From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Mon Oct 1 00:27:18 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 22:27:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: two multibus systems in Pasadena need homes Message-ID: Sorry about the short notice on this... I will be down in the LA/Pasadena area on Monday October 1 to pick up another load of stuff to liquidate. Among the items are two Intel Multibus systems. I have not yet examined these systems, but the owner (the same one who had the Nova 4 mini) tells me that they're ready to boot if you have some boot media. Each is in a rackmount case about 20 inches cubed. No boot media or docs appear to be present. If you're in the LA area and are interested in one or both, please email me immediately. I will describe the machines to you on the phone when I see them and then if you decide to buy them, I'll deliver them for gas money (range within reason). The machines are in Glendora. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 1 02:11:24 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:11:24 +0100 Subject: Easily Amused... In-Reply-To: <51ea77730709301750h79f98263raa3ab5179a87dfcc@mail.gmail.com> References: <1191193296.26229.5.camel@elric> <51ea77730709301750h79f98263raa3ab5179a87dfcc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1191222684.26229.8.camel@elric> On Sun, 2007-09-30 at 19:50 -0500, Jason T wrote: > On 9/30/07, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > > > Hm. Unfortunately citroen.cx is taken, although I could get citroen.id > > or citroen.ax if I lived in Denmark. Think citroen.gs might be > > available too... > > Or perhaps audi.tt? You know, we have cctech which is very on-topic, cctalk which is minorly offtopic, and what we need also is ccblethers for massively offtopic ;-) Gordon (who is going off to register suzuki.gs) From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Mon Oct 1 03:46:06 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 10:46:06 +0200 Subject: VSII/GPX joy (and minor annoyance) In-Reply-To: <20070930100302.259250@gmx.net> References: <20070930100302.259250@gmx.net> Message-ID: <20071001104606.2ddcdc21@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 12:03:02 +0200 "Arno Kletzander" wrote: > To my understanding, this means the grant chain was broken in slot 5 > (after the RQDX3) because there's no board in its CD half. Yes. But I asume it doesn't matter, as the QDSS isn't a DMA device (?) and maybe can't generate interrupts at all? > (I have yet to get myself a DEC keyboard, mouse and the BC18Z splitter > box cable; at the same time, I'll be looking for a TK drive with > controller and any other stuff I can cram in there.) Most likely you will have to solder the BC18Z yourself. But I think I can provide a LK201 keyboard and a VSxxx rodent. I can throw in some QBus stuff like a 8 port serial mux or a TQK50, maybe a TK50 drive too. But TK50 tape drives are as reliable as RD53 disks... I recommend to get a TK70. Much better. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Mon Oct 1 04:05:00 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:05:00 +0200 Subject: MSCP controllers In-Reply-To: <47000FAA.1060900@softjar.se> References: <200709302032.l8UKW5Gf047899@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47000FAA.1060900@softjar.se> Message-ID: <20071001110500.4ec03a07@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:05:46 +0200 Johnny Billquist wrote: > MSCP is really like serial SCSI (or serial ATA), only done 20 years > earlier. AFAIK MSCP / TMSCP is also the protocol spoken on CI and DSSI. (DSSI is just a "cheap" parallel cable variant of CI.) So the typical VAX cluster setup with HSCs is more similar to a FibreChannel SAN. And I think CI is close to 30 years old. DEC was really ahead of the time. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From cheri-post at web.de Mon Oct 1 04:15:49 2007 From: cheri-post at web.de (Pierre Gebhardt) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:15:49 +0200 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen Message-ID: <123065567@web.de> > > On 9/30/07, Scott Quinn wrote: > > Ethan Dicks wrote: > > > I have a DEC 4000 (Futurebus+, 1 CPU installed approx 384MB RAM... [...] > It already has network and have plenty of SCSI busses, but if I'm > going to be paying to power this thing up, it might as well be fully > loaded. I've had it for years and never run across loose spare parts > - so I'm thinking if I ever _do_ get to upgrade mine, it will be by > harvesting parts from another DEC 4000. Ethan, I share the same experience in regard to DEC 4000 spare parts. Apparently, the Futurebus systems were quite rare. Situation seems to be such, that can get parts only , when you're lucky enough to obtain another DEC 4000 system. The spare parts problem seems to be so serious, that I know of people, who won't let their DEC 4000 run, as they are afraid that boards or other parts my become defective... knowing that it's difficult to get replacement boards. Kind regards, Pierre ______________________________________________________________________________ Jetzt neu! Im riesigen WEB.DE Club SmartDrive Dateien freigeben und mit Freunden teilen! http://www.freemail.web.de/club/smartdrive_ttc.htm/?mc=021134 From Arno_1983 at gmx.de Mon Oct 1 07:25:35 2007 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:25:35 +0200 Subject: VSII/GPX joy (and minor annoyance) Message-ID: <20071001122535.246970@gmx.net> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > > On Sunday 30 September 2007 06:03, Arno Kletzander wrote: > > my very first DEC computer has arrived (...) > Congrats. Thanks. I'd already had my hands on a MicroVAX II and a MicroVAX 3100, but those weren't my own. I basically just dusted them off, tried to boot them up once, wrote a catalog page and placed them in storage at the University's computer collection, so there wasn't much reason to get more involved with them. The MVII wouldn't boot due to a broken power supply and Tony currently talks me through finding the fault there :) > As others will tell you, dead RD53s are a common occurrence. And sometimes quite possible to repair in a makeshift clean box because the problem in most cases is just the sticky rubber bumper inside, as I've been reading. > You can always pull out the VCB cardset... (...) > I think that you may need to pull the VCB to get it to use the serial > port as the console. The ribbon cable interconnects between the VCB boards look a little frail and the connectors are so difficult to get at that I think I was already pushing my luck when I changed the board order. I also would like to keep all the boards in the machine and just have to plug in the user interface components when I get some. As I've said, I can get into the console by causing a Break condition and I don't _need to_ see the identification and countdown stuff. It was just a minor rant on what I would see as a desirable feature of the PROM code. > Other than that, I'm off now looking for a MOP server and some > netbootable OS image, perhaps NetBSD, for a start... I have since finished downloading NetBSD/vax 3.1. In order to make 'er boot that, I still need a MOP daemon that will run without me jumping through flaming hoops, i.e. under Win9x. I have found some old messages from Fred N. van Kempen about a creation of his called OpenMOP, which should meet these requirements, but his homepage www.pdp11.nl is down and, come to think of it, I don't remember seeing him on the list recently. Anybody know where the program can still be obtained? Search machines are coming up mostly blank. And more importantly, is Fred okay? -- Arno Kletzander Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer From ian_primus at yahoo.com Mon Oct 1 07:35:33 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 05:35:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Burroughs B80 rescued Message-ID: <502625.76228.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Well, I drove up to Canada yesterday and picked up the Burroughs B80. That thing is HEAVY. It was down in the basement, and took several of us to get it out. Unfortunately, while the two sections of the main unit (CPU and console) will unbolt, they can't easily be separated because of the massively complex wiring harness inside. You'd think they would have put a few convenient connectors in there. But, that meant that we had to move the main unit up as one piece - it's the size of an office desk and weighs several hundred pounds. The power supply was an interesting beast, and I am unsure of it's purpose. The B80 has a hefty power supply inside it - with transformers and regulators, and seems perfectly capable of being connected to the wall directly. But along with the system unit is a power supply box - 23" wide, 30" tall and 29" deep. I didn't pull the panels off it, but the computer was direcly wired into it originally, with a heavy three conductor cable. (well, sorta directly. A three conductor cable came out the back of the unit, with no connector - and the computer had no power plug on it either. He had it spliced to the power supply's output with tape. ) I really think that this power supply box is only a UPS - but he claims that the computer won't work without it. Maybe it's a power conditioner of some sort? Step-up transformer? It takes 240v in, and I am unsure of the output/computer input. The power supply is a nondescript box with breakers and outlets on the back. I'll know more when I can pull the covers off it. The disk drive was simple to move, it was a slim little rack, 44" tall, with two drives in it - they appear to be Diablo style drives. Amazingly simplistic mechanisms. Looks more like a giant floppy drive than a removable platter hard drive. Exposed heads and very few boards on the drives. There's a controller interface board on the bottom of the rack that they plug into. I was more concerned with moving the computer than inspecting it, but I don't recall seeing any kind of standard looking interface ports. I believe that the B80 can support extra terminals, but I don't see it. Hopefully, when I get it going, I can connect something external to it and back up the disk packs. I have 11 packs, at least one of which is the operating system, MCP. And yes, this computer predates Tron. I do not have any manuals for the machine. There are some documents on Bitsavers, so hopefully some will be close enough for me to figure it out. -Ian From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 1 07:42:04 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 05:42:04 -0700 Subject: two multibus systems in Pasadena need homes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> > > Sorry about the short notice on this...> > I will be down in the LA/Pasadena area on Monday October 1 to pick up> another load of stuff to liquidate. Among the items are two Intel> Multibus systems. I have not yet examined these systems, but the owner> (the same one who had the Nova 4 mini) tells me that they're ready to boot> if you have some boot media. Each is in a rackmount case about 20 inches> cubed. No boot media or docs appear to be present.> > If you're in the LA area and are interested in one or both, please email> me immediately. I will describe the machines to you on the phone when I> see them and then if you decide to buy them, I'll deliver them for gas> money (range within reason). The machines are in Glendora.> Hi If they are Intel boxes and rack mounted, they are most likely MDS800s. These are really nice machines. If I didn't already have one, I'd be able to justify getting one to the wife. If this is what they are, the first CP/M was written for this machine. These may even have 8086 boards in them but should have a 8080 or 8085 board as well. Since they are rack mounted, it is not to likely that they have ICE boards with them because the cables need to be short. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ News, entertainment and everything you care about at Live.com. Get it now! http://www.live.com/getstarted.aspx From dogas at bellsouth.net Mon Oct 1 07:53:42 2007 From: dogas at bellsouth.net (dogas at bellsouth.net) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:53:42 +0000 Subject: Core duo SC/MP? Message-ID: <100120071253.5611.4700EDD6000ACC57000015EB22216128369B0A02D2089B9A019C04040A0DBF9C0E09010B@bellsouth.net> Hi there folks. I just got a sweet NS LCDS (low cost dev system) with a SC/MP II processor card and nice set of docs on the chip itself, the lcds,appnotes,and assembly programming It looks pretty easy to add more than one scamp to the same bus and I was wondering if there are known multiproc scamp systems or archetectures out there. So, in looking for a few additional sc/mp II chips (national semi ISP8060 or ISP 8-A/600N) , the only place I could find was the CPU Shack.com He said he could get them, but 8 would have to be purchased at $14/chip. I only want two more for my rig, any interest in filling out the rest of an order for the other 6? Or does anyone have them cheaper? Thanks - Mike From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Oct 1 08:24:14 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:24:14 +0100 Subject: Burroughs B80 rescued In-Reply-To: <502625.76228.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <502625.76228.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4700F4FE.6080106@yahoo.co.uk> Mr Ian Primus wrote: > Well, I drove up to Canada yesterday and picked up the > Burroughs B80. Nice. (We've got a B90 - anyone know if that's a similar - later - beast, or some totally different machine?) > Unfortunately, while the two sections of the main unit > (CPU and console) will unbolt, they can't easily be > separated because of the massively complex wiring > harness inside. That seems to be quite common on old systems - they weren't supposed to be moved much, and engineers would commission/decommission them accordingly. The guys at the nuclear station where our Marconi came from actually put connectors into the wiring loom in order to make life a bit easier. I presume connectors were just seen as a weak point in the system once (I doubt expense came into it, not in the days when computers cost vast amounts of money anyway) > The power supply was an interesting beast, and I am > unsure of it's purpose. The B80 has a hefty power > supply inside it - with transformers and regulators, > and seems perfectly capable of being connected to the > wall directly. But along with the system unit is a > power supply box - 23" wide, 30" tall and 29" deep. That's big. Our Marconi (four cabs, each about 8'x2'x1') has a step-down unit, but that's still only about 2'x1'x1' in size, and I imagine the machine's a lot more power-hungry than this B80. Our BCL Susie machine (which I think is roughly the same physical size as the B80) has line conditioning transformers, but they're integral to its desk and not large at all (maybe 12"x8"x8"). Now, our Elliott 803 is a different matter - big beast, much bigger than the B80, but it does have an external power cabinet about the size you describe. I'm pretty certain that one is a UPS too, having room for a couple of big wet-cell batteries inside. Cabinet output I think I was told is DC at around 40V. Again, what you have seems a bit big for the job it does (given the machine size), but a UPS would certainly push the size up by quite a bit versus line conditioning / AC step-down / step-up. > I'll know more when I can pull the covers off it. In this hobby, the speculation's often more fun than the reality ;) cheers Jules From pcoghlan+cctech at vms.eurokom.ie Mon Oct 1 08:17:19 2007 From: pcoghlan+cctech at vms.eurokom.ie (Peter Coghlan) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:17:19 +0100 (WET-DST) Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? Message-ID: <01MM0DKWJCFMJU2QKN@vms.eurokom.ie> > >I have monitored the postings and know of a few collectors of VAXen, all types it seems. The >PDP family is popular too. What about Alphaservers? some are by classic definition at least >10 years old such as the 1000/1000A and 1200 series. Alphastations definitely qualify like the >200/250/255/500 series. I collect most of the Alpha family as I use them frequently. OpenVMS >and Digital Unix is the OS of choice. > I have: 3 x Vaxstation 2000 - 6MB 2 x Vaxstation 3100 Model 76 16MB/24MB 1 x Microvax 3100 - 16MB 1 x Microvax 3100 Model 40 - 24MB 1 x Microvax 3100 Model 80 - 16MB 1 x Microvax 4000-100A - 128MB 2 x Dec 3000 M600 1 x Alphaserver 1000A 1 x Alphaserver 2100 4/275 All run VMS - the Alphaserver 1000A also has NT but I've never worked up the enthusiasm to find out how to break into it. The Alphaserver 2100 also has Digital Unix - I keep threatening to delete this but I have kept it around in case I need to make use of it for porting something unixy to VMS. The Microvax 4000-100A runs fine when it's cold but croaks once it heats up with most of the useful console commands generating errors and providing no help in diagnosing the problem. Some random attempts to narrow down the problem with a can of freezer were not successful. One of the Microvax 3100s had an intermittent problem with its SCSI interface which has now turned permanent. The model 80 died in the middle of a self test and can't be persuaded to do anything now. I haven't had any success in locating a list of the diagnostic led codes, only for the earlier models which seem to have quite different firmware. The two Dec 3000 machines both failed in service before I got them. Nothing appears on the console and as far as I recall, the diagnostic leds count down as far as F0 and then stop. The Alphaserver 2100 worked fine when I first got it but some time ago began powering itself off intermittently due to a problem with the main fan which started varying its speed erratically. At one point the machine was all but unusable but now the problem appears to have gone into hiding! I would be interested in obtaining more memory, cpu and a spare fan for the 2100, possibly also a decent graphics card and a redundant power supply for it. I would also be interested in finding out about what I could do with the Qbus interface on the 4000-100A and what bits and pieces would be needed to get started with this. I presume at a minimum, I need one or two oddball cables, a backplane of some sort and a power supply. I would like to get hold of one or two small DSSI disks as the ones that came with this machine both died. I am located in Dublin, Ireland - unfortunately there don't seem to be many other classic computer nuts located nearby. Regards, Peter. From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 1 08:31:15 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:31:15 -0600 Subject: "destructive read of a ROM"? Message-ID: Over on comp.terminals someone wrote this about the VT100: "The power-on operation does a "destructive" read of the ROM-based firmware. After so many power-ups, the ROM becomes unreadable. This was a design issue at the time - the technology to fix it did not evolve until the VT200 series." Is this true? I've never heard of a ROM being damaged by reading it a lot. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 1 08:32:18 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 14:32:18 +0100 Subject: "destructive read of a ROM"? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710011432.18845.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Monday 01 October 2007 14:31:15 Richard wrote: > Over on comp.terminals someone wrote this about the VT100: > > "The power-on operation does a "destructive" read of the > ROM-based firmware. After so many power-ups, the ROM becomes > unreadable. This was a design issue at the time - the technology > to fix it did not evolve until the VT200 series." > > Is this true? I've never heard of a ROM being damaged by reading it a > lot. A comment like the above would merit an uncharitable response on some of the straight-talking, no-nonsense automotive lists I'm on. Gordon From melamy at earthlink.net Mon Oct 1 08:40:00 2007 From: melamy at earthlink.net (Steve Thatcher) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 06:40:00 -0700 (GMT-07:00) Subject: "destructive read" Message-ID: <1738229.1191246000916.JavaMail.root@elwamui-wigeon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> the "destructive read" could have been a design issue where the ROM outputs are enabled while some other output drive is attempting to use the data bus. The ROM output drivers may well fail after repeatedly being abused like this. >On Monday 01 October 2007 14:31:15 Richard wrote: >> Over on comp.terminals someone wrote this about the VT100: >> >> "The power-on operation does a "destructive" read of the >> ROM-based firmware. After so many power-ups, the ROM becomes >> unreadable. This was a design issue at the time - the technology >> to fix it did not evolve until the VT200 series." >> >> Is this true? I've never heard of a ROM being damaged by reading it a >> lot. From caveguy at sbcglobal.net Mon Oct 1 09:16:34 2007 From: caveguy at sbcglobal.net (Bob Bradlee) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:16:34 -0400 Subject: "destructive read" In-Reply-To: <1738229.1191246000916.JavaMail.root@elwamui-wigeon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <200710011416.l91EGage042441@billy.ezwind.net> I am aware of some problems with poorly sequenced devices that would fail over time from the constant abuse. Mixing ttl logic with opencollector devices was still a neat idea to keep a mininum chip count about the time those monitors were designed. During powerup ttl devices were trying to push a 1 onto a buss where several opencollector devices trying to pull the buss to ground at the same time. A lot of things happen in those first clock cycles on powerup, before everything falls into sync. The other Bob On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 06:40:00 -0700 (GMT-07:00), Steve Thatcher wrote: >the "destructive read" could have been a design issue where the ROM outputs are enabled while some other output drive is attempting to use the data bus. The ROM output drivers may well fail after repeatedly being abused like this. From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 1 09:38:14 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:38:14 -0600 Subject: "destructive read" In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:16:34 -0400. <200710011416.l91EGage042441@billy.ezwind.net> Message-ID: Yeah, but this is a VT100 we're talking about. I imagine that most of us here have used one, and some of us have probably used them *a lot*. If this sort of thing were common with VT100s, wouldn't one of us experienced it by now? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From blstuart at bellsouth.net Mon Oct 1 09:57:36 2007 From: blstuart at bellsouth.net (Brian L. Stuart) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:57:36 +0000 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? Message-ID: <100120071457.18723.47010AE00000152B0000492322230650629B0A02D2089B9A019C04040A0DBF9B9D0E9A9B9C040D@bellsouth.net> From: "Dan Snyder" > Heat issues are what the Alphaserver 1200 is about, for sure keep the case > closed. It has > dual 475W supplies and both are required for operation. It does serve very > well as a space > heater. I justify it for this purpose by looking at the watt rating of an > average oil filled electric > space heater, they are 1500W. I'll second that. I've got a 5300 (the "white box" version of the 1200). I ended up building a little cardboard duct to keep it from blowing on my legs. And I sometimes even keep the window cracked open during the winter. Speaking of cooling these things, does anyone know of a good source of CPU fans? My second CPU is currently out of the machine because the fan doesn't spin up right and the system shuts down because of it. As near as I can tell, they're not the same a the fans on commodity Intel boxes. BLS From zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com Mon Oct 1 11:30:55 2007 From: zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 12:30:55 -0400 Subject: Identify "System 3000" machine (was: Epson QX-10 Emulator In-Reply-To: <696722.22790.qm@web61018.mail.yahoo.com> References: <46FE9EB3.16601.581C5E9D@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071001122339.012cc188@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Chris M may have mentioned these words: >this is going to sound like a real silly question, and >I really should have written it down, but I payed a >visit to this guy in S.Jersey that had a bunch of >stuff, mostly pretty OT peecee stuff, but he had this >one large thing tucked away beneath the rest of the >stuff. 3 letters duh System 3000 IIRC (and that's a >big if). Not "duh" -- that was prolly "DEC" - short for Digital Equipment Corporation. Doubtful you've ever heard of the company on _this_ list before... ;-) I have a DEC System 3000 Model 300 at home... nice machine. Had Tru64 Unix on it for the wife. Gotta love not worrying about spyware or viruses! :-) Sadly, the framebuffer didn't have enough colors for true-color, and when the wife wanted to view more pictures & stuff on the web, she wanted an upgrade. Ah well, a Compaq dual-processor server & a 32Meg PCI video card w/Linux to the rescue... Still have the box & 19" monitor, tho. Heavy sucker that it is... Assuming I actually get a job soon (Supposedly, the longer I wait to hear if I have the job, the better chance I have of getting the job... weird logic, but it's for "da man") and can afford to go to a VCF or two next year... it may be available for cheap. Right now I can barely afford a pot to cook in... let alone petrol for the 4x4. Shipping is out of the question... Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | Anarchy doesn't scale well. -- Me zmerch at 30below.com. | SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 12:34:17 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:34:17 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <575131af0710011034n6105838aq7304f9b415f0a8fc@mail.gmail.com> On 30/09/2007, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 16:28:18 +0100 > "Liam Proven" wrote: > > > [1] I don't have a suitable monitor cable. > It is not hard to construct. I've not soldered a computer cable since the 1980s and I was rubbish at it then. And even so, I have no source for the relevant connectors! > If you don't > have a color frame buffer (GPX or SPX) How would I tell? -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 12:36:50 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:36:50 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <20070930153501.4F845BA45B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930153501.4F845BA45B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710011036m7a59c94cj572d5cd8bb5344c0@mail.gmail.com> On 30/09/2007, Tim Shoppa wrote: > "Liam Proven" wrote: > > The two problems I don't currently have answers for are these. > > > > [1] I don't have a suitable monitor cable. > > If you don't find one, you can still use a MMJ serial cable/console > to boot it. I don't own a serial terminal. I'd have to try to make a cable and hook it to a PC and use a terminal emulator. Yet more complexity! > > [2] Friends have commented to me that a VAX of this age won't be able > > to boot from CD-ROM. > > It will, but you'll have to find a SCSI CD-ROM that supports 512 byte blocks. Did I not mention that in my original post? :?) Looking back I appear to have put KB instead of B, but still... > VAXcluster setup isn't hard but I've been doing it for decades and > learned all the tricks in the first couple years, so maybe I'm > not the guy to judge :-). I've not touched a VMS prompt since about 1995 and even then I never installed a machine or built a cluster. I did things like back it up, clear out logfiles, add the odd user and reboot occasionally. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 12:37:59 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:37:59 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <46FFC6BE.2090008@yahoo.co.uk> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <51ea77730709300836g7851b0aexffe289b2409a5b6b@mail.gmail.com> <46FFC6BE.2090008@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <575131af0710011037h21087e3dveb686a14407483bf@mail.gmail.com> On 30/09/2007, Jules Richardson wrote: > Freecycle lists seem awash with old 90's Apple kit free for the asking... Alas, *my garage* is awash with old Apple kit! Any CCers in London, England who fancy a free Mac should contact me at the details below... -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 12:38:28 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:38:28 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <51ea77730709300836g7851b0aexffe289b2409a5b6b@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <51ea77730709300836g7851b0aexffe289b2409a5b6b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710011038j77f4d025q57d522fe8e6eda75@mail.gmail.com> On 30/09/2007, Jason T wrote: > On 9/30/07, Liam Proven wrote: > > > Is this likely to be correct? That a 3100/38 won't be able to boot > > from CD? If it can, what sort of CD-ROM drive will I need? Do I need > > the special 512KB block support that SPARCstations are supposed to > > need? I have an old external Apple drive (CD300, I think) that I hope > > will do, if I can come up with the right permutations of SCSI cables > > to connect it... > > My 3100/30 boots fine off the Hobbyist VMS disc using my > boots-anything Apple CD300 (aka Sony) drive. It's the one with the > removable trays, not built-in. That drive has booted all the Vaxen, > SGI, Suns and NeXT machines I have. Painfully slow, but does the job. Excellent news. Thanks for that! -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 12:40:22 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:40:22 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <9e2403920709300850w294f2fedka22e62bec32a793b@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <9e2403920709300850w294f2fedka22e62bec32a793b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710011040q6ecd06dbq3436142f21f278bf@mail.gmail.com> On 30/09/2007, Josef Chessor wrote: > Liam, > > On 9/30/07, Liam Proven wrote: > > Well, last night, I went and collected my first ever DEC box. It's a > > VAXstation 3100/38, bought on eBay for 99p (UK?0.99). > > [2] Friends have commented to me that a VAX of this age won't be able > > to boot from CD-ROM. Somewhere, I have a hobbyist VMS CD, if I can > > find it. It's been suggested to me that the easiest way to install > > would be to install VMS onto SIMH on my PC, netboot the VAXstation off > > the simulated VAX and install from one to the other. This sounds > > moderately hairy to me. I'm not a VMS virgin but I've not used it in > > 15y or so and I've never installed a machine from scratch - I just did > > day-to-day sysop duties. > > Congratulations, by the way. :-) Thanks! > I went a slightly different route, lacking an appropriate CD-ROM > drive: I installed OpenVMS/VAX 7.2 Hobbyist onto a SIMH disk image, > then DD'd the image onto a real SCSI drive in Unix. My 3100 M38 > booted off the hard drive and has been quite happy since. Gosh. I hadn't thought of that. I no longer use SCSI much on PCs, but I could stick a card into my Linux box and do that, no problem... > Installing from scratch isn't that hard. There are a few tutorials > (geared for SIMH) that'll get you started online, like this one: > > http://www.wherry.com/gadgets/retrocomputing/vax-simh.html Thanks. I had already seen and read that. Moderately hairy, but I *am* doing this to learn! -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 12:47:32 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:47:32 +0100 Subject: "Chuck" question In-Reply-To: References: <46FEDE0F.21577.5913DD92@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710011047p21d0240bo92e8bbc93d3babe1@mail.gmail.com> On 30/09/2007, Zane H. Healy wrote: > Not knowing the show (and not caring to), my hand-wave of an > explanation would be the guy had the computer around when he was a > little kid and took it to college with him. He might have written > software for it just for fun. That's what I did, going up to the University of London in 1985, with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K in a full-travel keyboard and a small black-and-white TV. At first, outside of playing, it did some basic stats for me. Chi-squared and so on, written in BASIC. A year or so later, it had a 5.25" floppy drive, a printer port and I was writing essays on it. This made me painfully cutting-edge for the time; AFAIK I was the only person in my year to have their own computer. I also had an account on the college's cluster of twin VAX 11/870s, on which I learned Fortran (which I thought would be useful, but wasn't) and things like email and BBSs and comms (which I didn't think would be useful, but was). -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Oct 1 13:42:58 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 14:42:58 -0400 Subject: MSCP controllers In-Reply-To: <20071001110500.4ec03a07@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <200709302032.l8UKW5Gf047899@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47000FAA.1060900@softjar.se> <20071001110500.4ec03a07@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: On Oct 1, 2007, at 5:05 AM, Jochen Kunz wrote: >> MSCP is really like serial SCSI (or serial ATA), only done 20 years >> earlier. > AFAIK MSCP / TMSCP is also the protocol spoken on CI and DSSI. > (DSSI is > just a "cheap" parallel cable variant of CI.) So the typical VAX > cluster > setup with HSCs is more similar to a FibreChannel SAN. And I think > CI is > close to 30 years old. > > DEC was really ahead of the time. Absolutely. Every time I hear someone blathering on about "new SAN technology" I show them stuff about VAXclusters and CI. I always get a kick out of the reactions. :) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Mon Oct 1 13:43:46 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 11:43:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: two multibus systems in Pasadena need homes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, dwight elvey wrote: > > If they are Intel boxes and rack mounted, they are most > likely MDS800s. These are really nice machines. If I didn't already > have one, I'd be able to justify getting one to the wife. > If this is what they are, the first CP/M was written for this > machine. > These may even have 8086 boards in them but should have > a 8080 or 8085 board as well. Since they are rack mounted, > it is not to likely that they have ICE boards with them because > the cables need to be short. > Dwight Update: There's only one box and it's not clear if it's complete or not. Want it for spare parts? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From chaosotter76 at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 14:19:23 2007 From: chaosotter76 at gmail.com (Mark Meiss) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:19:23 -0400 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> On 9/27/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > How well has TI-99/4A software on floppies been preserved? We just > received a very large donation. As part of the donation is what > appears to be a complete TI-99/4A system complete with the expansion > box, and a couple other expansions. There is documentation for at > least some of the hardware and software. Preservation for TI-99/4A software on floppies seems to be pretty poor right now, because of (as Jim mentioned) the rarity of the expansion box and third-party software that used it. There are a few large-ish archives, but they're almost entirely unorganized -- nothing remotely approaching the TOSEC sets available for other systems. If you're able to image a significant number of those floppies, that would be a real service to enthusiasts. You might know this already, but you might look to see whether that expansion box houses a MyArc Geneve 9640, or any of the software is for the Geneve rather than the stock TI-99/4A. From Arno_1983 at gmx.de Mon Oct 1 14:25:43 2007 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:25:43 +0200 Subject: VSII/GPX joy (and minor annoyance) Message-ID: <20071001192543.242690@gmx.net> Jochen Kunz wrote: > > To my understanding, this means the grant chain was broken in slot 5 > > (after the RQDX3) because there's no board in its CD half. > Yes. But I asume it doesn't matter, as the QDSS isn't a DMA device (?) > and maybe can't generate interrupts at all? Hmm. One half of the base board does however have circuitry connected to those pads that are just linked by grant continuity traces on the second half (and the 4-plane memory boards), so I figured it might actually be doing something useful with it. Haven't studied the technical description yet... > Most likely you will have to solder the BC18Z yourself. But I think I > can provide a LK201 keyboard and a VSxxx rodent. I can throw in some > QBus stuff like a 8 port serial mux or a TQK50, maybe a TK50 drive too. > But TK50 tape drives are as reliable as RD53 disks... I recommend to get > a TK70. Much better. I found the pinouts of the BC18Z somewhere (and I'm aware that there is a buggy version), so I should be able to construct a replacement. Your offer for the other stuff is gratefully taken, let me know what I should be on the lookout for you in private mail. The MVII at University has a TK70 installed, but as it will probably never see much use even if we manage to fix the supply, I might be able to get it traded for a TK50 (which was what the machine originally had). -- Arno Kletzander Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen! Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer From chaosotter76 at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 14:28:20 2007 From: chaosotter76 at gmail.com (Mark Meiss) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:28:20 -0400 Subject: Coco keyboards In-Reply-To: References: <200709292359.l8TNx0Cu023103@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <653a64ac0710011228m4b70344dy5d7c45ab24ae6bd7@mail.gmail.com> On 9/30/07, Tony Duell wrote: > > I assume all CoCo1s had the older design of processor board with things > like discrete resistors for the DAC, while all CoCo 2's had the 2 ASICs, > one contianing the DAC, analogue mux, comparator, etc, the other > containing the cassette relay driver, 5V regulator controller and RS232 > level shifters. That brings to mind a surprise acquisition I got recently from a mixed lot on eBay: it's an original silver case CoCo 1 with fairly low serial number, but decked out with ECB 1.1, full 64KB, and a CoCo 3 keyboard. Were the CoCo 3 keyboards available to the public before the actual release of the CoCo 3? From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Mon Oct 1 14:30:59 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 21:30:59 +0200 Subject: VSII/GPX joy (and minor annoyance) In-Reply-To: <20071001122535.246970@gmx.net> References: <20071001122535.246970@gmx.net> Message-ID: <20071001213059.4c1c6fa3@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:25:35 +0200 "Arno Kletzander" wrote: > The MVII wouldn't boot due to a broken power supply and Tony currently > talks me through finding the fault there :) If "everything fails": I may have a spare BA123 PSU around somewhere... -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From chaosotter76 at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 14:32:50 2007 From: chaosotter76 at gmail.com (Mark Meiss) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:32:50 -0400 Subject: 80s video game markets... In-Reply-To: <470002D2.7080408@yahoo.co.uk> References: <470002D2.7080408@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <653a64ac0710011232ka6e79eanae9e6b60041b0ad7@mail.gmail.com> On 9/30/07, Jules Richardson wrote: > Like I said, random mutterings. I'm just curious what was going on > elsewhere > while us UK lot were playing Frak, Manic Miner, Repton, Monty Mole etc... > :-) Having spent a lot of time discussing this very topic with a British co-worker, I can say that one key difference is that we in the U.S. didn't have any such thing as a Football Management game... One thing that surprised him was learning that the Sinclair Spectrum made almost no market impact at all in the US, but the ZX-81 / TS-1000 did. It made a lot more sense to him when I explained that Commodore was offering people $100 trade-in value on a $50 Timex-Sinclair 1000. From aserlanger at earthlink.net Mon Oct 1 14:36:22 2007 From: aserlanger at earthlink.net (aserlanger at earthlink.net) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:36:22 -0400 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? In-Reply-To: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> References: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <002a01c80462$5959c2a0$0202fea9@hpmpc01> I had absolutely the same experience. I paid in full for a machine in march of 2003. For a year he bs'ed me about how the machine was a few months off. Then in june of 2004 I asked for my money back. He then went from telling me how honorable a businessman he was, to lying about sending me a refund, to no response at all. This man is in my opinion a liar and a fraud if not worse. DO NOT SEND HIM MONEY NO MATTER WHAT HE CLAIMS HE CAN DO. -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Robert Stek Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 12:22 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? I was an early fan of the Todd Fischer's IMSAI II project (www.imsai.net) and sent off a deposit several years ago. I even offered to review it in Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar Ink (I'm a friend of Steve's and formerly lived in Hartford). I understand the problems of a task like re-inventing the IMSAI and think that I have been more than patient. His website is still active, he has a copyright date of 2007 on it, and it appears that you can still order not only an IMSAI II but other items as well. Unfortunately I have emailed him several times over the past 12-18 months and haven't had the courtesy of a response. I know he's there - he posts in comp.os.cpm - but from him to me: nada, zip, zilch, nothing. Is there anyone else on the list who was as retrospectively foolish as I as to trust him with a deposit? It doesn't speak much for his ethics if he advertises and takes orders for non-existent products (who was that guy and his company that advertised in Kilobaud, among others, back in the '70's with full page ads for non-existent products? Remember that?). And his customer service skills are non-existent if he just ignores politely worded inqueries re: progress on the product. So, am I the only one still waiting for an IMSAI II? Bob Stek Saver of Lost Sols From chaosotter76 at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 14:41:54 2007 From: chaosotter76 at gmail.com (Mark Meiss) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:41:54 -0400 Subject: "Chuck" question In-Reply-To: <200709301723.l8UHNZOf030359@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> References: <200709301723.l8UHNZOf030359@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> Message-ID: <653a64ac0710011241t673b0b1bsd6cb0d663f495470@mail.gmail.com> On 9/30/07, Martin Scott Goldberg wrote: > > > I've never had any problems, and I've gotten some pretty grimy "left in a > box used as a trash dump for the last 25 years" Atari computers. I think > the only things Atari wise I've had minor problems with have been ST era > drives going bad. And damn those ST era drives to hell. Both ST354s I've managed to get my hands on have had drive belts that had already turned to goo and melted all over the innards. From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Mon Oct 1 14:48:58 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 21:48:58 +0200 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710011034n6105838aq7304f9b415f0a8fc@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <575131af0710011034n6105838aq7304f9b415f0a8fc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071001214858.51d3ee59@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:34:17 +0100 "Liam Proven" wrote: > > If you don't have a color frame buffer (GPX or SPX) > How would I tell? There may be some boot PROM commands to get that information, maybe "show conf". (It is to long ago that I played with a VS3k1.) At least you can see it by physical inspection: The mono frame buffer is on the main PCB. GPX or SPX are mezzanine plug in cards sitting on top of the main PCB, maybe 20x25 cm^2 in size. Don't confuse it with RAM options. These are mezzanine plug in cards too, but they are only about 10x20 cm^2 and they are aligned to the front of the machine. The framebuffer is aligned in the middle / a bit to the back. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Mon Oct 1 15:01:42 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 22:01:42 +0200 Subject: MSCP controllers In-Reply-To: References: <200709302032.l8UKW5Gf047899@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47000FAA.1060900@softjar.se> <20071001110500.4ec03a07@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <20071001220142.277c62ff@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 14:42:58 -0400 Dave McGuire wrote: > Absolutely. Every time I hear someone blathering on about "new > SAN technology" I show them stuff about VAXclusters and CI. I always > get a kick out of the reactions. :) Yes, thats it. Just like that 64 bit hype. DEC Alpha systems where the first real 64 bit machines, 15, 16 (?) years ago... Where do HyperTransport and HyperThreading originate? Alpha... Did you read "Origins and Development of TOPS-20"? http://tenex.opost.com/hbook.html -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From ian_primus at yahoo.com Mon Oct 1 15:03:13 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 13:03:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Coco keyboards In-Reply-To: <653a64ac0710011228m4b70344dy5d7c45ab24ae6bd7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <862604.94311.qm@web52711.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > That brings to mind a surprise acquisition I got > recently from a mixed lot > on eBay: it's an original silver case CoCo 1 with > fairly low serial number, > but decked out with ECB 1.1, full 64KB, and a CoCo 3 > keyboard. Were the > CoCo 3 keyboards available to the public before the > actual release of the > CoCo 3? Not that I am aware of, although third party keyboards were a popular upgrade at the time. I saw all kinds of ads for them in Rainbow. So, it might be a third party upgrade. If it's an authentic part, then it's always possible that someone pieced together the machine from other systems. I don't recall if the CoCo 3 keyboard pinout will match a CoCo 1, but it's possible. I also seem to remember hacks people did, adding extra switches manually to the matrix to add extra keys to the CoCo. -Ian From rtellason at verizon.net Mon Oct 1 15:11:42 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:11:42 -0400 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> References: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 01 October 2007 15:19, Mark Meiss wrote: > Preservation for TI-99/4A software on floppies seems to be pretty poor > right now, because of (as Jim mentioned) the rarity of the expansion box > and third-party software that used it. I remember back when we were talking about getting a computer for the first time... She called my attention to the fact that there was this local place advertising that machine "for only $149"... So we went up there and talked to them about it. My thoughts at that time were that to have something useful you'd need at least two floppy drives. I also thought that more memory than what came in the basic unit wasn't a bad idea, either. The sales dude did some figuring, and when the expansion box, the memory, and the drives were all added in the total came to something over $1,000 -- not as good a deal as it looked like, at the time. :-) I also didn't consider that it had only a 40-column screen, either. Having done a bunch of work on C64s, and having gotten (eventually) an Osborne Executive which came with a built-in monitor showing an 80-column screen, I think I probably would've found that hard to live with as well. I suspect that that machine was an attempt to make a "computer appliance" which would provide a platform for commercial software or similar, and it wasn't even that good at that. I never got one, never played around with one, but I don't think I'm missing much. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 1 15:19:26 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 13:19:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: "destructive read of a ROM"? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20071001131834.H98453@shell.lmi.net> On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: > Over on comp.terminals someone wrote this about the VT100: > "The power-on operation does a "destructive" read of the > ROM-based firmware. After so many power-ups, the ROM becomes > unreadable. This was a design issue at the time - the technology > to fix it did not evolve until the VT200 series." > Is this true? I've never heard of a ROM being damaged by reading it a > lot. Then we'll have to send John Titor back to get some "fresh" VT100s! From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 1 15:20:59 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 13:20:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Easily Amused... In-Reply-To: <1191222684.26229.8.camel@elric> References: <1191193296.26229.5.camel@elric> <51ea77730709301750h79f98263raa3ab5179a87dfcc@mail.gmail.com> <1191222684.26229.8.camel@elric> Message-ID: <20071001132017.R98453@shell.lmi.net> > > > Hm. Unfortunately citroen.cx is taken, although I could get citroen.id > > > or citroen.ax if I lived in Denmark. Think citroen.gs might be > > > available too... > > Or perhaps audi.tt? On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > You know, we have cctech which is very on-topic, cctalk which is minorly > offtopic, and what we need also is ccblethers for massively offtopic ;-) > Gordon (who is going off to register suzuki.gs) . . . and what about AppleII.GS ? From silent700 at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 15:23:35 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:23:35 -0500 Subject: Easily Amused... In-Reply-To: <20071001132017.R98453@shell.lmi.net> References: <1191193296.26229.5.camel@elric> <51ea77730709301750h79f98263raa3ab5179a87dfcc@mail.gmail.com> <1191222684.26229.8.camel@elric> <20071001132017.R98453@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <51ea77730710011323l21c1aa9p7feab2c22b0d62e9@mail.gmail.com> On 10/1/07, Fred Cisin wrote: > > . . . and what about AppleII.GS ? Ooo....back on topic! Now how does one go about registering a .gs domain? I'm waiting for Iraq to get their act together so I can get low.iq :) From silent700 at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 15:26:21 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 15:26:21 -0500 Subject: Easily Amused... In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710011323l21c1aa9p7feab2c22b0d62e9@mail.gmail.com> References: <1191193296.26229.5.camel@elric> <51ea77730709301750h79f98263raa3ab5179a87dfcc@mail.gmail.com> <1191222684.26229.8.camel@elric> <20071001132017.R98453@shell.lmi.net> <51ea77730710011323l21c1aa9p7feab2c22b0d62e9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <51ea77730710011326l7955bf11w372986b9827c8ba6@mail.gmail.com> On 10/1/07, Jason T wrote: > On 10/1/07, Fred Cisin wrote: > > > > . . . and what about AppleII.GS ? > > Ooo....back on topic! Now how does one go about registering a .gs domain? That would be here: https://secure.nic.gs/index.jsp ...and it's taken :( From zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com Mon Oct 1 15:39:49 2007 From: zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:39:49 -0400 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071001162907.03735c98@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Roy J. Tellason may have mentioned these words: >My thoughts at that time were that to have something useful you'd need at >least two floppy drives. I also thought that more memory than what came in >the basic unit wasn't a bad idea, either. The sales dude did some >figuring, >and when the expansion box, the memory, and the drives were all added in >the total came to something over $1,000 -- not as good a deal as it looked >like, at the time. :-) You might have a slightly different concept of "useful" than I did - at least with my CoCo (and with most other computers I'd used at the time) 1 floppy drive was all that was necessary to be "useful." I certainly didn't "complain" after getting my second floppy drive (many years later) but I did a *lot* of useful work on single-floppy systems. Other than that, you're right - more memory was always good. ;-) >I also didn't consider that it had only a 40-column screen, either. Having >done a bunch of work on C64s, and having gotten (eventually) an Osborne >Executive which came with a built-in monitor showing an 80-column screen, I >think I probably would've found that hard to live with as well. Not me - having used a 32x16 screen (which was rather limiting) on the CoCo and a 40x16 screen on my Tandy 200 (for which I was *very* glad I chose that over the 40x8 of the Model 100) 40x24 would have been "ok". At least at 40 columns, it's still easy to visually extrapolate what 80-char lines look like - a very painful exercise on 32x16! >I never got one, never played around with one, but I don't think I'm >missing much. Well, if you were a Basic programmer (like I was at the time) then you *really* weren't missing much! IIRC, it's Basic is not run on the primary CPU, but on the graphics chip! As such, it's a pretty limited Basic, and dog slow... at least 10x slower (for a simple For/Next loop) than a CoCo2, so for a home platform, you'd need to learn assembly or purchase (read: more $$$) a dev package for C/Fortran/Forth/whatever else might've been available for that box. It did seem to have some decent game cartridges, but other than that, for a more "serious" work platform, you're right - it needed a *lot* more than just the bare machine. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch at 30below.com What do you do when Life gives you lemons, and you don't *like* lemonade????????????? From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Oct 1 15:51:42 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 16:51:42 -0400 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? In-Reply-To: <002a01c80462$5959c2a0$0202fea9@hpmpc01> References: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> <002a01c80462$5959c2a0$0202fea9@hpmpc01> Message-ID: <486DD8CC-5188-44FF-B748-3E9A768884C4@neurotica.com> Crap, I should've ordered that replacement top cover when I had the chance. :-( Does anyone here have a spare top cover for an original IMSAI 8080? -Dave On Oct 1, 2007, at 3:36 PM, aserlanger at earthlink.net wrote: > I had absolutely the same experience. I paid in full for a machine > in march > of 2003. For a year he bs'ed me about how the machine was a few > months off. > Then in june of 2004 I asked for my money back. He then went from > telling me > how honorable a businessman he was, to lying about sending me a > refund, to > no response at all. This man is in my opinion a liar and a fraud if > not > worse. DO NOT SEND HIM MONEY NO MATTER WHAT HE CLAIMS HE CAN DO. > > -----Original Message----- > From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech- > bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of Robert Stek > Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 12:22 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their > deposit? > > I was an early fan of the Todd Fischer's IMSAI II project > (www.imsai.net) > and sent off a deposit several years ago. I even offered to review > it in > Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar Ink (I'm a friend of Steve's and formerly > lived in > Hartford). I understand the problems of a task like re-inventing > the IMSAI > and think that I have been more than patient. His website is still > active, > he has a copyright date of 2007 on it, and it appears that you can > still > order not only an IMSAI II but other items as well. > > > > Unfortunately I have emailed him several times over the past 12-18 > months > and haven't had the courtesy of a response. I know he's there - he > posts in > comp.os.cpm - but from him to me: nada, zip, zilch, nothing. > > > > Is there anyone else on the list who was as retrospectively foolish > as I as > to trust him with a deposit? It doesn't speak much for his ethics > if he > advertises and takes orders for non-existent products (who was that > guy and > his company that advertised in Kilobaud, among others, back in the > '70's > with full page ads for non-existent products? Remember that?). > And his > customer service skills are non-existent if he just ignores > politely worded > inqueries re: progress on the product. > > > > So, am I the only one still waiting for an IMSAI II? > > > > > > Bob Stek > > Saver of Lost Sols > > > > > -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Oct 1 16:01:34 2007 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:01:34 -0500 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20071001162907.03735c98@mail.30below.com> References: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20071001162907.03735c98@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <4701602E.8000307@pacbell.net> Roger Merchberger wrote: ... > Well, if you were a Basic programmer (like I was at the time) then you > *really* weren't missing much! IIRC, it's Basic is not run on the > primary CPU, but on the graphics chip! As such, it's a pretty limited > Basic, and dog slow... at least 10x slower (for a simple For/Next loop) > than a CoCo2, so for a home platform, you'd need to learn assembly or > purchase (read: more $$$) a dev package for C/Fortran/Forth/whatever > else might've been available for that box. I never used a 99/4 of any flavor, but I recall hearing a very different explanation why the stock BASIC was so slow. The graphics chip had nothing to do with it; as far as I know there is no way to run code on the graphics chip (it is a simple raster+sprite engine). No, the real reason was that the BASIC was a two-level interpreter. TI didn't have the time/resources to write a BASIC interpreter in native assembly, so they procured a BASIC interpreter written in an abstract machine code, kinda like p-code, such that TI would then just have to write an assembly level program to interpret the "p-code". I'm sure they made other enhancements to this BASIC interpreter in order to support the unique features of the hardware, though. This approach wasn't all that uncommon. The IBM 5100 did something like that (although the "p-code" was the instruction set from a real IBM machine). The early Dr. Dobbs were full of homebrew BASIC interpreters, and many took this two-level interpreter approach, motivated more to save space than anything else. Finally, the "SWEET16" interpreter Woz wrote into the original Apple II ROMs was intended for this type of speed/space trade off. From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 1 16:01:50 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:01:50 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> References: , <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com>, <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4700FDCE.18277.615FE0AC@cclist.sydex.com> On 1 Oct 2007 at 16:11, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I never got one, never played around with one, but I don't think I'm missing > much. I don't know--for its time (1976), a 16-bit CPU with hardware multiply and divide isn't too shabby. A bit slow because its 16-word register file (relocatable) was kept in main memory (operations referencing a register were directed to the appropriate location by a pointer registrer called the Workspace Pointer). Not exciting, true, but there were certainly more boring MPUs out there at the time. TI did make an I2L version of the TMS9900, but the most I was able to get from the local TI sales rep was a bunch of datasheets--and no samples. I gathered that the I2L version was reserved for the defense industry. Cheers, Chuck From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Mon Oct 1 16:10:59 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:10:59 -0300 Subject: "destructive read of a ROM"? References: <20071001131834.H98453@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <007301c80470$379810a0$f0fea8c0@alpha> >> "The power-on operation does a "destructive" read of the >> ROM-based firmware. After so many power-ups, the ROM becomes >> unreadable. This was a design issue at the time - the technology >> to fix it did not evolve until the VT200 series." >> Is this true? I've never heard of a ROM being damaged by reading it a >> lot. It seems not a matter of reading, but reading it with a wrong VPP voltage applied or something like that. As stated, this is a design issue. From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 1 16:17:12 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:17:12 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <4701602E.8000307@pacbell.net> References: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com>, <5.1.0.14.2.20071001162907.03735c98@mail.30below.com>, <4701602E.8000307@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <47010168.14809.616DF089@cclist.sydex.com> On 1 Oct 2007 at 16:01, Jim Battle wrote: > No, the real reason was that the BASIC was a two-level interpreter. TI > didn't have the time/resources to write a BASIC interpreter in native > assembly, so they procured a BASIC interpreter written in an abstract > machine code, kinda like p-code, such that TI would then just have to > write an assembly level program to interpret the "p-code". I'm sure > they made other enhancements to this BASIC interpreter in order to > support the unique features of the hardware, though. Back around 1978 or so, I recall visiting Ryan-McFarland and chatting with Dave McFarland about some changes to their BASIC compiler/interpreter. He mentioned TI and I let it pass without comment. But yes, indeed, RM BASIC was implemented in a type of P- CODE for both the parsing/compiling and runtime. It was hideously slow on an 8085 and I can't believe it was much better on a 9900. I wonder if that "TI Version" that they were doing was the selfsame one that ended up on a real TI product. It was bad enough that we did our own after trying to use the RM software. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 1 17:09:12 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:09:12 -0600 Subject: Easily Amused... In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710011326l7955bf11w372986b9827c8ba6@mail.gmail.com> References: <1191193296.26229.5.camel@elric> <51ea77730709301750h79f98263raa3ab5179a87dfcc@mail.gmail.com> <1191222684.26229.8.camel@elric> <20071001132017.R98453@shell.lmi.net> <51ea77730710011323l21c1aa9p7feab2c22b0d62e9@mail.gmail.com> <51ea77730710011326l7955bf11w372986b9827c8ba6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47017008.8000903@jetnet.ab.ca> Jason T wrote: > On 10/1/07, Jason T wrote: >> On 10/1/07, Fred Cisin wrote: >>> . . . and what about AppleII.GS ? >> Ooo....back on topic! Now how does one go about registering a .gs domain? > > That would be here: > > https://secure.nic.gs/index.jsp > > ...and it's taken :( > le and li are also taken as extensions. http://www.lunarembassy.com/lunar/domainsind_e.lasso From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 1 17:36:59 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:36:59 -0600 Subject: "destructive read of a ROM"? In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:10:59 -0300. <007301c80470$379810a0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: In article <007301c80470$379810a0$f0fea8c0 at alpha>, "Alexandre Souza" writes: > >> "The power-on operation does a "destructive" read of the > >> ROM-based firmware. After so many power-ups, the ROM becomes > >> unreadable. This was a design issue at the time - the technology > >> to fix it did not evolve until the VT200 series." > >> Is this true? I've never heard of a ROM being damaged by reading it a > >> lot. > > It seems not a matter of reading, but reading it with a wrong VPP > voltage applied or something like that. As stated, this is a design issue. Sure, but the poster on comp.terminals is making it sound like if you've used a VT100 for any reasonable period of time, this will have happened to you. They even go so far as to say that if you turn on your VT100 you should leave it on until the next power bump. That sort of advice just sounds fishy to me, as I've not heard of this being said about a VT100 before. But hey, I could easily be wrong. I'm looking for confirmation of this behavior ON A VT100. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 1 17:24:21 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 23:24:21 +0100 (BST) Subject: Core duo SC/MP? In-Reply-To: <100120071253.5611.4700EDD6000ACC57000015EB22216128369B0A02D2089B9A019C04040A0DBF9C0E09010B@bellsouth.net> from "dogas@bellsouth.net" at Oct 1, 7 12:53:42 pm Message-ID: > > Hi there folks. I just got a sweet NS LCDS (low cost dev system) with > a SC/MP II processor card and nice set of docs on the chip itself, the > lcds,appnotes,and assembly programming It looks pretty easy to add > more than one scamp to the same bus and I was wondering if there are I rememebr an article in 'Computing Today' magazine _many_ years ago, I would guess around 1980. It was to add a second SC/MP to the Science of Cambridge MK14, so that you could, for example, run the monitor program on one chip and a user program on the other. >From what I remember, you ended up soldering the 2 SC/MP on top of each other with a couple of pins bent out and not directly conencted. There was a bit of scrossed-over wiring to get the arbitration chain right, and a swich to disable the second processor wired to on of the pins. That was about it. No otehr chips were involved. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 1 17:29:40 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 23:29:40 +0100 (BST) Subject: "destructive read of a ROM"? In-Reply-To: from "Richard" at Oct 1, 7 07:31:15 am Message-ID: > > Over on comp.terminals someone wrote this about the VT100: > > "The power-on operation does a "destructive" read of the > ROM-based firmware. After so many power-ups, the ROM becomes > unreadable. This was a design issue at the time - the technology > to fix it did not evolve until the VT200 series." The polite reply, I believe, is B*llsh*t! AFAIK, based on reading the VT100 schematics, there's nothing special about the power-on operation. It just reads the ROMs like any other ROM read. And the VT100 firmware is run from ROM all the time, it's not copied into RAM at power-up or anything like that. So presumably, if this were true, the ROM would die if the terminal is left on. There ahd been semiconductor ROMs for about 10 years before the VT100, it was not new technology at the time. And AFAIK none of them had this problem. Now, there is an EAROM in the VT100 to store the configuration settings. It has a limited number of write cycles (i.e. saving new configurations), but AFAIK no limit to reads (and it is read on power-up to restore the configuration, of course). Maybe that's where this story originates. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 1 17:05:55 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 23:05:55 +0100 (BST) Subject: Epson QX-10 Emulator In-Reply-To: <306133.27500.qm@web61018.mail.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Sep 30, 7 05:02:27 pm Message-ID: > > hey thanks for that. Do you still attend radio > rallies, and if so are you still able to find I've not been to one for a few years now. The last one I went to had only slightly out-of-date PC parts, which really don't interest me at all. Pity really, I got some very interesting toys at rallies over the years -- the Intellec MCS8i, Xerox Daybreak (\pounds 10.00, the seller hadn't a clue as to what it was. Nor had I, but it looked interesting, and I thought I recognised 2901-like things on the porcessor oard...), HH Tiger, various BBC micro bits, paper tape punches, etc, etc, etc. > interesting stuff? I haven't attended ham shows in > years, except for the MIT Flea 2 weekends ago, so I > don't know what turns up these days. Back in the early > 90's you could find all sorts of useless stuff LOL > LOL. Like 19" open frame monochrome monitors and such. > They always asked a lot for their *junk* though. Often > I was put off. Odd, over hera the prices for computer stuff were always pretty reasoanble. As were components. Radio stuff was another matter, I guess the sellers knew the value of that ;-). > OT - Tony, what are you doing about finding yourself > (or ME LOL) and early English T & LM lathe. If you Nothing as yet. I'm happy with my Myford.... > don't know what I'm talking about, lathes.co.uk should > have a profile on it. Lindsay Pubs. has a small > booklet that describes the construction (contains a > reprint from "American Machinist" from the early 20th > century). Since you're in the country it was > manufactured, don't take offence, but you'd be crazy > to not at least keep yer eyes open for one. Or > advertise around. Yer know ;) I will, of course take a look and keep my eyes open. Quite where I'd put it is another matter... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 1 17:08:52 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 23:08:52 +0100 (BST) Subject: MSCP controllers In-Reply-To: <20071001110500.4ec03a07@SirToby.dinner41.local> from "Jochen Kunz" at Oct 1, 7 11:05:00 am Message-ID: > > DEC was really ahead of the time. Or alternatively the common desktop machines (PC, Mac) were massively behind the times... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 1 17:37:20 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 23:37:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710011034n6105838aq7304f9b415f0a8fc@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 1, 7 06:34:17 pm Message-ID: > I've not soldered a computer cable since the 1980s and I was rubbish > at it then. And even so, I have no source for the relevant connectors! For the last part, RS components, Farnell, Digikey??? For the first part, I'd offer to do it for you, but it would be illegal to do so. Owing to our totally daft laws, (a) I'd have to use lead-free solder, which I don't have, don't trust, and am not set up to use and (b) it has been said that if an enthusiast (specifically a model engineer, but it would apply here too) does jobs for others, then his workshop becomes a workplace and is covered by all the daft health-and-safety rules that I have no desire to get involved with, and which quite honestly, would stop me from getting on with things. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 1 17:50:39 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 23:50:39 +0100 (BST) Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <4701602E.8000307@pacbell.net> from "Jim Battle" at Oct 1, 7 04:01:34 pm Message-ID: > I never used a 99/4 of any flavor, but I recall hearing a very different > explanation why the stock BASIC was so slow. The graphics chip had > nothing to do with it; as far as I know there is no way to run code on > the graphics chip (it is a simple raster+sprite engine). I've never used a TI99/4A either, I do have one somewhere, but I've never done anything with it. I assume the grahpics chip is a TMS9918 or similar. In which case you can hang RAM off that, it doesn't appear in the main CPU memory map, but is accessed thorugh some registes in said chip. I'd heard that on an unexpanded 99/4A _all_ the RAM was on the video chip, your BASIC program was stored in said RAM, and the interpretter (in ROM, in the CPU address space) had to read your program via the video chip registers. This (a) made the machine very slow and (b) made it impossble to program in machine code. -tony From arcarlini at iee.org Mon Oct 1 18:20:41 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:20:41 +0100 Subject: VSII/GPX joy (and minor annoyance) In-Reply-To: <20071001192543.242690@gmx.net> Message-ID: <003901c80481$b0f35b10$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Arno Kletzander wrote: > Hmm. One half of the base board does however have circuitry connected > to those pads that are just linked by grant continuity traces on the > second half (and the 4-plane memory boards), so I figured it might > actually be doing something useful with it. Haven't studied the > technical description yet... The QVSS and QDSS will be passing the grant signals along otherwise boards further down the bus will have issues. The RQDX1 got that wrong (so it has to be the last board on the bus). You can remove the boards but you will have to avoid leaving "holes" behind them (so you'll have to shuffle other stuff up). > The MVII at University has a TK70 installed, but as it will probably > never see much use even if we manage to fix the supply, I might be > able to get it traded for a TK50 (which was what the machine > originally had). Don't let me stop you trading up to a TK70, but FWIW I never had an issue with TK50s. I prefer TK70s but that's because I can get about three times as much on them! Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.35/1040 - Release Date: 30/09/2007 21:01 From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Mon Oct 1 18:23:06 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 20:23:06 -0300 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies References: Message-ID: <00af01c80482$11cee350$f0fea8c0@alpha> > I assume the grahpics chip is a TMS9918 or similar. In which case you can > hang RAM off that, it doesn't appear in the main CPU memory map, but is > accessed thorugh some registes in said chip. I'd heard that on an > unexpanded 99/4A _all_ the RAM was on the video chip, your BASIC program > was stored in said RAM, and the interpretter (in ROM, in the CPU address > space) had to read your program via the video chip registers. > This (a) made the machine very slow and (b) made it impossble to program > in machine code. I'd not say that is impossible, but I'm hardly pressed to believe that! :oO From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 1 19:05:29 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:05:29 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <00af01c80482$11cee350$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: , <00af01c80482$11cee350$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <470128D9.17151.620801EF@cclist.sydex.com> On 1 Oct 2007 at 20:23, Alexandre Souza wrote: > I'd not say that is impossible, but I'm hardly pressed to believe that! Believe it. The standard unexpanded TI 99/4A had 256 bytes of SRAM local to the CPU: http://www.nouspikel.com/ti99/titechpages.htm Cheers, Chuck From lbickley at bickleywest.com Mon Oct 1 09:51:43 2007 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 07:51:43 -0700 Subject: Who was putting together the TSX+ archive? In-Reply-To: <1191193101.26229.1.camel@elric> References: <46FFCF69.7070401@bitsavers.org> <1191193101.26229.1.camel@elric> Message-ID: <200710010751.44022.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Sunday 30 September 2007 15:58, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > On Sun, 2007-09-30 at 09:31 -0700, Al Kossow wrote: > > > Is this already in the archive, or would it be useful? > > > > Lyle Bickley was putting together the software archive > > unfortunately, he's no longer subscribed here. I'm back in CCTECH as opposed to CCTECH - see below. > > The TSX docs are under pdf/dec/pdp11/tsxPlus > > and I have some manuals scanned from Feb 84. > > I put together a site for the TSX+ stuff and was waiting for the > go-ahead to put it live, but then Lyle went silent. Two reasons I went "silent". First, I've been absolutely swamped businesswise. That's both good and bad when you're a consultant. Good because you're getting $ and bad because your hobby life goes away. Second - and equally important - I wanted us to have a different license for TSX-Plus. As originally agreed to by S&H, I needed to track "who" had TSX-Plus and had agreed to the personal license. The idea was to make sure that current commercial users (primarily gov) of TSX-Plus did not download the personal version and use it commercially - without any tracking. The primary reason - I wanted personal users to have unlimited use; i.e., multiple system capability - so if you owned 10 PDP-11's capable of running TSX-Plus you could run them without violating the single user software or license restrictions. It turned out that the only practical way to set this up was to have a "free" store, where one would agree to the license and then be able to download a multisystem version of TSX-Plus. That individual could NOT transfer the license nor could they give away a copy to anyone else. At first it seemed O.K. to me. But in actually, it had a serious flaw - a single point of failure. Whoever owned the website housing the TSX-Plus "store" could go away for any one of a number of reasons - and the hobbiest community would be stuck w/o a legal source of TSX-Plus. As a result, I have worked with S&H to create a new, more liberal license agreement - just in the last two weeks. It is still not "open source" - but it is modeled after the "Apache license". Essentially, the license will be included with the zipped binaries, docs, etc. It requires that the license be included (zipped) with every distributed copy of the binaries or documentation. The license includes TSX-Plus (Version 6.5), COBOL and RTSORT binaries and documentation in PDF form. I plan to put everything up on one of my websites - and also, as time permits - add summaries of the many lessons I've learned in configuring and running TSX-Plus on Unibus and QBus systems. I also will provide reasonable free "support" for personal use as time permits - probably by developing an FAQ for TSX-Plus (help from others desireable). With the new license, anyone will be able to distribute TSX-Plus as long as it includes the license agreement. > Didn't know he'd unsubscribed though. I got really frustrated with the massive quantity of "off topic" crap on CCTALK and unsubscribed. I recently subscribed to CCTECH. > > I built the site a while ago, so I'd be inclined to just start > again and do it better this time... Sorry for the miscommunication, Gordon. I did ping you several times - and didn't hear from you. I suspect it was because you got busy. Perhaps when you were freed up I got busy... Regards, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From robert.stek at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 11:22:04 2007 From: robert.stek at gmail.com (Robert Stek) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 09:22:04 -0700 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? Message-ID: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> I was an early fan of the Todd Fischer's IMSAI II project (www.imsai.net) and sent off a deposit several years ago. I even offered to review it in Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar Ink (I'm a friend of Steve's and formerly lived in Hartford). I understand the problems of a task like re-inventing the IMSAI and think that I have been more than patient. His website is still active, he has a copyright date of 2007 on it, and it appears that you can still order not only an IMSAI II but other items as well. Unfortunately I have emailed him several times over the past 12-18 months and haven't had the courtesy of a response. I know he's there - he posts in comp.os.cpm - but from him to me: nada, zip, zilch, nothing. Is there anyone else on the list who was as retrospectively foolish as I as to trust him with a deposit? It doesn't speak much for his ethics if he advertises and takes orders for non-existent products (who was that guy and his company that advertised in Kilobaud, among others, back in the '70's with full page ads for non-existent products? Remember that?). And his customer service skills are non-existent if he just ignores politely worded inqueries re: progress on the product. So, am I the only one still waiting for an IMSAI II? Bob Stek Saver of Lost Sols From stevew at ka6s.com Mon Oct 1 19:26:40 2007 From: stevew at ka6s.com (Steve Wilson) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 17:26:40 -0700 Subject: [SPAM(date)] Re: Burroughs B80 rescued Message-ID: <200710011726.40508.stevew@ka6s.com> Some possible suggestions: Serial line- likely this is a Burroughs Multidrop line - RS485 using a polled protocol. Should be compatible with TD830/TD850/MT983 Burroughs terminals etc. Disk drive control was done by the CPUs - most of the drives were not terribly smart. Best bet is bitsavers as you've already suggested. I've never used a B80 myself, - but am an expert on B1900 stuff. Steve Wilson From dholland at woh.rr.com Mon Oct 1 19:57:26 2007 From: dholland at woh.rr.com (David Holland) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:57:26 -0400 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <1191286646.8499.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> On Mon, 2007-10-01 at 16:11 -0400, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Monday 01 October 2007 15:19, Mark Meiss wrote: > > Preservation for TI-99/4A software on floppies seems to be pretty poor > > right now, because of (as Jim mentioned) the rarity of the expansion box > > and third-party software that used it. > > I never got one, never played around with one, but I don't think I'm missing > much. > Eh, I dunno.. I tend to think it was my 'first' real computer. You could learn BASIC programming on the thing. (I seem to recall writing my first game on one. Programmed the thing, debugged the thing, played it once, and then turned the machine off. - No idea why I didn't try to at least save the code on the cassette tape.) Wouldn't mind finding one w/ copies of MicroSurgeon, and Pirate Adventure again for nostalgia purposes.... David From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 20:06:00 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 02:06:00 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <20071001214858.51d3ee59@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <575131af0710011034n6105838aq7304f9b415f0a8fc@mail.gmail.com> <20071001214858.51d3ee59@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <575131af0710011806y5514460et10d11bbb749790f1@mail.gmail.com> On 01/10/2007, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:34:17 +0100 > "Liam Proven" wrote: > > > > If you don't have a color frame buffer (GPX or SPX) > > How would I tell? > There may be some boot PROM commands to get that information, maybe > "show conf". Tricky, when I have no display yet... :?) > At least > you can see it by physical inspection: The mono frame buffer is on the > main PCB. GPX or SPX are mezzanine plug in cards sitting on top of the > main PCB, maybe 20x25 cm^2 in size. Don't confuse it with RAM options. > These are mezzanine plug in cards too, but they are only about 10x20 > cm^2 and they are aligned to the front of the machine. The framebuffer > is aligned in the middle / a bit to the back. Taking it apart, I can do, and indeed am rather looking forward to, when I get it home! I don't know how much RAM it's got yet, either. I have had the lid off. Poking up above the tray that the internal disks sit on, there is what I think is a SCSI controller. That's all I could see. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 20:16:05 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 02:16:05 +0100 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <575131af0710011816u4f860d9cid8dcde2198925d7b@mail.gmail.com> On 01/10/2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I remember back when we were talking about getting a computer for the first > time... > > She called my attention to the fact that there was this local place > advertising that machine "for only $149"... So we went up there and talked > to them about it. > > My thoughts at that time were that to have something useful you'd need at > least two floppy drives. I also thought that more memory than what came in > the basic unit wasn't a bad idea, either. The sales dude did some figuring, > and when the expansion box, the memory, and the drives were all added in > the total came to something over $1,000 -- not as good a deal as it looked > like, at the time. :-) > > I also didn't consider that it had only a 40-column screen, either. Having > done a bunch of work on C64s, and having gotten (eventually) an Osborne > Executive which came with a built-in monitor showing an 80-column screen, I > think I probably would've found that hard to live with as well. > > I suspect that that machine was an attempt to make a "computer appliance" > which would provide a platform for commercial software or similar, and it > wasn't even that good at that. They were odd little machines. I used several; my school equipped its computer lab with them. Each with its own cassette recorded and black & white TV. (!) The BASIC was dog-slow and integer only, IIRC. There was a better BASIC as a cartridge, but it cost too much. They were pretty much the first ever 16-bit home micro, but it was a crippled 16-bit chip - as detailed in another message in this thread. They did have good keyboards, were solidly built and I believe the graphics chip was, for its time, decent and capable. However, they were obliterated in the UK market (and I suspect worldwide) by the cheaper, faster, more capable and more flexible Sinclair and Commodore machines. Even the less successful 8-bit machines like the Dragon 32/64, Oric-1/Atmos & Amstrad CPC464/664/6128 sold masses more. The TI99s were relegated to the ranks of the obscure, along with the Camputers Lynx, Memotech 512, Elan/Flan Enterprise, Tatung Einstein and so on. Even the MSX did better and /nobody/ over here bought /those/. I suspect that made them /very/ cheap by the end of their life, and that's why my school bought 20 or so of them. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Mon Oct 1 20:16:42 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:16:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Intel MSD 225 value Message-ID: As I was driving north from the Los Angeles area with, among other things, an Intel MDS 225, I was struck from the rear by someone who was driving on a suspended license. I'm fine, but the MSD appears to have been destroyed. Picture rolling one down a steep staircase. So, to get a figure on how much monetary damage was done, I'd like some help. What's a guestimate of the value of an Intel MDS with integral CRT and 8-inch floppy drive? If you want one, how much would you be willing to spend? If you have one, how much would you want to sell it? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 1 20:21:59 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:21:59 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <1191286646.8499.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> References: , <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net>, <1191286646.8499.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> Message-ID: <47013AC7.21700.624E0BBE@cclist.sydex.com> On Monday 01 October 2007 15:19, Mark Meiss wrote: > Preservation for TI-99/4A software on floppies seems to be pretty poor > right now, because of (as Jim mentioned) the rarity of the expansion box > and third-party software that used it. Does there exist an emulator that can make use of the disk images? It strikes me that you're probably not going to find a COBOL compiler or heavy-duty productivity software in the collection, but the games might be interesting to some. Cheers, Chuck From silent700 at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 20:27:13 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 20:27:13 -0500 Subject: CompacTape Message-ID: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> I just received my shipment of items from this auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220149564798 which should have been a load of recyclable TK50 media. Instead of CompacTape, however, they are all CompacTape III. I think these were TK85 2.6gb media. Does anyone know if they will still be writable with the standard format in a TK50? Or do I have a bunch of useless DLT I tapes? From grant at stockly.com Mon Oct 1 20:38:25 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:38:25 -0800 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? In-Reply-To: <002a01c80462$5959c2a0$0202fea9@hpmpc01> References: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> <002a01c80462$5959c2a0$0202fea9@hpmpc01> Message-ID: <0JP900ENKGIGSQ80@msgmmp-1.gci.net> I've talked to him several times. Before the Altair kit and after. Very nice guy. I don't think he has any bad intentions at all. I will buy one the second they become available. I have no idea what the situation with them is, but I'd have a hard time thinking he was trying to defraud people or lie (of course, I have all my money). He has told me of the money, engineering, and time he has spent. Possibly he just isn't a "business" man. That's not a bad thing at all, we all have our strengths! Engineers aren't good with making their own due dates... ; ) The Kenbak kit was supposed to be done by March. I just shipped the first 8 kits a week ago today. ; ) When I started selling kits I decided in the beginning not to collect money until stuff was ready to ship. I wasn't worried too much about getting lazy, but it made me look forward to shipping and work towards that goal. Grant At 11:36 AM 10/1/2007, you wrote: >I had absolutely the same experience. I paid in full for a machine in march >of 2003. For a year he bs'ed me about how the machine was a few months off. >Then in june of 2004 I asked for my money back. He then went from telling me >how honorable a businessman he was, to lying about sending me a refund, to >no response at all. This man is in my opinion a liar and a fraud if not >worse. DO NOT SEND HIM MONEY NO MATTER WHAT HE CLAIMS HE CAN DO. > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] >On Behalf Of Robert Stek >Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 12:22 PM >To: cctalk at classiccmp.org >Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? > >I was an early fan of the Todd Fischer's IMSAI II project (www.imsai.net) >and sent off a deposit several years ago. I even offered to review it in >Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar Ink (I'm a friend of Steve's and formerly lived in >Hartford). I understand the problems of a task like re-inventing the IMSAI >and think that I have been more than patient. His website is still active, >he has a copyright date of 2007 on it, and it appears that you can still >order not only an IMSAI II but other items as well. > > > >Unfortunately I have emailed him several times over the past 12-18 months >and haven't had the courtesy of a response. I know he's there - he posts in >comp.os.cpm - but from him to me: nada, zip, zilch, nothing. > > > >Is there anyone else on the list who was as retrospectively foolish as I as >to trust him with a deposit? It doesn't speak much for his ethics if he >advertises and takes orders for non-existent products (who was that guy and >his company that advertised in Kilobaud, among others, back in the '70's >with full page ads for non-existent products? Remember that?). And his >customer service skills are non-existent if he just ignores politely worded >inqueries re: progress on the product. > > > >So, am I the only one still waiting for an IMSAI II? > > > > > >Bob Stek > >Saver of Lost Sols > > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 1 20:48:42 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:48:42 -0600 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? In-Reply-To: <0JP900ENKGIGSQ80@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> <002a01c80462$5959c2a0$0202fea9@hpmpc01> <0JP900ENKGIGSQ80@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <4701A37A.7040701@jetnet.ab.ca> It was written: (who was that >> guy and >> his company that advertised in Kilobaud, among others, back in the '70's >> with full page ads for non-existent products? Remember that?). And his >> customer service skills are non-existent if he just ignores politely >> worded >> inqueries re: progress on the product. Well it is hard to find any of the old magizines on-line like Kilobaud. Both today are non-existent. :( From healyzh at aracnet.com Mon Oct 1 20:51:15 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 18:51:15 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <47013AC7.21700.624E0BBE@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net>, <1191286646.8499.5.camel@crusader.localdomain.home> <47013AC7.21700.624E0BBE@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: At 6:21 PM -0700 10/1/07, Chuck Guzis wrote: >On Monday 01 October 2007 15:19, Mark Meiss wrote: >> Preservation for TI-99/4A software on floppies seems to be pretty poor >> right now, because of (as Jim mentioned) the rarity of the expansion box >> and third-party software that used it. > >Does there exist an emulator that can make use of the disk images? Yes, but then I would have thought you'd know that. :^) Your software seems to be used as the disk format for at least one. http://www.mrousseau.org/programs/ti99sim/ >It strikes me that you're probably not going to find a COBOL compiler >or heavy-duty productivity software in the collection, but the games >might be interesting to some. Actually I think there might be some productivity software in there. I don't know about a COBOL compiler, but I believe there is at least one language disk. I'm hope to find time in the next couple months to do some inventorying of the floppies. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 rtellason at verizon.net Mon Oct 1 21:05:04 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:05:04 -0400 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20071001162907.03735c98@mail.30below.com> References: <653a64ac0710011219u190aa85bn40245b504f64555d@mail.gmail.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20071001162907.03735c98@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <200710012205.04535.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 01 October 2007 16:39, Roger Merchberger wrote: > Rumor has it that Roy J. Tellason may have mentioned these words: > >My thoughts at that time were that to have something useful you'd need at > >least two floppy drives. I also thought that more memory than what came > > in the basic unit wasn't a bad idea, either. The sales dude did some > > figuring, > >and when the expansion box, the memory, and the drives were all added in > >the total came to something over $1,000 -- not as good a deal as it looked > >like, at the time. :-) > > You might have a slightly different concept of "useful" than I did - at > least with my CoCo (and with most other computers I'd used at the time) 1 > floppy drive was all that was necessary to be "useful." I certainly didn't > "complain" after getting my second floppy drive (many years later) but I > did a *lot* of useful work on single-floppy systems. Well, my only previous actual hands-on experience prior to that is with that H11 system I've mentioned, and you did need two drives for that one because it was always hitting the drive where the software lived, with a pretty full floppy. Where were you supposed to put your actual data otherwise? :-) And besides there were all those CP/M boxes I'd seen in the ads that all had two drives in/with 'em. > Other than that, you're right - more memory was always good. ;-) Still seems to be, too. > >I also didn't consider that it had only a 40-column screen, either. > > Having done a bunch of work on C64s, and having gotten (eventually) an > > Osborne Executive which came with a built-in monitor showing an 80-column > > screen, I think I probably would've found that hard to live with as well. > > Not me - having used a 32x16 screen (which was rather limiting) on the CoCo > and a 40x16 screen on my Tandy 200 (for which I was *very* glad I chose > that over the 40x8 of the Model 100) 40x24 would have been "ok". At least > at 40 columns, it's still easy to visually extrapolate what 80-char lines > look like - a very painful exercise on 32x16! I also remember during that time looking at the Osborne-1, which only had 52 columns on the screen, though with the screen-pac upgrade you could have 80 or 104. And back in those days (a bit later, actually), when I installed one of those for somebody and tested it out, I could actually read the text on those screens! Anyhow, that salesman was pointing out how you could cause the screen to scroll horizontally. I feel the same way about that as I do about windows and web pages that have horizontal scroll bars on them. I don't like the idea... > >I never got one, never played around with one, but I don't think I'm > >missing much. > > Well, if you were a Basic programmer (like I was at the time) then you > *really* weren't missing much! BASIC was most of what I messed around with on that H11. Though I got very weird with it, doing things like packing all sorts of fields into a string and then parsing it back out again, etc. > IIRC, it's Basic is not run on the primary CPU, but on the graphics chip! As > such, it's a pretty limited Basic, and dog slow... at least 10x slower (for > a simple For/Next loop) than a CoCo2, so for a home platform, you'd need to > learn assembly or purchase (read: more $$$) a dev package for > C/Fortran/Forth/whatever else might've been available for that box. I don't recall ever running across any development stuff for that box, nor ever actually hearing that you could do much in terms of programming it. > It did seem to have some decent game cartridges, but other than that, for a > more "serious" work platform, you're right - it needed a *lot* more than > just the bare machine. In thinking back on what some of the other alternatives were back then, I probably wouldn't have minded getting to know some of them a little better. Like the CoCo, for example. That OS9 was supposed to be pretty nifty from what I heard. > What do you do when Life gives you lemons, > and you don't *like* lemonade????????????? Open a stand and sell it? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 1 21:39:25 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:39:25 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <575131af0710011816u4f860d9cid8dcde2198925d7b@mail.gmail.com> References: , <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net>, <575131af0710011816u4f860d9cid8dcde2198925d7b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47014CED.4439.6294ECDB@cclist.sydex.com> On 2 Oct 2007 at 2:16, Liam Proven wrote: > They were pretty much the first ever 16-bit home micro, but it was a > crippled 16-bit chip - as detailed in another message in this thread. > They did have good keyboards, were solidly built and I believe the > graphics chip was, for its time, decent and capable. Tossing all of the other chips and CROMs and other stuff out, how compatible was the TMS9900 with the TI 990 mini? The same or considerablly different? Cheers, Chuck From healyzh at aracnet.com Mon Oct 1 21:49:15 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:49:15 -0700 Subject: CompacTape In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> References: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: At 8:27 PM -0500 10/1/07, Jason T wrote: >I just received my shipment of items from this auction: > >http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220149564798 > >which should have been a load of recyclable TK50 media. Instead of >CompacTape, however, they are all CompacTape III. I think these were >TK85 2.6gb media. Does anyone know if they will still be writable >with the standard format in a TK50? Or do I have a bunch of useless >DLT I tapes? I take it you didn't get what was shown in the picture. DLT III tapes are far from useless. I use them on my VMS box with a modernish tape drive, much better for backing up 18-36GB drives than TK50's. :^) Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 pcw at mesanet.com Mon Oct 1 22:03:06 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 20:03:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <47014CED.4439.6294ECDB@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net>, <575131af0710011816u4f860d9cid8dcde2198925d7b@mail.gmail.com> <47014CED.4439.6294ECDB@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:39:25 -0700 > From: Chuck Guzis > Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > Subject: Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > > On 2 Oct 2007 at 2:16, Liam Proven wrote: > >> They were pretty much the first ever 16-bit home micro, but it was a >> crippled 16-bit chip - as detailed in another message in this thread. >> They did have good keyboards, were solidly built and I believe the >> graphics chip was, for its time, decent and capable. > > Tossing all of the other chips and CROMs and other stuff out, how > compatible was the TMS9900 with the TI 990 mini? The same or > considerablly different? > > Cheers, > Chuck > Since the 990/4 Mini was based on a TMS9900, Probably not much. Dont know if its enough to run DX10 though. Peter Wallace From ian_primus at yahoo.com Mon Oct 1 22:08:00 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 20:08:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: CompacTape In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <138987.49420.qm@web52712.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > >which should have been a load of recyclable TK50 > media. Instead of > >CompacTape, however, they are all CompacTape III. > I think these were > >TK85 2.6gb media. Ouch. I'd complain big time. Definitely not what was being sold there. Does anyone know if they will > still be writable > >with the standard format in a TK50? No. Not at all. They won't even fit - go ahead, try it. There's a plastic stop in the left side that prevents the cartridge from fitting Or do I have a > bunch of useless > >DLT I tapes? Pretty much. They're not entirely useless - but pretty close if you don't have the proper drive. I have once even tried to trick a TK50 drive into accepting a CompacTape III. I had a dud TK50, so I swapped the bottom cover of the cartridge onto a CompacTape III. It threads up in the TK50 but won't even come ready. Nor will it rewind and unload - you have to do it manually. Now, not that I expected this to work, mind you - the media is vastly different, by a factor of three or more in terms of orsted rating. I was curious what would happen. Now, the tape in nine track reels, that's close magnetically. I have sometimes wondered what would happen if you spooled nine track tape into a modified CompacTape shell, although I've never attempted it. Nine track tape is pretty hard to find too. -Ian From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Mon Oct 1 22:30:56 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 20:30:56 -0700 Subject: MSCP controllers Message-ID: > Jochen Wrote: > Dave McGuire wrote: > >> Absolutely. Every time I hear someone blathering on about "new >> SAN technology" I show them stuff about VAXclusters and CI. I always >> get a kick out of the reactions. :) > Yes, thats it. Just like that 64 bit hype. DEC Alpha systems where the > first real 64 bit machines, 15, 16 (?) years ago... > > Where do HyperTransport and HyperThreading originate? > Alpha... I remember being somewhat dumbfounded yet amused when Apple made the big deal about having the first "World First 64-bit desktop with native 32-bit application compatibility" as I looked over at my DEC 3000, Indigo2 R10k, HP 9000 C180, and Sun Ultra 1. Ah - here's the marketing drivel: "On other platforms, switching to a 64-bit computer requires migrating to a 64-bit operating system (and purchasing 64-bit applications) or running a 32-bit operating system in a slow emulation mode.With the PowerPC G5, the transition to a 64-bit system is seamless:Current 32-bit code?such as existing Mac OS X and Classic applications?runs natively at processor speed, with no interruptions to your workflow and no additional investment in software." Gee that's funny- IRIX did that in '96, Solaris in '99, and HP-UX in '99 or '00 - and DEC's VEST wasn't too shabby in '92 even if it wasn't transparent. From ak6dn at mindspring.com Mon Oct 1 22:49:18 2007 From: ak6dn at mindspring.com (Don North) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:49:18 -0700 Subject: Who was putting together the TSX+ archive? In-Reply-To: <200710010751.44022.lbickley@bickleywest.com> References: <46FFCF69.7070401@bitsavers.org> <1191193101.26229.1.camel@elric> <200710010751.44022.lbickley@bickleywest.com> Message-ID: <4701BFBE.5030503@mindspring.com> Lyle Bickley wrote: > ... > > With the new license, anyone will be able to distribute TSX-Plus as > long as it includes the license agreement. > ... > > Regards, > Lyle Does not TSX-plus run on top of RT-11? So even if one had a TSX-plus license, without the underlying RT-11 license, it cannot be legally run on physical hardware, no? So is SIMH the only real option for TSX-plus (assuming that the Mentec license is still valid for a 'DEC-labeled' PDP-11 simulator)? From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 23:18:10 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 05:18:10 +0100 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: References: <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net> <575131af0710011816u4f860d9cid8dcde2198925d7b@mail.gmail.com> <47014CED.4439.6294ECDB@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710012118x6df55e5hc11d47cd88a2d54d@mail.gmail.com> On 02/10/2007, Peter C. Wallace wrote: > > Tossing all of the other chips and CROMs and other stuff out, how > > compatible was the TMS9900 with the TI 990 mini? The same or > > considerablly different? No eye deer whatsoever, I'm afraid. A completely uneducated guess would be "not very". I don't know much about non-home-micros of the 80s, but from my experience, in many or perhaps most cases, they tended to be a lot less compatible with one another than "pro" kit such as CP/M boxes or indeed generic business-oriented 8- and 16-bit systems. When manufacturers cut 'em down /hard/ to keep them cheap, it led to an interesting variety in designs, whereas business-oriented kit wasn't so price-sensitive and thus stayed a lot more "standard". -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From silent700 at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 00:33:00 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:33:00 -0500 Subject: CompacTape In-Reply-To: <138987.49420.qm@web52712.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <138987.49420.qm@web52712.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51ea77730710012233r46991837o95da6363a85c4fa6@mail.gmail.com> On 10/1/07, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > Ouch. I'd complain big time. Definitely not what was > being sold there. I wrote to the seller, we'll see what happens. It's not a lot of $, but I would like some compatible tapes! Are the tapes pictured at least correct TK50 tapes? I don't recall if my other ones are marked "CompacTape" or not. If so then perhaps he sent the wrong batch. The auction also lists those as not having cases, while the ones he sent did have cases. I believe the ones he sent are the ~2gb media that came just before DLT. From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Oct 2 01:01:29 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:01:29 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <200710020201.29276.rtellason@verizon.net> I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and there's some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what they're calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't say. Dates are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured I'd ask in here... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 2 01:20:01 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:20:01 -0600 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <200710020201.29276.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710020201.29276.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4701E311.3040703@jetnet.ab.ca> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and there's > some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what they're > calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't say. Dates > are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured I'd ask in > here... Goggle finds only a few hits for utilogic,and is mostly a odd chip for sale. I suspect more TTL rather than DTL. Ben. From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Mon Oct 1 02:00:44 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 08:00:44 +0100 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB02@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> My list pdp11/94 x 4 R DEC Rainbow 100+ * VAX 300 * VAX 400 * VAX 500 R VAXStation 3100 * DEC 3000 * Multia * * = Working R = Renovation (Mostly missing parts) Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison Sent: 29 September 2007 14:04 To: cctech at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > >Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > From: "Dan Snyder" > Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:32:23 -0400 > To: > >To all, > >I have monitored the postings and know of a few collectors of VAXen, >all types it seems. The PDP family is popular too. What about >Alphaservers? some are by classic definition at least 10 years old such >as the 1000/1000A and 1200 series. Alphastations definitely qualify >like the 200/250/255/500 series. I collect most of the Alpha family as I use them frequently. OpenVMS and Digital Unix is the OS of choice. I collect Qbus PDP-11s and MicroVAX and also have a selection of 3100 series machines (VAXserver and microVAX). OS for the Vaxen are OVMS5.4, V7.3 and also Ultrix4.2. OS for the PDP-11s is RT11, RSTS and unixV6. Never considered Alpha as they are too recent for me. If I had one it would be in daily service. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 1 09:47:18 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:47:18 -0400 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? Message-ID: <0JP800GQVMDWSNU9@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > From: "Rod Smallwood" > Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:00:44 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > > >My list > pdp11/94 x 4 R > > DEC Rainbow 100+ * > > VAX 300 * > VAX 400 * > VAX 500 R > VAXStation 3100 * > > DEC 3000 * > > Multia * > >* = Working >R = Renovation (Mostly missing parts) > >Rod Smallwood A more detailed list of DEC systems here. :) Collection of operational hardware: PDP-8 based machines: ==================== PDP-8f, 20k core and 2 serial 8650 and 8652 2 Decmate-IIIs OS/278 Intersil sampler (6100 chipset) extended to 3k ram 6120 based board, homebrew 32kram 8k rom PDP-11 based machines: ===================== 1 LSI-11/03 rx02 2 PDP11/23 BA11S boxes, 1MB, RQDX2 and RD52 1MB, RQDX2 and RD31, RX50 1 pdp11/73 50" RACK SYSTEM (4MB, DLVJ11, DEQNA, RQDX3>> RX02, RD52, RX33, RL02). 1 BA11va with 11/23 +tu58 RT-11 1 BA11va with 11/23 +Viking RX02 equivilent RT-11 PDT11/130 11/03 with tu58 dectapeII OSs in use: RT-11, XXDP-11 and unix V6 VAX based machines: =================== Microvax-II (ba23 based) 12mb, RQDX3, RD53, RX33 This one lived as HIPSS:: during my days at DEC. Microvax-II/GPX (Ba123 based, TK50 and SCSI disks) This one was know as VIDSYS:: inside DEC. 3 Microvax2000 all with 2 RD53, 1 RD54 drive, one with ultrix 1 Microvax2000 as hard disk formatter and MOP bootable system. 2 Microvax3100/m76/gpx 32mb 2 each 1gb scsi internal 3 Microvax3100/server (not M10e) (filled with 400mb and 1gb disks) 4 BA42 SCSI disk farm for the 3100s populated with RZ56s OSs in use VMSv5.4-4,V5.54, V7.2, Ultrix 4.2 Terminal for the uVAX systems is usually VT1200 via thinnet and the PDP-11s the usual terminal is either VT340, VT320 or VT180 in terminal mode. DEC CP/M speaking machines: =========================== 1 Vt180 complete (dual RX180s) 2 Vt180 CP/M board built up as standalone one modded for 6mhz 1 Vt185 Thats a Vt125 + Vt180. In the non operational list: 11/23B uPDP-11 in a BA23 pedestal that while complete with 11/23B, M8057 memory, DHV11, RQDX2 and RD52, RX50 it requries cleaning and testing. H11 Backplane complete with LSI-11 CPU, 16k of ram, two serial cards and a parallel card of heath origin. Some day I'll find the case/power supply for it. All parts are tested as working. Small 11/23 system using a H9281-BC (12x2 slots) filled with: M8186 1/23 (Overclocked CPU mod) 4 M8059 MSV11 ram DLV11j, RQDX3 with M9058 distribution board. (for RX33 and RD31) MRV-11 Eprom card with MSCP boot. VK170 with matching LK02 keyboard and a monitor. The VK170 is a minimal VT52 on a dual width card for packaged systems that communicates via RS232 to system and the bus use is power only. This is waiting on being packed in a reasonable nonDEC box with a DEC PS and fans. The boards are known working and the backplane is already jumpered as Q22. Generally in my house operational means I can actually turn it on and play and it has a permanent spot that is easily accessable. One project that is in process is a H9800 desk/rack that will replace the existing standard steel office desk. the system to be installed there will be 11/23B in BA11s with a hand made Disk box for RX33 and RD52s. I have two boxes (Xerox Paper sized) of tested boards enough to build another few 11/23s and a few uVAXII as my spares. Failed boards get repaird when I feel like it so I have good boards around. Who was it that has the SIG of "DEC had then what you wish you could buy now." ? Allison From LauraTurner at bhsu.edu Mon Oct 1 11:51:08 2007 From: LauraTurner at bhsu.edu (Turner, Laura) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 10:51:08 -0600 Subject: Displaywriter available Message-ID: Hello Is this still available?? Thanks Laura Laura Turner Computer Technology Instructor College of Education - BHSU 642-6235 lauraturner at bhsu.edu Ed Portalhttp://www.bhsu.edu/education/edfaculty/lturner/index.html From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Mon Oct 1 12:16:42 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 19:16:42 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Core duo SC/MP? In-Reply-To: <100120071253.5611.4700EDD6000ACC57000015EB22216128369B0A02D2089B9A019 C04040A0DBF9C0E09010B@bellsouth.net> References: <100120071253.5611.4700EDD6000ACC57000015EB22216128369B0A02D2089B9A019C04040A0DBF9C0E09010B@bellsouth.net> Message-ID: <28652.129.26.149.18.1191259002.squirrel@129.26.149.18> dogas at bellsouth.net said: > Hi there folks. I just got a sweet NS LCDS (low cost dev system) with a > SC/MP II processor card and nice set of docs on the chip itself, the > lcds,appnotes,and assembly programming It looks pretty easy to add more > than one scamp to the same bus and I was wondering if there are known > multiproc scamp systems or archetectures out there. So, in looking for a > few additional sc/mp II chips (national semi ISP8060 or ISP 8-A/600N) , > the only place I could find was the CPU Shack.com He said he could get > them, but 8 would have to be purchased at $14/chip. I only want two more > for my rig, any interest in filling out the rest of an order for the other > 6? Or does anyone have them cheaper? unicornelectronics, USD 5.99 -- Holger From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 1 16:12:24 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:12:24 -0400 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JP900GY047N4V01@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:11:42 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On Monday 01 October 2007 15:19, Mark Meiss wrote: >> Preservation for TI-99/4A software on floppies seems to be pretty poor >> right now, because of (as Jim mentioned) the rarity of the expansion box >> and third-party software that used it. > >I remember back when we were talking about getting a computer for the first >time... > >She called my attention to the fact that there was this local place >advertising that machine "for only $149"... So we went up there and talked >to them about it. > >My thoughts at that time were that to have something useful you'd need at >least two floppy drives. I also thought that more memory than what came in >the basic unit wasn't a bad idea, either. The sales dude did some figuring, >and when the expansion box, the memory, and the drives were all added in >the total came to something over $1,000 -- not as good a deal as it looked >like, at the time. :-) > >I also didn't consider that it had only a 40-column screen, either. Having >done a bunch of work on C64s, and having gotten (eventually) an Osborne >Executive which came with a built-in monitor showing an 80-column screen, I >think I probably would've found that hard to live with as well. The Ti though color was a step down from the smallest screen I'd had at the time and that was the PT VDM1 at 64charx16 lines which was at least useful. >I suspect that that machine was an attempt to make a "computer appliance" >which would provide a platform for commercial software or similar, and it >wasn't even that good at that. > >I never got one, never played around with one, but I don't think I'm missing >much. > I have one I bought back in the big sell off so I got it all for under $150 floppies and what not as well. Still have that. Since then I've aquired two more. However the screen size 40x anything is painfully short for me. At the other end the software was decent and the time (1981-2ish) it wasn't a bad machine to use off the serial port with a real terminal (you could do that with some software). I still enjoy bugertime and some fo the games on it. Allison From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Mon Oct 1 21:04:58 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 04:04:58 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Core duo SC/MP? In-Reply-To: References: <100120071253.5611.4700EDD6000ACC57000015EB22216128369B0A02D2089B9A019C04040A0DBF9C0E09010B@bellsouth.net> from "dogas@bellsouth.net" at Oct 1, 7 12:53:42 pm Message-ID: <29048.129.26.149.17.1191290698.squirrel@129.26.149.17> Tony Duell said: >> >> Hi there folks. I just got a sweet NS LCDS (low cost dev system) with >> a SC/MP II processor card and nice set of docs on the chip itself, the >> lcds,appnotes,and assembly programming It looks pretty easy to add >> more than one scamp to the same bus and I was wondering if there are > > I rememebr an article in 'Computing Today' magazine _many_ years ago, I > would guess around 1980. It was to add a second SC/MP to the Science of > Cambridge MK14, so that you could, for example, run the monitor program > on one chip and a user program on the other. > >>From what I remember, you ended up soldering the 2 SC/MP on top of each > other with a couple of pins bent out and not directly conencted. There > was a bit of scrossed-over wiring to get the arbitration chain right, and > a swich to disable the second processor wired to on of the pins. That was > about it. No otehr chips were involved. The actual daisy-chaining scheme to be used to run multiple SC/MPs is described in the datasheet. Basically this infact results in piggybacking the two CPUs with the exception of NENIN/NENOUT pins. This is in principle not limited to two CPUs. You could build a small tower of CPU chips this way; however, with N chips, each of them will only run at one Nth of the central clock speed. And the SC/MP does not belong to the fastest 8 bit CPUs ever. There is one further problem with real multitasking this way, though. The CT article hacks it by simply switching one of the two CPUs off, and then uses the same memory. The problem is to have each CPU identify itself and have it run different code from boot up. In the naive solution both CPUs would, after reset, run the same monitor code which won't work. The better method is not to tie NRDS/NWDS (the memory read/write lines) together, but connect them to different memory chips - in this case ROMs, so one could become the master, and the others the slaves. Another idea is to add an offset to the upper four address lines to have each chip operate in a different 4k bank (just use 7483 adders there). This is accomplished easily because with the 8050/8060 (the 807x "SC/MP III" was constructed better) the upper 4 bits are multiplexed through the databus during NADS time, and you need some glue logic latch anyway to expand the address space beyond 4K. To the original poster: can you scan your papers and make them available to Al Kossov? Since National seemed to have thrown away all old original documents of that time, such documentation is rather rare and interesting to be conserved. -- Holger From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 1 21:05:30 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:05:30 -0400 Subject: Core duo SC/MP? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4701A76A.4030103@bellatlantic.net> Tony Duell wrote: >> Hi there folks. I just got a sweet NS LCDS (low cost dev system) with >> a SC/MP II processor card and nice set of docs on the chip itself, the >> lcds,appnotes,and assembly programming It looks pretty easy to add >> more than one scamp to the same bus and I was wondering if there are > > I rememebr an article in 'Computing Today' magazine _many_ years ago, I > would guess around 1980. It was to add a second SC/MP to the Science of > Cambridge MK14, so that you could, for example, run the monitor program > on one chip and a user program on the other. I never saw Computing Today.. However the apnotes and the databook for SC/MP made it look simple. Only thing was I had an 8A-500 (Pmos first version) an 8A-600(Nmos sc/mpII) and the 8072 (third version with NIBBLE in internal rom). Turns out that a few inverters sorts it all out and I went for a dual processor version and using one cpu to report on the other in a crude debug monitor. I later used the 8a600 as an IO processor for the 8072 nibble chip as a unique system to explore the useful techniques for multi cpu systems. Allison From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Tue Oct 2 01:08:33 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 07:08:33 +0100 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB07@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Hmmm Time for a quick 'We are not worthy' ^00^ What did you do? Raid the Mill with a fleet of trucks? Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison Sent: 01 October 2007 15:47 To: cctech at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > >Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > From: "Rod Smallwood" > Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:00:44 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > > > >My list > pdp11/94 x 4 R > > DEC Rainbow 100+ * > > VAX 300 * > VAX 400 * > VAX 500 R > VAXStation 3100 * > > DEC 3000 * > > Multia * > >* = Working >R = Renovation (Mostly missing parts) > >Rod Smallwood A more detailed list of DEC systems here. :) Collection of operational hardware: PDP-8 based machines: ==================== PDP-8f, 20k core and 2 serial 8650 and 8652 2 Decmate-IIIs OS/278 Intersil sampler (6100 chipset) extended to 3k ram 6120 based board, homebrew 32kram 8k rom PDP-11 based machines: ===================== 1 LSI-11/03 rx02 2 PDP11/23 BA11S boxes, 1MB, RQDX2 and RD52 1MB, RQDX2 and RD31, RX50 1 pdp11/73 50" RACK SYSTEM (4MB, DLVJ11, DEQNA, RQDX3>> RX02, RD52, RX33, RL02). 1 BA11va with 11/23 +tu58 RT-11 1 BA11va with 11/23 +Viking RX02 equivilent RT-11 PDT11/130 11/03 with tu58 dectapeII OSs in use: RT-11, XXDP-11 and unix V6 VAX based machines: =================== Microvax-II (ba23 based) 12mb, RQDX3, RD53, RX33 This one lived as HIPSS:: during my days at DEC. Microvax-II/GPX (Ba123 based, TK50 and SCSI disks) This one was know as VIDSYS:: inside DEC. 3 Microvax2000 all with 2 RD53, 1 RD54 drive, one with ultrix 1 Microvax2000 as hard disk formatter and MOP bootable system. 2 Microvax3100/m76/gpx 32mb 2 each 1gb scsi internal 3 Microvax3100/server (not M10e) (filled with 400mb and 1gb disks) 4 BA42 SCSI disk farm for the 3100s populated with RZ56s OSs in use VMSv5.4-4,V5.54, V7.2, Ultrix 4.2 Terminal for the uVAX systems is usually VT1200 via thinnet and the PDP-11s the usual terminal is either VT340, VT320 or VT180 in terminal mode. DEC CP/M speaking machines: =========================== 1 Vt180 complete (dual RX180s) 2 Vt180 CP/M board built up as standalone one modded for 6mhz 1 Vt185 Thats a Vt125 + Vt180. In the non operational list: 11/23B uPDP-11 in a BA23 pedestal that while complete with 11/23B, M8057 memory, DHV11, RQDX2 and RD52, RX50 it requries cleaning and testing. H11 Backplane complete with LSI-11 CPU, 16k of ram, two serial cards and a parallel card of heath origin. Some day I'll find the case/power supply for it. All parts are tested as working. Small 11/23 system using a H9281-BC (12x2 slots) filled with: M8186 1/23 (Overclocked CPU mod) 4 M8059 MSV11 ram DLV11j, RQDX3 with M9058 distribution board. (for RX33 and RD31) MRV-11 Eprom card with MSCP boot. VK170 with matching LK02 keyboard and a monitor. The VK170 is a minimal VT52 on a dual width card for packaged systems that communicates via RS232 to system and the bus use is power only. This is waiting on being packed in a reasonable nonDEC box with a DEC PS and fans. The boards are known working and the backplane is already jumpered as Q22. Generally in my house operational means I can actually turn it on and play and it has a permanent spot that is easily accessable. One project that is in process is a H9800 desk/rack that will replace the existing standard steel office desk. the system to be installed there will be 11/23B in BA11s with a hand made Disk box for RX33 and RD52s. I have two boxes (Xerox Paper sized) of tested boards enough to build another few 11/23s and a few uVAXII as my spares. Failed boards get repaird when I feel like it so I have good boards around. Who was it that has the SIG of "DEC had then what you wish you could buy now." ? Allison From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Tue Oct 2 02:35:01 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:35:01 -0700 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies References: , <200710011611.42494.rtellason@verizon.net>, <575131af0710011816u4f860d9cid8dcde2198925d7b@mail.gmail.com> <47014CED.4439.6294ECDB@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4701F4A6.7C7A49A1@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 2 Oct 2007 at 2:16, Liam Proven wrote: > > > They were pretty much the first ever 16-bit home micro, but it was a > > crippled 16-bit chip - as detailed in another message in this thread. > > They did have good keyboards, were solidly built and I believe the > > graphics chip was, for its time, decent and capable. > > Tossing all of the other chips and CROMs and other stuff out, how > compatible was the TMS9900 with the TI 990 mini? The same or > considerablly different? I can't state so categorically but my understanding is that they were very much the same. Going back to a conversation of a few weeks ago, when we were developing/running Verex/Thoth at UBC ca 1980 it was on a 990/10. The next major step in the project was to develop a distributed kernel for multiple processors. To this end, 3 bare single board computers based on the 9900 chip were ordered and received from TI. Something makes me think they were called "990/5"s. I remember making up a front panel for the 3 of them with reset buttons and a few status LEDs to go in the rack with the /10. The idea, of course, was to use the 9900s because we already had the compilers,etc. generating code for the 990/10. (Cheriton left before we actually got into using them at the software level and the distributed kernel would become the VKernel at Stanford on other hardware). Also, the description of the 9900 in Osborne's "An Introduction to Microcomputers, Vol II" ('76) fits well with my recollections of the 990/10. To my knowledge the 9900 chip was not crippled; rather (going from what others have described) the design and implementation of the 99/4 home computer failed to make effective use of it. I didn't follow micros too much in the early 80s but I remember wondering at the time why the 99/4 was doing so poorly when it had that great processor in it. I quite liked the 990 architecture with the workspace pointer. Yes, there was the overhead of accessing registers in memory, but there were also savings. The workspace pointer essentially became the stack/frame pointer. Procedure calls, interrupts and process switches were quick because there were only 3 machine registers to save (PC,WSP,PSW). Stack variables and parameters were referenced in instructions as registers, thus saving on instruction length/memory accesses to retrieve addresses/offsets, etc. For use with "modern software design", i.e.: stack-oriented high-level languages, I thought it was a quite effective architecture. From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Tue Oct 2 03:03:30 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 10:03:30 +0200 Subject: CompacTape In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> References: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071002100330.2fe40f91@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 20:27:13 -0500 "Jason T" wrote: > Instead of CompacTape, however, they are all CompacTape III. I think > these were TK85 2.6gb media. They are DLT III, 10 GB native actually. I use DLT III (and IIIxt) tapes to backup my main machine. They are still quite usefull. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Oct 2 03:05:25 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 09:05:25 +0100 Subject: Epson QX-10 Emulator In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710020905.25941.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Monday 01 October 2007 23:05:55 Tony Duell wrote: > -- the Intellec MCS8i, Xerox Daybreak (\pounds 10.00, the seller hadn't a > clue as to what it was. Nor had I, but it looked interesting, and I Clueless sellers are brilliant. I scored a nice Roland Juno 106 off the notoriously overpriced Cash Converters for ?120 - it was the HS60 model with the built-in speakers, so it got lumped in with the home keyboards. Apparently it was "crap, because it didn't have any rhythms or nothing". Yup, and it's also 300 quid cheaper than the going rate... \o/ Gordon From dmabry at mich.com Tue Oct 2 03:33:17 2007 From: dmabry at mich.com (Dave Mabry) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:33:17 -0400 Subject: Intel MSD 225 value In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4702024D.7020501@mich.com> If it works, I have seen systems go for about $700 on e-pay. I have a few of them that work and I would be glad to that price for one. There was one on e-bay that went for much more, but it had lots of documentation and an In-Circuit Emulator, as I recall. On another subject, do you think there are some salvageable parts on yours? Good luck with the insurance. David Griffith said the following on 10/1/2007 9:16 PM: > As I was driving north from the Los Angeles area with, among other things, > an Intel MDS 225, I was struck from the rear by someone who was driving on > a suspended license. I'm fine, but the MSD appears to have been > destroyed. Picture rolling one down a steep staircase. So, to get a > figure on how much monetary damage was done, I'd like some help. What's a > guestimate of the value of an Intel MDS with integral CRT and 8-inch > floppy drive? If you want one, how much would you be willing to spend? > If you have one, how much would you want to sell it? > > > From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Oct 2 03:38:25 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 01:38:25 -0700 Subject: Utilogic II (was these RTL or what?) Message-ID: <19DF0409-CA44-48CD-A37A-FE95B0CDB3D4@bitsavers.org> >> I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and there's >> some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what they're >> calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't say. Dates >> are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured I'd ask in >> here... > > Goggle finds only a few hits for utilogic,and is mostly a odd chip for sale. > I suspect more TTL rather than DTL. Ben. look under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/signetics/_dataBooks/ From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Oct 2 03:44:33 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 01:44:33 -0700 Subject: DX10 (was TI-99/4A Floppies) Message-ID: <467650EE-AAA1-4A92-854B-E8D813B29EE4@bitsavers.org> > Since the 990/4 Mini was based on a TMS9900, Probably not much. Dont know if > its enough to run DX10 though. DX10 requires the memory management of the 990/10 or /12 or a 99000 A simulation of the 990/10 that can run DX10 is present in MESS. TX990 could run on the 990/4 or /5 http://bitsavers.org/bits/TI/990/TX990_TXDS_2.0/ http://bitsavers.org/pdf/ti/990/txds/ From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Oct 2 05:59:14 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:59:14 +0100 Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting Message-ID: <47022482.9050101@yahoo.co.uk> Morning, What's the normal procedure to boot a floppy from an Apple ][? I'm just taking a look at my Mitac [1] clone (with a view to selling it) and got curious as to whether it'd boot a standard Apple DOS system disk. If powered up with a drive connected the spindle motor starts and it'll step the drive head back to track 0 - but nothing more. On the one hand, it's entirely possible that the machine isn't a close enough clone to work with standard Apple DOS (that wouldn't surprise me at all, in fact) - but on the other, maybe I'm just missing some standard key combination to magically boot from the drive... (whilst I've got an Apple ///, I've never used an Apple ][ in my life) I can hit CTRL-reset and the machine will drop to BASIC; is there a normal way of booting (or at least bringing up a dir) a floppy from BASIC on a genuine ][? [1] Quite an impressive machine. Has some flavour of far-east legends on the key fronts, as well as regular ASCII (we had a discussion about it on here once, but there were conflicting opinions on what language it actually was). Built-in disk controller, joystick port, tape, TV modulator, 80-column card. There's a little backplane which can be plugged into the machine's expansion port and gives you five Apple ][ card slots, too. cheers Jules From dave06a at dunfield.com Tue Oct 2 07:59:12 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 07:59:12 -0500 Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting In-Reply-To: <47022482.9050101@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200710021203.l92C3px7001379@hosting.monisys.ca> > What's the normal procedure to boot a floppy from an Apple ][? I'm just taking > a look at my Mitac [1] clone (with a view to selling it) and got curious as to > whether it'd boot a standard Apple DOS system disk. > > If powered up with a drive connected the spindle motor starts and it'll step > the drive head back to track 0 - but nothing more. > > On the one hand, it's entirely possible that the machine isn't a close enough > clone to work with standard Apple DOS (that wouldn't surprise me at all, in > fact) - but on the other, maybe I'm just missing some standard key combination > to magically boot from the drive... (whilst I've got an Apple ///, I've never > used an Apple ][ in my life) > > I can hit CTRL-reset and the machine will drop to BASIC; is there a normal way > of booting (or at least bringing up a dir) a floppy from BASIC on a genuine ][? Powering it on should be enough to boot it. The apple launches the ROM on the disk controller as part of it's initialization and that ROM tries to boot. If it's booting at all, you should observe the disk head step all the way out, then back in a bit as it reads the OS. If it just stays on the outside track, it's probably not getting very far. Normally, you will see the drive select and hear the head "rattle" against the stop of a bit (Apple does not use a Track-0 sensor - it simply steps out 40 times no matter what), then you head the drive seeking around as it loads the OS (Most AppleII drives seek very smoothly, with a "swoosh" sound). If you hit ctrl-reset it will interrupt the boot attempt and drop you to the Apple basic prompt. To re-try booting, you need to activate the disk controller ROM again, this is easily accomplished with a PR# or IN# command referencing the disk controller slot. The convention is to place the disk controller in slot-6, so the normal way to reboot an AppleII is "PR#6" -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Oct 2 08:28:03 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:28:03 +0100 Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting In-Reply-To: <200710021203.l92C3px7001379@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200710021203.l92C3px7001379@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <47024763.7080502@yahoo.co.uk> Dave Dunfield wrote: >> What's the normal procedure to boot a floppy from an Apple ][? I'm just taking > > Powering it on should be enough to boot it. The apple launches the ROM on the disk > controller as part of it's initialization and that ROM tries to boot. If it's > booting at all, you should observe the disk head step all the way out, then back > in a bit as it reads the OS. If it just stays on the outside track, it's probably > not getting very far. Hmm, I don't see the heads move (other than stepping to the outside track at power-on if I've manually moved them) - no luck with PR#6 either (same behaviour; starts the spindle motor, then briefly rattles the heads against the end - outer - stop before just sitting there with the motor turning). I'm going to take the machine in to the museum tomorrow though and try combinations of different drives / media, as there's no way I can test here that what I have is working. > (Most AppleII drives seek very smoothly, with a "swoosh" sound). This one's something of an unknown - it's a half-height drive in a case best described as "borderline homebrew" (i.e. it's quite well done for something done in a home workshop, but not quite as good as something I'd expect from a professional product). No identifying marks as to who made it, but the drive inside is made by ALPS - it's got a band-driven stepper motor for the heads rather than the spiral groove that I seem to remember the disk ][ units having. I'll dig out a genuine disk ][ drive tomorrow and see if that makes any difference. (The DOS disk I have is 3.2 incidentally... the wikipedia article on the A2 suggests there was a tweak available for genuine Disk ][ interface cards post-3.2 to allow more sectors per track; I presume that such 'tweaked' cards will still boot 3.2 and earlier media though? I've got no idea which 'type' of interface this clone copies) > The convention is to place the disk controller in slot-6, so the normal > way to reboot an AppleII is "PR#6" PR#5 seems to activate the drive on this system too - weird. Hmm... if the number following PR# is the slot, then I'll try this drive / disk combination with a real Disk ][ interface card plugged into the Mitac's expansion backplane (I've got a pile of Apple cards, I've just never had a genuine A2!). Thanks for the info anyway - will see what I can find out tomorrow. J. From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Tue Oct 2 08:39:51 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 10:39:51 -0300 Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting References: <47022482.9050101@yahoo.co.uk> <9E4A078FDCC94D66ABBFEF4DBE4075F6@fluke> Message-ID: <004a01c804f9$d1793ad0$f0fea8c0@alpha> > I developed a very rough but surprisingly functional test for bad > alignment; putting a little pressure on the head carrier (or spiral disk) > to move it a tiny amount in each direction was often enough to bring track > zero close enough to alignment that the drive would spring into life. If > that worked, at least I knew that the drive was basically functional, and > probably just needed an align. I also need to track down info on how to > align those spiral-disk-head-drive type mechanisms (Shugart? or were they > ALPS? I forget). I used to know this stuff once, but that was a long time > ago, and it's just not coming back on its own. A very common procedure here in Brazil in the apple days: Put the drive to be aligned as the #2 drive. Load up Locksmith 6 on the drive 1 and try to read a disk in drive 2. Loose the screws on the stepper motor and turn it cw/ccw up when all the sectors read right. Try 2 or 3 different disks (commercial software is great for that!) and tight the screws. You're done! From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 09:02:52 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:02:52 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Sun, 30 Sep 2007 16:28:18 +0100 > "Liam Proven" wrote: > >> [1] I don't have a suitable monitor cable. > It is not hard to construct. The VAXstation 3100 has a DA15 with RGB > analog video output. Every multisync monitor, that can understand sync > on green, will do the job. The pinout is somthere on the net. IIRC there > are three pins for RGB and a separate pin for mono-video. If you don't > have a color frame buffer (GPX or SPX) just connect the mono output to > the green channel of the monitor. The graphics on this machine wouldn't be 1024x864? If it is, then most multisync monitors will have trouble with it, no? Peace... Sridhar From jwest at ezwind.net Tue Oct 2 09:18:48 2007 From: jwest at ezwind.net (Jay West) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 09:18:48 -0500 Subject: PDP-11/84 availability (multiple) Message-ID: <002001c804ff$26a24740$6500a8c0@BILLING> A gentleman contacted me who is working at a facility where there are eight PDP-11/84-AA's in use. Six are working, two are spares. Whenever they are decomissioned (he didn't say how long it would be, but I got the impression "not several years"), he would like to have people lined up to take them. He seemed quite interested in making sure they went to people who would appreciate them rather than scrappers/dealers. That sounds like us! If interested, I suggest you open a dialog with him now. His name is Mike Kinslow, and his email address is first initial, last name, at netstorm.net I know of no other information, nor where they are located. Please direct all inquiries to Mike. Jay West From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 10:16:57 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:16:57 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470260E9.8070004@gmail.com> Tony Duell wrote: >> I've not soldered a computer cable since the 1980s and I was rubbish >> at it then. And even so, I have no source for the relevant connectors! > > For the last part, RS components, Farnell, Digikey??? > > For the first part, I'd offer to do it for you, but it would be illegal > to do so. Owing to our totally daft laws, (a) I'd have to use lead-free > solder, which I don't have, don't trust, and am not set up to use and (b) > it has been said that if an enthusiast (specifically a model engineer, > but it would apply here too) does jobs for others, then his workshop > becomes a workplace and is covered by all the daft health-and-safety > rules that I have no desire to get involved with, and which quite > honestly, would stop me from getting on with things. The way around that last bit, I believe, would be to make the cable for yourself, and let him have it as a gift, no? Peace... Sridhar From bpope at wordstock.com Tue Oct 2 11:32:26 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 12:32:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 80s video game markets... In-Reply-To: <470002D2.7080408@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <20071002163226.0041955D82@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Jules Richardson > > > Random mutterings... > > I was just thinking earlier how huge the UK computer game market was in the > 80s - and yet most of the titles were produced by UK people for the UK market, > and presumably never exported elsewhere. Other countries presumably followed > the same pattern - and there must be games which were huge in one country and > relatively unheard of anywhere else. > > Which sort-of raised the question of whether anyone's ever tried to 'map' the > 80s video game industry by popularity in each country? > > Like I said, random mutterings. I'm just curious what was going on elsewhere > while us UK lot were playing Frak, Manic Miner, Repton, Monty Mole etc... :-) > > I was buying Zzap! 64 in Canada, so I knew about (and played!) quite a few of the UK games... Cheers, Bryan From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Oct 2 12:07:45 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:07:45 -0400 Subject: Utilogic II (was these RTL or what?) In-Reply-To: <19DF0409-CA44-48CD-A37A-FE95B0CDB3D4@bitsavers.org> References: <19DF0409-CA44-48CD-A37A-FE95B0CDB3D4@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <200710021307.45842.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 02 October 2007 04:38, Al Kossow wrote: > >> I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and > >> there's some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what > >> they're calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't > >> say. Dates are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured > >> I'd ask in here... > > > > Goggle finds only a few hits for utilogic,and is mostly a odd chip for > > sale. > > > I suspect more TTL rather than DTL. Ben. > > look under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/signetics/_dataBooks/ I don't recall where I picked them up, but what I am referring to is indeed a couple of databooks... I might have gotten them there, even. Maybe I just need to dig into them further. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Oct 2 12:30:00 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 13:30:00 -0400 Subject: Intel MSD 225 value In-Reply-To: <4702024D.7020501@mich.com> References: <4702024D.7020501@mich.com> Message-ID: On Oct 2, 2007, at 4:33 AM, Dave Mabry wrote: > Good luck with the insurance. Yes, good luck. Around 1999 I got rear-ended outside of Washington DC by a suit who was rushing to the airport. In my trunk was SOMEONE ELSE'S HP-5061B cesium beam oscillator. My wallet still hurts. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From billdeg at degnanco.com Tue Oct 2 12:46:01 2007 From: billdeg at degnanco.com (B Degnan) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 13:46:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: TI 990 architecture In-Reply-To: <200710021700.l92H0VVr095376@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710021700.l92H0VVr095376@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <58373.207.245.121.210.1191347161.squirrel@webmail.degnanco.net> > > I can't state so categorically but my understanding is that they were very > much the same. > Going back to a conversation of a few weeks ago, when we were > developing/running Verex/Thoth at UBC ca 1980 it was on a 990/10. The next > major step in the project was to develop a distributed kernel for multiple > processors. To this end, 3 bare single board computers based on the 9900 > chip > were ordered and received from TI. Something makes me think they were > called > "990/5"s. I remember making up a front panel for the 3 of them with reset > buttons and a few status LEDs to go in the rack with the /10. The idea, of > course, was to use the 9900s because we already had the compilers,etc. > generating code for the 990/10. > Here are some pics of possibly a related system that I posted a while ago. http://vintagecomputer.net/ti/TI-990-101/ Bill D From lproven at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 14:11:16 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 20:11:16 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> On 02/10/2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > The graphics on this machine wouldn't be 1024x864? > > If it is, then most multisync monitors will have trouble with it, no? Why would that be a problem? The point of a *multi*sync screen is that it can sync to any resolution (within limits), surely? -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 14:18:00 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 20:18:00 +0100 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <575131af0710021218rdb4f8c2q882f3779a605441c@mail.gmail.com> On 02/10/2007, Allison wrote: > The 9900 chips is not crippled, for 1976 three voltage NMOS its about as fast > as the technology of the time could go. The TI99/4 did however do a nasty to > it. One is they muxed the bus down to 8bits wide and that does slow the system > some. There were 128 words of ram (6810s) that if you execute there the speed > is noticeable. The other is the GROM (sort of an interpreted language with a > register point to next instruction) is a bottleneck as well. There was a > later 9980 and the 9985 which were a 8bit bus interface and were somewhat > crippled but I'd never seen one in a TI99/4A. That's probably true, but the 99/4a wasn't a 1976 machine. It was released in 1981 and withdrawn 1983. A bit unfairly for a tweaked 1979 machine (the 99/a), the 99/4a's competition was mainly 1982 machines like the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum, which (based on my possibly erroneous recollection) outperformed the 99/4a significantly. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From aserlanger at earthlink.net Tue Oct 2 14:32:47 2007 From: aserlanger at earthlink.net (aserlanger at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:32:47 -0400 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? In-Reply-To: <47026a41.13578c0a.25fa.64b8@mx.google.com> References: <47026a41.13578c0a.25fa.64b8@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <005a01c8052b$038b42d0$0308a8c0@hpmpc01> Based on his actions with me, there is no reason to believe there is any integrity behind anything he does. I could care less about what might be a nightmare to him. Besides which, since he never refunded anything (certainly not to me, and I'm one of those who paid full in advance), he has no claims to reduced working capital to make. There's no "probably" fraudulent about it. It's a shame for Howard Harte, whose reputation has not been enhanced by his association with this guy. -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Robert Stek Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 11:57 AM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? I don't think he had any bad intentions in the beginning (some 6 years ago), as I said in a related comp.os.cpm post, "Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice." But his actions over the last two years suggest a lot about his integrity now. I have now heard from four individuals (in 24 hours), two of whom paid in full in advance, with the same basic story: after politely asking for updates, we are ignored despite repeated attempts at communication - no updates, no explanation, no 'good faith' offer of partial shipment (Howard Harte's super I/O board was produced, though apparently by Howard directly), no 'good faith' offer of anything, and certainly no offer of refund. I am sure that the project has been a personal nightmare for him. It is a shame to see someone who contributed so much to the development of the microcomputer industry in its early days end up trying to sweep his recent mistakes (and our money) under the rug while still pretending to offer an IMSAI II (and other items) for sale on his website - it's not only unethical but very probably fraudulent as well. I've screwed up in my life (just ask my ex-wife!). But IMHO it's far better to admit defeat and offer whatever atonement you can, than to continue in the self-delusion that the IMSAI II will ever be built and that a bunch of 'cry-babies' (my projection, not his words) who want their money back are stopping forward progress by reducing working capital. rant := off So, any there any others out there who are willing to admit that they lost their front money? Or anyone who actually received any of his other hardware offerings? Or who received a refund? Bob Stek Saver of Lost Sols >From: Grant Stockly >Subject: RE: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their > deposit? >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Message-ID: <0JP900ENKGIGSQ80 at msgmmp-1.gci.net> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > >I've talked to him several times. Before the Altair kit and >after. Very nice guy. I don't think he has any bad intentions at >all. I will buy one the second they become available. I have no >idea what the situation with them is, but I'd have a hard time >thinking he was trying to defraud people or lie (of course, I have >all my money). He has told me of the money, engineering, and time he >has spent. > >Possibly he just isn't a "business" man. That's not a bad thing at >all, we all have our strengths! Engineers aren't good with making >their own due dates... ; ) The Kenbak kit was supposed to be done >by March. I just shipped the first 8 kits a week ago today. ; ) > >When I started selling kits I decided in the beginning not to collect >money until stuff was ready to ship. I wasn't worried too much about >getting lazy, but it made me look forward to shipping and work >towards that goal. > >Grant From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 14:33:28 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:33:28 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47029D08.9070008@gmail.com> Liam Proven wrote: >> The graphics on this machine wouldn't be 1024x864? >> >> If it is, then most multisync monitors will have trouble with it, no? > > Why would that be a problem? The point of a *multi*sync screen is that > it can sync to any resolution (within limits), surely? You'd think so, but I believe it actually works with a discrete sequence of resolutions, and a continuous spectrum of frequencies. Peace... Sridhar From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Tue Oct 2 14:37:08 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:37:08 -0700 Subject: Utilogic II (was these RTL or what?) References: <19DF0409-CA44-48CD-A37A-FE95B0CDB3D4@bitsavers.org> <200710021307.45842.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <47029DE4.DB805890@cs.ubc.ca> "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > On Tuesday 02 October 2007 04:38, Al Kossow wrote: > > >> I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and > > >> there's some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what > > >> they're calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't > > >> say. Dates are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured > > >> I'd ask in here... > > > > > > Goggle finds only a few hits for utilogic,and is mostly a odd chip for > > > sale. > > > > > I suspect more TTL rather than DTL. Ben. > > > > look under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/signetics/_dataBooks/ > > I don't recall where I picked them up, but what I am referring to is indeed a > couple of databooks... I might have gotten them there, even. Maybe I just > need to dig into them further. "UtilLogicII_Handbook_1968.pdf" from Al's bitsavers presents some internal schematics. Kind of interesting in that the family is a mixture of technologies: AND gate inputs are current-*sinking* multi-emitter TTL style, N/OR gates inputs are current-*sourcing* like RTL with a common limiting resistor but referred to in the text as DTL with the diodes replaced with transistors. N/OR outputs are totem-pole so they'll both source and sink current. AND gate outputs only have a high-side transistor so they'll only source. If one stuck to AND-OR-NOT combinatorics it was probably OK to design with. I came across a small pile of unknown 60s-era SSI gold-ceramic ICs recently (SG 2xx series) and popped the lid off one just for fun to see if I could figure out what it was under a microscope (looks like a dual 4-input TTL or DTL gate), then later found some mention of them in the cross-refs of an early TI TTL databook. From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 14:38:02 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:38:02 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47029E1A.6000704@gmail.com> Liam Proven wrote: > On 02/10/2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> The graphics on this machine wouldn't be 1024x864? >> >> If it is, then most multisync monitors will have trouble with it, no? > > Why would that be a problem? The point of a *multi*sync screen is that > it can sync to any resolution (within limits), surely? BTW, if it's a GPX it's limited to 1024x864, and if it's an SPX, it can do 1280x1024, which your multi-sync monitor should be capable of. I might be remembering incorrectly, and if I am, someone please correct me. Peace... Sridhar From glen.slick at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 14:41:42 2007 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 12:41:42 -0700 Subject: ALERT, WA State: Boeing Surplus Closing... In-Reply-To: <200709271833540838.28FD3F5C@192.168.42.129> References: <200709271833540838.28FD3F5C@192.168.42.129> Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90710021241p3ff364f4r55ce26fdf938a12c@mail.gmail.com> On 9/27/07, Bruce Lane wrote: > This is directed primarily at those in or near the Puget Sound region. > > Fellow techies, > > I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have learned that Boeing Surplus's retail store will be closing permanently at the end of this year. The last day for retail operations will be Friday, December 21st. This decision was revealed to the employees on July 13th. Boeing has, for unknown reasons, made no apparent effort to publicize it. > Bruce made the local news... http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/333830_boeingsurplus02.html "The closure has drawn the ire of Bruce Lane, a former Boeing employee, who started a Web site, www.saveboeingsurplus.com, to stop the closure." From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 2 14:43:12 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:43:12 -0600 Subject: TI 990 architecture In-Reply-To: <575131af0710021218rdb4f8c2q882f3779a605441c@mail.gmail.com> References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <575131af0710021218rdb4f8c2q882f3779a605441c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47029F50.9040907@jetnet.ab.ca> >> The 9900 chips is not crippled, for 1976 three voltage NMOS its about as fast >> as the technology of the time could go. The TI99/4 did however do a nasty to >> it. One is they muxed the bus down to 8bits wide and that does slow the system >> some. There were 128 words of ram (6810s) that if you execute there the speed >> is noticeable. If I remember right, the architecure of the ti chip it used a pointer to ram as the internal registers. That would really bog down on byte wide bus. The year sounds right as I remember BYTE talking about the chip. One of the few times you had BYTE not looking at 8080/Z80 cpu's. Ben. From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 14:42:10 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:42:10 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710011036m7a59c94cj572d5cd8bb5344c0@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930153501.4F845BA45B4@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <575131af0710011036m7a59c94cj572d5cd8bb5344c0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47029F12.6050701@gmail.com> Liam Proven wrote: >> If you don't find one, you can still use a MMJ serial cable/console >> to boot it. > > I don't own a serial terminal. I'd have to try to make a cable and > hook it to a PC and use a terminal emulator. Yet more complexity! Making an MMJ cable is a piece of cake. Just take the retention clip off of the RJ11 at the end of a phone cord. Crimp an RJ45 on the other end with the proper wires heading to the proper pins, and use a Cisco RJ45->DE9 adapter. Peace... Sridhar From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 2 14:47:26 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:47:26 -0600 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <47029D08.9070008@gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> <47029D08.9070008@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4702A04E.2030301@jetnet.ab.ca> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > You'd think so, but I believe it actually works with a discrete sequence > of resolutions, and a continuous spectrum of frequencies. "You have any choice of colors as long as it is black.[1]" Ford on the model T? > Peace... Sridhar [1] Australians got a greenish color. From pcw at mesanet.com Tue Oct 2 14:48:56 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 12:48:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <47029E1A.6000704@gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> <47029E1A.6000704@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:38:02 -0400 > From: Sridhar Ayengar > Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > ; > Subject: Re: Setting up a VAXstation > > Liam Proven wrote: >> On 02/10/2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >>> The graphics on this machine wouldn't be 1024x864? >>> >>> If it is, then most multisync monitors will have trouble with it, no? >> >> Why would that be a problem? The point of a *multi*sync screen is that >> it can sync to any resolution (within limits), surely? > > BTW, if it's a GPX it's limited to 1024x864, and if it's an SPX, it can do > 1280x1024, which your multi-sync monitor should be capable of. I might be > remembering incorrectly, and if I am, someone please correct me. > > Peace... Sridhar > SPX will do 1024x1280 I think at 66Hz and maybe 72 Hz with a crystal change. Peter Wallace From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 2 13:05:43 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 19:05:43 +0100 (BST) Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <470128D9.17151.620801EF@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 1, 7 05:05:29 pm Message-ID: > > On 1 Oct 2007 at 20:23, Alexandre Souza wrote: > > > I'd not say that is impossible, but I'm hardly pressed to believe that! > > Believe it. The standard unexpanded TI 99/4A had 256 bytes of SRAM > local to the CPU: And being a TMS9900-series CPU, aren't the registers in external RAM? I guess the subroutine stack is too.. Which doesn't leave much space for anything else. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 2 13:34:25 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 19:34:25 +0100 (BST) Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting In-Reply-To: <47024763.7080502@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Oct 2, 7 02:28:03 pm Message-ID: > Hmm, I don't see the heads move (other than stepping to the outside track at > power-on if I've manually moved them) - no luck with PR#6 either (same > behaviour; starts the spindle motor, then briefly rattles the heads against > the end - outer - stop before just sitting there with the motor turning). Couild this be a 13 sector .vs. 16 sector issue? IIRC, the early Apple disk drives used a 13 sector format. Apple worked out a modification (basically allowing some bit patterns that were illegal before) to pack 16 sectors on to each track. The modifications to a real Apple cotnroller were 2 new PROMs, one was the state machine logic (the modified state machine could physiaclly read both 13 and 16 sector disks), the other was the bootstrap firmware, and IIRC the new firmware would only boot 16 sector disks. Of course an unmodified controller could only boot (heck, could only read) 13 sector disks. > (The DOS disk I have is 3.2 incidentally... the wikipedia article on the A2 > suggests there was a tweak available for genuine Disk ][ interface cards > post-3.2 to allow more sectors per track; I presume that such 'tweaked' cards > will still boot 3.2 and earlier media though? I've got no idea which 'type' of > interface this clone copies) Aha... IIRC, 3.2 is 13 sector, 3.3 is 16 sector. If your clone is expecting 16 sector disks, it will not boot 3.2 AFAIK. -tony From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Oct 2 14:57:08 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 12:57:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TI 990 architecture In-Reply-To: <47029F50.9040907@jetnet.ab.ca> from woodelf at "Oct 2, 7 01:43:12 pm" Message-ID: <200710021957.l92Jv8RK013898@floodgap.com> > If I remember right, the architecure of the ti chip > it used a pointer to ram as the internal registers. That would really > bog down on byte wide bus. But then chips like the 9995 do very well on a 8-bit data bus. IMHO the bigger problems with the 9900 implementation in the 99/4A were the external scratch pad (made internal for the 9995) and the presence of GROMs, requiring their own interpretation step and murderously slow serial access. Compare this to a system like the Tomy Tutor, which has a 9995 on an 8-bit bus too, but is significantly faster than the 99/4A despite being clocked slightly slower (10.7MHz oscillator instead of the 99/4A's 12MHz one). -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Everything you think you know is wrong. -- Jack Chalker -------------------- From arcarlini at iee.org Tue Oct 2 14:59:27 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 20:59:27 +0100 Subject: Easily Amused... In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710011326l7955bf11w372986b9827c8ba6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <002001c8052e$c42a7350$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Jason T wrote: > https://secure.nic.gs/index.jsp > > ...and it's taken :( Think laterally apple-2.gs and apple-ii.gs are both still available ... Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.37/1042 - Release Date: 01/10/2007 18:59 From arcarlini at iee.org Tue Oct 2 15:03:45 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 21:03:45 +0100 Subject: CompacTape In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710012233r46991837o95da6363a85c4fa6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <002101c8052f$57e47190$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Jason T wrote: > Are the tapes pictured at least correct TK50 tapes? I don't recall if > my other ones are marked "CompacTape" or not. Some of my TK50 carts say CompactTape, some say nothing at all. The TK70 ones all say CompactTape II (or at least the ones I can see doo and my recollection is that they all did). Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.37/1042 - Release Date: 01/10/2007 18:59 From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 2 14:59:56 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 20:59:56 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 2, 7 08:11:16 pm Message-ID: > > On 02/10/2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > The graphics on this machine wouldn't be 1024x864? > > > > If it is, then most multisync monitors will have trouble with it, no? > > Why would that be a problem? The point of a *multi*sync screen is that > it can sync to any resolution (within limits), surely? Actually, most multisync montiors will sync to a number of different scan frequencies (corresponding to resolutions) but they won't sync to _any_ frequency in that range. Often, for example, capicitors are electronically sqitched in and out in the horizontal output stage, obviously a given capacitor is either in-circuit or not, So there's a limited number of frequencies that stage will correctly work at. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 2 15:12:08 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 21:12:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <47029F12.6050701@gmail.com> from "Sridhar Ayengar" at Oct 2, 7 03:42:10 pm Message-ID: > > Making an MMJ cable is a piece of cake. Just take the retention clip > off of the RJ11 at the end of a phone cord. Crimp an RJ45 on the other Rememeber the OP (and I) are in the UK. The standard telephone connector over here is not an RJ11 or snythig like that. > end with the proper wires heading to the proper pins, and use a Cisco > RJ45->DE9 adapter. Having had to try to get wires into the right holes on an RJ45 connector, I would _much_ rather solder up a D connector. -tony From pat at computer-refuge.org Tue Oct 2 15:15:27 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 16:15:27 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <47029F12.6050701@gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <575131af0710011036m7a59c94cj572d5cd8bb5344c0@mail.gmail.com> <47029F12.6050701@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200710021615.27338.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Tuesday 02 October 2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Liam Proven wrote: > >> If you don't find one, you can still use a MMJ serial > >> cable/console to boot it. > > > > I don't own a serial terminal. I'd have to try to make a cable and > > hook it to a PC and use a terminal emulator. Yet more complexity! > > Making an MMJ cable is a piece of cake. Just take the retention clip > off of the RJ11 at the end of a phone cord. Crimp an RJ45 on the > other end with the proper wires heading to the proper pins, and use a > Cisco RJ45->DE9 adapter. If you're using the right Cisco adapter on the other end (labelled "Terminal" usually, but not "Modem", basically any DB25 or DE9 adapter that's got a female end), you shouldn't need to recrimp the other end. Just shove the RJ11 into the adapter and the 'ez-disconnect' end into the MMJ jack. (This assumes that the phone cable is properly wired as a "roll-over" cable, with the wires on either end being in the opposite order, and that you've got at least 4 pins wired on the cable. Just 2 pins wired, and all you'll do is wire the grounds together. :) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 2 15:15:42 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:15:42 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: References: <470128D9.17151.620801EF@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 1, 7 05:05:29 pm, Message-ID: <4702447E.32485.665BFB6C@cclist.sydex.com> On 2 Oct 2007 at 19:05, Tony Duell wrote: > And being a TMS9900-series CPU, aren't the registers in external RAM? I > guess the subroutine stack is too.. Which doesn't leave much space for > anything else. Yup, 32 bytes/16 words at a toss. And the usual subroutine linkage used a BLWP (Branch and Link Workspace Pointer or "Bullwhip") which set a completely new register frame for each subroutine. So that didn't make for a lot of spare processor-local RAM. Using 256 bytes of RAM at the late date of the 99/4A was screwy implmentation if there ever was one, though I suppose that some can think of some kind of advantage to this. Cheers, Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 2 15:16:49 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:16:49 -0600 Subject: ALERT, WA State: Boeing Surplus Closing... In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:41:42 -0700. <1e1fc3e90710021241p3ff364f4r55ce26fdf938a12c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: IMO, its Boeing's store and they can pack it up and ship it to the moon if they want to. Instead of trying to *stop* the closure of the store, IMO it would be better to lobby for a one-time fire sale "everything must go!" event with big discounts. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 2 15:24:20 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:24:20 -0700 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <575131af0710021218rdb4f8c2q882f3779a605441c@mail.gmail.com> References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, <575131af0710021218rdb4f8c2q882f3779a605441c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47024684.19591.6663E25F@cclist.sydex.com> On 2 Oct 2007 at 20:18, Liam Proven wrote: > That's probably true, but the 99/4a wasn't a 1976 machine. It was > released in 1981 and withdrawn 1983. No, but I think the point was that the TMS9900 itself was a 1976- release chip. But then, so was the GI CP1610 and that saw plenty of use in Intellivision consoles, even though it was pretty much the same as the also-16-bit GI 1600, released in 1975. Cheers, Chuck From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 15:42:30 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:42:30 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> Tony Duell wrote: >> Making an MMJ cable is a piece of cake. Just take the retention clip >> off of the RJ11 at the end of a phone cord. Crimp an RJ45 on the other > > Rememeber the OP (and I) are in the UK. The standard telephone connector > over here is not an RJ11 or snythig like that. What is the connector over there? I remember seeing RJ11/14 connectors in India, in certain places. >> end with the proper wires heading to the proper pins, and use a Cisco >> RJ45->DE9 adapter. > > Having had to try to get wires into the right holes on an RJ45 connector, > I would _much_ rather solder up a D connector. I suppose I have a lot of practice, but I can strip, order, cut and crimp and RJ45 for ethernet in about 30 seconds. It takes longer than that for my iron to warm up. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 15:43:20 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:43:20 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710021615.27338.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <575131af0710011036m7a59c94cj572d5cd8bb5344c0@mail.gmail.com> <47029F12.6050701@gmail.com> <200710021615.27338.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <4702AD68.2020100@gmail.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: >>>> If you don't find one, you can still use a MMJ serial >>>> cable/console to boot it. >>> I don't own a serial terminal. I'd have to try to make a cable and >>> hook it to a PC and use a terminal emulator. Yet more complexity! >> Making an MMJ cable is a piece of cake. Just take the retention clip >> off of the RJ11 at the end of a phone cord. Crimp an RJ45 on the >> other end with the proper wires heading to the proper pins, and use a >> Cisco RJ45->DE9 adapter. > > If you're using the right Cisco adapter on the other end > (labelled "Terminal" usually, but not "Modem", basically any DB25 or > DE9 adapter that's got a female end), you shouldn't need to recrimp the > other end. Just shove the RJ11 into the adapter and > the 'ez-disconnect' end into the MMJ jack. Wow. That's cool. That'll save me some time next time. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 15:45:42 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:45:42 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> <47029E1A.6000704@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4702ADF6.6070509@gmail.com> Peter C. Wallace wrote: >> BTW, if it's a GPX it's limited to 1024x864, and if it's an SPX, it >> can do 1280x1024, which your multi-sync monitor should be capable of. >> I might be remembering incorrectly, and if I am, someone please >> correct me. >> > > SPX will do 1024x1280 I think at 66Hz and maybe 72 Hz with a crystal > change. Yes, but I wasn't getting into refresh rates. The fact remains that the GPX can't do anything other than 1024x864, which isn't well supported by monitors. Peace... Sridhar From pcw at mesanet.com Tue Oct 2 16:40:37 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 14:40:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <4702ADF6.6070509@gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> <47029E1A.6000704@gmail.com> <4702ADF6.6070509@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:45:42 -0400 > From: Sridhar Ayengar > Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > ; > Subject: Re: Setting up a VAXstation > > Peter C. Wallace wrote: >>> BTW, if it's a GPX it's limited to 1024x864, and if it's an SPX, it can do >>> 1280x1024, which your multi-sync monitor should be capable of. I might be >>> remembering incorrectly, and if I am, someone please correct me. >>> >> >> SPX will do 1024x1280 I think at 66Hz and maybe 72 Hz with a crystal >> change. > > Yes, but I wasn't getting into refresh rates. The fact remains that the GPX > can't do anything other than 1024x864, which isn't well supported by > monitors. > > Peace... Sridhar > Actually CRT monitors rarely care about resolution, only horizontal and vertical frequencies. AFAICR GPX and the mono VR262 ends up being something like 48 KHz horizontal (which is standard) and ~55 Hz vertical, which gives me a headache but should be in range for any decent Multisync monitor. For GPX and SPX, you do need a monitor that can do Sync On Green (SOG), For example the Sony 400PS on my desk works fine with GPX output (got a VS2000 connected ATM) Peter Wallace From feedle at feedle.net Tue Oct 2 17:18:54 2007 From: feedle at feedle.net (C. Sullivan) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 15:18:54 -0700 Subject: ALERT, WA State: Boeing Surplus Closing... In-Reply-To: <1e1fc3e90710021241p3ff364f4r55ce26fdf938a12c@mail.gmail.com> References: <200709271833540838.28FD3F5C@192.168.42.129> <1e1fc3e90710021241p3ff364f4r55ce26fdf938a12c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Oct 2, 2007, at 12:41 PM, Glen Slick wrote: > On 9/27/07, Bruce Lane wrote: >> This is directed primarily at those in or near the Puget >> Sound region. >> >> Fellow techies, >> >> I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have learned >> that Boeing Surplus's retail store will be closing permanently at >> the end of this year. The last day for retail operations will be >> Friday, December 21st. This decision was revealed to the employees >> on July 13th. Boeing has, for unknown reasons, made no apparent >> effort to publicize it. >> > > Bruce made the local news... > > http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/333830_boeingsurplus02.html Anybody on the list from Portland (or the Willamette Valley area) want to carpool up there for one last hurrah? Boeing Surplus was one of the things I'd hit on my monthly trip to Seattle for junk. It'll certainly be missed. From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Tue Oct 2 17:33:21 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:33:21 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies References: <470128D9.17151.620801EF@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 1, 7 05:05:29 pm, <4702447E.32485.665BFB6C@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4702C730.D7629108@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 2 Oct 2007 at 19:05, Tony Duell wrote: > > > And being a TMS9900-series CPU, aren't the registers in external RAM? I > > guess the subroutine stack is too.. Which doesn't leave much space for > > anything else. > > Yup, 32 bytes/16 words at a toss. And the usual subroutine linkage > used a BLWP (Branch and Link Workspace Pointer or "Bullwhip") which > set a completely new register frame for each subroutine. Though IIRC, with a well-designed stack management policy, the register frames could overlap, so as long as one didn't use the registers in overlapping memory you were fine. You were not obligated to grab a fresh 16 words of memory on every function call. Equivalent in more conventional archs to deciding how many machine registers you're going to save based on usage on a function call rather than saving them all without question. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 2 17:55:22 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:55:22 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <4702C730.D7629108@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470128D9.17151.620801EF@cclist.sydex.com>, <4702C730.D7629108@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <470269EA.21400.66EE24C8@cclist.sydex.com> On 2 Oct 2007 at 15:33, Brent Hilpert wrote: > Though IIRC, with a well-designed stack management policy, the register > frames could overlap, so as long as one didn't use the registers in > overlapping memory you were fine. You were not obligated to grab a fresh 16 > words of memory on every function call. Equivalent in more conventional archs > to deciding how many machine registers you're going to save based on usage on > a function call rather than saving them all without question. Agreed. But 128 words still doesn't leave much room for variables beyond those that can be stored in the registers of each frame. There's a comment on one of the 99/4A sites that 1,024 bytes of RAM were originally planned, which is more reasonable. I doubt that TI saved very much by using the 256 byte part. Cheers, Chuck From mtapley at swri.edu Tue Oct 2 18:06:35 2007 From: mtapley at swri.edu (Mark Tapley) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 18:06:35 -0500 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? In-Reply-To: <200709291700.l8TH0IHT027469@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200709291700.l8TH0IHT027469@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: At 12:00 -0500 9/29/07, Dan wrote: > What about Alphaservers? Alphaserver 1000A 4/266 Alphaserver 2100A 4/275 (3 CPU's) Alpha 3000/300x Gotta find some tuits in my circular file and get VMS and distributed.net running on those. The honor of VMS is being sadly neglected in the distributed.net standings! -- - Mark, 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward. From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Tue Oct 2 18:35:36 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:35:36 -0700 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies References: <470128D9.17151.620801EF@cclist.sydex.com>, <4702C730.D7629108@cs.ubc.ca> <470269EA.21400.66EE24C8@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4702D5C8.73A1FCD4@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 2 Oct 2007 at 15:33, Brent Hilpert wrote: > > > Though IIRC, with a well-designed stack management policy, the register > > frames could overlap, so as long as one didn't use the registers in > > overlapping memory you were fine. You were not obligated to grab a fresh 16 > > words of memory on every function call. Equivalent in more conventional archs > > to deciding how many machine registers you're going to save based on usage on > > a function call rather than saving them all without question. > > Agreed. But 128 words still doesn't leave much room for variables > beyond those that can be stored in the registers of each frame. > There's a comment on one of the 99/4A sites that 1,024 bytes of RAM > were originally planned, which is more reasonable. I doubt that TI > saved very much by using the 256 byte part. Oh, agreed too. I'm sticking up for the 990/9900 architecture, but in no way trying to defend the 99/4 design. Based on what others are describing the latter was amazingly limiting. I guess home computing got tossed over to the consumer products division at TI, which always seemed to have a bottom-of-the-line/low-end approach to things, too bad they didn't find some middle ground between that and their higher-end commercial/military stuff. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 2 18:52:04 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:52:04 -0600 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <4702D5C8.73A1FCD4@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470128D9.17151.620801EF@cclist.sydex.com>, <4702C730.D7629108@cs.ubc.ca> <470269EA.21400.66EE24C8@cclist.sydex.com> <4702D5C8.73A1FCD4@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4702D9A4.6020200@jetnet.ab.ca> Brent Hilpert wrote: > I guess home computing got tossed over to the consumer products division at > TI, which always seemed to have a bottom-of-the-line/low-end approach to > things, too bad they didn't find some middle ground between that and their > higher-end commercial/military stuff. Well the hand writing was on the wall after 1975 since in hindsight we know that 16 bit computers with 32kw is just too small for any programs after about 1975. Look how hard it was to cram advent on a 32K pdp8. Ben. From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Oct 2 19:33:11 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 17:33:11 -0700 Subject: EPROM Death? Message-ID: How do you tell an over-erased EPROM? I finally have my programmer and eraser, and just tried erasing 6 EPROM's. Four erased just fine, and two are showing weird patterns of alternating blocks of 04/06 and 14/16. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Oct 2 19:33:30 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 17:33:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> References: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071002173258.U83730@shell.lmi.net> On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > I suppose I have a lot of practice, but I can strip, order, cut and > crimp and RJ45 for ethernet in about 30 seconds. It takes longer than > that for my iron to warm up. only because you've been turning it off or unplugging it between uses. From jwest at classiccmp.org Tue Oct 2 19:42:52 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 19:42:52 -0500 Subject: vcf 10 Message-ID: <009401c80556$555e9f50$6600a8c0@JWEST> I may be going to VCF10 - and turning it into a mini-vacation with the wife. I'd appreciate it if anyone familiar with area can email me some non-geek things to see and do around Mountain View on non-show days. It'd be nice to have her not think it's ALL geek stuff on the trip :) Jay From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Oct 2 19:48:24 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 17:48:24 -0700 Subject: lead-free solder (was: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 11:37 PM +0100 10/1/07, Tony Duell wrote: >For the first part, I'd offer to do it for you, but it would be illegal >to do so. Owing to our totally daft laws, (a) I'd have to use lead-free >solder, which I don't have, don't trust, and am not set up to use and How hard is it to work with lead-free solder, and is it becoming a problem to get traditional solder in the US? I've been meaning to pick up a few rolls. As I'm still using a roll purchased in the 80's from Rat Shack for building a couple things for my VIC-20, I haven't been going through it that fast. Though I seem to be using it more often now than. >(b) >it has been said that if an enthusiast (specifically a model engineer, >but it would apply here too) does jobs for others, then his workshop >becomes a workplace and is covered by all the daft health-and-safety >rules that I have no desire to get involved with, and which quite >honestly, would stop me from getting on with things. Does it count as a job if you don't take payment? Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 Oct 2 19:54:17 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 17:54:17 -0700 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <46FFC6BE.2090008@yahoo.co.uk> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <51ea77730709300836g7851b0aexffe289b2409a5b6b@mail.gmail.com> <46FFC6BE.2090008@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: At 4:54 PM +0100 9/30/07, Jules Richardson wrote: >Jason T wrote: >>My 3100/30 boots fine off the Hobbyist VMS disc using my >>boots-anything Apple CD300 (aka Sony) drive. > >You got there first :-) Pulls of drives from old Apple systems seem >like a good bet - I've used a few on various machines which need a >512 byte block size. I normally use an Apple CD600, but it isn't >quite perfect - some SGI systems don't like it for some reason >(others do, as does everything non-SGI I've hooked it up to) I've had very good luck with an external Panasonic 4x CD-ROM drive I purchased new in '95 for my PowerBook 520c. It has worked on everything I've connected it to. I've used it on both a Mac and PC laptop, and on numerous DEC, SUN, and Amiga systems. My only SGI systems have built in CD-ROM's. Another likely source would be old Sun Hardware. As I've previously mentioned I'm quite fond of Plextor caddy drives for my PDP-11's. If you're trying to boot an old enough version of VAX/VMS then I suspect 3rd party drives could cause problems. I know the Hard Drives will. I'd recommend OpenVMS 7.2 or 7.3 for greatest SCSI compatibility. I simply only use DEC HD's on VAXen. Even though I use 3rd party drives on my PDP-11's and Alpha's. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 glen.slick at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 20:31:40 2007 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 18:31:40 -0700 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? In-Reply-To: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> References: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90710021831o6ce77990we3bb54aea42936db@mail.gmail.com> On 10/1/07, Robert Stek wrote: > Is there anyone else on the list who was as retrospectively foolish as I as > to trust him with a deposit? It doesn't speak much for his ethics if he > advertises and takes orders for non-existent products (who was that guy and > his company that advertised in Kilobaud, among others, back in the '70's > with full page ads for non-existent products? Remember that?). Search for "World Power Systems". I remember those ads and that story from back in the day. Here's a couple of references: http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/wps/ http://polaris.umuc.edu/~fbetz/references/Ahl.html http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1998-November/113422.html From halarewich at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 21:47:12 2007 From: halarewich at gmail.com (Chris Halarewich) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 19:47:12 -0700 Subject: lead-free solder (was: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6d6501090710021947t787d714fpc81566bb0c390526@mail.gmail.com> heres a link to some lead solder http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1290635&cp=2568443.2568450.2628094.2629278.2629346&view=all&parentPage=family Chris On 10/2/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > At 11:37 PM +0100 10/1/07, Tony Duell wrote: > >For the first part, I'd offer to do it for you, but it would be illegal > >to do so. Owing to our totally daft laws, (a) I'd have to use lead-free > >solder, which I don't have, don't trust, and am not set up to use and > > How hard is it to work with lead-free solder, and is it becoming a > problem to get traditional solder in the US? I've been meaning to > pick up a few rolls. As I'm still using a roll purchased in the 80's > from Rat Shack for building a couple things for my VIC-20, I haven't > been going through it that fast. Though I seem to be using it more > often now than. > > >(b) > >it has been said that if an enthusiast (specifically a model engineer, > >but it would apply here too) does jobs for others, then his workshop > >becomes a workplace and is covered by all the daft health-and-safety > >rules that I have no desire to get involved with, and which quite > >honestly, would stop me from getting on with things. > > Does it count as a job if you don't take payment? > > Zane > > > -- > | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | > | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | > | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 chris at mainecoon.com Tue Oct 2 22:12:13 2007 From: chris at mainecoon.com (Chris Kennedy) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:12:13 -0700 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <6d6501090710021947t787d714fpc81566bb0c390526@mail.gmail.com> References: <6d6501090710021947t787d714fpc81566bb0c390526@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4703088D.9050004@mainecoon.com> Chris Halarewich wrote: > heres a link to some lead solder > > http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1290635&cp=2568443.2568450.2628094.2629278.2629346&view=all&parentPage=family .093" diameter, perfect for, oh, replacing the switch in a hair dryer ;) I'm a .020"/.56mm - .032"/.81mm sorta guy myself. I haven't noticed any trouble getting SN60; I got the last batch from Specialized: http://www.specialized.net/ecommerce/shop/seriesmaster.asp?series_id=Wire+Solder Cheers, Yet another Chris -- Chris Kennedy chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97 PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97 "Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..." From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Tue Oct 2 22:23:46 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:23:46 -0700 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? References: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com> <1e1fc3e90710021831o6ce77990we3bb54aea42936db@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47030B41.1B7999EC@cs.ubc.ca> Glen Slick wrote: > > On 10/1/07, Robert Stek wrote: > > Is there anyone else on the list who was as retrospectively foolish as I as > > to trust him with a deposit? It doesn't speak much for his ethics if he > > advertises and takes orders for non-existent products (who was that guy and > > his company that advertised in Kilobaud, among others, back in the '70's > > with full page ads for non-existent products? Remember that?). > > Search for "World Power Systems". I remember those ads and that story > from back in the day. > > Here's a couple of references: > http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/wps/ > http://polaris.umuc.edu/~fbetz/references/Ahl.html > http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/1998-November/113422.html I was wondering if WPS was what was being recollected. There's also Tom Jennings site for which he usurped (his words) the name, as something of an ironic homage to that bit of vintage computing (http://www.wps.com/about-WPS/WPS/index.html#N2). Tom used to be on the list. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 2 22:27:17 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:27:17 -0700 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <4703088D.9050004@mainecoon.com> References: , <6d6501090710021947t787d714fpc81566bb0c390526@mail.gmail.com>, <4703088D.9050004@mainecoon.com> Message-ID: <4702A9A5.12923.AEFAFF@cclist.sydex.com> Not hard to get 60Sn/40Pb solder at all. Here's some from Marlon Jones http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=15345+TL Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 2 22:32:32 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:32:32 -0600 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <4702A9A5.12923.AEFAFF@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <6d6501090710021947t787d714fpc81566bb0c390526@mail.gmail.com>, <4703088D.9050004@mainecoon.com> <4702A9A5.12923.AEFAFF@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47030D50.1090902@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > Not hard to get 60Sn/40Pb solder at all. Here's some from Marlon > Jones Try that in the UK. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 2 22:38:32 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:38:32 -0700 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <47030D50.1090902@jetnet.ab.ca> References: , <4702A9A5.12923.AEFAFF@cclist.sydex.com>, <47030D50.1090902@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4702AC48.32362.B94984@cclist.sydex.com> On 2 Oct 2007 at 21:32, woodelf wrote: > Try that in the UK. Okay, how's this? http://cgi.ebay.ie/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270171180127 Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 2 22:40:01 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:40:01 -0700 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? In-Reply-To: <47030B41.1B7999EC@cs.ubc.ca> References: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com>, <47030B41.1B7999EC@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4702ACA1.3694.BAA303@cclist.sydex.com> On 2 Oct 2007 at 20:23, Brent Hilpert wrote: > > Search for "World Power Systems". I remember those ads and that story > > from back in the day. Golly, I remember seeing the 3S+P ad and thinking "those sockets looked like they're glued to the PC board." Must've been. --Chuck From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Oct 2 23:38:10 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:38:10 -0500 Subject: Experience with Dysan drive tester? Message-ID: <47031CB2.1080509@oldskool.org> A friend might have a Dysan Pat-2+ 5.25" floppy drive tester held for me, but we both have no experience with it. Assuming it comes with the alignment disk and manual, and functions, is it a worthwhile piece of equipment to have? I am not a die-hard techie -- I do not own an oscilloscope -- so I might grab it to keep my drives aligned, but not if it's more placebo than functional. If anyone has had experience using this unit or one like it, I'd like to hear your thoughts. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Oct 2 23:28:50 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 01:28:50 -0300 Subject: Burroughs B80 rescued Message-ID: <01C8055C.E5A53A00@mandr71> ---------------Original Message: Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 05:35:33 -0700 (PDT) From: Mr Ian Primus Subject: Burroughs B80 rescued Well, I drove up to Canada yesterday and picked up the Burroughs B80. I was more concerned with moving the computer than inspecting it, but I don't recall seeing any kind of standard looking interface ports. I believe that the B80 can support extra terminals, but I don't see it. Hopefully, when I get it going, I can connect something external to it and back up the disk packs. I have 11 packs, at least one of which is the operating system, MCP. -------------Reply: Not necessarily; as I recall, things like terminals, line printers, PPT I/O, Datacomm etc. and their interface/controller hardware were all options. The basic machine (which was probably most of them) consisted of the main unit with its dual-forms printer and keyboard and either integrated 8" floppies and/or the external dual 14" drive cabinet which could be 2 removable carts or one fixed/one removable; the self-scan display was also an option, but I don't think there was any I/O as standard equipment on the base model, which was essentially the disk-based replacement for the single-user L series ledger-card accounting/posting machines. mike From mike at ambientdesign.com Tue Oct 2 07:23:50 2007 From: mike at ambientdesign.com (Mike van Bokhoven) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 01:23:50 +1300 Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting In-Reply-To: <47022482.9050101@yahoo.co.uk> References: <47022482.9050101@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <9E4A078FDCC94D66ABBFEF4DBE4075F6@fluke> Hi, Unfortunately, this is normal behaviour for a lot of disk system faults. I've just worked my way through a huge pile of Apple II disk drives and controllers. Many of the drives and some of the controllers showed the fault described here - head stepped all the way out looking for data on track zero, finding nothing. #1 cause here was dirty heads, followed by bad alignment, then various analog board faults. Slight alignment issues or slightly dirty heads would cause a violent-sounding reseek. I will have to spend some time eventually going through the faulty drives and figure out what's wrong. I have an oscilloscope (10Mhz only, but I have a feeling that'll do!), and the analog boards don't look overly complicated. Does anyone know of a reference that details signals at test points etc? Knowing what I'm looking for would be nice. Does anyone have an image or similar for a test disk that can be written with a known-good drive? As mentioned in a recent post, any disk without copy protection would do if not. I developed a very rough but surprisingly functional test for bad alignment; putting a little pressure on the head carrier (or spiral disk) to move it a tiny amount in each direction was often enough to bring track zero close enough to alignment that the drive would spring into life. If that worked, at least I knew that the drive was basically functional, and probably just needed an align. I also need to track down info on how to align those spiral-disk-head-drive type mechanisms (Shugart? or were they ALPS? I forget). I used to know this stuff once, but that was a long time ago, and it's just not coming back on its own. Mike. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jules Richardson" To: ; "Discussion at 5star.net.nz:On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 11:59 PM Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting > > Morning, > > What's the normal procedure to boot a floppy from an Apple ][? I'm just > taking a look at my Mitac [1] clone (with a view to selling it) and got > curious as to whether it'd boot a standard Apple DOS system disk. > > If powered up with a drive connected the spindle motor starts and it'll > step the drive head back to track 0 - but nothing more. > > On the one hand, it's entirely possible that the machine isn't a close > enough clone to work with standard Apple DOS (that wouldn't surprise me at > all, in fact) - but on the other, maybe I'm just missing some standard key > combination to magically boot from the drive... (whilst I've got an Apple > ///, I've never used an Apple ][ in my life) > > I can hit CTRL-reset and the machine will drop to BASIC; is there a normal > way of booting (or at least bringing up a dir) a floppy from BASIC on a > genuine ][? > > [1] Quite an impressive machine. Has some flavour of far-east legends on > the key fronts, as well as regular ASCII (we had a discussion about it on > here once, but there were conflicting opinions on what language it > actually was). Built-in disk controller, joystick port, tape, TV > modulator, 80-column card. There's a little backplane which can be plugged > into the machine's expansion port and gives you five Apple ][ card slots, > too. > > cheers > > Jules From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 2 08:46:06 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:46:06 -0400 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? Message-ID: <0JPA00AI4E7KWKH7@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > From: "Rod Smallwood" > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:08:33 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > >Hmmm > Time for a quick 'We are not worthy' ^00^ Consider my leg pulled. :) > >What did you do? >Raid the Mill with a fleet of trucks? No. I did get some small amounts of odd items from DEC salvage before it was shut down. Mostly things like H751A power controllers, power supplies and TU58 drives and boards. The one uVII (BA123 VIDSYS::) was a parting gift(I paid 100$ for it with DOCS and licenses) during the days of blood. For those that don't understand the post 1991 sell off of parts of DEC, that's when the DIGITAL logo went from blue to burgandy. The other was built from scrounge. VIDSYS:: is still setup for DECnet area 56.920 (one area in OGO was 56) and HIPPY:: was area 63.390 (hidden area for DECnet overflow). My 11T03 which is now the 11/73 was a gift from my boss at DEC. I kept it in the lab area for years for those odd projects but by late 80s it was obvious it was getting used less and less. He suggested "when are you going to scrap that thing?" I bring it home (on property pass) which I did. A year later when it was time to confirm and renew the property pass his answer was "what 11?". The remainder were mostly rescues. The bulk of the uVAX3100s came from UV Waterloo over 10 years ago on a if you take one you take them all and I was the only one willing to take a huge pile of uVAX3100s plus cables, VT320s VS2000s, TK50s, several TLZ04s.. Took two seperate 400mile round trips with a pickup truck filled to capacity. A fair number of those got redistributed to others as sixteen uVax3100s take a bit of space. The rest are also rescues from various seperate trips. Usually if the system is incomplete I jump on it and clean it up and restore it to life from spares. The few pending systems are due to my activities in amateur radio this year and now that I'm done with the bigger projects it's back to machines. I don't do Ubus-11s, big VAX (780s and the like) and unfortunately PDP-10/20s as most are too large to handle or power here. Also I've reached the point where excess do get passed on to others as I don't store any large number of systems either. I try to manage my collection. Those excess sometimes get cleaned up board added and moved along so they are operable and don't end up in the trash or worse. I like to power them up and play and that's incompatable with storage. There are a few small items like extra VT320s (white, green and amber), VT100s, H19, DECMate-IIIs I keep in the garage on rotation but I can and do run them there as well as it's warm enough in the winter and very dry. I keep those out there mostly to make it easier to move other stuff around in the room. What seperates me from museum is I use them, reconfigure and expand them them to suit my wishes or for fun. However, junking them is out of the questionas even basket cases are salvaged for any and all usable parts. FYI: if anyone needs parts for PDT11/1xx systems I have many CPU, memory and IO boards I'm not ever going to use. Someone took a bunch apart and then later gave me the box of boards. (ugly mutter mutter cuss cuss.) I mostly do DEC and CP/M based systems (s100, totables, SBCs) but I do have a few oddballs. For some reason the MIPS based DEC hardware never got my attention nor have the PC/clone(intel) based systems like Rainbow and VAXmate. I did have PROs (350s and 380s) but gave those away to concentrate on Qbus. Allison > >Rod > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org >[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison >Sent: 01 October 2007 15:47 >To: cctech at classiccmp.org >Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > >> >>Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? >> From: "Rod Smallwood" >> Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:00:44 +0100 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" >> >> >> >>My list >> pdp11/94 x 4 R >> >> DEC Rainbow 100+ * >> >> VAX 300 * >> VAX 400 * >> VAX 500 R >> VAXStation 3100 * >> >> DEC 3000 * >> >> Multia * >> >>* = Working >>R = Renovation (Mostly missing parts) >> >>Rod Smallwood > > >A more detailed list of DEC systems here. :) > > >Collection of operational hardware: > >PDP-8 based machines: >==================== > PDP-8f, 20k core and 2 serial 8650 and 8652 >2 Decmate-IIIs OS/278 > Intersil sampler (6100 chipset) extended to 3k ram > 6120 based board, homebrew 32kram 8k rom > >PDP-11 based machines: >===================== >1 LSI-11/03 rx02 >2 PDP11/23 BA11S boxes, > 1MB, RQDX2 and RD52 > 1MB, RQDX2 and RD31, RX50 >1 pdp11/73 50" RACK SYSTEM (4MB, DLVJ11, DEQNA, RQDX3>> RX02, RD52, >RX33, RL02). >1 BA11va with 11/23 +tu58 RT-11 >1 BA11va with 11/23 +Viking RX02 equivilent RT-11 > PDT11/130 11/03 with tu58 dectapeII > OSs in use: RT-11, XXDP-11 and unix V6 > >VAX based machines: >=================== > Microvax-II (ba23 based) 12mb, RQDX3, RD53, RX33 > This one lived as HIPSS:: during my days at DEC. > Microvax-II/GPX (Ba123 based, TK50 and SCSI disks) > This one was know as VIDSYS:: inside DEC. >3 Microvax2000 all with 2 RD53, 1 RD54 drive, one with ultrix >1 Microvax2000 as hard disk formatter and MOP bootable system. >2 Microvax3100/m76/gpx 32mb 2 each 1gb scsi internal >3 Microvax3100/server (not M10e) (filled with 400mb and 1gb disks) >4 BA42 SCSI disk farm for the 3100s populated with RZ56s > OSs in use VMSv5.4-4,V5.54, V7.2, Ultrix 4.2 > >Terminal for the uVAX systems is usually VT1200 via thinnet and the >PDP-11s the usual terminal is either VT340, VT320 or VT180 in terminal >mode. > >DEC CP/M speaking machines: >=========================== >1 Vt180 complete (dual RX180s) >2 Vt180 CP/M board built up as standalone one modded for 6mhz >1 Vt185 Thats a Vt125 + Vt180. > >In the non operational list: > >11/23B uPDP-11 in a BA23 pedestal that while complete with 11/23B, >M8057 memory, DHV11, RQDX2 and RD52, RX50 it requries cleaning and >testing. > >H11 Backplane complete with LSI-11 CPU, 16k of ram, two serial cards and >a parallel card of heath origin. Some day I'll find the case/power >supply for it. All parts are tested as working. > >Small 11/23 system using a H9281-BC (12x2 slots) filled with: > M8186 1/23 (Overclocked CPU mod) > 4 M8059 MSV11 ram > DLV11j, > RQDX3 with M9058 distribution board. (for RX33 and RD31) > MRV-11 Eprom card with MSCP boot. > VK170 with matching LK02 keyboard and a monitor. The VK170 > is a minimal VT52 on a dual width card for packaged systems > that communicates via RS232 to system and the bus use is > power only. >This is waiting on being packed in a reasonable nonDEC box with a DEC PS >and fans. The boards are known working and the backplane is already >jumpered as Q22. > >Generally in my house operational means I can actually turn it on and >play and it has a permanent spot that is easily accessable. > >One project that is in process is a H9800 desk/rack that will replace >the existing standard steel office desk. the system to be installed >there will be 11/23B in BA11s with a hand made Disk box for RX33 and >RD52s. > >I have two boxes (Xerox Paper sized) of tested boards enough to build >another few 11/23s and a few uVAXII as my spares. Failed boards get >repaird when I feel like it so I have good boards around. > >Who was it that has the SIG of > "DEC had then what you wish you could buy now." ? > >Allison > > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 2 08:56:10 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:56:10 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPA00GC8EOBTMED@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: these RTL or what? > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:01:29 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and there's >some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what they're >calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't say. Dates >are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured I'd ask in >here... There are many early families of saturated logic RTL is the oldest, DTL and it's kin "utilogic" where the intermediate sorta TTL like and later TTL( H,LS,S,F,AS,C,HC,HCT flavors). In the middle of all that was ECL (also about three or four generations) a fast non saturating logic. What amazing is when people say "60s" you must do so with care as 1960 was basically germainium transistors but by 1964 silicon transistors are about and ICs were already appearing. Most integrated circuit logic was post '65 and even then from that point speeds went from about 3mhz to 30mhz and RTL was replaced by TTL by 1970. The evoloutionary scale was very steep from the mid 50s to the mid 70s. That 20 years window we went from computers with tubes to microprocessors, delays lines or other serial storage to semiconductor RAM. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 2 09:10:56 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:10:56 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: Brent Hilpert > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:35:01 -0700 > To: General at priv-edtnaa06.telusplanet.net, > "Discussion at priv-edtnaa06.telusplanet.net":On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > >Chuck Guzis wrote: >> >> On 2 Oct 2007 at 2:16, Liam Proven wrote: >> >> > They were pretty much the first ever 16-bit home micro, but it was a >> > crippled 16-bit chip - as detailed in another message in this thread. >> > They did have good keyboards, were solidly built and I believe the >> > graphics chip was, for its time, decent and capable. >> >> Tossing all of the other chips and CROMs and other stuff out, how >> compatible was the TMS9900 with the TI 990 mini? The same or >> considerablly different? > >I can't state so categorically but my understanding is that they were very >much the same. >Going back to a conversation of a few weeks ago, when we were >developing/running Verex/Thoth at UBC ca 1980 it was on a 990/10. The next >major step in the project was to develop a distributed kernel for multiple >processors. To this end, 3 bare single board computers based on the 9900 chip >were ordered and received from TI. Something makes me think they were called >"990/5"s. I remember making up a front panel for the 3 of them with reset >buttons and a few status LEDs to go in the rack with the /10. The idea, of >course, was to use the 9900s because we already had the compilers,etc. >generating code for the 990/10. Actually 1980 was mid to late in the life of the TI9900 chip. The first one I worked with was on a Technico Superstarter System, TI9900, 2k ram, 1k prom (monitor ans line by line asm) and a 2708 eprom programmer on one board. I still have it. I purchased it at PCC '78 in in memory serves Philly. Fir the amount of resource on the board it was pretty capable for systems of that day. >(Cheriton left before we actually got into using them at the software level >and the distributed kernel would become the VKernel at Stanford on other hardware). > >Also, the description of the 9900 in Osborne's "An Introduction to >Microcomputers, Vol II" ('76) fits well with my recollections of the 990/10. > >To my knowledge the 9900 chip was not crippled; rather (going from what others >have described) the design and implementation of the 99/4 home computer failed >to make effective use of it. I didn't follow micros too much in the early 80s >but I remember wondering at the time why the 99/4 was doing so poorly when it >had that great processor in it. There are really three 99/4 home computers, original with chiclet keys, the second and most common with a really nice keyboard and the whie version that is really the same thing with a few board level cost reductions. The 9900 chips is not crippled, for 1976 three voltage NMOS its about as fast as the technology of the time could go. The TI99/4 did however do a nasty to it. One is they muxed the bus down to 8bits wide and that does slow the system some. There were 128 words of ram (6810s) that if you execute there the speed is noticeable. The other is the GROM (sort of an interpreted language with a register point to next instruction) is a bottleneck as well. There was a later 9980 and the 9985 which were a 8bit bus interface and were somewhat crippled but I'd never seen one in a TI99/4A. >I quite liked the 990 architecture with the workspace pointer. Yes, there was >the overhead of accessing registers in memory, but there were also savings. >The workspace pointer essentially became the stack/frame pointer. Procedure >calls, interrupts and process switches were quick because there were only 3 >machine registers to save (PC,WSP,PSW). Stack variables and parameters were >referenced in instructions as registers, thus saving on instruction >length/memory accesses to retrieve addresses/offsets, etc. For use with >"modern software design", i.e.: stack-oriented high-level languages, I thought >it was a quite effective architecture. It was a very minicomputer in look and feel and the addressing modes were on par with PDP11 and other CISC machines. Allison From robert.stek at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 10:56:51 2007 From: robert.stek at gmail.com (Robert Stek) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 08:56:51 -0700 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? Message-ID: <47026a41.13578c0a.25fa.64b8@mx.google.com> I don't think he had any bad intentions in the beginning (some 6 years ago), as I said in a related comp.os.cpm post, "Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice." But his actions over the last two years suggest a lot about his integrity now. I have now heard from four individuals (in 24 hours), two of whom paid in full in advance, with the same basic story: after politely asking for updates, we are ignored despite repeated attempts at communication - no updates, no explanation, no 'good faith' offer of partial shipment (Howard Harte's super I/O board was produced, though apparently by Howard directly), no 'good faith' offer of anything, and certainly no offer of refund. I am sure that the project has been a personal nightmare for him. It is a shame to see someone who contributed so much to the development of the microcomputer industry in its early days end up trying to sweep his recent mistakes (and our money) under the rug while still pretending to offer an IMSAI II (and other items) for sale on his website - it's not only unethical but very probably fraudulent as well. I've screwed up in my life (just ask my ex-wife!). But IMHO it's far better to admit defeat and offer whatever atonement you can, than to continue in the self-delusion that the IMSAI II will ever be built and that a bunch of 'cry-babies' (my projection, not his words) who want their money back are stopping forward progress by reducing working capital. rant := off So, any there any others out there who are willing to admit that they lost their front money? Or anyone who actually received any of his other hardware offerings? Or who received a refund? Bob Stek Saver of Lost Sols >From: Grant Stockly >Subject: RE: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their > deposit? >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Message-ID: <0JP900ENKGIGSQ80 at msgmmp-1.gci.net> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > >I've talked to him several times. Before the Altair kit and >after. Very nice guy. I don't think he has any bad intentions at >all. I will buy one the second they become available. I have no >idea what the situation with them is, but I'd have a hard time >thinking he was trying to defraud people or lie (of course, I have >all my money). He has told me of the money, engineering, and time he >has spent. > >Possibly he just isn't a "business" man. That's not a bad thing at >all, we all have our strengths! Engineers aren't good with making >their own due dates... ; ) The Kenbak kit was supposed to be done >by March. I just shipped the first 8 kits a week ago today. ; ) > >When I started selling kits I decided in the beginning not to collect >money until stuff was ready to ship. I wasn't worried too much about >getting lazy, but it made me look forward to shipping and work >towards that goal. > >Grant From wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu Tue Oct 2 14:47:46 2007 From: wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu (Martin Scott Goldberg) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 14:47:46 -0500 (CDT) Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Oct 02, 2007 10:10:56 AM Message-ID: <200710021947.l92Jllcv017940@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> >There are really three 99/4 home computers, original with chiclet keys, the >second and most common with a really nice keyboard and the whie version that >is really the same thing with a few board level cost reductions. > Actually, there's one TI-99/4 and two TI-99/4a models. Marty From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 2 15:17:18 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:17:18 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture In-Reply-To: <47029F50.9040907@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <575131af0710021218rdb4f8c2q882f3779a605441c@mail.gmail.com> <47029F50.9040907@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4702A74E.3070509@bellatlantic.net> woodelf wrote: > >>> The 9900 chips is not crippled, for 1976 three voltage NMOS its about >>> as fast >>> as the technology of the time could go. The TI99/4 did however do a >>> nasty to >>> it. One is they muxed the bus down to 8bits wide and that does slow >>> the system >>> some. There were 128 words of ram (6810s) that if you execute there >>> the speed >>> is noticeable. > > If I remember right, the architecure of the ti chip > it used a pointer to ram as the internal registers. That would really > bog down on byte wide bus. The year sounds right as > I remember BYTE talking about the chip. One of the few times > you had BYTE not looking at 8080/Z80 cpu's. > Ben. Yes thats true. Fortunately the address bus was not munged up but all the registers and the pointers they form are 16bit so a split bus slowed things some due to the limitations of ram speed. What was done was at the point in the processor read, write or RMW cycle they would insert a wait and then mux/demux the bus depending on direction. The overall cost was around two wait states due to ram speed rather than CPU speed. Since the bus splitting was done outside the CPU it was less costly then the 9080 flavor. Actually the 9900 was a fine chip and there were faster versions never really got marketed. It was the first real 16bitter. Allison From shieldsm at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 20:08:42 2007 From: shieldsm at gmail.com (Mike Shields) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 21:08:42 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <51ea77730709300836g7851b0aexffe289b2409a5b6b@mail.gmail.com> <46FFC6BE.2090008@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <13135db40710021808k57cd3981o4d910775a3a4829@mail.gmail.com> On 10/2/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > At 4:54 PM +0100 9/30/07, Jules Richardson wrote: > >Jason T wrote: > >>My 3100/30 boots fine off the Hobbyist VMS disc using my > >>boots-anything Apple CD300 (aka Sony) drive. > > > >You got there first :-) Pulls of drives from old Apple systems seem > >like a good bet - I've used a few on various machines which need a > >512 byte block size. I normally use an Apple CD600, but it isn't > >quite perfect - some SGI systems don't like it for some reason > >(others do, as does everything non-SGI I've hooked it up to) > > I've had very good luck with an external Panasonic 4x CD-ROM drive I > purchased new in '95 for my PowerBook 520c. It has worked on > everything I've connected it to. I've used it on both a Mac and PC > laptop, and on numerous DEC, SUN, and Amiga systems. My only SGI > systems have built in CD-ROM's. Another likely source would be old > Sun Hardware. > Maybe I've just been really lucky, but I've been using a Toshiba 40x SCSI cdrom in Sony external case to boot Suns, SGIs, and Macs for quite some time. It also works great on my Amigas and PCs. I read all this about using old drives, but then just gave the Toshiba a shot, and it's worked ever since. As a bonus, being a (somewhat, maybe 5 or 6 years old) recent drive, it reads CD-R copies of discs so I can leave the originals in safekeeping. Guess I just lucked out and it supports 512-byte blocks? Mike From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 2 20:31:45 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:31:45 -0400 Subject: EPROM Death? Message-ID: <0JPB000NZAVG1KL0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: EPROM Death? > From: "Zane H. Healy" > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:33:11 -0700 > To: classiccmp at classiccmp.org > >How do you tell an over-erased EPROM? > >I finally have my programmer and eraser, and just tried erasing 6 >EPROM's. Four erased just fine, and two are showing weird patterns >of alternating blocks of 04/06 and 14/16. > > Zane > I've seen that when the quartz window isn't really clean and the UV hasn't quite done the full job. I have found some vendors eproms need a little more time to cook. Ove 26 years I think I've only seen one that really had a stuck bit and that was a blown output pin. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 2 20:33:55 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:33:55 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation Message-ID: <0JPB00KBXAZ1VR05@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Setting up a VAXstation > From: "Zane H. Healy" > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:54:17 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" , > General Discussion: > >At 4:54 PM +0100 9/30/07, Jules Richardson wrote: >>Jason T wrote: >>>My 3100/30 boots fine off the Hobbyist VMS disc using my >>>boots-anything Apple CD300 (aka Sony) drive. >> >>You got there first :-) Pulls of drives from old Apple systems seem >>like a good bet - I've used a few on various machines which need a >>512 byte block size. I normally use an Apple CD600, but it isn't >>quite perfect - some SGI systems don't like it for some reason >>(others do, as does everything non-SGI I've hooked it up to) > >I've had very good luck with an external Panasonic 4x CD-ROM drive I >purchased new in '95 for my PowerBook 520c. It has worked on >everything I've connected it to. I've used it on both a Mac and PC >laptop, and on numerous DEC, SUN, and Amiga systems. My only SGI >systems have built in CD-ROM's. Another likely source would be old >Sun Hardware. > >As I've previously mentioned I'm quite fond of Plextor caddy drives >for my PDP-11's. > >If you're trying to boot an old enough version of VAX/VMS then I >suspect 3rd party drives could cause problems. I know the Hard >Drives will. I'd recommend OpenVMS 7.2 or 7.3 for greatest SCSI >compatibility. I simply only use DEC HD's on VAXen. Even though I >use 3rd party drives on my PDP-11's and Alpha's. > > Zane > I have a few Toshiba 2x SCSI drives that work well for uVAX. The drives are easy to spot as there is a jumper header in the ID select area. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 2 20:43:42 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:43:42 -0400 Subject: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JPB00KAWBFCRUT4@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: woodelf > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:52:04 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Brent Hilpert wrote: > >> I guess home computing got tossed over to the consumer products division at >> TI, which always seemed to have a bottom-of-the-line/low-end approach to >> things, too bad they didn't find some middle ground between that and their >> higher-end commercial/military stuff. > >Well the hand writing was on the wall after 1975 since in hindsight >we know that 16 bit computers with 32kw is just too small for any programs >after about 1975. Look how hard it was to cram advent on a 32K pdp8. >Ben. That doesn't apply to the TI9900. the reason is the PDP-8 is a 4k machine with a minimal instruction set and memory extension. The 990/9900 is a 32KW CISC machine that can support memory extension into the megabyte range. You forget the PDP11 was a 16bit 32kW machine too and that was highly successful. Advent fit on Z80 with 48Kb and PDP11 (LSI-11/03)with 28K of ram. The reason the TI990/9900 was not wide spread is TI was not a computer company and despite having something decent they didn't market it until it was way too late. In 1976-77 the 9900 was about one generation ahead of the 8080 and maybe Z80. Maybe the best code example is the line by line assembler along with a simple monitor all in 1K words. It was capable of very dense code. Actually the 64kB limit was not starting to be problematic until around 1978-9{or later} when applications like DBASE and VISICalc started filling ram. Allison From matt.valerio at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 22:14:24 2007 From: matt.valerio at gmail.com (Matt Valerio) Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2007 23:14:24 -0400 Subject: Cromemco Z-2D free to a good home Message-ID: Hey everybody, I acquired a Cromemco Z-2D for $2 at a garage sale a few years ago thinking "Holy cow that's a sweet rack-mount case". It's been sitting in my basement and I could use the space, so I figured I'd look into donating it to a good home where it would be appreciated (instead of just scrapping the parts fot the case like what I was going to do). Being a grad student right now doesn't give me much spare time to futz around with it, either. If there's anyone out there in the Columbus, OH area that wants it, just let me know! Have a good one, -Matt From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Wed Oct 3 00:31:37 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 06:31:37 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB08@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> If you are in the UK then Black Box stock MMJ cables. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: 02 October 2007 21:12 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Setting up a VAXstation > > Making an MMJ cable is a piece of cake. Just take the retention clip > off of the RJ11 at the end of a phone cord. Crimp an RJ45 on the > other Rememeber the OP (and I) are in the UK. The standard telephone connector over here is not an RJ11 or snythig like that. > end with the proper wires heading to the proper pins, and use a Cisco > RJ45->DE9 adapter. Having had to try to get wires into the right holes on an RJ45 connector, I would _much_ rather solder up a D connector. -tony From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Wed Oct 3 01:00:06 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 07:00:06 +0100 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB09@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Now there's a story. ... Luckily (or unluckily) I had moved on from DEC by 1985 so I was not a witness to its sad demise. Better made products you could not want for. Despite having worked with PC's for many years. I could never see how they became preferred over central unit plus terminals for general business use. My modest collection has beeen accrued of the last couple of years. Apart from the 11/94's (Some potato head stole the CPU cards before I got to the machines) the rest of it is running/will run. I need KDJ 11 processors for the 11/94's. They are expensive and even those intended for 11/84's are silly prices. I also have three small Sun systems (I can't resist quality engineering) Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison Sent: 02 October 2007 14:46 To: cctech at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > >Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > From: "Rod Smallwood" > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:08:33 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > > >Hmmm > Time for a quick 'We are not worthy' ^00^ Consider my leg pulled. :) > >What did you do? >Raid the Mill with a fleet of trucks? No. I did get some small amounts of odd items from DEC salvage before it was shut down. Mostly things like H751A power controllers, power supplies and TU58 drives and boards. The one uVII (BA123 VIDSYS::) was a parting gift(I paid 100$ for it with DOCS and licenses) during the days of blood. For those that don't understand the post 1991 sell off of parts of DEC, that's when the DIGITAL logo went from blue to burgandy. The other was built from scrounge. VIDSYS:: is still setup for DECnet area 56.920 (one area in OGO was 56) and HIPPY:: was area 63.390 (hidden area for DECnet overflow). My 11T03 which is now the 11/73 was a gift from my boss at DEC. I kept it in the lab area for years for those odd projects but by late 80s it was obvious it was getting used less and less. He suggested "when are you going to scrap that thing?" I bring it home (on property pass) which I did. A year later when it was time to confirm and renew the property pass his answer was "what 11?". The remainder were mostly rescues. The bulk of the uVAX3100s came from UV Waterloo over 10 years ago on a if you take one you take them all and I was the only one willing to take a huge pile of uVAX3100s plus cables, VT320s VS2000s, TK50s, several TLZ04s.. Took two seperate 400mile round trips with a pickup truck filled to capacity. A fair number of those got redistributed to others as sixteen uVax3100s take a bit of space. The rest are also rescues from various seperate trips. Usually if the system is incomplete I jump on it and clean it up and restore it to life from spares. The few pending systems are due to my activities in amateur radio this year and now that I'm done with the bigger projects it's back to machines. I don't do Ubus-11s, big VAX (780s and the like) and unfortunately PDP-10/20s as most are too large to handle or power here. Also I've reached the point where excess do get passed on to others as I don't store any large number of systems either. I try to manage my collection. Those excess sometimes get cleaned up board added and moved along so they are operable and don't end up in the trash or worse. I like to power them up and play and that's incompatable with storage. There are a few small items like extra VT320s (white, green and amber), VT100s, H19, DECMate-IIIs I keep in the garage on rotation but I can and do run them there as well as it's warm enough in the winter and very dry. I keep those out there mostly to make it easier to move other stuff around in the room. What seperates me from museum is I use them, reconfigure and expand them them to suit my wishes or for fun. However, junking them is out of the questionas even basket cases are salvaged for any and all usable parts. FYI: if anyone needs parts for PDT11/1xx systems I have many CPU, memory and IO boards I'm not ever going to use. Someone took a bunch apart and then later gave me the box of boards. (ugly mutter mutter cuss cuss.) I mostly do DEC and CP/M based systems (s100, totables, SBCs) but I do have a few oddballs. For some reason the MIPS based DEC hardware never got my attention nor have the PC/clone(intel) based systems like Rainbow and VAXmate. I did have PROs (350s and 380s) but gave those away to concentrate on Qbus. Allison > >Rod > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org >[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison >Sent: 01 October 2007 15:47 >To: cctech at classiccmp.org >Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > >> >>Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? >> From: "Rod Smallwood" >> Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:00:44 +0100 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" >> >> >> >>My list >> pdp11/94 x 4 R >> >> DEC Rainbow 100+ * >> >> VAX 300 * >> VAX 400 * >> VAX 500 R >> VAXStation 3100 * >> >> DEC 3000 * >> >> Multia * >> >>* = Working >>R = Renovation (Mostly missing parts) >> >>Rod Smallwood > > >A more detailed list of DEC systems here. :) > > >Collection of operational hardware: > >PDP-8 based machines: >==================== > PDP-8f, 20k core and 2 serial 8650 and 8652 >2 Decmate-IIIs OS/278 > Intersil sampler (6100 chipset) extended to 3k ram > 6120 based board, homebrew 32kram 8k rom > >PDP-11 based machines: >===================== >1 LSI-11/03 rx02 >2 PDP11/23 BA11S boxes, > 1MB, RQDX2 and RD52 > 1MB, RQDX2 and RD31, RX50 >1 pdp11/73 50" RACK SYSTEM (4MB, DLVJ11, DEQNA, RQDX3>> RX02, RD52, >RX33, RL02). >1 BA11va with 11/23 +tu58 RT-11 >1 BA11va with 11/23 +Viking RX02 equivilent RT-11 > PDT11/130 11/03 with tu58 dectapeII > OSs in use: RT-11, XXDP-11 and unix V6 > >VAX based machines: >=================== > Microvax-II (ba23 based) 12mb, RQDX3, RD53, RX33 > This one lived as HIPSS:: during my days at DEC. > Microvax-II/GPX (Ba123 based, TK50 and SCSI disks) > This one was know as VIDSYS:: inside DEC. >3 Microvax2000 all with 2 RD53, 1 RD54 drive, one with ultrix >1 Microvax2000 as hard disk formatter and MOP bootable system. >2 Microvax3100/m76/gpx 32mb 2 each 1gb scsi internal >3 Microvax3100/server (not M10e) (filled with 400mb and 1gb disks) >4 BA42 SCSI disk farm for the 3100s populated with RZ56s > OSs in use VMSv5.4-4,V5.54, V7.2, Ultrix 4.2 > >Terminal for the uVAX systems is usually VT1200 via thinnet and the >PDP-11s the usual terminal is either VT340, VT320 or VT180 in terminal >mode. > >DEC CP/M speaking machines: >=========================== >1 Vt180 complete (dual RX180s) >2 Vt180 CP/M board built up as standalone one modded for 6mhz >1 Vt185 Thats a Vt125 + Vt180. > >In the non operational list: > >11/23B uPDP-11 in a BA23 pedestal that while complete with 11/23B, >M8057 memory, DHV11, RQDX2 and RD52, RX50 it requries cleaning and >testing. > >H11 Backplane complete with LSI-11 CPU, 16k of ram, two serial cards and >a parallel card of heath origin. Some day I'll find the case/power >supply for it. All parts are tested as working. > >Small 11/23 system using a H9281-BC (12x2 slots) filled with: > M8186 1/23 (Overclocked CPU mod) > 4 M8059 MSV11 ram > DLV11j, > RQDX3 with M9058 distribution board. (for RX33 and RD31) > MRV-11 Eprom card with MSCP boot. > VK170 with matching LK02 keyboard and a monitor. The VK170 > is a minimal VT52 on a dual width card for packaged systems > that communicates via RS232 to system and the bus use is > power only. >This is waiting on being packed in a reasonable nonDEC box with a DEC PS >and fans. The boards are known working and the backplane is already >jumpered as Q22. > >Generally in my house operational means I can actually turn it on and >play and it has a permanent spot that is easily accessable. > >One project that is in process is a H9800 desk/rack that will replace >the existing standard steel office desk. the system to be installed >there will be 11/23B in BA11s with a hand made Disk box for RX33 and >RD52s. > >I have two boxes (Xerox Paper sized) of tested boards enough to build >another few 11/23s and a few uVAXII as my spares. Failed boards get >repaird when I feel like it so I have good boards around. > >Who was it that has the SIG of > "DEC had then what you wish you could buy now." ? > >Allison > > > > From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Wed Oct 3 01:16:33 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 07:16:33 +0100 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB0A@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Whilst I am in no way involved (I'm in the UK and would not know an IMSAI from a busted banjo) I am apalled at what this guy did. Is it not time to use the legal system to bring this guy to book? The English and US legal systems parted company in the late 1700's so I'm not sure how it would work. Suffice to say, in the UK at this stage the court bailiffs would have removed anything of value from his premisis and put it up for sale along with his house and car (if he owned them). The proceeds to go to repaying the swindled customers. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Robert Stek Sent: 02 October 2007 16:57 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: RE: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? I don't think he had any bad intentions in the beginning (some 6 years ago), as I said in a related comp.os.cpm post, "Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice." But his actions over the last two years suggest a lot about his integrity now. I have now heard from four individuals (in 24 hours), two of whom paid in full in advance, with the same basic story: after politely asking for updates, we are ignored despite repeated attempts at communication - no updates, no explanation, no 'good faith' offer of partial shipment (Howard Harte's super I/O board was produced, though apparently by Howard directly), no 'good faith' offer of anything, and certainly no offer of refund. I am sure that the project has been a personal nightmare for him. It is a shame to see someone who contributed so much to the development of the microcomputer industry in its early days end up trying to sweep his recent mistakes (and our money) under the rug while still pretending to offer an IMSAI II (and other items) for sale on his website - it's not only unethical but very probably fraudulent as well. I've screwed up in my life (just ask my ex-wife!). But IMHO it's far better to admit defeat and offer whatever atonement you can, than to continue in the self-delusion that the IMSAI II will ever be built and that a bunch of 'cry-babies' (my projection, not his words) who want their money back are stopping forward progress by reducing working capital. rant := off So, any there any others out there who are willing to admit that they lost their front money? Or anyone who actually received any of his other hardware offerings? Or who received a refund? Bob Stek Saver of Lost Sols >From: Grant Stockly >Subject: RE: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their > deposit? >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Message-ID: <0JP900ENKGIGSQ80 at msgmmp-1.gci.net> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > >I've talked to him several times. Before the Altair kit and >after. Very nice guy. I don't think he has any bad intentions at >all. I will buy one the second they become available. I have no >idea what the situation with them is, but I'd have a hard time >thinking he was trying to defraud people or lie (of course, I have >all my money). He has told me of the money, engineering, and time he >has spent. > >Possibly he just isn't a "business" man. That's not a bad thing at >all, we all have our strengths! Engineers aren't good with making >their own due dates... ; ) The Kenbak kit was supposed to be done >by March. I just shipped the first 8 kits a week ago today. ; ) > >When I started selling kits I decided in the beginning not to collect >money until stuff was ready to ship. I wasn't worried too much about >getting lazy, but it made me look forward to shipping and work >towards that goal. > >Grant From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Wed Oct 3 01:10:47 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:10:47 -0700 Subject: IMSAI II - still viable OR has anyone else lost their deposit? References: <47011eab.221e640a.0cd9.ffffcb61@mx.google.com>, <47030B41.1B7999EC@cs.ubc.ca> <4702ACA1.3694.BAA303@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47033266.E362C454@cs.ubc.ca> > On 2 Oct 2007 at 20:23, Brent Hilpert wrote: > > > > Search for "World Power Systems". I remember those ads and that story > > > from back in the day. Just for the sake of proper attribution, Glen Slick wrote the above and was the first to recall WPS. Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Golly, I remember seeing the 3S+P ad and thinking "those sockets > looked like they're glued to the PC board." > > Must've been. I must go pull out my last remaining copy of Kilobaud and see if it's in there. From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 3 01:26:31 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 02:26:31 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <47029E1A.6000704@gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <20070930194737.2dc7f8e9@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47024F8C.6020003@gmail.com> <575131af0710021211m5faa21b4s88c75393bf56c859@mail.gmail.com> <47029E1A.6000704@gmail.com> Message-ID: <6AF7578A-6879-4589-8634-982ED6EB903E@neurotica.com> On Oct 2, 2007, at 3:38 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> Why would that be a problem? The point of a *multi*sync screen is >> that >> it can sync to any resolution (within limits), surely? > > BTW, if it's a GPX it's limited to 1024x864, and if it's an SPX, it > can do 1280x1024, which your multi-sync monitor should be capable > of. I might be remembering incorrectly, and if I am, someone > please correct me. You're definitely correct about the GPX being 1024x864.. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From g-wright at att.net Wed Oct 3 01:40:26 2007 From: g-wright at att.net (g-wright at att.net) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 06:40:26 +0000 Subject: Boeing Surplus Closing... for the better........... Message-ID: <100320070640.8018.47033957000E45B700001F5221602807419B0809079D99D309@att.net> -------------- Original message from Richard : -------------- > IMO, its Boeing's store and they can pack it up and ship it to the > moon if they want to. > > Instead of trying to *stop* the closure of the store, IMO it would be > better to lobby for a one-time fire sale "everything must go!" event > with big discounts. > -- > "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download > > > Legalize Adulthood! I have been going there almost daily, since the early 70's. when you could buy Aircraft fasteners, computer hardware, test gear, and anything in between. PDP 8a's where 25.00 and PDP 11's where 45.00. if it was a large rack system, just name your price. ( I have 3 PDP 11/60's, 5 racks each) The store has been going down hill ever since. Most of the good stuff never makes it to surplus. In the past 5 years, only "Boeing has beens" have worked there. I have heard that the system has 175 employees. Over the years this has just been a monkey on Boeings back and they *never* should have been involve in a retail business. They staff this with people that could only function in a Boeing Mold. These folks should never been involved with the public. The folks that did care and wanted to help where stopped by the turf wars and Boeing policy. I tried over the year to at least slow down the trashing of vintage items. No one cared. You could go in there and see carcass of vintage items. They would only put out what would sell quickly. Lately I found 7 HP suite cases with HP 79xx Alignment tools and packs. They where empty. They could get 25.00 for the suite cases. So they trashed the rest. They love to sell 3 ring binders for .25 each. If you watched closely there where 100's of DEC, HP, Cray, TEK, Sun, Motorola binders from the 70's and 80's. covering both computers and test gear. All empty. As for really good test gear, that was offered up to a local company first and what was left went to the store. I could go further on this but won't. As for the things that this "list" would be interested in. They had what they called pre-sort. if it was newer and/or sold quickly, send it to the store, if not scrap it. They would set out DEC and Data General systems, empty. They could sell the boards by the pound and did not have to worry about anything. I saw some Dumb terminals (VT100) setting in the back this summer and asked to make sure the came out to the store. I was told its was easier to scrap them. No TEK or Dumb terminals would be brought out to the retail store. They have a large amount of old computer boards going trough there each month. all go to scrap. You can go in there on a Saturday morning and see 7 to 10 $60,000.00 a year employees setting around drinking coffee and talking to one another with out any care about the customer. How much surplus do you have to sell to cover one Saturday In the last couple of years they basicly have been watching 10-15 ebay sellers that are at the front door each day and catered to them. Putting everthing out first thing and then sat back and watched the rush when the door opened. The best thing that could happen is for the company to put everything in lot bids so someone, that at least cares a little, has the items. As for the fire sale, everyone is headed for the door. Through the 1st of the year all Boeing employees only have 6 to 8 weeks left to work. So I would just wait for the first lot bids and follow the winner home. Just my .02 cents worth - jerry Jerry wright JLC inc g-wrigtht at att.net From lproven at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 04:49:46 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 10:49:46 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB08@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB08@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <575131af0710030249t21ca5acey992aac14b01cdd29@mail.gmail.com> On 03/10/2007, Rod Smallwood wrote: > If you are in the UK then Black Box stock MMJ cables. Setting aside the notion of /buying/ new parts to build a cable, which is dangerously close to crazy talk around here... I think we need to keep in mind the purchase price of the machine, here, folks. I'm not going to spend ?20 or ?30 on getting or making a cable for a 99p computer! Also, I do not have any of the tools or parts to crimp anything onto anything. I never have had and have never crimped a cable in 20y in the computer business, from junior workshop bod to IT manager for an international stockbroker. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From Arno_1983 at gmx.de Wed Oct 3 06:44:25 2007 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:44:25 +0200 Subject: VSII/GPX joy (and minor annoyance) Message-ID: <20071003114425.44290@gmx.net> Antonio Carlini wrote: > Arno Kletzander wrote: > > Hmm. One half of the base board does however have circuitry connected > > to those pads that are just linked by grant continuity traces on the > > second half (and the 4-plane memory boards), so I figured it might > > actually be doing something useful with it. Haven't studied the > > technical description yet... > > The QVSS and QDSS will be passing the grant signals along otherwise > boards further down the bus will have issues. That is the very point I am disputing - in order to just _pass along_ the signals, you only need a _trace_ from the pad where the signal enters the board to the one where it leaves again. This is what the video memory boards do. OTOH, if the pads carrying the grant signals in and out aren't just shorted together but _connected to the electronics_, as they are on the video master board, chances are the board is _actually using_, i.e. monitoring or (more likely in this case) influencing those signals at some time. > Don't let me stop you trading up to a TK70, but FWIW I never had an > issue with TK50s. I prefer TK70s but that's because I can get about > three times as much on them! Getting media might end up being more of a problem in both cases, I assume... ISTR that a TK70 should work in place of a TK50, but I assume I won't get the full capacity without the corresponding controller; coming to think of it, I also have use for a TK50 anyway because I have that TK50-Z SCSI enclosure (minus drive) at home and I found out that a TK70's front bezel won't fit into the panel cut-out. -- Arno Kletzander Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de GMX FreeMail: 1 GB Postfach, 5 E-Mail-Adressen, 10 Free SMS. Alle Infos und kostenlose Anmeldung: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freemail From ian_primus at yahoo.com Wed Oct 3 07:52:05 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 05:52:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710030249t21ca5acey992aac14b01cdd29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <926070.75257.qm@web52709.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- Liam Proven wrote: > On 03/10/2007, Rod Smallwood > wrote: > > If you are in the UK then Black Box stock MMJ > cables. > > Setting aside the notion of /buying/ new parts to > build a cable, which > is dangerously close to crazy talk around here... > > I think we need to keep in mind the purchase price > of the machine, > here, folks. I'm not going to spend ?20 or ?30 on > getting or making a > cable for a 99p computer! Ah, then you need to go find a 6 conductor telephone cable, and file off that clip. It'll fit and work in an MMJ socket, it just won't stay in too well. Hold it in place with some tape... -Ian From ian_primus at yahoo.com Wed Oct 3 07:57:41 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 05:57:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710030249t21ca5acey992aac14b01cdd29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <798242.57125.qm@web52711.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- Liam Proven wrote: > On 03/10/2007, Rod Smallwood > wrote: > > If you are in the UK then Black Box stock MMJ > cables. > > Setting aside the notion of /buying/ new parts to > build a cable, which > is dangerously close to crazy talk around here... > > I think we need to keep in mind the purchase price > of the machine, > here, folks. I'm not going to spend ?20 or ?30 on > getting or making a > cable for a 99p computer! Ah, that's right - you're in the UK so the telephone cables won't be the same. Actually, you _might_ be able to take an Ethernet cable, file off the clip and file both sides to make it fit. If you can keep the pins centered properly after filing, it should work. -Ian From pspan at amerytel.net Wed Oct 3 08:31:36 2007 From: pspan at amerytel.net (Phil Spanner) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 08:31:36 -0500 Subject: EPROMS Message-ID: <000e01c805c1$b8b8e090$6714a8c0@home> Zane, After erasing thousands of eproms, I have not experienced a maximum ttme. You can try to erase them again. I personally have left eproms under an eraser for days, with no ill effects on the eproms. If another tour under the eraser doesn't work, then you have two bad eproms. Over the years, I made a living replacing defective eproms on telecom equipment. If they do erase, mark them, because my experience tells me they will fail when trying to reprogram. Or they would be a good starting point for board failure troubleshooting and repair. phil From stimpy.u.idiot at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 08:34:26 2007 From: stimpy.u.idiot at gmail.com (Pete Edwards) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:34:26 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <798242.57125.qm@web52711.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <575131af0710030249t21ca5acey992aac14b01cdd29@mail.gmail.com> <798242.57125.qm@web52711.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <11c909eb0710030634o45682d1v7c72d76cd67f4985@mail.gmail.com> > > > here, folks. I'm not going to spend ?20 or ?30 on > > getting or making a > > cable for a 99p computer! > > Ah, that's right - you're in the UK so the telephone > cables won't be the same. Actually, you _might_ be > able to take an Ethernet cable, file off the clip and > file both sides to make it fit. If you can keep the > pins centered properly after filing, it should work. > > -Ian > There's plenty of telephone kit in the UK that does use RJ11, look on answering machines and especially external modems - they nearly always came with an RJ11-BT adaptor cable. A lot of modern laptop internal modems seem to have RJ11 sockets too. -- Pete Edwards "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" - Niels Bohr From lproven at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 09:54:25 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 15:54:25 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <926070.75257.qm@web52709.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <575131af0710030249t21ca5acey992aac14b01cdd29@mail.gmail.com> <926070.75257.qm@web52709.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710030754l2691cdd5lae475f5d4dc92e61@mail.gmail.com> On 03/10/2007, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > > --- Liam Proven wrote: > > > On 03/10/2007, Rod Smallwood > > wrote: > > > If you are in the UK then Black Box stock MMJ > > cables. > > > > Setting aside the notion of /buying/ new parts to > > build a cable, which > > is dangerously close to crazy talk around here... > > > > I think we need to keep in mind the purchase price > > of the machine, > > here, folks. I'm not going to spend ?20 or ?30 on > > getting or making a > > cable for a 99p computer! > > Ah, then you need to go find a 6 conductor telephone > cable, and file off that clip. It'll fit and work in > an MMJ socket, it just won't stay in too well. Hold it > in place with some tape... I know that's possible. I do actually have an old DEC MMC to MMC cable here; one plan was to cut it into two and solder D9s onto the ends, but some DEC collectors I know are horrified at the thought of destroying an original DEC cable. However, I don't really want a serial console. I want to get my graphical display up and running under DECwindows! -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From healyzh at aracnet.com Wed Oct 3 11:28:05 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 09:28:05 -0700 Subject: EPROM Death? / EPROMS In-Reply-To: <0JPB000NZAVG1KL0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPB000NZAVG1KL0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: At 9:31 PM -0400 10/2/07, Allison wrote: > > From: "Zane H. Healy" > > >>How do you tell an over-erased EPROM? >> >>I finally have my programmer and eraser, and just tried erasing 6 > >EPROM's. Four erased just fine, and two are showing weird patterns > >of alternating blocks of 04/06 and 14/16. > > >I've seen that when the quartz window isn't really clean and the >UV hasn't quite done the full job. I have found some vendors >eproms need a little more time to cook. > >Ove 26 years I think I've only seen one that really had a stuck >bit and that was a blown output pin. The two EPROM's in question are 27128's of different manufacturers. The strange thing is both have the same pattern in them (I read them in when checking). I did manage at the same time to erase a 27C128, 2 different 27C256's, and a 27256. Rather irritating as I'd prefer to use either 27128's or 27C128's for the next step. Hopefully either these two really are good, or the other two I have, and still need to erase, are good. I won't be able to mess with this more until at least tonight. At 8:31 AM -0500 10/3/07, Phil Spanner wrote: >After erasing thousands of eproms, I have not experienced a maximum >ttme. You can try to erase them again. I personally have left eproms >under an eraser for days, with no ill effects on the eproms. >If another tour under the eraser doesn't work, then you have two bad eproms. >Over the years, I made a living replacing defective eproms on >telecom equipment. >If they do erase, mark them, because my experience tells me they >will fail when trying to reprogram. Or they would be a good starting >point for board failure troubleshooting and repair. One thing I've noticed is that my "dirt cheap" P.O.S. Chinese eraser takes a lot longer than I would expect to erase chips. Here is what I bought last week to erase EPROM's. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=140150073985 OTOH, the $50 Willem EPROM Programmer seems great so far. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=130156704118 Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 Wed Oct 3 11:37:33 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 09:37:33 -0700 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <13135db40710021808k57cd3981o4d910775a3a4829@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <51ea77730709300836g7851b0aexffe289b2409a5b6b@mail.gmail.com> <46FFC6BE.2090008@yahoo.co.uk> <13135db40710021808k57cd3981o4d910775a3a4829@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: At 9:08 PM -0400 10/2/07, Mike Shields wrote: >Maybe I've just been really lucky, but I've been using a Toshiba 40x SCSI >cdrom in Sony external case to boot Suns, SGIs, and Macs for quite some >time. It also works great on my Amigas and PCs. I read all this about using >old drives, but then just gave the Toshiba a shot, and it's worked ever >since. As a bonus, being a (somewhat, maybe 5 or 6 years old) recent drive, >it reads CD-R copies of discs so I can leave the originals in safekeeping. My Plextor 8x Caddy drive in my main PDP-11 will read CD-R's. >Guess I just lucked out and it supports 512-byte blocks? Sounds like. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 3 11:48:37 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 12:48:37 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <200710021947.l92Jllcv017940@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> References: <200710021947.l92Jllcv017940@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> Message-ID: <339DBE41-4901-46A5-9C4F-5389EC0F6286@neurotica.com> On Oct 2, 2007, at 3:47 PM, Martin Scott Goldberg wrote: >> There are really three 99/4 home computers, original with chiclet >> keys, the >> second and most common with a really nice keyboard and the whie >> version that >> is really the same thing with a few board level cost reductions. > > Actually, there's one TI-99/4 and two TI-99/4a models. What are the differences between them, does anyone know offhand? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From arcarlini at iee.org Wed Oct 3 12:12:48 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 18:12:48 +0100 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <47030D50.1090902@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <005801c805e0$a06c89a0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> woodelf wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: >> Not hard to get 60Sn/40Pb solder at all. Here's some from Marlon >> Jones > Try that in the UK. When last I looked CPC still had leaded solder for sale. It is (AFAIK) perfectly OK to purchase and use. Theoretically there may be some issues if you decide to produce new widgets at home in order to sell (or even give) them to others, but in practice I think you'd have to ring the HSE and beg to get them to come round and prosecute. Similarly, I expect that if you rang and said "I have what amounts to a machine tool workshop, do I have to follow the full elven safety rules" you'd have a hard time getting one of them to say "No, feel free, do what you like". On the other hand, I'd be somewhat surprised if they turned up on your doorstep one day. Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.39/1045 - Release Date: 02/10/2007 18:43 From pcw at mesanet.com Wed Oct 3 12:13:12 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 10:13:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > > Actually 1980 was mid to late in the life of the TI9900 chip. The first > one I worked with was on a Technico Superstarter System, TI9900, 2k ram, > 1k prom (monitor ans line by line asm) and a 2708 eprom programmer on > one board. I still have it. I purchased it at PCC '78 in in memory > serves Philly. Fir the amount of resource on the board it was pretty > capable for systems of that day. That sure brings back memories. I also had a Technico SuperStarter (Two bytes are better than one!) Eventually made a wire wrapped 32 KByte RAM card (using TMS4060 non muxed 4K DRAMS), a 256x256 graphic display, A wire wrapped floppy controller (8 inch with 16 KByte DRAM track buffer). The floppy was a revelation after waiting for the papertape version of EAL (Editor Assembler Linker?) to load. > >> (Cheriton left before we actually got into using them at the software level >> and the distributed kernel would become the VKernel at Stanford on other hardware). >> >> Also, the description of the 9900 in Osborne's "An Introduction to >> Microcomputers, Vol II" ('76) fits well with my recollections of the 990/10. I think I chose the 9900 based on the Osborne book, it had the shortest benchmark program... Interestingly TI's MSP430 has an instruction set reminiscent of the 9900 Peter Wallace From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Oct 3 12:31:20 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:31:20 +0100 Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4703D1E8.7060408@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: > IIRC, the early Apple disk drives used a 13 sector format. Apple worked > out a modification (basically allowing some bit patterns that were > illegal before) to pack 16 sectors on to each track. The modifications to > a real Apple cotnroller were 2 new PROMs, one was the state machine logic > (the modified state machine could physiaclly read both 13 and 16 sector > disks), the other was the bootstrap firmware, and IIRC the new firmware > would only boot 16 sector disks. Of course an unmodified controller could > only boot (heck, could only read) 13 sector disks. Aha, OK - that's plausible I suppose... *reading* either format is OK, but booting isn't... releasing an upgrade which could no longer make any sense of the old format would seem a funny thing to do :-) Anyway - progress of a sort. I've got hold of a proper Apple Disk ][ drive, and some 3.3 media - and the clone machine boots that quite happily. The 3.3 media I have *won't* boot in the half-height ALPS drive I had, suggesting that there's a fault with the drive (heads cleaned with IPA just for the record, there's evidently something else up with it). I haven't tried the 3.2 media with the Disk ][ drive yet, but if you're right about the above then it won't boot (although if catalog works with both disk formats then I should be able to boot via 3.3 and catalog the 3.2 disk). > Aha... IIRC, 3.2 is 13 sector, 3.3 is 16 sector. If your clone is > expecting 16 sector disks, it will not boot 3.2 AFAIK. Yes, that seems to be the concise answer :) Still, I'm happy because I've seen it boot *something* - major plus point considering that the machine's a clone rather than the real thing (and useful to know that the disk interface hardware's functional). cheers Jules From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 3 12:36:34 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:36:34 -0700 Subject: TI 990 architecture In-Reply-To: <4702A74E.3070509@bellatlantic.net> References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, <47029F50.9040907@jetnet.ab.ca>, <4702A74E.3070509@bellatlantic.net> Message-ID: <470370B2.22055.3B8860F@cclist.sydex.com> While a workspace point defining the location of a set of "registers" in main memory sounds like a good idea, is it? While one avoids the need for 16 words of on-chip register RAM, it comes at a cost of making an external memory access (not to mention an address calculation) each time a register is addressed (most of the instructions do this, so the cost in cycles is very high). It seems to me to be far better to employ the S/360 method of using STM/LM-type instructions to change the context. The multiple register load and store instructions are present on many other CPUs since then, but it seems that S/360 was the first to make use of this. While the in-memory "registers" could certainly be cached by the CPU (watch out for "dual" reference issues!), that seems to be less flexible than an architecture that allows any number of registers to be stored or loaded explicitly as part of a context switch. Thoughts? Cheers, Chuck From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 12:49:27 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:49:27 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <20071002173258.U83730@shell.lmi.net> References: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> <20071002173258.U83730@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <4703D627.7040906@gmail.com> Fred Cisin wrote: >> I suppose I have a lot of practice, but I can strip, order, cut and >> crimp and RJ45 for ethernet in about 30 seconds. It takes longer than >> that for my iron to warm up. > > only because you've been turning it off or unplugging it between uses. I'd rather my tips not oxidize. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 12:50:15 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:50:15 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0709300828w1eac85cevaba461c9fda6a778@mail.gmail.com> <51ea77730709300836g7851b0aexffe289b2409a5b6b@mail.gmail.com> <46FFC6BE.2090008@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4703D657.8020604@gmail.com> Zane H. Healy wrote: >>> My 3100/30 boots fine off the Hobbyist VMS disc using my >>> boots-anything Apple CD300 (aka Sony) drive. >> >> You got there first :-) Pulls of drives from old Apple systems seem >> like a good bet - I've used a few on various machines which need a 512 >> byte block size. I normally use an Apple CD600, but it isn't quite >> perfect - some SGI systems don't like it for some reason (others do, >> as does everything non-SGI I've hooked it up to) > > I've had very good luck with an external Panasonic 4x CD-ROM drive I > purchased new in '95 for my PowerBook 520c. It has worked on everything > I've connected it to. I've used it on both a Mac and PC laptop, and on > numerous DEC, SUN, and Amiga systems. My only SGI systems have built in > CD-ROM's. Another likely source would be old Sun Hardware. I use Toshiba XM-4101s, the third-height one. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 3 13:17:06 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:17:06 -0700 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, Message-ID: <47037A32.28547.3DD9EB9@cclist.sydex.com> On 3 Oct 2007 at 10:13, Peter C. Wallace wrote: > I think I chose the 9900 based on the Osborne book, it had the shortest > benchmark program... Those benchmarks weren't very comparable! Some had artificial restrictions placed on them because a "move any number of bytes anywhere" sample of code would likely take more than a single page of print. And for many of them, the *size* of the benchmark code wasn't taken into consideration. For example, the Z80 benchmark is really shorter than that of the TMS9900; the 9900 benchmark makes the assumption that the workspace has been "preloaded" with the operands and that a BLWP was used to change context--and that words, not bytes, are to be moved. If the registers used are explicitly loaded and stored, the TMS9900 benchmark would have been much longer. This overly-simple benchmark with varying assumptions is one of the biggest weaknesses of Volume II of the Osborne books. Perhaps a better benchmark might have been searching a character string for a matching substring. But even with its weaknesses, the "Introduction to Microcomputers" set was a valuable resource when there was little software and no MPU was yet dominant. Cheers, Chuck From stanb at dial.pipex.com Wed Oct 3 02:54:47 2007 From: stanb at dial.pipex.com (Stan Barr) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 08:54:47 +0100 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:32:32 MDT." <47030D50.1090902@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200710030754.IAA19465@citadel.metropolis.local> Hi, woodelf said: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Not hard to get 60Sn/40Pb solder at all. Here's some from Marlon > > Jones > Try that in the UK. > Last time I looked CPC, a division of Farnell, still stocked it. http://www.cpc.co.uk/ I've not bought any for a while, I bought about 5lb of it a couple of years ago on the priciple that even if it was still available it would get more expensive. Getting lead *anything* is getting more difficult, even the balance weights for car wheels are made of zinc now. -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com The future was never like this! From pcw at mesanet.com Wed Oct 3 13:46:14 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 11:46:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <47037A32.28547.3DD9EB9@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, <47037A32.28547.3DD9EB9@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 11:17:06 -0700 > From: Chuck Guzis > Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > > On 3 Oct 2007 at 10:13, Peter C. Wallace wrote: > >> I think I chose the 9900 based on the Osborne book, it had the shortest >> benchmark program... > > Those benchmarks weren't very comparable! Some had artificial > restrictions placed on them because a "move any number of bytes > anywhere" sample of code would likely take more than a single page of > print. And for many of them, the *size* of the benchmark code wasn't > taken into consideration. > > For example, the Z80 benchmark is really shorter than that of the > TMS9900; the 9900 benchmark makes the assumption that the workspace > has been "preloaded" with the operands and that a BLWP was used to > change context--and that words, not bytes, are to be moved. If the > registers used are explicitly loaded and stored, the TMS9900 > benchmark would have been much longer. > > This overly-simple benchmark with varying assumptions is one of the > biggest weaknesses of Volume II of the Osborne books. Perhaps a > better benchmark might have been searching a character string for a > matching substring. > > But even with its weaknesses, the "Introduction to Microcomputers" > set was a valuable resource when there was little software and no MPU > was yet dominant. > > Cheers, > Chuck > It was mainly the source code size of the assembly language and the minicomputer elegance that I liked (since at that time assembler was all I knew), In comparison the Z80 instruction set is anything but minicomputer like or elegant, just a bag on the side of a bag on the side of an 8008. The registers-in-memory architecture might be suitable for a FPGA CPU where BlockRAM (as system memory) is almost as fast as registers. Why not have registers in memory instead of simulatiing it badly (and expensively power wise) via caching, that is, why move data if you dont have to? Peter Wallace From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Oct 3 14:04:51 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:04:51 -0600 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, <47037A32.28547.3DD9EB9@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4703E7D3.2060507@jetnet.ab.ca> Peter C. Wallace wrote: > The registers-in-memory architecture might be suitable for a FPGA CPU > where BlockRAM (as system memory) is almost as fast as registers. Why > not have registers in memory instead of simulatiing it badly (and > expensively power wise) via caching, that is, why move data if you dont > have to? Simple registers are expensive. Look at the PDP-5. This is the 1960's when most architectures where developed. Even the PDP-10 I think was designed to use core memory as registers unless you want the optional module for F/F registers. Ben. From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Wed Oct 3 14:10:15 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:10:15 -0700 Subject: TI 990 architecture References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, <47029F50.9040907@jetnet.ab.ca>, <4702A74E.3070509@bellatlantic.net> <470370B2.22055.3B8860F@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4703E917.28B5F923@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > While a workspace point defining the location of a set of "registers" > in main memory sounds like a good idea, is it? While one avoids the > need for 16 words of on-chip register RAM, it comes at a cost of > making an external memory access (not to mention an address > calculation) each time a register is addressed (most of the > instructions do this, so the cost in cycles is very high). > > It seems to me to be far better to employ the S/360 method of using > STM/LM-type instructions to change the context. The multiple > register load and store instructions are present on many other CPUs > since then, but it seems that S/360 was the first to make use of > this. > > While the in-memory "registers" could certainly be cached by the CPU > (watch out for "dual" reference issues!), that seems to be less > flexible than an architecture that allows any number of registers to > be stored or loaded explicitly as part of a context switch. > > Thoughts? My 'feeling' was that for general purpose computing and modern software developed in stack-oriented languages, with a lot of function calls/system calls/context switches/argument passing - where the focus of data activity is around the stack - relative to the amount of 'basic' calculation, the benefits of machine registers becomes less due to the amount of save/restore/other stack work that has to be done one way or the other. (An informed judgement needs piles of program execution profiling data at hand, but then I do believe the issue has been studied to death.) I'm not very familiar with modern RISC processors at the machine level, but I thought that was the direction general purpose RISC processors had gone with register windows & c. Nowadays high speed cache reduces the margin of benefit of machine registers and one can throw a lot of straight combinatorial logic at address calculation to minimise the amount of time needed for such. For things like DSPs where one is doing a lot of the same calculation on a (perhaps narrower) stream of data in time sequence I can see the benefit of sticking more towards machine registers (or vector machine registers). From Arno_1983 at gmx.de Wed Oct 3 14:35:00 2007 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:35:00 +0200 Subject: Looking for OpenMOP for Windows Message-ID: <20071003193500.146230@gmx.net> Sorry for the double post, not wanting to pester anyone, but I figured I'd better write what I need on the subject line because not everybody might be following the VSII thread. So, I'm looking for the OpenMOP daemon for Windows by Fred N. van Kempen in order to get my newly-acquired VAXstation II/GPX started with NetBSD/vax (or whatever). I didn't find anything on the 'net except for Freds announcing the program and looking for test users here, his homepage is currently down, the program is nowhere to be found on the archived snapshots and it's been a long time since I last remember reading from him here. Anybody know if he's okay? TIA, Arno Kletzander -- GMX FreeMail: 1 GB Postfach, 5 E-Mail-Adressen, 10 Free SMS. Alle Infos und kostenlose Anmeldung: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freemail From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 14:51:06 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:51:06 -0400 Subject: Looking for OpenMOP for Windows In-Reply-To: <20071003193500.146230@gmx.net> References: <20071003193500.146230@gmx.net> Message-ID: <4703F2AA.1080005@gmail.com> Arno Kletzander wrote: > Sorry for the double post, not wanting to pester anyone, but I > figured I'd better write what I need on the subject line because not > everybody might be following the VSII thread. > > So, I'm looking for the OpenMOP daemon for Windows by Fred N. van > Kempen in order to get my newly-acquired VAXstation II/GPX started > with NetBSD/vax (or whatever). Why not just use mopd on NetBSD or Linux? Peace... Sridhar From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Wed Oct 3 14:56:06 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:56:06 -0700 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, <47037A32.28547.3DD9EB9@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4703F3D6.1B9ABCDF@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 3 Oct 2007 at 10:13, Peter C. Wallace wrote: > > > I think I chose the 9900 based on the Osborne book, it had the shortest > > benchmark program... > This overly-simple benchmark with varying assumptions is one of the > biggest weaknesses of Volume II of the Osborne books. Perhaps a > > But even with its weaknesses, the "Introduction to Microcomputers" > set was a valuable resource when there was little software and no MPU > was yet dominant. I love that book, for it's overview of lesser known microprocs and being a period snapshot of the state-of-the-art. I still find it a useful technical reference for a lot of chips for which data is hard to come by. From zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com Wed Oct 3 15:03:41 2007 From: zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 16:03:41 -0400 Subject: It's only ontopic(ish) towards the end... Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071003155721.05462a38@mail.30below.com> ... and if you're a "Mac fanboi" don't go here... ;-) http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/28/bofh_episode_33/ 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 spectre at floodgap.com Wed Oct 3 15:22:42 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 13:22:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: It's only ontopic(ish) towards the end... In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20071003155721.05462a38@mail.30below.com> from Roger Merchberger at "Oct 3, 7 04:03:41 pm" Message-ID: <200710032022.l93KMgkt013784@floodgap.com> > ... and if you're a "Mac fanboi" don't go here... ;-) > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/28/bofh_episode_33/ I knew it! A closet Archie user! -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Ah, the insight of hindsight. -- Thurston N. Davis ------------------------- From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 3 16:00:14 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 17:00:14 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On Oct 3, 2007, at 1:13 PM, Peter C. Wallace wrote: > Interestingly TI's MSP430 has an instruction set reminiscent of the > 9900 Rrrr? The MSP430 is *VERY* PDP-11 like. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From pcw at mesanet.com Wed Oct 3 16:58:57 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 14:58:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: References: <0JPA00409FCXQRQ6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Dave McGuire wrote: > Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 17:00:14 -0400 > From: Dave McGuire > Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > > On Oct 3, 2007, at 1:13 PM, Peter C. Wallace wrote: >> Interestingly TI's MSP430 has an instruction set reminiscent of the 9900 > > Rrrr? The MSP430 is *VERY* PDP-11 like. > > -Dave Sure but more TMS9900 like... (plus they got the source and destination Register addresses on nibble boundaries so the HEX opcode are fairly readable...) Peter Wallace From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 3 16:38:30 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 22:38:30 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> from "Sridhar Ayengar" at Oct 2, 7 04:42:30 pm Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > >> Making an MMJ cable is a piece of cake. Just take the retention clip > >> off of the RJ11 at the end of a phone cord. Crimp an RJ45 on the other > > > > Rememeber the OP (and I) are in the UK. The standard telephone connector > > over here is not an RJ11 or snythig like that. > > What is the connector over there? I remember seeing RJ11/14 connectors > in India, in certain places. It's something called a 'BT 600' plug IIRC. COnceptially it's like an RJ11, in that there are metal contacts on one face of the plug that mate with spring contacts in the socket, but while the RJ11 os almost square seen end-on, the BT plug is much wider than it's high (say a 2:1 ratio). the cotnacts (6 positions, for most domestic installations only the centre 4 are fitted) are on one of the long faces, the latch is on one of the short sides. Which side the latch is on indicates whether it's a 'line' or 'handset' connector I think. This conenctor is always white, there was (I've not seen one for years) similar black connector with different key notches (so you could not fit that in a telephone socket or vice versa) which was used for 'data' applicaitons, I believe the Sinclair QL had them for serial and joystick ports. I would think any of the UK electronic compoent distributors would have a picture on their web sites. Try http://www.rswww.com/ or http://www.farnell.com/ > I suppose I have a lot of practice, but I can strip, order, cut and > crimp and RJ45 for ethernet in about 30 seconds. It takes longer than > that for my iron to warm up. Ah, when I'm doing hardware hacking (i.e. almost all the time) my iron is always turned on. I know I am going to need it. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 3 16:46:48 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 22:46:48 +0100 (BST) Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <47030D50.1090902@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Oct 2, 7 09:32:32 pm Message-ID: > > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Not hard to get 60Sn/40Pb solder at all. Here's some from Marlon > > Jones > Try that in the UK. BOth RS (which is NOT Radio Shack, OK) and Farnell have tin/lead solder listed on their websites (I checked earlier this evening) and neither seems to say 'avaialble until stocks exhausted'. I don't think there's any real problem yet in getting it over here. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 3 17:21:01 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 23:21:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <005801c805e0$a06c89a0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> from "Antonio Carlini" at Oct 3, 7 06:12:48 pm Message-ID: > > woodelf wrote: > > Chuck Guzis wrote: > >> Not hard to get 60Sn/40Pb solder at all. Here's some from Marlon > >> Jones > > Try that in the UK. > > When last I looked CPC still had leaded solder for sale. As do RS and Farnell. Actually, I saw a little coil of it in a 'pound shop' today, but that's a ridiculously expensive way to buy it. > > It is (AFAIK) perfectly OK to purchase and use. Theoretically There is nothing illegal in buying or using it (for certain applications). > there may be some issues if you decide to produce new widgets at > home in order to sell (or even give) them to others, but in practice It is certainly legal to use it for stuff you build for yourself. Or to do repairs on devices that were originally made with leaded solder (like classic computers). I am not sure about making new things and giving them away. > I think you'd have to ring the HSE and beg to get them to come round > and prosecute. Similarly, I expect that if you rang and said "I have > what amounts to a machine tool workshop, do I have to follow the full > elven safety rules" you'd have a hard time getting one of them to say > "No, feel free, do what you like". On the other hand, I'd be somewhat > surprised if they turned up on your doorstep one day. That, alas, was not the experience of at least one model engineer who had the little hitlers turn up at his workshop (shed?) and tell him that if he did jobs for others then he had to fit guards to all his tools, have fume extracion on the soldeirng iron, and all sorts of other sillies. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 3 17:25:07 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 23:25:07 +0100 (BST) Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting In-Reply-To: <4703D1E8.7060408@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Oct 3, 7 06:31:20 pm Message-ID: > Aha, OK - that's plausible I suppose... *reading* either format is OK, but > booting isn't... releasing an upgrade which could no longer make any sense of > the old format would seem a funny thing to do :-) This is taking me back many years, and I didn't do much with Apples anyway, but IIRC the DOS 3.3 system came with a disk that you booted, then replaced with a 13 secotr disk and it booted that. Since the new state machine could handle 13 sector disks without problems, and since the boot PROM was only used for booting, there was no problem after that, the system acted as a 13 sector one). There was also a program, IIRC called 'MUFFIN' (why???) on the 16 sector DOS disk that would transfer files from 13 sector disks to 16 sector. > I haven't tried the 3.2 media with the Disk ][ drive yet, but if you're right > about the above then it won't boot (although if catalog works with both disk > formats then I should be able to boot via 3.3 and catalog the 3.2 disk). It doesn;t :-(. DOS 3.3 will not natively read a 13 sector disk. The hardware can do it, the software can't. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 3 16:59:20 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 22:59:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: Experience with Dysan drive tester? In-Reply-To: <47031CB2.1080509@oldskool.org> from "Jim Leonard" at Oct 2, 7 11:38:10 pm Message-ID: > > A friend might have a Dysan Pat-2+ 5.25" floppy drive tester held for > me, but we both have no experience with it. Assuming it comes with the > alignment disk and manual, and functions, is it a worthwhile piece of > equipment to have? I am not a die-hard techie -- I do not own an > oscilloscope -- so I might grab it to keep my drives aligned, but not if > it's more placebo than functional. > > If anyone has had experience using this unit or one like it, I'd like to > hear your thoughts. I don't know this particular unit, but this sounds like a 'drive exerciser', and I have one of those. A drive exerciser basically simulates the host interface to a floppy drive. It lets you select the drive, load the heads, step the heads in and out (good ones lwt you go to particualr tracks directly, move the heads and forth automatially, etc). It'll monitor the write protect, inde, track 0, etc lines and display them on front panel LEDs. Most of them also let you write a continuous square wave at a couple of selected frequencies to the currently selected track. But you do need a 'scope to use one. FIrstly to look at the waveform read back form the disk (e,g, after writing one of those test frequencies), and secondly to do the alignment. Typically to do the 'radial alignment' (gettign the head on the centre of the track, what most people mean by 'alignment' here), you put the alignment disk in, move the heads to the CE track using the exerciser, then monitor the outputs of the read amplifier in the drive (2 testpoint on the drive PCB) with a 'scope and move the stepper motor or whatever until the 2 loes of the CE pattern are the same szie. If you don't have a 'scope, there was a thing sold in the UK (designed over here too I think) called a 'Microtest'. You used that with a PC (the minimum spec, was I believe, 256K RAM, 1 serial port, 8088, any video card, even MDA). You linked up the drive-under-test as drive B to the PC (there were cables included with the Microtest unit for this), connected the Microtest box to the serial port (this was a box containing a microcontroller, ADC chip, etc, and which drew poer from the RS232 port) and ran the Micortest software on the PCB. You then selected the drive type from a menu of about 300 types, and it displayed a picture of the drive PCB on the screen (using the IBM block graphics characters) and told you where to connect 5 leads coming from the Microtest box. You then put a stnadard alignment disk in the drive. If, say, you wanted to do the radial alignment, you presss the approrpiate function key, the ehads moved to the right track, and the mcirotest unit effectively measured the amplitude of the 2 CE lobes. The result was displayed on the PC (again using IBM graphics chracters) as was the distance that the head was from the right position, and whether it was in tolerance. You moved the head stepper until it was where it should be. What do I use? Both :-). The Microtest (I was given one) is useful for quick test and alignments on basically working drives. The exerciser is useful to figuring out why the heads won'y move in the first place, or why the write cirucit is blowing transistors, or... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 3 17:07:44 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 23:07:44 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710030249t21ca5acey992aac14b01cdd29@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 3, 7 10:49:46 am Message-ID: > > On 03/10/2007, Rod Smallwood wrot= > e: > > If you are in the UK then Black Box stock MMJ cables. > > Setting aside the notion of /buying/ new parts to build a cable, which > is dangerously close to crazy talk around here... > > I think we need to keep in mind the purchase price of the machine, > here, folks. I'm not going to spend =A320 or =A330 on getting or making a > cable for a 99p computer! Ah, you've clearly not come across one of 'ARDs laws of vintage computing', namely that the machines are cheap, but you'll go broke buying disks, cables, plugs, repair components, and so on. The way to thin of it is not 'I had to spend 20 times as much for the cable as for the CPU' but 'I've got a nice little machine for \pounds 21.00'. :-) > Also, I do not have any of the tools or parts to crimp anything onto > anything. I never have had and have never crimped a cable in 20y in > the computer business, from junior workshop bod to IT manager for an > international stockbroker. Next you'll be telling me you've never used a soldering iron, 'scope, logic analyser or machine code monitor either... -tony From curt at atarimuseum.com Wed Oct 3 17:43:46 2007 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:43:46 -0400 Subject: Unknown 64pin ceramic TRW Chip... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47041B22.2090407@atarimuseum.com> I have an S-100 experimenters board with a ceramic 64pin chip on it that has a black cap over it and all it says is TRW. Anyone have any idea what the heck this might be, there are no other markings what so ever. Curt From pcw at mesanet.com Wed Oct 3 17:53:47 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 15:53:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Unknown 64pin ceramic TRW Chip... In-Reply-To: <47041B22.2090407@atarimuseum.com> References: <47041B22.2090407@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:43:46 -0400 > From: "Curt @ Atari Museum" > Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > ; > Subject: Unknown 64pin ceramic TRW Chip... > > I have an S-100 experimenters board with a ceramic 64pin chip on it that has > a black cap over it and all it says is TRW. Anyone have any idea what the > heck this might be, there are no other markings what so ever. > > > Curt > > Quite likely a combinatorial multiplier, less likely a flash A-D. Peter Wallace From drb at msu.edu Wed Oct 3 17:55:12 2007 From: drb at msu.edu (Dennis Boone) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:55:12 -0400 Subject: MMJ connectors Message-ID: <200710032255.l93MtCsT007810@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> Got a note from Digi-Key today saying Tyco/AMP are discontinuing their 6p6c MMJ connectors (AMP #5-555236-2, Digi-Key #A24919-ND). Which leads me to the (somewhat rhetorical) question: are these things starting to vanish from the new market? DK doesn't seem to have any others, based on a quick web search. Mouser carries one brand. De From lproven at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 18:49:21 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 00:49:21 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710030249t21ca5acey992aac14b01cdd29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710031649x7df0ab75rc1866fdb692ecaa8@mail.gmail.com> On 03/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > On 03/10/2007, Rod Smallwood wrot= > > e: > > > If you are in the UK then Black Box stock MMJ cables. > > > > Setting aside the notion of /buying/ new parts to build a cable, which > > is dangerously close to crazy talk around here... > > > > I think we need to keep in mind the purchase price of the machine, > > here, folks. I'm not going to spend =A320 or =A330 on getting or making a > > cable for a 99p computer! > > Ah, you've clearly not come across one of 'ARDs laws of vintage > computing', namely that the machines are cheap, but you'll go broke > buying disks, cables, plugs, repair components, and so on. No, but it sounds horribly plausible... [Looks alarmed] > The way to thin of it is not 'I had to spend 20 times as much for the > cable as for the CPU' but 'I've got a nice little machine for \pounds > 21.00'. :-) [Grin] > > Also, I do not have any of the tools or parts to crimp anything onto > > anything. I never have had and have never crimped a cable in 20y in > > the computer business, from junior workshop bod to IT manager for an > > international stockbroker. > > Next you'll be telling me you've never used a soldering iron, 'scope, > logic analyser or machine code monitor either... I own a soldering iron and sometimes manage to use it without burning myself too badly. I recently bought my first multimeter, as it was very cheap in Lidl and I thought it might come in handy some time, though I confess I don't know when, exactly. It's still in its box. 'Scope? Oscilloscope? No, never. Logic analyser? I only have a hazy idea what one is. Not sure I've ever seen one. M/C monitor? Not since the 1980s, and then only to do things like kick off a low-level format, or reboot a machine fairly cleanly, or try to restart a crashed program. Never in anger, but then, I never learned to code in assembly. BASIC is my forte; I am currently half-heartedly trying to learn Python. Nope, in two decades of professional computer fettling, from minis to mainframes to workstations to PDAs to smartphones, and of course PC servers, laptops, desktops and many Macs, I've never soldered a chip or a PCB, never done anything more than remove & replace a socketed chip. I've built more machines than I can remember, fixed innumerable broken ones, restored old dead ones and given them away or sold them, but generally, to me, the smallest unit of a computer is a circuit board, and when one is dead, it gets thrown away and replaced. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 18:50:41 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:50:41 -0400 Subject: MMJ connectors In-Reply-To: <200710032255.l93MtCsT007810@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> References: <200710032255.l93MtCsT007810@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> Message-ID: <47042AD1.9030402@gmail.com> Dennis Boone wrote: > Got a note from Digi-Key today saying Tyco/AMP are discontinuing their > 6p6c MMJ connectors (AMP #5-555236-2, Digi-Key #A24919-ND). > > Which leads me to the (somewhat rhetorical) question: are these things > starting to vanish from the new market? DK doesn't seem to have any > others, based on a quick web search. Mouser carries one brand. I usually buy from cables.com. Not cheap, but not that expensive either. $0.19 qty 1. Peace... Sridhar From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Wed Oct 3 18:55:58 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 19:55:58 -0400 Subject: MUFFIN (was Apple II (clone) booting) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20071003235558.8EDA6BA45D9@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > This is taking me back many years, and I didn't do much with Apples > anyway, but IIRC the DOS 3.3 system came with a disk that you booted, > then replaced with a 13 secotr disk and it booted that. Since the new > state machine could handle 13 sector disks without problems, and since > the boot PROM was only used for booting, there was no problem after that, > the system acted as a 13 sector one). There was also a program, IIRC > called 'MUFFIN' (why???) on the 16 sector DOS disk that would transfer > files from 13 sector disks to 16 sector. MUFFIN, good question. It's a somewhat symmetrical yet assymetrical word, maybe suited for a conversion utility, and also fitting in the vague pattern of food-like words for Apple software tools? Tim. From kerobaros at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 20:54:44 2007 From: kerobaros at gmail.com (Matt Lichtenberg) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 20:54:44 -0500 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <6103c8710710031854p11860dffhdddb34d0c2cb0071@mail.gmail.com> On Oct 3, 2007, at 12:48PM, Dave McGuire wrote: > On Oct 2, 2007, at 3:47 PM, Martin Scott Goldberg wrote: > >> There are really three 99/4 home computers, original with chiclet > >> keys, the > >> second and most common with a really nice keyboard and the whie > >> version that > >> is really the same thing with a few board level cost reductions. > > > > Actually, there's one TI-99/4 and two TI-99/4a models. > > What are the differences between them, does anyone know offhand? > > -Dave Apparently, I'm one of the resident TI-99 experts! The differences are almost exactly as Martin said; the 99/4 is the first computer he described, and the 4As are the second two. The 4's only benefit was the built-in 'Equation Calculator' mode; sure mark of TI's educational division. The 4As had, other than a better keyboard, the ability to use 'lowercase' (just small caps), and not much else. More info can be found at Thierry Nouspikel's pages, which are currently at , and at the Mainbyte pages, at . And now I'm out the door! ~Matt From dbwood at kc.rr.com Wed Oct 3 23:02:12 2007 From: dbwood at kc.rr.com (Douglas Wood) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 23:02:12 -0500 Subject: Cromemco Z-2D free to a good home References: Message-ID: <124a01c8063b$5805ee80$677ba8c0@epicis> For pick-up only? I bought a Z-2D (minus the S-100 boards) years ago, but was never able to get any cards for it. I've always watned to get mine up and running with something in it. Douglas Wood ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matt Valerio" To: Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 10:14 PM Subject: Cromemco Z-2D free to a good home > Hey everybody, > > I acquired a Cromemco Z-2D for $2 at a garage sale a few years ago > thinking > "Holy cow that's a sweet rack-mount case". It's been sitting in my > basement > and I could use the space, so I figured I'd look into donating it to a > good > home where it would be appreciated (instead of just scrapping the parts > fot > the case like what I was going to do). Being a grad student right now > doesn't give me much spare time to futz around with it, either. > > If there's anyone out there in the Columbus, OH area that wants it, just > let > me know! > > Have a good one, > -Matt > > > __________ NOD32 2567 (20071002) Information __________ > > This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. > http://www.eset.com > > From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 3 23:29:49 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:29:49 -0400 Subject: Utilogic II (was these RTL or what?) In-Reply-To: <47029DE4.DB805890@cs.ubc.ca> References: <19DF0409-CA44-48CD-A37A-FE95B0CDB3D4@bitsavers.org> <200710021307.45842.rtellason@verizon.net> <47029DE4.DB805890@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <200710040029.49338.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 02 October 2007 15:37, Brent Hilpert wrote: > "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > On Tuesday 02 October 2007 04:38, Al Kossow wrote: > > > >> I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and > > > >> there's some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to > > > >> what they're calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It > > > >> doesn't say. Dates are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, > > > >> but I figured I'd ask in here... > > > >> > > > > Goggle finds only a few hits for utilogic,and is mostly a odd chip > > > > for sale. > > > > > > > > I suspect more TTL rather than DTL. Ben. > > > > > > look under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/signetics/_dataBooks/ > > > > I don't recall where I picked them up, but what I am referring to is > > indeed a couple of databooks... I might have gotten them there, even. > > Maybe I just need to dig into them further. > > "UtilLogicII_Handbook_1968.pdf" I'm not 100% certain without going and looking, but I believe that's one of the files I have on hand here... > from Al's bitsavers presents some internal schematics. Kind of interesting > in that the family is a mixture of technologies: AND gate inputs are > current-*sinking* multi-emitter TTL style, N/OR gates inputs are > current-*sourcing* like RTL with a common limiting resistor but referred to > in the text as DTL with the diodes replaced with transistors. N/OR outputs > are totem-pole so they'll both source and sink current. AND gate outputs > only have a high-side transistor so they'll only source. If one stuck to > AND-OR-NOT combinatorics it was probably OK to design with. No wonder I'm having trouble figuring out what I'm looking at. :-) > I came across a small pile of unknown 60s-era SSI gold-ceramic ICs recently > (SG 2xx series) and popped the lid off one just for fun to see if I could > figure out what it was under a microscope (looks like a dual 4-input TTL or > DTL gate), then later found some mention of them in the cross-refs of an > early TI TTL databook. Yeah, those cross-reference tables are another area where I might be able to glean some useful info, it appears, as there are numbers there (including some like the one you mention) that I don't remember seeing anywhere else. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Oct 4 00:14:21 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:14:21 -0400 Subject: Experience with Dysan drive tester? In-Reply-To: <47031CB2.1080509@oldskool.org> References: <47031CB2.1080509@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <200710040114.24263.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 03 October 2007 00:38, Jim Leonard wrote: > A friend might have a Dysan Pat-2+ 5.25" floppy drive tester held for > me, but we both have no experience with it. Assuming it comes with the > alignment disk and manual, and functions, is it a worthwhile piece of > equipment to have? I am not a die-hard techie -- I do not own an > oscilloscope -- so I might grab it to keep my drives aligned, but not if > it's more placebo than functional. > > If anyone has had experience using this unit or one like it, I'd like to > hear your thoughts. I've used drive exercisers before, but with a scope. Dunno what you're gonna do without one. And you need the alignment disk, not a copy, but the original. Do folks still consider drives worth aligning these days? If so I guess I'd consider that worthwhile to have, otherwise probably not. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Oct 4 00:26:40 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:26:40 -0400 Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting In-Reply-To: <9E4A078FDCC94D66ABBFEF4DBE4075F6@fluke> References: <47022482.9050101@yahoo.co.uk> <9E4A078FDCC94D66ABBFEF4DBE4075F6@fluke> Message-ID: <200710040126.40490.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 02 October 2007 08:23, Mike van Bokhoven wrote: > Hi, > > Unfortunately, this is normal behaviour for a lot of disk system faults. > I've just worked my way through a huge pile of Apple II disk drives and > controllers. Many of the drives and some of the controllers showed the > fault described here - head stepped all the way out looking for data on > track zero, finding nothing. #1 cause here was dirty heads, followed by bad > alignment, then various analog board faults. Slight alignment issues or > slightly dirty heads would cause a violent-sounding reseek. Not near as violent-sounding as those 1541 drives whacking against the stop... :-) > I will have to spend some time eventually going through the faulty drives > and figure out what's wrong. I have an oscilloscope (10Mhz only, but I have > a feeling that'll do!), Yup. > and the analog boards don't look overly complicated. Does anyone know of a > reference that details signals at test points etc? Knowing what I'm looking > for would be nice. Does anyone have an image or similar for a test disk that > can be written with a known-good drive? As mentioned in a recent post, any > disk without copy protection would do if not. I thought I might have something in my files here, but after looking through a couple of folders it appears not. I *did* however get a surprise while I was looking -- a brand new, still in the bag, Vector prototyping board for that machine, accompanied by the layout sheets that go with it. Hmm. :-) > I developed a very rough but surprisingly functional test for bad > alignment; putting a little pressure on the head carrier (or spiral disk) > to move it a tiny amount in each direction was often enough to bring track > zero close enough to alignment that the drive would spring into life. If > that worked, at least I knew that the drive was basically functional, and > probably just needed an align. I also need to track down info on how to > align those spiral-disk-head-drive type mechanisms (Shugart? or were they > ALPS? I forget). I used to know this stuff once, but that was a long time > ago, and it's just not coming back on its own. > > Mike. I remember working on those, but like you, it's been a long time and I'm damned if I can remember what it is that you're supposed to do to set track zero on those, though I could probably figure it out if I had one of those drives in front of me. > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Jules Richardson" > To: ; "Discussion at 5star.net.nz:On-Topic and Off-Topic > Posts" > Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 11:59 PM > Subject: Apple ][ (clone) disk booting > > > Morning, > > > > What's the normal procedure to boot a floppy from an Apple ][? I'm just > > taking a look at my Mitac [1] clone (with a view to selling it) and got > > curious as to whether it'd boot a standard Apple DOS system disk. > > > > If powered up with a drive connected the spindle motor starts and it'll > > step the drive head back to track 0 - but nothing more. > > > > On the one hand, it's entirely possible that the machine isn't a close > > enough clone to work with standard Apple DOS (that wouldn't surprise me > > at all, in fact) - but on the other, maybe I'm just missing some standard > > key combination to magically boot from the drive... (whilst I've got an > > Apple ///, I've never used an Apple ][ in my life) > > > > I can hit CTRL-reset and the machine will drop to BASIC; is there a > > normal way of booting (or at least bringing up a dir) a floppy from BASIC > > on a genuine ][? > > > > [1] Quite an impressive machine. Has some flavour of far-east legends on > > the key fronts, as well as regular ASCII (we had a discussion about it on > > here once, but there were conflicting opinions on what language it > > actually was). Built-in disk controller, joystick port, tape, TV > > modulator, 80-column card. There's a little backplane which can be > > plugged into the machine's expansion port and gives you five Apple ][ > > card slots, too. > > > > cheers > > > > Jules -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Oct 4 00:38:08 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:38:08 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPA00GC8EOBTMED@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPA00GC8EOBTMED@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <200710040138.08331.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 02 October 2007 09:56, Allison wrote: > >Subject: these RTL or what? > > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:01:29 -0400 > > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > > > > >I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and > > there's some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what > > they're calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't > > say. Dates are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured > > I'd ask in here... > > There are many early families of saturated logic RTL is the oldest, Which explains why I was seeing it first, and hobby-type projects based on it back when. > DTL and it's kin "utilogic" where the intermediate sorta TTL like > and later TTL( H,LS,S,F,AS,C,HC,HCT flavors). My first TTL book (which I still have) was a TI book that covered the standard, H, and L varieties. LS and S I can understand, F and AS still confuse me a bit, I'm not quite sure where they fit in. Then there are all those CMOS variants. C parts are pretty uncommon these days, and I'm not real clear on the distinction between HC and AC (I know about the ones with T in there, just shifted thresholds on the inputs and I have a pile of 'em.) > In the middle of all that was ECL (also about three or four generations) a > fast non saturating logic. I've read some ECL data, but have never done a darn thing with it, nor even seen much of anything that used it. From what I understand it had some weird packaging sometimes, very tight board layout requirements (I was mostly thinking of wire-wrapping stuff), and was very power-hungry. I guess if I ever want a prescaler for a counter to get *way* up there or maybe one or two other apps I can think of I might eventually have to go there, depending on what parts I can find. But I'm in no hurry. :-) > What amazing is when people say "60s" you must do so with care as > 1960 was basically germainium transistors but by 1964 silicon > transistors are about and ICs were already appearing. Most > integrated circuit logic was post '65 and even then from that > point speeds went from about 3mhz to 30mhz and RTL was replaced > by TTL by 1970. I did say "late 1960s" up there. :-) > The evoloutionary scale was very steep from the mid 50s to the mid 70s. > That 20 years window we went from computers with tubes to microprocessors, > delays lines or other serial storage to semiconductor RAM. I remember seeing some of the boards from the tube stuff for sale in various electronic junk places around. I may have even got one or two for parts, though there was nothing to be done with those backplane connectors. I remember one set of 9-pin sockets for which it was apparent to me that they were using something like a 12AU7, because of the center-tapped heater connections. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Oct 4 00:56:42 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:56:42 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <4703D627.7040906@gmail.com> References: <20071002173258.U83730@shell.lmi.net> <4703D627.7040906@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200710040156.43056.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 03 October 2007 13:49, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Fred Cisin wrote: > >> I suppose I have a lot of practice, but I can strip, order, cut and > >> crimp and RJ45 for ethernet in about 30 seconds. It takes longer than > >> that for my iron to warm up. > > > > only because you've been turning it off or unplugging it between uses. > > I'd rather my tips not oxidize. > > Peace... Sridhar That's why I built a little box with a couple of switches, a couple of neon indcators, and a couple of rectifier diodes... One switch turns it on and off. The other cuts the power to half, which I leave it on for "standby". And with a 45W element holding a 1/8" chisel tip, they last a LONG time for me. Years, even, depending on what I'm doing. Lots of salvage with a solder sucker seems to eat 'em up quicker. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 3 06:18:28 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:18:28 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JPC00K5I215RV86@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: "Liam Proven" > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:18:00 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > >On 02/10/2007, Allison wrote: > >> The 9900 chips is not crippled, for 1976 three voltage NMOS its about as fast >> as the technology of the time could go. The TI99/4 did however do a nasty to >> it. One is they muxed the bus down to 8bits wide and that does slow the system >> some. There were 128 words of ram (6810s) that if you execute there the speed >> is noticeable. The other is the GROM (sort of an interpreted language with a >> register point to next instruction) is a bottleneck as well. There was a >> later 9980 and the 9985 which were a 8bit bus interface and were somewhat >> crippled but I'd never seen one in a TI99/4A. > >That's probably true, but the 99/4a wasn't a 1976 machine. It was >released in 1981 and withdrawn 1983. A bit unfairly for a tweaked 1979 >machine (the 99/a), the 99/4a's competition was mainly 1982 machines >like the Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum, which (based on my >possibly erroneous recollection) outperformed the 99/4a significantly. >The TI99/4 did however do a nasty to >> it. One is they muxed the bus down to 8bits wide and that does slow the system I requote the statement. Why? Because thats what I'd said. The basic 9900 chip was fairly fast the 99/4 computer is _not fast_ and I gave the reasons why. Comparing it to 1980 tech just showed how badly the little console faired. Having a 9900 system without the funky 99/4 hardware I can say the 9900 was still not fast but faired far better against its contemporaries. The reason it did well enough is the archetecture was very good even if 2mhz was somewhat slow. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 3 06:19:45 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:19:45 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JPC00GMK23ASQEH@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: Martin Scott Goldberg > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:47:46 -0500 (CDT) > To: cctech at classiccmp.org > >>There are really three 99/4 home computers, original with chiclet keys, the >>second and most common with a really nice keyboard and the whie version that >>is really the same thing with a few board level cost reductions. >> > > >Actually, there's one TI-99/4 and two TI-99/4a models. > I know I have them but they are still software compatable and overall similar. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 3 06:24:03 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:24:03 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture Message-ID: <0JPC00JLK2AG5Z04@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture > From: Cameron Kaiser > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:57:08 -0700 (PDT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> If I remember right, the architecure of the ti chip >> it used a pointer to ram as the internal registers. That would really >> bog down on byte wide bus. > >But then chips like the 9995 do very well on a 8-bit data bus. IMHO the >bigger problems with the 9900 implementation in the 99/4A were the external >scratch pad (made internal for the 9995) and the presence of GROMs, >requiring their own interpretation step and murderously slow serial access. > >Compare this to a system like the Tomy Tutor, which has a 9995 on an 8-bit >bus too, but is significantly faster than the 99/4A despite being clocked >slightly slower (10.7MHz oscillator instead of the 99/4A's 12MHz one). Actually My 99/4a has the 10.7 and the actual CPU is clocked off the slower division of that. The clocks you note were used for the video timing. However, the 9985 was a far nwer chip that the 9900 and was clocked internally faster. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 3 06:42:30 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:42:30 -0400 Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? Message-ID: <0JPC00AA2357TI88@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > From: "Rod Smallwood" > Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:00:06 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > > >Now there's a story. ... Only part of it. Both MicroVAX-IIs were enabled by DEC but at the time were minimal machines (BA23 had RD53 and BA123 only had RD54). It was post DEC and many finds later they became filled with ram and better disks. the big thig was not the hardware but a set of TK50s with V5.44 and a nontransferable non expiring license for it and all the layered apps. VIDSYS:: is a 5.44 node for that reason with things like Pathworks and VAXnotes. The 11T03 was exactly that, the big find if one was the RL02/RL21 in it. Years later (post DEC) I put in 11/23B, then 11/73, more ram and built the MFM disk shelf supported by RQDX3. >Luckily (or unluckily) I had moved on from DEC by 1985 so I was not a >witness to its sad demise. It was bloody. >Better made products you could not want for. > >Despite having worked with PC's for many years. I could never see how >they became preferred over central unit plus terminals for general >business use. We agree. IN reality they did exactly that. Save for the central system is now called "server" and the terminals are smarter. >My modest collection has beeen accrued of the last couple of years. >Apart from the 11/94's >(Some potato head stole the CPU cards before I got to the machines) the >rest of it is running/will run. I need KDJ 11 processors for the >11/94's. They are expensive and even those intended for 11/84's are >silly prices. Yes even Qbus J-11 cpus are scarce. >I also have three small Sun systems (I can't resist quality engineering) I had suns as well and gave them away to concentrate more on DEC and the CP/M systems. Allison > >Rod > > > > >-----Original Message----- >From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org >[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison >Sent: 02 October 2007 14:46 >To: cctech at classiccmp.org >Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > >> >>Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? >> From: "Rod Smallwood" >> Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 07:08:33 +0100 >> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" >> >> >>Hmmm >> Time for a quick 'We are not worthy' ^00^ > >Consider my leg pulled. :) > >> >>What did you do? >>Raid the Mill with a fleet of trucks? > >No. I did get some small amounts of odd items from DEC salvage before >it was shut down. Mostly things like H751A power controllers, power >supplies and TU58 drives and boards. > >The one uVII (BA123 VIDSYS::) was a parting gift(I paid 100$ for it with >DOCS and licenses) during the days of blood. For those that don't >understand the post 1991 sell off of parts of DEC, that's when the >DIGITAL logo went from blue to burgandy. The other was built from >scrounge. VIDSYS:: is still setup for DECnet area 56.920 (one area in >OGO was 56) and HIPPY:: was area 63.390 (hidden area for DECnet >overflow). > >My 11T03 which is now the 11/73 was a gift from my boss at DEC. I kept >it in the lab area for years for those odd projects but by late 80s it >was obvious it was getting used less and less. He suggested "when are >you going to scrap that thing?" I bring it home (on property pass) which >I did. A year later when it was time to confirm and renew the property >pass his answer was "what 11?". > >The remainder were mostly rescues. The bulk of the uVAX3100s came from >UV Waterloo over 10 years ago on a if you take one you take them all and >I was the only one willing to take a huge pile of uVAX3100s plus cables, >VT320s VS2000s, TK50s, several TLZ04s.. Took two seperate 400mile round >trips with a pickup truck filled to capacity. >A fair number of those got redistributed to others as sixteen uVax3100s >take a bit of space. > >The rest are also rescues from various seperate trips. > >Usually if the system is incomplete I jump on it and clean it up and >restore it to life from spares. The few pending systems are due to my >activities in amateur radio this year and now that I'm done with the >bigger projects it's back to machines. > >I don't do Ubus-11s, big VAX (780s and the like) and unfortunately >PDP-10/20s as most are too large to handle or power here. Also I've >reached the point where excess do get passed on to others as I don't >store any large number of systems either. I try to manage my >collection. Those excess sometimes get cleaned up board added and moved >along so they are operable and don't end up in the trash or worse. I >like to power them up and play and that's incompatable with storage. >There are a few small items like extra VT320s (white, green and amber), >VT100s, H19, DECMate-IIIs I keep in the garage on rotation but I can and >do run them there as well as it's warm enough in the winter and very >dry. I keep those out there mostly to make it easier to move other stuff >around in the room. What seperates me from museum is I use them, >reconfigure and expand them them to suit my wishes or for fun. However, >junking them is out of the questionas even basket cases are salvaged for >any and all usable parts. > >FYI: if anyone needs parts for PDT11/1xx systems I have many CPU, memory >and IO boards I'm not ever going to use. Someone took a bunch apart and >then later gave me the box of boards. (ugly mutter mutter cuss cuss.) > >I mostly do DEC and CP/M based systems (s100, totables, SBCs) but I do >have a few oddballs. For some reason the MIPS based DEC hardware never >got my attention nor have the PC/clone(intel) based systems like Rainbow >and VAXmate. I did have PROs (350s and 380s) but gave those away to >concentrate on Qbus. > > >Allison > >> >>Rod >> >>-----Original Message----- >>From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org >>[mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Allison >>Sent: 01 October 2007 15:47 >>To: cctech at classiccmp.org >>Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? >> >>> >>>Subject: RE: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? >>> From: "Rod Smallwood" >>> Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:00:44 +0100 >>> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" >>> >>> >>> >>>My list >>> pdp11/94 x 4 R >>> >>> DEC Rainbow 100+ * >>> >>> VAX 300 * >>> VAX 400 * >>> VAX 500 R >>> VAXStation 3100 * >>> >>> DEC 3000 * >>> >>> Multia * >>> >>>* = Working >>>R = Renovation (Mostly missing parts) >>> >>>Rod Smallwood >> >> >>A more detailed list of DEC systems here. :) >> >> >>Collection of operational hardware: >> >>PDP-8 based machines: >>==================== >> PDP-8f, 20k core and 2 serial 8650 and 8652 >>2 Decmate-IIIs OS/278 >> Intersil sampler (6100 chipset) extended to 3k ram >> 6120 based board, homebrew 32kram 8k rom >> >>PDP-11 based machines: >>===================== >>1 LSI-11/03 rx02 >>2 PDP11/23 BA11S boxes, >> 1MB, RQDX2 and RD52 >> 1MB, RQDX2 and RD31, RX50 >>1 pdp11/73 50" RACK SYSTEM (4MB, DLVJ11, DEQNA, RQDX3>> RX02, RD52, >>RX33, RL02). >>1 BA11va with 11/23 +tu58 RT-11 >>1 BA11va with 11/23 +Viking RX02 equivilent RT-11 >> PDT11/130 11/03 with tu58 dectapeII >> OSs in use: RT-11, XXDP-11 and unix V6 >> >>VAX based machines: >>=================== >> Microvax-II (ba23 based) 12mb, RQDX3, RD53, RX33 >> This one lived as HIPSS:: during my days at DEC. >> Microvax-II/GPX (Ba123 based, TK50 and SCSI disks) >> This one was know as VIDSYS:: inside DEC. >>3 Microvax2000 all with 2 RD53, 1 RD54 drive, one with ultrix >>1 Microvax2000 as hard disk formatter and MOP bootable system. >>2 Microvax3100/m76/gpx 32mb 2 each 1gb scsi internal >>3 Microvax3100/server (not M10e) (filled with 400mb and 1gb disks) >>4 BA42 SCSI disk farm for the 3100s populated with RZ56s >> OSs in use VMSv5.4-4,V5.54, V7.2, Ultrix 4.2 >> >>Terminal for the uVAX systems is usually VT1200 via thinnet and the >>PDP-11s the usual terminal is either VT340, VT320 or VT180 in terminal >>mode. >> >>DEC CP/M speaking machines: >>=========================== >>1 Vt180 complete (dual RX180s) >>2 Vt180 CP/M board built up as standalone one modded for 6mhz >>1 Vt185 Thats a Vt125 + Vt180. >> >>In the non operational list: >> >>11/23B uPDP-11 in a BA23 pedestal that while complete with 11/23B, >>M8057 memory, DHV11, RQDX2 and RD52, RX50 it requries cleaning and >>testing. >> >>H11 Backplane complete with LSI-11 CPU, 16k of ram, two serial cards >and >>a parallel card of heath origin. Some day I'll find the case/power >>supply for it. All parts are tested as working. >> >>Small 11/23 system using a H9281-BC (12x2 slots) filled with: >> M8186 1/23 (Overclocked CPU mod) >> 4 M8059 MSV11 ram >> DLV11j, >> RQDX3 with M9058 distribution board. (for RX33 and RD31) >> MRV-11 Eprom card with MSCP boot. >> VK170 with matching LK02 keyboard and a monitor. The VK170 >> is a minimal VT52 on a dual width card for packaged systems >> that communicates via RS232 to system and the bus use is >> power only. >>This is waiting on being packed in a reasonable nonDEC box with a DEC >PS >>and fans. The boards are known working and the backplane is already >>jumpered as Q22. >> >>Generally in my house operational means I can actually turn it on and >>play and it has a permanent spot that is easily accessable. >> >>One project that is in process is a H9800 desk/rack that will replace >>the existing standard steel office desk. the system to be installed >>there will be 11/23B in BA11s with a hand made Disk box for RX33 and >>RD52s. >> >>I have two boxes (Xerox Paper sized) of tested boards enough to build >>another few 11/23s and a few uVAXII as my spares. Failed boards get >>repaird when I feel like it so I have good boards around. >> >>Who was it that has the SIG of >> "DEC had then what you wish you could buy now." ? >> >>Allison >> >> >> >> > > > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 3 14:26:08 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:26:08 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JPC00KE7OLSV717@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: woodelf > Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:04:51 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Peter C. Wallace wrote: > >> The registers-in-memory architecture might be suitable for a FPGA CPU >> where BlockRAM (as system memory) is almost as fast as registers. Why >> not have registers in memory instead of simulatiing it badly (and >> expensively power wise) via caching, that is, why move data if you dont >> have to? There was a late version of 9900 that was done in I think bipolar or some strange combo process that was many times faster than the earlier machine be they NMOS or TTL. TI was not a MOS house for the most part and were ahead by doing like PDP-8 and PDP11 putting their earlier TTL machine on a chip. What they did wrong was to lag severely in marketing and advancing the technology. The 9900 was slow becuase at the time 2102s (fast ones were 400ns) were slow. By 4 years later ram would be down to 45NS (2147 and 2167 as examples). If the 9900 were to ramp up the clock as did the 8085 and Z80 by 1980 it would have gone from 2mhz to around 6-8mhz and that speed increase would have made it from a pure performance standpoint, fast. The speed would ahve been aciveable as the total transistor count on the die was far lower than most (few registers) and the complexity was fairly low. The sad story is they didn't. The TI99/4a was a sad detour that really didn't show off the CPU but did embody some interesing ideas. Grom was one. >Simple registers are expensive. Look at the PDP-5. This is the 1960's >when most architectures where developed. Even the PDP-10 I think Registers were costly when a FlipFlop was an entire board. Then they started to get two in a 16legged chip the cost was way lower and the advantage of having more registers was nowhere near as costly. Also PDP-5 was mid 60s and and we had PDP-10, PDP-11, CDC monsters UNIVAC 1180s and VAX ahead of us at that date. >was designed to use core memory as registers unless you want the >optional module for F/F registers. >Ben. Your thinking pdp6 and earlier. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 3 16:23:43 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:23:43 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JPC00J6UU1Q5RO5@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: Dave McGuire > Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:48:37 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > >On Oct 2, 2007, at 3:47 PM, Martin Scott Goldberg wrote: >>> There are really three 99/4 home computers, original with chiclet >>> keys, the >>> second and most common with a really nice keyboard and the whie >>> version that >>> is really the same thing with a few board level cost reductions. >> >> Actually, there's one TI-99/4 and two TI-99/4a models. > > What are the differences between them, does anyone know offhand? > > -Dave There are really three 99/4 home computers: original with chiclet keys the 99/4 the second and most common with a really nice keyboard 99/4a the white console version that is really the same thing with a few board level cost reductions. (still 99/4A on the back) Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 3 16:27:04 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:27:04 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JPC00JJGU7D5Z66@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: "Peter C. Wallace" > Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:13:12 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> >> Actually 1980 was mid to late in the life of the TI9900 chip. The first >> one I worked with was on a Technico Superstarter System, TI9900, 2k ram, >> 1k prom (monitor ans line by line asm) and a 2708 eprom programmer on >> one board. I still have it. I purchased it at PCC '78 in in memory >> serves Philly. Fir the amount of resource on the board it was pretty >> capable for systems of that day. > > > >That sure brings back memories. I also had a Technico SuperStarter (Two bytes >are better than one!) Eventually made a wire wrapped 32 KByte RAM card (using I still have mine and it's operational. >TMS4060 non muxed 4K DRAMS), a 256x256 graphic display, A wire wrapped floppy >controller (8 inch with 16 KByte DRAM track buffer). The floppy was a >revelation after waiting for the papertape version of EAL (Editor Assembler >Linker?) to load. Did do all that with mine. Mostly used it for small playing and dumping 2708 eproms. >>> (Cheriton left before we actually got into using them at the software level >>> and the distributed kernel would become the VKernel at Stanford on other hardware). >>> >>> Also, the description of the 9900 in Osborne's "An Introduction to >>> Microcomputers, Vol II" ('76) fits well with my recollections of the 990/10. > >I think I chose the 9900 based on the Osborne book, it had the shortest >benchmark program... Strikingly so. >Interestingly TI's MSP430 has an instruction set reminiscent of the 9900 Instruction sets tend to repeat and reoccur. Allison From matt.valerio at gmail.com Wed Oct 3 21:13:57 2007 From: matt.valerio at gmail.com (Matt Valerio) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 22:13:57 -0400 Subject: Cromemco Z-2D free to a good home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hello everyone, WOW, I had no idea that I would get 20+ responses for the Z-2D. Thanks to everyone who has inquired -- all the way from NC, PA, Dayton, and elsewhere. 2 of the replies were from folks in Columbus, OH. I decided to give it to the first guy from Columbus (you know who you are) that inquired. Wish I had another 19 to give away to everyone else, but that's life :) -Matt On 10/2/07, Matt Valerio wrote: > > Hey everybody, > > I acquired a Cromemco Z-2D for $2 at a garage sale a few years ago > thinking "Holy cow that's a sweet rack-mount case". It's been sitting in my > basement and I could use the space, so I figured I'd look into donating it > to a good home where it would be appreciated (instead of just scrapping the > parts fot the case like what I was going to do). Being a grad student right > now doesn't give me much spare time to futz around with it, either. > > If there's anyone out there in the Columbus, OH area that wants it, just > let me know! > > Have a good one, > -Matt > > > > > > > > > > From jack.rubin at ameritech.net Wed Oct 3 21:19:21 2007 From: jack.rubin at ameritech.net (Jack Rubin) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 21:19:21 -0500 Subject: Tribute to Jim Butterfield at the Vintage Computer Festival (VCF X), November 4, 2007 Message-ID: <000001c8062c$fb164ed0$176fa8c0@obie> There will be a session at the upcoming Vintage Computer Festival in Mountainview, California, to honor Jim's memory and the contributions he made to the community of computer hobbyists. Please join us if you can - http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/session.php#53 I hope this will be a chance to get together and share memories and stories - this will be a "gathering" rather than a "presentation". If you have videos, stories, artifacts, or ??? that you would like to share during this time, please let me know. And of course, please pass this information along to anyone who might be interested in joining us, either in person or in thought. Jack jack.rubin at ameritech.net 847.424.7320 days No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.13.39/1045 - Release Date: 10/2/2007 6:43 PM From derschjo at msu.edu Thu Oct 4 00:05:44 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:05:44 -0700 Subject: SGI Crimson Questions & hardware request... Message-ID: <470474A8.7050703@msu.edu> Hi all -- Just picked up an SGI Crimson this afternoon, which should prove to be a fun machine to play around with once I get it running... a few questions for those who've dealt with these before... - What kind of power cable does this thing take? I've not yet seen anything like the connector on the back of this thing... can I plug this thing into a regular household outlet (that can supply the massive power requirements) or am I going to have to rewire my house? :) - What version of IRIX do you recommend running? I have a copy of 5.3, and 6.5, but I know that 6.5's too new for this beast. Anyone out there have a keyboard/mouse they're willing to part with (or know where I can find one?). This thing's got a 15-pin D-Sub connector on it and I of course don't have anything compatible... Thanks, as always... - Josh From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Thu Oct 4 01:11:54 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 07:11:54 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB10@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> My view is that if you have spent little or nothing on the computer. Then a few pounds on a cable is a good investment. If you do not have experience in making up cables then don't waste time learning for a small number. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Pete Edwards Sent: 03 October 2007 14:34 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Setting up a VAXstation > > > here, folks. I'm not going to spend ?20 or ?30 on getting or making > > a cable for a 99p computer! > > Ah, that's right - you're in the UK so the telephone cables won't be > the same. Actually, you _might_ be able to take an Ethernet cable, > file off the clip and file both sides to make it fit. If you can keep > the pins centered properly after filing, it should work. > > -Ian > There's plenty of telephone kit in the UK that does use RJ11, look on answering machines and especially external modems - they nearly always came with an RJ11-BT adaptor cable. A lot of modern laptop internal modems seem to have RJ11 sockets too. -- Pete Edwards "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" - Niels Bohr From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Thu Oct 4 02:13:39 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 09:13:39 +0200 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> References: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071004091339.6585b2f7@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:42:30 -0400 Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > It takes longer than that for my iron to warm up. Wrong iron. => Metcal. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 4 02:36:25 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:36:25 -0700 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <0JPC00KE7OLSV717@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPC00KE7OLSV717@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <47043589.11601.6B967F4@cclist.sydex.com> On 3 Oct 2007 at 15:26, Allison wrote: > There was a late version of 9900 that was done in I think bipolar or > some strange combo process that was many times faster than the > earlier machine be they NMOS or TTL. I2L = TI Integrated Injection Logic. circa 1979-1980. SBP9900 initially, followed by the SBP9989. I never could wrangle a sample from the TI sales guy. The stuff tended to go into military applications. IIRC, it was faster than the MOS version, but not tremendously so. Clock max was something like 3 or 4 MHz. I/O was TTL-compatible. Cheers, Chuck From tothwolf at concentric.net Thu Oct 4 02:58:36 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 02:58:36 -0500 (CDT) Subject: MMJ connectors In-Reply-To: <200710032255.l93MtCsT007810@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> References: <200710032255.l93MtCsT007810@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Dennis Boone wrote: > Got a note from Digi-Key today saying Tyco/AMP are discontinuing their > 6p6c MMJ connectors (AMP #5-555236-2, Digi-Key #A24919-ND). > > Which leads me to the (somewhat rhetorical) question: are these things > starting to vanish from the new market? DK doesn't seem to have any > others, based on a quick web search. Mouser carries one brand. Mouser always carried AMP/Tyco, which is what I had been buying. Another source for these is Stewart Connector / Bel Fuse. http://www.belfuse.com/StewartConnector/ProdList-ModularConnectors.asp?pPrLinID=9&pView=4&pPrLin=Modular%20Connectors&pCat=Plugs&pReset=y&pOrder=BelPartNumber 940-SP-3066-OST, 6P6C, offset tab, flat/oval cord 937-SP-3066-OST 6P6C, offset tab, round cord 937-SP-3066R-OST 6P6C, offset tab, round cord I'd mainly been buying AMP/Tyco since they were easier to come by, but I guess that may soon change. I think I need to place a call to AMP this week. From tothwolf at concentric.net Thu Oct 4 03:34:00 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 03:34:00 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI Crimson Questions & hardware request... In-Reply-To: <470474A8.7050703@msu.edu> References: <470474A8.7050703@msu.edu> Message-ID: On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Josh Dersch wrote: > Hi all -- > > Just picked up an SGI Crimson this afternoon, which should prove to be a > fun machine to play around with once I get it running... a few questions > for those who've dealt with these before... > > - What kind of power cable does this thing take? I've not yet seen > anything like the connector on the back of this thing... can I plug > this thing into a regular household outlet (that can supply the massive > power requirements) or am I going to have to rewire my house? :) I'd recommend a dedicated 120V 20A circuit for anything other than light testing. The original power cords were made made of 12 AWG SO cord with NEMA L5-20P and L5-20R connectors. SGI used Hubbell plugs, though Leviton also makes compatible products. Anyone know the cord length offhand? I don't have ready access to mine right now. I think they were 12-15ft. I just installed a bunch of Hubbell IG2310 receptacles a few weeks ago. They are slightly more expensive than HBL2310 receptacles, but are not a bad choice in a data center environment where you are installing everything in conduit and running a dedicated ground to each device anyway. If you are wiring stuff with romex, there isn't any benefit in using a isolated ground device, so stick with the HBL2310 instead. Either way, make sure you use a deep 4" metal box as these devices are rather large. I can dig up the part numbers for the boxes and mud-rings I usually use if needed. http://www.hubbellnet.com/max_htm/PDF_Literature_Library/h4636.pdf Cord receptacle: NEMA L5-20R Hubbell HBL2313 - 2 Pole, 3 Wire Grounding 20A 125V AC Twist-Lock Connector Body http://www.hubbellcatalog.com/wiring/section-b-datasheet.asp?PN=HBL2313 Cord plug: NEMA L5-20P Hubbell HBL2311 - 2 Pole, 3 Wire Grounding 20A 125V AC Twist-Lock Plug http://www.hubbellcatalog.com/wiring/section-b-datasheet.asp?PN=HBL2311 Wall receptacle: NEMA L5-20R Hubbell HBL2310 - 2 Pole, 3 Wire Grounding 20A 125V AC Twist-Lock Receptacle http://www.hubbellcatalog.com/wiring/section-b-datasheet.asp?PN=HBL2310 -- OR -- Hubbell IG2310 - - 2 Pole, 3 Wire Grounding 20A 125V AC Isolated Ground Twist-Lock Receptacle http://www.hubbellcatalog.com/wiring/section-b-datasheet.asp?PN=IG2310 From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 04:02:06 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:02:06 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <20071004091339.6585b2f7@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> <20071004091339.6585b2f7@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <4704AC0E.3080904@gmail.com> Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:42:30 -0400 > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> It takes longer than that for my iron to warm up. > Wrong iron. => Metcal. Mine is a Metcal. Peace... Sridhar From wmaddox at pacbell.net Thu Oct 4 05:54:21 2007 From: wmaddox at pacbell.net (William Maddox) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 02:54:21 -0800 Subject: Interesting early all-in-one PC with monitor and printer built-in -- Computer Devices DOT (eBay) Message-ID: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120166532727 Computer Devices DOT 14547-03 1983 - (eBay item 120166532727 end time Oct-04-07 19:25:01 PDT) Comes with a carrying case, sort of portable, 8088. I've never seen one of these. Kind of neat for a PC clone. More info here: http://old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=116 OLD-COMPUTERS.COM Museum ~ Computer Devices Incorporated DOT --Bill From mike at brickfieldspark.org Thu Oct 4 06:07:52 2007 From: mike at brickfieldspark.org (Mike Hatch) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 12:07:52 +0100 Subject: lead-free solder References: <200710032351.l93NpA2a024779@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <001f01c80676$cf7ef250$911ca8c0@mss.local> > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 18:12:48 +0100 > From: "Antonio Carlini" > Subject: RE: lead-free solder > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > > When last I looked CPC still had leaded solder for sale. > It is (AFAIK) perfectly OK to purchase and use. Theoretically > there may be some issues if you decide to produce new widgets at > home in order to sell (or even give) them to others, but in practice > I think you'd have to ring the HSE and beg to get them to come round > and prosecute. Leaded solder is still on sale in the UK, but you cannot use it for new production, that has to be lead free. Leaded solder can be used to repair old leaded product which can still be sold if they are spares for old equipment, that is manufactured prior to the lead free cut off date. Some processes, product and organisations are exempt but there are not many. In practice you would have to get somebody annoyed enough for them to want to have your product tested for lead as it can be an expensive process. From stimpy.u.idiot at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 06:16:28 2007 From: stimpy.u.idiot at gmail.com (Pete Edwards) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 12:16:28 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710031649x7df0ab75rc1866fdb692ecaa8@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0710030249t21ca5acey992aac14b01cdd29@mail.gmail.com> <575131af0710031649x7df0ab75rc1866fdb692ecaa8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <11c909eb0710040416n2c5a1ca5k77a1470498531cc0@mail.gmail.com> On 04/10/2007, Liam Proven wrote: > > > Nope, in two decades of professional computer fettling, from minis to > mainframes to workstations to PDAs to smartphones, and of course PC > servers, laptops, desktops and many Macs, I've never soldered a chip > or a PCB, never done anything more than remove & replace a socketed Never too late to start. I hadn't touched an iron in 20 years but managed to scratch build an eeprom programmer and put together an SBC without too much investment. I look at it as mental exercise to stave off the inevitable decay of my cognitive functions as I get older. chip. I've built more machines than I can remember, fixed innumerable > broken ones, restored old dead ones and given them away or sold them, > but generally, to me, the smallest unit of a computer is a circuit > board, and when one is dead, it gets thrown away and replaced. > > -- Shhh! You'll upset Tony :) -- Pete Edwards "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" - Niels Bohr From spectre at floodgap.com Thu Oct 4 08:05:15 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 06:05:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TI 990 architecture In-Reply-To: <0JPC00JLK2AG5Z04@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> from Allison at "Oct 3, 7 07:24:03 am" Message-ID: <200710041305.l94D5Fp7005604@floodgap.com> > Actually My 99/4a has the 10.7 and the actual CPU is clocked off the > slower division of that. The clocks you note were used for the video timing. I'm quite sure this is backwards. According to my notes, the 99/4A uses a 12MHz oscillator divided down for its CPU, and uses a 10.7MHz clock divided down for video (both, IIRC, by four). This page concurs (in French): http://perso.orange.fr/fabrice.montupet/ticm.htm > However, the 9985 was a far nwer chip that the 9900 and was clocked > internally faster. Quite, but the point I was making was that I don't believe the eight-bit data bus muxing in the 99/4A was the primary reason performance was comparatively poor. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Wherever I go, there's I AM. ----------------------------------------------- From rescue at hawkmountain.net Thu Oct 4 08:16:14 2007 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 09:16:14 -0400 Subject: Interesting early all-in-one PC with monitor and printer built-in -- Computer Devices DOT (eBay) In-Reply-To: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> References: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <4704E79E.4090608@hawkmountain.net> William Maddox wrote: > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120166532727 > Computer Devices DOT 14547-03 1983 - (eBay item 120166532727 end time > Oct-04-07 19:25:01 PDT) > > Comes with a carrying case, sort of portable, 8088. > I've never seen one of these. Kind of neat for a PC clone. > > More info here: > > http://old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=116 > OLD-COMPUTERS.COM Museum ~ Computer Devices Incorporated DOT > > --Bill > Heh... never thought I'd see one of those on ebay ! I have one myself.... There were a 'sort of' PC compatable. Don't recall all the differences, could have been IRQs, or something. They ran DOT DOS 1.X. DOT went under before DOT DOS 2.X, but it was floating around. I have either a 'beta' DOT DOS 2.X or a 'hacked' DOS 2.X, but it didn't work right so stuck with DOT DOS 1.X. I bought mine while at UNH, and someone there 'ported' Turbo Pascal. I bought the real thing and then that person gave me the modified copy for DOT, on DOT 3.5" diskettes. Mine is like brand new. They support a built in thermal printer (I believe it was thermal anyway), but not all models had it. They could be expanded to 256K ? The 3.5" drives were single sided... don't recall capacity, but I think 360K ? Built in B&W monitor... think it did Hercules rez ... but can't recall. It was a neat PC clone for the day. I have all the original software and docs that came with mine. Since that one is local to me I put a bid on it (it has the thermal printer :-) ). Not like I need it however :-) I got mine around fall 85/sprint 86 as DOT went under. Wish I knew the specifics of what was different... but I never did learn all those details. Sadly after paying a fortune (for me in the day) for the machine, I barely used it. -- Curt -- Curt From rborsuk at colourfull.com Thu Oct 4 09:22:17 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 10:22:17 -0400 Subject: SGI Crimson Questions & hardware request... In-Reply-To: <470474A8.7050703@msu.edu> References: <470474A8.7050703@msu.edu> Message-ID: <79060E0A-46C7-455D-935A-DC8427DCA36E@colourfull.com> Hi Josh, Congrats on the system. I have one that I've upgraded with a reality engine. On Oct 4, 2007, at 1:05 AM, Josh Dersch wrote: > Hi all -- > > Just picked up an SGI Crimson this afternoon, which should prove to > be a fun machine to play around with once I get it running... a few > questions for those who've dealt with these before... > > - What kind of power cable does this thing take? I've not yet seen > anything like the connector on the back of this thing... can I > plug this thing into a regular household outlet (that can supply > the massive power requirements) or am I going to have to rewire my > house? :) > Tothwolf did a good job answering this for you. I have a cable I made for mine so I can just plug it into 120v outlet. Works fine off a 15a house breaker BUT like Tothwolf, I don't really recommend this for long term. Give it it's own breaker. (Have a heart). > - What version of IRIX do you recommend running? I have a copy of > 5.3, and 6.5, but I know that 6.5's too new for this beast. > 5.3 is cool. 6.2 I think is the last one that runs on it. > Anyone out there have a keyboard/mouse they're willing to part with > (or know where I can find one?). This thing's got a 15-pin D-Sub > connector on it and I of course don't have anything compatible... > > Thanks, as always... > - Josh These are getting harder to get. I bought three of the units you can plug in and use the standard ps/2 keyboard and mouse. I got mine from Chris at CK Computer Systems. http://store.ckcomputersystems.com On another note, I see your address is msu, I'm about 20 minutes north of Detroit if you want to hook up in the future and get some SGI stuff. I have a ton. Hope that helps. Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Thu Oct 4 10:08:53 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 08:08:53 -0700 Subject: SGI Crimson Questions & hardware request Message-ID: <8c923a14f9c676591317591f5051060b@valleyimplants.com> The power cable can be either 240V or 110V, but it will need either 15 or 20A depending on config AFAIK. It's only the later Onyx multi-CPU+RealityEngine that requires 240V power. Can't tell you where to get the cable, didn't even see them in Boeing when they were selling off Onyxs. If you have an Indigo/Onyx keyboard (Mini-DIN 6 but not PS/2) it's a simple plug adapter to use it in 4D/Crimson/PI machines - look at the 4D/FAQ (search for "This Old SGI") The Crimson uses the DA-15 connector rather than the early PIs DE-9, but this is the only difference. For IRIX, you'll get the best support for modern applications with IRIX 6.2, but you will need to partition/label the disk in fx on another machine or using the fx that comes with IRIX 4 or IRIX 5, as fx.IP17 is broken on IRIX 6.2, IRIX 5.3 will give you the option of running older ECOFF binaries built for IRIX 4, however, and if your Crimson has GTX graphics rather than PowerVision or RealityEngine you will need to use 5.3. Less than 96MB you'll probably get better performance from 5.3, other than that it's your call - 6.2 has the POSIX pthreads patches available and n32 binary support (and some newer freeware- 2001 was the last 6.2 build on freeware.sgi.com, and there's an offshoot of Nekoware for 6.2 (tgcware, perhaps they have some 5.3 builds available). From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Thu Oct 4 10:11:01 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 08:11:01 -0700 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation Message-ID: > On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:42:30 -0400 > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> It takes longer than that for my iron to warm up. > Wrong iron. => Metcal. > -- > > > tsch??, > Jochen > So THAT'S why my soldering jobs look so bad. Works great for tinning boards, though :-). From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Thu Oct 4 11:11:27 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:11:27 +0200 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <4704AC0E.3080904@gmail.com> References: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> <20071004091339.6585b2f7@SirToby.dinner41.local> <4704AC0E.3080904@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071004181127.0907560b@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 05:02:06 -0400 Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Mine is a Metcal. I allways thought Metcals need only a few seconds to heat up? -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Oct 4 11:47:48 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 12:47:48 -0400 Subject: Interesting early all-in-one PC with monitor and printer built-in -- Computer Devices DOT (eBay) In-Reply-To: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> References: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <5513AED6-9A48-4082-A3C3-06D58F32F5F9@neurotica.com> On Oct 4, 2007, at 6:54 AM, William Maddox wrote: > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120166532727 > Computer Devices DOT 14547-03 1983 - (eBay item 120166532727 end > time Oct-04-07 19:25:01 PDT) > > Comes with a carrying case, sort of portable, 8088. > I've never seen one of these. Kind of neat for a PC clone. > > More info here: > > http://old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=116 > OLD-COMPUTERS.COM Museum ~ Computer Devices Incorporated DOT Wow, I have to say, that's adorable! What an odd aspect ratio that display has. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From healyzh at aracnet.com Thu Oct 4 12:32:05 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 10:32:05 -0700 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? Message-ID: Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be "New Old Stock". Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 bpope at wordstock.com Thu Oct 4 13:00:29 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 14:00:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20071004180029.7526255E3F@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Zane H. Healy > > Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be "New Old Stock". > No.. http://www.athana.com still sells new 5.25" floppies. They even stock 8" floppies! Cheers, Bryan From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 13:16:56 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:16:56 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <20071004181127.0907560b@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> <20071004091339.6585b2f7@SirToby.dinner41.local> <4704AC0E.3080904@gmail.com> <20071004181127.0907560b@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <47052E18.5020508@gmail.com> Jochen Kunz wrote: >> Mine is a Metcal. > I allways thought Metcals need only a few seconds to heat up? They get hot quick, but they still take about 45 seconds to stabilize completely. The main benefit is that they have an effectively infinite power reserve. The tip doesn't cool while your working, even if you're working on giant stuff. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 13:20:10 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:20:10 -0400 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <20071004180029.7526255E3F@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071004180029.7526255E3F@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <47052EDA.8070103@gmail.com> Bryan Pope wrote: > And thusly were the wise words spake by Zane H. Healy >> Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be "New Old Stock". >> > > No.. http://www.athana.com still sells new 5.25" floppies. They > even stock 8" floppies! But when were they manufactured? I'm reasonably certain there's noone left making 8" floppy drives today. Hence, "new old stock". Peace... Sridhar From curt at atarimuseum.com Thu Oct 4 13:35:12 2007 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:35:12 -0400 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47053260.70405@atarimuseum.com> Getting harder to find them in NOS and they are catching a premium on the pricing for a 1/2 height 1.2mb 5.25" I actually picked up a few combo 3.5/5.25 drives in 1/2 height formfactor as many cases only have 2 bays and space is getting tight. Curt Zane H. Healy wrote: > Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be "New Old > Stock". > > Zane > > > From bpope at wordstock.com Thu Oct 4 13:37:04 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 14:37:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <47052EDA.8070103@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071004183704.7A57755E3D@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Sridhar Ayengar > > Bryan Pope wrote: > > And thusly were the wise words spake by Zane H. Healy > >> Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be "New Old Stock". > >> > > > > No.. http://www.athana.com still sells new 5.25" floppies. They > > even stock 8" floppies! > > But when were they manufactured? I'm reasonably certain there's noone > left making 8" floppy drives today. Hence, "new old stock". > According to a posting on the Vintage Computer forum webpage from November of last year at: http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=5069&highlight=athana&page=3 This is the response to that question: > We do manufactured this products and is made as > order comes in , this product is not setting for > years on our warehouse > We still manufactured 8" Diskettes. Yes, you can > pick up your order between 8 AM - 1PM Monday thru > Friday Cheers, Bryan From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 14:01:29 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:01:29 -0400 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <20071004183704.7A57755E3D@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071004183704.7A57755E3D@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <47053889.8050303@gmail.com> Bryan Pope wrote: > And thusly were the wise words spake by Sridhar Ayengar >> Bryan Pope wrote: >>> And thusly were the wise words spake by Zane H. Healy >>>> Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be "New Old Stock". >>>> >>> No.. http://www.athana.com still sells new 5.25" floppies. They >>> even stock 8" floppies! >> But when were they manufactured? I'm reasonably certain there's noone >> left making 8" floppy drives today. Hence, "new old stock". >> > > According to a posting on the Vintage Computer forum webpage from > November of last year at: > > http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=5069&highlight=athana&page=3 > > This is the response to that question: > >> We do manufactured this products and is made as >> order comes in , this product is not setting for >> years on our warehouse >> We still manufactured 8" Diskettes. Yes, you can >> pick up your order between 8 AM - 1PM Monday thru >> Friday That's fine for the floppies, but I was talking about the drives themselves. Peace... Sridhar From pat at computer-refuge.org Thu Oct 4 14:07:12 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 15:07:12 -0400 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <47053889.8050303@gmail.com> References: <20071004183704.7A57755E3D@mail.wordstock.com> <47053889.8050303@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200710041507.12519.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Thursday 04 October 2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >>> And thusly were the wise words spake by Zane H. Healy > >>> > >>>> Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be > >>>> "New Old Stock". > That's fine for the floppies, but I was talking about the drives > themselves. But I think that the OP was talking about floppy disks, else they would have surely said "floppy drives"... Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 4 12:53:49 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:53:49 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710031649x7df0ab75rc1866fdb692ecaa8@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 4, 7 00:49:21 am Message-ID: > > > I think we need to keep in mind > > > Also, I do not have any of the tools or parts to crimp anything onto > > > anything. I never have had and have never crimped a cable in 20y in > > > the computer business, from junior workshop bod to IT manager for an > > > international stockbroker. > > > > Next you'll be telling me you've never used a soldering iron, 'scope, > > logic analyser or machine code monitor either... > > I own a soldering iron and sometimes manage to use it without burning I often get burns from soldering, but mainly because I am soldering quite large bits of metal and i've not waited for them to cool down sufficiently before handling them. 4mm plug pins are 'good' for this... > myself too badly. I recently bought my first multimeter, as it was > very cheap in Lidl and I thought it might come in handy some time, There have been reports of the accuracy -- or lack of it -- of those cheap meters, Many of them do odd things if the internal battery is flat (and don't rely on the 'battery low' indicator for this), and there have been problems due to the poor quality switches used. A friend of mine was nearly killed due to this. He tested some wiring for voltage-to-earth and the meter said it was essentially dead. SO he started workign, alas the meter was malfuctioning, and he got the full mains volatege across him. He imediately went and bought an expensive mad reliable neter. > though I confess I don't know when, exactly. It's still in its box. > > 'Scope? Oscilloscope? No, never. Logic analyser? I only have a hazy Yes, Oscillosope... > idea what one is. Not sure I've ever seen one. M/C monitor? Not since A logic analyser is a bit lile a 'scope in that it displays a grpah of signals against time. The differnces are (a) it records the signals and displays the recorded version (some 'scopes do that too -- storage 'scopes), (b) it only works with digital signals (it doesn't display the voltage, only whether they are high or low), and (c) it has many more input channels (even a good 'scope rarely has more than 4 channels, a logic analyser will have 16 or more). > Nope, in two decades of professional computer fettling, from minis to > mainframes to workstations to PDAs to smartphones, and of course PC > servers, laptops, desktops and many Macs, I've never soldered a chip > or a PCB, never done anything more than remove & replace a socketed I am puzzled by people who want to run old hardware, but who don't want to learn to repair it to component level. I can understand why people want to run the software under emulation (even if that's not what I want to do), but I am seriously wondering what extra you get from running the old machien _other_ than being able to fully understnad and repair the hardware. Notice I said 'I am puzzled' not 'you are wrong'. Perhaps somebody could enlighten me... > chip. I've built more machines than I can remember, fixed innumerable > broken ones, restored old dead ones and given them away or sold them, > but generally, to me, the smallest unit of a computer is a circuit > board, and when one is dead, it gets thrown away and replaced. I tend to take it to extremse the other way. I've rewonsd motors, made mechanical bits from raw metal, kuldged in the 'wrong' chip, and so on. How do you repair vintage machines when spare boards are not available? And please don't throw away PCBs from vintage machines, even if they're defective. Somevody else might be able to repair them, or use parts off them. For example one machine I am currently working on has a RAM board containing 16 off Intel 1103 DRAMs. These were the first 1Kbit DRAM chip (35+ years ago...) and are very hard to find now. If one of those chips fails and you replace the board, the old board could supply 15 very useful chips to somebody else. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 4 12:55:20 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:55:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: MUFFIN (was Apple II (clone) booting) In-Reply-To: <20071003235558.8EDA6BA45D9@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> from "Tim Shoppa" at Oct 3, 7 07:55:58 pm Message-ID: > MUFFIN, good question. It's a somewhat symmetrical yet assymetrical > word, maybe suited for a conversion utility, and also fitting > in the vague pattern of food-like words for Apple software tools? I thnik 'MUFFIN' was the only food-named progam I came across, what were the others? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 4 13:59:54 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 19:59:54 +0100 (BST) Subject: Experience with Dysan drive tester? In-Reply-To: <200710040114.24263.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 4, 7 01:14:21 am Message-ID: > Do folks still consider drives worth aligning these days? If so I guess = > I'd=20 > consider that worthwhile to have, otherwise probably not. Actaully, considering the 'quality' of new PC 3.5" floppy drives, I consider an exerciser and alignment disk essential if you want to use those. Some of them come pre-mis-aligned ;-) There are a number of types of drives used in vintage computers that are no longer available, so it makes sense to be able to repair and align them. I just wioh I'd bought a 3" alignment disk (and for that matter an 8" one) when they were available. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 4 14:05:05 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 20:05:05 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB10@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> from "Rod Smallwood" at Oct 4, 7 07:11:54 am Message-ID: > > My view is that if you have spent little or nothing on the computer. Then= > a few pounds on a cable is a good investment. If you do not have experie= This is basically my view. As I said last night, don;t think of it as 'The cable cost 20 times as much as the rest of the computer' but as 'I've got a very nice machine here and it only cost me \pounds 21.00' > nce in making up cables then don't waste time learning for a small number. I'm not so sure about that. Very often in setting up a vintage computer you'll need a special cable (RS232 serial cables being an obvious example, there are all sorts of odd pin-swaps you need for some machines...), and it makes a lot of sense to be abe to make it up. You can't always buy the right cable off-the-shelf, particularly not for obscure classics. -tony From healyzh at aracnet.com Thu Oct 4 14:22:46 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 12:22:46 -0700 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <200710041507.12519.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <20071004183704.7A57755E3D@mail.wordstock.com> <47053889.8050303@gmail.com> <200710041507.12519.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: At 3:07 PM -0400 10/4/07, Patrick Finnegan wrote: >But I think that the OP was talking about floppy disks, else they would >have surely said "floppy drives"... I was, I know no one is making new C-1541 drives. Though I'm looking into building a 1541-III drive... Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 jim at photojim.ca Thu Oct 4 14:30:28 2007 From: jim at photojim.ca (Jim MacKenzie) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 13:30:28 -0600 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? References: Message-ID: <02ac01c806bd$05829a50$1802a8c0@JIMM> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Zane H. Healy" To: Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 11:32 AM Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? > Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be "New Old > Stock". There is a company in California that still manufactures them (http://www.athana.com). Jim From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Thu Oct 4 14:33:59 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:33:59 -0400 Subject: MUFFIN (was Apple II (clone) booting) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20071004193359.E8F93BA45E0@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > > MUFFIN, good question. It's a somewhat symmetrical yet assymetrical > > word, maybe suited for a conversion utility, and also fitting > > in the vague pattern of food-like words for Apple software tools? > > I thnik 'MUFFIN' was the only food-named progam I came across, what were > the others? AppleSOS, Sweet 16, and a food-named 6502 assembler whose name is just barely escaping me :-). Nibble was a famous Apple II magazine. I wanted to quote Bagle Brothers but it was really Beagle Brothers :-). Tim. From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 14:45:02 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:45:02 -0400 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <200710041507.12519.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <20071004183704.7A57755E3D@mail.wordstock.com> <47053889.8050303@gmail.com> <200710041507.12519.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <470542BE.2060405@gmail.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Thursday 04 October 2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >>>>> And thusly were the wise words spake by Zane H. Healy >>>>> >>>>>> Am I correct that the only "new" DSDD 5.25" floppies would be >>>>>> "New Old Stock". >> That's fine for the floppies, but I was talking about the drives >> themselves. > > But I think that the OP was talking about floppy disks, else they would > have surely said "floppy drives"... Ah. My bad. Peace... Sridhar From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Thu Oct 4 14:50:28 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 12:50:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: MUFFIN (was Apple II (clone) booting) In-Reply-To: <20071004193359.E8F93BA45E0@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <20071004193359.E8F93BA45E0@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Tim Shoppa wrote: > ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > > > > MUFFIN, good question. It's a somewhat symmetrical yet assymetrical > > > word, maybe suited for a conversion utility, and also fitting > > > in the vague pattern of food-like words for Apple software tools? > > > > I thnik 'MUFFIN' was the only food-named progam I came across, what were > > the others? > > AppleSOS, Sweet 16, and a food-named 6502 assembler whose name > is just barely escaping me :-). > > Nibble was a famous Apple II magazine. > > I wanted to quote Bagle Brothers but it was really Beagle Brothers :-). Stuff from Interplay frequently had files named BURGER which had something to do with a programmer so nicknamed. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From spectre at floodgap.com Thu Oct 4 15:00:38 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 13:00:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: MUFFIN (was Apple II (clone) booting) In-Reply-To: <20071004193359.E8F93BA45E0@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> from Tim Shoppa at "Oct 4, 7 03:33:59 pm" Message-ID: <200710042000.l94K0dDf013846@floodgap.com> > > > MUFFIN, good question. It's a somewhat symmetrical yet assymetrical > > > word, maybe suited for a conversion utility, and also fitting > > > in the vague pattern of food-like words for Apple software tools? > > > > I thnik 'MUFFIN' was the only food-named progam I came across, what were > > the others? > > AppleSOS, Sweet 16, and a food-named 6502 assembler whose name > is just barely escaping me :-). > > Nibble was a famous Apple II magazine. > > I wanted to quote Bagle Brothers but it was really Beagle Brothers :-). Some people do eat those too. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense. -------------- From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Oct 4 15:09:56 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:09:56 +0100 Subject: Apple again - Disk ]|[ this time... Message-ID: <47054894.1010009@yahoo.co.uk> Having got the Mitac A2 clone up and running (checked out the 80-column output today and that was fine - only casualty in the whole machine was one cap that had gone high-ESR), I've dug my Apple /// out of storage... Disk ]|[ question - should the ribbon cable to the internal drive be plugged into J2 or J3 on the drive's analog board (does it even matter)? A long time ago I disconnected mine as a precaution; the drive began eating disks, but I didn't have time to get to the bottom of it at the time - I suspect it just needs a good clean. I can't for the life of me find where I made a note of which socket the cable plugs into. Normally I leave myself a note somewhere in the machine for things like this, but for some reason I haven't with this one :-( cheers J. From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Thu Oct 4 15:09:20 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 16:09:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710042037.QAA22495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I am puzzled by people who want to run old hardware, but who don't > want to learn to repair it to component level. I can understand why > people want to run the software under emulation (even if that's not > what I want to do), but I am seriously wondering what extra you get > from running the old machien _other_ than being able to fully > understnad and repair the hardware. Well, speaking personally.... I'm not hardware-antipathic; I know which end of a soldering iron to hold [the cool one :)], and I've hacked together assorted electronics on occasion (a few of which I've even mentioned here). However, most of my on-topic hardware, I have no particular interest in repairing below the board-swap level. So, while I can't speak for anyone else in this regard, I can perhaps address your puzzlement as it applies to me. Most of the hardware in question is SBus-era Suns. I don't run it under emulation because an emulator, plus the hardware to run it on, would cost me a lot more than the Suns cost me (which latter figure is usually $0 + shipping, and often the shipping is $0 because they're local). Then, consider some additional points: - Speed - emulators are usually slower than the real thing. An emulated setup capable of matching the real thing's speed will be substantially more expensive. - Hardware compat - I have some oddball SBus cards. I daresay PCI-to-SBus, ISA-to-SBus, etc, bridges exist, but they will be expensive, probably difficult to find, and may not even play nice with the emulator. - Reliability - as I think I've mentioned before, peecee-class machines account for a rather disproportionate fraction of the hardware failures I've experienced. "Modern" machines as reliable as the old Suns are doubtless available, but, again, that will mean a substantial additional cost. So, really, it's a total no-brainer for me whether to run the real thing or an emulation, quite aside from whether I'm prepared to do low-level repair work. Now, some of my stuff isn't SBus-era Suns. Much of *that* stuff I *do* want to be able to repair down to the chip level - for example, I have some hp300 hardware with, I suspect, a blown HP-IB driver (last time I tried to use it I was seeing what looked like a stuck-at fault). When I get the round tuits together, I'm going to see if I can confirm/deny my suspicion, and (if confirmed) pull a compatible driver chip from something else and do a swap. Perhaps someday I'll be applying the same philosophy to (say) the SPARCstation 20, and, if that happens, I'll probably then be glad I'm not chucking "dead" hardware.... /~\ 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 Thu Oct 4 15:58:13 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:58:13 -0700 Subject: Interesting early all-in-one PC with monitor and printer built-in -- Computer Devices DOT (eBay) In-Reply-To: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> References: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <4704F175.17684.9977CE6@cclist.sydex.com> On 4 Oct 2007 at 2:54, William Maddox wrote: > Comes with a carrying case, sort of portable, 8088. Weight is 19 Kg. A sousaphone is more "portable". Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 4 16:22:38 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 22:22:38 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710042037.QAA22495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> from "der Mouse" at Oct 4, 7 04:09:20 pm Message-ID: > I'm not hardware-antipathic; I know which end of a soldering iron to > hold [the cool one :)], and I've hacked together assorted electronics > on occasion (a few of which I've even mentioned here). However, most > of my on-topic hardware, I have no particular interest in repairing > below the board-swap level. > > So, while I can't speak for anyone else in this regard, I can perhaps > address your puzzlement as it applies to me. > > Most of the hardware in question is SBus-era Suns. I don't run it > under emulation because an emulator, plus the hardware to run it on, > would cost me a lot more than the Suns cost me (which latter figure is RIght. I wish people would rememebr that when they try to convince me that the 'emulator is free'. Yes it is, but the hardware to run it on isn't and not everybody has a modern PC. > usually $0 + shipping, and often the shipping is $0 because they're > local). Then, consider some additional points: > > - Speed - emulators are usually slower than the real thing. An > emulated setup capable of matching the real thing's speed will be > substantially more expensive. I was under the impression that for many older machines (OK, not Sun workstations) the emulator running on a fast Pentium-x was considerably faster than th real thing. > > - Hardware compat - I have some oddball SBus cards. I daresay > PCI-to-SBus, ISA-to-SBus, etc, bridges exist, but they will be > expensive, probably difficult to find, and may not even play nice > with the emulator. Very good point. One reason I use some of the older machines is becuase of the wide range of interfaces available. HPIB is rare on PCs, very common on HP machines (:-)), very few PCs have an equivalent to the HP GPIO port, or the BBC Nicro user port, or ADC inputs, oe... [...] > Now, some of my stuff isn't SBus-era Suns. Much of *that* stuff I *do* > want to be able to repair down to the chip level - for example, I have > some hp300 hardware with, I suspect, a blown HP-IB driver (last time I I can't rememebr if schematics, etc, for thsoe are available. I assume you've poked about on http://www.hpmuseum.net. > tried to use it I was seeing what looked like a stuck-at fault). When > I get the round tuits together, I'm going to see if I can confirm/deny > my suspicion, and (if confirmed) pull a compatible driver chip from > something else and do a swap. Perhaps someday I'll be applying the Of course damaged buffers driving external connectors are quite common. In older machines HP tended to use standard buffer chips to drive the HPIB connecotr (things like MC3448, SN75160/75161/75162). They did make their own custom buffer chip in a 40 pin DIL package (I forget the number, I can find it, and the pinouts, if you suspect you have it) that handles all the data and handshake lines (It is just a buffer, it doesn't do the handshake state machine functions), and which turns up in things like the 82169, 9122, etc. > same philosophy to (say) the SPARCstation 20, and, if that happens, > I'll probably then be glad I'm not chucking "dead" hardware.... Oh, indeed. If you don't have the skill or knowledge to repair it now, keep it for when you do (or give it to someone who does). -tony From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 4 16:58:33 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:58:33 -0700 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710042037.QAA22495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: , <200710042037.QAA22495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <4704FF99.14263.9CEB7F1@cclist.sydex.com> On 4 Oct 2007 at 16:09, der Mouse wrote: > I'm not hardware-antipathic; I know which end of a soldering iron to > hold [the cool one :)] Well, you're a notch above me--in my brief (at least in geological terms) life, I've picked up one of the old 100 watt "American Beauty" irons by the wrong end a couple of times. Since I've taken to soldering with an acetylene torch, I've become more careful. > - Speed - emulators are usually slower than the real thing. An > emulated setup capable of matching the real thing's speed will be > substantially more expensive. It depends on the vintage of the original equipment and the emulator. A lot of the hardware I'm interested in is quite old and I can watch all of the YouTube videos I care to while running multiple emulators at 10x-over 100x "real thing" speed. And I don't have to fool with noisy equipment with klunky peripherals (particularly printers) when emulation is used. Some may feel joy when seeing an original IBM 1620 console typewriter work, but it always struck me as something ready to fly apart at any moment (particularly when returning the carriage). > - Hardware compat - I have some oddball SBus cards. I daresay > PCI-to-SBus, ISA-to-SBus, etc, bridges exist, but they will be > expensive, probably difficult to find, and may not even play nice > with the emulator. On the other hand, an emulator can allow you to emulate an exotic peripheral that you might not even be able to find. It's a knife that cuts both ways. > - Reliability - as I think I've mentioned before, peecee-class machines > account for a rather disproportionate fraction of the hardware > failures I've experienced. "Modern" machines as reliable as the old > Suns are doubtless available, but, again, that will mean a > substantial additional cost. Again, pick your "PeeCee" carefully and you can easily wind up with something that not only is more reliable, but much quieter and less power-hungry than your dinosaur. Heck, I'm typing this on an 800 MHz P3 HP Vectra that's never had a bit of trouble, in spite of being used every day. The odd thing is that it seems to actually be *faster* for most things than my friend's Dell 2.4GHz Athlon-equipped system that was recently here for repairs. > So, really, it's a total no-brainer for me whether to run the real > thing or an emulation, quite aside from whether I'm prepared to do > low-level repair work. Not clearly so for me--and I believe that I can easily go either way. For many things, emulation is a great way to probe into the innards without getting my hands burned or dirty. But then, my interest is mostly along the lines of software and architecture and not iron. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 4 17:10:13 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:10:13 -0700 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <200710040138.08331.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <0JPA00GC8EOBTMED@vms040.mailsrvcs.net>, <200710040138.08331.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <47050255.12806.9D9658F@cclist.sydex.com> On 4 Oct 2007 at 1:38, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Tuesday 02 October 2007 09:56, Allison wrote: > > There are many early families of saturated logic RTL is the oldest, > > Which explains why I was seeing it first, and hobby-type projects based on it > back when. And in the 60's, logic families were less well-defined. I still have some Fairchild 8-bit addressable memories (TO-100 can) whose datasheet claims DTL as the logic family. +6 for Vcc and...+7vdc for clock. > I remember one set of 9-pin sockets for which it was apparent to me > that they were using something like a 12AU7, because of the > center-tapped heater connections. :-) I used subminiature tube sockets for my first transistor projects-- they were easier to find than transistor sockets. Some transistors, such as the 2N109 required the use of sockets--they were too expensive to solder into a circuit. Cheers, Chcuk From healyzh at aracnet.com Thu Oct 4 17:27:07 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 15:27:07 -0700 Subject: Interesting early all-in-one PC with monitor and printer built-in -- Computer Devices DOT (eBay) In-Reply-To: <5513AED6-9A48-4082-A3C3-06D58F32F5F9@neurotica.com> References: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> <5513AED6-9A48-4082-A3C3-06D58F32F5F9@neurotica.com> Message-ID: At 12:47 PM -0400 10/4/07, Dave McGuire wrote: > Wow, I have to say, that's adorable! > > What an odd aspect ratio that display has. It's better than the aspect ratio my Kaypro 2000 had. I still remember having to take the floppy for "Battletech: The Crescent Hawks Inception" over to a friends so I could *see* one place I was supposed to go! :^) Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Oct 4 17:30:24 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:30:24 -0400 Subject: Interesting early all-in-one PC with monitor and printer built-in -- Computer Devices DOT (eBay) In-Reply-To: References: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> <5513AED6-9A48-4082-A3C3-06D58F32F5F9@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <3A8540F3-FC2B-4A47-85EA-0CD026AE2F0C@neurotica.com> On Oct 4, 2007, at 6:27 PM, Zane H. Healy wrote: >> Wow, I have to say, that's adorable! >> >> What an odd aspect ratio that display has. > > It's better than the aspect ratio my Kaypro 2000 had. I still > remember having to take the floppy for "Battletech: The Crescent > Hawks Inception" over to a friends so I could *see* one place I was > supposed to go! :^) Hooboy yes. I used a Kaypro 2000 for quite a while; really neat machine, I wish I had kept it. The aspect ratio didn't bother me as much as the lack of backlighting! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From healyzh at aracnet.com Thu Oct 4 18:13:40 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 16:13:40 -0700 Subject: Interesting early all-in-one PC with monitor and printer built-in -- Computer Devices DOT (eBay) In-Reply-To: <3A8540F3-FC2B-4A47-85EA-0CD026AE2F0C@neurotica.com> References: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> <5513AED6-9A48-4082-A3C3-06D58F32F5F9@neurotica.com> <3A8540F3-FC2B-4A47-85EA-0CD026AE2F0C@neurotica.com> Message-ID: At 6:30 PM -0400 10/4/07, Dave McGuire wrote: > Hooboy yes. I used a Kaypro 2000 for quite a while; really neat >machine, I wish I had kept it. The aspect ratio didn't bother me as >much as the lack of backlighting! I really regret giving the Kaypro 2000 and my VIC-20 away in the early 90's. I even had the base unit with 5.25" floppy and a 30MB HD (I paid for a 20MB, and since the dealer couldn't make it work, I got a free upgrade to 30MB). I was in the Navy when I bought it, and that base unit took up a sizable portion of my storage space on board ship. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 jwest at classiccmp.org Thu Oct 4 20:58:44 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 20:58:44 -0500 Subject: TI 990 architecture References: <200710041305.l94D5Fp7005604@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <018201c806f3$42c8e1e0$6600a8c0@JWEST> If we are going to start a thread talking about the TI990 minicomputer, and people then MORPH that thread into talking about the TI-99/4A microcomputer... could someone perhaps possibly consider the idea that changing the subject would be helpful? Jay From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Thu Oct 4 21:05:29 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 22:05:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710050211.WAA24117@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> - Speed - emulators are usually slower than the real thing. [...] > I was under the impression that for many older machines (OK, not Sun > workstations) the emulator running on a fast Pentium-x was > considerably faster than th real thing. Yes, quite likely. For such machines this argument does not apply; that's why I specifically mentioned that most of the on-topic hardware I have and run (and was addressing your puzzlement with respect to) was SBus-era Suns. Perhaps even them, though probably not with a freeware emulator. (I'd expect it to have to do some kind of JIT compilation to native machine code to run at anything approaching full speed, and that's a but much to ask of a freeware emulator.) >> Now, some of my stuff isn't SBus-era Suns. Much of *that* stuff I >> *do* want to be able to repair down to the chip level - for example, >> I have some hp300 hardware with, I suspect, a blown HP-IB driver > I assume you've poked about on http://www.hpmuseum.net. No, not yet. When I saw the stuck-at fault, I shelved that project, and haven't picked it up again even to the extent necessary to go looking for schematics. (Especially since it was working when I started, which means I quite likely blew it myself - perhaps I shorted a pin to a power rail by mistake or something.) When I do get back to that project, if I have further trouble, I'm sure I'll mention it 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 lproven at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 21:17:41 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 03:17:41 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710031649x7df0ab75rc1866fdb692ecaa8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710041917w1dcf4e06radca63dad0e71c7b@mail.gmail.com> On 04/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > There have been reports of the accuracy -- or lack of it -- of those > cheap meters, Many of them do odd things if the internal battery is flat > (and don't rely on the 'battery low' indicator for this), and there have > been problems due to the poor quality switches used. > > A friend of mine was nearly killed due to this. He tested some wiring for > voltage-to-earth and the meter said it was essentially dead. SO he > started workign, alas the meter was malfuctioning, and he got the full > mains volatege across him. He imediately went and bought an expensive mad > reliable neter. Oh dear. Oh very much dear. > A logic analyser is a bit lile a 'scope in that it displays a grpah of > signals against time. The differnces are (a) it records the signals and > displays the recorded version (some 'scopes do that too -- storage > 'scopes), (b) it only works with digital signals (it doesn't display the > voltage, only whether they are high or low), and (c) it has many more > input channels (even a good 'scope rarely has more than 4 channels, a > logic analyser will have 16 or more). Fascinating. The snag is, I know very little about electronics below the level of a broad knowledge of TTL, the rudiments of circuits and gates and so on. I have a bit of theory, no practice. I could not diagnose a faulty chip or anything; my troubleshooting consists of swap bits until it works. And at this, I know more than most people I know in the PC world; I find it amusing that I can both fix TCP/IP problems on a corporate WAN which have baffled a room full of senior techies and diagnose a faulty DIMM or spot an incorrect amount of cache on a modern PC. By C21 PC tech standards, I'm an old-timer with low-level knowledge. I have worked with hundreds of people who have never seen an OS older than Windows XP or maybe, for the veterans, Windows 2000, who have never seen an ISA card or a SIMM and don't know what they are. > I am puzzled by people who want to run old hardware, but who don't want > to learn to repair it to component level. I can understand why people > want to run the software under emulation (even if that's not what I want > to do), but I am seriously wondering what extra you get from running the > old machien _other_ than being able to fully understnad and repair the > hardware. > > Notice I said 'I am puzzled' not 'you are wrong'. Perhaps somebody could > enlighten me... Well, aside from 1 old Sun (SPARCstation IPX), the soon-to-arrive VAXstation, an Amiga and 2 STs and a QL, all my kit is Macs and PCs. The PCs range from a 386 to an Athlon XP, Macs from an SE/30 to a Blue & White G3/400MHz. So I don't run what most people here would consider "old hardware", I suppose! I'm interested in things like the Sun and the DEC - and my couple of IBM PS/2s and even the 9" mono compact Macs - because I hugely admire the engineering and design of these machines from before the rise of the mass-market PC. Things were /different/ then. Look at a modern Acorn-compatible or Amiga-compatible and it's just another ATX motherboard with the usual interfaces and slots. Yes, it's a different CPU and a different OS, but it's a machine in disguise as a PC. A sheep in wolf's clothing, sadly, these days: contemporary RISC desktops are actually considerably /slower/ than a modern PC, even a cheap one. This is in part compensated for by the efficiency of their OSs. So I appreciate the way things used to be. However, my Sun is dead with a duff NVRAM battery, which means changing the chip, and that, while it doesn't fill me with terror, intimidates me enough that it went into storage in about 1998 and it's been there ever since. I am, a bit like Chuck, mainly a software person, but one who's competent with hardware to a basic level. I know bugger-all about electronics and while I regret that, I'm not inclined to fix it now. I just have an aesthetic appreciation for the way things /used/ to be done. I'm not sure if that answers your question, really... > And please don't throw away PCBs from vintage machines, even if they're > defective. Somevody else might be able to repair them, or use parts off > them. For example one machine I am currently working on has a RAM board > containing 16 off Intel 1103 DRAMs. These were the first 1Kbit DRAM chip > (35+ years ago...) and are very hard to find now. If one of those chips > fails and you replace the board, the old board could supply 15 very > useful chips to somebody else. Well, I would offer it here, but my "vintage" kit is old ISA boards, dead MC680x0 Macs and suchlike. Probably not of much interest to classic collectors, I fear. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Thu Oct 4 21:11:33 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 22:11:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <4704FF99.14263.9CEB7F1@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <200710042037.QAA22495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <4704FF99.14263.9CEB7F1@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710050220.WAA24173@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> - Speed - emulators are usually slower than the real thing. [...] > It depends on the vintage of the original equipment and the emulator. Well, of course. I _did_ specifically mention that I was talking about SBus-era Suns. > And I don't have to fool with noisy equipment with klunky peripherals > (particularly printers) when emulation is used. True. Emulation does have its place. But talking about that wouldn't've addressed ARD's puzzlement. >> - Hardware compat - I have some oddball SBus cards. [...] > On the other hand, an emulator can allow you to emulate an exotic > peripheral that you might not even be able to find. But only in an emulated world. As a simple example, I have an SBus card that does HP-IB (or GP-IB, or perhaps both - it's been long enough I'm not clear on how similar they are any longer). An emulator might be able to emulate the card from the host-software perspective, but it's not going to be able to actually talk to other HP-IB (resp. GP-IB) peripherals over the emulated card - unless it's backed by a real interface, of course. I'm certainly not going to argue that emulation, including hardware emulation, is valueless. But that isn't what Tony was asking about. >> - Reliability - as I think I've mentioned before, peecee-class >> machines account for a rather disproportionate fraction of the >> hardware failures I've experienced. > Again, pick your "PeeCee" carefully and you can easily wind up with > something that not only is more reliable, but much quieter and less > power-hungry than your dinosaur. Perhaps - but only at substantial additional cost (whether money or called-in favours or effort put into digging for sources or whatever). Reliability isn't free. Of course, there is a place for reliable peecees. I'm not going to argue against them; in fact, I wish they were more popular. But they are not relevant to my explaining to Tony why I behaved in ways he found so puzzling. /~\ 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 legalize at xmission.com Thu Oct 4 22:24:53 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:24:53 -0600 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:53:49 +0100. Message-ID: In article , ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes: > I am puzzled by people who want to run old hardware, but who don't want > to learn to repair it to component level. To summarize: I don't give a shit. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From dm561 at torfree.net Thu Oct 4 21:40:08 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 23:40:08 -0300 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? Message-ID: <01C806DF.E814A580@mandr71> Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 12:22:46 -0700 From: "Zane H. Healy" Subject: Re: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? >At 3:07 PM -0400 10/4/07, Patrick Finnegan wrote: >>But I think that the OP was talking about floppy disks, else they would >>have surely said "floppy drives"... >I was, I know no one is making new C-1541 drives. Though I'm looking >into building a 1541-III drive... > Zane --------------------------------- It just so happens that a member of the local (Toronto) CBM list is getting rid of 6 1541s and he also has several hundred 5 1/4 floppies; I can put you in touch if you're interested (and he still has them and is willing to ship). If he isn't on this list anyway... mike From spectre at floodgap.com Thu Oct 4 22:41:20 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 20:41:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) Message-ID: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> This is semi-OT, but if you use an OS X capable Power Mac to run legacy Mac software, 10.5 apparently no longer supports Classic even on PowerPC machines. http://www.lowendmac.com/mail/mb07/0716.html#2 This is a shame, since a lot of early Mac software will surprisingly still run on my G5 running Tiger. In fact, I use an old System 6-era version of Caere OmniPage for simple OCR tasks since it's so unbelievably fast by comparison. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- In memory of Howard Caine -------------------------------------------------- From gklinger at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 22:53:25 2007 From: gklinger at gmail.com (Golan Klinger) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 23:53:25 -0400 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <01C806DF.E814A580@mandr71> References: <01C806DF.E814A580@mandr71> Message-ID: M H Stein wrote: > If he isn't on this list anyway... He is. :) I didn't bother posting the 1541s anywhere other than a local mailing list because shipping would be exorbitant and I didn't post them here because I felt it was inappropriate. The cat is out of the bag though so if anyone wants 'em, let me know. As for the disks, they're new (sealed) Maxell 5.25" DSDD and I've got 20+ cases sitting behind me. I'm selling because I don't think I'm going to need 2000+ disks any time soon. -- Golan Klinger Dark is the suede that mows like a harvest. From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 4 22:58:44 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:58:44 -0700 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: References: <20071004183704.7A57755E3D@mail.wordstock.com>, <200710041507.12519.pat@computer-refuge.org>, Message-ID: <47055404.29242.B1877C7@cclist.sydex.com> On 4 Oct 2007 at 12:22, Zane H. Healy wrote: > I was, I know no one is making new C-1541 drives. Though I'm looking > into building a 1541-III drive... This CBM know-nothing is curious why a 1541 would be better than a 1571? Cheers, Chuck From trixter at oldskool.org Thu Oct 4 22:58:39 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:58:39 -0500 Subject: MUFFIN (was Apple II (clone) booting) In-Reply-To: References: <20071004193359.E8F93BA45E0@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <4705B66F.2040403@oldskool.org> David Griffith wrote: > Stuff from Interplay frequently had files named BURGER which had something > to do with a programmer so nicknamed. That was Bill "Burger" Heineman, so named because he was fond of keeping burgers in his desk drawers so he could eat without having to take a programming break. I don't recall what kind of burgers, but they were probably McDonald's because those are the only fast-food burgers I can think of that would still be edible after having been in a desk drawer for a few hours. As what seems to be a trend with classic game programmers (Bunten, Mataga, etc.), "he" is now a "she" and can be found online as Rebecca Heineman. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From doc at mdrconsult.com Thu Oct 4 23:24:27 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 23:24:27 -0500 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> References: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <4705BC7B.3030300@mdrconsult.com> Cameron Kaiser wrote: > This is semi-OT, but if you use an OS X capable Power Mac to run legacy Mac > software, 10.5 apparently no longer supports Classic even on PowerPC machines. > > http://www.lowendmac.com/mail/mb07/0716.html#2 > > This is a shame, since a lot of early Mac software will surprisingly still > run on my G5 running Tiger. In fact, I use an old System 6-era version of > Caere OmniPage for simple OCR tasks since it's so unbelievably fast by > comparison. "Doesn't support" as in "will not run the Classic environment", or "does not ship with Classic"? Tiger (v10.4) did not ship with Classic either. Doc From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Oct 4 23:37:28 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:37:28 -0600 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710041917w1dcf4e06radca63dad0e71c7b@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0710031649x7df0ab75rc1866fdb692ecaa8@mail.gmail.com> <575131af0710041917w1dcf4e06radca63dad0e71c7b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4705BF88.4070603@jetnet.ab.ca> Liam Proven wrote: A friend of mine was nearly killed due to this. He tested some wiring for >> voltage-to-earth and the meter said it was essentially dead. SO he >> started workign, alas the meter was malfuctioning, and he got the full >> mains volatege across him. He imediately went and bought an expensive mad >> reliable neter. > > Oh dear. Oh very much dear. I know a friend who installed a light fixture live. They had power coming in from the neighbors rather than the fusebox. From spectre at floodgap.com Thu Oct 4 23:36:34 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 21:36:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <4705BC7B.3030300@mdrconsult.com> from Doc Shipley at "Oct 4, 7 11:24:27 pm" Message-ID: <200710050436.l954aYQE014352@floodgap.com> > > http://www.lowendmac.com/mail/mb07/0716.html#2 > > > > This is a shame, since a lot of early Mac software will surprisingly still > > run on my G5 running Tiger. In fact, I use an old System 6-era version of > > Caere OmniPage for simple OCR tasks since it's so unbelievably fast by > > comparison. > > "Doesn't support" as in "will not run the Classic environment", or > "does not ship with Classic"? > > Tiger (v10.4) did not ship with Classic either. Doesn't support. If you look at the screen shot from the URL above, it says, "If a Classic application doesn't open "You can't open Mac OS 9 applications in Mac OS X version 10.5 because it doesn't support the Classic environment. "If you need to use a Mac OS 9 application, try the following: "* Contact the developer to see if a Mac OS X version is available. "* Check your computer's documentation to see if it can start up in Mac OS 9." -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Let us live! Let us love! Let us share our darkest secrets! ... you first. - From spectre at floodgap.com Thu Oct 4 23:37:38 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 21:37:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <47055404.29242.B1877C7@cclist.sydex.com> from Chuck Guzis at "Oct 4, 7 08:58:44 pm" Message-ID: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> > > I was, I know no one is making new C-1541 drives. Though I'm looking > > into building a 1541-III drive... > > This CBM know-nothing is curious why a 1541 would be better than a > 1571? This CBM know-something doesn't understand that either :) the 1571 is much less prone to alignment problems and can be easily coerced into reading many more formats. It is a very versatile disk drive. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Po-Ching Lives! ------------------------------------------------------------ From healyzh at aracnet.com Fri Oct 5 02:01:17 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 00:01:17 -0700 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> Message-ID: At 9:37 PM -0700 10/4/07, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > > I was, I know no one is making new C-1541 drives. Though I'm looking >> > into building a 1541-III drive... >> >> This CBM know-nothing is curious why a 1541 would be better than a >> 1571? > >This CBM know-something doesn't understand that either :) the 1571 is much >less prone to alignment problems and can be easily coerced into reading many >more formats. It is a very versatile disk drive. And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm I'm about ready to start collecting the parts needed and to see about getting at least a couple circuit boards made. I figure having an extra or two won't hurt in case I mess up a circuit board while building the device. I've been working on some modifications to my C-64, and since I borrowed an Optivisor (http://www.doneganoptical.com/optivisor.php) I'm finding it a lot easier to do soldering, so I'm almost brave enough to attempt this. BTW, I currently have 3-5 1541's, 1 1571, and 1 or 2 Excelerator+Plus (minus power-supplies) drives. I tend to use a pair of the 1541's. Though the 1571 is at home rather than lost up in storage. :^) I use the 1541's as I don't have a spare 1571. I prefer to only use drives if I have a spare. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Oct 4 06:58:19 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:58:19 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPD002D0YJ7IW63@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: these RTL or what? > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:38:08 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On Tuesday 02 October 2007 09:56, Allison wrote: >> >Subject: these RTL or what? >> > From: "Roy J. Tellason" >> > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:01:29 -0400 >> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" >> > >> > >> >I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and >> > there's some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what >> > they're calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't >> > say. Dates are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured >> > I'd ask in here... >> >> There are many early families of saturated logic RTL is the oldest, > >Which explains why I was seeing it first, and hobby-type projects based on it >back when. The big thing of DTL was to add diodes to the input of the basic RTL structure for increased (noise immunity) input thresholds for better noise immunity. Both families were easily wired OR and systems built around it usually exploited that feature. >> DTL and it's kin "utilogic" where the intermediate sorta TTL like >> and later TTL( H,LS,S,F,AS,C,HC,HCT flavors). > >My first TTL book (which I still have) was a TI book that covered the >standard, H, and L varieties. LS and S I can understand, F and AS still >confuse me a bit, I'm not quite sure where they fit in. Then there are all >those CMOS variants. C parts are pretty uncommon these days, and I'm not >real clear on the distinction between HC and AC (I know about the ones with T >in there, just shifted thresholds on the inputs and I have a pile of 'em.) > >> In the middle of all that was ECL (also about three or four generations) a >> fast non saturating logic. > >I've read some ECL data, but have never done a darn thing with it, nor even >seen much of anything that used it. From what I understand it had some weird >packaging sometimes, very tight board layout requirements (I was mostly >thinking of wire-wrapping stuff), and was very power-hungry. I guess if I >ever want a prescaler for a counter to get *way* up there or maybe one or two >other apps I can think of I might eventually have to go there, depending on >what parts I can find. But I'm in no hurry. :-) VAX9000 built of ECL100K, fastest of the fast. The second most common use of TTL was in very high speed instrumentation and specifically frequency counters and UHF PLLs. >> What amazing is when people say "60s" you must do so with care as >> 1960 was basically germainium transistors but by 1964 silicon >> transistors are about and ICs were already appearing. Most >> integrated circuit logic was post '65 and even then from that >> point speeds went from about 3mhz to 30mhz and RTL was replaced >> by TTL by 1970. > >I did say "late 1960s" up there. :-) Even then.. ;) It's hard to imagine the rate of change. An example, Apollo Guidance Computer. The AGC was designed too be built of RTL, by time it actually flew to the moon is was actually a generation behind as TTL existed by then. Of course that really was becase of development time being so long and space systems having to be man rated (reliability assured). It was a case then of if it was out the door likely a whole new generation and technology was already in design. Where commercial computers went from transistors (1965ish PDP-5) to DTL and early TTL (1967ish PDP-8) in that same time window. Computer design and packaging underwent significant change and not all of it was grossly obvious. >> The evoloutionary scale was very steep from the mid 50s to the mid 70s. >> That 20 years window we went from computers with tubes to microprocessors, >> delays lines or other serial storage to semiconductor RAM. > >I remember seeing some of the boards from the tube stuff for sale in various >electronic junk places around. I may have even got one or two for parts, >though there was nothing to be done with those backplane connectors. I >remember one set of 9-pin sockets for which it was apparent to me that they >were using something like a 12AU7, because of the center-tapped heater >connections. :-) Yep, back then those were good sources of parts for building radios. Most however were noncomputer pulled from things like old instruments and the like. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Oct 4 08:39:26 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 09:39:26 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies Message-ID: <0JPE00JHV37O6158@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > From: Brent Hilpert > Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:56:06 -0700 > To: General at priv-edtnaa06.telusplanet.net, > "Discussion at priv-edtnaa06.telusplanet.net":On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > >Chuck Guzis wrote: >> >> On 3 Oct 2007 at 10:13, Peter C. Wallace wrote: >> >> > I think I chose the 9900 based on the Osborne book, it had the shortest >> > benchmark program... > >> This overly-simple benchmark with varying assumptions is one of the >> biggest weaknesses of Volume II of the Osborne books. Perhaps a >> >> But even with its weaknesses, the "Introduction to Microcomputers" >> set was a valuable resource when there was little software and no MPU >> was yet dominant. > >I love that book, for it's overview of lesser known microprocs and being a >period snapshot of the state-of-the-art. I still find it a useful >technical reference for a lot of chips for which data is hard to come by. Same here. I do find that one has to qualify the views of the authors as having some bias. Some of the CPUs commented as being least likely actually had excellent longevity. For example 1802, 6100, 6502 and a few others. It's interesting that at the time of writing the embedded system market was still in it infantcy and would grow considerably to be the primary consumer of microprocessors. But as you say it's at least an overview of many micros to compare or understand at some level. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Oct 4 09:15:22 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:15:22 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture Message-ID: <4704F57A.403@bellatlantic.net> Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture From: Cameron Kaiser Message-id: 200710021957.l92Jv8RK013898 (at) floodgap.com Date: 2007-10-02 21:57:08 >> If I remember right, the architecure of the ti chip >> it used a pointer to ram as the internal registers. That would really >> bog down on byte wide bus. > > But then chips like the 9995 do very well on a 8-bit data bus. IMHO the > bigger problems with the 9900 implementation in the 99/4A were the external > scratch pad (made internal for the 9995) and the presence of GROMs, > requiring their own interpretation step and murderously slow serial access. > > Compare this to a system like the Tomy Tutor, which has a 9995 on an 8-bit > bus too, but is significantly faster than the 99/4A despite being clocked > slightly slower (10.7MHz os Rather than rely on sometimes parity afflicted memory I pulled down a spare board (TI99/4A black) and the TI system manuals and prints.. 10.738625mhz is the Video clock (TMS9918) 12.000 is the CPU clock. (4phase 3MHz) The print set indicates FOUR wait states (1.33uS) for every 8bit bus access (to GROM, 9918 and Peripheral expansion). The 16bit bus has 128Words of scratch ram and 4kWords of system rom(GPL interpreter) and no wait states. Since most of the active IO to memory space is to GROM or 9918 on the console that speed cost overhead is both wait states and interpretive language. The TI99/4 series is clearly not representative of TI9900 cpu performance. However the idea of an interpretive system does reoccur in the computing world (JAVA, UCSD PASCAL). Allison From glenvdb at hotmail.com Thu Oct 4 11:17:03 2007 From: glenvdb at hotmail.com (Glen VanDenBiggelaar) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 10:17:03 -0600 Subject: Sale of the CoCo lounge Message-ID: Hello, and good day everyone, Please exscuse the interruption, I am on the Yahoo and Multimedia lists, but It was suggested that I post this information here also. My Name is Glen VanDenBiggelaar, and for the last 3 years, I have run the website www.thecocolounge.com. Due to space and time considerations, I am selling the site, and all the stock and my personal CoCo collection and leaving the hobby. I was close to a deal with anther buyer, but he backed out at the last moment due to shipping problems. I have for sale, my site (domain and all files etc) and 30 boxes of CoCo "stuff" for the on-line store. A lot of the stuff is common hardware (i.e. at least 8 - 10 CoCo 2's etc) but I have some Proto-type experimental stuff also. I don't have a complete list, but I can get a general list off hand. Before you ask, there is only 1 512k CoCo3 and 1 White CoCo 1 and no MPI's or cm8 monitors (sold all of that lot last year) I have at least 5 full high Floppy drives and a lot of "Non-working DD's for parts or repair. I also have the list of box dimensions for shipping on request. I am ask $1000 dollars for all of it (reduced from $5000). The terms are simple : In order to not get accused of shipping gouging, you must make arrangements on your end for shipping. I live up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5M-0K6. The last buyer was an hour out of Buffalo, in Canada, And he was quoted $600 for shipping -which was too much for his budget. The payment will be made through Western Union Money Transfer (as paypal won't actually let me cash Money) and this transaction has to be completed ASAP or I am getting rid of it all at the end of the month. If you have any question, please feel free to e-mail, but I will not tear this lot down, as it is all ready for shipping and the boxes are sealed. You must take it all. _thank you for your time -Glen From rigdonj at cfl.rr.com Thu Oct 4 13:39:14 2007 From: rigdonj at cfl.rr.com (Joe R.) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:39:14 Subject: FS: Zenrom for HP-41 calculator Message-ID: <3.0.6.16.20071004133914.321fd114@pop-server.cfl.rr.com> From cctech at retro.co.za Fri Oct 5 02:41:25 2007 From: cctech at retro.co.za (Wouter) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:41:25 +0200 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710050716.l957GFvS046885@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <5.0.0.25.2.20071005093910.07deef98@alpha.ccii.co.za> Hi all >From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > >A friend of mine was nearly killed due to this. He tested some wiring for >voltage-to-earth and the meter said it was essentially dead. SO he >started workign, alas the meter was malfuctioning, and he got the full >mains volatege across him. He imediately went and bought an expensive mad >reliable neter. I always short my screwdriver across the line before fitting, say, a light socket or a switch. This would be after turning the mains off and measuring. Even when it's a brand new installation and the main breaker panel isn't connected to the utility yet. Yea, it might cause a helluva flashbang, but it beats walking that tunnel towards the bright light. W From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Fri Oct 5 04:20:29 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 11:20:29 +0200 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <47052E18.5020508@gmail.com> References: <4702AD36.9060004@gmail.com> <20071004091339.6585b2f7@SirToby.dinner41.local> <4704AC0E.3080904@gmail.com> <20071004181127.0907560b@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47052E18.5020508@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071005112029.78e1dd2c@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 14:16:56 -0400 Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > They get hot quick, but they still take about 45 seconds to stabilize > completely. Ahh, OK. Didn't know that. > The main benefit is that they have an effectively > infinite power reserve. The tip doesn't cool while your working, > even if you're working on giant stuff. That is the reason I wane get a Metcal. Unfortunately they fetch quite some EUR, even used on ebay. At least at this side of The Pond. I remember when I tried to unsolder a SMD capacitor on a mainboard with a Weller. Despite its 80 W it was really hard to get the capacitor off. The tip was unable to transport enough heat to the ground plane solder joint. Even my primitive 25 W mains powered ERSA can do better. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From gerold.pauler at gmx.net Fri Oct 5 05:35:18 2007 From: gerold.pauler at gmx.net (Gerold Pauler) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:35:18 +0200 Subject: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] Message-ID: <1191580513.1023.15.camel@bladerider.local> Got an email today, that you can get a complete pdp8/f on ebay. It is located in Germany. Does not mention how much memory it got but seams to be complete with paper tape reader and an atari 140ST as console. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320166292810 I don't have any connection to the seller. And I don't have any more free space for another pdp8 of this era. - Gerold From trash3 at splab.cas.neu.edu Fri Oct 5 07:05:10 2007 From: trash3 at splab.cas.neu.edu (joe heck) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:05:10 -0400 Subject: misleading subject lines- vaxes, soldering, electricution, etc... In-Reply-To: <0JPD002D0YJ7IW63@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPD002D0YJ7IW63@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <47062876.2010007@splab.cas.neu.edu> Everybody, Can you please, please change the subject line when you actually go off topic from the original post? I love to hear about setting up vaxen, but really don't care who got electricuted or why you don't want to repair your own equipment. If you update the subject line, I don't have to look at each and every email to see if it is worth reading. Thanks! Joe Heck From listmailgoeshere at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 07:30:40 2007 From: listmailgoeshere at gmail.com (listmailgoeshere at gmail.com) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:30:40 +0100 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: References: <47030D50.1090902@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 10/3/07, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > > Not hard to get 60Sn/40Pb solder at all. Here's some from Marlon > > > Jones > > Try that in the UK. > > BOth RS (which is NOT Radio Shack, OK) and Farnell have tin/lead solder > listed on their websites (I checked earlier this evening) and neither > seems to say 'avaialble until stocks exhausted'. I don't think there's > any real problem yet in getting it over here. Maplin have stopped selling it entirely. Look in the latest catalogue - it's not in there. Ed. From james.rice at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 08:04:05 2007 From: james.rice at gmail.com (James Rice) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 07:04:05 -0600 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: References: <47030D50.1090902@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > > > Maplin have stopped selling it entirely. Look in the latest catalogue > - it's not in there. > > Ed. > Fortunately that isn't the case in the US. The local Fry's had 25-30 spools for lead alloy solder in stock and only two spools of lead free yesterday. I wondered in that was because of lead free being sold and lead alloy solder sitting on the shelf, but the sales droid looked on the computers and showed me that the average monthly stock turn on lead-free was .35 spools per month while lead alloy solder had an average turn of 6 spools a month. Stan Rubinstein Assoc's average price for a 63/37 no clean core 0.020 solder in a one pound spool is a little over nine dollars. I have 10-15 pounds of lead based solder in my storage cabinet in various gauges so my personal supply is assured for decades. I am assuming that lead free solder sales to hobbyists and repairmen will eventually pickup and pass lead based alloys. One question that I have, do you need a special type of iron for lead free soldering or just a different tip? I noticed both Hakko and Aoyue shows a different model that is rated for lead free duty. They show the same temperature range but are fitted with a larger heating element (70w vs 50w). -- www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Fri Oct 5 08:24:14 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 09:24:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.2.20071005093910.07deef98@alpha.ccii.co.za> References: <5.0.0.25.2.20071005093910.07deef98@alpha.ccii.co.za> Message-ID: <200710051336.JAA27824@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I always short my screwdriver across the line before fitting, say, a > light socket or a switch. [...] > Yea, it might cause a helluva flashbang, but it beats walking that > tunnel towards the bright light. I once deliberately bridged hot to ground with a screwdriver on a live circuit - we were having trouble figuring out which breaker it was on. It did make "a helluva flashbang", and it took some time - half a minute? multiple minutes? - before I could see again; I was silly enough to look right at it as I did it. It also ate a nice little cavity about halfway through the screwdriver shaft. The shaft was perhaps 5mm thick, and the cavity looked, roughly, as though someone had drilled a 5mm hole whose centreline passed through the surface of the shaft. Oh, and the room smelled of vapourized copper and steel for a few minutes. :) I don't recommend this, except as (as Wouter describes it) a belt-and-suspenders technique for making *sure* the line is cold. In retrospect, it was a stupid way to do what I wanted done, and quite probably reduced the life expectancy of that breaker substantially. /~\ 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 lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 08:39:15 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 14:39:15 +0100 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> References: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710050639w53b7a515ka3ffdae45dad69cd@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > This is semi-OT, but if you use an OS X capable Power Mac to run legacy Mac > software, 10.5 apparently no longer supports Classic even on PowerPC machines. > > http://www.lowendmac.com/mail/mb07/0716.html#2 Hmph! I pointed that out on LowEndMac's UnsupportedOSX list /months/ ago. It's one good reason that I probably won't be going to 10.5 for a while. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From ama at ugr.es Fri Oct 5 08:39:28 2007 From: ama at ugr.es (Angel Martin Alganza) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 15:39:28 +0200 Subject: misleading subject lines- vaxes, soldering, electricution, etc... In-Reply-To: <47062876.2010007@splab.cas.neu.edu> References: <0JPD002D0YJ7IW63@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <47062876.2010007@splab.cas.neu.edu> Message-ID: <20071005133928.GD21042@darwin.ugr.es> On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 08:05:10AM -0400, joe heck wrote: > Can you please, please change the subject line when you actually go off > topic from the original post? I love to hear about setting up vaxen, Joe, if you ever find a way to stop people stealing email/news/forum posts, etc. threads, please let me know how to do so. :-) Cheers, ?ngel -- Angel @ Granada, Spain PGP Public key: http://www.ugr.es/~ama/ama-pgp-key 3EB2 967A 9404 6585 7086 8811 2CEC 2F81 9341 E591 ------------------------------------------------------ () ASCII Ribbon Campaign - http://www.asciiribbon.org/ /\ Against all HTML e-mail and proprietary attachments From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 08:43:47 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 14:43:47 +0100 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <4705BC7B.3030300@mdrconsult.com> References: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> <4705BC7B.3030300@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710050643g40933737ye3bfe0f51cb689b0@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Doc Shipley wrote: > Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > This is semi-OT, but if you use an OS X capable Power Mac to run legacy Mac > > software, 10.5 apparently no longer supports Classic even on PowerPC machines. > > > > http://www.lowendmac.com/mail/mb07/0716.html#2 > > > > This is a shame, since a lot of early Mac software will surprisingly still > > run on my G5 running Tiger. In fact, I use an old System 6-era version of > > Caere OmniPage for simple OCR tasks since it's so unbelievably fast by > > comparison. > > "Doesn't support" as in "will not run the Classic environment", or > "does not ship with Classic"? > > Tiger (v10.4) did not ship with Classic either. You misunderstand, badly. You are confusing the older OS with the VM environment in which is runs. "Classic", to be precise and accurate, means the support for running MacOS 9 in a VM under OS X. Classic is the *compatibility environment* for MacOS 9, it is not MacOS 9. MacOS 9 remains itself; it's the OS, "Classic" is the subsystem it runs in. You launch MacOS 9 inside Classic. Leapard - OS X 10.5 - lacks that subsystem. It cannot launch MacOS 9 in a VM, and thus it cannot run MacOS 9 apps at all in any way. OS X 10.5 is the first version that is not in any way backwardly software compatible with previous MacOS versions. In this way, 10.5 brings fast G4s and G5 PowerPC machines to parity with x86-based "Macintels". Now, neither can run "classic MacOS" code. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Fri Oct 5 08:51:38 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:51:38 -0400 Subject: MSCP controllers In-Reply-To: <47000FAA.1060900@softjar.se> References: <200709302032.l8UKW5Gf047899@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47000FAA.1060900@softjar.se> Message-ID: <4706416A.502@compsys.to> >Johnny Billquist wrote: > (Sortof starting a new thread) > > There have been a discussion about the ineffectiveness of MSCP > recently, especially compared to a dumb controller interface. > > To make a few comments on this; yes the MSCP controller is much more > intelligent. But noone have yet talked about what this means. > > The overhead for playing with the MSCP controller is way much more > than for a simple, and stupid controller. However, there is also a big > speed gain in some situations. > Jerome Fines observations are correct. Under a single-user system such > as RT-11 (especially of the software acts in a naive way) much of the > advantages of MSCP is lost. The fact that it can deal with large disks > (or disks with different sizes) can hardle be called "intelligent". > That's really primitive. > > Things that the MSCP protocol do handle, however, and where the HD: > driver will suffer and loose, is when we get into more advanced stuff. > > The MSCP controller can have many I/O requests outstanding at the same > time. Once one operation is completed, it can immediately start the > next one. You actually have a zero setup time with MSCP. So if you're > doing several I/O operations in sequence, a good driver, in > combination with a good program, will be able to get more performance > out of the MSCP controller than the HD: driver, which each new > operation can only be programmed once the previous operation is > completed. > > The MSCP controller can also complete several I/O requests with just > one interrupt. No need for one interrupt for each I/O operation that > completes. > > The MSCP controller can also reorder I/O operations for better > efficiency. If you have three requests, jumping back and forth over > the disk, it makes sense to actually do the two operations on one end, > before doing the operation at the other end. This can be implemented > in software by the HD: controller, but then we now have more software > that must run before each I/O request is issued. > > The MSCP controller handles bad block replacement without the > involvement of the software. It always present a disk without bad > blocks. In real life, all disks have bad blocks, so somewhere this > always needs to be handled. Now, if you have a simulated PDP-11, the > disk is actually a file on that OS, so the underlaying OS will handle > bad blocks for you, so it isn't necceasry for the PDP-11 controller to > do this anymore, but MSCP was designed for raw disks, not emulated > systems. Dealing with bad blocks on the HD: driver would cost a lot. > > The MSCP controller can do I/O to several disks in parallel. In real > life, controllers like the HD: driver pretends to talk to exists as > well. One problem with these are that if you have several disks, you > can only do I/O to one disk at a time. Some of these controllers could > allow you to do seeks on other disks while I/O was performed on one > disk. However, things started getting complicated with this. > > The MSCP controller have pretty advanced error detection and handling. > Including extensive reports to the software on problems. > > Now, those things are why it's more intelligent. And more intelligent > means it also takes more software to talk to it. :-) > > MSCP is really like serial SCSI (or serial ATA), only done 20 years > earlier. Jerome Fine replies: Johnny, I believe that your comments are very clear and they address many of the aspects which concern the way in which MSCP handles read / write requests in both small systems (single user systems like RT-11 and even TSX-PLUS since the device driver still handles one request at a time) and large systems (such as RSX-11 and especially VMS). (NOTE that all of the following comments are with respect to running programs on a 750 MHz Pentium III with 768 MB of RAM using W98SE as the operating system, ATA 100 disk drives of 160 GB and Ersatz-11 as the application program running a mapped RT-11 monitor, RT11XM. While I have very good reason to believe that the same relative results will be obtained on a Pentium 4 under WXP, again using Ersatz-11 running RT-11, I have done almost no testing at this time. OBVIOUSLY, comparison with real DEC hardware of a PDP-11 and a VAX can only be done on a relative basis since HD: exists ONLY under Ersatz-11. In addition, since the speed of disk I/O on the Pentium III (even more so on a Pentium 4) is so much faster (more than 100 times) than the transfer rate on a SCSI Qbus or Unibus, the comparison could be very misleading since CPU time vs I/O transfer time might become much more significant. For just one example, when the BINCOM program that runs on a real DEC PDP-11/73 is used to compare 2 RT-11 partitions of 32 MB on 2 different ESDI Hitachi hard drives (under MSCP emulation with an RQD11-EC controller), it takes about the same time (about 240 seconds) to copy an RT-11 partition and to compare those same 2 partitions. Under Ersatz-11, the copy time is about 2 1/4 seconds and the BINCOM time is about 6 1/2 seconds using MSCP device drivers. When the HD: device driver is used under Ersatz-11, the times are about 1 second for the copy and about 6 seconds for the BINCOM - I have not bothered to figure out why the reduction is only 1/2 second instead of 1 1/4 seconds.) However, I believe that my comments on the efficiency of using the MSCP device driver under RT-11 vs the efficiency of using the HD: device driver probably need to be analysed much more closely. The other aspect of the analysis that is missing is the efficiency with with Ersatz-11 implements the MSCP emulation as opposed to the HD: "emulation". It is unlikely, but possible, that Ersatz-11 has much higher overhead for MSCP since the interface is so much more "intelligent" than the HD: interface only needs to transfer the data to the user buffer based on the IOPAGE register values. A bit more information may help. (a) The HD: device driver can be used BOTH with and without interrupts being active after the I/O request is issued. It makes no difference under W98SE since the I/O request is ALWAYS complete before even one PDP-11 instruction is executed. This result also applies to the MSCP device driver which I could modify to see if it might make a difference in efficiency. However, when I attempt to compare the copy of a 32 MB RT-11 partition with HD:, the time difference between using interrupts and not using interrupts is so negligible that it is almost impossible to measure the total time difference to copy the 32 MB RT-11 partition using the available PDP-11 clock which measures in 1/60 of a second. Since there are 60 ticks in a second, the accuracy is better than 2% over 1 second which seems adequate to determine on an overall basis if using interrupts vs no interrupts makes a significant difference. Obviously if there is no significant time difference at the 2% level (of one time tick of 1/60 of a second), then avoiding the extra RT-11 code to handle the interrupt does not play a major role in the increased efficiency of HD: vs MSCP. I conclude that would be the same for MSCP as well. (b) The other aspect is the ability of MSCP to order and internally queue I/O requests based on the most efficient order for them to be performed, probably when there are many requests outstanding and the required head movement can be minimized by choosing the order in which to execute the requests - which thereby increases overall I/O throughput. If I can make a suggestion, I respectfully ask what the interface between the device driver and the controller (or host adapter in the case of SCSI for MSCP - note that ESDI controllers are also MSCP) has to do with efficient internal queuing of I/O requests. Perhaps my viewpoint based on RT-11 is distorted (or TSX-PLUS for that matter which uses almost the identical code as RT-11 as far as I am aware), but I ask the question. It seems to me that a simple (dumb and efficient) interface such as HD: is only the final step in instructing the "controller" to perform the disk I/O whereas the actual "intelligent" aspect is probably going to be in the device driver of the respective operating system such as RT-11, TSX-PLUS, RSX-11 or VMS. Obviously the "intelligent" portion can also be in the actual controller or host adapter, but based on my VERY limited understanding of MSCP implementation by both DEC and 3rd party MSCP controller and host adapter manufactures for both the Qbus and Unibus, all of the "intelligence" of internal queuing of I/O requests for the above 4 example operating systems is performed in the device driver, if anywhere. Please confirm if my assumption is correct with regard to where the "intelligence" is located, i.e. in the device driver or the controller / host adapter. Based on the answer, it will then be possible to continue this discussion. It would be helpful to isolate where the decreased efficiency of using the DEC concept of MSCP is introduced and what specifically causes the decrease in efficiency. For example, on my Pentium III, I have noted that when I copy large files of 1 GB or larger, it is almost always useful to to no other disk I/O during the minute it takes for the copy to complete unless the additional disk I/O for another job is trivial in comparison and I can usefully overlap my time looking a a different screen of information. Whenever possible, I also arrange to have different disk files which will be copied back and forth on different physical disk drives if the files are larger than about 32 MB since the time to copy any file (or read a smaller file) is so short in any case. While I realize that on a large VMS system with hundreds of users there will be constant disk I/O, I still suggest that the efficiency of the device driver to controller interface may play a significant role in overall I/O throughput rates. I await your reply and wish you a good weekend. 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 jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Fri Oct 5 08:52:13 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:52:13 -0400 Subject: CompacTape In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> References: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4706418D.3020601@compsys.to> >Jason T wrote: >I just received my shipment of items from this auction: > >http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220149564798 > >which should have been a load of recyclable TK50 media. Instead of >CompacTape, however, they are all CompacTape III. I think these were >TK85 2.6gb media. Does anyone know if they will still be writable >with the standard format in a TK50? Or do I have a bunch of useless >DLT I tapes? > > Jerome Fine replies: I notice that there have been a number of replies to this question and, if I might summarize what I have read, it seems as if the answer depends on if the responder could (or could not) use the (I believe you have received) the DLT III tapes (since as far as I know DLT I and DLT II tapes were actually the CompacTape I, for the TK50, and CompacTape II, for the TK70). FIRST: In the 1990's I used BOTH CompacTape (by default it was CompacTape I) and CompacTape II media without any problems in both TK50 and TK70 drives - although when I wanted to switch between which drive would WRITE the tape, I always did a BULK ERASE. If the tape was completely unused (very rare for me an I only ever had about a dozen), both TK50 and TK70 drives could be used. SECOND: I always verified the contents of any backup files written to the tape and over a period of about 10 years, I can't remember having had more than isolated problems with the verify operation which consisted of a completely separate comparison AFTER all the backup files had been written by the TK70 and the tape switched to WRITE PROTECT. THIRD: A memorex site (long since disappeared) provided all the physical and magnetic properties of the DLT line of tape media starting with CompacTape I, CompacTape II, DLT III, DLT IV, etc. The physical and magnetic properties of BOTH CompacTape I and CompacTape II were IDENTICAL (which reflected my experience in using them on either TK50 or TK70 - but with BULK ERASE in between). The DLT III tapes had a much higher magnetic rating and I seem to remember reading that they can't be used with either the TK50 or TK70 drives - even if you can overcome the small physical differences. And, of course, the CompacTape media can't be used where DLT III media are required. The following point is based on my use of the TK70 drive and media when they were used to hold 32 MB backup files which were written under RT-11 by BUP using a PDP-11/73. I only used the TK70 for this one purpose (well about 99.9% of the time). THe disk drives were 600 MB ESDI Hitachi and the disk controller was the RQD11-EC. FOURTH: While many individuals over the years have attempted to justify the higher price of CompacTape II media over CompacTape I media by saying that the quality control was better, etc., my experience over those 10 years when I used TK70 drives and CompacTape I media after a bulk erase (90% were used media from a TK50) was more than satisfactory. The TK50 could write a maximum of about 50 MB on a tape while a TK70 could write over 256 MB on a tape. IN ADDITION, the TK70 wrote the same file about in about 1/3 of the time on a PDP-11/73, BUT FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES, it was impossible to verify the file using a TK50 except to restore the backup file to an unused RT-11 disk partition and then compare the "restored" RT-11 disk partition against the original RT-11 partition. This was because the TK50 could not be kept in streaming mode while the comparison was being made even though with the identical hardware and software (except for the TK70 drive and controller of course) the TK70 was able to perform the VERIFY operation in about the same time period (about 7 minutes on a TK70 vs about 19 minutes on a TK50 - if I remember correctly) as it originally took to write the backup file under RT-11 using BUP. By the way, I have a large number of CompacTape I media which I no longer will be using, but they will need to be bulk erased since they have all been initialized in a TK70. Assuming they are still usable, I will look into selling them. I am in Toronto (M2R 3G3). 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 spectre at floodgap.com Fri Oct 5 08:51:32 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 06:51:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <575131af0710050643g40933737ye3bfe0f51cb689b0@mail.gmail.com> from Liam Proven at "Oct 5, 7 02:43:47 pm" Message-ID: <200710051351.l95DpWaI011844@floodgap.com> > > "Doesn't support" as in "will not run the Classic environment", or > > "does not ship with Classic"? > > > > Tiger (v10.4) did not ship with Classic either. > > You misunderstand, badly. You are confusing the older OS with the VM > environment in which is runs. No, Doc is well aware of the difference -- I think he misspoke here. I'm also pretty certain that 10.3 didn't come with OS 9 either, but obviously runs Classic, of course. I need to go find my retail Panther box. > 10.5 is the first version that is not in any way backwardly software > compatible with previous MacOS versions. > > In this way, 10.5 brings fast G4s and G5 PowerPC machines [down] to parity > with x86-based "Macintels". Now, neither can run "classic MacOS" code. T,FTFY. ;) -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Po-Ching Lives! ------------------------------------------------------------ From ian_primus at yahoo.com Fri Oct 5 08:56:35 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 06:56:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <309472.74855.qm@web52701.mail.re2.yahoo.com> One > question that I have, do > you need a special type of iron for lead free > soldering or just a different > tip? I think that for lead free solder, in order to make a proper connection, you need an alternate plane of reality. You know, one where the laws of physics are different. Lead free solder doesn't flow, doesn't stick properly, and barely even melts completely. Cold joints are assured in most circumstances. I accidentally bought a roll of it once. I kept tring to use it at different times figuring "Well, maybe with this iron" or "maybe since I'm just soldering two wires together". Not only that, but it smells bad when it melts. So far, I have found that I can use it only as a paperweight. It does that pretty good. Lead free solder == total garbage. Neat idea, but it doesn't work. -Ian From pat at computer-refuge.org Fri Oct 5 09:18:33 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 10:18:33 -0400 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <309472.74855.qm@web52701.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <309472.74855.qm@web52701.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200710051018.33558.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Friday 05 October 2007, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > Lead free solder == total garbage. Neat idea, but it > doesn't work. I don't see how this is possibly true, considering that millions of products each week are built with it. You do, however, need to alter your methods. I believe that one of the things you need to do is have a much hotter iron tip to use it, this would be why you say that it "barely melts". As far as smell, leaded solder may "smell better", but I'd rather not breathe much of the fumes of either. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From rborsuk at colourfull.com Fri Oct 5 09:45:35 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 10:45:35 -0400 Subject: Kind of vintage - Selling my C-one Computer Message-ID: Hi All, I've put my C-one computer on eBay if anyones interested. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=300157914171 I know the computer isn't vintage but the stuff it runs, is. Thanks Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From ian_primus at yahoo.com Fri Oct 5 10:07:07 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 08:07:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <200710051018.33558.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <45864.99992.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Friday 05 October 2007, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > > Lead free solder == total garbage. Neat idea, but > it > > doesn't work. > > I don't see how this is possibly true, considering > that millions of > products each week are built with it. Perhaps. Perhaps from the manufacturing standpoint, it is usable in a wave-solder machine or similar. But I have never once achieved satisfactory results with it. I've also seen several very recent things fail due to bad soldering. Of course, TV manufacturers have never quite gotten the hang of soldering, even with standard 60/40 leaded solder, so I guess that isn't much of a sticking point. > You do, however, need to alter your methods. I > believe that one of the > things you need to do is have a much hotter iron tip > to use it, this > would be why you say that it "barely melts". I don't know - I even tried my 100 watt soldering gun on it. Nasty stuff. > As far as smell, leaded solder may "smell better", > but I'd rather not > breathe much of the fumes of either. Also, probably a very good point. -Ian From mike at brickfieldspark.org Fri Oct 5 10:13:51 2007 From: mike at brickfieldspark.org (Mike Hatch) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 16:13:51 +0100 Subject: Lead free solder References: <200710051342.l95DfuRb050442@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <001901c80762$5ddfda00$911ca8c0@mss.local> > From: "James Rice" > Subject: Re: lead-free solder > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > We have not changed tip or temperature settings in production. Mike. > eventually pickup and pass lead based alloys. One question that I have, > do > you need a special type of iron for lead free soldering or just a > different > tip? I noticed both Hakko and Aoyue shows a different model that is rated > for lead free duty. They show the same temperature range but are fitted > with a larger heating element (70w vs 50w). > > -- > www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned > Computers > From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 11:34:14 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:34:14 -0400 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <45864.99992.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <200710051018.33558.pat@computer-refuge.org> <45864.99992.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > Perhaps. Perhaps from the manufacturing standpoint, it > is usable in a wave-solder machine or similar. But I > have never once achieved satisfactory results with it. Practice, practice, practice. Just like the plumbers had to do some time back. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 11:42:15 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:42:15 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPD002D0YJ7IW63@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPD002D0YJ7IW63@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > VAX9000 built of ECL100K, fastest of the fast. The second most common > use of TTL was in very high speed instrumentation and specifically frequency > counters and UHF PLLs. If the 9000 series was till using 100K, DEC must have been sleeping. By the 9000s development period, ECL was beyond 100K. I am not sure, but 10E may have been out by then. 10G maybe as well, but using that leads to insanity. But one thing I notice about DEC's ECL machines (9000, KL10) - for being ECL, there sure were ssssllloooowwwww. -- Will From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 11:50:11 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 17:50:11 +0100 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <200710051351.l95DpWaI011844@floodgap.com> References: <575131af0710050643g40933737ye3bfe0f51cb689b0@mail.gmail.com> <200710051351.l95DpWaI011844@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710050950o56fe0c95u2f8547fea009d34@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > > "Doesn't support" as in "will not run the Classic environment", or > > > "does not ship with Classic"? > > > > > > Tiger (v10.4) did not ship with Classic either. > > > > You misunderstand, badly. You are confusing the older OS with the VM > > environment in which is runs. > > No, Doc is well aware of the difference -- I think he misspoke here. I'm > also pretty certain that 10.3 didn't come with OS 9 either, but obviously > runs Classic, of course. I need to go find my retail Panther box. Oh, OK. No, I don't think OS X's been /supplied/ with OS9 in the box for a long time. However, a couple of years ago, I set up a client's then-new iBook G4 and discovered that OS9 was on the DVD as a separate installer if you looked. That machine came with 10.4, I think. It may be a peculiarity of the new-machine bundle. > > 10.5 is the first version that is not in any way backwardly software > > compatible with previous MacOS versions. > > > > In this way, 10.5 brings fast G4s and G5 PowerPC machines [down] to parity > > with x86-based "Macintels". Now, neither can run "classic MacOS" code. > > T,FTFY. ;) [Googles] Ahh, yes! It's a real pain. Not that I have any burning /need/ for OS9 apps any more, but I kinda feel that a so-called "Mac" that can't run Mac apps isn't really a Mac any more. I was sorry when they stopped booting original MacOS; that was bad enough. I am vaguely looking for a dual G4 when I can find one cheap enough or free... -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From silent700 at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 11:53:18 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 11:53:18 -0500 Subject: CompacTape In-Reply-To: <4706418D.3020601@compsys.to> References: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> <4706418D.3020601@compsys.to> Message-ID: <51ea77730710050953r5c67f84ake0e932655fb8be67@mail.gmail.com> On 10/5/07, Jerome H. Fine wrote: > I notice that there have been a number of replies to this > question and, if I might summarize what I have read, it seems > as if the answer depends on if the responder could (or could > not) use the (I believe you have received) the DLT III tapes > (since as far as I know DLT I and DLT II tapes were actually > the CompacTape I, for the TK50, and CompacTape II, for the > TK70). Thanks Jerome and everyone else for the replies. The seller was a plain dealer and refunded me for the tapes he shipped since he couldn't find the actual TK50s. Fair enough. Wiki's page on DLT has a media chart that these tapes don't exactly fit into: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Linear_Tape These tapes are labeled "CompacTape III," which isn't listed. I'm guessing they are DLT III, but according to that chart they're the wrong color (they're dark gray like a TK50.) My guess is they are meant for the 2.6gb THZ01/DLT260/Tx85 drives rather than the 10gb DLT2000 drive. If anyone can make use of them and wants to pay only shipping, lemme know. -- j From healyzh at aracnet.com Fri Oct 5 12:10:08 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 10:10:08 -0700 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> References: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> Message-ID: At 8:41 PM -0700 10/4/07, Cameron Kaiser wrote: >This is semi-OT, but if you use an OS X capable Power Mac to run legacy Mac >software, 10.5 apparently no longer supports Classic even on PowerPC machines. > > http://www.lowendmac.com/mail/mb07/0716.html#2 > >This is a shame, since a lot of early Mac software will surprisingly still >run on my G5 running Tiger. In fact, I use an old System 6-era version of >Caere OmniPage for simple OCR tasks since it's so unbelievably fast by >comparison. OK, that STINKS! Just the night before last I had to fire up ClarisDraw as even though I own copies of more modern drawing app's, nothing works as well. First in 10.4 they dropped support for classic AppleTalk breaking things for me, now this. Well, we may just stay on 10.4.x for the next few years. As a result of the Appletalk issue I didn't upgrade to 10.4 till earlier this year, even though I bought it the day it came out. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 tshoppa at wmata.com Fri Oct 5 12:28:34 2007 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:28:34 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <200710051700.l95H0PZ0052948@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710051700.l95H0PZ0052948@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47063C020200003700013B64@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Will wrote: > Someone wrote: >> VAX9000 built of ECL100K, fastest of the fast. The second most common >> use of TTL was in very high speed instrumentation and specifically frequency >> counters and UHF PLLs. > If the 9000 series was till using 100K, DEC must have been sleeping. > By the 9000s development period, ECL was beyond 100K. I am not sure, > but 10E may have been out by then. 10G maybe as well, but using that > leads to insanity. Using ultra-fast ECL doesn't make much sense when you've got nanoseconds of delay to the backplane, to the next board, and back to the part that needs the signal. The ECL technology used in the VAX9000 was gate arrays with roughly the same timing parameters as 100K ECL (0.5 to 1.0 ns propogation delays). > But one thing I notice about DEC's ECL machines (9000, KL10) - for > being ECL, there sure were ssssllloooowwwww. KL10 was 100 series 10K ECL technology, typically 3 to 4 ns propgation delay. A lot easier to build large systems with than say 74F00 stuff but not a whole lot faster. Responsiveness of a computer system depends on a lot more than the speed of the semiconductors used to build it. Plenty of modern examples of how to make fast silicon seem slow are coming out of Redmond I notice :-). Tim. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 5 12:42:03 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:42:03 -0600 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <47063C020200003700013B64@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> References: <200710051700.l95H0PZ0052948@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47063C020200003700013B64@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Message-ID: <4706776B.8080302@jetnet.ab.ca> Tim Shoppa wrote: > KL10 was 100 series 10K ECL technology, typically 3 to 4 ns propgation > delay. A lot easier to build large systems with than say 74F00 stuff but > not a whole lot faster. I guess we need a 36 bit computer built with 74Fxx. :) > Responsiveness of a computer system depends on a lot more than the > speed of the semiconductors used to build it. Plenty of modern examples > of how to make fast silicon seem slow are coming out of Redmond I > notice :-). But how fast is the silicon anyhow? You read the fine print after all the cache has loaded. > Tim. Could the PDP-10 instruction set have been simplified for a faster machine. Mind you I think you would still be stuck with 18bit address because of LISP and having two addresses in one word. Ben. From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 5 12:43:43 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:43:43 -0400 Subject: Experience with Dysan drive tester? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710051343.43313.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 04 October 2007 14:59, Tony Duell wrote: > > Do folks still consider drives worth aligning these days? If so I guess > > I'd consider that worthwhile to have, otherwise probably not. > > Actaully, considering the 'quality' of new PC 3.5" floppy drives, I > consider an exerciser and alignment disk essential if you want to use > those. Some of them come pre-mis-aligned ;-) Heh. I have a whole box of those drives, pulled out of various systems. I never did get around to acquiring an alignment disk for them, or for 8" drives either, for that matter, as there wasn't any demand for such back when. These days I'm not sure I could find one if needed. > There are a number of types of drives used in vintage computers that are > no longer available, so it makes sense to be able to repair and align > them. I just wioh I'd bought a 3" alignment disk (and for that matter an > 8" one) when they were available. You imply here that they're not. I don't know, not having looked. I know that with the 3.5" drives, I can buy new ones way cheaper than my time to repair them is worth, if you can even get enough repair info on them to do anything useful. Working on the older stuff is another matter entirely though. It also seems to make a lot of difference which brand of drive you get. I've had spectacularly bad luck with some of them, like for example the Alps drive that let the magic smoke out the first time I powered that particular system up... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 5 12:44:57 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:44:57 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710051344.57699.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 04 October 2007 15:05, Tony Duell wrote: > > My view is that if you have spent little or nothing on the computer. > > Then= a few pounds on a cable is a good investment. If you do not have > > experie= > > This is basically my view. As I said last night, don;t think of it as > 'The cable cost 20 times as much as the rest of the computer' but as > 'I've got a very nice machine here and it only cost me \pounds 21.00' > > > nce in making up cables then don't waste time learning for a small > > number. > > I'm not so sure about that. Very often in setting up a vintage computer > you'll need a special cable (RS232 serial cables being an obvious > example, there are all sorts of odd pin-swaps you need for some > machines...), and it makes a lot of sense to be abe to make it up. You > can't always buy the right cable off-the-shelf, particularly not for > obscure classics. I'd *still* like to someday get my hands on one of the fancier breakout boxes I used to see in catalogs... :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 5 12:48:08 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:48:08 -0400 Subject: Interesting early all-in-one PC with monitor and printer built-in -- Computer Devices DOT (eBay) In-Reply-To: <4704F175.17684.9977CE6@cclist.sydex.com> References: <4704C65D.8020908@pacbell.net> <4704F175.17684.9977CE6@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710051348.09100.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 04 October 2007 16:58, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 4 Oct 2007 at 2:54, William Maddox wrote: > > Comes with a carrying case, sort of portable, 8088. > > Weight is 19 Kg. A sousaphone is more "portable". I like "luggable" for those... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 12:55:28 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:55:28 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <47063C020200003700013B64@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> References: <200710051700.l95H0PZ0052948@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47063C020200003700013B64@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Message-ID: > Using ultra-fast ECL doesn't make much sense when you've got nanoseconds > of delay to the backplane, to the next board, and back to the part that > needs the signal. That depends on how tight everything is. Thermal Conduction Module, anyone? > The ECL technology used in the VAX9000 was gate arrays with roughly the > same timing parameters as 100K ECL (0.5 to 1.0 ns propogation delays). Yes, but I do not think that was the cutting edge anymore. Considering the 9000 was supposed to be the machine that finally convinces the mainframe world to accept DEC, it may have been a poor choice. We probably will never know. 9000 may have been as big of an embarrassment as the KC10. Even though the 9000s were bombs, they are one of the few VAX machines I would chase after. > Responsiveness of a computer system depends on a lot more than the > speed of the semiconductors used to build it. Plenty of modern examples > of how to make fast silicon seem slow are coming out of Redmond I > notice :-). I am thinking raw horsepower - all the benchmarking stuff. Looking at the KL10 (or the other DEC ECL machines), it justs seems like they should have been better number crunchers. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 12:57:42 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:57:42 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4706776B.8080302@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200710051700.l95H0PZ0052948@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47063C020200003700013B64@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> <4706776B.8080302@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > Could the PDP-10 instruction set have been simplified for a faster > machine. Mind you I think you would still be stuck with 18bit address > because of LISP and having two addresses in one word. Of course, any architecture could get a speed boost when you start pruning out those pesky instructions. PDP-10 was pretty clean, actually. -- Will From stanb at dial.pipex.com Fri Oct 5 12:54:40 2007 From: stanb at dial.pipex.com (Stan Barr) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:54:40 +0100 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 05 Oct 2007 06:56:35 PDT." <309472.74855.qm@web52701.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200710051754.SAA31716@citadel.metropolis.local> Hi, Ian Primus said: > > Lead free solder doesn't flow, doesn't stick properly, > and barely even melts completely. Cold joints are > assured in most circumstances. I accidentally bought a > roll of it once. I kept tring to use it at different > times figuring "Well, maybe with this iron" or "maybe > since I'm just soldering two wires together". Not only > that, but it smells bad when it melts. So far, I have > found that I can use it only as a paperweight. It does > that pretty good. > > Lead free solder == total garbage. Neat idea, but it > doesn't work. I've been using it for repairs to lead-free equipment for a year or more now with no problems. You *do* need an iron with a tip temp of around 370 deg C and capable on maintaining that temperature while you're making the joint. In my experience the solder with a small amount, 4% or so, of silver flows signifcantly better then the plain tin/copper stuff. -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com The future was never like this! From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 5 13:18:20 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:18:20 -0700 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <200710051018.33558.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <309472.74855.qm@web52701.mail.re2.yahoo.com>, <200710051018.33558.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <47061D7C.23708.E2B741B@cclist.sydex.com> While not using lead-free solder in electronics construction, I'm exposed to it in musical instrument construction and repair, as many insruments now originate in the EU and even some Chinese brands have turned to using it. It has been an interesting experience adapting to using it. I'd usually have two alloys of leaded solder on hand--63/37 "eutectic" solder (it's either liquid or solid, but not "plastic") for most work, and 50/50 for those times when I needed to fill a gap (has a comparatively broad "plastic" range and so can be worked a bit before it sets. Lead-free is different to work with, but not awfully so. Generally, most eutectic alloys melt at a higher temperature than the 63/37 alloy. The type of flux seems to be more critical--but then, I use liquid acid fluxes, so that may not obtain in electronics work. Lead-free is generally harder and stronger than leaded when cool. For non-eutectic solders, the plastic range "feels" different--the solder seems to be a bit more "grainy" (like wet sawdust) than "smooth" (like cake batter), but that's subjective and the plastic phase shouldn't be part of proper electronics work anyway. "Wetting" seems to be somewhat more difficult with lead-free, but good, strong joints can still be made if done with sufficient care (very clean surfaces, sufficient heat and flux). On the plus side, I'm sometimes called on to repair small cracks or splits in silverplated brass. Doing so with leaded solders usually means spot-plating (copper, then silver) over the repaired area because lead stains silver surfaces rather badly. With silver-tin alloy solder, I can make the repair, then simply buff the solder to blend in with the surrounding silver--it's very difficult to see when finished--and I don't need to fuss with the silver cyanide plating solution. I've also been given to understand that it's not a good thing to mix the two types of solder, so I don't. For me, that means cleaning old joints down to the base metal before resoldering. If you're interested, NIST has published a table of properties at: http://www.boulder.nist.gov/div853/lead%20free/props01.html In conclusion, I don't think that lead-free solder should be a barrier to anyone's work, if the effort to learn how to use it well is made. ------ On a side issue, I've been wanting to learn to use the solder-flux paste used in surface-mount work. One thing that's been off-putting is the very low shelf life of the stuff--and the need for refrigeration (raising shipping costs). Does anyone make a two-part solder, where the metal and flux are combined just before use? Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 5 13:22:16 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:22:16 -0700 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com>, Message-ID: <47061E68.13743.E2F0B8E@cclist.sydex.com> On 5 Oct 2007 at 0:01, Zane H. Healy wrote: > And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the > "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) > http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm Zane, it still doesn't answer my question. "Why emulate a 1541 when you could just as easily emulate a 1571?" Sorry for my blockheadedness, but I'm still not clear on this. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 5 13:27:07 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 11:27:07 -0700 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <0JPE00JHV37O6158@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPE00JHV37O6158@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <47061F8B.368.E337F47@cclist.sydex.com> On 4 Oct 2007 at 9:39, Allison wrote: > Same here. I do find that one has to qualify the views of the authors > as having some bias. Some of the CPUs commented as being least likely > actually had excellent longevity. For example 1802, 6100, 6502 and a > few others. It's interesting that at the time of writing the embedded > system market was still in it infantcy and would grow considerably to be > the primary consumer of microprocessors. But as you say it's at least > an overview of many micros to compare or understand at some level. I used to work with an engineer whose first job out of school was writing for those books for Osborne. He thought his efforts were pretty terrible, but I assured him that there was enough information there for most to draw their own conclusions. Does anyone know of ready sources for the TMS9900 and 9995 chips these days? Cheers, Chuck From dkelvey at hotmail.com Fri Oct 5 13:47:17 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 11:47:17 -0700 Subject: OT shocking was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710031649x7df0ab75rc1866fdb692ecaa8@mail.gmail.com> from Message-ID: > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk---snip--- > > > myself too badly. I recently bought my first multimeter, as it was> > very cheap in Lidl and I thought it might come in handy some time,> > There have been reports of the accuracy -- or lack of it -- of those > cheap meters, Many of them do odd things if the internal battery is flat > (and don't rely on the 'battery low' indicator for this), and there have > been problems due to the poor quality switches used.> > A friend of mine was nearly killed due to this. He tested some wiring for > voltage-to-earth and the meter said it was essentially dead. SO he > started workign, alas the meter was malfuctioning, and he got the full > mains volatege across him. He imediately went and bought an expensive mad > reliable neter.> Hi I've liked cheap meters for digitals. I do have a 5 digit Fluke and several analog meters. I've found that even the leads on a good meter can be broken. If I'm working on the mains, I always measure it with power first. I check to make sure that the ground and neutral measure correctly to the line and then turn the line off. I've seen some really bad wiring done. I had a case where there was a line-ground short after someone did some painting. Instead of fixing, they swapped the line at the box. All the neutrals were hot to ground by direct connection. Someone even swapped some of the sockets to look right. Only the neutral return wires had breakers. Unless all the main were disconnected the wires were hot to ground with the breakers off. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From tshoppa at wmata.com Fri Oct 5 14:14:52 2007 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:14:52 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <470654EC0200003700013BCE@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Will wrote: > I wrote: > > The ECL technology used in the VAX9000 was gate arrays with roughly the > > same timing parameters as 100K ECL (0.5 to 1.0 ns propogation delays). > Yes, but I do not think that was the cutting edge anymore. Considering > the 9000 was supposed to be the machine that finally convinces the > mainframe world to accept DEC, it may have been a poor choice. We > probably will never know. 9000 may have been as big of an > embarrassment as the KC10. The 9000 was obsoleted by the NVAX chip before the 9000 hit the street. "the mainframe world" acceptance of a CPU is the stupidest-ass thing a company could ever ever want. On a.f.c there were some references to emulating Unisys architectures on Intel hardware, and I followed the links to the trade press rags, and the rags were filled with a bunch of useless self-important balloon-filling about CPU technologies with no evidence that anywhere anyone understood what the emulation layer actually did. I came away not knowing what the emulation layer actually did either (classic CPU-technology-on-the-mind poisoning of those who should know better). There are about ten thousand markets that DEC served quite well, and it's a shame they put all that effort and money into neglecting those markets and trying to do a mainframe. > Even though the 9000s were bombs, they are one of the few VAX machines > I would chase after. Stack it up with all those other CPU's without peripherals, huh? :-). >> Responsiveness of a computer system depends on a lot more than the >> speed of the semiconductors used to build it. Plenty of modern examples >> of how to make fast silicon seem slow are coming out of Redmond I >> notice :-). >I am thinking raw horsepower - all the benchmarking stuff. Looking at >the KL10 (or the other DEC ECL machines), it justs seems like they >should have been better number crunchers. Mainframes are really good at some things, sometimes they are decent number crunchers in terms of pure FLOPS but it has been three to four decades since they delivered any punch in terms of FLOPS per dollar. Tim. From dkelvey at hotmail.com Fri Oct 5 14:16:06 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:16:06 -0700 Subject: EPROM Death? / EPROMS In-Reply-To: References: <0JPB000NZAVG1KL0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 09:28:05 -0700> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org; cctech at classiccmp.org> From: healyzh at aracnet.com> CC: > Subject: Re: EPROM Death? / EPROMS> > At 9:31 PM -0400 10/2/07, Allison wrote:> > > From: "Zane H. Healy" > > >> >>How do you tell an over-erased EPROM?> >>> >>I finally have my programmer and eraser, and just tried erasing 6> > >EPROM's. Four erased just fine, and two are showing weird patterns> > >of alternating blocks of 04/06 and 14/16.> > >> >I've seen that when the quartz window isn't really clean and the> >UV hasn't quite done the full job. I have found some vendors> >eproms need a little more time to cook.> >> >Ove 26 years I think I've only seen one that really had a stuck> >bit and that was a blown output pin.> > The two EPROM's in question are 27128's of different manufacturers. > The strange thing is both have the same pattern in them (I read them > in when checking). I did manage at the same time to erase a 27C128, > 2 different 27C256's, and a 27256. Rather irritating as I'd prefer > to use either 27128's or 27C128's for the next step. Hopefully > either these two really are good, or the other two I have, and still > need to erase, are good. I won't be able to mess with this more > until at least tonight.> Hi As Phil mentions, people have left EPROMs under UV for days. Normally the only issue is that they may not hold data as long. As I stated before, your problem sounds just like bad contact to the pins. Many EPROM sockets only connect on the edges of the pins. The pins can look clean while still having any number of oxided and such on the edges of the pins. Clean the pin sides before giving up. Use some fine 220 sand paper and some small pliers to apply some force to the sand paper. Remember that the sides of the pins may not be plated and are often exposed base material. This is most often brass or even some iron mixtures. It doesn't take much corrosion to be a problem in a ZIF type socket. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From bpope at wordstock.com Fri Oct 5 14:33:57 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 15:33:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <575131af0710041917w1dcf4e06radca63dad0e71c7b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071005193357.4EEDC55E31@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Liam Proven > > Fascinating. The snag is, I know very little about electronics below > the level of a broad knowledge of TTL, the rudiments of circuits and > gates and so on. I have a bit of theory, no practice. I could not > diagnose a faulty chip or anything; my troubleshooting consists of All you need to start with is a logic probe. Then for simple logic chips like AND, OR, NOT you would place the logic probe on the one or two inputs o see if they are high or low. Then from that you would know what the output should be. For chips that were a little more complex you would use the truth table from the datasheet for the particular chip to see what the output should be for each combination of input(s). > Well, aside from 1 old Sun (SPARCstation IPX), the soon-to-arrive > VAXstation, an Amiga and 2 STs and a QL, all my kit is Macs and PCs. > The PCs range from a 386 to an Athlon XP, Macs from an SE/30 to a Blue > & White G3/400MHz. So I don't run what most people here would consider > "old hardware", I suppose! > I know for the Amiga Commodore provided schematics... > I am, a bit like Chuck, mainly a software person, but one who's > competent with hardware to a basic level. I know bugger-all about > electronics and while I regret that, I'm not inclined to fix it now. I > just have an aesthetic appreciation for the way things /used/ to be > done. > I am also mainly a software person, but I am slowly teaching myself electronics because I would like to know how the "other side" works! :) Cheers, Bryan From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Fri Oct 5 14:56:07 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:56:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <47061E68.13743.E2F0B8E@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com>, <47061E68.13743.E2F0B8E@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 5 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 5 Oct 2007 at 0:01, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > > And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the > > "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) > > http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm > > Zane, it still doesn't answer my question. "Why emulate a 1541 when > you could just as easily emulate a 1571?" > > Sorry for my blockheadedness, but I'm still not clear on this. Maybe because the 1541 is a simpler first step? I wish I saw this project earlier so I could have gotten in on the group buy of PCBs. Since this thing is powered by a PIC18, the firmware source is available, and is easily reprogrammable, hacking in 1571 support shouldn't be too hard. This thing looks like just the thing I need to quickly have some fun with my old C64. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 15:14:58 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:14:58 +0100 Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <20071005193357.4EEDC55E31@mail.wordstock.com> References: <575131af0710041917w1dcf4e06radca63dad0e71c7b@mail.gmail.com> <20071005193357.4EEDC55E31@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710051314u2644901ehed6c63abdb5a9856@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Bryan Pope wrote: > And thusly were the wise words spake by Liam Proven > > > > Fascinating. The snag is, I know very little about electronics below > > the level of a broad knowledge of TTL, the rudiments of circuits and > > gates and so on. I have a bit of theory, no practice. I could not > > diagnose a faulty chip or anything; my troubleshooting consists of > > All you need to start with is a logic probe. Then for simple logic > chips like AND, OR, NOT you would place the logic probe on the one > or two inputs o see if they are high or low. Then from that you > would know what the output should be. For chips that were a little > more complex you would use the truth table from the datasheet for > the particular chip to see what the output should be for each > combination of input(s). Er, hardly, when a modern chip has several tens of millions of gates on it! I make my meagre crust working on machines of, on average, 2-3GHz of processing power, 1-2 gig of RAM and about a quarter to a half a terabyte of RAM. I fear when one of those goes wrong, probing for a duff transistor will do me little good! > > Well, aside from 1 old Sun (SPARCstation IPX), the soon-to-arrive > > VAXstation, an Amiga and 2 STs and a QL, all my kit is Macs and PCs. > > The PCs range from a 386 to an Athlon XP, Macs from an SE/30 to a Blue > > & White G3/400MHz. So I don't run what most people here would consider > > "old hardware", I suppose! > > I know for the Amiga Commodore provided schematics... I know a few dozen characters of Chinese. I also know that I could buy a Chinese dictionary, but it wouldn't tell me anything! :?) > > > I am, a bit like Chuck, mainly a software person, but one who's > > competent with hardware to a basic level. I know bugger-all about > > electronics and while I regret that, I'm not inclined to fix it now. I > > just have an aesthetic appreciation for the way things /used/ to be > > done. > > > > I am also mainly a software person, but I am slowly teaching myself > electronics because I would like to know how the "other side" works! :) Ahhh. I'm going the other way. The recent new skills that are relevant to me are principles of firewalling and TCP/IP security, routing, DNS setup and so on. I'm also trying to learn about setting up and running Linux servers built from scratch and a bit of coding in Python. For me, the relevance of basic electronics is declining, not increasing, and I am already half way through my life and accelerating! -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 15:19:59 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:19:59 +0100 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: References: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710051319p77374ab6w7b4a7d59df2640fb@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 8:41 PM -0700 10/4/07, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > >This is semi-OT, but if you use an OS X capable Power Mac to run legacy Mac > >software, 10.5 apparently no longer supports Classic even on PowerPC machines. > > > > http://www.lowendmac.com/mail/mb07/0716.html#2 > > > >This is a shame, since a lot of early Mac software will surprisingly still > >run on my G5 running Tiger. In fact, I use an old System 6-era version of > >Caere OmniPage for simple OCR tasks since it's so unbelievably fast by > >comparison. > > word> word> word> > > OK, that STINKS! Just the night before last I had to fire > up ClarisDraw as even though I own copies of more modern drawing > app's, nothing works as well. First in 10.4 they dropped support for > classic AppleTalk breaking things for me, now this. Well, we may > just stay on 10.4.x for the next few years. As a result of the > Appletalk issue I didn't upgrade to 10.4 till earlier this year, even > though I bought it the day it came out. Yep. Although to be fair, I have few Macs so old they can't run MacOS 8.1 and it networks happily with Tiger boxes over TCP/IP. But yes, I entirely agree. OTOH, Apple's market now is x86 boxes and its competition is Windows. A Macintel can dual-boot to Windows or run it in a fairly seamless VM. With the best will in the world, to most people - including, I must reluctantly admit, me - that is (or would be) vastly more use than running MacOS 9 in a VM! I happily run Linux, but if money were no object, I'd be on OS X on a Mac Pro, with Wine for a few legacy Windows apps - or possibly Parallels Desktop, as it's cheap and it runs Windows seamlessly - i.e. Windows apps' windows merged with OS X apps on the same shared desktop. On a quad-core or octo-core machine with 4G of RAM, I could afford a copy of W2K in a VM. I'd never notice the load, I'm sure. The thing that saddens me is that if you do this, you suddenly have to do all that tired old dancing around with legions of MS updates and antivirus and antispyware and so on in Windows on your nice clean safe Mac. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 15:23:06 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:23:06 +0100 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <47061E68.13743.E2F0B8E@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> <47061E68.13743.E2F0B8E@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710051323w4ad4a91cmf1af4a4fec220074@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 5 Oct 2007 at 0:01, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > > And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the > > "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) > > http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm > > Zane, it still doesn't answer my question. "Why emulate a 1541 when > you could just as easily emulate a 1571?" > > Sorry for my blockheadedness, but I'm still not clear on this. Well, as no actual disks are involved and the transfer speeds of the media are probably half a dozen orders of magnitude faster than an actual floppy disk, why bother? It's not a disk drive. It's a way to load games and things from modern media into a vintage computer. Why not go for maximum software compatibility and emulate the most widespread and commonly-supported disk drive, especially if it will save effort? -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From spectre at floodgap.com Fri Oct 5 15:27:38 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:27:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 1541 vs 1571 was New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: from David Griffith at "Oct 5, 7 12:56:07 pm" Message-ID: <200710052027.l95KRcdS011878@floodgap.com> Changing subject line ;) > > > And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the > > > "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) > > > http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm > > > > Zane, it still doesn't answer my question. "Why emulate a 1541 when > > you could just as easily emulate a 1571?" > > > > Sorry for my blockheadedness, but I'm still not clear on this. > > Maybe because the 1541 is a simpler first step? That's what I was going to say also. The 1571 is a considerably more complex (being more versatile) unit. Emulating a 1541 is hard enough due to how exploited its intelligent architecture was by software authors. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Any clod can have the facts, but having an opinion is an art. -- C. McCabe - From spectre at floodgap.com Fri Oct 5 15:32:04 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:32:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: from "Zane H. Healy" at "Oct 5, 7 10:10:08 am" Message-ID: <200710052032.l95KW4ls012018@floodgap.com> > OK, that STINKS! Just the night before last I had to fire > up ClarisDraw as even though I own copies of more modern drawing > app's, nothing works as well. First in 10.4 they dropped support for > classic AppleTalk breaking things for me, now this. Well, we may > just stay on 10.4.x for the next few years. Given how long Apple has (probably unwillingly but still) continued to support Panther, I expect that there will be a similar lag between Leopard and Housecat or whatever 10.6's going to be called and thus Tiger will remain in support for a while too. My OS X fileserver runs Panther for exactly the reason you specify, although I've got a 7100+G3 doing nothing that will probably get made into a classic AFP server for the IIgs and 68K systems. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- You've become useful again. -- "Die Another Day" --------------------------- From spectre at floodgap.com Fri Oct 5 15:35:35 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 13:35:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <575131af0710050950o56fe0c95u2f8547fea009d34@mail.gmail.com> from Liam Proven at "Oct 5, 7 05:50:11 pm" Message-ID: <200710052035.l95KZZHX011894@floodgap.com> > > No, Doc is well aware of the difference -- I think he misspoke here. I'm > > also pretty certain that 10.3 didn't come with OS 9 either, but obviously > > runs Classic, of course. I need to go find my retail Panther box. > > Oh, OK. No, I don't think OS X's been /supplied/ with OS9 in the box > for a long time. However, a couple of years ago, I set up a client's > then-new iBook G4 and discovered that OS9 was on the DVD as a separate > installer if you looked. That machine came with 10.4, I think. It may > be a peculiarity of the new-machine bundle. I forgot about that. Yes, my iBook G4 had it also with Tiger :) > > > In this way, 10.5 brings fast G4s and G5 PowerPC machines [down] to parity > > > with x86-based "Macintels". Now, neither can run "classic MacOS" code. > > > > T,FTFY. ;) > > [Googles] Ahh, yes! > > It's a real pain. Not that I have any burning /need/ for OS9 apps any > more, but I kinda feel that a so-called "Mac" that can't run Mac apps > isn't really a Mac any more. I was sorry when they stopped booting > original MacOS; that was bad enough. I am vaguely looking for a dual > G4 when I can find one cheap enough or free... It's just a shame when until the MacIntel transition, even big beefy G5s could still run many ancient Mac 128K-era apps (I still like to play Zero Gravity from time to time, which is actually quite playable despite the speed disparity -- probably a testament to very good programming). Running code in Basilisk II just isn't the same. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- /etc/motd: /earth is 98% full. please delete anyone you can. --------------- From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 16:17:53 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 17:17:53 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <470654EC0200003700013BCE@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> References: <470654EC0200003700013BCE@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Message-ID: > "the mainframe world" acceptance of a CPU is the stupidest-ass thing > a company could ever ever want. I think it was more than just CPU - a effort to get VAX and VMS into the mainframe market, rather than skirt the edges of it. I am not sure I agree with you about it being stupid. There always has been a large amount of money in the mainframe world. The market IS money, if you think about it. Bankers will always be richer than professors. > There are about ten thousand markets that DEC served quite well, and > it's a shame they put all that effort and money into neglecting those > markets and trying to do a mainframe. Who was pushing it? > Stack it up with all those other CPU's without peripherals, huh? :-). Which string of DASDs should I roll over your foot? > Mainframes are really good at some things, sometimes they are decent > number crunchers in terms of pure FLOPS but it has been three to four > decades since they delivered any punch in terms of FLOPS per dollar. Well, the KL10 is reaching that 3 or 4 decade point! -- Will From healyzh at aracnet.com Fri Oct 5 16:24:06 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 14:24:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <47061E68.13743.E2F0B8E@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 05, 2007 11:22:16 AM Message-ID: <200710052124.l95LO66L006238@onyx.spiritone.com> > On 5 Oct 2007 at 0:01, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > > And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the > > "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) > > http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm > > Zane, it still doesn't answer my question. "Why emulate a 1541 when > you could just as easily emulate a 1571?" > > Sorry for my blockheadedness, but I'm still not clear on this. > > Cheers, > Chuck Actually *THAT* is a good question! :^) Currently it works with .D64 files, but the developer is apparently looking into adding .D71 and .D81 support. I would guess it was developed to support the majority of software/games out there, which in turn supported C-1541 drives. But that is just a guess. Zane From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Fri Oct 5 16:26:24 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 17:26:24 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? Message-ID: <4706AC00.7030702@compsys.to> I have a specific question, but a general concern about how long a backup can still be read. I realize that all of the hardware and software is less than 10 years old, but the software files being backed up are often 30 years old. Environment: Pentium III (running W98SE) or Pentium 4 (running WXP) and using GHOST 7.0 as the backup software with C: hard drive under FAT32 file structure. An image file backup made of the C: drive is eventually written to a DVD and within a time period of between one second to one day, another copy of the DVD file is made back to a spare hard drive thereby proving that the DVD can be read. In addition, the MD5 value of the image file was kept and written to the DVD and compared with the MD5 value of the file copied from the DVD (since it takes less time to produce the MD5 value from a hard disk file than from an identical DVD file). Question: How long a period of time should I wait to be sure that infant mortality of the image file on the DVD is no longer a factor? Is one second sufficient? i.e. at present as soon as the DVD is finished being burned and the DVD is ejected, I copy all of the files back to a vacant partition on the hard drive. Question: I am using Fujifilm DVD-R 16X 4.7 GB blanks with an old Pioneer 105 DVD burner. I have not experienced any problems over the past 5 years and I plug the power into the DVD burner ONLY when it is being used - which is 3 or 4 times a year. Should I be using a second DVD drive which only reads a DVD to check on the files which have been burned to the DVD blank? How often should I be reading the files on the DVD to be sure that the files can still be read? Is 5 years the length of time before I should duplicate the files on an old DVD? Or perhaps sooner or perhaps longer? Since I make and keep a monthly backup image file of the C: drive (3 DVDs a year with 4 monthly backup files of 1 GB each), loosing one backup image file would probably not be critical. Question: The dual layer DVD drives and blanks (which hold more than 8 GB) seem to be more than double the cost. Are they just as reliable at this point as the single layer drives and blanks which hold only 4.7 GB? 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 cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 5 16:28:00 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:28:00 -0700 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <47063C020200003700013B64@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> References: <200710051700.l95H0PZ0052948@dewey.classiccmp.org>, <47063C020200003700013B64@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Message-ID: <470649F0.26307.ED91786@cclist.sydex.com> On 5 Oct 2007 at 13:28, Tim Shoppa wrote: > Responsiveness of a computer system depends on a lot more than the > speed of the semiconductors used to build it. Plenty of modern examples > of how to make fast silicon seem slow are coming out of Redmond I > notice :-). I seem to recall that there was a Honeywell mainframe back in the 70's that was completely re-engineered to make use of ECL--with the result that the new machine wasn't much faster than the older one. Anyone recall the system? Was that the one with direct water cooling- -and algae in the cooling lines? Cheers, Chuck From cisin at xenosoft.com Fri Oct 5 16:46:39 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 14:46:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <200710052035.l95KZZHX011894@floodgap.com> References: <200710052035.l95KZZHX011894@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <20071005144444.L70295@shell.lmi.net> On Fri, 5 Oct 2007, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > It's just a shame when until the MacIntel transition, even big beefy G5s > could still run many ancient Mac 128K-era apps (I still like to play Zero > Gravity from time to time, which is actually quite playable despite the > speed disparity -- probably a testament to very good programming). Running > code in Basilisk II just isn't the same. . . . and the incompatabilities have been solved, so that "modern" Macs can now run malware intended for Windoze? From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 17:01:56 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:01:56 +0100 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <200710052035.l95KZZHX011894@floodgap.com> References: <575131af0710050950o56fe0c95u2f8547fea009d34@mail.gmail.com> <200710052035.l95KZZHX011894@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710051501p3133f784jaaba03968f848e1c@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > It's just a shame when until the MacIntel transition, even big beefy G5s > could still run many ancient Mac 128K-era apps (I still like to play Zero > Gravity from time to time, which is actually quite playable despite the > speed disparity -- probably a testament to very good programming). Running > code in Basilisk II just isn't the same. I absolutely agree. Running an emulator doesn't make it a Mac. Anything can run an emulator; because a Windows box or an Amiga can run a Mac emulator doesn't mean they're Macs. By the same token, a Macintel can emulate a VAX or a PDP or an S/370, but it is none of those things! -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 17:02:40 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:02:40 +0100 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <20071005144444.L70295@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710052035.l95KZZHX011894@floodgap.com> <20071005144444.L70295@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <575131af0710051502n67038e0ej92e509782a37c551@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Fred Cisin wrote: > On Fri, 5 Oct 2007, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > It's just a shame when until the MacIntel transition, even big beefy G5s > > could still run many ancient Mac 128K-era apps (I still like to play Zero > > Gravity from time to time, which is actually quite playable despite the > > speed disparity -- probably a testament to very good programming). Running > > code in Basilisk II just isn't the same. > > . . . and the incompatabilities have been solved, so that "modern" Macs > can now run malware intended for Windoze? No, not directly, but if it runs real actual Windows, even in a VM, then Windows is the same old malware-magnet it is running natively. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From healyzh at aracnet.com Fri Oct 5 17:07:02 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 15:07:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <575131af0710051319p77374ab6w7b4a7d59df2640fb@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 05, 2007 09:19:59 PM Message-ID: <200710052207.l95M72Tt007409@onyx.spiritone.com> > > OK, that STINKS! Just the night before last I had to fire > > up ClarisDraw as even though I own copies of more modern drawing > > app's, nothing works as well. First in 10.4 they dropped support for > > classic AppleTalk breaking things for me, now this. Well, we may > > just stay on 10.4.x for the next few years. As a result of the > > Appletalk issue I didn't upgrade to 10.4 till earlier this year, even > > though I bought it the day it came out. > > Yep. Although to be fair, I have few Macs so old they can't run MacOS > 8.1 and it networks happily with Tiger boxes over TCP/IP. > > But yes, I entirely agree. In my case I was normally using classic Appletalk to speak to my OpenVMS server. As that was keeping me at Mac OS X 10.3.9 *AND* OpenVMS 7.3-2, I finally broke down and copied all the Mac files off of VMS, and upgraded both systems. Now the best way to get files between the two is FTP, which is far less convenient! :^( In all fairness I've already started looking into running ClarisDraw under emulation since I can't find a replacement I like, in the long run it is likely to run better under emulation. There is a glitch or two with running it under Classic on my G5. Besides I want to be able to upgrade to a Mac Pro one of these days. Or, I might just setup my G4/450 running Mac OS 8.6 (I have the special G4 version), and use it as an X-Terminal running my old copy of eXodus. At which point I'll be able to run ClarisDraw on there. Though at 8 years old, I'm not sure I want to depend on it for an app I *need*. > I happily run Linux, but if money were no object, I'd be on OS X on a > Mac Pro, with Wine for a few legacy Windows apps - or possibly > Parallels Desktop, as it's cheap and it runs Windows seamlessly - i.e. > Windows apps' windows merged with OS X apps on the same shared > desktop. On a quad-core or octo-core machine with 4G of RAM, I could > afford a copy of W2K in a VM. I'd never notice the load, I'm sure. The > thing that saddens me is that if you do this, you suddenly have to do > all that tired old dancing around with legions of MS updates and > antivirus and antispyware and so on in Windows on your nice clean safe > Mac. One of the reasons I'm still on the G5 is RAM is more important to me that speed. The only new system I could use would be a nice Mac Pro, and I don't really want to know what 4-8GB RAM would cost. I'm currently sitting at 5.5GB in my G5, and am starting to look at bumping it up to 7GB (will require pulling 512MB). Zane From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Oct 5 17:14:43 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:14:43 +0100 Subject: Apple Profiles... Message-ID: <4706B753.6090003@yahoo.co.uk> Anyone happen to know: a) The correct voltage* for the supply to the HDA (ST506), b) Whether the comms cable is wired straight through? (This for an Apple /// Profile - I'm not sure if the Lisa variant is different in this regard). I'm pretty sure I just used a straight-through cable many years ago, but confirmation would be nice. * I'm getting +16VDC on the one here (with the logic supply given a suitable dummy load so that it produces a regulated +5VDC). I don't particularly want to toast the HDA if that's supposed to be something like 12VDC... possible that the supplies are essentially separate I suppose, and the HDA output needs its own load before it'll regulate properly. I thought there was a service manual for the Profile (Lisa or /// I'm not sure) floating around a decade or so ago - doesn't seem to show up under Google though and it's not on bitsavers :-( cheers Jules From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 5 16:43:18 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:43:18 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <4704FF99.14263.9CEB7F1@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 4, 7 02:58:33 pm Message-ID: > (particularly printers) when emulation is used. Some may feel joy > when seeing an original IBM 1620 console typewriter work, but it > always struck me as something ready to fly apart at any moment > (particularly when returning the carriage). That is part of the fun. Picking up all the little bits and figuring out how to get them back together ;-) > On the other hand, an emulator can allow you to emulate an exotic > peripheral that you might not even be able to find. It's a knife > that cuts both ways. That depends on whether the priperhal has a sensible mapping to a normal PC peripheral. For something like a printer, or a graphics display (even a vecotr display), it does. But an interface to a real-world measuring instrument probably doesn't. For example I have an interface on one of my calculators that reads in 9 decades of BCD digits + exponet, sign, etc infromation. Suppose I link that to a frequency counter. I doubt there's any common PC peripheral that can measure the frequenct of a 10MHz signal and gie 8 or 9 digits. The other thing I make a lot of use of are TTL-level parallel interfaces. Not printer prots, but things more akin to 'user ports'. Again there's no common, unviersal, PC equivalent. > Again, pick your "PeeCee" carefully and you can easily wind up with > something that not only is more reliable, but much quieter and less 'As reliable', maybe, but I doubt it could be 'more relaile' than many of my classics -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 5 17:26:44 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:26:44 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <5.0.0.25.2.20071005093910.07deef98@alpha.ccii.co.za> from "Wouter" at Oct 5, 7 09:41:25 am Message-ID: > > Hi all > > >From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > > > >A friend of mine was nearly killed due to this. He tested some wiring for > >voltage-to-earth and the meter said it was essentially dead. SO he > >started workign, alas the meter was malfuctioning, and he got the full > >mains volatege across him. He imediately went and bought an expensive mad > >reliable neter. > > I always short my screwdriver across the line before fitting, say, a light > socket or a switch. Not with one of my screwdriers you don't! I value my tools... An electircal-engineer friend of mine toaught me the correct procedure. Firstly, test the meter on a circuit you know is live. Then isolate the circuit you want to work on, check that the meter shows it to be dead. Then chekc the meter on a live cirucit again, to be sure it's not failed between the first 2 tests. After that, for mains volage, (but nothing higher)!, I'd brush the wiring with the back of my fingers, the idea being that if by some fluke it is sitll live, the shock would throw me off, not force me onto the terminals/ Said friend has a voltmeter used for small overhead power lines (up to 11kV or something). In the carrying case is a small 5kV-or-so battery-operated PSU. You use that to check the meter is working correctly before and ever seach test to see if a power line is dead. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 5 17:31:49 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:31:49 +0100 (BST) Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: from "listmailgoeshere@gmail.com" at Oct 5, 7 01:30:40 pm Message-ID: > > BOth RS (which is NOT Radio Shack, OK) and Farnell have tin/lead solder > > listed on their websites (I checked earlier this evening) and neither > > seems to say 'avaialble until stocks exhausted'. I don't think there's > > any real problem yet in getting it over here. > > Maplin have stopped selling it entirely. Look in the latest catalogue > - it's not in there. (It wasn't in the last Maplin catalouge either). So what? I can name a dozen things that Maplin used to sell, that are still made, and that are availale from other UK components suppliers. This hardly makes them unavailale. Maplin have really gone away from the hobbyist electronic market towards PC-clone modules, cinsumer electronics, etc. Gone are the days when you could go to the enarest Maplin in your lunchbreak to get the bits needed for the afternoon's hardware hacking. In fact these days, even if it's in the catalogue, there's a good chance it won't be in the shop. Most interesting items are 'order only' Still, RS and Frnell take credit cards. They're prompt about sending and have a good range of stuff. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 5 17:40:09 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:40:09 +0100 (BST) Subject: Experience with Dysan drive tester? In-Reply-To: <200710051343.43313.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 5, 7 01:43:43 pm Message-ID: > > There are a number of types of drives used in vintage computers that ar= > e > > no longer available, so it makes sense to be able to repair and align > > them. I just wioh I'd bought a 3" alignment disk (and for that matter a= > n > > 8" one) when they were available. > > You imply here that they're not. I don't know, not having looked. I kn= 8" alignment disks _may_ still be available (I've not checked recently either), but I doubt that 3" (Amstrad, etc) ones are. They were hard to find when the drives were in common use. > ow=20 > that with the 3.5" drives, I can buy new ones way cheaper than my time t= > o=20 > repair them is worth, if you can even get enough repair info on them to = My point is that the new, replacement, drives may not be properly aligned. Trying to get servicve manuals for such drives is normally a waste of effort (althogh I did get the Teac manual for the drive in this PC). But in general you can fidnd the read amplifier testpoints without a schematic, and figuring out what to move to do the alignment isn't hard either. As regards whether or not it's worth buying the alignment disk, I have some 3.5" drives that are non-standard (in particular the full-height Sony 600rpm units) and which can't be replaced by ex-PC-drives. I have to be able to repair and align those. > do=20 > anything useful. Working on the older stuff is another matter entirely=20 > though. I thought this was classiccmp :-). In other words, my first thoughts on this list are for the 'odler stuff'. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 5 17:14:56 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:14:56 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710041917w1dcf4e06radca63dad0e71c7b@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 5, 7 03:17:41 am Message-ID: > > A logic analyser is a bit lile a 'scope in that it displays a grpah of > > signals against time. The differnces are (a) it records the signals and > > displays the recorded version (some 'scopes do that too -- storage > > 'scopes), (b) it only works with digital signals (it doesn't display th= > e > > voltage, only whether they are high or low), and (c) it has many more > > input channels (even a good 'scope rarely has more than 4 channels, a > > logic analyser will have 16 or more). > > Fascinating. The snag is, I know very little about electronics below > the level of a broad knowledge of TTL, the rudiments of circuits and OK, a higher-level description would be 'something that records a number of digitla signals and displays their relative timing'. The sorts of things you might use one for would be to trace machine code (or microcode!) instructions/addresses on a processor bus (but cache memory and even a pre-fetch buffer makes that a little hard!), checking things like handshake sequencies on an interface, recording bit-seiral signals so you can decode them later, checking state machine sequences, and so on. What it is _not_ is a majic box that finds all digital electronic faults. It's a tool, which if used intellegently will help, though. > gates and so on. I have a bit of theory, no practice. I could not > diagnose a faulty chip or anything; my troubleshooting consists of > swap bits until it works. And at this, I know more than most people I You mean oyu've not been on the receiving end of my flames about this :-). Suffice it to say I've just written a presentation where I describe that as a 'ridiculous method'. I tried it twice when I was young-and-foolish and both times it not only didn't find the fualt, it actually left me more confused. I ended up tracing the fault using test gear in the traditional way, and it took me a lot less time. The main prolems are : 1) You have to know the module you're swapping in works. This is not always certain, particulalry on classic machines. Whre would you find known-good boards for an obcure 30-year-old system? 2) E very careful if the old and new boards are not the same revision. This caught me once, I swapped in what I thought was the same board (same part number, etc), only to find (after _much_ testing) it was a later version that needed a backplane modification to work. 3) A fault elsewhere in the machine could have damaged the origianl board, and might damage the replacemetn too. An obvious example of this is a defective power supply that's damaging chips on the logic boards 4) Even if you replace a board and the machine works, you may not have found the fault. One example of this (which happened to me) can be simiplified into a system of 2 modules linked by some interface. Let's call them 'A' and 'B'. You replace 'A' and the machine works. Unfortunately, the old 'A' was working fine _and was withing tolerance for things like interface timing (but towards the edge of that tolerance_, module 'B' was failing and couldn't handle the timing of the old 'A'. The new 'A' was on the other side of that tolerance, so it worked with the fialing 'B', but in time 'B' got worse and worse and the machine failed again. > I'm interested in things like the Sun and the DEC - and my couple of > IBM PS/2s and even the 9" mono compact Macs - because I hugely admire > the engineering and design of these machines from before the rise of > the mass-market PC. Things were /different/ then. Things were even more different before that IMHO. In many of my machines (and those of others on the list), theres isn't a processor chip. The processor is several boards of fairly simple chips -- simple gates, flip-flops maybe some small RAMs or PROMs. > I am, a bit like Chuck, mainly a software person, but one who's > competent with hardware to a basic level. I know bugger-all about > electronics and while I regret that, I'm not inclined to fix it now. I I actually wonder how you can be 'competent with hardware' and 'know bugger-all about electronics' To me those are contradictory statements. We also ssem to have different attidudes about learning new things. I tend to spend the time to learn whatever I need to fix the problem. I don't claim to be a programmer, I;d never write an OS or a compiler or an emulator, or.. from scratch. But when I had a problem which was clearly due to a device driver not correctly hadnling the somewhat odd hardwre in my PC, I learnt enough C to understand how said driver worked, and then editied the sources to get it to work. > Well, I would offer it here, but my "vintage" kit is old ISA boards, > dead MC680x0 Macs and suchlike. Probably not of much interest to > classic collectors, I fear. Actually, there are some ISA boards I am still looking for. Top of the list is an origianl IB< PGC. I don't suppose your Apple bits include Laserwriter spares, do they? I am looking for partially-dead boards to raid for custom chips (PALs, microcontrollers, etc) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 5 17:42:13 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:42:13 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710051344.57699.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 5, 7 01:44:57 pm Message-ID: > > I'm not so sure about that. Very often in setting up a vintage computer > > you'll need a special cable (RS232 serial cables being an obvious > > example, there are all sorts of odd pin-swaps you need for some > > machines...), and it makes a lot of sense to be abe to make it up. You > > can't always buy the right cable off-the-shelf, particularly not for > > obscure classics. > > I'd *still* like to someday get my hands on one of the fancier breakout b= > oxes=20 > I used to see in catalogs... :-) How fancy is fancy? I've got one here that does Bit-Error-Rate test, and anohter that will do RS232-current loop conversions, RS232 to parallel conversions, test RS232, current loop, or parallel devices, and even program EPROMs. Oh, it's got a little strip-printer built in too. -tony From pete at dunnington.plus.com Fri Oct 5 17:59:58 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:59:58 +0100 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <47061D7C.23708.E2B741B@cclist.sydex.com> References: <309472.74855.qm@web52701.mail.re2.yahoo.com>, <200710051018.33558.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47061D7C.23708.E2B741B@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4706C1EE.3000404@dunnington.plus.com> On 05/10/2007 19:18, Chuck Guzis wrote: > "Wetting" seems to be somewhat more difficult with lead-free, but > good, strong joints can still be made if done with sufficient care > (very clean surfaces, sufficient heat and flux). That's my experience too. I've used it for some electronics without problems, though I've found some alloys easier to use than others. I've also used the same lead-free wire recently to solder some stainless steel, and had no trouble -- though like Chuck I wasn't relying on the flux in the solder wire for that. It flowed well and made a very neat finish, better than leaded actually. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From ray at arachelian.com Fri Oct 5 18:15:37 2007 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:15:37 -0400 Subject: Apple Profiles... In-Reply-To: <4706B753.6090003@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4706B753.6090003@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4706C599.6010500@arachelian.com> I have this, however it's in multipage lzw compressed tiff format, not PDF. I'll gladly send it your way on condition that you'll turn it into a proper PDF so it can be put up somewhere such as lisa.sunder.net or bitsavers. :-) Jules Richardson wrote: > > Anyone happen to know: > > a) The correct voltage* for the supply to the HDA (ST506), > > b) Whether the comms cable is wired straight through? (This for an > Apple /// Profile - I'm not sure if the Lisa variant is different in > this regard). I'm pretty sure I just used a straight-through cable > many years ago, but confirmation would be nice. > > * I'm getting +16VDC on the one here (with the logic supply given a > suitable dummy load so that it produces a regulated +5VDC). I don't > particularly want to toast the HDA if that's supposed to be something > like 12VDC... possible that the supplies are essentially separate I > suppose, and the HDA output needs its own load before it'll regulate > properly. > > I thought there was a service manual for the Profile (Lisa or /// I'm > not sure) floating around a decade or so ago - doesn't seem to show up > under Google though and it's not on bitsavers :-( > > cheers > > Jules > > > From healyzh at aracnet.com Fri Oct 5 18:19:30 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 16:19:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: from "Tony Duell" at Oct 05, 2007 11:31:49 PM Message-ID: <200710052319.l95NJVla009262@onyx.spiritone.com> > Maplin have really gone away from the hobbyist electronic market towards > PC-clone modules, cinsumer electronics, etc. Gone are the days when you > could go to the enarest Maplin in your lunchbreak to get the bits needed > for the afternoon's hardware hacking. In fact these days, even if it's in > the catalogue, there's a good chance it won't be in the shop. Most > interesting items are 'order only' Sounds exactly like Rat Shack (aka Radio Shack) in the US. They still stock some parts, but quite honestly it seems to be a rather odd mix. They're more interested in Cell Phones, cheap stereo equipment, and cheap electronic toys. Zane From als at thangorodrim.de Fri Oct 5 18:20:52 2007 From: als at thangorodrim.de (Alexander Schreiber) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 01:20:52 +0200 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <470654EC0200003700013BCE@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> References: <470654EC0200003700013BCE@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Message-ID: <20071005232051.GB9935@thangorodrim.de> On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 03:14:52PM -0400, Tim Shoppa wrote: > Will wrote: > > I wrote: > > > The ECL technology used in the VAX9000 was gate arrays with roughly the > > > same timing parameters as 100K ECL (0.5 to 1.0 ns propogation delays). > > > Yes, but I do not think that was the cutting edge anymore. Considering > > the 9000 was supposed to be the machine that finally convinces the > > mainframe world to accept DEC, it may have been a poor choice. We > > probably will never know. 9000 may have been as big of an > > embarrassment as the KC10. > > The 9000 was obsoleted by the NVAX chip before the 9000 hit the street. > > "the mainframe world" acceptance of a CPU is the stupidest-ass thing > a company could ever ever want. On a.f.c there were some references > to emulating Unisys architectures on Intel hardware, and I followed the > links to the trade press rags, and the rags were filled with a bunch of > useless self-important balloon-filling about CPU technologies with no evidence > that anywhere anyone understood what the emulation layer actually > did. I came away not knowing what the emulation layer actually did either Oh, the one emulate-mainframe-on-other-CPUs approach I'm remotely familiar with was emulating BS2000 maainframes (the SIEMENS version of a slightly modified S/390 with their on version of the OS on it) on SPARC CPUs running Solaris. They used a two-pronged approach: - non performance critical path: simply run /390 (their version of the S/390 architecture) machine code in an emulator - performance critical path (sorting routines and stuff): treat /390 machine code as high level language, compile to SPARC machine code and load that inside the emulator To set it all up, they took a standard Fujitsu-SIEMENS SPARC machine (reasonably similiar to SUNs stuff, I believe) with stock Solaris and proceeded by ramming a _honking_ big kernel module down the throat of Solaris to speed things up with tricks like grabbing a huge chunk of memory away from Solaris and mucking around with the VM setup themselves and so on as well as containing the emulation environments guts and running them in kernel space. It appeared to work - they even offered what machines as "mainframe and UNIX server in one box", basically a SPARC server with their mainframe emulation environment in there. That, btw, was the second generation approach. Their first version of that apparently was based on using MIPS based machines and massively molesting the kernel of their own UNIX variant to support the mainframe emulator infrastructure. The guys we talked to told that the SPARC based approach was much less complex and much faster as well. They apparently also were emulating much of the mainframes I/O environment in terms of storage and communication links and mapping them to what was available on the host system. And they even went as far as clustering their UNIX/mainframe machine bastards into a failover cluster. All of this information was gleaned from a trip our operating systems professor organized to their (SIEMENS) mainframe development labs while I was studying CS and was around 1999/2000 or so. So consider it with a grain (or more) of salt ;-) > >I am thinking raw horsepower - all the benchmarking stuff. Looking at > >the KL10 (or the other DEC ECL machines), it justs seems like they > >should have been better number crunchers. > > Mainframes are really good at some things, sometimes they are decent > number crunchers in terms of pure FLOPS but it has been three to four > decades since they delivered any punch in terms of FLOPS per dollar. As far as I'm aware - correct me if I'm hilariously wrong - mainframes were (and are) less renowned for their raw number crunching power but more for massive I/O capabilities and the ability to translate that into a metric arseload of parallel activities (sessions, transactions, ...) going on at the same time. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison From aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Oct 5 18:44:29 2007 From: aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk (Andrew Burton) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 00:44:29 +0100 (BST) Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <20071005193357.4EEDC55E31@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <203474.31545.qm@web23410.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Yes, you can find Amiga schematics online. Simply search for them using a certain well known online search site :) Speaking of Amiga's, I have been very lucky over the last few months to acquire several Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manuals and 2 different editions of the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual (1985 & 1989 editions) which have proved invaluable in helping me to get my own copperlist working :) I'm a software guy too and have been meaning to Google/Wiki things like "electrolytic capacitors" to find out how things work. However, my current projects require alot of my online time, so it isn't possible at present :( Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Bryan Pope wrote: > Well, aside from 1 old Sun (SPARCstation IPX), the soon-to-arrive > VAXstation, an Amiga and 2 STs and a QL, all my kit is Macs and PCs. > The PCs range from a 386 to an Athlon XP, Macs from an SE/30 to a Blue > & White G3/400MHz. So I don't run what most people here would consider > "old hardware", I suppose! > I know for the Amiga Commodore provided schematics... > I am, a bit like Chuck, mainly a software person, but one who's > competent with hardware to a basic level. I know bugger-all about > electronics and while I regret that, I'm not inclined to fix it now. I > just have an aesthetic appreciation for the way things /used/ to be > done. > I am also mainly a software person, but I am slowly teaching myself electronics because I would like to know how the "other side" works! :) Cheers, Bryan From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 19:01:26 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 20:01:26 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <20071005232051.GB9935@thangorodrim.de> References: <470654EC0200003700013BCE@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> <20071005232051.GB9935@thangorodrim.de> Message-ID: > As far as I'm aware - correct me if I'm hilariously wrong - mainframes > were (and are) less renowned for their raw number crunching power but > more for massive I/O capabilities and the ability to translate that into > a metric arseload of parallel activities (sessions, transactions, ...) > going on at the same time. "Number crunching" is perhaps the wrong term. Perhaps just plain old horsepower would be better. My point is this. The KL10s only managed something like 2 MIPS, I think. For an ECL machine running a fairly clean architecture, that is just plain old slow. -- Will From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 19:24:37 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 01:24:37 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710041917w1dcf4e06radca63dad0e71c7b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710051724o7467200bp70ef14701b424a2d@mail.gmail.com> On 05/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > > > A logic analyser is a bit lile a 'scope in that it displays a grpah of > > > signals against time. The differnces are (a) it records the signals and > > > displays the recorded version (some 'scopes do that too -- storage > > > 'scopes), (b) it only works with digital signals (it doesn't display th= > > e > > > voltage, only whether they are high or low), and (c) it has many more > > > input channels (even a good 'scope rarely has more than 4 channels, a > > > logic analyser will have 16 or more). > > > > Fascinating. The snag is, I know very little about electronics below > > the level of a broad knowledge of TTL, the rudiments of circuits and > > OK, a higher-level description would be 'something that records a number > of digitla signals and displays their relative timing'. > > The sorts of things you might use one for would be to trace machine code > (or microcode!) instructions/addresses on a processor bus (but cache > memory and even a pre-fetch buffer makes that a little hard!), checking > things like handshake sequencies on an interface, recording bit-seiral > signals so you can decode them later, checking state machine sequences, > and so on. [Nod] But as I said elsewhere, for my clients today, if a machine is less than a couple of gigahertz, it's skipware. It's not worth my time to try to diagnose a fault; if it fails, swap it out and replace it with a new machine. It's taken me a long time to accept this, but it is the most sensible method; my job is to economically deliver a working, stable system for my clients, not to nurse their old kit along as long as possible. For my own kit, the rule is similar, /pace/ that I am unwilling to spend any money at all on it if at all possible. Things get replaced once there's a better replacement waiting for free. > You mean oyu've not been on the receiving end of my flames about this > :-). Suffice it to say I've just written a presentation where I describe > that as a 'ridiculous method'. I take your point, but what I'm talking about here is swapping DIMMs and video cards and so on in PCs. A PC more than about 3-4yr old is not worth fixing; extract the data, maybe cannibalise some bits, and bin in. (Which actually means, ship it off to ComputerAid.) Nonetheless, PCs depreciate in about 3yr. After that, you don't fix, you replace. Macs are much the same but it's maybe 4-5y if they're not in demanding roles. However, the vastly superior build quality usually means that they last until they're too old and slow to be any use to anyone. > I actually wonder how you can be 'competent with hardware' and 'know > bugger-all about electronics' To me those are contradictory statements. I realize that. But I did specify earlier: I don't generally work below the level of the circuit board. There's no single part of a PC bar the CPU that's generally worth more than ?50, and I charge ?75 an hour. If it's duff, stick in a new one. > We also ssem to have different attidudes about learning new things. I > tend to spend the time to learn whatever I need to fix the problem. I > don't claim to be a programmer, I;d never write an OS or a compiler or an > emulator, or.. from scratch. But when I had a problem which was clearly > due to a device driver not correctly hadnling the somewhat odd hardwre > in my PC, I learnt enough C to understand how said driver worked, and > then editied the sources to get it to work. Well, maybe you learn stuff like that easier than I do! > Actually, there are some ISA boards I am still looking for. Top of the > list is an origianl IB< PGC. I don't know what that is. I have a bag of ISA kit: mostly multi-I/O cards, sound cards, some NICs, and a few bits of relative exotica like a Hayes Enhanced Serial Port & a Colorgrafix dual-head ISA VGA card. If anyone here wants them, they can have them! > I don't suppose your Apple bits include Laserwriter spares, do they? I am > looking for partially-dead boards to raid for custom chips (PALs, > microcontrollers, etc) I have a dead Mac IIsi & a dead LC475, from memory. If you want them to cannibalize, you're very welcome to them. I can probably even deliver. I think I also have a flakey Umax PPC604 clone machine and a flakey Beige G3/300 minitower. Likewise, if you want them, you can have them. Might prove interesting projects to get working again? One would make a decent MacOS 9 system, the other a slow but workable low-end Mac OS X box, ideally with 10.3, I suspect. I would be happy to help and can provide media and so on for these OSs too. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 19:27:43 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 01:27:43 +0100 Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <203474.31545.qm@web23410.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <20071005193357.4EEDC55E31@mail.wordstock.com> <203474.31545.qm@web23410.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710051727v211cfbbcg9ef649982794c2f7@mail.gmail.com> On 06/10/2007, Andrew Burton wrote: > > Yes, you can find Amiga schematics online. Simply search for them using a certain well known online search site :) > Speaking of Amiga's, I have been very lucky over the last few months to acquire several Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manuals and 2 different editions of the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual (1985 & 1989 editions) which have proved invaluable in helping me to get my own copperlist working :) Gosh. Well, I think that for me, the extent of my ambitions are to get my A1200 with a 68030 card in it up to AmigaOS 3.9, and then maybe to put that on the Internet, just for fun. It also has a single 72-pin DIMM slot that can only physically take a single-sided DIMM; it needs FP-DRAM, too. I have only managed to find an 8MB DIMM for it; I'd really like to find a 16MB or even a 32MB one that would fit some time. I'm also tempted to try to get a Mac emulator running on it and then offload some of my old 68K Macs. I really want to get shot of most of my kit mountain and reduce it down to just the interesting machines I actually originally /wanted/! > However, my current projects require alot of my online time, so it isn't possible at present :( I think we all know /that/ feeling all too well. :?( -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Fri Oct 5 20:03:42 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:03:42 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... Message-ID: <4706DEEE.1030804@rogerwilco.org> The gods smiled upon me, and I was chosen to rescue the DEC VAX 11/750 that Richard alerted us too about a month ago. Yesterday I went up to collect it. I think most of us, during a pickup, are mindful of just getting the load onboard and away, and it was the same way for me with this pickup. Besides, the unit was literally stuffed so tightly into the front corner of their storage that there was no way to examine the innards at that location. A few images can be found at: http://www.rogerwilco.org/VAX11-750 Once back on homebase, I finally got a chance to open up the unit. To my horror (it is October, after all), I find just a single board installed in the CPU backplane, and one loose q-bus board! The first is a System Industries 9700-6301 with the following significant chips: Signetics N8X60N, AMD AM9128 (x2), Motorola MCM93L422PC (x4), TI SN74S181N, and about a dozen TI 82S137s with little numbered stickers on each. Otherwise it's loaded with TTL logic chips. There are no headers or other connectors on board, just the backplane fingers. I have no idea what this board is. I openly admit that I'm a complete {non-uVAX | massbus | unibus} novice. The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, which I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel interface. I'll have to do a little scouting on Bitsavers and Manx to see if I can turn up anything useful. Anyway, sadly, this box is not much more than an empty carcass, without any brains. It clearly was sacrificed to keep other systems alive. Still, I would dearly love to populate the backplane(s) and light this baby up, but I guessing I'll be hard pressed to find anyone with a whole set of spares that I could somehow convince into letting them go. I don't want to lose an opportunity here, and I'm not saying that I have my eye on the local metal recycler just yet, but what am I going to do with an empty chassis?! Now, I should say that the donor was extremely nice, and offered to pass along anything related that eventually turns up as they dig deeper into their massive pile (12' x 15' x 20', literally boxes/cartons/PCs upon boxes/cartons/PCs), but I'm not sure I should hope for much. Am I foolish to ask? Anyone with a spare set of VAX 11/750 modules? - Jared From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Fri Oct 5 20:09:30 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:09:30 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... Message-ID: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> [Sorry for the double post...having trouble with my mailer line-wrapping] The gods smiled upon me, and I was chosen to rescue the DEC VAX 11/750 that Richard alerted us too about a month ago. Yesterday I went up to collect it. I think most of us, during a pickup, are mindful of just getting the load onboard and away, and it was the same way for me with this pickup. Besides, the unit was literally stuffed so tightly into the front corner of their storage that there was no way to examine the innards at that location. A few images can be found at: http://www.rogerwilco.org/VAX11-750 Once back on homebase, I finally got a chance to open up the unit. To my horror (it is October, after all), I find just a single board installed in the CPU backplane, and one loose q-bus board! The first is a System Industries 9700-6301 with the following significant chips: Signetics N8X60N, AMD AM9128 (x2), Motorola MCM93L422PC (x4), TI SN74S181N, and about a dozen TI 82S137s with little numbered stickers on each. Otherwise it's loaded with TTL logic chips. There are no headers or other connectors on board, just the backplane fingers. I have no idea what this board is. I openly admit that I'm a complete {non-uVAX | massbus | unibus} novice. The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, which I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel interface. I'll have to do a little scouting on Bitsavers and Manx to see if I can turn up anything useful. Anyway, sadly, this box is not much more than an empty carcass, without any brains. It clearly was sacrificed to keep other systems alive. Still, I would dearly love to populate the backplane(s) and light this baby up, but I guessing I'll be hard pressed to find anyone with a whole set of spares that I could somehow convince into letting them go. I don't want to lose an opportunity here, and I'm not saying that I have my eye on the local metal recycler just yet, but what am I going to do with an empty chassis?! Now, I should say that the donor was extremely nice, and offered to pass along anything related that eventually turns up as they dig deeper into their massive pile (12' x 15' x 20', literally boxes/cartons/PCs upon boxes/cartons/PCs), but I'm not sure I should hope for much. Am I foolish to ask? Anyone with a spare set of VAX 11/750 modules? - Jared From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Fri Oct 5 09:46:18 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 07:46:18 -0700 Subject: Boeing Surplus Closing... for the better........... Message-ID: <505863d71d80bbf3f332500cd3dacb96@valleyimplants.com> So it isn't ideal- how's running everything through "a few ebay sellers" and resellers going to improve matters? The Tek terminals will still go to the scrapper, the Grey Walls will still go to the recycle bin (with the binders this time), and nobody else will even have a shot. I work in education, and I provide computer support for a nonprofit, and both groups get stuff at Boeing Surplus (though usually not classic computers- that's my department, and Boeing is a valuable asset, at little cost to Boeing. If you take away the surplus store (providing it covers expenses) you're removing an asset to the community and replacing it with people who are interested in maximizing profits, period. What's the likely change in how they handle 'classic' equipment? Not much. From bpope at wordstock.com Fri Oct 5 20:46:40 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 21:46:40 -0400 (EDT) Subject: TI-990 ... Message-ID: <20071006014640.902CB55E39@mail.wordstock.com> I believe it was Chuck who was asking where to find TMS9900 and TMS9995 chips.. The TMS9900 is available from Unicorn Electronics for $34.88 each. See --> http://www.unicornelectronics.com/monthly.html Cheers, Bryan From jrkeys at concentric.net Fri Oct 5 20:51:05 2007 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 20:51:05 -0500 Subject: Software Find at Thrift Message-ID: <008b01c807bb$5ce37b30$0c406b43@66067007> While checking out a old hangout I found a copy of IBM's Hollywood software Version 1.0 (on 3.5 FD), complete in the box for $1.81 plus tax. There was not much else there like it was in the long ago past. Speaking of Hollywood, the Hollywood video store near us is closing and I went dumpster driving the other night and found that they had tossed all the video game cases that had been on display. Most but not all were empty, I found PS2 and PS3 DVD's in some of the cases. It got too dark and I had to stop pulling cases from the dumpster but there was over 150 cases left in the trash. John From bpope at wordstock.com Fri Oct 5 21:04:50 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 22:04:50 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <575131af0710051314u2644901ehed6c63abdb5a9856@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071006020450.97D1A55E41@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Liam Proven > > On 05/10/2007, Bryan Pope wrote: > > And thusly were the wise words spake by Liam Proven > > > > > > Fascinating. The snag is, I know very little about electronics below > > > the level of a broad knowledge of TTL, the rudiments of circuits and > > > gates and so on. I have a bit of theory, no practice. I could not > > > diagnose a faulty chip or anything; my troubleshooting consists of > > > > All you need to start with is a logic probe. Then for simple logic > > chips like AND, OR, NOT you would place the logic probe on the one > > or two inputs o see if they are high or low. Then from that you > > would know what the output should be. For chips that were a little > > more complex you would use the truth table from the datasheet for > > the particular chip to see what the output should be for each > > combination of input(s). > > Er, hardly, when a modern chip has several tens of millions of gates on it! > > I make my meagre crust working on machines of, on average, 2-3GHz of > processing power, 1-2 gig of RAM and about a quarter to a half a > terabyte of RAM. I fear when one of those goes wrong, probing for a > duff transistor will do me little good! > Errgh.. I was *not* talking about anything modern!! :( :( Is not this a *vintage* computer email group?! I was referring to things like C= PETs, 4040s and other systems from that era! ie stuff you can test with equipment that does not mortgage your house.. > > I know for the Amiga Commodore provided schematics... > > I know a few dozen characters of Chinese. I also know that I could buy > a Chinese dictionary, but it wouldn't tell me anything! :?) But the schematics can help you fix a problem.. Even if you are only following the connections, it may help to show you which component failed by what the problem is and what is still working. > Ahhh. I'm going the other way. The recent new skills that are relevant > to me are principles of firewalling and TCP/IP security, routing, DNS > setup and so on. I'm also trying to learn about setting up and running > Linux servers built from scratch and a bit of coding in Python. For > me, the relevance of basic electronics is declining, not increasing, > and I am already half way through my life and accelerating! > So now you will be able to write a TCP/IP stack for a vintage computer? ;) How computers work is pretty much the same since the beginning.. they have just got faster over time. (and a lot more sterile, IMHO) Cheers, Bryan From gkaufman at the-planet.org Fri Oct 5 21:30:16 2007 From: gkaufman at the-planet.org (Gary E Kaufman) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:30:16 -0400 Subject: Decmate I In-Reply-To: <200710060148.l961mSEQ064302@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710060148.l961mSEQ064302@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4706F338.6000100@the-planet.org> I have a reasonable Decmate I / PDP8 with dual RX02's in a tower and spare parts CRT/Keyboard, spare motherboard. It boots up nicely, includes serial port board and back cover. I've enjoyed it for the past year, but now have to get it out of my workspace. Open to a reasonable offer, especially if the buyer can pick it up in Southern NH. - Gary From lproven at gmail.com Fri Oct 5 22:19:16 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 04:19:16 +0100 Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <20071006020450.97D1A55E41@mail.wordstock.com> References: <575131af0710051314u2644901ehed6c63abdb5a9856@mail.gmail.com> <20071006020450.97D1A55E41@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710052019p7698051dg1da57a845bba6dad@mail.gmail.com> On 06/10/2007, Bryan Pope wrote: > And thusly were the wise words spake by Liam Proven > > > > On 05/10/2007, Bryan Pope wrote: > > > And thusly were the wise words spake by Liam Proven > > > > > > > > Fascinating. The snag is, I know very little about electronics below > > > > the level of a broad knowledge of TTL, the rudiments of circuits and > > > > gates and so on. I have a bit of theory, no practice. I could not > > > > diagnose a faulty chip or anything; my troubleshooting consists of > > > > > > All you need to start with is a logic probe. Then for simple logic > > > chips like AND, OR, NOT you would place the logic probe on the one > > > or two inputs o see if they are high or low. Then from that you > > > would know what the output should be. For chips that were a little > > > more complex you would use the truth table from the datasheet for > > > the particular chip to see what the output should be for each > > > combination of input(s). > > > > Er, hardly, when a modern chip has several tens of millions of gates on it! > > > > I make my meagre crust working on machines of, on average, 2-3GHz of > > processing power, 1-2 gig of RAM and about a quarter to a half a > > terabyte of RAM. I fear when one of those goes wrong, probing for a > > duff transistor will do me little good! > > Errgh.. I was *not* talking about anything modern!! :( :( Is not > this a *vintage* computer email group?! I was referring to things > like C= PETs, 4040s and other systems from that era! ie stuff you > can test with equipment that does not mortgage your house.. But I don't and wouldn't even /attempt/ to fix anything that old. I have a couple of vintage machines, and I'd like to keep them running, but personally, that's more or less enough for me. I read with great fascination the discussions in this group, but for me, getting my first computer in 1982 or '83, I'm not really interested in owning anything before the early-1980s 8-bit home micros. And since there were many dozens of makes and I have absolutely no use for any of them, I confine myself to the few I still have. In the later '80s, there were a much smaller number of much more powerful 16- (or 32-) bit machines. I've got one of each of the big ones: a QL, an Amiga, an ST and several Acorns - an Archimedes and an A5000 and a RISC-PC. Apart from that, it's all Macs and PCs. That suits me fine. They were all free or /extremely/ cheap. If one dies, I'll try to find someone who wants it & I'll get another one. Things like logic analysers would be of little to no use to me on the machines I work with, which contain no discrete logic at all, just a few SMT or BGA VLSI ICs. They are, for the most part, impossible for human hands to repair, and if they were, it wouldn't be economical. So, I don't. I'd vaguely like to know how to run a metal smelter, how to forge and cast metal, how to do carpentry and whatnot, but they're archaic skills of no actual /use/ to me. I'm afraid tracing a duff RAM chip or replacing a serial line driver is in the same bucket in 2007. > > > I know for the Amiga Commodore provided schematics... > > > > I know a few dozen characters of Chinese. I also know that I could buy > > a Chinese dictionary, but it wouldn't tell me anything! :?) > > But the schematics can help you fix a problem.. Even if you are only > following the connections, it may help to show you which component > failed by what the problem is and what is still working. How? Given I have no analysers and wouldn't know how to use one if I did? The Amiga cost me a copy of NT4 and a Compaq server Ethernet card. Its accelerator and Squirrel SCSI cost me ?25 together. Hard disk, RAM, cables and software were all free. If any of it dies, I'll scrounge other bits. As an operating system aficionado, I want to know a bit about AmigaOS works, as it's widely held as a classic design. I've no desire and no need to know how to fix a duff Amiga, though. > So now you will be able to write a TCP/IP stack for a vintage computer? ;) No. Why would I want to? I'm not a programmer. I can program but I'm /rotten/ at it. > How computers work is pretty much the same since the beginning.. they > have just got faster over time. (and a lot more sterile, IMHO) I'd have to agree, yes. But learning to service a Model T - or, given my personal predilections as a biker, a Rudge or Douglas or AJS - would not be much help in running my ZZR1100. The owner's manual says, pretty much, check oil, chain tension, brakes and lights; otherwise, take it to the dealer. That's what I do. If I repair my PC badly, I might lose some data. If I repair my bike badly, I might die. I already have a metal arm, a metal leg and badly damaged inner ears from a severe bike crash. I don't want another. I leave it to the pros. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From evan at snarc.net Fri Oct 5 22:22:33 2007 From: evan at snarc.net (Evan Koblentz) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:22:33 -0400 Subject: Finally! We have video of Chuck Peddle @ VCF East 4.0 Message-ID: <005201c807c8$243229a0$eb4df945@evan> Thanks to Dave Haynie and Robert Bernardo. Chuck's talk begins around 15:00 into part 1. Part 4 ends just as he was concluding - and then the Skype PC when blue-screen on us. No video yet of the post-Chuck celebration, which is when the audience got to ask questions of Dave, Bil Herd, and Bob Russell, and when we sang "Happy Birthday to the Pet" with a chocolate chickenhead cake! 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBnmJhEOdC8 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LeMNKHUbs 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm8M5rdrDpA 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_C1j8uSO_I Rumor has it that a DVD may soon be available. - Evan From evan at snarc.net Fri Oct 5 22:31:28 2007 From: evan at snarc.net (Evan Koblentz) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:31:28 -0400 Subject: Finally! We have video of Chuck Peddle @ VCF East 4.0 In-Reply-To: <005201c807c8$243229a0$eb4df945@evan> Message-ID: <005701c807c9$631bdb10$eb4df945@evan> PS -- the "native German speaker" toward the end of part 1 is our good friend Hans Franke, who came all the way to New Jersey from Munich! -----Original Message----- From: Evan Koblentz [mailto:evan at snarc.net] Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 11:23 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Finally! We have video of Chuck Peddle @ VCF East 4.0 Thanks to Dave Haynie and Robert Bernardo. Chuck's talk begins around 15:00 into part 1. Part 4 ends just as he was concluding - and then the Skype PC when blue-screen on us. No video yet of the post-Chuck celebration, which is when the audience got to ask questions of Dave, Bil Herd, and Bob Russell, and when we sang "Happy Birthday to the Pet" with a chocolate chickenhead cake! 1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBnmJhEOdC8 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1LeMNKHUbs 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm8M5rdrDpA 4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_C1j8uSO_I Rumor has it that a DVD may soon be available. - Evan From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 5 22:35:42 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 20:35:42 -0700 Subject: TI-990 ... In-Reply-To: <20071006014640.902CB55E39@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071006014640.902CB55E39@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <4706A01E.15310.1029B8C3@cclist.sydex.com> On 5 Oct 2007 at 21:46, Bryan Pope wrote: > I believe it was Chuck who was asking where to find TMS9900 and TMS9995 > chips.. The TMS9900 is available from Unicorn Electronics for > $34.88 each. See --> Ooof, that's steep for an old chip. I'll be better off digging up a 99/4A and sticking the mainboard in my shop toaster oven. Thanks, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 6 00:03:38 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:03:38 -0600 Subject: TI-990 ... In-Reply-To: <20071006014640.902CB55E39@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071006014640.902CB55E39@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <4707172A.6060007@jetnet.ab.ca> Bryan Pope wrote: > > I believe it was Chuck who was asking where to find TMS9900 and TMS9995 > chips.. The TMS9900 is available from Unicorn Electronics for > $34.88 each. See --> > > http://www.unicornelectronics.com/monthly.html Where did you find that page? I can't find it from the main menu. > Cheers, Consider that replaces say 5 TTL boards at $400 each you got a good deal. Ben. PS. I can't find it in the catalog too. From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 6 01:29:34 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:29:34 -0700 Subject: TI-990 ...chip sources In-Reply-To: <4707172A.6060007@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20071006014640.902CB55E39@mail.wordstock.com>, <4707172A.6060007@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4706C8DE.23224.461363@cclist.sydex.com> I've done a little digging and, in addition to the SBP9989 I2L bipolar CPU, TI evidently produced something called an SMJ68689GBM, a CMOS version. Supposedly used in defense apps such as TOW missles. Anyone ever seen one of these things in the flesh? Supposedly, DOD bought up all remaining stocks as spares. Cheers, Chuck From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Sat Oct 6 01:43:08 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 03:43:08 -0300 Subject: Experience with Dysan drive tester? References: Message-ID: <06ea01c807e4$90d7d160$f0fea8c0@alpha> > As regards whether or not it's worth buying the alignment disk, I have > some 3.5" drives that are non-standard (in particular the full-height > Sony 600rpm units) and which can't be replaced by ex-PC-drives. I have to > be able to repair and align those. BTW, is asking for the "interrogator.exe" that in my original dysan disk it should still live, something wrong or offtopic here? :o) I have my alignment disks and the interrogator program, but the disk with interrogator seems not to work anymore :( From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 6 02:40:35 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 03:40:35 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710060340.36121.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 05 October 2007 18:14, Tony Duell wrote: > > gates and so on. I have a bit of theory, no practice. I could not > > diagnose a faulty chip or anything; my troubleshooting consists of > > swap bits until it works. And at this, I know more than most people I > > You mean oyu've not been on the receiving end of my flames about this > :-). Suffice it to say I've just written a presentation where I describe > that as a 'ridiculous method'. The derogatory term I've seen used for that is calling it the "shotgun approach" to troubleshooting. :-) (Snip) > 2) E very careful if the old and new boards are not the same revision. > This caught me once, I swapped in what I thought was the same board (same > part number, etc), only to find (after _much_ testing) it was a later > version that needed a backplane modification to work. I ran into a rather interesting situation one time in an industrial production situation. The device in question consisted of several boards full of 4000-series CMOS and it was controlling some machinery. The "fixer" there had been trying unsuccessfully to swap boards, and then to swap chips, though they didn't have a complete set of spare chips on hand and were getting them. I was called in as was a tech from another outfit, a rather different situation than the usual one but we managed to work together. I found a bad sensor (and no doubt the chip connecting to it was bad as well) where they'd routed the wire for it through the same conduit as a 480VAC line... Anyhow, after a bit the factory rep arrived and that's when we found out that the two sets of boards on hand were different revisions, and that they both needed to be swapped at the same time, or they wouldn't work with each other. Oh yeah, and in a spare minute I described, and quickly sketched out, a crowbar circuit for the fixer -- the light dawning on his face was quite edifying. The apparent original cause of the problems was a power supply having gone up to 22-24VDC, somewhere around there... > 3) A fault elsewhere in the machine could have damaged the origianl > board, and might damage the replacemetn too. An obvious example of this > is a defective power supply that's damaging chips on the logic boards See above. :-) (Snip) > In many of my machines (and those of others on the list), theres isn't a > processor chip. The processor is several boards of fairly simple chips -- > simple gates, flip-flops maybe some small RAMs or PROMs. Which reminds me of trying to troubleshoot some hardware that was controlling a milling machine once. There was a "logic diagram" that consisted of a whole *mess* of OR gates, but there weren't any particulars in there at all about which gate corresponded to anything at all physical. And in looking at the boards themselves what I saw was a whole lot of discrete transistors and no ICs at all. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 6 02:42:34 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 03:42:34 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710060342.35091.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 05 October 2007 18:42, Tony Duell wrote: > > > I'm not so sure about that. Very often in setting up a vintage computer > > > you'll need a special cable (RS232 serial cables being an obvious > > > example, there are all sorts of odd pin-swaps you need for some > > > machines...), and it makes a lot of sense to be abe to make it up. You > > > can't always buy the right cable off-the-shelf, particularly not for > > > obscure classics. > > > > I'd *still* like to someday get my hands on one of the fancier breakout > > boxes I used to see in catalogs... :-) > > How fancy is fancy? Not too terribly, considering I can't in any way justify spending much if any money on such a thing. The ability to interrupt any of the pins, maybe do cross-connecting, and LED indicators would be nice. > I've got one here that does Bit-Error-Rate test, and anohter that will do > RS232-current loop conversions, RS232 to parallel conversions, test RS232, > current loop, or parallel devices, and even program EPROMs. Oh, it's got a > little strip-printer built in too. Well, I don't see me affording anything like that any time soon, though if I were to somehow or other acquire one, I surely would NOT be disappointed. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Fri Oct 5 11:16:50 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 17:16:50 +0100 Subject: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB17@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> My German Is not that good but the gist of it is that it's a controller for a CNC drill. The 8/f is an Irish made one from the Galway plant. (Whilst working at DEC I visited Galway on a regular basis). I'm a bit confused as to where it is. The only Penzing I know is in Austria near Vienna. If it was northern Germany I'd go and get it. The system unit might be the basis for building up a PDP 8 system. Oh well one day I'll get a PDP-8 from somewhere. I'm sure that 10,000 + where made. Of those probably 3,000 where UK/European voltage models. Rod Smallwood The DECcollector -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gerold Pauler Sent: 05 October 2007 11:35 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] Got an email today, that you can get a complete pdp8/f on ebay. It is located in Germany. Does not mention how much memory it got but seams to be complete with paper tape reader and an atari 140ST as console. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320166292810 I don't have any connection to the seller. And I don't have any more free space for another pdp8 of this era. - Gerold From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Oct 5 11:24:35 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:24:35 -0400 Subject: MSCP controllers Message-ID: <0JPG0039U5IJ70F0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: MSCP controllers > From: "Jerome H. Fine" > Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:51:38 -0400 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > > >Johnny Billquist wrote: > >> (Sortof starting a new thread) >> >> There have been a discussion about the ineffectiveness of MSCP >> recently, especially compared to a dumb controller interface. >> >> To make a few comments on this; yes the MSCP controller is much more >> intelligent. But noone have yet talked about what this means. >> >> The overhead for playing with the MSCP controller is way much more >> than for a simple, and stupid controller. However, there is also a big >> speed gain in some situations. >> Jerome Fines observations are correct. Under a single-user system such >> as RT-11 (especially of the software acts in a naive way) much of the >> advantages of MSCP is lost. The fact that it can deal with large disks >> (or disks with different sizes) can hardle be called "intelligent". >> That's really primitive. >> >> Things that the MSCP protocol do handle, however, and where the HD: >> driver will suffer and loose, is when we get into more advanced stuff. >> >> The MSCP controller can have many I/O requests outstanding at the same >> time. Once one operation is completed, it can immediately start the >> next one. You actually have a zero setup time with MSCP. So if you're >> doing several I/O operations in sequence, a good driver, in >> combination with a good program, will be able to get more performance >> out of the MSCP controller than the HD: driver, which each new >> operation can only be programmed once the previous operation is >> completed. >> >> The MSCP controller can also complete several I/O requests with just >> one interrupt. No need for one interrupt for each I/O operation that >> completes. >> >> The MSCP controller can also reorder I/O operations for better >> efficiency. If you have three requests, jumping back and forth over >> the disk, it makes sense to actually do the two operations on one end, >> before doing the operation at the other end. This can be implemented >> in software by the HD: controller, but then we now have more software >> that must run before each I/O request is issued. >> >> The MSCP controller handles bad block replacement without the >> involvement of the software. It always present a disk without bad >> blocks. In real life, all disks have bad blocks, so somewhere this >> always needs to be handled. Now, if you have a simulated PDP-11, the >> disk is actually a file on that OS, so the underlaying OS will handle >> bad blocks for you, so it isn't necceasry for the PDP-11 controller to >> do this anymore, but MSCP was designed for raw disks, not emulated >> systems. Dealing with bad blocks on the HD: driver would cost a lot. >> >> The MSCP controller can do I/O to several disks in parallel. In real >> life, controllers like the HD: driver pretends to talk to exists as >> well. One problem with these are that if you have several disks, you >> can only do I/O to one disk at a time. Some of these controllers could >> allow you to do seeks on other disks while I/O was performed on one >> disk. However, things started getting complicated with this. >> >> The MSCP controller have pretty advanced error detection and handling. >> Including extensive reports to the software on problems. >> >> Now, those things are why it's more intelligent. And more intelligent >> means it also takes more software to talk to it. :-) >> >> MSCP is really like serial SCSI (or serial ATA), only done 20 years >> earlier. > >Jerome Fine replies: > >Johnny, I believe that your comments are very clear and >they address many of the aspects which concern the way >in which MSCP handles read / write requests in both small >systems (single user systems like RT-11 and even TSX-PLUS >since the device driver still handles one request at a time) >and large systems (such as RSX-11 and especially VMS). > >(NOTE that all of the following comments are with respect >to running programs on a 750 MHz Pentium III with 768 MB >of RAM using W98SE as the operating system, ATA 100 disk >drives of 160 GB and Ersatz-11 as the application program >running a mapped RT-11 monitor, RT11XM. While I have very >good reason to believe that the same relative results will >be obtained on a Pentium 4 under WXP, again using Ersatz-11 >running RT-11, I have done almost no testing at this time. >OBVIOUSLY, comparison with real DEC hardware of a PDP-11 >and a VAX can only be done on a relative basis since HD: >exists ONLY under Ersatz-11. In addition, since the speed >of disk I/O on the Pentium III (even more so on a Pentium 4) >is so much faster (more than 100 times) than the transfer >rate on a SCSI Qbus or Unibus, the comparison could be very >misleading since CPU time vs I/O transfer time might become >much more significant. For just one example, when the BINCOM >program that runs on a real DEC PDP-11/73 is used to compare >2 RT-11 partitions of 32 MB on 2 different ESDI Hitachi hard >drives (under MSCP emulation with an RQD11-EC controller), >it takes about the same time (about 240 seconds) to copy >an RT-11 partition and to compare those same 2 partitions. >Under Ersatz-11, the copy time is about 2 1/4 seconds and the >BINCOM time is about 6 1/2 seconds using MSCP device drivers. >When the HD: device driver is used under Ersatz-11, the times >are about 1 second for the copy and about 6 seconds for the >BINCOM - I have not bothered to figure out why the reduction >is only 1/2 second instead of 1 1/4 seconds.) > >However, I believe that my comments on the efficiency of >using the MSCP device driver under RT-11 vs the efficiency >of using the HD: device driver probably need to be analysed >much more closely. The other aspect of the analysis that >is missing is the efficiency with with Ersatz-11 implements >the MSCP emulation as opposed to the HD: "emulation". It >is unlikely, but possible, that Ersatz-11 has much higher >overhead for MSCP since the interface is so much more >"intelligent" than the HD: interface only needs to transfer >the data to the user buffer based on the IOPAGE register >values. > >A bit more information may help. > >(a) The HD: device driver can be used BOTH with and without >interrupts being active after the I/O request is issued. >It makes no difference under W98SE since the I/O request >is ALWAYS complete before even one PDP-11 instruction is >executed. This result also applies to the MSCP device >driver which I could modify to see if it might make a >difference in efficiency. However, when I attempt to >compare the copy of a 32 MB RT-11 partition with HD:, >the time difference between using interrupts and not >using interrupts is so negligible that it is almost >impossible to measure the total time difference to copy >the 32 MB RT-11 partition using the available PDP-11 >clock which measures in 1/60 of a second. Since there >are 60 ticks in a second, the accuracy is better than >2% over 1 second which seems adequate to determine on >an overall basis if using interrupts vs no interrupts >makes a significant difference. Obviously if there is >no significant time difference at the 2% level (of one >time tick of 1/60 of a second), then avoiding the extra >RT-11 code to handle the interrupt does not play a >major role in the increased efficiency of HD: vs MSCP. >I conclude that would be the same for MSCP as well. > >(b) The other aspect is the ability of MSCP to order >and internally queue I/O requests based on the most >efficient order for them to be performed, probably >when there are many requests outstanding and the >required head movement can be minimized by choosing >the order in which to execute the requests - which >thereby increases overall I/O throughput. If I can >make a suggestion, I respectfully ask what the interface >between the device driver and the controller (or host >adapter in the case of SCSI for MSCP - note that ESDI >controllers are also MSCP) has to do with efficient >internal queuing of I/O requests. Perhaps my viewpoint >based on RT-11 is distorted (or TSX-PLUS for that matter >which uses almost the identical code as RT-11 as far as >I am aware), but I ask the question. It seems to me >that a simple (dumb and efficient) interface such as >HD: is only the final step in instructing the "controller" >to perform the disk I/O whereas the actual "intelligent" >aspect is probably going to be in the device driver >of the respective operating system such as RT-11, TSX-PLUS, >RSX-11 or VMS. Obviously the "intelligent" portion can >also be in the actual controller or host adapter, but based >on my VERY limited understanding of MSCP implementation >by both DEC and 3rd party MSCP controller and host adapter >manufactures for both the Qbus and Unibus, all of the >"intelligence" of internal queuing of I/O requests for >the above 4 example operating systems is performed in >the device driver, if anywhere. All of the MSCP devices have some form of CPU RQDXn is PDP-11 (specifically T-11) other us Z80 or 8088/80188. Regardless the CPu engine sued there is considerable "intelligence" for example the RQDX3 carries the T-11, 8KW or ram and 16KW of Eprom as well as hardware support for disk(floppy and hard) IO and bus level DMA. So on one level your expectation is, if you want an intelligent reponse from the HD: you need to have an intelligent conversation. RT-11 however is rather dull in that it's conversation is limited to "do this", and the device does the simple thing and says "here" RT deals at the logical block level and if there is more than one block is a sequential read or write, very plain. RT does not even have the concept of nonsequential file allocation (scatter gather). More souphisticated operating systems do things like "get me this", "write out that" and flush this buffer for multiple users and processes. So the task list is both dynamic and multiple in its activity. TSX is still RT11 under the skin and only does simple operations as a result. >Please confirm if my assumption is correct with regard to >where the "intelligence" is located, i.e. in the device >driver or the controller / host adapter. Based on the >answer, it will then be possible to continue this >discussion. It would be helpful to isolate where the >decreased efficiency of using the DEC concept of MSCP >is introduced and what specifically causes the decrease >in efficiency. For example, on my Pentium III, I have >noted that when I copy large files of 1 GB or larger, >it is almost always useful to to no other disk I/O >during the minute it takes for the copy to complete >unless the additional disk I/O for another job is >trivial in comparison and I can usefully overlap my >time looking a a different screen of information. >Whenever possible, I also arrange to have different >disk files which will be copied back and forth on >different physical disk drives if the files are larger >than about 32 MB since the time to copy any file (or >read a smaller file) is so short in any case. While >I realize that on a large VMS system with hundreds of >users there will be constant disk I/O, I still suggest >that the efficiency of the device driver to controller >interface may play a significant role in overall I/O >throughput rates. The base intelligence must be on the controller to understand and act on IO requests. Othe the other hand there is also a requirement that to use the performance you need to have a high performing driver. RT-11 does not. The VMS DU driver is. The difference is the driver for RT11 is essentally a single task stream, do this, check, do that. The VMS driver will form up a list of tasks required of the storage system and so here's a list go do it and let me know when it's done and what the status for each was. I do believe what you really pointing at is not MSCP but the difference in emulation, simulation and real hardware behavour. I suggest this, emulation/simulation fidelity has multiple dimensions one being behavour of the programs code and another is operational speed. It's my experience with E-11 that program behavour is faithful but speed far exceeds the original device capabbilities to the limit of the host PC. The RQDX is old and depends on T-11 and that CPU is only clocked at 7.5mhz making it rather slow compared to it's hosts. Where as PC emulation (without throttles) may have a huge performance advantage is a far faster CPU. So it makes me ask how would your E-11 simulation look if you could tell it that the MSCP device and connected disks have a more limited speed. It also brings to mind is the MSCP emulated or simple stubbed with PC drivers and devices behind it? I ask that as MSCP is a copyrighted and encumbered (or was) protocal. >I await your reply and wish you a good weekend. I do hope there is s more sophisticated reply as well. I have the advantage of useing the RQDX in both Qbus uVAX and Qbus PDP-11 systems so I've seen how the the VAX (VMS) uses it and how RT-11, and RSX11 use it the performance over less complex disks like RL02. Allison From phil at ultimate.com Fri Oct 5 13:48:06 2007 From: phil at ultimate.com (Phil Budne) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 14:48:06 -0400 (EDT) Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200710051848.l95Im66J002107@ultimate.com> woodelf wrote: > Could the PDP-10 instruction set have been simplified for a faster > machine. Mind you I think you would still be stuck with 18bit address > because of LISP and having two addresses in one word. I was at DEC when the KC10 (aka "Jupiter") was under developement, and died, working in the FORTRAN-10/20 group on a compiler revision to generate code for "Extended Addressing" mode (see more below). I seem to recall being at a meeting where the Jupiter folks were giving us a talk, and it comming out that indirect addressing [recall the PDP-6/10 had one bit in each instruction for indirect, which meant: calculate the effective address using the index register (if non-zero) and the right 18 bits of the instruction, and then fetch the indicated word, and start all over, and if the indirectly fetched word has the indirect bit lit, you start again....] going to be slow, which was a serious problem, since one important way to access memory outside your current 18-bit "section" was to indirect thru a word with the high order bit set. The extended addressing design allowed for 30 bit virtual addresses -- 12 extended address bits, or 4096 18-bit sections. The KL only implemented 7 bits of extended addressing (16 sections), but the Toad-1 implemented all of them, requiring addition work on the monitor, and, I think another layer of indirection in section/page mapping. In hindsight, I'm not sure why we couldn't have "made do" using "base registers" ala S/360 for objects in other sections or performing addressing arithmetic explicitly, and then indexing, unless indexing couldn't reference data outside the "local" section. William Donzelli wrote: > Of course, any architecture could get a speed boost when you start > pruning out those pesky instructions. > > PDP-10 was pretty clean, actually. Except for the EXTEND instruction, which had all kinds of goop including MOVSLJ (move-sludge) a string copy instruction and kinds of stuff only a COBOL runtime implementor could love.... phil From paul0926 at comcast.net Fri Oct 5 13:56:54 2007 From: paul0926 at comcast.net (Paul Heller) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:56:54 -0600 Subject: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB17@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <00d201c80781$7f5d5da0$6401a8c0@xppro> ---- Original Message ----- From: "Rod Smallwood" > I'm a bit confused as to where it is. The only Penzing I know is in > Austria near Vienna. > If it was northern Germany I'd go and get it. The system unit might be > the basis for building up a PDP 8 system. > Google maps shows it near Munich. Paul From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 02:45:41 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 09:45:41 +0200 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <4705BC7B.3030300@mdrconsult.com> References: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> <4705BC7B.3030300@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: On 10/5/07, Doc Shipley wrote: > Tiger (v10.4) did not ship with Classic either. I happen to be running an Intel MacBook Pro and have already run into this issue... for emulating various classic environments, I've already installed VICE, have tried to install Dosbox (and had as-yet-unresolved problems with its source not being able to find the X-11 header files on my disk - yes... I _did_ install X)... what I would love to do, but don't seem to be able to, is to run some OS 9 PPC Mac programs. Presumably, I'm screwed since I have an Intel processor, but if there's a way to run Classic PPC Mac apps on an Intel Mac running OS 10.4, I'd love to hear about it. Thanks, -ethan From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Fri Oct 5 14:27:33 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:27:33 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: these RTL or what? > From: "William Donzelli" > Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:55:28 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> Using ultra-fast ECL doesn't make much sense when you've got nanoseconds >> of delay to the backplane, to the next board, and back to the part that >> needs the signal. > >That depends on how tight everything is. Thermal Conduction Module, anyone? At 1ns/ft even the TCMs were not tight/dense enough. >> The ECL technology used in the VAX9000 was gate arrays with roughly the >> same timing parameters as 100K ECL (0.5 to 1.0 ns propogation delays). > >Yes, but I do not think that was the cutting edge anymore. Considering >the 9000 was supposed to be the machine that finally convinces the >mainframe world to accept DEC, it may have been a poor choice. We >probably will never know. 9000 may have been as big of an >embarrassment as the KC10. > >Even though the 9000s were bombs, they are one of the few VAX machines >I would chase after. ;) the problem is the 9000 by time it got out the door CMOS system on a chip was around the corner. With the ability to put transistors literally next to each other it was easier to achieve overall speed. When you consider that you could put multiple systems in less space than a 9000 well, quantity has it's own special quality. >> Responsiveness of a computer system depends on a lot more than the >> speed of the semiconductors used to build it. Plenty of modern examples >> of how to make fast silicon seem slow are coming out of Redmond I >> notice :-). ;) I was always amazed that a dozen users could be on an 11/34 but one user could bring a 486 to it's knees. > >I am thinking raw horsepower - all the benchmarking stuff. Looking at >the KL10 (or the other DEC ECL machines), it justs seems like they >should have been better number crunchers. Crunching numbers was a part of the task. The other part was moving and handeling data in mass storage and memory. Most of the DEC hardware moved data pretty fast. What was the demise of PDP-10 was simple, megabytes. A PDP-10 could not address the huge volumes of data in one chunk comming from the more complex models and programs in use. VAX offered a 32bit address, PDP-10 was basicially 18bits with memory extension. If your munching a model or database of millions of elements that is as important as the time to add two word size numbers. It's why PDP-11 was replaced with VAX and why VAX was replaced with Alpha. In the end ECL was a way to speed but always at such a high system cost and complexity it was often behind the curve for integration and delivery. Usually other technologies were close enough behind and had the higher density or ease of integrationin to larger systems needed to offset the per gate speed with sometimes better complex function speeds. Allison >-- >Will From bqt at softjar.se Fri Oct 5 14:49:00 2007 From: bqt at softjar.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 21:49:00 +0200 Subject: MSCP controllers In-Reply-To: <200710051700.l95H0PZ9052948@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710051700.l95H0PZ9052948@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <1191613740.6298.46.camel@hq-tutus> fre 2007-10-05 klockan 12:00 -0500 skrev "Jerome H. Fine" : > Johnny, I believe that your comments are very clear and > they address many of the aspects which concern the way > in which MSCP handles read / write requests in both small > systems (single user systems like RT-11 and even TSX-PLUS > since the device driver still handles one request at a time) > and large systems (such as RSX-11 and especially VMS). Thank you. And yes, there might be a big difference between systems like RT-11, and larger ones. I don't know enough of the innards of RT-11 device drivers to tell how it is doing, nor how programs might utlize the driver. > (NOTE that all of the following comments are with respect > to running programs on a 750 MHz Pentium III with 768 MB > of RAM using W98SE as the operating system, ATA 100 disk > drives of 160 GB and Ersatz-11 as the application program > running a mapped RT-11 monitor, RT11XM. While I have very > good reason to believe that the same relative results will > be obtained on a Pentium 4 under WXP, again using Ersatz-11 > running RT-11, I have done almost no testing at this time. > OBVIOUSLY, comparison with real DEC hardware of a PDP-11 > and a VAX can only be done on a relative basis since HD: > exists ONLY under Ersatz-11. In addition, since the speed > of disk I/O on the Pentium III (even more so on a Pentium 4) > is so much faster (more than 100 times) than the transfer > rate on a SCSI Qbus or Unibus, the comparison could be very > misleading since CPU time vs I/O transfer time might become > much more significant. For just one example, when the BINCOM > program that runs on a real DEC PDP-11/73 is used to compare > 2 RT-11 partitions of 32 MB on 2 different ESDI Hitachi hard > drives (under MSCP emulation with an RQD11-EC controller), > it takes about the same time (about 240 seconds) to copy > an RT-11 partition and to compare those same 2 partitions. > Under Ersatz-11, the copy time is about 2 1/4 seconds and the > BINCOM time is about 6 1/2 seconds using MSCP device drivers. > When the HD: device driver is used under Ersatz-11, the times > are about 1 second for the copy and about 6 seconds for the > BINCOM - I have not bothered to figure out why the reduction > is only 1/2 second instead of 1 1/4 seconds.) There is a big problem with using E11 here, since it queues and optimizes disk I/O as well, and so does the underlying OS also in the end. So it is tricky to do much evaluation of the controllers as such. You basically see what is best under E11. > However, I believe that my comments on the efficiency of > using the MSCP device driver under RT-11 vs the efficiency > of using the HD: device driver probably need to be analysed > much more closely. The other aspect of the analysis that > is missing is the efficiency with with Ersatz-11 implements > the MSCP emulation as opposed to the HD: "emulation". It > is unlikely, but possible, that Ersatz-11 has much higher > overhead for MSCP since the interface is so much more > "intelligent" than the HD: interface only needs to transfer > the data to the user buffer based on the IOPAGE register > values. Analysis is always a good thing. And yes, the implementation of the respective emulation in E11 plays a big part. > A bit more information may help. > > (a) The HD: device driver can be used BOTH with and without > interrupts being active after the I/O request is issued. > It makes no difference under W98SE since the I/O request > is ALWAYS complete before even one PDP-11 instruction is > executed. This result also applies to the MSCP device > driver which I could modify to see if it might make a > difference in efficiency. However, when I attempt to > compare the copy of a 32 MB RT-11 partition with HD:, > the time difference between using interrupts and not > using interrupts is so negligible that it is almost > impossible to measure the total time difference to copy > the 32 MB RT-11 partition using the available PDP-11 > clock which measures in 1/60 of a second. Since there > are 60 ticks in a second, the accuracy is better than > 2% over 1 second which seems adequate to determine on > an overall basis if using interrupts vs no interrupts > makes a significant difference. Obviously if there is > no significant time difference at the 2% level (of one > time tick of 1/60 of a second), then avoiding the extra > RT-11 code to handle the interrupt does not play a > major role in the increased efficiency of HD: vs MSCP. > I conclude that would be the same for MSCP as well. An interrupt handler that took anywhere near a fraction of 1/60 of a second is so broken it should be shot. Basically, you cannot measure anything with a clock of that low precision. Also, you need to check for I/O completion before doing the next operation. If you skip that, you will loose. So the question then is: is it acceptable to be in a tight loop waiting for I/O to complete, or do you want the machine to be able to do something else meanwhile? Let us instead look at this from a theoretical point of view. With the HD: driver, you need to somehow make sure that the previous operation have completed before you start the next one. This must all be done in PDP-11 code. You have the choice of either doing it polled, using a tight loop, or having an interrupt when the device is ready. Now, having a tight loop will most likely be better, but then your machine will do nothing else while it is waiting for the previous operation to complete. So most likely you will want to use interrupts. But no matter, we're talking about executing PDP-11 instructions the whole time here. Either to polled loop, followed by setting up the registers for the next I/O request, or having an interrupt handler entry doing the same setup after some sagister saving and so on. As such, they take a damn much longer than doing native instructions on the host CPU. This is important. The host CPU in the HD: case is the machine running the E11 emulator, while for the MSCP case is either the machine running E11, or the local CPU on the controller card. My point here then is: once the previous operation have completed, the HD: controller must run through some PDP-11 code before the next I/O operation can start. With MSCP, the host CPU needs to run though some code before the next I/O operation can start, while the PDP-11 isn't burdened at all in this phase. Obviously, the MSCP case is better. But this is only true, if you queue more than one I/O reuqest to the MSCP controller. If you don't take advantage of this feature in MSCP, then your MSCP controller will be the same as the HD: controller, but with more overhead, since there is more bits to fiddle on the PDP-11 before a new I/O request can start using MSCP. Basically stop and go. Not efficient at all. So it's a question of if the device driver takes advantage of this or not. And this might be something that RT-11 don't do. Oh, and no, disk operations under E11 aren't so fast that no instructions will be executed before the operation completes. However, with disk caching and tricks inside E11, a few operations might appear to go that fast, before reality catches up with you. Disk I/O still takes on the order of milliseconds to complete. Guess how long one PDP-11 instruction in E11 takes? If anything, computer speed have advanced much more that disk speeds, so that even with emulated computers, we now manage to do a *lot* while waiting for disks. And already with the trusty old real hardware, we sat around waiting for disks long times... > (b) The other aspect is the ability of MSCP to order > and internally queue I/O requests based on the most > efficient order for them to be performed, probably > when there are many requests outstanding and the > required head movement can be minimized by choosing > the order in which to execute the requests - which > thereby increases overall I/O throughput. If I can > make a suggestion, I respectfully ask what the interface > between the device driver and the controller (or host > adapter in the case of SCSI for MSCP - note that ESDI > controllers are also MSCP) has to do with efficient > internal queuing of I/O requests. Perhaps my viewpoint > based on RT-11 is distorted (or TSX-PLUS for that matter > which uses almost the identical code as RT-11 as far as > I am aware), but I ask the question. It seems to me > that a simple (dumb and efficient) interface such as > HD: is only the final step in instructing the "controller" > to perform the disk I/O whereas the actual "intelligent" > aspect is probably going to be in the device driver > of the respective operating system such as RT-11, TSX-PLUS, > RSX-11 or VMS. Obviously the "intelligent" portion can > also be in the actual controller or host adapter, but based > on my VERY limited understanding of MSCP implementation > by both DEC and 3rd party MSCP controller and host adapter > manufactures for both the Qbus and Unibus, all of the > "intelligence" of internal queuing of I/O requests for > the above 4 example operating systems is performed in > the device driver, if anywhere. There are obviously several reasons why this needs to be in the controller. If we go back to the first point I discussed above, about MSCP being more efficient if we queue several operations at once, without having to wait for each operation to complete before queueing the next one, then you must also do queue optimization inside the controller, since obviously you cannot easily synconize and reorder operations inside the device driver once you have queued them to the controller. That would require you to withdraw that I/O request, so that you can insert another and then reinsert the revoked one again for you to get the correct ordering. Now, if you don't want the efficiency of being able to queue new operations immediately, but instead only issue them once the previous one is finished, then you can easily also do queue optimizations in the device driver. However, this all also is related to another aspect of MSCP that I mentioned: bad block replacement. Since the controller does this without the involvement of the driver, you cannot from the software really say which ordering of the I/O requests that are optimal. Bad block replacements mean that block that you might think are adjacent might physically be very far apart on the disk. In short, the software haven't a clue to how the physical layout of the disk looks like, and therefore the software can't really do correct I/O queue optimizations. Another aspect is once again efficiency. By letting the controller do the queue optimizations, you unburden the normal CPU from this task, which otherwise takes quite a few CPU cycles to do. The controller can play with this while it's doing a transfer and is just idling anyway, so even if it is a slower CPU, this will end up being faster. So from several points of view, this is both more efficient, and leads to smaller and nimbler device driver, by not having to implement some issues for efficiency because that is moved to the controller instead. > Please confirm if my assumption is correct with regard to > where the "intelligence" is located, i.e. in the device > driver or the controller / host adapter. Based on the > answer, it will then be possible to continue this > discussion. It would be helpful to isolate where the > decreased efficiency of using the DEC concept of MSCP > is introduced and what specifically causes the decrease > in efficiency. For example, on my Pentium III, I have > noted that when I copy large files of 1 GB or larger, > it is almost always useful to to no other disk I/O > during the minute it takes for the copy to complete > unless the additional disk I/O for another job is > trivial in comparison and I can usefully overlap my > time looking a a different screen of information. > Whenever possible, I also arrange to have different > disk files which will be copied back and forth on > different physical disk drives if the files are larger > than about 32 MB since the time to copy any file (or > read a smaller file) is so short in any case. While > I realize that on a large VMS system with hundreds of > users there will be constant disk I/O, I still suggest > that the efficiency of the device driver to controller > interface may play a significant role in overall I/O > throughput rates. Well, as to your thoughts above, I think I've covered that now. As for explanations why you're observing faster operations with the HD: driver in RT-11, my first suspicion would be that the program don't issue multiple reads/writes to the controller, but instead issues one and waits for it to complete before doing the next one. If the program indees tries to be optimal, then my next guess would be the device driver not issuing several operations to the same controller, leading to the same behaviour. While I admittedly don't know enough about RT-11 to say, and obviously don't know how your program does it, I know that in RSX, the device driver do issue the request immediately if possible, and as such you can have several operations outstanding in parallell. If I were to write a na?ve copy program, I might not care enough to try to get the disks working at full speed, which would lead to the same problem you're observing. However, I know how to write such a program in RSX so that I really would keep the controller busy at all times. But that would involve using asynchronous I/O. Another thing: The MSCP driver in RSX is maybe the most complex driver there is (in competition with the TT: driver). There is a reason for this. MSCP is a complex controller. One interesting thing to note is that RSX device drivers can use I/O queue optimization. There is support in the kernel for drivers to do this. And the MSCP driver do have the code for this, but is turned off by default, since it's mostly useless, for the reasons above. Only if very many packets are queued will the driver I/O queue optimization even begin to be used, and then over just the trailing I/O requests that the controller don't have room for. Johnny From derschjo at msu.edu Fri Oct 5 20:00:29 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:00:29 -0700 Subject: Looking for Acorn A5000 keyboard & mouse... Message-ID: <4706DE2D.3020002@msu.edu> Man, I seem to be asking for a lot of keyboards lately :). Got a working Acorn A5000 sans keyboard and mouse. Connector looks like PS/2, but of course it's not. Anyone have a spare set? Thanks again, Josh From derschjo at msu.edu Fri Oct 5 20:49:08 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:49:08 -0700 Subject: SGI Crimson Questions & hardware request... In-Reply-To: References: <470474A8.7050703@msu.edu> Message-ID: <4706E994.60706@msu.edu> Thanks. Now that I know what to look for it makes it easier to order parts :). I'm going to put together a power cable so I can test the Crimson out and at some point I'll see what I can do about getting a nice 20A line. Could be useful for other stuff in the future... Thanks again! Josh Tothwolf wrote: > On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Josh Dersch wrote: > >> Hi all -- >> >> Just picked up an SGI Crimson this afternoon, which should prove to >> be a fun machine to play around with once I get it running... a few >> questions for those who've dealt with these before... >> >> - What kind of power cable does this thing take? I've not yet seen >> anything like the connector on the back of this thing... can I plug >> this thing into a regular household outlet (that can supply the >> massive power requirements) or am I going to have to rewire my house? :) > > I'd recommend a dedicated 120V 20A circuit for anything other than > light testing. > > The original power cords were made made of 12 AWG SO cord with NEMA > L5-20P and L5-20R connectors. SGI used Hubbell plugs, though Leviton > also makes compatible products. Anyone know the cord length offhand? I > don't have ready access to mine right now. I think they were 12-15ft. > > I just installed a bunch of Hubbell IG2310 receptacles a few weeks > ago. They are slightly more expensive than HBL2310 receptacles, but > are not a bad choice in a data center environment where you are > installing everything in conduit and running a dedicated ground to > each device anyway. If you are wiring stuff with romex, there isn't > any benefit in using a isolated ground device, so stick with the > HBL2310 instead. Either way, make sure you use a deep 4" metal box as > these devices are rather large. I can dig up the part numbers for the > boxes and mud-rings I usually use if needed. > > http://www.hubbellnet.com/max_htm/PDF_Literature_Library/h4636.pdf > > Cord receptacle: NEMA L5-20R > > Hubbell HBL2313 - 2 Pole, 3 Wire Grounding 20A 125V AC Twist-Lock > Connector Body > http://www.hubbellcatalog.com/wiring/section-b-datasheet.asp?PN=HBL2313 > > > Cord plug: NEMA L5-20P > > Hubbell HBL2311 - 2 Pole, 3 Wire Grounding 20A 125V AC Twist-Lock Plug > http://www.hubbellcatalog.com/wiring/section-b-datasheet.asp?PN=HBL2311 > > > Wall receptacle: NEMA L5-20R > > Hubbell HBL2310 - 2 Pole, 3 Wire Grounding 20A 125V AC Twist-Lock > Receptacle > http://www.hubbellcatalog.com/wiring/section-b-datasheet.asp?PN=HBL2310 > > -- OR -- > > Hubbell IG2310 - - 2 Pole, 3 Wire Grounding 20A 125V AC Isolated > Ground Twist-Lock Receptacle > http://www.hubbellcatalog.com/wiring/section-b-datasheet.asp?PN=IG2310 > > From healyzh at aracnet.com Sat Oct 6 02:48:27 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 00:48:27 -0700 Subject: EPROM Death? / EPROMS In-Reply-To: References: <0JPB000NZAVG1KL0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: I found out why I was getting weird results with the 27128's and 27C128's. I had the EPROM Programmer set for 27C256's. What can I say, I've only had the programmer for a few days, and this is my first time messing with programming EPROM's. I was able to successfully program one of the 27128's tonight, and it is now in use. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Sat Oct 6 03:01:10 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:01:10 +0200 Subject: CompacTape In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710050953r5c67f84ake0e932655fb8be67@mail.gmail.com> References: <51ea77730710011827m3b9c0003jc904130fcc52d5ca@mail.gmail.com> <4706418D.3020601@compsys.to> <51ea77730710050953r5c67f84ake0e932655fb8be67@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20071006100110.40ac5b06@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Fri, 5 Oct 2007 11:53:18 -0500 "Jason T" wrote: > My guess is they are meant for the 2.6gb THZ01/DLT260/Tx85 drives > rather than the 10gb DLT2000 drive. All these drives (2.6 GB to 10 GB) use the same media: DLT III, also called CompacTape III. To add more confusion: I have tapes labled with "DLT CompacTape III". -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From healyzh at aracnet.com Sat Oct 6 03:02:27 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 01:02:27 -0700 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: References: <200710050341.l953fKQ2015246@floodgap.com> <4705BC7B.3030300@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: At 9:45 AM +0200 10/6/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: >X-11 header files on my disk - yes... I _did_ install X)... what I >would love to do, but don't seem to be able to, is to run some OS 9 >PPC Mac programs. Have you tried? I thought that "carbon" apps should run under Rosetta. Of course your apps might not be "carbonized" (I think those are the right terms, it's been years, and it's late). >Presumably, I'm screwed since I have an Intel processor, but if >there's a way to run Classic PPC Mac apps on an Intel Mac running OS >10.4, I'd love to hear about it. I suspect you are out of luck. Most of us with non-Mac OS X apps are trying to run stuff so old that they're 68k apps. I've found that anything I am interested in that had a PPC version now has a Mac OS X version. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 03:28:00 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:28:00 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: On 10/6/07, J Blaser wrote: > The gods smiled upon me, and I was chosen to rescue the DEC > VAX 11/750 that Richard alerted us too about a month ago... > > http://www.rogerwilco.org/VAX11-750 > > ... To my horror (it is October, after all), I find just > a single board installed in the CPU backplane, and one loose > q-bus board! That is unfortunate. > The first is a System Industries 9700-6301 > with the following significant chips: Signetics N8X60N, AMD > AM9128 (x2), Motorola MCM93L422PC (x4), TI SN74S181N, and > about a dozen TI 82S137s with little numbered stickers on > each. Otherwise it's loaded with TTL logic chips. There > are no headers or other connectors on board, just the > backplane fingers. I have no idea what this board is. I > openly admit that I'm a complete {non-uVAX | massbus | > unibus} novice. That looks to me (from appearance and the part number) to be the 11/750-specific SI-9900 interface. I have one in an 11/750 in my quonset hut. SI made a number of host-specific interfaces (Qbus and 11/750, for certain, others likely)... this one fits in the same kind of slot as a DEC RH-750 MASSBUS interface, but is not, itself, specifically a MASSBUS card (there is at least one other board for that slot include, an additional UNIBUS interface). For the case of what you have there, you should also have a pair of 40-pin cables going off the backplane for that slot, out to an I/O bulkhead header. There would then be a pair of (possibly shielded) 40-pin cables running off to a 5.25"-tall rackmount box marked "SI 9900". It should have at least one host board to receive the pair of 40-pin cables, then on the other side of the box, one or more disk interfaces (there should be room for two or three of those). We had a pair of SMD interfaces in ours, attached to 160MB and 450MB Fuji disks, emulating a pair of RM03s and a "custom-sized" RM05, respectively. The 450MB disk always caused us heartburn because we had to patch the, IIRC, DBDRIVER.EXE to change the RM05 geometry, every time we upgraded VMS. The 160MB drive emulated a pair of RM03s/9762s, with no tweaking. I did notice you have a cable hanging down for a UDA50... it's likely that they had both SI disk _and_ Unibus-attachd SMD disks. That was a common arrangement for a variety of reasons. You will also want to be on the lookout for a DU boot ROM. The 11/750 didn't use the TU58 for boot files as the 11/730 and 11/725 did. You just twisted the ROM selector to the right device, then pressed reset/boot. the D ROM was typically the TU58 boot (DDA0?) so you could boot tape-based diagnostics. > The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, > which I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel > interface. I'll have to do a little scouting on Bitsavers > and Manx to see if I can turn up anything useful. If you don't find anything, the board looks to me like a papertape punch/reader interface. Try throwing that into your searches. > Anyway, sadly, this box is not much more than an empty > carcass, without any brains. Good luck on finding boards. They are out there, but I doubt they'd be inexpensive from a dealer. If you do find boards, you will have to match up the memory to your memory controller. There are three flavors. The oldest only can talk to 256KB boards (the same ones that work in an 11/730 or 11/70). You can stuff a max of 2MB in there - enough for ancient UNIX or VMS, but I wouldn't want to run VMS 4.0 or newer on that. The most common version will support eight 1MB boards (same as used with an 11/730 or 11/725). The newest version supports a pair of 4MB boards and a six 1MB boards (14MB). I have never worked with that one, but it would be something to look for. The other thing to do, and I don't have the docs handy for this, is to check your backplane in the memory area, to confirm what it's wired to accept. I have 11/750 S/N BT0000354. It shipped with 512KB, then I upgraded it to 8MB by adding the extra refresh/mux line and changing the SID dipswitch (rather than paying DEC to do it). I presume an additional wire is needed for the 14MB mod. I think you should be able to put a lower-rev memory controller in a backplane designed for a newer one, but you might need to update the SID switch to match what the OS is expecting. Don't let this worry you until you get enough boards to throw together into a CPU... just get some memory - 1MB boards _should_ be safe - then worry about which memory controller you find next. 256KB boards shouldn't be expensive, I wouldn't think - since nobody wanted them much after 1990. Everyone wanted 1MB boards for several varieties of VAXen, so lots of those were produced, too. We even had a couple 3rd-party boards with a handful of 256Kbit DRAMs, but the DEC boards (packed solid with 4164s) were the easiest to locate at surplus dealers. > Now, I should > say that the donor was extremely nice, and offered to pass > along anything related that eventually turns up as they dig > deeper into their massive pile (12' x 15' x 20', literally > boxes/cartons/PCs upon boxes/cartons/PCs), but I'm not sure > I should hope for much. Have them keep an eye out for that SI disk box - it's the other half of the board you already have. > Am I foolish to ask? Anyone with a spare set of VAX 11/750 > modules? I have no spares, sorry. Just a couple of machines and lots of experience crawling around inside them (at Software Results, I was our own primary hardware maintenance resource from about 1990-1994). -ethan P.S. - don't forget to pick up a short length of 1/2 ID Tygon tubing to rehab the TU58 roller. If you _do_ eventually have to scrap out the machine, save the backplanes, PSUs and TU58 for other 11/750 owners. Best of luck on finding a boardset, though. The 11/750 is a really neat beast. It would be good to see you getting it going. From spectre at floodgap.com Sat Oct 6 03:41:37 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 01:41:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: from Ethan Dicks at "Oct 6, 7 09:45:41 am" Message-ID: <200710060841.l968fblg010276@floodgap.com> > I happen to be running an Intel MacBook Pro and have already run into > this issue... for emulating various classic environments, I've already > installed VICE, have tried to install Dosbox (and had > as-yet-unresolved problems with its source not being able to find the > X-11 header files on my disk - yes... I _did_ install X)... what I > would love to do, but don't seem to be able to, is to run some OS 9 > PPC Mac programs. Carbon PPC binaries will run under Rosetta (and OS 9). Non-Carbonized ones will not. > Presumably, I'm screwed since I have an Intel processor, but if > there's a way to run Classic PPC Mac apps on an Intel Mac running OS > 10.4, I'd love to hear about it. Your other option is Sheepshaver and/or Basilisk II, which are emulators for PPC and 68K respectively. Sheepshaver can host up to OS 9.0.4. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Computers are like air conditioners. They stop working if you open windows. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 03:43:20 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:43:20 +0200 Subject: Retro-gaming on Mactel/OS 10.4 (was Re: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5)) Message-ID: On 10/6/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 9:45 AM +0200 10/6/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: > >X-11 header files on my disk - yes... I _did_ install X)... what I > >would love to do, but don't seem to be able to, is to run some OS 9 > >PPC Mac programs. > > Have you tried? I thought that "carbon" apps should run under > Rosetta. Of course your apps might not be "carbonized" (I think > those are the right terms, it's been years, and it's late). Hmm... I haven't tried screwing with it too much... I tried doing a 'fink' or one of the other distro tools - it fetched the Dosbox source just fine, but the compile stopped when it failed to locate X11.h or something similar. I have it on the system, so it's probably a Makefile assumption as to INCLUDEPATH or something similar. I just haven't had time to dig into it. It's really just to play DOS games ("Master of Orion I", "X-COM", "Colonization", etc.) so I'll probably dig into it in the depths of Winter at Pole, when I'm bored and need a nostalgia fix. It's entirely uncritical for "real" work. > I suspect you are out of luck. Most of us with non-Mac OS X apps are > trying to run stuff so old that they're 68k apps. I've found that > anything I am interested in that had a PPC version now has a Mac OS X > version. As I thought... but I don't think they have released a Mac OS X version of "Starcraft" and "Starcraft: Broodwars" - more unessential retro-gaming. I do have genuine copies of both for Windows, so it's probably easiest to just finish setting up Parallels and run the DOS versions. I was just hoping to stay native where native was possible, but not, apparently, in this case. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 03:44:13 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 10:44:13 +0200 Subject: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5) In-Reply-To: <200710060841.l968fblg010276@floodgap.com> References: <200710060841.l968fblg010276@floodgap.com> Message-ID: On 10/6/07, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > Your other option is Sheepshaver and/or Basilisk II, which are emulators > for PPC and 68K respectively. Sheepshaver can host up to OS 9.0.4. I have set up vMac, but not Basilisk II yet. I can probably do that when I find enough free-time to play games in the first place. -ethan From arcarlini at iee.org Sat Oct 6 05:00:51 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:00:51 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <004e01c807ff$c8e2f0b0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Tony Duell wrote: >> I always short my screwdriver across the line before fitting, say, a >> light socket or a switch. > > Not with one of my screwdriers you don't! I value my tools... You've often said that you always purchase good quality tools so I can see why you'd like to avoid damaging them, but damaging a screwdriver is usually preferable to ending up halfway across the room on your backside or worse (although if it's a vintage screwdriver maybe the equation is a little harder to compute :-)). At the point that he's shorting the wires, he already thinks that the power is cut so it really is "him or the screwdriver: pick one". Having said that, I do what you do and brush the back of my hand across to be (more) sure that the power is off. Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.14.2/1052 - Release Date: 05/10/2007 18:53 From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 05:01:50 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 12:01:50 +0200 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710042037.QAA22495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <200710042037.QAA22495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: On 10/4/07, der Mouse wrote: > > I am puzzled by people who want to run old hardware, but who don't > > want to learn to repair it to component level. It doesn't puzzle me so much... I personally started off with a self-assembled Elf and a factory-assembled PET to which I added a number of hardware hacks (including a "Simon" addon from a late 1970s issue of Byte), so I've always approached computing, let along "classic" computing, as a tandem hardware-software experience. Many others I see and work with, though, are 100% software. I see a lot of self-induced problems from not understanding the underlying hardware, but the fact that it happens hasn't changed over my 30-year time in the field (I started young). > > I can understand why > > people want to run the software under emulation (even if that's not > > what I want to do), but I am seriously wondering what extra you get > > from running the old machien _other_ than being able to fully > > understnad and repair the hardware. Even back in the day, there were lots of folks who bought PETs and Apples and more, that didn't know a single thing about hardware troubleshooting and repair - 30 years ago, when it broke, they took it to their dealer, or if it was too expensive to fix, they junked it (or gave it to me ;-) I don't find it surprising that people are around today with interest in the platform, but no interest or aptitude for repairing it when it breaks. Look at how many folks work on their own cars now, compared with 1977 - same issue, different hardware platform. > Well, speaking personally.... > > I'm not hardware-antipathic; I know which end of a soldering iron to > hold [the cool one :)], and I've hacked together assorted electronics > on occasion (a few of which I've even mentioned here). However, most > of my on-topic hardware, I have no particular interest in repairing > below the board-swap level. > > So, while I can't speak for anyone else in this regard, I can perhaps > address your puzzlement as it applies to me. > > Most of the hardware in question is SBus-era Suns. I don't run it > under emulation because an emulator, plus the hardware to run it on, > would cost me a lot more than the Suns cost me (which latter figure is > usually $0 + shipping, and often the shipping is $0 because they're > local). Certainly for now, and for the past few years, Sun S-bus-era hardware is plentiful and cost more to ship than to buy (thus the importance of local acquisition). 10 years from now, though, it might not be as easy to find on the ground - like mid-1970s micros are already. Suns, being a rather hardware-closed, high-speed (for their time), highly-integrated platform, were never routinely hacked-on or repaired by the folks running them (NVRAM replacements aside). OTOH, lots of Apples, S-100 boxes, PETs, TRS-80s, etc., were. I do component-level repair on lots of things, and I do have a lot of S-bus Suns, I really haven't done much in the way of Sun repair. One of the more important considerations is where I'd get spare parts. I _could_ component-level-troubleshoot a SPARC 2 or a SPARC 5, but so many of the components are not generic TTL parts, I wouldn't approach the fault with the expectation that I'd be able to locate a replacement part except on another similar board. I don't mind replacing SMT parts, but in the case of most of the SMT ICs on a SPARC board, I don't know where I'd locate new parts. Removing DIP parts is difficult from boards as complex as these; not impossible, but certainly lots more difficult than from a 2-sided 1970s micro. > Then, consider some additional points: > > - Speed - emulators are usually slower than the real thing. An > emulated setup capable of matching the real thing's speed will be > substantially more expensive. When I first started emulating classic platforms, I'd agree with you - about 10 years ago, since I couldn't manage a large enough PDP-11 disk, I built an emulated PDP-11 w/RP03 under SIMH on a SPARC 1... talk about *slooooow*. It worked, but was a small fraction of the speed of the real thing. A little later, when I had a SPARC 5 on my desktop at work, the PDP-11 was still slow, but acceptable. The 6502, via VICE, was really nice; especially being able to load files from a local directory on the workstation - I was able to *scream* through software development by editing on a 1152x900 screen, cross-compiling under Solaris, then running the binary on the emulated target. These days, with even semi-modern hardware, x86 emulation of a 1995-era machine (386-DX25 through 486 DX2/66) at original machine speeds is trivial. Emulating a VAX at original, or even faster, speeds isn't difficult. If your target is 10 years older than your emulation platform, I don't see why it has to be slow. > - Hardware compat - I have some oddball SBus cards. I daresay > PCI-to-SBus, ISA-to-SBus, etc, bridges exist, but they will be > expensive, probably difficult to find, and may not even play nice > with the emulator. That's an important point for a number of platforms - I used to make Unibus, Qbus, and VAXBI 68000-based smart serial boards. I still need a real VAX or PDP-11 to fiddle with my old boards. I know that there were some bus interfaces for older PCs, but I've never handled one personally. Certainly, I wouldn't expect those to work with modern PCs. > - Reliability - as I think I've mentioned before, peecee-class machines > account for a rather disproportionate fraction of the hardware > failures I've experienced. "Modern" machines as reliable as the old > Suns are doubtless available, but, again, that will mean a > substantial additional cost. Consumer-grade PCs are notorious, naturally. Server-class x86 hardware can be as reliable as Suns, etc., but not as cheap as Packard Bells, and the like, and certainly not as abundant. If you intend to do production-quality emulation, you _should_ be using production quality hosts for it. If it's just for fun, I don't see it as such an issue. > So, really, it's a total no-brainer for me whether to run the real > thing or an emulation, quite aside from whether I'm prepared to do > low-level repair work. In the case of Sbus Suns, I agree with you that it's reasonable to run the real hardware without being able to do more than depot-level service. > Now, some of my stuff isn't SBus-era Suns. Much of *that* stuff I *do* > want to be able to repair down to the chip level - for example, I have > some hp300 hardware with, I suspect, a blown HP-IB driver (last time I > tried to use it I was seeing what looked like a stuck-at fault). When > I get the round tuits together, I'm going to see if I can confirm/deny > my suspicion, and (if confirmed) pull a compatible driver chip from > something else and do a swap. Perhaps someday I'll be applying the > same philosophy to (say) the SPARCstation 20, and, if that happens, > I'll probably then be glad I'm not chucking "dead" hardware.... I can agree with that as well - for something more obscure, like non-consumer HP products - it's much more reasonable to expect to have to delve into component-level repairs to keep them running. I think it comes down to relative abundance coupled with intrinsic complexity. If I ever had a VAX 9000, I'd want to run it, even though I don't think I have much hope of being able to find spare components, but at least I would expect to be able to track down engineering prints, unlike with SPARCstations. -ethan From ms at vaxcluster.de Sat Oct 6 05:03:54 2007 From: ms at vaxcluster.de (Michael Schneider) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:03:54 +0200 Subject: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB17@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB17@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <47075D8A.5050505@vaxcluster.de> Hi, Penzing is in southern Germany, Bavaria ("Oberbayern", to be precise), near Landsberg. Living in southern Germany myself, i'm bidding on this one. Or at least try to, usually there's always someone with much deeper pockets.... Greetings Michael Schneider (ms) Rod Smallwood wrote: > My German Is not that good but the gist of it is that it's a controller > for a CNC drill. > The 8/f is an Irish made one from the Galway plant. (Whilst working at > DEC I visited Galway on a regular basis). > > I'm a bit confused as to where it is. The only Penzing I know is in > Austria near Vienna. > If it was northern Germany I'd go and get it. The system unit might be > the basis for building up a PDP 8 system. > > Oh well one day I'll get a PDP-8 from somewhere. I'm sure that 10,000 + > where made. Of those probably 3,000 where UK/European voltage models. > > Rod Smallwood > The DECcollector > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Gerold Pauler > Sent: 05 October 2007 11:35 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] > > Got an email today, that you can get a complete pdp8/f on ebay. > It is located in Germany. > Does not mention how much memory it got but seams to be complete with > paper tape reader and an atari 140ST as console. > > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320166292810 > > I don't have any connection to the seller. > And I don't have any more free space for another pdp8 of this era. > > - Gerold > > > -- Michael Schneider email: ms at vaxcluster.de Germany http://www.vaxcluster.de "Man muss nicht immer alles glauben was stimmt" From arcarlini at iee.org Sat Oct 6 05:06:00 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:06:00 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710051724o7467200bp70ef14701b424a2d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <004f01c80800$80165ab0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Liam Proven wrote: > But as I said elsewhere, for my clients today, if a machine is less > than a couple of gigahertz, it's skipware. It's not worth my time to > try to diagnose a fault; if it fails, swap it out and replace it with > a new machine. I think we've done this to death before. You are talking about a commercial situation where time is money, Tony is talking about the vintage gear at home, where money is usually more scarce. No business I've worked in would consider component-level repair: it is simply not economical. But at home things are different, at least for the vintage stuff. Even if you do have a spare PDP-8 to swap in, at least you've said you'll pass the old one on to us :-) Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.14.2/1052 - Release Date: 05/10/2007 18:53 From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 05:08:20 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 12:08:20 +0200 Subject: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] In-Reply-To: <47075D8A.5050505@vaxcluster.de> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB17@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <47075D8A.5050505@vaxcluster.de> Message-ID: On 10/6/07, Michael Schneider wrote: > Hi, > > Penzing is in southern Germany, Bavaria ("Oberbayern", to be precise), > near Landsberg. > Living in southern Germany myself, i'm bidding on this one. Or at least > try to, usually there's always someone with much deeper pockets.... It looks like a nice little package there... it's even cheap, for now. I expect it will heat up as the auction draws to a close, though. Someone out there will have fun with it, I'm sure. Good luck, -ethan From arcarlini at iee.org Sat Oct 6 05:45:16 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:45:16 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <005801c80805$fcc114b0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Ethan Dicks wrote: > Even back in the day, there were lots of folks who bought PETs and > Apples and more, that didn't know a single thing about hardware > troubleshooting and repair - 30 years ago, when it broke, they took it > to their dealer, or if it was too expensive to fix, they junked it (or > gave it to me ;-) I don't find it surprising that people are around > today with interest in the platform, but no interest or aptitude for > repairing it when it breaks. Back in the day 99% of the people I met knew nothing about computers and didn't use them. Of the ones that did use them (that I knew) most were interested in both hardware and software. But that (in the case of both myself and the other handful) was because we started out with an interest in electronics and then decided that computers looked fun too. These days it's much harder to find people who haven't had to use a computer to some extent in their job. The few that haven't have almost certainly used a games console. As with all things, most people don't care about how X works, just that X gets the job done. > Look at how many folks work on their own > cars now, compared with 1977 - same issue, different hardware > platform. Cars are more complex now than before, there's more packed in under the bonnet than before, we're generally better off than before. So there's quite a disincentive to fiddling yourself on a Saturday morning. Much the same applies to computers. Given that a new box can be had for, say, ?400 all-in and that it is probably noticeably faster than your previous one (or has some better widgets built in or whatever), I'm not that surprised to hear that some people upgrade the hardware rather than learning how easy it is to do an OS install. I'm not complaining - without all those motherboards coming my way how would I have found one that passes all the TESTFDC tests :-) > Consumer-grade PCs are notorious, naturally. Server-class x86 > hardware can be as reliable as Suns, etc., but not as cheap as Packard > Bells, and the like, and certainly not as abundant. If you intend to > do production-quality emulation, you _should_ be using production > quality hosts for it. If it's just for fun, I don't see it as such an > issue. Server hardware becomes obsolete just as quickly as desktop hardware. There's not so much of it to start with, but there's still a steady stream of it being scrapped: I have two Xeon-based systems (sans cases) plus a couple of spare Xeon CPUs (they just looked cool ...). So if you want a more reliable hardware platform, the stuff is out there. > I think it comes down to relative abundance coupled with intrinsic > complexity. If I ever had a VAX 9000, I'd want to run it, even though > I don't think I have much hope of being able to find spare components, > but at least I would expect to be able to track down engineering > prints, unlike with SPARCstations. I've never seen prints for a VAX 9000. I do remember that sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s, while I was at DEC, a customer had a problem with a DMB32 in a VAX 9000. The only VAX 9000 we could find inside DEC was all setup for 110V operation and the only BI cab for it was apparently all set up for 240V (or so I was told). While someone was deciding what to do, the customer stopped using the DMB32 and went over to a DEMSB! I was also told (in 1998) by a reseller (who came in and snarfed a few of out VAX 4000s) that they'd recently sold a VAX 9000 to NASA so it could use it as a hot spare. What noone realised was that when the original owner of the VAX 9000 had decided to scrap it, they'd let their computer guys cherry pick some of the ECUs as souvenirs :-) Having charged NASA ?5k or so just for the shipping, the reseller felt honour-bound to scrounge around trying to find some replacements for them ... In my experience a VAX 6000 or VAX 7000 would be far more practical. Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.14.2/1052 - Release Date: 05/10/2007 18:53 From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Oct 6 07:40:15 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 08:40:15 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20071006124015.8254EBA458E@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Allison wrote: > In the end ECL was a way to speed but always at such a high system cost > and complexity it was often behind the curve for integration and delivery. It depends on what you're doing. ECL was perfect for custom-built lab and military hardware. Follow a few simple rules and even a bozo like me could reliably lay out the PCB's. Contrast that with 74F technology where you couldn't even figure out if ground at the center of the board was the same as the ground at the edge of the board :-). Above the onesies-twosies level things weren't so clear. There's a big leap between a back-projector or array-processor made at the onesies-twosies level and the world where VLSI becomes economical. Gate arrays helped span this gap but that gap had been pinched to nonexistence by the mid-80's. Minicomputer makers like DEC who also had their own fabs were in an odd boat... the process-leading CPU chips couldn't utilize the fabs built to deal with them because DEC didn't sell enough CPU's. In the end a vast army of interface and peripheral chips seemed to keep things churning well enough that they kept their fabs for many many years past where I was convinced they couldn't be economically viable. Tim. From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Oct 6 07:48:41 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 08:48:41 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <200710042037.QAA22495@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <20071006124841.EDFCCBA458E@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "Ethan Dicks" wrote: > Certainly for now, and for the past few years, Sun S-bus-era hardware > is plentiful and cost more to ship than to buy (thus the importance of > local acquisition). 10 years from now, though, it might not be as > easy to find on the ground - like mid-1970s micros are already. > > Suns, being a rather hardware-closed, high-speed (for their time), > highly-integrated platform, were never routinely hacked-on or repaired > by the folks running them (NVRAM replacements aside). Maybe not the later S-bus Suns themselves, but I worked in many many labs where either VME-bus Suns or S-bus-to-VME-bus adapters were used and all sorts of interesting things hooked on to them. > OTOH, lots of > Apples, S-100 boxes, PETs, TRS-80s, etc., were. Peripheral-wise, the biggest things I ever heard most of those boxes being hooked to was a SMD disk. Kinda puny compared to what was hung off the Suns :-). And of course that's puny compared to Will's DASD chains! Tim. From James at jdfogg.com Sat Oct 6 07:56:38 2007 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 08:56:38 -0400 Subject: Decmate I Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A257068@sbs.jdfogg.com> > I have a reasonable Decmate I / PDP8 with dual RX02's in a > tower and spare parts CRT/Keyboard, spare motherboard. It > boots up nicely, includes serial port board and back cover. > I've enjoyed it for the past year, but now have to get it out > of my workspace. Open to a reasonable offer, especially if > the buyer can pick it up in Southern NH. > > - Gary I don't know what "reasonable" would be, but I am "reasonably" close in Northern New Hampshire (New London). Your space woes could be solved today. I need some fiscal guidance or suggested trades. From Watzman at neo.rr.com Sat Oct 6 08:49:39 2007 From: Watzman at neo.rr.com (Barry Watzman) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 09:49:39 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <200710060810.l968ABLS073568@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> First, I don't think that DVD media is subject to "infant mortality" at all, which is not to say that a just burned disc can't be defective. Now a couple of things that look like infant mortality are possible, although the mechanisms are not the same as what we usually call infant mortality. One of these is that data written a burner whose laser power is below spec can "fade" over time, but this is mostly a problem when using "RW" media (which should be avoided for archival and backup uses). Also, a media that is subject to bending can delaminate .... DVDs are a sandwich of two layers of plastic glued together, and the data is stored on a dye layer coating on the inside, at the juncture of the two layers. Delamination is fatal to the data, and normally occurs from the outside in .... Good advice is to only use 80% to 90% of the media capacity, leaving the outside edge (which is where the first damage usually occurs) unused for data anyway. Second, there is no doubt, I don't think, that dual layer media is considerably less reliable than single layer media (knowing how dual layer works, it's hard to believe that it works at all). That said, I have not yet had a problem with any of the dual layer backups that I've made. The subject of optical media longevity is one of considerable debate. All studies by the media makers suggest a life of several decades to centuries, but some skeptics insist on saying less than 10 years. I have optical CD media that is now 12 years old that I can still read just fine. I think that some of your practices are excessively conservative (such as only applying power when the drives are being used), but will do no harm. The biggest risk, I think, is burning with a marginal burner (low laser power and/or bad or just dirty optics). Reading the media with a variety of drives other than the one used for burning is certainly not a bad idea, but for most users is unacceptably time consuming. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 09:47:28 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 16:47:28 +0200 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> References: <200710060810.l968ABLS073568@dewey.classiccmp.org> <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> Message-ID: On 10/6/07, Barry Watzman wrote: > First, I don't think that DVD media is subject to "infant mortality" at all, > which is not to say that a just burned disc can't be defective. I wouldn't call it "infant mortality", but I had a spate of cheap CD-Rs about 6-7 years ago have numerous manufacturing defects - there was visible contamination between the top of the polycarbonate blank and the reflective layer. In one case, I lost a file due to the reflective layer flaking off around a speck of dust/plastic shavings/whatever. I have not seen similar visible defects with DVD-R blanks. When writing DVDs, I always do a read-verify right after burning, and for archival data, I tend to create recovery data with programs like par2, and burn two to three copies. If it's worth my time to archive, it's worth spending $1 for more than one copy. As I said, I lost a file once. That was with CD-Rs, and that was the first one out of many hundreds of discs burned (presuming they verified at write-time in the first place). I _have_ had a number of discs that didn't verify, and that could be due to a number of causes, from defective media to "cosmic rays". I have not, however, with that one previously mentioned exception, lost data (yet?) from disks that did verify. > The subject of optical media longevity is one of considerable debate. All > studies by the media makers suggest a life of several decades to centuries, > but some skeptics insist on saying less than 10 years. I have optical CD > media that is now 12 years old that I can still read just fine. As do I (just last month, I re-read some discs from 1996 with no errors). > I think > that some of your practices are excessively conservative (such as only > applying power when the drives are being used), but will do no harm. I recall a discussion here about some of the early burners that left the laser energized even when not burning, leading to appreciable "dimming" of the laser diode over many years of powered-on idle time. I don't think leaving an external burner powered off qualifies as "excessively conservative" in that light, but as you say, it certainly won't harm the drive, especially if you burn discs rarely. > The > biggest risk, I think, is burning with a marginal burner (low laser power > and/or bad or just dirty optics). Reading the media with a variety of > drives other than the one used for burning is certainly not a bad idea, but > for most users is unacceptably time consuming. I've only resorted to read verification in a different variety of drive for data that I have that I would be especially sore to lose (such as copies of programs I wrote for the PET and C-64 15-20 years ago, or old digital pictures). For these sorts of data, I do resort to numerous copies, "just in case". -ethan From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Oct 6 10:10:28 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 11:10:28 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> References: <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <20071006151028.4D60ABA4590@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "Barry Watzman" wrote: > The subject of optical media longevity is one of considerable debate. All > studies by the media makers suggest a life of several decades to centuries, > but some skeptics insist on saying less than 10 years. I have optical CD > media that is now 12 years old that I can still read just fine. While I like to pontificate on the subject too, in my experience scratches that damage the reflective layer are clearly (no pun intended) responsible for 95% of CD failures I've witnessed. I too have CD-R disks in the 10-12-14 year old range that read just fine. I have torture tested by exposure to direct sunlight at elevated temperatures for several years at a time and it still reads just fine (I know, not the same as a real BER test, ...) > I think > that some of your practices are excessively conservative (such as only > applying power when the drives are being used), but will do no harm. I have found that CD-R burners rarely last more than 3 years. Actually the latest one I have is on its fourth year... maybe they fixed something in the past couple of years, or maybe I'm just lucky! (Probably just lucky because other ones in the farms at work die after 2 or 3 years.) Many OS's are not happy about IDE or SCSI drives connecting/disconnecting without a reboot, although I know some tricks for Linux. > The > biggest risk, I think, is burning with a marginal burner (low laser power > and/or bad or just dirty optics). Reading the media with a variety of > drives other than the one used for burning is certainly not a bad idea, but > for most users is unacceptably time consuming. I think it's wise to do at least spot-checks. Tim. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 10:41:24 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 17:41:24 +0200 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> Message-ID: On 10/5/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the > "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) > http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm I've seen that before, and have often contemplated throwing one together. > I'm about ready to start collecting the parts needed and to see about > getting at least a couple circuit boards made. Would you mind sharing where you are getting Nokia 3310 phones (or the Phillips PDC 8544 LCD display)? > BTW, I currently have 3-5 1541's, 1 1571, and 1 or 2 Excelerator+Plus > (minus power-supplies) drives. I tend to use a pair of the 1541's. > Though the 1571 is at home rather than lost up in storage. :^) I use > the 1541's as I don't have a spare 1571. I prefer to only use drives > if I have a spare. I've never had a 1571 - I started with 1540 in 1982 (and wish I could find it - I think it has my Spartan Apple-II interface mounted inside it), then acquired a number of 1541s in my C-64 days, but never moved over to the C-128, so froze there in time (except for the 1581 I have that came from a defunct Commodore dealer - it works, but I haven't put more than a couple floppies through it). I _am_ interested in the 1541-III, but I'd *really* be interested in a FLASH-storage-based 2031 - i.e., with an IEEE-488 interface. I still do lots with PETs, and the .D64 support would solve one of the problems I have with running old programs - Infocom used "random files" (unstructured raw block access) for their Zmachine. The games were very much floppy-based, with no obvious way to migrate them to a hard disk or other non-floppy medium. -ethan From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 6 11:51:30 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 10:51:30 -0600 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> References: <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <4707BD12.1070901@jetnet.ab.ca> Barry Watzman wrote: Reading the media with a variety of > drives other than the one used for burning is certainly not a bad idea, but > for most users is unacceptably time consuming. Software mortality worries me. Who knows what bugs the next version of your driver has. Ben. From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Oct 6 13:07:34 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:07:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 1541-III group buy? Message-ID: So, it seems to me that there is a decently sizable demand for 1541-III parts. I asked the creator of this thing if he plans to make PCBs any time soon. He said "no". But he left all the design files, firmware, etc on his website for anyone to use. So, how about a group buy? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From healyzh at aracnet.com Sat Oct 6 13:23:52 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:23:52 -0700 Subject: 1541-III (was: New DSDD 5.25" floppies?) In-Reply-To: References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> Message-ID: At 5:41 PM +0200 10/6/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: >On 10/5/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > >> I'm about ready to start collecting the parts needed and to see about >> getting at least a couple circuit boards made. > >Would you mind sharing where you are getting Nokia 3310 phones (or the >Phillips PDC 8544 LCD display)? I've not looked into where to find the parts yet. I take it the display is unobtainable? Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Oct 6 13:26:58 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:26:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 1541-III (was: New DSDD 5.25" floppies?) In-Reply-To: References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 5:41 PM +0200 10/6/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: > >On 10/5/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > > >> I'm about ready to start collecting the parts needed and to see about > >> getting at least a couple circuit boards made. > > > >Would you mind sharing where you are getting Nokia 3310 phones (or the > >Phillips PDC 8544 LCD display)? > > I've not looked into where to find the parts yet. I take it the > display is unobtainable? How about cannibalizing old Nokia 33xx phones? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From healyzh at aracnet.com Sat Oct 6 13:30:19 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:30:19 -0700 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 11:07 AM -0700 10/6/07, David Griffith wrote: >So, it seems to me that there is a decently sizable demand for 1541-III >parts. I asked the creator of this thing if he plans to make PCBs any >time soon. He said "no". But he left all the design files, firmware, etc >on his website for anyone to use. So, how about a group buy? Funny you should mention that, I was wondering if it would be worth while to do something like this yesterday, but didn't have the time to post anything about it (too busy hacking one of my real 1541's). Are you thinking of simply a group buy on the PCB's, or on the parts as well? Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 Sat Oct 6 13:33:43 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:33:43 -0700 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: At 10:28 AM +0200 10/6/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: >On 10/6/07, J Blaser wrote: > > The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, >> which I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel >> interface. I'll have to do a little scouting on Bitsavers >> and Manx to see if I can turn up anything useful. > >If you don't find anything, the board looks to me like a papertape >punch/reader interface. Try throwing that into your searches. Not even looking at the pictures that was what I figured it was. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Oct 6 13:34:07 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:34:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 11:07 AM -0700 10/6/07, David Griffith wrote: > >So, it seems to me that there is a decently sizable demand for 1541-III > >parts. I asked the creator of this thing if he plans to make PCBs any > >time soon. He said "no". But he left all the design files, firmware, etc > >on his website for anyone to use. So, how about a group buy? > > Funny you should mention that, I was wondering if it would be worth > while to do something like this yesterday, but didn't have the time > to post anything about it (too busy hacking one of my real 1541's). > Are you thinking of simply a group buy on the PCB's, or on the parts > as well? Just the PCBs. The rest of the parts seem easily available in one-offs. In particular, I presume the LCDs can be cannibalized from 33xx series phones. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk Sat Oct 6 13:22:35 2007 From: roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk (Roger Holmes) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 19:22:35 +0100 Subject: ClarisDraw and ICT1301 (was: Semi-OT: Classic Mac support gone from Leopard (OS X 10.5)) In-Reply-To: <200710060148.l961mSEb064302@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710060148.l961mSEb064302@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4F8FB654-7BEC-4101-8A6D-D33DFCEB2D35@microspot.co.uk> On 6 Oct, 2007, at 02:48, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > From: "Zane H. Healy" > > In all fairness I've already started looking into running > ClarisDraw under > emulation since I can't find a replacement I like, in the long run > it is > likely to run better under emulation. There is a glitch or two > with running > it under Classic on my G5. Besides I want to be able to upgrade to > a Mac > Pro one of these days. > > Or, I might just setup my G4/450 running Mac OS 8.6 (I have the > special G4 > version), and use it as an X-Terminal running my old copy of > eXodus. At > which point I'll be able to run ClarisDraw on there. Though at 8 > years old, > I'm not sure I want to depend on it for an app I *need*. Sorry to take this off topic still further. Please excuse me being nosey, but is it a matter of speed , features, user interface, opening ClarisDraw files, price or what? My company took over 'MacDraft' from IDD many years ago and still supply both MacDraft and the cheaper version MacDraft PE (personal edition) which are both universal binaries on OS-X. We get some people complaining that the UI is not modern enough and others that its too modern. We do not currently have any sort of gradient fills, maybe that's what is missing. We are currently working on version 6.0 so would be interested if you or any others on this list would like to tell me what we need to do to meet your needs, though of course we don't make programs for one users needs alone. To bring back on topic, last month we got the core memory of my ICT1301 back to 100% functionality, all 2000 words of 48 bits (1200lbs weight). We're now working on an interface to write data to a parallel port so we can catch it with a modern machine. We're using TTL working from a -5v supply as Vss and ground as Vcc to match up with the -6.3 volt logic levels (with an implicit inversion). We're also using an IDT 7201 FIFO to buffer the rapid supply of 48 bits from a word against the 8 bit at a time parallel port, and it may also absorbs some of the difference between rapid data transfer of each mag tape block and no data during the inter-block gap with the constant data rate of the parallel port. Roger Holmes From healyzh at aracnet.com Sat Oct 6 13:41:46 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:41:46 -0700 Subject: 1541-III (was: New DSDD 5.25" floppies?) In-Reply-To: References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> Message-ID: At 11:26 AM -0700 10/6/07, David Griffith wrote: >On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > > At 5:41 PM +0200 10/6/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: > >> >Would you mind sharing where you are getting Nokia 3310 phones (or the >> >Phillips PDC 8544 LCD display)? >> >> I've not looked into where to find the parts yet. I take it the >> display is unobtainable? > >How about cannibalizing old Nokia 33xx phones? OK, I just looked up the 3310 to see what it is. That's newer than the Cell Phone I'm using! :^) Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 6 13:42:33 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:42:33 -0700 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710060342.35091.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710060342.35091.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: > Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 03:42:34 -0400> From: rtellason at verizon.net> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Setting up a VAXstation> > On Friday 05 October 2007 18:42, Tony Duell wrote:> > > > I'm not so sure about that. Very often in setting up a vintage computer> > > > you'll need a special cable (RS232 serial cables being an obvious> > > > example, there are all sorts of odd pin-swaps you need for some> > > > machines...), and it makes a lot of sense to be abe to make it up. You> > > > can't always buy the right cable off-the-shelf, particularly not for> > > > obscure classics.> > >> > > I'd *still* like to someday get my hands on one of the fancier breakout> > > boxes I used to see in catalogs... :-)> >> > How fancy is fancy?> > Not too terribly, considering I can't in any way justify spending much if any > money on such a thing. The ability to interrupt any of the pins, maybe do > cross-connecting, and LED indicators would be nice.> If you can't find one of these at someplace, you can always make one. LED's that are rated for 20ma will still give out noticable light at as low as 1 ma. Just design them for about 2 ma at 5 volts and they should work fine over the full range of RS232. Resistor limiting values of about 1500 ohms should be fine. Using two screw terminal blocks is a lot easier than locating 28 ga. wire for jumpers. Just put it on some vector board. Even a piece of plywood and some hot glue would be fine. Nothing hi tech about it. If you really wanted to be fancy, you could add two 9V batteries to drive static values for some of those hard to figure out control line problems. You just need to add some current limiting resistors to these. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 6 13:56:49 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:56:49 -0700 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <200710052319.l95NJVla009262@onyx.spiritone.com> References: from <200710052319.l95NJVla009262@onyx.spiritone.com> Message-ID: Hi One thing I thought I'd note. You can not mix lead free with lead solder. It will cause the melt temperature to go up, making it really hard to solder. If you need to repair something that has lead solder on it with lead free, remove as much of the original solder as you can with wick or sucker. Just thought I'd add this. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Boo!?Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews From gklinger at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 14:04:04 2007 From: gklinger at gmail.com (Golan Klinger) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 15:04:04 -0400 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The developer of the 1541-III derivative, the 1541-III-DTV is putting together another batch of fully assembled and tested units "with normal C64 compatibility". They will be available in a few weeks for $50 EUR + postage. You'll find more information at the developer's website: -- Golan Klinger Dark is the suede that mows like a harvest. From trixter at oldskool.org Sat Oct 6 14:16:11 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:16:11 -0500 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: References: <200710060810.l968ABLS073568@dewey.classiccmp.org> <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <4707DEFB.6090808@oldskool.org> Ethan Dicks wrote: > When writing DVDs, I always do a read-verify right after burning, and > for archival data, I tend to create recovery data with programs like > par2, and burn two to three copies. If it's worth my time to archive, > it's worth spending $1 for more than one copy. This is exactly my procedure as well, but I use QuickPar instead of par2. I also burn two copies, since high-quality DVD-Rs can be had for less than $0.50 in bulk. My typical process is to use Winrar with a recovery record (parity) of 1%, then take the resulting files and use Quickpar to generate as much parity as necessary to fill up the DVD-R. I then burn, ***and I make sure that the DVD-R also has a copy of winrar and quickpar on the disc*** (just in case 20 years from now someone is trying to extract my stuff and doesn't know what a *.par file is). > As I said, I lost a file once. That was with CD-Rs, and that was the > first one out of many hundreds of discs burned (presuming they > verified at write-time in the first place). I _have_ had a number of > discs that didn't verify, and that could be due to a number of causes, > from defective media to "cosmic rays". I have not, however, with that > one previously mentioned exception, lost data (yet?) from disks that > did verify. Yes, that's been my experience as well. If they're going to be bad, they're usually bad right out of the gate (ie. didn't pass Verify). Every year, I take my very first burnt CDR from 1995 out and try to read it. It has always read. I keep my CDRs and DVDRs in a cool dry dark place, though; not everyone can store them in optimal conditions. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Oct 6 14:40:42 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 12:40:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Golan Klinger wrote: > The developer of the 1541-III derivative, the 1541-III-DTV is putting > together another batch of fully assembled and tested units "with > normal C64 compatibility". They will be available in a few weeks for > $50 EUR + postage. You'll find more information at the developer's > website: > > I don't see any reference to a new batch of 1541-III-DTV units there. Besides, I want one with an LCD. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Sat Oct 6 15:05:24 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:05:24 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 10/6/07, J Blaser wrote: > >> The first is a System Industries 9700-6301 >> with the following significant chips: Signetics N8X60N, AMD >> >> > That looks to me (from appearance and the part number) to be the > 11/750-specific SI-9900 interface. I have one in an 11/750 in my > quonset hut. SI made a number of host-specific interfaces (Qbus and > > Ah, okay, that's helpful. I'll keep that in mind as I do more background research. > For the case of what you have there, you should also have a pair of > 40-pin cables going off the backplane for that slot, out to an I/O > bulkhead header. There would then be a pair of (possibly shielded) > 40-pin cables running off to a 5.25"-tall rackmount box marked "SI > 9900". It should have at least one host board to receive the pair of > I'll check that, and see. So, is it normal that a lot of the connections for this system come off the backplane, rather than headers on the PCBs themselves? Hmmm..... No wonder the reverse side of the backplane looks so hairy! > I did notice you have a cable hanging down for a UDA50... it's likely > that they had both SI disk _and_ Unibus-attachd SMD disks. That was a > common arrangement for a variety of reasons. You will also want to be > Yes, looks like the SMD cabling is in there, but I haven't even gotten so far as seeing where it might run to. As it turns out, I _do_ already have an RA81 (and two Fujitsu Super Eagles) that came along with a separate pickup of some qbus stuff a couple of years ago. Maybe I now have a use for these drives, assuming they are functional! ;-) > on the lookout for a DU boot ROM. The 11/750 didn't use the TU58 for > boot files as the 11/730 and 11/725 did. You just twisted the ROM > selector to the right device, then pressed reset/boot. the D ROM was > typically the TU58 boot (DDA0?) so you could boot tape-based > diagnostics. > > Okay, good words, thanks for the heads-up on this. I am absolutely novice with this system, so all suggestions and advice are very welcome! >> The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, >> which I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel >> interface. I'll have to do a little scouting on Bitsavers >> and Manx to see if I can turn up anything useful. >> > > If you don't find anything, the board looks to me like a papertape > punch/reader interface. Try throwing that into your searches. > > I'll give it a go and see what turns up. > Good luck on finding boards. They are out there, but I doubt they'd > be inexpensive from a dealer. > I've been fortunate enough to already receive some helpful offers (you guys know who you are!). It just depends on what specific pieces can rationally be cut loose by their current owners. > The other thing to do, and I don't have the docs handy for this, is to > check your backplane in the memory area, to confirm what it's wired to > Ooo, sounds like I've got some interesting self-education ahead of me! :-) Wiring backplanes has definitely not been in my experience...yet! :-o > Don't let this worry you until you get enough boards to throw together > into a CPU... just get some memory - 1MB boards _should_ be safe - > then worry about which memory controller you find next. 256KB boards > Great advice! Make sense to me. > >> say that the donor was extremely nice, and offered to pass >> along anything related that eventually turns up as they dig >> deeper into their massive pile (12' x 15' x 20', literally >> boxes/cartons/PCs upon boxes/cartons/PCs), but I'm not sure >> I should hope for much. >> > > Have them keep an eye out for that SI disk box - it's the other half > of the board you already have. > > Yes, they are. While making the pickup, we thought we saw another cabinet just peeking out from under the huge lumpy pile, but it turned out to be a telephone switch, I guess used as the in-house PBX by the former owners of all of this stuff. Anyway, the donor is aware that these big VAXen were coupled with external storage devices, and is looking out for other cabs. > P.S. - don't forget to pick up a short length of 1/2 ID Tygon tubing > to rehab the TU58 roller. Oh, yes, thanks for the reminder. Indeed there are about a half-dozen carts floating around in the bottom of the cabinet. I haven't even extracted them yet to see what they are. But I'll definitely want to get an image of them, if I can, once the drive is revived. I wonder, can the integrated TU58 be (temporarily) cabled to something like the PDP-11/23+ that I have, so that I could image those carts first before trying to use them in the VAX (eventually)? Is it just a standard serial connection coming off of the drive, like the desktop TU58 subsystems, or is it something lower level? I guess I'll have to climb in there and take a look, and scout the docs for more info. Looks like this is going to be a somewhat lengthy revival, with lots of things to consider, detail-wise. > If you _do_ eventually have to scrap out > the machine, save the backplanes, PSUs and TU58 for other 11/750 > owners. Actually, I just can't see myself scrapping the machine. It would be a real shame to do that, so I'm going to do my best to get the backplane repopulated, cobble some storage, and light it up! Thanks for the advice and encouragement! Keep it coming! - Jared From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 15:48:07 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 16:48:07 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > >That depends on how tight everything is. Thermal Conduction Module, anyone? > > At 1ns/ft even the TCMs were not tight/dense enough. Have you ever seen a IBM TCM? > Crunching numbers was a part of the task. The other part was moving > and handeling data in mass storage and memory. Most of the DEC hardware > moved data pretty fast. What was the demise of PDP-10 was simple, megabytes. And being six bit machine in an eight bit world... -- Will From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 6 16:14:53 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:14:53 -0700 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net>, Message-ID: <4707985D.25687.1604F86@cclist.sydex.com> On 6 Oct 2007 at 16:48, William Donzelli wrote: > And being six bit machine in an eight bit world... I remember getting the Adventure source tape and reading it in and saying "What the h*ll is this?" It didn't take too long before I figureed that I was dealing with 36-bit words with 5 7-bit ASCII characters packed into each. Of course, someone on a PDP-10 may have been equally puzzled to see 6- bit display code packed 10 characters per word, with an end-of-line being a 00 00 combination packed into the low-order 12 bits of a 60 bit word--otherwise, the meaning of 00 was a colon (:) character. The standard tape conversion/transfer utility for the Cyber 70's had no idea of how to deal with PDP-10 character representations. Most large mainframes excelled at I/O. The aforementioned Cyber 70s used 10 peripheral processors to transfer data between I/O devices and central memory. The standard I/O scheme was to use "circular buffering", so that it was possible to continously transfer data from one device to another by using two PPUs and having them chase buffer pointers. Disks were only somewhat faster than tapes. Deadstart involved reading a tape and copying files from it to disk. Much effort went into the deadstart routine that did this so that the tape could read non-stop. Cheers, Chuck From rdawson16 at hotmail.com Sat Oct 6 17:15:44 2007 From: rdawson16 at hotmail.com (Randy Dawson) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 17:15:44 -0500 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I dont participate as much as I would like, but I may be of help on this one. I'm a professional PCB guy, and can show you all how to get this fabricated. There are a number of shops in our trade magazines that offer some pretty low cost (double and 4 layer) PCBs What do we have to start with, some gerber files? Or really going out on a limb, the entire design file in PADS, or Orcad? Randy Dawson > Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:34:07 -0700 > From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > CC: > Subject: Re: 1541-III group buy? > > On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > > At 11:07 AM -0700 10/6/07, David Griffith wrote: > > >So, it seems to me that there is a decently sizable demand for 1541-III > > >parts. I asked the creator of this thing if he plans to make PCBs any > > >time soon. He said "no". But he left all the design files, firmware, etc > > >on his website for anyone to use. So, how about a group buy? > > > > Funny you should mention that, I was wondering if it would be worth > > while to do something like this yesterday, but didn't have the time > > to post anything about it (too busy hacking one of my real 1541's). > > Are you thinking of simply a group buy on the PCB's, or on the parts > > as well? > > Just the PCBs. The rest of the parts seem easily available in one-offs. > In particular, I presume the LCDs can be cannibalized from 33xx series > phones. > > -- > David Griffith > dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu > > A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. > Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? > A: Top-posting. > Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Sat Oct 6 17:15:02 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 19:15:02 -0300 Subject: 1541-III (was: New DSDD 5.25" floppies?) References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <086f01c80866$72070c10$f0fea8c0@alpha> >> I've not looked into where to find the parts yet. I take it the >> display is unobtainable? > How about cannibalizing old Nokia 33xx phones? can't you find it on ebay? From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Sat Oct 6 17:14:40 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 19:14:40 -0300 Subject: 1541-III group buy? References: Message-ID: <086e01c80866$70d36e10$f0fea8c0@alpha> > So, it seems to me that there is a decently sizable demand for 1541-III > parts. I asked the creator of this thing if he plans to make PCBs any > time soon. He said "no". But he left all the design files, firmware, etc > on his website for anyone to use. So, how about a group buy? Well, I don't have a C64 but I'm very interested in the drive. If I create a single-sided PCB easy enough to be made by thermal toner transfer, will it help? Maybe I find a C64 around someday :) Greetz AS From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 6 16:19:33 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 22:19:33 +0100 (BST) Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: <200710052319.l95NJVla009262@onyx.spiritone.com> from "Zane H. Healy" at Oct 5, 7 04:19:30 pm Message-ID: > > > Maplin have really gone away from the hobbyist electronic market towards > > PC-clone modules, cinsumer electronics, etc. Gone are the days when you > > could go to the enarest Maplin in your lunchbreak to get the bits needed > > for the afternoon's hardware hacking. In fact these days, even if it's in > > the catalogue, there's a good chance it won't be in the shop. Most > > interesting items are 'order only' > > Sounds exactly like Rat Shack (aka Radio Shack) in the US. They still stock It's like Tandy/Radio Shack _used_ to be over here, sure. About 20 years ago there was Tanfy, who sold Lo-Fi, portable TVs, etc and a few components. And there was Maplin who sold components, electronic kits [1] and little else. And the shops had at least the common things, like 10k resistors, 74LS00s, DB25 connectors, etc in stock. [1] Some of those kits were specific to Maplin, and were quite complicated. I remember building the Nicam TV tuner/decoder, for example. A lot of R's and C's and I had to align the IF strip when I'd built it. In the old days I bought quite a it of stuff from Maplin. Now just about the only thing I buy from Maplins is propan-2-ol, amasingly they keep spray cans of that in stock at the shops. I got to RS or Farnell for components. The only real prolem is cable. Maplin used to do a good rangem, and sell it by the metre (well, ribbon cable in 30cm multiples). TS/Farnell generally only sell large (50m, 100m) reels. No prolem if I'm buying single-core wire, I use 100m in not-too-long, and it's not expensive. It is a prolem if I have to pay \pounds 300.00 for a reel of multi-core cale when all I need is 1m, and I can't see ever needing the rest... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 6 16:30:32 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 22:30:32 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710051724o7467200bp70ef14701b424a2d@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 6, 7 01:24:37 am Message-ID: > But as I said elsewhere, for my clients today, if a machine is less > than a couple of gigahertz, it's skipware. It's not worth my time to > try to diagnose a fault; if it fails, swap it out and replace it with > a new machine. Wait a second. Last time I checked, this was classiccmp. Not 'How-to-easter-egg-modern-PCs' or 'Computer-jobseekers' or... But classiccmp. It is ridiculous to assume that becasue something may well be the right solution in one case that it has to be right solution in all cases. That's secondary to the fact that how the heck you can claim to have cured a fault that you've not diagnosed is totally beyond me. OK, you swap parts and it seems to work so you think it's OK. It doesn't mean it is. In a previous job we actally ordered a sevice enigneer out of the building for trying tricks like that (the fact that I'd already traced the fault and knew what _should_ have been done is another matter...) It's darn hard to 'swap it out' if you haven't a hope of finding another even remotely-similart machine, let alone one you know to be working. For at least one part of a family of machines I repair, it's very unlikely that _any_ of the original parts are still useable. You have to be able to make replacements (the part in question is a rubber driver roller that decays with time). > It's taken me a long time to accept this, but it is the most sensible > method; my job is to economically deliver a working, stable system for To me a stable system is one that uyou know works. If there's a fualt, you have to know what it is to be know you've fixed it. > my clients, not to nurse their old kit along as long as possible. As I said, this is classiccmp. Nursing old kit is exactly what we do here. > > I actually wonder how you can be 'competent with hardware' and 'know > > bugger-all about electronics' To me those are contradictory statements. > > I realize that. But I did specify earlier: I don't generally work > below the level of the circuit board. There's no single part of a PC Again, how on earth cna you know what the fault is if you can't diagnose it. You mentioned swapping a DIMM. How can you know if an intermittant memory problem is a fault in the DIMM or in the memory controller on the motherboard? > > Actually, there are some ISA boards I am still looking for. Top of the > > list is an origianl IB< PGC. > > I don't know what that is. I have a bag of ISA kit: mostly multi-I/O PGC = Professional Graphics Controller. An IBM board set (3 boards fitting into 2 adjacent ISA slots (there's a memory PCB sandwiched between them) that form an intellegent-ish graphics card with an 8088 to control it (!). I have the techref, I'd love to play with the boards. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 6 16:40:32 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 22:40:32 +0100 (BST) Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <20071006020450.97D1A55E41@mail.wordstock.com> from "Bryan Pope" at Oct 5, 7 10:04:50 pm Message-ID: > > I make my meagre crust working on machines of, on average, 2-3GHz of > > processing power, 1-2 gig of RAM and about a quarter to a half a > > terabyte of RAM. I fear when one of those goes wrong, probing for a > > duff transistor will do me little good! > >=20 > > Errgh.. I was *not* talking about anything modern!! :( :( Is not=20 > this a *vintage* computer email group?! I was referring to things=20 > like C=3D PETs, 4040s and other systems from that era! ie stuff you=20 > can test with equipment that does not mortgage your house.. =20 As I have said many, many times (and I wasn't joking), one reason I don't have a modern PC is that I can't afford the 'scope and logic analyser I'd need to be able to repair them. One reason I stick ot vintage machines is that I can understand them, I can do hardweare tests on them with equipoment I have, I can repair them. > > Ahhh. I'm going the other way. The recent new skills that are relevant > > to me are principles of firewalling and TCP/IP security, routing, DNS > > setup and so on. I'm also trying to learn about setting up and running So? I doubt very much if I'll ever need metal-turning skills in any job I get, this hasn't stopped me from learning to use a lathe. > > Linux servers built from scratch and a bit of coding in Python. For > > me, the relevance of basic electronics is declining, not increasing, > > and I am already half way through my life and accelerating! The day I stop learning is the day I am put in a pine box. Seriously! -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 6 17:13:55 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 23:13:55 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710060342.35091.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 6, 7 03:42:34 am Message-ID: > > > I'd *still* like to someday get my hands on one of the fancier breako= > ut > > > boxes I used to see in catalogs... :-) > > > > How fancy is fancy? > > Not too terribly, considering I can't in any way justify spending much i= > f any=20 > money on such a thing. The ability to interrupt any of the pins, maybe = > do=20 > cross-connecting, and LED indicators would be nice. Err, isn't that what all breakout boxes so, even the simple ones. Every one I own (and I think I have 5 so far, maybe more) has switches to open-circuit each of the lines, sockets/ pins and jumper leads to cross-connect. Some of them monitor all 25 (or maybe 24, often Protective Ground is omitted) of the lines on LEDs, others monitor only the cmmonly-used lines, but have some 'spare' indiocators you can patch to any line. > > I've got one here that does Bit-Error-Rate test, and anohter that will = > do > > RS232-current loop conversions, RS232 to parallel conversions, test RS2= > 32, > > current loop, or parallel devices, and even program EPROMs. Oh, it's go= > t a > > little strip-printer built in too.=20 > > Well, I don't see me affording anything like that any time soon, though= > if I=20 > were to somehow or other acquire one, I surely would NOT be=20 > disappointed. :-) I got mine ata radio rally for \pounds 15.00 ro something like that. Yes I think I did rather well ;-). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 6 16:55:02 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 22:55:02 +0100 (BST) Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <575131af0710052019p7698051dg1da57a845bba6dad@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 6, 7 04:19:16 am Message-ID: > > Errgh.. I was *not* talking about anything modern!! :( :( Is not > > this a *vintage* computer email group?! I was referring to things > > like C=3D PETs, 4040s and other systems from that era! ie stuff you > > can test with equipment that does not mortgage your house.. > > But I don't and wouldn't even /attempt/ to fix anything that old. I THis _is_ classiccimp, right??? To me, an amiga, any amiga, is a new machine. So are PETs. Next weeked, I am giving a presentation on how I restored a 35-year-old programmable claculator (really a computer under a different name...) FOr all but one of the faults, I repaired it using parts still available (just) today, tracing logic fualts around the machine (it's bit-serial which makes things 'interesting', machining new rollers and spindles from metal stock, and so on. The fault I had to cheat on was a cracked ceramic thick-film thermal printhead. I can't repair that -- yet. I 'borrowed' one from a related, but more common, machine which I have 2 of. But of course I've kept the old printhead, one day I might have, or have access too, the facilties to make or repair it. > have a couple of vintage machines, and I'd like to keep them running, > but personally, that's more or less enough for me. > > I read with great fascination the discussions in this group, but for > me, getting my first computer in 1982 or '83, I'm not really > interested in owning anything before the early-1980s 8-bit home I think you're really missing out. There was some great stuff done in the 1970's, some machines are not too hard to find, and running one is a real education (and a great experience). > micros. And since there were many dozens of makes and I have > absolutely no use for any of them, I confine myself to the few I still > have. In the later '80s, there were a much smaller number of much more > powerful 16- (or 32-) bit machines. I've got one of each of the big THere were 16, 20, 24, 32, 36 bit machines around _long_ before that!. > ones: a QL, an Amiga, an ST and several Acorns - an Archimedes and an > A5000 and a RISC-PC. But you've missed out the interesting stuff.You've mentioned everal 68K machines, but you don't seem to have any HP9000/200 series stuff, for example. Or a PERQ 3a > I'd have to agree, yes. But learning to service a Model T - or, given > my personal predilections as a biker, a Rudge or Douglas or AJS - > would not be much help in running my ZZR1100. The owner's manual says, I am not convinced of that _at all_. Learning how to repair old cars has helped a lot with my father's latest thing. For example, although the automatic trnsmission has some microcontroller to run it, it's got similar hydraulics (just a simpler valve block with soldenoid valves) and plaentary geartrains and the Borg-Warners I've already learnt about. > pretty much, check oil, chain tension, brakes and lights; otherwise, > take it to the dealer. That's what I do. Yeah, the user guid for said car says much the same thing. So I bought the workshop manual and follow that... > > If I repair my PC badly, I might lose some data. If I repair my bike > badly, I might die. I already have a metal arm, a metal leg and badly > damaged inner ears from a severe bike crash. I don't want another. I > leave it to the pros. Having seen what some of those 'pros' do, I can't believe I could ever do a worse jo, and I am not boasting here... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 6 17:26:16 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 23:26:16 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 6, 7 12:01:50 pm Message-ID: > > On 10/4/07, der Mouse wrote: > > > I am puzzled by people who want to run old hardware, but who don't > > > want to learn to repair it to component level. [...] > > > > I can understand why > > > people want to run the software under emulation (even if that's not > > > what I want to do), but I am seriously wondering what extra you get > > > from running the old machien _other_ than being able to fully > > > understnad and repair the hardware. > > Even back in the day, there were lots of folks who bought PETs and > Apples and more, that didn't know a single thing about hardware > troubleshooting and repair - 30 years ago, when it broke, they took it I think you're somewhat missing the point. I can (alas) understand why there are people who use currently-available machines (both then and now) and don't understnand how they work. I cna understnad why people are interested only in old software, not hardware, and want to run it under emulation on a modern machine My puzzlement is with people who want to run the old hardware (not have to run the old hardware becuase it is part of some machine tool or something) but don't want to understand what's going on inside. What more do you get over running the software under emulation? [..] > One of the more important considerations is where I'd get spare parts. > I _could_ component-level-troubleshoot a SPARC 2 or a SPARC 5, but so > many of the components are not generic TTL parts, I wouldn't approach > the fault with the expectation that I'd be able to locate a > replacement part except on another similar board. I don't mind Exactly. 'Another _similar_ board' (my emphasis). The point being the board doesn't have to be indetical, the same part might be used on another, more common, board. And even if you do have to take the part from an indentical board, you could do so from a board that's got a fualt in aother custom chip, thus either being able to use a 'junk' board or being abole to fix 2 machines from the same board-of-spares. I do quite a few reparis on HP handheld calculators. There are very few standard chips in those. The point is, though, you can often take processor chips from related machine (the ACT -- Arithmetic Control And Timing -- chip from an HP21 will repair and HP67, for example). > replacing SMT parts, but in the case of most of the SMT ICs on a SPARC > board, I don't know where I'd locate new parts. Removing DIP parts is > difficult from boards as complex as these; not impossible, but > certainly lots more difficult than from a 2-sided 1970s micro. As an aside, the most layers of any PCB I've worked on was 14 (or is it 16, I've seen both figures quoted), and that was in a 1968 machine. The good news is that all I had to desolder and replace were transistors. -tony From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Sat Oct 6 18:07:03 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:07:03 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <47081517.1090601@rogerwilco.org> Following up on previous postings...as I get myself educated a bit more on this system...some questions for the 11/750 experts... 1. It appears that a 'complete' CPU boardset consists of, at a minimum, the following: - L0002 Data Path - L0003 Memory interconnect - L0004 Unibus interconnect - either of L0005 CPU control store, or L0008 Program control store - either of L0011, L0016, L0022 Memory controller (depending on memory choice) Is this correct? All other boards in the L-series are optional, depending on other hardware options, right? 2. Is the L0005 or the L0008 preferred? Which one is easier to use with VMS? With NetBSD? (Gee, a random thought just hit me...is there ULTRIX for this beastie?) 3. The TU58 carts only hold 256KB, so they can't be used as a boot device, I guess, but if I use the L0008 Program control store module, in normal operations, does it get it's initial 'bootstrap' from the TU58, or from the boot device? 4. With the L0004 Unibus interconnect in place, can I just use any (more or less) Unibus module out there, for comm ports and storage? Drinking from the fire-hose at first, here, and hopefully I can pose more intelligent questions as we go along. - Jared From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 6 18:09:58 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:09:58 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710061909.58499.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 06 October 2007 17:30, Tony Duell wrote: > Again, how on earth cna you know what the fault is if you can't diagnose > it. You mentioned swapping a DIMM. How can you know if an intermittant > memory problem is a fault in the DIMM or in the memory controller on the > motherboard? I've wondered about that for a while now. I've used various memory diagnostics on different machines over the years, and basically they all seem to have in common that they write different patterns to memory and then read it back for comparison. While this is okay as far as it goes, how DO you deal with the situation you mention there? Another one I ran into some years back (my first purchased 386 board actually) was what appeared to be a problem with cache. I *still* have no idea whether the lockups I was seeing that went away when I disabled external cache were the fault of the cache ram or something on the MB, and I've never run across anything that appeared to be capable of testing that function. > > > Actually, there are some ISA boards I am still looking for. Top of the > > > list is an origianl IB< PGC. > > > > I don't know what that is. I have a bag of ISA kit: mostly multi-I/O > > PGC = Professional Graphics Controller. An IBM board set (3 boards > fitting into 2 adjacent ISA slots (there's a memory PCB sandwiched > between them) that form an intellegent-ish graphics card with an 8088 to > control it (!). I have the techref, I'd love to play with the boards. Ah. I was wondering about that too. If you'd said "PGA" I would've had a clue right off. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 6 18:15:59 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:15:59 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710061915.59428.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 06 October 2007 18:13, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > I'd *still* like to someday get my hands on one of the fancier > > > > breakout boxes I used to see in catalogs... :-) > > > > > > How fancy is fancy? > > > > Not too terribly, considering I can't in any way justify spending much > > if any money on such a thing. The ability to interrupt any of the pins, > > maybe do cross-connecting, and LED indicators would be nice. > > Err, isn't that what all breakout boxes so, even the simple ones. No. I've not looked at that sort of thing in catalogs for quite a while, but the last time I did, some years ago, that sort of thing was at the upper end of what at least one company was offering, other stuff was quite simpler, omitting the indicators and such, maybe a more limited patching ability, or whatever. > Every one I own (and I think I have 5 so far, maybe more) has switches to > open-circuit each of the lines, sockets/ pins and jumper leads to > cross-connect. Some of them monitor all 25 (or maybe 24, often Protective > Ground is omitted) of the lines on LEDs, others monitor only the > cmmonly-used lines, but have some 'spare' indiocators you can patch to > any line. About the only thing I've accumulated so far is a double-ended adapter that has seven LEDs in it, which has already proved useful enough to have justified its fairly reasonable cost. No patching in that one, just the indicators, but it comes in handy sometimes anyway. How does one accumulate _five_ of those things? :-) > > > I've got one here that does Bit-Error-Rate test, and anohter that will > > > do RS232-current loop conversions, RS232 to parallel conversions, test > > > RS232, current loop, or parallel devices, and even program EPROMs. Oh, > > > it's got a little strip-printer built in too. > > > > Well, I don't see me affording anything like that any time soon, > > though if I were to somehow or other acquire one, I surely would NOT > > be disappointed. :-) > > I got mine ata radio rally for \pounds 15.00 ro something like that. > Yes I think I did rather well ;-). I would tend to agree with that. Perhaps I should make it a point to get to those some time, though accumulating some excess cash first would probably help. It's been that kind of a year.. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 6 19:10:55 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:10:55 -0600 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <4708240E.8090601@jetnet.ab.ca> William Donzelli wrote: >> Crunching numbers was a part of the task. The other part was moving >> and handeling data in mass storage and memory. Most of the DEC hardware >> moved data pretty fast. What was the demise of PDP-10 was simple, megabytes. > > And being six bit machine in an eight bit world... > SEVEN bit world. We can blame IBM for all our 8 bit PC ASCII stuff. Eight bits I think for EBDC was earlier. Having 4 bit sized TTL stuff does not make for nice octal digits. Ben. From ray at arachelian.com Sat Oct 6 19:44:37 2007 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:44:37 -0400 Subject: xerox 820-II boot disk In-Reply-To: <200708031035.l73AZbhq019100@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200708012117.l71LHETS019645@hosting.monisys.ca> <200708031035.l73AZbhq019100@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <47082BF5.6050504@arachelian.com> Dave Dunfield wrote: > You shouldn't need a lot of additional space. The adapter consists of a > 50-pin edge card connector (you can make this from a cut-down ISA connector > if you need), and the 34-pin connector salvaged from an old 5.25" drive > PCB. If your PC doesn't have one, you will also need a PC floppy cable > with a 5.25" drive connector. If you prefer, you could make the adapter > using a pin-header and connect directly to a 3.5" floppy cable. > > You already have the 8" drives in an enclosure with power supply. You > pop the cover off, sit your PC beside it with it's cover off, and run > the floppy cable from the PC to one of the 8" drives. > > Trickiest part is iirc the 820 has single-density on the system tracks > and many PCs can't do that. > > Depending on where you are located, there may be someone nearby with an > 8" <> PC setup who can make you the disk. (Where are you?) > > Hi Dave, I'm also interesting in doing this, but for a Star, not an 820. I looked around on your site, but didn't see where the docs for making this interface are. Also, would you know if your interface would work with reading Xerox Star 8" floppies from a PC? From useddec at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 19:45:48 2007 From: useddec at gmail.com (Paul Anderson) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 19:45:48 -0500 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <4706DEEE.1030804@rogerwilco.org> References: <4706DEEE.1030804@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <624966d60710061745y2d8e1da8r35bb4b2b0a9b03ca@mail.gmail.com> Send me a wish list- I should have most of them. Paul On 10/5/07, J Blaser wrote: > > The gods smiled upon me, and I was chosen to rescue the DEC VAX 11/750 > that Richard alerted us too about a month ago. Yesterday I went up to > collect it. I think most of us, during a pickup, are mindful of just > getting the load onboard and away, and it was the same way for me with > this pickup. Besides, the unit was literally stuffed so tightly into > the front corner of their storage that there was no way to examine the > innards at that location. A few images can be found at: > > http://www.rogerwilco.org/VAX11-750 > > Once back on homebase, I finally got a chance to open up the unit. To > my horror (it is October, after all), I find just a single board > installed in the CPU backplane, and one loose q-bus board! The first is > a System Industries 9700-6301 with the following significant chips: > Signetics N8X60N, AMD AM9128 (x2), Motorola MCM93L422PC (x4), TI > SN74S181N, and about a dozen TI 82S137s with little numbered stickers on > each. Otherwise it's loaded with TTL logic chips. There are no headers > or other connectors on board, just the backplane fingers. I have no > idea what this board is. I openly admit that I'm a complete {non-uVAX | > massbus | unibus} novice. The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, which > I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel interface. I'll have to > do a little scouting on Bitsavers and Manx to see if I can turn up > anything useful. > > Anyway, sadly, this box is not much more than an empty carcass, without > any brains. It clearly was sacrificed to keep other systems alive. > Still, I would dearly love to populate the backplane(s) and light this > baby up, but I guessing I'll be hard pressed to find anyone with a whole > set of spares that I could somehow convince into letting them go. > > I don't want to lose an opportunity here, and I'm not saying that I have > my eye on the local metal recycler just yet, but what am I going to do > with an empty chassis?! Now, I should say that the donor was extremely > nice, and offered to pass along anything related that eventually turns > up as they dig deeper into their massive pile (12' x 15' x 20', > literally boxes/cartons/PCs upon boxes/cartons/PCs), but I'm not sure I > should hope for much. > > Am I foolish to ask? Anyone with a spare set of VAX 11/750 modules? > > - Jared > > From dave06a at dunfield.com Sat Oct 6 20:52:25 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 20:52:25 -0500 Subject: xerox 820-II boot disk In-Reply-To: <47082BF5.6050504@arachelian.com> References: <200708031035.l73AZbhq019100@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <200710070057.l970vE8k017819@hosting.monisys.ca> > Dave Dunfield wrote: > > You shouldn't need a lot of additional space. The adapter consists of a > > 50-pin edge card connector (you can make this from a cut-down ISA connector > > if you need), and the 34-pin connector salvaged from an old 5.25" drive > > PCB. If your PC doesn't have one, you will also need a PC floppy cable > > with a 5.25" drive connector. If you prefer, you could make the adapter > > using a pin-header and connect directly to a 3.5" floppy cable. > > > > You already have the 8" drives in an enclosure with power supply. You > > pop the cover off, sit your PC beside it with it's cover off, and run > > the floppy cable from the PC to one of the 8" drives. > > > > Trickiest part is iirc the 820 has single-density on the system tracks > > and many PCs can't do that. > > > > Depending on where you are located, there may be someone nearby with an > > 8" <> PC setup who can make you the disk. (Where are you?) > Hi Dave, I'm also interesting in doing this, but for a Star, not an > 820. I looked around on your site, but didn't see where the docs for > making this interface are. Near the bottom of the main page is a link called "Disk/Software images" (or something like that) - on that page you will find links to the docs I mentioned re: connecting an 8" drive. > Also, would you know if your interface would work with reading Xerox > Star 8" floppies from a PC? Not familier with the star, however as long as it's IBM format soft sector (like the 820/820-II) it should work. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 6 20:11:02 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:11:02 -0700 Subject: Character width; was: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4708240E.8090601@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net>, , <4708240E.8090601@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4707CFB6.26593.2387DF4@cclist.sydex.com> On 6 Oct 2007 at 18:10, woodelf wrote: > William Donzelli wrote: > > > And being six bit machine in an eight bit world... > > > SEVEN bit world. We can blame IBM for all our 8 bit PC ASCII stuff. > Eight bits I think for EBDC was earlier. Having 4 bit sized TTL stuff > does not make for nice octal digits. Ben. The whole history of character respresntations in computers seems to have been pretty bleak to me. Early decimal machines could use 00-99 for characters, then binary machines adopted 6-bit characters--a *smaller* set. At least 5-bit Baudot wasn't used much. When customers started asking for lowercase characters on the CDC 6- bit machines, IIRC, there were seveal approaches suggested. One was to pack 7.5 characters into a 60 bit word. Someone coined the term "snaque" for this unit (bigger than a byte, get it?). I'm not aware that the system was ever widely deployed, thankfully. Instead, uppercase characters were represented with their usual 6-bit codes, while lower-case was denoted with a 00 "escape" character. So, "HELLO" woud be represented in octal as 10 05 14 14 17 and "Hello" would be represented as "10 00 05 00 14 00 14 00 17". (Hope I got that right!). 6 bits was miserably crowded when numbers and punctuation were added. In particular, I recall that double-quote and "not equals" shared the same code--what came out on your listing depended on what type train was installed in the printer. In retrospect, a 12-bit character would have made a huge amount of sense--12 rows on a punch card, so nn need for translation hardware to somehow turn legal and illegal punch combinations into characters. Lots of room to grow--perhaps not enough for the ideographic alphabets, such as Kanji, but enough for most writing systems. Octal or hexadecimal accommodated equally well. In the Sepember IEEE Computer magazine, Neville Holmes wrote a squib on "The Profession as a Culture Killer", with some note of the new ICANN rules allowing non-Latin characters to be part of domain names. I don't agree with everything he wrote, but he had some points. Cheers, Chuck From dave06a at dunfield.com Sat Oct 6 21:09:21 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 21:09:21 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS files Message-ID: <200710070114.l971E3Ec022536@hosting.monisys.ca> Hi Guys, I've been approached by an artist who has many 5.25" Cromemco CDOS disks containing artwork from early in her career the she would like to recover. She has already made arrangements with the supplier of the original software to convert the files to something she can use on a modern PC, however she needs the files extracted from the CDOS disks. As there are several hundred disks, I would really like to find a PC based solution which I can automate. So far I can have tried the shareware version of 22disk, which can list the directory, however it reports multiple linked sectors in two of the three sample disks I am looking at, and also gets unrecoverable errors on sector 1 of every track (sector 1 on Cromemco disk is problematic with a PC - I've already got the drive slowed slightly, which allows ImageDisk to read and recreate the entire disk. So I have access to all of the sector data, but no way to feed it to 22disk. I've also tried Uniform, however it gets an unrecoverable error on any attempt to access the disk - in fact the error comes at the moment the drive selects, so I don't believe it's even trying, possibly because the P200 PC in my imaging station is "Way too fast" for software timing loops etc. So I am left with the option to extract the files from the ImageDisk images - what I need are technical details on the CDOS file system. CDOS is "CP/M compatible", does anyone know if the file system is identical - if not, can anyone point me at technical details. If yes, can anyone point me at a good description of the CP/M file system (It's been years since I needed to dig deeply into it). Anyone got source code ('C' preferred) for extracting files from CP/M? I have found sector->cluster mapping tables in the back of the CDOS manual, which hopefully will help sort out the XLT issues etc. Any other assistance/suggestions/pointers etc. would be most welcome. Regards, Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 20:43:06 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 21:43:06 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4708240E.8090601@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <4708240E.8090601@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > SEVEN bit world. Explain? Parity does not count. > We can blame IBM for all our 8 bit PC ASCII stuff. > Eight bits I think for EBDC was earlier. Having 4 bit sized TTL stuff > does not make for nice octal digits. Ben. The big reason IBM picked eight over six with the S/360 (and yes, there was a fight over this), was that in the big scheme of things, eight and four bit chunks are more memory efficient than six bit chunks. Kind of really bad timing on DEC's part, setting up the whole 36 bit line just as IBM set up everything to 32. But then, they would not have known. Bad luck. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sat Oct 6 20:52:57 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 21:52:57 -0400 Subject: Character width; was: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4707CFB6.26593.2387DF4@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <4708240E.8090601@jetnet.ab.ca> <4707CFB6.26593.2387DF4@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > 6 bits was miserably crowded when numbers and punctuation were added. Six bits also is VERY inefficient for numeric data - all that stuff the bank uses. In the 1960s, IBM found this was a HUGE percentage of what was stored on disk. Yes, you could pack 1.5 BCD digits into six bits, but then there is a overhead dealing with the translation. The overhead may be tiny on a per digit basis, but when you need to crunch zillions of digits per nightly run of the batch... > In retrospect, a 12-bit character would have made a huge amount of > sense--12 rows on a punch card, so nn need for translation hardware > to somehow turn legal and illegal punch combinations into characters. Once again, very inefficient for character data - at least character data back then. Too many wasted bits. -- Will From healyzh at aracnet.com Sat Oct 6 20:56:41 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 18:56:41 -0700 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 5:15 PM -0500 10/6/07, Randy Dawson wrote: >I dont participate as much as I would like, but I may be of help on this one. > >I'm a professional PCB guy, and can show you all how to get this fabricated. >There are a number of shops in our trade magazines that offer some >pretty low cost (double and 4 layer) PCBs > >What do we have to start with, some gerber files? > >Or really going out on a limb, the entire design file in PADS, or Orcad? I was told by another list member that the Gerber files were generated by "ACCEL P-CAD PCB, Version 14.01.03". Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 Oct 6 21:09:27 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:09:27 -0600 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <4708240E.8090601@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <47083FD7.50908@jetnet.ab.ca> William Donzelli wrote: >> SEVEN bit world. > > Explain? Parity does not count. Yup! > The big reason IBM picked eight over six with the S/360 (and yes, > there was a fight over this), was that in the big scheme of things, > eight and four bit chunks are more memory efficient than six bit > chunks. What about IBM's 36 bit machines? > Kind of really bad timing on DEC's part, setting up the whole 36 bit > line just as IBM set up everything to 32. But then, they would not > have known. Bad luck. Dec started with 18's so 36 makes sence. Still here is some thoughts on DEC's PDP-2. http://locl.net/homes/pdp2/ Ben. > -- > Will > > > . > From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 6 21:14:37 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:14:37 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: <200710070114.l971E3Ec022536@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200710070114.l971E3Ec022536@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <4707DE9D.19730.272B70E@cclist.sydex.com> On 6 Oct 2007 at 21:09, Dave Dunfield wrote: > So far I can have tried the shareware version of 22disk, which can > list the directory, however it reports multiple linked sectors in > two of the three sample disks I am looking at, and also gets > unrecoverable errors on sector 1 of every track (sector 1 on > Cromemco disk is problematic with a PC - I've already got the > drive slowed slightly, which allows ImageDisk to read and > recreate the entire disk. So I have access to all of the sector > data, but no way to feed it to 22disk. Mask out the index pulse if all you're going to do is read. 22Disk needs an index only for formatting (the old 10x512 problem). The same should be the case with Uniform. Also, I show FOUR different 5.25" CDOS formats, which one are you using? Usually when you get cross-linked files, it's an issue with the definition that you're using. AFAIK, at least from the CDOS samples I have here, the allocation and naming setup is the same as CP/M. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 6 21:33:00 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:33:00 -0700 Subject: Character width; was: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net>, <4707CFB6.26593.2387DF4@cclist.sydex.com>, Message-ID: <4707E2EC.21691.2838A6C@cclist.sydex.com> On 6 Oct 2007 at 21:52, William Donzelli wrote: > Six bits also is VERY inefficient for numeric data - all that stuff > the bank uses. In the 1960s, IBM found this was a HUGE percentage of > what was stored on disk. Yes, you could pack 1.5 BCD digits into six > bits, but then there is a overhead dealing with the translation. The > overhead may be tiny on a per digit basis, but when you need to crunch > zillions of digits per nightly run of the batch... If efficiency was the primary goal, hollerith cards could have been punched in column- or row-binary; packing 3 digits per colum, with leftover codes for sign and point. Think of the trees saved! Yet I never saw a BDP application do that. Would have been hell on the punches in any case. > > In retrospect, a 12-bit character would have made a huge amount of > > sense--12 rows on a punch card, so nn need for translation hardware > > to somehow turn legal and illegal punch combinations into characters. > > Once again, very inefficient for character data - at least character > data back then. Too many wasted bits. Back to 6 bits. For the type of stuff that the BDP community did, 6 bits per character was plenty. In that sense, using an 8 bit character was a real waste. Two 6-bit characters can pack 3 BCD digits--exactly the same efficiency as S/360 packed decimal--and packing/unpacking is not much different from converting from packed to zoned decimal. Cheers, Chuck From aek at bitsavers.org Sat Oct 6 21:37:58 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:37:58 -0700 Subject: Xerox Star floppies (was xerox 820-II boot disk) Message-ID: <47084686.4070606@bitsavers.org> > Hi Dave, I'm also interesting in doing this, but for a Star Imagedisk should work fine. They are double sided, double density disks. Somewhere I have a Unix program that can extract the contents from them. I have at least a hundred 8010 floppies read already with various versions of the Star OS, Interlistp-D, Server software and XDE. From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sat Oct 6 23:17:32 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 05:17:32 +0100 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: References: <200710050437.l954bcLk014118@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <1191730652.9371.0.camel@elric> On Sat, 2007-10-06 at 17:41 +0200, Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 10/5/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > > And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the > > "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) > > http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm > > I've seen that before, and have often contemplated throwing one together. > > > I'm about ready to start collecting the parts needed and to see about > > getting at least a couple circuit boards made. > > Would you mind sharing where you are getting Nokia 3310 phones (or the > Phillips PDC 8544 LCD display)? A quick search suggests three quid including postage, on eBay. That's a bare display PCB. Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sun Oct 7 00:26:39 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 06:26:39 +0100 Subject: lead-free solder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1191734799.9371.4.camel@elric> On Fri, 2007-10-05 at 23:31 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > Maplin have really gone away from the hobbyist electronic market towards > PC-clone modules, cinsumer electronics, etc. Gone are the days when you > could go to the enarest Maplin in your lunchbreak to get the bits needed > for the afternoon's hardware hacking. In fact these days, even if it's in > the catalogue, there's a good chance it won't be in the shop. Most > interesting items are 'order only' I've started just buying components from suppliers on eBay. Case in point was a couple of months ago when I needed an LM723 regulator chip for the power supply in a synthesizer - Maplin listed them, but for about ?2 and "online order only", with a lead time of two weeks. I bought a tube of 10 for a fiver including shipping, from someone on eBay. It arrived within four days. Gordon From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sun Oct 7 01:11:38 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 23:11:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 6 Oct 2007, Randy Dawson wrote: > > I dont participate as much as I would like, but I may be of help on this > one. > > I'm a professional PCB guy, and can show you all how to get this > fabricated. There are a number of shops in our trade magazines that > offer some pretty low cost (double and 4 layer) PCBs > > What do we have to start with, some gerber files? > > Or really going out on a limb, the entire design file in PADS, or Orcad? There are gerbers at http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541_downloads/PCB_1541_III_V1_GERBER.zip. It's a two-layer design. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 02:37:24 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:37:24 +0200 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/6/07, David Griffith wrote: > Just the PCBs. The rest of the parts seem easily available in one-offs. > In particular, I presume the LCDs can be cannibalized from 33xx series > phones. Yes... the LCD called for (PDC 8544) does appear in the Nokia 3310, specifically, and most likely in other models as well. I'd be interested in one or two blank boards, myself, if there's a group-buy on 1541-III-DTVs (I have a couple of DTVs and a few Hummers), but since I also have a stable of desktop C= hardware, I'd also be very much interested in a 1541-III w/LCD. I'd definitely buy a blank board for one of those. I have a well-stocked parts bin, so I'd be more interested in a CPU/regulator/PCB kit than a 100% bag-o-parts on either project. Coincidentally enough, just yesterday, I was asking a list member about any IEEE-488 FLASH drives, since the 1541-III is IEC. I don't know that anyone has ever done one, and given the abundance of C= IEC-based machines over C= IEEE-488-based machines, perhaps what is called for is a new project, a C=-friendly IEEE<->IEC "serializer/deserializer" (since the byte-level protocol is the same). In any case, I _am_ interested in IEC FLASH drives. I build several kits a year, so if there are bare boards to be had, I will be interested in one or two of anything that comes out of these discussions. I would have bought a 1541-III-DTV earlier this year if I'd noticed that there were preliminary kits available. -ethan From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 02:54:51 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:54:51 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: On 10/6/07, J Blaser wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: > > I did notice you have a cable hanging down for a UDA50... it's likely > > that they had both SI disk _and_ Unibus-attachd SMD disks. Grrr... I _meant_ *SDI* disks, not SMD. RA81s, RA90s, etc. > Oh, yes, thanks for the reminder. Indeed there are about a half-dozen > carts floating around in the bottom of the cabinet. I haven't even > extracted them yet to see what they are. But I'll definitely want to > get an image of them, if I can, once the drive is revived. I wonder, > can the integrated TU58 be (temporarily) cabled to something like the > PDP-11/23+ that I have, so that I could image those carts first before > trying to use them in the VAX (eventually)? Is it just a standard > serial connection coming off of the drive, like the desktop TU58 > subsystems, or is it something lower level? Electrically, it's a standard serial interface, but I think there might be an odd cable because it's an 11/750-internal cable. Nothing insurmountable with a willingness to make a cable adapater. Yes, you could use an 11/23+, or even a modern machine running DOS or UNIX and one of the several TU-58-slurping programs out there. I personally use a dual TU58 from an 11/725 and a PC to read my carts. I forget, at the moment, which program I'm using, but it's one of the old, standard ones that's been kicking around for years. I have about an 80% success rate with the tapes I've read so far. Oh... you could eventually substitute a PC or FLASH-based TU58 emulator in place of the drive, but in practice, we only ever used our TU58 for booting diagnostics or Standalone Backup for OS installs, or loading the DEC Microcode patch... come to think of it... the Microcode patch (which we started using around VMS 4.6 or 4.7) would be an excellent use for a TU58 emulator. Software-based ones are out there, just like the tapedumping packages, but except for an ancient 8051-based Spare Time Gizmos hardware TU58 emulator (now out of production), I don't know of any hardware TU58 emulators, but every once in a while, I kick around the idea of building one (with a CF socket for storage, and an LCD to see what the emulator is doing). > Looks like this is going to be a somewhat lengthy revival, with lots of > things to consider, detail-wise. That seems likely. > Actually, I just can't see myself scrapping the machine. It would be a > real shame to do that, so I'm going to do my best to get the backplane > repopulated, cobble some storage, and light it up! Good to hear. Keep up the good work. -ethan P.S. - as for adding wires to the backplane, any wire-wrap tool should suffice, including the manual tool that Radio Shack used to sell (looks like a Jeweler's Screwdriver, with a wire-stripper stored in the handle). No unusual tools (beyond ordinary WW tools) are required. P.P.S - if you are *lucky*, there are plastic alignment blocks on the backplane where the cables tap into the off-board I/O area. If not, you might want to track down the installation manual for the SI 9700/9900. More with Massbus or Unibus adapters, I've seen 2x20 plastic blocks that slide down over the pins to help connector orientation and registration, but they aren't required, as long as you get the cables on right the first time. From healyzh at aracnet.com Sun Oct 7 03:27:15 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 01:27:15 -0700 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I have been looking into the parts needed to build one of these. Not even including the price of the PCB or MMC/SD card, it isn't exactly cheap. It looks like it will cost about $64.00 just for the parts. It is also worth noting that most of these parts are surface mount. I've done up a web page showing the price breakdown when ordering the parts from Newark, as they are a US arm of Farnell. http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/commodore/1541-III.html It also includes the Manufacturer and Newark part numbers. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 04:10:46 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 11:10:46 +0200 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/7/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > I have been looking into the parts needed to build one of these. Not > even including the price of the PCB or MMC/SD card, it isn't exactly > cheap. It looks like it will cost about $64.00 just for the parts. See below... > It is also worth noting that most of these parts are surface mount. Indeed. > I've done up a web page showing the price breakdown when ordering the > parts from Newark, as they are a US arm of Farnell. > http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/commodore/1541-III.html It also > includes the Manufacturer and Newark part numbers. Nice work. I do notice that you've listed two MCUs, a PIC 18F252 and a PIC 18F2620. Presumably, the design takes one _or_ the other, not both. Also, it looks to me like those 0.1" (2.54mm) jumpers is a bit high - $0.25 each, min q. 10. Other killers are the $15 handling fee (presumably because the order value isn't up to their minimum value - $50?), the RL73K2BR33JTD resistor (1 required, min q. 10 @ ~$2), and various min quantity orders. What might make more fiscal sense, to me, at least, would be to order enough parts to build two, rather than one. More of the teeny parts would be used up for zero additional expense, plus the order might cross the min-order threshold and avoid the $15 service fee. Of course, if it were _my_ order, I'd find some MCUs or other parts to round up my own order, just because I'd rather have $15 worth of additional components than pay a $15 fee that gets me nothing substantial. Thanks for laying everything out in a very plain and clear fashion. It's a great starting point, especially for those who might have to order every single part to build a kit (I see large numbers of things I'd pull from my own stores). -ethan From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 6 09:49:01 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 10:49:01 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPH0003SVS60XW2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: these RTL or what? > From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) > Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 08:40:15 -0400 > To: cctech at classiccmp.org, cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Allison wrote: >> In the end ECL was a way to speed but always at such a high system cost >> and complexity it was often behind the curve for integration and delivery. > >It depends on what you're doing. > >ECL was perfect for custom-built lab and military hardware. Follow >a few simple rules and even a bozo like me could reliably lay out the >PCB's. Contrast that with 74F technology where you couldn't even figure >out if ground at the center of the board was the same as the ground at >the edge of the board :-). Having used most logic from transistors to ECL100k and some oddballs inbetween I'd agree. ECL was excellent for mixed signal and fast front end stuff. My favorite uses were programable /n for PLLs and frequency counters. ECL was far nicer without ground noise and some of the transmission line difficulties that the faster/fastest TTL (and CMOS) were really nasty driving. Ringing and reflections on a board, bus or interconnect could really ruin your day. That made ECL nice for fast intersystem connects were the cables were for reasons coaxial cables or other shielded schemes. >Above the onesies-twosies level things weren't so clear. There's a big >leap between a back-projector or array-processor made at the onesies-twosies >level and the world where VLSI becomes economical. Gate arrays helped >span this gap but that gap had been pinched to nonexistence by the mid-80's. The magical thing that really impacted logic design indirectly be it discrete transistors or the fastest of the fast was simply size. The faster the logic was the closer all the sourrounding bits had to be to capitalize on it. Otherwise the rule of thumb of 1nS/ft took over never minding load capacitances. Witness the Cray round machine (YMP?). There is a long history of systems compaction, cooling and speed interactions in computers. >Minicomputer makers like DEC who also had their own fabs were in an odd boat... >the process-leading CPU chips couldn't utilize the fabs built to >deal with them because DEC didn't sell enough CPU's. In the end >a vast army of interface and peripheral chips seemed to keep things >churning well enough that they kept their fabs for many many years past >where I was convinced they couldn't be economically viable. Bingo there. While a few chips were economically successful it was only with the help of silicon foundries like WD, SMC and AMD to get needed volumes. In the end the greatest value of silicon hill was in its sale with a few licenses kicked in. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 6 11:01:36 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:01:36 -0400 Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? Message-ID: <0JPH00DL8Z55HII3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? > From: "Ethan Dicks" > Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:41:24 +0200 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 10/5/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: >> And you all seem to have missed what I'm referring to. :^) Note the >> "III" portion of 1541-III. :^) >> http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm > >I've seen that before, and have often contemplated throwing one together. > >> I'm about ready to start collecting the parts needed and to see about >> getting at least a couple circuit boards made. > >Would you mind sharing where you are getting Nokia 3310 phones (or the >Phillips PDC 8544 LCD display)? > >> BTW, I currently have 3-5 1541's, 1 1571, and 1 or 2 Excelerator+Plus >> (minus power-supplies) drives. I tend to use a pair of the 1541's. >> Though the 1571 is at home rather than lost up in storage. :^) I use >> the 1541's as I don't have a spare 1571. I prefer to only use drives >> if I have a spare. > >I've never had a 1571 - I started with 1540 in 1982 (and wish I could >find it - I think it has my Spartan Apple-II interface mounted inside >it), then acquired a number of 1541s in my C-64 days, but never moved >over to the C-128, so froze there in time (except for the 1581 I have >that came from a defunct Commodore dealer - it works, but I haven't >put more than a couple floppies through it). > >I _am_ interested in the 1541-III, but I'd *really* be interested in a >FLASH-storage-based 2031 - i.e., with an IEEE-488 interface. I still >do lots with PETs, and the .D64 support would solve one of the >problems I have with running old programs - Infocom used "random >files" (unstructured raw block access) for their Zmachine. The games >were very much floppy-based, with no obvious way to migrate them to a >hard disk or other non-floppy medium. > >-ethan Something similar to that would be appealing for my Epson PX-8. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 6 11:59:23 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:59:23 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? Message-ID: <0JPI00KKX1TFBAP3@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? > From: woodelf > Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 10:51:30 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Barry Watzman wrote: > Reading the media with a variety of >> drives other than the one used for burning is certainly not a bad idea, but >> for most users is unacceptably time consuming. >Software mortality worries me. Who knows what bugs the next version of >your driver has. Ben. One solution is a few older systems "frozen in time" and not allowed to auto update (if M$). Even if Linux frozen in time is a good idea for backups and archives. This ahs proven successful for me and also give me working systems that are not prone to yet a new set of different bugs or lost capability. Allison From Josef.Deuschinger at web.de Sat Oct 6 16:56:09 2007 From: Josef.Deuschinger at web.de (Josef Deuschinger) Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 23:56:09 +0200 Subject: Tektronix 4041 System Controller Docs Message-ID: <000601c80863$d743abe0$2101a8c0@STO3> Hi Richard, I just read your email below, when scanning through the net for more 4041 information. You know, I asked you for the missing page A-10 of your '4041 System Controller' manual a while ago. I am looking for more information about how to get user programs as stand alone units into the ROMs. The Utility package names at page 7-1 the programs PRMBLD for building ROMable tape images and RMXFER for transferring them to the ROMs. I am also interested in a description of how to prepare files to be loaded with the command 'Loadroms'. The programs should be part of an optional accessory package. Do you have them? Are they part of the 'systems verification tape'? The following manuals I don't have: * 4041 Option 10 Graphics, plotting, signal processing & utility routines - programmers reference guide 70-5983-00 (I suppose it's a detailed ROM call description), * Getting Stared With Your 4041, * 4041R03 operation manual with ROM call description 070-4559-00, * 4041 service manual 061-2513-00 In turn, I can give you copies of all ROM packs as files. I have them all verified by programmed MCM68766C EPROMs! I also would be interested in an 4041 experience exchange with other users. Thanks in advance for your help. Best regards, Josef Richard legalize at xmission.com Mon Apr 24 12:28:58 CDT 2006 a.. Previous message: anyone have a terminal server? b.. Next message: Tektronix 4041 System Controller Docs c.. Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since I just acquired one of these new-in-box with all the docs, if someone else out there needs more docs for these let me know and I'll move them to the top of my scanning queue. Of particular interest is the documentation for several of the ROM packs and the complete programmer's reference documentation giving all the details on the BASIC language in the controller. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 6 17:01:42 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:01:42 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPI0042NFT7ST90@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: these RTL or what? > From: "William Donzelli" > Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:48:07 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> >That depends on how tight everything is. Thermal Conduction Module, anyone? >> >> At 1ns/ft even the TCMs were not tight/dense enough. > >Have you ever seen a IBM TCM? Yes, but conductors on substrate are slower depending on substrate used. They are dense but TCMs still have to talk to other TCMs. >> Crunching numbers was a part of the task. The other part was moving >> and handeling data in mass storage and memory. Most of the DEC hardware >> moved data pretty fast. What was the demise of PDP-10 was simple, megabytes. > >And being six bit machine in an eight bit world... ;) minor thing. >-- >Will From prd at bur.st Sat Oct 6 18:30:04 2007 From: prd at bur.st (Peter Dreisiger) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 07:30:04 +0800 Subject: DECnet/E and/or can anyone in Australia image a 1600 BPI tape? Message-ID: <20071006233004.GA3376@bur.st> G'day there, Although I've been watching this list for a few months now, this is my first post to the cctech mailing list so I guess I should start by saying hello from Perth, Western Australia. I've been collecting DEC machines and Commodore 8-bitters for about eight years now, and I've recently started collecting members of the Apple ][ and Macintosh family. (While I'm yet to pick up any big iron PDPs, I do have representatives of DEC's PDP-11, VAX, MIPS and Alpha families.) I've also managed to pick up members of the PA-RISC, SGI MIPS, SUN SPARC and IBM RS/6000 families, though this part of my collection is much less comprehensive. Anyway, on to the topic of my message --- currently up for sale on eBay is a set of RSTS/E and DECnet/E tapes. I've been playing around with RSTS/E, TOPS-20, and earlier versions of VAX/VMS, Ultrix and BSD UNIX in the hopes of setting up a limited ARPAnet-era free public access network, and while I do have some RSTS/E 9.2 boxes running under simh, they're basically standalone. Now, some RSTS/E and DECnet/E tapes have come up for auction on eBay (see http://cgi.ebay.com.au/DEC-Software-Kit-RSTS-E-Tapes-More_W0QQitemZ180166208542QQihZ008QQ) but there are at least two problems: (1) the current set of RSTS/E 9.[257] and DECnet/E 4.1 tapes are listed for AUD 595/795 for Buy It Now, and (2) I don't have any tape drives older than a TK50. So, should this auction lapse, and in the off chance that I can obtain just the DECnet/E tape, I was wondering if anyone here (1) has a 1600 BPI tape drive with which they can image a tape or two, and (2) lives in Australia. Of course, if anyone already has a copy of DECnet/E that they're willing to share, I'd appreciate that even more as the seller doesn't make any guarantees about his tapes' quality or usability. Many thanks in advance, Pete From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 6 19:57:05 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:57:05 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: these RTL or what? > From: woodelf > Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:10:55 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >William Donzelli wrote: > >>> Crunching numbers was a part of the task. The other part was moving >>> and handeling data in mass storage and memory. Most of the DEC hardware >>> moved data pretty fast. What was the demise of PDP-10 was simple, megabytes. >> >> And being six bit machine in an eight bit world... >> >SEVEN bit world. We can blame IBM for all our 8 bit PC ASCII stuff. >Eight bits I think for EBDC was earlier. Having 4 bit sized TTL stuff >does not make for nice octal digits. Ben. Does it really makes that much differnce the number of bits for a char? Really, Six bits was kinda tight for work where upper or lower case was used but it didn't affect calculating Pi to a 100 places. Wasn't the basic chunk 9 bits for PDP10 and it happened (DEC software) used 6 bit char notation as a carry over from earlier life with friden flexowriter and TTYs on earlier machines? While It may have been an issue and part of the picture I don't feel it was as heavy a weight as VAX was easier to promote and potentially could address Gigabyte size memories with 32 bit pointers rather than 256KW with a memory extension to 4MW. I find it easier to see and recognize that bigger machines with bigger memories for big programs crunching huge amounts of data is what had a big part in the 10s demise. Only opinion but hey, it's free. Allison From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Sun Oct 7 04:23:49 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:23:49 +0100 Subject: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB18@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Wundebar... That's nearly as bad as Vienna. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Paul Heller Sent: 05 October 2007 19:57 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Re: [Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay] ---- Original Message ----- From: "Rod Smallwood" > I'm a bit confused as to where it is. The only Penzing I know is in > Austria near Vienna. > If it was northern Germany I'd go and get it. The system unit might be > the basis for building up a PDP 8 system. > Google maps shows it near Munich. Paul From rcini at optonline.net Sun Oct 7 07:38:25 2007 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:38:25 -0400 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Same here. I have a DTV that could use a drive, but the stand-alone is pretty intriguing as well. There's going to be a run on Nokia phones on eBay...get yours now :-) On 10/7/07 3:37 AM, "Ethan Dicks" wrote: > On 10/6/07, David Griffith wrote: >> Just the PCBs. The rest of the parts seem easily available in one-offs. >> In particular, I presume the LCDs can be cannibalized from 33xx series >> phones. > > Yes... the LCD called for (PDC 8544) does appear in the Nokia 3310, > specifically, and most likely in other models as well. > > I'd be interested in one or two blank boards, myself, if there's a > group-buy on 1541-III-DTVs (I have a couple of DTVs and a few > Hummers), but since I also have a stable of desktop C= hardware, I'd > also be very much interested in a 1541-III w/LCD. I'd definitely buy > a blank board for one of those. > > I have a well-stocked parts bin, so I'd be more interested in a > CPU/regulator/PCB kit than a 100% bag-o-parts on either project. > > Coincidentally enough, just yesterday, I was asking a list member > about any IEEE-488 FLASH drives, since the 1541-III is IEC. I don't > know that anyone has ever done one, and given the abundance of C= > IEC-based machines over C= IEEE-488-based machines, perhaps what is > called for is a new project, a C=-friendly IEEE<->IEC > "serializer/deserializer" (since the byte-level protocol is the same). > In any case, I _am_ interested in IEC FLASH drives. > > I build several kits a year, so if there are bare boards to be had, I > will be interested in one or two of anything that comes out of these > discussions. I would have bought a 1541-III-DTV earlier this year if > I'd noticed that there were preliminary kits available. > > -ethan Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Sun Oct 7 08:02:32 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:02:32 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <4707DEFB.6090808@oldskool.org> References: <200710060810.l968ABLS073568@dewey.classiccmp.org> <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> <4707DEFB.6090808@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <4708D8E8.4010805@compsys.to> >Jim Leonard wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: > >> When writing DVDs, I always do a read-verify right after burning, and >> for archival data, I tend to create recovery data with programs like >> par2, and burn two to three copies. If it's worth my time to archive, >> it's worth spending $1 for more than one copy. > > > This is exactly my procedure as well, but I use QuickPar instead of > par2. I also burn two copies, since high-quality DVD-Rs can be had > for less than $0.50 in bulk. Jerome Fine replies: I noticed the replies by Tim Shoppa and Barry Watzman as well as Ethan Dicks and Jim Leonard. They were all very helpful. MANY thanks for everyone who replied. It would seem that my precautions are at the high end rather than the low end. As for copies, the Fujifilm DVD-R spindle of 100 was less than $ 30, so the cost is no longer a factor. I doubt that I will use up the spindle at less than a dozen blanks a year before dual layer media and drives become standard plus single layer media and drives become more expensive due to lack of sales. And since the time to collect and prepare the files for archive (with their MD5 values) is over an hour and the burn time per DVD is only 20 minutes, making an extra copy is very reasonable. My precautions include producing an MD5 value for each Ghost backup file which I write to the DVD along with the file name and number of bytes. Since each backup file is named CddMMMyy.GHO (dd is the day and yy the year), the date is also included. After I burn the DVD, I read all the files to an empty partition and generate an MD5 value for the new copy which I compare against the original. In about a week, I will again read the Ghost backup files from the DVD using a READ ONLY DVD drive that I originally purchased 5 years ago and use only for that purpose. I don't mind that W98SE requires a reboot since I have a faulty hard disk device driver which crashes W98SE after about 5 hours (also not a problem since I take a break at least every 4 hours) and I am the only user. After I read the files on the DVD for the second time, I will delete the original. Then, I suspect that it will be useful to read the December backup for the last 4 years and re-copy then to a DVD (each are just less than a GB) so that I have an historical archive. What are Quickpar and Winrar? Please clarify. If they are similar to MD5, then I guess I am already doing the same thing. Actually, I would use FC to compare the original and the copy, but I know that FC does not catch all of the differences with binary files. Plus, after the original file has been deleted, MD5 is the only reasonable method I have found of checking the archived file. > > My typical process is to use Winrar with a recovery record (parity) of > 1%, then take the resulting files and use Quickpar to generate as much > parity as necessary to fill up the DVD-R. I then burn, ***and I make > sure that the DVD-R also has a copy of winrar and quickpar on the > disc*** (just in case 20 years from now someone is trying to extract > my stuff and doesn't know what a *.par file is). > >> As I said, I lost a file once. That was with CD-Rs, and that was the >> first one out of many hundreds of discs burned (presuming they >> verified at write-time in the first place). I _have_ had a number of >> discs that didn't verify, and that could be due to a number of causes, >> from defective media to "cosmic rays". I have not, however, with that >> one previously mentioned exception, lost data (yet?) from disks that >> did verify. > > > Yes, that's been my experience as well. If they're going to be bad, > they're usually bad right out of the gate (ie. didn't pass Verify). > Every year, I take my very first burnt CDR from 1995 out and try to > read it. It has always read. I keep my CDRs and DVDRs in a cool dry > dark place, though; not everyone can store them in optimal conditions. It seems that I have missed a valuable file. Thank you. The MD5.EXE is not on the DVD, although I do have the GHOST.EXE file that was used to create the backup files. Only Barry commented on dual layer DVD blanks. Has anyone else had any experience? Are they cost effective as compared with single layer when the extra capacity is considered. I have been using the Pioneer 105 drive since 2002 when my son loaned me his to test everything. The following year my other son and I shared a new drive for a year (well he had it 80% of the time and I had it 20%) after which he decided to buy a faster drive for himself. Prior to that I had the READ ONLY DVD drive which I still have. Plus I still have a CD burner from 1997 which also still works since I have all CD / DVD drives powered off when not in use. For those individuals who use a CD to boot foreign OSs, the Pioneer 105 and the device drivers for W98SE read and make available to Ersatz-11 the first 16 CD sectors (64 blocks of 512 characters each is the equivalent for a hard drive) which I have found to be all zeros for a standard CD. This allowed me to boot RT-11 from the Pioneer 105 drive using a raw CD media (as opposed to an actual file on either the CD or a DVD which Ersatz-11 MOUNTs in the normal fashion) under Ersatz-11 as opposed to any other CD / DVD IDE based drive which prevented Ersatz-11 from obtaining access to the first 16 CD sectors where the boot information for RT-11 (and the file structure for the first RT-11 partition) is located. I was able to use a SCSI CDROM drive, however, and Ersatz-11 did manage to see the first 16 sectors on the media which allowed booting of RT-11 in this case. For anyone who is interested in creating bootable CD media for PDP-11 hardware or in emulation under Ersatz-11, I can probably answer many questions. For SIMH, I haven't any experience with bootable CD media. 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 ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 08:21:48 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 15:21:48 +0200 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <4708D8E8.4010805@compsys.to> References: <200710060810.l968ABLS073568@dewey.classiccmp.org> <001501c8081f$bd9d7340$6500a8c0@barry> <4707DEFB.6090808@oldskool.org> <4708D8E8.4010805@compsys.to> Message-ID: On 10/7/07, Jerome H. Fine wrote: > >Jim Leonard wrote: > > > Ethan Dicks wrote: > > > >> When writing DVDs, I always do a read-verify right after burning, and > >> for archival data, I tend to create recovery data with programs like > >> par2, and burn two to three copies. If it's worth my time to archive, > >> it's worth spending $1 for more than one copy. > > > > This is exactly my procedure as well, but I use QuickPar instead of > > par2. I also burn two copies, since high-quality DVD-Rs can be had > > for less than $0.50 in bulk. > My precautions include producing an MD5 value for each Ghost backup file... > What are Quickpar and Winrar? Please clarify. If they are similar to > MD5, then I guess I am already doing the same thing.... MD5 generates a simple checksum. Winrar (rar/unrar) splits a large file into uniform segments with optional data integrity record. Quickpar (and par2) generate additional recovery records that can be used to reconstruct a damaged archive. What one might do is to start with a disk image file, of a, say, 500MB filesystem, then hand that image file to Winrar (rar), telling it to make as many 20MB parts as required, then run Quickpar (par2) on the collection of 20MB rar parts, and to generate, say, 20% excess data, resulting in ~500MB of rar parts, and ~100MB of par parts, then burn that whole mess to a CD-R. To reconstitute, one can copy the pars and rars to a DOS or UNIX machine (or other), run Quickpar (par2) to verify that all the rar parts are intact, then use rar to rebuild the original 500MB file from all the 20MB parts. The advantage comes in when you have one or more of the 20MB rar parts that can't be read from the CD-R... you have previously provided for excess data, so as long as you haven't lost more than about 100MB of your original data, the par files can be used with the intact rar parts to reconstitute the missing/damaged rar parts. One analogy is that this is like RAID 5 for files... as long as you have a sufficient percentage of the original data and recovery data intact, you can restore what you are missing. This allows you to archive your data in a way that allows for less than perfect retention over time. As long as you catch media degradation before it passes your self-selected threshold, you can still recover what you originally wanted to save and migrate it to new media. For the truely paranoid, you are allowed to save arbitrary amounts of recovery data, to 100% or more (i.e. - a 500MB filesystem along with another 500MB or more of recovery data). One could even save that 100% or 150% of recovery data *without* the original data, and simply recover the original files when required, but that's an extreme use of the tools. I only occasionally go to these lengths for data archiving - for photographs or software that was never available commercially (i.e., my own), since these data aren't likely to be in the hands of anyone else (unlike commercial software packages and operating system distros for various platforms). In short - it's belt-and-suspenders tools for archiving. Not essential, but the first time you have to restore a missing rar bit from par files, it makes all the hassle worthwhile. -ethan From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Oct 7 09:49:56 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:49:56 -0600 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: > Does it really makes that much differnce the number of bits for a char? > Really, Six bits was kinda tight for work where upper or lower case > was used but it didn't affect calculating Pi to a 100 places. > Wasn't the basic chunk 9 bits for PDP10 and it happened (DEC > software) used 6 bit char notation as a carry over from earlier > life with friden flexowriter and TTYs on earlier machines? Floppy disk is 8 bit I/O. That made all the difference when standard floppy disk controlers came out. Ben. From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 7 09:57:51 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 07:57:51 -0700 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 08:49:56 -0600> From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> To: > Subject: Re: these RTL or what?> > Allison wrote:> > > Does it really makes that much differnce the number of bits for a char?> > Really, Six bits was kinda tight for work where upper or lower case> > was used but it didn't affect calculating Pi to a 100 places.> > Wasn't the basic chunk 9 bits for PDP10 and it happened (DEC > > software) used 6 bit char notation as a carry over from earlier > > life with friden flexowriter and TTYs on earlier machines?> > Floppy disk is 8 bit I/O. That made all the difference when standard> floppy disk controlers came out. Ben.> Hi Actually there is nothing in the floppy disk drive that cares about byte size or anything else. It is entirely a function of the controller. I have a machine that has floppies and it writes 20 bit words. The floppy is just a bit serial device and could care less about where you choose to partition it. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Boo!?Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Oct 7 10:10:01 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:10:01 -0600 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4708F6C9.40609@jetnet.ab.ca> dwight elvey wrote: >> Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 08:49:56 -0600> From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> To: > Subject: Re: these RTL or what?> > Allison wrote:> > > Does it really makes that much differnce the number of bits for a char?> > Really, Six bits was kinda tight for work where upper or lower case> > was used but it didn't affect calculating Pi to a 100 places.> > Wasn't the basic chunk 9 bits for PDP10 and it happened (DEC > > software) used 6 bit char notation as a carry over from earlier > > life with friden flexowriter and TTYs on earlier machines?> > Floppy disk is 8 bit I/O. That made all the difference when standard> floppy disk controlers came out. Ben.> Hi > Actually there is nothing in the floppy disk drive that cares > about byte size or anything else. It is entirely a function of the > controller. I have a machine that has floppies and it writes 20 bit > words. The floppy is just a bit serial device and could care less > about where you choose to partition it. That is why I said floppy controler chips. A board of TTL vs 1 chip on uprocesser. BTW what computer uses 20 bit words? > Dwight Ben. From cc at corti-net.de Sun Oct 7 10:09:08 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 17:09:08 +0200 (CEST) Subject: VT100 flyback / geometry Message-ID: Does anyone happen to know the exact part number of the flyback transformer in the DEC VT100 terminal? The VT100 in question has the 'DEC' type video board, not the 'Ball' type. Is there a matching HR-Diemen or equivalent part number? Oh, and questions concerning another VT100: What may cause a bad geometry of the picture on a VT100 (slight trapezoid and pincushion; Philips CRT)? The only adjustable magnets are the two sets of rings on the neck, one for the position and one for the focus (it's a magnetically focused CRT as most monitors are). Christian From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 7 10:38:08 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 08:38:08 -0700 Subject: no sale on ebay In-Reply-To: References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: Hi I just saw a missed sale. There was a KIM and some type of encore board. both for $50. Not one bid? I guess things are slowing or it is just that people are a sleep. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 7 10:55:41 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:55:41 -0700 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <47089F0D.8457.131E6B@cclist.sydex.com> On 7 Oct 2007 at 8:49, woodelf wrote: > Floppy disk is 8 bit I/O. That made all the difference when standard > floppy disk controlers came out. Ben. It's not the 8-bittedness of floppy disk I/O that's the problem for non-8 bit systems; it's the length of a sector as a power of two 8- bit characters. Witness the strange packing used for WPS I, etc. on the 12-bit DECstation. If it were just character size, it would be a non-issue, since we're usually talking about characters that are a multiple of 3 or 4. So 2 12-bit characters = 3 8 bit characters; 3 16 bit characters = 4 12 bit characters, etc. There was a 2311-lookalike for the CDC systems that had a fixed sector size at something like 256 8 bit bytes. If you're working with 60-bit words or 12 bit words, that's not very friendly. IIRC, a great hunk of the capacity went unused, rather than working out some sort of packing algorithm to make things come out right. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 7 11:00:17 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:00:17 -0700 Subject: no sale on ebay In-Reply-To: References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, , Message-ID: <4708A021.24330.175257@cclist.sydex.com> On 7 Oct 2007 at 8:38, dwight elvey wrote: > I just saw a missed sale. There was a KIM and some > type of encore board. both for $50. Not one bid? > I guess things are slowing or it is just that people > are a sleep. Collecting is cyclical and generational. What counts as a "collectible" depends a great deal on the age of the collector. Could be that a KIM isn't just a hot item now. --Chuck From spectre at floodgap.com Sun Oct 7 11:02:46 2007 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:02:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: no sale on ebay In-Reply-To: <4708A021.24330.175257@cclist.sydex.com> from Chuck Guzis at "Oct 7, 7 09:00:17 am" Message-ID: <200710071602.l97G2kW3015056@floodgap.com> > Could be that a KIM isn't just a hot item now. Also, I think the KIM Dwight was talking about wasn't working right. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Friends don't let friends use Windows. ------------------------------------- From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 11:09:09 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 18:09:09 +0200 Subject: no sale on ebay In-Reply-To: <200710071602.l97G2kW3015056@floodgap.com> References: <4708A021.24330.175257@cclist.sydex.com> <200710071602.l97G2kW3015056@floodgap.com> Message-ID: On 10/7/07, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > Could be that a KIM isn't just a hot item now. > > Also, I think the KIM Dwight was talking about wasn't working right. I wouldn't personally mind a KIM that wasn't working right, but equally, I don't know that I'd pay $50 for it. -ethan From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 7 11:34:02 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:34:02 -0700 Subject: no sale on ebay In-Reply-To: References: <4708A021.24330.175257@cclist.sydex.com> <200710071602.l97G2kW3015056@floodgap.com> Message-ID: > From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com> > On 10/7/07, Cameron Kaiser wrote:> > > Could be that a KIM isn't just a hot item now.> >> > Also, I think the KIM Dwight was talking about wasn't working right.> > I wouldn't personally mind a KIM that wasn't working right, but> equally, I don't know that I'd pay $50 for it.> > -ethan Hi I just rechecked the sale. The seller pulled the sale early. The description said that they didn't expect that it worked after all these years. That is saying in most cases that they didn't even try to power it up. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From healyzh at aracnet.com Sun Oct 7 11:55:48 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:55:48 -0700 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 8:38 AM -0400 10/7/07, Richard A. Cini wrote: >Same here. I have a DTV that could use a drive, but the stand-alone is >pretty intriguing as well. > >There's going to be a run on Nokia phones on eBay...get yours now :-) I figured I'd ask around work and see if anyone has an old one laying around. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 7 12:19:30 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:19:30 -0700 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4708F6C9.40609@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> <4708F6C9.40609@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> ---snip---> > That is why I said floppy controler chips. A board of TTL vs 1 chip> on uprocesser. BTW what computer uses 20 bit words?> > Dwight> Ben.> Hi OK, the controller chips were mostly based on one of the IBM formats that was specified as 8 bit. There are some pictures of a Nicolet 1080 at: http://www.vintage.org/nicolet/nicolet.htm This one is Sellam's. His is a complete NMR instrument. I only have the CPU and floppy disk drive. His didn't have the floppy but had a hard disk instead. These machine were designed to do FFT's for signal processing. One of the instructions would reverse the order of the bits as is needed for FFT's. These had a nice BASIC with matrix operators as well. I know of only four 1080 left inthe world. I know of one in England and three, here, in California. The one I have and the one in England are floppy system. The other one that isn't Sellam's that belongs to Bob Rosebloom does have any mass storage. The systems were designed to run from punch tape as a base systems. I can't imagine loading the BASIC from tape and then loading the appliction program on top. It was they way they did things then. I'm always looking for others with these machines. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook ? together at last. ?Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 From healyzh at aracnet.com Sun Oct 7 12:32:08 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:32:08 -0700 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 11:10 AM +0200 10/7/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: > > I've done up a web page showing the price breakdown when ordering the >> parts from Newark, as they are a US arm of Farnell. >> http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/commodore/1541-III.html It also >> includes the Manufacturer and Newark part numbers. > >Nice work. I do notice that you've listed two MCUs, a PIC 18F252 and >a PIC 18F2620. Presumably, the design takes one _or_ the other, not >both. Good point. Looking at the Bill of Materials, which is what I based that on, it appears that those are IC3. Which tells me that you're correct. http://jderogee.tripod.com/project1541_downloads/1541-III_v1_BOM.txt >Also, it looks to me like those 0.1" (2.54mm) jumpers is a bit high - >$0.25 each, min q. 10. That seems more than a little high to me as well. I think the issue is that these are one of the items coming from Farnell. I've not tried to find US equivalents, or checked other outfits such as Digi-Key. I'm guessing this would result if a price reduction. I'm also curious as to what the price would be to simply order everything from Farnell. >Other killers are the $15 handling fee >(presumably because the order value isn't up to their minimum value - >$50?), Actually it is to cover the stuff coming from Farnell (UK) rather than Newark (US). In looking at the Farnell website, they do the same thing for stuff coming from Newark. >Thanks for laying everything out in a very plain and clear fashion. >It's a great starting point, especially for those who might have to >order every single part to build a kit (I see large numbers of things >I'd pull from my own stores). I have it in an Excel spreadsheet if anyone wants it. I still need to go through and figure out how much is optional (I know some of the power stuff is), or like the PIC's duplicates. I might have a new expanded version up later on today depending on how much free time I have. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 jos.mar at bluewin.ch Sun Oct 7 12:57:21 2007 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 19:57:21 +0200 Subject: Apple ii disk controller again... In-Reply-To: <47054894.1010009@yahoo.co.uk> References: <47054894.1010009@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <47091E01.8080202@bluewin.ch> This item has been discussed recently, and I found myself figthing this same floppy diskcontroller in my Lilith external floppydrive. This is a 6502 subsystem with 4K rom/4k ram, a 9600 baud serial channel ( goes to the Lilith ) and said floppycontroller. Symptoms :head goes to track zero, no directory is found. I did not find a schematic on the net for this floppy controller. When backengineering it I found that both Proms and the 74174 have their power switched. Why would that be ? seems very hairy to me. If anyone has such a controller and/or floppy drive available I'd be interested. ( Switzerland ) Jos From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Oct 7 12:24:19 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 18:24:19 +0100 Subject: no sale on ebay In-Reply-To: References: <4708A021.24330.175257@cclist.sydex.com> <200710071602.l97G2kW3015056@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <47091643.8010309@yahoo.co.uk> dwight elvey wrote: >> From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com> > On 10/7/07, Cameron Kaiser wrote:> > > Could be that a KIM isn't just a hot item now.> >> > Also, I think the KIM Dwight was talking about wasn't working right.> > I wouldn't personally mind a KIM that wasn't working right, but> equally, I don't know that I'd pay $50 for it.> > -ethan > Hi > I just rechecked the sale. The seller pulled the sale early. > The description said that they didn't expect that it worked > after all these years. That is saying in most cases that they > didn't even try to power it up. At least it wasn't "tried to see if it works but smoke came out" :-) From healyzh at aracnet.com Sun Oct 7 13:15:15 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 11:15:15 -0700 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 11:10 AM +0200 10/7/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: >Also, it looks to me like those 0.1" (2.54mm) jumpers is a bit high - >$0.25 each, min q. 10. Other killers are the $15 handling fee BTW, I'd personally replace the jumpers with switches accessible from outside the case. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 7 13:19:28 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:19:28 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <4708F6C9.40609@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200710071419.28928.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 07 October 2007 13:19, dwight elvey wrote: > I can't imagine loading the BASIC from tape and then loading > the appliction program on top. It was they way they did things > then. Heh. I can remember doing that. I don't miss it... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From mcguire at neurotica.com Sun Oct 7 13:48:14 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 14:48:14 -0400 Subject: no sale on ebay In-Reply-To: References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <2F9D3F37-759F-4878-858D-8AD1A2483F27@neurotica.com> On Oct 7, 2007, at 11:38 AM, dwight elvey wrote: > I just saw a missed sale. There was a KIM and some > type of encore board. both for $50. Not one bid? > I guess things are slowing or it is just that people > are a sleep. Well I sure missed it...I'd skip meals to drop $50 on a KIM, working or not. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 14:54:50 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 15:54:50 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <47083FD7.50908@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <4708240E.8090601@jetnet.ab.ca> <47083FD7.50908@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > Yup! ???? > What about IBM's 36 bit machines? The 36 bit IBM architectures died with the that early 1960s IBM report. > Dec started with 18's so 36 makes sence. Yes, it did. My point is that right after DEC decided to make the 36 bit line, the 8 bit world was born. Nobody's fault, just really bad timing. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 14:55:57 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 15:55:57 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPI0042NFT7ST90@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPI0042NFT7ST90@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > Yes, but conductors on substrate are slower depending on substrate used. > They are dense but TCMs still have to talk to other TCMs. So you have never seen the innards of a 3081, then? -- Will From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Sun Oct 7 14:57:42 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 21:57:42 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <47081517.1090601@rogerwilco.org> References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> <47081517.1090601@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <20071007215742.510d5604@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:07:03 -0600 J Blaser wrote: > 2. Is the L0005 or the L0008 preferred? Which one is easier to use > with VMS? With NetBSD? (Gee, a random thought just hit me...is > there ULTRIX for this beastie?) There should be ULTRIX for the 11/750. An other option is 4.3BSD-Tahoe. You can get it from TUHS or the CSRG CDs. Once I instaled it on a MV II, that was upgraded to a MV III+ after install. It was really fun to work with that old software. (And it felt much faster then NetBSD. No surprise, given the 15 years of software developement in between. Though, NetBSD is astonishing efficient on "old" hardware, yet giving contamporarily features like IPv6.) -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 15:02:24 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 16:02:24 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: > Does it really makes that much differnce the number of bits for a char? In the 1960s, when all these ideas started to solidify, yes. For a typical big bank batch job - one that occurs every night - the difference was enough to justify careful planning. When the disk took over from the tape for everyday data storage in the 1960s, those extra bits here and there added up as wasted space on very expensive packs. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 7 15:10:35 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 16:10:35 -0400 Subject: Character width; was: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4707E2EC.21691.2838A6C@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> <4707CFB6.26593.2387DF4@cclist.sydex.com> <4707E2EC.21691.2838A6C@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > Back to 6 bits. For the type of stuff that the BDP community did, 6 > bits per character was plenty. > > In that sense, using an 8 bit character was a real waste. Two 6-bit > characters can pack 3 BCD digits--exactly the same efficiency as > S/360 packed decimal--and packing/unpacking is not much different > from converting from packed to zoned decimal. This is not what IBM found. Back then, most of the data was BCD. Yes, 12 bits can get you 3 digits and the same space efficiency, but then the processor has to start dealing with non-2^n multiples of digits. A 36 bit word would give 9 BCD digits, and odd numbers are no fun to deal with. The same 1964 (I think) report states that IBM was getting concerned about the possibility of the alphanumeric character set expanding with upper and lower case, symbols, etc.. -- Will From jrkeys at concentric.net Sun Oct 7 15:18:31 2007 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 15:18:31 -0500 Subject: Test Only No Message Message-ID: <00ab01c8091f$3c6aaf80$19406b43@66067007> TESTING From jrkeys at concentric.net Sun Oct 7 15:30:54 2007 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 15:30:54 -0500 Subject: Fw: Software Find at Thrift Message-ID: <00c001c80920$f6a9dd70$19406b43@66067007> Second try at sending this to list. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Keys" To: "cctalk at classiccmp" Sent: Friday, October 05, 2007 8:51 PM Subject: Software Find at Thrift > While checking out a old hangout I found a copy of IBM's Hollywood > software Version 1.0 (on 3.5 FD), complete in the box for $1.81 plus tax. > There was not much else there like it was in the long ago past. Speaking > of Hollywood, the Hollywood video store near us is closing and I went > dumpster driving the other night and found that they had tossed all the > video game cases that had been on display. Most but not all were empty, I > found PS2 and PS3 DVD's in some of the cases. It got too dark and I had to > stop pulling cases from the dumpster but there was over 150 cases left in > the trash. > > John From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 7 12:38:13 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 18:38:13 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710061909.58499.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 6, 7 07:09:58 pm Message-ID: > > On Saturday 06 October 2007 17:30, Tony Duell wrote: > > Again, how on earth cna you know what the fault is if you can't diagnos= > e > > it. You mentioned swapping a DIMM. How can you know if an intermittant > > memory problem is a fault in the DIMM or in the memory controller on th= > e > > motherboard? > > I've wondered about that for a while now. I've used various memory=20 > diagnostics on different machines over the years, and basically they all= > =20 > seem to have in common that they write different patterns to memory and t= > hen=20 > read it back for comparison. While this is okay as far as it goes, how = > DO=20 > you deal with the situation you mention there? I don;'t see how software could do anything more. The purpose of memory is to store data, all the program can do is say that it's not doing so correctly. To go further, I normally look at the timing of signals going to the RAM chips (marginal timing causes all sorts of itneresting prolems), check supply rails, etc. And then fidn the problem is due to ground bounce. Seriously, the worst memoery prolems I've had to trace were due to poor PCB layout. > > PGC =3D Professional Graphics Controller. An IBM board set (3 boards > > fitting into 2 adjacent ISA slots (there's a memory PCB sandwiched > > between them) that form an intellegent-ish graphics card with an 8088 t= > o > > control it (!). I have the techref, I'd love to play with the boards. > > Ah. I was wondering about that too. If you'd said "PGA" I would've had = > a=20 > clue right off. AFAIK it was never called the 'Professional Graphics Adapter',though. Maybe IBM relaised that 'PGA' had other meanings (Pin Grid Array, for example). Certainly the TechRef refers to it as a Professional Graphics Controller. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 7 12:46:21 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 18:46:21 +0100 (BST) Subject: RS232 Breakout Boxes In-Reply-To: <200710061915.59428.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 6, 7 07:15:59 pm Message-ID: > > > > > I'd *still* like to someday get my hands on one of the fancier > > > > > breakout boxes I used to see in catalogs... :-) > > > > > > > > How fancy is fancy? > > > > > > Not too terribly, considering I can't in any way justify spending mu= > ch > > > if any money on such a thing. The ability to interrupt any of the pi= > ns,=20 > > > maybe do cross-connecting, and LED indicators would be nice. > > > > Err, isn't that what all breakout boxes so, even the simple ones. > > No. I've not looked at that sort of thing in catalogs for quite a while,= > but=20 > the last time I did, some years ago, that sort of thing was at the upper= > end=20 > of what at least one company was offering, other stuff was quite simpler= > , =20 > omitting the indicators and such, maybe a more limited patching ability,= > or=20 > whatever. I'm not sure I'd call that a 'breakout box'. To me a breakout box has to let you completely re-wire the cable if you have to (i.e. complete opening and cross-patching facitlities) and has to let you monitor at least the important signals. > > > Every one I own (and I think I have 5 so far, maybe more) has switches = > to > > open-circuit each of the lines, sockets/ pins and jumper leads to > > cross-connect. Some of them monitor all 25 (or maybe 24, often Protecti= > ve > > Ground is omitted) of the lines on LEDs, others monitor only the > > cmmonly-used lines, but have some 'spare' indiocators you can patch to > > any line. > > About the only thing I've accumulated so far is a double-ended adapter th= > at=20 > has seven LEDs in it, which has already proved useful enough to have=20 They're very useful, aren't they? I have one too, it gets more use than my fancier RS232 test gear. > justified its fairly reasonable cost. No patching in that one, just the= > =20 > indicators, but it comes in handy sometimes anyway. > > How does one accumulate _five_ of those things? :-) I can rememebr what 4 are :-) 1) An old RS23 breakout box. Real slide-switches to open all the wires, and 2mm sockets for cross-patching. The main signals are monitored by transistor-driven filament lamps, the whole thing is mains-powered,, said PSU also prvides +12V and -=12V outputs for forcing handshake signals 2) A cheap (well, cheaply made) modern breakout ox. DIP swithcs to interrupt the signals, turned-pin IC-socket pins for cross-patching, into whcih you stich the bare ends of wires. Monitor LEDs for _all_ pins, powered from the RS232 signals 3) A Neavtel Supertest. Runs off rechargeable batteries, DIP switches to open the signals and pins (with socket-ended jumers) for cross-patching. Does things like Bit Error Rate Tests. Monitors only the commonly-used signals/ 4) A Ferret. The breakout box part is DIP-switches and pins as in (3). Monitors all suignals on RS232-powered LEDs. Also does things like current loop/parallel conversions, printing, EPROM programming, etc. Mains powered, of course. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 7 15:21:08 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 21:21:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: Character width; was: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 6, 7 09:52:57 pm Message-ID: > > > 6 bits was miserably crowded when numbers and punctuation were added. > > Six bits also is VERY inefficient for numeric data - all that stuff Curiously, the HP9100 _calculator_ used 6 bit words. This made sesne for user programs (and keycodes), but numbers were stored with one BCD digit, a sign bit and a blanking bit in each word (I think). The main processor register was 6 bits wide too. The HP9810 that replaced it used 6 bit (logical width) memory, but I think only for the user programs (which again were lists of 6-bit keycodes). I think nunmbers were stoed in 16-bit-wide memory. Actually, since this machine had phyical memeory that was half the width of the logical memory (and circuitry to automaitcally do 2 memory cycles), this must be one of the few machines to have 3-bit-wide memory boards. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 7 15:42:40 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 21:42:40 +0100 (BST) Subject: VT100 flyback / geometry In-Reply-To: from "Christian Corti" at Oct 7, 7 05:09:08 pm Message-ID: > Oh, and questions concerning another VT100: What may cause a bad geometry > of the picture on a VT100 (slight trapezoid and pincushion; Philips CRT)? Are the sloping sides of the trapezium horizontal or vertical? Trapezium problems can be caused by the deflection yoke, of course (shorted turns or other prolems in one coil of the pair), but before worrying about that, I'd make sure none of the supply lines on the video board have a sigificant ripple at one of the scan frequencies. > The only adjustable magnets are the two sets of rings on the neck, one for > the position and one for the focus (it's a magnetically focused CRT as > most monitors are). Every VT100 I've worked on -- in fact every monitor of any type that I've worked on, has been electrostatically-focused. There's a preset on the video board that adjusts the votlage on one of the CRT pins (I forget if it's pin 6 or pin 7). The 2 rings on the back of the yoke are both for picture positioning. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 7 12:31:28 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 18:31:28 +0100 (BST) Subject: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? In-Reply-To: <0JPH00DL8Z55HII3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> from "Allison" at Oct 6, 7 12:01:36 pm Message-ID: > Something similar to that would be appealing for my Epson PX-8. It shouldn't be hard to do (famous last words). The hardware interface is a simple asynchronous serial interface running at 38400 baud and at RS232 levels. The Epson seiral drive protocol is pretty well documented, I am pretty sure I found the documetation on the web, along with some other Epson manuals I know I found a program for linux machines that emulates an Epson drive. It even runs on my ancient PC. The original Epson TF20 floppy was ridiculously over-complex. There's a Z80A in there with 64K RAM and a boot ROM that's switched out after booting. I boots a hacked version of CP.M from the master disk (!). The serial port uses a 7201, etc. In other words that hardware could do a lot more than is needed for this application. Later Apson drives, like the PF10, are simpler (a 6303 + EPROM + 2K RAM + FDC, basically). -tony > > Allison > From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 7 15:50:24 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 13:50:24 -0700 Subject: Character width; was: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net>, <4707E2EC.21691.2838A6C@cclist.sydex.com>, Message-ID: <4708E420.27646.120EEFB@cclist.sydex.com> On 7 Oct 2007 at 16:10, William Donzelli wrote: > The same 1964 (I think) report states that IBM was getting concerned > about the possibility of the alphanumeric character set expanding with > upper and lower case, symbols, etc.. And yet, many of my bills still arrive as all upper-case. And I'll wager that most of that data is stored as 8-bit characters. Go figure. Cheers, Chuck From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sun Oct 7 15:52:38 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 13:52:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: RS232 Breakout Boxes In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 7 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: > I can rememebr what 4 are :-) > > 1) An old RS23 breakout box. Real slide-switches to open all the wires, > and 2mm sockets for cross-patching. The main signals are monitored by > transistor-driven filament lamps, the whole thing is mains-powered,, said > PSU also prvides +12V and -=12V outputs for forcing handshake signals ARRGG!!! You've provoked me into building a banana-jack breakout box! -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 7 15:56:03 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 21:56:03 +0100 (BST) Subject: Apple ii disk controller again... In-Reply-To: <47091E01.8080202@bluewin.ch> from "Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel" at Oct 7, 7 07:57:21 pm Message-ID: > Symptoms :head goes to track zero, no directory is found. > > I did not find a schematic on the net for this floppy controller. IOf this is a standard Apple Disk// controller, there's a schematic (and indeed a schematic of the disk drive analogue board) in Appendix E of the Apple DOS manual. I have no idea if that's availale on the web, I have a paper copy in front of me. > When backengineering it I found that both Proms and the 74174 have their > power switched. Why would that be ? seems very hairy to me. Yes. This was a typicval Apple method of saving power. No matter that it's a made idea to paply logic signals to an unpowered chip. And people wonder why I dislike Apple hardware designs... The state machine ('174 and the P6/P6A PROM) is enabled by the motor-on line The boot ROM (P5/P5A() is eanabled from the IOSEL/ signal on the edge connector, which also enables said ROM. Is there anything I could easily type (pinouts of the slot, pinouts of the drive cable, etc) that would help you? -tony From henk.gooijen at hotmail.com Sun Oct 7 15:58:59 2007 From: henk.gooijen at hotmail.com (Henk Gooijen) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 22:58:59 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <20071007215742.510d5604@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> <47081517.1090601@rogerwilco.org> <20071007215742.510d5604@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: > Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 21:57:42 +0200> From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas...> > On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:07:03 -0600> J Blaser wrote:> > > 2. Is the L0005 or the L0008 preferred? Which one is easier to use> > with VMS? With NetBSD? (Gee, a random thought just hit me...is> > there ULTRIX for this beastie?)> There should be ULTRIX for the 11/750.> > An other option is 4.3BSD-Tahoe. You can get it from TUHS or the CSRG> CDs. Once I instaled it on a MV II, that was upgraded to a MV III+ after> install. It was really fun to work with that old software. (And it felt> much faster then NetBSD. No surprise, given the 15 years of software> developement in between. Though, NetBSD is astonishing efficient on> "old" hardware, yet giving contamporarily features like IPv6.)> -- > > > tsch??,> Jochen> > Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ Just my 2 ct, I have an 11/750, but not yet had a good look at it. I know it boots VMS from an RA81, but can't remember the version. This is DEC hardware, so will NEVER run NetBSD or anything non-DEC on it. If I want to run non-DEC software, I'll grab a stupd PC! I found this a good page: http://www.vaxarchive.org/hw/750faq.html Somebody (in The Netherlands) promised to send me a CD-ROM with Ultrix for the 11/750, and I gave him 10 euro to cover expenses. Alas, after 2 e-mails, I never heard of him ... so I would be very interested in an Ultrix CD-ROM for the 11/750 too. - Henk, PA8PDP www.pdp-11.nl From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 7 16:16:07 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:16:07 -0700 Subject: Character width; was: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 6, 7 09:52:57 pm, Message-ID: <4708EA27.15900.1387B10@cclist.sydex.com> On 7 Oct 2007 at 21:21, Tony Duell wrote: > Curiously, the HP9100 _calculator_ used 6 bit words. This made sesne for > user programs (and keycodes), but numbers were stored with one BCD digit, > a sign bit and a blanking bit in each word (I think). The main processor > register was 6 bits wide too. Let's not forget the venerable IBM 1620. 5 bits per word (Oh, okay, there was a sixth parity bit, but it's not programmable). F8421. If F was present over the low-order digit, it denoted a negative number. A flag over the high-order digit signified where the number ended (this was a variable word length machine). Certain non-BCD combinations were reserved for other uses. 82, for example was a record mark (which allowed you to deal with a group of words as a unit); 842 was a group mark (used by the 1311 disk drive to transfer groups of records; 84 was a numeric blank (display I/O had two modes; numeric and alphanumeric). All of the above could also be flagged and treated as part of a varaible-length word. In addition, a flag over the low-order digit of an address signified indirection (if the system was so equipped). Words and addresses were addressed by the low-order (highest address) digit; instructions, records and groups were addressed by the high order (lowest address) position. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Oct 7 16:40:35 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:40:35 +0100 Subject: Character width; was: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4708E420.27646.120EEFB@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JPG000QIDZF1Y21@vms046.mailsrvcs.net>, <4707E2EC.21691.2838A6C@cclist.sydex.com>, <4708E420.27646.120EEFB@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47095253.2060602@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 7 Oct 2007 at 16:10, William Donzelli wrote: > >> The same 1964 (I think) report states that IBM was getting concerned >> about the possibility of the alphanumeric character set expanding with >> upper and lower case, symbols, etc.. > > And yet, many of my bills still arrive as all upper-case. And I'll > wager that most of that data is stored as 8-bit characters. Go > figure. Presumably a lot is 16-bit these days, given that a lot of systems have to operate in a global environment. I suspect there's a lot of case conversion goes on in systems though, partly for efficiency (i.e. when searching for data), and partly because so many people seem to have trouble grasping the concept of mixed cases :-) cheers Jules From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sun Oct 7 18:28:35 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 19:28:35 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20071007232835.BD341BA4576@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> woodelf wrote: > Allison wrote: > > > Does it really makes that much differnce the number of bits for a char? > > Really, Six bits was kinda tight for work where upper or lower case > > was used but it didn't affect calculating Pi to a 100 places. > > Wasn't the basic chunk 9 bits for PDP10 and it happened (DEC > > software) used 6 bit char notation as a carry over from earlier > > life with friden flexowriter and TTYs on earlier machines? > > Floppy disk is 8 bit I/O. That made all the difference when standard > floppy disk controlers came out. Ben. There's nothing intrinsically 8-bit about a floppy disk. A serial bitstream to be sliced/diced however you want. Several word processors, using 8" hard-sectored floppies, had 7-bit and 9-bit formats. Now, IBM 3740 floppy format (from which almost all modern floppy formats have descended) has a lot of 8-bitness in it. But it was still used by 12-bit machines (with various packing/repacking). There's a whole lot of crap in the IBM 3740 floppy format that nobody has used for decades but is still carried around, too. (e.g. "deleted data" marks). Tim. From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 7 19:46:17 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:46:17 -0700 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <20071007232835.BD341BA4576@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <0JPI004O1NXHSQJ0@vms042.mailsrvcs.net>, <4708F214.8070105@jetnet.ab.ca>, <20071007232835.BD341BA4576@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <47091B69.980.1F8E045@cclist.sydex.com> On 7 Oct 2007 at 19:28, Tim Shoppa wrote: > Now, IBM 3740 floppy format (from which almost all modern floppy > formats have descended) has a lot of 8-bitness in it. But it > was still used by 12-bit machines (with various packing/repacking). > There's a whole lot of crap in the IBM 3740 floppy format that > nobody has used for decades but is still carried around, too. (e.g. > "deleted data" marks). ...and if you check some IBM 3741 floppies, you'll find that only the first 80 characters of each 128 character sector was used on most systems (128 characters was a maximum and many installations elected to retain their 80-column card format). Since the 3741-created diskettes held roughly a box of cards, how else would you delete a card, except to use a "deleted data mark"? Cheers, Chuck From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 7 19:55:32 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 20:55:32 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710072055.32245.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 07 October 2007 13:38, Tony Duell wrote: > > On Saturday 06 October 2007 17:30, Tony Duell wrote: > > > Again, how on earth cna you know what the fault is if you can't > > > diagnos= > > > > e I'm wondering what the heck it is that's breaking words, inserting equal signs, and equal-sign-followed-by-20 in various places in the quoted material here... I don't see this anywhere else but in stuff of mine that you're quoting. Odd. Fixing it gets a little old... > > > it. You mentioned swapping a DIMM. How can you know if an intermittant > > > memory problem is a fault in the DIMM or in the memory controller on > > > the motherboard? > > > > I've wondered about that for a while now. I've used various memory > > diagnostics on different machines over the years, and basically they > > all seem to have in common that they write different patterns to memory > > and then read it back for comparison. While this is okay as far as it > > goes, how DO you deal with the situation you mention there? > > I don't see how software could do anything more. Nor do I. But I was thinking about approaches other than just software. > The purpose of memory is to store data, all the program can do is say that > it's not doing so correctly. And maybe get a little specific about where. > To go further, I normally look at the timing of signals going to the RAM > chips (marginal timing causes all sorts of itneresting prolems), check > supply rails, etc. And then fidn the problem is due to ground bounce. > Seriously, the worst memoery prolems I've had to trace were due to poor > PCB layout. This sounds more like design flaws than anything else, while my normal tendency (perhaps erroneously?) is to look for some sort of a component failure. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sun Oct 7 22:13:31 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 23:13:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710072055.32245.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710072055.32245.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <200710080320.XAA20898@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >>>> Again, how on earth cna you know what the fault is if you can't >>>> diagnos= >>> e > I'm wondering what the heck it is that's breaking words, inserting > equal signs, and equal-sign-followed-by-20 in various places in the > quoted material here... In a word, MIME. What you describe is basically MIME's quoted-printable encoding. In theory, text that does not meet SMTP's restrictions (on line length, character set, etc) is encoded by the sender and decoded by the reader. The practice is rather less neat, but going into detail here would take us rather far afield from classic computing. In this case, what happened is probably that either the sender's software encoded the text but failed to correctly mark the text as encoded, or the receiver's software failed to decode it before doing the "> " quoting to it and generating the initial draft of the response. (If I had to pick one as more likely, I'd pick the second. Classic-computing email software is comparatively likely to predate MIME and thus, of course, not handle it "correctly". See RFCs 2045 through 2049, and their updates, for more on MIME. /~\ 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 Sun Oct 7 22:33:10 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 23:33:10 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Apple ii disk controller again... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710080342.XAA21138@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > No matter that it's a [bad] idea to [apply] logic signals to an > unpowered chip. I recently built a ROM reader with a parallel-port interface. But it had one bizarre problem: the last byte of the ROM always read as FF. I finally tracked it down. I'd connected Vcc, and I had tied the enable signals on the ROM together, to the ground pin - but hadn't connected the enable-and-grounds anywhere. As long as at least one input was low, it powered the chip through the protection diodes (thank the TTL, and TTL-alike, output current-sinking capacity when low), which was why the rest of the chip read correctly - but as soon as all inputs were high, the outputs perforce all showed high too. (The time between address line setting and data line reading was in the microseconds, plenty of time for ROM power-up.) /~\ 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 brain at jbrain.com Sun Oct 7 22:58:56 2007 From: brain at jbrain.com (Jim Brain) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 22:58:56 -0500 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4709AB00.1070600@jbrain.com> Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 11:10 AM +0200 10/7/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: >> Also, it looks to me like those 0.1" (2.54mm) jumpers is a bit high - >> $0.25 each, min q. 10. Other killers are the $15 handling fee > > BTW, I'd personally replace the jumpers with switches accessible from > outside the case. > > Zane > > I'm coming in a bit late on this, but I always try allelectronics.com for the commodity stuff (I assume there's a UK counterpart, and All Electornics is one of several similar ventures in the US, but I forget the names of the others all the time) I recently bought jumpers from there for much less, as I recall. Jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Sun Oct 7 04:50:05 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 10:50:05 +0100 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Hi Fear not all is not lost. There's tons of modules around but not that many cabs. In the picture of the Qbus board it appears to be sitting on the module config diagram. As it is pre printed and not filled in by hand its probably a standard system. That will give you a list of the boards. Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power supplies will need some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics. The case will clean up well and you can start off by getting the PSU's working and getting the list of modules together. Disk drives would have been in another rack I think. Rod Smallwood The DECcollector -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of J Blaser Sent: 06 October 2007 02:10 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... [Sorry for the double post...having trouble with my mailer line-wrapping] The gods smiled upon me, and I was chosen to rescue the DEC VAX 11/750 that Richard alerted us too about a month ago. Yesterday I went up to collect it. I think most of us, during a pickup, are mindful of just getting the load onboard and away, and it was the same way for me with this pickup. Besides, the unit was literally stuffed so tightly into the front corner of their storage that there was no way to examine the innards at that location. A few images can be found at: http://www.rogerwilco.org/VAX11-750 Once back on homebase, I finally got a chance to open up the unit. To my horror (it is October, after all), I find just a single board installed in the CPU backplane, and one loose q-bus board! The first is a System Industries 9700-6301 with the following significant chips: Signetics N8X60N, AMD AM9128 (x2), Motorola MCM93L422PC (x4), TI SN74S181N, and about a dozen TI 82S137s with little numbered stickers on each. Otherwise it's loaded with TTL logic chips. There are no headers or other connectors on board, just the backplane fingers. I have no idea what this board is. I openly admit that I'm a complete {non-uVAX | massbus | unibus} novice. The second board is an MCD MLSI PC-11, which I'm guessing may be some kind of dual parallel interface. I'll have to do a little scouting on Bitsavers and Manx to see if I can turn up anything useful. Anyway, sadly, this box is not much more than an empty carcass, without any brains. It clearly was sacrificed to keep other systems alive. Still, I would dearly love to populate the backplane(s) and light this baby up, but I guessing I'll be hard pressed to find anyone with a whole set of spares that I could somehow convince into letting them go. I don't want to lose an opportunity here, and I'm not saying that I have my eye on the local metal recycler just yet, but what am I going to do with an empty chassis?! Now, I should say that the donor was extremely nice, and offered to pass along anything related that eventually turns up as they dig deeper into their massive pile (12' x 15' x 20', literally boxes/cartons/PCs upon boxes/cartons/PCs), but I'm not sure I should hope for much. Am I foolish to ask? Anyone with a spare set of VAX 11/750 modules? - Jared From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Oct 7 10:14:49 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 11:14:49 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPJ00BBVRMTD2P4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: these RTL or what? > From: woodelf > Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:49:56 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >> Does it really makes that much differnce the number of bits for a char? >> Really, Six bits was kinda tight for work where upper or lower case >> was used but it didn't affect calculating Pi to a 100 places. >> Wasn't the basic chunk 9 bits for PDP10 and it happened (DEC >> software) used 6 bit char notation as a carry over from earlier >> life with friden flexowriter and TTYs on earlier machines? > >Floppy disk is 8 bit I/O. That made all the difference when standard >floppy disk controlers came out. Ben. RX02 works with PDP-8, WD1793 works with Cmos6120 (PDP-8), VAXen and other long word machines are using floppy and other 8bit interfaces. VAX 780 microcode was loaded from floppy. Most of those systems had already dealt with the 8bit/n-bit issue and as devices got larger and space less an issue it became less an issue. If it were, then PCs would have 32bit wide HDC rather than 16bit. With that character representation and word size are at best only loosely associated or an OS convention. If anything ASCII was a standard as were a few others like IBMs scheme. Converting from one coding to another was one of the first apps (code breaking). Going from one character representation to another is generally is not a big task so long and it's not language translaton. We as early users did that often for devices like Seletric printers. Did character convention used affect system choice or OS choice, possibly. It was only a piece of a larger picture of how systems evolved. Allison Allison Allison From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Sun Oct 7 12:51:33 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 19:51:33 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 6, 7 12:01:50 pm Message-ID: <3644.217.225.108.91.1191779493.squirrel@217.225.108.91> Tony Duell said: [...] > I cna understnad why people are interested only in old software, not > hardware, and want to run it under emulation on a modern machine > > My puzzlement is with people who want to run the old hardware (not have > to run the old hardware becuase it is part of some machine tool or > something) but don't want to understand what's going on inside. What more > do you get over running the software under emulation? > [..] Maybe nostalgia. Maybe they had such a machine earlier in their life and now want to *have* it again. That's not your more engineering-like approach; fascination about tractable technology - nowadays, you are almost out of the game with understanding and/or repairing modern gadgets. There is also rather the attitude of the art collector who wants a VanGogh painting not because he likes the artwork of the painter but is aware that it is worth hundred thousands or more. Why would one want an original KIM-1 with 1,25K memory? And then, why would one want a replica of a KIM-1? That is not better than a MESS emulation; it lacks the originality for the art collector type. I for my part are of the kind of being interested in the software; the operating systems, not actually the original hardware, so I am satisfied with emulators in this area. Systems like PDP-11 or VAX-11/780 which I had worked with were black boxes for me that time, but today as an electrical engineer I probably could read the schematics, and with enough time, money, and the right parts, I could even bring defective ones back to life. But then, what would it demonstrate? Like painting a certain arrangement of sun flowers on a canvas? Not my original work - it is VanGogh's one. More interesting is crafting an own computer; that's one of a kind, and others might laugh pointing at the Intel Quad Core they just bought for the same money and less time -, and its 1MHz clock whatever is ridiculous, but it is *mine*. -- Holger From tothwolf at concentric.net Mon Oct 8 02:14:48 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 02:14:48 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: >> I've not soldered a computer cable since the 1980s and I was rubbish at >> it then. And even so, I have no source for the relevant connectors! > > For the last part, RS components, Farnell, Digikey??? > > For the first part, I'd offer to do it for you, but it would be illegal > to do so. Owing to our totally daft laws, (a) I'd have to use lead-free > solder, which I don't have, don't trust, and am not set up to use and > (b) it has been said that if an enthusiast (specifically a model > engineer, but it would apply here too) does jobs for others, then his > workshop becomes a workplace and is covered by all the daft > health-and-safety rules that I have no desire to get involved with, and > which quite honestly, would stop me from getting on with things. I'm wondering, does any of that also apply to cables imported into the UK from the US? 99% of the cables I make and ship to the UK are made with crimped connections (done with the correct OEM tooling and given a good pull test too). Because a lot of the connectors I use are NOS/vintage, I really have no idea if they have lead in them though. I suspect most don't as the D-sub pins I tend to use are the gold plated AMP brand pins, but this does get me wondering. I know the modular plugs I use are lead free at least. From tothwolf at concentric.net Mon Oct 8 02:28:17 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 02:28:17 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: > There have been reports of the accuracy -- or lack of it -- of those > cheap meters, Many of them do odd things if the internal battery is flat > (and don't rely on the 'battery low' indicator for this), and there have > been problems due to the poor quality switches used. > > A friend of mine was nearly killed due to this. He tested some wiring > for voltage-to-earth and the meter said it was essentially dead. SO he > started workign, alas the meter was malfuctioning, and he got the full > mains volatege across him. He imediately went and bought an expensive > mad reliable neter. I usually check for voltage 3-4 different ways before I work on mains wiring. My first test is usually with a non-contact voltage tester. Then I test with my good old Square D Wiggy tester. If I'm really concerned, then I'll check it with my Fluke DMM. Even after all those show something dead, I still check it with the back of my hand or finger. From tothwolf at concentric.net Mon Oct 8 02:36:04 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 02:36:04 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: >> nce in making up cables then don't waste time learning for a small >> number. > > I'm not so sure about that. Very often in setting up a vintage computer > you'll need a special cable (RS232 serial cables being an obvious > example, there are all sorts of odd pin-swaps you need for some > machines...), and it makes a lot of sense to be abe to make it up. You > can't always buy the right cable off-the-shelf, particularly not for > obscure classics. I dunno...I've met a lot of folks online who found one of the various cables I've been selling on eBay and didn't want to go about making their own cables. I'd say half of them weren't even aware of classiccmp. Currently about 10% of the cables I sell get shipped internationally. I used to ship lots more internationally, especially to the UK, but with the last postage increase from the USPS that pushed international shipping up to around $20 US, the drop in sales hasn't been all that surprising. -Toth From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 03:09:49 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:09:49 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <20071007215742.510d5604@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> <47081517.1090601@rogerwilco.org> <20071007215742.510d5604@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: On 10/7/07, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 17:07:03 -0600 > J Blaser wrote: > > > 2. Is the L0005 or the L0008 preferred? Which one is easier to use > > with VMS? With NetBSD? There are no OS dependencies that I am aware of, beyond how much physical RAM you have to stuff into the box. We ran 4.0BSD and 4.1BSD (and VMS 3.4, I think) on an 11/750 w/2MB. When our leased system went away, I added the extra memory line to the backplane and took that same 11/750 to 8MB, where it still remains. On that machine, we ran VMS 4.x and various versions oUltrix. > > (Gee, a random thought just hit me...is there ULTRIX for this beastie?) > There should be ULTRIX for the 11/750. There is. Finding it might be tricky, though, and I forget what versions run on the 11/750, but ISTR we started with Ultrix 1.1 sometime around 1988 (and it wasn't particularly new then). > An other option is 4.3BSD-Tahoe. You can get it from TUHS or the CSRG > CDs. Once I instaled it on a MV II, that was upgraded to a MV III+ after > install. It was really fun to work with that old software. (And it felt > much faster then NetBSD. No surprise, given the 15 years of software > developement in between. Though, NetBSD is astonishing efficient on > "old" hardware, yet giving contamporarily features like IPv6.) Unless you are a dedicated DEC masochist, I can recommend exploring 4.3BSD-Tahoe vs Ultrix. But for me, even though we did run both BSD and VMS back in the day, if I were going to pay to power a Unibus VAX, I'd set it up to run VMS and leave BSD to more generic hardware. -ethan From cc at corti-net.de Mon Oct 8 04:21:29 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:21:29 +0200 (CEST) Subject: VT100 flyback / geometry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 7 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: > Are the sloping sides of the trapezium horizontal or vertical? They are vertical, i.e. on the left and right side. The width gets wider from top to bottom. > Trapezium problems can be caused by the deflection yoke, of course > (shorted turns or other prolems in one coil of the pair), but before > worrying about that, I'd make sure none of the supply lines on the video > board have a sigificant ripple at one of the scan frequencies. I'll check the power supply voltages. This VT100 is the replacement for the other one with the (as I think) defective flyback. >> The only adjustable magnets are the two sets of rings on the neck, one for >> the position and one for the focus (it's a magnetically focused CRT as >> most monitors are). > > Every VT100 I've worked on -- in fact every monitor of any type that I've > worked on, has been electrostatically-focused. There's a preset on the > video board that adjusts the votlage on one of the CRT pins (I forget if > it's pin 6 or pin 7). The 2 rings on the back of the yoke are both for > picture positioning. Yes and no. They are magnetically focused CRTs as the model number implies; it's an MW type (Mxx-yyW) made by Philips, an electrostatically focused CRT would be an AW-type. And there are four rings on the neck arranged in two pairs. One pair (the one near the deflection coils) controls the centering, and the other pair (towards the beam system near the socket) controls the focus. But additionally the focus is fine tuned with a potentiometer on the video board. BWT the focus and centering rings are described in the VT100 technical manual. I think that most high quality CRT systems like monitors are magnetically focused; I've seen such CRTs several times in video monitors and terminals. Christian From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Mon Oct 8 04:23:20 2007 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:23:20 +0200 Subject: Apple ii disk controller again... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4709F708.2060009@bluewin.ch> Tony Duell wrote: >> When backengineering it I found that both Proms and the 74174 have their >> power switched. Why would that be ? seems very hairy to me. > > Yes. This was a typicval Apple method of saving power. No matter that > it's a made idea to paply logic signals to an unpowered chip. And people > wonder why I dislike Apple hardware designs... > Looked some more and it seems that power switching is done to stop a PROM output being shorted by a 74ls05 output ! i.e. An input ot the 74ls323 is either driven by the Stateprom, or pulled low by the ls05 . That is indeed two outputs being shorted. And this is supposed to be a clever design.... > Is there anything I could easily type (pinouts of the slot, pinouts of > the drive cable, etc) that would help you? Thanks, meanwhile the problem has been traced, with a bit of luck, to a bad connection between 2 pcb's in the floppydrive itself. I was able to copy Kermit across and am now happily downloading my second Lilith disk. Jos From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Mon Oct 8 07:14:33 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:14:33 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <3644.217.225.108.91.1191779493.squirrel@217.225.108.91> References: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 6 7 pm <3644.217.225.108.91.1191779493.squirrel@217.225.108.91> Message-ID: <20071008121433.87FC0BA45AE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Tony Duell said: > I cna understnad why people are interested only in old software, not > hardware, and want to run it under emulation on a modern machine > > My puzzlement is with people who want to run the old hardware (not have > to run the old hardware becuase it is part of some machine tool or > something) but don't want to understand what's going on inside. What more > do you get over running the software under emulation? In fact, availability of hardware is a huge factor in succesfully making an emulator for a machine. All but the simplest processors are complicated enough that there are little corner cases all over the place where none of the processor/architecture documentation tells you what is going to happen. And outside the central processors, all peripherals but the very simplest are filled with complicated and undocumented behavior. Schematics could answer many of these questions, but in real life they end up guiding the search for the answer to the question rather than being the actual defining source for the answer. So in general emulator users and especially developers completely grok the need to have hardware working. Sometimes I believe that today's emulator developers know much more about the architectures than the original architects did :-). (In a couple cases, they are the orignal architect!) Availability of software is also important for making a reliable emulator. You could spend years reading the books to write an emulator, but you don't trust anything you've read or done until you've booted the simplest OS. Tim. From rcini at optonline.net Mon Oct 8 07:34:42 2007 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:34:42 -0400 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: <4709AB00.1070600@jbrain.com> Message-ID: You know, on the jumpers, I buy SIP and DIP headers in strips of 72 from Digi-Key and cut them off as needed. On 10/7/07 11:58 PM, "Jim Brain" wrote: > Zane H. Healy wrote: >> At 11:10 AM +0200 10/7/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: >>> Also, it looks to me like those 0.1" (2.54mm) jumpers is a bit high - >>> $0.25 each, min q. 10. Other killers are the $15 handling fee >> >> BTW, I'd personally replace the jumpers with switches accessible from >> outside the case. >> >> Zane >> >> > I'm coming in a bit late on this, but I always try allelectronics.com > for the commodity stuff (I assume there's a UK counterpart, and All > Electornics is one of several similar ventures in the US, but I forget > the names of the others all the time) I recently bought jumpers from > there for much less, as I recall. > > Jim > Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp From Watzman at neo.rr.com Mon Oct 8 10:10:59 2007 From: Watzman at neo.rr.com (Barry Watzman) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:10:59 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <200710080702.l9871rNw017999@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <002701c809bd$6f63cea0$6500a8c0@barry> RE: " I doubt that I will use up the spindle at less than a dozen blanks a year before dual layer media and drives become standard " Become? Dual layer drives became standard about 2 years ago. I doubt you can buy a burner which is not dual layer. ALL readers have been dual layer since day 1, because most commercial DVDs (e.g. movies and TV shows) are dual layer (but factory pressed media rather than burned media). On the other hand, I doubt that dual layer DVD will ever outsell single layer DVD. It is FAR more expensive (almost 10x), it offers LESS THAN twice the capacity (8GB vs. 4.7GB) and it is very likely to be FAR less reliable. I use dual layer because I need to for some of my work, but I don't like it. I have never had a problem, but I know how it works and I don't trust it. I consider it to be a miracle that it works at all. The current standard for drives is "burn everything", all formats, both CD & DVD, + and -, single and dual layer, for about $40. I still believe that Pioneer makes the best drives, but Pioneer doesn't support "lightscribe" (the ability to "burn" a graphic label on the label side of the media), so I have two DVD burner drives in my machine, a Pioneer and a Samsung (which I think is the second best brand, and which does support Lightscribe). My next move, probably in about 2 years, will be to Blu-Ray, but right now it's still [WAY] too expensive. From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 8 10:37:18 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 08:37:18 -0700 Subject: RS232 Breakout Boxes Message-ID: > From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> > On Sun, 7 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote:> > > I can rememebr what 4 are :-)> >> > 1) An old RS23 breakout box. Real slide-switches to open all the wires,> > and 2mm sockets for cross-patching. The main signals are monitored by> > transistor-driven filament lamps, the whole thing is mains-powered,, said> > PSU also prvides +12V and -=12V outputs for forcing handshake signals> > ARRGG!!! You've provoked me into building a banana-jack breakout box!> Of course if you make one, put all the connector combinations on each side. Also put an extra connector on it that can be used to snoop the data in progress between two machines. One can usually put two receivers on a single drive. I've used this method to analyze unusual protocols in the past. It is handy. _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts!? Play Star Shuffle:? the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct From brain at jbrain.com Mon Oct 8 10:38:05 2007 From: brain at jbrain.com (Jim Brain) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:38:05 -0500 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470A4EDD.4080205@jbrain.com> Richard A. Cini wrote: > You know, on the jumpers, I buy SIP and DIP headers in strips of 72 from > Digi-Key and cut them off as needed. > > > I do as well. I thought we were talking about the jumpers blocks. I thought everyone used 2x30 or 2x72 pin .100 headers and broke them off. Is there another way? Jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com From scrappylaptop at yahoo.com Mon Oct 8 10:42:15 2007 From: scrappylaptop at yahoo.com (Scrappy Laptop) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 08:42:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <002701c809bd$6f63cea0$6500a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <734846.77661.qm@web53606.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Barry Watzman wrote: "I use dual layer because I need to for some of my work, but I don't like it. I have never had a problem, but I know how it works and I don't trust it. I consider it to be a miracle that it works at all." I feel the same way about those CPU-thingys. I mean, how can they possibly count so fast and not make a mistake? ;) Seriously, if you look into the standards and see just how much of a laser-buned disk is used up for error control, it makes the HDD space used for formatting look downright frugal. As much faith in them as I have though, I've started looking for other archive media for my personal files. I've now come across several disks out of maybe 75 that have large numbers of unreadable image files (photos) that were readable less than five years ago. --------------------------------- Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel. From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 8 10:43:19 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:43:19 -0600 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough Message-ID: Has anyone got one online? If so, URLs please... -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 11:02:56 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 12:02:56 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Has anyone got one online? If so, URLs please... It has mostly been a lot of smoke and no fire, actually. Actually, no smoke, either. Amongst the serious electronics restoration and repair folks I deal with, reforming caps is pretty much a waste of time. The only electrolytic caps that seem to really require careful handling are those made prior to 1950 - the kinds that we never encounter. Even the caps from the 1940s are of little concern. Yes, they go bad, but reforming them mostly does not work. If they are going to blow, the are going to blow. It is probably best to apply the power just as normal, and have the ability to kill it in at an instant, under controlled conditions. I use a foot operated switch, so at any time, I can cut the power hands free. The caps from 1960s seem to be of little concern, and those from past 1970 are of no concern. If the cap decides to die, its going to die. Think about it - of the zillions of powerups and reformations some of us have done, when has there been clear evidence that somehow all the reformation processing has actually worked? Time to move on. -- Will, the guy that (I think) originally mentioned reforming caps on this list years ago. From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Oct 8 11:21:45 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 12:21:45 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPH0003SVS60XW2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPH0003SVS60XW2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On Oct 6, 2007, at 10:49 AM, Allison wrote: > The magical thing that really impacted logic design indirectly be > it discrete transistors or the fastest of the fast was simply size. > The faster the logic was the closer all the sourrounding bits had > to be to capitalize on it. Otherwise the rule of thumb of 1nS/ft > took over never minding load capacitances. Witness the Cray round > machine (YMP?). Many Cray designs used that trick. The original Cray-1 was C- shaped (for more than one reason I suspect!) as was the XMP family. Many members of the YMP family used curved segments, but only the earlier models. The Cray-2 was also C-shaped. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 8 11:11:36 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 17:11:36 +0100 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710081711.36355.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Monday 08 October 2007 17:02:56 William Donzelli wrote: > > Has anyone got one online? If so, URLs please... > The caps from 1960s seem to be of little concern, and those from past > 1970 are of no concern. If the cap decides to die, its going to die. I've had a beercan-sized cap (a proper UK 500ml beercan, not yer fiddly little USian 300ml ones) in a radio transmitter dating from the 1960s blow in spectacular fashion. To be fair, I suspect that a failing rectifier had already administered the death blow to it. Gordon From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 11:43:24 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 12:43:24 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <200710081711.36355.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> References: <200710081711.36355.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> Message-ID: > I've had a beercan-sized cap (a proper UK 500ml beercan, not yer fiddly little > USian 300ml ones) in a radio transmitter dating from the 1960s blow in > spectacular fashion. To be fair, I suspect that a failing rectifier had > already administered the death blow to it. I have had spectacular explosions as well, with little bits of crap ending up in my hair - but they seem to happen regardless of anything we do. -- Will From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 12:07:17 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:07:17 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <004f01c80800$80165ab0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> References: <575131af0710051724o7467200bp70ef14701b424a2d@mail.gmail.com> <004f01c80800$80165ab0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Message-ID: <575131af0710081007o201d6febr3fc1078ec4ded737@mail.gmail.com> On 06/10/2007, Antonio Carlini wrote: > Liam Proven wrote: > > > But as I said elsewhere, for my clients today, if a machine is less > > than a couple of gigahertz, it's skipware. It's not worth my time to > > try to diagnose a fault; if it fails, swap it out and replace it with > > a new machine. > > I think we've done this to death before. You are talking about a > commercial situation where time is money, Tony is talking about the > vintage gear at home, where money is usually more scarce. > > No business I've worked in would consider component-level repair: > it is simply not economical. But at home things are different, at > least for the vintage stuff. Even if you do have a spare PDP-8 to > swap in, at least you've said you'll pass the old one on to us :-) Absolutely. I think you slightly misplace the direction of my argument, though. I did say that cheap commodity hardware is the reason I don't repair defective components, I just swap them out. However, that's not the reason why I don't try to repair collectable kit. The thing *is* that for pretty much my entire working life - i.e., the last 2 decades - this has been the case, so I never learned electronics or how to do component-level diagnosis or repair. And what's more, the skill is more obsolete now than ever. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 8 12:25:10 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:25:10 -0700 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> On 8 Oct 2007 at 2:28, Tothwolf wrote: > I usually check for voltage 3-4 different ways before I work on mains > wiring. My first test is usually with a non-contact voltage tester. Then I > test with my good old Square D Wiggy tester. If I'm really concerned, then > I'll check it with my Fluke DMM. Even after all those show something dead, > I still check it with the back of my hand or finger. When I worked in industry, I was informed that the nice Simpson 260 VOMs were to be used where there was something to measure, not for safety checks. And always be aware that there are lots of DIY "fixers" out there. For safety checking, one can use a Wiggy (still made), or a neon bulb probe. Check for voltage before pulling the breaker and afterwards. Check each line against ground in case some idiot swapped the lines. If it's a three-phase setup, check each line against the others and against ground. Secure the breaker in the off position, lest someone come by and think that it's been tripped and decides to do you a favor. In industry, this meant locking the disconnect box with your lock and tag. If there are fuses in addition to a disconnect, pull the fuses and put them in your pocket or tool pouch--don't leave them by the disconnect box. In residential installations, this may not be possible, so I'll use good old duct tape over the breaker handle. Not perfect, but better than nothing. Wear shoes with rubber soles. Mains work should not be done when one is shoeless. While you may be certain that a circuit is "dead", work as much as possilbe as if the circuit were live. I was chatting with one of our electrical co-op's linemen. He mentioned that when dealing with outages, that disconnected lines sometimes aren't. Apparently some workers have been surprised when some enterprising homeowner decided to fire up his portable generator without pulling the main disconnect. Cheers, Chuck From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 12:30:04 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:30:04 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710051724o7467200bp70ef14701b424a2d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710081030gfcb142k316d6ee3d1c5ff80@mail.gmail.com> On 06/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > > But as I said elsewhere, for my clients today, if a machine is less > > than a couple of gigahertz, it's skipware. It's not worth my time to > > try to diagnose a fault; if it fails, swap it out and replace it with > > a new machine. > > Wait a second. Last time I checked, this was classiccmp. Not > 'How-to-easter-egg-modern-PCs' or 'Computer-jobseekers' or... But > classiccmp. It is ridiculous to assume that becasue something may well be > the right solution in one case that it has to be right solution in all cases. As have others, you misunderstand me. Clearly I should have spelled this out more. The fact that PC kit is so cheap that it's not worth repairing is not why I don't repair classic machines. It's the reason I /don't know how/ to repair classic machines. > > my clients, not to nurse their old kit along as long as possible. > > As I said, this is classiccmp. Nursing old kit is exactly what we do here. No... Classicmp is a mailing list. It's where people /talk/ about classic kit. The nursing happens elsewhere in real life. Salient difference! > > I realize that. But I did specify earlier: I don't generally work > > below the level of the circuit board. There's no single part of a PC > > Again, how on earth cna you know what the fault is if you can't diagnose > it. You mentioned swapping a DIMM. How can you know if an intermittant > memory problem is a fault in the DIMM or in the memory controller on the > motherboard? Well, although I realise that's just an example, I can respond using details of a recent real job. An AtlhonXP PC works fine with 2 DIMMs. With all 3 slot filled, it crashes, freezes or hangs. I suspect, from prior experience, a memory error. So step #1, I get a Linux boot CD with memtest86 on it, so I can exercise the RAM. With all 3 DIMMs fitted, memtest gives errors. With 2 fitted, it's OK. Try the 3rd on its own: fine. Try the other 2 on their own: fine. Try all 3 slots individually: fine. Summary: any permutation of 2 of the 3 is fine. All the DIMMs themselves check out fine, including on other machines. But on this machine, filling all 3 slots makes it unreliable. Given that I don't have a good motherboard to swap in, the resolution, then, is to downgrade it to 2 DIMMs & warn the owner not to try 3. That seems like a reasonable diagnostic process to me, and apart from fitting or removing the DIMMs, the only tests were done in software. > > I don't know what that is. I have a bag of ISA kit: mostly multi-I/O > > PGC = Professional Graphics Controller. An IBM board set (3 boards > fitting into 2 adjacent ISA slots (there's a memory PCB sandwiched > between them) that form an intellegent-ish graphics card with an 8088 to > control it (!). I have the techref, I'd love to play with the boards. Ah. Exotica. Most of my stuff is very vanilla, I'm afraid. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 12:35:11 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:35:11 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <575131af0710081035m48d08449lc0676e70c673ebb0@mail.gmail.com> On 06/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > I think you're somewhat missing the point. I can (alas) understand why > there are people who use currently-available machines (both then and now) > and don't understnand how they work. > > I cna understnad why people are interested only in old software, not > hardware, and want to run it under emulation on a modern machine > > My puzzlement is with people who want to run the old hardware (not have > to run the old hardware becuase it is part of some machine tool or > something) but don't want to understand what's going on inside. What more > do you get over running the software under emulation? I don't understand your puzzlement. I don't know how to change the oil on most of my bikes, let alone anything more advance, but nonetheless, I'd love the chance to ride a classic Norton or something. I am no car buff at all - I find them rather dull, mostly - but I appreciate an E-type Jag as a beautiful machine, without any idea of what's under the bonnet or any wish to know. Appreciation is /entirely/ separate from /understanding./ Most people who admire a fine oil painting couldn't paint it. Most people who listen to music can't play an instrument. There's no need to be able to /do/ something to /enjoy/ it. > As an aside, the most layers of any PCB I've worked on was 14 (or is it > 16, I've seen both figures quoted), and that was in a 1968 machine. The > good news is that all I had to desolder and replace were transistors. Wow! I honestly did not know such tech went back more than 10-15y. Amazing. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 8 12:35:49 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:35:49 -0700 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <002701c809bd$6f63cea0$6500a8c0@barry> References: <200710080702.l9871rNw017999@dewey.classiccmp.org>, <002701c809bd$6f63cea0$6500a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <470A0805.25490.5951D55@cclist.sydex.com> On 8 Oct 2007 at 11:10, Barry Watzman wrote: > The current standard for drives is "burn everything", all formats, > both CD & DVD, + and -, single and dual layer, for about $40. I still > believe that Pioneer makes the best drives, but Pioneer doesn't support > "lightscribe" (the ability to "burn" a graphic label on the label side > of the media), so I have two DVD burner drives in my machine, a Pioneer > and a Samsung (which I think is the second best brand, and which does > support Lightscribe). I've got a couple of Lightscribe drives here but have discovered that the LS process isn't all that permanent. Apparently (this is from the manufacturer's fine print) the label will slowly fade under normal room lighting and will fade quickly in bright sunlight. That is, the dye in the label surface is IR-reactive but there is no "fixing" process. I've already got a drawer full of old faxes that aren't readable any longer; I don't need to play guessing games with my CDs and DVDs. I like to use MAM-A gold media and I've never seen it with a Lightscribe coating. Cheers, Chuck From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Mon Oct 8 12:35:13 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:35:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Richard A. Cini wrote: > You know, on the jumpers, I buy SIP and DIP headers in strips of 72 from > Digi-Key and cut them off as needed. I thought everyone here did this. You can get them on the cheap from ebay. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 8 12:40:27 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:40:27 -0700 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710081007o201d6febr3fc1078ec4ded737@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0710051724o7467200bp70ef14701b424a2d@mail.gmail.com> <004f01c80800$80165ab0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <575131af0710081007o201d6febr3fc1078ec4ded737@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > From: lproven at gmail.com ---snip--- > > I did say that cheap commodity hardware is the reason I don't repair > defective components, I just swap them out. However, that's not the > reason why I don't try to repair collectable kit. The thing *is* that > for pretty much my entire working life - i.e., the last 2 decades - > this has been the case, so I never learned electronics or how to do > component-level diagnosis or repair. And what's more, the skill is > more obsolete now than ever. > Hi It isn't obsolete, just not main stream. Almost every manufacture has a team called "Product Engineers". These guys need to locate failures to the source and determine root cause. At board level they do the same type of stuff many of us do in this group. At the chip level, they even disect individual transistor on dies to see what makes them tick wrong. No, it isn't obsolete, just done at different levels. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 8 12:41:33 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:41:33 -0700 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPH0003SVS60XW2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net>, Message-ID: <470A095D.23479.59A5ED3@cclist.sydex.com> On 8 Oct 2007 at 12:21, Dave McGuire wrote: > Many Cray designs used that trick. The original Cray-1 was C- > shaped (for more than one reason I suspect!) as was the XMP family. > Many members of the YMP family used curved segments, but only the > earlier models. The Cray-2 was also C-shaped. In one of Cray's chats, I recall that he held his hands about a foot apart and said "this is a nanosecond". Cray exploited this even on the old CDC mainfraimes. On the taper-pin backplanes, one could find coils and loops of twisted-pair wires that had been carefully measured to provide a specific delay. Also note that the 6600 cabinets are configured in the shape of a cross, not as a row of cabinets in a single line as was the custom in those days. Cheers, Chuck From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 12:49:50 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:49:50 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710051724o7467200bp70ef14701b424a2d@mail.gmail.com> <004f01c80800$80165ab0$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <575131af0710081007o201d6febr3fc1078ec4ded737@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710081049p7ca4e01crfc43d0231601ecdb@mail.gmail.com> On 08/10/2007, dwight elvey wrote: > > > > From: lproven at gmail.com > ---snip--- > > > > I did say that cheap commodity hardware is the reason I don't repair > > defective components, I just swap them out. However, that's not the > > reason why I don't try to repair collectable kit. The thing *is* that > > for pretty much my entire working life - i.e., the last 2 decades - > > this has been the case, so I never learned electronics or how to do > > component-level diagnosis or repair. And what's more, the skill is > > more obsolete now than ever. > > > > Hi > It isn't obsolete, just not main stream. > Almost every manufacture has a team called > "Product Engineers". These guys need to locate failures to the source > and determine root cause. > At board level they do the same type of stuff many of us do > in this group. > At the chip level, they even disect individual transistor on dies > to see what makes them tick wrong. > No, it isn't obsolete, just done at different levels. OK, fair point. Conceded. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From arcarlini at iee.org Mon Oct 8 12:46:53 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:46:53 +0100 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <734846.77661.qm@web53606.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001a01c809d3$380c0380$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Scrappy Laptop wrote: > Seriously, if you look into the standards and see just how much of a > laser-buned disk is used up for error control, it makes the HDD space > used for formatting look downright frugal. I don't expect to ever see that kind of read error on a DVD (i.e. the data reads back with no reported errors but is incorrect). The odds of that are astronomically low (and I'd never notice 'cos no error was reported :-)). What I worry about is part (or all) of a DVD or CD not reading at all. All the error correction stuff built into the media just hides how close I really am to that much more interesting point in the life of that particular piece of media! (There are tools out there which can read the raw bits/pits, reconstruct the intermediate layers and tell you how scratched your media looks today. I've not found one that tells you, in some convenient way, how long it is likely to be before the media has degraded seriously). Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.14.4/1056 - Release Date: 07/10/2007 18:12 From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 8 12:50:20 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:50:20 -0700 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <200710081711.36355.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> References: , , <200710081711.36355.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> Message-ID: <470A0B6C.1133.5A2688C@cclist.sydex.com> On 8 Oct 2007 at 17:11, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > I've had a beercan-sized cap (a proper UK 500ml beercan, not yer fiddly little > USian 300ml ones) in a radio transmitter dating from the 1960s blow in > spectacular fashion. To be fair, I suspect that a failing rectifier had > already administered the death blow to it. The most dangerous, in my experience, are the old steel-jacketed, epoxy-sealed Sprague "Vitamin Q" caps (not large electrolytics) sometimes found in miltary equipment. I've got a mark in my ceiling where that steel jacket embedded itself when the cap blew. Cheers, Chuck From ian_primus at yahoo.com Mon Oct 8 13:02:03 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:02:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <538328.43605.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > Secure the breaker in the off position, lest someone > come by and > think that it's been tripped and decides to do you a > favor. In > industry, this meant locking the disconnect box with > your lock and > tag. If there are fuses in addition to a > disconnect, pull the fuses > and put them in your pocket or tool pouch--don't > leave them by the > disconnect box. > > In residential installations, this may not be > possible, so I'll use > good old duct tape over the breaker handle. Not > perfect, but better > than nothing. Hehe, that doesn't always work... Several years ago I did work for a school system installing network wiring and nice metal wall mounted tracks for it to run in (Wiremold). Some areas included the installation of power as well. Well, the guys and I were installing the power section of one of the labs, so we went down and shut off the breaker. Now, this breaker panel is in a utility room, and it's a household style breaker. No "lock-out" system available. So, we used what we normally used. Black electrical tape covering the shut off breakers, the panel taped shut, and a sign taped to the panel warning that breakers #X and #Y were shut off to install outlets, and were not to be turned on. Go back to the room, and test the voltage with the meter. Dead as a doornail. So, work progresses, wires threaded through metal tracking, installing outlets, when, as we were pulling some wire through a hole, the bare ends dragged against the metal, creating a heck of a flashbang. Scared the hell out of us. We went back to the panel, only to find that the sign and the tape were gone, and the breakers switched back on. (And of course, one of the previously shut-off breakers was now tripped from being shorted out.) Now, this work was being done in the summer time - no students. There were some janitors and other people in the building working on things, but that's about it. We never did figure out who turned the breaker back on, or why in the hell they did it. And the sad thing was, this panel was actually labelled as to what the breakers did. All anyone needed to do was pop by the room number marked on the panel to see if someone was still working on the wiring. Since we couldn't very well post guards on the panels, tape and signs were the best we could really do, save for taking the panel apart and removing the breaker. So we would always be sure to have the wiring shorted out completely at our end, and leave it that way until all work was completed. Our hope was that if some fool did turn the breaker back on, it would immediately trip. -Ian From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 8 13:05:45 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:05:45 -0700 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 12:02:56 -0400 > From: wdonzelli at gmail.com > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough > >> Has anyone got one online? If so, URLs please... > > It has mostly been a lot of smoke and no fire, actually. > > Actually, no smoke, either. > > Amongst the serious electronics restoration and repair folks I deal > with, reforming caps is pretty much a waste of time. The only > electrolytic caps that seem to really require careful handling are > those made prior to 1950 - the kinds that we never encounter. > ---snip--- Hi I still think it is worth doing. The problem I've seen is that the capacitor had been powered up too fast some time in the past and had broken the burst seal. It most likely hadn't failed at the time, just outgassed some. Later, no amount of reforming would have saved it. Although, like you, I don't always reform, it still has some value. I'd suspect there should be some type of current limit per volume of capacitor that one should follow. I've just made guesses but I'd guess someone should determine a rule of thumb. For a typical large filter caps, I use a limit of about 10 ma. This seems to work well. There is nothing that can be done for dry tantalums. They can't be reformed. Dwight Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Boo!?Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 8 13:11:23 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:11:23 -0600 Subject: these RTL or what? In-Reply-To: <0JPJ00BBVRMTD2P4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPJ00BBVRMTD2P4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <470A72CB.4070404@jetnet.ab.ca> Allison wrote: > RX02 works with PDP-8, WD1793 works with Cmos6120 (PDP-8), VAXen and > other long word machines are using floppy and other 8bit interfaces. > VAX 780 microcode was loaded from floppy. I grew up in alas in a PC world.I got to play with a 8 but that is about all. > Most of those systems had already dealt with the 8bit/n-bit issue > and as devices got larger and space less an issue it became less > an issue. If it were, then PCs would have 32bit wide HDC rather > than 16bit. I like 16 bits for IDE ... You can cut that down to say 12 bits for your PDP-8. 9 or 12 bits for the cpu depending on what cpu I build.:) From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Mon Oct 8 13:28:35 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:28:35 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20071008182835.845A2BA45D1@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "William Donzelli" wrote: > The caps from 1960s seem to be of little concern, and those from past > 1970 are of no concern. If the cap decides to die, its going to die. Take it one step further: apply higher than normal line voltage to purposefully seek out and destroy the flaky capacitors. Called "margining" in more than one industry. Tim. From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Oct 8 13:28:46 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 14:28:46 -0400 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <200710081428.46469.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Sunday 07 October 2007, Rod Smallwood wrote: > That will give you a list of the boards. > Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power supplies will > need some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics. 11/750s aren't that old (early 80s), and shouldn't need reforming. It appears that William Donzelli agrees with me, and I'm sure he has more experience with this than I do. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 8 13:33:26 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:33:26 -0600 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <20071008182835.845A2BA45D1@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <20071008182835.845A2BA45D1@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <470A77F6.3070600@jetnet.ab.ca> Tim Shoppa wrote: > Take it one step further: apply higher than normal line voltage > to purposefully seek out and destroy the flaky capacitors. > > Called "margining" in more than one industry. If that is AC line voltage it is called Ka-Boom. :) > Tim. From bpope at wordstock.com Mon Oct 8 13:36:22 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 14:36:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: TI-990 ... In-Reply-To: <4707172A.6060007@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20071008183622.2D24055D82@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by woodelf > > Bryan Pope wrote: > > > > I believe it was Chuck who was asking where to find TMS9900 and TMS9995 > > chips.. The TMS9900 is available from Unicorn Electronics for > > $34.88 each. See --> > > > > http://www.unicornelectronics.com/monthly.html > Where did you find that page? I can't find it from the main menu. Ben, I got this link from a (monthly) email I receive from them with a coupon. The current one is 10% off a web order over $250. expires 10/9/07, enter promotional code 1191613347. > > Cheers, > Consider that replaces say 5 TTL boards at $400 each you got a good > deal. > Ben. > PS. I can't find it in the catalog too. > And there is stuff in their catalog that is not on their website, like IC test clips. Cheers, Bryan From ian_primus at yahoo.com Mon Oct 8 13:44:14 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:44:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <470A77F6.3070600@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <465179.93254.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- woodelf wrote: > Tim Shoppa wrote: > > > Take it one step further: apply higher than normal > line voltage > > to purposefully seek out and destroy the flaky > capacitors. > > > > Called "margining" in more than one industry. > If that is AC line voltage it is called Ka-Boom. :) Hmm. Kinda like trying to find the shorted component by replacing a blown fuse with a bolt. -Ian From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Mon Oct 8 13:55:33 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:55:33 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <001a01c809d3$380c0380$5b01a8c0@uatempname> References: <001a01c809d3$380c0380$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Message-ID: <470A7D25.1000309@compsys.to> >Antonio Carlini wrote: >Scrappy Laptop wrote: > > >>Seriously, if you look into the standards and see just how much of a >>laser-buned disk is used up for error control, it makes the HDD space >>used for formatting look downright frugal. >> >> > >I don't expect to ever see that kind of read error on a DVD (i.e. the >data reads back with no reported errors but is incorrect). The odds of >that >are astronomically low (and I'd never notice 'cos no error was reported >:-)). > > Jerome Fine replies: Which is why I feel that using MD5 to verify a file after I read it back to a hard drive from the DVD is so essential. Actually, for files up to about 10 MB, I produce the MD5 directly from the DVD file. But I have found that with a 1 GB file, it takes less overall time to copy the file to a hard drive first. I don't exactly understand, but it is probably because the MD5 program has different buffer sizes than the COPY program - or because a single command copies all of the files from the DVD to the hard drive (so I don't need to execute an individual copy command for each file) whereas the MD5 program needs a separate command for each file. >What I worry about is part (or all) of a DVD or CD not reading at all. >All >the error correction stuff built into the media just hides how close I >really am to that much more interesting point in the life of that >particular piece of media! (There are tools out there which can read the >raw bits/pits, reconstruct the intermediate layers and tell you how >scratched your media looks today. I've not found one that tells you, >in some convenient way, how long it is likely to be before the media >has degraded seriously). > That would be helpful, but "long" is probably relative. Unless the DVD is actually experiencing slow bit rot faster than scratches and other external damage, probably the only status that would be helpful would be a percentage of the allowable damage before the errors are no longer recoverable. Can anyone suggest whether or not degradation due to bit rot can be distinguished from external damage? I keep my CD and DVD archival files inside their envelopes. I rarely mark the actual DVD media, however, I use a standard sheet of paper cut into 4 pieces that fits nicely inside the envelop to identify the DVD files on the media. My experience is that careful handling of CD and DVD media (limiting the contact to ONLY the edge of the media) probably prolongs the useful life of the files. I also attempt to keep media from physically touching each other, especially after they are burned - which that piece of paper is very helpful in preventing since I usually store 3 DVD media per envelope. 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 jfoust at threedee.com Mon Oct 8 13:55:23 2007 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:55:23 -0500 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <465179.93254.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <470A77F6.3070600@jetnet.ab.ca> <465179.93254.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20071008134909.047a5a48@mail> At 01:44 PM 10/8/2007, you wrote: >Hmm. Kinda like trying to find the shorted component >by replacing a blown fuse with a bolt. Tony's right on several levels, but it's always a trade-off, and different aspects of the compromise come into play with old uncommon equipment. Sub-assembly swapping is easy with contemporary PCs because all the parts are relatively common and inexpensive. Swapping power supplies to debug a motherboard isn't going to help if the fault is good at destroying power supplies. Killing a power supply isn't going to help the next motherboard if the newly blown power supply destroys that motherboard, too. Swapping memory chips between motherboards that are destroying memory chips is a sure route to frustration and wasted chips. With classic hardware, there may not be an easy source of extra subassemblies. With new hardware, it may be impossible to secure proper documentation and it may be difficult to impossible to decipher what's happening inside of such tiny chips. - John From aek at bitsavers.org Mon Oct 8 14:09:55 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:09:55 -0700 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough Message-ID: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> "William Donzelli" wrote: > The caps from 1960s seem to be of little concern, and those from past > 1970 are of no concern. If the cap decides to die, its going to die. -- This was not the experience of the PDP-1 team during the restoration of that machine. Detailed records were kept of every cap that was reformed. This process took several months to perform. Blowing up a cap in the machine during restoration was not an option. Lyle, or one of the other hardware folks would know the details. I am disappointed at the 'let it just blow up' attitude that has been expressed on this list so far in the discussion. From ohh at drizzle.com Mon Oct 8 14:12:14 2007 From: ohh at drizzle.com (O. Sharp) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 12:12:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Attributions unfortunately lost, but somebody out there asked: > > Has anyone got one online? If so, URLs please... Actually I think I have _too_ many. :) I ended up having to read several in order to come up with a good overall picture of what was happening. It may be you don't need all of these, but here's a few of the websites where I found useful information. Several of these seem to be concerned with capacitors from antique radios and the like, with voltages up around 400V, but the information is still worth a look: http://home.insightbb.com/~stephenwmoore/Electronics/Reform.htm http://www.vcomp.co.uk/tech_tips/reform_caps/reform_caps.htm http://www.vmars.org.uk/capacitor_reforming.htm http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/Restore_cap.html http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~reese/electrolytics/index.html http://www.parse.com/~museum/pdp12/pdp12/restore1.html#20031114 If you want significantly more detail, or don't want it but later discover you need it anyway, here's a Cornell-Dubilier PDF on electrolytic construction and a _very_ detailed account from CWRU of what, exactly, is happening during the capacitor construction and forming process: http://www.cde.com/catalogs/AEappGUIDE.pdf http://electrochem.cwru.edu/ed/encycl/art-c04-electr-cap.htm ...To comment on one reply, for which I also managed to lose the attribution: > Amongst the serious electronics restoration and repair folks I deal > with, reforming caps is pretty much a waste of time. The only > electrolytic caps that seem to really require careful handling are > those made prior to 1950 - the kinds that we never encounter. Well, the PDP-12 I've been working on was surprisingly finicky and unstable until I'd fully reformed the power-supply caps - turns out on the first go I hadn't reformed them to their full capacity, and the -12 _knew_ it, and it didn't like it. :) So I think it's still a relevant skill, even with equipment as late as c.1971. (Knowing someone who accidentally _blew up_ a cap in a PDP-11 PSU by not reforming them first is an added incentive, of course. ) > Think about it - of the zillions of powerups and reformations some of > us have done, when has there been clear evidence that somehow all the > reformation processing has actually worked? It's pretty easy to verify, actually. After doing the reforming discharge the cap, then turn the reforming current back on again. If reforming is taking place correctly, the voltage on the cap will increase _much_ faster than it did during reforming. -O.- From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Oct 8 14:16:18 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:16:18 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <200710081516.18405.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Monday 08 October 2007, Al Kossow wrote: > I am disappointed at the 'let it just blow up' attitude that has been > expressed on this list so far in the discussion. I think that (at least for anything I own), I'd rather replace marginal or defective capacitors that would require "reforming" to work properly, with new ones that are less likely to blow at an in-opportune time. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Mon Oct 8 14:22:06 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 14:22:06 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI Onyx Power Boards & System Controller Message-ID: Greetings all; I picked up an SGI Onyx 10000 RE2 rack ("Terminator") last week from surplus and, unfortunately, it appears I'm in the same boat as J Blaser - Boeing used this machine as 'parts' for another. I'm missing the Power Boards (I believe I need three) and the System Controller. Also someone removed the Graphics and Main I/O panels... violently, apparently, as the cable that goes from the DG2 (Display Generator) to the breakout has part of the breakout PCB still attached to the cable! I see a main I/O panel on eBay right now relatively inexpensively, as well as the graphics panel - but the Graphics I/O Panel is for an InfiniteReality, not a RealityEngine2, and is no good to me, alas. Many thanks to all; JP Hindin From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 14:28:43 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:28:43 -0400 Subject: SGI Onyx Power Boards & System Controller In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470A84EB.8000308@gmail.com> JP Hindin wrote: > I see a main I/O panel on eBay right now relatively inexpensively, as well > as the graphics panel - but the Graphics I/O Panel is for an > InfiniteReality, not a RealityEngine2, and is no good to me, alas. Couldn't you just pick up an IR boardset? I've seen them periodically for not too much money. Peace... Sridhar From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 14:31:39 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:31:39 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <470A0B6C.1133.5A2688C@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710081711.36355.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> <470A0B6C.1133.5A2688C@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > The most dangerous, in my experience, are the old steel-jacketed, > epoxy-sealed Sprague "Vitamin Q" caps (not large electrolytics) > sometimes found in miltary equipment. I've got a mark in my ceiling > where that steel jacket embedded itself when the cap blew. Perhaps you are just having bad luck, but Vitamin Qs are extremely stable capacitors. Sometimes the seals around the larger ones are a bit weak, however, and the oil oozes out. -- Will From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Oct 8 14:29:11 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:29:11 +0100 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <470A8507.9020607@yahoo.co.uk> Al Kossow wrote: > "William Donzelli" wrote: > > The caps from 1960s seem to be of little concern, and those from past > > 1970 are of no concern. If the cap decides to die, its going to die. > > -- > > This was not the experience of the PDP-1 team during the restoration of > that machine. Detailed records were kept of every cap that was reformed. > This process took several months to perform. What data did you use to figure out that this process was worth doing? I think Will's implying that the need to reform caps that new is not necessary, because there's no data available to say that it actually does any good... Presumably someone somewhere's done some real tests on old caps of different vintages and come to the conclusion that it does indeed have some benefit. > Blowing up a cap in the machine during restoration was not an option. I don't think anyone can say that it just won't happen - so it all comes down to a question of how much risk there is. cheers Jules From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 14:36:01 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:36:01 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20071008134909.047a5a48@mail> References: <470A77F6.3070600@jetnet.ab.ca> <465179.93254.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <6.2.3.4.2.20071008134909.047a5a48@mail> Message-ID: > Swapping power supplies to debug a motherboard isn't going to help > if the fault is good at destroying power supplies. Killing a > power supply isn't going to help the next motherboard if the > newly blown power supply destroys that motherboard, too. It should be noted that real computers, both old and new, have enough protection between the power supplies and circuitry that this almost never happens. Power Check. -- Will From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Mon Oct 8 14:37:07 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 14:37:07 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI Onyx Power Boards & System Controller In-Reply-To: <470A84EB.8000308@gmail.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > JP Hindin wrote: > > I see a main I/O panel on eBay right now relatively inexpensively, as well > > as the graphics panel - but the Graphics I/O Panel is for an > > InfiniteReality, not a RealityEngine2, and is no good to me, alas. > > Couldn't you just pick up an IR boardset? I've seen them periodically > for not too much money. Possibly - but I'd hate to go out and buy an entire GFX subsystem, when all I need is a matching breakout :) Keep in mind, I only paid $50 for the Onyx itself! JP From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 14:39:54 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:39:54 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > I still think it is worth doing. The problem I've seen > is that the capacitor had been powered up too fast some > time in the past and had broken the burst seal. Go ahead and break the seal. Nothing will repair it anyway. I would rather have the seal blow while I and right there and can instantly cut the power, rather than while I am in the kitchen getting another slice of pizza. -- Will From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 8 14:43:26 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:43:26 -0700 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: , <470A0B6C.1133.5A2688C@cclist.sydex.com>, Message-ID: <470A25EE.19552.609F26F@cclist.sydex.com> On 8 Oct 2007 at 15:31, William Donzelli wrote: > Perhaps you are just having bad luck, but Vitamin Qs are extremely > stable capacitors. Sometimes the seals around the larger ones are a > bit weak, however, and the oil oozes out. Only had it happen once, but that was enoough to make me very careful with them. Cheers, Chuck From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 14:45:55 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:45:55 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Several of these seem to be concerned > with capacitors from antique radios and the like, with voltages up around > 400V, but the information is still worth a look: It should be noted that the older caps, especially from the 1930s, are in a whole different league as far as reforming is concerned. There, it is a must for any electrolytic cap of unknown quality. And they still blow up, sometimes. > Well, the PDP-12 I've been working on was surprisingly finicky and > unstable until I'd fully reformed the power-supply caps - turns out on the > first go I hadn't reformed them to their full capacity, and the -12 _knew_ > it, and it didn't like it. :) This makes little sense. While the PDP-12 was being powered up and "finicky", the caps would have been applied to a reforming voltage anyway - in this case plain old operating voltage. And if the caps took that long to heal - DON'T TRUST THEM. They are on their way out... -- WIll From chaosotter76 at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 14:55:45 2007 From: chaosotter76 at gmail.com (Mark Meiss) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:55:45 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies In-Reply-To: <0JPC00J6UU1Q5RO5@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPC00J6UU1Q5RO5@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <653a64ac0710081255wa5c04a1ide5fff3365290778@mail.gmail.com> On 10/3/07, Allison wrote: > > There are really three 99/4 home computers: > > original with chiclet keys the 99/4 > > the second and most common with a really nice keyboard 99/4a > > the white console version that is really the same thing with > a few board level cost reductions. (still 99/4A on the back) There's a caveat associated with the white/beige console version, actually: Most (all?) of them have an additional lockout chip to prevent the use of third-party cartridges -- in particular, the Atarisoft games that came in the black wedge-shaped cases. More than any of the technical considerations that have been mentioned, that's probably the biggest reason why TI's home computer division flopped: their outright hostility to third-party development. Commodore laid all the internals bare, even to the point of including schematics in the programmer's reference, whereas you STILL can't find a decent technical reference for TI's GPL interpreter. It is a pity that they laid out the memory the way they did, with the standard 16KB as ported video memory, because the assembly is really fun to work with. I've installed a CompactFlash sidecar with 32KB memory expansion on my old 99/4A, and that's made it into a fun computer again. From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 15:01:44 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 16:01:44 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <470A8507.9020607@yahoo.co.uk> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> <470A8507.9020607@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: > What data did you use to figure out that this process was worth doing? I think > Will's implying that the need to reform caps that new is not necessary, > because there's no data available to say that it actually does any good... Yes, that is what I am saying. >From my experience, and the experiences of many other electronics restorers, I see little to no benefit. Maybe if I had kept a log book over the past 15 or 20 years, I could back things up with numbers, but I did not. I think the reforming process may only very slightly improve a capacitors life - so little that it probably is not worth doing. > Presumably someone somewhere's done some real tests on old caps of different > vintages and come to the conclusion that it does indeed have some benefit. I would like to see this data, but have no idea where it could be found - if it even exists. The place I would look is perhaps industry reports from the 1970s concerning failures in military equipment - and that is a long shot. > I don't think anyone can say that it just won't happen - so it all comes down > to a question of how much risk there is. Yes. With the restored PDP-1, I would hope that CHM realizes that the caps may fail at any time. Or any other part, for that matter. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 15:04:32 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 16:04:32 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: > I am disappointed at the 'let it just blow up' attitude that has been > expressed on this list so far in the discussion. I should add that offlist with another listmember, I pointed out that when I power up a rare item, I will disconnect as much as possible, so if there is a big failure, the effects will be localized. I am not so reckless. Basically, unplug the power supply from the circuitry... -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 15:16:47 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 16:16:47 -0400 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > For safety checking, one can use a Wiggy (still made), or a neon bulb > probe. For what its worth, those neon bulb probes are often referred to generically as Wiggies as well. > I was chatting with one of our electrical co-op's linemen. He > mentioned that when dealing with outages, that disconnected lines > sometimes aren't. Apparently some workers have been surprised when > some enterprising homeowner decided to fire up his portable generator > without pulling the main disconnect. What kind of monster generator did this homeowner have?! The normal little portables will instantly disconnect (breaker or otherwise) if you try to connect it to a blacked out grid, with all those people in dark houses with the lights and fridges still connected. That's one helluva load. -- Will From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 8 15:30:29 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:30:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <538328.43605.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <538328.43605.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20071008132938.B12383@shell.lmi.net> On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > Now, this work was being done in the summer time - no > students. There were some janitors and other people in > the building working on things, but that's about it. Your primary problem isn't going to be students; it's administrators. From jwest at classiccmp.org Mon Oct 8 15:31:41 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 15:31:41 -0500 Subject: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies References: <0JPC00J6UU1Q5RO5@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <653a64ac0710081255wa5c04a1ide5fff3365290778@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <009401c809ea$415054c0$6400a8c0@BILLING> Change the subject line for this thread. The TI-99/4A MICROcomputer is the same topic as discussion about the TI990 MAINFRAME. Second warning... Jay ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Meiss" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 2:55 PM Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture / was Re: TI-99/4A Floppies > On 10/3/07, Allison wrote: >> >> There are really three 99/4 home computers: >> >> original with chiclet keys the 99/4 >> >> the second and most common with a really nice keyboard 99/4a >> >> the white console version that is really the same thing with >> a few board level cost reductions. (still 99/4A on the back) > > > There's a caveat associated with the white/beige console version, > actually: > Most (all?) of them have an additional lockout chip to prevent the use of > third-party cartridges -- in particular, the Atarisoft games that came in > the black wedge-shaped cases. > > More than any of the technical considerations that have been mentioned, > that's probably the biggest reason why TI's home computer division > flopped: > their outright hostility to third-party development. Commodore laid all > the > internals bare, even to the point of including schematics in the > programmer's reference, whereas you STILL can't find a decent technical > reference for TI's GPL interpreter. > > It is a pity that they laid out the memory the way they did, with the > standard 16KB as ported video memory, because the assembly is really fun > to > work with. I've installed a CompactFlash sidecar with 32KB memory > expansion > on my old 99/4A, and that's made it into a fun computer again. From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 8 15:42:10 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:42:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20071008134909.047a5a48@mail> References: <470A77F6.3070600@jetnet.ab.ca> <465179.93254.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <6.2.3.4.2.20071008134909.047a5a48@mail> Message-ID: <20071008133818.O12383@shell.lmi.net> On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, John Foust wrote: > Swapping power supplies to debug a motherboard isn't going to help > if the fault is good at destroying power supplies. Killing a > power supply isn't going to help the next motherboard if the > newly blown power supply destroys that motherboard, too. Swapping > memory chips between motherboards that are destroying memory chips > is a sure route to frustration and wasted chips. With classic > hardware, there may not be an easy source of extra subassemblies. Industry standard floppy drives (TM100, etc.) have a write-protect as part of the drive. The very first time that I dealt with a malfunctioning Apple][, I destroyed three boot disks before I realized that that controller and those drives could wipe out disks even when write-protected. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From blkline at attglobal.net Mon Oct 8 15:40:54 2007 From: blkline at attglobal.net (Barry L. Kline) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:40:54 -0400 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470A95D6.1000601@attglobal.net> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 William Donzelli wrote: > What kind of monster generator did this homeowner have?! The normal > little portables will instantly disconnect (breaker or otherwise) if > you try to connect it to a blacked out grid, with all those people in > dark houses with the lights and fridges still connected. That's one > helluva load. I work for a power cooperative. It's not a generator back-feeding into a blacked out grid that's a problem (you'll stall one trying it, or at least you'll pop the generator's circuit breaker). The problem is when you're having an outage to a home due to snow/ice or fallen trees. In that case the primary line feeding that house could have been sectionalized by an oil circuit recloser or single-shot fuse with the back feed going into virtually no load. The lineman then finds himself working a hot line that shouldn't be hot. Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFHCpXVCFu3bIiwtTARAuYCAJ9o9806YTl1KqJ4hk03ol9zPPfGygCeJ9K2 CHPoI/1sDDAXopRuegbZFro= =Fj08 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Mon Oct 8 15:46:19 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:46:19 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <20071008204619.B3D1FBA45BE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Al Kossow wrote: > "William Donzelli" wrote: > > The caps from 1960s seem to be of little concern, and those from past > > 1970 are of no concern. If the cap decides to die, its going to die. > > This was not the experience of the PDP-1 team during the restoration of > that machine. Detailed records were kept of every cap that was reformed. > This process took several months to perform. > > Blowing up a cap in the machine during restoration was not an option. > > Lyle, or one of the other hardware folks would know the details. > > I am disappointed at the 'let it just blow up' attitude that has been > expressed on this list so far in the discussion. Was that the PDP-1 at the Capacitor History Museum, Al? :-) I am certainly the guilty party in advocating the position that equipment expected to operate under adverse condition should be margined to available extremes during the PM cycle. At my day job margining the logic (be it relay, solid-state, SSI, or microprocessor) up and down also happens to take care of margining the capacitors up and down too. Margining isn't a procedure to preserve components, it's a procedure to make sure that equipment will work to specification. That's not to say that margining has a goal of blowing bad parts up, either. After 30 years we rewrote one margining procedure for track circuits after we had a loss-of-shunt and two trains nearly collided at rush hour in a tunnel under the Potomac. We found out that the procedure could result in adjustment to pass the margining but not be safe. So margining is to be done with thought and care towards important function, not just to blow the bad parts up! I don't say that babying the tenderest components cannot yield a working result, just that it's not my personal style nor the standards of the industries I've worked in, and being responsible for the logic that runs a railroad 24x7 and has to run even when it's -20F or 110F, it's more likely than possible that my experience doesn't apply to something in a museum environment. Tim. From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 8 15:53:17 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:53:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: <470A77F6.3070600@jetnet.ab.ca> <465179.93254.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <6.2.3.4.2.20071008134909.047a5a48@mail> Message-ID: <20071008135103.J12383@shell.lmi.net> On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, William Donzelli wrote: > It should be noted that real computers, both old and new, have enough > protection between the power supplies and circuitry that this almost > never happens. I had one of those "almost never happens". That is when I learned that when you replace a multi-filament automobile headlight because one of the filaments went, save the rest for loading suspect power supplies. It's a quite adequate load, and it gives you a lot of extra light to work by. From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 8 15:54:16 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:54:16 -0700 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: , <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com>, Message-ID: <470A3688.23903.64ACC14@cclist.sydex.com> On 8 Oct 2007 at 16:16, William Donzelli wrote: > What kind of monster generator did this homeowner have?! The normal > little portables will instantly disconnect (breaker or otherwise) if > you try to connect it to a blacked out grid, with all those people in > dark houses with the lights and fridges still connected. That's one > helluva load. Probably no more than a 10KVA unit, although one of my neighbors has a trailer-mounted 250KVA unit (has a 6-cylinder Detroit Diesel on it) that he picked up cheap at a logging equipment auction. But he's not stupid, either. Out here in REA-land, homes are far apart and each home is serviced by a 6600V drop connected to one or more pad-mounted transformers (usually in the front yard). (I've got 6600V direct-bury cable running parallel to my driveway, about 4 ft. down). Each drop from the buried main distribution line to the transformer has its own disconnect, in addition to a master disconnect for each branch distrubution line. It's not unusual after a winter storm to see that you and two neighbors are dark, while everyone else has power. I could see a situation where a rogue generator would produce a pretty good "tickle" on the other side of the distribution transformer. Cheers, Chuck From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 16:03:49 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 17:03:49 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitors, worth it? Message-ID: > I think > Will's implying that the need to reform caps that new is not necessary, > because there's no data available to say that it actually does any good... One though occurred to me just a few minutes ago. Most failures in capacitors - actually almost all pre-IC components - can be boiled down to impurities getting into the innards of the part thru failing seals. This is documented in military and trade rags, as they found out in the jungles of the Pacific during World War 2. With capacitors, the problems seem to be the dielectric (oil) getting out (see my previous post concerning Vitamin Qs), or moisture getting in. Either way, the dielectric is poisoned near the weakest part of the cap's structure - the edge of the foil, specifically where the leads connect to the foil. I can not see where reforming an electrolytic capacitor will do any good for the seals. If the seals are drying up, cracking, shrinking, expanding, or in some way not meeting spec, the crap is going to get into the innards of the capacitor and lead to a failure. Other than a complete rebuild, I doubt any seals can be repaired. And if you are going to do a complete rebuild, you might as well run the cap until it fails. And unlike an inductors that can be baked to drive off moisture, capacitors do not do well in the oven. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 16:07:29 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 17:07:29 -0400 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470A3688.23903.64ACC14@cclist.sydex.com> References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> <470A3688.23903.64ACC14@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > Probably no more than a 10KVA unit, although one of my neighbors has > a trailer-mounted 250KVA unit (has a 6-cylinder Detroit Diesel on it) > that he picked up cheap at a logging equipment auction. Anyone want to know how to run a mainframe out of your house? This is the answer. -- Will From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 8 16:07:03 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:07:03 -0700 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <20071008204619.B3D1FBA45BE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org>, <20071008204619.B3D1FBA45BE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <470A3987.2988.6568256@cclist.sydex.com> I recall reading the following 3741 restoration report and wondering how much damage was done by bad caps: http://www.retrocomputing.net/parts/ibm/S32/docs/3741piva.htm Cheers, Chuck From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 16:11:22 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:11:22 -0400 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> <470A3688.23903.64ACC14@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470A9CFA.7020902@gmail.com> William Donzelli wrote: >> Probably no more than a 10KVA unit, although one of my neighbors has >> a trailer-mounted 250KVA unit (has a 6-cylinder Detroit Diesel on it) >> that he picked up cheap at a logging equipment auction. > > Anyone want to know how to run a mainframe out of your house? This is > the answer. I've used a motor-generator set in the past. 8-) Peace... Sridhar From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Oct 8 16:58:28 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:58:28 +0100 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <20071008204619.B3D1FBA45BE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> <20071008204619.B3D1FBA45BE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <470AA804.2070703@yahoo.co.uk> Tim Shoppa wrote: > I am certainly the guilty party in advocating the position that > equipment expected to operate under adverse condition should be > margined to available extremes during the PM cycle. Trouble is, if you run things outside of spec to see what goes bang, surely there's a danger that some of the equipment which survives has had component life shortened due to the very fact that it's been run out of spec? Or do you only run things to the limit of the spec, but absolutely no higher? When it comes to vintage stuff, I'd rather treat it lightly I think, in the hope of getting maximum lifetime from components which may well fail if put under serious load. Seems reasonable that things might be rather different in a production environment, though. From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Mon Oct 8 17:40:48 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:40:48 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <470AB1F0.1010109@rogerwilco.org> Ethan Dicks wrote: > >> trying to use them in the VAX (eventually)? Is it just a standard >> serial connection coming off of the drive, like the desktop TU58 >> subsystems, or is it something lower level? >> > > Electrically, it's a standard serial interface, but I think there > might be an odd cable because it's an 11/750-internal cable. Nothing > insurmountable with a willingness to make a cable adapater. > > Yes, you could use an 11/23+, or even a modern machine running DOS or > UNIX and one of the several TU-58-slurping programs out there. > This is useful to know. I've only had experience using Will Kranz' TU58 emulator on a PC running against my PDP-11/23+, but if it's just a cable then it'll be pretty easy to get it connected to the RT-11 environment and capture the images. A simple serial cable is no sweat. In the last couple of days I've had a chance to poke around inside and extract the carts. Looks like there are four altogether (I thought there were six), three of which look to be DEC original carts for bits of FORTRAN 4.4, and the fourth is some kind of driver/diagnostic tape for the Systems Industries 9700 board, looks like. > I personally use a dual TU58 from an 11/725 and a PC to read my carts. > I forget, at the moment, which program I'm using, but it's one of the > old, standard ones that's been kicking around for years. I have about > an 80% success rate with the tapes I've read so far. > Mmmm... I doubt the four carts that I have are particularly rare, someone probably has an image of these already, but I just like to copy everything that comes my way. Who knows? And based on your success rate, if I see similar results, I might get lucky and be able to copy the four carts I have, with an imaginary fifth cart making up the 20% that are unreadable. ;-) > Oh... you could eventually substitute a PC or FLASH-based TU58 > emulator in place of the drive, but in practice, we only ever used our > TU58 for booting diagnostics or Standalone Backup for OS installs, or > loading the DEC Microcode patch... come to think of it... the > Microcode patch (which we started using around VMS 4.6 or 4.7) would > be an excellent use for a TU58 emulator. I'm not too worried about this at the moment, at worst I can use a PC running some type of TU58 emulation, but a simple dedicated device might come in handy when all of these TU58s start dying off for good, replaced roller or not. > P.S. - as for adding wires to the backplane, any wire-wrap tool should > suffice, including the manual tool that Radio Shack used to sell > (looks like a Jeweler's Screwdriver, with a wire-stripper stored in > the handle). No unusual tools (beyond ordinary WW tools) are > required. > Okay, I can probably handle that. I have a simple WW tool exactly as you describe that I occasionally use on DLV11-Js and whatnot, so as long as I know what pins to connect, should be doable. ;-) > P.P.S - if you are *lucky*, there are plastic alignment blocks on the > backplane where the cables tap into the off-board I/O area. If not, > Haven't examined that side of the backplane yet... > you might want to track down the installation manual for the SI > 9700/9900. So far no luck on bitsaves or manx. I'm still on the hunt, though... - Jared From trixter at oldskool.org Mon Oct 8 17:43:06 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:43:06 -0500 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <470A7D25.1000309@compsys.to> References: <001a01c809d3$380c0380$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <470A7D25.1000309@compsys.to> Message-ID: <470AB27A.4010109@oldskool.org> Jerome H. Fine wrote: > But I have found > that with a 1 GB file, it takes less overall time to copy the file to a > hard drive > first. This is a buffering issue with your md5 binary, not DVD_R technology itself. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Mon Oct 8 17:46:20 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:46:20 -0500 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <470A0805.25490.5951D55@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710080702.l9871rNw017999@dewey.classiccmp.org>, <002701c809bd$6f63cea0$6500a8c0@barry> <470A0805.25490.5951D55@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470AB33C.1010202@oldskool.org> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've got a couple of Lightscribe drives here but have discovered that > the LS process isn't all that permanent. There are newer media surfaces and drives (so-called LightScribe v1.2) that burn it in a bit more permanently. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Mon Oct 8 17:40:37 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:40:37 -0500 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <002701c809bd$6f63cea0$6500a8c0@barry> References: <002701c809bd$6f63cea0$6500a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <470AB1E5.9050306@oldskool.org> Barry Watzman wrote: > On the other hand, I doubt that dual layer DVD will ever outsell single > layer DVD. It is FAR more expensive (almost 10x), it offers LESS THAN twice > the capacity (8GB vs. 4.7GB) and it is very likely to be FAR less reliable. In two years it will be 2x the price of single layer, or less. Then you will see it outsell single. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Mon Oct 8 17:59:13 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:59:13 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> Rod Smallwood wrote: > Hi > Fear not all is not lost. There's tons of modules around but not that > many cabs. > Yes, you are absolutely correct! The more I think about it, the more glad I am to have even this empty chassis. Definitely harder to come by than the modules that are missing. A few good souls have already stepped forward offering some help with the boards, so this revival might be less difficult than I anticipated at first. > In the picture of the Qbus board it appears to be sitting on the module > config diagram. > As it is pre printed and not filled in by hand its probably a standard > system. > That will give you a list of the boards. > Yup, I went through that last night. There is another label that was inside one of the front cover plates that does show a list of modules penciled in. So I believe I now know what the original configuration of this system was. I've come up with a minimum list of boards, and a wish-list of the boards that were originally included. Looks like the the mass storage was hung off of a UDA50, and some tape devices on the SI 9700 board (which I still am completely ignorant of). I have a couple of Fuji SuperEagles and an RA81, so I'll be on the lookout for SDI and SMD interfaces for the rebuild. I just hope the Fujis and RA81 are functional when the time comes! > Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power supplies will need > some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics. > > Roger that! I'm a firm believer in a full chassis cleanup, capacitor reform, and separate PS checkout before every hitting the big switch on the front! ;-) Oh, yeah, that reminds me...I've got to locate the 'vending machine' power-switch key for this thing. Anyone know if it is a fairly standard key? > The case will clean up well and you can start off by getting the PSU's > working and getting the list of modules together. Disk drives would have > been in another rack I think. > This looks like it'll be a more lengthy revival than any that I've done up until now, which have been mostly qbus PDPs and uVAXen. A great winter project! - Jared From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Mon Oct 8 18:07:10 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:07:10 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <200710081428.46469.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <200710081428.46469.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <470AB81E.2020803@rogerwilco.org> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Sunday 07 October 2007, Rod Smallwood wrote: > >> That will give you a list of the boards. >> Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power supplies will >> need some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics. >> > > 11/750s aren't that old (early 80s), and shouldn't need reforming. It > appears that William Donzelli agrees with me, and I'm sure he has more > experience with this than I do. > > You guys may very well be right on that, but still, I'll probably go through the motions anyway. It's just what I normally do. From what I can tell, looking at various stickers on and inside the unit, and comments from the donor, this system probably has not seen electricity in its veins for about 13 years. The last markings I see indicate 1994 as the last time it saw any recorded service. I don't know if that's long enough or not for these more 'modern' '80-ish caps to 'go bad' (what's the proper word for that exactly?) to the point of needing to be reformed. Anyway, I'll probably do it anyway, if for no other reason than to get a better understanding of how all the components in the chassis tie together. - Jared From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:02:23 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:02:23 +0100 (BST) Subject: Apple ii disk controller again... In-Reply-To: <4709F708.2060009@bluewin.ch> from "Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel" at Oct 8, 7 11:23:20 am Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > > >> When backengineering it I found that both Proms and the 74174 have their > >> power switched. Why would that be ? seems very hairy to me. > > > > Yes. This was a typicval Apple method of saving power. No matter that > > it's a made idea to paply logic signals to an unpowered chip. And people > > wonder why I dislike Apple hardware designs... > > > > Looked some more and it seems that power switching is done to stop a > PROM output being shorted by a 74ls05 output ! > i.e. An input ot the 74ls323 is either driven by the Stateprom, or > pulled low by the ls05 . That is indeed two outputs being shorted. FOrutnaely it's not quite as bad as that. That '05 (section d if my schematic is right) holds the S0 input of that '323 in a defined state when the state machine isn't powered. Why, I am not sure :-). But that '05 is driven by the power switching signal, there's no possility of a contention. It's pulling low an output pin on an IC that's grounded but not powered. > And this is supposed to be a clever design.... Many times I'ev crtiicised the Apple ][ design and been flamed for it. At least you realise why I think it's a right kludge from start to finish!. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 16:58:29 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 22:58:29 +0100 (BST) Subject: VT100 flyback / geometry In-Reply-To: from "Christian Corti" at Oct 8, 7 11:21:29 am Message-ID: > > Every VT100 I've worked on -- in fact every monitor of any type that I've > > worked on, has been electrostatically-focused. There's a preset on the > > video board that adjusts the votlage on one of the CRT pins (I forget if > > it's pin 6 or pin 7). The 2 rings on the back of the yoke are both for > > picture positioning. > > Yes and no. They are magnetically focused CRTs as the model number > implies; it's an MW type (Mxx-yyW) made by Philips, an > electrostatically focused CRT would be an AW-type. And there are four Not according to my 1988 Philips CRT Databooks! The coding is explained as follows : - First letter D : Oscilloscope tube, single trace E : Oscilloscopt tube, mulitple trace F : Radar display tube, direct view L : Storage display tube M : TV Display tube for professional application, direct view P : DIsplay tube for professional applicaiton, projection Q : Flying spot scanner tube First number : Face diagonal (cm) Second number : Design number Letters : Screen Phosphor (W = White, P4) There are many Mxxxxxx CRTsa in the books, _all_ of them are electorstatically focussed (one of the electron gun electrodes is described as the focus electrode). I've not seen a mgnetically-focuessed CRT since I repaired an _old_ Bush TV. Old meaning System A, 405 lines. The focussing in that was controlled by a pair of ring magnets positioned arround the CRT neck, there was a mechanial arrangemetn to move them closer or further apart, thus varying the strngth of the magnetic field. > rings on the neck arranged in two pairs. One pair (the one near the > deflection coils) controls the centering, and the other pair (towards the > beam system near the socket) controls the focus. But additionally the To do magneitc focussing, you meed a pretty strong magnetic field running along the axis of the CRT. I doubt you'd get that from a couple of magnetic rings. > focus is fine tuned with a potentiometer on the video board. BWT the focus > and centering rings are described in the VT100 technical manual. > I think that most high quality CRT systems like monitors are magnetically > focused; I've seen such CRTs several times in video monitors and > terminals. I;ve never seen one. OK, most of my high-end monitors are colour, and you don't try magnetic focussing on a colour CRT (there's enough prolems getting the convergence and purity right!), but nonoe of the monochrome monitor service manuals I've read mention magnetic focussing. I've never seen a yoke with anything other than centering rings on it. other than the VT100, can you give me a definite pointer to a terminal/monitor service manual that uses magneitc focussing? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 16:36:12 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 22:36:12 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: from "Tothwolf" at Oct 8, 7 02:14:48 am Message-ID: [Lead-free parts, RoHS Directive, etc] > > I'm wondering, does any of that also apply to cables imported into the UK > from the US? 99% of the cables I make and ship to the UK are made with I beleive it does. I think it applies to anything sold within the EU, which would conver cables made in the States and sold in the UK, even as 1-offs. I can't rememebr all the exemptions to the directive, though. There is certainly one for repair (you can repair equipment originally made with leaded solder/parts using leaded solder/parts). There _may_ be one about accessories that can only be used with machines made with leaded solder/parts. > crimped connections (done with the correct OEM tooling and given a good > pull test too). Because a lot of the connectors I use are NOS/vintage, I > really have no idea if they have lead in them though. I suspect most don't It's not just lead. I think cadmium platings is a big no-no now. > as the D-sub pins I tend to use are the gold plated AMP brand pins, but You;d be suprised. As I said it's not just lead. I seem to rememebr a Molex plug housing (plasic moulding, no metal parts at all) has bad to be made in a different plastic, the originals didn't meet te RoHS directive (!). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:04:18 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:04:18 +0100 (BST) Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: from "Richard A. Cini" at Oct 8, 7 08:34:42 am Message-ID: > > You know, on the jumpers, I buy SIP and DIP headers in strips of 72 from > Digi-Key and cut them off as needed. > Doesn't everyody? I've also been know to use those as pin headers for the IDC sockets (like you find on, say, IDE cales). Not as good as the proper boxed headers, easier to mis-mate, but OK on stiff I uild for myself. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:07:27 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:07:27 +0100 (BST) Subject: RS232 Breakout Boxes In-Reply-To: from "dwight elvey" at Oct 8, 7 08:37:18 am Message-ID: > > > > From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> > On Sun, 7 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote:> > >= > I can rememebr what 4 are :-)> >> > 1) An old RS23 breakout box. Real slid= > e-switches to open all the wires,> > and 2mm sockets for cross-patching. Th= > e main signals are monitored by> > transistor-driven filament lamps, the wh= > ole thing is mains-powered,, said> > PSU also prvides +12V and -=3D12V outp= > uts for forcing handshake signals> > ARRGG!!! You've provoked me into build= > ing a banana-jack breakout box!>=20 > Of course if you make one, put all the connector combinations > on each side. Also put an extra connector on it that can be > used to snoop the data in progress between two machines. I made up a cable for my 2mm-socket breakout box. On one end is a DB25 socket, handshake pins strapped RTS-CTS, DSR-DTR-CD and with a bit of 3-core cable wired to TxD, RxD, Ground. On the other end of that cable are 3 2mm plugs. The DB25 goes into a terminal, the plugs go into sockets on the breakout box. I can monitor data by pluggin the RxD line plug into the appropraite signal on the breakout box, I can open a signal line and inject data from the terminal using the TxD plug. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:09:01 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:09:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: <470A4EDD.4080205@jbrain.com> from "Jim Brain" at Oct 8, 7 10:38:05 am Message-ID: > I do as well. I thought we were talking about the jumpers blocks. I I assuem everyone saves those from dead ISA cards, PC drives, etc. Older drives often had 0.1"-spacing jumpers on them (2mm are, alas, common now I think). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:12:40 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:12:40 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710081007o201d6febr3fc1078ec4ded737@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 8, 7 06:07:17 pm Message-ID: > I did say that cheap commodity hardware is the reason I don't repair > defective components, I just swap them out. However, that's not the > reason why I don't try to repair collectable kit. The thing *is* that > for pretty much my entire working life - i.e., the last 2 decades - > this has been the case, so I never learned electronics or how to do > component-level diagnosis or repair. And what's more, the skill is > more obsolete now than ever. The last is a complete non-sequitur. OK, for most of us classic computing is a hobby, and a hobby is something you do becuase you enjoy it, but that doesn't mean you don't have a learn particular skills for that hobby that are useless elsewhere (for example in your job). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:22:20 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:22:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 8, 7 10:25:10 am Message-ID: > > On 8 Oct 2007 at 2:28, Tothwolf wrote: > > > I usually check for voltage 3-4 different ways before I work on mains > > wiring. My first test is usually with a non-contact voltage tester. Then I > > test with my good old Square D Wiggy tester. If I'm really concerned, then > > I'll check it with my Fluke DMM. Even after all those show something dead, > > I still check it with the back of my hand or finger. > > When I worked in industry, I was informed that the nice Simpson 260 > VOMs were to be used where there was something to measure, not for There is 'something to measure', namely the voltage on the mains wiring :-) More seriously, I see no reason why a voltmeter (analuge, digital, whatever), used correctly -- test a known live point, test the wiring you want to work on, test a known live point again -- is any less safe than any other method of determining that wiring is dead. > safety checks. And always be aware that there are lots of DIY > "fixers" out there. So? Please rememebr that somebody doing something becuase they enjoy doing it doesn't necessarily do a worse job that somebody who's paid to do it. I've seen many dangerous bits of wiring done by so-called 'professionals'... > > For safety checking, one can use a Wiggy (still made), or a neon bulb > probe. Check for voltage before pulling the breaker and afterwards. I don't see why those are better than a voltmeter. An aside : Back in the 1960s there were many live-chassis valve radios over here. Seires stringh heaters (normally 0.1A current) and half-wave rectification to get the HT+ line. WHich meant the chassis of the radio was connected to one side of the mains. Now to repair those yoy were _supposed_ to use an isolating transformer. But most of the time you just made sure the chassis was connected to the neutral side of the mains and carried on. One way to do that was to use a neon-tester screwdriver and to rever the mains plug unti it didn't light up. A not-funny joke to play on he enwie was to convince him that if he took the screewderiver apart and turned the neon round, it would then light up on the _dead_ chassis [Note for anyone not-too-clureful reading this : Whichever way round the neon is, it'll light on the live chassis and be dark o nthe neutral-connected one. The resutl of this 'joke' was that the newbie got thrown across the room -- or worse -- by the full mains voltage when he touched the chassis] > Secure the breaker in the off position, lest someone come by and > think that it's been tripped and decides to do you a favor. In Equally, if you see a breaker/main switch that's off _do not turn it on_ unless you are sure there's noe working on the circuit. But you can't rely on that, so of course you tag/lockout the switch too. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:28:22 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:28:22 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710081030gfcb142k316d6ee3d1c5ff80@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 8, 7 06:30:04 pm Message-ID: > The fact that PC kit is so cheap that it's not worth repairing is not > why I don't repair classic machines. It's the reason I /don't know > how/ to repair classic machines. There's nothing to stop you learning how to do repairs on classics... > > it. You mentioned swapping a DIMM. How can you know if an intermittant > > memory problem is a fault in the DIMM or in the memory controller on th= > e > > motherboard? > > Well, although I realise that's just an example, I can respond using > details of a recent real job. > > An AtlhonXP PC works fine with 2 DIMMs. With all 3 slot filled, it > crashes, freezes or hangs. I suspect, from prior experience, a memory > error. So step #1, I get a Linux boot CD with memtest86 on it, so I > can exercise the RAM. > > With all 3 DIMMs fitted, memtest gives errors. > With 2 fitted, it's OK. > Try the 3rd on its own: fine. > Try the other 2 on their own: fine. > Try all 3 slots individually: fine. > > Summary: any permutation of 2 of the 3 is fine. All the DIMMs > themselves check out fine, including on other machines. But on this > machine, filling all 3 slots makes it unreliable. Given that I don't > have a good motherboard to swap in, the resolution, then, is to > downgrade it to 2 DIMMs & warn the owner not to try 3. > > That seems like a reasonable diagnostic process to me, and apart from > fitting or removing the DIMMs, the only tests were done in software. ARGH!. Oh %deity, where to begin... OK, it works with 2 DIMMs, not 3. My first question is 'should it work with 3 DIMMs of that size'. Or is there a limit on the total memory that's been exceeded. Assuming there isn't, it would _appear_ the problem is with the memory controller on the motherboard. If it's some large ASIC that's failing, my expeirince is that when a chip starts to go bad, it gets worse. So the machine might have more mrmory errors shortly. I'd want to be sure any machine I'd fixed was working, and would carry on working. Not fail on me when I need it most And I said 'appear' above. Maybe the motherboard is fine. Maybe it's a marginal PSU that can't supply enough current for the 3 DIMMs. Did you even chack the PSU votlages under load? Let alone ripple? Now perhaps you know why I do all diagnosis and repairs of _everything_ I own myself... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:36:54 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:36:54 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710081035m48d08449lc0676e70c673ebb0@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 8, 7 06:35:11 pm Message-ID: > I don't know how to change the oil on most of my bikes, let alone I[ve yet to meet an engine where you don't change the oil by removing the drain plug on the bottom of the sump.... > anything more advance, but nonetheless, I'd love the chance to ride a > classic Norton or something. I am no car buff at all - I find them > rather dull, mostly - but I appreciate an E-type Jag as a beautiful Oh, absolutely. And the only way to get the experience of driving an E-type is to actually drive one. Sure. Which is why I _can_ understand people who own and drive classic cars but pay others to maintain them (assuming the latter are actually clueful...) But that's not the same thing. The point is that if you want the expeirence of driving an E-type, you have to do that, in a real E-type. There's no simulator that comes close. You can't make your modern car behave in the same way. But if you want to run, say, RSX-11 or CP/M or an HP9830 program there are simulators that run on modern PCs that let you do jsut that. And the classic software 'looks and feels' just the same. So unless you want to get inside the classic hardware, or unless you have some physical interface board you wish to use, I am still puzzled as to why you run the old hardare. I know why _I_ run it, but then (a) I like diving into the circuitry and (b) I do have strange interfaces for most of my machines. > machine, without any idea of what's under the bonnet or any wish to > know. > > Appreciation is /entirely/ separate from /understanding./ Most people > who admire a fine oil painting couldn't paint it. Most people who True enough. But I find there is certainly beauty in these old computers, and _that_ eauty can only be appreciated if you understand how they work. > > As an aside, the most layers of any PCB I've worked on was 14 (or is it > > 16, I've seen both figures quoted), and that was in a 1968 machine. Th= > e > > good news is that all I had to desolder and replace were transistors. > > Wow! I honestly did not know such tech went back more than 10-15y. Amazin= > g. See what you're missing out on by not looking into the older machines. The machine with that 16-layer board wasn't even described as a computer. It's a calculator. The PSB is actually the main ROM -- the bits are stored by inductive coupling between the PCB tracks inside this multi-layer board. 512 locations of 64 bits IIRC. THis machine, the HP9100B, is probably the most beautiful piece of engineering I've ever worked on. But you only spot that if you understand what's going on inside. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 18:05:59 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 00:05:59 +0100 (BST) Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <20071008133818.O12383@shell.lmi.net> from "Fred Cisin" at Oct 8, 7 01:42:10 pm Message-ID: > Industry standard floppy drives (TM100, etc.) have a write-protect as part > of the drive. Yep. Even modern PC drives have that I think (certianly all the ones I've tested do). FWIW, when I do a drive alighment, I put the drive on the exerciser and try to write a test pattern to a write-protected scratch disk. If the drive writes it, the alignment disk goes nowhere near that drive until I've fixed the problem. > The very first time that I dealt with a malfunctioning Apple][, I > destroyed three boot disks before I realized that that controller and > those drives could wipe out disks even when write-protected. Just looked at the schemaitcs, and it seems the drive _does_ have hardware write protect. The WP switch disables a 3-state buffer in the Wr Req line (everybody else callse it WriteGate) which should stop the drive from writing. Maybe early versions didn't have that circuit. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 18:10:44 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 00:10:44 +0100 (BST) Subject: reforming capacitors, worth it? In-Reply-To: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 8, 7 05:03:49 pm Message-ID: > > > I think > > Will's implying that the need to reform caps that new is not necessary, > > because there's no data available to say that it actually does any good... > > One though occurred to me just a few minutes ago. > > Most failures in capacitors - actually almost all pre-IC components - > can be boiled down to impurities getting into the innards of the part > thru failing seals. This is documented in military and trade rags, as > they found out in the jungles of the Pacific during World War 2. With > capacitors, the problems seem to be the dielectric (oil) getting out > (see my previous post concerning Vitamin Qs), or moisture getting in. > Either way, the dielectric is poisoned near the weakest part of the > cap's structure - the edge of the foil, specifically where the leads > connect to the foil. > > I can not see where reforming an electrolytic capacitor will do any > good for the seals. If the seals are drying up, cracking, shrinking, I an electorlytic capacitor, the liquid is _not_ the dielectric, it's the negaitve electorde. The dielectric is an oxide film on the surface of the +ve elecrtode. I was under the impession that that film was electrolytically deposited when the capacitor was first made (so-called 'forming') and that re-froming re-depositied the film which can disolve back into the electrolyte. Whether it's worth re-formoing capacitors is another matter. I don't feel it is. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:52:09 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:52:09 +0100 (BST) Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 8, 7 03:36:01 pm Message-ID: > > > Swapping power supplies to debug a motherboard isn't going to help > > if the fault is good at destroying power supplies. Killing a > > power supply isn't going to help the next motherboard if the > > newly blown power supply destroys that motherboard, too. > > It should be noted that real computers, both old and new, have enough > protection between the power supplies and circuitry that this almost > never happens. If by 'real' you mean minis and mainframes, I agree with you. If by 'real' you mean 'actual production machines of any size' then I most certianly do not. Take a look at the HP9815 or HP9825 PSU scheamtics sometime. Or any number of home micro schematics. No crowbar at all. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 8 17:55:10 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:55:10 +0100 (BST) Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 8, 7 04:04:32 pm Message-ID: > Basically, unplug the power supply from the circuitry... How many times have I said 'Test the power supply on a dummy load' :-). -tony From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Mon Oct 8 18:24:56 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:24:56 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> <47081517.1090601@rogerwilco.org> <20071007215742.510d5604@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <470ABC48.8030606@rogerwilco.org> Henk Gooijen wrote: > > Just my 2 ct, I have an 11/750, but not yet had a good look at it. > I know it boots VMS from an RA81, but can't remember the version. > This is DEC hardware, so will NEVER run NetBSD or anything non-DEC > on it. If I want to run non-DEC software, I'll grab a stupd PC! > As a curiosity, I might want to try BSD or NetBSD at some point, but I agree with you. I'm hoping to run VMS on this thing as the more or less permanent software environment. Still, it might be fun to explore what the state-of-the-art in BSD was like back then on this equipment. Like I said, as a curiosity. > I found this a good page: http://www.vaxarchive.org/hw/750faq.html > Yes, that has already proven to be useful as I get myself up to speed on this 'big' VAX. > > Somebody (in The Netherlands) promised to send me a CD-ROM with > Ultrix for the 11/750, and I gave him 10 euro to cover expenses. > Alas, after 2 e-mails, I never heard of him ... so I would be very > interested in an Ultrix CD-ROM for the 11/750 too. > Too bad the CD never arrived. It would be interesting to see Ultrix on this beastie. I'm presently running Ultrix 4.5 on a MIPS R3000-based DECsystem 5400, with a fairly complete docset for Ultrix 4.0), and I also have several flavors of Ultrix 4 for VAX that I've played with on a Vs3100, so have some familiarity with these newest versions. Still, there's no telling what BSD4.3 or Ultrix 1.x would be like. Be kinda fun to find out. As Jochen mentioned, some of the ancient BSD stuff is available from TUHS or on the CSRG CDs. I sprang for the CSRG CDs last year, but haven't been smart enough yet to try any of that stuff out. I'm getting there, but maybe this system will give me reason (and a platform) to try that old BSD stuff out. - Jared From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 8 19:17:45 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:17:45 -0700 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 8, 7 10:25:10 am, Message-ID: <470A6639.29611.89B039@cclist.sydex.com> On 8 Oct 2007 at 23:22, Tony Duell wrote: > There is 'something to measure', namely the voltage on the mains wiring :-) > > More seriously, I see no reason why a voltmeter (analuge, digital, > whatever), used correctly -- test a known live point, test the wiring you > want to work on, test a known live point again -- is any less safe than > any other method of determining that wiring is dead. Other than cost and fragility of the old analogue meters, you're probably better off using something with a low number of points of failure (a neon lamp is pretty simple). You're not interested in *measuring* the voltage, just testing for its presence or absence. > > > safety checks. And always be aware that there are lots of DIY > > "fixers" out there. > > So? Please rememebr that somebody doing something becuase they enjoy > doing it doesn't necessarily do a worse job that somebody who's paid to > do it. I've seen many dangerous bits of wiring done by so-called > 'professionals'... That wasn't what I meant. I mean that there are people out there who will sneak around while you're working on a circuit and flip the breaker on without notifying you. It's happened to me. > > For safety checking, one can use a Wiggy (still made), or a neon bulb > > probe. Check for voltage before pulling the breaker and afterwards. > > I don't see why those are better than a voltmeter. Fewer parts to fail and no fuses. A genuine Wiggy not only has a solenoid-type voltage tester; it also has a neon lamp indicator. Two indications of current present. > Back in the 1960s there were many live-chassis valve radios over here. > Seires stringh heaters (normally 0.1A current) and half-wave > rectification to get the HT+ line. WHich meant the chassis of the radio > was connected to one side of the mains. ...as well as hot-chassis television sets. And the US hot-chassis radio goes back to at least the 1940s (12SA7, 12SK7, 12SQ7, 50L6, 35Z5); some of the 50's models used 7xx or 14xx loctal based tubes. Later, the lineup was usually 12BE6, 12BA6, 12AV6, 50C5, 35W4 in miniature envelopes. Hot-chassis phonographs weren't that uncommon either (70L7+12SJ7) or 117L7/M7). But all of the "All American Five" sets here used a 150 ma heater string. Many of the older ones did not have polarized mains plugs, so either side of the line could be connected to the chassis. If there was a lot of AC hum in the audio, you were advised to reverse the mains plug. > Equally, if you see a breaker/main switch that's off _do not turn it on_ > unless you are sure there's noe working on the circuit. But you can't > rely on that, so of course you tag/lockout the switch too. Hence my comment about "DIY fixers". I've always wondered why there's no sure way to secure a residential panel breaker. Panels don't have locks and breakers look like switches with no way to tie them down securely in the "OFF" position. It would seem that a hole through the breaker toggle and an eyelet on the dress panel would allow the use of a cable tie to secure the thing. In that respect, fuses are better--you can simply remove them and take them along with you. Cheers, Chuck From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 19:43:38 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:43:38 -0400 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470A6639.29611.89B039@cclist.sydex.com> References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> <470A6639.29611.89B039@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > Fewer parts to fail and no fuses. A genuine Wiggy not only has a > solenoid-type voltage tester; it also has a neon lamp indicator. Two > indications of current present. The probes also do not disconnect from the meter when you snag them on your belt climbing a ladder or something. -- Will From rollerton at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 20:59:56 2007 From: rollerton at gmail.com (Robert Ollerton) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:59:56 -0500 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> <470A6639.29611.89B039@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <2789adda0710081859n3bed9d6cxd2cebcac5d57f44e@mail.gmail.com> A wiggie vibrates when you have a hot circuit, you dont have to look at it to know its hot i love my wiggie. On 10/8/07, William Donzelli wrote: > > > Fewer parts to fail and no fuses. A genuine Wiggy not only has a > > solenoid-type voltage tester; it also has a neon lamp indicator. Two > > indications of current present. > > The probes also do not disconnect from the meter when you snag them on > your belt climbing a ladder or something. > > -- > Will > From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 21:30:57 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:30:57 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470AE7E1.1030903@gmail.com> Tony Duell wrote: >> I don't know how to change the oil on most of my bikes, let alone > > I[ve yet to meet an engine where you don't change the oil by removing the > drain plug on the bottom of the sump.... A two-stroke? I have a four stroke diesel engine where the engine oil is soaked into a foam pad. You clean the pad, re-oil it and reinstall. Peace... Sridhar From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Mon Oct 8 22:05:29 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:05:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: choosing a 360k FDD Message-ID: So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64, Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something about this? By the way, I have an IBM-branded full-height Tandon that I will trade for the "ideal" half-height. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From rtellason at verizon.net Mon Oct 8 22:31:16 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:31:16 -0400 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <200710081428.46469.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <200710081428.46469.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <200710082331.17800.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 08 October 2007 14:28, Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Sunday 07 October 2007, Rod Smallwood wrote: > > That will give you a list of the boards. > > Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power supplies will > > need some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics. > > 11/750s aren't that old (early 80s), and shouldn't need reforming. It > appears that William Donzelli agrees with me, and I'm sure he has more > experience with this than I do. I've not anywhere near as much experience with earlier computer gear as you guys in here... But! I've been messing around with electronics since I was a kid, been a tech for something over four decades now. I've *never* done this. Never had any caps blow on me, either, excepting two occasions I can think of where they'd been wired in backwards, one of those being a cathode bypass cap in a Leslie amplifier and the other one being a tantalum cap in some gear this other guy was working on. For whatever that's worth. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 8 22:45:37 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:45:37 -0700 Subject: choosing a 360k FDD In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------------------------------------- > Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:05:29 -0700 > From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu > > So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put > in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64, > Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best > specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. > According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something > about this? > > By the way, I have an IBM-branded full-height Tandon that I will trade for > the "ideal" half-height. Hi David The best drives to mount on a PC are those with direct drive and use band drives from the stepper. These are the most stable. Belt drives tend to slip. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 8 22:46:03 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:46:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: choosing a 360k FDD In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20071008204312.J30534@shell.lmi.net> On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, David Griffith wrote: > So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put > in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64, > Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best > specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. > According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something > about this? > By the way, I have an IBM-branded full-height Tandon that I will trade for > the "ideal" half-height. My favorite for "360K" formats is the Tandon Tm100. It tends to work better with flux-transition boards than any of the others. Are you sure that you want to try to do C64 on your PC? TEC is OK, but I prefer the TEAC 55B for 360K, and 55FG for 720k/1.2M. From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Mon Oct 8 22:50:57 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:50:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <200710090351.XAA02856@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Oh, yeah, that reminds me...I've got to locate the 'vending machine' > power-switch key for this thing. Anyone know if it is a fairly > standard key? Don't all 750s use key XX2247? /~\ 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 rtellason at verizon.net Mon Oct 8 22:51:12 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:51:12 -0400 Subject: Jumpers, was: Re: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710082351.12494.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 08 October 2007 18:09, Tony Duell wrote: > > I do as well. I thought we were talking about the jumpers blocks. I > > I assuem everyone saves those from dead ISA cards, PC drives, etc. Older > drives often had 0.1"-spacing jumpers on them (2mm are, alas, common now > I think). The 0.1" stuff is about all I have on hand here, ones that I've collected over the years. A while back I got a hold of a bunch of 2G SCSI-wide drives, which seem to need something a bit smaller -- is that the 2mm size you refer to here? Any idea where I might get a hold of some? Setting device numbers would seem to be indicated if I'm going to use these. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Oct 8 22:51:06 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:51:06 -0400 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <470AB81E.2020803@rogerwilco.org> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <200710081428.46469.pat@computer-refuge.org> <470AB81E.2020803@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <200710082351.06755.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Monday 08 October 2007 19:07, J Blaser wrote: > You guys may very well be right on that, but still, I'll probably go > through the motions anyway. It's just what I normally do. Just keep in mind that (I think) the supplies in the /750 are switching power supplies, so it'd be a BAD idea to try to run the power supply under the rated voltage using a variac. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Mon Oct 8 22:52:01 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:52:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710090355.XAA02880@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > More seriously, I see no reason why a voltmeter (analuge, digital, > whatever), used correctly -- test a known live point, test the wiring > you want to work on, test a known live point again -- is any less > safe than any other method of determining that wiring is dead. A method (eg, neon-bulb indicators) that does not require continuity to the possibly-live circuit is somewhat safer, because it cannot produce a false dead indication due to bad contact between the probe and the conductor, since there is no contact with the conductor. No, this isn't a particularly likely failure mode, but the price of a false dead indication is, potentially, quite high. /~\ 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 rtellason at verizon.net Mon Oct 8 22:54:23 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:54:23 -0400 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710082354.23659.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 08 October 2007 18:22, Tony Duell wrote: > An aside : > > Back in the 1960s there were many live-chassis valve radios over here. > Seires stringh heaters (normally 0.1A current) and half-wave > rectification to get the HT+ line. WHich meant the chassis of the radio > was connected to one side of the mains. > > Now to repair those yoy were _supposed_ to use an isolating transformer. > But most of the time you just made sure the chassis was connected to the > neutral side of the mains and carried on. One way to do that was to use > a neon-tester screwdriver and to rever the mains plug unti it didn't > light up. Worse yet, there were apparently some of those that had the on-off switch interrupting the connection between one side of the line and the chassis ground. So with the switch off, you could do this test, get no indication, and still have hazardous voltages present in the radio... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Oct 8 22:52:57 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:52:57 -0400 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <200710090351.XAA02856@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> <200710090351.XAA02856@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200710082352.57819.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Monday 08 October 2007 23:50, der Mouse wrote: > > Oh, yeah, that reminds me...I've got to locate the 'vending > > machine' power-switch key for this thing. Anyone know if it is a > > fairly standard key? > > Don't all 750s use key XX2247? Unless someone replaced it (unlikely, but it's possible), it does use the DEC-standard XX2247 ACE key. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From rtellason at verizon.net Mon Oct 8 23:00:22 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:00:22 -0400 Subject: choosing a 360k FDD In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710090000.22285.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 08 October 2007 23:05, David Griffith wrote: > So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put > in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64, > Kaypro, etc. I don't know how you're going to do that for c64 disks, since they use a completely different recording method. If there's some way to deal with that oddball format with a standard drive I'd sure like to know about it! > What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best specimen I have > right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. According to the tag, > it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something about this? Not much offhand. TEC apparently stands (stood?) for Tokyo Electric Company last I heard. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 8 23:05:33 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 21:05:33 -0700 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <2789adda0710081859n3bed9d6cxd2cebcac5d57f44e@mail.gmail.com> References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> <470A6639.29611.89B039@cclist.sydex.com> <2789adda0710081859n3bed9d6cxd2cebcac5d57f44e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: > From: rollerton at gmail.com > > A wiggie vibrates when you have a hot circuit, you dont have to look at it > to know its hot > > i love my wiggie. > > Hi I've made a simple probe from a coule resistors and a neon light. I use two 510K's in series then the neon. The other lead of the neon is just a wire wrapped around things. I put it into the plastic part of an old ballpoint pen. I use the point from an old scribe. With this I can even puncture wire insulation easily. The entire thing is sealed with hot glue. The idea is that there isn't enough current to harm one if your connected to ground but enough current if your on insulated shoes to still see the lamp light a little. You don't need to connect two leads. Any hot wire will light the lamp some and that is all one needs. The bad part is that it works poorly in bright light. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Boo!?Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews From sttaylor at charter.net Mon Oct 8 23:06:46 2007 From: sttaylor at charter.net (Steve Taylor) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:06:46 -0700 Subject: VT100 flyback / geometry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470AFE56.7030305@charter.net> Christian Corti wrote: > Does anyone happen to know the exact part number of the flyback > transformer in the DEC VT100 terminal? The VT100 in question has the > 'DEC' type video board, not the 'Ball' type. Is there a matching > HR-Diemen or equivalent part number? > Oh, and questions concerning another VT100: What may cause a bad > geometry of the picture on a VT100 (slight trapezoid and pincushion; > Philips CRT)? The only adjustable magnets are the two sets of rings on > the neck, one for the position and one for the focus (it's a > magnetically focused CRT as most monitors are). > > Christian > > > We used to position magnets along the sides at the front of the tube to correct the trapezoid/pincushion. 1/4" x 1/4" x 1 inch magnets. sometimes had to use several on each side and the top and bottom to square to image. (if we had to we'd break them in half as well) Hope this helps. Steve glue in place with silicone glue. From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 8 23:20:17 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 21:20:17 -0700 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470A6639.29611.89B039@cclist.sydex.com> References: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> from <470A6639.29611.89B039@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > From: cclist at sydex.com ---snip---> > Hence my comment about "DIY fixers". I've always wondered why > there's no sure way to secure a residential panel breaker. Panels > don't have locks and breakers look like switches with no way to tie > them down securely in the "OFF" position. It would seem that a hole > through the breaker toggle and an eyelet on the dress panel would > allow the use of a cable tie to secure the thing.> > In that respect, fuses are better--you can simply remove them and > take them along with you. Hi Chuck This isn't too hard to do with breakers. All one usually needs is a screw driver to release the wire. Just take the breaker with you. I do recommend a little no-ox to put the connector at the back of the breaker. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts!? Play Star Shuffle:? the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 23:29:10 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 05:29:10 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710081030gfcb142k316d6ee3d1c5ff80@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710082129o23a89b6cy62d07b3cb032cc6@mail.gmail.com> On 08/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > > The fact that PC kit is so cheap that it's not worth repairing is not > > why I don't repair classic machines. It's the reason I /don't know > > how/ to repair classic machines. > > There's nothing to stop you learning how to do repairs on classics... I don't want to and I don't need to. Those are 2 pretty damned good reasons. > ARGH!. > > Oh %deity, where to begin... > > OK, it works with 2 DIMMs, not 3. My first question is 'should it work > with 3 DIMMs of that size'. Or is there a limit on the total memory > that's been exceeded. AFAIK, yes, it should, but it doesn't. This sort of thing appears to be a consistent fault with old ~1.5GHz Athlon XP motherboards. > Assuming there isn't, it would _appear_ the problem is with the memory > controller on the motherboard. If it's some large ASIC that's failing, my > expeirince is that when a chip starts to go bad, it gets worse. So the > machine might have more mrmory errors shortly. I'd want to be sure any > machine I'd fixed was working, and would carry on working. Not fail on me > when I need it most It might do, yes, but I don't have any suitable spares and it's for someone who can't afford to replace it. > And I said 'appear' above. Maybe the motherboard is fine. Maybe it's a > marginal PSU that can't supply enough current for the 3 DIMMs. Did you > even chack the PSU votlages under load? Let alone ripple? And again, you're working on the assumption that I am you, or that I work like you, or that everyone should work like you. No, I didn't, and no, I'm not about to, because I don't do hardware repairs and if the hardware is faulty it goes in the bin and gets replaced wherever possible. > Now perhaps you know why I do all diagnosis and repairs of _everything_ I > own myself... No, Tony, I don't. While I have huge respect for your apparent abilities at troubleshooting, diagnosing and fixing classic kit, comments like "I won't run a modern PC because I can't afford the test equipment to analyse it if it goes wrong" say to me that you are so obsessed that you will shoot yourself in the foot and drastically inconvenience yourself rather than change your behaviour. If a PC goes wrong, one does not analyse it, one junks it and replaces it, because PCs are interchangeable commodity kit. To spend thousands on repairing something worth at best hundreds and probably in fact worth perhaps the cost of a pint or a train ticket is not sensible pragmatism, it's not commendable attention to detail, it's bl**dy daft. And to say "I won't run it if I can't repair it" is dafter still! -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Mon Oct 8 23:30:48 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 21:30:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: choosing a 360k FDD In-Reply-To: <200710090000.22285.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710090000.22285.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Monday 08 October 2007 23:05, David Griffith wrote: > > So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put > > in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64, > > Kaypro, etc. > > I don't know how you're going to do that for c64 disks, since they use a > completely different recording method. If there's some way to deal with that > oddball format with a standard drive I'd sure like to know about it! I'll be using a Catweasel for handling C64 disks. (http://amiga.think42.com/news/news99_e.htm and http://www.jschoenfeld.com/indexe.htm) > > What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best specimen I have > > right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. According to the tag, > > it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something about this? > > Not much offhand. TEC apparently stands (stood?) for Tokyo Electric Company > last I heard. After pawing through the list archives, I came to the conclusion that it would be best to leave the TEC drive in the Morrow and sell it as-is even though it has only one drive. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From lproven at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 23:45:35 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 05:45:35 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710081035m48d08449lc0676e70c673ebb0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710082145p4439bd49p93b08d4c18ed40a5@mail.gmail.com> In 08/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > > I don't know how to change the oil on most of my bikes, let alone > > I[ve yet to meet an engine where you don't change the oil by removing the > drain plug on the bottom of the sump.... And if you don't know what a sump plug is, how to find one, how to remove one, how to refit one? If you don't know when to do it or what to replace the oil with? If you don't know what to catch the oil in or how to refill it? As it happens, I do know these. I just *hate* that sort of job and would rather pay someone to do it for me. But I know lots of vehicle owners - the vast majority, indeed, I suspect - who *don't*. > Oh, absolutely. And the only way to get the experience of driving an > E-type is to actually drive one. Sure. Which is why I _can_ understand > people who own and drive classic cars but pay others to maintain them > (assuming the latter are actually clueful...) > > But that's not the same thing. The point is that if you want the > expeirence of driving an E-type, you have to do that, in a real E-type. > There's no simulator that comes close. You can't make your modern car > behave in the same way. But if you want to run, say, RSX-11 or CP/M or an > HP9830 program there are simulators that run on modern PCs that let you > do jsut that. And the classic software 'looks and feels' just the same. Well, no, it doesn't, not really. There is a pleasure to using the real thing which is not recreated at all by using an emulator. If I want to play an old copy of Nemesis, I'll run it on MAME. The game is the thing and I have neither the money nor the space for an arcade cabinet. If I want to play with AmigaOS, I get out the Amiga and boot it. And whereas that might be a new computer to you, it dates back to when I was about 16y old. I'm now 40. To me, an Amiga is a machine from a lost golden age of computer design diversity. I like the Zen minimalism of 8-bit home micros, but I have no *use* for them. I could, I suppose, play some classic games on them. On a 16-bit home micro with a GUI, I can write and perhaps at a push use the Web, and getting it on the web will be instructive and educational. But I personally have no use for a multiuser host machine and never have had. A mini or even an old mainframe might be /interesting/ but I have absolutely no function that it can perform for me, so there's not much point in having one. I didn't aspire to own one when I was a kid and I don't now. For me, computers got interesting when they could display graphics, and they got pleasant and fun to *use* when they got GUIs and could multitask. I'd love to know more about some of the classic minis and their OSs, but I don't have the room or the time or any conceivable use whatsoever, including just play. You really seem to have great difficulty accepting that others do not think as you do! > True enough. But I find there is certainly beauty in these old computers, > and _that_ eauty can only be appreciated if you understand how they work. I find beauty in the ones I'm interested in. I know how the custom chips that make an Amiga into an Amiga work, what they do and why and how. I'm not remotely interesting in knowing how to solder one in place or how to troubleshoot it using a logic analyser, any more than - say, if I wanted my cat spayed, I want a good and reasonably inexpensive local vet, I don't want to know how to do the operation myself! > > Wow! I honestly did not know such tech went back more than 10-15y. Amazin= > > g. > > > See what you're missing out on by not looking into the older machines. *No*. It's an interesting fact. It doesn't make we want to take one apart! > The machine with that 16-layer board wasn't even described as a computer. > It's a calculator. The PSB is actually the main ROM -- the bits are > stored by inductive coupling between the PCB tracks inside this > multi-layer board. 512 locations of 64 bits IIRC. > > THis machine, the HP9100B, is probably the most beautiful piece of > engineering I've ever worked on. But you only spot that if you understand > what's going on inside. When I see /Selaginella/ in a pot at Kew, I can (and have, to the utter mystification of several friends) go into rhapsodies about the evolutionary importance of the Lycopodiae and the remarkable happenstance in the survival of one for 400,000,000 years after most of its kind died out. I think it's an amazing organism. That doesn't mean I expect everyone else to, or feel that any gardener should know what a clubmoss is and how to cultivate one. Let it go. You have your interests, I have mine. I'm not telling you you're wrong; I admire your skills and knowledge. Please stop telling me that I'm wrong for not wanting to know how to disassemble and rebuilt the machines I use! -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From jbdigriz at dragonsweb.org Mon Oct 8 23:53:42 2007 From: jbdigriz at dragonsweb.org (James B. DiGriz) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:53:42 -0400 Subject: TI-990 ...chip sources In-Reply-To: <4706C8DE.23224.461363@cclist.sydex.com> References: <20071006014640.902CB55E39@mail.wordstock.com>, <4707172A.6060007@jetnet.ab.ca> <4706C8DE.23224.461363@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470B0956.4060304@dragonsweb.org> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I've done a little digging and, in addition to the SBP9989 I2L > bipolar CPU, TI evidently produced something called an SMJ68689GBM, a > CMOS version. Supposedly used in defense apps such as TOW missles. > > Anyone ever seen one of these things in the flesh? Supposedly, DOD > bought up all remaining stocks as spares. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > According to Jim Krych, who is currently spearheading a revival of the SAMS mapped memory expansion for the 99/4A over on the swpb list at yahoo, the 68689 is faster than the 9989, but it wasn't enough improvement for military projects being coded in ADA, not when PPCs, Sparcs, et. al. were at hand. There was "lifetime-buy" by the DoD, but most of the weapon systems that used the 9989 or 68689 have been expended or replaced by now anyway, I would think. At any rate, you can find either one, and the SBP9900, as well, through partminers and other brokers. How much faster, though? It's a static design running DC-16Mhz according to the datasheet* I have. Uses a 16-bit data bus and does have the full 9900 instruction set, plus signed multiply, signed divide, load WP, and load ST. No internal scratchpad RAM like the 9995 for use as a register file or stack, though. There is an attached processor interface and locking mechanism as with the 99000, though. On the 8-bit 4A expansion bus, a 9995 (as in the Myarc Geneve) runs up to 5-6 times faster than a 9900, partly due to the 256-byte scratchpad ram, and partly due to instruction pipelining. The Geneve uses a 12Mhz oscillator, but it's still the same 4-phase clock arrangement as the 9900, just generated internally, so it's actually running with the same cycle time as the 9900. It would be more accurate to call it a 3Mhz processor. It just feels like about a 10-12 Mhz '286 AT in actual use. They've been over-clocked too, at 16-18 Mhz, with few problems reported, aside from timing issues in software. Some might consider the 99000 chips, the microprocessor versions of the 990/12 CPU as used in the 990/10A, BS300, and so on, to be more interesting, whether in a mini, a desktop, or a console. Also, for a while there was an open core project called the Freedom CPU which started out at least as a 32-bit derivative of the 9900, with Sparc influences. Need to check back into that. jbdigriz * ftp://popeye.dragonsweb.org/pub/ti/sgus015.pdf, courtesy of Berry Harmsen of the Dutch TI User Group From tothwolf at concentric.net Mon Oct 8 23:55:39 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:55:39 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Jumpers, was: Re: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: <200710082351.12494.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710082351.12494.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Monday 08 October 2007 18:09, Tony Duell wrote: > >>> I do as well. I thought we were talking about the jumpers blocks. I >> >> I assuem everyone saves those from dead ISA cards, PC drives, etc. >> Older drives often had 0.1"-spacing jumpers on them (2mm are, alas, >> common now I think). > > The 0.1" stuff is about all I have on hand here, ones that I've > collected over the years. > > A while back I got a hold of a bunch of 2G SCSI-wide drives, which seem > to need something a bit smaller -- is that the 2mm size you refer to > here? Any idea where I might get a hold of some? Setting device > numbers would seem to be indicated if I'm going to use these. :-) I've used at least 4 different sizes on SCSI drives and I think there are a few other sizes also in common use. $0.25/ea isn't unheard of for the good jumpers from the electronics supply companies. Mouser or Digikey would probably have them for slightly less, but I often buy that sort of thing on the surplus market for pennies or less. From tothwolf at concentric.net Mon Oct 8 23:58:38 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 23:58:38 -0500 (CDT) Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 7 Oct 2007, Richard A. Cini wrote: > Same here. I have a DTV that could use a drive, but the stand-alone is > pretty intriguing as well. > > There's going to be a run on Nokia phones on eBay...get yours now :-) Maybe folks should work together and group buy those as well? The phone dealers are going to be wondering why those phones suddenly become so popular ;) From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Tue Oct 9 01:29:03 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:29:03 -0600 (MDT) Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <200710082351.06755.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <200710081428.46469.pat@computer-refuge.org> <470AB81E.2020803@rogerwilco.org> <200710082351.06755.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <1191911343.470b1faf4b37f@www.jblaser.org> Quoting Patrick Finnegan : > On Monday 08 October 2007 19:07, J Blaser wrote: > > You guys may very well be right on that, but still, I'll probably go > > through the motions anyway. It's just what I normally do. > > Just keep in mind that (I think) the supplies in the /750 are switching > power supplies, so it'd be a BAD idea to try to run the power supply > under the rated voltage using a variac. That's fair, but my method does not include the use of a variac. I pull the caps and slowly (10ma max current) bring them up to their rated DC voltage. I let them 'cook' for a while (overnight usually), until I see the leakage current drop and stabilize. Then I put them back in the PS, and check it out as a sub-system. Only then do I think about powering up the whole system. That's my method, anyway. - Jared From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Tue Oct 9 01:30:58 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:30:58 -0600 (MDT) Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <200710082352.57819.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> <200710090351.XAA02856@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200710082352.57819.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <1191911458.470b2022e8ee9@www.jblaser.org> Quoting Patrick Finnegan : > On Monday 08 October 2007 23:50, der Mouse wrote: > > > Oh, yeah, that reminds me...I've got to locate the 'vending > > > machine' power-switch key for this thing. Anyone know if it is a > > > fairly standard key? > > > > Don't all 750s use key XX2247? > > Unless someone replaced it (unlikely, but it's possible), it does use > the DEC-standard XX2247 ACE key. Good! I'll go to work getting my hands on one of those. Thanks for clearing that little item up for me. - Jared From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 8 06:01:03 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 07:01:03 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPL00BJYAJKDEE8@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: these RTL or what? > From: "William Donzelli" > Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2007 15:55:57 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> Yes, but conductors on substrate are slower depending on substrate used. >> They are dense but TCMs still have to talk to other TCMs. > >So you have never seen the innards of a 3081, then? Not enough of one to appreciate. I do know that IBM did some fairly sophisticated stuff to get around the problem. Allison >-- >Will From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 8 07:42:57 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:42:57 -0400 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation Message-ID: <0JPL004YMF9DTBE4@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Setting up a VAXstation > From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) > Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:14:33 -0400 > To: cctech at classiccmp.org, cctalk at classiccmp.org > >Tony Duell said: >> I cna understnad why people are interested only in old software, not >> hardware, and want to run it under emulation on a modern machine >> >> My puzzlement is with people who want to run the old hardware (not have >> to run the old hardware becuase it is part of some machine tool or >> something) but don't want to understand what's going on inside. What more >> do you get over running the software under emulation? > >In fact, availability of hardware is a huge factor in succesfully >making an emulator for a machine. All but the simplest processors >are complicated enough that there are little corner cases all over >the place where none of the processor/architecture documentation tells >you what is going to happen. > >And outside the central processors, all peripherals but the very simplest >are filled with complicated and undocumented behavior. > >Schematics could answer many of these questions, but in real life >they end up guiding the search for the answer to the question rather >than being the actual defining source for the answer. > >So in general emulator users and especially developers completely >grok the need to have hardware working. Sometimes I believe that >today's emulator developers know much more about the architectures >than the original architects did :-). (In a couple cases, they are >the orignal architect!) > >Availability of software is also important for making a reliable emulator. >You could spend years reading the books to write an emulator, but you >don't trust anything you've read or done until you've booted the simplest >OS. > >Tim. The best example of this that comes to mind is the Apollo Guidence Computer (AGC). There was one hardy and persistant soul that not only researched it, he built a sim and tracked down samples of software to validate the sim and the later hardware. One great issues was lack of documentation, apparently much was lost/destroyed when that chapter of the space program ended around 30 years ago. The few intact copies of the AGC (Apollo command modules) likely haven't seen power in at least that long if even complete. I doubt any of the CM holders could be convinced to power it up assuming they were even preserved sufficiently to safely do so. So for those interested in machines that are obscure, unusual or very rare even generating a sim has to be a huge challenge only equaled by task of gatherering the needed data to base it on. It is reverse engineering on a very deep level for a faithful sim. Allison From gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk Mon Oct 8 11:10:16 2007 From: gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 17:10:16 +0100 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710081710.16380.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> On Monday 08 October 2007 17:02:56 William Donzelli wrote: > > Has anyone got one online? If so, URLs please... > The caps from 1960s seem to be of little concern, and those from past > 1970 are of no concern. If the cap decides to die, its going to die. I've had a beercan-sized cap (a proper UK 500ml beercan, not yer fiddly little USian 300ml ones) in a radio transmitter dating from the 1960s blow in spectacular fashion. To be fair, I suspect that a failing rectifier had already administered the death blow to it. Gordon From spedraja at gmail.com Mon Oct 8 11:56:57 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 18:56:57 +0200 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS Message-ID: Hello. As the subject say, I'm searching for one working MFM (not RQDx, better something like the Andromeda UDC) or ESDI QBUS controller plus cables to use with one PDP-11/23 PLUS. The ESDI would be a better choice because I have one 300 Mb HD and one 700 Mb HD, both of full-height (in the terms used with old PeeCee's). I have too a couple of RX33 floppies but no controller for them. I would appreciate to obtain one. Finally, I am thinking in use one old PC enclosure for disks and floppies. Someone has did it ? Results ? Can contact privately with offers. Thanks and Greetings Sergio From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 8 13:27:13 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:27:13 -0400 Subject: these RTL or what? Message-ID: <0JPL003VUV71HIO0@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: these RTL or what? > From: woodelf > Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:11:23 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: > >> RX02 works with PDP-8, WD1793 works with Cmos6120 (PDP-8), VAXen and >> other long word machines are using floppy and other 8bit interfaces. >> VAX 780 microcode was loaded from floppy. > >I grew up in alas in a PC world.I got to play with a 8 but that >is about all. I'd have guessed that. ;) > >> Most of those systems had already dealt with the 8bit/n-bit issue >> and as devices got larger and space less an issue it became less >> an issue. If it were, then PCs would have 32bit wide HDC rather >> than 16bit. > >I like 16 bits for IDE ... You can cut that down to say 12 bits for >your PDP-8. 9 or 12 bits for the cpu depending on what cpu I build.:) True. But since the 386, PCs are 32bit, for that fact since 1978 VAX was 32bit.. You would have thought a wider IDE or data channels would have happend. But it hasn't. IO devices often lagged the CPUs or were designed for the devices convenience or so it seemed. I feel legacy, (not always PCs) played distinct factor as well. Allison From lynchaj at yahoo.com Mon Oct 8 13:58:40 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 14:58:40 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial-walkthrough.htm Message-ID: <000001c809dd$3e19f4d0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> >Has anyone got one online? If so, URLs please... [snip] Here is a good one: http://www.s100-manuals.com/Repairs.htm I can't say if it is effective or not but I have followed the directions using a variac several times with some success. At least no exploding/leaking electrolytics in any of my restored machines. I have seen some equipment with burst/leaking electrolytic capacitors and they are very messy. Even if the procedure is marginally effective, it is probably worth something. Preventing even one burst capacitor saves you a *LOT* of time cleaning up. Best of luck! Andrew Lynch From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 8 16:28:22 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:28:22 -0400 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS Message-ID: <0JPM0043Q3KXT1O6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS > From: "Sergio Pedraja" > Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:56:57 +0200 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Hello. > >As the subject say, I'm searching for one working MFM (not RQDx, better >something like the Andromeda UDC) or ESDI QBUS controller plus cables to use >with one PDP-11/23 PLUS. The ESDI would be a better choice because I have >one 300 Mb HD and one 700 Mb HD, both of full-height (in the terms used with >old PeeCee's). I'm perplexed. The RQDXn controllers are MFM and Floppy. Best shot is late firmware RQDX3 as it does RX33 and most all MFM drives. Its also easier to find. Allison > >I have too a couple of RX33 floppies but no controller for them. I would >appreciate to obtain one. > >Finally, I am thinking in use one old PC enclosure for disks and floppies. >Someone has did it ? Results ? > >Can contact privately with offers. > >Thanks and Greetings >Sergio From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Mon Oct 8 19:01:24 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 01:01:24 +0100 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB1D@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Its not so much the age of the system more how long it is since it last ran. As minimum isolate the positive terminal and put a meter on ohms range across it. As the capacitor charges the resistance will rise. If it does then good if not or goes up slowly then change the capacitor. I rang our old (now retired) DEC branch field service manager and he said "Turn on a 750 stored for years and with no load on the PSU .. Sure use a pole about twenty feet long!!" Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Patrick Finnegan Sent: 08 October 2007 19:29 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... On Sunday 07 October 2007, Rod Smallwood wrote: > That will give you a list of the boards. > Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power supplies will need > some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics. 11/750s aren't that old (early 80s), and shouldn't need reforming. It appears that William Donzelli agrees with me, and I'm sure he has more experience with this than I do. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Oct 9 02:26:00 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 08:26:00 +0100 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <470A3987.2988.6568256@cclist.sydex.com> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> , <20071008204619.B3D1FBA45BE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <470A3987.2988.6568256@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <1191914760.18189.3.camel@elric> On Mon, 2007-10-08 at 14:07 -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I recall reading the following 3741 restoration report and wondering > how much damage was done by bad caps: > > http://www.retrocomputing.net/parts/ibm/S32/docs/3741piva.htm "Vibrate the machine to cause the failure" ? I can just picture the CE and his able assistant... "Get me the IBM Special Tool FBH-4 from the van, will you?" ... "Right. Here goes, watch that meter now..." BONG BONG BONG BONG CLATTER "Yup, that's the fault showing!" Gordon From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 03:12:37 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:12:37 +0200 Subject: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: <470A4EDD.4080205@jbrain.com> Message-ID: On 10/9/07, Tony Duell wrote: > > I do as well. I thought we were talking about the jumpers blocks. I > > I assuem everyone saves those from dead ISA cards, PC drives, etc. Older > drives often had 0.1"-spacing jumpers on them I certainly do - Over the past couple of years, I've had the opportunity to scrape connectors and components off of several cubic feet of boards before they hit the "electronic scrap" bin... I almost have enough 805 green LEDs from Quantum drives to refurb a US digital clock to support 24-hour mode (one of my peeves - the chip in most clock radios supports 12/24 hour mode via jumper, but the manufacturers for the US market skimp on the LEDs since there will "never" be anything but a "1" in the tens-of-hours column). I haven't had to buy a 2 or 3-pin header or jumper block in many, many years. > (2mm are, alas, common now I think). Hmm... I don't think I have many of those. -ethan From asholz at topinform.de Tue Oct 9 03:12:55 2007 From: asholz at topinform.de (Andreas Holz) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:12:55 +0200 Subject: Olivetti Programma 101 In-Reply-To: <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch> References: <44544D61.1010407@pacbell.net> <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch> Message-ID: <470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> A Programma 101 is on ebay 190161063091. -- Andreas From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 03:19:16 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:19:16 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <200710090351.XAA02856@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> <200710090351.XAA02856@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: On 10/9/07, der Mouse wrote: > > Oh, yeah, that reminds me...I've got to locate the 'vending machine' > > power-switch key for this thing. Anyone know if it is a fairly > > standard key? > > Don't all 750s use key XX2247? Mine do. As I've posted before, in over 25 years of working with DEC equipment, I've seen exactly *one* key that wasn't XX2247 (PDP-8/L-carcass-for-parts I got at Dayton in 1982). Your easiest choices are to either find a DEC enthusiast with a spare key, or to go to a full-service locksmith with that number, XX2247, and tell them you want a "code cut key". The last time I needed a code-cut key (for a video game cabinet), it was about $15. Newer machines that use the plastic key (11/24, 11/730...) can use an uncut tubular key - about $2 the last time I bought one of the _those_. Oh... since it's *much* cheaper to copy than code-cut, if you can borrow a key from someone, you could get it copied then returned. The problem with that, though, is that I've occasionally had problems getting round keys copied successfully. At one place (that I won't return to), I eventually dragged in the lock because three previous trips failed to produce a working key. -ethan From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Oct 9 03:40:36 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 09:40:36 +0100 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <200710090351.XAA02856@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200710090940.36499.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Tuesday 09 October 2007 09:19:16 Ethan Dicks wrote: > problem with that, though, is that I've occasionally had problems > getting round keys copied successfully. At one place (that I won't > return to), I eventually dragged in the lock because three previous > trips failed to produce a working key. I use a shop run by an elderly Indian chap. Got his life story the first time I went in to get a set of keys cut; apparently he feels that because he was a teenager when his parents moved them all to the UK in the late 40s, and older than his next-youngest brother by about 10 years, he just hasn't quite integrated as well as his brothers and sisters. He reckons he just doesn't have the grasp of the language like they do, and as he gets old and forgetful it's getting worse. He told me that when he gets excited, say by the presence of a ?20 note, he starts to forget some English words. Particularly big complicated words, like "duplication" and "prohibited"... Gordon From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 03:57:48 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:57:48 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <200710090940.36499.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <200710090351.XAA02856@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200710090940.36499.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> Message-ID: On 10/9/07, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > On Tuesday 09 October 2007 09:19:16 Ethan Dicks wrote: > > problem with that, though, is that I've occasionally had problems > > getting round keys copied successfully. At one place (that I won't > > return to), I eventually dragged in the lock because three previous > > trips failed to produce a working key. > > I use a shop run by an elderly Indian chap. Got his life story the first time > I went in to get a set of keys cut... > He told me that when he gets excited, say by the > presence of a ?20 note, he starts to forget some English words. Particularly > big complicated words, like "duplication" and "prohibited"... Heh... that's one of the reasons for the intricate multiple-facet and other odd security keys - fewer locksmiths to license and train, and less of of chance of one of them getting "excitable". No... in my case, it wasn't that they *wouldn't* copy it - it was that the copies would barely turn in the lock because the depths weren't cut right and the pins were still binding. I finally came in with the lock so they could see how bad the copies were and so that I could leave with a good key. Fundamentally, I think the problem was that they didn't get lots of practice cutting round keys and so they just weren't good at it. -ethan From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Oct 9 04:10:42 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:10:42 +0100 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <200710090940.36499.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> Message-ID: <200710091010.42819.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Tuesday 09 October 2007 09:57:48 Ethan Dicks wrote: > Heh... that's one of the reasons for the intricate multiple-facet and > other odd security keys - fewer locksmiths to license and train, and > less of of chance of one of them getting "excitable". You'd be amazed what a clever guy with a steady hand and a dremel can do ;-) Gordon From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 04:20:14 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 11:20:14 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: On 10/9/07, J Blaser wrote: > Yes, you are absolutely correct! The more I think about it, the more > glad I am to have even this empty chassis. Definitely harder to come by > than the modules that are missing. Much harder. Boards store flat ;-) > I've come up with a minimum list of boards, and a wish-list of the > boards that were originally included. Very handy, but you should still check the backplane - all the list will show is a snapshot in time - not the final configuration. I've seen few machines where those labels were updated consistently. > Looks like the the mass storage > was hung off of a UDA50, and some tape devices on the SI 9700 board That makes sense. > (which I still am completely ignorant of). I know I went over bits of this before, but perhaps a different approach might be clearer... Systems Industries made a variety of disk/tape systems for various DEC machines. I have personally seen Qbus and 11/750 host cards, and I think there were others (Unibus, at least). To order an SI system, you'd tell the salesman what box you had, and what devices you wanted to attach. They would spec out the right host controller, and the right cards for the SI9900 external box to do what you wanted to do. I think there was also support for multiple hosts to access multiple disks - not like a true cluster, but more like multi-port access between a set of CPUs and a set of disks and/or tape. When I used an SI9900, it was nearly as simple as it could be. We had an SI 9700 board in our 11/750, a pair of 40-pin cables to SI 9900 box in the next rack, one host-side card in the SI 9900, and two SMD disk cards in the other half of the SI 9900 box. We had two SMD disks (60-pin control, 26-pin analog data) in the rack with the SI 9900, emulating a pair of RM03s and a large RM05. We could have chosen to hang more disks off our SI 9900, but the way SDI disks were plunging in price in the late 1980s, we kept the SI 9900 for our boot disk, and added a couple of RA81s for user data, etc. In your case, it sounds like the SI 9900 box you would run across (if it's still on-site to be found), would have one board with a pair of 40-pin connectors that would hang off of your CPU, then one or more tape interfaces, with, presumably, Pertec-style interfaces. One of the benefits of the 11/750 over, say, the 11/730, is that the CMI bus (I think that's what it was called) had really high bandwidth path to memory. You could hang a low-speed tape drive or two off of the Unibus, but for the free-standing 125 ips vacuum-column monsters, I just don't think the Unibus could keep the tape streaming. On our 11/750, we had that SI 9700 for system disk and one data disk, a UDA-50/RA81 for user directories, and an RH750 and TU78 for backups. It was hell to keep working, but when the TU78 was up, it *screamed* through backups. For your system, since it's going to be easier to find Unibus disk than an SI 9900, I'd recommend de-installing the SI 9700 (which involves twiddling the backplane jumpers on that slot to pass grant across the slot), and picking up a UDA-50. > I have a couple of Fuji SuperEagles and an RA81, so I'll be on the > lookout for SDI and SMD interfaces for the rebuild. I just hope the > Fujis and RA81 are functional when the time comes! There were some Emulex Unibus SMD interfaces, but ISTR those were more common on PDP-11s and VAXen running UNIX, not VMS. Once the RA-81 fell below $20,000, SDI disks became really popular for sites without VAXclusters. > > Disk drives would have been in another rack I think. That's one of the things _I_ would like to do with my 11/750 - mount an RA70 in the space to the left of the Unibus - where the battery-backup normally goes... stick a VT102 on top and have a single-cabinet 11/750 "workstation". :-) I do already have an 3-bay 8300 set up, so I'd also probably run a cable over to my RA81 port B, and my MDA 2.3GB ESDI-SDI box, but I'd like to be able to boot the 11/750 in-cabinet, without spinning up several amps of external disk. -ethan From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 9 04:21:38 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:21:38 -0700 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <1191914760.18189.3.camel@elric> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org>, <470A3987.2988.6568256@cclist.sydex.com>, <1191914760.18189.3.camel@elric> Message-ID: <470AE5B2.12658.27B9B2E@cclist.sydex.com> On 9 Oct 2007 at 8:26, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > "Vibrate the machine to cause the failure" ? > > I can just picture the CE and his able assistant... > "Get me the IBM Special Tool FBH-4 from the van, will you?" Hmmm. I remember that Viking Labs had a pretty big shaker table. Bolt that 3741 to one of those and crank it up to, oh, about 11G's sinusoidal. I guarantee you'll find a fault. Destructive testing can be lots of fun. :) If I read the article correctly, the result of the effort described was that a bunch of caps were bad; there were some PC trace-protected fuses; and the whole mess went back into mothballs not working. Sigh. Cheers, Chuck From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Tue Oct 9 04:59:52 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:59:52 -0400 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <20071009095952.97E12BA45D6@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "Ethan Dicks" wrote: > I know I went over bits of this before, but perhaps a different > approach might be clearer... Systems Industries made a variety of > disk/tape systems for various DEC machines. I have personally seen > Qbus and 11/750 host cards, and I think there were others (Unibus, at > least). To order an SI system, you'd tell the salesman what box you > had, and what devices you wanted to attach. They would spec out the > right host controller, and the right cards for the SI9900 external box > to do what you wanted to do. I think there was also support for > multiple hosts to access multiple disks - not like a true cluster, but > more like multi-port access between a set of CPUs and a set of disks > and/or tape. The SI9900's supported (with the right options) multi-port access over the SI-proprietary interface, and could also be used with two SI9900's (one for each CPU) and dual-ported SMD drives. The latter is what I more commonly saw. And it caused no end of heartache! A firmware variation between the two SI9900's would render a disk written by one of them, impossible to read on the other. Almost as bad as firmware variations in modern RAID controllers, in that it inspires you to keep so many identical ones around "just in case" because you know that field service will not be able to find the right firmware when you need it. > When I used an SI9900, it was nearly as simple as it could be. We had > an SI 9700 board in our 11/750, a pair of 40-pin cables to SI 9900 box > in the next rack, one host-side card in the SI 9900, and two SMD disk > cards in the other half of the SI 9900 box. We had two SMD disks > (60-pin control, 26-pin analog data) in the rack with the SI 9900, > emulating a pair of RM03s and a large RM05. We could have chosen to > hang more disks off our SI 9900, but the way SDI disks were plunging > in price in the late 1980s, we kept the SI 9900 for our boot disk, and > added a couple of RA81s for user data, etc. The Fuji SMD drives plunged in price in the mid 80's, and I don't think SDI ever got that inexpensive :-). > There were some Emulex Unibus SMD interfaces, but ISTR those were more > common on PDP-11s and VAXen running UNIX, not VMS. Under VMS the Massbus-emulating interfaces were a pain in the butt if you used a non-standard geometry, because you had to patch all the drivers in all the right places. Still lots of sites had them with VMS. After MSCP emulation came in it became so much easier! Tim. From spedraja at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 01:57:56 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 08:57:56 +0200 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS In-Reply-To: <0JPM0043Q3KXT1O6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPM0043Q3KXT1O6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: Hi, Allison. I'm perplexed. The RQDXn controllers are MFM and Floppy. Best shot > is late firmware RQDX3 as it does RX33 and most all MFM drives. Its > also easier to find. > > At least as I can remember, the RQDx3 needs an internal distribution panel. I'm searching for ONE single board. Thanks and Greetings Sergio From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Tue Oct 9 04:20:19 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:20:19 +0100 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB20@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> The system key can be found on the key rings of many PDP11 enthusiasts. -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of J Blaser Sent: 08 October 2007 23:59 To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... Rod Smallwood wrote: > Hi > Fear not all is not lost. There's tons of modules around but not > that many cabs. > Yes, you are absolutely correct! The more I think about it, the more glad I am to have even this empty chassis. Definitely harder to come by than the modules that are missing. A few good souls have already stepped forward offering some help with the boards, so this revival might be less difficult than I anticipated at first. > In the picture of the Qbus board it appears to be sitting on the > module config diagram. > As it is pre printed and not filled in by hand its probably a standard > system. > That will give you a list of the boards. > Yup, I went through that last night. There is another label that was inside one of the front cover plates that does show a list of modules penciled in. So I believe I now know what the original configuration of this system was. I've come up with a minimum list of boards, and a wish-list of the boards that were originally included. Looks like the the mass storage was hung off of a UDA50, and some tape devices on the SI 9700 board (which I still am completely ignorant of). I have a couple of Fuji SuperEagles and an RA81, so I'll be on the lookout for SDI and SMD interfaces for the rebuild. I just hope the Fujis and RA81 are functional when the time comes! > Note of caution do not try to turn it on. The power supplies will need > some work. You need to reform/replace any electrolytics. > > Roger that! I'm a firm believer in a full chassis cleanup, capacitor reform, and separate PS checkout before every hitting the big switch on the front! ;-) Oh, yeah, that reminds me...I've got to locate the 'vending machine' power-switch key for this thing. Anyone know if it is a fairly standard key? > The case will clean up well and you can start off by getting the PSU's > working and getting the list of modules together. Disk drives would > have been in another rack I think. > This looks like it'll be a more lengthy revival than any that I've done up until now, which have been mostly qbus PDPs and uVAXen. A great winter project! - Jared From cc at corti-net.de Tue Oct 9 05:28:00 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 12:28:00 +0200 (CEST) Subject: VT100 flyback / geometry In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: First, the CRT in the VT100 is a M31-340W. On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: > Not according to my 1988 Philips CRT Databooks! > The coding is explained as follows : [...] 1988 is pretty new... Did they really change the nomenclature of the tubes? I thought that First letter A: Electrostatic focusing D: Oscilloscope tube M: Magnetic focusing Second letter (and later last letter) B: blue/blueish G: green/greenish W: white X: colour First number: diameter in centimeters Second number: "random" model number > There are many Mxxxxxx CRTsa in the books, _all_ of them are > electorstatically focussed (one of the electron gun electrodes is > described as the focus electrode). I hate Philips and everyone who thinks he needs to change a good and established system... > I've not seen a mgnetically-focuessed CRT since I repaired an _old_ Bush > TV. Old meaning System A, 405 lines. The focussing in that was controlled Well, System A was broadcast until the 80s ;-)) According to my tube books one of the newest magnetic focus CRTs for television sets should be the MW53-80 and MW61-80 (around 1958/1959). But they don't use fixed magnets, instead a focusing coil is used. > getting the convergence and purity right!), but nonoe of the monochrome > monitor service manuals I've read mention magnetic focussing. I've never > seen a yoke with anything other than centering rings on it. VT100 Series Pocket Service Guide, page 59/60. > other than the VT100, can you give me a definite pointer to a > terminal/monitor service manual that uses magneitc focussing? Other than for the VT100 I don't have such detailed service manuals for monochrome terminals and monitors, at least they don't tell you much about the CRT. But I know that the tube in the SIG100 terminal (attached to the Telefunken TR86-S and TR440, around 1972) was a M-type, too. But apparently that doesn't mean anything now... Christian From dave06a at dunfield.com Tue Oct 9 06:41:53 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 06:41:53 -0500 Subject: choosing a 360k FDD In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200710091046.l99AkdD7010733@hosting.monisys.ca> > > So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put > in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64, > Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best > specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. > According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something > about this? I've had "not the greatest" luck with TEC drives. Out of the 4-5 I've come across in recent years, I've had two failures. In both cases the drive simply can no longer read - schematics and technical info. have been non-existant. (btw, one was from a Micro-Decision, the other was a single-sided variant of the same drive from a Nabu cable computer). [Really annoying thing about the TEC/Nabu - the TEC drives have the data connector on the opposite side from "most everyone else", and the Nabu drive enclosure uses a circuit board behind the drive with really short (ie: 2 inches) data cables - impossible to use another drive without modification] I've had excellent results with TEAC FD-55B for 360k drives. The Panasonic drives have worked well for me also. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 06:43:11 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 07:43:11 -0400 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough In-Reply-To: <1191914760.18189.3.camel@elric> References: <470A8083.3010807@bitsavers.org> <20071008204619.B3D1FBA45BE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <470A3987.2988.6568256@cclist.sydex.com> <1191914760.18189.3.camel@elric> Message-ID: > "Vibrate the machine to cause the failure" ? > > I can just picture the CE and his able assistant... > "Get me the IBM Special Tool FBH-4 from the van, will you?" > ... > "Right. Here goes, watch that meter now..." > BONG BONG BONG BONG CLATTER > "Yup, that's the fault showing!" Related, maybe... With the big machines of the 1970s, like the 3033 (and perhaps earlier), a little calibrated hammer was supplied so the CE could whack each card to make sure the things were seated properly. -- Will From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Tue Oct 9 07:51:06 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 08:51:06 -0400 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS In-Reply-To: References: <0JPM0043Q3KXT1O6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <470B793A.4070203@compsys.to> >Sergio Pedraja wrote: >Hi, Allison. > >I'm perplexed. The RQDXn controllers are MFM and Floppy. Best shot > > >>is late firmware RQDX3 as it does RX33 and most all MFM drives. Its >>also easier to find. >> >At least as I can remember, the RQDx3 needs an internal distribution panel. >I'm searching for ONE single board. > Jerome Fine replies: Then perhaps you can describe your other hardware - backplane with power supply. Do you have a BA23 or a BA11 box? Or something else? What about the serial ports, etc.? I agree that the RQDX1, RQDX2 and RQDX3 require a distribution panel of some sort to change from the 50 pin cable to the 34 pin / 20 pin cable required by MFM hard drives and floppy drives. That panel is usually part of a BA23 box. A BA123 box uses a distribution board which can handle 4 drives, but the hard drives also require an additional READY / WRITE PROTECT (very small) panel. As far as I can remember, the only controller that I have ever used with an RX33 was a DEC "late firmware RQDX3" as Allison has noted. Probably a 3rd party controller like the Dilog DM01 is what you are looking for. But I suspect that these days, an RQDX3 is probably more easily found - except for that internal distribution panel which is also required if you are using a BA11 box. Let us know about your other hardware so that we can help a bit more. 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 dkelvey at hotmail.com Tue Oct 9 09:40:36 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 07:40:36 -0700 Subject: Olivetti Programma 101 In-Reply-To: <470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> References: <44544D61.1010407@pacbell.net> <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch> <470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> Message-ID: > From: asholz at topinform.de > > A Programma 101 is on ebay 190161063091. > > -- Andreas There are two machines that I'd love to have. This is one of them. This and the Diehl machine came out about the same time but most believe this to be the first programmable calculator. Programs could be stored on magnetic cards. I've always wondered if one could just take tape recorder tape and glue it to some cards to work with these. The original cards are real hard to find. The Diehl had an optional paper read/punch. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Boo!?Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews From dkelvey at hotmail.com Tue Oct 9 09:40:39 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 07:40:39 -0700 Subject: Olivetti Programma 101 In-Reply-To: <470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> References: <44544D61.1010407@pacbell.net> <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch> <470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> Message-ID: > From: asholz at topinform.de > > A Programma 101 is on ebay 190161063091. > > -- Andreas There are two machines that I'd love to have. This is one of them. This and the Diehl machine came out about the same time but most believe this to be the first programmable calculator. Programs could be stored on magnetic cards. I've always wondered if one could just take tape recorder tape and glue it to some cards to work with these. The original cards are real hard to find. The Diehl had an optional paper read/punch. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Boo!?Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews From asholz at topinform.de Tue Oct 9 10:01:15 2007 From: asholz at topinform.de (Andreas Holz) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:01:15 +0200 Subject: Olivetti Programma 101 In-Reply-To: References: <44544D61.1010407@pacbell.net> <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch> <470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> Message-ID: <470B97BB.9070909@topinform.de> The Diehl Combitron? -- Andreas > >> From: asholz at topinform.de >> >> A Programma 101 is on ebay 190161063091. >> >> -- Andreas >> > > There are two machines that I'd love to have. This > is one of them. This and the Diehl machine came out about > the same time but most believe this to be the first > programmable calculator. Programs could be stored on magnetic > cards. > I've always wondered if one could just take tape recorder > tape and glue it to some cards to work with these. The original > cards are real hard to find. > The Diehl had an optional paper read/punch. > Dwight > > _________________________________________________________________ > Boo! Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! > http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews > > > From dkelvey at hotmail.com Tue Oct 9 10:24:46 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 08:24:46 -0700 Subject: Olivetti Programma 101 In-Reply-To: <470B97BB.9070909@topinform.de> References: <44544D61.1010407@pacbell.net> <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch> <470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> <470B97BB.9070909@topinform.de> Message-ID: Hi Yes, That is the one. Years ago when I worked for the U. of Miami, I recued one of the SCM ones from the reclaim. I couldn't keep it but used it to do many calculations. I could be wrong about the tape, it may have been punch cards. I do recall one could connect some way of loading a program. The one I used was just the machine without extras. As I recall it had two delay lines. It would boot from a small metal tape. Dwight > From: asholz at topinform.de> > The Diehl Combitron?> > -- Andreas> > > >> From: asholz at topinform.de> >>> >> A Programma 101 is on ebay 190161063091.> >>> >> -- Andreas> >> > >> > There are two machines that I'd love to have. This> > is one of them. This and the Diehl machine came out about> > the same time but most believe this to be the first> > programmable calculator. Programs could be stored on magnetic> > cards.> > I've always wondered if one could just take tape recorder> > tape and glue it to some cards to work with these. The original> > cards are real hard to find.> > The Diehl had an optional paper read/punch.> > Dwight> >> > _________________________________________________________________> > Boo! Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare!> > http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews> >> >> > > _________________________________________________________________ Boo!?Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 9 11:38:42 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:38:42 -0700 Subject: choosing a 360k FDD In-Reply-To: <200710091046.l99AkdD7010733@hosting.monisys.ca> References: , <200710091046.l99AkdD7010733@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <470B4C22.31001.40BC5F4@cclist.sydex.com> Teac FD-55Bxxx's are okay; Toshiba drives are very much ignored--I've got a couple of ND-01014's that I use for "tough cases" that will often work when nothing else does. There have been some YE Data (YD- 580B) and NEC (1053) drives that I've used with decent results. Fred mentions the Tandon TM-100's; they're not bad, but they are belt- drive. I tweak one of the low-pass filter caps on the drive electronics to give a bit more gain on these. Micropolis 1016-2 likewise are belt drive, but with a leadscrew positioner--they're slow, but indestructible, if the drive belt holds. Note that if you use belt-drive units, the tachometer circuit tends to be pretty simple, so you'll need to keep tabs on the spindle speed at regular intervals. Drives I don't like: Qume 142 and 542; CDC 9428; Shugart SA-450. Note that many older drives will require more power, if that's an issue for you. I've used others; but they didn't make enough of an impression to stick around. If you're going to use hard-sector diskettes from time to time, make sure that your drive will work with them. Some later- model (for 360K, that is) drives will wait until a "drive ready" condition exists (i.e., the spindle is at speed) before gating the read signal to the host. Cheers, Chuck From ian_primus at yahoo.com Tue Oct 9 12:20:37 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:20:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <839530.45581.qm@web52712.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > I'm perplexed. The RQDXn controllers are MFM and > Floppy. Best shot > > is late firmware RQDX3 as it does RX33 and most > all MFM drives. Its > > also easier to find. > At least as I can remember, the RQDx3 needs an > internal distribution panel. > I'm searching for ONE single board. It doesn't exactly _require_ a distribution panel , it's a simple matter to make a cable to go from an RQDX3 to the drives without using the distribution bulkhead inside a DEC enclosure. See this site for pinouts and details: http://home.alltel.net/engdahl/rqdx3.htm -Ian From glen.slick at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 13:55:21 2007 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 11:55:21 -0700 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS In-Reply-To: <0JPN000UVCTF1VMC@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPN000UVCTF1VMC@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90710091155v2c70eb5ftdca2008b4f48bfe7@mail.gmail.com> On 10/9/07, Allison wrote: > The only MSCP boards I've used that didn't require breakout were > SCSI. > I have at least three Q-bus MSCP ESDI controllers that have standard 20-pin & 34-pin IDC header ESDI connectors, no breakout required. Emulex QD21, Dilog DQ696, Sigma SDC-RQD11. They are hard disk only though, so maybe in general controllers with floppy support do require breakout adapters. I also have an Andromeda ESDC Q-Bus ESDI controller which I haven't been able to use yet as I am lacking documentation on how to configure it. Anyone have a manual? I don't see any Andromeda manuals at all on bitsavers. -Glen From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 9 14:02:00 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:02:00 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products Message-ID: Does anyone have a comprehensive list of graphics products (UNIBUS or Q-BUS) for the PDP-11 family of minicomputers? Please don't list terminals with graphics capability, that's not what I'm after. Thanks! -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From dave06a at dunfield.com Tue Oct 9 15:15:06 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 15:15:06 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: <4707DE9D.19730.272B70E@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710070114.l971E3Ec022536@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> > Mask out the index pulse if all you're going to do is read. 22Disk > needs an index only for formatting (the old 10x512 problem). The > same should be the case with Uniform. Also, I show FOUR different > 5.25" CDOS formats, which one are you using? Usually when you get > cross-linked files, it's an issue with the definition that you're > using. AFAIK, at least from the CDOS samples I have here, the > allocation and naming setup is the same as CP/M. Hi Chuck, Thanks for the suggestions. I was told that these are DSDD CDOS diskettes, and reading them with ImageDisk gives me double density on both sides except for the first track which is single density. The shareware 22disk has four Cromemco types: CRO1 Cromemco CDOS - SSSD 48 tpi 5.25" CRO3 Cromemco CDOS - SSDD 48 tpi 5.25" CRO4 Cromemco CDOS - DSDD 48 tpi 5.25" CRO6 Cromemco CP/M - SSDD 48 tpi 5.25" Of these, CRO4 (and only CRO4) gives me what looks like a readable directory with reasonable filenames. However it reports that files have cross-linked blocks. Masking out pin 8 (Index) on the 34-pin connector has no effect, I still get: Error reading diskette B: (Cyl 1, Side 1, Sect 1) Sector not found This sector DOES exist, both ImageDisk and TeleDisk can read it fine, however no amount of "Retry" will convice 22disk to read it. I'd try my hand at extracting the files from the images, however this isn't going to be easy due to the "invisible" sector interleaving... hopefully the tables in the back of the CDOs manual are correct. Unfortunately ALL the files on the three sample disks I have are binary in nature, so I can't easily tell if I actually got the right data (as you usually can with a readable text file). Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Oct 9 14:21:52 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 12:21:52 -0700 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 1:02 PM -0600 10/9/07, Richard wrote: >Does anyone have a comprehensive list of graphics products (UNIBUS or >Q-BUS) for the PDP-11 family of minicomputers? > >Please don't list terminals with graphics capability, that's not what >I'm after. I'm not aware of such a list, I believe there are only about 3-6 "video cards". I've a 3rd party card that was used in a Cameca Microprobe (Electron Microscope). The DEC cards were/are popular in spectrum analyzers, and a lot of those are still in service in labs. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 9 14:30:20 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:30:20 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:21:52 -0700. Message-ID: In article , "Zane H. Healy" writes: > I'm not aware of such a list, I believe there are only about 3-6 > "video cards". I've a 3rd party card that was used in a Cameca > Microprobe (Electron Microscope). The DEC cards were/are popular in > spectrum analyzers, and a lot of those are still in service in labs. Yes, I already know such cards exist. I'm looking for information on them: make/model, module/board IDs, etc. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From doc at mdrconsult.com Tue Oct 9 14:30:54 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:30:54 -0500 Subject: Component level repair (Was: Re: Setting up a VAXstation) In-Reply-To: <575131af0710051727v211cfbbcg9ef649982794c2f7@mail.gmail.com> References: <20071005193357.4EEDC55E31@mail.wordstock.com> <203474.31545.qm@web23410.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <575131af0710051727v211cfbbcg9ef649982794c2f7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <470BD6EE.5020706@mdrconsult.com> Liam Proven wrote: > Well, I think that for me, the extent of my ambitions are to get my > A1200 with a 68030 card in it up to AmigaOS 3.9, and then maybe to put > that on the Internet, just for fun. It also has a single 72-pin DIMM > slot that can only physically take a single-sided DIMM; it needs > FP-DRAM, too. I have only managed to find an 8MB DIMM for it; I'd > really like to find a 16MB or even a 32MB one that would fit some > time. Haven't looked this week, but the Ebay seller mchowardelectronics has been selling 128MB 72-pin SIMMs for $10. I've used 128MB SIMMs on the 68040 CPU card in my A3000, and I'd suspect it'll work in the A1200 upgrade. Doc From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Oct 9 15:09:35 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 13:09:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: choosing a 360k FDD In-Reply-To: <470B4C22.31001.40BC5F4@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <200710091046.l99AkdD7010733@hosting.monisys.ca> <470B4C22.31001.40BC5F4@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071009130306.P65389@shell.lmi.net> On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Micropolis 1016-2 likewise are belt drive, but with a leadscrew > positioner--they're slow, but indestructible, if the drive belt > holds. With a new belt now and then, the Micropolis will outlast all of us. > Drives I don't like: Qume 142 slow, and the second most unreliable that I've used (after the BASF 2/3 height) > Shugart SA-450. I've had excellent luck with Shugart 455s, which seems to be the same drive as Panasonic and Matsushita. > Note that many older drives will require more power, if that's an > issue for you. I learned early on that the drives don't have to be on the same power supply as the motherboard. > Teac FD-55Bxxx's are okay; . . . > I've used others; but they didn't make enough of an impression to > stick around. If you're going to use hard-sector diskettes from time > to time, make sure that your drive will work with them. Some later- > model (for 360K, that is) drives will wait until a "drive ready" > condition exists (i.e., the spindle is at speed) before gating the > read signal to the host. Teac is one of the ones where masking off the index must be done in the cable, not by covering the hole in the disk jacket. In addition to hard sectored, that is an issue with Cromemco, some Kaypros, etc. (The 10x512 short gap problem) From rickb at bensene.com Tue Oct 9 15:40:36 2007 From: rickb at bensene.com (Rick Bensene) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 13:40:36 -0700 Subject: Olivetti Programma 101 In-Reply-To: References: <44544D61.1010407@pacbell.net> <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch><470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> Message-ID: > > There are two machines that I'd love to have. This is one of > them. This and the Diehl machine came out about the same time > but most believe this to be the first programmable > calculator. Programs could be stored on magnetic cards. > I've always wondered if one could just take tape recorder > tape and glue it to some cards to work with these. The > original cards are real hard to find. > The Diehl had an optional paper read/punch. The Programma 101 was not the first progrmmable calculator, though in popular culture, it is considered to be the first. Actually, the first programmable stored-program calculator was the Mathatronics Mathatron 4-24 and 8-48 calculators. These were introduced and sold before the Olivetti machine came to market. The Diehl Combitron (and the SCM equivalent, OEM'd from Diehl) were amazing machines. The Combitron was invented by Stanley Frankel, one of the physicists on the Manhattan Project, and also the designer of the SCM Cogito 240 electronic calculator, as well as the Royal McBee LGP-30 "mini computer" (and a few other small computers). The Combitron was a microcoded architecture (the first microcoded electronic calculator), and loaded its microcode from a punched metal tape that encoded the microcode. The tape had two channels, one channel provided clocking, and the other channel coded 0's and 1's for the microcode load, which was read into a magnetostrictive delay like, and controlled the operation of the machine. Another magnetostrictive delay line contained the working registers of the machine. It was quite an elegant design. I have been in communication with Stanley Frankel's son, who has vivid memories of helping his Dad working on building the prototype of the Combitron in their home. They made visits to Germany to the Diehl plant to build a second, improved prototype, which Diehl then used as the basis for the building the production Combitron. The Programma 101 had a distinction of being the first calculator to have a simple and efficient built-in magnetic card storage device that allowed reading in programs and data, and writing them back out again. The Mathatron did not have a means for "offline" storage of programs, although it did use magnetic core memory for program storage, so programs would be retained during powered-off time. However, anytime a new program was desired, it would have to be entered by hand through "Learn Mode" program entry. The Combitron did provide ability to attach an external punched paper tape reader/punch which could be used to punch out programs on tape for later re-reading into the calculator (the delay line memories were volatile, meaning the content would be lost when the calculator was powered off), and could also be used to load data into programs automatically, as well as punch out the results of calculations. The Combitron was a great "front end" machine to small and medium-sized computer systems, where data could be pre-processed on the Combitron, then intermediate resulst punched onto tape, for input to a large computer for final data analysis. All of these machines are wonderful examples of the ingenuity and creativity of the early designs used in early electronic calculators. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Oct 9 15:41:43 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 13:41:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200710070114.l971E3Ec022536@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <20071009132928.J65389@shell.lmi.net> > > Mask out the index pulse if all you're going to do is read. 22Disk Definitely, but it still doesn't work sometimes. On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Dave Dunfield wrote: > Hi Chuck, > Thanks for the suggestions. > I was told that these are DSDD CDOS diskettes, and reading them with > ImageDisk gives me double density on both sides except for the first > track which is single density. > The shareware 22disk has four Cromemco types: > CRO1 Cromemco CDOS - SSSD 48 tpi 5.25" > CRO3 Cromemco CDOS - SSDD 48 tpi 5.25" > CRO4 Cromemco CDOS - DSDD 48 tpi 5.25" > CRO6 Cromemco CP/M - SSDD 48 tpi 5.25" > Of these, CRO4 (and only CRO4) gives me what looks like a readable > directory with reasonable filenames. However it reports that files > have cross-linked blocks. That is likely to be a slightly different format than what you've got. Can we see hex of the 32 bytes of some of the directory entries, preferably with a LARGE file? IIRC, Cromemco used at least 3 different ways of handling extended entries for large files. Do you have access to how many records per block? How many blocks per extent? (Is the block number stored as 8 or 16 bits?) > Masking out pin 8 (Index) on the 34-pin connector has no effect, I > still get: > Error reading diskette B: (Cyl 1, Side 1, Sect 1) > Sector not found > This sector DOES exist, both ImageDisk and TeleDisk can read it fine, > however no amount of "Retry" will convice 22disk to read it. Can you use ImageDisk or TeleDisk to copy the sector contents, to produce a "copied" disk that has readable sector 1s? IIRC, some CDOS variants (there were several) had a skew, resulting in some other sectors on the disk being hard to get at. If the Cromemco machine is still in existence, they don't seem to mind disks that have reasonable gaps, so long as you get the flag in the "boot sector" to show the correct disk size. > I'd try my hand at extracting the files from the images, however this > isn't going to be easy due to the "invisible" sector interleaving... > hopefully the tables in the back of the CDOs manual are correct. > Unfortunately ALL the files on the three sample disks I have are > binary in nature, so I can't easily tell if I actually got the right > data (as you usually can with a readable text file). I probably won't have access to any of my stuff in the next week or two, but I can eventually get my notes of the CDOS interleave pattern(s). Good luck, -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From dkelvey at hotmail.com Tue Oct 9 15:45:15 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 13:45:15 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200710070114.l971E3Ec022536@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: > From: dave06a at dunfield.com> > > Mask out the index pulse if all you're going to do is read. 22Disk > > needs an index only for formatting (the old 10x512 problem). The > > same should be the case with Uniform. Also, I show FOUR different > > 5.25" CDOS formats, which one are you using? Usually when you get > > cross-linked files, it's an issue with the definition that you're > > using. AFAIK, at least from the CDOS samples I have here, the > > allocation and naming setup is the same as CP/M.> > Hi Chuck,> > Thanks for the suggestions.> > I was told that these are DSDD CDOS diskettes, and reading them with> ImageDisk gives me double density on both sides except for the first> track which is single density.> > The shareware 22disk has four Cromemco types:> CRO1 Cromemco CDOS - SSSD 48 tpi 5.25" > CRO3 Cromemco CDOS - SSDD 48 tpi 5.25"> CRO4 Cromemco CDOS - DSDD 48 tpi 5.25"> CRO6 Cromemco CP/M - SSDD 48 tpi 5.25"> > Of these, CRO4 (and only CRO4) gives me what looks like a readable> directory with reasonable filenames. However it reports that files> have cross-linked blocks.> > Masking out pin 8 (Index) on the 34-pin connector has no effect, I> still get:> > Error reading diskette B: (Cyl 1, Side 1, Sect 1)> Sector not found> > This sector DOES exist, both ImageDisk and TeleDisk can read it fine,> however no amount of "Retry" will convice 22disk to read it. Hi Not all the formats that 22DISK has are correct. Cross linked files would indicate that your just not seeing the disk correctly. Interleaving is the most likely problem but it might be just that the tool is pointing to the wrong location for the directory. The fact that it sees some meaningful names indicates that is is close. I suspect interleaving may still be the main issues. It is too bad there are no text files, these can often help to figure these out interleaving. You should still scan the binary images. Sometimes there are old deleted files still on the disk. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts!? Play Star Shuffle:? the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Oct 9 15:50:24 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 13:50:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: References: <200710070114.l971E3Ec022536@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <20071009134802.I65389@shell.lmi.net> On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, dwight elvey wrote: > It is too bad there are no text files, these can often > help to figure these out interleaving. You should still scan the binary > images. Sometimes there are old deleted files still on the > disk. Are they binary data, or machine code? If binary data, are there any obvious patterns or format of the records? Run some of them through a Z80 assembler. See if the code straddling sector boundaries has bad op codes v making sense. Rather tedious and difficult, but worth the effort. From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Oct 9 15:58:23 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 13:58:23 -0700 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet Message-ID: We live in a 2nd floor apartment, and are getting ready to put our Neo Geo 4-Slot into storage. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on this. We are thinking a refrigerator dolly, along with a U-Haul truck that will allow it to stand up during transport. Does this sound about right? How many people does something like this take to get down the stairs? It took 3 people to get it up the stairs when we bought it a few years ago. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 dkelvey at hotmail.com Tue Oct 9 15:58:43 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 13:58:43 -0700 Subject: Olivetti Programma 101 In-Reply-To: References: <44544D61.1010407@pacbell.net> <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch><470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> Message-ID: > From: rickb at bensene.com > ---snip--- > The Programma 101 had a distinction of being the first calculator to > have a simple and efficient built-in magnetic card storage device that > allowed reading in programs and data, and writing them back out again. > The Mathatron did not have a means for "offline" storage of programs, > although it did use magnetic core memory for program storage, so > programs would be retained during powered-off time. However, anytime a > new program was desired, it would have to be entered by hand through > "Learn Mode" program entry. > ---snip--- Hi Rick Has anyone tried to create program cards for the 101? Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook ? together at last. ?Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 9 16:23:07 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:23:07 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200710070114.l971E3Ec022536@hosting.monisys.ca>, <4707DE9D.19730.272B70E@cclist.sydex.com>, <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <470B8ECB.4612.5102609@cclist.sydex.com> On 9 Oct 2007 at 15:15, Dave Dunfield wrote: > I'd try my hand at extracting the files from the images, however this > isn't going to be easy due to the "invisible" sector interleaving... > hopefully the tables in the back of the CDOs manual are correct. > Unfortunately ALL the files on the three sample disks I have are > binary in nature, so I can't easily tell if I actually got the right > data (as you usually can with a readable text file). If you can get TeleDisk files of them, send me a couple of samples and I'll work the 22Disk stuff out for you. After we did 22Disk 1.x, we ran into a bunch of formats with bizarre formatting (dissimilar sector sizes, tracks distributed alternately from the middle of the diskette, varying sector numbering from track to track, etc.) We built a 22Disk 2.0 to handle them, but it requires that the format definitions be compiled in, rather than as a text file. On the other hand, it caches directory tracks and works out the fastest way to read a track (I/O is track buffered). So there may be some hope there if things are really strange. Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 9 15:22:56 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 21:22:56 +0100 (BST) Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470A6639.29611.89B039@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 8, 7 05:17:45 pm Message-ID: > > On 8 Oct 2007 at 23:22, Tony Duell wrote: > > > There is 'something to measure', namely the voltage on the mains wiring :-) > > > > More seriously, I see no reason why a voltmeter (analuge, digital, > > whatever), used correctly -- test a known live point, test the wiring you > > want to work on, test a known live point again -- is any less safe than > > any other method of determining that wiring is dead. > > Other than cost and fragility of the old analogue meters, you're > probably better off using something with a low number of points of > failure (a neon lamp is pretty simple). You're not interested in > *measuring* the voltage, just testing for its presence or absence. True enough. But a neon lamp could develop a hairline fracture and stop working, for example. Provided you do the 'test on known live, test on circuit-to-work-on, test on known live' procedure, I think any voltage measurement/detection device is equally safe. The chances of it breakign when used on the circuit-onder-test and then repairing itself when used on the known-live circuit are pretty remote. > > Back in the 1960s there were many live-chassis valve radios over here. > > Seires stringh heaters (normally 0.1A current) and half-wave > > rectification to get the HT+ line. WHich meant the chassis of the radio > > was connected to one side of the mains. > > ...as well as hot-chassis television sets. And the US hot-chassis Indeed. _Very_ few UK TVs, even the 1950's ones with a mains transformer had an isolated chassis before the widespread use provision of composite video coskets, etc in the 1980s. > radio goes back to at least the 1940s (12SA7, 12SK7, 12SQ7, 50L6, > 35Z5); some of the 50's models used 7xx or 14xx loctal based tubes. > Later, the lineup was usually 12BE6, 12BA6, 12AV6, 50C5, 35W4 in > miniature envelopes. YEs, I've heard of such sets. They appear over here from time to time, sometimes with a 'line cord' (mains cable with one resistive wire) to drop our 240V mains down to 120V for the set. UK-designed hot-chassis radios of the 1950s and later tended to have 100mA heater chains using U-series vables. Sticking with the B9A (9 pin miniatures) for the moment, the common ones wrre : UCC85 : double triode, often used as a FM-band frequency changer. UCH81 : triode/hexode frequency changer UF89 IF amplidier pentode UBF89 : IF amplifier pentode and 2 diodes (detector and AGC rectifier) UABC80 : Triple diode (AM detector + FM discrimiator) + audio amplifier triode UL84 : Audio output pentode UCL82 : Audio triode and output pentode UY85 : Half-wave rectifier diode. Be warned there were a few UK AC-only radios using an autotransformer to supply the heater string -- and thus a live chassis. Worse still, there wrre a few sets with 6.3V heaters in parallel (E-series valves) but the HT+ coming from half-wave rectifying the mains (and thus a live chassis). And just to complete the set (!) there was at least one radio with a series heater string running off a double-wound mains transformer (so a 'dead' chassis). TV sets often had 300mA heater chains using P-series valves. I am not listign all thsoe, but I am sure old-timers will rememebr the PL36 (octal base) and PL81 (B9A base) line output pentodes. > > Hot-chassis phonographs weren't that uncommon either (70L7+12SJ7) or > 117L7/M7). But all of the "All American Five" sets here used a 150 AC/DC record players were uncommn, since most of the turntable motors needed AC [1]. But live-chassis amplifiers were common here too. Often a UY85 rectifier and a UL84 or UCL82 amplifier valve. The heaters were often run off a tap on the motor winding, which acted as an autotransformer [1] There was at least one radiogram with an AC/DC radio/amplifier chassis and a separate unit, only used on DC mains, containing a pair of 50L6s and some oscillator valve. Its job was to provide 50Hz AC for the motor. Oh the joys of having a shelf of radio.TV schematics... > ma heater string. Many of the older ones did not have polarized > mains plugs, so either side of the line could be connected to the > chassis. If there was a lot of AC hum in the audio, you were advised > to reverse the mains plug. Some of them, I believe, had the mains switch between one side of the mains cable and the chassis. Which means if you got the chassis connected to neutral with the set on, it would be live when you turned it off (the resistnve of the heater string will not limit the current to a safe value). Ouch! -tony From zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com Tue Oct 9 16:27:37 2007 From: zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:27:37 -0400 Subject: Royal McBee (was: Olivetti Programma 101 In-Reply-To: References: <44544D61.1010407@pacbell.net> <44545450.8050400@bluewin.ch> <470B3807.1090402@topinform.de> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071009165552.012ccba0@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Rick Bensene may have mentioned these words: [snippety] >... as well as the Royal McBee LGP-30 "mini computer" Just yesterday, my wife's uncle just dropped off a "manual" (almost more like a 40-page sales flyer) for a Royal McBee "Keydex" system. The manual number is "S-329" and details the use of a Keydex Information Retrieval System, using "specialized" translucent/transparent punched/marked sheets. They're punched at the top, and I think marked in the grid. Until yesterday, I'd never heard of the company... and now I hear it twice in 2 days! That's kismet for ya... I guess it's not prezactly on-topic, but it does have to do with vintage information storage & retrieval, so hopefully Jay doesn't slap me in the face with a frozen mackerel! I'm _guessing_ this thingy's from the early 60's... maybe late 50's guessing from the printing technology used on the 2-color single-page sales flyer in the back of this, and the fact that nowhere can I find a postal zip-code on anything.... OK, a little more looking and I find an example of one of the cards, and the card has a (R) date of 1962. This manual is in near-mint to mint condition - is this something that should be preserved? Should I send it off to Al Kossow for scanning (assuming he's interested in this documentation)? ePayed? Sacrificed in a Pagan ritual? Inquiring minds want to know! ;-) Totally offtopically, during the same "delivery" my wife's uncle dropped off issues of _World Coins_ published by Amos Press in Sydney, Ohio... from '63(ish) to '75 as well.... and I thought *I* was a packrat. ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Bugs of a feather flock together." sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Russell Nelson zmerch at 30below.com | From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 9 15:34:49 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 21:34:49 +0100 (BST) Subject: Jumpers, was: Re: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: <200710082351.12494.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 8, 7 11:51:12 pm Message-ID: > A while back I got a hold of a bunch of 2G SCSI-wide drives, which seem = > to=20 > need something a bit smaller -- is that the 2mm size you refer to here? = Quite likely, since 0.1" is 2.54mm. Measure the pin spacing with a ruler to eb sure. > Any=20 > idea where I might get a hold of some? Setting device numbers would seem= Don't Digikey or Newark/Farnell sell them? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 9 15:53:01 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 21:53:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710082129o23a89b6cy62d07b3cb032cc6@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 9, 7 05:29:10 am Message-ID: > > Oh %deity, where to begin... > > > > OK, it works with 2 DIMMs, not 3. My first question is 'should it work > > with 3 DIMMs of that size'. Or is there a limit on the total memory > > that's been exceeded. > > AFAIK, yes, it should, but it doesn't. This sort of thing appears to > be a consistent fault with old ~1.5GHz Athlon XP motherboards. > > > Assuming there isn't, it would _appear_ the problem is with the memory > > controller on the motherboard. If it's some large ASIC that's failing, = > my > > expeirince is that when a chip starts to go bad, it gets worse. So the > > machine might have more mrmory errors shortly. I'd want to be sure any > > machine I'd fixed was working, and would carry on working. Not fail on = > me > > when I need it most > > It might do, yes, but I don't have any suitable spares and it's for > someone who can't afford to replace it. Hang one a second. You've said this is an old board (and from the spec, even I know it's an old board). You the owner can't afford to replace it. And then later you say PC bits are 'cheap as chips' so there's no point in trying to faultfind them. You can't have it both ways! > > And I said 'appear' above. Maybe the motherboard is fine. Maybe it's a > > marginal PSU that can't supply enough current for the 3 DIMMs. Did you > > even chack the PSU votlages under load? Let alone ripple? > > And again, you're working on the assumption that I am you, or that I > work like you, or that everyone should work like you. No, I'm working under the assumption that hardware works logically, when it fails to work there's a good reason for it, and that before you can claim to have repaired it you have to have found that reason. > > No, I didn't, and no, I'm not about to, because I don't do hardware > repairs and if the hardware is faulty it goes in the bin and gets > replaced wherever possible. And when, as here, it's not possible to replace it, what do you do? > > > Now perhaps you know why I do all diagnosis and repairs of _everything_= > I > > own myself... > > No, Tony, I don't. While I have huge respect for your apparent I was referign to the fact that I've come across far too many clueless repairers to ever let them within 10' of anythign I own! > abilities at troubleshooting, diagnosing and fixing classic kit, > comments like "I won't run a modern PC because I can't afford the test > equipment to analyse it if it goes wrong" say to me that you are so > obsessed that you will shoot yourself in the foot and drastically > inconvenience yourself rather than change your behaviour. If a PC goes How am I inconveniencing myself? What do you think I want to do that could be done more easily by having a modern PC? (And remember I think _you're_ inconveniencing yourself by not having electronic test gear and learning how to use it) > wrong, one does not analyse it, one junks it and replaces it, because ARGH! When are you going to understand that I don't replace parts without knowing what's failed and why!. I simply don't. I never will... > PCs are interchangeable commodity kit. To spend thousands on repairing Oh yes.... And then find there's no driver for the new video card for whatever odd OS I want to run. Or that the hoebrew add-on hung off the parallel port won't work correctly with a USB-parallel converter and no new PC has a real parallel port. Or that the floppy cotnroller (if there's on at all) doesn't support 5.25" drives proerly, or ... It's a lot less inconvenient to me to stick to hardware I know, that I understand, and that I can keep going to avoid any such problems. > something worth at best hundreds and probably in fact worth perhaps > the cost of a pint or a train ticket is not sensible pragmatism, it's You also have to realise that not everybody knows people who give away old PC hardawre. I don't, for example. > not commendable attention to detail, it's bl**dy daft. And to say "I > won't run it if I can't repair it" is dafter still! I disgaree, but there you are... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 9 16:26:30 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 22:26:30 +0100 (BST) Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: from "Zane H. Healy" at Oct 9, 7 12:21:52 pm Message-ID: > > At 1:02 PM -0600 10/9/07, Richard wrote: > >Does anyone have a comprehensive list of graphics products (UNIBUS or > >Q-BUS) for the PDP-11 family of minicomputers? > > > >Please don't list terminals with graphics capability, that's not what > >I'm after. > > I'm not aware of such a list, I believe there are only about 3-6 > "video cards". I've a 3rd party card that was used in a Cameca There were rather more than that, and most of them were racks of electronics that happened to have a Unibus/Qbus interface on the end. Often there were interfaces abailable for other minis too. Ones I know about (I have some of these) DEC VT11 (Unibus interface, vector display) Ramtek Marguis 9460 (Rack of boards witha Z80 or 68K to control them. Colour raster display, Unibus or Qbus interfaces) Grinnel PDP11 framstore (linked to a DR11-B, possibly no Q-bus version) PPL Video Disk (A special hard disk that stored video as an FM signal, one frape per track. COlour output, rack of boards to control it. Linked to a DR11-B again) I2S Model 70 and Model 75 Image processors. Large cabinets of boards. Interfaces avaialvbe to Unibus, HP2100, etc. There was also the GPIT, which linked it to a DR(V)11-W Does the AMT DAP count :-) An SIMD machine with a graphics output that links to a DR11-W -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 9 16:01:37 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 22:01:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <575131af0710082145p4439bd49p93b08d4c18ed40a5@mail.gmail.com> from "Liam Proven" at Oct 9, 7 05:45:35 am Message-ID: > > In 08/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > > > I don't know how to change the oil on most of my bikes, let alone > > > > I[ve yet to meet an engine where you don't change the oil by removing t= > he > > drain plug on the bottom of the sump.... > > And if you don't know what a sump plug is, how to find one, how to > remove one, how to refit one? If you don't know when to do it or what > to replace the oil with? If you don't know what to catch the oil in or > how to refill it? Ah, ut you said '_most_ of my bikes' (emphassis mine). The point being that if you can do it on one engine (OK, 2 strokes are a notable exception), you can do it on any. > But I personally have no use for a multiuser host machine and never > have had. A mini or even an old mainframe might be /interesting/ but I > have absolutely no function that it can perform for me, so there's not > much point in having one. I didn't aspire to own one when I was a kid > and I don't now. For me, computers got interesting when they could > display graphics, and they got pleasant and fun to *use* when they got So obviously all the graphics systems for 1970s minis (and indeed _calculators__) esist only in my imagination. That'll save me a lot of space :-) Seriosuly, there were some rather nice graphical display systems for PDP11s,VAXen and other minis. Made both by DEC and 3rd parties. > GUIs and could multitask. I'd love to know more about some of the I don;t know if you call a PERQ a minicomputer (to me it is, the CPU is a large boarf of simple logic chips, not a microprocessor), but that had a multitasking GUI. > Let it go. You have your interests, I have mine. I'm not telling you > you're wrong; I admire your skills and knowledge. Please stop telling Err , couple of messages ago you described me a 'bl**dy daft'. I hardly think that's appropritate.. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 9 16:12:16 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 22:12:16 +0100 (BST) Subject: VT100 flyback / geometry In-Reply-To: from "Christian Corti" at Oct 9, 7 12:28:00 pm Message-ID: > > First, the CRT in the VT100 is a M31-340W. > > On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: > > Not according to my 1988 Philips CRT Databooks! > > The coding is explained as follows : > [...] > > 1988 is pretty new... Did they really change the nomenclature of the > tubes? I thought that I have, alas, no idea if/when it was changed. I can try going back through old books to see if anything turns up. > > I've not seen a mgnetically-focuessed CRT since I repaired an _old_ Bush > > TV. Old meaning System A, 405 lines. The focussing in that was controlled > > Well, System A was broadcast until the 80s ;-)) True. But system-A only TVs weren't still being made AFAIK. For a time (late 60's, until mid 70's) we had 'dual standard' TVs over here with a user switch to select between System A (405 lines) and System I (625 lines). There were even colour TVs that could display System A (in monochrome only, of course). > According to my tube books one of the newest magnetic focus CRTs for > television sets should be the MW53-80 and MW61-80 (around 1958/1959). > But they don't use fixed magnets, instead a focusing coil is used. Some UK TVs did that too. Often the focus coil current was the cathode (or anode) current of the audio output valve (!). But I've not seen one of those for _many_ years, and certainly not in any computer-related device. > > getting the convergence and purity right!), but nonoe of the monochrome > > monitor service manuals I've read mention magnetic focussing. I've never > > seen a yoke with anything other than centering rings on it. > > VT100 Series Pocket Service Guide, page 59/60. OK, I will take a look. I am still very suprised. -tony From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Oct 9 16:29:22 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:29:22 +0100 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470BF2B2.50703@yahoo.co.uk> Zane H. Healy wrote: > We live in a 2nd floor apartment, and are getting ready to put our Neo > Geo 4-Slot into storage. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on > this. We are thinking a refrigerator dolly, along with a U-Haul truck > that will allow it to stand up during transport. I think if it were me I'd pull the boards and display and carry those separately (for any arcade cab, not specific to this one). That applies to any machine really... I figure boards are probably going to shift in transit anyway, so it makes sense to pull the delicate stuff. At least then if there are any accidents with the cab itself there's a reasonable chance it'll be something cosmetic. re. dollies, one of our guys at the museum made a couple not long ago, and they've been fantastic - he said the castors (about 4" diameter) were dirt cheap (I think it was ten pounds for four - so around $20), and he used wood for the deck (around 1 1/2" think). I was wary about how well the wood would stand up, but we've had stuff probably 3x the weight of a typical arcade cab on there and run them across rough surfaces with no ill effects so far. The height's not really been a problem so far, and the larger wheels are a great help. I'd get pissed trying to move something heavy on tiny castors over anything but the smoothest of surfaces... > How many people does something like this take to get down the > stairs? It took 3 people to get it up the stairs when we bought it a > few years ago. You need two flights of stairs, a thick bit of rope, and another cabinet to use as a counterweight ;) cheers J. From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Oct 9 16:35:59 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:35:59 +0100 Subject: Jumpers, was: Re: 1541-III group buy? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470BF43F.5050909@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: >> A while back I got a hold of a bunch of 2G SCSI-wide drives, which seem = >> to=20 >> need something a bit smaller -- is that the 2mm size you refer to here? = > > Quite likely, since 0.1" is 2.54mm. Measure the pin spacing with a ruler > to eb sure. Ugh, I just remembered the 'low profile' ones found on some equipment (notably IDE drives mid-90s) - around 2mm spacing, but only 1mm in height. Bloody things were great for parting company with whatever equipment they were plugged in to :-( From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Tue Oct 9 16:40:14 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 16:40:14 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion Message-ID: Greetings all; I'm reading up on the Onyx (rackmount, original Onyx) and the manual says that units with three power supplies (OLS') are configured for three phase, and units with two OLS' are configured for two phase. While my machine does have the optional lower VME card cage and also the second SCSI box (thus necessitating the 3 OLS'), I won't be likely to use either of them. 220v I can do (handy-dandy nearby 40A circuit for a stove) - 3 phase would require wiring changes in the building. Is anyone aware if there was an established procedure to go from 3 phase back to 3 phase on these units? Could I be lucky enough to have someone here who has done it? Thanks! JP Hindin From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Oct 9 16:42:45 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:42:45 +0100 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1191966165.2090.5.camel@elric> On Tue, 2007-10-09 at 13:58 -0700, Zane H. Healy wrote: > We live in a 2nd floor apartment, and are getting ready to put our > Neo Geo 4-Slot into storage. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice > on this. We are thinking a refrigerator dolly, along with a U-Haul > truck that will allow it to stand up during transport. Does this > sound about right? How many people does something like this take to > get down the stairs? It took 3 people to get it up the stairs when > we bought it a few years ago. We moved one a couple of years ago - just hired a van and two of us picked it up and carried it. Dead simple. There's hardly any weight in them, 60kg at most. Gordon From curt at atarimuseum.com Tue Oct 9 16:46:27 2007 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:46:27 -0400 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470BF6B3.1010200@atarimuseum.com> A refigerator dolly works best. 3 capable people can move most coin-ops and a Neo Geo is a bit cumbersome, but weighs around 295lbs or so, so generally 3 can handle it with 2 at the bottom and one guiding the top if you're going to carry it down the stairs, don't bump it down step by step, the innards will take a pounding... You may want to look into removing the monitor from the unit as well as the power supply, that alone will remove close to 100lbs out of the unit and make moving it soooooooo much easier. Curt Zane H. Healy wrote: > We live in a 2nd floor apartment, and are getting ready to put our Neo > Geo 4-Slot into storage. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on > this. We are thinking a refrigerator dolly, along with a U-Haul truck > that will allow it to stand up during transport. Does this sound > about right? How many people does something like this take to get > down the stairs? It took 3 people to get it up the stairs when we > bought it a few years ago. > > Zane > > > From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Oct 9 17:08:39 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 15:08:39 -0700 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: <470BF6B3.1010200@atarimuseum.com> References: <470BF6B3.1010200@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: At 5:46 PM -0400 10/9/07, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: >A refigerator dolly works best. 3 capable people can move most >coin-ops and a Neo Geo is a bit cumbersome, but weighs around 295lbs >or so, so generally 3 can handle it with 2 at the bottom and one >guiding the top if you're going to carry it down the stairs, don't >bump it down step by step, the innards will take a pounding... > >You may want to look into removing the monitor from the unit as well >as the power supply, that alone will remove close to 100lbs out of >the unit and make moving it soooooooo much easier. I'd just as soon not try to remove the monitor. The power supply is only about the size of a PC PS, so I can't see as how that would save much in the way of weight. All the cartridges will be pulled, as they are staying home for use in the SuperGun with our 1-slot board. :^) The other thing that will be interesting is when we get it to storage, I've been told it has to go onto casters so we can easily move it between units if we have to. My Dad has been volunteered to build the "skateboards", so I'm not worried about them holding up, just getting the unit up on them. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 Oct 9 17:33:10 2007 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 23:33:10 +0100 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Tony Duell wrote: >> At 1:02 PM -0600 10/9/07, Richard wrote: >>> Does anyone have a comprehensive list of graphics products (UNIBUS >>> or Q-BUS) for the PDP-11 family of minicomputers? >>> >> I'm not aware of such a list, I believe there are only about 3-6 >> "video cards". I've a 3rd party card that was used in a Cameca > > There were rather more than that, and most of them were racks of > electronics that happened to have a Unibus/Qbus interface on the end. > Often there were interfaces abailable for other minis too. Qbus: VSV11, VSV90, QVSS, QDVSS (aka Dragon) UNIBUS: VT30, VS100 (wasn't X developed on this?) I don't know which will actually work (or were intended for) any of the PDP-11 series. I've used both the QVSS and QDSS on MicroVAX systems. At university I used a framestore of some kind that hung off a PDP-11/23's Q-bus. The PDP lived in an H9xx cab of some sort and the framestore stood next to it and was about the same size. Not sure it would count as a "graphics system" in the modern sense, and anyway I cannot for the life of me remember the make. Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.14.5/1058 - Release Date: 08/10/2007 16:54 From emu at e-bbes.com Tue Oct 9 17:38:35 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:38:35 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470C02EB.8010104@e-bbes.com> DEC VSV21 q-bus, hd63484 based graphics Richard wrote: > Does anyone have a comprehensive list of graphics products (UNIBUS or > Q-BUS) for the PDP-11 family of minicomputers? From emu at e-bbes.com Tue Oct 9 17:41:24 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:41:24 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470C0394.9000703@e-bbes.com> Tony Duell wrote: > Grinnel PDP11 framstore (linked to a DR11-B, possibly no Q-bus version) I remember this one. Frame buffer with a size of decent freezer ;-) But ours had a nice 19" BARCO Monitor attached to it. We were fighting for the time to work on it ;-) From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 9 18:05:01 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:05:01 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:33:10 +0100. <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Message-ID: In article <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0 at uatempname>, "Antonio Carlini" writes: > At university I used a framestore of some kind that hung off a > PDP-11/23's Q-bus. The PDP lived in an H9xx cab of some sort and the > framestore stood next to it and was about the same size. Not sure > it would count as a "graphics system" in the modern sense, and anyway > I cannot for the life of me remember the make. Frame buffers are graphics systems, just dumb ones. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Oct 9 18:23:56 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 19:23:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: <470C0394.9000703@e-bbes.com> References: <470C0394.9000703@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <200710092326.TAA15052@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> Grinnel PDP11 framstore (linked to a DR11-B, possibly no Q-bus version) > I remember this one. Frame buffer with a size of decent freezer ;-) That sounds a lot like the Grinnell (I think that's how it was spelt) framebuffer we had at the lab I worked at in the '80s. It was a Unibus device, attached to our VAX-11/780, and had some capabilities I've never seen in a framebuffer since. Only 256x256, though, of which only 256x240 was visible.... /~\ 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 ian_primus at yahoo.com Tue Oct 9 19:14:32 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 17:14:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <520987.77336.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > I'd just as soon not try to remove the monitor. The > power supply is > only about the size of a PC PS, so I can't see as > how that would save > much in the way of weight. All the cartridges will > be pulled, as > they are staying home for use in the SuperGun with > our 1-slot board. > :^) Yeah, you don't really have to remove the monitor, provided it's bolted in good. I have moved many video games, and more than once I have looked to find that the previous owner/op never put the bolts back in the last time the monitor was swapped or repaired, or more commonly, held in by one or two bolts. Be sure and check this, you don't want to hear that *KSHHHHHHH* of a broken picture tube while moving... Similarly, boards aren't always secured too well, and I've seen loose power supplies too. Ideally, if everything is as it should be, there will be no problem. So check, secure everything, remove loose parts, etc. These machines were meant to be moved from location to location. Some even have built in wheels on the back, so that it acts as it's own refrigerator dolly. Just tip it back and wheel. For going down stairs, two guys is a must. Three helps. A refrigerator dolly is great for this, and as was previously pointed out, don't bounce it down. Go gently. For transport, it doesn't need to be standing up, provided that everything inside is secure. Just slide it into a van on it's back or side (use a moving blanket to avoid scratches). Removing things is probably the _best_ way, but they move fine intact, if a little heavier. The older machines by far are easier to move, the monitors are small and not very heavy - some Neo-Geo machines have huge monitors that make it pretty difficult, and some have control panels that stick out past the sides of the cabinet. Having extra people around when moving things is always a nice thing to have, but sometimes it's impossible. Or, if you're like me, you just don't have any friends... at least, not after you asked them to help move a minicompuer last month... Fortunately, arcade machines are far easier to move than, say, a CDC 9766. I have moved several games alone. It took three people just to get the 9766 out of the van... Now, technically, moving arcade games is off topic... but the same thing applies to computers too. Only computers are heavier. And on-topic But, of course, in an ideal world, all this would be much easier. First consider a stairwell with a 45 degree incline, and a spherical arcade machine.... -Ian From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 19:23:08 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:23:08 -0400 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0@uatempname> References: <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Message-ID: > UNIBUS: VT30, VS100 (wasn't X developed on this?) I think it was developed on a VAXstation 2000? A long time ago I had a Unibus color vector graphics board from some third party. I remember it had some really weird coax connectors for output signals. No amount of truth serum will be able to dig up any facts from my head, however. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 19:28:10 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:28:10 -0400 Subject: Sun 3/280 Message-ID: I have a rackmount Sun-3/280, pretty loaded up, that I would like to move out. I think I have a SPARC board for it as well, to turn it into a 4/280. No disk, but I think the interface card is there, along with a few others. The thing is a cube, a little under a 20 inches on a side or so. I have the front panel. I think it even has a 1/4 inch tape drive in the front. The last time I powered it up, it passed its memory test OK, but that was almost 10 years ago (!). -- Will in 10512 From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 9 20:52:14 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:52:14 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:23:56 -0400. <200710092326.TAA15052@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: In article <200710092326.TAA15052 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>, der Mouse writes: > That sounds a lot like the Grinnell (I think that's how it was spelt) > framebuffer we had at the lab I worked at in the '80s. It was a Unibus > device, attached to our VAX-11/780, and had some capabilities I've > never seen in a framebuffer since. Such as? Today's graphics cards are the fanciest devices available ever. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From davis at saw.net Tue Oct 9 20:57:14 2007 From: davis at saw.net (davis) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:57:14 -0700 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470C317A.3080808@saw.net> Richard wrote: > In article <200710092326.TAA15052 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>, > der Mouse writes: > > >> and had some capabilities I've >> never seen in a framebuffer since. >> > > Such as? > > Today's graphics cards are the fanciest devices available ever. > A bus interface for an 11? Jim Davis. From emu at e-bbes.com Tue Oct 9 21:06:11 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:06:11 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470C3393.7030104@e-bbes.com> Richard wrote: > In article <200710092326.TAA15052 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>, > der Mouse writes: > >> That sounds a lot like the Grinnell (I think that's how it was spelt) >> framebuffer we had at the lab I worked at in the '80s. It was a Unibus >> device, attached to our VAX-11/780, and had some capabilities I've >> never seen in a framebuffer since. > > Such as? > > Today's graphics cards are the fanciest devices available ever. they are neat, but not doing anything which wasn't done 20 years ago. But they do it very fast ;-) From rivie at ridgenet.net Tue Oct 9 21:06:28 2007 From: rivie at ridgenet.net (Roger Ivie) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 19:06:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: > In article <200710092326.TAA15052 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>, > der Mouse writes: >> That sounds a lot like the Grinnell (I think that's how it was spelt) >> framebuffer we had at the lab I worked at in the '80s. It was a Unibus >> device, attached to our VAX-11/780, and had some capabilities I've >> never seen in a framebuffer since. > > Such as? > > Today's graphics cards are the fanciest devices available ever. Can't speak about the Grinnel, but in the early '80s I was involved with a site that had some nice Megatek (IIRC) stroke graphics engines that include a conic section generator so it could do curves and circles and stuff. 'Course, for all I know that was standard equipment for stroke graphics hardware... -- roger ivie rivie at ridgenet.net From silent700 at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 21:34:55 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 21:34:55 -0500 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0@uatempname> Message-ID: <51ea77730710091934s7e1bd373g72b5f7c9da1d721c@mail.gmail.com> I know naught of its specs, but what of the Terak system, which I believe was 11-based? From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 9 21:35:26 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:35:26 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:06:28 -0700. Message-ID: In article , Roger Ivie writes: > Can't speak about the Grinnel, but in the early '80s I was involved with > a site that had some nice Megatek (IIRC) stroke graphics engines that include > a conic section generator so it could do curves and circles and stuff. Was this a storage tube, calligraphic tube or raster tube? > 'Course, for all I know that was standard equipment for stroke graphics > hardware... It depends on what you mean by stroke graphics hardware; the Tektronix 401x series is a storage tube device that is "painted" by strokes, but it doesn't have anything more than point, line and character output. You have to build smooth curves out of line approximations. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 21:40:50 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 22:40:50 -0400 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: <200710092326.TAA15052@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: > Such as? > > Today's graphics cards are the fanciest devices available ever. Here is a function that "the fanciest devices available ever" can not do: Intergraph marketed VAXes as servers - 8550s, I think. They had custom disk controllers that had processing engines to search the disks for graphics primitives, independent of the VAX. No one knows why. -- Will From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Oct 9 21:32:16 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 22:32:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710100240.WAA16058@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> That sounds a lot like the Grinnell (I think that's how it was >> spelt) framebuffer we had at the lab I worked at in the '80s. It >> was a Unibus device, attached to our VAX-11/780, and had some >> capabilities I've never seen in a framebuffer since. > Such as? Such as the selector switches between the pixel data and the lookup tables, and between the lookup table outputs and the DAC inputs. In pseudo-C pseudo-code, the per-pixel operation was not DACinput[chan] = cmap[chan][pixeldata[chan]] but rather DACinput[chan] = cmap[sw2[chan]][pixdata[sw1[sw2[chan]]]] where sw1[] and sw2[] are three-element arrays each element of which can hold only one of three values. Of course, it's questionable how necessary this is when you can rerender a multi-mega-polygon scene afresh during the vertical retrace interval, but that's a different issue...especially when you the buyer of the video card essentially can't get the information necessary to write the software to drive that rerendering. > Today's graphics cards are the fanciest devices available ever. ...in some respects. Most of their fancies, though, are aimed at high frame rate when doing 3D rendering, and don't even notice other possibilities. /~\ 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 jfoust at threedee.com Tue Oct 9 21:54:11 2007 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:54:11 -0500 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710091934s7e1bd373g72b5f7c9da1d721c@mail.gmail.co m> References: <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <51ea77730710091934s7e1bd373g72b5f7c9da1d721c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20071009215036.04b77380@mail> At 09:34 PM 10/9/2007, you wrote: >I know naught of its specs, but what of the Terak system, which I >believe was 11-based? The original Terak 8510/a was 320 x 240 mono square pixels with hardware smooth pan and scroll, and downloadable character sets. My rarely updated Terak page: http://www.threedee.com/jcm/terak/index.html There were subsequent Terak models that I believe doubled the resolution and added color, but I don't know much about those models. - John From rivie at ridgenet.net Tue Oct 9 22:14:18 2007 From: rivie at ridgenet.net (Roger Ivie) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:14:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: > > In article , > Roger Ivie writes: > >> Can't speak about the Grinnel, but in the early '80s I was involved with >> a site that had some nice Megatek (IIRC) stroke graphics engines that include >> a conic section generator so it could do curves and circles and stuff. > > Was this a storage tube, calligraphic tube or raster tube? Calligraphic tube. -- roger ivie rivie at ridgenet.net From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Oct 9 22:43:35 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:43:35 -0700 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: <520987.77336.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <520987.77336.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: At 5:14 PM -0700 10/9/07, Mr Ian Primus wrote: >Yeah, you don't really have to remove the monitor, >provided it's bolted in good. I have moved many video It's bolted down, as is everything else. We bought the system a few years ago from an operator, and I've had it apart trying to find the loose connection (or whatever is wrong with it) so I know everything is bolted down good. >Having extra people around when moving things is >always a nice thing to have, but sometimes it's >impossible. Or, if you're like me, you just don't have >any friends... at least, not after you asked them to >help move a minicompuer last month... I've got even better, a big burly brother-in-law with friends. They're all about 15 years younger than me, so in a lot better shape physically than me. :^) Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 compoobah at valleyimplants.com Tue Oct 9 22:50:44 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:50:44 -0700 Subject: reforming capacitor tutorial/walkthrough Message-ID: <806b9f7566dae9f3bb5299db66b8211e@valleyimplants.com> > With new hardware, it may be impossible to secure proper documentation > and it may be difficult to impossible to decipher what's happening > inside of such tiny chips. Not completely on-topic, but a recent acquisition by the school had a schematic in the so-called "user's manual" that dutifully showed all the interconnections to the black-box ASICs and the 2 or 3 transistors (and handful of passives). All in a 4" square area. From fernande at internet1.net Tue Oct 9 23:10:59 2007 From: fernande at internet1.net (Chad Fernandez) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:10:59 -0400 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470C50D3.8040500@internet1.net> Does your manual actually use the words "2 phase"? 220v is not 2 phase, although, I can't tell you exactly why. It's been told to me, that each 110v hot wire of 220v(actually 120v and 240v in the US) is really the same phase, but inverses of each other, or something like that. Real 2PH, was used quite a bit in Pennsylvania, but has been mostly phased out, if not entirely. This came from various people who collect/restore/use old machinery, many of whom are engineers. This may or may not apply, if your outside the US. Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA JP Hindin wrote: > Greetings all; > > I'm reading up on the Onyx (rackmount, original Onyx) and the manual says > that units with three power supplies (OLS') are configured for three > phase, and units with two OLS' are configured for two phase. > > While my machine does have the optional lower VME card cage and also the > second SCSI box (thus necessitating the 3 OLS'), I won't be likely to use > either of them. 220v I can do (handy-dandy nearby 40A circuit for a stove) > - 3 phase would require wiring changes in the building. > > Is anyone aware if there was an established procedure to go from 3 phase > back to 3 phase on these units? Could I be lucky enough to have someone > here who has done it? > > Thanks! > JP Hindin > > > > From silent700 at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 23:22:18 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 23:22:18 -0500 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20071009215036.04b77380@mail> References: <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <51ea77730710091934s7e1bd373g72b5f7c9da1d721c@mail.gmail.com> <6.2.3.4.2.20071009215036.04b77380@mail> Message-ID: <51ea77730710092122h62deca26m3678d4817b87585b@mail.gmail.com> On 10/9/07, John Foust wrote: > The original Terak 8510/a was 320 x 240 mono square pixels > with hardware smooth pan and scroll, and downloadable character sets. Yep, I remember finding your page when I saw a Terak on ebay a year or so ago. Even though I don't know much about them, it's in my top-5 wanted items list. Must be the unique-factor. Same goes for the Symbolics machines :) From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Tue Oct 9 23:32:24 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 21:32:24 -0700 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion Message-ID: Check the dates on your OLS PSUs - some of the early ones were defective and could catch fire. I would think that Boeing would have had them swapped out, but if it's an older Onyx (R4400 at 200MHz or below probably) it might have been pulled from service before the recall. From jbdigriz at dragonsweb.org Tue Oct 9 23:39:22 2007 From: jbdigriz at dragonsweb.org (James B. DiGriz) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:39:22 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture In-Reply-To: <58373.207.245.121.210.1191347161.squirrel@webmail.degnanco.net> References: <200710021700.l92H0VVr095376@dewey.classiccmp.org> <58373.207.245.121.210.1191347161.squirrel@webmail.degnanco.net> Message-ID: <470C577A.1010202@dragonsweb.org> B Degnan wrote: >> I can't state so categorically but my understanding is that they were very >> much the same. >> Going back to a conversation of a few weeks ago, when we were >> developing/running Verex/Thoth at UBC ca 1980 it was on a 990/10. The next >> major step in the project was to develop a distributed kernel for multiple >> processors. To this end, 3 bare single board computers based on the 9900 >> chip >> were ordered and received from TI. Something makes me think they were >> called >> "990/5"s. I remember making up a front panel for the 3 of them with reset >> buttons and a few status LEDs to go in the rack with the /10. The idea, of >> course, was to use the 9900s because we already had the compilers,etc. >> generating code for the 990/10. >> > > > Here are some pics of possibly a related system that I posted a while ago. > > http://vintagecomputer.net/ti/TI-990-101/ > > Bill D > You have most of the components of a TM990 system. This was TI's attempt to market the 9900 to developers, mostly for embedded systems, industrial controls, and so forth. TI seems to have fumbled the the late '70s microcomputer market in this case, as well with the 99/4, but not due to any fault of the TM990. For whatever reason, though, most here will be far more familiar S-100 micros, and with Intel, Moto, Zilog, and other development systems, excepting maybe the TM990/189 type single-board trainers which are fairly well known. You could get a full TM990 software development system, though, eg. the TM990/602. There any number of tools and languages available for it, including UCSD Pascal. The only reference I ever saw in the microcompter press about TM990 systems was a couple of articles in the Feb. '83 99er mag by David G. Brader, about the aforesaid TM990/602 and UCSD Pascal. I contacted Brader not too long ago on the off chance, btw, but he says the system is long gone. TM990 systems live on in the industrial automation and control world, as TI used them heavily in-house. I've mentioned before here the VPU200 programmers for TI sequencers and PLC's are TM990 based. (They have a 7-slot backplane, btw.) Seimens, which bought the TI industrial controls business, still lists parts for them in their catalogs, so many if not most industrial automation supply houses will still have parts, though not at hobbyist prices. (This is one case where ebay is definitely your friend, though. I picked up a TM990/311 buffered I/O board for cheap there.) I'm working on a VPU200 right now which has what looks like a 101MA processor board, 64Kw RAM board (pn. I'm not sure of), Floppy controller, pn. undetermined. and a 5TI sequencer interface port, pn. undetermined. (These boards don't have the TM990 numbers on them, just the regular TI pn.s. So far I haven't found an xref.) Luckily I have the "OS" (actually just an executive, a few utilities, and the programming app.)for it (5TI, 6MT, and PM550 versions), and it looks like TX990 underneath the hood, so I may be able to get some other TX990 apps running on it. This particular VPU200 has one 360K 5-1/4" floppy. The TM990/602 had IIRC an FD800 or FD1000 dual floppy setup. The VPU200 has a CRT and keyboard as part of the case, the /602 uses a serial terminal. The 4-slot card cage and backplane is a TM990/510. With power supply, TM990/522. That may help you if you try to get yours running. There were plenty of other TM990 boards. Bubble memory, A/D, D/A, I/O, extra-hi-density (3.0M, 5-1/4") floppy, GPIB, TIWAY host, comm, something called "MUX CPU", speech synth, different memory boards. Don't know about hard disks or scsi, but that proto board looks like just the thing for constructing an IDE interface. Yours looks like some kind of timer/counter or signal generator of some kind. There is at least one other 100-contiguous-pin bus TI used, in the DS990/1 computer/771 terminal. The form factor is different, having only one card ejector on the left end, front-facing, with a larger board extent on the right end, front-facing. The actual bus may be similar or the same, but I can't say at the moment. Will post some pics, manuals soon, though. Promise. jbdigriz From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 9 06:35:56 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 07:35:56 -0400 Subject: choosing a 360k FDD Message-ID: <0JPN009YJ6TBW0P1@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: choosing a 360k FDD > From: David Griffith > Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:05:29 -0700 (PDT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > >So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put >in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64, >Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best >specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. >According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something >about this? > >By the way, I have an IBM-branded full-height Tandon that I will trade for >the "ideal" half-height. > >-- >David Griffith >dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu I have a collection of drive but my go to drives are the TEAC 55B for 360K, and 55FG for 720k/1.2M. Allison From spedraja at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 08:37:02 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 15:37:02 +0200 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS In-Reply-To: <470B793A.4070203@compsys.to> References: <0JPM0043Q3KXT1O6@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> <470B793A.4070203@compsys.to> Message-ID: Hi, Jerome: Then perhaps you can describe your other hardware - backplane > with power supply. Do you have a BA23 or a BA11 box? Or > something else? What about the serial ports, etc.? The PDP-11/23-PLUS comes in one BA11. I have another BA11 plus the boards to connect both, but this is not important for this matter, I think. I have too one PDP-11/53 ( not sure at all) who uses one BA23. It's state is not good in excess, but I don't want to dismantle it... by now. I agree that the RQDX1, RQDX2 and RQDX3 require a distribution > panel of some sort to change from the 50 pin cable to the > 34 pin / 20 pin cable required by MFM hard drives and floppy > drives. That panel is usually part of a BA23 box. A BA123 box > uses a distribution board which can handle 4 drives, but the > hard drives also require an additional READY / WRITE PROTECT > (very small) panel. > > Probably a 3rd party controller like the Dilog DM01 is what > you are looking for. But I suspect that these days, an RQDX3 > is probably more easily found - except for that internal > distribution panel which is also required if you are using > a BA11 box. > Well, this is something :-) I didn't hear about the DM01 previously. This is helpful, but I accept pleasantly other suggestions and, of course, any offer about items like this one (for example). Don't forget the ESDI option that I've mentioned previously. And, of course, we ever have the option of one SCSI board, but I am not sure about what was the better option for one QBUS PDP. QMD Perhaps ? I have too one SCSI Hard Disk but not sure even if it works :-) Thanks and Greetings Sergio From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 9 08:45:37 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:45:37 -0400 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS Message-ID: <0JPN000UVCTF1VMC@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS > From: "Sergio Pedraja" > Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 08:57:56 +0200 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Hi, Allison. > >I'm perplexed. The RQDXn controllers are MFM and Floppy. Best shot >> is late firmware RQDX3 as it does RX33 and most all MFM drives. Its >> also easier to find. >> >> >At least as I can remember, the RQDx3 needs an internal distribution > panel. I'm searching for ONE single board. Understood. Most of the nonDEC FM/EDSI boards still require a distribution pannel as they were targeting DEC systems. At a minimum you need to make a hybrid cable to use them with one drive. How can you tell? Simple, if the board is said to do FM/EDSI and has only a 50pin connector a breakout board (distribution pannel) is required. Most do. I have several differnt examples of nonDEC MSCP controllers for floppy and hard disks and they all like the 50pin cable to breakout. There may be some that do not I don't have one. Actually there are several possible distribution or breakout boards. They primarily serve to translate the 50pin RQDX cable to the more typical cables used for floppy and FN/EDSI disks. One is the distribution pannel used in the BA23 and its only connectors and wires so easily duplicated. Its function is to take the 50pin cable from the RQDXn (or nonDEC MSCP) and route them to the 34pin connector for floppy and the 26/34 pin cables used for MFM. It is located in back of the drive bay of the BA23 and can be used outside of BA23. The second is the M9058 used in the BA123 and that is a dual width Qbus board that can support 1 floppy and 3 hard disks. It's Qbus but only takes power for running the local buffers and extended device select plus providing the interconnect point for the ready/writelock switch pannel. While it appears complex it's really trivial and is better described as a breakout board. If You get a M9058 it is not required to install it on the Qbus, only provide it with needed power if that is mechanically more suitable. The reason for that is while it's dual width it's thick due to the presence of many connectors. The M9058 is typically located outside the BA123 backplane cage nearest the disk bays for easy cable routing. There is a third board RQDXE that is for use mostly in BA23s for extending the RQDXn outside the case for additional drives. Its of limited utility as breakout/distribution. I know this from fitting two half height HD + RX33 in ba23 and also putting RQDX3 in BA11S with RX33 and 3 RD52s. Hope this helps. The only MSCP boards I've used that didn't require breakout were SCSI. Allison From spedraja at gmail.com Tue Oct 9 12:38:59 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 19:38:59 +0200 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS In-Reply-To: <839530.45581.qm@web52712.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <839530.45581.qm@web52712.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi, Ian: 2007/10/9, Mr Ian Primus : > > > See this site for pinouts and details: > http://home.alltel.net/engdahl/rqdx3.htm > > -Ian > Mmm... I see. I should need to construct this elemental circuit, but I must confess my null experience with it... Fortunately I got help :-) But I must translate to spanish this page for the helper... And perhaps clear some points of the text, now that I'm reading it more in deep. With independence of this, my request for one board if available continues. Thanks and Greetings Sergio Pedraja From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 9 12:50:17 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:50:17 -0400 Subject: DEC RSX-11 Message-ID: <0JPN0034JO54HEQ4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> HALP! I just decided to attack a micro-11 system I had not attendded to. Good news is it's pristine and complete: BA23, 11/23BH, 512k (M8057), DEQNA, RQDX2(late firmware). The RD52 has RXS11 and boots. It's been a long time since I used RSX and longer since I've administered it. So some procedures for doing things I need to know or a pointer to. TO shut down I do? TO change admin password how, and which account again? If I add a 8line mux (DHV or DZV) what the procedure to get system to install and recognise it. On line DOCs to refresh memory from? I'm most comfortable with VMS, Ultrix and RT-11 but never bothered with RSX for a home system. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 9 14:29:24 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:29:24 -0400 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products Message-ID: <0JPN00NU4SR739N0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: PDP-11 graphics products > From: "Zane H. Healy" > Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 12:21:52 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >At 1:02 PM -0600 10/9/07, Richard wrote: >>Does anyone have a comprehensive list of graphics products (UNIBUS or >>Q-BUS) for the PDP-11 family of minicomputers? >> >>Please don't list terminals with graphics capability, that's not what >>I'm after. > >I'm not aware of such a list, I believe there are only about 3-6 >"video cards". I've a 3rd party card that was used in a Cameca >Microprobe (Electron Microscope). The DEC cards were/are popular in >spectrum analyzers, and a lot of those are still in service in labs. > >Zane Ones I know of are the QVSS, QDSS and the Matrox cards for QBus but versions for unibus may exist. I do have a video/graphics card for Qbus but no info or vendor name but I can say it's NOT DEC or Matrox. Allison From jrr at flippers.com Tue Oct 9 16:18:13 2007 From: jrr at flippers.com (John Robertson) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:18:13 -0700 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470BF015.8060503@flippers.com> Zane H. Healy wrote: > We live in a 2nd floor apartment, and are getting ready to put our Neo > Geo 4-Slot into storage. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on > this. We are thinking a refrigerator dolly, along with a U-Haul truck > that will allow it to stand up during transport. Does this sound > about right? How many people does something like this take to get > down the stairs? It took 3 people to get it up the stairs when we > bought it a few years ago. > > Zane > > > You can normally lay a commercial video game down on its back for driving around a city. If you wish to reduce the handling weight then take the monitor out of the game - be careful!!! - it adds about 75 lbs to the load and will make it a lot easier to handle on stairs. A good fridge dolly that straps the game to the dolly is best, stair-walkers are essential for going down a flight of stairs - and unless you or your friends are linebackers do NOT be underneath the game in case it slips.... John :-#)# -- John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9 Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, VideoGames) www.flippers.com "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out" From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 9 16:18:02 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:18:02 -0400 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS Message-ID: <0JPN0034AXS8HIJ5@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS > From: "Glen Slick" > Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 11:55:21 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > >On 10/9/07, Allison wrote: >> The only MSCP boards I've used that didn't require breakout were >> SCSI. >> > >I have at least three Q-bus MSCP ESDI controllers that have standard >20-pin & 34-pin IDC header ESDI connectors, no breakout required. >Emulex QD21, Dilog DQ696, Sigma SDC-RQD11. They are hard disk only >though, so maybe in general controllers with floppy support do require >breakout adapters. That may be the difference as all of my MSCP with RQDXn replacements need a breakout or a funky cable to do it. I do not have anything for ESDI. Allison >I also have an Andromeda ESDC Q-Bus ESDI controller which I haven't >been able to use yet as I am lacking documentation on how to configure >it. Anyone have a manual? I don't see any Andromeda manuals at all >on bitsavers. > >-Glen From lynchaj at yahoo.com Tue Oct 9 19:21:53 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:21:53 -0400 Subject: 100TPI floppy disk drives Message-ID: <000001c80ad3$8f7e85b0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Hi, I recently bought this S-100 chassis with four Vector Graphic boards. Based on what I gathered from searches, the Vector Graphic system uses 100TPI floppy disk drives. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSAA:US:1 1&Item=320164273848 Will anyone confirm which disk drives are compatible with the Vector Graphic floppy disk controller? I believe those 100TPI drives such as the Tandon TM-100-4M. There are probably others from Micropolis as well so if you know of some please include them in a response. In addition, I would like to extend the Catweasel hard sector decoder software concept to the Vector Graphic 16 sector 5.25" hard sector floppy disks. I have written Catweasel floppy disk decoder software for the NorthStar which now seems to be working pretty good. Also, the Catweasel Heath project is coming along although not as far along as the Catweasel NorthStar software. It can make images of Heath SSSD floppy disks. Does anyone have some 100TPI floppy disk drives they would be willing to sell? I think I will need at least two or three drives total so even if you have only a single drive you can part with, I would appreciate an offer. Thanks! Andrew Lynch From lynchaj at yahoo.com Tue Oct 9 19:37:31 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:37:31 -0400 Subject: Extracting CDOS files Message-ID: <000001c80ad5$be8072e0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> [snip] > >Masking out pin 8 (Index) on the 34-pin connector has no effect, I >still get: > >Error reading diskette B: (Cyl 1, Side 1, Sect 1) >Sector not found > >This sector DOES exist, both ImageDisk and TeleDisk can read it fine, >however no amount of "Retry" will convice 22disk to read it. Dave, Have you considered using the Tim Mann software (cw2dmk) and the Catweasel? That would pull up whatever information is on the disk and you could use it to diagnose what is wrong with the disk. It won't decode the CDOS file format but it will give you the sector headers and the raw sector data. If you send me a disk, I will return it with a raw disk Catweasel image from cw2dmk. Best of luck with your project. Andrew Lynch From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Wed Oct 10 01:44:46 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 23:44:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Sinclair Power Pack 1 tape contents Message-ID: I think I've sucessfully digitized the Timex Sinclair 1000 Power Pack 1 (2K RAM) tape. Would someone with a Sinclair and a tape player please check my result? Please email me privately so I can give you the correct URL. I don't want random people hammering my connection. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Oct 10 04:03:36 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:03:36 +0200 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: <0JPN00NU4SR739N0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPN00NU4SR739N0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On 10/9/07, Allison wrote: > >At 1:02 PM -0600 10/9/07, Richard wrote: > >>Does anyone have a comprehensive list of graphics products (UNIBUS or > >>Q-BUS) for the PDP-11 family of minicomputers? > > > Ones I know of are the QVSS, QDSS and the Matrox cards for QBus but > versions for unibus may exist. I do have a video/graphics card for > Qbus but no info or vendor name but I can say it's NOT DEC or Matrox. I, too, have a Qbus video card that's not DEC or Matrox. I can't recall the name, but I've posted about it before - 512x512, at least 12 bit color, but we used the green-channel-only as a 16-grey-scale monitor for displaying ultrasonic scan data (4-bit samples). We used it with RT-11 and custom-written software. I know nothing about what driver support there ever was for it, but I do recall that it wasn't that hard to talk to. -ethan From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Oct 10 04:46:06 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:46:06 +0200 Subject: DEC RSX-11 In-Reply-To: <0JPN0034JO54HEQ4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPN0034JO54HEQ4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: On 10/9/07, Allison wrote: > HALP! > > I just decided to attack a micro-11 system... > > It's been a long time since I used RSX and longer since > I've administered it. So some procedures for doing things > I need to know or a pointer to. > > TO shut down I do? IIRC, from an account with privs, it _might_ be... @[1,4]SHUTUP.CMD ... or something quite similar. > TO change admin password how, and which account again? It's been a long time, and I've worked with a variety of early-1980s versions of RSX, but the account, at least, is probably [1,4]. Unfortunately, I can't recall what program you have to invoke to twiddle passwords and privs. It might even be dependent on exactly what version of RSX you have, if it's an old one (not all that likely, though, if it's a MicroPDP. It would be more likely on an 11/34, say). > If I add a 8line mux (DHV or DZV) what the procedure to get > system to install and recognise it. IIRC, you'll have to do some type of SYSGEN - lots of questions to answer, then several hours as your wee little F-11 spins its wheels and builds a new system. I haven't done a sysgen in over 20 years, so hopefully someone else with fresher experience can speak up. > On line DOCs to refresh memory from? I don't know of any, and I wasn't able to Google any. :-/ -ethan From joachim.thiemann at gmail.com Wed Oct 10 08:05:26 2007 From: joachim.thiemann at gmail.com (Joachim Thiemann) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:05:26 -0400 Subject: Sinclair Power Pack 1 tape contents In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4affc5e0710100605g29db556r1dc3413a44a1f76@mail.gmail.com> On 10/10/2007, David Griffith wrote: > I think I've sucessfully digitized the Timex Sinclair 1000 Power Pack 1 > (2K RAM) tape. Would someone with a Sinclair and a tape player please > check my result? > > Please email me privately so I can give you the correct URL. I don't want > random people hammering my connection. I've got one of those, I could give it a try... Joe. From jfoust at threedee.com Wed Oct 10 09:44:53 2007 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:44:53 -0500 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710092122h62deca26m3678d4817b87585b@mail.gmail.co m> References: <002301c80ac4$623fdf40$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <51ea77730710091934s7e1bd373g72b5f7c9da1d721c@mail.gmail.com> <6.2.3.4.2.20071009215036.04b77380@mail> <51ea77730710092122h62deca26m3678d4817b87585b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20071010092719.04b01ac0@mail> At 11:22 PM 10/9/2007, you wrote: >Yep, I remember finding your page when I saw a Terak on ebay a year or >so ago. Even though I don't know much about them, it's in my top-5 >wanted items list. Must be the unique-factor. Same goes for the >Symbolics machines :) There was a Terak on eBay!? Wow. Never saw that. What did it go for? I have four or five 8510/a's and matching monitors, plus a box or two of parts, as well as a rare hard drive. I know another fellow from my old days in the computer graphics business who has a slightly larger pile as well as a color Terak or two. I have a lot of other computers that I'd give away before I'd give away these, just on the theory that you should pick one system and specialize, as well as my baby-duck affection for having used them in college approximately 53 million years ago. When they asked me to bring a working Terak to the 25-year UCSD Pascal reunion a few years ago, I was sad to discover that my last working unit no longer powered-on. When I get around to it, I'll need to figure out why. The other long-standing to-do item would be to create extensions for one of the PDP-11 emulators to match the Terak's hardware. - John From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Wed Oct 10 10:00:40 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 08:00:40 -0700 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet Message-ID: <538dc77821f811cfaa1d0bc0b9ba7609@valleyimplants.com> > Quoth Ian > But, of course, in an ideal world, all this would be > much easier. First consider a stairwell with a 45 > degree incline, and a spherical arcade machine.... Ideal world? I'm thinking Sisyphus here... From dundas at caltech.edu Wed Oct 10 10:24:38 2007 From: dundas at caltech.edu (John A. Dundas III) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 08:24:38 -0700 Subject: DEC RSX-11 In-Reply-To: <0JPN0034JO54HEQ4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPN0034JO54HEQ4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: At 1:50 PM -0400 10/9/07, Allison wrote: >HALP! > >I just decided to attack a micro-11 system I had not attendded to. >Good news is it's pristine and complete: > > BA23, 11/23BH, 512k (M8057), DEQNA, RQDX2(late firmware). > >The RD52 has RXS11 and boots. What version? >It's been a long time since I used RSX and longer since >I've administered it. So some procedures for doing things >I need to know or a pointer to. > >TO shut down I do? >RUN $SHUTUP from a privileged account. LB:[1,2]SHUTUP.CMD can be edited to include local shutdown tasks. It is invoked as part of $SHUTUP.TSK. >TO change admin password how, and which account again? If this is a version of RSX that has DCL installed, use SET PASSWORD. Otherwise >RUN $ACNT >If I add a 8line mux (DHV or DZV) what the procedure to get >system to install and recognise it. Either VMR or @[200,200]SYSGEN; no longer remember under what circumstances you could "just" VMR. >On line DOCs to refresh memory from? I've assembled some of mine, Al's, and others at John From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 10 11:36:52 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:36:52 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:40:50 -0400. Message-ID: In article , "William Donzelli" writes: > > Such as? > > > > Today's graphics cards are the fanciest devices available ever. > > Here is a function that "the fanciest devices available ever" can not do: > > Intergraph marketed VAXes as servers - 8550s, I think. They had custom > disk controllers that had processing engines to search the disks for > graphics primitives, independent of the VAX. Its not a graphics feature. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 10 11:37:47 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:37:47 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:32:16 -0400. <200710100240.WAA16058@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: In article <200710100240.WAA16058 at Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>, der Mouse writes: > In pseudo-C pseudo-code, the per-pixel operation was not > > DACinput[chan] = cmap[chan][pixeldata[chan]] > > but rather > > DACinput[chan] = cmap[sw2[chan]][pixdata[sw1[sw2[chan]]]] This is trivially done in a pixel shader on modern cards. Next? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 10 11:39:22 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:39:22 -0600 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:03:36 +0200. Message-ID: In article , "Ethan Dicks" writes: > I, too, have a Qbus video card that's not DEC or Matrox. I can't > recall the name, but I've posted about it before - 512x512, at least > 12 bit color, but we used the green-channel-only as a 16-grey-scale > monitor for displaying ultrasonic scan data (4-bit samples). We used > it with RT-11 and custom-written software. I know nothing about what > driver support there ever was for it, but I do recall that it wasn't > that hard to talk to. Pictures? Architecture info (some sort of block diagram maybe)? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 10 11:42:01 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:42:01 -0600 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:32:24 -0700. Message-ID: In article , Scott Quinn writes: > Check the dates on your OLS PSUs - some of the early ones were > defective and could catch fire. I love it when people toss out stuff like this without any specifics (what dates?). The way people constantly warn of this and that on this list makes you afraid to plug anything in and ever turn it on, which is a waste. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 10 11:43:12 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:43:12 -0700 Subject: 100TPI floppy disk drives In-Reply-To: <000001c80ad3$8f7e85b0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> References: <000001c80ad3$8f7e85b0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Message-ID: <470C9EB0.5605.1D68F3@cclist.sydex.com> On 9 Oct 2007 at 20:21, Andrew Lynch wrote: > Does anyone have some 100TPI floppy disk drives they would be willing to > sell? I think I will need at least two or three drives total so even if you > have only a single drive you can part with, I would appreciate an offer. Insofar as I'm aware, Micropolis originated the 100 tpi format and there were few followers. I recall that Micropolis even marketed their own 2-drive box for a time. Not every old Micropolis drive you see, however, will be 100 tpi. They also made 96 and 48 tpi drives. Tandon TM-100-3M (Single sided) TM-100-4M (Double sided)and a couple of MPI/CDC drives was about the extent of the cloning, as far as I know. Some of the old CBM Pet drive boxes (8050/8250?) used Micropolis drives; Vector was about the last one out of the bath with their Tandon TM-100-4Ms. Bottom line is that they were made by only a handful of manufacturers (if three is a handful), were never common, and were pretty much history by 1980--and a fair number were single-sided. Cheers, Chuck From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Wed Oct 10 11:48:57 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:48:57 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: > > Check the dates on your OLS PSUs - some of the early ones were > > defective and could catch fire. > > I love it when people toss out stuff like this without any specifics > (what dates?). > > The way people constantly warn of this and that on this list makes > you afraid to plug anything in and ever turn it on, which is a waste. Actually, in Scott's defense, I found the same document already (some days ago) and it does not give dates nor serial numbers for the OLS' in question. It simply says to keep paperwork out of the Onyx (!) and should you notice a funny smell shut it down immediately. I kid you not. The unit is, as Richard knows, an Onyx 10k - so I believe it's new enough not to be an issue. JP From earl at baugh.org Wed Oct 10 11:55:40 2007 From: earl at baugh.org (earl at baugh.org) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:55:40 -0400 Subject: IBM PC Network Adapter 6450213 for shipping? Message-ID: I've found (in the slowly shrinking pile I'm trying to distribute) an IBM PC Network Adapter identified by what I believe is the part number 6450213 I've got the original box (from 1985 looks like) and driver disks and manuals. Doesn't look like this has ever been used. 8 Bit card, with a coax connector (it includes the coax cable). Not sure exactly what kind of network it would connect to... but I definitely have no need for it. Before I toss it in the scrapper, figured I'd see if anybody was interested in it for the price of shipping... (it also has a diagnostics for IBM Personal Computer AT, Hardware Reference Library Diagnostics, and IBM PC XT compatibility test diskettes...) Earl From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 10 12:13:39 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:13:39 -0600 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:48:57 -0500. Message-ID: In article , JP Hindin writes: > On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: > > > Check the dates on your OLS PSUs - some of the early ones were > > > defective and could catch fire. > > > > I love it when people toss out stuff like this without any specifics > > (what dates?). > > > > The way people constantly warn of this and that on this list makes > > you afraid to plug anything in and ever turn it on, which is a waste. > > Actually, in Scott's defense, I found the same document already (some days > ago) and it does not give dates nor serial numbers for the OLS' in > question. It simply says to keep paperwork out of the Onyx (!) and should > you notice a funny smell shut it down immediately. I kid you not. My point is that if you listened to every dire warning on this list, you'd never plug anything in and use it. Warnings about this and that are tossed out regularly on this list, along with the immediate counter-opinion that those warnings are exaggerations that you needn't concern yourself with. Given all the conflicting information and personal anecdotes that people swear by ("turning on a VT100 will destructively read the ROM") that others have not experienced, the conflicting warnings and advice have lead me to the conclusion of just generally ignoring all such warnings and advice from this list. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From wdonzelli at gmail.com Wed Oct 10 12:41:23 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:41:23 -0400 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > My point is that if you listened to every dire warning on this list, > you'd never plug anything in and use it. > > Warnings about this and that are tossed out regularly on this list, > along with the immediate counter-opinion that those warnings are > exaggerations that you needn't concern yourself with. You are getting dangerously close to one of the great revelations of collecting life: Most collectors do not do anything with their collections. Nearly all of us are on this constant drive to get new items, chase them down, acquire them - then put them in the pile. 5 percent of the pile gets used and played with 95 percent of the time. The dire warnings are mostly as solid as a souffle. Cue the usual suspects to rebut. -- Will From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 10 12:43:20 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:43:20 -0400 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 9, 2007, at 5:26 PM, Tony Duell wrote: > PPL Video Disk (A special hard disk that stored video as an FM signal, > one frape per track. COlour output, rack of boards to control it. > Linked > to a DR11-B again) Wow...that sounds like fun! > Does the AMT DAP count :-) An SIMD machine with a graphics output that > links to a DR11-W That also sounds like fun. Years ago, I had an AED 767, which I suppose was a cross between a graphics subsystem and a graphics terminal. It was a 2U rackmount chassis to which one connected a keyboard and monitor, and it had a DMA port which connected to (in my case) a dual-width Qbus card in a PDP-11. I had lots and lots of fun with that setup. I have no idea what happened to it (this was ~1986) and would love to get my hands on another one. Has anyone else worked on those? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From aek at bitsavers.org Wed Oct 10 12:45:11 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:45:11 -0700 Subject: Terak simulator Message-ID: <470D0FA7.20608@bitsavers.org> > The other long-standing to-do item would be to create > extensions for one of the PDP-11 emulators to match the Terak's hardware. http://sourceforge.net/projects/bk-terak-emu/ From jfoust at threedee.com Wed Oct 10 13:03:30 2007 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:03:30 -0500 Subject: Terak simulator In-Reply-To: <470D0FA7.20608@bitsavers.org> References: <470D0FA7.20608@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20071010125356.051425c8@mail> At 12:45 PM 10/10/2007, you wrote: >> The other long-standing to-do item would be to create >> extensions for one of the PDP-11 emulators to match the Terak's hardware. > >http://sourceforge.net/projects/bk-terak-emu/ "Emulator of the LSI-11 based Soviet home microcomputers of the Elektronika BK-0010 family and of the Terak-8510/a (planned, need ROM/binaries to proceed). Linux, SDL." I did hear from Leo in 2004. He said "From what I can gather, BK is a somewhat cutdown Terak - without the hardware text mode and, originally, with a tape recorder interface, therefore with a significant part of the memory devoted to the BIOS, character generator and Basic or Focal ROM." He needed a ROM image, which I couldn't provide - lacking a functioning Terak or a ROM reader. I'd be glad to lend some ROMs if someone's up for the task. - John From dm561 at torfree.net Wed Oct 10 12:24:36 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:24:36 -0300 Subject: 100TPI floppy disk drives Message-ID: <01C80B49.6AF1AA80@MSE_D03> ------------Original Message: Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 20:21:53 -0400 From: "Andrew Lynch" Subject: 100TPI floppy disk drives Hi, I recently bought this S-100 chassis with four Vector Graphic boards. Based on what I gathered from searches, the Vector Graphic system uses 100TPI floppy disk drives. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSAA:US:1 1&Item=320164273848 Will anyone confirm which disk drives are compatible with the Vector Graphic floppy disk controller? I believe those 100TPI drives such as the Tandon TM-100-4M. There are probably others from Micropolis as well so if you know of some please include them in a response. In addition, I would like to extend the Catweasel hard sector decoder software concept to the Vector Graphic 16 sector 5.25" hard sector floppy disks. I have written Catweasel floppy disk decoder software for the NorthStar which now seems to be working pretty good. Also, the Catweasel Heath project is coming along although not as far along as the Catweasel NorthStar software. It can make images of Heath SSSD floppy disks. Does anyone have some 100TPI floppy disk drives they would be willing to sell? I think I will need at least two or three drives total so even if you have only a single drive you can part with, I would appreciate an offer. Thanks! Andrew Lynch ----------------Reply: FWIW, my Vector MZ has a pair of Micropolis 1016-II drives which AFAIK are SS 77Trk 100TPI drives, with a Vector Graphics Disk Controller marked FD CONTROL B MICROPOLIS. However, I believe Vector Graphic used different drives in some later models, even soft sector in some if I'm not mistaken. mike From aek at bitsavers.org Wed Oct 10 13:27:37 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:27:37 -0700 Subject: AED (was PDP-11 graphics products) Message-ID: <470D1999.3040708@bitsavers.org> > Years ago, I had an AED 767, which I suppose was a cross between a > graphics subsystem and a graphics terminal. > Has anyone else worked on those? I worked at AED from 84 - 86 and was the architect of the AED 1280, which was their last graphics terminal. The 767 is a modification of the AED 512 which used 64k instead of 16k DRAMs and 4x the frame buffer space. The original designers of the 512 did their own version called the Jupiter 7. It has a 6502 processor and an RS232 or 'AED' (parallel intf, the same as the AED 3100 floppy ctlr) parallel interface. I still have most of the docs/firmware for these. AED terminals were popular with chip designers. The Berkeley CAD tools suite supported them, as well as VTI. From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 10 13:27:18 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:27:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: choosing a 360k FDD In-Reply-To: <0JPN009YJ6TBW0P1@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPN009YJ6TBW0P1@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <20071010112534.G17787@shell.lmi.net> On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Allison wrote: > I have a collection of drive but my go to drives are the TEAC 55B > for 360K, and 55FG for 720k/1.2M. I'm sure that most of us will agree completely. But, when I need to screw around with the drive, use it with a flux transition board (Option, Catweasel, turnover, etc.), or mask off index, I switch to the TM100-2 From hoelscher-kirchbrak at freenet.de Wed Oct 10 13:31:39 2007 From: hoelscher-kirchbrak at freenet.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?H=F6lscher?=) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:31:39 +0200 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS Message-ID: Sergio, I made good experience with the SRQD11 Controller for ST506 (=MFM) disks made by the Australian Webster Computer Corporation. It can interface one disk (genuine DEC RDs or any other MFMs) to your PDP-11 or MicroVAX without any additional boards or panels. Mine has been running as well in my PDP-11/03 [RT-11] as in my MicroVAX I [VMS], which is VERY picky about disk controllers. Another good choice would be an Emulex QD21 for ESDI disks or even an Emulex UC07 for SCSI disks (if you find one). Ulli From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 10 13:33:09 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:33:09 -0400 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 10, 2007, at 1:41 PM, William Donzelli wrote: >> My point is that if you listened to every dire warning on this list, >> you'd never plug anything in and use it. >> >> Warnings about this and that are tossed out regularly on this list, >> along with the immediate counter-opinion that those warnings are >> exaggerations that you needn't concern yourself with. > > You are getting dangerously close to one of the great revelations of > collecting life: > > Most collectors do not do anything with their collections. > > Nearly all of us are on this constant drive to get new items, chase > them down, acquire them - then put them in the pile. 5 percent of the > pile gets used and played with 95 percent of the time. The dire > warnings are mostly as solid as a souffle. > > Cue the usual suspects to rebut. I'll take that cue. I regularly use the PDP-8/m that lives on my desk, as well as my Kaypro 10 (though its hard drive died last week, sob). I don't use much of my other stuff lately due to thermal restrictions, but that's easing off now. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 10 13:35:23 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:35:23 -0400 Subject: Terak simulator In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20071010125356.051425c8@mail> References: <470D0FA7.20608@bitsavers.org> <6.2.3.4.2.20071010125356.051425c8@mail> Message-ID: On Oct 10, 2007, at 2:03 PM, John Foust wrote: >>> The other long-standing to-do item would be to create >>> extensions for one of the PDP-11 emulators to match the Terak's >>> hardware. >> >> http://sourceforge.net/projects/bk-terak-emu/ > > "Emulator of the LSI-11 based Soviet home microcomputers of the > Elektronika BK-0010 family and of the Terak-8510/a (planned, > need ROM/binaries to proceed). Linux, SDL." > > I did hear from Leo in 2004. He said "From what I can gather, BK > is a somewhat cutdown Terak - without the hardware text mode and, > originally, > with a tape recorder interface, therefore with a significant part > of the > memory devoted to the BIOS, character generator and Basic or Focal > ROM." > > He needed a ROM image, which I couldn't provide - lacking a > functioning > Terak or a ROM reader. I'd be glad to lend some ROMs if someone's up > for the task. I'm happy to read 'em.. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From aek at bitsavers.org Wed Oct 10 13:51:09 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:51:09 -0700 Subject: Terak simulator Message-ID: <470D1F1D.3040406@bitsavers.org> > Terak or a ROM reader. I'd be glad to lend some ROMs if someone's up > for the task. > I'm happy to read 'em.. There is a file called TERAK.ROM dated Nov 2004 in the distribution. I had thought he had told me he had the Terak simulation working. From jfoust at threedee.com Wed Oct 10 14:00:24 2007 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:00:24 -0500 Subject: Terak simulator In-Reply-To: <470D1F1D.3040406@bitsavers.org> References: <470D1F1D.3040406@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20071010135810.04f340d0@mail> At 01:51 PM 10/10/2007, Al Kossow wrote: >> I'm happy to read 'em.. > >There is a file called TERAK.ROM dated Nov 2004 in the distribution. I had thought he >had told me he had the Terak simulation working. That's only 128 bytes in the tar I just downloaded - doesn't seem big enough. He based it on the 'pdp', a PDP-11 simulator from 1994 by Eric A. Edwards. Any opinions on the speed or fidelity of that emulator? - John From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Oct 10 14:01:23 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:01:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Terak simulator In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20071010125356.051425c8@mail> References: <470D0FA7.20608@bitsavers.org> <6.2.3.4.2.20071010125356.051425c8@mail> Message-ID: <200710101905.PAA02209@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > He needed a ROM image, which I couldn't provide - lacking a > functioning Terak or a ROM reader. I'd be glad to lend some ROMs if > someone's up for the task. I can read them if they're 2732/2764/27128/27256/etc, or sufficiently compatible to work in a reader designed for those. /~\ 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 Wed Oct 10 14:33:01 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:33:01 -0500 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470D28ED.30609@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I was chatting with one of our electrical co-op's linemen. He > mentioned that when dealing with outages, that disconnected lines > sometimes aren't. Apparently some workers have been surprised when > some enterprising homeowner decided to fire up his portable generator > without pulling the main disconnect. People are idiots. (c)2007 Seriously, it doesn't matter what sort of warning or obstacle you provide, if your work gets in the way of their plans, they'll go around it. I was once working on a '40s-era bridge hoist that had its main wiring panel on the bridge. I had thrown the 480V main breaker, taped it down with red 100mph tape, and tied the outer latch of the breaker box down with a red flag*. I had my hands in the wiring panel (and my butt on the outer beam of the bridge, 25 feet off the floor), when the bridge took off moving! One of the welders had untied the red flag from the breaker box, removed the tape from the switch, turned on the breaker, and was running the hoist down to his table to move a finished beam. Apparently** it never occurred to him that there might be a reason for all that rigamarole. * The hoist wasn't the only equipment powered from that breaker panel, and the other stuff was live, so I couldn't lock the box. ** I'm not sure, as I never got a chance to ask him. I was told later that he complained to the shop foreman because I was throwing wrenches and curses at him, and when he explained the situation, the foreman advised him to make himself gone before I got down on the floor. Doc From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 10 14:49:32 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:49:32 -0700 Subject: 100TPI floppy disk drives In-Reply-To: <01C80B49.6AF1AA80@MSE_D03> References: <01C80B49.6AF1AA80@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <470CCA5C.17784.C80440@cclist.sydex.com> On 10 Oct 2007 at 14:24, M H Stein wrote: >> However, I believe Vector Graphic used different drives in some later > models, even soft sector in some if I'm not mistaken. Yes they did--both 96 tpi and 48 tpi during the last throes of the company. But, AFAIK, all of the Vector hard-sectored units were 100 tpi. I don't know about some of the old WP equipment (e.g. Lanier) that took HS 5.25" floppies, but I don't think that any were 100 tpi. Cheers, Chuck From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Wed Oct 10 16:22:41 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:22:41 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: <470C50D3.8040500@internet1.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Chad Fernandez wrote: > Does your manual actually use the words "2 phase"? Indeed it does. http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/manuals/1000/007-1736-060/pdf/007-1736-060.pdf Last paragraph on page 42. > 220v is not 2 phase, although, I can't tell you exactly why. It's been > told to me, that each 110v hot wire of 220v(actually 120v and 240v in > the US) is really the same phase, but inverses of each other, or > something like that. Real 2PH, was used quite a bit in Pennsylvania, > but has been mostly phased out, if not entirely. You know, I'm just not sure. I can't quite decide. Sometimes it appears as it 'Two Phase' is a misnomer, as you suggest - but if the units configuration can apparently be configured for Three-phase just as easily as 220v "Two phase"... it would seem to me that... oh, heck, I don't understand enough about this to be sure! I do recall someone saying that they'd run a 220v unit on a stove outlet, so I guess US 220v single-phase is what they must run on. I guess what I'm trying to work out is whether all you do is pop out one of the OLS' and it'll "just work"... somehow I seriously doubt it, but there isn't that much electrical wiring in the unit EXCEPT for the OLS' - so what would you reconfigure? Alas SGI's techpubs only contain the User Guide and are thin on all other manuals for the Onyx, that I can find at any rate. Many thanks to all; JP From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Wed Oct 10 16:30:36 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:30:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: seeking ms/pc dos 1.x Message-ID: Can someone point me to somewhere I can find bootable disk images for MS/PC DOS 1.x? I found vetusware.com, but the quality is spotty and frequently uses obscure compression programs. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 10 16:36:49 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:36:49 -0600 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:22:41 -0500. Message-ID: In article , JP Hindin writes: > Alas SGI's techpubs only contain the User Guide and are thin on all other > manuals for the Onyx, that I can find at any rate. You should be able to find: POWER Onyx and Onyx Rackmount Owner's Guide 007-1736-060.pdf -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Wed Oct 10 16:51:31 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:51:31 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: > > Alas SGI's techpubs only contain the User Guide and are thin on all other > > manuals for the Onyx, that I can find at any rate. > > You should be able to find: > > POWER Onyx and Onyx Rackmount Owner's Guide 007-1736-060.pdf >>Indeed it does. >>http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/manuals/1000/007-1736-060/pdf/007-1736-060.pdf >>Last paragraph on page 42. You mean the one in the URI I included at the top of the eMail you just responded to? :P (So I got "User" and "Owner" confused) JP From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 10 17:09:50 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:09:50 -0600 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:51:31 -0500. Message-ID: In article , JP Hindin writes: > You mean the one in the URI I included at the top of the eMail you just > responded to? :P > (So I got "User" and "Owner" confused) D'oh! Ya got me, I didn't compare URLs, just looked at the stash of manuals I grabbed from their web site. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From g-wright at att.net Wed Oct 10 17:10:23 2007 From: g-wright at att.net (g-wright at att.net) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 22:10:23 +0000 Subject: Terak simulator Message-ID: <101020072210.15045.470D4DCF0003F9B700003AC521603763169B0A02D29B9B0EBF9B0809079D99D309@att.net> I beleive I have some of the boards to these at home. Which roms ??? I thought there was a lot of them ??? OIf someone still needs them, contact me off list and I will did them out. - Jerry Jerry Wright g-wright at att.net -------------- Original message ---------------------- From: John Foust > > At 12:45 PM 10/10/2007, you wrote: > >> The other long-standing to-do item would be to create > >> extensions for one of the PDP-11 emulators to match the Terak's hardware. > > > >http://sourceforge.net/projects/bk-terak-emu/ > > "Emulator of the LSI-11 based Soviet home microcomputers of the > Elektronika BK-0010 family and of the Terak-8510/a (planned, > need ROM/binaries to proceed). Linux, SDL." > > I did hear from Leo in 2004. He said "From what I can gather, BK > is a somewhat cutdown Terak - without the hardware text mode and, originally, > with a tape recorder interface, therefore with a significant part of the > memory devoted to the BIOS, character generator and Basic or Focal ROM." > > He needed a ROM image, which I couldn't provide - lacking a functioning > Terak or a ROM reader. I'd be glad to lend some ROMs if someone's up > for the task. > > - John > From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Wed Oct 10 17:31:18 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:31:18 -0500 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion Message-ID: > > Check the dates on your OLS PSUs - some of the early ones were >> defective and could catch fire. > >I love it when people toss out stuff like this without any specifics >(what dates?). > >The way people constantly warn of this and that on this list makes >you afraid to plug anything in and ever turn it on, which is a waste. I would like to give specifics, but not having been blessed with machines from the SGI Advanced Systems Division I don't have specifics- only general information that I've picked up that this is a real and serious problem that I don't want anyone to find out about first-hand. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 9 18:36:11 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:36:11 +0100 (BST) Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: from "Richard" at Oct 10, 7 10:42:01 am Message-ID: > > > In article , > Scott Quinn writes: > > > Check the dates on your OLS PSUs - some of the early ones were > > defective and could catch fire. > > I love it when people toss out stuff like this without any specifics > (what dates?). > > The way people constantly warn of this and that on this list makes > you afraid to plug anything in and ever turn it on, which is a waste. It doesn't day that to me at all.. What it says to me is 'there might be a problem. Look for signs of overheating (discoloured PCBs/connectors), and when you first turn it on, don't leave it unattended. Keep an eye on it, and if starts to smoke, kill the power and investigate' -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 9 18:41:54 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:41:54 +0100 (BST) Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 10, 7 01:41:23 pm Message-ID: > > Most collectors do not do anything with their collections. > > Nearly all of us are on this constant drive to get new items, chase > them down, acquire them - then put them in the pile. 5 percent of the > pile gets used and played with 95 percent of the time. The dire > warnings are mostly as solid as a souffle. > > Cue the usual suspects to rebut. Assuming I'm one of the 'usual suspects' :-) I won't contradict your statnement because, alas, it;s true. Many collectors (the perjorative term for them over here is 'stamp collectors') never power anything up, and in fact won't allow machines to be powered up for fear of daamaging them. And you're right. Even those (and I include myself here) who do run their classics spend most the time working with a very small part of their collection. -tony From dave06a at dunfield.com Wed Oct 10 19:16:09 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:16:09 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <200710102320.l9ANKvZm001257@hosting.monisys.ca> > Hi > Not all the formats that 22DISK has are correct. Cross linked files > would indicate that your just not seeing the disk correctly. > Interleaving is the most likely problem but it might be just that > the tool is pointing to the wrong location for the directory. > The fact that it sees some meaningful names indicates > that is is close. I suspect interleaving may still be the > main issues. > It is too bad there are no text files, these can often > help to figure these out interleaving. You should still scan the binary > images. Sometimes there are old deleted files still on the > disk. > Dwight Yeah, I've scanned the disk images using IMDV, and there appears to be essentially no significant text - My next step is to see if I can read the disks on a real cromemco system, and if so, try creating a disk full of text files and see if I can work out how to extract them... Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From dave06a at dunfield.com Wed Oct 10 19:16:09 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:16:09 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: <20071009132928.J65389@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> > Can we see hex of the 32 bytes of some of the directory entries, > preferably with a LARGE file? > > IIRC, Cromemco used at least 3 different ways of handling extended entries > for large files. > Do you have access to how many records per block? > How many blocks per extent? > (Is the block number stored as 8 or 16 bits?) Sorry, I haven't delved back into the CDOS/CPM filesystem yet - It's been years, and I haven't found a good technical description yet (any pointers?) I have put ImageDisk images up at: www.dunfield.com/pub/index.htm You can use my IMDV (IMageDisk View) utility to browse through the sectors. > Can you use ImageDisk or TeleDisk to copy the sector contents, to produce > a "copied" disk that has readable sector 1s? Nope - the copy behaves exactly like the originals. Reads fine with IMD/TD, but 22disk has trouble - Since 22disk also reports file mislinks, it's possible that it's looking somewhere that isn't (I don't know if the Cyl1, Side1, Sec1 indication is real or logical - if logical, it might refer to a physical sector that doesn't exist... Chuck?) > IIRC, some CDOS variants (there were several) had a skew, resulting in > some other sectors on the disk being hard to get at. > > If the Cromemco machine is still in existence, they don't seem to mind > disks that have reasonable gaps, so long as you get the flag in the "boot > sector" to show the correct disk size. I've always had trouble with Cromemco disks - I find that slowing the drive to about 290 rpm makes a huge difference in being able to read the disks. The original machine used to create the disks is long gone, although I can get a Cromemco machine setup if necessary - I don't relise the thought if transferring files from a few hundred disks by serial tranfer, which is why I would really like to get a PC based solution working... > I probably won't have access to any of my stuff in the next week or two, > but I can eventually get my notes of the CDOS interleave pattern(s). Thanks, anything would help. The CDOS manual has some tables at the back, but I don't know how complete or accurate they are for all versions. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From dave06a at dunfield.com Wed Oct 10 19:18:45 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:18:45 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS files In-Reply-To: <470B8ECB.4612.5102609@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <200710102323.l9ANNXAn001735@hosting.monisys.ca> > If you can get TeleDisk files of them, send me a couple of samples > and I'll work the 22Disk stuff out for you. After we did 22Disk 1.x, > we ran into a bunch of formats with bizarre formatting (dissimilar > sector sizes, tracks distributed alternately from the middle of the > diskette, varying sector numbering from track to track, etc.) We > built a 22Disk 2.0 to handle them, but it requires that the format > definitions be compiled in, rather than as a text file. On the other > hand, it caches directory tracks and works out the fastest way to > read a track (I/O is track buffered). So there may be some hope > there if things are really strange. Thanks Chuck, That would be really awesome! I've posted both TeleDisk and ImageDisk images of the three sample disks that I have at: www.dunfield.com/pub/index.htm Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 10 18:25:28 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:25:28 -0700 Subject: Mains safety, was: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <470D28ED.30609@mdrconsult.com> References: , <470A0586.22511.58B5DA3@cclist.sydex.com>, <470D28ED.30609@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <470CFCF8.1847.18DB2B1@cclist.sydex.com> On 10 Oct 2007 at 14:33, Doc Shipley wrote: > I was once working on a '40s-era bridge hoist that had its main > wiring panel on the bridge. I had thrown the 480V main breaker, taped > it down with red 100mph tape, and tied the outer latch of the breaker > box down with a red flag*. I had my hands in the wiring panel (and my > butt on the outer beam of the bridge, 25 feet off the floor), when the > bridge took off moving! When I worked in a steel mill, you were issued a lock and a tag (there were no master keys for the locks; only you could unlock it). The tag had your clock number and department stamped on it. I suppose that some enterprising idiot could find a pair of bolt cutters or a hacksaw to remove your lock from the disconnect, but I never saw it happen. Electricity didn't bother me, but I was constantly fearful of falling objects, such as large wrenches or steel coils. Cheers, Chuck From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Oct 10 18:48:26 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:48:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Working with collections (was Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710102354.TAA03670@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > And you're right. Even those (and I include myself here) who do run > their classics spend most the time working with a very small part of > their collection. Well, FSVO "very small" and "working with". At last count I had somewhere between 60 and 70 computers. Only a few of them are off-topic here, and even them, only by the 10-year rule, which has been repeatedly said by our listowner to be but a rough guideline. I currently have 15 of them up and running. That's between 1/4 and 1/5, which seems a little large to be "a very small part". However, I could rarely be said to be "working with" more than about four of them at any given time, and even that much only if you count things like the router that's forwarding packets or the NFS sever the diskless machine is using as being machines I'm "working with". /~\ 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 jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Wed Oct 10 19:22:17 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:22:17 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <470AB27A.4010109@oldskool.org> References: <001a01c809d3$380c0380$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <470A7D25.1000309@compsys.to> <470AB27A.4010109@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <470D6CB9.2000100@compsys.to> >Jim Leonard wrote: > >Jerome H. Fine wrote: > >> But I have found >> that with a 1 GB file, it takes less overall time to copy the file to >> a hard drive >> first. > > This is a buffering issue with your md5 binary, not DVD_R technology > itself. I agree. On the other hand, it is painful to wait many minutes for each 1 GB file to be checked (produce the MD5 value) while still on the DVD and then manually check the next 1 GB file. So even if the time was the same to copy or check the file, it is far more convenient to just copy all the files on the DVD to the hard drive at which point I have also verified I can read the complete file. If I then check the file copied from the DVD media (reproduce the MD5 value), I am confident that the file on the DVD is completely valid. Interestingly, reproducing the MD5 value from the file on the hard drive takes just under a minute (just about the read speed of the file) and it takes me about the same time to manually scan the original saved MD5 value and the new value and compare them. And I just discovered that the length of the MD5 value is 128 bits (32 hex digits - I had though it was that long but somehow the 32 hex digits always became 32 bits when I though about the size) which should be more than sufficient to confirm that the file I have read with the same size as the original is IDENTICAL to the original. I remember that Tim Shoppa used MD5 values for BZ2 files that were downloaded. Since it is rare for downloads to be corrupted, MD5 is probably the most efficient way to verify that the downloaded file is identical. I agree that it would be better to use some methods to restore the archived file if corruption takes place, but yearly testing should minimize that problem. Plus with a monthly backup image, the file I want to recover is most often on more than a single backup image. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 10 19:23:30 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:23:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <20071010165821.R33761@shell.lmi.net> On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Dave Dunfield wrote: > Sorry, I haven't delved back into the CDOS/CPM filesystem yet - It's been > years, and I haven't found a good technical description yet (any pointers?) I can't immediately find one to point you to, so here is an off the top of my head rundown of the CP/M DIRectory structure (which may be completely indecipherable without illustrations or more careful wording): CDOS had one or more bytes in the first physical sector of the disk to identify which format. There ARE multiple (user modifications?) variant formats that may have the same ID byte(s)! There are track(s) set aside for system and boot. Each DIRectory entry is 32 bytes. The first byte is "user number", 0 through 31, usually 0 - a crude substitute for subdirectories, from when disks were expensive, and multiple people might share a floppy :-). If that byte is E5, then that entry is unused or deleted. Bytes 1 through 8 are "filename", padded to right with 20h Bytes 9 through 0B are "extension", padded One of the bytes 0C through 0F (I forget which, sorry) is the "extent" number. The remaining sixteen bytes, 10h through 1Fh contain a list of blocks occupied by the file. That can be up to sixteen 8 bit entries, OR up to 8 sixteen bit entries, OR even four sixteen bit entries. Depending on how many records per block there are, there might be more than one "extent" represented within that block list. Unused block numbers in the list are set to 00. Once the list is full, then the OS starts an additional DIRectory entry with a larger "extent" number. If you find alternating 00 and numbers, then it is normally a sixteen bit number. If a program is wrong about THAT, then it will think that block 0 is being crosslinked many times. If the last 8 or 12 bytes are all 00, then either it is a short file, or that particular variant is using an 8 byte, rather than sixteen byte long list. (and not putting more than one extent in the block list) Obviously, the number of records (128 byte "sectors") per block makes a difference in whether the block numbers will be 8 or sixteen bits. Later, with some more time, we can go back and clean this up to be readable. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From charlesmorris at hughes.net Wed Oct 10 19:26:51 2007 From: charlesmorris at hughes.net (Charles) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:26:51 -0500 Subject: TSX on RL02 pack? Message-ID: <16rqg396hlgi835uh5dp7b67i7vqh4pa5n@4ax.com> While playing with my 11/23+, on one of my spare RL02 packs, I found some interesting files. The disk has 982 files (lots off .XSB extensions, whatever those are) and perhaps more interestingly the following: TSKMON.NEW, TSKMON.SAV, TSX.NEW, TSX.SAV, TSXMOD.NEW, TSXSPL.TSX, TSXSWP.TSX, TSXUCL.SAV. Now I know nothing about TSX but do those filenames sound like it might be that operating system? I tried to boot from the pack but instead it came up in RT11SJ. What have I got here? thanks Charles From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Wed Oct 10 19:32:52 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:32:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Sun 3/280 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <149992.9518.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> Damn 68020. Interested though. --- William Donzelli wrote: > I have a rackmount Sun-3/280, pretty loaded up, that > I would like to > move out. I think I have a SPARC board for it as > well, to turn it into > a 4/280. No disk, but I think the interface card is > there, along with > a few others. > > The thing is a cube, a little under a 20 inches on a > side or so. I > have the front panel. I think it even has a 1/4 inch > tape drive in the > front. > > The last time I powered it up, it passed its memory > test OK, but that > was almost 10 years ago (!). > > -- > Will in 10512 > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Catch up on fall's hot new shows on Yahoo! TV. Watch previews, get listings, and more! http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/3658 From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 10 19:36:45 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:36:45 -0400 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071010165821.R33761@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> <20071010165821.R33761@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200710102036.46015.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 10 October 2007 20:23, Fred Cisin wrote: > On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Dave Dunfield wrote: > > Sorry, I haven't delved back into the CDOS/CPM filesystem yet - It's been > > years, and I haven't found a good technical description yet (any > > pointers?) > > I can't immediately find one to point you to, so here is an off the top of > my head rundown of the CP/M DIRectory structure (which may be completely > indecipherable without illustrations or more careful wording): (Snip) Let me add to that the high bit of the "name" and "type" fields being used for "attributes", like a file being read-only, etc. Some of these were pretty consistent and some of them varied from one implementation to another, thinking CP/M, CDOS (which I have no direct expierience with), Turbodos, MMMOST, and so forth. Some were, I think, "user flags", which an application could use, as well. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From jwest at classiccmp.org Wed Oct 10 19:46:19 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:46:19 -0500 Subject: TSX on RL02 pack? References: <16rqg396hlgi835uh5dp7b67i7vqh4pa5n@4ax.com> Message-ID: <001201c80ba0$23aa37d0$6600a8c0@JWEST> Charles wrote... > Now I know nothing about TSX but do those filenames sound like it > might be that operating system? They are part of the operating system for sure. I haven't booted mine up for a while, so I don't recall if that's all of it. > I tried to boot from the pack but > instead it came up in RT11SJ. What have I got here? TSX doesn't boot from "bare metal". It requires RT-11 there to boot. Once RT-11 boots, then you run TSX. At that point, TSX replaces most all of RT-11 with itself - I don't think it leaves much of RT11 if any (in memory) after it loads. So... after RT-11 boots, do "R TSX" To modify accounts... "R TSAUTH" Jay West From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 10 20:10:40 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:10:40 -0400 Subject: can anybody use this? Message-ID: <200710102110.40309.rtellason@verizon.net> While looking for something else (ain't that always the way of it? :-) I came across this box... Apparently an Olicom OC2132, it's a microchannel ethernet adapter. This is in the original box, and there's some software and documentation in there as well. I looked at the card and there are AUI and RJ45 connectors and some LED indicators on the metal bracket. I have no microchannel hardware, having divested myself of the last of it a while back, and no plans to get into any in the forseeable future. If you can use this, feel free to drop me a line offlist, and make me an offer. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk Wed Oct 10 20:44:12 2007 From: classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk (Ensor) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:44:12 +0100 Subject: Unused Collections (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion) References: Message-ID: <004201c80ba8$3aaa4df0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Hi, > You are getting dangerously close to one of the great >revelations of collecting life: > > Most collectors do not do anything with their > collections. > > Nearly all of us are on this constant drive to get new items, >chase them down, acquire them - then put them in the pile. 5 >percent of the pile gets used and played with 95 percent of the >time.... Never a truer word said.... I used to use the majority of my collection on and off, back when it was limited to around 10 machines. Once it grew larger than that, things became problematical (at one point I had well over 60 machines!). More and more machines got "mothballed" I ended up with a situation where I simply don't have the space to actually set up *ANY* of them....despite having gotten rid of some 15 machines so far this year (and only acquiring 2 or 3 new ones). The thing is though, my interest in them is primarily in the hardware anyway. Once I've stripped them down, repaired them and found out what "makes them tick" my interest in them is pretty much over (though again, I've not had the room to strip down/repair any of the machines I've collected over the past 10 years or so, dammit). TTFN - Pete. From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Wed Oct 10 22:02:01 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:02:01 -0300 Subject: HD46505 CRT controller chips References: <000001c80b81$1f568630$4ead1456@store> Message-ID: <025701c80bb3$2a89bae0$f0fea8c0@alpha> >Hi its a long shot now the post was in 2001 , but I need a Hd46505 chip !! Where is it used, Paul? Maybe I have something here?! From rivie at ridgenet.net Wed Oct 10 22:53:39 2007 From: rivie at ridgenet.net (Roger Ivie) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:53:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071010165821.R33761@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> <20071010165821.R33761@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Fred Cisin wrote: > If you find alternating 00 and numbers, then it is normally a sixteen bit > number. If a program is wrong about THAT, then it will think that block 0 > is being crosslinked many times. Can't speak for CDOS, but in CP/M block zero contains the first block of the directory; it can't be allocated to a file. Disk allocation is kept in a bitmap in memory, with one bit per block (I'm talking 2.x here; I think 3.0 used two bits per block, but I'm not up on 3.0). The BIOS indicated which blocks were allocated to the directory by supplying the first 16 bits of the allocation bitmask, making block 0 the first block of the directory. Since there must always be at least one block in the directory, block 0 can't be allocated to files. Of course, I may be wrong; wouldn't be the first time. -- roger ivie rivie at ridgenet.net From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 10 23:15:05 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:15:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> <20071010165821.R33761@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <20071010205837.F43621@shell.lmi.net> > > If you find alternating 00 and numbers, then it is normally a sixteen bit > > number. If a program is wrong about THAT, then it will think that block 0 > > is being crosslinked many times. On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Roger Ivie wrote: > Can't speak for CDOS, but in CP/M block zero contains the first block of > the directory; it can't be allocated to a file. Disk allocation is kept > in a bitmap in memory, with one bit per block (I'm talking 2.x here; I > think 3.0 used two bits per block, but I'm not up on 3.0). The BIOS > indicated which blocks were allocated to the directory by supplying the > first 16 bits of the allocation bitmask, making block 0 the first block > of the directory. Since there must always be at least one block in the > directory, block 0 can't be allocated to files. > Of course, I may be wrong; wouldn't be the first time. Yes, and if a program other than CP/M is attempting to analyze the disk, and it sees what LOOKS like block 0 having been allocated to a file, then it will choke and start talking about cross-linked files, or some other error message. THAT is what Dave was getting from 22Disk, which is why we are suggesting the possibility that the configuration of 22Disk might be expecting an 8 bit number for the block number, and when encountering a sixteen bit number less than 100h, it mistakes that for two 8 bit numbers, one of which is ZERO. GIGO: If the program is given wrong information about the disk format, or the disk format is different from what is expected, the program can not handle it successfully. When considering a program running on another OS that is attempting to read the CP/M disks, do NOT assume that allocation is kept in a bitmap in memory, and/or that the BIOS preloads those bits. There are other ways to handle it, including even making a linked list "virtual FAT". The current question is NOT whether block 0 can be allocated to a file. You are right that it can't (or shouldn't be able). The current question is "WHY is 22Disk telling Dave that there are cross-linked files?" (on a presumably valid disk) From dm561 at torfree.net Wed Oct 10 22:33:21 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:33:21 -0300 Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 50, Issue 33 Message-ID: <01C80B9E.605E7300@MSE_D03> -------------Original message: Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:30:36 -0700 (PDT) From: David Griffith Subject: seeking ms/pc dos 1.x To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Can someone point me to somewhere I can find bootable disk images for MS/PC DOS 1.x? I found vetusware.com, but the quality is spotty and frequently uses obscure compression programs. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu ------------Reply: If you have no luck elsewhere, drop me a line off-list & I'll try to dig one out for ya (if I can find it and it's still readable). mike From dm561 at torfree.net Wed Oct 10 22:33:27 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:33:27 -0300 Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion Message-ID: <01C80B9E.62E3E560@MSE_D03> -------------Original Message: Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:13:39 -0600 From: Richard Subject: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion Given all the conflicting information and personal anecdotes that people swear by ("turning on a VT100 will destructively read the ROM") that others have not experienced, the conflicting warnings and advice have lead me to the conclusion of just generally ignoring all such warnings and advice from this list. ------------Reply: It's getting harder and harder to find any wheat in the chaff on this list; no doubt in part due to the fact that some of the people who used to contribute good hard info got tired of wasting time scrolling through the irrelevant stuff and left. Even Tony who has so often contributed valuable information seems to be spending more of his time preaching and arguing his various gospels lately... m From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 01:06:38 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:06:38 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071010205837.F43621@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca>, , <20071010205837.F43621@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <470D5AFE.14689.AB3473@cclist.sydex.com> I don't know exactly what Dave's having a problem with, but from his images, I could extract files using 22Disk with no problems at all. The definition I used was CRO4. Cheers, Chuck From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Wed Oct 10 06:19:57 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:19:57 +0200 Subject: DEC RSX-11 In-Reply-To: References: <0JPN0034JO54HEQ4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <470CB55D.1020908@iais.fraunhofer.de> Ethan Dicks schrieb: > On 10/9/07, Allison wrote: > >> HALP! >> >> I just decided to attack a micro-11 system... >> >> It's been a long time since I used RSX and longer since >> I've administered it. So some procedures for doing things >> I need to know or a pointer to. >> >> TO shut down I do? >> > > IIRC, from an account with privs, it _might_ be... > > @[1,4]SHUTUP.CMD > > ... or something quite similar. > It is probably @[1,2]SHUTUP.CMD, or better RUN $SHUTUP > >> TO change admin password how, and which account again? >> RUN $ACNT and then modify the UIC [1,2]. Basically, any account [1,x] is privileged, so you might create a new account in this range before fiddling with the old one and maybe accidentally disabling it (happened to experience this myself :-)) > It's been a long time, and I've worked with a variety of early-1980s > versions of RSX, but the account, at least, is probably [1,4]. > Unfortunately, I can't recall what program you have to invoke to > twiddle passwords and privs. It might even be dependent on exactly > what version of RSX you have, if it's an old one (not all that likely, > though, if it's a MicroPDP. It would be more likely on an 11/34, > say). > > >> If I add a 8line mux (DHV or DZV) what the procedure to get >> system to install and recognise it. >> > > IIRC, you'll have to do some type of SYSGEN - lots of questions to > answer, then several hours as your wee little F-11 spins its wheels > and builds a new system. I haven't done a sysgen in over 20 years, so > hopefully someone else with fresher experience can speak up. > This is infact a job for a sysgen which should be under UIC [200,200] for a complete installation, or on the OS distribution. You should have the manual for exactly the same RSX you use version at hand, because in sysgen there are always some subtle changes between the versions which had hit me more than once. And SYSGEN is not for faint-hearted, to be assured ;-) >> On line DOCs to refresh memory from? >> > > I don't know of any, and I wasn't able to Google any. :-/ > http://www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/RSX-11M%20Version%204.2%20Manual%20Set.html for one set. Regards -- Holger From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 10 06:47:47 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:47:47 -0400 Subject: PDP-11 graphics products Message-ID: <0JPP00KWP21L02X1@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: PDP-11 graphics products > From: "William Donzelli" > Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:23:08 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >> UNIBUS: VT30, VS100 (wasn't X developed on this?) > >I think it was developed on a VAXstation 2000? I don't think so, as my memory of X predates VAXstation2000. >A long time ago I had a Unibus color vector graphics board from some >third party. I remember it had some really weird coax connectors for >output signals. I may have a few of the Qbus versions, Need to dig them out. Allison > >No amount of truth serum will be able to dig up any facts from >my head, however. > >-- >Will From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 10 06:55:15 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:55:15 -0400 Subject: DEC RSX-11 Message-ID: <0JPP003CR2E1HWQ7@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: DEC RSX-11 > From: "Ethan Dicks" > Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:46:06 +0200 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 10/9/07, Allison wrote: >> HALP! >> >> I just decided to attack a micro-11 system... >> >> It's been a long time since I used RSX and longer since >> I've administered it. So some procedures for doing things >> I need to know or a pointer to. >> >> TO shut down I do? > >IIRC, from an account with privs, it _might_ be... > >@[1,4]SHUTUP.CMD > >.... or something quite similar. > >> TO change admin password how, and which account again? > >It's been a long time, and I've worked with a variety of early-1980s >versions of RSX, but the account, at least, is probably [1,4]. >Unfortunately, I can't recall what program you have to invoke to >twiddle passwords and privs. It might even be dependent on exactly >what version of RSX you have, if it's an old one (not all that likely, >though, if it's a MicroPDP. It would be more likely on an 11/34, >say). > >> If I add a 8line mux (DHV or DZV) what the procedure to get >> system to install and recognise it. > >IIRC, you'll have to do some type of SYSGEN - lots of questions to >answer, then several hours as your wee little F-11 spins its wheels >and builds a new system. I haven't done a sysgen in over 20 years, so >hopefully someone else with fresher experience can speak up. > >> On line DOCs to refresh memory from? > >I don't know of any, and I wasn't able to Google any. :-/ > >-ethan Thanks, Thats a start, I found docs on bitsavers. Some however appear broken as I down load them and mid way my system crashes. First thats rare and unusual for this crate. The other is there is no clear reason why. May be that some are >50mb in size and something is broken. I'll try FTP rather than firefox and see. Allison From gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk Wed Oct 10 08:22:01 2007 From: gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:22:01 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710101422.01955.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> On Tuesday 09 October 2007 21:53:01 Tony Duell wrote: > > > And I said 'appear' above. Maybe the motherboard is fine. Maybe it's a > > > marginal PSU that can't supply enough current for the 3 DIMMs. Did you > > > even chack the PSU votlages under load? Let alone ripple? > > > > And again, you're working on the assumption that I am you, or that I > > work like you, or that everyone should work like you. > > No, I'm working under the assumption that hardware works logically, when > it fails to work there's a good reason for it, and that before you can > claim to have repaired it you have to have found that reason. Heh, I remember troubleshooting a PC that would work with a CD ROM disconnected, but not with it connected - even if you left the IDE cable off (actually it's long enough ago that it might have been a Mitsumi interface) Guess what it was? The 'scope told me, the +12 rail was all over the place. Once the second CD ROM was connected up, it swung wildly from 9v to 15v. Why? Who knows? Who cares? Let's maybe try a bigger PSU than the dinky 130W one the case came with. Oh wow, look at that, it even runs at less than fingerprint-removing temperature... > How am I inconveniencing myself? What do you think I want to do that > could be done more easily by having a modern PC? (And remember I think > _you're_ inconveniencing yourself by not having electronic test gear and > learning how to use it) You've said yourself that you don't have (easy) access to resources like bitsavers.org, because some of the formats used require fairly modern PCs. I'd find that pretty inconvenient. > ARGH! When are you going to understand that I don't replace parts without > knowing what's failed and why!. I simply don't. I never will... I must admit, I don't just replace bits without at least trying to guess why they might have failed. Obviously if the cause of the failure is obvious, it's not worth spending time on (most recent example being (sorry folks) one of my cars, where it was "Let's see, why might these ball joints have 6mm of play? Maybe because of 19 years of British roads?"). > It's a lot less inconvenient to me to stick to hardware I know, that I > understand, and that I can keep going to avoid any such problems. Not keen on learning new stuff, then? > > something worth at best hundreds and probably in fact worth perhaps > > the cost of a pint or a train ticket is not sensible pragmatism, it's > > You also have to realise that not everybody knows people who give away > old PC hardawre. I don't, for example. Look on the pavement the night before the bins are collected. I have a couple of nice P3 1GHz desktops which I picked up like this. They may well have been riddled with spyware and viruses, I don't know. The first thing I did was flatten the drives and install Ubuntu. One of them is now at a friend's Mum's house being a word processor and internet thing, the other is in a different friend's recording studio being a sampler. > > not commendable attention to detail, it's bl**dy daft. And to say "I > > won't run it if I can't repair it" is dafter still! > > I disgaree, but there you are... I try to only use things I can repair or rebuild, but I appreciate that there are some things that should just be considered a complete replaceable part. I've repaired computer boards (the memory board for my PDP11, for one) and I've repaired "sealed" ECUs in cars (the suspension ECU in Citro?n XMs, many times). I *replaced* a ball joint, because it was 30 quid and I've got no chance of making one, especially for that kind of money. I *replaced* a serial controller card, 'cos it was a fiver and again I doubt I could build one for that. Gordon From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Wed Oct 10 12:48:02 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:48:02 +0100 Subject: DEC RSX-11 Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB28@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> >The RD52 has RXS11 and boots. Perhaps a matching fur hat and pink handbag to go with the boots!! Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John A. Dundas III Sent: 10 October 2007 16:25 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: DEC RSX-11 At 1:50 PM -0400 10/9/07, Allison wrote: >HALP! > >I just decided to attack a micro-11 system I had not attendded to. >Good news is it's pristine and complete: > > BA23, 11/23BH, 512k (M8057), DEQNA, RQDX2(late firmware). > >The RD52 has RXS11 and boots. What version? >It's been a long time since I used RSX and longer since I've >administered it. So some procedures for doing things I need to know or >a pointer to. > >TO shut down I do? >RUN $SHUTUP from a privileged account. LB:[1,2]SHUTUP.CMD can be edited to include local shutdown tasks. It is invoked as part of $SHUTUP.TSK. >TO change admin password how, and which account again? If this is a version of RSX that has DCL installed, use SET PASSWORD. Otherwise >RUN $ACNT >If I add a 8line mux (DHV or DZV) what the procedure to get system to >install and recognise it. Either VMR or @[200,200]SYSGEN; no longer remember under what circumstances you could "just" VMR. >On line DOCs to refresh memory from? I've assembled some of mine, Al's, and others at John From spedraja at gmail.com Wed Oct 10 12:57:31 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 19:57:31 +0200 Subject: IBM PC Network Adapter 6450213 for shipping? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > I've found (in the slowly shrinking pile I'm trying to distribute) an > IBM PC Network Adapter identified by what I believe is the part > number 6450213 We used them in my job during seven years, from 1986 to 1993, in conjunction with FBSS. This software permit to manage financial machines like passbook printers (4720 for example), and you can organize a limited LAN, sharing one disk in the "server" of the network. This server connect at same time with an IBM or SNA Host using one LU0 (perhaps the most simple and useful communication method developed by IBM) to one CICS (for example). One of our networks more usual was compound by one Server (IBM PC-XT with 20 Mb HD, or IBM PC-AT with 30 Mb Hd, with 512 to 640 Kb) plus six Requesters (IBM PC-XT with TWO diskette units and 384 to 640 Kb). All with monochrome monitors. The electronic diary was stored in the terminal, included the Server (it wasn't dedicated). The application used by the terminals was developed in Microfocus Cobol and was of our own facture. And it survived to this PC Network until 1999 under Token Ring with IBM PS/VP 486 :-). No graphic environment at any moment... in fact the transition to Windows and OS/2 was lightly complicated because all the system was very intuitive when it was managed with the keyboard. In fact it was a development from the IBM 3600 previously used for us and some approachings of the 4700 plus the CICS terminal, but all over PC. Start the network completely took over TEN minutes. The most usual was to leave started the terminals/PC's EVER DURING WEEKS. Fortunately someone send one internal note speaking about the power comsumption. It was very fortunate for our finances. In the other side of the finance savings, the software was updated by internal distribution in form of diskettes. All of them must be returned to re-use them (some a couple of times/month during YEARS) in only one point of recording. Our first antivirus was installed in... 1988 ? Not sure. It was one from IBM, but in a short time we began to use another of one new builder named McAfee :-) I've got the original box (from 1985 looks like) and driver disks and > manuals. Doesn't look like this has ever been used. 8 Bit card, > with a coax connector (it includes the coax cable). Not sure exactly > what kind > of network it would connect to... but I definitely have no need for it. > (it also has a diagnostics for IBM Personal Computer AT, Hardware > Reference Library Diagnostics, and > IBM PC XT compatibility test diskettes...) I own this material plus a complete PC Network (boards, distributors, etc...). I have it in my list of hobby tasks. By the way, this network works with PC LAN Program 1.20... But I'm not sure about Lan Manager or early Netware (as the 2.11 version). But I'm almost sure that we have yet ALL THE PC NETWORK BOARDS IN OUR BASEMENT (over 300) in a carton box. Heh, heh, what times... Greetings Sergio From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 10 14:29:07 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:29:07 -0400 Subject: DEC RSX-11 Message-ID: <0JPP0039ONEMHMZ9@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: DEC RSX-11 > From: Holger Veit > Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:19:57 +0200 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only > >Ethan Dicks schrieb: >> On 10/9/07, Allison wrote: >> >It is probably @[1,2]SHUTUP.CMD, or better RUN $SHUTUP >> RUN $SHUTUP That works. >>> TO change admin password how, and which account again? >>> >RUN $ACNT >and then modify the UIC [1,2]. It's "run $acntres" on this beastie. However any attempt to modify the accounts or add accounts causes a illegal instruction trap and return to prompt. Could it be the files are protected? I did insure the disk write protect was disabled and working. >Basically, any account [1,x] is privileged, so you might create a new >account in this range before >fiddling with the old one and maybe accidentally disabling it (happened >to experience this myself :-)) Fortunately when the system boots the startup.cmd also logs in account 7,21. >> >http://www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/RSX-11M%20Version%204.2%20Manual%20Set.html >for one set. Very helpful, save for Acrobat say the files are corrupt for any of the more useful ones and crashes for manuals over 25MB. I'm not sure anything useful other than a "Pregen"ned system is on the disk as I havent found any languages. Allison From paul.haley1 at ntlworld.com Mon Oct 8 11:40:20 2007 From: paul.haley1 at ntlworld.com (ph) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:40:20 -0500 Subject: HD46505 CRT controller chips Message-ID: <000001c80b81$1f568630$4ead1456@store> Hi its a long shot now the post was in 2001 , but I need a Hd46505 chip !! best regards paul Haley From spedraja at gmail.com Wed Oct 10 16:52:43 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:52:43 +0200 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi, Ulli: I made good experience with the SRQD11 Controller for ST506 (=MFM) disks > made by the Australian Webster Computer Corporation. I never heard about it. What's about obtain one today ? Another good choice would be an Emulex QD21 for ESDI disks or even an Emulex > UC07 for SCSI disks (if you find one). > I take note. Just today I've located finally in my basement one box of Qbus boards that came to me a couple of years ago together with one of my PDP's. I shall check the existence of the QD21, but I'm sure that I don't have one UC07. Thanks and Greetings Sergio From bqt at softjar.se Wed Oct 10 18:20:15 2007 From: bqt at softjar.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:20:15 +0200 Subject: DEC RSX-11 In-Reply-To: <200710101701.l9AH0gI5005559@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710101701.l9AH0gI5005559@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <470D5E2F.9030101@softjar.se> Allison skrev: Did I hear someone say "RSX"? :-) > HALP! > > I just decided to attack a micro-11 system I had not attendded to. > Good news is it's pristine and complete: > > BA23, 11/23BH, 512k (M8057), DEQNA, RQDX2(late firmware). > > The RD52 has RXS11 and boots. > > It's been a long time since I used RSX and longer since > I've administered it. So some procedures for doing things > I need to know or a pointer to. > > TO shut down I do? "RUN SHUTUP" usually does it, since by default SHUTUP is installed in the system. If it isn't, "RUN $SHUTUP" will do the same deal. As others mentioned, LB:[1,2]SHUTUP.CMD is invoked as a part of the shutup procedure, and shouldn't be invoked by hand. > TO change admin password how, and which account again? "RUN ACNT" if ACNT is installed. Otherwise "RUN $ACNT" will do it. The "SET PASSWORD" command is something that only exists in RSX-11M-PLUS, but if so, then it works just as fine from MCR as from DCL by default. ACNT is the general account management program. From a privileged terminal, you can change any account. In 11M, you can only change your own password with ACNT. In 11M-PLUS, ACNT is not usable by non-prived terminals. And there isn't any explicit admin account in RSX. The closest would be [1,54], if it exists. It does by default, which is why I mention it. But there are no problems with just deleting that account if you want to. Any account with a group number <= 10 is a privileged account. What this means is that when logged in, the terminal will have the PRIV bit set. Other users will have it cleared. Most things go on the terminal info bit when checking for privs. Run ACNT, and you can list all accounts, and see which exists with privs. > If I add a 8line mux (DHV or DZV) what the procedure to get > system to install and recognise it. Phew, big question. In short, you have two ways: 1) Do a full sysgen, which includes all the devices you want, and you'll have it. This will take a couple of hours, and literally hundreds of questions. A manual is almost neccesary. 2) Just build the device driver and load it. This requires that your system have been generated with loadable device drivers. You still need to figure out how to build the device driver. There are commands scripts that do these things, but they expect to be called as a part of SYSGEN, so doing it by hand will require some hands on fiddling. If you want a device driver to be abailable each time you boot, you need to add it to the system image you're booting. That is done by VMR. VMR is done as a part of SYSGEN as well, but if you build stuff yourself, you'll have to either add them in VMR as well, or load them at boot time in the startup script. > On line DOCs to refresh memory from? I think I saw that SRI now have some RSX manuals online, and of course, we also have bitsavers. There is a whole manual just on the SYSGEN process. Read it. :-) > I'm most comfortable with VMS, Ultrix and RT-11 but never > bothered with RSX for a home system. VMS knowledge can be of some help, but not much of anything else. RSX is so much fun. Welcome to the asylum. :-) Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 01:46:57 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 23:46:57 -0700 Subject: HD46505 CRT controller chips In-Reply-To: <000001c80b81$1f568630$4ead1456@store> References: <000001c80b81$1f568630$4ead1456@store> Message-ID: <470D6471.30051.D01F12@cclist.sydex.com> On 8 Oct 2007 at 11:40, ph wrote: > Hi its a long shot now the post was in 2001 , but I need a Hd46505 chip I don't have one, but will the Rockwell R6545 work? It might be more widely available. Cheers, Chuck From dave06a at dunfield.com Thu Oct 11 06:18:15 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:18:15 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470D5AFE.14689.AB3473@cclist.sydex.com> References: <20071010205837.F43621@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200710111023.l9BAN4l6008608@hosting.monisys.ca> > I don't know exactly what Dave's having a problem with, but from his > images, I could extract files using 22Disk with no problems at all. > > The definition I used was CRO4. Hi Chuck, Exactly what version of 22disk were you using? Is it the newer version 2.x that you mentioned earlier? The version I am trying to use is 1.44 shareware. I am using the CRO4 definition. I've never actually used 22disk before, but I think I've got it right - here is a transcript of an attempt to copy files from the diskette: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ C:\22DISK>cdir b: CDIR Ver. 1.44-Oct 31 1996, Copyright 1996, Sydex. All rights reserved. THIS IS AN UNREGISTERED COPY--SEE DOCUMENTATION FOR DETAILS. Enter 1-4 character disk format type, or ENTER alone for list - cro4 Cromemco CDOS - DSDD 48 tpi 5.25" format * WARNING! * Two files found to use same diskette block -- You may be using the wrong disk definition Block: 0003, File: FRAME2.PIX B0:FRAME1.MAP B0:FRAME1.PIX B0:FRAME2.PIX 142K free on drive B: C:\22DISK>ctod b:*.* d: CTOD Ver. 1.44-Oct 31 1996, Copyright 1996, Sydex. All rights reserved. THIS IS AN UNREGISTERED COPY--SEE DOCUMENTATION FOR DETAILS. Enter 1-4 character disk format type, or ENTER alone for list - cro4 Cromemco CDOS - DSDD 48 tpi 5.25" format Copying B0:FRAME1.MAP to D:FRAME1.MAP Copying B0:FRAME1.PIX to D:FRAME1.PIX Error reading diskette B: (Cyl 1, Side 1, Sect 1): Sector not found Enter R - retry operation, A - abort program, I - ignore error Error reading diskette B: (Cyl 1, Side 1, Sect 1): Sector not found Enter R - retry operation, A - abort program, I - ignore error Error reading diskette B: (Cyl 1, Side 1, Sect 1): Sector not found Enter R - retry operation, A - abort program, I - ignore error C:\22DISK> ------------------------------------------------------------------ A little more information which may or may not be relevant: Mike Stein reproduced one of the ImageDisk images and use his Cromemco system to read the files and transfer them via serial cable to the PC (thanks Mike!) - The three files I received from him were: FRAME1.MAP - 128 bytes FRAME1.PIX - 88576 bytes FRAME2.PIX - 9984 bytes I sent these files to the author of the graphics program that is supposed to have originated them, and he things they should be bigger. He says the .MAP should be 768 bytes, and that the .PIX files should be much larger - they are 512x512x256 color images with RLE encoding, which means they could be up to 256k. As seen above 22disk reports 143k free on a 400k disk, quick math shows over 150k unaccounted for - There will of course be some overhead, but not that much ... but with the cross linked files reported, I don't know if the 143k free number can be trusted. Then, I dug out an XT and got it up and running (man I had forgotten the pain involved in getting a hard drive working on an XT)... UNIFORM works on this machine, and I am able to extract the same three files from the same disk. I get FRAME1.MAP and FRAME2.PIX exactly the same size and content as the files Mike sent to me - FRAME1.PIX comes out at only 6144 bytes in size, although it appears to be the same content as the first 6144 bytes of Mikes file. So it would appear that UNIFORM has issues as well. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From dave06a at dunfield.com Thu Oct 11 06:27:50 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:27:50 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071010165821.R33761@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <200710111032.l9BAWdaN011191@hosting.monisys.ca> > I can't immediately find one to point you to, so here is an off the top of > my head rundown of the CP/M DIRectory structure (which may be completely > indecipherable without illustrations or more careful wording): Fred, thanks for the useful info. > CDOS had one or more bytes in the first physical sector of the disk to > identify which format. There ARE multiple (user modifications?) variant > formats that may have the same ID byte(s)! Anyone have more info on this? - One of my main problems is determining exactly what format these disks are in. > The remaining sixteen bytes, 10h through 1Fh contain a list of blocks > occupied by the file. That can be up to sixteen 8 bit entries, OR up to 8 > sixteen bit entries, OR even four sixteen bit entries. Depending on > how many records per block there are, there might be more than one > "extent" represented within that block list. Unused block > numbers in the list are set to 00. Once the list is full, then the OS > starts an additional DIRectory entry with a larger "extent" number. Does each entry represent a cluster? The CDOS manual does have tables relating physical sectors to clusters, which can be represented with an 8-bit value. These are listed for "large disks" and "small disks", although it's not clear where a DSDD 5.25" disk fits (it's large for a 5.25, small compared to 8") - I'm guessing the "small disks" means any 5.25, but I'd love to be corrected if anyone knows differently. > If the last 8 or 12 bytes are all 00, then either it is a short file, or > that particular variant is using an 8 byte, rather than sixteen byte long list. > (and not putting more than one extent in the block list) > Obviously, the number of records (128 byte "sectors") per block makes a > difference in whether the block numbers will be 8 or sixteen bits. Is there any information recorded on the disk which will indicate the size of a cluster? Or the logical interleave? Or are these quantities that the OS "just knows"? Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Oct 11 06:31:03 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:31:03 +0100 Subject: Unused Collections In-Reply-To: <004201c80ba8$3aaa4df0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> References: <004201c80ba8$3aaa4df0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: <470E0977.8030508@yahoo.co.uk> Ensor wrote: > The thing is though, my interest in them is primarily in the hardware > anyway. Once I've stripped them down, repaired them and found out what > "makes them tick" my interest in them is pretty much over Yeah, that's about the size of it for me, too. My main interests these days are: 1) Collecting prototype machines, or things which saw production runs in the tens, 2) Collecting systems containing software which never got released to the world. 3) Collecting basket-case machines purely for restoration. 4) Collecting unusual or uncommon peripherals, boards etc. for more common systems. I like the 'detective' side of the hobby I suppose, and in trying to put together bits of a jigsaw puzzle and come up with conclusions which would otherwise have been lost in the mists of time. Messing around with some high production volume system is always of less interest though, and I figure if it's something that's common I could just pick one up any time I wanted. Often the hardware I've got is incomplete or buggy, or never really had any kind of code written for it, so there's no way of really "using" the machines I have anyway. So yes, I've got lots of stuff and most of it's "unused". But it still carries some importance to me personally - which I suspect is what drives most collectors. What might seem like junk to one person is in some way special for the collector, making them reluctant to part with it even if it doesn't get used. Never underestimate the power of the "I'll never get another one of those" mentality :-) cheers Jules From billdeg at degnanco.com Thu Oct 11 07:24:17 2007 From: billdeg at degnanco.com (B. Degnan) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:24:17 -0400 Subject: seeking ms/pc dos 1.x In-Reply-To: <200710110629.l9B6StHm019605@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20071011082104.02babdc0@mail.degnanco.net> >Can someone point me to somewhere I can find bootable disk images for >MS/PC DOS 1.x? I found vetusware.com, but the quality is spotty and >frequently uses obscure compression programs. >-- >David Griffith >dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu > >------------------------------ http://www.vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread.cfm?id=60 From quapla at xs4all.nl Thu Oct 11 07:32:30 2007 From: quapla at xs4all.nl (Ed Groenenberg) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:32:30 +0200 (CEST) Subject: repairing a Dec frontpanel Message-ID: <11059.88.211.153.27.1192105950.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> Hi All, I have a PDP-11/45 and the frontpanel unfortunately has 2 spots where the matt finish is gone. Is there a way to make those 2 areas to look original again? Thanks, Ed From emu at e-bbes.com Thu Oct 11 08:16:42 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:16:42 -0600 Subject: DEC RSX-11 In-Reply-To: <0JPN0034JO54HEQ4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPN0034JO54HEQ4@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <470E223A.7050706@e-bbes.com> Allison wrote: > HALP! > The RD52 has RXS11 and boots. Hello Allison, PLEASE tell us to which version it boots ;-) From trixter at oldskool.org Thu Oct 11 09:12:24 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:12:24 -0500 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <470D6CB9.2000100@compsys.to> References: <001a01c809d3$380c0380$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <470A7D25.1000309@compsys.to> <470AB27A.4010109@oldskool.org> <470D6CB9.2000100@compsys.to> Message-ID: <470E2F48.1060505@oldskool.org> Jerome H. Fine wrote: > file, it is far more convenient to just copy all the files on the DVD to > the hard drive You missed my point: Get yourself a new md5 program. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From ian_primus at yahoo.com Thu Oct 11 09:51:05 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:51:05 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Looking for a VME chassis Message-ID: <296554.80243.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Looking for a rackmount VME chassis to rebuild a Sun 3 system. Anyone got anything collecting dust bunnies? -Ian From rcini at optonline.net Thu Oct 11 10:06:49 2007 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:06:49 -0400 Subject: The use of Plexiglas for mounting PCBs Message-ID: All: I want to use a sheet of Plexiglas to make a case for my KIM-1. Fabrication isn?t a problem, but I wanted to open it up for discussion about any static electricity issues. Should I be concerned about using Plexi for this project or what recommendations do y?all have for mitigating the possibility of damage. Thanks. Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 10:39:00 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:39:00 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: References: <200710091919.l99JJs4C022938@hosting.monisys.ca>, <20071010165821.R33761@shell.lmi.net>, Message-ID: <470DE124.29728.2B73985@cclist.sydex.com> Looking at the first diskette image, it ppears that it's been corrupted somehow (the second one is fine). Take a look at cylinder 1, side 0, sector 1. Near the beginning of the directory we see the entries for two files, FRAME1.MAP, FRAME1.PIX (2 extents) 0020 00 46 52 41 4d 45 31 20 20 4d 41 50 00 00 00 01 0030 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0040 00 46 52 41 4d 45 31 20 20 50 49 58 00 00 00 80 0050 04 05 06 07 08 09 0a 0b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0060 00 46 52 41 4d 45 31 20 20 50 49 58 01 00 00 80 The extents continue for FRAME1.PIX: 00e0 00 46 52 41 4d 45 31 20 20 50 49 58 05 00 00 34 00f0 2c 2d 2e 2f 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 And then we see a new file, FRAME2.PIX: 0100 00 46 52 41 4d 45 32 20 20 50 49 58 00 00 00 4e 0110 02 03 04 05 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 But it's allocated using the same clusters as the first two, i.e. 02 03 04 05 06! This is a problem. How did it get that way? Disks swapped, OS bug; any number of other things. But it's clearly wrong. One very ugly way I've seen for this to happen is for a rogue application program to clear part of the BDOS allocation bitmnap in CP/M. We do have the definitions correct; note how the record count in byte offset 0Fh in each directory entry agrees with the number of clusters allocated. This ain't rocket science. 22Disk got it exactly right-- cluster 03 is double-allocated in the directory. I thought it better that 22Disk stop complaining at the first message, since additional warnings won't tell you anything you didn't already know. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I've seen this before--and it's why 22Disk checks for stupid OS tricks like this--and CP/M doesn't until something goes wrong. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 10:48:19 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:48:19 -0700 Subject: The use of Plexiglas for mounting PCBs In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <470DE353.1954.2BFC012@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Oct 2007 at 11:06, Richard A. Cini wrote: > I want to use a sheet of Plexiglas to make a case for my KIM-1. > Fabrication isn?t a problem, but I wanted to open it up for discussion about > any static electricity issues. Should I be concerned about using Plexi for > this project or what recommendations do y?all have for mitigating the > possibility of damage. I've used acrylic for decades to package projects--it's easy to work using power tools and joints are invisble when the appropriate solvent cement is used. I've never had a static electricity problem with it. Thicker material is probably better to use than thinner--most of my work has been with 3/8"-1/4" material. If you don't mind tinted casework, you can even get acrylic with a metallized film surface. If youi're VERY nervous, there are spray-on antistatic solutions that can be used. Personally, I'd be more worried about wall-to-wall carpeting. I've killed computers with that. Cheers, Chuck From rivie at ridgenet.net Thu Oct 11 12:22:38 2007 From: rivie at ridgenet.net (Roger Ivie) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:22:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <200710111032.l9BAWdaN011191@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710111032.l9BAWdaN011191@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Dave Dunfield wrote: > > Does each entry represent a cluster? The CDOS manual does have tables > relating physical sectors to clusters, which can be represented with an > 8-bit value. These are listed for "large disks" and "small disks", although > it's not clear where a DSDD 5.25" disk fits (it's large for a 5.25, > small compared to 8") - I'm guessing the "small disks" means any 5.25, > but I'd love to be corrected if anyone knows differently. In CP/M, each entry represents a cluster and "small disk" means "has fewer than 256 clusters". -- roger ivie rivie at ridgenet.net From charlesmorris at hughes.net Thu Oct 11 12:35:52 2007 From: charlesmorris at hughes.net (Charles) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:35:52 -0500 Subject: TSX on RL02 pack? In-Reply-To: <200710111701.l9BH1GXD025398@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710111701.l9BH1GXD025398@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <1ensg3tpe48dqakceqq0j8h7lri1aeagji@4ax.com> On Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:01:24 -0500 (CDT), you wrote: >> I tried to boot from the pack but >> instead it came up in RT11SJ. What have I got here? >TSX doesn't boot from "bare metal". It requires RT-11 there to boot. Once >RT-11 boots, then you run TSX. At that point, TSX replaces most all of RT-11 >with itself - I don't think it leaves much of RT11 if any (in memory) after >it loads. > >So... after RT-11 boots, do "R TSX" > >To modify accounts... "R TSAUTH" > >Jay West Thanks, Jay! I did that and TSX-Plus Version 5.0 started right up. It executes several small .com files and then put up a big splash screen on the VT220 for "DBL/RT11/TSX by mumble mumble Corporation" or something like that, but freezes halfway through it and won't do anything until reboot. Now I just need to download a TSX+ manual and figure out how to remove/modify the startup files. Is this disk something the list is interested in, or is it easy to find a working TSX image elsewhere? (Regardless, I'm going to preserve the disk since it's another OS to play with). -Charles From tshoppa at wmata.com Thu Oct 11 12:33:56 2007 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:33:56 -0400 Subject: The use of Plexiglas for mounting PCBs In-Reply-To: <200710111700.l9BH0i9r025357@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710111700.l9BH0i9r025357@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <470E26440200003700014403@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Rich writes: > I want to use a sheet of Plexiglas to make a case for my KIM-1. > Fabrication isn?t a problem, but I wanted to open it up for discussion about > any static electricity issues. Should I be concerned about using Plexi for > this project or what recommendations do y?all have for mitigating the > possibility of damage. The biggest problem, IMHO, of plexiglass is that static buildup attracts dust to the case :-). That said, there are anti-static sprays and "static-dissipative" and "anti-static" acrylic sheets available if you're worried about either ESD damage or just all the dust! I don't think it's sold by Rohm directly so you might want to use "acrylic" rather than "Plexiglas" in google searches. McMaster-Carr is a great place to get the stuff if you don't have a local plastic shop that stocks it. (I used to have a really really good platic shop in my neighborhood, but it got bought out by a national chain and now the retail side sucks rocks.) Tim. From feldman.r at comcast.net Thu Oct 11 12:40:01 2007 From: feldman.r at comcast.net (feldman.r at comcast.net) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:40:01 +0000 Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 50, Issue 35 Message-ID: <101120071740.20829.470E5FF1000C6F310000515D22070229339DD2020E030B040A00@comcast.net> > Message: 8 > Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:06:49 -0400 > From: "Richard A. Cini" > Subject: The use of Plexiglas for mounting PCBs > > All: > > I want to use a sheet of Plexiglas to make a case for my KIM-1. > Fabrication isn't a problem, but I wanted to open it up for discussion about > any static electricity issues. Should I be concerned about using Plexi for > this project or what recommendations do y'all have for mitigating the > possibility of damage. > > Thanks. > > Rich You might have trouble with electrical interference from the computer getting out and affecting other devices. I had that problem with a PC clone I put in a plywood case. It interfered with an open-frame monitor I had on top of the case until I put metal screening under the case lid. Bob From dm561 at torfree.net Thu Oct 11 11:51:42 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:51:42 -0300 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Message-ID: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03> -----------Original Message: Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:39:00 -0700 From: "Chuck Guzis" Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Looking at the first diskette image, it ppears that it's been corrupted somehow (the second one is fine). Take a look at cylinder 1, side 0, sector 1. Near the beginning of the directory we see the entries for two files, FRAME1.MAP, FRAME1.PIX (2 extents) -----------Reply: That's what I see: the first and third image have cross-linked files but the second one looks OK; the question is whether the disks themselves have a problem or whether Dave's IMD program got confused. The first image seems to start on sector 2 and wrap around; however, the third does start on sector1 but has errors nevertheless. mike From cisin at xenosoft.com Thu Oct 11 12:58:08 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:58:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <200710111032.l9BAWdaN011191@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710111032.l9BAWdaN011191@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <20071011105050.V71651@shell.lmi.net> > > CDOS had one or more bytes in the first physical sector of the disk to > > identify which format. There ARE multiple (user modifications?) variant > > formats that may have the same ID byte(s)! On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Dave Dunfield wrote: > Anyone have more info on this? - One of my main problems is determining > exactly what format these disks are in. It might be stored in the first sector, or it might be known only to the OS. On a functioning CP/M 2.x? machine, STAT DSK: gives some of the parameters. > Does each entry represent a cluster? Yes, each of the numbers in the block list represents a "cluster" (which is the MICROS~1 word for a block) Each OS company seems to have had their own unique word (like "standards") for an allocation unit. Remember that CP/M calls a 128 byte record a "sector" disunirregardless of how many there are in each physical sector. From dave06a at dunfield.com Thu Oct 11 13:51:55 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (dave06a at dunfield.com) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:51:55 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <200710111758.l9BHwncx068508@keith.ezwind.net> > -----------Original Message: > Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:39:00 -0700 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files > > Looking at the first diskette image, it ppears that it's been > corrupted somehow (the second one is fine). Take a look at cylinder > 1, side 0, sector 1. Near the beginning of the directory we see the > entries for two files, FRAME1.MAP, FRAME1.PIX (2 extents) > > > -----------Reply: > That's what I see: the first and third image have cross-linked files > but the second one looks OK; the question is whether the disks > themselves have a problem or whether Dave's IMD program got > confused. The first image seems to start on sector 2 and wrap > around; however, the third does start on sector1 but has errors > nevertheless. I believe Chuck made his disks from the TeleDisk images, also I get the cross-link error on the original as well. I was told that these three disks have already visited several other people who attempted to recover the files from them... Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Thu Oct 11 13:08:47 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:08:47 +0200 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <470ABC48.8030606@rogerwilco.org> References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> <47081517.1090601@rogerwilco.org> <20071007215742.510d5604@SirToby.dinner41.local> <470ABC48.8030606@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <20071011200847.173305a4@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:24:56 -0600 J Blaser wrote: > I also have several flavors of Ultrix 4 for VAX that I've played with > on a Vs3100 Why not install it on the 11/750? There should be some way to prepare bootable ULTRIX media with a VAXstation 3100 or MicroVAX running ULTRIX. Or netboot the 11/750... -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Oct 11 13:24:33 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:24:33 -0400 Subject: Looking for a VME chassis In-Reply-To: <296554.80243.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <296554.80243.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Oct 11, 2007, at 10:51 AM, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > Looking for a rackmount VME chassis to rebuild a Sun 3 > system. Anyone got anything collecting dust bunnies? Hey there Ian...Will Donzelli mentioned one on the list just yesterday: > I have a rackmount Sun-3/280, pretty loaded up, that I would like to > move out. I think I have a SPARC board for it as well, to turn it into > a 4/280. No disk, but I think the interface card is there, along with > a few others. > > The thing is a cube, a little under a 20 inches on a side or so. I > have the front panel. I think it even has a 1/4 inch tape drive in the > front. > > The last time I powered it up, it passed its memory test OK, but that > was almost 10 years ago (!). > > -- > Will in 10512 -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 13:40:11 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:40:11 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <470E0B9B.4264.35D1ACC@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Oct 2007 at 13:51, M H Stein wrote: > That's what I see: the first and third image have cross-linked files > but the second one looks OK; the question is whether the disks > themselves have a problem or whether Dave's IMD program got > confused. The first image seems to start on sector 2 and wrap > around; however, the third does start on sector1 but has errors > nevertheless. (Disclaimer: I haven't looked at the third image yet) But it's not TeleDisk or ImageDisk that's messed up. Note that in the first disk, the cross-linking/double-allocation entries are contained in the same physical sector. I'll grab a gander at the third disk later today when I have a chance. Cheers, Chuck From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Thu Oct 11 13:53:07 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:53:07 +0200 Subject: MFM or ESDI QBUS controller for one PDP-11/23 PLUS In-Reply-To: <839530.45581.qm@web52712.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <839530.45581.qm@web52712.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20071011205307.62f60ec2@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:20:37 -0700 (PDT) Mr Ian Primus wrote: > See this site for pinouts and details: RQDX3 Dist Panel from BA23: J1: Fixed Disk 1 Control (34 pin) J2: Fixed Disk 0 Data (20 pin) J3: RQDX3 (50 pin) J4: Control Panel (10 pin) J5: Fixed Disk 1 Data (20 pin) J6: Removable Disk (34 pin) J7: Fixed Disk 0 Control (34 pin) RQDX3 J3 J1/J7 J6 J2 J4 J5 50 1 22 34 49 2 GND 48 3 14 32 47 4 GND 46 5 30 45 6 GND 44 7 1 43 8 8 42 9 10 26 41 10 GND 40 11 6 24 39 12 GND 38 13 22 37 14 GND 36 15 24 20 35 16 GND 34 17 34 18 33 18 GND 32 19 16 31 20 7 30 21 30 14 29 22 28 12 28 23 26 10 27 24 6 26 25 20 8 25 26 GND 24 27 32 6 23 28 2 22 29 2 2 21 30 GND 20 31 18 19 32 17 18 33 14 17 34 13 16 35 18 15 36 17 14 37 1 13 38 4 12 39 1 11 40 3 10 41 18 9 42 GND 8 43 12 28 7 44 5 6 45 8 5 46 GND 4 47 4 3 48 GND 2 49 14 1 50 13 J1/J6/J7 1,3,5,7,...,29,31,33 GND J6 4 GND J1/J7 16 NC J4 9,10 NC J2/J5 2,4,6,8,10,11,12,15,16,19,20 GND J2/J5 3.5.7.9 NC -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From dkelvey at hotmail.com Thu Oct 11 14:24:17 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:24:17 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470E0B9B.4264.35D1ACC@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03> <470E0B9B.4264.35D1ACC@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > From: cclist at sydex.com> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:40:11 -0700> Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files> > On 11 Oct 2007 at 13:51, M H Stein wrote:> > > That's what I see: the first and third image have cross-linked files> > but the second one looks OK; the question is whether the disks> > themselves have a problem or whether Dave's IMD program got> > confused. The first image seems to start on sector 2 and wrap > > around; however, the third does start on sector1 but has errors > > nevertheless.> > (Disclaimer: I haven't looked at the third image yet)> > But it's not TeleDisk or ImageDisk that's messed up. Note that in > the first disk, the cross-linking/double-allocation entries are > contained in the same physical sector. > Hi I wonder if the maximum cluster number is 2F. The rouge program may have just overflowed the cluster counts. As you've stated, I don't think programs like IMD could do such damage. Knowing the 2F size might help to partition the images. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From silent700 at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 14:40:27 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:40:27 -0500 Subject: Unused Collections (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phaseconversion) In-Reply-To: <0JPQ007L5XMPPQL1@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPQ007L5XMPPQL1@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <51ea77730710111240p6c6a4161xb10c2bef68bb7f32@mail.gmail.com> I'd have to count myself as a mostly-not-using-it collector as well. I do deny the charge oh hoarding, however! Having 80 C64s might be hoarding - having one or two of every Commodore model is merely "collecting" ;) Not having a ton of space or $ for serious iron, my collection mainly aims toward: - Having all the cool stuff I couldn't afford in the 80s (being in grade school or junior high then): lots of CBM, Apple, Atari accessories, etc. - Machines that few or no individual would ever have owned when they were new, but may have used: VAX, Sun, SGI workstations and servers, HP, etc - Historically significant hardware or stuff that ran an odd O/S: Symbolics LISP machine, AT&T 3B series....I guess this is somewhat subjective and could be said about a lot of different kinds of hardware And of course, anything that's free and I just can't bear to see thrown away. Now that I think of it, that might account for the bulk of the collection :) Someday, I say someday, there will be enough space to set all this stuff up and display it nicely. That is if I could power it all... From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 14:49:07 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:49:07 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, <470E0B9B.4264.35D1ACC@cclist.sydex.com>, Message-ID: <470E1BC3.26173.39C3822@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Oct 2007 at 12:24, dwight elvey wrote: > I wonder if the maximum cluster number is 2F. The rouge > program may have just overflowed the cluster counts. > As you've stated, I don't think programs like IMD could > do such damage. > Knowing the 2F size might help to partition the images. The cluster size appears to be 2K, with 193 clusters on the disk (386K, with 1K=1024). This jibes nicely with the physical format (39x2x10x512) = 390K, less 4K (2 clusters) for a directory. The first file drops right into place using these numbers. Cheers, Chuck From cisin at xenosoft.com Thu Oct 11 15:05:52 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:05:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03> <470E0B9B.4264.35D1ACC@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, dwight elvey wrote: > I wonder if the maximum cluster number is 2F. Not likely > The rouge program may have just overflowed the cluster counts. The rogue program is likely to be the OS/user. Many people would forget to hit ctrl-C when they switched diskettes. BTW, Ctrl-C worked with MS-DOS, but wasn't ever documented by MICROS~1. Now that 22Disk and the rest of the tools have been exonerated, we can concentrate on ways to read the hard to read sectors - a ubiquitous problem with Cromemco disks. From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Thu Oct 11 15:06:52 2007 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim s) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:06:52 -0700 Subject: Emulex SMD controller subsystem with drives on Ebay Message-ID: <470E825C.4080102@msm.umr.edu> On the east coast, or I'd buy it. Jim 220158695883 From tshoppa at wmata.com Thu Oct 11 15:31:56 2007 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:31:56 -0400 Subject: Emulex SMD controller subsystem with drives on Ebay Message-ID: <470E4FFC020000370001445B@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Jim s wrote: > On the east coast, or I'd buy it. > 220158695883 He also has a small pile of VT100's. I remember back in the 1990's I stacked an 8x8 (64) array of VT100's on the back wall of my garage, and that was just the working ones! If you alternate forward/backwards it takes some skill to get as high as 8 tall :-). I guess I found a home for them, 'cause I didn't drag them all along in the next move! Tim. From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Oct 11 15:14:51 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:14:51 -0400 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071011105050.V71651@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710102320.l9ANKvZo001257@hosting.monisys.ca> <200710111032.l9BAWdaN011191@hosting.monisys.ca> <20071011105050.V71651@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200710111614.51336.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 11 October 2007 13:58, Fred Cisin wrote: > > Does each entry represent a cluster? > > Yes, each of the numbers in the block list represents a "cluster" (which > is the MICROS~1 word for a block) Each OS company seems to have had their > own unique word (like "standards") for an allocation unit. > > Remember that CP/M calls a 128 byte record a "sector" disunirregardless of > how many there are in each physical sector. Yeah, "cluster" is a _DOS_ thing! CP/M called 'em "allocation units" or somesuch... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 16:03:38 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:03:38 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, , <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Oct 2007 at 13:05, Fred Cisin wrote: > The rogue program is likely to be the OS/user. > Many people would forget to hit ctrl-C when they switched diskettes. In theory, that's what the feature of the CP/M directory checksum was supposed to avoid ("DISK R/O" error). But I don't know if CDOS implemented it--and, in any case, the hole was big enough that you could drive a Peterbilt through it. Earlier versions of MS-DOS also suffered with this problem on 360K drives with no "Disk Changed" line. At Durango, we also had the problem. It was fixed it by keeping a "Files Open" flag for each drive (maintained by the filesystem). Every 2 seconds or so, each drive's "Write Protected" status was polled (didn't require turning the drive motor on or loading the heads, so it was fast). If it changed and there were files open, an audible alarm was sounded and a message saying in essence "Put that floppy back, idiot!" was displayed until the disk was again inserted. The one we never could figure a way around was the customer turning the power off before an application could terminate and close any open files, update indices, etc. The problem is still with us today. Nihil sub sole novum. Cheers, Chuck From rcini at optonline.net Thu Oct 11 16:04:45 2007 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:04:45 -0400 Subject: The use of Plexiglas for mounting PCBs In-Reply-To: <470DE353.1954.2BFC012@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: This is encouraging. I like working with plastics; I think this is going to work out nicely. Thanks for the help. On 10/11/07 11:48 AM, "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > On 11 Oct 2007 at 11:06, Richard A. Cini wrote: > >> I want to use a sheet of Plexiglas to make a case for my KIM-1. >> Fabrication isn?t a problem, but I wanted to open it up for discussion about >> any static electricity issues. Should I be concerned about using Plexi for >> this project or what recommendations do y?all have for mitigating the >> possibility of damage. > > I've used acrylic for decades to package projects--it's easy to work > using power tools and joints are invisble when the appropriate > solvent cement is used. > > I've never had a static electricity problem with it. Thicker > material is probably better to use than thinner--most of my work has > been with 3/8"-1/4" material. > > If you don't mind tinted casework, you can even get acrylic with a > metallized film surface. If youi're VERY nervous, there are spray-on > antistatic solutions that can be used. > > Personally, I'd be more worried about wall-to-wall carpeting. I've > killed computers with that. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp From trixter at oldskool.org Thu Oct 11 16:49:34 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:49:34 -0500 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: <470BF015.8060503@flippers.com> References: <470BF015.8060503@flippers.com> Message-ID: <470E9A6E.8050205@oldskool.org> John Robertson wrote: > A good fridge dolly that straps the game to the dolly is best, > stair-walkers are essential for going down a flight of stairs - and Stair-walkers? Is that some sort of mechanical device, or are you just referring to the people who will help you carry it? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From glen.slick at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 16:53:55 2007 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:53:55 -0700 Subject: Looking for an H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel for a KA650/KA655 in a BA213 Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90710111453l730db0f9m2fe7e33855b78616@mail.gmail.com> Anyone got a spare H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel for a KA650/KA655 in a BA213? I recently picked up a VAXServer 3600 which has the KA650 board but is missing the H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel and I would like to acquire one. From cisin at xenosoft.com Thu Oct 11 17:10:12 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:10:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, , <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071011145145.N83565@shell.lmi.net> On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > The one we never could figure a way around was the customer turning > the power off before an application could terminate and close any > open files, update indices, etc. > The problem is still with us today. Nihil sub sole novum. Current method is to treat "shutdown" as a "request", not a command. For the youngsters who weren't around in those days: In MS-DOS 6.00 (and some earlier incidents back to Windoze 3.10) MICROS~1 exacerbated that problem horribly with SMARTDRV. People would turn off their computers as soon as the DOS prompt reappeared after word processing, spreadsheets, etc., and some or all of the new data and DIR would not have been written yet! The blame was always hung on the disk compression, since that was what people NOTICED being different; but the compression was NOT the problem. Eventually, MICROS~1 had to do a free update (6.2x) to fix it. The repairs that were made to fix the compression related problems consisted of: SMARTDRV would default to not doing WRITE caching. If write caching had been enabled, SMARTDRV would no longer change the sequence that cached sectors were written (which had provided some additional performance) If write caching were enabled, then when an application ended, SMARTDRV would not relinquish control back to DOS to display tyhe prompt until the write buffers had been written. Those were the patches that "fixed the bugs in the compression system". Infoworld had "proven" that the compression was bad by setting up a script to WP, Lotus, etc. and a COLD restart in a loop. Bill Gates contacted the editor, and because billg would not admit to flaws in SMARTDRV (or anything else), he just told the editor that their testing methodology was flawed. That resulted in an editorial denouncing MICROS~1 for the call. Ah, the good old days. From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 17:16:43 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:16:43 -0400 Subject: Advice on moving Arcade Cabinet In-Reply-To: <470E9A6E.8050205@oldskool.org> References: <470BF015.8060503@flippers.com> <470E9A6E.8050205@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <470EA0CB.6040703@gmail.com> Jim Leonard wrote: > John Robertson wrote: >> A good fridge dolly that straps the game to the dolly is best, >> stair-walkers are essential for going down a flight of stairs - and > > Stair-walkers? Is that some sort of mechanical device, or are you just > referring to the people who will help you carry it? It's a machine uses rubber tracks to climb stairs. You just need to make sure that your stairs are strong enough to hold the device plus the weight of the stair-walker. Peace... Sridhar From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Oct 11 17:25:20 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:25:20 +0100 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071011145145.N83565@shell.lmi.net> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, , <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> <20071011145145.N83565@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk> Fred Cisin wrote: > The blame was always hung on the disk compression, since that was what > people NOTICED being different; but the compression was NOT the problem. Smartdrv was purely a disk cache, wasn't it? The compression was something else... umm... doublespace? > Ah, the good old days. And then Windows came along... From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Oct 11 17:32:37 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:32:37 -0600 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, , <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> <20071011145145.N83565@shell.lmi.net> <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <470EA485.5010206@jetnet.ab.ca> Jules Richardson wrote: > And then Windows came along... Leave already!!!! From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 11 18:04:39 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:04:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: HD46505 CRT controller chips In-Reply-To: <470D6471.30051.D01F12@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <414184.99126.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> the 6545 was a close relative of the 6845. IIRC the TI PC used it. No clue where to find one though. The Rockwell will probably work. They had their own version of the Intel 8272/NEC '465 chip. My old ITT Xtra XP used the Rockwell version. It went bust and I replaced it with the 8272 from my Tandy 2000. It worked fine. --- Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 8 Oct 2007 at 11:40, ph wrote: > > > Hi its a long shot now the post was in 2001 , but > I need a Hd46505 chip > > I don't have one, but will the Rockwell R6545 work? > It might be more > widely available. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Don't let your dream ride pass you by. Make it a reality with Yahoo! Autos. http://autos.yahoo.com/index.html From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 11 18:07:17 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:07:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: HD46505 CRT controller chips In-Reply-To: <470D6471.30051.D01F12@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <992373.56130.qm@web61012.mail.yahoo.com> --- Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 8 Oct 2007 at 11:40, ph wrote: > > > Hi its a long shot now the post was in 2001 , but > I need a Hd46505 chip Wasn't this very chip used in the Victor 9000/Sirius 1? If so I think you can replace it with a 6845. Worth a try... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545433 From cisin at xenosoft.com Thu Oct 11 18:11:55 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:11:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, , <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> <20071011145145.N83565@shell.lmi.net> <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <20071011160555.C87184@shell.lmi.net> > > The blame was always hung on the disk compression, since that was what > > people NOTICED being different; but the compression was NOT the problem. On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Jules Richardson wrote: > Smartdrv was purely a disk cache, wasn't it? Yes. But MICROS~1 was completely clueless what the risks were and how to deal with them for WRITE caching (what happens if the power goes off, or a disk error occurs before the cached stuff gets written?) > The compression was something > else... umm... doublespace? Therein hangs a bizarre tale of conflict and betrayal between MICROS~1 and Stac Electronics (billg said, "I'm having a bad day", when the court awarded damages), and the differences between DOS 6.20, 6.21, 6.22. > > Ah, the good old days. > And then Windows came along... Has anybody explained to Al Gore about how Windoze is the primary cause of global warming? From cisin at xenosoft.com Thu Oct 11 18:12:50 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:12:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470EA485.5010206@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, , <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> <20071011145145.N83565@shell.lmi.net> <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk> <470EA485.5010206@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20071011161214.I87184@shell.lmi.net> > Jules Richardson wrote: > > And then Windows came along... On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, woodelf wrote: > Leave already!!!! Windoze, me, or Jules? From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 18:26:57 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:26:57 -0700 Subject: HD46505 CRT controller chips In-Reply-To: <414184.99126.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> References: <470D6471.30051.D01F12@cclist.sydex.com>, <414184.99126.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <470E4ED1.13.463A49B@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Oct 2007 at 16:04, Chris M wrote: > the 6545 was a close relative of the 6845. IIRC the TI > PC used it. No clue where to find one though. The > Rockwell will probably work. They had their own > version of the Intel 8272/NEC '465 chip. My old ITT > Xtra XP used the Rockwell version. It went bust and I > replaced it with the 8272 from my Tandy 2000. It > worked fine. The big difference that's important here is that the Hitachi and Rockwell chips have a "transparent" refresh mode that allows a nice seamless memory share with a 6502. Set by Register 8, bit 3. The 6845 doesn't have this--so it probably won't work. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 18:23:30 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:23:30 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071011160555.C87184@shell.lmi.net> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk>, <20071011160555.C87184@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <470E4E02.20660.4607CEC@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Oct 2007 at 16:11, Fred Cisin wrote: >> Therein hangs a bizarre tale of conflict and betrayal between MICROS~1 and > Stac Electronics (billg said, "I'm having a bad day", when the court > awarded damages), and the differences between DOS 6.20, 6.21, 6.22. The innards of Doublespace got laid out on exactly one MSDN CD, IIRC. After that, the information mysteriously vanished (Did we make THAT?). (I still have the CD). Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 11 18:05:48 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:05:48 +0100 (BST) Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: <200710101422.01955.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> from "Gordon JC Pearce" at Oct 10, 7 02:22:01 pm Message-ID: > > No, I'm working under the assumption that hardware works logically, whe= > n > > it fails to work there's a good reason for it, and that before you can > > claim to have repaired it you have to have found that reason. > > Heh, I remember troubleshooting a PC that would work with a CD ROM=20 > disconnected, but not with it connected - even if you left the IDE cable = > off=20 > (actually it's long enough ago that it might have been a Mitsumi interfac= > e) > > Guess what it was? The 'scope told me, the +12 rail was all over the pla= > ce. =20 > Once the second CD ROM was connected up, it swung wildly from 9v to 15v. = > =20 It's amazing how often PSUs cause problems like this... [...] > > How am I inconveniencing myself? What do you think I want to do that > > could be done more easily by having a modern PC? (And remember I think > > _you're_ inconveniencing yourself by not having electronic test gear an= > d > > learning how to use it) > > You've said yourself that you don't have (easy) access to resources like=20 > bitsavers.org, because some of the formats used require fairly modern PCs= > . =20 > I'd find that pretty inconvenient. The same logic would imply that because I have never learnt to drive, I have to walk everywhere ;-) More serieously, on the few times I need soemthing from Bitsavers, I go to an internet cafe. > > > ARGH! When are you going to understand that I don't replace parts witho= > ut > > knowing what's failed and why!. I simply don't. I never will... > > I must admit, I don't just replace bits without at least trying to guess = > why=20 > they might have failed. Obviously if the cause of the failure is obvious= > ,=20 > it's not worth spending time on (most recent example being (sorry folks) = > one=20 > of my cars, where it was "Let's see, why might these ball joints have 6mm= > of=20 > play? Maybe because of 19 years of British roads?"). Ah, but 'natural wear and tear' is a good reason for failure. But suppose your front tyres wore out, unevenly. You'd rrplace them, of course, but I assume you 'd also check the front suspension/steering alignment. Or if several car ulbs burnt out at the same time, you'd check the system voltage. > > > It's a lot less inconvenient to me to stick to hardware I know, that I > > understand, and that I can keep going to avoid any such problems. > > Not keen on learning new stuff, then? OK :-).... Actually I prefer learning new _old_ stuff. Modern stuff is so badly docuemted that it seems to be impossible to really learn it anyhow. > > > > something worth at best hundreds and probably in fact worth perhaps > > > the cost of a pint or a train ticket is not sensible pragmatism, it's > > > > You also have to realise that not everybody knows people who give away > > old PC hardawre. I don't, for example. > > Look on the pavement the night before the bins are collected. I have a c= I've never seen anything computer-related in such a place. > > > not commendable attention to detail, it's bl**dy daft. And to say "I > > > won't run it if I can't repair it" is dafter still! > > > > I disgaree, but there you are... > > I try to only use things I can repair or rebuild, but I appreciate that t= > here=20 > are some things that should just be considered a complete replaceable par= > t. YEs, I guess so. Things like 7400s :-) > > I've repaired computer boards (the memory board for my PDP11, for one) an= > d=20 > I've repaired "sealed" ECUs in cars (the suspension ECU in Citro=C3=ABn X= > Ms, many=20 > times). I *replaced* a ball joint, because it was 30 quid and I've got n= > o=20 > chance of making one, especially for that kind of money. I *replaced* a=20 OK, although I drove the local Citroan parts centre nuts back when we had the BX. I rebuilt the steering rack (the procedure is in the workshop manual), and ordered all sorts of little bits -- damper yoke, shims, clips, etc. They had never had to supply those before -- apparently their workshop just replaced the entire steerign rack assembly. > serial controller card, 'cos it was a fiver and again I doubt I could bui= > ld=20 > one for that. No, but you could ggt the 1488/1489 for less than that, couldn't you? 90% of RS232 problems are the driver/receiver chip. Althought I had a fault in an HP9816 where not onlyhad both 1488s and both 1489s failed, but so had the 8250 serial chip [1]. No idea how.... ]1] Yes, I know it's a 68000 system. And I know that's not the normal serial chip in a 68K machine. But that's what HP used. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 11 18:13:22 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:13:22 +0100 (BST) Subject: Unused Collections (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase In-Reply-To: <004201c80ba8$3aaa4df0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> from "Ensor" at Oct 11, 7 02:44:12 am Message-ID: > The thing is though, my interest in them is primarily in the hardware > anyway. Once I've stripped them down, repaired them and found out what > "makes them tick" my interest in them is pretty much over (though again, YEs, me too. Once I've understood tha hardware to the lowest level possible (to gate/trasnsitor level in many cases), and once I've repaired the machine so that it can boot the OS, etc, I try it out for a bit and then generally loose interest and go to investigate something else. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 11 18:16:58 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:16:58 +0100 (BST) Subject: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: <01C80B9E.62E3E560@MSE_D03> from "M H Stein" at Oct 11, 7 00:33:27 am Message-ID: > Even Tony who has so often contributed valuable information seems > to be spending more of his time preaching and arguing his various > gospels lately... Although I read every message that appears here, I've found few threads recently that I can really contribute to. Of the current threads, I have no real knoweldge of RSX, I've never used CDOS (and I know little of disk imaging programs), and so on. Now, get a good hardware/repair thread going, nand it'll be difficult to stop me ;-) -tony From cisin at xenosoft.com Thu Oct 11 18:54:00 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:54:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470E4E02.20660.4607CEC@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk>, <20071011160555.C87184@shell.lmi.net> <470E4E02.20660.4607CEC@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071011165252.I87929@shell.lmi.net> > > Therein hangs a bizarre tale of conflict and betrayal between > > MICROS~1 and > > Stac Electronics (billg said, "I'm having a bad day", when the court > > awarded damages), and the differences between DOS 6.20, 6.21, 6.22. On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > The innards of Doublespace got laid out on exactly one MSDN CD, IIRC. > After that, the information mysteriously vanished (Did we make > THAT?). (I still have the CD). Did they ever do comparable docs of Drivespace? From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 11 19:06:53 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:06:53 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071011165252.I87929@shell.lmi.net> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, <470E4E02.20660.4607CEC@cclist.sydex.com>, <20071011165252.I87929@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <470E582D.18757.48831ED@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Oct 2007 at 16:54, Fred Cisin wrote: > Did they ever do comparable docs of Drivespace? Not as far as I know--at least I don't recall any. I suppose they learned their lesson. Cheers, Chuck From lproven at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 20:25:54 2007 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:25:54 +0100 Subject: Setting up a VAXstation In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0710082129o23a89b6cy62d07b3cb032cc6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0710111825h1336d38dv36cc577204d3cf8a@mail.gmail.com> On 09/10/2007, Tony Duell wrote: > Hang one a second. You've said this is an old board (and from the spec, > even I know it's an old board). You the owner can't afford to replace it. > And then later you say PC bits are 'cheap as chips' so there's no point > in trying to faultfind them. You can't have it both ways! OK, I was getting a bit too wound up there. I've backed off for a couple of days, much aided by my phone getting cut off - thanks for "leaving the retail market", C&W. Look, it's your choice, you live the way you want. The PC with the problem with 3 DIMMs is for a skint mate & I'm skint too. She can't afford to replace it and I am fixing it for her for free for a favour. If it was a business, it'd be a bit different. Want a free PC? No problem. You could try Freecycle: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleLondon/ Or check the skips in your local business park or trading estate. I've pulled some lovely machines out of there, and 21" monitors and so. Weird graphics card not working? Well, choose the card to suit the OS. Me, I run Linux, and these days, most things seem to just work. I'm happy to run nVidia's binary drivers on the free PC I got out of a mate at the new year. Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB RAM, 100GB hard disk, DVD+CDRW, 256MB AGP 3D card. Free for putting Windows on his new iMac for him. xBSD might be a bit more hassle but I believe they share a lot of X.11 these days. Frankly, if you want to run TSX-32, Haiku, AROS, FreeGEM, Syllable, SkyOS or something like that, use a VM. It'll be easier. I've run all of these except TSX under VMware or VirtualPC. VMware Server is a free download now; won't cost you a penny. Seriously. You don't need to spend a penny, just keep your eyes open. Fix a few CD players or something for someone and they'll give you their old PC, no hassle, I'm sure. Same goes for the OS and parts. I run a free and Free open source OS with about 99% open source apps. I use binaries for graphics card, Flash, Java and that's about it. But, yes, you're probably going to have to deal with not being able to repair the components if they die. PCs are like modern cars, or worse: designed for planned obsolescence. There are some things you just can't change in this world. If you try to be a tree, rigid and unyielding, you will get broken by the storm, blown down and smashed. Be a reed, bend in the wind. It's the only sane way to be sometimes. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 From jbdigriz at dragonsweb.org Thu Oct 11 20:40:30 2007 From: jbdigriz at dragonsweb.org (James B. DiGriz) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:40:30 -0400 Subject: TI 990 architecture In-Reply-To: <470C577A.1010202@dragonsweb.org> References: <200710021700.l92H0VVr095376@dewey.classiccmp.org> <58373.207.245.121.210.1191347161.squirrel@webmail.degnanco.net> <470C577A.1010202@dragonsweb.org> Message-ID: <470ED08E.1010600@dragonsweb.org> James B. DiGriz wrote: > There is at least one other 100-contiguous-pin bus TI used, in the > DS990/1 computer/771 terminal. > Well, something bothered me about this, so I opened the hood (er, bonnet, for our UK list members) of my 990/1 (literally), and it has, in fact, an 86-pin backplane. Oh well, score one for bit rot. Actually, two. I also looked again at one of the VPU200's I have. It has 16Kw, not 64. 4116's, not 4164's. What's interesting about the 990/1 is it has 2 9900 boards in it, one main CPU and the other for file I/O. Thing should zip right along, but that will have to wait until I hook some drives up to it. While I was at it, I opened up an XDS/22 TMS320C25 emulator system I have, since it has an interesting SE9996JD processor along with a 'C25, and it also has an 86-pin backplane, although the pins are split between two card-edge fingers. I have no idea yet if the busses are anything alike beyond that, but the 9996 looks exactly like one of the purple ceramic 9900's, 64-pin DIP and all. Given the nomenclature, I can only speculate that it may be the equivalent of a 9995 without the multiplexing of the data bus. I haven't been able to find a datasheet, but I'm going to do more investigating to see whether it can drop-in replace a 9900, which might be interesting. Anyone know whether this can be done and/or tried it? Also, has anyone here used both the TM990 and AMPL development systems enough to tell me if they aren't essentially the same software-wise? Thx in advance. jbdigriz From tothwolf at concentric.net Thu Oct 11 21:03:22 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:03:22 -0500 (CDT) Subject: FS: MMJ plugs & cables Message-ID: I've just purchased 2000pcs of Tyco Electronics/AMP 5-555237-1 MMJ plugs as a last-time buy since these are being discontinued by Tyco. If anyone needs some plugs or a cord made, now is the time to get in touch with me. Those plugs should get here in a couple of weeks (possibly sooner), but I still have 2-3 dozen or so on hand that I can use for making cables in the meantime. Even with the discount I got when buying that many connectors at once, it was still a very significant investment of money, so anything I can sell now to help offset that cost would be a good thing. I've also gotten my hands on another spool of DEC H8240 DECconnect cord, so those who wanted some cables made with genuine DEC wire should also get in touch with me now. I still have a small amount of ivory colored cord on hand (probably 30-40ft) as well if anyone wants a few cables made from that. I've mainly been offering the 10ft cables on eBay for $10.00 + postage, but I can make them any length required for $1.00/ft plus $1.00 for two connectors. I still have a limited number of other misc DEC MMJ serial adapters in addition to the stock of new H8571-J adapters that I mentioned previously. If you need something specific, drop me a note and I'll see if I have it. I also found that I currently have 10 used (but good condition) H8571-J adapters that I'll let go for $20.00 each since a few folks expressed an interest in those. I never imagined I'd get this involved with making cables as a "hobby", but I don't turn a profit on these (I've gone in the hole on this stuff in a huge way over the last couple of months), so I certainly can't call it a business :) From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Thu Oct 11 21:23:03 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:23:03 -0300 Subject: Unused Collections (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase References: Message-ID: <061d01c80c76$e4c10b70$f0fea8c0@alpha> > YEs, me too. Once I've understood tha hardware to the lowest level > possible (to gate/trasnsitor level in many cases), and once I've repaired > the machine so that it can boot the OS, etc, I try it out for a bit and > then generally loose interest and go to investigate something else. Tick one for me. Hardware is what drives me hard :o) Love to mess with that :o) From useddec at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 21:28:35 2007 From: useddec at gmail.com (Paul Anderson) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:28:35 -0500 Subject: Looking for an H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel for a KA650/KA655 in a BA213 In-Reply-To: <1e1fc3e90710111453l730db0f9m2fe7e33855b78616@mail.gmail.com> References: <1e1fc3e90710111453l730db0f9m2fe7e33855b78616@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <624966d60710111928g54144d21s532ff2efc4a83b43@mail.gmail.com> I thing I just boxed a few up up for my "move". I'll try to check over the weekend Paul On 10/11/07, Glen Slick wrote: > > Anyone got a spare H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel for a KA650/KA655 in a > BA213? > > I recently picked up a VAXServer 3600 which has the KA650 board but is > missing the H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel and I would like to acquire > one. > From dkelvey at hotmail.com Thu Oct 11 22:14:07 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:14:07 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, , <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > From: cclist at sydex.com ---snip---> > The one we never could figure a way around was the customer turning > the power off before an application could terminate and close any > open files, update indices, etc.> > The problem is still with us today. Nihil sub sole novum.> Hi That is why HDOS for H8/89 had volume numbers assigned to each disk. If the user was faithful and used a new number for each formatting, one was protected against overwriting, or so I'm told. Most didn't do this and trashed there disk. I'd always thought that it wouldn't have hurt to use one more buffer and check to see if the disk in the drive had a matching dir and allocation table. Another way might be to keep a random number, create from a hash of the information on the disk, that would need to be read before writing. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Boo!?Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare! http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/purchase/trial.aspx?s_cid=wl_hotmailnews From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 12 00:00:59 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:00:59 -0600 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <20071011161214.I87184@shell.lmi.net> References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, , <20071011125940.E74029@shell.lmi.net> <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com> <20071011145145.N83565@shell.lmi.net> <470EA2D0.8090703@yahoo.co.uk> <470EA485.5010206@jetnet.ab.ca> <20071011161214.I87184@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <470EFF8B.1090002@jetnet.ab.ca> > Windoze, me, or Jules? Mr Gates nightmare :) From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 00:29:01 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:29:01 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: References: <01C80C0D.DBF16E40@MSE_D03>, <470E2D3A.30724.3E06FB9@cclist.sydex.com>, Message-ID: <470EA3AD.19301.5AF1D59@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Oct 2007 at 20:14, dwight elvey wrote: > Another way might be to keep a random number, create from > a hash of the information on the disk, that would need to be read > before writing. Uh, that's what CP/M does--that value of CKS in the DPB tells CP/M how many directory entries to checksum--which it does on open calls. Unfortunately, one needn't do an open call to create a file--a valid filled-in FCB usually is good enough. There were applications that swapped FCBs around--and before CP/M 2.0, there were no random-access positioning calls, so programs would do their own FCB fiddling. A hole that you could drive a truck through. All of that got pretty much taken care of with CP/M 3.0 and MP/M, but CDOS predates those. But even if you could tell that a disk was changed, there was no system noficiation function to call in CP/M to tell the OS to check the disk. Cheers, Chuck From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Thu Oct 11 02:48:20 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:48:20 +0200 Subject: DEC RSX-11 In-Reply-To: <0JPP0039ONEMHMZ9@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> References: <0JPP0039ONEMHMZ9@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> Message-ID: <470DD544.1080000@iais.fraunhofer.de> Allison schrieb: >> Subject: Re: DEC RSX-11 >> From: Holger Veit >> Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:19:57 +0200 >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only >> >> Ethan Dicks schrieb: >> >>> On 10/9/07, Allison wrote: >>> >>> >> It is probably @[1,2]SHUTUP.CMD, or better RUN $SHUTUP >> >>> >>> > > RUN $SHUTUP > > That works. > > >>>> TO change admin password how, and which account again? >>>> >>>> >> RUN $ACNT >> and then modify the UIC [1,2]. >> > > It's "run $acntres" on this beastie. However any attempt to modify > the accounts or add accounts causes a illegal instruction trap and > return to prompt. > Yes, this is a "shared library" version of the ACNT program which can be built with sysgen to save some space in memory. IIRC, it is linked against some RMSRES.TSK or FCSRES.TSK library loaded into memory. Look into the [1,2]STARTUP.CMD file what is done there. It is possible that some TSKs have to be installed first (INS cmd). > Could it be the files are protected? I did insure the disk write > protect was disabled and working. > Things that can happen are: - the ACNTRES.TSK is not contiguous (PIP [1,2]ACNT*.TSK/LI does not contain a 'C' in the line - some of the resident libraries are missing/not INStalled (because on that turn-key application there were not required) - the ACNTRES comes from a different OS version - there are several versions of ACNTRES.TSK in the system dir, and only an older one works. > >> Basically, any account [1,x] is privileged, so you might create a new >> account in this range before >> fiddling with the old one and maybe accidentally disabling it (happened >> to experience this myself :-)) >> > > Fortunately when the system boots the startup.cmd also logs in account > 7,21. > Was [7,*] also privileged? I am not sure anymore after several years. The point may be though that the password file is actually owned by [1,2] - in this case you might not be able modify it from [7,21]. >> http://www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/RSX-11M%20Version%204.2%20Manual%20Set.html >> for one set. >> > > Very helpful, save for Acrobat say the files are corrupt for any of the more > useful ones and crashes for manuals over 25MB. > > I had downloaded them, as well as the ones at John Dundas's site, and did not find corruptions. The files at the Australian computer museum are large, though; the first thing I did was to compress them with an Adobe Acrobat. There it should have been detected if they were corrupt. So I guess its you having some transfer problem. > I'm not sure anything useful other than a "Pregen"ned system is on > the disk as I havent found any languages. > > Hmmm, to sysgen a new system, the installation set is required. One indicator you might have sysgen stuff on the system is the presence of some [200,200]SYSGEN*.CMD scripts, and the current configuration should be in [200,200]SYSSAVED.CMD;* -- Holger From trasz at FreeBSD.org Thu Oct 11 06:51:49 2007 From: trasz at FreeBSD.org (Edward Tomasz Napierala) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:51:49 +0200 Subject: Indigo 2 - no video. Message-ID: <20071011115149.GA23184@pin.if.uz.zgora.pl> I just got a "teal" SGI Indigo 2. Problem is, I get no graphics output. When I turn it on, the LEDs on keyboard flash once, the LED on the I2 turns on, after two seconds turns off, then turns on again and stays turned on. I hear the boot tune. Monitor is SGI 20E21, connected via 13W3 cable, but it gets no signal (or at least no sync) from the machine. Manual says something about "dissonant piano chord" - how is it supposed to sound like? One thing I've verified that without graphics card the chord sounds the same. NumLock LED on the keyboard does not light when i press that key. Is there some way to reset the NVRAM or something like this? Note that there are no SCSI disks installed - the bays are empty. -- If you cut off my head, what would I say? Me and my head, or me and my body? From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Oct 11 07:07:44 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:07:44 -0400 Subject: Unused Collections (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phaseconversion) Message-ID: <0JPQ007L5XMPPQL1@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Unused Collections (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phaseconversion) > From: "Ensor" > Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:44:12 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Hi, > > > You are getting dangerously close to one of the great > >revelations of collecting life: > > > > Most collectors do not do anything with their > > collections. > > > > Nearly all of us are on this constant drive to get new items, > >chase them down, acquire them - then put them in the pile. 5 > >percent of the pile gets used and played with 95 percent of the > >time.... > >Never a truer word said.... Generally I have to agree. That said I'm the throwback here I guess. Of the 45 or so machines I have they are grouped by how I use them. Some like the 6800D1 and SC/MP very rarely see power. Others like my IMP48 and COSMACELF are small and don't need a terminal so its out and played with. the PDP-8, PDP11s and microVAX are all out and accessable. Same for the DECmateIII and several of the CP/M machines. Now there are machines I don't use but are occasionally brought out to insure run. I also have a small group maybe 5 systems that haven't run in 5 years as their status is "second copy" which is a working system but not intended for regular use. If there is one constant it is there are systems in that group that see power often and are part of my prefered tools to do various things. The fact that those tools are a bit retro is less important than they work and any bugs are well known. Allison From trasz at FreeBSD.org Thu Oct 11 11:54:25 2007 From: trasz at FreeBSD.org (Edward Tomasz Napierala) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:54:25 +0200 Subject: Indigo 2 - "NESTED EXCEPTION" at boot. Message-ID: <20071011165425.GA25408@pin.if.uz.zgora.pl> The following error is sent via serial port #1 during Indigo 2 boot, just after boot tune: Exception: Status register: 0x30044803 Cause register: 0x8000c000 Exception PC: 0x9fc368f8, Exception RA: 0x9fc368d8 Interrupt exception Bus Error ? Local I/O interrupt register 0: 0x4 Local I/O interrupt register 2: 0xc8 Saved user regs in hex (&gpda 0xa8740e48, &_regs 0xa8741048): arg: a8740000 20 20 12 tmp: a8740000 1f a8000000 8000000 a8746f78 0 ffffffff 4 sve: a8740000 c12dc13a 0 c0f9138a 0 c0edd9c9 0 bf077b8a t8 a8740000 t9 c0dcea58 at 0 NESTED EXCEPTION #1 at EPC: 9fc24020; first exception at PC: 9fc368f8 Any idea what to do about this? What can be the reason, bad memory, bad planar or CPU? -- If you cut off my head, what would I say? Me and my head, or me and my body? From shieldsm at gmail.com Thu Oct 11 13:09:00 2007 From: shieldsm at gmail.com (Mike Shields) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:09:00 -0400 Subject: Indigo 2 - no video. In-Reply-To: <20071011115149.GA23184@pin.if.uz.zgora.pl> References: <20071011115149.GA23184@pin.if.uz.zgora.pl> Message-ID: <13135db40710111109u4457541dmc41f3b1ef07e08d7@mail.gmail.com> It's often helpful to hook up a serial console - all SGI's that I've revived (including Purple, but not Teal I2's) have worked without a graphics card, with a 9600 n81 serial console hooked up. It should go into a PROM console on the serial port, even with no drives or graphics card, at which point you'll be able to at least do some diagnostics. HTH, Mike On 10/11/07, Edward Tomasz Napierala wrote: > > I just got a "teal" SGI Indigo 2. Problem is, I get no graphics output. > When I turn it on, the LEDs on keyboard flash once, the LED on the I2 > turns > on, after two seconds turns off, then turns on again and stays turned on. > I hear the boot tune. Monitor is SGI 20E21, connected via 13W3 cable, > but it gets no signal (or at least no sync) from the machine. > > Manual says something about "dissonant piano chord" - how is it supposed > to sound like? One thing I've verified that without graphics card > the chord sounds the same. > > NumLock LED on the keyboard does not light when i press that key. > > Is there some way to reset the NVRAM or something like this? > > Note that there are no SCSI disks installed - the bays are empty. > > -- > If you cut off my head, what would I say? Me and my head, or me and my > body? > > From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Thu Oct 11 13:12:55 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:12:55 +0200 (CEST) Subject: HD46505 CRT controller chips In-Reply-To: <025701c80bb3$2a89bae0$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <000001c80b81$1f568630$4ead1456@store> <025701c80bb3$2a89bae0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <1093.129.26.149.17.1192126375.squirrel@129.26.149.17> Alexandre Souza said: >>Hi its a long shot now the post was in 2001 , but I need a Hd46505 chip >> !! > > Where is it used, Paul? Maybe I have something here?! Actually, the HD46505 is just the Hitachi version of the well-known MC6845. Nothing really uncommon. -- Holger From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Oct 11 13:23:27 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:23:27 -0400 Subject: DEC RSX-11 Message-ID: <0JPR000ZSF0TU000@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: DEC RSX-11 > From: "e.stiebler" > Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 07:16:42 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Allison wrote: >> HALP! >> The RD52 has RXS11 and boots. > >Hello Allison, >PLEASE tell us to which version it boots ;-) RSX-11M PLUS V2.1 BL15 256KW system: "PREGEN" However the system is minimal and best described as built to run a specific application. All of the required files to build a more complete system are not there. I does boot and and shutdown without complaining. There are no languages and the only editor is a bare bones line oriented EDI. Looked exciting for a while. I'll likely remove the disk and install another to preserve what I have and run RT-11 on the new media. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Thu Oct 11 13:31:02 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:31:02 -0400 Subject: DEC RSX-11 Message-ID: <0JPR00NHPFDF3410@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: DEC RSX-11 > From: Holger Veit > Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 09:48:20 +0200 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only > >Allison schrieb: >- some of the resident libraries are missing/not INStalled (because on > that turn-key application there were not required) Exactly the case. >Was [7,*] also privileged? I am not sure anymore after several years. >The point may be though that >the password file is actually owned by [1,2] - in this case you might >not be able modify it from [7,21]. It was sufficient to perform ACNTRES actions. >>> http://www.computer.museum.uq.edu.au/RSX-11M%20Version%204.2%20Manual%20Set.html >>> for one set. >>> >> >> Very helpful, save for Acrobat say the files are corrupt for any of the more >> useful ones and crashes for manuals over 25MB. >> >> >I had downloaded them, as well as the ones at John Dundas's site, and >did not find corruptions. The files >at the Australian computer museum are large, though; the first thing I >did was to compress them with an >Adobe Acrobat. There it should have been detected if they were corrupt. Firefox was used to do the download. My Adobe says files are corrupt and when it attempts to repair the system bluescreens (NT4/sp6 NO MS web apps). The smaller files, those around or under 10mb seem fine. >So I guess its you having some transfer problem. May be the case but ??>? Or Acrobat reader V5.05 is broken. >> I'm not sure anything useful other than a "Pregen"ned system is on >> the disk as I havent found any languages. >> >> >Hmmm, to sysgen a new system, the installation set is required. One >indicator you might have sysgen stuff >on the system is the presence of some [200,200]SYSGEN*.CMD scripts, and >the current configuration >should be in [200,200]SYSSAVED.CMD;* Not there. [200,200] is mostly empty and the supporting directories are as well. There are less than 12000 blocks used on a RD52(~64000 blocks). Allison From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 00:13:43 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:13:43 -0300 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Message-ID: <01C80C7C.6318B220@mandr71> ------------Original Message: Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:40:11 -0700 From: "Chuck Guzis" Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files On 11 Oct 2007 at 13:51, M H Stein wrote: > That's what I see: the first and third image have cross-linked files > but the second one looks OK; the question is whether the disks > themselves have a problem or whether Dave's IMD program got > confused. The first image seems to start on sector 2 and wrap > around; however, the third does start on sector1 but has errors > nevertheless. (Disclaimer: I haven't looked at the third image yet) But it's not TeleDisk or ImageDisk that's messed up. Note that in the first disk, the cross-linking/double-allocation entries are contained in the same physical sector. I'll grab a gander at the third disk later today when I have a chance. Cheers, Chuck ----------------Reply: Yes, as usual I pressed Send before completely reading your message; obviously the problem is on the disks themselves. I'm kicking myself because I had looked at the directory entries before I started but didn't notice the duplicate pointers (see, your eyes aren't nearly as bad as mine). And it didn't occur to me that neither CDOS nor Cromix would complain until I finally ran STAT; I just assumed the the disks must be good and the problem lay in the transfer. Live & learn - never assume anything. mike From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 00:28:23 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:28:23 -0300 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Message-ID: <01C80C7C.642CE140@mandr71> Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:11:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Fred Cisin Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files >>> The blame was always hung on the disk compression, since that was what >>> people NOTICED being different; but the compression was NOT the problem. >On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Jules Richardson wrote: >> Smartdrv was purely a disk cache, wasn't it? >Yes. But MICROS~1 was completely clueless what the risks were and how to >deal with them for WRITE caching (what happens if the power goes off, or a >disk error occurs before the cached stuff gets written?) Well, in all fairness if the power goes off just before or during a disk write I don't see how you could avoid problems without a battery backup or similar. >> The compression was something >> else... umm... doublespace? >Therein hangs a bizarre tale of conflict and betrayal between MICROS~1 and >Stac Electronics (billg said, "I'm having a bad day", when the court >awarded damages), and the differences between DOS 6.20, 6.21, 6.22. Not one of his finest moments fer sure... >>> Ah, the good old days. >> And then Windows came along... >Has anybody explained to Al Gore about how Windoze is the primary cause of >global warming? I KNEW IT! MICROSOFT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL WARMING! Now, how many ways are they going to make money out of it.... m From dm561 at torfree.net Thu Oct 11 23:32:25 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:32:25 -0300 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Message-ID: <01C80C7C.60F053E0@mandr71> ------------Original Message: Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:22:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Roger Ivie Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Dave Dunfield wrote: > > Does each entry represent a cluster? The CDOS manual does have tables > relating physical sectors to clusters, which can be represented with an > 8-bit value. These are listed for "large disks" and "small disks", although > it's not clear where a DSDD 5.25" disk fits (it's large for a 5.25, > small compared to 8") - I'm guessing the "small disks" means any 5.25, > but I'd love to be corrected if anyone knows differently. In CP/M, each entry represents a cluster and "small disk" means "has fewer than 256 clusters". -- roger ivie rivie at ridgenet.net ------------Reply: In Cromemco-speak, (S)mall usually means 5 1/4 and (L)arge=8" m From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 00:06:40 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:06:40 -0300 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Message-ID: <01C80C7C.61FB5B40@mandr71> ---------------Original Message: Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:58:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Fred Cisin Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: <20071011105050.V71651 at shell.lmi.net> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > CDOS had one or more bytes in the first physical sector of the disk to > > identify which format. There ARE multiple (user modifications?) variant > > formats that may have the same ID byte(s)! On Thu, 11 Oct 2007, Dave Dunfield wrote: > Anyone have more info on this? - One of my main problems is determining > exactly what format these disks are in. It might be stored in the first sector, or it might be known only to the OS. On a functioning CP/M 2.x? machine, STAT DSK: gives some of the parameters. > Does each entry represent a cluster? Yes, each of the numbers in the block list represents a "cluster" (which is the MICROS~1 word for a block) Each OS company seems to have had their own unique word (like "standards") for an allocation unit. Remember that CP/M calls a 128 byte record a "sector" disunirregardless of how many there are in each physical sector. -----------------Reply: On a Cromemco disk (including HDs) at offset 0070H there are 6 bytes that indicate CDOS or Cromix format, Single or Double density and S/D sided, and these are all options in the format (init) program. This is why track 0 is formatted as the lowest common denominator (SD) for all floppies, so that the controller can start with a known format and then decide how to handle the rest of the disk. Hard disks indicate type (IMI/MFM) instead of SD/DD & SS/DS. The first (dummy) directory entry of a CDOS floppy contains the 8 character disk ID, the date it was formatted and the number of directory entries. The remaining parameters (disk size, interleave vector table, etc. are stored in the BIOS the same as CP/M AFAIK; hard disks keep size &c on the disk (along with partition & alternate track tables) so that you can swap disks without reconfiguring anything. mike From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 01:19:09 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:19:09 -0300 Subject: Tony - was: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion Message-ID: <01C80C7E.C6F95220@mandr71> -------------Original Message: Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:16:58 +0100 (BST) From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Subject: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion > Even Tony who has so often contributed valuable information seems > to be spending more of his time preaching and arguing his various > gospels lately... Although I read every message that appears here, I've found few threads recently that I can really contribute to. Of the current threads, I have no real knoweldge of RSX, I've never used CDOS (and I know little of disk imaging programs), and so on. Now, get a good hardware/repair thread going, nand it'll be difficult to stop me ;-) -tony -----------------Reply: True enough; most threads don't interest me either, and your comprehensive contributions on the hardware side (and occasionally even software) are greatly appreciated; thank you for giving us as much time on those as you do. However, by now we're all pretty well acquainted with your philosophy of hardware ownership, maintenance and repair, not only of computers but automobiles, cameras, watches & clocks, machine tools etc. as well. Life is short and there are so many things that need your restoring & repair skills; why waste any of it on preaching to the choir or the unenlightened foolish ones, as the case may be... mike From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 02:23:35 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:23:35 -0300 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Message-ID: <01C80C87.C2C27020@mandr71> >Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:05:52 -0700 (PDT) >From: Fred Cisin >Subject: RE: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files >Now that 22Disk and the rest of the tools have been exonerated, we can >concentrate on ways to read the hard to read sectors - a ubiquitous >problem with Cromemco disks. ----------- Admittedly a problem when trying to read their disks with today's crippled controllers, but their use of a common SD Track 0 meant that without any configuration changes the OS could concurrently and transparently read a mix of at least 8 different types of disks; not many systems of that day could do that. Want to copy your SDSS 8" disk to a DDDS 5" one? No problem. Friend or business partner has some data on SDSS 5" disks that you want on DDDS 8"? Just pop in the disks and copy away; add some software and you can even copy to/from MS-DOS disks if you must. Run Z80 CDOS/CP/M Wordstar on your 68000 Cromix+ CS-400? No sweat (although a different issue). Process your old CDOS data files with your UNIX software? Not much harder. It all just looks different from today's PC-centric perspective. mike From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Oct 12 05:11:44 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:11:44 +0100 Subject: OS-9 sector sizes Message-ID: <470F4860.8020604@yahoo.co.uk> Anyone know if OS-9 is guaranteed to use a certain sector size when resident on a hard disk? Or is it implementation-specific? ta J. From sellam at vintagetech.com Fri Oct 12 08:21:40 2007 From: sellam at vintagetech.com (Sellam Ismail) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:21:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: VCF Lodging Message-ID: I wanted to get this out ASAP for those travelling in from out of the area... VCF LODGING OPTIONS!! http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/lodging.php The Residence Inn ($119) is minor luxury, the Holiday Inn ($99) is recently renovated (I am told). For those on a budget, use the internet to find a budget hotel or motel in the area. Rates are definitely higher than they've ever been for VCF, mostly due to normal inflation trends (it ain't cheap out here). If you can find something clean and nearby for under $80 then let me know and I'll add it to the lodging page. More on VCFX in the newsletter coming out by this weekend. -- 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 bpope at wordstock.com Fri Oct 12 08:35:41 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:35:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Logic gates humour (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20071012133541.CBBDD55DE7@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Tony Duell > > > Even Tony who has so often contributed valuable information seems > > to be spending more of his time preaching and arguing his various > > gospels lately... > > Although I read every message that appears here, I've found few threads > recently that I can really contribute to. Of the current threads, I have > no real knoweldge of RSX, I've never used CDOS (and I know little of disk > imaging programs), and so on. Now, get a good hardware/repair thread > going, nand it'll be difficult to stop me ;-) ^^^^ That was a good one! :D Watch out, you will be able to make anything out of that!! Cheers, Bryan From emu at e-bbes.com Fri Oct 12 09:00:30 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:00:30 -0600 Subject: OS-9 sector sizes In-Reply-To: <470F4860.8020604@yahoo.co.uk> References: <470F4860.8020604@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <470F7DFE.2060305@e-bbes.com> Jules Richardson wrote: > > Anyone know if OS-9 is guaranteed to use a certain sector size when > resident on a hard disk? Or is it implementation-specific? Which one are you talking about, os-9/6809 or os-9/68k ? From legalize at xmission.com Fri Oct 12 09:06:36 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:06:36 -0600 Subject: Tony - was: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 12 Oct 2007 03:19:09 -0300. <01C80C7E.C6F95220@mandr71> Message-ID: In article <01C80C7E.C6F95220 at mandr71>, M H Stein writes: > [...] why waste any of it on preaching to the choir or the unenlightened > foolish ones, as the case may be... LOL, as if those are the only two choices. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Oct 12 09:49:17 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:49:17 +0100 Subject: OS-9 sector sizes In-Reply-To: <470F7DFE.2060305@e-bbes.com> References: <470F4860.8020604@yahoo.co.uk> <470F7DFE.2060305@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <470F896D.9000409@yahoo.co.uk> e.stiebler wrote: > Jules Richardson wrote: >> >> Anyone know if OS-9 is guaranteed to use a certain sector size when >> resident on a hard disk? Or is it implementation-specific? > > Which one are you talking about, os-9/6809 or os-9/68k ? Sorry, 68k (actually a 68008 in this case, if it matters) J. From classiccmp.org at stellar.eclipse.co.uk Fri Oct 12 10:02:01 2007 From: classiccmp.org at stellar.eclipse.co.uk (Stroller) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:02:01 +0100 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine Message-ID: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1670168_1461055,00.html From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Fri Oct 12 10:47:18 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:47:18 -0700 Subject: Indigo 2 - "NESTED EXCEPTION" at boot. Message-ID: <9f0a63580695aa13f45f9e1de0540fac@valleyimplants.com> > Edward writes > Manual says something about "dissonant piano chord" - how is it > supposed > to sound like? One thing I've verified that without graphics card > the chord sounds the same. It's an arpeggio of some sort, perhaps with a 7th. Haven't worked it out. Getting the boot-tune means that much of the computer is working properly. Try pulling the graphics and reseating the memory and processor module & memory and see what pops out on TTY0. It could be bad graphics (had that happen once in an Indigo), in which case there is a surfeit of XL/Express graphics boards around (I have an Extreme that I haven't used for years). Do you know what the hardware is? Another possibility is that someone tried to upgrade the processor module beyond what the boot PROM could support. Most of the time the machine will 'let it slide', but some cause issues (especially if it's a R10k on a R4k board). If you don't know for certain than describe: "module with a big aluminum heat sink and a small portion of board exposed that has several SMD memory chips on it" can localize it to one of 2 processor modules (R4400 in either 200MHz/2MB cache or R4400/250 with 2MB). Also give the IP number of the main board (it's near the riser for the GIO/EISA cards), and the model number on the back (CMNB007-something). From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 10:54:35 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:54:35 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80C7C.642CE140@mandr71> References: <01C80C7C.642CE140@mandr71> Message-ID: <470F364B.18007.7EBD6BC@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 2:28, M H Stein wrote: > I KNEW IT! MICROSOFT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL WARMING! > Now, how many ways are they going to make money out of it.... Guess billg can kiss the Nobel Peace prize goodbye... From cisin at xenosoft.com Fri Oct 12 11:01:35 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:01:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80C7C.642CE140@mandr71> References: <01C80C7C.642CE140@mandr71> Message-ID: <20071012085439.K23100@shell.lmi.net> > >Yes. But MICROS~1 was completely clueless what the risks were and how to > >deal with them for WRITE caching (what happens if the power goes off, or a > >disk error occurs before the cached stuff gets written?) On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, M H Stein wrote: > Well, in all fairness if the power goes off just before or during a disk write I > don't see how you could avoid problems without a battery backup or similar. Two issues: 1) deliberate. The OS seems to say, "All done", and the user flips the big red switch. With write caching, the obvious "all done" signals occur before the work is done. 2) SMARTDRV rearranged the sequence of writes for more efficiency. When power fails, you have a false DIRectory, even though none of the file was actually written. Without SMARTDRV, perhaps some of the data was or wasn't written yet, but the DIRectory will show a 0 length file, since "closing" the file and writing the updated DIR isn't done until after all of the data is written. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From cisin at xenosoft.com Fri Oct 12 11:09:22 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:09:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80C87.C2C27020@mandr71> References: <01C80C87.C2C27020@mandr71> Message-ID: <20071012090346.E23100@shell.lmi.net> > >Now that 22Disk and the rest of the tools have been exonerated, we can > >concentrate on ways to read the hard to read sectors - a ubiquitous > >problem with Cromemco disks. On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, M H Stein wrote: > Admittedly a problem when trying to read their disks with today's crippled > controllers, but their use of a common SD Track 0 meant that without any > . . . > It all just looks different from today's PC-centric perspective. No complaint about the idea of minimal first sector. The specific problem that I was referring to is the incompatability with trying to read Cromemco diskettes using an NEC 765 type controller, which needs a larger index gap, resulting problems reading the first sector of each track. From spoon_813 at hotmail.com Fri Oct 12 10:36:56 2007 From: spoon_813 at hotmail.com (SPOONSPOON) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:36:56 +0800 Subject: Purchase: DEC PDP11/93 (Whole Machine) Message-ID: Hello, I want to purchase DEC PDP11/93 (1). Can I get a quote from you? If it is in stock, please reply me. What does it include? I mean how is the configuration? Thank you very much Regard Beijing KSD Electron Technical Service Center _________________________________________________________________ ????? MSN ?????????? http://mobile.msn.com.cn/ From spoon_813 at hotmail.com Fri Oct 12 10:57:16 2007 From: spoon_813 at hotmail.com (SPOONSPOON) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:57:16 +0800 Subject: Purchase: DEC PDP11/93(whole system) Message-ID: Hello Paul Anderson, I want to purchase DEC PDP11/93 (1). Can I get a quote from you? If it is in stock, please reply me. What does it include? I mean how is the configuration? If it is 2MB how much? If it is 4MB how much? Thank you very much Regard Beijing KSD Electron Technical Service Center _________________________________________________________________ ????? MSN ?????????? http://mobile.msn.com.cn/ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 12 11:36:27 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:36:27 -0600 Subject: OS-9 sector sizes In-Reply-To: <470F4860.8020604@yahoo.co.uk> References: <470F4860.8020604@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <470FA28B.9060100@jetnet.ab.ca> Jules Richardson wrote: > > Anyone know if OS-9 is guaranteed to use a certain sector size when > resident on a hard disk? Or is it implementation-specific? What version of OS-9? I think the sector size is the same, but the only way to really tell is to look at the driver module for a specific hard drive. Ben. From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 11:41:36 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:41:36 -0300 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Message-ID: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03> ---------Original Message: Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 09:09:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Fred Cisin Subject: RE: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files > >Now that 22Disk and the rest of the tools have been exonerated, we can > >concentrate on ways to read the hard to read sectors - a ubiquitous > >problem with Cromemco disks. On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, M H Stein wrote: > Admittedly a problem when trying to read their disks with today's crippled > controllers, but their use of a common SD Track 0 meant that without any > . . . > It all just looks different from today's PC-centric perspective. No complaint about the idea of minimal first sector. The specific problem that I was referring to is the incompatability with trying to read Cromemco diskettes using an NEC 765 type controller, which needs a larger index gap, resulting problems reading the first sector of each track. ------------Reply: Tell me about it; went through 7 mobo/fdcs while trying to help Dave D; although some could write OK (which was all I really needed to recreate his images), I never did find one that could *read* using IMD or Uniform. Slowed down the drive, which sometimes helps, but still no good reads. That's why I keep at least one Cromemco system up & running; much easier to go the other way and copy to MSDOS disks on the Cromemco (or transfer files the old-fashioned RS-232 way). Nevertheless, just wanted to point out that their format wasn't quite such a dumb/bad thing as it seems from a PC POV; just too bad IBM picked the 765 instead of the 1793. BTW, that disk ID in track 0 is not *required*; if it's not found, the controller defaults to (stays in) SD/SS mode (although that doesn't mean that CDOS will be able to read your particular flavour of CP/M disk unless it's the IBM 8" "standard"). mike From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 13:01:53 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:01:53 -0700 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03> References: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <470F5421.24924.860627D@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 13:41, M H Stein wrote: > No complaint about the idea of minimal first sector. > The specific problem that I was referring to is the incompatability with > trying to read Cromemco diskettes using an NEC 765 type controller, which > needs a larger index gap, resulting problems reading the first sector > of each track. At the expense of crossing over into Tony's territory, it was easier to make a simple WD1770 circuit on a Peecee ISA prototype board. The software to interface to it is almost trivial. I recently shipped a batch of formatted Cromemco DSSD 5.25" diskettes to Germany made using this board. Customer reports that they worked just fine. I rather like the NEC 9801 approach--change the physical format, but keep the data format the same. There's no logical difference between the 9801 8", 5.25" and 3.5" diskettes--all are 77x2x8x1024 format, 360 RPM. The first time I ran into the "first track is always FM" disks was on ISIS-II on the MDS. Of course, that didn't help you if you had an FM- only controller and were trying to boot an MFM floppy... Cheers, Chuck From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 12:07:57 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:07:57 -0300 Subject: Compaticard 1 manual needed Message-ID: <01C80CD9.67055B60@MSE_D03> Does anyone have (or can point me to) a scanned copy of the manual for a MicroSolutions Compaticard I by any chance? Also the drivers, in case the ones I have are for another version? Can't find mine and only found the IV on the 'Web. Would be much appreciated; TIA mike From emu at e-bbes.com Fri Oct 12 13:18:50 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:18:50 -0600 Subject: Universal Floppy reader, was : Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470F5421.24924.860627D@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03> <470F5421.24924.860627D@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470FBA8A.8070202@e-bbes.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12 Oct 2007 at 13:41, M H Stein wrote: > > At the expense of crossing over into Tony's territory, it was easier > to make a simple WD1770 circuit on a Peecee ISA prototype board. The > software to interface to it is almost trivial. I was wondering about it for a while already. Why not just take any of the old FDCs, put it with an 8051 on a board. Make the software open source, transfer the files via V24 (or for the weird ones, use USB). No PCI, no PC ISA, just a plain cheap board, which is even usable with old Mac/Vaxes/whatever ... Compilers for the 8051 is on sourceforge (sdcc). So it should be cheap, and should also work for a while. Am I really missing something ? Cheers From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Fri Oct 12 13:21:23 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:21:23 -0700 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine References: Message-ID: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> Stroller wrote: > > http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1670168_1461055,00.html Lovely photography but many of the blurbs leave a lot to be desired as far as historical and technical accuracy goes. Can't have everything I guess. e.g. this bizarrely phrased attribution: > #10: Core Memory > Because it holds its state, core memory is able to retain information > even when the electricity is turned off, thereby paving the way to modern > computing. Howze that again? From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 13:23:32 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:23:32 -0700 Subject: Compaticard 1 manual needed In-Reply-To: <01C80CD9.67055B60@MSE_D03> References: <01C80CD9.67055B60@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <470F5934.5312.87433AF@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 14:07, M H Stein wrote: > Does anyone have (or can point me to) a scanned copy of the > manual for a MicroSolutions Compaticard I by any chance? > Also the drivers, in case the ones I have are for another version? > > Can't find mine and only found the IV on the 'Web. > > Would be much appreciated; TIA Give me a couple of days to look around. I know I've got the stuff here. The CC I and II were essentially the same card; the I had an external drive connector and the II didn't. Cheers, Chuck From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 12:17:03 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:17:03 -0300 Subject: Tony - was: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion Message-ID: <01C80CDA.ACA29880@MSE_D03> Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:06:36 -0600 From: Richard Subject: Re: Tony - was: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion >In article <01C80C7E.C6F95220 at mandr71>, > M H Stein writes: >> [...] why waste any of it on preaching to the choir or the unenlightened >> foolish ones, as the case may be... >LOL, as if those are the only two choices. -- It sometimes sounds like they are, at least in Tony's view... m From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 13:27:27 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:27:27 -0700 Subject: Universal Floppy reader, was : Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470FBA8A.8070202@e-bbes.com> References: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03>, <470F5421.24924.860627D@cclist.sydex.com>, <470FBA8A.8070202@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <470F5A1F.32423.877C8FA@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 12:18, e.stiebler wrote: > I was wondering about it for a while already. > Why not just take any of the old FDCs, put it with an 8051 on a board. > Make the software open source, transfer the files via V24 (or for the > weird ones, use USB). No PCI, no PC ISA, just a plain cheap board, which > is even usable with old Mac/Vaxes/whatever ... It's been discussed before here. I wonder if the whole shebang could be wrapped up in an FPGA. The Backpack drives pretty much did that via the parallel port. The unit had an FDC (National 8477), a uP and a few K of RAM. You sent it commands to program the ports on the FDC directly, which seems to me like the best way to go for maximum flexibility. Let the host figure out what to do with the raw data. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 13:32:03 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:32:03 -0700 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> References: , <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <470F5B33.21990.87BFF99@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 11:21, Brent Hilpert wrote: > > #10: Core Memory > > Because it holds its state, core memory is able to retain information > > even when the electricity is turned off, thereby paving the way to modern > > computing. Sure--the "green" movement. You'd be amazed at how much power is saved when you turn your system's power off. Cheers, Chuck From emu at e-bbes.com Fri Oct 12 13:35:30 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:35:30 -0600 Subject: Universal Floppy reader, was : Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470F5A1F.32423.877C8FA@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03>, <470F5421.24924.860627D@cclist.sydex.com>, <470FBA8A.8070202@e-bbes.com> <470F5A1F.32423.877C8FA@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470FBE72.6090207@e-bbes.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12 Oct 2007 at 12:18, e.stiebler wrote: > >> I was wondering about it for a while already. >> Why not just take any of the old FDCs, put it with an 8051 on a board. >> Make the software open source, transfer the files via V24 (or for the >> weird ones, use USB). No PCI, no PC ISA, just a plain cheap board, which >> is even usable with old Mac/Vaxes/whatever ... > > It's been discussed before here. I wonder if the whole shebang could > be wrapped up in an FPGA. You could. But the Tony would complain, as he doesn't like FPGAs ;-) > The Backpack drives pretty much did that via the parallel port. The > unit had an FDC (National 8477), a uP and a few K of RAM. You sent > it commands to program the ports on the FDC directly, which seems to > me like the best way to go for maximum flexibility. Let the host > figure out what to do with the raw data. Really don't understand all the talks about catweasels secrets, etc. Just make few boards for the classiccomp group, and be done with the subject ;-) From caveguy at sbcglobal.net Fri Oct 12 13:38:09 2007 From: caveguy at sbcglobal.net (Bob Bradlee) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:38:09 -0400 Subject: Tony - was: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: <01C80CDA.ACA29880@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <200710121838.l9CIcBZE088442@keith.ezwind.net> On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:17:03 -0300, M H Stein wrote: >Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:06:36 -0600 >From: Richard >Subject: Re: Tony - was: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase > conversion >>In article <01C80C7E.C6F95220 at mandr71>, >> M H Stein writes: >>> [...] why waste any of it on preaching to the choir or the unenlightened >>> foolish ones, as the case may be... >>LOL, as if those are the only two choices. >-- >It sometimes sounds like they are, at least in Tony's view... >m All that truely matters is that this choir, of both the enlightened and unenlightened, and yet all foolish ones, keep all in sync (sorry ... I had to sneek something on topic in here) and sing in harmony. The Other Bob From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 12 13:50:26 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:50:26 -0600 Subject: Tony - was: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase conversion In-Reply-To: <200710121838.l9CIcBZE088442@keith.ezwind.net> References: <200710121838.l9CIcBZE088442@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <470FC1F2.20301@jetnet.ab.ca> Bob Bradlee wrote: > All that truely matters is that this choir, of both the enlightened and unenlightened, and yet all foolish ones, > keep all in sync (sorry ... I had to sneek something on topic in here) and sing in harmony. Never work. You need a third Bob for for 3 part Harmony. > The Other Bob Ben Alias woodelf From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Oct 12 13:46:36 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:46:36 +0100 Subject: Universal Floppy reader, was : Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470F5A1F.32423.877C8FA@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03>, <470F5421.24924.860627D@cclist.sydex.com>, <470FBA8A.8070202@e-bbes.com> <470F5A1F.32423.877C8FA@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470FC10C.7040404@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12 Oct 2007 at 12:18, e.stiebler wrote: > >> I was wondering about it for a while already. >> Why not just take any of the old FDCs, put it with an 8051 on a board. >> Make the software open source, transfer the files via V24 (or for the >> weird ones, use USB). No PCI, no PC ISA, just a plain cheap board, which >> is even usable with old Mac/Vaxes/whatever ... > > It's been discussed before here. I wonder if the whole shebang could > be wrapped up in an FPGA. That's Phil's project... I thought he said on here recently that he was making good progress, too. From bpope at wordstock.com Fri Oct 12 13:51:12 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:51:12 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Brent Hilpert > > Stroller wrote: > > > > http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1670168_1461055,00.html > > Lovely photography but many of the blurbs leave a lot to be desired as far > as historical and technical accuracy goes. Can't have everything I guess. > > e.g. this bizarrely phrased attribution: > > > #10: Core Memory > > Because it holds its state, core memory is able to retain information > > even when the electricity is turned off, thereby paving the way to modern > > computing. > > Howze that again? > You are supposed to forget about static RAM and dynamic RAM 'cause those were not too terribly important in the whole stream of computing evolution.. What *is* important is flash memory! Jus' like core mem it keeps its thoughts even when the power is off... That is the modern computin' connection missin' link! :P Cheers, Bryan From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 12 14:02:47 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:02:47 -0600 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> Bryan Pope wrote: > You are supposed to forget about static RAM and dynamic RAM 'cause those > were not too terribly important in the whole stream of computing > evolution.. What *is* important is flash memory! Jus' like core mem it > keeps its thoughts even when the power is off... That is the modern > computin' connection missin' link! :P No EEPROM's are. I never quite trust the idea flashing a bios. We will now crash while re-installing the working version or happily upgrade to a buggey one that needs service pack that will be out around 2013. > Cheers, > > Bryan > > > . > From wbblair3 at yahoo.com Fri Oct 12 14:12:18 2007 From: wbblair3 at yahoo.com (William Blair) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:12:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine Message-ID: <541914.25565.qm@web50501.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1670168_1461055,00.html Nice. I'm going to have to buy that book. Here are some "Dinosaur Sightings: 1970s Computers": http://www.news.com/2300-1042_3-6213000-1.html?tag=ne.gall.pg ____________________________________________________________________________________ Catch up on fall's hot new shows on Yahoo! TV. Watch previews, get listings, and more! http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/3658 From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Fri Oct 12 14:15:07 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:15:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200710121917.PAA25842@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I never quite trust the idea flashing a bios. I don't mind it all that much...EXCEPT... (1) I don't trust them to get the "write the new one then switch" logic right to avoid trashing things in case of power-offs while writing. (2) I *really* dislike systems that do this without having a hardware facility to disable writes - such as a pair of jumper pins which must be jumpered to write. (If software can do it, rogue software can do it.) /~\ 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 Fri Oct 12 14:26:48 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:26:48 +0100 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <200710121917.PAA25842@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> <200710121917.PAA25842@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <470FCA78.5040801@yahoo.co.uk> der Mouse wrote: >> I never quite trust the idea flashing a bios. > > I don't mind it all that much...EXCEPT... > > (1) I don't trust them to get the "write the new one then switch" logic > right to avoid trashing things in case of power-offs while writing. > > (2) I *really* dislike systems that do this without having a hardware > facility to disable writes - such as a pair of jumper pins which must > be jumpered to write. (If software can do it, rogue software can do > it.) I suppose real computers have a separate service processor for this kind of thing, so it's easy to put things right even if something does go wrong (plus of course the update can *only* be done from the service processor - not from some rogue code running on the main CPU) From caveguy at sbcglobal.net Fri Oct 12 14:34:30 2007 From: caveguy at sbcglobal.net (Bob Bradlee) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:34:30 -0400 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <200710121934.l9CJYV9k094047@keith.ezwind.net> On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:21:23 -0700, Brent Hilpert wrote: >Stroller wrote: >> >> http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1670168_1461055,00.html >Lovely photography but many of the blurbs leave a lot to be desired as far >as historical and technical accuracy goes. Can't have everything I guess. >e.g. this bizarrely phrased attribution: >> #10: Core Memory >> Because it holds its state, core memory is able to retain information >> even when the electricity is turned off, thereby paving the way to modern >> computing. >Howze that again? Many years ago, when removing magnetic core from process control systems I was required to erase well more like scramble the magnetic core before it could leave the plant. So there was no chance process variables would leave the plant. I would take off the top cover and pass a magnet over the core array and told them to put it back into the system, if they did not believe me, but I had no idea what state the production line would come back up in, if at all. Never had anyone put one back in and test it. One of the sales points of using magnetic core memory on early process control systems even as late as the early 8080 days, was core's ability to retain state on loss of power. One of the leading process control systems of the day did not boot as we know it today on power up It just woke back up, the program was always stored in 16k of magnetic core. The floppy drive was an FE tool for IMPL of core on cold boot. Power on was a true warm boot because the current program was still in memory in a running state. It just needed to be restarted or continued depending on the first interupts it gets back from it's sensors. Not to defend the person who wrote #10 above, but is not instant on, fast recover to operation, computing devices based on rewriteable static memory, the very definition of modern computing even if they only had a clock speed of 476khz. These words being typed by someone who just flashed an ATT/Cingiular 8525 2gigs of storage and 3G connectivity. >From core to flash via eeprom, where too next ? The Other Bob Still a few Bobs short of a choir :) From doc at mdrconsult.com Fri Oct 12 15:00:26 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:00:26 -0500 Subject: EEPROM Flash; Was Re: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470FCA78.5040801@yahoo.co.uk> References: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> <200710121917.PAA25842@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <470FCA78.5040801@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <470FD25A.80801@mdrconsult.com> Jules Richardson wrote: > I suppose real computers have a separate service processor for this kind > of thing, so it's easy to put things right even if something does go > wrong (plus of course the update can *only* be done from the service > processor - not from some rogue code running on the main CPU) One would think so, yes? Pat Finnegan helped me revive an IBM 43P-260 awhile back - arguably workstation-class, but well into my idea of "a real computer". It had a version mismatch between the service processor's firmware and the main system firmware, probably due to a hosed firmware update. This completely bricks the system - no boot, no recovery option, nada. you can talk to the service processor, but the SP's firmware flash option requires that the system boot. Catch 22. IBM's supported repair option was to replace the entire I/O planar, where the service processor's EEPROM lives. The I/O board is about 2/3 of the system's logic, with the "system board" being basically a CPU/RAM backplane. Doc From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Fri Oct 12 15:04:37 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: data tape audio file archive Message-ID: It seems that an audio file of the Sinclair tape will load fine. Now then, is there an archive of data tape audio files somewhere? Will I have to start one myself? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 15:23:49 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:23:49 -0700 Subject: Universal Floppy reader, was : Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470FBE72.6090207@e-bbes.com> References: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03>, <470F5A1F.32423.877C8FA@cclist.sydex.com>, <470FBE72.6090207@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <470F7565.30039.8E251CA@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 12:35, e.stiebler wrote: > Really don't understand all the talks about catweasels secrets, etc. > Just make few boards for the classiccomp group, and be done with the > subject ;-) I suppose--every once in awhile, I run into a very odd format that's not compatible with any of the commodity controllers and am forced to use a Catweasel on it. But 99% of what I see is plain old soft- sectored media, readable on most WD17xx or NEC 765 controllers. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 15:27:54 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:27:54 -0700 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <470F765A.6276.8E60DF8@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 14:51, Bryan Pope wrote: > You are supposed to forget about static RAM and dynamic RAM 'cause those > were not too terribly important in the whole stream of computing > evolution.. What *is* important is flash memory! Jus' like core mem it > keeps its thoughts even when the power is off... That is the modern > computin' connection missin' link! :P It seems that we're coming full circle--I just read an article that says Intel plans on deploying FRAM on some one of its products. If FRAM gets Intel's blessing, it's sure to be the Next Big Thing in nonvolatile memory. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 15:29:53 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:29:53 -0700 Subject: Universal Floppy reader, was : Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470FC10C.7040404@yahoo.co.uk> References: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03>, <470F5A1F.32423.877C8FA@cclist.sydex.com>, <470FC10C.7040404@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <470F76D1.27467.8E7DDCD@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 19:46, Jules Richardson wrote: >> That's Phil's project... I thought he said on here recently that he was making > good progress, too. My impression is that Phil was working on something a bit more elegant; sort of a "read anything" gizmo. If it's not, then I apologize for the GCR images that I sent him... :) Cheers, Chuck From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 12 15:43:03 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:43:03 -0400 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80C87.C2C27020@mandr71> References: <01C80C87.C2C27020@mandr71> Message-ID: <200710121643.03236.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 12 October 2007 03:23, M H Stein wrote: > >Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:05:52 -0700 (PDT) > >From: Fred Cisin > >Subject: RE: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files > > > > >Now that 22Disk and the rest of the tools have been exonerated, we can > >concentrate on ways to read the hard to read sectors - a ubiquitous > >problem with Cromemco disks. > > ----------- > Admittedly a problem when trying to read their disks with today's crippled > controllers, but their use of a common SD Track 0 meant that without any > configuration changes the OS could concurrently and transparently read a > mix of at least 8 different types of disks; not many systems of that day > could do that. > > Want to copy your SDSS 8" disk to a DDDS 5" one? No problem. > Friend or business partner has some data on SDSS 5" disks that you > want on DDDS 8"? Just pop in the disks and copy away; add some > software and you can even copy to/from MS-DOS disks if you must. > Run Z80 CDOS/CP/M Wordstar on your 68000 Cromix+ CS-400? > No sweat (although a different issue). Process your old CDOS data > files with your UNIX software? Not much harder. > > It all just looks different from today's PC-centric perspective. So what sort of hardware does it take to be able to do stuff like that? I know my Bigboard II has both sizes of floppy drive connectors, though I think there's a jumper change involved to deal with different data rates IIRC. And there might be some potential for that board that's in my Cromemco, as well. I'm sure that a lot of my CP/M boxes have controller chips that are much more capable than the pc-centric stuff is, too. And how would the OS have to handle this? Some serious BIOS hacking? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 12 15:44:58 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:44:58 -0400 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470F364B.18007.7EBD6BC@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80C7C.642CE140@mandr71> <470F364B.18007.7EBD6BC@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710121644.58202.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 12 October 2007 11:54, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12 Oct 2007 at 2:28, M H Stein wrote: > > I KNEW IT! MICROSOFT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL WARMING! > > Now, how many ways are they going to make money out of it.... > > Guess billg can kiss the Nobel Peace prize goodbye... That ain't all he can kiss, but I'm gonna stop there, not wanting to get quite that rude in here... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 12 15:54:11 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:54:11 -0400 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200710121654.11659.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 12 October 2007 15:02, woodelf wrote: > Bryan Pope wrote: > > You are supposed to forget about static RAM and dynamic RAM 'cause those > > were not too terribly important in the whole stream of computing > > evolution.. What *is* important is flash memory! Jus' like core mem it > > keeps its thoughts even when the power is off... That is the modern > > computin' connection missin' link! :P > > No EEPROM's are. I never quite trust the idea flashing a bios. > We will now crash while re-installing the working version > or happily upgrade to a buggey one that needs service pack that will > be out around 2013. Speaking of which, I have a tube or so of 2816s around, and would appreciate it if you guys could point me toward any materials on the 'net that'd give me some ideas as to how you use those things... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 12 15:58:24 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:58:24 -0400 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470F765A.6276.8E60DF8@cclist.sydex.com> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> <470F765A.6276.8E60DF8@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710121658.24579.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 12 October 2007 16:27, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12 Oct 2007 at 14:51, Bryan Pope wrote: > > You are supposed to forget about static RAM and dynamic RAM 'cause those > > were not too terribly important in the whole stream of computing > > evolution.. What *is* important is flash memory! Jus' like core mem it > > keeps its thoughts even when the power is off... That is the modern > > computin' connection missin' link! :P > > It seems that we're coming full circle--I just read an article that > says Intel plans on deploying FRAM on some one of its products. If > FRAM gets Intel's blessing, it's sure to be the Next Big Thing in > nonvolatile memory. Does that stuff have a limit in terms of how many times you can write to it, like some of the earlier choices did? I did look at a bit of data on those parts, but didn't get the answer to that one out of it... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From emu at e-bbes.com Fri Oct 12 16:12:22 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:12:22 -0600 Subject: Universal Floppy reader, was : Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <470F76D1.27467.8E7DDCD@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03>, <470F5A1F.32423.877C8FA@cclist.sydex.com>, <470FC10C.7040404@yahoo.co.uk> <470F76D1.27467.8E7DDCD@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470FE336.8010603@e-bbes.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > My impression is that Phil was working on something a bit more > elegant; sort of a "read anything" gizmo. If it's not, then I > apologize for the GCR images that I sent him... :) Interesting, I'm doing the same for MFM/RLL drives. All is in a FPGA, plus a small micro for communication. Cheers From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Fri Oct 12 16:29:20 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 17:29:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: EEPROM docs (was Re: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine) In-Reply-To: <200710121654.11659.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> <200710121654.11659.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <200710122130.RAA26609@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Speaking of which, I have a tube or so of 2816s around, and would > appreciate it if you guys could point me toward any materials on the > 'net that'd give me some ideas as to how you use those things... I know I found some 28xx docs in one of my databooks a while ago (though I don't recall for which value of xx). If nothing else turns up I can go see if I can scare it up again. /~\ 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 Fri Oct 12 16:30:54 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:30:54 -0700 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <200710121658.24579.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <470F765A.6276.8E60DF8@cclist.sydex.com>, <200710121658.24579.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <470F851E.6855.91FBD6A@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 16:58, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > Does that stuff have a limit in terms of how many times you can write to it, > like some of the earlier choices did? I did look at a bit of data on those > parts, but didn't get the answer to that one out of it... Ramtron claims unlimited writes for their newer stuff. If not infinite, probably in the jillions of cycles at any rate. Cheers, Chuck From glen.slick at gmail.com Fri Oct 12 16:42:22 2007 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:42:22 -0700 Subject: 2816s Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90710121442q3c259489j893bdf92e3f2d23b@mail.gmail.com> On 10/12/07, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > Speaking of which, I have a tube or so of 2816s around, and would appreciate > it if you guys could point me toward any materials on the 'net that'd give me > some ideas as to how you use those things... > > -- Here's a datasheet on how the Atmel AT28C16 works: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/doc0540.pdf From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 12 16:45:04 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:45:04 -0600 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470F851E.6855.91FBD6A@cclist.sydex.com> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <470F765A.6276.8E60DF8@cclist.sydex.com>, <200710121658.24579.rtellason@verizon.net> <470F851E.6855.91FBD6A@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <470FEAE0.5080809@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12 Oct 2007 at 16:58, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > Ramtron claims unlimited writes for their newer stuff. If not > infinite, probably in the jillions of cycles at any rate. I still can't find the unlimited writes bit. But with at a few GHZ a jillion is not that long.[1] > Cheers, > Chuck Ben. [1] Used for default windows display. This way win/2'13 can crash[2] and you still can type away. [2]It does that now... automatic updates force a reboot anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 hours later. From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 12 17:01:52 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:01:52 -0700 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470FEAE0.5080809@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <470F851E.6855.91FBD6A@cclist.sydex.com>, <470FEAE0.5080809@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <470F8C60.22938.93C149C@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 15:45, woodelf wrote: > I still can't find the unlimited writes bit. But with at a few GHZ > a jillion is not that long.[1] Depending on where you look on the Ramtron website, they say "practically unlimited" to "more than 1,000,000,000,000". That's cycles *per cell*, not for the whole unit. Even with most GHz CPUs, hitting one location more than a quadrillion times is quite a bit. I wonder what the cycle lifetime is for core memory? Cheers, Chuck From dave06a at dunfield.com Fri Oct 12 18:09:44 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:09:44 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files - Progress In-Reply-To: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <200710122214.l9CMEc9U003624@hosting.monisys.ca> Ok - this morning I got a program working which can extract the CDOS files directly from my ImageDisk images - The extracted files exactly match two other sets extracted independantly for me by Mike S. and Chuck G. (THANKS guys!) - so it looks like I have it working correctly - this makes things much easier, since IMD is able to read the disks with no problems - since I'm planning to provide both IMD backup images of the disks, and ZIP files containing the content files, this will save me a step as well. When I have time, I will look into enhancing the utility into a general purpose tool for reading and writing files to CP/M images. You will need to provide some additional information so that it can know how to access the particular image. So far I have needed: - Cylinder/Head mapping and interleave required to access CP/M logical sectors. - Actual size of a physical sector (I can get this from the .IMD) - Number of 128 byte records in a cluster (Yeah, I know you guys call them blocks, however CDOS refers to them as clusters). - Number of directory entries. - Offset to user area (size of system area). - I'll need to add something to handle 16-bit allocation entries etc. when I move on to "large" disks. Not all of this information can be gleaned from the disk, so a general tool will need some sort of configuration file similar to what Chuck does with 22disk. Will let you know if/when I get "a round tuit" - at least now I am able to extract the files from the diskettes with relative ease. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From dave06a at dunfield.com Fri Oct 12 18:09:44 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:09:44 -0500 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80CD5.9F619900@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <200710122214.l9CMEc9W003624@hosting.monisys.ca> > Tell me about it; went through 7 mobo/fdcs while trying to help Dave D; > although some could write OK (which was all I really needed to recreate > his images), I never did find one that could *read* using IMD or Uniform. > Slowed down the drive, which sometimes helps, but still no good reads. > That's why I keep at least one Cromemco system up & running; much > easier to go the other way and copy to MSDOS disks on the Cromemco > (or transfer files the old-fashioned RS-232 way). No kidding - I just discovered last night that the XT I had set up to run Uniform can read the disks recreated with IMD just fine, but can't read the original Cromemco disks ... probably the gap is just a bit shorter on the originals - the drives in the XT aren't easily slowed (Panasonic)... Anyway, I think I have a working solution now (See next posting). Thanks again for all your help. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Fri Oct 12 17:32:54 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:32:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <200710121658.24579.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <659878.65131.qm@web82701.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Intel's phase change memory is supposed to be unlimited cycles and a 30 year storage time. I don't think core had the 30 year limitation. The Ramtron 5 volt parts had a cycle limit but the 3.3 volt parts are supposed to be unlimited. At work, we have been testing a 3.3 volt part, running a simple memory test at 150ns cycles for over 6 months with no errors (yet). Bob "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: On Friday 12 October 2007 16:27, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12 Oct 2007 at 14:51, Bryan Pope wrote: > > You are supposed to forget about static RAM and dynamic RAM 'cause those > > were not too terribly important in the whole stream of computing > > evolution.. What *is* important is flash memory! Jus' like core mem it > > keeps its thoughts even when the power is off... That is the modern > > computin' connection missin' link! :P > > It seems that we're coming full circle--I just read an article that > says Intel plans on deploying FRAM on some one of its products. If > FRAM gets Intel's blessing, it's sure to be the Next Big Thing in > nonvolatile memory. Does that stuff have a limit in terms of how many times you can write to it, like some of the earlier choices did? I did look at a bit of data on those parts, but didn't get the answer to that one out of it... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 12 17:39:56 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:39:56 -0400 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <659878.65131.qm@web82701.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <200710121658.24579.rtellason@verizon.net> <659878.65131.qm@web82701.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: FRAM has been the "Next Big Thing" for, what, 15 years? I still have my sample FRAM from the college days. -- Will From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 12 17:37:39 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:37:39 +0100 (BST) Subject: OS-9 sector sizes In-Reply-To: <470F4860.8020604@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Oct 12, 7 11:11:44 am Message-ID: > > > Anyone know if OS-9 is guaranteed to use a certain sector size when resident > on a hard disk? Or is it implementation-specific? OS-9 has one of the most modular I/O systems there is . Basically there are (from emmoey) the following modules : Device managers : SCFMAN (Sequenatial character devices, terminal, printers, etc); RBFMAN (block-structured devices, disks), PIPEMAN (interprocess pipes) Device drivers : code to actually access a particular it of hardware Device descriptors : tables of parameters for a particular device The last 2 levels can best be explained by example. If you had 8 identical serial poets, you'd have one driver, but 8 descriptors. The latter would contain the addressies of the serial chips (to be read by the driver when accessing that port), various parameters like baud rate, word lenth, etc. Anyway, wityh a system that modular and thus configurale, I can't beleive _all_ OS-9 systems used the same hardware blcok size on a hard disk. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 12 17:39:31 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:39:31 +0100 (BST) Subject: Logic gates humour (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase In-Reply-To: <20071012133541.CBBDD55DE7@mail.wordstock.com> from "Bryan Pope" at Oct 12, 7 09:35:41 am Message-ID: > > going, nand it'll be difficult to stop me ;-) > ^^^^ > That was a good one! :D Watch out, you will be able to make anything > out of that!! Oh, I'm going to need more than one of them... -tony From dm561 at torfree.net Fri Oct 12 17:15:22 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:15:22 -0300 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files Message-ID: <01C80D04.3E669680@MSE_D03> ------------Original Message: Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:43:03 -0400 From: "Roy J. Tellason" Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files On Friday 12 October 2007 03:23, M H Stein wrote: > > Want to copy your SDSS 8" disk to a DDDS 5" one? No problem. > Friend or business partner has some data on SDSS 5" disks that you > want on DDDS 8"? Just pop in the disks and copy away; add some > software and you can even copy to/from MS-DOS disks if you must. > Run Z80 CDOS/CP/M Wordstar on your 68000 Cromix+ CS-400? > No sweat (although a different issue). Process your old CDOS data > files with your UNIX software? Not much harder. > > It all just looks different from today's PC-centric perspective. So what sort of hardware does it take to be able to do stuff like that? I know my Bigboard II has both sizes of floppy drive connectors, though I think there's a jumper change involved to deal with different data rates IIRC. And there might be some potential for that board that's in my Cromemco, as well. I'm sure that a lot of my CP/M boxes have controller chips that are much more capable than the pc-centric stuff is, too. And how would the OS have to handle this? Some serious BIOS hacking? ---------Reply: The simple answer for a Cromemco box is a minimum configuration of a DPU, 16/64FDC, 128KB of memory and optionally a hard disk & controller. (You'd need somewhat more to run UNIX). AFAIK, as far as Cromemco systems go (assuming a 16FDC controller or later, and soft-sector disks): CDOS can read/write any one of the 8 (10?)possible CDOS formats and 8"SSSD CP/M (which, essentially being the first floppy "standard", was a more-or-less universal distribution medium for software such as WordStar, SuperCalc etc). Third-party software was available to handle other formats, and there were also custom versions of CP/M configured for a Z80 Cromemco. CDOS itself is a clone of an early 1.x version of CP/M, which Cromemco licenced from DRI and enhanced somewhat with some additional calls, and it can run most CP/M software (at least early pre-2.x versions). Any version of Cromix (Cromemco's early Z80 and 68000 pseudo-UNIX) can read/write any version of CDOS or Cromix disk (floppies, that is; hard disks are a different story). Third-party software (e.g. CsCopy) can read/write MSDOS disks but requires Cromix+ (and a 680x0 CPU) which was the current Cromix version when the PC became commonplace. Cromix+ and UNIX both read/write UNIX format disks; anything else that Cromix+ could handle was transferred to UNIX via a shared HD partition. Anything else would indeed require some custom programming; the FDC controller cards were reasonably well documented. If the main CPU was a 680x0 instead of a Z80 then Z80 & CP/M software was run either on a dual (Z80/68000) DPU card or, if there was only a 680x0 CPU then it was run on the Z80 on an I/O card such as the IOP I/O processor or the Octart 8-port RS-232 card, if available. Their first hard disks were 11MB 8" IMI drives using a WDI controller; they were superseded by 5 & 20 MB 5" IMI drives requiring a WDI-II. Then came MFM disks using an STDC controller and SMD drives & controller, and finally ESDI and SCSI drives using the ESDC controller. The floppy controller also supported the small tape drives while the larger tapes required the ESDC controller, and there was also a controller and OS support for 9-track mag tape. mike From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 12 19:34:52 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:34:52 -0400 Subject: 2816s In-Reply-To: <1e1fc3e90710121442q3c259489j893bdf92e3f2d23b@mail.gmail.com> References: <1e1fc3e90710121442q3c259489j893bdf92e3f2d23b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200710122034.53713.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 12 October 2007 17:42, Glen Slick wrote: > On 10/12/07, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > Speaking of which, I have a tube or so of 2816s around, and would > > appreciate it if you guys could point me toward any materials on the 'net > > that'd give me some ideas as to how you use those things... > > > > -- > > Here's a datasheet on how the Atmel AT28C16 works: > > http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/doc0540.pdf Thanks for the datasheet, it complements the one I have from microchip. The one bit of info I'm looking for, though, is what sort of limits there might be on the number of write cycles for those parts. Is this one of those deals where there's a limited number of them and then you're screwed? That limit would have a lot of effect on which applications one might want to use those parts in, by comparison with other stuff. I see lots of different possibilities for NVRAM of one sort or another, ranging from EPROM replacement (probably a good one for EEPROM) to datalogging to all sorts of other stuff -- with each application having different numbers of write cycles one might expect to have available in the device. I see an awful lot of people seeming to use flash devices as if you can just keep on writing to them indefinitely these days, and I'm sure that's not the case, though it may be that the number is so high it doesn't make all that much difference... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 12 20:00:18 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:00:18 -0400 Subject: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files In-Reply-To: <01C80D04.3E669680@MSE_D03> References: <01C80D04.3E669680@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <200710122100.18877.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 12 October 2007 18:15, M H Stein wrote: > ------------Original Message: > Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:43:03 -0400 > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files > > On Friday 12 October 2007 03:23, M H Stein wrote: > > > > Want to copy your SDSS 8" disk to a DDDS 5" one? No problem. > > Friend or business partner has some data on SDSS 5" disks that you > > want on DDDS 8"? Just pop in the disks and copy away; add some > > software and you can even copy to/from MS-DOS disks if you must. > > Run Z80 CDOS/CP/M Wordstar on your 68000 Cromix+ CS-400? > > No sweat (although a different issue). Process your old CDOS data > > files with your UNIX software? Not much harder. > > > > It all just looks different from today's PC-centric perspective. > > So what sort of hardware does it take to be able to do stuff like that? > > I know my Bigboard II has both sizes of floppy drive connectors, though I > think there's a jumper change involved to deal with different data rates > IIRC. And there might be some potential for that board that's in my > Cromemco, as well. > > I'm sure that a lot of my CP/M boxes have controller chips that are much > more capable than the pc-centric stuff is, too. > > And how would the OS have to handle this? Some serious BIOS hacking? > > ---------Reply: > The simple answer for a Cromemco box is a minimum configuration of a DPU, > 16/64FDC, 128KB of memory and optionally a hard disk & controller. > (You'd need somewhat more to run UNIX). That's more than I've got in there. It's a ZPU, 64KB ram card, I *think* that 64FDC, and an I/O card, not real sure but I think maybe it's the PRI... > AFAIK, as far as Cromemco systems go (assuming a 16FDC controller or later, > and soft-sector disks): > > CDOS can read/write any one of the 8 (10?)possible CDOS formats and 8"SSSD > CP/M (which, essentially being the first floppy "standard", was a > more-or-less universal distribution medium for software such as WordStar, > SuperCalc etc). No CDOS handy, I'm not even sure what I got for disks with that box, though I did get some, the problem with the drive having done some physical damage to the one that was in it. Somewhere around here I have a box of 8" floppies, but that would include what came with this system and also what came with the Imsai, at least, plus probably some stuff that folks have sent my way over the years. > Third-party software was available to handle other formats, and there were > also custom versions of CP/M configured for a Z80 Cromemco. I'm not sure if I even have CP/M specific to that box. Mostly I was looking for what sort of hardware capabilities would be needed... > CDOS itself is a clone of an early 1.x version of CP/M, which Cromemco > licenced from DRI and enhanced somewhat with some additional calls, and it > can run most CP/M software (at least early pre-2.x versions). I don't think I've ever actually seen anything WRT 1.x, or if I have it's been so long ago that I've forgotten. > Any version of Cromix (Cromemco's early Z80 and 68000 pseudo-UNIX) can > read/write any version of CDOS or Cromix disk (floppies, that is; hard > disks are a different story). I'd love to get some info on that software, particularly if I can ever get my hands on a DPU card to stick in there. > Third-party software (e.g. CsCopy) can read/write MSDOS disks but requires > Cromix+ (and a 680x0 CPU) which was the current Cromix version when the PC > became commonplace. Around the time I got that box I remember trying for some info and being told that the company wasn't doing anything but making 68K boxes for some specialized applications any more. > Cromix+ and UNIX both read/write UNIX format disks; anything else that > Cromix+ could handle was transferred to UNIX via a shared HD partition. What's a "unix format disk"? > Anything else would indeed require some custom programming; the FDC > controller cards were reasonably well documented. That's mostly what I was looking for, if the common FDC chips back in those days were likely to be sufficient to handle a wide variety of "stuff" out there. > If the main CPU was a 680x0 instead of a Z80 then Z80 & CP/M software was > run either on a dual (Z80/68000) DPU card or, if there was only a 680x0 CPU > then it was run on the Z80 on an I/O card such as the IOP I/O processor or > the Octart 8-port RS-232 card, if available. I saw the sheet on the IOP in my book just now, but don't know about that other one. Why would they stick a processor on an 8-port serial card? > Their first hard disks were 11MB 8" IMI drives using a WDI controller; they > were superseded by 5 & 20 MB 5" IMI drives requiring a WDI-II. Then came > MFM disks using an STDC controller and SMD drives & controller, and finally > ESDI and SCSI drives using the ESDC controller. Rigging up some sort of mounting hardware and finding 12V power for some of the 3.5" HDs I have kicking around here should be an interesting exercise. :-) I have nothing around for a controller, but given the choice I'd rather go with SCSI if possible. > The floppy controller also supported the small tape drives while the larger > tapes required the ESDC controller, and there was also a controller and OS > support for 9-track mag tape. Hmm. And then there's the Bigboard II, which has this "SASI" port on it. From what I was able to discover back when, there didn't seem to be a whole heck of a lot of difference between that and SCSI at the hardware level as far as I could find out. I also have a *very* vague recollection of some mod that somebody or other did that allowed the use of both sizes of floppy. I guess that would'be had to involve selecting the data rate under software control instead of the switch or jumper that ordinarily set it (I don't recall which it was). I don't know what might be needed to take advantage of the resemblance between SCSI and SASI and have no idea of where I might even start as far as the software is concerned. Going to MFM I also did get a hold of a Xebec (?) board of some sort that would allow the interface, but there's still the software issue to contend with and I don't even know what I have around any more for MFM drives. I never got CP/M for that board at all, deciding at the time I purchased it that it'd be better if I could spread the expense out a bit. Then finding out that the company had shut down operations between me getting the hardware and trying for the software. I'm open to suggestions as to how I might make a bootable disk that'll use the hardware that's there (DSDD) - -at this point it _will_ boot a Xerox 820 SSSD disk but that only gives me SSSD operatoin. And I'm not sure how to proceed from there. The 'net is surprisingly short of any information on that board, which is a shame because it's a damn nice board. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From bpope at wordstock.com Fri Oct 12 20:08:36 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:08:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Logic gates humour (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phase In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20071013010836.C16005652A@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Tony Duell > > > > going, nand it'll be difficult to stop me ;-) > > ^^^^ > > That was a good one! :D Watch out, you will be able to make anything > > out of that!! > > Oh, I'm going to need more than one of them... > Well of course! The more nand the better... Cheers, Bryan From ballsandy at msn.com Fri Oct 12 21:07:14 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:07:14 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: I have been looking at this poor machine for almost two years now and I'm furious that there is no way for me to rescue it. http://www.vintagecomputermarketplace.com/view.cfm?ad=2372 Only one other person openly admits they own one: that guy who runs the corestore, and he never responds to my emails. http://www.corestore.org/36.htm Grrrr, if shipping was not so expensive and if I didn't live on the other side of the country and above the 49th parallel. >:( It would cost thousands to get that thing back to the safety of the garage and chances are that there are nothing like that over here in Kamloops BC or close to my relative location. I really want something bigger and something that just screams "I'm dimming your lights!". A crimson running off a serial terminal does not seem to cut it for me. _________________________________________________________________ R U Ready for Windows Live Messenger Beta 8.5? Try it today! http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.ca/WindowsLiveMessenger From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 12 21:25:00 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:25:00 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > I have been looking at this poor machine for almost two years now and I'm furious that there is no way for me to rescue it. Big S/36s are not all that rare. Look, and you will find one on the West Coast. Do not delay, as I can see them mostly drying up in a few years. > Only one other person openly admits they own one: that guy who runs the corestore, and he never responds to my emails. I will admit to having one, but I am not overly proud of it. I think I can honestly say it is the least liked machine in my collection. -- Will From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Fri Oct 12 22:57:59 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 20:57:59 -0700 Subject: firmware updates [WAS Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine] Message-ID: <9c4af63ea7aba104dab7885b71196014@valleyimplants.com> Jules writes: > I suppose real computers have a separate service processor for this > kind of > thing, so it's easy to put things right even if something does go > wrong (plus > of course the update can *only* be done from the service processor - > not from > some rogue code running on the main CPU) Not a service processor, but Alpha has a built in "failsafe loader" that allows you to rewrite the console firmware if something happens. It also has hardware lockdown of the PROM. I don't think I'd consider a separate service processor always a good thing, though - I've just been looking at the docs for the Sun E10k and if you loose the SSP you're pretty much hosed unless you can get Sun to make a new one up that matches your machine. Aren't IBM mainframes and their ThinkPads in roughly the same boat? There, though, I think it's easier to recover if you have a backup - I got the feeling that the E10k's unit was somehow hardware-locked to that machine. From dkelvey at hotmail.com Fri Oct 12 23:12:17 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:12:17 -0700 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <200710121934.l9CJYV9k094047@keith.ezwind.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710121934.l9CJYV9k094047@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: > From: caveguy at sbcglobal.net> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:34:30 -0400> Subject: Re: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine> > On Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:21:23 -0700, Brent Hilpert wrote:> > >Stroller wrote:> >> > >> http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1670168_1461055,00.html> > >Lovely photography but many of the blurbs leave a lot to be desired as far> >as historical and technical accuracy goes. Can't have everything I guess.> > >e.g. this bizarrely phrased attribution:> > >> #10: Core Memory> >> Because it holds its state, core memory is able to retain information> >> even when the electricity is turned off, thereby paving the way to modern> >> computing.> > >Howze that again?> > Many years ago, when removing magnetic core from process control systems I was required to erase well > more like scramble the magnetic core before it could leave the plant. So there was no chance process > variables would leave the plant. I would take off the top cover and pass a magnet over the core array and > told them to put it back into the system, if they did not believe me, but I had no idea what state the > production line would come back up in, if at all. Never had anyone put one back in and test it.> > One of the sales points of using magnetic core memory on early process control systems even as late as > the early 8080 days, was core's ability to retain state on loss of power. One of the leading process control ---snip--- Core was an important step in computing. Much more than Intel's 4004. The microprocessor was happening with or without Intel. Intel's most significant achievements were the EPROM and solid state memory. The only other thing I consider even more important was the quartz crystal used for timing, as an achievement. I'm not sure who to credit for that one. I shouldn't leave out TI's creation of the IC in the first place. ALthough I have a 4004 development system, the 4004 was a minor step compared to the others. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From bpope at wordstock.com Sat Oct 13 00:04:58 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:04:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Quartz crystals (was: Re: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20071013050458.3B66A564D4@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by dwight elvey > > > The only other thing I consider even more important was the quartz > crystal used for timing, as an achievement. I'm not sure who to > credit for that one. Speaking of the quartz crystal, when did the first one(s) (approximately) come out? Cheers, Bryan From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 13 00:20:26 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:20:26 -0600 Subject: Quartz crystals In-Reply-To: <20071013050458.3B66A564D4@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071013050458.3B66A564D4@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <4710559A.5040102@jetnet.ab.ca> Bryan Pope wrote: > Speaking of the quartz crystal, when did the first one(s) > (approximately) come out? As the earth slowly cooled ... :) I suspect around the 1890's materials like quartz where first studied but but the triode many properites of materials where left to be discovered. > Cheers, > > Bryan From chris at mainecoon.com Sat Oct 13 00:35:51 2007 From: chris at mainecoon.com (Chris Kennedy) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 22:35:51 -0700 Subject: Quartz crystals In-Reply-To: <20071013050458.3B66A564D4@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071013050458.3B66A564D4@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <47105937.5080101@mainecoon.com> Bryan Pope wrote: > Speaking of the quartz crystal, when did the first one(s) > (approximately) come out? In the context of classic computing I'm guessing you're asking about crystal controlled oscillators? The first use of a quartz piezoid to control the frequency of an oscillator circuit is generally credited to Cady in 1919. The more familiar Pierce oscillator dates to 1923. -- Chris Kennedy chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97 PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97 "Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..." From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 01:02:14 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:02:14 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710121934.l9CJYV9k094047@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> dwight elvey wrote: > Core was an important step in computing. Much more than Intel's > 4004. > The microprocessor was happening with or without Intel. Intel's > most significant achievements were the EPROM and solid state memory. > The only other thing I consider even more important was the quartz > crystal used for timing, as an achievement. I'm not sure who to > credit for that one. > I shouldn't leave out TI's creation of the IC in the first place. ALthough > I have a 4004 development system, the 4004 was a minor step compared > to the others. (No doubt that core was important, just the way it was attributed in the photo blurb was misleading). I quite agree about the 4004. It may have been first, but it was one of those things whose time had come - it really wasn't that big a conceptual leap. Some time ago I ran across an editorial in a magazine ca. 1969 that basically summed up the problem: increasing logic density and hence IC complexity (LSI was on the horizon) would result in an explosion of chip designs that would be unmanageable (unique design per task,low production runs,etc.). The answer a year or two later would be the microproc (few chip designs, uniqueness in software in ROM). You could say FPGA/CPLDs are another, more recent, answer to that question. Now if only I could find that editorial. Based on what I've read though, I disagree about the (degree of) credit generally given to TI/Kilby regarding the creation of the IC, on similar grounds: in the late 50s there were lots of efforts/attempts/designs to create miniature modules of some sort. Kilby made the 'obvious' (like the microproc) development of not cutting the transistor dies apart from the wafer before interconnecting them and got to the patent office first on that issue. His techniques however, were frankly a bit of a hack that weren't going to go (scale up) anywhere. It was the development of the planar form of transistor by Hoerni, junction isolation by Lehovec and putting it all together with various layering techniques by Noyce at Fairchild that created and made feasible the IC as we still know it today. Can't testify to it's accuracy but one of my favorite quips about the 4004 is the reason it had that multiplexed 4-bit bus/machine cycle was to squish it into a 16-pin package because management didn't want to tool up for larger packages. From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 13 01:59:13 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:59:13 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 23:02, Brent Hilpert wrote: > Can't testify to it's accuracy but one of my favorite quips about the 4004 > is the reason it had that multiplexed 4-bit bus/machine cycle was to squish > it into a 16-pin package because management didn't want to tool up for larger > packages. Sounds like an urban legend to me. 24-pin packages were around in the Intel line then, I believe. In any case, the 8008 followed suit with an 18-pin package. I suspect that multiplexing didn't matter much to the overall speed of the thing. While the 8080 wasn't multiplexed, the 8085 was, as was the 8086/8088. I don't think it was thought to matter. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 13 02:13:15 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:13:15 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <47100D9B.14864.B34E080@cclist.sydex.com> On 12 Oct 2007 at 23:02, Brent Hilpert wrote: > I quite agree about the 4004. It may have been first, but it was one of those > things whose time had come - it really wasn't that big a conceptual leap. Some > time ago I ran across an editorial in a magazine ca. 1969 that basically > summed up the problem: increasing logic density and hence IC complexity (LSI > was on the horizon) would result in an explosion of chip designs that would be > unmanageable (unique design per task,low production runs,etc.). Check old Datamation and Computerweek issues; I used to read those religiously and that may be where I saw it. Could also have been in an IEEE publication. That was the definitely the buzz in 1969-70; I remember commenting to an EE prof at a local university that the single-chip monolithic CPU was just on the horizon. His reaction was one who was being told that blue M&Ms were just on the horizon. He just didn't get it. When I left CDC for the grand world of microprocessors, Neil Lincoln (the architect of the not-yet-envisioned ETA-10) had me flown to Arden Hills to talk some sense into me. After spending most of a day tagging around with him being shown the great projects on the drawing board, he sat down and said: "So you're leaving supercomputers for MICROCOMPUTERS? Really?" I told him that I'd seen the future and he confessed that he'd just bought a Commodore Pet. I told him that I'd had an MITS Altair since 1975. Cheers, Chuck From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 04:13:57 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 02:13:57 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 12 Oct 2007 at 23:02, Brent Hilpert wrote: > > > Can't testify to it's accuracy but one of my favorite quips about the 4004 > > is the reason it had that multiplexed 4-bit bus/machine cycle was to squish > > it into a 16-pin package because management didn't want to tool up for larger > > packages. > > Sounds like an urban legend to me. 24-pin packages were around in > the Intel line then, I believe. In any case, the 8008 followed suit Can't remember where I read it, but it seemed plausible for the time the 4004 was being developed (1970), also that it was compounded by management's perceptions that the 4004 was a little business on the side and not willing to invest much in it, memory chips still being the focus. On the other hand, I wonder what packages the original Busicom designs utilised - that Intel would otherwise have been obligated to produce - one would expect, or typically, they would be larger. (The 4040 would go to a larger package, of course.) > with an 18-pin package. I suspect that multiplexing didn't matter > much to the overall speed of the thing. Perhaps not speed as an issue but you were wired into the small family of chips that understood the highly specific machine/bus cycle, at least until the 4008/9 came along that broke out the address/data busses. > While the 8080 wasn't multiplexed, the 8085 was, as was the > 8086/8088. I don't think it was thought to matter. From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 04:14:34 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 02:14:34 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100D9B.14864.B34E080@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 12 Oct 2007 at 23:02, Brent Hilpert wrote: > > I quite agree about the 4004. It may have been first, but it was one of those > > things whose time had come - it really wasn't that big a conceptual leap. Some > > time ago I ran across an editorial in a magazine ca. 1969 that basically > > summed up the problem: increasing logic density and hence IC complexity (LSI > > was on the horizon) would result in an explosion of chip designs that would be > > unmanageable (unique design per task,low production runs,etc.). > > Check old Datamation and Computerweek issues; I used to read those > religiously and that may be where I saw it. Could also have been in > an IEEE publication. (For the article I saw I think it was Electronics or Electronics World. I was sorting mags at the radio museum and had my eye out for articles relating to digital stuff. I don't think it was a computer mag per se, unless I ran across an oddball. Unfortunately I didn't make a ref note for it as I did for a lot of other articles and have to go back and scan thru sometime.) So much of the commonly told history makes the dev of the microproc into such a momentous issue, I'd like to have some real stuff around to point to show the contrary, or put it in context of the times. > That was the definitely the buzz in 1969-70; I remember commenting to > an EE prof at a local university that the single-chip monolithic CPU > was just on the horizon. His reaction was one who was being told > that blue M&Ms were just on the horizon. He just didn't get it. > > When I left CDC for the grand world of microprocessors, Neil Lincoln > (the architect of the not-yet-envisioned ETA-10) had me flown to > Arden Hills to talk some sense into me. After spending most of a day > tagging around with him being shown the great projects on the drawing > board, he sat down and said: "So you're leaving supercomputers for > MICROCOMPUTERS? Really?" I told him that I'd seen the future and he > confessed that he'd just bought a Commodore Pet. I told him that I'd > had an MITS Altair since 1975. Viewed from the outside, leaving a company like CDC at that time would seem like a difficult decision, being on the inside perhaps you could see better where they were headed. This also goes back to mention of the Osborne book last week, the first microprocs really being targetted at embedded systems/logic replacement, it was just those silly hobbyists trying to make general purpose computing systems out of them. It would seem that some saw beyond that, some didn't. From caveguy at sbcglobal.net Sat Oct 13 08:28:12 2007 From: caveguy at sbcglobal.net (Bob Bradlee) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:28:12 -0400 Subject: Quartz crystals (was: Re: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine) In-Reply-To: <20071013050458.3B66A564D4@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <200710131328.l9DDSD96060407@billy.ezwind.net> On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:04:58 -0400 (EDT), Bryan Pope wrote: >And thusly were the wise words spake by dwight elvey >> >> >> The only other thing I consider even more important was the quartz >> crystal used for timing, as an achievement. I'm not sure who to >> credit for that one. >Speaking of the quartz crystal, when did the first one(s) >(approximately) come out? >Cheers, >Bryan Walter Guyton Cady developed the first Quartz resonator in 1921 for use in early sonar while at Wesleyan University in Middletown CT. George W Pierce patented quartz crystal oscillators in 1923. The first quartz clock developed by Warren Marrison a telecommunications engineer in 1927 while searching for a reliable frequency standards at Bell Telephone Laboratories. later .... The other Bob From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sat Oct 13 08:58:30 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:58:30 -0400 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710121934.l9CJYV9k094047@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: > Intel's > most significant achievements were the EPROM and solid state memory. Did they not advance semiconductor fab techniques quite a bit? > The only other thing I consider even more important was the quartz > crystal used for timing, as an achievement. I'm not sure who to > credit for that one. That is very much a pre-computing technology. You probably should not count that, or you will need to count just about everything. The invention of wire, for example. -- Will From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 13 09:46:51 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 07:46:51 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > From: cclist at sydex.com> > On 12 Oct 2007 at 23:02, Brent Hilpert wrote:> > > Can't testify to it's accuracy but one of my favorite quips about the 4004> > is the reason it had that multiplexed 4-bit bus/machine cycle was to squish> > it into a 16-pin package because management didn't want to tool up for larger> > packages.> > Sounds like an urban legend to me. 24-pin packages were around in > the Intel line then, I believe. In any case, the 8008 followed suit > with an 18-pin package. I suspect that multiplexing didn't matter > much to the overall speed of the thing. Hi This was what Federico Faggin had stated at a talk he gave at the CHM. Packaging was expensive and they'd made volume deals on 16 pin packages. Faggin stated that his design could have been a few times faster had he not been restricted to the small bus. > > While the 8080 wasn't multiplexed, the 8085 was, as was the > 8086/8088. I don't think it was thought to matter. The 4004/4040 had an 8 cycle muxing of the bus. The later ones were just two cycle. Package size was always a dominating cost and defined many projects. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 13 11:26:44 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 09:26:44 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <47108F54.7047.D2F99AE@cclist.sydex.com> On 13 Oct 2007 at 7:46, dwight elvey wrote: > This was what Federico Faggin had stated at a talk he gave at the CHM. > Packaging was expensive and they'd made volume deals on 16 pin > packages. That's interesting, particularly considering the competition at the time, the Rockwell PPS-4 in the funny quad-row package. We need to be fair, though--none of these (4004, 8008, PPS-4) were single-chip microprocessors--they all required additional support logic chips that, it could be argued, were just as much a part of the microprocessor as what was in the main package. The act of moving the control and sequencing into the same package as the ALU doesn't seem like that much of a leap in retrospect. I've even seen the National IMP-16 referred to as a microprocessor in some documents; that was definitely a multi-chip configuration. Something you could simply connect a crystal and some RAM to was still in the future. On 13 Oct 2007 at 2:14, Brent Hilpert wrote: > This also goes back to mention of the Osborne book last week, the first > microprocs really being targetted at embedded systems/logic replacement, it > was just those silly hobbyists trying to make general purpose computing > systems out of them. It would seem that some saw beyond that, some didn't. One of the more humiliating memories of mine was stopping by my apartment with a (female) co-worker and showing her my just-assembled new pride and joy; the MITS Altair. This would have been 1975. Her response was something to the effect of "I thought you told me you had a computer. THAT'S not a computer; that's a toy with blinking lights. You paid a thousand dollars for THAT?" What is it that H.L. Mencken said? "How little it takes to make life unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a woman's laugh." I was mortified. Cheers, Chuck From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 13 13:40:34 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:40:34 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 05:13, Brent Hilpert wrote: > Can't remember where I read it, but it seemed plausible for the time the > 4004 was being developed (1970), also that it was compounded by > management's perceptions that the 4004 was a little business on the side > and not willing to invest much in it, memory chips still being the focus. > On the other hand, I wonder what packages the original Busicom designs > utilised - that Intel would otherwise have been obligated to produce - one > would expect, or typically, they would be larger. (The 4040 would go to a > larger package, of course.) Having heard of the 4004 of course, I know basically nothing about it. Except that it's the part that was supposed to have started all this... And the 4040? I've only seen mention of it now and then. (Snip) > Perhaps not speed as an issue but you were wired into the small family of > chips that understood the highly specific machine/bus cycle, at least > until the 4008/9 came along that broke out the address/data busses. 4008/9? First I've heard of these at all. Can you give any sort of a general overview of what those parts were all about? I remember very little about the 8008, it having appeared in that Radio-Electronics article way back when. I do remember, even after the 8080 article in Popular Electronics came out, not thinking very much of microprocessors for quite a while. They seemed limited, it appeared that you had to really go through a lot to fit your thinking and way of doing things to what they could handle, and it took me quite a while before I got to the point where I got a really good grip on the tradeoffs involved, like low package count, etc. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 13 13:44:22 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:44:22 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 10:46, dwight elvey wrote: > Package size was always a dominating cost and defined many projects. I've often wondered why it is that 14-pin packages seemed to dominate the early parts so much. Why they never offered, for example, a dual 2-input gate package instead of the more common quad, or other combinations like that. It seemed sometimes that things were altered a bit to fit into those 14-pin packages that they wanted to use... And I don't lay any claim to having any kind of a clue about what factors dominated the economics of things back then. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 14:06:49 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:06:49 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> <47108F54.7047.D2F99AE@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47111749.29939F64@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 13 Oct 2007 at 7:46, dwight elvey wrote: > > This was what Federico Faggin had stated at a talk he gave at the CHM. > > Packaging was expensive and they'd made volume deals on 16 pin > > packages. > > That's interesting, particularly considering the competition at the > time, the Rockwell PPS-4 in the funny quad-row package. > > We need to be fair, though--none of these (4004, 8008, PPS-4) were > single-chip microprocessors--they all required additional support > logic chips that, it could be argued, were just as much a part of the > microprocessor as what was in the main package. The act of moving > the control and sequencing into the same package as the ALU doesn't > seem like that much of a leap in retrospect. I've even seen the > National IMP-16 referred to as a microprocessor in some documents; > that was definitely a multi-chip configuration. Something you could > simply connect a crystal and some RAM to was still in the future. Funny you should mention the PPS-4: a few months ago I was working on some reverse-engineering efforts for a PPS-4 system (actually for another list member). He was able to provide some documents for the chips but some of the finer timing details of the inter-chip communication are not covered (it may be they never were covered in public documents as it could be considered internal to the system and not relevant to the application designer). I'd like to get back to it sometime to continue to attempt to figure it out, but in the unlikely event anybody has gut-level specs for those chips, I'd be interested in hearing about them. The Osborne book doesn't cover the PPS-4 (obsolete even in 1976) but the book was actually still helpful in that the timing of the PPS-8, which is covered in part, has similarities. I was interested in the task just because it was an obscure system I had never heard of; you are but the 2nd person I've ever heard to mention the PPS-4. After learning what I did about it I believe that two of my calculators are based on it, that is, I've had a PPS-4 system for years but never realised it. > One of the more humiliating memories of mine was stopping by my > apartment with a (female) co-worker and showing her my just-assembled > new pride and joy; the MITS Altair. This would have been 1975. Her > response was something to the effect of "I thought you told me you > had a computer. THAT'S not a computer; that's a toy with blinking > lights. You paid a thousand dollars for THAT?" > > What is it that H.L. Mencken said? "How little it takes to make life > unbearable: a pebble in the shoe, a cockroach in the spaghetti, a > woman's laugh." I was mortified. I won't ask what the interpersonal outcome was, but in terms of foresight we know who had the last laugh. From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Oct 13 14:29:11 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:29:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: AT 286 motherboard with mathco Message-ID: I have an AT 286 clone motherboard with math coprocessor that needs a home. I only ask for postage. I'm in southern California. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 13 14:40:43 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:40:43 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: > Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:40:34 -0400> From: rtellason at verizon.net> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery> > On Saturday 13 October 2007 05:13, Brent Hilpert wrote:> > Can't remember where I read it, but it seemed plausible for the time the> > 4004 was being developed (1970), also that it was compounded by> > management's perceptions that the 4004 was a little business on the side> > and not willing to invest much in it, memory chips still being the focus.> > On the other hand, I wonder what packages the original Busicom designs> > utilised - that Intel would otherwise have been obligated to produce - one> > would expect, or typically, they would be larger. (The 4040 would go to a> > larger package, of course.)> > Having heard of the 4004 of course, I know basically nothing about it. > Except that it's the part that was supposed to have started all this... And > the 4040? I've only seen mention of it now and then. Hi The 4040 was just an expanded 4004. It had more addressing range. It was used in the universal prom programmer. Each personality card would have the electronics to program a specific part and a couple 4001 ROM chips to handle I/O and specific code. > > (Snip)> > Perhaps not speed as an issue but you were wired into the small family of> > chips that understood the highly specific machine/bus cycle, at least> > until the 4008/9 came along that broke out the address/data busses.> > 4008/9? First I've heard of these at all. These were but interface chips that took the pmos levels and convertered then to TTL levels to use with standard RAM, ROM, EPROM and I/O. They included the needed mux decoders and the needed instruction monitors to know when to read or write onto the bus. These two were replaced later by a single chip ( 42?? ) that did the same fuctions. The 4004 family included: 4004 CPU 4001 ROM I/O 4002 RAM Output 4003 Shift reg output 4008/9 Interface and a couple others I forget. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 14:55:11 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:55:11 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > Having heard of the 4004 of course, I know basically nothing about it. > Except that it's the part that was supposed to have started all this... And > the 4040? I've only seen mention of it now and then. > > (Snip) > > Perhaps not speed as an issue but you were wired into the small family of > > chips that understood the highly specific machine/bus cycle, at least > > until the 4008/9 came along that broke out the address/data busses. > > 4008/9? First I've heard of these at all. > > Can you give any sort of a general overview of what those parts were all > about? A poor scan of some datasheets are (were?) at http://smithsonianchips.si.edu/ice/4004thb.htm I know there are some others scans out there as well although I have yet to run across a good set. In brief, initially the main chips of the family were: 4001: 256*8 ROM & 4-bit IO 4002: 320-bit RAM & 4-bit IO 4004: 4-bit CPU In a system a 4-bit bus along with a few timing/sync signals interconnected a 4004 and multiples of the 4001/2. Address and data were muxed through the bus in a somewhat complex sequence. The 4001/2s were hard-programmed with address range and I/O port numbers to respond to. The 4008 & 9 were introduced later, and were in larger packages, they demuxed the bus/machine cycle into wider,separate address/data lines to permit use of more-conventional RAM/ROM/EPROM chips and easier I/O. The mask-programmed 4001/2 made it all essentially inaccessible to hobbyists but the small packages and high level of family integration actually did make for very compact systems. Regarding the 4040, I'm speculating as I've never dealt with one or come across the pinout, but I suspect the 4040 essentially integrated the 4004/4008/4009 into one larger package making it look more like a 'standard' microproc in terms of signals/interface (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 14:56:47 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:56:47 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <47112300.1CB98AFB@cs.ubc.ca> "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > On Saturday 13 October 2007 10:46, dwight elvey wrote: > > Package size was always a dominating cost and defined many projects. > > I've often wondered why it is that 14-pin packages seemed to dominate the > early parts so much. Why they never offered, for example, a dual 2-input > gate package instead of the more common quad, or other combinations like > that. It seemed sometimes that things were altered a bit to fit into those > 14-pin packages that they wanted to use... There was a brief period (early-mid 60s) were packaging was as you suggest, early RTL ICs were in 8 or 10 pin cans and flat-paks with typically two gates per package. As densities increased there was little point though, when building systems with hundreds or thousands of gates, 2-gates per package just increased the package count and the potential wastage of 2 unused gates in a quad pack just wasn't a concern. > And I don't lay any claim to having any kind of a clue about what factors > dominated the economics of things back then. :-) From cisin at xenosoft.com Sat Oct 13 14:56:43 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 12:56:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20071013125529.T78254@shell.lmi.net> > The 4040 was just an expanded 4004. It had more addressing range. A Pentium is just an expanded 4004. Weren't almost all of the design decisions of the 4004 done to provide Pentium compatibility? From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Sat Oct 13 15:01:49 2007 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim s) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:01:49 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4711242D.2080905@msm.umr.edu> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > >I've often wondered why it is that 14-pin packages seemed to dominate the >early parts so much. > There was a company started up in the 1971 or 1972 time frame in Columbia, Missouri that made a splash in the IC market by offering "cheap" parts. It was Solid State Industries, or SSI and sold a pretty good mix of 7400 IC's. They bought the die and packaged them in Columbia. The big cost was the packaging machine at the time. That is to some degree what dictated their choices of what to package, since they eliminated the actual silicon fab from their business model. They kept up for a while but eventually were wiped out the eventual drop of prices to a few cents. Jim From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Oct 13 15:34:49 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:34:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, David Griffith wrote: > I have an AT 286 clone motherboard with math coprocessor that needs a > home. I only ask for postage. I'm in southern California. The board is spoken for. Thanks. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 13 15:56:00 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 13:56:00 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: > From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca ---snip----> > Regarding the 4040, I'm speculating as I've never dealt with one or come> across the pinout, but I suspect the 4040 essentially integrated the> 4004/4008/4009 into one larger package making it look more like a 'standard'> microproc in terms of signals/interface (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). No, it was just a 4004 with, as I recall, two more instructions. It kept the 4004 multiplexed bus and connected to 4001's and 4002's, just like the 4004. As I recall, it had 4 times the address space with bank selects. I'd need to look at the specs again to be sure. When I worked for Intel, I made an interface between the 4040 bus and a MDS800. I used it to check and verify the 4001's that were on the personality boards for the UPP product. Since the bus was dynamic, one had to keep it clocking. I'd keep nop's running on the bus until the program on the MDS requested data or wanted to send a command to one of the ports. It made a useful diagnostic tool because one could do things repeatedly that the normal program would have aborted because of a failure indications. It also helped to catch incorrect 4001's installed. This seemed to happen more than it should. bitsaver has a MCS4 manual. It has most of the info one needs. I also have a newer manual with 4040 and newer parts. It is in storage right now. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 16:14:25 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:14:25 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47113531.A3B51994@cs.ubc.ca> dwight elvey wrote: > > > From: cclist at sydex.com> > On 12 Oct 2007 at 23:02, Brent Hilpert wrote:> > > Can't testify to it's accuracy but one of my favorite quips about the 4004> > is the reason it had that multiplexed 4-bit bus/machine cycle was to squish> > it into a 16-pin package because management didn't want to tool up for larger> > packages.> > Sounds like an urban legend to me. 24-pin packages were around in > the Intel line then, I believe. In any case, the 8008 followed suit > with an 18-pin package. I suspect that multiplexing didn't matter > much to the overall speed of the thing. > > Hi > This was what Federico Faggin had stated at a talk he gave at the CHM. > Packaging was expensive and they'd made volume deals on 16 pin > packages. Faggin stated that his design could have been a few times > faster had he not been restricted to the small bus. Here it is, straight from FF: http://www.intel4004.com/qa4004.htm, under the question "Q.: Was there anything unique about the 4004?" or search for "16-pin". From rogpugh at mac.com Sat Oct 13 16:19:36 2007 From: rogpugh at mac.com (Roger Pugh) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:19:36 +0100 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <4711242D.2080905@msm.umr.edu> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711242D.2080905@msm.umr.edu> Message-ID: <6721f6322950269ef897ae2276a8f056@mac.com> This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a door to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! oops Roger From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Oct 13 16:20:44 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:20:44 +0100 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710121934.l9CJYV9k094047@keith.ezwind.net> <47105F67.D05DFDA5@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <471136AC.4070406@yahoo.co.uk> Brent Hilpert wrote: > Based on what I've read though, I disagree about the (degree of) credit generally > given to TI/Kilby regarding the creation of the IC, on similar grounds: in the > late 50s there were lots of efforts/attempts/designs to create miniature > modules of some sort. Yeah, I'd wondered that too - there was all sorts going on around that sort of time; TI went down one route, but I don't think they were "first IC", just "first IC using a particular approach". (I always get wary when people use the filing of a patent as the definitive proof that someone was first to do something :-) Oh, someone mentioned the IMP-16 - mine happened to be nearby; there's six 'major' ICs on the (approx 12" x 9") board (plus a couple of EPROMs on mine, a handful of TTL, and 16 1101 chips - RAM, I'd assume). cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Oct 13 16:32:23 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:32:23 +0100 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <6721f6322950269ef897ae2276a8f056@mac.com> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711242D.2080905@msm.umr.edu> <6721f6322950269ef897ae2276a8f056@mac.com> Message-ID: <47113967.6070302@yahoo.co.uk> Roger Pugh wrote: > This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a door > to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! You need to own more things with azerty keyboards. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 13 16:45:21 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:45:21 +0100 (BST) Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <6721f6322950269ef897ae2276a8f056@mac.com> from "Roger Pugh" at Oct 13, 7 10:19:36 pm Message-ID: > > This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a door > to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! > oops Oh that's easy to solve. Change all your keyboards to the Dvorak (?spel) layout. -tony From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 16:47:54 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:47:54 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> dwight elvey wrote: > > > From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca >> ---snip---> >> Regarding the 4040, I'm speculating as I've never dealt with one or come >> across the pinout, but I suspect the 4040 essentially integrated the >> 4004/4008/4009 into one larger package making it look more like a 'standard' >> microproc in terms of signals/interface (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). > No, it was just a 4004 with, as I recall, two more instructions. > It kept the 4004 multiplexed bus and connected to 4001's and 4002's, > just like the 4004. > As I recall, it had 4 times the address space with bank selects. I'd > need to look at the specs again to be sure. Thanks for the correction, but why was it in such a larger package? (4040 was a 28 or 40-pin package wasn't it?). From steve at radiorobots.com Sat Oct 13 17:05:47 2007 From: steve at radiorobots.com (Steve Stutman) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:05:47 -0400 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4711413B.3020608@radiorobots.com> Tony Duell wrote: >>This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a door >>to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! >>oops >> >> > >Oh that's easy to solve. Change all your keyboards to the Dvorak (?spel) >layout. > >-tony > > Time for touchscreens? Else maybe a hangar. Steve From ballsandy at msn.com Sat Oct 13 17:27:02 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:27:02 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: > > I have been looking at this poor machine for almost two years now and I'm furious that there is no way for me to rescue it. > > Big S/36s are not all that rare. Look, and you will find one on the > West Coast. Do not delay, as I can see them mostly drying up in a few > years. > > > Only one other person openly admits they own one: that guy who runs the corestore, and he never responds to my emails. > > I will admit to having one, but I am not overly proud of it. I think I > can honestly say it is the least liked machine in my collection. > > -- > Will Well it's great to hear of another person who owns one. Why is it the least liked? The design? Well if they are quite common, people out here really don't want to part with them or their first thought is scrap it and then look for people willing to take it. I have been putting out wanted calls for these older mainframe systems for years now and I have never had one reply to any of them. It really make you think your search is hopeless I have always had a strong determination. It took years for me to get my first deskside and I never gave up. _________________________________________________________________ Send a smile, make someone laugh, have some fun! Start now! http://www.freemessengeremoticons.ca/?icid=EMENCA122 From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 13 17:56:51 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:56:51 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 15:40, dwight elvey wrote: > > > 4008/9? First I've heard of these at all. > > These were but interface chips that took the pmos levels and convertered > then to TTL levels to use with standard RAM, ROM, EPROM and I/O. Oh, heck, I'd forgotten about PMOS stuff altogether! :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 13 18:03:58 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:03:58 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47112300.1CB98AFB@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> <47112300.1CB98AFB@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 15:56, Brent Hilpert wrote: > "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > On Saturday 13 October 2007 10:46, dwight elvey wrote: > > > Package size was always a dominating cost and defined many projects. > > > > I've often wondered why it is that 14-pin packages seemed to dominate the > > early parts so much. Why they never offered, for example, a dual > > 2-input gate package instead of the more common quad, or other > > combinations like that. It seemed sometimes that things were altered a > > bit to fit into those 14-pin packages that they wanted to use... > > There was a brief period (early-mid 60s) were packaging was as you suggest, > early RTL ICs were in 8 or 10 pin cans and flat-paks with typically two > gates per package. As densities increased there was little point though, > when building systems with hundreds or thousands of gates, 2-gates per > package just increased the package count and the potential wastage of 2 > unused gates in a quad pack just wasn't a concern. I was just thinking more along the lines of when you only need some of what's in a typical package... And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there that's offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount package. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 13 18:07:20 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:07:20 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <4711242D.2080905@msm.umr.edu> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711242D.2080905@msm.umr.edu> Message-ID: <200710131907.20970.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 16:01, jim s wrote: > Roy J. Tellason wrote: > >I've often wondered why it is that 14-pin packages seemed to dominate the > >early parts so much. > > There was a company started up in the 1971 or 1972 time frame in > Columbia, Missouri that made a splash in the IC market by offering "cheap" > parts. It was Solid State Industries, or SSI and sold a pretty good mix of > 7400 IC's. They bought the die and packaged them in Columbia. The big cost > was the packaging machine at the time. I may have even heard of them somewhere along the line, though I'm not certain. > That is to some degree what dictated their choices of what to package, > since they eliminated the actual silicon fab from their business model. Interesting bit of history there. > They kept up for a while but eventually were wiped out the eventual drop > of prices to a few cents. I remember that drop, I used to look at the ads in the back of magazines like Popular Electronics and such, where something like a 7400 went from a couple of dollars down and down and down, eventually getting to the point of around 10 cents or so for one. And then LSTTL came into the picture and complicated the heck out of things, and they've been getting more so ever since then. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 13 18:08:51 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:08:51 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 16:34, David Griffith wrote: > On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, David Griffith wrote: > > I have an AT 286 clone motherboard with math coprocessor that needs a > > home. I only ask for postage. I'm in southern California. > > The board is spoken for. Thanks. On this subject, I have a couple or three 286 boards around, and it's possible that one of them might even have a mathco on it, I don't remember for sure. My question is, what are these good for these days? What sort of use could something like this be put to? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sat Oct 13 18:08:55 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:08:55 -0700 Subject: That poor System/36 Message-ID: <1526edde79d298ae542589cf30b7ccf2@valleyimplants.com> > I really want something bigger and something that just screams "I'm > dimming your lights!". A crimson running off a serial terminal does > not seem to cut it for me. IBM is a different mindset at the mini/mainframe levels than UNIX-type systems, and hobbyists suffer from the fact that IBM does not court the hobbyist market. Notice that I did not say it was a worse mindset, just different, nor did I imply that any company must bend over backwards for the hobbyist. IBM minis are optimized for database, accounting and semi-mainframe type tasks, too, and there are many pitfalls and booby traps in place to prevent horrible and unscrupulous people from buying them secondhand without giving IBM their cut, at least on the AS/400 level. You might want to look at one of the heftier VAXen or Alphas running VMS- different from UNIX and bulletproof, but still from within the same "interactive terminal" mindset. The OpenVMS Hobbyist program and the availability of free/low cost documentation and help is a big plus there, too. A VAX 7000 or AlphaServer 4k series will dim the lights on a branch circuit, definitely, and if that doesn't cut it you can plug in a couple of LaserJet IIISIs. Note that dim lights = low voltage = bad news for extended operation of SMPSUs, though :). Be patient: RealityEngines happen. From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Oct 13 18:32:23 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:32:23 -0400 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 17:45, Tony Duell wrote: > > This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a door > > to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! > > oops > > Oh that's easy to solve. Change all your keyboards to the Dvorak (?spel) > layout. I've seen assorted setups to change one's keyboard layout to that in software, but darn it, if I'm going there I want the keycaps too! Which I've *never* seen on anything... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sat Oct 13 18:50:16 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:50:16 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> <47112300.1CB98AFB@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: > And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there that's > offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount package. 20? years ago, TI offered a few 74xx series parts in 8 pin DIPs - dual gates and such. They bombed. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sat Oct 13 18:56:40 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:56:40 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Well it's great to hear of another person who owns one. Why is it the least liked? The design? The hardware is pretty nice, and you can understand the whole machine if you get the maintenance prints. Most of the midrange IBMs up to the S/36 seem to always include them. The problem is software. There just is not a lot of cool stuff for the S/36. Databases. More databases. A smaller S/390 is a much better toy to play with. They are not too hard to find. Or, as someone else mentioned, get a VAX. Oodles of fun there. -- Will From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 13 18:57:37 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:57:37 -0600 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <20071013125529.T78254@shell.lmi.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071013125529.T78254@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <47115B71.7000002@jetnet.ab.ca> Fred Cisin wrote: >> The 4040 was just an expanded 4004. It had more addressing range. > > A Pentium is just an expanded 4004. > > Weren't almost all of the design decisions of the 4004 done to provide > Pentium compatibility? > That would be the 5005 :) From emu at e-bbes.com Sat Oct 13 18:57:15 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:57:15 -0600 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <47115B5B.8050203@e-bbes.com> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I've seen assorted setups to change one's keyboard layout to that in software, > but darn it, if I'm going there I want the keycaps too! Which I've *never* > seen on anything... There were keyboards with little lcd "screens" on the keycaps. You download whatever you wanted to it. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 13 19:03:01 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:03:01 -0600 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <47115CB5.4030508@jetnet.ab.ca> Brent Hilpert wrote: > Thanks for the correction, but why was it in such a larger package? > (4040 was a 28 or 40-pin package wasn't it?). I think I read that lintel at that time could not test a larger package at time.Since the original market was a 4 function calculator small packages made sense. Ben. From teoz at neo.rr.com Sat Oct 13 19:04:58 2007 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:04:58 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roy J. Tellason" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 7:08 PM Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco > On Saturday 13 October 2007 16:34, David Griffith wrote: > > On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, David Griffith wrote: > > > I have an AT 286 clone motherboard with math coprocessor that needs a > > > home. I only ask for postage. I'm in southern California. > > > > The board is spoken for. Thanks. > > On this subject, I have a couple or three 286 boards around, and it's > possible that one of them might even have a mathco on it, I don't remember > for sure. > > My question is, what are these good for these days? What sort of use could > something like this be put to? > To play the original Wing Commander (way too fast on my 486)! From mcguire at neurotica.com Sat Oct 13 19:21:40 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:21:40 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47115CB5.4030508@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> <47115CB5.4030508@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <1DF3114C-2050-4DEC-A846-645877C10734@neurotica.com> On Oct 13, 2007, at 8:03 PM, woodelf wrote: >> Thanks for the correction, but why was it in such a larger package? >> (4040 was a 28 or 40-pin package wasn't it?). > > I think I read that lintel at that time could not test a larger > package at time.Since the original market was a 4 function calculator > small packages made sense. Really? I've never heard about that. What was the problem with larger packages, do you recall? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 13 19:25:58 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:25:58 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> <47112300.1CB98AFB@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: On 10/13/07, Roy J. Tellason wrote > And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there that's > offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount package. The first one of those I saw was a single-gate NAND in a 5-pin pseudo-SOT-23 package (don't know the proper designation) on a Palm Pilot memory board over 10 years ago. I still have some older Palms that might be upgradable, but you need both the RAM chip _and_ an extra NAND to fully populate the partially-empty boards. No idea where to get just a couple of those these days. Probably the easiest thing is to scrape them off of a Palm SIMM from an old Palm with a broken screen. -ethan From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 13 19:32:35 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:32:35 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: On 10/13/07, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Saturday 13 October 2007 15:40, dwight elvey wrote: > > > > 4008/9? First I've heard of these at all. > > > > These were but interface chips that took the pmos levels and convertered > > then to TTL levels to use with standard RAM, ROM, EPROM and I/O. > > Oh, heck, I'd forgotten about PMOS stuff altogether! :-) Hmm... PMOS... I know that there are fundamental composition and voltage differences between NMOS, PMOS, CMOS, HMOS, etc... What makes it not-compatible with TTL (unlike CMOS, which is easy to interface to TTL)? >From time to time, I consider building a small 4004 board - nothing more complicated than a digital clock, but my lack of examples to study in detail always slows me down. I've read over various datasheets, but not recently enough to really recall any specifics. I happen to have a couple of 4004s already - one plastic, one ceramic package, but they came from devices that I didn't have schematics for (one digital kitchen scale, one early barcode reader), and don't have the original PCBs from to study. I can't say that a modern 4004 project would be practical, but it sure would be neat to watch. I know there were some older bi-polar 4-bit PROMs that should still be programmable with 25-year-old programmers, but I suppose that it's just easy enough to use modern 8-bit devices and ignore 4 of the bits. -ethan From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Sat Oct 13 20:07:21 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:07:21 -0300 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca><200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net><47112300.1CB98AFB@cs.ubc.ca><200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <005601c80dfe$e829b1c0$f0fea8c0@alpha> >> And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there >> that's >> offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount package. > The first one of those I saw was a single-gate NAND in a 5-pin > pseudo-SOT-23 package (don't know the proper designation) on a Palm > Pilot memory board over 10 years ago. I still have some older Palms > that might be upgradable, but you need both the RAM chip _and_ an > extra NAND to fully populate the partially-empty boards. > No idea where to get just a couple of those these days. Probably the > easiest thing is to scrape them off of a Palm SIMM from an old Palm > with a broken screen. Motorola has a whole line. You can find it on farnell, digikey, mouser, and all good electronic suppliers :o) From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Sat Oct 13 20:11:37 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:11:37 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20071014011137.9B135BA45E5@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "Ethan Dicks" wrote: > On 10/13/07, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > On Saturday 13 October 2007 15:40, dwight elvey wrote: > > > > > 4008/9? First I've heard of these at all. > > > > > > These were but interface chips that took the pmos levels and convertered > > > then to TTL levels to use with standard RAM, ROM, EPROM and I/O. > > > > Oh, heck, I'd forgotten about PMOS stuff altogether! :-) > > Hmm... PMOS... I know that there are fundamental composition and > voltage differences between NMOS, PMOS, CMOS, HMOS, etc... What makes > it not-compatible with TTL (unlike CMOS, which is easy to interface to > TTL)? NMOS is good at pulling down. This works well with TTL with a pullup resistor, because TTL traditionally is a "pull down" logic family. The NMOS output pins are not by any means beefy - usually they only are good for driving a single TTL or two inputs, and only with the right pullups. Some NMOS chips used on-chip pullups (I think actually weak PMOS FETS on the chip but I was NEVER a VLSI guy.) PMOS is good at pulling up. This is not a natural match to TTL. NMOS is only compatible if the supplies are structured to be similar to the TTL levels. PMOS often used voltages that were rather bizarre compared to the TTL designer's view of 0 and +5V, because there was almost always some extra interface glue between the two. For fun, abandon gates and instead build stuff out of CD4007's. The datasheets and part number might make you think it's a logic chip, but in real life it's some NMOS/PMOS pairs with a good amount of the internal connections available. Lotsa fun as an analog device! And now that the CA3046 is discontinued I may as well learn how to use FET's :-). Tim. From ballsandy at msn.com Sat Oct 13 21:13:15 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 00:13:15 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: >> I really want something bigger and something that just screams "I'm >> dimming your lights!". A crimson running off a serial terminal does >> not seem to cut it for me. > >IBM is a different mindset at the mini/mainframe levels than UNIX-type >systems, and hobbyists suffer from the fact that IBM does not court the >hobbyist market. Notice that I did not say it was a worse mindset, just >different, nor did I imply that any company must bend over backwards >for the hobbyist. > >IBM minis are optimized for database, accounting and semi-mainframe >type tasks, too, and there are many pitfalls and booby traps in place >to prevent horrible and unscrupulous people from buying them secondhand >without giving IBM their cut, at least on the AS/400 level. You might >want to look at one of the heftier VAXen or Alphas running VMS- >different from UNIX and bulletproof, but still from within the same >"interactive terminal" mindset. The OpenVMS Hobbyist program and the >availability of free/low cost documentation and help is a big plus >there, too. >A VAX 7000 or AlphaServer 4k series will dim the lights on a branch >circuit, definitely, and if that doesn't cut it you can plug in a >couple of LaserJet IIISIs. Note that dim lights = low voltage = bad >news for extended operation of SMPSUs, though :). > >Be patient: RealityEngines happen. I have always known that IBM never wanted these systems to go to people like us who run them in their basement and yes I do know that the majority of the IBM mainframes were leased out which makes them even harder to find But once in a blue moon a leased system enters the hands of a hobbyist. Yes I also know that mainframes were usually designed for databases and the likes but they can still be fun to play with and you gotta admit it's fun showing off those massive IBM hard drives and then telling your friends how much that massive drive can actually store (20-80 megs if more). There is no way I will look into a DEC. I have absolutely no knowledge on any of their good old systems (I have never even seen one) and I have always loved IBM systems (yes, criticize me). BTW: My Crimson is equipped with a Reality Engine.:) Yes, an S/390 would be really nice (hey, you can even go with linux if you really wanted to) but they seem a a tad too small for me. It also looks too modern IMO. _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself with free Messenger emoticons. Get them today! http://www.freemessengeremoticons.ca/?icid=EMENCA122 From trixter at oldskool.org Sat Oct 13 21:32:37 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:32:37 -0500 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> <009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> Message-ID: <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> Teo Zenios wrote: > To play the original Wing Commander (way too fast on my 486)! It would have to be a 16MHz 286, and you must play in VGA(*) (really MCGA) mode. But with those conditions met, yes, the original Wing Commander is playable. 12Mhz is a hair too slow to be enjoyable. (*) Original Wing Commander supported EGA and Tandy 16-color graphics. However, the graphics speed in these modes, even though they require half the memory, is so slow that the game is unplayable due to the bitwide manipulation needed. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 21:41:37 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:41:37 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> <47115CB5.4030508@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <471181E0.AE27C1E6@cs.ubc.ca> woodelf wrote: > > Brent Hilpert wrote: > > > Thanks for the correction, but why was it in such a larger package? > > (4040 was a 28 or 40-pin package wasn't it?). > > I think I read that lintel at that time could not test a larger > package at time.Since the original market was a 4 function calculator > small packages made sense. > Ben. I think you have my question backwards, the question is what are the additional 8 pins (24-pin package I have been advised) being used for on the 4040, given as Dwight says, that the bus interface is the same. From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 21:42:37 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:42:37 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> Ethan Dicks wrote: > >From time to time, I consider building a small 4004 board - nothing > more complicated than a digital clock, but my lack of examples to > study in detail always slows me down. I've read over various > datasheets, but not recently enough to really recall any specifics. I > happen to have a couple of 4004s already - one plastic, one ceramic > package, but they came from devices that I didn't have schematics for > (one digital kitchen scale, one early barcode reader), and don't have > the original PCBs from to study. > > I can't say that a modern 4004 project would be practical, but it sure > would be neat to watch. I know there were some older bi-polar 4-bit > PROMs that should still be programmable with 25-year-old programmers, > but I suppose that it's just easy enough to use modern 8-bit devices > and ignore 4 of the bits. I think one essentially has two choices: - find a 4008 & 9 to break out the bus and then you can use standard 8-bit EPROMS (4004 instructions are 8-bits actually). You may still be screwed for RAM without a 4002 though, as the 4004 is Harvard arch. and I'm not sure that the 4008/9 bring out the data address space. - (re)design some bus muxing logic (4000 series CMOS should interwork) to deal with the 4004 cycle and use 4 or 8-bit (E)PROMs and RAM. In other words, recreate the 4001 and 4002 in SSI (or 4008/9 depending on your perspective). (For 4004 stuff it's nice to find equipment with at least the entire digital portion intact, precisely to avoid having to do the above.) (And I forgot to mention the 4201 clock generator (still looking for one)). From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 13 21:43:16 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 19:43:16 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071014011137.9B135BA45E5@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <47118243.21D5B0DF@cs.ubc.ca> Tim Shoppa wrote: > For fun, abandon gates and instead build stuff out of CD4007's. > The datasheets and part number might make you think it's a logic > chip, but in real life it's some NMOS/PMOS pairs with a good amount > of the internal connections available. Lotsa fun as an analog device! Yeah, that's an oddball, I remember learning about it when building a pong game from Popular Electronics out of CMOS SSI and Norton amps as a teenager. From teoz at neo.rr.com Sat Oct 13 21:49:27 2007 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:49:27 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net><009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Leonard" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 10:32 PM Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco > It would have to be a 16MHz 286, and you must play in VGA(*) (really > MCGA) mode. But with those conditions met, yes, the original Wing > Commander is playable. 12Mhz is a hair too slow to be enjoyable. > > (*) Original Wing Commander supported EGA and Tandy 16-color graphics. > However, the graphics speed in these modes, even though they require > half the memory, is so slow that the game is unplayable due to the > bitwide manipulation needed. Yes, I have a 286-16 (the chip is a 20 but the motherboard only has settings for 12/16Mhz), VGA mode. The only reason I have the 286 (which I never realy cared for processor wise) was because my tandy 1000HX is too slow for some games, and my 386/40 or 486/66 is too fast for others). Trying to play WC on a 486/66 is like playing an arcade game on crack. Am I the only one who never got into 286 systems (my 1st pc in the late 80's was a Packard Bell 286/12)? TZ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 13 22:07:12 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:07:12 -0600 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <471181E0.AE27C1E6@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> <47115CB5.4030508@jetnet.ab.ca> <471181E0.AE27C1E6@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <471187E0.8080005@jetnet.ab.ca> Brent Hilpert wrote: > I think you have my question backwards, the question is what are the > additional 8 pins (24-pin package I have been advised) being used for on the > 4040, given as Dwight says, that the bus interface is the same. All I can say is try to find the real data sheet. Ben. Pinouts here http://intelvsamd.info/Intel_4040.html Instruction set http://www.pastraiser.com/ PS. I don't see anything under bitsavers/intel From swtpc6800 at comcast.net Sat Oct 13 22:05:55 2007 From: swtpc6800 at comcast.net (Michael Holley) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:05:55 -0700 Subject: Electronics Parts Stores near Seattle Message-ID: <0fbb01c80e0f$29e215c0$6601a8c0@downstairs2> One of the last part stores in the Seattle area, Alphatronics, has move moved a few blocks to 1035 Andover Park East in Tukwila WA. http://www.alphatronics-usa.com/ I when there today to buy parts for a replica of the first MITS product. A Model Rocket Tracking Light from 1969. They had all of the parts on the shelf. I hope to have this built for Vintage Computer Festival in November. I have a copy of the article on DigiBarn http://www.digibarn.com/collections/devices/MITS-Model-Rockets-Tracking-Light/index.html Thank to Marvin Johnston for giving me some G pattern Vectorbord. Alphatronics had some nice S-100 prototype boards on sale. There is a box of various prototype boards on the floor near the cash register. Michael Holley www.swtpc.com/mholley From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 13 22:59:46 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:59:46 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: > From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> > Ethan Dicks wrote:> > > >From time to time, I consider building a small 4004 board - nothing> > more complicated than a digital clock, but my lack of examples to> > study in detail always slows me down. I've read over various> > datasheets, but not recently enough to really recall any specifics. I> > happen to have a couple of 4004s already - one plastic, one ceramic> > package, but they came from devices that I didn't have schematics for> > (one digital kitchen scale, one early barcode reader), and don't have> > the original PCBs from to study.> > > > I can't say that a modern 4004 project would be practical, but it sure> > would be neat to watch. I know there were some older bi-polar 4-bit> > PROMs that should still be programmable with 25-year-old programmers,> > but I suppose that it's just easy enough to use modern 8-bit devices> > and ignore 4 of the bits. Hi The instruction width is 8 bits so that matches. It is just the data that is 4 bits. There are a number of 4 bit RAMs out there. > > I think one essentially has two choices:> > - find a 4008 & 9 to break out the bus and then you can use standard> 8-bit EPROMS (4004 instructions are 8-bits actually). You may still> be screwed for RAM without a 4002 though, as the 4004 is Harvard arch.> and I'm not sure that the 4008/9 bring out the data address space.> > - (re)design some bus muxing logic (4000 series CMOS should interwork)> to deal with the 4004 cycle and use 4 or 8-bit (E)PROMs and RAM.> In other words, recreate the 4001 and 4002 in SSI (or 4008/9 depending> on your perspective). If you use the 4008/9 chips, you can used regular EPROMs and static RAMs. No need to be upset at not having 4001's or 4002's. Of course you'll need to memory map your I/O. I don't recall if the 4008/4009 did I/O separately but it might. > > (For 4004 stuff it's nice to find equipment with at least the entire digital> portion intact, precisely to avoid having to do the above.)> > (And I forgot to mention the 4201 clock generator (still looking for one)). I don't think the board in my development system used a 4201. It seems it just use a few transistors. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From trixter at oldskool.org Sat Oct 13 23:15:30 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:15:30 -0500 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net><009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> Message-ID: <471197E2.7000707@oldskool.org> Teo Zenios wrote: > Am I the only one who never got into 286 systems (my 1st pc in the late 80's > was a Packard Bell 286/12)? I didn't either. 808x had about as long a run of usefulness as the other popular/surviving home computers at the time (I'm thinking Apple II, C64, Mac classic here), which was about 8 years. As to why that is, I'm still trying to hammer out theories (additional ones are welcome), such as "the home computer software industry moved at a slower pace back then" or "computers cost so much back then that people expected them to last", etc. I got an 808x in December 1984 and used it until December of 1990, when it was replaced by an 80386sx-16 with VGA. So I bypassed the 80286 era as well. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 13 23:20:24 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:20:24 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: > From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca > > dwight elvey wrote: >> >>> From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca >>> ---snip---> >>> Regarding the 4040, I'm speculating as I've never dealt with one or come >>> across the pinout, but I suspect the 4040 essentially integrated the >>> 4004/4008/4009 into one larger package making it look more like a 'standard' >>> microproc in terms of signals/interface (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). > >> No, it was just a 4004 with, as I recall, two more instructions. >> It kept the 4004 multiplexed bus and connected to 4001's and 4002's, >> just like the 4004. >> As I recall, it had 4 times the address space with bank selects. I'd >> need to look at the specs again to be sure. > > Thanks for the correction, but why was it in such a larger package? > (4040 was a 28 or 40-pin package wasn't it?). Hi It had more select lines for a larger address space. I think it added an Interupt and a single step as well. I believe that made up for the rest of the pins. It also had TTL compatible pins for many of the signal lines. I believe that required an extra power line as well. I recall that the reset line had inverted logic sense but that didn't effect the pin count. I recall that did cause problems for the UPP. The other chips still had the original sense of logic. On the UPP, they'd used a transistor to invert the level. The problem was that they'd released the CPU about 3 cycles befor releasing the ROM's reset. It was flakey on reset. Some boards just never reset right. They even had an ap note stating to put a few nops at the start of the ROM to fix this. This didn't always work right. Changing the reset order fixed it. It seems the 4040 was a 24 pin part. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts!? Play Star Shuffle:? the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct From rescue at hawkmountain.net Sat Oct 13 23:43:16 2007 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 00:43:16 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net><009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> Message-ID: <47119E64.9010803@hawkmountain.net> Teo Zenios wrote: > ... > Yes, I have a 286-16 (the chip is a 20 but the motherboard only has settings > for 12/16Mhz), VGA mode. The only reason I have the 286 (which I never realy > cared for processor wise) was because my tandy 1000HX is too slow for some > games, and my 386/40 or 486/66 is too fast for others). Trying to play WC on > a 486/66 is like playing an arcade game on crack. > Heh... too funny... my 286 is a 286-16 clocked as a 286-20 :-) > Am I the only one who never got into 286 systems (my 1st pc in the late 80's > was a Packard Bell 286/12)? > > I think skipping a generation wasn't uncommon.... I skipped the 386 generation... went from my 286-20 to a 486DX-33. I skipped the pentium pro generation too (not that I didn't get cheaper/free ones later to toy with... just like I have a few 386s now... just didn't get them 'in their time'). -- Curt > TZ > > > > From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 13 23:52:33 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:52:33 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: > From: dkelvey at hotmail.com---snip--- > > I don't think the board in my development system used a 4201. It> seems it just use a few transistors. Hi I was almost right. They used a 4 each 9602 one shots and several transistor to create the voltages needed for the clocks. Check the section on bitsavers under Intel and MCS4. The manual has schematics for the board I have. It used descreate parts to interface 1702A to the 4004 bus. It did use 4002s for RAM but that isn't necessary if one doesn't expect to emulate the Busicom. The 4002s had a status nibble on each line of 16 nibbles. This is why it had such funny non-power of 2 size. One could use 555 directly now days instead of the 9602s. These can output the needed voltage swing. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Oct 14 00:33:29 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:33:29 -0600 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4711AA29.2020902@jetnet.ab.ca> dwight elvey wrote: > One could use 555 directly now days instead of the 9602s. > These can output the needed voltage swing. The only gotya I can guess might be timing delay between clock phases. > Dwight From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sun Oct 14 01:00:24 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:00:24 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <471122A0.6BA6D37E@cs.ubc.ca> <47113D0A.782BF62C@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4711B077.A0113EC@cs.ubc.ca> dwight elvey wrote: > > > From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca > > > > dwight elvey wrote: > >> > >>> From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca > >>> ---snip---> > >>> Regarding the 4040, I'm speculating as I've never dealt with one or come > >>> across the pinout, but I suspect the 4040 essentially integrated the > >>> 4004/4008/4009 into one larger package making it look more like a 'standard' > >>> microproc in terms of signals/interface (somebody correct me if I'm wrong). > > > >> No, it was just a 4004 with, as I recall, two more instructions. > >> It kept the 4004 multiplexed bus and connected to 4001's and 4002's, > >> just like the 4004. > >> As I recall, it had 4 times the address space with bank selects. I'd > >> need to look at the specs again to be sure. > > > > Thanks for the correction, but why was it in such a larger package? > > (4040 was a 28 or 40-pin package wasn't it?). > > Hi > > It had more select lines for a larger address space. I think it added > an Interupt and a single step as well. I believe that made up for the > rest of the pins. It also had TTL compatible pins for many of the signal > lines. I believe that required an extra power line as well. I recall that the > reset line had inverted logic sense but that didn't effect the pin count. > > It seems the 4040 was a 24 pin part. Thanks, that matches up with the pinout Ben found. Along with some other contribs it appears the 4040 was mostly software-arena improvements with relatively little change to the hardware/interface environment. From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sun Oct 14 01:01:59 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:01:59 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4711B0D7.3A961266@cs.ubc.ca> dwight elvey wrote: > > If you use the 4008/9 chips, you can used regular EPROMs and static > RAMs. No need to be upset at not having 4001's or 4002's. Yes, except for RAM/4002's, see below. > Of course you'll need to memory map your I/O. I don't recall if the > 4008/4009 did I/O separately but it might. Looking at a schematic of an actual system using all this stuff, the 4008/9 provide: - ROM: up to 16 pages of 256 bytes (4 binary page select lines, 8 address, 8 data) - I/O: up to 16 4-bit bi-dir ports (4 binary port select lines, IN/OUT control lines, 4 data lines) - RAM: no provision it appears, so you still need a 4002 (or get by with registers, or via I/O) From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 01:09:49 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 02:09:49 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47118243.21D5B0DF@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071014011137.9B135BA45E5@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <47118243.21D5B0DF@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: On 10/13/07, Brent Hilpert wrote: > Tim Shoppa wrote: > > For fun, abandon gates and instead build stuff out of CD4007's. > > The datasheets and part number might make you think it's a logic > > chip, but in real life it's some NMOS/PMOS pairs with a good amount > > of the internal connections available. Lotsa fun as an analog device! > > Yeah, that's an oddball, I remember learning about it when building a pong > game from Popular Electronics out of CMOS SSI and Norton amps as a teenager. There's some stuff in Don Lancaster's "CMOS Cookbook" about the CD4007. Quite interesting to read about. -ethan From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sun Oct 14 01:20:19 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:20:19 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4711B522.9BD6C1AD@cs.ubc.ca> dwight elvey wrote: > > > From: dkelvey at hotmail.com---snip--- > > > I don't think the board in my development system used a 4201. It> seems it just use a few transistors. > > Hi > I was almost right. They used a 4 each 9602 one shots and > several transistor to create the voltages needed for the clocks. > One could use 555 directly now days instead of the 9602s. > These can output the needed voltage swing. Oh, I have built a plug-in 4201 replacement from 3 4000-series CMOS ICs, so the equipment is functional (it's just kind of ugly - a daughter board connected via a 16-pin DIP plug). The clock cycle used is modulo-7 so it's not quite trivial. One might question the drive capability of the CMOS but it seems to work well enough, I think when I did it I looked at the phases on the 'scope and they appeared as sharp as with an actual 4201. From dm561 at torfree.net Sun Oct 14 02:01:41 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 04:01:41 -0300 Subject: Cromemco (was Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files) Message-ID: <01C80E17.2C710460@MSE_D03> Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:00:18 -0400 From: "Roy J. Tellason" Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files >That's more than I've got in there. It's a ZPU, 64KB ram card, I *think* >that 64FDC, and an I/O card, not real sure but I think maybe it's the >PRI... Your basic single-user CDOS system, although I suspect that's a 16FDC. I assume it's a System 3, or perhaps a Z-2? Either way, lots of room in there for expansion ;-) >No CDOS handy, I'm not even sure what I got for disks with that box, though >I did get some, the problem with the drive having done some physical damage >to the one that was in it. Somewhere around here I have a box of 8" >floppies, but that would include what came with this system and also what >came with the Imsai, at least, plus probably some stuff that folks have >sent my way over the years. Dave D has various images on his excellent site - also see below. If you're having trouble with the 8" drive(s) and haven't gotten around to making the cable for a 3 1/2" substitute, add a 7812 or use an old PC supply and temporarily hook up a 5 1/4" drive; the FDC handles both. >I'm not sure if I even have CP/M specific to that box. Several people have configured CP/M for the Cromemco configuration; Barry Watzman for one, if I'm not mistaken. >Mostly I was looking for what sort of hardware capabilities would be needed... You've got the basic hardware except for a 7812 or equivalent for the 5.25 (and 3.5" if 12V - see below) drives; the rest is software ;-) >> Any version of Cromix (Cromemco's early Z80 and 68000 pseudo-UNIX) can >> read/write any version of CDOS or Cromix disk (floppies, that is; hard >> disks are a different story). >I'd love to get some info on that software, particularly if I can ever get my >hands on a DPU card to stick in there. If/when you do, it's certainly out there. Several sites have extensive collections of Cromemco software and manuals; one of the most complete is Marcus' site: http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/cromemco (Also see Herb Johnson's & Howard Harte's sites). To run Z80 Cromix, all you'd need is another 64K; to run 68K Cromix/+ you'd need at least a 68000 DPU and 256K would be nice. >Around the time I got that box I remember trying for some info and being told >that the company wasn't doing anything but making 68K boxes for some >specialized applications any more. In the last years they'd become part of Dynatech, who had been using Cromemco boxes for their TV weather systems and didn't seem particularly interested in the computer business beyond supporting their own applications (they apparently also owned Fuzz-Buster BTW). The European company that's still around today is Cromemco in name only, having moved into UNIX software long ago. >> Cromix+ and UNIX both read/write UNIX format disks; anything else that >> Cromix+ could handle was transferred to UNIX via a shared HD partition. >What's a "unix format disk"? Actually their name is "Uniform style floppy" and it's a format compatible with both Cromix and UNIX (and without the pesky SD first track or Disk ID). >> Anything else would indeed require some custom programming; the FDC >> controller cards were reasonably well documented. >That's mostly what I was looking for, if the common FDC chips back in those >days were likely to be sufficient to handle a wide variety of "stuff" out there. Well, hard sector disks might still be a problem... >> If the main CPU was a 680x0 instead of a Z80 then Z80 & CP/M software was >> run either on a dual (Z80/68000) DPU card or, if there was only a 680x0 CPU >> then it was run on the Z80 on an I/O card such as the IOP I/O processor or >> the Octart 8-port RS-232 card, if available. >I saw the sheet on the IOP in my book just now, but don't know about that >other one. Why would they stick a processor on an 8-port serial card? Not relevant or supported in single-user CDOS (which used ordinary TUART 4-port serial and PRI 2-port parallel cards), but running a multi-user sort-of-UNIX on a 4MHz Z80 wasn't exactly blindingly fast, especially on the slow hard disks of the day. If the main CPU also had to directly service all those UARTS it probably would grind to a halt so they handled serial I/O with coprocessors (IOP & Octart), which later could also run Z80 user software in between I/O requests when there wasn't a Z80 on the main processor board any longer. The IOP is only the I/O *processor* BTW; there can be up to 4 installed, and each can control up to 4 Quadart 4-port serial cards for a maximum of 16 ports; that'd keep a single Z80 so busy it wouldn't have much time to actually run those users' programs ;-). The Octart is a coprocessor and 8 ports combined, and a system could have up to 4 for a total of 32 ports; although in practice you wouldn't have that many users you could have I/O devices on all of those ports (I have in fact had Cromemco systems installed with more than 32 terminals, although they were not all unique "users"). >> Their first hard disks were 11MB 8" IMI drives using a WDI controller; they >> were superseded by 5 & 20 MB 5" IMI drives requiring a WDI-II. Then came >> MFM disks using an STDC controller and SMD drives & controller, and finally >> ESDI and SCSI drives using the ESDC controller. >Rigging up some sort of mounting hardware and finding 12V power for some of >the 3.5" HDs I have kicking around here should be an interesting >exercise. :-) You'd need it for 5.25 drives for sure, but many 3.5" drives actually only require 5V which you already have for the 8" drive. >I have nothing around for a controller, but given the choice I'd rather go >with SCSI if possible. SCSI wasn't supported until pretty late in the game and you'd need fairly late versions of cards & OS; definitely not an option with your setup. >> The floppy controller also supported the small tape drives while the larger >> tapes required the ESDC controller, and there was also a controller and OS >> support for 9-track mag tape. >Hmm. Indeed... Can't help any with the Bigboard, alas. Good luck! mike From ploopster at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 03:32:44 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 04:32:44 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net><009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> Message-ID: <4711D42C.2020902@gmail.com> Teo Zenios wrote: > games, and my 386/40 or 486/66 is too fast for others). Trying to play WC on > a 486/66 is like playing an arcade game on crack. You mean the game is on crack, or you're on crack playing the game? Peace... Sridhar From cc at corti-net.de Sun Oct 14 04:17:33 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:17:33 +0200 (CEST) Subject: 4004 and IC history In-Reply-To: <20071013125529.T78254@shell.lmi.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47100A51.1872.B2804B3@cclist.sydex.com> <47108C54.486A9376@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071013125529.T78254@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, Fred Cisin wrote: > A Pentium is just an expanded 4004. No, not at all; and the 4004 has a harvard architecture. You're confusing it with the i8008, this is the ancestor that can be found in all Pentii. The 4004 and 8008 are very different designs, the former an order from Busicom to the firm "Integrated Electronics" as a chipset for a calculator, the latter from I think DTC for a CRT terminal. Christian From paco.linux at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 04:35:14 2007 From: paco.linux at gmail.com (Paco Linux) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:35:14 +0200 Subject: Looking for DOMAIN kbd Message-ID: Hi all: I have a HP Apollo 425e and I want to run DOMAIN in it, but for this I need this type of keyboard. Has somebody a spare keyboard? Thanks From grant at stockly.com Sun Oct 14 04:35:34 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 01:35:34 -0800 Subject: Underclock a Pentium/Overdrive/486 Message-ID: <0JPW00GG2AQI9V00@msgmmp-1.gci.net> I'm wondering about underclocking a pentium. I've read about running Windows XP on a Pentium Overdrive underclocked to 8MHz with 20MB RAM. I was curious if anyone in here knew enough about the design of an early pentium or 486 to say if its possible to go lower, like 2MHz. For a joke I thought it would be fun to have an intel machine running XP or Vista at an Altair paced clock speed. XP took 30 minutes to boot at 8MHz, so I imagine a bare bones Vista would take a few hours at 2MHz, that is if Vista would even run on a Pentium... To me this is kind of like the project where someone booted Mac OS X on a 25MHz Centris 650 using a PPC emulator. Except most likely faster. : ) Maybe I'm just looking for something to carry me through the Alaskan winter. : ) Any thoughts? My first one is to set the jumpers as low as they would go and then start changing the onboard crystals/oscillators. Chances are the BIOS would still report 8MHz to windows and the screen shot wouldn't look as cool? I have already overclocked the Kenbak-1 500%, and underclocked it 800%. Time to move on to bigger and better things. Grant From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Oct 14 04:41:46 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 10:41:46 +0100 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <471197E2.7000707@oldskool.org> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net><009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> <471197E2.7000707@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <4711E45A.2070503@yahoo.co.uk> Jim Leonard wrote: > I didn't either. 808x had about as long a run of usefulness as the > other popular/surviving home computers at the time (I'm thinking Apple > II, C64, Mac classic here), which was about 8 years. As to why that is, > I'm still trying to hammer out theories (additional ones are welcome), > such as "the home computer software industry moved at a slower pace back > then" or "computers cost so much back then that people expected them to > last", etc. I suspect the driving force was peoples' expectations; back then nobody expected new hardware and software to come out so frequently, and so it just didn't happen - the computer was a tool, not a status symbol, and purchased based on whether it filled a need. I'm not sure if expense comes into it - look how many gadgets people buy these days (it all adds up!) or how many people change their car each year etc. Then: "It's a bit clunky, but it does pretty much what I need it to do. Why should I change?" Now: "Oh look, new shiny thing!" From ian_primus at yahoo.com Sun Oct 14 06:23:48 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 04:23:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Underclock a Pentium/Overdrive/486 In-Reply-To: <0JPW00GG2AQI9V00@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <514009.10751.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- Grant Stockly wrote: > I'm wondering about underclocking a pentium. I've > read about running > Windows XP on a Pentium Overdrive underclocked to > 8MHz with 20MB RAM. > > I was curious if anyone in here knew enough about > the design of an > early pentium or 486 to say if its possible to go > lower, like 2MHz. I don't know, but what I do know is that XP won't run on a 486. Period. I've tried it :) > For a joke I thought it would be fun to have an > intel machine running > XP or Vista at an Altair paced clock speed. XP took > 30 minutes to > boot at 8MHz, so I imagine a bare bones Vista would > take a few hours > at 2MHz, that is if Vista would even run on a > Pentium... That would be cool. But be forewarned - Vista doesn't even really run right on a Pentium 4... I tried it. It brought a 2.4 ghz P4 to it's knees. > To me this is kind of like the project where someone > booted Mac OS X > on a 25MHz Centris 650 using a PPC emulator. Except > most likely faster. : ) Yes, that was a pretty cool hack too. Didn't that take like half a day to boot? I wonder if it would run VirtualPC... > Maybe I'm just looking for something to carry me > through the Alaskan > winter. : ) Maybe. But you might need something with more heat output. Think ECL logic minicomputer. > Any thoughts? My first one is to set the jumpers as > low as they > would go and then start changing the onboard > crystals/oscillators. Chances are the BIOS would > still report 8MHz > to windows and the screen shot wouldn't look as > cool? Well, the guys the did XP at 25mhx removed the fan from the overdrive, so it defaulted to a multiplier of 1. Then you could start swapping crystals to bring the bus speed down. I don't know what the minimum bus speed is, but if you were to install a socket for the crystal, you could keep fiddleing. I have no idea if the bios would report the proper speed though. -Ian From ian_primus at yahoo.com Sun Oct 14 07:03:30 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 05:03:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <6721f6322950269ef897ae2276a8f056@mac.com> Message-ID: <596027.30544.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- Roger Pugh wrote: > This morning my wife complained to me that every > time she opened a door > to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it > falls out !!! > oops Well, that's not as bad as all that. It's only when you get to the point where computers start substituting for furniture that you should worry. Sparcstation end tables, IBM nightstand, that sort of thing. -Ian From quapla at xs4all.nl Sun Oct 14 07:21:52 2007 From: quapla at xs4all.nl (Ed Groenenberg) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:21:52 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Latest find Message-ID: <4430.88.211.153.27.1192364512.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> The company I work for had some stuff to dump. I'ts from a Kent PLC system and I took the cpu & drive box. CPU box containd a KDJ11-A, an MXV11-A, a DILOG DQ614, a 8 port serial line interfaxe, and a M7549 DMA interface. The drive box contained a RD52 & an Ampex disk. The CPU box also contained 2 Tandon TM-828 slimline 8" floppy drives. Eventually there is more PDP stuff to come :) Ed From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Sun Oct 14 07:24:15 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:24:15 -0400 Subject: Purchase: DEC PDP11/93 (Whole Machine) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47120A6F.1040401@compsys.to> >SPOONSPOON wrote: >Hello, > >I want to purchase DEC PDP11/93 (1). Can I get a quote from you? If it is in stock, please reply me. What does it include? I mean how is the configuration? > >Thank you very much > >Regard > >Beijing KSD Electron Technical Service Center >_________________________________________________________________ >????? MSN ?????????? >http://mobile.msn.com.cn/ > Jerome Fine replies: Asking to purchase a PDP-11/93 is like asking to purchase a Quad Core Pentium 4. While you have specified the CPU, all the other options are still to be decided - well I agree that the memory has only 2 options, 2 MB and 4 MB. If your only purpose is to resell the system, then obviously it doesn't matter much what backplane, power supply and disk drives, to name just 3 options, will be included. UNLESS you just want the CPU board itself????? And is this request for commercial or hobby use? It does make a big difference! Do you have any idea who is going to use the PDP-11/93 and what software will be used? Other possibilities other than the most expensive option may solve the problem. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Sun Oct 14 07:25:05 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:25:05 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <470E2F48.1060505@oldskool.org> References: <001a01c809d3$380c0380$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <470A7D25.1000309@compsys.to> <470AB27A.4010109@oldskool.org> <470D6CB9.2000100@compsys.to> <470E2F48.1060505@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <47120AA1.5070603@compsys.to> >Jim Leonard wrote: > Jerome H. Fine wrote: > >> file, it is far more convenient to just copy all the files on the DVD >> to the hard drive > > > You missed my point: Get yourself a new md5 program. Jerome Fine replies: It seems that there are md5 programs which are more flexible than the single file (at a time) use version that I am using. Any help possible on a link to an enhanced version? 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 bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Oct 14 09:42:57 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:42:57 -0600 Subject: Underclock a Pentium/Overdrive/486 In-Reply-To: <0JPW00GG2AQI9V00@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <0JPW00GG2AQI9V00@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <47122AF1.9040102@jetnet.ab.ca> Grant Stockly wrote: > Maybe I'm just looking for something to carry me through the Alaskan > winter. : ) How about swapping jobs with Ethan and move way south. :) > Any thoughts? My first one is to set the jumpers as low as they would > go and then start changing the onboard crystals/oscillators. Chances > are the BIOS would still report 8MHz to windows and the screen shot > wouldn't look as cool? I think 8MHz is as slow as you can go because of memory refresh. Remember also to have the video card slowed down too. > I have already overclocked the Kenbak-1 500%, and underclocked it 800%. > Time to move on to bigger and better things. PDP 8. :) > Grant > From emu at e-bbes.com Sun Oct 14 09:53:06 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:53:06 -0600 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <471197E2.7000707@oldskool.org> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net><009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> <471197E2.7000707@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <47122D52.7000806@e-bbes.com> Jim Leonard wrote: > I didn't either. 808x had about as long a run of usefulness as the > other popular/surviving home computers at the time (I'm thinking Apple > II, C64, Mac classic here), which was about 8 years. As to why that is, > I'm still trying to hammer out theories (additional ones are welcome), > such as "the home computer software industry moved at a slower pace back > then" or "computers cost so much back then that people expected them to > last", etc. I think people worked/played more with the computer more back then. Meaning wrote utilities, improved stuff, changed something, and were proud if it. Now it (the pc a least) became a utility appliance like a toaster. Nothing sexy about it anymore. And software is so bloated, it is hard enough to just use it ;-) Cheers From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Oct 14 10:06:22 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:06:22 -0600 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47122D52.7000806@e-bbes.com> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net><009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> <471197E2.7000707@oldskool.org> <47122D52.7000806@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <4712306E.8060604@jetnet.ab.ca> e.stiebler wrote: > Now it (the pc a least) became a utility appliance like a toaster. > Nothing sexy about it anymore. And software is so bloated, it is hard > enough to just use it ;-) For a while it seemed the pc was game driven... New graphics card,cpu and extra's for each revision of games. Now it seems to hardware fads like USB,todays brand of networking... Ben > Cheers > From dholland at woh.rr.com Sun Oct 14 10:15:00 2007 From: dholland at woh.rr.com (David Holland) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:15:00 -0400 Subject: Infant mortality and longevity of DVD media? In-Reply-To: <47120AA1.5070603@compsys.to> References: <001a01c809d3$380c0380$5b01a8c0@uatempname> <470A7D25.1000309@compsys.to> <470AB27A.4010109@oldskool.org> <470D6CB9.2000100@compsys.to> <470E2F48.1060505@oldskool.org> <47120AA1.5070603@compsys.to> Message-ID: <47123274.8070103@woh.rr.com> Jerome H. Fine wrote: > > Jerome Fine replies: > > It seems that there are md5 programs which are more > flexible than the single file (at a time) use version > that I am using. Any help possible on a link to an > enhanced version? OpenSSL. You can then use SHA1 if you feel like it. If you're running under Win32, use CygWin (www.cygwin.com) to get precompiled binaries, and then: openssl md5 If you're running a Linux variant, it probably already has a openssl package in the distro somewhere. If you're using another Unix variant: www.openssl.org has the source, as well as manpages. I think it'll build on VMS as well. David > > > 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 compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sun Oct 14 10:22:21 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:22:21 -0700 Subject: Electronics Parts Stores near Seattle Message-ID: > > One of the last part stores in the Seattle area, Alphatronics, has move > moved a few blocks to 1035 Andover Park East in Tukwila WA. > http://www.alphatronics-usa.com/ > > Glad to hear that- I was a bit in shock when I rolled up about a month ago and there was a trucking company where they used to be. For the mail-order set who doesn't have a parts store nearby, how do you work things out (reference-wise, other than the usual databooks?). Especially for test equipment and things like that (now that we're loosing Boeing, there I knew that the equipment was used but reasonably good quality). From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sun Oct 14 10:34:29 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:34:29 -0700 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: > Yes, an S/390 would be really nice (hey, you can even go with linux if > you really wanted to) but they seem a > a tad too small for me. It also looks too modern IMO. But Linux on a S/390 would be like Linux on a SGI (unless it was in a single LPAR) - it's lacking something. Anyone know what they're using for the front-end laptop or whatever you call it on the zSeries now that OS/2 is gone? Also, anyone know if there's a mirror of the DriverPak Online setup (when IBM says end-of-support they mean it) - I'm trying to get a not-on-topic Compaq Armada PII laptop running with something marginally interesting. From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sun Oct 14 10:38:47 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:38:47 -0700 Subject: I've gone too far Message-ID: Roy wrote: > On Saturday 13 October 2007 17:45, Tony Duell wrote: >>> This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a >>> door >>> to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! >>> oops >> >> Oh that's easy to solve. Change all your keyboards to the Dvorak >> (?spel) >> layout. > > I've seen assorted setups to change one's keyboard layout to that in > software, > but darn it, if I'm going there I want the keycaps too! Which I've > *never* > seen on anything... Get a Model M (or other decent keyboard), pop 'em off and reshuffle. The letter keys are generally interchangeable, the only problem would be a cheap keyboard that won't let them go gracefully. From rogpugh at mac.com Sun Oct 14 11:01:58 2007 From: rogpugh at mac.com (Roger Pugh) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:01:58 +0100 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <596027.30544.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <596027.30544.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <88d68f5661b968f3748823bac4d34a10@mac.com> > >> This morning my wife complained to me that every >> time she opened a door >> to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it >> falls out !!! >> oops > > Well, that's not as bad as all that. It's only when > you get to the point where computers start > substituting for furniture that you should worry. > Sparcstation end tables, IBM nightstand, that sort of > thing. > > -Ian > Aaah, that goes back to the days before the wife when a HP ossciloscope made a wonderful combined coffee table, foot rest and TV dinner table! From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 11:06:13 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:06:13 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > and yes I do know that the majority of the IBM mainframes were leased out which makes them even harder to find The leasing was mostly in the older days. > Yes I also know that mainframes were usually designed for databases and the likes The 360 in System/360 stands for 360 degrees of coverage, meaning the machines were made to do all sorts of tasks. Before the workstation came into real power, mainframes had a significant portion of the CAD and simulation market. S/360s and S/370 found a few scores in the factory process control market. One mystery - what was the box that converted the Bus and Tag to signals the machines could use, before the S/1s were released? A 29xx or 39xx series box? I want to know! > but they can still be fun to > play with and you gotta admit it's fun showing off those massive IBM hard drives and then telling your friends > how much that massive drive can actually store (20-80 megs if more). Here you will have troubles. The big IBM drives (DASDs) are almost all gone. The last of the really huge disks, 3390s, are just about all out of service. Just about everything else big, from early times, is gone, except for a few anomalies (like the recent 3350s out of Columbus, OH). For big drives, the CDCs seem to have survived the best. And oddly, old IBM tape drives - the 3420s - can still be found. > There is no way I will look into a DEC. I have absolutely no knowledge on any of their good old systems (I have > never even seen one) and I have always loved IBM systems (yes, criticize me). DEC systems mostly just make a lot of sense. Try one, you might like it. > Yes, an S/390 would be really nice (hey, you can even go with linux if you really wanted to) but they seem a > a tad too small for me. If you are looking for a pre-S/390 big IBM, you have very few options. S/34 and S/36 are just about the only ones. S/1s are getting pretty thin. You can mostly forget about finding a pre-S/390 mainframe, like a 9121, 9221, or 43xx. There are very few of these left in the wild. That said, I am still looking for an ES/9000 (9021, 9121, or 9221). Or even 3090 or before. -- Will From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 14 11:07:43 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:07:43 -0700 Subject: Underclock a Pentium/Overdrive/486 In-Reply-To: <0JPW00GG2AQI9V00@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <0JPW00GG2AQI9V00@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: > From: grant at stockly.com> > I'm wondering about underclocking a pentium. I've read about running > Windows XP on a Pentium Overdrive underclocked to 8MHz with 20MB RAM.> > Hi Most current processors use PLLs to create the actual clock that runs the processor. While one can change things digitally with jumpers that change the dividers coming out of the PLLs there is not a lot that can be done with changing the reference clock. The PLLs will lock down to some lower frequencies but it may have a hard time keeping lock if one dropped it too low. I don't know what the pentiums use but the AMD parts use a 200MHz reference. With early K8 stuff, I ran these down to about a 80MHz clock someplace without things going bad. Below that, the oscillator wouldn't go any slower. I've no idea what todays chips would do. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From mcguire at neurotica.com Sun Oct 14 11:19:09 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:19:09 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <4712306E.8060604@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net><009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> <471197E2.7000707@oldskool.org> <47122D52.7000806@e-bbes.com> <4712306E.8060604@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4B6BD6E3-4701-4C44-AD55-CD1E6D66EAD8@neurotica.com> On Oct 14, 2007, at 11:06 AM, woodelf wrote: >> Now it (the pc a least) became a utility appliance like a toaster. >> Nothing sexy about it anymore. And software is so bloated, it is hard >> enough to just use it ;-) > > For a while it seemed the pc was game driven... New graphics card,cpu > and extra's for each revision of games. Now it seems to hardware fads > like USB,todays brand of networking... Ben It still seems pretty game-driven to me. In a way I think the game fanatics have had a positive effect even on the grownup computing world; look at all the graphics advancements we've had in the name of faster 3D game performance. Some of that hardware is pretty impressive! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 14 11:30:13 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:30:13 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <4711AA29.2020902@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> <4711AA29.2020902@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:33:29 -0600> From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca> To: > Subject: Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery> > dwight elvey wrote:> > > One could use 555 directly now days instead of the 9602s.> > These can output the needed voltage swing.> The only gotya I can guess might be timing delay between clock phases. Hi Ok, use 4 555s to create each time span. I don't think the timing is super critical. I still think it could be handled with just 2 555s because on can control both rise and fall times with a 555. The main idea it the voltage swing. Using CMOS is another option. One of the others mentioned creating the signals with a counter and higher frequency clock. I think that is over kill when analog timers should be enough. Dwight > _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 14 11:47:41 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:47:41 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <4711B0D7.3A961266@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131440.34566.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> <4711821D.84773C9D@cs.ubc.ca> <4711B0D7.3A961266@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: > From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca ---snip---> > - RAM: no provision it appears, so you still need a 4002 > (or get by with registers, or via I/O) Hi It looks like one would need to build a full bus monitor. One would no longer need the 4008/9 since one could use the same circuit to moitor all. The way the ROM and RAM chips work is that they watch the instructions on the bus, going to the processor. When they see instructions that require specific actions, they then execute that operation on the bus. As an example, if they see a write to RAM, the RAM chip sees the instruction and then does the write at the correct timing cycle. One can use the circuitry used for the EPROM on the SIM4-01 as an example of how to monitor the instruction flow. With some extra work, one doesn't need 4002s. They do show up on ebay now and then. Do remember, there are two types. There are 4002-1s and 4002-2s The enable is inverted so these can be used on the same select line. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook ? together at last. ?Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 From pat at computer-refuge.org Sun Oct 14 11:49:55 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:49:55 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710141249.55318.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Sunday 14 October 2007, William Donzelli wrote: > If you are looking for a pre-S/390 big IBM, you have very few > options. S/34 and S/36 are just about the only ones. S/1s are getting > pretty thin. You can mostly forget about finding a pre-S/390 > mainframe, like a 9121, 9221, or 43xx. There are very few of these > left in the wild. > > That said, I am still looking for an ES/9000 (9021, 9121, or 9221). > Or even 3090 or before. ES/9000 boxes were showing at least once a month or so on eBay, about 4 years ago. I ended up picking one up two years ago, because it was cheap ($9.99, and I was the only one bidding on it) and came with a 9343 disk box, and 3174-11L. I believe it's a 9221-191, which is an amazingly small CPU - just a 10 or 12U rackmount box. I think I've got all the software necessary to rebuild the HMC, but alas, didn't get an HMC with it. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 12:02:29 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:02:29 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <200710141249.55318.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <200710141249.55318.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: > ES/9000 boxes were showing at least once a month or so on eBay, about 4 > years ago. I ended up picking one up two years ago, because it was > cheap ($9.99, and I was the only one bidding on it) and came with a > 9343 disk box, and 3174-11L. I believe it's a 9221-191, which is an > amazingly small CPU - just a 10 or 12U rackmount box. I think I've got > all the software necessary to rebuild the HMC, but alas, didn't get an > HMC with it. Key words - "4 years ago". Unlike most mini and microcomputers, the mainframe things tend to get slaughtered off about ten years after introduction. S/390s are getting slaughtered now - note the dip in the number that are showing up on Ebay. The slaughters tend to pretty bloody, with few survivors. I should have purchased that somewhat expensive 9121 that showed up regularly. Anyone know what happened to that? It was being sold by a surplus guy, I think near Virginia Beach (not Tony S.). I have tried to track the guy down, but have gone nowhere. -- Will From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 14 12:42:12 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:42:12 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <200710141342.12607.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 19:50, William Donzelli wrote: > > And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there > > that's offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount > > package. > > 20? years ago, TI offered a few 74xx series parts in 8 pin DIPs - dual > gates and such. They bombed. I've never heard of these nor seen any reference to them. How did they number those parts? Sounds like it might make a worthwhile addition to the parts pages... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 14 12:45:14 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:45:14 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131856.51953.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <200710141345.14686.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 13 October 2007 20:32, Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 10/13/07, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > On Saturday 13 October 2007 15:40, dwight elvey wrote: > > > > > 4008/9? First I've heard of these at all. > > > > > > These were but interface chips that took the pmos levels and > > > convertered then to TTL levels to use with standard RAM, ROM, EPROM and > > > I/O. > > > > Oh, heck, I'd forgotten about PMOS stuff altogether! :-) > > Hmm... PMOS... I know that there are fundamental composition and > voltage differences between NMOS, PMOS, CMOS, HMOS, etc... What makes > it not-compatible with TTL (unlike CMOS, which is easy to interface to > TTL)? Weird power supplies and logic levels come to mind. Negative with respect to ground... I think they used some of that stuff in organs, back when. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From dm561 at torfree.net Sun Oct 14 12:01:48 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:01:48 -0300 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco Message-ID: <01C80E6A.DFC7E1C0@mandr71> >Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:53:06 -0600 >From: "e.stiebler" >Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco >I think people worked/played more with the computer more back then. >Meaning wrote utilities, improved stuff, changed something, and were >proud if it. Really??? Have you browsed the Internet lately and seen the amount of software & mods out there, and the just wild and crazy things that people are doing with their PCs? Seems to me there are a heck of a lot *more* people writing utilities, improving stuff etc. today, and far more complex and sophisticated stuff at that (especially since there's so much more room for improvement ;-). Perhaps the *percentage* of computer owners who dug into the hard/software was higher then, but most of the time you *had to*, whereas today most of it is done for fun and enjoyment, as well as pride of accomplishment. And I think you're ignoring the business users of then and now; for them and probably for most people computers are after all just a tool to do some specific task(s). Although many of us like Tony are interested in and enjoy poking around in the innards of cameras, clocks, computers etc., most "normal" people just want to take pictures, know the time and send an e-mail or two. m From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 14 13:13:25 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:13:25 -0400 Subject: Cromemco (was Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files) In-Reply-To: <01C80E17.2C710460@MSE_D03> References: <01C80E17.2C710460@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <200710141413.26173.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 14 October 2007 03:01, M H Stein wrote: > Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 21:00:18 -0400 > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > Subject: Re: Extracting CDOS and CP/M) files > > > > >That's more than I've got in there. It's a ZPU, 64KB ram card, I > > *think* that 64FDC, and an I/O card, not real sure but I think maybe > > it's the PRI... > > Your basic single-user CDOS system, although I suspect that's a 16FDC. > I assume it's a System 3, or perhaps a Z-2? Either way, lots of room in > there for expansion ;-) It _is_ a System 3. > >No CDOS handy, I'm not even sure what I got for disks with that box, > > though I did get some, the problem with the drive having done some > > physical damage to the one that was in it. Somewhere around here I have > > a box of 8" floppies, but that would include what came with this system > > and also what came with the Imsai, at least, plus probably some stuff > > that folks have sent my way over the years. > > Dave D has various images on his excellent site - also see below. If you're > having trouble with the 8" drive(s) and haven't gotten around to making > the cable for a 3 1/2" substitute, add a 7812 or use an old PC supply and > temporarily hook up a 5 1/4" drive; the FDC handles both. The main thing I wanted to do in terms of making a cable was to extend the power connection for the installed drive so I could get it far enough out of the box to work on it. Do you (or anybody else in here) know what that odd connector is they're using to supply power to the drive? > >I'm not sure if I even have CP/M specific to that box. > > Several people have configured CP/M for the Cromemco configuration; Barry > Watzman for one, if I'm not mistaken. That sort of hacking is just a bit beyond where I've gotten to with that stuff... > >Mostly I was looking for what sort of hardware capabilities would be > > needed... > > You've got the basic hardware except for a 7812 or equivalent for the 5.25 > (and 3.5" if 12V - see below) drives; the rest is software ;-) Got plenty of 7812s on hand here, and adding additional sizes sounds like a worthwhile project, if I can get the system to support 'em. Power wiring is probably the single point where I'm getting hung up there. > > > >> Any version of Cromix (Cromemco's early Z80 and 68000 pseudo-UNIX) can > >> read/write any version of CDOS or Cromix disk (floppies, that is; hard > >> disks are a different story). > > > >I'd love to get some info on that software, particularly if I can ever > > get my hands on a DPU card to stick in there. > > If/when you do, it's certainly out there. Several sites have extensive > collections of Cromemco software and manuals; one of the most complete is > Marcus' site: > > http://maben.homeip.net/static/S100/cromemco > > (Also see Herb Johnson's & Howard Harte's sites). Noted. > To run Z80 Cromix, all you'd need is another 64K; to run 68K Cromix/+ > you'd need at least a 68000 DPU and 256K would be nice. Yes. One of the things I can recall from reading what docs I have on hand here is that they used several bus lines to select individual ram banks, rather than using them as address lines, which puts an upper limit of how far you can go in that regard. I wish they'd gone the address bits route, and have had idle thoughts about how difficult it might be to modify things. > >> Anything else would indeed require some custom programming; the FDC > >> controller cards were reasonably well documented. > > > >That's mostly what I was looking for, if the common FDC chips back in > > those days were likely to be sufficient to handle a wide variety of > > "stuff" out there. > > Well, hard sector disks might still be a problem... I've actually encountered those so seldom that this isn't likely to be a problem for me. > >> If the main CPU was a 680x0 instead of a Z80 then Z80 & CP/M software > >> was run either on a dual (Z80/68000) DPU card or, if there was only a > >> 680x0 CPU then it was run on the Z80 on an I/O card such as the IOP I/O > >> processor or the Octart 8-port RS-232 card, if available. > > > >I saw the sheet on the IOP in my book just now, but don't know about that > >other one. Why would they stick a processor on an 8-port serial card? > > Not relevant or supported in single-user CDOS (which used ordinary TUART > 4-port serial and PRI 2-port parallel cards), but running a multi-user > sort-of-UNIX on a 4MHz Z80 wasn't exactly blindingly fast, especially on > the slow hard disks of the day. If the main CPU also had to directly > service all those UARTS it probably would grind to a halt so they handled > serial I/O with coprocessors (IOP & Octart), which later could also run Z80 > user software in between I/O requests when there wasn't a Z80 on the main > processor board any longer. Hmm. > The IOP is only the I/O *processor* BTW; there can be up to 4 installed, > and each can control up to 4 Quadart 4-port serial cards for a maximum of > 16 ports; that'd keep a single Z80 so busy it wouldn't have much time to > actually run those users' programs ;-). The Octart is a coprocessor and 8 > ports combined, and a system could have up to 4 for a total of 32 ports; > although in practice you wouldn't have that many users you could have I/O > devices on all of those ports (I have in fact had Cromemco systems > installed with more than 32 terminals, although they were not all unique > "users"). There is definitely some appeal in the idea of having lots of I/O, but unfortunately the closest I've come to that is that TeleVideo 816 I have, which only seems to be set to talk to other TeleVideo gear, of which I have none... Though I *do* have an ISA card around that's supposed to hook into that stuff. > >> Their first hard disks were 11MB 8" IMI drives using a WDI controller; > >> they were superseded by 5 & 20 MB 5" IMI drives requiring a WDI-II. Then > >> came MFM disks using an STDC controller and SMD drives & controller, and > >> finally ESDI and SCSI drives using the ESDC controller. > > > >Rigging up some sort of mounting hardware and finding 12V power for some > > of the 3.5" HDs I have kicking around here should be an interesting > >exercise. :-) > > You'd need it for 5.25 drives for sure, but many 3.5" drives actually only > require 5V which you already have for the 8" drive. True. > >I have nothing around for a controller, but given the choice I'd rather > > go with SCSI if possible. > > SCSI wasn't supported until pretty late in the game and you'd need fairly > late versions of cards & OS; definitely not an option with your setup. I've seen some S-100 stuff around from time to time, but am not particularly into investing a lot of money into this setup. Perhaps I'll acquire some stuff to plug in there eventually. > >> The floppy controller also supported the small tape drives while the > >> larger tapes required the ESDC controller, and there was also a > >> controller and OS support for 9-track mag tape. > > > >Hmm. > > Indeed... > > Can't help any with the Bigboard, alas. The Bigboard I was essentially the same as the Xerox 820-1, and I saw both the I and II versions advertised in Micro-Cornucopia magazine over quite a span of time. It's still surprising to me that there's so little information out there on those. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 14 13:21:39 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:21:39 -0400 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710141421.40028.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 14 October 2007 11:38, Scott Quinn wrote: > Roy wrote: > > On Saturday 13 October 2007 17:45, Tony Duell wrote: > >>> This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a > >>> door to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! > >>> oops > >> > >> Oh that's easy to solve. Change all your keyboards to the Dvorak > >> (?spel) layout. > > > > I've seen assorted setups to change one's keyboard layout to that in > > software, but darn it, if I'm going there I want the keycaps too! Which > > I've *never* seen on anything... > > Get a Model M (or other decent keyboard), pop 'em off and reshuffle. > The letter keys are generally interchangeable, the only problem would > be a cheap keyboard that won't let them go gracefully. I thought about that, but the Dvorak layout requires some specific combinations on the non-alphanumeric keys that I wouldn't end up with, and somehow the thought of little sticky labels just doesn't have much appeal... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From emu at e-bbes.com Sun Oct 14 13:29:40 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:29:40 -0600 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <01C80E6A.DFC7E1C0@mandr71> References: <01C80E6A.DFC7E1C0@mandr71> Message-ID: <47126014.8000707@e-bbes.com> M H Stein wrote: >> Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:53:06 -0600 >> From: "e.stiebler" >> Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco > >> I think people worked/played more with the computer more back then. >> Meaning wrote utilities, improved stuff, changed something, and were >> proud if it. > > Really??? Have you browsed the Internet lately and seen the amount of > software & mods out there, and the just wild and crazy things that people > are doing with their PCs? I wasn't talking about repainting the case. > Seems to me there are a heck of a lot *more* > people writing utilities, improving stuff etc. today, and far more complex > and sophisticated stuff at that (especially since there's so much more > room for improvement ;-). I really don't think so. Go on this modding groups, and check, how much background info they really have. They just take a motherboard, put a water cooler on it and wait until it falls apart by over clocking it. I was talking about people crawling into their computers with an soldering iron without hurting themselfes ;-) Cheers From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sun Oct 14 13:43:36 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:43:36 -0400 (EDT) Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710141846.OAA19070@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Get a Model M (or other decent keyboard), pop 'em off and reshuffle. > The letter keys are generally interchangeable, the only problem would > be a cheap keyboard that won't let them go gracefully. I dunno, I've seen at least one keyboard where the keytops were sculpted to provide a slightly dished typing surface. Not normally noticeable, but if you swapped keys between rows the difference became *really* obvious. I think it was the Televideo 950, but that could be wetware bitrot. Looking at the Sun type-3 I'm using right now, it looks as though it too has the same property in a more subtle form - I should swap some keycaps and see.... /~\ 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 classiccmp.org at stellar.eclipse.co.uk Sun Oct 14 14:12:21 2007 From: classiccmp.org at stellar.eclipse.co.uk (Stroller) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:12:21 +0100 Subject: Linux on a SGI. Was: Re: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0BEA9624-3A2E-4FB4-8FA6-13E1F4CE5EC6@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> On 14 Oct 2007, at 16:34, Scott Quinn wrote: > ... Linux on a SGI ... - it's lacking something. You & I clearly have very different views on Irix. Stroller. From ragooman at comcast.net Sun Oct 14 14:54:48 2007 From: ragooman at comcast.net (Dan Roganti) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:54:48 -0400 Subject: PPS-4...Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47111749.29939F64@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> <47108F54.7047.D2F99AE@cclist.sydex.com> <47111749.29939F64@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <47127408.8000101@comcast.net> Brent Hilpert wrote: > you are but the 2nd person I've ever heard to mention the PPS-4. > After learning what I did about it I believe that two of my calculators are > based on it, that is, I've had a PPS-4 system for years but never realised it. > Another area that I frequent is vintage pinball machines. The PPS-4 was widely used in another embedded controller design for Gottlieb(Chicago) in their first generation digital pinball machines. Although it wasn't the first digital pinball in the market, their first digital pinball using this design was released in 1977, well after the PPS-4 became obsolete, until 1980. Sadly though, it has become uneconomical for most pinball collectors to get these CPU boards repaired and instead use a replacement board which emulates the embedded software. =Dan [ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them" ] [ Pittsburgh --- http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ] From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 15:03:19 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:03:19 -0400 Subject: PPS-4...Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <47127408.8000101@comcast.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> <47108F54.7047.D2F99AE@cclist.sydex.com> <47111749.29939F64@cs.ubc.ca> <47127408.8000101@comcast.net> Message-ID: > Sadly though, it has become uneconomical for most > pinball collectors to get these CPU boards repaired and instead use a > replacement board which emulates the embedded software. Why is this sad? It seems to me that this is a triumph for the vintage pinball community. The original parts were going to dry up anyway, so apparently someone had the good sense to go ahead and solve the problem. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 15:06:32 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:06:32 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <200710141342.12607.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710141342.12607.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: > I've never heard of these nor seen any reference to them. How did they number > those parts? Sounds like it might make a worthwhile addition to the parts > pages... Their your part pages, and you can do what you want with them, but... Why include data on chips that effectively never existed? It is entirely possible that TI never received a single order for the things, and only made a few hundred for a pre-production prototype run. I have never seen one on the wild. I think they were 74LS1000 and 74LS1001, but I could be wrong. Anyone? -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 15:07:44 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:07:44 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710141342.12607.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: > Their your part pages, and you can do what you want with them, but... ^^^^^ Wow, great grasp of the English language, Will... -- Will (sorry) From ragooman at comcast.net Sun Oct 14 15:23:33 2007 From: ragooman at comcast.net (Dan Roganti) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:23:33 -0400 Subject: PPS-4...Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> <47108F54.7047.D2F99AE@cclist.sydex.com> <47111749.29939F64@cs.ubc.ca> <47127408.8000101@comcast.net> Message-ID: <47127AC5.4030908@comcast.net> William Donzelli wrote: >> Sadly though, it has become uneconomical for most >> pinball collectors to get these CPU boards repaired and instead use a >> replacement board which emulates the embedded software. >> > > Why is this sad? It seems to me that this is a triumph for the vintage > pinball community. The original parts were going to dry up anyway, so > apparently someone had the good sense to go ahead and solve the > problem. > > It's not sad in all respects, just some, because there's collectors which still like to own the original hardware that operated the machines, much like us computer collectors. I would still rebuild these occasionally for those die hard collectors. But for the average buyer, they don't mind what's inside as long as it plays. =Dan [ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them" ] [ Pittsburgh --- http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ] From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 14 15:14:01 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:14:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 13, 7 08:25:58 pm Message-ID: > > On 10/13/07, Roy J. Tellason wrote > > And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there that's > > offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount package. > > The first one of those I saw was a single-gate NAND in a 5-pin > pseudo-SOT-23 package (don't know the proper designation) on a Palm > Pilot memory board over 10 years ago. I still have some older Palms > that might be upgradable, but you need both the RAM chip _and_ an > extra NAND to fully populate the partially-empty boards. > > No idea where to get just a couple of those these days. Probably the > easiest thing is to scrape them off of a Palm SIMM from an old Palm > with a broken screen. I don't know if they are still available (I've never looked), but I remember reading about some devices in 6-pin SMD paackages that were basically single 2-input multiplexers. One type had a non-inerting output, like 1/4 or a 74157, the other was inverting, like 1/4 of a 74158. I thin kthe part numbers contained '157' and '158' but I can't really rememebr. By crafule wiring you could make most of the common 2-input logic gates from one or other of these devices. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 14 15:07:04 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:07:04 +0100 (BST) Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 13, 7 07:50:16 pm Message-ID: > > > And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there that's > > offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount package. > > 20? years ago, TI offered a few 74xx series parts in 8 pin DIPs - dual > gates and such. They bombed. I've never seen thosei in any databooks, do you have the part numbers? I do remember 7545x parts that were dual 2-input gates with open collector outputs that could drive lamps/relays/etc. IIRC AND, NAND, OR, NOR gates all existed The only 8-pin TTL chips I (just) rememebr the 7456 ands 7457 (I think) which were /50 and /60 counters (desigend to get 1Hz clocks from European or US power lines) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 14 15:25:37 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:25:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: from "Scott Quinn" at Oct 14, 7 08:38:47 am Message-ID: > Get a Model M (or other decent keyboard), pop 'em off and reshuffle. > The letter keys are generally interchangeable, the only problem would > be a cheap keyboard that won't let them go gracefully. Fopr some keyboards (although not the type M), the letter keys are different depending on which row they are supposed to be in. The HP HP-HIL keyboards (HP46020/HP46021 I think) are like this, as I found out the hard way when trying to converet a German to an English one... -tony From bpope at wordstock.com Sun Oct 14 15:45:39 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:45:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: AT 286 Uses (was: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco) In-Reply-To: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20071014204539.D6C404F3E1@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Roy J. Tellason > > My question is, what are these good for these days? What sort of use could > something like this be put to? > Playing Wolfenstein 3D? :) Cheers, Bryan From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 14 15:59:18 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:59:18 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <200710141342.12607.rtellason@verizon.net>, Message-ID: <471220B6.9384.4682619@cclist.sydex.com> On 14 Oct 2007 at 16:06, William Donzelli wrote: > I have never seen one on the wild. I think they were 74LS1000 and > 74LS1001, but I could be wrong. Anyone? I don't think that's right, WIll. At least my databooks show the ALS1000--ALS1008 as beefy (48 ma outputs) replacements for the ALS00- 08. It's entirely possible that the numbers were reused, but it doesn't seem likely. Cheers, Chuck From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 16:03:00 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:03:00 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/14/07, Tony Duell wrote: > The only 8-pin TTL chips I (just) rememebr the 7456 ands 7457 (I think) > which were /50 and /60 counters (desigend to get 1Hz clocks from European > or US power lines) Those sound handy (since digital horology is one of my hobbies). Never seen one, but I suspect they weren't common after, say, 1975. -ethan From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 14 16:05:09 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:05:09 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710141342.12607.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <200710141705.10117.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 14 October 2007 16:06, William Donzelli wrote: > Why include data on chips that effectively never existed? It is entirely > possible that TI never received a single order for the things, and only made > a few hundred for a pre-production prototype run. Oh. Well, in that case... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 16:06:15 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:06:15 -0400 Subject: AT 286 Uses (was: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco) In-Reply-To: <20071014204539.D6C404F3E1@mail.wordstock.com> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071014204539.D6C404F3E1@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: On 10/14/07, Bryan Pope wrote: > And thusly were the wise words spake by Roy J. Tellason > > > > My question is, what are these good for these days? What sort of use could > > something like this be put to? > > > > Playing Wolfenstein 3D? :) That reminds me of all the 286s in Hamfests I saw 15+ years ago - Wolf3D every direction you turned, until people got tired of hauling 286s to Hamfests to watch them not sell. It was a long time until sellers found a new "attract" program to pull in buyers. At least the smoothness of the animation could give you a rough idea of the overall performance of the system - much better than quoting megahertz and waitstates. -ethan From bpope at wordstock.com Sun Oct 14 16:08:16 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:08:16 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <005601c80dfe$e829b1c0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <20071014210816.B9B6055E3B@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Alexandre Souza > > >> And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there > >> that's > >> offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount package. > > The first one of those I saw was a single-gate NAND in a 5-pin > > pseudo-SOT-23 package (don't know the proper designation) on a Palm > > Pilot memory board over 10 years ago. I still have some older Palms > > that might be upgradable, but you need both the RAM chip _and_ an > > extra NAND to fully populate the partially-empty boards. > > No idea where to get just a couple of those these days. Probably the > > easiest thing is to scrape them off of a Palm SIMM from an old Palm > > with a broken screen. > > Motorola has a whole line. You can find it on farnell, digikey, mouser, > and all good electronic suppliers :o) > They are in my latest Jameco catalog - called "Tiny Logic" from Fairchild. Cheers, Bryan From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 14 16:17:26 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:17:26 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710141717.27126.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 14 October 2007 16:07, Tony Duell wrote: > I do remember 7545x parts that were dual 2-input gates with open > collector outputs that could drive lamps/relays/etc. IIRC AND, NAND, OR, > NOR gates all existed Yes, and I've managed to scrape up data on those. If I'm not mistaken, that dual floppy drive in the Cromemco we were talking about a bit ago uses a bunch of those in there. (Looking...) Yup, here in the "299B Disk Drive" manual I spot some 75453 and 75454 in several locations in there. Those always struck me as extremely handy parts, I wonder if they're still commonly available? > The only 8-pin TTL chips I (just) rememebr the 7456 ands 7457 (I think) > which were /50 and /60 counters (desigend to get 1Hz clocks from European > or US power lines) Those were LS56 and 57, or at least that's what's in my parts page, if there were earlier non-LS versions of them I haven't found any data on them. I don't recall ever actually running across those, but do remember some other part number that was a similar package size and functionality. And speaking of 50 and 60 Hz, I have this digital clock here that I got *real* cheap, because it has a problem. it gains a LOT of time every hour. Something like 10 minutes, maybe? I'm convinced that it's jumpered (or something) for 50 Hz line power. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From bpope at wordstock.com Sun Oct 14 17:04:24 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:04:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <88d68f5661b968f3748823bac4d34a10@mac.com> Message-ID: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Roger Pugh > > Aaah, that goes back to the days before the wife when a HP ossciloscope > made a wonderful combined coffee table, foot rest and TV dinner table! > Does it keep the food warm too? :) Cheers, Bryan From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Oct 14 17:26:27 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:26:27 -0600 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <47129793.3010709@jetnet.ab.ca> Bryan Pope wrote: > Does it keep the food warm too? :) What a novel idea -- warm food. :) From ballsandy at msn.com Sun Oct 14 17:28:21 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:28:21 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: >> Yes, an S/390 would be really nice (hey, you can even go with linux if >> you really wanted to) but they seem a >> a tad too small for me. It also looks too modern IMO. > >But Linux on a S/390 would be like Linux on a SGI (unless it was in a >single LPAR) - it's lacking something. That's what the "if you really wanted to" part meant. You can run linux on it if you want but it's a promise you won't be able to fully harness the system. >> Yes I also know that mainframes were usually designed for databases and the likes > >The 360 in System/360 stands for 360 degrees of coverage, meaning the >machines were made to do all sorts of tasks. Before the workstation >came into real power, mainframes had a significant portion of the CAD >and simulation market. Yeah but the odds of finding a 360 now are pretty slim. Besides, Most homes are not equipped with three-phase power. >> but they can still be fun to >> play with and you gotta admit it's fun showing off those massive IBM hard drives and then telling your friends >> how much that massive drive can actually store (20-80 megs if more). > >Here you will have troubles. The big IBM drives (DASDs) are almost all >gone. The last of the really huge disks, 3390s, are just about all out >of service. Just about everything else big, from early times, is gone, >except for a few anomalies (like the recent 3350s out of Columbus, >OH). > >For big drives, the CDCs seem to have survived the best. > >And oddly, old IBM tape drives - the 3420s - can still be found. yeah, and that's what makes that one system/36 so nice. Not only do you have the two internal hard drives in the processing unit but included are two tape drives. I love 3420's. There is something I have always liked about a wall of them just working away. It must be the cool noises they make. >> There is no way I will look into a DEC. I have absolutely no knowledge on any of their good old systems (I have >> never even seen one) and I have always loved IBM systems (yes, criticize me). > >DEC systems mostly just make a lot of sense. Try one, you might like it. So you want me to start off with a VAX? http://www.nekochan.net/gallery2/d/11127-2/vax11_750.jpg hmmm, well if that 11/750 is running in a home it might be worth a try. _________________________________________________________________ Are you ready for Windows Live Messenger Beta 8.5 ? Get the latest for free today! http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.ca/WindowsLiveMessenger From cisin at xenosoft.com Sun Oct 14 19:05:25 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:05:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <20071014170343.L43152@shell.lmi.net> Ahh, to have a Cray. How cool can the cooling system get? From cisin at xenosoft.com Sun Oct 14 19:06:50 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:06:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <47129793.3010709@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com> <47129793.3010709@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20071014170619.F43152@shell.lmi.net> > > Does it keep the food warm too? :) > What a novel idea -- warm food. :) It takes a long time to cook over a Pentium I. From trixter at oldskool.org Sun Oct 14 19:18:04 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:18:04 -0500 Subject: AT 286 Uses In-Reply-To: References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071014204539.D6C404F3E1@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <4712B1BC.5050600@oldskool.org> Ethan Dicks wrote: > It was a long time until sellers found a new "attract" program to pull > in buyers. At least the smoothness of the animation could give you a > rough idea of the overall performance of the system - much better than > quoting megahertz and waitstates. The best "attract" programs I have ever seen for a 286 with VGA are "demoscene" demos. The two best ones I can think of are: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=463 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1353 3-D graphics, full-screen texture/bitmap effects, all in the full 70Hz framerate of VGA. Very impressive if you don't know how it's done (and still impressive even if you do :-) -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 19:29:48 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:29:48 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Yeah but the odds of finding a 360 now are pretty slim. Besides, Most homes are not > equipped with three-phase power. It can be made. In some cases, the machine can be fooled into thinking it is getting three phase power. > yeah, and that's what makes that one system/36 so nice. > Not only do you have the two internal hard drives in the processing unit but included are two tape drives. > I love 3420's. There is something I have always liked about a wall of them just working away. It must > be the cool noises they make. I have not viewed the lot in a while, but are not the tapes 8809s? They were the standards on the smaller, cheaper systems, like the midranges. Not nearly as cool as 3420s. > So you want me to start off with a VAX? Lots of folks on this list have lots of nice things to say about the 11/750. -- Will From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 14 19:31:37 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 17:31:37 -0700 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <20071014170343.L43152@shell.lmi.net> References: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com>, <20071014170343.L43152@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <47125279.2777.52A83BE@cclist.sydex.com> On 14 Oct 2007 at 17:05, Fred Cisin wrote: > How cool can the cooling system get? An old friend who worked on SAGE said the operators used to store their lunches inside the machine. Mmmm, toasty... Cheers, Chuck From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Sun Oct 14 19:53:01 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:53:01 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB19@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> <470AB641.1030404@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <4712B9ED.906@rogerwilco.org> [apologies for the long delay in responding. A spontaneous road trip without internet connectivity came up...] Ethan Dicks wrote: > > I know I went over bits of this before, but perhaps a different > approach might be clearer... Systems Industries made a variety of > disk/tape systems for various DEC machines. I have personally seen > Qbus and 11/750 host cards, and I think there were others (Unibus, at > least). To order an SI system, you'd tell the salesman what box you > had, and what devices you wanted to attach. They would spec out the > right host controller, and the right cards for the SI9900 external box > to do what you wanted to do. I think there was also support for > multiple hosts to access multiple disks - not like a true cluster, but > more like multi-port access between a set of CPUs and a set of disks > and/or tape. > Okay, thanks for the further clarification, and sorry for being somewhat dense on this topic. I've had no success at finding _any_ SI 9700/9900 documentation, and since I have no prior VAX (or even DEC, except for playing with a few qbus -11s this past year) experience, I'm glad for the extra education. So, I guess that means that without the companion gear this 9700 of mine is pretty much useless to me, at present anyway. > In your case, it sounds like the SI 9900 box you would run across (if > it's still on-site to be found), would have one board with a pair of > 40-pin connectors that would hang off of your CPU, then one or more > tape interfaces, with, presumably, Pertec-style interfaces. > Sadly, I'm pretty sure that this box is long gone... > One of the benefits of the 11/750 over, say, the 11/730, is that the > CMI bus (I think that's what it was called) had really high bandwidth > path to memory. You could hang a low-speed tape drive or two off of > the Unibus, but for the free-standing 125 ips vacuum-column monsters, > I just don't think the Unibus could keep the tape streaming. On our > 11/750, we had that SI 9700 for system disk and one data disk, a > UDA-50/RA81 for user directories, and an RH750 and TU78 for backups. > It was hell to keep working, but when the TU78 was up, it *screamed* > through backups. > Ah, more education. I don't know any of the specs of the CMI bus, but what you suggest makes a lot of sense, and would explain the presence of the SI 9700 board. > For your system, since it's going to be easier to find Unibus disk > than an SI 9900, I'd recommend de-installing the SI 9700 (which > involves twiddling the backplane jumpers on that slot to pass grant > across the slot), and picking up a UDA-50. > > Yes, this is just what I intend to do...unless, of course, the other chunk of the SI 9700/9900 shows itself underneath that enormous pile that the donor still has to sort through. All I need after getting the Unibus interfaces are a couple of gorillas to help me lift and mount those Super Eagles and the RA81 into some kind of rack (they're just stacked on the floor right now). :-) > That's one of the things _I_ would like to do with my 11/750 - mount > an RA70 in the space to the left of the Unibus - where the > battery-backup normally goes... stick a VT102 on top and have a > single-cabinet 11/750 "workstation". :-) > > I do already have an 3-bay 8300 set up, so I'd also probably run a > cable over to my RA81 port B, and my MDA 2.3GB ESDI-SDI box, but I'd > like to be able to boot the 11/750 in-cabinet, without spinning up > several amps of external disk. > This would be a very cool configuration. Space and power are sometimes in short supply, so these kinds of 'non-standard' solutions serve the purpose of keeping these oldies alive. I might end up doing a similar thing. Depends on how dim the lights get when I turn on the 11/750 _and_ the Super Eagles and RA81! ;-) - Jared From trixter at oldskool.org Sun Oct 14 20:00:17 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:00:17 -0500 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <01C80E6A.DFC7E1C0@mandr71> References: <01C80E6A.DFC7E1C0@mandr71> Message-ID: <4712BBA1.8010502@oldskool.org> M H Stein wrote: > Perhaps the *percentage* of computer owners who dug into the hard/software > was higher then, but most of the time you *had to*, whereas today most of > it is done for fun and enjoyment, as well as pride of accomplishment. The latter two reasons are most definitely why I do most of my "for fun" programming on my 8088. I'm accomplishing things with that platform that nobody 20 years ago did, which is a nice feeling. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Sun Oct 14 20:02:09 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:02:09 -0600 Subject: VAX 11/750 rescued, alas... In-Reply-To: <20071011200847.173305a4@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4706E04A.1030704@rogerwilco.org> <4707EA84.7010108@rogerwilco.org> <47081517.1090601@rogerwilco.org> <20071007215742.510d5604@SirToby.dinner41.local> <470ABC48.8030606@rogerwilco.org> <20071011200847.173305a4@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <4712BC11.1080004@rogerwilco.org> Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:24:56 -0600 > J Blaser wrote: > > >> I also have several flavors of Ultrix 4 for VAX that I've played with >> on a Vs3100 >> > Why not install it on the 11/750? There should be some way to prepare > bootable ULTRIX media with a VAXstation 3100 or MicroVAX running ULTRIX. > Or netboot the 11/750... > I'm sure I will, at some point. My interest in these old systems (that I never had a chance to use until now) are seeing how they behave and perform with different hardware and software configurations. In fact, it's the act of getting the thing installed and running that makes for the fun. And, netbooting shouldn't be too bad. (Hmm...I hadn't even yet wondered if the 11/750 is capable of netbooting until you mentioned it.) As has been mentioned previously in this thread IIRC, a VAX should really be running VMS, but Ultrix is DEC stuff too, after all. I do believe, though, that I'll end up _keeping_ VMS running on this thing, once I've had my fill at experimenting with Ultrix on it. - Jared From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 14 20:35:28 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:35:28 -0400 Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Fwd: [TekScopes2] Nortex Electronis, Fort Worth, TX is closing. Message-ID: <200710142135.28891.rtellason@verizon.net> Anybody here in Texas? Looks like tons of stuff I could probably use, too, but there's just no way I can do that trip at this point in time... ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [roys-tech-chat] Fwd: [TekScopes2] Nortex Electronis, Fort Worth, TX is closing. Date: Sunday 14 October 2007 21:29 From: "Roy J. Tellason" To: roys-tech-chat at yahoogroups.com Oh man... Just lookin' at those pictures! I could have a blast with some of this stuff!!! ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [TekScopes2] Nortex Electronis, Fort Worth, TX is closing. Date: Sunday 14 October 2007 20:01 From: J Forster To: TekScopes2 at yahoogroups.com >From the HP List: -John ******************* Subject: [hp_agilent_equipment] Nortex Electronis, Fort Worth, TX is closing. Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:49:58 -0000 From: "eidophor1" Reply-To: hp_agilent_equipment at yahoogroups.com To: hp_agilent_equipment at yahoogroups.com Hello to the group. I felt the group would like to know that Nortex Electronics in Fort Worth, TX is closing for good. Lewis E. Cearly, the proprietor, passed away on Oct 5th, 2007. Nortex will be open Oct 15th through the 20th so customers can make final purchases. They will be having a final "garage" sale to clear stuff out Thursday through Saturday of that week. There's lots of older test equipment, and plenty of older units for parts. There's a fair amount of older HP and Tektronix gear too. What's left after the sale will be recycled. Here's a link with more information, and the address: http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/nortex/index.html Nortex will be missed. There's nothing else like it in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. Yahoo! Groups Links ------------------------------------------------------- -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roys-tech-chat/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roys-tech-chat/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:roys-tech-chat-digest at yahoogroups.com mailto:roys-tech-chat-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: roys-tech-chat-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------- -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From ballsandy at msn.com Sun Oct 14 20:47:34 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:47:34 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: >Unlike most mini and microcomputers, the mainframe things tend to get >slaughtered off about ten years after introduction. Which is why I feel pity for that system/36. I talked to the guy and while he never mentioned that he will eventually give up and scrap it I have a feeling that after a few years with no bites he might re-think scrapping it. It's currently in a cold storage locker and all that's needed is for someone to contact him and come with a cube van that you must supply. I think he also tole me that they will even help you load it all up and wave you goodbye. :) Okay, how about I cut down to the point: -I'm 17 and have a wicked case of OCD -I like old electronics -I use a 5 1/4" floppy drive on a normal basis -I like things that have blinkenlites and make cool whirring noises -I have passed notes written in hex to a friend in class ("what are you doing at lunch?") Just owning a computer like this would complete my childhood. Yes, I am a very strange person indeed. :P _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself with free Messenger emoticons. Get them today! http://www.freemessengeremoticons.ca/?icid=EMENCA122 From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Oct 14 20:53:35 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:53:35 -0600 Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Fwd: [TekScopes2] Nortex Electronis, Fort Worth, TX is closing. In-Reply-To: <200710142135.28891.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710142135.28891.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4712C81F.8010105@jetnet.ab.ca> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > Anybody here in Texas? Looks like tons of stuff I could probably use, too, > but there's just no way I can do that trip at this point in time... See if you can gab his stuff in ebay -- buy it now. see under TOOLS Alot of american rocket society magzines. From doc at mdrconsult.com Sun Oct 14 21:01:43 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:01:43 -0500 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Saturday 13 October 2007 17:45, Tony Duell wrote: >>> This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a door >>> to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! >>> oops >> Oh that's easy to solve. Change all your keyboards to the Dvorak (?spel) >> layout. I once taught an "RHCE review" night course for the local community college. There was one student that I *knew* was going to be trouble when he walked in the door. He was wearing an Atari T-shirt, had zero tan, and was carrying a Genuine Dvorak Keyboard under one arm. Doc From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 14 21:11:35 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:11:35 -0400 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <200710142211.36122.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 14 October 2007 22:01, Doc Shipley wrote: > Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > On Saturday 13 October 2007 17:45, Tony Duell wrote: > >>> This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a door > >>> to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! > >>> oops > >> > >> Oh that's easy to solve. Change all your keyboards to the Dvorak (?spel) > >> layout. > > I once taught an "RHCE review" night course for the local community > college. > > There was one student that I *knew* was going to be trouble when he > walked in the door. He was wearing an Atari T-shirt, had zero tan, and > was carrying a Genuine Dvorak Keyboard under one arm. So, was he? :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From fu3.org at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 21:13:38 2007 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (from@fu3.org) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 04:13:38 +0200 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <310f50ab0710141913k5aafd38ewc8ca8187d17cf0ee@mail.gmail.com> > > I once taught an "RHCE review" night course for the local community > college. > > There was one student that I *knew* was going to be trouble when he > walked in the door. He was wearing an Atari T-shirt, had zero tan, and > was carrying a Genuine Dvorak Keyboard under one arm. > > > Doc > Trouble? - Please explain. ;) From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 14 22:24:44 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:24:44 -0700 Subject: PPS-4...Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> <47108F54.7047.D2F99AE@cclist.sydex.com> <47111749.29939F64@cs.ubc.ca> <47127408.8000101@comcast.net> Message-ID: > Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:03:19 -0400> From: wdonzelli at gmail.com> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: PPS-4...Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery> > > Sadly though, it has become uneconomical for most> > pinball collectors to get these CPU boards repaired and instead use a> > replacement board which emulates the embedded software.> > Why is this sad? It seems to me that this is a triumph for the vintage> pinball community. The original parts were going to dry up anyway, so> apparently someone had the good sense to go ahead and solve the> problem.> Hi There are still a few suppliers that have the parts for the Gottlieb control boards. I have a Jeanie that I replaced the CPU chip on because it just wouldn't start the crystal soon enough to stop from blowing a fuse. The one I got was a pull but some of the other chips are still available as NOS. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sun Oct 14 22:37:23 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:37:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710150341.XAA21666@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > -I'm 17 and have a wicked case of OCD > -I like old electronics > -I use a 5 1/4" floppy drive on a normal basis > -I like things that have blinkenlites and make cool whirring noises > -I have passed notes written in hex to a friend in class ("what are > you doing at lunch?") Whoo, will *you* ever fit in here! Well, okay, possibly except for your age; my feeling is that you're near the young end of our age distribution. But my feeling is also that nobody will hold that against you. :) But really, OCD, old electronics, non-3?" floppies, blinkenlights, knows ASCII in hex...yup, you're home! Welcome. /~\ 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 dm561 at torfree.net Sun Oct 14 22:05:37 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:05:37 -0300 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco Message-ID: <01C80EC0.8744C580@mandr71> ---------------Original Message: Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:29:40 -0600 From: "e.stiebler" Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco M H Stein wrote: >> Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:53:06 -0600 >> From: "e.stiebler" >> Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco > >> I think people worked/played more with the computer more back then. >> Meaning wrote utilities, improved stuff, changed something, and were >> proud if it. > > Really??? Have you browsed the Internet lately and seen the amount of > software & mods out there, and the just wild and crazy things that people > are doing with their PCs? I wasn't talking about repainting the case. > Seems to me there are a heck of a lot *more* > people writing utilities, improving stuff etc. today, and far more complex > and sophisticated stuff at that (especially since there's so much more > room for improvement ;-). I really don't think so. Go on this modding groups, and check, how much background info they really have. They just take a motherboard, put a water cooler on it and wait until it falls apart by over clocking it. I was talking about people crawling into their computers with an soldering iron without hurting themselfes ;-) Cheers -------------Reply: I wasn't talking about painting cases or water cooling either, although if you include the esthetics of the computer even that would count for something; a really snazzy custom paint job and custom case can be just as much of an accomplishment as building a serial card for your Apple. Admittedly it's not practical or possible any longer to make any useful mods to a modern motherboard itself, but you were talking about "writing utilities, improving stuff and changing things;" sounds like that wouldn't necessarily involve a soldering iron (aside from the fact that today you'd use a heat gun), but *would* include the vast amount of open-source stuff out there and all that other software written by folks just for the fun of doing it, far more and often much better quality than a lot of the stuff of the "good old days." As a matter of fact I'd say that even most people just using Linux would probably qualify. And then there's the fact that what took many nights of soldering ICs, caps and resistors back then is now a matter of programming an FPGA or any of the modern replacements for discrete logic; because of the way the hardware has evolved into mass-market appliances that activity has also evolved into different methods and directions. Just because it's done with a pencil and keyboard instead of a soldering iron doesn't mean it doesn't have the same essential quality. But even on the hardware side there's a lot going on; folks are adding LCD displays & controllers and building MP3 players for their car, controlling their telescopes with computer-driven steppers etc. etc.; all sorts of robotics and other computer-related custom hardware that wasn't even possible back then And how about the people on this list and numerous other lists like it where people, many of whom weren't born when these things were new, are building things like custom disk interfaces, memory expanders, etc. etc. for C64s (not to mention the single-chip C64 itself), PETs, Apples, Tandys and all the other old computers, writing emulators, etc. etc.? Don't we/they count? You won't convince me that there isn't far more activity in this area today than there was then, in part just because it's so much more affordable and mainstream world-wide; how many people in Russia, China or India were playing with computers in the 70s? Even if only .00001% ever take the cover off their computer, that's still a lot of additional tinkerers. As for the dearth of technical magazines like the old Byte, Kilobaud etc., the same kind of ideas, projects and articles are still out there, only now they're to be found on the internet for free and in a much more convenient form. 'nuff said, mike From doc at mdrconsult.com Sun Oct 14 23:20:29 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:20:29 -0500 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <200710142211.36122.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> <200710142211.36122.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4712EA8D.7020800@mdrconsult.com> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Sunday 14 October 2007 22:01, Doc Shipley wrote: >> Roy J. Tellason wrote: >>> On Saturday 13 October 2007 17:45, Tony Duell wrote: >>>>> This morning my wife complained to me that every time she opened a door >>>>> to a cupboard something with qwerty written on it falls out !!! >>>>> oops >>>> Oh that's easy to solve. Change all your keyboards to the Dvorak (?spel) >>>> layout. >> I once taught an "RHCE review" night course for the local community >> college. >> >> There was one student that I *knew* was going to be trouble when he >> walked in the door. He was wearing an Atari T-shirt, had zero tan, and >> was carrying a Genuine Dvorak Keyboard under one arm. > > So, was he? :-) Yes. Among other problems, he really really wanted RedHat to be Debian. Can't blame him, but it wasn't a Debian course. :) That class was an amazing experience. There was a group of Netware admins who had been told that Netware Version Next would run on a linux kernel, so they signed up. They spent the entire course explaining to me that Linux will never be the OS that Netware should have been. Then there was one young lady whose fine arts degree wasn't paying her bills, so she signed up to be an RHCE. She'd never seen a Linux or UNIX system, had no admin experience even in Windows, and since she plainly ignored the printed prerequisites (Administrative experience with Linux or Unix), I can only assume she also couldn't read. She really did expect to take the 6-week 2-nights-a-week class, pass the RHCE, and go get a $50K job. She did stick it out through the course. After it ended, she sent me a 3-page email that expressed, in prose, her bitter disappointment in the strangeness of "the Linux Mindset". The term "megalodorks" was used. Doc From ploopster at gmail.com Sun Oct 14 23:29:23 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:29:23 -0400 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <4712EA8D.7020800@mdrconsult.com> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> <200710142211.36122.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712EA8D.7020800@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <4712ECA3.4040905@gmail.com> Doc Shipley wrote: > Then there was one young lady whose fine arts degree wasn't paying her > bills, so she signed up to be an RHCE. She'd never seen a Linux or UNIX > system, had no admin experience even in Windows, and since she plainly > ignored the printed prerequisites (Administrative experience with Linux > or Unix), I can only assume she also couldn't read. She really did > expect to take the 6-week 2-nights-a-week class, pass the RHCE, and go > get a $50K job. > > She did stick it out through the course. After it ended, she sent me > a 3-page email that expressed, in prose, her bitter disappointment in > the strangeness of "the Linux Mindset". The term "megalodorks" was used. Was she cute? Peace... Sridhar From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Mon Oct 15 00:51:20 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:51:20 -0300 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine References: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com><470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> <200710121654.11659.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <004701c80eef$8c00e2a0$f0fea8c0@alpha> > Speaking of which, I have a tube or so of 2816s around, and would > appreciate > it if you guys could point me toward any materials on the 'net that'd give > me > some ideas as to how you use those things... Datasheetarchive is your friend :o) http://www.datasheets.org.uk/search.php?t=0&q=2816&manystr=&sub.x=0&sub.y=0 From marvin at west.net Sun Oct 14 23:53:47 2007 From: marvin at west.net (Marvin Johnston) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:53:47 -0700 Subject: Recommended Books to Keep Message-ID: <4712F25B.630B02DB@west.net> I am starting to pare down my book collection (there will be a bunch at VCF!), and am curious what people here think are the best books to keep. Things I don't normally get rid of include original hardware/software manuals, computer history books, etc. unless there are duplicates. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 15 00:04:01 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:04:01 -0600 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <01C80EC0.8744C580@mandr71> References: <01C80EC0.8744C580@mandr71> Message-ID: <4712F4C1.80709@jetnet.ab.ca> M H Stein wrote: > ---------------Original Message: > Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:29:40 -0600 > From: "e.stiebler" > Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco > > M H Stein wrote: >>> Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 08:53:06 -0600 >>> From: "e.stiebler" >>> Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco >>> I think people worked/played more with the computer more back then. >>> Meaning wrote utilities, improved stuff, changed something, and were >>> proud if it. >> Really??? Have you browsed the Internet lately and seen the amount of >> software & mods out there, and the just wild and crazy things that people >> are doing with their PCs? > > I wasn't talking about repainting the case. > >> Seems to me there are a heck of a lot *more* >> people writing utilities, improving stuff etc. today, and far more complex >> and sophisticated stuff at that (especially since there's so much more >> room for improvement ;-). > > I really don't think so. Go on this modding groups, and check, how much > background info they really have. They just take a motherboard, put a > water cooler on it and wait until it falls apart by over clocking it. > > I was talking about people crawling into their computers with an > soldering iron without hurting themselfes ;-) Half this list[1] is trying to find thier way out ... You are in a twistly little tape drive ... passages are east, south and up. [2] As for the dearth of technical magazines like the old Byte, Kilobaud etc., > the same kind of ideas, projects and articles are still out there, only now > they're to be found on the internet for free and in a much more convenient > form. Where? DIY audio, 6502's and PIC's I can find. Real projects I can't.[3] > 'nuff said, > > mike Ben. [1] the other half are the chinese take out deivery people. [2] They are lost some where inside the front door. [3] Something other than blinking a led. From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Mon Oct 15 01:53:52 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:53:52 -0700 Subject: PPS-4...Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computerphotogallery References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> <47108F54.7047.D2F99AE@cclist.sydex.com> <47111749.29939F64@cs.ubc.ca> <47127408.8000101@comcast.net> Message-ID: <47130E7F.5DF2B9CE@cs.ubc.ca> Dan Roganti wrote: > > Brent Hilpert wrote: > > you are but the 2nd person I've ever heard to mention the PPS-4. > > After learning what I did about it I believe that two of my calculators are > > based on it, that is, I've had a PPS-4 system for years but never realised it. > > Another area that I frequent is vintage pinball machines. The PPS-4 was > widely used in another embedded controller design for Gottlieb(Chicago) > in their first generation digital pinball machines. Although it wasn't > the first digital pinball in the market, their first digital pinball > using this design was released in 1977, well after the PPS-4 became > obsolete, until 1980. Sadly though, it has become uneconomical for most > pinball collectors to get these CPU boards repaired and instead use a > replacement board which emulates the embedded software. As it happens, those Gottlieb boards are the task I was working on: trying to get enough details about the chips to create an exerciser for the boards for use in servicing them. Was working on it last winter, I hope to get back to it this winter. I have no knowledge of the pinball arena though, it's purely a technical task to me. From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Oct 15 02:30:53 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 03:30:53 -0400 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <20071014170343.L43152@shell.lmi.net> References: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com> <20071014170343.L43152@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <31ACD616-C88C-4021-A943-28BC7EC4E19F@neurotica.com> On Oct 14, 2007, at 8:05 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: > Ahh, to have a Cray. This can be arranged. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 15 03:42:08 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:42:08 +0100 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <4711E45A.2070503@yahoo.co.uk> References: <471197E2.7000707@oldskool.org> <4711E45A.2070503@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200710150942.08178.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Sunday 14 October 2007 10:41:46 Jules Richardson wrote: > Then: "It's a bit clunky, but it does pretty much what I need it to do. Why > should I change?" > > Now: "Oh look, new shiny thing!" Me: "Oh look, new 25-year-old shiny thing!" My fiance?: "No, not until you get a shed" Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 15 04:26:45 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:26:45 +0100 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710151026.45626.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Monday 15 October 2007 02:47:34 john ball wrote: > all that's needed is for someone to contact him and come with a cube van > -I'm 17 and have a wicked case of OCD Y'know, an old van is going to be fairly cheap for a 17-year-old to insure, cheaper than most cars... Less stuff to go wrong, too. Easier for those of a geeky disposition to fix when it expires due to hauling around minicomputers. Gordon From ragooman at comcast.net Mon Oct 15 06:19:33 2007 From: ragooman at comcast.net (Dan Roganti) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:19:33 -0400 Subject: Vintage computer photogallery - Time Magazine In-Reply-To: <470FCA78.5040801@yahoo.co.uk> References: <20071012185112.A728C55E3B@mail.wordstock.com> <470FC4D7.8080606@jetnet.ab.ca> <200710121917.PAA25842@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <470FCA78.5040801@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <47134CC5.8000701@comcast.net> Jules Richardson wrote: > > I suppose real computers have a separate service processor for this > kind of thing, so it's easy to put things right even if something does > go wrong (plus of course the update can *only* be done from the > service processor - not from some rogue code running on the main CPU) > > > > This is exactly what we did on the 5ESS(sort of vintage now) switching systems to avoid any glitches to retain the high availability. We always designed in a 2nd coprocessor to preform routine maintenance tasks such as downloading new updates into the backup flash in a duplex processor system. Then we downloaded the code into the standby processor first and switch over to active mode after all the diagnostics checked out. Regression tests were a strict priority in any telecom system to weed out any of the software faults. =Dan [ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them" ] [ Pittsburgh --- http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ] From ragooman at comcast.net Mon Oct 15 06:34:39 2007 From: ragooman at comcast.net (Dan Roganti) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:34:39 -0400 Subject: PPS-4...Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computerphotogallery In-Reply-To: <47130E7F.5DF2B9CE@cs.ubc.ca> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca>, <47108C7A.6905A7A3@cs.ubc.ca> <47108F54.7047.D2F99AE@cclist.sydex.com> <47111749.29939F64@cs.ubc.ca> <47127408.8000101@comcast.net> <47130E7F.5DF2B9CE@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4713504F.2060000@comcast.net> Brent Hilpert wrote: > servicing them. Was working on it last winter, I hope to get back to it > this winter. I have no knowledge of the pinball arena though, it's purely a > technical task to me. > Get a good Desoldering station for them chips :) [ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them" ] [ Pittsburgh --- http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ] From gtoal at gtoal.com Mon Oct 15 10:19:27 2007 From: gtoal at gtoal.com (Graham Toal) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:19:27 -0500 Subject: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) Message-ID: Here's a very interesting 1951 paper on the construction of a complex boolean logic unit using relays. It's contemporary with the more better-known Kalin-Burkhart machine. http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/docs/mechanized_reasoning_screenres.pdf This is the first time this paper has been put online. I received it as a photocopy of the original from J B Smith's sister. This is at screen resolution. I'll post a higher-res version later for printing. (I had to clean up the paper considerably from the original using Photoshop.) If you're interested in the history of logic machines, you should also look for machines by Alfred Smee (1851), and William Stanley Jevons (1870) Graham References: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&channel=2PSP&q=Kalin-Burkhart http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=%22mechanized+reasoning%22+McCallum+Smith From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 15 12:02:21 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:02:21 -0700 Subject: Fluketronix... Message-ID: <47133AAD.32041.8B587C5@cclist.sydex.com> Tektronix will soon be just a logo in someone's stable: http://www.manufacturing.net/Danaher-Buying-Tektronix.aspx?menuid=36 Thought folks might like to know. Cheers, Chuck From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Oct 15 12:34:07 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:34:07 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 12, 2007, at 10:25 PM, William Donzelli wrote: >> Only one other person openly admits they own one: that guy who >> runs the corestore, and he never responds to my emails. > > I will admit to having one, but I am not overly proud of it. I think I > can honestly say it is the least liked machine in my collection. I'd gladly take that off your hands if it were anywhere near FL...I'd love to learn more about those machines. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 15 13:09:53 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:09:53 -0600 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4713ACF1.90306@jetnet.ab.ca> Dave McGuire wrote: > I'd gladly take that off your hands if it were anywhere near FL...I'd > love to learn more about those machines. You better not. Californa is to be the first state to sink in to the ocean, not Florida. > -Dave Ben. PS:You seem often to see little scale models of main frames in the old ads.I wonder how small a scale you could go and still have it work in some fashion. The tape drives could be fun,using reel-to-reel cassete tape. From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Oct 15 13:11:01 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:11:01 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <4713ACF1.90306@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <4713ACF1.90306@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <2EDF23F4-AAAC-45D5-A27C-95D4297B8C90@neurotica.com> On Oct 15, 2007, at 2:09 PM, woodelf wrote: >> I'd gladly take that off your hands if it were anywhere near >> FL...I'd love to learn more about those machines. > > You better not. Californa is to be the first state to sink in to the > ocean, not Florida. *whoosh!* :) > PS:You seem often to see little scale models of main frames > in the old ads.I wonder how small a scale you could go > and still have it work in some fashion. The tape drives > could be fun,using reel-to-reel cassete tape. That'd be neat...Have FPGA, will travel! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From healyzh at aracnet.com Mon Oct 15 14:34:51 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:34:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Fluketronix... In-Reply-To: <47133AAD.32041.8B587C5@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 15, 2007 10:02:21 AM Message-ID: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com> > > Tektronix will soon be just a logo in someone's stable: > > http://www.manufacturing.net/Danaher-Buying-Tektronix.aspx?menuid=36 > > Thought folks might like to know. > > Cheers, > Chuck Living in the land of Tek, I really hope that won't effect all the Tek retiree's. Zane From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Mon Oct 15 15:48:26 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:48:26 -0300 Subject: Fluketronix... References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com> Message-ID: <018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha> >> Tektronix will soon be just a logo in someone's stable: >> http://www.manufacturing.net/Danaher-Buying-Tektronix.aspx?menuid=36 >> Thought folks might like to know. > Living in the land of Tek, I really hope that won't effect all the Tek > retiree's. Strange: 90 million dollars in sales of ONE BILIHON??? that is something around 9% profit!? Very poor for a company of the size (and with the premium price) of tek. I'm dying of sleep deprivation. Maybe I'm just going crazy... :o( From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 15 15:20:52 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:20:52 -0400 Subject: Fluketronix... In-Reply-To: <018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com> <018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: > Strange: 90 million dollars in sales of ONE BILIHON??? that is something > around 9% profit!? Very poor for a company of the size (and with the premium > price) of tek. > > I'm dying of sleep deprivation. Maybe I'm just going crazy... :o( In the US, the idea is that corporations make as little profit as possible. When one makes excessive profit, a good portion just goes away as taxes. -- Will From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 15 15:23:40 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:23:40 -0400 Subject: Fluketronix... In-Reply-To: References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com> <018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <4713CC4C.1030700@gmail.com> William Donzelli wrote: >> Strange: 90 million dollars in sales of ONE BILIHON??? that is something >> around 9% profit!? Very poor for a company of the size (and with the premium >> price) of tek. >> >> I'm dying of sleep deprivation. Maybe I'm just going crazy... :o( > > In the US, the idea is that corporations make as little profit as > possible. When one makes excessive profit, a good portion just goes > away as taxes. Do stockholder dividends count against profits? Peace... Sridhar From rescue at hawkmountain.net Mon Oct 15 16:18:43 2007 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:18:43 -0400 Subject: what the heck is it Message-ID: <4713D933.3010305@hawkmountain.net> I 'rescued' a unique piece of computer equipment... Here is the data: Raytheon RDS-201E (on badge on front/top) P/N G246101-3010 (from badge on rear) Model VT302 (from badge on rear) This has 2 5.25" full height floppy drives (like the original IBM PC) likely Tandon mechs ? Has a 'built in' (more like 'built on') screen. Has switches for 10 pitch/12 pitch 1/1.5/2 spacing and another I forget (they are on the monitor piece). I don't have a floppy. Ports on the back look like possibly a printer port and the other likes similar like a short printer end centronics interface. So... internet searches have turned up nada.... So.... what the heck is it ? Is it a computer ? Is it some sort of terminal ? I have no media for it... so if it is a computer, I'm doubtful I'll turn up anything for it. Same goes for the keyboard. It is a unique looking enclosure though... very very retro Help me identify what this is, and what I should do with it (if a computer and I can get media, will probably at least play with it, then if no interest find a new owner for it... if some sort of wacked out terminal... if there is no interest, I'm going to yank the drives and anything else useful and scrap it, or if feasable... maybe use it as a 'case mod' for a PC (I usually loath this... but got to admit, this would make a highly unique PC :-) ). -- Curt From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Mon Oct 15 16:26:57 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:26:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: what the heck is it In-Reply-To: <4713D933.3010305@hawkmountain.net> References: <4713D933.3010305@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: <200710152129.RAA28301@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Has switches for 10 pitch/12 pitch > 1/1.5/2 spacing and another I forget These sound like typewriter settings (10/12 pitch controlling spacing horizontally, 1/1.5/2 vertically). What typewriter settings would be doing on a device such as you descrie is, of course, a completely separate question. :-) Perhaps it's some kind of rudimentary digital (or at least electronic) typesetter? /~\ 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 curt at atarimuseum.com Mon Oct 15 16:35:44 2007 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:35:44 -0400 Subject: what the heck is it In-Reply-To: <4713D933.3010305@hawkmountain.net> References: <4713D933.3010305@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: <4713DD30.5090004@atarimuseum.com> I wonder if its a rebadged Compugraphic typesetting system, sounds very similar. Curt Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: > > I 'rescued' a unique piece of computer equipment... > > Here is the data: > > Raytheon > RDS-201E (on badge on front/top) > P/N G246101-3010 (from badge on rear) > Model VT302 (from badge on rear) > > This has 2 5.25" full height floppy drives (like the original IBM PC) > likely Tandon mechs ? > > Has a 'built in' (more like 'built on') screen. > > Has switches for 10 pitch/12 pitch > 1/1.5/2 spacing and another I forget > (they are on the monitor piece). > > I don't have a floppy. Ports on the back look like possibly a printer > port > and the other likes similar like a short printer end centronics > interface. > > So... internet searches have turned up nada.... > > So.... what the heck is it ? > > Is it a computer ? Is it some sort of terminal ? > > I have no media for it... so if it is a computer, I'm doubtful I'll turn > up anything for it. Same goes for the keyboard. > > It is a unique looking enclosure though... very very retro > > Help me identify what this is, and what I should do with it > (if a computer and I can get media, will probably at least play > with it, then if no interest find a new owner for it... if some sort > of wacked out terminal... if there is no interest, I'm going to > yank the drives and anything else useful and scrap it, or if > feasable... maybe use it as a 'case mod' for a PC (I usually > loath this... but got to admit, this would make a highly unique > PC :-) ). > > -- Curt > From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 15 16:37:50 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:37:50 -0400 Subject: Fluketronix... In-Reply-To: <4713CC4C.1030700@gmail.com> References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com> <018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha> <4713CC4C.1030700@gmail.com> Message-ID: > Do stockholder dividends count against profits? I do not know the details, but the idea is to take the profit before taxes and either shovel them back into the company in some fashion, manage to write them off as some sort of loss, and/or let the shareholders take it. It is much easier for individual shareholders to shelter themselves from taxes, and isolates the tax liability. -- Will, not an account From teoz at neo.rr.com Mon Oct 15 16:44:25 2007 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:44:25 -0400 Subject: Fluketronix... References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com><018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha><4713CC4C.1030700@gmail.com> Message-ID: <003301c80f74$8e7ae1e0$5f5d1941@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "William Donzelli" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 5:37 PM Subject: Re: Fluketronix... > > Do stockholder dividends count against profits? > > I do not know the details, but the idea is to take the profit before > taxes and either shovel them back into the company in some fashion, > manage to write them off as some sort of loss, and/or let the > shareholders take it. It is much easier for individual shareholders to > shelter themselves from taxes, and isolates the tax liability. > > -- > Will, not an account Or the obvious answer .... BONUS for the CEO and VP's. From thrashbarg at kaput.homeunix.org Mon Oct 15 17:22:52 2007 From: thrashbarg at kaput.homeunix.org (Alexis) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:52:52 +0930 Subject: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710160752.52955.thrashbarg@kaput.homeunix.org> On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:49:27 am Graham Toal wrote: > Here's a very interesting 1951 paper on the construction of a complex > boolean logic unit using relays. It's contemporary with the more > better-known Kalin-Burkhart machine. > > http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/docs/mechanized_reasoning_screenres.pdf > > This is the first time this paper has been put online. I received it > as a photocopy of the original from J B Smith's sister. > > This is at screen resolution. I'll post a higher-res version later > for printing. (I had to clean up the paper considerably from the > original using Photoshop.) > > If you're interested in the history of logic machines, you should also > look for machines by Alfred Smee (1851), and William Stanley Jevons > (1870) > > > Graham > References: > http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&channel=2PSP&q=Kalin-Burkhart > > http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=%22mechanized+reasoning%22 >+McCallum+Smith Now THIS is interesting! I love the idea of a computer that's actually designed to compute, as opposed to playing games on or getting annoyed at. If you have any more documents like it I'd love to hear about them. Do you have anything about analogue computing? Thanks, Alexis. From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Mon Oct 15 17:38:38 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 15:38:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DIGITAL TA79-BF tape drive on Govliq. In-Reply-To: <200710160752.52955.thrashbarg@kaput.homeunix.org> Message-ID: <754099.95815.qm@web82703.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Looks nice. http://cgi.govliquidation.com/auction/view?auctionId=1400425&convertTo=USD Bob From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 15 16:57:47 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:57:47 +0100 (BST) Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 14, 7 05:03:00 pm Message-ID: > > On 10/14/07, Tony Duell wrote: > > The only 8-pin TTL chips I (just) rememebr the 7456 ands 7457 (I think) > > which were /50 and /60 counters (desigend to get 1Hz clocks from European > > or US power lines) > > Those sound handy (since digital horology is one of my hobbies). I prefer mechanical horology, but anyway (actually, there have been mechanical digital clocks, but I digress). It's not that hard to provide the same fucntion using a pair of 7490s or a 7490 + 7492 as approrpritate. Or to start from a wristwatch crystal (32768Hz) and use a 15 stage divider. > > Never seen one, but I suspect they weren't common after, say, 1975. I've never seen either. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 15 17:07:24 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:07:24 +0100 (BST) Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <200710141717.27126.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 14, 7 05:17:26 pm Message-ID: > bunch of those in there. (Looking...) Yup, here in the "299B Disk Driv= > e"=20 > manual I spot some 75453 and 75454 in several locations in there. They were quite commonly used to drive head load solenoids, head postiioner stepper motors and the like. > > The only 8-pin TTL chips I (just) rememebr the 7456 ands 7457 (I think) > > which were /50 and /60 counters (desigend to get 1Hz clocks from Europe= > an > > or US power lines) > > Those were LS56 and 57, or at least that's what's in my parts page, if = > there=20 > were earlier non-LS versions of them I haven't found any data on them. I= You're right. The only ones I can find in the databooks are 74LS56 and 74LS57. Oh, and the 54LS56, 54LS57 seem to have existed. [...] > And speaking of 50 and 60 Hz, I have this digital clock here that I got=20 > *real* cheap, because it has a problem. it gains a LOT of time every ho= > ur. =20 > Something like 10 minutes, maybe? I'm convinced that it's jumpered (or=20 > something) for 50 Hz line power. :-) If it was, it would add 72 minutes instead of 60 ever hour, I think. So it would gain 12 minutes per hour. Sounds just like your problem. Most LSI digital clock chips could be jumpered for 50Hz or 60Hz input. SOme earely ones seem to have been 60Hz only (I've not seen one that's 50Hz only, but that may be because most of the books I've read on this originiated in the States). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 15 17:21:05 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:21:05 +0100 (BST) Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 14, 7 08:29:48 pm Message-ID: > > So you want me to start off with a VAX? > > Lots of folks on this list have lots of nice things to say about the 11/750. Personally, I theink the 11/750 is not the best machine to try to keep running. The reason is that the CPU is made up of a large-ish number of custom gate array chips. Even when they were available as spares from DEC they were very expensive, now they're unobtainanle other than by raiding other 750s. If you have the space (and it's large), try to get am 11/780. I've never been inside one, but I've read the printset (schematics) and it seems to be all standard chips. If you don't have the spave, and can stand the lack of speed, consider an 11/730. It's small (1 10.5" high rackmount unit), you can fit the processor, disk and tape drives into a half-height rack (this was a standard configuration). It's almost all standard chips, 2901 ALUs, TTL, non-protected PALs, etc. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 15 17:31:04 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:31:04 +0100 (BST) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: from "john ball" at Oct 14, 7 11:47:34 pm Message-ID: > Okay, how about I cut down to the point: > -I'm 17 and have a wicked case of OCD When I was a little older than you (not having learnt to drive, and in fact still not having learnt to drive), I carried minicomputers and their peripehrals on trains. I would also routinely read schematic diagrams on such journeys... > -I like old electronics Check. > -I use a 5 1/4" floppy drive on a normal basis My main PC has a 5.25" drive. I've got a couple from an HP desktop machine going on the bench soon for a full overhaul and alignment. > -I like things that have blinkenlites and make cool whirring noises Check. I have a PDP8/e on my desk. > -I have passed notes written in hex to a friend in class ("what are you doi= > ng at lunch?") Yep. And read paper tape by eye... > > Just owning a computer like this would complete my childhood. > Yes, I am a very strange person indeed. :P You're really going to fit in here :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 15 17:38:15 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:38:15 +0100 (BST) Subject: what the heck is it In-Reply-To: <4713D933.3010305@hawkmountain.net> from "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." at Oct 15, 7 05:18:43 pm Message-ID: > > > I 'rescued' a unique piece of computer equipment... > > Here is the data: > > Raytheon > RDS-201E (on badge on front/top) > P/N G246101-3010 (from badge on rear) > Model VT302 (from badge on rear) > > This has 2 5.25" full height floppy drives (like the original IBM PC) > likely Tandon mechs ? > > Has a 'built in' (more like 'built on') screen. > > Has switches for 10 pitch/12 pitch Those sound like common pitches (in characters/inch) back in the days of monospaced fonts > 1/1.5/2 spacing and another I forget And that could be line spacing > (they are on the monitor piece). > > I don't have a floppy. Ports on the back look like possibly a printer port > and the other likes similar like a short printer end centronics interface. Err, what does that mean? > So... internet searches have turned up nada.... > > So.... what the heck is it ? > > Is it a computer ? Is it some sort of terminal ? My guess is some kind of printer controller, or printing terminal. > > I have no media for it... so if it is a computer, I'm doubtful I'll turn > up anything for it. Same goes for the keyboard. Does it have a keyboard connector? HAve you looked inside? What are the main chips? -tony From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 15 18:27:41 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:27:41 -0600 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4713F76D.7070106@jetnet.ab.ca> Tony Duell wrote: > Check. I have a PDP8/e on my desk. I thought a PDP-8 was desk sized. That reminds me to find a smaller case for SBC6120 so it can fit on a desk. I have stuffed in a old wooden box. > You're really going to fit in here :-) *Grumbles* about the lack single females my age on this list. Better keep quiet as they know more than I do. > -tony As a newbie with just setting up the PDP-8 and OS/8 what is the best way to get started? I can download stuff from bitsavers but what to download. Ben. From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Mon Oct 15 18:43:41 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:43:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: question about overseas shipping Message-ID: <561216.65958.qm@web61014.mail.yahoo.com> If something were to be shipped by a countries native po, how would it be handled once it got here? Is there reason to suspect that some independent (private) carrier would handle it once it got to our shores? ____________________________________________________________________________________ Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/ From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 15 18:43:23 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:43:23 -0700 Subject: what the heck is it In-Reply-To: References: <4713D933.3010305@hawkmountain.net> from "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." at Oct 15, 7 05:18:43 pm, Message-ID: <471398AB.26707.A24B293@cclist.sydex.com> Search the web for "Lexitron" and I think you'll find something very similar. It's a word processor--the keyboard is probably lost. After 1977, Raytheon owned Lexitron. All of their WaPro equipment (even the printers) started off with VT... Here's a photo of a VT1303--note the switches on the front panel: http://www.computermuseum.li/Testpage/Lexitron-VT1303.jpg Cheers, Chuck From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 15 19:21:09 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:21:09 -0400 Subject: question about overseas shipping In-Reply-To: <561216.65958.qm@web61014.mail.yahoo.com> References: <561216.65958.qm@web61014.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > If something were to be shipped by a countries native > po, how would it be handled once it got here? USPS. > Is there > reason to suspect that some independent (private) > carrier would handle it once it got to our shores? The USPS does farm out to carriers (for example - the USPS does not own anything to get the mail off the aircraft at the airport), but they all are bonded quite well. No need to worry. Why? -- Will From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Mon Oct 15 20:47:49 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:47:49 -0300 Subject: That poor system/36 References: Message-ID: <026c01c80f97$5684ef10$f0fea8c0@alpha> >> -I have passed notes written in hex to a friend in class ("what are you >> doi= >> ng at lunch?") > Yep. And read paper tape by eye... Whazzzdat? Nerdy classification? :oD From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 15 20:20:58 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:20:58 -0700 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4713AF8A.13834.A7E0A41@cclist.sydex.com> On 14 Oct 2007 at 23:47, john ball wrote: > -I have passed notes written in hex to a friend in class ("what are you doing at lunch?") In what representation? Unicode, ASCII, EBCDIC, Baudot, Rotate-and- tilt? Cheers, Chuck From cannings at earthlink.net Mon Oct 15 22:53:25 2007 From: cannings at earthlink.net (Steven Canning) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:53:25 -0700 Subject: 4004 and IC history / clock stuff References: Message-ID: <000b01c80fa8$1b1d8160$0201a8c0@hal9000> > > > The only 8-pin TTL chips I (just) rememebr the 7456 ands 7457 (I think) > > > which were /50 and /60 counters (desigend to get 1Hz clocks from Europe= > > > And speaking of 50 and 60 Hz, I have this digital clock here that I got=20 > > *real* cheap, because it has a problem. it gains a LOT of time every ho= > > ur. =20 > > Something like 10 minutes, maybe? I'm convinced that it's jumpered (or=20 > > something) for 50 Hz line power. :-) > > If it was, it would add 72 minutes instead of 60 ever hour, I think. So > it would gain 12 minutes per hour. Sounds just like your problem. > > Most LSI digital clock chips could be jumpered for 50Hz or 60Hz input. > SOme earely ones seem to have been 60Hz only (I've not seen one that's > 50Hz only, but that may be because most of the books I've read on this > originiated in the States). > > -tony When I need / needed 50 / 60 Hz I use / used a Mostek 5009 ( 16 pins ). Yes I have a datasheet. I think I have a couple parts in my Mostek dark archives... Best regards, Steven C From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 00:00:49 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 01:00:49 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/15/07, Tony Duell wrote: > > > So you want me to start off with a VAX? > > > > Lots of folks on this list have lots of nice things to say about the 11/750. > > Personally, I theink the 11/750 is not the best machine to try to keep > running. The reason is that the CPU is made up of a large-ish number of > custom gate array chips. Even when they were available as spares from DEC > they were very expensive, now they're unobtainanle other than by raiding > other 750s. I agree that the custom gate arrays make the 11/750 unrepairable (except for raiding parts), but I still think it's a good compromise between size and performance, for the VAX-11 line. > If you have the space (and it's large), try to get am 11/780. I've never > been inside one, but I've read the printset (schematics) and it seems to > be all standard chips. Yes.... repairable, but large and power hungry, and, IMO, more difficult to obtain than an 11/750 (partially due to quantities sold, but also due to how long ago 11/780s were turned off and sold/scrapped compared to 11/750s). Neither are _easy_ to find, but I think it's more likely to find a dusty 11/750 in a corner of a warehouse than an 11/780. > If you don't have the spave, and can stand the lack of speed, consider an > 11/730. It's small (1 10.5" high rackmount unit), you can fit the > processor, disk and tape drives into a half-height rack (this was a > standard configuration). It's almost all standard chips, 2901 ALUs, TTL, > non-protected PALs, etc. Yes. There were two system packages - the older 11/730-Z box (10.5"-tall rackmount box in the middle of a 42" rack, with room for an RB80 below, and an RL02 above), and a newer BA-11-style package (don't know the designation), with the CPU chassis up top and hidden behind a full-height door (also 42" rack), and room for cable management below. The 11/730-Z is a self-contained system, with (as shipped) a 121MB fixed "IDE" disk (in the sense that the disk controller is a special board and "integrated" into the CPU in a special slot - it's a simplified SMD interface to the drive, IIRC) and 10MB removable (known as DQA0: and DQA1: in VMS), room for up to 5MB of memory, a DMF32 serial/printer interface (8 async, 1 sync, one parallel out that can be used to drive a line printer), and a couple empty slots. The 11/725 is also a nice package if you can find one - same CPU cage as the 11/730-Z, but supposedly only rated to 3MB (I heard that some backplanes had 2 memory slots filled with epoxy, but never observed one). It's in a smaller, roll-around-pedestal "office friendly" package, with an RC25 drive mounted standard (but you aren't limited to it). There have been numerous threads on the RC25, but suffice it to say that you may find it difficult to find a working one after this many years. You can put 3rd party controllers, like SMD or SCSI in either the 11/730 or 11/725, or you can hang an external BA-11 off of one and do what you like (though the 11/730-Z makes it easy to route the BA-11 cable, and the 11/725 does not). I used to have an 11/730-Z, but I had to leave it behind in a downsizing 13 years ago. I do still have an 11/725, but have not powered it up in many years. I have seen VMS 5.0 running on an 11/725, booting off of RC25, even, but VMS 4.x runs very well on them. It's hard to get much newer than VMS 5.0 with only 5MB of physical memory. The CPU is slow enough that I'm not sure I'd want to try something newer, even if it had 8MB. There's a lot to be said for the old Unibus VAXen, as long as speed isn't your goal. OTOH, unless you have prior experience with them or have a Unibus board that you want to run (as I do), you might find a MicroVAX of some flavor easier to find and easier to work with (but probably not as easy to repair). -ethan From ggs at shiresoft.com Tue Oct 16 00:25:17 2007 From: ggs at shiresoft.com (Guy Sotomayor) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:25:17 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47144B3D.9090206@shiresoft.com> Ethan Dicks wrote: >> If you have the space (and it's large), try to get am 11/780. I've never >> been inside one, but I've read the printset (schematics) and it seems to >> be all standard chips. >> > > Yes.... repairable, but large and power hungry, and, IMO, more > difficult to obtain than an 11/750 (partially due to quantities sold, > but also due to how long ago 11/780s were turned off and sold/scrapped > compared to 11/750s). Neither are _easy_ to find, but I think it's > more likely to find a dusty 11/750 in a corner of a warehouse than an > 11/780. > Hmm. I didn't find it all that hard to find some. As a matter of fact they seem to find me. After "disposing" of 2 of them (well 3 actually...the third was everything but the cabinetry), I still have 4 (one's in my shop, the others are in storage). If anyone really wants one, I'll make a deal! :-) If any one's serious about it and are out for VCF, we can do some digging in storage (they're packed in tight). The power controller is 3-phase but that's more to get the amperage reasonable rather than anything really needing it. It's just the power controller and it just splits the phases. All of the supplies in the cpu are 110v with standard 15A 3-prong plugs (there's just a lot of them...I think the one in my shop has 5 or 6 supplies). Of course I have plenty of 3-phase in my shop so I don't need to come up with a "creative" solution. -- TTFN - Guy From ballsandy at msn.com Tue Oct 16 00:47:01 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:47:01 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: >> -I'm 17 and have a wicked case of OCD >> -I like old electronics >> -I use a 5 1/4" floppy drive on a normal basis >> -I like things that have blinkenlites and make cool whirring noises >> -I have passed notes written in hex to a friend in class ("what are >> you doing at lunch?") > >Whoo, will *you* ever fit in here! Well, okay, possibly except for >your age; my feeling is that you're near the young end of our age >distribution. But my feeling is also that nobody will hold that >against you. :) But really, OCD, old electronics, non-3?" floppies, >blinkenlights, knows ASCII in hex...yup, you're home! It's great to know I joined the right mailing list. I wanna spread my knowledge of the good old days of computing on to my children...like a virus. :) >> all that's needed is for someone to contact him and come with a cube van > >> -I'm 17 and have a wicked case of OCD > >Y'know, an old van is going to be fairly cheap for a 17-year-old to insure, >cheaper than most cars... > >Less stuff to go wrong, too. Easier for those of a geeky disposition to fix >when it expires due to hauling around minicomputers. I think you didn't get me. The size of this system will require a Budget/Uhaul truck. People around here call those "Cube vans". You must of thought I meant those commercial minivans that are used by cable companies...and people who make shaggin' wagons. >I have not viewed the lot in a while, but are not the tapes 8809s? >They were the standards on the smaller, cheaper systems, like the >midranges. Not nearly as cool as 3420s. according to this site, the unit is being given away with two IBM 8809 drives. http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/rochester/rochester_4018.html yeah they are not 3420's but nothing's perfect. _________________________________________________________________ R U Ready for Windows Live Messenger Beta 8.5? Try it today! http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.ca/WindowsLiveMessenger From ballsandy at msn.com Tue Oct 16 00:53:50 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:53:50 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: >> -I have passed notes written in hex to a friend in class ("what are you doing at lunch?") > >In what representation? Unicode, ASCII, EBCDIC, Baudot, Rotate-and- >tilt? I did a few in regular ASCII and two or three in EBCDIC but those three I screwed up and didn't translate right. I also wrote profanity on a test paper in ASCII knowing my Photoshop teacher would not know what it was. _________________________________________________________________ Are you ready for Windows Live Messenger Beta 8.5 ? Get the latest for free today! http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.ca/WindowsLiveMessenger From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 16 01:13:44 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:13:44 -0700 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4713F428.2228.B8A11D5@cclist.sydex.com> On 16 Oct 2007 at 3:53, john ball wrote: > I did a few in regular ASCII and two or three in EBCDIC but those > three I screwed up and didn't translate right. I also wrote profanity > on a test paper in ASCII knowing my Photoshop teacher would not know > what it was. You probably misjudged the size of the gap between I and J and R and S. Just remember that they correspond with punched card code. I=12- 9=C9, J=11-1=D1; R=11-9=D9, S=0-2=E2. Photoshop teacher? Hmmm. When I took photography it was with a 4x5 Calumet view camera. Cheers, Chuck From grant at stockly.com Tue Oct 16 01:32:46 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:32:46 -0800 Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? Message-ID: <0JPZ00C1ORLVE080@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Is there anyone in here who is qualified to give advice on taxes? I've made a few computer kits and am still deep into the hole. No money made, so no profit. I want to know what to expect I have to do for the tax man. A lot of money has changed hands with no gains for me. I hope I don't owe anyone anything. I've got a few more computer kits on the back burner, but its not worth it to me to continue if there are tax implications. Not trying to get free services, just free advice. : ) Respond off list if you want to help a fellow vintage computer guy. Grant From bear at typewritten.org Tue Oct 16 01:40:45 2007 From: bear at typewritten.org (r.stricklin) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:40:45 -0700 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <05A591A2-4B24-4E57-AF50-07F7E834597B@typewritten.org> On Oct 14, 2007, at 8:34 AM, Scott Quinn wrote: > Anyone know what they're using for the front-end laptop or whatever > you call it on the zSeries now that OS/2 is gone? The HMCs run Linux now. I imagine the service elements (the laptop you refer to) do as well, but IBM doesn't let us touch them so I can't answer authoritatively. ok bear From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 16 01:46:33 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:46:33 -0700 Subject: TTL DIPs with fewer than 14 pins. Was: Re: 4004 and IC history In-Reply-To: References: , , Message-ID: <4713FBD9.18608.BA81E88@cclist.sydex.com> On 10/14/07, Tony Duell wrote: > The only 8-pin TTL chips I (just) rememebr the 7456 ands 7457 (I think) > which were /50 and /60 counters (desigend to get 1Hz clocks from European > or US power lines) A darned useful set of through-hole TTL DIPs to have around are the Fairchild 74OL6000 series. Basically opto-isolated level translators in a 6 pin DIP. LSTTL in and (depending on part) TTL or CMOS out, inverting or noninverting. Pretty fast for optos too--about 70 nsec. propogation delay. Still made, the last I checked. Cheers, Chuck From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Oct 16 02:18:43 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:18:43 -0700 Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? In-Reply-To: <0JPZ00C1ORLVE080@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <0JPZ00C1ORLVE080@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: At 10:32 PM -0800 10/15/07, Grant Stockly wrote: >Is there anyone in here who is qualified to give advice on taxes? >I've made a few computer kits and am still deep into the hole. No >money made, so no profit. I want to know what to expect I have to >do for the tax man. A lot of money has changed hands with no gains >for me. I hope I don't owe anyone anything. > >I've got a few more computer kits on the back burner, but its not >worth it to me to continue if there are tax implications. > >Not trying to get free services, just free advice. : ) Respond off >list if you want to help a fellow vintage computer guy. > >Grant You might want to mention what Country (and if in the US, what State) you're in. Good question, I'd think it is close enough to being on topic to be suitable for the cctalk list. I know I'm curious. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Tue Oct 16 02:24:10 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:24:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? In-Reply-To: References: <0JPZ00C1ORLVE080@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Zane H. Healy wrote: > You might want to mention what Country (and if in the US, what State) > you're in. Good question, I'd think it is close enough to being on > topic to be suitable for the cctalk list. I know I'm curious. Given that he's the one behind the new Altair kits, I hope it's on topic. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Tue Oct 16 05:27:54 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:27:54 -0300 Subject: That poor system/36 References: Message-ID: <030601c80fdf$94af76f0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Talking about big iron IBMs, want to laugh? Prices in Brazil (on our local "ebay-like" site): S/390, Parallel enterprise server, generation 4 http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-61058787-mainframe-ibm-s390-parallel-enterprise-server-geraco-4-_JM R$ 65900 -> Us$ 35000 S/390 G6 http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-62756510-mainframe-s390-geraco-06-_JM R$ 40000 -> Us$ 19000 IBM G3-R44 http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-62757336-mainframe-ibm-g3-r44-_JM R$ 30.000 -> Us$ 14.000 Brazilian sellers are crazy people :o) From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Tue Oct 16 06:10:18 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:10:18 -0300 Subject: That poor system/36 References: Message-ID: <037d01c80fe5$7bc40330$f0fea8c0@alpha> > It can be made. In some cases, the machine can be fooled into thinking > it is getting three phase power. How? From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Tue Oct 16 06:13:38 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:13:38 -0300 Subject: I've gone too far References: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com>, <20071014170343.L43152@shell.lmi.net> <47125279.2777.52A83BE@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <038c01c80fe5$aa0b16c0$f0fea8c0@alpha> >> How cool can the cooling system get? > An old friend who worked on SAGE said the operators used to store > their lunches inside the machine. Mmmm, toasty... OT: Some years ago, I had a serious infeccion on my testicles. I had to be hospitalized and stayed more than a week on antibiotics. Since the hospital food was nice for a dog, I asked a friend to bring me a mcdonalds sandwich and some coke. When he arrived, he brought the sandwich in the same pack as the coke, and the sandwich was cold as alaska! "Hmmm..." I though. Since I was in the parking lot with him, I asked him to open the hood of his car. Put the sandwich between the tubes of the exaust manifold and asked him to rev up the motor. In 30 seconds the sandwich was "eatable" :o) Mmmmm, toasty! :oD AS From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 07:23:45 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:23:45 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > I agree that the custom gate arrays make the 11/750 unrepairable > (except for raiding parts), but I still think it's a good compromise > between size and performance, for the VAX-11 line. Has anyone here actually ever come across an 11/750 failure caused by one of the gate arrays? They are remarkably reliable machines. > Neither are _easy_ to find, but I think it's > more likely to find a dusty 11/750 in a corner of a warehouse than an > 11/780. One will find ten /750s for every /780 these days. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 07:35:15 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:35:15 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <037d01c80fe5$7bc40330$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <037d01c80fe5$7bc40330$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: > > It can be made. In some cases, the machine can be fooled into thinking > > it is getting three phase power. > > How? Most of the time, the three phases get split up and sent to banks of single phase power supplies. It is reasonably easy to rewire these power supplies all to run off the single phase, although it might involve a few transformers to get the voltages right. The remaining three phase requirements will probably be for motors, like the fans and for the disk drives (in older DASDs). You may still need an external converter (rotary or otherwise), but now the power requirements are much smaller. In IBMs, you will also need to fool the phase rotation sensor, otherwise the machine will not start up due to a power check. Check the archives for more on three phase conversion. -- Will From ian_primus at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 07:37:27 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 05:37:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <47144B3D.9090206@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > >> If you have the space (and it's large), try to > get am 11/780. I still have 4 > (one's in my shop, the others are in storage). If > anyone really wants > one, I'll make a deal! :-) Gah! If only you weren't so far away! The 11/780 is one of those "Holy Grail" machines for me. Hmm, you're not planning on visiting New York any time soon, are you... (Pictures a station wagon with an 11/780 somehow strapped to the roof rack...) -Ian From ian_primus at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 07:47:59 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 05:47:59 -0700 (PDT) Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <371740.89176.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- William Donzelli wrote: > > I agree that the custom gate arrays make the > 11/750 unrepairable > > (except for raiding parts), but I still think it's > a good compromise > > between size and performance, for the VAX-11 line. > > Has anyone here actually ever come across an 11/750 > failure caused by > one of the gate arrays? They are remarkably reliable > machines. I found my 11/750 in a dusty corner of a warehouse... They do seem to be pretty reliable, after a lot of cleaning (it was filthy!) it powered up and sorta worked. The RDM board is bad, but that's not required to get the machine to run. It appears to be failure of the RAM on the RDM board, actually. Which of course is soldered to the board, and there is no diagnostic routine to find out which chip is bad... So, yeah, it seems like it's a fairly robust critter. Years of service, then years of storage in an unheated warehouse, and it still works. But then again, this is only personal experience... -Ian From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 07:57:06 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:57:06 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <371740.89176.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <371740.89176.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > I found my 11/750 in a dusty corner of a warehouse... > They do seem to be pretty reliable, after a lot of > cleaning (it was filthy!) it powered up and sorta > worked. The RDM board is bad, but that's not required > to get the machine to run. It appears to be failure of > the RAM on the RDM board, actually. Which of course is > soldered to the board, and there is no diagnostic > routine to find out which chip is bad... Most (all?) RDMs for the VAX-11/750s were made from that odd circuit board process where wires are laminated right to the board (the name escapes me right now, and I will remember just after sending this). Those boards could develop faults from the wires breaking. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 08:11:42 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:11:42 -0400 Subject: Looking for a VME chassis In-Reply-To: <296554.80243.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <296554.80243.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > Looking for a rackmount VME chassis to rebuild a Sun 3 > system. Anyone got anything collecting dust bunnies? Did I bug you about my old SPARCstation 370 yet? Its a 12 slot VME system, but as a deskside, not a rackmount. It needs some help,as the backplane died and took the power unit with it. I have a replacement backplane, and a power supply as well, but you will have to spend some time inside the chassis swapping stuff. Which is what you like doing anyway. -- Will From pat at computer-refuge.org Tue Oct 16 08:35:30 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:35:30 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Tuesday 16 October 2007 08:37, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > Gah! If only you weren't so far away! The 11/780 is > one of those "Holy Grail" machines for me. Hmm, you're > not planning on visiting New York any time soon, are > you... (Pictures a station wagon with an 11/780 > somehow strapped to the roof rack...) It should only be $1k or so to get one shipped cross-country. They're not too heavy. After moving an 11/780 (big footprint) and IBM S/390 (small footprint) into my place (the 780 by myself, and the 390 with the help of a friend), well I can say I feel perfectly fine after the 780 (which I had no help moving), unlike the sore knees I had for a few months after moving the s/390 (which I had help with) (pushing both of them up a 10% or so grade from the alley behind my place to the door). IOW, 11/780 *light*, S/390 (or any similarly sized IBM gear) HEAVY. :) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From emu at e-bbes.com Tue Oct 16 08:41:25 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 07:41:25 -0600 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4714BF85.30807@e-bbes.com> Tony Duell wrote: > If you don't have the spave, and can stand the lack of speed, consider an > 11/730. It's small (1 10.5" high rackmount unit), you can fit the > processor, disk and tape drives into a half-height rack (this was a > standard configuration). It's almost all standard chips, 2901 ALUs, TTL, > non-protected PALs, etc. Talking about the 11/730's and 11/725's. Anybody on this list has one, he doesn't use ? And probably would like to get rid of ? Cheers, emanuel From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 09:43:40 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:43:40 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > After moving an 11/780 (big footprint) and IBM S/390 (small footprint) > into my place (the 780 by myself, and the 390 with the help of a > friend), well I can say I feel perfectly fine after the 780 (which I > had no help moving), unlike the sore knees I had for a few months after > moving the s/390 (which I had help with) (pushing both of them up a 10% > or so grade from the alley behind my place to the door). > > IOW, 11/780 *light*, S/390 (or any similarly sized IBM gear) HEAVY. :) If you think an S/390 is heavy, you should try moving anything older. Peace... Sridhar From rickb at bensene.com Tue Oct 16 11:00:16 2007 From: rickb at bensene.com (Rick Bensene) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:00:16 -0700 Subject: Fluketronix... References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com> Message-ID: One can hope that the acquiring coompay will be good about retaining the history of Tektronix. Tek has been pretty good about keeping its own internal history well-documented (but not well-publicized) over all these years. I feel sad that they're been acquired by a multi-national conglomerate. Tek, though it has in recent years, outsourced a lot of manufacturing, has been a mainstay of US-based quality design and manufacturing, especially in electronic T&M (test & measurement) equipment. Having worked for Tektronix from 1977 to 1990, I feel a real affection for the place. By 1990, it was just a shadow of the company it was in the late '70's, with lots of layoffs between '86 and '90 (and more afterwards), and a lot of consolidation and associated financial difficulties. I hope that whatever happens, the new owners will A) take good care of the current employees, B) take good care of retired Tektronix employee pension and retirement plans, and C) work to retain the historical and cultural aspects of Tektronix. For Oregon, if the deal goes through, it's definitely the end of an era. Tektronix was the catalyst for what became the 'Silicon Forest', and being a major part of the rescue of Oregon's economy as the timber business fell apart as a result of government controls and environmental concerns. For a long time, Tektronix was the second largest employer in the state of Oregon, only behind Pacific Northwest Bell/AT&T. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 16 11:06:32 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:06:32 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com>, <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org>, <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> Message-ID: <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> On 16 Oct 2007 at 10:43, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > If you think an S/390 is heavy, you should try moving anything older. Same goes for the comments on 3-phase power supplies. A lot of the old iron really used 3-phase AC, usually employing a star rectifier configuration. Ripple frequency for 60 Hz mains is 360Hz, with a high constant DC component to the unfiltered output. Some older equipment required a 3-phase 400Hz supply (i.e. get your MG set running). Cheers, Chuck From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Tue Oct 16 11:31:46 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:31:46 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home References: <371740.89176.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4714E772.D0F5EF63@cs.ubc.ca> William Donzelli wrote: > > Most (all?) RDMs for the VAX-11/750s were made from that odd circuit > board process where wires are laminated right to the board (the name > escapes me right now, and I will remember just after sending this). > Those boards could develop faults from the wires breaking. Sounds like "Multiwire" (as others on the list reminded me a year ago when I was trying to remember the same thing). From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Oct 16 11:48:27 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:48:27 -0400 Subject: yet another logic family? Message-ID: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> I've just encountered some datasheets for parts that I've never heard of before -- 74ABTxxx parts. The lack of a "C" in there would seem to indicate TTL of some sort but looking at the datasheet the power supply current would seem to indicate CMOS of some sort, it's in the uA range. Anybody ever encountered these before? What can you tell me about them if so? I note that packaging seems to be _only_ surface-mount styles. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 12:07:41 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:07:41 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4714E772.D0F5EF63@cs.ubc.ca> References: <371740.89176.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <4714E772.D0F5EF63@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: > Sounds like "Multiwire" (as others on the list reminded me a year ago when I > was trying to remember the same thing). Yes, thats it. I think I was the one that reminded you last year! -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 12:11:37 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:11:37 -0400 Subject: yet another logic family? In-Reply-To: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: > I've just encountered some datasheets for parts that I've never heard of > before -- 74ABTxxx parts. The lack of a "C" in there would seem to indicate > TTL of some sort but looking at the datasheet the power supply current would > seem to indicate CMOS of some sort, it's in the uA range. BiCMOS - a hybrid technology of CMOS and bipolar. > Anybody ever encountered these before? Another TI bit of weirdness, but they actually sold this successfully. > What can you tell me about them if so? > > I note that packaging seems to be _only_ surface-mount styles. I am pretty sure I have seen it in DIP (I may have some), but DIPs started to die just when BiCMOS was coming out. -- Will From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Tue Oct 16 12:11:46 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:11:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: PCI floppy interface Message-ID: Is anyone here qualified to design PCI cards? This morning I got the bright idea that since PCI floppy interfaces don't seem to exist, one of us ought to make one. I'm aware of the Catweasel, but it doesn't appear to behave as a bog-standard floppy interface. This wouldn't be a replacement for the Catweasel, more of a compliment, especially for machines that lack a floppy interface entirely or can't handle double-density 5.25" media. I can source the chips. Who here knows PCI? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From tshoppa at wmata.com Tue Oct 16 12:20:57 2007 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:20:57 -0400 Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? Message-ID: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Grant asks: > Is there anyone in here who is qualified to give advice on > taxes? I've made a few computer kits and am still deep into the > hole. No money made, so no profit. I want to know what to expect I > have to do for the tax man. A lot of money has changed hands with no > gains for me. I hope I don't owe anyone anything. > I've got a few more computer kits on the back burner, but its not > worth it to me to continue if there are tax implications. > Not trying to get free services, just free advice. : ) Respond off > list if you want to help a fellow vintage computer guy. I am NOT qualified, but my two cents, on the situation in the US: 1. Any money you have coming in has to be reported as income somewhere. 2. It's possible that you can report it (at least in the US) on schedule C as a sole proprietership and deduct your expenses. Just because you lost money in your first year doesn't mean it's not a "business activity". But if you don't have any hope or plan to turn it into something profit-making, it's probably a hobby. Under some circumstances hobby expenses might be itemized deductions if you itemize, but the deductions cannot exceed gross income from the hobby. This would mean for example that if you spent $10,000 on parts and expenses, but only sold $3,000 worth of stuff, that at least you won't have to pay income tax on the $3000. This area is a little hairy. There are some potentially onerous taxes associated with stocking large quanties of parts/assemblies/computers that might be of value to your business, depending on how your locality figures inventory taxes. Sitting on inventory more than a year or two can be incredibly costly if your jurisdiction has inventory taxes. IRS Publication 535 has some of the tests for whether it's a hobby or a business. Tim. From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Oct 16 12:21:04 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:21:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: yet another logic family? In-Reply-To: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <200710161724.NAA03162@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I've just encountered some datasheets for parts that I've never heard > of before -- 74ABTxxx parts. The lack of a "C" in there would seem > to indicate TTL of some sort but looking at the datasheet the power > supply current would seem to indicate CMOS of some sort, it's in the > uA range. > Anybody ever encountered these before? > I note that packaging seems to be _only_ surface-mount styles. I think I have some, though I'll have to check when I get home - but what I have is definitely DIPs, not SMT. If I'm right, ie, if what I have really is 74ABTxxx, then they're CMOS chips with TTL-compatible interfaces, ie, you can connect them directly to real 74xxx TTL logic. /~\ 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 Oct 16 12:24:28 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:24:28 -0700 Subject: yet another logic family? In-Reply-To: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4714915C.29643.DF02452@cclist.sydex.com> On 16 Oct 2007 at 12:48, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I've just encountered some datasheets for parts that I've never heard of > before -- 74ABTxxx parts. The lack of a "C" in there would seem to indicate > TTL of some sort but looking at the datasheet the power supply current would > seem to indicate CMOS of some sort, it's in the uA range. > > Anybody ever encountered these before? Advanced BiCMOS Technology, mostly used for driver applications. 3nsec gates with 32ma drive and will operate at both TTL or CMOS logic levels. Another member of the 74-alphabet soup series. See: http://www.interfacebus.com/logic_table.html for more letters. Cheers, Chuck From ian_primus at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 12:29:58 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:29:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: PCI floppy interface In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <863771.36996.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- David Griffith wrote: > > Is anyone here qualified to design PCI cards? This > morning I got the > bright idea that since PCI floppy interfaces don't > seem to exist, one of > us ought to make one. I'm aware of the Catweasel, > but it doesn't appear > to behave as a bog-standard floppy interface. This > wouldn't be a > replacement for the Catweasel, more of a compliment, > especially for > machines that lack a floppy interface entirely or > can't handle > double-density 5.25" media. > > I can source the chips. Who here knows PCI? That sounds like an excellent idea. I, too, have often wished for a PCI floppy controller. The Catweasel is expensive and very hard to find, and probably overkill for most tasks. Similarly, I have often wished for a PCI MDA board... -Ian From emu at e-bbes.com Tue Oct 16 12:31:48 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:31:48 -0600 Subject: PCI floppy interface In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4714F584.8020808@e-bbes.com> David Griffith wrote: > Is anyone here qualified to design PCI cards? This morning I got the > bright idea that since PCI floppy interfaces don't seem to exist, one of > us ought to make one. I'm aware of the Catweasel, but it doesn't appear > to behave as a bog-standard floppy interface. This wouldn't be a > replacement for the Catweasel, more of a compliment, especially for > machines that lack a floppy interface entirely or can't handle > double-density 5.25" media. I'm not sure, you like to go PCI. (PCI is dying already, PCIe kills the budget ;-) ) Probably to expensive anyway. We talked on this list few days ago, that the easiest is to put a ucontroller and a floppy controller on a board, communicate via v24/usb. Why can't you use something like that ? From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 16 12:36:13 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:36:13 -0700 Subject: PCI floppy interface In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> On 16 Oct 2007 at 10:11, David Griffith wrote: > > Is anyone here qualified to design PCI cards? This morning I got the > bright idea that since PCI floppy interfaces don't seem to exist, one of > us ought to make one. I'm aware of the Catweasel, but it doesn't appear > to behave as a bog-standard floppy interface. This wouldn't be a > replacement for the Catweasel, more of a compliment, especially for > machines that lack a floppy interface entirely or can't handle > double-density 5.25" media. While I can support your idea, one might as well make the floppy controller a standalone device, given the availability of microprocessor cores. In either case, new software drivers weill be needed, as the legacy floppy depends on the old ISA-style DMA (does that exist for any other reason in modern systems without ISA slots?). One could supply local RAM instead, but what with the PCI interface logic, the drivers and the board cost, it might as well be a USB, Firewire or ethernet device that could hook to darned near anything, not just PeeCee boxes. My two inflation-prone cents worth, at any rate. Cheers, Chuck From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Tue Oct 16 12:38:53 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:38:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: PCI floppy interface In-Reply-To: <863771.36996.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <863771.36996.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > That sounds like an excellent idea. I, too, have often wished for a PCI > floppy controller. The Catweasel is expensive and very hard to find, and > probably overkill for most tasks. > > Similarly, I have often wished for a PCI MDA board... The Catweasel isn't that hard to find, but it can indeed be overkill. I want one for Commodore purposes. But I'd also like a regular PCI floppy controller as well. I emailed Howard Harte to see if he'd be interested in this. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Tue Oct 16 12:42:05 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:42:05 -0700 Subject: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) References: Message-ID: <4714F7ED.4FF2724E@cs.ubc.ca> Graham Toal wrote: > > Here's a very interesting 1951 paper on the construction of a complex > boolean logic unit using relays. It's contemporary with the more > better-known Kalin-Burkhart machine. > > http://history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/docs/mechanized_reasoning_screenres.pdf > > This is the first time this paper has been put online. I received it > as a photocopy of the original from J B Smith's sister. > > This is at screen resolution. I'll post a higher-res version later > for printing. (I had to clean up the paper considerably from the > original using Photoshop.) > > If you're interested in the history of logic machines, you should also > look for machines by Alfred Smee (1851), and William Stanley Jevons > (1870) > > Graham > References: > http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&channel=2PSP&q=Kalin-Burkhart > http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&q=%22mechanized+reasoning%22+McCallum+Smith Thanks for putting that up, fits in as a contemporary of Simon as an early logic educational instrument (and the Kalin-Burkhart refs lead through Berkeley's Giant Brains book). I don't think I've seen Smee mentioned before, have to go look him up; Jevons did the mechanical 'logic piano' didn't he? I'm trying to remember the name of another fellow who made an electrical logic instrument ca 1900-1910. IIRC, it was interesting in that it used dual-coil relays as gates, each coil being an input, and making the gate construction look a little more like modern gates than typical multi-contact relay logic. Also reminds me of the Kosmos (from Germany) "computer"/(switching)-logic trainer from the late-60s/early-70s I received as a kid. I think Radio Shack marketed it over here for a while, later in the 70s. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 16 13:05:36 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:05:36 -0600 Subject: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) In-Reply-To: <4714F7ED.4FF2724E@cs.ubc.ca> References: <4714F7ED.4FF2724E@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4714FD70.4080901@jetnet.ab.ca> Brent Hilpert wrote: Also reminds me of the Kosmos (from Germany) "computer"/(switching)-logic > trainer from the late-60s/early-70s I received as a kid. I think Radio Shack > marketed it over here for a while, later in the 70s. But the logic all seems to be for word logic problems, but not much for what is now real computer problems like adding two numbers. Ben. From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Tue Oct 16 13:13:08 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:13:08 -0600 Subject: Fluketronix... In-Reply-To: <003301c80f74$8e7ae1e0$5f5d1941@game> References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com><018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha><4713CC4C.1030700@gmail.com> <003301c80f74$8e7ae1e0$5f5d1941@game> Message-ID: <4714FF34.9010104@rogerwilco.org> Teo Zenios wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "William Donzelli" > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 5:37 PM > Subject: Re: Fluketronix... > > > >>> Do stockholder dividends count against profits? >>> >> I do not know the details, but the idea is to take the profit before >> taxes and either shovel them back into the company in some fashion, >> manage to write them off as some sort of loss, and/or let the >> shareholders take it. It is much easier for individual shareholders to >> shelter themselves from taxes, and isolates the tax liability. >> >> -- >> Will, not an account >> > > Or the obvious answer .... BONUS for the CEO and VP's. > Yes, that happens, for sure, but to return to the the OP's question: Dividends are paid out AFTER all expenses (including taxes) are otherwise accounted for. Dividends are paid out of profits, not revenues, if you get my meaning, since the dividend is a distribution of 'net income' to the company's owners, that is, the shareholders. The company first must pay taxes on its gross income, leaving net income to be distributed to the shareholders according to the determination of the board of directors. Dividends, indeed, are a perfect example of double-taxation. Of course, YOU have to pay taxes, too, on any dividends that you receive as a shareholder, thus the 'double-taxation' comment. And dividends are always considered to be short-term returns, thus are taxed at your normal tax rate. As was mentioned, a corporation WANTS to minimize income, trying to shuffle off as much as possible as an expense, thus minimizing the taxes, and if these 'expenses' are bonuses to employees (including the CEO, for sure), well then that can be treated as an expense, before taxes come into the picture. At least bonuses to employees are only taxed once, as income to the individual. As an investor, these days (unlike the 60's and 70's), rightly or wrongly, dividends are usually not considered to be all that important, since most investors now are just looking for a run-up in the stock price, and a capital gain. In fact, our present tax laws make us want this, due to the double-taxation effects of dividends, and the fact that long-term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than 'personal income' (short-term income). No, I'm not an accountant, but I have some experience with these matters from the point of view of business owner and investor. - Jared [sorry, Jay, for the OT nature of this post] From zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com Tue Oct 16 13:21:59 2007 From: zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:21:59 -0400 Subject: I've gone too far Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071016142154.05f6f270@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Alexandre Souza may have mentioned these words: >>>How cool can the cooling system get? >>An old friend who worked on SAGE said the operators used to store >>their lunches inside the machine. Mmmm, toasty... > > OT: > > Some years ago, I had a serious infeccion... Ahh.... too much information! ;-) > Since I was in the parking lot with him, I asked him to open the hood of > his car. Put the sandwich between the tubes of the exaust manifold and > asked him to rev up the motor. In 30 seconds the sandwich was "eatable" :o) http://www.amazon.com/Manifold-Destiny-Guide-Cooking-Engine/dp/0375751408 If you ever wanna go "Emeril" with your engine...... Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch at 30below.com What do you do when Life gives you lemons, and you don't *like* lemonade????????????? From zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com Tue Oct 16 13:57:18 2007 From: zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:57:18 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <01C80EC0.8744C580@mandr71> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071016142818.047d9b60@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that M H Stein may have mentioned these words: >You won't convince me that there isn't far more activity in this area today >than there was then, in part just because it's so much more affordable and >mainstream world-wide; how many people in Russia, China or India were >playing with computers in the 70s? Even if only .00001% ever take the >cover off their computer, that's still a lot of additional tinkerers. When anyone starts out with "You won't convince me..." and you don't have _hard numbers_ then it doesn't matter who has what facts... ... but for that matter, I'd disagree with you anyway... for the simple fact that you're looking at *sheer numbers.* I'd look at it as a per-capita number: The number of people who dug deep into their computers as a ratio of the total number of people who actually had computers (say... 20 years ago) IMHO would be higher than today. There might be more projects overall, but the number of projects in comparison to the number of people who just use their computers as toasters as a ratio is lower. But as you're not convinced for anything for any reason, it would be pointless for me to tell you about it. ;-) Which just goes to show that Mark Twain wasn't just right... but was /damn right/ when he said this: "There are 3 kinds of lies in this world: lies, damn lies, and statistics." ;-) I will say this: There's a lot less "mainstream computer" hacking now than then. As in: When Tandy CoCos/Commie64's/Apple]['s/etc. were mainstream, there was a lot more hacking then for them than there is for hardware Pentium4/Athlon/etc. stuff now. A lot of the hacking that goes on nowadays is for routers (look at what you can hook up to a WRT54Gxx series router), CPLD/FPGA's, and now older computers. For the CoCo alone, there's VGA and SVideo upconverters, CompactFlash & IDE interfaces, etc... Today's computers (beyond overclocking... pffft.... that's not hacking) just aren't that hackable. Just my $0.000000002 worth. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch at 30below.com What do you do when Life gives you lemons, and you don't *like* lemonade????????????? From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 16 12:58:01 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:58:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 16, 7 01:00:49 am Message-ID: > Yes. There were two system packages - the older 11/730-Z box > (10.5"-tall rackmount box in the middle of a 42" rack, with room for > an RB80 below, and an RL02 above), and a newer BA-11-style package I've always known it as an 'R80' drive. It's got a somewhat SMD-like interfacee, but different enough to give SMD hackers headaches. I am told that the RM80 is the same drive with an external Massbus interface unit. My 11/730 came in that type of cabinet, and was a standard DEC configuration. Intead of the RL02 (which, BTW, was linked to the Integrated Drive Controller, there's no sepratate RL11 card in the machine), there's an TSU05 front-loading 1/2" magtape. A rebadged Cipher F880 IIRC. That does link to a separate controller card in a normal Unibus slot. > You can put 3rd party controllers, like SMD or SCSI in either the > 11/730 or 11/725, or you can hang an external BA-11 off of one and do > what you like (though the 11/730-Z makes it easy to route the BA-11 > cable, and the 11/725 does not). There was an official DEC way to put a Unibus expansion cabinet on the 11/730. A board that went in the Unibus Out slot on the CPU backplane, 3 ribbon cables to a paenl on the bulkhead, then a screened ribbon cable with 3 connectors on each end to a similar panel on the rack containing the expanison box, more ribbon cables to a PCB in the Unibus In slot of the backplane i nthe expansion box. I have this in my 11/730. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 16 13:04:20 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:04:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <4713F428.2228.B8A11D5@cclist.sydex.com> from "Chuck Guzis" at Oct 15, 7 11:13:44 pm Message-ID: > Photoshop teacher? Hmmm. When I took photography it was with a 4x5 > Calumet view camera. It's called 'dumbing down' :-( To get this mildly on-topic, I was talking to some friends over the weekend and the subject of the BBC micro came up. That machine, which was deisnged as an educational machine had a good implementation of BASIC with named procedueres, multi-line functions and local variables; a built-in assembler ; A user port (8 bit I/O, half a 6522, basically), and a ADC port (4 channel 10 bit). It was interesting that 25 years ago (or so), an introductory computing course would be expected to include programming (including the ideas of structured programs and some assembler) and some simple interfacing. Now most introductory computing courses seem to teach how to use the latest bloatware and nothing more :-( -tony From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 15:01:31 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:01:31 -0400 Subject: Fluketronix... In-Reply-To: <4714FF34.9010104@rogerwilco.org> References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com><018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha><4713CC4C.1030700@gmail.com> <003301c80f74$8e7ae1e0$5f5d1941@game> <4714FF34.9010104@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <4715189B.4060102@gmail.com> J Blaser wrote: >>>> Do stockholder dividends count against profits? >>>> >>> I do not know the details, but the idea is to take the profit before >>> taxes and either shovel them back into the company in some fashion, >>> manage to write them off as some sort of loss, and/or let the >>> shareholders take it. It is much easier for individual shareholders to >>> shelter themselves from taxes, and isolates the tax liability. > > Dividends are paid out AFTER all expenses (including taxes) are > otherwise accounted for. Dividends are paid out of profits, not > revenues, if you get my meaning, since the dividend is a distribution of > 'net income' to the company's owners, that is, the shareholders. The > company first must pay taxes on its gross income, leaving net income to > be distributed to the shareholders according to the determination of the > board of directors. > > Dividends, indeed, are a perfect example of double-taxation. Of course, > YOU have to pay taxes, too, on any dividends that you receive as a > shareholder, thus the 'double-taxation' comment. And dividends are > always considered to be short-term returns, thus are taxed at your > normal tax rate. > > As was mentioned, a corporation WANTS to minimize income, trying to > shuffle off as much as possible as an expense, thus minimizing the > taxes, and if these 'expenses' are bonuses to employees (including the > CEO, for sure), well then that can be treated as an expense, before > taxes come into the picture. At least bonuses to employees are only > taxed once, as income to the individual. So what exactly is to stop a corporation from writing bylaws that, in effect, employ each shareholder as a part-time employee who gets paid their dividend as salary? Peace... Sridhar From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Tue Oct 16 15:01:56 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:01:56 +0200 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:06:32 -0700 "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > Some older equipment required a 3-phase 400Hz supply (i.e. get your > MG set running). Once I saw the MG of a CDC Cyber 960 starting. It needed about one minute to get up to speed. It sucked 400 V @ 120 A three phsase during startup. Comment of the operator: "I am glad those NH-fuses are so slow. We have only a 80 A feed. So starting the machine overloads the 80 A fuses quite a bit." The VAX6000 uses three phase to generate a 300 V (?) DC main supply. But it is possible to convert it to single pahse. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Tue Oct 16 15:10:19 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:10:19 -0600 Subject: Fluketronix... In-Reply-To: <4715189B.4060102@gmail.com> References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com><018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha><4713CC4C.1030700@gmail.com> <003301c80f74$8e7ae1e0$5f5d1941@game> <4714FF34.9010104@rogerwilco.org> <4715189B.4060102@gmail.com> Message-ID: <47151AAB.4070908@rogerwilco.org> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > J Blaser wrote: >>>>> Do stockholder dividends count against profits? >>>>> >>>> I do not know the details, but the idea is to take the profit before >>>> taxes and either shovel them back into the company in some fashion, >>>> manage to write them off as some sort of loss, and/or let the >>>> shareholders take it. It is much easier for individual shareholders to >>>> shelter themselves from taxes, and isolates the tax liability. >> >> Dividends are paid out AFTER all expenses (including taxes) are >> otherwise accounted for. Dividends are paid out of profits, not >> revenues, if you get my meaning, since the dividend is a distribution >> of 'net income' to the company's owners, that is, the shareholders. >> The company first must pay taxes on its gross income, leaving net >> income to be distributed to the shareholders according to the >> determination of the board of directors. >> >> Dividends, indeed, are a perfect example of double-taxation. Of >> course, YOU have to pay taxes, too, on any dividends that you receive >> as a shareholder, thus the 'double-taxation' comment. And dividends >> are always considered to be short-term returns, thus are taxed at >> your normal tax rate. >> >> As was mentioned, a corporation WANTS to minimize income, trying to >> shuffle off as much as possible as an expense, thus minimizing the >> taxes, and if these 'expenses' are bonuses to employees (including >> the CEO, for sure), well then that can be treated as an expense, >> before taxes come into the picture. At least bonuses to employees >> are only taxed once, as income to the individual. > > So what exactly is to stop a corporation from writing bylaws that, in > effect, employ each shareholder as a part-time employee who gets paid > their dividend as salary? > > Peace... Sridhar > Nothing. If that were to be possible for the large-ish corporations out there, I'm sure that would be a preferred route to take. But there is no way that a Mega-, Large-, or even a Mid-sized corporation could have thousands of shareholders on the payroll! ;-) Besides, what are you going to have 80-year old Mr. and Mrs. Doe do for you if you are a Gulf of Mexico oil exploration outfit? :-o - Jared From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 15:25:12 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:25:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: eBay - old Tektronix 8080a board Message-ID: <446584.4916.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> 150170304866 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545433 From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 15:25:45 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:25:45 -0400 Subject: Fluketronix... In-Reply-To: <47151AAB.4070908@rogerwilco.org> References: <200710151934.l9FJYqTi014552@onyx.spiritone.com><018301c80f6c$eb5cef00$f0fea8c0@alpha><4713CC4C.1030700@gmail.com> <003301c80f74$8e7ae1e0$5f5d1941@game> <4714FF34.9010104@rogerwilco.org> <4715189B.4060102@gmail.com> <47151AAB.4070908@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <47151E49.6010302@gmail.com> J Blaser wrote: >>>>>> Do stockholder dividends count against profits? >>>>>> >>>>> I do not know the details, but the idea is to take the profit before >>>>> taxes and either shovel them back into the company in some fashion, >>>>> manage to write them off as some sort of loss, and/or let the >>>>> shareholders take it. It is much easier for individual shareholders to >>>>> shelter themselves from taxes, and isolates the tax liability. >>> >>> Dividends are paid out AFTER all expenses (including taxes) are >>> otherwise accounted for. Dividends are paid out of profits, not >>> revenues, if you get my meaning, since the dividend is a distribution >>> of 'net income' to the company's owners, that is, the shareholders. >>> The company first must pay taxes on its gross income, leaving net >>> income to be distributed to the shareholders according to the >>> determination of the board of directors. >>> >>> Dividends, indeed, are a perfect example of double-taxation. Of >>> course, YOU have to pay taxes, too, on any dividends that you receive >>> as a shareholder, thus the 'double-taxation' comment. And dividends >>> are always considered to be short-term returns, thus are taxed at >>> your normal tax rate. >>> >>> As was mentioned, a corporation WANTS to minimize income, trying to >>> shuffle off as much as possible as an expense, thus minimizing the >>> taxes, and if these 'expenses' are bonuses to employees (including >>> the CEO, for sure), well then that can be treated as an expense, >>> before taxes come into the picture. At least bonuses to employees >>> are only taxed once, as income to the individual. >> >> So what exactly is to stop a corporation from writing bylaws that, in >> effect, employ each shareholder as a part-time employee who gets paid >> their dividend as salary? > > Nothing. If that were to be possible for the large-ish corporations out > there, I'm sure that would be a preferred route to take. Cool. > But there is no way that a Mega-, Large-, or even a Mid-sized > corporation could have thousands of shareholders on the payroll! ;-) Well, there's a fair amount of administrative overhead dealing with a publicly traded corporation already. I wonder how big of an increase it would be to just call the shareholders employees. > Besides, what are you going to have 80-year old Mr. and Mrs. Doe do for > you if you are a Gulf of Mexico oil exploration outfit? :-o Nothing except own the shares. It would be the only responsibility of the job. Peace... Sridhar From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 15:26:49 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:26:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tandy 2000HD on eBay - w/3.5" drive Message-ID: <723977.90492.qm@web61014.mail.yahoo.com> 170157593582 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search that gives answers, not web links. http://mobile.yahoo.com/mobileweb/onesearch?refer=1ONXIC From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 15:29:24 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:29:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Morrow MicroDecision (eBay) Message-ID: <256637.5776.qm@web61015.mail.yahoo.com> 230179883509 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 15:31:08 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:31:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: another Zorba (eBay) Message-ID: <855452.39016.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> 250174363572 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 15:38:27 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:38:27 -0700 (PDT) Subject: funky terminal Message-ID: <65355.96763.qm@web61011.mail.yahoo.com> 110179808242 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Tonight's top picks. What will you watch tonight? Preview the hottest shows on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/ From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 15:41:08 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:41:08 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/16/07, Tony Duell wrote: > > Yes. There were two system packages - the older 11/730-Z box > > (10.5"-tall rackmount box in the middle of a 42" rack, with room for > > an RB80 below, and an RL02 above), and a newer BA-11-style package > > I've always known it as an 'R80' drive. Right... it says "R80" on the front, but in a variety of places (Ultrix device drivers, perhaps?) it's also called the RB80, presumably to distinguish it from the RM80 and RA80 (same HDA, for folks unfamiliar with it, but 3 different host interfaces). > It's got a somewhat SMD-like > interfacee, but different enough to give SMD hackers headaches. I am told > that the RM80 is the same drive with an external Massbus interface unit. AFAIK, yes... the RM80 is an "R80" HDA on an RM02/RM03-like pedestal, with a Massbus cage below. I wouldn't be surprised to learn there are numerous board and packaging similarities )in the Massbus portion) between an RM02/RM03 and an RM80. From experience, I know that the RM02/RM03 HDA is a repackaged CDC 9762 (same guts, different shell), *but* a real 9762 is SMD (and works with Emulex controllers, SI 9900s, etc) and the RM02/RM03 does not, despite identical cabling. I was assigned the task, once, to attempt to convert an RM02 back into a real SMD drive - in effect, making it a 9762 with a DEC faceplate, but it was beyond my skill level at the time. 80% or so of the boards in the HDA card cage were absolutely identical between the two drives, and the obivous differences didn't seem insurmountable, but it just didn't work. Thinking back, one of the things I _didn't_ check was the card cage backplane wiring - perhaps there was a difference there. > My 11/730 came in that type of cabinet, and was a standard DEC > configuration. Intead of the RL02 (which, BTW, was linked to the > Integrated Drive Controller, there's no sepratate RL11 card in the > machine), there's an TSU05 front-loading 1/2" magtape. A rebadged Cipher > F880 IIRC. That does link to a separate controller card in a normal > Unibus slot. I think I saw that once or twice in the real world - tape rather than RL02 on top. Yes... I didn't explicitly state it (but implied it via the device names DQA0: and DQA1:) that the RL02 did not require a RL11. As far as we were concerned, it was a feature, since RL02 was our "sneaker-net" medium of choice, and at the time, an RL11 was on the order of $600. > > (though the 11/730-Z makes it easy to route the BA-11 > > cable, and the 11/725 does not). > > There was an official DEC way to put a Unibus expansion cabinet on the > 11/730. A board that went in the Unibus Out slot on the CPU backplane, 3 > ribbon cables to a paenl on the bulkhead, then a screened ribbon cable > with 3 connectors on each end to a similar panel on the rack containing > the expanison box, more ribbon cables to a PCB in the Unibus In slot of > the backplane i nthe expansion box. I have this in my 11/730. That seems newer. Our 11/730 was ordered the day they were announced at a DECUS, if I remember the story correctly. Our guys had a devil of a time with the cable management, and had to escalate their calls a couple of levels inside DEC for our "self-install" of the machine. There was this especially tricky "Z fold" to measure. Get it right, and the cables for the IDC disk (1 x 40 + 1 x 60 + 1 x 26), the DMF-32 (1 x 25 + 3 x 40), and the Unibus (wide, white, mylar flat cable) all fit nicely in the tray and were properly protected when extending the CPU. Get that Z-fold wrong, and it was a thick mess that was nearly twice as thick as would fit. :-P Once the cables were installed, though, it was a nice package. The fact that it was an inexpensive (for the time) Unibus VAX, made it a critical part of our operation for over 8 years. I learned to install Unix (Ultrix v1.1) on that machine in 1985, and later, it was our VMS 5.0 host for relinking our product images against the VMS 5 run-time libraries so we could support 4.x and 5.x simultaneously. I wrote a script to stuff our object files over DECnet (via the DMF-32 DDCMP-compatible sync serial port) and pull the linked files back, so that we could run one script on our build machine and have it crank out both versions of the binaries into our tape-cutting directories. That one little machine, tied to our 11/750, is how we kept our company going for years and years. When we finally did get that 8300, it was solely for VAXBI product development, never for day-to-day use. To that, we trusted our VAX-11 hardware right to the very end day in 1993. -ethan From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 15:44:50 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:44:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: vintage Wang keybaord (word processor?) Message-ID: <79555.11676.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> now that's vintage - 290170169824 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Tue Oct 16 15:49:10 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:49:10 +0200 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20071016224910.26f3ac72@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:31:04 +0100 (BST) ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > I would also routinely read schematic diagrams on such journeys... Some time ago I liked to read "The Rothammel"[1]. Just like other people read a novel. It was so relaxing and fun to read. But finaly I didn't get into ham radio. Insted I got into good, old, analog black and white photography. Now my kitchen is a darkroom also... Though, I still want to learn Morse code. I appreciate handcrafted arts like this. [1] "Rothammels Antennen Buch" => "Rothammels Antenna Book". A book that describes and discusses all kinds of antennas from longwave to micowave for ham radio. It is _the_ german antenna book. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 15:53:09 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:53:09 -0400 Subject: vintage Wang keybaord (word processor?) In-Reply-To: <79555.11676.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> References: <79555.11676.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > now that's vintage - 290170169824 Throttle back on the Ebay adverts, dude. Tell us when something noteworthy comes along (S/360, Lisa 1, Sphere, Straight-8 - the top shelf stuff). -- Will From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Oct 16 15:49:44 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:49:44 +0100 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 09:06:32 -0700 > "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > >> Some older equipment required a 3-phase 400Hz supply (i.e. get your >> MG set running). > Once I saw the MG of a CDC Cyber 960 starting. It needed about one > minute to get up to speed. It sucked 400 V @ 120 A three phsase during > startup. That's the sort of thing worthy of video. Big power control stuff is fun :) Was that rating for the entire system, or just the CPU & I/O (no drives etc.)? From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Tue Oct 16 15:55:19 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:55:19 +0200 Subject: That poor System/36 In-Reply-To: <1526edde79d298ae542589cf30b7ccf2@valleyimplants.com> References: <1526edde79d298ae542589cf30b7ccf2@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <20071016225519.67ae6540@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 16:08:55 -0700 Scott Quinn wrote: > A VAX 7000 or AlphaServer 4k series will dim the lights on a branch > circuit, You don't need to go that big. A (at least my) MicroVAX III+ in a BA123 does this. :-) -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 15:58:29 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:58:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: vintage (and expensive) floppy drive tester Message-ID: <439610.83813.qm@web61018.mail.yahoo.com> 260169460280 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545433 From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 16 16:00:16 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:00:16 -0600 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <20071016224910.26f3ac72@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <20071016224910.26f3ac72@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <47152660.4070808@jetnet.ab.ca> Jochen Kunz wrote: > But finaly I didn't get into ham radio. Insted I got into good, old, > analog black and white photography. Now my kitchen is a darkroom also... > Though, I still want to learn Morse code. I appreciate handcrafted arts > like this. Well if you don't spill trays of water on the tubes, I am sure they can share the same space.They even glow red so you don't need a darkroom light. While waiting for your photos to develop you can practice your code. :) From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 16:05:47 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:05:47 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: <371740.89176.qm@web52710.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 10/16/07, William Donzelli wrote: > > ...The RDM board is bad, but that's not required > > to get the machine to run. It appears to be failure of > > the RAM on the RDM board, actually. Which of course is > > soldered to the board, and there is no diagnostic > > routine to find out which chip is bad... > > Most (all?) RDMs for the VAX-11/750s were made from that odd circuit > board process where wires are laminated right to the board (the name > escapes me right now, and I will remember just after sending this). Multiwire, as was pointed out elsewhere (though there's another technology that we used for our VAXBI boards, called "Unilayer" which is much like Multiwire, except, I think, the difference is that the Unilayer wire nest is laid out on a bit of pressure/heat-sensitive adhesive sheet, then bonded to the substrate as a unit, not one wire at a time. > Those boards could develop faults from the wires breaking. I suppose that's possible, but unless there has been mechanical damage or massive cyclical temperature shifts, I think the wires are somewhat sturdy. I certainly can believe there's a bad SRAM on that board, especially if they are 2114s or similar. But as the OP said, it's not an essential board. -ethan From glen.slick at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 16:05:56 2007 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:05:56 -0700 Subject: DoveBid: IBM 3180 Display Stations, ending 10/17/07, Guttenberg, NJ Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90710161405q54b62f9ai1f74c5efc4c41495@mail.gmail.com> No idea if these are interesting to anyone on the list. About 16 of these, currently at $10 each, no reserve, ending 10/17/07 morning in Guttenberg, NJ. http://www.dovebid.com/assets/display.asp?ItemID=cpt69125 IBM 3180-2 15" Green Monochrome Display Station. Includes Keyboard, Logic and Power Cable. Display P/N: 2446813, Logic P/N: 2446964. Keyboard P/N: 1389262. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 16:08:42 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:08:42 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/16/07, William Donzelli wrote: > > I agree that the custom gate arrays make the 11/750 unrepairable > > (except for raiding parts), but I still think it's a good compromise > > between size and performance, for the VAX-11 line. > > Has anyone here actually ever come across an 11/750 failure caused by > one of the gate arrays? They are remarkably reliable machines. They are remarkably reliable. I think I've seen one or two gate array failures in the 10-15 years that I was around 11/750s on a regular basis (and none lately, but that's a sample size of effectively zero). Even so, that's two out of dozens of problems that were in less esoteric arenas (like bad power supplies and such). > > Neither are _easy_ to find, but I think it's > > more likely to find a dusty 11/750 in a corner of a warehouse than an > > 11/780. > > One will find ten /750s for every /780 these days. I am entirely willing to accept that ratio (and since I have two 11/750s... that means that somewhere in my pile should be 1/5 of a 11/780, right ;-) -ethan From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 16 16:09:03 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:09:03 -0600 Subject: funky terminal In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:38:27 -0700. <65355.96763.qm@web61011.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: In article <65355.96763.qm at web61011.mail.yahoo.com>, Chris M writes: > 110179808242 Yeah, this one has been on ebay for a while, expired a couple times with no bids. It kinda reminds me of a minitel, but its not exotic enough for me to bite right now. Trying to spend my money more wisely right now :) -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 16 16:10:05 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:10:05 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com>, <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local>, <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4714C63D.24565.EBEB58E@cclist.sydex.com> On 16 Oct 2007 at 21:49, Jules Richardson wrote: > Was that rating for the entire system, or just the CPU & I/O (no drives etc.)? Sounds like the usual 40 HP setup for the CPU+I/O. Larger systems with more I/O sometimes added a 20 HP MG. The beautiful things about these was that you didn't need much in the way of filtering (400Hz 3- phase gives a ripple frequency of 2400 Hz) or regulation (usually accomplished with a panel meter and a 3-phase variac. Of course, that's not taking into account the need for HVAC and chilled water supply... CDC Sunnyvale Ops had a big cooling tower -- sent up a plume that you could see from a long distance away when the smog wasn't too thick. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 16 16:15:30 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:15:30 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: , , Message-ID: <4714C782.9841.EC3A8E3@cclist.sydex.com> On 16 Oct 2007 at 17:05, Ethan Dicks wrote: > Multiwire, as was pointed out elsewhere (though there's another > technology that we used for our VAXBI boards, called "Unilayer" which > is much like Multiwire, except, I think, the difference is that the > Unilayer wire nest is laid out on a bit of pressure/heat-sensitive > adhesive sheet, then bonded to the substrate as a unit, not one wire > at a time. IIRC, there was another technique called "stitched wire", but the specifics escape me at the moment. Cheers, Chuck From aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Oct 16 16:16:01 2007 From: aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk (Andrew Burton) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:16:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: eBay - old Tektronix 8080a board In-Reply-To: <446584.4916.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <958701.5975.qm@web23407.mail.ird.yahoo.com> I don't know about anyone else here, but I don't mind ebay links to retro computers/equipment on auction sites. However, if you are going to send several links one after the other, why not stick them in one email? I am behind in my email (about a months worth behind) with 1700 new emails to read. Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Chris M wrote: 150170304866 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545433 From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Oct 16 16:18:24 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:18:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> > > Photoshop teacher? Hmmm. When I took photography it was with a 4x5 > > Calumet view camera. On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: > It's called 'dumbing down' :-( Current "photography" teachers don't even know Scheimpflug's principle. From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 16:25:58 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:25:58 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> References: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: > Current "photography" teachers don't even know Scheimpflug's principle. And Jay's face turns a half shade more red, as the photography thread closes in... -- Will From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Tue Oct 16 17:25:16 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:25:16 -0300 Subject: That poor system/36 References: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <00bd01c81043$f52deca0$f0fea8c0@alpha> > Current "photography" teachers don't even know Scheimpflug's principle. Is this edible? Or to use in the hair? (sorry, brazilian joke...) :o) From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 16:43:08 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:43:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: HP 9000 in Australia Message-ID: <872064.33550.qm@web61022.mail.yahoo.com> 290170979430 ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! FareChase. http://farechase.yahoo.com/ From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 16:49:11 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:49:11 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47119E64.9010803@hawkmountain.net> References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> <009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> <47119E64.9010803@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: On 10/14/07, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: > > Am I the only one who never got into 286 systems (my 1st pc in the late 80's > > was a Packard Bell 286/12)? > > > I think skipping a generation wasn't uncommon.... I skipped the 386 > generation... went from my 286-20 to a 486DX-33. I skipped the > pentium pro generation too Since I came from Commodores on the low end and PDPs on the high end, when I was buying hardware in the 1980s and 1990s, I went from a $100 8088 running DOS, skipping the 286, to an AMD 386-DX/40 that I originally bought in 1992 to run Linux, but later ran DOS and Windows games on it (including beta-testing "Return to Zork" for Activision). Eventually, the 386-DX/40 gave way to an AMD 486-DX/80, then that was replaced by a Pentium-90. I made a career of upgrading when the CPUs were under $100 each, about two years behind the curve, IIRC. I never did own any Pentium-Pro hardware, but some of my friends did, and except for laptops, not too much in the P-II or P-III line. Still don't own any P-4 gear. OTOH, I'm still using an AMD 1400MHz Athlon as my main machine at home - the motherboard was free from a former boss in 2001, and the current CPU in it was, you guessed it, $99.99 at the Dayton Computerfest (a defunct show that was in the odd quarters from the Dayton Hamfest, but still at Hara Arena). I do *not* miss the days of DOS. I only dabbled in it to run certain apps (Morse code trainers, games, device programmers, etc. - except for one job, for CompuServe, where I was actually *paid* to program a DOS app - *shudder*. As such, I escaped the must-upgrade-as-often-as-possible mentality I saw in friends who were 100% hard-core DOS users in the 8088-286-386-486 days. I just got one machine and stuck with it until it just plain wouldn't run some game I wanted to play, then that was enough impetus to find a new $100-or-less CPU/video card/sound card/etc. -ethan From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 16 17:04:19 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:04:19 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com>, <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com>, <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4714D2F3.9702.EF05B8D@cclist.sydex.com> Back on the subject--a friend runs his 3-phase shop equipment off of a rotary "phase converter" (Rotocon). At first blush, this looks like nothing more than a 3-phase motor with single-phase feeding one (delta-connected) winding with the others being fed through a large capacitor form one side of the mains or the other. The equipment to be powered is connected in parallel with the windings of the Rotocon motor. I take it that this might work for motors, but probably would wreak havoc with a less-reactive load such as a VAX. Cheers, Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 16 17:31:34 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:31:34 -0600 Subject: vintage Wang keybaord (word processor?) In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:53:09 -0400. Message-ID: In article , "William Donzelli" writes: > > now that's vintage - 290170169824 > > Throttle back on the Ebay adverts, dude. Tell us when something > noteworthy comes along (S/360, Lisa 1, Sphere, Straight-8 - the top > shelf stuff). De gustibus non est disputandum. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 16 17:55:21 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:55:21 -0600 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> References: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <47154159.5000409@jetnet.ab.ca> Fred Cisin wrote: Current "photography" teachers don't even know Scheimpflug's principle. Well what is it. The only thing I remeber is 'contrast' is needed to see. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 16 18:00:43 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:00:43 -0600 Subject: cross-post:fpga-cpu upcoming events ibm1130 In-Reply-To: References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> <009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> <47119E64.9010803@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: <4715429B.5060906@jetnet.ab.ca> --- In fpga-cpu at yahoogroups.com, woodelf wrote: > > > > rtstofer wrote: > > >> > > In the end, the only goal is to get Unix V6 running. Just because... >> > > I don't have any long time love affair with PDP's. That level of >> > > commitment is reserved for the IBM 1130. > > > > Then why are you *NOT* doing that in a FPGA? > > >> > > Richard > > Ben. > > PS. Ok the hard drive, line printer and punch card > > card reader/punch don't fit in one.Other than I/O > > the IBM-1130 had a nice instruction set considering > > the time era it was in. > > But, I already have... The FPGA implementation runs the entire IBM software suite include DMS, Fortran, Macro Assembler, etc. Even Robert Louden's "Three Dimension Tic-Tac-Toe" is running. In the beginning I used a 25x80 VGA display core for the console printer, a PS/2 keyboard core for the console keyboard and a pair of serial port cores for the reader and printer. I got lazy and loaded the OS on a 16Mb flash EEPROM and copied it to RAM for a ram disk. That limited the system to 16k words versus a max of 32k. I have started working on an IDE interface for one or more CF drives. I have always viewed that as a 'someday' project because source code was never stored on the disk. Building programs from source decks is more interesting to watch if the disk is 'fresh'. It's been running for several months and I will do a "show and tell" at the Vintage Computer Fair, Nov 3rd, at the Computer Museum in Mountain View. There's a 5th annual IBM 1130 party at the fair. For that evolution, the console display and keyboard will be replaced with yet another serial port so that there will be 3 instances of Hyperterminal running on a laptop (ugly...). Portability drives the change. I like the IO system: it is all based on DMA and if you want to add a gadget, just hook it up to the DMA channel, invent an XIO command sequence and write the driver. I only implemented the devices that used DMA like the 2501 card reader and 1403 printer. I added delays so that the IO devices run in real time. The IBM 1130 is the first computer I ever used, starting in 1969. There are a few 'firsts' in life that are worth remembering; this is one. Fortunately, there were others... Richard From rborsuk at colourfull.com Tue Oct 16 18:38:31 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:38:31 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip Message-ID: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> Curse you who mentioned this Mainframe on the list. My love of big iron couldn't let it go to the dumpster. Check out the trip for this monster on my family blog at http://www.borsuk.us Any ex-Amdahl administrators out there? Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Tue Oct 16 19:51:29 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:51:29 -0300 Subject: IBM 5120 monitor issues References: <4712F50D.3080900@msu.edu> Message-ID: <01af01c81057$e3b5a2b0$f0fea8c0@alpha> > But I'd like to see what I can do about the monitor. The picture exhibits > a strange behavior that I can't say I've seen before. The horizontal > retrace seems to "fold" over itself in the middle (like the electron gun > is doing a "loop" in the center of the screen for each line). I've taken > a (terrible) picture of the fault and put it at: > http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/5120disp.jpg). The picture's also a bit > jumpy. I've tinkered a bit with the various adjustments on the CRT's PCB > but it doesn't make any appreciable difference. Have phun on the horizontal circuit caps. There is one shorted or with a huge loss probably on the yoke line. From silent700 at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 18:54:53 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:54:53 -0500 Subject: another Zorba (eBay) In-Reply-To: <855452.39016.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> References: <855452.39016.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51ea77730710161654n21b4cedbx33dae19c28a7bbd3@mail.gmail.com> On 10/16/07, Chris M wrote: > 250174363572 Classy leatherette case! From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Tue Oct 16 19:00:35 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:00:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Another curse added. I really loved it when I saw it on ebay. I'm very glad you saved it. Did your car survive? Or did it need major work? Bob Robert Borsuk wrote: Curse you who mentioned this Mainframe on the list. My love of big iron couldn't let it go to the dumpster. Check out the trip for this monster on my family blog at http://www.borsuk.us Any ex-Amdahl administrators out there? Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk Tue Oct 16 19:05:21 2007 From: classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk (Ensor) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:05:21 +0100 Subject: eBay - old Tektronix 8080a board References: <958701.5975.qm@web23407.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00da01c81051$68fa2b00$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Hi, > However, if you are going to send several links one after the >other, why not stick them in one email? That would be *VASTLY* more friendly.... Also please put something like "[eBay]" in the subject line, so I can set up OE to automatically filter them out. :-) TTFN - Pete. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 16 19:06:15 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:06:15 -0700 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <47154159.5000409@jetnet.ab.ca> References: , <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net>, <47154159.5000409@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4714EF87.27314.F5FF991@cclist.sydex.com> On 16 Oct 2007 at 16:55, woodelf wrote: > Well what is it. The only thing I remeber is 'contrast' is needed to see. If you've ever used a view camera, you'd know. Basically, the object that you're photographing is not parallel to the film focal plane. That means only one area on the object will be in sharp focus--the nearer and farther parts will be out-of-focus. You could stop way down, but that may not be practical or sufficient. So you tilt the film plane sufficiently to bring everything into focus. And with that, I'm through with the OT stuff on this thread. Cheers, Chuck From rborsuk at colourfull.com Tue Oct 16 19:06:56 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:06:56 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> It's a beauty. My car survived. Though I don't think I'll be doing any major towing with it anymore. It just doesn't have that umph anymore. I'm also going to go with a heavier weight oil until I can rebuild the engine. It just turned 150k miles on the trip. On Oct 16, 2007, at 8:00 PM, Bob Rosenbloom wrote: > Another curse added. I really loved it when I saw it on ebay. > I'm very glad you saved it. Did your car survive? Or did it > need major work? > > Bob > > Robert Borsuk wrote: Curse you who > mentioned this Mainframe on the list. > My love of big iron couldn't let it go to the dumpster. Check out > the trip for this monster on my family blog at > > http://www.borsuk.us > > Any ex-Amdahl administrators out there? > > Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From rborsuk at colourfull.com Tue Oct 16 19:09:25 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:09:25 -0400 Subject: Amdahl and eBay - old Tektronix 8080a board In-Reply-To: <00da01c81051$68fa2b00$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> References: <958701.5975.qm@web23407.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <00da01c81051$68fa2b00$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: <5178F6E7-8C7D-48A1-9DE1-4633EA231F66@colourfull.com> eBay and combined links would be cool. BUT a big thanks to someone though who posted the eBay link to the Amdahl Mainframe so I could save it. Rob On Oct 16, 2007, at 8:05 PM, Ensor wrote: > Hi, > > > However, if you are going to send several links one after the > >other, why not stick them in one email? > > That would be *VASTLY* more friendly.... > > Also please put something like "[eBay]" in the subject line, so I > can set up OE to automatically filter them out. :-) > > > TTFN - Pete. > Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From ballsandy at msn.com Tue Oct 16 19:24:19 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:24:19 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: Sorry to disrupt your photography derailment but... IT'S GONE!! I went to check something in the photo and the person has de-listed it. I don't have his contact info anymore so we will never know what it's fate was. I assume the worst. :( Wait a sec, they also got rid of my account! Now I'm angry! _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself with free Messenger emoticons. Get them today! http://www.freemessengeremoticons.ca/?icid=EMENCA122 From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Tue Oct 16 19:25:53 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:25:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Amdahl and eBay - old Tektronix 8080a board In-Reply-To: <5178F6E7-8C7D-48A1-9DE1-4633EA231F66@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <271922.12460.qm@web82710.mail.mud.yahoo.com> It was me who posted it. I also appreciate you posting your save. It's nice to know that passing on ebay and govliq finds actually ends up saving stuff. Next, we are hoping for photos of it up and running! Bob Robert Borsuk wrote: eBay and combined links would be cool. BUT a big thanks to someone though who posted the eBay link to the Amdahl Mainframe so I could save it. Rob On Oct 16, 2007, at 8:05 PM, Ensor wrote: > Hi, > > > However, if you are going to send several links one after the > >other, why not stick them in one email? > > That would be *VASTLY* more friendly.... > > Also please put something like "[eBay]" in the subject line, so I > can set up OE to automatically filter them out. :-) > > > TTFN - Pete. > Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From dkelvey at hotmail.com Tue Oct 16 19:37:45 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:37:45 -0700 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> References: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> Message-ID: > From: rborsuk at colourfull.com ---snip---> > the trip for this monster on my family blog at> >> > http://www.borsuk.us> >> > Any ex-Amdahl administrators out there?> >Hi I thought I'd mention this to keep others from doing damage. Unless the vehicle you have is specifically designed for all the time 4 wheel drive, one should never run 4 wheel drive on hard pavement. This is known to break axels and drive lines. 4 wheel drive is intended for surfaces that the tires are slipping. Those with all the time 4 wheel have special clutches or limited slip transfer cases. There is no good reason to use 4 wheel drive on the hiway unless it is covered in snow. Rob was lucky to not have done any damage. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts!? Play Star Shuffle:? the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 19:53:53 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:53:53 -0400 Subject: vintage Wang keybaord (word processor?) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47155D21.9050206@gmail.com> Richard wrote: >>> now that's vintage - 290170169824 >> Throttle back on the Ebay adverts, dude. Tell us when something >> noteworthy comes along (S/360, Lisa 1, Sphere, Straight-8 - the top >> shelf stuff). > > De gustibus non est disputandum. I agree, up to a point. There's a definite point after which it becomes universally distasteful. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 19:56:57 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:56:57 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> References: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <47155DD9.2040603@gmail.com> Robert Borsuk wrote: > Curse you who mentioned this Mainframe on the list. > My love of big iron couldn't let it go to the dumpster. Check out the > trip for this monster on my family blog at > > http://www.borsuk.us > > Any ex-Amdahl administrators out there? That's a fairly newish Amdahl. Anyone who's admin'd IBM (myself included -- although there are actually a number of us on the list), should have very little trouble with Amdahl. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 20:02:33 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:02:33 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> References: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <47155F29.3020403@gmail.com> Robert Borsuk wrote: > Curse you who mentioned this Mainframe on the list. > My love of big iron couldn't let it go to the dumpster. Check out the > trip for this monster on my family blog at > > http://www.borsuk.us > > Any ex-Amdahl administrators out there? I would have definitely rented a diesel box-van with a ten-speed for that one. You have big brass ones, sir. I moved a machine roughly that size in a regular 24' Penske box truck once. I had enough ratchet straps, but the problem was that the wood tie-down strapping wasn't beefy enough to stop the machines rolling. They got a bit dented. Imagine moving a machine ten times that big, or more. I've done it. It sucked. It was worth it. Peace... Sridhar From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 20:24:33 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:24:33 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <47155F29.3020403@gmail.com> References: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> <47155F29.3020403@gmail.com> Message-ID: > I moved a machine roughly that size in a regular 24' Penske box truck > once. I had enough ratchet straps, but the problem was that the wood > tie-down strapping wasn't beefy enough to stop the machines rolling. > They got a bit dented. Wiki "dunnage". -- Will From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 16 20:26:46 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:26:46 -0600 Subject: Amdahl and eBay - old Tektronix 8080a board In-Reply-To: <271922.12460.qm@web82710.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <271922.12460.qm@web82710.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <471564D6.9000403@jetnet.ab.ca> Bob Rosenbloom wrote: > It was me who posted it. I also appreciate you posting your save. It's nice > to know that passing on ebay and govliq finds actually ends up saving stuff. > Next, we are hoping for photos of it up and running! The computer that is. The car is optional. Ben. > Bob From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 20:28:18 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:28:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: vintage Wang keybaord (word processor?) In-Reply-To: <47155D21.9050206@gmail.com> Message-ID: <642022.45956.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> --- Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Richard wrote: > >>> now that's vintage - 290170169824 > >> Throttle back on the Ebay adverts, dude. Tell us > when something > >> noteworthy comes along (S/360, Lisa 1, Sphere, > Straight-8 - the top > >> shelf stuff). > > > > De gustibus non est disputandum. > > I agree, up to a point. There's a definite point > after which it becomes > universally distasteful. who knows what discussion it could promote. That's my feeling anyway. Those aren't my auctions duh __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 20:33:08 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:33:08 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: References: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> <47155F29.3020403@gmail.com> Message-ID: <47156654.8050805@gmail.com> William Donzelli wrote: >> I moved a machine roughly that size in a regular 24' Penske box truck >> once. I had enough ratchet straps, but the problem was that the wood >> tie-down strapping wasn't beefy enough to stop the machines rolling. >> They got a bit dented. > > Wiki "dunnage". Noted for future use. Thanks. Peace... Sridhar From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 20:39:42 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:39:42 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <47156654.8050805@gmail.com> References: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> <47155F29.3020403@gmail.com> <47156654.8050805@gmail.com> Message-ID: > Noted for future use. Thanks. I use cardboard boxes. It is impressive how much abuse a small one, built up and taped but empty, can take. A bunch nestled together like bricks can be downright amazing. Cram them wherever there is air, between racks and such. You would be amazed at how little rolling will occur, even without straps (except on the rearmost items - you still will need straps). And at the end of the trip, I just fill up your recycle bin. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 20:51:18 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:51:18 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: > That's the sort of thing worthy of video. Big power control stuff is fun :) What would you see? All the rotating stuff in any MG post-1920 is all enclosed. The only thing that might be visible is the flexible coupling between the motor and generator (great to get your tie stuck in). -- Will From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Oct 16 20:58:09 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:58:09 -0600 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <47156C31.9040309@jetnet.ab.ca> William Donzelli wrote: >> That's the sort of thing worthy of video. Big power control stuff is fun :) > > What would you see? All the rotating stuff in any MG post-1920 is all > enclosed. The only thing that might be visible is the flexible > coupling between the motor and generator (great to get your tie stuck > in). So that is what you do with Door to Door vacum cleaner salesmen. > -- > Will From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 21:04:58 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:04:58 -0400 Subject: What to download for a PDP-8 (was Re: That poor system/36) Message-ID: On 10/15/07, woodelf wrote: > Tony Duell wrote: > > > Check. I have a PDP8/e on my desk. > I thought a PDP-8 was desk sized. PDP-8s come in many sizes - the Straight-8 was "desk-sized" in that it was available with a built-in desk. The -8/a is about the size of a microwave oven (1/2 the size of a PDP-8/e), but was also available built _into_ a desk) the CPU was in front of your knees, with room to mount two RX01/RX02 units or an RL01/RL02 where the drawers would normally go. DECmates are the size of large desktop PCs or smaller (like the DM III)... various sizes and weights, all 12-bits, 4Kwords to 32Kwords (to 128Kwords in rare cases)... > That reminds me to find > a smaller case for SBC6120 so it can fit on a desk. > I have stuffed in a old wooden box. At one point, I had one mounted in an external floppy case for an Amiga... http://penguincentral.com/retrocomputing/sbc6120/ > As a newbie with just setting up the PDP-8 and OS/8 what is the > best way to get started? I can download stuff from bitsavers > but what to download. Besides the OS, there's a few collections of BASIC programs running around - several games and a few of the typical utility-type programs. If you want to write programs, you'll need the right programs for that - PAL assembler, FORTRAN-II, FORTRAN-IV (slow on an SBC-6120 since it doesn't have the optional-for-a-PDP-8/a FPP12 math co-processor), BASIC, etc. BASIC.SV should be on most OS/8 distros you find out there. The FORTRAN stuff might take a little hunting and gathering. DECUS used to have a large PDP-8 collection, but I don't know that swaths of it are available anywhere. -ethan From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Oct 16 20:08:16 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:08:16 -0300 Subject: Today's hackers (was: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco) Message-ID: <01C81041.294D2760@mandr71> >Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:57:18 -0400 >From: Roger Merchberger >Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco >Rumor has it that M H Stein may have mentioned these words: >>You won't convince me that there isn't far more activity in this area today >>than there was then, in part just because it's so much more affordable and >>mainstream world-wide; how many people in Russia, China or India were >>playing with computers in the 70s? Even if only .00001% ever take the >>cover off their computer, that's still a lot of additional tinkerers. >When anyone starts out with "You won't convince me..." and you don't have >_hard numbers_ then it doesn't matter who has what facts... >... but for that matter, I'd disagree with you anyway... for the simple >fact that you're looking at *sheer numbers.* I'd look at it as a per-capita >number: The number of people who dug deep into their computers as a ratio >of the total number of people who actually had computers (say... 20 years >ago) IMHO would be higher than today. There might be more projects overall, >but the number of projects in comparison to the number of people who just >use their computers as toasters as a ratio is lower. >But as you're not convinced for anything for any reason, it would be >pointless for me to tell you about it. ;-) --------------------- No, you can't *convince* me because I already agreed with your viewpoint ;-). What are you "disagree"ing with? I think you said exactly the same thing I did, that it's almost certain that more people are digging into their computers today than back then just because there are so many more people with computers, while it *is* probably true that for various reasons fewer people who own or have access to computers are tinkering with them. Maybe you missed my original post where I said, "perhaps the *percentage* of computer owners who dug into the hard/software was higher then, but most of the time you *had to*, whereas today most of it is done for fun and enjoyment, as well as pride of accomplishment." (Note the "probably" and "perhaps," since I *don't* have hard numbers ;-) Since you're picking nits, I'll even amend that to "almost certainly;" happy? Computers are more reliable and harder to tinker with at the hardware level today and people have a lot more options how to spend their spare time; so what? There's still a lot more overall activity and with all the forums and Web sites like this one it's a lot broader, more fun and not as socially isolated today, at least as far as I'm concerned; hackers like us were probably (!) more outside of the mainstream back then, and the chances of someone understanding what you mean by GHz or MBs are probably (!) better today. I still don't see why case mods, seeing how far you can push speed with water-cooling etc., or programming a CPLD instead of burning your fingers on a hot soldering iron should be excluded; that sounds a little like old-fogey-ism to me. Times have changed and folks are doing what's relevant and possible today for mostly the same reasons and satisfaction as then; more often than not that involves modern approaches to *old* hardware & software because it's almost impossible to do some of the things we used to, due to the complexity, inaccessibility and lack of documentation of most of today's hardware. I think a lower percentage of people having to spend time dealing with flaky and unreliable hardware, poor/buggy software and tools, incompatible disk formats, etc. is a good thing; my enjoyment of that sort of thing may well be a symptom of a mental disorder. Sheesh; like I said, 'nuff said. m From shumaker at att.net Tue Oct 16 21:11:55 2007 From: shumaker at att.net (Steve Shumaker) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:11:55 -0700 Subject: RS6000 server Message-ID: <47156F6B.2050803@att.net> PublicSurplus.com has an RS6000 server system up for auction Is this considered a vintage system of any value? Worth going after? Auction #217152 - IBM RS/6000 SERVER (TYPE 7017-S7A): IBM RS/6000 S-SERVER, TYPE 7017-S7A, SN 10-92250. UNIT IS TWO TOWERS, EACH MEASURING 23"W X 41"D X 62"H. INCLUDES IBM MAGSTAR MP 3570 AND IBM 7133-020. ss a newbie to the list From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 16 21:23:43 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:23:43 -0400 Subject: RS6000 server In-Reply-To: <47156F6B.2050803@att.net> References: <47156F6B.2050803@att.net> Message-ID: <4715722F.50505@gmail.com> Steve Shumaker wrote: > PublicSurplus.com has an RS6000 server system up for auction > Is this considered a vintage system of any value? > Worth going after? Yes, and yes. Uses a lot of juice, and is extremely heavy, but definitely worth picking up. Peace... Sridhar > Auction #217152 - IBM RS/6000 SERVER (TYPE 7017-S7A): > IBM RS/6000 S-SERVER, TYPE 7017-S7A, SN 10-92250. UNIT IS TWO TOWERS, > EACH MEASURING 23"W X 41"D X 62"H. INCLUDES IBM MAGSTAR MP 3570 AND IBM > 7133-020. From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Tue Oct 16 23:22:20 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:22:20 -0700 Subject: Possible DEC based controller on Dovebid In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47158DFC.4050809@sbcglobal.net> The first photo shows what looks like a DEC terminal, and the last photo shows some DEC like boards. Bob http://www.dovebid.com/assets/display.asp?ItemID=fab11474 From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Oct 17 00:04:09 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:04:09 -0600 Subject: What to download for a PDP-8 (was Re: That poor system/36) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> Ethan Dicks wrote: > Besides the OS, there's a few collections of BASIC programs running > around - several games and a few of the typical utility-type programs. > If you want to write programs, you'll need the right programs for > that - PAL assembler, FORTRAN-II, FORTRAN-IV (slow on an SBC-6120 > since it doesn't have the optional-for-a-PDP-8/a FPP12 math > co-processor), BASIC, etc. BASIC.SV should be on most OS/8 distros > you find out there. The FORTRAN stuff might take a little hunting and > gathering. I still find it hard to belive that PDP-8/a had a math co-processor. That does make the PDP-8 the smallest computer with real floating point I can think of. Ben. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 00:04:41 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:04:41 -0400 Subject: Possible DEC based controller on Dovebid In-Reply-To: <47158DFC.4050809@sbcglobal.net> References: <47158DFC.4050809@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: On 10/17/07, Bob Rosenbloom wrote: > The first photo shows what looks like a DEC terminal, and the last photo > shows some DEC like boards. > > http://www.dovebid.com/assets/display.asp?ItemID=fab11474 That's a VT52 (or something similar in the same shell) in the first picture, and, as you say, some DEC boards in the last. The auction text mentions a PDP-11, but there's not enough detail to tell what it might be. Given the terminal era and appearance of the boards, I'd place it in the late 1970s, suggesting that the PDP-11 might be an 11/04 or 11/34. -ethan From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Wed Oct 17 00:19:24 2007 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim s) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:19:24 -0700 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: References: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> <47155F29.3020403@gmail.com> <47156654.8050805@gmail.com> Message-ID: <47159B5C.9050102@msm.umr.edu> William Donzelli wrote: >>Noted for future use. Thanks. >> >> I drill in 2x4's into the deck of the van with drywall screws w/o running them all the way down. At the end of the trip, I back them out and remove the 2/4's (or whatever). I belive in strapping the cargo to the deck, not to the sides, since on close examination of several vans they appeared to be made of plastic or styrofoam, and the only real surface that could handle any abuse was the hardwood deck. Be sure that you get a metal body truck and not one of the plastic ones if you secure things to the sides of the truck. Jim From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 00:34:57 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:34:57 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <47159B5C.9050102@msm.umr.edu> References: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> <47155F29.3020403@gmail.com> <47156654.8050805@gmail.com> <47159B5C.9050102@msm.umr.edu> Message-ID: <47159F01.7030004@gmail.com> jim s wrote: >>> Noted for future use. Thanks. >>> > I drill in 2x4's into the deck of the van with drywall screws w/o > running them all the way down. At the end of the trip, I back them out > and remove the 2/4's (or whatever). I belive in strapping the cargo to > the deck, not to the sides, since on close examination of several vans > they appeared to be made of plastic or styrofoam, and the only real > surface that could handle any abuse was the hardwood deck. Do you have to make any repairs to the deck before you return the truck? Peace... Sridhar From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Wed Oct 17 01:12:09 2007 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim s) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:12:09 -0700 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <47159F01.7030004@gmail.com> References: <73294E92-B5F6-402A-8619-1123E544C172@colourfull.com> <47155F29.3020403@gmail.com> <47156654.8050805@gmail.com> <47159B5C.9050102@msm.umr.edu> <47159F01.7030004@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4715A7B9.70609@msm.umr.edu> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > Do you have to make any repairs to the deck before you return the truck? I did less damage to the floor than was already there. I used drywall screws which leave small holes behind. Jim From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Oct 17 02:17:33 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:17:33 +0100 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4715B70D.7060905@yahoo.co.uk> William Donzelli wrote: >> That's the sort of thing worthy of video. Big power control stuff is fun :) > > What would you see? All the rotating stuff in any MG post-1920 is all > enclosed. Hmm, I think the latest one I had dealings with was a Dorman out in NZ - that was 1950's (ex-telecoms) and the generator side was mostly exposed (and no covers at all on the motor side of things). The British Polars I did some messing around with were mid-30's; the generators were something like 1200kVA each (and stood about 6ft tall) - could power a fair few mainframes off those! It's mainly the sound of these things running that's so captivating (and the smell) I suppose, rather than the visuals. From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Oct 17 02:22:26 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:22:26 +0100 Subject: What to download for a PDP-8 (was Re: That poor system/36) In-Reply-To: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4715B832.3030801@yahoo.co.uk> woodelf wrote: > I still find it hard to belive that PDP-8/a had a math co-processor. > That does make the PDP-8 the smallest computer with real floating > point I can think of. Ben. For a math copro to be called as such, does it have to integrate itself with the CPU's instruction set - or does some sort of box of tricks sitting on an I/O port and accessed through normal CPU instructions count? I'm not sure what the correct definition is. What do you mean by 'smallest computer' by the way? Smallest in terms of spec? I'm pretty sure some of the 1950's stuff had optional floating point hardware available, although it wouldn't have been physically small :) cheers Jules From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Wed Oct 17 03:18:39 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:18:39 +0200 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <20071017101839.3d0b9c58@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:49:44 +0100 Jules Richardson wrote: > That's the sort of thing worthy of video. Big power control stuff is > fun :) You can visit it: http://www.cray-cyber.org/ > Was that rating for the entire system, or just the CPU & I/O (no > drives etc.)? It was just the MG starting. The machine was switched off. Current droped to a few A once the MG got to speed. The MG has a big flywheel. Therefore it needs all that energy to get up to speed. The idea is that the flywheel stores enough energy to compensate short power outages. If power stays off longer the disel kicks in. (But at Cray-Cyber they skiped the disel. ENOSPACE.) AFAIK a minimal configuration of the machine (CPU + I/O) needs about 20 kW. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From dm561 at torfree.net Wed Oct 17 03:04:38 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:04:38 -0300 Subject: Any Vector Graphic experts out there? Message-ID: <01C8107B.57526AA0@mandr71> I've got a Vector MZ with a ZCB processor and BitStreamer II I/O board; at present the 4.0 'C' series monitor program uses serial port A on the BitStreamer for its console, but I want to remove the BitStreamer and use the serial port on the ZCB instead. At a fast glance I can't see a jumper setting that would accomplish that; anybody out there have any experience/ideas by any chance? TIA, mike From cc at corti-net.de Wed Oct 17 04:29:37 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:29:37 +0200 (CEST) Subject: IBM 5120 monitor issues In-Reply-To: <01af01c81057$e3b5a2b0$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <4712F50D.3080900@msu.edu> <01af01c81057$e3b5a2b0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Alexandre Souza wrote: >> But I'd like to see what I can do about the monitor. The picture exhibits >> a strange behavior that I can't say I've seen before. The horizontal >> retrace seems to "fold" over itself in the middle (like the electron gun is >> doing a "loop" in the center of the screen for each line). I've taken a >> (terrible) picture of the fault and put it at: >> http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/5120disp.jpg). The picture's also a bit >> jumpy. I've tinkered a bit with the various adjustments on the CRT's PCB >> but it doesn't make any appreciable difference. > > Have phun on the horizontal circuit caps. There is one shorted or with a > huge loss probably on the yoke line. Ehmm, you've replied to a posting that has apparently never appeared on the list, at least it didn't arrive here... Who was the original poster? Anyway the machine's not working as it halted at $01F6, or did you (->original poster) halt the machine with internal HALT switch? The routine around 01F6 (specifically 01EE-01FA) is POST 'G' "Keyboard Test". It enables interrupt 3 and busy waits for a short time: ; --- Test G --- ; Keyboard Test 01EE 8BC7 LBI R11, #'G' 01F0 7B50 MOVB (R5)+, R11 01F2 1440 CTRL $4, #$40 ; enable int.3 and typamatic 01F4 AF00 ADD R15, #$01 01F6 CF04 SS R15 01F8 F005 BRA $01F4 ; small delay 01FA 1442 CTRL $4, #$42 ; disable typamatic Christian From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Wed Oct 17 04:34:10 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:34:10 +0100 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> References: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <200710171034.10685.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 01:06:56 Robert Borsuk wrote: > It's a beauty. My car survived. Though I don't think I'll be doing > any major towing with it anymore. It just doesn't have that umph > anymore. I'm also going to go with a heavier weight oil until I can > rebuild the engine. It just turned 150k miles on the trip. Looks like a fun trip though. I'm surprised you had problems towing it home with your Disco - which engine does it have? We regularly pull two or three tonnes with my friend's gas-converted 4.6 V8, but I'd expect the diesel to handle it better if a little slowly. I shifted roughly 700kg of VAX stuff in my Citro?n CX saloon a couple of years ago. There wasn't a lot of room for me to sit and drive it. I think most of the weight was between the Fujitsu Eagles and the grey wall. Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Wed Oct 17 04:34:18 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:34:18 +0100 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: References: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <200710171034.18048.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 01:37:45 dwight elvey wrote: > Those with all the time 4 wheel have special clutches or > limited slip transfer cases. Most European 4x4s have this, except very old Landrovers (Series 3 or earlier). Small Japanese 4x4s like Suzuki SJs have "solid" transfer boxes. I don't think I've seen a 4x4 with anything else that wasn't built at least 15 years ago. Gordon From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 04:37:07 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 05:37:07 -0400 Subject: What to download for a PDP-8 (was Re: That poor system/36) In-Reply-To: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 10/17/07, woodelf wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: > > > ... FORTRAN-IV (slow on an SBC-6120 > > since it doesn't have the optional-for-a-PDP-8/a FPP12 math > > co-processor)... > > I still find it hard to belive that PDP-8/a had a math co-processor. > That does make the PDP-8 the smallest computer with real floating > point I can think of. Ben. It's kinda worse than that. The FORTRAN-II compiler compiles down to rather ordinary and expected sequences of PDP-8 machine instructions. The FORTRAN-IV compiler, AFAIK, really just compiles down to sequences of FPP-12 instructions, which makes it fast if you have an FPP-12, but really slow (because of emulation) if you do not. There's a bunch of register-level information on the FPP-12 in the 1977-1978 edition of the "Small Computer Handbook" (it has a PDP-8/a on the cover, naturally). I received a copy of that from the local DEC field service guys back in 1982 when I picked up my first PDP-8. Unfortunately, I had an -8/L, and in my "n00bness", failed to appreciate all that was in there. Much later, when I found a 1968 copy of the handbook, much more made sense. In the meantime, I did read about the FPP-12 and decided that it would be cool to play with, but I've never run across one. -ethan From ceby2 at csc.com Wed Oct 17 05:05:10 2007 From: ceby2 at csc.com (Colin Eby) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:05:10 +0100 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <200710170932.l9H9W0pj020505@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: John / all, Sorry I've been lurkin' on this thread for a bit, though thoroughly amused that 2 years after I listed the system I can finally say, yes I have a taker. Or I think I do -- hence I put John's mind at rest by retiring the listing. If anyone had checked the cctalk archive, you'd see I was whining on the very subject of this system a couple of weeks back (see http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2007-September/245969.html). I'm afraid the collective amnesia on this point was kinda amusing me. Rest assured the system is safe (to the best of my knowledge... I'm 4000 miles from it and haven't check on it for a couple of years). Regards, Colin Eby From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Wed Oct 17 09:08:09 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:08:09 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Do you have a rackmount SGI Onyx RealityEngine2? Message-ID: If so, Uncle Sam wants you! Well, not really. I'd be immensely appreciative if someone with one of these could take a quick gander at a couple of things for me. To get mine back to functioning order I need to know the following to make certain I have the right parts. Please note this is specific to an RE2 Onyx - the IR Onyxes definitely had different Power Boards. The VTX may too, but I'm not positive - better to be safe than sorry later. 1) The number and types of Power Boards in the upper front card cage. (512, 505, 303, etc?) Part numbers would suffice. 2) The part numbers of the Online Switchers (located on the top of the OLS after it's been slipped out). And that's it! Many, many thanks to anyone who takes the time to whip out a screwdriver and take the front panel off their Onyx to let me know. JP Hindin From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Oct 17 09:30:28 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:30:28 -0500 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: <200710131908.51729.rtellason@verizon.net> <009301c80df5$dd759b80$5f5d1941@game> <47117FC5.1050702@oldskool.org> <00be01c80e0c$d64bd6f0$5f5d1941@game> <47119E64.9010803@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: <47161C84.5060707@oldskool.org> Ethan Dicks wrote: > I do *not* miss the days of DOS. I do, since it was simpler and easier to gain complete access to the hardware. You can still do so in other operating systems, but DOS+Debug remains one of my favorite environments to poke around in. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Oct 17 09:32:54 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:32:54 -0500 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20071016142818.047d9b60@mail.30below.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071016142818.047d9b60@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <47161D16.8070000@oldskool.org> Roger Merchberger wrote: > Today's computers (beyond overclocking... pffft.... that's not hacking) > just aren't that hackable. You're conveniently forgetting that most of the hacking done on 8-bitters was to overclock them. That, or expand their I/O options... which is already built-in to modern machines. So what kind of "hacking" would you like to perform on modern machines that you cannot, but *can* on 8-bitters? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From rborsuk at colourfull.com Wed Oct 17 10:02:48 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:02:48 -0400 Subject: Graphics Collector Message-ID: <09C32CF3-6EDD-4316-9538-4A05F1516844@colourfull.com> Who's our graphic's system collector on the list? Wasn't there a Richard or someone? I'm going through an old box of documentation of mine and I want to send the graphic stuff on to someone who collects/ scans/and post this kind of stuff. It's stuff on graphic chips, acceleration, etc. Glint, PowerVR and others. Please write me off the list. Thanks Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com Wed Oct 17 10:39:01 2007 From: zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:39:01 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47161D16.8070000@oldskool.org> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071016142818.047d9b60@mail.30below.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20071016142818.047d9b60@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071017112836.05406118@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Jim Leonard may have mentioned these words: >Roger Merchberger wrote: >>Today's computers (beyond overclocking... pffft.... that's not hacking) >>just aren't that hackable. > >You're conveniently forgetting that most of the hacking done on 8-bitters >was to overclock them. Maybe in your circles, certainly not mine. With most of the machines I used the system clock was tied to the main color burst freq. crystal, "overclocking" meant "no video" and when was the last time you'd seen a paper tape reader or teletypewriter hooked up to a CoCo3? ;-) No, most of the hacking done that I knew about was adding more storage (RAM/Magnetic/etc.) than the computer was originally designed to handle... 256K in a CoCo1/2, 1 or 2 Meg in a CoCo3, ditching the 160K drives and going to DSDD or DSQD drives, hard drives, etc. >That, or expand their I/O options... which is already built-in to modern >machines. So what kind of "hacking" would you like to perform on modern >machines that you cannot, but *can* on 8-bitters? Offtopically, show me an Intel 810 chipset motherboard that can take more than 512Meg RAM. If you can, it was _modified_ to do it, and I'd like to meet the individual that hacked it in. ;-) However, you are right about the expanded I/O: I was about to say "Add an A/D converter" but then I remembered the audio in on a PC sound card. Done. Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Bugs of a feather flock together." sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | Russell Nelson zmerch at 30below.com | From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 17 10:40:09 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:40:09 -0600 Subject: vintage Wang keybaord (word processor?) In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:53:53 -0400. <47155D21.9050206@gmail.com> Message-ID: In article <47155D21.9050206 at gmail.com>, Sridhar Ayengar writes: > Richard wrote: > >>> now that's vintage - 290170169824 > >> Throttle back on the Ebay adverts, dude. Tell us when something > >> noteworthy comes along (S/360, Lisa 1, Sphere, Straight-8 - the top > >> shelf stuff). > > > > De gustibus non est disputandum. > > I agree, up to a point. There's a definite point after which it becomes > universally distasteful. Neither William, yourself, nor I get to decide what's apropos for the list. If you don't find it of interest, just move on to the next message where you can read yet another message from Tony castigating anyone doing a board swap. Besides, I think Chris M. posted like 5-6 ebay auction 'heads up' messages, its hardly anything worth getting your panties in a bunch. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 17 11:11:33 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:11:33 -0700 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47161C84.5060707@oldskool.org> References: , , <47161C84.5060707@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <4715D1C5.22310.12D3B992@cclist.sydex.com> On 17 Oct 2007 at 9:30, Jim Leonard wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: > > I do *not* miss the days of DOS. > > I do, since it was simpler and easier to gain complete access to the > hardware. You can still do so in other operating systems, but DOS+Debug > remains one of my favorite environments to poke around in. Ditto here. Not much of a problem running DOS 7.x for FAT-32 with DOSLFN to give long filename support. With a faster disk, an otherwise unusuable (under WinXP) system can turn in very decent performance. And using a 32-bit DPMI server to run 32-bit command- line applications can turn in very good results indeed--while not putting a wall between the hardware and your applications. A lot of Linux has even been getting bloated enough to adversely affect performanc on many P1 systems, particularly when one of the graphics desktops is involved. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 17 11:22:31 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:22:31 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <20071017101839.3d0b9c58@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com>, <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk>, <20071017101839.3d0b9c58@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <4715D457.2968.12DDC5DD@cclist.sydex.com> On 17 Oct 2007 at 10:18, Jochen Kunz wrote: > It was just the MG starting. The machine was switched off. Current > droped to a few A once the MG got to speed. The MG has a big flywheel. > Therefore it needs all that energy to get up to speed. The idea is that > the flywheel stores enough energy to compensate short power outages. If > power stays off longer the disel kicks in. (But at Cray-Cyber they > skiped the disel. ENOSPACE.) AFAIK a minimal configuration of the > machine (CPU + I/O) needs about 20 kW. One of the reasons that I don't really want one of the old 60's era big iron mainframes (even if I could find one) is related to this. CDC Sunnyvale did not have a backup power supply for their machines. So, when power went, the automatic switch would switch over to-- nothing. When the onion fields in Moffet Park started giving way to tilt-ups, power outages were frequent. When the lights went out and that awful silence took possession of the machine floor, you packed up your stuff and left. The CE's would probably be repairing the dmanage to the machines for the rest of the day--and perhaps for the next several days. Power outages were not kind to big iron. Not at all. I remember seeing an early mini and noticing that one could safely power it off when not being used and I was amazed. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Oct 17 11:32:42 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:32:42 -0600 Subject: What to download for a PDP-8 (was Re: That poor system/36) In-Reply-To: <4715B832.3030801@yahoo.co.uk> References: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> <4715B832.3030801@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> Jules Richardson wrote: > For a math copro to be called as such, does it have to integrate itself > with the CPU's instruction set - or does some sort of box of tricks > sitting on an I/O port and accessed through normal CPU instructions > count? I'm not sure what the correct definition is. It does tricks, but then with only 8 opcodes defined on the PDP-8 what do you expect. > What do you mean by 'smallest computer' by the way? Smallest in terms of > spec? I'm pretty sure some of the 1950's stuff had optional floating > point hardware available, although it wouldn't have been physically > small :) True, but then they had longer word lengths than a tiny 12 bits. You are comparing apples and oranges here - late 50's and 70's > cheers > > Jules Ben. From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Oct 17 11:32:27 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:32:27 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4715D457.2968.12DDC5DD@cclist.sydex.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <20071017101839.3d0b9c58@SirToby.dinner41.local> <4715D457.2968.12DDC5DD@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710171232.27301.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 12:22, Chuck Guzis wrote: > One of the reasons that I don't really want one of the old 60's era > big iron mainframes (even if I could find one) is related to this. > CDC Sunnyvale did not have a backup power supply for their machines. > So, when power went, the automatic switch would switch over to-- > nothing. When the onion fields in Moffet Park started giving way to > tilt-ups, power outages were frequent. When the lights went out and > that awful silence took possession of the machine floor, you packed > up your stuff and left. The CE's would probably be repairing the > dmanage to the machines for the rest of the day--and perhaps for the > next several days. So what kind of problems were caused by the power outages? I assume that these are hardwar faults, not software-related things (like filesystems that were screwed up after the outage, etc). Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From frustum at pacbell.net Wed Oct 17 12:09:44 2007 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:09:44 -0500 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> <4715B832.3030801@yahoo.co.uk> <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> woodelf wrote: > Jules Richardson wrote: > >> For a math copro to be called as such, does it have to integrate >> itself with the CPU's instruction set - or does some sort of box of >> tricks sitting on an I/O port and accessed through normal CPU >> instructions count? I'm not sure what the correct definition is. > > It does tricks, but then with only 8 opcodes defined on the PDP-8 > what do you expect. > >> What do you mean by 'smallest computer' by the way? Smallest in terms >> of spec? I'm pretty sure some of the 1950's stuff had optional >> floating point hardware available, although it wouldn't have been >> physically small :) Northstar (of Northstar Horizon fame) sold an S-100 card that had a TTL FPU on it. It was a microcoded affair (256 words of 40 bits) that processed a nibble (BCD digit) per clock (4 MHz I believe). You could also specify how many digits were in the mantissa (2-14, even # digits only). Only the four basic functions, +-*/, were supported. Northstar had a version of BASIC that could use this FPU. As I recall, you had to specify how many digits of precision you wanted in your floating point numbers when you ordered BASIC (it wasn't dynamically specified in the interpreter). Others sold S-100 cards that used an AMD FPU chip. This too required poking data bytes and a command, then waiting for the result to be computed and then pulling out the result bytes. It wasn't somehow integrated into the instruction set of the host processor. Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point library code. From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 17 12:09:52 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:09:52 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <200710171232.27301.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com>, <4715D457.2968.12DDC5DD@cclist.sydex.com>, <200710171232.27301.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <4715DF70.18886.13091FEE@cclist.sydex.com> On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:32, Patrick Finnegan wrote: > So what kind of problems were caused by the power outages? I assume > that these are hardwar faults, not software-related things (like > filesystems that were screwed up after the outage, etc). All hardware. We didn't keep anything permanent on the development machines (tape and card was really the only permanent storage that I used). Cold deadstart/files reload from tape every time I came on the machine. We did keep some benchmark test data on 844 packs, but had backups for all of those. Typically, after the power would come up again, you'd see a couple of CE's staring at a scope hooked somewhere into the guts of a system with a dead display. A side bit of interest. PPU debugging on a 6000/Cyber 70/170 system was like driving in the dark with no lights--no blinkenlights or other indicators. If your driver was hung, you had to read the P- counter out bit-by-bit on a scope to figure out where that was. I wrote a PPU debugger that executed instructions one at a time very slowly in one PP under the supervision of a second. It didn't help much, but was fun to watch. The average CDC systems programmer, however, knew nothing about PP programming and wanted to keep it that way. Of those who did, even fewer knew anything about the firmware in the various controllers. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Oct 17 12:17:04 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:17:04 +0100 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <20071017101839.3d0b9c58@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <20071017101839.3d0b9c58@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <47164390.1030900@yahoo.co.uk> Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:49:44 +0100 > Jules Richardson wrote: > >> That's the sort of thing worthy of video. Big power control stuff is >> fun :) > You can visit it: http://www.cray-cyber.org/ Rats, seems to be broken at the moment (I get a connection, but no data ever comes back) :-( >> Was that rating for the entire system, or just the CPU & I/O (no >> drives etc.)? > It was just the MG starting. The machine was switched off. Current > droped to a few A once the MG got to speed. The MG has a big flywheel. > Therefore it needs all that energy to get up to speed. The idea is that > the flywheel stores enough energy to compensate short power outages. If > power stays off longer the disel kicks in. (But at Cray-Cyber they > skiped the disel. ENOSPACE.) AFAIK a minimal configuration of the > machine (CPU + I/O) needs about 20 kW. Ahh, I think we're talking about different things. To me, a motor-generator is a diesel (or other non-electric power source) driving a generator to produce electricity; I've always known something which just converts electric between forms as a rotary converter. (but I'm not sure quite what I'd call a flywheel-storage device) Maybe the terms are ambiguous... or I'm just plain wrong ;-) (I've had a few experiences with generating plant, but not in a computer context...) From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 17 12:21:40 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:21:40 -0700 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> References: , <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca>, <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:09, Jim Battle wrote: > Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket > calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and > then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very > slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point > library code. I remember that one. It may have been an early issue of Byte. I also wondered at the time if any speed was gained over just running plain old x80 code. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Oct 17 12:28:34 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:28:34 +0100 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> References: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> <4715B832.3030801@yahoo.co.uk> <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <47164642.1060203@yahoo.co.uk> Jim Battle wrote: >>> What do you mean by 'smallest computer' by the way? Smallest in terms >>> of spec? I'm pretty sure some of the 1950's stuff had optional >>> floating point hardware available, although it wouldn't have been >>> physically small :) > > Northstar (of Northstar Horizon fame) sold an S-100 card that had a TTL > FPU on it. It was a microcoded affair (256 words of 40 bits) that > processed a nibble (BCD digit) per clock (4 MHz I believe). You could > also specify how many digits were in the mantissa (2-14, even # digits > only). Only the four basic functions, +-*/, were supported. Yep - the number of systems which could have hardware FPU support added as an option must be pretty large, even discounting the IBM-compatible PC world. (I've had some NS32016 stuff with NS32081 FPU on the bench the last couple of weeks, for instance). > Others sold S-100 cards that used an AMD FPU chip. This too required > poking data bytes and a command, then waiting for the result to be > computed and then pulling out the result bytes. It wasn't somehow > integrated into the instruction set of the host processor. I suspect most solutions are (were) like that (add-on rather than integrated). > Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket > calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and > then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very > slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point > library code. OK, that really appeals to my appreciation of people coming up with off-the-wall solutions to problems. :-) From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Wed Oct 17 12:42:51 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:42:51 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <47164390.1030900@yahoo.co.uk> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <20071017101839.3d0b9c58@SirToby.dinner41.local> <47164390.1030900@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <20071017174251.38A13BA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Jules Richardson wrote: > Ahh, I think we're talking about different things. To me, a motor-generator is > a diesel (or other non-electric power source) driving a generator to produce > electricity; I've always known something which just converts electric between > forms as a rotary converter. (but I'm not sure quite what I'd call a > flywheel-storage device) "Rotary converters" are often not just a motor and a generator. Very often they make double-use of windings so that energy flows through them without being converted to mechanical motion (although of course mechanical motion is a necessary part of the amchine, otherwise it would just be a transformer). For applications where they can be used, they are smaller and lighter and cheaper that motor/generator sets. Many/most rotary converters will NOT make full output when the input is disconnected but the shaft is turning at full speed. So they are not usable for riding out a brief interruption like a motor/generator is. It may be European vs US usage, but in the US "motor" almost always means electric motor in this and other contexts. So what you call a "motor-generator" would be here just plain called a "generator" with the assumption that there was a power plant burning something in there (so you'd see "gas powered generator" or "diesel generator"). In the US "motor-generator" implies a motor, and a generator, and usually in computer usage some sort of flywheel too, with full conversion of electrical to mechanical energy at the motor end and another conversion back at the generator end. Tim. From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Wed Oct 17 12:48:23 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:48:23 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> References: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071017174823.2FF5ABA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:09, Jim Battle wrote: > > > Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket > > calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and > > then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very > > slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point > > library code. > > I remember that one. It may have been an early issue of Byte. I > also wondered at the time if any speed was gained over just running > plain old x80 code. This had a couple of S-100 incarnations, one by an outfit known as Mini-Micro-Mart. In the 1975 timeframe when you had a few K of memory in a S-100 system it made at least a little sense. Later extrapolations used a AMD 9511/9512 chip, as in the Compupro System Support, and boards by TDL and Northstar. That was a very expensive chip whenever I saw it for sale :-). Tim. From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Oct 17 12:59:32 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:59:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <47154159.5000409@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> <47154159.5000409@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200710171800.OAA10823@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> Current "photography" teachers don't even know Scheimpflug's >> principle. > Well what is it. The only thing I remeber is 'contrast' is needed to > see. I wondered that too. Google turned out to be my friend. /~\ 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 pcw at mesanet.com Wed Oct 17 13:08:07 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:08:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <20071017174823.2FF5ABA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <20071017174823.2FF5ABA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: > This had a couple of S-100 incarnations, one by an outfit known > as Mini-Micro-Mart. In the 1975 timeframe when you had a few K > of memory in a S-100 system it made at least a little sense. > > Later extrapolations used a AMD 9511/9512 chip, as in the > Compupro System Support, and boards by TDL and Northstar. That > was a very expensive chip whenever I saw it for sale :-). > > Tim. > Didn't Marinchip make one as well? Peter Wallace From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 12:59:31 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:59:31 -0400 Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? In-Reply-To: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> References: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Message-ID: <200710171359.31665.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 16 October 2007 13:20, Tim Shoppa wrote: > There are some potentially onerous taxes associated with > stocking large quanties of parts/assemblies/computers that > might be of value to your business, depending on how your > locality figures inventory taxes. Sitting on inventory more > than a year or two can be incredibly costly if your jurisdiction > has inventory taxes. I think it was Don Lancaster that wrote once about how Santa Fe, NM (?) tried to consider a writer's unsold works to be "inventory"...! -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 17 14:18:18 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:18:18 -0700 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net>, <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4715FD8A.26611.137EB4AD@cclist.sydex.com> I also recall seeing an S100 card using a bipolar 8x8 multiplier some time back in the 70's. I don't recall the brand of the multiplier chip (Rockwell, TI?). Cheers, Chuck From marvin at west.net Wed Oct 17 14:21:16 2007 From: marvin at west.net (Marvin Johnston) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:21:16 -0700 Subject: VCF on November 4,5 Message-ID: <471660AB.BC494FA2@west.net> As usual, I'll be up at VCF this year with quite a bit of stuff to get rid, er, sell :). If anyone who will be there is looking for something, let me know and I can bring it up if I have it ... and it is not too bulky or heavy (unless there is a committment to buy.) As usual, I'll have quite a few books, some computers, and some other not easily found items. I am assuming that there will also be the informal Saturday night dinner at the usual place (can't remember the name, just how to get there.) One thing I've been thinking about for some time is a FAQ on cables and connectors, i.e. something with pictures and what computers, etc. it goes to. As such, I'll have a variety of cables with me that I'll be talking to others about to find out what they go to. Examples would be like the Appletalk cables, cables connecting the Commodore computers to disk drives, etc., video cables, DEC cables, etc. The rational is that I frequently find cables and don't know if they are worth saving or just scraping out, and I think others would benefit as well. From rivie at ridgenet.net Wed Oct 17 14:27:47 2007 From: rivie at ridgenet.net (Roger Ivie) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:27:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca>, <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:09, Jim Battle wrote: > >> Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket >> calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and >> then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very >> slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point >> library code. > > I remember that one. It may have been an early issue of Byte. I > also wondered at the time if any speed was gained over just running > plain old x80 code. IIRC, it was in the .01-centennial issue of Dr. Dobb's. I have a copy of it somewhere, but there's no way I could find it without a lot of effort. -- roger ivie rivie at ridgenet.net From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Oct 17 14:55:21 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:55:21 -0600 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <4715FD8A.26611.137EB4AD@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net>, <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <4715FD8A.26611.137EB4AD@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471668A9.1010504@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I also recall seeing an S100 card using a bipolar 8x8 multiplier some > time back in the 70's. I don't recall the brand of the multiplier > chip (Rockwell, TI?). Was also a pascal chip set, demoed for the S-100 bus. I am guessing AMD might be the multiplier chip.I think BYTE had a blurb on signed 8x8 multiplier for the 6800. > Cheers, > Chuck Ben. From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 17 15:30:24 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:30:24 -0700 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <471668A9.1010504@jetnet.ab.ca> References: , <4715FD8A.26611.137EB4AD@cclist.sydex.com>, <471668A9.1010504@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <47160E70.10853.13C0B6B9@cclist.sydex.com> On 17 Oct 2007 at 13:55, woodelf wrote: > Was also a pascal chip set, demoed for the S-100 bus. > I am guessing AMD might be the multiplier chip.I think BYTE > had a blurb on signed 8x8 multiplier for the 6800. Not to go too far astray, but anyone remember the M4TH (or something like that) S-100 (IIRC) Forth system? Anyone have one? Cheers, Chuck From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 17 15:32:41 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:32:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <20071017174823.2FF5ABA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <20071017174823.2FF5ABA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: <20071017133120.P19524@shell.lmi.net> > Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket > calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and > then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very > slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point > library code. Well, at least it's better than using solenoids and photocells (which would have permitted a wider choice of calculators) From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Oct 17 16:09:54 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:09:54 -0600 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <20071017133120.P19524@shell.lmi.net> References: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <20071017174823.2FF5ABA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <20071017133120.P19524@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <47167A22.1010501@jetnet.ab.ca> Fred Cisin wrote: > Well, at least it's better than using solenoids and photocells (which > would have permitted a wider choice of calculators) That was saved for I/O devices. :) From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Wed Oct 17 16:29:43 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:29:43 -0700 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) References: , <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca>, <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47167EC8.1302D204@cs.ubc.ca> Roger Ivie wrote: > > On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:09, Jim Battle wrote: > > > >> Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket > >> calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and > >> then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very > >> slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point > >> library code. > > > > I remember that one. It may have been an early issue of Byte. I > > also wondered at the time if any speed was gained over just running > > plain old x80 code. > > IIRC, it was in the .01-centennial issue of Dr. Dobb's. I have a copy of > it somewhere, but there's no way I could find it without a lot of > effort. The book "How to Design, Build & Program Your Own _Advanced_ Working Computer System" (1981/TAB Books) has an entire chapter devoted to this, mentioning a couple of chips. Note the underlining (part of the title) of "Advanced" to distinguish it from the earlier book, which was about designing, building & programming not-so-advanced working computer systems. I rather questioned the performance aspect too, esp. with using chips from pocket calcs, which typically weren't too fast. It all seemed like a hardware hacker's solution to something rather than learning some math and doing some programming. Fred Cisin wrote: > Well, at least it's better than using solenoids and photocells (which > would have permitted a wider choice of calculators) The book mentions a programming interface to calculators using relays for the keyboard matrix and calls such a device a "compulator" (only place I've ever heard the expression). From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Oct 17 16:30:22 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:30:22 -0400 Subject: VCF on November 4,5 In-Reply-To: <471660AB.BC494FA2@west.net> References: <471660AB.BC494FA2@west.net> Message-ID: <200710171730.22751.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Wednesday 17 October 2007, Marvin Johnston wrote: > As usual, I'll be up at VCF this year with quite a bit of stuff to > get rid, er, sell :). If anyone who will be there is looking for > something, let me know and I can bring it up if I have it ... and it > is not too bulky or heavy (unless there is a committment to buy.) As > usual, I'll have quite a few books, some computers, and some other > not easily found items. FWIW, VCF is on Nov 3-4, not 4-5, unless the website is wrong. :) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 16:44:11 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:44:11 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <47167A22.1010501@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <20071017174823.2FF5ABA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <20071017133120.P19524@shell.lmi.net> <47167A22.1010501@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 10/17/07, woodelf wrote: > Fred Cisin wrote: > > > Well, at least it's better than using solenoids and photocells (which > > would have permitted a wider choice of calculators) > That was saved for I/O devices. :) Yeah.... my mother had a Selectric typewriter back when we got our first computer (32K PET). She was, at first, interested in the solenoid-based typewriter adapter, but I think it turned out to be too expensive for her. I didn't get a printer on a computer until many years later, and that was dot matrix. Besides calculators, I remember an article in Byte to adapt a TI Speak-n-Spell to a computer. Given that the toys weren't cheap, I don't know how much it would have saved over an SC-02 Votrax chip, but certainly the Speak-n-Spell hack was interesting. I was just a bit bummed because as a PET-owning kid, I was just on the edge of that stuff - the "mainstream" of the day for those sorts of projects was _not_ my platform, and I was just learning how to do this stuff and, though I tried a few of these hacks, my success rate was substantially under 100% (the typewriter solenoid interface was one of those - there was not plug-and-play PET version. It was strictly roll-your-own). But it was all fun and instructional, even if it wasn't always successful. -ethan From dkelvey at hotmail.com Wed Oct 17 16:45:16 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 14:45:16 -0700 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <471668A9.1010504@jetnet.ab.ca> References: , <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net>, <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <4715FD8A.26611.137EB4AD@cclist.sydex.com> <471668A9.1010504@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca > > Chuck Guzis wrote: >> I also recall seeing an S100 card using a bipolar 8x8 multiplier some >> time back in the 70's. I don't recall the brand of the multiplier >> chip (Rockwell, TI?). > Was also a pascal chip set, demoed for the S-100 bus. > I am guessing AMD might be the multiplier chip.I think BYTE > had a blurb on signed 8x8 multiplier for the 6800. >> Cheers, >> Chuck > Ben. > I have a S100 board made by N* that is a math board but it doesn't have a FPU. It has a 2901 and some ROM chips. It only has the one 2901. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From grant at stockly.com Wed Oct 17 16:44:53 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:44:53 -0800 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> References: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <0JQ200FGMSHWEU70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> At 09:21 AM 10/17/2007, you wrote: >On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:09, Jim Battle wrote: > > > Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket > > calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and > > then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very > > slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point > > library code. > >I remember that one. It may have been an early issue of Byte. I >also wondered at the time if any speed was gained over just running >plain old x80 code. I have a MiniMicroMart packet scanned with details on an 8bit interface to a calculator chipset. Is anyone interested? Grant From dm561 at torfree.net Wed Oct 17 15:52:02 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:52:02 -0300 Subject: DOS lives (was: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco) Message-ID: <01C810E6.9274A6A0@mandr71> -------------Original Message(s): Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:11:33 -0700 From: "Chuck Guzis" Subject: Re: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco On 17 Oct 2007 at 9:30, Jim Leonard wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: > > I do *not* miss the days of DOS. > > I do, since it was simpler and easier to gain complete access to the > hardware. You can still do so in other operating systems, but DOS+Debug > remains one of my favorite environments to poke around in. Ditto here. Not much of a problem running DOS 7.x for FAT-32 with DOSLFN to give long filename support. With a faster disk, an otherwise unusuable (under WinXP) system can turn in very decent performance. And using a 32-bit DPMI server to run 32-bit command- line applications can turn in very good results indeed--while not putting a wall between the hardware and your applications. A lot of Linux has even been getting bloated enough to adversely affect performanc on many P1 systems, particularly when one of the graphics desktops is involved. Cheers, Chuck -------------Reply: Count me in! Dos7.x on a modern system is sweet; fast, stable as a rock and lots of time-tested *useful* utilities out there as well to make it even better. Hook it up to your network and who could ask for more; now if only there were drivers for some of the newer peripherals... Thanks, BillG! . m From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Wed Oct 17 17:50:17 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:50:17 -0300 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip References: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <033601c81111$021adbd0$f0fea8c0@alpha> > It's a beauty. My car survived. Though I don't think I'll be doing any > major towing with it anymore. It just doesn't have that umph anymore. > I'm also going to go with a heavier weight oil until I can rebuild the > engine. It just turned 150k miles on the trip. It will lower the noise, but make your (old and tired) oil pump work harder. Or not work anymore. Beware! From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 17:05:43 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:05:43 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: References: , <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net>, <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <4715FD8A.26611.137EB4AD@cclist.sydex.com> <471668A9.1010504@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <47168737.6000904@gmail.com> dwight elvey wrote: >> Was also a pascal chip set, demoed for the S-100 bus. >> I am guessing AMD might be the multiplier chip.I think BYTE >> had a blurb on signed 8x8 multiplier for the 6800. >>> Cheers, >>> Chuck > > I have a S100 board made by N* that is a math board but it > doesn't have a FPU. It has a 2901 and some ROM chips. > It only has the one 2901. I actually had an idea for an arbitrary-precision floating point unit for a bit-serial processor. Maybe I should implement. Peace... Sridhar From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 17 17:06:56 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:06:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: References: <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <20071017174823.2FF5ABA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> <20071017133120.P19524@shell.lmi.net> <47167A22.1010501@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20071017150034.A24069@shell.lmi.net> > > > Well, at least it's better than using solenoids and photocells (which > > > would have permitted a wider choice of calculators) > > That was saved for I/O devices. :) On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Ethan Dicks wrote: > Yeah.... my mother had a Selectric typewriter back when we got our > first computer (32K PET). She was, at first, interested in the > solenoid-based typewriter adapter, but I think it turned out to be too > expensive for her. I didn't get a printer on a computer until many > years later, and that was dot matrix. Too bad, those were FUN! I never came up with any other way to transfer my manuscript into my publisher's Merganthaler typesetter. One of my TRS model 3's had a keyboard that wasn't working well. But, if I hit a key enough times it would start to work. Put the box of solenoids on top of the keyboard and dumped a bunch of files, and the keyboard eventually worked OK. > Besides calculators, I remember an article in Byte to adapt a TI > Speak-n-Spell to a computer. Given that the toys weren't cheap, I > don't know how much it would have saved over an SC-02 Votrax chip, but > certainly the Speak-n-Spell hack was interesting. Percom peddled a Speak-n-spell interface. Speak-n-spell was fairly easy to find for $50; a fully assembled Votrax device was around $300. To quote Debee Norling, "A Votrax sounds like a Martian in a tin can". Speak-n-spell was beautifully clear, but with a finite vocabulary, From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 17:25:47 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:25:47 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: References: <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <4715FD8A.26611.137EB4AD@cclist.sydex.com> <471668A9.1010504@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 10/17/07, dwight elvey wrote: > I have a S100 board made by N* that is a math board but it > doesn't have a FPU. It has a 2901 and some ROM chips. > It only has the one 2901. Hmm... that sounds interesting - a 4-bit ALU math co-pro? Obviously it must be running many machine cycles to be digesting numbers a nybble at a time. It's not a general-purpose thing, but the Atari vector game hardware (Battlezone, Star Wars...) has an 8-bit main CPU and a 16-bit 2901-based "math box". It's been mentioned on the list before, but essentially, the 8-bit CPU feeds shaps to the 16-bit math co-processor, which does transforms to calculate the 2D vector endpoints to render the shapes as they tumble and rotate. -ethan From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 17:24:18 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:24:18 -0400 Subject: yet another logic family? In-Reply-To: <200710161724.NAA03162@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710161724.NAA03162@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200710171824.19015.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 16 October 2007 13:21, der Mouse wrote: > > I've just encountered some datasheets for parts that I've never heard > > of before -- 74ABTxxx parts. The lack of a "C" in there would seem > > to indicate TTL of some sort but looking at the datasheet the power > > supply current would seem to indicate CMOS of some sort, it's in the > > uA range. > > > > Anybody ever encountered these before? > > > > I note that packaging seems to be _only_ surface-mount styles. > > I think I have some, though I'll have to check when I get home - but > what I have is definitely DIPs, not SMT. If I'm right, ie, if what I > have really is 74ABTxxx, then they're CMOS chips with TTL-compatible > interfaces, ie, you can connect them directly to real 74xxx TTL logic. I just wondered because I'm running into more and more variations on the 74xx numbers, ones that don't make a whole lot of sense, while adding some datasheets to the parts pages. And I'm beginning to get the feeling that I'm reaching the point of diminishing returns with that stuff, that it might not be worth my while to bother with it. In addition to those, I ran across 74ASTxxx, 74ACQ (and 74ACTQ, which I'm guessing is the standard "works with TTL thresholds" variant), 74ALV, 74ALVC, 74ALVCF, 74ALVCH, 74FR, 74LCX, 74LVTH, 74OL, 74VCX, 74VCH (and 74VHCT), and 74VHCU. And this was all from only one mfr.! (Fairchild, in case anyone's curious.) The "LV" stuff seems to mean "Low Voltage", and the "Q" means Quiet (in terms of glitching or power supply noise or something), I'm not sure about the rest of it. I noted that I'd skipped those, and did not bother putting them into the table with the rest, for now. Somehow I doubt that I'm likely to run into most of those anyhow... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Oct 17 17:43:21 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:43:21 -0600 Subject: yet another logic family? In-Reply-To: <200710171824.19015.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710161724.NAA03162@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <200710171824.19015.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <47169009.2040808@jetnet.ab.ca> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I noted that I'd skipped those, and did not bother putting them into the > table with the rest, for now. Somehow I doubt that I'm likely to run into > most of those anyhow... I got the fealing all this bunch of TTL is bus & bus interface. Since everything in now custom chips, you don't need bus drivers any more. Ben. From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 17 17:49:13 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:49:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <200710171800.OAA10823@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> <47154159.5000409@jetnet.ab.ca> <200710171800.OAA10823@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <20071017152335.L25480@shell.lmi.net> >> Current "photography" teachers don't even know Scheimpflug's >> principle. > Well what is it. The only thing I remeber is 'contrast' is needed to > see. Sorry. Somebody pointed out to me that it was rather seriously off-topic.\ So, . . . If you are photographing a Vector Graphic, and you want to get both the screen and the keyboard in focus, you might not be able to stop down the lens enough to get the depth of field that you need. Or, you could tilt the lens and/or film plane of a "REAL" camera. If the object (microcomputer), lens "plane", and film plane are not parallel, you can get the distortion of focus that you need by having those three planes meet in a single line. Wikipedia's description is kinda adequate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle It is named after Theodor Scheimpflug, although he didn't invent it nor claim credit for it. "Modern" photography "teachers" often don't even know about lens and film plane swings, shifts, and tilts. From ddsnyder at zoominternet.net Fri Oct 12 18:29:30 2007 From: ddsnyder at zoominternet.net (Dan Snyder) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:29:30 -0400 Subject: Looking for an H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel for a KA650/KA655 ina BA213 References: <1e1fc3e90710111453l730db0f9m2fe7e33855b78616@mail.gmail.com> <624966d60710111928g54144d21s532ff2efc4a83b43@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <000601c80d27$bcfad560$6801a8c0@intel1gmmc> I have a few if Paul does not.. one from a mv3500 and another from a mv3800 (KA650/655) Dan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Anderson" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 10:28 PM Subject: Re: Looking for an H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel for a KA650/KA655 ina BA213 > I thing I just boxed a few up up for my "move". I'll try to check over the > weekend > > Paul > > > On 10/11/07, Glen Slick wrote: > > > > Anyone got a spare H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel for a KA650/KA655 in a > > BA213? > > > > I recently picked up a VAXServer 3600 which has the KA650 board but is > > missing the H3600-SA CPU bulkhead panel and I would like to acquire > > one. > > > From lynchaj at yahoo.com Fri Oct 12 18:28:33 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:28:33 -0400 Subject: Emailing: Universal Floppy reader, was Re Extracting CDOS and CP-M) files Message-ID: <004101c80d27$9b0327a0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> > Really don't understand all the talks about catweasels secrets, etc. > Just make few boards for the classiccomp group, and be done with the > subject ;-) I suppose--every once in awhile, I run into a very odd format that's not compatible with any of the commodity controllers and am forced to use a Catweasel on it. But 99% of what I see is plain old soft- sectored media, readable on most WD17xx or NEC 765 controllers. Cheers, Chuck -----REPLY----- There has been lots of talk about these universal floppy controller devices and I for one would LOVE to see one done but so far nobody has made one work. The closest thing I have seen is either the external floppy drive and compaticard combination or the parallel port Backpack external floppy drive from Microsolutions. If anyone actually makes the universal floppy reader, please put me down to buy one as well. However, IMO, the best solution for the universal floppy drive is an old PC with a Catweasel and a 3.5", 5.25", and/or 8" floppy drive. Then just write the software for it. Really, writing software for the Catweasel is really simple and it is 100% open source. The documentation is all available publicly, its supported in Linux, MS-DOS, and/or Windows, the owner/manufacturer is as accomodating as one could possibly hope for (Jens Schoenfeld). There is a developer list and lots of enthusiastic users. The hardware is cheap and readily available. Count me as diehard Catweasel fan! The Catweasel in an old PC is as close to the perfect universal floppy drive reader as far as I can see. What else is needed? More and better software and that is about all. There are Catweasel software available for practically every format imaginable. Most if not all of the soft sector formats are covered by the Tim Mann CW2DMK software. There are reader for many formats such as specialty disks as the Amiga, Atari, Macintosh, Commodore, Nintendo, Apple II, etc. There is software for many of the hard sector formats as well (NorthStar, PTDOS, Data General, and Heath, at least. Vector Graphic is in work). Thanks and best of luck with your project. Really, if anyone does complete a universal floppy reader which is even close to as good as the Catweasel, I will be in line to buy it. Andrew Lynch From ddsnyder at zoominternet.net Fri Oct 12 18:42:22 2007 From: ddsnyder at zoominternet.net (Dan Snyder) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:42:22 -0400 Subject: Unused Collections References: <004201c80ba8$3aaa4df0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: <001b01c80d29$8969ed60$6801a8c0@intel1gmmc> To all, I agree mostly with this thread, I do collect, the thrill of building or rebuilding, maxing out a config. And I do use some of the machines I have, but I do not have that many, I think as compared to others. About 70% of my collection serve only to satisfy my "pack rat" habit and are "on display" in my finished attic. I do use some as "furniture" like an end table in order to justify keeping, others serve as space heaters. Dan ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ensor" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 9:44 PM Subject: Unused Collections (was: Re: SGI Onyx - Three Phase to Two Phaseconversion) > Hi, > > > You are getting dangerously close to one of the great > >revelations of collecting life: > > > > Most collectors do not do anything with their > > collections. > > > > Nearly all of us are on this constant drive to get new items, > >chase them down, acquire them - then put them in the pile. 5 > >percent of the pile gets used and played with 95 percent of the > >time.... > > Never a truer word said.... > > I used to use the majority of my collection on and off, back when it was > limited to around 10 machines. Once it grew larger than that, things became > problematical (at one point I had well over 60 machines!). More and more > machines got "mothballed" I ended up with a situation where I simply don't > have the space to actually set up *ANY* of them....despite having gotten rid > of some 15 machines so far this year (and only acquiring 2 or 3 new ones). > > The thing is though, my interest in them is primarily in the hardware > anyway. Once I've stripped them down, repaired them and found out what > "makes them tick" my interest in them is pretty much over (though again, > I've not had the room to strip down/repair any of the machines I've > collected over the past 10 years or so, dammit). > > > TTFN - Pete. > > From snhirsch at gmail.com Sat Oct 13 16:08:08 2007 From: snhirsch at gmail.com (Steven Hirsch) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:08:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: TEACO Floppy Drive Tester Message-ID: I picked up this unit today at the NEAR-Fest swap meet in Deerfield, NH. Does anyone know anything about it? It has connectors for 5-1/4" and 8" drives and looks useful. It's a Model 4077, if that helps. Steve -- From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Sun Oct 14 09:40:38 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:40:38 +0200 (CEST) Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131444.22186.rtellason@verizon.net> <47112300.1CB98AFB@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <3510.217.225.105.67.1192372838.squirrel@217.225.105.67> Ethan Dicks said: > On 10/13/07, Roy J. Tellason wrote >> And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there >> that's >> offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount package. > > The first one of those I saw was a single-gate NAND in a 5-pin > pseudo-SOT-23 package (don't know the proper designation) on a Palm > Pilot memory board over 10 years ago. [...] > No idea where to get just a couple of those these days. Probably the > easiest thing is to scrape them off of a Palm SIMM from an old Palm > with a broken screen. Unnecessary. They are rather common, Farnell, Digikey etc. should have them. Google for 74LVC1G00 for a single 7400 type NAND, for instance. The series is labeled "1G", basically. Consequently, there should be also 02, 04, 08, 32, and 86 gates. -- Holger From derschjo at msu.edu Mon Oct 15 00:05:17 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:05:17 -0700 Subject: IBM 5120 monitor issues Message-ID: <4712F50D.3080900@msu.edu> Well, here I am again soliciting advice from you guys. One of these days I'll be able to answer someone else's question and I'll feel useful :). Anyway. I picked up an IBM 5120 (i.e. the "really big and heavy" (with emphasis on "heavy") variant of the 5100/5110) awhile back that has a few issues and I've just now got enough spare time to take a look at it. Finally got done cleaning out copious amounts of gooey black tar that used to be foam 25 years ago... There are two major issues, the first being the monitor, the second being a ROS error on startup (which I suspect may be quite difficult to solve...) But I'd like to see what I can do about the monitor. The picture exhibits a strange behavior that I can't say I've seen before. The horizontal retrace seems to "fold" over itself in the middle (like the electron gun is doing a "loop" in the center of the screen for each line). I've taken a (terrible) picture of the fault and put it at: http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/5120disp.jpg). The picture's also a bit jumpy. I've tinkered a bit with the various adjustments on the CRT's PCB but it doesn't make any appreciable difference. The monitor is labeled as a "Ball TV 90." I've done a bit of maintenance on old Arcade monitors, mostly of the "cap kit" variety so I know how to be careful around the HV sections, but I'm not much for troubleshooting (yet). Any suggestions on where to start? While I'm at it -- anyone have an archive of software for this thing anywhere? I haven't found much, I'm looking for floppy images (the 5120 has 2 8" drives). Thanks again for the advice... - Josh From wupdike at hotmail.com Fri Oct 12 11:41:53 2007 From: wupdike at hotmail.com (Warren Updike) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:41:53 -0400 Subject: looking for the HP Vectra ('286) and Televideo Telecat Message-ID: Whatever could be your interest in a Televideo Telecat 286?? I have one and it is complete. I was in a business that sold these units to doctor's offices for preparation and electronic submission of medical claims via modem. When I say complete, I mean everything: 2-floppy drives, hard drive, expanded (or extended??) memory board, monitor, keyboard, Basic and User manuals in original slip cases (pristine condition,) as well as the original system and diagnostic diskettes. It was in good working order when I unplugged it some years ago. I also have a complete set of Borland Quattro Pro V4.0, with all the distributed materials. This, of course, runs on the Telecat just fine. Somewhere I have other vintage software as well. Don't know if you are interested in any of this stuff. Let me know. Warren Updike Towson, MD 410-821-8246 From trasz at FreeBSD.org Mon Oct 15 02:56:49 2007 From: trasz at FreeBSD.org (Edward Tomasz Napierala) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:56:49 +0200 Subject: Indigo 2 - "NESTED EXCEPTION" at boot. In-Reply-To: <9f0a63580695aa13f45f9e1de0540fac@valleyimplants.com> References: <9f0a63580695aa13f45f9e1de0540fac@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <20071015075649.GA66683@pin.if.uz.zgora.pl> On 1012T0847, Scott Quinn wrote: >> Manual says something about "dissonant piano chord" - how is it supposed >> to sound like? One thing I've verified that without graphics card >> the chord sounds the same. > > It's an arpeggio of some sort, perhaps with a 7th. Haven't worked it out. > > Getting the boot-tune means that much of the computer is working properly. > Try pulling the graphics and reseating the memory and processor module & > memory and see what pops out on TTY0. It could be bad graphics (had that > happen once in an Indigo), in which case there is a surfeit of XL/Express > graphics boards around (I have an Extreme that I haven't used for years). Pulling out graphics didn't change anything. Removing the audio module did: the error changed to the following one: Exception: Status register: 0x30004803 Cause register: 0xb000c000 Exception PC: 0x9fc36674, Exception RA: 0x9fc3667c Interrupt exception CPU Parity Error Interrupt Local I/O interrupt register 2: 0xc8 CPU parity error register: 0x308 CPU parity error: address: 0x87fee88 NESTED EXCEPTION #1 at EPC: 9fc4b3b0; first exception at PC: 9fc36674 After that I replaced the memory with some spare SIMMs I had, put audio and graphics back in and it seems to work. That is, it actually gets to the boot menu. I didn't install IRIX yet, I have only 16MB of RAM. I wonder why the original memory didn't work. It's IBM brand, marked "11E8360BD-70 VJRX 32MB, 8M X 36 P". SIMMs from HP/9000 E25 don't work, too, but that's expected. > Do you know what the hardware is? Another possibility is that someone tried > to upgrade the processor module beyond what the boot PROM could support. > Most of the time the machine will 'let it slide', but some cause issues > (especially if it's a R10k on a R4k board). If you don't know for certain > than describe: "module with a big aluminum heat sink and a small portion of > board exposed that has several SMD memory chips on it" can localize it to > one of 2 processor modules (R4400 in either 200MHz/2MB cache or R4400/250 > with 2MB). Also give the IP number of the main board (it's near the riser > for the GIO/EISA cards), and the model number on the back > (CMNB007-something). System: IP22 Processor: 200 Mhz R4400, with FPU Primary I-cache size: 16 Kbytes Primary D-cache size: 16 Kbytes Secondary cache size: 2048 Kbytes Memory size: 16 Mbytes PROM Monitor SGI Version 5.3 Rev E IP22 Sep 28, 1995 (BE) Model No: CMNB007Y100 -- If you cut off my head, what would I say? Me and my head, or me and my body? From cctech at daffy.vax-11.org Mon Oct 15 19:04:43 2007 From: cctech at daffy.vax-11.org (cctech at daffy.vax-11.org) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:04:43 -0600 (MDT) Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 15 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: >>> So you want me to start off with a VAX? >> >> Lots of folks on this list have lots of nice things to say about the 11/750. > > Personally, I theink the 11/750 is not the best machine to try to keep > running. The reason is that the CPU is made up of a large-ish number of > custom gate array chips. Even when they were available as spares from DEC > they were very expensive, now they're unobtainanle other than by raiding > other 750s. > > If you have the space (and it's large), try to get am 11/780. I've never > been inside one, but I've read the printset (schematics) and it seems to > be all standard chips. > > If you don't have the spave, and can stand the lack of speed, consider an > 11/730. It's small (1 10.5" high rackmount unit), you can fit the > processor, disk and tape drives into a half-height rack (this was a > standard configuration). It's almost all standard chips, 2901 ALUs, TTL, > non-protected PALs, etc. > > -tony > I like the 750. It can be plugged into a 30A 150V outlet without any problems. It isn't as fast as the 780, but you can rebuild 4.3BSD from sources in about 10 hours. I have a goal to decap the gate arrays and take die photographs, but haven't done so yet. The 780 wants 3 phase power, but you can jury rig the supply box to run on 2 phase with an external supply for the air flow sensors. It generates a LOT of heat, so running without airconditioning is a sure path to hardware failure. 730's are dog slow. I'd take a uVax or VS3100 over a 730 except for curiousity sake. Unfortunately, many were cannabalized for the 2901's to repair video games, and the PALs are hard to find anymore. The printsets also appear to have errors (delibrate?) with regards to the PAL fusemaps. I got a second one to reconcile the errors (Thanks Emanuel!), but haven't had time to do so. Clint From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 15 19:25:45 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:25:45 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home Message-ID: <0JPZ00H4WAIPZ714@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: VAXen at home > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:21:05 +0100 (BST) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> > So you want me to start off with a VAX? >> >> Lots of folks on this list have lots of nice things to say about the 11/750. > >Personally, I theink the 11/750 is not the best machine to try to keep >running. The reason is that the CPU is made up of a large-ish number of >custom gate array chips. Even when they were available as spares from DEC >they were very expensive, now they're unobtainanle other than by raiding >other 750s. It's not that bad, lots of spares out there this side of the pond. It's a nice system as it's fast enough to be useful and while a big VAX it's not a huge vax like 780 or 8650. That and there were a fair number of machines kept in service that were supported. >If you have the space (and it's large), try to get am 11/780. I've never >been inside one, but I've read the printset (schematics) and it seems to >be all standard chips. The air handlers and the power will get you. It's a very nice well ordered machine in many ways. >If you don't have the spave, and can stand the lack of speed, consider an >11/730. It's small (1 10.5" high rackmount unit), you can fit the >processor, disk and tape drives into a half-height rack (this was a >standard configuration). It's almost all standard chips, 2901 ALUs, TTL, >non-protected PALs, etc. The only thing is a 730 is hard to expand to run fairly current VMS and it's slow. For that performance you can get a lot of other VAXen. It's up side is for one rack it's small and power consumption is within the realm of a 20A at 120V circuit with some of the smaller single cab version down near 12-13A at 120V. Allison From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Mon Oct 15 20:07:28 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:07:28 +0100 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB48@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> I'm sure I saw a development system at DEC for the 4004 running on a PDP-8 circa 1975. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Roy J. Tellason Sent: 13 October 2007 19:41 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery On Saturday 13 October 2007 05:13, Brent Hilpert wrote: > Can't remember where I read it, but it seemed plausible for the time > the > 4004 was being developed (1970), also that it was compounded by > management's perceptions that the 4004 was a little business on the > side and not willing to invest much in it, memory chips still being the focus. > On the other hand, I wonder what packages the original Busicom designs > utilised - that Intel would otherwise have been obligated to produce - > one would expect, or typically, they would be larger. (The 4040 would > go to a larger package, of course.) Having heard of the 4004 of course, I know basically nothing about it. Except that it's the part that was supposed to have started all this... And the 4040? I've only seen mention of it now and then. (Snip) > Perhaps not speed as an issue but you were wired into the small family > of chips that understood the highly specific machine/bus cycle, at > least until the 4008/9 came along that broke out the address/data busses. 4008/9? First I've heard of these at all. Can you give any sort of a general overview of what those parts were all about? I remember very little about the 8008, it having appeared in that Radio-Electronics article way back when. I do remember, even after the 8080 article in Popular Electronics came out, not thinking very much of microprocessors for quite a while. They seemed limited, it appeared that you had to really go through a lot to fit your thinking and way of doing things to what they could handle, and it took me quite a while before I got to the point where I got a really good grip on the tradeoffs involved, like low package count, etc. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From paul0926 at comcast.net Mon Oct 15 21:49:23 2007 From: paul0926 at comcast.net (Paul Heller) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:49:23 -0600 Subject: That poor system/36 References: Message-ID: <012101c80f9f$28c9ce30$6501a8c0@xppro> ----- Original Message ----- From: "William Donzelli" > I will admit to having one, but I am not overly proud of it. I think I > can honestly say it is the least liked machine in my collection. > For the record, I have one too. Once I hacked in an retrieved the master passwords, I was able to look around. It has an accounting application on it and a folder full of games. RPG anyone? From derschjo at msu.edu Tue Oct 16 13:12:46 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:12:46 -0700 Subject: IBM 5120 monitor issues In-Reply-To: <4712F50D.3080900@msu.edu> References: <4712F50D.3080900@msu.edu> Message-ID: <4714FF1E.9050102@msu.edu> (Resending this since it doesn't seem to have made it to the list after ~2 days... this of course guarantees that my original mail will show up post haste...) Well, here I am again soliciting advice from you guys. One of these days I'll be able to answer someone else's question and I'll feel useful :) . Anyway. I picked up an IBM 5120 (i.e. the "really big and heavy" (with emphasis on "heavy") variant of the 5110) awhile back that has a few issues and I've just now got enough spare time to take a look at it. Finally got done cleaning out copious amounts of gooey black tar that used to be foam 25 years ago... There are two major issues, the first being the monitor, the second being a ROS error on startup (which I suspect may be quite difficult to solve...) But I'd like to see what I can do about the monitor. The picture exhibits a strange behavior that I can't say I've seen before. The horizontal retrace seems to "fold" over itself in the middle (like the electron gun is doing a "loop" in the center of the screen for each line). I've taken a (terrible) picture of the fault and put it at: http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/5120disp.jpg). The picture's also a bit jumpy. I've tinkered a bit with the various adjustments on the CRT's PCB but it doesn't make any appreciable difference. The monitor is labeled as a "Ball TV 90." I've done a bit of maintenance on old Arcade monitors, mostly of the "cap kit" variety so I know how to be careful around the HV sections, but I'm not much for troubleshooting (yet). Any suggestions on where to start? While I'm at it -- anyone have an archive of software for this thing anywhere? I haven't found much, I'm looking for floppy images (the 5120 has 2 8" drives). Thanks again for the advice... - Josh From zmerch at 30below.com Tue Oct 16 13:21:49 2007 From: zmerch at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:21:49 -0400 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <038c01c80fe5$aa0b16c0$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <20071014220424.CC570564D6@mail.wordstock.com> <20071014170343.L43152@shell.lmi.net> <47125279.2777.52A83BE@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071016141747.04803810@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that Alexandre Souza may have mentioned these words: >>>How cool can the cooling system get? >>An old friend who worked on SAGE said the operators used to store >>their lunches inside the machine. Mmmm, toasty... > > OT: > > Some years ago, I had a serious infeccion... Ahh.... too much information! ;-) > Since I was in the parking lot with him, I asked him to open the hood of > his car. Put the sandwich between the tubes of the exaust manifold and > asked him to rev up the motor. In 30 seconds the sandwich was "eatable" :o) http://www.amazon.com/Manifold-Destiny-Guide-Cooking-Engine/dp/0375751408 If you ever wanna go "Emeril" with your engine...... Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers zmerch at 30below.com What do you do when Life gives you lemons, and you don't *like* lemonade????????????? From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 16 16:55:27 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:55:27 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home Message-ID: <0JQ0005MDY7V8CH1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: VAXen at home > From: "Ethan Dicks" > Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:08:42 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 10/16/07, William Donzelli wrote: >> > I agree that the custom gate arrays make the 11/750 unrepairable >> > (except for raiding parts), but I still think it's a good compromise >> > between size and performance, for the VAX-11 line. >> >> Has anyone here actually ever come across an 11/750 failure caused by >> one of the gate arrays? They are remarkably reliable machines. > >They are remarkably reliable. I think I've seen one or two gate array >failures in the 10-15 years that I was around 11/750s on a regular >basis (and none lately, but that's a sample size of effectively zero). > >Even so, that's two out of dozens of problems that were in less >esoteric arenas (like bad power supplies and such). Most common problems were power supplies and perpieral related. Serial lines drivers and recievers were common failures as well but in the mill we usualy had long lines and occasional ground faults to deal with. If the machine is kept reasonably cool it's a rock. Within DEC 750s were very common and after they were less in vogue for actual use they serves lat, mop and routing service as they required near zero attention if any at all. I have a bigger sample size to look at from being inside DEC. the gate arrays are as relaible or more so than any other chip and the likelyhood of failure is highest for chips that talk off the board this being due to electrical stress (drivers) and ESD from handling the board. Theother group of possible failures is in ram arrays as there are so many it's statisiclly possible to see a part fail. Allison > >> > Neither are _easy_ to find, but I think it's >> > more likely to find a dusty 11/750 in a corner of a warehouse than an >> > 11/780. >> >> One will find ten /750s for every /780 these days. > >I am entirely willing to accept that ratio (and since I have two >11/750s... that means that somewhere in my pile should be 1/5 of a >11/780, right ;-) > >-ethan From lynchaj at yahoo.com Tue Oct 16 18:18:47 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:18:47 -0400 Subject: Emailing: Universal Floppy reader, was Re Extracting CDOS and CP-M) files Message-ID: <000f01c8104a$e7ae18f0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> > Really don't understand all the talks about catweasels secrets, etc. > Just make few boards for the classiccomp group, and be done with the > subject ;-) I suppose--every once in awhile, I run into a very odd format that's not compatible with any of the commodity controllers and am forced to use a Catweasel on it. But 99% of what I see is plain old soft- sectored media, readable on most WD17xx or NEC 765 controllers. Cheers, Chuck -----REPLY----- There has been lots of talk about these universal floppy controller devices and I for one would LOVE to see one done but so far nobody has made one work. The closest thing I have seen is either the external floppy drive and compaticard combination or the parallel port Backpack external floppy drive from Microsolutions. If anyone actually makes the universal floppy reader, please put me down to buy one as well. However, IMO, the best solution for the universal floppy drive is an old PC with a Catweasel and a 3.5", 5.25", and/or 8" floppy drive. Then just write the software for it. Really, writing software for the Catweasel is really simple and it is 100% open source. The documentation is all available publicly, its supported in Linux, MS-DOS, and/or Windows, the owner/manufacturer is as accomodating as one could possibly hope for (Jens Schoenfeld). There is a developer list and lots of enthusiastic users. The hardware is cheap and readily available. Count me as diehard Catweasel fan! The Catweasel in an old PC is as close to the perfect universal floppy drive reader as far as I can see. What else is needed? More and better software and that is about all. There are Catweasel software available for practically every format imaginable. Most if not all of the soft sector formats are covered by the Tim Mann CW2DMK software. There are reader for many formats such as specialty disks as the Amiga, Atari, Macintosh, Commodore, Nintendo, Apple II, etc. There is software for many of the hard sector formats as well (NorthStar, PTDOS, Data General, and Heath, at least. Vector Graphic is in work). Thanks and best of luck with your project. Really, if anyone does complete a universal floppy reader which is even close to as good as the Catweasel, I will be in line to buy it. Andrew Lynch From gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk Wed Oct 17 03:14:54 2007 From: gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:14:54 +0100 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> References: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <200710170914.54893.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 01:06:56 Robert Borsuk wrote: > It's a beauty. My car survived. Though I don't think I'll be doing > any major towing with it anymore. It just doesn't have that umph > anymore. I'm also going to go with a heavier weight oil until I can > rebuild the engine. It just turned 150k miles on the trip. Looks like a fun trip though. I'm surprised you had problems towing it home with your Disco - which engine does it have? We regularly pull two or three tonnes with my friend's gas-converted 4.6 V8, but I'd expect the diesel to handle it better if a little slowly. I shifted roughly 700kg of VAX stuff in my Citro?n CX saloon a couple of years ago. There wasn't a lot of room for me to sit and drive it. I think most of the weight was between the Fujitsu Eagles and the grey wall. Gordon From gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk Wed Oct 17 03:17:22 2007 From: gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:17:22 +0100 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: References: <732079.99877.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <0CF76D21-B419-4ED0-B5A0-9546BD5D2251@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <200710170917.23024.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 01:37:45 dwight elvey wrote: > Those with all the time 4 wheel have special clutches or > limited slip transfer cases. Most European 4x4s have this, except very old Landrovers (Series 3 or earlier). Small Japanese 4x4s like Suzuki SJs have "solid" transfer boxes. I don't think I've seen a 4x4 with anything else that wasn't built at least 15 years ago. Gordon From derschjo at msu.edu Wed Oct 17 08:18:45 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 06:18:45 -0700 Subject: IBM 5120 monitor issues In-Reply-To: References: <4712F50D.3080900@msu.edu> <01af01c81057$e3b5a2b0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <47160BB5.5090301@msu.edu> Christian Corti wrote: > On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Alexandre Souza wrote: >>> But I'd like to see what I can do about the monitor. The picture >>> exhibits a strange behavior that I can't say I've seen before. The >>> horizontal retrace seems to "fold" over itself in the middle (like >>> the electron gun is doing a "loop" in the center of the screen for >>> each line). I've taken a (terrible) picture of the fault and put it >>> at: http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/5120disp.jpg). The picture's >>> also a bit jumpy. I've tinkered a bit with the various adjustments >>> on the CRT's PCB but it doesn't make any appreciable difference. >> >> Have phun on the horizontal circuit caps. There is one shorted or >> with a huge loss probably on the yoke line. > > Ehmm, you've replied to a posting that has apparently never appeared > on the list, at least it didn't arrive here... Who was the original > poster? > > Anyway the machine's not working as it halted at $01F6, or did you > (->original poster) halt the machine with internal HALT switch? The > routine around 01F6 (specifically 01EE-01FA) is POST 'G' "Keyboard > Test". It enables interrupt 3 and busy waits for a short time: > ; --- Test G --- > ; Keyboard Test > > 01EE 8BC7 LBI R11, #'G' > 01F0 7B50 MOVB (R5)+, R11 > > 01F2 1440 CTRL $4, #$40 ; enable int.3 and > typamatic > 01F4 AF00 ADD R15, #$01 > 01F6 CF04 SS R15 > 01F8 F005 BRA $01F4 ; small delay > 01FA 1442 CTRL $4, #$42 ; disable typamatic > > > Christian > > It was a response to my post (which took almost 2 days to show up for whatever reason :)). I know the machine's not working, it has several hardware issues -- the most apparent being the monitor :). There's also a keyboard issue (which is why it's halted in the pic) -- it seems to think there's a stuck key when there isn't (I've disassembled and cleaned the keyboard, etc...) -- if I swap in the keyboard (apologies to Tony) from my 5110 this goes away. The last issue is a ROS error, which I'm betting will be very tough to solve, given the odd (proprietary?) packaging of the ROS chips. (Again, if I swap ROS boards from my 5110, this goes away and the machine works OK, minus the monitor issue.) Thanks, - Josh From spedraja at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 12:19:17 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:19:17 +0200 Subject: Sun3 information request Message-ID: Hello. I'm not sure if this is the correct list to ask about this, but I accept suggestions about the matter. I have one Sun3/50 and a couple of Sun 3/60. No disks or monitor. I know that they use ECL monitors. In fact I have the ECL cables, plus one Extron RGB device to (supposed) connect them to other kind of monitors as VGA and so. Someone has experience about this matter ? Related resources ? THanks and Greetings Sergio From scheefj at netscape.net Wed Oct 17 18:18:55 2007 From: scheefj at netscape.net (scheefj at netscape.net) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:18:55 -0400 Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? In-Reply-To: <200710171359.31665.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> <200710171359.31665.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4716985F.2000900@netscape.net> Grant, When I was a sole proprietor of a similar business, I was told that the business had to make money at least once in every three years for the losses to be deducible from ordinary income. If you are going to treat this project as a business, you should be able to claim your development costs (what you are doing now) as a loss. All accounting must be on a cash basis which means you cannot accrue these losses and use them to offset future income (when that might help reduce profits). No, I'm not "qualified" to give this advice, just experienced. As a suggestion, if you used Turbo Tax last year, open it up and look in the tax advice for information on your situation. That should be a good as any other free advice. Jim Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Tuesday 16 October 2007 13:20, Tim Shoppa wrote: >> There are some potentially onerous taxes associated with >> stocking large quanties of parts/assemblies/computers that >> might be of value to your business, depending on how your >> locality figures inventory taxes. Sitting on inventory more >> than a year or two can be incredibly costly if your jurisdiction >> has inventory taxes. > > I think it was Don Lancaster that wrote once about how Santa Fe, NM (?) tried > to consider a writer's unsold works to be "inventory"...! > From scheefj at netscape.net Wed Oct 17 18:23:12 2007 From: scheefj at netscape.net (scheefj at netscape.net) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:23:12 -0400 Subject: VCF on November 4,5 In-Reply-To: <471660AB.BC494FA2@west.net> References: <471660AB.BC494FA2@west.net> Message-ID: <47169960.6020503@netscape.net> Marvin, A cable FAQ is a *FABULOUS* idea. It would be great if it were in a wiki so others can contribute. Jim Marvin Johnston wrote: > As usual, I'll be up at VCF this year with quite a bit of stuff to get rid, er, > sell :). If anyone who will be there is looking for something, let me know and I > can bring it up if I have it ... and it is not too bulky or heavy (unless there > is a committment to buy.) As usual, I'll have quite a few books, some computers, > and some other not easily found items. > > I am assuming that there will also be the informal Saturday night dinner at the > usual place (can't remember the name, just how to get there.) > > One thing I've been thinking about for some time is a FAQ on cables and > connectors, i.e. something with pictures and what computers, etc. it goes to. As > such, I'll have a variety of cables with me that I'll be talking to others about > to find out what they go to. Examples would be like the Appletalk cables, cables > connecting the Commodore computers to disk drives, etc., video cables, DEC > cables, etc. > > The rational is that I frequently find cables and don't know if they are worth > saving or just scraping out, and I think others would benefit as well. From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Wed Oct 17 18:33:08 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:33:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Emailing: Universal Floppy reader, was Re Extracting CDOS and CP-M) files In-Reply-To: <004101c80d27$9b0327a0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> References: <004101c80d27$9b0327a0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Message-ID: On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, Andrew Lynch wrote: > There has been lots of talk about these universal floppy controller devices > and I for one would LOVE to see one done but so far nobody has made one > work. The closest thing I have seen is either the external floppy drive and > compaticard combination or the parallel port Backpack external floppy drive > from Microsolutions. If anyone actually makes the universal floppy reader, > please put me down to buy one as well. FWIW, I'm exploring the idea of a universal floppy controller with some currently undisclosed people in the classic computers arena. I envision the final product as a fully-populated naked board. It would carry an FPGA, support up to four drives of any kind, and talk USB to the host computer. From a software perspective, it look like ordinary PC floppy drives, much like an external 3.5" drive. It also presents raw character interfaces to each of the drives as well. User-mode programs can read and write raw data to do things like copying entire disks. Disks can be mounted by way of usermode filesystems. My current task is locating free FPGA cores to implement the usual floppy controller chips. This will allow the external 5.25" drive that some people here have been clamoring for. I'm also exploring the feasability of a PCI and/or PCIE floppy card. All this would do is just provide regular PC-style floppy interfaces. According to private discussions, this would be easy, but would not be usuable with stock floppy drivers. This won't be a problem for modern operating systems, we'll just create new drivers. It would present problems for DOS programs that directly diddle with the interface. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 17 18:36:25 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:36:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? In-Reply-To: <4716985F.2000900@netscape.net> References: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> <200710171359.31665.rtellason@verizon.net> <4716985F.2000900@netscape.net> Message-ID: <20071017163048.B28780@shell.lmi.net> On Wed, 17 Oct 2007 scheefj at netscape.net wrote: > Grant, > When I was a sole proprietor of a similar business, I was told that the > business had to make money at least once in every three years for the > losses to be deducible from ordinary income. WHO told you that? It ain't true, and there have been a few BIG businesses that have had more than 2 successive years of losses. BUT, . . . there is the issue of whether the IRS will believe that it is a business, not a hobby. IF you always lose money (less than 1 in 3 profitable, or less than 2 out of 5, etc. depending on the agent), then they are MUCH more likely to take a look at whether or not they'll believe that it is a "real" business. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 17 18:45:34 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:45:34 +0100 (BST) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <47154159.5000409@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Oct 16, 7 04:55:21 pm Message-ID: > > Fred Cisin wrote: > Current "photography" teachers don't even know Scheimpflug's principle. > Well what is it. The only thing I remeber is 'contrast' is needed to see. I'm not a photographer, but... Basically, it states that the object plane you want to be in sharp focus; a plane through the optical centre of the lens, perpenicular to the optical axis; and the image plane (where you put he film/CCD) all intersect in a single line. (which might be 'at infinity' -- that is the 3 planes can be parallel). It becomes useful when you use a camera with 'movements'. Most large-format cameras and a few medium format cameras (OK and _one_ 35mm camera to my knowledge) have the faciltiy to shift and tilt the lens and fim back. You cna thus use this principle to get an apparently extended depth of field -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 17 18:30:44 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:30:44 +0100 (BST) Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 16, 7 04:41:08 pm Message-ID: > > I've always known it as an 'R80' drive. > > Right... it says "R80" on the front, but in a variety of places > (Ultrix device drivers, perhaps?) it's also called the RB80, > presumably to distinguish it from the RM80 and RA80 (same HDA, for > folks unfamiliar with it, but 3 different host interfaces). >From what I remember, the boards are thr same in the R80 and RM80 (the difference, as I said being that the latter has an external Massbus interface) but different in the RA80. The R80 has an 8085 in it, with rows of 8355/8755 (ROM/IO chips) IIRC. There's an interesting diagnostic facility on one of the boards consisting of a couple of hex switches, 8 LEDs and some momentary switches. From what I recall, amongst other things you can read any location in the 8085's memory space... > Yes... I didn't explicitly state it (but implied it via the device > names DQA0: and DQA1:) that the RL02 did not require a RL11. As far > as we were concerned, it was a feature, since RL02 was our > "sneaker-net" medium of choice, and at the time, an RL11 was on the > order of $600. If you have the tape drive versions, there's a normal RL-style connector on the CPU distribution panel, so presumanly you can cable up an external RL02. Can you use an RL01, I wonder. No idea why you'd wnat to, but the manuals don't say one way or the other, so I am curious. > Once the cables were installed, though, it was a nice package. The > fact that it was an inexpensive (for the time) Unibus VAX, made it a I find it impressive that you can build _any_ VAX using standard chips (OK, with some PALs, and the memory ECC gate arrays from an 11/750 (I think), but the latter are hardly an important part of the CPU) on 3 hex-height DEC boards. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 17 18:35:44 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:35:44 +0100 (BST) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <20071016224910.26f3ac72@SirToby.dinner41.local> from "Jochen Kunz" at Oct 16, 7 10:49:10 pm Message-ID: > > On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 23:31:04 +0100 (BST) > ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > > > I would also routinely read schematic diagrams on such journeys... > Some time ago I liked to read "The Rothammel"[1]. Just like other people > read a novel. It was so relaxing and fun to read. I must be the only person who reads service manuals for things he doesn't own, and probably never will own, though... > But finaly I didn't get into ham radio. Insted I got into good, old, > analog black and white photography. Now my kitchen is a darkroom also... Ah yes... I convereted an old coal store (no longer needed for its orignal purpose) into a darkroom. I can _just_ get the enlarger in there. It's a DeVere 504, so it's not exactly small... > [1] "Rothammels Antennen Buch" =3D> "Rothammels Antenna Book". A book tha= > t > describes and discusses all kinds of antennas from longwave to micowave > for ham radio. It is _the_ german antenna book. Not ins the same class, but I found the ARRL Antennas Book for 10p (!) at a library sale some years boak. No need to ask if I bought it, OK. Same sale had some classic computing books, like 'Communication Sequential Processes', the Occam books, etc. I bought all those too.... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 17 18:38:58 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:38:58 +0100 (BST) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <20071016141731.C59565@shell.lmi.net> from "Fred Cisin" at Oct 16, 7 02:18:24 pm Message-ID: > > > > Photoshop teacher? Hmmm. When I took photography it was with a 4x5 > > > Calumet view camera. > On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: > > It's called 'dumbing down' :-( > > Current "photography" teachers don't even know Scheimpflug's principle. That figures... But AFAIK it applies to _any_ camera, film or digital. So it should still be known and tuaght. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 17 19:07:43 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:07:43 +0100 (BST) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20071017112836.05406118@mail.30below.com> from "Roger Merchberger" at Oct 17, 7 11:39:01 am Message-ID: > "overclocking" meant "no video" and when was the last time you'd seen a > paper tape reader or teletypewriter hooked up to a CoCo3? ;-) When I rotate my heand left by about $\pi$/6 radians :-) I built a paper tape interface catridge for the CoCos. Links to a Trend reader and a Facit 4070 punch. It's not currenyly cabled up, but it certainly could be again. Amd as for a teletype, when I built by tripple serial port for the CoCo (what's the point of OS-9 without serial ports ;-)), I specifically included a 1760Hz clock so I could us an ASR33 with it. > However, you are right about the expanded I/O: I was about to say "Add an > A/D converter" but then I remembered the audio in on a PC sound card. Done. Hmm.. I wasn't aware that the response of most soundcards went down to DC. A lot of the things I use an ADC for are very slowly changing signals. And how many PCs have a 'user port'? That's one thing I would certainly want to hack in somehow. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 17 19:08:48 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:08:48 +0100 (BST) Subject: vintage Wang keybaord (word processor?) In-Reply-To: from "Richard" at Oct 17, 7 09:40:09 am Message-ID: > list. If you don't find it of interest, just move on to the next > message where you can read yet another message from Tony castigating > anyone doing a board swap. I've not done that for at least a week :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 17 19:17:37 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:17:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <20071017174251.38A13BA459F@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> from "Tim Shoppa" at Oct 17, 7 01:42:51 pm Message-ID: > It may be European vs US usage, but in the US "motor" almost always > means electric motor in this and other contexts. So what you That tends to be UK usage too. The thing under the bonnet (OK, hood) of a car is called an 'engine' over here. 'Motor' for that would be very uncommon. To me, a 'motor generator' is just that. An electric motor driving an electric generator, to be used to convert voltage/frequency, etc. A 'rotary converter' (or 'Dynamotor; if oyu go back far enough) is a simialr thing with common field windings/frame/etc rather than 2 separate electrical machines with the shafts coupled. > call a "motor-generator" would be here just plain called a "generator" A 'generator' over here is either just the mechanical-to-electircal energy converter or , as you said, a heat engine coupled to such a machine. Certainly if you hired a 'generator' (as somebody suggested we should do for a VCF-type event), you'd expect to get something with the engine included. I don't know how common these other term are across the Pond, but an 'alternator' is an AC-output geneterator, a 'Dynamo' (short for 'Dynamo-electric machine' is a generator, normally DC output, with a wound field, and a 'Magneto' (short for 'Magneto-electric machine' is a genatore with a permanent magnet field. Which means the common bicycle dynamo (as it's normally called over here' is in fact a magneto.... -tony From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 19:36:19 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:36:19 -0400 Subject: yet another logic family? In-Reply-To: <4714915C.29643.DF02452@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> <4714915C.29643.DF02452@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710172036.19566.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 16 October 2007 13:24, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Another member of the 74-alphabet soup series. See: > http://www.interfacebus.com/logic_table.html > for more letters. Thanks for the link, lots of good info there... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 17 19:41:01 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:41:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: IBM 5120 monitor issues In-Reply-To: <4714FF1E.9050102@msu.edu> from "Josh Dersch" at Oct 16, 7 11:12:46 am Message-ID: > > But I'd like to see what I can do about the monitor. The picture > exhibits a strange behavior that I can't say I've seen before. The > horizontal retrace seems to "fold" over itself in the middle (like the > electron gun is doing a "loop" in the center of the screen for each > line). I've taken a (terrible) picture of the fault and put it at: > http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/5120disp.jpg). The picture's also a > bit jumpy. I've tinkered a bit with the various adjustments on the > CRT's PCB but it doesn't make any appreciable difference. Now that's unusual, to say the least.... Now, let's think about this. Firstly, the deflected position of the beam is in the centre of the screen, right. Normally, the horizotnal output transistor, when turned on, pulls the beam to the left (and also stores energy in the magnetic fields of the yoke and hoirzotnal output transofrmer), the beam is then 'released' and goes back towards the centre, and then the stored energy is used to get it all the way across. OK, that's an oversimplification, but it'll do for a start. Now it appears to me you've got some kind of 'ringing' at the crossover point. The beam is moving back and forth at the centre of the screen. I'd start checking components around the horizontal output stage/flyback transformer. Maybe an open capacitor, maybe a damper diode is open-circuit. Being a Ball Brothers unit, it should be fairly standard circuitry. -tony From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Oct 17 19:45:02 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:45:02 +0100 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4716AC8E.1050103@yahoo.co.uk> Tony Duell wrote: >> It may be European vs US usage, but in the US "motor" almost always >> means electric motor in this and other contexts. So what you > > That tends to be UK usage too. The thing under the bonnet (OK, hood) of a > car is called an 'engine' over here. 'Motor' for that would be very uncommon. These days. Not so true in decades past, however... > I don't know how common these other term are across the Pond, but an > 'alternator' is an AC-output geneterator Yep; the sorts of big power-generating equipment I've worked on were sometimes referred to in the docs as "motor alternators". "genset" is another common term, implying a generator hooked up to some kind of device to drive the generator (and quite often prefixed with something to imply what that device is) >, a 'Dynamo' (short for 'Dynamo-electric machine' is a generator, normally > DC output, with a wound field I've never done any playing around with big stuff that has direct DC output, although at one place though the power plant was AC but there were rotary converters around to spit out 400VDC... I suspect it's one of those things where the terms change depending on what time period's being talked about and also depending on the size of the equipment involved. From grant at stockly.com Wed Oct 17 19:48:40 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:48:40 -0800 Subject: Emailing: Universal Floppy reader, was Re Extracting CDOS and CP-M) files In-Reply-To: References: <004101c80d27$9b0327a0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Message-ID: <0JQ3006Z7108W3X1@msgmmp-1.gci.net> At 03:33 PM 10/17/2007, you wrote: >On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, Andrew Lynch wrote: > > > There has been lots of talk about these universal floppy controller devices > > and I for one would LOVE to see one done but so far nobody has made one > > work. The closest thing I have seen is either the external > floppy drive and > > compaticard combination or the parallel port Backpack external floppy drive > > from Microsolutions. If anyone actually makes the universal floppy reader, > > please put me down to buy one as well. > >FWIW, I'm exploring the idea of a universal floppy controller with some >currently undisclosed people in the classic computers arena. I envision >the final product as a fully-populated naked board. It would carry an >FPGA, support up to four drives of any kind, and talk USB to the host >computer. From a software perspective, it look like ordinary PC floppy >drives, much like an external 3.5" drive. It also presents raw >character interfaces to each of the drives as well. User-mode programs >can read and write raw data to do things like copying entire disks. Disks >can be mounted by way of usermode filesystems. My current task is >locating free FPGA cores to implement the usual floppy controller chips. >This will allow the external 5.25" drive that some people here have been >clamoring for. There are 44 pin QFP packages available to control 4 drives, 8" to 3.5". $7.50 a piece. To me its not even worth the time to do a google search for disk drive cores. Free usually means buggy and YMMV any way... ; ) I'm making a 3.5" disk drive card for the Altair. From ballsandy at msn.com Wed Oct 17 20:07:08 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:07:08 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: Thanks for breaking the good news colin. :D I really hope it goes to a nice home it would be a shame to neglect that big of a system. Hmmm, asides from our two Canadian tire sores (they have something, there are Twinax terminals everywhere!) I really can't think of any place in town that would have an IBM mainframe of any kind. I can see modern servers and lots of them but the closest place I can think of that would hide an IBM would be the lower mainland....or the Okanagan valley. _________________________________________________________________ Have fun while connecting on Messenger! Click here to learn more. http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.ca/WindowsLiveMessenger From ballsandy at msn.com Wed Oct 17 20:07:00 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:07:00 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: Thanks for breaking the good news colin. :D I really hope it goes to a nice home it would be a shame to neglect that big of a system. Hmmm, asides from our two Canadian tire sores (they have something, there are Twinax terminals everywhere!) I really can't think of any place in town that would have an IBM mainframe of any kind. I can see modern servers and lots of them but the closest place I can think of that would hide an IBM would be the lower mainland....or the Okanagan valley. _________________________________________________________________ Have fun while connecting on Messenger! Click here to learn more. http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.ca/WindowsLiveMessenger From wdonzelli at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 20:11:31 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:11:31 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Hmmm, asides from our two Canadian tire stores (they have something, there are Twinax terminals everywhere!) My 8809 came from a tire store. I is probably just spare parts now, because it is covered with brake grinding debris. -- Will From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Wed Oct 17 20:24:14 2007 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:24:14 -0700 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> References: <471597C9.8030900@jetnet.ab.ca> <4715B832.3030801@yahoo.co.uk> <4716392A.4070501@jetnet.ab.ca> <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> Message-ID: On 10/17/07, Jim Battle wrote: > > Jules Richardson wrote: > > > >> For a math copro to be called as such, does it have to integrate > >> itself with the CPU's instruction set - or does some sort of box of > >> tricks sitting on an I/O port and accessed through normal CPU > >> instructions count? I'm not sure what the correct definition is. I would count those in coprocessor category, for sure. > Northstar (of Northstar Horizon fame) sold an S-100 card that had a TTL > FPU on it. It was a microcoded affair (256 words of 40 bits) that > processed a nibble (BCD digit) per clock (4 MHz I believe). You could > also specify how many digits were in the mantissa (2-14, even # digits > only). Only the four basic functions, +-*/, were supported. I've seen even simpler home-brew (or more accurately lab-brew) S100 and Apple II boards that support only the multiply function. I recall a 4bit x 4bit -> 8bit unsigned multiply board that was essentially 256 bytes of PROM and some address decoding. Write a byte to the board input port and the board would put the product of the upper and lower nibbles on the output port. (Actually, the board I'm thinking about had two output ports, one for the product, and one for the product with upper and lower nibbles reversed. When it takes an instruction per bit shifted, you could save a bit of time by shifting in hardware (i.e. reordering the wires.)) I would imagine that some enterprising students did the same thing with 64K of PROM for 8x8->16 multiply, once PROMs got big enough for that to be affordable. I doubt many of these survive, since labs tend to throw things out and rarely keep documents around for wire wrapped boards. Eric From mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com Wed Oct 17 21:32:27 2007 From: mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:32:27 -0600 Subject: DOS lives (was: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco) In-Reply-To: <01C810E6.9274A6A0@mandr71> References: <01C810E6.9274A6A0@mandr71> Message-ID: <4716C5BB.6000003@brutman.com> M H Stein wrote: > > Count me in! Dos7.x on a modern system is sweet; fast, stable as a rock and > lots of time-tested *useful* utilities out there as well to make it even better. > Hook it up to your network and who could ask for more; now if only there > were drivers for some of the newer peripherals... > > Thanks, BillG! . > > m > > The the TCP/IP support keeps getting better every day! (Well, maybe every month when I find time to go back to it ...) Mike From frustum at pacbell.net Wed Oct 17 20:38:51 2007 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:38:51 -0500 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: References: , <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net>, <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <4715FD8A.26611.137EB4AD@cclist.sydex.com> <471668A9.1010504@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4716B92B.7080502@pacbell.net> dwight elvey wrote (in response to a response to a message I posted): > I have a S100 board made by N* that is a math board but it > doesn't have a FPU. It has a 2901 and some ROM chips. > It only has the one 2901. > Dwight That is the same board that I was talking that kicked off this mini-thread. However, reading back, I wrote it a funny way: > Northstar (of Northstar Horizon fame) sold an S-100 card that had > a TTL FPU on it. It was a microcoded affair (256 words of 40 bits) ... I meant to say the board implemented a FPU in TTL, not that there was a monolithic TTL FPU chip of some kind. From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 20:37:33 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:37:33 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> References: <471641D8.9000304@pacbell.net> <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710172137.33362.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 13:21, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:09, Jim Battle wrote: > > Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket > > calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and > > then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very > > slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point > > library code. > > I remember that one. It may have been an early issue of Byte. It may have been, as it sounds familiar to me too. > I also wondered at the time if any speed was gained over just running > plain old x80 code. I guess in those days RAM was considered quite expensive? I remember an article which I'm also pretty sure was in early Byte that talked about how there was plenty of address space, and how 1-bit-wide storage might be useful for some things. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 20:45:28 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:45:28 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: References: <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710172145.28621.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 15:27, Roger Ivie wrote: > On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:09, Jim Battle wrote: > >> Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket > >> calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and > >> then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very > >> slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point > >> library code. > > > > I remember that one. It may have been an early issue of Byte. I > > also wondered at the time if any speed was gained over just running > > plain old x80 code. > > IIRC, it was in the .01-centennial issue of Dr. Dobb's. I have a copy of > it somewhere, but there's no way I could find it without a lot of > effort. Speaking of DDJ, I could still kick myself for passing up on some bound versions of their early years, which I first saw at a local computer store one time for around ten bucks each. (Computerland? I forget...) Seeing them later the price had gone up 3-4 times that high. :-( -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Wed Oct 17 20:49:03 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:49:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Emailing: Universal Floppy reader, was Re Extracting CDOS and CP-M) files In-Reply-To: <0JQ3006Z7108W3X1@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <004101c80d27$9b0327a0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <0JQ3006Z7108W3X1@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Grant Stockly wrote: > There are 44 pin QFP packages available to control 4 drives, 8" to > 3.5". $7.50 a piece. To me its not even worth the time to do a > google search for disk drive cores. Free usually means buggy and > YMMV any way... ; ) Hmm, I suppose that chip would do the trick for native block-access. Still, an FPGA will be required to support "weird" formats like Commodore older Macintosh. > I'm making a 3.5" disk drive card for the Altair. Nifty! When can we expect the serial and cassette tape cards? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 20:46:49 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:46:49 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <47167A22.1010501@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <20071017133120.P19524@shell.lmi.net> <47167A22.1010501@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200710172146.50075.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 17:09, woodelf wrote: > Fred Cisin wrote: > > Well, at least it's better than using solenoids and photocells (which > > would have permitted a wider choice of calculators) > > That was saved for I/O devices. :) Certain Selectric adaptations come to mind... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 20:49:23 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:49:23 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <47167EC8.1302D204@cs.ubc.ca> References: <47167EC8.1302D204@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <200710172149.23680.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 17:29, Brent Hilpert wrote: > > IIRC, it was in the .01-centennial issue of Dr. Dobb's. I have a copy of > > it somewhere, but there's no way I could find it without a lot of > > effort. > > The book "How to Design, Build & Program Your Own _Advanced_ Working > Computer System" (1981/TAB Books) has an entire chapter devoted to this, > mentioning a couple of chips. > > Note the underlining (part of the title) of "Advanced" to distinguish it > from the earlier book, which was about designing, building & programming > not-so-advanced working computer systems. I have both of those, along with a bunch of other stuff from TAB books. That's some of the worst publishing I've ever seen, typos and errors all over the place. If I'm remembering right they were in one of those "book club" kind of deals in one of the magazines back when, and they never did get my first order right, so I never went anywhere with it... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From trixter at oldskool.org Wed Oct 17 20:55:39 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:55:39 -0500 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> Tony Duell wrote: > And how many PCs have a 'user port'? That's one thing I would certainly > want to hack in somehow. What is a "user port"? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 20:54:16 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:54:16 -0400 Subject: yet another logic family? In-Reply-To: <47169009.2040808@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200710161248.29917.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710171824.19015.rtellason@verizon.net> <47169009.2040808@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200710172154.16619.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 18:43, woodelf wrote: > Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > I noted that I'd skipped those, and did not bother putting them into the > > table with the rest, for now. Somehow I doubt that I'm likely to run > > into most of those anyhow... > > I got the fealing all this bunch of TTL is bus & bus interface. > Since everything in now custom chips, you don't need bus drivers any more. > Ben. Well, the idea of the parts pages wasn't so much to be used for newer design but more as a reference to be able to understand what you might be dealing with in terms of all sorts of older hardware. I started it as a way to organize my datasheets, and it grew from there. And apparently a lot of folks are interested in the older numbers, from what I can see, and also the tube stuff... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From dm561 at torfree.net Wed Oct 17 20:27:03 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:27:03 -0300 Subject: MAI cable -anybody want it? Message-ID: <01C8110D.2A09EE00@mandr71> >Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:21:16 -0700 >From: Marvin Johnston >Subject: VCF on November 4,5 >The rational is that I frequently find cables and don't know if they are worth >saving or just scraping out, and I think others would benefit as well. Ugh - scraping out... sounds most unpleasant and not very rational at that... Speaking of cables, I've got one here from a previous life marked MAI Tape. 50-pin 3-row AMP DB??-type male connectors with 34 pins used (11,12,11). Anybody have a use for it before it gets 'scraped'? m From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 17 21:28:35 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 19:28:35 -0700 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <200710172145.28621.rtellason@verizon.net> References: , , <200710172145.28621.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <47166263.18925.1508A23B@cclist.sydex.com> On 17 Oct 2007 at 21:45, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > Speaking of DDJ, I could still kick myself for passing up on some bound > versions of their early years, which I first saw at a local computer store > one time for around ten bucks each. (Computerland? I forget...) Seeing > them later the price had gone up 3-4 times that high. :-( I gave a Vol. 1, No. 1 DDJ to someone in exchange for taking a bunch of other stuff that I didn't want to pay dump fees for. Sigh. Cheers, Chuck From marvin at west.net Wed Oct 17 22:01:06 2007 From: marvin at west.net (Marvin Johnston) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:01:06 -0700 Subject: Web Rings Message-ID: <4716CC72.E0EE9646@west.net> It seems that there are a number of websites and listservers for classic computers. Have any of you who run such sites looked at forming a WebRing? It would certainly be easier to have an up-to-date webring resource than having to wade through Google search results. I, for one, would enjoy being able to go to one site to find sites that contain information I'm looking for! From healyzh at aracnet.com Wed Oct 17 22:11:01 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:11:01 -0700 Subject: Web Rings In-Reply-To: <4716CC72.E0EE9646@west.net> References: <4716CC72.E0EE9646@west.net> Message-ID: At 8:01 PM -0700 10/17/07, Marvin Johnston wrote: >It seems that there are a number of websites and listservers for classic >computers. Have any of you who run such sites looked at forming a WebRing? It >would certainly be easier to have an up-to-date webring resource >than having to >wade through Google search results. I, for one, would enjoy being >able to go to >one site to find sites that contain information I'm looking for! The PDP-10 portion of my DEC Emulation Website is part of a webring. Classic computer related webrings tend to be dedicated to a specific platform. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 wdonzelli at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 22:11:44 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:11:44 -0400 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB48@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB48@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: > I'm sure I saw a development system at DEC for the 4004 running on a PDP-8 circa 1975. I think in its collection, RCS has a DEC Y187 card (the only yellow handled Flip Chip I have ever seen) that has a 4004 on it. -- Will From ballsandy at msn.com Wed Oct 17 22:23:47 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:23:47 -0200 Subject: That poor system/36 Message-ID: >My 8809 came from a tire store. I is probably just spare parts now, >because it is covered with brake grinding debris. Oh that can't be healthy to the drive. hmm, I wonder if the will ever replace those systems soon? They have been in use for almost two decades now however inventory work does not mean graphics so they might stick with whatever they have until it finally gives the ghost. _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself with free Messenger emoticons. Get them today! http://www.freemessengeremoticons.ca/?icid=EMENCA122 From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 17 22:23:32 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:23:32 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <47166263.18925.1508A23B@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710172145.28621.rtellason@verizon.net> <47166263.18925.1508A23B@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710172323.33013.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 17 October 2007 22:28, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 17 Oct 2007 at 21:45, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > Speaking of DDJ, I could still kick myself for passing up on some bound > > versions of their early years, which I first saw at a local computer > > store one time for around ten bucks each. (Computerland? I forget...) > > Seeing them later the price had gone up 3-4 times that high. :-( > > I gave a Vol. 1, No. 1 DDJ to someone in exchange for taking a bunch > of other stuff that I didn't want to pay dump fees for. > > Sigh. > > Cheers, > Chuck Well, if somebody has one they don't want, I'd sure like to hear from them... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Oct 17 22:37:24 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:37:24 -0400 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> References: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <4716D4F4.8070204@gmail.com> Jim Leonard wrote: > Tony Duell wrote: >> And how many PCs have a 'user port'? That's one thing I would >> certainly want to hack in somehow. > > What is a "user port"? I would assume something similar to the geek port on the BeBox. Peace... Sridhar From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Oct 17 22:47:28 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:47:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710180349.XAA15057@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> [...] Scheimpflug's principle. > But AFAIK it applies to _any_ camera, film or digital. Only those with well-defined lenses. (It is not an issue for, for example, a pinhole camera.) Still, that's a large enough set that I agree when you say > So it should still be known and tuaght. /~\ 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 Oct 17 22:53:40 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:53:40 -0600 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> References: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <4716D8C4.20703@jetnet.ab.ca> Jim Leonard wrote: > Tony Duell wrote: >> And how many PCs have a 'user port'? That's one thing I would >> certainly want to hack in somehow. > > What is a "user port"? Well that would imply that you have a user wanting to have the do something other than "install todays OS game". From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Oct 17 22:54:54 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:54:54 -0600 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <200710172323.33013.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710172145.28621.rtellason@verizon.net> <47166263.18925.1508A23B@cclist.sydex.com> <200710172323.33013.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4716D90E.3030607@jetnet.ab.ca> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > Well, if somebody has one they don't want, I'd sure like to hear from > them... But mail it me. :) From marvin at west.net Wed Oct 17 22:55:24 2007 From: marvin at west.net (Marvin Johnston) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:55:24 -0700 Subject: Troubleshooting with a Frequency Counter Message-ID: <4716D92C.F4F05E52@west.net> I was just thinking about troubleshooting, and am curious if anyone has used a frequency counter for troubleshooting? It seems like it would be another way to find out if there are clock or data signals besides using a scope. And reasonable frequency counters shouldn't cost more than $50.00 or so including shipping. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Wed Oct 17 22:57:54 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:57:54 -0600 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <4716D90E.3030607@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200710172145.28621.rtellason@verizon.net> <47166263.18925.1508A23B@cclist.sydex.com> <200710172323.33013.rtellason@verizon.net> <4716D90E.3030607@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4716D9C2.4030202@jetnet.ab.ca> woodelf wrote: > Roy J. Tellason wrote: >> Well, if somebody has one they don't want, I'd sure like to hear >> from them... > But mail it me. :) Mail it to me... I better go eat something, since I can't think of my grammer today. PS.I would rather have kilobyte instead. From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 17 23:43:31 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:43:31 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4714BF85.30807@e-bbes.com> References: <4714BF85.30807@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <5B18FF50-FF44-4E4E-8852-95C72FE910D4@neurotica.com> On Oct 16, 2007, at 9:41 AM, e.stiebler wrote: >> If you don't have the spave, and can stand the lack of speed, >> consider an 11/730. It's small (1 10.5" high rackmount unit), you >> can fit the processor, disk and tape drives into a half-height >> rack (this was a standard configuration). It's almost all standard >> chips, 2901 ALUs, TTL, non-protected PALs, etc. > > Talking about the 11/730's and 11/725's. Anybody on this list has one, > he doesn't use ? And probably would like to get rid of ? I have an 11/730 (the RL02/R80 configuration) but I'm not interested in parting with it. It is currently in storage; I hope to get it home sometime over the next few months. Then I'll be trying to get it working...it hasn't been powered up in well over a decade. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 17 23:46:41 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:46:41 -0400 Subject: DoveBid: IBM 3180 Display Stations, ending 10/17/07, Guttenberg, NJ In-Reply-To: <1e1fc3e90710161405q54b62f9ai1f74c5efc4c41495@mail.gmail.com> References: <1e1fc3e90710161405q54b62f9ai1f74c5efc4c41495@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <045514DE-EC51-424A-B4DD-7642A0655447@neurotica.com> On Oct 16, 2007, at 5:05 PM, Glen Slick wrote: > No idea if these are interesting to anyone on the list. > > About 16 of these, currently at $10 each, no reserve, ending 10/17/07 > morning in Guttenberg, NJ. > > http://www.dovebid.com/assets/display.asp?ItemID=cpt69125 > > IBM 3180-2 15" Green Monochrome Display Station. Includes Keyboard, > Logic and Power Cable. Display P/N: 2446813, Logic P/N: 2446964. > Keyboard P/N: 1389262. I'd be interested in one or two of these if anyone buys the lot to piece out. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 17 23:53:21 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:53:21 -0400 Subject: That poor System/36 In-Reply-To: <20071016225519.67ae6540@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <1526edde79d298ae542589cf30b7ccf2@valleyimplants.com> <20071016225519.67ae6540@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <421F0402-B4A5-421A-8F37-A1D6B22678F4@neurotica.com> On Oct 16, 2007, at 4:55 PM, Jochen Kunz wrote: >> A VAX 7000 or AlphaServer 4k series will dim the lights on a branch >> circuit, > You don't need to go that big. A (at least my) MicroVAX III+ in a > BA123 > does this. :-) Yep. :-) Also, VAX 7000s just don't pull that much power. My big one (four CPUs, 512MB of RAM, lots of XMI cards) only pulls about 7A at 120V. They're just big...not power-hungry or inefficient. In fact, I'd love to find a new home for one of them...I don't need two. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 17 23:56:24 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:56:24 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> On Oct 16, 2007, at 9:51 PM, William Donzelli wrote: >> That's the sort of thing worthy of video. Big power control stuff >> is fun :) > > What would you see? All the rotating stuff in any MG post-1920 is all > enclosed. The only thing that might be visible is the flexible > coupling between the motor and generator (great to get your tie stuck > in). If one is wearing a tie whilst working on big computers, one probably deserves it! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Oct 18 00:17:18 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:17:18 -0600 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <4716EC5E.1080900@jetnet.ab.ca> Dave McGuire wrote: > If one is wearing a tie whilst working on big computers, one probably > deserves it! Did not IBM tech's have to wear one? > -Dave > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Oct 18 00:18:53 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:18:53 -0600 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <4716ECBD.20207@jetnet.ab.ca> Dave McGuire wrote: > If one is wearing a tie whilst working on big computers, one probably > deserves it! I'm the the GEEK. I got the little rotating spotted bow tie. :) > -Dave Ben. From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 00:22:24 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:22:24 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4716EC5E.1080900@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> <4716EC5E.1080900@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4716ED90.6030108@gmail.com> woodelf wrote: > Dave McGuire wrote: > >> If one is wearing a tie whilst working on big computers, one >> probably deserves it! > Did not IBM tech's have to wear one? Yes. Usually with a tie-clip holding it against the shirt. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 01:00:07 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:00:07 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4716ECBD.20207@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> <4716ECBD.20207@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4716F667.6050500@gmail.com> woodelf wrote: > Dave McGuire wrote: > >> If one is wearing a tie whilst working on big computers, one >> probably deserves it! > I'm the the GEEK. I got the little rotating spotted bow tie. :) That's not geek. That's nerd. 8-) Peace... Sridhar From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Oct 18 01:06:09 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:06:09 -0600 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4716F667.6050500@gmail.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> <4716ECBD.20207@jetnet.ab.ca> <4716F667.6050500@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4716F7D1.8070209@jetnet.ab.ca> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > That's not geek. That's nerd. 8-) I thought the nerd had the foil hats. :) > Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 01:31:01 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:31:01 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4716F7D1.8070209@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> <4716ECBD.20207@jetnet.ab.ca> <4716F667.6050500@gmail.com> <4716F7D1.8070209@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4716FDA5.6060201@gmail.com> woodelf wrote: > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> That's not geek. That's nerd. 8-) > I thought the nerd had the foil hats. :) Those are kooks. 8-) Peace... Sridhar From classiccmp at philpem.me.uk Thu Oct 18 01:36:21 2007 From: classiccmp at philpem.me.uk (Philip Pemberton) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:36:21 +0100 Subject: Emailing: Universal Floppy reader, was Re Extracting CDOS and CP-M) files In-Reply-To: <000f01c8104a$e7ae18f0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> References: <000f01c8104a$e7ae18f0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Message-ID: <4716FEE5.8030709@philpem.me.uk> Andrew Lynch wrote: > There has been lots of talk about these universal floppy controller devices > and I for one would LOVE to see one done but so far nobody has made one > work. The closest thing I have seen is either the external floppy drive and > compaticard combination or the parallel port Backpack external floppy drive > from Microsolutions. If anyone actually makes the universal floppy reader, > please put me down to buy one as well. I've got what is essentially a USB Catweasel clone, built and tested in a 'virtual' environment (i.e. fed a Verilog core test data and watched it trundle away and work). The schematics are almost completely entered into KiCAD, but I haven't started the PCB yet. The Verilog HDL for the controller CPLDs (there are two - the Acquisition Controller and the 'IOED' I/O Expansion Device that controls the low-speed I/O lines via I2C) is done, aside from the inevitable bugs I've missed. What I need to do is get the schematics done - which is basically adding the output buffers and wiring them to the IOED (the ACQCON stuff is already done). Then it's PCB design time... I'll probably wire up the prototype with a Roadrunner pen. -- Phil. | (\_/) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny classiccmp at philpem.me.uk | (='.'=) into your signature to help him gain http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | (")_(") world domination. From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 02:26:50 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:26:50 +1300 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071017112836.05406118@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: On 10/18/07, Tony Duell wrote: > Amd as for a teletype, when I built by tripple serial port for the CoCo > (what's the point of OS-9 without serial ports ;-)), I specifically > included a 1760Hz clock so I could us an ASR33 with it. Nice. > And how many PCs have a 'user port'? That's one thing I would certainly > want to hack in somehow. That's one of my largest complaints with "modern" laptops - no traditional ("legacy") parallel port. I have, in the past year, attached LCD displays, a ladder D-A, MCUs for programming, and a real Dragon's Lair/Space Ace scoreboard to a PeeCee parallel port. It's not quite as versatile as the User Port on a PET or a C-64, but I'm still missing my old (i.e., bought in 2005!) laptop. I _do_ have some "user port"-ish hardware for ISA, though - essentially one to three 8255s on either a 2/3-length or full-length card. A couple of them are just meant to hang external cables out the back to access the I/O, and another couple are also bread-board cards, with either grids of 0.1"-spacing holes, or real nylon-block prototyping strips, with a pre-done circuit area for instruction decode, latch, off-board DC-37 connector, etc. I have nothing like it newer than for ISA, unfortunately. -ethan From trixter at oldskool.org Thu Oct 18 02:34:43 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:34:43 -0500 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <4716D8C4.20703@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> <4716D8C4.20703@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <47170C93.5010808@oldskool.org> woodelf wrote: >> Jim Leonard wrote: >> What is a "user port"? > Sridhar wrote: > I would assume something similar to the geek port on the BeBox. > woodelf wrote: > Well that would imply that you have a user wanting > to have the do something other than "install todays OS game". Neither of those responses answer the question. Tony: What is a "user port" as you originally referred to it, and what was it used for? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Oct 18 02:41:49 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:41:49 +0100 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1192693310.10460.1.camel@elric> On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 21:11 -0400, William Donzelli wrote: > > Hmmm, asides from our two Canadian tire stores (they have something, there are Twinax terminals everywhere!) > > My 8809 came from a tire store. I is probably just spare parts now, > because it is covered with brake grinding debris. That may be asbestos, so be careful if you clean it up. Modern brake pads haven't used asbestos for a long time, but depending on how old the computer is it could have been around when asbestos pads were... Unless you mean it's full of metal and grit from regrinding brake discs and drums, which seems to be common in the US (and with brake parts so cheap and so important, something I've never seen the point of - but let's not stray so far offtopic). Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Oct 18 02:43:42 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:43:42 +0100 Subject: Indigo 2 - "NESTED EXCEPTION" at boot. In-Reply-To: <20071015075649.GA66683@pin.if.uz.zgora.pl> References: <9f0a63580695aa13f45f9e1de0540fac@valleyimplants.com> <20071015075649.GA66683@pin.if.uz.zgora.pl> Message-ID: <1192693422.10460.3.camel@elric> On Mon, 2007-10-15 at 09:56 +0200, Edward Tomasz Napierala wrote: > After that I replaced the memory with some spare SIMMs I had, put audio > and graphics back in and it seems to work. That is, it actually gets > to the boot menu. I didn't install IRIX yet, I have only 16MB of RAM. > I wonder why the original memory didn't work. It's IBM brand, marked > "11E8360BD-70 VJRX 32MB, 8M X 36 P". SIMMs from HP/9000 E25 don't work, > too, but that's expected. "Just Plain Broken"? If you can put the SIMMs into a plain ordinary PC (not sure if you can), then try running memtest86 on them and see what happens. Gordon From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 03:09:21 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:09:21 +1300 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/18/07, Tony Duell wrote: > The R80 has an 8085 in it, with rows of 8355/8755 (ROM/IO chips) IIRC. > There's an interesting diagnostic facility on one of the boards > consisting of a couple of hex switches, 8 LEDs and some momentary > switches. I remember fiddling with those once or twice, long ago. > From what I recall, amongst other things you can read any > location in the 8085's memory space... Interesting. Didn't know they were that flexible. > If you have the tape drive versions, there's a normal RL-style connector > on the CPU distribution panel, so presumanly you can cable up an external > RL02. ISTR that was the standard arrangement, just that the integral RL02 routed the cable such that it perfectly reached the I/O panel. One could still route the signal to an external drive if desired (which we did once or twice for reasons I now cannot recall). > Can you use an RL01, I wonder. No idea why you'd wnat to, but the manuals > don't say one way or the other, so I am curious. Good question. Back in the day, I owned RL01 drives (since they were under $200 and RL02s at the time were over $1000), but we never had RL01s where we used VAXen. ISTR there was something about being able to use RL02s but not RL01s with the RL278 interface on a DECmate I, but I also have not had the chance to explore that, either. If you had one handy, it might make an interesting experiment. There's no reason why it should break anything, but the driver/controller might attempt to seek to a non-existent cylinder on an RL01. > I find it impressive that you can build _any_ VAX using standard chips > (OK, with some PALs, and the memory ECC gate arrays from an 11/750 (I > think), but the latter are hardly an important part of the CPU) on 3 > hex-height DEC boards. I was pretty impressed when I saw the guts of an 11/750 for the first time - it was so much smaller than an 11/780. I, too, was impressed when I saw all of that essential functionality in an 11/730. My first MicroVAX was even more amazing, but that's another product line and another topic. -ethan From ats at offog.org Thu Oct 18 04:17:38 2007 From: ats at offog.org (Adam Sampson) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:17:38 +0100 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <4716D4F4.8070204@gmail.com> (Sridhar Ayengar's message of "Wed\, 17 Oct 2007 23\:37\:24 -0400") References: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> <4716D4F4.8070204@gmail.com> Message-ID: Sridhar Ayengar writes: > I would assume something similar to the geek port on the BeBox. Yes -- lots of Acorn machines in the UK had "user ports" with a bunch of general-purpose IO pins. Very useful for interfacing random external hardware to the computer (such as a model railway, a shortwave radio and my hamster's wheel, in my case). -- Adam Sampson From pete at dunnington.plus.com Thu Oct 18 04:23:45 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:23:45 +0100 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47170C93.5010808@oldskool.org> References: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> <4716D8C4.20703@jetnet.ab.ca> <47170C93.5010808@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <47172621.5080306@dunnington.plus.com> On 18/10/2007 08:34, Jim Leonard wrote: > woodelf wrote: >>> Jim Leonard wrote: >>> What is a "user port"? > > > Sridhar wrote: > > I would assume something similar to the geek port on the BeBox. > > > woodelf wrote: >> Well that would imply that you have a user wanting >> to have the do something other than "install todays OS game". > > Neither of those responses answer the question. Tony: What is a "user > port" as you originally referred to it, and what was it used for? Tony actually did say what it was. He was referring to a BBC Microcomputer, the user port on which is port B of a 2MHz 6522A VIA, unbuffered. The signals CB1, CB2, and PB0...PB7 are brought out to the even-numbered pins 2...20 of a 20-pin IDC header; pins 1 and 3 are connected to the +5V supply and the rest of the pins are ground. The timers and shift register etc in the same 6522A are also available for user applications. Port A is buffered and used for the parallel printer port, brought out to a 26-way header, and there's another 6522A which is used for assorted internal I/O -- it interfaces to things like the keyboard, the speech system, and the sound generator. The user port was typically used for home-grown digital I/O, but some commercial hardware used it too, eg at least one mouse, some satellite hardware, a turtle, a robot arm, and a CNC lathe controller. I used it to interface to a PCB tester I made to test some circuit boards I made. Analogue input was handled by the logically-named Analogue Port, which had a 4-channel 12-bit (but the Vref was only accurate to about 10 bits) ADC and a few bits of digital input, so this was often used for a pair of two-axis joysticks and their fire buttons, and for a 3D joystick for CAD, called a BitStik. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Thu Oct 18 04:58:09 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:58:09 +0100 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47172621.5080306@dunnington.plus.com> References: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> <4716D8C4.20703@jetnet.ab.ca> <47170C93.5010808@oldskool.org> <47172621.5080306@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <47172E31.50807@yahoo.co.uk> Pete Turnbull wrote: > The user port was typically used for home-grown digital I/O, but some > commercial hardware used it too, eg at least one mouse, some satellite > hardware, a turtle, a robot arm, and a CNC lathe controller. ... and the Buggy and trackerball. Somewhere I've got a Grafpad too; I think that was possibly hooked up to the User port. I suppose in the PC (as in IBM-compatible) world things tended to get their own ISA card (if they couldn't be driven via RS-232). IBM really missed a trick in not making the PC's parallel port bidirectional from the start. :-( cheers Jules From pcoghlan+cctech at vms.eurokom.ie Thu Oct 18 05:49:30 2007 From: pcoghlan+cctech at vms.eurokom.ie (Peter Coghlan) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:49:30 +0100 (WET-DST) Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip Message-ID: <01MMNZK0YEZ6K30XI4@vms.eurokom.ie> > >Any ex-Amdahl administrators out there? > Hi Rob, Many years ago, I looked after an Amdahl 5870 briefly before it was downsized to an IBM 4381. It was rather bigger and I suspect older and slower than what you have. It was a 370 machine - maybe yours is a 390? It was powered by a 400Hz motor-generator set (that was always referred to as "the MG set" and never as a rotary converter) in the next building. A reassuring 400Hz whirr could just be heard from the power supplies in the computer room over the racket of the air conditioners and it was instantly noticable if it stopped, generally just before the shouting started! The 3270 console was built into a desk and as far as I recall had some extra features not normally found on the usual sort of IBM console. I don't remember many details but I think there was a console processor that ran some variant of unix, possibly related to UTS and this could be used to set up performance monitoring screens that could be switched in and out instead of the operator console screen. It was also possible to do things to the i/o channels from the console such as change the mapping between logical and physical channels. I probably won't be much help to you getting your machine set up but I have come across one or two ex-Amdahl guys elsewhere on the net and I may be able to put you in touch if necessary. Regards, Peter. From wdonzelli at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 08:45:43 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:45:43 -0400 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: <1192693310.10460.1.camel@elric> References: <1192693310.10460.1.camel@elric> Message-ID: > Unless you mean it's full of metal and grit from regrinding brake discs > and drums, which seems to be common in the US (and with brake parts so > cheap and so important, something I've never seen the point of - but > let's not stray so far offtopic). Yes, it appears to me from metal disks. It was stored very near the disk grinder tool. I should just scrap is out for non-mechanical parts, and junk the rest, actually. I am not about to put any tape of mine in the thing. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 08:50:42 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:50:42 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> Message-ID: > If one is wearing a tie whilst working on big computers, one > probably deserves it! Hey, you do not know how deep some of the guys on this list get. Nerd cosplay? -- Will From legalize at xmission.com Thu Oct 18 09:23:08 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:23:08 -0600 Subject: DoveBid: IBM 3180 Display Stations, ending 10/17/07, Guttenberg, NJ In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:46:41 -0400. <045514DE-EC51-424A-B4DD-7642A0655447@neurotica.com> Message-ID: In article <045514DE-EC51-424A-B4DD-7642A0655447 at neurotica.com>, Dave McGuire writes: > I'd be interested in one or two of these if anyone buys the lot to > piece out. They're already listed as individual monitors, not as a lot. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Oct 18 09:29:56 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:29:56 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <4716EC5E.1080900@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> <4716EC5E.1080900@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <29514661-9916-4DC0-BCB4-BB3295431F11@neurotica.com> On Oct 18, 2007, at 1:17 AM, woodelf wrote: >> If one is wearing a tie whilst working on big computers, one >> probably deserves it! > Did not IBM tech's have to wear one? Pretty much all of them did at one time or another. I just have a large philosophical objection to the notion that one's clothing is more important than one's technical abilities. I've turned down many a job due to "dress code" garbage. I work best when I'm comfortable. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 18 11:39:56 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:39:56 -0700 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071017112836.05406118@mail.30below.com>, , Message-ID: <471729EC.30401.18140E4C@cclist.sydex.com> On 18 Oct 2007 at 20:26, Ethan Dicks wrote: > I _do_ have some "user port"-ish hardware for ISA, though - > essentially one to three 8255s on either a 2/3-length or full-length > card. A couple of them are just meant to hang external cables out the > back to access the I/O, and another couple are also bread-board cards, > with either grids of 0.1"-spacing holes, or real nylon-block > prototyping strips, with a pre-done circuit area for instruction > decode, latch, off-board DC-37 connector, etc. > > I have nothing like it newer than for ISA, unfortunately. PCI versions of the same card can be had for not a lot of money ( References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071017112836.05406118@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <4717A416.3010400@mdrconsult.com> Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 10/18/07, Tony Duell wrote: > >>And how many PCs have a 'user port'? That's one thing I would certainly >>want to hack in somehow. > > > That's one of my largest complaints with "modern" laptops - no > traditional ("legacy") parallel port. I have, in the past year, > attached LCD displays, a ladder D-A, MCUs for programming, and a real > Dragon's Lair/Space Ace scoreboard to a PeeCee parallel port. It's > not quite as versatile as the User Port on a PET or a C-64, but I'm > still missing my old (i.e., bought in 2005!) laptop. > > I _do_ have some "user port"-ish hardware for ISA, though - > essentially one to three 8255s on either a 2/3-length or full-length > card. A couple of them are just meant to hang external cables out the > back to access the I/O, and another couple are also bread-board cards, > with either grids of 0.1"-spacing holes, or real nylon-block > prototyping strips, with a pre-done circuit area for instruction > decode, latch, off-board DC-37 connector, etc. > > I have nothing like it newer than for ISA, unfortunately. So, here's a thought. As mentioned by somebody else, even 32-bit PCI slots are getting thin on the ground in new hardware. The various "hook-my-old-gear-up-to-my-new-PC" projects seem, for better or worse, to be centering on USB. I don't know crap about USB or about ISA, but would it be feasible to just build a USB-attached ISA expansion board? Would that simpler than attaching existing serial cards, floppy interfaces, etc., or would it just further complicate things? Doc From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 18 14:20:22 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:20:22 +0100 (BST) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> from "Jim Leonard" at Oct 17, 7 08:55:39 pm Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > > And how many PCs have a 'user port'? That's one thing I would certainly > > want to hack in somehow. > > What is a "user port"? SOme 8-bit home micros -- the Commodore PETs/VIC20/C64/C128 and the BBC micro being the obvious examples, had an uncommitted 8 bit parallel I/O port that was essentially half of a 6522 VIA. The Tatung Einstein had a similar port that was half of a Z80-PIO. In all cases the external connector was labelled 'User Port'. THe idea was to have an port that could be used for simple homebrew control/sensing applications. You could easilly hook up switches, transistors-driving-relays and so on. Very few later machines had them. The Sirius/Victor 9000 did -- a full 6522 on an unmarkerd header inside. The PC printer prot is nowhere near as versatile IMHO. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 18 14:27:35 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:27:35 +0100 (BST) Subject: Troubleshooting with a Frequency Counter In-Reply-To: <4716D92C.F4F05E52@west.net> from "Marvin Johnston" at Oct 17, 7 08:55:24 pm Message-ID: > > > I was just thinking about troubleshooting, and am curious if anyone has used a > frequency counter for troubleshooting? It seems like it would be another way to > find out if there are clock or data signals besides using a scope. And > reasonable frequency counters shouldn't cost more than $50.00 or so including > shipping. It will tell you if a signal is changing, sure. So it's useful for checking the clocks, and I suppose for seeing if data/address lines are changing at all. But it won't tell you if said data/address lines are doing the right thing. OK, you know the bottom 8 address lines are all changing, but you don't know what addresses the processor is actually acessing, for example. My most-often-used test instrument, an HP LogicDart does display the frequency of the input signal, as well as letting me capture it (high/low/undefined states, not a true 'scope type of capture). I've used that facility for checking clock waveforms, and thus finding the open-circuit crystal in my HP9820. But that reading on its own is not enough to go much further. -tony From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 18 14:35:34 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 12:35:34 -0700 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <4717A416.3010400@mdrconsult.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071017112836.05406118@mail.30below.com>, , <4717A416.3010400@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <47175316.2621.18B4D824@cclist.sydex.com> On 18 Oct 2007 at 13:21, Doc Shipley wrote: > I don't know crap about USB or about ISA, but would it be feasible to > just build a USB-attached ISA expansion board? Would that simpler than > attaching existing serial cards, floppy interfaces, etc., or would it > just further complicate things? I'd think that it all depends on the speed desired. Single-byte transfer over USB is very slow; the speed doesn't really kick in until block transfers are being done. Interrupts and DMA might be accommodated after a fashion, given enough intelligence on the box end, but I'd just rather use an old ISA-equipped PC myself. However, if what you're after is a "user port", there are USB-to- bidirectional parallel port (with FIFO yet) (and serial port) available very inexpensively. Cheers, Chuck From RBORSUK at COLOURFULL.COM Thu Oct 18 14:36:12 2007 From: RBORSUK at COLOURFULL.COM (Robert Borsuk) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:36:12 -0400 Subject: Apple IIGS and my Amdahl Message-ID: <6CA32CA9-C0E9-4F6A-83D1-CDA9C7F8553D@COLOURFULL.COM> So to help finance and focus my collection, I've decide to part with my decked out Apple IIGS. Check it out on eBay when you get a chance at item #300162750255 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300162750255 I figure it will help me pay for my recent Amdahl acquisition. Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From legalize at xmission.com Thu Oct 18 14:41:16 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:41:16 -0600 Subject: ebay search reports? Message-ID: Has anyone else noticed that the ebay email notification of search results has gone wacky in the past week or so? I'm getting repeat results in all my search emails (i.e. the same search reports the same items each day) and the search emails are being delivered less than daily. They are tooting their horn about having "improved" things lately and it feels like they are having some fallout. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From silent700 at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 14:49:59 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:49:59 -0500 Subject: ebay search reports? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <51ea77730710181249h4b51e0baod61809ad5ecf1a22@mail.gmail.com> On 10/18/07, Richard wrote: > Has anyone else noticed that the ebay email notification of search > results has gone wacky in the past week or so? YES! I'm getting tired of receiving the same item four or five times over in my saved searches. From wdonzelli at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 15:22:24 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:22:24 -0400 Subject: Apple IIGS and my Amdahl In-Reply-To: <6CA32CA9-C0E9-4F6A-83D1-CDA9C7F8553D@COLOURFULL.COM> References: <6CA32CA9-C0E9-4F6A-83D1-CDA9C7F8553D@COLOURFULL.COM> Message-ID: > So to help finance and focus my collection, I've decide to part with > my decked out Apple IIGS. You mean "pay for my new engine", right? -- Will From rborsuk at colourfull.com Thu Oct 18 15:33:19 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:33:19 -0400 Subject: Apple IIGS and my Amdahl In-Reply-To: References: <6CA32CA9-C0E9-4F6A-83D1-CDA9C7F8553D@COLOURFULL.COM> Message-ID: lol. You know, I drove the beast to work today just fine. Though my oil light was blinking a little this morning. I even hooked the trailer back up and towed it over my friend Phil's house at lunch. So far, so good. I want to rebuild it this winter. On the Amdahl note, I've been loving and appreciating the feedback about this trip and what I have. I don't remember if I mentioned this, but the guys were nice enough to throw in 3 PC's that they were using with the Amdahl(that helped to weigh down the rear of the rover that much more). I've been able to successfully boot two of them. One contained Windows NT 4.0 workstation with a bunch of Amdahl stuff on it. Number two contained OS/2 warp with a bunch of Amdahl stuff on it, unfortunately this one needs a password to get into the software. I need to spend some time trying to get PC number three going to see what's on it. On Oct 18, 2007, at 4:22 PM, William Donzelli wrote: >> So to help finance and focus my collection, I've decide to part with >> my decked out Apple IIGS. > > You mean "pay for my new engine", right? > > -- > Will Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From rborsuk at colourfull.com Thu Oct 18 15:38:15 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:38:15 -0400 Subject: Amdahl Mainframe - The great trip In-Reply-To: <01MMNZK0YEZ6K30XI4@vms.eurokom.ie> References: <01MMNZK0YEZ6K30XI4@vms.eurokom.ie> Message-ID: <646A02E8-9EEF-4A38-897B-030F984B657F@colourfull.com> [trimmed for your reading pleasure] On Oct 18, 2007, at 6:49 AM, Peter Coghlan wrote: >> >> Any ex-Amdahl administrators out there? >> > > Hi Rob, > > maybe yours is a 390? Yes mine is 390 compatible. I believe that it might be capable of runnig a newer version of the z/os but I'm not sure. This beast is right at our cutoff for vintage. > > I probably won't be much help to you getting your machine > set up but I have come across one or two ex-Amdahl guys > elsewhere on the net and I may be able to put you in touch > if necessary. > > Regards, > Peter. Peter, any help is greatly appreciated. Yes, if you could hook me up with some Amdahl guys that would be great. The biggest machines I've dealt with have been SGI 3800 systems. I'm not use to a Mainframe at all. Where to start? Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Oct 18 15:43:18 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:43:18 +0100 Subject: Apple IIGS and my Amdahl In-Reply-To: References: <6CA32CA9-C0E9-4F6A-83D1-CDA9C7F8553D@COLOURFULL.COM> Message-ID: <1192740198.13508.7.camel@elric> On Thu, 2007-10-18 at 16:33 -0400, Robert Borsuk wrote: > lol. You know, I drove the beast to work today just fine. Though my > oil light was blinking a little this morning. I even hooked the That's not a good thing. The oil pressure warning light should never ever come on if the engine is running. I have one car where I occasionally get a little blink of oil pressure, but I know it runs at low oil pressure anyway and it's only at *very* low revs, such as letting it dip below 500rpm when pulling away gently. If it's a blinky oil *level* light then you ought to put some oil in ;-) Gordon From v.slyngstad at verizon.net Thu Oct 18 16:35:56 2007 From: v.slyngstad at verizon.net (Vincent Slyngstad) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:35:56 -0700 Subject: Question about PDP-8 thing on eBay Message-ID: <20e401c811ce$df1a7f50$6600a8c0@vrsxp> I was looking through my eBay search mail (which has been wonky since way before the recent "upgrades"), and encountered this thing: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170155699367 which claims to be a "processor control module" for a PDP-8. The pictures show that it is clearly a 12-bit something or other, which gives some credence to the theory that it is PDP-8 related. I thought I knew a fair bit about things PDP-8, but I have no idea what this could be, unless it is some kind of front panel replacement for an Omnibus machine. Anyone know what the heck it is, and if it is really a PDP-8 thing? Vince (I'm assuming the "Gemini E" is some kind of machine controller, likely based on an 8/A or the like.) From wmaddox at pacbell.net Thu Oct 18 16:42:57 2007 From: wmaddox at pacbell.net (William Maddox) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:42:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Question about PDP-8 thing on eBay In-Reply-To: <20e401c811ce$df1a7f50$6600a8c0@vrsxp> Message-ID: <371823.77040.qm@web82611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> --- Vincent Slyngstad wrote: > Anyone know what the heck it is, and if it is really > a PDP-8 thing? > > Vince Kearny and Trecker used PDP8s in CNC controls for machine tools. I bought a PDP8/E that had only one omnibus backplane, with the second backplane position occupied by the K&T interface. Apparently, they built the whole thing into the PDP8/E chassis. I believe they used the 8/A in later generation tools. --Bill From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Oct 18 16:51:56 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:51:56 -0600 Subject: Question about PDP-8 thing on eBay In-Reply-To: <371823.77040.qm@web82611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <371823.77040.qm@web82611.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4717D57C.9010805@jetnet.ab.ca> William Maddox wrote: > Kearny and Trecker used PDP8s in CNC controls for > machine tools. I bought a PDP8/E that had only > one omnibus backplane, with the second backplane > position occupied by the K&T interface. Apparently, > they built the whole thing into the PDP8/E chassis. > I believe they used the 8/A in later generation tools. I'd want the whole thing.The right paper tape will give me a aircraft carrier or some other big toy to create at home. > --Bill Ben. PS: It would be the only paper tape miles long :) From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 18 14:35:26 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:35:26 +0100 (BST) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 18, 7 08:26:50 pm Message-ID: > > > And how many PCs have a 'user port'? That's one thing I would certainly > > want to hack in somehow. > > That's one of my largest complaints with "modern" laptops - no > traditional ("legacy") parallel port. I have, in the past year, > attached LCD displays, a ladder D-A, MCUs for programming, and a real > Dragon's Lair/Space Ace scoreboard to a PeeCee parallel port. It's > not quite as versatile as the User Port on a PET or a C-64, but I'm > still missing my old (i.e., bought in 2005!) laptop. THere was an articlke in Elektor magazine recently about a sort-of USB (host interface) user port thing. It was basically a microcontroller with uilt-in USB slave interface and not a lot more, You could download various firmware into the microcontroller to make the thing act as a device programmer for vearious microcotnroller (AVR, etc), a more general I/O port, and so on. From what I read (I've obviously not tried it...) it appeared a lot of the software (Windows/Linux)/firmware was open. May be worth a look... > I _do_ have some "user port"-ish hardware for ISA, though - > essentially one to three 8255s on either a 2/3-length or full-length It's just a pity that the 8255 was the worst parallel port chip ever designed. I mean, change the direction of any port, and all outputs are set low (setting them high would be marginally more tolerable!). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 18 14:42:35 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:42:35 +0100 (BST) Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: from "Ethan Dicks" at Oct 18, 7 09:09:21 pm Message-ID: [VAX 11/730 IDC] > > Can you use an RL01, I wonder. No idea why you'd wnat to, but the manuals > > don't say one way or the other, so I am curious. > > Good question. Back in the day, I owned RL01 drives (since they were > under $200 and RL02s at the time were over $1000), but we never had > RL01s where we used VAXen. ISTR there was something about being able > to use RL02s but not RL01s with the RL278 interface on a DECmate I, > but I also have not had the chance to explore that, either. It's got to be a software.driver issue I think. From waht I rememebr of the RL's. the only difference between the RL01 and the RL02 is that the latter has twice as many cylinders. Since the cylinder offset (how far to move) is sent serially on a seek command, and since in both cases, the command (including the offset) is a 16 bit number, there's no hardware difference that I can think of at the interface. The data rate is the same, too. I don;t see how you can make hardware that works with the '02 and not the '01 unless you're delibrately trying to do so (and have it, say, read out the drive satus, detct the 'I'm an RL02' bit and shut down if it sees an RL01 > > I find it impressive that you can build _any_ VAX using standard chips > > (OK, with some PALs, and the memory ECC gate arrays from an 11/750 (I > > think), but the latter are hardly an important part of the CPU) on 3 > > hex-height DEC boards. > > I was pretty impressed when I saw the guts of an 11/750 for the first > time - it was so much smaller than an 11/780. I, too, was impressed > when I saw all of that essential functionality in an 11/730. My first > MicroVAX was even more amazing, but that's another product line and > another topic. I guess I'm less impreessed when I see large LSI chip, simply because I don't have an intuitive idea for how much you can do in one at a given date. But having used TTL (and PALs) a lot, I do haev an indea of what those sort of chips can do, which makes the 11/730 very impressive to me. (And for a slightly different reasons, the HP9830...) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 18 14:48:39 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:48:39 +0100 (BST) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: from "Adam Sampson" at Oct 18, 7 10:17:38 am Message-ID: > Yes -- lots of Acorn machines in the UK had "user ports" with a bunch > of general-purpose IO pins. Very useful for interfacing random > external hardware to the computer (such as a model railway, a > shortwave radio and my hamster's wheel, in my case). The first 2 I can understand (although there are many different ways to control model railways...). But please explain the last. Was it an input or an output device, for example? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 18 14:52:46 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:52:46 +0100 (BST) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47172E31.50807@yahoo.co.uk> from "Jules Richardson" at Oct 18, 7 10:58:09 am Message-ID: > I suppose in the PC (as in IBM-compatible) world things tended to get their > own ISA card (if they couldn't be driven via RS-232). IBM really missed a > trick in not making the PC's parallel port bidirectional from the start. :-( THey almost did, and then didn't enable it, or document it!. Look at an original PC printer port card. There are 3 pads at 0.1" spacing, the middle one of which goes to the OE/ pin of the '374 (data output latch), onf of the end ones is groud, the other end one is the unused output of the '174 (control output port). The frist 2 are linked by a trace. Cut that last trace, solder in a 0.1" pin header and use one of those well-known jumper links to sleect whether you want a bidirectional port or not. This is _not_ shown in the Techred for some unknown reason.... Of coruse it's not as versatile as the BBC user port, which let you set the driection of each pin individually. -tony From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Oct 18 17:43:06 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:43:06 -0600 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4717E17A.1090108@jetnet.ab.ca> Tony Duell wrote: >> shortwave radio and my hamster's wheel, in my case). > > The first 2 I can understand (although there are many different ways to > control model railways...). But please explain the last. Was it an input > or an output device, for example? Hamster wheel's are know to power many things, this case the Vcc for the port. > -tony Ben. PS: I suspect input ... count RPM of something like that. PSS I am sending this post 4:41PM Mountain standard time. I got this bunch of posts only a few miniutes ago... stamped 1:48PM. From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 18 17:47:51 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:47:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: looking for the HP Vectra ('286) and Televideo Telecat In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <299138.30961.qm@web61022.mail.yahoo.com> interested in any event, but particularly if it has the color monitor/controller. But seeing that you used it for business purposes, I imagine it's monochrome. Still interested though. Thanks. --- Warren Updike wrote: > Whatever could be your interest in a Televideo > Telecat 286?? I have one and it is complete. I was > in a business that sold these units to doctor's > offices for preparation and electronic submission of > medical claims via modem. > > When I say complete, I mean everything: 2-floppy > drives, hard drive, expanded (or extended??) memory > board, monitor, keyboard, Basic and User manuals in > original slip cases (pristine condition,) as well as > the original system and diagnostic diskettes. It > was in good working order when I unplugged it some > years ago. > > I also have a complete set of Borland Quattro Pro > V4.0, with all the distributed materials. This, of > course, runs on the Telecat just fine. Somewhere I > have other vintage software as well. Don't know if > you are interested in any of this stuff. Let me > know. > > Warren Updike > Towson, MD > 410-821-8246 > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 18 17:49:04 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:49:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: vintage Wang keybaord (word processor?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <75142.22473.qm@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> --- Tony Duell wrote: > > list. If you don't find it of interest, just move > on to the next > > message where you can read yet another message > from Tony castigating > > anyone doing a board swap. > > I've not done that for at least a week :-) > > -tony slacker! LOL LOL ____________________________________________________________________________________ Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/ From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Oct 18 17:51:45 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 15:51:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DoveBid: IBM 3180 Display Stations, ending 10/17/07, Guttenberg, NJ In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <333324.21558.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> well...I wanna 1 too, but I wasn't willing to run up to Jersey City or it's environs just to git it. But...if there was enough interest (assuming there are multiple units) I could be persuaded. No allowance for time, but my gas would need to be reimbursed. And shipping of course. --- Richard wrote: > > In article > <045514DE-EC51-424A-B4DD-7642A0655447 at neurotica.com>, > Dave McGuire writes: > > > I'd be interested in one or two of these if > anyone buys the lot to > > piece out. > > They're already listed as individual monitors, not > as a lot. > -- > "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft > available for download > > > > Legalize Adulthood! > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From tothwolf at concentric.net Thu Oct 18 17:56:29 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:56:29 -0500 (CDT) Subject: ebay search reports? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 18 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: > Has anyone else noticed that the ebay email notification of search > results has gone wacky in the past week or so? > > I'm getting repeat results in all my search emails (i.e. the same search > reports the same items each day) and the search emails are being > delivered less than daily. > > They are tooting their horn about having "improved" things lately and it > feels like they are having some fallout. It's been a mess with their email stuff lately. They've also changed up all the ASQ and notification emails, possibly partly due to all the fake/spoof ASQ and notification emails. It's about to get even more fun too...eBay is about to roll out their new and "improved" search that sorts by the lowest price+shipping. For those of us selling new items that include the box/books/etc, it will place our items lower in the search results because it weighs more and costs more to ship. -Toth From korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu Thu Oct 18 18:35:34 2007 From: korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J Korpela) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:35:34 -0700 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) In-Reply-To: <200710172145.28621.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <4715E234.31878.1313ED50@cclist.sydex.com> <200710172145.28621.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: > Speaking of DDJ, I could still kick myself for passing up on some bound > versions of their early years, which I first saw at a local computer store > one time for around ten bucks each. (Computerland? I forget...) Seeing > them later the price had gone up 3-4 times that high. :-( They still come up on ebay and VCM from time to time. Occasionally you can score a volume for $1+shipping, but more likely you'll be talking between $10 and $15. Also got a few out of Powells. I think my set is pretty much complete through v14. They're certainly much easier to find than the same years of BYTE. Eric > > -- > Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and > ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can > be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" > - > Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James > M Dakin > > From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Thu Oct 18 19:04:24 2007 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim s) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:04:24 -0700 Subject: Question about PDP-8 thing on eBay In-Reply-To: <20e401c811ce$df1a7f50$6600a8c0@vrsxp> References: <20e401c811ce$df1a7f50$6600a8c0@vrsxp> Message-ID: <4717F488.8030003@msm.umr.edu> Vincent Slyngstad wrote: > > http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170155699367 > dkrafter. the vendor helped me select some Cincinatti Millacron parts which he had, though he is a mechanical mill guy and not an NC guy that understands the computers he is dealing with. He'd probably help with questions about the item and what it hooks to if he has one as well. I've bought most of what is a Microdata 800 from him and a manual about it. Jim From rborsuk at colourfull.com Thu Oct 18 22:01:43 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:01:43 -0400 Subject: Apple IIGS and my Amdahl In-Reply-To: <1192740198.13508.7.camel@elric> References: <6CA32CA9-C0E9-4F6A-83D1-CDA9C7F8553D@COLOURFULL.COM> <1192740198.13508.7.camel@elric> Message-ID: <917F437A-241C-4122-918A-097CDCD0D7D4@colourfull.com> [trimmed for your viewing pleasure] On Oct 18, 2007, at 4:43 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > > If it's a blinky oil *level* light then you ought to put some oil > in ;-) > It's not that. There's plenty of oil in the car. The oil got toasted on the trip which altered the viscosity. I need to change the oil. I'll get to it this weekend. She'll be as good as new. On Oct 17, 2007, at 4:14 AM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > > Looks like a fun trip though. I'm surprised you had problems > towing it home > with your Disco - which engine does it have? We regularly pull two > or three > tonnes with my friend's gas-converted 4.6 V8, but I'd expect the > diesel to > handle it better if a little slowly. > > Gordon > You know, that's a good point. It was a fun trip and now I can sit back and laugh about it. I got to pick up a cool computer and spend some time with my wife. It only would have been better if my boys could have came and enjoyed the trip instead of bailing my butt out. My Rover is a 4.0 V8. I probably could have pulled it off if it would have been under 200 miles, and on flat highway instead of the disastrous mountains of West Virginia. Yeah, a diesel would have been better. I have to say that I greatly underestimated the weight of the system. Big is one thing, heavy is another. Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 17 19:43:31 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:43:31 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) Message-ID: <0JQ3005LE0NK8B46@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) > From: Jim Battle > Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 12:09:44 -0500 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >woodelf wrote: >> Jules Richardson wrote: >> >>> For a math copro to be called as such, does it have to integrate >>> itself with the CPU's instruction set - or does some sort of box of >>> tricks sitting on an I/O port and accessed through normal CPU >>> instructions count? I'm not sure what the correct definition is. >> >> It does tricks, but then with only 8 opcodes defined on the PDP-8 >> what do you expect. >> >>> What do you mean by 'smallest computer' by the way? Smallest in terms >>> of spec? I'm pretty sure some of the 1950's stuff had optional >>> floating point hardware available, although it wouldn't have been >>> physically small :) > >Northstar (of Northstar Horizon fame) sold an S-100 card that had a TTL >FPU on it. It was a microcoded affair (256 words of 40 bits) that >processed a nibble (BCD digit) per clock (4 MHz I believe). You could >also specify how many digits were in the mantissa (2-14, even # digits >only). Only the four basic functions, +-*/, were supported. > >Northstar had a version of BASIC that could use this FPU. As I recall, >you had to specify how many digits of precision you wanted in your >floating point numbers when you ordered BASIC (it wasn't dynamically >specified in the interpreter). > >Others sold S-100 cards that used an AMD FPU chip. This too required >poking data bytes and a command, then waiting for the result to be >computed and then pulling out the result bytes. It wasn't somehow >integrated into the instruction set of the host processor. > >Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket >calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and >then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very >slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point >library code. Actually The article used a CALC chip that was slow on speed but had an interface that was BCD output and convenient for input. A few years back I took a 8742 (8048 with a slave interface) at 11Mhz and programmed it to do 24bit BCD math (+-/*) and it was faster than a calc chip. It was done because I could. Overall it was as fast as z80/4mhz. Allison From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Wed Oct 17 20:01:00 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:01:00 -0400 Subject: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) Message-ID: <0JQ3003JE1GPJSE1@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: FPUs for small computers (Was: What to download for a PDP-8) > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:21:40 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 17 Oct 2007 at 12:09, Jim Battle wrote: > >> Finally, I recall seeing an article where somebody took a pocket >> calculator chip and essentially poked simulated keystrokes at it and >> then decoded the LED driver output to determine the answer. It was very >> slow, though, so all it saved was the space of the floating point >> library code. > >I remember that one. It may have been an early issue of Byte. I >also wondered at the time if any speed was gained over just running >plain old x80 code. If it's the article as I remember it it was a push for Add/subtract but better for multiply and divide (to 8 digits). An 8080 does a 16x16 multiply in a few milliseconds to compare. In another Byte there was a simple design and explanation of hardware multiply by shift and add. That was capable of high speed. With TTL of the time that was something under 10 microseconds for 16 bits using a 2mhz clock. At that point a 4mhz Z80 takes nearly that much time to load and read it. You can do subtract and shift to implement a divide. Allison From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Thu Oct 18 01:15:44 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 07:15:44 +0100 Subject: VAXen at home Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB59@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> >From a UK point of view 'motor' as in motor-generator would be taken to some form of internal combustion engine. I have heard lots of references to 'motor-generators' but never an 'engine-generator'. Devices used for AC to DC, DC to AC and voltage conversion using a electric motor coupled to a generator would be referred to as 'rotary convertors'. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: 18 October 2007 01:18 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: VAXen at home > It may be European vs US usage, but in the US "motor" almost always > means electric motor in this and other contexts. So what you That tends to be UK usage too. The thing under the bonnet (OK, hood) of a car is called an 'engine' over here. 'Motor' for that would be very uncommon. To me, a 'motor generator' is just that. An electric motor driving an electric generator, to be used to convert voltage/frequency, etc. A 'rotary converter' (or 'Dynamotor; if oyu go back far enough) is a simialr thing with common field windings/frame/etc rather than 2 separate electrical machines with the shafts coupled. > call a "motor-generator" would be here just plain called a "generator" A 'generator' over here is either just the mechanical-to-electircal energy converter or , as you said, a heat engine coupled to such a machine. Certainly if you hired a 'generator' (as somebody suggested we should do for a VCF-type event), you'd expect to get something with the engine included. I don't know how common these other term are across the Pond, but an 'alternator' is an AC-output geneterator, a 'Dynamo' (short for 'Dynamo-electric machine' is a generator, normally DC output, with a wound field, and a 'Magneto' (short for 'Magneto-electric machine' is a genatore with a permanent magnet field. Which means the common bicycle dynamo (as it's normally called over here' is in fact a magneto.... -tony From gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk Thu Oct 18 04:50:35 2007 From: gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:50:35 +0100 Subject: That poor system/36 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710181050.35400.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> On Thursday 18 October 2007 00:45:34 Tony Duell wrote: > large-format cameras and a few medium format cameras (OK and _one_ 35mm > camera to my knowledge) have the faciltiy to shift and tilt the lens and I remember my father making a lens shift adaptor from a sawn-up extension tube and a short bit of car radiator hose. It worked fairly well. Gordon From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Thu Oct 18 07:04:06 2007 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:04:06 +0100 Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3903BB5B@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> My memory may be at fault here but that sounds like it. A quad board ... I can't recall any yellow handles. It did have the standard DEC 20mA ASR 33 conector on a bit of short grey cable hanging off the top of the board. Other early sightings at DEC VT100 prototype . Wire wrap board mounted on a piece of thick plywood. Another similar bit of plywood on top with the monitor out of a VT52 perched on it. A third bit of plywood held the keyboard. A PSU (I know not whence that came) and an Intel MDS. (8 inch Floppy based in a blue box.) So I asked the inevitable 'Why all the wood' 'It doesn't short anything out came the reply' The design of the VT100 was done by one engineer who I met but I cannot recall his name. The case was the work of an industrial designer. We all thought the case was really smart LA36 prototype another wirewrap wonder with the print mech screwed to a board. LA180 prototype as LA-36 but with the wooden board clamped to the bench to stop it leaping about. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of William Donzelli Sent: 18 October 2007 04:12 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery > I'm sure I saw a development system at DEC for the 4004 running on a PDP-8 circa 1975. I think in its collection, RCS has a DEC Y187 card (the only yellow handled Flip Chip I have ever seen) that has a 4004 on it. -- Will From lynchaj at yahoo.com Thu Oct 18 07:57:54 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:57:54 -0400 Subject: Vector Graphic Message-ID: <006b01c81186$8022e700$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Hi, I am trying to gauge whether there is sufficient interest in the Vector Graphic to support a mailing list. Please reply or email me if you'd be interested in joining. The mailing list would be a LISTSERV on a university domain (.EDU) *NOT* a Yahoo! Group. Thanks! Andrew Lynch From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Wed Oct 17 13:22:57 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:22:57 +0200 (CEST) Subject: 4004 and IC history / was Re: Vintage computer photogallery In-Reply-To: <200710141342.12607.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <470FBB23.865854F5@cs.ubc.ca> <200710131903.58980.rtellason@verizon.net> <200710141342.12607.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4829.129.26.149.21.1192645377.squirrel@129.26.149.21> Roy J. Tellason said: > On Saturday 13 October 2007 19:50, William Donzelli wrote: >> > And what's funny is that there now seems to be some stuff out there >> > that's offering as simple as single gates in a small surface-mount >> > package. >> >> 20? years ago, TI offered a few 74xx series parts in 8 pin DIPs - dual >> gates and such. They bombed. > > I've never heard of these nor seen any reference to them. How did they > number > those parts? Sounds like it might make a worthwhile addition to the parts > pages... I think I have seen such parts in one of the older TI pocket guides, namely 50/60 dividers for use in clocks as Tony Duell mentioned. But these IIRC didn't belong to the SN74 series but rather to the almost unknown SN49 series. Difficult to find datasheets... Regarts -- Holger From jwest at classiccmp.org Thu Oct 18 22:48:46 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:48:46 -0500 Subject: Listadmin References: <200710181050.35400.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> Message-ID: <001c01c81202$f3ce5780$6600a8c0@JWEST> >> large-format cameras and a few medium format cameras ..... Please redirect this thread to alt.cameras where they care. Jay From useddec at gmail.com Thu Oct 18 22:54:27 2007 From: useddec at gmail.com (Paul Anderson) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:54:27 -0500 Subject: Listadmin In-Reply-To: <001c01c81202$f3ce5780$6600a8c0@JWEST> References: <200710181050.35400.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> <001c01c81202$f3ce5780$6600a8c0@JWEST> Message-ID: <624966d60710182054y4f801174he25a9be1777369f6@mail.gmail.com> Did I miss that ? Where? Paul On 10/18/07, Jay West wrote: > > > >> large-format cameras and a few medium format cameras ..... > > Please redirect this thread to alt.cameras where they care. > > Jay > > From jwest at classiccmp.org Thu Oct 18 22:57:56 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:57:56 -0500 Subject: Listadmin References: <200710181050.35400.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> <001c01c81202$f3ce5780$6600a8c0@JWEST> Message-ID: <004001c81204$3bb4c150$6600a8c0@JWEST> Geeze.... Next post on car engines gets a suspension. Jay From jwest at classiccmp.org Fri Oct 19 00:18:09 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:18:09 -0500 Subject: trs-80 trade? (wanted) Message-ID: <000701c8120f$713901f0$6600a8c0@JWEST> I have a TRS-80 model I monitor, disk drives, and expansion unit... but no cpu/keyboard. I am looking for the keyboard, cable to expansion unit, and power adapter. Willing to trade DEC/HP/DG stuff for above :) Jay West From mcguire at neurotica.com Fri Oct 19 00:18:29 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:18:29 -0400 Subject: PCI floppy interface In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 16, 2007, at 1:11 PM, David Griffith wrote: > Is anyone here qualified to design PCI cards? This morning I got the > bright idea that since PCI floppy interfaces don't seem to exist, > one of > us ought to make one. I'm aware of the Catweasel, but it doesn't > appear > to behave as a bog-standard floppy interface. This wouldn't be a > replacement for the Catweasel, more of a compliment, especially for > machines that lack a floppy interface entirely or can't handle > double-density 5.25" media. > > I can source the chips. Who here knows PCI? I have done one PCI design. I can't call myself "good at it", and very-high-speed logic isn't my forte', but I can probably handle this if it turns into a project. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From mcguire at neurotica.com Fri Oct 19 00:19:34 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:19:34 -0400 Subject: PCI floppy interface In-Reply-To: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> On Oct 16, 2007, at 1:36 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> Is anyone here qualified to design PCI cards? This morning I got the >> bright idea that since PCI floppy interfaces don't seem to exist, >> one of >> us ought to make one. I'm aware of the Catweasel, but it doesn't >> appear >> to behave as a bog-standard floppy interface. This wouldn't be a >> replacement for the Catweasel, more of a compliment, especially for >> machines that lack a floppy interface entirely or can't handle >> double-density 5.25" media. > > While I can support your idea, one might as well make the floppy > controller a standalone device, given the availability of > microprocessor cores. In either case, new software drivers weill be > needed, as the legacy floppy depends on the old ISA-style DMA (does > that exist for any other reason in modern systems without ISA > slots?). One could supply local RAM instead, but what with the PCI > interface logic, the drivers and the board cost, it might as well be > a USB, Firewire or ethernet device that could hook to darned near > anything, not just PeeCee boxes. PCI doesn't imply PeeCee. I have a metric buttload of PCI slots around here, and not a PeeCee to be seen. (well, except a Sun-badged Opteron box) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 19 01:11:49 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 23:11:49 -0700 Subject: PCI floppy interface In-Reply-To: <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> References: , <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com>, <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <4717E835.6215.1AFB5664@cclist.sydex.com> On 19 Oct 2007 at 1:19, Dave McGuire wrote: > > While I can support your idea, one might as well make the floppy > > controller a standalone device, given the availability of > > microprocessor cores. In either case, new software drivers weill be > > needed, as the legacy floppy depends on the old ISA-style DMA (does > > that exist for any other reason in modern systems without ISA > > slots?). One could supply local RAM instead, but what with the PCI > > interface logic, the drivers and the board cost, it might as well be > > a USB, Firewire or ethernet device that could hook to darned near > > anything, not just PeeCee boxes. > > PCI doesn't imply PeeCee. I have a metric buttload of PCI slots > around here, and not a PeeCee to be seen. (well, except a Sun-badged > Opteron box) I know that, but my point was that there are plenty of boxes out there that don't have PCI slots (PeeCees later than a certain vintage generally do). Neither to laptops, notebooks and whole bunch of other platforms. Since the cost of silicon at this point is fairly negligible, why not expand the base of possible users to its maximum? Cheers, Chuck From Arno_1983 at gmx.de Fri Oct 19 01:49:55 2007 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:49:55 +0200 Subject: VAXen at home Message-ID: <20071019064955.207790@gmx.net> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > woodelf wrote: > > Dave McGuire wrote: > > > > > If one is wearing a tie whilst working on big computers, one > > > probably deserves it! > > Did not IBM tech's have to wear one? > > Yes. Usually with a tie-clip holding it against the shirt. > > Peace... Sridhar And the clip specified to be "non-conductive" in the safety precautions preface of the CE manuals, as I remember from those of our 4331. BTW (@Sridhar and to bring this back to the subject topic): I got that VSII to boot a NetBSD installation kernel by using a SPARCclassic with NetBSD as MOP server so it kind of works now, but it's of course not as nice as having a MOP daemon run on one of my windoze machines that I keep around anyway. (We already had that argument back when I looked for a RARP server to netboot my Suns, IIRC.) Then again, next thing I'd need is an NFS server for windoze which has some idea of representing unix-style links in a VFAT system, which tgpnfs does not. The netboot only worked after I removed the GPX framebuffer boards. Otherwise, the machine would again try all of the POST countdown after I typed "b xqa0" at the chevron prompt and get stuck at "A", not sending out its MOP request. Another nit in the boot code...why not "remember" to use the serial console and skip the framebuffer test if it was activated by a "Break" during the boot process? Its RD53 seems to have bigger problems than just a sticky bumper, I got it to rev up once and immediately tried to start a NetBSD install on it, but was rewarded with lots of "soft errors". I'll have a friend of mine try to low-level it on his VS2000. Ifff that takes care of the problem, where would I get an additional frontpanel insert for it (the pushbutton thing)? TIA, so long, Arno -- Ist Ihr Browser Vista-kompatibel? Jetzt die neuesten Browser-Versionen downloaden: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/browser From riedelec at wi.rr.com Fri Oct 19 00:48:23 2007 From: riedelec at wi.rr.com (Riedel Electronics, LLC/Telstar) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:48:23 -0500 Subject: PDP8A K&T Message-ID: Vince, I know plenty about your PDP8A and it's use in Kearney & Trecker machine tools. I fixed these and PDP8E computers for K&T back in the 80's and continue to do it to this day. I am running one as I write this. If you want to talk email at riedelec at wi.rr.com Dave Riedel Electronics/Telstar phone: 262-392-3366 fax: 262-392-3971 www.predicta.com riedelec at wi.rr.com From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Fri Oct 19 04:25:10 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:25:10 -0300 Subject: OT: Predicta?! Re: PDP8A K&T References: Message-ID: <009e01c81232$16411d50$f0fea8c0@alpha> > www.predicta.com Dave, IS IT TRUE? I still cannot believe! :oD What is the price of a TV like this? Where is it sold? What a fantastic thing, these sets are absolutely BEAUTIFUL! :oD From ats at offog.org Fri Oct 19 03:31:08 2007 From: ats at offog.org (Adam Sampson) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:31:08 +0100 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: (Tony Duell's message of "Thu\, 18 Oct 2007 20\:48\:39 +0100 \(BST\)") References: Message-ID: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) writes: > The first 2 I can understand (although there are many different ways to > control model railways...). But please explain the last. Was it an input > or an output device, for example? An input -- an LDR detected a reflective spot on the wheel as it went past, giving me a readout of how fast and far the hamster ran in an evening. (His top speed wasn't anything to write home about, but he managed some impressive distances; a few kilometers in an evening...) -- Adam Sampson From roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk Fri Oct 19 05:22:43 2007 From: roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk (Roger Holmes) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:22:43 +0100 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <200710190345.l9J3j2G8056997@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710190345.l9J3j2G8056997@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <0D817124-8977-49EF-BFF4-67ECE45314B6@microspot.co.uk> >> >> From a UK point of view 'motor' as in motor-generator would be >> taken to > some form of internal combustion engine. > I have heard lots of references to 'motor-generators' but never an > 'engine-generator'. Well it just depends who you are used to talking to. I am in the UK, I own some WW2 kit with a brass plate saying 'Air Ministry Engine Driven Alternator Set'. Another plate says Tangye-Ricardo and another saying it was built by Tangye Ltd, Birmingham. Ricardo was a south coast engine design consulting company. It has a two cylinder 3.5 litre diesel engine which runs at 1000rpm, a huge flywheel and a big alternator with a smaller (about 15 inch long and 15 inch wide) DC generator on the back to provide the excitation current for the alternators field coils. The whole thing comes on rolled steel joists as a frame and is about 10 foot long, 4 foot wide and 5 foot high. I bought it to drive my ICT mainframe, so it is on topic. > > Devices used for AC to DC, DC to AC and voltage conversion using a > electric motor coupled to a generator would be referred to as 'rotary > convertors'. No, when I've talked to people (in the UK) about a rotary converter, they were talking about a large 3 phase motor wired up with big capacitors so that it could be started on a single phase supply and once turning, the other two windings would provide the other two phases whilst the pulses to the first winding would keep it running at the right speed. Of course for a 10kVA supply, I would have needed at least a 30kVA motor as only one phase was actually driving it. >> It may be European vs US usage, but in the US "motor" almost always >> means electric motor in this and other contexts. So what you > > That tends to be UK usage too. The thing under the bonnet (OK, > hood) of > a car is called an 'engine' over here. 'Motor' for that would be very > uncommon. I agree, though motor is also used to mean motor car as in Ford Motor Company, Dagenham or Vauxhall Motors, Luton. > > To me, a 'motor generator' is just that. An electric motor driving an > electric generator, to be used to convert voltage/frequency, etc. A > 'rotary converter' (or 'Dynamotor; if oyu go back far enough) is a > simialr thing with common field windings/frame/etc rather than 2 > separate electrical machines with the shafts coupled. > > >> call a "motor-generator" would be here just plain called a >> "generator" > > A 'generator' over here is either just the mechanical-to-electircal > energy converter or , as you said, a heat engine coupled to such a > machine. Certainly if you hired a 'generator' (as somebody > suggested we > should do for a VCF-type event), you'd expect to get something with > the > engine included. Yes, but generator also means a machine converting a turning motion into DC. Cars prior to the mid sixties had generators, after that they have alternators with a bridge rectifier. > I don't know how common these other term are across the Pond, but an > 'alternator' is an AC-output geneterator, a 'Dynamo' (short for > 'Dynamo-electric machine' is a generator, normally DC output, with a > wound field, and a 'Magneto' (short for 'Magneto-electric machine' > is a > genatore with a permanent magnet field. Which means the common bicycle > dynamo (as it's normally called over here' is in fact a magneto.... I agree with all but the last part. A magneto is a coil mounted next to a flywheel, the flywheel having a permanent magnet attached which when it moves past the coil, generates an electrical spike which drives the spark plug at exactly the right point in the engine cycle for a two stroke engine, or for a four stroke, one spark is just wasted, though it would be possible for the magneto to be run off the camshaft. The Magento was in turn was a big advance on the old hot tube ignition, but thats another story. Roger Holmes ICT 1301 UK101 Apple 2,3,Lisa and Macs From ian_primus at yahoo.com Fri Oct 19 06:17:07 2007 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 04:17:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Apple IIGS and my Amdahl In-Reply-To: <917F437A-241C-4122-918A-097CDCD0D7D4@colourfull.com> Message-ID: <362227.6739.qm@web52701.mail.re2.yahoo.com> I have to say that I greatly > underestimated the weight > of the system. Big is one thing, heavy is another. And the Amdahl has a lot of both :) I have underestimated the weight of equipment before. For example, the Burroughs B80. I initially though - gee, this looks bulky, but it's got a printer in one side, can't be that heavy - there's all that empty space. Wrong... The CPU side was crammed full of heavy transformers and stuff. Getting it in and out of the van was a huge task. (the getting in part made immensely easier with a forklift...) Also, first glance at a CDC disk pack drive and I figured "well, that probably weighs a good 200 pounds, can't be that heavy". Well, it was beyond heavy, into the realm of "are you sure it's not welded to the floor". Bringing that load (two CDC drives, 5 ft rack, misc stuff), I managed to split a bushing in one of the shocks on the van. The worst part was that I didn't realize just how heavy they were until I got them home and tried to get them out of the van. They were loaded with a ramp and a loading dock. And now I had to somehow get them out... -Ian From sellam at vintagetech.com Fri Oct 19 07:51:18 2007 From: sellam at vintagetech.com (Sellam Ismail) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:51:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Vintage Computer Festival 10.0 Update Message-ID: _ _ ______ ______ __ __ | | | | | __ | | ____| \ \ / / | | | | | | |_| | | \ \/ / | | | | | | | |___ \ / | | | | | | | ___| / \ \ \/ / | | _ | | / /\ \ \ / | |__| | | | / / \ \ \/ |______| |_| /_/ \_\ November 3-4, 2007 Computer History Museum Mountain View, California http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/ Well, here we are, a little more than two weeks away from VCFX, the tenth annual Vintage Computer Festival. This is it, folks. The culmination of a decade of computer history celebration. From a simple yet over-budgeted inaugural event held at the county fairgrounds to a multi-dimensional extravaganza hosted in the hallowed halls of the Computer History Museum, the Vintage Computer Festival has come a long way. I wasn't quite sure we would even make it to this point, but here we are! I'm as amazed as anyone. \_...> Session Schedule As long-time VCF attendees know, one of the most anticipated aspects of the Festival is the roster of speakers and sessions we assemble each year. This year we've outdone ourselves. We have the most sessions we've ever featured at the VCF, so many in fact that we opened up a third track! There's something here for everyone. See below for the schedule outline but check the VCF 10.0 website for complete session abstracts and speaker biographies. The current speaker schedule is as follows (the name of the room where the session is being held is in parenthesis): Saturday, November 3 Track 01 (Grand Hall) Time Topic Presenter(s) ------- ------------------------------------- ------------------- 10:00am The Role of the TRS-80 in Computer Theresa & David History Welch 11:00am Deconstructing the Intel 4004 Tim McNerney 12:00pm Intel SIM8-01: A Proto-PC Zbigniew Stachniak 1:00pm The Computer Revolution 30 Years On Lee Felsenstein Track 10 (Boole) Time Topic Presenter(s) ------- ------------------------------------- ------------------- 10:30am The History of RAMAC: The First Al Hoagland Spinning Disk Drive 11:30am More Disk Drive History Shrikant Desai 12:30pm WeirdStuff Panel Dave MacDougall, Chuck Schuetz & Jim Schuetz Track 11 (Theater) Time Topic Presenter(s) ------- ------------------------------------- ------------------- 11:30am The DigiBarn Bruce Damer, Al Lundell & Galen Brandt 2:00pm Director's Notes Greg Maletic 3:00pm Director's Notes Jason Scott Sunday, November 4 Track 01 (Grand Hall) Time Topic Presenter(s) ------- ------------------------------------- ------------------ 10:00am The Impact of Magnetic Stripe Media Jerry Svigals on Computers 11:00am Booting Sage Computer - A Subjective Rod Coleman Retrospective 12:00pm Recent Developments in Conway's Life, Bill Gosper and a Miniblast from Macsyma's Past 1:00pm The LINC: A Paradigm Shift Tom Chaney, Wesley Clark, Jerome Cox, Gerald Johns, Severo Ornstein, Maury Pepper, Scott Robinson, Mary Allen Wilkes, Bruce Damer Track 10 (Boole) Time Topic Presenter(s) ------- ------------------------------------- ------------------- 10:30am Thank You, Jim Jack Rubin 11:30am Phreaking History Phil Lapsley 12:30pm The First Computer Store: What Was Lance Leventhal Then, What Is Now, and Where We Are Heading 2:00pm PDP-1 Restoration Review Lyle Bickley, Eric Smith, Ken Sumrall & Steve Russell Track 11 (Theater) Time Topic Presenter(s) ------- ------------------------------------- ------------------- 11:30am International Obfuscated C Code Landon Curt Noll Contest Awards Presentation 3:00pm Creatively Vintage: Retro-Tech in Art Christine Finn Space * Some titles are subject to change Complete information on the VCF 10.0 session schedule can be found here: http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/speaker.php \_...> The Vintage Computer Film Festival The 2nd annual Vintage Computer Film Festival accompanies the VCF again this year. This is a fesitval within a festival whereby we show films, documentaries, shorts and clips that either have a vintage computing or technology theme or are otherwise vintage in their own right. Sometimes we choose stock footage from old computer industry marketing or training videos and sometimes we feature previews from upcoming documentaries (including the filmmakers themselves giving introductions). Screenings run both days of the VCF. The full Film Festival schedulexi will be posted by Saturday at: http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/film.php \_...> You Can Still Be An Exhibitor! Exhibit registration closes on October 29th. Exhibiting is the best way to experience the Vintage Computer Festival. It is an enjoyable and rewarding experience. But don't take my word for it, be an exhibitor and find out for yourself. All you really need is a neat old computer, a good story to tell about it, and a little bit of time. Check out the VCF 10.0 exhibit page for more information: http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/exhibit.php \_...> Computer History Museum Tours & Demos Each year the Computer History Museum's all volunteer docents give VCF attendees a series of guided tours of the Museum's fantastic collection, providing historical stories about various artifacts in the collection along the way. This year they've added themed tours that cover Internet and Video Game history in more depth and detail. Tours are held in the afternoon and run at hour intervals. They've also scheduled demos of the restored DEC PDP-1 and IBM 1401 computers. The tour and demonstration schedule is available here: http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/tours.php \_...> Buy, Sell and Trade at the VCF Marketplace The VCF Marketplace features a wide variety of interesting vintage computers and related items for sale from a variety of vendors. There is simply no better place to buy and sell vintage computers than at the VCF Marketplace. Vendor booths are still available. For more information on selling at VCFX, please visit: http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/vendor.php \_...> Lodging Options For our out of town guests, we've arranged hotel room blocks at fine local hotels at discounted rates. There is still time to book a room at a reduced rate, but don't delay as the registration deadlines are looming. Full lodging information is here: http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/lodging.php See You There! Complete information about VCFX, including the speaker schedule, exhibit roster, end everything else can be found on the VCF 10.0 web pages: http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/ Best regards, Sellam Ismail Producer Vintage Computer Festival ;) -- 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 jfoust at threedee.com Fri Oct 19 08:06:11 2007 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:06:11 -0500 Subject: PDP8A K&T (and Predicta) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20071019080321.04f01a80@mail> At 12:48 AM 10/19/2007, Riedel Electronics, LLC/Telstar wrote: >Vince, > I know plenty about your PDP8A and it's use in Kearney & Trecker machine >tools. I fixed these and PDP8E computers for K&T back in the 80's and >continue to do it to this day. I am running one as I write this. > If you want to talk email at riedelec at wi.rr.com Geez, I've been to your site many times, and I never realized you are located about 30 minutes from me. You have PDP-8 as well as reconditioned Predictas? How much? :-) An old friend of mine is Tim Jenison of Newtek (once in Topeka, now in Austin) who has quite an extensive antique television collection, including several Predictas. - John >Riedel Electronics/Telstar >phone: 262-392-3366 >fax: 262-392-3971 >www.predicta.com >riedelec at wi.rr.com From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 19 11:18:09 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:18:09 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <0D817124-8977-49EF-BFF4-67ECE45314B6@microspot.co.uk> References: <200710190345.l9J3j2G8056997@dewey.classiccmp.org>, <0D817124-8977-49EF-BFF4-67ECE45314B6@microspot.co.uk> Message-ID: <47187651.24328.1D26725D@cclist.sydex.com> On 19 Oct 2007 at 11:22, Roger Holmes wrote: > No, when I've talked to people (in the UK) about a rotary converter, > they were talking about a large 3 phase motor wired up with big > capacitors so that it could be started on a single phase supply and > once turning, the other two windings would provide the other two > phases whilst the pulses to the first winding would keep it running > at the right speed. Of course for a 10kVA supply, I would have needed > at least a 30kVA motor as only one phase was actually driving it. There is the class of the commutating synchronous rectifier (for want of a better made-up term). See http://www.nycsubway.org/tech/power/rotary.html To be honest, I suspect that a gizmo of this vintage is simply too much of an antique to have been used to power any mainframe systems. The term for the ildling 3-phase motor driven from a single-phase source via one or more large capacitors used here in the US is usually "Phase Converter" or "Rotary phase converter" or "Dynamic phase converter" to differentiate itself from a simple capacitor bank feeding a 3-phase motor, sometimes called a "static phase converter". There is a trade name for the former, Rotocon, and occasionally you'll see their reference to their products as "rotary converters", but that's not general usage. Regardless, I don't know if I'd try powering a three-phase computer power supply from one. Cheers, Chuck From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 12:33:25 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:33:25 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <47187651.24328.1D26725D@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710190345.l9J3j2G8056997@dewey.classiccmp.org> <0D817124-8977-49EF-BFF4-67ECE45314B6@microspot.co.uk> <47187651.24328.1D26725D@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > Regardless, I don't know if I'd try powering a three-phase computer > power supply from one. With older gear, why not? Most of that classic mainframe stuff has brute force power supplies, often fed by voltage regulating transformers (almost always a Sola, it seems). The three phase motors in the drives will just help things along, as well. -- Will From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 19 12:47:12 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:47:12 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: References: <200710190345.l9J3j2G8056997@dewey.classiccmp.org>, <47187651.24328.1D26725D@cclist.sydex.com>, Message-ID: <47188B30.29993.1D77FB1C@cclist.sydex.com> On 19 Oct 2007 at 13:33, William Donzelli wrote: > With older gear, why not? Most of that classic mainframe stuff has > brute force power supplies, often fed by voltage regulating > transformers (almost always a Sola, it seems). > > The three phase motors in the drives will just help things along, as well. My experience with these things (admittedly only with machine tools) shows a strong tendency for less-than-perfect (i.e. 120 degree) phase- to-phase relationships and fairly drastic phase-to-phase voltage and current variations. They work with motors, but none allows for full motor nameplate loading (usually around 80 percent of nameplate). My take is that they work "sort of". Heaven only knows how a power supply would behave attached to one of these things. My feeling is that if you have to power some three-phase big iron from a single-phase source, it's probably better to take a look at one of the modern (and expensive) solid-state converters--or get some real three-phase distribution installed. Cheers, Chuck From roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk Fri Oct 19 13:53:52 2007 From: roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk (Roger Holmes) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:53:52 +0100 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <200710191700.l9JH04fM062964@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710191700.l9JH04fM062964@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: > From: "Chuck Guzis" > >> No, when I've talked to people (in the UK) about a rotary converter, >> they were talking about a large 3 phase motor wired up with big >> capacitors so that it could be started on a single phase supply and >> once turning, the other two windings would provide the other two >> phases whilst the pulses to the first winding would keep it running >> at the right speed. Of course for a 10kVA supply, I would have needed >> at least a 30kVA motor as only one phase was actually driving it. > > There is the class of the commutating synchronous rectifier (for want > of a better made-up term). See > > http://www.nycsubway.org/tech/power/rotary.html Amazing and very interesting. It seems for every accepted modern technology there were always alternative ways used in the past which have been almost forgotten. Take the crank pin and crankshaft, back in the early days of steam power, someone had a patent on that, so someone else thought up two cog wheels rotating round each other in a similar motion with tie rods to keep them in mesh but did not transmit power. Or take the poppet valve used in engines, an american, Mr Knight invented a sleeve valve sold under the name Silent Knight, which fitted between each piston and cylinder in an engine, which allowed much larger inlet and outlet ports to be in the wall of the cylinder. In the calculation field, there have even been base 3 mechanical calculators using digits 0, +1 and -1 instead of conventional binary or BCD. > To be honest, I suspect that a gizmo of this vintage is simply too > much of an antique to have been used to power any mainframe systems. I would think the slip rings would produce the odd spark which would generate big glitches. > > The term for the ildling 3-phase motor driven from a single-phase > source via one or more large capacitors used here in the US is > usually "Phase Converter" or "Rotary phase converter" or "Dynamic > phase converter" to differentiate itself from a simple capacitor bank > feeding a 3-phase motor, sometimes called a "static phase converter". > There is a trade name for the former, Rotocon, and occasionally > you'll see their reference to their products as "rotary converters", > but that's not general usage. Looking on Wikipeda, it says 'Rotary Converter' covers both types, and they say, even covers motor generator sets. > > Regardless, I don't know if I'd try powering a three-phase computer > power supply from one. Nor me, thats why I bought the proper diesel powered generator, though almost antique and a hundred times bigger than a modern generator, it would just chug on continuously, for years on end if I needed it to with simple topping up of oil, water and fuel and a twist of the oil cleaning discs now and again. One decade I might have to give it an oil change I suppose, its probably got some of the original wartime oil in it, incredibly diluted of course with all the new stuff added over the years. The other maintenance was to periodically wash the exhaust through with caustic soda (sodium hydoxide) to unblock all the carbon deposits. From pat at computer-refuge.org Fri Oct 19 13:55:09 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:55:09 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <47188B30.29993.1D77FB1C@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710190345.l9J3j2G8056997@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47188B30.29993.1D77FB1C@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710191455.10027.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Friday 19 October 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 19 Oct 2007 at 13:33, William Donzelli wrote: > > With older gear, why not? Most of that classic mainframe stuff has > > brute force power supplies, often fed by voltage regulating > > transformers (almost always a Sola, it seems). > > > > The three phase motors in the drives will just help things along, > > as well. > > My experience with these things (admittedly only with machine tools) > shows a strong tendency for less-than-perfect (i.e. 120 degree) > phase- to-phase relationships and fairly drastic phase-to-phase > voltage and current variations. They work with motors, but none > allows for full motor nameplate loading (usually around 80 percent of > nameplate). My take is that they work "sort of". Heaven only knows > how a power supply would behave attached to one of these things. > > My feeling is that if you have to power some three-phase big iron > from a single-phase source, it's probably better to take a look at > one of the modern (and expensive) solid-state converters--or get some > real three-phase distribution installed. Or, of course, you could just find a big heavy single phase motor, and pair it up with a 3phase motor of the same RPM rating with a shaft-coupler, and make your own single-to-three phase MG set. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 14:08:04 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:08:04 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home In-Reply-To: <47188B30.29993.1D77FB1C@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710190345.l9J3j2G8056997@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47187651.24328.1D26725D@cclist.sydex.com> <47188B30.29993.1D77FB1C@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > My experience with these things (admittedly only with machine tools) > shows a strong tendency for less-than-perfect (i.e. 120 degree) phase- > to-phase relationships and fairly drastic phase-to-phase voltage and > current variations. They work with motors, but none allows for full > motor nameplate loading (usually around 80 percent of nameplate). My > take is that they work "sort of". Heaven only knows how a power > supply would behave attached to one of these things. I doubt it would be SO bad that the power supply would not work properly. Most have constant voltage transformers to take care of problems like this anyway, and if one of the phases is really out of whack in the voltage department, it can be bucked or boosted with an autotransformer. A small phase shift in one of the phases really will not do much. Any fans or pumps will basically not care (and help correct the error as well). In a full three phase rectifier, the ripple just will not go out of control if a phase if off even by 30 degrees. And if it is, put another big cap or two in the circuit. All this assumes that the three phase converter is not some little wimpy motor, but something with a lot of balls. The bigger the converter, the smaller the problems, but the larger the electric bill. > My feeling is that if you have to power some three-phase big iron > from a single-phase source, it's probably better to take a look at > one of the modern (and expensive) solid-state converters--or get some > real three-phase distribution installed. If the iron gets too big, it will suck up too much power for reasonable use in a house anyway. The proper thing to do is buy or rent some industrial space with real power. -- Will From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Fri Oct 19 14:09:45 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:09:45 -0500 (CDT) Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <200710191455.10027.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: On Fri, 19 Oct 2007, Patrick Finnegan wrote: > > My feeling is that if you have to power some three-phase big iron > > from a single-phase source, it's probably better to take a look at > > one of the modern (and expensive) solid-state converters--or get some > > real three-phase distribution installed. > > Or, of course, you could just find a big heavy single phase motor, and > pair it up with a 3phase motor of the same RPM rating with a > shaft-coupler, and make your own single-to-three phase MG set. You know, it's ironic this topic has come up, as I'm currently working on converting my 3ph SGI Onyx to single phase and had looked into static and rotary phase convertors. Having never had any reason to look at one before I started anew - and decided quickly that they did not appear to be safe for computer use. Where I am the cost of installing three phase would likely be in the quadruple digits (Ah, electricians, well paid princes of the earth). Thankfully the conversion on the SGI is relatively trivial with the appropriate bits and pieces, nevertheless I was wondering about the chances of building an MG set to produce a stable three-phase source. On the off chance I end up dealing with this problem again, and won't be in a position to do a conversion, does anyone know about the math involved to work out what kind of sizes of motors would be required to produce such a contraption? Thanks all; JP Hindin From pat at computer-refuge.org Fri Oct 19 14:28:25 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:28:25 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Friday 19 October 2007, JP Hindin wrote: > You know, it's ironic this topic has come up, as I'm currently > working on converting my 3ph SGI Onyx to single phase and had looked > into static and rotary phase convertors. Having never had any reason > to look at one before I started anew - and decided quickly that they > did not appear to be safe for computer use. The easiest and best way to do this, is to either rewire things to be happy with single-phase, or just run single phase to it. In general most modern-ish computer three phase supplies (since at least '90 or so) will be perfectly happy if you wire them up to a single phase supply - you may want to bond the third phase to one of the "hot" wires of the single phase supply. I've run IBM S/390 and SP systems off of a single phase supply like this, with no other work to convert them, and they're perfectly happy with it. One small "gotcha" is that it may have some control bits of the power supply that are wired to two of the three phases, so if you have the third phase bonded to one of the hot leads, and it doesn't work, you may want to try bonding it to the other phase instead. Worrying about any sort of single to three phase converter for a modernish computer is just a waste of money. The only things that truly need three phase (real or improvised) are things with three-phase motors in them... Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From technobug at comcast.net Fri Oct 19 14:29:07 2007 From: technobug at comcast.net (CRC) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:29:07 -0700 Subject: Chance to Recycle... In-Reply-To: <200710191700.l9JH04fA062964@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710191700.l9JH04fA062964@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <34B91229-5420-4919-A93A-5EB22C6A70AC@comcast.net> I was at my local scrapper (Tucson, AZ) and got to look at recent acquisitions that were stored in an adjacent warehouse. In the short time I was allowed to look I saw at least two RL02s, numerous disc packs including an alignment pack, a DECStation 3300 case (no boards), and several what appeared to be microPDP11 crates (again, unpopulated). In another area was a DEC 9000 rack which looked like it had a couple of CPUs and disc arrays. When I went to look at some test equipment, I found an SGI O2 which lights and talks (asks for password to do anythng...), but no disks (there are plenty lying around...). If there is any interest I'll have the rippers and cutters stayed and connect you with the knowledgeable party. CRC From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Fri Oct 19 14:37:20 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:37:20 -0700 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers References: <009e01c81232$16411d50$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> Alexandre Souza wrote: > > www.predicta.com > Dave, IS IT TRUE? I still cannot believe! :oD What is the price of a TV > like this? Where is it sold? What a fantastic thing, these sets are > absolutely BEAUTIFUL! :oD Ah, the Predicta lives on (but where's my flying car?). In case you are unaware, the original was the Philco Predicta from the late 50's. They were quite the design statement but the originals had reliability problems and (by some accounts) killed Philco the company. Very famous (or infamous) in the vintage radio/TV community. Bringing this on-topic, Philco was also an early transistor and transistorised computer manufacturer (I guess they figured a good market for lots and lots of transistors would be computers): "In 1954, engineers at Philco Corporation invented the surface barrier transistor, the first transistor suitable for use in high-speed computers. Philco set up a computer activity?eventually a computer division?and in 1957 introduced the Philco Transac S-2000, the first large-scale, transistorized scientific computer system offered as a product by a computer manufacturer." See for a first person account. I'm not familiar with what happened to the computer division with the demise of Philco but it could be interesting to speculate as to what would have happened to Philco computers if the Predicta hadn't killed the company. From ploopster at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 14:37:37 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:37:37 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <47190781.6070009@gmail.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > Worrying about any sort of single to three phase converter for a > modernish computer is just a waste of money. The only things that > truly need three phase (real or improvised) are things with three-phase > motors in them... If I'm remembering correctly, this includes my ES/9021. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 19 14:46:01 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:46:01 -0700 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> References: , <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> On 19 Oct 2007 at 12:37, Brent Hilpert wrote: > I'm not familiar with what happened to the computer division with the demise > of Philco but it could be interesting to speculate as to what would have > happened to Philco computers if the Predicta hadn't killed the company. I've got a core plane stitting in my desk drawer from what I was told was a Philco computer. Biggish (visible with the naked eye) core; maybe 2K bits on the plane. Cheers, Chuck From rborsuk at colourfull.com Fri Oct 19 14:47:51 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:47:51 -0400 Subject: SGI Onyx [was] Re: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <75B9345B-AB1A-4AF6-A61D-6EAAE546545B@colourfull.com> On Oct 19, 2007, at 3:09 PM, JP Hindin wrote: > You know, it's ironic this topic has come up, as I'm currently > working on > converting my 3ph SGI Onyx to single phase and had looked into > static and > rotary phase convertors. Having never had any reason to look at one > before > I started anew - and decided quickly that they did not appear to be > safe > for computer use. Did you ever get your necessary power boards? I pulled the three boards from my stock, I just was trying to get to the front of my Onyx to check part numbers for you. If you got them, I won't bother then. Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From aek at bitsavers.org Fri Oct 19 15:04:53 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:04:53 -0700 Subject: Philco computers Message-ID: <47190DE5.2040009@bitsavers.org> > I'm not familiar with what happened to the computer division with the demise > of Philco They were bought by Ford, and survived into the late 60's. The 212 at the Computer History Museum is a Philco/Ford product. From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Fri Oct 19 15:04:22 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:04:22 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI Onyx [was] Re: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <75B9345B-AB1A-4AF6-A61D-6EAAE546545B@colourfull.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 19 Oct 2007, Robert Borsuk wrote: > > You know, it's ironic this topic has come up, as I'm currently > > working on > > converting my 3ph SGI Onyx to single phase and had looked into > > static and > > rotary phase convertors. Having never had any reason to look at one > > before > > I started anew - and decided quickly that they did not appear to be > > safe > > for computer use. > > Did you ever get your necessary power boards? I pulled the three > boards from my stock, I just was trying to get to the front of my > Onyx to check part numbers for you. If you got them, I won't bother > then. Wow, thanks Rob, I appreciate that. The list got quiet, so I assumed no one was able to help out. I've found a guy on Nekochan who is going to sell me the electrical board that sits in for the CC3 midplane on a single-phase unit, three power boards (512x2 and two 505x2), a System Controller and a Main I/O breakout for $115. Although, I have to say, if I can -really- hook up the crazy machine using three single phase hots, I might save myself some dosh on the midplane replacement. I greatly appreciate your time and effort, though, to help out, Rob. I don't suppose you have an RE2 Graphics I/O breakout, maybe we can still jive on something? Thank you! JP From ggs at shiresoft.com Fri Oct 19 15:05:31 2007 From: ggs at shiresoft.com (Guy Sotomayor) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:05:31 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > > Worrying about any sort of single to three phase converter for a > modernish computer is just a waste of money. The only things that > truly need three phase (real or improvised) are things with three-phase > motors in them... > Unless it has a Ferroresonant transformer...then you *need* 3-phase. The other thing to note is that 3-phase was used to keep the wiring "reasonable". Wiring up a 3-phase 24A circuit (and cabling) is much easier than a single phase 75A circuit (although I've run a 3-phase 75A branch in my shop...100' of #3 wire (4 conductors) is *not* fun). -- TTFN - Guy From legalize at xmission.com Fri Oct 19 15:09:37 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:09:37 -0600 Subject: adobe machine room? Message-ID: This discussion of 3-phase power and VAXen in your home and the big Amdahl machine transport has reminded me again of my desire to have some sort of controlled environment for my big SGI boxes. I have a rather large lot and I considered building a Henk style machine room on my property attached to the back of the garage. My idea was to build a machine room adjacent to the garage and have a large set of doors put on the back of the garage so that equipment would be loaded/unloaded through the garage into the machine room. However, it gets pretty frosty in winter time here and pretty toasty in summer time. (I'm in Salt Lake City, UT.) Recently there was some program on TV touting the benefit of adobe construction for its high insulating value and keeping a relatively constant indoor temperature with little to no active heating or cooling. That got me to thinking that if you built a machine room with an adobe exterior, then you'd only need AC equipment to compensate for heat generated by the machines themselves and wouldn't need to worry much about the seasons. Any thoughts on this? Note that I'm not suggesting going without any active cooling, just wondering if adobe construction would lower the bills and make the necessary cooling equipment smaller. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 19 14:59:43 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:59:43 -0400 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> References: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 19 October 2007 15:46, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 19 Oct 2007 at 12:37, Brent Hilpert wrote: > > I'm not familiar with what happened to the computer division with the > > demise of Philco but it could be interesting to speculate as to what > > would have happened to Philco computers if the Predicta hadn't killed the > > company. > > I've got a core plane stitting in my desk drawer from what I was told > was a Philco computer. Biggish (visible with the naked eye) core; > maybe 2K bits on the plane. I remember years back when some of the surplus places were selling core planes and such, I think that they actually figured that some hobbyist was gonna get them functional, or something. Way more of a challenge than I wanted to take on, for sure. I've thought much recently that it'd be cool to have one, just to have it hanging on the wall or something. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rborsuk at colourfull.com Fri Oct 19 15:17:14 2007 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:17:14 -0400 Subject: SGI Onyx In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8A556A15-9CD1-48EA-9AB0-88761BD91066@colourfull.com> On Oct 19, 2007, at 4:04 PM, JP Hindin wrote: > Wow, thanks Rob, I appreciate that. The list got quiet, so I > assumed no > one was able to help out. > > I've found a guy on Nekochan who is going to sell me the electrical > board > that sits in for the CC3 midplane on a single-phase unit, three power > boards (512x2 and two 505x2), a System Controller and a Main I/O > breakout > for $115. Although, I have to say, if I can -really- hook up the crazy > machine using three single phase hots, I might save myself some > dosh on > the midplane replacement. > > I greatly appreciate your time and effort, though, to help out, Rob. I > don't suppose you have an RE2 Graphics I/O breakout, maybe we can > still > jive on something? > > Thank you! > > JP JP, Let's go off list. I have two 12's and a 5 volt board. You see, bad Rob (that's me) had an RE2 Onyx gutted about 5 to 6 years ago. It was in California and I just couldn't afford to freight it, but I could afford to pay for and have the boards and breakouts shipped. I should have enough base stuff to get you up and going. I can't give them to you, but I'll make them way cheaper then the other guy. Or we can always trade stuff (dig deep). Anyways, I'll shoot a bunch of pictures of the insides for you this weekend. Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From pat at computer-refuge.org Fri Oct 19 15:23:41 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:23:41 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: <200710191623.42025.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Friday 19 October 2007, Guy Sotomayor wrote: > Patrick Finnegan wrote: > > Worrying about any sort of single to three phase converter for a > > modernish computer is just a waste of money. The only things that > > truly need three phase (real or improvised) are things with > > three-phase motors in them... > > Unless it has a Ferroresonant transformer...then you *need* 3-phase. What "modernish" (I think I said since about '90) uses a ferro-resonant transformer? > The other thing to note is that 3-phase was used to keep the wiring > "reasonable". Wiring up a 3-phase 24A circuit (and cabling) is much > easier than a single phase 75A circuit (although I've run a 3-phase > 75A branch in my shop...100' of #3 wire (4 conductors) is *not* fun). You could also just parallel three 10AWG wires for each phase. (Or, two 6AWG) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Fri Oct 19 15:11:56 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:11:56 -0400 (EDT) Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <200710192023.QAA09622@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Worrying about any sort of single to three phase converter for a > modernish computer is just a waste of money. This amounts to declaring anything that depends on three-phase as non-"modernish". But there really are substantive differences between three-phase and single-phase for supplying power, since rectified single-phase drops to zero (even if full-wave rectified). Rectified three-phase has a substantial minimum DC component (cos(30?), about .866, times peak, if full-wave rectified; cos(60?), or .5, times peak, if half-wave rectified - minus rectifier losses - assuming pure sine-wave input - I think). This means substantially less need for filter caps and the like - indeed, if you're willing to depend on having all three phases, and your regulators are good enough at ripple rejection, you may be able to run without any filter caps on the unregulated side of the regulator. Try feeding *that* single phase! /~\ 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 Fri Oct 19 15:23:50 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:23:50 -0700 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4718AFE6.29791.1E075F49@cclist.sydex.com> On 19 Oct 2007 at 14:09, Richard wrote: > Any thoughts on this? Note that I'm not suggesting going without any > active cooling, just wondering if adobe construction would lower the > bills and make the necessary cooling equipment smaller. There are lots of very good alternative construction techniques. Walls made of straw bales covered with chicken wire and stucco were very popular a few years ago. Rammed earth is another possibility. Why not go subterranean? Relatively constant temperature year round. Some local codes allow varied construction; others are downright hostile. Earthquake codes may get in the way of adobe in some areas. Plumbing and wiring with adobe can be a real pain, unless you don't mind running everything on the interior surface. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 19 15:25:48 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:25:48 -0600 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <471912CC.6030203@jetnet.ab.ca> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I remember years back when some of the surplus places were selling core planes > and such, I think that they actually figured that some hobbyist was gonna > get them functional, or something. Way more of a challenge than I wanted to > take on, for sure. Let's see surplus Core Memory,5 level TTY, and 10 cent TTL are all gone. What is left to play with? Ben alias woodelf. From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 19 15:43:33 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:43:33 -0700 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> References: , <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <4718B485.23875.1E196E7F@cclist.sydex.com> Another tack on the Predicta: http://www.onomy.com/blue/predicta.html Cheers, Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Fri Oct 19 15:50:15 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:50:15 -0600 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:23:50 -0700. <4718AFE6.29791.1E075F49@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: In article <4718AFE6.29791.1E075F49 at cclist.sydex.com>, "Chuck Guzis" writes: > On 19 Oct 2007 at 14:09, Richard wrote: > > > Any thoughts on this? Note that I'm not suggesting going without any > > active cooling, just wondering if adobe construction would lower the > > bills and make the necessary cooling equipment smaller. > > There are lots of very good alternative construction techniques. > Walls made of straw bales covered with chicken wire and stucco were > very popular a few years ago. Rammed earth is another possibility. > Why not go subterranean? Relatively constant temperature year round. I had considered rammed earth using the technique called "passive annual heat storage". Basically you have a huge dry earth mass into which you pump heat all summer long and draw heat out of it all winter long. For a machine room, you'd probably want to do the reverse: draw heat away from the machine room into the earth mass all summer long and draw (some) heat out during the winter. To create a dry earth mass large enough to provide sufficient cooling for a machine room I'd need to do some calculations, but off the top of my head I was figuring that the earth mass would need to be pretty large. I was figuring I'd need to buy an empty lot instead of use the back of my garage :-). > Some local codes allow varied construction; others are downright > hostile. Earthquake codes may get in the way of adobe in some areas. > Plumbing and wiring with adobe can be a real pain, unless you don't > mind running everything on the interior surface. Good point, I hadn't considered earthquake codes w.r.t. adobe. As for the wiring, I'd either live with the industrial look of interior conduit or just put up drywall on the interior to hide it. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 19 16:08:35 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:08:35 -0700 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: References: >, Message-ID: <4718BA63.24169.1E305774@cclist.sydex.com> On 19 Oct 2007 at 14:50, Richard wrote: > I had considered rammed earth using the technique called "passive > annual heat storage". Basically you have a huge dry earth mass into > which you pump heat all summer long and draw heat out of it all > winter long. For a machine room, you'd probably want to do the > reverse: draw heat away from the machine room into the earth mass all > summer long and draw (some) heat out during the winter. To create > a dry earth mass large enough to provide sufficient cooling for a > machine room I'd need to do some calculations, but off the top of my > head I was figuring that the earth mass would need to be pretty > large. I was figuring I'd need to buy an empty lot instead of use > the back of my garage :-). You could always drill a well and use a subterranean aquafer for heating/cooling.... :) Cheers, Chuck From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Fri Oct 19 16:18:13 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:18:13 -0700 Subject: Philco computers References: <47190DE5.2040009@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <47191F14.C8AD683@cs.ubc.ca> Al Kossow wrote: > > > I'm not familiar with what happened to the computer division with the demise > > of Philco > > They were bought by Ford, and survived into the late 60's. > > The 212 at the Computer History Museum is a Philco/Ford product. Thanks, I knew Philco had been bought by Ford, but thought maybe the computer division might have been hived off to another computer manufacturer or one of the seven dwarves, always figured Ford wanted it (Philco) for the radio division. From grant at stockly.com Fri Oct 19 16:20:33 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:20:33 -0800 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> I was thinking about this today and it occurred to me that the ultimate solution already exists. Howard Harte's eZ80SBC is a 50MHz Z80 with plenty of RAM, an ethernet interface, 2 SD memory card slots, a USB peripheral port, a USB host/peripheral port (selectable), and 4 serial ports. Ethernet would be a viable communication method for transferring the images. TCP or UDP IP would also be easier for more operating systems to support. There is also of course the USB peripheral interface (2 of them actually) I mean, what could be more fun than a disk drive transfer tool that can also run CPM at lightening speeds? : ) Increased demand for Howard's product would help support his efforts in furthering CP/M support and development. What do you guys think? The thing has a peripheral expansion header. We could hook a modern floppy chip to that, connectors for different drives, and off we go... Grant From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Oct 19 16:42:26 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:42:26 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> Grant Stockly wrote: > What do you guys think? The thing has a peripheral expansion header. > We could hook a modern floppy chip to that, connectors for different > drives, and off we go... What's the cost like? Is the board made up of separate components (CPU, ROM, RAM, USB chip, buffers for I/O, Ethernet chip etc.)? I'd find Ethernet more useful than USB, and in an ideal world I'd prefer a board where the functional areas are segregated (rather than some complex and expensive single chip, where if disaster strikes the thing basically needs throwing out and replacing as a complete unit) cheers Jules From legalize at xmission.com Fri Oct 19 16:44:45 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:44:45 -0600 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 19 Oct 2007 14:08:35 -0700. <4718BA63.24169.1E305774@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: In article <4718BA63.24169.1E305774 at cclist.sydex.com>, "Chuck Guzis" writes: > You could always drill a well and use a subterranean aquafer for > heating/cooling.... :) Interesting idea; its cooling you have to worry about most for a machine room and I don't know if there's a way for me to get sufficient cooling that way. (I live in a desert, my house is on clay and I have no idea if there's any aquafer beneath me.) Some of these ideas translate into "feasible, but not cost effective" compared to traditional A/C. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 19 16:49:32 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:49:32 -0600 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: <4718B485.23875.1E196E7F@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718B485.23875.1E196E7F@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4719266C.8080306@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > Another tack on the Predicta: > http://www.onomy.com/blue/predicta.html > Cheers, > Chuck Yuck. And off topic too! From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Oct 19 16:52:16 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:52:16 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <1192830736.23789.6.camel@elric> On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 22:42 +0100, Jules Richardson wrote: > I'd find Ethernet more useful than USB, and in an ideal world I'd prefer a > board where the functional areas are segregated (rather than some complex and > expensive single chip, where if disaster strikes the thing basically needs > throwing out and replacing as a complete unit) You get USB ports on microcontrollers costing less than a pound these days. Gordon From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 19 17:01:21 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:01:21 -0600 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47192931.4030503@jetnet.ab.ca> Richard wrote: > Interesting idea; its cooling you have to worry about most for a > machine room and I don't know if there's a way for me to get > sufficient cooling that way. (I live in a desert, my house is on clay > and I have no idea if there's any aquafer beneath me.) Some of these > ideas translate into "feasible, but not cost effective" compared to > traditional A/C. You have a better chance of hitting OIL rather than water. Ben. PS. That idea is not mine, but of some old 60's cartoon. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 19 17:06:10 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:06:10 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <1192830736.23789.6.camel@elric> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <1192830736.23789.6.camel@elric> Message-ID: <47192A52.9060500@jetnet.ab.ca> Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > You get USB ports on microcontrollers costing less than a pound these > days. I am not sure how much a pound is but know I got years ago a motherboard (166 MHZ?) with a USB port. The cable to connect to the PC case from the mother board was about $75 Canadian. You figure how many pounds that would cost? > Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Oct 19 17:14:16 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:14:16 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <47192A52.9060500@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <1192830736.23789.6.camel@elric> <47192A52.9060500@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <1192832056.23789.9.camel@elric> On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 16:06 -0600, woodelf wrote: > Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > > > You get USB ports on microcontrollers costing less than a pound these > > days. > I am not sure how much a pound is but know I got years ago a motherboard (166 MHZ?) > with a USB port. The cable to connect to the PC case from the mother board > was about $75 Canadian. You figure how many pounds that would cost? You got ripped off, if that's the little cable from the header on the motherboard to a USB socket. My local computer shop doesn't even bother to charge for them, unless you want more than a handful. 1GBP is currently roughly US$2, although the dollar is still dropping. Gordon From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Fri Oct 19 17:26:29 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:26:29 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <1192832056.23789.9.camel@elric> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <1192830736.23789.6.camel@elric> <47192A52.9060500@jetnet.ab.ca> <1192832056.23789.9.camel@elric> Message-ID: <47192F15.1080609@jetnet.ab.ca> Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > You got ripped off, if that's the little cable from the header on the > motherboard to a USB socket. My local computer shop doesn't even bother > to charge for them, unless you want more than a handful. I was thinking the pound was about 4 to 5 canadian dollars. That was about 10 years ago for the USB cable. > 1GBP is currently roughly US$2, although the dollar is still dropping. > Gordon Well now is good time to buy from the USA, at least in Canada. Ben. From grant at stockly.com Fri Oct 19 18:12:20 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:12:20 -0800 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <0JQ600GMCLVKXR30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> At 01:42 PM 10/19/2007, you wrote: >Grant Stockly wrote: >>What do you guys think? The thing has a peripheral expansion header. >>We could hook a modern floppy chip to that, connectors for >>different drives, and off we go... > >What's the cost like? Is the board made up of separate components >(CPU, ROM, RAM, USB chip, buffers for I/O, Ethernet chip etc.)? > >I'd find Ethernet more useful than USB, and in an ideal world I'd >prefer a board where the functional areas are segregated (rather >than some complex and expensive single chip, where if disaster >strikes the thing basically needs throwing out and replacing as a >complete unit) The base eZ80SBC from howard is $250. Add $100 for the disk board... From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Fri Oct 19 18:28:13 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:28:13 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <0JQ600GMCLVKXR30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ600GMCLVKXR30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <47193D8D.40702@yahoo.co.uk> Grant Stockly wrote: > The base eZ80SBC from howard is $250. Add $100 for the disk board... Hmmm, I suppose if a SASI interface and ST412 interface could be added to talk to those kind of devices too, $250 wouldn't be too bad for the 'core' portion. $350 for just a floppy interface is perhaps a little on the high side, though. (Someone here was working on a generic ST412 interface - presumably over-sampling tack data and processing in software - weren't they? Can't remember who it was now...) From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 18:30:12 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:30:12 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: > Unless it has a Ferroresonant transformer...then you *need* 3-phase. Some three phase transformers can be run off one phase - it depends how they are wound. Some of the guys that run old tube broadcast transmitters have done this, and there is a good article on it in an old issue (ten years ago?) of Electric Radio magazine. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 18:39:55 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:39:55 -0400 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: <471912CC.6030203@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> <471912CC.6030203@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > Let's see surplus Core Memory,5 level TTY, and 10 cent TTL are all gone. > What is left to play with? Ben alias woodelf. If you can not find a 5 level Teletype for no money, you ain't lookin... -- Will From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Fri Oct 19 19:01:20 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:01:20 -0700 Subject: Lab-Volt model 355 6502 based trainer help? In-Reply-To: <4716FDA5.6060201@gmail.com> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> <4716ECBD.20207@jetnet.ab.ca> <4716F667.6050500@gmail.com> <4716F7D1.8070209@jetnet.ab.ca> <4716FDA5.6060201@gmail.com> Message-ID: <47194550.2080207@sbcglobal.net> I have two of these Lab Volt trainers that use the 6502 microprocessor. Does anyone have any docs on these? I contacted Lab-Volt but they don't even remember them and can't help. They are designed to help students learn microprocessors and have dip switches that can be set to introduce faults. I would love to find out the commands in the monitor EPROMS and what faults can be set. Some photos from my web site are here: Thanks, Bob http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/photos2/1k/lv_355_1.jpg http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/photos2/1k/lv_355_2.jpg http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/photos2/1k/lv_355_5.jpg From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Fri Oct 19 19:01:42 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:01:42 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? Message-ID: <7f41f462613b9c055da507b9abd4d265@valleyimplants.com> > You know, it's ironic this topic has come up, as I'm currently working > on > converting my 3ph SGI Onyx to single phase and had looked into static > and > rotary phase convertors. Having never had any reason to look at one > before > I started anew - and decided quickly that they did not appear to be > safe > for computer use. Disclaimer- I have no 3-phase equipment, nor any 240V-required computers so take this with the contempt it deserves. For the PSUs (for given machine X that does not have 3-phase motors for blowers or drives, or another thing that requires the rotating field of 3-phase), aren't they composed of (roughly) 3 standalone PSUs that convert the incoming power to a DC-source feeding the rails? Therefore, (and especially if it is wired phase -> neutral rather than cross-phase), provided the voltage supplied by a single-circuit would be within the range of acceptable input voltages for the PSU, couldn't they be driven by 1 split 240V circuit (driving 2 at 120V hot-to-neutral) and a third 120V line feeding the third PSU? From ggs at shiresoft.com Fri Oct 19 19:04:44 2007 From: ggs at shiresoft.com (Guy Sotomayor) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:04:44 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: <4719461C.60705@shiresoft.com> William Donzelli wrote: >> Unless it has a Ferroresonant transformer...then you *need* 3-phase. >> > > Some three phase transformers can be run off one phase - it depends > how they are wound. Some of the guys that run old tube broadcast > transmitters have done this, and there is a good article on it in an > old issue (ten years ago?) of Electric Radio magazine. > Except that after going through a 3-phase bridge rectifier, you have 360Hz (with a good DC component) vs 120Hz that drops to 0v so you need a lot less filter caps with the 3-phase. And frankly the situation I'm dealing with draws ~500A @12V - that's a butt load of current over single phase (and that's just the stuff that *requires* 3-phase...there's a bunch more power that splits the phases to get standard 120v single phase). Total load requirements are 70A across all 3-phases (210A single phase...how the *hell* are you going to wire that?). -- TTFN - Guy From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 19:30:46 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:30:46 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <4719461C.60705@shiresoft.com> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> <4719461C.60705@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: > Except that after going through a 3-phase bridge rectifier, you have > 360Hz (with a good DC component) vs 120Hz that drops to 0v so you need a > lot less filter caps with the 3-phase. And frankly the situation I'm > dealing with draws ~500A @12V - that's a butt load of current over > single phase (and that's just the stuff that *requires* > 3-phase...there's a bunch more power that splits the phases to get > standard 120v single phase). Total load requirements are 70A across all > 3-phases (210A single phase...how the *hell* are you going to wire that?). If it is a KL10, you will not need to worry about this at all, because the power supplies will fail anyway. But seriously... If you are dealing with something as big as a KL10, I think having real 3 phase is basically required. I would not even try it with a converter - god only knows how many HP the motor would need to be. Does your building not have 3 phase service available? If you were dealing with something like VAX-11/780 sized, with much lower current requirements, you probably could sling a bunch of extra caps on the side and have everything happy. Big ass 20 volt electrolytics are dime a dozen. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 18:38:07 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:38:07 -0400 Subject: Philco computers In-Reply-To: <47191F14.C8AD683@cs.ubc.ca> References: <47190DE5.2040009@bitsavers.org> <47191F14.C8AD683@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: > Thanks, I knew Philco had been bought by Ford, but thought maybe the computer > division might have been hived off to another computer manufacturer or one of > the seven dwarves, always figured Ford wanted it (Philco) for the radio division. Ford purchased Philco for the military contracts. Their radio business by then was a sinking ship. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 18:35:57 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:35:57 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <47190781.6070009@gmail.com> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190781.6070009@gmail.com> Message-ID: > If I'm remembering correctly, this includes my ES/9021. When I get my warehouse, I will rent you space for your machine with a three phase line. I will even give you your own electric meter, too. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 18:34:39 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:34:39 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: > I've run IBM S/390 and SP systems off of a single phase supply like > this, with no other work to convert them, and they're perfectly happy > with it. One small "gotcha" is that it may have some control bits of > the power supply that are wired to two of the three phases, so if you > have the third phase bonded to one of the hot leads, and it doesn't > work, you may want to try bonding it to the other phase instead. This, folks, is the Phase Rotation Sensor that he talks about, and will cause a power check if not fooled. > Worrying about any sort of single to three phase converter for a > modernish computer is just a waste of money. The only things that > truly need three phase (real or improvised) are things with three-phase > motors in them... I would agree. This is what in my post a bit back was specific to older machines - basically, before the switching power supply moved into the picture, in the mid 1970s. -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 18:27:14 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:27:14 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <200710191623.42025.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> <200710191623.42025.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: > You could also just parallel three 10AWG wires for each phase. (Or, two > 6AWG) Some electricians might have something to say about that. -- Will From ragooman at comcast.net Fri Oct 19 20:21:24 2007 From: ragooman at comcast.net (Dan Roganti) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:21:24 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <47193D8D.40702@yahoo.co.uk> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ600GMCLVKXR30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <47193D8D.40702@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <47195814.3040507@comcast.net> Jules Richardson wrote: > Grant Stockly wrote: >> The base eZ80SBC from howard is $250. Add $100 for the disk board... > > Hmmm, I suppose if a SASI interface and ST412 interface could be added > to talk to those kind of devices too, $250 wouldn't be too bad for the > 'core' portion. $350 for just a floppy interface is perhaps a little > on the high side, though. > > (Someone here was working on a generic ST412 interface - presumably > over-sampling tack data and processing in software - weren't they? > Can't remember who it was now...) > > There's already an inexpensive eZ80F91 development board from Zilog for the budget conscious -only $99. And it's complete with cables, jtag debugger, IDE, and C compiler. It has an ethernet port among other interfaces. It doesn't have USB, but easily done with a RS232-USB converter. The expansion interface provides all the GPIO's to let you connect a floppy interface.And it's available from Mouser or Digikey. http://www.zilog.com/products/partdetails.asp?id=eZ80F910200ZCO =Dan From trixter at oldskool.org Fri Oct 19 20:21:12 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:21:12 -0500 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47172621.5080306@dunnington.plus.com> References: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> <4716D8C4.20703@jetnet.ab.ca> <47170C93.5010808@oldskool.org> <47172621.5080306@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <47195808.9040804@oldskool.org> Pete Turnbull wrote: > The user port was typically used for home-grown digital I/O, but some > commercial hardware used it too, eg at least one mouse, some satellite > hardware, a turtle, a robot arm, and a CNC lathe controller. I used it > to interface to a PCB tester I made to test some circuit boards I made. All of these can be hooked up with a serial port, so I'm still wondering why today's machines are considered lacking for not having a "user port". -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From ggs at shiresoft.com Fri Oct 19 21:46:04 2007 From: ggs at shiresoft.com (Guy Sotomayor) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:46:04 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> <4719461C.60705@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: <47196BEC.9050107@shiresoft.com> William Donzelli wrote: >> Except that after going through a 3-phase bridge rectifier, you have >> 360Hz (with a good DC component) vs 120Hz that drops to 0v so you need a >> lot less filter caps with the 3-phase. And frankly the situation I'm >> dealing with draws ~500A @12V - that's a butt load of current over >> single phase (and that's just the stuff that *requires* >> 3-phase...there's a bunch more power that splits the phases to get >> standard 120v single phase). Total load requirements are 70A across all >> 3-phases (210A single phase...how the *hell* are you going to wire that?). >> > > If it is a KL10, you will not need to worry about this at all, because > the power supplies will fail anyway. > :-P > But seriously... > > If you are dealing with something as big as a KL10, I think having > real 3 phase is basically required. I would not even try it with a > converter - god only knows how many HP the motor would need to be. > Does your building not have 3 phase service available? > No, I have 125A 3-phase service into my shop...it's barely enough. :-/ > If you were dealing with something like VAX-11/780 sized, with much > lower current requirements, you probably could sling a bunch of extra > caps on the side and have everything happy. Big ass 20 volt > electrolytics are dime a dozen. > Na. All of the supplies in the 11/780 are single phase (with std 110v 15A plugs even). The power controller just splits the phases. As I said before, it simplifies the wiring from the system to the "mains". My DS570 uses a 3-phase power controller also. Again, it's convenient but not exactly necessary. -- TTFN - Guy From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 19 21:58:28 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:58:28 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <47196BEC.9050107@shiresoft.com> References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> <4719461C.60705@shiresoft.com> <47196BEC.9050107@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: > Na. All of the supplies in the 11/780 are single phase (with std 110v > 15A plugs even). The power controller just splits the phases. I was just using the VAX-11/780 as a size unit (VUS), not as an explicit example. Sort of "small mainframe-ish". > As I > said before, it simplifies the wiring from the system to the "mains". ALRIGHT, Alright...you broke the camels back...I have had enough! In the US, it is not MAINS, it is the LINE. Most US electricians will know what you mean, but may give you funny looks if you call it "mains", and not buy you a beer at the end of the day because you might be un-American. Non-US list members may still, of course, call it "mains". -- Will, son of Chicago electrician From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Fri Oct 19 22:57:08 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:57:08 -0700 Subject: Philco computers References: <47190DE5.2040009@bitsavers.org> <47191F14.C8AD683@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <47197C94.F4FDA7C1@cs.ubc.ca> William Donzelli wrote: > > > Thanks, I knew Philco had been bought by Ford, but thought maybe the computer > > division might have been hived off to another computer manufacturer or one of > > the seven dwarves, always figured Ford wanted it (Philco) for the radio division. > > Ford purchased Philco for the military contracts. Their radio business > by then was a sinking ship. The home radio side, yes, but Ford was producing millions of cars, I seem to recall dismantling and repairing more than a few Philco/Ford car radios as a kid. Interesting about the military contracts. From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 19 23:13:25 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:13:25 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <200710200013.25711.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 19 October 2007 17:20, Grant Stockly wrote: > Howard Harte's eZ80SBC is a 50MHz Z80 with plenty of RAM, an ethernet > interface, 2 SD memory card slots, a USB peripheral port, a USB > host/peripheral port (selectable), and 4 serial ports. That sure caught my attention... :-) Interesting stuff, that they're running things that fast... Years ago I'd have been getting all sorts of interested in something like that. Now? I'm not so sure. I wonder if it'd be easy enough to port ZCPR or similar to it? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 19 23:14:38 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:14:38 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200710200014.38785.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 19 October 2007 17:42, Jules Richardson wrote: > Grant Stockly wrote: > > What do you guys think? The thing has a peripheral expansion header. > > We could hook a modern floppy chip to that, connectors for different > > drives, and off we go... > > What's the cost like? Is the board made up of separate components (CPU, > ROM, RAM, USB chip, buffers for I/O, Ethernet chip etc.)? Have a look here: http://www.ez80sbc.com/index.htm That should answer your questions. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From steve at radiorobots.com Fri Oct 19 23:32:52 2007 From: steve at radiorobots.com (Steve Stutman) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:32:52 -0400 Subject: Philco computers In-Reply-To: <47197C94.F4FDA7C1@cs.ubc.ca> References: <47190DE5.2040009@bitsavers.org> <47191F14.C8AD683@cs.ubc.ca> <47197C94.F4FDA7C1@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <471984F4.9080401@radiorobots.com> Believe that Philco/Ford became part of Ford Aeronutronic. Folks who perpetrated the DIVAD system; aka "Sergeant York" gun. Steve Brent Hilpert wrote: >William Donzelli wrote: > > >>>Thanks, I knew Philco had been bought by Ford, but thought maybe the computer >>>division might have been hived off to another computer manufacturer or one of >>>the seven dwarves, always figured Ford wanted it (Philco) for the radio division. >>> >>> >>Ford purchased Philco for the military contracts. Their radio business >>by then was a sinking ship. >> >> > >The home radio side, yes, but Ford was producing millions of cars, I seem to recall >dismantling and repairing more than a few Philco/Ford car radios as a kid. >Interesting about the military contracts. > > > From ggs at shiresoft.com Sat Oct 20 00:21:42 2007 From: ggs at shiresoft.com (Guy Sotomayor) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:21:42 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: References: <200710191528.25924.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47190E0B.3060907@shiresoft.com> <4719461C.60705@shiresoft.com> <47196BEC.9050107@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: <47199066.9060300@shiresoft.com> William Donzelli wrote: >> Na. All of the supplies in the 11/780 are single phase (with std 110v >> 15A plugs even). The power controller just splits the phases. >> > > I was just using the VAX-11/780 as a size unit (VUS), not as an > explicit example. Sort of "small mainframe-ish". > OK. I just like using concrete examples. > >> As I >> said before, it simplifies the wiring from the system to the "mains". >> > > ALRIGHT, Alright...you broke the camels back...I have had enough! > Really? :-) I have enough of those "fire hoses" going from the panels to systems, that I just can't envision using single phase in those situations. Geez, the KL's power cable is 2+" in diameter (and the "plug" probably weighs in at 10+#). > In the US, it is not MAINS, it is the LINE. Most US electricians will > know what you mean, but may give you funny looks if you call it > "mains", and not buy you a beer at the end of the day because you > might be un-American. > Sorry, I've always used "line" for "dainty" power (radios and such) and "mains" when something heftier is called for. :-) But then again I'm just a software jock who masquerades as a EE on occasion. :-) -- TTFN - Guy From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 00:50:26 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:50:26 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <47199066.9060300@shiresoft.com> References: , , <47199066.9060300@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: <471934B2.23233.200E1A88@cclist.sydex.com> On 19 Oct 2007 at 22:21, Guy Sotomayor wrote: > Sorry, I've always used "line" for "dainty" power (radios and such) and > "mains" when something heftier is called for. :-) But then again I'm > just a software jock who masquerades as a EE on occasion. :-) It's a habit from business dealings. I use the word "mains" when I know there are friends in Blighty reading the list because I know that most "murricans will know what I mean. On the other hand, I prefer to use "ground" rather than "earth" when speaking about a common return, knowing full well that most of the list members from the UK will know exactly what I mean. Really, the UK usage "mains" makes a bit more sense--we have water mains, don't we? But I don't think I'll *ever* undertand cricket scores... :) Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 00:57:20 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 22:57:20 -0700 Subject: Philco computers In-Reply-To: <471984F4.9080401@radiorobots.com> References: <47190DE5.2040009@bitsavers.org>, <47197C94.F4FDA7C1@cs.ubc.ca>, <471984F4.9080401@radiorobots.com> Message-ID: <47193650.32659.20146A19@cclist.sydex.com> On 20 Oct 2007 at 0:32, Steve Stutman wrote: > Believe that Philco/Ford became part of Ford Aeronutronic. If so, I don't think that's the entire story. There was Ford Aerospace also, which was descended from a Philco division. I can remember Philco refrigerators and washing machines. I believe that Philco bought Crosley and Bendix's appliance divisions. Bendix made a very good washing machine, but I knew Crosley only for radios and electron tubes. Cheers, Chuck From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Sat Oct 20 01:11:21 2007 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:11:21 -0700 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? References: <7f41f462613b9c055da507b9abd4d265@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <47199C0A.F55A1841@cs.ubc.ca> Scott Quinn wrote: > Disclaimer- I have no 3-phase equipment, nor any 240V-required > computers so take this with the contempt it deserves. > > For the PSUs (for given machine X that does not have 3-phase motors for > blowers or drives, or another thing that requires the rotating field of > 3-phase), aren't they composed of (roughly) 3 standalone PSUs that > convert the incoming power to a DC-source feeding the rails? Therefore, > (and especially if it is wired phase -> neutral rather than > cross-phase), provided the voltage supplied by a single-circuit would > be within the range of acceptable input voltages for the PSU, couldn't > they be driven by 1 split 240V circuit (driving 2 at 120V > hot-to-neutral) and a third 120V line feeding the third PSU? Yes and no, as others have been explaining in separate messages. To condense: There are two distinct approaches to using 3 phase for the DC supplies: (1) As you mention above with multiple independant single-phase supplies distributed amongst the phases. (2) A 3-phase transformer feeding a 3-phase rectifier circuit with the consequent benefits of reduced filter requirements. Found this site with some graphics to show a little better how 3-phase rectification is beneficial: . Note the diagrams "Three-phase full-wave bridge rectifier circuit" and "Three-phase AC and 3-phase full-wave rectifier output". (1) is more typical in modernish machines largely because multiple switch-mode supplies are cheap and easy today. (2) could be found typically in older, larger machines from the linear supply era where the 3-phase reduced the DC filter requirements. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 20 02:16:18 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:16:18 -0600 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: References: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> <471912CC.6030203@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4719AB42.80409@jetnet.ab.ca> William Donzelli wrote: >> Let's see surplus Core Memory,5 level TTY, and 10 cent TTL are all gone. >> What is left to play with? Ben alias woodelf. > If you can not find a 5 level Teletype for no money, you ain't lookin... I did not look, because I did not think any were left. > -- > Will Ben. From dave06a at dunfield.com Sat Oct 20 08:30:43 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:30:43 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca> > Grant Stockly wrote: > > What do you guys think? The thing has a peripheral expansion header. > > We could hook a modern floppy chip to that, connectors for different > > drives, and off we go... > > What's the cost like? Is the board made up of separate components (CPU, ROM, > RAM, USB chip, buffers for I/O, Ethernet chip etc.)? > > I'd find Ethernet more useful than USB, and in an ideal world I'd prefer a > board where the functional areas are segregated (rather than some complex and > expensive single chip, where if disaster strikes the thing basically needs > throwing out and replacing as a complete unit) I've been working on a project for a client lately, which has as it's base processor core: - 400mhz Blackfin processor + Includes ethernet, Async serial, SPORT (synchronous serial), Multiple DMA channels, SDRAM controller & lots of other goodies. - 16M SDRAM - 8M SPI (serial) flash (boots from this) All this built into less than 2 square inches of board space. It can even run Linux if you want. It's blazingly quick - I'm pretty sure you could implement most any floppy interface "in software" - no need for a dedicated and possibly limiting floppy controller chip. 16M gives plenty of room for code, track buffers etc. Since it's flash based, you can easily load/update code at any time. If you wanted you could bootstrap code over the ethernet interface and just load new code for vastly different encoding etc. Something like this would make an ideal universal floppy interface. It would cost a bit to get the boards laid out etc., but after that the per-unit cost would be very low - there's not all that much hardware needed. Just a thought. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sat Oct 20 07:36:13 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:36:13 -0400 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: <4719AB42.80409@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> <471912CC.6030203@jetnet.ab.ca> <4719AB42.80409@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > I did not look, because I did not think any were left. Talk to hams. RTTY was very popular many years back. Hams never throw anything away. -- Will From henk.gooijen at hotmail.com Sat Oct 20 07:42:43 2007 From: henk.gooijen at hotmail.com (Henk Gooijen) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:42:43 +0200 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: References: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> <471912CC.6030203@jetnet.ab.ca> <4719AB42.80409@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: > Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:36:13 -0400> From: wdonzelli at gmail.com> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Predicta?! -> philco computers> > > I did not look, because I did not think any were left.> > Talk to hams. RTTY was very popular many years back. Hams never throw> anything away.> > --> Will That's definitely true :-) Henk, PA8PDP From technobug at comcast.net Sat Oct 20 08:05:37 2007 From: technobug at comcast.net (CRC) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:05:37 -0700 Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 50, Issue 61 In-Reply-To: <200710200551.l9K5pnOR071523@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710200551.l9K5pnOR071523@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:21:24 -0400 Dan Roganti wrote: > Jules Richardson wrote: >> Grant Stockly wrote: >>> The base eZ80SBC from howard is $250. Add $100 for the disk >>> board... >> >> Hmmm, I suppose if a SASI interface and ST412 interface could be >> added >> to talk to those kind of devices too, $250 wouldn't be too bad for >> the >> 'core' portion. $350 for just a floppy interface is perhaps a little >> on the high side, though. >> >> (Someone here was working on a generic ST412 interface - presumably >> over-sampling tack data and processing in software - weren't they? >> Can't remember who it was now...) >> >> > > There's already an inexpensive eZ80F91 development board from Zilog > for > the budget conscious -only $99. And it's complete with cables, jtag > debugger, IDE, and C compiler. It has an ethernet port among other > interfaces. It doesn't have USB, but easily done with a RS232-USB > converter. The expansion interface provides all the GPIO's to let you > connect a floppy interface.And it's available from Mouser or Digikey. > http://www.zilog.com/products/partdetails.asp?id=eZ80F910200ZCO You might want to look at Luminary Micro's Stellaris LM3S6965 Evaluation Kit ($99 @ Digi-key ). The beast is an ARM Cortex with USB and Ethernet along with a bunch of I/O. There is GNU support as well as several eval compilers. Fun toy. CRC From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 11:47:51 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 09:47:51 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk>, <200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca> Message-ID: <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> On 20 Oct 2007 at 8:30, Dave Dunfield wrote: > I've been working on a project for a client lately, which has as it's base > processor core: After I read the original email about the EZ80 board for $200, my reaction was that one could get a PC104 evaluation board with any of the ARM9-class CPUs for about half that and many other non-PC104 evaulation boards with "kitchen sink" type interfaces for about the same or less. While a 50MHz processor may seem fast, a 400MHz 32-bit CPU can probably run Z80 emulation faster, while hosting Linux. I suspect that most people who have a need to handle floppies regularly already have the gear in some shape, even if it's a Catweasel. My real question is "Does this fall under the "good idea" category or is there a real demand for this?" And "Is there enough demand for someone to invest time and money getting a model to a point where he won't go broke when few purchase it?" Cheers, Chuck From emu at e-bbes.com Sat Oct 20 12:00:09 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:00:09 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk>, <200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > While a 50MHz processor may seem fast, a 400MHz 32-bit CPU can > probably run Z80 emulation faster, while hosting Linux. Sorry, I don't care if it runs linux or windows. (which actually defeats the purpose of being easily programmed) I was thinking about a small controller, which does the job. Nothing else, but does the job right. I don't need USB/Ethernet and all this BS. If I need the data written or read from a valuable floppy, I can wait a minute to transfer it via V24 which most computers have. (Please don't kill me for this "most"). So, something like a z80 derivate (free compiler & tools !!!), some sram/flash + fdc. probably a connector with all CPU signals in case somebody likes to wire up something different (fpga, WD fdc, Intel FDC, whatever). And already the connectors to access 8", 5.25" and 3.5" floppies. That's it. Two or four layers, square and done. Just my 0.0000000006 $ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 20 12:02:27 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:02:27 -0600 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: References: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> <471912CC.6030203@jetnet.ab.ca> <4719AB42.80409@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <471A34A3.3070004@jetnet.ab.ca> Henk Gooijen wrote: >> Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:36:13 -0400> From: wdonzelli at gmail.com> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Predicta?! -> philco computers> > > I did not look, because I did not think any were left.> > Talk to hams. RTTY was very popular many years back. Hams never throw> anything away.> > --> Will > That's definitely true :-) > > Henk, PA8PDP Thats why you can't buy any. :) Also some sort of TTY is still used for DEAF people to talk over the phone. From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 12:14:13 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:14:13 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com>, <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> On 20 Oct 2007 at 11:00, e.stiebler wrote: > So, something like a z80 derivate (free compiler & tools !!!), some > sram/flash + fdc. probably a connector with all CPU signals in case > somebody likes to wire up something different (fpga, WD fdc, Intel FDC, > whatever). And already the connectors to access 8", 5.25" and 3.5" > floppies. That's it. Two or four layers, square and done. An old PC with some ISA slots (free, usually) and a few ISA prototype boards (about $20 or so the each) would seem to satisfy the basic need pretty handily, wouldn't it? Easy to program, free tools, etc. Or am I missing something important here? Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 12:17:10 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:17:10 -0700 Subject: H89 enthusiast opportunity Message-ID: <4719D5A6.6248.2282D284@cclist.sydex.com> We received an inquiry from someone who's looking for someone else to furnish him with CP/M and HDOS diskettes for his H89 (hard and/or soft sectored, 5.25" or 8"). While we could probably do it, it's outside of what we normally handle (i.e. conversion). If anyone would like to put their old H89/Z89 to some use for a few bucks (I assume), drop me a note offlist and I'll hook you up. Cheers, Chuck From emu at e-bbes.com Sat Oct 20 12:30:56 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:30:56 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com>, <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471A3B50.6030600@e-bbes.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 20 Oct 2007 at 11:00, e.stiebler wrote: > >> So, something like a z80 derivate (free compiler & tools !!!), some >> sram/flash + fdc. probably a connector with all CPU signals in case >> somebody likes to wire up something different (fpga, WD fdc, Intel FDC, >> whatever). And already the connectors to access 8", 5.25" and 3.5" >> floppies. That's it. Two or four layers, square and done. > > An old PC with some ISA slots (free, usually) and a few ISA prototype > boards (about $20 or so the each) would seem to satisfy the basic > need pretty handily, wouldn't it? Easy to program, free tools, etc. > > Or am I missing something important here? Nothing important, probably all a matter of personal preference. I'm trying to get rid of PCs(running out of space) and a card which can do the job sounds better. But as always, YMMV ;-) From doc at mdrconsult.com Sat Oct 20 12:32:11 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:32:11 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com>, <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > An old PC with some ISA slots (free, usually) and a few ISA prototype > boards (about $20 or so the each) would seem to satisfy the basic > need pretty handily, wouldn't it? Easy to program, free tools, etc. > > Or am I missing something important here? "small"? :) I recently picked up a 386-based ISA SBC and a 3-slot backplane to do exactly this. The whole thing, less actual floppy drives, should run on the PSU from an external hard drive enclosure, and just about fit in a standard 2-bay 3.5" drive enclosure. The big win, which is doubtful, will be if the SBC's FDC can do single-density. If that turns out true, I don't even need the backplane. Alas, that "free time" thing has been a problem lately, so I haven't touched this in a month, or even tested the 386 yet. Doc From bpope at wordstock.com Sat Oct 20 12:48:35 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:48:35 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47161C84.5060707@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <20071020174835.D256155DC6@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Jim Leonard > > Ethan Dicks wrote: > > I do *not* miss the days of DOS. > > I do, since it was simpler and easier to gain complete access to the > hardware. You can still do so in other operating systems, but DOS+Debug > remains one of my favorite environments to poke around in. And to peek as well? ;) Cheers, Bryan From pat at computer-refuge.org Sat Oct 20 13:36:49 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:36:49 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Saturday 20 October 2007 13:00, e.stiebler wrote: > or read from a valuable floppy, I can wait a minute to transfer it > via V24 which most computers have. (Please don't kill me for this > "most"). I think you mean "RS-232", or more properly, "EIA-232". V.24 comprises a part of the EIA-232 standard, but is only really a pinout specification. Also, if you think that RS-232 is fast enough, you haven't had a real stack of hundreds of floppies that you needed to sort through and read. Anyways, if you want to read the floppies in a classic machine that lacks ethernet, then you probably don't need the external controller to do it for you. :) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From bpope at wordstock.com Sat Oct 20 13:52:31 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:52:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <47192F15.1080609@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20071020185231.CF29F564D4@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by woodelf > > I was thinking the pound was about 4 to 5 canadian dollars. > That was about 10 years ago for the USB cable. > > > 1GBP is currently roughly US$2, although the dollar is still dropping. > > Gordon > > Well now is good time to buy from the USA, at least in Canada. Recently the US and Canadian $ became equal.. The last time that happened was about 30 years ago. Now 1 US$ = $1.03 Cad. Cheers, Bryan From bpope at wordstock.com Sat Oct 20 13:55:33 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:55:33 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20071017112836.05406118@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <20071020185533.1C4A056644@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Roger Merchberger > > Rumor has it that Jim Leonard may have mentioned these words: > >Roger Merchberger wrote: > >>Today's computers (beyond overclocking... pffft.... that's not hacking) > >>just aren't that hackable. > > > >You're conveniently forgetting that most of the hacking done on 8-bitters > >was to overclock them. > > Maybe in your circles, certainly not mine. With most of the machines I used > the system clock was tied to the main color burst freq. crystal, > "overclocking" meant "no video" and when was the last time you'd seen a > paper tape reader or teletypewriter hooked up to a CoCo3? ;-) > You forgot the SuperCPU for the C64/128. This made the computer run 20 times faster and you still have video. It also gave you 16MB of available memory... Cheers, Bryan From doc at mdrconsult.com Sat Oct 20 14:06:27 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:06:27 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <20071020185231.CF29F564D4@mail.wordstock.com> References: <20071020185231.CF29F564D4@mail.wordstock.com> Message-ID: <471A51B3.30608@mdrconsult.com> Bryan Pope wrote: > And thusly were the wise words spake by woodelf > >>I was thinking the pound was about 4 to 5 canadian dollars. >>That was about 10 years ago for the USB cable. >> >> >>>1GBP is currently roughly US$2, although the dollar is still dropping. >>>Gordon >> >>Well now is good time to buy from the USA, at least in Canada. > > > Recently the US and Canadian $ became equal.. The last time that > happened was about 30 years ago. Now 1 US$ = $1.03 Cad. Other way around. $1.00 USD = $0.966 CAD Doc From emu at e-bbes.com Sat Oct 20 14:17:09 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:17:09 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <471A5435.2070503@e-bbes.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Saturday 20 October 2007 13:00, e.stiebler wrote: >> or read from a valuable floppy, I can wait a minute to transfer it >> via V24 which most computers have. (Please don't kill me for this >> "most"). > Also, if you think that RS-232 is fast enough, you haven't had a real > stack of hundreds of floppies that you needed to sort through and read. And all those floppies got beamed to your shelf last night, or are they sitting there for years ? ;-) Not buying the speed issue ... From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 14:18:18 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:18:18 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com>, <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> On 20 Oct 2007 at 12:32, Doc Shipley wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > > > An old PC with some ISA slots (free, usually) and a few ISA prototype > > boards (about $20 or so the each) would seem to satisfy the basic > > need pretty handily, wouldn't it? Easy to program, free tools, etc. > > > > Or am I missing something important here? > > "small"? :) Oh, golly the casemodders have been fooling around with small- footprint mobos for years. And there's always PC104, no? Basically ISA--and a variety of processors (yes, even x86) are available with that bus, as well as prototyping cards. Cheers, Chuck . From cc at corti-net.de Sat Oct 20 14:20:02 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:20:02 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: On Sat, 20 Oct 2007, Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Saturday 20 October 2007 13:00, e.stiebler wrote: >> or read from a valuable floppy, I can wait a minute to transfer it >> via V24 which most computers have. (Please don't kill me for this >> "most"). > > I think you mean "RS-232", or more properly, "EIA-232". V.24 comprises > a part of the EIA-232 standard, but is only really a pinout > specification. I think you're wrong. There is no pinout specification at all in V.24, in contrary to RS-232 which specifies DB-25 connectors (and nothing else). And while you can have current loop or voltage levels for your signals with V.24, RS-232 is voltage levels only. So V.24 can be considered more versatile than RS-232 in that it really only specifies the function, not the signalling (that's part of V.28) nor the connectors (like ISO 2110). So most serial ports (what most of us call "serial port") are V.24 ports, but only some of them are RS-232. For example: a teletype ASR33 attached to a PDP-8 will be V.24 but not RS-232. Christian From classiccmp at philpem.me.uk Sat Oct 20 14:28:41 2007 From: classiccmp at philpem.me.uk (Philip Pemberton) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:28:41 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A3B50.6030600@e-bbes.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com>, <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3B50.6030600@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <471A56E9.1090508@philpem.me.uk> e.stiebler wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: >> An old PC with some ISA slots (free, usually) and a few ISA prototype >> boards (about $20 or so the each) would seem to satisfy the basic need >> pretty handily, wouldn't it? Easy to program, free tools, etc. >> >> Or am I missing something important here? > > Nothing important, probably all a matter of personal preference. I'm > trying to get rid of PCs(running out of space) and a card which can do > the job sounds better. But as always, YMMV ;-) I think I've mentioned my USB floppy drive controller here before... At the moment the design is 90% done - I just need to add the I/O buffers to the schematic and route the PCB. For the latter part, I'll probably need to rig up some form of KiCAD-to-FreeRouting (via SPECCTRA DSN) interface. If I can get the PCB done reasonably quickly (say before noon tomorrow) I'll cook up a prototype. Of course, to achieve that, I'll have to get off my lazy butt and probably stop listening to the CDs I just bought... Current target price is ?50 (or about $100 US at current exchange rates). Of course, if you want portable, you get a Linksys NSLU2 and bolt the FDC onto that via a USB port. Add a pendrive and a 5V power supply (and whatever your floppy drive wants) and you've got a portable one-touch floppy disc reader. Better to use a laptop, though, then you can analyse the image and make sure it decodes properly. -- Phil. | (\_/) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny classiccmp at philpem.me.uk | (='.'=) into your signature to help him gain http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | (")_(") world domination. From doc at mdrconsult.com Sat Oct 20 14:32:00 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 14:32:00 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A5435.2070503@e-bbes.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471A5435.2070503@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <471A57B0.6010605@mdrconsult.com> e.stiebler wrote: > Patrick Finnegan wrote: > >> On Saturday 20 October 2007 13:00, e.stiebler wrote: >> >>> or read from a valuable floppy, I can wait a minute to transfer it >>> via V24 which most computers have. (Please don't kill me for this >>> "most"). > > >> Also, if you think that RS-232 is fast enough, you haven't had a real >> stack of hundreds of floppies that you needed to sort through and read. > > > And all those floppies got beamed to your shelf last night, or are they > sitting there for years ? > ;-) > Not buying the speed issue ... I've transcribed 8" and 5.25" disks for pay a few times. They do sort of get beamed to my shelf overnight, and the client usually needs them yesterday. While I don't mind taking the time it takes to do the job, I don't want to do it at 19,200 b/s or even 215,000 if I can help it. Doc From emu at e-bbes.com Sat Oct 20 14:45:37 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:45:37 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A57B0.6010605@mdrconsult.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471A5435.2070503@e-bbes.com> <471A57B0.6010605@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <471A5AE1.4040108@e-bbes.com> Doc Shipley wrote: > e.stiebler wrote: >> Not buying the speed issue ... > > I've transcribed 8" and 5.25" disks for pay a few times. They do sort > of get beamed to my shelf overnight, and the client usually needs them > yesterday. While I don't mind taking the time it takes to do the job, I > don't want to do it at 19,200 b/s or even 215,000 if I can help it. Sorry, but if you transfer with 215kbit/s, it is faster than reading them ;-) From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sat Oct 20 14:45:04 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:45:04 -0700 Subject: AlphaServer 2100 parts Message-ID: <759fb102dd23ef54efaf5e2a6cc9c7be@valleyimplants.com> Parting out an AlphaServer 2100 RM machine. Does anyone need: 1x 275MHz 21064 processor 2x B2021-FA 128MB CBUS memory 2x AlphaServer 2100 PSU units 1x CBUS board 1x floppy/3.5" sled 1x CD-ROM/5.25" sled internal cables, AlphaServer 2100 base I/O, 2100 I/O breakout panel, operator's panel, etc. From shumaker at att.net Sat Oct 20 14:54:03 2007 From: shumaker at att.net (Steve Shumaker) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:54:03 -0700 Subject: Lab-Volt model 355 6502 based trainer help? In-Reply-To: <47194550.2080207@sbcglobal.net> References: <361234.1500.qm@web52707.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200710160935.30373.pat@computer-refuge.org> <4714CE1C.9030303@gmail.com> <47147F18.4203.DA8CBE5@cclist.sydex.com> <20071016220156.1c351fd4@SirToby.dinner41.local> <471523E8.5000705@yahoo.co.uk> <0B6BC29E-6083-4707-ACAD-A62A70230725@neurotica.com> <4716ECBD.20207@jetnet.ab.ca> <4716F667.6050500@gmail.com> <4716F7D1.8070209@jetnet.ab.ca> <4716FDA5.6060201@gmail.com> <47194550.2080207@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: <471A5CDB.9070909@att.net> check out e-pay auction 290171794664 s shumaker Bob Rosenbloom wrote: > I have two of these Lab Volt trainers that use the 6502 microprocessor. > Does anyone have any docs on these? > I contacted Lab-Volt but they don't even remember them and can't help. > They are designed to help students > learn microprocessors and have dip switches that can be set to introduce > faults. I would love to find out the > commands in the monitor EPROMS and what faults can be set. Some photos > from my web site are here: > > Thanks, > > Bob > > http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/photos2/1k/lv_355_1.jpg > http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/photos2/1k/lv_355_2.jpg > http://www.dvq.com/oldcomp/photos2/1k/lv_355_5.jpg > From doc at mdrconsult.com Sat Oct 20 15:08:07 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:08:07 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com>, <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471A6027.8000702@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 20 Oct 2007 at 12:32, Doc Shipley wrote: > > >>Chuck Guzis wrote: >> >>>An old PC with some ISA slots (free, usually) and a few ISA prototype >>>boards (about $20 or so the each) would seem to satisfy the basic >>>need pretty handily, wouldn't it? Easy to program, free tools, etc. >>> >>>Or am I missing something important here? >> >> "small"? :) > > > Oh, golly the casemodders have been fooling around with small- > footprint mobos for years. Oh, I misunderstood. I thought you were talkng about "an old [cheap] PC with some ISA slots and some ISA prototype boards". :) I have a bunch of small-form-factor boards, from EBX to mini-ITX to ISA-bus and PICMG industrial SBC. Only the industrial ISA and PICMG systems have ISA peripheral slots, and they're mostly neither cheap nor small. I looked for over a year before I found an ISA backplane with <10 slots. > And there's always PC104, no? Basically ISA--and a variety of > processors (yes, even x86) are available with that bus, as well as > prototyping cards. Well, yeah. Ergo the 386 SBC, which has PC104 as one of its attractions. That's likely to be its network connection. Doc From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 20 15:18:33 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:18:33 +0100 (BST) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47195808.9040804@oldskool.org> from "Jim Leonard" at Oct 19, 7 08:21:12 pm Message-ID: > > Pete Turnbull wrote: > > The user port was typically used for home-grown digital I/O, but some > > commercial hardware used it too, eg at least one mouse, some satellite > > hardware, a turtle, a robot arm, and a CNC lathe controller. I used it > > to interface to a PCB tester I made to test some circuit boards I made. > > All of these can be hooked up with a serial port, so I'm still wondering > why today's machines are considered lacking for not having a "user port". The _oriignal_ use of the 'user port' was for _users_ to connect their own gadgets to. It is a lot easier to connect you hamster wheel/ relay-to-control-lights/ homebrew circuit to an 8-bit parallel port than to a serial port (or worse a USB port). Yes I know there are microcontrollers with built-in serial ports, USH interfaces, and whatever. But the thought of having to write the firmware for the microcontroller, get it debugged, etc, puts people off. COnnecting a couple of resistors and a transistor together is an easier introduction to hardware hacking. -tony From doc at mdrconsult.com Sat Oct 20 15:36:59 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:36:59 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A5AE1.4040108@e-bbes.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471A5435.2070503@e-bbes.com> <471A57B0.6010605@mdrconsult.com> <471A5AE1.4040108@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <471A66EB.2090106@mdrconsult.com> e.stiebler wrote: > Doc Shipley wrote: > >> e.stiebler wrote: >> >>> Not buying the speed issue ... >> >> >> I've transcribed 8" and 5.25" disks for pay a few times. They do >> sort of get beamed to my shelf overnight, and the client usually needs >> them yesterday. While I don't mind taking the time it takes to do the >> job, I don't want to do it at 19,200 b/s or even 215,000 if I can help >> it. > > > Sorry, but if you transfer with 215kbit/s, it is faster than reading > them ;-) Ack. You're right. Then again, I've never had a serial connection that would actually *do* that.... Doc From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Oct 20 15:48:57 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:48:57 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A5AE1.4040108@e-bbes.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3419.6050002@e-bbes.com> <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471A5435.2070503@e-bbes.com> <471A57B0.6010605@mdrconsult.com> <471A5AE1.4040108@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <471A69B9.6060506@yahoo.co.uk> e.stiebler wrote: > Doc Shipley wrote: >> e.stiebler wrote: >>> Not buying the speed issue ... >> >> I've transcribed 8" and 5.25" disks for pay a few times. They do >> sort of get beamed to my shelf overnight, and the client usually needs >> them yesterday. While I don't mind taking the time it takes to do the >> job, I don't want to do it at 19,200 b/s or even 215,000 if I can help >> it. > > Sorry, but if you transfer with 215kbit/s, it is faster than reading > them ;-) I don't know, I keep thinking in terms of reading the raw data stream from the floppy drive and processing in software - so that errors might be more recoverable, and so that completely alien data encoding formats can be handled. For that sort of task, what with the over-sampling required, I expect the data sizes are just too big to easily send over a serial link (even if compressed). For a straight "PC-type" FDC, and decoding within the gadget hosting the drives (so that the transfer sizes are small), it's perhaps just about do-able over an RS-232 link. cheers Jules From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 15:55:18 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:55:18 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A6027.8000702@mdrconsult.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com>, <471A6027.8000702@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <471A08C6.20072.234A8A87@cclist.sydex.com> On 20 Oct 2007 at 15:08, Doc Shipley wrote: > Oh, I misunderstood. I thought you were talkng about "an old [cheap] > PC with some ISA slots and some ISA prototype boards". :) To use an old chestnut, "What do you want, egg in your beer?" :) That's one of the problems we seem to have to deal with in modern times. Not much mass-produced stuff is really hack-able to purpose-- and custom devices are expensive. I can get DSL modems with ARM7 MPUs, wireless, USB and 100BaseT as well as some sort of serial connection, flash and generous DRAM that are running Linux for next to nothing at the local recycler (or from Freecycle). There's just no easy way to dig into the thing to add my own doodads, otherwise I'd have a bucket of the things and toss a lot of my bigger boxes. But if the truth be told, I'm perfectly happy *reading* floppies with what I have here--once. What I'd like to do is *accurately* archive what I've got on, say, CD-R or DVD and get rid of the pile of slowly- decomposing library floppies once and for all. If I needed a floppy of any sort, then I could simply take some magic box with a CD drive and a 34- or 50-pin header on it and hook it to whatever system that normally takes a floppy and be in business, at least for reading. I really don't care much about *writing* floppies. I'm experimenting with a Catweasel, recording at least two complete revolutions of a floppy track in the hope that it will be enough to recreate anything I have in my archives, should anyone care. So while the form may change, the information is preserved. As far as using traditional imaging tools; it's no good. There's too much that a 765 can't read. Cheers, Chuck From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Oct 20 15:59:54 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:59:54 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <47195814.3040507@comcast.net> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ600GMCLVKXR30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <47193D8D.40702@yahoo.co.uk> <47195814.3040507@comcast.net> Message-ID: <471A6C4A.1020808@yahoo.co.uk> Dan Roganti wrote: > > Jules Richardson wrote: >> Grant Stockly wrote: >>> The base eZ80SBC from howard is $250. Add $100 for the disk board... >> >> Hmmm, I suppose if a SASI interface and ST412 interface could be added >> to talk to those kind of devices too, $250 wouldn't be too bad for the >> 'core' portion. $350 for just a floppy interface is perhaps a little >> on the high side, though. > > There's already an inexpensive eZ80F91 development board from Zilog for > the budget conscious -only $99. And it's complete with cables, jtag > debugger, IDE, and C compiler. It has an ethernet port among other > interfaces. It doesn't have USB, but easily done with a RS232-USB > converter. The expansion interface provides all the GPIO's to let you > connect a floppy interface.And it's available from Mouser or Digikey. Hmm, I'll take a look at that - I like the sound of it. I really don't need USB, and I can't imagine using this where I don't have Ethernet handy anyway. (Even if I did, I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to put a CF interface onto the hardware, and 1GB of local CF storage is cheap these days - if it's got a RS232 interface, it'd be trivial to hook a terminal up to it and drive it that way) I've not got any free time for the coming couple of months, but one of the things that's got in the way in the past is the lack of a suitable cheap development board to play around with and try some stuff out. Maybe later this year... cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Oct 20 16:20:07 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:20:07 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk>, <200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471A7107.7040506@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > While a 50MHz processor may seem fast, a 400MHz 32-bit CPU can > probably run Z80 emulation faster, while hosting Linux. Certainly quick enough for handling a raw data stream... > I suspect that most people who have a need to handle floppies > regularly already have the gear in some shape, even if it's a > Catweasel. Well, I've got PC hardware that'll read/write FM (including at 128b/s), but I still want something that'll give me raw data to play with in order to handle the really alien stuff (and allow a bit more interpretation of marginal media). Catweasel's a bit off-putting because it's an internal board, and something of a black-box. I expect I'll buy one at some point soon, but I'd still prefer an external, 'open' device. A while back, I made a nice crate containing the aforementioned PC hardware and a bunch of drives - it proved to be a huge pain in the butt, because I forever had the thing in bits to swap cables and drives around (not to mention the need to keep cleaning drive heads). A small external box hanging off an Ethernet, with whatever drives I needed at the time hanging off *that* would be far more practical. (Random off-the-wall dreaming: 400MHz is perhaps fast enough to process an analogue signal direct from a drive head rather than going through the drive's own electronics) > My real question is "Does this fall under the "good idea" category or > is there a real demand for this?" And "Is there enough demand for > someone to invest time and money getting a model to a point where he > won't go broke when few purchase it?" That's the thing. It's the sort of project where someone has to just do it because *they* need it (because it does something that whatever's currently out there doesn't offer), and the turning it into a saleable product comes almost as an afterthought, probably on an as-and-when ordered basis. Unfortunately my "just do it" time ended up being rather non-existent this year :-( cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Oct 20 16:29:15 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:29:15 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A08C6.20072.234A8A87@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com>, <471A6027.8000702@mdrconsult.com> <471A08C6.20072.234A8A87@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471A732B.60803@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > But if the truth be told, I'm perfectly happy *reading* floppies with > what I have here--once. What I'd like to do is *accurately* archive > what I've got on, say, CD-R or DVD and get rid of the pile of slowly- > decomposing library floppies once and for all. If I needed a floppy > of any sort, then I could simply take some magic box with a CD drive > and a 34- or 50-pin header on it and hook it to whatever system that > normally takes a floppy and be in business, at least for reading. Yep, went through that at the museum because some people were advocating putting media on the archive shelves - but it's not an idea I'm a fan off; the stuff's just too prone to damage and decay. Much better to archive it off to modern storage in such a way that it can be recreated as-and-when needed. The originals would get kept "just in case", but the plan wouldn't be to ordinarily touch them once they'd been archived (which would likely mean they'd get boxed up and put into suitable storage - *not* taking up valuable space on archive shelving) > I really don't care much about *writing* floppies. Now, with museum hat on I do (see above) - but not so much for things in my own collection. There, getting the data onto modern media *and interpreting it on modern media* is more useful. > As far as using traditional imaging tools; it's no good. There's too > much that a 765 can't read. Yep, judging by Dave's experiences, 765 quirks seem widespread - there's an awful lot of subtle variations out there. Then on top of that, there's the stuff that even a "100% pure" 765 won't read anyway. From feedle at feedle.net Sat Oct 20 17:13:02 2007 From: feedle at feedle.net (C. Sullivan) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:13:02 -0700 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <84B7E1B3-6B2E-4DFB-BA4B-175A48398D0B@feedle.net> On Oct 20, 2007, at 1:18 PM, Tony Duell wrote: > It is a lot easier to connect you hamster wheel/ relay-to-control- > lights/ > homebrew circuit to an 8-bit parallel port than to a serial port (or > worse a USB port). Yes I know there are microcontrollers with built-in > serial ports, USH interfaces, and whatever. But the thought of > having to > write the firmware for the microcontroller, get it debugged, etc, puts > people off. COnnecting a couple of resistors and a transistor > together is > an easier introduction to hardware hacking. As somebody who got their start hacking the Commodore VIC-20 and the CBM "user port", I don't find a BASIC Stamp plugged in through a USB port that significantly different to experiment with, at least from an ease-of-use perspective. There's almost as much power in some of the BASIC Stamp products as I had in the entire VIC-20. A couple of teens I know who are just starting to "hardware hack" are doing the exact same sorts of "thermister controlled fan in the window" stuff I was doing on the VIC-20.. except now they are doing it all outboard. Even with a small webserver. On a BASIC Stamp, you can have your "thermister" project done in about an hour, assuming no previous knowledge of even basic electronics, just following the instructions in the Stamp's application notes. When a PIC chip based system that has more CPU power (and in some cases, even more RAM) than we had in entire computer systems can be had for $80 at RadioShack with a breadboard, manual, and programming software.. what do you need to bring it all into the computer for? When you are finally advanced enough to want to talk to a bigger computer, you'll have enough of the basic understanding to get the USB-based stuff working. From pat at computer-refuge.org Sat Oct 20 17:34:28 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:34:28 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A5435.2070503@e-bbes.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <200710201436.49933.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471A5435.2070503@e-bbes.com> Message-ID: <200710201834.28658.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Saturday 20 October 2007 15:17, e.stiebler wrote: > Patrick Finnegan wrote: > > On Saturday 20 October 2007 13:00, e.stiebler wrote: > >> or read from a valuable floppy, I can wait a minute to transfer it > >> via V24 which most computers have. (Please don't kill me for this > >> "most"). > > > > Also, if you think that RS-232 is fast enough, you haven't had a > > real stack of hundreds of floppies that you needed to sort through > > and read. > > And all those floppies got beamed to your shelf last night, or are > they sitting there for years ? > ;-) > Not buying the speed issue ... Usually, people dump them off on me something like 100+ when they do. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 20 18:37:06 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:37:06 +1300 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers In-Reply-To: References: <47190770.F870F2D8@cs.ubc.ca> <4718A709.25441.1DE4C103@cclist.sydex.com> <200710191559.43441.rtellason@verizon.net> <471912CC.6030203@jetnet.ab.ca> <4719AB42.80409@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On 10/21/07, William Donzelli wrote: > > I did not look, because I did not think any were left. > > Talk to hams. RTTY was very popular many years back. Hams never throw > anything away. Until we moved Comms out of the Dome to the new Station, we still had an RTTY rig set up for emergency communications. It was used in 2004, for certain, when we were between satellite passes and we couldn't get a call through on our Iridium phones. To keep this nominally on-topic, it was one of two 386s in production when the dome was still in use - the other was a Dell 386SX-16 working as a front-end to our PBX. There was a sign on it warning people not to throw it away. RTTY always sounded like fun, but, despite my Ham ticket, I have yet to set up so much as a packet station, let alone something I know less about. -ethan From javickers at solutionengineers.com Sat Oct 20 19:33:01 2007 From: javickers at solutionengineers.com (Ade Vickers) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 01:33:01 +0100 Subject: HP1000 'F' back on eBay (UK) Message-ID: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160171142933 This is a completely complete system, one of a pair that I helped rescue from Shell some years ago: I never got her to do anything past the self test (and, it would seem, nor did the buyer), so she's up for sale again... looking for a good home. Machine is in Preston, and requires a Luton-type van to transport (you could maybe manage with a high-top transit, but IIRC the cabs are 6ft high, which is taller than a high-top's cargo area). Cheers! Ade. No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.15.3 - Release Date: 19/10/2007 00:00 From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sat Oct 20 21:28:32 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:28:32 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A51B3.30608@mdrconsult.com> References: <20071020185231.CF29F564D4@mail.wordstock.com> <471A51B3.30608@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <471AB950.8020206@jetnet.ab.ca> Doc Shipley wrote: >> Recently the US and Canadian $ became equal.. The last time that >> happened was about 30 years ago. Now 1 US$ = $1.03 Cad. > > Other way around. $1.00 USD = $0.966 CAD Or I just use 1:1 ratio. Tax and shipping still needs to be figured in. > Doc > From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 20 21:35:47 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:35:47 +1300 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <47195808.9040804@oldskool.org> References: <4716BD1B.2090303@oldskool.org> <4716D8C4.20703@jetnet.ab.ca> <47170C93.5010808@oldskool.org> <47172621.5080306@dunnington.plus.com> <47195808.9040804@oldskool.org> Message-ID: On 10/20/07, Jim Leonard wrote: > All of these can be hooked up with a serial port, so I'm still wondering > why today's machines are considered lacking for not having a "user port". All? Well some of the stuff I hook up to machines lately needs multiple wires, so unless I want to hack a microcontroller to interpret serial packets into wire-wiggling (and the attendant drop in response time to serialize the data to begin with), I'm faced with stuff that won't fit. The LED scoreboard is a good example of that... it technically has a bus-type interface (D0-D3, A0-A2, R/W, SEL1, SEL2...). Essentially, one just needs to pick a chip select, a register address, then read/write a nybble to make it all work. There are no serial (or USB) interfaces for it. OTOH, an 11-wire cable to a PC parallel port (being used as a 'user port', not a printer port), and some very simple software to read and write the port registers, and it's a fully functioning peripheral. Can I make a microcontroller to talk to it via serial? Yes. Is it more work than an 11-wire parallel cable? Absolutely. -ethan From dave06a at dunfield.com Sat Oct 20 22:37:47 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:37:47 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <200710210243.l9L2hT6s009394@hosting.monisys.ca> Some additional thoughts: - There is just too much the 765 won't do. Even 179x series can't read some formats. That why I think a system with a fast processor with direct access to the read (and write) data stream is the best universal solution. It also must be easily programmable, so that an oddball format can be handled by "just adding software". - I agree with Chuck - reading is far more important than writing, however hand in hand with that, is that ultimately the data read has to be recoverable somehow. - Although you could take an old PC and wrap on a custom FDC for certain formats, I don't think this is a good idea, because of what I consider is the most important point: The system has to become an accepted "standard" - even if only by members of this list. If everyone "does their own thing", there is no consistancy, and little chance of someone else being able to recover data. Did we learn nothing from the Don Maslin situation. You just can't keep valuable backups in the hands of only one person. The key thing is that if someone needs a particular disk, they need to be able to obtain not only the backup data, but enough information to recreate the disk. This would include: - A open & well documented hardware design. We must assume that at some point any boards we make will become unavailable. The information needs to be presented to allow someone with enough of a requirement to recreate a compatible system. - Open and well documented software. If the hardware/software system allows for custom code to handle oddball formats, then that code needs to be made available as well. Ideally there would be some forum to collect and organize this information. - Documented image file formats. Supporting libraries and tools available to persons developing for the system, so that consistance can be maintained. In many ways, such a development would be a logical extension to my ImageDisk project - I developed that tool with the explicit goal of making sure that the data from archived floppies could be extracted by other means. To that end, I documented and released the Image File format into the public domain, developed additional tools to manipulate the images, and have make the source code to those tools and the IMD program itself freely available. A good example of the use of this documented format is my recent efforts to recover files from CDOS disks - after some screwing around, I found the only way I could reliably recover data from the disks was to extract it from ImageDisk images - Although I happen to have authored those tools, I have published enough information that most any of you could have done it as well if you had the need. Equally important is the fact that if I should subsqeuently have to recover files from a different CP/M system - I could most likely do it with the same or a very similar program. What I would like to see is a hardware version of ImageDisk - basically something that can read/write *anything* - and documented well enough that I can figure out other ways to manipulate the data if I need, and standardized enough within our communitity that the archived data will be equally useful to others. The Catweasel may fill this void - I'm not sure how standardized the various images files that can be created from it are, or what other tools are available. As far as I can tell it has suffered from a somewhat inconsistant and erratic software development. I also don't really like that it's tied to a PC PCI card, as that locks it into certain environments unless you want to do a bunch of development not relating to the actual task at hand. And how open and recreatable it is I do not know. I personally like the idea of a "mostly software" system based around a simple/fast fairly modern engine - I'm currently working on projects using Blackfin BF536 and BF537, and also a Curris EP9307 (ARM9), either of which has plenty of muscle for the task - I'm sure other ARM7/ARM9 devices, MIPS etc. would also be contenders. The actual processor used isn't to my mind all that important, since specific modern processors usually become unobtanium in short order anyway - more important is that the code base be portable and well documented. I don't think an 8-bit control processor interfaced with an off-the- shelf FDC will have the flexibility, nor the design longevity required for this type of project. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From aek at bitsavers.org Sat Oct 20 21:52:34 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:52:34 -0700 Subject: Archival preservation of software Message-ID: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> > Yep, went through that at the museum because some people were advocating > putting media on the archive shelves - but it's not an idea I'm a fan off; the > stuff's just too prone to damage and decay. Unless you recover the data, what you have is a physical artifact of a magnetic storage medium. There is absolutely no way to say what, in fact, is even on it until you read it. Bits aren't preserved if they exist on only one physical medium, which you may not be able to recover in the future. From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 21:52:06 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:52:06 -0700 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: References: , <47195808.9040804@oldskool.org>, Message-ID: <471A5C66.27551.24912B5D@cclist.sydex.com> Uh, guys? I've had the 286 in my hands for almost 2 days now. It's okay to change the subject line. :) Cheers, Chuck From scheefj at netscape.net Sat Oct 20 22:07:30 2007 From: scheefj at netscape.net (scheefj at netscape.net) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:07:30 -0400 Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? In-Reply-To: <20071017163048.B28780@shell.lmi.net> References: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> <200710171359.31665.rtellason@verizon.net> <4716985F.2000900@netscape.net> <20071017163048.B28780@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <471AC272.6090408@netscape.net> I think you just made my point. BIG businesses are not a hobby, they are corporations and thus a different animal. It's always the little guy who gets screwed. cisin at xenosoft.com wrote: > On Wed, 17 Oct 2007 scheefj at netscape.net wrote: > >> Grant, >> When I was a sole proprietor of a similar business, I was told that the >> business had to make money at least once in every three years for the >> losses to be deducible from ordinary income. >> > > WHO told you that? > It ain't true, and there have been a few BIG businesses that have had more > than 2 successive years of losses. > > BUT, . . . > there is the issue of whether the IRS will believe that it is a business, > not a hobby. IF you always lose money (less than 1 in 3 profitable, or > less than 2 out of 5, etc. depending on the agent), then they are MUCH > more likely to take a look at whether or not they'll believe that it is a > "real" business. > > From cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 22:16:48 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:16:48 -0700 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <471A6230.14547.24A7C954@cclist.sydex.com> On 20 Oct 2007 at 19:52, Al Kossow wrote: > Unless you recover the data, what you have is a physical artifact of a magnetic > storage medium. There is absolutely no way to say what, in fact, is even on it > until you read it. Bits aren't preserved if they exist on only one physical medium, > which you may not be able to recover in the future. Exactly. I'm starting to see a trend with some brands of floppies more than 25 years old where the oxide is starting to separate from the substrate, leading to fouled heads and "see through" tracks. Mostly on Wabash brand floppies currently, although a few off-brands such as "Precision" seem to also be showing this behavior. Time to get 'em archived. Cheers, Chuck From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sat Oct 20 22:19:59 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:19:59 +1300 Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? In-Reply-To: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> References: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Message-ID: On 10/17/07, Tim Shoppa wrote: > There are some potentially onerous taxes associated with > stocking large quanties of parts/assemblies/computers that > might be of value to your business, depending on how your > locality figures inventory taxes. Sitting on inventory more > than a year or two can be incredibly costly if your jurisdiction > has inventory taxes. In my area, there is a no-questions-asked $5000 deduction on business property and inventory. It covers manufacturing machinery (soldering irons in this venue, for example) as well as parts and unsold inventory. For a small-scale operation, as long as you are below that, there are no huge burdens in dealing with property tax. Get large enough to go over (or, as we did once, own a number of DEC machines bought new), and you start paying. One disadvantage to property taxes is that typically, you can depreciate tools and fixtures, but only down to a certain level, no matter their actual market value (20% of price paid, in the case around here). We paid enough in property taxes per year to probably re-purchase our VAXen annually, at the prices in the mid-1990s, but the disruption to the business would have been huge to sell and re-buy them in an arms-length, legally defensibly transaction - so we just paid the tax. -ethan From jwest at classiccmp.org Sat Oct 20 22:29:10 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:29:10 -0500 Subject: Paging Brad Parker Message-ID: <001f01c81392$8bb0ec80$6800a8c0@JWEST> Sorry to take up the bandwidth...I've gotten no response on direct email... Brad; I burned your M9312 proms... give me a shout to arrange shipping. Jay West From grant at stockly.com Sun Oct 21 00:53:14 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 21:53:14 -0800 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <47195814.3040507@comcast.net> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ600GMCLVKXR30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <47193D8D.40702@yahoo.co.uk> <47195814.3040507@comcast.net> Message-ID: <0JQ8002RZZ0P9P10@msgmmp-1.gci.net> >interfaces. It doesn't have USB, but easily done with a RS232-USB >converter. The expansion interface I don't like that. If this were the option, I would rather use my own USB converter. For my own project I'm using a 200MHz ARM to handle the USB and FAT. Cheaper than the other options too. : ) It does make me feel kind of bad though... From grant at stockly.com Sun Oct 21 01:06:14 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:06:14 -0800 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <0JQ800C1FZMCWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> At 11:18 AM 10/20/2007, you wrote: >On 20 Oct 2007 at 12:32, Doc Shipley wrote: > > > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > > > > > An old PC with some ISA slots (free, usually) and a few ISA prototype > > > boards (about $20 or so the each) would seem to satisfy the basic > > > need pretty handily, wouldn't it? Easy to program, free tools, etc. > > > > > > Or am I missing something important here? > > > > "small"? :) > >Oh, golly the casemodders have been fooling around with small- >footprint mobos for years. > >And there's always PC104, no? Basically ISA--and a variety of >processors (yes, even x86) are available with that bus, as well as >prototyping cards. Yes. 200MHz ARM SBCs are available for $149 with 100B-T, USB host, etc. These are as fast as advertised. : ) Given the options, I figured a Z80 based solution would be preferable. It would give an excuse for people to support Howard, and provide a tool useful for stuff other than transferring disks. A stand alone controller for 3.5, 5.25 and 8" disks would be handy though... It would be useful for the Altair project I'm working on. ; ) Only if its USB and enumerates itself as a mass storage device. None of the serial converter stuff. ; ) From grant at stockly.com Sun Oct 21 01:15:34 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:15:34 -0800 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A7107.7040506@yahoo.co.uk> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A7107.7040506@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <0JQ900CGG01WWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> >(Random off-the-wall dreaming: 400MHz is perhaps fast enough to >process an analogue signal direct from a drive head rather than >going through the drive's own electronics) I've found the GPIO on the ARM is slow. The best thing to do is interface to the outside world via the SRAM bus. I have an application that reads from a FIFO and sends the data over ethernet at 5.7mbyte/s. I can't recall right this second what the interrupt time was, but it didn't impress me... Grant From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sun Oct 21 01:55:12 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:55:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco In-Reply-To: <471A5C66.27551.24912B5D@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <47195808.9040804@oldskool.org>, <471A5C66.27551.24912B5D@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 20 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Uh, guys? I've had the 286 in my hands for almost 2 days now. > > It's okay to change the subject line. :) I'm just giggling over how much this thread diverged from an adoption request. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sun Oct 21 02:25:28 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 00:25:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: CP/M is BSD-ish licensed??? Message-ID: I just noticed that on the Wikipedia talk page for CP/M someone write that CP/M was released under a BSD-like license in October 2001. Who had the copyrights at the time to do this? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From geoffr at zipcon.net Sun Oct 21 04:20:21 2007 From: geoffr at zipcon.net (Geoff Reed) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:20:21 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <0JQ900CGG01WWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk><200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca><4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com><471A7107.7040506@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ900CGG01WWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <076301c813c3$a104dca0$6a01a8c0@liberator> This may be a silly question, why not interface a 1793 to a PIC/microcontroller with USB support? From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Oct 21 04:31:04 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:31:04 +0100 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <471B1C58.7010700@yahoo.co.uk> Al Kossow wrote: >> Yep, went through that at the museum because some people were advocating >> putting media on the archive shelves - but it's not an idea I'm a fan >> off; the stuff's just too prone to damage and decay. > > Unless you recover the data, what you have is a physical artifact of a > magnetic storage medium. There is absolutely no way to say what, in fact, > is even on it until you read it. Bits aren't preserved if they exist on > only one physical medium, which you may not be able to recover in the > future. Exactly. There's not much point saying "I have this" when you don't know if "this" is still viable. There seems little point in keeping media on shelving either, except for ease of sorting and identifying things which might be "the same" (which is somewhat misleading anyway - I'm forever finding media where the contents bear no resemblance to what's actually written on the label) Again with museum hat on, one of my worries is not the archival of this stuff, but the subsequent need to recreate the content - typically there's little or no redundancy at the bridge between old world and new (i.e. I think we only have one SCSI drive which can be easily hooked up to a PC in order to read and write certain classes of disk pack - if it fails then it has implications for the running of any system requiring those packs). I think it was probably Dave D. who came up with the idea of some form of 'registry' listing who could handle reading and writing certain types of media - in light of the above, that seems like a rather good idea... cheers Jules From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Oct 21 04:44:12 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:44:12 +0100 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <471A6230.14547.24A7C954@cclist.sydex.com> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> <471A6230.14547.24A7C954@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471B1F6C.7060807@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 20 Oct 2007 at 19:52, Al Kossow wrote: > >> Unless you recover the data, what you have is a physical artifact of a magnetic >> storage medium. There is absolutely no way to say what, in fact, is even on it >> until you read it. Bits aren't preserved if they exist on only one physical medium, >> which you may not be able to recover in the future. > > Exactly. I'm starting to see a trend with some brands of floppies > more than 25 years old where the oxide is starting to separate from > the substrate, leading to fouled heads and "see through" tracks. > Mostly on Wabash brand floppies currently, although a few off-brands > such as "Precision" seem to also be showing this behavior. I'm glad it's not just me. Almost every single Wabash disk I've come across seems prone to this - if I'm lucky, there's one chance to read the data, and the drive heads always need a clean afterwards. More often than not, the surface comes away though. Other than Wabash, things seem to hold together pretty well, although I think I recall having troubles with a batch of Parrot disks a while back (although in that case they were ones that hadn't been stored in very nice conditions). > Time to get 'em archived. Indeed. Although I'm almost more worried about ST412 hard drives, a problem which seems to often get overlooked (the same can be said of other hard disk technology, such as SMD). The contents are often far more interesting, but a sensible procedure for archiving them doesn't really exist short of finding the original hardware with which they belong and somehow transferring data to a modern system. cheers Jules From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sun Oct 21 05:21:26 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 11:21:26 +0100 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> On Sat, 2007-10-20 at 19:52 -0700, Al Kossow wrote: > > Yep, went through that at the museum because some people were advocating > > putting media on the archive shelves - but it's not an idea I'm a fan off; the > > stuff's just too prone to damage and decay. > > Unless you recover the data, what you have is a physical artifact of a magnetic > storage medium. There is absolutely no way to say what, in fact, is even on it > until you read it. Bits aren't preserved if they exist on only one physical medium, > which you may not be able to recover in the future. Just on that note, there's a problem I've been struggling with for a while. I'm trying to capture disk images for an Ensoniq Mirage sampler, which uses a slightly odd format - five sectors of 1024 bytes followed by one sector of 512 bytes. I can read the disks with piece of software intended for a similar piece of equipment, I ought to be able to write them but haven't tested this, but I can't format them. Now at the moment this isn't a huge problem, because I've got working formatter disks for the Mirage - you boot up the appropriate disk, stick a blank in, and it will format it. However, to write to the disk you need to have a format on it in the first place, so you can't write a formatter disk without having a formatted disk... Chicken and egg. Gordon From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 21 05:26:04 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:26:04 +1300 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> Message-ID: On 10/21/07, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > Just on that note, there's a problem I've been struggling with for a > while. I'm trying to capture disk images for an Ensoniq Mirage sampler, > which uses a slightly odd format - five sectors of 1024 bytes followed > by one sector of 512 bytes. > > I can read the disks with piece of software intended for a similar piece > of equipment, I ought to be able to write them but haven't tested this, > but I can't format them. > > Now at the moment this isn't a huge problem, because I've got working > formatter disks for the Mirage - you boot up the appropriate disk, stick > a blank in, and it will format it. However, to write to the disk you > need to have a format on it in the first place, so you can't write a > formatter disk without having a formatted disk... Chicken and egg. I'll be curious to hear about any future progress. I, too, have a Mirage, and a box of sample disks, but I don't know if I have any utility disks. -ethan From quapla at xs4all.nl Sun Oct 21 06:27:56 2007 From: quapla at xs4all.nl (Ed Groenenberg) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:27:56 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Any interested in a VSV-11 kit? Message-ID: <13926.88.211.153.27.1192966076.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> Available : 1x Dec VSV11 kit. Contains - boardset M7061, M7062 & M7064 - original joystick - videocable - bulkhead/distibution panel - inetconnect box (switchable between 110/220V), heavy! - VT100 keyboard It is a pull from a working machine. Contact me offlist please. From emu at e-bbes.com Sun Oct 21 08:21:52 2007 From: emu at e-bbes.com (e.stiebler) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 07:21:52 -0600 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> Message-ID: <471B5270.2010503@e-bbes.com> Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > Now at the moment this isn't a huge problem, because I've got working > formatter disks for the Mirage - you boot up the appropriate disk, stick > a blank in, and it will format it. However, to write to the disk you > need to have a format on it in the first place, so you can't write a > formatter disk without having a formatted disk... Chicken and egg. But you could format it, if you would have a bit image of a formatted disk. (preferably take the bit image of a freshly formatted disk, and hope for no bad block) From classiccmp at philpem.me.uk Sun Oct 21 08:53:21 2007 From: classiccmp at philpem.me.uk (Philip Pemberton) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:53:21 +0100 Subject: CP/M is BSD-ish licensed??? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471B59D1.4000908@philpem.me.uk> David Griffith wrote: > I just noticed that on the Wikipedia talk page for CP/M someone write that > CP/M was released under a BSD-like license in October 2001. Who had the > copyrights at the time to do this? Probably Caldera/Lineo. -- Phil. | (\_/) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny classiccmp at philpem.me.uk | (='.'=) into your signature to help him gain http://www.philpem.me.uk/ | (")_(") world domination. From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 21 09:41:47 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 07:41:47 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <076301c813c3$a104dca0$6a01a8c0@liberator> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk><200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca><4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com><471A7107.7040506@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ900CGG01WWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <076301c813c3$a104dca0$6a01a8c0@liberator> Message-ID: > From: geoffr at zipcon.net> > This may be a silly question, why not interface a 1793 to a> PIC/microcontroller with USB support?> > Hi I think this has been answered several times. Not all formats can be read with standard controller chips. I have several that fall under that type of problem. To make it truly useful, it needs to read the timing of the pulses. It can then use various rules to decode into data or simply keep it as timed data, depending on the purpose. To do this, the tool needs to be able to over sample with enough resolution. Because of the nature of FM/MFM, one needs to over sample 6 to 8 times the bit rate. As David suggested, something like a BlackFin processor would be good. It is designed to handle USB, runs at 400MHz instruction rate from its cache and has a clocked serial port that is able to sample a large amount of data at rates up to 80 MHz clock. Unlike a current x86 processor, it is designed to have more determinist execution times and can keep up with large data transfer rates. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 21 09:44:47 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 07:44:47 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <0JQ900CGG01WWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <200710201236.l9KCaNW7023330@hosting.monisys.ca> <4719CEC7.13180.2267F9FA@cclist.sydex.com> <471A7107.7040506@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ900CGG01WWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: > From: grant at stockly.com> > > >(Random off-the-wall dreaming: 400MHz is perhaps fast enough to > >process an analogue signal direct from a drive head rather than > >going through the drive's own electronics)> > I've found the GPIO on the ARM is slow. The best thing to do is > interface to the outside world via the SRAM bus. I have an > application that reads from a FIFO and sends the data over ethernet > at 5.7mbyte/s. I can't recall right this second what the interrupt > time was, but it didn't impress me...> Hi Grant That is why one should use a DSP like the BlackFin. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Climb to the top of the charts!? Play Star Shuffle:? the word scramble challenge with star power. http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_oct From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 21 11:14:59 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:14:59 -0700 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org>, <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> Message-ID: <471B1893.1426.85466@cclist.sydex.com> On 21 Oct 2007 at 11:21, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > Now at the moment this isn't a huge problem, because I've got working > formatter disks for the Mirage - you boot up the appropriate disk, stick > a blank in, and it will format it. However, to write to the disk you > need to have a format on it in the first place, so you can't write a > formatter disk without having a formatted disk... Chicken and egg. It can be done with ordinary PC hardware--there are just a few tricks that need to be employed. Think IBM XDF disks (which could be copied on a standard PC using the right software). Or use a WD17xx controller to do it. Cheers, Chuck From brad at heeltoe.com Sun Oct 21 11:28:42 2007 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:28:42 -0400 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:16:48 PDT." <471A6230.14547.24A7C954@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710211628.l9LGSgCi011511@mwave.heeltoe.com> "Chuck Guzis" wrote: >Mostly on Wabash brand floppies currently, although a few off-brands heh. they used to do that when new if you used them in a room over 85F :-) I once (back when s-100 was current) tried to run several CP/M machines with 8" floppies in a un-airconditioned room over the summer. big mistake. We ended up with a lot of floppies with clear bands. With an A/C running at 75F the problem went away, but some brands did better than others. -brad From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 21 11:53:14 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:53:14 -0700 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <200710211628.l9LGSgCi011511@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: >, <200710211628.l9LGSgCi011511@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <471B218A.2812.2B5902@cclist.sydex.com> On 21 Oct 2007 at 12:28, Brad Parker wrote: > heh. they used to do that when new if you used them in a room over 85F :-) > > I once (back when s-100 was current) tried to run several CP/M machines > with 8" floppies in a un-airconditioned room over the summer. big > mistake. We ended up with a lot of floppies with clear bands. Our storage is a relatively constant 65F at 40-50 percent humidity. I'm more than a bit concerned that this is just the tip of the iceberg and other brands will follow suit. Consider the situation, for example, with old DC-xxx carts of approximately the same age. It's akin to the situation with very old documents--you might have handled them a lot when they were newer, but as they get older and start decomposing, you realize that you'll have to capture the document's contents and forget about the medium on which they're inscribed. Cheers, Chuck From ygehrich at yahoo.com Sun Oct 21 10:28:44 2007 From: ygehrich at yahoo.com (Gene Ehrich) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:28:44 -0200 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers Message-ID: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net> I remember a discussion a long time ago but not much of it. Would there be anyway to hook up a 5-1/4" diskette drive to a modern day computer running any version of Windows? Have a number of things that I would love to convert to 3-1/2" or put on CD. The two machines that I have up and running are Windows 98 and Vista Ultimate. I also have an older Thinkpad 500 running Windows 3.1 From fernande at internet1.net Sun Oct 21 12:40:43 2007 From: fernande at internet1.net (Chad Fernandez) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:40:43 -0400 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net> References: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <471B8F1B.7050907@internet1.net> Gene Ehrich wrote: > Would there be anyway to hook up a 5-1/4" diskette drive to a modern day > computer running any version of Windows? I don't know about Vista, but 98 knows what to do with a 5.25" drive. Check and see if the bios has a 5.25" setting..... if it does, plug it in and go. I used to have a 360K Teac running on a Win98 machine. I didn't do anything special to make it work. Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA From kth at srv.net Sun Oct 21 13:08:30 2007 From: kth at srv.net (Kevin Handy) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:08:30 -0600 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471B959E.1070301@srv.net> Richard wrote: > In article <4718BA63.24169.1E305774 at cclist.sydex.com>, > "Chuck Guzis" writes: > > >> You could always drill a well and use a subterranean aquafer for >> heating/cooling.... :) >> > > Interesting idea; its cooling you have to worry about most for a > machine room and I don't know if there's a way for me to get > sufficient cooling that way. (I live in a desert, my house is on clay > and I have no idea if there's any aquafer beneath me.) Some of these > ideas translate into "feasible, but not cost effective" compared to > traditional A/C. > Cooling can be done by simply digging down several feet, and running smooth conduit in a serpentine fashion. One end exits into the area you want to cool, and a simple fan, or a solar chimney, forces warm air into one end of the conduit, and cool air comes out the other end. No water is needed, or wanted. Brief articles to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_cooling_tubes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_chimney This works because the ground below a certain depth is usually much cooler than the surface, which is why your grandparents dug a root cellar to store vegetables and preserves. You need to make sure it is well screened to keep "critters" and pets out. From pat at computer-refuge.org Sun Oct 21 13:09:05 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:09:05 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: <4719461C.60705@shiresoft.com> References: <4719461C.60705@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: <200710211409.05954.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Friday 19 October 2007 20:04, Guy Sotomayor wrote: > Except that after going through a 3-phase bridge rectifier, you have > 360Hz (with a good DC component) vs 120Hz that drops to 0v so you > need a lot less filter caps with the 3-phase. And frankly the > situation I'm dealing with draws ~500A @12V - that's a butt load of > current over single phase (and that's just the stuff that *requires* > 3-phase...there's a bunch more power that splits the phases to get > standard 120v single phase). Total load requirements are 70A across > all 3-phases (210A single phase...how the *hell* are you going to > wire that?). Ok, well, I was specifically talking about JP's Onyx 2. It has been my experience with more modern machines (like my IBM SPs and S/390s, and like JP's Onyx2), that the power supplies are generally over-designed enough that they won't really care if they're running off single phase or three phase power. Either they're designed already to run off either single or three phase (like the Onyx 2 I was referring to, and the IBM SPs I've got), or they have an already over-designed amount of power-soothing capacitors (which are going to be designed to work at over the max possible loading of the computer, which it should basically never reach, at least after the inital inrush current). Also, good design dictates that the power supply should be designed to be able to run for a cycle or two with lower or no input voltage, first so that you can get a "useful" power fail interrupt, and second, so that you can ride out short brownout or power blips from inrush current, say from a disk drive or A/C compressor spinning up. :) I'll further argue that if the equipment can tolerate a missing cycle of A/C, then it should have no problem dealing with the difference between rectified single and three phase power. Of course, not all machines are designed "well", and some things won't appreciate the difference, but I'd imagine that the problems will mostly be limited to much older equipment, with linear, instead of switching, power supplies, and which is fairly big in size (and might warrant 200A 208V 3ph service or even 480V 3ph service:). I wasn't exactly trying to say that Big Computers like your PDP-10 should be run off single phase instead of 3-phase power*, it's possible, but probably doesn't make sense. It probably makes more sense to just buy a 3ph diesel (or LP/natural gas) generator to run it if you're not going to do it frequently, than to convert the machine to 3 phase power. Or, just get 3phase power, of course. The cost of installation will quickly get outweighed by the cost of running the machine for any significant period of time. :) * Though, honestly, you aren't 100% correct in your calculation; most people would use 240V single phase instead of 208V three phase... 240V 1ph delivers 2/3 of the power of a 208V 3ph circuit of the same amperage... so your 70A 208V feed is equivalent to a ~100A 240V 1ph feed. I actually do have a 100A 240V "branch circuit" run in my "computing facility", though it's to run a machine with more mad-scientist appeal than computer-scientist appeal. :) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From pat at computer-refuge.org Sun Oct 21 13:13:13 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:13:13 -0400 Subject: VAXen at home - 3ph source/MG set? In-Reply-To: References: <200710191623.42025.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <200710211413.13692.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Friday 19 October 2007 19:27, William Donzelli wrote: > > You could also just parallel three 10AWG wires for each phase. (Or, > > two 6AWG) > > Some electricians might have something to say about that. Yeah, fine, I did look it up in my Code book, and you're not supposed to parallel lines less than 0 AWG in size. This isn't something I'd do myself, anyhow, as 3 AWG conductors aren't *too* bad to run as long as you keep the number of bends down to a minimum. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 21 13:28:26 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 11:28:26 -0700 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: <471B959E.1070301@srv.net> References: , <471B959E.1070301@srv.net> Message-ID: <471B37DA.7893.828334@cclist.sydex.com> On 21 Oct 2007 at 12:08, Kevin Handy wrote: > This works because the ground below a certain depth is usually > much cooler than the surface, which is why your grandparents > dug a root cellar to store vegetables and preserves. I was thinking about big-iron machine room with a heat load of perhaps 100K BTUs or more. Earth tubes of any practical size just don't have the capacity for that. Heat pumps using wells for a heat source or sink are not uncommon for large-capacity installations. Cheers, Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Sun Oct 21 13:42:20 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:42:20 -0600 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:08:30 -0600. <471B959E.1070301@srv.net> Message-ID: In article <471B959E.1070301 at srv.net>, Kevin Handy writes: > Cooling can be done by simply digging down several feet, > and running smooth conduit in a serpentine fashion. One end > exits into the area you want to cool, and a simple fan, or a solar > chimney, forces warm air into one end of the conduit, and cool > air comes out the other end. No water is needed, or wanted. What you describe is a variant of passive annual heat storage. But for a machine room we're talking *lots* of BTUs that need to be removed. The approach you describe is fine for a root cellar, but so far I'm not convinced it would be practical for a machine room, but I haven't done the calculations. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cisin at xenosoft.com Sun Oct 21 14:19:28 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:19:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <200710211628.l9LGSgCi011511@mwave.heeltoe.com> References: <200710211628.l9LGSgCi011511@mwave.heeltoe.com> Message-ID: <20071021121804.Y29588@shell.lmi.net> > mistake. We ended up with a lot of floppies with clear bands. MICROS~1 copy protected their disks of "Adventure". A lot of them had clear bands at the 2 inch slit, the snake, and the mazes From cisin at xenosoft.com Sun Oct 21 14:29:16 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:29:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <0JQ800C1FZMCWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> <0JQ800C1FZMCWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <20071021113524.H28054@shell.lmi.net> Obviously, the device needs to be a single external device in an esthetically pleasing case. It must be available in multiple colors. It needs to sell for no more than $75, with a kit form at $10 (including all parts and 24/7 handholding support) It needs to contain 3", 3.25", 3.5", 3.9", 5.25" and 8" drives. It needs to handle ST506/412 MFM/RLL, ESDI, SCSI, and whatever it was that 1401 used (RADAC?) It needs to fit in a pocket. It needs to get at least a month or 10,000 floppy reads from a set of batteries (single AAA or LR44) All media needs to go into a single slot, and the drive will identify it. It needs to have it's own screen and keyboard. It needs to produce a dead-tree hardcopy log of all data transferred, including automatically identified format, date of creation, date of transfer, creator's full name (might need internet access to research that data), and spell check all document files Should have motorized next-disk feeder It needs to operate stand alone It needs to connect to a user port It needs to connect to 34 pin/DC37 FDC, It needs to connect to a parallel ("Centronics") port It needs to connect to a V.24 port It needs to connect to a RS232 port It needs to connect to a ethernet port It needs to connect to a USB port It needs to connect to a PCMCIA port It needs to connect to a CF port It needs to connect to a SD port It needs to connect to a SCSI port It needs to connect to a SASI port It needs to connect to ISA It needs to connect to VLB It needs to connect to PCI It needs to connect to Apple ][ bus It needs to connect to TRS80 bus It needs to connect to Coco bus It needs to connect to Amiga It needs to connect to 20ma current loop It needs to connect with Bell 103, 212, V.90 It needs to read below flux transition It needs to handle and seamlessly recognize WD/IBM FM/MFM, GCR (Apple, Commodor, Victor, etc.), Hard sector (N*,H/Z, etc.) It needs to handle and seamlessly recognize all prior and future disk formats It needs to have analog track positioning (think Amlyn) to handle 48TPI, 96TPI, 100TPI, 67.5TPI, 135TPI, spiral formats, etc. It needs to handle data transfer rates of 0 to 10G (that will obviate the need for variable spindle speed, and save LOTS of money) It needs to output at at least 10GB/sec It needs to be able to automatically repair errors from single bit to entire tracks It needs drivers to work as a native peripheral for DOS, Apple-DOS, TRS-DOS (also DOSPLUS, NEWDOS, LDOS, VTOS, etc.), CP/M, VMS, OS-360 Once all of these requirements are met, should we write drivers to use it with Windoze? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Sun Oct 21 15:03:15 2007 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:03:15 +0200 Subject: Baydel S11 anyone ? Message-ID: <471BB083.4000307@bluewin.ch> Does anybody here have a Baydel S11 ( a PDP-11 clone ) ? Ideally with a few spare disc packs .... Jos Dreesen From doc at mdrconsult.com Sun Oct 21 15:12:17 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:12:17 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <20071021113524.H28054@shell.lmi.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> <0JQ800C1FZMCWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <20071021113524.H28054@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <471BB2A1.6000302@mdrconsult.com> Fred Cisin wrote: > Obviously, the device needs to be a single external device in an > esthetically pleasing case. It must be available in multiple colors. > > > It needs drivers to work as a native peripheral for DOS, Apple-DOS, > TRS-DOS (also DOSPLUS, NEWDOS, LDOS, VTOS, etc.), CP/M, VMS, OS-360 > > Once all of these requirements are met, should we write drivers to use it > with Windoze? YOU FORGOT THE LINUX DRIVERS. :^) You're not really suggesting that nobody's going to get 100% exactly what they want, are you? That's heresy. Doc From mtapley at swri.edu Sun Oct 21 14:14:01 2007 From: mtapley at swri.edu (Mark Tapley) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:14:01 -0500 Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos (was: Re: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) ) In-Reply-To: <200710162042.l9GKgdan011258@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710162042.l9GKgdan011258@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: At 15:42 -0500 10/16/07, Brent wrote: >Also reminds me of the Kosmos (from Germany) "computer"/(switching)-logic >trainer from the late-60s/early-70s I received as a kid. I think Radio Shack >marketed it over here for a while, later in the 70s. ...and you have just reminded me of the name (see subject). I had one too. ... ah. http://oldcomputermuseum.com/logix_kosmos.html Power supply, 10 bulbs across the top, 10 slides, each slide opened or closed 5 sets of contacts (functioning as a 5PDT switch), and a pushbutton. Each contact had 3 holes, as did the power supply and the lights. By placing jumper wires, you enabled "gates" to create the logic. You'd slide the slides to generate the input, then press the pushbutton to provide current. The lights would illuminate to generate the output. There were paper fold-ups to place inside the light housing so that the output could be pictographic, and to slide into a holder to label the slides. It's more or less the next step up from the "Digi-Comp" (3 bits -> 10 bits), except that it can't affect its own state. But you could implement "feedback" manually, by sliding slides when the bulb above them was illuminated. I quite clearly remember watching the Star Trek episode where Spock determines that the Enterprise's computer has been tampered with by beating it at chess, and thinking it'd take some pretty hot wiring to get the Logix-Cosmos to play chess, so I'd better get started. I never did figure out how to make the overlays work... Mine died of corrosion on the contacts, and was (regrettably) trashed, I'm pretty sure. -- - Mark, 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward. From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Oct 21 15:22:52 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:22:52 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <20071021113524.H28054@shell.lmi.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> <0JQ800C1FZMCWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <20071021113524.H28054@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk> Fred Cisin wrote: > Obviously, the device needs to be a single external device in an > esthetically pleasing case. It must be available in multiple colors. >... You missed out power supply specification (including use on three-phase). And a whole bunch of floppy sizes. Geez, haven't you been paying attention? :-) From jwest at classiccmp.org Sun Oct 21 16:11:06 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:11:06 -0500 Subject: TU81+ & KLESI-UA Message-ID: <000b01c81426$e5ce3b70$6800a8c0@JWEST> So I have a TU81+ and a KLESI-UA that I'd like to hook up to my 11/44. My first stop was bitsavers and google, to see if there was any specific docs on these. I found docs on the TU81+, but the only thing I found on the M8739 is the printset. 1) Can't find anything detailed about all the dip switch and jumper settings on the KLESI 2) The printset seems to be for a slightly different board than mine (mine has J1 vertical, printset shows it horizontal) >From what I read in the TU81+ docs, it seems that it should pass built-in diags without the need for a host connection. Upon powerup, after a moment I get Ebb in the display. Can't seem to find what that refers to. Reset button does clear it though. Running diag 01 consistently fails after about 4 minutes with "E06". I cleaned the heads, tape cleaner, rollers, and am using a brand new tape. Same results. Test 60, 58, and 59 all end with "00" in the display, but the fault light comes on. 00 supposedly indicates a passed result, but the writeup on the test doesn't mention if the fault light is indicative of a specific result. Apparently my RT-11 docs are old... what is the device driver code for TU81+? Any pointers or advice is most appreciated! Jay West From dave06a at dunfield.com Sun Oct 21 17:07:56 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:07:56 -0500 Subject: LF: Microvax 3100 power supply technical information. Message-ID: <200710212114.l9LLE6JN032487@hosting.monisys.ca> Hi Guys, I have a "VAXserver 3100" which afaik is the same hardware as a Microvax 3100. This unit has a bad power supply. The power supply is labled: MODEL H7822-00 Anyone have schematics or other technical information? In case anyone has run into this before - the symptoms: This supply appears to be two "mostly separate" supplies in one box. Both boards have connection to AC power. One board generates +5, -5, +12 and -12v, which is the sent via jumper wires to the second board - There it appears to be monitored by a "power good" circuit, and passes directly to the connector for the VAX mainboard, and one of the two disk drive power connectors. All of these rails look good. The second supply generates +5 and +12v which is applied only to the second disk drive power connector. This supply constantly starts and stops - with or without a load. I can see the output voltages coming on, then going off over and over. Since this supply drives only the second disk drive power connector, the system shoud come up, however it does not - I believe the reason for this is that the power monitor is either holding the system in reset, or providing a "bad power" indication which otherwise halts the system because the second drive supply voltages are not stable. The connector to the VAX mainboard looks like this (viewing end of power supply cable) -12 +5 Gnd +12 Gnd +5 [Key ] Gnd Gnd [Tab ] +5 Gnd [Here] +5 -5 ?1 ?2 The ?1 and ?2 signals appeare to be control signals. All power rails look good. With a supply borrowed from a Vaxstation 3100 (smaller supply without the extra drive connector/supply, but same main pinout), I see 4+ volts on ?2 and some low but non-zero voltage on ?1 - with the bad supply, both ?1 and ?2 are at 0v. Can anyone tell me the names and description of function for the ?1 and ?2 signals - I'd like to know exactly what these are supposed to do as the supply comes up. Any other technical information and/or ideas would be very much appreciated. Regards, Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Sun Oct 21 16:43:14 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:43:14 +1300 Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos (was: Re: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) ) In-Reply-To: References: <200710162042.l9GKgdan011258@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: On 10/22/07, Mark Tapley wrote: > At 15:42 -0500 10/16/07, Brent wrote: > >Also reminds me of the Kosmos (from Germany) "computer"/(switching)-logic > >trainer from the late-60s/early-70s I received as a kid. I think Radio Shack > >marketed it over here for a while, later in the 70s. Yes. I had the Radio-Shack-badged one. > ...and you have just reminded me of the name (see subject). I > had one too. ... ah. > http://oldcomputermuseum.com/logix_kosmos.html That was the first one I had - the overlays inside were, IIRC, printed tissue paper. > Power supply, 10 bulbs across the top, 10 slides, each slide > opened or closed 5 sets of contacts (functioning as a 5PDT switch), > and a pushbutton. Each contact had 3 holes, as did the power supply > and the lights. By placing jumper wires, you enabled "gates" to > create the logic. You'd slide the slides to generate the input, then > press the pushbutton to provide current. The lights would illuminate > to generate the output. There were paper fold-ups to place inside the > light housing so that the output could be pictographic, and to slide > into a holder to label the slides. Yep. And the whole thing arrived as bagged fiddly-bits - I remember taking more than an hour to assemble. > Mine died of corrosion on the contacts, and was (regrettably) > trashed, I'm pretty sure. I remember the contacts weren't great on the best of days. I think my step-mother threw mine out when she decided my room was too messy. :-( My step-brother had the later Radio-Shack model - the lights were down inside the body of the unit, with flat, plastic printed overlay strips that mounted flush to the face of the unit, and rather than small holes with brass contacts inside the switches, it had external springs like the 150-in-one project kits of the day. It was also sold pre-assembled, IIRC. I did most of the projects in mine, but the one I remember best was the goat/cabbage/fox puzzle. There were graphics on the 3 left-most and 3 right-most bulb spots for the puzzle elements, and a light to signify that you had an error condition (i.e. - the fox ate the goat or the goat ate the cabbage). You flipped the switches to migrate the elements back and forth across the "water", and you might have pressed the button to see what "got et" on that pass, if anything. My only real complaint with it as a teaching tool was that even though I did all the projects, there was no abstraction of the underlying concepts presented. I knew what logic gates were, but at that age, wasn't able to extrapolate on my own how multi-pole switches related to logic gates. I don't recall there being any schematics printed for the projects, either; something that might have helped illustrate what was going on under the hood. It was fun to play with, but I don't think I learned that much from it, unfortunately. I think the N-in-one electronic kits were better as teaching toys. -ethan From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 21 16:51:43 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:51:43 +0100 (BST) Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos (was: Re: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) ) In-Reply-To: from "Mark Tapley" at Oct 21, 7 02:14:01 pm Message-ID: > > At 15:42 -0500 10/16/07, Brent wrote: > >Also reminds me of the Kosmos (from Germany) "computer"/(switching)-logic > >trainer from the late-60s/early-70s I received as a kid. I think Radio Shack > >marketed it over here for a while, later in the 70s. > > ...and you have just reminded me of the name (see subject). I > had one too. ... ah. > http://oldcomputermuseum.com/logix_kosmos.html > > Power supply, 10 bulbs across the top, 10 slides, each slide > opened or closed 5 sets of contacts (functioning as a 5PDT switch), > and a pushbutton. Each contact had 3 holes, as did the power supply > and the lights. By placing jumper wires, you enabled "gates" to Ah yes, I had one of those.The main problem was the lamp socksts, they were formed by running wires through the plastic chassis moulding, one under each (MES cap) lamp to touch the base contact, one acoss the hole to hopefully engage the thread on the cap. Needless to say bad contacts wrre very common, In the end I got some real bulbholders and wired those in. > create the logic. You'd slide the slides to generate the input, then > press the pushbutton to provide current. The lights would illuminate IIRC, you didn't _have_ to use the button. It was just wired to 2 contacts on the panel. The lamps were wired with one side of each to a speparate contact on the panel, the other side of the lamps were connected together and to one side of the battery (3 C cells IIRC), the other side of the battery went to a contact on the panel. Thus connecting that battery contact to one of the lamp contacts -- via the switch array -- caused that lamp to light. > to generate the output. There were paper fold-ups to place inside the > light housing so that the output could be pictographic, and to slide > into a holder to label the slides. > > It's more or less the next step up from the "Digi-Comp" (3 > bits -> 10 bits), except that it can't affect its own state. But you > could implement "feedback" manually, by sliding slides when the bulb > above them was illuminated. > > I quite clearly remember watching the Star Trek episode where > Spock determines that the Enterprise's computer has been tampered > with by beating it at chess, and thinking it'd take some pretty hot > wiring to get the Logix-Cosmos to play chess, so I'd better get > started. I never did figure out how to make the overlays work... There was patchin diagrm in the manual for something called 'mini-chess'. IiIRC it was played on a 4*4 board with very modified rules from normal chess (the one I rememebr was that the king couldn't move, so 'check' was the same as 'checkmate'. > Mine died of corrosion on the contacts, and was (regrettably) > trashed, I'm pretty sure. I know I still have mine, But don't expect me to be able to find it! -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 21 17:00:15 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:00:15 +0100 (BST) Subject: LF: Microvax 3100 power supply technical information. In-Reply-To: <200710212114.l9LLE6JN032487@hosting.monisys.ca> from "Dave Dunfield" at Oct 21, 7 05:07:56 pm Message-ID: > > Hi Guys, > > I have a "VAXserver 3100" which afaik is the same hardware > as a Microvax 3100. This unit has a bad power supply. > > The power supply is labled: MODEL H7822-00 > > Anyone have schematics or other technical information? I've never worked on this supply (and don't have schematics), but it can't be that odd, can it??? > > > In case anyone has run into this before - the symptoms: > > This supply appears to be two "mostly separate" supplies > in one box. Both boards have connection to AC power. > > One board generates +5, -5, +12 and -12v, which is the > sent via jumper wires to the second board - There it > appears to be monitored by a "power good" circuit, and > passes directly to the connector for the VAX mainboard, > and one of the two disk drive power connectors. All of > these rails look good. > > The second supply generates +5 and +12v which is applied > only to the second disk drive power connector. This supply > constantly starts and stops - with or without a load. I > can see the output voltages coming on, then going off > over and over. Wouldn't it be best to find out why it's doing this? My _guess_ is that either one output is rising too high, tripping the crowbar, and thus shutting the supply down, or, less likely, the supply to the control circutiry has failed (the reason I mention the latter is that that fualt, caused by a dried-up capacitor on the _primary_ side of the supply, once led me a merry dance in a Tektronix X-terminal). I'd be inclined to start by checking _all_ the electrolytics on that second PSU board with an ESR meter. An high ESR capactior on the output side can put some 'interesting' high-ish voltage spikes on the output. > > Since this supply drives only the second disk drive > power connector, the system shoud come up, however it > does not - I believe the reason for this is that the > power monitor is either holding the system in reset, > or providing a "bad power" indication which otherwise > halts the system because the second drive supply > voltages are not stable. > > The connector to the VAX mainboard looks like this > (viewing end of power supply cable) > > -12 +5 > Gnd +12 > Gnd +5 [Key ] > Gnd Gnd [Tab ] > +5 Gnd [Here] > +5 -5 > ?1 ?2 > > The ?1 and ?2 signals appeare to be control signals. > All power rails look good. With a supply borrowed > from a Vaxstation 3100 (smaller supply without the > extra drive connector/supply, but same main pinout), > I see 4+ volts on ?2 and some low but non-zero voltage > on ?1 - with the bad supply, both ?1 and ?2 are at > 0v. > > Can anyone tell me the names and description of > function for the ?1 and ?2 signals - I'd like to > know exactly what these are supposed to do as the > supply comes up. Being a DEC supply, these might well be open-collector signals, pulled up on the mainboard. At least one is likely to be power-OK. The other might be a second power-OK (some DEC machines have separate ACLO and DCLO signals), it might be a line-frequency [1] clock interrupt signal. Have you tried a 'scope on the signals from the good supply? [1] After Will's flame last night, I won't call it 'mains frequency', for all that's what wee normally call it over here. 'Line' to us is the horizontal deflection on a raster CRT display, so 'line frequency' over here is what you'd call 'horizontal frequency'.... -tony From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sun Oct 21 17:56:08 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 23:56:08 +0100 Subject: Baydel S11 anyone ? In-Reply-To: <471BB083.4000307@bluewin.ch> References: <471BB083.4000307@bluewin.ch> Message-ID: <1193007368.6471.0.camel@elric> On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 22:03 +0200, Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote: > Does anybody here have a Baydel S11 ( a PDP-11 clone ) ? Possibly, what does it look like? My PDP11/73 was built by Baydel, and looks like this: http://pdp11.kicks-ass.net Gordon From cisin at xenosoft.com Sun Oct 21 19:16:14 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:16:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471BB2A1.6000302@mdrconsult.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> <0JQ800C1FZMCWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <20071021113524.H28054@shell.lmi.net> <471BB2A1.6000302@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <20071021171325.O40145@shell.lmi.net> > > Obviously, the device needs to be a single external device in an > > esthetically pleasing case. It must be available in multiple colors. On Sun, 21 Oct 2007, Doc Shipley wrote: > (because everybody agrees with all of them) > > It needs drivers to work as a native peripheral for DOS, Apple-DOS, > > TRS-DOS (also DOSPLUS, NEWDOS, LDOS, VTOS, etc.), CP/M, VMS, OS-360 > YOU FORGOT THE LINUX DRIVERS. :^) Sorry. That was supposed to have read, "and drivers for 128 different flavors of Linux" > > Once all of these requirements are met, should we write drivers to use it > > with Windoze? > You're not really suggesting that nobody's going to get 100% exactly > what they want, are you? > That's heresy. Why not, if we adhere carefully to the spec reqs? -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From cisin at xenosoft.com Sun Oct 21 19:21:06 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:21:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719D4F5.12694.22801C82@cclist.sydex.com> <471A3B9B.3030504@mdrconsult.com> <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> <0JQ800C1FZMCWV70@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <20071021113524.H28054@shell.lmi.net> <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net> > > Obviously, the device needs to be a single external device in an > > esthetically pleasing case. It must be available in multiple colors. On Sun, 21 Oct 2007, Jules Richardson wrote: > You missed out power supply specification (including use on three-phase). And > a whole bunch of floppy sizes. Geez, haven't you been paying attention? :-) Yes, the batteries need to be rechargeable with BUILT-IN charger that will function with any voltage (positive or negative), any frequency, and any number of phases, as well as solar cells sufficient to operate from a single red LED (on drive front panel). Aside from 2", 2.5", 2.9" varieties, which additional floppy sizes would you like to add? From lynchaj at yahoo.com Sat Oct 20 12:33:21 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:33:21 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface Message-ID: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> At 01:42 PM 10/19/2007, you wrote: >Grant Stockly wrote: >>What do you guys think? The thing has a peripheral expansion header. >>We could hook a modern floppy chip to that, connectors for >>different drives, and off we go... > >What's the cost like? Is the board made up of separate components >(CPU, ROM, RAM, USB chip, buffers for I/O, Ethernet chip etc.)? > >I'd find Ethernet more useful than USB, and in an ideal world I'd >prefer a board where the functional areas are segregated (rather >than some complex and expensive single chip, where if disaster >strikes the thing basically needs throwing out and replacing as a >complete unit) The base eZ80SBC from howard is $250. Add $100 for the disk board... -----REPLY----- Hi, By the time you add in all the costs of the CPU board with IO, case, power supply, cables, documentation, plus the specialized disk controller, AND write most if not all of the software this project is quickly going to become uneconomical for all but the most patient and financially well off. You could use a throw away old 486 or Pentium II computer with ISA and/or PCI slots to provide any interface you'd like (ethernet, SCSI, ST506, USB, whatever) for a whole lot less time and effort. A double sided 48tpi floppy drive will read practically any format given the right controller. The same can be done for whatever sort of drive you'd like to test. I have made and am using a few bench stations for testing floppy drives, ST506/ST412 hard drives, SCSI, etc for a small fraction of what the cost you are proposing. I am sure many others here are doing the same thing as well. In addition, reusing old PCs effectively removes them from the waste stream which is not only economical it is environmentally friendly as well. Get a small enough PC and they are portable assuming you choose standard interface for peripherals like VGA, PS/2 keyboards & mice, etc. On top of the above, as an added bonus much of the software is already written. You can use ImageDisk for soft sector floppy disks, SpinRite II for ST506/ST412 hard disks, etc. Respectfully, it seems like the proposals being discussed are reinventing the wheel by developing and/or repurposing a new CPU and IO board rather than reusing proven and cost effective solutions which already exist. It is just my $0.02. Best of luck with your project. Thanks! Andrew Lynch From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 20 19:02:11 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:02:11 -0400 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers Message-ID: <0JQ800I99IPJEFO4@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Predicta?! -> philco computers > From: "Ethan Dicks" > Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:37:06 +1300 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 10/21/07, William Donzelli wrote: >> > I did not look, because I did not think any were left. >> >> Talk to hams. RTTY was very popular many years back. Hams never throw >> anything away. > >Until we moved Comms out of the Dome to the new Station, we still had >an RTTY rig set up for emergency communications. It was used in 2004, >for certain, when we were between satellite passes and we couldn't get >a call through on our Iridium phones. > >To keep this nominally on-topic, it was one of two 386s in production >when the dome was still in use - the other was a Dell 386SX-16 working >as a front-end to our PBX. There was a sign on it warning people not >to throw it away. > >RTTY always sounded like fun, but, despite my Ham ticket, I have yet >to set up so much as a packet station, let alone something I know less >about. > >-ethan RTTY is one of the oldest digital modes, Amtor and Clover are newer. Some of the newest weak signal modes require 500mhz systems with decent soundcards. Examples are PSK31 and JST65, they work to the noise level and below. One of my pet projects is to get somthing like PSK31 working on a Qbus PDP11 I have fast A/D and D/A needed to do the 22K or better samples/sec. but the DSP software is a new thing to me. PSK31 translates user text IO at 31.5 baud to a variable length code and then to something a transmitter can digest (Narrow audio bandwidth, less than 31hz!). The software to do it on curent laptops and PCs exist but that's no fun. Allison From lynchaj at yahoo.com Sat Oct 20 19:58:10 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:58:10 -0400 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester Message-ID: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Hi, Does anyone have any experience with using a TOP2049 as a TTL 74xxx chip tester? How did it work for you? Do you recommend it as a worthwhile piece of test equipment? Thanks! Andrew Lynch From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sat Oct 20 12:15:30 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:15:30 -0400 Subject: Predicta?! -> philco computers Message-ID: <0JQ700D8KZVUBTO3@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Predicta?! -> philco computers > From: woodelf > Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:02:27 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Henk Gooijen wrote: >>> Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 08:36:13 -0400> From: wdonzelli at gmail.com> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: Predicta?! -> philco computers> > > I did not look, because I did not think any were left.> > Talk to hams. RTTY was very popular many years back. Hams never throw> anything away.> > --> Will >> That's definitely true :-) >> >> Henk, PA8PDP >Thats why you can't buy any. :) >Also some sort of TTY is still used for DEAF people to talk over the phone. Lesse a bunch of years ago I gave one [asr33] away due to space and noise in use. More recently I refused a KSR36 on no space to use or store it. They are out there though many will likely require basic maintenace use as is. Of course a small computer can simulate any as needed. Allison From spedraja at gmail.com Sun Oct 21 03:11:21 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:11:21 +0200 Subject: HP1000 'F' back on eBay (UK) In-Reply-To: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> Message-ID: Having in mind that I don't live in the UK, and the space needed for this monster, I could get and manage only the CPU, plus some terminals(s). Not interested in the other parts. Greetings Sergio 2007/10/21, Ade Vickers : > > > http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160171142933 > > This is a completely complete system, one of a pair that I helped rescue > from Shell some years ago: I never got her to do anything past the self > test > (and, it would seem, nor did the buyer), so she's up for sale again... > looking for a good home. > > Machine is in Preston, and requires a Luton-type van to transport (you > could > maybe manage with a high-top transit, but IIRC the cabs are 6ft high, > which > is taller than a high-top's cargo area). > > Cheers! > Ade. > > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.15.3 - Release Date: 19/10/2007 > 00:00 > > > From lynchaj at yahoo.com Sun Oct 21 13:00:42 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 14:00:42 -0400 Subject: Archival preservation of software Message-ID: <004601c8140c$4c353e60$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Archival preservation of software Chuck Guzis cclist at sydex.com Sat Oct 20 22:16:48 CDT 2007 * Previous message: Archival preservation of software * Next message: Archival preservation of software * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] ________________________________ On 20 Oct 2007 at 19:52, Al Kossow wrote: > Unless you recover the data, what you have is a physical artifact of a magnetic > storage medium. There is absolutely no way to say what, in fact, is even on it > until you read it. Bits aren't preserved if they exist on only one physical medium, > which you may not be able to recover in the future. Exactly. I'm starting to see a trend with some brands of floppies more than 25 years old where the oxide is starting to separate from the substrate, leading to fouled heads and "see through" tracks. Mostly on Wabash brand floppies currently, although a few off-brands such as "Precision" seem to also be showing this behavior. Time to get 'em archived. Cheers, Chuck ________________________________ -----REPLY----- Agree. I have made disk images of about 400 NorthStar Horizon disks. I am seeing some percentage of disks which just are not readable any longer. Fortunately, not too many but it seems like INSUA and other original disks are the worst. What I am doing and encourage others to as well is to make disk images of all of your NorthStar Horizon disks. Write a one line summary of the contents of the disk into an index and send the images to Bitsavers.org. There is a NorthStar Horizon disk image archive at: http://bitsavers.org/bits/NorthStar/NorthStar_Horizon/ You can send the disk images and indexes to me and I will load them for you. Don't let your NorthStar Horizon information fade away. Once it is gone, it is gone for good. Thanks! Andrew Lynch From djret at sbcglobal.net Sun Oct 21 14:06:36 2007 From: djret at sbcglobal.net (Dan Retzinger) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 12:06:36 -0700 Subject: Wanted: Intel Data Catalogs Message-ID: <200710211906.l9LJ6g17031951@billy.ezwind.net> Hello John Galt: Are you still looking for Intel Catalogs and C3107's?? Dan Retzinger From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Sun Oct 21 20:32:31 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:32:31 -0300 Subject: Taken: AT 286 motherboard with mathco References: Message-ID: <002a01c8144c$136b5390$f0fea8c0@alpha> > It is a lot easier to connect you hamster wheel/ relay-to-control-lights/ > homebrew circuit to an 8-bit parallel port than to a serial port (or > worse a USB port). Yes I know there are microcontrollers with built-in > serial ports, USH interfaces, and whatever. But the thought of having to > write the firmware for the microcontroller, get it debugged, etc, puts > people off. COnnecting a couple of resistors and a transistor together is > an easier introduction to hardware hacking. How to use serial port with bascom: $crystal 8000000 $baud 9600 main: Print "Hi Tony, this is an example of using a serial port" goto main How to use USB port with bascom and a FT232 module/chip $crystal 8000000 $baud 9600 main: Print "Hi Tony, this is an example of using a serial port" goto main There is no spoon :o) From dave06a at dunfield.com Sun Oct 21 20:34:18 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:34:18 -0500 Subject: LF: Microvax 3100 power supply technical information. In-Reply-To: References: <200710212114.l9LLE6JN032487@hosting.monisys.ca> from "Dave Dunfield" at Oct 21, 7 05:07:56 pm Message-ID: <200710220040.l9M0eNck013182@hosting.monisys.ca> > > I have a "VAXserver 3100" which afaik is the same hardware > > as a Microvax 3100. This unit has a bad power supply. > > > > The power supply is labled: MODEL H7822-00 > > > > Anyone have schematics or other technical information? > > I've never worked on this supply (and don't have schematics), but it > can't be that odd, can it??? It's complex enough that I'd feel better going at it with a set of schematics. If nothing turns up I'll draw it out myself, but if someone has technical data it could save considerable time. > > The second supply generates +5 and +12v which is applied > > only to the second disk drive power connector. This supply > > constantly starts and stops - with or without a load. I > > can see the output voltages coming on, then going off > > over and over. > > Wouldn't it be best to find out why it's doing this? My _guess_ is that > either one output is rising too high, tripping the crowbar, and thus > shutting the supply down, or, less likely, the supply to the control > circutiry has failed (the reason I mention the latter is that that fualt, > caused by a dried-up capacitor on the _primary_ side of the supply, once > led me a merry dance in a Tektronix X-terminal). I'd be inclined to start > by checking _all_ the electrolytics on that second PSU board with an ESR > meter. An high ESR capactior on the output side can put some > 'interesting' high-ish voltage spikes on the output. Agreed completely - I guess I wasn't clear. I haven't done any debugging yet, just a brief characterization of the symptoms - I received it with the statement "it doesn't work on this supply, I think the 12v or something is dead, but it works on this one borrowed from another unit" - With a light bulb limiter and multimeter I did a quick verification on the rails and discovered that they were all present, and followed far enough to give the observations stated previously. Thats when I decided to see if technical data was available before digging much deeper. The problem with "just going at it" is that sometimes you make what seems like reasonable assumptions that one look at the schematic will tell you are completely wrong. The description of symptoms was just in case this is a common/known DEC supply failure mode. I too suspect a lack of regulation and crowbar trip, and yes in the absense of technical data, I'll probably "shotgun" the electrolitics in the hope that I'll get lucky. It is at least fortunate that the working board and the non-working board are VERY similar. Once I draw it out I may be able to do some comparitive debugging. > > The ?1 and ?2 signals appeare to be control signals. > > All power rails look good. With a supply borrowed > > from a Vaxstation 3100 (smaller supply without the > > extra drive connector/supply, but same main pinout), > > I see 4+ volts on ?2 and some low but non-zero voltage > > on ?1 - with the bad supply, both ?1 and ?2 are at > > 0v. > > > > Can anyone tell me the names and description of > > function for the ?1 and ?2 signals - I'd like to > > know exactly what these are supposed to do as the > > supply comes up. > > Being a DEC supply, these might well be open-collector signals, pulled up > on the mainboard. At least one is likely to be power-OK. The other might > be a second power-OK (some DEC machines have separate ACLO and DCLO > signals), it might be a line-frequency [1] clock interrupt signal. Have > you tried a 'scope on the signals from the good supply? They are open collector signals (or at least they appear to be). If no tech data surfaces, I'll spend some time with the scope and provide more detailed information sometime in the next week or so. > [1] After Will's flame last night, I won't call it 'mains frequency', for > all that's what wee normally call it over here. 'Line' to us is the > horizontal deflection on a raster CRT display, so 'line frequency' over > here is what you'd call 'horizontal frequency'.... Funny - I don't see any problem with "mains frequency" - I've seen household AC power referred to as "mains" many times. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From blstuart at bellsouth.net Sun Oct 21 19:43:12 2007 From: blstuart at bellsouth.net (Brian L. Stuart) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:43:12 +0000 Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos (was: Re: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) ) Message-ID: <102220070043.28720.471BF2200003B78B0000703022230703729B0A02D2089B9A019C04040A0DBF9B9D0E9A9B9C040D@att.net> > > http://oldcomputermuseum.com/logix_kosmos.html > > That was the first one I had - the overlays inside were, IIRC, printed > tissue paper. Me too. I still remember how I would forget that they were not symmetric, so if you put them in backwards the separators between the output values and the plastic separators between the lights don't line up. > > Mine died of corrosion on the contacts, and was (regrettably) > > trashed, I'm pretty sure. > > I remember the contacts weren't great on the best of days. I think my > step-mother threw mine out when she decided my room was too messy. > :-( Yeah. The contacts were my biggest source of frustration. I probably would have done a lot more with it, if I hadn't had to wiggle wires and adjust the contacts for every "program" on it. Believe it or not, I still have mine. I even have it upstairs where I can find it. Not that I've used it any time recently. > My only real complaint with it as a teaching tool was that even though > I did all the projects, there was no abstraction of the underlying > concepts presented. I agree. They also didn't do a good job of clarifying that the device only implemented combinatorial logic. As I recall, I got it before the idea of a stored program really clicked with me. Unless I missed it, they didn't have a discussion in the manual that said, this "computer" does this, but real computers also have memory that stores not only data, but instructions too. BLS From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 21 20:05:46 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 18:05:46 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk>, <20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <471B94FA.19600.1EE44EB@cclist.sydex.com> On 21 Oct 2007 at 17:21, Fred Cisin wrote: > Yes, the batteries need to be rechargeable with BUILT-IN charger that will > function with any voltage (positive or negative), any frequency, and any > number of phases, as well as solar cells sufficient to operate from a > single red LED (on drive front panel). I want mine powered by cold fusion as well as zero-point energy. Cheers, Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Sun Oct 21 20:30:42 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:30:42 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471B94FA.19600.1EE44EB@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net>, <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk>, <20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net> <471B94FA.19600.1EE44EB@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471BFD42.2000707@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > I want mine powered by cold fusion as well as zero-point energy. Try a black hole diode. See APRIL BYTE for details. From ballsandy at msn.com Sun Oct 21 21:07:22 2007 From: ballsandy at msn.com (john ball) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:07:22 -0200 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers Message-ID: I see why not. I still see Intel/AMD boards that come out with support for the 5 1/4" drive but it's becoming more and more uncommon. My MSI K7N2 Delta2-LSR can support one 5 1/4" drive. I have also had success both read and writing 5 1/4" floppies on Windows XP professional also. As a matter of fact, XP was the last OS from micro$oft to include built-in support for 5 1/4" floppies. Nothing says that the die-hards won't patch Vista and bring back 5 1/4" support. _________________________________________________________________ R U Ready for Windows Live Messenger Beta 8.5? Try it today! http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.ca/WindowsLiveMessenger From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 21 21:19:20 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:19:20 -0400 Subject: IBM junk Message-ID: Lots of new IBM things today, but all basically PC related. Does anyone here have a 5182 Color Printer? This was one of the goodies today, from an ex-IBM salesman that was finally clearing out the closet. He said it was a very unsuccessful product from the XT/AT era, and may have never been for sale to the public. He said they were probably internal use only. The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a stick. Still, it is built like the mainframe people were in charge of the project. -- Will From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 21 22:47:07 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:47:07 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Message-ID: > From: lynchaj at yahoo.com ---snip---> Hi,> > By the time you add in all the costs of the CPU board with IO, case, power> supply, cables, documentation, plus the specialized disk controller, AND> write most if not all of the software this project is quickly going to> become uneconomical for all but the most patient and financially well off.> > You could use a throw away old 486 or Pentium II computer with ISA and/or> PCI slots to provide any interface you'd like (ethernet, SCSI, ST506, USB,> whatever) for a whole lot less time and effort. A double sided 48tpi floppy> drive will read practically any format given the right controller. The same> can be done for whatever sort of drive you'd like to test.> Hi Most of us have older PC's that will read most standard formats. That isn't the issue. The Catweasel is the closest thing out there but it is, as Dave D. says, not open documented. As for the BlackFin processor that Dave mentions, the interface to read data might be as simple as a 7474 chip. Writing would require even less. You'd need the needed line drivers to control the normal signals like step, dir, wgate and such. Other than that, there would not be any disk controller chip. It would all be handled by the BlackFin chip. The idea is to create something that would work with current day hardware and parts. Not something that continues to depend on obsolete technology. Since the actual translation of the disk data is done in software, the hardware portion would be trivial. The software can be written in a relatively portable language like C so that it can more easily migrate to current processors as things like the BlackFin become obsolete. Unless I were to get something like the CatWeasel, I can't read the double density hard sectored disk I currently have that I'd like to archieve. I don't know of anything else that will plug into a PC that will do the job. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook ? together at last. ?Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 From tomhudson at execpc.com Sun Oct 21 23:42:56 2007 From: tomhudson at execpc.com (Tom Hudson) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:42:56 -0600 Subject: Old word processor Message-ID: <471C2A50.2050800@execpc.com> A friend and I were talking yesterday and it turns out he has an old Smith Corona PWP 100C word processor that he wants to get rid of. I think he'll unload it to anyone who'll pay to have it packed up and shipped. Not sure how functional it is, but it struck me as something someone on the list might want. Let me know if you're interested and I'll forward your note. -Tom -- Thomas Hudson http://portdistrict5.org -- 5th District Aldermanic Website http://portev.org -- Electric Vehicles, Solar Power & More http://portgardenclub.org -- Port Washington Garden Club http://portlightstation.org -- Light Station Restoration http://klanky.com -- Animation Projects From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Sun Oct 21 23:25:44 2007 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:25:44 +0200 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester In-Reply-To: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Message-ID: <471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> Andrew Lynch wrote: > Hi, > Does anyone have any experience with using a TOP2049 as a TTL 74xxx chip > tester? > > How did it work for you? Do you recommend it as a worthwhile piece of test > equipment? > I do not know the TOP2049, but use an ALLPRO-07 for that purpose. It can also test (some) SRAM & DRAM. You can also define your own testpattern. It even programs Eproms ! About the only drawback is the need for an ISA slot for the controller card. Jos From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 21 23:30:31 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:30:31 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop>, Message-ID: <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> On 21 Oct 2007 at 20:47, dwight elvey wrote: > Most of us have older PC's that will read most standard formats. > That isn't the issue. The Catweasel is the closest thing out there > but it is, as Dave D. says, not open documented. It isn't? At least from a software point of view it is--and the operation is straightforward enough that I could probably toss one together without too much trouble. As a matter of fact, if you have a reasonably quick PC, I suspect that you could probably toss something together that could hook to a printer port that would scarcely be more than a timer and a couple of flip-flops (and maybe some drivers) that could do the job for most 5.25" FM and MFM low-density disks. The Catweasel, at least on the reading end, isn't rocket science. Heck, it doesn't even use DMA and stepping is all done by banging the STEP/ line at software-determined intervals. Compared to the Catweasel a Deluxe Option Board is rocket science. At least on the CW MK I and MK III, most of the board is taken up by Amiga-realted nonsense like joystick ports and SID sockets. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 22 00:00:55 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:00:55 -0700 Subject: Old word processor In-Reply-To: <471C2A50.2050800@execpc.com> References: <471C2A50.2050800@execpc.com> Message-ID: <471BCC17.20940.2C58F03@cclist.sydex.com> On 21 Oct 2007 at 22:42, Tom Hudson wrote: > A friend and I were talking yesterday and it turns out he has an old > Smith Corona PWP 100C word processor that he wants to get rid of. I > think he'll unload it to anyone who'll pay to have it packed up and > shipped. Not sure how functional it is, but it struck me as something > someone on the list might want. Let me know if you're interested and > I'll forward your note. Not worth keeping unless you're into low-end word processing. It doesn't work with any conventional operating system and may (I don't remember) not even use ASCII for document representation. But if it has the optional monitor, it might be worth it for something to hook to a PC MDA output. I think it's plug-compatible; I know the Brother WP mono monitors are. Cheers, Chuck From richardlynch3 at tx.rr.com Sun Oct 21 21:27:40 2007 From: richardlynch3 at tx.rr.com (Richard Lynch) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:27:40 -0500 Subject: Good finds this weekend Message-ID: I went to that Nortex Electronics sale in Ft. Worth Texas this weekend, and while the vast majority of items in 3 large buildings was test and a/v equipment and parts, along with a lot of junk, I was able to ferret out a few interesting computer-related items stashed in corners. There was probably more there, but a lot was packed, stacked and inaccessible (including a couple of VAX cabinets that looked semi-parted out at a distance), and I ran out of time. Almost everything is in nice, average used condition, very presentable considering the age of some of the documents: Manuals - Teletype manuals in original blue/gray binders with cover sheets -- Parts/Model 28 Compact KSR And RO/Bulletin 1197B/July 1964 (original) -- Parts/Model 28 Page Printer Set (KSR &RO)/Bulletin 1149B/June 1965 (change 13) -- Description and Principles of Operation/Model 28 KSR and RO/Bulletin 216B/Feb 1964, change 4 - May 1971 -- Maintenance Tools/Bulletin 1124B/Feb 1962 (change 3) -- Technical Manual/High Speed Tape Punch Set (BRPE)/Bulletin 215B/March 1963 (change 4) -- Parts/Model 37 Page Printer Set (KSR-RO)/Bulletin 1209B/June 1970 (change 3) -- Technical Manual/Motor Units (MU, LMU, YMU)/Bulletin 295B/(2 versions) Jan 1967 (change 1), Feb 1973 (change 4) -- Parts/Paper Winders (LPW, PW)/Bulletin 1129B/(4 versions) Nov 1959, Mar 1966, May 1970, Dec 1970 -- Parts/33 Page Printer Set (ASR, KSR and RO)/Bulletin 1184B/Dec 1970, change 13 - Feb 1971 -- Technical Manual/33 Teletypewriter Sets (RO, KSR, ASR)/Bulletin 310B Vol 1/June 1969 (original) -- Technical Manual/33 Teletypewriter Sets (RO, KSR, ASR)/Bulletin 310B Vol 2/March 1971 (change 2) -- Technical Manual/32 and 33 Teletypewriter Sets (KSR, RO, ASR)/Bulletin 273B/Nov 1964 (change 4) - Large blue Honeywell binder with Teletype information, including several change order sheets and custom modification descriptions, along with both of the Model 33 technical manual volumes dated 1974, and the parts manual dated 1973. - Large black generic binder with several Model 32/33 manuals without cover sheets dated 1964 ? 1967 - FAA Manual 6170.6/Maintenance of Teletypewriter Terminal Equipment/June 16, 1973 - Digital VT125 User Guide/1st Edition Sept 1981 - Remex Technical Manual, Perforator System and Tape Reader/Perforator System, Models RPS612XBA, RPF612XBA/1975 - Tandon Operating and Service Manual, TM100 Disk Drives/1981 - DEC PDT-11/150 User Guide/1st edition, Feb 1979 (copy) - TI Silent 700 Model 742 Operating Instructions with Supplement/1 June 1975 - Visual 200 Video Display Terminal Reference Manual/March 1980 - TI Model 980A Computer Maintence Manual/Electrical Drawings Vol VII/15 Feb 1973 (in light blue TI plastic binder) - Pro-Log Brochure/Series 90 PROM Programmer featuring the M980 Control Unit/May 1981 - Pro-Log Series 90 PROM Programmer Operating Manual/Oct 1975 - Heathkit Manual/Microprocessor Trainer Model ET-3400/1977 (with 2 change pages) - Friden Service Operation & Adjustment Manual (Motorized Reader and Punch, Regeneration, Comparator, Regen Comparator)/Dec 13, 1962 (with schematic of Add Punch Model APT dated Nov 14, 1957) - intel MCS-85 Handbook (Preliminary)/Feb 1977 - intel 8080 Microcomputer System Manual/Jan 1975 - intel 8080 Microcomputer Systems User?s Manual/Sept 1975 - Light blue paper folder with intel logos, containing a few letters and forms (Software Problem Report and Library Submittal Form) for the Intellec 8/MOD 8 and /MOD 80, a brochure for the imm8-90 High Speed Paper Tape Reader, and two paper tapes: one labeled ?Intellec 8/MOD 8 Monitor Ver 3.0?, and another with the same wording except with additional ?Monitor Installation Tape?. One of the letters in the folder describes the intended use of the paper tapes. - Generic black binder with more intel documentation: -- Programming Manual for the 8080 Microcomputer System, Volumes 1 and 2, Preliminary Edition, May 1974 -- Intellec 8/Mod 80 Microcomputer Development System Reference Manual/no date on front, copyright 1974 on back -- 8080 Assembly Language Programming Manual/copyright 1974 on front - Lockheed-California CADAM Training Manual, in original binder, March 1980 - SD Sales Z8800 CPU Card manual/no date - Pacific Data Systems Brochure/An Introduction to the PDS 1020 Digital Computer/with survey insert addressed to the Data Systems Branch Chief of NASA/no date - Pacific Data Systems/An Engineer?s Guide to the PDS 1020/April 1964/(copies of change pages replacing originals in spots) - Pacific Data Systems/Machine Reference Handbook/April 1964 - Generic binder containing several copied Application Notes for the PDS 1020 from 1964 and 1965 - Generic binder containing a copy of summaries of software available for the PDS 1020/Feb 1965 - Generic binder containing what looks like a printout of specific PDS 1020 software program descriptions, including flowcharts and assembly language listings/no date - SYMTEC PGSIII (graphics generator for Apple II) documentation, probably incomplete, with copies of some floppies, no hardware - Saturn Systems 64K/128K RAM board Operations Manual (for Apple II)/1982 - Apple ][e Owner?s Manual/1985 - Apple Monochrome Monitor IIe Owner?s Guide Hardware - DRC 16K EPROM S100 board, unused, no EPROMs installed, with copy of manual - MITS 8K PROM S100 board, Rev 0-X2(J.D.), 1976, no EPROMs installed, with copy of schematic - small wire-wrapped, socketed board with about 20 TI TTL chips with date codes mostly in 1970, connector has 31 fingers on a side, small handwritten label says ?CNTRL (A5)? - One Apple ][ computer, no boards - Three Apple ][ Plus computers, no boards - One Apple ][e computer with 3 boards, including 1 double board of unknown use showing the name ?Collins? with 3 external cables: 25-pin(f), 37-pin(f) and 37-pin(m) - any ideas what this is? - Radio Shack TRS-80 Printer Controller (PTC-64), still in the box Books (mostly with markings showing originally from the LTV Computer Dept Technical Library) - Computer Organization and the System/370, Katzan, 1971 - System/370 Job Control Language, Brown, 1977 - Computer Graphics, Gruenberger, 1967 - The Transition to On-Line Computing, Gruenberger, 1967 - Digital Tape Drives, Taunt, 1965 - Information Processing for Management, BEMA, 1969 - The Computer and the Executive, Kanter, 1967 - IBM Electronic Circuit Analysis Program Techniques and Applications, Jensen and Lieberman, 1968 - PL/I Programming Primer, Weinberg, 1966 - VAX Architecture Reference Manual, DEC Books, 1987 - Honeywell Instrumentation Handbook, 2nd Edition, 1970, contains a couple of pages on the DDP-516 and H316, with a picture of the ?Kitchen Computer? although it?s not called that in this book Magazines - Popular Electronics -- 1975: Aug, Nov (Altair 680 on cover), Dec -- 1976: Jan, Feb (TV Dazzler on cover), Mar, Apr, Jun, Jul (SOL on cover) -- 1977: Mar - Radio Electronics April 1970 (Penniac - $150 Game Computer on cover) Software - Lot of 8? floppies, about 5 unused boxes, also several used disks with labels indicating some kind of IBM software (?EDX002?, ?ASMLIB?, others) - Xerox 6060 Family floppies and manuals Richard Lynch From cc at corti-net.de Mon Oct 22 03:48:21 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:48:21 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos In-Reply-To: References: <200710162042.l9GKgdan011258@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: On Sun, 21 Oct 2007, Mark Tapley wrote: > At 15:42 -0500 10/16/07, Brent wrote: >> Also reminds me of the Kosmos (from Germany) "computer"/(switching)-logic >> trainer from the late-60s/early-70s I received as a kid. I think Radio >> Shack >> marketed it over here for a while, later in the 70s. > > ...and you have just reminded me of the name (see subject). I had one > too. ... ah. http://oldcomputermuseum.com/logix_kosmos.html In Germany this trainer was called Kosmos Spielcomputer Logikus and it was released in 1968. It had a GDR counterpart named PIKOdat. Calling this a "computer" is very, ehm, exaggerative. Nit-pick: The publisher is "Frankh'sche Verlagshandlung Stuttgart" or "Kosmos Verlag Stuttgart", not "Frankh'Sche Verlag Stuttgart" Christian From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 22 03:59:56 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:59:56 +0100 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> Message-ID: <200710220959.56996.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Sunday 21 October 2007 11:26:04 Ethan Dicks wrote: > > I'll be curious to hear about any future progress. I, too, have a > Mirage, and a box of sample disks, but I don't know if I have any > utility disks. If you grab the SQ80 utilities from www.buchty.net then you can adapt them to read the Mirage's single-sided disks (it's just a case of commenting out the bit that toggles the "side select" and making it not loop over side 0/side 1/) and get usable images. I haven't tried writing them back to formatted disks yet. There is an application that runs under DOS that will format SQ80 disks, which work just fine in the Mirage - it will cheerfully ignore side 1, even though many of them have DSDD drives - but it's a PITA to find a machine to install DOS on just for one thing. It must be possible, therefore, to format the disks on a PC controller. I know the Mirage uses a WD1772 controller. I suspect that the formatter needs to write some "magic bits" to the directory block before the Mirage will actually talk to the disk. Using the Geibler utility I can format a disk but I need to write an image to it before I can save anything. Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 22 04:03:33 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:03:33 +0100 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: <471B959E.1070301@srv.net> References: <471B959E.1070301@srv.net> Message-ID: <200710221003.33975.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Sunday 21 October 2007 19:08:30 Kevin Handy wrote: > This works because the ground below a certain depth is usually > much cooler than the surface, which is why your grandparents > dug a root cellar to store vegetables and preserves. That depends on where you are. Once you go 1m down into the soil, it stays at a pretty steady 14?C in these latitudes (57?N), which is usually warmer than the surface temperature, except in the middle of summer. Gordon From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Oct 22 06:24:48 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:24:48 +0100 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester In-Reply-To: <471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> Message-ID: <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> On 22/10/2007 05:25, Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote: > I do not know the TOP2049, but use an ALLPRO-07 for that purpose. It can > also test (some) SRAM & DRAM. You can also define your own testpattern. > It even programs Eproms ! > About the only drawback is the need for an ISA slot for the controller > card. Do you know if that's similar to an ALL-02? I have a couple of these, though only one ISA card, and I have the disk with the software, but I can't get it to run on under DOS on a modern PC -- it looks like the PC is too fast. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 22 07:28:29 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 06:28:29 -0600 Subject: Good finds this weekend In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:27:40 -0500. Message-ID: In article , Richard Lynch writes: > Books (mostly with markings showing originally from the LTV Computer Dept > Technical Library) > - Computer Graphics, Gruenberger, 1967 I haven't heard of this book before; can you give more of a description of what's in it? Any photos (B&W or color)? Sometimes books like this have appendices that give lists of manufacturers/products. Anything like that in there? This often becomes a useful historical snapshot of the marketplace at the time the book was produced. Such things are very useful for historical reconstruction of product offerings! -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 22 09:31:16 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:31:16 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop>, <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > From: cclist at sydex.com ---snip--- > > As a matter of fact, if you have a reasonably quick PC, I suspect > that you could probably toss something together that could hook to a > printer port that would scarcely be more than a timer and a couple of Hi Chuck I agree that it doesn't take much. The problem is that my printer port is a USB! I do think that a faster sample rate can help to capture data from flakey disk. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook ? together at last. ?Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 From rtellason at verizon.net Mon Oct 22 11:33:53 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:33:53 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk> <20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200710221233.53819.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 21 October 2007 20:21, Fred Cisin wrote: > > > Obviously, the device needs to be a single external device in an > > > esthetically pleasing case. It must be available in multiple colors. > > On Sun, 21 Oct 2007, Jules Richardson wrote: > > You missed out power supply specification (including use on three-phase). > > And a whole bunch of floppy sizes. Geez, haven't you been paying > > attention? :-) > > Yes, the batteries need to be rechargeable with BUILT-IN charger that will > function with any voltage (positive or negative), any frequency, and any > number of phases, as well as solar cells sufficient to operate from a > single red LED (on drive front panel). > > Aside from 2", 2.5", 2.9" varieties, which additional floppy sizes would > you like to add? You might want to throw in mag cards while you're at it... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Mon Oct 22 12:11:30 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:11:30 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop>, <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> Chuck Guzis wrote: > As a matter of fact, if you have a reasonably quick PC, I suspect > that you could probably toss something together that could hook to a > printer port that would scarcely be more than a timer and a couple of > flip-flops (and maybe some drivers) that could do the job for most > 5.25" FM and MFM low-density disks. Hmm, I thought all modern machines emulate a parallel port connected via an ISA bus - i.e. it's still slow compared to the rest of the machine, and a modern xGHz system won't drive the port any quicker than a syatem of ten years ago... > At least on the CW MK I and MK III, most of the board is taken up by > Amiga-realted nonsense like joystick ports and SID sockets. That's another thing putting me off a CW... I just want a floppy-access device, not half an Amiga thrown into the mix. cheers Jules From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 22 12:21:06 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:21:06 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <200710221233.53819.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk> <20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net> <200710221233.53819.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20071022101745.T72833@shell.lmi.net> > > Aside from 2", 2.5", 2.9" varieties, which additional floppy sizes would > > you like to add? On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > You might want to throw in mag cards while you're at it... Mag cards of various types. also flash memory, including Toshiba printer cards, Atari Portfolio memory cards, etc. Prob'ly oughta include a versatile ROM reader, . . . From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 22 12:55:58 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:55:58 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop>, <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com>, <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <471C81BE.21934.5792B8@cclist.sydex.com> On 22 Oct 2007 at 18:11, Jules Richardson wrote: > Hmm, I thought all modern machines emulate a parallel port connected via an > ISA bus - i.e. it's still slow compared to the rest of the machine, and a > modern xGHz system won't drive the port any quicker than a syatem of ten years > ago... If it's an IEEE 1284-conforming port, then it can execute at least 2M transfers/second, which should be sufficient for most 5.25" DD and SD floppies. If you want to get more exotic, add some RAM (like the Catweasel) or a FIFO. Still no big deal. > > At least on the CW MK I and MK III, most of the board is taken up by > > Amiga-realted nonsense like joystick ports and SID sockets. > > That's another thing putting me off a CW... I just want a floppy-access > device, not half an Amiga thrown into the mix. Then get a CW MK4 - Jens has left all of the Amiga stuff off of it. The MK3 was interesting in that it was a "flippy" card--you could plug it into a PCI bus or whatever the Amiga used for a bus. As I said, it's not rocket science and even a USB catweasel reader can probably be constructed easily with off-the-shelf components. If a standard is needed, the only things I can really think of are the meaning of the high-order bit (in the CW, it's the presence of the index signal) and the clock frequency used (the CW, depending on model, uses two or three fairly odd ones--probably related to the SID accommodation). Cheers, Chuck From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Mon Oct 22 14:02:41 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:02:41 -0300 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk><20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net><200710221233.53819.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071022101745.T72833@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <002301c814de$90f06cf0$f0fea8c0@alpha> > Mag cards of various types. > also flash memory, including Toshiba printer cards, Atari Portfolio memory > cards, etc. > Prob'ly oughta include a versatile ROM reader, . . . Will it work with recording wire? From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 22 13:12:03 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:12:03 -0700 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471C8583.6155.664C52@cclist.sydex.com> In a pinch, one can declare a 360K 5.25" drive on system as a 720K or 1.44M drive for the purposes of reading floppies. If you try to format a floppy using M$ utilities, you'll slam into the position stop somewhere around 42 cylinders in--repeatedly. Disk change detection will, of course, not work, but that may not be an issue with your application. 5.25" DSHD drives can be used to read HD floppies by declaring them as 1.44MB 3.5" drives. The data rate's the same--the drive just spins faster. DD disks however, will not be read because of the speed difference (5.25" DD disks in an HD drive employ a 300K data rate, rather than the 250K used by 3.5" DD disks). Cheers, Chuck From rtellason at verizon.net Mon Oct 22 13:19:25 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:19:25 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <20071022101745.T72833@shell.lmi.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <200710221233.53819.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071022101745.T72833@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200710221419.26276.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 22 October 2007 13:21, Fred Cisin wrote: > > > Aside from 2", 2.5", 2.9" varieties, which additional floppy sizes > > > would you like to add? > > On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > You might want to throw in mag cards while you're at it... > > Mag cards of various types. > also flash memory, including Toshiba printer cards, Atari Portfolio memory > cards, etc. > Prob'ly oughta include a versatile ROM reader, . . . Might as well throw tape cartridges into the mix, too... And loose HD platters. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Oct 22 13:40:58 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:40:58 -0400 Subject: DEC parts available Message-ID: <200710221440.59128.pat@computer-refuge.org> Last week, I picked up a load of DEC parts from a company that had recently moved off of some of their older PDP-11 equipment in a large-scale "process control" environment. I've got available two H9644 racks with BA11-K chassis in them, four more de-racked BA11-K's (all 10.5" tall, I think they all have a 9-slot unibus backplane in them - no boards other than the random G727 grand card - and I have rails for all of them). I'll probably have more parts available soon, but this is what I want to work on redistributing first. All of this is in downtown Lafayette, IN. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 22 13:57:41 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:57:41 -0600 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <002301c814de$90f06cf0$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk><20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net><200710221233.53819.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071022101745.T72833@shell.lmi.net> <002301c814de$90f06cf0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <471CF2A5.4070804@jetnet.ab.ca> Alexandre Souza wrote: >> Mag cards of various types. >> also flash memory, including Toshiba printer cards, Atari Portfolio >> memory >> cards, etc. >> Prob'ly oughta include a versatile ROM reader, . . . > > Will it work with recording wire? Only the German version :) From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Mon Oct 22 13:59:03 2007 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:59:03 +0200 Subject: Baydel S11 anyone ? In-Reply-To: <1193007368.6471.0.camel@elric> References: <471BB083.4000307@bluewin.ch> <1193007368.6471.0.camel@elric> Message-ID: <471CF2F7.3030205@bluewin.ch> Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 22:03 +0200, Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote: >> Does anybody here have a Baydel S11 ( a PDP-11 clone ) ? > > Possibly, what does it look like? My PDP11/73 was built by Baydel, and > looks like this: > > http://pdp11.kicks-ass.net > > Gordon > > It looks like this : http://www.auram.de/baydels11.htm I am looking for info on the diskdrive visible in the above link. Jos From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Mon Oct 22 14:12:49 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:12:49 -0400 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <471CF631.2010106@compsys.to> >Al Kossow wrote: > > Yep, went through that at the museum because some people were > advocating > > putting media on the archive shelves - but it's not an idea I'm a > fan off; the > > stuff's just too prone to damage and decay. > > Unless you recover the data, what you have is a physical artifact of a > magnetic > storage medium. There is absolutely no way to say what, in fact, is > even on it > until you read it. Bits aren't preserved if they exist on only one > physical medium, > which you may not be able to recover in the future. Jerome Fine replies: AGREED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just went through the backup / recovery cycle with images from 2002 through 2005. My current system has used a C: drive with approximately 2 GB of files for about the past 5 years. GHOST compresses that to an image file of just under 1 GB which allows me to fit 4 images per DVD or 3 DVDs per year with one image saved each month. About once a year, I take a whole day and read all of the old files back to the hard drive and check for a valid file by producing and comparing the current MD5 value with the original MD5 value. Thus far this exercise turned up only one bad file which could not be read back - at the extreme edge of the DVD - which had a clear fingerprint at the edge of the DVD media. I am considering making up a DVD with all of the December 31st images since after 4 years, over 50 different end of month images hardly seem very important any more. In addition, I have all of the RT-11 binary distributions on a CD and a second CD with the DECUS RT-11 CD from Tim Shoppa. Every so often, I also read these media as well. The ISO files from both CDs are on a DVD with other RT-11 archived files. Since the CD is over 20 years old and still supported on current DVD burners, I suspect that the single layer DVD will also be around for at least another 10 years. At that point, an upgrade to the current media type may be needed. Since I have used the following as backup media over the past 30 years, it will not be unexpected: RX02 - 1/2 MB (around 1980) TK25 - 32 MB (around 1985) TK70 - 256 MB (around 1990) 5 1/4" optical Sony SMO S-501 compatible - 290 MB on each side (around 1995) CD - 600 MB (around 1995) DVD - 4 GB (around 2002) 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 jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Mon Oct 22 14:14:07 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:14:07 -0400 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net> References: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <471CF67F.9080802@compsys.to> >Gene Ehrich wrote: > I remember a discussion a long time ago but not much of it. > > Would there be anyway to hook up a 5-1/4" diskette drive to a modern > day computer running any version of Windows? > > Have a number of things that I would love to convert to 3-1/2" or put > on CD. > > The two machines that I have up and running are Windows 98 and Vista > Ultimate. I also have an older Thinkpad 500 running Windows 3.1 Jerome Fine replies: I still have both a 5 1/4" floppy drive on a Pentium III under W98SE as well as the 3 1/2" floppy drive. The only time that I use the 5 1/4" floppy drive is when I run Ersatz-11. Then the 5 1/4" drive is either an RX50 or an RX33. The 3 1/2" floppy drive is used to boot DOS when I run GHOST to perform a backup. When I run Ersatz-11, the 3 1/2" floppy drive becomes an RX23. I do intend to upgrade to WXP with a Pentium 4. From what I read, the above use of both 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy drives may still be possible. Can anyone confirm? 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 gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 22 14:12:21 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:12:21 +0100 Subject: Baydel S11 anyone ? In-Reply-To: <471CF2F7.3030205@bluewin.ch> References: <471BB083.4000307@bluewin.ch> <1193007368.6471.0.camel@elric> <471CF2F7.3030205@bluewin.ch> Message-ID: <1193080341.7683.1.camel@elric> On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 20:59 +0200, Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote: > http://www.auram.de/baydels11.htm > > I am looking for info on the diskdrive visible in the above link. Looks very like my dual RX02, but with the addition of an on/off switch on the front. Mine isn't DEC-branded externally. Does yours have the SBC-11 multifunction card? If so, can I get a dump of the ROMs? Gordon From silent700 at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 14:33:12 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:33:12 -0500 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: <471CF67F.9080802@compsys.to> References: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net> <471CF67F.9080802@compsys.to> Message-ID: <51ea77730710221233x1059f63gc58f1e7021099f4f@mail.gmail.com> On 10/22/07, Jerome H. Fine wrote: > > I do intend to upgrade to WXP with a Pentium 4. From what I > read, the above use of both 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy drives > may still be possible. Can anyone confirm? This suggests that it would be possible: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B309623 From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Mon Oct 22 14:43:14 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:43:14 -0400 Subject: Tax Advice for kit hobby? In-Reply-To: <20071017163048.B28780@shell.lmi.net> References: <4714BAB90200003700014AE6@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com><200710171359.31665.rtellason@verizon.net><4716985F.2000900@netscape.net> <20071017163048.B28780@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <471CFD52.2090600@compsys.to> >Fred Cisin wrote: >On Wed, 17 Oct 2007 scheefj at netscape.net wrote: > > >>Grant, >>When I was a sole proprietor of a similar business, I was told that the >>business had to make money at least once in every three years for the >>losses to be deducible from ordinary income. >> >WHO told you that? >It ain't true, and there have been a few BIG businesses that have had more >than 2 successive years of losses. > >BUT, . . . >there is the issue of whether the IRS will believe that it is a business, >not a hobby. IF you always lose money (less than 1 in 3 profitable, or >less than 2 out of 5, etc. depending on the agent), then they are MUCH >more likely to take a look at whether or not they'll believe that it is a >"real" business. > Jerome Fine replies: Since the original question was with regard to a hobby rather than an actual business, this information may not be helpful. However, tax departments tend to regard a profit making venture as a business. So it is important to document revenue and expenses to prove that the expenses exceed income where that is the situation. The following information is for a company (incorporated) in Ontario, Canada, so it may not apply to IRS practice in the US. In addition, a sole proprietor can't (at least in Canada it is not possible) apply a loss in one year against the next year whereas an incorporated company has that advantage. I have been running a company since 1980 and after about 4 profitable years, I made a profit less than half the time. Around 1998, business picked up again due to Y2K, but after that, there were at least 5 or 6 years with a loss. This year (2007) I finally made a profit again, but if the carry forward losses from previous years exceed the net profit in 2007, there will not be any tax to be paid. 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 cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 22 14:54:11 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:54:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <002301c814de$90f06cf0$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471BB51C.8080001@yahoo.co.uk><20071021171737.N40145@shell.lmi.net><200710221233.53819.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071022101745.T72833@shell.lmi.net> <002301c814de$90f06cf0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <20071022124844.J81233@shell.lmi.net> On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Alexandre Souza wrote: > Will it work with recording wire? Of course! and MICR, also 1/4" mag tape, 1/2", 3/4", 1" linear and helical scan, and most cartridge configurations, so that you can read corvus tapes from Apple, and transfer that bogus copy of "Debbie Does Dallas" from Quasar cartridge. But should punch tape be reel to reel, or Z-fold? and the punch card hopper(s) are getting in the way of the OCR readers. Which type of joystick ports should it have? From zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com Mon Oct 22 14:57:11 2007 From: zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com (Roger Merchberger) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:57:11 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071022154711.043e01b8@mail.30below.com> Rumor has it that William Donzelli may have mentioned these words: >Lots of new IBM things today, but all basically PC related. > >Does anyone here have a 5182 Color Printer? This was one of the >goodies today, from an ex-IBM salesman that was finally clearing out >the closet. He said it was a very unsuccessful product from the XT/AT >era, and may have never been for sale to the public. He said they were >probably internal use only. > >The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a stick. I can't verify that it was an actual "5182" but I did work with an IBM branded 9-pin DM color printer (4 color bands, yellow, blue, red & black) built like a tank (like everything from IBM of that era) on an IBM AT (512K RAM, 20G HD) back when I was 17.... so this was 23 years ago... in the dinky town of Sault Ste. Marie. So if we had one here, chances are IBM made more than one! AFAIK, the company I worked for _never_ used the color aspect of the computer, so 3/4 of the nice expensive ribbon got wasted. A quick google search shows that the 5182 was commercially available, if not 'viable': ;-) http://www.computerreset.com/images/ibm5182.jpg Which brings another ontopic response: Wholly Crap! Computer Reset is still in business? I remember when they sold peripherals for Tandy model 100s & advertised in "Deforestation Monthly." ;-) The web page lists 'em for sale for $99... but at the bottom of the page, I see this: Sale list Date 3/13/2004 Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy... zmerch at 30below.com | ...in oxymoron!" From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 22 15:35:38 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:35:38 -0700 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710221233x1059f63gc58f1e7021099f4f@mail.gmail.com> References: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net>, <471CF67F.9080802@compsys.to>, <51ea77730710221233x1059f63gc58f1e7021099f4f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <471CA72A.4835.E9BE1C@cclist.sydex.com> On 22 Oct 2007 at 14:33, Jason T wrote: > This suggests that it would be possible: > > http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B309623 Yes, but--this doesn not include 360K 5.25" 48 tpi drives. AFAIK, there is no support for these in XP. Worse, there may be no way to tell your BIOS setup that you're using one--on many systems that I've seen, the menu option is gone. Worse yet, is the trend that's been several years a-going that only *one* floppy is supported on a system, regardless of cabling used (i.e., the electrical signals for the second drive are absent on the drive connector. Cheers, Chuck From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 15:36:23 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:36:23 +1300 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester In-Reply-To: <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: On 10/23/07, Pete Turnbull wrote: > Do you know if that's similar to an ALL-02? I have a couple of these, > though only one ISA card, and I have the disk with the software, but I > can't get it to run on under DOS on a modern PC -- it looks like the PC > is too fast. I have that problem with my B&C Microsystems UP600A - I have to keep a 286 maintained to be able to use it (a Compaq 286/SLT laptop with docking station, in which is the B&C ISA card and an Ethernet card). -ethan From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Mon Oct 22 17:05:41 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:05:41 -0300 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop><471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> Well, seems that now is my time... I have the oportunity of - at least - putting my dirty hands into a SGI indigo! :oD My questions: - How fast is it? - What can I run on that? - Does it use any kind of special memory? - Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? Thanks Alexandre (yes, in Brazil these are R A R E !) From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Mon Oct 22 17:04:03 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:04:03 -0300 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop><471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <00bb01c814f7$c7785990$f0fea8c0@alpha> >> Do you know if that's similar to an ALL-02? I have a couple of these, >> though only one ISA card, and I have the disk with the software, but I >> can't get it to run on under DOS on a modern PC -- it looks like the PC >> is too fast. Strange. If I'm not mistaken, ALL-02 is almost the same of the ALL-03, incluiding the same board (SAC201?). I use my ALL-03 into a P3 PC with no problems > I have that problem with my B&C Microsystems UP600A - I have to keep a > 286 maintained to be able to use it (a Compaq 286/SLT laptop with > docking station, in which is the B&C ISA card and an Ethernet card). With the price of the TOP 200x programmers, I don't think this option is still feasible... From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 16:10:55 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:10:55 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20071022154711.043e01b8@mail.30below.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071022154711.043e01b8@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: > So if we had one here, chances are IBM made > more than one! Yes, I saw a few bits and pieces on the web, mostly from resellers and such. So, no, I never thought this was the only one*. Clearly, however, these machines were not a success. > A quick google search shows that the 5182 was commercially available, if > not 'viable': ;-) Perhaps - I am just going on what what this salesman said. For all I know, he worked the U.P.. * Another interesting thing that he explicitly said was unique was his IBM Office-on-the-Go. This neat assembly puts a PS/2 N51x laptop and a 5183 printer in a nice Italian briefcase, with a built in power unit, and pockets for all sorts of extra things, like cables and printer cartridges. He said he was doing the test marketing, but it did not go anywhere. He lost the mouse at some point in his travels. What mouse was normally packed with the N51x? -- Will From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 16:16:14 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:16:14 +1300 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester In-Reply-To: <00bb01c814f7$c7785990$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <00bb01c814f7$c7785990$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: On 10/23/07, Alexandre Souza wrote: > > I have that problem with my B&C Microsystems UP600A - I have to keep a > > 286 maintained to be able to use it (a Compaq 286/SLT laptop with > > docking station, in which is the B&C ISA card and an Ethernet card). > > With the price of the TOP 200x programmers, I don't think this option is > still feasible... Well... it's a laptop, so it takes up about as much space as the programmer. It was given to me, so it didn't cost anything to acquire. If you don't already have one, or your only option is a PC-XT or PC-AT and space is tight, I can see that being a problem, but in my case, it works great. When I'm not using it, I close the lid, then stack the programmer on the closed laptop - not much space at all. -ethan From jbglaw at lug-owl.de Mon Oct 22 16:20:33 2007 From: jbglaw at lug-owl.de (Jan-Benedict Glaw) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:20:33 +0200 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <20071022212033.GE16774@lug-owl.de> On Mon, 2007-10-22 19:05:41 -0300, Alexandre Souza wrote: > > Well, seems that now is my time... > > I have the oportunity of - at least - putting my dirty hands into a SGI > indigo! :oD > > My questions: > - How fast is it? Slow. It's a 32bit R3000-based machine IIRC. > - What can I run on that? Irix 5.4 is IIRC the last version running on the Indigo. (There is, by the way, a clone built by Siemens Nixdorf namend RW320.) If memory serves me correctly, there was also a Plan9 port at some time, but I won't bet on it to still work. Linux won't run on that box, but there are references for NetBSD on this hardware. > - Does it use any kind of special memory? It does. > - Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? You cannot. You need to use a SGI keyboard and mouse. You can, of course, access the box via serial console connected to a PC. But keep in mind that it uses a mini-DIN 7pin connector (somewhat uncommen.) Also the serial line driver isn't all that well-protected for electrostatic discharges. I killed one and it was hard to find a new driver chip... > - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? They aren't. It's sync-on-green, so you either need a good monitor and you definitively need an adaptor. MfG, JBG -- Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de +49-172-7608481 Signature of: Zensur im Internet? Nein danke! the second : From trixter at oldskool.org Mon Oct 22 16:20:26 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:20:26 -0500 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: <471CF67F.9080802@compsys.to> References: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net> <471CF67F.9080802@compsys.to> Message-ID: <471D141A.3020207@oldskool.org> Jerome H. Fine wrote: > I do intend to upgrade to WXP with a Pentium 4. From what I > read, the above use of both 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy drives > may still be possible. Can anyone confirm? I do it all the time. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 22 16:22:12 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:22:12 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:05:41 -0300. <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: In article <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0 at alpha>, "Alexandre Souza" writes: > My questions: > - How fast is it? That would depend on the processor installed. Check the manuals here: > - What can I run on that? You should be able to run any MIPS based/IRIX software for SGIs. I don't know what IRIX release you'll need; perhaps someone else can provide that info. > - Does it use any kind of special memory? Its my understanding that it uses SIMMS. See: > - Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? > - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? I *think* the answer to these is yes, but check the usual web sites (futuretech, Ian Mapelson's SGI site, etc.) for info. I got 2 Indigos sans hard drives recently but haven't had a chance to explore more in depth than unpacking them. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 22 16:24:37 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:24:37 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:20:33 +0200. <20071022212033.GE16774@lug-owl.de> Message-ID: In article <20071022212033.GE16774 at lug-owl.de>, Jan-Benedict Glaw writes: > > - Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? > > You cannot. You need to use a SGI keyboard and mouse. OK, good to know! There is a guy who sells adapters on ebay for $40. (it connects to a standard PC kbd/mouse and adapts the signals for the SGI). I haven't used one of these. > > - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? > > They aren't. It's sync-on-green, so you either need a good monitor and > you definitively need an adaptor. Also good to know! (And the version of IRIX I'll need to hunt down.) Thanks for the info! -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk Mon Oct 22 16:39:55 2007 From: classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk (Ensor) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 22:39:55 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop>, <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com>, <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> <471C81BE.21934.5792B8@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <003001c814f4$167e97b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Hi, >....The MK3 was interesting in that it was a "flippy" card--you >could plug it into a PCI bus or whatever the Amiga used for a >bus. "Zorro" rings a bell there.... TTFN - Pete. From Tim at Rikers.org Mon Oct 22 17:06:27 2007 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:06:27 -0600 Subject: HP1000 'F' back on eBay (UK) In-Reply-To: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> Message-ID: <471D1EE3.3060706@Rikers.org> argh! You're killing me. I'd love this system, but alas, I'm on the other side of the pond. Hope someone picks it up and posts the disk and tape contents online. -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! From javickers at solutionengineers.com Mon Oct 22 17:13:59 2007 From: javickers at solutionengineers.com (Ade Vickers) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:13:59 +0100 Subject: HP1000 'F' back on eBay (UK) In-Reply-To: <471D1EE3.3060706@Rikers.org> References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> <471D1EE3.3060706@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <018d01c814f8$d9797600$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> For the avoidance of doubt - it's not me selling it! I originally sold it to this guy (mainly to stop it going rusty in my shed/warehouse thing), and he's selling it on... > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tim Riker > Sent: 22 October 2007 23:06 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: HP1000 'F' back on eBay (UK) > > argh! You're killing me. I'd love this system, but alas, I'm > on the other side of the pond. Hope someone picks it up and > posts the disk and tape contents online. > -- > Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded > Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - > http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.15.5/1084 - Release > Date: 21/10/2007 15:09 > > No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.488 / Virus Database: 269.15.5/1084 - Release Date: 21/10/2007 15:09 From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 17:20:22 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:20:22 +1300 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: On 10/23/07, Jules Richardson wrote: > Hmm, I thought all modern machines emulate a parallel port connected via an > ISA bus Perhaps you've been skipping the recent thread where we've been beating this topic to death? Macs have never had parallel printer ports, not even the new Intel Mac Pros. PC-type laptops made in the past two years aren't coming with parallel ports, and rack-mount x86 hardware made in the past, what, 5? years haven't come with them. So far, most PC desktops still come with a DB25 parallel port, but I think even that's no longer universal. -ethan From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 17:22:02 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:22:02 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071022154711.043e01b8@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <471D228A.8050508@gmail.com> William Donzelli wrote: >> So if we had one here, chances are IBM made >> more than one! > > Yes, I saw a few bits and pieces on the web, mostly from resellers and > such. So, no, I never thought this was the only one*. Clearly, > however, these machines were not a success. > >> A quick google search shows that the 5182 was commercially available, if >> not 'viable': ;-) > > Perhaps - I am just going on what what this salesman said. For all I > know, he worked the U.P.. > > * Another interesting thing that he explicitly said was unique was his > IBM Office-on-the-Go. This neat assembly puts a PS/2 N51x laptop and a > 5183 printer in a nice Italian briefcase, with a built in power unit, > and pockets for all sorts of extra things, like cables and printer > cartridges. He said he was doing the test marketing, but it did not go > anywhere. > > He lost the mouse at some point in his travels. What mouse was > normally packed with the N51x? It was the 07G0033 PS/2 Miniature Mouse. I bet most PS/2 mice would work. Peace... Sridhar From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Oct 22 17:15:01 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:15:01 +0100 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471D20E5.5060802@dunnington.plus.com> On 22/10/2007 22:22, Richard wrote: > You should be able to run any MIPS based/IRIX software for SGIs. Sadly, not. Most of the later software was compiled for MIPS2 or MIPS3/4 and that definitely won't run on an Indigo. MIPS2 would run on an R4K machine, but only MIPS1 on an R3K. >> - Does it use any kind of special memory? > > Its my understanding that it uses SIMMS. They're proprietary SIMMs with a completely different form-factor to anything you'll find elsewhere. They also have a control ASIC on the SIMM. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Oct 22 17:10:56 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:10:56 +0100 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <20071022212033.GE16774@lug-owl.de> References: <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> <20071022212033.GE16774@lug-owl.de> Message-ID: <471D1FF0.50700@dunnington.plus.com> On 22/10/2007 22:20, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote: > On Mon, 2007-10-22 19:05:41 -0300, Alexandre Souza wrote: >> Well, seems that now is my time... >> >> I have the oportunity of - at least - putting my dirty hands into a SGI >> indigo! :oD >> >> My questions: >> - How fast is it? > > Slow. It's a 32bit R3000-based machine IIRC. Unless of course you have an R4000 Indigo, which is 3-4 times faster than the 33MHz R3000 ones. Still slower than a 200MHz Pentium, though. However, it's subjectively not as slow as you might expect if you run a sensible version of Irix, rather than the bloat that may be found in some other OSs for other architectures. >> - What can I run on that? > > Irix 5.4 is IIRC the last version running on the Indigo. (There is, by > the way, a clone built by Siemens Nixdorf namend RW320.) If memory > serves me correctly, there was also a Plan9 port at some time, but I > won't bet on it to still work. I think Jan means 5.3 (there is no 5.4). However the R4K version can run 6.2 and IIRC versions of 6.5 up to 6.5.22, same as an R4K series Indy. As for applications, a lot of the later Irix freeware (and all the stuff you'll find on Nekochan) was compiled for later architectures and won't run on the Indigos. However, there's still stuff to be found on the net, and I'm sure other list members have copies of things, like me. > Linux won't run on that box, but there are references for NetBSD on > this hardware. > >> - Does it use any kind of special memory? > > It does. > >> - Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? > > You cannot. You need to use a SGI keyboard and mouse. You can, of > course, access the box via serial console connected to a PC. But keep > in mind that it uses a mini-DIN 7pin connector (somewhat uncommen.) > Also the serial line driver isn't all that well-protected for > electrostatic discharges. I killed one and it was hard to find a new > driver chip... 9-pin miniDIN, actually. >> - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? > > They aren't. It's sync-on-green, so you either need a good monitor and > you definitively need an adaptor. The frequencies are OK, and many modern monitors are fine. There are several graphics variants for the Indigo, and most of them will drive an SVGA-type monitor with no problem. We used to use Iiyamas a lot. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Oct 22 17:19:10 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:19:10 +0100 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester In-Reply-To: <00bb01c814f7$c7785990$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop><471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <00bb01c814f7$c7785990$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <471D21DE.2010809@dunnington.plus.com> On 22/10/2007 23:04, Alexandre Souza wrote: >>> Do you know if that's similar to an ALL-02? I have a couple of these, >>> though only one ISA card, and I have the disk with the software, but I >>> can't get it to run on under DOS on a modern PC -- it looks like the PC >>> is too fast. > > Strange. If I'm not mistaken, ALL-02 is almost the same of the > ALL-03, incluiding the same board (SAC201?). I use my ALL-03 into a P3 > PC with no problems Hmm... I'll have to go and check the card to see what it is, but the machine it's in is a P3 or maybe even a P2. I wonder if it would be worth trying a copy of your software? I'll trade you some SGI/Irix info for a teledisk image or a zipfile :-) However, a realistic solution might be to replace the workshop pentium that's hardly used one a year with the 486DX4 that's currently preventing the door from moving in the breeze. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 17:26:29 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:26:29 +1300 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <003001c814f4$167e97b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> <471C81BE.21934.5792B8@cclist.sydex.com> <003001c814f4$167e97b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: On 10/23/07, Ensor wrote: > Hi, > > >....The MK3 was interesting in that it was a "flippy" card--you > >could plug it into a PCI bus or whatever the Amiga used for a > >bus. > > "Zorro" rings a bell there.... Yes... Zorro was the name for the 100-pin Amiga system bus. "Zorro I" refers to mostly-square cards for a very few expansion products for the A-1000. I saw one, once, in 1986. Mostly what you are likely to see are "Zorro II" cards - PC-form-factor, with lots more pins, and on the opposite end of the card - allowing products like the GG2 Bus+ to exist (which has along one edge, ISA *and* Zorro II fingers). -ethan From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 17:27:24 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:27:24 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071022154711.043e01b8@mail.30below.com> Message-ID: <471D23CC.4090507@gmail.com> William Donzelli wrote: > * Another interesting thing that he explicitly said was unique was his > IBM Office-on-the-Go. This neat assembly puts a PS/2 N51x laptop and a > 5183 printer in a nice Italian briefcase, with a built in power unit, > and pockets for all sorts of extra things, like cables and printer > cartridges. He said he was doing the test marketing, but it did not go > anywhere. BTW, if the hard drive fails, you might be in trouble. If memory serves, the N51SX uses a 2.5" ESDI (!) drive. Peace... Sridhar From robinson at shlrc.mq.edu.au Mon Oct 22 17:33:20 2007 From: robinson at shlrc.mq.edu.au (Ray Robinson) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:33:20 +1000 (EST) Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! Message-ID: <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au> Hi gang, > > > Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? > > > > You cannot. You need to use a SGI keyboard and mouse. > I have plugged a PC kybd/mouse into a SGI Crimson and an Octane and they seemed to work OK. > > > Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? > > > > They aren't. It's sync-on-green, so you either need a good monitor and > > you definitively need an adaptor. > Needed a special cable so I used a Sun cable on the SGI monitor. Worked OK. Have not tried any other monitors. Regards Ray vk2ilv From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 22 17:47:35 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:47:35 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:33:20 +1000. <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au> Message-ID: In article <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285 at srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au>, Ray Robinson writes: > > > > Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? > > > > > > You cannot. You need to use a SGI keyboard and mouse. > > > I have plugged a PC kybd/mouse into a SGI Crimson and an Octane > and they seemed to work OK. The Crimson and Octane are much later in the product line than the Indigo. The Indigo is after the Personal Iris but before the Indigo^2 or Indy. There's a point where SGI switched to using PS/2 compatible keyboard/mouse connectors, but prior to that they used a special interface that would either fry the interface circuitry or the kbd/mouse if you tried to use a PS/2 compatible kbd/mouse on them. The frustrating part is that the connector is identical but the voltages and pinouts are wrong. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 22 17:26:06 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:26:06 +0100 (BST) Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 21, 7 10:19:20 pm Message-ID: > > Lots of new IBM things today, but all basically PC related. > > Does anyone here have a 5182 Color Printer? This was one of the > goodies today, from an ex-IBM salesman that was finally clearing out > the closet. He said it was a very unsuccessful product from the XT/AT > era, and may have never been for sale to the public. He said they were > probably internal use only. I have never seen one, but there's a section in the Options and Adapters TechRef for the 'IBM Personal Comp[uter Color Printer'. Unfortunately the TechRaf doesn't give model numbers, so I can't eb sure it's the same unit, but I suspect it is. For reference, the TechRef shows the microcontroller as a 6803 at loaction U6 on the control board. If it is the same device, the mention of it in said TechRef would seem to imply it as a released product. > > The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a stick. Thet idea was not uncommn at the time. DEC made one called the 'LA324' which could take a colour ribbon and mechanically shifted it up and down to change colour. I also rememebr using an Epson printer in the mid 1980s that could take a 'colour kit' which was a motor + mechanical bits to tilt the ribbon. How well it worked I don't know. I've never been able to find a colour ribbon for my LA324. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 22 17:08:33 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:08:33 +0100 (BST) Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos (was: Re: Ferranti Logical Computor (1951) ) In-Reply-To: <102220070043.28720.471BF2200003B78B0000703022230703729B0A02D2089B9A019C04040A0DBF9B9D0E9A9B9C040D@att.net> from "Brian L. Stuart" at Oct 22, 7 00:43:12 am Message-ID: > > My only real complaint with it as a teaching tool was that even though > > I did all the projects, there was no abstraction of the underlying > > concepts presented. > > I agree. They also didn't do a good job of clarifying that the > device only implemented combinatorial logic. As I recall, I got THis is, alas, a major failing of a lot of the educational kits. THose n-in-1 electronics kits were poor at this too. Not only did they rarely give a proper explanation of the circuit operation, but in some cases the circuits were designed round the components in the kit and were quite hard to understand. Possibly the best educational kits were those produced by Philips. There were the IR (Interphone Enginner) and RE (Radio Engineer) kits that assembled to make a 2-station wired intercom and an AM radio respectively (using screw terminals, no soldering), nothing more. But there were at least 3 other seires that I've come across : EE (Electronic Enginner). These were good in that you handled real components, they were not pre-mounted on the kit's baseboard. So you learnt the resistor colour code early on :-). The compoennts were connected together by spring terminals that you fitted to an insulating baseboard, orgiinally hardboard, later plastic. The early kits used germanium transistors with long leads that were connected up in the same way, later kits had transistors (and later still varicap diodes, FETs, LEDs, etc) on little PCBs that fitted onto the terminals. You got some quite interesting components in the kits. THings like audio driver and output transformers, and a matched pair of transistors to make quite reasonable amplfiiers. IF transformers, oscillator coil and a 2-gang variable capacitor to make superhet radios. (I think one of the later kits had a circuit for a varicap-tuned FM radio). One of the smaller kits made a auio-frequency signal generator using a pair of RF oscillators and a diode to mix them non-linearly, a larger kit made a wein brisge oscillator with a lamp to stabilise the gain. I am told (but never had) that one of the kits had a pre-mounted CRT (with a ready-built HV supply) to act as a simple 'scope, another kit added a TV tuner module so you could make a simple black-and-white TV (!) Anyway... ME (mechanical engineer) kits were plastic plates and disks + metal rods. You could put pins into the disks to make gear wheels, there was a small electric motor in the kit too. What made them more interesting (for the time, late 1960's) was that you could control the mechanical models (motor/lamps) using the components in the EE kits. So you could make a car that would turn on its headlights when it got dark or something. And finally, to get this on-topic (sort of) CL kits. These were computer educational kits. The basic module was a plastic box with 3 input sockets, one output socket (with a lamp to monitor the sate) and 8 'programming' sockets. By wiring up the latter appropriately you could get the module to act as any 3-input gate. If you wanted a flip-flop, you could either corss-couple 2 modules, or feed the ouptut back to an input on the same module programmed as an AND-OR gate. Alas the smallest kit (all I have) only contaiend 2 logic modules and one battery/input switch module, whuch wasn't enough to do much with. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 22 17:13:46 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:13:46 +0100 (BST) Subject: LF: Microvax 3100 power supply technical information. In-Reply-To: <200710220040.l9M0eNck013182@hosting.monisys.ca> from "Dave Dunfield" at Oct 21, 7 08:34:18 pm Message-ID: > > I've never worked on this supply (and don't have schematics), but it > > can't be that odd, can it??? > > It's complex enough that I'd feel better going at it with a set > of schematics. If nothing turns up I'll draw it out myself, but > if someone has technical data it could save considerable time. Sure. I am not sure if DEC ever published schematics for this supply, though. And I have, alas, come to realise that for most classic devices if a quite question here (or on other similar lists) doesn't turn up the diagrams, it's often quicker and less stressful to trace them out yourself. > > > > > > The second supply generates +5 and +12v which is applied > > > only to the second disk drive power connector. This supply > > > constantly starts and stops - with or without a load. I > > > can see the output voltages coming on, then going off > > > over and over. > > > > Wouldn't it be best to find out why it's doing this? My _guess_ is that > > either one output is rising too high, tripping the crowbar, and thus > > shutting the supply down, or, less likely, the supply to the control > > circutiry has failed (the reason I mention the latter is that that fualt, > > caused by a dried-up capacitor on the _primary_ side of the supply, once > > led me a merry dance in a Tektronix X-terminal). I'd be inclined to start > > by checking _all_ the electrolytics on that second PSU board with an ESR > > meter. An high ESR capactior on the output side can put some > > 'interesting' high-ish voltage spikes on the output. > > Agreed completely - I guess I wasn't clear. I haven't done any debugging Your first message could have been read to suggest you were thinking of remvoing the second PCB altogether and somehow fooling the power-fail circuit. > I too suspect a lack of regulation and crowbar trip, and yes in the absense > of technical data, I'll probably "shotgun" the electrolitics in the hope > that I'll get lucky. I would strongly recomend getting an ESR meter if you do any (not many, but any) repairs on SMPSUs. It will save a lot of time... -tony From james.rice at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 17:57:53 2007 From: james.rice at gmail.com (James Rice) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:57:53 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: On 10/22/07, Alexandre Souza wrote: > > > Well, seems that now is my time... > > I have the oportunity of - at least - putting my dirty hands into a > SGI > indigo! :oD > > My questions: > - How fast is it? > - What can I run on that? > - Does it use any kind of special memory? > - Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? > - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? > > Thanks > Alexandre > (yes, in Brazil these are R A R E !) > > It really depends on the version of Iris Indigo you have. They come in various flavors from the above mentioned R3000 to an R4000 version that can support the R4400 up to 150mhz. The R3000's do require special ram while the R4000/4400 use standard 72 pin SIMMS. All Iris Indigo's need the special keyboards (9500801 Indigo Keyboard (beige), 9150800 Indigo Mouse (beige)) or the PS2 adapter you mentioned. They also came in several levels of graphics sophistication from the LG1/2 Entry boards to the Elan with 4 Geometry Engines, 24bit video memory and a Z buffer. The R3000 units will run Irix to 5.3 with XFS and the R4400 wil run up to the R6.5.2x versions. Support for the Iris Indigo was dropped from Irix above 6.5.22 as I recall. But at 6.5.22 you can run most freeware and commercial software. Omne thing to keep in mind, the tOD battery will probably be dead in your Indigo. Some are soldered on the motherboard, some are plug in. The proper part number is a Tadiran TL-5186. If you find a keyboard and need some odd bits, let me know as I have 8 Iris Indigo's and a couple of bins of spare parts. I also have some Sgi freeware on my ftp server at blackcube.org. James - Blackcube -- www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers From lynchaj at yahoo.com Mon Oct 22 18:00:32 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:00:32 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface Message-ID: <002d01c814ff$5a344490$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface dwight elvey dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Oct 21 22:47:07 CDT 2007 * Previous message: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface * Next message: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] ________________________________ [snip] Hi Most of us have older PC's that will read most standard formats. That isn't the issue. The Catweasel is the closest thing out there but it is, as Dave D. says, not open documented. [snip] Unless I were to get something like the CatWeasel, I can't read the double density hard sectored disk I currently have that I'd like to archieve. I don't know of anything else that will plug into a PC that will do the job. Dwight ________________________________ -----REPLY----- Dwight, There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the Catweasel circulation about. Hopefully this can clear some of it up. These are things I believe to be true about Catweasel: The Catweasel is well documented. The design is easy to write software for. F/OSS Linux drivers exist. F/OSS MS-DOS & Linux software exists. The Catweasel is documented at the register level. There is a developers forum available. The developer of the Catweasel is accessible and very helpful. There are experienced developers on CCTALK which can answer questions. The Catweasel is commercially available from stock in both PCI and ISA versions. I do not know for a fact, but I am confident based on my dealings with Jens that if you needed additional information about the FPGA firmware for some reason you could just ask and get what information you need. True, software development has not been integrated and is fragmented but that is mostly organizational issues. The content does exist. Here is a recent post on CCTALK which lists some of the many Catweasel resources available on the internet. (not by me but other another respected CCTALK member) http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2007-April/077150.html As an aside, if it were me designing a small portable floppy reader, I would use something like to this in a small case with a 5.25" floppy drive and CF for storage: http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS6085572550.html It is only a small stretch from what I am presently using: an old PC with a Catweasel to read NorthStar (DSDD, SSDD, SSSD, and mixed) and Heath (SSSD and DSSD) hard sector disks. The Tim Mann CW2DMK software pretty much covers the soft sector format. There are many other formats supported. My whole Catweasel station cost less than $200 is working right now in my basement. It has Ethernet, PCI, USB, IDE, serial, parallel, VGA, PS/2, floppy drive interfaces in addition to the Catweasel. It can run several Operating Systems. There are still slots available to add more interfaces if you'd like. There is another machine next to it with ISA slots, a different Catweasel, and SCSI interfaces. I have had ST506/ST412 interfaces working on it. All parts for both systems are commercially available for low cost. Yes, Catweasel is restricted to PCI or ISA but if you "wrap" it with a dedicated PC you do not have to deal with it. Also, the raw format the Catweasel produces is literally magnetic flux transition times and whether an index hole is present or not. It doesn't get much more basic than than when reading a floppy disk. The hard part of ANY universal floppy reader will be the writing of the specific format decoders. That is where the investment is truly needed. My only wish for Catweasel is for it to be supported by excellent software like ImageDisk in an open and documented format like ImageDisk does. I believe the extensions to at least ImageDisk would be trivial to implement once the specifics of the interface were well known. Thanks! Andrew Lynch From james.rice at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 18:00:31 2007 From: james.rice at gmail.com (James Rice) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:00:31 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: On 10/22/07, Alexandre Souza wrote: > > > - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? > > If you have an Indigo with the Entry boards, either LG1 or LG2 (the "Song and Dance Board") it will have a VGA port and a standard VGA monitor will work. I even hooked up a cheap LCD panel to mine and it worked pretty well. James -- www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 22 18:01:47 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:01:47 -0600 Subject: SGI workstation sequence Message-ID: I think it goes like this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong: 1984 IRIS (terminal/workstation) 1988? Personal Iris 1990 Indigo 1992 Indigo^2 1993 Indy 1996 O2 1999 Octane 2000 Octane2 2002 Fuel 2003 Tezro I'm not including any of the x86 based stuff, nor any of the stuff that required a large deskside or rack cabinet. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Oct 22 18:01:13 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:01:13 +0100 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au> References: <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au> Message-ID: <471D2BB9.9070408@dunnington.plus.com> On 22/10/2007 23:33, Ray Robinson wrote: >>>> Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? >>> You cannot. You need to use a SGI keyboard and mouse. > I have plugged a PC kybd/mouse into a SGI Crimson and an Octane > and they seemed to work OK. The Octane uses a standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse, so that's not surprising. The Crimson uses a PC-compatible keyboard though with a non-standard (to the PC world) DA-15 connector, but uses an SGI mouse rather like the older Sun mice and not PC-compatible. Neither the Indigo mouse or keyboard are PC-compatible, but you can make an adapter to convert the protocols -- see http://rshockley.dyndns.org/indigo.htm > Needed a special cable > so I used a Sun cable on the SGI monitor. That would be a 13W3 cable. It may be worth noting that later version used more pins for monitor ID, and used one or two pins for sync -- on connections that use those, the Sun pinout is different from the SGI pinout. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 22 18:13:09 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:13:09 -0700 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: References: from "William Donzelli" at Oct 21, 7 10:19:20 pm, Message-ID: <471CCC15.19078.179F37E@cclist.sydex.com> On 22 Oct 2007 at 23:26, Tony Duell wrote: > Thet idea was not uncommn at the time. DEC made one called the 'LA324' > which could take a colour ribbon and mechanically shifted it up and down > to change colour. I also rememebr using an Epson printer in the mid 1980s > that could take a 'colour kit' which was a motor + mechanical bits to > tilt the ribbon. Some Diablo Hytype printer models had a ribbon-shift solenoid also on the print head. Typically, just two colors, red and black. The big problem with any of these multicolor ribbon systems is that there is ink transfer from the printhead pins to the ribbon that eventually causes the lighter colors to get contaminated with the darker ink colors. And the multicolor ribbons were substantially more expensive than monochrome ribbons. But then, many typewriters, including my old Smith-Corona manual, had a ribbon-shift levers--so it's not a new idea by any means. Cheers, Chuck From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 18:14:16 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:14:16 -0400 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au> References: <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au> Message-ID: <471D2EC8.2020404@gmail.com> Ray Robinson wrote: > Hi gang, > >>>> Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? >>> You cannot. You need to use a SGI keyboard and mouse. > I have plugged a PC kybd/mouse into a SGI Crimson and an Octane > and they seemed to work OK. Octane yes, Crimson no. Indigo no, Indigo^2 yes. Onyx no. Peace... Sridhar From wdonzelli at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 18:18:17 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:18:17 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: <471D228A.8050508@gmail.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071022154711.043e01b8@mail.30below.com> <471D228A.8050508@gmail.com> Message-ID: > It was the 07G0033 PS/2 Miniature Mouse. I bet most PS/2 mice would work. In looking over the documentation, no mouse was included at first. Obviously added later, especially since WIndows 3.1 is installed on the machine. Minor revision - it is called "Office-on-the-Road", not "Office-on-the-Go". The set includes a plug and cable for powering from a car cigarette lighter. -- Will From james.rice at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 18:20:14 2007 From: james.rice at gmail.com (James Rice) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:20:14 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <471D2BB9.9070408@dunnington.plus.com> References: <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au> <471D2BB9.9070408@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: On topic with Iris Indigo's, has anyone noticed how vandalized www.irisindigo.com has become? Total shame. -- www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers From SUPRDAVE at aol.com Mon Oct 22 18:27:40 2007 From: SUPRDAVE at aol.com (SUPRDAVE at aol.com) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:27:40 EDT Subject: IBM junk Message-ID: >In a message dated 10/22/2007 6:34:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time, ploopster at gmail.com >writes: >William Donzelli wrote: >> * Another interesting thing that he explicitly said was unique was his >> IBM Office-on-the-Go. This neat assembly puts a PS/2 N51x laptop and a >> 5183 printer in a nice Italian briefcase, with a built in power unit, >> and pockets for all sorts of extra things, like cables and printer >> cartridges. He said he was doing the test marketing, but it did not go >> anywhere. >BTW, if the hard drive fails, you might be in trouble. If memory >serves, the N51SX uses a 2.5" ESDI (!) drive. >Peace... Sridhar The Thinkpad 700 also uses an ESDI drive. ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com From innfoclassics at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 18:30:13 2007 From: innfoclassics at gmail.com (Paxton Hoag) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:30:13 -0700 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Does anyone here have a 5182 Color Printer? This was one of the > goodies today, from an ex-IBM salesman that was finally clearing out > the closet. He said it was a very unsuccessful product from the XT/AT > era, and may have never been for sale to the public. He said they were > probably internal use only. > > The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a stick. > I have had quite a few of these go throgh my hands in the early 90s. The IBM 5182 Color dot matrix printer is actually a Dataproducts 8050 with different plastic and branding. Any 8050 dataproducts ribbon (widely used) should work. The Dataproducts 8050 was a heavy duty office dot matrix printer and quite common. The IBM varient is uncommon. Worth saving if in good condition. Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Oct 22 18:37:59 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:37:59 +0100 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1193096279.7683.7.camel@elric> On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 22:19 -0400, William Donzelli wrote: > The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a stick. I have a printer (possibly Seikosha?) with a CMYK ribbon and 24-pin head. The printout from it is surprisingly good. I first saw one of these used with an Amiga. Gordon From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 18:42:31 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:42:31 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.2.20071022154711.043e01b8@mail.30below.com> <471D228A.8050508@gmail.com> Message-ID: <471D3567.8040209@gmail.com> William Donzelli wrote: >> It was the 07G0033 PS/2 Miniature Mouse. I bet most PS/2 mice would work. > > In looking over the documentation, no mouse was included at first. > Obviously added later, especially since WIndows 3.1 is installed on > the machine. I don't know. I bought an N51SX the second they came out. The N51SX definitely came with a mouse. Hell, my Mod 50 came with one some years earlier. Later on, my father bought a CL57SX, which also came with one. Peace,,, Sridhar From fu3.org at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 19:01:00 2007 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (from@fu3.org) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:01:00 +0200 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <310f50ab0710221701o7dc3118bka3c4a3f7eef003e1@mail.gmail.com> Or this: - http://ryan.tliquest.net/sgi/irix_versions.html From classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk Mon Oct 22 19:13:08 2007 From: classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk (Ensor) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:13:08 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop><471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com><471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <003401c81509$7e086ef0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Hi, > So far, most PC desktops still come with a DB25 parallel port, >but I think even that's no longer universal. I've seen one or two motherboards advertised over the past year which have no serial/parallel ports and something like 8 USB2 ports on the back panel instead....oh, and NO floppy support at all! I suspect that's the direction things are headed in the future. TTFN - Pete. From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 19:17:58 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:17:58 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: <1193096279.7683.7.camel@elric> References: <1193096279.7683.7.camel@elric> Message-ID: <471D3DB6.4030803@gmail.com> Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 22:19 -0400, William Donzelli wrote: > >> The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a stick. > > I have a printer (possibly Seikosha?) with a CMYK ribbon and 24-pin > head. The printout from it is surprisingly good. Wasn't there also the Okidata ML395C with a similar setup? Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 19:20:30 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:20:30 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471D3E4E.2020904@gmail.com> SUPRDAVE at aol.com wrote: >> BTW, if the hard drive fails, you might be in trouble. If memory >> serves, the N51SX uses a 2.5" ESDI (!) drive. > > The Thinkpad 700 also uses an ESDI drive. Indeed. Another problem machine for that reason. Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 22 19:27:14 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:27:14 -0700 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <003401c81509$7e086ef0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop>, <003401c81509$7e086ef0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: <471CDD72.27070.1BDC483@cclist.sydex.com> On 23 Oct 2007 at 1:13, Ensor wrote: > I suspect that's the direction things are headed in the future. I agree. Add to that the decreasing popularity of desktop systems. I've seen loaded desktop Athlon 64 systems selling for about $250 shipped lately. Some of the silly prices that people selling old used systems on Craigslist remind me of the real-estate market. Soon, a desktop system will bear a distinct similarity to a Mac Mini. o floppy, no legacy mouse, keyboard, printer or serial interface--and pretty much use-and-discard. Cheers, Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 22 19:41:56 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:41:56 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:20:14 -0600. Message-ID: In article , "James Rice" writes: > On topic with Iris Indigo's, has anyone noticed how vandalized > www.irisindigo.com has become? Total shame. That's what happens when you allow anyone to create an account and edit a wiki. There's wiki spam software now that looks for wikis and edits all these bullshit URLs into pages. I just nuked what I found there and put a watch on those pages. Eventually you get sick of despamming it and lock down account creation; although it looks like this spam software creates an account for spamming, performs the edit, and then deletes the account. Either that, or its exploiting the wiki package somehow (not surprising if that's the case). Does anyone know how to contact the owner of the domain? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From dave06a at dunfield.com Mon Oct 22 20:46:21 2007 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:46:21 -0500 Subject: LF: Microvax 3100 power supply technical information. In-Reply-To: References: <200710220040.l9M0eNck013182@hosting.monisys.ca> from "Dave Dunfield" at Oct 21, 7 08:34:18 pm Message-ID: <200710230051.l9N0pLvN014817@hosting.monisys.ca> > > It's complex enough that I'd feel better going at it with a set > > of schematics. If nothing turns up I'll draw it out myself, but > > if someone has technical data it could save considerable time. > > Sure. I am not sure if DEC ever published schematics for this supply, > though. And I have, alas, come to realise that for most classic devices > if a quite question here (or on other similar lists) doesn't turn up the > diagrams, it's often quicker and less stressful to trace them out > yourself. Yeah, and since nothing else has turned up, thats probably what I'm going to end up doing. > > > Wouldn't it be best to find out why it's doing this? My _guess_ is that > > > either one output is rising too high, tripping the crowbar, and thus > > > shutting the supply down, or, less likely, the supply to the control > > > circutiry has failed (the reason I mention the latter is that that fualt, > > > caused by a dried-up capacitor on the _primary_ side of the supply, once > > > led me a merry dance in a Tektronix X-terminal). I'd be inclined to start > > > by checking _all_ the electrolytics on that second PSU board with an ESR > > > meter. An high ESR capactior on the output side can put some > > > 'interesting' high-ish voltage spikes on the output. > > > > Agreed completely - I guess I wasn't clear. I haven't done any debugging > > Your first message could have been read to suggest you were thinking of > remvoing the second PCB altogether and somehow fooling the power-fail > circuit. The idea crossed my mind as a way to bring up the system until I get the secondary supply fixed, however on closer inspection I discovered some things that make for an even better workaround: - This is a VAXserver 3100/20 apparently - it has two drive levels (one on top of the other), and can hold something like 5 or 6 drives. To provide powers for that many drives, there is a main power supply that powers the mainboard, and one of the drive power outlets, and secondary power supply which powers the second drive power outlet. - Turns out the main supply board is IDENTICAL to the one in the VAXstation 3100, which has only the one board - this supply is marked 180W. The VAXstation only has mountings for two drives. so it would appear that the 277W VAXserver 3100/20 supply is actually a 180W supply for the mainboard and a couple of drives, and a 97w supply for additional drives. - Tracing the wiring of the VAXstation supply, I confirmed that all the rails go to exactly the same places, and also I located the power-good output which in my setup daisy chains to the second board. - So I took the power-good from the primary supply and fed it into the corresponding pin on the connector - and as expected, I now have what appears to be a perfectly good 180w supply. - As long as I don't try to use more than 1-2 drives (I don't plan to anyway) this should be OK for the purposes of playing with the system. It also lets me take out the secondary board and work on it separately on the bench, and reduces the desire to "get it working now", allowing me more time to draw it out etc. - the downside is that I was incorrect in my first assessment that AC went to both boards, although the primary power input looks the same, with the same brown and blue wires, the secondary supply receives primary DC (rectified/filtered mains) from the primary supply - If you look on the VAXstation supply, you can see the connections where this power is taken off on my board. - So I'll have to put together an DC supply for it. > > I too suspect a lack of regulation and crowbar trip, and yes in the absense > > of technical data, I'll probably "shotgun" the electrolitics in the hope > > that I'll get lucky. > > I would strongly recomend getting an ESR meter if you do any (not many, > but any) repairs on SMPSUs. It will save a lot of time... Thanks for the advice - I don't have one, but I do have access to one when I need it.... Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Mon Oct 22 19:54:37 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:54:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: > I think it goes like this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong: > > 1984 IRIS (terminal/workstation) > 1988? Personal Iris > 1990 Indigo > 1992 Indigo^2 > 1993 Indy > 1996 O2 > 1999 Octane > 2000 Octane2 > 2002 Fuel > 2003 Tezro I seem to recall the O2 coming out in 1999, roughly at the same time as the Octane. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 19:58:58 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:58:58 -0400 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471D4752.8050800@gmail.com> David Griffith wrote: >> I think it goes like this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong: >> >> 1984 IRIS (terminal/workstation) >> 1988? Personal Iris >> 1990 Indigo >> 1992 Indigo^2 >> 1993 Indy >> 1996 O2 >> 1999 Octane >> 2000 Octane2 >> 2002 Fuel >> 2003 Tezro > > I seem to recall the O2 coming out in 1999, roughly at the same time as > the Octane. Didn't the O2, O20 (Octane), O200 and O2000 come out at roughly the same time? Peace... Sridhar From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 22 20:03:23 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:03:23 -0600 Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471D485B.2060406@jetnet.ab.ca> Tony Duell wrote: > CL kits. These were computer educational kits. The basic module was a > plastic box with 3 input sockets, one output socket (with a lamp to > monitor the sate) and 8 'programming' sockets. By wiring up the latter > appropriately you could get the module to act as any 3-input gate. If > you wanted a flip-flop, you could either corss-couple 2 modules, or feed > the ouptut back to an input on the same module programmed as an AND-OR gate. I assume this is transistor not relay logic. > Alas the smallest kit (all I have) only contaiend 2 logic modules and one > battery/input switch module, whuch wasn't enough to do much with. That was the problem with all the computer trainers, they were too small, even the ones with a cpu in them. > -tony From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 22 20:03:17 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:03:17 -0600 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:58:58 -0400. <471D4752.8050800@gmail.com> Message-ID: In article <471D4752.8050800 at gmail.com>, Sridhar Ayengar writes: > David Griffith wrote: > >> I think it goes like this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong: > >> > >> 1984 IRIS (terminal/workstation) > >> 1988? Personal Iris > >> 1990 Indigo > >> 1992 Indigo^2 > >> 1993 Indy > >> 1996 O2 > >> 1999 Octane > >> 2000 Octane2 > >> 2002 Fuel > >> 2003 Tezro > > > > I seem to recall the O2 coming out in 1999, roughly at the same time as > > the Octane. > > Didn't the O2, O20 (Octane), O200 and O2000 come out at roughly the same > time? I scraped those dates out of wikipedia; they may very well be wrong. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From dm561 at torfree.net Mon Oct 22 18:58:09 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:58:09 -0300 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface Message-ID: <01C814EF.D137E660@MSE_D03> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:21:06 -0700 (PDT) From: Fred Cisin Subject: Re: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface > > Aside from 2", 2.5", 2.9" varieties, which additional floppy sizes would > > you like to add? >Mag cards of various types. >also flash memory, including Toshiba printer cards, Atari Portfolio memory >cards, etc. >Prob'ly oughta include a versatile ROM reader, . . . Ummm... not entirely facetiously: I've got some bubble memory cartridges (MS-DOS) that I wouldn't mind archiving... mike From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Mon Oct 22 20:05:24 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:05:24 -0700 Subject: SGI workstation sequence Message-ID: <29426113466a98a6706f2a2dabca4cf3@valleyimplants.com> > I think it goes like this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong: > > 1984 IRIS (terminal/workstation) These were fairly beefy desksides in the 15-slot workstation guise. I think they might have been a little earlier, at least for terminals. Bear (www.typewritten.org) has a 1984 date for version 1.3 of the IRIS terminal manuals. > 1988? Personal Iris The /2x series. The /3x series came out about the same time as Indigo. > 1990 Indigo Indigo came later-1991. R4k Indigo was in 1992. > 1992 Indigo^2 1993. It was a bit earlier than Indy, but not a whole year. > 1993 Indy > 1996 O2 > 1999 Octane Way earlier, 1997 for Octane > 2000 Octane2 Not really new, just a marketing rebadge. If you're counting this you should count Indigo2 IMPACT. > 2002 Fuel > 2003 Tezro > ASD stuff: Professional IRIS: 1986 PowerSeries: 1987 Crimson: 1992 Onyx/Challenge: 1993 From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Mon Oct 22 20:05:29 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:05:29 -0700 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! Message-ID: <252369aef1caaed602aa6cc7034983c6@valleyimplants.com> >> - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? > > They aren't. It's sync-on-green, so you either need a good monitor and > you definitively need an adaptor. > The LG1 and LG2 (Entry 8-bit 2D graphics options) have DE15 VGA connectors alongside the 13W3, it isn't multisync but does do the PC-standard 1024x768. Express graphics (XS, XS-[24, 24Z], XZ, Elan) have sync-on-green 13W3 output in more resolutions (and 24-bit for XS-24 and up). > You should be able to run any MIPS based/IRIX software for SGIs. I > don't know what IRIX release you'll need; perhaps someone else can > provide that info. For the Indigo R3k (33MHz R3000/3010, which uses proprietary SIMMS in sets of 4) you'll probably want IRIX 5.3 (and you can download the development option from ftp.sgi.com for free). The other possible option would be IRIX 4.0.5F if you want to be old-school. Any other functional IRIX release will not be as satisfactory (you can't run IRIX 3.3.x on LG or Express graphics, and R3000 support was dropped in any version of IRIX 6). For the Indigo R4k you can run IRIX 6.5.22 (get any version of the IRIX 6.5 disks at 6.5.22 or earlier and you can download the overlays for free from Supportfolio at SGI), IRIX 6.2 (if it's a low-end configuration with 128MB or less of RAM this would be better), or IRIX 5.3 (which can run the older ECOFF binaries from IRIX 4). You can also run IRIX 4.0.5F if you want, but the newer the IRIX the more standard it is and the more software there is. IRIX 6.2 headers and the MIPSpro toolchain can be downloaded from ftp.sgi.com (no compilers, though), and for IRIX 6.5 the headers/toolchain is included in the CD-ROM distribution. The Indigo R4k can have either a R4000 at 100MHz (will show as 50MHz in the PROM 'hinv') or a R4400 at 150MHz (will show as 'R4000' at 75MHz in the PROM hinv). The IP20 uses parity 72-pin (36-bit) SIMMS in groups of 4. Ray wrote: > I have plugged a PC kybd/mouse into a SGI Crimson and an Octane > and they seemed to work OK. Octane, yep. Crimson, definitely not (uses a DA15 keyboard port) Onyx2, maybe- since that uses a PS/2 interface (along with Indigo2, Indy, Octane, O2 and all things newer _except_ the original Onyx. All of the SGI-proprietary keyboards/mice (apart from being very well built) use the same signalling and protocol so you can use one with plug converters to DA15 (Professional IRIS, PowerSeries, Crimson), DE-9 (Personal IRIS 4D/2x), and the Mini-DIN 6 (Personal IRIS 4D/3x, Indigo, Onyx1). From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 22 20:11:04 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:11:04 -0700 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: References: >, Message-ID: <471CE7B8.31698.1E5E5AE@cclist.sydex.com> On 22 Oct 2007 at 18:41, Richard wrote: > Does anyone know how to contact the owner of the domain? Domain Name: IRISINDIGO.COM Registrant: N.A. Eric (brokebit at brokenbytes.org) 9024 Ewing Ave. Evanston IL,60203 US Tel. +1.8477639713 But a reverse lookup on the street address shows: Stonitsch, Lonnette M & Lonnie 9024 Ewing Ave Evanston, IL 60203-1909 (847) 763-9713 Maybe this helps? Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Mon Oct 22 20:21:24 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:21:24 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:11:04 -0700. <471CE7B8.31698.1E5E5AE@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: In article <471CE7B8.31698.1E5E5AE at cclist.sydex.com>, "Chuck Guzis" writes: > Maybe this helps? Yes, it helps, thanks. I emailed the owner and nuked all the spam I could find. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 22 20:24:10 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:24:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <01C814EF.D137E660@MSE_D03> References: <01C814EF.D137E660@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <20071022182338.U85113@shell.lmi.net> On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, M H Stein wrote: > Ummm... not entirely facetiously: I've got some bubble memory cartridges > (MS-DOS) that I wouldn't mind archiving... Which format? I may still have some Gavilan ones. From silent700 at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 20:26:07 2007 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:26:07 -0500 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <471CE7B8.31698.1E5E5AE@cclist.sydex.com> References: <471CE7B8.31698.1E5E5AE@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <51ea77730710221826u7a5777b4h89ed9f3039068235@mail.gmail.com> On 10/22/07, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 22 Oct 2007 at 18:41, Richard wrote: > > > Does anyone know how to contact the owner of the domain? > > Domain Name: IRISINDIGO.COM > Eric (email) Eric is local to me and I've traded with him a bit. I don't recall why irisindigo was abandoned but it was probably for lack of time, like most projects. I do remember him saying he got tired of keeping up with the spammers. Maybe someone else would like to take it on? From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 20:30:38 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:30:38 +1300 Subject: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <4712EA8D.7020800@mdrconsult.com> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> <200710142211.36122.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712EA8D.7020800@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: On 10/15/07, Doc Shipley wrote: > Then there was one young lady whose fine arts degree wasn't paying > her bills... > > She did stick it out through the course. After it ended, she sent me > a 3-page email that expressed, in prose, her bitter disappointment in > the strangeness of "the Linux Mindset". Perhaps it would have been more entertaining in verse, or expressed in interpretive dance? > The term "megalodorks" was used. Can't argue with that, though, and I've been using UNIX for over 20 years (I suspect that if there was ever an open vote to put someone's face on a T-shirt labelled "megalodork", I'd garner more than a few votes ;-). -ethan From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 22 20:48:35 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:48:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: OT: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> <200710142211.36122.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712EA8D.7020800@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <20071022184749.M85113@shell.lmi.net> > > The term "megalodorks" was used. > Can't argue with that, though, and I've been using UNIX for over 20 > years (I suspect that if there was ever an open vote to put someone's > face on a T-shirt labelled "megalodork", I'd garner more than a few > votes ;-). any sources for "Megalodork" T-shirts? From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Mon Oct 22 20:52:29 2007 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:52:29 -0600 Subject: OT: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <20071022184749.M85113@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> <200710142211.36122.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712EA8D.7020800@mdrconsult.com> <20071022184749.M85113@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <471D53DD.606@jetnet.ab.ca> Fred Cisin wrote: >>> The term "megalodorks" was used. >> Can't argue with that, though, and I've been using UNIX for over 20 >> years (I suspect that if there was ever an open vote to put someone's >> face on a T-shirt labelled "megalodork", I'd garner more than a few >> votes ;-). > > any sources for "Megalodork" T-shirts? How about the face of the person who would buy one. From cisin at xenosoft.com Mon Oct 22 20:57:54 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:57:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: OT: I've gone too far In-Reply-To: <471D53DD.606@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <200710131932.23872.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712CA07.5090907@mdrconsult.com> <200710142211.36122.rtellason@verizon.net> <4712EA8D.7020800@mdrconsult.com> <20071022184749.M85113@shell.lmi.net> <471D53DD.606@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <20071022185728.V85113@shell.lmi.net> > > any sources for "Megalodork" T-shirts? On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, woodelf wrote: > How about the face of the person who would buy one. You rang? From gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk Mon Oct 22 03:54:36 2007 From: gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 09:54:36 +0100 Subject: Archival preservation of software In-Reply-To: References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org> <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> Message-ID: <200710220954.36266.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> On Sunday 21 October 2007 11:26:04 Ethan Dicks wrote: > > I'll be curious to hear about any future progress. I, too, have a > Mirage, and a box of sample disks, but I don't know if I have any > utility disks. If you grab the SQ80 utilities from www.buchty.net then you can adapt them to read the Mirage's single-sided disks (it's just a case of commenting out the bit that toggles the "side select" and making it not loop over side 0/side 1/) and get usable images. I haven't tried writing them back to formatted disks yet. There is an application that runs under DOS that will format SQ80 disks, which work just fine in the Mirage - it will cheerfully ignore side 1, even though many of them have DSDD drives - but it's a PITA to find a machine to install DOS on just for one thing. It must be possible, therefore, to format the disks on a PC controller. I know the Mirage uses a WD1772 controller. I suspect that the formatter needs to write some "magic bits" to the directory block before the Mirage will actually talk to the disk. Using the Geibler utility I can format a disk but I need to write an image to it before I can save anything. Gordon From gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk Mon Oct 22 04:03:22 2007 From: gpearce at curiousgroup.co.uk (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:03:22 +0100 Subject: adobe machine room? In-Reply-To: <471B959E.1070301@srv.net> References: <471B959E.1070301@srv.net> Message-ID: <200710221003.22205.gpearce@curiousgroup.co.uk> On Sunday 21 October 2007 19:08:30 Kevin Handy wrote: > This works because the ground below a certain depth is usually > much cooler than the surface, which is why your grandparents > dug a root cellar to store vegetables and preserves. That depends on where you are. Once you go 1m down into the soil, it stays at a pretty steady 14?C in these latitudes (57?N), which is usually warmer than the surface temperature, except in the middle of summer. Gordon From derschjo at msu.edu Mon Oct 22 16:39:00 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Joshua Alexander Dersch) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:39:00 -0400 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <00bc01c814f7$c8515470$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: Alexandre Souza writes: > > Well, seems that now is my time... > > I have the oportunity of - at least - putting my dirty hands into a SGI > indigo! :oD > > My questions: > - How fast is it? > - What can I run on that? > - Does it use any kind of special memory? > - Can I use a PC mouse/keyboard with that? > - Are the monitor frequencies suitable for a modern PC monitor? > > Thanks > Alexandre > (yes, in Brazil these are R A R E !) > > Depending on the model, it's either a 33Mhz R3000, a 100Mhz R4000, or a 150Mhz R4400. You should be able to run IRIX up to 6.2 on an R3000, or 6.5 on the R4k models. There are likely Linux & NetBSD ports that will run, but those are no fun to run on an SGI :). You'll need a special Indigo Keyboard & Mouse. The connector looks like PS/2, but it's not, unfortunately. It's possible to buy an adapter (for about $40) which will likely be easier to find than the real thing. See: http://ckcomputersystems.com/ckcs/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=87&os Csid=64f39e3c9aced887b829c8bd540f36be R3000-based Indigos use proprietary (hard to find) memory, but the R4x000-based ones take standard 72-pin, fast-page ECC SIMMS. Any decent PC monitor that supports Sync-On-Green should be able to work with the Indigo without problems. Good luck! - Josh From shieldsm at gmail.com Mon Oct 22 18:26:11 2007 From: shieldsm at gmail.com (Mike Shields) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:26:11 -0400 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <13135db40710221626m143be679qa17e821434f43598@mail.gmail.com> I have an Epson LQ-2550 wide-carriage dot matrix that does color exactly this way, with a 4-color ribbon and shifting the ribbon up and down to select colors while printing, printing color 4 passes per line. On 10/22/07, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > > Lots of new IBM things today, but all basically PC related. > > > > Does anyone here have a 5182 Color Printer? This was one of the > > goodies today, from an ex-IBM salesman that was finally clearing out > > the closet. He said it was a very unsuccessful product from the XT/AT > > era, and may have never been for sale to the public. He said they were > > probably internal use only. > > > I have never seen one, but there's a section in the Options and Adapters > TechRef for the 'IBM Personal Comp[uter Color Printer'. Unfortunately the > TechRaf doesn't give model numbers, so I can't eb sure it's the same > unit, but I suspect it is. For reference, the TechRef shows the > microcontroller as a 6803 at loaction U6 on the control board. > > If it is the same device, the mention of it in said TechRef would seem to > imply it as a released product. > > > > > The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a > stick. > > Thet idea was not uncommn at the time. DEC made one called the 'LA324' > which could take a colour ribbon and mechanically shifted it up and down > to change colour. I also rememebr using an Epson printer in the mid 1980s > that could take a 'colour kit' which was a motor + mechanical bits to > tilt the ribbon. > > How well it worked I don't know. I've never been able to find a colour > ribbon for my LA324. > > -tony > From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Mon Oct 22 20:32:29 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:32:29 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface Message-ID: <0JQC007Z9C9M1QE1@vms042.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface > From: Fred Cisin > Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:24:10 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, M H Stein wrote: >> Ummm... not entirely facetiously: I've got some bubble memory cartridges >> (MS-DOS) that I wouldn't mind archiving... > >Which format? > >I may still have some Gavilan ones. I have a bunch too save for I have two Intel BPK72 to use them in. Allison From doc at mdrconsult.com Mon Oct 22 22:55:00 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 22:55:00 -0500 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <471D7094.1080203@mdrconsult.com> Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 10/23/07, Jules Richardson wrote: > >>Hmm, I thought all modern machines emulate a parallel port connected via an >>ISA bus > > > Perhaps you've been skipping the recent thread where we've been > beating this topic to death? That thread's not recent. It's, uhhh, parallel. Doc From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Mon Oct 22 23:41:31 2007 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 06:41:31 +0200 Subject: Baydel S11 anyone ? In-Reply-To: <1193080341.7683.1.camel@elric> References: <471BB083.4000307@bluewin.ch> <1193007368.6471.0.camel@elric> <471CF2F7.3030205@bluewin.ch> <1193080341.7683.1.camel@elric> Message-ID: <471D7B7B.3090503@bluewin.ch> Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 20:59 +0200, Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote: > >> http://www.auram.de/baydels11.htm >> >> I am looking for info on the diskdrive visible in the above link. > > Looks very like my dual RX02, but with the addition of an on/off switch > on the front. Mine isn't DEC-branded externally. > The actual disk I was interested in is the one below this rx02 : a 10MB fixed disk, with a 10MB cartridge disk on top. > Does yours have the SBC-11 multifunction card? If so, can I get a dump > of the ROMs? I do not have such an S11, I was looking for info on the diskdrive. Jos From marvin at west.net Tue Oct 23 01:16:02 2007 From: marvin at west.net (Marvin Johnston) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:16:02 -0700 Subject: Xilinx XCR5128C Message-ID: <471D91A2.93160C05@west.net> In searching through my pile of "stuff", I came across 38 of these unused chips still in the chip carrier. I am not at all familiar with these things (or most semicurrent chips for that matter), so are these (or could they be) useful for Classic Computer related projects? From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Oct 23 00:41:37 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:41:37 -0300 Subject: IBM junk Message-ID: <01C81520.41E7B4A0@MSE_D03> >Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:20:30 -0400 >From: Sridhar Ayengar >Subject: Re: IBM junk >SUPRDAVE at aol.com wrote: >> BTW, if the hard drive fails, you might be in trouble. If memory >> serves, the N51SX uses a 2.5" ESDI (!) drive. >> >> The Thinkpad 700 also uses an ESDI drive. >Indeed. Another problem machine for that reason. >Peace... Sridhar ----------------- Good news! That means mine have some value after all... m From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Oct 23 00:55:16 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:55:16 -0300 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface Message-ID: <01C81520.4358F7E0@MSE_D03> >Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:24:10 -0700 (PDT) >From: Fred Cisin >Subject: Re: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface >On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, M H Stein wrote: >> Ummm... not entirely facetiously: I've got some bubble memory cartridges >> (MS-DOS) that I wouldn't mind archiving... >Which format? >I may still have some Gavilan ones. -------------------- Sharp PC5000; mostly the customized apps like WordStar, SuperCalc, etc. Guess I could pull them off through the comm app somehow though; haven't looked at it for a while & don't recall whether I can xfer binary files that way. m From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Oct 23 00:56:01 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:56:01 -0300 Subject: Colour dot matrix printers (was IBM junk) Message-ID: <01C81520.447DEFE0@MSE_D03> >Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:17:58 -0400 >From: Sridhar Ayengar >Subject: Re: IBM junk To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Message-ID: <471D3DB6.4030803 at gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed >Gordon JC Pearce wrote: >> On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 22:19 -0400, William Donzelli wrote: >> >> The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a stick. >> >> I have a printer (possibly Seikosha?) with a CMYK ribbon and 24-pin >> head. The printout from it is surprisingly good. >Wasn't there also the Okidata ML395C with a similar setup? >Peace... Sridhar ------------------------- Citizen as well; in fact I still have some colour conversion kits (print head and ribbon) for the MSP and HSP if anybody wants one. m From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Oct 23 02:13:08 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:13:08 +0100 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <51ea77730710221826u7a5777b4h89ed9f3039068235@mail.gmail.com> References: <471CE7B8.31698.1E5E5AE@cclist.sydex.com> <51ea77730710221826u7a5777b4h89ed9f3039068235@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1193123588.7683.11.camel@elric> On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 20:26 -0500, Jason T wrote: > like most projects. I do remember him saying he got tired of keeping > up with the spammers. Akismet. Just about makes forums, wikis etc usable... Let's try not to get into *why* people in the US seem to think it's OK to vandalise people's websites to try and encourage people to buy medicine from Canada. I don't understand why you'd do that anyway. Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Oct 23 02:15:43 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:15:43 +0100 Subject: IBM junk In-Reply-To: <471D3DB6.4030803@gmail.com> References: <1193096279.7683.7.camel@elric> <471D3DB6.4030803@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1193123743.7683.13.camel@elric> On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 20:17 -0400, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > > On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 22:19 -0400, William Donzelli wrote: > > > >> The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a stick. > > > > I have a printer (possibly Seikosha?) with a CMYK ribbon and 24-pin > > head. The printout from it is surprisingly good. > > Wasn't there also the Okidata ML395C with a similar setup? It could easily be Okidata. I can picture what it looks like. I can picture where it is relative to all the other stuff. I just can't remember any details about it, and it's 220 miles away right now. Gordon From cc at corti-net.de Tue Oct 23 04:00:42 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:00:42 +0200 (CEST) Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: <471CA72A.4835.E9BE1C@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net>, <471CF67F.9080802@compsys.to>, <51ea77730710221233x1059f63gc58f1e7021099f4f@mail.gmail.com> <471CA72A.4835.E9BE1C@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > seen, the menu option is gone. Worse yet, is the trend that's been > several years a-going that only *one* floppy is supported on a > system, regardless of cabling used (i.e., the electrical signals for > the second drive are absent on the drive connector. Yes, the signals are absent. But if you have a look at the datasheet for the super I/O chip (e.g. ITE IT8712) you'll see that the chip still can handle two drives. Just route the signals from the chip to the socket (e.g. with fine wire-wrap wire) and eventually program the chip to enable these signals (many pins have shared functions, the actual function is selected by programming the appropriate I/O configuration register). As a side note: many older boards that support two drives can handle four drives with the same procedure. They have /DS0, /DS1, /DS2 and /DS3 as well as the four /MOTORx lines. You only need a second socket and you should be able to use the two additional drives with the proper DRIVER.SYS statement. Again, a look at the datasheet will tell you whether the limitation comes from the I/O chip or simply (as in most cases) from the motherboard designer. Christian From cc at corti-net.de Tue Oct 23 04:11:02 2007 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:11:02 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Ethan Dicks wrote: > Pros. PC-type laptops made in the past two years aren't coming with > parallel ports, and rack-mount x86 hardware made in the past, what, 5? Well if you buy those cheap 500 EUR laptops then maybe you don't get neither a parallel nor a serial port. But good business notebooks (like the HP/Compaq NC6320 bought last year) have both (that was BTW the reason why I had chosen this model over e.g. a Thinkpad). > So far, most PC desktops still come with a DB25 parallel port, but I > think even that's no longer universal. YGWYPF. On the other hand the ExSys cards (or other cards with e.g. ax OX16PCI954) are really nice (four serial plus one parallel). As nearly everything is integrated on board today, such cards will finally render the mostly useless slots useful again. Christian From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Oct 23 04:28:40 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:28:40 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <471DBEC8.6050506@yahoo.co.uk> Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 10/23/07, Jules Richardson wrote: >> Hmm, I thought all modern machines emulate a parallel port connected via an >> ISA bus > > Perhaps you've been skipping the recent thread where we've been > beating this topic to death? Ahh. I meant that I thought all PC-type machines *with a parallel port* present it to the system as though it were an ISA-connected port (as in the original PC) and *not* a high-speed I/O port running at close to the system's main bus speed - i.e. using a new machine with a parallel port doesn't give you any speed advantage over using a machine from ten years ago with a parallel port. That could well be wrong, in light of what Chuck said. I know that more modern ports are capable of higher rates using different modes - but I thought those were purely for point-to-point data transfer between port and device, and not really suited to twiddling individual port lines at high speed. BICBW :-) Finding a new system with a parallel port is a separate challenge. I miss my old Thinkpad laptop as there's no useful ports on this crappy Dell :-( cheers J. From jvdg at sparcpark.net Tue Oct 23 04:37:25 2007 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (jvdg at sparcpark.net) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:37:25 +0200 Subject: SGI workstation sequence Message-ID: <08d2gn20ltu0yh4.231020071137@jvdg.com> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > David Griffith wrote: >>> I think it goes like this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong: >>> >>> 1984 IRIS (terminal/workstation) >>> 1988? Personal Iris >>> 1990 Indigo >>> 1992 Indigo^2 >>> 1993 Indy >>> 1996 O2 >>> 1999 Octane >>> 2000 Octane2 >>> 2002 Fuel >>> 2003 Tezro >> >> I seem to recall the O2 coming out in 1999, roughly at the same time as >> the Octane. > > Didn't the O2, O20 (Octane), O200 and O2000 come out at roughly the same > time? More or less. Besides that, the Indigo2 and Indy represent a split in the low-end line, both being offspring of the Indigo, with O2 being Indy's successor and Octane being Indigo2's successor. The O200 was the offspring of the Challenge S (and M) low-end server offering. The Fuel and Tezro are also pretty much complementary machines. Also, since Octane sported the Cube logo, I seriously doubt that 1999 introduction date. The logo was changed in 1997/1998 and debuted on the Octane2/O2+ in the IRIS workstation line. Here's the family tree, then: /-> Indigo2 -> Octane -> Octane2 -> Tezro Personal Iris -> Indigo -< \-> Indy -> O2 -> O2+ -> Fuel ,xtG tsooJ From Arno_1983 at gmx.de Tue Oct 23 04:55:51 2007 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:55:51 +0200 Subject: IBM junk Message-ID: <20071023095551.117340@gmx.net> ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > > > > The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a > > stick. > Thet idea was not uncommn at the time. DEC made one called the 'LA324' > which could take a colour ribbon and mechanically shifted it up and down > to change colour. I also rememebr using an Epson printer in the mid > 1980s that could take a 'colour kit' which was a motor + mechanical bits > to tilt the ribbon. The NEC CP6 and CP7 printers (colour variants of the P6/P7) also used such an arrangement - wheels sliding along profiled shafts and small toothed belts to change the height of the ribbon guide on the printer carriage by means of a stepper motor mounted on the chassis. I had the "fun" of repairing a broken guide bridge on mine (had to fit a reinforcement under the crack and reassure it didn't bind or collide with anything). So long, -- Arno Kletzander Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de GMX FreeMail: 1 GB Postfach, 5 E-Mail-Adressen, 10 Free SMS. Alle Infos und kostenlose Anmeldung: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freemail From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 05:02:02 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:02:02 +1300 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: <08d2gn20ltu0yh4.231020071137@jvdg.com> References: <08d2gn20ltu0yh4.231020071137@jvdg.com> Message-ID: On 10/23/07, jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote: > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > > David Griffith wrote: > >>> I think it goes like this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong: > >>> > >>> 1992 Indigo^2 > >>> 1993 Indy > More or less. Besides that, the Indigo2 and Indy represent a split in the low-end line, both being offspring of the Indigo, with O2 being Indy's successor and Octane being Indigo2's successor. I've had some interest, off and on, of fiddling with some SGI hardware. I really wanted an Indy when they came out, but couldn't come close to affording it (I ended up buying a SPARC 1 for $800 the following year, and many, many job opportunities and good things came from that). I did get to fiddle with an Indigo^2 in the mid-1990s, during the Virtual Reality bubble, but couldn't afford one of those at the time, either. I had the chance to pick up a discarded Indy about 4 years ago, but by the time I returned with wheels, someone else had carted it away. Given the descendent machines in the family tree in this thread, I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go after an Octane or an O2 rather than an Indigo or an Indy, at least if I wanted to do more than take the demo programs for a spin. So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it worth holding out for something newer and most likely more expensive to acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do the older personal graphic workstations use odd or impossible-to-find memory, or are they easy/cheap to load up? -ethan From jvdg at sparcpark.net Tue Oct 23 07:04:49 2007 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (jvdg at sparcpark.net) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:04:49 +0200 Subject: SGI workstation sequence Message-ID: Ethan Dicks wrote: > I've had some interest, off and on, of fiddling with some SGI > hardware. I really wanted an Indy when they came out, but couldn't > come close to affording it (I ended up buying a SPARC 1 for $800 the > following year, and many, many job opportunities and good things came > from that). I did get to fiddle with an Indigo^2 in the mid-1990s, > during the Virtual Reality bubble, but couldn't afford one of those at > the time, either. I know the feeling. I remember reading the Byte review of the Indy in 1993... I wanted one SO badly. Couldn't justify the price of several thousand dollars back then, though. I was a student at the time, and I had two classrooms full of Suns at my disposal (SPARCclassic and SPARCstation LX). I did buy an Indy about ten years ago, though. Still paid the equivalent of about a thousand dollars for it. Seeing what they go for these days ($0 - $25) kinda hurts... > I had the chance to pick up a discarded Indy about 4 years ago, but by > the time I returned with wheels, someone else had carted it away. > Given the descendent machines in the family tree in this thread, I'm > beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go after an Octane or an O2 rather > than an Indigo or an Indy, at least if I wanted to do more than take > the demo programs for a spin. > > So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or > Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it worth > holding out for something newer and most likely more expensive to > acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do the older > personal graphic workstations use odd or impossible-to-find memory, or > are they easy/cheap to load up? O2 is cheap enough these days that I'd recommend it as the minimum config to get. And go for the R10K models, too. Even Octanes can be had cheap enough to be considered for just playing around. You gan a lot of expandibility whan going for one of those. Although they are significantly bigger, hotter and noisier. Then again, some might consider that a plus. ;-) Indies are nice to just have, make pretty decent servers, too, but I wouldn't buy an Indy today for workstation use. ,xtG tsooJ From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Oct 23 07:57:34 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:57:34 +0100 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471DEFBE.7080405@dunnington.plus.com> On 23/10/2007 13:04, jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: > >> I had the chance to pick up a discarded Indy about 4 years ago, but >> by the time I returned with wheels, someone else had carted it >> away. Given the descendent machines in the family tree in this >> thread, I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go after an Octane >> or an O2 rather than an Indigo or an Indy, at least if I wanted to >> do more than take the demo programs for a spin. >> >> So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or >> Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it >> worth holding out for something newer and most likely more >> expensive to acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do >> the older personal graphic workstations use odd or >> impossible-to-find memory, or are they easy/cheap to load up? > > O2 is cheap enough these days that I'd recommend it as the minimum > config to get. And go for the R10K models, too. Even Octanes can be > had cheap enough to be considered for just playing around. You gan a > lot of expandibility whan going for one of those. Although they are > significantly bigger, hotter and noisier. Then again, some might > consider that a plus. ;-) > > Indies are nice to just have, make pretty decent servers, too, but I > wouldn't buy an Indy today for workstation use. I pretty much agree with the above. I still run an Indy (R5000, though bought in about 1995 as an R4600SC and later upgraded) as a mail/file/print server and for text editing but I rarely run other apps on it now. I have an O2 R10K for that. I do have another R5K Indy in the workshop, running zmail, netscape and comms stuff but it's not used as a serious workstation any longer. I also have several Indigos which are rarely used, and a rackmount Origin 2000 which has enough crunch power but rarely gets turned on unless I want to warm the room. The fastest official O2 (I think) is R12000 400Mhz, but there was a DIY RM7000 600MHz upgrade for 300MHz R5ks. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From james.rice at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 08:09:43 2007 From: james.rice at gmail.com (James Rice) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:09:43 -0600 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: <471DEFBE.7080405@dunnington.plus.com> References: <471DEFBE.7080405@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: I own several SGI boxes: 1. Two Indy's a R4k and a R5k example 2. Eight Indigo's but have only found the time to install an OS on three of them 3. Two Indigo2's one of which is a refugee from Disney's animation department 4. One Octane (ex-Lockheed-Martin) which actually does some work 5. Two R5k O2 which never get turned on 6. One R10K O2 which is a work in progress 7. Two O200's. One of which hosts my blackcube website and one rack system that is still waiting to be reassembled and turned on. It has 2 O200 Gigachannel chassis, a XBox expansion chassis and 6 Anadatco RAID cabinets in a full glass doored rack. I haven't figured out a use for that one yet other than Pete's room heater. -- www.blackcube.org - The Texas State Home for Wayward and Orphaned Computers From glen.slick at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 09:04:38 2007 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:04:38 -0700 Subject: Xilinx XCR5128C In-Reply-To: <471D91A2.93160C05@west.net> References: <471D91A2.93160C05@west.net> Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90710230704x30897c1j592c6b7816bbeb5e@mail.gmail.com> On 10/22/07, Marvin Johnston wrote: > > In searching through my pile of "stuff", I came across 38 of these unused chips > still in the chip carrier. I am not at all familiar with these things (or most > semicurrent chips for that matter), so are these (or could they be) useful for > Classic Computer related projects? > XCR5128C: 128 Macrocell CPLD with Enhanced Clocking Might be a lot of work to design a PCB for a 100-pin VQFP or 128-pin TQFP package for a part that is 7 years old, but someone might want to do that. From jvdg at sparcpark.net Tue Oct 23 09:27:33 2007 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (jvdg at sparcpark.net) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:27:33 +0200 Subject: SGI workstation sequence Message-ID: <0soun0tl8owyn6k.231020071627@jvdg.com> Pete Turnbull wrote: > The fastest official O2 (I think) is R12000 400Mhz, but there was a DIY > RM7000 600MHz upgrade for 300MHz R5ks. Yeah, that's something to bear in mind; SGI workstations have a plethora of CPU options, so they were available in many configuration from cheap budget machines to high end number crunchers. The Fastest O2's are O2+'s, but they're really only different in the case colour (purple vs. blue) and the logo (Cube vs. that weird-ass script logo). The R5K O2's can sport anything from R5000PC180 to R7000SC350, the R10K model can be equipped with R10000SC150 through R120000SC400. Unlike Indigo2, however, a different class CPU on an O2 means a different motherboard. ,xtG tsooJ From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Oct 23 09:52:14 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:52:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471DBEC8.6050506@yahoo.co.uk> References: <000001c8133f$4fb839c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> <471BC4F7.27875.2A9B7BC@cclist.sydex.com> <471CD9C2.8060706@yahoo.co.uk> <471DBEC8.6050506@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <200710231454.KAA10176@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Ahh. I meant that I thought all PC-type machines *with a parallel > port* present it to the system as though it were an ISA-connected > port (as in the original PC) and *not* a high-speed I/O port running > at close to the system's main bus speed - i.e. using a new machine > with a parallel port doesn't give you any speed advantage over using > a machine from ten years ago with a parallel port. I don't see how the one follows from the other. Just because its CPU-facing interface looks like an ISA bus's doesn't necessarily mean that there is anywhere, even internal to some chip, that actually has ISA bus signals - and, in particular, it doesn't necessarily mean that anything limits its speed to ISA bus speeds. /~\ 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 pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Oct 23 10:14:27 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:14:27 +0100 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: <471DEFBE.7080405@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <471E0FD3.6010109@dunnington.plus.com> On 23/10/2007 14:09, James Rice wrote: > one rack system > that is still waiting to be reassembled and turned on. It has 2 O200 > Gigachannel chassis, a XBox expansion chassis and 6 Anadatco RAID cabinets > in a full glass doored rack. I haven't figured out a use for that one yet > other than Pete's room heater. My "room heater" came with a state-of-the-art-when-new dual fibre-channel RAID chassis. Unfortunately its 88GB of disk gives me slightly less useful storage than I have on my laptop :-( -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 23 10:31:18 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:31:18 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:26:07 -0500. <51ea77730710221826u7a5777b4h89ed9f3039068235@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: In article <51ea77730710221826u7a5777b4h89ed9f3039068235 at mail.gmail.com>, "Jason T" writes: > On 10/22/07, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 22 Oct 2007 at 18:41, Richard wrote: > > > > > Does anyone know how to contact the owner of the domain? > > > > Domain Name: IRISINDIGO.COM > > Eric (email) > > Eric is local to me and I've traded with him a bit. I don't recall > why irisindigo was abandoned but it was probably for lack of time, > like most projects. I do remember him saying he got tired of keeping > up with the spammers. Maybe someone else would like to take it on? If he just locks down account creation to require approval before accounts are granted and lock down edits so that only those with registered accounts can edit, it will be fine on its own. That's what I suggested in email to him after nuking all the spam. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Oct 23 10:32:41 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:32:41 +0100 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: <471E0FD3.6010109@dunnington.plus.com> References: <471DEFBE.7080405@dunnington.plus.com> <471E0FD3.6010109@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <471E1419.2000707@dunnington.plus.com> On 23/10/2007 16:14, Pete Turnbull wrote: > My "room heater" came with a state-of-the-art-when-new dual > fibre-channel RAID chassis. Unfortunately its 88GB of disk gives me > slightly less useful storage than I have on my laptop :-( OTOH, it is attached to a machine with a DLT8000 with a pile of DLT-IVs, and a sensible operating system that understands backups, none of which can be said for the laptop :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 23 10:35:12 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:35:12 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:26:07 -0500. <51ea77730710221826u7a5777b4h89ed9f3039068235@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: The spam has mostly all come back after only a single day. Without locking down the site, it will just come back every single day because its being edited back in by a bot. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 23 10:57:02 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:57:02 -0600 Subject: SGI Sirius Video Breakout Box -- do you need the i/f board? Message-ID: There's one on ebay right now (item 230183969927) complete with the cabling and connectors to the chassis. No cables connecting the board to the breakout box, though. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From austin at ozpass.co.uk Tue Oct 23 11:26:30 2007 From: austin at ozpass.co.uk (Austin Pass) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:26:30 +0100 Subject: Indy or Indigo reasonable to use? [Was: SGI workstation sequence] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 23/10/07 11:02, "Ethan Dicks" wrote: > So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or > Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it worth > holding out for something newer and most likely more expensive to > acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do the older > personal graphic workstations use odd or impossible-to-find memory, or > are they easy/cheap to load up? I think that you'd find them a little sluggish / limited for *real* use. That said, they're both fantastic computers in their own right. Beautifully made and very stylish. To my mind, nothing says "90's computing" like an SGI box and their current highly affordable status surely can't last. Lawnmower man and VR chic must be due a revival. ;-) I have a 300Mhz R12000 Octane with 1.5GB of RAM and a couple of 72GB SCSI disks running IRIX 6.5.22. It isn't quite on-topic being c. 1999 vintage but it runs the latest Nekoware build of Firefox 2 and with the adblock extension to remove Flash crapware (IRIX only supports Flash up to version 5) it feels every bit as responsive as, say, a late model PowerBook G4. Surely not many other computers of that vintage can make such a claim? -Austin. P.S. The Octane in question was a freebie - you can get Octanes and O2's for next-to-nothing. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 23 11:59:13 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:59:13 -0700 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: References: <200710211729.l9LHTKgm019013@billy.ezwind.net>, <471CA72A.4835.E9BE1C@cclist.sydex.com>, Message-ID: <471DC5F1.10840.FE02A@cclist.sydex.com> On 23 Oct 2007 at 11:00, Christian Corti wrote: > Yes, the signals are absent. But if you have a look at the datasheet for > the super I/O chip (e.g. ITE IT8712) you'll see that the chip still can > handle two drives. Just route the signals from the chip to the socket > (e.g. with fine wire-wrap wire) and eventually program the chip to enable > these signals (many pins have shared functions, the actual function is > selected by programming the appropriate I/O configuration register). > As a side note: many older boards that support two drives can handle four > drives with the same procedure. They have /DS0, /DS1, /DS2 and /DS3 as > well as the four /MOTORx lines. You only need a second socket and you > should be able to use the two additional drives with the proper DRIVER.SYS > statement. If you're using DOS it might be that simple (if modifying a modern motherboard can be called "simple"), but the BIOS configuration software for many of these machine allows for only one drive, which lets out support on OS-es such as Win2K and WinXP. Given the poor state of expandability of many modern mobos, I don't consider modification a worthwhile enterprise except as an interesting exercise. Anent the configuration situation and a related thread, there are chipsets that also allow interfacing a floppy via the parallel port with suitable configuration. But again, your BIOS is going to be a problem for this if you're using a "modern" Windoze OS. Given that the floppy controller is about the only thing in a modern machine that requires a PCI-to-ISA bridge, I expect that it's not far from vanishing permanently from all new PCs. Cheers, Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 23 12:23:07 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:23:07 -0600 Subject: Indy or Indigo reasonable to use? [Was: SGI workstation sequence] In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:26:30 +0100. Message-ID: In article , Austin Pass writes: > P.S. The Octane in question was a freebie - you can get Octanes and O2's for > next-to-nothing. I suppose that depends on where you are; they get bid up on dovebid and on ebay. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From austin at ozpass.co.uk Tue Oct 23 12:48:44 2007 From: austin at ozpass.co.uk (Austin Pass) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:48:44 +0100 Subject: Indy or Indigo reasonable to use? [Was: SGI workstation sequence] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 23/10/07 18:23, "Richard" wrote: > I suppose that depends on where you are; they get bid up on dovebid > and on ebay. I'd be astonished if being UK-based put me at an advantage in the classic collecting stakes! Whereabouts are you? For example, there's a really basic Octane for ?35 buy-it-now on ebay.co.uk. I obtained mine through comp.sys.sgi.marketplace - it's a super-low volume group but items are available through there every once in a while. Likewise nekochan.net has many items passing through their "For Sale" forum, of which at least 80% are US-based. That said, I'm aware that the US is *slightly* larger than blighty ;-), and SGI build-quality definitely works against them when one is seeking cheap postage. I made a weekend trip of collecting Octanes and a Crimson, although having a van at my disposal makes the task simpler too. An Octane is well worth the extra couple of dollars though IMHO. A daily-use classic capable of modern tasks is a joy - plus mine looks ace on the desk at work next to my MacPro! -Austin. From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Oct 23 12:03:58 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:03:58 -0300 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers Message-ID: <01C8157D.914B8500@MSE_D03> Message: 24 Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:59:13 -0700 From: "Chuck Guzis" Subject: Re: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers >Anent the configuration situation and a related thread, there are >chipsets that also allow interfacing a floppy via the parallel port >with suitable configuration. But again, your BIOS is going to be a >problem for this if you're using a "modern" Windoze OS. >Cheers, >Chuck ----------- Nevertheless, in light of the amount of misinformation about the subject (apparently even on the MS site) it might be worth mentioning again that at least XP does not have any problems with any of the standard floppy formats (although all except 3.5HD require formatting from a CLI), and that the restrictions, if any, are in the modern BIOSs and mobo hardware no matter how modern (or not) the OS may be. mike From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 23 13:02:14 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:02:14 -0600 Subject: Indy or Indigo reasonable to use? [Was: SGI workstation sequence] In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:48:44 +0100. Message-ID: In article , Austin Pass writes: > On 23/10/07 18:23, "Richard" wrote: > > > I suppose that depends on where you are; they get bid up on dovebid > > and on ebay. > > I'd be astonished if being UK-based put me at an advantage in the classic > collecting stakes! Whereabouts are you? I'm in the states. I suppose it also depends on what you mean by "cheap". For me, "cheap" means < $50. 35 BP = $75, not what I would call "cheap", but I suppose it is by SGI standards. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 22 18:58:08 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:58:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos In-Reply-To: <471D485B.2060406@jetnet.ab.ca> from "woodelf" at Oct 22, 7 07:03:23 pm Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > > > CL kits. These were computer educational kits. The basic module was a > > plastic box with 3 input sockets, one output socket (with a lamp to > > monitor the sate) and 8 'programming' sockets. By wiring up the latter > > appropriately you could get the module to act as any 3-input gate. If > > you wanted a flip-flop, you could either corss-couple 2 modules, or feed > > the ouptut back to an input on the same module programmed as an AND-OR gate. > > I assume this is transistor not relay logic. Actually, it's TTL chips. IIRC the kits came out in the mid-1970s. There's a schematic of the logic module in the manual (one of the frw pages I can understand, since the manual is in German, but a schematic is much the same in any language). There are 3 chips in the module, all with Philis-type numbers. An FJH241 (looks like a 7404), FJH151 (7451) and FJH231 (7401) Here's a breif circuit description : Call the 3 inputs A, B, C. They each go to a chain of 2 NOT gates ('04), producing buffered A, A/ B, B/, C, C/ signals. C and C/ go to programming sockets (outputs) on the module. 2 other programming sockets are '1' (left open, this module makes the worrying assumption that a floating TTL input is a '1') and '0' (tird to ground). The next stage uses 2-wide 2-input AOI gates. For each gate, onr AND gate is eanbled by B, the other B/ The other inputs to the AND gates (4 in total) got to the f1...f4 prgramming sockets. The outputs of the AOIs go to a pair of '01 gats, the other inputs of those go to the A and A/ signals. Then the outputs of those NANDs are commoned (and pulled up by a resisotr), that then goes to another stage ('01s again) where you can connect a capacitor to slow the module down (to make a clock oscillator, for ecxample), then to the F output socket and to the transitor that drives the lamp. To summarise, most the module is a 4-input mux controlled by the A and B inputs, with the output going (via a delay) to the F output. The inputs to the muc are the f1...f4 programming sockets. You patch those either high, low, or to C or C/ in the well-known way. So you can make any 3-input gate from the module. The section immediately befroe the schematic in the manual gives the method of working out the pathing for a given logic function by drawing up the truth table, dividing it into pairs of lines, then calling a pair that's 00 a low, a 11 a high, a 10 a C/ and a 01 a C. Then patch appropriately. Or at least I think that's what it's saying, as I said it's in German. For most of the later experiments in the book you get separate diagrams for the patching of each module and the wiring between the modules. Also it appears you get an explanation of _why_ the patching is done that way. In the back of the manual are some sheets which I think you were supposed to cut out and put on the modules. They give a patching diagram for a particular gste and a diagram of the conventional gate symbol and name with the input and output lines extended to the sockets on the module (if you see what I mean). It appears there was another module, included in one of the add-on kits (I don't have one). It was yellow in colour, but otherwise looked the same as the logic module. In fact it contained the same logic circuit. but with a msall relay in place of the lamp. The contacts of the relay were wired to a 3.5mm jack socket mounted in the 'lamp hole' on the module case, you got a cable with a suitable plug on one end and bare wires at the other in the kit. It appears you could use that to control small lamps, motors, etc from your logic designs. > > > Alas the smallest kit (all I have) only contaiend 2 logic modules and one > > battery/input switch module, whuch wasn't enough to do much with. > > That was the problem with all the computer trainers, they were too > small, even the ones with a cpu in them. Well, 2 3-input gates (even arbitrary 3-input gates) was not enough to do anything much (a single full adder was possible, not much more). If you bought larger kits and the add-on kits I guess you could do a lot more, some of the experiments in the book have 8 or so logic modules. -tony From jvdg at sparcpark.net Tue Oct 23 13:31:40 2007 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (Joost van de Griek) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:31:40 +0200 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 2007-10-23 0:47, Richard wrote: > The Crimson and Octane are much later in the product line than the > Indigo. Crimson is a peer of Indigo. It is the higher-end workstation from that same period. It was replaced by the RealityStation (single-CPU Onyx) about the time of the Indigo2/Indy. ,xtG .tsooJ -- "Visual Basic is the programming equivalent of playing with coloured blocks that squeak when you squeeze them." - Phil Stracchino -- Joost van de Griek From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 23 14:03:52 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:03:52 -0600 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:31:40 +0200. Message-ID: In article , Joost van de Griek writes: > On 2007-10-23 0:47, Richard wrote: > > > The Crimson and Octane are much later in the product line than the > > Indigo. > > Crimson is a peer of Indigo. It is the higher-end workstation from that same > period. It was replaced by the RealityStation (single-CPU Onyx) about the > time of the Indigo2/Indy. My mistake, thanks for the correction! My SGI knowledge is shaky, but I learn more by being corrected :). -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Oct 23 14:21:42 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:21:42 -0400 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: <08d2gn20ltu0yh4.231020071137@jvdg.com> Message-ID: <105BF524-DD71-4343-9029-409B0234473F@neurotica.com> On Oct 23, 2007, at 6:02 AM, Ethan Dicks wrote: > So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or > Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it worth > holding out for something newer and most likely more expensive to > acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do the older > personal graphic workstations use odd or impossible-to-find memory, or > are they easy/cheap to load up? Indigo2, yes...Indigo or Indy, no. Just my opinion. I've used a few Indigo2 systems as my main desktop machines over the years. They are fantastic in many ways. The last one, about four years ago, was an Indigo2 R10K MaxImpact...It was wonderful, although the R10K is a bit constrained in the Indigo2 design. It's still very responsive and more than fast enough for everyday modern- style work. With prices the way they are, though, I'd probably find an Octane if I were looking to set up an SGI desktop workstation. They are considerably faster than the R10K Indigo2 systems at the same clock rate, and expandable to truly juicy configurations. (think dual- R12K, etc) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From trag at io.com Tue Oct 23 14:31:26 2007 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:31:26 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <200710231701.l9NH1kfB042275@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710231701.l9NH1kfB042275@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <60327.209.163.133.242.1193167886.squirrel@webmail.io.com> > Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 11:20:22 +1300 > From: "Ethan Dicks" > On 10/23/07, Jules Richardson wrote: >> Hmm, I thought all modern machines emulate a parallel port connected via >> an ISA bus > > Macs have never had parallel printer ports, not even the new Intel Mac > Pros. Au contraire. Okay, actually, it's a nitpick. During the cloning heyday, there was a family of clones which had a parallel port. I think it was the model from Motorola (Starmax?), but my memory is hazy. Of course, that was back in the 90s. Jeff Walther From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Tue Oct 23 14:37:01 2007 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:37:01 -0500 (CDT) Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: <105BF524-DD71-4343-9029-409B0234473F@neurotica.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Dave McGuire wrote: > On Oct 23, 2007, at 6:02 AM, Ethan Dicks wrote: > > So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or > > Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it worth > > holding out for something newer and most likely more expensive to > > acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do the older > > personal graphic workstations use odd or impossible-to-find memory, or > > are they easy/cheap to load up? > > Indigo2, yes...Indigo or Indy, no. Just my opinion. For a laugh, a few years ago I installed Linux on my R4600 133mHz Indy. The machine took 8 hours to compile a Linux kernel, 21 hours to compile X - and 34 hours to compile KDE. Not much of a benchmark, since Linux isn't as efficient on the MIPS processors as IRIX, for obvious reasons, but... for what it's worth :) JP From trag at io.com Tue Oct 23 14:49:54 2007 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:49:54 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Color Dot Matrix; Was Re: IBM junk In-Reply-To: <200710231701.l9NH1kfB042275@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710231701.l9NH1kfB042275@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <63563.209.163.133.242.1193168994.squirrel@webmail.io.com> > Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:26:06 +0100 (BST) > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) >> The 5182 is a dot matrix printer with a four color ribbon. Kludge on a >> stick. > > Thet idea was not uncommn at the time. DEC made one called the 'LA324' > which could take a colour ribbon and mechanically shifted it up and down > to change colour. I also rememebr using an Epson printer in the mid 1980s > that could take a 'colour kit' which was a motor + mechanical bits to > tilt the ribbon. > > How well it worked I don't know. I've never been able to find a colour > ribbon for my LA324. The Apple Imagewriter II can use a color ribbon and the color ribbons are still fairly available. I have a few boxes sealed up in plastic bags... However, Apple never wrote a viable color driver for the Mac OS. One could print the 8 basic Quickdraw (not Color Quickdraw) colors, for example, by coloring cells in Excel and printing the spreadsheet, but anything complex was out. A company called Microspot wrote MacPalette II for the Mac which dithered the colors on the ribbon to provide 24 bit color printing. Keep in mind that the IWII is a 72 or 144 dpi dot matrix printer. The images produced by MacPalette are pretty amazing given the underlying printer. It really does get the colors nicely mixed. The image quality is poor because of the poor resolution, but it's a bit like the dancing bear. The wonder isn't that she dances so well, it's that she dances at all. I always get really poor text quality with MacPalette II though, so if anyone else is using it and knows what I'm doing wrong, let me know. IIRC, MacPalette II only prints in Tall Adjusted, so many the poor text is just an artifact of that, or maybe one is meant to use different fonts. I think the IWII has the engine for another printer in it but I can't remember whose. I keep dredging up Okidata and Canon, but I think those are wrong. Citizen? Jeff Walther From jvdg at sparcpark.net Tue Oct 23 15:39:44 2007 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (Joost van de Griek) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:39:44 +0200 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 2007-10-23 21:03, Richard wrote: > In article , > Joost van de Griek writes: > >> On 2007-10-23 0:47, Richard wrote: >> >>> The Crimson and Octane are much later in the product line than the >>> Indigo. >> >> Crimson is a peer of Indigo. It is the higher-end workstation from that same >> period. It was replaced by the RealityStation (single-CPU Onyx) about the >> time of the Indigo2/Indy. > > My mistake, thanks for the correction! My SGI knowledge is shaky, but > I learn more by being corrected :). We all do. Here's a nice illustration, the IRIS family tree (unfortunately it ends at the Onyx2/Octane/O2 era): ,xtG .tsooJ -- "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity." - Nadine (Velociraptor) -- Joost van de Griek From jvdg at sparcpark.net Tue Oct 23 15:45:56 2007 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (Joost van de Griek) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:45:56 +0200 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 2007-10-23 21:37, JP Hindin wrote: > For a laugh, a few years ago I installed Linux on my R4600 133mHz Indy. > The machine took 8 hours to compile a Linux kernel, 21 hours to compile X > - and 34 hours to compile KDE. Heh. My Mac SE/30 (16 MHz 68030) took two days (trying) to compile a NetBSD 1.5 kernel, before keeling over and dying with a failed hard drive. Not surprising, really; the HD was flaky to begin with, and it had been thoroughly thrashed during that compile session, making the poor SE/30 sound like a coffee maker. ,xtG .tsooJ -- Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups -- Joost van de Griek From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 16:21:26 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:21:26 -0400 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471E65D6.2080906@gmail.com> Joost van de Griek wrote: >> For a laugh, a few years ago I installed Linux on my R4600 133mHz Indy. >> The machine took 8 hours to compile a Linux kernel, 21 hours to compile X >> - and 34 hours to compile KDE. > > Heh. My Mac SE/30 (16 MHz 68030) took two days (trying) to compile a NetBSD > 1.5 kernel, before keeling over and dying with a failed hard drive. Not > surprising, really; the HD was flaky to begin with, and it had been > thoroughly thrashed during that compile session, making the poor SE/30 sound > like a coffee maker. I once compiled a NetBSD kernel (1.4-something) on a VAXstation 2000. I don't remember how it took, but it was a long, long time. Peace... Sridhar From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Oct 23 16:10:27 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:10:27 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <20071022124844.J81233@shell.lmi.net> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <002301c814de$90f06cf0$f0fea8c0@alpha> <20071022124844.J81233@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200710231710.28166.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 22 October 2007 15:54, Fred Cisin wrote: > On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Alexandre Souza wrote: > > Will it work with recording wire? > > Of course! > and MICR, > also 1/4" mag tape, 1/2", 3/4", 1" linear and helical scan, and most > cartridge configurations, so that you can read corvus tapes from Apple, > and transfer that bogus copy of "Debbie Does Dallas" from Quasar > cartridge. > > But should punch tape be reel to reel, or Z-fold? The z-fold stuff gets a little cumbersome when the pile gets too big -- it tends to fall over... > and the punch card hopper(s) are getting in the way of the OCR readers. > > > Which type of joystick ports should it have? Both, of course. :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Tue Oct 23 17:03:04 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:03:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: rs232 interface for Radio Shack PT210 printing terminal Message-ID: I've decided to make a couple serial boards for my Radio Shack PT210 terminals so I can have them talk serial. How many people here have PT210s who'd like a serial board? -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 17:29:51 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:29:51 +1300 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: <471E65D6.2080906@gmail.com> References: <471E65D6.2080906@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 10/24/07, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > I once compiled a NetBSD kernel (1.4-something) on a VAXstation 2000. I > don't remember how it took, but it was a long, long time. Well... I'm not worried about how long an Indy or an Indigo or anything made in the past 15 years is going to take - my first kernel compile was on an 11/730... I think it was around 8 hours, possibly 10. Pretty much anything I do these days is going to be faster. I'm more concerned about interactive responsitivity. Sounds like unless I get a free Indy (including local pickup), I'll probably keep my eye out for an Indigo2 or Octane. Thanks for the advice. -ethan From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 18:37:36 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:37:36 -0400 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: <471E65D6.2080906@gmail.com> Message-ID: <471E85C0.4050703@gmail.com> Ethan Dicks wrote: > On 10/24/07, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> I once compiled a NetBSD kernel (1.4-something) on a VAXstation 2000. I >> don't remember how it took, but it was a long, long time. > > Well... I'm not worried about how long an Indy or an Indigo or > anything made in the past 15 years is going to take - my first kernel > compile was on an 11/730... I think it was around 8 hours, possibly > 10. Pretty much anything I do these days is going to be faster. My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week. Peace... Sridhar From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 23 19:40:44 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:40:44 -0600 Subject: kernel compile times (was: SGI workstation sequence) In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:37:36 -0400. <471E85C0.4050703@gmail.com> Message-ID: In article <471E85C0.4050703 at gmail.com>, Sridhar Ayengar writes: > My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week. Are we talking *just* the kernel here, or are we talking compiling a full distribution (all the utility programs, shell programs, X server, X clients, etc.). I have a really hard time believing it takes a few days *just* to compile the kernel. Toss in the huge pile of additional programs accessible from the shell or the X Window System and now we're talking believable. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 23 19:50:11 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:50:11 -0700 Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: <01C8157D.914B8500@MSE_D03> References: <01C8157D.914B8500@MSE_D03> Message-ID: <471E3453.29109.1BF0C0D@cclist.sydex.com> On 23 Oct 2007 at 14:03, M H Stein wrote: > Nevertheless, in light of the amount of misinformation about the > subject (apparently even on the MS site) it might be worth mentioning > again that at least XP does not have any problems with any of the standard > floppy formats (although all except 3.5HD require formatting from a CLI), > and that the restrictions, if any, are in the modern BIOSs and mobo > hardware no matter how modern (or not) the OS may be. Anent XP and 2K, one thing that's absolutely required to get anywhere is a Windows-conforming boot sector on a disk to be read, complete with media descriptor. The NT/XP/2K/Vista floppy driver reads that sector on any newly-inserted floppy then matches it against a table of media descriptors it knows about. No match means you get a "General Failure" or some such error, no matter how readable the diskette might be in non Windows terms. This should (but I haven't checked) eliminate PC-DOS 1.1 diskettes. Interestingly, it's possible to *write* a non-Windows conforming boot sector on 2K/XP. When the diskette just written is reinserted, however, you won't be able to read it. This situation obtains even if you use 16-bit VMM access using port I/O or BIOS calls. Cheers, Chuck From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 20:01:02 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:01:02 +1300 Subject: kernel compile times (was: SGI workstation sequence) In-Reply-To: References: <471E85C0.4050703@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 10/24/07, Richard wrote: > > In article <471E85C0.4050703 at gmail.com>, > Sridhar Ayengar writes: > > > My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week. > > Are we talking *just* the kernel here, or are we talking compiling a > full distribution (all the utility programs, shell programs, X server, > X clients, etc.). > > I have a really hard time believing it takes a few days *just* to > compile the kernel. Toss in the huge pile of additional programs > accessible from the shell or the X Window System and now we're talking > believable. Sridhar can answer for the details of his VS2000, but in my case, the two machines I have the most experience with are the 11/750 and 11/730, and Ultrix 1.1 (4.2BSD under the hood, IIRC). It may be that I didn't do a complete compile from source, just a kernel rebuild of drivers and affected areas from the installation process, and it may be that the disk on a VS2000 is vastly slower than Unibus and IDC disks on the 11/750 and 11/730, respectively. I do stand by my 8-10 hour kernel compile time after an initial install of the OS on a blank disk for those machines - if my memories have not entirely disintegrated, it took all of a long work day to install Ultrix, but not more than one. -ethan From legalize at xmission.com Tue Oct 23 20:10:38 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:10:38 -0600 Subject: kernel compile times (was: SGI workstation sequence) In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:01:02 +1300. Message-ID: In article , "Ethan Dicks" writes: > Sridhar can answer for the details of his VS2000, but in my case, the > two machines I have the most experience with are the 11/750 and > 11/730, and Ultrix 1.1 (4.2BSD under the hood, IIRC). It may be that > I didn't do a complete compile from source, just a kernel rebuild of > drivers and affected areas from the installation process, and it may > be that the disk on a VS2000 is vastly slower than Unibus and IDC > disks on the 11/750 and 11/730, respectively. I do stand by my 8-10 > hour kernel compile time after an initial install of the OS on a blank > disk for those machines - if my memories have not entirely > disintegrated, it took all of a long work day to install Ultrix, but > not more than one. I thought those unix kernels were supposed to be little itty bitty simply pieces of software. I had no idea they were so bloated. As for the X Window System, I've compiled the whole thing and worked on the server itself. I know that's a huge honkin pile of stuff and it woudln't surprise me that compiling any distribution after X11R4 from scratch would take you all day. In 1990 I was regularly compiling chunks of the X Window System, usually the server, on a MIPS R3000 CPU @ 25 MHz. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't blindingly fast either. There's simply a huge pile of code in X11, or even just the server. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 20:21:07 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:21:07 +1300 Subject: kernel compile times (was: SGI workstation sequence) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/24/07, Richard wrote: > > In article , > "Ethan Dicks" writes: > > > Sridhar can answer for the details of his VS2000, but in my case... > > it took all of a long work day to install Ultrix, but not more than one. > > I thought those unix kernels were supposed to be little itty bitty > simply pieces of software. I had no idea they were so bloated. Bloated? For the day, we certainly thought so, but remember, this was the era of monolithic kernels. All the devices you wanted to use were compiled in and loaded at boot time. When you fiddled with your hardware, the final step was to re-do a kernel config and re-compile. For most changes, you could get away with compiling the affected drivers and re-linking, but that first compile on install took hours. I ran Ultrix 1.1 on a 5MB 11/730 and an 8MB 11/750. ISTR the kernel was between 1MB and 2MB, but that's a fuzzy memory. > As for the X Window System, I've compiled the whole thing and worked > on the server itself. I know that's a huge honkin pile of stuff and > it woudln't surprise me that compiling any distribution after X11R4 > from scratch would take you all day. Perhaps Sridhar was doing that on his VS2000, but on a headless VAX-11, we never installed the workstation packages. I didn't get into the "modern" UNIX era until 1994 when I got that first $800 SPARC 1 I mentioned the other day (SunOS 4 / Solaris 1.1.1, etc.) For the first 9 years, I was dumb-terminals only, except for the few workstations I got to play with at DECUS conventions. -ethan From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 20:59:51 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:59:51 -0400 Subject: kernel compile times In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471EA717.6010005@gmail.com> Richard wrote: >> My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week. > > Are we talking *just* the kernel here, or are we talking compiling a > full distribution (all the utility programs, shell programs, X server, > X clients, etc.). > > I have a really hard time believing it takes a few days *just* to > compile the kernel. Toss in the huge pile of additional programs > accessible from the shell or the X Window System and now we're talking > believable. Nope. It wasn't the full tree. I wouldn't even try compiling the entire tree on that machine. Admittedly, the machine was under a small amount of other load at the time, but it was just the kernel. Part of it was because it was swapping like crazy during the compile, and swapping to the same disk where the sources were stored. That machine is S*L*O*W. It would have probably gone a whole lot faster if it had enough RAM. Peace... Sridhar From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 21:19:15 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:19:15 +1300 Subject: kernel compile times In-Reply-To: <471EA717.6010005@gmail.com> References: <471EA717.6010005@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 10/24/07, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week. > > ...it was swapping like crazy during the compile, and > swapping to the same disk where the sources were stored. That machine > is S*L*O*W. It would have probably gone a whole lot faster if it had > enough RAM. Oh, yeah. The CPU is nominally as fast as a MicroVAX II (and over 50% faster than an 11/750), but if you were swapping, that'd be a *huge* difference in compile times. I was doing this on an 8MB 11/750 with nothing else going on (or on a 5MB 11/730 in a similar state), which is, BTW, fully loaded, thus the difference. I haven't had the pleasure to use a fully-loaded VS2000 - mine are around 6MB - enough to boot and run, but not a lot of empty RAM sitting around. I think a VS2000 disk vastly underperforms compared to an RA81 on a UDA50, so the swapping makes it much, much worse. -ethan From evan at snarc.net Tue Oct 23 21:46:28 2007 From: evan at snarc.net (Evan Koblentz) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:46:28 -0400 Subject: OT: VCF X lodging -- a recommendation Message-ID: <009701c815e8$14fc8ab0$f750f945@evan> Got a good price tonight for the Days Inn / Stanford U., just a couple of miles up the road from Mountain View and the CHM. $81 per night, in-room Ethernet and snacks, all included with the price. Can't beat that. From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Tue Oct 23 21:55:46 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:55:46 -0700 Subject: Help on a Computer Automation system In-Reply-To: <0JQ8002RZZ0P9P10@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ600GMCLVKXR30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <47193D8D.40702@yahoo.co.uk> <47195814.3040507@comcast.net> <0JQ8002RZZ0P9P10@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <471EB432.7060602@sbcglobal.net> I received this email this week. Possibly someone with CA experience can help him (Lars, are you there?). Please contact him directly. Bob ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ You have a picture of a CA Naked mini on your site, so I thought that perhaps you might be able to help me.... I'm a volunteer at the Oakland Air Museum. We have an old flight simulator from the Alameda Naval Airstation. It uses a couple CA Naked minis, as well as misc other embedded processors. I've been slowly trying to breath life back into the system, starting with the computer proper with all peripherals disconnected. We have quite an extensive collection of documentation for the system since it was a military training device. Everything seems to power up, and I can read and write data to memory using the front panel, but I can't get it to boot. All evidence indicates that both the floppy and removable hard drive are not working, and even the CRT terminal may not be fully working (ie even if it did boot I might not even know it). Unfortunately I got rid of my last 8" floppy drive and data terminal many many years ago. Any suggestions on how to go about resuscitating one of these? Also, any suggestions on where to start looking for basic repair stuff, such as a card extender? Any help or pointers would be appreciated. --jon jonb at jmbaai.com From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Tue Oct 23 22:00:51 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:00:51 -0700 Subject: Ericsson Desktop PC In-Reply-To: <471B1893.1426.85466@cclist.sydex.com> References: <471ABEF2.50308@bitsavers.org>, <1192962086.27927.3.camel@elric> <471B1893.1426.85466@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <471EB563.2090603@sbcglobal.net> I got another email about an older Ericsson Desktop PC. If anyone is interested, please contact them directly. Bob --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, Bob: I have a very rare (Ericsson manufactured/sold VERY few PCs) vintage PC and I wondered if you would be interested in it. And I could really use help determining its value, so ANY suggestions on that would be greatly appreciated. Some specifics follow. If you need any more information, just E-Mail me at the address below. -Ericsson Desktop PC (Ericsson manufactured/sold VERY few PCs), including the following (all are original items provided with the original PC): -Color Monitor, Keyboard, Dual Floppy Tower with stand -All cables, connectors -Complete set of SCHEMATICS -Full set of diskettes (DOS 2.11B) -Full set of original documentation, each set in pristine (who actually reads manuals?) condition, in original binders and original cardboard holders: -Users Manual and Users Guide -DOS Manual and Users Guide -GW Basic Manual and Users Guide -Original shipping containers/packing material (Yes, I actually have the original cardboard "Ericsson" boxes, and they are in excellent condition!) -Mint condition outside -Fully functional/operational when last used (NO operational problems experienced) -Manufactured ~ 1984 -Beige/Putty color In summary, I have every item that came with the original PC purchase, with the possible exception of a few pieces of plastic wrap or foam used for packing. If you need any other information, please don't hesitate to contact me at the address below. I'm in the Bay Area. Thanks, MCraggs sunpun at earthlink.net From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Tue Oct 23 23:02:41 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:02:41 -0700 Subject: SGI workstation sequence Message-ID: <911695a3f2700885a4127ee5062ecc86@valleyimplants.com> Joost writes > Unlike Indigo2, however, a different class CPU on an O2 means a > different motherboard. Other way around - Indigo2 had different mainboards for the different processors (IP22 for R4k, IP26 for R8k, IP28 for R10k), whereas O2 had a single mainboard (IP32) for all processors. The R10k/12k processors did have different mounting hardware, though (the R10k/12k module takes up one of the drive bays). The Indy's main limitation today is memory. It does not support SIMMS over 32MB, so it can have only 256MB RAM installed. A smaller limitation is the internal FAST-10/narrow SCSI interface (O2/Octane have Ultra/Wide). Still useable, though, and has the most gonzo startup tune I've heard anywhere (I have never heard of degrees of gonzo before this, though...) Definitely get 256MB RAM, 24-bit graphics, and IRIX 6.5.22 with the unused bits (especially ESP) chkconfig'd off (or 6.2 works well, too, but fewer software packages available). I wouldn't advise Indigo for a first system, they're a bit more tempermental and require the proprietary keyboard (try a few different PS/2 kbds in your Indy or above, though, as some don't work quite right). Octane came slightly after O200/O2000/Onyx2, the first release of IRIX 6.4 doesn't support Octane. The difference was only a couple of months, though. If anyone offers you an Octane, take it. O2s have the advantage of being small and quiet, but they don't seem to be as durable or as fast. It's getting to the point where Octanes with Vpro graphics are hitting the freebie bins (I'd like to find one...), and Octane supports faster CPUs, more memory, and faster graphics. The downside is (most likely) no PCI (the add-in PCI boxes are about $300 even now), but there are few drivers for O2 PCI (O2 doesn't support GbE cards, and I think there might be an issue with FC/SAS but I'm not sure there). That said I have a PI 4D/25, Indigo R3k/R4k Indy R5k, Indigo2 R4k, Indigo2 IMPACT R10k and an Octane 2x250/SSE (mostly running different versions of IRIX, the only double I have is 6.5 with the I2/R10k running 6.5.22 and the Octane running 6.5.30- the other beasts run 3.3.2, 4.0.5F, 5.3 and 6.2 (with one unused, I'm considering 5.1.1 there). They're all useable, but do bog down a bit with things like Firefox and OpenOffice. I do work on most of them, though (although the 4D/25 with 3.3.2 is mostly a "novelty" system - I haven't been able to find much of anything that runs under NeWS/4Sight). From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Tue Oct 23 23:46:12 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:46:12 -0700 Subject: rs232 interface for Radio Shack PT210 printing terminal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471ECE14.80101@sbcglobal.net> David Griffith wrote: > I've decided to make a couple serial boards for my Radio Shack PT210 > terminals so I can have them talk serial. How many people here have > PT210s who'd like a serial board? > I would like one. Also, this weekend I found on Craigslist, an IBM 5100. When I picked it up, I was offered a Radio Shack TRS-80 model one and a model 4. The model 4 powers up and asks for a diskette. The model one has the expansion box and disk but I don't know which connectors to hook the stuff up to. Do you know where I can get a boot disk for the model 4 and manual for the model one? Or a web site that shows the connections? Thanks, Bob From healyzh at aracnet.com Wed Oct 24 00:00:37 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:00:37 -0700 Subject: Group buy of 1541-III PCB's? Message-ID: I know there was some interest in 1541-III PCB's recently. Vincent Slyngstad and I have been discussing this since that time, and he has done up schematic in Eagle CAD and has the initial board layout done (actually three different versions using different SD Sockets). The big difference between this and the original design is that it uses through the hole parts wherever possible rather than surface mount parts. I'm trying to find out if anyone here will be interested in boards. I have a design question or two for anyone that is interested. Additionally, I'm looking for anyone familiar with SD Sockets, as neither Vince nor I are, and a couple questions have come up on the socket placement. Information on the 1541-III can be found at the creator, Jan Derogee's website http://jderogee.tripod.com/ Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Oct 24 00:41:32 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:41:32 +1300 Subject: Group buy of 1541-III PCB's? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/24/07, Zane H. Healy wrote: > I know there was some interest in 1541-III PCB's recently. Vincent > Slyngstad and I have been discussing this since that time, and he has > done up schematic in Eagle CAD and has the initial board layout done > (actually three different versions using different SD Sockets). Nice. > The big difference between this and the original design is that it uses > through the hole parts wherever possible rather than surface mount > parts. I would build one or two, regardless. > I'm trying to find out if anyone here will be interested in boards. Yes. One or two bare boards, depending on price (or if they are really cheap, perhaps 3). > I have a design question or two for anyone that is interested. > Additionally, I'm looking for anyone familiar with SD Sockets, as > neither Vince nor I are, and a couple questions have come up on the > socket placement. Sorry... I have minimal experience with SD sockets. -ethan From jvdg at sparcpark.net Wed Oct 24 04:38:15 2007 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (jvdg at sparcpark.net) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:38:15 +0200 Subject: kernel compile times Message-ID: Richard wrote: > Sridhar Ayengar writes: > >> My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week. > > Are we talking *just* the kernel here, or are we talking compiling a > full distribution (all the utility programs, shell programs, X server, > X clients, etc.). > > I have a really hard time believing it takes a few days *just* to > compile the kernel. Toss in the huge pile of additional programs > accessible from the shell or the X Window System and now we're talking > believable. Well, in the (my) case of the SE/30 taking two days to compile a NetBSD 1.5 kernel, it definitely was just the kernel. Other stuff would have come later. Granted, it may have been less than 48 hours, like starting early one evening and ending late the next morning, but in my memory it was two days until it upped and died when nearly done. I also suspect it might have been (a lot) faster had the machine been equipped with the full 128 MB RAM at the time, instead of just a paltry 20 MB. Might have saved the (500 MB) drive, too. :-) In any case, it was done just for shits and giggles, and if anything it did inspire a whole new level of appreciation for the art of cross-compilation. ,xtG tsooJ From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 24 07:25:43 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 06:25:43 -0600 Subject: kernel compile times In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:19:15 +1300. Message-ID: In article , "Ethan Dicks" writes: > On 10/24/07, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > >> My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week . > > > > ...it was swapping like crazy during the compile, and > > swapping to the same disk where the sources were stored. That machine > > is S*L*O*W. It would have probably gone a whole lot faster if it had > > enough RAM. > > I think a VS2000 disk vastly underperforms compared to an RA81 on a > UDA50, so the swapping makes it much, much worse. This reminds me of when I was fresh out of college and was working on a consulting contract. They were writing 6809 assembly code using a cross-compiler than ran on something like a PDP-11/34. The project engineer insisted that using a linker was slower than just reassembling all 100,000 lines (I kid you not). It would take all day just to assemble the code so you could test it the next day. I modified everything to declare symbols and use a linker. That got the assembly process down to a few minutes and the link process down to a few hours. You could get 4 builds done in a day. The guy's ego was so fragile he had a shit fit because I made things 4x more productive! -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From doc at mdrconsult.com Wed Oct 24 08:20:16 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 08:20:16 -0500 Subject: Group buy of 1541-III PCB's? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471F4690.6030303@mdrconsult.com> Zane H. Healy wrote: > I know there was some interest in 1541-III PCB's recently. Vincent > Slyngstad and I have been discussing this since that time, and he has > done up schematic in Eagle CAD and has the initial board layout done > (actually three different versions using different SD Sockets). The big > difference between this and the original design is that it uses through > the hole parts wherever possible rather than surface mount parts. I'm in, probably for one. > I'm trying to find out if anyone here will be interested in boards. I > have a design question or two for anyone that is interested. > Additionally, I'm looking for anyone familiar with SD Sockets, as > neither Vince nor I are, and a couple questions have come up on the > socket placement. !clue.... Doc From ats at offog.org Wed Oct 24 10:15:43 2007 From: ats at offog.org (Adam Sampson) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:15:43 +0100 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <60327.209.163.133.242.1193167886.squirrel@webmail.io.com> (Jeff Walther's message of "Tue\, 23 Oct 2007 14\:31\:26 -0500 \(CDT\)") References: <200710231701.l9NH1kfB042275@dewey.classiccmp.org> <60327.209.163.133.242.1193167886.squirrel@webmail.io.com> Message-ID: "Jeff Walther" writes: > During the cloning heyday, there was a family of clones which had a > parallel port. I think it was the model from Motorola (Starmax?), > but my memory is hazy. My Starmax 3000/180 doesn't have a parallel port, although it does have an unlabelled DB25 SCSI port which is physically the same. I could imagine this causing some user confusion at the time. -- Adam Sampson From geoffr at zipcon.net Wed Oct 24 11:55:41 2007 From: geoffr at zipcon.net (Geoff Reed) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 09:55:41 -0700 Subject: Color Dot Matrix; Was Re: IBM junk In-Reply-To: <63563.209.163.133.242.1193168994.squirrel@webmail.io.com> References: <200710231701.l9NH1kfB042275@dewey.classiccmp.org> <63563.209.163.133.242.1193168994.squirrel@webmail.io.com> Message-ID: <00f901c8165e$b6666580$6a01a8c0@liberator> -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Walther Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 12:50 PM To: cctech at classiccmp.org Subject: Color Dot Matrix; Was Re: IBM junk I think the IWII has the engine for another printer in it but I can't remember whose. I keep dredging up Okidata and Canon, but I think those are wrong. Citizen? Jeff Walther ------- I would suspect that it could also be a C.Itoh engine, the IW-1 was a C.Itoh 8510 (I think that was the model #, I know that is the right manufacturer) with apple roms in it, and possibly an add on board for appletalk (I don't remember if appletalk was supported on the original IW) I had one of the C.Itohs and an IW at the same time and the printers were identical. From gary.katz at csun.edu Wed Oct 24 12:23:25 2007 From: gary.katz at csun.edu (Gary S Katz) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:23:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TRS-80 Reference Site (was rs232 interface for Radio Shack PT210 printing terminal) Message-ID: <20071024102325.BPP70797@cuckoo.csun.edu> Bob - Ira Goldklang runs a very comprehensive TRS80 site with a number of resources for the Mod1/3/4 on it. You can find his website at: http://www.trs-80.com/ Best, -gk ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary S. Katz, Ph.D. 326 Sierra Tower Assistant Professor (818) 677-2964 office Dept. of Psychology (818) 677-2827 dept California State University - Northridge (818) 677-2829 fax 18111 Nordhoff Street Northridge, CA 91330 http://www.csun.edu/~gk45683 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Message: 3 >Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:46:12 -0700 >From: Bob Rosenbloom >Subject: Re: rs232 interface for Radio Shack PT210 printing terminal >To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > >Message-ID: <471ECE14.80101 at sbcglobal.net> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > >David Griffith wrote: >> I've decided to make a couple serial boards for my Radio Shack PT210 >> terminals so I can have them talk serial. How many people here have >> PT210s who'd like a serial board? >> > >I would like one. Also, this weekend I found on Craigslist, an IBM 5100. >When I picked it up, >I was offered a Radio Shack TRS-80 model one and a model 4. The model 4 >powers up and >asks for a diskette. The model one has the expansion box and disk but I >don't know which connectors >to hook the stuff up to. Do you know where I can get a boot disk for the >model 4 and manual for the >model one? Or a web site that shows the connections? > >Thanks, > >Bob > > >------------------------------ > From innfoclassics at gmail.com Wed Oct 24 14:08:28 2007 From: innfoclassics at gmail.com (Paxton Hoag) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 12:08:28 -0700 Subject: ancestry oif Color Dot Matrix; Was Re: IBM junk Message-ID: ancestry > I think the IWII has the engine for another printer in it but I can't > remember whose. I keep dredging up Okidata and Canon, but I think those > are wrong. Citizen? I think the Imagewriter 1 was just a rebadged C. Itoh 8510. One of the C.Itoh models supported a 4 color ribbon. and this carried over to the IW2. The ancestry of the IBM Color printer goes back to the IDS 480 which was such a nice printer that Dataproducts bought the company in the very early 80s. I believe its design became the basis for the long running Dataproducts 8050/8070 series of dot matrix printers offering color ribbons. I think the IBM Color Printer was made by Dataproducts with different plastic and branding. Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Wed Oct 24 15:24:12 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:24:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: rs232 interface for Radio Shack PT210 printing terminal In-Reply-To: <471ECE14.80101@sbcglobal.net> References: <471ECE14.80101@sbcglobal.net> Message-ID: On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Bob Rosenbloom wrote: > David Griffith wrote: > > I've decided to make a couple serial boards for my Radio Shack PT210 > > terminals so I can have them talk serial. How many people here have > > PT210s who'd like a serial board? > > I would like one. The board is about 3 inches by 2 inches, double-sided, and without soldermask or silkscreening. That brings it to maybe $10 each if I do a run of five. All the other parts are easily available from Mouser or Jameco including the 4PDT push-push switches. I got the schematics and foil patterns from the PT-210 service manual. I'll post a formal BOM later this week. I'd like to send off the order by Friday next week, so if anyone else wants one, please let me know by then. I won't ask for any money until I have the boards in my hands. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From wdonzelli at gmail.com Wed Oct 24 15:30:18 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:30:18 -0400 Subject: Heath H17 Message-ID: Anyone need a power transformer assembly from a Heath H17 floppy disk system, for a spare or otherwise? Contact me off list. -- Will From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 24 16:34:15 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:34:15 -0600 Subject: freight shipping = ~$1/lb.? Message-ID: OK, for a pile of stuff I got from dovebid, I used a new freight shipper -- adcom worldwide. This time, the bill turned out to be about $1/lb. I just wondered if that seemed reasonable, overpriced, etc., or if anyone had any stories about adcom. The packaging of the items was a little sloppy, but otherwise they seemed OK. Better than CTS, but still not up to the level of excellent service I've gotten with Craters & Freighters. (I would have used C&F, but they don't have a location near Reading, PA.) -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From curt at atarimuseum.com Wed Oct 24 17:00:12 2007 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt - Atari Museum) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:00:12 -0400 Subject: freight shipping = ~$1/lb.? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <471FC06C.2010206@atarimuseum.com> Never heard of Adcom, I've been experiencing huge amounts of delays with NAVL, anyone else have a door to door freight service they've had good dealing with? I've got to get two arcade units here to the shop to restore for the museum display. Curt Richard wrote: > OK, for a pile of stuff I got from dovebid, I used a new freight > shipper -- adcom worldwide. This time, the bill turned out to be > about $1/lb. I just wondered if that seemed reasonable, overpriced, > etc., or if anyone had any stories about adcom. > > The packaging of the items was a little sloppy, but otherwise they > seemed OK. Better than CTS, but still not up to the level of > excellent service I've gotten with Craters & Freighters. (I would > have used C&F, but they don't have a location near Reading, PA.) > From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 24 16:59:07 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:59:07 +0100 (BST) Subject: rs232 interface for Radio Shack PT210 printing terminal In-Reply-To: <471ECE14.80101@sbcglobal.net> from "Bob Rosenbloom" at Oct 23, 7 09:46:12 pm Message-ID: > I was offered a Radio Shack TRS-80 model one and a model 4. The model 4 > powers up and > asks for a diskette. The model one has the expansion box and disk but I > don't know which connectors > to hook the stuff up to. Do you know where I can get a boot disk for the > model 4 and manual for the > model one? Or a web site that shows the connections? The M4 first : If you hold down the BREAK key while turning it on or pressing Reset (Reset == the unmarked recessed button on the keyoard), it'll go into Cassette BASIC. You'll get a CASS? prompt on the screen. Hit ENTER and you'll get a MEMORY SIZE prompt. ENTER again and you're in BASIC. Of course you can't use the disk drives, but at least it'll let you test the system As regards the OS, there were basically 2 options. One was the TRS-DOS 6.x / LS-DOS 6.x, The other was CP/M. I have no idea where you'd find the latter (or indeed _why_ you'd want to find it, LS-DOS being a much nicer OS), but I got the former from Tim Mann's site. If you can't find it anywhere, I suppose I could send you the image I downloaded. For the M1 : The EI (expansion interfce) is placed with the power button on the front face and the 2 removable covers on top. The left-hand cover is held on by 4 screws, under that you can put an optional I/O board, normally a serial port. It's likely to be empty. The right-hand cover is held on by 3 screws and covers a space to fit 2 power supplies, one for the EI and one for the keyboard/CPU. The 2 supplies are indentical. At the front of this space, on the PCB at the left side, is a 5 pin DIN socket. That takes the output cable from the PSU used to power the EI. Now, going round the card edge fingers, starting at the centre front and going clockwise, we have : Front Centre (40 way) : Connected to the optional I/O board. Normally not used. Front Left (40 way) : System bus input from the CPU. How this is connected depends on the revision of the EI. The latest one (which is what I have) just uses a straight-through ribbon cable. Earlier ones had a special 'buffered cable' with a box containing buffer chips in the middle. This cable is marked to say which end connects to what. Some early versions _also_ had a DIN cable soldered to the EI and the CPU, you just plug those together. Left Front (40 pins) : Buffered system bus output to other devices. Normally not used Left Rear (34 pins) : Parallel printer. Straight-trhough ribbon cable to a 36 pin microribon plug to a Centronics printer Rear left (34 pin) : Disk drives. Normal SA400 pinout to 5.25" drives. Model 1 TRS-DOS only supports single-sided drives (and the normal hardware only supports signle density (FM) operation. There were add-on boards normally called doublers' to do MFM recording. Other OSes (my favourite was LDOS) would use said doublers, and would also let you use double-sided drives. On the rear are 3 DIN sockets. You can ignore these. They connect to an internal relay to select between 2 cassette recorders, one to each of 2 of the socekts and then a striaght-through DIN cable to the CPU cassette socket. I cna never remember the order. -tony From mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Wed Oct 24 17:49:30 2007 From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us (Mike Loewen) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:49:30 -0400 (EDT) Subject: freight shipping = ~$1/lb.? In-Reply-To: <471FC06C.2010206@atarimuseum.com> References: <471FC06C.2010206@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Curt - Atari Museum wrote: > I've been experiencing huge amounts of delays with NAVL, anyone else have a > door to door freight service they've had good dealing with? I've got to get > two arcade units here to the shop to restore for the museum display. I've only used them once, but I had excellent service from Freight Quote: Tony Sidoti at 1-800-323-5441 EXT. 1383 tsidoti at freightquote.com Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ From rcini at optonline.net Wed Oct 24 17:52:41 2007 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:52:41 -0400 Subject: Group buy of 1541-III PCB's? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I would be interested in one. I'd really like a DTV version, too. On 10/24/07 1:00 AM, "Zane H. Healy" wrote: > I know there was some interest in 1541-III PCB's recently. Vincent > Slyngstad and I have been discussing this since that time, and he has > done up schematic in Eagle CAD and has the initial board layout done > (actually three different versions using different SD Sockets). The > big difference between this and the original design is that it uses > through the hole parts wherever possible rather than surface mount > parts. > > I'm trying to find out if anyone here will be interested in boards. > I have a design question or two for anyone that is interested. > Additionally, I'm looking for anyone familiar with SD Sockets, as > neither Vince nor I are, and a couple questions have come up on the > socket placement. > > Information on the 1541-III can be found at the creator, Jan > Derogee's website http://jderogee.tripod.com/ > > Zane Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Oct 24 18:44:56 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:44:56 +0100 Subject: HP1000 'F' back on eBay (UK) In-Reply-To: References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> Message-ID: <471FD8F8.6040802@yahoo.co.uk> Sergio Pedraja wrote: > Having in mind that I don't live in the UK, and the space needed for this > monster, I could get and manage only the CPU, plus some terminals(s). Not > interested in the other parts. FWIW, there's a museum (not mine) interested in this as a complete system to exhibit, so providing the gold scrappers don't get in on the act and go nuts, it seems like it'll get rescued and go to a good home (whether to the museum or to a classiccmper). Shame it ended up on EBay really rather than here / uk.comp.vintage / VCM etc. :-( cheers Jules From charlesmorris at hughes.net Wed Oct 24 19:35:54 2007 From: charlesmorris at hughes.net (Charles) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:35:54 -0500 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? Message-ID: I bought an RL disk pack on Ebay, supposedly for an RL02 drive. It is a Memorex "Mark III T" with a small label "Made in USA CI 04050" and various previous-owner stickers/scribbles showing first use in 1983 up through 1985. The shock indicator is not red. But it won't load in any of my four RL02 drives (the Ready light never comes on, so track 0 is not being found)! Since the drive has embedded servo info, so head alignment between drives is not an issue, there are only two remaining possibilities that I can think of: 1) the pack is defective (factory servo tracks are trashed), or 2) it is an RL01 (5 Mb) pack, which looks physically identical but will not work in an RL02 drive. Any thoughts... Would this be the likely result (no Ready light) of putting an RL01 pack in an RL02 drive? If so, anyone want to buy it (or preferably trade for the proper pack)? thanks Charles From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Wed Oct 24 19:49:47 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:49:47 +1300 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 10/25/07, Charles wrote: > I bought an RL disk pack on Ebay, supposedly for an RL02 drive. It > is a Memorex "Mark III T" with a small label "Made in USA CI > 04050" and various previous-owner stickers/scribbles showing first > use in 1983 up through 1985. The shock indicator is not red. I have seen non-DEC RL packs in the past, but didn't DG or someone use the same shell for their own drives, too? > 1) the pack is defective (factory servo tracks are trashed)... Defective, or bulk-erased, which amounts to the same thing. I don't recall what happens when you try to mount an RL01 pack in an RL02, but you _might_ get an error light rather than just not get a ready light. You could hook a scope to some amplified head signal and at least verify that there is *some* signal coming from the pack. That might help eliminate bulk-erased media from consideration. Perhaps someone with an old media company catalog might be able to check order info for the Memorex pack, but ISTR the best days of the RL01 were long behind it by 1983, which would make me initially expect that it probably was some other cause than RL01 vs RL02 issues, leaving "blank media" or "non-DEC media" as likely issues. -ethan From aek at bitsavers.org Wed Oct 24 19:53:04 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:53:04 -0700 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? Message-ID: <471FE8F0.2070808@bitsavers.org> I bought an RL disk pack on Ebay, supposedly for an RL02 drive. It is a Memorex "Mark III T" the pack is defective (factory servo tracks are trashed) -- You bought a generic 5440 style pack. I saw that listing and the seller didn't know what he was selling. DEC packs have custom servo tracks. If it don't say 'DEC' on it it is highly unlikely to work in an RL0x From lynchaj at yahoo.com Wed Oct 24 19:55:08 2007 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:55:08 -0400 Subject: Vector Graphic mailing list Message-ID: <003201c816a1$b0c8e240$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Hi, If anyone is interested in joining the Vector Graphic mailing list, here are the instructions on how to do it. All are welcome. To subscribe, send the command "sub vector-graphic", without the quotes, in the BODY of the message, to listserv at h-net.msu.edu. To post (send a message to all subscribers), address your e-mail to vector-graphic at h-net.msu.edu. For other help, e-mail Dennis Boone . You can also use the web interface at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=VECTOR-GRAPHIC Thanks! Andrew Lynch From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Oct 24 21:13:19 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:13:19 -0400 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF Message-ID: <200710242213.19124.pat@computer-refuge.org> So, I'm going to be spending a few days out in the San Francisco area before VCF (I'll be there Weds afternoon through early Monday). Can anyone suggest other (non-computer) related things to do while I'm out there? Or if anyone wants to show off their collection of big iron, that might be interesting too. :) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 24 21:36:44 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:36:44 -0700 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: <200710242213.19124.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <200710242213.19124.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <471F9ECC.13934.11B7371@cclist.sydex.com> On 24 Oct 2007 at 22:13, Patrick Finnegan wrote: > Can anyone suggest other (non-computer) related things to do while I'm > out there? There's always North Beach ;) And get some vegetable ice cream at Polly Ann's. Cheers, Chuck From wdonzelli at gmail.com Wed Oct 24 21:43:05 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:43:05 -0400 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: <471F9ECC.13934.11B7371@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200710242213.19124.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471F9ECC.13934.11B7371@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > There's always North Beach ;) And get some vegetable ice cream at > Polly Ann's. And weird Asian food. The submarine PAMPANITO is worth a visit, as are some of the other ships. And that weird tidal model thing, if it is open. And the Nike site. And Exploritorium (sp?). -- Will, the only guy here NOT attending VCF. From evan at snarc.net Wed Oct 24 22:01:00 2007 From: evan at snarc.net (Evan) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:01:00 -0400 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF Message-ID: <200710250301.l9P31r76057291@billy.ezwind.net> Visit Sellam's warehouse nearby in Livermore. Seriously. And visit the Digibarn (although Bruce is always very busy preparing for VCF). Visiting Stanford is also fun, plus the HP garage down the street. Visit the Intel museum. Visit any number of differently theme Fry's stores. And of course, WeirdStuff Warehouse. None of that is in San Francisco, so just venture south a couple of days early. Speaking of which: I always rented Hertz cars for my past VCF excursions, because only they had the GPS option, but now Avis has it too. Got a really good deal when making my reservation yesterday -- four days with Avis, plus GPS, in a Pontiac G6 for aroun $150. Hertz wanted $200 for a subcompact. From wdonzelli at gmail.com Wed Oct 24 22:22:30 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:22:30 -0400 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > Any thoughts... Would this be the likely result (no Ready light) > of putting an RL01 pack in an RL02 drive? If so, anyone want to > buy it (or preferably trade for the proper pack)? What is the price? -- Will From healyzh at aracnet.com Wed Oct 24 22:40:30 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:40:30 -0700 Subject: Group buy of 1541-III PCB's? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: At 6:52 PM -0400 10/24/07, Richard A. Cini wrote: >On 10/24/07 1:00 AM, "Zane H. Healy" wrote: > > > Information on the 1541-III can be found at the creator, Jan > > Derogee's website http://jderogee.tripod.com/ > > > > Zane > >I would be interested in one. I'd really like a DTV version, too. For a DTV version check out the following website. http://www.pyrofersprojects.com/blog/?page_id=38 This version will be considerably larger than the DTV version. The board Vince has designed is currently slightly longer than Jan Derogee's design, this is to accommodate through the hole components, rather than surface mount. He has managed to keep it as small as it is by having the resistors "stand up" rather than "lay flat". This is one of the questions I have for those interested in the boards. What is the preference. I personally would prefer them to lay flat, even though it will result in a larger circuit board, as this will make it easier to solder. It might also be worth while to allow more space between components. For an idea of how tight everything currently is, here is a PDF of a version the board using a SD connector from Digikey. http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/commodore/board.pdf Another question is about an enclosure for the board, should we decided on the enclosure first, and the board be designed to fit it, or just get the board done, and let everyone come up with their own enclosures. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Wed Oct 24 22:54:51 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:54:51 -0600 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4720138B.7060903@rogerwilco.org> Charles wrote: > Any thoughts... Would this be the likely result (no Ready light) > of putting an RL01 pack in an RL02 drive? If so, anyone want to > buy it (or preferably trade for the proper pack)? > I have Qbus systems with both RL01 and RL02 drives. I'll experiment with the improper media and each drive and post the results later tonight. - Jared From doc at mdrconsult.com Wed Oct 24 22:56:56 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:56:56 -0500 Subject: Group buy of 1541-III PCB's? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47201408.6050202@mdrconsult.com> Zane H. Healy wrote: > The board Vince has designed is currently slightly longer than Jan > Derogee's design, this is to accommodate through the hole components, > rather than surface mount. He has managed to keep it as small as it is > by having the resistors "stand up" rather than "lay flat". This is one > of the questions I have for those interested in the boards. What is the > preference. I personally would prefer them to lay flat, even though it > will result in a larger circuit board, as this will make it easier to > solder. It might also be worth while to allow more space between > components. I don't like standing resistors, myself. They look sloppy, and they're vulnerable. It's not a showstopper either way, though. > Another question is about an enclosure for the board, should we decided > on the enclosure first, and the board be designed to fit it, or just get > the board done, and let everyone come up with their own enclosures. I'll probably build my own anyway, no no preference. From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Wed Oct 24 22:58:56 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:58:56 -0600 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: <471FE8F0.2070808@bitsavers.org> References: <471FE8F0.2070808@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <47201480.6010006@rogerwilco.org> Al Kossow wrote: > You bought a generic 5440 style pack. I saw that listing and the > seller didn't know what he was selling. > > DEC packs have custom servo tracks. If it don't say 'DEC' on it > it is highly unlikely to work in an RL0x Probably correct in most cases, but I have an RL01-compatible cartridge from "Digital Systems" that works very well for me. So, the generalization is probably a fair one, and should be considered whenever considering the purchase of a non-DEC RL cartridge, but there are third-party carts that do work. My two cents. - Jared From oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org Wed Oct 24 23:28:27 2007 From: oldcpu2 at rogerwilco.org (J Blaser) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:28:27 -0600 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: <4720138B.7060903@rogerwilco.org> References: <4720138B.7060903@rogerwilco.org> Message-ID: <47201B6B.8020401@rogerwilco.org> J Blaser wrote: > Charles wrote: >> Any thoughts... Would this be the likely result (no Ready light) >> of putting an RL01 pack in an RL02 drive? If so, anyone want to >> buy it (or preferably trade for the proper pack)? >> > > I have Qbus systems with both RL01 and RL02 drives. I'll experiment > with the improper media and each drive and post the results later > tonight. Did a couple of quick tests with these results: RL02K cart in RL01 drive: - spins up okay, and READY lights up - using RT11, a DIR produces: ?DIR-F-Error reading directory[1] RL01K cart in RL02 drive: - spins up okay, and READY lights up - using RT11, a DIR produces a full directory listing just fine![2] So, if the OP is not seeing the READY light, then the cart is probably not formatted for DEC equipment, as Al suggested. I'm not sure that there is any way to make that cart DEC compatible, since DEC formatted these RL carts at the factory, and as I understand it, there is no field formatter, nor is the drive capable of doing a format in the first place. - Jared [1] I haven't calculated, but probably because the directory 'spills' over into unexpected blocks at the end of the 'expected' RL01 directory segment. [2] Looks okay, but then once the head seeks past track 0, we'd be doomed! Tracks on the RL02K carts are twice as narrow as those on the RL01K carts and the RL01 drive would skip the physical track 1 and try to use track 2, thinking it is track 1. From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Wed Oct 24 23:54:13 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:54:13 -0700 Subject: TRS-80 mdls 1 & 4 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47202175.7050005@sbcglobal.net> Tony Duell wrote: >> I was offered a Radio Shack TRS-80 model one and a model 4. The model 4 >> > > The M4 first : > > If you hold down the BREAK key while turning it on or pressing Reset > (Reset == the unmarked recessed button on the keyoard), it'll go into > Cassette BASIC. You'll get a CASS? prompt on the screen. Hit ENTER and > you'll get a MEMORY SIZE prompt. ENTER again and you're in BASIC. Of > course you can't use the disk drives, but at least it'll let you test the > system > Great help! I followed this and it's working! There's a sticker on the front saying it has 128K of RAM. Can TR-DOS use all of it? I assume it's bank selected somehow. > For the M1 : > > The EI (expansion interfce) is placed with the power button on the front > face and the 2 removable covers on top. The left-hand cover is held on by > 4 screws, under that you can put an optional I/O board, normally a serial > port. It's likely to be empty. The right-hand cover is held on by 3 > screws and covers a space to fit 2 power supplies, one for the EI and one > for the keyboard/CPU. The 2 supplies are indentical. At the front of this > space, on the PCB at the left side, is a 5 pin DIN socket. That takes the > output cable from the PSU used to power the EI. > Snip.. Again, great help. Mine does have the serial port board, but only one power supply. I tried the one supply with the model 1 but the LED on the keyboard flashes about once per second, and nothing else (monitor has a slight flicker at the flashing rate.). I downloaded the schematics and will get to it sometime in the future.... Anyway, the IBM 5100 works except for a keyboard problem (shift and cmd keys get stuck on after they are pressed once. Electrically stuck, not mechanical). That along with the working model 4 is not bad. Thanks again. Bob From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Wed Oct 24 23:55:30 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:55:30 -0700 Subject: TRS-80 Reference Site (was rs232 interface for Radio Shack PT210 printing terminal) In-Reply-To: <20071024102325.BPP70797@cuckoo.csun.edu> References: <20071024102325.BPP70797@cuckoo.csun.edu> Message-ID: <472021C2.3010800@sbcglobal.net> Gary S Katz wrote: > Bob - > > Ira Goldklang runs a very comprehensive TRS80 site with a number of resources for the Mod1/3/4 on it. You can find his website at: > > http://www.trs-80.com/ > > Best, > -gk > > Thanks! Helps a lot. I did not know they made so many different versions. The Model 2 with the 8" floppies is interesting. Bob From billdeg at degnanco.com Thu Oct 25 07:31:02 2007 From: billdeg at degnanco.com (B. Degnan) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:31:02 -0400 Subject: Fuse for Apple /// power supply Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20071025082740.0153e8d0@mail.degnanco.net> Quick question - is the fuse for Apple /// power supply supposed to be a "125V 5mf 2 1/2 A" or a "125V 5mf 2 3/4 A" ? - I don't want to use the wrong one. The schematic appears to indicate 2 1/2 A, but the unit I have has a blown 2 3/4A fuse, possibly a replacement from the original owner. Don't know for sure. Why the fuse blew in the first place, that's a different question. Thanks. Bill From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Oct 25 07:47:39 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 13:47:39 +0100 Subject: Fuse for Apple /// power supply In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20071025082740.0153e8d0@mail.degnanco.net> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20071025082740.0153e8d0@mail.degnanco.net> Message-ID: <200710251347.39600.gordonjcp@gjcp.net> On Thursday 25 October 2007 13:31:02 B. Degnan wrote: > Quick question - is the fuse for Apple /// power supply supposed to be a > "125V 5mf 2 1/2 A" or a "125V 5mf 2 3/4 A" ? - I don't want to use the > wrong one. The schematic appears to indicate 2 1/2 A, but the unit I have > has a blown 2 3/4A fuse, possibly a replacement from the original > owner. Don't know for sure. Why the fuse blew in the first place, that's > a different question. > Thanks. > Bill I doubt that 250mA is going to make a significant difference there. Gordon From caveguy at sbcglobal.net Thu Oct 25 08:07:09 2007 From: caveguy at sbcglobal.net (Bob Bradlee) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:07:09 -0400 Subject: List test please ignore In-Reply-To: <1193096279.7683.7.camel@elric> Message-ID: <200710251307.l9PD7BeM024753@keith.ezwind.net> For some unexplained reason I have stoped recieving messages from this list. I expect this message will bounce, if it makes it through then sorry everyone, I just wanted to see what the bounce looked like. Bob From wdonzelli at gmail.com Thu Oct 25 11:03:13 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:03:13 -0400 Subject: Solder Message-ID: It seems, from a past thread, that leaded solder is starting to become a concern around here. I have a chance to buy some new 1 pound rolls, as well as some bar stock. In the pile is everything from Kester 44 to Ersin SN62 to noname company wire solder. Diameters are all over the place, from very small to quite thick. Prices have not been set, but it will probably fall in the 8-10 dollar per 1 pound roll area, maybe a hair more for the better stuff. What sort of _serious_ interest is there on this list? -- Will From caveguy at sbcglobal.net Thu Oct 25 11:39:51 2007 From: caveguy at sbcglobal.net (Bob Bradlee) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:39:51 -0400 Subject: Warning ATT-Yahoo now blocking cctalk as spam. In-Reply-To: <200710251307.l9PD7BeM024753@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <200710251639.l9PGdqFf036716@billy.ezwind.net> I just got off the phone with SBCglobal and discovered that they have begun filtering this list as SPAM/Bulk mail. I use a pop3 mail reader and have never accessesd their webmail before, so I am sure I never turned any filtering on. I was supprised to find that AT&T is no longer able to manage their own mail servers and are relying on the Yahhos at yahoo to do it for them. After about 30 minutes on the phone with India, I was able to get cctalk whitelisted for my account, but not whitelisted in general so others using AT&T Yahoo mail servers will likely still have problems. We don't care, we don't have to care, we are AT&T, again ! As I crawl back under under my rock ... muttering ... Bob On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:07:09 -0400, Bob Bradlee wrote: >For some unexplained reason I have stoped recieving messages from this list. >I expect this message will bounce, if it makes it through then sorry everyone, >I just wanted to see what the bounce looked like. >Bob From pete at dunnington.plus.com Thu Oct 25 12:16:52 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:16:52 +0100 Subject: Solder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4720CF84.9080509@dunnington.plus.com> On 25/10/2007 17:03, William Donzelli wrote: > It seems, from a past thread, that leaded solder is starting to become > a concern around here. I don't understand why that should be. I think that's a misperception. It's not banned, just not permitted under RoHS for new electrical/electronic equipment for sale. It's still allowed for repairs upgrades or expansions to pre-July 2006 things that already contain leaded solder. It's still being made by most companies because some things are exempt from the RoHS directives, such as leaded solder for servers, storage and storage array systems, network infrastructure equipment, and other applications including the coatings on some pin connector systems, solder for some microprocessor BGA packages, solder for high power loudspeakers and acoustic transducers, etc. There are many more exemptions for lead, lead alloys, and lead compounds in specific cases. High-temperature solders containing over 85% lead are completely exempt. Another example: it's banned in Europe for plumbing involving drinking water or food preparation, but not for other water uses. Even Farnell -- who are currently "dumping" non-RoHS-compliant stock of many lines at up to 90% discount and labelling most non-RoHS stock as no longer available after stock is exhausted -- are still selling tin/lead solder. Oh, and military uses are exempt (what a surprise) along with the aerospace, space, and defence industries. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Thu Oct 25 12:44:44 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:44:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Warning ATT-Yahoo now blocking cctalk as spam. In-Reply-To: <200710251639.l9PGdqFf036716@billy.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <508973.4412.qm@web82704.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Bob Bradlee wrote: I just got off the phone with SBCglobal and discovered that they have begun filtering this list as SPAM/Bulk mail. -snip.. Yes, I have been having this problem the last week. Looks like a call to At&t is in order. Bob From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 25 12:48:07 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 10:48:07 -0700 Subject: Solder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47207467.27786.45DDC32@cclist.sydex.com> On 25 Oct 2007 at 12:03, William Donzelli wrote: > It seems, from a past thread, that leaded solder is starting to become > a concern around here. I've never had a problem finding it. About the only way I'd buy in is if the prices offered were "once in a lifetime". FWIW, brand seems to make a difference not in the quality of the solder itself, but in the rosin flux core. Some stuff (I don't remember the brand offhand) seems to be somwhat corrosive to plated iron soldering tips. Cheers, Chuck From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Thu Oct 25 13:37:21 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 11:37:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Solder In-Reply-To: <4720CF84.9080509@dunnington.plus.com> References: <4720CF84.9080509@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Pete Turnbull wrote: > On 25/10/2007 17:03, William Donzelli wrote: > > It seems, from a past thread, that leaded solder is starting to become > > a concern around here. > > I don't understand why that should be. I think that's a misperception. > It's not banned, just not permitted under RoHS for new > electrical/electronic equipment for sale. It's still allowed for > repairs upgrades or expansions to pre-July 2006 things that already > contain leaded solder. It's still being made by most companies because > some things are exempt from the RoHS directives, such as leaded solder > for servers, storage and storage array systems, network infrastructure > equipment, and other applications including the coatings on some pin > connector systems, solder for some microprocessor BGA packages, solder > for high power loudspeakers and acoustic transducers, etc. There are > many more exemptions for lead, lead alloys, and lead compounds in > specific cases. > > High-temperature solders containing over 85% lead are completely exempt. > Another example: it's banned in Europe for plumbing involving drinking > water or food preparation, but not for other water uses. Even Farnell > -- who are currently "dumping" non-RoHS-compliant stock of many lines at > up to 90% discount and labelling most non-RoHS stock as no longer > available after stock is exhausted -- are still selling tin/lead solder. > > Oh, and military uses are exempt (what a surprise) along with the > aerospace, space, and defence industries. Based on this, it seems that someone can make the case that leaded solder for electronics still is completely legal. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Oct 25 14:13:56 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:13:56 -0400 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: References: <200710242213.19124.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471F9ECC.13934.11B7371@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710251513.57041.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 24 October 2007 22:43, William Donzelli wrote: > > There's always North Beach ;) And get some vegetable ice cream at > > Polly Ann's. > > And weird Asian food. > > The submarine PAMPANITO is worth a visit, as are some of the other ships. > > And that weird tidal model thing, if it is open. > > And the Nike site. > > And Exploritorium (sp?). I remember the last time I was there ('81 :-(...) getting some really good sourdough bread at fisherman's wharf... > -- > Will, the only guy here NOT attending VCF. Nope. I ain't going either, dang it! -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From cisin at xenosoft.com Thu Oct 25 14:25:07 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:25:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: <200710251513.57041.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710242213.19124.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471F9ECC.13934.11B7371@cclist.sydex.com> <200710251513.57041.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20071025122432.A61131@shell.lmi.net> > > Will, the only guy here NOT attending VCF. > > Nope. I ain't going either, dang it! My work schedule sucks, also. From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Thu Oct 25 14:32:14 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:32:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: <200710251513.57041.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710242213.19124.pat@computer-refuge.org> <471F9ECC.13934.11B7371@cclist.sydex.com> <200710251513.57041.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 25 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > Will, the only guy here NOT attending VCF. > > Nope. I ain't going either, dang it! I was hoping to go to VCF and sell some P112 kits, but my studies are consuming every bit of free time. I haven't even sent off for a new run of boards or done anything with the recently-discovered leftovers from the first run. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Oct 25 14:36:01 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:36:01 -0400 Subject: Warning ATT-Yahoo now blocking cctalk as spam. In-Reply-To: <200710251639.l9PGdqFf036716@billy.ezwind.net> References: <200710251639.l9PGdqFf036716@billy.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <200710251536.01425.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 25 October 2007 12:39, Bob Bradlee wrote: > I just got off the phone with SBCglobal and discovered that they have begun > filtering this list as SPAM/Bulk mail. I use a pop3 mail reader and have > never accessesd their webmail before, so I am sure I never turned any > filtering on. I was supprised to find that AT&T is no longer able to manage > their own mail servers and are relying on the Yahhos at yahoo to do it for > them. After about 30 minutes on the phone with India, I was able to get > cctalk whitelisted for my account, but not whitelisted in general so others > using AT&T Yahoo mail servers will likely still have problems. > > We don't care, we don't have to care, we are AT&T, again ! > > As I crawl back under under my rock ... muttering ... > > Bob I use verizon here. I have been using them for roughly a year or so, now. I was rather surprised, when going on their web site, to find that they have spam filtering turned on by default, and that they also have the default of simply deleting what they consider to be spam messages without any notification of what's going on or any opportunity to deal with it. Fortunately, they also provide the option to toss 'em in a folder, where you can look at them before they're deleted automatically after 30 days. This is the same behavior of my yahoo and gmail accounts. I get in there every once in a while and look at what's there. Mostly I delete this stuff, but every once in a while I find one that's not spam, and there's usually an option to deal with that appropriately. Hopefully that's better training for whatever software it is that's making those decisions. And yet I still get spam here, sometimes, and forward it to their "notcaught" mailbox, hoping that it'll help. You'd think that there being a list of alphabetically-sequential email addresses would be a usable clue, but apparently not... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 25 13:56:33 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:56:33 +0100 (BST) Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: from "Charles" at Oct 24, 7 07:35:54 pm Message-ID: > > I bought an RL disk pack on Ebay, supposedly for an RL02 drive. It > is a Memorex "Mark III T" with a small label "Made in USA CI > 04050" and various previous-owner stickers/scribbles showing first > use in 1983 up through 1985. The shock indicator is not red. > > But it won't load in any of my four RL02 drives (the Ready light > never comes on, so track 0 is not being found)! > > Since the drive has embedded servo info, so head alignment between > drives is not an issue, there are only two remaining possibilities > that I can think of: > > 1) the pack is defective (factory servo tracks are trashed), or > > 2) it is an RL01 (5 Mb) pack, which looks physically identical but > will not work in an RL02 drive. > > Any thoughts... Would this be the likely result (no Ready light) > of putting an RL01 pack in an RL02 drive? If so, anyone want to > buy it (or preferably trade for the proper pack)? It may not be an RL pack at all. Several other companies made top-loading disk drives that used similar-looking packs, which were not servo-tracked at all. I seem to rememebr seeing one for the PDP11, I think it was norminally RK05-compatile. Often these other drives had a different number of sectors to the RL's as well. Have you tried counting the notches in the flange of the hub? If you put one of thse packs into an RL, it never goes ready. Or the ready lamp flickers. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 25 15:18:01 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:18:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: TRS-80 mdls 1 & 4 In-Reply-To: <47202175.7050005@sbcglobal.net> from "Bob Rosenbloom" at Oct 24, 7 09:54:13 pm Message-ID: > > The M4 first : > > > > If you hold down the BREAK key while turning it on or pressing Reset > > (Reset == the unmarked recessed button on the keyoard), it'll go into > > Cassette BASIC. You'll get a CASS? prompt on the screen. Hit ENTER and > > you'll get a MEMORY SIZE prompt. ENTER again and you're in BASIC. Of > > course you can't use the disk drives, but at least it'll let you test the > > system > > > Great help! I followed this and it's working! There's a sticker on the > front saying it has 128K of RAM. You still want to get a boot disk, so you cna use the disk drives, etc. Most PC controllers can write the TRS-80 format (you should use a 360K drive in the PC, BTW, the TRS-80 uses 40 cylinder disks normally). > Can TR-DOS use all of it? I assume it's bank selected somehow. It is,. of course, bank-switched, along with the 14K BASIC ROMs and the (2K) video memory. IIRC, TRS-DOS only used 64K for running programs. The other 64K can be used as a RAM disk. > > > For the M1 : > > > > The EI (expansion interfce) is placed with the power button on the front > > face and the 2 removable covers on top. The left-hand cover is held on by > > 4 screws, under that you can put an optional I/O board, normally a serial > > port. It's likely to be empty. The right-hand cover is held on by 3 > > screws and covers a space to fit 2 power supplies, one for the EI and one > > for the keyboard/CPU. The 2 supplies are indentical. At the front of this > > space, on the PCB at the left side, is a 5 pin DIN socket. That takes the > > output cable from the PSU used to power the EI. > > > Snip.. > > Again, great help. Mine does have the serial port board, but only one > power supply. I tried the one supply > with the model 1 but the LED on the keyboard flashes about once per > second, and nothing else (monitor That's very unusual. That sounds like the typical behaviour of an SMPSU that's detecting a problem and shutting down, but of course the M1 supply is a linear one. This _is_ the origianl supply, right? -tony From cclist at sydex.com Thu Oct 25 16:07:18 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:07:18 -0700 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: <200710251513.57041.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200710242213.19124.pat@computer-refuge.org>, , <200710251513.57041.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4720A316.27629.514347B@cclist.sydex.com> On 25 Oct 2007 at 15:13, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > Nope. I ain't going either, dang it! Nor I--20 years was enough. My wife still goes down to visit once a year to remind herself why we moved. I used to fly my kite in the fields on North First Street when North First was notable as the road to the Alviso dump. Great Italian prunes in Santa Clara, cherries in Sunnyvale when it was easier to get a good phone connection to Seattle than to Los Gatos. Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Oct 25 16:11:31 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 22:11:31 +0100 (BST) Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: <20071025122432.A61131@shell.lmi.net> from "Fred Cisin" at Oct 25, 7 12:25:07 pm Message-ID: > > > > Will, the only guy here NOT attending VCF. > > > > Nope. I ain't going either, dang it! > > My work schedule sucks, also. And I'm across the Pond, with no possibility of crossing it. -tony From charlesmorris at hughes.net Thu Oct 25 16:26:56 2007 From: charlesmorris at hughes.net (Charles) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:26:56 -0500 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: <200710251700.l9PH0YJN069599@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710251700.l9PH0YJN069599@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <5422i355ca2e11mr0edrr50i19ijdoj3gm@4ax.com> On Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:00:39 -0500 (CDT), you wrote: >Defective, or bulk-erased, which amounts to the same thing. >RL01 were long behind it by 1983, which would make me initially expect >that it probably was some other cause than RL01 vs RL02 issues, >leaving "blank media" or "non-DEC media" as likely issues. > >-ethan I saw Al Kossow's response too - thanks, Al... I had no idea that there were different (low-level) formatting on the same physical media! So I emailed the seller and got the following (excerpted) response: >It was in a rack with other discs that had been used on a pdp11/23 PLUS system, >having two RL02 drives, and was presumably used to archive obsolete >paper-plant simulation programs, written in FORTRAN 77. The disc >cartridges in this set were of multiple manufacturers, and seemed to >have been bought from the lowest bidder. I have CDC's, Memorex's, and >even some DEC's. No idea as to whether it was bulk-erased, but that is starting to sound more likely, given the above history. He has volunteered to mail me a "real" (DEC) pack, at no additional cost - that's superb fleabay service and definitely exceeded my expectations. Meanwhile, anyone got one or two more packs I can purchase? -Charles From ethan.dicks at gmail.com Thu Oct 25 16:46:50 2007 From: ethan.dicks at gmail.com (Ethan Dicks) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:46:50 +1300 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: References: <20071025122432.A61131@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: On 10/26/07, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > > > Will, the only guy here NOT attending VCF. > > > > > > Nope. I ain't going either, dang it! > > > > My work schedule sucks, also. > > And I'm across the Pond, with no possibility of crossing it. And I'm across the Pacific... -ethan From trixter at oldskool.org Thu Oct 25 16:47:30 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:47:30 -0500 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47210EF2.3080502@oldskool.org> Tony Duell wrote: >>>> Will, the only guy here NOT attending VCF. >>> Nope. I ain't going either, dang it! >> My work schedule sucks, also. > > And I'm across the Pond, with no possibility of crossing it. And to borrow one of Tony's expressions, my financial situation has gone completely pants. So I'm stuck here too. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From legalize at xmission.com Thu Oct 25 17:11:34 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:11:34 -0600 Subject: table of contents for all issues of BYTE? Message-ID: Does anyone know of a web site that lists the TOC (article titles and authors) for all the issues of BYTE? I know there's lots of computer graphics goodness hiding in the run of BYTE magazine, but I don't know which issues to look for... -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From rcini at optonline.net Thu Oct 25 19:37:34 2007 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:37:34 -0400 Subject: table of contents for all issues of BYTE? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Not complete. I have an Excel spreadsheet with 700 or so article titles in it which cover most of the main articles. Email me off-list if you're interested. On 10/25/07 6:11 PM, "Richard" wrote: > Does anyone know of a web site that lists the TOC (article titles and > authors) for all the issues of BYTE? > > I know there's lots of computer graphics goodness hiding in the run of > BYTE magazine, but I don't know which issues to look for... Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp From rickb at bensene.com Thu Oct 25 20:34:56 2007 From: rickb at bensene.com (Rick Bensene) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:34:56 -0700 Subject: Altair 8800 Help In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hello, all, I recently acquired a very nice Altair 8800 with 40K of RAM (1 non-MITS 16K Static RAM board, and 3 MITS 4K Static RAM Boards, a MITS Version 1 8080 CPU Board, a MITS 2SIO, a MITS 88-DCDD floppy disc controller (two board pair), a MITS PROM board (8-slots for 1702 256-byte PROMS), a MITS 4-port Parallel card, and two MITS 8" floppy disc drive enclosures, along with a Televideo 912 Terminal, a heavily modified CT-1024 "TV-Typewriter", and a serial TI 810 printer, and an 18-slot (non-MITS) motherboard with an upgraded power supply. That along with boatloads of spare parts, a bus extender, a couple of unused S-100 bus prototyping cards, an unstuffed Ithaca Audio S100 board (not sure what it is), all of the original Altair documentation, a bunch of 8" floppies (including original various version of MITS (Micro-soft) BASIC, MITS DOS, and FORTRAN complier, and a bunch of documentation written by the former owner of the system. I very carefully inventoried everything first, then pulled out all of the boards from the CPU and tested out the power supply, first un-loaded, then under dummy loads, then powered it up with the front panel power leads connected, but no other boards, and all looked good. Then I plugged in the CPU board and the 16K static RAM board, and powered up and could reliably examine and deposit data into the RAM. I then wrote some simple test programs and toggled them in, such as reading the sense switches and storing their content into a memory location, setting all (as much of possible without getting too fancy) of memory to a specific value, then verifying it, and various other CPU functionality tests. All the little test I did passed with flying colors. I then added in the three 8K MITS RAM boards, and they all seemed to work fine also. Then I plugged in the 2SIO board, but didn't have a cable to connect the port clearly configured on the board as the console port to the terminal, so I've got some work to do there. Tonight, I'm hoping to write a little test code using HYPERTERM or the like on a laptop to read/write characters through the console port. The other port is configured strangely, and I need to do some jumper wire tracing to figure out how it's configured. So, the CPU itself seems great. Next, I checked out the floppy controller boards, making sure all of the chips were well-seated (they were all socketed), and checked the power supply lines and regulators to make sure they were OK. Put the board set into the system, plugged "DRIVE 0" into the CPU, and toggled in some very basic floppy controller functionality tests that are included in the manual for the controller, and tried out the tests. They all passed just fine per the results that should be obtained as mentioned in the manual. So, here's the dilemma. The PROM board is currently configured at a start address of 1 111 100 000 000 000 (174000 Octal, or 0xF800). I plugged all of the PROMs into the sockets (there were five different ROMs that I found, including one that had a label that indicated that it was some kind of BOOT ROM). I started examining memory at 0xF800, and found that most all of the PROMs contained all zeros...either erased, or suffering from failure due to extreme age (date codes of '76), and/or no covers over the windows. The one PROM that responded was the one that had the label hinting that it might be a boot PROM. So, I wrote down the content of the PROM and went about hand disassembling it. It does indeed appear to talk to the floppy controller, which is hard-coded at I/O Addresses 0x10, 0x11, and 0x12), as there are a lot of IN and OUT instructions referencing these I/O addresses. Looking at the various absolute jump addresses in the ROM, it appers to be coded to run at 0x4Cxx, or 046xxx Octal. If I set the start address of the ROM board to make this ROM appear in the proper place, it'll conflict with the RAM installed in the system. I have a number of disks which I'd like to try to boot from, including: ALTAIR DISK EXTENDED BASIC REVISION 4.1 JUNE 1977 COPYRIGHT 1988 BY MITS INC. Another disk with the following: MITS DISK OPERATING SYSTEM (DOS) VERSION #1.0 MFG: 03/13/78 COPYRIGHT 1977 BY MITS INC. FLOPPY DISK (NWD) SN: 10396 Which also has a label below this one saying FORTRAN COMPILER VERSION #2.8 MFG:06/05/78 COPYRIGHT 1978 BY MITS INC. COPYRIGHT 1978 BY MICROSOFT INC. (NWD) SN: 10152 Also on this same disk is a small label saying: (C)MICROSOFT 1977 ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO And another disk that says: ALTAIR COMPUTER CENTER BEAVERTON, OREGON DISK COPY UTILITY VERSION 2.0 14-APR-78 SN: 10058 7808 NOTE: THIS DISKETTE WILL NOT COPY ITSELF All of the labels on these disks are original manufacturer labels...these disks are the genuine thing, not copies. Clearly, I'd love to be able to boot these disks. I think that the floppy controller is good. The system even came with a Alignment Disk, so I toggled in some of the routines that would allow observation of the tracking (cats-eye) and index/sector (it's a hard-sectored controller) stuff with an oscilloscope, and everything looked perfect. I just need some bootstrap code. I've looked around in all of the documentation, and there's no boot code listed in the docs for the floppy subsystem. There are small bootstrap routines to load code over the 2SIO board (presumably from a paper-tape reader on an ASR-33 TTY), another from a parallel port (presumably from one of those little optical tape readers that you'd pull the tape through, wasn't it a company called OAE?), and another from cassette (but I don't have an interface board for cassette). I've thought of writing a small program that would copy the boot code out of the PROM into the proper space within RAM, and then JMPing to it, but not sure if that'll work or not...I suppose it's worth a try, but haven't done that yet. I've perused the web a lot looking for boot code for the Altair floppy controller, and haven't been able to find anything. Any Altair experts out there that might have some floppy boot code for the Altair 88DCDD floppy controller that might work to boot up the MITS DOS, or DISK EXTENDED BASIC floppies I've got? Also, anyone know the default console port I/O address that these products expect the serial console to be at? I assume the FORTRAN compiler runs under MITS DOS, and that's why the two products are together on the same disk. Right now I've only got one of the floppy drives connected up, but I'd expect that the FORTRAN compiler will need the 2nd drive in order to do anything useful, but I'm trying to take things one step at a time. I've got a manual for Altair DOS, and it does describe the disk format, so I suppose I could write a boot program myself, but it'd be a lot easier just to find someone that already has the stuff. Also, if anyone knows where Altair DOS and Disk Extended BASIC expect the serial console (e.g, I/O Port Address), that too would be helpful. If anyone could help, I'd sure appreciate it. Thanks in advance, Rick Bensene The Old Calculator (and sometimes Computer) Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com From mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Thu Oct 25 20:41:11 2007 From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us (Mike Loewen) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:41:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Basic Four In-Reply-To: References: <471FC06C.2010206@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: Can one of you Basic Four experts identify the model for this control panel? http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/Panels/index.html#Basic4 A picture of a complete system would be useful. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ From brad at heeltoe.com Thu Oct 25 20:52:00 2007 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:52:00 -0400 Subject: Xilinx XCR5128C In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:16:02 PDT." <471D91A2.93160C05@west.net> Message-ID: <200710260152.l9Q1q0Gq014515@mwave.heeltoe.com> Marvin Johnston wrote: > >In searching through my pile of "stuff", I came across 38 of these unused chip >s >still in the chip carrier. I am not at all familiar with these things (or most >semicurrent chips for that matter), so are these (or could they be) useful for >Classic Computer related projects? I used them for a while in 5v only systems. They are (as I recall) ttl compatible. They were not too fast but they were very flexible and nice for making little register based state machines. I don't think they are made any more as they are 5v only. -brad From rcini at optonline.net Thu Oct 25 20:52:46 2007 From: rcini at optonline.net (Richard A. Cini) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 21:52:46 -0400 Subject: Altair 8800 Help In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Rick: Congrats on a great acquisition. 4k BASIC requires a console at ports 0/1 but you could configure later BASICs (8k, 12k and Disk Extended) to accept other configurations by setting the front panel toggles properly. If you look on my emulator site (http://www.altair32.com) you will find the instructions for booting BASIC (they are actually contained in the help file for the emulator). As far as booting the floppy disk is concerned, I think one of the folders in the emulator distribution has the code for the disk bootstrap in it. If not, here's what I have. This is used in the 88-DSK emulation to boot Altair disk images. Since you have a real operating machine, it'd be great if I could get binary copies of any interesting disks for the archive and see if I can get them to boot on the emulator. Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp ;the altair rom moves this code to 4c00h then jumps to it ;this is a disassembly of the 4c00h code ;C crc on disk doesn't match calculated crc ;M memory error read/back from memory doesn't match ; write to memory (no ram or bad ram) ;O overflow or out of mem caused by trying to load beyond ; ff00 or bad "load limit bytes" on disk. 4C00 DI ;disable interrupts 4C01 LXI SP,4D62 ;load stack pointer 4C04 XRA A ;ZERO IN A 4C05 OUT 08 ;SELECT DRIVE 0 4C07 MVI A,04 ;HEAD DOWN CMD 4C09 OUT 09 ;SEND head down 4C0B JMP 4C19 ;GO TEST FOR TRACK ZERO 4C0E TMVOK: IN 08 ;GET STATUS 4C10 ANI 02 ;TEST FOR MOVE OK 4C12 JNZ 4C0E ;JMP MOVE NOT OK 4C15 MVI A,02 ;step out cmd 4C17 OUT 09 ;send step out 4C19 TTRK0: IN 08 ;GET STATUS 4C1B ANI 40 ;TEST FOR TRACK ZERO 4C1D JNZ 4C0E ;JMP NOT TRACK ZERO 4C20 LXI D,0000 ;DE->0000H 4C23 NXTTK: MVI B,00 ;B=0 4C25 THDDN: IN 08 ;GET STATUS 4C27 ANI 04 ;TEST FOR HEAD DOWN 4C29 JNZ 4C25 ;JMP NOT HEAD DOWN ;SEEK TO SECTOR IN B 4C2C NXTSEC: MVI A,10 ;A=10H 16D RETRY COUNT 4C2E RETRY: PUSH PSW ;SAVE RETRY COUNT 4C2F PUSH D ;NXTMEM 4C30 PUSH B ;B=SECTOR 4C31 PUSH D ;NXTMEM 4C32 LXI D,8086 ;D=80(UNUSED?) E=128=COUNT 4C35 LXI H,4CD4 ;M=POINTER TO INBUFFER 4C38 TSECT: IN 09 ;GET SECTOR# UNDER HEAD AND STATUS 4C3A RAR ;TEST SECTOR TRUE 4C3B JC 4C38 ;jmp TSECT if not true 4C3E ANI 1F ;and sector mask 31d 4C40 CMP B ;DESIRED SECTOR 4C41 JNZ 4C38 ;jmp TSECT if not equal ;READ 134 BYTES TWO AT A TIME INTO INBUFFER 4C44 TRDOK: IN 08 ;get status 4C46 ORA A ;set flags test for read ok 4C47 JM 4C44 ;jmp TRDOK if not read ok 4C4A IN 0A ;get data byte1 4C4C MOV M,A ;move BYTE TO INBUFF 4C4D INX H ;BUMP INPOINTER 4C4E DCR E ;decrement COUNT 4C4F JZ 4C5A ;jmp MVBYTS if DONE 4C52 DCR E ;dec COUNT 4C53 IN 0A ;get data byte2 4C55 MOV M,A ;move to INBUFF 4C56 INX H ;increment POINTER 4C57 JNZ 4C44 ;jmp TRDOK if count in E is not zero ;MOVE 128 DATA BYTES FROM BUFF TO MEMORY MAKE A CRC 4C5A MVBYTS: POP H ;hl (M)=0000h first time 4C5B LXI D,4CD7 ;DE POINTS TO BUFFER + 3 4C5E LXI B,0080 ;B=0=CRC C=128 count 4C61 MVBYT2: LDAX D ;GET BYTE FROM BUFFER 4C62 MOV M,A ;MOVE TO DESTINATION 4C63 CMP M ;CHECK FOR MEMORY PROBLEM 4C64 JNZ 4CC1 ;JMP MERROR if problem 4C67 ADD B ;make a crc 4C68 MOV B,A ;save in B 4C69 INX D ;inc src 4C6A INX H ;inc dest 4C6B DCR C ;dec count 4C6C JNZ 4C61 ;jmp MVBYT2 until count = 0 ;CHECK CRC 4C6F LDAX D ;DE POINTS TO BUFFER + 131 4C70 CPI FF ;COMPARE THAT BYTE TO 255 4C72 JNZ 4C78 ;JMP FFERR IF NOT EQUAL 4C75 INX D ;INC DE POINTS TO BUFF+132 4C76 LDAX D ;GET THAT BYTE 4C77 CMP B ;COMPARE TO CRC 4C78 FFERR: POP B ;B=SECTOR 4C79 XCHG ;DE->NEXT DEST HL->BUFF+132 4C7A JNZ 4CB5 ;CRC ERROR GO CRCERR ;CHECK FOR OUT OF MEMORY CHECK DONE LOADING 4C7D POP PSW ;0000H FIRST TIME 4C7E POP PSW ;ACC=16 4C7F LHLD 4CD5 ;L=BUFF+1 H=BUFF+2 4C82 PUSH D ;SAVE NEXT DEST 0080 first time 4C83 LXI D,FF00 ;DE->BOOTROM(END OF MEMORY) 4C86 CALL 4CCE ;COMPARE1 FF00H,HL OUT OF MEMORY (HL GREATER THAN FF00H) 4C89 POP D ; NEXT DEST 4C8A JC 4CBE ;JMP 'O'UT OF RAM ERROR (HL GREATER THAN FFOOH) 4C8D CALL 4CCE ;COMPARE2 DE,HL ARE WE DONE LOADING? 4C90 JNC 4CAE ;IF NO CARRY (HL <= NEXT DEST)WE'RE DONE GO EXECUTE ;CALCULATE NEXT SECTOR AND TRACK 4C93 INR B ;ADD 2 TO SECTOR# 4C94 INR B ; 4C95 MOV A,B ;DESIRED NEXT SECTORA 4C96 CPI 20 ;TEST IF SECTORA LESS THAN 32 4C98 JC 4C2C ;IF LESS GO GET IT 4C9B MVI B,01 ; IF NOT LESS MAKE DESIRED SECTORB=1 4C9D JZ 4C2C ;IF SECTORA EQUALED 32 GO GET SECTORB=1 4CA0 IN 08 ;ELSE GET STATUS 4CA2 ANI 02 ;TEST MOVE OK 4CA4 JNZ 4CA0 ;UNTIL MOVE IS OK 4CA7 MVI A,01 ;STEP IN CMD 4CA9 OUT 09 ;SEND STEP IN CMD 4CAB JMP 4C23 ;START LOADING FROM NEXT TRACK SECTORB=0 ;load the even sectors on a track first ;then the odd sectors ;DONE 4CAE MVI A,80 ; 4CB0 OUT 08 ;CLEAR CONTROLLER 4CB2 JMP 0000 ;GO ;CRC ERROR RETRY PSW TIMES 4CB5 CRCERR: POP D 4CB6 POP PSW ; 4CB7 DCR A ;DECREMENT RETRY COUNT 4CB8 JNZ 4C2E ;IF NOT 0 GO RETRY ;CLEAR CONTROLLER SEND TO CONSOLE ERROR MESSAGE 4CBB MVI A,43 ;ELSE LOAD A WITH CHAR 'C'RC ERROR 4CBD LXI B,4F3E ;GARBAGE ;4CBE MVI A,4F ; LOAD A WITH CHAR 'O'verflow 4CC0 LXI B,4D3E ;GARBAGE ;4CC1 MERROR: MVI A,4D ; LOAD A WITH CHAR 'M'EMORY ERROR 4CC3 MOV B,A ;SAVE CHAR 4CC4 MVI A,80 ;CLEAR CONTROLLER 4CC6 OUT 08 ;SEND CLEAR 4CC8 MOV A,B ;GET CHAR 4CC9 OUT 01 ;SEND error char TO CONSOLE 4CCB JMP 4CC9 ;OVER AND OVER and over... ;TEST FOR OVERFLOW, TEST load limit, COMPARE HL,DE 4CCE MOV A,D ; 4CCF CMP H ; 4CD0 RNZ ; 4CD1 MOV A,E ; 4CD2 CMP L ; 4CD3 RET ;BEGINNING OF IN BUFFER 4CD4 ADD H On 10/25/07 9:34 PM, "Rick Bensene" wrote: > > Hello, all, > > I recently acquired a very nice Altair 8800 with 40K of RAM (1 non-MITS > 16K Static RAM board, and 3 MITS 4K Static RAM Boards, a MITS Version 1 > 8080 CPU Board, a MITS 2SIO, a MITS 88-DCDD floppy disc controller (two > board pair), a MITS PROM board (8-slots for 1702 256-byte PROMS), a MITS > 4-port Parallel card, and two MITS 8" floppy disc drive enclosures, > along with a Televideo 912 Terminal, a heavily modified CT-1024 > "TV-Typewriter", and a serial TI 810 printer, and an 18-slot (non-MITS) > motherboard with an upgraded power supply. That along with boatloads of > spare parts, a bus extender, a couple of unused S-100 bus prototyping > cards, an unstuffed Ithaca Audio S100 board (not sure what it is), all > of the original Altair documentation, a bunch of 8" floppies (including > original various version of MITS (Micro-soft) BASIC, MITS DOS, and > FORTRAN complier, and a bunch of documentation written by the former > owner of the system. > > I very carefully inventoried everything first, then pulled out all of > the boards from the CPU and tested out the power supply, first > un-loaded, then under dummy loads, then powered it up with the front > panel power leads connected, but no other boards, and all looked good. > Then I plugged in the CPU board and the 16K static RAM board, and > powered up and could reliably examine and deposit data into the RAM. I > then wrote some simple test programs and toggled them in, such as > reading the sense switches and storing their content into a memory > location, setting all (as much of possible without getting too fancy) of > memory to a specific value, then verifying it, and various other CPU > functionality tests. > > All the little test I did passed with flying colors. I then added in > the three 8K MITS RAM boards, and they all seemed to work fine also. > > Then I plugged in the 2SIO board, but didn't have a cable to connect the > port clearly configured on the board as the console port to the > terminal, so I've got some work to do there. Tonight, I'm hoping to > write a little test code using HYPERTERM or the like on a laptop to > read/write characters through the console port. The other port is > configured strangely, and I need to do some jumper wire tracing to > figure out how it's configured. > So, the CPU itself seems great. Next, I checked out the floppy > controller boards, making sure all of the chips were well-seated (they > were all socketed), and checked the power supply lines and regulators to > make sure they were OK. > Put the board set into the system, plugged "DRIVE 0" into the CPU, and > toggled in some very basic floppy controller functionality tests that > are included in the manual for the controller, and tried out the tests. > They all passed just fine per the results that should be obtained as > mentioned in the manual. > > So, here's the dilemma. The PROM board is currently configured at a > start address of 1 111 100 000 000 000 (174000 Octal, or 0xF800). I > plugged all of the PROMs into the sockets (there were five different > ROMs that I found, including one that had a label that indicated that it > was some kind of BOOT ROM). I started examining memory at 0xF800, and > found that most all of the PROMs contained all zeros...either erased, or > suffering from failure due to extreme age (date codes of '76), and/or > no covers over the windows. The one PROM that responded was the one > that had the label hinting that it might be a boot PROM. So, I wrote > down the content of the PROM and went about hand disassembling it. It > does indeed appear to talk to the floppy controller, which is hard-coded > at I/O Addresses 0x10, 0x11, and 0x12), as there are a lot of IN and OUT > instructions referencing these I/O addresses. Looking at the various > absolute jump addresses in the ROM, it appers to be coded to run at > 0x4Cxx, or 046xxx Octal. If I set the start address of the ROM board to > make this ROM appear in the proper place, it'll conflict with the RAM > installed in the system. > > I have a number of disks which I'd like to try to boot from, including: > > ALTAIR DISK EXTENDED BASIC > REVISION 4.1 JUNE 1977 > COPYRIGHT 1988 BY MITS INC. > > > Another disk with the following: > MITS DISK OPERATING SYSTEM (DOS) > VERSION #1.0 MFG: 03/13/78 > COPYRIGHT 1977 BY MITS INC. > FLOPPY DISK > (NWD) SN: 10396 > > Which also has a label below this one saying > > FORTRAN COMPILER > VERSION #2.8 MFG:06/05/78 > COPYRIGHT 1978 BY MITS INC. > COPYRIGHT 1978 BY MICROSOFT INC. > (NWD) SN: 10152 > > > Also on this same disk is a small label saying: > > (C)MICROSOFT 1977 > ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO > > > And another disk that says: > > ALTAIR COMPUTER CENTER > BEAVERTON, OREGON > DISK COPY UTILITY VERSION 2.0 14-APR-78 > SN: 10058 7808 > NOTE: THIS DISKETTE WILL NOT COPY ITSELF > > All of the labels on these disks are original manufacturer > labels...these disks are the genuine thing, not copies. > > Clearly, I'd love to be able to boot these disks. I think that the > floppy controller is good. The system even came with a Alignment Disk, > so I toggled in some of the routines that would allow observation of the > tracking (cats-eye) and index/sector (it's a hard-sectored controller) > stuff with an oscilloscope, and everything looked perfect. > > I just need some bootstrap code. I've looked around in all of the > documentation, and there's no boot code listed in the docs for the > floppy subsystem. There are small bootstrap routines to load code over > the 2SIO board (presumably from a paper-tape reader on an ASR-33 TTY), > another from a parallel port (presumably from one of those little > optical tape readers that you'd pull the tape through, wasn't it a > company called OAE?), and another from cassette (but I don't have an > interface board for cassette). I've thought of writing a small program > that would copy the boot code out of the PROM into the proper space > within RAM, and then JMPing to it, but not sure if that'll work or > not...I suppose it's worth a try, but haven't done that yet. > > I've perused the web a lot looking for boot code for the Altair floppy > controller, and haven't been able to find anything. > > Any Altair experts out there that might have some floppy boot code for > the Altair 88DCDD floppy controller that might work to boot up the MITS > DOS, or DISK EXTENDED BASIC floppies I've got? Also, anyone know the > default console port I/O address that these products expect the serial > console to be at? I assume the FORTRAN compiler runs under MITS DOS, > and that's why the two products are together on the same disk. Right > now I've only got one of the floppy drives connected up, but I'd expect > that the FORTRAN compiler will need the 2nd drive in order to do > anything useful, but I'm trying to take things one step at a time. > > I've got a manual for Altair DOS, and it does describe the disk format, > so I suppose I could write a boot program myself, but it'd be a lot > easier just to find someone that already has the stuff. > > Also, if anyone knows where Altair DOS and Disk Extended BASIC expect > the serial console (e.g, I/O Port Address), that too would be helpful. > > If anyone could help, I'd sure appreciate it. > > Thanks in advance, > Rick Bensene > The Old Calculator (and sometimes Computer) Museum > http://oldcalculatormuseum.com > Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Thu Oct 25 22:18:10 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:18:10 -0300 Subject: [OT]: Kam Packet Controller References: <20071025122432.A61131@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <03b401c8177f$27404cf0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Any ham here? I'm looking for a KAM / KAM PLUS TNC...Lots of people here are hams, maybe someone willing to sell one... :o) Thanks Alexandre Souza PU1BZZ From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Thu Oct 25 21:44:35 2007 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim s) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:44:35 -0700 Subject: Basic Four In-Reply-To: References: <471FC06C.2010206@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <47215493.20303@msm.umr.edu> Mike Loewen wrote: > > Can one of you Basic Four experts identify the model for this control > panel? > dont know the basic four model number, but it is a Microdata 1600 front panel manufactured for Basic four. They licensed their own version of the 1600 which formed the basis of their own manufactured systems, but later migrated to 2901 based bit slice systems then to 68000's or such, I think. They usually had front loading IOmec drives in them for disk drives. Some systems had small pertec tape drives (1/2" 800 bpi) Cabinet was about 4' high. Too high for a "desk" high, but not as tall as most minicomputers. They could handle 8 or 16 users via rs232 boards. They supported a centronics or data products line printer (with same blue color scheme) A photo of a Basic 4 system with such a front panel can be viewed here: http://www.microdata-alumni.org/images/BasicFour_MicrodataCPU.jpg A microdata system with a similar panel is here: http://www.microdata-alumni.org/images/Reality_fullsystem.jpg A Microdata maintainence panel is nicely displayed on a manual cover here: http://www.microdata-alumni.org/images/computer_design_march1972_micro-babe.jpg Jim From grant at stockly.com Thu Oct 25 21:52:27 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 18:52:27 -0800 Subject: Altair 8800 Help In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0JQH00K29ZZ62600@msgmmp-1.gci.net> >So, here's the dilemma. The PROM board is currently configured at a >start address of 1 111 100 000 000 000 (174000 Octal, or 0xF800). I >plugged all of the PROMs into the sockets (there were five different >ROMs that I found, including one that had a label that indicated that it >was some kind of BOOT ROM). I started examining memory at 0xF800, and >found that most all of the PROMs contained all zeros...either erased, or >suffering from failure due to extreme age (date codes of '76), and/or >no covers over the windows. The one PROM that responded was the one >that had the label hinting that it might be a boot PROM. So, I wrote >down the content of the PROM and went about hand disassembling it. It >does indeed appear to talk to the floppy controller, which is hard-coded >at I/O Addresses 0x10, 0x11, and 0x12), as there are a lot of IN and OUT >instructions referencing these I/O addresses. Looking at the various >absolute jump addresses in the ROM, it appers to be coded to run at >0x4Cxx, or 046xxx Octal. If I set the start address of the ROM board to >make this ROM appear in the proper place, it'll conflict with the RAM >installed in the system. I have most of the boot PROMs and I also have a way of programming them. The disk boot rom goes in the far right slot. I think it copies itself into ram before running. Your ROM card is set up for the correct addresses as is. Flip A15-A8 up, do examine, flip all down except A11, then run. Your system should boot. You should at least get a noise out of the disk drive. You should have at least 24k of RAM to be safe. It won't sound anything like the emulator... ; ) I have detailed pictures and descriptions on how to wire the 2SIO as well as programs for checking it out. There are 3 pages here: http://www.stockly.com/forums/showthread.php?t=507 Grant From philippe at cowpig.ca Thu Oct 25 22:30:50 2007 From: philippe at cowpig.ca (Philippe Vachon) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:30:50 -0400 Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? Message-ID: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> Hi everyone, Being personally quite interested in DEC's laboratory systems, I stumbled a few days ago upon some scant details on DEC's nuclear medical imaging system, the Gamma-11. Apparently this PDP-11 was designed to be connected to a Gamma Camera, and had a VT11 or VSV11 display system connected to it. As well, along with it came a modified version of RT-11. I was wondering if anyone on the list had one of these machines and knew what parts made the hardware a Gamma-11, as well if anyone had manuals online that they might share, as well as potentially the software for the unit. There's not really much that I can see on Bitsavers, but I might not have looked hard enough; I found the VSV11 and VT11 option manuals, but that seemed to be about it. Cheers, Phil From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Thu Oct 25 22:44:27 2007 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 20:44:27 -0700 Subject: TRS-80 1 & 4 also: Help with IBM part numbers and schematics for the 5100 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4721629B.9010100@sbcglobal.net> Tony Duell wrote: > You still want to get a boot disk, so you cna use the disk drives, etc. > Most PC controllers can write the TRS-80 format (you should use a 360K > drive in the PC, BTW, the TRS-80 uses 40 cylinder disks normally). > Got some DOS disk from TRS-80.com and the systems works fine. > That's very unusual. That sounds like the typical behaviour of an SMPSU > that's detecting a problem and shutting down, but of course the M1 supply > is a linear one. This _is_ the origianl supply, right? > > -tony > It's an original RS black brick, analog type power supply. I'll look into this over the weekend. Now, yet another problem. On the IBM 5100 system I got, there is a problem with the keyboard. If you press the shift key (either one) or the command key, they act as if they are stuck down. Not mechanically, but logically. I took the keyboard apart, it's an interesting design. The key switches are a capacitive type, but operate in the reverse of other keyboards of that type I have seen before. All of the key switches are pressed down in the "open" position. When you press a key, the capacitive plate moves away from the pads on the PCB. I swapped key switches around and the problem stays with the shift and cmd keys. After downloading the maintenance manual from bitsavers.org, its clear that those keys control latches that change the key codes. There is a logic diagram, but not a real schematic. I believe the IC's are all TTL type, they are all made by TI or National, but all are IBM house numbered. Before I start to trace out the logic, does anyone have a cross reference for IBM IC numbers to industry standard numbers? Anyone with a real schematic that shows pin numbers on the IC's? Thanks, Bob From fu3.org at gmail.com Fri Oct 26 00:15:18 2007 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (from@fu3.org) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:15:18 +0200 Subject: table of contents for all issues of BYTE? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <310f50ab0710252215s2cac61f2p9ba6cc2cd72cec73@mail.gmail.com> 2007/10/26, Richard : > Does anyone know of a web site that lists the TOC (article titles and > authors) for all the issues of BYTE? Only a very few here: - http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/toc/index-table.html In the right column here, http://www.byte.com/art/, there's a link to buying "over eight years of" BYTE, as they put it; perhaps that would work, too. ..And I guess there's tons of issues issued, so this is probably useless. Good luck, anyway. From fu3.org at gmail.com Fri Oct 26 00:19:06 2007 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (from@fu3.org) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:19:06 +0200 Subject: table of contents for all issues of BYTE? In-Reply-To: <310f50ab0710252215s2cac61f2p9ba6cc2cd72cec73@mail.gmail.com> References: <310f50ab0710252215s2cac61f2p9ba6cc2cd72cec73@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <310f50ab0710252219s5dd432f7gcd3294683dfd75d8@mail.gmail.com> Hm, the first link (http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/toc/index-table.html) had more than I expected. (Seems like the lot, but what do I know..) From gtn at mind-to-mind.com Fri Oct 26 00:19:34 2007 From: gtn at mind-to-mind.com (Gavin Thomas Nicol) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 01:19:34 -0400 Subject: NeXT OD achiving In-Reply-To: References: <20071025122432.A61131@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <8220B84D-8465-4933-8CEF-B1A972735BF1@mind-to-mind.com> I have one OD drive in a cube that works (for how long, who knows). I also have a 0.8 OD disk that I need to archive, and later install onto an HDD. Installing by booting from the OD seems really risky so I'm thinking of doing a dump(8) of the OD drive dd'ing it to files on a larger hard disk, and then using using restore/dd to a new HDD. I remember a thread a long time ago about archiving NeXT OD images. Given the fragility of the drives, chances are I'll only get one shot at this, so I would appreciate hearing from anyone with experience archiving, and then using such images. From rickb at bensene.com Fri Oct 26 01:15:48 2007 From: rickb at bensene.com (Rick Bensene) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:15:48 -0700 Subject: Altair 8800 Help (Follow-Up) In-Reply-To: <0JQH00K29ZZ62600@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <0JQH00K29ZZ62600@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: Thanks to Rich and Grant for the information they promptly posted. This led me to put the supposed boot PROM in the right-most slot in the ROM board, and try booting. I got nowhere. Thought I'd try single stepping a bit, and noted that With the boot PROM is in this socket, it always reads back 11111111 for all addresses within the 256-byte address space. If I move the PROM to one of the lower-addressed sockets (further to the left end of the board), the PROM data shows up properly in that PROM socket's address space. So, what I think I've got going on is that either the 74157 address decoder has bad outputs for chip enable on the highest-addressed ROM, or the discrete-transistor-based Vgg power switching drivers that control the -9V supply (based on diode-AND-gated pairs of outputs from the 74157) to the upper two PROMs is bad. This Vgg switching based on "turning on" banks of two PROMS at a time is a power-saving measure. Time to break out the scope and start looking around. Both Rich and Grant pointed out that the ROM actually copies most of itself into RAM beginning at 0x4C00, and then branches to the RAM-resident code. I'd overlooked this in my hand disassembly, as I was mostly looking to find the references to the IN and OUT instructions that talked to the floppy controller, as well as branch addresses, which was confusing in the context of the code executing directly out of the PROM. Looking more carefully at what I dumped out of the PROM (when it was located in a socket on the ROM board where I can actually read it), it's clear that it does a copy of a chunk of the PROM image, executing this copy code out of the PROM, into RAM beginning at 0x4C00, then branches to 0x4C00 after the copy is completed, to actually do the boot from disk executing the boot code in RAM. I'll keep the list posted as to progress. -Rick From asholz at topinform.de Fri Oct 26 03:57:30 2007 From: asholz at topinform.de (Andreas Holz) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:57:30 +0200 Subject: Need help: Step by step approach in the restoration of old computers In-Reply-To: <471FD8F8.6040802@yahoo.co.uk> References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> <471FD8F8.6040802@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <4721ABFA.40403@topinform.de> Hello all, I need some advices for a proper approach to bring back to life an old system, which probably has not been used for a long time. Recently I got a LINC-8 in a quite good condition. I don't like to straight power on the system to look what might happen, but I would like to do it step by step. From reading this list and some personal experiences I think to check the power supply first. How I've to care abou the capacitors, there are 20 big ones in two power supplies. What is the general process in checking an old system? Andreas From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Fri Oct 26 03:59:29 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:59:29 -0400 Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? In-Reply-To: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> References: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> Message-ID: <20071026085929.7D5CDBA45FE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Philippe Vachon wrote: > Being personally quite interested in DEC's laboratory systems, I > stumbled a few days ago upon some scant details on DEC's nuclear medical > imaging system, the Gamma-11. Apparently this PDP-11 was designed to be > connected to a Gamma Camera, and had a VT11 or VSV11 display system > connected to it. As well, along with it came a modified version of > RT-11. > > I was wondering if anyone on the list had one of these machines and knew > what parts made the hardware a Gamma-11, as well if anyone had manuals > online that they might share, as well as potentially the software for > the unit. There's not really much that I can see on Bitsavers, but I > might not have looked hard enough; I found the VSV11 and VT11 option > manuals, but that seemed to be about it. Phil - I have worked with many different medical scanners based around PDP-11's. In every single case, they took a PDP-11 processor, a Unibus or Q-bus backplane, some memory and a disk drive or two, and bolted it onto an enormous kick-ass CAT scanner or NMR machine. None of these were Gamma-11's. Invariably the OS run was either RT-11 or RSX-11. With RSX-11 you usually had a custom device driver to talk to the specific componentry but lots of time with RT-11SJ they just run around the I/O page with what we'd call today "user code" with wild abandon. So this doesn't help you find Gamma-11, but it does let you know that for every Gamma-11 system out there, there were at least ten or twenty other medical imaging systems that used -11's. I suspect that some folks at DEC figured out that a lot of their systems were being sold to put into medical imaging systems so they took some common choices and put them into a catalog as a "starting point" configuration, but real medical imaging vendors had specific needs so they just specified what they needed and not what they didn't need. For CAT scanners, the amount of computation needed to do the backprojection usually resulted in a dedicated array processor that spanned dozens of big boards and sucked up very large amounts of power (often ECL). Well, that power sucking was not really noticeable compared to all the X-ray guns :-) The PDP-11 componentry pales in comparison to the backprojector and table and stuff! When I was working with these professionally, on a couple of occasions the customer would offer to ship me an entire CAT scanner for me to install in my basement at home. I never took them up on it! Tim. From wdonzelli at gmail.com Fri Oct 26 07:26:07 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 08:26:07 -0400 Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? In-Reply-To: <20071026085929.7D5CDBA45FE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> References: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> <20071026085929.7D5CDBA45FE@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> Message-ID: > I suspect > that some folks at DEC figured out that a lot of their systems were > being sold to put into medical imaging systems so they took some > common choices and put them into a catalog as a "starting point" > configuration... Basically, a fancy paint job, like the Clinical-12s - PDP-12s just painted blue. I wonder if they charged more money for that? -- Will From sellam at vintagetech.com Fri Oct 26 08:45:49 2007 From: sellam at vintagetech.com (Sellam Ismail) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:45:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: VCF 10.0 Press Release Message-ID: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE COMPUTER HISTORY PIONEERS CONGREGATE ON NOVEMBER 3-4 AT VINTAGE EVENT Vintage Computer Festival Celebrates History of Computing with live antique computers and living legends from the computer industry LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA (PRWEB) October 26, 2007 -- The Vintage Computer Festival, a yearly event that celebrates computers and their history, is being held on November 3-4 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Anticipation is building for what is expected to be the biggest and most well-attended event since the Festival's founding ten years ago. Celebrated once a year in Silicon Valley, as well as three other locations worldwide, the Vintage Computer Festival is the largest and most prestigious event of its kind, featuring a lecture series, an exhibition of working vintage and antique computers, and a marketplace for traders to buy and sell vintage computers. Collectors from around the world attend this event, which was founded in 1997. The Festival also recognizes its own history this year as it marks its tenth anniversary. This year, attendees will be treated to several historical figures in the computer industry, including Lee Felsenstein (designer of the classic Osborne 1, one of the first portable computers, and the SOL-20, one of the first personal computers), Al Hoagland (designer of the first commercial disk drive), legendary MIT proto-hackers Bill Gosper Steve Russell (author of the first videogame, Spacewar!), Wesley Clark (not the general, but the inventor of the first transistorized computer in the US) and prolific computer book author Lance Leventhal, who wrote dozens of computer self-help books throughout the 1970s and 1980s. One of the keynote sessions at the Festival this year is a panel featuring the engineers who in the early 1960s designed the LINC (Laboratory INstrumentation Computer), which was a revolutionar computer design that some consider to be the first "personal computer". The Festival also features a marketplace for collectors to buy, sell and trade vintage computers. There is also a screening of documentaries and films on both days of the event that have vintage computing or vintage technology themes. Some of the filmmakers will be present to talk about their work and give introductions to their films. There will also be an abstract artist (Christine Finn) on site throughout the event constructing a collaborative artwork based on discarded technology, culminating at a talk she will give on the piece at 3:00pm on Sunday. The Computer History Museum is an ideal location for the Festival as it allows attendees the opportunity to tour the Museum's collection while also attending the lectures and exhibits organized by the VCF. Tours of the Museum's collection will be given throughout the afternoon on each day of the Festival. Special theme tours during the weekend will include "A Brief History of the Internet" and "The History of Video Games", which are both guided by Museum docents. There will also be live demonstrations of ancient mainframe computers that have been painstakingly restored to working condition, including an IBM 1401 mainframe circa 1960 and a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 minicomputer circa 1961 running Spacewar!, the first ever videogame, written in 1962. The game's author, Steve Russell, will also be speaking at the Festival. The Computer History Museum is located at 1401 North Shoreline Blvd. in Mountain View, California, just off highway 101. The Vintage Computer Festival opens at 9:30am each day, with first sessions beginning at 10:00am and the exhibition and marketplace opening at 2:00pm each day. The film festival runs from 11:00am to 6:00pm each day. The Festival officially ends at 6:00pm on Sunday. Complete event information including admission, directions to the venue and the event schedule can be found on the VCF website: http://www.vintage.org/2007/main/ # # # -- 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 roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk Fri Oct 26 11:50:32 2007 From: roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk (Roger Holmes) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:50:32 +0100 Subject: Color Dot Matrix; Was Re: IBM junk In-Reply-To: <200710240257.l9O2uu4n051236@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710240257.l9O2uu4n051236@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <0D9A3C52-EA44-4F11-B4DB-C8AB1BED559B@microspot.co.uk> > > I always get really poor text quality with MacPalette II though, so if > anyone else is using it and knows what I'm doing wrong, let me know. > IIRC, MacPalette II only prints in Tall Adjusted, so many the poor > text is > just an artifact of that, or maybe one is meant to use different > fonts. Er, no. It was designed primarily for C.A.D. and simple pictures, so text quality was not a high priority. Its too long ago, but when I wrote MacPalette 1, it was based on the ImageWriter 1 driver. MacPalette 2 was in turn based on MacPalette 1. The text is just imaged into the off screen pixmap by QuickDraw so MacPalette does not have much control on what it looks like. I think there were some Apple magic font adjustment tables in there, maybe they were in a resource where you could edit them. They controlled things like how many pixels to offset the images of the characters by when making bold text and maybe things I never got into, which might be useful to you. I just had a look on my hard drive and I have a floppy disk image of MacPalette II, but on my Intel Mac, double clicking it says the application to open it is not supported on this system. I found the paragraph below on the web when I Googled "Apple font characterisation table", unfortunately at the time, Apple had not documented it, and it seems like they never got around to it. "For certain types of devices, such as a screen or the ImageWriter printer, the Font Manager uses the font characterization table from the device driver to determine any additional information that QuickDraw may need. The font characterization table contains information about the dots per vertical inch and dots per horizontal inch for that device, along with information about the different styles that the device can produce. Non-QuickDraw devices, such as the LaserWriter printer, return an error when the Font Manager requests their font characterization table." Roger Holmes, Technical Director, Microspot Ltd. From dmc_67301 at yahoo.com Fri Oct 26 12:28:34 2007 From: dmc_67301 at yahoo.com (Debbie Cornett) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:28:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: New Topic - Keyboard on Xerox Memorywriter 630 Message-ID: <254549.80901.qm@web55315.mail.re4.yahoo.com> I have an old Xerox Memorywriter 630 typewriter that is in good condition except that one key on the keyboard doesn't work and one key that works about half the time. I'm looking for a working keyboard for this machine or someone who knows how to fix the problem. Thanks. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From rickb at bensene.com Fri Oct 26 12:33:25 2007 From: rickb at bensene.com (Rick Bensene) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:33:25 -0700 Subject: Altair 8800 Help (Another Follow-Up) In-Reply-To: References: <0JQH00K29ZZ62600@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: An update on the Altair: Rather than try to debug the problem with the ROM board, I just moved the boot PROM to the lowest address socket, leaving the board select address at 0xF400, and wrote a tiny program to copy the correct part of the PROM into RAM at 0x4C00, as the beginning code in the boot PROM does. Put an infinite loop at the end of the little copier so I could check on the copy. First time around, the copy wasn't working. Diagnosed to be a problem on one of the 8K RAM boards. Removed that board for now, and reconfigured the two remaining 8K RAM boards so there was no gap in the address space, resulting in 32K in the machine. Tried again, and now I could see the boot code properly copied into 0x4C00. Next, I did some tinkering, and figured out that the low port on the 2SIO board was configured at the correct default I/O address. Tinkered with some RS232 cables I had, along with null modem/gender benders to get a cable that resulted in garbage being displayed on the Televideo 912C terminal that came with the system when the CPU was powered on. Then wrote some little tests to make sure I could send and receive characters from the terminal, which worked just fine. So, I re-entered the little "copy" routine, ran it, then halted the machine from the infinite loop at the end of the copy code, reset the CPU, set the address switches to 0x4C00, put the Altair Disk Extended BASIC disk into the floppy drive, held my breath, and flicked "RUN". The drive immediately loaded the head at Track 0, lights on the front panel were blinking like crazy, then the drive advanced the head to track 1, and then track 2, then suddenly, on the terminal, I see "MEMORY SIZE?"!!! I ran through the initial dialog, and was able to MOUNT disk 0, then do a RUN"PIP", and see the directory of the disk. Since this was an original disk, I didn't attempt to write anything to it. The only things on the disk are "PIP" and "STRTREK". Can't run STRTREK because the machine doesn't have enough RAM for it. With Disk Extended BASIC loaded, the machine reports 3072 bytes free after the initial dialog, where I told the system to allow up to 3 open files at once, and 2 random files at once. I'm sure that if I set it to 1 and 0, there'd be considerably more space left for user programs, but probably still not enough for STRTREK. I need to figure out what is up with the sick 8K RAM board, so I can get the machine back to 40K. While rummaging through the stuff in the boxes of stuff I got with the machine, I found a couple more interesting things. A spare 2SIO board, 2 original MITS 4K RAM boards (I think these were the very trouble-prone first generation dynamic RAM boards, which is why they probably aren't used), and a bare board made by "wmc Inc." entitled "MEM-1", revision C, with a date of 1977. This appears to be a Wameco 8K Static RAM board that uses 2101A RAMs. No wonder it has four places for 7805 Voltage Regulators with heat sinks. I found an assembly guide on the Web, may go ahead and build it out. I've got a good stash of 2102's, and the rest of the support logic I probably have in my cache of old TTL chips. The unpopulated Ithaca Audio board is an IA-1010, and looking around on the web, it's a Z80 CPU board for the S-100 bus. It is a very nicely-made board, with full solder mask, and nice silkscreen. So far, haven't been able to find any assembly information for this board, though it'd be interesting to build out and try. I think I've got a couple of Z80 chips around here, and probably enough parts to populate it. Things to do: 1) Figure out the problem with the ROM board 2) Try to fix the busted 8K RAM board 3) Build a cable to connect the floppy DRIVE 0 chassis to the DRIVE 1 chassis (so I can run both drives) 4) Start exploring all of the other floppies that came with the system 5) Check out the TI 810 printer and see if I can get it hooked up to the system and working 6) Do some tinkering with the TV Typewriter, and see if it's functional, though with all the mods, it'll be a bit of a challenge. So far, I'm pretty encouraged with how things are going. None of the problems found thus far are showstoppers . Comments & suggestions are welcomed, either (if appropriate) by posting here, or sending me Email off-list. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com From cclist at sydex.com Fri Oct 26 13:10:07 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:10:07 -0700 Subject: Altair 8800 Help (Another Follow-Up) In-Reply-To: References: , , Message-ID: <4721CB0F.7650.998562A@cclist.sydex.com> On 26 Oct 2007 at 10:33, Rick Bensene wrote: > An update on the Altair... Congratulations on getting the thing running! I'm surprised that the old capacitors in the power supply haven't dried out yet--but I suspect that you have a heavier-duty PSU in your box--the original didn't have much spare capacity. Yup, the 4K DRAM boards were miserable--they had an annoying tendency to change contents when "Reset" was pressed. Still, if you feel the urge to try them, I have some Fujitsu clones of the original 4K TI chips that you can have that might hold onto data better. On the other hand, the boards that used 2102 or even 21L02 SRAMs were pretty power hungry. I never used MITS-DOS; I became disgusted with the lousy production quality of the 8800 and moved to an IMSAI box for a time, then to an Integrand "no blinky lights, not even a power indicator" box and ran CP/M. Cheers, Chuck From grant at stockly.com Fri Oct 26 13:39:50 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:39:50 -0800 Subject: Altair 8800 Help (Another Follow-Up) In-Reply-To: References: <0JQH00K29ZZ62600@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <0JQJ00IFA7U61970@msgmmp-1.gci.net> > >So, I re-entered the little "copy" routine, ran it, then halted the >machine from the infinite loop at the end of the copy code, reset the >CPU, set the address switches to 0x4C00, put the Altair Disk Extended >BASIC disk into the floppy drive, held my breath, and flicked "RUN". >The drive immediately loaded the head at Track 0, lights on the front >panel were blinking like crazy, then the drive advanced the head to >track 1, and then track 2, then suddenly, on the terminal, I see "MEMORY >SIZE?"!!! Put an AM radio next to the computer with the lid off and it will sound crazy when you are running programs off of disk. Instant Sci-Fi movie effect. I've written a program that transfers the disks into a computer for archival and preservation. Are you interested in using it to save your disks? The disk images are compatible with the Altair32 emulator. I've used it to image very sensitive disks with many errors. I was able to go through the disk on my windows machine and extract information. Grant From aek at bitsavers.org Fri Oct 26 16:41:31 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:41:31 -0700 Subject: GAMMA-11 Message-ID: <47225F0B.1010405@bitsavers.org> > I was wondering if anyone on the list had one of these machines and knew > what parts made the hardware a Gamma-11, as well if anyone had manuals > online that they might share I have the manuals scanned, but they aren't on line yet, since it hasn't been a high-demand item. From healyzh at aracnet.com Fri Oct 26 17:00:45 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:00:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Group buy of 1541-III PCB's? In-Reply-To: <47201408.6050202@mdrconsult.com> from "Doc Shipley" at Oct 24, 2007 10:56:56 PM Message-ID: <200710262200.l9QM0jPs007499@onyx.spiritone.com> Warning, it looks like I'm going to be mostly offline for 10 days or so. I have problems with my DSL line and am being told that it will take about 10 days (I assume that's if I'm lucky) for them to modernize my circuit to work with the current DSL modems. So if I don't post any further on this for a while, I've not flaked out, I simply haven't figured out how to access my email reliably. :^( Verizon S****! Zane From tpeters at mixcom.com Fri Oct 26 17:27:20 2007 From: tpeters at mixcom.com (Tom Peters) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:27:20 -0500 Subject: [OT]: Kam Packet Controller In-Reply-To: <03b401c8177f$27404cf0$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <20071025122432.A61131@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20071026172651.0ea3c298@localhost> At 12:18 AM 10/26/2007 -0300, you wrote: > Any ham here? I'm looking for a KAM / KAM PLUS TNC...Lots of people > here are hams, maybe someone willing to sell one... :o) > > Thanks > Alexandre Souza > PU1BZZ I have only my little KPC-3 de N9QQB ----- 927. "Adam was but human - this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent." - -Twain --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... tpeters at nospam.mixcom.com (remove "nospam") N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) WEB: 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 ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 26 17:58:47 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:58:47 +0100 (BST) Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: <5422i355ca2e11mr0edrr50i19ijdoj3gm@4ax.com> from "Charles" at Oct 25, 7 04:26:56 pm Message-ID: > No idea as to whether it was bulk-erased, but that is starting to > sound more likely, given the above history. He has volunteered to > mail me a "real" (DEC) pack, at no additional cost - that's superb > fleabay service and definitely exceeded my expectations. But given what you said, it could be that all the packs, including the DEC ones have been bluk-erased :-( There is no way to rewrite the servo information using a normal RL drive. The formatter at the factoy had a totally different head positioner (or so I am told) which could position the heads at particular distances from the spindle (oviously it couldn't rely on patterns read from the back). I was told that for some disks (I don't know if the RL's were among them), the pposition feedback for this postiioner was provided by an optical interferonmeter. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 26 18:00:29 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:00:29 +0100 (BST) Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: <47210EF2.3080502@oldskool.org> from "Jim Leonard" at Oct 25, 7 04:47:30 pm Message-ID: > And to borrow one of Tony's expressions, my financial situation has gone > completely pants. So I'm stuck here too. I don;t beleive I've ever used that expression... But like you, I have a cashflow problem. It's all flowed out. It is the way of the world that certain groups of people get well-paid and electronics hackers are not among them. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 26 18:06:42 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:06:42 +0100 (BST) Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? In-Reply-To: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> from "Philippe Vachon" at Oct 25, 7 11:30:50 pm Message-ID: > > Hi everyone, > > Being personally quite interested in DEC's laboratory systems, I > stumbled a few days ago upon some scant details on DEC's nuclear medical > imaging system, the Gamma-11. Apparently this PDP-11 was designed to be > connected to a Gamma Camera, and had a VT11 or VSV11 display system > connected to it. As well, along with it came a modified version of > RT-11. > > I was wondering if anyone on the list had one of these machines and knew > what parts made the hardware a Gamma-11, as well if anyone had manuals I don't have one, but I did repair one about 10 years ago (it was still being used for 'real' work back then), so I have some idea as to what was inside. I never worked on the camera side of things, so I can't comment on that. The machine consisted of a normal 11/34 processor (I can't rememebr if there was a floating point oard in it or not) with a grpahics display system, I think it was a VS60. There was an RL11 disk controller linked to (IIRC) a single RL01 drive. There was also a 5.25" high expanison box. This contains 2 4-slot backplanee. One was Unibus, linked to the 11/34 Unius, and contains (IIRC again) the RL11 and the Unibus end of a DW11-B. The other was Q-bus, and contains the other end of the DW11-B. It also contained 3 special Qbus cards which were the interface to the camera. I probably took copies of the printsets for those, but don't expect me to find them in the near future. The only part I had to repair was the RL11, that was standard. So alas I didn't get to look at any of the 'interesting' bits. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 26 18:13:37 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:13:37 +0100 (BST) Subject: TRS-80 1 & 4 also: Help with IBM part numbers and schematics In-Reply-To: <4721629B.9010100@sbcglobal.net> from "Bob Rosenbloom" at Oct 25, 7 08:44:27 pm Message-ID: [M4] > Got some DOS disk from TRS-80.com and the systems works fine. Excellent. Incidentally, you can also boot any Model 3 OS (or self-booting disk, or...) on the Model 4. You'll have a 64*16 display, like a M3, and 48K RAM, but it does work (and was designed to work). [M1] > It's an original RS black brick, analog type power supply. I'll look > into this over the weekend. It's been a long time since I've been inside an M1, but I remmber some of it. The PSU has a cnetre-tapped AC output used for the +12V ad -5V supplies and am unsmoothed DC output (it's another centre-tapped winding with a couple of dfodes inside the power brick) for the +5V. All smoothing is on the CPU PCB. The +12V and +5V regulator circuits use the well-known 723 chip, and are linear supplies. The -5V supply is a simple zener diode + resistor circuit. I wonder if for some unknown reason the machine suddently draws too much current from one of the supplies about 1s after reset. And that shuts the supply down, it then tires to restart onlg for the prolem to repeat. I can't think what would do that, though. But the prolem might not be in the PSU area. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Oct 26 18:25:28 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:25:28 +0100 (BST) Subject: Need help: Step by step approach in the restoration of old computers In-Reply-To: <4721ABFA.40403@topinform.de> from "Andreas Holz" at Oct 26, 7 10:57:30 am Message-ID: > What is the general process in checking an old system? My procedure (for which I've been flamed here, I might add) is as follows : 1) Dismantle the machine as far as is sensible. Do a visual inspection for a) Loose phardware that might be causing short-crcuits b) Bent pins, etc that might be doing the same c) Broekn/burnt compoennts 2) Check that mechanical parts, including fans, are free to move correctly 3) Check for ovious shorts on power lines if possible. Maybe remove large cpaacitors and check them separately using a bench supply and series limiting resistor. 4) Check earth (ground) wiring back to the mains plug. Preferably at test current of twice the mains fuse rating. You don't want this wiring to burn out if there is an insulation breakdown, having the chassis becoming live is not good for the machine or anything it's connected to! 5) Do an insulation test (1000V test voltage) on the mains-connected parts (trnasformers, fans, etc) To be fair, I've never had a piece of _old_ computer hardware fail either of those tests. New stuff is another matter! 6) At this point, power up as little as possible. Maybe just the transformer and fans. Check the output voltages from the transformer, leave it on for a bit and see if anything gets hot (may indicate shorted turns in the transofrmer). If you are worried about possile peoblems here, connect a mains-rated light bulu (100W or so rathing) in series with the supply to the machiune. With just the transformer and fans running, the bulb might give a dim glow, but nothing more. If it glows brightly, you've got a short somewhree. 7) Add the rest of the PSU. Check the output voltages on dummy load. 8) Add as little of the logic as possible to get something that will work. Check again. 9) Add some more logic, checking at each stage. -tony From mross666 at hotmail.com Fri Oct 26 20:15:33 2007 From: mross666 at hotmail.com (Mike Ross) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 01:15:33 +0000 Subject: cctech Digest, Vol 50, Issue 62 Message-ID: Message: 1 Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:25:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Fred Cisin Subject: Re: Things to do in SF before VCF > > Will, the only guy here NOT attending VCF. > > Nope. I ain't going either, dang it! >My work schedule sucks, also. Not just you guys, I won't be near the place. Wrong coast, plus my wife is VERY preg and could just possibly go 'pop' at an inconvenient time! Not too sad tho - just had a major coup, see: http://www.corestore.org/3.htm :-) Cheers Mike http://www.corestore.org _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook ? together at last. ?Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 From tponsford at rnsmte.com Fri Oct 26 21:25:51 2007 From: tponsford at rnsmte.com (tponsford) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 19:25:51 -0700 Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? In-Reply-To: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> References: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> Message-ID: <4722A1AF.4000807@rnsmte.com> Hi All Just Last month I picked up a Tracor Northern console which was hooked up to (I think) either a scanning electron microscope or some kind of EC design system. I picked it up for $15 as I wanted the 11/73, the DQ616 and the floppy controllers, as well as the syquest MFM removable optical drive! The rest of the graphics subsystem is sitting in my shed with my Vision One which was another pdp run graphics subsystem. The Vision One was use for astronomy I think! Cheers Tom Philippe Vachon wrote: >Hi everyone, > >Being personally quite interested in DEC's laboratory systems, I >stumbled a few days ago upon some scant details on DEC's nuclear medical >imaging system, the Gamma-11. Apparently this PDP-11 was designed to be >connected to a Gamma Camera, and had a VT11 or VSV11 display system >connected to it. As well, along with it came a modified version of >RT-11. > >I was wondering if anyone on the list had one of these machines and knew >what parts made the hardware a Gamma-11, as well if anyone had manuals >online that they might share, as well as potentially the software for >the unit. There's not really much that I can see on Bitsavers, but I >might not have looked hard enough; I found the VSV11 and VT11 option >manuals, but that seemed to be about it. > >Cheers, >Phil > > > > From billdeg at degnanco.com Fri Oct 26 21:51:45 2007 From: billdeg at degnanco.com (B. Degnan) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:51:45 -0400 Subject: Cromemco System Three PerSci 8" Drive Problem ? Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20071026223157.02c4c290@mail.degnanco.net> Question I have a CS3 with a PerSci dual 8" internal drive that does not recognize/respond when a disk is inserted in drive A, but drive B does respond when a disk is inserted. Drives C and D are empty. The PerSci dual 8" drive is the model with the one belt/on-board controller shared by the two drives. When working correctly, the drive has a mechanical lock that detects the insertion of the disk, engages the read head, and holds the diskette in place. No latch arm needed. There are 4 buttons on the front, one for each drive (A,B,C,D) - If you push the corresponding button and there's a disk in the drive a motor ejects the diskette automatically. Pretty cool for a 1979 micro. Do the diskette detect sensors go bad on these? Next I tried and failed to get a RDOS monitor prompt, although I followed the dip switch settings as instructed in the manual. The drive controller has the RDOS ROM. I did all of the standard things, re-press the IC's, re-seat the cards, etc. The system is in very nice shape, no corrosion or scratches. I feel that I have nailed down the problem to being either the drive, the drive controller, or the terminal. Through a process of elimination I will attempt to replace each component in question (except the dual drive, I will probably put in Tandons instead if I can. I have a head start, the entire system came together in one donation so I was able to record how it was all cabled together, and I can assume it worked once as-was. Also included in the lot was Fortran IV and CDOS software. The printer is a Texas Instruments Omni 800 / 810 RO Terminal. I was told the system cost $15,000 new in 1979. A pretty sweet personal computer. PICS: http://www.vintagecomputer.net/cromemco/system_three/ From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Oct 26 22:10:09 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:10:09 -0400 Subject: Cromemco System Three PerSci 8" Drive Problem ? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20071026223157.02c4c290@mail.degnanco.net> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20071026223157.02c4c290@mail.degnanco.net> Message-ID: <200710262310.09946.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 26 October 2007 22:51, B. Degnan wrote: > Question > I have a CS3 with a PerSci dual 8" internal drive that does not > recognize/respond when a disk is inserted in drive A, but drive B does > respond when a disk is inserted. Drives C and D are empty. The PerSci > dual 8" drive is the model with the one belt/on-board controller shared by > the two drives. When working correctly, the drive has a mechanical lock > that detects the insertion of the disk, engages the read head, and holds > the diskette in place. No latch arm needed. There are 4 buttons on the > front, one for each drive (A,B,C,D) - If you push the corresponding button > and there's a disk in the drive a motor ejects the diskette > automatically. Pretty cool for a 1979 micro. > > Do the diskette detect sensors go bad on these? I have one of those systems and it also has a problem with that drive. In fact the problem was persistent enough that the disk that was in it was worn clear at the track zero location. I have some data on it here, and it appears that they use incandescent (!) bulbs for things like index pulse, etc. in those drives. I strongly suspect that these are related to the problems I'm seeing, but haven't done anything with it pending me finding some of those rather odd connectors used to supply power to the drive, as I'd need to make an extension for it to work on the unit. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From jack.rubin at ameritech.net Fri Oct 26 23:03:33 2007 From: jack.rubin at ameritech.net (Jack Rubin) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:03:33 -0500 Subject: WTB - IMSAI or similar chassis Message-ID: <000401c8184e$57949490$176fa8c0@obie> I'm looking for an S100 chassis in which to mount my WAMECO system. I have power supply, mother board and component cards but I'm looking for a chassis with a front bulkhead for attaching the WAMECO front panel. The WAMECO components are drop-in replacements for the IMSAI bits. The distinguishing characteristic of the chassis is that the motherboard actually extends thorough the front bulkhead to receive the front panel. Slot one is offset by an extra 1/4" to accommodate the front panel. In addition to IMSAI, boxes of this type were manufactured by TEI and Integrand and maybe a few others. I don't need the top or any electronics - just a bare chassis with card guides. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jack No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.11/1093 - Release Date: 10/25/2007 5:38 PM From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Fri Oct 26 19:21:00 2007 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim s) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:21:00 -0700 Subject: GAMMA-11 In-Reply-To: <47225F0B.1010405@bitsavers.org> References: <47225F0B.1010405@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <4722846C.5070606@msm.umr.edu> Al Kossow wrote: > > I was wondering if anyone on the list had one of these machines and knew > > what parts made the hardware a Gamma-11, as well if anyone had manuals > > online that they might share > > I have the manuals scanned, but they aren't on line yet, since it hasn't > been > a high-demand item. > > > This discussion reminded me of a very interesting series of incident documented on the web pages linked to below. The problem was related to control computers which were controlling exposure to patients which were being treated with a particle beam from a linear accelerator. The title is the Therac-25 Accidents, if you already are familiar with it. I don't recall from having not reread this whether this was a PDP-11 instrument or not, however, but this certainly remindes me of this. Jim http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sat Oct 27 02:46:10 2007 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 08:46:10 +0100 Subject: Need help: Step by step approach in the restoration of old computers In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1193471170.16531.1.camel@elric> On Sat, 2007-10-27 at 00:25 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > > What is the general process in checking an old system? > > My procedure (for which I've been flamed here, I might add) is as follows > : > > 1) Dismantle the machine as far as is sensible. Do a visual inspection > for Before you do this, make extensive notes of what goes where. I didn't, when I first got my PDP11, and was fortunate in that a) it's a fairly simple machine with not a lot to get wrong, and b) I had enough sense and tools to figure out how it was meant to be... Gordon From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Sat Oct 27 03:37:25 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:37:25 +0200 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <471A08C6.20072.234A8A87@cclist.sydex.com> References: <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <4719F20A.21437.22F1B8E9@cclist.sydex.com> <471A6027.8000702@mdrconsult.com> <471A08C6.20072.234A8A87@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071027103725.78eb8732@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:55:18 -0700 "Chuck Guzis" wrote: > I can get DSL modems with ARM7 MPUs, wireless, USB and 100BaseT as > well as some sort of serial connection, flash and generous DRAM that > are running Linux for next to nothing at the local recycler (or from > Freecycle). There's just no easy way to dig into the thing to add my > own doodads, otherwise I'd have a bucket of the things and toss a lot > of my bigger boxes. There is the Alix from PC-Engines. It is basicly a PeeCee SBC around the AMD LX800 CPU / system on a chip. Cost is 100..150 EUR. The alix1c has GPIO pins. It is open, it is documented, you can run any PeeCee OS on it, WinDOS, Linux, ... It seems a reasonable base for all non-trivial tasks, that can't be handled by a small microcontroler. E.g. if you need Ethernet, USB2, ... or lots of RAM. Speaking about small microcontrolers: I am currently hacking an Atmel AVR. avr-gcc and avr-libc are great stuff. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sat Oct 27 10:33:26 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 08:33:26 -0700 Subject: WTB - IMSAI or similar chassis In-Reply-To: <000401c8184e$57949490$176fa8c0@obie> References: <000401c8184e$57949490$176fa8c0@obie> Message-ID: > From: jack.rubin at ameritech.net> > I'm looking for an S100 chassis in which to mount my WAMECO system. Hi Jack Is that the front panel that has 7 segment LEDs instead of individual LEDs? I've got one of those with a box but I've not had time to fiddle with it. I've got it to load code but the processor only runs for a short time before it goes to never-never land. It could be a RAM, CPU or BUS issue?? I've collected enough pieces to build a complete system, RAM, CPU, Disk Controller, I/O and drive box. I regret that I don't have a spare box for you. It seems like I just saw someone stating that they were scrapping a number of S100 boxes. Someone that was interested in possible gold recovering. I wish people would do the math. People look at something like the edge connector of a S100 and they see riches. I calculated that at $760 a troy oz, the fingers are worth about $1 to $2 in gold, depending on thickness. The ebay value is much more. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live Hotmail and Microsoft Office Outlook ? together at last. ?Get it now. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102225181033.aspx?pid=CL100626971033 From philippe at cowpig.ca Sat Oct 27 10:48:28 2007 From: philippe at cowpig.ca (Philippe Vachon) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 11:48:28 -0400 Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? In-Reply-To: References: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> Message-ID: <20071027154828.GA27089@cowpig.ca> On Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 12:06:42AM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > > I don't have one, but I did repair one about 10 years ago (it was still > being used for 'real' work back then), so I have some idea as to what was > inside. I never worked on the camera side of things, so I can't comment > on that. > > The machine consisted of a normal 11/34 processor (I can't rememebr if > there was a floating point oard in it or not) with a grpahics display > system, I think it was a VS60. There was an RL11 disk controller linked > to (IIRC) a single RL01 drive. > > There was also a 5.25" high expanison box. This contains 2 4-slot > backplanee. One was Unibus, linked to the 11/34 Unius, and contains (IIRC > again) the RL11 and the Unibus end of a DW11-B. The other was Q-bus, and > contains the other end of the DW11-B. It also contained 3 special Qbus > cards which were the interface to the camera. I probably took copies of > the printsets for those, but don't expect me to find them in the near future. > > The only part I had to repair was the RL11, that was standard. So alas I > didn't get to look at any of the 'interesting' bits. > > -tony Hrmn, this is interesting; I wonder why DEC chose to use an 11/34 for the Gamma-11, or if the machine was "upgraded" to become a Gamma-11 post-installation. I'm fairly tempted to try to pick up that boardset, nonetheless... I imagine it is rather difficult to snag anymore though. Thanks for the details, Tony! > > > I don't recall from having not reread this whether this was a PDP-11 > instrument or not, however, but this certainly remindes me of this. > > Jim Yeah, these were PDP-11s, as I recall. In skimming the article, that seems to be what it indicates as well. I can't help but to feel sorry for the people who were overexposed to radiation in the Therac-25, but I get the impression that the lesson from it has been learned, but only after prolonged time in court. Cheers, Phil From starbase89 at gmail.com Sat Oct 27 12:37:09 2007 From: starbase89 at gmail.com (Joe Giliberti) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 13:37:09 -0400 Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? In-Reply-To: <20071027154828.GA27089@cowpig.ca> References: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> <20071027154828.GA27089@cowpig.ca> Message-ID: <2b1f1f550710271037n75330906x4a4dbad79b6020d0@mail.gmail.com> just a quick question: wasn't it a poorly programmed PDP-11 that controlled the infamous Therac 25 radiotherapy machine? On 10/27/07, Philippe Vachon wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 12:06:42AM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > > > > I don't have one, but I did repair one about 10 years ago (it was still > > being used for 'real' work back then), so I have some idea as to what > was > > inside. I never worked on the camera side of things, so I can't comment > > on that. > > > > The machine consisted of a normal 11/34 processor (I can't rememebr if > > there was a floating point oard in it or not) with a grpahics display > > system, I think it was a VS60. There was an RL11 disk controller linked > > to (IIRC) a single RL01 drive. > > > > There was also a 5.25" high expanison box. This contains 2 4-slot > > backplanee. One was Unibus, linked to the 11/34 Unius, and contains > (IIRC > > again) the RL11 and the Unibus end of a DW11-B. The other was Q-bus, and > > contains the other end of the DW11-B. It also contained 3 special Qbus > > cards which were the interface to the camera. I probably took copies of > > the printsets for those, but don't expect me to find them in the near > future. > > > > The only part I had to repair was the RL11, that was standard. So alas I > > didn't get to look at any of the 'interesting' bits. > > > > -tony > > Hrmn, this is interesting; I wonder why DEC chose to use an 11/34 for > the Gamma-11, or if the machine was "upgraded" to become a Gamma-11 > post-installation. I'm fairly tempted to try to pick up that boardset, > nonetheless... I imagine it is rather difficult to snag anymore though. > > Thanks for the details, Tony! > > > > > > > I don't recall from having not reread this whether this was a PDP-11 > > instrument or not, however, but this certainly remindes me of this. > > > > Jim > > Yeah, these were PDP-11s, as I recall. In skimming the article, that > seems to be what it indicates as well. I can't help but to feel sorry > for the people who were overexposed to radiation in the Therac-25, but > I get the impression that the lesson from it has been learned, but only > after prolonged time in court. > > Cheers, > Phil > From evan at snarc.net Sat Oct 27 12:53:00 2007 From: evan at snarc.net (Evan) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 13:53:00 -0400 Subject: Very cool DEC documents Message-ID: <200710271754.l9RHrwO3080216@billy.ezwind.net> No details yet, but our local user group (MARCH) is getting some manuals from a PDP-4. Yes I said "4". How rare are these ... Al K.? From ragooman at comcast.net Sat Oct 27 13:44:31 2007 From: ragooman at comcast.net (Dan Roganti) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:44:31 -0400 Subject: Things to do in SF before VCF In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4723870F.1060402@comcast.net> Tony Duell wrote: > electronics hackers are not among them. > > -tony > > > This reminds me of an old comic I had seen in an old issue of EDN (early 80's). I dug it out to make sure I still have it, so I'm going to scan it The Two engineers made a remark about the speed of their computer design. "It's fast all right, the only thing that goes faster is my paycheck." =Dan [ "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them" ] [ Pittsburgh --- http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ] From pat at computer-refuge.org Sat Oct 27 13:56:58 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:56:58 -0400 Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? In-Reply-To: <2b1f1f550710271037n75330906x4a4dbad79b6020d0@mail.gmail.com> References: <20071026033050.GA24823@cowpig.ca> <20071027154828.GA27089@cowpig.ca> <2b1f1f550710271037n75330906x4a4dbad79b6020d0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200710271456.58786.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Saturday 27 October 2007 13:37, Joe Giliberti wrote: > just a quick question: wasn't it a poorly programmed PDP-11 that > controlled the infamous Therac 25 radiotherapy machine? Yes. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From charlesmorris at hughes.net Sat Oct 27 14:50:36 2007 From: charlesmorris at hughes.net (Charles) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:50:36 -0500 Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? Message-ID: <6t47i35kdcsu6naelbbm73ivih3v4fsnh7@4ax.com> >But given what you said, it could be that all the packs, including the >DEC ones have been bluk-erased :-( I wish you hadn't said that :P Only way to find out is to try it when the replacement arrives. Meanwhile I also looked at the platter hub. The DEC cartridge has 40 slots evenly spaced around its circumference, whereas this Memorex pack has only 8, one of which is a "double", presumably for indexing. As the RL drive uses a reluctor pickup on this area to sense disk rotational speed (among other things), there is no way the Memorex would have ever worked in an RL... >There is no way to rewrite the servo information using a normal RL drive. Is there anyone out there who has hardware capable of reformatting these packs i.e. rewriting servo tracks? -Charles From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Sat Oct 27 15:17:45 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 13:17:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 5-1/4 diskette drive on current computers In-Reply-To: <471D141A.3020207@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <142186.60376.qm@web61023.mail.yahoo.com> have tried it on Windoze up to 2000 Server. You need to have a 3.5" drive as a:, and the 5.25" (DD or HD) as b:. Works like a charm. I seem to recall W2000 even being able to open a quad. You'll need an old style a:/b: cable wit duh twist to differentiate the 2. Set up bios accordingly. Never did it on anything other then a Celeron/PMMX though IIRC. I don't imagine the hardware (accept for proprietary) being the issue. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From cheri-post at web.de Sat Oct 27 15:20:35 2007 From: cheri-post at web.de (Pierre Gebhardt) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:20:35 +0200 Subject: Illustrated parts breakdown document for the DEC HSC50 needed Message-ID: <171900945@web.de> Hi all, can anybody point me to a "working" pdf-version of the IPB-document for a HSC50 called EK-HSC50-IP-00x ? There are pdf-copies from the DEC MDS online on the Manx-website, but unfortunately, most of the diagrams are missing there. Same for the mirrored copies... The reason for asking this that I saved such a unit before the scrappers could get it, and I need to figure out how to take apart the locked front door of the chassis. The key is missing... Any help is apprechiated! Kind regards, Pierre ______________________________________________________________________________ Jetzt neu! Im riesigen WEB.DE Club SmartDrive Dateien freigeben und mit Freunden teilen! http://www.freemail.web.de/club/smartdrive_ttc.htm/?mc=021134 From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Sat Oct 27 15:24:46 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 13:24:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap Message-ID: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> 170161400500 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sat Oct 27 15:36:42 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:36:42 +0100 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4723A15A.40300@yahoo.co.uk> Chris M wrote: > 170161400500 What CPU is that code for? From teoz at neo.rr.com Sat Oct 27 15:55:23 2007 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:55:23 -0400 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <001401c818db$b22c6ee0$55724247@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris M" To: "talk" Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2007 4:24 PM Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap > 170161400500 > Ebay IBM xga-2 video card (ps/2)? From aek at bitsavers.org Sat Oct 27 17:03:42 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:03:42 -0700 Subject: PDP-4 documents (was Very cool DEC documents) Message-ID: <4723B5BE.7080106@bitsavers.org> > manuals from a PDP-4. Yes I said "4". How rare are these ... Al K.? Paper copies aren't common. Most of the material has been scanned. The 4 is the first of the 18 bit series that ended with the 15. It was the first DEC computer to ship after the 1. From classiccmp.org at stellar.eclipse.co.uk Sat Oct 27 17:07:10 2007 From: classiccmp.org at stellar.eclipse.co.uk (Stroller) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:07:10 +0100 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <001401c818db$b22c6ee0$55724247@game> References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> <001401c818db$b22c6ee0$55724247@game> Message-ID: <485B2C16-4F5A-43A1-A0C7-898410934F56@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> On 27 Oct 2007, at 21:55, Teo Zenios wrote: >> 170161400500 > > Ebay IBM xga-2 video card (ps/2)? Ideal if you wish to enjoy the authentic desire to upgrade to a Hercules. Stroller. From starbase89 at gmail.com Sat Oct 27 17:22:52 2007 From: starbase89 at gmail.com (Joe Giliberti) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 18:22:52 -0400 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <4723A15A.40300@yahoo.co.uk> References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> <4723A15A.40300@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <2b1f1f550710271522t13f9de4u26aaa4983f152c95@mail.gmail.com> think its an ebay item number? Joe On 10/27/07, Jules Richardson wrote: > > Chris M wrote: > > 170161400500 > > What CPU is that code for? > > From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 27 17:28:32 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:28:32 +0100 (BST) Subject: Cromemco System Three PerSci 8" Drive Problem ? In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20071026223157.02c4c290@mail.degnanco.net> from "B. Degnan" at Oct 26, 7 10:51:45 pm Message-ID: > > Question > I have a CS3 with a PerSci dual 8" internal drive that does not > recognize/respond when a disk is inserted in drive A, but drive B does > respond when a disk is inserted. Drives C and D are empty. The PerSci > dual 8" drive is the model with the one belt/on-board controller shared by > the two drives. When working correctly, the drive has a mechanical lock > that detects the insertion of the disk, engages the read head, and holds > the diskette in place. No latch arm needed. There are 4 buttons on the Actually, there is a latch arm which lowers the hub clamping cone as usual. It's just that it's operated by the same motor that ejects the disk, so you don't have to do it manually. > front, one for each drive (A,B,C,D) - If you push the corresponding button > and there's a disk in the drive a motor ejects the diskette > automatically. Pretty cool for a 1979 micro. IIRC, there was a way to eject disks automatically, probably by using one of the otherwise unused pins on the interface connector. > > Do the diskette detect sensors go bad on these? Anything can go bad :-( It's been a long time since I've been inside my Persci drive, but from what I rememebr there's a lot of circuitry common to the 2 drives. And since one of your drives is working, it would appear that all that circuitry must be working too. IIRC, the disk inserted sensor uses a filampnt lamp as the light source. Maybe that's failed. In any case this shouldn't be too hard to trace out. > > Next I tried and failed to get a RDOS monitor prompt, although I followed > the dip switch settings as instructed in the manual. The drive controller > has the RDOS ROM. > > I did all of the standard things, re-press the IC's, re-seat the cards, > etc. The system is in very nice shape, no corrosion or scratches. > > I feel that I have nailed down the problem to being either the drive, the > drive controller, or the terminal. Through a process of elimination I will > attempt to replace each component in question (except the dual drive, I Before you easter-egg the machine (and thus start _that_ flamewar again :-)). I feel it would be better to do some tests. My first test would be on the RS232 cable to the terminal. See if the machine is sending anything. You caouls also try a hardware loopback connection on the terminal's RS232 port to see if you can get it to echo characters from its keyboard to the screen. Then I'd start looking at he signals on the drive cable with a logic probe, or batter still a logic analyser. See if the machine is selecting the drive. Check there's a naindex pulse, that the drive is going ready, that head is been stepped to cylinder 0, and so on. Then see if the read data line looks sensible. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 27 17:36:11 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:36:11 +0100 (BST) Subject: Need help: Step by step approach in the restoration of old In-Reply-To: <1193471170.16531.1.camel@elric> from "Gordon JC Pearce" at Oct 27, 7 08:46:10 am Message-ID: > > > On Sat, 2007-10-27 at 00:25 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > > > What is the general process in checking an old system? > > > > My procedure (for which I've been flamed here, I might add) is as follows > > : > > > > 1) Dismantle the machine as far as is sensible. Do a visual inspection > > for > > Before you do this, make extensive notes of what goes where. I didn't, Ooops, yes... In particular record what the cables conneect to what, and which way up connectors go. Make a diagram of where the PCBs go. It may be worth putting numbers on all the PCBs, indicating which slot they came out of if there are several identical PCBs that have to e put back in the same slots (an example of this is the monostable PCBs in an RK11C. They're all the same electrically, but are set to different time delays. Unless you want to have to set the whole thing up from scratch, get them back in the same slots!). In some cases I make a note of the order of nuts, washers, solder tags, etc on things like earthing screws. Needless to say a notebook and pen is always to hand when I take a machine apart. It may be old-fshioned, but I've yet to find a computer that's anywhere near as convenient! I've never found taking photos to be much help. It takes considerable time and trouble to get a picture which actually shows the machine in sufficient detail to be useful in putting it together again. Another thing I do is get a couple of those partitioned boxes sold for storing screwsm etc. When I take a machine apart, I put related bits of fixing hardware i nthe compartments. Maybe the first compartment has the tope cover screws, the nect one has the PCB hold-down clamp screws, and so on. Taht way washers, nuts, etc are kept with the appropraite screws, saving a lot of confusion later. > when I first got my PDP11, and was fortunate in that a) it's a fairly > simple machine with not a lot to get wrong, and b) I had enough sense > and tools to figure out how it was meant to be... The worst thing I ever did was dismantle the keyboard of an HP9815 withoug doing a keycap diagram. I'd not realised the keys would fall out when I took the PCB off. I then had to send a panicky e-mail message to several known-owners of said machine asking for the layout. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 27 17:49:26 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:49:26 +0100 (BST) Subject: DEC Gamma-11 units in private collector hands? In-Reply-To: <20071027154828.GA27089@cowpig.ca> from "Philippe Vachon" at Oct 27, 7 11:48:28 am Message-ID: > Hrmn, this is interesting; I wonder why DEC chose to use an 11/34 for > the Gamma-11, or if the machine was "upgraded" to become a Gamma-11 THe rack had a 'Gamma 11' nameplate at the top, that's how I know what it was. Of course the processor might have been upgraded at some point. Or maybe DEC felt that the extra address space was useful. > post-installation. I'm fairly tempted to try to pick up that boardset, > nonetheless... I imagine it is rather difficult to snag anymore though. I've never seen another one. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Oct 27 17:53:08 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 23:53:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: Did I get an RL01 pack instead of RL02? In-Reply-To: <6t47i35kdcsu6naelbbm73ivih3v4fsnh7@4ax.com> from "Charles" at Oct 27, 7 02:50:36 pm Message-ID: > > >But given what you said, it could be that all the packs, including the > >DEC ones have been bluk-erased :-( > > I wish you hadn't said that :P > > Only way to find out is to try it when the replacement arrives. > > Meanwhile I also looked at the platter hub. The DEC cartridge has > 40 slots evenly spaced around its circumference, whereas this > Memorex pack has only 8, one of which is a "double", presumably YEs, the DEC packs are 40 sectors. 8 sectors (you're right about the double slot being the index pulse, this was used on many other drives, including the RK05, and indeed hard-sectored floppies) sounds rather too few, but anyway. > for indexing. As the RL drive uses a reluctor pickup on this area > to sense disk rotational speed (among other things), there is no I beelive it's also used to get the servo system to start looking for the servo bursts. > way the Memorex would have ever worked in an RL... > > > >There is no way to rewrite the servo information using a normal RL drive. > > Is there anyone out there who has hardware capable of reformatting > these packs i.e. rewriting servo tracks? I very much dout it, ut it would eb a fun project to try... -tony From fu3.org at gmail.com Sat Oct 27 18:58:08 2007 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (from@fu3.org) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:58:08 +0200 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <2b1f1f550710271522t13f9de4u26aaa4983f152c95@mail.gmail.com> References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> <4723A15A.40300@yahoo.co.uk> <2b1f1f550710271522t13f9de4u26aaa4983f152c95@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <310f50ab0710271658u38344997rb11b4f43dc52e565@mail.gmail.com> 2007/10/28, Joe Giliberti : > think its an ebay item number? > > Joe > No, it's my briefcase lock-combination; now I have to change.. ;) (Yes, a Google search leads you to an ebay listing, as otherwise suggested, so it's probably about it.) From jhfinedp3k at compsys.to Sat Oct 27 19:42:48 2007 From: jhfinedp3k at compsys.to (Jerome H. Fine) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:42:48 -0400 Subject: GAMMA-11 In-Reply-To: <4722846C.5070606@msm.umr.edu> References: <47225F0B.1010405@bitsavers.org> <4722846C.5070606@msm.umr.edu> Message-ID: <4723DB08.4050607@compsys.to> >jim s wrote: > This discussion reminded me of a very interesting series of incident > documented on the web pages linked to below. The problem was related > to control computers which were controlling exposure to patients which > were being treated with a particle beam from a linear accelerator. > The title is the Therac-25 Accidents, if you already are familiar with > it. > > I don't recall from having not reread this whether this was a PDP-11 > instrument or not, however, but this certainly remindes me of this. > > Jim > > http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html Jerome Fine replies: I thought that a timely response will be helpful to clarify any possible confusion. First I suggest that it needs to be strongly emphasized that the actual PDP-11 hardware was NOT at fault, it was the software, as far as I remember and understand about the problem. Second, I have not checked the link as yet, but I believe that AECL was the company involved and responsible for both the hardware configuration and the software. Third, I seem to remember that the problems were the result of a race (or timing) bug in the software which occurred when a certain (unexpected?) sequence of keys were used on the VT100 terminal that the operator used to control the radiation which was delivered to the recipient (in medical terms, the patient). If all of the above is correct, then I am not surprised at the reasons that the (so-called?) accidents took place since the use of a less than expert systems analyst and the lack of time for software checkout in those decades was probably a systemic problem for all software projects, not just medical related systems. Even these days, I am still finding bugs in RT-11 operating system software which, although not catastrophic, are the result of obvious short cuts by programmers who should not have used tricky code which works 99% of the time, and in particular 100% of the time with the existing set of programs written by the manufacturer (DEC in this case). Although one bug has long been fixed (with V05.05 or RT-11 in 1989) as a result of other software added to the operating system, the problem was caused by (note that ^RUSR means the Radix-50 value of the 3 characters "USR"): CMP (R2),#<^RUSR> ;Branch if the "USR" BEQ SET.USR.CODE ; is being "SET" ROR STATUS.WORD ;Set up Status Word for default device As long as the value pointed to by (R2) was LESS than <^RUSR>, then the CARRY bit was set and the ROR instruction did as was expected (Status Word which was originally zero became 100000). Since the value pointed at by (R2) was the first two characters of the name of a device driver, the code worked perfectly ONLY when the device driver name was less than <^RUSR>. Unfortunately, the latest version of RT-11 which is a so-called hobby version is V05.03 from 1985. Thus hobby users are still going to have the problem if they want to use a device driver name such as VM(X).SYS with V05.03 of RT-11 and are hoping for a transparent substitution of VM(X).SYS with the modified HD(X).SYS device driver when they are using Erstaz-11, which I agree will not be a lot of hobby users. But I hope that my example illustrates the reason that bugs tend to be in both applications and operating systems in the first place. Since DEC did not have any device drivers which had a name that had a conflict, such as VM(X).SYS, which depended on the CARRY bit being set after the CMP instruction, there were no conflicts in the distributed code. Unfortunately, the documentation very explicitly stated that the users who wrote their own device drivers could always expect the CARRY bit to be set resulting in a value of 100000 being passed to the user when no unit number was specified. About 3 months ago, the problem first occurred, but I was still busy with other more pressing modifications and enhancements. When those were finally finished, it took me a few days during the past week to determine why a device driver with the name of VMX.SYS (that I am using as a substitute for the DEC version) did not work when I attempted to: COPY HDX.SYS VMX.SYS SET VM NAME in order to accommodate changing the original name of the device driver so that I could transparently substitute the code I wished to use instead of the DEC version (which would then be totally transparent as far as the rest of the process that I was doing) along with providing me with the advantages (3 times the speed of DEC's version, 4 times the available number of blocks, all of the emulated PDP-11 memory now available instead of being used as a disk drive, a smaller LOADed footprint AND the option of being able to toggle the device between WRITE and NOWRITE). Fortunately, the problem in this specific case could be solved by ignoring the bug. However, with other SET commands which rely on the correct value being supplied, such as being able to distinguish between: SET VM: NOWRITE SET VM0: NOWRITE other solutions will still have to be found. 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 tothwolf at concentric.net Sat Oct 27 19:45:46 2007 From: tothwolf at concentric.net (Tothwolf) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 19:45:46 -0500 (CDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Sat, 27 Oct 2007, Chris M wrote: > 170161400500 I have one of these XGA cards, but I never managed to find an IBM XGA monitor to go with it. My PS/2 systems are in storage right now anyway though. From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Oct 27 20:24:34 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 18:24:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Unix PC mouse Message-ID: Someone some time ago said that he has some AT&T Unix PC mice. Who was that? I'd like one. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From g-wright at att.net Sat Oct 27 20:50:17 2007 From: g-wright at att.net (g-wright at att.net) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:50:17 +0000 Subject: Unix PC mouse, wanted Message-ID: <102820070150.22192.4723EAD80006A3A4000056B022230650629B0A02D29B9B0EBF9B0809079D99D309@att.net> -------------- Original message from David Griffith : -------------- > > Someone some time ago said that he has some AT&T Unix PC mice. Who was > that? I'd like one. > > -- > David Griffith > dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu I second that. Ihave need one for a while - Jerry Jerry wright g-wright at att.net From tponsford at rnsmte.com Sat Oct 27 22:14:07 2007 From: tponsford at rnsmte.com (tponsford) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:14:07 -0700 Subject: Unix PC mouse In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4723FE7F.2070906@rnsmte.com> David Griffith wrote: >Someone some time ago said that he has some AT&T Unix PC mice. Who was >that? I'd like one. > > > It may have been me! I have about 7 or 8 PC 7300 (3B1) mice! They are the ones with the 6 pin rectangular plug! Let me know (off-list) if thats what you need! Cheers Tom From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Oct 27 22:37:35 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:37:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: dsdd floppies Message-ID: Someone here posted about a friend in Canada who has boxes upon boxes of unopened blank DSDD 5.25" floppies. Who was that? I think I deleted the relevant emails (or at least grep is failing me). -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From healyzh at aracnet.com Sat Oct 27 22:43:23 2007 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:43:23 -0700 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: At 1:24 PM -0700 10/27/07, Chris M wrote: >170161400500 Talk about overly cryptic. In what way is an "IBM XGA-2 Video Card" the "Ultimate" in "vintage crap"? How are we supposed to take that post? Furthermore in the future, how about putting a short description with the item number (and for those that need it, note it is an eBay listing). Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | 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 v.slyngstad at verizon.net Sun Oct 28 00:04:57 2007 From: v.slyngstad at verizon.net (Vincent Slyngstad) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:04:57 -0700 Subject: Need help: Step by step approach in the restoration of old computers References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> <471FD8F8.6040802@yahoo.co.uk> <4721ABFA.40403@topinform.de> Message-ID: <290001c81920$1740cdf0$6600a8c0@vrsxp> From: "Andreas Holz" > I need some advices for a proper approach to bring back to life an old > system, which probably has not been used for a long time. > > Recently I got a LINC-8 in a quite good condition. A LINC-8 in any condition at all is an amazing find! > I don't like to straight power on the system to look what might happen, > but I would like to do it step by step. > > From reading this list and some personal experiences I think to check > the power supply first. How I've to care abou the capacitors, there are > 20 big ones in two power supplies. There seem to be two schools on this. One group tries very hard to save the old capacitors for as long as possible. The other says the capacitors are a liability (in terms of the system's reliability and longevity), and either just replaces them, or waits for them to blow up and then replaces them. I think there is probably some gain in charging them at least once in a controlled current situation, which will if nothing else identify bad ones without making such a mess. Vince From v.slyngstad at verizon.net Sun Oct 28 00:07:21 2007 From: v.slyngstad at verizon.net (Vincent Slyngstad) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:07:21 -0700 Subject: UofOregon LINC-8? References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> <471FD8F8.6040802@yahoo.co.uk> <4721ABFA.40403@topinform.de> Message-ID: <290301c81920$6c05b3a0$6600a8c0@vrsxp> From: "Andreas Holz" > I need some advices for a proper approach to bring back to life an old > system, which probably has not been used for a long time. > > Recently I got a LINC-8 in a quite good condition. This reminds me of a question that's been rattling around in my head for a few years now. Does anyone on this list know what ever became of the University of Oregon's LINC? Everyone I knew in the Neuroscience lab in the early 1980's seems to have died or moved on in the last 25 years :-(. Thanks, Vince Apologies to the list if these eventually show up duplicates, but it's been a over a day since I sent these from my other cctalk member email. From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sun Oct 28 00:09:58 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:09:58 -0700 Subject: Short notice: Sun rescue (Seattle area) Message-ID: <76a6174abc4cc83ec762625adf9cfc9a@valleyimplants.com> I have an opportunity to grab a bunch of Sun stuff tomorrow. I know that there will be some SPARCstation, Ultra-1 and Ultra-2 workstations, and a bunch of undefined-but-Sun parts. Not sure about SW and docs. Does anyone have something that they want me to keep a lookout for and pass on? It's in Kent. From jwstephens at msm.umr.edu Sat Oct 27 23:31:20 2007 From: jwstephens at msm.umr.edu (jim s) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:31:20 -0700 Subject: Therac-25 (was Gamma 11) In-Reply-To: <4723DB08.4050607@compsys.to> References: <47225F0B.1010405@bitsavers.org> <4722846C.5070606@msm.umr.edu> <4723DB08.4050607@compsys.to> Message-ID: <47241098.1080504@msm.umr.edu> Jerome H. Fine wrote: > >jim s wrote: > > Jerome Fine replies: > > I thought that a timely response will be helpful to clarify > any possible confusion. > The software was custom grown PDP-11 software from the AECL company. The problem was that the instrument could deliver a massive 25,000 rad blast over a 1 second interval due to the fact that the beam control mask was incorrectly positioned. A collimator with adjustible slits, bending magnets, and a blocker to safe the machine was how the basic machine set the dosage. Cryptic undocumented error messages, frequent malfunctions that had to be ignored in normal operation, and incorrect instructions to operators caused the malfunction to be unrecongnized. This was analyzed in great depth as it was the first computer caused malfunction that could be analyzed to study the responses of the people involved in the use of the machine. It is very educational to read this from time to time, when you think you have though of every systematic thing you should consider when designing a system. The software basically got the dosage setting displayed to the operator out of sync with the actual, and eventually you would deliver a zap of electron beam energy that felt like an electrical shock, plus hot coffee on your skin to a patient. Jim From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 28 00:22:53 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:22:53 -0700 Subject: UofOregon LINC-8? In-Reply-To: <290301c81920$6c05b3a0$6600a8c0@vrsxp> References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers>, <290301c81920$6c05b3a0$6600a8c0@vrsxp> Message-ID: <4723BA3D.20406.11269B34@cclist.sydex.com> On 27 Oct 2007 at 22:07, Vincent Slyngstad wrote: > Does anyone on this list know what ever became of the University of > Oregon's LINC? Everyone I knew in the Neuroscience lab in the early > 1980's seems to have died or moved on in the last 25 years :-(. My next-door neighbor is a biology professor specializing in neuroscience (flies and cuttlefish, I think) at UofO. Would he be worth asking? Cheers, Chuck From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 00:38:02 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:38:02 -0400 Subject: Short notice: Sun rescue (Seattle area) In-Reply-To: <76a6174abc4cc83ec762625adf9cfc9a@valleyimplants.com> References: <76a6174abc4cc83ec762625adf9cfc9a@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: > I have an opportunity to grab a bunch of Sun stuff tomorrow. I know > that there will be some SPARCstation, Ultra-1 and Ultra-2 workstations, > and a bunch of undefined-but-Sun parts. Not sure about SW and docs. > > Does anyone have something that they want me to keep a lookout for and > pass on? SPARC era Sun stuff around the East is so damn common, but I can not say how it is up in Microsoftland. If the pile has any SPARCstation 12 machines, I know someone that has been bugging me for one. Yes, they exist. Which brings me to the point of this post - I have just about dug out my old Sun-3/60, and I want to sell or trade it. It works - at least as of about ten years ago! Sun-3 stuff is just starting to get thin in the wild, and in a few years will probably be damn hard to find. Email me offlist, if anyone is interested. And I finally rolled the Apollo 10K out, to be cleaned up and moved on. -- Will From v.slyngstad at verizon.net Sun Oct 28 00:51:33 2007 From: v.slyngstad at verizon.net (Vincent Slyngstad) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:51:33 -0700 Subject: UofOregon LINC-8? References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers>, <290301c81920$6c05b3a0$6600a8c0@vrsxp> <4723BA3D.20406.11269B34@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <290a01c81926$989b8600$6600a8c0@vrsxp> From: "Chuck Guzis" > On 27 Oct 2007 at 22:07, Vincent Slyngstad wrote: >> Does anyone on this list know what ever became of the University of >> Oregon's LINC? Everyone I knew in the Neuroscience lab in the early >> 1980's seems to have died or moved on in the last 25 years :-(. > > My next-door neighbor is a biology professor specializing in > neuroscience (flies and cuttlefish, I think) at UofO. Would he be > worth asking? Sure. I know it was still there in 1984, and still in use then. I remember at the time being taken on a tour of all the "retired" gear in the basement, too. Maybe it is down there now. (More likely someone hauled it away since then.) I still fondly remember once it stopped working, and Dave Brumbley debugged the thing and found a bad transistor, replaced it, and within a day or two from start to finish it was working again. Any word on what happened to Dave would be great, too. Vince From dm561 at torfree.net Sun Oct 28 01:30:00 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 02:30:00 -0400 Subject: dsdd floppies Message-ID: <01C8190A.721C8C20@mandr71> Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:37:35 -0700 (PDT) From: David Griffith Subject: dsdd floppies To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >Someone here posted about a friend in Canada who has boxes upon boxes of >unopened blank DSDD 5.25" floppies. Who was that? I think I deleted the >relevant emails (or at least grep is failing me). >-- >David Griffith >dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu ------------------ That might have been me, but he's also on this list; Golan, are you listening? m From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Oct 28 03:07:35 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:07:35 +0000 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <47244347.6080108@yahoo.co.uk> Zane H. Healy wrote: > At 1:24 PM -0700 10/27/07, Chris M wrote: >> 170161400500 > > Talk about overly cryptic. In what way is an "IBM XGA-2 Video Card" the > "Ultimate" in "vintage crap"? How are we supposed to take that post? > Furthermore in the future, how about putting a short description with > the item number (and for those that need it, note it is an eBay listing). Precisely. Put in the subject line what it is, too, and tag the subject line with 'ebay' or something so that those of us who couldn't care less about ebay don't even have to bother opening the message... seems like the courteous thing to do! From julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk Sun Oct 28 03:22:15 2007 From: julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:22:15 +0000 Subject: Short notice: Sun rescue (Seattle area) In-Reply-To: References: <76a6174abc4cc83ec762625adf9cfc9a@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <472446B7.2080201@yahoo.co.uk> William Donzelli wrote: > Sun-3 stuff is just starting to get thin in > the wild, and in a few years will probably be damn hard to find. Around here it seems to be at that stage where if the word's put around, quite a lot will turn up (3/50 and 3/60 in particular) - but nobody's actively listing it any more because it's all tucked away at the back of their storage and largely forgotten about. But then we had a lot of tech companies and the uni around here who largely used Sun hardware in the past - the Sun-to-everything-else density's probably a lot higher here than in a lot of places. > And I finally rolled the Apollo 10K out, to be cleaned up and moved on. Always wanted one of those. Always been a fan of Apollo stuff; even though the 10k seems like a significantly different chunk of hardware, I guess it still appeals just because it's so uncommon (I like weird, low-volume machines :-) Any chance of throwing some photos up somewhere at some point? I don't think there any around on the 'net any more (and there weren't ever many) cheers Jules From ploopster at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 04:40:32 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 05:40:32 -0400 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <47245910.6000301@gmail.com> Tothwolf wrote: > On Sat, 27 Oct 2007, Chris M wrote: > >> 170161400500 > > I have one of these XGA cards, but I never managed to find an IBM XGA > monitor to go with it. My PS/2 systems are in storage right now anyway > though. Any multisync monitor capable of 1024x768 would work. Backward-compatible with VGA. Peace... Sridhar From dan at ekoan.com Sun Oct 28 08:41:54 2007 From: dan at ekoan.com (Dan Veeneman) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 09:41:54 -0400 Subject: dsdd floppies Message-ID: <6.1.2.0.2.20071028094150.0a609090@mail.marcal.com> David, I picked up about three dozen sealed boxes this weekend, Verbatim Datalife 5.25" DSDD. How many do you need? Regards, Dan www.decodesystems.com At 11:37 PM 10/27/07, you wrote: >Someone here posted about a friend in Canada who has boxes upon boxes of >unopened blank DSDD 5.25" floppies. Who was that? I think I deleted the >relevant emails (or at least grep is failing me). > >-- >David Griffith >dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu > >A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. >Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? >A: Top-posting. >Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From bob at jfcl.com Sun Oct 28 10:06:42 2007 From: bob at jfcl.com (Bob Armstrong) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:06:42 -0700 Subject: Therac-25 (was Gamma 11) In-Reply-To: <47241098.1080504@msm.umr.edu> References: <47225F0B.1010405@bitsavers.org> <4722846C.5070606@msm.umr.edu> <4723DB08.4050607@compsys.to> <47241098.1080504@msm.umr.edu> Message-ID: <002801c81974$2647a770$72d6f650$@com> >The software was custom grown PDP-11 software from the AECL company. >The problem was that the instrument could deliver a massive 25,000 rad >blast over a 1 second interval due to the fact that the beam control >mask was incorrectly positioned. It's worth mentioning that the machine's predecessor, the Therac-20, had a hardware interlock that would prevent the beam from being turned on if the collimator was out of position. The collimator blocks were mounted on a rotating turntable and this interlock was nothing more complicated than a microswitch that disabled the HV supply unless the table was rotated to the right orientation. AECL removed the microswitch and several other safety interlocks from the Therac-25 in the name of cost reduction, the plan being that the software would perform the equivalent safety checks. Bob From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Oct 28 12:24:30 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:24:30 -0400 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <485B2C16-4F5A-43A1-A0C7-898410934F56@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> References: <775518.76188.qm@web61024.mail.yahoo.com> <001401c818db$b22c6ee0$55724247@game> <485B2C16-4F5A-43A1-A0C7-898410934F56@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> Message-ID: <200710281324.30808.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 27 October 2007 18:07, Stroller wrote: > On 27 Oct 2007, at 21:55, Teo Zenios wrote: > >> 170161400500 > > > > Ebay IBM xga-2 video card (ps/2)? > > Ideal if you wish to enjoy the authentic desire to upgrade to a > Hercules. Hey, I heard they were pretty good for monochrome graphics... :-) -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Sun Oct 28 12:39:56 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 10:39:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <200710281324.30808.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <443864.2063.qm@web61025.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > On Saturday 27 October 2007 18:07, Stroller wrote: > > Ideal if you wish to enjoy the authentic desire to > upgrade to a > > Hercules. > > Hey, I heard they were pretty good for monochrome > graphics... :-) "Pretty good" and "monochrome graphics" is seemingly contradictory. At least in my book. Unless of course we're talking on a large-ish paper-white screen. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From markk at clara.co.uk Sun Oct 28 12:42:12 2007 From: markk at clara.co.uk (Mark) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:42:12 +0000 Subject: Technical info on Amiga video port expansion devices wanted Message-ID: <1193593332.6020.69.camel@pc> Hi, Over the Amiga's life, several devices were produced that connected to the 23-pin video port, and allowed more colours to be shown. I'm aware of at least five. Were any other video port devices produced? - HAM-E from Black Belt Systems - DCTV from Digital Creations (this also plugged into the parallel port and the hardware included a video digitiser) - ColorBurst from M.A.S.T. - Fun Color from Adept Development (saw this on amiga-hardware.com) - Graffiti from Individual Computers Technical info on the Graffiti is available from the Individual Computers web site, but I couldn't find detailed docs on any of the others. I would like to get hold of: - Technical details about how the hardware works for DCTV, Fun Color, ColorBurst and HAM-E. (I got a little info on the HAM-E from an old Usenet posting.) -Details of any chips inside any of the devices. or just high-res pictures of the circuit boards. - Any software that came with ColorBurst & Fun Color (DCTV & HAM-E software is available on the web, but other versions of those would be good to have too.) So if you have that or know where I might get it, please let me know. (The eventual aim is to allow Amiga emulators to support at least some of these devices.) -- M From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Sun Oct 28 12:45:38 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 10:45:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <4723A15A.40300@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: <509745.82526.qm@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> albeit some would find PC/2's interesting, I generally don't. The Model 25 is a cutey. If I were to acquire a PC/2, and play around with it to any extent, I certainly would want an XGA card in mine. I was told there are 2 versions of the Microchannel bus (16 and 32 bit). Anyway, I doubt you'd find very much that would utilize such a graphics system. Autocad as per the usual, and probably other high-powered engineering and scientific stuff. I have to wonder if there were any aftermarket superVGA cards for the uChannel based PC/2's. Or for that matter were there ISA/VESA/EISA XGA cards available for vanilla PC's. Thanks for participating. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From fu3.org at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 12:47:58 2007 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (from@fu3.org) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:47:58 +0100 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <443864.2063.qm@web61025.mail.yahoo.com> References: <200710281324.30808.rtellason@verizon.net> <443864.2063.qm@web61025.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <310f50ab0710281047p5267f32w2931039f96084244@mail.gmail.com> 2007/10/28, Chris M : > > --- "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > > On Saturday 27 October 2007 18:07, Stroller wrote: > > > Ideal if you wish to enjoy the authentic desire to > > upgrade to a > > > Hercules. > > > > Hey, I heard they were pretty good for monochrome > > graphics... :-) > > "Pretty good" and "monochrome graphics" is seemingly > contradictory. At least in my book. Unless of course > we're talking on a large-ish paper-white screen. > Are you serious? - It seems most colour monitors are impossible to configure using a true 255[?] tone/shade driver; if anyone could enlighten whether monocrome (not 2-tone black/white, mind you,) is possible on any 'ol monitor. -I'd love to use monocrome for loads of things/tasks; -if there is a way, it'd be interesting to hear about it. (..I had an old ICL monochrome once [beige with orange logo] for a desktop tower [with same design; 2/386, perhaps,] and I miss how good that display was on the eyes. From bshannon at tiac.net Sun Oct 28 13:03:43 2007 From: bshannon at tiac.net (Bob Shannon) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:03:43 -0400 Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. References: Message-ID: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> Is anyone familiar with vacuum tube indicators used on transistor logic machines? I recently found a small rack filled with small transistor logic modules. Each module holds a flip flop or two at most. The modules are small PC boards with a metal frame and handle. Test points give you the state of each transistor on the module. Several modules have some sort of visual indicator tube as well. These tubes are not much larger than a standard NE-2 bulb, but they more resemble subminiature vacuum tubes. The tubes are marked 01037 J3, each had four leads. Two of these leads shows a resistance of 9.8 Ohms, and appears to be a low voltage filament. One is grounded, the other is connected to a bus in the rack of logic. There is no 'getter flash' inside the glass tube, so they may be some sort of glow discharge tube. Looking at the insides of each tube thee appears to be a very fine V style filament and a grid-like structure, but I see no clear anode or plate structures. There are two thin 'wires' outside of the grid, one in front and one behind the central grid-like / filament structure. The logic itself is made from 2N414 transistors, mil-spec at one time, covered in conformal coating. Markings show this device came from the USAF Airborne Instrumentation Labs. I only have a small part of some larger system, but I would like to power this rack of logic up and see these indicators in action. There is something very familiar about these things. They remind me of something I may have seen once in a telephone switching application when I was in the USAF long ago. Any idea what these things may be? I'll try to get a digital photo, but the tubes are mounted under small metal clips with short leads. From fu3.org at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 13:01:35 2007 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (from@fu3.org) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 19:01:35 +0100 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <509745.82526.qm@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> References: <4723A15A.40300@yahoo.co.uk> <509745.82526.qm@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <310f50ab0710281101s15d7f98bx316a3b7e54199d64@mail.gmail.com> 2007/10/28, Chris M : > albeit some would find PC/2's interesting, I generally > don't. The Model 25 is a cutey. If I were to acquire a > PC/2, and play around with it to any extent, I > certainly would want an XGA card in mine. I was told > there are 2 versions of the Microchannel bus (16 and > 32 bit). > Anyway, I doubt you'd find very much that would > utilize such a graphics system. Autocad as per the > usual, and probably other high-powered engineering and > scientific stuff. I have to wonder if there were any > aftermarket superVGA cards for the uChannel based > PC/2's. Or for that matter were there ISA/VESA/EISA > XGA cards available for vanilla PC's. Thanks for participating. > I don't give a rat's ass what "utilizes" monochrome; -I've already got a 22" Mac with OS X for things "utilizing" graphics, as you refer to it. - What I'm talking about are all the other uses a monochrome setup would do wonders in; like the fact that any monochrome setup I've seen are like reading off a book's page, "in contrast" [hrr hrr] to crappy 'ol two-tone and colour setup alike. From cclist at sydex.com Sun Oct 28 13:16:08 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:16:08 -0700 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <509745.82526.qm@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> References: <4723A15A.40300@yahoo.co.uk>, <509745.82526.qm@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <47246F78.12233.13EA877D@cclist.sydex.com> On 28 Oct 2007 at 10:45, Chris M wrote: > albeit some would find PC/2's interesting, I generally > don't. The Model 25 is a cutey. If I were to acquire a > PC/2, and play around with it to any extent, I > certainly would want an XGA card in mine. I was told > there are 2 versions of the Microchannel bus (16 and > 32 bit). What's a PC/2? What did I miss? Cheers, Chuck From pcw at mesanet.com Sun Oct 28 13:22:32 2007 From: pcw at mesanet.com (Peter C. Wallace) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:22:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. In-Reply-To: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> References: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> Message-ID: On Sun, 28 Oct 2007, Bob Shannon wrote: > Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:03:43 -0400 > From: Bob Shannon > Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. > > Is anyone familiar with vacuum tube indicators used on transistor logic > machines? > > I recently found a small rack filled with small transistor logic modules. > Each module holds a flip flop or two at most. > The modules are small PC boards with a metal frame and handle. Test points > give you the state of each transistor > on the module. > > Several modules have some sort of visual indicator tube as well. > > These tubes are not much larger than a standard NE-2 bulb, but they more > resemble subminiature vacuum tubes. > > The tubes are marked 01037 J3, each had four leads. Two of these leads shows > a resistance of 9.8 Ohms, and > appears to be a low voltage filament. One is grounded, the other is > connected to a bus in the rack of logic. > > There is no 'getter flash' inside the glass tube, so they may be some sort of > glow discharge tube. > > Looking at the insides of each tube thee appears to be a very fine V style > filament and a grid-like structure, but > I see no clear anode or plate structures. There are two thin 'wires' outside > of the grid, one in front and one > behind the central grid-like / filament structure. > > The logic itself is made from 2N414 transistors, mil-spec at one time, > covered in conformal coating. Markings > show this device came from the USAF Airborne Instrumentation Labs. I only > have a small part of some > larger system, but I would like to power this rack of logic up and see these > indicators in action. > > There is something very familiar about these things. They remind me of > something I may have seen once > in a telephone switching application when I was in the USAF long ago. > > Any idea what these things may be? I'll try to get a digital photo, but the > tubes are mounted under small > metal clips with short leads. > Probably simple VFDs, like magic eye tubes on old radios. Leads are 2 filament/cathode, 1 grid and 1 plate (flourescent target) Probably very low filament voltage Peter Wallace From pat at computer-refuge.org Sun Oct 28 13:23:44 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:23:44 -0400 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <47246F78.12233.13EA877D@cclist.sydex.com> References: <4723A15A.40300@yahoo.co.uk> <509745.82526.qm@web61017.mail.yahoo.com> <47246F78.12233.13EA877D@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200710281423.44548.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Sunday 28 October 2007 14:16, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 28 Oct 2007 at 10:45, Chris M wrote: > > albeit some would find PC/2's interesting, I generally > > don't. The Model 25 is a cutey. If I were to acquire a > > PC/2, and play around with it to any extent, I > > certainly would want an XGA card in mine. I was told > > there are 2 versions of the Microchannel bus (16 and > > 32 bit). > > What's a PC/2? What did I miss? I'm pretty sure that Chris typo'd PS/2. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 13:41:10 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:41:10 -0400 Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. In-Reply-To: References: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> Message-ID: > Probably simple VFDs, like magic eye tubes on old radios. > > Leads are 2 filament/cathode, 1 grid and 1 plate (flourescent target) > > Probably very low filament voltage Low everything. Except cost. Those little critters are getting quite hard to find. And Etco once had them for a penny a piece! -- Will From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 13:43:58 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:43:58 -0400 Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. In-Reply-To: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> References: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> Message-ID: > Any idea what these things may be? The modules are just generic logic modules, as you probably guessed. RCS has a rack of these that sound very similar. Are some of your modules color coded? We never figured out who was the maker, although admittedly we did not try very hard. These generic logic modules were a minor success in the factory automation market, selling to the guys that could look beyond the relay. -- Will From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Sun Oct 28 14:04:37 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <47246F78.12233.13EA877D@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <555819.12791.qm@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> --- Chuck Guzis wrote: > What's a PC/2? What did I miss? Absolutely nothing dude. Let's all just forget it ever happened. Not the post, the product LOL LOL LOL LOL! Only kidding... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From sethm at loomcom.com Sun Oct 28 15:22:54 2007 From: sethm at loomcom.com (Seth Morabito) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 13:22:54 -0700 Subject: Wanted: VAX Ultrix 3.0C Message-ID: Folks, I'm looking for VAX Ultrix 3.0C. TUHS doesn't seem to have it, nor does Bitsavers, but I'm hopeful someone on this list might have tape images they'd be willing to share. It used to be an extremely common VAX UNIX in the wild, so I'm hoping it still exists somewhere. -Seth From aijones2 at bsu.edu Sun Oct 28 16:16:27 2007 From: aijones2 at bsu.edu (ajones) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:16:27 -0400 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! Message-ID: <4724FC2B.1090501@bsu.edu> From: Jan-Benedict Glaw Subject: Re: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! > Irix 5.4 is IIRC the last version running on the Indigo. ... If memory > serves me correctly, there was also a Plan9 port at some time, but I > won't bet on it to still work The Plan9 open source release omits the SGI IP22 stuff, sadly. From: Richard Subject: Re: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! > The Crimson and Octane are much later in the product line than the > Indigo. The Indigo is after the Personal Iris but before the Indigo^2 > or Indy. The Crimson, technologically speaking, is contemporary to the R3k Indigo. The Crimson used the same (slow) bus as 80s SGIs, but had their top-end CPU in it. It was an upgrade path for existing SGI customers. If I recall correctly, the only way to get an R4k CPU with the old IRIS GL graphics boardsets. (VGX and friends.) While the first-generation (R3k) Indigo was similar to the old PI systems, the second-generation (R4k) Indigo guts were extraordinarily similar to the Indy. Nothing in them is common to the R3k Indigo. I expect they only used the old non-PS/2 keyboards to avoid confusion. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 28 16:35:58 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:35:58 +0000 (GMT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: from "Zane H. Healy" at Oct 27, 7 08:43:23 pm Message-ID: > > At 1:24 PM -0700 10/27/07, Chris M wrote: > >170161400500 > > Talk about overly cryptic. In what way is an "IBM XGA-2 Video Card" > the "Ultimate" in "vintage crap"? How are we supposed to take that > post? Furthermore in the future, how about putting a short > description with the item number (and for those that need it, note it > is an eBay listing). Seconded! Please rememebr that not all of us read our main on-line. I for one download all my main, then read anf reply to it (I pay for phone calls by the second (or whatever), I don't have broadband). So for me to look up an e-bay item certainly involves me dialing back in to my ISP and running a web browser. So please specify the sort of item it is. And indeed that it is an e-bay item number. On this list a string of digits could be a part number from any of a hundred or more companies, it could be a machine or micro- instruction, and so on. Just out of curiosity, why do you think an XGA card is the ultimate vintage find? I can think of many things that are rarer and/or more interesting. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 28 16:44:17 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:44:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. In-Reply-To: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> from "Bob Shannon" at Oct 28, 7 02:03:43 pm Message-ID: > > Is anyone familiar with vacuum tube indicators used on transistor logic > machines? > > I recently found a small rack filled with small transistor logic modules. > Each module holds a flip flop or two at most. > The modules are small PC boards with a metal frame and handle. Test points > give you the state of each transistor > on the module. > > Several modules have some sort of visual indicator tube as well. > > These tubes are not much larger than a standard NE-2 bulb, but they more > resemble subminiature vacuum tubes. > > The tubes are marked 01037 J3, each had four leads. Two of these leads > shows a resistance of 9.8 Ohms, and > appears to be a low voltage filament. One is grounded, the other is > connected to a bus in the rack of logic. > > There is no 'getter flash' inside the glass tube, so they may be some sort > of glow discharge tube. > > Looking at the insides of each tube thee appears to be a very fine V style > filament and a grid-like structure, but > I see no clear anode or plate structures. There are two thin 'wires' > outside of the grid, one in front and one > behind the central grid-like / filament structure. These sound a lot like what we caleld 'DM160's in the UK. These are about the size of a 1.24" (3AG??) cartridge fuse and have 4 active leads coming out of one end. 2 of them are a filament (direcctly heated cathode), running at about 1V. Another is the anode/target, which IIRC has a grid-like structure, It is normally riun at about 30V +ve wrt the filament. The fourth wire is the control grid, IIRC with the grid at the smae voltage as the filament the device glows green, a -3V grid bias cuts it off and it's dark. Needless to say the actual current drawn y the cotnrol grid from the transistor logic is minimal/ -tony From Watzman at neo.rr.com Sun Oct 28 18:07:36 2007 From: Watzman at neo.rr.com (Barry Watzman) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 19:07:36 -0400 Subject: Cromemco System Three PerSci 8" Drive Problem ? In-Reply-To: <200710280833.l9S8Wqvb026822@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <005201c819b7$545f7230$6500a8c0@barry> Disk detection on the Persci 270 series drives (and I think on the 299 series drives as well) is simply a microswitch triggered by the leading edge of the diskette. There are NO electronics in the insert detection / clamp / eject mechanism. It is a trivial circuit consisting ONLY of a DC electric motor (24 volts, I think) and 4 microswitches (two of these are operated by cams on the motor shaft, one is the front panel eject switch and one is triggered by the diskette itself when it's pushed in). All you need to troubleshoot it is a multimeter. It has no connection to the actual "electronics" of the drive. It's just straight DC electricity. Schematics are available on the Harte site and in other places if you don't have the manuals. The only thing different about the CS3 implementation is that they removed the front bezel of the drives, and then replaced the eject switches that had been part of the drive's own front bezel (now removed) with a switch on the CS3 chassis. I don't remember if they connected this through the switch wires left over from the (removed) Persci front bezel or if they did eject through the 50-pin data interface connector (Persci did allow an eject function through the 50-pin data cable). From jwest at classiccmp.org Sun Oct 28 19:09:35 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 19:09:35 -0500 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap References: <555819.12791.qm@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00cd01c819bf$fd272c70$6600a8c0@JWEST> A few months back, someone offered to throw together a script/program that would process inbound mail on the list, removing or substituting certain words then passing the email on. I can't find the original email, and would appreciate it if the person who did so would contact me offlist. Best regards, Jay West From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sun Oct 28 19:34:20 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:34:20 +0000 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <4724FC2B.1090501@bsu.edu> References: <4724FC2B.1090501@bsu.edu> Message-ID: <47252A8C.9070509@dunnington.plus.com> On 28/10/2007 21:16, ajones wrote: > While the first-generation (R3k) Indigo was similar to the old PI > systems, the second-generation (R4k) Indigo guts were extraordinarily > similar to the Indy. Nothing in them is common to the R3k Indigo. I > expect they only used the old non-PS/2 keyboards to avoid confusion. Perhaps you're referring to the Indigo^2, but the R4K Indigo has most things in common with the R3K Indigo. Same backplane, same skins, same graphics boards and options. IIRC the little serial PROM is different. The PSU is uprated slightly (though some R3Ks used the same PSU) but otherwise the same. Obviously the CPU board is different, and the memory on it is standard 72-pin FPM SIMMs instead of the proprietary stuff used on the R3K. In that sense only is it like an Indy. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk Sun Oct 28 20:32:57 2007 From: classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk (Ensor) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:32:57 -0000 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) References: <5.1.0.14.2.20070925101941.012cb740@mail.30below.com>, <004c01c80177$74066010$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> <46FC1A8E.395.4E4837CD@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <02e001c819cb$a3c03f80$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Hi, > Oh, there was a lot of WTF on the ST.... Well, most things can be excused by the fact that it was a "rush job" and it's quite surprising what they achieved in such a short time (what was it, 6 months from start to shop shelf?). This is why I was so surprised by them inventing their own dialect of SCSI, surely it would have been far easier/quicker to implement "normal" SCSI.... >....For example, why did the 400 and 800 have pretty decent >keyboards, yet the more-expensive-and-powerful ST have such an >abomination for a keyboard? Actually, the 400 keyboard was pretty good for a touch keyboard....certainly massively better than the Sinclair touch keyboards I'd been used to at the time. That said, my first upgrade to that machine was a real keyboard! :-) IKWYM about the ST keyboard, it was horrible. Back then I was developing software for the ST, *ON* the ST, so I quickly grew to loath that keyboard. The MegaST's keyboard was no different. > The software was pretty good. Did you ever use Magic Sac to >emulate a Mac? That was a pretty neat idea. Errrrrm, I did use a Mac emulator from time to time, but I forget which one it was.... I don't think it was "Magic Sac", didn't that one come with a cartridge into which you fitted a set of Mac ROMs? I'm pretty sure the one I ran loaded the ROMs from disc. Pretty good as I recall. TTFN - Pete. From wdonzelli at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 21:07:08 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 22:07:08 -0400 Subject: Short notice: Sun rescue (Seattle area) In-Reply-To: References: <76a6174abc4cc83ec762625adf9cfc9a@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: > And I finally rolled the Apollo 10K out, to be cleaned up and moved on. A few folks have asked about the 10K - I will need to roll it outside clean it up this week. I will also shoot some pictures, and figure out what is installed. It is currently not a runner, as it has no hard disk. -- Will From curt at atarimuseum.com Sun Oct 28 22:12:11 2007 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:12:11 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors In-Reply-To: <02e001c819cb$a3c03f80$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20070925101941.012cb740@mail.30below.com>, <004c01c80177$74066010$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> <46FC1A8E.395.4E4837CD@cclist.sydex.com> <02e001c819cb$a3c03f80$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: <47254F8B.2040600@atarimuseum.com> ASCI was a nice implementation of drive connect, what was really nice was the devices would automatically be assigned a device# on the bus, no jumpers, switches or SCSI address settings... The ST and the XE keyboards were horrific!!! Mushy, crappy feel - horrible. Best Electronics has an upgrade kit for the keyboards with stronger springs for better tactile feel - www.best-electronics-ca.com They and B&C Atari Sales - www.myatari.com are two original companies that still to this day sell exclusively Atari items, many NOS items. The Atari 1200XL had THE BEST keyboard for look, feel and layout of all of the Atari computers IMHO Curt Ensor wrote: > Hi, > > > Oh, there was a lot of WTF on the ST.... > > Well, most things can be excused by the fact that it was a "rush job" > and it's quite surprising what they achieved in such a short time > (what was it, 6 months from start to shop shelf?). > > This is why I was so surprised by them inventing their own dialect of > SCSI, surely it would have been far easier/quicker to implement > "normal" SCSI.... > > >....For example, why did the 400 and 800 have pretty decent > >keyboards, yet the more-expensive-and-powerful ST have such an > >abomination for a keyboard? > > Actually, the 400 keyboard was pretty good for a touch > keyboard....certainly massively better than the Sinclair touch > keyboards I'd been used to at the time. > > That said, my first upgrade to that machine was a real keyboard! :-) > > > IKWYM about the ST keyboard, it was horrible. > > Back then I was developing software for the ST, *ON* the ST, so I > quickly grew to loath that keyboard. The MegaST's keyboard was no > different. > > > > The software was pretty good. Did you ever use Magic Sac to > >emulate a Mac? That was a pretty neat idea. > > Errrrrm, I did use a Mac emulator from time to time, but I forget > which one it was.... > > I don't think it was "Magic Sac", didn't that one come with a > cartridge into which you fitted a set of Mac ROMs? I'm pretty sure the > one I ran loaded the ROMs from disc. > > Pretty good as I recall. > > > TTFN - Pete. > > From eightbitguy at sbcglobal.net Sun Oct 28 22:13:35 2007 From: eightbitguy at sbcglobal.net (Atsushi Takahashi) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 20:13:35 -0700 Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. In-Reply-To: <01C8190A.721C8C20@mandr71> References: <01C8190A.721C8C20@mandr71> Message-ID: <1193627615.12667.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> HI, Does anyone have a source for hard sector (10 sector) 5.25" floppy disks? I have a Northstar double density disk controller in an old IMSAI that I would like to get running. I also have single density NorthStar Disk controller at my parents home in a Netronics Explorer-85 (8085) S-100 bus system I built in the 80s. I'm afraid to use it too much before I have some backups of the precious code I have on the old disks. Atsushi On Sun, 2007-10-28 at 02:30 -0400, M H Stein wrote: > Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:37:35 -0700 (PDT) > From: David Griffith > Subject: dsdd floppies > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Message-ID: > Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > > >Someone here posted about a friend in Canada who has boxes upon boxes of > >unopened blank DSDD 5.25" floppies. Who was that? I think I deleted the > >relevant emails (or at least grep is failing me). > > >-- > >David Griffith > >dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu > > ------------------ > That might have been me, but he's also on this list; Golan, are you listening? > > m > From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Sun Oct 28 23:08:37 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:08:37 -0700 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue Message-ID: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com> Turns out to be mostly Sun, but a bunch of other stuff as well. Much test equipment (list to follow when I decide what I want to keep), and assorted VME Sun boards (Sun-3 and Sun-4). There's also many boards for a (can't remember the name, it starts with "T" and is the ultra-high-reliability system that runs 2 or 4 processors in parallel. Think it's PA-RISC, but can't recall for sure). I don't have them, but can pick them up tomorrow if anyones interested. From SUPRDAVE at aol.com Sun Oct 28 23:51:38 2007 From: SUPRDAVE at aol.com (SUPRDAVE at aol.com) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:51:38 EDT Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap Message-ID: In a message dated 10/27/2007 7:47:55 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, tothwolf at concentric.net writes: On Sat, 27 Oct 2007, Chris M wrote: >> 170161400500 > >I have one of these XGA cards, but I never managed to find an IBM XGA >monitor to go with it. My PS/2 systems are in storage right now anyway >though. The 9517-001 was the model number for the IBM XGA monitor IIRC. Of course, you can use a standard old VGA/SVGA display. I've put XGA2 cards in all my PS/2 computers that can use one. I have an Ultimedia PS/2 running an Actionmedia capture card through an XGA2 card. Full motion video in 640x480x64k colors. ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Mon Oct 29 02:24:19 2007 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:24:19 +0100 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <02e001c819cb$a3c03f80$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: On 29/10/07 02:32, "Ensor" wrote: > Actually, the 400 keyboard was pretty good for a touch keyboard....certainly > massively better than the Sinclair touch keyboards I'd been used to at the > time. I didn't get hold of a 400 until a couple of years ago and I was really surprised at how good it was for a membrane keyboard compared to the ZX81. Whether this was down to the key spacing, the raised edge round each key or the general sensitivity I haven't sat down and worked out yet :) > That said, my first upgrade to that machine was a real keyboard! :-) My second 400 came with a real keyboard, much better! > IKWYM about the ST keyboard, it was horrible. > > Back then I was developing software for the ST, *ON* the ST, so I quickly > grew to loath that keyboard. The MegaST's keyboard was no different. Now there's a thing. The ST/XE keyboard is a horrible rubber-based mashy thing with awful feedback whereas both MegaST keyboards I have are proper spring-based switch keyboards that I can easily touch type on and actually enjoy using. Was there 2 different types of MegaST keyboard? I can't comment on the ST Mac emulators since I've only ever seen one (sure it had 'magic' in the name though) many years ago and the bloke who had it wouldn't sell it to me, bah. Cheers, -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection? From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Mon Oct 29 02:25:15 2007 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:25:15 +0100 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: On 29/10/07 05:08, "Scott Quinn" wrote: > There's also many boards for a (can't remember the name, it starts with > "T" and is the ultra-high-reliability system that runs 2 or 4 > processors in parallel. Think it's PA-RISC, but can't recall for sure). > I don't have them, but can pick them up tomorrow if anyones interested. Tandem? -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection? From stanb at dial.pipex.com Mon Oct 29 03:59:37 2007 From: stanb at dial.pipex.com (Stan Barr) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:59:37 +0000 Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:44:17 GMT." Message-ID: <200710290859.IAA01834@citadel.metropolis.local> Hi, tony said: > These sound a lot like what we caleld 'DM160's in the UK. These are about > the size of a 1.24" (3AG??) cartridge fuse and have 4 active leads coming > out of one end. > > 2 of them are a filament (direcctly heated cathode), running at about 1V. > Another is the anode/target, which IIRC has a grid-like structure, It is > normally riun at about 30V +ve wrt the filament. The fourth wire is the > control grid, IIRC with the grid at the smae voltage as the filament the > device glows green, a -3V grid bias cuts it off and it's dark. Needless > to say the actual current drawn y the cotnrol grid from the transistor > logic is minimal/ According to my data book: Filament 1.0V 0.03A Target Volts 50V Target Current 0.585mA Grid Voltage Change 0 to -3 -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com The future was never like this! From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Mon Oct 29 10:14:15 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:14:15 -0700 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! Message-ID: <5817a8101b7225ed185624741a8f6a43@valleyimplants.com> > Perhaps you're referring to the Indigo^2, but the R4K Indigo has most > things in common with the R3K Indigo. Same backplane, same skins, same > graphics boards and options. IIRC the little serial PROM is different. > The PSU is uprated slightly (though some R3Ks used the same PSU) but > otherwise the same. Obviously the CPU board is different, and the > memory on it is standard 72-pin FPM SIMMs instead of the proprietary > stuff used on the R3K. In that sense only is it like an Indy. > I think he's referring to the design of the IP20 vs the design of the IP12, rather than the design of the rest of the Indigo. The core design of IP20 is quite similar to IP22 (but not as close as Indigo2 and Indy are to each other), using a MC1 and DMUX chips coupled with the PM1/PM2 modules, but the peripherals and their interfaces are slightly different- graphics interconnections, audio, etc. (SCSI is the same, and enet). From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Oct 29 10:41:30 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:41:30 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <200710200013.25711.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <200710200013.25711.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <55D72884-BFD8-4D34-842C-A1C0A8E82AAE@neurotica.com> On Oct 20, 2007, at 12:13 AM, Roy J. Tellason wrote: >> Howard Harte's eZ80SBC is a 50MHz Z80 with plenty of RAM, an ethernet >> interface, 2 SD memory card slots, a USB peripheral port, a USB >> host/peripheral port (selectable), and 4 serial ports. > > That sure caught my attention... :-) > > Interesting stuff, that they're running things that fast... > Years ago I'd > have been getting all sorts of interested in something like that. > Now? I'm > not so sure. I've done several commercial projects with that chip. It's very good. > I wonder if it'd be easy enough to port ZCPR or similar to it? CP/M has been ported to the eZ80 and eZ80Acclaim! family more than once. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Oct 29 10:45:44 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:45:44 -0400 Subject: Alternative Hardware Design for Floppy Interface In-Reply-To: <47195814.3040507@comcast.net> References: <4714941D.26613.DFAE8FB@cclist.sydex.com> <59F6C987-DA34-4D67-B9C9-DF35EB62C95F@neurotica.com> <0JQ600D6VGPAGN30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <471924C2.50107@yahoo.co.uk> <0JQ600GMCLVKXR30@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <47193D8D.40702@yahoo.co.uk> <47195814.3040507@comcast.net> Message-ID: <1EAE0394-C0E2-4473-BBF7-939FE4F07A03@neurotica.com> On Oct 19, 2007, at 9:21 PM, Dan Roganti wrote: >>> The base eZ80SBC from howard is $250. Add $100 for the disk >>> board... >> >> Hmmm, I suppose if a SASI interface and ST412 interface could be >> added to talk to those kind of devices too, $250 wouldn't be too >> bad for the 'core' portion. $350 for just a floppy interface is >> perhaps a little on the high side, though. >> >> (Someone here was working on a generic ST412 interface - >> presumably over-sampling tack data and processing in software - >> weren't they? Can't remember who it was now...) > > There's already an inexpensive eZ80F91 development board from Zilog > for the budget conscious -only $99. And it's complete with cables, > jtag debugger, IDE, and C compiler. It has an ethernet port among > other interfaces. It doesn't have USB, but easily done with a RS232- > USB converter. The expansion interface provides all the GPIO's to > let you connect a floppy interface.And it's available from Mouser > or Digikey. > http://www.zilog.com/products/partdetails.asp?id=eZ80F910200ZCO I have that board...it's what I used to evaluate the eZ80F91 for a few projects a couple of years ago. It's a good development system overall, but their C compiler is Windows-only, so I was stuck with running it under an emulator. I hope they fix that soon. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From curt at atarimuseum.com Mon Oct 29 10:55:51 2007 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:55:51 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47260287.8040401@atarimuseum.com> I have a MagicSac cartridge module which turns the ST into a Mac and it works great!!! I also have an AT-Speed16 board in my 520ST and gives me a basic IBM 286 AT system as well... while limited for todays use, to be able to access Mac disks and programs and to run older PC programs all on the one computer system, especially an Atari is certainly a nice thing. Curt Adrian Graham wrote: > On 29/10/07 02:32, "Ensor" wrote: > > >> Actually, the 400 keyboard was pretty good for a touch keyboard....certainly >> massively better than the Sinclair touch keyboards I'd been used to at the >> time. >> > > I didn't get hold of a 400 until a couple of years ago and I was really > surprised at how good it was for a membrane keyboard compared to the ZX81. > Whether this was down to the key spacing, the raised edge round each key or > the general sensitivity I haven't sat down and worked out yet :) > > >> That said, my first upgrade to that machine was a real keyboard! :-) >> > > My second 400 came with a real keyboard, much better! > > >> IKWYM about the ST keyboard, it was horrible. >> >> Back then I was developing software for the ST, *ON* the ST, so I quickly >> grew to loath that keyboard. The MegaST's keyboard was no different. >> > > Now there's a thing. The ST/XE keyboard is a horrible rubber-based mashy > thing with awful feedback whereas both MegaST keyboards I have are proper > spring-based switch keyboards that I can easily touch type on and actually > enjoy using. Was there 2 different types of MegaST keyboard? > > I can't comment on the ST Mac emulators since I've only ever seen one (sure > it had 'magic' in the name though) many years ago and the bloke who had it > wouldn't sell it to me, bah. > > Cheers, > > From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 29 13:20:56 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 11:20:56 -0700 Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. In-Reply-To: <1193627615.12667.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <01C8190A.721C8C20@mandr71>, <1193627615.12667.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <4725C218.15755.191546DA@cclist.sydex.com> On 28 Oct 2007 at 20:13, Atsushi Takahashi wrote: > Does anyone have a source for hard sector (10 sector) 5.25" floppy > disks? I have a Northstar double density disk controller in an old > IMSAI that I would like to get running. I also have single density > NorthStar Disk controller at my parents home in a Netronics Explorer-85 > (8085) S-100 bus system I built in the 80s. I'm afraid to use it too > much before I have some backups of the precious code I have on the old > disks. You could always make your own, by punching or drilling additional index holes in soft-sector media. Or you could use soft-sector media and employ something like a PIC microcontroller to simulate the additional sector holes via software. With a bit of programming, said PIC could determine if HS or SS media was present in the drive and generate sector signals only if required. In any case, I'd strongly advise you to back what you have up to other media--old disks won't last forever. Cheers, Chuck From hoelscher-kirchbrak at freenet.de Mon Oct 29 13:38:21 2007 From: hoelscher-kirchbrak at freenet.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?H=F6lscher?=) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:38:21 +0100 Subject: Wanted: VAX Ultrix 3.0C Message-ID: Hi, I haven't got ULTRIX/VAX V3.0C, but: V2.0 V3.1 (disk image only) V4.2 V4.4 V4.5 I'd like to have the missing versions, too. More ULTRIX-Manuals would be VERY interesting as well. (I scanned the ones at bitsavers.com) What type of VAX do you want to run ULTRIX on? Regards, Ulli From Watzman at neo.rr.com Mon Oct 29 15:07:53 2007 From: Watzman at neo.rr.com (Barry Watzman) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:07:53 -0400 Subject: Warning ATT-Yahoo now blocking cctalk as spam In-Reply-To: <200710291800.l9TI0bIR054577@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <004b01c81a67$64237c60$6500a8c0@barry> Re: " I just got off the phone with SBCglobal and discovered that they have begun filtering this list as SPAM/Bulk mail. I use a pop3 mail reader and have never accessesd their webmail before, so I am sure I never turned any filtering on. I was supprised to find that AT&T is no longer able to manage their own mail servers and are relying on the Yahhos at yahoo to do it for them. After about 30 minutes on the phone with India, I was able to get cctalk whitelisted for my account, but not whitelisted in general so others using AT&T Yahoo mail servers will likely still have problems." Of course, the people who are not receiving this are also not going to receive this explanation of WHY they are not receiving it. But it fails EVERY test for SPAM. First, it's not selling ANYTHING. Second, the recipients REQUESTED to receive it. From ray at arachelian.com Mon Oct 29 15:33:06 2007 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:33:06 -0400 Subject: Warning ATT-Yahoo now blocking cctalk as spam In-Reply-To: <004b01c81a67$64237c60$6500a8c0@barry> References: <004b01c81a67$64237c60$6500a8c0@barry> Message-ID: <47264382.60200@arachelian.com> Not to drag this too far off topic, but a few months ago, I received a spam via Yahoo, which I promptly reported as spam. The morons at Yahoo decided to block my own SMTP server as well as the spammers, so now I can't email folks with @yahoo.com addresses from my machine and need to go through gmail. YMMV, but it's possible the same or a similar thing has happened here. Barry Watzman wrote: > Re: " I just got off the phone with SBCglobal and discovered that they have > begun filtering this list as SPAM/Bulk mail. I use a pop3 mail reader and > have never accessesd their webmail before, so I am sure I never turned any > filtering on. I was supprised to find that AT&T is no longer able to manage > their own mail servers and are relying on the Yahhos at yahoo to do it for > them. After about 30 minutes on the phone with India, I was able to get > cctalk whitelisted for my account, but not whitelisted in general so others > using AT&T Yahoo mail servers will likely still have problems." > > Of course, the people who are not receiving this are also not going to > receive this explanation of WHY they are not receiving it. > > But it fails EVERY test for SPAM. > > First, it's not selling ANYTHING. > > Second, the recipients REQUESTED to receive it. > > > > > > From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Oct 29 15:59:18 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:59:18 +0000 Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. In-Reply-To: <4725C218.15755.191546DA@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C8190A.721C8C20@mandr71>, <1193627615.12667.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> <4725C218.15755.191546DA@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <472649A6.1020305@dunnington.plus.com> On 29/10/2007 18:20, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 28 Oct 2007 at 20:13, Atsushi Takahashi wrote: > >> Does anyone have a source for hard sector (10 sector) 5.25" floppy >> disks? > You could always make your own, by punching or drilling additional > index holes in soft-sector media. Having relatively recently acquired disk drives for my Exidy Sorcerer, which also wants 10-sector hard-sector 5.25" disks, I was wondering about that too. The PIC solution isn't so attractive for that, partly because I've only just bought my first PIC and partly because of the dedicated interface on the drive board for the Sorcerer. Anyone in the UK got a few spare 10-sector floppy disks? -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From gavin.melville at acclipse.co.nz Mon Oct 29 16:24:42 2007 From: gavin.melville at acclipse.co.nz (Gavin Melville) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:24:42 +1300 Subject: Info about a Mullard Core Message-ID: <72AEBE65BC566843B59D52D3A479AC7501567175@excserver.chc.acclipse.co.nz> Hi, I have had for many years a large core, and while I don't really want to part with it, I also see what little pieces of core sell for on ebay.... I was told when given this about 15 years ago that it was from a Burroughs mainframe which was installed at the Cadburys head office in New Zealand and that they had paid GBP 20,000 for it in 1960. I have been unable to find out if this was correct however. Does anyone on the list know anything about it ? pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/8788341 at N05/?saved=1 There are 921600 cores in the array, which is made up of 48x48 cores, 4 to a layer and 100 layers. _________________________________ Regards, Gavin Melville Senior Engineer Acclipse Electronic Ltd From eightbitguy at sbcglobal.net Mon Oct 29 16:42:08 2007 From: eightbitguy at sbcglobal.net (Atsushi Takahashi) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:42:08 -0700 Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. In-Reply-To: <4725C218.15755.191546DA@cclist.sydex.com> References: <01C8190A.721C8C20@mandr71> , <1193627615.12667.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> <4725C218.15755.191546DA@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <1193694128.14851.11.camel@localhost.localdomain> Hi, When reading, you could sense where the data starts and ends but to write to a new disk you'd have to make sure the motor speed was constant before trying to generate fake sector hole signals. Maybe some kind of PLL circuit. Any idea what jitter is allowed? Has anyone made any kind of jig to physically punch holes? I am thinking about destroying a somewhat damaged disk drive to get enough parts to build a jig but wasn't sure what kind of mechanical accuracy I need to get the hole position jitter within spec. I saw, somewhere out on the web, a persons description of hand punching the holes so I can't imagine the tolerance is too tight. I have been worried about my old disks but haven't archived them yet. Last time I visited my folks, one on my 5.25 floppy drives on the NorthStar controller stopped working. I swapped drives but next visit, I have to try to revive or replace that! Atsushi On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 11:20 -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 28 Oct 2007 at 20:13, Atsushi Takahashi wrote: > > > Does anyone have a source for hard sector (10 sector) 5.25" floppy > > disks? I have a Northstar double density disk controller in an old > > IMSAI that I would like to get running. I also have single density > > NorthStar Disk controller at my parents home in a Netronics Explorer-85 > > (8085) S-100 bus system I built in the 80s. I'm afraid to use it too > > much before I have some backups of the precious code I have on the old > > disks. > > You could always make your own, by punching or drilling additional > index holes in soft-sector media. Or you could use soft-sector media > and employ something like a PIC microcontroller to simulate the > additional sector holes via software. With a bit of programming, > said PIC could determine if HS or SS media was present in the drive > and generate sector signals only if required. > > In any case, I'd strongly advise you to back what you have up to > other media--old disks won't last forever. > > Cheers, > Chuck > From cclist at sydex.com Mon Oct 29 17:30:11 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:30:11 -0700 Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. In-Reply-To: <1193694128.14851.11.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <01C8190A.721C8C20@mandr71>, <4725C218.15755.191546DA@cclist.sydex.com>, <1193694128.14851.11.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <4725FC83.2747.19F97976@cclist.sydex.com> On 29 Oct 2007 at 14:42, Atsushi Takahashi wrote: > When reading, you could sense where the data starts and ends but to > write to a new disk you'd have to make sure the motor speed was > constant before trying to generate fake sector hole signals. Maybe > some kind of PLL circuit. Any idea what jitter is allowed? It would depend on the format, but there's always a run-in (sync) gap on these things. Here's what I've been thinking. Time two or three revolutions of a disk after motor on and select before generating the index pulse. If it's a soft-sector disk, you'll see a real index pulse every 200 msec. or so and you can subdivide the rotation accordingly and update your rotational rate metric every revolution. If you see many index pulses, just pass them through as you're handling a hard-sector diskette. You'd need to look at drive select, index and perhaps ready as inputs and ready and index as outputs. At first blush, it appears as if a PIC 12F629 8-pin DIP might just be able to do the job. Cheers, Chuck From sethm at loomcom.com Mon Oct 29 17:41:15 2007 From: sethm at loomcom.com (Seth Morabito) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:41:15 -0700 Subject: Wanted: VAX Ultrix 3.0C In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Oct 29, 2007, at 11:38 AM, H?lscher wrote: > Hi, > > I haven't got ULTRIX/VAX V3.0C, but: > > V2.0 > V3.1 (disk image only) > V4.2 > V4.4 > V4.5 > > I'd like to have the missing versions, too. > > More ULTRIX-Manuals would be VERY interesting as well. > (I scanned the ones at bitsavers.com) > > What type of VAX do you want to run ULTRIX on? > Hello Ulli, I was hoping to run it on the SIMH VAX simulator. I see that you recently posted to the SIMH list on this very matter, so you and I have a shared interest :) I have ULTRIX/VAX 4.3 and some VAX CONDIST media from 1992 as well, and I would gladly make you images of the CD-ROM media if you like. Regards, -Seth From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Mon Oct 29 17:50:30 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:50:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <00cd01c819bf$fd272c70$6600a8c0@JWEST> Message-ID: <195924.16753.qm@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> if the "c" word was so offensive, I won't use it again. I can hardly imagine how that would be, seeing the illustrious language that does get used from time to time, albeit sparingly. I meant no offense. --- Jay West wrote: > A few months back, someone offered to throw together > a script/program that > would process inbound mail on the list, removing or > substituting certain > words then passing the email on. > > I can't find the original email, and would > appreciate it if the person who > did so would contact me offlist. > > Best regards, > > Jay West > > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Mon Oct 29 17:57:57 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:57:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <872573.95342.qm@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> --- SUPRDAVE at aol.com wrote: > I have an Ultimedia > PS/2 running an Actionmedia > capture card through an XGA2 card. Full motion video > in 640x480x64k colors. I did find a page (http://seds.org/~spider/ps2/ibm40212.html) which presumably describes what you're talking about. That's an attractive box. I didn't scour it, but I would imagine yours sports a '486, no? Anyway, I for one would be interested in seeing a sample of the setup you described. Sounds impressive. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Mon Oct 29 18:04:19 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:04:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <169002.2687.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> --- Tony Duell wrote: > > > > At 1:24 PM -0700 10/27/07, Chris M wrote: > > >170161400500 > > > > Talk about overly cryptic. In what way is an "IBM > XGA-2 Video Card" > > the "Ultimate" in "vintage crap"? How are we > supposed to take that > > post? Furthermore in the future, how about > putting a short > > description with the item number (and for those > that need it, note it > > is an eBay listing). > > Seconded! > > Please rememebr that not all of us read our main > on-line. I for one > download all my main, then read anf reply to it (I > pay for phone calls by > the second (or whatever), I don't have broadband). > So for me to look up > an e-bay item certainly involves me dialing back in > to my ISP and running > a web browser. My apologies. But out of curiosity what computer do you run the browser off of and do you get realistic graphics? Pardon the asking. You really need to take some pictures of your setup, and even do a write up. I have a domain now (actually have for over a year!) and when I set it up, I'd be more then happy to host some of your stuff. Do the local newspapers, or even Wired and other periodicals know about you Tony??? I'm thinking they should. > Just out of curiosity, why do you think an XGA card > is the ultimate > vintage find? I can think of many things that are > rarer and/or more > interesting. There's a duality to my feelings on PC/2 stuph. Hence the rather torturous tenuous title to my post. I'll just leave it at this and say an XGA is what's bound to make a PC/2 interesting (in my book). __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 28 18:34:16 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:34:16 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. In-Reply-To: <200710290859.IAA01834@citadel.metropolis.local> from "Stan Barr" at Oct 29, 7 08:59:37 am Message-ID: > > Hi, > > tony said: > > > These sound a lot like what we caleld 'DM160's in the UK. These are about > > the size of a 1.24" (3AG??) cartridge fuse and have 4 active leads coming > > out of one end. > > > > 2 of them are a filament (direcctly heated cathode), running at about 1V. > > Another is the anode/target, which IIRC has a grid-like structure, It is > > normally riun at about 30V +ve wrt the filament. The fourth wire is the > > control grid, IIRC with the grid at the smae voltage as the filament the > > device glows green, a -3V grid bias cuts it off and it's dark. Needless > > to say the actual current drawn y the cotnrol grid from the transistor > > logic is minimal/ > > According to my data book: > Filament 1.0V 0.03A > Target Volts 50V > Target Current 0.585mA > Grid Voltage Change 0 to -3 The voltages are not that critical. The first time I played with one of these vales was about 30 years ago. It was certainly when there were 4 Henry's Radio shops in the Edgware Road, because that's where I bought a little assembly of 4 DM160s from. Anyway, I rememebr heating the filament with a single AA cell. A bit overvoltage, and in retrospect I should have added a series resistor, but the filament didn't burn out. There was a very dull read glow visile in the dark -- I suspect there should be no glow at all at the right operating voltage. For the target supply I used a 22.5V dry battery, probably a B122. That gave a good green glow. I am sure I've seen 30V quoted in other databooks. As for the cotnrol grid, it's hard to overvoltage that. Certainly a 5V swing will do no harm at all, if you want to drive one of these devices from a TTL circuit. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Oct 28 18:43:48 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 23:43:48 +0000 (GMT) Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. In-Reply-To: <1193694128.14851.11.camel@localhost.localdomain> from "Atsushi Takahashi" at Oct 29, 7 02:42:08 pm Message-ID: > Has anyone made any kind of jig to physically punch holes? I am > thinking about destroying a somewhat damaged disk drive to get enough > parts to build a jig but wasn't sure what kind of mechanical accuracy I > need to get the hole position jitter within spec. I saw, somewhere out > on the web, a persons description of hand punching the holes so I can't > imagine the tolerance is too tight. I'd thought of doing much the same thing. Probably raid an ex-PC 1/2 height drive. Remove just about everything. put a punch and die in place of the index sensor, and a disk with 11 notches suitably-spaced in place of the pulley/rotor on the bottom of the spidnle. THen provide some kind of detent for that. It would then just be a matter of putting a disk in, aligning the existing index hole with the punch, locking it to the spindle in the normal way and then engaging the detent in the other 10 notches, punching a hole each time. As regards accuracty, you want them fairly evenly spaced becuase if 2 holes are 2 close together they won't be enough space to find the data in that sector. But apart from that, it shouldn't be that critical. The same hole is used to synchronise the controller for both reading and writing, so there's no intercahnaility adjustment type of problems. -tony From doc at mdrconsult.com Mon Oct 29 18:42:20 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:42:20 -0500 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <195924.16753.qm@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> References: <195924.16753.qm@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <47266FDC.8010700@mdrconsult.com> Chris M wrote: > if the "c" word was so offensive, I won't use it > again. I can hardly imagine how that would be, seeing > the illustrious language that does get used from time > to time, albeit sparingly. I meant no offense. > > --- Jay West wrote: > >> A few months back, someone offered to throw together >> a script/program that >> would process inbound mail on the list, removing or >> substituting certain >> words then passing the email on. I'm hoping it's not "crap" that Jay wants to filter, but "LOL" and "stuph". Doc From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Oct 29 18:47:17 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:47:17 +0000 (GMT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <169002.2687.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Oct 29, 7 04:04:19 pm Message-ID: > > > > Please rememebr that not all of us read our main > > on-line. I for one > > download all my main, then read anf reply to it (I > > pay for phone calls by > > the second (or whatever), I don't have broadband). > > So for me to look up > > an e-bay item certainly involves me dialing back in > > to my ISP and running > > a web browser. > > My apologies. But out of curiosity what computer do > you run the browser off of and do you get realistic I run lynx on this machine (the much-hacked PC/AT with a text-only display), of course that's text-only. When I need graphics (which is not often, normally to look at a data sheet or scanend service manual), I've been known to wander into an internet cafe. It actually works out a lot cheaper than a modern PC + broadband + new monitor + new 'scope + new logic analyser + ... > graphics? Pardon the asking. You really need to take > some pictures of your setup, and even do a write up. I > have a domain now (actually have for over a year!) and > when I set it up, I'd be more then happy to host some > of your stuff. There's nothing much to see. It looks like a normal PC/AT (IBM 5170). OK, there are other odd machines around here that are a lot more intereting oth to look at and to understnad. > Do the local newspapers, or even Wired and other > periodicals know about you Tony??? I'm thinking they > should. I beelieve I got a mention (for this reason) in Popular Mechanics or soemthing like that. Apart from that, I am heppy living surrounded by (old) computers, cameras, tools and the like. And my cat, of course. I may be a freak, and I am certain;y accentric, but I really don't want to become known to all and sundry as such. > > Just out of curiosity, why do you think an XGA card > > is the ultimate > > vintage find? I can think of many things that are > > rarer and/or more > > interesting. > > There's a duality to my feelings on PC/2 stuph. Hence > the rather torturous tenuous title to my post. I'll > just leave it at this and say an XGA is what's bound > to make a PC/2 interesting (in my book). > That's not really my question. My point is that the PS/2, no matter _what_ expansion cards it has is not the ultimate vinatage computer, at least not to me. The 'Ulitimat vintage...' would be something like a PERQ 2T4, or an HP95C, or a prototype or... -tony From bshannon at tiac.net Mon Oct 29 19:14:17 2007 From: bshannon at tiac.net (Bob Shannon) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:14:17 -0400 Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. References: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> Message-ID: <000701c81a89$d0907930$485a9c04@screamer> Yes, the modules are color-coded. The "F/F" modules with the indicator tubes (6977's) are silver, with a contrasting black stripe around the slot where the logic indicator tube shines through. There are also some reddish 'D' modules, and one or two other types. What's sort of interesting is that the 'F/F' module and the 'D' module both use exactly the same artwork, but have very different drilling patterns. The modules don't look very similar, but each type has 'extra' etch and pad areas that are used on the other module types. Someone really thought this through carefully. These logic modules are an interesting sort of 'logic family', like RTL or TTL that's not been shrunken down onto chips. Oh yes, I just got the logic display tubes to fire up on the bench. The grids glow! They are coated with phosphor. The anode is totally dark, and a tiny voltage on the grid switches the phosphors on and off. A vacuum tube triode designed for 'transistorized computers'! Very cool. ----- Original Message ----- From: "William Donzelli" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 2:43 PM Subject: Re: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. >> Any idea what these things may be? > > The modules are just generic logic modules, as you probably guessed. > RCS has a rack of these that sound very similar. Are some of your > modules color coded? We never figured out who was the maker, although > admittedly we did not try very hard. > > These generic logic modules were a minor success in the factory > automation market, selling to the guys that could look beyond the > relay. > > -- > Will > From trixter at oldskool.org Mon Oct 29 19:50:02 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:50:02 -0500 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <169002.2687.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> References: <169002.2687.qm@web61016.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <47267FBA.5040409@oldskool.org> Chris M wrote: > There's a duality to my feelings on PC/2 stuph. Hence Why do you keep writing it as "PC/2" when it's official name was "PS/2"? -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From robinson at shlrc.mq.edu.au Mon Oct 29 20:39:00 2007 From: robinson at shlrc.mq.edu.au (robinson at shlrc.mq.edu.au) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:39:00 +1100 (EST) Subject: [Fwd: FREE KSR-33 TTY in San Francisco:] Message-ID: <1232.137.111.6.93.1193708340.squirrel@www.shlrc.mq.edu.au> Hi gang, from the armyradios group Regards ray ---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: [armyradios] FREE KSR-33 TTY in San Francisco: From: "Patricia \(Elaine\) Gibbons" Date: Mon, October 29, 2007 11:59 am To: armyradios at yahoogroups.com Cc: "'Bill Ruck'" "'9AmTalkNet Mailing List'" -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Likely, this is pick-up only ... If anyone is interested please contact Bill Ruck directly Elaine: -----Original Message----- From: Bill Ruck [mailto:billruck at earthlink.net] Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2007 5:33 PM To: Richard Dillman; Trish Gibbons Subject: KSR-33 I know youse guys are more 5-level but there is a KSR-33 at KUSF that needs a home before it goes into a dumpster. I'd save it myself but I like staying married. It was from USF's Center For Business Education and Research when they had an h/p time share system in the 70's. Has a RS-232 to current converter inside. Was in excellent shape and stored since then until they kinda dinged it a little and lost the paper feed knob. Price is "Free but pick it up in San Francisco". This can be posted on lists referring back to me. Maybe leave out the part about USF's gorillas. They tend to get offended. Thanks Bill For current radio net info, see the bi-weekly net announcement which is sent to you via e-mail. The net schedule can also viewed at any time, by going to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/armyradios/files/armynets.txt The URL for the armyradios group at Yahoo is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/armyradios Community email addresses: Post message: armyradios at yahoogroups.com Subscribe: armyradios-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: armyradios-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com List owner: armyradios-owner at yahoogroups.com Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/armyradios/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/armyradios/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:armyradios-digest at yahoogroups.com mailto:armyradios-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: armyradios-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From jwest at classiccmp.org Mon Oct 29 23:02:54 2007 From: jwest at classiccmp.org (Jay West) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:02:54 -0500 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap References: <195924.16753.qm@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> <47266FDC.8010700@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <001f01c81aa9$c01adbc0$6600a8c0@JWEST> Doc wrote.... > I'm hoping it's not "crap" that Jay wants to filter, but "LOL" and > "stuph". Absolutely correct (tis the latter). Jay From SUPRDAVE at aol.com Mon Oct 29 23:25:05 2007 From: SUPRDAVE at aol.com (SUPRDAVE at aol.com) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:25:05 EDT Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap Message-ID: In a message dated 10/29/2007 6:00:24 PM Eastern Standard Time, chrism3667 at yahoo.com writes: >> PS/2 running an Actionmedia >> capture card through an XGA2 card. Full motion video >> in 640x480x64k colors. >I did find a page >(http://seds.org/~spider/ps2/ibm40212.html) which >presumably describes what you're talking about. That's >an attractive box. I didn't scour it, but I would >imagine yours sports a '486, no? >Anyway, I for one would be interested in seeing a >sample of the setup you described. Sounds impressive. Here's my hopelessly outdated web page for my Ultimedia PS/2-- _http://www.nothingtodo.org/classiccmp/ps2ultim.htm_ (http://www.nothingtodo.org/classiccmp/ps2ultim.htm) I need to get that machine out and play with it sometime. ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com From dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Oct 29 23:29:01 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:29:01 -0700 Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. Message-ID: > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> > > Has anyone made any kind of jig to physically punch holes? I am> > thinking about destroying a somewhat damaged disk drive to get enough> > parts to build a jig but wasn't sure what kind of mechanical accuracy I> > need to get the hole position jitter within spec. I saw, somewhere out> > on the web, a persons description of hand punching the holes so I can't> > imagine the tolerance is too tight.> > I'd thought of doing much the same thing. Probably raid an ex-PC 1/2 > height drive. Remove just about everything. put a punch and die in place > of the index sensor, and a disk with 11 notches suitably-spaced in place > of the pulley/rotor on the bottom of the spindle. THen provide some kind > of detent for that.> ---snip--- Hi I've made just such a jig. I started with the frame of a SA400 that I picked up scrap. I then made two blocks of aluminum that would mount where the index hole was. I remove them both and mounted a disk in the flame. I then positioned it on the table of a drill press. I aligned the drill through the index hole where the two blocks would mount. I then clamped the frame to the drill press table. I then removed the disk and mounted the two blocks. I drilled the blocks at the aligned hole. I used a #93 drill. This seems to be close enough. I made a punch with the shank of the drill bit by grinding a groove across the end, leaving two sharp blades, like most punches have. I used drilled detents on the flywheel, using a 10 hard sectored disk to index with. I've not made the mechanical detent yet but will do that eventually. Right now I just have a visual pointer that I visually align with the hole. Another way would be to find a gear with teeth divisible by 20 ( 20, 40 or 60 would work ). One could the mount it to the flywheel and use it as a better detent. It is a slow way to make disk but works well enough. If one is concerned about how well the spacing is, a few minutes with an oscilloscope and a drive should be able to determine the quality of the hole positions. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Peek-a-boo FREE Tricks & Treats for You! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us From classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk Mon Oct 29 23:47:25 2007 From: classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk (Ensor) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:47:25 -0000 Subject: Atari ST connectors References: <5.1.0.14.2.20070925101941.012cb740@mail.30below.com>, <004c01c80177$74066010$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> <46FC1A8E.395.4E4837CD@cclist.sydex.com><02e001c819cb$a3c03f80$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> <47254F8B.2040600@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <008801c81aaf$f8efc040$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Hi, >....devices would automatically be assigned a device# on the >bus, no jumpers, switches or SCSI address settings... You know, I'd forgotten all about that after all these years! > The ST and the XE keyboards were horrific!!! The XE keyboard was the single biggest reason I never bought one when they came out. I was lucky with my first ST (a 520STM+) in that it had a noticably bettter keyboard than the later "FM" machines, but it was still pretty nasty. I hung onto that particular machine until I got shot of all my ST gear in the mid 90's. > The Atari 1200XL had THE BEST keyboard for look, feel and layout >of all of the Atari computers IMHO I've never used a 1200XL (though I have a 1200XL main board somewhere) but I've been told that the keyboard was very similar to the original 800XL keyboard? Is this true? TTFN - Pete. From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Tue Oct 30 00:02:40 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:02:40 -0700 Subject: Did someone here need a Sun SPARCstation LX (lunchbox) drive holder? Message-ID: I seem to recall somewhere someone saying they needed the metal drive holder part from a Sun lunchbox system. I got a LX case and drive holder on Sunday so - paging the person who needed one... From classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk Tue Oct 30 00:45:56 2007 From: classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk (Ensor) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:45:56 -0000 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) References: Message-ID: <008d01c81ab8$25b172b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Hi, >> That said, my first upgrade to that machine was a real >>keyboard! :-) > > My second 400 came with a real keyboard, much better! There were several replacement keyboards available for the 400, mine was the "in Home" unit which used low profile keyswitches and almost looked like the machine had come with it as standard, IYKWIM? Not as nice to type on as a "full travel" keyboard, but a very worthwhile upgrade. > Now there's a thing. The ST/XE keyboard is a horrible rubber-based >mashy thing with awful feedback.... I had a very early ST which had a slightly different keyboard. If I remember correctly, rather than using those rubber things, it had little springs beneath the keycaps which pressed down directly on the keyboard membrane. It was terrible compared with what I was used to, but better than the later ST keyboards I've used. >....whereas both MegaST keyboards I have are proper spring-based >switch keyboards that I can easily touch type on and actually >enjoy using. Was there 2 different types of MegaST keyboard? That's an interesting question. I didn't get my MegaST until they released the 1Mb machine with blitter, this was what, a year or so after the 2Mb and 4Mb models launched? It's possible they bundled a cheaper keyboard with that model, or maybe by this time quailty had suffered in the mad scramble to stay afloat...? All I can say for sure, is that my keyboard was of the horrible "spongy" type. :-( TTFN - Pete. From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Oct 30 00:50:11 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:50:11 -0500 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4726C613.6090108@oldskool.org> SUPRDAVE at aol.com wrote: > Here's my hopelessly outdated web page for my Ultimedia PS/2-- > > _http://www.nothingtodo.org/classiccmp/ps2ultim.htm_ > (http://www.nothingtodo.org/classiccmp/ps2ultim.htm) > > I need to get that machine out and play with it sometime. If you do, I'd love to take a hack at the video file format. Keeping this on-topic for the list, I have a friend at Adobe who enjoys reverse-engineering video/audio/multimedia formats so that they can be played by players in the future. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk Tue Oct 30 00:59:20 2007 From: classiccmp at memory-alpha.org.uk (Ensor) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 05:59:20 -0000 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) References: <47260287.8040401@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <009201c81aba$03b8efb0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Hi, >....I also have an AT-Speed16 board in my 520ST and gives me a >basic IBM 286 AT system as well... LOL, that brings back memories. I had the software only PC emulator, again I forget the name of it after all these years, but it emulated an XT with CGA passably well. That was where the rot set in, LOL. Before long, the wealth of MS-Dos stuff available via BBSs spurred me on to get a Tandy 1400LT, then I built an XT.... I still have fond memories of the ST, it was the last "current" system for which I did any real programming. TTFN - Pete. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 30 02:02:19 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:02:19 -0700 Subject: IBM PC AT BIOS image? Message-ID: <4726748B.27277.1BCE5477@cclist.sydex.com> Does anyone happen to have the BIOS image from an IBM PC AT (with BASIC) rattling around that they could email to me? It'd save me a considerable amount of time digging through my own very dusty archives to locate a copy. Just the image read from memory is fine--I can odd-even it here for burning. Thanks, Chuck From james at attfield.co.uk Tue Oct 30 02:38:54 2007 From: james at attfield.co.uk (Jim Attfield) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:38:54 -0000 Subject: WTB/WTT S-100 Chassis (UK/Europe only) In-Reply-To: <200710300720.l9U7JuN8063552@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: I'm looking for an S-100 chassis and PSU to house my Cromemco Z80/68000 system as I have given up any hope of sourcing one from the US due to weight and cost of shipping. Preferably Cromemco Z2/Z2D, I will consider chassis/PSU only as I already have a Blitz Bus backplane. Willing to trade if anyone would like, I have e.g. 4-FDC, TU-ART, 32K Bytesaver, some RAM, 8-PIO, ZPU etc. I would also like to snag an IMI 20Mb drive to go with my WDI-II if anyone knows of any. I'm located in the West Midlands (UK) and can be reached at james AT attfield DOT co DOT UK. Sorry, no fancy sig just yet :) If the shipping cost is right I am happy to consider European sources. Jim This outbound email was scanned by Norton AntiVirus 2007 when transmitted and all reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure that this email was free of current known viruses and other malware when sent. Please be aware that between here and you are an indeterminate number of email relays so you should not rely wholly on this and ensure that you have adequate up-to-date protection against viruses, worms, spyware and trojans etc. The sender can not be held responsible for any undesirable elements or malware in a received email sent by him. Please note that if your reply originates from GOOGLE, HOTMAIL, MSN or YAHOO it may never reach me as these domains are blocked. From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Tue Oct 30 01:54:53 2007 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:54:53 +0100 Subject: Atari ST connectors In-Reply-To: <008801c81aaf$f8efc040$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: On 30/10/07 05:47, "Ensor" wrote: >> The Atari 1200XL had THE BEST keyboard for look, feel and layout >> of all of the Atari computers IMHO > > I've never used a 1200XL (though I have a 1200XL main board somewhere) but > I've been told that the keyboard was very similar to the original 800XL > keyboard? Is this true? It's the same as early 800XLs only it appears to have better feel. I got a 1200XL many moons ago for not much because it had 'dodgy video' but it certainly works over here so I'm not complaining :) -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection? From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Tue Oct 30 02:12:08 2007 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:12:08 +0100 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <008d01c81ab8$25b172b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> Message-ID: On 30/10/07 06:45, "Ensor" wrote: > There were several replacement keyboards available for the 400, mine was the > "in Home" unit which used low profile keyswitches and almost looked like the > machine had come with it as standard, IYKWIM? Sort of :) At the time I was only ever aware of the flat 400 and the nice 800 but couldn't afford either. When I got my paws on the 2nd machine with 'real' keyboard I was surprised: http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/scripts/picshow.php?image=atari400close.jpg &folder=/Museum/Atari&back=/Museum/Atari/atari400.php If anyone could shed light as to which keyboard this is I'd be grateful. > I had a very early ST which had a slightly different keyboard. If I remember > correctly, rather than using those rubber things, it had little springs > beneath the keycaps which pressed down directly on the keyboard membrane. I'm going to have to dig out my floppy-less 520 now! > I didn't get my MegaST until they released the 1Mb machine with blitter, > this was what, a year or so after the 2Mb and 4Mb models launched? It's > possible they bundled a cheaper keyboard with that model, or maybe by this > time quailty had suffered in the mad scramble to stay afloat...? Could be, as I have both the 2mb and 4mb machines. IIRC the TT030 we have at Bletchley Park seems to have a mushier keyboard than the MegaST so quality could well have become an issue. -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection? From dm561 at torfree.net Tue Oct 30 03:57:19 2007 From: dm561 at torfree.net (M H Stein) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:57:19 -0400 Subject: WTB/WTT S-100 Chassis (UK/Europe only) Message-ID: <01C81AB1.B0266920@MSE_D03> -------------Original Message: Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:38:54 -0000 From: "Jim Attfield" Subject: WTB/WTT S-100 Chassis (UK/Europe only) I'm looking for an S-100 chassis and PSU to house my Cromemco Z80/68000 system as I have given up any hope of sourcing one from the US due to weight and cost of shipping. Preferably Cromemco Z2/Z2D, I will consider chassis/PSU only as I already have a Blitz Bus backplane. Willing to trade if anyone would like, I have e.g. 4-FDC, TU-ART, 32K Bytesaver, some RAM, 8-PIO, ZPU etc. I would also like to snag an IMI 20Mb drive to go with my WDI-II if anyone knows of any. I'm located in the West Midlands (UK) and can be reached at james AT attfield DOT co DOT UK. Sorry, no fancy sig just yet :) If the shipping cost is right I am happy to consider European sources. Jim ------------Reply: I have several IMI 20MB (and 5MB) drives, but they're also on the wrong side of the Atlantic (Toronto). Also, I'm not sure at this point how many are still working reliably or how many I can spare (if any). I have scrapped a few though, so if you happen to find an ST-412/506 version (they were used in some PCs) I could probably send you the PCBs to convert it. Why not just build a nice custom case & PS? mike From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Tue Oct 30 04:06:19 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:06:19 +0100 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <47252A8C.9070509@dunnington.plus.com> References: <4724FC2B.1090501@bsu.edu> <47252A8C.9070509@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <20071030100619.4f1f9a2c@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:34:20 +0000 Pete Turnbull wrote: > Perhaps you're referring to the Indigo^2, but the R4K Indigo has most > things in common with the R3K Indigo. Only from the outside. The architecture of the R3k Indigo CPU board is a slightly modified Personal IRIS 4D3x. It uses the same proprietary memory modules as the 4D3x and it even shares the same IP12 CPU architecture denominator. The IP20 R4k Indigo CPU board in turn is a completely different beast. It uses the same keyboard / mouse as the R3k Indigo as well as GFX bus, but uses ordinary PS/2 SIMM memory. It is much closer to the IP22 (Indigo2 R4k) and IP24 (Indy) then 4D3x (IP12). A IP20 R4k Indigo can run IRIX up to 6.5.22 just like the Indigo2 and Indy. -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Oct 30 04:34:28 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:34:28 +0000 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <20071030100619.4f1f9a2c@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4724FC2B.1090501@bsu.edu> <47252A8C.9070509@dunnington.plus.com> <20071030100619.4f1f9a2c@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <4726FAA4.6010007@dunnington.plus.com> On 30/10/2007 09:06, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:34:20 +0000 > Pete Turnbull wrote: > >> Perhaps you're referring to the Indigo^2, but the R4K Indigo has most >> things in common with the R3K Indigo. > Only from the outside. The architecture of the R3k Indigo CPU board is > a slightly modified Personal IRIS 4D3x. It uses the same proprietary > memory modules as the 4D3x and it even shares the same IP12 CPU > architecture denominator. The IP20 R4k Indigo CPU board in turn is a > completely different beast. It uses the same keyboard / mouse as the > R3k Indigo as well as GFX bus, but uses ordinary PS/2 SIMM memory. It is > much closer to the IP22 (Indigo2 R4k) and IP24 (Indy) then 4D3x (IP12). > A IP20 R4k Indigo can run IRIX up to 6.5.22 just like the Indigo2 and Indy. It also uses the same GIO bus as the R3K, different from the Indy's one. My point is that the CPU is only one part, of several. To say that makes the R4K Indigo like an Indy is like saying an R5K Indy is like an O2 :-) It's a question of emphasis, I suppose. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com Tue Oct 30 05:51:25 2007 From: shoppa_classiccmp at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 06:51:25 -0400 Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. In-Reply-To: References: <000301c8198c$e1b83200$b05a9c04@screamer> Message-ID: <20071030105126.21F1CBA461D@mini-me.trailing-edge.com> "William Donzelli" wrote: > > Any idea what these things may be? > > The modules are just generic logic modules, as you probably guessed. > RCS has a rack of these that sound very similar. Are some of your > modules color coded? We never figured out who was the maker, although > admittedly we did not try very hard. > > These generic logic modules were a minor success in the factory > automation market, selling to the guys that could look beyond the > relay. General Automation had such a line, even after they went into minicomputers. And how they were selling generic logic modules to a rather captive market after, for example, DEC had stopped years before. It was odd how some of their form factors were exactly the same as Q-bus and Unibus :-). Tim. From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 30 08:55:39 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:55:39 -0400 Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <472737DB.6080504@gmail.com> Tony Duell wrote: > The 'Ulitimat vintage...' would be something like a PERQ 2T4, or an > HP95C, or a prototype or... Or an S/360 or something even earlier. Peace... Sridhar From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Oct 30 09:15:01 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:15:01 -0400 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: On Oct 29, 2007, at 12:08 AM, Scott Quinn wrote: > There's also many boards for a (can't remember the name, it starts > with "T" and is the ultra-high-reliability system that runs 2 or 4 > processors in parallel. Think it's PA-RISC, but can't recall for > sure). I don't have them, but can pick them up tomorrow if anyones > interested. Tandem? If so, those will almost definitely be MIPS processors. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 30 09:19:25 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 10:19:25 -0400 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com> Message-ID: <47273D6D.4010101@gmail.com> Dave McGuire wrote: > On Oct 29, 2007, at 12:08 AM, Scott Quinn wrote: >> There's also many boards for a (can't remember the name, it starts >> with "T" and is the ultra-high-reliability system that runs 2 or 4 >> processors in parallel. Think it's PA-RISC, but can't recall for >> sure). I don't have them, but can pick them up tomorrow if anyones >> interested. > > Tandem? If so, those will almost definitely be MIPS processors. Refresh my memory how those worked? Two processors in lock-step? Three processors in a voting quorum? Peace... Sridhar From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 30 10:27:07 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:27:07 -0700 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: References: <008d01c81ab8$25b172b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk>, Message-ID: <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com> On 30 Oct 2007 at 8:12, Adrian Graham wrote: > > I had a very early ST which had a slightly different keyboard. If I remember > > correctly, rather than using those rubber things, it had little springs > > beneath the keycaps which pressed down directly on the keyboard membrane. > > I'm going to have to dig out my floppy-less 520 now! I was so upset with the keyboard on my 520ST that I purchased a third- party set of springs that were installed right under the keycaps. It was better, but the keyboard was still a real pile of (What's the right word, Jay--"stuph"?). I also recall that there was a mod for the 520ST wherein additional DRAM could be soldered piggyback-style over the original chips to double memory capacity. The chip-selects for the added RAM were tied together and run to somewhere on the main board. Had Atari managed to put better keyboards on their intial STs, it probably would have sold better. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 30 10:35:15 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:35:15 -0700 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <47273D6D.4010101@gmail.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com>, , <47273D6D.4010101@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com> On 30 Oct 2007 at 10:19, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Refresh my memory how those worked? Two processors in lock-step? Three > processors in a voting quorum? Nothing that simple. Special software and hardware. As was driven home to me by a Tandem engineer who was also a good friend, the term of art used by Tandem is "Nonstop" not "Fault tolerant". A world of difference between them. For a very good analysis, check out the paper "Why Do Computers Stop and What Can Be Done About It?" by Tandem's Jim Gray. It should be somewhere on the web, given its importance. It describes in very eloquent terms, the Tandem philosophy. Cheers, Chuck From aek at bitsavers.org Tue Oct 30 10:51:50 2007 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:51:50 -0700 Subject: Tandem memo (why do computers stop) Message-ID: <47275316.9060509@bitsavers.org> http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf and yes, it was THAT Jim Gray, may he rest in peace. From doc at mdrconsult.com Tue Oct 30 11:09:06 2007 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:09:06 -0500 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com>, , <47273D6D.4010101@gmail.com> <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47275722.70402@mdrconsult.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 30 Oct 2007 at 10:19, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> Refresh my memory how those worked? Two processors in lock-step? Three >> processors in a voting quorum? > > Nothing that simple. Special software and hardware. As was driven > home to me by a Tandem engineer who was also a good friend, the term > of art used by Tandem is "Nonstop" not "Fault tolerant". A world of > difference between them. For a very good analysis, check out the > paper "Why Do Computers Stop and What Can Be Done About It?" by > Tandem's Jim Gray. It should be somewhere on the web, given its > importance. It describes in very eloquent terms, the Tandem > philosophy. For a very graphic example of that philosophy, consider this: In mid-2004 I ran into a guy who works at HP/Austin. His team had just finished a major project. They had just completed certification of the first 10/100 ethernet driver for Non-Stop OS. Doc Shipley From bpope at wordstock.com Tue Oct 30 11:09:14 2007 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:09:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: the ultimate in vintage crap In-Reply-To: <47266FDC.8010700@mdrconsult.com> Message-ID: <20071030160914.A283556756@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Doc Shipley > > Chris M wrote: > > if the "c" word was so offensive, I won't use it > > again. I can hardly imagine how that would be, seeing > > the illustrious language that does get used from time > > to time, albeit sparingly. I meant no offense. > > > > --- Jay West wrote: > > > >> A few months back, someone offered to throw together > >> a script/program that > >> would process inbound mail on the list, removing or > >> substituting certain > >> words then passing the email on. > > I'm hoping it's not "crap" that Jay wants to filter, but "LOL" and > "stuph". > I thought it was to automatically lookup and ebay listing when just an item number was present... Cheers, Bryan From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Oct 30 11:11:15 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:11:15 -0400 Subject: Tandem memo (why do computers stop) In-Reply-To: <47275316.9060509@bitsavers.org> References: <47275316.9060509@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <472757A3.4050508@gmail.com> Al Kossow wrote: > http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf > > and yes, it was THAT Jim Gray, may he rest in peace. According to this document, it's two processors in lock-step. Peace... Sridhar From g at kurico.com Tue Oct 30 11:12:38 2007 From: g at kurico.com (George Currie) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:12:38 -0500 Subject: Tandem memo (why do computers stop) In-Reply-To: <47275316.9060509@bitsavers.org> References: <47275316.9060509@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <472757F6.7050701@kurico.com> Al Kossow wrote: > http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf > > and yes, it was THAT Jim Gray, may he rest in peace. > Interesting read. I worked for a software company in the late 80's that was started by some former Tandem folks who were trying to bring some of the software transaction protection concepts he mentions to PC's. A virtual machine was utilized to help address the lack of hardware robustness. It was a great concept, but alas, the PC's of the time (and OS's) were not up to the task. That and some unfortunate technical/business decisions doomed the product. From chris at mainecoon.com Tue Oct 30 11:17:36 2007 From: chris at mainecoon.com (Chris Kennedy) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:17:36 -0700 Subject: Tandem memo (why do computers stop) In-Reply-To: <472757A3.4050508@gmail.com> References: <47275316.9060509@bitsavers.org> <472757A3.4050508@gmail.com> Message-ID: <47275920.5010404@mainecoon.com> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > According to this document, it's two processors in lock-step. Yep, that was the Tandem way. You could watch the lights blink on the first processor, count two and watch the lights do precisely the same thing on the second. Cheers, Chris. -- Chris Kennedy chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97 PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97 "Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..." From jvdg at sparcpark.net Tue Oct 30 11:28:21 2007 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (jvdg at sparcpark.net) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:28:21 +0100 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue Message-ID: Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 30 Oct 2007 at 10:19, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> Refresh my memory how those worked? Two processors in lock-step? Three >> processors in a voting quorum? > > Nothing that simple. Special software and hardware. As was driven > home to me by a Tandem engineer who was also a good friend, the term > of art used by Tandem is "Nonstop" not "Fault tolerant". A world of > difference between them. For a very good analysis, check out the > paper "Why Do Computers Stop and What Can Be Done About It?" by > Tandem's Jim Gray. It should be somewhere on the web, given its > importance. It describes in very eloquent terms, the Tandem > philosophy. I always found Tandem machines a joy to work on. NSK/Guardian/TACL is a nice OS, the user is nicely close to the hardware (unlike IBM mainframes, for instance). Almost UNIX-like. The hardware's not too shabby, either. We once had a Tandem engineer over because one CPU on our (16-CPU) machine was constantly giving errors. When he finally decided the best course of action was to replace the CPU, he simply yanked it out. The machine kept running like nothing happened. A new CPU was inserted and in the process monitor you could literally see processes moving from their back-up CPU's back to the newly installed one, which was their primary. All of this without any of the programs running skipping a beat. They had cute promotional items, too. One of my favourites was a coffee mug with two handles on it. ,xtG tsooJ From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 30 11:41:19 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:41:19 -0700 Subject: Tandem memo (why do computers stop) In-Reply-To: <47275920.5010404@mainecoon.com> References: <47275316.9060509@bitsavers.org>, <472757A3.4050508@gmail.com>, <47275920.5010404@mainecoon.com> Message-ID: <4726FC3F.17923.1DE068E7@cclist.sydex.com> On 30 Oct 2007 at 9:17, Chris Kennedy wrote: > Yep, that was the Tandem way. You could watch the lights blink on the > first processor, count two and watch the lights do precisely the same > thing on the second. Yes, but as I said "it's nothing that simple"--to say that it was would be completely discounting the enormous investment in software that Tandem made to produce their NonStop systems. Heck, back around then, a friend and I prototyped a system with three PC/XT's and a proprietary expansion card that did three-way voting and also performed hot replacement of failed processors. Basically a garage operation and nearly sold to a then-cash-rich Everex. Maybe good enough for process control, but too weak for anything more involved than that. Our selling point was that it was off-the-shelf and cheap. I think I still have the OrCAD files for our board somewhere on a 5.25" 360K floppy. We did nothing about what software ran on the system--and that was the giant weakness. Without software, it was just another interesting piece of iron. Simple redundancy doesn't always identify which of the two systems is producing the error--only that there was an error--and that's where Tandem's genius comes in. Tandem was a whole world apart--not only did they have hardware redundancy (which would have been no great shucks back then), but their software was constructed along a modular transaction-based model, so that transactions were never lost. (Hence the popularity of these in the banking sector). Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 30 11:43:48 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:43:48 -0700 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4726FCD4.30401.1DE2AEFE@cclist.sydex.com> On 30 Oct 2007 at 17:28, jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote: > The hardware's not too shabby, either. We once had a Tandem engineer > over because one CPU on our (16-CPU) machine was constantly giving > errors. When he finally decided the best course of action was to > replace the CPU, he simply yanked it out. The machine kept running > like nothing happened. A new CPU was inserted and in the process > monitor you could literally see processes moving from their back-up > CPU's back to the newly installed one, which was their primary. All of > this without any of the programs running skipping a beat. I remember seeing a demo of this hosted by Jimmy Treybig hisself. "Go ahead--pull any wire". If not conclusive, it was at least impressive. Cheers, Chuck From andy.piercy at gmail.com Tue Oct 30 13:00:43 2007 From: andy.piercy at gmail.com (Andy Piercy) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:00:43 +0000 Subject: Tandem memo (why do computers stop) In-Reply-To: <4726FC3F.17923.1DE068E7@cclist.sydex.com> References: <47275316.9060509@bitsavers.org> <472757A3.4050508@gmail.com> <47275920.5010404@mainecoon.com> <4726FC3F.17923.1DE068E7@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: I worked on a UK designed lock step fault tolerant computer for Sun Micro systems the Netra FT1800. This was a huge beast based on the E450 and had all the modules duplicated and hot swap out design. You could just pull out the CPU module (each had up to 4 * 450MHz Ultrasparc II processor modules and 4gb of ram) and the system would continue running with out a glitch and on reinsertion the system would reload and resynchronise. You could do this with any of the modules, disk, I/O (PCI cards fitted in hot swap carriers, fan modules, psu's it was a direct competitor to Tandem. http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/validateUser.do?target=Systems/Netra_ft_1800/Netra_ft_1800 There were issues with the lock step and sometimes they would go out of sync b ut they never just stopped... Anyone ever seen these? Ta, Andy. On 30/10/2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 30 Oct 2007 at 9:17, Chris Kennedy wrote: > > > Yep, that was the Tandem way. You could watch the lights blink on the > > first processor, count two and watch the lights do precisely the same > > thing on the second. > > Yes, but as I said "it's nothing that simple"--to say that it was > would be completely discounting the enormous investment in software > that Tandem made to produce their NonStop systems. > > Heck, back around then, a friend and I prototyped a system with three > PC/XT's and a proprietary expansion card that did three-way voting > and also performed hot replacement of failed processors. Basically > a garage operation and nearly sold to a then-cash-rich Everex. Maybe > good enough for process control, but too weak for anything more > involved than that. Our selling point was that it was off-the-shelf > and cheap. I think I still have the OrCAD files for our board > somewhere on a 5.25" 360K floppy. > > We did nothing about what software ran on the system--and that was > the giant weakness. Without software, it was just another > interesting piece of iron. > > Simple redundancy doesn't always identify which of the two systems is > producing the error--only that there was an error--and that's where > Tandem's genius comes in. > > Tandem was a whole world apart--not only did they have hardware > redundancy (which would have been no great shucks back then), but > their software was constructed along a modular transaction-based > model, so that transactions were never lost. (Hence the popularity of > these in the banking sector). > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > From curt at atarimuseum.com Tue Oct 30 14:05:58 2007 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:05:58 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com> References: <008d01c81ab8$25b172b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk>, <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47278096.8090909@atarimuseum.com> Tramiel was using Vic-20 mentality towards a next generation computer - the whole all in one cases which I never liked - the Amiga's pedestal with detachable keyboard looked soooooooo much nicer (Atari would come out with the Mega ST in 1987 which was a nice pizza box design, that grey was just blah...) Atari had a lot of well established connections for good quality keyboards, tactile input for the keys and for the mouse (that horrible little wedge shape that they never improves) are paramount importance... In fact right now I'm typing on a newly released Dell keyboard for a Vostro Dual Core I upgraded to this week, the keyboard is too light and slides around a bit, but the keys have an almost hollow tactile feel to them and for the last 2 days I've been making typos galore and its driving me nuts, so this keybaord is being pulled tonight and I'm going back to my nice heavy, solid feeling IBM Thinkcentre keyboard which I have been using since 1999 and I'm putting back tonight. Some things you just don't skimp on, no matter what, a keyboard especially whether its a 22 year old ST or a brand new Wintel box. Curt Chuck Guzis wrote: > On 30 Oct 2007 at 8:12, Adrian Graham wrote: > > >>> I had a very early ST which had a slightly different keyboard. If I remember >>> correctly, rather than using those rubber things, it had little springs >>> beneath the keycaps which pressed down directly on the keyboard membrane. >>> >> I'm going to have to dig out my floppy-less 520 now! >> > > I was so upset with the keyboard on my 520ST that I purchased a third- > party set of springs that were installed right under the keycaps. It > was better, but the keyboard was still a real pile of (What's the > right word, Jay--"stuph"?). I also recall that there was a mod for > the 520ST wherein additional DRAM could be soldered piggyback-style > over the original chips to double memory capacity. The chip-selects > for the added RAM were tied together and run to somewhere on the main > board. > > Had Atari managed to put better keyboards on their intial STs, it > probably would have sold better. > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > From grant at stockly.com Tue Oct 30 14:31:00 2007 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:31:00 -0800 Subject: 1702 multiple burning Message-ID: <0JQQ00KUMOV87Y20@msgmmp-1.gci.net> I'm designing a 1702 programmer. Other than reading, does anyone know why I couldn't just parallel 4-8 chips at the same time? Grant From geoffr at zipcon.net Tue Oct 30 15:06:20 2007 From: geoffr at zipcon.net (Geoff Reed) Date: 30 Oct 2007 13:06:20 -0700 Subject: 1702 multiple burning In-Reply-To: <0JQQ00KUMOV87Y20@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <0JQQ00KUMOV87Y20@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <1193774780.47278ebc753a2@secure.zipcon.net> that is what some of the low-end (and possibly higher end too, but never looked) multi-chip adapters do. Quoting Grant Stockly : > I'm designing a 1702 programmer. Other than reading, does anyone > know why I couldn't just parallel 4-8 chips at the same time? > > Grant > > From compoobah at valleyimplants.com Tue Oct 30 15:01:03 2007 From: compoobah at valleyimplants.com (Scott Quinn) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:01:03 -0500 Subject: Tandem memo (why do computers stop) Message-ID: <9e52c9dbb2194c9db21aac4a4bd4b32e@valleyimplants.com> These were spares from a guy who does service for the FAA. Too bad there wasn't a small chassis as well - sounds like an interesting system, but probably very hard to find SSW for. Sounds like no one wants the modules. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Oct 30 15:19:55 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:19:55 +0000 (GMT) Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. In-Reply-To: from "dwight elvey" at Oct 29, 7 09:29:01 pm Message-ID: > I've made just such a jig. I started with the frame of a SA400 > that I picked up scrap. I then made two blocks of aluminum Thinking about it, the advantage of the SA400 is that the upper part of the index sensor, and thus the upper die block after modification, is on the clamp arm. Taht means the 2 die blocks are moved apart when you insert a disk. The disandvantage of the SA400 is that because the 2 die blocks would move apart, they may not align again perfectly. And the other prolem is that the doors tend to reak if your'e not careful. > I used drilled detents on the flywheel, using a 10 hard sectored > disk to index with. Having got a proper dviding head (!), it would be very easy for me to either drill holes or mill notches in the pulley. -tony From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Tue Oct 30 16:55:18 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:55:18 -0300 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop><471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <006701c81b3f$d33a92e0$f0fea8c0@alpha> > Do you know if that's similar to an ALL-02? I have a couple of these, > though only one ISA card, and I have the disk with the software, but I > can't get it to run on under DOS on a modern PC -- it looks like the PC is > too fast. I have an ALL-03, it has the SAC201 card. It runs in everything I put it on, but not on windows XP. There are two pages that says a lot about these old hi-lo programmers: http://www.danbbs.dk/~rmadrm/sunshine.htm http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/ Other I didn't know: http://people.zeelandnet.nl/wgeeraert/eprom.htm The sunshine programmer is the same of all-01/02/03/etc Good luck! From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Tue Oct 30 16:06:58 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:06:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <47278096.8090909@atarimuseum.com> References: <008d01c81ab8$25b172b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk>, <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com> <47278096.8090909@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > Some things you just don't skimp on, no matter what, a keyboard > especially whether its a 22 year old ST or a brand new Wintel box. This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. All my pee-cee class machines use them. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From spc at conman.org Tue Oct 30 16:16:05 2007 From: spc at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:16:05 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: References: <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com> <47278096.8090909@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <20071030211605.GA1953@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great David Griffith once stated: > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > > > Some things you just don't skimp on, no matter what, a keyboard > > especially whether its a 22 year old ST or a brand new Wintel box. > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. All my pee-cee > class machines use them. Same here. In fact, I use them on newer Macs as well (using a PS/2->USB converter). -spc (have yet to wear out an IBM Model M keyboard ... ) From teoz at neo.rr.com Tue Oct 30 16:39:49 2007 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:39:49 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) References: <008d01c81ab8$25b172b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk>, <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com><47278096.8090909@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <002001c81b3d$65f15950$55724247@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Griffith" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 5:06 PM Subject: Re: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > > > Some things you just don't skimp on, no matter what, a keyboard > > especially whether its a 22 year old ST or a brand new Wintel box. > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. All my pee-cee > class machines use them. > I got my only model M recently with an IBM 9595, nice keyboard. I do have 2 Northgate keyboards one of which I am typing with now that I got new in 1992 and still working 100%. From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Tue Oct 30 17:03:02 2007 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:03:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <20071030211605.GA1953@brevard.conman.org> References: <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com> <47278096.8090909@atarimuseum.com> <20071030211605.GA1953@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Sean Conner wrote: > It was thus said that the Great David Griffith once stated: > > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > > > > > Some things you just don't skimp on, no matter what, a keyboard > > > especially whether its a 22 year old ST or a brand new Wintel box. > > > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. All my pee-cee > > class machines use them. > > Same here. In fact, I use them on newer Macs as well (using a PS/2->USB > converter). I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws holding a Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter inside. So far everything I've tried (and I haven't looked very hard) will fit the nut, but is too thick to get inside the hole. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Oct 30 17:07:07 2007 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:07:07 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: References: <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com> <47278096.8090909@atarimuseum.com> <20071030211605.GA1953@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <200710302208.SAA01426@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws > holding a Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter > inside. So far everything I've tried (and I haven't looked very > hard) will fit the nut, but is too thick to get inside the hole. Surely the simple thing to do is to take an ordinary one and grind down its outer surface? (Admittedly, this is easier with a lathe, or at least a variable-speed drill, that can hold it by the handle, but it's hardly impossible with nothing but a bench grinder.) /~\ 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 pete at dunnington.plus.com Tue Oct 30 17:17:34 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:17:34 +0000 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester In-Reply-To: <006701c81b3f$d33a92e0$f0fea8c0@alpha> References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop><471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <006701c81b3f$d33a92e0$f0fea8c0@alpha> Message-ID: <4727AD7E.1000200@dunnington.plus.com> On 30/10/2007 21:55, Alexandre Souza wrote: > I have an ALL-03, it has the SAC201 card. It runs in everything I put > it on, but not on windows XP. There are two pages that says a lot about > these old hi-lo programmers: > > http://www.danbbs.dk/~rmadrm/sunshine.htm > http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/ > > Other I didn't know: > http://people.zeelandnet.nl/wgeeraert/eprom.htm > > The sunshine programmer is the same of all-01/02/03/etc Thank you! That's really useful, and I might be able to get it going now. I was interested to see the mention of some Altera CPLDs on one of the pages, as I just happen to have a boxful of those. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Tue Oct 30 18:46:08 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:46:08 -0300 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop><471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com> <00bb01c814f7$c7785990$f0fea8c0@alpha> <471D21DE.2010809@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <011801c81b4f$9d561590$f0fea8c0@alpha> > Hmm... I'll have to go and check the card to see what it is, but the > machine it's in is a P3 or maybe even a P2. I wonder if it would be > worth trying a copy of your software? I'll trade you some SGI/Irix info > for a teledisk image or a zipfile :-) Help is on your way :o) > However, a realistic solution might be to replace the workshop pentium > that's hardly used one a year with the 486DX4 that's currently > preventing the door from moving in the breeze. I use mine in a P3/1000, there is no why it would not work there From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Oct 30 18:09:19 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:09:19 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: References: <20071030211605.GA1953@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <200710301909.21042.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 30 October 2007 18:03, David Griffith wrote: > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Sean Conner wrote: > > It was thus said that the Great David Griffith once stated: > > > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > > > > Some things you just don't skimp on, no matter what, a keyboard > > > > especially whether its a 22 year old ST or a brand new Wintel box. > > > > > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. All my > > > pee-cee class machines use them. > > > > Same here. In fact, I use them on newer Macs as well (using a PS/2->USB > > converter). > > I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws holding a > Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter inside. So far > everything I've tried (and I haven't looked very hard) will fit the nut, > but is too thick to get inside the hole. If you're talking about those hex-head screws, my answer is simple: Snap-On Tools! :-) I just pulled a 5.5mm nutdriver out of my toolbox, and it fits the screw head quite nicely, and that's one of the recessed ones. They use a better grade of steel, and tend to be thinner for any given size. One of the reasons I like 'em, the no-hassle warranty being another one... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 30 18:22:08 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:22:08 -0700 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <200710302208.SAA01426@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: , , <200710302208.SAA01426@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <47275A30.2726.1F4F5E46@cclist.sydex.com> On 30 Oct 2007 at 18:07, der Mouse wrote: > Surely the simple thing to do is to take an ordinary one and grind down > its outer surface? (Admittedly, this is easier with a lathe, or at > least a variable-speed drill, that can hold it by the handle, but it's > hardly impossible with nothing but a bench grinder.) Just buy a *good* nutdriver (or set of them), not some cheap chrome- plated hunk of Chinese boron steel. My 30+ year old Xcelite set still works just fine, but I've been rather disappointed with recent Cooper Group tool offerings. Maybe Klein? In any case, buy the hollow-shaft model--it'll save you from cursing at an overlog screw. Cheers, Chuck From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 30 19:06:04 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:06:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: any info on the ABS Orb (UK)? Message-ID: <168015.25690.qm@web61021.mail.yahoo.com> why wasn't I told of this existence of this! I want one. Or more - __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Oct 30 19:10:55 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:10:55 -0400 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <47273D6D.4010101@gmail.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com> <47273D6D.4010101@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1bb838f95e0150704687cc8b9d013a40@neurotica.com> On Oct 30, 2007, at 10:19 AM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >>> There's also many boards for a (can't remember the name, it starts >>> with "T" and is the ultra-high-reliability system that runs 2 or 4 >>> processors in parallel. Think it's PA-RISC, but can't recall for >>> sure). I don't have them, but can pick them up tomorrow if anyones >>> interested. >> Tandem? If so, those will almost definitely be MIPS processors. > > Refresh my memory how those worked? Two processors in lock-step? > Three processors in a voting quorum? I don't know which machines are which, but the ones Doug Humphrey showed me (when he worked at Tandem) used three R3000 processors in a voting system. It was very impressive. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Oct 30 19:16:44 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:16:44 -0400 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com>, , <47273D6D.4010101@gmail.com> <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <74fc3e6b12880f0ef651d7d766d78638@neurotica.com> On Oct 30, 2007, at 11:35 AM, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> Refresh my memory how those worked? Two processors in lock-step? >> Three >> processors in a voting quorum? > > Nothing that simple. Special software and hardware. As was driven > home to me by a Tandem engineer who was also a good friend, the term > of art used by Tandem is "Nonstop" not "Fault tolerant". A world of > difference between them. For a very good analysis, check out the > paper "Why Do Computers Stop and What Can Be Done About It?" by > Tandem's Jim Gray. It should be somewhere on the web, given its > importance. It describes in very eloquent terms, the Tandem > philosophy. Actually at least one of their systems (I don't remember what it was called) does use a voting scheme, according to my old friend (and former employer, and DEC20 hacker) Doug Humphrey, who worked for Tandem for many years. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Oct 30 19:30:30 2007 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:30:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: anyone in Fall River, MA? Message-ID: <512420.42339.qm@web61013.mail.yahoo.com> ...that can do me for a favor? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From cclist at sydex.com Tue Oct 30 20:07:39 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:07:39 -0700 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <74fc3e6b12880f0ef651d7d766d78638@neurotica.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com>, <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com>, <74fc3e6b12880f0ef651d7d766d78638@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <472772EB.19805.1FAFF713@cclist.sydex.com> On 30 Oct 2007 at 20:16, Dave McGuire wrote: > Actually at least one of their systems (I don't remember what it was > called) does use a voting scheme, according to my old friend (and > former employer, and DEC20 hacker) Doug Humphrey, who worked for Tandem > for many years. Quite possible, and probably later than my own exposure to their systems (mid 80's) and perhaps not transaction-oriented. There were other contenders in the field, most notably Stratus. I remember that one of the early online computer-gear auction sites, OnSale used Tandem gear. Cheers, Chuck From wdonzelli at gmail.com Tue Oct 30 20:37:33 2007 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:37:33 -0500 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <472772EB.19805.1FAFF713@cclist.sydex.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com> <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com> <74fc3e6b12880f0ef651d7d766d78638@neurotica.com> <472772EB.19805.1FAFF713@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > I remember that one of the early online computer-gear auction sites, > OnSale used Tandem gear. AOL had a fair amount of Tandem gear as well. -- Will From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Oct 30 21:04:16 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:04:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <200710301909.21042.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <20071030211605.GA1953@brevard.conman.org> <200710301909.21042.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> > > > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. All my > > I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws holding a > > Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter inside. So far On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > If you're talking about those hex-head screws, my answer is simple: Snap-On > Tools! :-) I just pulled a 5.5mm nutdriver out of my toolbox, and it fits > the screw head quite nicely, and that's one of the recessed ones. Is it 5.5mm, or 7/32"? > They use a better grade of steel, and tend to be thinner for any given size. > One of the reasons I like 'em, the no-hassle warranty being another one... Well, even Sears will give you a lifetime supply of scrap metal, but at least Snap-on tends to be decent quality. From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Oct 30 21:08:17 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:08:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <472772EB.19805.1FAFF713@cclist.sydex.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com>, <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com>, <74fc3e6b12880f0ef651d7d766d78638@neurotica.com> <472772EB.19805.1FAFF713@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071030190739.Q93170@shell.lmi.net> On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > I remember that one of the early online computer-gear auction sites, > OnSale used Tandem gear. Did a quorum of working machines vote to send those machines to auction? From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Oct 30 21:38:28 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:38:28 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710301909.21042.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200710302238.28519.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 30 October 2007 22:04, Fred Cisin wrote: > > > > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. All my > > > > > > I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws > > > holding a Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter > > > inside. So far > > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > If you're talking about those hex-head screws, my answer is simple: > > Snap-On Tools! :-) I just pulled a 5.5mm nutdriver out of my toolbox, > > and it fits the screw head quite nicely, and that's one of the recessed > > ones. > > Is it 5.5mm, or 7/32"? The one I pulled and tried first was a 5.5mm, which seemed to fit pretty well, but I have both, if I need 'em. My "stuff" in terms of nut drivers, sockets and deep sockets in 1/4" drive, and also small combination wrenches goes all the way down to 1/8" and 4mm. :-) > > They use a better grade of steel, and tend to be thinner for any given > > size. One of the reasons I like 'em, the no-hassle warranty being > > another one... > > Well, even Sears will give you a lifetime supply of scrap metal, but at > least Snap-on tends to be decent quality. Sears has given me a hard time more often than not in recent times, and although I'll go there and buy tools it's not my first choice, if I have a choice in the circumstances. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From trixter at oldskool.org Tue Oct 30 22:37:32 2007 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:37:32 -0500 Subject: Atari ST connectors In-Reply-To: References: <008d01c81ab8$25b172b0$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk>, <4726EADB.29682.1D9C7C81@cclist.sydex.com> <47278096.8090909@atarimuseum.com> Message-ID: <4727F87C.3070107@oldskool.org> David Griffith wrote: > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Curt @ Atari Museum wrote: > >> Some things you just don't skimp on, no matter what, a keyboard >> especially whether its a 22 year old ST or a brand new Wintel box. > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. All my pee-cee > class machines use them. Seconded. The Model M13 (the one with the trackpoint in the middle) is currently my pride and joy, since it lets me switch to it when my mousing/trackballing hand starts to get numb/tingly and keep working (within reason, of course). -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/ From dkelvey at hotmail.com Tue Oct 30 23:38:31 2007 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:38:31 -0700 Subject: 10 Sector Hard sectored disks. In-Reply-To: References: from Message-ID: > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> > > I've made just such a jig. I started with the frame of a SA400> > that I picked up scrap. I then made two blocks of aluminum> > Thinking about it, the advantage of the SA400 is that the upper part of > the index sensor, and thus the upper die block after modification, is on > the clamp arm. Taht means the 2 die blocks are moved apart when you > insert a disk.> > The disandvantage of the SA400 is that because the 2 die blocks would > move apart, they may not align again perfectly. And the other prolem is > that the doors tend to reak if your'e not careful. Hi Tony The holes don't align with the with the door open but I find that if I slide it through one block and the index hole on the disk, things align nicely as the door closes. If I don't catch it, the bit slides through all the way. A good indication that it is aligned well. The SA400 uses metal bands for the hinge and that keeps really good alignment. > > > I used drilled detents on the flywheel, using a 10 hard sectored> > disk to index with.> > Having got a proper dviding head (!), it would be very easy for me to > either drill holes or mill notches in the pulley. Yes, that is the other option. In any case, it does work. I like the SA400 frame because it is heavy enough to hold up to all the drilling and taping. It could use a larger diameter flywheel. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Caf?. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Wed Oct 31 04:24:27 2007 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:24:27 +0100 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <4726FAA4.6010007@dunnington.plus.com> References: <4724FC2B.1090501@bsu.edu> <47252A8C.9070509@dunnington.plus.com> <20071030100619.4f1f9a2c@SirToby.dinner41.local> <4726FAA4.6010007@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <20071031102427.3268ca8a@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:34:28 +0000 Pete Turnbull wrote: > It also uses the same GIO bus as the R3K, different from the Indy's > one. Sure? I think once I munted a FDDI card from an Indy in a R3k Indigo. The thought of a R3k driving 100 MBit/s appealed me. (I tried it with a PI 4D35 before. But the VME FDDI card was broken.) > It's a question of emphasis, I suppose. Or a matter of taste. ;-) -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From coredump at gifford.co.uk Wed Oct 31 05:20:36 2007 From: coredump at gifford.co.uk (John Honniball) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:20:36 +0000 Subject: Atari ST connectors In-Reply-To: <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> References: <20071030211605.GA1953@brevard.conman.org> <200710301909.21042.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <472856F4.9000905@gifford.co.uk> Fred Cisin wrote: >>>I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws holding a >>>Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter inside. So far > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: >>I just pulled a 5.5mm nutdriver out of my toolbox, and it fits >>the screw head quite nicely, and that's one of the recessed ones. > > Is it 5.5mm, or 7/32"? It's probably 7/32", but I opened mine with a 5.5mm nut-driver that I bought in a model shop (the sort of place where they sell radio-controlled planes, model trains and R/C cars). It's much easier to find the metric ones here (England) than the imperial sizes. -- John Honniball coredump at gifford.co.uk From pat at computer-refuge.org Wed Oct 31 05:40:03 2007 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:40:03 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> References: <200710301909.21042.rtellason@verizon.net> <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <200710310640.03303.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Tuesday 30 October 2007 22:04, Fred Cisin wrote: > > > > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. > > > > > All my > > > > > > I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws > > > holding a Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter > > > inside. So far > > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > If you're talking about those hex-head screws, my answer is > > simple: Snap-On Tools! :-) I just pulled a 5.5mm nutdriver out > > of my toolbox, and it fits the screw head quite nicely, and > > that's one of the recessed ones. > > Is it 5.5mm, or 7/32"? Pretty much all screws in IBM equipment are metric sized. Just remember 5.5, 8, 10, and 13mm, and you'll be able to remove most screws in IBM equipment that aren't flat-blade-only. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From james at attfield.co.uk Wed Oct 31 05:41:24 2007 From: james at attfield.co.uk (Jim Attfield) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:41:24 -0000 Subject: WTB/WTT S-100 Chassis (UK/Europe only) In-Reply-To: <200710301801.l9UI1Sed071634@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:57:19 -0400 From: M H Stein Subject: WTB/WTT S-100 Chassis (UK/Europe only) ------------Reply: I have several IMI 20MB (and 5MB) drives, but they're also on the wrong side of the Atlantic (Toronto). Also, I'm not sure at this point how many are still working reliably or how many I can spare (if any). I have scrapped a few though, so if you happen to find an ST-412/506 version (they were used in some PCs) I could probably send you the PCBs to convert it. Why not just build a nice custom case & PS? mike ------------------------------ Hi Mike, glad to see they are still around to be had. Shipping a 20Mb IMI wouldn't be as bad as shipping a Z2D lol Nice tip on the PC drives although I believe I have only ever seen Seagate, Rodime, Micropolis, IBM etc. but I'll look more carefully from now on. Please keep me in mind, though, as soon as I have a chassis of some sort organised I'll want to run up the WDI-II (was a working pull from my old CS1-H, no longer with me, along with the DPU , 16-FDC and 256KZ) and get Cromix back on the go. Jim From alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br Wed Oct 31 10:32:41 2007 From: alexandre-listas at e-secure.com.br (Alexandre Souza) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:32:41 -0300 Subject: top2049 programmer as 74xxx chip tester References: <000001c8137d$736863c0$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop><471C2648.6010909@bluewin.ch> <471C8880.80005@dunnington.plus.com><006701c81b3f$d33a92e0$f0fea8c0@alpha> <4727AD7E.1000200@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <04f101c81bd3$cdf2a5e0$f0fea8c0@alpha> > Thank you! That's really useful, and I might be able to get it going now. > I was interested to see the mention of some Altera CPLDs on one of the > pages, as I just happen to have a boxful of those. Altera chips are easier to program. Just look for "byteblaster cable" on the net, you'll see that you'll need only a '245 and some resistors. From aijones2 at bsu.edu Wed Oct 31 09:40:41 2007 From: aijones2 at bsu.edu (ajones) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:40:41 -0400 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! Message-ID: <472893E9.6070806@bsu.edu> > > It also uses the same GIO bus as the R3K, different from the Indy's one. > My point is that the CPU is only one part, of several. To say that > makes the R4K Indigo like an Indy is like saying an R5K Indy is like an > O2 :-) It's a question of emphasis, I suppose. > Yes, there's lots more than the CPU. The Indy and Indigo R4k share a lot more than just a CPU. To build on your example, the Indigo R4k, Indy R4k, and Indy R5k all have gio32bis slots. The Indigo R3k supports only gio32. The O2 supports neither. :) From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Oct 31 10:32:46 2007 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:32:46 -0400 Subject: More stuff from the Sun rescue In-Reply-To: <472772EB.19805.1FAFF713@cclist.sydex.com> References: <49b5a9b4c395e103f4b14cf84b001fdf@valleyimplants.com>, <4726ECC3.10340.1DA3EE04@cclist.sydex.com>, <74fc3e6b12880f0ef651d7d766d78638@neurotica.com> <472772EB.19805.1FAFF713@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: On Oct 30, 2007, at 9:07 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote: >> Actually at least one of their systems (I don't remember what >> it was >> called) does use a voting scheme, according to my old friend (and >> former employer, and DEC20 hacker) Doug Humphrey, who worked for >> Tandem >> for many years. > > Quite possible, and probably later than my own exposure to their > systems (mid 80's) and perhaps not transaction-oriented. Definitely later...the machines that were described to me were ones that I saw running in production at a Tandem facility in Maryland in early 1993. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL Farewell Ophelia, 9/22/1991 - 7/25/2007 From pete at dunnington.plus.com Wed Oct 31 12:20:31 2007 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:20:31 +0000 Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: <20071031102427.3268ca8a@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4724FC2B.1090501@bsu.edu> <47252A8C.9070509@dunnington.plus.com> <20071030100619.4f1f9a2c@SirToby.dinner41.local> <4726FAA4.6010007@dunnington.plus.com> <20071031102427.3268ca8a@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <4728B95F.8060209@dunnington.plus.com> On 31/10/2007 09:24, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 09:34:28 +0000 > Pete Turnbull wrote: > >> It also uses the same GIO bus as the R3K, different from the Indy's >> one. > Sure? I think once I munted a FDDI card from an Indy in a R3k Indigo. Yes, but some devices are back-compatible. I can't remember exactly the differences (width is one) but I once had to know about it when I was going to design a GIO interface. It never got very far because I found an easier way to do what I wanted via another machine, but I do have a pile of GIO designer's documents somewhere. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From alhartman at yahoo.com Wed Oct 31 13:18:47 2007 From: alhartman at yahoo.com (Al Hartman) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:18:47 -0400 Subject: Laser 512XT In-Reply-To: <200703161009.l2GA8DKB021411@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200703161009.l2GA8DKB021411@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4728C707.3060903@yahoo.com> I have a Laser 512XT I picked up at TCF a couple of years ago... The guy didn't have a power supply for it, and had jury rigged something with an XT Supply. Does anyone have or know where I can get a power supply for this venerable beast? I used one when I worked for Program STEPPE porting the Apple II version of FACTS+ over to the PC, and it would be fun to boot one up again and play. Thanks!!! Al Phila, PA From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Oct 31 16:14:33 2007 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:14:33 -0400 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <200710310640.03303.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> <200710310640.03303.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <200710311714.33215.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 31 October 2007 06:40, Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Tuesday 30 October 2007 22:04, Fred Cisin wrote: > > > > > > This is why I have a small hoard of IBM Model M keyboards. > > > > > > All my > > > > > > > > I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws > > > > holding a Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter > > > > inside. So far > > > > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > > If you're talking about those hex-head screws, my answer is > > > simple: Snap-On Tools! :-) I just pulled a 5.5mm nutdriver out > > > of my toolbox, and it fits the screw head quite nicely, and > > > that's one of the recessed ones. > > > > Is it 5.5mm, or 7/32"? > > Pretty much all screws in IBM equipment are metric sized. Just remember > 5.5, 8, 10, and 13mm, and you'll be able to remove most screws in IBM > equipment that aren't flat-blade-only. And then there was the time I was trying to pull apart an external floppy enclosure so I could snag the drive to put it into something else... There were four philips-head screws accessible from underneath, but the two along the middle of each side were "tamper-proof torx"! I enlisted the help of a friend, and had him throw those two away when he got 'em out. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 31 16:25:39 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:25:39 -0700 Subject: Better ESDI Controller? DTC 6280 or DTC 6282 Message-ID: <47289063.23675.240B126E@cclist.sydex.com> I'm setting up an old system with a 380MB Maxtor (Miniscribe) ESDI drive and I have two ESDI controllers. One is a DTC 6280, the other, a DTC 6282. Which one is the preferable one? The 6280 is about a 2/3 length ISA card and the 6282 is about 1/2 length. Date codes are about a year apart (90 vs. 91) with the 6280 being the older one. For the life of me, I just can't remember which one I liked better. I do recall that it's possible to hang 4 floppies on the same cable off of either and that the FDC part handles FM very nicely. Thanks, Chuck From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 31 16:32:21 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:32:21 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <200710311714.33215.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <20071030190142.B93170@shell.lmi.net> <200710310640.03303.pat@computer-refuge.org> <200710311714.33215.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20071031142318.P35858@shell.lmi.net> > > > Is it 5.5mm, or 7/32"? > > Pretty much all screws in IBM equipment are metric sized. Just remember > > 5.5, 8, 10, and 13mm, and you'll be able to remove most screws in IBM > > equipment that aren't flat-blade-only. OK Who knows WHEN they switched? On Wed, 31 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > There were four philips-head screws accessible from underneath, but the two > along the middle of each side were "tamper-proof torx"! I enlisted the help > of a friend, and had him throw those two away when he got 'em out. Rather than throw them away, there are uses for them, and people who would like them. 25 years ago, a friend was managing a computer lab for faculty. Tamper-proof torx was the solution to get them to ASK before "borrowing" boards and drives from machines. For $6, you can have a fairly complete selection for emergencies. http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=91310 Quality is low, so any that you actually end up using should be replaced with medium to good quality ones. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 31 16:35:51 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:35:51 -0700 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <200710311714.33215.rtellason@verizon.net> References: , <200710310640.03303.pat@computer-refuge.org>, <200710311714.33215.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <472892C7.2100.2414694A@cclist.sydex.com> On 31 Oct 2007 at 17:14, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > There were four philips-head screws accessible from underneath, but the two > along the middle of each side were "tamper-proof torx"! I enlisted the help > of a friend, and had him throw those two away when he got 'em out. Sounds like the PS/2 external 5.25" box. I still have a bunch of them--and the tamper-proof Torx bits. There are newer "tamper proof" Torx combinations now, including a 5-lobed one. Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 31 17:19:14 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:19:14 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: from "David Griffith" at Oct 30, 7 03:03:02 pm Message-ID: > I've been meaning to get a nutdriver that will get at the screws holding a > Model M together so I can shoehorn a ps/2-usb converter inside. So far > everything I've tried (and I haven't looked very hard) will fit the nut, > but is too thick to get inside the hole. I am sure I took mine apart using a nutdriver from my Xcellite System 99 kit, although I can't rememebr if it was 5.5mm or 7/32" (5.55mm) In general, better tools, made from stronger metal, are thinner (they don't need the thickness to get their strength) and will fit into more confined spaces I did have ome problem like this, though. The PSU for my Panasonic handheld computer -- the one with a voltage selector switch for 110V or 220V mains -- is assemed by 4 deeply-recessed System Zero screws. No idea _why_ they used those darn things, but the holes they were down were too small for the official System Zero tool to go in. But only just. I ran a twist drill down the hole to enlarge it slightly and had no problems gettingthe screws out and back (or indeed in replacing the blown fuse inside) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 31 17:26:23 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:26:23 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <200710302238.28519.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Oct 30, 7 10:38:28 pm Message-ID: > well, but I have both, if I need 'em. My "stuff" in terms of nut drive= > rs,=20 > sockets and deep sockets in 1/4" drive, and also small combination wrenc= > hes=20 > goes all the way down to 1/8" and 4mm. :-) I know I go a lot smaller than that in open-ended spanners. And yes, I haev needed them, althoguh not really for classic computer work. You do need a 1/8" nutdriver to undo the screws holding the end cap on the motor in an HP9100/9810/9820 card reader. And a similar-size open-ended spanner to get out the remaining screw holding the brushgear mounint in place if you want to inspect the armature. The spindle prevents you using a nutdriver for that last screw. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 31 17:29:06 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:29:06 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Atari ST connectors In-Reply-To: <472856F4.9000905@gifford.co.uk> from "John Honniball" at Oct 31, 7 10:20:36 am Message-ID: > radio-controlled planes, model trains and R/C cars). It's much > easier to find the metric ones here (England) than the imperial > sizes. The good (and thus expensice) toolshops I freqeunt seem to stock both ranges. Darn it, they ecen stock thost crazy US sizes, like 11/32" combination spanners (needed to take the PSU out of an HP9810/9820, BTW) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Oct 31 17:30:56 2007 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:30:56 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <200710310640.03303.pat@computer-refuge.org> from "Patrick Finnegan" at Oct 31, 7 06:40:03 am Message-ID: > > Pretty much all screws in IBM equipment are metric sized. Just remember Even in PC stuff? I am pretty sure the case screws on a PC, XT or AT are 1/4", and the scrrews on the PCB connector brackets are 3/16". -tony From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 31 18:04:39 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:04:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20071031155738.Y39822@shell.lmi.net> On Wed, 31 Oct 2007, Tony Duell wrote: > I did have ome problem like this, though. The PSU for my Panasonic > handheld computer -- the one with a voltage selector switch for 110V or > 220V mains -- is assemed by 4 deeply-recessed System Zero screws. No idea > _why_ they used those darn things, but the holes they were down were too > small for the official System Zero tool to go in. But only just. I ran a > twist drill down the hole to enlarge it slightly and had no problems > gettingthe screws out and back (or indeed in replacing the blown fuse inside) "Tamper-proof" is NOT "ARD-proof". Maybe it's just a "test". "Only those who can get past it can be trusted inside"? My TRS80s had a bigger problem, trying to come up with the right color and consistency of "Glyptol"? to keep them "on warranty" after adding additional circuitry. From cclist at sydex.com Wed Oct 31 18:33:12 2007 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:33:12 -0700 Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <20071031155738.Y39822@shell.lmi.net> References: , <20071031155738.Y39822@shell.lmi.net> Message-ID: <4728AE48.1638.247FD878@cclist.sydex.com> On 31 Oct 2007 at 16:04, Fred Cisin wrote: > "Tamper-proof" is NOT "ARD-proof". Actually, "tamper-proof" isn't even "tamper-proof"--just "tamper- resistant". The closest things to "tamper proof" that I've ever seen have been in the nature of breakaway head nuts and bolts--and recessed hardened rivets. The only way I know of to get those out is to drill the buggers out. There is a type of tamper-resistant bolt head called "Bryce" or some such thing. Every vendor has a different driver keyway pattern, so there's no "universal" bit to handle them--and Bryce won't talk to anyone looking for a particular bit, unless you happen to be a licensed customer. Cheers, Chuck From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Oct 31 18:46:10 2007 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:46:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <4728AE48.1638.247FD878@cclist.sydex.com> References: , <20071031155738.Y39822@shell.lmi.net> <4728AE48.1638.247FD878@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <20071031164000.S39822@shell.lmi.net> On Wed, 31 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Actually, "tamper-proof" isn't even "tamper-proof"--just "tamper- > resistant". The closest things to "tamper proof" that I've ever seen > have been in the nature of breakaway head nuts and bolts with some practice, they can usually be taken out by "tangential impact" with a very small, very hard chisel. Best examples are automotive, so for Jay, I'll leave it at that. From steve at radiorobots.com Wed Oct 31 20:22:51 2007 From: steve at radiorobots.com (Steve Stutman) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:22:51 -0500 Subject: SHARC stuff Message-ID: <47292A6B.2030704@radiorobots.com> Hi, Looking for product lit for "Virtuoso Classico" by Eonic Systems. It was a dev environment for SHARC circa 1995. Thanks, Steve From roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk Wed Oct 31 19:37:59 2007 From: roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk (Roger Holmes) Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 00:37:59 +0000 Subject: Info about a Mullard Core In-Reply-To: <200710300741.l9U7fN58064882@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200710300741.l9U7fN58064882@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: Hi, > From: "Gavin Melville" > Subject: Info about a Mullard Core > Hi, > > I have had for many years a large core, and while I don't really > want to > part with it, I also see what little pieces of core sell for on > ebay.... > > I was told when given this about 15 years ago that it was from a > Burroughs mainframe which was installed at the Cadburys head office in > New Zealand and that they had paid GBP 20,000 for it in 1960. 20,000 for the core or for the mainframe? How sure are you about it being Burroughs? Wouldn't they be using U.S. components rather than British? I know Cadburys bought an ICT 1300 series machine around 1963/4, and its now in a museum in NZ. It was a 48 bit machine, but I think it had a much smaller store of 1200 or 2000 words and would have cost around 100,000 GBP. I have read there was an option to replace all the 'barn door' core stores with a single store of 4,000 words of 48 bits, though I've never seen one, nor the logic diagrams. I have always wondered whether it used a full binary decode (using 16384 words to provide 4000 words of usable memory) of the 14 bits rather than a BCD decode. The 1300s use lots of Mullard components. Just a small piece of a jigsaw puzzle, maybe not even the right puzzle! Roger Holmes. Owner of the last working ICT 1301. > I have > been unable to find out if this was correct however. Does anyone on > the list know anything about it ? > > pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/8788341 at N05/?saved=1 > > There are 921600 cores in the array, which is made up of 48x48 > cores, 4 > to a layer and 100 layers. > > _________________________________ > > Regards, > Gavin Melville > Senior Engineer > Acclipse Electronic Ltd > From ploopster at gmail.com Wed Oct 31 19:46:12 2007 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:46:12 -0400 Subject: Smalltalk for OS/2 Message-ID: <472921D4.9030504@gmail.com> I'm looking for Digitalk Visual Smalltalk Enterprise for OS/2 including PARTS Workbench. Let me know if any of you have a copy available. Thanks. Peace... Sridhar From RMeenaks at olf.com Wed Oct 31 20:00:19 2007 From: RMeenaks at olf.com (Ram Meenakshisundaram) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:00:19 -0400 Subject: SHARC stuff References: <47292A6B.2030704@radiorobots.com> Message-ID: <9A6FF2537AEA484296A3EE4990D18557049C81C1@cpexchange.olf.com> I have the transputer version of the Virtuoso. I asked the president of the company if he would release it for free for the tranny and he agreed. Eonic Systems merged with VxWorks several years ago... Ram -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org on behalf of Steve Stutman Sent: Wed 10/31/2007 9:22 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: SHARC stuff Hi, Looking for product lit for "Virtuoso Classico" by Eonic Systems. It was a dev environment for SHARC circa 1995. Thanks, Steve From gavin.melville at acclipse.co.nz Wed Oct 31 21:46:07 2007 From: gavin.melville at acclipse.co.nz (Gavin Melville) Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 15:46:07 +1300 Subject: Info about a Mullard Core In-Reply-To: References: <200710300741.l9U7fN58064882@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <72AEBE65BC566843B59D52D3A479AC7501567575@excserver.chc.acclipse.co.nz> Hi Roger, I was told that was the price of just the core. The guy who gave it to me was a little unusual, but told me he tendered for the removal of the mainframe, and offered money, where all the other tenderers wanted money. It was inaccessable, and had a magnetic drum which weighed tons. The machine must have been large -- he did bring back 1000's of small boards, which appeared to be just one function per board (and/nor/ff etc). I do somewhere have the earth lead for the -6v power supply, and the lugs off that would fit over 25mm bolts. Most of the machine went to a scrap metal dealer in Dunedin. While I have no idea if it actually came from that machine, it was by the standards of that time a very large core -- 19200 x 48 bits is larger than I can find details of -- at least on the net. The machine would have been scrapped around 1988 or 1989. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Roger Holmes > Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 1:38 PM > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Info about a Mullard Core > > Hi, > > > From: "Gavin Melville" > > Subject: Info about a Mullard Core > > > Hi, > > > > I have had for many years a large core, and while I don't > really want > > to part with it, I also see what little pieces of core sell for on > > ebay.... > > > > I was told when given this about 15 years ago that it was from a > > Burroughs mainframe which was installed at the Cadburys > head office in > > New Zealand and that they had paid GBP 20,000 for it in 1960. > > 20,000 for the core or for the mainframe? > > How sure are you about it being Burroughs? Wouldn't they be > using U.S. components rather than British? > > I know Cadburys bought an ICT 1300 series machine around > 1963/4, and its now in a museum in NZ. It was a 48 bit > machine, but I think it had a much smaller store of 1200 or > 2000 words and would have cost around 100,000 GBP. I have > read there was an option to replace all the 'barn door' core > stores with a single store of 4,000 words of 48 bits, though > I've never seen one, nor the logic diagrams. I have always > wondered whether it used a full binary decode (using 16384 > words to provide 4000 words of usable memory) of the 14 bits > rather than a BCD decode. The 1300s use lots of Mullard components. > > Just a small piece of a jigsaw puzzle, maybe not even the > right puzzle! > > Roger Holmes. > Owner of the last working ICT 1301. > > > > > I have > > been unable to find out if this was correct however. Does > anyone on > > the list know anything about it ? > > > > pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/8788341 at N05/?saved=1 > > > > There are 921600 cores in the array, which is made up of > 48x48 cores, > > 4 to a layer and 100 layers. > > > > _________________________________ > > > > Regards, > > Gavin Melville > > Senior Engineer > > Acclipse Electronic Ltd > > > > From legalize at xmission.com Wed Oct 31 22:27:31 2007 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 21:27:31 -0600 Subject: airport x-ray machines: can they damage 8" floppies? Message-ID: I'm going to VCF/nanotech thing by plane and I thought this would be a good way to bring Al some 8" floppies (PLATO system!) to archive/image, but I wondered if the airport x-ray scanner would do anything bad to them? I'd hate to damage them on my way to having them archived... -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From shieldsm at gmail.com Tue Oct 23 09:13:46 2007 From: shieldsm at gmail.com (Mike Shields) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 14:13:46 -0000 Subject: SGI workstation sequence In-Reply-To: References: <08d2gn20ltu0yh4.231020071137@jvdg.com> Message-ID: <13135db40710230713r63bc269bg43109da5692d5a4e@mail.gmail.com> Some thoughts: I have an Indigo2, O2, and an Octane. (Well, and an RE2 Onyx) The only one I use with any frequency is the Indigo2. Specs-wise, it's equivalent to the Octane, 200mhz R10k cpu, Solid Impact graphics. However, the Octane can be upgraded much farther and the Indigo2 is "maxed out" (at least CPU-wise). The Octane (and Octane2) use a crossbar architecture instead of the bus that is in the Indigo2 series, but I haven't a clue how much real-world difference that makes. Since my Octane and I2 are very similarly spec'ed, running them side-by-side I prefer the I2. I can't really detect a speed difference between them in normal use. The O2's use a semi-rare memory type unique to the O2. This makes my poor O2 fairly useless with its 64mb ram. External appearance-wise, the O2's are by far the cutest SGI's, imho. The Indigo2's use standard parity SIMMs (72-pin). Octanes use a unique 200-pin DIMM, but ram for them is easier to find via ebay, etc. than it is for an O2. If I were to imagine starting over in SGI's, I'd probably get an Indigo2 or an Octane2. An Indigo2 is cheap, but heavy if you're going to ship. They're basically indestructible. An Octane 2, well equipped, is the best performing workstation short of the Fuel ($$$), but still very heavy to ship. Octanes have a higher incidence (at least anecdotally - have no statistics) of mainboard/frontplane issues, compared to analogous parts in the Indigo2. I'm not a big fan of the compression connectors used in the Octane/Octane2, but if you are aware of the handling concerns, they can be dealt with. I've no real experience with Indy or Indigo (sans 2), but the Indigo2 is fun. I hacked a pair of stereo lcd glasses to the stereo-driver port on the Solid Impact. Gotta love BZFlag in 3d. Mike On 10/23/07, Ethan Dicks wrote: > > On 10/23/07, jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote: > > Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > > > > David Griffith wrote: > > >>> I think it goes like this, someone please correct me if I'm wrong: > > >>> > > >>> 1992 Indigo^2 > > >>> 1993 Indy > > > More or less. Besides that, the Indigo2 and Indy represent a split in > the low-end line, both being offspring of the Indigo, with O2 being Indy's > successor and Octane being Indigo2's successor. > > I've had some interest, off and on, of fiddling with some SGI > hardware. I really wanted an Indy when they came out, but couldn't > come close to affording it (I ended up buying a SPARC 1 for $800 the > following year, and many, many job opportunities and good things came > from that). I did get to fiddle with an Indigo^2 in the mid-1990s, > during the Virtual Reality bubble, but couldn't afford one of those at > the time, either. > > I had the chance to pick up a discarded Indy about 4 years ago, but by > the time I returned with wheels, someone else had carted it away. > Given the descendent machines in the family tree in this thread, I'm > beginning to wonder if I shouldn't go after an Octane or an O2 rather > than an Indigo or an Indy, at least if I wanted to do more than take > the demo programs for a spin. > > So for the more experienced SGI folks - do you feel that an Indy or > Indigo is responsive enough to be reasonable to use, or is it worth > holding out for something newer and most likely more expensive to > acquire? Also, something I don't know much about, do the older > personal graphic workstations use odd or impossible-to-find memory, or > are they easy/cheap to load up? > > -ethan > From Krieg.Moore at dgs.ca.gov Tue Oct 23 14:38:44 2007 From: Krieg.Moore at dgs.ca.gov (Moore, Krieg) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:38:44 -0700 Subject: Genuine DEC H8571-J MMJ adapters available Message-ID: <4671BC41D85F664A95868DD3A5EB34AA025F2FE0@smf00exch104.dgsaccounts.dgs.ca.gov> Hi, We have ancient system that I'm switching over from VT340 to PC's running a terminal emulator - and would about (6) of the factory ones ($25.00 ea - I believe you said) do you still have 'em? Krieg Moore Electronics Technician DGS/RESD/BPM/ Capitol Historic Region/Electronics Shop From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 23 20:40:40 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:40:40 -0400 Subject: kernel compile times (was: SGI workstation sequence) Message-ID: <0JQE00AIX7AVT1N0@vms044.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: kernel compile times (was: SGI workstation sequence) > From: "Ethan Dicks" > Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:01:02 +1300 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 10/24/07, Richard wrote: >> >> In article <471E85C0.4050703 at gmail.com>, >> Sridhar Ayengar writes: >> >> > My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week. >> >> Are we talking *just* the kernel here, or are we talking compiling a >> full distribution (all the utility programs, shell programs, X server, >> X clients, etc.). >> >> I have a really hard time believing it takes a few days *just* to >> compile the kernel. Toss in the huge pile of additional programs >> accessible from the shell or the X Window System and now we're talking >> believable. > >Sridhar can answer for the details of his VS2000, but in my case, the >two machines I have the most experience with are the 11/750 and >11/730, and Ultrix 1.1 (4.2BSD under the hood, IIRC). It may be that >I didn't do a complete compile from source, just a kernel rebuild of >drivers and affected areas from the installation process, and it may >be that the disk on a VS2000 is vastly slower than Unibus and IDC >disks on the 11/750 and 11/730, respectively. I do stand by my 8-10 >hour kernel compile time after an initial install of the OS on a blank >disk for those machines - if my memories have not entirely >disintegrated, it took all of a long work day to install Ultrix, but >not more than one. Under VMS: A VS2000 that is light on ram and the page and swap files are small will be very slow, it will swap it's brains out. The differnce from a 6MB untuned and 12MB or more machine that is tuned without Decwindows running is far more than one might imagine. I managed to hack one for two RD54s (using a second box under it) and put the page and swap on the second drive and it does help. A base Ultrix install from TK50 was slow but it seems the TK50 was as much to blame for that. If memory serves you could get to 14MB in a VS2000 IF you can get the right card. Allison > >-ethan From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Tue Oct 23 22:00:31 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:00:31 -0400 Subject: kernel compile times Message-ID: <0JQE008LXAZX6GX0@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Re: kernel compile times > From: "Ethan Dicks" > Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:19:15 +1300 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >On 10/24/07, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> >> My compile on the VAXstation 2000 was at least a few days. Maybe a week. >> >> ...it was swapping like crazy during the compile, and >> swapping to the same disk where the sources were stored. That machine >> is S*L*O*W. It would have probably gone a whole lot faster if it had >> enough RAM. > >Oh, yeah. The CPU is nominally as fast as a MicroVAX II (and over 50% >faster than an 11/750), but if you were swapping, that'd be a *huge* >difference in compile times. I was doing this on an 8MB 11/750 with >nothing else going on (or on a 5MB 11/730 in a similar state), which >is, BTW, fully loaded, thus the difference. Actually since there is no Qbus the basic VS2000 CPU is generally faster. However.. It lacks the external hardware support for fast IO for mass storage and any bulk transfers. It also has a few implmentation items that actually slow it for IO. > >I haven't had the pleasure to use a fully-loaded VS2000 - mine are >around 6MB - enough to boot and run, but not a lot of empty RAM >sitting around. I have three one each 6, 8mb and 12mb. I use the 6mb as hot spare and for formatting disks as the differnce from 6 to 8mb is fairly noticeable even with V5.44. >I think a VS2000 disk vastly underperforms compared to an RA81 on a >UDA50, so the swapping makes it much, much worse. No question. MFM disks have less than half the serial data rate and the RA/UDA has a lot more smarts to make it happen (Buffers, LRU cache, silos). The 9224 HDC is fairly dumb it's basicically a 765 +similar HDC with DMA chip built in. On the VS2000 the DMA only goes to a 16k segment (hardware implementation limitation) so to get data elsewhere the CPU or another DMA chip moves data again from the buffer area to wherever. So in the end The VS2000 disk system is slower than most PCs running the WD1003 with the same RD54. A small insight as to why a MVII with the same chip is generally faster. Allison From derschjo at msu.edu Wed Oct 24 22:08:56 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:08:56 -0700 Subject: CMD CQD-200 manual Message-ID: <472008C8.5080501@msu.edu> Anyone know where to find a copy of the manual for a CMD CQD-200 QBus SCSI controller? Bitsavers has a manual for the CQD-220, which looks fairly similar, but I'd like to find the exact manual if possible... Thanks! Josh From spedraja at gmail.com Thu Oct 25 02:05:27 2007 From: spedraja at gmail.com (Sergio Pedraja) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:05:27 +0200 Subject: HP1000 'F' back on eBay (UK) In-Reply-To: <471FD8F8.6040802@yahoo.co.uk> References: <069a01c81379$f0bf2b50$0f01a8c0@solution.engineers> <471FD8F8.6040802@yahoo.co.uk> Message-ID: Ok, thanks and good luck with it. I hope to see it in a museum next time that I can go to the UK. Cheers Sergio 2007/10/25, Jules Richardson : > > Sergio Pedraja wrote: > > Having in mind that I don't live in the UK, and the space needed for > this > > monster, I could get and manage only the CPU, plus some terminals(s). > Not > > interested in the other parts. > > FWIW, there's a museum (not mine) interested in this as a complete system > to > exhibit, so providing the gold scrappers don't get in on the act and go > nuts, > it seems like it'll get rescued and go to a good home (whether to the > museum > or to a classiccmper). Shame it ended up on EBay really rather than here / > uk.comp.vintage / VCM etc. :-( > > cheers > > Jules > > From holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de Thu Oct 25 02:50:03 2007 From: holger.veit at iais.fraunhofer.de (Holger Veit) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:50:03 +0200 Subject: Tandy Logix-Kosmos In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47204AAB.4050408@iais.fraunhofer.de> Tony Duell schrieb: > Actually, it's TTL chips. IIRC the kits came out in the mid-1970s. > > There's a schematic of the logic module in the manual (one of the frw > pages I can understand, since the manual is in German, but a schematic is > much the same in any language). There are 3 chips in the module, all with > Philis-type numbers. An FJH241 (looks like a 7404), FJH151 (7451) and > FJH231 (7401) > Actually, they don't just look like the mentioned 74xx equivalents, they are almost (FJH241 is rather 5404). This xxxNNN convention was some European attempt to standardize the various logic families in the 70s; I think this came from JEDEC as a joint venture of Siemens, Philips, and some other vendors). The idea was basically to have the first letter to describe the logic family, the second a temperature range or a sub family (e.g. Z=noise immune logic with 12Vcc), the third a functional category. The three digit number then refers to the actual circuit. So, an FLH101 was a TTL (F) with temperature range 0..70degC (L), and combinational circuit (H). The number here refers to 4 totem pole NAND-2 gates -> so this is the well-known 7400. J in the third place denotes some flip flop or counter, K is a monoflop, L is a decoder (e.g. 74141, 7445, 7447). I have to look up the complete convention in some old Siemens data books. Almost all of these Fxx types directly map to 49xxx, 54xx, 74xx, and 75xxx types. This numbering scheme apparently wasn't very successful, and was silently dropped some years later. -- Holger From db3 at centurytel.net Thu Oct 25 05:14:45 2007 From: db3 at centurytel.net (JK) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:14:45 -0500 Subject: Toner as PCB resist (perilously close to OT) Message-ID: <005301c816ef$de8ff3f0$6400a8c0@jk> Looks like I am a year late, but if you are still at this address I have some options for you. Have developed a system which works quite well and cheaper than most others. Jim From jetfreight at hotmail.com Sat Oct 27 08:50:28 2007 From: jetfreight at hotmail.com (singh) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 09:50:28 -0400 Subject: atc-510 simulator Message-ID: hello i just bought a very low time atc 510 in canada the sim does not have any manuals with it i wonder if i can buy some copies of the manuals from you or any kind of training programs i got your email from the internet thanks j singh From derschjo at msu.edu Sat Oct 27 16:12:13 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 14:12:13 -0700 Subject: CMD CQD-200 manual In-Reply-To: <472008C8.5080501@msu.edu> References: <472008C8.5080501@msu.edu> Message-ID: <4723A9AD.6060904@msu.edu> Resending; sent this three days ago and it never made it to the list. Or at least, I never saw it make it to the list. If it did, I apologize for the spam :). Josh Dersch wrote: > Anyone know where to find a copy of the manual for a CMD CQD-200 QBus > SCSI controller? > Bitsavers has a manual for the CQD-220, which looks fairly similar, > but I'd like to find the exact manual if possible... > > Thanks! > Josh > From derschjo at msu.edu Sat Oct 27 22:06:41 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 20:06:41 -0700 Subject: IBM 9331 011 8" floppy pinouts? Message-ID: <4723FCC1.7000400@msu.edu> I have a nice, apparently functional external IBM 8" floppy drive, model 9331 011 that I'd like to hook up to a PC FDC. It has a 37-pin D-sub connector on the back. Searches for pinout info have returned nothing useful. Information about the 37-pin connector, or the pinouts of the drive inside the enclosure (a YE-Data YD-180 type 1601, which I've also not found any reliable info on) would be most appreciated. Thanks, Josh From snhirsch at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 10:06:26 2007 From: snhirsch at gmail.com (Steven Hirsch) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:06:26 -0400 (EDT) Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, Richard wrote: >> - Does it use any kind of special memory? > > Its my understanding that it uses SIMMS. See: Bzzzt! Not so. As was typical for workstations of that vintage, it seems as if every model produced by SGI used a different form of proprietary memory. They are a "SIMM like" form factor, although shorter in length than anything sold for PCs. I was fortunate enough to score a bag full of them at one of the MIT flea markets and expanded mine to the full 96MB. Steve -- From snhirsch at gmail.com Sun Oct 28 10:08:57 2007 From: snhirsch at gmail.com (Steven Hirsch) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 11:08:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: An old dream come true: Iris Indigo! In-Reply-To: References: <200710222233.l9MMXKM05285@srsuna.shlrc.mq.edu.au> <471D2BB9.9070408@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 22 Oct 2007, James Rice wrote: > On topic with Iris Indigo's, has anyone noticed how vandalized > www.irisindigo.com has become? Total shame. Yuck. Has anyone tried pinging the site owner? -- From ajp166 at bellatlantic.net Sun Oct 28 15:08:12 2007 From: ajp166 at bellatlantic.net (Allison) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 16:08:12 -0400 Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. Message-ID: <0JQN00ATB18NM77E@vms048.mailsrvcs.net> > >Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. > From: "Bob Shannon" > Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:03:43 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > >Is anyone familiar with vacuum tube indicators used on transistor logic >machines? > >I recently found a small rack filled with small transistor logic modules. >Each module holds a flip flop or two at most. >The modules are small PC boards with a metal frame and handle. Test points >give you the state of each transistor >on the module. > >Several modules have some sort of visual indicator tube as well. > >These tubes are not much larger than a standard NE-2 bulb, but they more >resemble subminiature vacuum tubes. > >The tubes are marked 01037 J3, each had four leads. Two of these leads >shows a resistance of 9.8 Ohms, and >appears to be a low voltage filament. One is grounded, the other is >connected to a bus in the rack of logic. > >There is no 'getter flash' inside the glass tube, so they may be some sort >of glow discharge tube. > >Looking at the insides of each tube thee appears to be a very fine V style >filament and a grid-like structure, but >I see no clear anode or plate structures. There are two thin 'wires' >outside of the grid, one in front and one >behind the central grid-like / filament structure. > >The logic itself is made from 2N414 transistors, mil-spec at one time, >covered in conformal coating. Markings >show this device came from the USAF Airborne Instrumentation Labs. I only >have a small part of some >larger system, but I would like to power this rack of logic up and see these >indicators in action. > >There is something very familiar about these things. They remind me of >something I may have seen once >in a telephone switching application when I was in the USAF long ago. > >Any idea what these things may be? I'll try to get a digital photo, but the >tubes are mounted under small >metal clips with short leads. > They are vacuum florescent indicators. the anode (part that will glow) is +V applied around 16-40V range and the cathode (most minus voltage) is formed by the two wires that are a filliment (heater to some). Some flavors of these also have a grid between the heater and the anode and act like a triode vacuum tube in that if the grid is sufficiently negative compared to the cathode/heater the tube will not glow if it is zero or positive (a few volts) the tube will glow. The transistors are then not required to handle much voltage or current as 2n414 was a low power alloy junction germainium (Vce of -20V and Pd of 150mW) so it could not switch much current or voltage. Any display used had to be operatble with less than 20V (more like 15or less) and only a few milliamps. I've also seen several such racks and displays down in RI. Basically the system is built of standard logic elements available in the late 50s early 60s and an element could be a gate or Flip flop and likely not many gates and only one FF to a card. Voltages were typically low in the less than 15V range. The cards rarely were a complete computer but more like a sequencer or other fixed logic system that was designed for a specific use. Use care powering that as power supplies may have bad caps, and wires may be cut/shorted. Allison From trasz at FreeBSD.org Sun Oct 28 19:24:43 2007 From: trasz at FreeBSD.org (Edward Tomasz Napierala) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:24:43 +0100 Subject: Indigo 2 and registered/buffered SIMMs. Message-ID: <20071029002443.GA91750@pin.if.uz.zgora.pl> Memory for Indigo 2 (IP22) needs to be FPM with ECC. But I couldn't find anywhere if these SIMMs may be "registered", aka "buffered". I see quite a few cheap FPM ECC SIMMs for sale, but most of them have some strange additional chips on them, I guess that means there are of the buffered kind. Will these modules work in I2? -- If you cut off my head, what would I say? Me and my head, or me and my body? From jrr at flippers.com Sun Oct 28 20:25:36 2007 From: jrr at flippers.com (John Robertson) Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:25:36 -0700 Subject: Indicator tubes for transistor logic machines. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47253690.4010006@flippers.com> Tony Duell wrote: >> Is anyone familiar with vacuum tube indicators used on transistor logic >> machines? >> ... >> Several modules have some sort of visual indicator tube as well. >> >> These tubes are not much larger than a standard NE-2 bulb, but they more >> resemble subminiature vacuum tubes. >> >> The tubes are marked 01037 J3, each had four leads. Two of these leads >> shows a resistance of 9.8 Ohms, and >> appears to be a low voltage filament. One is grounded, the other is >> connected to a bus in the rack of logic. >> >> There is no 'getter flash' inside the glass tube, so they may be some sort >> of glow discharge tube. >> >> Looking at the insides of each tube thee appears to be a very fine V style >> filament and a grid-like structure, but >> I see no clear anode or plate structures. There are two thin 'wires' >> outside of the grid, one in front and one >> behind the central grid-like / filament structure. >> > > These sound a lot like what we caleld 'DM160's in the UK. These are about > the size of a 1.24" (3AG??) cartridge fuse and have 4 active leads coming > out of one end. > > 2 of them are a filament (direcctly heated cathode), running at about 1V. > Another is the anode/target, which IIRC has a grid-like structure, It is > normally riun at about 30V +ve wrt the filament. The fourth wire is the > control grid, IIRC with the grid at the smae voltage as the filament the > device glows green, a -3V grid bias cuts it off and it's dark. Needless > to say the actual current drawn y the cotnrol grid from the transistor > logic is minimal/ > > -tony > > > > Nice picture of a machine using the DM160s: http://mypage.bluewin.ch/sagnell/id14.htm John :-#)# -- John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9 Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, VideoGames) www.flippers.com "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out" From james at machineroom.info Mon Oct 29 19:13:46 2007 From: james at machineroom.info (James) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 00:13:46 +0000 Subject: SGI Sirius Video Breakout Box -- do you need the i/f board? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4726773A.1000009@machineroom.info> Richard wrote: > There's one on ebay right now (item 230183969927) complete with the > cabling and connectors to the chassis. No cables connecting the board > to the breakout box, though. You need the IR GFX set, the sirius card, cables to back panel, cables to breakout box and the breakout box. The breakout box has some logic inside so you can't just use the sirius card. James From bpettitx at comcast.net Mon Oct 29 22:21:32 2007 From: bpettitx at comcast.net (Billy Pettit) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:21:32 -0700 Subject: Friday Night Gathering? Message-ID: <003e01c81aa3$f8b545c0$6601a8c0@RosemarysPC> Is anything set up for the VCF on Friday night? I know several out of towners are around on Friday. Any plans for a meal or mini-meeting? I can't make VCF on Saturday - my 10 month grandson is visiting and there are priorities. But Sunday looks good. I'll see you all there then. Billy From derschjo at msu.edu Mon Oct 29 23:12:00 2007 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:12:00 -0700 Subject: PERQ Emulator Progress (of sorts)! Message-ID: <4726AF10.2010903@msu.edu> Sorry, I just had to share this with someone, and I thought some of you guys might appreciate it... I've been working on a Three Rivers PERQ emulator since last year in my spare time, though I've had basically no time the past eight months or so. Last I left the code, it managed to boot POS about halfway before the boot process would hang. Well, I managed to fix (or at least, work around) the bug causing the hang, which brought me to this: http://yahozna.dyndns.org/projects/PERQemu/PERQ-3.png Ok, it doesn't look like _much_, but compare it with the photo here: http://yahozna.dyndns.org/computers/perq/photos/pos-boot.jpg (Hint: They're the same thing, only one's really scrambled up :P) The boot process is still erroring out, but it's about 99% there (at DDS 951). Of course, I obviously still have a ways to go. As evidenced by the completely garbled text, I have yet to get the PERQ's unique (and extremely complicated) RasterOp hardware emulated to any significant degree. And after that I have a ton of hardware details to work out. But this is a major milestone, and I'm so excited that I just had to share my excitement with someone... I never thought I'd get anywhere near this far with the emulation, given how complicated the PERQ is. And if I've seen so far, it's because I've been standing on the shoulders of giants. Or one giant, at least -- our own Tony Duell who's been ever-so-patient with my questioning and who probably knows more about the PERQ hardware than the original designers did... Thanks for taking a look, and sorry for tooting my own horn... Josh From wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu Tue Oct 30 03:06:06 2007 From: wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu (Martin Scott Goldberg) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 03:06:06 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Atari ST connectors (was: Atari SIO bus connectors found) In-Reply-To: <02e001c819cb$a3c03f80$0a01a8c0@memoryalpha.org.uk> from "Ensor" at Oct 29, 2007 01:32:57 AM Message-ID: <200710300806.l9U866Gb030419@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> "Ensor" says: > >Well, most things can be excused by the fact that it was a "rush job" and Rush job? Please tell me you're not refering to that "the ST was going to be based off Amiga technology, and when Jack lost access he threw the ST together" missinformation by RJ? ;) >it's quite surprising what they achieved in such a short time (what was it, >6 months from start to shop shelf?). > Bit longer than that. ;) The ST's were "officially" started in May of '84, demonstrated at the Jan '85 Winter CES, and shipped to distributors in July of '85. Although according to my talks with Leonard Tramiel, they were 90% done by the time his father bought Atari Consumer (mainly needing an OS). Which would lend credence to the claim that Shiraz based them on material he had been working on at Commodore. Marty From bpettitx at comcast.net Tue Oct 30 17:24:54 2007 From: bpettitx at comcast.net (Billy Pettit) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:24:54 -0700 Subject: Friday Night Gathering? Message-ID: <002e01c81b43$b24e16c0$6401a8c0@RosemarysPC> Is anything set up for the VCF on Friday night? I know several out of towners are around on Friday. Any plans for a meal or mini-meeting? I can't make VCF on Saturday - my 10 month grandson is visiting and there are priorities. But Sunday looks good. I'll see you all there then. Billy From g-wright at att.net Tue Oct 30 23:04:16 2007 From: g-wright at att.net (g-wright at att.net) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:04:16 +0000 Subject: IBM PC AT BIOS image? Message-ID: <103120070404.1321.4727FEAC000246D00000052922218865869B0A02D29B9B0EBF9B0809079D99D309@att.net> Chuck, not sure what these are, but they are from an AT mother board. has only 2 roms at u27 and u47. u17 and u37 are empty. The rest of the AT's would have to be dug out. - Jerry Jerry Wright JLC inc g-wright at att.net -------------- Original message from "Chuck Guzis" : -------------- > Does anyone happen to have the BIOS image from an IBM PC AT (with > BASIC) rattling around that they could email to me? It'd save me a > considerable amount of time digging through my own very dusty > archives to locate a copy. > > Just the image read from memory is fine--I can odd-even it here for > burning. > > Thanks, > Chuck >