.montreal.qc.ca:/pub/mouse/hacks/serialconsole.c. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From fireflyst at earthlink.net Fri Nov 18 16:24:30 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:24:30 -0600 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <003501c5ec88$bf4bf220$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: I have two DZV11s (4 lines each) and my two lines coming off the CPU at the moment, so 10 lines total. That's it. Depending on what I buy for a terminal server, I was going to wire up the berg connector to suit it. I'd like to stick with genuine DEC hardware, as they mount nicely in my DEC rack. What's the cheapest DECserver that supports telnet? I'm sort of on a budget, but I've seen many go for quite cheap on ebay. However, I have no idea what I'm looking at. A list of what supports what for DECservers would be great, if anyone can provide that off the top of their head. Thanks! Julian > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of a.carlini at ntlworld.com > Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 3:41 PM > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: RE: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup > > Wolfe, Julian wrote: > > > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal > > server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis > > that would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? > > The early DECservers use LAT (not DECnet) for ethernet connectivity > and MOP to downline load. The later DECservers do support telnet > (and bootp/tftp to load an image). So what do you have? > > Antonio > > > -- > > Antonio carlini > arcarlini at iee.org From gkicomputers at yahoo.com Fri Nov 18 17:03:38 2005 From: gkicomputers at yahoo.com (steve) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:03:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511181252090581.2F281FC6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051118230339.26031.qmail@web51604.mail.yahoo.com> > > What's odd is that th 4004's are going for very > little, even though they're > an "older' MPU. > not sure where your looking, but on ebay they don't, the C4004's go for hundreds, the C8008's for $20-$50 (about the same as the D4004) __________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From chenmel at earthlink.net Fri Nov 18 17:08:06 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 18:08:06 -0500 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <20051117232348.83746.qmail@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051117232348.83746.qmail@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20051118180806.338bc952.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:23:48 -0800 (PST) Chris M wrote: > > You might be right. The first 'minix book' I bought > > was certainly red, > > and came with no mefia. The source code to much of > > the OS (kernel, > > drivers, etc) was printed in the book. > > Well I should hope it came w/no mafia. O mefia. Well > I wouldn't want a book that came with that > either...whatever it is. LOL LOL > > > I bought a MInix installation kit seperately. It > > came in a 'software > > size' 3 rignt binder with a lot of 5.25" 360K > > floppies inside. And the > > manual pages for the standard programs, etc. IIRC > > that kit cost me > > somewhat over \pounds 140.00 (back in about 1992). > > > > -tony > > It very well could have been printed in different > colors. A red one...hmmm. Possible collectible? Mine > is yellow, and in pristine condition save for the > blanking razor slit on the spine. Didn't see any first > editions on Amazon, but the 2nd (white) wasn't exactly > cheap. Mine was a buck on Epay ;) > > There are a lot of copies of the first edition on abe.com for a buck or a bit more. I always go to abe first, it's a consortium of used bookstores worldwide in a common database. It beats Amazon in MANY ways. I ordered a $1 copy a few days ago. I paid full retail for a second edition copy but think the first edition will have enough significant differences to be worth the dollar. > > __________________________________ > Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. > http://farechase.yahoo.com From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 17:55:50 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:55:50 -0800 Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <20051118230339.26031.qmail@web51604.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051118230339.26031.qmail@web51604.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200511181555500597.2FD04918@10.0.0.252> On 11/18/2005 at 3:03 PM steve wrote: >not sure where your looking, but on ebay they don't, >the C4004's go for hundreds, the C8008's for $20-$50 >(about the same as the D4004) DIdn't see the closing bid on a D4004 this morning--$34. From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Fri Nov 18 18:03:41 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Witchy) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:03:41 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Corvus (was Fortune Systems) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2170.192.168.0.3.1132358621.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> On Sun, November 13, 2005 5:08 pm, Al Kossow said: > > A Corvus _Unix_ box? What was the model designation for this beast? I > have a Corvus Concept 68k with shelves full of manuals and lots of > software. None of it seems to be Unix-y. You're a handy man to know - I've got a Concept 68K waiting for me but it's the system box only, no display cable or video specs or anything like that. If it doesn't run some flavour of *nix then what does it run? cheers, -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection? From dwight.elvey at amd.com Fri Nov 18 18:13:34 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:13:34 -0800 (PST) Subject: and 4004 Re: 8008? Message-ID: <200511190013.QAA06690@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "steve" > > >> >> What's odd is that th 4004's are going for very >> little, even though they're >> an "older' MPU. >> >not sure where your looking, but on ebay they don't, >the C4004's go for hundreds, the C8008's for $20-$50 >(about the same as the D4004) > Hi I often time wonder what a working sim4-01 setup would go for. Not that I'd sell mine but I've been thinking of a donation to the CHM. If I knew the value I might get a tax write off. I've never seen one come up on ebay and only know of a couple others. I'd be interested to know if others on the list might have one? Dwight From williams.dan at gmail.com Fri Nov 18 18:41:59 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:41:59 +0000 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: References: <003501c5ec88$bf4bf220$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <26c11a640511181641u5c72eca2h@mail.gmail.com> t. > > I'd like to stick with genuine DEC hardware, as they mount nicely in my DEC > rack. What's the cheapest DECserver that supports telnet? I'm sort of on a > budget, but I've seen many go for quite cheap on ebay. However, I have no > idea what I'm looking at. > > A list of what supports what for DECservers would be great, if anyone can > provide that off the top of their head. > > Thanks! > Julian > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > > On Behalf Of a.carlini at ntlworld.com > > Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 3:41 PM > > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > > Subject: RE: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup > > > > Wolfe, Julian wrote: > > > > > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal > > > server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis > > > that would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? > I'm not 100% certain but I think any of the servers that have a T in the model number support Telnet. If you already have a Decserver, you could use a Vax or simh machine running vms to connect through. Dan From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 18:47:23 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:47:23 -0800 Subject: NEC PC-8001 RACET NECDOS In-Reply-To: <2170.192.168.0.3.1132358621.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> References: <2170.192.168.0.3.1132358621.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: <200511181647230318.2FFF796F@10.0.0.252> For your NEC PC-8001 collectors, I've got a copy (disk and manual, never used) of RACET NECDOS, circa 1981. Yours for the postage. (Note: by peering into the book, this beast is very PC-8001-specific; it ties into the NEC BASIC ROM). Cheers, Chuck From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Fri Nov 18 19:03:35 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Witchy) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 01:03:35 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: References: <003501c5ec88$bf4bf220$5b01a8c0@pc1> Message-ID: <2370.192.168.0.3.1132362215.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> On Fri, November 18, 2005 10:24 pm, Julian Wolfe said: > I'd like to stick with genuine DEC hardware, as they mount nicely in my > DEC > rack. What's the cheapest DECserver that supports telnet? I'm sort of on > a The first DECserver to provide TELNET was the DS300, then the DS700, DS90TL and DS90M. I can't imagine DS300s being expensive these days if only because of their size. The last DS300 I got was free but YMMV since I'm in the UK. You want to connect 'fluffy cloud' internet people to your PDP? At this time on a friday night^W^W saturday morning I can't think of an easy way to do this because there isn't a way of advertising a PDP service via TELNET to the great unwashed though I'm fully prepared to be proved wrong :) RSX people stand up and be counted! Was this possible on RT11? >server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? Remember that Digital, Intel and Xerox invented Ethernet back in the 70s, DIX Ethernet as it was called back then. There's no such thing as a DECnet only port that I've come across so far.....caveat emptor etc.... -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection? From williams.dan at gmail.com Fri Nov 18 19:40:22 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 01:40:22 +0000 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <2370.192.168.0.3.1132362215.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> References: <003501c5ec88$bf4bf220$5b01a8c0@pc1> <2370.192.168.0.3.1132362215.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: <26c11a640511181740j10ce0c6di@mail.gmail.com> > >server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that > would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? > > Remember that Digital, Intel and Xerox invented Ethernet back in the 70s, > DIX Ethernet as it was called back then. There's no such thing as a DECnet > only port that I've come across so far.....caveat emptor etc.... > I think the earlier ones are LAT only. I know there is a version of LAT for Linux but I have never tried it. Dan From bqt at update.uu.se Fri Nov 18 19:55:11 2005 From: bqt at update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:55:11 +0100 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F109B3262@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> References: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F109B3262@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Message-ID: <437E85FF.7070208@update.uu.se> Wolfe, Julian wrote: > Alright, > > I'm getting ready to make my 11/23+ available online for people to play > with, but I'm a bit stumped as far as how I should attach the serial > lines to my Ethernet network. Fun. What exactly do you have on the 11/23? Only serial lines, or do you have ethernet as well? > Now, I have a Sun server running Solaris 10 which I was able to connect > a couple serial lines to and then tunneled that through a telnet port, > but I'd rather not do that...with the setup I'm thinking of, we're > talking about a whole lot of cable running into that box. That is one very common way of doing it. > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal > server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that > would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? The ethernet port is ethernet only. :-) However, the terminal server might be LAT only, in which case you'll have some problems, since I assume you want people to be able to telnet to the box from outside, so you really need something that speak tcp/ip and telnet. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.3/172 - Release Date: 2005-11-15 From brad at heeltoe.com Fri Nov 18 20:01:01 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:01:01 -0500 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 18 Nov 2005 13:01:19 PST." <200511181301190512.2F3083F0@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511190201.jAJ211rL026120@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > >This would simplify design and implementation tremendously. fifo's are generally the rubber band which make these 2nd order system work (and oscillate :-) I'd still go with the simple, controlled dos-extender solution but I would not be suprised if you could get it work under winders also. -brad From aw288 at osfn.org Fri Nov 18 20:03:50 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:03:50 -0500 (EST) Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511181252090581.2F281FC6@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: > What's odd is that th 4004's are going for very little, even though they're > an "older' MPU. Still worthy chips, but the market has been a bit flooded for a while. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 18 20:14:39 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:14:39 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver Message-ID: Are there any Econet enthusiasts here? I've just bought most of an Acorn Econet fileserver (it's missing the 2 floppy drioves and their cables, the mainboard and PSU look intact). The mainboard contains : 65C102 CPU 64K EPROM (2 off 27256). I've not tried to look at their contents yet 64K DRAM WD2793 disk controller (not what I'd expect from Acorn) 6522 VIA Real time clcok chip and backup battery TTL glue An Econet module (looks like the one used in a Master or Arc, the type with the hardware collision detection). Oddly theres a 26LS30 on the mainboard, does this thing source the Exonet clock too? The PSU looks to be a normal switch-mode unit giving +5V and +12V On the back are the 5 pin DIN econet socket, a 26 pin header identified as 'Printer' (presumably wired as a BBC micro printer port) and a 34 pin header. I am told this is to add a hard disk, and it looks similar to a Beeb's 1MHz bus. I assume it takes the normal SASI host adapter and ST506 bridgboard (I have spares of those somewhere...) On the front are 2 LEDs (power and mode) and what looks like a reflectiove optoswitch (why?) Can anyone tell me anything more about it, how to use it, what the intenral links do, etc? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 18 20:20:01 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:20:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <20051117232348.83746.qmail@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Nov 17, 5 03:23:48 pm Message-ID: > It very well could have been printed in different > colors. A red one...hmmm. Possible collectible? Mine I;'ve found it. It's a red paperback. The front cover reads : Operating Systems Design and Implementation Prentice-Hall Interational Editions Andrew S Tanenbaum Inside is the curious comment 'This edition may be sold only in those countries to which it is consigned by Prentice Hall International. It is not to be re-exported and it is not for sale in the USA, Mexico or Canada' No idea why not. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 18 20:24:39 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:24:39 +0000 (GMT) Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <437D3327.4060106@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 18, 5 01:49:27 am Message-ID: > Presumably there are all sorts of 'standard' formats for storing read-out PAL > information, so: > > 1) What's the most sensible format to use, and The most standard, which should be supported by any PAL programmer and/or design software, is called 'Jedec'. > > 2) Is it possible for a PAL to fail reading in such a way that the data you > get out is junk - but not *obviously* junk to the user? (if I go around Alas yes. A chip can fail in all sorts of 'interesting' ways. > backing PALs up I'd like to know for sure that the backups are good - but > obviously testing them at backup time by writing a new device for every single > one isn't much of a solution! :) The best way I've found is to turn the jedec file back into the equations (there used to be a free (binary-only) MS-DOS program for this provided by National Semiconductor which covered most PALs and GALs of the time, I think it was called JED2EQN.EXE) and see if the equations make sense. Obviously if you get terms with both an input and its inverse ANDed in, you start to get suspicious. If you have a scheamtic of the device the PAL comes out of, you could see if the equations made sense for the signals that go into the PAL -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 18 20:27:22 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:27:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: from "Charles" at Nov 17, 5 08:24:12 pm Message-ID: > > Today I was hooking up my homebrewed driver board to the M-series > connector on the back of my Tally 420PR tape punch (interfaces to > my 8/A and . Fortunately, before I inserted the eight data pins > into the connector body it occurred to me that Tally and DEC might > not interpret the holes in the same order. And indeed they don't! > > The paper tape has five holes on one side of the sprocket hole and > three on the other. Typical DEC terminology is Bit 1 = MSB and Bit > 8 = LSB. Is that in fact how DEC labeled it? Err, that depends on the DEC machine. My PDP11 has bit 0 as the LSB and bit 15 asn the MSB. The PDP8/e on my desk has bit 0 as the MSB and bit 11 as the LSB . I don't know of any DEC machine that has bit 1 as the MSB > > Is the MSB on the outside of the 5-hole side or the 3-hole side? > Which hole on the tape is which? MSB LSB 7 6 5 4 3 * 2 1 0 > > Even more interestingly, Tally labels their punch pins as follows: > (* is the sprocket hole) > > 8 7 6 1 2 * 3 4 5 I have an idea that gets 1...5 right for 5-level baudot tape... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 18 20:31:18 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:31:18 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511180944010199.2E7BE088@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 18, 5 09:44:01 am Message-ID: > > On 11/18/2005 at 6:35 AM Brad Parker wrote: > > >Ah. I'd love to see the schematics - are they on the web? > > No, I did those on pencil and paper. Brutally simple, actually--mostly So? There exist things called 'scanenrs', I believe :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 18 20:34:37 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:34:37 +0000 (GMT) Subject: 8008? In-Reply-To: <200511181252090581.2F281FC6@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 18, 5 12:52:09 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/18/2005 at 11:44 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > > > There is some variation based on the date code as well. > >Some are worth more than others. > >Dwight > > What's odd is that th 4004's are going for very little, even though they're > an "older' MPU. > I have long since stopped trying to make sense of the prices of old computer (or old 'anything') bits. I've got some nice HP bits (DIO cards, etc) on E-overpay for a lot less than similar interfaces for home micros. And I will never understand why an Altair is more valuable than a PERQ. -tony From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 18 21:32:47 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 03:32:47 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver Message-ID: <20051119033247.97838.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > On the front are 2 LEDs (power and mode) and what looks like > a reflectiove optoswitch (why?) > Can anyone tell me anything more about it, how to use it, what > the intenral links do, etc? http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2003-October/028831.html Lee. ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Model Search 2005 - Find the next catwalk superstars - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hot/model-search/ From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Fri Nov 18 21:26:26 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:26:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511190333.WAA28234@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >>> Ah. I'd love to see the schematics - are they on the web? >> No, I did those on pencil and paper. > So? There exist things called 'scanenrs', I believe :-) Yeah, but they're not on-topic. (Well, tyop aside.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From gtn at mind-to-mind.com Fri Nov 18 22:05:12 2005 From: gtn at mind-to-mind.com (Gavin Thomas Nicol) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 23:05:12 -0500 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1061B158-1C99-443E-B2BD-3C2889DC8179@mind-to-mind.com> On Nov 18, 2005, at 9:20 PM, Tony Duell wrote: > 'This edition may be sold only in those countries to which it is > consigned by Prentice Hall International. It is not to be re- > exported and > it is not for sale in the USA, Mexico or Canada' The US had a different version of the book... hardcover from memory. The US version cost an arm and a leg, the version I got (red, like that one) was poorer quality printing and available for something like 1/4 of the "real" book. I got it while I liked in Japan. I believe the one I have was supposed to be used in Taiwan only. From charlesmorris at direcway.com Fri Nov 18 22:22:59 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:22:59 -0600 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >Err, that depends on the DEC machine. My PDP11 has bit 0 as the LSB and >bit 15 asn the MSB. The PDP8/e on my desk has bit 0 as the MSB and bit >11 as the LSB . I don't know of any DEC machine that has bit 1 as the MSB > Actually I was referring to the labels within the PC8E schematic where the punch lines are labeled "HOLE1" through "HOLE8". I agree that bits should start at 0, and usually do... As it turns out Hole 8..1 corresponds on a PDP-8 to data bits 4..11 respectively (more significant to least significant). I was surprised since I expected the hole numbers to increase directly with the data bit number. I also found in the archives a copy of the manual DEC-08-NGCC-D (PDP-8 Family Paper Tape Systems User's Guide) and on page 26/155 (manual page Intro-13) there is a nice diagram of the 8-bit tape. So in conclusion the relationships on a PDP-8 are as follows: Holes: 87654x321 Significance: MSB.......LSB Data bus bits: D4.......D11 The punch is now hooked up (correctly) via my homebrewed driver card to the PC8E interface, and merrily spews chad all over the floor at high speed! I can email an Eagle schematic/board layout for the drive card if anyone wants... Now looking for a Tally 420 chad bucket :) -Charles From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 18 23:12:53 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 21:12:53 -0800 Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511190201.jAJ211rL026120@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200511190201.jAJ211rL026120@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <200511182112530792.30F28BDD@10.0.0.252> On 11/18/2005 at 9:01 PM Brad Parker wrote: >I'd still go with the simple, controlled dos-extender solution but I >would not be suprised if you could get it work under winders also. Although I've written my share of NT and 2K/XP (they're not exactly the same) drivers, I still love the "down and dirty" of using a DOS extender to get the 32 bit flat addressability and just banging on the ports. I'll work out the schematics fer real this time and post them after I've prototyped the thing up. No sense in scanning something that doesn't work right. Normally, I'd wirewrap the thing, but I'm thinking about using a PCB prototyping service. Has anyone tried PCB123? Cheers, Chuck From ghrx at solivant.com Fri Nov 18 10:15:22 2005 From: ghrx at solivant.com (Geoff Harrison) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:15:22 -0600 Subject: Sun-1 Revival Message-ID: <437DFE1A.70402@solivant.com> I have a 100u that I plan eventually to revive, too. I also have a few spare boards that I want to hang on to, but I think there's one or two 2/120 CPUs among them that I could part with. Contact me off line if you're interested. Geoff. ghrx.at.solivant.com >So if anyone out there has a spare, or a board that >needs repair, etc. Let me know! Any 68010 multibus >Sun card would do. > From trag at io.com Fri Nov 18 14:23:09 2005 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:23:09 -0600 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <200511181201.jAIC1hJx053178@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511181201.jAIC1hJx053178@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:33:45 +0000 (GMT) >From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) >Some manufactuerers did not copy-protect their PALs. For example, all the >PALs in the VAX 11/730 CPU are readable (for all they're the key to the >design). All PALs in every PERQ I've seen (including the AGW3300) are >readable. All PALs in the Torch XXX -- apart from those on the (3rd >party?) 68020 kludgeboard -- are readable. But then again, most PALs on >clone ISA boards are protected. > >If the original chip is a HAL, you are out of luck. HAL == Hard Array >Logic, it's a mask-programmed equivalent to a PAL. I've never found one >that can be read out, I suspect the circuitry simply isn't there. There are a couple of articles in the archives about reverse engineering the behaviour of PALs. One article started out very promisingly (to my inexperienced eye) and the author stated that parts 2 & 3 were to follow, but they never did. Oh well. I would like to clone the external floppy drive and SCSI adapter for the Outbound Model 125. I've acquired most of the required parts for each. However, they each have a GAL 16V8 (just one per product) installed. The terror at trying to figure the contents of that GAL has been stalling me for months (well that, plus all the other stuff around here, like getting the autumn garden planted). How heat sensitive are PALs and GALs? Am I likely to deprogram the thing when I desolder it from the board? Jeff Walther From trag at io.com Fri Nov 18 14:28:48 2005 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:28:48 -0600 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? Message-ID: >Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:33:45 +0000 (GMT) >From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) >Some manufactuerers did not copy-protect their PALs. For example, all the >PALs in the VAX 11/730 CPU are readable (for all they're the key to the >design). All PALs in every PERQ I've seen (including the AGW3300) are >readable. All PALs in the Torch XXX -- apart from those on the (3rd >party?) 68020 kludgeboard -- are readable. But then again, most PALs on >clone ISA boards are protected. > >If the original chip is a HAL, you are out of luck. HAL == Hard Array >Logic, it's a mask-programmed equivalent to a PAL. I've never found one >that can be read out, I suspect the circuitry simply isn't there. Oops. Forgot to mention in my previous message. I saw a programmer the other day that said it supported user defined test inputs to PLDs. There wasn't any detail, but it sounded like you could use the thing to set up a set of input data and get the results that come out of a PLD. This could be much faster than sticking the target chip on a breadboard and flipping switches and reading LEDs to compare I/O. Let's see, (checks bookmarks) it was the Dataman 48Pro. Unfortunately, it retails for about $1000. Here's a quote from the blurb: " Dataman 48Pro isn't only a programmer, but also a tester of TTL/CMOS logic ICs and memories. Furthermore, it allows the generation of user-definable test pattern sequences for PLD devices." I have a Needham EMP-30 which will program the smaller PALs but I don't think it has any provision for nifty testing of the I/O of the things. Jeff Walther From trag at io.com Fri Nov 18 14:40:40 2005 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 14:40:40 -0600 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: <200511181201.jAIC1hJx053178@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511181201.jAIC1hJx053178@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 15:41:28 -0500 >From: "Teo Zenios" >Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? >As some of you might recall I was looking for drivers for my Tokamac II FX >PDS card on my mac IIfx. Well I found the drivers from the original company >founder. I read in Macworld (and had it confirmed from the company contact) >that you need a PAL chip on the IIfx reprogrammed (or replaced?) because >Apple screwed up BUS mastering on the IIfx and nobody caught on at the time >because those types of cards were rare. > >Well I have found another person who has the same card AND the PAL chip >needed on his unit but is having other problems getting his setup to work. > >What I want to know is are PAL chips somewhat like eprons in getting >programmed or is there some other process involved? Does anybody know of a >way to get a pre programmed chip dumped so it can be duplicated or do you >need the original chip (or code) to do this? If I can be duplicated does >anybody here have equipment to do it? PAL chips require a programming machine that supports them in order to program them. Many of the PROM programming machines also support PALs. Tony already covered the facts about reading out an existing PAL. But, since you were able to contact the company founder regarding the software, is there any chance he could supply you with the revised PAL code? That would be much simpler than desoldering the other fellow's PAL and trying to read it out. I have a Needham EMP-30. It will program Lattice GALs and AMD PALs from 16V8 up to 22V10. Anything more complicated than that and my machine doesn't support it, I think. I'm willling to help and am in Austin, TX. What package is the PAL in? Probably PLCC or DIP, and I'm betting PLCC. Whoever helps you with the programming will need the appropriate adapter for the PAL you are using. DIP is no problem as the programmers come with a large DIP ZIF socket. However, PLCC will require an adapter or the building of an adapter. >Does anybody here have any experience with a IIfx running a Tokamac II FX >upgrade processor? No experience with that setup. I'm still working on my IIfx 16 MB SIMM project. It's slow at the moment because I need to do an 8" X 11" panel of PCB for economical reasons, and my layout software doesn't copy and paste traces, just other board features. Very tedious. Jeff Walther From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Fri Nov 18 15:12:54 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 15:12:54 -0600 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup Message-ID: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F109B3262@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Alright, I'm getting ready to make my 11/23+ available online for people to play with, but I'm a bit stumped as far as how I should attach the serial lines to my Ethernet network. Now, I have a Sun server running Solaris 10 which I was able to connect a couple serial lines to and then tunneled that through a telnet port, but I'd rather not do that...with the setup I'm thinking of, we're talking about a whole lot of cable running into that box. Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to this, so feel free to correct me. As always, any help is appreciated Julian From pat at computer-refuge.org Sat Nov 19 01:14:31 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:14:31 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511181740j10ce0c6di@mail.gmail.com> References: <003501c5ec88$bf4bf220$5b01a8c0@pc1> <2370.192.168.0.3.1132362215.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> <26c11a640511181740j10ce0c6di@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200511190214.32063.pat@computer-refuge.org> Dan Williams declared on Friday 18 November 2005 20:40: > > >server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis > > > that > > > > would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? > > > > Remember that Digital, Intel and Xerox invented Ethernet back in the > > 70s, DIX Ethernet as it was called back then. There's no such thing > > as a DECnet only port that I've come across so far.....caveat emptor > > etc.... > > I think the earlier ones are LAT only. I know there is a version of > LAT for Linux but I have never tried it. There's a DECnet package, which supports LAT and MOP, for Linux and (at least) NetBSD. I've used it on Debian Linux, and it works quite well, except for a bug that pops up when MOP booting a DECserver 500/550 off of it. I need to get around to submitting a patch sometime... My suggestion is to use either a DECserver, or a Xyplex MAXserver 1500/16xx. The Xyplexes seem to have come down in price quite significantly on ebay, and are based on the DECservers (Xyplex, now MRV, ended up with the DECserver stuff when DEC sold it off). If you need boot firmware for the Xyplex though, ask someone on the list... trying to get it out of MRV will make you want to shoot them. :) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From teoz at neo.rr.com Sat Nov 19 01:27:11 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 02:27:11 -0500 Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? References: <200511181201.jAIC1hJx053178@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <003a01c5ecda$a832bbd0$0500fea9@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Walther" To: Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 3:40 PM Subject: Re: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? > But, since you were able to contact the company founder regarding the > software, is there any chance he could supply you with the revised > PAL code? That would be much simpler than desoldering the other > fellow's PAL and trying to read it out. > The person told me he was pretty sure he did not have any PALs left, and did not think he still had the software for programming them either. He has yet to ge back to my on my last email about the software. > No experience with that setup. I'm still working on my IIfx 16 MB > SIMM project. It's slow at the moment because I need to do an 8" X > 11" panel of PCB for economical reasons, and my layout software > doesn't copy and paste traces, just other board features. Very > tedious. > > Jeff Walther 128MB in a IIfx would be interesting if the chips are cheap enough, I am glad I have 32MB in mine. Anyway I am not ready to give up just yet. Finding drivers or technical information for many Mac Nubus cards made in the late 1980's or early 1990's is very hard to do for some reason. Just about all of the companies that made those parts are long out of business. From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Sat Nov 19 05:56:09 2005 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:56:09 +0100 Subject: Classiccmp goes mainstream... Message-ID: <7917627B-58F3-11DA-A825-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> A local ( Zurich, Switzerland ) shopping centre is holding an exhibition on the development of the computer. Not very big, but some real nice hardware is on display. Among then are : - Straight pdp-8 -ETH / Diser Lilith modula2 machine - Altair, Imsai, - HP IPC, HP110,HP150 - hp9100, hp67, hp01, Wang 700, Friden -IBM360 ( console only ) And a whole slew of lesser machines and calculators. Also some mechanical calculators ( Curta etc ) Shopping center is Letzipark www.letzipark.ch I noticed a fair bit of interest of the people doing their weekly shopping. Jos Dreesen From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sat Nov 19 05:49:03 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 11:49:03 GMT Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) "Acorn Econet Fileserver" (Nov 19, 2:14) References: Message-ID: <10511191149.ZM7031@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 19 2005, 2:14, Tony Duell wrote: > Are there any Econet enthusiasts here? Yes :-) > I've just bought most of an Acorn Econet fileserver (it's missing the 2 > floppy drioves and their cables, the mainboard and PSU look intact). > > The mainboard contains : > 65C102 CPU > 64K EPROM (2 off 27256). I've not tried to look at their contents yet There are several versions of the firmware, each with its own little idiosyncracies ;-) One EPROM is the MOS and the other is the fileserver code, as you might expect. > 64K DRAM > WD2793 disk controller (not what I'd expect from Acorn) > 6522 VIA > Real time clcok chip and backup battery > TTL glue > An Econet module (looks like the one used in a Master or Arc, the type > with the hardware collision detection). Oddly theres a 26LS30 on the > mainboard, does this thing source the Exonet clock too? Yes, it does, and it's a decent asymmetric clock. It's supposed to switch itself off (or actually, I suspect, not switch on at boot time) if it detects another clock already on the wire. > The PSU looks to be a normal switch-mode unit giving +5V and +12V > > On the back are the 5 pin DIN econet socket, a 26 pin header identified > as 'Printer' (presumably wired as a BBC micro printer port) Yes, just as normal. > and a 34 pin > header. I am told this is to add a hard disk, and it looks similar to a > Beeb's 1MHz bus. I assume it takes the normal SASI host adapter and ST506 > bridgboard (I have spares of those somewhere...) Yes. > On the front are 2 LEDs (power and mode) and what looks like a > reflectiove optoswitch (why?) The optoswitch detects whether the front panel is in the open or closed state. When closed, the box starts up as a server. When open, it runs in maintenance mode. The plastic "hinges" were rather fragile and frequently broke, leading sometimes to the loss of the cover. > Can anyone tell me anything more about it, how to use it, what the > intenral links do, etc? I should have the manual somewhere. You shouldn't need to change any links. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From rcini at optonline.net Sat Nov 19 06:01:01 2005 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 07:01:01 -0500 Subject: Heath HTX-10 keyboard Message-ID: <006401c5ed00$e979be60$6501a8c0@bbrk0oksry5qza> All: I saw this keyboard kit on eBay today. Any idea exactly what it is? Is it a serial/parallel keyboard kit or is it a Ham Radio-type item? I'm totally ignorant of Heath items and I used to have an old catalog but I can't find it. Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ /************************************************************/ From baumereku at hazadata.com Sat Nov 19 02:39:29 2005 From: baumereku at hazadata.com (Xochipilli Baumert) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 03:39:29 -0500 Subject: Clyde Just Offr Message-ID: <000a01c5ece4$c151f680$39a8a8c0@cider> forsooth! A HALF-FAMISHED JACKDAW seated himself on a fig-tree, which had LPVXVACerIaAmIvoAnLbAizGaIiLtaRxUeIracA MnS 3,35 1,20 3,70 http://www.geocities.com/AngviHenslBli/ The Trumpeter Taken Prisoner the fable, so conspicuous in the great Greek fabulist. The exact to meet special circumstances, are so admirably constructed as to From williams.dan at gmail.com Sat Nov 19 07:02:45 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 13:02:45 +0000 Subject: Anyone have Practical Computing, December 1978? In-Reply-To: <437E2F95.2010808@yahoo.co.uk> References: <437E2F95.2010808@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <26c11a640511190502r7550d14cv@mail.gmail.com> On 18/11/05, Jules Richardson wrote: > > ... apparently (according to a letter in a later issue that I'm looking at) > they did a review of the RML 380Z - I'd be rather grateful for a scan of the > article if anyone has a copy of that issue (and a scanner :) > > cheers > > Jules > > I have found someone with a copy of that issue, Hopefully he will scan it. Dan From m_thompson at ids.net Sat Nov 19 07:56:29 2005 From: m_thompson at ids.net (M Thompson) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 08:56:29 -0500 Subject: Sun-1 Revival In-Reply-To: <437D84DE.8080403@soupwizard.com> References: <20051117155445.56146.qmail@web31411.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <437D84DE.8080403@soupwizard.com> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.0.20051119085530.044885a8@155.212.1.107> I have a running 2/120 with a 2/50 client. http://users.ids.net/%7ethompson/Sun/vcf-east-2.0.html At 02:38 AM 11/18/2005, you wrote: >Hi, > >I have a Sun 2/120 in storage that I got from someone who had it in >storage for 7 or 8 years - I have no idea if it works. My plan is >to eventually pull the power supply and bench check it before >applying power to the boards. > >Where are you located? I'm in Santa Barbara, California. I haven't >had much luck find parts or much info about these early machines either. > >Jeff Michael Thompson E-Mail: M_Thompson at IDS.net From Watzman at neo.rr.com Sat Nov 19 08:50:58 2005 From: Watzman at neo.rr.com (Barry Watzman) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:50:58 -0500 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: <200511191310.jAJDArqg066793@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <007701c5ed18$a6e5c040$6401a8c0@barry> I have a chart of paper tape hole patterns for all 128 characters, and it shows the LSB (bit zero, although the chart numbers them 1-8) as the edge hole on the 3-hole side, with the bits in order 0 to 7 (or 1 to 8). However, one question, this chart shows the high-order bit (parity bit) punched for every character, no exceptions. Was that a standard convention in sending ascii files to paper tape? From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sat Nov 19 09:15:00 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:15:00 GMT Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: "Barry Watzman" "Re: Which paper tape hole is bit 1?" (Nov 19, 9:50) References: <007701c5ed18$a6e5c040$6401a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <10511191515.ZM7344@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 19 2005, 9:50, Barry Watzman wrote: > I have a chart of paper tape hole patterns for all 128 characters, and it > shows the LSB (bit zero, although the chart numbers them 1-8) as the edge > hole on the 3-hole side, with the bits in order 0 to 7 (or 1 to 8). > > However, one question, this chart shows the high-order bit (parity bit) > punched for every character, no exceptions. Was that a standard convention > in sending ascii files to paper tape? It was for DEC, at least with PDP-8s. I don't know about anyone else. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 19 09:20:30 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 10:20:30 -0500 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? Message-ID: <0IQ700H22JV0D9AP@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? > From: "Barry Watzman" > Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:50:58 -0500 > To: > >I have a chart of paper tape hole patterns for all 128 characters, and it >shows the LSB (bit zero, although the chart numbers them 1-8) as the edge >hole on the 3-hole side, with the bits in order 0 to 7 (or 1 to 8). > >However, one question, this chart shows the high-order bit (parity bit) >punched for every character, no exceptions. Was that a standard convention >in sending ascii files to paper tape? There were three, even, odd and stick (usually 1 but could be 0). TTY when used with PDP-8 was stick at 1 (hole). PDP-8 convention was stick at 1 (hole) for ascii PDP-8 RIM format channel 8 is not used and channel 7 signals addres or data pair (lower six bits x4 for 12 bits address and 12bits data). This allows the 4 six bit pairs to specify and address and data anywhere and non consecutively. PDP-8 BIN format bit 7 was 2 6bit addresses to follow and then the rest are data (six bit pairs). The address is an origin and the data follows in sequential locations. Nominal PDP-8 use was short BIN loader hand toggled in. Load bin tape that contains small BIN format program or loads the RIM loader for more complex programs (basic, focal). BASIC would then read an ascii program tape. Some systems the 8th hole was used for data. PDP8 convention for hole numbering is outside 3 hole side is 1 and numbered through 8 across. 1 2 3 S 4 5 6 7 8 Allison From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sat Nov 19 09:24:20 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:24:20 -0600 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <2370.192.168.0.3.1132362215.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: <012c01c5ed1d$507d4a70$6401a8c0@Gils6240> ... > Remember that Digital, Intel and Xerox invented Ethernet back > in the 70s, DIX Ethernet as it was called back then. There's > no such thing as a DECnet only port that I've come across so > far.....caveat emptor etc.... ... Unfortunately the term "DECNet" was also applied to ISA bus adapters sold into the PC world. Gil From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sat Nov 19 09:29:18 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:29:18 -0600 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <012d01c5ed1e$02130590$6401a8c0@Gils6240> International editions of the textbooks are cheaper. Usually published in paperback and on thinner paper, etc. We have many international students here at UTA, many from India. They almost always have international editions of their texts that they buy over there and bring with them. I am not sure of the difference, but I think it must be substantial. Less than 50% of the price of the standard edition I am sure. Gil A. G. (Gil) Carrick, Director The Museum at CSE Coach - ICPC Programming Team University of Texas at Arlington Department of Computer Science & Engineering Box 19015, 471 S Cooper Street Arlington, TX 76019 817-272-3620 http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/ ... > 'This edition may be sold only in those countries to which it > is consigned by Prentice Hall International. It is not to be > re-exported and it is not for sale in the USA, Mexico or Canada' > > No idea why not. > > -tony > From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sat Nov 19 09:20:31 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:20:31 GMT Subject: DEC 861B and 871B power controllers Message-ID: <10511191520.ZM7356@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> I'm looking for a spare 871B power controller -- that's the smaller 8A 240V type, with six outlets, used on smaller QBus PDP-11 systems. I have a rack with more than one system, and I'd like to be able to switch two of them on and off independantly from their front panels. I might have a spare 861B (that's the larger 12-outlet 16A 240V version) to trade if that helps. Size and weight suggest it would be better for me to find one in the UK, ideally near York, if possible :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From lbickley at bickleywest.com Sat Nov 19 09:32:54 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 07:32:54 -0800 Subject: WTB: HP-85B... Message-ID: <200511190732.54457.lbickley@bickleywest.com> I have an HP-85 - but am interested in acquiring an HP-85B w/128K memory. Please contact me off-list if you have one you'd be willing to sell or trade... Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From RMeenaks at olf.com Sat Nov 19 10:04:32 2005 From: RMeenaks at olf.com (Ram Meenakshisundaram) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 11:04:32 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD533@cpexchange.olf.com> Yep, close to 50% and the materials are IDENTICAL! We americans love bond paper and color diagrams, so we end up paying twice as much for textbooks. This semester alone cost me $450 for 3 textbooks and none of them were international editions. There was one book that costs $150 and the international edition was only $60! Ram > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gil Carrick > Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 10:29 AM > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: RE: Minix > > > International editions of the textbooks are cheaper. Usually > published in paperback and on thinner paper, etc. We have > many international students here at UTA, many from India. > They almost always have international editions of their texts > that they buy over there and bring with them. I am not sure > of the difference, but I think it must be substantial. Less > than 50% of the price of the standard edition I am sure. > > Gil > > From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sat Nov 19 10:10:47 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:10:47 GMT Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: "Wolfe, Julian " "Need recommendations on a terminal server setup" (Nov 18, 15:13) References: Message-ID: <10511191610.ZM7453@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 18 2005, 15:13, Wolfe, Julian wrote: > I'm getting ready to make my 11/23+ available online for people to play > with, but I'm a bit stumped as far as how I should attach the serial lines > to my Ethernet network. At home, I have a Xylogics Annex terminal server with connections to some consoles, including (when I sort out the cables) my PDP-8, 11/23+ and 11/40. Most of those aren't switched on all the time, though. It also has a real VT420 and a Wyse 50, and a few other things attached. Elsewhere, I have an Origin2000 and its MMSC which I'd like to be able to talk to, and I thought of a similar sort of thing as you -- an old laptop running Linux. I also have a spare Racal Interlan terminal server that would do the job, and I've seen Cisco 1000-series, 1600-series, and 2500-series boxes going cheap on eBay that would suit. Some ofthem support 8 or 16 serial lines. However, I've found a little Lantronix MSS1-T which is effectively a 1-port terminal server. If you need several serial lines connected from one PDP-11, go for a terminal server, mounted in the same rack as the PDP. If you're thinking of buying a Cisco or similar, make sure it's a terminal (or console) server -- Cisco call them access servers. The ones with one or two WAN serial ports are not what you want. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com Sat Nov 19 10:27:31 2005 From: kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com (Bruce Lane) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 08:27:31 -0800 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> Message-ID: <200511190827310993.36AD7F60@192.168.42.129> Hi, Dave, *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 18-Nov-05 at 11:16 Dave Dunfield wrote: >Hi Guys, > >I've just posted another update to my ImageDisk program to my site. Uhh... where? I've been all over your site (and a fascinating one it was, too... you may have another paying customer in the coming year), but I couldn't find the thing. Of course, I'm not ruling out the possibility that I may have gone right by it. Please advise. Thanks. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?" From williams.dan at gmail.com Sat Nov 19 10:35:56 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:35:56 +0000 Subject: Anyone have Practical Computing, December 1978? In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511190833s60063d47g@mail.gmail.com> References: <437E2F95.2010808@yahoo.co.uk> <26c11a640511190833s60063d47g@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <26c11a640511190835m91b487bk@mail.gmail.com> > Right here they are, they are quite big to have sent them in 2 lots. > > Dan > > > Should of sent privately. If anyone wants a copy let me know. I assume the attachments won't make it to the list. Dan From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sat Nov 19 10:35:57 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:35:57 +0000 Subject: DEC 861B and 871B power controllers In-Reply-To: <10511191520.ZM7356@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> References: <10511191520.ZM7356@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <437F546D.1010709@gjcp.net> Pete Turnbull wrote: > I'm looking for a spare 871B power controller -- that's the smaller 8A > 240V type, with six outlets, used on smaller QBus PDP-11 systems. I > have a rack with more than one system, and I'd like to be able to > switch two of them on and off independantly from their front panels. I've got an 872B with a broken local switch, which I was kind of planning on using. I could be persuaded to part with it though. Let me fix it first and make sure it works properly, unless you're particularly keen to do it yourself. > I might have a spare 861B (that's the larger 12-outlet 16A 240V > version) to trade if that helps. Understanding and geeky though my girlfriend might be, running ceeform plugs in the computer room might be looked upon... unfavourably. > Size and weight suggest it would be better for me to find one in the > UK, ideally near York, if possible :-) Glasgow close enough? I've got to get a greywall to Dan Kolb at some stage so you may be able to conspire on something there. Gordon. From zmerch at 30below.com Sat Nov 19 10:59:21 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 11:59:21 -0500 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: <200511190827310993.36AD7F60@192.168.42.129> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Bruce Lane may have mentioned these words: > Uhh... where? I've been all over your site (and a fascinating one > it was, too... you may have another paying customer in the coming year), > but I couldn't find the thing. http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/img/index.htm Google is your friend... ;-) Took a bit to find, but he has a separate 'museum' type site, and it's listed here. Hope this helps! Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me zmerch at 30below.com. | SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 19 11:05:25 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:05:25 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. Suggestions? Allison From vrs at msn.com Sat Nov 19 11:06:33 2005 From: vrs at msn.com (vrs) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:06:33 -0800 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? References: <0IQ700H22JV0D9AP@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: From: "Allison": > Nominal PDP-8 use was short BIN loader hand toggled in. Load bin > tape that contains small BIN format program or loads the RIM > loader for more complex programs (basic, focal). BASIC would > then read an ascii program tape. It's a nit, but you have the roles of BIN and RIM reversed in this paragraph. You also omitted a discussion of the checksum, field setting, and comment features allowed in a BIN tape :-). For those who care, BIN tapes have an extra 'data' pair at the end which forms a checksum. Bytes with both of the most significant bits set use the next three bits to select which bank or 'field' is loaded. And arbitrary 'comments' may appear between rub-outs (which have all bits set). RIM tapes have none of these features. Both BIN and RIM tapes use leader-trailer with just the MSB set. There are at least two versions of the BIN loader. I don't know offhand if the older BIN loader supported all the features or not. Vince From zmerch at 30below.com Sat Nov 19 11:11:29 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:11:29 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051119120821.03adb7f0@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Allison may have mentioned these words: >Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > >I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. >around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. > >Suggestions? That's what I do - I've found USPS to be the cheapest available to send to Canada, and haven't had a problem yet. If the package weight is under 4 pounds (IIRC) you can use the "small customs form" which is pretty much: Name, Address, Contents, Value, Weight. Pretty simple to fill out. HTH, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Bugs of a feather flock together." sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Russell Nelson zmerch at 30below.com | From vrs at msn.com Sat Nov 19 11:16:22 2005 From: vrs at msn.com (vrs) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:16:22 -0800 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com><20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com><5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > > I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. > around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. That should work, but mail to Canada is notoriously slow and subject to random failures. Most of the stuff I've had shipped from Canada was done with UPS, since they seem to have a presence on both sides of the border. (I don't know if it is called UPS there, though.) Then you get delivery dates and tracking and such, for a few extra $. If you do more than $500 in a year (I think it is), you also turn into an importer-exporter, and your packages get zapped with duties. (That happened to me one year that I was buying stuff on ePay from Canada.) (That's really weird because it is a subsidiary of UPS that attempts to collect from you, rather than some government agency.) For larger stuff, I'd go with FedEx (but stay away from the helpful little stores with their extra fees, and look for the regional center). HTH, Vince From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sat Nov 19 11:16:39 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 11:16:39 -0600 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: <012e01c5ed2d$018dd230$6401a8c0@Gils6240> It's been quite a while since I did this, but you used to need to use a freight forwarder in Canada or it would sit in customs for weeks. Ask your recipient who they recommend or try Googling. Gil > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison > Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 11:05 AM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Shipping between US and Canada > > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > > I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. > around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. > > Suggestions? > > Allison From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Nov 19 11:18:53 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:18:53 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: <20051119171853.CD2F8BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Allison wrote: > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > > I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. > around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. > > Suggestions? > > Allison Shipping to Canada: always use USPS. If the declared value is small (don't know what the limit is today, $15 or $20?) then it goes through with no import duties (but possibly GST/PST). If you dare ship it UPS, the receiver will be stuck with a $30-$40 "brokerage charge" even if there are zero import duties. UPS and the brokerage charge are not necessarily all that bad if it is truly a commercial shipment and the value is large enough that the $40 brokerage charge is in the noise. It's a crying shame when a supplier sends a free catalog to Canada via UPS and the recipient ends up paying $40 in brokerage fees! Tim. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 19 11:35:00 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:35:00 -0500 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: References: <0IQ700H22JV0D9AP@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <437F6244.6060609@bellatlantic.net> vrs wrote: > From: "Allison": > >>Nominal PDP-8 use was short BIN loader hand toggled in. Load bin >>tape that contains small BIN format program or loads the RIM >>loader for more complex programs (basic, focal). BASIC would >>then read an ascii program tape. > > > It's a nit, but you have the roles of BIN and RIM reversed in > this paragraph. You also omitted a discussion of the checksum, > field setting, and comment features allowed in a BIN tape :-). > > For those who care, BIN tapes have an extra 'data' pair at the > end which forms a checksum. Bytes with both of the most significant > bits set use the next three bits to select which bank or 'field' > is loaded. And arbitrary 'comments' may appear between rub-outs > (which have all bits set). RIM tapes have none of these features. > Both BIN and RIM tapes use leader-trailer with just the MSB set. > > There are at least two versions of the BIN loader. I don't know > offhand if the older BIN loader supported all the features or > not. > > Vince I flubed the first one and 99% get it wrong when playing with the -8! The other was one of those typing things where I decided it was enough and stopped rather than get even further off the topic. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 19 11:37:04 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:37:04 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <012e01c5ed2d$018dd230$6401a8c0@Gils6240> References: <012e01c5ed2d$018dd230$6401a8c0@Gils6240> Message-ID: <437F62C0.90706@bellatlantic.net> This is NON_COMMERCIAl and may weigh more than 4 pounds (less that 12) as paper is heavy. Allison Gil Carrick wrote: > It's been quite a while since I did this, but you used to need to use a > freight forwarder in Canada or it would sit in customs for weeks. Ask your > recipient who they recommend or try Googling. > > Gil > > >>-----Original Message----- >>From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org >>[mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison >>Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 11:05 AM >>To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >>Subject: Shipping between US and Canada >> >>Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? >> >>I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. >>around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. >> >>Suggestions? >> >>Allison From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Nov 19 11:36:22 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:36:22 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <00a101c5ed2c$f71acd80$6700a8c0@vrshome.msn.com> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> <00a101c5ed2c$f71acd80$6700a8c0@vrshome.msn.com> Message-ID: <20051119173622.95E32BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "vrs" wrote: > > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > > > > I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. > > around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. > > That should work, but mail to Canada is notoriously slow and subject > to random failures. > > Most of the stuff I've had shipped from Canada was done with UPS, > since they seem to have a presence on both sides of the border. > (I don't know if it is called UPS there, though.) Then you get > delivery dates and tracking and such, for a few extra $. > > If you do more than $500 in a year (I think it is), you also turn > into an importer-exporter, and your packages get zapped with duties. > (That happened to me one year that I was buying stuff on ePay from > Canada.) (That's really weird because it is a subsidiary of UPS that > attempts to collect from you, rather than some government agency.) > > For larger stuff, I'd go with FedEx (but stay away from the helpful > little stores with their extra fees, and look for the regional center). > > HTH, > > Vince Vince - Mailing inside Canada via Canada Post is notoriously slow and subject to random failures. When I lived in British Columbia, regular mail to/from the "rest" of Canada (notably provinces like Quebec, Ontario) took weeks and randomly disappeared quite often too. And this doesn't count the weeks-long postal workers' strikes. Best situation if the recipient is near the border is to ship to a mailboxes-type place on the US side of the border. Most require the recipient to be a regular monthly mailbox renter but some are more flexible. Tim. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 19 11:40:12 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:40:12 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <20051119171853.CD2F8BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> <20051119171853.CD2F8BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <437F637C.7050905@bellatlantic.net> I try to avoid UPS on General Principle. I'd FEDX it first. Noncommercal and not as business activity. It's things like an inch of 8.5x11 paper (manuals). Maybe an S100 board or three (no cash value). Allison Tim Shoppa wrote: > > Shipping to Canada: always use USPS. If the declared value is small > (don't know what the limit is today, $15 or $20?) then it goes through > with no import duties (but possibly GST/PST). > > If you dare ship it UPS, the receiver will be stuck with a $30-$40 > "brokerage charge" even if there are zero import duties. > > UPS and the brokerage charge are not necessarily all that bad if > it is truly a commercial shipment and the value is large enough > that the $40 brokerage charge is in the noise. It's a crying shame > when a supplier sends a free catalog to Canada via UPS and the > recipient ends up paying $40 in brokerage fees! > > Tim. > From philpem at dsl.pipex.com Sat Nov 19 11:41:36 2005 From: philpem at dsl.pipex.com (Philip Pemberton) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:41:36 GMT Subject: WTD: Fuse PROM programming specs / datasheets Message-ID: <73675ccc4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> Hi, Does anyone happen to have copies of any of the following documents? - Generic I Programming Specification (Signetics) - Generic II Programming Specification (Signetics) - Programming spec for the 74S*** fuse PROMs (National Semiconductor) - Programming spec for the 6*** series PROMs (MMI / Monolithic Memories) - Programming spec for the 27S*** series PROMs (AMD) - 76** series programming spec (Harris) - also datasheets (or at least pinouts) for 74S, 6***, 76** and 27S PROMs I'm trying to build a PROM reader/programmer, and I'd like to make it as versatile as possible. At the very least, I want to program 82S129s with it, but programming them is rather difficult without the specs for the algorithms. I've already got the Generic I spec, but my copy is incomplete - it covers 82S129s and I suspect it was probably included in one of the Signetics databooks at one time. Of course, not having access to any databooks older than 1997 makes it a little difficult to track the info down... Thanks. -- Phil. | Acorn RiscPC600 SA220 64MB+6GB 100baseT philpem at philpem.me.uk | Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxe R2 512MB+100GB http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Panasonic CF-25 Mk.2 Toughbook ... Happiness is a twit filter From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Nov 19 11:42:15 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:42:15 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada Message-ID: <20051119174215.E5209BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Allison wrote: > This is NON_COMMERCIAL and may weigh more than 4 pounds (less than 12) > as paper is heavy. If it'll fit in a big envelope (truly all paper) then far and away the easiest way is to just send it USPS and it'll arrive via Canada Post on the other side, you probably won't have to fill out a declaration form at all. If you put it in a box then you'll have to fill out a simple declaration form at the post office. If you send it via UPS and/or Fedex then you'll have to prepare a bill of sale/bill of lading enumerating the contents, their cost/value (not necessarily the same!), country of origin, etc. If you've done these before it's a rather simple form but it can be daunting if you've never done it before and the shipment gets hung up because you forgot one little detail. The USPS declaration form is really much easier especially for shipments of items of small/no commercial value. Tim. From vrs at msn.com Sat Nov 19 11:49:05 2005 From: vrs at msn.com (vrs) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:49:05 -0800 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com><20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com><5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com><437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net><20051119171853.CD2F8BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <437F637C.7050905@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: From: "Allison": > I try to avoid UPS on General Principle. I'd FEDX it first. I prefer FedEx over OOPS, myself :-). For smaller packages FedEx will likely cost more, though. Vince From dancohoe at oxford.net Sat Nov 19 12:29:18 2005 From: dancohoe at oxford.net (Dan Cohoe) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 13:29:18 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: <001d01c5ed37$2802bf20$6501a8c0@wcruz> At the risk of dragging this thread on too long, here's my take on the topic. This is from the POV of someone on the Canadian side of the border. USPS is my friend. They've got Global Priority mail, air parcel post and surface mail. Simple customs declaration forms are available at the counter. It's really not much more difficult than addressing the package label. The Canadian postal service (Canada Post Corporation) has good hand-off from the USPS and they also have a deal with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to provide collection of whatever charges may be levied at crossing. For items under $15 value there's typically no application of the usual Sales taxes(across Canada, GST at 7 % and in Ontario PST at 8 %) and no brokerage fee. A $5 brokerage fee and the taxes will often be charged for values over $15 or $20 Most items of interest to this list from the USA attract no Customs Duties, just the taxes. I've not experienced the loss of packages that others are referring to by Canada Post and generally try to have epay sellers send stuff by USPS, though most will not, apparently because of the lack of tracking through USPS. No experience with Fedex, but UPS rates to Canada are a lot higher than domestic US and they will hit you with the automatic $35 brokerage charge. For items that must be shipped UPS, again on the shipper's rules, I almost always get them dropped at a pick-up spot in Niagara Falls NY. I`can then cross the border myself, pay $5 to the pick-up spot and bring the stuff across personally. For really big stuff, I try to find a local freight company that does regular runs to the area of the purchase and arrange for them to stop and bring the load back. Very reasonable cost compared to most alternatives when you're talking bigger than 2-300 lbs. Of course you do need to have the paper work done and ddeal with a customs broker then, but the charge is still less than the UPS flat rate brokerage would be. People sometimes comment to me about how difficult it must be to cross with some of the larger items I find....like my latest fun acquisition, a JEOL JEM 100CXii electron microscope. In fact, going either way across I've never had many hassles, particularly if its US-made goods I'm going south with. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Allison > Sent: November 19, 2005 12:05 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Shipping between US and Canada > > > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > > I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. > around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. > > Suggestions? > > Allison > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.4/175 - Release > Date: 11/18/05 > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.4/175 - Release Date: 11/18/05 From vrs at msn.com Sat Nov 19 12:52:38 2005 From: vrs at msn.com (vrs) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 10:52:38 -0800 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada References: <001d01c5ed37$2802bf20$6501a8c0@wcruz> Message-ID: From: "Dan Cohoe" > I've not experienced the loss of packages that others are referring to by > Canada Post and generally try to have epay sellers send stuff by USPS, > though most will not, apparently because of the lack of tracking through > USPS. The way it was explained to me (bear in mind that this is at least third-hand information that I have no easy way to confirm), is that Canada's system for re-delivering mail that fails on the first attempt (which is a lot of mail here in the USA, too), is different. That somehow the path there is relatively short between "this came back to the post office" and "let's sell this on our eBay site". My wife buys and sells dolls from and to Canada, and apparently her colleagues go to check Canada Post's ebay auctions when their dolls don't get delivered. And have actually found them there. (They are reportedly really good about pulling the auction if the rightful claimant comes forward.) There's also a tactic where the shipper includes hir name, address, and phone number in the package, so that when they open it, they have another chance of being contacted to fix the problem. FWIW, Vince From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 19 12:57:08 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 13:57:08 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <001d01c5ed37$2802bf20$6501a8c0@wcruz> References: <001d01c5ed37$2802bf20$6501a8c0@wcruz> Message-ID: <437F7584.1070008@bellatlantic.net> Dan Cohoe wrote: > At the risk of dragging this thread on too long, here's my take on the > topic. This is from the POV of someone on the Canadian side of the border. > > USPS is my friend. They've got Global Priority mail, air parcel post and > surface mail. Simple customs declaration forms are available at the counter. > It's really not much more difficult than addressing the package label. I've always gotten excellent service for my dollar from them. > The Canadian postal service (Canada Post Corporation) has good hand-off from > the USPS and they also have a deal with the Canada Border Services Agency > (CBSA) to provide collection of whatever charges may be levied at crossing. > For items under $15 value there's typically no application of the usual > Sales taxes(across Canada, GST at 7 % and in Ontario PST at 8 %) and no > brokerage fee. A $5 brokerage fee and the taxes will often be charged for > values over $15 or $20 Excellent info. Bwetween you and Tom I've gotten an answer. One key is to break it down in to very small loads if need be. > Most items of interest to this list from the USA attract no Customs Duties, > just the taxes. > > I've not experienced the loss of packages that others are referring to by > Canada Post and generally try to have epay sellers send stuff by USPS, > though most will not, apparently because of the lack of tracking through > USPS. > > No experience with Fedex, but UPS rates to Canada are a lot higher than > domestic US and they will hit you with the automatic $35 brokerage charge. > For items that must be shipped UPS, again on the shipper's rules, I almost > always get them dropped at a pick-up spot in Niagara Falls NY. I`can then > cross the border myself, pay $5 to the pick-up spot and bring the stuff > across personally. No love for UPS, used them. The broerage would likely be more than shipping cost. > For really big stuff, I try to find a local freight company that does > regular runs to the area of the purchase and arrange for them to stop and > bring the load back. Very reasonable cost compared to most alternatives when > you're talking bigger than 2-300 lbs. Of course you do need to have the > paper work done and ddeal with a customs broker then, but the charge is > still less than the UPS flat rate brokerage would be. We're talking under 10-12pounds max. Small box (under 14x6x10 inches). No commercial or retail value. > People sometimes comment to me about how difficult it must be to cross with > some of the larger items I find....like my latest fun acquisition, a JEOL > JEM 100CXii electron microscope. In fact, going either way across I've never > had many hassles, particularly if its US-made goods I'm going south with. I've bought US goods in CN and brought them back with zero problems at customs. Small CN items were never questioned. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Nov 19 13:00:20 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 14:00:20 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <20051119173622.95E32BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> <00a101c5ed2c$f71acd80$6700a8c0@vrshome.msn.com> <20051119173622.95E32BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <437F7644.8050700@bellatlantic.net> > Mailing inside Canada via Canada Post is notoriously slow > and subject to random failures. When I lived in British Columbia, > regular mail to/from the "rest" of Canada (notably provinces like > Quebec, Ontario) took weeks and randomly disappeared quite often > too. And this doesn't count the weeks-long postal workers' strikes. This to Ontairo Province so I have better expectations than that. Allison From cfox1 at cogeco.ca Sat Nov 19 13:53:16 2005 From: cfox1 at cogeco.ca (Charles E. Fox) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 14:53:16 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F7644.8050700@bellatlantic.net> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> <00a101c5ed2c$f71acd80$6700a8c0@vrshome.msn.com> <20051119173622.95E32BA479A@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <437F7644.8050700@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.0.20051119144556.01bc9af8@pop.cogeco.ca> At 02:00 PM 11/19/2005, you wrote: >> Mailing inside Canada via Canada Post is notoriously slow Hoping not to get too far off topic, I had occasion to mail a CD-Rom to a friend in Detroit, total distance about twenty five miles, and was asked at the post office if I wanted to send it airmail. I had visions of a letter carrier hopping into a Cub and zipping over the border, but was informed that the letter would have to go from Windsor to Toronto, from Toronto to Chicago, and then back to Detroit, total about 800 miles. Isn't modern technology wonderful? Charlie Fox Charles E. Fox Video Production 793 Argyle Rd. Windsor Ont. 519-254-4991 N8Y 3J8 Camcorder Kindergarten, chasfoxvideo.com From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Nov 19 14:01:04 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 20:01:04 +0000 Subject: Anyone have Practical Computing, December 1978? In-Reply-To: <26c11a640511190835m91b487bk@mail.gmail.com> References: <437E2F95.2010808@yahoo.co.uk> <26c11a640511190833s60063d47g@mail.gmail.com> <26c11a640511190835m91b487bk@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <437F8480.70304@yahoo.co.uk> Dan Williams wrote: >> Right here they are, they are quite big to have sent them in 2 lots. >> >> Dan >> >> >> > Should of sent privately. If anyone wants a copy let me know. I assume > the attachments won't make it to the list. ta muchly - and dammit, I'd gone and found it at the museum today and was congratulating myself on such luck! :-) (saves me scanning it myself for archive purposes though!) cheers Jules From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Nov 19 14:26:32 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 13:26:32 -0700 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: <437F8A78.1020205@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > > I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. > around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. > > Suggestions? > > Allison > I think USPS ground charges a fee to get into Canada, Air does not. From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Nov 19 14:27:32 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:27:32 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F109B3262@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> References: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F109B3262@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Message-ID: <437F8AB4.1000603@gmail.com> Wolfe, Julian wrote: > Alright, > > I'm getting ready to make my 11/23+ available online for people to play > with, but I'm a bit stumped as far as how I should attach the serial > lines to my Ethernet network. > > Now, I have a Sun server running Solaris 10 which I was able to connect > a couple serial lines to and then tunneled that through a telnet port, > but I'd rather not do that...with the setup I'm thinking of, we're > talking about a whole lot of cable running into that box. > > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal > server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that > would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? Look on ebay for a DECserver 700. There are 8- and 16-port versions. They will do telnet. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Nov 19 14:45:25 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:45:25 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: <437F8EE5.9080401@gmail.com> Allison wrote: > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > > I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. > around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. > > Suggestions? I send stuff to Canada all the time, but I don't have much information for you because I usually drive across the border and send Canada Post. Sorry. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 19 14:50:03 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 12:50:03 -0800 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F8A78.1020205@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> <437F8A78.1020205@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511191250030831.344C9027@10.0.0.252> [Begin flip response] Locate a friendly marijuana smuggler from BC and pay him to drop your package in the Canadian mail when he gets back home. You completely avoid customs duties that way. [End flip response] For valuable things, we've always used Fedex. They employ their own brokers and usually can get things through customs much faster than ordinary mail. They also offer shipment tracking and will make good on an insurance claim if the package doesn't reach its destination. So, you may ask, "What of USPS insurance?" We found out the hard way that USPS insurance (and delivery confirmation) only covers a shipment until the moment it crosses the border. After that, it's "contact Canada Post; we did our job". Cheers, Chuck From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Nov 19 15:02:25 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:02:25 -0500 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <200511191250030831.344C9027@10.0.0.252> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> <437F8A78.1020205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511191250030831.344C9027@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <437F92E1.60903@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > [Begin flip response] > Locate a friendly marijuana smuggler from BC and pay him to drop your > package in the Canadian mail when he gets back home. You completely avoid > customs duties that way. > [End flip response] > > For valuable things, we've always used Fedex. They employ their own > brokers and usually can get things through customs much faster than > ordinary mail. They also offer shipment tracking and will make good on an > insurance claim if the package doesn't reach its destination. > > So, you may ask, "What of USPS insurance?" > > We found out the hard way that USPS insurance (and delivery confirmation) > only covers a shipment until the moment it crosses the border. After that, > it's "contact Canada Post; we did our job". I thought the way around that limitation was to use "Global Express Mail"? Peace... Sridhar From dave04a at dunfield.com Sat Nov 19 11:05:51 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:05:51 +0000 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20051119211147.DOOK14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> > > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > That should work, but mail to Canada is notoriously slow and subject > to random failures. I've had very good luck with postal service (on both sides of the border) having run a mail-order business for many years, I still find it the best option in many cases. > Most of the stuff I've had shipped from Canada was done with UPS, NEVER ship to Canada via UPS ... ***NEVER*** UPS charges a large "brokerage" fee to the recipient which they clain is for processing the customs paperwork. Postal service costs nothing in clearing. EG: I had a PET shipped up, shipping cost to the sender was $60, "brokerage fee" I had to pay to receive the machine at my door was $45. -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From dave04a at dunfield.com Sat Nov 19 11:05:51 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:05:51 +0000 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: <200511190827310993.36AD7F60@192.168.42.129> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> Message-ID: <20051119211153.DOOS14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> > Hi, Dave, > > *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** > > On 18-Nov-05 at 11:16 Dave Dunfield wrote: > > >Hi Guys, > > > >I've just posted another update to my ImageDisk program to my site. > > > > Uhh... where? I've been all over your site (and a fascinating one it was, too... you may have another paying customer in the coming year), but I couldn't find the thing. > > Of course, I'm not ruling out the possibility that I may have gone right by it. > > Please advise. Thanks. Hi Bruce, It's on my classic-collection site. Easiest way to get there is to go to my commercial site (www.dunfield.com), and click on the "old computer guy" near the bottom of the page. Once you get to my collection, go to almost the bottom and you will find a link called "Disks/Software images".The ImageDisk download is located on that page. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 19 15:19:30 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 13:19:30 -0800 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F92E1.60903@gmail.com> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> <437F8A78.1020205@jetnet.ab.ca> <200511191250030831.344C9027@10.0.0.252> <437F92E1.60903@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200511191319300028.3467834B@10.0.0.252> On 11/19/2005 at 4:02 PM Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >I thought the way around that limitation was to use "Global Express Mail" It depends on the service. GXG is really done through Fedex, not an IPU agency and it's pretty good. Plain old GXM, however, will usually pay a claim when it can be shown that the parcel didn't make it as far as customs. We've tried to get USPS to make good on a GXM claim and I'd rather try out that "Do it yourself at-home Root Canal" kit. You do get delivery confirmation with GXM when everything works. However, if you think that USPS will pay off on an insurance claim if delivery confirmation wasn't obtained, forget it. If you think that you'll always get delivery confirmation, forget it. Cheers, Chuck From gtulloch at shaw.ca Sat Nov 19 15:19:56 2005 From: gtulloch at shaw.ca (gtulloch at shaw.ca) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 15:19:56 -0600 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <20051119211147.DOOK14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> Message-ID: I've shipped to the US and been shipped innumerable things and the absolute most reliable and inexpensive method is USPS / Canada Post. In some cases receipt has been so rapid as to be astonishing, while very very occasionally things take quite some time. Only once has anything ever been lost, which unfortunately wasn't insured. Ship with confidence, but the extra $1 is worth it for insurance. Regards, Gord cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org wrote on 19/11/2005 11:05:51 AM: > > > Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? > > > That should work, but mail to Canada is notoriously slow and subject > > to random failures. > > I've had very good luck with postal service (on both sides of the border) > having run a mail-order business for many years, I still find it the best > option in many cases. > > > Most of the stuff I've had shipped from Canada was done with UPS, > > NEVER ship to Canada via UPS ... ***NEVER*** > > UPS charges a large "brokerage" fee to the recipient which they clain > is for processing the customs paperwork. Postal service costs nothing > in clearing. > > EG: I had a PET shipped up, shipping cost to the sender was $60, > "brokerage fee" I had to pay to receive the machine at my door > was $45. > > > > > -- > dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield > dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com > com Collector of vintage computing equipment: > http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html > From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Sat Nov 19 17:30:52 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Witchy) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 23:30:52 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <012c01c5ed1d$507d4a70$6401a8c0@Gils6240> References: <2370.192.168.0.3.1132362215.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> <012c01c5ed1d$507d4a70$6401a8c0@Gils6240> Message-ID: <2885.192.168.0.3.1132443052.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> On Sat, November 19, 2005 3:24 pm, Gil Carrick said: > ... > Unfortunately the term "DECNet" was also applied to ISA bus adapters sold > into the PC world. Was it? I didn't know that, was it a DEC thing or something a card manufacturer jumped on and used? -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection? From drb at msu.edu Sat Nov 19 18:02:30 2005 From: drb at msu.edu (Dennis Boone) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 19:02:30 -0500 Subject: first power up, Osborne 1 Message-ID: <200511200002.jAK02U1C005119@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> I just dug my Osborne 1 out of the attic after probably 10-15 years. Blue case, double density motherboard. Anyone have thoughts about osborne-specific things I should do before just powering it up? It was in working order when stored, and has been dry. De From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 19 18:37:42 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 00:37:42 +0000 (GMT) Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: from "Jeff Walther" at Nov 18, 5 02:23:09 pm Message-ID: > >If the original chip is a HAL, you are out of luck. HAL == Hard Array > >Logic, it's a mask-programmed equivalent to a PAL. I've never found one > >that can be read out, I suspect the circuitry simply isn't there. > > There are a couple of articles in the archives about reverse > engineering the behaviour of PALs. One article started out very > promisingly (to my inexperienced eye) and the author stated that > parts 2 & 3 were to follow, but they never did. Oh well. Well, here's a start... It only applies to PALs with no burried flip-flops -- that is it only works for chips where a change of internal state is visible on the pins. This applies to the classic PALs, but not necessarily to GALs (from what I rmember). What you need is a device that has a fair number of TTL I/O lines (alas few modern computers have user ports or hacker-friendly buses, but anyway). You want to be able to drive each input of the PAL under test and read all the outputs (I asusme you know which pins are inputs and which are outputs, from the schematic if nowhere else). The first thing to do is to indentify which (if any) outputs show sequential (i.e. internal latch/flip-flop) behaviour. In pseudocode it goes like this set all output_states to COMBINATORIAL for inputs=0 to (2^no_of_inputs)-1 do write(inputs) outputs_1= read (outputs) for this_input = 0 to no_of_inputs-1 do invert this_input invert this_input /* this toggles each input in turn and sets it back to the original state */ new_outputs=read_outputs if new_outputs!=outputs_1 then set output_states for outputs that changed to SEQUENTIAL At the end of this, you will hopefully have some combinatorial outputs. Then, try all possible input states again, record the outputs and look at those that are known to be combinatorial. Use your favourite logic minimalisation method to produce the logic equations for those. That's part 1. I will think about cracking sequential terms... > How heat sensitive are PALs and GALs? Am I likely to deprogram the > thing when I desolder it from the board? TAoE calles this 'Security through solder' or soemthing similar. I've never desoldered a GAL. I've desoldered _many_ DIL-packaged PALs without damage. It depends on how good you are at soldering. If you're happy removing other ICs without problems, I don't think you'll have any problems with PALs/GALs -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 19 18:42:36 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 00:42:36 +0000 (GMT) Subject: How exactly do PAL chips get programmed? In-Reply-To: from "Jeff Walther" at Nov 18, 5 02:28:48 pm Message-ID: > Oops. Forgot to mention in my previous message. I saw a programmer > the other day that said it supported user defined test inputs to > PLDs. There wasn't any detail, but it sounded like you could use > the thing to set up a set of input data and get the results that come > out of a PLD. This could be much faster than sticking the target > chip on a breadboard and flipping switches and reading LEDs to > compare I/O. > > Let's see, (checks bookmarks) it was the Dataman 48Pro. > Unfortunately, it retails for about $1000. Here's a quote from the > blurb: " Dataman 48Pro isn't only a programmer, but also a tester of > TTL/CMOS logic ICs and memories. Furthermore, it allows the > generation of user-definable test pattern sequences for PLD devices." I have something a bit like that, or at least most of one. It's a unit that has a 40 pin SIF socket on top. Pin 20 is permanently tied to ground. The other pins can be switched, under program control to ground, or to one of 4 or so programmable voltage sources. So you can set Vpp, Vcc, set pins high or low, etc. It should be able to program or test just about anything The problem is that I don't have the computer interface card or software for it. There is a ribbon cable coming out of it ending in a DC37 plug. Some of the ICs inside have had their numbers sanded off, which held me up for about 5 minutes in figuring out what they were. There is a PAL chip inside, which seems ot be an an address decoder. I could probably make up a host adapter card, but without software it's not a lot of use. And since most manufacturers don't release their programming specs, there's no easy way to write said software. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 19 18:44:42 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 00:44:42 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Cheapest PCI prototyping? In-Reply-To: <200511190333.WAA28234@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> from "der Mouse" at Nov 18, 5 10:26:26 pm Message-ID: > > >>> Ah. I'd love to see the schematics - are they on the web? > >> No, I did those on pencil and paper. > > So? There exist things called 'scanenrs', I believe :-) > > Yeah, but they're not on-topic. (Well, tyop aside.) Hmmm.. Discussion of how to use modern scanners, repairing them, etc is off-toppic. Discussion of their use in preserving classic computer material is as on-topic as discussion of any other modern tools used for that purpose. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 19 18:48:07 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 00:48:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: from "Charles" at Nov 18, 5 10:22:59 pm Message-ID: > As it turns out Hole 8..1 corresponds on a PDP-8 to data bits > 4..11 respectively (more significant to least significant). I was > surprised since I expected the hole numbers to increase directly > with the data bit number. That's exactly what I'd have expected. It puts the 'holes', in order, in the low 8 bits of the machine word. > The punch is now hooked up (correctly) via my homebrewed driver > card to the PC8E interface, and merrily spews chad all over the Any chance of schematics being posted somewhere? I have a PC8e linked up to my homebrew PC04 (well, converted from a PC05...). But I also have a Tally 420, and I'd like to give it a go sometime. > floor at high speed! I can email an Eagle schematic/board layout > for the drive card if anyone wants... Please don't e-mail them to me. Can they go on a web page somewhere? > > Now looking for a Tally 420 chad bucket :) I have one, but it's not spare, if you see what I mean. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 19 18:55:41 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 00:55:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <10511191149.ZM7031@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> from "Pete Turnbull" at Nov 19, 5 11:49:03 am Message-ID: > > On Nov 19 2005, 2:14, Tony Duell wrote: > > Are there any Econet enthusiasts here? > > Yes :-) Excellent. And as you saw, Lee Davison pointed me at your last reply to my question a couple of years back... > > The mainboard contains : [...] > > 64K EPROM (2 off 27256). I've not tried to look at their contents yet > > There are several versions of the firmware, each with its own little > idiosyncracies ;-) One EPROM is the MOS and the other is the > fileserver code, as you might expect. Yes, they've got labels on them saying 'MOS' and 'Filestore' or something like that. Next time I have it apart I'll see if I can find version numbers on them. [...] > > An Econet module (looks like the one used in a Master or Arc, the > type > > with the hardware collision detection). Oddly theres a 26LS30 on the > > mainboard, does this thing source the Exonet clock too? > > Yes, it does, and it's a decent asymmetric clock. It's supposed to What is the benefit of an asymmetic clock? Or more precisely, why does it help? > switch itself off (or actually, I suspect, not switch on at boot time) > if it detects another clock already on the wire. I would guess, without any evidence, that it detects the lack of clock using the same method that a Beeb uses to display the 'no clock' message and then enables the internal clock if necessary. > > and a 34 pin > > header. I am told this is to add a hard disk, and it looks similar to > a > > Beeb's 1MHz bus. I assume it takes the normal SASI host adapter and > ST506 > > bridgboard (I have spares of those somewhere...) > > Yes. I am now confused. Your last message on this (the one Lee pointed me at) says it uses a SCSI and not SASI disk. I don't think the 34 pin header carries the SCSI signals (does it? -- I've not removed the PCB yet to look what it's connected to). Do I use the Acorn host adapter card and put a SCSI disk on the other side of it? Or is it a special host adapter that I haven't a hope of finding, or what? > > On the front are 2 LEDs (power and mode) and what looks like a > > reflectiove optoswitch (why?) > > The optoswitch detects whether the front panel is in the open or closed > state. When closed, the box starts up as a server. When open, it runs > in maintenance mode. The plastic "hinges" were rather fragile and > frequently broke, leading sometimes to the loss of the cover. Ah, right... Mine is missing the flap, althohgh I can see the holes for the 'hinges'. I will have to rig something up to operate the optoswtich... More pressing is the lack of drives and cables. I assume the floppy drives are plain, 300 rpm, 80 cylinder, ones. Anyhting I should know about them? > > > Can anyone tell me anything more about it, how to use it, what the > > intenral links do, etc? > > I should have the manual somewhere. You shouldn't need to change any If you find it, I'd be interested in seeing a copy... > links. No, probably not, but you know I am curious about such things anyway... -tony From pat at computer-refuge.org Sat Nov 19 19:34:11 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 20:34:11 -0500 Subject: DECwriters at Ft. Wayne Hamfest Message-ID: <200511192034.11673.pat@computer-refuge.org> There's a guy with a 3 DECwriter II/IIIs at the Ft. Wayne (IN, US) hamfest, asking for someone to haul them away for free. Find info on the hamfest from http://www.arrl.org If intersted, go there and pick them up on Sunday. The guy is just looking for a good home for them, he said he'll leave them there if no one wants them. No connection to seller, etc, so don't ask me for details. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From shirsch at adelphia.net Sat Nov 19 20:06:04 2005 From: shirsch at adelphia.net (Steven N. Hirsch) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 21:06:04 -0500 (EST) Subject: Corvus (was Fortune Systems) In-Reply-To: <2170.192.168.0.3.1132358621.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> References: <2170.192.168.0.3.1132358621.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: On Sat, 19 Nov 2005, Witchy wrote: > > > > A Corvus _Unix_ box? What was the model designation for this beast? I > > have a Corvus Concept 68k with shelves full of manuals and lots of > > software. None of it seems to be Unix-y. > > You're a handy man to know - I've got a Concept 68K waiting for me but > it's the system box only, no display cable or video specs or anything like > that. If it doesn't run some flavour of *nix then what does it run? I think they call it "Concept OS" (from memory, as everything Corvus is in the loft of my garage and inaccessible at the moment). Definitely not Unix or anything even close. Steve From hp41cx at gmail.com Sat Nov 19 07:53:41 2005 From: hp41cx at gmail.com (hp41cx) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 11:53:41 -0200 Subject: 1975 H-P Catalog References: <01C5E9DF.3121BA80@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <00b501c5ed10$aef29400$0201010a@Servidor> Would you send me to Brazil by Air Mail? Payment PayPal (credit card payment). If yes You could tell me which is the most economical way (USPS) to send her for airmail for Brazil. ----- Original Message ----- From: "M H Stein" To: Sent: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 15:21 Subject: 1975 H-P Catalog > Anybody want a 1975 H-P Electronics Instruments and Systems > catalog? 572 pages, hard cover, mostly test equipment with abt > 25 pages of calculators, computers (HP 21MX & 2000 series) > & peripherals. Pictures, model numbers, descriptions & prices. > > $20. + S&H > > mike > From carlos at jimulco.autonoma.edu.co Sat Nov 19 08:03:49 2005 From: carlos at jimulco.autonoma.edu.co (Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:03:49 -0500 (EST) Subject: Minix Message-ID: Tony Duell wrote: > 'This edition may be sold only in those countries to which it is > consigned by Prentice Hall International. It is not to be re-exported and > it is not for sale in the USA, Mexico or Canada' > > No idea why not. > > -tony It is an "International Student Edition". Some publishing companies offer these paperback editions in poorer countries where people couldn't possibly afford the hard back edition. Some are even translated to other languages (even mandarin). carlos. Carlos E. Murillo-Sanchez email: carlos_murillo at ieee.org Dean of Engineering, Universidad Autonoma de Manizales, Manizales, Colombia ---- "Western civilization... thought like the greek, organized itself like the romans and believed in itself like the hebrew." -- Ortega y Gasset. From pkoning at equallogic.com Sat Nov 19 08:58:17 2005 From: pkoning at equallogic.com (Paul Koning) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:58:17 -0500 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? References: <200511191310.jAJDArqg066793@dewey.classiccmp.org> <007701c5ed18$a6e5c040$6401a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <17279.15753.812000.872092@gargle.gargle.HOWL> >>>>> "Barry" == Barry Watzman writes: Barry> However, one question, this chart shows the high-order bit Barry> (parity bit) punched for every character, no exceptions. Was Barry> that a standard convention in sending ascii files to paper Barry> tape? You mean the high order bit was always on -- as opposed to being a parity bit? That's unusual. Parity is a bit more common, but I don't think there was a single standard. Classic ASCII is a 7-bit code, leaving the 8th bit for people to mess with as they saw fit. paul From Bob at BRADLEE.ORG Sat Nov 19 09:28:06 2005 From: Bob at BRADLEE.ORG (Bob Bradlee) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 10:28:06 -0500 Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: <007701c5ed18$a6e5c040$6401a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <200511191539.jAJFdNA3010866@keith.ezwind.net> There are 4 parity states. Mark parity = always punched Space parity = never punched Odd & even = punching based on other 7 bits of data and None = all 8 bits are data. Bob On Sat, 19 Nov 2005 09:50:58 -0500, Barry Watzman wrote: >I have a chart of paper tape hole patterns for all 128 characters, and it >shows the LSB (bit zero, although the chart numbers them 1-8) as the edge >hole on the 3-hole side, with the bits in order 0 to 7 (or 1 to 8). >However, one question, this chart shows the high-order bit (parity bit) >punched for every character, no exceptions. Was that a standard convention >in sending ascii files to paper tape? From williams.dan at gmail.com Sat Nov 19 10:33:20 2005 From: williams.dan at gmail.com (Dan Williams) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 16:33:20 +0000 Subject: Anyone have Practical Computing, December 1978? In-Reply-To: <437E2F95.2010808@yahoo.co.uk> References: <437E2F95.2010808@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <26c11a640511190833s60063d47g@mail.gmail.com> On 18/11/05, Jules Richardson wrote: > > ... apparently (according to a letter in a later issue that I'm looking at) > they did a review of the RML 380Z - I'd be rather grateful for a scan of the > article if anyone has a copy of that issue (and a scanner :) > > cheers > > Jules > > Right here they are, they are quite big to have sent them in 2 lots. Dan From trag at io.com Sat Nov 19 18:38:09 2005 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 18:38:09 -0600 Subject: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511191336.jAJDaNdP068400@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511191336.jAJDaNdP068400@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 23:48:14 -0800 >From: "Chuck Guzis" >On 11/14/2005 at 11:24 PM Jeff Walther wrote: > >>For big surface mount chips I like to use Chip Quik desoldering >>alloy, which will lower the melting point of the solder on the board. >>If I preapply Chip Quik, I can usually use the 600F setting for a >>minute or two to loosen a chip. I've successfully done this on chips >>as large as 208 pin QFPs. > >Jeff, unless the thermostat on your heat gun is faulty, you should be able >to go much lower than 600F, shouldn't you? 60/40 solder flows at about >370F. You would think so, wouldn't you? As I recall, I tried lower temperatures first and it just took too long for the solder to loosen. My back of a beer soaked envelope explanation would be that the heat is conducting away at some rate and so one needs a higher temperature source than the target temperature. But beats me. The 600F setting is the one that gets the chips loose in about 2 minutes. The heat gun could be poorly calibrated. It was inexpensive but gets the job done. Interestingly, if I'm doing a bunch of boards, e.g. pulling the flash off of cheap ATA-66 cards, after the first card the following ones go faster. Either the heat gun takes a while to reach its set temperature, or my work area gets hot and helps the boards along or something. I use a 1/16" sheet of sheet metal as a work surface. I figure it's anti-static protection and fairly impervious to mechanical, chemical and thermal insult. >It seems to me that I've also seen special desoldering rigs that use hot >air and a special nozzle to better focus the airstream. I've heard of those, but they seem to cost multiple hundreds of dollars. I like the < $40 heat gun + modeling clay solution. That's a little bit of hyperbole as I also have dental picks and the Chip Quik set for the big chips and a nice bottle of resin. With those and a 15W and a 40W soldering pencil I manage. >Thanks for the tip on Chip Quik; from the MSDS, it appears to be a >Tin-Indium alloy. I thought there was bismuth involved but the memory is moldy. It melts/mixes in with the existing solder and lowers the melting point. That's the point behind the stuff. It's fairly expensive, but very little of it is needed per desoldered chip. And four beads of the stuff makes the big QFPs come off soooo much easier. Jeff Walther From tix at 1000bit.net Sat Nov 19 10:37:46 2005 From: tix at 1000bit.net (Tix) Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:37:46 +0100 Subject: PeCos One Message-ID: <004801c5ed27$93b690d0$0100a8c0@MILENA> I have just published the PeCos One Owner's Manual at this url: http://www.1000bit.net/support/manuali/manuali.asp How many PeCos One owner are here ? Tix From Useddec at aol.com Sun Nov 20 01:49:12 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 02:49:12 EST Subject: Looking for C3642 and C3552's Message-ID: <23e.1e3a074.30b18478@aol.com> Hi, I'm looking for 5 or 10 (maybe more!) of each of these. Anybody have any extras in stock? Thanks, Paul From spedraja at ono.com Sun Nov 20 02:47:17 2005 From: spedraja at ono.com (SP) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 09:47:17 +0100 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051119211153.DOOS14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> Message-ID: <008901c5edaf$03559fd0$1602a8c0@ACER> Well, I shall try it, of course. I'm trying to compose one boot disk for my (actually orpahn of software) Xerox 820 in 5,25 inch.format. I have the files and even (I think) the CPM.SYS file what must be copied in the first tracks of the CP/M disk in single density format. But I have the impression that all the tools available actually musn't do the job I want to do. I only know one tool in CP/M to grab the boot tracks, and I suppose that if I use one computer to do the job (one Osborne Vixen) and compose with it one boot disk for the Xerox 820 it will not work in the Xerox cause of the different treatment of the disks from the Vixen to the Xerox. Isn't so ? Regards Sergio From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sun Nov 20 05:58:02 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 11:58:02 GMT Subject: Which paper tape hole is bit 1? In-Reply-To: Paul Koning "Re: Which paper tape hole is bit 1?" (Nov 19, 9:58) References: <200511191310.jAJDArqg066793@dewey.classiccmp.org> <007701c5ed18$a6e5c040$6401a8c0@barry> <17279.15753.812000.872092@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Message-ID: <10511201158.ZM9215@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 19 2005, 9:58, Paul Koning wrote: > >>>>> "Barry" == Barry Watzman writes: > > Barry> However, one question, this chart shows the high-order bit > Barry> (parity bit) punched for every character, no exceptions. Was > Barry> that a standard convention in sending ascii files to paper > Barry> tape? > > You mean the high order bit was always on -- as opposed to being a > parity bit? That's unusual. Parity is a bit more common, but I don't > think there was a single standard. Classic ASCII is a 7-bit code, > leaving the 8th bit for people to mess with as they saw fit. It's called "mark parity", though it's not really a parity indicator at all, just a way of defining that that bit is always set. It's exactly equivalent to having 7-bit data with an extra stop bit and not unusual at all on PDP-8s, in fact it's the norm. All DEC-supplied ASR33s were set for mark parity, as far as I know. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From dave04a at dunfield.com Sun Nov 20 02:37:41 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 08:37:41 +0000 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: <008901c5edaf$03559fd0$1602a8c0@ACER> Message-ID: <20051120124337.LKTA29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> > Well, I shall try it, of course. I'm trying to compose one boot disk for my > (actually orpahn of software) Xerox 820 in 5,25 inch.format. I have the > files and even (I think) the CPM.SYS file what must be copied in the first > tracks of the CP/M disk in single density format. But I have the impression > that all the tools available actually musn't do the job I want to do. I only > know one tool in CP/M to grab the boot tracks, and I suppose that if I use > one computer to do the job (one Osborne Vixen) and compose with it one boot > disk for the Xerox 820 it will not work in the Xerox cause of the different > treatment of the disks from the Vixen to the Xerox. Isn't so ? Not sure exactly what you are trying to do, however I gather that you have a binary image of a boot track that you wish to use to replace the boot tracks of an existing disk. If you have these on two different disks, you can merge them with ImageDisk, You can either read images containing only the tracks you want from each, or you can use IMDU to extract only those tracks from full images. Then you can either write the two sub-images to the disk separately (ImageDisk will only format/write tracks occuring an image), or you can use IMDU to merge them into a single complete image, which you can then write to the disk. If your boot track is not already on a disk (Ie: you just have a binary track image in a file), then you can either: - Use ImageDisk to read the disk you want to patch - Use IMDU to record the details of the disk format which is recorded in the .IMD image file. - Use IMDU to convert the .IMD image into a raw binary sector dump. (This removes the formatting information and leaves you with just the data from the disk sectors). - Patch you new binary data into the resulting file using whatever means you would normally use to patch binary files. - Use BIN2IMD and the formatting details noted earlier to convert the binary dump back into a ImageDisk .IMD file - Use ImageDisk to write the image to a disk. - or - - Use BIN2IMD to convert your boot track image into a small .IMD. (You will need to know the correct disk format - you should be able to determine this by looking at an image of the target disk) - Use IMDU to merge an image of the other disk - this will add all of the tracks not occuring in your boot image. - Use IMD to write the new image to a disk. Someone out there must already X820 bootdisks in 5.25" format. If so, could you make ImageDisk images and send them to be for inclusion in the archive. I have X820 disks in 8" format, however I don't have 5.25". Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sun Nov 20 08:31:26 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 14:31:26 GMT Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) "Re: Acorn Econet Fileserver" (Nov 20, 0:55) References: Message-ID: <10511201431.ZM9442@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 20 2005, 0:55, Tony Duell wrote: > What is the benefit of an asymmetic clock? Or more precisely, why > does it help? I forget whether it's the mark that's longer than the space, or the other way round, but in essence the longer interval gives the hardware longer to respond and means you can run the network significantly faster. An Econet will run happily over a range of speeds, the upper limit being determined mainly by the length of the network, but for really short networks, ultimately the speed depends on the interfaces. > I would guess, without any evidence, that it detects the lack of clock > using the same method that a Beeb uses to display the 'no clock' > message and then enables the internal clock if necessary. I believe so. However, Field change Order No. 2020 says "Design error: Bi-phase network clock is 180 degrees out of phase with clocks generated by Econet Clock Boxes and E01S Filestores. Consequently the system fails to recognise the presence of an external clock when these are installed in large networks. This can cause unreliable data transfer." The fix given is to cut the tracks on the component side of the PCB, between IC26 pin 14 and SK10 pin 4, and between IC26 pin 15 and SK10 pin 5; then on the solder side link IC26-14 to SK10-5 and IC26-15 to SK10-4. I'm not quite sure what this implies for clock detection. Since the clock is free-running it won't remain phase-locked to anything else, let alone an external clock, so why that should affect the detection I don't know. Presumably something to do with the uneven mark-space ratio. > > > and a 34 pin > > > header. I am told this is to add a hard disk, and it looks similar to > > a > > > Beeb's 1MHz bus. I assume it takes the normal SASI host adapter and > > ST506 > > > bridgboard (I have spares of those somewhere...) > > > > Yes. > > I am now confused. Your last message on this (the one Lee pointed me at) > says it uses a SCSI and not SASI disk. I don't think the 34 pin header > carries the SCSI signals (does it? -- I've not removed the PCB yet to > look what it's connected to). Do I use the Acorn host adapter card and > put a SCSI disk on the other side of it? Or is it a special host adapter > that I haven't a hope of finding, or what? Well, the normal ACB4000 bridgeboard is actually SCSI, not SASI, but it's an early implementation and doesn't use the Common Command Set. All I said was "Yes" -- *you* wrote SASI :-) The winchester host adaptor board doesn't have the ATN line though. Actually, I was slightly off the mark. The 34-pin connector is for a box called an E20 containing a winchester adaptor (same as the Beeb one) and a 3.5" 20MB SCSI drive (native SCSI, no bridgeboard). It's basically a BBC 1MHz bus, but running at 2MHz like the one on a Master 128 or compact. Later types of filestore, called the Stacking Filestore, used SCSI disks without an adaptor board in the disk box. Those units have E01S instead of E01 on the front, product code AEH35 instead of AEH26, the bus connector is a standard 50-way Centronics-style connector carrying the SCSI bus, and the hard disk boxes would be labeled E40S, E60S instead of E20. The two digits gives the storage capacity, incidentally. > More pressing is the lack of drives and cables. I assume the floppy > drives are plain, 300 rpm, 80 cylinder, ones. Anyhting I should know > about them? Pretty ordinary SA400-interface double-sided 80-track single/double density half-height 3.5" drives, normally Sony F6 3W drives as fitted to Master Compact and similar machines including some early Archimedes or Citizen drives as fitted to other Archimedes machines. Some of the Citizen drives need a small mod (remove R61). Drives intended for PCs may or may not work because they may not respond correctly to DS0 and DS1. > > I should have the manual somewhere. You shouldn't need to change > > any > > If you find it, I'd be interested in seeing a copy... I thought Jules Richardson had scanned the user manual and service manual. Links 1 enable I/O IRQs 2 enable A15 adressing 3 enable 1?s network clock source 4 enable 2?s network clock source 5 enable network clock divide by 2 6 enable network clock divide by 4 7 enable network clock divide by 8 8 enable network NMIs 10 disable 0000-7FFF addressing 13 enable ROM latch There's more at the BBC Documentation Project, http://members.aon.at/~musher/bbc/econet.htm, and at The BBC Lives! site, http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/bbc/dir.php3?dir=doc Another place to look is http://beebmaster.co.uk/EconetHelp.html And of course the BBC mailing list (email majordomo AT cloud9 co uk or look for the archive -- presently down for maintenance -- at http://jonripley.com/8bit/bmlarchive/) and the comp.sys.acorn.networking newsgroup. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From gilcarrick at comcast.net Sun Nov 20 08:44:02 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 08:44:02 -0600 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <2885.192.168.0.3.1132443052.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: <003701c5ede0$d9a98570$6501a8c0@Gils6240> > > ... > > Unfortunately the term "DECNet" was also applied to ISA bus > adapters > > sold into the PC world. > > Was it? I didn't know that, was it a DEC thing or something a > card manufacturer jumped on and used? ... I can't find many references to it, but here are a couple: http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Brochure/Overview/PCTelnet.overvie w.html http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~rikblok/TipsnTricks/win98.html The lack of references make me think that these people are just being imprecise. There are also references to "DECNet Adapter" but they are talking about a software adapter. Gil From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Sun Nov 20 10:59:07 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 10:59:07 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051120105907.0fd7b53a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> At 12:05 PM 11/19/05 -0500, Allison wrote: >Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? I've shipped small items like that to Canada via USPS with no problems except that things happen in SLOW motion once they hit the Canadian postal system. I've never used them but I know FedEx and UPS both deliver to Canada. However they both charge a "customs broker" charge and UPS in particular charges a LOT for that. Below is a reply that I got from someone in Canada just last week when I asked him about this very subject. Hi. What you heard about UPS is true. I received a brake disk last week and it was delivered with UPS. For a 55 USD value, I was charged 40 CAD for broker fee !!!!!!!! With that, I was charged 15 USD for shipping and needed to pay the canadian taxes......... With FedEx, I've never had any problem... If I remember well, their broker fee is about 3% (with a minimum of about 13 CAD) and a week after having reveived my item, I receive an invoice for the canadian taxes... I pay with a check and that's it ! USPS is slower but I don't pay any fee. USPS Fast Priority is faster (more expensive too) but I need to pay taxes at the post office... > >I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. >around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. It's exactly the same when using USPS except that it will cost a little more and you'll need to fill out a small customs form with your name and address, the reciever's name and address, date and a couple of words describing the contents and value and a check box telling if it is a gift, merchandise or commercail sample. That only takes about a minute. Joe > >Suggestions? > >Allison > From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Nov 20 10:36:15 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 05:36:15 +1300 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.16.20051120105907.0fd7b53a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20051119115822.03adb570@mail.30below.com> <437F5B55.5050505@bellatlantic.net> <3.0.6.16.20051120105907.0fd7b53a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Message-ID: On Sun, 20 Nov 2005 10:59:07, Joe R. wrote: > > At 12:05 PM 11/19/05 -0500, Allison wrote: > >Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? Yes... mostly bad. > ..."customs broker" charge... UPS in particular charges a LOT for that. I had a package get stuck at the border because the sender didn't know to fill out any paperwork in advance - they wanted $85 USD. I told them I wasn't paying and what to do with the package (send it back ;-) I have sent things _to_ Canada via my commercial UPS account, but I always fill out the customs docs. No hassles on the other end (the recipient probably pays taxes, but that's a Candian law thing, not a UPS thing). I have never had any hassles sending things via Post around the world - except glacially slow delivery in Canada. At least there are no unwelcome charges. -ethan From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 20 12:29:30 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:29:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <10511201431.ZM9442@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> from "Pete Turnbull" at Nov 20, 5 02:31:26 pm Message-ID: > > On Nov 20 2005, 0:55, Tony Duell wrote: > > > What is the benefit of an asymmetic clock? Or more precisely, why > > does it help? > > I forget whether it's the mark that's longer than the space, or the > other way round, but in essence the longer interval gives the hardware Ah, does the TX output change on one edge of the clock and the Rx input sample on the opposite edge, or something? Time to get out the 6854 datasheet.... > I believe so. However, Field change Order No. 2020 says "Design error: > Bi-phase network clock is 180 degrees out of phase with clocks > generated by Econet Clock Boxes and E01S Filestores. Consequently the > system fails to recognise the presence of an external clock when these > are installed in large networks. This can cause unreliable data > transfer." The fix given is to cut the tracks on the component side of > the PCB, between IC26 pin 14 and SK10 pin 4, and between IC26 pin 15 > and SK10 pin 5; then on the solder side link IC26-14 to SK10-5 and > IC26-15 to SK10-4. > > I'm not quite sure what this implies for clock detection. Since the > clock is free-running it won't remain phase-locked to anything else, > let alone an external clock, so why that should affect the detection I > don't know. Presumably something to do with the uneven mark-space > ratio. I think, without having the board in front of me, that IC26 is the 26LS30 chip that drives the clock lines, and doing that mod would, indeed, invert the phase of the clock. The only possible reason for doing that would be to invert the mark and space times. > > Well, the normal ACB4000 bridgeboard is actually SCSI, not SASI, but > it's an early implementation and doesn't use the Common Command Set. > All I said was "Yes" -- *you* wrote SASI :-) The winchester host Ah, right. Well, SASI and SCSI are pretty much the same at the hardware level, particularly if you only have on initiator (as here). > adaptor board doesn't have the ATN line though. I haev now seen the manuals on The BBC Lives (great site, should have thought to look there first!). It appears I have an E01 Filestore (not an E01S, which would have the host adpater logic on the mainboard). The 34 pin connector, as you say, is a subset of the 1MHz bus signals on the same pins, but the clock is 2MHz. The E20 hard disk unit contains the standard Host Adapter card linked to a 20NByte SCSI hard disk. That was the normal thing to link to the 34 pin connector on the E01. It sohuld be relatively easy to put one of those together... Is there any restriction on the hard disk size? What would happen if I linked up a unit of several hundred Mbyte capacity? Would it just not work, would it only see it as a 20Mhyte unit, or would it see the whole thing? Accordign to the manual, there is a utility disk for this unit, and maybe a service disk too (it's not clear whether this is one disk or two). The former contained the program to format the winchester, and is therefore somewhat importent. The latter ran on a BBC Master and contained various test programs. There was a special test box for Econet testing that plugged into the econet ports on the Master and on the unit-under-test (here, the Filestore), and could source a clock and simulate a poor-quality line, both contrlled by lines on the user port. Amazingly I have this test box, I don't have the software. I've not looked for it seriously in the archives on the web, but does anyone have a link for it to hand? > > More pressing is the lack of drives and cables. I assume the floppy > > drives are plain, 300 rpm, 80 cylinder, ones. Anyhting I should know > > about them? > > Pretty ordinary SA400-interface double-sided 80-track single/double > density half-height 3.5" drives, normally Sony F6 3W drives as fitted Right. The chap who sold this to me included a couple of such Sony drives, alas missing the front panels and eject buttons. I now have to try to find those. The missing mounting hardware is less of a problem, as are the missing cables. > to Master Compact and similar machines including some early Archimedes > or Citizen drives as fitted to other Archimedes machines. Some of the > Citizen drives need a small mod (remove R61). Drives intended for PCs > may or may not work because they may not respond correctly to DS0 and > DS1. Yes, but presumably a bit of work with wire-swapping in the cable will sort that out if necessary. > There's more at the BBC Documentation Project, > http://members.aon.at/~musher/bbc/econet.htm, and at The BBC Lives! > site, http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/bbc/dir.php3?dir=3Ddoc Thanks, that's where I found the manuals. -tony From jwest at classiccmp.org Sun Nov 20 16:33:15 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 16:33:15 -0600 Subject: PeCos One References: <004801c5ed27$93b690d0$0100a8c0@MILENA> Message-ID: <00da01c5ee22$6642a6b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Tix wrote.... >I have just published the PeCos One Owner's Manual at this url: > http://www.1000bit.net/support/manuali/manuali.asp I noticed the HP standard software systems manual on your site is apparently identical to the one on Jeff Moffat's 2100 site? Did it get copied from there? Jay West From jwest at classiccmp.org Sun Nov 20 16:38:37 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 16:38:37 -0600 Subject: DECwriters at Ft. Wayne Hamfest References: <200511192034.11673.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <010101c5ee23$265fb640$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Patrick wrote.... > There's a guy with a 3 DECwriter II/IIIs at the Ft. Wayne (IN, US) > hamfest, asking for someone to haul them away for free. Find info on > the hamfest from http://www.arrl.org > > If intersted, go there and pick them up on Sunday. The guy is just > looking for a good home for them, he said he'll leave them there if no > one wants them. If no one picks them up and they are left to get scrapped, I'd love the print heads out of them as spares for my DECwriter. Jay From jwest at classiccmp.org Sun Nov 20 16:45:24 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 16:45:24 -0600 Subject: teco for Linux References: <200511131917500018.16C97962@10.0.0.252><437814F5.5030704@gmail.com><20051114060850.GA20891@monolith.hacktivismo.lan><437A5054.7010802@srv.net><20051115211754.GB8846@monolith.hacktivismo.lan><437DF913.6050401@srv.net> <17278.2323.746430.158730@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <01b601c5ee24$18717810$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> It was written.... > Looks like something stripped off your attachments... And no, it's > not OS specific, though it is tied to the PDP11/VAX flavor of TECO. > (It won't run on TECO-10 or TECO-8.) The list will not allow file attachments. Jay From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Sun Nov 20 17:07:36 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 23:07:36 +0000 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <003701c5ede0$d9a98570$6501a8c0@Gils6240> Message-ID: On 20/11/05 14:44, "Gil Carrick" wrote: > I can't find many references to it, but here are a couple: > > http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Brochure/Overview/PCTelnet.overvie > w.html > > http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~rikblok/TipsnTricks/win98.html > > The lack of references make me think that these people are just being > imprecise. There are also references to "DECNet Adapter" but they are > talking about a software adapter. Hmm.... The 2nd one is obviously a mistake since win98 has detected the card as a PCI based DEC 21040-powered card like the venerable DE500, the first one is talking about an ISA card and I don't know of any ISA cards that DEC did, though obviously that doesn't mean they didn't exist :) The first card I'm aware of is the DE100 which was an AUI/BNC switchable EISA card. Also for the first one, if it WAS a DECnet card you certainly wouldn't have been able to run TELNET over it and I didn't think DECnet had ever been ported to the PC architecture until DEC themselves did a DECnet stack as part of Pathworks/PCSA in the 80s. Cheers A From doc at mdrconsult.com Sun Nov 20 17:36:33 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 17:36:33 -0600 Subject: Monty Python CD-ROM? Message-ID: <43810881.5020408@mdrconsult.com> I dug out my "Monty Python's Complete Watse of Time" software today, and the CD isn't in the box. Does anybody have the media for this? I could download an ISO image or pay shipping for a copy. Can provide proof that I previously owned it (as in a scan of the box and the CD booklet). Thanks! PS - And yes, it's on-topic. Doc From rupertveal at hotmail.com Sun Nov 20 17:43:39 2005 From: rupertveal at hotmail.com (Rupert Savene) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 15:43:39 -0800 Subject: IBM Mag Card II Message-ID: Hi I am a new user on this forum because I have an IBM Mag Card II that was left by a tenant in my building. I believe she was the only owner of it. I am was wondering if I could sell it/pass it on to someone else. What would it be worth if anything? It appears to be in good condition but I do not know if it works well or what components are in it. It has the main box and the keyboard/typewriter. I live in the LA area and as it weighs ~100lbs I think pick up would be the best idea. I can hold on to it for a while but need to get it moved soon. Rupe From jmiles007 at iquest.net Sun Nov 20 17:46:25 2005 From: jmiles007 at iquest.net (Jon Miles) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:46:25 -0500 Subject: DECwriters at Ft. Wayne Hamfest In-Reply-To: <010101c5ee23$265fb640$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Message-ID: <001001c5ee2c$9e847620$6401a8c0@RileyTech.local> > > Patrick wrote.... > > There's a guy with a 3 DECwriter II/IIIs at the Ft. Wayne (IN, US) > > hamfest, asking for someone to haul them away for free. > Find info on > > the hamfest from http://www.arrl.org > > > > If intersted, go there and pick them up on Sunday. The guy is just > > looking for a good home for them, he said he'll leave them > there if no > > one wants them. > > If no one picks them up and they are left to get scrapped, > I'd love the print heads out of them as spares for my DECwriter. > > Jay > > > I went up there this morning and picked up the one LA36 DECwriter II he had. He also had two DECwriter III's, one DEC marked and another with a reseller name plate. I didn't have room in my car for another and didn't want to take them all anyway in case someone else was traveling for one. Then I found out he is on the other side of Indianapolis from me so I asked him, if no one came for the DEC marked III, if he would bring it back with him and I would pick it up from his shop. The hamfest ended at 3pm and I haven't heard from him yet. Might know more tomorrow... Jon Miles From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sun Nov 20 17:58:41 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:58:41 -0500 (EST) Subject: IBM Mag Card II In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511210002.TAA05406@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I am a new user on this forum because I have an IBM Mag Card II that > was left by a tenant in my building. [...] I have no idea what it is (or at least no idea beyond what you've stated), and doubt I'd be interested (especially since you say "LA area", which is almost diametrically across the continent from me). I'm writing to say, even if nobody takes it, thank you very much for looking into getting it into the hands of someone such as listmembers here rather than just scrapping it. If everyone were as thoughtful and foresighted, a lot less computing history would be inadvertently lost (and a lot of collectors would be a lot less anguished). This is exactly the sort of thing we wish everyone stuck dealing with someone else's old computer "junk" would do. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From Useddec at aol.com Sun Nov 20 18:08:19 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 19:08:19 EST Subject: Possible regulator problem in 11/34 Message-ID: <14.51f08e26.30b269f3@aol.com> I have these in stock if you need any. Thanks, Paul From James at jdfogg.com Sun Nov 20 18:23:54 2005 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 19:23:54 -0500 Subject: IBM Mag Card II Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E59DC@sbs.jdfogg.com> > I am a new user on this forum because I have an IBM Mag Card > II that was left by a tenant in my building. I believe she > was the only owner of it. I am was wondering if I could sell > it/pass it on to someone else. What would it be worth if anything? > > It appears to be in good condition but I do not know if it > works well or what components are in it. It has the main box > and the keyboard/typewriter. > I live in the LA area and as it weighs ~100lbs I think pick > up would be the best idea. I can hold on to it for a while > but need to get it moved soon. I believe this is a very early "word processor". Pages could be stored on a magnetic stripe on a cardboard card. There would be a slot in the front of the box to slide the cards into so they could be read. There will be a thick cable connected to an IBM electric typewriter that should look familiar, but with some extra keys and functions. I had one of these many years ago and wish I still had it. They are hard to find, but mostly of value only to collectors and museums. I don't think there's any cash value to it. I am in the North East, and shipping this would be a bear. From jwest at classiccmp.org Sun Nov 20 18:41:12 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:41:12 -0600 Subject: HP gear available Message-ID: <002001c5ee34$463d4de0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> I was contacted by someone wanting to dispose of some HP gear. He sent me pictures, and it appears to be in very good condition. HP21MX M-series (2108A) (2) 8K boards, DCPC, MEM, MEMPRT HP21MX E-series (2113A) (2) 64K boards, DCPC, MEM, MEMPRT Yes, both systems have the A style power supply. The machines have a bevy of I/O cards in them (in my opinion, a good assortment). Some highlights include 13210, 12531, 12880, 12566, TBG, 8bit duplex reg, 16bit duplex reg, prototype board!, tape reader, and I/O exp. boards. Also includes a 92922A net system to terminal box, I/O extender, and an assortment of manuals & possibly some paper tapes. Available in San Jose, needs to be gone by christmas. Contact me off list if interested. Jay West From rupertveal at hotmail.com Sun Nov 20 20:14:29 2005 From: rupertveal at hotmail.com (Rupert Savene) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:14:29 -0800 Subject: IBM Mag Card II In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E59DC@sbs.jdfogg.com> Message-ID: Thanks for the info about the Mag Card II. I was wondering what it was and I had not looked too deeply yet into what it did or how it worked. Rupe >From: "James Fogg" >Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic >Posts" >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Subject: RE: IBM Mag Card II >Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 19:23:54 -0500 > > > I am a new user on this forum because I have an IBM Mag Card > > II that was left by a tenant in my building. I believe she > > was the only owner of it. I am was wondering if I could sell > > it/pass it on to someone else. What would it be worth if anything? > > > > It appears to be in good condition but I do not know if it > > works well or what components are in it. It has the main box > > and the keyboard/typewriter. > > I live in the LA area and as it weighs ~100lbs I think pick > > up would be the best idea. I can hold on to it for a while > > but need to get it moved soon. > >I believe this is a very early "word processor". Pages could be stored >on a magnetic stripe on a cardboard card. There would be a slot in the >front of the box to slide the cards into so they could be read. There >will be a thick cable connected to an IBM electric typewriter that >should look familiar, but with some extra keys and functions. > >I had one of these many years ago and wish I still had it. They are hard >to find, but mostly of value only to collectors and museums. I don't >think there's any cash value to it. I am in the North East, and shipping >this would be a bear. > > From allain at panix.com Sun Nov 20 21:38:02 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 22:38:02 -0500 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> <20051119211153.DOOS14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> Message-ID: <009201c5ee4d$e4ea9b00$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Dave, I think you should post the complete link whenever you make new release announcements. I've found it inconvenient as well. John A. From fmc at reanimators.org Mon Nov 21 00:04:16 2005 From: fmc at reanimators.org (Frank McConnell) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 22:04:16 -0800 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> (Dave Dunfield's message of "Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:16:47 +0000") References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> Message-ID: <200511210604.jAL64G8w010493@lots.reanimators.org> Dave Dunfield wrote: > I've just posted another update to my ImageDisk program to my site. OK, so I decided to have some fun pointing it at an HP150 stiffy. I'm thinking that this is a single-sided HP150 stiffy. Exactly what that means in terms of the on-disk format, I don't really know, just that it should be readable in a 9121 or 9133XV with a single-sided stiffy drive. The HP150 would have been talking to one of several HP-IB-attached drives, where the drive would have its own microcontroller and disk controller, and I'm thinking the firmware in the drive may have some notions of using some sectors on the disk for its own data and so the HP150 doesn't do any more than tell the drive to format the disk, and the HP150 might not get to use or see all of the disk. How does ImageDisk develop its list of sector numbers? I ask because it seems to think this stiffy has 70 tracks, with 17 sectors per track, with the sectors numbered 0, 11, 6, 1, 12, 7, 2, 13, 8, 3, 14, 9, 4, 15, 10, 5, 17 on the even tracks and 8, 3, 14, 9, 4, 15, 10, 5, 0, 11, 6, 1, 12, 7, 2, 13, 17 on the odd tracks. (These derived from IMDU output after a run.) Some stuff re-keyed from the screen on another run (is there a way to get it to log this stuff to a file?): Read into C:\FRANK\WORK\V2B.IMD Interex CSL/150 volume 2 from master 0/0: Unable to determine interleave : 250k DD - 17 sectors of 256 bytes - G1:24 G2:37 : Read error <17> NoSector - Reanalyzing : Unable to determine interleave : Read error <17> NoSector - Unavailable 0/1: Single-sided 4/0: Unable to determine interleave 0/0: Single-step 1/0: Unable to determine interleave : Read error <17> NoSector - Reanalyzing : Unable to determine interleave : Read error <17> NoSector - Unavailable It continues much like this through subsequent tracks (gronk, gronk), which takes a while, but this may be what I get for asking it to do a full analysis. Yes, I should probably sit down and read the manual a bit before charging in like this. BTW, if someone out there has the HP150 Technical Reference manual set, and it says something about what the expected on-disk format is, I'd like to know more about that. Similarly for anyone who has some idea what the 9121/9122 drives think about where they're allowed to scribble on the disk. -Frank McConnell From Tim at Rikers.org Mon Nov 21 00:47:05 2005 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 23:47:05 -0700 Subject: PeCos One In-Reply-To: <00da01c5ee22$6642a6b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> References: <004801c5ed27$93b690d0$0100a8c0@MILENA> <00da01c5ee22$6642a6b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Message-ID: <43816D69.3090104@Rikers.org> Jay West wrote: > Tix wrote.... > >> I have just published the PeCos One Owner's Manual at this url: >> http://www.1000bit.net/support/manuali/manuali.asp > > > I noticed the HP standard software systems manual on your site is > apparently identical to the one on Jeff Moffat's 2100 site? Did it get > copied from there? > > Jay West As they are byte for byte identical complete with extraneous trailing spaces and a few scattered control characters, I'd bet on yes. -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! From huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Mon Nov 21 06:10:36 2005 From: huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au (Huw Davies) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:10:36 +1100 Subject: Minix In-Reply-To: <437CA235.2060606@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IQ3009Y8LKYDM80@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <437CA235.2060606@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 18/11/2005, at 2:31 AM, woodelf wrote: > Allison wrote: > >> Minix on PDP11, Not that I know of. It would be interesting. >> >> > Well I think Minix #1, would be easy to port, but why? You got > real unix. Because you can :-) Don't forget XINU which was designed to run on PDP-11s. > It just proves how effective code on the 11 could be. Too bad you > can't buy > a pdp-11 cpu chip for $2.49 like a 8088. I take it is still rather > pricy to put together > a basic 11. Any body know how much? I haven't looked, but I would have thought that you could buy something like a PDP-11/03 for not a lot of money (assuming that the 11/03 is what I think it is - small Qbus system, yes?) Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green" From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 21 06:30:17 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 07:30:17 -0500 Subject: Minix Message-ID: <0IQB00DTO1CAKVF2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Minix > From: Huw Davies > Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:10:36 +1100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > >On 18/11/2005, at 2:31 AM, woodelf wrote: > >> Allison wrote: >> >>> Minix on PDP11, Not that I know of. It would be interesting. >>> >>> >> Well I think Minix #1, would be easy to port, but why? You got >> real unix. > >Because you can :-) Exactly! >Don't forget XINU which was designed to run on PDP-11s. > >> It just proves how effective code on the 11 could be. Too bad you >> can't buy >> a pdp-11 cpu chip for $2.49 like a 8088. I take it is still rather >> pricy to put together >> a basic 11. Any body know how much? > >I haven't looked, but I would have thought that you could buy >something like a PDP-11/03 for not a lot of money (assuming that the >11/03 is what I think it is - small Qbus system, yes?) > >Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Yes, there is also 11/2 and 11/23 than usualy can be found cheap. At the single board level there is the 11/21 falcon card. If one wishes to build from chip level defunct VT240/241, HSC50, RQDXn controllers and a few other DEC bits can supply a T-11 chip (base PDP11 on a chip). Allison From dave04a at dunfield.com Mon Nov 21 02:34:26 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 08:34:26 +0000 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: <200511210604.jAL64G8w010493@lots.reanimators.org> References: <20051118152241.HCEO14871.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> (Dave Dunfield's message of "Fri, 18 Nov 2005 11:16:47 +0000") Message-ID: <20051121124024.GYR29421.berlinr.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> > How does ImageDisk develop its list of sector numbers? > > I ask because it seems to think this stiffy has 70 tracks, with 17 > sectors per track, with the sectors numbered 0, 11, 6, 1, 12, 7, > 2, 13, 8, 3, 14, 9, 4, 15, 10, 5, 17 on the even tracks and 8, 3, 14, > 9, 4, 15, 10, 5, 0, 11, 6, 1, 12, 7, 2, 13, 17 on the odd tracks. > (These derived from IMDU output after a run.) With interleave set to "As original", ImageDisk will wait for a sector index pulse, then begin reading sector ID fields and storing them until another sector index pulse occurs. It would appear that you disks are interleaved 3:!, and that the interleave is offset by 1/2 revolution on the odd tracks (not all that uncommon - it means that the disk has 1/2 revolution to step before it has to wait for the next revolution. This can make disks noticably faster to read when reading sequential tracks. If you like, you can set interleave to "Best Guess" which will regenerate the calculated interleave from the first sector on each track. You can also pick an interleave if you want to change it., however either of these choices would likely result in disks which are slower to access than your original. > Read into C:\FRANK\WORK\V2B.IMD > Interex CSL/150 volume 2 from master > 0/0: Unable to determine interleave > : 250k DD - 17 sectors of 256 bytes - G1:24 G2:37 > : Read error <17> NoSector - Reanalyzing > : Unable to determine interleave > : Read error <17> NoSector - Unavailable > 0/1: Single-sided > 4/0: Unable to determine interleave > 0/0: Single-step > 1/0: Unable to determine interleave > : Read error <17> NoSector - Reanalyzing > : Unable to determine interleave > : Read error <17> NoSector - Unavailable > > It continues much like this through subsequent tracks (gronk, gronk), > which takes a while, but this may be what I get for asking it to do a > full analysis. When it says "unable to determine interleave", it means that it could not read the sector id's reliably in the same order on multiple attempts. Imagedisk will read the disk for several revolutions, storing any new sector IDs that it finds. If it figures out that it is not seeing all of the sector IDs on each revolution, it generates this message. Most likelt the disk is marginal to read with the PC controller. Full analysis will cause it to perform quite slowly as it reanalyzes the disk "from scratch" on every track. Full analysis is very rarely required. It would appear that your PC controller is unable to read the last sector on the disk (17) - also not uncommon, many systems use gaps etc. in their formats which are outside the tolerances of the PC controller. The good news is that PC's vary widely, and you will likely find that another machine may read the whole disk, or it may be able read different sectors (in which case you can use IMDU to merge the two images to get a complete one). Out of a dozen or so machines that I tested ImageDisk with, only a couple of them were able to read all of the disks I've been able to make work. I've also found that slowing the drive a bit can help with some of these. See the notes in the document and in the online help. > Yes, I should probably sit down and read the manual a bit before > charging in like this. Yes, please do - I have also provided fairly extensive online help at the touch of the F1 button. Spend some time with it, as there is a lot of information there, and you will not get the most out of ImageDisk if you do not understand it. I designed ImageDisk to allow me to archive disks that I had trouble with by other means, and it has a lot of fairly technical options - it is not a "click OK" type program. -- A general note to everyone about ImageDisk "support" -- In one of my "day jobs", I produce and sell development tools for various small/embedded processors - 80+% of my technical support consists of cutting and pasting pages from the documentation and sending it back to people. In most cases, it's obvious that they have not even "cracked the cover" of the manual, since several of the most common questions are answered on the first page. Since ImageDisk is being made available as free software, I am not going to be overly inclined to do this on an ongong basis for it. I know nothing can overcome he urge to fire up a new toy "right away' (I do it!), however when doing so brings questions, please refer to the documentaion and help files (in detail) before coming to me. Also note that there are *MANY* disk formats which cannot be read by the PC floppy controller. If ImageDisk just can't seen to digest your favorite systems disks (or even your less favorite ones) - there's not much point coming to me about it, as chances are that it simply is not possible. For other issues, reasonable suggestions, legimate bugs etc. I am here and am happy to help. Regards, Dave Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 21 09:50:15 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:50:15 +0000 Subject: OS9 login / shutdown Message-ID: <4381ECB7.6050207@yahoo.co.uk> I've just come across my first OS9 system, and know absolutely nothing about OS9 other than that it's vaguely UNIX-like. Before I try hooking the hard disk up and seeing if it actually works, obvious questions follow: 1) I assume there's a login process. Of course I don't know any account details for the system; are there any tricks to breaking in as there often are with old UNIX systems? 2) Assuming I can't log in at this stage, is it possible to cleanly shut the system down? e.g. some magic keypress or login name (as there is with Apollo machines) 3) If I can login somehow, how do I then shut the system down properly? Is there a shutdown command in OS9, or is it something else entirely? On the plus side, the interface between host and disk unit is SASI, so there's a chance I can do a raw backup of the drive via a modern system. On the minus side, the physical drive is an ST506 type via an OMTI bridge board, so I can't easily go from raw backup to working system without proper low-level format utils (which I don't have, although I'm still sorting through floppies that came in the same haul) Of course all of this assumes that a) the hard drive isn't toast already and b) that the hard drive which came in the pile of stuff actually belongs with this system in the first place :) ta Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 21 10:01:36 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:01:36 +0000 Subject: Taking photos of PCBs / wiki question Message-ID: <4381EF60.6050701@yahoo.co.uk> I have a feeling that a while back someone was going to update the classiccmp wiki with tips about taking photos of PCBs. a) Did it ever happen and, b) Where's the wiki gone!? www.classiccmp.org/wiki appears empty of any information! I've got a few boards I'd like to grab photos of now I'm back in the UK and thought I'd educate myself a little first :-) (results in the past have been somewhat mixed) cheers Jules From tlindner at ix.netcom.com Mon Nov 21 11:28:07 2005 From: tlindner at ix.netcom.com (tim lindner) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 09:28:07 -0800 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT Message-ID: <1h6de39.1uo5908fp0ockM%tlindner@ix.netcom.com> In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate? After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here. -- tim lindner tlindner at ix.netcom.com Bright From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Mon Nov 21 11:45:06 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 11:45:06 -0600 Subject: TK50 questions Message-ID: Well, I got a TK50 drive off eBay, and I have some questions about it. First, is there a (transition panel/bulkhead/distribution panel/whatever you want to call it) connector for it? I'd really like to use that if possible. It came with a Micro-PDP11 style hookup, which is just the TK50, ribbon cable, and the controller that goes to the drive. Secondly, how do you clean these drives? Is there any procedure I should use to clean the unit before installation? As always, your anwers are much appreciated. TIA Julian From emu at ecubics.com Mon Nov 21 11:58:08 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:58:08 -0700 Subject: TK50 questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43820AB0.4030005@ecubics.com> Wolfe, Julian wrote: > Secondly, how do you clean these drives? Is there any procedure I should > use to clean the unit before installation? > > As always, your anwers are much appreciated. Try : google, tk50, vaccum cleaner ;-) Anyway, there is a FAQ from NetBSD too: http://www.jp.netbsd.org/Documentation/Hardware/Machines/DEC/vax/tk50.list Cheers From healyzh at aracnet.com Mon Nov 21 12:45:18 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:45:18 -0800 Subject: TK50 questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: >Secondly, how do you clean these drives? Is there any procedure I should >use to clean the unit before installation? I take the drive apart and use tape head cleaning stuff from "Rat Shack" on it. It's a *lot* easier to do this with the TK50 than it is the TZ30 :^) Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Nov 21 13:03:31 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:03:31 -0600 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <1h6de39.1uo5908fp0ockM%tlindner@ix.netcom.com> References: <1h6de39.1uo5908fp0ockM%tlindner@ix.netcom.com> Message-ID: <43821A03.5090409@pacbell.net> tim lindner wrote: > In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate? > > After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here. > Here are some bounds and data points. The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation (circa 1964). I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa 1975). Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- instead it used "P.". Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention. From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 21 13:32:07 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 14:32:07 -0500 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT Message-ID: <0IQB00JP1KV8VTR4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT > From: Jim Battle > Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:03:31 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >tim lindner wrote: >> In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate? >> >> After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here. >> > >Here are some bounds and data points. > >The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation (circa 1964). > >I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa 1975). > >Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- instead it >used "P.". > >Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention. > > From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. The ? was adopted by convention from the fact that early MS basic (MITS BASIC) the ? was also the same value as the token for print. Most of the non-compiled 8bit basics were tokenized in memory for execution and storage and when "LIST"ed were detokenized to list as Basic we know. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 21 13:45:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 11:45:46 -0800 Subject: Intel 80130 OSP Message-ID: <200511211145460213.3E5E6875@10.0.0.252> Is anyone aware of a single commercial system, save for an Intel Multibus development board, that incorprated the 80130-2 OSP chip? Cheers, Chuck From bob_lafleur at technologist.com Mon Nov 21 14:18:02 2005 From: bob_lafleur at technologist.com (Bob Lafleur) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:18:02 -0500 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <43821A03.5090409@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200511212026.jALKQ8ji057325@keith.ezwind.net> > From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. DEC's BASIC PLUS used & instead of ? to mean Print. From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Nov 21 14:26:52 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 14:26:52 -0600 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <0IQB00JP1KV8VTR4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQB00JP1KV8VTR4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <43822D8C.8070009@pacbell.net> Allison wrote: >>Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT >> From: Jim Battle >> Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:03:31 -0600 >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> >>tim lindner wrote: >> >>>In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate? >>> >>>After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here. >>> >> >>Here are some bounds and data points. >> >>The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation (circa 1964). >> >>I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa 1975). >> >>Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- instead it >>used "P.". >> >>Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention. >> >>From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. > > > The ? was adopted by convention from the fact that early MS basic > (MITS BASIC) the ? was also the same value as the token for print. > Most of the non-compiled 8bit basics were tokenized in memory for > execution and storage and when "LIST"ed were detokenized to list as > Basic we know. > > Allison Allison, that seems unlikely. Later versions of microsoft basic certainly didn't use any value lower than 0x80 for tokens. Even if you could find a few characters in the "live" portion of the ascii table that didn't lead to ambiguous parsing, I can't think of a good reason why they'd do it -- there was enough room at 0x80 and above, and not enough unused values below 0x80, so why have two lookup tables when one would do? It would seem much easier to have special case where '?' got mapped to the token for PRINT. OK, trying to be less speculative, I looked at the binary for ALTAIR BASIC VERSION 3.2 [EIGHT-K VERSION] that is included with Rich Cini's Altair emulator. At the end is the list of the statement keywords. In memory each keyword abuts the next, and the boundary between keywords is marked by setting the msb of the byte. Here is the table in order: END FOR NEXT DATA INPUT DIM READ LET GOTO RUN IF RESTORE GOSUB RETURN REM STOP OUT ON NULL WAIT DEF POKE PRINT CONT LIST CLEAR CLOAD CSAVE NEW TAB( Since there no room for storing a token value after each item (I know it is possible that that mapping is held elsewhere, but it seems unlikely), these keywords very likely have consecutive token values. Elsewhere in the binary, near the beginning, is a similar table for the functions (FN, SPC, NOT, AND, OR, VAL, CHR, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, FRE, SIN, COS, TAN, PEEK, etc, but also including THEN, STEP). From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Mon Nov 21 14:55:17 2005 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 12:55:17 -0800 Subject: Cooling and leaks; was: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511160845330521.23F9A799@10.0.0.252> References: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511160845330521.23F9A799@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/16/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I can't ever remember seeing a water leak in the machine room. The Bryant > 6603 disks (and one very memorable 808 drive) would leak hydraulic fluid, > however. Made a terrible mess. I've avoided the potential leak hazard by keeping the water systems underpressured at the computer. I've got a pump that can push water 10 ft vertical that's located about 15 feet below the computer. If I get a leak more than 10ft above the pump, it sucks air in rather than squirting out water. A slow leak shows up as bubbles in a clear section of the hose (and as bubbles in the reservoir, since the surface tension reducer is soapy). The drawbacks of this system are that you need to prime it, and that a bad enough leak will disrupt the coolant flow, so you need to monitor the flow rate or have a decent thermal shutdown mechanism. You need that in case of pump failure, anyway. Eric From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Nov 21 15:09:20 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:09:20 +0000 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <43822D8C.8070009@pacbell.net> References: <0IQB00JP1KV8VTR4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <43822D8C.8070009@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <43823780.6010403@gjcp.net> Jim Battle wrote: > Allison, that seems unlikely. Later versions of microsoft basic > certainly didn't use any value lower than 0x80 for tokens. Even if you > could find a few characters in the "live" portion of the ascii table > that didn't lead to ambiguous parsing, I can't think of a good reason > why they'd do it -- there was enough room at 0x80 and above, and not > enough unused values below 0x80, so why have two lookup tables when one > would do? Aha - didn't the last letter of each keyword have bit 7 set? That would mean that it would be 63+128 = 191 Just a thought. Gordon. From Richard.Cini at wachovia.com Mon Nov 21 15:18:07 2005 From: Richard.Cini at wachovia.com (Cini, Richard) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:18:07 -0500 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT Message-ID: That was to permit parsing the table for the end of the keyword. Although I haven't investigated other BASICs, I know for a fact that Commodore BASIC used that method. Supposedly, all of the micro BASICs were compiled from the same source tree using a bunch of #if/#endif-like switches. ISTR that Microsoft used some sort of intermediate language or series of complex macros to facilitate being to compile a version of BASIC for almost any machine. Indeed, ASCII(63) is the question mark character. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gordon JC Pearce Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 4:09 PM To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT Jim Battle wrote: > Allison, that seems unlikely. Later versions of microsoft basic > certainly didn't use any value lower than 0x80 for tokens. Even if you > could find a few characters in the "live" portion of the ascii table > that didn't lead to ambiguous parsing, I can't think of a good reason > why they'd do it -- there was enough room at 0x80 and above, and not > enough unused values below 0x80, so why have two lookup tables when one > would do? Aha - didn't the last letter of each keyword have bit 7 set? That would mean that it would be 63+128 = 191 Just a thought. Gordon. From bkr at WildHareComputers.com Mon Nov 21 15:22:04 2005 From: bkr at WildHareComputers.com (Bruce Ray) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 14:22:04 -0700 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT References: <1h6de39.1uo5908fp0ockM%tlindner@ix.netcom.com> <43821A03.5090409@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <011f01c5eee1$b8e784c0$367cfea9@newhare> Another data point: Data General BASIC in 1969 used '?' as equivalent to the PRINT command. Another data point: this was before Microsoft BASIC. Bruce Ray ...preserving the Data General legacy: www.NovasAreForever.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Battle" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Monday, November 21, 2005 12:03 PM Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT > tim lindner wrote: >> In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate? >> >> After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here. >> > > Here are some bounds and data points. > > The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation (circa > 1964). > > I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa 1975). > > Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- instead > it used "P.". > > Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention. > > From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. > From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 21 15:40:47 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:40:47 -0800 Subject: Cooling and leaks; was: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: References: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511160845330521.23F9A799@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511211340470135.3EC7B4E9@10.0.0.252> On 11/21/2005 at 12:55 PM Eric J Korpela wrote: >The drawbacks of this system are that you need to prime it, and that a bad >enough leak will disrupt the coolant flow, so you need to monitor the flow >rate or have a decent thermal shutdown mechanism. You need that in case of >pump failure, anyway. Why not simply use a standard sump pump? Most such pumps can push a 15 or 20 foot head and don't need to be primed. From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Mon Nov 21 09:58:44 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 07:58:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: Looking for early XENIX stuff In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20051121155844.26306.qmail@web61012.mail.yahoo.com> the Lisa distro certainly was welcome Adrian, but there's considerable interest in Xenix for other micros also. There's a revived interest in the Tandy 6000 for instance. And I hope Robert will keep us abreast of any discoveries ;). --- Adrian Graham wrote: > Hi Rob, > > You obviously missed my discovery of a couple of > weeks ago :) I've attached > it onto this message; hope you can make use of it! > I'm going to try and > install it onto a spare ProFile I've got lying > around, assuming I've got an > old Mac capable of writing 400k disks.... > > Cheers > > A > > On 15/11/05 17:50, "Robert Ferguson" > wrote: > > > Hi folks, > > > > I'm looking for XENIX installation disks, > documentation, and other > > assorted paraphernalia for both the Apple Lisa and > the Altos 586 > > series of machines. Actually, any early (pre-1985) > XENIX stuff is of > > interest to me, but those two machines are the > ones I'm working on at > > the moment. > > > > If you have anything that you'd be willing to > either copy or let go, > > let me know off-list, and we can work out the > details. If there's > > interest, I'll summarize what I find to the list. > > > > Thanks very much, > > Rob Ferguson > > rob at ferguson labs dot com > > > > > > > > __________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From don.brown4 at sympatico.ca Sun Nov 20 18:19:03 2005 From: don.brown4 at sympatico.ca (Don Brown) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:19:03 -0600 Subject: Heath ET-3400 Trainer Simulator SW Message-ID: <001901c5ee31$2e974180$06f8e2d1@pavilion> How do I go about getting a copy of the simulator. How much will it cost. Don Brown Ontario From ics65 at sbcglobal.net Mon Nov 21 12:27:28 2005 From: ics65 at sbcglobal.net (George Wiegand) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:27:28 -0500 Subject: DEC RK07K DC Specs.? Message-ID: <007801c5eec9$3a748880$aeb8fa44@ics63szde1vn50> Any one know the Specifications (inside hub diameter, outside diameter, thickness) of the DEC RKO7K DC Disk Pack Platters? Thanks for your time, George Wiegand ICS65 at SBCglobal.net From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Mon Nov 21 11:41:16 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 11:41:16 -0600 Subject: TK50 questions Message-ID: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F10A23A67@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Well, I got a TK50 drive off eBay, and I have some questions about it. First, is there a (transition panel/bulkhead/distribution panel/whatever you want to call it) connector for it? I'd really like to use that if possible. It came with a Micro-PDP11 style hookup, which is just the TK50, ribbon cable, and the controller that goes to the drive. Secondly, how do you clean these drives? Is there any procedure I should use to clean the unit before installation? As always, your anwers are much appreciated. TIA Julian From johnny.billquist at softjar.se Mon Nov 21 13:13:35 2005 From: johnny.billquist at softjar.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:13:35 +0100 Subject: TK50 questions In-Reply-To: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F10A23A67@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> References: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F10A23A67@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Message-ID: <43821C5F.2040304@softjar.se> Wolfe, Julian wrote: > Well, I got a TK50 drive off eBay, and I have some questions about it. What do you want to know, apart from the fact that it probably won't work before you clean it? :-) > First, is there a (transition panel/bulkhead/distribution panel/whatever > you want to call it) connector for it? I'd really like to use that if > possible. It came with a Micro-PDP11 style hookup, which is just the > TK50, ribbon cable, and the controller that goes to the drive. Yes there is. Atleast if you have the Unibus version. But then you also have the TK50 in a separate box with it's own power supply, and the cable between the machine and the TK50 is a thick cable with DB37 at each end (hmm, come to think of it, it's probably not a DB37, the connector is higher than a DB). > Secondly, how do you clean these drives? Is there any procedure I > should use to clean the unit before installation? Remove the top rear (3 screws). Then you'll see the head, and a plastic piece in front of the head. Remove that plastic piece (1 screw). Unhook the catcher and back out the tape lead so that you get access to the head. Clean it with something suitable. Reverse for assembly. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.3/172 - Release Date: 2005-11-15 From tiziano.garuti at tin.it Mon Nov 21 15:52:46 2005 From: tiziano.garuti at tin.it (Tiziano) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:52:46 +0100 Subject: PeCos One References: <200511211800.jALI06s9092974@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <004f01c5eee5$e87c5130$0100a8c0@MILENA> > Jay West wrote.... > I noticed the HP standard software systems manual on your site is > apparently > identical to the one on Jeff Moffat's 2100 site? Did it get copied from > there? No, I don't know mr. Jeff Moffat, I received that manual via email (the sender is on the web page). Tix From Mark.Brennan at ie.fujitsu.com Mon Nov 21 15:31:34 2005 From: Mark.Brennan at ie.fujitsu.com (Brennan Mark) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:31:34 -0000 Subject: brochure/flier request. Message-ID: <2ACC3F56AA17DD4290D82232B02E569F5A58EF@wwmessm11> Hi, I am a systems engineer with Fujitsu in Ireland and I have a request I am looking for some help with. My request is some what strange to say the least. Since I joined Wang Computer in 1988 I have been collecting Product Brochures on various computer systems it started of with Wang Vs server systems. For the last few years I have been trying to collect old product/info/fact/marketing brochures on various computer systems with very little luck, as in the future I hope to set-up a web site with details and overviews of them. I have managed to collect some information on, DG/HP/Wang/Netframe/NCR/Tandem/DEC/Sequent/SGI/Siemens-Fujitsu/Pyramid/Apoll o/Cray/KSR/Ncube/ICL/Compaq etc, I was wondering whether or not you may have or know where I maybe able to get my hands on any old product brochures/fact sheets etc on any of the supercomputer/workstations/systems/servers, I know that my request is at best strange but any help would be great. Anything that is sent to me I will copy and return the originals if people still need them that is. Regard and thanks again markb. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 21 15:54:12 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:54:12 -0500 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <43822D8C.8070009@pacbell.net> References: <0IQB00JP1KV8VTR4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <43822D8C.8070009@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <43824204.6080405@bellatlantic.net> Jim Battle wrote: > Allison wrote: > >>> Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT >>> From: Jim Battle >>> Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:03:31 -0600 >>> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >>> >>> >>> tim lindner wrote: >>> >>>> In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate? >>>> >>>> After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here. >>>> >>> >>> Here are some bounds and data points. >>> >>> The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation >>> (circa 1964). >>> >>> I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa 1975). >>> >>> Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- >>> instead it used "P.". >>> >>> Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention. >>> >>> From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. >> >> >> >> The ? was adopted by convention from the fact that early MS basic >> (MITS BASIC) the ? was also the same value as the token for print. >> Most of the non-compiled 8bit basics were tokenized in memory for >> execution and storage and when "LIST"ed were detokenized to list as >> Basic we know. >> >> Allison > > > Allison, that seems unlikely. Later versions of microsoft basic > certainly didn't use any value lower than 0x80 for tokens. Even if you > could find a few characters in the "live" portion of the ascii table > that didn't lead to ambiguous parsing, I can't think of a good reason > why they'd do it -- there was enough room at 0x80 and above, and not > enough unused values below 0x80, so why have two lookup tables when one > would do? > > It would seem much easier to have special case where '?' got mapped to > the token for PRINT. > > OK, trying to be less speculative, I looked at the binary for > > ALTAIR BASIC VERSION 3.2 [EIGHT-K VERSION] > > that is included with Rich Cini's Altair emulator. At the end is the > list of the statement keywords. In memory each keyword abuts the next, > and the boundary between keywords is marked by setting the msb of the > byte. Here is the table in order: > > END > FOR > NEXT > DATA > INPUT > DIM > READ > LET > GOTO > RUN > IF > RESTORE > GOSUB > RETURN > REM > STOP > OUT > ON > NULL > WAIT > DEF > POKE > PRINT > CONT > LIST > CLEAR > CLOAD > CSAVE > NEW > TAB( > > Since there no room for storing a token value after each item (I know it > is possible that that mapping is held elsewhere, but it seems unlikely), > these keywords very likely have consecutive token values. > > Elsewhere in the binary, near the beginning, is a similar table for the > functions (FN, SPC, NOT, AND, OR, VAL, CHR, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, FRE, SIN, > COS, TAN, PEEK, etc, but also including THEN, STEP). Ever look at the saved files or in memory programs? I also have 3.2 (the first no so buggy one). Allison From trag at io.com Sun Nov 20 20:14:12 2005 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 20:14:12 -0600 Subject: Shipping between US and Canada In-Reply-To: <200511201800.jAKI0baS084413@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511201800.jAKI0baS084413@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Allison wrote: > >> Anyone with expereince shipping USA to Canada? >> >> I'm talking small stuff, some eproms or manuals maybe a board. >> around the USA I'd just pack a box and off to the post office. >> >> Suggestions? >> >> Allison If the item(s) are under 1 or 2 pounds, then Air Letter Post is the way to go. But you can use the post office's on-line postage calculator to find the best method for you. Just go to www.usps.com and choose "Calculate Postage" from the bar near the top of the page. Fill in US Post Office form 2976 which is the USPS Customs Declaration. It's a self adhesive form with a green part that stays on the package and a white part that is torn off by the shipping post office. I keep a few on hand for when I need to mail stuff to Canada. Two ounces or less (a few EPROMs) is $.85, IIRC and they claim 4 - 7 days for delivery. Jeff Walther From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Nov 21 16:16:27 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:16:27 GMT Subject: DEC 861B and 871B power controllers In-Reply-To: Gordon JC Pearce "Re: DEC 861B and 871B power controllers" (Nov 19, 16:35) References: <10511191520.ZM7356@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <437F546D.1010709@gjcp.net> Message-ID: <10511212216.ZM12357@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 19 2005, 16:35, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > Pete Turnbull wrote: > > I'm looking for a spare 871B power controller > I've got an 872B with a broken local switch, which I was kind of > planning on using. I could be persuaded to part with it though. Let me > fix it first and make sure it works properly, unless you're particularly > keen to do it yourself. OK. > > I might have a spare 861B (that's the larger 12-outlet 16A 240V > > version) to trade if that helps. > > Understanding and geeky though my girlfriend might be, running ceeform > plugs in the computer room might be looked upon... unfavourably. I recognise that feeling ;-) Glasgow? Hmm... maybe. If you feel like being nearer to York, I still have that listing paper :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Nov 21 16:13:51 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:13:51 GMT Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) "Re: Acorn Econet Fileserver" (Nov 20, 18:29) References: Message-ID: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 20 2005, 18:29, Tony Duell wrote: > > I forget whether it's the mark that's longer than the space, or the > > other way round, but in essence the longer interval gives the hardware > > Ah, does the TX output change on one edge of the clock and the Rx input > sample on the opposite edge, or something? Something like that. I forget the details. > The E20 hard disk unit contains the standard Host Adapter card linked to > a 20NByte SCSI hard disk. That was the normal thing to link to the 34 pin > connector on the E01. It sohuld be relatively easy to put one of those > together... Is there any restriction on the hard disk size? What would > happen if I linked up a unit of several hundred Mbyte capacity? Would it > just not work, would it only see it as a 20Mhyte unit, or would it see > the whole thing? There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is. More than 20MB, for sure. Might be 500MB, maybe less. I know that stacking filestores use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house. > Accordign to the manual, there is a utility disk for this unit, and maybe > a service disk too (it's not clear whether this is one disk or two). The > former contained the program to format the winchester, and is therefore > somewhat importent. Yes, two 3.5" floppies. And I just happen to have a set :-) One is for use with a Master 128 called "M128-FSUTILS" and the other is for use with a Compact and labelled "COMPACT-FSUTILS". They're 640K, like ADFS L format, but the actual disk directory etc is somewhat different, and called "Filestore Format". So I can copy them for you if you send me a couple of 3.5" DD floppies. I've never tried making a teledisk image; that *might* work. They're double-density, 256 bytes/sector, 16 sectors/track. Once upon a time I made a couple of normal ADFS copies, so I can see that the content seems to be most (all?) of the Master Series Welcome disk, plus the normal Econet library programs, the utilities that come with Level 3 for copying between filing systems and cataloging multiple directories, Level 3 library programs like the formatter, backup/restore, netmonitor, etc, some updated 1770 DFS ROM images, printer drivers, etc. > The latter ran on a BBC Master and contained various > test programs. There was a special test box for Econet testing that > plugged into the econet ports on the Master and on the unit-under-test > (here, the Filestore), and could source a clock and simulate a > poor-quality line, both contrlled by lines on the user port. Amazingly I > have this test box, I don't have the software. Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was around when Beebs were. > The chap who sold this to me included a couple of such Sony > drives, alas missing the front panels and eject buttons. I now have to > try to find those. The missing mounting hardware is less of a problem, > as are the missing cables. Those probably came from a Master Compact or an Archimedes -- they used the drives without the bezels. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 21 16:27:14 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:27:14 +0000 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <43821A03.5090409@pacbell.net> References: <1h6de39.1uo5908fp0ockM%tlindner@ix.netcom.com> <43821A03.5090409@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <438249C2.7060904@yahoo.co.uk> Jim Battle wrote: > Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- > instead it used "P.". BBC BASIC used P. too, although the manual in front of me suggests that it wasn't until version 4 (circa 1985 probably) - I don't think prior versions supported token abbreviations (version 3 may have; this was produced purely for the US market). The '?' token was used by BBC BASIC for peek and poke as I recall. Print is listed in the manual as token #241. (BBC BASIC was probably somewhat unconventional though in that it had functions and procedures, local variables, built-in assembler etc. and so was rather more advanced than most other BASICs around at the time) cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 21 16:32:51 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:32:51 +0000 Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <4381ECB7.6050207@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4381ECB7.6050207@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <43824B13.2070501@yahoo.co.uk> Jules Richardson wrote: > > I've just come across my first OS9 system, and know absolutely nothing > about OS9 other than that it's vaguely UNIX-like. Before I try hooking > the hard disk up and seeing if it actually works, obvious questions follow: Oh and grrrr that's a real OS9 machine too - *not* a Mac running OS release 9! (I'm having trouble in google filtering the Mac junk out from the stuff I'm interested in...) cheers :) Jules From jplist at kiwigeek.com Mon Nov 21 16:24:04 2005 From: jplist at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:24:04 -0600 (CST) Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? Message-ID: Hey there folks; Decided to move into the CP/M world a little with my Vector Graphic machine, which is expecting CP/M 2.0. I was curious what the legal status was these days? Since I find source code for CP/M, MP/M and so on online, I'm guessing the status is fairly free, but I wanted to check. I can also find CP/M 2.0 online - but I don't believe I have any way of producing a bootable 5.25" floppy disk of it. If the OS is in a free-as-in-speech state, would it be possible for someone to whip me up a 5.25" disk and ship it out to me (shipping paid for, of course) for the Vector? The Vector suggests 2.0, but it appears that 2.2 is the superior release of the 2 series, I'm hoping that this will work on the machine. My thanks to all; JP From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 21 16:51:45 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:51:45 +0000 Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> References: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <43824F81.9010703@yahoo.co.uk> Pete Turnbull wrote: > On Nov 20 2005, 18:29, Tony Duell wrote: >> Is there any restriction on the hard disk size? > > There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is. More than 20MB, > for sure. Might be 500MB, maybe less. I know that stacking filestores > use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and > supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house. They didn't just stack them (as was intended by design)? Not practical for the ST506 units I suppose is it'd only support two drives, but the SCSI ones I think could be piled up to the limit of the SCSI bus - ie. 6 devices. 360MB would not be at all bad for the time, considering the nature of the data which tended to be stored on them. >> Accordign to the manual, there is a utility disk for this unit, and > maybe >> a service disk too (it's not clear whether this is one disk or two). > The >> former contained the program to format the winchester, and is > therefore >> somewhat importent. > > Yes, two 3.5" floppies. And I just happen to have a set :-) One is > for use with a Master 128 called "M128-FSUTILS" Hmm, if you can ever do a raw image dump of that, shout! :-) I've got a level-3 server hard disk which I can't get in to as I don't know any passwords; I think I can get around this with the utils disk, except that it isn't online anywhere... The drive in question is another one used internally by Acorn, so it's possible that it has some interesting stuff on it. I can boot it via a Master Turbo and Winchester unit hooked up to a simple Econet, I just then can't do a lot apart from shut it down again (because as you say the filesystem is something other than ADFS). It may have been emptied of user data for all I know, but I'd like to check *before* the disk keels over :-) [Econet test box] >> Amazingly I have this test box, I don't have the software. > > Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was > around when Beebs were. Is that this critter? : http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/ETB.html cheers Jules From emu at ecubics.com Mon Nov 21 16:59:42 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:59:42 -0700 Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <43824B13.2070501@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4381ECB7.6050207@yahoo.co.uk> <43824B13.2070501@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4382515E.5040703@ecubics.com> Jules Richardson wrote: > Jules Richardson wrote: > Oh and grrrr that's a real OS9 machine too - *not* a Mac running OS > release 9! (I'm having trouble in google filtering the Mac junk out from > the stuff I'm interested in...) did you try to google for "os-9" ? That's actually the name of it ;-) From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 21 17:10:33 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:10:33 -0500 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? Message-ID: <0IQB00FNUUZ83332@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? > From: JP Hindin > Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 16:24:04 -0600 (CST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > >Hey there folks; > >Decided to move into the CP/M world a little with my Vector Graphic >machine, which is expecting CP/M 2.0. > >I was curious what the legal status was these days? Since I find source >code for CP/M, MP/M and so on online, I'm guessing the status is fairly >free, but I wanted to check. >I can also find CP/M 2.0 online - but I don't believe I have any way of >producing a bootable 5.25" floppy disk of it. The copyright is still valid but the owners have released it for non-profit use. >If the OS is in a free-as-in-speech state, would it be possible for >someone to whip me up a 5.25" disk and ship it out to me (shipping paid >for, of course) for the Vector? If you look around there may be a copy for that machine and a way to get it to you. >The Vector suggests 2.0, but it appears that 2.2 is the superior release >of the 2 series, I'm hoping that this will work on the machine. Nominally 2.0 doesn't really show on radar. Almost all releases of V2 are really 2.2 and 2.2 is interchangeable upgrade (fewer bugs). The real issue is getting a boot able disk and Vector did make a few machines so copies are possible. Allison From tradde at excite.com Mon Nov 21 17:09:48 2005 From: tradde at excite.com (Tim) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:09:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: OS9 login / shutdown Message-ID: <20051121230948.3E89B3DF7@xprdmailfe6.nwk.excite.com> --- On Mon 11/21, Jules Richardson < julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk > wrote: From: Jules Richardson [mailto: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk] To: General at excite.com, Discussion at excite.com, UNEXPECTED_DATA_AFTER_ADDRESS at .SYNTAX-ERROR. Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:32:51 +0000 Subject: Re: OS9 login / shutdown Jules Richardson wrote:> > I've just come across my first OS9 system, and know absolutely nothing > about OS9 other than that it's vaguely UNIX-like. Before I try hooking > the hard disk up and seeing if it actually works, obvious questions follow:Oh and grrrr that's a real OS9 machine too - *not* a Mac running OS release 9! (I'm having trouble in google filtering the Mac junk out from the stuff I'm interested in...)cheers :) I am curious as to what type of system it is. _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web! From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 21 17:35:36 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 15:35:36 -0800 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: <0IQB00FNUUZ83332@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQB00FNUUZ83332@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511211535360991.3F30D624@10.0.0.252> On 11/21/2005 at 6:10 PM Allison wrote: >>If the OS is in a free-as-in-speech state, would it be possible for >>someone to whip me up a 5.25" disk and ship it out to me (shipping paid >>for, of course) for the Vector? > >If you look around there may be a copy for that machine and a way to >get it to you. Exactly what model Vector do you have? Some took hard-sectored diskettes. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 21 17:51:31 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:51:31 +0000 Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <20051121230948.3E89B3DF7@xprdmailfe6.nwk.excite.com> References: <20051121230948.3E89B3DF7@xprdmailfe6.nwk.excite.com> Message-ID: <43825D83.9070803@yahoo.co.uk> Tim wrote: > > --- On Mon 11/21, Jules Richardson < julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk > wrote: > From: Jules Richardson [mailto: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk] > To: General at excite.com, Discussion at excite.com, UNEXPECTED_DATA_AFTER_ADDRESS at .SYNTAX-ERROR. > Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:32:51 +0000 > Subject: Re: OS9 login / shutdown > > Jules Richardson wrote:> > I've just come across my first OS9 system > > I am curious as to what type of system it is. It's a 68008 coprocessor made by Cumana (the people famous for making disk drive units for the BBC micro) and uses a BBC B as the host for I/O. Unlike other BBC coprocessors, it plugs straight into the BBC's CPU socket (the BBC's 6502 CPU then lives on the Cumana board too). It's got a SASI and floppy interface on board, as well as a 50-pin expansion connector. I've only ever heard of one other survivor of these, and that was a few years ago (I'm trying to dig out emails now to see who it was) - I believe the owner only had the board too, not any of the software or boot ROM to go with it. I don't know of any docs surviving anywhere. Presumably Cumana did quite a bit of work on the OS too in order to get it to interact with the BBC hardware for keyboard and video I/O... A 'strings' dump on a modern system from the ROM image gives the following: 68008 on the BBC Version 1.0 (C) Vivaway 1985 OS9 - OS-9/68000 from Cumana 68008 Upgrade Board for the BBC from Cumana According to Google, Vivaway were responsible for UK marketing of OS-9. 68k processors for the BBC are few and far between. Torch made one which enjoyed reasonable success and would run UNIX. The only other board I know of was called Casper (the company name eludes me right now) but I don't even know of a single survivor there - I think it was aimed more as teaching aid and so there was no official OS release of any kind for it. Acorn themselves of course backed the Natsemi 32k chips during that time period rather than any of Motorola's offerings, and then eventually moved solely to 32 bit via the ARM CPU. cheers Jules From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Nov 21 17:57:21 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:57:21 GMT Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: Jules Richardson "Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT" (Nov 21, 22:27) References: <1h6de39.1uo5908fp0ockM%tlindner@ix.netcom.com> <43821A03.5090409@pacbell.net> <438249C2.7060904@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <10511212357.ZM12626@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 21 2005, 22:27, Jules Richardson wrote: > BBC BASIC used P. too, although the manual in front of me suggests that it > wasn't until version 4 (circa 1985 probably) - I don't think prior versions > supported token abbreviations (version 3 may have; this was produced purely > for the US market). No, all versions, from the original 1981 version, support abbreviations. > The '?' token was used by BBC BASIC for peek and poke as I recall. Yes, that's right. '?' for byte values, and '!' for word values. You could do interesting things with them. For example, ?&400=0 means poke zero into (hex)0400 but &400?1=0 means poke zero into the address 1 higher than &400 -- this is useful if you replace either the '1' or the '&400' in my example with a variable, and use it in a loop. Or set a variable to the address of some buffer or control block, and then fill specific entries in the control block with values: 800 DEF PROCdiskaccess 810 returncode=10:parm?drive:parm!1=buffer 820 IF format THEN PROCformatparms:GOTO 850 830 parm?5=3:IF rnotw THEN parm?6=&53 else parm?6=&4B 840 parm?7=track:parm?8=sector:parm?9=&21 850 A%=&7F:X%=parm:Y%=0:CALL OSWORD [ result code processing and display here ] 890 ENDPROC which is a piece of a disk sector editor program I wrote in November 1982 (according to the REMs at its head). That particular bit is the procedure to set up a parameter block at an address "parm" (defined further up the program) and call an OS routine called OSWORD which with 7F in A (and the address in X and Y, in this case it's in zero page) calls the routine that accesses the 8271 disk controller. "CALL" in BBC BASIC copies the variables A%, X%, and Y% into the obvious 6502 registers and does a JSR to the address following the "CALL" keyword. All of which has very little to do with '?' as shorthand for PRINT! -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Nov 21 18:17:20 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 00:17:20 GMT Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: Jules Richardson "Re: Acorn Econet Fileserver" (Nov 21, 22:51) References: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <43824F81.9010703@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <10511220017.ZM12686@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 21 2005, 22:51, Jules Richardson wrote: > Pete Turnbull wrote: > > There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is. More than 20MB, > > for sure. Might be 500MB, maybe less. I know that stacking filestores > > use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and > > supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house. > > They didn't just stack them (as was intended by design)? Yes, but there's a limit on the size of a single drive in ADFS. > > Yes, two 3.5" floppies. And I just happen to have a set :-) One is > > for use with a Master 128 called "M128-FSUTILS" > > Hmm, if you can ever do a raw image dump of that, shout! :-) I have an ADFS E copy of the contents which I could zip/tar if that's any help. Or if you have a spare DD 3.5" disk I can make a copy (I have some software to do that much). I think what you're really looking for is the NetMgr program. > [Econet test box] > >> Amazingly I have this test box, I don't have the software. > > > > Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was > > around when Beebs were. > > Is that this critter? : > > http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/ETB.html It is. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From doc at mdrconsult.com Mon Nov 21 19:06:43 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:06:43 -0600 Subject: Cooling and leaks; was: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511211340470135.3EC7B4E9@10.0.0.252> References: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511160845330521.23F9A799@10.0.0.252> <200511211340470135.3EC7B4E9@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <43826F23.8090203@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/21/2005 at 12:55 PM Eric J Korpela wrote: > > >>The drawbacks of this system are that you need to prime it, and that a bad >>enough leak will disrupt the coolant flow, so you need to monitor the flow >>rate or have a decent thermal shutdown mechanism. You need that in case of >>pump failure, anyway. > > > Why not simply use a standard sump pump? Most such pumps can push a 15 or > 20 foot head and don't need to be primed. I think that putting the computer higher than the pump can push is the point. If the computer's on the low-pressure side of the circuit, (the pump is *pulling* water through instead of *pushing* ) it would take a very large leak to get the system wet. It'll pull air into the water lines, instead of pushing water out into the electronics. Doc From charlesmorris at direcway.com Mon Nov 21 19:12:40 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:12:40 -0600 Subject: PDP-11/03 basic questions Message-ID: Today I powered up the "new" 11/03-L, with which I have absolutely no experience. The POWER OK light blinked slowly on and off for a while and then went out. Now it doesn't come on at all. The top card in the cage, though, has a row of red LED's and a large green one, all of which are lit. Power supply is H7861, cage is BA-11SA. The cards from top to bottom are: M8189 2 Mb Clearpoint memory card (don't see a model number) M8061 M7957 M8053 Dilog CQ 1610 card (what is it? Many 2861 PLCC chips in sockets) M8029 I didn't see a lot of 11/03 manuals on the bitsavers site. Before I do a lot of searching and headscratching, can one of the -11 gurus tell me what kind of beast I've got here? Or point me to the appropriate manuals? thanks Charles From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 21 13:20:51 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:20:51 +0000 (GMT) Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: <200511210604.jAL64G8w010493@lots.reanimators.org> from "Frank McConnell" at Nov 20, 5 10:04:16 pm Message-ID: > BTW, if someone out there has the HP150 Technical Reference manual > set, and it says something about what the expected on-disk format is, > I'd like to know more about that. Similarly for anyone who has some > idea what the 9121/9122 drives think about where they're allowed to > scribble on the disk. I do have the HP150 technical reference manual and the 150-II update, but from what I rmemeber it says remarkably little about the physical disk format. I wrote linus programs to read the 9114 disks and there was nothing of use in said manual. >From what I recall, the single and double sided formats are somewhat different, though. There is also the issue of the bad track replacement. HP reserved a few tracks at the end of the disk, and put something on the innermost track (79) to indicate that ome of the user tracks was bad and should be replaced by one of the reserved ones. Oh, they also wrote the media usage count there (that's what causes the drive LED to flash when the disk is, in HP's opinion, too old). All this was handled by the _drive_ unit, not by the 150, and I've never seen it documented anywhrre. Alas I just had to igore it and assume I was using good enough disks that no tracks were replaced (this has worked -- so far). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 21 13:53:28 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:53:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <43821A03.5090409@pacbell.net> from "Jim Battle" at Nov 21, 5 01:03:31 pm Message-ID: > Here are some bounds and data points. > > The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation (circa 1964). > > I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa 1975). > > Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- instead it > used "P.". > > Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention. > > From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. HP BASIC (at least the version on the 9830) doesn't either. Of course HP BASIC was odd anyway, in that PRINT was what other BASICs called LPRINT (it sent stuff to the printer), while DISP was what everone else called PRINT (to send stuff to the display). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 21 14:03:52 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:03:52 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> from "Pete Turnbull" at Nov 21, 5 10:13:51 pm Message-ID: > > The E20 hard disk unit contains the standard Host Adapter card linked > to > > a 20NByte SCSI hard disk. That was the normal thing to link to the 34 > pin > > connector on the E01. It sohuld be relatively easy to put one of > those > > together... Is there any restriction on the hard disk size? What > would > > happen if I linked up a unit of several hundred Mbyte capacity? Would > it > > just not work, would it only see it as a 20Mhyte unit, or would it > see > > the whole thing? > > There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is. More than 20MB, > for sure. Might be 500MB, maybe less. I know that stacking filestores > use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and > supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house. Julese Richardson seems to think there'll be a problem with the fact that the Filestore will want a deive that suports 256 byte sectors. > Yes, two 3.5" floppies. And I just happen to have a set :-) One is > for use with a Master 128 called "M128-FSUTILS" and the other is for > use with a Compact and labelled "COMPACT-FSUTILS". What's the difference? I don't have a Compact, so I probably don't need the second disk. Can I assume these are the hard disk formatter, etc, programs and not the diagnostic stuff? > > They're 640K, like ADFS L format, but the actual disk directory etc is > somewhat different, and called "Filestore Format". So I can copy them > for you if you send me a couple of 3.5" DD floppies. I've never tried Will do, but it won't be soon (I've got a lot to do before I need the utility disk). > making a teledisk image; that *might* work. They're double-density, > 256 bytes/sector, 16 sectors/track. Should be possible, but not a lot of use to me as I don;t haev Teledisk (and don't intend to try to write soemthing to handle its images). I might have a go at writing programs to handle Imagedisk stuff though. > Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was > around when Beebs were. It's a pitty the software seems to be long-lost.... > > The chap who sold this to me included a couple of such Sony > > drives, alas missing the front panels and eject buttons. I now have > to > > try to find those. The missing mounting hardware is less of a > problem, > > as are the missing cables. > > Those probably came from a Master Compact or an Archimedes -- they used > the drives without the bezels. Indeed. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 21 14:09:29 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:09:29 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <43824F81.9010703@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 21, 5 10:51:45 pm Message-ID: > > There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is. More than 20MB, > > for sure. Might be 500MB, maybe less. I know that stacking filestores > > use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and > > supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house. > > They didn't just stack them (as was intended by design)? Not practical for the > ST506 units I suppose is it'd only support two drives, but the SCSI ones I > think could be piled up to the limit of the SCSI bus - ie. 6 devices. 360MB > would not be at all bad for the time, considering the nature of the data which > tended to be stored on them. As I understand it, the Filestore supported a total of 6 drives. Drive 0-3 were Winchesters, Drives 4 and 5 were the 2 built-in floppies. With an E01S (built-in host adapter) you could hang up to 4 SCSI drive units (E40, E60) off it. The E01 (seperate host adapter) officially supported only 1 E20 add-on (contrary to what some web pages state). It's clear you can't connect more than one E20, all the host adapters would respond to the same address on the '2MHz bus' But ti's not clear to me if you could hack an E20 to have more than one SCSI drive on the other side of the host adapter. Since I don't have an E20, but do have a spare host adapter card, this is something to try. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 21 14:14:52 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:14:52 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Wnated : Front panels and eject buttons for Sony MFD-63W-00D Message-ID: OK, it's a _very_ long shot. As you know. I am sorting out this Acorn Filestore. I have 2 floppy drives that were sold to me with it, and which I believe might well have been the original type of drive for that unit. They are Sony units, marked MFD-63W-00D one a label on the side and Model MP-F63W-00D on a label on the motor cover plate Alas they are missing the front bezels and eject buttons (I suspect they came from an Acorn Achimedes). So, does anyone have a couple of scrap drives of that type that I can obtain the bezelz/buttons from? -tony From emu at ecubics.com Mon Nov 21 19:26:38 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:26:38 -0700 Subject: tektronix 4207 and 4209 Message-ID: <438273CE.2050807@ecubics.com> Hi, anybody has an Idea where to find manuals for them ? Cheers & thanks From dwight.elvey at amd.com Mon Nov 21 19:37:50 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 17:37:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: Cooling and leaks; was: removing parts from PCBs ?JUNK MAIL? 4 Message-ID: <200511220137.RAA02887@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Doc Shipley" > >Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> On 11/21/2005 at 12:55 PM Eric J Korpela wrote: >> >> >>>The drawbacks of this system are that you need to prime it, and that a bad >>>enough leak will disrupt the coolant flow, so you need to monitor the flow >>>rate or have a decent thermal shutdown mechanism. You need that in case of >>>pump failure, anyway. >> >> >> Why not simply use a standard sump pump? Most such pumps can push a 15 or >> 20 foot head and don't need to be primed. > > I think that putting the computer higher than the pump can push is >the point. If the computer's on the low-pressure side of the circuit, >(the pump is *pulling* water through instead of *pushing* ) it would Hi Not actually pulling. It would still be pushing but the top part of the system would be siphoning. This means it has negative pressure relative to the air. Dwight >take a very large leak to get the system wet. It'll pull air into the >water lines, instead of pushing water out into the electronics. > > > Doc From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 21 20:07:53 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:07:53 -0800 Subject: Cooling and leaks; was: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <43826F23.8090203@mdrconsult.com> References: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511160845330521.23F9A799@10.0.0.252> <200511211340470135.3EC7B4E9@10.0.0.252> <43826F23.8090203@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <200511211807530000.3FBC3CB1@10.0.0.252> On 11/21/2005 at 7:06 PM Doc Shipley wrote: > I think that putting the computer higher than the pump can push is >the point. If the computer's on the low-pressure side of the circuit, >(the pump is *pulling* water through instead of *pushing* ) it would >take a very large leak to get the system wet. It'll pull air into the >water lines, instead of pushing water out into the electronics. I have such a sump pump as part of my septic system--the l500 gallon tank drains overflow into a smaller 100 gallon tank and a float-actuated submerged sump pump moves the waste water to the drainfield (which is located about 20 ft. higher than the tank. The sump pump works by means of an impeller; i.e., it sits submerged in the water and centrifugally pushes it out the drain port. There are no check valves. My own pump is rated at 28' lift and it can fully drain the 100 gallon holding tank in less than 30 seconds. If the tank is empty and the pump continues to run, there are no bad effects and no air ends up getting pushed out the drain line. A very robust design; my own pump has been operating for more than 15 years without attention. Here's a photo of such a pump: http://www.pumps-in-stock.com/images/6-cia_large.jpg Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 21 20:18:31 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:18:31 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/03 basic questions Message-ID: <0IQC00FZY3OF38Y2@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: PDP-11/03 basic questions > From: Charles > Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:12:40 -0600 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Today I powered up the "new" 11/03-L, with which I have absolutely >no experience. The POWER OK light blinked slowly on and off for a >while and then went out. Now it doesn't come on at all. The top >card in the cage, though, has a row of red LED's and a large green >one, all of which are lit. > >Power supply is H7861, cage is BA-11SA. > >The cards from top to bottom are: >M8189 11/23b >2 Mb Clearpoint memory card (don't see a model number) >M8061 RLV12 cartridge disk controller. >M7957 DZV11 serial mux. >M8053 With an M8064 it would be sync controller DMV11 >Dilog CQ 1610 card (what is it? Many 2861 PLCC chips in sockets) 2861 is a serial chip, likely a multiport serial card. >M8029 RXV21 8" floppy interface (RX02) On thing is for sure it's not an 11/03! the 11/03 CPu is either M7264 or M7270. You have an 11/23B (M8189). > >I didn't see a lot of 11/03 manuals on the bitsavers site. Before >I do a lot of searching and headscratching, can one of the -11 >gurus tell me what kind of beast I've got here? Or point me to the >appropriate manuals? For certain you are looking for the wrong thing anyway. If you'd found 11/03 manuals it would not cover much of the hardware listed. The base system is 11/23B (or 11/23+) and you need to find individual manuals for the boards as that is likely a hybridized system and not a stock configuration. By that I mean either someone dumped all the bards they had in it or it was built as a special purpose system. Allison From charlesmorris at direcway.com Mon Nov 21 20:44:56 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:44:56 -0600 Subject: PDP-11/03 basic questions - some answers found. Message-ID: I still can't find a schematic for the power supply, although I hope it's similar to the H780. But I did manage to unearth the PDP-11 "Field Guide" (thanks to Megan Gentry for maintaining it). So now I know my 11/03-L system has: M8189 = KDF11-B: LSI-11/23+ CPU Clearpoint 2 Mb memory M8061 = RLV12: an RL01/RL02 controller M7957 = DZV11-M: 4 serial ports M8053 = DMV11: V.35 Controller .... what's that for? A modem? Dilog CQ1610: 16 serial ports M8029 = RXV21: an RX02 controller. The RL02 was filthy on the outside but nice and clean on the inside, and powers up. Guess it's time to make a cable to hook it to the RLV12 and see if the Fault light goes off (just like my 8/A I assume). Although I suppose I shouldn't complain, how much trouble would it be for the institutions discarding hardware to disconnect the cables instead of cutting them off! Now all I need is some kind of OS on an RL02 pack, and a room full of twenty terminals :) -Charles From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Mon Nov 21 20:47:26 2005 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:47:26 -0800 Subject: What is a DEC WT/78? Message-ID: A VT78 with a word processor in ROM? Doesn't look like it includes the pedestal, if so. At any rate, there's one on E-bay. I am not affiliated in any way with the seller. I do have a cousin in Fresno, though. http://cgi.ebay.com/DIGITAL-WT-78-WORD-TERMINAL-VINTAGE-ALL-IN-ONE_W0QQitemZ8726021082QQcategoryZ4193QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Eric From allain at panix.com Mon Nov 21 21:34:48 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:34:48 -0500 Subject: What is a DEC WT/78? References: Message-ID: <070b01c5ef15$b15c6020$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> > A VT78 with a word processor in ROM? Doesn't look like it includes > the pedestal, if so. At any rate, there's one on E-bay. Thought I had seen it all. Looks from the side and rear views like a heavily remarketed VT52. With a MR-78 unit, whatever that is. There also looks to be a floppy access plug in back there. Missing the RX01? I think it's saying WT := Word Terminal. First one seen for me. Yes, this checks out here: http://hampage.hu/dr/decmate.html John A. From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 21 21:52:13 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:52:13 -0800 Subject: What is a DEC WT/78? In-Reply-To: <070b01c5ef15$b15c6020$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> References: <070b01c5ef15$b15c6020$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <200511211952130885.401BC40D@10.0.0.252> On 11/21/2005 at 10:34 PM John Allain wrote: >> A VT78 with a word processor in ROM? Doesn't look like it includes >> the pedestal, if so. At any rate, there's one on E-bay. > >Thought I had seen it all. Looks from the side and rear views like >a heavily remarketed VT52. With a MR-78 unit, whatever that is. >There also looks to be a floppy access plug in back there. >Missing the RX01? >I think it's saying WT := Word Terminal. First one seen for me. Yup, you see mention of the WT78 (special-cased) all through the WPS I source code... Cheers, Chuck From waisun.chia at gmail.com Mon Nov 21 22:27:09 2005 From: waisun.chia at gmail.com (Wai-Sun Chia) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:27:09 +0800 Subject: What is a DEC WT/78? In-Reply-To: <200511211952130885.401BC40D@10.0.0.252> References: <070b01c5ef15$b15c6020$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> <200511211952130885.401BC40D@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/22/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/21/2005 at 10:34 PM John Allain wrote: > Yup, you see mention of the WT78 (special-cased) all through the WPS I > source code... You _HAVE_ the WPS source? From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Nov 21 23:12:05 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:12:05 -0600 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <43824204.6080405@bellatlantic.net> References: <0IQB00JP1KV8VTR4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <43822D8C.8070009@pacbell.net> <43824204.6080405@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: <4382A8A5.7030403@pacbell.net> Allison wrote: > Jim Battle wrote: > >> Allison wrote: >> >>>> Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT >>>> From: Jim Battle >>>> Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:03:31 -0600 >>>> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >>>> >>>> >>>> tim lindner wrote: >>>> >>>>> In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate? >>>>> >>>>> After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Here are some bounds and data points. >>>> >>>> The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation >>>> (circa 1964). >>>> >>>> I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa >>>> 1975). >>>> >>>> Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- >>>> instead it used "P.". >>>> >>>> Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention. >>>> >>>> From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> The ? was adopted by convention from the fact that early MS basic >>> (MITS BASIC) the ? was also the same value as the token for print. >>> Most of the non-compiled 8bit basics were tokenized in memory for >>> execution and storage and when "LIST"ed were detokenized to list as >>> Basic we know. >>> >>> Allison >> >> >> >> Allison, that seems unlikely. Later versions of microsoft basic >> certainly didn't use any value lower than 0x80 for tokens. Even if >> you could find a few characters in the "live" portion of the ascii >> table that didn't lead to ambiguous parsing, I can't think of a good >> reason why they'd do it -- there was enough room at 0x80 and above, >> and not enough unused values below 0x80, so why have two lookup tables >> when one would do? >> >> It would seem much easier to have special case where '?' got mapped to >> the token for PRINT. >> >> OK, trying to be less speculative, I looked at the binary for >> >> ALTAIR BASIC VERSION 3.2 [EIGHT-K VERSION] >> >> that is included with Rich Cini's Altair emulator. At the end is the >> list of the statement keywords. In memory each keyword abuts the >> next, and the boundary between keywords is marked by setting the msb >> of the byte. Here is the table in order: >> >> END >> FOR >> NEXT >> DATA >> INPUT >> DIM >> READ >> LET >> GOTO >> RUN >> IF >> RESTORE >> GOSUB >> RETURN >> REM >> STOP >> OUT >> ON >> NULL >> WAIT >> DEF >> POKE >> PRINT >> CONT >> LIST >> CLEAR >> CLOAD >> CSAVE >> NEW >> TAB( >> >> Since there no room for storing a token value after each item (I know >> it is possible that that mapping is held elsewhere, but it seems >> unlikely), these keywords very likely have consecutive token values. >> >> Elsewhere in the binary, near the beginning, is a similar table for >> the functions (FN, SPC, NOT, AND, OR, VAL, CHR, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, FRE, >> SIN, COS, TAN, PEEK, etc, but also including THEN, STEP). > > > Ever look at the saved files or in memory programs? I tried using Rich that 3.2 version of basic on Altair32 but I wasn't able to figure out how to get it to run (just like the real hardware, I'm sure!). I then tried a somewhat later version of MS basic, version 4.7, on my Sol. The in-memory token for PRINT is 164, or 0xA4. How I determined that was as follows: 10 PRINT "aqzy" 20 FOR I=0 to 50000 30 IF PEEK(I)<>ASC("a") THEN 100 40 IF PEEK(I+1)<>ASC("q") THEN 100 50 IF PEEK(I+2)<>ASC("z") THEN 100 60 IF PEEK(I+3)<>ASC("y") THEN 100 70 FOR J=-6 TO 5 80 PRINT I+J, PEEK(I+J), CHR$(PEEK(I+J)) 90 NEXT J:STOP 100 NEXT I It finds itself and then prints the bytes of the line. The string may appear in memory more than once due to the fact it might appear in an edit buffer or some scratch space in addition to its program location. Rich, if you can get your version 3.2 MS BASIC running on your Altair32 emulator perhaps you can run the program and report what token is used for PRINT. From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 21 23:14:56 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 21:14:56 -0800 Subject: What is a DEC WT/78? In-Reply-To: References: <070b01c5ef15$b15c6020$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> <200511211952130885.401BC40D@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511212114560308.40677B8C@10.0.0.252> On 11/22/2005 at 12:27 PM Wai-Sun Chia wrote: >On 11/22/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> On 11/21/2005 at 10:34 PM John Allain wrote: >> Yup, you see mention of the WT78 (special-cased) all through the WPS I >> source code... > >You _HAVE_ the WPS source? It's on the web, believe it or not. --Chuck From huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Tue Nov 22 01:30:32 2005 From: huw.davies at kerberos.davies.net.au (Huw Davies) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:30:32 +1100 Subject: Ultrix for DECstations In-Reply-To: <0IPW0062EZ1PDVC7@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IPW0062EZ1PDVC7@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <799C67A1-D9F9-48EB-91F4-B79F9C982F93@kerberos.davies.net.au> On 14/11/2005, at 9:13 AM, Allison wrote: > > Thankyou for that! Some of the things I was used to at DEC I still > haven't > found a PC version that is close. If there ever was one that would be > VAXNotes, really great collaboritive tool. There's now a windows client which I use frequently - like several times a week. It's easier than finding a VMS system to log into. > Anyone ever do a wintel editor (NOT WORD) that had a single key for > advance > cursor one word? vi? Wordstar? Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green" From fireflyst at earthlink.net Tue Nov 22 03:38:27 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 03:38:27 -0600 Subject: Mentec's web site? Message-ID: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> Anyone here know why Mentec's web site has been down for the last two weeks? http://www.mentec-inc.com From brad at heeltoe.com Tue Nov 22 05:47:34 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 06:47:34 -0500 Subject: Mentec's web site? In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 22 Nov 2005 03:38:27 CST." <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> Message-ID: <200511221147.jAMBlYV8021719@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Julian Wolfe" wrote: >Anyone here know why Mentec's web site has been down for the last two weeks? > >http://www.mentec-inc.com The domain is valid and there is a machine at the other end of the dsl line, but it doesn't do http. It does do smtp, however... -brad From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 22 05:51:39 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 06:51:39 -0500 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT Message-ID: <0IQC00GSMU7I56Y3@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT > From: Jim Battle > Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 23:12:05 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > > >Rich, if you can get your version 3.2 MS BASIC running on your Altair32 emulator >perhaps you can run the program and report what token is used for PRINT. Altair basic V3.2 at startup looks at the sense switches (port adddress 377Q) for a value that tells it if the SIO-A, SIO-B or 2SIO is the IO. The alternate is to watch it run on the FP and stop it where it loops and look at the IO instructions. Least that how it was done on the real Altair. Allison From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 22 06:03:02 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:03:02 +0000 Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <438308F6.5080908@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: > The E01 (seperate host adapter) officially supported only 1 E20 add-on > (contrary to what some web pages state). It's clear you can't connect > more than one E20, all the host adapters would respond to the same > address on the '2MHz bus' But ti's not clear to me if you could hack an > E20 to have more than one SCSI drive on the other side of the host adapter. I'd forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew nothing about device IDs - everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device connected up to it. Maybe that was fixed for the Filestore's firmware though, as it always seemed like a silly omission. cheers J. From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Mon Nov 21 19:32:31 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 20:32:31 -0500 Subject: anyone local interested? Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051121203048.0300f538@boff-net.dhs.org> I saw this on Hudson Valley Tag Sale Yahoo group today... Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 23:28:32 -0000 From: "winnie12553" Subject: OFFER_ Sun Sparc Station 5 Total 6 gb-New Windsor Area My son has moved and could not take this computer with him. It is not a typical computer rather a UNIX. It is made by Sun and all pieces are from Sun. Features included: Sun Monitor 40 mb Ram Solaris 2.51 CDE 1.1/WABI2.2 External CDRom External Hard drive 2 Internal Hard Drives 24 Bit Graphics Card External Sound Speaker. He is asking $125.00. Pictures available upon request. New Windsor, NY is in Orange County, NY, USA. Anyone nearby interested? I'm not big into the sun stuff or i would have jumped at it and no, I know nothing of the poster/owner. -John Boffemmyer IV -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.4/176 - Release Date: 11/20/2005 From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 22 06:33:21 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:33:21 +0000 Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <43831011.6090502@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: >>> The E20 hard disk unit contains the standard Host Adapter card linked >> to >>> a 20NByte SCSI hard disk. That was the normal thing to link to the 34 >> pin >>> connector on the E01. It sohuld be relatively easy to put one of >> those >>> together... Is there any restriction on the hard disk size? What >> would >>> happen if I linked up a unit of several hundred Mbyte capacity? Would >> it >>> just not work, would it only see it as a 20Mhyte unit, or would it >> see >>> the whole thing? >> There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is. More than 20MB, >> for sure. Might be 500MB, maybe less. I know that stacking filestores >> use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and >> supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house. > > Julese Richardson seems to think there'll be a problem with the fact that > the Filestore will want a deive that suports 256 byte sectors. Of course with ST506/412 you're probably OK - the Adaptec board probably supports various sector sizes (and of course the drive is non-intelligent and won't care). The only manual I have to hand is for the OMTI board, but that certainly supports 128/256/512/1024 bytes/sector. But with SCSI straight to the host adapter it'll be somewhat different and the drive needs to support whatever the initiator requests, which I expect is 256 bytes/sector. Acorn *might* have moved things along by then and be doing 512 bytes/sector - although in all fairness 256 is likely more suitable for the nature of the data stored on a typical fileserver. Pete, were there two releases of the format utility - one for ST-type disks and one for SCSI? Strictly speaking in SCSI-world there's no need to define drive geometry as it can be queried from the target drive itself, but this would be a necessary step when using an ST-type drive. (of course ST-type drives also need geometry subsequently stored - presumably in block 0 - which isn't necessary for SCSI) Certainly prior to formatting an ST-type disk with the OMTI board you need to issue an 0xC2 "assign disk parameters" command to tell the board what it's connected to; I can't imagine this is different with the Adaptec (unless it does it via a vendor unique extension instead). I *think* this would all be unnecessary for SCSI, although I suppose it might be possible to assign different geometry to the SCSI drive that its physical geometry (providing you don't exceed total space available) and the drive would translate accordingly. Following that it's just a case of issuing a 'format unit' command (and subsequent verification) to either the Adaptec board or in the case of SCSI direct to the drive. So there are a lot of similarities in the process, but there's an extra step for ST-type drives that isn't (strictly?) necessary for SCSI. >> making a teledisk image; that *might* work. They're double-density, >> 256 bytes/sector, 16 sectors/track. > > Should be possible, but not a lot of use to me as I don;t haev Teledisk > (and don't intend to try to write soemthing to handle its images). I > might have a go at writing programs to handle Imagedisk stuff though. True, Imagedisk is probably a more viable format these days (hat off to Dave D). I've just gained another PC, so time to see if that one supports FM recording on the disk interface (if not it goes in the bin - I don't need more hardware around here :) >> Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was >> around when Beebs were. > > It's a pitty the software seems to be long-lost.... I'm sure It'll turn up sometime. I don't know what it is about Acorn, but their stuff seems to vanish for years and then suddenly appear again. I bet it's lurking in someone's garage somewhere... >>> The chap who sold this to me included a couple of such Sony >>> drives, alas missing the front panels and eject buttons. I'm sure I can rustle up a pair of suitable drives through the museum if you have no luck (I've been deliberately rescuing 5.25" drives from landfill, but it's probably time to start doing the same with 3.5"...) cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 22 06:45:14 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:45:14 +0000 Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <10511220017.ZM12686@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> References: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <43824F81.9010703@yahoo.co.uk> <10511220017.ZM12686@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <438312DA.60109@yahoo.co.uk> Pete Turnbull wrote: > On Nov 21 2005, 22:51, Jules Richardson wrote: >>> Yes, two 3.5" floppies. And I just happen to have a set :-) One is >>> for use with a Master 128 called "M128-FSUTILS" >> Hmm, if you can ever do a raw image dump of that, shout! :-) > > I have an ADFS E copy of the contents which I could zip/tar if that's > any help. Or if you have a spare DD 3.5" disk I can make a copy (I > have some software to do that much). I think what you're really > looking for is the NetMgr program. Hmm, well apparently the way to get around not knowing the password is to set up a fileserver on another disk (which may be a floppy) using the setup floppy - that way you end up with a bootable fileserver where you know the password. Then just treat the existing hard disk as a secondary store and you can explore it quite happily. It wouldn't surprise me if it was you who told me this (or Ian W) over on the BBC list about 4 months ago :-) It didn't seem like the level-3 disks were out there on the 'net in any suitable form though. I'm not sure what the best way of getting them to me is. I suppose having them on 5.25" is easier than 3.5", although I do have one beeb somewhere with a 3.5" drive attached. Maybe a zip of the contents is the best plan, then I can drop them on the PC and use Xfer to get them across onto a beeb and onto whatever media makes most sense. (I've never tried xfer for individual files, only for complete disk images, but it should work) >> [Econet test box] >>>> Amazingly I have this test box, I don't have the software. >>> Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was >>> around when Beebs were. >> Is that this critter? : >> >> http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/ETB.html > > It is. Hard to date it then. The only thing that springs to mind is that early Acorn clock boxes were in the same style of "bought from Maplin" cases :) (Actually, didn't the Econet software protocol change very early on... maybe such a unit - or at least the software - wouldn't even work on a typical 'modern' Econet even if anyone did have a copy) cheers Jules From Richard.Cini at wachovia.com Tue Nov 22 07:04:22 2005 From: Richard.Cini at wachovia.com (Cini, Richard) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:04:22 -0500 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT Message-ID: I actually haven't used 3.2 BASIC on the emulator in a while, instead favoring 8k or Extended BASIC. I can't get it to work here at work but I suspect that it's because of configuration issues (blocked telnet). To run 4k BASIC, load the toggle loader file lodr_4k.hex. Then load the paper tape file using the emulated cassette drive in PLAY mode (an anachronism, but that's how I could get 4k to work based on the port configurations. Altair paper tapes and cassettes used the same format). Click RESET, then EXAMINE to set address 0. Raise A15 and click RUN. If all goes well, 4k should pop up. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jim Battle Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 12:12 AM To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT Allison wrote: > Jim Battle wrote: > >> Allison wrote: >> >>>> Subject: Re: BASIC's question mark and PRINT >>>> From: Jim Battle >>>> Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:03:31 -0600 >>>> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >>>> >>>> >>>> tim lindner wrote: >>>> >>>>> In BASIC, where did the short cut of '?' for PRINT originate? >>>>> >>>>> After following a discussion on the CoCo list I thought I'd ask here. >>>>> >>>> >>>> Here are some bounds and data points. >>>> >>>> The Dartmouth BASIC specification does not have ? as an abbrevation >>>> (circa 1964). >>>> >>>> I think all versions of Microsoft BASIC have this shortcut (circa >>>> 1975). >>>> >>>> Palo Alto Tiny BASIC (li chen wang) didn't use this convention -- >>>> instead it used "P.". >>>> >>>> Wang BASIC (circa 1972) didn't use this convention. >>>> >>>> From what I can tell, DEC BASIC didn't use this abbreviation. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> The ? was adopted by convention from the fact that early MS basic >>> (MITS BASIC) the ? was also the same value as the token for print. >>> Most of the non-compiled 8bit basics were tokenized in memory for >>> execution and storage and when "LIST"ed were detokenized to list as >>> Basic we know. >>> >>> Allison >> >> >> >> Allison, that seems unlikely. Later versions of microsoft basic >> certainly didn't use any value lower than 0x80 for tokens. Even if >> you could find a few characters in the "live" portion of the ascii >> table that didn't lead to ambiguous parsing, I can't think of a good >> reason why they'd do it -- there was enough room at 0x80 and above, >> and not enough unused values below 0x80, so why have two lookup tables >> when one would do? >> >> It would seem much easier to have special case where '?' got mapped to >> the token for PRINT. >> >> OK, trying to be less speculative, I looked at the binary for >> >> ALTAIR BASIC VERSION 3.2 [EIGHT-K VERSION] >> >> that is included with Rich Cini's Altair emulator. At the end is the >> list of the statement keywords. In memory each keyword abuts the >> next, and the boundary between keywords is marked by setting the msb >> of the byte. Here is the table in order: >> >> END >> FOR >> NEXT >> DATA >> INPUT >> DIM >> READ >> LET >> GOTO >> RUN >> IF >> RESTORE >> GOSUB >> RETURN >> REM >> STOP >> OUT >> ON >> NULL >> WAIT >> DEF >> POKE >> PRINT >> CONT >> LIST >> CLEAR >> CLOAD >> CSAVE >> NEW >> TAB( >> >> Since there no room for storing a token value after each item (I know >> it is possible that that mapping is held elsewhere, but it seems >> unlikely), these keywords very likely have consecutive token values. >> >> Elsewhere in the binary, near the beginning, is a similar table for >> the functions (FN, SPC, NOT, AND, OR, VAL, CHR, LEFT, RIGHT, MID, FRE, >> SIN, COS, TAN, PEEK, etc, but also including THEN, STEP). > > > Ever look at the saved files or in memory programs? I tried using Rich that 3.2 version of basic on Altair32 but I wasn't able to figure out how to get it to run (just like the real hardware, I'm sure!). I then tried a somewhat later version of MS basic, version 4.7, on my Sol. The in-memory token for PRINT is 164, or 0xA4. How I determined that was as follows: 10 PRINT "aqzy" 20 FOR I=0 to 50000 30 IF PEEK(I)<>ASC("a") THEN 100 40 IF PEEK(I+1)<>ASC("q") THEN 100 50 IF PEEK(I+2)<>ASC("z") THEN 100 60 IF PEEK(I+3)<>ASC("y") THEN 100 70 FOR J=-6 TO 5 80 PRINT I+J, PEEK(I+J), CHR$(PEEK(I+J)) 90 NEXT J:STOP 100 NEXT I It finds itself and then prints the bytes of the line. The string may appear in memory more than once due to the fact it might appear in an edit buffer or some scratch space in addition to its program location. Rich, if you can get your version 3.2 MS BASIC running on your Altair32 emulator perhaps you can run the program and report what token is used for PRINT. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 22 07:12:31 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 05:12:31 -0800 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511220512310725.421CB66B@10.0.0.252> On 11/21/2005 at 7:20 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >I do have the HP150 technical reference manual and the 150-II update, but >from what I rmemeber it says remarkably little about the physical disk >format. I wrote linus programs to read the 9114 disks and there was >nothing of use in said manual. > >>From what I recall, the single and double sided formats are >somewhat different, though. A long time ago, I wrote a DOS driver for the HP-150 series 1 and 2. Here's what I have: HP-150 series 1: 16 256-byte sectors per side, 1 side, 66 cylinders, interleaved 4:1, first sector is 1 HP-150 series 2: 9 512-byte sectors per side, 2 sides, 77 cylinders, interleaved 2:1, first sector is 1 Does that help any? Note that these numbers reflect the diskette are used by DOS, not the absolute number of tracks on each disk. Like Allison said, some are intended as spares. Chuck From gilcarrick at comcast.net Tue Nov 22 08:18:41 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:18:41 -0600 Subject: Ethernet or VG Anylan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <00a101c5ef6f$b5a25450$6501a8c0@Gils6240> This offer on eBay is unclear to me. 8727096878 It says Ethernet and it says VG AnyLan. I know VG AnyLan was supposed to replace Ethernet, but I was not aware that anybody ever called them both things. Anybody familiar with this product? TIA, Gil From bert at brothom.nl Tue Nov 22 08:51:03 2005 From: bert at brothom.nl (Bert Thomas) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:51:03 +0100 Subject: Ethernet or VG Anylan In-Reply-To: <00a101c5ef6f$b5a25450$6501a8c0@Gils6240> References: <00a101c5ef6f$b5a25450$6501a8c0@Gils6240> Message-ID: <43833057.6060109@brothom.nl> Gil Carrick wrote: > This offer on eBay is unclear to me. 8727096878 > > It says Ethernet and it says VG AnyLan. I know VG AnyLan was supposed to > replace Ethernet, but I was not aware that anybody ever called them both > things. > > Anybody familiar with this product? Yes, I am. What would you like to know? Be aware: you need 'special' 100VG switches for these cards to be able to use them. You can't use them with a cross-cable. The switch acts like some sort of traffic agent and has a lot of intelligence. Regards, bert From pat at computer-refuge.org Tue Nov 22 09:47:58 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 10:47:58 -0500 Subject: Mentec's web site? In-Reply-To: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> References: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> Message-ID: <200511221047.58238.pat@computer-refuge.org> Julian Wolfe declared on Tuesday 22 November 2005 04:38: > Anyone here know why Mentec's web site has been down for the last two > weeks? > > > > http://www.mentec-inc.com >From googling for "mentec" and "pdp", it looks like their website is now at www.mentec.com. I can't see much useful content there though anymore, partially because their page doesn't render very well under Firefox. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 22 09:56:09 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:56:09 -0700 Subject: Mentec's web site? In-Reply-To: <200511221047.58238.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> <200511221047.58238.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <43833F99.4010305@jetnet.ab.ca> Patrick Finnegan wrote: >>From googling for "mentec" and "pdp", it looks like their website is now >at www.mentec.com. I can't see much useful content there though >anymore, partially because their page doesn't render very well under >Firefox. > > > Well the same is true for me! ( mozilla ). But the word Microsoft is everywhere so that is not a good sign. They also seem to have the same business plan, buy out the good software, replace with the crap! >Pat > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 22 10:20:49 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:20:49 -0500 Subject: Mentec's web site? Message-ID: <0IQD0059H6O1F5K4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Mentec's web site? > From: Patrick Finnegan > Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 10:47:58 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Julian Wolfe declared on Tuesday 22 November 2005 04:38: >> Anyone here know why Mentec's web site has been down for the last two >> weeks? >> >> >> >> http://www.mentec-inc.com > >>From googling for "mentec" and "pdp", it looks like their website is now >at www.mentec.com. I can't see much useful content there though >anymore, partially because their page doesn't render very well under >Firefox. I use Firefox exclusively (took IE off the system completely even registry) and it renders fine for me. Major nit I have is their site is slower than sludge even on a DSL which is typical for MSbased sites. Allison From labomb_s at yahoo.com Tue Nov 22 10:22:24 2005 From: labomb_s at yahoo.com (Scott LaBombard) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:22:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <4382A8A5.7030403@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <20051122162224.61055.qmail@web50704.mail.yahoo.com> --- Jim Battle wrote: > Rich, if you can get your version 3.2 MS BASIC > running on your Altair32 emulator > perhaps you can run the program and report what > token is used for PRINT. > Depending on the specific release, Microsoft used different token values for many Basic keywords. For 4K version 3.2, the token used for 'Print' was 90h. For the 8K version 4.0 release, the token used was 96h. For Extended Basic 4.1, it was 91h. And for the 680b variation (which was essentially equivalent to 8k version 3.2 for the 8080) the token for 'Print' was 95h. Regarding the use of '?' for 'Print', he question mark was not handled with it's own unique assigned token. Early in the bit of code that 'tokenizes' a line, there is an explicit check for a '?' after the line number is processed (or as the first byte in direct command mode) ...if found, the actual token for 'Print' is substituted, and it is processed accordingly. As new revisions of MS Basic were introduced, the methodology used to interpret/process Basic tokens evolved somewhat as well. There was mention previously in this thread that token values less than 80h were likely not used. This was indeed the case until Extended Basic (and Extended Disk Basic) was released. It was at that point that token values that were less than 80h were used expressly for functions. In addition, token values from F0h to FFh were used for logic operations (AND, XOR, etc...). Scott __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Nov 22 10:53:22 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:53:22 -0800 Subject: Mentec's web site? In-Reply-To: <43833F99.4010305@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> <200511221047.58238.pat@computer-refuge.org> <43833F99.4010305@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: At 8:56 AM -0700 11/22/05, woodelf wrote: >Well the same is true for me! ( mozilla ). But the word Microsoft >is everywhere >so that is not a good sign. They also seem to have the same business plan, >buy out the good software, replace with the crap! http://www.mentec-inc.com/ works just fine for me this morning. As for http://www.mentec.com that is their website for the rest of the company, not the portion that deals with the PDP-11 side. The PDP-11 side was moved to the other website a while ago (what was it, a couple years ago?). Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From emu at ecubics.com Tue Nov 22 10:48:35 2005 From: emu at ecubics.com (e.stiebler) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 09:48:35 -0700 Subject: Mentec's web site? In-Reply-To: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> References: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> Message-ID: <43834BE3.1000008@ecubics.com> Weird. Shows up nice here ... Julian Wolfe wrote: > Anyone here know why Mentec's web site has been down for the last two weeks? > > > > http://www.mentec-inc.com > > > From tony.eros at machm.org Tue Nov 22 10:54:10 2005 From: tony.eros at machm.org (Tony Eros) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:54:10 -0500 Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection In-Reply-To: <20051122162224.61055.qmail@web50704.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20051122165454.2A3E638041@smtp04.dc2.safesecureweb.com> I'm looking to donate my vintage computer collection to a museum in Delaware. The museum is a 501(c)3 educational foundation, so theoretically my donation will be tax-deductible. >From what I'm reading though, it looks like I will need to get the collection appraised in order to properly take advantage of the tax benefits. Has anyone on the list had experience in this area? How do I go about getting my collection valued? Thanks! -- Tony From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Nov 22 12:36:11 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:36:11 -0500 (EST) Subject: anyone local interested? In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20051121203048.0300f538@boff-net.dhs.org> References: <6.2.5.6.2.20051121203048.0300f538@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <200511221838.NAA28951@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Subject: OFFER_ Sun Sparc Station 5 Total 6 gb-New Windsor Area > He is asking $125.00. Pictures available upon request. I suspect that is too optimistic of the seller; even including all the extra bits, like the screen and the video card, I'd be surprised. But then, we've all seen things go for way more than we think they should, so ICBW. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From coredump at gifford.co.uk Tue Nov 22 06:48:25 2005 From: coredump at gifford.co.uk (John Honniball) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:48:25 +0000 Subject: List of kit to give away (Bristol, UK) Message-ID: <43831399.2080509@gifford.co.uk> Here's my list of (mostly) classic computer parts that I need to give away. All free for collection in Bristol (UK): DEC TU77 reel-to-reel tape drive suitable for PDP-10 or DECsystem-2020. With manuals and a few spares. Massbus interface. Will need van with tail-lift to shift it. QIC quarter-inch tape drive, Archive model 2525S with SCSI interface. Capacity 525Mb per tape, with box of tapes. Digital DECstation 5000/240 model PM38A-AC. With colour framebuffer and two external SCSI disk/tape drive cases (with disks). MIPS CPU. Will run NetBSD. Several SCSI external disk/tape enclosures with power supplies. Some have Exabyte tape drives in them (full-height). Several full-height 5.25" SCSI hard disk drives. Capacities range from 327Mb to 1.3Gb. IBM RAID disk caddy for SCA-type SCSI disk. FRU 00N7281. PVC cover for Teletype Model ASR33. Case for iMac in pink. Just the case, no internal parts. HP LaserJet IID for spares. Giving Error 50, a fuser failure, but I've had no luck fixing it. Also some spares from a LaserJet II. Video monitor for Tandy TRS-80. Monochrome, with video input. Actually a TV set, converted by Tandy to remove the tuner and add a video input. Apricot PC and printer. The original Apricot MS-DOS machine, with 10Mb hard disk. 8086 CPU, but not PC-compatible! Sage IV, as used by INMOS for transputer development. Badged with INMOS logo. 68000 CPU. Western Digital FileCard 30. 30Mb hard disk on a full-length ISA card. Apple Mac IIsi with video monitor. 68030 CPU. Two quarter-inch tape backup units. Sun 3/60 with colour framebuffer. Desktop "pizza box". 68020 CPU. Sun 3/60 with mono monitor and disk "shoebox". 68020 CPU. Sun 3/260 with colour framebuffer and monitor. In floorstanding chassis with two internal full-height 5.25" hard disks. 68020 CPU. Personal Computer World magazines: Dec 1983, Feb & Apr 1984, Jan 1985, Jan & Apr 1986, Apr 1993. -- John Honniball coredump at gifford.co.uk From gcarrick at cse.uta.edu Tue Nov 22 12:31:28 2005 From: gcarrick at cse.uta.edu (A. G. Carrick) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:31:28 -0600 Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection In-Reply-To: <20051122165454.2A3E638041@smtp04.dc2.safesecureweb.com> Message-ID: <001101c5ef92$f61a7580$805e6b81@Gils6240> Sellam Ismail is your man. He no longer reads the list. He is a pro, literally. vcf at siconic.com is his email Gil A. G. (Gil) Carrick, Director The Museum at CSE University of Texas at Arlington Department of Computer Science & Engineering Box 19015, 471 S Cooper Street Arlington, TX 76019 817-272-3620 http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/ > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Eros > Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 10:54 AM > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'; > 'General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only' > Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection > > I'm looking to donate my vintage computer collection to a > museum in Delaware. The museum is a 501(c)3 educational > foundation, so theoretically my donation will be tax-deductible. > > >From what I'm reading though, it looks like I will need to get the > collection appraised in order to properly take advantage of > the tax benefits. > > Has anyone on the list had experience in this area? How do I > go about getting my collection valued? > > Thanks! > > -- Tony > > > From gkicomputers at yahoo.com Tue Nov 22 13:28:24 2005 From: gkicomputers at yahoo.com (steve) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:28:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection In-Reply-To: <20051122165454.2A3E638041@smtp04.dc2.safesecureweb.com> Message-ID: <20051122192824.7794.qmail@web51610.mail.yahoo.com> People have been know to place antiques up on ebay with $1,000,000 reserves to determine market value of the antiques, not recommending that, but its been done. You could grab past ebay auctions of similar equipment in similar condition. Final prices vary widely on similar items, true, but if you are trying to appraise 100 items it probably evens out. Taking good pictures of your donations and printing out the ebay auctions prices (with pictures) would provide a good source of material if your audited. If the pictures are taken by someone other then you, even better. Also, using the prices from the book "collectible microcomputers" is another option. I think want you want for difficult to price items like this is multiple sources of price information, current ebay prices (best), books, and appraisers. Of course a good appraiser takes all this into account to begin with, but its nice to have back up info. --- Tony Eros wrote: > I'm looking to donate my vintage computer collection > to a museum in > Delaware. The museum is a 501(c)3 educational > foundation, so theoretically > my donation will be tax-deductible. > > >From what I'm reading though, it looks like I will > need to get the > collection appraised in order to properly take > advantage of the tax > benefits. > > Has anyone on the list had experience in this area? > How do I go about > getting my collection valued? > > Thanks! > > -- Tony > > > > __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Nov 22 13:32:38 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 19:32:38 GMT Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: Jules Richardson "Re: Acorn Econet Fileserver" (Nov 22, 12:45) References: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <43824F81.9010703@yahoo.co.uk> <10511220017.ZM12686@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <438312DA.60109@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <10511221932.ZM14600@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 22 2005, 12:45, Jules Richardson wrote: > Pete Turnbull wrote: > Hmm, well apparently the way to get around not knowing the password is to set > up a fileserver on another disk (which may be a floppy) using the setup floppy > - that way you end up with a bootable fileserver where you know the password. Well, that's fine for a Filestore. I'm not sure it'll work for a Level 3 Fileserver, because that expects to just use a winchester. I'm willing to be proven wrong, however. > It didn't seem like the level-3 disks were out there on the 'net in any > suitable form though. Didn't I give you one last time you were here? > I'm not sure what the best way of getting them to me is. I suppose having them > on 5.25" is easier than 3.5", although I do have one beeb somewhere with a > 3.5" drive attached. Maybe a zip of the contents is the best plan, then I can > drop them on the PC and use Xfer to get them across onto a beeb and onto > whatever media makes most sense. That won't work. Those disks are 3.5" disks for a Filestore, in Filestore format. How are you going to write Filestore format from a zip archive? > Hard to date it then. The only thing that springs to mind is that early Acorn > clock boxes were in the same style of "bought from Maplin" cases :) > (Actually, didn't the Econet software protocol change very early on... maybe > such a unit - or at least the software - wouldn't even work on a typical > 'modern' Econet even if anyone did have a copy) They are Vero cases. Not particularly cheap. No, the software protocol didn't change. Anyway, that wouldn't affect the test circuits. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Nov 22 13:32:28 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 19:32:28 GMT Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: Jules Richardson "Re: Acorn Econet Fileserver" (Nov 22, 12:33) References: <43831011.6090502@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <10511221932.ZM14597@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 22 2005, 12:33, Jules Richardson wrote: > Of course with ST506/412 you're probably OK - the Adaptec board probably > supports various sector sizes Yes, normally 256 or 512 bytes/sector. > But with SCSI straight to the host adapter it'll be somewhat different and the > drive needs to support whatever the initiator requests, which I expect is 256 > bytes/sector. Yes. The original drives were all Rodime drives -- at least all the ones I saw were -- and they did support 256 byte sectors. > Pete, were there two releases of the format utility - one for ST-type disks > and one for SCSI? Probably but I don't remember formatting a SCSI disk. Actually, perhps I did. The Filestore utilities disks contain a version of AForm and presumably that's what it's for. > Certainly prior to formatting an ST-type disk with the OMTI board you need to > issue an 0xC2 "assign disk parameters" command to tell the board what it's > connected to; I can't imagine this is different with the Adaptec It uses a Mode Select command. > >> making a teledisk image; that *might* work. They're double-density, > >> 256 bytes/sector, 16 sectors/track. > > > > Should be possible, but not a lot of use to me as I don;t haev Teledisk > > (and don't intend to try to write soemthing to handle its images). I > > might have a go at writing programs to handle Imagedisk stuff though. > > True, Imagedisk is probably a more viable format these days (hat off to Dave > D). Although Teledisk is available in many places on the net, and lots of disk images exist as TD0 files. It's still the standard for CP/M and DOS systems, for example, and it's a small program so an easy download. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From vp at cs.drexel.edu Tue Nov 22 13:45:51 2005 From: vp at cs.drexel.edu (Vassilis Prevelakis) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:45:51 -0500 Subject: Ethernet or VG Anylan Message-ID: <20051122194551.537E1200FAE9@mail.cs.drexel.edu> Bert Thomas wrote: > Gil Carrick wrote: > > This offer on eBay is unclear to me. 8727096878 > > > > It says Ethernet and it says VG AnyLan. I know VG AnyLan was supposed to > > replace Ethernet, but I was not aware that anybody ever called them both > > things. > > Be aware: you need 'special' 100VG switches for these cards to be able > to use them. You can't use them with a cross-cable. The 100VG Ethernet cards use all 4 pairs of a CAT3 cable to get 100Mbps bandwidth. As such they are NOT compatible with Fast Ethernet switches. However, I have a crossover cable that I have used to interconnect two Intel 100VG cards. This is the crossover cable: gr-w or-w gr or or-w gr-w br-w bl br bl-w or gr bl br-w bl-w br **vp From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 22 14:27:08 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:27:08 +0000 Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <10511221932.ZM14600@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> References: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <43824F81.9010703@yahoo.co.uk> <10511220017.ZM12686@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <438312DA.60109@yahoo.co.uk> <10511221932.ZM14600@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <43837F1C.80705@yahoo.co.uk> Pete Turnbull wrote: > On Nov 22 2005, 12:45, Jules Richardson wrote: >> Pete Turnbull wrote: > >> Hmm, well apparently the way to get around not knowing the password > is to set >> up a fileserver on another disk (which may be a floppy) using the > setup floppy >> - that way you end up with a bootable fileserver where you know the > password. > > Well, that's fine for a Filestore. I'm not sure it'll work for a Level > 3 Fileserver, because that expects to just use a winchester. I'm > willing to be proven wrong, however. Hmm, I'll have to give it a go - I think that advice came with the caveat that nobody had actually tried it, actually :) Perhaps I got the "which may be a floppy" bit wrong and it has to be another hard disk onto which the server's set up (with the disk that the passwords aren't known for used as a second drive). From memory Acorn did acknowledge that you might want two hard drives connected to the Adaptec board... >> It didn't seem like the level-3 disks were out there on the 'net in >> any suitable form though. > > Didn't I give you one last time you were here? Nope, I only got this hard disk with the fileserver software on a couple of weeks before I left for the US as I recall... >> I'm not sure what the best way of getting them to me is. I suppose > having them >> on 5.25" is easier than 3.5", although I do have one beeb somewhere > with a >> 3.5" drive attached. Maybe a zip of the contents is the best plan, > then I can >> drop them on the PC and use Xfer to get them across onto a beeb and > onto >> whatever media makes most sense. > > That won't work. Those disks are 3.5" disks for a Filestore, in > Filestore format. How are you going to write Filestore format from a > zip archive? Oops, misunderstood then. I was thinking the utils floppy was ADFS format not filestore format... >> Hard to date it then. The only thing that springs to mind is that > > They are Vero cases. Not particularly cheap. No, the software > protocol didn't change. Hmm, maybe what I have are docs from the days before Econet was even finalised then! They were certainly early, printed on fanfold paper, and from within Acorn's offices. cheers Jules From jplist at kiwigeek.com Tue Nov 22 13:48:46 2005 From: jplist at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:48:46 -0600 (CST) Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: <200511211535360991.3F30D624@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/21/2005 at 6:10 PM Allison wrote: > > >>If the OS is in a free-as-in-speech state, would it be possible for > >>someone to whip me up a 5.25" disk and ship it out to me (shipping paid > >>for, of course) for the Vector? > > > >If you look around there may be a copy for that machine and a way to > >get it to you. > > Exactly what model Vector do you have? Some took hard-sectored diskettes. Only some? I am unsure of the model, to be honest. The front case simply says "Vector". The sticker on the back says the model number is 9002-something, if memory serves. (The Vector is in a 'mainframe' configuration, with multiple terminals, and an MFM hard disk attached) I have done a quick review and am confident I own no hard sectored disks at all, so if the drive is hard sectored, I'm kinda up a tree without another classiccmp member helping me out. Any extra information, even lacking preformatted and bootable CP/M disks ;), would be very helpful. JP From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Nov 22 14:40:15 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:40:15 GMT Subject: Ethernet or VG Anylan In-Reply-To: "Gil Carrick" "Ethernet or VG Anylan" (Nov 22, 8:18) References: <00a101c5ef6f$b5a25450$6501a8c0@Gils6240> Message-ID: <10511222040.ZM14767@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 22 2005, 8:18, Gil Carrick wrote: > This offer on eBay is unclear to me. 8727096878 > > It says Ethernet and it says VG AnyLan. I know VG AnyLan was supposed to > replace Ethernet, but I was not aware that anybody ever called them both > things. > > Anybody familiar with this product? Not terribly, but enough to know that VG Anylan carries Ethernet packets; it's only the physical layer that differs. No carrier sense/collision detect but instead it uses access rules called Demand Priority to ensure there will never be a collision. That, incidentally, is why the switches are smart and not like ordinary Ethernet switches. Also VG Anylan uses all four pairs in the cable; 10baseT and 100baseTX only use two pairs (100baseT4 uses all four though, and for the same reason that VG Anylan does -- more bandwidth on inferior cable. VG stands for "voice grade", ie Cat 3 or similar). Anyway, Ethernet packets are one reason a card can be both Ethernet and VG Anylan. Also most HP cards were made dual-standard -- one physical 10baseT interface and one physical VG Anylan interface -- as a transition mechanism. Often they had two connectors , but sometimes just one that can be configured or autoconfigures. HP's website lists these as dual-standard, probably by detecting signals on the second and third pairs. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From lbickley at bickleywest.com Tue Nov 22 14:49:41 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 12:49:41 -0800 Subject: Mentec's web site? In-Reply-To: <0IQD0059H6O1F5K4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQD0059H6O1F5K4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511221249.41331.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Tuesday 22 November 2005 08:20, Allison wrote: > >Subject: Re: Mentec's web site? > > From: Patrick Finnegan > > Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 10:47:58 -0500 > > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > > > > >Julian Wolfe declared on Tuesday 22 November 2005 04:38: > >> Anyone here know why Mentec's web site has been down for the last two > >> weeks? > >> > >> > >> > >> http://www.mentec-inc.com > >> > >>From googling for "mentec" and "pdp", it looks like their website is now > > > >at www.mentec.com. I can't see much useful content there though > >anymore, partially because their page doesn't render very well under > >Firefox. > > I use Firefox exclusively (took IE off the system completely even registry) > and it renders fine for me. Major nit I have is their site is slower than > sludge even on a DSL which is typical for MSbased sites. Not to "beat a dead horse", but I use Firefox on a Linux workstation and my Internet access is SBC/ATT DSL at 2Mb/sec - and Mentec's site is snappy and displayed accurately. I suspect one's observation of "performance" depends more on the BW of your ISP's "pipes" and how many nodes away you are - than Mentec's website... Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Nov 22 14:51:33 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:51:33 -0500 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? Message-ID: <0IQD008YBJ77GNC1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? > From: JP Hindin > Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:48:46 -0600 (CST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > > >> Exactly what model Vector do you have? Some took hard-sectored diskettes. > >Only some? >I am unsure of the model, to be honest. The front case simply says >"Vector". The sticker on the back says the model number is 9002-something, >if memory serves. >(The Vector is in a 'mainframe' configuration, with multiple terminals, >and an MFM hard disk attached) It would be wise and even a good idea to see whats inside and what model as if you don't know we can't even guess. >I have done a quick review and am confident I own no hard sectored disks >at all, so if the drive is hard sectored, I'm kinda up a tree without >another classiccmp member helping me out. > >Any extra information, even lacking preformatted and bootable CP/M disks >;), would be very helpful. Lacking further infomation it's really hard to guess from here. Allison From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Nov 22 14:43:47 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:43:47 GMT Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: Jules Richardson "Re: Acorn Econet Fileserver" (Nov 22, 20:27) References: <10511212213.ZM12354@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <43824F81.9010703@yahoo.co.uk> <10511220017.ZM12686@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <438312DA.60109@yahoo.co.uk> <10511221932.ZM14600@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> <43837F1C.80705@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <10511222043.ZM14771@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 22 2005, 20:27, Jules Richardson wrote: > Perhaps I got the "which may be a floppy" bit wrong and it has to > be another hard disk onto which the server's set up (with the disk > that the passwords aren't known for used as a second drive). From > memory Acorn did acknowledge that you might want two hard drives > connected to the Adaptec board... Yes, I've run them that way -- but only under ADFS. I don't know what the Level 3 Fileserver would make of that. It can't hurt to try. > > Didn't I give you one last time you were here? > > Nope, I only got this hard disk with the fileserver software on a couple of > weeks before I left for the US as I recall... Ah, another reason you probably ought to pay another visit here sometime! -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 22 15:04:55 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:04:55 -0500 Subject: anyone local interested? In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20051121203048.0300f538@boff-net.dhs.org> References: <6.2.5.6.2.20051121203048.0300f538@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <438387F7.6010302@gmail.com> John Boffemmyer IV wrote: > I saw this on Hudson Valley Tag Sale Yahoo group today... > > Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 23:28:32 -0000 > From: "winnie12553" > Subject: OFFER_ Sun Sparc Station 5 Total 6 gb-New Windsor Area > > My son has moved and could not take this computer with him. It is not > a typical computer rather a UNIX. It is made by Sun and all pieces > are from Sun. Features included: > Sun Monitor > 40 mb Ram > Solaris 2.51 > CDE 1.1/WABI2.2 > External CDRom > External Hard drive > 2 Internal Hard Drives > 24 Bit Graphics Card > External Sound Speaker. > He is asking $125.00. Pictures available upon request. > > New Windsor, NY is in Orange County, NY, USA. Anyone nearby interested? > I'm not big into the sun stuff or i would have jumped at it and no, I > know nothing of the poster/owner. I doubt it's worth that much. Peace... Sridhar From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 22 14:41:52 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:41:52 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <438308F6.5080908@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 22, 5 12:03:02 pm Message-ID: > I'd forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew nothing about device IDs - > everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device How stupid! I wonder why they did that (after all, they allowed for multiple floppy drives on the same controller). It's almsot as stupid as POS haeving 2 storage devices (one floppy, one winchester) hard-coded into the OS. > connected up to it. Maybe that was fixed for the Filestore's firmware though, > as it always seemed like a silly omission. According to the docs, the E01S (with the host adapter on the mainboard) supported up to 4 SCSI drives. Now, the ROM is different between the E01 and E01S (if only because the former has a pair of 27256s, the latter a single 27512), but I am not sure what, if any, changes were made to the filesystem code. Certainly the host adapter _hardware_ could support multiple devices (even on the E01 with the external host adapter). May be worth investigating. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 22 14:47:02 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:47:02 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <43831011.6090502@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 22, 5 12:33:21 pm Message-ID: > >> There will be some limit, but I'm not sure what it is. More than 20MB, > >> for sure. Might be 500MB, maybe less. I know that stacking filestores > >> use the same code, and I know that although the largest ones sold and > >> supported by Acorn were 60MB, they had bigger in-house. > > > > Julese Richardson seems to think there'll be a problem with the fact that > > the Filestore will want a deive that suports 256 byte sectors. > > Of course with ST506/412 you're probably OK - the Adaptec board probably > supports various sector sizes (and of course the drive is non-intelligent and Well, it's obvious that ADFS supports the Adaptec board + ST412 drive -- that's what was in the original Acron winchester box (which, IIRC, hung off a Beeb), and what is used in the ACW. However, from what I can tell, the Filestore mever supported this (I don't know if it would work or not, I suspect not). The first Filestore hard disk unit -- the E20 -- was the same host adapter linked to a SCSI winchester. I suspect the Adaptec board supports 256 byte sectors. > >>> The chap who sold this to me included a couple of such Sony > >>> drives, alas missing the front panels and eject buttons. > > I'm sure I can rustle up a pair of suitable drives through the museum if you Oh, I have plenty (?) of 3.5" drives (and I suspect even modern 1.44M ones could be made to work in 720K mode). But I'd rather like to install the original type of drive if possible. Hence my other post asking for scrap Sony drive bits. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 22 14:51:28 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 20:51:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <438312DA.60109@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 22, 5 12:45:14 pm Message-ID: > >> [Econet test box] > >>>> Amazingly I have this test box, I don't have the software. > >>> Ditto! The test box pre-dates the Master series, though. It was > >>> around when Beebs were. > >> Is that this critter? : > >> > >> http://www.beebmaster.co.uk/ETB.html > > > > It is. > > Hard to date it then. The only thing that springs to mind is that early Acorn I can see if there are any date codes on the chips in mine, which would be a starting point. > clock boxes were in the same style of "bought from Maplin" cases :) Standard Veroboxes (from the same company that makes Veroboard stripboard). Very common in the 1980s. > (Actually, didn't the Econet software protocol change very early on... maybe > such a unit - or at least the software - wouldn't even work on a typical > 'modern' Econet even if anyone did have a copy) The Econet test box knows nothing of the Econet protocol. What it contains is a mini-econet -- 2 DIN sockets with the termination circuits, linked together. There's a relay which switches in an RC network to degrade the network line (to ensure the unit-under-test will work on a normal cable) and a simple clock circuit (fixed frequency, fixed duty cycle). Two lines of the user port on the testing computer control the relay and enable the clock. That's all there is to it. I've traced out a schematic, I think a copy of that in the pile of stuff to give you when we meet up. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 22 15:12:43 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:12:43 +0000 (GMT) Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: <200511220512310725.421CB66B@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 22, 5 05:12:31 am Message-ID: > > On 11/21/2005 at 7:20 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > >I do have the HP150 technical reference manual and the 150-II update, but > >from what I rmemeber it says remarkably little about the physical disk > >format. I wrote linus programs to read the 9114 disks and there was > >nothing of use in said manual. > > > >>From what I recall, the single and double sided formats are > >somewhat different, though. > > A long time ago, I wrote a DOS driver for the HP-150 series 1 and 2. > Here's what I have: > > HP-150 series 1: > > 16 256-byte sectors per side, 1 side, 66 cylinders, interleaved 4:1, first > sector is 1 That sounds possible. It agrees with the technical mamual, I think The manaul gives remarkable little info on the disk format, as I said, because the 150 itself doesn't bother with it -- it's handled by the HPIB drives units. But it does give the follwoing. I will correct the obvious errors (it firstly talks about 3" disks when they clearly mean 3.5", and it claims the single-sided units have 2 heads (!)). Anyway : 3.5" Single sided : Bytes/sector = 256 Sectors/track = 16 Heads = 1 Total Sectors = 1056 That implese 66 tracks (or cylinders) 3.5" Double sided : Bytes/sector = 512 Sectors/track = 9 Heads = 2 Total sectors = 1386 Which gives 77 cylinders. Note that the values in the HP150 (original) manual seem to be full of errors! > > HP-150 series 2: > > 9 512-byte sectors per side, 2 sides, 77 cylinders, interleaved 2:1, first > sector is 1 Of course seiris 1 and series 2 here have nothing at all to do with the HP150 and the HP150-II specificially. Any HP150 (AFAIK) cna take either single or double sided drive. And an HP LIF format disk has 16 256-byte sectors/track (32 per cylinder on a double-sided unit, like a 9114). -tony From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 22 15:48:19 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:48:19 -0800 Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection In-Reply-To: <20051122165454.2A3E638041@smtp04.dc2.safesecureweb.com> References: <20051122165454.2A3E638041@smtp04.dc2.safesecureweb.com> Message-ID: <200511221348190316.43F4ECAA@10.0.0.252> On 11/22/2005 at 11:54 AM Tony Eros wrote: >>From what I'm reading though, it looks like I will need to get the >collection appraised in order to properly take advantage of the tax >benefits. > >Has anyone on the list had experience in this area? How do I go about >getting my collection valued? It depends a lot on the size and valuation of your collection and its relationship to your overall tax bill. IOW, I've done perfectly legitimate cash donations to 501(c)3's and got audited anyway. If the valuation is modest, simply get a receipt from the organization that calls out the amounts as they see them. Quite honestly, old computer gear is one of those things that it's impossible to place an objective value on. The best thing is for the recipient of your largesse to value it at what they figure it would cost to otherwise acquire. Also, remember that the tax deduction for donations can be amortized over 5 years, so don't be in a big hurry to take the writeoff in one year. You want to avoid annoying those darned IRS computers. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 22 16:04:19 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:04:19 -0800 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 posted In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511221404190392.440392E7@10.0.0.252> On 11/22/2005 at 9:12 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Of course seiris 1 and series 2 here have nothing at all to do with the >HP150 and the HP150-II specificially. Any HP150 (AFAIK) cna take either >single or double sided drive. Yes, but that's the way folks talked about them, so who am I to swim against the current? I have some samples in my files, but the drivers in question were used by many folks for several years with no complaints, so I figure I got it right. If the itch to know becomes a major rash, I can dig them out and double-check. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 22 16:07:45 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 14:07:45 -0800 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511221407450631.4406B883@10.0.0.252> On 11/22/2005 at 1:48 PM JP Hindin wrote: >Only some? >I am unsure of the model, to be honest. The front case simply says >"Vector". The sticker on the back says the model number is 9002-something, >if memory serves. Yes, the Vector 4 for instance, was made with with both hard and soft-sectored drives. And if you've got the S-100 "box" version of the Vector 1, it could use any third-party S-100 diskette controller, so the question of "what format" may be a bit harder to determine. Here are some photos of various Vector models: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/company.asp?st=1&l=V Cheers, Chuck From johnny.billquist at softjar.se Tue Nov 22 15:24:17 2005 From: johnny.billquist at softjar.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 22:24:17 +0100 Subject: Mentec's web site? In-Reply-To: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> References: <000001c5ef48$7db95970$6401a8c0@dementium> Message-ID: <43838C81.6000405@softjar.se> Huh? The web-site looks just fine to me. Johnny Julian Wolfe wrote: > Anyone here know why Mentec?s web site has been down for the last two weeks? > > > > http://www.mentec-inc.com > > > -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.3/172 - Release Date: 2005-11-15 From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 22 16:16:24 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 22:16:24 +0000 Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <438398B8.4010502@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: >> I'd forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew nothing about device IDs - >> everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device > > How stupid! I wonder why they did that (after all, they allowed for > multiple floppy drives on the same controller). It's almsot as stupid as > POS haeving 2 storage devices (one floppy, one winchester) hard-coded > into the OS. Isn't SASI just single target though? (I'd forgotten this, I was thinking that it was multiple target like SCSI just without all the device reservation like SCSI) So if the board (despite Acorn calling it SCSI) is really just SASI (or maybe if it started life as a SASI project) then it could explain why the software never addressed more than one target device. Either that or Acorn were rather short-sighted in their software, but they weren't normally known for this (typically, if the hardware would do it they seemed to think that someone would actually want to do it). Maybe it comes down to code size and there just wasn't the room in the ADFS ROM for the device selection code (assuming that Acorn's board contains the necessary SCSI features anyway - I think you likely need /ATN to do device selection?) >> connected up to it. Maybe that was fixed for the Filestore's firmware though, >> as it always seemed like a silly omission. > > According to the docs, the E01S (with the host adapter on the mainboard) > supported up to 4 SCSI drives. Now, the ROM is different between the E01 > and E01S (if only because the former has a pair of 27256s, the latter a > single 27512) You made me realise that I need to archive the ROMs from the E01 I have in the cupboard - I've only got E01S ROM dumps on this 'ere PC (at least they're 512Kbit). I've never had an E01S, but I do get stray ROMs amongst Acorn finds occasionally, which is where these will have come from. Incidentally I have a "Version A" ROM and a "Version 1" ROM; why Acorn named one with a letter and one with a number I don't know (they are different in content) cheers Jules From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 22 16:52:33 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 22:52:33 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: <438398B8.4010502@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 22, 5 10:16:24 pm Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > >> I'd forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew nothing about device IDs - > >> everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device > > > > How stupid! I wonder why they did that (after all, they allowed for > > multiple floppy drives on the same controller). It's almsot as stupid as > > POS haeving 2 storage devices (one floppy, one winchester) hard-coded > > into the OS. > > Isn't SASI just single target though? (I'd forgotten this, I was thinking that I thought SASI supported a total of 8 devices on the bus, like 8-bit SCSI. > it was multiple target like SCSI just without all the device reservation like > SCSI) > > So if the board (despite Acorn calling it SCSI) is really just SASI (or maybe > if it started life as a SASI project) then it could explain why the software > never addressed more than one target device. Well, the Adaptec board that Acorn used in the BBC Winchester box -- which AFAIK was the first application for the host adapter -- certainly has an address jumper. > Either that or Acorn were rather short-sighted in their software, but they > weren't normally known for this (typically, if the hardware would do it they > seemed to think that someone would actually want to do it). > > Maybe it comes down to code size and there just wasn't the room in the ADFS That is the most likely explanation. To quote Bill Wickes 'Life is short and ROM is full' > ROM for the device selection code (assuming that Acorn's board contains the > necessary SCSI features anyway - I think you likely need /ATN to do device > selection?) I will see what it says in the ACW service manual. I seem to recall it does describe what goes on between the Host Adapter and the Adaptec board. > You made me realise that I need to archive the ROMs from the E01 I have in the I will do mine sometime too, in case they're different versions. Fortunately they're socketed. I can't rememebr if you have to remove the floppy drives to get to them, but that's not an issue for me anyway at the momnet.. You do have to remove all that stupid plastic stuff around the case, of course. -tony From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Tue Nov 22 17:26:37 2005 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 15:26:37 -0800 Subject: Cooling and leaks; was: removing parts from PCBs In-Reply-To: <200511211340470135.3EC7B4E9@10.0.0.252> References: <0IQ2008RN13SV0A1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <200511160845330521.23F9A799@10.0.0.252> <200511211340470135.3EC7B4E9@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/21/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 11/21/2005 at 12:55 PM Eric J Korpela wrote: > > >The drawbacks of this system are that you need to prime it, and that a > bad > >enough leak will disrupt the coolant flow, so you need to monitor the > flow > >rate or have a decent thermal shutdown mechanism. You need that in case > of > >pump failure, anyway. > > Why not simply use a standard sump pump? Most such pumps can push a 15 or > 20 foot head and don't need to be primed. The underpressure is a design feature (to minimize damage from leaks). I'm willing to prime the system on those rare occasion that enough air gets into the system to stop the flow in return for never needing to worry that a leak inside the computer will short something out. If a hose leaks inside of the computer the water ends up in the reservoir, not in the computer. The sound of a leak is also pretty obvious. From jplist at kiwigeek.com Tue Nov 22 16:21:49 2005 From: jplist at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:21:49 -0600 (CST) Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: <200511221407450631.4406B883@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > >Only some? > >I am unsure of the model, to be honest. The front case simply says > >"Vector". The sticker on the back says the model number is 9002-something, > >if memory serves. > > Yes, the Vector 4 for instance, was made with with both hard and > soft-sectored drives. And if you've got the S-100 "box" version of the > Vector 1, it could use any third-party S-100 diskette controller, so the > question of "what format" may be a bit harder to determine. How helpful ;P I'll have a close look at the disk drive tonight and see if I can look it up and find something out about it. > Here are some photos of various Vector models: > > http://www.old-computers.com/museum/company.asp?st=1&l=V I have the external chassis Vector, like an MZ (or System B), but the MZs and Bs I have seen all seem to have "MZ" and "B" screen printed onto the front case along with the "VECTOR" name, which mine does not, as below. (Pictures-) http://www.kiwigeek.com/misc/VectorGraphics-front.jpg http://www.kiwigeek.com/misc/VectorGraphics-hdd.jpg http://www.kiwigeek.com/misc/VectorGraphics-top.jpg I appreciate your help in continuing to identify what specific Vector I have. From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Nov 22 18:25:21 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:25:21 GMT Subject: Acorn Econet Fileserver In-Reply-To: ard@p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) "Re: Acorn Econet Fileserver" (Nov 22, 22:52) References: Message-ID: <10511230025.ZM15219@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 22 2005, 22:52, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > Tony Duell wrote: > > >> I'd forgotten about that; in ADFS-land, ADFS knew nothing about device IDs - > > >> everything was ID 0 and so the host adapter could still only have one device > > > > > > How stupid! I wonder why they did that (after all, they allowed for > > > multiple floppy drives on the same controller). It's almsot as stupid as > > > POS haeving 2 storage devices (one floppy, one winchester) hard-coded > > > into the OS. I'm not sure. In fact I didn't realise it was single device; ADFS was designed to allow 4 winchesters and 4 floppies, and the only way to have four winchesters would be to have 2 Adaptec cards. The code to actually handle that may not be in the ROM, though. > > Isn't SASI just single target though? (I'd forgotten this, I was thinking that > > I thought SASI supported a total of 8 devices on the bus, like 8-bit SCSI. I thought so too... The Xebec manuals describe how to set the addresses. > > So if the board (despite Acorn calling it SCSI) is really just SASI No, it really is SCSI. It complies with the first ANSI spec. > > ROM for the device selection code (assuming that Acorn's board contains the > > necessary SCSI features anyway - I think you likely need /ATN to do device > > selection?) No, that's for something completely different (disconnects and reconnects). SEL is what is used for device selection. The initiator waits for the bus to be idle (BSY and SEL both inactive), asserts BSY and its own ID line, and assuming nothing with higher priority also asserts an ID line, then asserts SEL and the ID line for the desired target. Then it releases BSY, and waits for the target to assert BSY, at which point it releases SEL. > > You made me realise that I need to archive the ROMs from the E01 I have in the > > I will do mine sometime too, in case they're different versions. FWIW, I have FS 1.33 ((c)1988), FS 2.08 ((c)1989), MOS 2.07, and MOS 3.66. MOS2.07 has the string "Stacking FileStore" in it but I'm fairly sure it came out of my E01. It also has the string "Acorn Econet 3.68" i it, whereas MOS 3.66 has the string "Acorn Econet 3.66". Both are mostly empty. Somewhere amongst the Customer Services newsletters I will probably have several FCOs that will list the released versions, or most of them. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From jrkeys at concentric.net Tue Nov 22 18:33:32 2005 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:33:32 -0600 Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection References: <20051122165454.2A3E638041@smtp04.dc2.safesecureweb.com> <200511221348190316.43F4ECAA@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <005601c5efc5$cb3633d0$46406b43@66067007> Museum's can NOT give pricing information to the donor, it's an IRS rule. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chuck Guzis" To: Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 3:48 PM Subject: Re: Appraisal and donating a collection > On 11/22/2005 at 11:54 AM Tony Eros wrote: > >>>From what I'm reading though, it looks like I will need to get the >>collection appraised in order to properly take advantage of the tax >>benefits. >> >>Has anyone on the list had experience in this area? How do I go about >>getting my collection valued? > > It depends a lot on the size and valuation of your collection and its > relationship to your overall tax bill. IOW, I've done perfectly > legitimate > cash donations to 501(c)3's and got audited anyway. > > If the valuation is modest, simply get a receipt from the organization > that > calls out the amounts as they see them. Quite honestly, old computer > gear is one of those things that it's impossible to place an objective > value on. The best thing is for the recipient of your largesse to value > it > at what they figure it would cost to otherwise acquire. > > Also, remember that the tax deduction for donations can be amortized over > 5 > years, so don't be in a big hurry to take the writeoff in one year. You > want to avoid annoying those darned IRS computers. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 22 20:14:59 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 18:14:59 -0800 Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection In-Reply-To: <005601c5efc5$cb3633d0$46406b43@66067007> References: <20051122165454.2A3E638041@smtp04.dc2.safesecureweb.com> <200511221348190316.43F4ECAA@10.0.0.252> <005601c5efc5$cb3633d0$46406b43@66067007> Message-ID: <200511221814590155.44E90E44@10.0.0.252> On 11/22/2005 at 6:33 PM Keys wrote: >Museum's can NOT give pricing information to the donor, it's an IRS rule. How much are we talking about here? I've never given anything to a museum for tax credit, but have given musical instruments to schools. The conversation went like this: Me: I have a tuba for you. Them: Cool. You want a receipt? Me: That would be nice. Them: How much should we make it out for? Me: (Giving my best guess, relatively certain that I'll be backed up by the local music store who know me very well) Them: Here you go. We're not talking about artworks here, are we? If the donation were in the 5- or 6-digit range, yes, I'd probably hire an appraiser. But there are limits. It'd be plain silly to pay an appraiser $500 to appraise a gift woth $100. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 22 23:14:13 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:14:13 -0800 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511222114130677.458D26EA@10.0.0.252> On 11/22/2005 at 4:21 PM JP Hindin wrote: >How helpful ;P >I'll have a close look at the disk drive tonight and see if I can look it >up and find something out about it. Well, that drive looks like a Tandon TM-100M, so most likely, you not only have hard-sectored diskettes, but they're 100 tpi also. Vector had a DS format that held about 640K. Cheers, Chuck From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Nov 22 23:18:07 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:18:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: <200511222114130677.458D26EA@10.0.0.252> References: <200511222114130677.458D26EA@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051122211631.K57274@shell.lmi.net> > On 11/22/2005 at 4:21 PM JP Hindin wrote: > >How helpful ;P > >I'll have a close look at the disk drive tonight and see if I can look it > >up and find something out about it. On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Well, that drive looks like a Tandon TM-100M, so most likely, you not only > have hard-sectored diskettes, but they're 100 tpi also. Vector had a DS > format that held about 640K. ... just to add to the bad news,... I've seen numerous TM100-4M drives that were labelled TM100-4 ! So, a visual inspection may be inadequate to identify it. From dave at mitton.com Tue Nov 22 23:21:37 2005 From: dave at mitton.com (Dave Mitton) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:21:37 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <200511221800.jAMI0XDX008086@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511221800.jAMI0XDX008086@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20051123000143.02960e60@getmail.mitton.com> On 11/22/2005 01:00 PM, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: >Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 23:07:36 +0000 >From: Adrian Graham >Subject: Re: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Message-ID: >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" > >On 20/11/05 14:44, "Gil Carrick" wrote: > > > I can't find many references to it, but here are a couple: > > > > > http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Brochure/Overview/PCTelnet.overvie > > w.html > > > > http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~rikblok/TipsnTricks/win98.html > > > > The lack of references make me think that these people are just being > > imprecise. There are also references to "DECNet Adapter" but they are > > talking about a software adapter. > >Hmm.... The 2nd one is obviously a mistake since win98 has detected the card >as a PCI based DEC 21040-powered card like the venerable DE500, the first >one is talking about an ISA card and I don't know of any ISA cards that DEC >did, though obviously that doesn't mean they didn't exist :) > >The first card I'm aware of is the DE100 which was an AUI/BNC switchable >EISA card. Also for the first one, if it WAS a DECnet card you certainly >wouldn't have been able to run TELNET over it and I didn't think DECnet had >ever been ported to the PC architecture until DEC themselves did a DECnet >stack as part of Pathworks/PCSA in the 80s. > >Cheers > >A The first DEC manufactured Ethernet card for the PC bus was the ISA DEPCA. It was based on the AMD Lance design that was implemented in the VAXmate (the first DEC PC that was somewhat IBM PC compatible) DECnet-DOS was developed and released on Rainbows and IBM XT/AT compatibles before PATHworks. It supported third party Ethernet adapters (like the sucky 3Com 3C501, and an Interlan model) via a proprietary driver interface. When Microsoft got the NDIS driver standard going, we migrated to that. The DEPCA did not have "DECnet" in it. Though it might have had a boot ROM that could support MOP downline load. It did have a unique memory mapped architecture where the buffer pool on the card could be directly accessed by the network stack. Our stack avoided buffer copies using this feature. By the way PATHWORKS for Windows V3.1 and Windows for Workgroups supported DECnet, TCP/IP, NetWare and NetBEUI, mix and match, without rebooting. Dave. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 22 23:37:58 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:37:58 -0800 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: <20051122211631.K57274@shell.lmi.net> References: <200511222114130677.458D26EA@10.0.0.252> <20051122211631.K57274@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200511222137580607.45A2E4C5@10.0.0.252> On 11/22/2005 at 9:18 PM Fred Cisin wrote: >... just to add to the bad news,... >I've seen numerous TM100-4M drives that were labelled TM100-4 ! >So, a visual inspection may be inadequate to identify it. Vector Graphic was suprisingly stubborn about retaining the 100 tpi HS format long after it had become pass?. I've had HS 100 tpi diskettes from the Vector 4. I think Vector used some Micropolis drives and some Tandon. They may have also used some MPI drives in the 100 tpi format. What I can't explain are the small cables between the RAM cards in the middle of the card cage and whatever the cards are at the rear. Cheers, Chuck From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Nov 23 01:36:25 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Witchy) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 07:36:25 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20051123000143.02960e60@getmail.mitton.com> References: <200511221800.jAMI0XDX008086@dewey.classiccmp.org> <6.2.3.4.2.20051123000143.02960e60@getmail.mitton.com> Message-ID: <49353.82.152.112.73.1132731385.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> On Wed, November 23, 2005 5:21 am, Dave Mitton said: > The first DEC manufactured Ethernet card for the PC bus was the ISA DEPCA. > It was based on the AMD Lance design that was implemented in the > VAXmate (the first DEC PC that was somewhat IBM PC compatible) Ah yes! I've got my eye on a VAXmate.....I'd forgotten about the DEPCA and it's Big Blue Jumper to toggle between AUI and BNC though.... > The DEPCA did not have "DECnet" in it. Though it might have had a > boot ROM that could support MOP downline load. It did have a unique > memory mapped architecture where the buffer pool on the card could be We've got a couple at work so I can check :) > By the way PATHWORKS for Windows V3.1 and Windows for Workgroups > supported DECnet, TCP/IP, NetWare and NetBEUI, mix and match, without > rebooting. $gods, you've just reminded me of the hellish weekend spent trying to get Pathworks 5 VAX talking to Pathworks WFW3.11...we'd been using PCSA 4.2 and got on fine with that but PW5 was a different beast altogether! Cheers -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection? From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 23 06:09:36 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 07:09:36 -0500 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? Message-ID: <0IQE00CE4PP1E9Q1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 21:37:58 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/22/2005 at 9:18 PM Fred Cisin wrote: > >>... just to add to the bad news,... >>I've seen numerous TM100-4M drives that were labelled TM100-4 ! >>So, a visual inspection may be inadequate to identify it. > >Vector Graphic was suprisingly stubborn about retaining the 100 tpi HS >format long after it had become pass?. I've had HS 100 tpi diskettes >from the Vector 4. I think Vector used some Micropolis drives and some >Tandon. They may have also used some MPI drives in the 100 tpi format. > >What I can't explain are the small cables between the RAM cards in the >middle of the card cage and whatever the cards are at the rear. > >Cheers, >Chuck Battery backup for the ram? Allison From madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 07:15:01 2005 From: madcrow.maxwell at gmail.com (Madcrow Maxwell) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 08:15:01 -0500 Subject: UK giveaways Message-ID: <8dd2d95c0511230515n2079c942s72ae9b3694bcde2a@mail.gmail.com> How much do you think it would cost to ship the pizzaboz Sun/3 to the States? Given that it's not a very heavy computer, sea (surface> trasport might be fairly cheap and if it is, I'd be willing to pay the costs. From James at jdfogg.com Wed Nov 23 08:13:37 2005 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 09:13:37 -0500 Subject: OS9 login / shutdown Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E59E4@sbs.jdfogg.com> > > I've just come across my first OS9 system, and know > absolutely nothing > > about OS9 other than that it's vaguely UNIX-like. Before I > try hooking > > the hard disk up and seeing if it actually works, obvious > questions follow: For some reason I missed the original post - I used to support high volume page scanners manufactured by Terminal Data Corp (now owned by Banctec). They had a Motorola based VME system that ran OS9, and I remember a little about it. To begin to understand it, consider it to be a CP/M clone with multi-user extensions. List the files in the system directory and most of them will be vaguely familiar utilities. I believe "DIR" was the command. If not, use commands from other common OS's as it was the same as one of them (LIST maybe?). From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Wed Nov 23 09:16:07 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 09:16:07 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: <200511221407450631.4406B883@10.0.0.252> References: Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051123091607.4017bac6@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> I used have some original hard sectored 5 1/4" floppy disk for one of the Vector machines. I was going to send them to Don Maslin but don't think I ever got around to it. Let me know if you figure out what model you have and I'll try to find these and see if they're for the same. Joe At 02:07 PM 11/22/05 -0800, you wrote: >On 11/22/2005 at 1:48 PM JP Hindin wrote: > >>Only some? >>I am unsure of the model, to be honest. The front case simply says >>"Vector". The sticker on the back says the model number is 9002-something, >>if memory serves. > >Yes, the Vector 4 for instance, was made with with both hard and >soft-sectored drives. And if you've got the S-100 "box" version of the >Vector 1, it could use any third-party S-100 diskette controller, so the >question of "what format" may be a bit harder to determine. > >Here are some photos of various Vector models: > >http://www.old-computers.com/museum/company.asp?st=1&l=V > >Cheers, >Chuck > > > From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 23 10:13:22 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:13:22 +0000 Subject: Cambridge Ring network hardware / docs.... Message-ID: <43849522.6020909@yahoo.co.uk> Following on from a query over on the BBC Micro mailing list, did anyone here save any Cambridge Ring network hardware or documentation? I'm just curious as to how much has survived (sadly I scrapped a pile about ten years ago and now regret it) (for the curious see: http://koo.corpus.cam.ac.uk/projects/earlyatm) cheers Jules From andy.piercy at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 10:27:10 2005 From: andy.piercy at gmail.com (Andy Piercy) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 16:27:10 +0000 Subject: Masscomp OS floppies / tape dump Message-ID: All, Is there anyone on this alias who has access to Masscomp OS floppy disks for a 5400 series, including graphics and dat acc etc? Thanks. From charlesmorris at direcway.com Wed Nov 23 10:51:33 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 10:51:33 -0600 Subject: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help Message-ID: I've found the reason why my PDP-11 power supply (H7861) is not putting out POK and DCOK signals. One of the small daughterboards which appears to provide the level checks and timers (marked Digital Type 1 SG-1 5015047B 5415048) has been badly mouse-pissed and rusted. (Previous owner stored it in the carport). There is enough corrosion that the leads of two diodes and two film resistors have been rusted right through and broke off during gentle toothbrush cleaning, and several others don't look good. I suspect the board would be better replaced than patched. Unfortunately the H780 schematic does not match closely (they use 74123's while this one uses 555's, for example) so it'll be hard to figure out the missing or unreadable parts anyway! Does anyone have a spare board from a "parts" power supply? Or at least a schematic? thanks Charles From pechter at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 11:06:27 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:06:27 -0500 Subject: Masscomp OS floppies / tape dump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I wish I did. I had a 5450 running RTU-3.5 and later 4.x (IIRC) back when I worked for Concurrent Computer. I wish I had the sources for it and Pyramid's OS/x... and the binaries and the machines. I'd love to see FreeBSD with a dual AT&T/SysV universe set up. (or maybe BSD/Linux...) Bill On 11/23/05, Andy Piercy wrote: > > All, > > Is there anyone on this alias who has access to Masscomp OS floppy > disks for a 5400 series, including graphics and dat acc etc? > > Thanks. > > From andy.piercy at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 11:14:28 2005 From: andy.piercy at gmail.com (Andy Piercy) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:14:28 +0000 Subject: Masscomp OS floppies / tape dump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Bill, I use to work for Masscomp in the UK office, worked on the 5500, 5400, 5600, 5700. They were kool systems and with data acc! I was in the support office, what did you do? Ta, Andy. On 23/11/05, Bill Pechter wrote: > I wish I did. I had a 5450 running RTU-3.5 and later 4.x (IIRC) back when I > worked for Concurrent Computer. > > I wish I had the sources for it and Pyramid's OS/x... and the binaries and > the machines. > > I'd love to see FreeBSD with a dual AT&T/SysV universe set up. > (or maybe BSD/Linux...) > > Bill > > > On 11/23/05, Andy Piercy wrote: > > > > All, > > > > Is there anyone on this alias who has access to Masscomp OS floppy > > disks for a 5400 series, including graphics and dat acc etc? > > > > Thanks. > > > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 23 12:03:33 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:03:33 -0500 Subject: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help Message-ID: <0IQF001XY62XZK51@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help > From: Charles > Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 10:51:33 -0600 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >I've found the reason why my PDP-11 power supply (H7861) is not >putting out POK and DCOK signals. One of the small daughterboards >which appears to provide the level checks and timers (marked >Digital Type 1 SG-1 5015047B 5415048) has been badly mouse-pissed >and rusted. (Previous owner stored it in the carport). > >There is enough corrosion that the leads of two diodes and two >film resistors have been rusted right through and broke off during >gentle toothbrush cleaning, and several others don't look good. I >suspect the board would be better replaced than patched. >Unfortunately the H780 schematic does not match closely (they use >74123's while this one uses 555's, for example) so it'll be hard >to figure out the missing or unreadable parts anyway! > >Does anyone have a spare board from a "parts" power supply? >Or at least a schematic? > >thanks >Charles Your best bet is to scrounge a power supply as they can be had. The H786 and H7861 are interchangeable, not the same circuit but fit the same form factor. A H780 can be used but it's not a mechanical fit. Allison From pete at dunnington.plus.com Wed Nov 23 11:51:31 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:51:31 GMT Subject: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help In-Reply-To: Charles "Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help" (Nov 23, 10:51) References: Message-ID: <10511231751.ZM16652@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 23 2005, 10:51, Charles wrote: > I've found the reason why my PDP-11 power supply (H7861) is not > putting out POK and DCOK signals. [ ... ] > Unfortunately the H780 schematic does not match closely (they use > 74123's while this one uses 555's, for example) so it'll be hard > to figure out the missing or unreadable parts anyway! The H7861 is a reworked version of the H786 design, which is fairly different from the H780. The H786 is used in the BA11-N box commonly used for PDP-11/03 and 11/23 systems, and the H7861 is used in the BA11-S box commonly used for 11/23plus and 11/73S systems, so you should be able to find the schemeatics amongst the BA11-{N,S} drawings. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 23 12:25:08 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 10:25:08 -0800 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? In-Reply-To: <0IQE00CE4PP1E9Q1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQE00CE4PP1E9Q1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511231025080187.0265F3FA@10.0.0.252> On 11/23/2005 at 7:09 AM Allison wrote: >>What I can't explain are the small cables between the RAM cards in the >>middle of the card cage and whatever the cards are at the rear. >Battery backup for the ram? I don't think so. Each little black cable goes to a different card at each end. If you look closely at the top view of the card cage, starting from the front, you see what I would guess to be a hard/floppy controller, a RAM card (note the positioning of the components that you can see and compare them with the three cards in the middle), perhaps a CPU card, a couple of empty slots, three more RAM cards and then three unidentified cards with SSI chips (some sort of comms?). The front RAM card doesn't appear to have the same small black cable attached. Perhaps bank switching of some sort? Cheers, Chuck From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Wed Nov 23 12:30:01 2005 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim stephens) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 10:30:01 -0800 Subject: Kevin Stumpf info Message-ID: <4384B529.2050707@msm.umr.edu> I have a friend with a machine refered to in Kevin Stumpf's book on collecting computers. He owns the Univac III mentioned in a book he published. Does anyone have a copy of the book, or a contact for Me Stumpf? He would like to get the information about the system, which was in the book Many thanks Jim Stephens reply to jws - at - world.std.com, unless info is of interest to list, please. Thanks From marvin at rain.org Wed Nov 23 12:37:08 2005 From: marvin at rain.org (Marvin Johnston) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 10:37:08 -0800 Subject: Vector Graphic CP/M Disk, was Re: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? References: <200511231800.jANI03gW019525@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4384B6D4.19BB7634@rain.org> I just posted an original 16 sector Vector Graphic CP/M System disk for the 3032 on VCM (http://www.vintagecomputermarketplace.com/.) I'm not sure what the tpi of the disk are since it doesn't say on the labels. On a similar note, I've been really busy and not able to respond timely to requests. That will most likely continue until after Christmas :(. I am working though to try and get caught up! > > On 11/22/2005 at 4:21 PM JP Hindin wrote: > > >How helpful ;P > > >I'll have a close look at the disk drive tonight and see if I can look it > > >up and find something out about it. > > On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Well, that drive looks like a Tandon TM-100M, so most likely, you not only > > have hard-sectored diskettes, but they're 100 tpi also. Vector had a DS > > format that held about 640K. > > ... just to add to the bad news,... > I've seen numerous TM100-4M drives that were labelled TM100-4 ! > So, a visual inspection may be inadequate to identify it. > From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 23 13:18:02 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:18:02 -0600 Subject: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help In-Reply-To: <10511231751.ZM16652@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: Interesting, I was never aware that the 11/03 and 23 had different boxen than the 11/23plus, though I knew the power supplies were different. Speaking to my local DEC salvage dealer, he told me he used to get whole 11/780s just for the power supplies in the front end 11/03s. However, judging from the number of 23plus systems that were sold (and have recently hit, if not flooded, the used market)I'd say it should be fairly easy to find a cheap H7861 supply. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Pete Turnbull > Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 11:52 AM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help > > On Nov 23 2005, 10:51, Charles wrote: > > I've found the reason why my PDP-11 power supply (H7861) is not > > putting out POK and DCOK signals. > [ ... ] > > Unfortunately the H780 schematic does not match closely (they use > > 74123's while this one uses 555's, for example) so it'll be hard > > to figure out the missing or unreadable parts anyway! > > The H7861 is a reworked version of the H786 design, which is fairly > different from the H780. The H786 is used in the BA11-N box commonly > used for PDP-11/03 and 11/23 systems, and the H7861 is used in the > BA11-S box commonly used for 11/23plus and 11/73S systems, so you > should be able to find the schemeatics amongst the BA11-{N,S} drawings. > > -- > Pete Peter Turnbull > Network Manager > University of York From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 23 13:51:53 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 14:51:53 -0500 Subject: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help Message-ID: <0IQF00GQTB3GCHX3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help > From: "Julian Wolfe" > Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:18:02 -0600 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > >Interesting, I was never aware that the 11/03 and 23 had different boxen >than the 11/23plus, though I knew the power supplies were different. >Speaking to my local DEC salvage dealer, he told me he used to get whole >11/780s just for the power supplies in the front end 11/03s. However, >judging from the number of 23plus systems that were sold (and have recently >hit, if not flooded, the used market)I'd say it should be fairly easy to >find a cheap H7861 supply. There were four major boxes used, and a few oddballs as well. The majors were: BA11-m with the H780 on the side. smaller cage. BA11-N H786 in the front BA11-S H7861 in the front A good PC power supply will do the DC needs of a modest system but the signals BDCok, BPok, Bhalt, Bevent (ltc), Srun need to be created. Allison > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] >> On Behalf Of Pete Turnbull >> Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 11:52 AM >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> Subject: Re: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help >> >> On Nov 23 2005, 10:51, Charles wrote: >> > I've found the reason why my PDP-11 power supply (H7861) is not >> > putting out POK and DCOK signals. >> [ ... ] >> > Unfortunately the H780 schematic does not match closely (they use >> > 74123's while this one uses 555's, for example) so it'll be hard >> > to figure out the missing or unreadable parts anyway! >> >> The H7861 is a reworked version of the H786 design, which is fairly >> different from the H780. The H786 is used in the BA11-N box commonly >> used for PDP-11/03 and 11/23 systems, and the H7861 is used in the >> BA11-S box commonly used for 11/23plus and 11/73S systems, so you >> should be able to find the schemeatics amongst the BA11-{N,S} drawings. >> >> -- >> Pete Peter Turnbull >> Network Manager >> University of York > From Useddec at aol.com Wed Nov 23 14:16:41 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 15:16:41 EST Subject: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help Message-ID: <1e5.48f07cc8.30b62829@aol.com> Hi Charles, I'll look for the boards over the weekend, but I do have the H7861. Thanks, Paul From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 23 14:50:12 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:50:12 -0800 Subject: NSC800x-4 Message-ID: <200511231250120256.02EAC6BD@10.0.0.252> I've done some calling around looking for an NSC800x-4 CPU chip (4 MHz National Z80-type) and am coming up zeroes. Does anyone have one that they'd be willing to part with? Either DIP or PLCC is fine. Thanks, Chuck From crites at ktc.com Wed Nov 23 12:28:06 2005 From: crites at ktc.com (N. R. Crites) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 12:28:06 -0600 Subject: Quick intro and requests Message-ID: <000501c5f05b$a6d0d040$f2c6a3d1@n2liv8dzjxvmt1> Hi, Somewhere I picked up a message sent by you requesting a manual for the NEC ProSpeed 286. I have such a machine with manuals, nice carrying case and the only thing wrong with it is the battery is dead. It does not enough juice to boot up. If you are interested in it I would send it to for the cost of the shipping. Let me know. Regards, N.R. Crites From gcarrick at cse.uta.edu Tue Nov 22 16:25:24 2005 From: gcarrick at cse.uta.edu (A. G. Carrick) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:25:24 -0600 Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection In-Reply-To: <200511221348190316.43F4ECAA@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <000d01c5efb3$a2bd5a30$805e6b81@Gils6240> I know our university prohibits me from making any evaluation of a "gift in kind". I was under the impression that this was an IRS rule. Goggle turned up this which I think is accurate: "A gift of books to the MSUL will in most instances qualify as a charitable deduction for income tax purposes. Librarians and staff of the MSUL cannot make a monetary appraisal of donated materials, because such an appraisal constitutes a conflict of interest. Federal law places the responsibility for establishing the fair market value of a work donated to a not-for-profit organization with the donor. The MSUL can assist donors by providing sources of information for evaluation and appraisal purposes." I usually suggest what an earlier post suggested - monitor eBay for valuations. Once or twice I have emailed a donor of something really nice (e.g. our two Altair's) an eBay result. Gil A. G. (Gil) Carrick, Director The Museum at CSE University of Texas at Arlington Department of Computer Science & Engineering Box 19015, 471 S Cooper Street Arlington, TX 76019 817-272-3620 http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/ ... > If the valuation is modest, simply get a receipt from the > organization that > calls out the amounts as they see them. Quite honestly, > old computer > gear is one of those things that it's impossible to place an > objective value on. The best thing is for the recipient of > your largesse to value it at what they figure it would cost > to otherwise acquire. ... From ics65 at sbcglobal.net Wed Nov 23 10:37:51 2005 From: ics65 at sbcglobal.net (George Wiegand) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 11:37:51 -0500 Subject: Rescued: Data General Nova Boards References: <4980.68.6.79.45.1121399015.squirrel@webmail5.pair.com> <50649.65.6.15.42.1121720584.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com> Message-ID: <005f01c5f04c$3f9b4bd0$02cbda45@ics63szde1vn50> Hi Jeff, Did you ever send those DG boards to anyone? If you did, could you give me their email address or name so that I can add them to my DG reference list in case I need to contact them in the future? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Davis" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 4:03 PM Subject: Re: Rescued: Data General Nova Boards > Ok, I received a few interested responses, so I set the boards aside somewhere > safe until I get back from my trip. Will figure out who gets what in 3 weeks > or so. > > And, to answer a common question, there were no other DG parts or chassis > there. I'll have a friend who frequents the surplus store ask around and see > if he can find out if there still is a DG on campus. I suspect these were > either spares or pulled from the DG when it was scrapped some time ago, and > they were found when cleaning out a storage room (based on the types of stuff > I found in the same bin the boards came from). > > If I'm wrong, maybe we'll get lucky and the chassis or drives will show up in > this week's surplus drop-off (and that my friend will spot it). > > Jeff > > > Hi, I was at my local uni surplus today (UC Santa Barbara) and found, buried > > in a bin of random industrial parts from the chem lab, some Data General Nova > > boards. Here's what I found, if anyone would like to help me identify them > > further: > > > > These boards are 15 x 15 inches: > > > > 107-000187-12X Disk Cartridge Controller, DGC Nova > > 107-000007-02 DGC Nova Extender Board (quantity 2, one with gouged traces) > > 107-000055-03 DGC D-A Converter Scope Control Card Reader > > 107-000054-02 DGC General Purpose Interface > > 107-000151-17-16 DGC Nova Cassette I/O > > 107-000094-00 DG Nova Compatible Wiring Board (quantity 2) > > D-10632-01 Data Channel Linc Tape, CO3000N Option 008 > > > > The wiring boards look to be prototyping boards, they are half filled with > > soldered sockets and hand-wired components. > > > > These boards are 6.5 x 3.25 inches, and have no obvious plug connectors: > > > > 107-000008-01 DGC (no other writing, quantity 2) > > These look like prototyping boards also, with rows for sockets and wire wrap > > posts on either side. Each has different components wired up. > > > > I don't have any DG stuff, and it's unlikely I'm going to acquire one in the > > near future (still working on my Sun 2/120), so eventually these will go to > > someone else. I'll be leaving Sunday on a trip until Aug 10th, but I'll try > > to take some photos of the boards tomorrow or Saturday (if anyone is > > interested in them). > > > > Jeff > > > > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________ > This message scanned for viruses by CoreComm > From os9al at os9al.com Tue Nov 22 17:52:01 2005 From: os9al at os9al.com (OS-9 Al) Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:52:01 -0600 Subject: OS-9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53C607A7-9138-42F4-ADC8-3F8D0144320D@os9al.com> > I've just come across my first OS9 system, and know absolutely > nothing about > OS9 other than that it's vaguely UNIX-like. Before I try hooking > the hard disk > up and seeing if it actually works, obvious questions follow: > > 1) I assume there's a login process. Of course I don't know any > account > details for the system; are there any tricks to breaking in as > there often are > with old UNIX systems? The stock "login" utility provided by Microware was very, very basic (not even encrypted passwords; it was designed just as a front end for selecting user IDs for the super user). An example /dd/sys/ password file would have "super" for the user name, and "user" for the password. You could even type them both at the login prompt: Login? super user But no one should have ever shipped a system with that in place ;-) > 2) Assuming I can't log in at this stage, is it possible to cleanly > shut the > system down? e.g. some magic keypress or login name (as there is > with Apollo > machines) Power off at will! OS-9 was designed for embedded use and except for potential disk caching issues if you powered down during a write, there is no "shutdown" sequence for OS-9. > 3) If I can login somehow, how do I then shut the system down > properly? Is > there a shutdown command in OS9, or is it something else entirely? Not needed :-) Just make sure nothing is writing to the disk. > On the plus side, the interface between host and disk unit is SASI, > so there's > a chance I can do a raw backup of the drive via a modern system. On > the minus > side, the physical drive is an ST506 type via an OMTI bridge board, > so I can't > easily go from raw backup to working system without proper low- > level format > utils (which I don't have, although I'm still sorting through > floppies that > came in the same haul) You can do a web search and find disk utilities for PC and maybe Linux (and maybe Mac) that will read/write to an OS-9 disk image. > Of course all of this assumes that a) the hard drive isn't toast > already and > b) that the hard drive which came in the pile of stuff actually > belongs with > this system in the first place :) You can also find the OS-9 Technical I/O manual online at the CD-i Association website (netsearch; I don't know the address) and it has the disk structure in there. Worst case: disk zapper ;-) -- Allen http://os9al.com From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 23 16:18:39 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:18:39 +0000 Subject: OS-9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <53C607A7-9138-42F4-ADC8-3F8D0144320D@os9al.com> References: <53C607A7-9138-42F4-ADC8-3F8D0144320D@os9al.com> Message-ID: <4384EABF.1030900@yahoo.co.uk> OS-9 Al wrote: > >> I've just come across my first OS9 system > > Power off at will! Great :) I've since found that the floppy drive in the system was hosed, but the boot floppy's still good, so I've now managed to boot from floppy only, which is a start. Unfortunately accesses to the hard disk are currently failing; my assumption is that the board used to store hard disk geometry in NVRAM and the NVRAM battery's likely long since given up. At this moment I have no idea how to reprogram it as that was almost certainly done with a utility outside of the OS-9 boot floppy that I have... (remember that this system uses an ST506 disk via a bridge board, so it's non-intelligent and needs its drive geometry stored somewhere) Still, it is at the stage of being an operational OS-9 system now - I just don't know what's lurking on that hard disk. Hopefully it was all non-exciting user data... >> On the plus side, the interface between host and disk unit is SASI, so >> there's >> a chance I can do a raw backup of the drive via a modern system. On >> the minus >> side, the physical drive is an ST506 type via an OMTI bridge board, so >> I can't >> easily go from raw backup to working system without proper low-level >> format >> utils (which I don't have, although I'm still sorting through floppies >> that >> came in the same haul) > > You can do a web search and find disk utilities for PC and maybe Linux > (and maybe Mac) that will read/write to an OS-9 disk image. Ah, thanks - that's worth bearing in mind if it turns out that I have no way of getting the machine's hard drive working with the system itself; it'd be nice to see what's on there at least. cheers! Jules From jdaviscl2 at soupwizard.com Wed Nov 23 16:13:36 2005 From: jdaviscl2 at soupwizard.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 14:13:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: Rescued: Data General Nova Boards In-Reply-To: <005f01c5f04c$3f9b4bd0$02cbda45@ics63szde1vn50> References: <4980.68.6.79.45.1121399015.squirrel@webmail5.pair.com> <50649.65.6.15.42.1121720584.squirrel@webmail3.pair.com> <005f01c5f04c$3f9b4bd0$02cbda45@ics63szde1vn50> Message-ID: <42139.207.71.246.177.1132784016.squirrel@webmail7.pair.com> All the DG Nova people (I left my list at home): Yep, I still have them, they're in a box in the corner of my room (buried behind other stuff), each wrapped in antistatic bags. Work and other projects have prevented me from getting to them, but I have a 4 day holiday weekend that I'm spending organizing my pile of computer parts into keep, sell, and give away piles. With any luck, I'll get to Nova boards sometime over the weekend. At the very least, I need to email the lucky recipients and reconfirm what people need. Jeff On Wed, November 23, 2005 8:37 am, George Wiegand wrote: > Hi Jeff, > Did you ever send those DG boards to anyone? > If you did, could you give me their email address or name so that I can add > them to my DG reference list in case I need to contact them in the future? > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jeff Davis" > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 4:03 PM > Subject: Re: Rescued: Data General Nova Boards > > >> Ok, I received a few interested responses, so I set the boards aside > somewhere >> safe until I get back from my trip. Will figure out who gets what in 3 > weeks >> or so. >> >> And, to answer a common question, there were no other DG parts or chassis >> there. I'll have a friend who frequents the surplus store ask around and > see >> if he can find out if there still is a DG on campus. I suspect these were >> either spares or pulled from the DG when it was scrapped some time ago, > and >> they were found when cleaning out a storage room (based on the types of > stuff >> I found in the same bin the boards came from). >> >> If I'm wrong, maybe we'll get lucky and the chassis or drives will show up > in >> this week's surplus drop-off (and that my friend will spot it). >> >> Jeff >> >> > Hi, I was at my local uni surplus today (UC Santa Barbara) and found, > buried >> > in a bin of random industrial parts from the chem lab, some Data General > Nova >> > boards. Here's what I found, if anyone would like to help me identify > them >> > further: >> > >> > These boards are 15 x 15 inches: >> > >> > 107-000187-12X Disk Cartridge Controller, DGC Nova >> > 107-000007-02 DGC Nova Extender Board (quantity 2, one with gouged > traces) >> > 107-000055-03 DGC D-A Converter Scope Control Card Reader >> > 107-000054-02 DGC General Purpose Interface >> > 107-000151-17-16 DGC Nova Cassette I/O >> > 107-000094-00 DG Nova Compatible Wiring Board (quantity 2) >> > D-10632-01 Data Channel Linc Tape, CO3000N Option 008 >> > >> > The wiring boards look to be prototyping boards, they are half filled > with >> > soldered sockets and hand-wired components. >> > >> > These boards are 6.5 x 3.25 inches, and have no obvious plug connectors: >> > >> > 107-000008-01 DGC (no other writing, quantity 2) >> > These look like prototyping boards also, with rows for sockets and wire > wrap >> > posts on either side. Each has different components wired up. >> > >> > I don't have any DG stuff, and it's unlikely I'm going to acquire one in > the >> > near future (still working on my Sun 2/120), so eventually these will go > to >> > someone else. I'll be leaving Sunday on a trip until Aug 10th, but I'll > try >> > to take some photos of the boards tomorrow or Saturday (if anyone is >> > interested in them). >> > >> > Jeff >> > >> > >> > >> >> >> >> >> _____________________________________________________ >> This message scanned for viruses by CoreComm >> > > From pete at dunnington.plus.com Wed Nov 23 16:09:39 2005 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:09:39 GMT Subject: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help In-Reply-To: "Julian Wolfe" "RE: Mouse Pissed! Need power supply help" (Nov 23, 13:18) References: Message-ID: <10511232209.ZM17089@mindy.dunnington.plus.com> On Nov 23 2005, 13:18, Julian Wolfe wrote: > Interesting, I was never aware that the 11/03 and 23 had different boxen > than the 11/23plus, though I knew the power supplies were different. > Speaking to my local DEC salvage dealer, he told me he used to get whole > 11/780s just for the power supplies in the front end 11/03s. However, > judging from the number of 23plus systems that were sold (and have recently > hit, if not flooded, the used market)I'd say it should be fairly easy to > find a cheap H7861 supply. Probably, and as Allison pointed out, if there's a lot of damage a replacement may, for once, be better than attempting a repair. BTW, if you've not already found it, my web page (actually it's a flat-ASCII text file) describing the different QBus boxes and backplanes and such may be of interest to you: http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/PDP-11/QBus_chassis -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From jplist at kiwigeek.com Wed Nov 23 14:21:46 2005 From: jplist at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 14:21:46 -0600 (CST) Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? (Vector box cards) In-Reply-To: <200511231025080187.0265F3FA@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On Wed, 23 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > >>What I can't explain are the small cables between the RAM cards in the > >>middle of the card cage and whatever the cards are at the rear. > > >Battery backup for the ram? > > I don't think so. Each little black cable goes to a different card at each > end. > > If you look closely at the top view of the card cage, starting from the > front, you see what I would guess to be a hard/floppy controller, a RAM > card (note the positioning of the components that you can see and compare > them with the three cards in the middle), perhaps a CPU card, a couple of > empty slots, three more RAM cards and then three unidentified cards with > SSI chips (some sort of comms?). The front RAM card doesn't appear to have > the same small black cable attached. Perhaps bank switching of some sort? Jackpot Chuck; The three cards ahead of the RAM cards are FlashWriters - terminal interface cards, basically. The Vector time slices through standalone copies of the OS in separate memory cards, running multiple instances of the single-user CP/M. The single wire from the FlashWriter is BD_ENABLE. The cards are: FlashWriter FlashWriter FlashWriter 56k RAM board 56k RAM board 56k RAM board Odd little wire divider (No clue whatefer) ZCB (CPU board) RAM board Floppy & Hard disk controller BitStreamer (out of picture) The FlashWriter talks to a MindlessTerminal (vaguely proprietary connection, but easy enough to mimic as I'm working on now). My ZCB has RS-232 hanging off it, and a memory board next to it - which suggests to me that it can run a serial console and another instance of an OS, but I haven't tested this yet. The BitStreamer is a serial & parallel port I/O host. The thing is a pretty nifty set up, to be honest, I didn't know it was nearly so cool ;) From allain at panix.com Wed Nov 23 17:57:23 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:57:23 -0500 Subject: Two Classiccmp stories on NPR References: Message-ID: <001e01c5f089$a6af0180$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Two actual stories Today on NPR: All Things Considered Story 2: Person who moved from modern to Wordperfect for DOS so as to remove the Internet distractions from his life. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5025301 Story 1: Silicon Valley worker who keeps an HP3000 in his house and is surviving jobless on a shoestring. Choose your paths wisely, Happy Thanksgiving John A. From tponsford at theriver.com Wed Nov 23 18:16:53 2005 From: tponsford at theriver.com (tom ponsford) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:16:53 -0700 Subject: IBM RT Message-ID: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> I just rescued a complete IBM RT PC. It includes all the documentation. AIX 2.x software, extra keyboards, extra cards, extra HDD;s and extra tape drives. It also has an extra ESDI hard drive labeled Reno 4.3. Was there a port of 4.x BSD to the ROMP processor? I thought that it was tried but not completed. There is also a backup tape labeled AOS? The whole system looks like its in pretty good condition. And maybe after consuming mass quantities of turkey tomorrow, I'll see if it boots up. Cheers Tom From allain at panix.com Wed Nov 23 18:14:36 2005 From: allain at panix.com (John Allain) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:14:36 -0500 Subject: Kevin Stumpf info References: <4384B529.2050707@msm.umr.edu> Message-ID: <004a01c5f08c$0e41ad00$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> > Does anyone have a copy of the book, or a contact for Me Stumpf? http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0968424406/103-1974629-2914209 "A Guide to Collecting Computers and Computer Collectibles: History, Practice, and Technique" (Spiral-bound) http://www.chac.org/engine-ascii/engv2n1.txt gives Kevin's: {email-address},{phone-number}... (drumroll)... from 1994 John A. From mokuba at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 18:21:25 2005 From: mokuba at gmail.com (Gary Sparkes) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:21:25 -0500 Subject: IBM RT In-Reply-To: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> Message-ID: On 11/23/05 7:16 PM, "tom ponsford" wrote: > The whole system looks like its in pretty good condition. And maybe > after consuming mass quantities of turkey tomorrow, I'll see if it boots up. ^---- Did anyone else read that as turnkey? From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 18:24:07 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:24:07 -0500 Subject: IBM RT In-Reply-To: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> References: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> Message-ID: <43850827.1050605@gmail.com> tom ponsford wrote: > I just rescued a complete IBM RT PC. It includes all the documentation. > AIX 2.x software, extra keyboards, extra cards, extra HDD;s and extra > tape drives. It also has an extra ESDI hard drive labeled Reno 4.3. > > Was there a port of 4.x BSD to the ROMP processor? I thought that it was > tried but not completed. It's incomplete, but it boots and does most stuff. I've actually been looking for an RT Enhanced Advanced. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 23 18:24:35 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:24:35 -0500 Subject: IBM RT In-Reply-To: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> References: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> Message-ID: <43850843.8050908@gmail.com> tom ponsford wrote: > There is also a backup tape labeled AOS? BTW, AOS is IBM's BSD. Peace... Sridhar From doc at mdrconsult.com Wed Nov 23 18:36:16 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:36:16 -0500 Subject: IBM RT In-Reply-To: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> References: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> Message-ID: <43850B00.8090802@mdrconsult.com> tom ponsford wrote: > I just rescued a complete IBM RT PC. It includes all the documentation. > AIX 2.x software, extra keyboards, extra cards, extra HDD;s and extra > tape drives. It also has an extra ESDI hard drive labeled Reno 4.3. <12-year-old girl> OMG!!! Please to be transcribing all software, sir. And if you have one more tape drive than you need, we should negotiate offline. > Was there a port of 4.x BSD to the ROMP processor? I thought that it was > tried but not completed. > > There is also a backup tape labeled AOS? AOS is IBM's port of BSD. AOS stands for "Academic Operating System". IIRC, Reno is one of the "after-the-fact" versions of v4.3. > The whole system looks like its in pretty good condition. And maybe > after consuming mass quantities of turkey tomorrow, I'll see if it boots > up. Doc From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 23 13:32:05 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:32:05 +0000 (GMT) Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E59E4@sbs.jdfogg.com> from "James Fogg" at Nov 23, 5 09:13:37 am Message-ID: Warning : My knowledge of OS-9 is beased entirely on the 6809 (8 bit) version, I've never used a 68K version. I suspect some of the things that I think were 'misisng' on the 6809 version (like shell variables and wildcards) are present in the stnadard shell of the 68K version. But anyway... > To begin to understand it, consider it to be a CP/M clone with > multi-user extensions. List the files in the system directory and most Internally it's not a bit like CP/M > of them will be vaguely familiar utilities. I believe "DIR" was the > command. If not, use commands from other common OS's as it was the same > as one of them (LIST maybe?). A few things.... At least in the 6809 version there was no equivalent to the PATH for lookin for commands. At any time, a user had 2 default directories. One was the data directory, the other the execution directory. The latter is what was searched for commands. File paths were somewhat unix-like. But you don't mount all the disks into one filesystem. Rather, the first part of each complete file path is the device name. I remeember floppies called /D0, /D1. etc and hard drives /H0, /H1, etc. Some machines have a device /DD which is a copy of the device descriptor for the drive you want to be the default. So, for example, a file on the second floppy drive might be specified soemthing like : /D1/pascal/demo.pas Two of the built-in commands of the stnadard shell were CHD (to set the data directory) and CHX (to set the execution directory). Typically the latter is set to /D)/CMDS (that being the normal equivalent of /bin on a unix box). Note that if you chanve floppies, you have to type CHX /D0/CMDS (even if the directory was /D)/CMDS both before and after the change), since IIRC, it stores a pointer to some part of that directory in RAM, not the name iteslf. IIRC, the stnadard name for the directory command was DIR, but of course as it was simply a program loaded and run from the execution directory, it could be called anything. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 23 14:01:20 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:01:20 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: Does anyone have the pinout (or a datasheet) for the SED9421 chip (18 pin DIL package). I think it's some kind of floppy disk data seperator/PLL. A web search has found nothing of obvious use... If you want to send me anything other than plain text (like an image, or a pdf), please don't send it here. Please send it to tony_duell at yahoo.co.uk -tony From SUPRDAVE at aol.com Wed Nov 23 19:34:17 2005 From: SUPRDAVE at aol.com (SUPRDAVE at aol.com) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:34:17 EST Subject: IBM RT Message-ID: <201.e7ac666.30b67299@aol.com> >>In a message dated 11/23/2005 7:15:58 PM Eastern Standard Time, >>tponsford at theriver.com writes: >>I just rescued a complete IBM RT PC. It includes all the documentation. >>AIX 2.x software, extra keyboards, extra cards, extra HDD;s and extra >>tape drives. It also has an extra ESDI hard drive labeled Reno 4.3. >>Was there a port of 4.x BSD to the ROMP processor? I thought that it was >>tried but not completed. >>There is also a backup tape labeled AOS? >>The whole system looks like its in pretty good condition. And maybe >>after consuming mass quantities of turkey tomorrow, I'll see if it boots up. >>Cheers >>Tom Sounds like mine. Mine also has AIX 2.2.1 on it. I have some RT diagnostic disks that might be copyable if anyone needs them. I think I have what's known as a megapel card but I dont have a free slot to put it in or a display to connect it to. From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 23 19:38:17 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:38:17 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511231738170190.03F282EC@10.0.0.252> On 11/23/2005 at 8:01 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Does anyone have the pinout (or a datasheet) for the SED9421 chip (18 pin >DIL package). I found this on a Japanese site: 1.XG 2.XD 3. ph1 4.NC 5.RD DATA 6.WINDOWS 7.DATA 8.MFM/FM 9.MIN/STD 10.VSS 11.CONTROL 12.OFFSET 13.LPF 14.WCLK 15.ph2 16.NC 17.NC 18.VDD It appears to be a VFO for use with the SED9420C data separator (like you'd find in an Amstrad CPC). Hope this helps. Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 23 20:24:43 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:24:43 -0800 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? (Vector box cards) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511231824430617.041D0767@10.0.0.252> On 11/23/2005 at 2:21 PM JP Hindin wrote: >The thing is a pretty nifty set up, to be honest, I didn't know it was >nearly so cool ;) Isn't this whole thing deja vu all over again--only 6 years later? http://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-May/127508.html This was almost certainly an MP/M II system. FWIW, if you're wondering about the Flashwriter cards, there's a MDM7 overlay for them wandering around on the web. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 23 20:28:14 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:28:14 -0800 Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection In-Reply-To: <000d01c5efb3$a2bd5a30$805e6b81@Gils6240> References: <000d01c5efb3$a2bd5a30$805e6b81@Gils6240> Message-ID: <200511231828140981.0420410A@10.0.0.252> On 11/22/2005 at 4:25 PM A. G. Carrick wrote: >I usually suggest what an earlier post suggested - monitor eBay for >valuations. Once or twice I have emailed a donor of something really nice >(e.g. our two Altair's) an eBay result. Point taken, Gil, but a word of caution is in order when taking prices from eBay. There are sellers who post items with ridiculously high prices--(e.g. almost $100 for a DC-600 cart). When you use eBay for valuation, be sure you quote SALE prices, not ASKING. Come to think of it, I've got 2 CD's worth of eBay tuba auctions just for that eventuality. Cheers, Chuck From jrkeys at concentric.net Wed Nov 23 20:52:06 2005 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 20:52:06 -0600 Subject: Kevin Stumpf info References: <4384B529.2050707@msm.umr.edu> <004a01c5f08c$0e41ad00$21fe54a6@ibm23xhr06> Message-ID: <00ac01c5f0a2$1aacaf20$62406b43@66067007> WOW a used copy going for $184.49!!!!!!!!!!!! Glad I got my copy from Kevin after it first came out. ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Allain" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 6:14 PM Subject: Re: Kevin Stumpf info >> Does anyone have a copy of the book, or a contact for Me Stumpf? > > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0968424406/103-1974629-2914209 > "A Guide to Collecting Computers and Computer Collectibles: > History, Practice, and Technique" (Spiral-bound) > > http://www.chac.org/engine-ascii/engv2n1.txt > gives Kevin's: {email-address},{phone-number}... (drumroll)... from 1994 > > John A. > From ken at seefried.com Wed Nov 23 21:33:26 2005 From: ken at seefried.com (Ken Seefried) Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:33:26 -0500 Subject: Pyramid - Re: Masscomp OS floppies / tape dump In-Reply-To: <200511231800.jANI03gY019525@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511231800.jANI03gY019525@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <43853486.4050303@seefried.com> From: Bill Pechter > I wish I had the sources for it and Pyramid's OS/x... We had a Pyramid 90x when I was at GaTech. Really nifty box, but exceptionally obscure now. Sorta like our Kendall Square Reasearch machine (KSR/1). From gilcarrick at comcast.net Thu Nov 24 00:06:53 2005 From: gilcarrick at comcast.net (Gil Carrick) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 00:06:53 -0600 Subject: Quick intro and requests In-Reply-To: <000501c5f05b$a6d0d040$f2c6a3d1@n2liv8dzjxvmt1> Message-ID: <000601c5f0bd$4ca9f8a0$0200a8c0@Gils6240> Where are you located? Gil > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of N. R. Crites > Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 12:28 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Quick intro and requests > > Hi, Somewhere I picked up a message sent by you requesting a > manual for the NEC ProSpeed 286. I have such a machine with > manuals, nice carrying case and the only thing wrong with it > is the battery is dead. It does not enough juice to boot up. > If you are interested in it I would send it to for the cost > of the shipping. Let me know. > Regards, > N.R. Crites From Useddec at aol.com Thu Nov 24 01:16:43 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 02:16:43 EST Subject: Appraisal and donating a collection Message-ID: <25c.20a6a66.30b6c2db@aol.com> Hi, I can give you "fair market value" for most DEC and some other equipment. Thanks, Paul From dm561 at torfree.net Thu Nov 24 01:21:28 2005 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 02:21:28 -0500 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? (Vector box cards) Message-ID: <01C5F09D.C98B2BC0@MSE_D03> Well, from my limited knowledge of Vector systems, AFAIK the multi-user systems did actually use a standard 48K CP/M and not MP/M; each terminal loaded it into its own memory card and the supervisor ROM looked after time-slicing among the cards. Not sure what MDM7 has to do with the Flashwriter, which is essentially just a video display and parallel keyboard interface. But the question still remains whether the FDD is soft or hard sectored; it does indeed look like a Tandon and not the usual Micropolis and if the model number can't be relied on, how could one tell (other than by trial & error)? mike ------------Original Message--------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 18:24:43 -0800 From: "Chuck Guzis" Subject: Re: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? (Vector box cards) On 11/23/2005 at 2:21 PM JP Hindin wrote: >The thing is a pretty nifty set up, to be honest, I didn't know it was >nearly so cool ;) Isn't this whole thing deja vu all over again--only 6 years later? http://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-May/127508.html This was almost certainly an MP/M II system. FWIW, if you're wondering about the Flashwriter cards, there's a MDM7 overlay for them wandering around on the web. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 24 04:45:15 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 02:45:15 -0800 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? (Vector box cards) In-Reply-To: <01C5F09D.C98B2BC0@MSE_D03> References: <01C5F09D.C98B2BC0@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <200511240245150854.05E74650@10.0.0.252> On 11/24/2005 at 2:21 AM M H Stein wrote: >But the question still remains whether the FDD is soft or hard >sectored; it does indeed look like a Tandon and not the usual >Micropolis and if the model number can't be relied on, how >could one tell (other than by trial & error)? Sorry, I meant Bitstreamer, not Flashwriter. The drive model isn't going to tell you anything but the track density and the one/two sidedness of the recording capabilities (but then, you could tell the sidedness by looking at the heads--SS drives have a felt pad and not a head on one side. I've seen soft-sectored diskettes only on late Vectors like the 4; this isn't one, so it's a pretty safe bet that it's a HS diskette. If the drive is indeed a Tandon TM-100-4M, it's 100 tpi. It *might* also be 100 tpi if it says TM-100-4, rather than 96 tpi. That can be verified easily enough by using the drive on something like a PC to format a soft-sectored diskette, then checking the result on a 96 tpi drive. If track 0's in the right place, it's 96 tpi; otherwise it's probably 100 tpi. Just wondering if the serial number if this unit is the same 1003 that the 1999 posting describes. In any case, give Herb Johnson a call; he's got a pile of Vector manuals, the last I heard. He's also got 16-sector 5.25" diskettes for sale. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 24 05:56:48 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:56:48 +0000 Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4385AA80.4020401@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: > Warning : My knowledge of OS-9 is beased entirely on the 6809 (8 bit) > version, I've never used a 68K version. I suspect some of the things that > I think were 'misisng' on the 6809 version (like shell variables and > wildcards) are present in the stnadard shell of the 68K version. But > anyway... > >> To begin to understand it, consider it to be a CP/M clone with >> multi-user extensions. List the files in the system directory and most > > Internally it's not a bit like CP/M More UNIX-like than anything. In fact, some text implies that library calls were kept as close to UNIX as possible to aid porting between the two. Privately someone sent me a link to some very handy OS-9 manuals online after reading these posts. I won't quote it here as presumably it was sent privately for a reason, but I'm sure they'll pass it on to anyone else interested... > At least in the 6809 version there was no equivalent to the PATH for > lookin for commands. At any time, a user had 2 default directories. One > was the data directory, the other the execution directory. The latter is > what was searched for commands. That seems to be exactly the same with the 68k version. It seems a bit strange given that the system's supposed to be multi-user and so binaries might be all over the place. Presumably it was a memory-saving thing, but I would have thought string-splitting routines needed to be in memory for other tasks already, and all it needs on top of that is a loop-type construct to iterate through each component of a path... > File paths were somewhat unix-like. But you don't mount all the disks > into one filesystem. Rather, the first part of each complete file path is > the device name. I remeember floppies called /D0, /D1. etc and hard > drives /H0, /H1, etc. Some machines have a device /DD which is a copy of > the device descriptor for the drive you want to be the default. Ahh, that's what /DD is :) When this system boots from floppy it mentions "don't forget to set execution path to /DD/blah/blah/..." or somesuch (user-added to the startup file). I knew about /Dx and /Hx, but this was the first time I'd seen /DD anywhere. > IIRC, the stnadard name for the directory command was DIR, but of course > as it was simply a program loaded and run from the execution directory, > it could be called anything. Unbelievably, I've found Cumana's advertising flyer about the board - I got hold of that sometime last year in a totally separate pile of stuff. They seem to keep very quiet about the fact that it's a 68008 CPU rather than a 68000 :) It does, however, list all the supported commands inside. Oh, and even stranger than Cumana (the disk drive people) making a BBC coprocessor that ran OS-9, is that Cumana also made a version for the Sinclair QL (which I don't fully understand as the QL's already a 68008, right? Maybe that version was just the extra RAM, floppy and SASI interface...) According to the flyer, both Acorn and QL versions should come with a word processor, spreadsheet, database, BASIC compiler, C compiler, Pascal compiler, assembler, and graphics kernel. I can only assume they're on the hard drive (which I can't access at present) - but having said that, the flyer talks as though a hard disk was totally optional. Wish I had all the install floppies! cheers Jules From andy.piercy at gmail.com Thu Nov 24 05:52:50 2005 From: andy.piercy at gmail.com (Andy Piercy) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 11:52:50 +0000 Subject: Masscomp help please! Message-ID: Folks, I'm searching for info and parts for Masscomp computers. I have a MC5420 (68020) system less data acc and some parts of an MC5000 (68000) system and am looking for to a set of RTU distribution floppies or tapes for each system, manuals, and general Masscomp parts... Can anyone help? Thanks, Andy. From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Thu Nov 24 07:12:06 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Witchy) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 13:12:06 -0000 (GMT) Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <4385AA80.4020401@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4385AA80.4020401@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <32174.135.196.233.27.1132837926.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> On Thu, November 24, 2005 11:56 am, Jules Richardson said: > > Oh, and even stranger than Cumana (the disk drive people) making a BBC > coprocessor that ran OS-9, is that Cumana also made a version for the > Sinclair QL (which I don't fully understand as the QL's already a 68008, > right? Maybe that version was just the extra RAM, floppy and SASI > interface...) It is, yes, or at least I *think* there's a SASI connector on there. I can check when I get home, assuming my interface is down here with me and not 250 miles away :) I guess that if they made the interface for the Beeb first it was probably very trivial to make one for the QL since they have the same CPU? cheers -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection? From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Nov 24 07:34:25 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 13:34:25 +0000 Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <32174.135.196.233.27.1132837926.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> References: <4385AA80.4020401@yahoo.co.uk> <32174.135.196.233.27.1132837926.squirrel@vorbis.demon.co.uk> Message-ID: <4385C161.4040509@yahoo.co.uk> Witchy wrote: > On Thu, November 24, 2005 11:56 am, Jules Richardson said: >> Oh, and even stranger than Cumana (the disk drive people) making a BBC >> coprocessor that ran OS-9, is that Cumana also made a version for the >> Sinclair QL (which I don't fully understand as the QL's already a 68008, >> right? Maybe that version was just the extra RAM, floppy and SASI >> interface...) > > It is, yes, or at least I *think* there's a SASI connector on there. I can > check when I get home, assuming my interface is down here with me and not > 250 miles away :) I guess that if they made the interface for the Beeb > first it was probably very trivial to make one for the QL since they have > the same CPU? I was wondering which was first. OTOH, the QL already has the right CPU so it might make a more sensible development platform / proof of concept rather than going to make a full BBC copro before you can do anything. Once you've bodged some extra RAM, FDC etc. onto a QL you may as well just market the QL board too. Plus of course doing it that way around would explain Cumana branching out into the QL world; far as I know they never really strayed beyond BBC-related stuff (drives, touch pad etc.) otherwise, so it seems a little strange them selling QL hardware. cheers Jules From dogas at bellsouth.net Thu Nov 24 07:33:30 2005 From: dogas at bellsouth.net (dogas at bellsouth.net) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 8:33:30 -0500 Subject: Kevin Stumpf info Message-ID: <20051124133329.LMNT19845.ibm61aec.bellsouth.net@mail.bellsouth.net> Original Message ----- From: "Keys" > WOW a used copy going for $184.49!!!!!!!!!!!! Glad I got my copy from Kevin > after it first came out. wow again, though the publishing numbers couldn't be big . Kevin nicely signed my copy of that great book too I seem to recall chapters maybe like "how the PDP-10 made me fix the roof"... Fun. But, because my book was delivered along also with Kevin's Imsai 8080 and VDP-80, my review might be jaded... Joe's reading it now. ;) - Mike: dogas at bellsouth.net From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Thu Nov 24 10:41:58 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 10:41:58 Subject: Kevin Stumpf info In-Reply-To: <20051124133329.LMNT19845.ibm61aec.bellsouth.net@mail.bells outh.net> Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051124104158.33475c90@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> Mike, Are you still lurking here! I haven't seen or heard anything out of you in months. Joe At 08:33 AM 11/24/05 -0500, you wrote: >Original Message ----- >From: "Keys" >> WOW a used copy going for $184.49!!!!!!!!!!!! Glad I got my copy from >Kevin >> after it first came out. > >wow again, though the publishing numbers couldn't be big . Kevin nicely signed my copy of that great book too I seem to recall chapters maybe like "how the PDP-10 made me fix the roof"... Fun. > >But, because my book was delivered along also with Kevin's Imsai 8080 and VDP-80, my review might be jaded... Joe's reading it now. > >;) >- Mike: dogas at bellsouth.net > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 24 13:30:30 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 14:30:30 -0500 Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? (Vector box cards) Message-ID: <0IQH00HW94RGJA03@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? (Vector box cards) > From: M H Stein > Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 02:21:28 -0500 > To: "'cctalk at classiccmp.org'" > >Well, from my limited knowledge of Vector systems, AFAIK the >multi-user systems did actually use a standard 48K CP/M and >not MP/M; each terminal loaded it into its own memory card >and the supervisor ROM looked after time-slicing among the cards. A lot of the multiuser S100 systems used CPU/memory/IO per user running CP/M and a additional CPU/mem/IO/disks running MPM as server to provide inter-cpu communication, file services and spooled printing. Some ran Multiple IO subsystems and one cpu to time slice task swap. >But the question still remains whether the FDD is soft or hard >sectored; it does indeed look like a Tandon and not the usual >Micropolis and if the model number can't be relied on, how >could one tell (other than by trial & error)? > >mike This is the crush question. Board names/model numbers may help. Then those specifically familar with Vector can say whats what. Allison From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 24 14:45:22 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 20:45:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511231738170190.03F282EC@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 23, 5 05:38:17 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/23/2005 at 8:01 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > >Does anyone have the pinout (or a datasheet) for the SED9421 chip (18 pin > >DIL package). > > I found this on a Japanese site: > > 1.XG > 2.XD > 3. ph1 > 4.NC > 5.RD DATA > 6.WINDOWS > 7.DATA > 8.MFM/FM > 9.MIN/STD > 10.VSS > 11.CONTROL > 12.OFFSET > 13.LPF > 14.WCLK > 15.ph2 > 16.NC > 17.NC > 18.VDD Thanks for that. It seems to make sense against the PCB I'm investigating... > > It appears to be a VFO for use with the SED9420C data separator (like you'd > find in an Amstrad CPC). I never thought to look in Amstrad service manuals (and I have quite a number of them). They sed the SED9420 quite a lot (in the CPC, PCW, etc), but never with an external VCO. Are you sure the SED9421 is not a complete data seperator? The PCB I am looking at (from an Epson PF10 drive unit) doesn't seem to have much else around the 765 disk controller chip. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 24 14:59:03 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 20:59:03 +0000 (GMT) Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <4385AA80.4020401@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 24, 5 11:56:48 am Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > > Warning : My knowledge of OS-9 is beased entirely on the 6809 (8 bit) > > version, I've never used a 68K version. I suspect some of the things that > > I think were 'misisng' on the 6809 version (like shell variables and > > wildcards) are present in the stnadard shell of the 68K version. But > > anyway... > > > >> To begin to understand it, consider it to be a CP/M clone with > >> multi-user extensions. List the files in the system directory and most > > > > Internally it's not a bit like CP/M > > More UNIX-like than anything. In fact, some text implies that library calls > were kept as close to UNIX as possible to aid porting between the two. The calls are very unix-like, but the internals of the OS are very different. It's much more modular for one thing (device drivers and descriptors are sepeare modules which can be loaded from the command line, for example). > According to the flyer, both Acorn and QL versions should come with a word > processor, spreadsheet, database, BASIC compiler, C compiler, Pascal compiler, > assembler, and graphics kernel. > Having used the 6809 version, the C should be pretty much original K&R, the Pascal will be ISO level 0 with some extras (it doesn't quite make level 1), and the BASIC should be BASIC-09, which IMHO is the best BASIC ever (nicer, even, than BBC BASIC). > I can only assume they're on the hard drive (which I can't access at present) > - but having said that, the flyer talks as though a hard disk was totally > optional. Wish I had all the install floppies! It was certainly possible to run the 8-bit versions from floppies. Two drives helped a lot, but it was just about possible on a single-drive machine by swapping disks. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Nov 24 15:06:52 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 21:06:52 +0000 (GMT) Subject: OS9 login / shutdown In-Reply-To: <4385C161.4040509@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Nov 24, 5 01:34:25 pm Message-ID: > Plus of course doing it that way around would explain Cumana branching out > into the QL world; far as I know they never really strayed beyond BBC-related > stuff (drives, touch pad etc.) otherwise, so it seems a little strange them > selling QL hardware. On my right is a Cumana hard disk unit. It contains a Shugart ST612 drive (maybe not original!), a WD1001 card, a PSU and a little interface board. What makes it unusual is that it's not for the Beeb, or for any UK home computer, it's for the TRS-80 Model 3 or Model 4 (and yes, it's totally compatible with the Radio Shack one, not suprisingly). -tony From pechter at gmail.com Thu Nov 24 15:12:04 2005 From: pechter at gmail.com (Bill Pechter) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 16:12:04 -0500 Subject: Masscomp OS floppies / tape dump In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I was in the MIS department at Concurrent for a couple of years. When they did the merger I was in Concurrent training working to train the guys from the 3200 world on Masscomps. Bill On 11/23/05, Andy Piercy wrote: > > Bill, > > I use to work for Masscomp in the UK office, worked on the 5500, 5400, > 5600, 5700. > > They were kool systems and with data acc! > > I was in the support office, what did you do? > > Ta, > > Andy. > > > On 23/11/05, Bill Pechter wrote: > > I wish I did. I had a 5450 running RTU-3.5 and later 4.x (IIRC) back > when I > > worked for Concurrent Computer. > > > > I wish I had the sources for it and Pyramid's OS/x... and the binaries > and > > the machines. > > > > I'd love to see FreeBSD with a dual AT&T/SysV universe set up. > > (or maybe BSD/Linux...) > > > > Bill > > > > > > On 11/23/05, Andy Piercy wrote: > > > > > > All, > > > > > > Is there anyone on this alias who has access to Masscomp OS floppy > > > disks for a 5400 series, including graphics and dat acc etc? > > > > > > Thanks. > > > > > > > > > > From cclist at sydex.com Thu Nov 24 16:19:32 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 14:19:32 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511241419320080.0862E5EA@10.0.0.252> On 11/24/2005 at 8:45 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: (taking a break between putting the turkey in the oven and making the cranberry sauce) >Are you sure the SED9421 is not a complete data seperator? The PCB I am >looking at (from an Epson PF10 drive unit) doesn't seem to have much else >around the 765 disk controller chip. I was trying to interpret the Japanese comments--it's entirely possible that the writer was simply drawing a parallel to the 9420, not saying that the 9421 used the 9420. Has anyone noticed a significant performance difference between the PLL type data separators (e.g. the WD1691/2143 combo) and the plain-Jane WD9216 digital ones? I suspect that the PLL type is more tolerant of drive speed variations, but that hardly matters all that much with modern drives. I don't recall finding a disk that failed to read on a generic 9216-equipped FDC but read fine on the old IBM PC floppy board. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Nov 24 17:01:28 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 18:01:28 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQH002V3EIZS4Q0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 14:19:32 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Has anyone noticed a significant performance difference between the PLL >type data separators (e.g. the WD1691/2143 combo) and the plain-Jane WD9216 >digital ones? I suspect that the PLL type is more tolerant of drive speed >variations, but that hardly matters all that much with modern drives. I >don't recall finding a disk that failed to read on a generic 9216-equipped >FDC but read fine on the old IBM PC floppy board. > >Cheers, >Chuck I've used he 9216 and 9229 and the NEC apnote digital data seperator (prom state machine synthetic PLL) as well as a custom NEC ASIC (with the prom data sep inside) and they all do very well. Testing against a well developed PLL (not the WD animal) showed a small difference after a 4 days of continious read and writes (number of fails less than 3). You have to do a very large number of reads without external influences to see the difference. Power blips and the like were a pain. A small difference was seen in the order of one of one failure per 250,000 reads vs 1 in maybe 400-500,000 reads. You need a lot more testing than we did then to get near 1:10^8 stats with any validity. FYI:the average PLL is a bear to build and debug, they required clean power and good board layout with ample groundplanes. The digital ones are very good, simple to layout and shift rates with only a mux. Allison From dogas at bellsouth.net Thu Nov 24 19:59:55 2005 From: dogas at bellsouth.net (dogas at bellsouth.net) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 20:59:55 -0500 Subject: not lurking Message-ID: <20051125015955.WRAN6508.ibm70aec.bellsouth.net@mail.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe R." > Are you still lurking here! I haven't seen or heard anything out of you hell yeah I'm still around. I love this place. Been classic computing. ;) - Mike: dogas at bellsouth.net From kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com Thu Nov 24 21:26:01 2005 From: kyrrin at bluefeathertech.com (Bruce Lane) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 19:26:01 -0800 Subject: DEC Boot PROM files: Mirror Up! Message-ID: <200511241926010546.52C855DA@192.168.42.129> With my thanks to Don North for his permission, as well as his excellent page layout work, I have established a mirror of his site containing PROM images and source code for numerous DEC'ish boot PROMs, as used on the M9312 boards. The link is -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com/technoid/promfiles.html If you have trouble accessing the page (folks outside the U.S., notably those in the Pacific Rim countries, may run afoul of our firewall's filters), please drop me a note. If your E-mail bounces, put in a brief 'Page' for me here in the group, and I'll see what I can do. Keep the peace(es). -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?" From news at computercollector.com Fri Nov 25 00:48:42 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 01:48:42 -0500 Subject: User group directory? In-Reply-To: <001301c5ebd0$9916cb60$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: <000b01c5f18c$46dd7080$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> If anyone's interested, I finally found what I was looking for -- http://cdb.apcug.org/loclist.asp - Evan -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of 'Computer Collector Newsletter' Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 6:43 PM To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' Subject: OT: User group directory? Hey folks, I used to have a link to some national web site which listed computer user groups by region. Can't find it now. Anyone know the link? ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: >> http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >> http://www.marchclub.org >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Fri Nov 25 08:31:03 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:31:03 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQH002V3EIZS4Q0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQH002V3EIZS4Q0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051125143103.8F208BA478D@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Allison wrote: > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > > From: "Chuck Guzis" > > Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 14:19:32 -0800 > > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Has anyone noticed a significant performance difference between the PLL > >type data separators (e.g. the WD1691/2143 combo) and the plain-Jane WD9216 > >digital ones? I suspect that the PLL type is more tolerant of drive speed > >variations, but that hardly matters all that much with modern drives. I > >don't recall finding a disk that failed to read on a generic 9216-equipped > >FDC but read fine on the old IBM PC floppy board. > > > >Cheers, > >Chuck > > I've used he 9216 and 9229 and the NEC apnote digital data seperator > (prom state machine synthetic PLL) as well as a custom NEC ASIC (with > the prom data sep inside) and they all do very well. Testing against a > well developed PLL (not the WD animal) showed a small difference after a > 4 days of continious read and writes (number of fails less than 3). > You have to do a very large number of reads without external influences to > see the difference. Power blips and the like were a pain. A small > difference was seen in the order of one of one failure per 250,000 reads > vs 1 in maybe 400-500,000 reads. You need a lot more testing than we did > then to get near 1:10^8 stats with any validity. > > FYI:the average PLL is a bear to build and debug, they required clean > power and good board layout with ample groundplanes. The digital ones are > very good, simple to layout and shift rates with only a mux. > > > Allison Don't neglect: PLL's require analog components of rather tight tolerances to give consistent behavior from time-to-time and unit-to-unit. The digital data separator (I heard its designer once refer to it as a "jerk-locked-loop") has no such tight tolerances and in fact is usually driven from a crystal oscillator. The one-shot-with-critical-RC-constant used in early FM data separators is a good example. With a little tweaking it really works pretty well. But imagine mass-producing such a beast and training the assembly line people to do the tweaking, as well as field service, as well as ... (Of course us hackers don't mind!) Tim. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 08:59:54 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:59:54 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQI0018HMZPXGJ3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:31:03 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> FYI:the average PLL is a bear to build and debug, they required clean >> power and good board layout with ample groundplanes. The digital ones are >> very good, simple to layout and shift rates with only a mux. >> >> >> Allison > >Don't neglect: PLL's require analog components of rather tight tolerances >to give consistent behavior from time-to-time and unit-to-unit. That falls in the catagory of a bear to build part. >The digital data separator (I heard its designer once refer to it as >a "jerk-locked-loop") has no such tight tolerances and in fact is usually >driven from a crystal oscillator. That is a good description. It also depends on the number of bits used as to how locked it is. Really only makes a difference when the peak shift is bad due to impropper media or bad write precomp or the drive speed is really off. Usually fixing the drive speed is easiest. The upside is predictable performance and repeatability. >The one-shot-with-critical-RC-constant used in early FM data separators >is a good example. With a little tweaking it really works pretty well. >But imagine mass-producing such a beast and training the assembly line >people to do the tweaking, as well as field service, as well as ... >(Of course us hackers don't mind!) I hate analog oneshots unless they are timing uncritical. I worked with an engineer that did everything with onshots and his stuff was prone to wandering off or plain quitting. The all time worst was the 1771 internal data sep. Tandy initally did that to save parts. Really bad. Allison From chenmel at earthlink.net Fri Nov 25 09:30:30 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:30:30 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQI0018HMZPXGJ3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQI0018HMZPXGJ3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051125103030.203a03d3.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:59:54 -0500 Allison wrote: > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > > From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) > > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:31:03 -0500 > > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > > >> FYI:the average PLL is a bear to build and debug, they required clean > >> power and good board layout with ample groundplanes. The digital ones are > >> very good, simple to layout and shift rates with only a mux. > >> > >> > >> Allison > > > >Don't neglect: PLL's require analog components of rather tight tolerances > >to give consistent behavior from time-to-time and unit-to-unit. > > That falls in the catagory of a bear to build part. > > >The digital data separator (I heard its designer once refer to it as > >a "jerk-locked-loop") has no such tight tolerances and in fact is usually > >driven from a crystal oscillator. > > That is a good description. It also depends on the number of bits used > as to how locked it is. Really only makes a difference when the peak shift > is bad due to impropper media or bad write precomp or the drive speed is > really off. Usually fixing the drive speed is easiest. The upside is > predictable performance and repeatability. > > >The one-shot-with-critical-RC-constant used in early FM data separators > >is a good example. With a little tweaking it really works pretty well. > >But imagine mass-producing such a beast and training the assembly line > >people to do the tweaking, as well as field service, as well as ... > >(Of course us hackers don't mind!) > > I hate analog oneshots unless they are timing uncritical. I worked with > an engineer that did everything with onshots and his stuff was prone to > wandering off or plain quitting. > > The all time worst was the 1771 internal data sep. Tandy initally did that > to save parts. Really bad. > I once worked for a guy whose approach to any problem was to slap in another one-shot: Timing problem casuing a glitch on the chip enable? Don't do an analysis. Slap in a one shot! He refused to allow me to modify the circuit to properly correct the problem. That kind of design leads to a cascading disaster. It's an analog kludge approach. And the R/C of a one-shot circuit is prone to drift over time. > > Allison > From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 25 11:24:30 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:24:30 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <20051125143103.8F208BA478D@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <0IQH002V3EIZS4Q0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> <20051125143103.8F208BA478D@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <200511250924300734.0C7B25C3@10.0.0.252> On 11/25/2005 at 9:31 AM shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com wrote: >to do the tweaking, as well as field service, as well as ... >(Of course us hackers don't mind!) I've got a system here with a rather elaborate analog data separator PLL (built around a CA3130 op amp). Part of the manufacturing process involves a calibration diskette, trimpot and scope. It's pretty robust once it's been set up, but component aging is probably a significant factor in long-term performance. It seems hardly any more robust than a plain old digital (9216-type) data separator. Which makes me wonder why anyone would bother implementing the data separator in Figure 13 of the 179x app notes (3 trimpots). Out of the stats on performance that Allison cited, how many of those errors could be recovered with a simple retry? When I learned that Jameco was running low on 9216's, I bought their entire stock, which amounts to about a 2 ft. tube of 8 pin DIPS. So if you're looking for one, you know who's got 'em. :) Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 11:49:26 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:49:26 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 09:24:30 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/25/2005 at 9:31 AM shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com wrote: > >>to do the tweaking, as well as field service, as well as ... >>(Of course us hackers don't mind!) > >I've got a system here with a rather elaborate analog data separator PLL >(built around a CA3130 op amp). Part of the manufacturing process involves >a calibration diskette, trimpot and scope. It's pretty robust once it's >been set up, but component aging is probably a significant factor in >long-term performance. > >It seems hardly any more robust than a plain old digital (9216-type) data >separator. Which makes me wonder why anyone would bother implementing the >data separator in Figure 13 of the 179x app notes (3 trimpots). Simple, the non-digital circuits were available and the chips like 9229/9216 were later. There were really three varients, for plain FM oneshots either analog or digital did the job well enough. When DD (MFM) started to appear along with then current drives That didn't work well enough (peak shift) and PLLs became the solution then around 1981 people started to figure out how to apply write precomp and digital data seps that were either counter based or DPLL. >Out of the stats on performance that Allison cited, how many of those >errors could be recovered with a simple retry? Most were soft. Once they started to become hard the media was showing distress. >When I learned that Jameco was running low on 9216's, I bought their entire >stock, which amounts to about a 2 ft. tube of 8 pin DIPS. So if you're >looking for one, you know who's got 'em. :) Either that a Dflop(74LS74), hex D-latch(74LS174) and 32x4 prom(74LS288). Allison From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 25 12:36:33 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:36:33 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQI0018HMZPXGJ3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQI0018HMZPXGJ3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511251036330539.0CBD1BB9@10.0.0.252> On 11/25/2005 at 9:59 AM Allison wrote: >The all time worst was the 1771 internal data sep. Tandy initally did that >to save parts. Really bad. I remember once asking our FDC design guy (he cut his teeth at Sperry ISS) about the 1771 on-chip DS. He just laughed and gave a thumbs-down. He built his board around the 1781, using GCR and a bit rate of about 380 KHz on DS media. The drive electronics needed the low-pass filter tweaked a bit to work, but he managed to get about a megabyte on a 5.25" DS floppy. Not too shabby for the time (1979). Drives back then tended to have more problems than the controllers did. In particular, we gave up on Micropolis because of their stubborn insistence on using a leadscrew positioner, long after almost everyone else went to the faster taut-band. I still have a 96 tpi Micropolis drive that employs buffered seek (goes not ready while seeking). It also mounts the drive electronics board and the positioner on the movable part of the disk clamping assembly. Only the drive motor and tach circuit is mounted on the stationary drive frame. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 13:29:33 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 14:29:33 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQI001L9ZH1X6E4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 10:36:33 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/25/2005 at 9:59 AM Allison wrote: > >>The all time worst was the 1771 internal data sep. Tandy initally did >that to save parts. Really bad. > >I remember once asking our FDC design guy (he cut his teeth at Sperry ISS) >about the 1771 on-chip DS. He just laughed and gave a thumbs-down. He >built his board around the 1781, using GCR and a bit rate of about 380 KHz >on DS media. The drive electronics needed the low-pass filter tweaked a >bit to work, but he managed to get about a megabyte on a 5.25" DS floppy. >Not too shabby for the time (1979). Tandys EI design got me a few trips to FtWorth to massage their heads with a bat for what they did. Yes, 1meg was way above the usual 190k-380k common for for DDDS drives. The highest I got to with MFM was 800k (80tr 2sided). >Drives back then tended to have more problems than the controllers did. > >In particular, we gave up on Micropolis because of their stubborn >insistence on using a leadscrew positioner, long after almost everyone else >went to the faster taut-band. I still have a 96 tpi Micropolis drive that >employs buffered seek (goes not ready while seeking). It also mounts the >drive electronics board and the positioner on the movable part of the disk >clamping assembly. Only the drive motor and tach circuit is mounted on the >stationary drive frame. The disk that Shugart used while innovative was really bad for repeatability of position and slooowwww. Allison From cisin at xenosoft.com Fri Nov 25 14:28:14 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:28:14 -0800 (PST) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQI001L9ZH1X6E4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQI001L9ZH1X6E4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051125122416.T88968@shell.lmi.net> On Fri, 25 Nov 2005, Allison wrote: > >>The all time worst was the 1771 internal data sep. Tandy initally did > >that to save parts. Really bad. The 1771 may have CLAIMED to have an internal data separator; performance did not bear that out. > Tandys EI design got me a few trips to FtWorth to massage their heads > with a bat for what they did. You were much too gentle. Next time, we'll loan you a bigger bat. > Yes, 1meg was way above the usual 190k-380k common for for DDDS drives. > The highest I got to with MFM was 800k (80tr 2sided). 880K but a pain to use. > >In particular, we gave up on Micropolis because of their stubborn > >insistence on using a leadscrew positioner, long after almost everyone else > >went to the faster taut-band. I still have a 96 tpi Micropolis drive that > The disk that Shugart used while innovative was really bad for repeatability > of position and slooowwww. the Micropolis lead screw was SLOW. But noticably more reliable than either the Shugart spiral, or the split bands. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 14:46:44 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:46:44 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQJ0042A31NT6Z4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: Fred Cisin > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:28:14 -0800 (PST) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On Fri, 25 Nov 2005, Allison wrote: >> >>The all time worst was the 1771 internal data sep. Tandy initally did >> >that to save parts. Really bad. > >The 1771 may have CLAIMED to have an internal data separator; performance >did not bear that out. ;) I'm not going to argue that! ;) >You were much too gentle. Next time, we'll loan you a bigger bat. Hey North actually called me obnoxious once. ;) >the Micropolis lead screw was SLOW. But noticably more reliable than >either the Shugart spiral, or the split bands. Shugart whas prolific but not very good. Allison From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 25 14:51:27 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:51:27 -0700 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: >Either that a Dflop(74LS74), hex D-latch(74LS174) and 32x4 prom(74LS288). > > > Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater rather than a floppy disk controler? >Allison > From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 25 14:58:01 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:58:01 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQI001L9ZH1X6E4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQI001L9ZH1X6E4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511251258010812.0D3EA56E@10.0.0.252> On 11/25/2005 at 2:29 PM Allison wrote: >Yes, 1meg was way above the usual 190k-380k common for for DDDS drives. >The highest I got to with MFM was 800k (80tr 2sided). The FDC board itself has 56 ICs, counting the 1781, and a fair number of discretes. The next edition of the machine simply used a 179x and 96 tpi drive for 720K, but it wasn't nearly as real-estate hungry. IIRC, the 1781 was a marginal design; it had a nasty tendency to hang unexpectedly, so a latch was added for the software to toggle the reset pin. I can't even find a datasheet for it anymore. >The disk that Shugart used while innovative was really bad for >repeatability of position and slooowwww. I wondered how well that disc would wear, but then Shugart had lousy drive electronics too, so it didn't matter in the long run. We used a Micropolis leadscrew drive as our calibration diskette writer. We disconnected the stepper on the positioner and hooked a 100:1 reduction drive onto it and drove it with a separate stepper. Took forever to get from cylinder 76 to 0, but it worked just fine. Cheers, Chuck From pcw at mesanet.com Fri Nov 25 15:08:54 2005 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:08:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On Fri, 25 Nov 2005, woodelf wrote: > Allison wrote: > >> Either that a Dflop(74LS74), hex D-latch(74LS174) and 32x4 prom(74LS288). >> >> > Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? > Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater > rather than a floppy disk controler? Heathkit did with their H89 hard sectored floppy controller.... > Peter Wallace From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 25 15:25:49 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:25:49 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511251325490938.0D5819AC@10.0.0.252> On 11/25/2005 at 1:51 PM woodelf wrote: >Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? >Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater >rather than a floppy disk controler? I've done it on lashups to read very oddball floppies. A 2651 in sync mode will go to something like 600KHz or 1MHz data rate. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 15:31:54 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:31:54 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQJ002PD54XS1R2@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: woodelf > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:51:27 -0700 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >>Either that a Dflop(74LS74), hex D-latch(74LS174) and 32x4 prom(74LS288). >> >> >> >Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? Sure do. Send a scanner and a system that won't croak under the load. It's in the net, someone about three months ago found it. >Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater >rather than a floppy disk controler? Yes, many. usually its a sync chip. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 15:39:22 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:39:22 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQJ00LVE5HDGZOA@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 13:25:49 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/25/2005 at 1:51 PM woodelf wrote: > >>Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? >>Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater >>rather than a floppy disk controler? > >I've done it on lashups to read very oddball floppies. A 2651 in sync mode >will go to something like 600KHz or 1MHz data rate. > The commonly used 2601 USRT was common, also the Z80 SIO in sync mode or the NEC d7201(8274) as they were faster. Allison From curt at atarimuseum.com Fri Nov 25 15:48:30 2005 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:48:30 -0500 Subject: Mindset keyboard - who needed to borrow it? In-Reply-To: <0IQJ00LVE5HDGZOA@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQJ00LVE5HDGZOA@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <438786AE.7000805@atarimuseum.com> Somone on the list asked to borrow one of my Mindset computer keyboards, please contact me off list, I pulled one out of storage yesterday. Curt > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.7/182 - Release Date: 11/24/2005 From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Fri Nov 25 15:56:16 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:56:16 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20051125215616.F0C83BA47AF@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "Peter C. Wallace" wrote: > On Fri, 25 Nov 2005, woodelf wrote: > > > Allison wrote: > > > >> Either that a Dflop(74LS74), hex D-latch(74LS174) and 32x4 prom(74LS288). > >> > >> > > Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? > > Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater > > rather than a floppy disk controler? > > Heathkit did with their H89 hard sectored floppy controller.... > > > > > Peter Wallace > Also Ohio Scientific, I think that was with an async UART? (Don't know for sure, but I do know the best way to get the correct information is to post incorrect information!) Tim. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 16:13:20 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:13:20 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQJ00CG371ZH3Y0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:56:16 -0500 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >"Peter C. Wallace" wrote: > >> On Fri, 25 Nov 2005, woodelf wrote: >> >> > Allison wrote: >> > >> >> Either that a Dflop(74LS74), hex D-latch(74LS174) and 32x4 prom(74LS288). >> >> >> >> >> > Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? >> > Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater >> > rather than a floppy disk controler? >> >> Heathkit did with their H89 hard sectored floppy controller.... >> >> > >> >> Peter Wallace >> > >Also Ohio Scientific, I think that was with an async UART? (Don't >know for sure, but I do know the best way to get the correct information >is to post incorrect information!) > >Tim. I think the part they used was an USART as in async, bisync, and HDLC/.x25 kinda thing. Allison From fire at dls.net Fri Nov 25 16:31:17 2005 From: fire at dls.net (Bradley Slavik) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:31:17 -0600 Subject: Cleaning out some old PC stuff In-Reply-To: <200511251800.jAPI05Uh042623@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: This is 286 era things. I have manuals and hardware. Please no disparaging comments. No obligation or guilt will be meted out to anyone here. Main computer Compaq DeskPro 286. Following manuals available in short wide 3-ring binders 2 copies of MS-DOS Version 30 Reference Guide 2 copies of MS-DOS Version 3.3 Reference Guide BASIC Version 3 Compaq Deskpro 286 Operations Guide Compaq Deskpro 286 Maintenance and Service guide 80286 Based Products - Volume I 80286 Based Products - Volume II MS-DOS Version 4 Reference guide (with 5 1/4" disks) AllChargeCard with manual AboveBoard PS/AT with manual AST Rampage 286 with manual Also Alps P2100 printer (Loud fast dot matrix) with muffler. All will hit local recycle place in two weeks if not spoken for. Bradley Slavik From lbickley at bickleywest.com Fri Nov 25 16:49:41 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lbickley) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:49:41 -0700 Subject: Cleaning out some old PC stuff Message-ID: <235b1e1b80bbf66be6510c3b5f117a52@4.246.223.182> Brad, Where are you located? Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA 94040 \"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero\" --------- Original Message -------- From: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Cleaning out some old PC stuff Date: 25/11/05 15:29 > This is 286 era things. I have manuals and hardware. > Please no disparaging comments. No obligation or guilt > will be meted out to anyone here. > > Main computer Compaq DeskPro 286. > > Following manuals available in short wide 3-ring binders > 2 copies of MS-DOS Version 30 Reference Guide > 2 copies of MS-DOS Version 3.3 Reference Guide > BASIC Version 3 > Compaq Deskpro 286 Operations Guide > Compaq Deskpro 286 Maintenance and Service guide > 80286 Based Products - Volume I > 80286 Based Products - Volume II > MS-DOS Version 4 Reference guide (with 5 1/4" disks) > > AllChargeCard with manual > AboveBoard PS/AT with manual > AST Rampage 286 with manual > > Also Alps P2100 printer (Loud fast dot matrix) with muffler. > > All will hit local recycle place in two weeks if not spoken for. > > Bradley Slavik > > ________________________________________________ Message sent using UebiMiau 2.7.8 From philpem at dsl.pipex.com Fri Nov 25 18:08:51 2005 From: philpem at dsl.pipex.com (Philip Pemberton) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:08:51 GMT Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <8adf96cf4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> In message <4387794F.1020008 at jetnet.ab.ca> woodelf wrote: > Allison wrote: > > >Either that a Dflop(74LS74), hex D-latch(74LS174) and 32x4 prom(74LS288). > > Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? > Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater > rather than a floppy disk controler? Actually, I wouldn't mind taking a look at the appnote with the data separator in it. Sounds like something that might be worth reading... I've just spent two days reverse-engineering the Atari Digital Vector Generator down to state machine level. Thank %DEITY for schematics! Only thing I am trying to work out is why the hell the state machine jumps to state 9 on startup, which is a DMALD microinstruction. Basically, when it starts up, it pulls an address off the stack and jumps to it. Unless I'm wrong, that means it jumps to a random address on startup. That is, unless the LS670 Register File Memory used for the stack is guaranteed to power up with all registers loaded with 0000(bin), but IMO that's a dangerous assumption to make without testing. Just a shame LS670s are pretty much unobtainium these days, otherwise I would have tested it out... Thanks. -- Phil. | Acorn RiscPC600 SA220 64MB+6GB 100baseT philpem at philpem.me.uk | Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxe R2 512MB+100GB http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Panasonic CF-25 Mk.2 Toughbook The Klingon dictionary: 90% curses or your money back. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 25 18:41:33 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:41:33 -0700 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <8adf96cf4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> References: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> <8adf96cf4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> Message-ID: <4387AF3D.5050308@jetnet.ab.ca> Philip Pemberton wrote: >In message <4387794F.1020008 at jetnet.ab.ca> > woodelf wrote: > > > >>Allison wrote: >> >> >> >>>Either that a Dflop(74LS74), hex D-latch(74LS174) and 32x4 prom(74LS288). >>> >>> >>Just for the heck of it, got a schematic and a prom listing? >>Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater >>rather than a floppy disk controler? >> >> > >Actually, I wouldn't mind taking a look at the appnote with the data >separator in it. Sounds like something that might be worth reading... > >I've just spent two days reverse-engineering the Atari Digital Vector >Generator down to state machine level. Thank %DEITY for schematics! > >Only thing I am trying to work out is why the hell the state machine jumps to >state 9 on startup, which is a DMALD microinstruction. Basically, when it >starts up, it pulls an address off the stack and jumps to it. Unless I'm >wrong, that means it jumps to a random address on startup. That is, unless >the LS670 Register File Memory used for the stack is guaranteed to power up >with all registers loaded with 0000(bin), but IMO that's a dangerous >assumption to make without testing. > >Just a shame LS670s are pretty much unobtainium these days, otherwise I would >have tested it out... > > > umm 33 cents each at unicorn electronics. Could the stack be jamed with 0 on reset? Ben alias woodelf >Thanks. > > From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 25 18:43:13 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:43:13 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <20051126004313.59536.qmail@web25008.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> >> Also Ohio Scientific, I think that was with an async UART? >> (Don't know for sure, but I do know the best way to get the >> correct information is to post incorrect information!) >> Tim. > I think the part they used was an USART as in async, bisync, > and HDLC/.x25 kinda thing. > Allison 6850 Async UART clocked at 125K bits/s, and a PIO for the control lines. Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Model Search 2005 - Find the next catwalk superstars - http://uk.news.yahoo.com/hot/model-search/ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Nov 25 18:49:21 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:49:21 -0700 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <8adf96cf4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> References: <0IQI00A73UU7F9E2@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> <4387794F.1020008@jetnet.ab.ca> <8adf96cf4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> Message-ID: <4387B111.3060207@jetnet.ab.ca> Philip Pemberton wrote: >Just a shame LS670s are pretty much unobtainium these days, otherwise I would >have tested it out... > > > PS. all you uk people I think need to get all your small orders togther, so shipping across the pond is not that much. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 18:52:29 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 19:52:29 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQJ004ZIEF6T6H5@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Pinout for SED9421 > From: lee davison > Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:43:13 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk > >>> Also Ohio Scientific, I think that was with an async UART? >>> (Don't know for sure, but I do know the best way to get the >>> correct information is to post incorrect information!) > >>> Tim. > >> I think the part they used was an USART as in async, bisync, >> and HDLC/.x25 kinda thing. > >> Allison > >6850 Async UART clocked at 125K bits/s, and a PIO for the control >lines. > >Lee. Sure it wasnt the 6852 SSDA? UARTs generate start and stop bits and even for a 128 byte sector that's 32 lost byte times as overhead. You could use a UART though but, storage efficientcy is then degraded. I went that path to do tape (FM encoded) so it's familiar. All of the designs I'd seen used synchronous serial parts from the old com2601/2651/2661 family and relatives under different names. Allison From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 25 18:59:27 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:59:27 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <8adf96cf4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> from "Philip Pemberton" at Nov 26, 5 00:08:51 am Message-ID: > I've just spent two days reverse-engineering the Atari Digital Vector > Generator down to state machine level. Thank %DEITY for schematics! You're lucky. I normally have to start by producing the schematics (mind you, for simple stuff, its quicker _for me_ to draw them out than either to do battle with the manufacturer or to download them and figure out how to print them...) > > Only thing I am trying to work out is why the hell the state machine jumps to > state 9 on startup, which is a DMALD microinstruction. Basically, when it > starts up, it pulls an address off the stack and jumps to it. Unless I'm Are you sure it does? In particular, are you sure the output of the stack is not tri-stated and the lines driven by something else? > wrong, that means it jumps to a random address on startup. That is, unless > the LS670 Register File Memory used for the stack is guaranteed to power up > with all registers loaded with 0000(bin), but IMO that's a dangerous > assumption to make without testing. > > Just a shame LS670s are pretty much unobtainium these days, otherwise I would > have tested it out... I've used the LS170 quite a bit (open-collector, not tri-state outputs), and I am darn sure the power-up state is not guaranteed to be anything special. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 25 18:32:10 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:32:10 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511241419320080.0862E5EA@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 24, 5 02:19:32 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/24/2005 at 8:45 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > (taking a break between putting the turkey in the oven and making the > cranberry sauce) > > >Are you sure the SED9421 is not a complete data seperator? The PCB I am > >looking at (from an Epson PF10 drive unit) doesn't seem to have much else > >around the 765 disk controller chip. > > I was trying to interpret the Japanese comments--it's entirely possible > that the writer was simply drawing a parallel to the 9420, not saying that > the 9421 used the 9420. Looking at am Amstrad manual, it would appear that the pins on the 9421 aee a subset of those on the 9420 (and I don't think that's because you link them together). And looking at the PF10 board, it must be the complete data sepearator, there simply isn't enough logic on the board otherwise. The PF10 is, of course, a 3.5" 40 cylinder drive for the PX8. Inside there's one PCB on top of the chassis half of which appears to be a ridiculously complicated PSU, the rest of which consists of : A 63A03X microcnotroller + 2764 EPROM + 6116 RAM A 765 disk controller + 9421 data seperator Some RS232 buffers (there are 2 8 pin mini-DIN serial ports on the back, one to link to the PX8, the other to link to another PF10. From what I can determine, they work at RS232 levels) An HA16642 read/write circuit A couple of motor driver chips to drive the head stepper Some glue logic. A few gates, a decoder (which seems to be an address decoder). No obvious sequential stuff. There is no seperate logic board on the drive mechanism. The heads, track 0 sensor and stepper plug into this logic board. There's a 6 pin plug that fits in to a socket on the spindle motor PCB under the chassis (the signals are helpfully labelled on that PCB, and are ground, +5V, Motor On, Index, Write Protect, and Disk Inserted). > > Has anyone noticed a significant performance difference between the PLL > type data separators (e.g. the WD1691/2143 combo) and the plain-Jane WD9216 > digital ones? I suspect that the PLL type is more tolerant of drive speed > variations, but that hardly matters all that much with modern drives. I Nothing to speak of. I've certainly never had real problems that were traced to, say, a 9216 design. But then I've even had few problems with that infernal built-in sepeator of the 1771... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 25 18:42:59 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:42:59 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQI0018HMZPXGJ3@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 25, 5 09:59:54 am Message-ID: > I hate analog oneshots unless they are timing uncritical. I worked with Me too. I have used them for things like stretching a pulse to drive a front paneal LED (which is totally non-critical), but I really work to avoid them in critical sections. > an engineer that did everything with onshots and his stuff was prone to > wandering off or plain quitting. I think if I came across him, I'd shove the business end of a tesla coil 'where the sun don't shine' :-) I am strongly of the belief that one-shots (monostables, monoflops, call them what you will) should not be taught in electronics courses. By the time you know enought to find out for yourself how to design them, you also know enough _not_ to design them :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Nov 25 18:48:50 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:48:50 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQI001L9ZH1X6E4@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Nov 25, 5 02:29:33 pm Message-ID: > >In particular, we gave up on Micropolis because of their stubborn > >insistence on using a leadscrew positioner, long after almost everyone else > >went to the faster taut-band. I still have a 96 tpi Micropolis drive that Is the difference in inertia between the band and the leadscrew really that significant? I always thought the taught band was indroduced for cheapness... And many of the better 3.5" drives went back to a leadscrew mechancism. I particularly like the Sony ones where you can remove the head carriage and the stepper/mount assembly and put them back without upsetting the alignment. > >employs buffered seek (goes not ready while seeking). It also mounts the > >drive electronics board and the positioner on the movable part of the disk > >clamping assembly. Only the drive motor and tach circuit is mounted on the > >stationary drive frame. > > The disk that Shugart used while innovative was really bad for repeatability > of position and slooowwww. It was, of course, also used on the Apple Disk // (which was based on a Shugart mechanism). I found it to be a disgusting design to be honest, really unreliable. -tony From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 25 19:13:45 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 01:13:45 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <20051126011345.69277.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> >> 6850 Async UART clocked at 125K bits/s, and a PIO for the control >> lines. >> Lee. > Sure it wasnt the 6852 SSDA? UARTs generate start and stop bits and I checked the OSI610 schematic before replying. 8^)= Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 25 19:42:33 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:42:33 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511251742330495.007FDCF7@10.0.0.252> On 11/26/2005 at 12:48 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Is the difference in inertia between the band and the leadscrew really >that significant? I always thought the taught band was indroduced for >cheapness... Micropolis drives were 30 ms. track-to-track. I believe they used a 4-step per track scheme. The last Micropolis 5.25" drive (with buffered seek) I have has a closed-loop tach belt-drive spindle motor. I've never verified it, but I suspect that with longer seeks, the stepping rate is sped up considerably. I recall fooling with the step rate on a paper-feed motor on a printer and discovering that once you've established direction, you can crank the stepping rate pretty far up. Try it before things really get moving and you're likely to find yourself stepping backwards. But you have a point about the speed. I've got some Siemens 8" drives that use leadscrew positioning and they do just fine at 8 msec. track-to-track. The drive PCB has an interesting 40 pin DIP with an MOS logo and a Micropolis house part number and hooked to a 2.0MHz crystal, probably a microcontroller. A heavy, power-hungry, beautifully constructed drive, but slow track-to-track. Probably very expensive and not cost-competitive with the other drives that were coming out. I recall that one bone of contention among 5.25 " manufacturers was the hub clamping mechanism on which Shugart claimed the patent rights. The Micropolis does not use the Shugart design--the "cone" is solid, not segmented. When the taut-band positionier 5.25" drives came out, our drive specialist did some tests using MPI and Tandon taut-band positioners and declared that they were good enough and much faster than the Micropolis. So we used both for a time, but eventually settled on Tandon, albeit with our own drive electronics--he didn't think much of the Tandon PCBs. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Fri Nov 25 19:49:42 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:49:42 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <20051126011345.69277.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> References: <20051126011345.69277.qmail@web25009.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200511251749420602.0086692A@10.0.0.252> On 11/26/2005 at 1:13 AM lee davison wrote: >I checked the OSI610 schematic before replying. 8^)= > >Lee. Darned if you're not right! See: http://www.technology.niagarac.on.ca/people/mcsele/images/SA400Disk1.jpg Very unusual. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 19:54:06 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 20:54:06 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQJ0014MH9UBYK0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Pinout for SED9421 > From: lee davison > Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 01:13:45 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk > >>> 6850 Async UART clocked at 125K bits/s, and a PIO for the control >>> lines. > >>> Lee. > >> Sure it wasnt the 6852 SSDA? UARTs generate start and stop bits and > >I checked the OSI610 schematic before replying. 8^)= > >Lee. Figures.. However they loose a full sector for every four which is pretty bad considering sync and other overhead that floppies incur. I'd used the 6850 in my first tape system back in '75-76 as it was available and worked well without baud rate clock scaling to do block replaceable FM format at around 30 kbaud. Problem was the tapes I used only got 60k of usable storage due to overhead. Going to a sync part upped that to 80k. Then I found a decent floppy that was affordable. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 19:59:18 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 20:59:18 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQJ001L7HIIXU25@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:42:33 -0800 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >On 11/26/2005 at 12:48 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > >>Is the difference in inertia between the band and the leadscrew really >>that significant? I always thought the taught band was indroduced for >>cheapness... > >Micropolis drives were 30 ms. track-to-track. I believe they used a 4-step >per track scheme. The last Micropolis 5.25" drive (with buffered seek) I >have has a closed-loop tach belt-drive spindle motor. I've never verified >it, but I suspect that with longer seeks, the stepping rate is sped up >considerably. I recall fooling with the step rate on a paper-feed motor on >a printer and discovering that once you've established direction, you can >crank the stepping rate pretty far up. Try it before things really get >moving and you're likely to find yourself stepping backwards. > >But you have a point about the speed. I've got some Siemens 8" drives that >use leadscrew positioning and they do just fine at 8 msec. track-to-track. The real problem is you can only step a stepper so fast. Older and smaller steppers tended to go async at relatively low speeds. A band position needed one maybe two steps per track some of the leadscrews were anywhere from 2(very fast ones) to 8. At some point you hit the wall for speed. Between resonance and other oddities steppers are hard to use for fast and precise at the same time. Allison From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Fri Nov 25 20:50:31 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 02:50:31 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <20051126025032.42245.qmail@web25010.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > Figures.. However they loose a full sector for every four > which is pretty bad considering sync and other overhead that > floppies incur. It's not that clever. One 2K block of data per track, no sectors, no sync, just the 125Kb/s async bitstream. Wait for the index pulse and read/write the whole track. At the time it was a lot cheaper than any other disk controller. Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From dave04a at dunfield.com Fri Nov 25 16:46:12 2005 From: dave04a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 22:46:12 +0000 Subject: ImageDisk 1.08 patch Message-ID: <20051126025213.OUDA3363.orval.sprint.ca@dunfield.com> I discovered that in my recent modifications to the filename selection code in ImageDisk, I introduced a bug which can cause it to close one too many windows when you are entering a filename and supplying the extension (if you don't supply an extension, ImageDisk will supply the default ".IMD" and all is well) - The symptom is that you appear to be back at the DOS screen, however the program is still active so you keyboard does not appear to be working. I have corrected this and updated IMD108.ZIP on my site (which now shows 1.08a when run). Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Nov 25 22:11:31 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 23:11:31 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQJ001EFNMUC4Y0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Pinout for SED9421 > From: lee davison > Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 02:50:31 +0000 (GMT) > To: cctalk > >> Figures.. However they loose a full sector for every four >> which is pretty bad considering sync and other overhead that >> floppies incur. > >It's not that clever. One 2K block of data per track, no sectors, >no sync, just the 125Kb/s async bitstream. Wait for the index >pulse and read/write the whole track. At the time it was a lot >cheaper than any other disk controller. > >Lee. They trade being efficient for a lot. Across 35 tracks (sa400) thats about 18k. NS* hard sector was 10x256 (2560bytes) track, and a sync chip (one sector per track) will give that much maybe more as well. I think what they did was very clever and dirt cheap and the hidden feature of async is the extra two bit times allows a bit more time to read/write the port 80uS vs 64uS typical. Wacky, but soon as you said OSI.. ;) they were a creative lot. Allison From philpem at dsl.pipex.com Sat Nov 26 02:29:30 2005 From: philpem at dsl.pipex.com (Philip Pemberton) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 08:29:30 GMT Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <69b5c4cf4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> In message ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > You're lucky. I normally have to start by producing the schematics (mind > you, for simple stuff, its quicker _for me_ to draw them out than either > to do battle with the manufacturer or to download them and figure out > how to print them...) If I didn't have the schematics, I'd be SOL - Asteroids and Battlezone arcade PCBs are getting a bit thin on the ground... > > Only thing I am trying to work out is why the hell the state machine jumps to > > state 9 on startup, which is a DMALD microinstruction. Basically, when it > > starts up, it pulls an address off the stack and jumps to it. Unless I'm > > Are you sure it does? In particular, are you sure the output of the stack > is not tri-stated and the lines driven by something else? I've just found another gate that I missed on my first look at the circuit... The Y_LOW and Y_HI/OPCODE latches are cleared to zero on a reset. That means the opcode being loaded on startup has a low LSB. That makes the read strobe for the register file inactive, and the GATE lines for the two address buffers (H6 and J6) active. They gate Y[11:0] onto the counter inputs and the counter's LOAD input gets strobed by DMALD. Cute trick... This thing has logic tricks to rival Woz's IWM (Disk II) floppy controller... > I've used the LS170 quite a bit (open-collector, not tri-state outputs), > and I am darn sure the power-up state is not guaranteed to be anything > special. I thought as much. "Guaranteed poweron state: None, probably random crap". Same as pretty much any ordinary SRAM really. Thanks. -- Phil. | Acorn RiscPC600 SA220 64MB+6GB 100baseT philpem at philpem.me.uk | Athlon64 3200+ A8VDeluxe R2 512MB+100GB http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | Panasonic CF-25 Mk.2 Toughbook ... This is 1 FM. - Quick Mr. Worf close the bloomin' hailing frequencies. From jrkeys at concentric.net Sat Nov 26 05:40:52 2005 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 05:40:52 -0600 Subject: User group directory? References: <000b01c5f18c$46dd7080$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: <004e01c5f27e$42c5d670$01406b43@66067007> Great thanks for the tip. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "'Computer Collector Newsletter'" To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" Sent: Friday, November 25, 2005 12:48 AM Subject: RE: User group directory? > If anyone's interested, I finally found what I was looking for -- > http://cdb.apcug.org/loclist.asp > > - Evan > > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of 'Computer Collector Newsletter' > Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 6:43 PM > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: OT: User group directory? > > Hey folks, > > I used to have a link to some national web site which listed computer user > groups by region. Can't find it now. Anyone know the link? > > > ----------------------------------------- > Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net > > Computer Collector Newsletter: >>> http://news.computercollector.com > > Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >>> http://www.marchclub.org >>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ > > From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Nov 26 06:19:02 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 07:19:02 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQJ001EFNMUC4Y0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQJ001EFNMUC4Y0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20051126121902.28BD2BA47B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Allison wrote: > > > >Subject: Pinout for SED9421 > > From: lee davison > > Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 02:50:31 +0000 (GMT) > > To: cctalk > > > >> Figures.. However they loose a full sector for every four > >> which is pretty bad considering sync and other overhead that > >> floppies incur. > > > >It's not that clever. One 2K block of data per track, no sectors, > >no sync, just the 125Kb/s async bitstream. Wait for the index > >pulse and read/write the whole track. At the time it was a lot > >cheaper than any other disk controller. > > > >Lee. > > They trade being efficient for a lot. Across 35 tracks (sa400) thats > about 18k. NS* hard sector was 10x256 (2560bytes) track, and a > sync chip (one sector per track) will give that much maybe more > as well. > > I think what they did was very clever and dirt cheap and the hidden feature > of async is the extra two bit times allows a bit more time to read/write the > port 80uS vs 64uS typical. > > Wacky, but soon as you said OSI.. ;) they were a creative lot. > > > Allison Allison - You forget (or maybe have repressed) how sucky the Ohio Scientific file system was. When every file you create must be explicitly specified by which tracks it resides on, you don't notice little things like a bit lower capacity! Tim. From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Nov 26 08:00:29 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 09:00:29 -0500 Subject: Free MK4801AN-1 chips Message-ID: <20051126140029.01425BA47B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> I've got 7 MK4801AN-1 (also marked 4118A) memory chips, 24-pin DIP's. Not sure what they go in, but if you can tell me where you want to plug them into, I'll send 'em to you gratis. Tim. From fire at dls.net Sat Nov 26 08:19:37 2005 From: fire at dls.net (Bradley Slavik) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 08:19:37 -0600 Subject: Cleaning out some old PC stuff In-Reply-To: <200511260833.jAQ8Xh32049776@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: on 11/26/05 2:33, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org at cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: I am located in Cary, IL. this is about halfway between Chicago and Rockford in northeastern Illinois. I will send items any way desired (assuming USPS Media rate will be cheapest). Available for shipping costs, or free if someone picks up anything. thank you for taking the time to write. Bradley Slavik > Brad, > > Where are you located? > > Lyle > -- > Lyle Bickley > Bickley Consulting West Inc. > Mountain View, CA 94040 > > \"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero\" From jclang at notms.net Thu Nov 24 09:42:43 2005 From: jclang at notms.net (joseph c lang) Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2005 10:42:43 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <437F8AB4.1000603@gmail.com> References: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F109B3262@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> <437F8AB4.1000603@gmail.com> Message-ID: <05112410424300.20699@bell> On Saturday 19 November 2005 15:27, you wrote: > Wolfe, Julian wrote: > > Alright, > > > > I'm getting ready to make my 11/23+ available online for people to play > > with, but I'm a bit stumped as far as how I should attach the serial > > lines to my Ethernet network. > > > > Now, I have a Sun server running Solaris 10 which I was able to connect > > a couple serial lines to and then tunneled that through a telnet port, > > but I'd rather not do that...with the setup I'm thinking of, we're > > talking about a whole lot of cable running into that box. > > > > Does anyone here have suggestions on what I should use for a terminal > > server? If I could just mount a DECserver box in my PDP-11 chassis that > > would be great, but isn't the Ethernet port DECnet-only? > > Look on ebay for a DECserver 700. There are 8- and 16-port versions. > They will do telnet. > > Peace... Sridhar If you're looking on e-bay (or anyware else for that matter) be aware there are several different model numbers for dec servers. many of them do not support stand alone boot. I have the DSRVW-YC. It does NOT support stand-alone boot. It does support bootting from a BOOTP/TFTP server or MOP. IIRC all the model numbers that have the -Y? suffix don't support internal flash cards and require a boot server. joe lang From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Nov 26 08:56:37 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 09:56:37 -0500 Subject: Free EPROM eraser Message-ID: <20051126145637.D3571BA47B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> If anyone's interested, I have a home-built UV EPROM eraser that I can't see ever using again myself. (Everything I do is flash now and I don't see going back to EPROM's.) It was homebuilt from a germicidal lamp and an 8-track storage box and a ballast probably 30 years ago. Of course, there are no safety interlocks etc. Pick-up in/near Washington DC or you can pay for shipping (probably $8 or so.) Tim. From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Sat Nov 26 11:49:49 2005 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 18:49:49 +0100 Subject: Free MK4801AN-1 chips In-Reply-To: <20051126140029.01425BA47B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <0A064D93-5EA5-11DA-9083-000A9586BBB0@bluewin.ch> Am zaterdag, 26.11.05, um 15:00 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Tim Shoppa: > > I've got 7 MK4801AN-1 (also marked 4118A) memory chips, 24-pin DIP's. > Not sure what they go in, but if you can tell me where you want > to plug them into, I'll send 'em to you gratis. > They go into the ZX81........ I don't need them,as my ZY81 has already twice the normal amount of RAM ! Jos From chenmel at earthlink.net Sat Nov 26 12:25:34 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 13:25:34 -0500 Subject: Free MK4801AN-1 chips In-Reply-To: <20051126140029.01425BA47B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <20051126140029.01425BA47B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <20051126132534.13c33cd2.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Sat, 26 Nov 2005 09:00:29 -0500 shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) wrote: > > I've got 7 MK4801AN-1 (also marked 4118A) memory chips, 24-pin DIP's. > Not sure what they go in, but if you can tell me where you want > to plug them into, I'll send 'em to you gratis. > > Tim. That is a fairly useful SRAM part, with footprint similar to an EPROM. Nice chips for small embedded projects. From cannings at earthlink.net Sat Nov 26 18:11:17 2005 From: cannings at earthlink.net (Steven Canning) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 16:11:17 -0800 Subject: Heath ET-3400 Trainer Simulator SW References: <001901c5ee31$2e974180$06f8e2d1@pavilion> Message-ID: <000401c5f2e7$171a64a0$6401a8c0@hal9000> Don, For some reason all the sites that used to have the simulator are " broken " at the moment. If you want send me an Email offline ( off of the list here ) and I'll send you a copy ( it's free ). Best regards, Steven C Don wrote; Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2005 4:19 PM Subject: Heath ET-3400 Trainer Simulator SW How do I go about getting a copy of the simulator. How much will it cost. Don Brown Ontario From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 26 18:03:22 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:03:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511251742330495.007FDCF7@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 25, 5 05:42:33 pm Message-ID: > Micropolis drives were 30 ms. track-to-track. I believe they used a 4-step I am not disputing that the Micropolis drives were slow. What I am questioning is whether that was solely due to the use of a leadscrew. > per track scheme. The last Micropolis 5.25" drive (with buffered seek) I Interesting, I've never seen a floppy drive with buffered seeks, and since there's no seek-complete pin on the interface connector, I don't see how it could really work. Every floppy controller I've ever seen sends the step pulses at a constant rate, which would have to be slow enough for the worst case. > have has a closed-loop tach belt-drive spindle motor. I've never verified > it, but I suspect that with longer seeks, the stepping rate is sped up > considerably. I recall fooling with the step rate on a paper-feed motor on That's the normal idea of buffered seeks. > a printer and discovering that once you've established direction, you can > crank the stepping rate pretty far up. Try it before things really get > moving and you're likely to find yourself stepping backwards. Sure... I remember the Sanders dot matrix printers that ramped up (and down) the step rate of the carriage feed stepper and sent the printhead pulses at just the right times to put the dots in the right places. > When the taut-band positionier 5.25" drives came out, our drive specialist > did some tests using MPI and Tandon taut-band positioners and declared that > they were good enough and much faster than the Micropolis. So we used > both for a time, but eventually settled on Tandon, albeit with our own > drive electronics--he didn't think much of the Tandon PCBs. IIRC, HP used Tandon drives at one point with their own PCBs. Well, they had HP part numbers, and were gold-plated like most HP PCBs of the period, but they seem to have much the same layout as the normal Tandon PCB... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 26 18:23:25 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:23:25 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <69b5c4cf4d.philpem@dsl.pipex.com> from "Philip Pemberton" at Nov 26, 5 08:29:30 am Message-ID: > > Are you sure it does? In particular, are you sure the output of the stack > > is not tri-stated and the lines driven by something else? > > I've just found another gate that I missed on my first look at the circuit... > The Y_LOW and Y_HI/OPCODE latches are cleared to zero on a reset. That means > the opcode being loaded on startup has a low LSB. That makes the read strobe > for the register file inactive, and the GATE lines for the two address > buffers (H6 and J6) active. They gate Y[11:0] onto the counter inputs and the > counter's LOAD input gets strobed by DMALD. Cute trick... Aha.... This reminds me of the way the classic-PERQ loads its control store. The only thing that can address the control store is the 2910 sequencer. And, of course, that's needed to run the microprogram which is going (at least in part) to load the control store, and so after writing to that word of control store, you need to execute the next instruction in the program, which is presumably nowhere near the location you've just written.. It goes something like that : You load the S register (a register in the 2910) with the address of the control store location you want to write The instruction that loads the control store has one of the microword fields set to a particular value to control the write logic. The condition field must be set to TRUE, the jump field to GOTO S. The instruction is executed. The sequencer outputs the address from the S register, the RAM write line is pulsed. The new value is written to the control store. But the microcode data pipeline latches are not clocked at the end of the insturction (as usual). The insturctions is therefore effectively executed again (but other bits of the CPU are disabled). This time, the condition input to the 2910 is forced into the deasserted state, so the GOTO S operation effectively becomes a NEXT. The address of the next location in the microprogram being executed is therefroe output by the 2910. This instruction is read, loaded into the pipeline latch and executed as usual. > > This thing has logic tricks to rival Woz's IWM (Disk II) floppy controller... Please do not compare an ingenious design with that almighty kludge. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Nov 26 18:25:27 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:25:27 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Free MK4801AN-1 chips In-Reply-To: <20051126140029.01425BA47B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> from "Tim Shoppa" at Nov 26, 5 09:00:29 am Message-ID: > > > I've got 7 MK4801AN-1 (also marked 4118A) memory chips, 24-pin DIP's. > Not sure what they go in, but if you can tell me where you want > to plug them into, I'll send 'em to you gratis. IIRC, 1K*8 SRAMs, something close to Jedec pinout (like most EPROMs). They were used in the Nascom (at last the Nascom 2). In fact at one point there was a shortage of said chips in the UK, so Nascoms were sent with the bare minimum of such RAM (I think just the RAM for the video circuitry), but with a 'free' 16K DRAM board. -tony From frustum at pacbell.net Sat Nov 26 19:44:43 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 19:44:43 -0600 Subject: HP K-Class 9000 auction in san antonio Message-ID: <43890F8B.4020500@pacbell.net> An auction house in san antonio is having an auction of "construction equipment" on Dec 10. However, the auction has other items including "salon & spa fixtures" and under miscellaneous, "HP K-Class 9000 computer system". I know nothing about this kind of system but presume that someone on this list might care about it. http://www.shattuck.com/liveauction/md1205.asp Picture 1: http://www.shattuck.com/md120530.jpg Picture 2: http://www.shattuck.com/md120531.jpg Other than giving notice of it, I can't help in procuring/storing/shipping it. From cclist at sydex.com Sat Nov 26 19:45:53 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 17:45:53 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511261745530957.05A9440A@10.0.0.252> On 11/27/2005 at 12:03 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >> Micropolis drives were 30 ms. track-to-track. I believe they used a >4-step > >I am not disputing that the Micropolis drives were slow. What I am >questioning is whether that was solely due to the use of a leadscrew. I think it's a combination of the stepper used (Molon LMS on the earlier drives and Hansen Synchron on the later drives; both were 7.5 degree models). Fairly large, so they probably could not have been stepped very quickly. Nameplate rating on the Hansen is 12v 0.9a, so not power misers either. >Interesting, I've never seen a floppy drive with buffered seeks, and >since there's no seek-complete pin on the interface connector, I don't >see how it could really work. Every floppy controller I've ever seen >sends the step pulses at a constant rate, which would have to be slow >enough for the worst case. READY goes false while seeking. You can issue pulses as fast as you want (I know the drive will take a pulse every 2 msec. and probably much faster). In a way, this isn't all that different from the overlapped seek capability of the 765 controller; you issue the seek and wait for READY to go true (or SEEK COMPLETE to be set in the case of the 765) Whether or not the drive has a disk inserted appears to be unimportant. You can issue your read or write when READY goes true. As I said, a very strange, probably expensive drive and a floppy evolutionary dead end. However, the Drivetec drives also use leadscrew positioning (2 of them) and still manage to get a 3 msec. track-to-track seek time (or faster for long seeks). But their steppers are tiny in comparison to the Micropolis units. Their buffered seek uses pin 4 as a combination READY/SEEK COMPLETE signal. Pin 2 true only tells you that a disk is in the drive and spinning. The Drivetec also masks INDEX while seeking; I'm not sure about the Micropolis, but it would make sense to do so. OT: has anyone figured out how to format the 2.88MB or the 6.4 MB diskettes on the Drivetec units? >Sure... I remember the Sanders dot matrix printers that ramped up (and >down) the step rate of the carriage feed stepper and sent the printhead >pulses at just the right times to put the dots in the right places. Are you certain that Sanders used a stepper for carriage positioning? If they were like Diablo or any of the other high-speed printers, it was more likely a DC motor with encoder. Steppers were just too slow, particularly for bidirectional "smart" printing. IIRC, one of the engineers who worked on the Diablo dot matrix printer (can't recall the model number, but it used the Rockwell PPS-8 set) said that the whole business of accelerating and decellerating a mass like a printhead made for some interesting programming. Paper feed, on the other hand, was almost certainly stepper-driven. Cheers, Chuck From jhfinexgs2 at compsys.to Sat Nov 26 20:24:00 2005 From: jhfinexgs2 at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 21:24:00 -0500 Subject: Timing of PDP-11 Instructions Message-ID: <438918C0.5040007@compsys.to> Hi All, I am not sure if there is still sufficient interest, however, I have encountered a rather bizarre timing situation when a specific subroutine is executed on my PDP-11/73. Background: I want to calculate the reciprocal (inverse) of a number between 1 and 65535 to an accuracy of 256 bits after the binary (or decimal) point. This result will then be used to calculate the logarithm of that value which in turn will be used to calculate li(x) for values of x up to 10**38. The code is in FORTRAN 77 (could also be in FORTRAN IV) which calls MACRO-11 code to do the really low level stuff such as repeated addition of many words with MANY Adc instructions following each addition (99.9% of the time the Adc instructions are never used). Preliminary Details: The subroutine first converts the INTEGER * 4 to a REAL * 8 to produce: R8ARG = I2ARG R8RCP = 1.0D0 / R8ARG as the initial 56 bit accurate estimate. The subroutine then continues: I must then convert R8RCP to a: REAL * 64 = INTEGER * 32 / FRACTION * 32 which is actually quite simple since the R8RCP value already contains the value EXP ** 2 which is the number of bits to be shifted right after the R8RCP fraction of 56 bits is unpacked. Next the unpacked 56 bits are moved by a whole number of words for each multiple of 16 bits to be right shifted. Completion is done by shifting right a group of 5 words when the last portion of the total shift is less than 16 bits of shifting. Unpacking uses the instructions: Mov (R0)+,-(R1) Word shifts use the following pair of instructions four times: Mov (R0),-(R1) Clr (R0)+ The final shifting (if needed) uses five instructions of: Ror -(R0) as many times as are required (1 to 15 times) The problem is as follows: When the destination argument address is in PAR0 (address is less than 17600), there is no problem. When I use an argument address in PAR1 (address is above 21000), there is a substantial speed reduction in the subroutine. It takes an average of 1611 microseconds for each of the 65535 cases when the destination address is in PAR0 (specifically 15236) while it takes an average of 6055 microseconds for each if the 65535 cases when the destination address is in PAR1 (specifically 21000) or about 3.75 times as long. What is EXTREMELY interesting is that the above timing is also repeated under E11, although everything is over TWENTY times as fast. Under E11, it takes 65 microseconds using PAR0 and 230 microseconds using PAR1 with the same identical program. I run using RT-11 with RT11XM for all testing, although I did check with RT11FB under E11 with almost the same timing results. I could also check with RT11FB on the real DEC PDP-11/73 if anyone thinks it might be worthwhile. ----------------------------------------------------------------- HOT FROM THE COMPUTER - A BIT MORE DETAIL! At first I was most suspicious of the Mov / Clr pairs since they are the code that is extra. HOWEVER, if I eliminate the last loop with the five Ror instructions, then (although the answer is incorrect - up to 2 ** 15 too large without the final shifts) the timing is the same for both PAR0 and PAR1 arguments. But this result contradicts the earlier version of the code which uses ONLY Ror instructions (a total of 16 Ror instructions are needed to span the 32 bytes in question) to accomplish all the shifting. Because the timing for the earlier version of the code (which is still present, just not used when the branch is taken to the "faster??" version) can now be compared by changing the branch instruction to use the less efficient code, I am still able to compare the timing for both versions - and the timing for the original less efficient version (which still includes the four unpack instructions and many more Ror instructions) is still the same as before for both PAR0 and PAR1 destinations arguments and equal to each other. SO I AM STUMPED!! Even when I turn the five Ror instructions loop into five Nop instructions (as opposed to not doing the loop even when there are more shifts needed - the code checks the remaining shift count, so pretending the remaining shift count is always zero to stop using the last five Ror instruction loop was easy), the timing test with a PAR1 destination argument takes longer even though NOTHING is being done! In fact using a PAR1 destination argument with a five Nop instructions loop still takes more than half of the extra timing (i.e. much more time than for the PAR0 destination argument which still uses the five Ror instructions loop). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HOTTER FROM THE COMPUTER - STILL MORE DETAILS! To my surprise, there is considerable variation even when different PAR0 destination addresses are used. Since the portion of the code up to the final right shifting within 5 words is all that can be different, I am even more mystified. However, after running 3 different code versions at 3 different addresses (2 in PAR0 and 1 in PAR1) on both a real DEC PDP-11/73 and under E11 on a Pentium III 750 (at over 20 times the speed of the PDP-11/73), the results are consistent. When I gradually increase the PAR0 destination argument address right up to the end of PAR0, the timing gradually decreases. When the address is in PAR1 (all or none - the field is 64 bytes long, so the last example in PAR0 is 17600), the average time suddenly jumps, but only for the "more efficient" code version. Since the results of all calculations are correct (verified against a version which uses the less efficient code), I am now totally mystified. I have never seen this occur before in all of the 45 years I have been using computers. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year. From frustum at pacbell.net Sat Nov 26 20:37:42 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 20:37:42 -0600 Subject: Timing of PDP-11 Instructions In-Reply-To: <438918C0.5040007@compsys.to> References: <438918C0.5040007@compsys.to> Message-ID: <43891BF6.1090906@pacbell.net> Jerome H. Fine wrote: > Hi All, ... > Background: I want to calculate the reciprocal (inverse) of a > number between 1 and 65535 to an accuracy of 256 bits after > the binary (or decimal) point. This result will then be used to > calculate the logarithm of that value which in turn will be used > to calculate li(x) for values of x up to 10**38. The code is in > FORTRAN 77 (could also be in FORTRAN IV) which calls > MACRO-11 code to do the really low level stuff such as > repeated addition of many words with MANY Adc instructions > following each addition (99.9% of the time the Adc instructions > are never used). Jerome, I didn't read all of this, but I have to ask: why do you need to compute the reciprocal at all? log(x^y) = y*log(x) in this case, y=-1, so log(1/x) = -log(x) accuracy is limited to your log computation, rather than being limited by your reciprocal and your log approximations. From ak6dn at mindspring.com Sat Nov 26 21:46:05 2005 From: ak6dn at mindspring.com (Don North) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 19:46:05 -0800 Subject: Timing of PDP-11 Instructions In-Reply-To: <438918C0.5040007@compsys.to> References: <438918C0.5040007@compsys.to> Message-ID: <43892BFD.3040603@mindspring.com> My suspicion is you are seeing cache line conflicts within your code, such that code/data accesses keep pushing valid data out of your cache. When your code fits, and the address does not collide with your data accesses, it runs 'fast'. When you get address collisions that cause cache invalidate/replacement, it runs slow. A little bit of research indicates: Cache Set Block Model Size Size Size Type 11/44 8KB 1 2B Unifiied I/D 11/60 2KB 1 2B Unifiied I/D 11/70 2KB 2 4B Unifiied I/D 11/73 8KB 1 2B Unifiied I/D As you can see, the 11/73 has a very simple direct-mapped cache. Any two memory locations that have the same low 13 physical address bits will map to the same cache location, and contend for that slot. By varying how your loop is unrolled, and the placement of your code and data in memory, you can either allow thrashing to never occur or always occur. Since the PDP-11 caches were all unified I/D caches (not separate I/D caches like modern processors) and have very simplistic set organizations (direct mapped, except for 11/70) thrashing is very easy to achieve (either on purpose or by accident). For your code, you want to guarantee that any code loops or data buffers are not offset by 8KB in physical address (the caches are physically tagged). Jerome H. Fine wrote: > Hi All, > > I am not sure if there is still sufficient interest, however, I have > encountered a rather bizarre timing situation when a specific > subroutine is executed on my PDP-11/73. > > Background: I want to calculate the reciprocal (inverse) of a > number between 1 and 65535 to an accuracy of 256 bits after > the binary (or decimal) point. This result will then be used to > calculate the logarithm of that value which in turn will be used > to calculate li(x) for values of x up to 10**38. The code is in > FORTRAN 77 (could also be in FORTRAN IV) which calls > MACRO-11 code to do the really low level stuff such as > repeated addition of many words with MANY Adc instructions > following each addition (99.9% of the time the Adc instructions > are never used). > > Preliminary Details: The subroutine first converts the INTEGER * 4 > to a REAL * 8 to produce: > R8ARG = I2ARG > R8RCP = 1.0D0 / R8ARG > as the initial 56 bit accurate estimate. > > The subroutine then continues: I must then convert R8RCP to a: > REAL * 64 = INTEGER * 32 / FRACTION * 32 > which is actually quite simple since the R8RCP value already > contains the value EXP ** 2 which is the number of bits to > be shifted right after the R8RCP fraction of 56 bits is unpacked. > Next the unpacked 56 bits are moved by a whole number of > words for each multiple of 16 bits to be right shifted. Completion > is done by shifting right a group of 5 words when the last portion > of the total shift is less than 16 bits of shifting. > > Unpacking uses the instructions: > Mov (R0)+,-(R1) > Word shifts use the following pair of instructions four times: > Mov (R0),-(R1) > Clr (R0)+ > The final shifting (if needed) uses five instructions of: > Ror -(R0) > as many times as are required (1 to 15 times) > > The problem is as follows: When the destination argument > address is in PAR0 (address is less than 17600), there is > no problem. When I use an argument address in PAR1 > (address is above 21000), there is a substantial speed reduction > in the subroutine. It takes an average of 1611 microseconds > for each of the 65535 cases when the destination address is > in PAR0 (specifically 15236) while it takes an average of 6055 > microseconds for each if the 65535 cases when the destination > address is in PAR1 (specifically 21000) or about 3.75 times as > long. > > What is EXTREMELY interesting is that the above timing is also > repeated under E11, although everything is over TWENTY times > as fast. Under E11, it takes 65 microseconds using PAR0 and > 230 microseconds using PAR1 with the same identical program. > > I run using RT-11 with RT11XM for all testing, although I did > check with RT11FB under E11 with almost the same timing results. > I could also check with RT11FB on the real DEC PDP-11/73 > if anyone thinks it might be worthwhile. > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > > HOT FROM THE COMPUTER - A BIT MORE DETAIL! > > At first I was most suspicious of the Mov / Clr pairs since they > are the code that is extra. HOWEVER, if I eliminate the last loop > with the five Ror instructions, then (although the answer is incorrect - > up to 2 ** 15 too large without the final shifts) the timing is the same > for both PAR0 and PAR1 arguments. But this result contradicts the > earlier version of the code which uses ONLY Ror instructions (a total > of 16 Ror instructions are needed to span the 32 bytes in question) to > accomplish all the shifting. Because the timing for the earlier version > of the code (which is still present, just not used when the branch is > taken to the "faster??" version) can now be compared by changing > the branch instruction to use the less efficient code, I am still able to > compare the timing for both versions - and the timing for the original > less efficient version (which still includes the four unpack instructions > and many more Ror instructions) is still the same as before for both > PAR0 and PAR1 destinations arguments and equal to each other. > > SO I AM STUMPED!! Even when I turn the five Ror instructions > loop into five Nop instructions (as opposed to not doing the loop > even when there are more shifts needed - the code checks the remaining > shift count, so pretending the remaining shift count is always zero to > stop using the last five Ror instruction loop was easy), the timing test > with a PAR1 destination argument takes longer even though NOTHING > is being done! In fact using a PAR1 destination argument with a five Nop > instructions loop still takes more than half of the extra timing (i.e. > much > more time than for the PAR0 destination argument which still uses the > five Ror instructions loop). > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > HOTTER FROM THE COMPUTER - STILL MORE DETAILS! > > To my surprise, there is considerable variation even when different PAR0 > destination addresses are used. Since the portion of the code up to the > final right shifting within 5 words is all that can be different, I am > even > more mystified. However, after running 3 different code versions at > 3 different addresses (2 in PAR0 and 1 in PAR1) on both a real DEC > PDP-11/73 and under E11 on a Pentium III 750 (at over 20 times the > speed of the PDP-11/73), the results are consistent. When I gradually > increase the PAR0 destination argument address right up to the end of > PAR0, the timing gradually decreases. When the address is in PAR1 > (all or none - the field is 64 bytes long, so the last example in PAR0 > is 17600), the average time suddenly jumps, but only for the "more > efficient" code version. > > Since the results of all calculations are correct (verified against a > version > which uses the less efficient code), I am now totally mystified. I have > never seen this occur before in all of the 45 years I have been using > computers. > > Sincerely yours, > > Jerome Fine > -- > If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail > address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk > e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be > obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the > 'at' with the four digits of the current year. > > From ygehrich at yahoo.com Sat Nov 26 21:55:22 2005 From: ygehrich at yahoo.com (Gene Ehrich) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 22:55:22 -0500 Subject: Is there a way to switch to a digest mode for the group In-Reply-To: <43890F8B.4020500@pacbell.net> References: <43890F8B.4020500@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051126225440.058a4c50@yahoo.com> Is there a way to switch to a digest mode for the group From brendle at ems.psu.edu Sat Nov 26 12:37:47 2005 From: brendle at ems.psu.edu (Jeff Brendle) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 13:37:47 -0500 Subject: IBM RT In-Reply-To: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> References: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> Message-ID: <80B68FEC-01D3-4EBC-B932-C1DB76BCAF24@ems.psu.edu> Just curious what model RT this one was & what exactly you got in it/ with it. Sounds like a good rescue ... I've got a bit of that old IBM gear so I'm always curious when there is mention of it on the list... -j On Nov 23, 2005, at 7:16 PM, tom ponsford wrote: > I just rescued a complete IBM RT PC. It includes all the > documentation. AIX 2.x software, extra keyboards, extra cards, > extra HDD;s and extra tape drives. It also has an extra ESDI hard > drive labeled Reno 4.3. > > Was there a port of 4.x BSD to the ROMP processor? I thought that > it was tried but not completed. > > There is also a backup tape labeled AOS? > > The whole system looks like its in pretty good condition. And maybe > after consuming mass quantities of turkey tomorrow, I'll see if it > boots up. > > Cheers > > Tom From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sun Nov 27 01:55:59 2005 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 23:55:59 -0800 Subject: Timing of PDP-11 Instructions References: <438918C0.5040007@compsys.to> <43891BF6.1090906@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <4389668E.478563AA@cs.ubc.ca> The other way of parsing Jerome's message is that he wants to *use* the reciprocal *to calculate* the log, i.e.: log(x) = F( 1/x ) as opposed to taking the log of the reciprocal ( log(1/x) ). F() is a rather basic anti-derivative function in calculus, but I've forgotton too much calculus to remember how to calculate it. Jim Battle wrote: > > Jerome H. Fine wrote: > > > Hi All, > ... > > Background: I want to calculate the reciprocal (inverse) of a > > number between 1 and 65535 to an accuracy of 256 bits after > > the binary (or decimal) point. This result will then be used to > > calculate the logarithm of that value which in turn will be used > > to calculate li(x) for values of x up to 10**38. The code is in > > FORTRAN 77 (could also be in FORTRAN IV) which calls > > MACRO-11 code to do the really low level stuff such as > > repeated addition of many words with MANY Adc instructions > > following each addition (99.9% of the time the Adc instructions > > are never used). > > Jerome, I didn't read all of this, but I have to ask: why do you need to compute > the reciprocal at all? > > log(x^y) = y*log(x) > > in this case, y=-1, so > > log(1/x) = -log(x) > > accuracy is limited to your log computation, rather than being limited by your > reciprocal and your log approximations. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sun Nov 27 02:05:02 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (gordonjcp at gjcp.net) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 08:05:02 -0000 (GMT) Subject: HP K-Class 9000 auction in san antonio In-Reply-To: <43890F8B.4020500@pacbell.net> References: <43890F8B.4020500@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <46674.195.212.29.83.1133078702.squirrel@mail.gjcp.net> > An auction house in san antonio is having an auction of "construction > equipment" > on Dec 10. However, the auction has other items including "salon & spa > fixtures" and under miscellaneous, "HP K-Class 9000 computer system". I > know > nothing about this kind of system but presume that someone on this list > might > care about it. > > http://www.shattuck.com/liveauction/md1205.asp > > Picture 1: http://www.shattuck.com/md120530.jpg > Picture 2: http://www.shattuck.com/md120531.jpg > > Other than giving notice of it, I can't help in procuring/storing/shipping > it. Bah, it's in Texas. All the good stuff is on the wrong side of the pond. I'd have that, and probably the Case 480 as well. I mean, I'd need *something* to carry it home, wouldn't I? Gordon. From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Sun Nov 27 09:27:14 2005 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 09:27:14 Subject: IBM AS400? Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20051127092714.3bc7290a@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> I spotted one of these in a local surplus store (Melbourne Florida). Is it anything particularly desireable? I believe it's model number is 9414. It's a large (30 inch?) tower and appears to be in very good condition. I don't know anything about these and tried to find info on Google but only found the usual collection of over-priced (or no price!) third party dealers and other spammers. Joe From jrasite at eoni.com Sun Nov 27 10:18:39 2005 From: jrasite at eoni.com (Jim Arnott) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 08:18:39 -0800 Subject: A trip down memory lane Message-ID: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> Some of you who lived in the RT-11 world may remember this little time-waster: Jim From curt at atarimuseum.com Sun Nov 27 10:49:32 2005 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 11:49:32 -0500 Subject: Interesting question - What happened to WOPR??? In-Reply-To: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> References: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> Message-ID: <4389E39C.7040101@atarimuseum.com> While not a REAL Vintage Computer, it's something that is burned into all of our memories from 1983... So what happened to the infamous "Prop" Curt -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/183 - Release Date: 11/25/2005 From lbickley at bickleywest.com Sun Nov 27 10:50:07 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 08:50:07 -0800 Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> References: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> Message-ID: <200511270850.07546.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Sunday 27 November 2005 08:18, Jim Arnott wrote: > Some of you who lived in the RT-11 world may remember this little > time-waster: > > > > Jim Fond remembrances! Where can I locate the RT source? Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From charlesmorris at direcway.com Sun Nov 27 11:46:02 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (Charles) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 11:46:02 -0600 Subject: Getting rid of 486 PC Message-ID: <3jrjo1p532gpiliqvom9pgnmrqc86koicf@4ax.com> I have come across a stripped (but formerly working) PC chassis. It has a generic case labeled "Computers Plus", 250W power supply, and a motherboard with a 486DX2-66. No drives, peripherals or RAM. Anyone want it for the cost of postage, before it goes in the trash? Or just the motherboard? thanks Charles From mbbrutman at brutman.com Sun Nov 27 12:17:21 2005 From: mbbrutman at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 12:17:21 -0600 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: <200511271800.jARI043p060897@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511271800.jARI043p060897@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4389F831.5060802@brutman.com> It's a midrange machine. Very good at COBOL and RPG. As a relational database that is tightly coupled with the OS. I'm not sure on the model numbers, but if it is in a white/beige box it's an old timer. The latest version of the OS is V3R2, dating back to about 1996. Black boxes mean it is a newer RISC processor model, although there were some previous generation boxes dressed up in black to make them sexy. :-) Peripherals and I/O on these things are weird. It's like working in a parallel universe. Read on the web for the gory details. If the box is newer, there is a good chance that some of my code is running on it in the bowels of the OS. Mike From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sun Nov 27 12:18:55 2005 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 13:18:55 -0500 Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <200511270850.07546.lbickley@bickleywest.com> References: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> <200511270850.07546.lbickley@bickleywest.com> Message-ID: <20051127181855.A9B50BA47B7@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Lyle Bickley wrote: > On Sunday 27 November 2005 08:18, Jim Arnott wrote: > > Some of you who lived in the RT-11 world may remember this little > > time-waster: > > > > > > > > Jim > > Fond remembrances! > > Where can I locate the RT source? > > Cheers, > Lyle > -- > Lyle Bickley > Bickley Consulting West Inc. > Mountain View, CA > http://bickleywest.com > > "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" Do a Google search for "Dungeon" and "Supnik". Bob's translation was from MDL into Fortran, it has since been translated from Fortran into C. Bob also did a version for the DG Nova's Fortran. Tim. From alexeyt at freeshell.org Sun Nov 27 15:08:05 2005 From: alexeyt at freeshell.org (Alexey Toptygin) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 21:08:05 +0000 (UTC) Subject: places to visit in England Message-ID: I'm going to be in southern England for 2 weeks in mid-december, and I was wonding if listmembers could recommend any classic computing sights I should see while there. Ideas? Alexey From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 27 12:19:25 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 18:19:25 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511261745530957.05A9440A@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 26, 5 05:45:53 pm Message-ID: > >Interesting, I've never seen a floppy drive with buffered seeks, and > >since there's no seek-complete pin on the interface connector, I don't > >see how it could really work. Every floppy controller I've ever seen > >sends the step pulses at a constant rate, which would have to be slow > >enough for the worst case. > > READY goes false while seeking. You can issue pulses as fast as you want Ah right... That would really confuse some controllers, I think > (I know the drive will take a pulse every 2 msec. and probably much > faster). In a way, this isn't all that different from the overlapped seek That reminds me in passing of the Shugart SA4000 hard disk. That thing has buffered seeks, but you can't issue step pulses at any old rate. You either have to give it a step pulse and wait for it to give seek_complete (i.e. totally unbuffered seeks) or give it all the pulse at greater than a certain rate and then wait for the seek complete (buffered seek). If you give it the pulses too _slowly_, it will miscount (there is one up/down counter for the step pulses, if you're not careful the pulses from the step input get confused with those from the drive logic when it moves the heads by one cylinder!). > >Sure... I remember the Sanders dot matrix printers that ramped up (and > >down) the step rate of the carriage feed stepper and sent the printhead > >pulses at just the right times to put the dots in the right places. > > Are you certain that Sanders used a stepper for carriage positioning? If Well, I was prtty certain, but I don't have the service manuals immediately to hand. I would be very certain about the 12/7, and fairly certain about the 700 (which is actually built on a Diablo 630 chassis with totally different elecronics and a dot-matrix head). > they were like Diablo or any of the other high-speed printers, it was more > likely a DC motor with encoder. Steppers were just too slow, particularly > for bidirectional "smart" printing. IIRC, one of the engineers who worked I think that's the reason for a lot of the Sanders electronics (the 700 had 3 micropeocessors in it -- 2 Z8s and a Z80) - -to handle the acceleration of the carriage motor and put the dots down at the right time. > on the Diablo dot matrix printer (can't recall the model number, but it > used the Rockwell PPS-8 set) said that the whole business of accelerating > and decellerating a mass like a printhead made for some interesting > programming. > > Paper feed, on the other hand, was almost certainly stepper-driven. It certainly was. The 12/7 had a separate tractor feed with its own stepper motor that was simply wired in parallel with the platten motor in the printer. Turning the knob on the tractor feed caused the motor in that to generate enough voltage to turn the platten roller motor, even with the machine turned off. -tony From fryers at gmail.com Sun Nov 27 17:04:38 2005 From: fryers at gmail.com (Simon Fryer) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 23:04:38 +0000 Subject: places to visit in England In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: All, On 11/27/05, Alexey Toptygin wrote: > > I'm going to be in southern England for 2 weeks in mid-december, and I was > wonding if listmembers could recommend any classic computing sights I > should see while there. Ideas? Stonehenge, Avebury? The Computer Museum in Swindon. Porthcurno, Cornwall. The Science Museum in London. Simon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is the utility of the final product." Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 27 17:24:16 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 16:24:16 -0700 Subject: places to visit in England In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <438A4020.7060400@jetnet.ab.ca> Simon Fryer wrote: >Stonehenge, Avebury? > Closed -- pending software upgrades. :) >The Computer Museum in Swindon. Porthcurno, >Cornwall. The Science Museum in London > > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 27 17:50:39 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 16:50:39 -0700 Subject: places to visit in England In-Reply-To: <438A4020.7060400@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <438A4020.7060400@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <438A464F.90009@jetnet.ab.ca> woodelf wrote: > Simon Fryer wrote: > >> Stonehenge, Avebury? > > Closed -- pending software upgrades. :) > >> The Computer Museum in Swindon. Porthcurno, >> Cornwall. The Science Museum in London > Come to think of it, I think stonehenge was to predict elcipses and the start of the 4 seasons and other historical data,so your mid december trip could be put to good use testing the finer points of using this equipment at night or first dawn. PS.You may even spot a Virgin :D From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Sun Nov 27 17:56:12 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 23:56:12 +0000 Subject: places to visit in England In-Reply-To: <438A464F.90009@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 27/11/05 23:50, "woodelf" wrote: > woodelf wrote: > >> Simon Fryer wrote: >> >>> Stonehenge, Avebury? >> >> Closed -- pending software upgrades. :) >> >>> The Computer Museum in Swindon. Porthcurno, >>> Cornwall. The Science Museum in London >> > Come to think of it, I think stonehenge was to predict elcipses and > the start of the 4 seasons and other historical data,so your mid december > trip could be put to good use testing the finer points of using this > equipment > at night or first dawn. > PS.You may even spot a Virgin :D Round that part of the country? No chance :) Virgin train perhaps, broken down somwehere nearby....... From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 27 18:03:35 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 16:03:35 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511271603350914.0A71F6C7@10.0.0.252> On 11/27/2005 at 6:19 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Well, I was prtty certain, but I don't have the service manuals >immediately to hand. I would be very certain about the 12/7, and fairly >certain about the 700 (which is actually built on a Diablo 630 chassis >with totally different elecronics and a dot-matrix head). I do remember the Diablos having enough moxie on the carriage drive motor to do some very serious damage to your hand should you be unfortuante enough to have it the way at the wrong time. The NEC Spinwriters, OTOH, were pretty wimpy in that respect. >I think that's the reason for a lot of the Sanders electronics (the 700 >had 3 micropeocessors in it -- 2 Z8s and a Z80) - -to handle the >acceleration of the carriage motor and put the dots down at the right time. The Durango here is patterned after the Sanders in one respect--it uses a fine wire dot-matrix printhead to do multipass character formation through a film ribbon. The quality from a 9 wire printhead is very good. Includes downloadable fonts, too--some over an inch tall. The brains are a 5 MHz 8085A with a bunch of ROM and RAM ( all separate from the main CPU). The carriage motor is a 48vdc Litton model with hi-res encoder. I remember hearing that the motor cost almost as much as the rest of the printer--it's a finger-breaker too. To get the half-dot vertical offset for multipass printing, it uses a geared-down stepper for the paper feed. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 27 18:17:59 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 16:17:59 -0800 Subject: Using a large MFM drive on a WD1000 controller Message-ID: <200511271617590075.0A7F2280@10.0.0.252> I've got an Atasi 1224 cylinder 16 head MFM drive that I want to use with a WD1000 disk controller. It will be the only drive attached to the controller. Pin 2 of the control connector on the WD1000 is RWC/, whereas the same pin on the Atasi is HS8/. So, I'll have to isolate that connector, but even so, since the WD can only address 8 heads, I'm stuck with around 70MB of storage out of a much larger drive. Has anyone in the same situation simply tried driving HS8/ off of DSEL2/ (pin 28) and jumpering DSEL1/ permanently TRUE? This should give me 2 drives of 1024 cylinders / 8 heads each. Am I thinking straight here? Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Nov 27 18:21:51 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 17:21:51 -0700 Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <20051127181855.A9B50BA47B7@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> <200511270850.07546.lbickley@bickleywest.com> <20051127181855.A9B50BA47B7@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <438A4D9F.50908@jetnet.ab.ca> Tim Shoppa wrote: >Lyle Bickley wrote: > > > >>On Sunday 27 November 2005 08:18, Jim Arnott wrote: >> >> >>>Some of you who lived in the RT-11 world may remember this little >>>time-waster: >>> >>> >>> >>>Jim >>> >>> >>Fond remembrances! >> >>Where can I locate the RT source? >> >>Cheers, >>Lyle >>-- >>Lyle Bickley >>Bickley Consulting West Inc. >>Mountain View, CA >>http://bickleywest.com >> >>"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" >> >> > >Do a Google search for "Dungeon" and "Supnik". Bob's translation was >from MDL into Fortran, it has since been translated from Fortran into >C. Bob also did a version for the DG Nova's Fortran. > >Tim. > >. > > > "A cheering band of friendly elves welcome you to... Colossal Cave Adventure" http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/ From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Sun Nov 27 18:43:58 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 00:43:58 +0000 Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <438A4D9F.50908@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 28/11/05 00:21, "woodelf" wrote: >> > "A cheering band of friendly elves welcome you to... > Colossal Cave Adventure" > http://www.rickadams.org/adventure/ Dammit, I've got to get one of my PDPs going so I can play ADVENT again, assuming my RL02s are still readable :) "a hollow voice says...." A From wmaddox at pacbell.net Sun Nov 27 18:49:51 2005 From: wmaddox at pacbell.net (William Maddox) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 16:49:51 -0800 Subject: places to visit in England In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <438A542F.4090001@pacbell.net> Alexey Toptygin wrote: > > I'm going to be in southern England for 2 weeks in mid-december, and I > was wonding if listmembers could recommend any classic computing sights > I should see while there. Ideas? I would recommend Bletchley Park, but it appears that it is only open seasonally from April to October. I don't know if this applies to the RetroBeep museum or not. The Manchester "Baby" reconstruction at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester is a must-see. You want to go on a Tuesday when volunteers from the Computer Conservation Society demonstrate the machine in operation. See the Babbage difference engine reconstruction at the London Science Museum. There is also a very nicely restored Ferranti Pegasus on display. I have heard that it runs, but no one I talked to at the museum on my last visit had any information about whether and when it might be demonstrated. --Bill From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Nov 27 15:02:58 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 21:02:58 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511271603350914.0A71F6C7@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 27, 5 04:03:35 pm Message-ID: > >I think that's the reason for a lot of the Sanders electronics (the 700 > >had 3 micropeocessors in it -- 2 Z8s and a Z80) - -to handle the > >acceleration of the carriage motor and put the dots down at the right > time. > > The Durango here is patterned after the Sanders in one respect--it uses a > fine wire dot-matrix printhead to do multipass character formation through > a film ribbon. The quality from a 9 wire printhead is very good. Includes The Sanders units I have (both of them, 12/7 and 700) actually use a 7 pin head and get amazing quality from it (some of the fonts take 8 pases). There's a PROM (on one of the PCBs in the 12/7 and on the back of the prinhead itself in the 700) that contains a table of mechanical constants for that particular head (!). The 12/7 electtonics is a lot simpler. Just one Z80 and a couple of Z80-DMA chips, one for the data input (mine is the RS232 version), the other to send data to the 'pinfire' electronics. From what I rmember, that's a set of state machines. As I mentioned, the 700 has 3 microprocessors in it, communicating by shared memory 9 bits wide. No, not 8 bits and parity, a true 9 bits. I am told there was a Sanders 900 that used a 9 pin head, you see.... Alas Snaders neve had downloadable fonts. On the 12/7, the fonts are stored in EPROMs on intenral PCBs, some osckets take 2708s, some take 2716s (the TI 3-rail ones...) some take 2732s. And I think there were address decoder PROMs that selected how much of the address space was allocated to each socket. What this meant was that you got the fonts it was ordered with, and any changes later, even if you had the EPROMs with the right font in, was a lot of work. The 780 doesn't support downloadable fonts either [1], but the fonts on this are stored in little EPROM cartridges that plug into connectors in front of the carriage. Any font cartridge can go into any slot, you were supposed to be able to swapt them around. [1] Although the hardware almost does. There is a Wr/ line on the font cartridge connector, a RAM cartridge could have been made. AFAIK there is no support for this in the firmware. A word of warning for anyone working on a 12/7. There is live mains where youy least expect it, since the ribbon feed motor and the sheetfeed motor are both AC mains ones. This puts mains on the backplane PCB and on the connector PCB at the back. > downloadable fonts, too--some over an inch tall. The brains are a 5 MHz > 8085A with a bunch of ROM and RAM ( all separate from the main CPU). The > carriage motor is a 48vdc Litton model with hi-res encoder. I remember > hearing that the motor cost almost as much as the rest of the printer--it's > a finger-breaker too. To get the half-dot vertical offset for multipass > printing, it uses a geared-down stepper for the paper feed. The 12/7 is very simple mechancially. The paper feed roller (which is only about 5/16" in diameter) is directly pinned to the stepper motor spindle. The carriage feed motor (I still think it's a stepper) has the cable drum on its spindle, a steel cable pulls the carriage back and forth. The ribbon drive motor (which is one of those AC ones with a built-in gearbox) directly drives the ribbon spool. Oh, there's a roller the ribbon goes round with holes in its flange and a slotted optoswitch to detect that the ribbon has moved and how far (!). The 700 is rather more complicated. It uses the Diablo ribbon cartridge, so it keeps some of the gearing to drive it (now driven by a little stepper motor in the carriage, since the ribbon usage is programmable (!)). Again the carriage feed is what you'd expect, a steel cable on a drum. And I think therer are even a few gears in the paper feed (which is very much the system from the Diablo 630) Have you come across the DEC LA100 (or LA210) that 'dip' the head mechanically to get the half dot spacing? -tony From alex at p9.com Sun Nov 27 19:04:04 2005 From: alex at p9.com (Alex Bochannek) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 17:04:04 -0800 Subject: NCD X-Terminals looking for a new home. Message-ID: I have a couple of X-terminals that I don't have time to work on and that are therefore looking for a new home. The NCD19 would probably just work with the right download image. The NCD16 has a problem, which seems to be related to the memory. It does have a good CRT though (the square 16" 1024x1024 mono) and has server PROMs. Might be a good candidate for parting out. The IBM is a bit newer (and therefore a bit off-topic, sorry) and is an NCD OEM product. It's actually a network computer that supposedly does X, Windows Terminal Server, and some Java stuff. NCD19 June 1991 No keyboard or mouse Ethernet AUI/Thinwire Boot PROM V2.2.1 8MB RAM Cosmetic appearance fair NCD16 January 1991 No keyboard or mouse Ethernet AUI/Thinwire XServer PROM V2.3.0 1.5MB RAM Cosmetic appearance good Fails self-test, possibly memory IBM 8361-110 ~1998 No keyboard or mouse Power-supply Ethernet 10BASE-T 32MB RAM Boot Monitor V3.0.7.2 Cosmetic appearance fair I won't ship, but I can meet anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am not really asking for money for them, but would consider a trade if you have something I am interested in. Please respond directly in email. Alex. From cclist at sydex.com Sun Nov 27 20:18:15 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 18:18:15 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511271818150222.0AED3AB3@10.0.0.252> On 11/27/2005 at 9:02 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >Have you come across the DEC LA100 (or LA210) that 'dip' the head >mechanically to get the half dot spacing? Nope, but sounds logical. The Durango uses an 18" wide HP ribbon cartridge with the 3/4" ribbon in it, driven via a cable and a unidirectional clutch through the carriage motor. The ribbon spans the entire page, but is slanted, so the entire surface is used while printing. There's no 2-color ribbon facility as there is on the daisywheels. Cheers, Chuck From jwest at classiccmp.org Sun Nov 27 21:41:06 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 21:41:06 -0600 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup References: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F109B3262@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU><437F8AB4.1000603@gmail.com> <05112410424300.20699@bell> Message-ID: <014d01c5f3cd$90a45060$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> The defacto standard for terminal servers for decades in the carrier class (and below) was the Livingston Portmaster series. We used to have racks and racks of PM2E's with a mix of isdn and pots cards. If you want a terminal server, get the one designed by a company that specialized in nothing but terminal servers and was the top-end cadillac of the market. Get a PM2E. Ebay has lots of them cheap. Jay West From news at computercollector.com Sun Nov 27 22:07:23 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 23:07:23 -0500 Subject: Kevin Stumpf info In-Reply-To: <00ac01c5f0a2$1aacaf20$62406b43@66067007> Message-ID: <000201c5f3d1$3d0b91d0$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Soon there will be a free online copy. Kevin early this year gave Jay West and I permission to post his book on our web sites. We haven't done so yet (we're both very busy) but the it's still part of our respective long-term plans. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Keys Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 9:52 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Kevin Stumpf info WOW a used copy going for $184.49!!!!!!!!!!!! Glad I got my copy from Kevin after it first came out. ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Allain" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 6:14 PM Subject: Re: Kevin Stumpf info >> Does anyone have a copy of the book, or a contact for Me Stumpf? > > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0968424406/103-1974629-2914209 > "A Guide to Collecting Computers and Computer Collectibles: > History, Practice, and Technique" (Spiral-bound) > > http://www.chac.org/engine-ascii/engv2n1.txt > gives Kevin's: {email-address},{phone-number}... (drumroll)... from > 1994 > > John A. > From h.otten at chello.nl Sun Nov 27 12:37:41 2005 From: h.otten at chello.nl (Hans Otten) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 19:37:41 +0100 Subject: VAXmate, docs or floppies? Message-ID: <004901c5f381$a6497590$0a01a8c0@aldipress.nl> I recently obtained a VAXmate, that Intel 286 based Digital Equipment MS-DOS machine with builtin ethernet. Last time I used one was around 1990, porting dutch versions of PSCA DECnet and PC ALL-IN-1 working for DEC. The system boots a DOS 3.3 floppy, so the hardware is fine. Underneath the unit is the RCD32 aka oizaabox hard disk system. I hear the disk spinning, no boot is done. Any one has more information on this system? The system floppies that belong to the VAXmate? Any help is appreciated. Hans. http://www.hansotten.com From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Sun Nov 27 17:38:08 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 15:38:08 -0800 (PST) Subject: places to visit in England Message-ID: <20051127233808.86832.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> anyplace that has a Research Machines Nimbus puter. None to be found on this side of the pond :( __________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From apryl at nctv.com Sun Nov 27 09:27:52 2005 From: apryl at nctv.com (Apryl) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 07:27:52 -0800 Subject: RC-18 /working equipment/tubes NBO Message-ID: <000001c5f367$26ae8600$e9ee8b40@pavilion> I recently came across a manual (1956 RCA receiving tube rc-18) w/spare tubes from the army signal corp. & electrical, tube, (etc) tech books dating in the early 1940's. Also, there are fuses and other parts. some w/their shipping dates and many w/the company names right on the unopened boxes. Included in my findings is a working radio/recorder (?) unit that has enough parts to build another or replace existing parts. I can gather from my research that this piece of equipment was used in the war itself (WWII). I would like to inquire about this equipment to anyone who may know or be able to direct me to the proper place to find out more about this fascinating device! I have seen some 411 in the history museum online, but I need more. If you or anyone you know out there could point me in the right direction, I would be ever so grateful! Anyone know it's value? Thank you for your time & efforts, Apryl From Betron522 at buckeye-express.com Sun Nov 27 18:23:56 2005 From: Betron522 at buckeye-express.com (Betty Schuster) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 19:23:56 -0500 Subject: paperclip computer project Message-ID: <000501c5f3b2$0539f5e0$08ccf048@bettysch> I teach middle school and would be very interested in your paperclip computer project. Thanks Betty Betron522 at buckeye-express.com From wmaddox at pacbell.net Mon Nov 28 04:14:13 2005 From: wmaddox at pacbell.net (William Maddox) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 02:14:13 -0800 Subject: Available: 8" Vydec compatible floppy disks Message-ID: <438AD875.9050201@pacbell.net> I have a box of 10 Memorex "FD VI" Vydec-compatible 8" floppy disks. These are single-sided, double-density disks with hard-sectored index holes around the periphery of the disk (on the outside, not near the center hole). They are labelled as compatible with the Memorex 651 drive. Note that these are not the more common 32-sector format, or the even more common soft-sectored variety. As far as I know, these are useful only for Vydec word processors, a very early WYSIWYG WP system. The disks appear to be unused, but are slightly warped due to improper storage. I suspect they are usable, however. They are available for the cost of postage to a collector with a compatible drive, otherwise I will put them up on eBay, or keep them as "bait" to lure a Vydec into my collection. ;) --Bill From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Mon Nov 28 05:20:33 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 06:20:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> References: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> Message-ID: <200511281123.GAA12631@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Some of you who lived in the RT-11 world may remember this little > time-waster: > I actually remember it from VMS. Doesn't seem to work for me, though. When I open the mailbox, it reveals a leaflet - but then when I try to pick up the leaflet, it doesn't work: You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. > open mailbox Opening the mailbox reveals: A leaflet. > ________________________________________________________________ but then when I type "get leaflet" into the field, I get You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here. > get leaflet I can't see one here. > ________________________________________________________________ /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 28 05:37:29 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:37:29 +0000 Subject: places to visit in England In-Reply-To: <438A542F.4090001@pacbell.net> References: <438A542F.4090001@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <438AEBF9.5080809@yahoo.co.uk> William Maddox wrote: > Alexey Toptygin wrote: >> >> I'm going to be in southern England for 2 weeks in mid-december, and I >> was wonding if listmembers could recommend any classic computing >> sights I should see while there. Ideas? > > I would recommend Bletchley Park, but it appears that it is only > open seasonally from April to October. I don't know if this applies > to the RetroBeep museum or not. Yes, bad timing I'm afraid. Previous years (well, the few years I've been there anyway) the Park's opened through the winter, but this year they've shut to visitors until the start of April (lots of UK museums seem to do this, which seems a shame when there's so much indoors stuff to see!) In addition, we're in the process of moving, so all the equipment's disconnected and much of it has been packaged up. Even if I could get Alexey onto the site under a temporary pass, there isn't much classic computing to see right now anyway :-( > See the Babbage difference engine reconstruction at the London > Science Museum. There is also a very nicely restored Ferranti > Pegasus on display. I have heard that it runs, but no one I talked > to at the museum on my last visit had any information about whether > and when it might be demonstrated. I'm not sure of the relevant contact there I'm afraid - but for Alexey's benefit, an advance email to them will hopefully find its way to the right people. If you're into technology in general, I can highly recommend the steam museum at Kew Bridge in London, and (assuming 'south' extends that far) the air museum at Duxford up near Cambridge: http://www.kbsm.org http://duxford.iwm.org.uk cheers Jules From brad at heeltoe.com Mon Nov 28 05:44:30 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 06:44:30 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 27 Nov 2005 21:41:06 CST." <014d01c5f3cd$90a45060$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Message-ID: <200511281144.jASBiUsh013183@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Jay West" wrote: >The defacto standard for terminal servers for decades in the carrier class >(and below) was the Livingston Portmaster series. We used to have racks and >racks of PM2E's with a mix of isdn and pots cards. beg to differ. The portmaster was not (by any means) carrier class. It was popular among those who where not colocated and/or didn't have much money. The ascend max & tnt where the carrier class defacto standard (ask uunet). one trip to mae-east around 1998 would confirm that... you'd see rows and rows and rows of them (along with large copper pipes carrying +48v) having said that, the PM would be a good choice for someone who wanted a cheap terminal server. but if you wanted a high quality small terminal server I think you'd be better off with a xylogics annex. The PM is easier to configure but the annex will last longer. Both are based on low end x86 cpu's but the xylogic's hardware and QA was much better than livingston's. -brad From blkline at attglobal.net Mon Nov 28 09:19:21 2005 From: blkline at attglobal.net (Barry L. Kline) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:19:21 -0500 Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <200511281123.GAA12631@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> <200511281123.GAA12631@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <438B1FF9.3090008@attglobal.net> der Mouse wrote: >>Some of you who lived in the RT-11 world may remember this little >>time-waster: > > > There is a small mailbox here. > > > get leaflet > > I can't see one here. read leaflet From dwight.elvey at amd.com Mon Nov 28 12:46:28 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:46:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <200511281846.KAA23227@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Allison" >> From: woodelf ---snip--- > >>Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater >>rather than a floppy disk controler? > >Yes, many. usually its a sync chip. > >Allison Hi Besides the HeathKit hard sectored controller board, used on both the H8 and the H89, Polymorphics also used a serial chip to do data. In both of these cases, as you state, they used synchronous serial chips and not async. Dwight From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Mon Nov 28 12:56:43 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 13:56:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <438B1FF9.3090008@attglobal.net> References: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> <200511281123.GAA12631@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <438B1FF9.3090008@attglobal.net> Message-ID: <200511281858.NAA14904@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> There is a small mailbox here. >> > get leaflet >> I can't see one here. > read leaflet "I can't see one here.". I've also tried moving around - and yes, I know the game fairly well; I beat the version we had on VMS back in my larval-stage days - and all the results I've had are entirely consistent with the theory that it's resetting the game state before processing each command. Maybe it just doesn't like me, or maybe I'm doing something wrong.... /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 28 13:00:39 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:00:39 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <0IQO00HNBI4546A2@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 > From: "Dwight K. Elvey" > Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:46:28 -0800 (PST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>From: "Allison" > >>> From: woodelf >---snip--- >> >>>Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater >>>rather than a floppy disk controler? >> >>Yes, many. usually its a sync chip. >> >>Allison > >Hi > Besides the HeathKit hard sectored controller board, >used on both the H8 and the H89, Polymorphics also >used a serial chip to do data. In both of these >cases, as you state, they used synchronous serial >chips and not async. Err, Yes that's what I did say. Sync chips were the norm for brewed designs there were not OSI or done with TTL. Often they were used because WD could not supply or was not viewed as the desireable item due to lack of second source (at least early on). Some did it to have a propritory format. Allison From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 28 13:07:41 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:07:41 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511281846.KAA23227@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511281846.KAA23227@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <200511281107410035.0E8960A4@10.0.0.252> On 11/28/2005 at 10:46 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > Besides the HeathKit hard sectored controller board, >used on both the H8 and the H89, Polymorphics also >used a serial chip to do data. In both of these >cases, as you state, they used synchronous serial >chips and not async. To put a reverse twist on this, has anyone ever used two floppy controllers to transfer data between two systems? I know it'd take a little extra hardware (something has to provide address headers outside of a format operation), but it should still be quite possible to do so. I've never tried, however. Ethernet is so much easier. Cheers, Chuck From dwight.elvey at amd.com Mon Nov 28 13:27:53 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:27:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <200511281927.LAA24217@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Allison" > >> >>Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 >> From: "Dwight K. Elvey" >> Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:46:28 -0800 (PST) >> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >> >>>From: "Allison" >> >>>> From: woodelf >>---snip--- >>> >>>>Did anybody ever use a serial chip and a data separater >>>>rather than a floppy disk controler? >>> >>>Yes, many. usually its a sync chip. >>> >>>Allison >> >>Hi >> Besides the HeathKit hard sectored controller board, >>used on both the H8 and the H89, Polymorphics also >>used a serial chip to do data. In both of these >>cases, as you state, they used synchronous serial >>chips and not async. > >Err, Yes that's what I did say. Sync chips were the norm Hi Allison I'm not contridicting, just pointing out some cases to support. As I recall, the N* controller also used the synchronous serial chip. I don't know of a case that used a async part. All of these were used on hard sectored disk. I don't know of any soft sectored that used serial chips. I suspect that it is because these depended on using illegal data clocking sequences in order to mark sectors. This would require more external circuits. Dwight >for brewed designs there were not OSI or done with TTL. > >Often they were used because WD could not supply or was >not viewed as the desireable item due to lack of second >source (at least early on). Some did it to have a >propritory format. > > >Allison > > > From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 28 13:37:52 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:37:52 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <0IQO00HNBI4546A2@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQO00HNBI4546A2@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200511281137520788.0EA505BC@10.0.0.252> On 11/28/2005 at 2:00 PM Allison wrote: >Often they were used because WD could not supply or was >not viewed as the desireable item due to lack of second >source (at least early on). Some did it to have a >propritory format. Let's not forget that the 1771 early on was pretty darned expensive, too! A USRT was almost always cheaper, particularly where software could be brought to bear to issue timed step pulses, search for index/sector pulses, etc. All USRTs AFAIK, can recognize sync characters embedded in an idle bit stream, which doesn't make them too different from floppy controllers. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 28 13:47:44 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:47:44 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511281927.LAA24217@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511281927.LAA24217@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <200511281147440454.0EAE0CE8@10.0.0.252> On 11/28/2005 at 11:27 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > I don't know of any soft sectored that used serial >chips. I suspect that it is because these depended >on using illegal data clocking sequences in order >to mark sectors. This would require more external >circuits. Some of the low end word processors (e.g. Smith Corona) used them (or a feature of the MPU that simulated a serial chip). No "illegal clocks", just sync fields embedded in an idle stream. SCM used 5F 5F 5F....16 followed by sector ID information and a CRC. Works just fine. Similarly, Brother 240K diskettes do not use missing clocks, but rely on illegal GCR patterns to denote start of sector ID. I believe that the Future Data systems used a similar scheme for their 8" media. All are soft-sectored. Cheers, Chuck From zmerch at 30below.com Mon Nov 28 13:52:26 2005 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:52:26 -0500 Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <200511281858.NAA14904@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <438B1FF9.3090008@attglobal.net> <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> <200511281123.GAA12631@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <438B1FF9.3090008@attglobal.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20051128144403.01bdcfa8@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that der Mouse may have mentioned these words: > >> There is a small mailbox here. > >> > get leaflet > >> I can't see one here. > > read leaflet > >"I can't see one here.". The mailbox needs to be opened first... which you prolly already know that. ;-) >I've also tried moving around - and yes, I know the game fairly well; I >beat the version we had on VMS back in my larval-stage days - and all >the results I've had are entirely consistent with the theory that it's >resetting the game state before processing each command. Maybe it just >doesn't like me, or maybe I'm doing something wrong.... Maybe you need cookies enabled? The game would need to save state to know where you are. HTH, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch at 30below.com Hi! I am a .signature virus. Copy me into your .signature to join in! From dwight.elvey at amd.com Mon Nov 28 13:58:02 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 11:58:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <200511281958.LAA24986@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Chuck Guzis" > >On 11/28/2005 at 10:46 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > >> Besides the HeathKit hard sectored controller board, >>used on both the H8 and the H89, Polymorphics also >>used a serial chip to do data. In both of these >>cases, as you state, they used synchronous serial >>chips and not async. > >To put a reverse twist on this, has anyone ever used two floppy controllers >to transfer data between two systems? I know it'd take a little extra >hardware (something has to provide address headers outside of a format >operation), but it should still be quite possible to do so. > >I've never tried, however. Ethernet is so much easier. > >Cheers, >Chuck Hi I've used slightly modified cassette tape software to transfer data to and from a Poly88 to a PC. The only part I recall changing was the initialization code and the sync detect. They used a 8251 so there was little other modifications. The Poly88 thought it was otherwise just doing a tape transfer. I initialized the 8251 as async to match the PC end. I suspect that one could do a controller to controller method but one would need to generate the index pulses. A simple 555 circuit would most likely be enough. You might need to add a little analog filtering to match up the compensation that is usually added to the write data on the higher density drives. Dwight From swebb at cix.co.uk Mon Nov 28 14:02:00 2005 From: swebb at cix.co.uk (Simon Webb) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 20:02 +0000 (GMT Standard Time) Subject: places to visit in England Message-ID: On 11/27/05, Alexey Toptygin wrote: > I'm going to be in southern England for 2 weeks in mid-december, and I > was wonding if listmembers could recommend any classic computing sights > I should see while there. Ideas? Hi Alexey I would be delighted to show you around the Museum of Computing, we are based in Swindon, Wiltshire. Simon Webb Curator, Museum of Computing www.museum-of-computing.org.uk Tel: 07939 582544 From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Mon Nov 28 13:57:18 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 14:57:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20051128144403.01bdcfa8@mail.30below.com> References: <438B1FF9.3090008@attglobal.net> <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> <200511281123.GAA12631@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <438B1FF9.3090008@attglobal.net> <5.1.0.14.2.20051128144403.01bdcfa8@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <200511282002.PAA15425@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> I've also tried moving around [...] and all the results I've had are >> entirely consistent with the theory that it's resetting the game >> state before processing each command. Maybe it just doesn't like >> me, or maybe I'm doing something wrong.... > Maybe you need cookies enabled? Oh, gross. I bet you're right. *tests* Yes, that's it. > The game would need to save state to know where you are. Yes, of course. But I'd assumed it put that in the URL; that's where I put it when I did a Web interface to a stateful game (blockade). Now, well, it has the problem that it scrolls back to the beginning of the transcript after each command, which is a minor problem. But since I'm not likely to want to play zork seriously over the web anyway, that's no big deal; it's still Pretty Cool. It even accepts the INCANTation which I find I still have memorized from my VMS zork-playing days. Ah, the things I spend gray cells on.... :-) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 28 14:09:02 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 12:09:02 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511281958.LAA24986@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511281958.LAA24986@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <200511281209020506.0EC18D0C@10.0.0.252> On 11/28/2005 at 11:58 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > I suspect that one could do a controller to controller >method but one would need to generate the index pulses. >A simple 555 circuit would most likely be enough. > You might need to add a little analog filtering to >match up the compensation that is usually added to the >write data on the higher density drives. If we're talking about 765-type controllers, one would need more than that--a 765 will not start reading or writing until an IDAM has been read and checked, and in the case of a read, the DAM seen. Both of which are provided not by writing, but by formatting. So one would need some extra logic to generate said info to keep both sides happy. One instance where a "smart" (sic) floppy controller gets in the way. Cheers, Chuck From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 28 14:12:41 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:12:41 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511281107410035.0E8960A4@10.0.0.252> References: <200511281846.KAA23227@ca2h0430.amd.com> <200511281107410035.0E8960A4@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <438B64B9.6090109@bellatlantic.net> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/28/2005 at 10:46 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > > >>Besides the HeathKit hard sectored controller board, >>used on both the H8 and the H89, Polymorphics also >>used a serial chip to do data. In both of these >>cases, as you state, they used synchronous serial >>chips and not async. > > > To put a reverse twist on this, has anyone ever used two floppy controllers > to transfer data between two systems? I know it'd take a little extra > hardware (something has to provide address headers outside of a format > operation), but it should still be quite possible to do so. > Yes, I have. only because the system didnt' have a serial port, only a centronics printer port (non PC style). Depends on the floppy controller on the headers. the 765 makes a good tape controller. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Nov 28 14:15:40 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:15:40 -0500 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511281927.LAA24217@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511281927.LAA24217@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <438B656C.7030600@bellatlantic.net> Dwight K. Elvey wrote: >>From: "Allison" >> >>>Subject: Re: Pinout for SED9421 >>> From: "Dwight K. Elvey" >>> Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 10:46:28 -0800 (PST) >>> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >>> > > Hi Allison > I'm not contridicting, just pointing out some cases > to support. As I recall, the N* controller also used > the synchronous serial chip. I don't know of a case > that used a async part. All of these were used on > hard sectored disk. Nope and I'm sure of is as I'm in the middle to sorting out a non working MDS-AD3! > I don't know of any soft sectored that used serial > chips. I suspect that it is because these depended > on using illegal data clocking sequences in order > to mark sectors. This would require more external > circuits. There is nothing to stop that as the data de and can also do a little majik on those marks. May not make as much sense but doable. Allison From RMeenaks at olf.com Mon Nov 28 14:22:01 2005 From: RMeenaks at olf.com (Ram Meenakshisundaram) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:22:01 -0500 Subject: Anyone have an unwanted Atari 1040ST or 1040STF? Message-ID: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD6A9@cpexchange.olf.com> I want to test out a KUMA K-MAX Atari RISC System and need an Atari? Thanks, Ram From Billy.Pettit at wdc.com Mon Nov 28 15:43:57 2005 From: Billy.Pettit at wdc.com (Billy Pettit) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 13:43:57 -0800 Subject: CDC 1700 Memory Stack Message-ID: About 6 months ago, someone on the list contacted me about a 1700 spares. I can't get to my archive for another couple of weeks. But I don't know where a 1700 memory is and available at for price to be negotiated. Could whoever was after this please get in touch with me off list and I'll get the two of you together. Billy Pettit billy.pettit at wdc.com From Billy.Pettit at wdc.com Mon Nov 28 15:48:11 2005 From: Billy.Pettit at wdc.com (Billy Pettit) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 13:48:11 -0800 Subject: CDC 1700 Memory Stack Message-ID: Sorry... It should have said I DO know where there is a memory available. Billy From jplist at kiwigeek.com Mon Nov 28 16:39:31 2005 From: jplist at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 16:39:31 -0600 (CST) Subject: CP/M 2 - what's its legal status? (Vector box cards) In-Reply-To: <200511231824430617.041D0767@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: Back from break, finally. Apologies for delays in response. (My first child, a son, was born a week ago... I'm up to my neck in "What the hell have I gotten myself into?") Now that is funny... I'm pretty sure Anthony was the name of the chap I picked the Vector up from, and the serial number lines up - so I guess thats the same machine. The internet never forgets! The documentation does not mention MP/M, I'm fairly certain that it runs multiple copies of CP/M, as Mike Stein suggests. The floppy drive is a Tandon unit, although I've yet to pry it out enough to identify which model number. Thankfully some very helpful chaps around have offered to line me up with appropriate CP/M boot disks (Gord & Mike rock), so I'm a happy chappy for now. The FlashWriter is a pretty clever piece of toy, and I'm fairly confident I can build a terminal for it easily enough. The FlashWriter II rev 4 (as I have) can spit out composite video with a jumper setting, and uses a parallel ASCII keyboard, which I'm going to use a Ubicom SX20 microcontroller to translate between a PS/2 keyboard and such. Thanks all for your help; On Wed, 23 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/23/2005 at 2:21 PM JP Hindin wrote: > > >The thing is a pretty nifty set up, to be honest, I didn't know it was > >nearly so cool ;) > > Isn't this whole thing deja vu all over again--only 6 years later? > > http://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1999-May/127508.html > > This was almost certainly an MP/M II system. > > FWIW, if you're wondering about the Flashwriter cards, there's a MDM7 > overlay for them wandering around on the web. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > > > > > From geoffreythomas at onetel.com Mon Nov 28 16:46:09 2005 From: geoffreythomas at onetel.com (Geoffrey Thomas) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:46:09 -0000 Subject: Dragon Beta m/c References: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD6A9@cpexchange.olf.com> Message-ID: <005001c5f46d$91304700$0300a8c0@geoff> http://www.dndata.com/dragond/hardware/Beta/Drag%20Beta.htm#itroars A few lads in the dragon user group are resurrecting the Dragon Beta (128) machine with twin 6809 processors. Piccies and info on page above. Geoff. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/183 - Release Date: 25/11/05 From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Nov 28 17:04:44 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 23:04:44 +0000 Subject: Dragon Beta m/c In-Reply-To: <005001c5f46d$91304700$0300a8c0@geoff> References: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD6A9@cpexchange.olf.com> <005001c5f46d$91304700$0300a8c0@geoff> Message-ID: <438B8D0C.8050101@yahoo.co.uk> Geoffrey Thomas wrote: > http://www.dndata.com/dragond/hardware/Beta/Drag%20Beta.htm#itroars > > A few lads in the dragon user group are resurrecting the Dragon Beta (128) > machine with twin 6809 processors. > Piccies and info on page above. Whoo! I remember Rich being all excited and bringing it to the museum last year, so it's great to hear that it's now running. (Reminds me that I think he was after another couple of 3.5" FH floppy drives for it...) cheers J. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Mon Nov 28 17:14:38 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 23:14:38 +0000 Subject: A trip down memory lane In-Reply-To: <200511282002.PAA15425@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <4fbad4a996c7122099da237ca2e79446@eoni.com> <200511281123.GAA12631@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <438B1FF9.3090008@attglobal.net> <5.1.0.14.2.20051128144403.01bdcfa8@mail.30below.com> <200511282002.PAA15425@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: On 11/28/05, der Mouse wrote: > ...it's still Pretty Cool. It even accepts the > INCANTation which I find I still have memorized from my VMS > zork-playing days. Ah, the things I spend gray cells on.... :-) Indeed... INCANTations were a major pain for me to properly implement on ZDungeon, especially because of the limitations of the Z-machine (no 'username', part of the hashing process). It really mattered to me because the original MDL code had a check for certain usernames (the Implementors), so as I do my regression testing against a real copy running on the "Panda" distribution of klh10 w/TOPS-20, it's nice to know, say, MAA's incantation. Inform doesn't handle character strings well (you have to redirect the output stream to an array and print things to it, then you can examine things a character at a time), but it _was_ eventually possible to craft an INCANT routine that was bit-for-bit compatible with the MDL. That having been said, I'm reasonably certain that VMS incantations are not identical to MDL incantations; ah, well. -ethan From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Mon Nov 28 17:21:36 2005 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 23:21:36 +0000 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511281107410035.0E8960A4@10.0.0.252> References: <200511281846.KAA23227@ca2h0430.amd.com> <200511281107410035.0E8960A4@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: On 11/28/05, Chuck Guzis wrote: > To put a reverse twist on this, has anyone ever used two floppy controllers > to transfer data between two systems? I know it'd take a little extra > hardware (something has to provide address headers outside of a format > operation), but it should still be quite possible to do so. There was a product for the Amiga that did this, but the Amiga's FDC is really just a combination of a couple of portions of a couple of custom chips. The data transfer portion is a huge shift register that lives on the sound chip (Paula). Dunno how much work it would be to make something like that for a WD FDC-based machine, like a PeeCee. -ethan From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Nov 28 09:03:53 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 15:03:53 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511271818150222.0AED3AB3@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 27, 5 06:18:15 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/27/2005 at 9:02 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: > > >Have you come across the DEC LA100 (or LA210) that 'dip' the head > >mechanically to get the half dot spacing? > > Nope, but sounds logical. The Durango uses an 18" wide HP ribbon cartridge >From waht I remember there were a pair of solenoids, one each side of the carriage, connected in series (maybe in parallel, but at least there were only 2 wires back to the logic board). The armature was a permanent magnet with a groove round it. Passing a pulse one way through the coils sent the armature to one side, a pulse the other way sent it to the other side. In one postiion the printhead was a little lower due to the groove. FWIW, the LA100 is nowhere near as mechanically well-built as the Sanders. > with the 3/4" ribbon in it, driven via a cable and a unidirectional clutch > through the carriage motor. The ribbon spans the entire page, but is > slanted, so the entire surface is used while printing. There's no 2-color > ribbon facility as there is on the daisywheels. The Sanders 12/7 uses a film ribbon on a spool. It fits on one side of the chassie, the ribbon runs round pulleys (and across the front of the head, then round that motion-detector roller I mentioned and onto the takeup spool on the other side of the chassis.. I had a fair number of problems with insufficient tension and the ribbon falling off its guides. The 700 takes the Diablo HiType/630 film ribbon cartridge (I have never tried a fabric ribbon, and don't intent to for fear of damaging the printhead pins). In both cases there's no colorchnage mechnaism. It's strictly black-only. -tony From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 28 18:15:21 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 16:15:21 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: References: <200511281846.KAA23227@ca2h0430.amd.com> <200511281107410035.0E8960A4@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511281615210306.0FA30CFA@10.0.0.252> On 11/28/2005 at 11:21 PM Ethan Dicks wrote: >Dunno how much work it would be to make something like that for a WD >FDC-based machine, like a PeeCee. How about attaching the read data and index lines on the floppy drive on one machine to the FDC on another? Format the diskette and write the data to be transfered on a given track. Allow the other machine to read it. Klutzy, but it ought to work with very little in the way of extra logic. Cheers, Chuck From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Mon Nov 28 19:03:56 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 19:03:56 -0600 Subject: IBM AS400? Message-ID: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> Disclaimer: all of this is based on what I heard/found out while looking at getting one Not a bad machine, as long as you want to run OS/400 and (generally) program in RPG. IBM never released any information about programming the actual hardware, just the software middle-layer (can't remember what it's called just now). The new machines could possibly be inferred, as they use PowerPC/ RS64 chips, but that may or may not help you because the other logic is undocumented. CISC AS/400s are an interesting architecture, no hardware memory protection, it's all taken care of in software. BIG GOTCHA- you need to make sure your machine comes with not only the OS, but also the mashine-specific intermediate layer software. Unless you have a friend at IBM, they may be happy to give you a replacement in return for much cash, or they may do the snooty Maitre d' thing . . . and OS/400 is rumored to lock itself after a certain period of inactivity as well. In short, it sounded to me like a 50/50 chance of having something cool or a nightmare, so I let the opporitunity slide. From dwight.elvey at amd.com Mon Nov 28 20:07:19 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:07:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: Pinout for SED9421 Message-ID: <200511290207.SAA02093@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Chuck Guzis" > >On 11/28/2005 at 11:21 PM Ethan Dicks wrote: > >>Dunno how much work it would be to make something like that for a WD >>FDC-based machine, like a PeeCee. > >How about attaching the read data and index lines on the floppy drive on >one machine to the FDC on another? Format the diskette and write the data >to be transfered on a given track. Allow the other machine to read it. > >Klutzy, but it ought to work with very little in the way of extra logic. > >Cheers, >Chuck > > Hi I was thinking that as well but you couldn't have any of the special characters that are used to mark the various fields. It would work if the files had ASCII text only but many of the FxH values would do funny things( for your standard controller chip, as I recall ) if the files had binary data. Dwight From vax9000 at gmail.com Mon Nov 28 20:20:53 2005 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:20:53 -0500 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: > BIG GOTCHA- you need to make sure your machine comes with not only the OS, but also the mashine-specific intermediate layer software. Unless you have a friend at IBM, they may be happy to give you a replacement in return for much cash, or they may do the snooty Maitre d' thing . . . and OS/400 is rumored to lock itself after a certain period of inactivity as well. You have found the reason why there are so many DEC fans and no IBM fans on the mailing list. vax, 9000 From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Nov 28 20:30:04 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:30:04 -0500 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <200511282130.04863.pat@computer-refuge.org> 9000 VAX declared on Monday 28 November 2005 21:20: > > BIG GOTCHA- you need to make sure your machine comes with not > > only the OS, but also the mashine-specific intermediate layer > > software. Unless you have a friend at IBM, they may be happy to give > > you a replacement in return for much cash, or they may do the snooty > > Maitre d' thing . . . and OS/400 is rumored to lock itself after a > > certain period of inactivity as well. > > You have found the reason why there are so many DEC fans and no IBM > fans on the mailing list. HEY! I'm a DEC fan *and* an IBM fan... With RISC AS/400's (or maybe just later versions of OS/400), IBM seems to have removed the timeout restriction. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Nov 28 20:32:55 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:32:55 -0500 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <438BBDD7.5030505@gmail.com> 9000 VAX wrote: >> BIG GOTCHA- you need to make sure your machine comes with not only the OS, but also the mashine-specific intermediate layer software. Unless you have a friend at IBM, they may be happy to give you a replacement in return for much cash, or they may do the snooty Maitre d' thing . . . and OS/400 is rumored to lock itself after a certain period of inactivity as well. > > > You have found the reason why there are so many DEC fans and no IBM > fans on the mailing list. I raise my hand and point out that I am a big-time IBM fan. Not AS/400's, though. I have multiple mainframes *in my house*. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 28 20:48:38 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:48:38 -0800 Subject: Pinout for SED9421 In-Reply-To: <200511290207.SAA02093@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511290207.SAA02093@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <200511281848380815.102F6385@10.0.0.252> On 11/28/2005 at 6:07 PM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: >Hi > I was thinking that as well but you couldn't have any >of the special characters that are used to mark the various >fields. It would work if the files had ASCII text only but >many of the FxH values would do funny things( for your standard >controller chip, as I recall ) if the files had binary data. >Dwight Not what I was thinking. Here's the scheme in detail. Format a track on a floppy; doesn't matter which one, so long as both systems use the same one. Tie only Read Data tied to both the local and the remote systems and leave the drive selected and the motor on (index doesn't reallly matter as long as you've got. Write any sector on the track (or all of them if you want) with the local system. Periodically read the same sectors with the remote system. You'd have to use some sort of sequence numbering scheme and some built-in delays to ensure synchronization, but it ought to work with any data. Maybe I'll try it one of these days... Cheers, Chuck From aw288 at osfn.org Mon Nov 28 20:50:21 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:50:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > You have found the reason why there are so many DEC fans and no IBM > fans on the mailing list. Hmmm...seems IBM did a much better job making a water cooled mainframe than DEC, wouldn't you say, Mr. VAX 9000? I have a number of IBMs and clones, PLUS a number of DEC 12 and 36 bitters - a fan of both, although I am not very agressive about obtaining DEC stuff anymore. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org From cclist at sydex.com Mon Nov 28 20:51:57 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:51:57 -0800 Subject: OT: Another interesting use for USB Message-ID: <200511281851570813.10326CD9@10.0.0.252> Not long ago, there was a discussion about the proliferation of reading lamps that were powered from USB ports. In the same vein, I give you: http://www.thanko.jp/usbslippers/index.html USB-powered slippers! To make this on-topic, this would be a good thing with which to start your USB classic peripherals collection... Cheers, Chuck From jwest at classiccmp.org Mon Nov 28 21:03:59 2005 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:03:59 -0600 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup References: <200511281144.jASBiUsh013183@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <00bb01c5f491$8bbbe7b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> You wrote.... > beg to differ. The portmaster was not (by any means) carrier class. Sure it was. I was there ;) Debatable, but it certainly was ubiquitous. You're confusing your decades - In the day I was referring to, large ISP's used portmasters, as there was no such thing as a tnt/max at the time, at least not commonly. We had lots of portmasters, then we later went to cisco AS5200/5800. But in the very early days, those did not exist either. > It was popular among those who where not colocated and/or didn't have much > money. I disagree. Most of the large ISP's around here started with PM's. They stayed with PM's for many years. > The ascend max & tnt where the carrier class defacto standard (ask uunet). Just because uunet used them? I think not. Depends on your timeframe again. I personally despised the ascend max & tnt. I've watched them catch fire before, not just one random event - really crappy hardware design. Their menu configuration is simply grotesque (about as horrid as the pipeline 50 config menus). I refused to use them (as did many other ISP's). I didn't care for the USR total control stuff much either, but I'm a huge fan of their courier I-modems and the v.everythings. > having said that, the PM would be a good choice for someone who wanted > a cheap terminal server. > > but if you wanted a high quality small terminal server I think you'd be > better off with a xylogics annex. The PM is easier to configure but the > annex will last longer. Both are based on low end x86 cpu's but the > xylogic's hardware and QA was much better than livingston's. Again, I humbly disagree. The PM was used by those providing large scale dial up service very commonly, the xylogics annex was not very common in that environment. For good reason. But today, my ISP uses dual cisco 5800's. I always thought the 7206 stuffed on top of each one was a kludge, but then, I'm still a big cisco fan. Jay West From aw288 at osfn.org Mon Nov 28 21:12:54 2005 From: aw288 at osfn.org (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:12:54 -0500 (EST) Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <00bb01c5f491$8bbbe7b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Message-ID: > I didn't > care for the USR total control stuff much either, but I'm a huge fan of > their courier I-modems and the v.everythings. What did you not like about Total Control? William Donzelli ex integrat at usr.com From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Nov 28 21:25:43 2005 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:25:43 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <00bb01c5f491$8bbbe7b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> References: <200511281144.jASBiUsh013183@mwave.heeltoe.com> <00bb01c5f491$8bbbe7b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Message-ID: <200511282225.43129.pat@computer-refuge.org> Jay West declared on Monday 28 November 2005 22:03: > But today, my ISP uses dual cisco 5800's. I always thought the 7206 > stuffed on top of each one was a kludge, but then, I'm still a big > cisco fan. Some of us don't like getting raped on pricing of networking gear.. even EMC uses Allied Telesyn gear. Anywho, I still prefer my Xyplex MAXserver 1600's, and Network 9000s, which are based upon the venerable DECserver. >From what I've heard, the Engineering IT group at Purdue has had plenty of issues with Annex 3 boxes (some are still in service for a dialup modem pool there). I've never heard anyone I work with complain about problems with Xyplex gear. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From brad at heeltoe.com Mon Nov 28 22:31:42 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 23:31:42 -0500 Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:03:59 CST." <00bb01c5f491$8bbbe7b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Message-ID: <200511290431.jAT4Vg04021168@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Jay West" wrote: >You wrote.... >> beg to differ. The portmaster was not (by any means) carrier class. >Sure it was. I was there ;) Debatable, but it certainly was ubiquitous. >You're confusing your decades - In the day I was referring to, large ISP's >used portmasters, as there was no such thing as a tnt/max at the time, at >least not commonly. Well, I respect your opinion, but when I say "large isp" I mean AOL or UUNet. I'm talking about isp's with 100's of POPs, not one city. Ever been to an interchange like MAE-East? I never saw a portmaster in use by a large ISP. and the decade was always 199x :-) -brad From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Nov 28 22:49:41 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:49:41 -0700 Subject: Dragon Beta m/co In-Reply-To: <438B8D0C.8050101@yahoo.co.uk> References: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD6A9@cpexchange.olf.com> <005001c5f46d$91304700$0300a8c0@geoff> <438B8D0C.8050101@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <438BDDE5.7040600@jetnet.ab.ca> Jules Richardson wrote: > > Whoo! I remember Rich being all excited and bringing it to the museum > last year, so it's great to hear that it's now running. (Reminds me > that I think he was after another couple of 3.5" FH floppy drives for > it...) > > cheers Great now I want a Dragon II for the Yule Tide! So are there any odd chips on the board? It looks like all the chips are still easy to come by. Ben alias Woodelf. PS It looks like the product was a finaly a nice UK computer that could go places. From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Mon Nov 28 23:11:04 2005 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:11:04 -0800 Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: <200511290255.jAT2tA9D075920@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511290255.jAT2tA9D075920@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> My IBM 1130 arrived today from Austria. It was packed very well, first wrapped in cardboard, then plastic wrap, then a sealed foil material, and finally a really strong crate. It spent a week in customs but they never even opened it up. The machine itself is quite dirty and will take some time to clean up, but looks complete and restorable. It came with a box of disk cartridges with unknown data or software. The main problem I have is that it's a 50 Hz machine. I assume the power supply could run on 60 Hz but the disk drive probably will not run correctly on 60 Hz. I believe the best thing is to start looking for a 60 Hz to 50 Hz power converter. Have a look at the unpacking at: http://www.dvq.com Bob From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Mon Nov 28 23:28:20 2005 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 06:28:20 +0100 Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: Am dinsdag, 29.11.05, um 06:11 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Bob Rosenbloom: > My IBM 1130 arrived today from Austria. It was packed very well, first > wrapped in cardboard, then plastic wrap, then a sealed foil material, > and finally a really strong crate. It spent a week in customs but they > never even opened it up. The machine itself is quite dirty and will > take some time to clean up, but looks complete and restorable. It came > with a box of disk cartridges with unknown data or software. The main > problem I have is that it's a 50 Hz machine. I assume the power supply > could run on 60 Hz but the disk drive probably will not run correctly > on 60 Hz. I believe the best thing is to start looking for a 60 Hz to > 50 Hz power converter. Have a look at the unpacking at: Shipping must have been more expensive than the machine itself.... Jos From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Mon Nov 28 23:44:11 2005 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim stephens) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:44:11 -0800 Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> References: <200511290255.jAT2tA9D075920@dewey.classiccmp.org> <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <438BEAAB.9060600@msm.umr.edu> Bob Rosenbloom wrote: > . I assume the power supply could run on 60 Hz but the disk drive > probably will not run correctly on 60 Hz. I believe the best thing is > to start looking for a 60 Hz to 50 Hz power converter. Have a look at > the unpacking at: frequently the 50 to 60 hz will involve a pully and belt change on any mechanical system that involves larger motors directly powered from the main supply. Other than that most of what you have should be strapable for voltage and frequency. On ebay, you might search for an Elgar converter, or pacific power systems (I think) of huntington beach, ca) both of which make larger variable frequency supplies. I had an elgar in the 5kw range, and a pacific supply that was 3kw in the past and both were quite reliable with solid state outputs. Both could handle the power factors to run motors as well as the power supplies. They will probably be cheaper than what I had if they are strapped to a fixed voltage and frequency as well. My pacific system had a 43 to 1000 hz variable oscillator, which allowed 400hz power. jim From alexeyt at freeshell.org Tue Nov 29 00:00:07 2005 From: alexeyt at freeshell.org (Alexey Toptygin) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 06:00:07 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Need recommendations on a terminal server setup In-Reply-To: <00bb01c5f491$8bbbe7b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> References: <200511281144.jASBiUsh013183@mwave.heeltoe.com> <00bb01c5f491$8bbbe7b0$6700a8c0@PC331890042458> Message-ID: On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Jay West wrote: > the USR total control stuff much either, but I'm a huge fan of their courier > I-modems and the v.everythings. Amen. Usefull to this day, for example for remote access to Africa :-) Alexey From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 29 00:26:19 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 22:26:19 -0800 Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> References: <200511290255.jAT2tA9D075920@dewey.classiccmp.org> <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <200511282226190192.10F6AAFC@10.0.0.252> On 11/28/2005 at 9:11 PM Bob Rosenbloom wrote: >My IBM 1130 arrived today from Austria. It was packed very well.. Thanks for some memories, Bob! It's always kind of strange to look at a machine that you haven't seen for more than 30 years. I hope you manage to get it running again. Cheers, Chuck From Arno_1983 at gmx.de Tue Nov 29 01:21:28 2005 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:21:28 +0100 (MET) Subject: IBM AS400? Message-ID: <17100.1133248888@www49.gmx.net> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > 9000 VAX wrote: > BIG GOTCHA- you need to make sure your machine comes with not only the > OS, but also the mashine-specific intermediate layer software. Unless > you have a friend at IBM, they may be happy to give you a replacement in > return for much cash, or they may do the snooty Maitre d' thing . . . > and OS/400 is rumored to lock itself after a certain period of > inactivity as well. I've even heard stories about some of the machines having something similar to a inertia/tilt switch inside which was monitored all the time, even with mains disconnected, and which invalidated the license code in the NVRAM in case the machine was moved around (or the switch tampered with), since this was taken as a sign of a change-of-ownership and IBM doesn't support license transfer for OS/400. Can I say IP nazi methods? I also suppose it's near impossible to reverse engineer such a beast, as IBM would put lots of custom silicon and house-marked discretes in it? > > You have found the reason why there are so many DEC fans and no IBM > > fans on the mailing list. > > I raise my hand and point out that I am a big-time IBM fan. I can admit that I've also taken a liking for IBM stuff, since my first bigger rescue operation was that of an IBM 4331 which now happily resides in Hans Franke's collection. Well, "happily" is a bit much said, it doesn't even power up correctly yet, but at least it wasn't made into Chinese bicycles. > Not AS/400's, though. I have multiple mainframes *in my house*. I can only dream of such yet. Then again, at least a smaller AS/400 shouldn't be too complicated to keep in a domestic environment, space-/power-/heat-wise? I've already been promised one for indefinite loan, but it has yet to surface in the owner's storage area again :-) . So long, -- Arno Kletzander Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de Telefonieren Sie schon oder sparen Sie noch? NEU: GMX Phone_Flat http://www.gmx.net/de/go/telefonie From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 29 01:24:21 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 00:24:21 -0700 Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: <200511282226190192.10F6AAFC@10.0.0.252> References: <200511290255.jAT2tA9D075920@dewey.classiccmp.org> <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> <200511282226190192.10F6AAFC@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <438C0225.6040103@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >Thanks for some memories, Bob! It's always kind of strange to look at a >machine that you haven't seen for more than 30 years. > > > Well the 1st computer I used was IBM 1130, in 1981. It was scrapped for gold the next year. Don't say 30 years, it makes me feel old! :) From john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org Mon Nov 28 20:26:29 2005 From: john_boffemmyer_iv at boff-net.dhs.org (John Boffemmyer IV) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:26:29 -0500 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <6.2.5.6.2.20051128212415.033d0200@boff-net.dhs.org> ... Not funny VAX. I still use and am a fan of IBM PS/2's. So are a couple others on here. A few still use IBM RS6000 machines and one or two use AS/400's. Please watch the generalizations... -John Boffemmyer IV At 09:20 PM 11/28/2005, you wrote: > > BIG GOTCHA- you need to make sure your machine comes with > not only the OS, but also the mashine-specific intermediate layer > software. Unless you have a friend at IBM, they may be happy to > give you a replacement in return for much cash, or they may do the > snooty Maitre d' thing . . . and OS/400 is rumored to lock itself > after a certain period of inactivity as well. > >You have found the reason why there are so many DEC fans and no IBM >fans on the mailing list. > >vax, 9000 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/184 - Release Date: 11/27/2005 From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Mon Nov 28 08:48:18 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 06:48:18 -0800 (PST) Subject: monitor tweaking Message-ID: <20051128144818.79442.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> to what extent is it advisable to use a say ~350 line monitor with a 400 line video output? Granted, I probably shouldn't try this with the original IBM mono display (reported to explode if you plug it into a CGA card), but this was a more or less common practice back when. Assuming you get a legible image, after adjusting the horizontal sweep, is there any risk to the equipment or operator when doing this? __________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Nov 29 03:20:42 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 02:20:42 -0700 Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> References: <200511290255.jAT2tA9D075920@dewey.classiccmp.org> <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <438C1D6A.6060200@jetnet.ab.ca> Bob Rosenbloom wrote: > My IBM 1130 arrived today from Austria. It was packed very well, first > wrapped in cardboard, then plastic wrap, then a sealed foil material, > and finally a really strong crate. It spent a week in customs but they > never even opened it up. The machine itself is quite dirty and will > take some time to clean up, but looks complete and restorable. It came > with a box of disk cartridges with unknown data or software. The main > problem I have is that it's a 50 Hz machine. I assume the power supply > could run on 60 Hz but the disk drive probably will not run correctly > on 60 Hz. I believe the best thing is to start looking for a 60 Hz to > 50 Hz power converter. Have a look at the unpacking at: > You could still have a system disk, locked in the drive. Other than power,I think you have two other major problems. 1) 8192 words of memory 2) No card reader/punch > http://www.dvq.com > > Bob > > . > From cc at corti-net.de Tue Nov 29 06:59:55 2005 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:59:55 +0100 (CET) Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: <438C1D6A.6060200@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511290255.jAT2tA9D075920@dewey.classiccmp.org> <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> <438C1D6A.6060200@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, woodelf wrote: > You could still have a system disk, locked in the drive. On the photo there's no disk in the drive. > Other than power,I think you have two other major problems. > 1) 8192 words of memory > 2) No card reader/punch And some more: 3) No 1132 printer (main output device, the console is hardly used by any program) 4) No card decks with the disk boot loader and application programs Especially the lack of 2) and 3) make the unit quite useless for the moment. You need to find a 1442 card reader/punch and the 1132 printer. Of course you can program your own disk operating system that works without cards and printer, just with the console. But then you're missing all the print sets. What is the serial number of the machine? Are there cartridges with interesting looking software? I can make 1130 2310-cartridge dumps to a file on a modern computer (usable e.g. with SIMH), but our machine is in Germany... BTW. is there ANY other 1130 in fully working order? I know Brian Knittel has a machine but I think it's not working yet. It's the same as with the LGP-30, there are some people who own such a machine but don't get them to work... Christian From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 29 07:15:59 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:15:59 -0500 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20051128212415.033d0200@boff-net.dhs.org> References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> <6.2.5.6.2.20051128212415.033d0200@boff-net.dhs.org> Message-ID: <438C548F.9010700@gmail.com> John Boffemmyer IV wrote: > ... > Not funny VAX. > I still use and am a fan of IBM PS/2's. So are a couple others on here. > A few still use IBM RS6000 machines and one or two use AS/400's. Please > watch the generalizations... What do you mean by "still use"? These machines are still in production! Peace... Sridhar From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Nov 29 07:53:29 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:53:29 +0000 Subject: Dragon Beta m/co In-Reply-To: <438BDDE5.7040600@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD6A9@cpexchange.olf.com> <005001c5f46d$91304700$0300a8c0@geoff> <438B8D0C.8050101@yahoo.co.uk> <438BDDE5.7040600@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <438C5D59.5080909@yahoo.co.uk> woodelf wrote: > Jules Richardson wrote: > >> >> Whoo! I remember Rich being all excited and bringing it to the museum >> last year, so it's great to hear that it's now running. (Reminds me >> that I think he was after another couple of 3.5" FH floppy drives for >> it...) >> >> cheers > > Great now I want a Dragon II for the Yule Tide! > So are there any odd chips on the board? It looks > like all the chips are still easy to come by. > Ben alias Woodelf. > PS It looks like the product was a finaly a nice UK computer > that could go places. It certainly seemed feature-rich, well designed, and way ahead of much of the competition. Problem is it would have suffered the same way as the BBC micro: too expensive on the domestic market for most mere mortals, and unlikely to be able to compete in non-UK markets (particularly the US) due to lack of marketing budget and consumers already having long-established ties with existing manufacturers (e.g. Apple, Commodore etc.) Computing history seems littered with technically superior unsuccessful machines :) (not that the BBC wasn't a huge success in the UK, primarily through widespread education use, but globally it didn't do as well) cheers Jules From mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com Tue Nov 29 08:33:18 2005 From: mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com (mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 06:33:18 -0800 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: <438C548F.9010700@gmail.com> References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> <6.2.5.6.2.20051128212415.033d0200@boff-net.dhs.org> <438C548F.9010700@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1133274798.438c66ae38af2@webmail.secure-wi.com> Quoting Sridhar Ayengar : > John Boffemmyer IV wrote: > > ... > > Not funny VAX. > > I still use and am a fan of IBM PS/2's. So are a couple others on here. > > A few still use IBM RS6000 machines and one or two use AS/400's. Please > > watch the generalizations... > > What do you mean by "still use"? These machines are still in production! > > Peace... Sridhar > We call them iSeries now, but yes, it's the same crusty code. :-) Mike From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Nov 29 10:03:14 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 11:03:14 -0500 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: <1133274798.438c66ae38af2@webmail.secure-wi.com> References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> <6.2.5.6.2.20051128212415.033d0200@boff-net.dhs.org> <438C548F.9010700@gmail.com> <1133274798.438c66ae38af2@webmail.secure-wi.com> Message-ID: <438C7BC2.7090500@gmail.com> mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com wrote: > Quoting Sridhar Ayengar : > > >>John Boffemmyer IV wrote: >> >>>... >>>Not funny VAX. >>>I still use and am a fan of IBM PS/2's. So are a couple others on here. >>>A few still use IBM RS6000 machines and one or two use AS/400's. Please >>>watch the generalizations... >> >>What do you mean by "still use"? These machines are still in production! >> >>Peace... Sridhar >> > > > > We call them iSeries now, but yes, it's the same crusty code. :-) Actually, I was referring to pSeries. Anyway, there are still *fast* machines that you can get that say "RS/6000" on them. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 29 11:06:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:06:46 -0800 Subject: monitor tweaking In-Reply-To: <20051128144818.79442.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051128144818.79442.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200511290906460097.13410194@10.0.0.252> On 11/28/2005 at 6:48 AM Chris M wrote: >to what extent is it advisable to use a say ~350 line >monitor with a 400 line video output? It depends on the construction of the monitor. Most should be able to survive the increase in horizontal frequency. When the PC was still young, there were quite a few machines around with Hercules -compatible mono displays that wouldn't run CGA games. I came up with a program called SIMCGA that used a small timer-driven TSR to duplicate every other line of the CGA display on the HGA screen. It was necessary to tweak the scan frequencies a bit to get things to work, but we found that most monitors put up with it just fine. Cheers, Chuck From charlesmorris at direcway.com Tue Nov 29 11:19:52 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (charlesmorris at direcway.com) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 12:19:52 -0500 Subject: Teletype 43 manual Message-ID: <2b4ab12b314a.2b314a2b4ab1@direcway.com> I have acquired a KSR 43 and am looking for a manual. I've looked in the usual online archives (and printed-manual resellers too) Can anyone help? Also I'm looking for a tape punch and the complete top cover assembly for an ASR 33. thanks Charles From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 29 12:57:51 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 10:57:51 -0800 Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: <438C0225.6040103@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200511290255.jAT2tA9D075920@dewey.classiccmp.org> <438BE2E8.6020804@sbcglobal.net> <200511282226190192.10F6AAFC@10.0.0.252> <438C0225.6040103@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200511291057510647.13A6BA94@10.0.0.252> On 11/29/2005 at 12:24 AM woodelf wrote: >Don't say 30 years, it makes me feel old! :) It'd be closer to 40 if you got one when the system was new. A very odd bird--I think many business customers opted instead for the S/360-20 as an entry system. The first cousin of the 1130, the 1800, however, enjoyed quite a run as a process-control computer. I know that the Standard Oil refinery not too far from my home used one. One of the problems with the 1130 is that it was a dead-end; there was no real upgrade path beyond core increments and a few peripheral choices. In particular, I'm not aware of anyone trying to hook a 729 tape drive to one, nor even sure that it could be done. I hope Bob can get this thing working, though I don't envy him working with old core that's been through a long-distance voyage. I suppose there's always SRAM if the memory's not salvageable. I didn't spend that much time on the 1130 (8K models were sort of limited), but I do remember the Selectric console typewriter and the 2315 cartridge drive--and a very small instruction set that one could learn in an afternoon. Cheers, Chuck From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Nov 29 14:45:29 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 14:45:29 -0600 Subject: monitor tweaking In-Reply-To: <200511290906460097.13410194@10.0.0.252> References: <20051128144818.79442.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> <200511290906460097.13410194@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <438CBDE9.9080505@oldskool.org> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 11/28/2005 at 6:48 AM Chris M wrote: > When the PC was still young, there were quite a few machines around with > Hercules -compatible mono displays that wouldn't run CGA games. I came up > with a program called SIMCGA that used a small timer-driven TSR to Didn't that slow things down quite a lot? My solution was to reprogram HGC horizontal clock so that it was 640 pixels displayed and 400 lines down -- no copying needed :-) I concur, most monitors handled it well (although one I had the misfortune of working with produced a nearly ultrasonic "whine" when operating in this mode) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From fireflyst at earthlink.net Tue Nov 29 15:21:52 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:21:52 -0600 Subject: Anyone have an unwanted Atari 1040ST or 1040STF? In-Reply-To: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557CCD6A9@cpexchange.olf.com> Message-ID: I have a 1040STF I want to get rid of. How does $60 sound? > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Ram Meenakshisundaram > Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 2:22 PM > To: cctech at classiccmp.org > Subject: Anyone have an unwanted Atari 1040ST or 1040STF? > > I want to test out a KUMA K-MAX Atari RISC System and need an Atari? > > Thanks, > > Ram From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 29 15:42:26 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 13:42:26 -0800 Subject: monitor tweaking In-Reply-To: <438CBDE9.9080505@oldskool.org> References: <20051128144818.79442.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> <200511290906460097.13410194@10.0.0.252> <438CBDE9.9080505@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <200511291342260406.143D67DB@10.0.0.252> On 11/29/2005 at 2:45 PM Jim Leonard wrote: >My solution was to reprogram HGC horizontal clock so that it was 640 >pixels displayed and 400 lines down -- no copying needed :-) It actually didn't slow things too much, as you only had to copy frequently enough to keep the flicker and artifacts to to reasonable level. And you could keep the original aspect ratio and not have the resulting display look like it'd lost an encounter with a 400 ton hydraulic press. Cheers, Chuck From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Tue Nov 29 15:50:01 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:50:01 -0600 Subject: Calling Will Kranz Message-ID: Will, if you get this, let me know on-list. I tried emailing you from my Earthlink and Comcast accounts and both gave bounceback messages. It's identifying my email as spam. I sent this mail message from my web mail account, so it's not a client thing. Will, how should I contact you about the disk packs/keyboard parts? A message (from ) was received at 23 Nov 2005 22:23:20 +0000. The following addresses had delivery problems: Permanent Failure: 550_passing_these_spams_on_just_makes_it_worse Delivery last attempted at Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:24:30 -0000 (Attachments successfully scanned for viruses.) Attachment 1: Name Unknown (message/delivery-status) From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Nov 29 03:00:30 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 09:00:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: monitor tweaking In-Reply-To: <20051128144818.79442.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Nov 28, 5 06:48:18 am Message-ID: > > to what extent is it advisable to use a say ~350 line > monitor with a 400 line video output? Granted, I > probably shouldn't try this with the original IBM mono > display (reported to explode if you plug it into a CGA > card), but this was a more or less common practice > back when. Assuming you get a legible image, after > adjusting the horizontal sweep, is there any risk to > the equipment or operator when doing this? I can see no obvious risk to the _operator_. The EHT will not rise that much, if at all, so the X-ray emissions won't be any worse. The CRT is not going to implode. The thing should not catch fire (assuming it was safely designed in the first place). As regards danger to the monitor. The problem is not the change in number of lines, it's the change in horizontal scan frequency. You can get more lines for essentially the same horizontal scan rate by lowering the vertical frequncy (an example of this is that UK 625 line TV and US 525 line TV have very similar horizontal rates, the difference is in the vertical rate (50 Hz or 60Hz)). In general tweaking the vertical rate is 'safe' and will do no damage to anything. Tweaking the horizontal rate may be OK. Certainly small changes will do no harm. In some cases even larger changes are OK (the original TRS-80 model 1 monitor -- the one based on the RCA TV chassis -- can be made to lock to MDA rates, and seems not to mind). If the monitor seems happy (stable picture, correct size, etc) then I would give it a go. -tony From brad at heeltoe.com Tue Nov 29 16:36:27 2005 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:36:27 -0500 Subject: IBM 1130 arrived from Austria In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 29 Nov 2005 10:57:51 PST." <200511291057510647.13A6BA94@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <200511292236.jATMaR5p009538@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > >I didn't spend that much time on the 1130 (8K models were sort of limited), >but I do remember the Selectric console typewriter and the 2315 cartridge >drive--and a very small instruction set that one could learn in an >afternoon. I have to say I loved working on the 1130. Everything said before seems true, but it was fun to use as a user. I loved to hear the 27 pass EMU fortran compiler grind away as it compiled. And I loved to hog the machine all to my self, install the APL typeball and tap away... and the fortran abends could be heard far down the hall as the row of stars was printed - "ka *chunk* bah bah bah bah bah kah *chunk*" I guess at the time (with 4k pdp-8's), 8k seemed reasonable. I will say, however, that when the pdp-11 arrived I was smitten :-) -brad From teoz at neo.rr.com Tue Nov 29 18:52:09 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:52:09 -0500 Subject: OLD Mac SCSI hardware References: <200511292236.jATMaR5p009538@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <000e01c5f548$4bd04d00$ca734247@game> Any mac collectors or all around packrats happen to have a manual or driver software for a 1991 Micronet NuPort II NUBUS SCSI card? I want to know what the switch block called HOST ID D0-D7 needs to be set to in my IIfx. Drivers or a manual would be a definite plus also. Most of the driver archives on the net rarely have drivers for anything pre 1995 , do any of the people on the list have an resources for things like that (or a personal stash?)? Thanks for any help. TZ From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Nov 29 19:05:03 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:05:03 -0600 Subject: monitor tweaking In-Reply-To: <200511291342260406.143D67DB@10.0.0.252> References: <20051128144818.79442.qmail@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> <200511290906460097.13410194@10.0.0.252> <438CBDE9.9080505@oldskool.org> <200511291342260406.143D67DB@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <438CFABF.8040700@oldskool.org> Chuck Guzis wrote: > It actually didn't slow things too much, as you only had to copy frequently > enough to keep the flicker and artifacts to to reasonable level. And you > could keep the original aspect ratio and not have the resulting display > look like it'd lost an encounter with a 400 ton hydraulic press. Touche :-) I was used to playing action games that ran at 15+ fps so that's why the timer-copy method wasn't an option for me. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Nov 29 19:08:38 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 19:08:38 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? Message-ID: <438CFB96.4030109@oldskool.org> At work I have an SE30, LC, IIci, and a 603 variety mac just... lying around. Are these things as common as dirt, or should I snag them? I ask because I'm reminded of the "x86 dead zone" -- a zone where a machine isn't old enough to be compatible with older software, but isn't new enough to be useful (a Pentium 133 falls into this category -- can't run old stuff, can't run new stuff, so toss it in the garbage). -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From James at jdfogg.com Tue Nov 29 19:21:43 2005 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:21:43 -0500 Subject: "Market" for old macs? Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A15@sbs.jdfogg.com> > At work I have an SE30, LC, IIci, and a 603 variety mac > just... lying around. > Are these things as common as dirt, or should I snag them? My interests stop at the "classic" Macs, of which the SE30 is the height of engineering achievement (in my opinion). So I don't know anything about the LC, Iici and 603. As for the SE30, I find them for about $25.00 in excellent working condition, but they are getting much harder to find locally. They still show up regularly on Ebay. From teoz at neo.rr.com Tue Nov 29 19:28:26 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:28:26 -0500 Subject: "Market" for old macs? References: <438CFB96.4030109@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <001901c5f54d$5d2e9cf0$ca734247@game> Depends on what kind of machines you like collecting. Personally I think the SE/30 was one of the best compact macs made (B&W anyway) and would not mind having one. 603's would be in the give away category for the most part, while LC/IIsi have fans but were never the best machines of the era. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Leonard" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 8:08 PM Subject: "Market" for old macs? > At work I have an SE30, LC, IIci, and a 603 variety mac just... lying around. > Are these things as common as dirt, or should I snag them? > > I ask because I'm reminded of the "x86 dead zone" -- a zone where a machine > isn't old enough to be compatible with older software, but isn't new enough to > be useful (a Pentium 133 falls into this category -- can't run old stuff, can't > run new stuff, so toss it in the garbage). > -- > Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ > Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ > Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Nov 29 19:45:07 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:45:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438CFB96.4030109@oldskool.org> from Jim Leonard at "Nov 29, 5 07:08:38 pm" Message-ID: <200511300145.RAA13870@floodgap.com> > At work I have an SE30, LC, IIci, and a 603 variety mac just... lying around. > Are these things as common as dirt, or should I snag them? SE/30s are people's favourite Classic Macs because they're small and pretty zippy for the time (16MHz '030). You can put a crapload of RAM into them and a nice-sized SCSI hard disk and turn it into a lil' file server. I've seen SE/30s crammed into closets doing AppleShare print services, for example, and on my old LocalTalk apartment network, my SE/30 served boot blocks for the IIgs systems to netboot. They run NetBSD and Linux superbly well. As a result, they are getting harder to find since people tend to hoard them. They'll fit anywhere you can find room. The IIci is my favourite but they're not nearly as "cute" and so they're pretty common. I like them because they have a PDS slot, three NuBus slots, can take up to 128MB of RAM, and can accomodate a full-height SCSI drive. They also stack really well and are easy to open up and service. The 25MHz '030 is quite decent, and they also run NetBSD and Linux nicely too. And most places are getting rid of them cheap -- my last set of IIcis was 3 for $1. The LC is a nothing Mac IMHO, useful mostly only as a collector's completist piece. They didn't do real well against the rest of the line even when they were new. They're also pretty common and cheap for this reason. Similarly, 603-based Power Macs sort of live in a grey zone as most of them were Performas and so, frankly, they sucked. There's a few PCI-based ones but most of them were NuBus (if that) and had seriously compromised hardware designs. I'd pass on these. If you want an old-school Power Mac, get a 7300, 7500 (upgrade to a 604 or better as soon as you can, though), or a 7600. All of these have CPU upgrade paths, PCI slots, lots of space for RAM, multiple drive bays and one of the nicest cases to work in ever created. They will also run OS 9 and with a little cajoling, can even run some versions of OS X. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- I don't care who you are, stop walking on the water when I'm fishing! <>< -- From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Nov 29 19:55:53 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 17:55:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511300145.RAA13870@floodgap.com> References: <200511300145.RAA13870@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <20051129175503.T26185@shell.lmi.net> On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > SE/30s are people's favourite Classic Macs because they're small and pretty > zippy for the time (16MHz '030). You can put a crapload of RAM into them and > a nice-sized SCSI hard disk and turn it into a lil' file server. I've seen > SE/30s crammed into closets doing AppleShare print services, for example, and > on my old LocalTalk apartment network, my SE/30 served boot blocks for the > IIgs systems to netboot. They run NetBSD and Linux superbly well. As a result, > they are getting harder to find since people tend to hoard them. They'll fit > anywhere you can find room. But you have to arrange them just right if you want to stack a lot of them. From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Nov 29 20:04:20 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:04:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <20051129175503.T26185@shell.lmi.net> from Fred Cisin at "Nov 29, 5 05:55:53 pm" Message-ID: <200511300204.SAA17178@floodgap.com> > > SE/30s are people's favourite Classic Macs because they're small [...] > > But you have to arrange them just right if you want to stack a lot of > them. Yup, hence why I like IIci's better ;) -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- I see nothing! Nothing! -- Sgt. Schultz, "Hogan's Heroes" ------------------ From rcini at optonline.net Tue Nov 29 20:51:50 2005 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:51:50 -0500 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511300145.RAA13870@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <002c01c5f559$03b671f0$6501a8c0@bbrk0oksry5qza> I have a Fat Mac, an SE/30 and a fully-loaded IIci and that covers my needs nicely, enabling me to move archived software back and forth. For file storage, I have an Ethernet card in the IIci and Services for Macintosh running on my NT Server. This looks like an AppleTalk zone to the IIci and enables me to easily archive software. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Cameron Kaiser Sent: Tuesday, November 29, 2005 8:45 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: "Market" for old macs? > At work I have an SE30, LC, IIci, and a 603 variety mac just... lying > around. > Are these things as common as dirt, or should I snag them? SE/30s are people's favourite Classic Macs because they're small and pretty zippy for the time (16MHz '030). You can put a crapload of RAM into them and a nice-sized SCSI hard disk and turn it into a lil' file server. I've seen SE/30s crammed into closets doing AppleShare print services, for example, and on my old LocalTalk apartment network, my SE/30 served boot blocks for the IIgs systems to netboot. They run NetBSD and Linux superbly well. As a result, they are getting harder to find since people tend to hoard them. They'll fit anywhere you can find room. The IIci is my favourite but they're not nearly as "cute" and so they're pretty common. I like them because they have a PDS slot, three NuBus slots, can take up to 128MB of RAM, and can accomodate a full-height SCSI drive. They also stack really well and are easy to open up and service. The 25MHz '030 is quite decent, and they also run NetBSD and Linux nicely too. And most places are getting rid of them cheap -- my last set of IIcis was 3 for $1. The LC is a nothing Mac IMHO, useful mostly only as a collector's completist piece. They didn't do real well against the rest of the line even when they were new. They're also pretty common and cheap for this reason. Similarly, 603-based Power Macs sort of live in a grey zone as most of them were Performas and so, frankly, they sucked. There's a few PCI-based ones but most of them were NuBus (if that) and had seriously compromised hardware designs. I'd pass on these. If you want an old-school Power Mac, get a 7300, 7500 (upgrade to a 604 or better as soon as you can, though), or a 7600. All of these have CPU upgrade paths, PCI slots, lots of space for RAM, multiple drive bays and one of the nicest cases to work in ever created. They will also run OS 9 and with a little cajoling, can even run some versions of OS X. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- I don't care who you are, stop walking on the water when I'm fishing! <>< -- From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Nov 29 20:58:27 2005 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:58:27 -0800 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438CFB96.4030109@oldskool.org> References: <438CFB96.4030109@oldskool.org> Message-ID: At 7:08 PM -0600 11/29/05, Jim Leonard wrote: >At work I have an SE30, LC, IIci, and a 603 variety mac just... >lying around. Are these things as common as dirt, or should I snag >them? > >I ask because I'm reminded of the "x86 dead zone" -- a zone where a >machine isn't old enough to be compatible with older software, but >isn't new enough to be useful (a Pentium 133 falls into this >category -- can't run old stuff, can't run new stuff, so toss it in >the garbage). With the proper software, older Mac's are far more useful than any older PC (though a Pentium 133 starts falling into the potentially useful range). Of the ones you mention, the SE30 is the one that I'd consider most worth saving. Find a suitable OS, a copy of MS Word 5.1, and some terminal software, and you've got a nice "Terminal" and Word Processing platform. Zane -- -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ | From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Nov 29 22:48:42 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:48:42 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511300145.RAA13870@floodgap.com> References: <200511300145.RAA13870@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <438D2F2A.4000809@oldskool.org> Cameron Kaiser wrote: >>At work I have an SE30, LC, IIci, and a 603 variety mac just... lying around. >>Are these things as common as dirt, or should I snag them? > > SE/30s are people's favourite Classic Macs because they're small and pretty > zippy for the time (16MHz '030). You can put a crapload of RAM into them and I'm surprised by this statement; I despise the SE/30s because they run TOO fast and are an '030 -- both of which are a deadly combination for trying to get old games to run. The 16MHz is too fast, but just in case, the '030's cache completely screws up any self-modifying code tricks. The rest of your email was helpful and informative, thank you. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Nov 29 22:51:44 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:51:44 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: References: <438CFB96.4030109@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <438D2FE0.4080405@oldskool.org> Zane H. Healy wrote: > Of the ones you mention, the SE30 is the one that I'd consider most > worth saving. Find a suitable OS, a copy of MS Word 5.1, and some > terminal software, and you've got a nice "Terminal" and Word Processing > platform. Now here's a tricky question: If the SE30 were the only mac in my entire household, how would I procure an OS install on diskette for it? The drive in that thing is the 800K multi-speed beast, yes? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Nov 29 22:52:49 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:52:49 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A15@sbs.jdfogg.com> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A15@sbs.jdfogg.com> Message-ID: <438D3021.20207@oldskool.org> James Fogg wrote: > My interests stop at the "classic" Macs, of which the SE30 is the height > of engineering achievement (in my opinion). Why? I know a bit of the classic Mac engineering history thanks to Andy's retro website/book, but I know nothing of the SE30. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From James at jdfogg.com Tue Nov 29 22:52:32 2005 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:52:32 -0500 Subject: "Market" for old macs? Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> > Now here's a tricky question: If the SE30 were the only mac > in my entire household, how would I procure an OS install on > diskette for it? The drive in that thing is the 800K > multi-speed beast, yes? Do you have a PC? Apple does (or did) offer the OS's on their website, and there were instructions about how to use various PC based programs to write them in a Mac 800K format from a PC drive. Somewhere I have the images and software because I've had to do this once. From James at jdfogg.com Tue Nov 29 22:59:42 2005 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:59:42 -0500 Subject: "Market" for old macs? Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A19@sbs.jdfogg.com> > James Fogg wrote: > > My interests stop at the "classic" Macs, of which the SE30 is the > > height of engineering achievement (in my opinion). > > Why? I know a bit of the classic Mac engineering history > thanks to Andy's retro website/book, but I know nothing of the SE30. OK, neither do I (it's too late to argue). It is the last of the classic Macs and has the greatest number of features and capabilities. From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Nov 29 23:04:24 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:04:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> Message-ID: <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, James Fogg wrote: > Do you have a PC? Apple does (or did) offer the OS's on their website, > and there were instructions about how to use various PC based programs > to write them in a Mac 800K format from a PC drive. > Somewhere I have the images and software because I've had to do this > once. The 1.4M Mac format can easily be done by a PC with special software. I'd LOVE to hear from anybody who is successfully formatting and writing GCR with a PC (without adding in a "flux transition" based additional disk controller (such as Catweasel or COPYII Option Board) It is "impossible". (VERY difficult) From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Nov 29 23:13:28 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:13:28 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438D2FE0.4080405@oldskool.org> from Jim Leonard at "Nov 29, 5 10:51:44 pm" Message-ID: <200511300513.VAA15410@floodgap.com> > Now here's a tricky question: If the SE30 were the only mac in my entire > household, how would I procure an OS install on diskette for it? The drive > in that thing is the 800K multi-speed beast, yes? The SE/30 (note slash -- just being pedantic ;) will read 1.44MB MFM disks just fine, as it came with a SuperDrive standard. It's the original SE that might not, depending on how the particular models you find were fitted out. There are various packages for making 1.44MB MFM disks from images on a PC and the Mac should happily boot from them (in the SE/30's case, from System 6 all the way to 7.6, and possibly 8.1 if you use a little trickery). -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- /etc/motd: /earth is 98% full. please delete anyone you can. --------------- From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Nov 29 23:16:43 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:16:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438D2F2A.4000809@oldskool.org> from Jim Leonard at "Nov 29, 5 10:48:42 pm" Message-ID: <200511300516.VAA20392@floodgap.com> > > SE/30s are people's favourite Classic Macs because they're small and pretty > > zippy for the time (16MHz '030). > > I'm surprised by this statement; I despise the SE/30s because they run > TOO fast and are an '030 -- both of which are a deadly combination for > trying to get old games to run. On that point, we're agreed -- that's why I have a Mac Plus sitting next to my dual G4 for the express purpose of playing Stunt Copter and Zero Gravity, two games I played to death when I got my hands on a Mac for the first time in 1987. Interestingly, when played on a much more powerful Power Mac, the game seems to run at closer to the right speed (but no sound, of course, because Zero Gravity used parts of the original sound system that were removed when the Compact Mac line was phased out). -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Kind of dangerous, but what fun is a safe shredder? -- Mike McFadden ------- From cclist at sydex.com Tue Nov 29 23:18:13 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:18:13 -0800 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200511292118130875.15DEAF4E@10.0.0.252> On 11/29/2005 at 9:04 PM Fred Cisin wrote: >I'd LOVE to hear from anybody who is successfully formatting and writing >GCR with a PC (without adding in a "flux transition" based additional disk >controller (such as Catweasel or COPYII Option Board) >It is "impossible". (VERY difficult) The bigger problem isn't that it's GCR, but rather that it's also variable rate GCR. I'd remove the quotes from "impossible" on this one, although, maybe with a razor blade and a magnet and a VERY steady hand... --Chuck From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Tue Nov 29 23:20:40 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:20:40 -0600 Subject: AS400? Message-ID: I am most definitely not anti-IBM- I like my brace of RS6ks very well, thank you, even though they're a bit grey around the muzzle (MCA, and one's a POWERstation). I don't expect companies to bend over backwards to hand me everything on a plate, but it would be nice if they didn't bend over backwards to make it difficult on the hobbiest. IBM's engineering is first-class, but RS6ks seem to be the only thing you can count on being able to use . . . quite a shame, really. Scott Quinn From teoz at neo.rr.com Tue Nov 29 23:29:30 2005 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:29:30 -0500 Subject: "Market" for old macs? References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <008e01c5f56f$0a5980e0$ca734247@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Cisin" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 12:04 AM Subject: RE: "Market" for old macs? > On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, James Fogg wrote: > > Do you have a PC? Apple does (or did) offer the OS's on their website, > > and there were instructions about how to use various PC based programs > > to write them in a Mac 800K format from a PC drive. > > Somewhere I have the images and software because I've had to do this > > once. > > The 1.4M Mac format can easily be done by a PC with special software. > > I'd LOVE to hear from anybody who is successfully formatting and writing > GCR with a PC (without adding in a "flux transition" based additional disk > controller (such as Catweasel or COPYII Option Board) > It is "impossible". (VERY difficult) > I don't think it can easily be done either. Another odd thing is that the 68K machines equipped with superdrives can reliably make 800K disks from images, my perfectly good powermacs have problems doing this. From spc at conman.org Wed Nov 30 00:43:21 2005 From: spc at conman.org (Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 01:43:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438CFB96.4030109@oldskool.org> from "Jim Leonard" at Nov 29, 2005 07:08:38 PM Message-ID: <20051130064321.7FC497302A@linus.groomlake.area51> It was thus said that the Great Jim Leonard once stated: > > At work I have an SE30, LC, IIci, and a 603 variety mac just... lying around. > Are these things as common as dirt, or should I snag them? > > I ask because I'm reminded of the "x86 dead zone" -- a zone where a machine > isn't old enough to be compatible with older software, but isn't new enough to > be useful (a Pentium 133 falls into this category -- can't run old stuff, can't > run new stuff, so toss it in the garbage). Well, only if you mean Microsoft stuff. Get an older distribution of Linux and it'll work fine. I have an old AMD 586 I still use, and it has not only some very old Unix software I wrote in the early 90s on it, but even newer stuff like the latest version of Samba and Apache. -spc (In fact, Linux up through perhaps 1.2 should be on topic ... ) From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Nov 30 00:00:09 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:09 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511300516.VAA20392@floodgap.com> References: <200511300516.VAA20392@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <438D3FE9.30908@oldskool.org> Cameron Kaiser wrote: > game seems to run at closer to the right speed (but no sound, of course, > because Zero Gravity used parts of the original sound system that were removed > when the Compact Mac line was phased out). Last trivia question for the day/night: I own Studio Session (the reason I keep a mac 512 around) and I swear I am hearing 6 digital voices from it simultaneously. I was under the impression that the Mac sound hardware was only 4 digital voices, and that the extra 2 voices were done via realtime mixing on two of the channels -- however, literature from the time claim that Jam Session/Studio Session use "hardware tricks" to get the extra 2 voices. Who is right? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From spectre at floodgap.com Wed Nov 30 00:14:57 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:14:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438D3FE9.30908@oldskool.org> from Jim Leonard at "Nov 30, 5 00:00:09 am" Message-ID: <200511300614.WAA20726@floodgap.com> > Last trivia question for the day/night: I own Studio Session (the reason I > keep a mac 512 around) and I swear I am hearing 6 digital voices from it > simultaneously. I was under the impression that the Mac sound hardware was > only 4 digital voices, and that the extra 2 voices were done via realtime > mixing on two of the channels -- however, literature from the time claim that > Jam Session/Studio Session use "hardware tricks" to get the extra 2 voices. > Who is right? Neither really. The original Mac sound hardware had four *synthesis* voices, which could be fed a waveform and act as a primitive wavetable synthesizer. This produces four-note polyphony. The other possibility is to drive the sound chip in "free form" mode, which is basically conventional PCM audio output. I don't know Studio Session well, but I suspect it just does the mixdown in software and plays the music out in this mode instead of using the synthesizer. Look at http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.09/09.03/Sound101/ "Ancient History" and then for some actual code examples, http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.02/02.02/SoundMadeSimple/ -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Don't let 'em drive you crazy when it's within walking distance. ----------- From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Nov 30 00:15:25 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:15:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511292118130875.15DEAF4E@10.0.0.252> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> <200511292118130875.15DEAF4E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051129221401.G36359@shell.lmi.net> > >I'd LOVE to hear from anybody who is successfully formatting and writing > >GCR with a PC (without adding in a "flux transition" based additional disk > >controller (such as Catweasel or COPYII Option Board) > >It is "impossible". (VERY difficult) On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > The bigger problem isn't that it's GCR, but rather that it's also variable > rate GCR. I'd remove the quotes from "impossible" on this one, although, > maybe with a razor blade and a magnet and a VERY steady hand... How fast can you turn the MOTOR ON line on and off? :-) From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Nov 30 00:20:05 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:20:05 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511300513.VAA15410@floodgap.com> References: <200511300513.VAA15410@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <438D4495.7080201@oldskool.org> Cameron Kaiser wrote: > There are various packages for making 1.44MB MFM disks from images on a PC > and the Mac should happily boot from them (in the SE/30's case, from System > 6 all the way to 7.6, and possibly 8.1 if you use a little trickery). Yes, but what is "best" for an SE/30? 6.x for compatibility or 7.6 for features if I have enough ram (and what *is* "enough" for 7.x?) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Nov 30 00:21:15 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:21:15 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <438D44DB.3050504@oldskool.org> Fred Cisin wrote: > I'd LOVE to hear from anybody who is successfully formatting and writing > GCR with a PC (without adding in a "flux transition" based additional disk > controller (such as Catweasel or COPYII Option Board) > It is "impossible". (VERY difficult) Writing? Yes. Reading? Not if you emulate a floppy controller with your parallel port. Google "disk2fdi" for a working program. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Nov 30 00:23:45 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:23:45 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <20051130064321.7FC497302A@linus.groomlake.area51> References: <20051130064321.7FC497302A@linus.groomlake.area51> Message-ID: <438D4571.8070704@oldskool.org> Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote: >>I ask because I'm reminded of the "x86 dead zone" -- a zone where a machine >>isn't old enough to be compatible with older software, but isn't new enough to >>be useful (a Pentium 133 falls into this category -- can't run old stuff, can't >>run new stuff, so toss it in the garbage). > > Well, only if you mean Microsoft stuff. Get an older distribution of > Linux and it'll work fine. I have an old AMD 586 I still use, and it has > not only some very old Unix software I wrote in the early 90s on it, but > even newer stuff like the latest version of Samba and Apache. Obviously an older distro will work fine (I still have my Slackware 1.2 around here somewhere). My point about being "useful" is that Pentium 133s are almost literally free (I see them curbside every month) and for "free" you can usually get all the way up to a 400MHz PII or 700 MHz PIII and those are much more useful. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From spectre at floodgap.com Wed Nov 30 00:27:38 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:27:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438D4495.7080201@oldskool.org> from Jim Leonard at "Nov 30, 5 00:20:05 am" Message-ID: <200511300627.WAA16506@floodgap.com> > > There are various packages for making 1.44MB MFM disks from images on a PC > > and the Mac should happily boot from them (in the SE/30's case, from System > > 6 all the way to 7.6, and possibly 8.1 if you use a little trickery). > > Yes, but what is "best" for an SE/30? 6.x for compatibility or 7.6 for > features if I have enough ram (and what *is* "enough" for 7.x?) Myself, I like System 7.1 -- which is a problem because Apple refuses to release it, but carrying on regardless -- because it has a small kernel, a Force Quit option that actually works most of the time, runs much quicker and can accept many control panels and extensions from 7.5, even the Appearance Manager from 8.1 with a little work, so that you can give it all the features of a later OS but with the smaller memory and CPU footprint. All of my '030s run it ... ... except my personal SE/30, which still runs 6.0.8 because the version of AppleShare on it does not like MultiFinder and I need this particular AppleShare to netboot Apple II clients. In any case, you will need to find it for aftermarket sale. There appears to be some third-party component in it that prevents Apple from releasing it for free download, or so I have been told. I do own it myself. As far as footprints -- 6.0.8 will be in hog heaven with just a megabyte of RAM. 7.1 will run very happily in 4MB, or even 2MB if you're really pinched (but I don't recommend this). 7.0 does all right, but upgrade to at least 7.0.1 or 7.1 if you can. 7.5 and 7.6 could be squeezed into 4MB, but I'd go for at least 8 -- 16MB is the sweet spot, and 30-pin RAM is so cheap there's no excuse not to. DO NOT run any 7.5 under 7.5.3 if you can avoid it (7.5.0 is okay but buggy; the others are quite crash prone). Of System 7 versions, I like 7.6.1 and 7.1. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- There are three kinds of people: those who can count and those who can't. -- From doc at mdrconsult.com Wed Nov 30 00:55:50 2005 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:55:50 -0600 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: <438C548F.9010700@gmail.com> References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> <6.2.5.6.2.20051128212415.033d0200@boff-net.dhs.org> <438C548F.9010700@gmail.com> Message-ID: <438D4CF6.5020808@mdrconsult.com> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > John Boffemmyer IV wrote: > >> ... >> Not funny VAX. >> I still use and am a fan of IBM PS/2's. So are a couple others on >> here. A few still use IBM RS6000 machines and one or two use AS/400's. >> Please watch the generalizations... > > > What do you mean by "still use"? These machines are still in production! Ehhh, that'd be a matter of interpretation, on both counts. As far as I know, the 7043-260 was the last system badged "RS/6000". The current pSeries, both POWER4- and POWER5-based, are architecturally different enough from their ancestors to make "just a name change" not tenable. The OS is the only real point of overlap. The changes from AS/400 to iSeries are comparable. Doc From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Nov 30 00:57:03 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:57:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438D44DB.3050504@oldskool.org> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> <438D44DB.3050504@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <20051129223858.C36359@shell.lmi.net> On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, James Fogg wrote: > Do you have a PC? Apple does (or did) offer the OS's on their website, > and there were instructions about how to use various PC based programs > to write them in a Mac 800K format from a PC drive. > Somewhere I have the images and software because I've had to do this > once. > Fred Cisin wrote: > > I'd LOVE to hear from anybody who is successfully formatting and writing > > GCR with a PC (without adding in a "flux transition" based additional disk > > controller (such as Catweasel or COPYII Option Board)) > > It is "impossible". (VERY difficult) > On Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Jim Leonard wrote: > Writing? Yes. Reading? Not if you emulate a floppy controller with your > parallel port. Google "disk2fdi" for a working program. Disk2fdi is, indeed, remarkable. (BTW, it does NOT appear to "emulate a floppy controller with your parallel port"; It appears to be sampling the raw data lines of a disk controlled by a normal FDC, and using the parallel port to provide some of the functionality of a "flux transition" board) Producing a version of it that can WRITE will add a few more serious complications. But I still don't believe that APPLE ever provided a way for a PC to format and write 800K GCR. From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 30 00:58:00 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:58:00 -0800 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438D44DB.3050504@oldskool.org> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> <20051129210133.J33908@shell.lmi.net> <438D44DB.3050504@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <200511292258000229.163A04EF@10.0.0.252> On 11/30/2005 at 12:21 AM Jim Leonard wrote: >Writing? Yes. Reading? Not if you emulate a floppy controller with your >parallel port. Google "disk2fdi" for a working program. Actually, not all that different from a Catweasel, only that the host FDC is used to handle drive stepping and that there's no buffer--and the thing can't write. Catweasel on the cheap, I guess. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 30 01:06:31 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:06:31 -0800 Subject: Looking for driver or information Message-ID: <200511292306310885.1641D397@10.0.0.252> I've got both Chi Corp./Computer Logics PCTD3 and PCTD16 Pertec-interface tape controlers. What I don't have is a clue as to how to drive them. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem that running down traces and some pencil and paper work wouldn't cure. But, other than for a couple of lines, much of the logic for these cards is hidden inside an early Xilinx FPGA. Thus far, my "pork poking" hasn't given up any information. Customer support at Chi Corporation is polite, but unhelpful. They claim that they don't have any docs for the cards any more (tossed during a move), nor are they sure about software (probably won't work on a modern PC), but they'll sell me a copy of their Outright conversion package for only $695 and it might work--maybe, but no promises. So, I'm wondering if anyone has any information on these beasts or perhaps has hung onto the TDRIVER.EXE or API.EXE files. I'm not interested in using the files, but rather want to use them to give up some clues on how that blasted FPGA is set up. Thanks, Chuck From phillipmilks at netzero.com Tue Nov 29 12:26:51 2005 From: phillipmilks at netzero.com (phillipmilks at netzero.com) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:26:51 GMT Subject: I8008 Micro-computer Message-ID: <20051129.102721.24245.44926@webmail51.nyc.untd.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU Tue Nov 29 15:28:40 2005 From: ISC277 at CLCILLINOIS.EDU (Wolfe, Julian ) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:28:40 -0600 Subject: Calling Will Kranz Message-ID: <3D86D46B6D24D642AC9BB09DD8CF335F10B2485F@hermes.CLCILLINOIS.EDU> Will, if you get this, let me know on-list. I tried emailing you from my Earthlink and Comcast accounts and both gave bounceback messages. It's identifying my email as spam. I sent this mail message from my web mail account, so it's not a client thing. Will, how should I contact you about the disk packs/keyboard parts? A message (from ) was received at 23 Nov 2005 22:23:20 +0000. The following addresses had delivery problems: Permanent Failure: 550_passing_these_spams_on_just_makes_it_worse Delivery last attempted at Wed, 23 Nov 2005 22:24:30 -0000 (Attachments successfully scanned for viruses.) Attachment 1: Name Unknown (message/delivery-status) From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Wed Nov 30 01:13:01 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 01:13:01 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? Message-ID: The 800k format is very proprietary, I'd be surprised if there was any way that stock IBM hardware could write it, no matter what the programming tricks were. More data was packed on the outer tracks than the inner tracks (done so that they didn't have to change the Lisa ROMs (expecting 400k single-sided) according to rumor). The 1.44s can be done on any machine that has DD or RAWRITE or anything similar, provided that it also has a 1.44 MB mechanism. All '030+ macs have SuperDrives, as do SE-FDHD, LC, and "upgraded" IIs with the IIx ROMs (fair number of upgrades were sold by Apple). For an OS, I'd use either 6.0.8 (very fast, can turn MultiFinder off, "classic" look but won't do Virtual Memory or 32-bit addressing (max memory=8MB, everything else is ignored)) or 7.1 PRO (fastish, and you can patch in much of the stuff that's nice in 7.5/7.6). If you're running 7, be sure to get Mode32, available free+legal. ROMs from the pre-IIci era aren't fully 32-bit, so they have problems if you turn on 32-bit addressing. A/UX also runs on the SE/30, it's the only compact Mac that can run it. For these old beasts, assuming that you aren't going to be a heavy Photoshop/PageMaker user, 16-20 MB of RAM works just fine with 7.1. System 6 won't see anything over 8. Remember to get your long-blade Torx-15 and case cracker, and to unplug SCSI, power, etc. before trying to slide out the logic board. Scott Quinn (SE(6.0.8), II (6.0.8), IIci (7.1), Quadra 950 (pegasys, A/UX 3.1), Quadra 700 (7.6)). P.S. The LC is weird because of several things: 020 but no PMMU option, 16-bit data bus, only will run up to 10MB RAM and 1/3 ht HDD, funky nonstandard video that doesn't run on all monitors. The only excuse I can think of for Apple was that they didn't want to eclipse the II in power. The 24-bit addressing bug in ROM I can find no excuse for- the 68000 was designed with a 32-bit outside address bus successor in mind (full internal 32-bit registers)- they must have just been lazy. From g-wright at worldnet.att.net Wed Nov 30 01:40:50 2005 From: g-wright at worldnet.att.net (Jerry Wright) Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:40:50 -0800 Subject: looking for some OS's TEK Basic, Pertec 4010, OMS Zues 4, Altos 5 Message-ID: <438D5782.7070406@worldnet.att.net> Hi, All I'm back at the grind trying to find a few OS's The first is for my TEK DPO (WP 1210 Digitial processing scope ) this is a 7704a scope with a P7001 Digital processor that connects to a DEC PDP 11/05 . It runs on TEK Basic (8" floppy or DEC tape}.. The official name is "TEK SPS Basic V02" There is also a system test disk. I also need a TEK 4010 Terminal to finish it off. If anyone in the Seattle area has one. The second is a Pertec Mini ?? coax system 4010 Don't know much about it other than it used coax to the dumb terminals instead of Serial.. (1/4 " Tape) The third is a OMS Zues 4 I beleive it ran cpm or mpm (5 1/4 disk) The forth is a Altos 5 CPM or MPM (5 1/4 Disk) I can handle most image files. Or would gladly pay for a Disk or tape. If I missed somewhere online, point me in the right direction Thanks, for reading this Jerry Jerry Wright JLC inc 800.292.6370 PST g-wright at att.net From frustum at pacbell.net Wed Nov 30 02:46:36 2005 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 02:46:36 -0600 Subject: looking for some OS's TEK Basic, Pertec 4010, OMS Zues 4, Altos 5 In-Reply-To: <438D5782.7070406@worldnet.att.net> References: <438D5782.7070406@worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <438D66EC.4020404@pacbell.net> Jerry Wright wrote: > Hi, All > > I'm back at the grind trying to find a few OS's ... > The forth is a Altos 5 CPM or MPM (5 1/4 Disk) Dave Dunfield has "Altos 586 System/Development" disks: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/img/d/altos586.zip From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 03:58:42 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 03:58:42 -0600 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 Message-ID: <000001c5f594$a58fd940$6401a8c0@dementium> Okay, I pulled the power supply on the VT100 after replacing the two video board components, only to find 3 resistors on the PSU burned out. I know I should probably get a book on how to read a schematic (I will soon) but in the meantime can someone tell me what these resistors are? http://home.earthlink.net/~fireflyst/images/burnedpsu.gif I copied a portion of the diagram image on page 23 of the VT100 found at: http://vt100.net/mirror/antonio/mp00633.pdf If someone could tell me what resistor is what, that would be awesome. Thanks again for everyone's help (and time) Julian From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Wed Nov 30 05:14:59 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 11:14:59 +0000 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <438D4571.8070704@oldskool.org> References: <20051130064321.7FC497302A@linus.groomlake.area51> <438D4571.8070704@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <438D89B3.7090506@gjcp.net> Jim Leonard wrote: > Obviously an older distro will work fine (I still have my Slackware 1.2 > around here somewhere). My point about being "useful" is that Pentium > 133s are almost literally free (I see them curbside every month) and for > "free" you can usually get all the way up to a 400MHz PII or 700 MHz > PIII and those are much more useful. I've got a PII-233 laptop that runs Slackware 10.2 quite happily. I tend to use P133 as the lowest spec for running NAT, SAMBA and Spamassassin on (with as much memory as they will take - Spamassassin is written in Perl and is a memory guzzler) for people to share out their broadband and keep a few common files on. Gordon From bill at timeguy.com Wed Nov 30 09:52:53 2005 From: bill at timeguy.com (Bill Richman) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 09:52:53 -0600 Subject: Uses for AS400 9040? In-Reply-To: <200511300623.jAU6MuBo088511@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511300623.jAU6MuBo088511@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <20051130155253.GA97959@outpost.timeguy.com> I was just given an IBM AS400/9040 at the computer refurb/recycling shop I operate. Is there anything legitimate that it could be used for, or should I scrap it? I know nothing about it other than that it's big and heavy, and it seems to IPL according to the front-panel display. I'm going to try to hook a terminal to it, but I'm not sure how quite yet. From Useddec at aol.com Wed Nov 30 11:39:17 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 12:39:17 EST Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 Message-ID: <292.c2b631.30bf3dc5@aol.com> I have the entire power supply for $75 Thanks, Paul From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Nov 30 12:08:05 2005 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 12:08:05 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511300614.WAA20726@floodgap.com> References: <200511300614.WAA20726@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <438DEA85.4080009@oldskool.org> Cameron Kaiser wrote: > Neither really. The original Mac sound hardware had four *synthesis* voices, Actually, according to the articles you provided, the Mac sound hardware appears to be a simple fixed-rate DAC that plays back exactly 22,200 bytes per second, and all of those "modes" are just variations on "calc a buffer and feed it to the DAC". Knowing that, and how it is programmed, I am now extremely impressed by Studio Session (it must have mixed 6 digital voices realtime). I've written "mod" players before but the most I've ever gotten out of 7MHz was 4 voices, and at half that rate. (No doubt the 32-bit registers, and more of them, are a big help on the mac, but still...) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ From charlesmorris at direcway.com Wed Nov 30 12:22:51 2005 From: charlesmorris at direcway.com (charlesmorris at direcway.com) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:22:51 -0500 Subject: cctech Digest, Vol 27, Issue 62 Message-ID: <42a76a4258a9.4258a942a76a@direcway.com> >Dammit, I've got to get one of my PDPs going so I can play ADVENT again, >assuming my RL02s are still readable :) > >"a hollow voice says...." "FOOL" :) I have an RL02 image running on SIMH OS/8 and I have the ADVENT.SV and the other ADVENT.** files. But it still won't run. What pieces do I need to complete the ADVENT game? thanks Charles From dwight.elvey at amd.com Wed Nov 30 13:25:24 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 11:25:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 Message-ID: <200511301925.LAA16856@ca2h0430.amd.com> Hi I would suggest that you get your self up on reading schematics. Resistors rarely just burn up without there being some other cause. Just replacing the resistors will most likely result in more burnt resistors if it is powered up without locating the reason for the resistors to burn in the first place. Many IC's and transistors show little to no visual indications that they are shorted inside. I don't know how one can find these without understanding where the resistors are in the schematic and how the resistors are being used. Dwight >From: "Julian Wolfe" > >Okay, I pulled the power supply on the VT100 after replacing the two video >board components, only to find 3 resistors on the PSU burned out. I know I >should probably get a book on how to read a schematic (I will soon) but in >the meantime can someone tell me what these resistors are? > > > >http://home.earthlink.net/~fireflyst/images/burnedpsu.gif > > > > > >I copied a portion of the diagram image on page 23 of the VT100 found at: > > > > http://vt100.net/mirror/antonio/mp00633.pdf > > > >If someone could tell me what resistor is what, that would be awesome. > > > >Thanks again for everyone's help (and time) > > > >Julian > From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Nov 30 13:54:08 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:54:08 +0000 Subject: OLD Mac SCSI hardware In-Reply-To: <000e01c5f548$4bd04d00$ca734247@game> Message-ID: On 30/11/05 00:52, "Teo Zenios" wrote: > Any mac collectors or all around packrats happen to have a manual or driver > software for a 1991 Micronet NuPort II NUBUS SCSI card? > I want to know what the switch block called HOST ID D0-D7 needs to be set to > in my IIfx. Drivers or a manual would be a definite plus also. I'm guessing that's going to be the SCSI ID of the card itself so if you've only got a couple of SCSI devices to connect to it you could use the default SCSI host id of 6.....at the end of the day as long as each device connected to the card has a different number to the card itself you'll be OK for a basic setup. A From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 14:11:46 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:11:46 -0600 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: <292.c2b631.30bf3dc5@aol.com> Message-ID: $75 is a lot of money, I'd like to try repairing it myself first, but if that doesn't work I'll let you know. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Useddec at aol.com > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 11:39 AM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 > > I have the entire power supply for $75 > > Thanks, Paul From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 14:15:28 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:15:28 -0600 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I actually have one of those old Central Point Software "option board" thingamajigs, made for backing up copy protected software and writing Mac disks. That right there is proof that you need additional hardware to properly write Mac disks. However, there is a program on the PC called HFVexplorer that does write mac disks pretty well on a PC. I'm not sure how it does it, but it does. You can find it with some searching on the web. Julian > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of compoobah at valleyimplants.com > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 1:13 AM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: "Market" for old macs? > > The 800k format is very proprietary, I'd be surprised if there was any way > that stock IBM hardware could write it, no matter what the programming > tricks were. More data was packed on the outer tracks than the inner > tracks (done so that they didn't have to change the Lisa ROMs (expecting > 400k single-sided) according to rumor). The 1.44s can be done on any > machine that has DD or RAWRITE or anything similar, provided that it also > has a 1.44 MB mechanism. All '030+ macs have SuperDrives, as do SE-FDHD, > LC, and "upgraded" IIs with the IIx ROMs (fair number of upgrades were > sold by Apple). > > For an OS, I'd use either 6.0.8 (very fast, can turn MultiFinder off, > "classic" look but won't do Virtual Memory or 32-bit addressing (max > memory=8MB, everything else is ignored)) or 7.1 PRO (fastish, and you can > patch in much of the stuff that's nice in 7.5/7.6). If you're running 7, > be sure to get Mode32, available free+legal. ROMs from the pre-IIci era > aren't fully 32-bit, so they have problems if you turn on 32-bit > addressing. A/UX also runs on the SE/30, it's the only compact Mac that > can run it. For these old beasts, assuming that you aren't going to be a > heavy Photoshop/PageMaker user, 16-20 MB of RAM works just fine with 7.1. > System 6 won't see anything over 8. Remember to get your long-blade Torx- > 15 and case cracker, and to unplug SCSI, power, etc. before trying to > slide out the logic board. > > Scott Quinn (SE(6.0.8), II (6.0.8), IIci (7.1), Quadra 950 (pegasys, A/UX > 3.1), Quadra 700 (7.6)). > > P.S. The LC is weird because of several things: 020 but no PMMU option, > 16-bit data bus, only will run up to 10MB RAM and 1/3 ht HDD, funky > nonstandard video that doesn't run on all monitors. The only excuse I can > think of for Apple was that they didn't want to eclipse the II in power. > The 24-bit addressing bug in ROM I can find no excuse for- the 68000 was > designed with a 32-bit outside address bus successor in mind (full > internal 32-bit registers)- they must have just been lazy. > From Useddec at aol.com Wed Nov 30 14:21:24 2005 From: Useddec at aol.com (Useddec at aol.com) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:21:24 EST Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 Message-ID: <205.f21ef40.30bf63c4@aol.com> Sounds good to me. Any DEC stuff you don't need? Thanks, Paul From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Nov 30 14:58:34 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:58:34 +0000 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 30/11/05 20:15, "Julian Wolfe" wrote: > I actually have one of those old Central Point Software "option board" > thingamajigs, made for backing up copy protected software and writing Mac > disks. > > That right there is proof that you need additional hardware to properly > write Mac disks. > > However, there is a program on the PC called HFVexplorer that does write mac > disks pretty well on a PC. I'm not sure how it does it, but it does. I tried using that when I was trying to write 400k disks for my Lisa but gave up and used TransMac instead. The process was: Format 1.4mb floppy on Mac Use HFVExplorer (or transmac) to copy image file to this disk on PC Use appletalk to transfer said floppy from the mac that formatted it to a mac capable of writing 400k disks (Iici I think) Create 400k disk Boot lisa Drink beer :) From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 30 15:18:11 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:18:11 -0800 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: <200511301925.LAA16856@ca2h0430.amd.com> References: <200511301925.LAA16856@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: <200511301318110158.194D8C5E@10.0.0.252> On 11/30/2005 at 11:25 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > Many IC's and transistors show little to no visual >indications that they are shorted inside. I don't >know how one can find these without understanding >where the resistors are in the schematic and how >the resistors are being used. Actually, many servicepeople rely on compiled tips for servicing. Something like "If there's no vertical sweep, replace R302, Q401 and C213". And with a lot of modern gear, manufacturer's schematics are almost useless, where signals disappear into a house-numbered chip with no clue as to the function or pinout on said chip. I confess that I've used the Euras technical database several times. For the $5 for a 14-day ticket, it's not a bad deal and usually makes short work of diagnosing problems on TVs. That being said, I agree with your statement about how burned resistors are usually a symptom of a shorted component somewhere else. Cheers, Chuck From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Wed Nov 30 15:21:39 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:21:39 -0500 Subject: Cable and breakout panel kit for RQDX3 Message-ID: <550C58E8-6259-4C28-85DE-58BFF8EC4D5D@xlisper.mv.com> Can anyone tell me the part numbers for the cable and breakout panel for the RQDX3 that allows it to be plugged into an RDxx MFM drive and an RX50 floppy drive? My understanding is that there is a ribbon cable that connects the RQDX3 module to some sort of panel that has places to plug in the cables that connect to the drives. I think the RDxx drive just uses standard PC type cables between the drive and this panel. Is that correct? Anyone know the part numbers for these parts? Thanks, David From news at computercollector.com Wed Nov 30 15:37:01 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:37:01 -0500 Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide Message-ID: <001801c5f5f6$33653d80$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Just an FYI, today I updated the buyers guide. (Is it missing anything?) http://www.snarc.net/c-holidays.php ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: >> http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >> http://www.marchclub.org >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Nov 30 15:39:07 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:39:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20051130132548.G69692@shell.lmi.net> On 30/11/05 20:15, "Julian Wolfe" wrote: > However, there is a program on the PC called HFVexplorer that does write mac > disks pretty well on a PC. I'm not sure how it does it, but it does. IT DOES 1.4M. IT DOES NOT DO 800K (NOR 400K) GCR. If you want to use it, you can use it to write a 1.4M Mac disk, then USE A MACINTOSH with the FDHD ("super") drive to read the 1.4M and write the 800K. OR, do a network/internet/serial transfer of the content to a Mac. You can NOT write 400k/800k Mac GCR with a PC, unless you add different disk writing hardware. On Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Adrian Graham wrote: > I tried using that when I was trying to write 400k disks for my Lisa but I've never used a Lisa with 3.5"; it must be a lot nicer than the twiggy disks with the extra thumb hole. > gave up and used TransMac instead. The process was: > Format 1.4mb floppy on Mac quite difficult if the reason for the project was to create a boot disk for that Mac. Some software shouldbe able to format on the PC. > Use HFVExplorer (or transmac) to copy image file to this disk on PC > Use appletalk to transfer said floppy from the mac that formatted it to a > mac capable of writing 400k disks (Iici I think) SOME Macs can do both 400K/800K AND do 1.4M (FDHD drive, and the early FDHD control circuitry - I've heard that "recent" Macs can not do GCR) > Create 400k disk > Boot lisa > Drink beer :) You were able to wait until you were done? I started hitting the alcohol less than halfway through. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 30 15:40:41 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:40:41 -0500 Subject: Cable and breakout panel kit for RQDX3 Message-ID: <0IQS00GXREU3W9O4@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Cable and breakout panel kit for RQDX3 > From: David Betz > Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:21:39 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Can anyone tell me the part numbers for the cable and breakout panel >for the RQDX3 that allows it to be plugged into an RDxx MFM drive and >an RX50 floppy drive? My understanding is that there is a ribbon >cable that connects the RQDX3 module to some sort of panel that has >places to plug in the cables that connect to the drives. I think the >RDxx drive just uses standard PC type cables between the drive and >this panel. Is that correct? Anyone know the part numbers for these >parts? I dont have the box with all the board and cables so it's all from memory. It carries a 50-class part number for BA23 boxes (mounted at the rear wall of the drive cavity) it's breaks the 50pin out to a floppy (rx50 or 33) and one drive (RDxx). Th board is only three or 4 connectors and nothing else so if you find the schematic you could make it easily. For the BA123 it an M9058 which looks like a Qbus board (it is) and it breaks the 50pin out to the mix of up to 4 drives(RDxx) and a floppy (RX50 or 33). The cables are 50pin IDC and the drive cables are 34 for floppy and hard disk and a narrow (22 or 26 pin) for the hard disk. The cables are nothing special (no PC half twists). The M9058 requires 5V power off the Qbus. Allison From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 15:44:44 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:44:44 -0600 Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide In-Reply-To: <001801c5f5f6$33653d80$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: For the DECies: Long live DEC, DEC is dead: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1576753050/qid=1133386970/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_x s_ap_i1_xgl14/002-2917276-5311230?n=507846&s=books&v=glance Images of America: Digital Equipment Corporation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738535877/qid=1133387006/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1 /002-2917276-5311230?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of 'Computer Collector Newsletter' > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 3:37 PM > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide > > Just an FYI, today I updated the buyers guide. (Is it missing anything?) > > http://www.snarc.net/c-holidays.php > > > ----------------------------------------- > Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net > > Computer Collector Newsletter: > >> http://news.computercollector.com > > Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: > >> http://www.marchclub.org > >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From arcarlini at iee.org Wed Nov 30 15:49:47 2005 From: arcarlini at iee.org (a.carlini@ntlworld.com) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:49:47 -0000 Subject: Cable and breakout panel kit for RQDX3 In-Reply-To: <550C58E8-6259-4C28-85DE-58BFF8EC4D5D@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <004b01c5f5f7$fcf92200$5b01a8c0@pc1> David Betz wrote: > Can anyone tell me the part numbers for the cable and breakout panel > for the RQDX3 that allows it to be plugged into an RDxx MFM drive and > an RX50 floppy drive? My understanding is that there is a ribbon > cable that connects the RQDX3 module to some sort of panel that has > places to plug in the cables that connect to the drives. I think the > RDxx drive just uses standard PC type cables between the drive and > this panel. Is that correct? Anyone know the part numbers for these > parts? I have the RQDXE User's Guide scanned and about to be uploaded somewhere. That has a diagram that may help (at least if you are using a BA123). I can email that directly to you if you need it right now. If you are using a BA23 then one of the MicroVAX II Maintenance Guides available on the net should sort you out. FWIW the cable from RQDX3 to RQDXE and from RQDXE to the internal panel are both BC02D-01. From the internal panel to the drive is (AFAIK) just the usual PC-style IDC cables. Antonio -- Antonio carlini arcarlini at iee.org From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 15:51:36 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:51:36 -0600 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: <200511301318110158.194D8C5E@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: The burned out resistors wouldn't have had anything to do with the blown flyback or the shorted components I replaced on the video board? > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 3:18 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 > > On 11/30/2005 at 11:25 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > > > Many IC's and transistors show little to no visual > >indications that they are shorted inside. I don't > >know how one can find these without understanding > >where the resistors are in the schematic and how > >the resistors are being used. > > Actually, many servicepeople rely on compiled tips for servicing. > Something like "If there's no vertical sweep, replace R302, Q401 and > C213". > And with a lot of modern gear, manufacturer's schematics are almost > useless, where signals disappear into a house-numbered chip with no clue > as > to the function or pinout on said chip. > > I confess that I've used the Euras technical database several times. For > the $5 for a 14-day ticket, it's not a bad deal and usually makes short > work of diagnosing problems on TVs. > > That being said, I agree with your statement about how burned resistors > are > usually a symptom of a shorted component somewhere else. > > Cheers, > Chuck > From news at computercollector.com Wed Nov 30 16:01:05 2005 From: news at computercollector.com ('Computer Collector Newsletter') Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:01:05 -0500 Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <002101c5f5f9$905db7d0$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Two points of clarification: 1. I'm looking for products / kits / etc., not more books; 2., please send replies directly to me. :) Thanks, - Evan -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Julian Wolfe Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 4:45 PM To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' Subject: RE: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide For the DECies: Long live DEC, DEC is dead: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1576753050/qid=1133386970/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_x s_ap_i1_xgl14/002-2917276-5311230?n=507846&s=books&v=glance Images of America: Digital Equipment Corporation: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738535877/qid=1133387006/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1 /002-2917276-5311230?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of 'Computer Collector Newsletter' > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 3:37 PM > To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' > Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide > > Just an FYI, today I updated the buyers guide. (Is it missing > anything?) > > http://www.snarc.net/c-holidays.php > > > ----------------------------------------- > Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net > > Computer Collector Newsletter: > >> http://news.computercollector.com > > Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: > >> http://www.marchclub.org > >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Nov 30 16:07:33 2005 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:07:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511302219.RAA16754@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I actually have one of those old Central Point Software "option > board" thingamajigs, made for backing up copy protected software and > writing Mac disks. > That right there is proof that you need additional hardware to > properly write Mac disks. Not at all. Just because someone makes a product designed to do something does not mean that that product is necessary to do that thing. Furthermore, even if it is necessary in some cases does not mean it's necessary in all; for example, it may be that "modern" floppy drives are capable of things that drives current when the gadget was produced aren't. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 30 16:31:46 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:31:46 -0800 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511302219.RAA16754@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <200511302219.RAA16754@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200511301431460877.1990ED46@10.0.0.252> On 11/30/2005 at 5:07 PM der Mouse wrote: >...for example, it may be that "modern" floppy drives are capable of >things that drives current when the gadget was produced aren't. I've actually found somewhat the reverse to be true, at least as far as floppy drives go. Or am I missing something when I don't succeed in reading an 800K Mac floppy in my nice shiny new USB drive? Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 30 16:34:55 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:34:55 -0800 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511301434550328.1993CD69@10.0.0.252> On 11/30/2005 at 3:51 PM Julian Wolfe wrote: >The burned out resistors wouldn't have had anything to do with the blown >flyback or the shorted components I replaced on the video board? Perhaps--or not. That's the problem when things start going "poof" and turning all brown and crunchy, particularly in HV or power circuitry. Multiple failures are not uncommon. Just because you've replaced the visibly bad components, it doesn't mean that there are still more problems lurking that you can't see. Cheers, Chuck From curt at atarimuseum.com Wed Nov 30 16:37:00 2005 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:37:00 -0500 Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide In-Reply-To: <001801c5f5f6$33653d80$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> References: <001801c5f5f6$33653d80$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> Message-ID: <438E298C.2010205@atarimuseum.com> I like the Semi Virtual Diskette.... its very similar to the SIO2PC cable Atari users have been using for about 10 years now. Although the SIO2PC allows you to also take control of a PC's serial modem and parallel ports as well as its floppy, hard disk and networked drives. I like the enigma kits too, pretty neat stuff. Curt 'Computer Collector Newsletter' wrote: >Just an FYI, today I updated the buyers guide. (Is it missing anything?) > >http://www.snarc.net/c-holidays.php > > >----------------------------------------- >Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net > >Computer Collector Newsletter: > > >>>http://news.computercollector.com >>> >>> > >Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: > > >>>http://www.marchclub.org >>>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/ >>> >>> > > > > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.10/189 - Release Date: 11/30/2005 From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Nov 30 16:39:09 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 22:39:09 +0000 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <20051130132548.G69692@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: On 30/11/05 21:39, "Fred Cisin" wrote: > I've never used a Lisa with 3.5"; it must be a lot nicer than the twiggy > disks with the extra thumb hole. Call me a masochist, but I *want* to use a twiggy based machine :) Booting off a ProFile is too quick! > quite difficult if the reason for the project was to create a boot disk > for that Mac. Some software shouldbe able to format on the PC. Sorry, I should've said I was creating disks for my Lisa..... > SOME Macs can do both 400K/800K AND do 1.4M (FDHD drive, and the early > FDHD control circuitry - I've heard that "recent" Macs can not do GCR) I checked my entire Mac collection and none of them would read 1.44 AND write 400K, hmm, I didn't get my SE/30 out of the garage..... >> Create 400k disk >> Boot lisa >> Drink beer :) > > You were able to wait until you were done? > I started hitting the alcohol less than halfway through. I don't drink during the day though, by the time I'd booted Lisa for the first time it was past beer o'clock :) A From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 16:43:05 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:43:05 -0600 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: <200511301434550328.1993CD69@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: Well, I'll just replace the resistors, and if they blow, well, I bought spares. I can gamble on $1.50, which is about what they cost me. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 4:35 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: RE: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 > > On 11/30/2005 at 3:51 PM Julian Wolfe wrote: > > >The burned out resistors wouldn't have had anything to do with the blown > >flyback or the shorted components I replaced on the video board? > > Perhaps--or not. That's the problem when things start going "poof" and > turning all brown and crunchy, particularly in HV or power circuitry. > Multiple failures are not uncommon. Just because you've replaced the > visibly bad components, it doesn't mean that there are still more problems > lurking that you can't see. > > Cheers, > Chuck From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Nov 30 16:55:04 2005 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 22:55:04 +0000 Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 30/11/05 21:44, "Julian Wolfe" wrote: > For the DECies: > > Long live DEC, DEC is dead: > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1576753050/qid=1133386970/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_x > s_ap_i1_xgl14/002-2917276-5311230?n=507846&s=books&v=glance > > Images of America: Digital Equipment Corporation: > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738535877/qid=1133387006/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1 > /002-2917276-5311230?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 > And I can have them both for 32 bucks! I think there'll be an order placed before the night's out :) A From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Nov 30 17:12:25 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:12:25 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511301431460877.1990ED46@10.0.0.252> References: <200511302219.RAA16754@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200511301431460877.1990ED46@10.0.0.252> Message-ID: <20051130150717.F76515@shell.lmi.net> > On 11/30/2005 at 5:07 PM der Mouse wrote: > >...for example, it may be that "modern" floppy drives are capable of > >things that drives current when the gadget was produced aren't. On Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've actually found somewhat the reverse to be true, at least as far as > floppy drives go. Or am I missing something when I don't succeed in > reading an 800K Mac floppy in my nice shiny new USB drive? In working with cable-interrupting FDC add-on boards (CopyII Option Board, Apple Turnover, etc.), I had MUCH better results with old Tandon TM100-2 drives than with anything newer (such as TEAC 55B) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 17:14:08 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:14:08 -0500 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A18@sbs.jdfogg.com> Message-ID: <20051130181408.6b428ccf.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:52:32 -0500 "James Fogg" wrote: > > Now here's a tricky question: If the SE30 were the only mac > > in my entire household, how would I procure an OS install on > > diskette for it? The drive in that thing is the 800K > > multi-speed beast, yes? > > Do you have a PC? Apple does (or did) offer the OS's on their website, > and there were instructions about how to use various PC based programs > to write them in a Mac 800K format from a PC drive. > > Somewhere I have the images and software because I've had to do this > once. > > Here's my question to throw into the ring: I have a LOT of Macintosh superdrives from early NuBus PPC Macs that I've salvaged. Is there a good spec for the interface and has anybody gotten anything but a Mac to talk to those drives? If anybody needs a superdrive or two for the cost of shipping just holler, btw. From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 17:17:59 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:17:59 -0600 Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm glad I helped somebody ;) I put these on my Christmas list actually for friends/family to get me this year since they're simple. I put an LA34 and VT100 on my list last year and it confused everyone, even though I gave them where to get it. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Adrian Graham > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 4:55 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide > > > > > On 30/11/05 21:44, "Julian Wolfe" wrote: > > > For the DECies: > > > > Long live DEC, DEC is dead: > > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1576753050/qid=1133386970/sr=8- > 1/ref=sr_8_x > > s_ap_i1_xgl14/002-2917276-5311230?n=507846&s=books&v=glance > > > > Images of America: Digital Equipment Corporation: > > http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738535877/qid=1133387006/sr=1- > 1/ref=sr_1_1 > > /002-2917276-5311230?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 > > > > And I can have them both for 32 bucks! I think there'll be an order placed > before the night's out :) > > A > From chenmel at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 17:19:05 2005 From: chenmel at earthlink.net (Scott Stevens) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:19:05 -0500 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A19@sbs.jdfogg.com> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A19@sbs.jdfogg.com> Message-ID: <20051130181905.111a37db.chenmel@earthlink.net> On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:59:42 -0500 "James Fogg" wrote: > > James Fogg wrote: > > > My interests stop at the "classic" Macs, of which the SE30 is the > > > height of engineering achievement (in my opinion). > > > > Why? I know a bit of the classic Mac engineering history > > thanks to Andy's retro website/book, but I know nothing of the SE30. > > OK, neither do I (it's too late to argue). It is the last of the classic > Macs and has the greatest number of features and capabilities. > Actually it isn't the last of the Classic Macs in a certain sense. Apple produced several other inferior compact Mac machines that aren't nearly as expandable as the SE/30. The Macintosh Classic is an example of this, if I'm not mistaken. The Classic can't sport anywhere near as much RAM as the SE/30. My favorite Mac personally is my PowerBook 165C, but that's just because it's so nice and small and eminently useful for those occasions when I need a small footprint 68K Mac for some purpose. And I have a box of SCSI-based ethernet interfaces that work with it. I'm very fond of my first SE/30, too, which is one I 'maxed out' with a lot of RAM and a big SCSI drive, but it runs NetBSD. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Nov 30 17:24:15 2005 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:24:15 -0700 Subject: A heads-up: updated holiday vintage computer buyers guide In-Reply-To: <438E298C.2010205@atarimuseum.com> References: <001801c5f5f6$33653d80$6401a8c0@DESKTOP> <438E298C.2010205@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <438E349F.9090005@jetnet.ab.ca> Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > I like the Semi Virtual Diskette.... its very similar to the SIO2PC > cable Atari users have been using for about 10 years now. Although > the SIO2PC allows you to also take control of a PC's serial modem and > parallel ports as well as its floppy, hard disk and networked drives. I don't like it. I like stand alone products, rather than a PC. The 8008's I still like because the components are few and easy to home brew. IMSAI is still busy on the S100 front. http://www.imsai.net/ From dwight.elvey at amd.com Wed Nov 30 16:57:15 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 14:57:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 Message-ID: <200511302257.OAA22238@ca2h0430.amd.com> >From: "Julian Wolfe" > >The burned out resistors wouldn't have had anything to do with the blown >flyback or the shorted components I replaced on the video board? > Hi They could but you still need to look at the schematics to see how they may have done this. It is possible that the power supply failed in such a way that it blew up the parts on the video board. If so, simply replacing the resistors may make expensive smoke of your replacement flyback and other parts. It is always wise to evaluate the root cause of each known bad component. If the resistors are in series with the load, it is likely that the shorted parts on the video board may have caused the damage. If you see the resistors in other paths, look to see what in the supply might have also caused the failure. As an example, the series pass transistor in a regulator output stage could have gone short. This would cause the voltage to go way above what the flyback was designed for. It shorted some turns that cause the horizontal output transistor to go short from excessive power. Now a resistor that was used in series with the supply's output might smoke because there was nothing else limiting the current. This is only an example of thousands of possible problems. In other words, you need to look at the failures and justify the cause. Resistors burn up because they have excess power dissipated. This is caused by the voltage going up across them for some reason. Dwight From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Nov 30 17:34:17 2005 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:34:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20051130152512.S76515@shell.lmi.net> On Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Adrian Graham wrote: > I checked my entire Mac collection and none of them would read 1.44 AND > write 400K, hmm, I didn't get my SE/30 out of the garage..... That would probably be your best possibility. Wasn't the SE/30 the first Mac with the FDHD ("super") drive? If so, then it would have been the most important one to have transition capabilities. BTW, the first Lisa that I ever played with DID have a hard disk (pre-release one on loan from Apple to UC Berkeley for Smalltalk development.) -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 30 17:35:56 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:35:56 -0800 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <20051130181905.111a37db.chenmel@earthlink.net> References: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A0E5A19@sbs.jdfogg.com> <20051130181905.111a37db.chenmel@earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200511301535560554.19CBAB07@10.0.0.252> Somewhat OT: At orchestra rehearsal last night, one of the bassists proudly told me that he'd bought a new computer--a Mac Mini for about $800, which included a 14" LCD monitor and a gig of DRAM. I must admit that I'm not sure if he got a good deal or not. You're definitely limited on expansion options and I'd sure hate to repair the thing. DVD/CD-RW drive, but no floppy. OTOH, it is kind of cool from an industrial design standpoint, although a small profile PC would be almost as small. Cheers, Chuck From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 17:50:50 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:50:50 -0600 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: <200511302257.OAA22238@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: Your point is well taken. I'm going to examine those schematics a bit more closely tonight. I also have a friend who has been building electronic projects for Atari computer systems for a very long time now, and hopefully he can give me a second opinion too. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Dwight K. Elvey > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 4:57 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: RE: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 > > >From: "Julian Wolfe" > > > >The burned out resistors wouldn't have had anything to do with the blown > >flyback or the shorted components I replaced on the video board? > > > > Hi > They could but you still need to look at the schematics to > see how they may have done this. It is possible that the > power supply failed in such a way that it blew up the > parts on the video board. If so, simply replacing the resistors > may make expensive smoke of your replacement flyback > and other parts. > It is always wise to evaluate the root cause of each > known bad component. If the resistors are in series with > the load, it is likely that the shorted parts on the > video board may have caused the damage. If you see the resistors > in other paths, look to see what in the supply might > have also caused the failure. > As an example, the series pass transistor in a regulator > output stage could have gone short. This would cause the > voltage to go way above what the flyback was designed for. > It shorted some turns that cause the horizontal output > transistor to go short from excessive power. Now a > resistor that was used in series with the supply's output > might smoke because there was nothing else limiting the > current. This is only an example of thousands of possible > problems. > In other words, you need to look at the failures and > justify the cause. Resistors burn up because they > have excess power dissipated. This is caused by the voltage > going up across them for some reason. > Dwight > From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Wed Nov 30 17:53:32 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:53:32 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: References: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <7ADE11AC-E5E4-4FA4-B22B-6305ADE468C0@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <919A71C5-0AA4-4721-8E4D-084F03D7FD0D@xlisper.mv.com> Well, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I was unable to fix my RL01 cable. I tried a few approaches to reconnect the pins I could see were disconnected and wasn't able to get it to work. However, the good news is that I was able to acquire another cable and that fixed the problem entirely. In fact, the PDP-11/73 booted off the RL01 pack the first time I powered it up. I have three packs and was able to read all of them. One contains RT-11 V5.5, another is a TSX-Plus system disk but appears just to boot RT-11SJ. It does have lots of files on it with ".tsx" extensions but doesn't seem to boot TSX. The third is a blank scratch pack. I'm now in the market for a cable and breakout panel (cab kit?) for my RQDX3 controller so that I can connect an ST225 drive and an RX50 floppy drive to my 11/73. I know it's possible to build one of these but from my experience with attempting to fix the RL01 cable, I don't think I want to tackle that project. If someone has a cable and breakout panel they'd like to sell please get in touch with me. Anyway, thanks to everyone who has given me help with this machine. I now have a working PDP-11/73 with 1.5mb of memory, an RX02 floppy drive and an RL01 hard drive and it's all working! From lbickley at bickleywest.com Wed Nov 30 17:59:04 2005 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:59:04 -0800 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <919A71C5-0AA4-4721-8E4D-084F03D7FD0D@xlisper.mv.com> References: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <919A71C5-0AA4-4721-8E4D-084F03D7FD0D@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <200511301559.05158.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Wednesday 30 November 2005 15:53, David Betz wrote: --snip-- > Anyway, thanks to everyone who has given me help with this machine. I > now have a working PDP-11/73 with 1.5mb of memory, an RX02 floppy > drive and an RL01 hard drive and it's all working! Cool!!! Glad you've got it running! Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Wed Nov 30 17:59:02 2005 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 23:59:02 +0000 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <919A71C5-0AA4-4721-8E4D-084F03D7FD0D@xlisper.mv.com> References: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <7ADE11AC-E5E4-4FA4-B22B-6305ADE468C0@xlisper.mv.com> <919A71C5-0AA4-4721-8E4D-084F03D7FD0D@xlisper.mv.com> Message-ID: <438E3CC6.5040800@gjcp.net> David Betz wrote: > Well, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I was unable > to fix my RL01 cable. I tried a few approaches to reconnect the pins I > could see were disconnected and wasn't able to get it to work. However, > the good news is that I was able to acquire another cable and that > fixed the problem entirely. In fact, the PDP-11/73 booted off the RL01 > pack the first time I powered it up. I have three packs and was able to > read all of them. One contains RT-11 V5.5, another is a TSX-Plus system > disk but appears just to boot RT-11SJ. It does have lots of files on it > with ".tsx" extensions but doesn't seem to boot TSX. The third is a > blank scratch pack. You need to actually run TSX. The bit you want it TSX.SAV iirc. Gordon. From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Wed Nov 30 18:03:05 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:03:05 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <438E3CC6.5040800@gjcp.net> References: <0IQ100CGM2HHI75G@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> <7ADE11AC-E5E4-4FA4-B22B-6305ADE468C0@xlisper.mv.com> <919A71C5-0AA4-4721-8E4D-084F03D7FD0D@xlisper.mv.com> <438E3CC6.5040800@gjcp.net> Message-ID: <327609CA-67E0-47A0-8DC6-7332B6B0D312@xlisper.mv.com> So you boot the system in RT-11 and then start TSX? Thanks! I'll try that. Do you know where I can find a description of TSX? On Nov 30, 2005, at 6:59 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > David Betz wrote: >> Well, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I was >> unable to fix my RL01 cable. I tried a few approaches to >> reconnect the pins I could see were disconnected and wasn't able >> to get it to work. However, the good news is that I was able to >> acquire another cable and that fixed the problem entirely. In >> fact, the PDP-11/73 booted off the RL01 pack the first time I >> powered it up. I have three packs and was able to read all of >> them. One contains RT-11 V5.5, another is a TSX-Plus system disk >> but appears just to boot RT-11SJ. It does have lots of files on >> it with ".tsx" extensions but doesn't seem to boot TSX. The third >> is a blank scratch pack. > > You need to actually run TSX. The bit you want it TSX.SAV iirc. > > Gordon. > From spectre at floodgap.com Wed Nov 30 18:15:27 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:15:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511301535560554.19CBAB07@10.0.0.252> from Chuck Guzis at "Nov 30, 5 03:35:56 pm" Message-ID: <200512010015.QAA14950@floodgap.com> > At orchestra rehearsal last night, one of the bassists proudly told me that > he'd bought a new computer--a Mac Mini for about $800, which included a 14" > LCD monitor and a gig of DRAM. I must admit that I'm not sure if he got a > good deal or not. You're definitely limited on expansion options and I'd > sure hate to repair the thing. They're not that hard to get into. Literally all you need is a putty knife. I've done some work on the mini a friend of mine has and it was fairly straightforward to do surgery on hers. > DVD/CD-RW drive, but no floppy. So? ^_^ Macs haven't had floppies in them since the original iMac. This isn't a new thing. For my dual G4, I just use a USB floppy drive. The mini is basically an iBook G4 in a smaller case with no screen. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- "Kirk to Enterprise: beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack." ---------------- From spectre at floodgap.com Wed Nov 30 18:15:42 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 16:15:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <20051130152512.S76515@shell.lmi.net> from Fred Cisin at "Nov 30, 5 03:34:17 pm" Message-ID: <200512010015.QAA12912@floodgap.com> > > I checked my entire Mac collection and none of them would read 1.44 AND > > write 400K, hmm, I didn't get my SE/30 out of the garage..... > > That would probably be your best possibility. Wasn't the SE/30 the first > Mac with the FDHD ("super") drive? If so, then it would have been the > most important one to have transition capabilities. No. The original SE was. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Mistakes are often the stepping stones to catastrophic failure. ------------ From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 30 18:18:05 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:18:05 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! Message-ID: <0IQS0083ZM4EB7V4@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! > From: David Betz > Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:53:32 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Well, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I was >unable to fix my RL01 cable. I tried a few approaches to reconnect >the pins I could see were disconnected and wasn't able to get it to >work. However, the good news is that I was able to acquire another >cable and that fixed the problem entirely. In fact, the PDP-11/73 >booted off the RL01 pack the first time I powered it up. I have three >packs and was able to read all of them. One contains RT-11 V5.5, >another is a TSX-Plus system disk but appears just to boot RT-11SJ. >It does have lots of files on it with ".tsx" extensions but doesn't >seem to boot TSX. The third is a blank scratch pack. First, Congrats! You need TSX.SAV and TSX also is built on RT11. >I'm now in the market for a cable and breakout panel (cab kit?) for >my RQDX3 controller so that I can connect an ST225 drive and an RX50 >floppy drive to my 11/73. I know it's possible to build one of these >but from my experience with attempting to fix the RL01 cable, I don't >think I want to tackle that project. If someone has a cable and >breakout panel they'd like to sell please get in touch with me. There isn't a "cab kit" for RQDXn. The cables were all internal and you used RQDXn in one of the BA23/123 boxen. So you either need a M9058 from a scrapped BA123 or a mostly torn up BA23 (micro PDP11 or microvax) you can pull the pannel from. You also need the little switch pannel inserts from the BA123 to enable READY/OFFLINE and Writeprotect. You need: 1 50 pin female to female IDC cable (max length 18") RQDXn to breakout 1 34pin female to female IDC cable (max length 30") (RX50) 1 26pin IDC to card edge (RDxx) 1 34 pin IDC to card edge (RDxx) If your not using either of those boxes then your doing what I did which was to build something DEC didn't document. The cables are seriously are trivial and not a big a deal like those breakout boards and the switch pannels. Having done this I know. >Anyway, thanks to everyone who has given me help with this machine. I >now have a working PDP-11/73 with 1.5mb of memory, an RX02 floppy >drive and an RL01 hard drive and it's all working! Sounds like mine. ;) Allison From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 30 18:51:50 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 00:51:50 +0000 (GMT) Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: <200511301318110158.194D8C5E@10.0.0.252> from "Chuck Guzis" at Nov 30, 5 01:18:11 pm Message-ID: > > On 11/30/2005 at 11:25 AM Dwight K. Elvey wrote: > > > Many IC's and transistors show little to no visual > >indications that they are shorted inside. I don't > >know how one can find these without understanding > >where the resistors are in the schematic and how > >the resistors are being used. > > Actually, many servicepeople rely on compiled tips for servicing. > Something like "If there's no vertical sweep, replace R302, Q401 and C213". I find those sort of tips totally useless!. There could be many causes of 'no vertical deflection' (or whatever), the fact that _once_ it was caused by a particular set of components doesn't mean it always is. The first time I came across soemthing like this was over 20 years ago. I had to fix a tape recorder for a teacher at school. The user manual was from the time that such manuals were useful and contained not only a schematic but also a list of faults and their cures. For 'low output and distortion' it told me to replace 3 capacitors (the decoupling capacitors on the cathodes of the amplifier valves). I did, and it made no difference. So I sat down with the 'scope and meter and found the real fault was a leaking coupling capacitor between the anode of the phase splitter triode and the grid of one of the output pentodes. Said grid was runing several volts +ve wrt that valve's cathode (!). I supose such fault databases are useful if you have many similar units to repair in that you'll get most of them off the bench quickly. But it's not a substitute for knowing how to trace the fault properly. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 30 18:54:48 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 00:54:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: from "Julian Wolfe" at Nov 30, 5 03:51:36 pm Message-ID: > > The burned out resistors wouldn't have had anything to do with the blown > flyback or the shorted components I replaced on the video board? Shouldn't do. The VT100 power supply has overcurrent protection and will shut down without damage if the load (video board, etc) is shorted. Does this supply work at all? Are you getting any output voltages from it? Have you checked the resistors (out of circuit -- that is with one end desoldered from the PCB) to see if they are burnt out (open circuit), or wildly different resistance from the value specified by their colour bands/markings? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 30 18:30:35 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 00:30:35 +0000 (GMT) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511300614.WAA20726@floodgap.com> from "Cameron Kaiser" at Nov 29, 5 10:14:57 pm Message-ID: > > > Last trivia question for the day/night: I own Studio Session (the reason I > > keep a mac 512 around) and I swear I am hearing 6 digital voices from it > > simultaneously. I was under the impression that the Mac sound hardware was > > only 4 digital voices, and that the extra 2 voices were done via realtime > > mixing on two of the channels -- however, literature from the time claim that > > Jam Session/Studio Session use "hardware tricks" to get the extra 2 voices. > > Who is right? > > Neither really. The original Mac sound hardware had four *synthesis* voices, > which could be fed a waveform and act as a primitive wavetable synthesizer. > This produces four-note polyphony. I don't know what you consider to be 'original Mac', but the Mac+ sound hardware was a pulse-width modulator loaded from a spare byte in the video RAM area at the end of each video line. Actually, the complete 16 bit word was loadrd into 2 PWM circuits (curiously one used TTL counter chips, the other was in a PAL), the other circuit was used to control the drive motor speed on the 400K drive (the 800K drive has internal speed control, or at least that motor speed line is not connected inside the drive). The 8 pin Apple 'sound IC' seems to be a filter and volume control. This, BTW, is based on me pulling a Mac+ apart and attacking it with a multimeter and logic analyser... Any multiple voices must have been done in software. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Nov 30 18:44:02 2005 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 00:44:02 +0000 (GMT) Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: <000001c5f594$a58fd940$6401a8c0@dementium> from "Julian Wolfe" at Nov 30, 5 03:58:42 am Message-ID: > > Okay, I pulled the power supply on the VT100 after replacing the two video > board components, only to find 3 resistors on the PSU burned out. I know I > should probably get a book on how to read a schematic (I will soon) but in > the meantime can someone tell me what these resistors are? > I have not tried to seriously look at your diagram, but I am told it's part of the PCB layout with 3 resistors marked on it. What you need to do first is to find the component layout diagram (it should be in the printset) and find out the references for those components. It will be something like 'R34'. 'R' for resistor, of course -- Other common ones are : C : Capacitor D : Diode T : Transformer (sometimes transistor) U or E : IC CR, MR : Diode (Crystal Rectifier, Metal Rectifier) Q : Transistor L : Inductor TR : Transformer The, you find those resistors on the schematic and work out what part of the circuit they're associated with. Please do not take the nest part as any sort of flame, it's not intended as such... I notice you've been offered a complete replacement PSU for $75. That seems like a reasonable price _but_ I think the old one can be repaired for less. I am going to asusme that you do not depend on this VT100 for income, health, or anything like that, and that while you want to get it working again, time is not too important. The think is that resistors do not burn out for no good reason, particularly not in SMPSUs (Switch Mode Power Supply Unit). Most often that 'good reason' is a shorted power transistor, which may, in turn, have failed due to a problem elsewhere (perhaps a faulty capacitor). You need to find the real cause, then (and only then) replace the faulty parts. SMPSUs are notoriously nasty to work on. They have live mains where you may not expect it (although the VT100 supply is relatively nice in this respect, much of the control cirucitry is isolated from the mains so you can make measurements there in relative safety. There is live mains on the PCB of course). A relatively minor fault can ruin a lot of expensive transistors at switch-on. Yes, I do think it can be repaired, and I think you will manage to do it. What I don't think is that just replacing these 3 resistors will help. You are going to have to learn to read and understand a schematic, and learn some of the theory of the SMPSU. If you don't already have it, get a second edition of 'The Art of Electronics' by Horrowitz and Hill. The second edition has a section on SMPSUs (with the full schematic of the Tandy 2000 sypply...). This, IMHO, is the single best book on electronics around. Yes, there are plenty of other books you may need or want later on. But this one is very clear, I've found nothing to really disagree with in it, and it goes way beyond the 'this is a resistor' level. When you've identified which the resistors are, I'll look at the prints and try to explain that particular bit of circuit. -tony From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Wed Nov 30 19:15:26 2005 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (compoobah at valleyimplants.com) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:15:26 -0600 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 Message-ID: <843ec58640464622a326a92172f010f6@valleyimplants.com> I'd look at what the resistors feed to- on my IRIS (as far as I can see) a resistor was smoked because multiple filter cap failures ^ ripple frequency with resultant lowering of reactive impedance, increasing current flow in this filter stage (between the outputs of the 5v rectifiers and ground, (.1?f cap -> 330 ohm -> gnd) and blowing the resistor. (at least that's what it looked like- the cap wasn't shorted and seemed to work properly under test) From spectre at floodgap.com Wed Nov 30 19:27:00 2005 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:27:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: from Tony Duell at "Dec 1, 5 00:30:35 am" Message-ID: <200512010127.RAA17752@floodgap.com> > > Neither really. The original Mac sound hardware had four *synthesis* voices, > > which could be fed a waveform and act as a primitive wavetable synthesizer. > > This produces four-note polyphony. > > I don't know what you consider to be 'original Mac', but the Mac+ sound > hardware was a pulse-width modulator loaded from a spare byte in the > video RAM area at the end of each video line. I think we're looking at this from different angles. I'm looking at it from the view of what the Toolbox offers for music playback and synthesis; it seems you and Jim are actually talking about what the Toolbox is driving. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- What's another word for thesaurus? ----------------------------------------- From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 30 19:31:40 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:31:40 -0800 Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200512010015.QAA14950@floodgap.com> References: <200512010015.QAA14950@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <200511301731400961.1A359F08@10.0.0.252> On 11/30/2005 at 4:15 PM Cameron Kaiser wrote: >They're not that hard to get into. Literally all you need is a putty knife. >I've done some work on the mini a friend of mine has and it was fairly >straightforward to do surgery on hers. >From what I gather, 2 putty knives work better than one. >So? ^_^ Macs haven't had floppies in them since the original iMac. This >isn't a new thing. For my dual G4, I just use a USB floppy drive. But what's he going to do with all of those old 800K floppies? >The mini is basically an iBook G4 in a smaller case with no screen. ...and no keyboard. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 30 19:32:09 2005 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 01:32:09 +0000 Subject: SMPSU IC explosion... (UC3844) Message-ID: <438E5299.1040405@yahoo.co.uk> Random failure of the weekend was a UC3844 IC in a switchmode power supply - with a very loud bang, the entire top of the chip blew off, but there's no *obvious* sign of any other failure within the supply. This was one of two such supplies in a Sun RAID disk controller; the two do current-sharing under normal conditions - but the unit will run on one supply if the other fails, which is exactly what happened here. Leads me to *tentatively* say that the RAID unit itself is 100% and the failure was totally in the PSU. So, given that assumption for now, anyone know of a likely fault in a typical SMPSU that might cause such a catastrophic chip failure but no other obvious damage? Seems like a strange one to me, but I assume that something else in the supply has failed and the chip just couldn't handle it. Whilst knowing a bit of SMPSU theory (and practice), I'm not familiar with the UC3844... Of course maybe it was just time for that chip to die (it was at startup, and this in a server which had probably only been power cycled a handful of times in its life), but it sure was noisy about it. Shame Sun don't publish schematics! cheers Jules From dbetz at xlisper.mv.com Wed Nov 30 19:38:59 2005 From: dbetz at xlisper.mv.com (David Betz) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:38:59 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! In-Reply-To: <0IQS0083ZM4EB7V4@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0IQS0083ZM4EB7V4@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <05C86583-4662-4FAD-B3E0-9A48DE625CE9@xlisper.mv.com> Well, I have the two cables that connect to the RDxx drive. Sounds like my best bet would be to get a BA23 box with the appropriate panel already installed. I guess I'll start looking for one of those. On Nov 30, 2005, at 7:18 PM, Allison wrote: >> >> Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! >> From: David Betz >> Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:53:32 -0500 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> >> >> Well, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I was >> unable to fix my RL01 cable. I tried a few approaches to reconnect >> the pins I could see were disconnected and wasn't able to get it to >> work. However, the good news is that I was able to acquire another >> cable and that fixed the problem entirely. In fact, the PDP-11/73 >> booted off the RL01 pack the first time I powered it up. I have three >> packs and was able to read all of them. One contains RT-11 V5.5, >> another is a TSX-Plus system disk but appears just to boot RT-11SJ. >> It does have lots of files on it with ".tsx" extensions but doesn't >> seem to boot TSX. The third is a blank scratch pack. > > First, Congrats! > > You need TSX.SAV and TSX also is built on RT11. > >> I'm now in the market for a cable and breakout panel (cab kit?) for >> my RQDX3 controller so that I can connect an ST225 drive and an RX50 >> floppy drive to my 11/73. I know it's possible to build one of these >> but from my experience with attempting to fix the RL01 cable, I don't >> think I want to tackle that project. If someone has a cable and >> breakout panel they'd like to sell please get in touch with me. > > There isn't a "cab kit" for RQDXn. The cables were all internal > and you used RQDXn in one of the BA23/123 boxen. So you either need > a M9058 from a scrapped BA123 or a mostly torn up BA23 (micro PDP11 > or microvax) you can pull the pannel from. You also need the little > switch pannel inserts from the BA123 to enable READY/OFFLINE and > Writeprotect. > > You need: > > 1 50 pin female to female IDC cable (max length 18") RQDXn to breakout > 1 34pin female to female IDC cable (max length 30") (RX50) > 1 26pin IDC to card edge (RDxx) > 1 34 pin IDC to card edge (RDxx) > > If your not using either of those boxes then your doing what I did > which was to build something DEC didn't document. The cables are > seriously are trivial and not a big a deal like those breakout boards > and the switch pannels. > > Having done this I know. > >> Anyway, thanks to everyone who has given me help with this machine. I >> now have a working PDP-11/73 with 1.5mb of memory, an RX02 floppy >> drive and an RL01 hard drive and it's all working! > > Sounds like mine. ;) > > > Allison From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Nov 30 19:46:20 2005 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:46:20 -0500 Subject: IBM AS400? In-Reply-To: <438D4CF6.5020808@mdrconsult.com> References: <0436dbaa0ec644f4956909ad2b8a65ec@valleyimplants.com> <6.2.5.6.2.20051128212415.033d0200@boff-net.dhs.org> <438C548F.9010700@gmail.com> <438D4CF6.5020808@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <438E55EC.6030706@gmail.com> Doc Shipley wrote: > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> John Boffemmyer IV wrote: >> >>> ... >>> Not funny VAX. >>> I still use and am a fan of IBM PS/2's. So are a couple others on >>> here. A few still use IBM RS6000 machines and one or two use >>> AS/400's. Please watch the generalizations... >> >> >> >> What do you mean by "still use"? These machines are still in production! > > > Ehhh, that'd be a matter of interpretation, on both counts. As far as > I know, the 7043-260 was the last system badged "RS/6000". The current > pSeries, both POWER4- and POWER5-based, are architecturally different > enough from their ancestors to make "just a name change" not tenable. > The OS is the only real point of overlap. > > The changes from AS/400 to iSeries are comparable. Check out the similarities between the p640 and the 44P-260. There are others that share a comparable similarity. Peace... Sridhar From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 30 20:07:44 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:07:44 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/73 booting! Message-ID: <0IQS00HI0R74GU60@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: PDP-11/73 booting! > From: David Betz > Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:38:59 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Well, I have the two cables that connect to the RDxx drive. Sounds >like my best bet would be to get a BA23 box with the appropriate >panel already installed. I guess I'll start looking for one of those. Certainly if you can find a BA23 with the rack kit that would be an ideal solution just make sure it has the PDP-11 backplane (can have a different one for VAX). Then you can transfer the modules you have to it and have more usable slots as the backplane is 18 slots (ABAB config). There's a plus you'll have the distribution board for the in box mounted RX and RD drives. Allison > >On Nov 30, 2005, at 7:18 PM, Allison wrote: > >> There isn't a "cab kit" for RQDXn. The cables were all internal >> and you used RQDXn in one of the BA23/123 boxen. So you either need >> a M9058 from a scrapped BA123 or a mostly torn up BA23 (micro PDP11 >> or microvax) you can pull the pannel from. You also need the little >> switch pannel inserts from the BA123 to enable READY/OFFLINE and >> Writeprotect. >> >> You need: >> >> 1 50 pin female to female IDC cable (max length 18") RQDXn to breakout >> 1 34pin female to female IDC cable (max length 30") (RX50) >> 1 26pin IDC to card edge (RDxx) >> 1 34 pin IDC to card edge (RDxx) >> >> If your not using either of those boxes then your doing what I did >> which was to build something DEC didn't document. The cables are >> seriously are trivial and not a big a deal like those breakout boards >> and the switch pannels. >> >> Having done this I know. From cclist at sydex.com Wed Nov 30 20:08:10 2005 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:08:10 -0800 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200511301808100303.1A5706FA@10.0.0.252> On 12/1/2005 at 12:51 AM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: >I find those sort of tips totally useless!. There could be many causes of >'no vertical deflection' (or whatever), the fact that _once_ it was >caused by a particular set of components doesn't mean it always is. No, but a tip that says "C303 is shorted, replace" actually gives me something to check for. The last time I used the Euras tips, it was precisely this situation--a GE-chassis 12" set that wouldn't power up. Power was controlled by an MPU connected to the pushbuttons on the front; the MPU had +5 on it, no part number or configuration that I recognized, so what to do? Most folks would throw the thing into electronics recycling, I suppose. But I spent my $5 on the Euras site (you can search for the problem report for free) and verifed that the cap indicated was indeed shorted. Replaced it with a higher WV rated cap and the set's still working a year later. It would have taken quite a while to otherwise probe and locate the faulty component. Some stuff however, doesn't seem to be worth repairing when it stops working. When I came home the other day, I found a socket 462 ATX mobo (sans CPU and memory) on the kitchen table. I asked my wife where it came from and she said that a friend had dropped it off for me. A call to the friend revealed that the mobo was faulty and he'd replaced it and--isn't life grand?--thought I'd like the old one. Well, I suppose the ZIF socket might be worth something, and there's always the button cell--but what else is salvageable? There's a bunch of SMT stuff that I could remove against the time that I might need it, but it seems scarcely worth the effort. Cheers, Chuck From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 20:08:40 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:08:40 -0600 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks for all the advice, and no, I didn't find any offense whatsoever in your post. I think you for the advice and I checked that book out from the library here at work (I work at a community college) Julian > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Tony Duell > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 6:44 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 > > > > > Okay, I pulled the power supply on the VT100 after replacing the two > video > > board components, only to find 3 resistors on the PSU burned out. I > know I > > should probably get a book on how to read a schematic (I will soon) but > in > > the meantime can someone tell me what these resistors are? > > > > I have not tried to seriously look at your diagram, but I am told it's > part of the PCB layout with 3 resistors marked on it. > > What you need to do first is to find the component layout diagram (it > should be in the printset) and find out the references for those > components. It will be something like 'R34'. 'R' for resistor, of course > -- Other common ones are : > C : Capacitor > D : Diode > T : Transformer (sometimes transistor) > U or E : IC > CR, MR : Diode (Crystal Rectifier, Metal Rectifier) > Q : Transistor > L : Inductor > TR : Transformer > > The, you find those resistors on the schematic and work out what part of > the circuit they're associated with. > > Please do not take the nest part as any sort of flame, it's not intended > as such... > > I notice you've been offered a complete replacement PSU for $75. That > seems like a reasonable price _but_ I think the old one can be repaired > for less. I am going to asusme that you do not depend on this VT100 for > income, health, or anything like that, and that while you want to get it > working again, time is not too important. > > The think is that resistors do not burn out for no good reason, > particularly not in SMPSUs (Switch Mode Power Supply Unit). Most often > that 'good reason' is a shorted power transistor, which may, in turn, > have failed due to a problem elsewhere (perhaps a faulty capacitor). You > need to find the real cause, then (and only then) replace the faulty > parts. > > SMPSUs are notoriously nasty to work on. They have live mains where you > may not expect it (although the VT100 supply is relatively nice in this > respect, much of the control cirucitry is isolated from the mains so you > can make measurements there in relative safety. There is live mains on > the PCB of course). A relatively minor fault can ruin a lot of expensive > transistors at switch-on. > > Yes, I do think it can be repaired, and I think you will manage to do it. > What I don't think is that just replacing these 3 resistors will help. > > You are going to have to learn to read and understand a schematic, and > learn some of the theory of the SMPSU. If you don't already have it, get > a second edition of 'The Art of Electronics' by Horrowitz and Hill. The > second edition has a section on SMPSUs (with the full schematic of the > Tandy 2000 sypply...). This, IMHO, is the single best book on electronics > around. Yes, there are plenty of other books you may need or want later > on. But this one is very clear, I've found nothing to really disagree > with in it, and it goes way beyond the 'this is a resistor' level. > > When you've identified which the resistors are, I'll look at the prints > and try to explain that particular bit of circuit. > > -tony From dwight.elvey at amd.com Wed Nov 30 20:31:42 2005 From: dwight.elvey at amd.com (Dwight K. Elvey) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:31:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 Message-ID: <200512010231.SAA27538@ca2h0430.amd.com> Hi I looked at the schematic and the parts you'd indicated. It looks like one of them was one off and was R55 and not D11. From the looks, it might be that you have other failures in the supply. You've indicated R11, R21 and R55. These are all part of the circuit that drives the primary switcher transistor through T3. You might check D11 to make sure it isn't shorted. You might want to run the supply separately to check outputs. A short in T3 to the mains would also cause a lot of troubles and burn these resistors( taking may other part with it ). Other parts to look at would be: Q2, Q3, Q4, E5 and D4 These are parts that could also be involved. It does look like there is something other than the resistors blown in the supply. Dwight From fireflyst at earthlink.net Wed Nov 30 21:00:25 2005 From: fireflyst at earthlink.net (Julian Wolfe) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:00:25 -0600 Subject: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 In-Reply-To: <200512010231.SAA27538@ca2h0430.amd.com> Message-ID: Okay, I'm sure that will help. I'm going to sit down and try to figure this thing out after spending some time with this book. Again, this isn't a hobby-crippling problem, as I'm using my VT220 right now in the VT100's stead. Actually, this is more a cleanup and cosmetic thing than anything else right now - I really don't like having nonworking equipment lying around unless the useful parts have been stripped out and put away and the excess thrown away, and also, the VT100 looks so much better with my vintage setup than the VT220. I'll get back to you guys on this in a day or so. Thanks for everyone's help so far! > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Dwight K. Elvey > Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 8:32 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: More parts I need to replace on the VT100 > > Hi > I looked at the schematic and the parts you'd indicated. > It looks like one of them was one off and was R55 and not > D11. From the looks, it might be that you have other failures > in the supply. You've indicated R11, R21 and R55. These > are all part of the circuit that drives the primary switcher > transistor through T3. > You might check D11 to make sure it isn't shorted. You > might want to run the supply separately to check outputs. > A short in T3 to the mains would also cause a lot of troubles > and burn these resistors( taking may other part with it ). > Other parts to look at would be: > Q2, Q3, Q4, E5 and D4 > These are parts that could also be involved. > It does look like there is something other than the > resistors blown in the supply. > Dwight > From jhfinexgs2 at compsys.to Wed Nov 30 20:57:37 2005 From: jhfinexgs2 at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:57:37 -0500 Subject: Timing of PDP-11 Instructions In-Reply-To: <4389668E.478563AA@cs.ubc.ca> References: <438918C0.5040007@compsys.to> <43891BF6.1090906@pacbell.net> <4389668E.478563AA@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <438E66A1.6040202@compsys.to> >Brent Hilpert wrote: >The other way of parsing Jerome's message is that he wants to *use* the >reciprocal *to calculate* the log, >i.e.: > log(x) = F( 1/x ) > >as opposed to taking the log of the reciprocal ( log(1/x) ). > >F() is a rather basic anti-derivative function in calculus, but I've >forgotton too much calculus to remember how to calculate it. > > Jerome Fine replies: First, I thank all of you who replied as I found helpful suggestions with every reply. What I really want to calculate is: log(v) = log(x * 2 ** A) = log(x) + A * log(2) where 1 =< x =< 2 then: log(1+x) = x - x**2/2 + x**3/3 - x**4/4 ... which converges quickly only for very small x. A faster rate of convergence is with: log(x) = log([1+y]/[1-y]) = 2 y (1+ y**2/3 + y**4/5 + y**6/7 ...) where y = ( x - 1 ) / ( x + 1 ) For this algorithm, I will require 1/(x+1). Then, if x = 2, y = 1.0 / 3.0 Since this still converges rather slowly (when at least 128 bit accuracy is required - perhaps 50 terms are needed), for values of x greater than about 1.125, I will likely split the range into about 8 windows and divide (actually multiply by the pre-calculated reciprocal) by the midpoint of each window. If anyone wants a link for log(2), please ask! IN ADDITION, where I really require 1/[2p+1] is for: log(p+1) = log(p) + 2 ( 1 / [2p+1] + 1 / < 3 * [2p+1]**3 > + 1 / < 5 * [2p+1]**5 > ... ) when I want to calculate a succession of log values. Since I want to calculate log(x) for: x = 1.000Eyy to 9.999Eyy, I require (yy+3)*log(10) and log(1000) to log(9999) Finally, li(x) also requires 1/A. I hope this additional detail clarifies my requirements. The value of li(x) for x = 10 ** 38 is about 10 ** 36 and I therefore require first the value of log(x) to be accurate to at least 128 bits if the accuracy of li(x) is to be accurate for just the integer portion. If you are interested to do a google search under "li for prime numbers", there are ample references including the formulae for li at: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LogarithmicIntegral.html The following provides additional links: http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=logarithmic+integral&btnG=Google+search&meta= I am still not able to figure out why the FORTRAN 77 subroutine has different timing when the destination address is moved from PAR0 to PAR1 under RT-11 under both E11 and a real PDP-11/73. Cache has been suggested, so I will attempt the calculation with a PDP-11/23 which does not have any cache. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year. From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Nov 30 21:39:07 2005 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 22:39:07 -0500 Subject: Timing of PDP-11 Instructions Message-ID: <0IQS007TFVFE8J56@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Timing of PDP-11 Instructions > From: "Jerome H. Fine" > Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 21:57:37 -0500 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >I am still not able to figure out why the FORTRAN 77 >subroutine has different timing when the destination >address is moved from PAR0 to PAR1 under RT-11 under >both E11 and a real PDP-11/73. Cache has been suggested, >so I will attempt the calculation with a PDP-11/23 >which does not have any cache. > >Sincerely yours, > >Jerome Fine Cache is half the answer. The other half is when you hit the bus on a cache miss two things have to happen. You have to do bus transactions which are very slow compared to cache and you have to refill the cache. IF there is any MMU action required (pagein/pageou) you add that overhead as well. Remember the PDP11 is 16 bits. Any addressing outside ~28kwords is going to involve a MMU operation. That a lot of register access and it's costly(in time), more so if you need to move the Dmap in an I&D machine (11/73). The reason for that is those actions lie inside the core OS and require system calls to process. E11 is just being faithful to the core PDP11 so I'd expect similar if not exact same behavour. You didn't say RTll SJ or FB. Shame you can try that (in F77) on a VAX or PC wher 32bit address space is the rule. I'd expect much different behavour.. Till your task is paged out. ;) Allison From swtpc6800 at comcast.net Wed Nov 30 21:59:07 2005 From: swtpc6800 at comcast.net (Michael Holley) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:59:07 -0800 Subject: Free Popular Electronics Issues References: <200511302336.jAUNaDNi098505@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <002a01c5f62b$bf0ec510$0300a8c0@downstairs2> I have some extra issues of Popular Electronics that are available for the cost of postage. U.S. only. Shipping from 98052 but media mail is by the pound. 1978 Jan to Aug and Dec 1979 Mar and Apr 1980 Jan, Sep, Oct and Nov 1982 Mar, Apr, Sep and Nov Here is my Popular Electronics web page. http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/PopularElectronics/Popular_Electronics.htm Michael Holley From leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk Wed Nov 30 22:16:26 2005 From: leeedavison at yahoo.co.uk (lee davison) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 04:16:26 +0000 (GMT) Subject: SMPSU IC explosion... (UC3844) Message-ID: <20051201041626.95853.qmail@web25005.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> > So, given that assumption for now, anyone know of a likely fault > in a typical SMPSU that might cause such a catastrophic chip > failure but no other obvious damage? The switching transistor has probably gone s/c which ends up connecting the rectified mains to the switch output on the IC. They tend not to last long when that happens. Lee. .. ___________________________________________________________ WIN ONE OF THREE YAHOO! VESPAS - Enter now! - http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/features/competitions/vespa.html From swtpc6800 at comcast.net Wed Nov 30 22:55:33 2005 From: swtpc6800 at comcast.net (Michael Holley) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 20:55:33 -0800 Subject: Free Popular Electronics Issues Message-ID: <003b01c5f633$7c6fe4c0$0300a8c0@downstairs2> They are taken. Michael Holley ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Holley" To: Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 7:59 PM Subject: Free Popular Electronics Issues >I have some extra issues of Popular Electronics that are available for the >cost of postage. U.S. only. Shipping from 98052 but media mail is by the >pound. > > 1978 Jan to Aug and Dec > 1979 Mar and Apr > 1980 Jan, Sep, Oct and Nov > 1982 Mar, Apr, Sep and Nov > > Here is my Popular Electronics web page. > http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/PopularElectronics/Popular_Electronics.htm > > Michael Holley From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 30 08:27:30 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 06:27:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20051130142730.93157.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> supposedly software written for even the later 680x0 Macs would run on the earliest ones (most of the time, given enough ram, etc). Of course the PowerPC models had to emulate 680x0 code, so software written specifically for them had to have a PPC to run on. The compact Macs were nifty, cute as all get out. But the line started to become interesting when they got some color...RIGHT ON! II/x/fx/cx/ci. I want a IIfx. So by that logic, the ci is arguably the most interesting. The most collectible is the SE30. __________________________________ Yahoo! Music Unlimited Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/ From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 30 09:23:54 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:23:54 -0800 (PST) Subject: need drivers for old graphics card Message-ID: <20051130152354.79518.qmail@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> made by Vermont Microsystems. Takes up 2 card slots, like an IBM PGA card. Has on onboard 80188. Is VM still around? __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From terry at terryking.us Wed Nov 30 11:58:55 2005 From: terry at terryking.us (Terry King) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:58:55 +0100 Subject: BASIC's question mark and PRINT In-Reply-To: <200511301531.jAUFV3xn093211@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.2.20051130184826.03880280@mail.terryking.us> Waaay...Back when I occasionally taught BASIC and APL, I always heard (Where?) that the "?" meant "What Is". Like: ?2+2 (What is 2 plus 2) ?2^16 and that this was intended to be used in "Immediate Mode". Some BASIC I used to use (Hmmm..??) would accept the "?" in program input lines, like: 100 ?"The Result is ";A but if you did LIST, it was shown as PRINT. That WAS a while ago... Regards, Terry King ...On The Mediterranean in Carthage, Tunisia terry at terryking.us From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Wed Nov 30 17:36:36 2005 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 15:36:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <20051130152512.S76515@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <20051130233636.71321.qmail@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> the original II didn't have the superdrive, though possibly later ones did. My old IIx had a superdrive, and I'm guessing that predated the SE/30. Come to think of it, my SE has a superdrive, and it even says so on the case. --- Fred Cisin wrote: > On Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Adrian Graham wrote: > > I checked my entire Mac collection and none of > them would read 1.44 AND > > write 400K, hmm, I didn't get my SE/30 out of the > garage..... > > That would probably be your best possibility. > Wasn't the SE/30 the first > Mac with the FDHD ("super") drive? If so, then it > would have been the > most important one to have transition capabilities. > > > BTW, the first Lisa that I ever played with DID have > a hard disk > (pre-release one on loan from Apple to UC Berkeley > for Smalltalk > development.) > > -- > Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com > __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com From Mark.Brennan at ie.fujitsu.com Wed Nov 30 17:55:06 2005 From: Mark.Brennan at ie.fujitsu.com (Brennan Mark) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 23:55:06 -0000 Subject: Pyramid - Re: Masscomp OS floppies / tape dump Message-ID: <2ACC3F56AA17DD4290D82232B02E569F61879E@wwmessm11> Hi Ken/Andy/Bill, I have some old marketing Pyramid brochures as well as some videos now on DVD, If you want any copies drop me a line off topic. Regards markb. Mark Brennan System Engineer System Services FUJITSU Fujitsu House, South County Business Park, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, Ireland Tel: +353 (0) 1 2076900 Mobile: +353 (0) 87 2222326 Fax: +353 (0) 1 2161863 E-mail mark.brennan at ie.fujitsu.com Web: http://ie.fujitsu.com/ Fujitsu Services Limited, Registered in England no 96056, Registered Office 26, Finsbury Square, London, EC2A 1SL This e-mail is only for the use of its intended recipient. Its contents are subject to a duty of confidence and may be privileged. Fujitsu Services does not guarantee that this e-mail has not been intercepted and amended or that it is virus-free. -----Original Message----- From: Ken Seefried [mailto:ken at seefried.com] Sent: 24 November 2005 03:33 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Pyramid - Re: Masscomp OS floppies / tape dump From: Bill Pechter > I wish I had the sources for it and Pyramid's OS/x... We had a Pyramid 90x when I was at GaTech. Really nifty box, but exceptionally obscure now. Sorta like our Kendall Square Reasearch machine (KSR/1). From bottlcaps at gmail.com Wed Nov 30 19:29:52 2005 From: bottlcaps at gmail.com (tom ponsford) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 18:29:52 -0700 Subject: IBM RT In-Reply-To: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> References: <43850675.5080704@theriver.com> Message-ID: <438E5210.3080902@gmail.com> Hi All, Several people have requested information on what was acquired. Here then is a partial (80%) of what I got. There is an additional box with some more cards and HDD, but it's under some stuff so it will wait. I did boot it up, but a problem with the keyboard didn't allow me to get much info. That's fixed now but I can't find the system config that I wrote down. I'll post that later. But here's the list: ================= Hardware ================= IBM RT PC 6150 26-0009018 w/ 1 5/14 floppy Drive 2 ESDI HDD E70 & E114 1 Ethernet Card 1 Monochrome Graphics Card IBM 6153 B/W Terminal IBM 6100 2 button mouse (4) IBM Type M keyboard (6 pin Square) (2) HDD IBM E70 ESDI HDD IBM E114 ESDI HDD Maxtor XT-4380E H310 ESDI IBM Tape Drive 6157-002 (2) ADAPTER CARD ISA Ethernet ADAPTER CARD ISA IBM Extended ESDI Adapter ADAPTER CARD Mother/daughter Color Graphics Adapter (2) w/ Color Graphics adapter cable IBM 8MB Enhanced ECC Memory Boards (2) IBM Streaming Tape drive Adapter RS232 Multi port Serial Board Misc. Serial Ports Boards (3) IBM Co-processor Board 4 Inmar 6150 Data Cassette Cartridges Miscellaneous cables and adapters =============== Documentation =============== AIX RT Network File System Reference Guide V2.2 IBM RT Advance Interoperative Executive Operating System Ver 2.1 Assembly Language Reference IBM RT Personal Computer Guide to Operations IBM RT Personal Computer 6150 System Unit Hardware Maintainance and Service Personal Computer AT Co-Processor Services User's Guide IBM RT Personal Computer Planning Guide IBM RT Personal Computer Hardware Technical Reference Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 IBM RT Personal Computer Users Setup Guide and Options Installation ================== Software ================== IBM RT Personal Computer AIX Operations System Diskettes V2.2 (approx 24 5-1/4 Diskettes) Volume 1 of 2 IBM RT Personal Computer Problem Determination Guide include 3 5-1/4 Diagnostic Diskettes ===================== tom ponsford wrote: > I just rescued a complete IBM RT PC. It includes all the > documentation. AIX 2.x software, extra keyboards, extra cards, extra > HDD;s and extra tape drives. It also has an extra ESDI hard drive > labeled Reno 4.3. > > Was there a port of 4.x BSD to the ROMP processor? I thought that it > was tried but not completed. > > There is also a backup tape labeled AOS? > > The whole system looks like its in pretty good condition. And maybe > after consuming mass quantities of turkey tomorrow, I'll see if it > boots up. > > Cheers > > Tom > > From trag at io.com Wed Nov 30 19:14:59 2005 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 19:14:59 -0600 Subject: PC floppy doing Mac 800K; Was: "Market" for old macs? In-Reply-To: <200511301503.jAUF3ID4092949@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200511301503.jAUF3ID4092949@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 22:15:25 -0800 (PST) >From: Fred Cisin >Subject: RE: "Market" for old macs? >> >I'd LOVE to hear from anybody who is successfully formatting and writing >> >GCR with a PC (without adding in a "flux transition" based additional disk >> >controller (such as Catweasel or COPYII Option Board) >> >It is "impossible". (VERY difficult) > >On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> The bigger problem isn't that it's GCR, but rather that it's also variable >> rate GCR. I'd remove the quotes from "impossible" on this one, although, >> maybe with a razor blade and a magnet and a VERY steady hand... > >How fast can you turn the MOTOR ON line on and off? :-) The Outbound Laptop Model 125 (ca. 1989 Mac laptop clone) uses a Citizen brand PC type laptop floppy drive. It reads and writes 800K Mac floppies as well as 1.4 MB floppies on both platforms. However, it has a controller card on the end of the floppy drive. The main components of the floppy controller card are an 85C30, WD37C65, WD92C32 (confused as to why this is there, since the 37C65 has a data separater built in), an LS624 voltage controlled oscillator, a Xicor X9103 digital potentiometer, a 27C256, and a GAL16V8. There's a little bit of other standard 74 series logic on board as well. My main obstacles to cloning the thing is an affordable source of the WD92C32 and the time and method to extract the logic of the GAL. I find it interesting that back in 1989 someone had already found a way to make a PC floppy work as a Mac floppy, though with a double handful of chips. I'm not quite sure what kind of interface the Outbound uses to the floppy drive, though. Obviously, there's no SWIM chip in the Outbound. So did the original designer (Doug Swartz?) cobble up a SWIM from 74 series logic or does the controller on the floppy negate the need for the SWIM? The thing that particularly arouses my curiosity is that the Laptop 125 has no SCSI port, nor external floppy port. But it has a Hirose brand DX10-28 connector (looks a lot like a mini-centronics). That connector can interface to an external floppy or external SCSI controller. The interface point for the external floppy is the 85C30. The interface point for the SCSI controller is a 53C80. So I wonder what the Outbound is using for signals on that 28 pin connector that will work for both of those interfaces and make some kind of sense to the Mac guts at the other end. Jeff Walther