From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 1 01:09:42 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:09:42 -0700 Subject: Future Domain TMC 1670 BIOS Message-ID: <47F16F36.9430.2C93AE1@cclist.sydex.com> Anyone have one of these ISA SCSI controllers out there with a version 3.4 or 3.5 BIOS? I'm looking to upgrade the old BIOS on my card and would appreciate a data snapshot of the ROM. Thanks, Chuck From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Tue Apr 1 00:02:29 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 06:02:29 +0100 Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF37@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Hi Its not test gear that's the problem its access to the board. My Tek 465 will trigger on single pulses with no problem. However whilst it's recommended that the the first CPU board (the 8330) be in slot 2 (The front panel is in No1) its not mandatory. So I can move the boards back a bit and get to the front of the 8330. Manual I have, (very good) Schematics also (Awful) so bad I may even redraw at least the 8330. I have an A0 HP plotter so its easy to do drawings. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: 31 March 2008 22:52 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's > > > Not only did Cricklewood have them, but they arrived Saturday morning. I'm even luckier in that I live near enough to Cricklewood Electronics that I can pop over there and pick the chips up the same day ;-) > That effected a partial fix. > The timing generator is a string of four bit shift registers clocked > with 20Mhz. OK. > Various combinations of their outputs are used to set and reset > bistables made out of cross coupled 7440's. > As the problem I'm fixing is you can't load memory, which is a one > shot operation, its slow old work. I don;t know what test gear you have, but I find a simple logic probe to be more use than a 'scope for this sort of problem. The former can easily detect narrow pulses that are difficult, if not impossible, to see on a non-storage 'scope. Of course an 'Advanded Logic Probe' as HP called the LogicDart is even nicer, but... Do you have the maintenance manual? Not the printset (schematics), but the book which is a low-level circuit description? It's well worth reading!. I would have thought it wouldn't be too hard to keep on hitting the DEP key and seeing what, if any Omnius signals are generated. And then totrace back the missing one(s). [...] > I also return all systems to working order. Apart from a couple of > VT420's with ticking SMPSU's everything I have restored runs. (Three Any reason you';ve not fixed those? Ticking SMPSUs are often quite simple to fix, maybe just dried-up capacitors. -tony From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Tue Apr 1 00:05:21 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 06:05:21 +0100 Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF38@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Oh I forgot.. The 420's .. I have not done anything because a) It only happened last week b) I cant find any drawings. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: 31 March 2008 22:52 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's > > > Not only did Cricklewood have them, but they arrived Saturday morning. I'm even luckier in that I live near enough to Cricklewood Electronics that I can pop over there and pick the chips up the same day ;-) > That effected a partial fix. > The timing generator is a string of four bit shift registers clocked > with 20Mhz. OK. > Various combinations of their outputs are used to set and reset > bistables made out of cross coupled 7440's. > As the problem I'm fixing is you can't load memory, which is a one > shot operation, its slow old work. I don;t know what test gear you have, but I find a simple logic probe to be more use than a 'scope for this sort of problem. The former can easily detect narrow pulses that are difficult, if not impossible, to see on a non-storage 'scope. Of course an 'Advanded Logic Probe' as HP called the LogicDart is even nicer, but... Do you have the maintenance manual? Not the printset (schematics), but the book which is a low-level circuit description? It's well worth reading!. I would have thought it wouldn't be too hard to keep on hitting the DEP key and seeing what, if any Omnius signals are generated. And then totrace back the missing one(s). [...] > I also return all systems to working order. Apart from a couple of > VT420's with ticking SMPSU's everything I have restored runs. (Three Any reason you';ve not fixed those? Ticking SMPSUs are often quite simple to fix, maybe just dried-up capacitors. -tony From cc at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de Tue Apr 1 03:47:25 2008 From: cc at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Christian Corti) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 10:47:25 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Adding a 3rd floppy to an old PC SCSI controller In-Reply-To: <47F134B0.22147.1E4A0D7@cclist.sydex.com> References: <47F134B0.22147.1E4A0D7@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Chuck Guzis wrote: > drive select out to the floppy connector. So, for 5 minutes of time, > and a couple of lengths of wire wrap wire and a hot soldering iron, > all one need do is strap pin 4 of the floppy connect to pin 1 of the > 8473 and pin 6 of the floppy connector to pin 42 of the 8473. The 8473 directly supports four drives, so you can do the "trick" a second time for a fourth drive. And even some motherboard Super I/O chips have support for four drives, the outputs are simply not used. Christian From kelly at catcorner.org Tue Apr 1 08:22:29 2008 From: kelly at catcorner.org (Kelly Leavitt) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 09:22:29 -0400 Subject: AC adapter for Dayna PORT SCSI/Link-T Message-ID: Does anyone know the specs for the wall wart for one of these? I have seen 2 different ones, and would like some clarification. I've seen 9V DC center positive and 12V DC center positive. Thanks for any help, Kelly From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Tue Apr 1 09:01:50 2008 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 09:01:50 -0500 (CDT) Subject: What is this? "DAMIUS"? Message-ID: Was waffling through the 'Worst Wiring' site this morning: http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/03/disturbing-wiring-part-3.html And the second to last picture is this: http://lh5.google.ca/abramsv/R-8VzPXRjMI/AAAAAAAANCE/jx8JYx24UY0/s800/2070168575_d4efbbdc59_o.jpg Is this a real machine? It might have nothing to do with computing at all, there's an awful lot of pot dial looking things on it. I'm still curious. Thanks all; - JP From mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Tue Apr 1 09:10:53 2008 From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us (Mike Loewen) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 10:10:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: What is this? "DAMIUS"? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 1 Apr 2008, JP Hindin wrote: > And the second to last picture is this: > http://lh5.google.ca/abramsv/R-8VzPXRjMI/AAAAAAAANCE/jx8JYx24UY0/s800/2070168575_d4efbbdc59_o.jpg > > Is this a real machine? It might have nothing to do with computing at all, > there's an awful lot of pot dial looking things on it. I'm still curious. It's a "Polyfusion Modular System" synthesizer, as used by Toto. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 1 09:15:30 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 10:15:30 -0400 Subject: PDP 11 RL11/01 Address confusion. In-Reply-To: <20080331220616.GB25708@usap.gov> References: <47F159D9.4020405@stillhq.com> <200803311800.m2VI0TIB022275@dewey.classiccmp.org> <200803312147.m2VLlDqI019339@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> <200803311759.11567.pat@computer-refuge.org> <20080331220616.GB25708@usap.gov> Message-ID: On Mar 31, 2008, at 6:06 PM, Ethan Dicks wrote: > I have used an RL11 in my 11/24 w/KT24 (to load real 2BSD from real > magtape), > so I'm pretty sure it works fine in a 22-bit environment (but I > can't say > if the KT24 just smooths over DMA buffer address issues or what). > Dunno if > you can stuff an RL11 in an 11/70 or not, but I would hope so > (since there > really aren't any Unibus peripherals that "know" about 22 bits). My PDP-11/70 has an RL11/RL02 in it. Actually that's its only mass storage until I figure out this Emulex SC72. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From blstuart at bellsouth.net Tue Apr 1 09:18:34 2008 From: blstuart at bellsouth.net (Brian L. Stuart) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:18:34 +0000 Subject: What is this? "DAMIUS"? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <040120081418.23485.47F2443A00090C8200005BBD22243322829B0A02D2089B9A019C04040A0DBF9B9D0E9A9B9C040D@att.net> > And the second to last picture is this: > http://lh5.google.ca/abramsv/R-8VzPXRjMI/AAAAAAAANCE/jx8JYx24UY0/s800/2070168575 > _d4efbbdc59_o.jpg > > Is this a real machine? It might have nothing to do with computing at all, > there's an awful lot of pot dial looking things on it. I'm still curious. That a synth. In fact, I think I remember that picture from an old issue of Keyboard or some other electronic music pub. But I'm blanking on who it is in the picture. I'd guess the modules in the "rack" are Moog, but I wouldn't swear to it. BLS From jfoust at threedee.com Tue Apr 1 11:28:55 2008 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:28:55 -0600 Subject: What is this? "DAMIUS"? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20080401101206.08795cd8@mail.threedee.com> At 08:10 AM 4/1/2008, Mike Loewen wrote: > It's a "Polyfusion Modular System" synthesizer, as used by Toto. And that's Steve Pocaro of Toto in that picture. http://www.modularsynth.co.uk/pictures.html When I worked at Sight & Sound Music Software circa 1984, one of our team of six was Ralph Dyck, who played synth on albums like "Toto IV" and "Turn Back". He had worked at Roland and worked on our DOS-based MIDI editing and recording program, quite proficient in C and x86 assembler. I believe this is a description of his demo of our software: http://paul-lehrman.com/digicon/digiconCC.html Here's a description of Dyck's MC8, a TTL-based 1024-note sequencer from 1971: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/mar97/rolandmc8.html His son is an accomplished digital musician, too: http://www.jeffvandyck.com/ . - John -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.2/1353 - Release Date: 3/31/2008 6:21 PM From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 1 12:27:07 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:27:07 -0700 Subject: Adding a 3rd floppy to an old PC SCSI controller In-Reply-To: <200804011420.m31EKRvZ039907@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804011420.m31EKRvZ039907@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47F20DFB.23953.269B64@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 10:47:25 +0200 (CEST) > From: Christian Corti > The 8473 directly supports four drives, so you can do the "trick" a second > time for a fourth drive. And even some motherboard Super I/O chips have > support for four drives, the outputs are simply not used. My needs and the number of spare conductors on the cable simultaneously gave out with 3 drives. Somewhere in my collection I've got a controller (may not even be SCSI; could be ESDI or MFM/RLL) that had a jumperable option to drive 4 floppies from a single cable by using the drive select jumpers and a common motor control line. The two downside issues are that your drives have to have 4 drive selects (or you had to be clever with your cable twists) and when one motor comes on, they all do. Better to use two headers and two cables, IMOHO. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 1 12:14:38 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:14:38 -0700 Subject: Adding a 3rd floppy to an old PC SCSI controller In-Reply-To: <200804011420.m31EKRvZ039907@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804011420.m31EKRvZ039907@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47F20B0E.31272.1B2FA7@cclist.sydex.com> Dwight asked: > Pardon me for asking but are you sure the chip can provide > enough drive? Most floppies expect to terminal with about > 150 Ohms. That is more than an unbuffered output of most > chips are designed for. > Just asking? Good point--but the datasheet states right in the opening remarks that it can be connected directly to the disk drive with its own internal 48 ma buffered output and schmitt inputs. The datahseet's easy to find on the web--several places have it. Here, for example: http://www.tranzistoare.ro/datasheets2/36/366021_1.pdf I like the DP8473--unlike the Intel 82077AA and later chips, it still knows how to do FM correctly--and will even write 128 byte sectored MFM, which is something that Intel was ever able to do. Don Maslin and I worked through a pile of FDC chips before we found this one. I think there was a Future Domain card (1680?) that brought all 4 floppy drives out to 2 headers--and I certainly could have added one to do that myself for 4 drives, but 3 on one cable was the easiest. Cheers, Chuck From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Apr 1 14:23:14 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:23:14 +0100 (BST) Subject: PDP 11 RL11/01 Address confusion. In-Reply-To: <20080331220616.GB25708@usap.gov> from "Ethan Dicks" at Mar 31, 8 10:06:16 pm Message-ID: > I have used an RL11 in my 11/24 w/KT24 (to load real 2BSD from real magtape), > so I'm pretty sure it works fine in a 22-bit environment (but I can't say > if the KT24 just smooths over DMA buffer address issues or what). Dunno if I believe that's exactly what the KT24 does. The F11 chipset (used on the 11/24 CPU board) has a full 22 bit MMU which addresses the 4Mbytes of memory, but of course the Unibus only has 18 address lines, so DMA addresses from peripherals (like the RL11) are only 18 bits wide. The KT24 is the 'Unibus Map' -- a little MMU to extend those DMA addresses to 22 bits. > you can stuff an RL11 in an 11/70 or not, but I would hope so (since there > really aren't any Unibus peripherals that "know" about 22 bits). AFAIk the 11/70 has a Unibus Map as part of the CPU. The 11/44 certainly does. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Apr 1 14:30:49 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:30:49 +0100 (BST) Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF37@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> from "Rod Smallwood" at Apr 1, 8 06:02:29 am Message-ID: > > Hi > Its not test gear that's the problem its access to the board. My Tek > 465 will trigger on single pulses with no problem. > However whilst it's recommended that the the first CPU board (the 8330) > be in slot 2 (The front panel is in No1) its not mandatory. So I can > move the boards back a bit and get to the front of the 8330. All Omnius slots are the same, and in an 8/e backplane, AFAIK all slots are plain Omnibus. The only time the top connectors are used on the M8330 is if you have the EAE board set installed, I think. If you do, take it out for the moment (you don't need it when trying to sort out a timing generator problem). You can then put the M8330 in whatever slot you want. An extender board is useful, but by no means essential :-). Another trick that's worked for me in the past if I can't re-arrange the boards and don't have an extneder is to solder a hnadful of wires to useful testpoints on the board and put it back in the cardcage. Then probee the free ends of the wires (make sure they don't short to anything!). Normally 2 or 3 iterations of doing that will get me to the faulty chip. > > Manual I have, (very good) Schematics also (Awful) so bad I may even > redraw at least the 8330. I have an A0 HP plotter so its easy to do > drawings. DEC scheamtics have the odd error on them (I've heard it claimed said errors are deliberate, either to stop the machine being copied, or as copyright traps on the diagrams themselves). They're also somewhat unconventionally drawn (flip-flops may appear to have 4 outputs!), but I've got used to them. I must say that if I need to re-draw a sechematic, I use pen and paper, not a CAD system... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Apr 1 14:33:55 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:33:55 +0100 (BST) Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF38@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> from "Rod Smallwood" at Apr 1, 8 06:05:21 am Message-ID: > > Oh I forgot.. The 420's .. > > I have not done anything because > > a) It only happened last week No that I can understand. There are far too few hours in a week to sort out all classic computer problems. Darn it, while I want to have all my machines running in the end, I have machines that I've had for 10 years and not got round to yet. > > b) I cant find any drawings. In that case, I generally draw them out myself. Often it's the only way to get schematics of computer devices. It takes time, but I find it's worth it in the end. -tony From chd_1 at nktelco.net Tue Apr 1 20:00:45 2008 From: chd_1 at nktelco.net (Charles H Dickman) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:00:45 -0400 Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47F2DABD.3060401@nktelco.net> Tony Duell wrote: > DEC scheamtics have the odd error on them (I've heard it claimed said > errors are deliberate, either to stop the machine being copied, or as > copyright traps on the diagrams themselves). They're also somewhat > unconventionally drawn (flip-flops may appear to have 4 outputs!), but > I've got used to them. I must say that if I need to re-draw a sechematic, > I use pen and paper, not a CAD system... > A year and a half ago I was playing with a PDP-8/e and trying to get an EAE working with it. I ended up needing a later version M8330. My original boards were rev 1 and the EAE didn't work until about rev 3. The drawings I found online were WAY different than the boards I had. For the EAE, it looked like there were some serious timing issues, so the later board revisions were quite significant. So, if your boards don't match the drawing rev, don't expect there to be a match. -chuck From dkelvey at hotmail.com Wed Apr 2 00:55:06 2008 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 22:55:06 -0700 Subject: Adding a 3rd floppy to an old PC SCSI controller In-Reply-To: <47F20B0E.31272.1B2FA7@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804011420.m31EKRvZ039907@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47F20B0E.31272.1B2FA7@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > From: cclist at sydex.com > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 10:14:38 -0700 > Subject: Re: Adding a 3rd floppy to an old PC SCSI controller > > Dwight asked: > >> Pardon me for asking but are you sure the chip can provide >> enough drive? Most floppies expect to terminal with about >> 150 Ohms. That is more than an unbuffered output of most >> chips are designed for. >> Just asking? > > Good point--but the datasheet states right in the opening remarks > that it can be connected directly to the disk drive with its own > internal 48 ma buffered output and schmitt inputs. The datahseet's > easy to find on the web--several places have it. > > Here, for example: > > http://www.tranzistoare.ro/datasheets2/36/366021_1.pdf > > I like the DP8473--unlike the Intel 82077AA and later chips, it still > knows how to do FM correctly--and will even write 128 byte sectored > MFM, which is something that Intel was ever able to do. Don Maslin > and I worked through a pile of FDC chips before we found this one. > > I think there was a Future Domain card (1680?) that brought all 4 > floppy drives out to 2 headers--and I certainly could have added one > to do that myself for 4 drives, but 3 on one cable was the easiest. > > Cheers, > Chuck > Hi Chuck I guess 48ma should be enough. It sounds like a great chip! Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_video_042008 From cc at corti-net.de Tue Apr 1 03:41:15 2008 From: cc at corti-net.de (Christian Corti) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 10:41:15 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Tony Duell wrote: > I don;t know what test gear you have, but I find a simple logic probe to > be more use than a 'scope for this sort of problem. The former can easily Yes, logic probes are very handy. They are small and easy to use, and I have found faulty devices most of the times just with the logic probe. The seven-segment display show transitions and illegal voltage levels (or no voltage at all), very useful e.g. for dead totem pole outputs (in this case the voltage of the signal will be determined by the input stage(s) and lies around 1-2V). >> I also return all systems to working order. Apart from a couple of >> VT420's with ticking SMPSU's everything I have restored runs. (Three > > Any reason you';ve not fixed those? Ticking SMPSUs are often quite simple > to fix, maybe just dried-up capacitors. I think ticking PSUs in displays are a sign of a shorted HOT and/or flyback (had this case several times). Christian From bqt at softjar.se Tue Apr 1 10:39:21 2008 From: bqt at softjar.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:39:21 +0200 Subject: PDP 11 RL11/01 Address confusion. In-Reply-To: <200804011421.m31EKRvj039907@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804011421.m31EKRvj039907@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47F25729.5060105@softjar.se> Doug Jackson - pesonal email wrote: > Hi Everybody > > I was reading some doco last night (specifically the DEC RL11/01 Disk > Subsystem Training Handout), and I am confused. > > (That is nothing new...) > > In the "Subsystem commands section", the addresses specified for DAR and > CSR are 774404, and 774400 respectively, but in the back of the > document, under the 'toggle in programs' section, the DAR and CSR are > shown as being at 174404 and 174400 respectively. > > Hmmm. I see three possibilities: > > 1. I have (re) discovered a documentation error - I wonder if DEC, no, > HP, no Compaq, would be happy for me to submit an amendment :-) > > 2. The hardware throws away the upper bits so both references are > correct. Hmmm Possibly not :-) > > 3. There is some other stuff happening that I missed... > > If anybody could shed some light on this I would appreciate it. The > background to the problem is that I can not convince my shiny, > wonderful, (and noisy) DL01 to perform the seek test - Me thinks there > is a problem.... People have already convered most of this, and essentially got all the details down. I'll just make a few comments, which relates to several answers. And maybe clarify things in a bit more technical detail. The PDP-11 CPU is a 16-bit machine, so all code will always just deal with 16-bit values. The PDP-11 can have different buses, with different behaviours, but basically we can divide them into three groups. 16-bit bus 18-bit bus 22-bit bus Machines with a simple 16-bit bus is almost nonexistant, but there was some early Q-bus CPUs with a pure 16-bit address range, I seem to remember. 18-bit means all Unibus machines, as well as some Q-bus machines. 22-bit means most Q-bus machines. When the PDP-11 sits on anything but a 16-bit bus, it must use tricks to somehow actually utilize the extra address bits. This is done at several places, and in several ways. The most important component here is the MMU. When you enable the MMU, you can select wether you want 18-bit or 22-bit addressing (assuming you have a 22-bit capable machine). With MMU turned off, addresses are directly physical. The MMU will simply just extend the physical address 160000-177777 to 760000-777777 if we have an 18-bit bus, and 17760000-17777777 of we have a 22-bit bus. If you enable the MMU in 18-bit mode, the MMU will start using the APR registers to relocate your addressing. All your addresses in the PDP-11 will be virtual addresses, which combined with the APR values will form physical addresses. If this is on a 22-bit capable machine, the MMU will now detect if you are addressing physical 760000-777777, and extend those addresses to physical 17760000-17777777, same as when you play in 16-bit mode, except for which physical addresses it remaps. In 22-bit mode, the MMU will use your virtual address in combination with the APR value to create a physical 22-bit address, and be happy. So, to answer another persons comment. A 11/70 can be run in either 18-bit addressing or 22-bit addressing. Also, since a Unibus is always 18-bit, any Unibus device will work fine in an 11/70, even though it has 22-bit addressing (the same is true of the 11/44, 11/24, 11/84 and 11/94, by the way). If the 11/70 is run in 18-bit mode, DMA from Unibus will directly address memory and everything will be just fine. Now, the really tricky part is how to deal with DMA on a Unibus machine, where devices doing DMA only can put out 18-bit addresses, while the MMU is using 22-bit addressing. When 22-bit addressing is enabled, there are two PDP-11 designs. From a normal users point of view, the difference is irrelevant. For OS programmers, it do make a difference, however. 11/70: all DMA addressing will actually be directed to a 124KW area addressed at 17000000-17760000. Notice how this is physically directly before the I/O page. These addresses cannot hold any memory. Instead, this area of memory is virtual, and subjected to a new remapping by the Unibus Map, if enabled. This remapped address in turn, is always on the memory bus. So the Unibus Map is only a mapping between 17000000-17760000 and the memory bus. This also means that on an 11/70, you can access addresses in the I/O page, on the memory bus, but you have to go through the Unibus Map. And this is needed, if you want to access the CSRs of the memory boxes, which don't sit on the Unibus at all. Note that the Unibus Map don't have anything to do with the I/O page addressing. That is done by the MMU as a part of forming the physical address. The MMU will then forward the address to either the memory, Unibus Map, or Unibus, depending on which physical address it is. The Unibus will, however, always forward DMA transfers to the Unibus map, which will convert it into a physical address, and always pass it on to the memory bus. (As a parethesis the RH70 massbus controllers in the 11/70 generate 22-bit addresses straight away, and sends them directly to the memory bus.) 11/84 and 11/94: With the 11/84 and 11/94, DEC removed the concept that the physical addresses 17000000-17760000 are remapped by the Unibus map. Instead they placed the Unibus map between the Unibus and the CPU bus. And all physical addresses on the CPU bus stay physical, and either address memory, or the I/O page. When the access is to the I/O page, the Unibus Map also relays the access back out on the Unibus, so both things on the CPU bus and the Unibus can respond. I haven't checked, but I believe that the 11/24 and 11/44 are a mix of the two above. They reserve the memory area like the 11/70, but the Unibus map works somewhat like the 11/84 and 11/94. But I/O page access don't do through it, and I think that the memory CSRs are visible on the Unibus instead. (Maybe this would be a third variation, but I'm a bit uncertain at this point on exactly how they work.) The only thing remaining are the pure 22-bit machines, which are most Q-bus machines. They don't have a Unibus map. Instead all devices can address the whole memory directly with DMA, and can run as is. This is where the RLV11 and similar devices runs into a small problem. These controllers are actually designed for 18-bit Q-bus machines. But the only thing that happens is that the high address bits are left cleared always when they do DMA, so they can do DMA just fine in 22-bit machines, with the limitation that they can only do DMA to the low 128KW of memory. That's why the bounce buffers are needed for these. Johnny From pichotjm at free.fr Tue Apr 1 13:10:31 2008 From: pichotjm at free.fr (pichotjm) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 20:10:31 +0200 Subject: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. Message-ID: <03b101c89423$acdd2740$2601a8c0@JM3800> Hi, Pls, have a look at this description of Signetics 25000 series 9046 XN component: http://pichotjm.free.fr/humr/2.html Can you explain me, what is Vff? Is it a good idea to decrease this voltage in order to increase reliability? But what will happen with our 50 Hz european supply? I need help... (please, answer with simple english) JM Pichot From lee_courtney at acm.org Tue Apr 1 20:03:00 2008 From: lee_courtney at acm.org (Lee Courtney (ACM)) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 18:03:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: MicroVMS Docs Available In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <157381.46195.qm@web35307.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I have the following MicroVMS docs in original orange DEC binders available for free - pickup only from 94025. MicroVMS User's Manual Part 1 PN AI-FW62B-TN MicroVMS User's Manual Part 2 PN AI-FW63B-TN MicroVMS Programmer's Manual PN AI-Z212B-TE MicroVMS Programming Support Manual PN AI-DC87B-TE Ping me off-list if interested. lee_courtney at acm.org From pcoghlan+cctech at vms.eurokom.ie Wed Apr 2 03:18:17 2008 From: pcoghlan+cctech at vms.eurokom.ie (Peter Coghlan) Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:18:17 +0100 (WET-DST) Subject: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. Message-ID: <01MT56MD9C5UKGR3FT@vms.eurokom.ie> pichotjm wrote: > >Pls, have a look at this description of Signetics 25000 series 9046 XN >component: http://pichotjm.free.fr/humr/2.html It is not always necessary to go to the expense of buying a 25000 series chip. I found some WOM in my Dec Alphaserver 1000A recently. I'm not interested in this bleeding-edge stuff (besides its too new to be on-topic here) so I have now replaced it with some ordinary memory. I wonder if I could get a good price for the WOM on ebay? >Can you explain me, what is Vff? Is it a good idea to decrease this voltage >in order to increase reliability? 6.3Vac is a common voltage for valve (tube) filaments. Given that the 25000 series is implemented in VLSI (Vacuum large scale integration), I suspect Vff is the supply to the filaments for the integrated valves on the WOM chip. Decreasing Vff should reduce power dissipation and improve the lifetime of the chip. However, it may also result in poorer noise immunity. Either that or Vff is the reference voltage used by the flip-flops and decreasing it will unbalance the chip by creating an excess of flops over flips. >But what will happen with our 50 Hz european supply? Typically, these things are designed for the American market with no thought given to widely used standards in other parts of the world. I suspect we will have to use motor-generator sets to power this type of circuit. Solid state frequency converters will not be suitable for the critical power requirements here. >I need help... > >(please, answer with simple english) > >JM Pichot > Regards, Peter. From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Wed Apr 2 05:26:58 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 12:26:58 +0200 Subject: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. References: <03b101c89423$acdd2740$2601a8c0@JM3800> Message-ID: <002201c894ac$17f38460$0501a8c0@xp1800> I think you need 1kV for Vff so you can use the hiden HSC feature. 50Hz is a little fast for HSC I think .5 to 1Hz should be fine. -Rik ----- Original Message ----- From: "pichotjm" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 8:10 PM Subject: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. > Hi, > > Pls, have a look at this description of Signetics 25000 series 9046 XN > component: http://pichotjm.free.fr/humr/2.html > Can you explain me, what is Vff? Is it a good idea to decrease this > voltage in order to increase reliability? > But what will happen with our 50 Hz european supply? > I need help... > > (please, answer with simple english) > > JM Pichot > > From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Wed Apr 2 06:21:40 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 13:21:40 +0200 Subject: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. References: <03b101c89423$acdd2740$2601a8c0@JM3800> <002201c894ac$17f38460$0501a8c0@xp1800> Message-ID: <003e01c894b3$bca90730$0501a8c0@xp1800> PS. HSC should not be mixed with ISC or MS that would give unwanted results This because HSC is white and ISC brown and MS varies a lot. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rik" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 12:26 PM Subject: Re: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. >I think you need 1kV for Vff so you can use the hiden HSC feature. > 50Hz is a little fast for HSC I think .5 to 1Hz should be fine. > > -Rik > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "pichotjm" > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" > Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 8:10 PM > Subject: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. > > >> Hi, >> >> Pls, have a look at this description of Signetics 25000 series 9046 XN >> component: http://pichotjm.free.fr/humr/2.html >> Can you explain me, what is Vff? Is it a good idea to decrease this >> voltage in order to increase reliability? >> But what will happen with our 50 Hz european supply? >> I need help... >> >> (please, answer with simple english) >> >> JM Pichot >> >> > > > From eric at brouhaha.com Wed Apr 2 13:20:08 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 11:20:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. In-Reply-To: <03b101c89423$acdd2740$2601a8c0@JM3800> References: <03b101c89423$acdd2740$2601a8c0@JM3800> Message-ID: <45320.64.62.206.10.1207160408.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> JM Pichot wrote about the Signetics 9046: > Subject: What is a FINO? FINO is First-In-Never-Out. > Can you explain me, what is Vff? Filament voltage. > Is it a good idea to decrease this voltage in order to increase > reliability? Not really. If you decrease it sufficiently to extend the life of the filament, the circuit won't function correctly. > But what will happen with our 50 Hz european supply? You need to get the 50 Hz rated version of the part. Contact your Signetics sales representative. Eric From tshoppa at wmata.com Wed Apr 2 14:12:11 2008 From: tshoppa at wmata.com (Tim Shoppa) Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:12:11 -0400 Subject: PDP 11 RL11/01 Address confusion. Message-ID: <47F3A24B020000370002624D@gwiavs.nservices.wmata.com> Johnny writes: > The PDP-11 CPU is a 16-bit machine, so all code will always just deal > with 16-bit values. > > The PDP-11 can have different buses, with different behaviours, but > basically we can divide them into three groups. > 16-bit bus > 18-bit bus > 22-bit bus > > Machines with a simple 16-bit bus is almost nonexistant, but there was > some early Q-bus CPUs with a pure 16-bit address range, I seem to remember. > > 18-bit means all Unibus machines, as well as some Q-bus machines. > > 22-bit means most Q-bus machines. Obviously written from a 11M+ user's perspective. Ignore all those puny Unibus and Q-bus machines without MMU, will you? But they still run RT-11 just fine! Lots of Unibus and Q-bus and not-anything-bus-11's all do quite fine with 16 bit address spaces. While the Unibus electrically has 18 address bits from the get-go, the Unibus 11's without memory management (or without the memory management option) don't use the last two. Even "later" Unibus CPU's like the 11/04 still came without MMU (and it was not an option, either!) Obviously "early" and "later" are taken to be Lasnerian. Tim. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Apr 2 17:03:18 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 23:03:18 +0100 (BST) Subject: What is a FINO? Need about Vff. In-Reply-To: <03b101c89423$acdd2740$2601a8c0@JM3800> from "pichotjm" at Apr 1, 8 08:10:31 pm Message-ID: > > Hi, > > Pls, have a look at this description of Signetics 25000 series 9046 XN > component: http://pichotjm.free.fr/humr/2.html > Can you explain me, what is Vff? Is it a good idea to decrease this voltage Almost certainly filament (heater) voltage. It should be 6.3V (rms AC, or I guess DC). Note the sudden vall in Iff if Vff much exceeds 6.3V -- this is _not_ reversable, if you get to this point, you'll never get much Iff through the same device in the future. > in order to increase reliability? No. Too low a Vff leads to a poisoned cathode. > But what will happen with our 50 Hz european supply? It shoul;dn't make ay difference. Or at least it didn't when I used a related-technology device. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Apr 2 17:07:40 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 23:07:40 +0100 (BST) Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's In-Reply-To: <47F2DABD.3060401@nktelco.net> from "Charles H Dickman" at Apr 1, 8 09:00:45 pm Message-ID: > A year and a half ago I was playing with a PDP-8/e and trying to get an > EAE working with it. I ended up needing a later version M8330. My > original boards were rev 1 and the EAE didn't work until about rev 3. > The drawings I found online were WAY different than the boards I had. > For the EAE, it looked like there were some serious timing issues, so > the later board revisions were quite significant. > > So, if your boards don't match the drawing rev, don't expect there to be > a match. This issue is by no means limited to the PDP8/e, or indeed DEC. On the 11/45, there was a amjor change to one of the boards which added an extra latch on some signals, and needed a backplane mod (an extra clock signal) for it to work. Please don't ask how I found that ont... And HP did similar things. On the HP11205 for example (RS232 interface for the 98x0 machines), there were major changes betwee Rev A and later veriosn. The latter had a little modification to get it to work in the 9830, and extra circutiry added to generate a delay after a carriage return. The 2 boards are nowhere near the same! (I have something I call an 'A.5'. I've don the 9830 mod, just a cut trace and jumper, but not tried to add the delay circutiry). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Apr 2 17:00:40 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 23:00:40 +0100 (BST) Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's In-Reply-To: from "Christian Corti" at Apr 1, 8 10:41:15 am Message-ID: > > On Mon, 31 Mar 2008, Tony Duell wrote: > > I don;t know what test gear you have, but I find a simple logic probe to > > be more use than a 'scope for this sort of problem. The former can easily > > Yes, logic probes are very handy. They are small and easy to use, and I I rarely use a 'scope when debugging digital circuitry. For a long time I used a cheap Radio Shack (!) logic probe -- I got my PDP11/45 and PDP8/e running with just that (and a VOM to check the power supplies). After spending a weekend sorting out a Whitechapel MG!, I bought a LogicDart and never looked back. I do have a larger (and better) logic analyser, which has proved very useful on occasions, but the Dart is a useful handheld instrument that'll help with 99%+ of faults. Pity it's no longer made.... > have found faulty devices most of the times just with the logic probe. The > seven-segment display show transitions and illegal voltage levels (or no > voltage at all), very useful e.g. for dead totem pole outputs (in this I've seen that too. Particularly in 74Hxx devices for some reason. Many logic analusers only detect 0 or 1 (they have a single threshold on the input). A logic probe (and indeed the LogicDart) is better for this sort of fault becuase they also detect illegal levels. > case the voltage of the signal will be determined by the input stage(s) > and lies around 1-2V). > > >> I also return all systems to working order. Apart from a couple of > >> VT420's with ticking SMPSU's everything I have restored runs. (Three > > > > Any reason you';ve not fixed those? Ticking SMPSUs are often quite simple > > to fix, maybe just dried-up capacitors. > > I think ticking PSUs in displays are a sign of a shorted HOT and/or > flyback (had this case several times). Yes, you're right. I'd mentally assumed he'd run the PSU on dummy load, but I guess not. I know the VT300 series are famous for bad flybacks, dunno about the VT420. -tony From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Apr 2 18:19:35 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 19:19:35 -0400 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question Message-ID: Hey folks. I'm trying to get an Overland Data OD3610 drive working with a Dilog DQ132 controller in a PDP-11/83 running RSTS/E. The DQ132 manual documents dipswitch S8 as enabling 22-bit addressing, and it defaults to disabled. Here's the relevant paragraph from the manual: ------------- Switch S8 selects between 18- and 22-bit addressing. Only the TSV05 software handler supports 22-bit addressing on the Q Bus. The TS11/TU80 handler may require modifications to support 22-bit addressing on the Q Bus. Default value is S8 ON, selecting 18-bit main memory addressing. ------------- So am I to assume that it can be used as a TS11 in a 22-bit system, and the driver uses bounce buffers? Any idea? Thanks, -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From tiggerlasv at aim.com Thu Apr 3 00:32:12 2008 From: tiggerlasv at aim.com (tiggerlasv at aim.com) Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:32:12 -0400 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question Message-ID: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> I guess my first question would be - If you're running on an 11/83 under RSTS/E, why WOULDN'T you want to use 22-bit addressing? Surely you're not "wasting" a perfectly good 11/83 on V6C or V7.0 ? ;-) But, to answer your question - My interpretation is that you can: Use 22-bit addressing, in which case RSTS/E (V8.0 and above) will see the controller as a TSV05, and will use 22-bit addressing to access memory above 256K (when applicable). You'll note that if you do a HAR LIST under RSTS/E V8.0 or above, it will flag this drive as "extended features enabled", indicating that it can use the full 22-bit address range. or Set 18-bit addressing, in which case RSTS/E (V7.0) will see the controller as a TS11, which will ONLY be able to access 256K of memory without modification to the device driver. (V8.0 and above might (properly) recognize it as a TSV05 either way, however, the "extended features" will be disabled, and it will only be able to access 256K of memory.) If I left anything out, I'm sure someone will chime in. . . . Tim From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Wed Apr 2 05:03:14 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF4F@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Hi Having worked for DEC for a number of years I'm used to the odd logic symbols. They do explain them in the manual. I don't use a CAD system but something much more useful. Visio. Define a DEC logic symbol once, add connection points in the right places, drop as many copies as you need, join connection points and print on A0 paper. Modify drawing as much as you like and print a new copy each time. Iv'e moved the boards back a bit and as soon as I get a few mins I'll see if I can spot why it won't write to memory. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: 01 April 2008 20:31 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's > > Hi > Its not test gear that's the problem its access to the board. My Tek > 465 will trigger on single pulses with no problem. > However whilst it's recommended that the the first CPU board (the > 8330) be in slot 2 (The front panel is in No1) its not mandatory. So I > can move the boards back a bit and get to the front of the 8330. All Omnius slots are the same, and in an 8/e backplane, AFAIK all slots are plain Omnibus. The only time the top connectors are used on the M8330 is if you have the EAE board set installed, I think. If you do, take it out for the moment (you don't need it when trying to sort out a timing generator problem). You can then put the M8330 in whatever slot you want. An extender board is useful, but by no means essential :-). Another trick that's worked for me in the past if I can't re-arrange the boards and don't have an extneder is to solder a hnadful of wires to useful testpoints on the board and put it back in the cardcage. Then probee the free ends of the wires (make sure they don't short to anything!). Normally 2 or 3 iterations of doing that will get me to the faulty chip. > > Manual I have, (very good) Schematics also (Awful) so bad I may even > redraw at least the 8330. I have an A0 HP plotter so its easy to do > drawings. DEC scheamtics have the odd error on them (I've heard it claimed said errors are deliberate, either to stop the machine being copied, or as copyright traps on the diagrams themselves). They're also somewhat unconventionally drawn (flip-flops may appear to have 4 outputs!), but I've got used to them. I must say that if I need to re-draw a sechematic, I use pen and paper, not a CAD system... -tony From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Wed Apr 2 08:34:30 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 14:34:30 +0100 Subject: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF52@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> I don't suppose you still have the old M8330 do you? Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Charles H Dickman Sent: 02 April 2008 02:01 To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Looking for a M8330 or a couple of SN74194's Tony Duell wrote: > DEC scheamtics have the odd error on them (I've heard it claimed said > errors are deliberate, either to stop the machine being copied, or as > copyright traps on the diagrams themselves). They're also somewhat > unconventionally drawn (flip-flops may appear to have 4 outputs!), but > I've got used to them. I must say that if I need to re-draw a > sechematic, I use pen and paper, not a CAD system... > A year and a half ago I was playing with a PDP-8/e and trying to get an EAE working with it. I ended up needing a later version M8330. My original boards were rev 1 and the EAE didn't work until about rev 3. The drawings I found online were WAY different than the boards I had. For the EAE, it looked like there were some serious timing issues, so the later board revisions were quite significant. So, if your boards don't match the drawing rev, don't expect there to be a match. -chuck From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Thu Apr 3 01:32:03 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 02:32:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: LA180 doc finally all scanned Message-ID: <200804030649.CAA00972@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Some time ago (two months? I forget) someone sent me the "LA180 DECprinter I Maintenance Manual" to scan. Thanks to the good offices of our very own Dave Dunfield, the 8?x11 pages were easy. I finally went through the foldout pages, scanning them with my flatbed. What I have not done: (1) where two scans were necessary to cover a whole page (which was true of most of the foldout pages), I have not merged the two scans into a single image file; (2) I have not interfiled them into the PDF, largely because I've never bothered to create/find PDF building/busting tools (the only PDF-aware software I have at hand is ghostscript). However, the information is all there. See ftp.rodents.montreal.qc.ca:/mouse/docs/DEC/LA180/ - the .pdf is the 8?x11 scans; the scan.%03d.bz2 files are the scans of the foldout pages. I think the pages are in order - that is, if page N is before page M, all scans of page N have lower numbers than any scan of page M. Anyone who cares to is welcome to pick them up and put them somewhere more appropriate, like bitsavers - I suspect anyone doing that would want to do the things I mentioned above I didn't do, but, well, that calls for a Princess Bride quote.[%] Most of my scans were 300dpi 1bpp line-art scans. Two pages came out quite horrible when done that way; those I scanned as greyscale - you can identify them by the file sizes (scan numbers 003/004 and 022/023, as it happens). Some small number of my scans (two, I think) actually fit on an 8?x11 page, just sideways. Those scans have been rotated so they're right-ways-up when the image file is viewed the usual way. My scans are bzip2ed PBM (for the 1bpp) or PGM (for the greyscale) files. If someone needs something else, like TIFF or GIF, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately the FTP daemon I'm running, while it supports conversion on request, does not grok *removing* suffixes to generate requested files. If you need bunzip2ed versions for some reason, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I still have the dead-tree version, so if you find anything that needs rescanning or any such, it's not out of the question. [%] "As you wiiiiiiiish!" /~\ 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 mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 3 10:30:42 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 11:30:42 -0400 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question In-Reply-To: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: On Apr 3, 2008, at 1:32 AM, tiggerlasv at aim.com wrote: > I guess my first question would be - > > If you're running on an 11/83 under RSTS/E, > why WOULDN'T you want to use 22-bit addressing? Well that was my thought...I've never used a 9-track drive on a 22- bit system running RSTS/E, so I was guessing a bit. I thought perhaps the driver might implement bounce buffers if the board was operating in 18-bit mode. Later last night (in total screaming frustration trying to get at least ONE of my five 9-track drives working) I discovered that the driver identifies the board correctly and says "extended features disabled" in the HA LI output, then init disables the device. > Surely you're not "wasting" a perfectly good 11/83 on V6C or > V7.0 ? ;-) No way. RSTS/E is, by far, my favorite PDP-11 OS...but only v9+. I'm definitely not a fan of the pre-v9 RSTS/E releases. Most of my early computer knowledge was gained on a v9.4 system. > You'll note that if you do a HAR LIST under RSTS/E V8.0 or above, > it will flag this drive as "extended features enabled", indicating > that > it can use the full 22-bit address range. Yup, I found that out later last night. Of course the drive doesn't actually *work*, but that's a different (extremely irritating) matter. > Set 18-bit addressing, in which case RSTS/E (V7.0) > will see the controller as a TS11, which will ONLY be able to access > 256K of memory without modification to the device driver. > > (V8.0 and above might (properly) recognize it as a TSV05 either way, > however, the "extended features" will be disabled, and it will only be > able to access 256K of memory.) I've got 4MB of RAM in the system; init disabled the device when it was set for 18-bit addressing. (it's running v9.5) It seems that all of my 9-track drives are nonfunctional now. At least two of them worked when put into storage; I'm very displeased. I've given up on them for the moment and am going to try to get a TK50 or TK70 working in the system. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From dundas at caltech.edu Thu Apr 3 10:52:21 2008 From: dundas at caltech.edu (John A. Dundas III) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 08:52:21 -0700 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question In-Reply-To: References: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: At 11:30 AM -0400 4/3/08, Dave McGuire wrote: >On Apr 3, 2008, at 1:32 AM, tiggerlasv at aim.com wrote: >>I guess my first question would be - >> >>If you're running on an 11/83 under RSTS/E, >>why WOULDN'T you want to use 22-bit addressing? > > Well that was my thought...I've never used a 9-track drive on a >22-bit system running RSTS/E, so I was guessing a bit. I thought >perhaps the driver might implement bounce buffers if the board was >operating in 18-bit mode. > > Later last night (in total screaming frustration trying to get at >least ONE of my five 9-track drives working) I discovered that the >driver identifies the board correctly and says "extended features >disabled" in the HA LI output, then init disables the device. Is _that_ particular device SYSGEN'd into the RSTS SIL you're attempting to run? IIRC, the boot-time code (HA LI) will show all the devices it successfully identifies on the bus, but the RSTS image you try to run after that may not be (and usually isn't) configured to support all devices. One good reason is because some of the magtape controllers use the same CSR but are otherwise incompatible. You may need to SYSGEN a new .SIL before you can actually use the device. John From jfoust at threedee.com Thu Apr 3 12:14:18 2008 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:14:18 -0600 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question [now 9-track repair] In-Reply-To: References: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20080403105840.084eb310@mail.threedee.com> At 09:30 AM 4/3/2008, Dave McGuire wrote: > It seems that all of my 9-track drives are nonfunctional now. At >least two of them worked when put into storage; I'm very displeased. >I've given up on them for the moment and am going to try to get a >TK50 or TK70 working in the system. I mentioned this place back on 5/06, but I'll ask again. Where do you get repairs on old 9-tracks? Back then I'd bought an M4 9914, an Overland Data 5622, and an HP 88780 in the hopes that one would work but none did. After a few months of trying, I eventually exchanged emails and a phone call with http://www.comco-inc.com/ in the hope of getting one of them fixed. I never bit the bullet on shipping and repair costs, though. - John -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.5/1356 - Release Date: 4/2/2008 4:14 PM From vax9000 at gmail.com Thu Apr 3 11:47:45 2008 From: vax9000 at gmail.com (9000 VAX) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 12:47:45 -0400 Subject: microvax 3800 available in NE ohio In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: This machine is claimed. On Thu, Dec 27, 2007 at 5:05 PM, 9000 VAX wrote: > Hello people, > > I am dumping my small collection. If anybody is interested and is able to > pick it up, you are welcome to get it. I do not ship or store. It was a > complete microvax 3800 (upgraded to 3900) but I took the KA655 to fix my > barebone 3900. You get the computer with RA7? DISK, DSSI disk controller, > memory, ethernet card, tape card and tape drive. Plug in a KA655 and it is > ready to go. > > vax9000 > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Ever watched "American Beauty"? > > > From brad at heeltoe.com Thu Apr 3 13:11:50 2008 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:11:50 -0400 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question In-Reply-To: References: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <25573.1207246310@mini> Dave McGuire wrote: ... > No way. RSTS/E is, by far, my favorite PDP-11 OS...but only v9+. >I'm definitely not a fan of the pre-v9 RSTS/E releases. Most of my >early computer knowledge was gained on a v9.4 system. Interesting. Could you expound on that a bit? I'm pretty ignorant about v9+. I first touched RSTS very early on - I'm pretty sure I saw version 2A running (sneaking into the computer lab at Carleton). Later I actually got paid to use it around V6/V7 but after that I moved on to other machines. (Always likes rsts, however. something cool about basic+ and then being able to run rt11 also) What would I notice/like/want running V9+ over running V7? I'd enjoy hearing from someone who's used it a lot. -brad Brad Parker Heeltoe Consulting +1-781-483-3101 http://www.heeltoe.com From dundas at caltech.edu Thu Apr 3 16:54:28 2008 From: dundas at caltech.edu (John A. Dundas III) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 14:54:28 -0700 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question In-Reply-To: <25573.1207246310@mini> References: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> <25573.1207246310@mini> Message-ID: At 2:11 PM -0400 4/3/08, Brad Parker wrote: >What would I notice/like/want running V9+ over running V7? I'd enjoy >hearing from someone who's used it a lot. I might be the wrong one to answer this as the bulk of my experience was from <= V7.2. However here are some things I know changed: - support for I/D-space; both in the kernel and in user programs - DCL as one of the CLIs; I think it's the default from 9.0 on - more/better shareable library support - on-disk structure changes - support for VMS-style BACKUP - granularity in privileges and quotas - support for later processors and devices [somewhat obvious]; correspondingly, support was removed for some older devices - async read/write [from user programs] Also, I think it was Zane who used to maintain (maybe still does) a compatibility matrix of layered products to OS versions. Many changes there over time. John From bshannon at tiac.net Thu Apr 3 18:58:40 2008 From: bshannon at tiac.net (Bob Shannon) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 19:58:40 -0400 Subject: HP-21xx BACI board References: <47D8BC11.6000407@Rikers.org>, <200803131445.m2DEjPsq023100@mail.bcpl.net>, <47D94DE1.4060703@Rikers.org><200803131642.m2DGgjNB018937@mail.bcpl.net> <000f01c88ddc$80910b90$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> Message-ID: <002601c895e6$a4325d80$6601a8c0@screamer> How many would you like? Need a cable too? Drop me an email with your home address and I'll send one down. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Robertson" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Monday, March 24, 2008 2:25 PM Subject: HP-21xx BACI board > Hey Guys, > > I'm looking for a BACI board for my HP2100. I'd be willing to trade a > MicroCircuit, High Speed Interface, HPIB, or other HP2100 board for one. > If > anyone is willing to trade, please let me know. > > Thanks, Steve Robertson > steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com > > > From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 3 22:07:35 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 23:07:35 -0400 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question In-Reply-To: <25573.1207246310@mini> References: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> <25573.1207246310@mini> Message-ID: <207769EB-B224-4B4A-B713-24BF6ED804EE@neurotica.com> On Apr 3, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Brad Parker wrote: >> No way. RSTS/E is, by far, my favorite PDP-11 OS...but only v9+. >> I'm definitely not a fan of the pre-v9 RSTS/E releases. Most of my >> early computer knowledge was gained on a v9.4 system. > > Interesting. Could you expound on that a bit? > > I'm pretty ignorant about v9+. I first touched RSTS very early on > - I'm > pretty sure I saw version 2A running (sneaking into the computer > lab at > Carleton). Later I actually got paid to use it around V6/V7 but after > that I moved on to other machines. > > (Always likes rsts, however. something cool about basic+ and then > being > able to run rt11 also) > > What would I notice/like/want running V9+ over running V7? I'd enjoy > hearing from someone who's used it a lot. Well, I had been exposed to VMS, so I knew a bit of DCL. Since RSTS/E includes DCL as a runtime system from V9 onwards, I was instantly comfortable with it. It's a pretty limited DCL compared to that of VMS, but it's close enough for someone to sit down and start working right away. The notion of logging in and being dumped into a BASIC interpreter didn't excite me at all, as I had an Atari 800 that did that just fine. Granted BASIC-Plus is a damn nice dialect of BASIC, it still wasn't enough to justify (to me) running two-and-a-half racks of equipment over the Atari 800. The first OS I ran on my first PDP-11 was RSX-11M v4.2, and I liked it a lot, but once I found RSTS/E (v9.4), I felt like I was right at home with DCL. I had written some little programs under RSX and they moved right over (a BBS program comes to mind) so I was able to keep hacking on my longer-term projects after converting. Doing a SYSGEN under RSX-11M at age 16 with just a doc kit and no help was...fun. :) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 3 22:08:38 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 23:08:38 -0400 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question In-Reply-To: References: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <971CEB53-CDFD-4CF1-9326-D9B19840F9FE@neurotica.com> On Apr 3, 2008, at 11:52 AM, John A. Dundas III wrote: >> Well that was my thought...I've never used a 9-track drive on a >> 22-bit system running RSTS/E, so I was guessing a bit. I thought >> perhaps the driver might implement bounce buffers if the board was >> operating in 18-bit mode. >> >> Later last night (in total screaming frustration trying to get >> at least ONE of my five 9-track drives working) I discovered that >> the driver identifies the board correctly and says "extended >> features disabled" in the HA LI output, then init disables the >> device. > > Is _that_ particular device SYSGEN'd into the RSTS SIL you're > attempting to run? IIRC, the boot-time code (HA LI) will show all > the devices it successfully identifies on the bus, but the RSTS > image you try to run after that may not be (and usually isn't) > configured to support all devices. One good reason is because some > of the magtape controllers use the same CSR but are otherwise > incompatible. You may need to SYSGEN a new .SIL before you can > actually use the device. The .SIL I was running was generated with the DQ132 configured with extended features enabled. That was probably why init disabled it. It's moot at this point, though, because I can't get the damn drive to work. The universe just doesn't want me to have tapes on my PDP-11s, it seems. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 3 22:11:29 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 23:11:29 -0400 Subject: Dilog DQ132 question [now 9-track repair] In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20080403105840.084eb310@mail.threedee.com> References: <8CA636331F6DDBA-1560-775@webmail-ne19.sysops.aol.com> <6.2.3.4.2.20080403105840.084eb310@mail.threedee.com> Message-ID: <3D9241F4-9E9F-42B0-BBD5-822145DF90F2@neurotica.com> On Apr 3, 2008, at 1:14 PM, John Foust wrote: >> It seems that all of my 9-track drives are nonfunctional now. At >> least two of them worked when put into storage; I'm very displeased. >> I've given up on them for the moment and am going to try to get a >> TK50 or TK70 working in the system. > > I mentioned this place back on 5/06, but I'll ask again. > Where do you get repairs on old 9-tracks? > > Back then I'd bought an M4 9914, an Overland Data 5622, and an HP > 88780 > in the hopes that one would work but none did. > > After a few months of trying, I eventually exchanged emails and > a phone call with http://www.comco-inc.com/ in the hope of getting > one of them fixed. I never bit the bullet on shipping and > repair costs, though. Where to get repairs? I have tools, test equipment, and a service manual for my HP 88780... ;) The 88780 is a fairly modern device as 9-track drives go. It has extensive onboard diagnostic capability. Do you have the docs to be able to go through the test procedures? That should narrow things down quite a bit for that tape drive at least. I'll be doing that soon myself. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Fri Apr 4 00:42:51 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 22:42:51 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Apple ADB mouse optical conversion Message-ID: Does anyone here have any ideas on how one would go about converting a ball-type Apple ADB mouse into an optical one? -- 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 bqt at softjar.se Thu Apr 3 13:15:37 2008 From: bqt at softjar.se (Johnny Billquist) Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:15:37 +0200 Subject: PDP 11 RL11/01 Address confusion. In-Reply-To: <200804031801.m33I0Gk4077525@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804031801.m33I0Gk4077525@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47F51EC9.40604@softjar.se> "Tim Shoppa" skrev: > Johnny writes: > >> The PDP-11 CPU is a 16-bit machine, so all code will always just deal >> with 16-bit values. >> >> The PDP-11 can have different buses, with different behaviours, but >> basically we can divide them into three groups. >> 16-bit bus >> 18-bit bus >> 22-bit bus >> >> Machines with a simple 16-bit bus is almost nonexistant, but there was >> some early Q-bus CPUs with a pure 16-bit address range, I seem to remember. >> >> 18-bit means all Unibus machines, as well as some Q-bus machines. >> >> 22-bit means most Q-bus machines. > > Obviously written from a 11M+ user's perspective. Ignore all those puny Unibus and Q-bus machines without MMU, will you? But they still run RT-11 just fine! Guilty as charged on the 11M+ part. :-) However, I think I covered machines without MMUs as well, I just didn't spell it out. Without MMUs are the same as machines with the MMU disabled. The one thing that differs is who puts out the extra bits on the address bus if there are more than 16 address bits, when you don't have an MMU. The CPU do, in those machines. Oh well. And I thought I'd done a real proper job. :-) 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 Arno_1983 at gmx.de Fri Apr 4 06:09:45 2008 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:09:45 +0200 Subject: Suns available in Germany Message-ID: <20080404110945.167860@gmx.net> Hello fellow collectors, University is about to clean out storage space and there are a few older Sun workstations which will probably get their tickets: 4x SPARCstation 10 2x SPARCstation 20 5x Ultra 5 (both sBus and UPA versions) 2x Ultra 10 (or so) I did peek inside and didn't find anything particularly exciting (e.g. matched processors or unusual boards) so I suppose they will not warrant shipping and would have to be picked up at Erlangen University, southern Germany. Some do have memory and disks installed, others were robbed. So long, Arno -- Arno Kletzander Student Assistant // Studentische Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de Psst! Geheimtipp: Online Games kostenlos spielen bei den GMX Free Games! http://games.entertainment.gmx.net/de/entertainment/games/free From hachti at hachti.de Sat Apr 5 08:50:48 2008 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:50:48 +0200 Subject: Looking for specific PDP-8 MAINDECs Message-ID: <47F783B8.1080409@hachti.de> Hi Folks, I have recently indexed my collection of PDP-8 software listings etc. You can find the list here: http://pdp8.hachti.de?docs I cannot find binaries for the following listings: Product Code: MAINDEC-08-DHKMC-A-D Product Name: PDP-8E Extended Memory Address Test (EA8E) Date Created: April 1975 Maintainer : Diagnostic Group Author : Vernon Frey, D.Macomber Product Code: MAINDEC-12-D8CD-D Product Name: KW12A Clock Test Date Created: December 1, 1971 Maintainer : Diagnostic Group Author : Raymond Shoop Product Code: MAINDEC-12-D8LA Product Name: A.I.P Instruction Test 1 Date Created: June 1, 1971 Maintainer : Diagnostic Group Author : Raymond Shoop Product Code: MAINDEC-08-DHRKC-E-D Product Name: RK8E Data Reliability Test Date Created: April 15, 1975 Maintainer : Diagnostic Group Author : John Vrobel Product Code: MAINDEC-8E-D8AB-D(D) Product Name: DK8E Clocks Diagnostic Date Created: June 1, 1971 Maintainer : Diagnostic Programming Group Author : John Vrobel Product Code: MAINDEC-8E-D6CA-D Product Name: VC8-E Display Diagnostic Date Created: June 21, 1971 Maintainer : Diagnostic Ggroup Author : Patrick Coyne Replaces : MAINDEC-8E-D3AB Product Name: TD8E DECTape Diagnostic Date Created: November 1, 1972 Maintainer : Diagnostic Group Author : E.Steinberger/B.Hansen Product Code: DEC-08-LHAA-D Product Name: "HELP" Loader Date Created: April 1, 1967 Maintainer : Software Services Group Product Code: Digital-8-5-U-Sym Product Name: Binary Punch (ASR33 or 75A) Date Created: March 1, 1965 Product Code: MAINDEC-08-D4A0-D Product Name: PDP-8, 8/I Memory Parity Checkerboard Date Created: May 14, 1968 Maintainer : Diagnostics Group If anybody has one or more of them, please send it to me! But please be aware that I am looking for the *exact* versions :-) Many thanks and best wishes, Philipp :-) From vrs at msn.com Sat Apr 5 09:57:34 2008 From: vrs at msn.com (Vincent Slyngstad) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 07:57:34 -0700 Subject: Looking for specific PDP-8 MAINDECs References: <47F783B8.1080409@hachti.de> Message-ID: > Product Code: MAINDEC-08-DHRKC-E-D > Product Name: RK8E Data Reliability Test > Date Created: April 15, 1975 > Maintainer : Diagnostic Group > Author : John Vrobel I have revision A, but not revision E, for what that's worth. > Product Code: DEC-08-LHAA-D > Product Name: "HELP" Loader > Date Created: April 1, 1967 > Maintainer : Software Services Group This one I think I do have: http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/tapes/index.html http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/tapes/dec.html http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/tapes/dec/dec-08-lha1-pb http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/tapes/dec/dec-08-lha2-pb (I think the tape comes in two segments.) > Product Code: Digital-8-5-U-Sym > Product Name: Binary Punch (ASR33 or 75A) > Date Created: March 1, 1965 and this one I'm sure of: http://www.so-much-stuff.com/pdp8/tapes/digital/digital-8-5-u-pb As you are probably aware, the trailing "-D" indicates a document, whereas a trailing "-PB" or "-PM" indicate a BIN or RIM format tape, respectively. I also have another tray of tapes that I haven't indexed. I'll have a quick look at that, and see if there is anything new there. Vince From lproven at gmail.com Sat Apr 5 16:41:39 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 22:41:39 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook Message-ID: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> I'm sure that the UHH is old news to folk hereabouts. When I was a baby geek, I remember reading about this seminal text, a distillation from a long-active mailing list called UNIX-HATERS. Now, it's available for free: http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/unix-haters.html (Yes, I know. Don't hold the URL against it.) It's a good & enjoyable read. I'm nearly at the end of it now. It's interesting to look back at this 1991 (-ish) book from the perspective of 2008. How many of the criticisms levelled against Unix were stuff that users of then-older OSs thought was deranged. Today, the same sort of rivalry exists between Unix and Windows people; the stuff before them is nearly forgotten now. I mean, I've been in this business for some 20y (and another 5-10y before that as a hobbyist) and I've never seen TOPS or MULTICS or ITS or anything like them. What I'm wondering is, how many of the criticisms levelled against Unix (and thus, by association, Linux) in this book from 17y ago are still current or valid today. I've been using Linux for 11-12y now, but I still regard myself as something of a beginner, whereas I've known Windows since it was 2 and can make it jump backwards through flaming hoops. A lot's changed. Hardware is much more homogeneous - a modern personal computer is either an IBM-compatible x86 box or something much like it; even later PowerPC Macs, Acorn-compatible RISC OS machines, Amiga clones and stuff like that are very PC-like in many ways. They use the same slots, buses, interfaces, RAM, disks and so on. The old problems that plagued Unix 1980s & 1990s Unix - incompatible keyboard layouts & terminal control codes, untrustworthy filesystems, lousy performance, all sorts of things - have gone away now, obliterated by advances in hardware and software design, increasing consolidation and standardization of the computer industry, and the simple progression of Moore's Law. Once, "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" was pejorative; now, an app that uses only 8MB is positively svelte. If you don't already know it, give it a read. I am not really a Linux expert - maybe a power user or competent sysadmin, at best. I do have lots of comparative OS knowledge, but most of it is of systems that came along long after Unix. I'd be really interested to know the thoughts of modern Unix gurus on how much of the criticism in the UHH is still valid today. -- 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 slawmaster at gmail.com Sat Apr 5 17:04:38 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 15:04:38 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Liam Proven wrote: > I'm sure that the UHH is old news to folk hereabouts. > > When I was a baby geek, I remember reading about this seminal text, a > distillation from a long-active mailing list called UNIX-HATERS. Now, > it's available for free: > > http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/unix-haters.html > > (Yes, I know. Don't hold the URL against it.) > > It's a good & enjoyable read. I'm nearly at the end of it now. > > It's interesting to look back at this 1991 (-ish) book from the > perspective of 2008. How many of the criticisms levelled against Unix > were stuff that users of then-older OSs thought was deranged. > > Today, the same sort of rivalry exists between Unix and Windows > people; the stuff before them is nearly forgotten now. I mean, I've > been in this business for some 20y (and another 5-10y before that as a > hobbyist) and I've never seen TOPS or MULTICS or ITS or anything like > them. > > What I'm wondering is, how many of the criticisms levelled against > Unix (and thus, by association, Linux) in this book from 17y ago are > still current or valid today. I've been using Linux for 11-12y now, > but I still regard myself as something of a beginner, whereas I've > known Windows since it was 2 and can make it jump backwards through > flaming hoops. > > A lot's changed. Hardware is much more homogeneous - a modern personal > computer is either an IBM-compatible x86 box or something much like > it; even later PowerPC Macs, Acorn-compatible RISC OS machines, Amiga > clones and stuff like that are very PC-like in many ways. They use the > same slots, buses, interfaces, RAM, disks and so on. > > The old problems that plagued Unix 1980s & 1990s Unix - incompatible > keyboard layouts & terminal control codes, untrustworthy filesystems, > lousy performance, all sorts of things - have gone away now, > obliterated by advances in hardware and software design, increasing > consolidation and standardization of the computer industry, and the > simple progression of Moore's Law. Once, "Eight Megs And Constantly > Swapping" was pejorative; now, an app that uses only 8MB is positively > svelte. > > If you don't already know it, give it a read. > > I am not really a Linux expert - maybe a power user or competent > sysadmin, at best. I do have lots of comparative OS knowledge, but > most of it is of systems that came along long after Unix. I'd be > really interested to know the thoughts of modern Unix gurus on how > much of the criticism in the UHH is still valid today. > > -- > 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 > > Some of them are still accurate. Others are a little outdated. Some, and these are the ones that kinda annoy me, are the kind of complaints that people come up with when they are unwilling to think outside of their favored OS's techniques. I mean, the complaints about command names? "rm" is not particularly intuitive, but good things require a little learning. I admit that TOPS-XX and VMS did pretty good with the ability to shorten command names, but "DELETE" is only one of several possible commands a new user might try--"REMOVE", "JUNK", etc. Complaints about how Unix is "silent" when there is no output--"grep" returning nothing instead of saying "No matches" when there aren't any matches--these are basically invalid. They're the kind of thing people who don't use or understand pipes will say. I don't feel like going through the document again and finding more things... However, Unix is old. We should be looking elsewhere. Plan 9 is one of the few non-Unix/non-Windows operating systems still in development today; it breaks out of some of the old Unix ideas. I would much rather see 10 new operating systems in active development than have Unix/Linux/Windows take over the world. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Sat Apr 5 17:54:02 2008 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 15:54:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 19" rack blanking panels Message-ID: <730327.37552.qm@web56203.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Hi, Looking for various parts to complete a 19" rack of various vintage servers :) In particular I'd like to get some blanking plates (any size) in black if possible, cable tidies, and empty 1U/2U or larger server boxes. Anything considered - I'm in the UK Many thanks Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com From spc at conman.org Sat Apr 5 18:10:47 2008 From: spc at conman.org (Sean Conner) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 19:10:47 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> It was thus said that the Great Liam Proven once stated: > > When I was a baby geek, I remember reading about this seminal text, a > distillation from a long-active mailing list called UNIX-HATERS. Now, > it's available for free: Darn. And to think I bought the dead tree version in the mid 90s (I still have the barf bag that came with it). > It's a good & enjoyable read. I'm nearly at the end of it now. > > It's interesting to look back at this 1991 (-ish) book from the > perspective of 2008. How many of the criticisms levelled against Unix > were stuff that users of then-older OSs thought was deranged. > > Today, the same sort of rivalry exists between Unix and Windows > people; the stuff before them is nearly forgotten now. I mean, I've > been in this business for some 20y (and another 5-10y before that as a > hobbyist) and I've never seen TOPS or MULTICS or ITS or anything like > them. I've certainly heard of them myself, and some of the concepts they came up with have made me want to learn more about each one, but I've yet to actually use any of them. > What I'm wondering is, how many of the criticisms levelled against > Unix (and thus, by association, Linux) in this book from 17y ago are > still current or valid today. I've been using Linux for 11-12y now, > but I still regard myself as something of a beginner, whereas I've > known Windows since it was 2 and can make it jump backwards through > flaming hoops. Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). Chapter 2---mostly user expectations here. And yes, it's still somewhat valid---VMS was a lot more consistent in the command line than Unix ever was. Chpater 3---Eh. They go on about how horrible man pages are, but they're infinitely better than the whole info crap you get nowadays with GNU (god, I love man pages that say crap like "The full documentation for cut is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and cut programs are properly installed at your site, the command info coreutils cut should give you access to the complete manual"). Nowadays you can probably paste any command or error message into Google and find out the problem (but then again, you might find plenty of other people with said problem but no definitive answer). Chapter 4---mail. Or more specifically sendmail. Still relevent, and sadly, the situations presented there are infinitely easier to deal with than the crap I have to deal with today. Chapter 5---Usenet. Strictly speaking, not specifically Unix, and frankly, nowadays, not really relevent all that much (which means, it's probably usuable these days). Replace USENET with Slashdot|Reddit|Digg|etc. Chapter 6---terminals. Not so much anymore. Pretty much vt100/xterm and you're good to go (alhough I still have issues with BS vs. DEL on Linux). Chapter 7---Pretty much spot on, although the alternatives to X Windows are worse (that is, if you want remote capabilities). And sadly, I do miss NeWS (used it in college; was sad when SGI dropped it). Chapter 8---who uses csh anymore? I think we all use bash nowadays, but this still holds up pretty well (man, I can't make heads or tails of the startup scripts on Linux, but then again, I never did learn to really read shell scripts). Chapter 9---Not so much anymore, as more and more people use languages other than C and make (and there are a few alternative to make nowadays). Chapter 10---Dead on. (I don't like C++ 8-P Chapter 11---If anything it's gotten better and worse in my opinion. If you set up Unix correctly, it can run smoothly for years without problems. The major problem comes when you have other users on the system, or trying to get a modern Linux distribution set up correctly (when did "which" become optional? Or "traceroute"? Don't even get me started on so-called "package managers"). Chapter 12---security. Sadly, this book was written before the Internet became as popular as it did and Microsoft showed us just how bad security could get. Or PHP showed us just how bad security could get (really! You can embed PHP in gif files and PHP will gladly execute it! How ... Microsoftian of it ... ). Chapter 13---file systems. They're gotten much better over the years, and even Linux is slowly learning about removable media [1]. Chapter 14---I don't know anyone using NFS anymore (I think the last time I saw NFS in a commercial setting was the late 90s, and even at home, I don't use NFS all that much). But replace NFS with Samba, and it's spot on (more or less). -spc (Been using Unix since 1989 ... ) [1] My own personal theory about Unix: If it wasn't in Unix V7, then it's never been supported all that well under Unix. That explains the crappy support for removable devices, graphical systems and threads. From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Apr 5 18:35:22 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:35:22 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <200804051935.22655.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 05 April 2008 19:10, Sean Conner wrote: > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of > K&R C floating around. What's wrong with K&R C? :-) (Snip) > Chpater 3---Eh. They go on about how horrible man pages are, but they're > infinitely better than the whole info crap you get nowadays with GNU (god, > I love man pages that say crap like "The full documentation for cut is > maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and cut programs are properly > installed at your site, the command info coreutils cut should give you > access to the complete manual"). Yeah... Talk about a truly *horrible* user interface! At least some of that stuff is available in HTML, which if I'm not happy with it I can hack away at... > Nowadays you can probably paste any command or error message into Google and > find out the problem (but then again, you might find plenty of other people > with said problem but no definitive answer). That's happened to me already, on a number of occasions. > Chapter 4---mail. Or more specifically sendmail. Still relevent, and > sadly, the situations presented there are infinitely easier to deal with > than the crap I have to deal with today. I started to look at all the bits involved in mail a while back, then got KDE going (my initial install and first year or two of running linux did not include a GUI :-), and once I found that I could get kmail to deal with all of that it sort of short-circuited the whole mess. Now I'm starting to think about looking at it again because of things like a message I want to send to another user on the LAN here having to go through Verizon's servers. :-( There's a pretty lively discussion currently going on in the local LUG about somebody else dealing with all of those issues that I'm following with interest. > Chapter 5---Usenet. Strictly speaking, not specifically Unix, and > frankly, nowadays, not really relevent all that much (which means, it's > probably usuable these days). Replace USENET with > Slashdot|Reddit|Digg|etc. Heh. Once in every really long while I fire up my news reader, and maybe I'll poke around in some newsgroups and maybe I'll just look a bit for certain specific material, but that's about it. I do remember what it was like before the web, though. And there are still lots and lots of clueless posters, no doubt about that... (Snip) > Chapter 8---who uses csh anymore? I think we all use bash nowadays, but > this still holds up pretty well (man, I can't make heads or tails of the > startup scripts on Linux, but then again, I never did learn to really read > shell scripts). I'm certainly no expert on that stuff, but have managed to poke around them to the extent where I can often follow what's going on. :-) There's a product out there I think I probably found at freshmeat called "Advanced Bash Scripting Guide" that's pretty good. (Snip) > Chapter 10---Dead on. (I don't like C++ 8-P I don't either. > Chapter 11---If anything it's gotten better and worse in my opinion. If > you set up Unix correctly, it can run smoothly for years without problems. > The major problem comes when you have other users on the system, or trying > to get a modern Linux distribution set up correctly (when did "which" > become optional? Or "traceroute"? Don't even get me started on so-called > "package managers"). That's a lot of why I run Slackware here pretty much exclusively. (snip) > Chapter 14---I don't know anyone using NFS anymore (I think the last time > I saw NFS in a commercial setting was the late 90s, and even at home, I > don't use NFS all that much). But replace NFS with Samba, and it's spot on > (more or less). I use it here. Though I can't quite get all aspects of it to work the way I think it should be. For some reason the server is refusing to export the first of three drives, while it does okay with the other two. And as far as I can tell all of the config stuff is pretty much identical. > -spc (Been using Unix since 1989 ... ) Linux here since 1999, and some exposure to unix before that with a friend who ran it at home, and gave me a login I could get to by way of a modem. I'm glad he did. :-) -- 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 hachti at hachti.de Sat Apr 5 19:33:36 2008 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2008 02:33:36 +0200 Subject: PDP-8 "Dumprest" experience? Message-ID: <47F81A60.7090502@hachti.de> Hi folks, I am just beginning to use Dave Gesswein's DumpRest from ftp://ftp.pdp8online.com/software/dumprest/. I successfully restored TD8-E DECtapes with it. That enabled me to install OS/8 on RK05 etc. I also (roughly) integrated the dumprest utilities into OS/8 (I can start them and they reboot OS/8 back to the monitor). And they now use a separate high speed rs232 port to connect to my PC (as my kermit does). When I use restrk05, I always get a checksum error. I just have read one RK05 disk - three times. What I get is always the same checksum error printout with the same checksum. And the generated files are identical as well. I can also successfully run them in SIMH. So what's wrong? Does anybody has a clue? Is that a known problem? Best wishes, Philipp :-) From spectre at floodgap.com Sat Apr 5 19:42:11 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 17:42:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> from Sean Conner at "Apr 5, 8 07:10:47 pm" Message-ID: <200804060042.m360gBkG005620@floodgap.com> > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R > C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of > Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? > (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). ... AIX, HP/UX, ... And, of course then there's the argument over whether OS X counts too. So I think there's still a fair amount of heterogeneity even now. > Chapter 8---who uses csh anymore? *raises hand* Well, tcsh really. > Chapter 14---I don't know anyone using NFS anymore (I think the last time > I saw NFS in a commercial setting was the late 90s, and even at home, I > don't use NFS all that much). I use it mostly for diskless systems, but even in that application I don't use it much. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Mistakes are often the stepping stones to catastrophic failure. ------------ From fmc at reanimators.org Sat Apr 5 20:20:19 2008 From: fmc at reanimators.org (Frank McConnell) Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2008 18:20:19 -0700 Subject: old computer books (was Re: The Unix Haters' Handbook) In-Reply-To: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> (Sean Conner's message of "Sat\, 5 Apr 2008 19\:10\:47 -0400") References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <200804060120.m361KJQf005713@lots.reanimators.org> Sean Conner wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Liam Proven once stated: >> >> When I was a baby geek, I remember reading about this seminal text, a >> distillation from a long-active mailing list called UNIX-HATERS. Now, >> it's available for free: > > Darn. And to think I bought the dead tree version in the mid 90s (I still > have the barf bag that came with it). Looks like it's still worth at least a few bucks, more if it's in decent condition. "Available free online" doesn't always whack the market for the dead-trees artifact. On another bookish note I have in front of me the February 16, 1970 issue of The IBM Magazine which contains an article featuring Dr. Kenneth E. Iverson. There's a photograph of his 1962 book, "A Programming Language", with a caption: Dr. Iverson presented his new notation in A Programming Language, which has sold 1,363 copies since it was published in 1962. This suggests to me that I have perhaps personally seen 1% of the surviving copies. -Frank McConnell From lproven at gmail.com Sat Apr 5 21:43:57 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 03:43:57 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804060042.m360gBkG005620@floodgap.com> References: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> <200804060042.m360gBkG005620@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <575131af0804051943k7566f29by9830b836776853f0@mail.gmail.com> On 06/04/2008, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R > > C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of > > Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? > > (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). > > > ... AIX, HP/UX, ... ... Mac OS X... Now /officially/ Unix & I believe has sold more individual system licenses than any other Unix ever, possibly now than all other Unixes ever put together... Certainly in the tens of millions... So, y'know, /quite/ significant... :?) -- 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 cisin at xenosoft.com Sat Apr 5 21:48:13 2008 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 19:48:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <20080405194217.C28981@shell.lmi.net> On Sat, 5 Apr 2008, Sean Conner wrote: > Darn. And to think I bought the dead tree version in the mid 90s (I still > have the barf bag that came with it). If you've still got it, I'll give you a dollar plus media mail shipping for it. And you can keep the collectable barf bag! Instead of teaching, I'm a librarian now, and I think that the library should have a copy of it. Since the administration won't give us any significant money to expand the collection, I'm buying and donating some books. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From tosteve at yahoo.com Sat Apr 5 23:55:55 2008 From: tosteve at yahoo.com (steven stengel) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 21:55:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: WANTED: Victor 9000 keyboard Message-ID: <304594.97387.qm@web51607.mail.re2.yahoo.com> I received a Victor 9000 with monitor and lots of software, but no keyboard. If someone has one to spare, I'd appreciate it! Now, what can I do with all of these extra software copies? Steve. --------------------------------- You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. From austin at ozpass.co.uk Sun Apr 6 02:57:53 2008 From: austin at ozpass.co.uk (Austin Pass) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 08:57:53 +0100 Subject: 19" rack blanking panels In-Reply-To: <730327.37552.qm@web56203.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <730327.37552.qm@web56203.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4FA690D7-159A-495E-BADD-41D70F134F91@ozpass.co.uk> On 5 Apr 2008, at 23:54, silvercreekvalley wrote: > Hi, > > Looking for various parts to complete a 19" rack > of various vintage servers :) In particular I'd > like to get some blanking plates (any size) in > black if possible, cable tidies, and empty 1U/2U > or larger server boxes. > > Anything considered - I'm in the UK > > Many thanks > > Ian. Hi Ian. I can hook you up with some 19" cable tidies (usual black, powder coated steel) FOC if you like? They also make a passable blanking plate if you reverse them ;-) Let me know. -Austin. From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Sun Apr 6 06:52:17 2008 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 04:52:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 19" rack blanking panels Message-ID: <208575.27799.qm@web56213.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Hi Austin, That would be great. Thanks. The blanking panels and other 19" rack bits seem quite pricey, especially if you need a lot of them which you typically do when building up a rack. All the best Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com From listmailgoeshere at gmail.com Sun Apr 6 09:35:12 2008 From: listmailgoeshere at gmail.com (listmailgoeshere at gmail.com) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 15:35:12 +0100 Subject: FS: QBUS boards, 4K memory boards, Sharp PC-3000 items In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sat, Feb 2, 2008 at 11:22 PM, wrote: > Hi list, > > I have the following for sale: > > 1) 4 * QBUS board: > > DEC "A/D FOR 1103 5012094E-P2" > DEC "4 CHANNEL D/A A6001 5012107 DP4" > DEC "PROG REAL TIME CLOCK M7952 5012108B" > DEC "M9060 5017109" load board Nobody wants these? They're packed ready to ship, and I really don't want to have to throw them in the bin, but the space requirements are becoming more pressing so that may happen before too long. UK postage ?7.27, worldwide airmail ?20.72 (plus you pay the PayPal fees). I don't care about getting money for these, just pay the shipping and they're yours. > 2) 2 boards marked > > "4K MEMORY BOARD FOR 118 > NICOLET INSTRUMENT CORP > 000-7488-04 10/14/75" > > Each one contains 40 ICs marked "TMS 4060JL BP7901" and then 15 chips' > worth of 74-series logic. One of these boards seems to have been used > for spares or something, as it's missing all its resistors, capacitors > and one of the TTL ICs. The connector on these is an 86-way 0.1" edge > connector. These are going to get stripped for parts before too long if no-one speaks up to the contrary. Ed. From andy at smokebelch.org Sun Apr 6 10:13:08 2008 From: andy at smokebelch.org (Andrew Back) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 16:13:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <20080406160445.D78615@plum.flirble.org> On Sat, 5 Apr 2008, Sean Conner wrote: > Chapter 14---I don't know anyone using NFS anymore (I think the last time > I saw NFS in a commercial setting was the late 90s, and even at home, I > don't use NFS all that much). But replace NFS with Samba, and it's spot on > (more or less). I'd say it's use has if anything grown. Modern data centers often have dedicated GigE NFS LANs. Good for consolidated storage and portability useful in HA and virtualised platforms, but cheaper than SAN. And NAS vendors such as NetApp have gone to great pains to get folks such as Oracle to certify their technology in such configurations. Andrew From James at jdfogg.com Sun Apr 6 13:45:24 2008 From: James at jdfogg.com (James Fogg) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 14:45:24 -0400 Subject: 19" rack blanking panels Message-ID: <4EE5D8CA323707439EF291AC9244BD9A2574B7@sbs.jdfogg.com> > Looking for various parts to complete a 19" rack > of various vintage servers :) In particular I'd > like to get some blanking plates (any size) in > black if possible, cable tidies, and empty 1U/2U > or larger server boxes. > > Anything considered - I'm in the UK It might be easier to go to a metal shop, autobody shop or Heating/Ventilating/Air Conditioning shop. Any shop like that can make panels to your exact size in a few minutes (aluminum works best). You can have a body shop paint them (wait until they are spraying your color anyways or it gets expensive) or you can use spray paint cans. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 6 12:36:08 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 18:36:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> from "John Floren" at Apr 5, 8 03:04:38 pm Message-ID: > Some of them are still accurate. Others are a little outdated. Some, > and these are the ones that kinda annoy me, are the kind of complaints > that people come up with when they are unwilling to think outside of > their favored OS's techniques. I mean, the complaints about command > names? "rm" is not particularly intuitive, but good things require a > little learning. I admit that TOPS-XX and VMS did pretty good with the > ability to shorten command names, but "DELETE" is only one of several > possible commands a new user might try--"REMOVE", "JUNK", etc. I've yet to find any user interface that doesn't need learning. It took me a long time to work out how to change directories under VMS -- coming from a Unix/OS9 background, SET DEFAULT was hardly expected. And on the Mac, I first thoguht that if dragging a file to the trash deleted it, then dragging a disk to the trash should reformat it. There's also the danger of confusing 'easy to learn' with 'easy to use'. Some things are easy to learn becuase they're so limited in what you can do there just isn't that much to learn. Personnally, I'd prefer a more powerful system that will actually help me to get the job done, even if I ahve to spend a fair amount of time learning to use it properly. Good tools (no mattter what sort of tool) need practice to use properly. -tony From als at thangorodrim.de Sun Apr 6 16:43:39 2008 From: als at thangorodrim.de (Alexander Schreiber) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 23:43:39 +0200 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <20080406214338.GA7826@thangorodrim.de> On Sat, Apr 05, 2008 at 07:10:47PM -0400, Sean Conner wrote: > It was thus said that the Great Liam Proven once stated: > > > > When I was a baby geek, I remember reading about this seminal text, a > > distillation from a long-active mailing list called UNIX-HATERS. Now, > > it's available for free: > > Darn. And to think I bought the dead tree version in the mid 90s (I still > have the barf bag that came with it). > > > It's a good & enjoyable read. I'm nearly at the end of it now. > > > > It's interesting to look back at this 1991 (-ish) book from the > > perspective of 2008. How many of the criticisms levelled against Unix > > were stuff that users of then-older OSs thought was deranged. > > > > Today, the same sort of rivalry exists between Unix and Windows > > people; the stuff before them is nearly forgotten now. I mean, I've > > been in this business for some 20y (and another 5-10y before that as a > > hobbyist) and I've never seen TOPS or MULTICS or ITS or anything like > > them. > > I've certainly heard of them myself, and some of the concepts they came up > with have made me want to learn more about each one, but I've yet to > actually use any of them. > > > What I'm wondering is, how many of the criticisms levelled against > > Unix (and thus, by association, Linux) in this book from 17y ago are > > still current or valid today. I've been using Linux for 11-12y now, > > but I still regard myself as something of a beginner, whereas I've > > known Windows since it was 2 and can make it jump backwards through > > flaming hoops. > > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R > C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of > Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? > (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). HP-UX and AIX are still alive and kicking, so commercial UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny. > Chapter 6---terminals. Not so much anymore. Pretty much vt100/xterm and > you're good to go (alhough I still have issues with BS vs. DEL on Linux). > > Chapter 7---Pretty much spot on, although the alternatives to X Windows > are worse (that is, if you want remote capabilities). And sadly, I do miss > NeWS (used it in college; was sad when SGI dropped it). > > Chapter 8---who uses csh anymore? I think we all use bash nowadays, but > this still holds up pretty well (man, I can't make heads or tails of the > startup scripts on Linux, but then again, I never did learn to really read > shell scripts). Ah, those are reasonably easy to read, but some people do really twisted things with shell scripts. > Chapter 11---If anything it's gotten better and worse in my opinion. If > you set up Unix correctly, it can run smoothly for years without problems. > The major problem comes when you have other users on the system, or trying > to get a modern Linux distribution set up correctly (when did "which" become > optional? Or "traceroute"? Don't even get me started on so-called "package > managers"). Package managers, done _right_ are a godsend. Done wrong, they are a nightmare. > Chapter 13---file systems. They're gotten much better over the years, and > even Linux is slowly learning about removable media [1]. > > Chapter 14---I don't know anyone using NFS anymore (I think the last time > I saw NFS in a commercial setting was the late 90s, and even at home, I > don't use NFS all that much). But replace NFS with Samba, and it's spot on > (more or less). Lets just say that NFS is _very_ much alive and in use, all over the place. From home networks (here, $HOME sits on NFS) to small and large companies. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison From als at thangorodrim.de Sun Apr 6 16:45:26 2008 From: als at thangorodrim.de (Alexander Schreiber) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 23:45:26 +0200 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <575131af0804051943k7566f29by9830b836776853f0@mail.gmail.com> References: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> <200804060042.m360gBkG005620@floodgap.com> <575131af0804051943k7566f29by9830b836776853f0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20080406214525.GB7826@thangorodrim.de> On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 03:43:57AM +0100, Liam Proven wrote: > On 06/04/2008, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > > > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R > > > C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of > > > Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? > > > (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). > > > > > > ... AIX, HP/UX, ... > > ... Mac OS X... > > Now /officially/ Unix & I believe has sold more individual system > licenses than any other Unix ever, possibly now than all other Unixes > ever put together... Certainly in the tens of millions... So, y'know, > /quite/ significant... :?) But from what I've seen, it twisted the definition of UNIX even worse that AIX did. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison From doug at stillhq.com Sun Apr 6 19:07:37 2008 From: doug at stillhq.com (Doug Jackson - pesonal email) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:07:37 +1000 Subject: PDP 11 owners in Canberra, Australia In-Reply-To: <200804061700.m36H08a8018858@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804061700.m36H08a8018858@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47F965C9.9060301@stillhq.com> It is now official... Having now got my RL01 drive in my PDP-11/34 to seek, and read a sector full of zeros, I would love to know if there are any PDP 11 users in Canberra, who would be able to load up a bootable RT11 image onto a RL01 disk pack. Heck, anybody within a couple of hundred km would also be cool.. Having known data on a disk pack would be very handy. Thanks, Doug From spectre at floodgap.com Sun Apr 6 19:50:23 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 17:50:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080406214338.GA7826@thangorodrim.de> from Alexander Schreiber at "Apr 6, 8 11:43:39 pm" Message-ID: <200804070050.m370oNW3030258@floodgap.com> > > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R > > C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of > > Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? > > (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). > > HP-UX and AIX are still alive and kicking, so commercial UNIX isn't > dead, it just smells funny. I giggled very loudly when I read this. Well put. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn? -- Beagle, "The Last Unicorn" From slawmaster at gmail.com Sun Apr 6 20:23:51 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 18:23:51 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804070050.m370oNW3030258@floodgap.com> References: <20080406214338.GA7826@thangorodrim.de> <200804070050.m370oNW3030258@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804061823m3ab0d012r4b45326151453e29@mail.gmail.com> On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > > > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R > > > C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of > > > Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? > > > (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). > > > > HP-UX and AIX are still alive and kicking, so commercial UNIX isn't > > dead, it just smells funny. > > I giggled very loudly when I read this. Well put. > A take on Rob Pike's "Not only is Unix dead, it's starting to smell really bad"? John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Mon Apr 7 03:31:44 2008 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 01:31:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: WTD: Sun 501-1443 framebuffer? Message-ID: <875906.43137.qm@web56204.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Hi, Looking for a 501-1443 or similar framebuffer to fit a Sun 3/80. This uses the P4 bus. Its not the same as a 3/60 cg4 framebuffer unfortunately - I think the main difference is the position of the video sockets, but there may be others... Good price paid, or can trade for other items (Sun or DEC). Cheers Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com From als at thangorodrim.de Mon Apr 7 05:11:19 2008 From: als at thangorodrim.de (Alexander Schreiber) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 12:11:19 +0200 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804061823m3ab0d012r4b45326151453e29@mail.gmail.com> References: <20080406214338.GA7826@thangorodrim.de> <200804070050.m370oNW3030258@floodgap.com> <7d3530220804061823m3ab0d012r4b45326151453e29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20080407101116.GA19045@thangorodrim.de> On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 06:23:51PM -0700, John Floren wrote: > On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > > > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > > > > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R > > > > C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of > > > > Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? > > > > (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). > > > > > > HP-UX and AIX are still alive and kicking, so commercial UNIX isn't > > > dead, it just smells funny. > > > > I giggled very loudly when I read this. Well put. > > > > A take on Rob Pike's "Not only is Unix dead, it's starting to smell really bad"? > Not intentionally ;-) But in that case, Rob is wrong, Unix as a OS family is very much alive. To cite someone else: If UNIX is dead, the necromancer who is animating the corpse is doing a damn fine job. -- Par Leijonhufvud (parlei at algonet.se) in a.s.r. ;-) Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison From fu3.org at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 05:16:36 2008 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (Chris H.) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 12:16:36 +0200 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804061823m3ab0d012r4b45326151453e29@mail.gmail.com> References: <20080406214338.GA7826@thangorodrim.de> <200804070050.m370oNW3030258@floodgap.com> <7d3530220804061823m3ab0d012r4b45326151453e29@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <310f50ab0804070316j3783d1f4g8ce0db766587e6ed@mail.gmail.com> 2008/4/7, John Floren : > On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 5:50 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > > > HP-UX and AIX are still alive and kicking, so commercial UNIX isn't > > > dead, it just smells funny. > > > > I giggled very loudly when I read this. Well put. > > > > > A take on Rob Pike's "Not only is Unix dead, it's starting to smell really bad"? > I believe Frank Zappa once said, "Jazz ain't dead, it just smells funny.." -- < http://whorehou.se/ > From cclist at sydex.com Mon Apr 7 12:49:20 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:49:20 -0700 Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 56, Issue 8 In-Reply-To: <200804071700.m37H0Bkh038085@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804071700.m37H0Bkh038085@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47F9FC30.7108.FC02363@cclist.sydex.com> On 7 Apr 2008 at 12:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 14:45:24 -0400 > From: "James Fogg" > It might be easier to go to a metal shop, autobody shop or > Heating/Ventilating/Air Conditioning shop. Any shop like that can make > panels to your exact size in a few minutes (aluminum works best). You can > have a body shop paint them (wait until they are spraying your color > anyways or it gets expensive) or you can use spray paint cans. Any music store dealing with pro road gear will have tons of 19" rack accessories, including blank panels. They also carry the hard-to- find cage nuts, trays, fans, ventilation panels, etc. etc. Cheers, Chuck From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 13:04:01 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:04:01 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> John Floren wrote: > Complaints about how Unix is "silent" when there is no output--"grep" > returning nothing instead of saying "No matches" when there aren't any > matches--these are basically invalid. They're the kind of thing people > who don't use or understand pipes will say. That's bull. There are ways to make grep output something like "No matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it. I suggest that perhaps those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't use or understand pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't understand pipes. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 13:08:31 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:08:31 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> Message-ID: <47FA631F.4040005@gmail.com> Sean Conner wrote: > Chapter 1---not so much any more. This was a time (94) when the ANSI-C > standard had only been out a few years so there was still quite a bit of K&R > C floating around. This was also a time when there were still plenty of > Unix versions floating around, instead of the what? Five we have left now? > (Linux, Open|Free|NetBSD, Solaris). AIX, MacOS, HP/UX, Tru64. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 13:11:23 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:11:23 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080406160445.D78615@plum.flirble.org> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> <20080406160445.D78615@plum.flirble.org> Message-ID: <47FA63CB.4050508@gmail.com> Andrew Back wrote: >> Chapter 14---I don't know anyone using NFS anymore (I think the last >> time >> I saw NFS in a commercial setting was the late 90s, and even at home, I >> don't use NFS all that much). But replace NFS with Samba, and it's >> spot on >> (more or less). > > I'd say it's use has if anything grown. Modern data centers often have > dedicated GigE NFS LANs. Good for consolidated storage and portability > useful in HA and virtualised platforms, but cheaper than SAN. And NAS > vendors such as NetApp have gone to great pains to get folks such as > Oracle to certify their technology in such configurations. I use NFS all over the place. I wouldn't be caught dead using SMBFS in a production setting. Peace... Sridhar From slawmaster at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 13:15:57 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 11:15:57 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 11:04 AM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > John Floren wrote: > > > Complaints about how Unix is "silent" when there is no output--"grep" > > returning nothing instead of saying "No matches" when there aren't any > > matches--these are basically invalid. They're the kind of thing people > > who don't use or understand pipes will say. > > > > That's bull. There are ways to make grep output something like "No > matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it. I suggest that perhaps > those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't use or understand > pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't understand pipes. > > Peace... Sridhar > No news is good news. Sure, you could make grep blather all over stderr or something, but why? If you don't get any errors, the program completed correctly. If you screwed up the syntax or specified a nonexistent file, you get an error. However, since GNU tools are so utterly goddamn broken, this may or may not be the case on any given tool. Try Plan 9 some time and you'll have a lovely experience... for example, see http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/cat for the proper way to implement cat. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From slawmaster at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 13:17:58 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 11:17:58 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47FA63CB.4050508@gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> <20080406160445.D78615@plum.flirble.org> <47FA63CB.4050508@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804071117m6780d940tec0a369f195b988b@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > Andrew Back wrote: > > > > > > Chapter 14---I don't know anyone using NFS anymore (I think the last > time > > > I saw NFS in a commercial setting was the late 90s, and even at home, I > > > don't use NFS all that much). But replace NFS with Samba, and it's spot > on > > > (more or less). > > > > > > > I'd say it's use has if anything grown. Modern data centers often have > dedicated GigE NFS LANs. Good for consolidated storage and portability > useful in HA and virtualised platforms, but cheaper than SAN. And NAS > vendors such as NetApp have gone to great pains to get folks such as Oracle > to certify their technology in such configurations. > > > > I use NFS all over the place. I wouldn't be caught dead using SMBFS in a > production setting. > > Peace... Sridhar > Us Real Men just import a remote fileserver's tree over 9p ;) % 9fs kremvax % ls /n/kremvax/usr/john /n/kremvax/usr/john/foo /n/kremvax/usr/john/bar ... % John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 13:31:17 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:31:17 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804071117m6780d940tec0a369f195b988b@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <20080405231047.GA25755@brevard.conman.org> <20080406160445.D78615@plum.flirble.org> <47FA63CB.4050508@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071117m6780d940tec0a369f195b988b@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47FA6875.3080305@gmail.com> John Floren wrote: > Us Real Men just import a remote fileserver's tree over 9p ;) > % 9fs kremvax > % ls /n/kremvax/usr/john > /n/kremvax/usr/john/foo > /n/kremvax/usr/john/bar > ... > % It doesn't exactly work that well with IBM mainframes. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 13:33:16 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:33:16 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47FA68EC.1070709@gmail.com> John Floren wrote: >> That's bull. There are ways to make grep output something like "No >> matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it. I suggest that >> perhaps those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't >> use or understand pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't >> understand pipes. > > No news is good news. Sure, you could make grep blather all over > stderr or something, but why? If you don't get any errors, the > program completed correctly. If you screwed up the syntax or > specified a nonexistent file, you get an error. However, since GNU > tools are so utterly goddamn broken, this may or may not be the case > on any given tool. Try Plan 9 some time and you'll have a lovely > experience... for example, see > http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/cat for the proper way to > implement cat. I've played with Plan 9, and it's a definite improvement over UNIX, especially in areas of consistency, but both seem to be more programmer-oriented than user-oriented. Peace... Sridhar From slawmaster at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 13:37:19 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 11:37:19 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47FA68EC.1070709@gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <47FA68EC.1070709@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804071137m63a48f34nde16398f9a5a7ddc@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > John Floren wrote: > > > > > > > > That's bull. There are ways to make grep output something like "No > > > matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it. I suggest that > > > perhaps those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't > > > use or understand pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't > > > understand pipes. > > > > > > > > > No news is good news. Sure, you could make grep blather all over stderr or > something, but why? If you don't get any errors, the > > program completed correctly. If you screwed up the syntax or > > specified a nonexistent file, you get an error. However, since GNU > > tools are so utterly goddamn broken, this may or may not be the case > > on any given tool. Try Plan 9 some time and you'll have a lovely > > experience... for example, see > http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/cat for the proper way to > > implement cat. > > > > I've played with Plan 9, and it's a definite improvement over UNIX, > especially in areas of consistency, but both seem to be more > programmer-oriented than user-oriented. > > Peace... Sridhar > Well, programmers are the only ones that matter, right? ;) John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Apr 7 14:08:08 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 15:08:08 -0400 Subject: Sun keyboards available Message-ID: <8F80516B-03BF-4EAA-9942-5FCD6FB21492@neurotica.com> A friend in Maryland has 13 (yes thirteen) Sun type 5 keyboards that need to find a new home. He is asking $10 plus the cost of DHL ground shipping for the lot. He needs them gone by Thursday 4/10 or they'll hit the trash. Email me for his contact information. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Apr 7 14:20:27 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 15:20:27 -0400 Subject: RSX-11M sysgen Message-ID: Hey folks. Super dumb question here. I'm trying to run a sysgen of RSX-11M v4.2, and when I try to boot the new executive at the end of the sysgen run, it drops into XDT saying "MISSING EXECUTIVE COMMON (S)". I've run through it three times, and I've made absolutely certain that I've said "Y" to the "Executive Common" question (#6 under Executive Options). The most annoying thing about this is that I'm sure I ran into this the last time I did an RSX-11M sysgen, in 1986, and solved it...but for the life of me I can't figure it out this time. Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks, -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From wh.sudbrink at verizon.net Mon Apr 7 14:45:50 2008 From: wh.sudbrink at verizon.net (Bill Sudbrink) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:45:50 -0400 Subject: Sun keyboards available In-Reply-To: <8F80516B-03BF-4EAA-9942-5FCD6FB21492@neurotica.com> Message-ID: Dave McGuire wrote: > A friend in Maryland has 13 (yes thirteen) Sun type 5 keyboards > that need to find a new home. He is asking $10 plus the cost of DHL > ground shipping for the lot. He needs them gone by Thursday 4/10 or > they'll hit the trash. Email me for his contact information. Can these be used to repair sol keyboards? There seems to be conflicting info regarding this. I've never had one apart. Do they use the foam pads? No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.8/1362 - Release Date: 4/6/2008 11:12 AM From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Apr 7 15:07:31 2008 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:07:31 -0500 Subject: Sun keyboards available In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47FA7F03.9020505@pacbell.net> Bill Sudbrink wrote: > Dave McGuire wrote: >> A friend in Maryland has 13 (yes thirteen) Sun type 5 keyboards >> that need to find a new home. He is asking $10 plus the cost of DHL >> ground shipping for the lot. He needs them gone by Thursday 4/10 or >> they'll hit the trash. Email me for his contact information. > > Can these be used to repair sol keyboards? There seems to be conflicting > info regarding this. I've never had one apart. Do they use the foam pads? I believe sun type 5 use an elastomeric membrane. sun type 4 have the keytronic foam pads. From frustum at pacbell.net Mon Apr 7 15:07:31 2008 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 15:07:31 -0500 Subject: Sun keyboards available In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47FA7F03.9020505@pacbell.net> Bill Sudbrink wrote: > Dave McGuire wrote: >> A friend in Maryland has 13 (yes thirteen) Sun type 5 keyboards >> that need to find a new home. He is asking $10 plus the cost of DHL >> ground shipping for the lot. He needs them gone by Thursday 4/10 or >> they'll hit the trash. Email me for his contact information. > > Can these be used to repair sol keyboards? There seems to be conflicting > info regarding this. I've never had one apart. Do they use the foam pads? I believe sun type 5 use an elastomeric membrane. sun type 4 have the keytronic foam pads. From roman.szeremeta at actewagl.net.au Sat Apr 5 05:38:41 2008 From: roman.szeremeta at actewagl.net.au (Roman Szeremeta) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 21:38:41 +1100 Subject: Xerox 820 II References: <7d3530220803271303x3d95fda7jbeeccfe5c55a0eef@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <001901c89709$375ab350$0600a8c0@inspiron> I'm trying to boot up an old Xerox 820 II with twin 8" floppies. I get an * (asterix) prompt with two options:- H Terminal L Load When I put the system floopy in drive A: and type L I get an error message "A:Load Tables Error". The drive light comes and it spins up but it doesnt sound like the drive is actually reading the floppy disk. I get the same result with drive b. I worked out that LB: reads the B drive. Any ideas? Roman From rdbrown at pacific.net.au Sat Apr 5 08:43:41 2008 From: rdbrown at pacific.net.au (Rodney Brown) Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:43:41 +1100 Subject: 3rd party HP-IB drives, Bering 7320SC Econopac (Ebay 180230181732) Message-ID: <1207403021.6302.41.camel@localhost.localdomain> Bering 7320SC Econopac Hard Drive Item number: 180230181732 The drive isn't mentioned in their current (2005) Econopac list. and a non-HP-IB paper tape reader/punch. GNT 4604 READER PUNCH CNC - TAPE READER WITH MANUAL. Item number: 120241325099 3rd party HP-IB => SCSI et al disk hardware - I wonder if any of them would consider releasing their code for the HP-IB emulation under an Open Source, Hobbyist or Non-compete license. I wonder too whether they have HP-IB device protocol manuals that could be scanned for bitsavers. Looks like Bering may do Amigo, SS-80, CS-80 http://www.bering.com/home.htm (web page not recently updated, still in ylwbook.addresses.com phone book) Bering Technology, Inc. 1400 Dell Ave., Ste. B Campbell, CA 95008-6620 USA I think these guys are selling SS-80 9122 etc devices http://www.isa-j.co.jp/english/product/HP/HPIB_SCSI/ CS-80 drives targeting HP-1000 & HP-3000 systems (still in online phone book) http://www.reactivedata.com/2-LegacyDiskAndTapeEmulators/leghp1000.htm From derschjo at msu.edu Sat Apr 5 17:10:31 2008 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:10:31 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> Liam Proven wrote: > I'm sure that the UHH is old news to folk hereabouts. > > When I was a baby geek, I remember reading about this seminal text, a > distillation from a long-active mailing list called UNIX-HATERS. Now, > it's available for free: > > http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/unix-haters.html > > (Yes, I know. Don't hold the URL against it.) > Good stuff. I picked up a physical copy awhile back. Everyone should read it to get a sense of perspective. At least to learn that UNIX was not and is not the end-all, be-all of operating systems. :) > I am not really a Linux expert - maybe a power user or competent > sysadmin, at best. I do have lots of comparative OS knowledge, but > most of it is of systems that came along long after Unix. I'd be > really interested to know the thoughts of modern Unix gurus on how > much of the criticism in the UHH is still valid today. > > I like to quote Jamie Zawinski on UNIX: "Of all the operating systems that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot." I think that's still fairly accurate. I hate Windows and UNIX equally :). I think a lot of the criticism is still relevant, it's just become less of an issue (and in some sense, people have become so accustomed to the UNIX brain-damage that they don't even know there /is/ an issue in many cases). Terminal handling in UNIX, for example, is still handled poorly (not a part of the core OS, left to user libraries, etc... so there's no standardization except for ad hoc ones) but it's not even an issue today because no one (except us) uses dumb terminals anymore and so it's OK to treat everything like an emulation of a VT102 in your XTerm windows. User friendliness, error handling, and consistency at the command line is still a problem -- and this is one of those cases where people don't even /realize /how limiting that is -- use a Lisp Listener on a 'bolix for 10 minutes and you'll realize how much better a CLI could be (command completion, inline help, /helpful error messages/)... same goes for documentation -- the LispM had graphical, hypertext sensitive documentation available at a mouse click or a press of the "Help" key whereas in UNIX it's still man or info pages displayed in a terminal window, for the most part. This may be less of an issue for the user-friendly Linux distros (Ubuntu, etc.) which are less CLI oriented. Shell scripts, pipes, etc... combined with the idea of "small programs that do one thing" are still pretty ugly (not in concept, but in terms of implementation sometimes - unidirectional data flow of byte streams only, bad/nonexistent error handling, cryptic syntax), but now that we have Perl and other languages to act as the glue between progams, this is somewhat less of an issue. Whereas on the lispm, "shell scripts" were Lisp code like any other on the system and so were extremely powerful, debuggable, maintainable, etc... (can you tell I'm a LispM fan? :) C's problems have been eclipsed 10-fold by the problems of C++ :). Networking is better supported, but NFS is still pretty terrible :). X-Windows is still a mixed bag, but I think we can safely say that it's here to stay. At least hardware's more than caught up to it at this point. Those are some of my thoughts. (And take them with a grain of salt, I have the mind of an old codger, on his front porch with a shotgun shooing hooligans off his lawn). I could go on for days. I won't :). Josh From steerex at ccvn.com Sat Apr 5 18:49:53 2008 From: steerex at ccvn.com (Steve Robertson) Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 18:49:53 -0500 Subject: HPIB Tape Drive Interface Protocol Message-ID: <004901c89777$be88adf0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> Hey, I have an ancient copy of the HPIB protocol specifications for 1/2 tape drives. I was going to send it to bitsavers for archival and re-distribution but, due to the number of errors and unreadability of the doc, I decided to go ahead and make the obvious editorial changes. I have placed a HTML version of the first draft at: http://www.steerex.com/hpib/7980_protocol At this time, there are a couple of sub-sections that are still missing. I'll add them in the coming days. I'll also be adding meaningful content, programming examples, tutorials, and HPIB pointers in the near future. Hope someone finds this stuff useful. See ya, Steve Robertson steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com From ohh at panix.com Mon Apr 7 01:02:54 2008 From: ohh at panix.com (O. Sharp) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 02:02:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: VR14 Engineering Drawings? Message-ID: Hey, all: Does somebody out there know of a set of DEC VR14 engineering drawings they could point me to online? Thanks! -O.- From derschjo at msu.edu Mon Apr 7 14:12:10 2008 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:12:10 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> Resending, mailed this on Saturday and it never made it. Which guarantees that two copies will show up in everyone's mailbox. Whee. Liam Proven wrote: > I'm sure that the UHH is old news to folk hereabouts. > > When I was a baby geek, I remember reading about this seminal text, a > distillation from a long-active mailing list called UNIX-HATERS. Now, > it's available for free: > > http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/unix-haters.html > > (Yes, I know. Don't hold the URL against it.) > Good stuff. I picked up a physical copy awhile back. Everyone should read it to get a sense of perspective. At least to learn that UNIX was not and is not the end-all, be-all of operating systems. :) > I am not really a Linux expert - maybe a power user or competent > sysadmin, at best. I do have lots of comparative OS knowledge, but > most of it is of systems that came along long after Unix. I'd be > really interested to know the thoughts of modern Unix gurus on how > much of the criticism in the UHH is still valid today. > > I like to quote Jamie Zawinski on UNIX: "Of all the operating systems that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot." I think that's still fairly accurate. I hate Windows and UNIX equally :). I think a lot of the criticism is still relevant, it's just become less of an issue (and in some sense, people have become so accustomed to the UNIX brain-damage that they don't even know there /is/ an issue in many cases). Terminal handling in UNIX, for example, is still handled poorly (not a part of the core OS, left to user libraries, etc... so there's no standardization except for ad hoc ones) but it's not even an issue today because no one (except us) uses dumb terminals anymore and so it's OK to treat everything like an emulation of a VT102 in your XTerm windows. User friendliness, error handling, and consistency at the command line is still a problem -- and this is one of those cases where people don't even /realize /how limiting that is -- use a Lisp Listener on a 'bolix for 10 minutes and you'll realize how much better a CLI could be (command completion, inline help, /helpful error messages/)... same goes for documentation -- the LispM had graphical, hypertext sensitive documentation available at a mouse click or a press of the "Help" key whereas in UNIX it's still man or info pages displayed in a terminal window, for the most part. This may be less of an issue for the user-friendly Linux distros (Ubuntu, etc.) which are less CLI oriented. Shell scripts, pipes, etc... combined with the idea of "small programs that do one thing" are still pretty ugly (not in concept, but in terms of implementation sometimes - unidirectional data flow of byte streams only, bad/nonexistent error handling, cryptic syntax), but now that we have Perl and other languages to act as the glue between progams, this is somewhat less of an issue. Whereas on the lispm, "shell scripts" were Lisp code like any other on the system and so were extremely powerful, debuggable, maintainable, etc... (can you tell I'm a LispM fan? :) C's problems have been eclipsed 10-fold by the problems of C++ :). Networking is better supported, but NFS is still pretty terrible :). X-Windows is still a mixed bag, but I think we can safely say that it's here to stay. At least hardware's more than caught up to it at this point. Those are some of my thoughts. (And take them with a grain of salt, I have the mind of an old codger, on his front porch with a shotgun shooing hooligans off his lawn). I could go on for days. I won't :). Josh From legalize at xmission.com Mon Apr 7 17:22:55 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:22:55 -0600 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: Your message of Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:10:31 -0700. <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> Message-ID: In article <47F7F8D7.8000907 at msu.edu>, Josh Dersch writes: > User friendliness, error handling, and consistency at the command line > is still a problem [...] For some reason I was thinking of how novice-friendly the PLATO system was when I read this paragraph. I remember large batches of people of all ages working their way through computer aided instruction lessons in the PLATO terminal room at Udel in the late 70s/early 80s, and this was when far fewer people were familiar with even the most rudimentary methods of interacting with a computer. The touch screen helped for the grade schoolers, most definately. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From Tim at Rikers.org Mon Apr 7 17:48:45 2008 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:48:45 -0600 Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc Message-ID: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org> HP-IB, GP-IB and IEEE-488.2 seem to refer to the same more-or-less compatible bus architecture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_488 I'm hoping to get GP-IB storage setup on my HP-1000 systems eventually. I've picked up: HP 59310-60101 "BUS INPUT/OUTPUT INTERFACE" - low speed GP-IB card HP-9122C - dual 3.5" GP-IB floppy drive (Thanx Stan!) However I don't have the cable to wire from one to the other. The drive has a standard IEEE-488 connector: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IEEE-488-Stecker2.jpg But the controller has a 50 pin card edge connector. Anyone have a spare cable? I've been looking at some GB-IB software tools: * http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdrive/ emulates GP-IB drives on win32 * http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdir/ read and write to some GP-IB media and filesystems from win32 * http://linux-gpib.sourceforge.net/ Linux GP-IB drivers and libraries. This does NOT include drive emulation or access, but it aimed at sensors and other devices that speak GB-IP Not all drives use the same protocol over GB-IP. Bitsavers has documents that cover the AMIGO and CS/80 command sets: * http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/ Lots of drive docs including: * http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/subset80_Jul83.pdf SS/80 and by reference some of CS/80 I do not currently have a GP-IB interface for a PC. The National Instruments PCI-GPIB cards seems popular on eBay. There are also USB-GPIB converters from NI and others. The ISA or SBus cards go for less, but then I need to find a machine with one of these slots. :) I understand that HP-7920 and HP-7925 drives were AMIGO flavor GP-IB drives. Perhaps the HP-7905 and HP-7906 as well? I'm not quite sure where the GP-IP buss comes in the picture. There is normally a contoller (13037-60028) interface between the drives and the host computer interface (02640-90042?) I presume that the bus on one side of the 13037 is IEEE-488 but I'm not sure which. Can the 026xx cards directly attach to GB-IP drives? How does the shared storage through a 13037 controller work? are they all just IDs on GB-IB? Any insight appreciated. Any hardware donations greatly appreciated. :) -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! From bshannon at tiac.net Mon Apr 7 18:24:16 2008 From: bshannon at tiac.net (Bob Shannon) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 19:24:16 -0400 Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc References: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <000301c89906$7f604c10$6601a8c0@screamer> To use HPIB mass-storage on an HP 1000 you should be using the 12821A interface, not the 59310B. 12821A interfaces are quite common, I have several extras. The 59310 interface is for general instrumentation use. The 12821A interface is electrically very different, at both ends! The 12821 interface is 'pre-loaded' with termination resistors that limit the number of devices and cable lengths allowed, and its setup for DMA (DCPC) transfers at high speed, using FIFO buffers. The 59310 interface is pure IEEE-488, designed for programmed I/O. In fact it takes quite a few machine language instructions to push a single byte down the bus. Fast, it is not. Can you drive your floppy from the 59310? Yes, its possible. I once tried to control general instruments using the 12821 (its much easier to program), but ran into electrical issues with the pre-loading, etc. As for cables, the 12821A cable has a massive ferrite core and a grounding lug that the 59310 cable does not have. But I believe that the two cables are electrically compatible. I know I have a 12821A cable that was cut, and a replacement connector. (if your up to building your own) I would strongly recommend you try to use the 12821A interface with your floppy, you might find that the 'CS/80' boot loader rom supports that drive. If so, the loader ROM will only work with the 12821A board, not the 59310B. I can also point you towards low-level driver code for both the 59310B and the 12821A interface boards. HP-IPL/OS fully supports the 59310 interface for instrument control. It should not be too hard to write IPL code to talk to your floppy disk drive and debug the thing from high-level code. 12821A code support is not currently in HP-IPL/OS, but I do have tested and working low-level code for CS/80 disks that could be patched into a working CS/80 disk driver, and at that point IPL would have 12821A support all the way up to a crude DOS and file system. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Riker" To: "cc talk" Sent: Monday, April 07, 2008 6:48 PM Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc > HP-IB, GP-IB and IEEE-488.2 seem to refer to the same more-or-less > compatible bus architecture. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_488 > > I'm hoping to get GP-IB storage setup on my HP-1000 systems eventually. > I've picked up: > > HP 59310-60101 "BUS INPUT/OUTPUT INTERFACE" - low speed GP-IB card > HP-9122C - dual 3.5" GP-IB floppy drive (Thanx Stan!) > > However I don't have the cable to wire from one to the other. The drive > has a standard IEEE-488 connector: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IEEE-488-Stecker2.jpg > > But the controller has a 50 pin card edge connector. > > Anyone have a spare cable? > > I've been looking at some GB-IB software tools: > > * http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdrive/ > emulates GP-IB drives on win32 > > * http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdir/ > read and write to some GP-IB media and filesystems from win32 > > * http://linux-gpib.sourceforge.net/ > Linux GP-IB drivers and libraries. This does NOT include drive emulation > or access, but it aimed at sensors and other devices that speak GB-IP > > Not all drives use the same protocol over GB-IP. Bitsavers has documents > that cover the AMIGO and CS/80 command sets: > > * http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/ > Lots of drive docs including: > > * http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/hp/disc/subset80_Jul83.pdf > SS/80 and by reference some of CS/80 > > I do not currently have a GP-IB interface for a PC. The National > Instruments PCI-GPIB cards seems popular on eBay. There are also > USB-GPIB converters from NI and others. The ISA or SBus cards go for > less, but then I need to find a machine with one of these slots. :) > > I understand that HP-7920 and HP-7925 drives were AMIGO flavor GP-IB > drives. Perhaps the HP-7905 and HP-7906 as well? I'm not quite sure > where the GP-IP buss comes in the picture. There is normally a contoller > (13037-60028) interface between the drives and the host computer > interface (02640-90042?) I presume that the bus on one side of the 13037 > is IEEE-488 but I'm not sure which. > > Can the 026xx cards directly attach to GB-IP drives? > > How does the shared storage through a 13037 controller work? are they > all just IDs on GB-IB? > > Any insight appreciated. Any hardware donations greatly appreciated. :) > -- > Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org > Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ > BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! > > From aek at bitsavers.org Mon Apr 7 18:44:39 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:44:39 -0700 Subject: VT14 engr drws Message-ID: <47FAB1E7.4050404@bitsavers.org> they are part of the GT40 drawing set http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/graphics/GT40_EngrDrws.pdf From hachti at hachti.de Mon Apr 7 20:08:30 2008 From: hachti at hachti.de (Philipp Hachtmann) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:08:30 +0200 Subject: VR14 Engineering Drawings? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47FAC58E.4080803@hachti.de> > Does somebody out there know of a set of DEC VR14 engineering drawings I have a maintainance manual which includes the schematics. > they could point me to online? Hm, I have it as a piece of paper. I probably could scan it - some day.... Perhaps I can answer questions? Or scan you a part of it? Philipp :) From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Apr 7 20:29:55 2008 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:29:55 -0400 Subject: VCF/Midwest - Just 3 weeks away Message-ID: <200804072129.55549.pat@computer-refuge.org> In case you hadn't noticed yet, this year's Midwest VCF is just under 3 weeks away - April 26 and 27. We still are working on getting exhibitors and speakers for the event - drop me a line if you're interested in either. Sign up to exhibit soon! Vince Briel will be at the event this year, doing a Micro-KIM and Replica One workshop. More details at: http://www.vintage.org/2008/midwest/ Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From fernande at internet1.net Mon Apr 7 20:39:16 2008 From: fernande at internet1.net (Chad Fernandez) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:39:16 -0400 Subject: VCF/Midwest - Just 3 weeks away In-Reply-To: <200804072129.55549.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <200804072129.55549.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <47FACCC4.9000800@internet1.net> When was the date changed? It thought the first email making the announcement gave a July date? Chad Fernandez Michigan, USA Patrick Finnegan wrote: > In case you hadn't noticed yet, this year's Midwest VCF is just under 3 > weeks away - April 26 and 27. We still are working on getting > exhibitors and speakers for the event - drop me a line if you're > interested in either. Sign up to exhibit soon! > > Vince Briel will be at the event this year, doing a Micro-KIM and > Replica One workshop. > > More details at: > http://www.vintage.org/2008/midwest/ > > Pat > From pat at computer-refuge.org Mon Apr 7 20:54:30 2008 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:54:30 -0400 Subject: VCF/Midwest - Just 3 weeks away In-Reply-To: <47FACCC4.9000800@internet1.net> References: <200804072129.55549.pat@computer-refuge.org> <47FACCC4.9000800@internet1.net> Message-ID: <200804072154.30319.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Monday 07 April 2008, Chad Fernandez wrote: > When was the date changed? It thought the first email making the > announcement gave a July date? This year it's earlier than the last two, but looking at my previous announcement, and Sellam's, they both say April 26-27. Pat > Patrick Finnegan wrote: > > In case you hadn't noticed yet, this year's Midwest VCF is just > > under 3 weeks away - April 26 and 27. We still are working on > > getting exhibitors and speakers for the event - drop me a line if > > you're interested in either. Sign up to exhibit soon! > > > > Vince Briel will be at the event this year, doing a Micro-KIM and > > Replica One workshop. > > > > More details at: > > http://www.vintage.org/2008/midwest/ > > > > Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From lproven at gmail.com Mon Apr 7 21:56:14 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 03:56:14 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> Message-ID: <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> On 07/04/2008, Josh Dersch wrote: > I like to quote Jamie Zawinski on UNIX: "Of all the operating systems > that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot." Sounds like a paraphrase of Winston Churchill: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." > User friendliness, error handling, and consistency at the command line > is still a problem -- and this is one of those cases where people don't > even /realize /how limiting that is -- use a Lisp Listener on a 'bolix > for 10 minutes and you'll realize how much better a CLI could be > (command completion, inline help, /helpful error messages/)... same goes > for documentation -- the LispM had graphical, hypertext sensitive > documentation available at a mouse click or a press of the "Help" key > whereas in UNIX it's still man or info pages displayed in a terminal > window, for the most part. This may be less of an issue for the > user-friendly Linux distros (Ubuntu, etc.) which are less CLI oriented. I know SQR(fsck all) about Lisp Machines, but in these days of high-powered PCs, would it be viable to create some form of implementation of the LispM OS on x86? Even if it required some kind of emulation layer underneath for content-addressable memory or whatever? -- 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 Apr 7 22:40:00 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 23:40:00 -0400 Subject: Sun keyboards available In-Reply-To: <8F80516B-03BF-4EAA-9942-5FCD6FB21492@neurotica.com> References: <8F80516B-03BF-4EAA-9942-5FCD6FB21492@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <88C6155C-2225-4E86-92CD-1DAD9C13F680@neurotica.com> On Apr 7, 2008, at 3:08 PM, Dave McGuire wrote: > A friend in Maryland has 13 (yes thirteen) Sun type 5 keyboards > that need to find a new home. He is asking $10 plus the cost of > DHL ground shipping for the lot. He needs them gone by Thursday > 4/10 or they'll hit the trash. Email me for his contact information. The Sun keyboards have been claimed. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Mon Apr 7 22:31:04 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 23:31:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> Message-ID: <200804080347.XAA05030@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> http://research.microsoft.com/~daniel/unix-haters.html Seems to be 404. Anyone care to send me a copy? I know I've read some version of it, but long ago, and an old version.... > At least to learn that UNIX was not and is not the end-all, be-all of > operating systems. :) No worries there; I went through my larval stage under VMS. :) > I think a lot of the criticism is still relevant, it's just become > less of an issue (and in some sense, people have become so accustomed > to the UNIX brain-damage that they don't even know there /is/ an > issue in many cases). And, to be fair, some of the problems with Unix have been at least partially alleviated by progress (for example, there are Linuces that have something at least a little like capabilities instead of the traditional Unix all-or-nothing privilege model). > [...] and so it's OK to treat everything like an emulation of a VT102 > in your XTerm windows. Except, of course, that it's a bad emulation in some important respects. To pick two examples, VT-102s can't be resized and have a specific keyboard layout which is rarely more than vaguely approached under X. Furthermore, xterm is far from the only terminal emulator out there. Not even the only X one. > (can you tell I'm a LispM fan? :) Me too. I'd be looking seriously for a Symbolics if (a) I had the resources (physical space, primarily) for it and (b) I thought it reasonably likely it would be within my budget if I found one. Not that I think they're perfect. But they're _different_. I don't like monocultures, and I think Unix has become too predominant a monoculture - even Windows has grown a Posix layer by now. > X-Windows is still a mixed bag, but I think we can safely say that > it's here to stay. Well..."it's a window system named X, not a system named XWindows". Yes, it's probably here to stay - but it's not that great; its keyboard handling sucks, and it almost encourages writing code based on broken assumptions like "there's a 32bpp TrueColor visual available". It's hard, or at least tedious, to get it right; far too many coders mistake "it works for me" for "it's right". (Not that _that_ mistake is confined to X code, to be sure.) /~\ 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 dkelvey at hotmail.com Mon Apr 7 23:37:27 2008 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:37:27 -0700 Subject: Polymorphic System88 disk In-Reply-To: <002601c895e6$a4325d80$6601a8c0@screamer> References: <47D8BC11.6000407@Rikers.org>, <200803131445.m2DEjPsq023100@mail.bcpl.net>, <47D94DE1.4060703@Rikers.org><200803131642.m2DGgjNB018937@mail.bcpl.net> <000f01c88ddc$80910b90$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> <002601c895e6$a4325d80$6601a8c0@screamer> Message-ID: Hi All I thought I'd talk about some of the fun I've been having to recover images from some disk. The disk are 5.25 double density, hard sectored. I started with a controller designed for the Polymorphic machine but for double density 8 inch disk. First thing was to reduce the clock speed and change some capacitor values in the PLL circuits. I was hoping theat the formats would be similar. I next disassembled the code for the 8 inch disk. I made comments and all for the different parts, especially the sector read code. I tried the 8 inch code on the 5.25 disk. No luck there, the format was different. How different, I had no idea yet. Hard sectored disk usually use a synchronous UART to read/write data. This controller was no exception. That meant I needed to find out the sync byte used. I used my scope with delayed sweep to pick out the first data of each sector. To my surprise, it turned out to be the same as the 8 inch, the letter 'B'. Still the headers were different. I next modified the code such that after reading the sync , it would dump the rest of the data, regardless of which sector it was reading. Bingo, there was a difference. The 8 inch had track, track complement, sector, sector complement. It was the other way around for the 5.25 disk. I modified some more code but I was still getting CRC errors. Unluckily, The first sector I'd read just happend to have all zeros in the data field. I went back to reading random sectors to see what was missing in the headers. It seem that unlike the 8 inch, there were three pad bytes of zero value bytes before the data. Why they'd done this I don't know. Unlike soft sectored, one always rewrites the headers when writing data. More software modifications! Still no getting good CRCs. The headers looked good and the data read was repeatable. I added another INIR instruction to the read and found that each sector had a 0 byte and a FF byte before what looked to be the CRC. Now, this was something that made sense. A lost bit, in the data, would be hard to figure what the good CRC alignment would be. The bits would only need to be shifted to fix the trailing 0 and FF. The the CRC could be used for data recovery. Finally I could read a sector without a CRC error. Still, I wasn't done yet. Besides the different number of sectors per track ( you'll remember the work on the divide by ten ). It seems that side two is different than how the 8 inch drive did it. On the 8 inch, tracks were numbered 0 and on, the same on both sides. The sector index would first read side one and then side two before incrementing to the next track. Of coarse, the 5.25 disk were different. It numbered 0 to 34 on side 0 and 35 to 69 on side 1. This require more software changes. I'm finally able to actually read these disk. Now I can start transfering images!!Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Get in touch in an instant. Get Windows Live Messenger now. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_getintouch_042008 From frustum at pacbell.net Tue Apr 8 00:13:29 2008 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:13:29 -0500 Subject: Polymorphic System88 disk In-Reply-To: References: <47D8BC11.6000407@Rikers.org>, <200803131445.m2DEjPsq023100@mail.bcpl.net>, <47D94DE1.4060703@Rikers.org><200803131642.m2DGgjNB018937@mail.bcpl.net> <000f01c88ddc$80910b90$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> <002601c895e6$a4325d80$6601a8c0@screamer> Message-ID: <47FAFEF9.1090405@pacbell.net> dwight elvey wrote: > Hi All > I thought I'd talk about some of the fun I've been having > to recover images from some disk. > The disk are 5.25 double density, hard sectored. > I started with a controller designed for the Polymorphic machine > but for double density 8 inch disk. ... [ interesting war story snipped ] ... Dwight, I've gone through a similar amount of work to recover data off of some disks, only to find in the end that the disks contained nothing but back up copies of dental records or some such, while I had been hoping to find treasure. Here's to hoping you turn up some interesting bytes. (clink!) From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 8 01:14:57 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:14:57 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804080131.m381VGJM048511@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804080131.m381VGJM048511@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47FAAAF1.13602.126AC11A@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:04:01 -0400 > From: Sridhar Ayengar > That's bull. There are ways to make grep output something like "No > matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it. I suggest that > perhaps those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't use or > understand pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't understand pipes. If anything, my issue with the evolution of *nix is that the original philosophy of "write a bunch of simple tools and hook 'em together via pipes" seems to have been deprecated in the almost 30 years since I began using Unix. There seems to be a trend of proliferating options. Quick, who can recite from memory all of the switches and their meanings for GNU tar? I can't. Who can understand the tar man pages? Who knows it to be accurate for the particular incarnation of tar that they're using? Cheers, Chuck From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Apr 8 01:20:24 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 02:20:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47FAAAF1.13602.126AC11A@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804080131.m381VGJM048511@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47FAAAF1.13602.126AC11A@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200804080631.CAA10999@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Quick, who can recite from memory all of the switches and their > meanings for GNU tar? I can't. Neither can I, but then, I don't use GNU tar if I can help it. > Who can understand the tar man pages? Who knows it to be accurate > for the particular incarnation of tar that they're using? I do. But then, I wrote both the tar implementation I use and its manpage, so perhaps that's cheating. :) (Actually, the manpage is somewhat out of date; I doubt I've updated it since the last round of changes to the code....) /~\ 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 gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Apr 8 02:09:20 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 08:09:20 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> Message-ID: <1207638560.6670.18.camel@elric> On Sat, 2008-04-05 at 15:10 -0700, Josh Dersch wrote: > for documentation -- the LispM had graphical, hypertext sensitive > documentation available at a mouse click or a press of the "Help" key > whereas in UNIX it's still man or info pages displayed in a terminal > window, for the most part. This may be less of an issue for the > user-friendly Linux distros (Ubuntu, etc.) which are less CLI oriented. Am I the only person in the world that likes man pages then? The GNU utilities have "info" with a pointy-clicky hypertext interface, but like nearly all such interfaces it's completely bloody useless and very hard to use. Part of the problem is that nearly all of the Unix command-line utilities can be fully explained in one short page (with a couple of notable exceptions like grep and awk), but misguided programmers writing the info pages feel they have to make everything a separate page, just so they can have the front page with a big pile of links to pages, most of which have only a couple of lines on them. Searching is impossible, and navigation is impossible. Just give me a nice plain flat page and let me do the searching myself. That's what the '/' key is for. Gordon From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Tue Apr 8 02:22:02 2008 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 09:22:02 +0200 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20080408092202.7f013a2e@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 03:56:14 +0100 "Liam Proven" wrote: > I know SQR(fsck all) about Lisp Machines, but in these days of > high-powered PCs, would it be viable to create some form of > implementation of the LispM OS on x86? Even if it required some kind > of emulation layer underneath for content-addressable memory or > whatever? http://labs.aezenix.com/lispm/index.php?title=VLM_On_Linux VLM On Linux This file gives some additional hints on running the Symbolics Virtual Lisp Machine (VLM) port to Linux/x86_64 by Brad Parker. [...] -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Apr 8 02:26:52 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 03:26:52 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <1207638560.6670.18.camel@elric> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> <1207638560.6670.18.camel@elric> Message-ID: <200804080731.DAA11373@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Am I the only person in the world that likes man pages then? [...] > Just give me a nice plain flat page and let me do the searching > myself. That's what the '/' key is for. You are not alone. I have very similar tastes in documentation. (I agree with you about info; I find it more useful to use less on the texinfo source, or even the underlying info file itself, than to try to get anything useful out of info.) /~\ 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 als at thangorodrim.de Tue Apr 8 05:23:44 2008 From: als at thangorodrim.de (Alexander Schreiber) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 12:23:44 +0200 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080408092202.7f013a2e@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> <20080408092202.7f013a2e@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <20080408102344.GC1202@thangorodrim.de> On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 09:22:02AM +0200, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 03:56:14 +0100 > "Liam Proven" wrote: > > > I know SQR(fsck all) about Lisp Machines, but in these days of > > high-powered PCs, would it be viable to create some form of > > implementation of the LispM OS on x86? Even if it required some kind > > of emulation layer underneath for content-addressable memory or > > whatever? > http://labs.aezenix.com/lispm/index.php?title=VLM_On_Linux > > VLM On Linux > > This file gives some additional hints on running the Symbolics Virtual > Lisp Machine (VLM) port to Linux/x86_64 by Brad Parker. > [...] There is also a Lisp on bare-metal-x86, project Movitz: http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/ It would probably be a good idea to port it against the Xen PVM interface - this would solve the pesky issue of hardware drivers quite elegantly ;-) Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison From dkelvey at hotmail.com Tue Apr 8 07:59:37 2008 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 05:59:37 -0700 Subject: Polymorphic System88 disk In-Reply-To: <47FAFEF9.1090405@pacbell.net> References: <47D8BC11.6000407@Rikers.org>, <200803131445.m2DEjPsq023100@mail.bcpl.net>, <47D94DE1.4060703@Rikers.org><200803131642.m2DGgjNB018937@mail.bcpl.net> <000f01c88ddc$80910b90$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> <002601c895e6$a4325d80$6601a8c0@screamer> <47FAFEF9.1090405@pacbell.net> Message-ID: > From: frustum at pacbell.net > > dwight elvey wrote: >> Hi All >> I thought I'd talk about some of the fun I've been having >> to recover images from some disk. >> The disk are 5.25 double density, hard sectored. >> I started with a controller designed for the Polymorphic machine >> but for double density 8 inch disk. > ... [ interesting war story snipped ] ... > > Dwight, > > I've gone through a similar amount of work to recover data off of some > disks, only to find in the end that the disks contained nothing but back > up copies of dental records or some such, while I had been hoping to > find treasure. > > Here's to hoping you turn up some interesting bytes. (clink!) Hi Jim Unless someone wrote over all these disk, they should be interesting. These are archive disk from Polymorphic. I hope that they also contain the code or source for the 5.25 controller. They may have, at least, the binaries. I have to rig up my 8 inch setup as well. There are just a few 8 inch disk with the source code for the BASIC they wrote. Most of the 5.25s seem have the text for the manuals they wrote. Too bad they didn't put the graphic parts on disk as well. I've already dumped images of the SSSD disk. These had copies of the manuals as well, without the pictures. They did graphics with cut and paste then. Dental records would be a real let down. One thing I've been careful with is to remove the wire to the write gate on the disk. With all the fiddling with the software, I wanted to make sure I didn't accidentally write to the disk. It has been a long process, mainly because I've had to balance familly time with the occational hour or so of experimentation. Each time something didn't work, it'd take days to weeks before I could spend more time on the problems. I destroyed two 2716s on the project. I think I stuck them in the programmer upside down. This required another trip to the surplus shop for more spares. Every time I do significant EPROM work, I think about building a ROM emulator. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_video_042008 From jfoust at threedee.com Tue Apr 8 09:20:31 2008 From: jfoust at threedee.com (John Foust) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:20:31 -0500 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804080631.CAA10999@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <200804080131.m381VGJM048511@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47FAAAF1.13602.126AC11A@cclist.sydex.com> <200804080631.CAA10999@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <6.2.3.4.2.20080408091949.07c31c18@mail.threedee.com> At 01:20 AM 4/8/2008, der Mouse wrote: >I do. But then, I wrote both the tar implementation I use and its >manpage, so perhaps that's cheating. :) (Actually, the manpage is >somewhat out of date; I doubt I've updated it since the last round of >changes to the code....) I think you started out trying to prove a point, but you proved another. Is that what they call an "own goal"? - John -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.5/1356 - Release Date: 4/2/2008 4:14 PM From slawmaster at gmail.com Tue Apr 8 09:25:38 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 07:25:38 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804080731.DAA11373@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> <1207638560.6670.18.camel@elric> <200804080731.DAA11373@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <7d3530220804080725l7067dbfdta31c3386ac7eae4b@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 12:26 AM, der Mouse wrote: > > Am I the only person in the world that likes man pages then? [...] > > > > Just give me a nice plain flat page and let me do the searching > > myself. That's what the '/' key is for. > > You are not alone. I have very similar tastes in documentation. (I > agree with you about info; I find it more useful to use less on the > texinfo source, or even the underlying info file itself, than to try to > get anything useful out of info.) > I have never found any information of any use in info. Manual pages are wholly sufficient and the interface is pretty good. My Preferred OS just uses nroff to dump man pages to your terminal (since by default terminal windows are non-autoscrolling); if I need to search for something in a big man page, I just send it to an editor (very simple) and search there. VMS HELP is pretty nice but I actually prefer a man page. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From slawmaster at gmail.com Tue Apr 8 09:27:46 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 07:27:46 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20080408091949.07c31c18@mail.threedee.com> References: <200804080131.m381VGJM048511@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47FAAAF1.13602.126AC11A@cclist.sydex.com> <200804080631.CAA10999@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <6.2.3.4.2.20080408091949.07c31c18@mail.threedee.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804080727g3505bce4r77d24babf3a46c06@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:20 AM, John Foust wrote: > At 01:20 AM 4/8/2008, der Mouse wrote: > >I do. But then, I wrote both the tar implementation I use and its > >manpage, so perhaps that's cheating. :) (Actually, the manpage is > >somewhat out of date; I doubt I've updated it since the last round of > >changes to the code....) > > I think you started out trying to prove a point, but you proved another. > > Is that what they call an "own goal"? > > - John > The point is that the GNU tools are so crappy, he was forced to write his own. How does that reflect on the work of Mr. Stallman, a LispM fanatic? For the brainchild of an old-time Lisp hacker, GNU has sure become inelegant and disgusting. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From lproven at gmail.com Tue Apr 8 09:41:39 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 15:41:39 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080408092202.7f013a2e@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> <20080408092202.7f013a2e@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <575131af0804080741k71ddc0adje47267b24b395b47@mail.gmail.com> On 08/04/2008, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 03:56:14 +0100 > > "Liam Proven" wrote: > > > > I know SQR(fsck all) about Lisp Machines, but in these days of > > high-powered PCs, would it be viable to create some form of > > implementation of the LispM OS on x86? Even if it required some kind > > of emulation layer underneath for content-addressable memory or > > whatever? > > http://labs.aezenix.com/lispm/index.php?title=VLM_On_Linux > > VLM On Linux > > This file gives some additional hints on running the Symbolics Virtual > Lisp Machine (VLM) port to Linux/x86_64 by Brad Parker. > [...] Fascinating - thanks for that! I didn't know this had been done. Shame it's not FOSS, though. Also a shame that I don't own a 64-bit machine yet. ;?) [Makes mental note to self: bump Lisp up list of languages to try 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 Tue Apr 8 09:49:19 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 15:49:19 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <20080408102344.GC1202@thangorodrim.de> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> <20080408092202.7f013a2e@SirToby.dinner41.local> <20080408102344.GC1202@thangorodrim.de> Message-ID: <575131af0804080749m389bb5c3y466ba0012dff5538@mail.gmail.com> On 08/04/2008, Alexander Schreiber wrote: > On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 09:22:02AM +0200, Jochen Kunz wrote: > > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 03:56:14 +0100 > > "Liam Proven" wrote: > > > > > I know SQR(fsck all) about Lisp Machines, but in these days of > > > high-powered PCs, would it be viable to create some form of > > > implementation of the LispM OS on x86? Even if it required some kind > > > of emulation layer underneath for content-addressable memory or > > > whatever? > > http://labs.aezenix.com/lispm/index.php?title=VLM_On_Linux > > > > VLM On Linux > > > > This file gives some additional hints on running the Symbolics Virtual > > Lisp Machine (VLM) port to Linux/x86_64 by Brad Parker. > > [...] > > > There is also a Lisp on bare-metal-x86, project Movitz: > http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/ > > It would probably be a good idea to port it against the Xen PVM > interface - this would solve the pesky issue of hardware drivers quite > elegantly ;-) Fascinating. Thanks for that. I was going to say that running it under Xen or something would rather miss the point, inasmuch as that brings all the baggage of having Unix underneath - but then, coincidentally, today I read this: The URL is quite informative in itself, really, but the article opens thus: _Novell Developing Stand-Alone Xen-Based Hypervisor Product_ *Novell's hypervisor product will be available later in 2008 and is based on the Xen hypervisor found in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.* Novell is quietly working on a stand-alone hypervisor product that will be based on the Xen hypervisor found in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. -- 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 Tue Apr 8 10:17:55 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 11:17:55 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <6.2.3.4.2.20080408091949.07c31c18@mail.threedee.com> References: <200804080131.m381VGJM048511@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47FAAAF1.13602.126AC11A@cclist.sydex.com> <200804080631.CAA10999@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <6.2.3.4.2.20080408091949.07c31c18@mail.threedee.com> Message-ID: <200804081522.LAA13753@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> I do. But then, I wrote both the tar implementation I use and its >> manpage, so perhaps that's cheating. :) (Actually, the manpage is >> somewhat out of date; I doubt I've updated it since the last round >> of changes to the code....) > I think you started out trying to prove a point, but you proved > another. Perhaps. I saw my point as being that yes, there is a pair where the user thoroughly understands the tar. If your point was that documentation is inaccurate, then I supported that too. > Is that what they call an "own goal"? Perhaps, if I were trying to take a stance on some issue, which I didn't think I was - I thought I was offering a data point to indicate that the situation of users understanding tar was not *quite* as bleak as it was painted. (I suppose this could be taken as taking a stance on the presence of users who grok the tars they use, but in that case I see no grounds for calling it an own goal....) /~\ 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 Tim at Rikers.org Tue Apr 8 10:40:45 2008 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:40:45 -0600 Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc In-Reply-To: <000301c89906$7f604c10$6601a8c0@screamer> References: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org> <000301c89906$7f604c10$6601a8c0@screamer> Message-ID: <47FB91FD.7060402@Rikers.org> Bob Shannon wrote: > To use HPIB mass-storage on an HP 1000 you should be using the 12821A > interface, not the 59310B. > > 12821A interfaces are quite common, I have several extras. Are you offering? I'd love to take one or two off your hands. > As for cables, the 12821A cable has a massive ferrite core and a > grounding lug that the 59310 cable does not have. But I believe that > the two cables are electrically compatible. > > I know I have a 12821A cable that was cut, and a replacement connector. > (if your up to building your own) Yes! If your offering, I'll take you up on it. I have extra card edge connectors, but not the IEEE-488 ends. > I would strongly recommend you try to use the 12821A interface with your > floppy, you might find that the 'CS/80' boot loader rom supports that > drive. > If so, the loader ROM will only work with the 12821A board, not the > 59310B. That sounds great. I can load the boot ROM over serial to test things, and if it works, I'll look for a real ROM. > I can also point you towards low-level driver code for both the 59310B > and the 12821A interface boards. I'm interested in this too. I've been meaning to hunt for code, but have not gotten to it yet. > HP-IPL/OS fully supports the 59310 interface for instrument control. > It should not be too hard to write IPL code to talk to your floppy disk > drive and debug the thing from high-level code. > > 12821A code support is not currently in HP-IPL/OS, but I do have tested > and working low-level code for CS/80 disks that could be patched into > a working CS/80 disk driver, and at that point IPL would have 12821A > support all the way up to a crude DOS and file system. cool! More things to play with. :) -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! From jdbryan at acm.org Tue Apr 8 11:55:37 2008 From: jdbryan at acm.org (J. David Bryan) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:55:37 -0400 Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc In-Reply-To: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org> References: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <200804081655.m38Gtfdr006857@mail.bcpl.net> On 7 Apr 2008 at 16:48, Tim Riker wrote: > I understand that HP-7920 and HP-7925 drives were AMIGO flavor GP-IB > drives. No, these drives used the MAC command set. > I'm not quite sure where the GP-IP buss comes in the picture. There were effectively three different interface systems employed by the 79xx series of drives. The 7905/06/20/25 drive systems debuted the MAC (Multi-Access Controller) command set. This used a 13037 controller box, one to eight drives, and one to eight CPU interfaces. There were master and slave versions of each drive (e.g., 7925M, 7925S, etc.) -- the essential difference being that a master drive came with the 13037 controller and the slave did not; the drives otherwise were identical. Interface to the HP 1000 was via the 13175 card for the first computer and 13178 card for the rest (the only differences were cabling and termination resistors on the 13175 card). Later, an HP-IB option was added via the 12745 card. This card was inserted in the 13037 box and provided an HP-IB connector at the rear of the chassis. Connection to the HP 1000 was via the 12821 disc interface card, rather than the 13175 card. With the HP-IB option, the multi-CPU capability was lost, although up to eight drives could still be connected to the single CPU. The MAC command set was retained, although it was now transferred via HP-IB. Note that the addition of the 12745A card did not change the command set to CS/80. Finally, to provide lower-cost installations, the "H" series of ICD (Integrated Controller Disc) products was introduced (e.g., 7925H). These dispensed with the 13037 controller box and added a controller card within the drive itself, presenting an HP-IB connector on the rear of the drive chassis. Up to four such drives could be connected together, and they used the same 12821 interface for connection to a single HP 1000. The MAC command set was still employed, although three of the commands dealing with multiple CPUs and error correction (the 13037 provided ECC; the ICD controllers did not) were deleted. > There is normally a contoller (13037-60028) interface... That's the Device Controller PCA number, one of three cards within the 13037 chassis (or four, if the 12745 HP-IB option were added). > ...between the drives and the host computer interface (02640-90042?) I don't recognize that number at all, although 02640-xxxx should be a 264x terminal part number. > How does the shared storage through a 13037 controller work? are they > all just IDs on GB-IB? The 13037+12745 controller appeared as a single HP-IB device; the attached drives were addressed via the "U" (unit number) field of the appropriate MAC commands. Each ICD controller had its own HP-IB address; the unit number fields with the commands were not used. References: 13037-90006 13037 Disc Controller Installation and Service Manual 13037-90015 13175/13178 Disc Controller Interface Kits Installation and Service Manual 12745-90901 12745A Disc Controller (13037) to HP-IB Adapter Kit Installation and Service Manual 13365-90901 13365 Integrated Controller Programming Guide -- Dave From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 8 13:06:11 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:06:11 -0700 Subject: Polymorphic System88 disk In-Reply-To: <200804081700.m38H0DMg057883@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804081700.m38H0DMg057883@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47FB51A3.30618.9B0A64@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 05:59:37 -0700 > From: dwight elvey Will all respect for your efforts, Dwight, at least you knew the origin of the diskette and had a faint idea of what might be on them. You haven't lived until someone shoots you a bunch of diskettes with everything being unknown--the modulation technique, the code representation, the data rate or track spacing or byte width, much less the file system. Your Polymorphics floppies sound a lot like a bunch of diskettes I got in recently from a manufacturer's in-house PCB stuffing robot. The format appears to be a "roll your own". It's hard to say which is the most fun--diskettes discovered to be GCR where you have no idea of what the group size is, nor what the groups correspond to. Or diskettes written on something like a typewriter where the code's not ASCII, nor does A immediately precede B--and you have nothing that says "this is a printout of what's on the diskette". Hint: You start with a statistical analysis of the pulse stream and go from there. For me, it's a lot of fun, ferreting out things by bits and pieces until the big picture emerges. Cheers, Chuck From eric at brouhaha.com Tue Apr 8 13:54:36 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 11:54:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Polymorphic System88 disk In-Reply-To: <47FB51A3.30618.9B0A64@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804081700.m38H0DMg057883@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47FB51A3.30618.9B0A64@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <35911.64.62.206.10.1207680876.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Chuck wrote: > It's hard to say which is the most fun--diskettes discovered to be > GCR where you have no idea of what the group size is, nor what the > groups correspond to. Or diskettes written on something like a > typewriter where the code's not ASCII, nor does A immediately precede > B--and you have nothing that says "this is a printout of what's on > the diskette". > > Hint: You start with a statistical analysis of the pulse stream and > go from there. > > For me, it's a lot of fun, ferreting out things by bits and pieces > until the big picture emerges. If it was a system that I had some significant personal interest in, I suppose I'd be willing to do things like that as a spare time endeavor. I've been involved in reverse-engineering projects of comparable complexity. If someone wanted to engage my services to do that on a contract basis, for something that doesn't hold any personal interest for me, they had better be prepared to pay a LOT of money. Eric From als at thangorodrim.de Tue Apr 8 14:19:53 2008 From: als at thangorodrim.de (Alexander Schreiber) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 21:19:53 +0200 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <575131af0804080749m389bb5c3y466ba0012dff5538@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> <20080408092202.7f013a2e@SirToby.dinner41.local> <20080408102344.GC1202@thangorodrim.de> <575131af0804080749m389bb5c3y466ba0012dff5538@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20080408191952.GA31399@thangorodrim.de> On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 03:49:19PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote: > On 08/04/2008, Alexander Schreiber wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 09:22:02AM +0200, Jochen Kunz wrote: > > > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 03:56:14 +0100 > > > "Liam Proven" wrote: > > > > > > > I know SQR(fsck all) about Lisp Machines, but in these days of > > > > high-powered PCs, would it be viable to create some form of > > > > implementation of the LispM OS on x86? Even if it required some kind > > > > of emulation layer underneath for content-addressable memory or > > > > whatever? > > > http://labs.aezenix.com/lispm/index.php?title=VLM_On_Linux > > > > > > VLM On Linux > > > > > > This file gives some additional hints on running the Symbolics Virtual > > > Lisp Machine (VLM) port to Linux/x86_64 by Brad Parker. > > > [...] > > > > > > There is also a Lisp on bare-metal-x86, project Movitz: > > http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/ > > > > It would probably be a good idea to port it against the Xen PVM > > interface - this would solve the pesky issue of hardware drivers quite > > elegantly ;-) > > Fascinating. Thanks for that. > > I was going to say that running it under Xen or something would rather > miss the point, inasmuch as that brings all the baggage of having Unix > underneath - but then, coincidentally, today I read this: > > > > The URL is quite informative in itself, really, but the article opens thus: > > _Novell Developing Stand-Alone Xen-Based Hypervisor Product_ > > *Novell's hypervisor product will be available later in 2008 and is > based on the Xen hypervisor found in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10.* > > Novell is quietly working on a stand-alone hypervisor product that > will be based on the Xen hypervisor found in SUSE Linux Enterprise > Server 10. Ah yes, Novell can play the "Lies, damn lies and marketing" game as well as anybody else. What the product _will_ be (if you read the announcement carefully), is a stand-alone product consisting of: - the Xen hypervisor - a stripped down Linux distribution to run as Domain 0 (the privileged Xen domain for management and hardware drivers) In other words, something any compentent Linux sysadmin with some knowledge of Xen can crank out on a boring friday, using $DISTRO_OF_CHOICE as base. So it will still contain Unix underneath, but you won't be able to use that Unix for anything. Regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison From Tim at Rikers.org Tue Apr 8 18:19:08 2008 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:19:08 -0600 Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc In-Reply-To: <200804081655.m38Gtfdr006857@mail.bcpl.net> References: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org> <200804081655.m38Gtfdr006857@mail.bcpl.net> Message-ID: <47FBFD6C.5030809@Rikers.org> Thanx for the info! J. David Bryan wrote: > On 7 Apr 2008 at 16:48, Tim Riker wrote: >> I understand that HP-7920 and HP-7925 drives were AMIGO flavor GP-IB >> drives. > > No, these drives used the MAC command set. Got a pointer to docs on that? >> I'm not quite sure where the GP-IP buss comes in the picture. > > There were effectively three different interface systems employed by the > 79xx series of drives. > > The 7905/06/20/25 drive systems debuted the MAC (Multi-Access Controller) > command set. This used a 13037 controller box, one to eight drives, and > one to eight CPU interfaces. There were master and slave versions of each > drive (e.g., 7925M, 7925S, etc.) -- the essential difference being that a > master drive came with the 13037 controller and the slave did not; the > drives otherwise were identical. Interface to the HP 1000 was via the > 13175 card for the first computer and 13178 card for the rest (the only > differences were cabling and termination resistors on the 13175 card). HP-1000 w/13175/13178 13075 7905/06/20/25 yes? What are cable-a and cable-b? dual 50 pin card edge on both ends of both cables? > Later, an HP-IB option was added via the 12745 card. This card was > inserted in the 13037 box and provided an HP-IB connector at the rear of > the chassis. Connection to the HP 1000 was via the 12821 disc interface > card, rather than the 13175 card. With the HP-IB option, the multi-CPU > capability was lost, although up to eight drives could still be connected > to the single CPU. The MAC command set was retained, although it was now > transferred via HP-IB. Note that the addition of the 12745A card did not > change the command set to CS/80. So now we have: HP-1000 w/12821 13075 w/12745 7905/06/20/25 where cable-c is a 50-pin to gp-ib? and cable-d is as cable-b above? > Finally, to provide lower-cost installations, the "H" series of ICD > (Integrated Controller Disc) products was introduced (e.g., 7925H). These > dispensed with the 13037 controller box and added a controller card within > the drive itself, presenting an HP-IB connector on the rear of the drive > chassis. Up to four such drives could be connected together, and they used > the same 12821 interface for connection to a single HP 1000. The MAC > command set was still employed, although three of the commands dealing with > multiple CPUs and error correction (the 13037 provided ECC; the ICD > controllers did not) were deleted. HP-1000 w/12821 7925H so I presume cable-e is 50 pin card edge to GP-IB? You say the drives could be "connected together". Is this just a normal GP-IB bus? or are there still a unit number here? >> There is normally a contoller (13037-60028) interface... > > That's the Device Controller PCA number, one of three cards within the > 13037 chassis (or four, if the 12745 HP-IB option were added). ah! >> ...between the drives and the host computer interface (02640-90042?) > > I don't recognize that number at all, although 02640-xxxx should be a 264x > terminal part number. I forget which pdf I read that number in. I think it was one of the 13037 documents. Can the 26xx terminals also speak GP-IB? >> How does the shared storage through a 13037 controller work? are they >> all just IDs on GB-IB? > > The 13037+12745 controller appeared as a single HP-IB device; the attached > drives were addressed via the "U" (unit number) field of the appropriate > MAC commands. Each ICD controller had its own HP-IB address; the unit > number fields with the commands were not used. I'm confused. See previous "connected together" comment. Thanx for the reply! Things are getting clearer. I picked up a National Instruments GPIB-SCSI converter. That could add whole new monkey wrenches to the picture. :) The docs say it'll drive in one direction or the other. ie: a machine with a scsi bus can talk to gpib devices through it, or a machine with a gpib bus can see scsi devices. It appears that it's one or the other, not both. -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! ????????u poo? ??n??u??s ?no? u? 8-??n ?u???? s? From jdbryan at acm.org Tue Apr 8 18:33:10 2008 From: jdbryan at acm.org (J. David Bryan) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:33:10 -0400 Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc In-Reply-To: <001301c899b8$3c6f79f0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> References: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org>, <001301c899b8$3c6f79f0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> Message-ID: <200804082333.m38NXBHL015847@mail.bcpl.net> On 8 Apr 2008 at 16:36, Steve Robertson wrote: > The hood is marked 59310-60008 and there's a good sized ferrite bead on > each end... and... there's a grounding lug on the computer end of the > cable. Are you saying this cable is inferior for disk access to the the > 12821A cable? The HP 1000 M/E/F-Series Computer Interfaces Technical Data catalog (5953- 2833, April 1982) lists the 59310-60002 cable for both the 12821A and 59310B interface cards. The HP 1000/9000 Interface Products Specification Guide (5954-6312, August 1985) lists the 59310-60008 cable for both cards. There's also a 59310- 60006 cable available (2 meters vs. 3.69 meters for the -60008 cable). It appears that either cable can be used with either card. I speculate that the -60008 cable was needed to meet then-new RFI emission requirements. Many HP cables in the '80s sprouted ferrite slugs, additional shielding, and ground straps where none had been before. -- Dave From eric at brouhaha.com Tue Apr 8 19:10:30 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 17:10:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc In-Reply-To: <47FBFD6C.5030809@Rikers.org> References: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org> <200804081655.m38Gtfdr006857@mail.bcpl.net> <47FBFD6C.5030809@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <43232.64.62.206.10.1207699830.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> J. David Bryan wrote: > No, these drives used the MAC command set. Tim Riker wrote: > Got a pointer to docs on that? The 13037 manuals are on Bitsavers. From pat at computer-refuge.org Tue Apr 8 19:36:41 2008 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 20:36:41 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804080731.DAA11373@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <1207638560.6670.18.camel@elric> <200804080731.DAA11373@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <200804082036.41991.pat@computer-refuge.org> > > Am I the only person in the world that likes man pages then? [...] > > > > Just give me a nice plain flat page and let me do the searching > > myself. That's what the '/' key is for. On Tuesday 08 April 2008, der Mouse wrote: > You are not alone. I have very similar tastes in documentation. (I > agree with you about info; I find it more useful to use less on the > texinfo source, or even the underlying info file itself, than to try > to get anything useful out of info.) I've never had much luck for using info, either, or like it. I think that the main problem with info is its relation to emacs. :) OTOH, I'm much happier with GNU tar and it's general compatibility with reading tar files that I throw with it, and a few smart things it does (like stripping off leading /'s), as compared to any other tar variant that ships with a UNIX. On Tuesday 08 April 2008, Chuck Guzis wrote: > Quick, who can recite from memory all of the switches and their > meanings for GNU tar? I can't. So? I can remember all of the switches that I normally use. If I need something else, it's quite easy to type "man tar". > Who can understand the tar man pages? Huh? I don't see how it's complex or hard to understand. > Who knows it to be accurate for the particular incarnation of > tar that they're using? If tar doesn't accept the options that the man page specifies when you try to use them, then it's not compatible. If it does, than it is. :) I've never actually run into any system that I can remember where there's a man page for tar, but it isn't up-to-date enough to be perfectly usable. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Apr 8 19:43:54 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:43:54 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47FAAAF1.13602.126AC11A@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804080131.m381VGJM048511@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47FAAAF1.13602.126AC11A@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200804082043.54870.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 08 April 2008 02:14, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:04:01 -0400 > > From: Sridhar Ayengar > > > > That's bull. There are ways to make grep output something like "No > > matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it. I suggest that > > perhaps those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't use or > > understand pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't understand > > pipes. > > If anything, my issue with the evolution of *nix is that the original > philosophy of "write a bunch of simple tools and hook 'em together > via pipes" seems to have been deprecated in the almost 30 years since > I began using Unix. There seems to be a trend of proliferating > options. > > Quick, who can recite from memory all of the switches and their > meanings for GNU tar? I can't. Who can understand the tar man > pages? Who knows it to be accurate for the particular incarnation of > tar that they're using? Ack! Tar was one of the first instances where I found the man pages to be less than useful, there being a whole lot more available in the "info" stuff on the system at the time. Way back then (probably not too long after I started running linux in 1999) I was playing with a tape drive, a bigger unit that had a proprietary interface card (used a short 50-wire ribbon cable) and of the assortment of DC-600 and DC-300XL and a number of other tapes the best I could do with any of them was something like 256MB, which would've meant spanning tapes to do a backup, even back then. I got to the point where I could tar a file on to the tape, read it back again, and verify that it was what it was supposed to be, and then pretty much lost interest at that point. And these days I'm wondering how all those data tapes are doing, up there in the attic, after some of what I've read 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 Tue Apr 8 19:45:12 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:45:12 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <1207638560.6670.18.camel@elric> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> <1207638560.6670.18.camel@elric> Message-ID: <200804082045.12989.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 08 April 2008 03:09, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > On Sat, 2008-04-05 at 15:10 -0700, Josh Dersch wrote: > > for documentation -- the LispM had graphical, hypertext sensitive > > documentation available at a mouse click or a press of the "Help" key > > whereas in UNIX it's still man or info pages displayed in a terminal > > window, for the most part. This may be less of an issue for the > > user-friendly Linux distros (Ubuntu, etc.) which are less CLI oriented. > > Am I the only person in the world that likes man pages then? The GNU > utilities have "info" with a pointy-clicky hypertext interface, but like > nearly all such interfaces it's completely bloody useless and very hard > to use. Part of the problem is that nearly all of the Unix command-line > utilities can be fully explained in one short page (with a couple of > notable exceptions like grep and awk), but misguided programmers writing > the info pages feel they have to make everything a separate page, just > so they can have the front page with a big pile of links to pages, most > of which have only a couple of lines on them. Searching is impossible, > and navigation is impossible. > > Just give me a nice plain flat page and let me do the searching myself. > That's what the '/' key is for. Absolutely. That "info" nonsense is bloody awful! -- 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 sellam at vintagetech.com Tue Apr 8 23:30:24 2008 From: sellam at vintagetech.com (Sellam Ismail) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 21:30:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Two recent vintage computer sightings in movies Message-ID: Two more sightings of vintage computers in old movies to report. Has anyone seen these already? I was watching This Is Spinal Tap (in-flight movie) for a bit and there is a scene where they're on the tour bus and some dude is playing Missile Command on a TRS-80 Color Computer (the original gr[ea]y model). Right now I'm watching TV (hotel cable) and George Carlin is on (AWESOME!!) and in his set there's an original Macintosh (or it could be a 512 or Plus) in the background. I don't know the name of this set. Isn't someone maintaining a list of these somewhere? -- 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 dkelvey at hotmail.com Wed Apr 9 00:14:55 2008 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 22:14:55 -0700 Subject: Polymorphic System88 disk In-Reply-To: <47FB51A3.30618.9B0A64@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804081700.m38H0DMg057883@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47FB51A3.30618.9B0A64@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: > From: cclist at sydex.com > >> Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 05:59:37 -0700 >> From: dwight elvey > > Will all respect for your efforts, Dwight, at least you knew the > origin of the diskette and had a faint idea of what might be on them. > > You haven't lived until someone shoots you a bunch of diskettes with > everything being unknown--the modulation technique, the code > representation, the data rate or track spacing or byte width, much > less the file system. > > Your Polymorphics floppies sound a lot like a bunch of diskettes I > got in recently from a manufacturer's in-house PCB stuffing robot. > The format appears to be a "roll your own". > > It's hard to say which is the most fun--diskettes discovered to be > GCR where you have no idea of what the group size is, nor what the > groups correspond to. Or diskettes written on something like a > typewriter where the code's not ASCII, nor does A immediately precede > B--and you have nothing that says "this is a printout of what's on > the diskette". > > Hint: You start with a statistical analysis of the pulse stream and > go from there. > > For me, it's a lot of fun, ferreting out things by bits and pieces > until the big picture emerges. > Hi Chuck I was lucky. I even know what the directory structure looks like. I did have to fix my scope. Several of the delayed sweep setting were not working correctly. It turned out to be a 4000 series analog mux used to select the delay capacitors. Still, I think this is one case that I'd liked to have a nice digital scope for. As a general rule, I prefer the analog scope but there are times it is hard to be effective with. Having a single sweep stay on the screen would have allowed more in depth analysis of the bit streams. I did enjoy the hunt but as Eric says, if someone wanted to pay for it, it would have been expenssive. What surprised me the most was the complete change of header and track usage. I'll never know what made them change it so. I do admit the 00,ff at the end of the data makes sense. I wish they'd used the same for their tape format. It would have sped up the recovery of tape data that I worked on a few years back. Now comes the work of actually transfering the images. I have to run at 9600 baud. I estimate about 8 minutes per disk. I've got some 50 disk. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Pack up or back up?use SkyDrive to transfer files or keep extra copies. Learn how. hthttp://www.windowslive.com/skydrive/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_skydrive_packup_042008 From ddsnyder at zoominternet.net Mon Apr 7 18:27:05 2008 From: ddsnyder at zoominternet.net (Daniel Snyder) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 19:27:05 -0400 Subject: DECServer 500/550 Manuals - PDP 11/53 References: <200803272218.m2RMIW0i008247@onyx.spiritone.com> <000301c8906b$941b32d0$6701a8c0@HP24150918428> Message-ID: <001601c89906$e473d8b0$6701a8c0@HP24150918428> To all who responded on and off topic, thanks. After a few hours tinkering with these machines, I learned a bit about the meaning of the rotary switch on the cpu panel, of course using the guide that came with one. I did solve the missing CXA16 manual, found one on Chuck McMannis' site and readdressed a rouge card. Now both systems MOP load with no problems. Does anyone have the cables and "harmonicas" to attach to a CXA16? If not, I will probably use a CXY08 card and cables. Now on to some Eprom burning and maybe some flavor of BSD or RSX. Dan From ddsnyder at zoominternet.net Mon Apr 7 18:36:58 2008 From: ddsnyder at zoominternet.net (Daniel Snyder) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 19:36:58 -0400 Subject: Free to a good home - IBM PS/2 stuff References: <200803272218.m2RMIW0i008247@onyx.spiritone.com><000301c8906b$941b32d0$6701a8c0@HP24150918428><47ECF3EB.4010602@mdrconsult.com><47ED1AEB.1040800@nktelco.net><1C8CF4C4-4F6E-444F-BA8F-181468E3507E@neurotica.com><47ED4427.2050202@nktelco.net> <20080328225000.GC32758@usap.gov> Message-ID: <001a01c89908$457d3240$6701a8c0@HP24150918428> To all, I am unloading all of my PS/2 gear, most of the systems may be too heavy to ship, but will part out. I'm out of space and my real interests have always been DEC, almost 30 years now. This is by all means not a complete list, I will continue this list as I uncover more. All has been stored indoors in a dry and heated area. 2 - Model 25's B&W (ISA) 2 - Model 30's (ISA) 1 - Model 65 tower (MCA) 1 - Model 80 tower (MCA) 1 - Model 50 desktop (MCA) memory modules, video, esdi drives, scsi drives, some good working floppies. I have most if not all of the config disks and copies on cd. I think the 80 has a worm drive and colorado/maynard? QIC tape, spare motherboards for the 50, 60, 70 and 80. Would really prefer local pickup (or relay or within 100 miles) That's all for now Dan Snyder Butler, PA 16001 From ohh at panix.com Mon Apr 7 20:24:20 2008 From: ohh at panix.com (O. Sharp) Date: Mon, 7 Apr 2008 21:24:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: VT14 engr drws In-Reply-To: <47FAB1E7.4050404@bitsavers.org> References: <47FAB1E7.4050404@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: Mr. Hachtmann, thanks for the kind offer; it looks like it's okay now, though. Mr. Kossow, thanks again. You're a god. :) -O.- On Mon, 7 Apr 2008, Al Kossow wrote: > they are part of the GT40 drawing set > > http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/graphics/GT40_EngrDrws.pdf > From derschjo at msu.edu Mon Apr 7 22:31:01 2008 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:31:01 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47FA720A.4070201@msu.edu> <575131af0804071956o7df76417u28e8a90c8f68e86@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <47FAE6F5.3060106@msu.edu> I think it'd certainly be possible. Symbolics did a "port" of Genera to the Alpha (ran under Tru64 unix) called OpenGenera; Brad Parker's done an amd64-linux port of that port (which I don't know the legal status of). See http://labs.aezenix.com/lispm/index.php?title=VLM_On_Linux. (I've tried it, it's /bleeding fast/ on modern PC hardware. It's also buggy at the moment :)). There are other "lisp directly on the hardware" OSes for modern hardware but I haven't looked into them very deeply yet. Josh Liam Proven wrote: > On 07/04/2008, Josh Dersch wrote: > > > >> I like to quote Jamie Zawinski on UNIX: "Of all the operating systems >> that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot." >> > > Sounds like a paraphrase of Winston Churchill: > > "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government > except all the others that have been tried." > > >> User friendliness, error handling, and consistency at the command line >> is still a problem -- and this is one of those cases where people don't >> even /realize /how limiting that is -- use a Lisp Listener on a 'bolix >> for 10 minutes and you'll realize how much better a CLI could be >> (command completion, inline help, /helpful error messages/)... same goes >> for documentation -- the LispM had graphical, hypertext sensitive >> documentation available at a mouse click or a press of the "Help" key >> whereas in UNIX it's still man or info pages displayed in a terminal >> window, for the most part. This may be less of an issue for the >> user-friendly Linux distros (Ubuntu, etc.) which are less CLI oriented. >> > > I know SQR(fsck all) about Lisp Machines, but in these days of > high-powered PCs, would it be viable to create some form of > implementation of the LispM OS on x86? Even if it required some kind > of emulation layer underneath for content-addressable memory or > whatever? > > From john_a_s2004 at hotmail.com Tue Apr 8 06:21:59 2008 From: john_a_s2004 at hotmail.com (John S) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 11:21:59 +0000 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) Message-ID: Hi, I have an ICL PC2 CP/M box (like this: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=752) which has a faulty PSU, I am hoping someone here can advise me. The PSU is a Farnell N100/F4190 SMPS, looks like a high quality unit with nice screw terminals for mains in and DC out. When fired up with 240V AC and a dummy load the output voltages are: 12V output=1.1V 5V output=2.3V -12V output=-5.9V The other worrying thing is it is also drawing 100W power (measured with a one of those plug in mains meters from Maplin), whilst the dummy load is around 20W (split between +12V and +5V). I've checked all the capacitors with multimeter and ESR meter, and all seem fine, and none are bulging or obviously overheating, DC resistance on each of the output connections to ground is around 60 ohm. I couldn't find a short so I don't know where all the power is going to, I suspect there is some protection circuit kicking in? I don't have a circuit diagram, so my first plea does any one have one please? The circuit has few ICs, and mostly transistors. There is a CA339E quad comparator chip, and a IL201 opto isolator (I'll try and check these), but no nice single IC controller. My current strategy is to apply +5V to the comparator chip and apply voltages to the output to try and see some feedback, and also apply 50V DC to the input in the hope this is enough to start up the oscillator (I think this is a small group of transistors, resistors and small capacitors near a small torial transformer, which then feeds to the main conversion transformer). Any suggestions gratefully received, Thanks, John _________________________________________________________________ Get Hotmail on your mobile. Text MSN to 63463 now! http://mobile.uk.msn.com/pc/mail.aspx From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Tue Apr 8 08:56:18 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 14:56:18 +0100 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF6F@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> I can't be of much help re PSU . However I do know the machine. RAIR were a customer of mine and I saw the first one ever built. RAIR was run by two guy's called Mark Potts and David Fogden. Mark went to the States and I have no idea what happened to Dave. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John S Sent: 08 April 2008 12:22 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) Hi, I have an ICL PC2 CP/M box (like this: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=752) which has a faulty PSU, I am hoping someone here can advise me. The PSU is a Farnell N100/F4190 SMPS, looks like a high quality unit with nice screw terminals for mains in and DC out. When fired up with 240V AC and a dummy load the output voltages are: 12V output=1.1V 5V output=2.3V -12V output=-5.9V The other worrying thing is it is also drawing 100W power (measured with a one of those plug in mains meters from Maplin), whilst the dummy load is around 20W (split between +12V and +5V). I've checked all the capacitors with multimeter and ESR meter, and all seem fine, and none are bulging or obviously overheating, DC resistance on each of the output connections to ground is around 60 ohm. I couldn't find a short so I don't know where all the power is going to, I suspect there is some protection circuit kicking in? I don't have a circuit diagram, so my first plea does any one have one please? The circuit has few ICs, and mostly transistors. There is a CA339E quad comparator chip, and a IL201 opto isolator (I'll try and check these), but no nice single IC controller. My current strategy is to apply +5V to the comparator chip and apply voltages to the output to try and see some feedback, and also apply 50V DC to the input in the hope this is enough to start up the oscillator (I think this is a small group of transistors, resistors and small capacitors near a small torial transformer, which then feeds to the main conversion transformer). Any suggestions gratefully received, Thanks, John _________________________________________________________________ Get Hotmail on your mobile. Text MSN to 63463 now! http://mobile.uk.msn.com/pc/mail.aspx From julianskidmore at yahoo.com Tue Apr 8 12:04:35 2008 From: julianskidmore at yahoo.com (Julian Skidmore) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 10:04:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: FS: QBUS boards, 4K memory boards, Sharp PC-3000 items Message-ID: <254372.25990.qm@web36801.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi Ed, I've been trying to use my BA23-based microPDP11/73 recently. I got as far as installing RT11 and Fig-Forth :-) , but then the power supply blew a cap so everything has been mothballed since Friday! > DEC "A/D FOR 1103 5012094E-P2" My guess is that the A/D won't work if it's for an 11/03 > DEC "4 CHANNEL D/A A6001 5012107 DP4" But the D/A sounds interesting! > DEC "PROG REAL TIME CLOCK M7952 5012108B" As does the RTC. > DEC "M9060 5017109" load board As does the Load board - I guess that board is there to simulate loading on a PSU so you can test the PSU? Obviously I'm happy to pay for the postage, in fact is sounds like good value! -cheers from julz @P ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com From ddsnyder at zoominternet.net Tue Apr 8 14:08:07 2008 From: ddsnyder at zoominternet.net (ddsnyder at zoominternet.net) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 15:08:07 -0400 Subject: Free to a good home - IBM PS/2 stuff Message-ID: <32329.1207681687@zoominternet.net> Somethings a miss here... resending... On Mon 04/ 7/08 7:36 PM , "Daniel Snyder" sent: To all, I am unloading all of my PS/2 gear, most of the systems may be too heavy to ship, but will part out. I'm out of space and my real interests have always been DEC, almost 30 years now. This is by all means not a complete list, I will continue this list as I uncover more. All has been stored indoors in a dry and heated area. 2 - Model 25's B&W (ISA) 2 - Model 30's (ISA) 1 - Model 65 tower (MCA) 1 - Model 80 tower (MCA) 1 - Model 50 desktop (MCA) memory modules, video, esdi drives, scsi drives, some good working floppies. I have most if not all of the config disks and copies on cd. I think the 80 has a worm drive and colorado/maynard? QIC tape, spare motherboards for the 50, 60, 70 and 80. Would really prefer local pickup (or relay or within 100 miles) That's all for now Dan Snyder Butler, PA 16001 From steerex at ccvn.com Tue Apr 8 15:36:34 2008 From: steerex at ccvn.com (Steve Robertson) Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 16:36:34 -0400 Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc References: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org><000301c89906$7f604c10$6601a8c0@screamer> <47FB91FD.7060402@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <001301c899b8$3c6f79f0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Riker" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 11:40 AM Subject: Re: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc > > As for cables, the 12821A cable has a massive ferrite core and a > > grounding lug that the 59310 cable does not have. But I believe that > > the two cables are electrically compatible. > > > > I know I have a 12821A cable that was cut, and a replacement connector. > > (if your up to building your own) > > Yes! If your offering, I'll take you up on it. I have extra card edge > connectors, but not the IEEE-488 ends. > Bob... I have a spare HPIB cable (complete) that I would part with . The hood is marked 59310-60008 and there's a good sized ferrite bead on each end... and... there's a grounding lug on the computer end of the cable. Are you saying this cable is inferior for disk access to the the 12821A cable? I'm not positive but, I think this the same type cable I had when booting my HP1000 off CS80 disks. What is the marking on the 12821A cable? Unfortunately, I don't have a bootable CS80 disk handy to test the cable. I lost the binaries when I moved and have not found again them (yet). I do have the original source code (on cellulose) so, I could recompile everything and build another CS80 system but, that is not at the top of my todo list. Building the disk from scratch is a PIA :-) I'm working on a PC to HP-IB disk/tape project right now but, I'll probably start dinking with the HP1000 CS80 stuff again in the next month or so. Tim... If you want the cable, send me your address. You can have it for the cost of shipping + $5.00... That'll pay about half my cost in gas to the Post Office. And save you a bunch of time soldering that rats nest :-) I also have several cables from other systems that have a HP-IB connector on one end and an incompatible connector on the other end. If Tim feels like soldering on new edge connectors, I would be willing to part with a couple of those as well. Sorry but, I don't have any spare edge connectors / hoods. See yas, Steve Robertson steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com From lproven at gmail.com Wed Apr 9 08:14:53 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 14:14:53 +0100 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <47FC5CD8.5040409@msu.edu> References: <47FC5CD8.5040409@msu.edu> Message-ID: <575131af0804090614m53c404f9i787e884947153a99@mail.gmail.com> On 09/04/2008, Josh Dersch wrote: > Title says it all... I picked up a "new" (still in shrink-wrap) AboveBoard > MC with the intent of using it in my PS/2 model 80 and I'm having serious > issues getting it to function properly. > > The Model 80 has 4mb of planar memory installed, and I've been running it > with no issues with an Orchid Ramquest 8/32 stocked with 8mb of memory (so > 12mb total). In an attempt to get a little more memory, I've tried running > with the Orchid replaced by the AboveBoard... > > The AboveBoard came with 4mb installed (4 1mb simms) which I initially > replaced with 32mb (8 4mb simms, known good). I've since tried running with > the original RAM, as well as other RAM I have lying around, without any > success. I've tried running in different slots (both 32 and 16 bit) with no > change. I've also adjusted the ram speed in the configuration page (options > are 100ns or 80/85ns) with no change, though it seems slightly happier with > 80/85ns selected. > > The behavior is very random -- sometimes the startup memory count (which is > separate from the memory count in the PS/2's BIOS) fails to count all the > memory -- on these occasions you can see it "pause" slightly during the > count as if it's hitting bad memory and skipping over it. Sometimes it > counts all the memory just fine. Regardless, the OS crashes or panics > (tried NT & Debian Linux, haven't tried OS/2 yet) eventually. I've run > memtest86 on it and what I find is that if the memory count is successful, > memtest reports no errors, but attempts to run actual OSes crash after > awhile. > > I've read that the Model 80 has trouble (not sure precisely /what/ trouble) > with more than 16mb of memory, but even limiting the AboveBoard to 4mb is > problematic. > > Anyone have any ideas? Similar/different experiences? I have an IBM expansion in my Model 80. Can't remember what model offhand, I'm afraid - I fitted it >10y ago. It has, from memory, 4 x 2MB parity SIMMs in it. I also have 8MB on the planar for 16MB total, and you can spot the difference during the POST text very easily - when it trips over from planar RAM to MCA-slot RAM, the speed of the RAM test drops by something like 25-33%. It's very noticeable. At the time, I was wondering if I could find a 2nd expansion board or even a 3rd, populate 'em with cheap 1MB SIMMs and get 32MB or so. I had slots to spare. However, on doing some reading at that time, I found, as I recall, that there was only 1 specific board that could extend a Model 80 past 16MB and it needed to be the sole RAM expansion. I /think/ that you needed to max out the planar first, too. A distant memory suggests that it was a Kingston RAM expansion that could do it. I think multiple boards adding <=4MB each to an 8MB machine could take you to 16MB, but getting above 16MB was very difficult and even 11-12y ago, getting hold of those special boards for >16MB was expensive. So my '80 rests at 16MB, no more, even though I did have more suitable SIMMs. :?( However, in 16MB, it ran NT Server 3.51SP5 really rather nicely and was a responsive fileserver on my network, driving 3 or 4 SCSI disks across 2 controllers (1 internal, 1 external), a SCSI CD-ROM and a SCSI Exabyte 8mm tape drive. Not bad for a machine that was ~10y old when it was pressed into service, running an OS that wasn't released until 7y after the H/W was discontinued. It's still sitting in my garage. Not powered it on this century. :?( Hope it still works. -- 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 jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Wed Apr 9 08:57:06 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:57:06 -0500 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47FCCB32.70509@gmail.com> John S wrote: > The PSU is a Farnell N100/F4190 SMPS, looks like a high quality unit with > nice screw terminals for mains in and DC out. > > When fired up with 240V AC and a dummy load the output voltages are: > > 12V output=1.1V 5V output=2.3V -12V output=-5.9V Hmm, failed (or failing) rectifier diode on one of the outputs maybe? I've had to replace quite a few in recent years on SMPSUs; some fail completely shorted (and so are obvious), but others only cause problems when loaded. Thankfully they're cheap, and a healthy number of modern alternatives exist if the original part can't be obtained. It's quite possible that any sort of protection (and regulation/feedback) only happens on the +5V rail in your PSU, so if something's upset on the other rails then weird things can start happening. As a test, you might be able to disconnect the +/-12V circuitry completely and then see if the +5V starts behaving itself. > I don't have a circuit diagram, so my first plea does any one have one > please? Not me, I'm afraid. I've got a few machines using Farnell switchers back in storage in the UK, but no schematics to hand here. Yours sounds relatively simple, though - I suspect you could draw one out in a couple of hours if needed. cheers Jules From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Wed Apr 9 09:01:15 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:01:15 -0500 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804082045.12989.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <47F7F8D7.8000907@msu.edu> <1207638560.6670.18.camel@elric> <200804082045.12989.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <47FCCC2B.20507@gmail.com> Roy J. Tellason wrote: >> Just give me a nice plain flat page and let me do the searching myself. >> That's what the '/' key is for. > > Absolutely. That "info" nonsense is bloody awful! Seconded (thirded, too ;-) I've always got along really well with man pages. info just seems very clumsy in comparison - as though some idiot decided that what people really needed was a web-a-like interface to the documentation, but then did a really brain-dead job when it came to actually implementing it. cheers Jules From jdbryan at acm.org Wed Apr 9 10:13:42 2008 From: jdbryan at acm.org (J. David Bryan) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:13:42 -0400 Subject: HP-1000 HP-IB / GP-IB IEEE-488.2, etc In-Reply-To: <47FBFD6C.5030809@Rikers.org> References: <47FAA4CD.1010308@Rikers.org>, <200804081655.m38Gtfdr006857@mail.bcpl.net>, <47FBFD6C.5030809@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <200804091513.m39FDk2X016554@mail.bcpl.net> On 8 Apr 2008 at 17:19, Tim Riker wrote: > > No, these drives used the MAC command set. > > Got a pointer to docs on that? As Eric mentioned, Bitsavers has the 13037 documents, although they're a little bit difficult to find. The Controller Installation and Service Manual is . This describes the MAC command set. The 13175/8 Interface Kits manual is . This shows the CPU-to-controller cabling. The 12745 HP-IB Controller to HP-IB Adapter Kit Service manual is . It also lists the cables used in the HP-IB configuration. The individual 79xx disc drive installation manuals illustrate the controller-to-drive cabling. I don't think Bitsavers has any online, but the HP Computer Museum does (e.g., 07906-90902, "7906 Disc Drive Installation Manual"). There's also the "13037 Disc Controller Technical Information Package" (13037-90902), that has schematics, controller microcode, detailed theory of operation, etc. on both the controller and the 13175 interface. This is . > HP-1000 w/13175/13178 13075 7905/06/20/25 yes? Almost. The 1317x cards were daisy-chained together and connected to the 13037 controller. The 79xx disc drives used two cables: a command cable (thick) and a data cable (thin). The command cables were daisy-chained together and connected to the controller. The data cables went from each drive to the controller individually. > What are cable-a and cable-b? dual 50 pin card edge on both ends of both > cables? The above documents have pictures, wiring, etc. of the cables involved. The drive control cables were fairly involved. There was a multi-unit cable from the controller to a terminator board mounted on a bracket on the rack cabinet. From that, a ribbon cable connected to the drive, and (if used) a second multi-unit cable went to the next terminator board, etc. > So now we have: > > HP-1000 w/12821 13075 w/12745 7905/06/20/25 > > where cable-c is a 50-pin to gp-ib? Yes. > and cable-d is as cable-b above? Yes (actually, a pair of cables: control and data). > HP-1000 w/12821 7925H > > so I presume cable-e is 50 pin card edge to GP-IB? Yes. > You say the drives could be "connected together". Is this just a normal > GP-IB bus? or are there still a unit number here? The ICD (H) drives daisy-chained HP-IB connectors, and each appeared as a separate address. The 13037 configurations, either 13175 or 12745, daisy- chained the drives as mentioned above. > I forget which pdf I read that number in. I think it was one of the > 13037 documents. Can the 26xx terminals also speak GP-IB? There was an HP-IB option for the 264x terminals, but I am unfamiliar with its operation. > I'm confused. See previous "connected together" comment. If you're still confused after looking at the cabling diagrams in the PDFa, please ask again. ;-) -- Dave From legalize at xmission.com Wed Apr 9 10:37:31 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:37:31 -0600 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:01:15 -0500. <47FCCC2B.20507@gmail.com> Message-ID: In article <47FCCC2B.20507 at gmail.com>, Jules Richardson writes: > Roy J. Tellason wrote: > >> Just give me a nice plain flat page and let me do the searching myself. > >> That's what the '/' key is for. > > > > Absolutely. That "info" nonsense is bloody awful! > > Seconded (thirded, too ;-) > > I've always got along really well with man pages. info just seems very clumsy > in comparison - as though some idiot decided that what people really needed > was a web-a-like interface to the documentation, but then did a really > brain-dead job when it came to actually implementing it. The worst part is when they intentionally cripple the man page and force you into the awful info system. Most of the time, I can either take or leave the GNU/FSF attitude about things, but shoving this info crap down my throat really makes me want to kick them in the collective nuts. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Wed Apr 9 11:21:22 2008 From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us (Mike Loewen) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 12:21:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Two recent vintage computer sightings in movies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Tue, 8 Apr 2008, Sellam Ismail wrote: > Right now I'm watching TV (hotel cable) and George Carlin is on > (AWESOME!!) and in his set there's an original Macintosh (or it could be a > 512 or Plus) in the background. I don't know the name of this set. > > Isn't someone maintaining a list of these somewhere? It would be an interesting (and time consuming) project. I've done something similar with appearances of the SAGE computer equipment: http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Q7/ Stan Brewer has a page for the Burroughs B-205 (mostly the console), with a list of appearances on screen: http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/B205/index.html Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Wed Apr 9 11:19:01 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:19:01 -0500 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47FCEC75.9060700@gmail.com> Richard wrote: > The worst part is when they intentionally cripple the man page and > force you into the awful info system. Aha, the old "The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create info documents instead". Bastards. :-) My preference order goes something like: man page, book, online docs, other online resources (Google search, usenet etc.), utility's built-in help, 'info' documentation. How old is 'info' anyway - does it pre-date widespread (whatever that may mean!) web use? I don't think I had cause to come across it until mid/late 90s (man pages were pretty well maintained until about then), by which time the web was well established. I'm not sure if info is a poor imitation of a bunch of HTML pages, or merely a poor implementation of a more general hypertext system (which had of course been around for many years previous) cheers Jules (skirting the bounds of off-topicness a little... sorry) From legalize at xmission.com Wed Apr 9 11:13:02 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:13:02 -0600 Subject: Fwd: [comp.sys.sgi.hardwar...] Power Challenge XL available Message-ID: This message has been forwarded from Usenet. To reply to the original author, use the email address from the forwarded message. Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 00:39:44 -0700 (PDT) Groups: comp.sys.sgi.hardware,comp.sys.sgi.admin From: "fischerc at itam.cas.cz" Org: http://groups.google.com Subject: Power Challenge XL available Id: <5df4658f-99e8-43a5-b318-153140a98ba1 at k13g2000hse.googlegroups.c om> ======== Hi everybody We have a rather big piece of HW: SGI Power Challenge XL (6 x R8000 at 75 MHz, 1G ram, a few 2-4Gb SCSI discs) available here in Prague (CZ, EU). The computer was cleanly shut down on May 5, 2004 and since that time was not touched. We intend to scrap it now. If anybody wants to have some spare parts or even the complete beast, let me know within 1-2 months. I regret to say, that this was the last SGI machine we have here. Anyway, I would like to express my thanks to the SGI admin comunity for all the help I've received in past years. Sincerely yours, Cyril F. From slawmaster at gmail.com Wed Apr 9 11:42:35 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 09:42:35 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <47FCEC75.9060700@gmail.com> References: <47FCEC75.9060700@gmail.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804090942q3f275dcdpd6211857cbecc76c@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Jules Richardson wrote: > Richard wrote: > > > The worst part is when they intentionally cripple the man page and > > force you into the awful info system. > > > > Aha, the old "The GNU folks, in general, abhor man pages, and create > info documents instead". Bastards. :-) > > My preference order goes something like: man page, book, online docs, other > online resources (Google search, usenet etc.), utility's built-in help, > 'info' documentation. > > How old is 'info' anyway - does it pre-date widespread (whatever that may > mean!) web use? I don't think I had cause to come across it until mid/late > 90s (man pages were pretty well maintained until about then), by which time > the web was well established. I'm not sure if info is a poor imitation of a > bunch of HTML pages, or merely a poor implementation of a more general > hypertext system (which had of course been around for many years previous) > > cheers > > Jules (skirting the bounds of off-topicness a little... sorry) > GNU info reminds me of the ITS help system, which isn't too surprising considering the Head Idiot's background. Have I made it clear yet that I really dislike Stallman? I like ITS and LispM, Stallman's favorites which are now, as Dennis Ritchie says, fertilizing the OS field from below; I just don't like Stallman. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From tiggerlasv at aim.com Wed Apr 9 12:33:55 2008 From: tiggerlasv at aim.com (tiggerlasv at aim.com) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:33:55 -0400 Subject: Two recent vintage computer sightings in movies Message-ID: <8CA687F04E091DE-1508-1E7E@webmail-ne21.sysops.aol.com> While it's not a movie, if you watch carefully on the Star Trek: Next Generation pilot episode "Encounter at Farpoint", you'll see what appears to be a VT100 sitting on a pedestal on the bridge. . . an interesting prop. ;-) T From brad at heeltoe.com Wed Apr 9 12:40:11 2008 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:40:11 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1481.1207762811@mini> Richard wrote: > >The worst part is when they intentionally cripple the man page and >force you into the awful info system. I don't want to debate this (it's not my space), but I think, like much of the unix-haters-handbook, there is more to this than has been discussed here. The info system is a lot like many page setting systems which came before it (and there is a long history, littered with things like scribe, bolio, runoff and many others) One nice thing about it is that you can "compile" source documents into many different formats. This tends to be really useful for some applications. It can also be done (somewhat) with man pages but it's not easy and there are fewer options for inserting various types of 'metadata' for referencing other information. There's also methods for structuring the information in ways that go beyond the format of a single man page. I've personally used info/tex-info to generate system documentation and then went on to make html pages, pdf's, printed pages and single text files (which can be searched with any text editor or grep). I found it easy and nice to use (but I still miss scribe). On topic here, the MIT lisp machine manual was written in bolio, which is somewhat close to tex-info and one industrious guy was able to take the source files I unearthed and (30 year later) compile them into really nice html, automagically. I'm sure he could turn them into even nicer pdf file with a small amount of work. That says something about the 'language' and how it encodes the information. http://common-lisp.net/project/bknr/static/lmman I'm not sure you could do that with man pages. Maybe you could. So I'd offer that info pages are more than just cumbersome poorly hypertext'd documents. They are part of a larger system which has goals beyond just simple man pages. -brad From bpope at wordstock.com Wed Apr 9 12:53:28 2008 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 13:53:28 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Two recent vintage computer sightings in movies In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20080409175328.9A21E56884@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Sellam Ismail > > > Two more sightings of vintage computers in old movies to report. Has > anyone seen these already? > > I was watching This Is Spinal Tap (in-flight movie) for a bit and there > is a scene where they're on the tour bus and some dude is playing Missile > Command on a TRS-80 Color Computer (the original gr[ea]y model). > > Right now I'm watching TV (hotel cable) and George Carlin is on > (AWESOME!!) and in his set there's an original Macintosh (or it could be a > 512 or Plus) in the background. I don't know the name of this set. > > Isn't someone maintaining a list of these somewhere? > These are not vintage computer but vintage arcade game sightings.. In the move "Midnight Madness", released in 1980, the characters have the play the game "Star Fire" to get a clue.. But the cool part is the many shots of the game "Death Race", even though this game is never played. Death Race did not have a CPU but used TTL chips. Cheers, Bryan From legalize at xmission.com Wed Apr 9 13:21:59 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:21:59 -0600 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:40:11 -0400. <1481.1207762811@mini> Message-ID: In article <1481.1207762811 at mini>, Brad Parker writes: > So I'd offer that info pages are more than just cumbersome poorly > hypertext'd documents. They are part of a larger system which has goals > beyond just simple man pages. In theory I don't disagree with what info pages *could* be. In practice though, they end up being vastly inferior to the man pages that they replaced. A man page is best at succinctly communicating important information about a utility: summary of usage, command-line options supported, environment variables consumed, etc. I wouldn't want to write a book using the an macro set for troff, but every time I just need a quick piece of information about a command-line utility and try to get it out of info, its a huge PITA. Of course some things need a bona-fide full-featured cross-linked manual -- just look at how many man pages perl sprawls across these days. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk Wed Apr 9 15:42:59 2008 From: roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk (Roger Holmes) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 21:42:59 +0100 Subject: Two recent vintage computer sightings in movies In-Reply-To: <200804091700.m39H0Rcg076279@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804091700.m39H0Rcg076279@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <59E9D6AF-4452-493A-94F1-463B0B00E557@microspot.co.uk> On 9 Apr, 2008, at 18:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > On Tue, 8 Apr 2008, Sellam Ismail wrote: > >> Right now I'm watching TV (hotel cable) and George Carlin is on >> (AWESOME!!) and in his set there's an original Macintosh (or it >> could be a >> 512 or Plus) in the background. I don't know the name of this set. >> >> Isn't someone maintaining a list of these somewhere? > > It would be an interesting (and time consuming) project. I've > done > something similar with appearances of the SAGE computer equipment: > > http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Q7/ > > Stan Brewer has a page for the Burroughs B-205 (mostly the > console), > with a list of appearances on screen: > > http://www.angelfire.com/scifi/B205/index.html Mike Milsom has a page for some of the appearances of ICT 1301 consoles: http://milsom.mysite.orange.co.uk/1301/1301f.htm We are always on the look out for more, but we already have Doctor Who, James Bond and Blake's Seven appearances. From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Apr 9 16:15:06 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:15:06 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804091715.07088.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 09 April 2008 11:37, Richard wrote: > In article <47FCCC2B.20507 at gmail.com>, > > Jules Richardson writes: > > Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > >> Just give me a nice plain flat page and let me do the searching > > >> myself. That's what the '/' key is for. > > > > > > Absolutely. That "info" nonsense is bloody awful! > > > > Seconded (thirded, too ;-) > > > > I've always got along really well with man pages. info just seems very > > clumsy in comparison - as though some idiot decided that what people > > really needed was a web-a-like interface to the documentation, but then > > did a really brain-dead job when it came to actually implementing it. > > The worst part is when they intentionally cripple the man page and > force you into the awful info system. Most of the time, I can either > take or leave the GNU/FSF attitude about things, but shoving this info > crap down my throat really makes me want to kick them in the > collective nuts. I wonder how hard it would be to extract the stuff from wherever "info" is keeping it and stuff it into a man page? -- 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 Apr 9 16:19:29 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 22:19:29 +0100 (BST) Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: from "John S" at Apr 8, 8 11:21:59 am Message-ID: > > > Hi, > > I have an ICL PC2 CP/M box (like this: > http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=752) which has a > faulty PSU, I am hoping someone here can advise me. > > The PSU is a Farnell N100/F4190 SMPS, looks like a high quality unit > with nice screw terminals for mains in and DC out. > > When fired up with 240V AC and a dummy load the output voltages are: > > 12V output=1.1V > 5V output=2.3V > -12V output=-5.9V The first thing that 'bothers' me is that the 12V output is lower than the 5V one. If this was a simple regulation fault, I'd expect all outputs to track. Do you know which output the crowbar operates on (not which one triggers it, but which one it shorts out?). It's not uncommon for that to be something other than the main output (simply becuase it's easier to pull down), it's possible there's a crowbar thryistor on the 12V output, and that that's firing. I assume this thing doesn't have external sense inoputs for the main output, or if it dows you've conencted them to said output. I think it's reasonable to asusme the chopper is working (otherwise you'd get no outputs at all). Does it seem to be running continuously, or do you get the 'tweet tweet tweet' of a PSU that's starting, detecting a fault, shutting down, and repearing? Are tyhe otuptus steady at those votlages? I find an analogue meter best for this, you can see the needle twitch if the PSU is starting and shutting down. -tony From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Apr 9 17:05:16 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:05:16 -0400 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804091805.16468.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 09 April 2008 17:19, Tony Duell wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I have an ICL PC2 CP/M box (like this: > > http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=752) which has a > > faulty PSU, I am hoping someone here can advise me. > > > > The PSU is a Farnell N100/F4190 SMPS, looks like a high quality unit > > with nice screw terminals for mains in and DC out. > > > > When fired up with 240V AC and a dummy load the output voltages are: > > > > 12V output=1.1V > > 5V output=2.3V > > -12V output=-5.9V > > The first thing that 'bothers' me is that the 12V output is lower than > the 5V one. If this was a simple regulation fault, I'd expect all outputs > to track. I've expected that too, in the past, and it hasn't been the case at least sometiimes... (Snip) > I think it's reasonable to asusme the chopper is working (otherwise you'd > get no outputs at all). Does it seem to be running continuously, or do > you get the 'tweet tweet tweet' of a PSU that's starting, detecting a > fault, shutting down, and repearing? Scoping tbings in there would sure be informative. -- 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 jrkeys at concentric.net Wed Apr 9 19:48:15 2008 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 19:48:15 -0500 Subject: Help Wanted Picking Items from NASA Message-ID: <010901c89aa4$916f3e80$6553ef42@66067007> Good Day I have been given a chance to submit a wish list to NASA for artifacts for the museum I started here in Houston and wanted suggestions from the list of items you would want to see on display from NASA's past. Please email me off list or you can share your input with the list. Thanks John From davis at saw.net Wed Apr 9 21:29:08 2008 From: davis at saw.net (davis) Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:29:08 -0800 Subject: Help Wanted Picking Items from NASA In-Reply-To: <010901c89aa4$916f3e80$6553ef42@66067007> References: <010901c89aa4$916f3e80$6553ef42@66067007> Message-ID: <47FD7B74.5070108@saw.net> Keys wrote: > Good Day > I have been given a chance to submit a wish list to NASA for artifacts > for the museum I started here in Houston and wanted suggestions from > the list of items you would want to see on display from NASA's past. > Please email me off list or you can share your input with the list. > > Thanks > John > > The mind BOGGLES! Try everything that isn't a beer can or a Toyota now.. Cheers, Jim. From rdawson16 at hotmail.com Wed Apr 9 20:44:14 2008 From: rdawson16 at hotmail.com (Randy Dawson) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 20:44:14 -0500 Subject: Help Wanted Picking Items from NASA In-Reply-To: <47FD7B74.5070108@saw.net> References: <010901c89aa4$916f3e80$6553ef42@66067007> <47FD7B74.5070108@saw.net> Message-ID: > Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 18:29:08 -0800 > From: davis at saw.net > To: General at saw.net > CC: > Subject: Re: Help Wanted Picking Items from NASA > > Keys wrote: > > Good Day > > I have been given a chance to submit a wish list to NASA for artifacts > > for the museum I started here in Houston and wanted suggestions from > > the list of items you would want to see on display from NASA's past. > > Please email me off list or you can share your input with the list. > > > > Thanks > > John > > > > > The mind BOGGLES! > Try everything that isn't a beer can or a Toyota now.. > > Cheers, > Jim. I worked for the astronaut group, supporting the MMU. Got to work with Bruce Mcandless on the one and only flight. I designed a test system for it while it was in the payload bay, used some Radio Shack parts. Martin Marietta told me 'there will be no design work done by Mr. Dawson in Houston' NASA said we like Mr. Dawson and what he is doing. You are fired. Then told them to come get their MMU, its been in mothballs ever since, after only one flight. GO PICK UP THE MMU Randy Randy _________________________________________________________________ Get in touch in an instant. Get Windows Live Messenger now. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_getintouch_042008 From derschjo at msu.edu Wed Apr 9 01:06:16 2008 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:06:16 -0700 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? Message-ID: <47FC5CD8.5040409@msu.edu> Title says it all... I picked up a "new" (still in shrink-wrap) AboveBoard MC with the intent of using it in my PS/2 model 80 and I'm having serious issues getting it to function properly. The Model 80 has 4mb of planar memory installed, and I've been running it with no issues with an Orchid Ramquest 8/32 stocked with 8mb of memory (so 12mb total). In an attempt to get a little more memory, I've tried running with the Orchid replaced by the AboveBoard... The AboveBoard came with 4mb installed (4 1mb simms) which I initially replaced with 32mb (8 4mb simms, known good). I've since tried running with the original RAM, as well as other RAM I have lying around, without any success. I've tried running in different slots (both 32 and 16 bit) with no change. I've also adjusted the ram speed in the configuration page (options are 100ns or 80/85ns) with no change, though it seems slightly happier with 80/85ns selected. The behavior is very random -- sometimes the startup memory count (which is separate from the memory count in the PS/2's BIOS) fails to count all the memory -- on these occasions you can see it "pause" slightly during the count as if it's hitting bad memory and skipping over it. Sometimes it counts all the memory just fine. Regardless, the OS crashes or panics (tried NT & Debian Linux, haven't tried OS/2 yet) eventually. I've run memtest86 on it and what I find is that if the memory count is successful, memtest reports no errors, but attempts to run actual OSes crash after awhile. I've read that the Model 80 has trouble (not sure precisely /what/ trouble) with more than 16mb of memory, but even limiting the AboveBoard to 4mb is problematic. Anyone have any ideas? Similar/different experiences? Thanks, Josh From jhawes at hawestv.com Wed Apr 9 18:19:33 2008 From: jhawes at hawestv.com (James T. Hawes) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 19:19:33 -0400 Subject: single transistor projects? Message-ID: Rufus Turner wrote a fabulous book on single-transistor projects. I reviewed the book for Amazon. See... http://www.amazon.com/125-One-Transistor-Projects-Rufus-Turner/dp/0830695370 You have to be careful with early transistor projects. Most of the transistors are germanium. After making circuit changes, you can build these circuits with modern, silicon parts. At minimum, the silicon transistors require changes to the bias circuits. (Sometimes, you'll need to make other changes, too.) For help with the changes, refer to my page at... http://www.hawestv.com/transistorize/germanium1.htm Equivalents to some early semiconductor types are unavailable today. (Or available only as used, or new-old stock parts). Such semiconductors include tunnel diodes, unijunction transistors and most early FETs. Redesigning circuits with these parts could be rather difficult. James T. Hawes From john_a_s2004 at hotmail.com Wed Apr 9 19:44:42 2008 From: john_a_s2004 at hotmail.com (John S) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:44:42 +0000 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) Message-ID: Hi, I've started to setch the output circuitry, not 100% accutarely as my meter shows all the transformer windings as 0 ohm, so I have some points that measure 0 ohm to ground which may be ground or maybe a transformer output. Thanks Tony for your reply, quote below. Tony wrote: >John wrote> >> I have an ICL PC2 CP/M box (like this: >> http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=752) which has a >> faulty PSU, I am hoping someone here can advise me. >> >> The PSU is a Farnell N100/F4190 SMPS, looks like a high quality unit >> with nice screw terminals for mains in and DC out. >> > When fired up with 240V AC and a dummy load the output voltages are: >> >> 12V output=1.1V >> 5V output=2.3V >> -12V output=-5.9V > >The first thing that 'bothers' me is that the 12V output is lower than >the 5V one. If this was a simple regulation fault, I'd expect all outputs >to track. > >Do you know which output the crowbar operates on (not which one triggers >it, but which one it shorts out?). Now I have some of the output circuit, I have found their is an SCR (2N6400) connected as follows: Anode - to +12V output Cathode - to ground Gate - to a resistor divider, which inturn is connected via a diode (assumed to be a zenner) to the +5V output. With the power off I have tried applying +5V to the +12V output, and this drew 250mA - ie around 20 ohm. most of this current turned out to be going through the SCR, as when I removed the SCR the current reduced to around 20mA. I think the SCR has been damaged, it is showing 80ohm between gate and cathode with the meter either way round (I think this should be a diode!). I guess the SCR must have taken the brut of the 80W or so of excess power taken by the PSU when I was testing it earlier. I'll buy a couple of replacements. > It's not uncommon for that to be >something other than the main output (simply becuase it's easier to pull >down), it's possible there's a crowbar thryistor on the 12V output, and >that that's firing. Exactly right - thanks for the tip. >I assume this thing doesn't have external sense inoputs for the main >output, or if it dows you've conencted them to said output. No sense inputs. >I think it's reasonable to asusme the chopper is working (otherwise you'd >get no outputs at all). Does it seem to be running continuously, or do >you get the 'tweet tweet tweet' of a PSU that's starting, detecting a >fault, shutting down, and repearing? > >Are tyhe otuptus steady at those votlages? I find an analogue meter best >for this, you can see the needle twitch if the PSU is starting and >shutting down. When I tested it earlier I applied power for around 5 seconds at a time, outut voltages were fairly stable. Next thing I'll look at is the feedback circuit from the +5V output via some resistors and what might be a FET into an opto-isolator to a circuit on the hot side involving a compartor, transistors, resistors and diodes. This looks fairly complicated (to me, probably a piece of cake for Tony!). Pity there isn't a nice IC controller like on the HP-85 PSU :-) Regards, John _________________________________________________________________ Get Hotmail on your mobile. Text MSN to 63463 now! http://mobile.uk.msn.com/pc/mail.aspx From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Thu Apr 10 01:58:41 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 23:58:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Bringing up an older Mac Message-ID: I've just brought up a Mac SE/30 with fresh disks and noticed that the monitor occasionally gets wavy or shudders. How should I proceed in fixing this? For those interested: Apple has all sorts of old stuff at http://www.info.apple.com/support/oldersoftwarelist.html You'll need the Linux version of Stuffit from ftp://ftp.allume.com/pub/archive/linux/StuffIt/stuffit520.611linux-i386.tgz. Unstuff the file you get from Apple, the Unstuff the .data file. Then make the disk like this: dd if=System\ Startup of=/dev/fd0 bs=84 skip=1 -- 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 legalize at xmission.com Thu Apr 10 01:54:20 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:54:20 -0600 Subject: Help Wanted Picking Items from NASA In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:44:14 -0500. Message-ID: In article , Randy Dawson writes: > GO PICK UP THE MMU For those of us not infected by TLA-itis, what's MMU? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From jvdg at sparcpark.net Thu Apr 10 02:35:18 2008 From: jvdg at sparcpark.net (Joost van de Griek) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:35:18 +0200 Subject: Help Wanted Picking Items from NASA In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 4/10/08, Richard wrote: > In article , > Randy Dawson writes: > > > GO PICK UP THE MMU > > For those of us not infected by TLA-itis, what's MMU? Manned Maneuvering Unit: . .tsooJ From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Thu Apr 10 04:41:11 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:41:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card Message-ID: I'm trying to find a Micron Xceed Color30 card and Greyscale30 card for a Mac SE/30. What I'm trying to do is enable 8-bit greyscale on the internal monitor. I've seen brief references to a clone of this sort of thing, but nothing more. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu From spectre at floodgap.com Thu Apr 10 07:38:42 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:38:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: from David Griffith at "Apr 10, 8 02:41:11 am" Message-ID: <200804101238.m3ACcgbN007234@floodgap.com> > I'm trying to find a Micron Xceed Color30 card and Greyscale30 card for a > Mac SE/30. Good luck. Those things are quite rare. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Quoth the Web Server, "404!" ----------------------------------------------- From ian_primus at yahoo.com Thu Apr 10 07:46:08 2008 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:46:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- David Griffith wrote: > > I've just brought up a Mac SE/30 with fresh disks > and noticed that the > monitor occasionally gets wavy or shudders. How > should I proceed in > fixing this? When you say fresh disks, did you mount two internal hard disks inside the SE/30? Because I did that once, and the magnetic field from the disk interfered with the monitor. I had to make up a bracket to move the second disk an inch farther away from the picture tube. But, in my case, it was because the magnets in the disk were bending the lower corner of the screen - it wasn't moving wavy, it was fixed wavy. You're probably going to need to replace a couple of capacitors on the analog board. There's one particular capacitor that comes to mind as causing a different problem, it's nonpolar, so watch out. Is it like a 60hz kind of a wave in the picture, or is it more random? A wave through the screen, like a waving flag? It's been a while since I fixed one of these, so I don't remember off the top of my head. But I have a book at home, forget the name, but it's a Macintosh repair guide that has a lot of good info to help pinpoint failed parts. It has a purple cover. Anyone remember this book? This is going to drive me nuts all day. :) -Ian From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 10 08:04:49 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:04:49 -0400 Subject: RL01/02 vs. RK06/07 terminators? Message-ID: <94F143FC-C12B-4D9A-9D6B-1C1BAD8107F0@neurotica.com> My dusty memory tells me that RL01/02 terminators are different from RK06/07 terminators. Can anyone here confirm? Thanks, -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From rdawson16 at hotmail.com Thu Apr 10 08:29:42 2008 From: rdawson16 at hotmail.com (Randy Dawson) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:29:42 -0500 Subject: Help Wanted Picking Items from NASA Message-ID: Manned Maneuvering Unit, the 'rocket backpack' - the first machine man flew untethered in space. http://www.lockheedmartin.com/aboutus/history/MannedManeuveringUnit.html Randy > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > From: legalize at xmission.com > Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:54:20 -0600 > Subject: Re: Help Wanted Picking Items from NASA > > > In article , > Randy Dawson writes: > > > GO PICK UP THE MMU > > For those of us not infected by TLA-itis, what's MMU? > -- > "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download > > > Legalize Adulthood! _________________________________________________________________ Going green? See the top 12 foods to eat organic. http://green.msn.com/galleries/photos/photos.aspx?gid=164&ocid=T003MSN51N1653A From rescue at hawkmountain.net Thu Apr 10 09:16:50 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:16:50 -0400 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47FE2152.7050101@hawkmountain.net> David Griffith wrote: > I'm trying to find a Micron Xceed Color30 card and Greyscale30 card for a > Mac SE/30. What I'm trying to do is enable 8-bit greyscale on the > internal monitor. I've seen brief references to a clone of this sort of > thing, but nothing more. > If anyone finds a stash of these... count me in :-) I have a TwinSpark adapter to put into my SE/30 with a Daystar Turbo 040 or Daystar Powercache 030. Adding internal greyscale would be really nice .... (of course there is the nice display vs networked issue... but I suppose depending on the OS you could use a scsi based ethernet). -- Curt From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Thu Apr 10 11:30:40 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:30:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > --- David Griffith wrote: > > > I've just brought up a Mac SE/30 with fresh disks > > and noticed that the > > monitor occasionally gets wavy or shudders. How > > should I proceed in > > fixing this? > > When you say fresh disks, did you mount two internal > hard disks inside the SE/30? No. I meant fresh floppies. > You're probably going to need to replace a couple of > capacitors on the analog board. There's one particular > capacitor that comes to mind as causing a different > problem, it's nonpolar, so watch out. Is it like a > 60hz kind of a wave in the picture, or is it more > random? A wave through the screen, like a waving flag? It happens perhaps once every ten seconds. The disturbance is something like a ripple or wave that crawls up the side of the screen. -- 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 Apr 10 11:56:24 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:56:24 -0400 Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552 (National Semiconductor) Message-ID: <200804101256.25228.rtellason@verizon.net> Have any of you guys ever heard of this chip? It's new to me... ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552 (National Semiconductor) Date: Thursday 10 April 2008 08:58 From: "Michel" To: roys-tech-chat at yahoogroups.com Hello all, I am trying to repair a Systron Donner Frequency Counter model 6254 that does not count well. This counter is build with "simple" TTL chips only. (I have no manual nor schematic). The culprit (found by swapping chips) is a TTL chip from NS : DM8552 It is a decade counter with latches and tri-state outputs. Since I did not find any source for replacement chip, I have thought to build some equivalent circuit with maybe 74LS160 and 74LS393. My problem is that I have no datasheet except pinout for DM8552 (found there http://www.datasheetarchive.com/pdf/1215336.pdf ). Does anybody have more information about it ? Many thanks in advance, Michel Grenoble - France. ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roys-tech-chat/ ------------------------------------------------------- -- 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 Thu Apr 10 12:10:33 2008 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:10:33 -0400 Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: References: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <21FAE2D2-3F58-4176-A2FF-BA657B116A74@colourfull.com> On Apr 10, 2008, at 12:30 PM, David Griffith wrote: > On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > >> --- David Griffith wrote: >> > > It happens perhaps once every ten seconds. The disturbance is > something > like a ripple or wave that crawls up the side of the screen. > > -- > David Griffith > dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu > Does the system still have the original shielding in it on the motherboard and analog board? Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com From slawmaster at gmail.com Thu Apr 10 12:19:05 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:19:05 -0700 Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: References: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804101019n7f442d2ai125ab81313235952@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 9:30 AM, David Griffith wrote: > It happens perhaps once every ten seconds. The disturbance is something > like a ripple or wave that crawls up the side of the screen. > Ugh. I've seen that on X and Plan 9. A couple suggestions: -Make sure the signal cable isn't going near a big power supply or line. Actually, isolate the monitor as much as you can by getting it away from the wall, away from the case, away from your speakers. -Try setting the display to a lower refresh rate, if you can--I had a very similar problem in X until I dropped the refresh to 60Hz. Hope this helps John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From mtapley at swri.edu Thu Apr 10 12:57:39 2008 From: mtapley at swri.edu (Mark Tapley) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:57:39 -0500 Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: <200804101700.m3AH0XXw090996@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804101700.m3AH0XXw090996@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: At 12:00 -0500 4/10/08, David Griffith wrote: >I've just brought up a Mac SE/30 with fresh disks and noticed that the >monitor occasionally gets wavy or shudders. How should I proceed in >fixing this? I had a long, long series of problems with my Mac Plus. They got pretty much cured when I took loose the power cable connecting the Analog/video board to the digital board, cleaned the pins (sanded lightly and wiped with ethanol), and put some silicone oil spray on to inhibit corrosion. I had previously done this at the digital board end, but the resistance (ohms to tens of ohms, and variable, responding to temperature and vibration) was at the analog board end. I finally discovered I could diagnose these by using an ohmmeter between the solder pads on the back sides of the boards at either end of the cable. I don't know how many differences there are between SE/30 and Plus, but some, for sure. Be very careful disconnecting at the analog board end of the cable - pull too hard, and your hand can smack into the thin end of the CRT, letting the vacuum out. I have a .pdf of the Apple Service Manual for the SE/30, which I'll be happy to forward (off-list, obviously). On the Plus, there are also a set of variable resistors on the analog board setting various parameters (width, height, etc.) of the video. Those might also be corroded. Running them back and forth and then back to the original settings might clear that, or some contact cleaner (which is probably a better treatment for the connectors than what I list above) might be a good idea. Finally, capacitors on the analog board might be going bad. An ESR meter could give you some indications there. Additional clues from somebody with an SE/30 would be very valuable! At 12:00 -0500 4/10/08, Ian Primus wrote: >But I have a >book at home, forget the name, but it's a Macintosh >repair guide that has a lot of good info to help >pinpoint failed parts. It has a purple cover. Anyone >remember this book? This is going to drive me nuts all >day. :) The "Dead Mac Scrolls"? "Macintosh Repair and Upgrade Secrets"? Google for Larry Pina, I think he's the most-recognized author in this area. At 12:00 -0500 4/10/08, David Griffith wrote: >It happens perhaps once every ten seconds. The disturbance is something >like a ripple or wave that crawls up the side of the screen. Oh. Probably my advice above is good in general but not specific to this problem. I think the Pina books may well address it though. If Jeff W. is listening, he can probably verify that. -- - 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 eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 10 13:14:37 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:14:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552 (National Semiconductor) In-Reply-To: <200804101256.25228.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200804101256.25228.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <41184.64.62.206.10.1207851277.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> > Have any of you guys ever heard of this chip? It's new to me... It should be in the National Semiconductor 1974 (IIRC) "Logic" databook. I don't have mine handy, but one could probably get a photocopy at Halted in Sunnyvale. National Semiconductor, Signetics, Motorola, and probably other vendors had their own proprietary series of TTL chips before it became apparent that the 7400 series was going to win. It was a source of considerable confusion that the Motorola TTL parts were the MC4000 series, which was completely different from the RCA CD4000 series CMOS (and its equivalents). Because Motorola was already using 4000 series numbers for their TTL, when they added CD4000 equivalent CMOS parts to their product line, they added a leading one, making it the MC14000 series. I've long wondered how much money one could get for the MC4040 on eBay: "rare Motorola 4040 chip" :-) From trag at io.com Thu Apr 10 14:13:00 2008 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:13:00 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: <200804101701.m3AH1P7x091039@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804101701.m3AH1P7x091039@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <37603.209.163.133.242.1207854780.squirrel@webmail.io.com> > Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:16:50 -0400 > From: "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." > David Griffith wrote: >> I'm trying to find a Micron Xceed Color30 card and Greyscale30 card for >> a >> Mac SE/30. > If anyone finds a stash of these... count me in :-) Heh. Typically, $300 - $500 on the rare occasions when they do show up on Ebay. I want one too...but not that much. I don't remember the exact URL, but google on Gamba SE/30 to get to a page with much discussion about this card. There are also a number of threads about it in the forums at 68kmla.net (68K Macintosh Liberation Army; rescuers of old, abandoned and unwanted 68K based Macintoshes). Some other discussion at applefritter.com's forums. The book the poster on the other related thread is probably thinking about is Larry Pina's "Macintosh Repair and Upgrade Secrets", which Tony probably disapproves of. :-) Pina discusses and recommends replacement of components based on the items which, in his experience, most often lead to certain symptoms. He does not discuss doing an actual probe and diagnosis to determine the failed component, which is why I good naturedly refer to Tony's disapproval. There are a couple of later variants on the above book, such as "Macintosh II Repair and Upgrade Secrets", "Mac Classic and SE: Repair and Upgrade Secrets", etc. These sometimes go for ridiculous sums on Ebay as well, but are often available at Amazon or other used book sites for very reasonable prices. At the moment "The Dead Mac Scrolls" are starting at over $100 on Amazon, but if the past is a guide, it will show up for under $20 if you wait around a while. Jeff Walther From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Apr 10 14:17:48 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:17:48 -0400 Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: References: <200804101700.m3AH0XXw090996@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <200804101517.48869.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 10 April 2008 13:57, Mark Tapley wrote: > On the Plus, there are also a set of variable resistors on > the analog board setting various parameters (width, height, etc.) of > the video. Those might also be corroded. Running them back and forth > and then back to the original settings might clear that, or some > contact cleaner (which is probably a better treatment for the > connectors than what I list above) might be a good idea. I'd tend to avoid tweaking those if at all possible, unless you have a pretty good indication that it's the problem... > Finally, capacitors on the analog board might be going bad. > An ESR meter could give you some indications there. I think that's pretty likely. I had one monitor that I was given a number of years back, EGA when I'd been running mono before that (g), and it was _very_ wavy, so changing the cap out between that and a scrapper nearby with a similar chassis fixed it. And speaking of older monitors, I mentioned this in here once before, but this guy is offering me a *pile* of older monitors -- mono, cga, ega, but nothing newer. I'm holding off on going and getting them because I don't really have a place to put them at this point in time, no storage available, and he said in recent correspondence that I'd need a truck or a van to be able to haul them all away. I've got past correspondence from a few of you folks, but anybody else who's interested, drop me a line offlist, and let's talk. I'd sure rather get 'em to somebody who can use them than scrap them 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 rtellason at verizon.net Thu Apr 10 14:23:29 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:23:29 -0400 Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552 (National Semiconductor) In-Reply-To: <41184.64.62.206.10.1207851277.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804101256.25228.rtellason@verizon.net> <41184.64.62.206.10.1207851277.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <200804101523.29554.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 10 April 2008 14:14, Eric Smith wrote: > > Have any of you guys ever heard of this chip? It's new to me... > > It should be in the National Semiconductor 1974 (IIRC) "Logic" databook. > I don't have mine handy, but one could probably get a photocopy at > Halted in Sunnyvale. He's in Europe. :-) He did snag that datasheet (as did I) mentioned in the original post, and it doesn't say much about how the inputs act, which is where the problem is. >From a subsequent post where I'd asked about date codes: "The datecodes indicate year 1980. This chip is appropriate for building a counter with multiplexed LED display because of the tri-state latched outputs. But I'm a bit puzzled by the names of input pins. Some are close to what can be found in more usual counters (74160, etc.), but I'm not sure they behave the same !" That's later than I would have thought. > National Semiconductor, Signetics, Motorola, and probably other vendors > had their own proprietary series of TTL chips before it became apparent > that the 7400 series was going to win. Yeah, I have some data on that stuff but not very much. > It was a source of considerable confusion that the Motorola TTL parts were > the MC4000 series, which was completely different from the RCA CD4000 series > CMOS (and its equivalents). I do know about "MTTL I", "II", and "III" :-) and why it is that Motorola had to use 14000 numbers for their versions of CMOS parts. I've never been all that clear on the exact differences between the series, but then since I've never run into them anyhow (excepting some MC4044s I have here) it's not been much of a problem. > Because Motorola was already using 4000 series numbers for their TTL, > when they added CD4000 equivalent CMOS parts to their product line, they > added a leading one, making it the MC14000 series. Yup... > I've long wondered how much money one could get for the MC4040 on eBay: > "rare Motorola 4040 chip" :-) I don't recall offhand what the MC4040 was. The MC4044 is a bit of an interesting part, though. Used in some early c64s, in conjunction with 74LS629 if I'm remembering right. -- 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 Thu Apr 10 15:51:58 2008 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:51:58 -0800 Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552(National Semiconductor) References: <200804101256.25228.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <47FE7DED.BA045CDB@cs.ubc.ca> "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > Have any of you guys ever heard of this chip? It's new to me... > > ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- > > Subject: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552 > (National Semiconductor) > Date: Thursday 10 April 2008 08:58 > From: "Michel" > To: roys-tech-chat at yahoogroups.com > > Hello all, > > I am trying to repair a Systron Donner Frequency Counter model 6254 > that does not count well. This counter is build with "simple" TTL > chips only. (I have no manual nor schematic). > The culprit (found by swapping chips) is a TTL chip from NS : DM8552 > It is a decade counter with latches and tri-state outputs. > Since I did not find any source for replacement chip, I have thought > to build some equivalent circuit with maybe 74LS160 and 74LS393. > My problem is that I have no datasheet except pinout for DM8552 > (found there http://www.datasheetarchive.com/pdf/1215336.pdf ). > Does anybody have more information about it ? > > Many thanks in advance, > Michel > Grenoble - France. Usually I'm asking about weird NatSemi chips, but this is one I can help with, I have it documented in a 1976 NS TTL databook. I'll communicate with the OP to try to get info to him. The 8552 has some other unusual features to support zero-blanking. (..always happy to talk about electronic counters, just yesterday I got an HP 524B from 1957 functioning, after two weeks of cleaning it up. It's a boat anchor, but it's tube digital (84 tubes). (But it's probably OT for this list). From scheefj at netscape.net Thu Apr 10 14:56:37 2008 From: scheefj at netscape.net (scheefj at netscape.net) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:56:37 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <47FC5CD8.5040409@msu.edu> References: <47FC5CD8.5040409@msu.edu> Message-ID: <47FE70F5.2060803@netscape.net> Josh, Do you have the setup diskette for the Aboveboard? Almost anyone knows more about PS/2 and MC machines than me, but I recall that expansion cards came with a diskette to update the machine configuration. Jim Josh Dersch wrote: > Title says it all... I picked up a "new" (still in shrink-wrap) > AboveBoard MC with the intent of using it in my PS/2 model 80 and I'm > having serious issues getting it to function properly. > > The Model 80 has 4mb of planar memory installed, and I've been running > it with no issues with an Orchid Ramquest 8/32 stocked with 8mb of > memory (so 12mb total). In an attempt to get a little more memory, > I've tried running with the Orchid replaced by the AboveBoard... > > The AboveBoard came with 4mb installed (4 1mb simms) which I initially > replaced with 32mb (8 4mb simms, known good). I've since tried > running with the original RAM, as well as other RAM I have lying > around, without any success. I've tried running in different slots > (both 32 and 16 bit) with no change. I've also adjusted the ram speed > in the configuration page (options are 100ns or 80/85ns) with no > change, though it seems slightly happier with 80/85ns selected. > > The behavior is very random -- sometimes the startup memory count > (which is separate from the memory count in the PS/2's BIOS) fails to > count all the memory -- on these occasions you can see it "pause" > slightly during the count as if it's hitting bad memory and skipping > over it. Sometimes it counts all the memory just fine. Regardless, > the OS crashes or panics (tried NT & Debian Linux, haven't tried OS/2 > yet) eventually. I've run memtest86 on it and what I find is that if > the memory count is successful, memtest reports no errors, but > attempts to run actual OSes crash after awhile. > > I've read that the Model 80 has trouble (not sure precisely /what/ > trouble) with more than 16mb of memory, but even limiting the > AboveBoard to 4mb is problematic. > > Anyone have any ideas? Similar/different experiences? > > Thanks, > Josh > > From jpero at sympatico.ca Thu Apr 10 12:14:36 2008 From: jpero at sympatico.ca (jpero at sympatico.ca) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:14:36 +0000 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <47FC5CD8.5040409@msu.edu> Message-ID: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> > Title says it all... I picked up a "new" (still in shrink-wrap) > AboveBoard MC with the intent of using it in my PS/2 model 80 and I'm > having serious issues getting it to function properly. > > > I've read that the Model 80 has trouble (not sure precisely /what/ > trouble) with more than 16mb of memory, but even limiting the AboveBoard > to 4mb is problematic. > > Anyone have any ideas? Similar/different experiences? > > Thanks, > Josh 1. The card is 32 bit not 16 bit MCA? Have to be 32 bits for stablity and speed in your 386 (model 80 are.), on this reason I went with 32 bit MCA memory card in my 70-Axx. You need to get a memory card of 32bit MCA using 72 pin SIMMs. This ram card model you got is specifically made for 8088 and 286 models. 2. The simms have to be 9 chips ONLY and speed 80ns or less for this aboveboard/MC. Nothing else will work right on these models. If you get 32bit MCA ram cards using 72 pin simms, if you got quality generic ones, modify them to IBM specs by arranging the presence sense lines via 0 ohm SMD resistors. Info are out there on 'net. 3. That card is good as expanded ram card in 386 machines. 4. You are correct that these older machines have hard 16MB limitations due to DMA limited to 24bits I think (same as 286) that as far as I know. Linky: http://ps-2.kev009.com:8081/ohlandl/misc/Intel_Aboveboard-MC.html Cheers, Wizard From eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 10 16:28:35 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:28:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552 (National Semiconductor) In-Reply-To: <200804101523.29554.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200804101256.25228.rtellason@verizon.net> <41184.64.62.206.10.1207851277.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <200804101523.29554.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <53577.64.62.206.10.1207862915.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> I wrote: > It should be in the National Semiconductor 1974 (IIRC) "Logic" databook. > I don't have mine handy, but one could probably get a photocopy at > Halted in Sunnyvale. Roy wrote: > He's in Europe. :-) I pointed it out because: 1) It might be possible to find that databook (or another National Logic databook from that era) in a similar electronic surplus store elsewhere. 2) Someone on the list could go to Halted, get a copy, and scan it for him. I didn't volunteer to do that myself because I'm too busy right now, but if he doesn't get the real datasheet from somewhere else soon, I might be able to do it. > I don't recall offhand what the MC4040 was. IIRC, it's a (dual?) four-line demultiplexer. Eric From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Thu Apr 10 16:42:18 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:42:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: <21FAE2D2-3F58-4176-A2FF-BA657B116A74@colourfull.com> References: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <21FAE2D2-3F58-4176-A2FF-BA657B116A74@colourfull.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Robert Borsuk wrote: > > It happens perhaps once every ten seconds. The disturbance is > > something like a ripple or wave that crawls up the side of the screen. > > Does the system still have the original shielding in it on the > motherboard and analog board? I haven't opened it up yet. -- 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 Apr 10 16:38:37 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:38:37 -0400 Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552 (National Semiconductor) In-Reply-To: <53577.64.62.206.10.1207862915.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804101256.25228.rtellason@verizon.net> <200804101523.29554.rtellason@verizon.net> <53577.64.62.206.10.1207862915.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <200804101738.37429.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 10 April 2008 17:28, Eric Smith wrote: > I wrote: > > It should be in the National Semiconductor 1974 (IIRC) "Logic" databook. > > I don't have mine handy, but one could probably get a photocopy at > > Halted in Sunnyvale. > > Roy wrote: > > He's in Europe. :-) > > I pointed it out because: > > 1) It might be possible to find that databook (or another National > Logic databook from that era) in a similar electronic surplus > store elsewhere. > > 2) Someone on the list could go to Halted, get a copy, and scan it > for him. I didn't volunteer to do that myself because I'm too > busy right now, but if he doesn't get the real datasheet from > somewhere else soon, I might be able to do it. Ok, forwarded to my tech-chat list... > > I don't recall offhand what the MC4040 was. > > IIRC, it's a (dual?) four-line demultiplexer. I do have some old Motorola books around here someplace, but right now I have no idea which box they're in. I notice that one's missing from my parts pages, too. Perhaps one of these days I'll find the time to work on fixing that... :-) -- 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 Apr 10 16:46:49 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:46:49 +0100 (BST) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: <37603.209.163.133.242.1207854780.squirrel@webmail.io.com> from "Jeff Walther" at Apr 10, 8 02:13:00 pm Message-ID: > The book the poster on the other related thread is probably thinking about > is Larry Pina's "Macintosh Repair and Upgrade Secrets", which Tony > probably disapproves of. :-) Pina discusses and recommends replacement > of components based on the items which, in his experience, most often lead > to certain symptoms. He does not discuss doing an actual probe and > diagnosis to determine the failed component, which is why I good naturedly > refer to Tony's disapproval. And you'd be right :-). It's what I call 'lucky dip servicing'. It may be useful if you have lots of similar machines to repair, or if you run a repair shop, or similar. Perhaps 95% of the time the book will get it right, or rather the most common failure is what's gone wrong with the machine on the bench. But that other 5% of the time, it'll be wrong. And becuase the book doesn't explain the reasoning behind the diagnosis it gives, it won't help you find the real fault, even if the real cause is a component in the same part of the circuit as the one you've just replaced based on said book. I must admit that just abotu every repairer uses a bit of this 'lucky dip method'. There'll be common causes for problems that he'll check first. But a _good_ repairer will know how to continue if none of those are the problem. Incidentally, had the original machine been a Mac+, I could possily have helped, as I've worked on those and have a fair idea how the analogue board works. But IIRC the SE/30 is very different, and I don't have one of those to look at. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 10 16:32:20 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:32:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: from "John S" at Apr 10, 8 00:44:42 am Message-ID: > > > Hi, > > I've started to setch the output circuitry, not 100% accutarely as my > meter shows all the transformer windings as 0 ohm, so I have some points > that measure 0 ohm to ground which may be ground or maybe a transformer > output. Thsi is not surpising. the secondary windings of most SMPSU transformers are perhaps 10 turns of thick wire. When I've traced out scheamtics of SMPSUs (and for that matter monitors, which also have low-resistance coils/transformers in them) I've had to desolder all 'wound' components from the PCB. It's not too bad if said components have the connections brought out to pins which are soldered to the PCB, you can remove the component in one go, and have no problems getting it back correctly. But some PMPSUs have chopper transformers with flying leads for some of the secondary winding connections. THose have to be desoldered, and a note made of how to get them back. Be warned that an inaccurate circuit diagram will drive you mad. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 10 16:28:20 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:28:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: <200804091805.16468.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Apr 9, 8 06:05:16 pm Message-ID: > > I think it's reasonable to asusme the chopper is working (otherwise you= > 'd > > get no outputs at all). Does it seem to be running continuously, or do > > you get the 'tweet tweet tweet' of a PSU that's starting, detecting a > > fault, shutting down, and repearing? > > Scoping tbings in there would sure be informative. The prolem is that if this is like most small SMPSUs, then almost all the 'interesting' circuitry (oscillator, etc) is on the mains side of the isolation barrier. And therefore you can't just connect a 'scope to it, not unless you like shorting out the mains via one of the rectifier diodes and the earth (ground) lead of the 'scope. The right way to do it, of course, is to use an isolating transformer, but not everybody has one of those in the workshop. I certainly do not recomend 'floating the scope;' (removing its earth lead so the 'scope chassis can sit at half mains voltage, or whatever), even though this is suggested in one service manual I have if an isolating transformer is not avaialble. I have this objection to large metal ohjects sitting at dangerous voltages. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 10 16:37:32 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:37:32 +0100 (BST) Subject: RL01/02 vs. RK06/07 terminators? In-Reply-To: <94F143FC-C12B-4D9A-9D6B-1C1BAD8107F0@neurotica.com> from "Dave McGuire" at Apr 10, 8 09:04:49 am Message-ID: > > > My dusty memory tells me that RL01/02 terminators are different > from RK06/07 terminators. Can anyone here confirm? The _cables_ are different (the RK07 one has all pins but 1 (termination power) wired, the RL one has fewer pins wired), but AFAIK the terminators are identical. I've never seen a terminator that doesn't terminate all pins used on either type fo drive, certainly. -tony From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Thu Apr 10 17:00:37 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:00:37 -0500 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47FE8E05.3050804@gmail.com> Tony Duell wrote: > Be warned that an inaccurate circuit diagram will drive you mad. :-) Not as bad as an inaccurate circuit diagram* produced by someone else, when you don't have the physical PCB handy. Cue "how the heck does *that* ever work?" hair-tearing moments... * manufacturers seem notoriously guilty for this, unfortunately. From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Apr 10 17:16:21 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:16:21 -0400 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804101816.21352.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 10 April 2008 17:28, Tony Duell wrote: > > > I think it's reasonable to asusme the chopper is working (otherwise > > > you= > > > > 'd > > > > > get no outputs at all). Does it seem to be running continuously, or do > > > you get the 'tweet tweet tweet' of a PSU that's starting, detecting a > > > fault, shutting down, and repearing? > > > > Scoping tbings in there would sure be informative. > > The prolem is that if this is like most small SMPSUs, then almost all the > 'interesting' circuitry (oscillator, etc) is on the mains side of the > isolation barrier. And therefore you can't just connect a 'scope to it, > not unless you like shorting out the mains via one of the rectifier > diodes and the earth (ground) lead of the 'scope. This is true, though at the time I wrote that I was thinking about scoping the outputs. > The right way to do it, of course, is to use an isolating transformer, > but not everybody has one of those in the workshop. I certainly do not > recomend 'floating the scope;' (removing its earth lead so the 'scope > chassis can sit at half mains voltage, or whatever), even though this is > suggested in one service manual I have if an isolating transformer is not > avaialble. I have this objection to large metal ohjects sitting at > dangerous voltages. Yes indeed. One way to achieve isolation is to get a couple of filament transformers that are of similar voltage ratings and use them both, tying both low-voltage windings together and using one primary as the output. I'd think that they wouldn't need to be particularly hefty if you're not going to load the supply 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 ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 10 17:22:34 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:22:34 +0100 (BST) Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: <47FE8E05.3050804@gmail.com> from "Jules Richardson" at Apr 10, 8 05:00:37 pm Message-ID: > > Tony Duell wrote: > > Be warned that an inaccurate circuit diagram will drive you mad. > > :-) > > Not as bad as an inaccurate circuit diagram* produced by someone else, when > you don't have the physical PCB handy. Cue "how the heck does *that* ever > work?" hair-tearing moments... Indeed. > > * manufacturers seem notoriously guilty for this, unfortunately. Perhaps somebody can explain the PSU scheamtic in the TRS-80 Model 3 Technicla Manual sometime. Note, I am not asking how the actual PSU works, I have my own, (more) accurate schamtic, and I understnad that. Just what the heck dows the manual show? -tony From tosteve at yahoo.com Thu Apr 10 21:06:30 2008 From: tosteve at yahoo.com (steven stengel) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:06:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Compaq Portable 1 for sale - between Boise and San Diego Message-ID: <192581.1838.qm@web51612.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Contact Joe if interested: lather222 at hotmail.com Original Compaq Portable I for sale for $??.??. It boots to green cursor, but no floppies available to verify. Joe is in Boise Idaho, but will be DRIVING to San Diego and Los Angeles area via Las Vegas in early June. Price unknown, but around $50 probably acceptable. Contact him if interested: lather222 at hotmail.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From aek at bitsavers.org Thu Apr 10 22:49:57 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:49:57 -0700 Subject: DM8552 Message-ID: <47FEDFE5.5030907@bitsavers.org> > Someone on the list could go to Halted, get a copy, and scan it for him. I scanned the entire data book last week. I'll see about getting it on line. From aek at bitsavers.org Thu Apr 10 23:24:55 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:24:55 -0700 Subject: DM8552 Message-ID: <47FEE817.8060708@bitsavers.org> http://bitsavers.org/pdf/national/_dataSheets/DM8552.pdf From dkelvey at hotmail.com Thu Apr 10 23:55:08 2008 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:55:08 -0700 Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: References: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu ---snip--- > > It happens perhaps once every ten seconds. The disturbance is something > like a ripple or wave that crawls up the side of the screen. > Hi It sounds like a bad primary filter capacitor. I assume it is a switcher. If so, there are high voltage capacitors on the primary side. If it is a linear, it would be low voltage on the secondary. Try adding additional capacitance in parallel with the one that is there. If it gets better you'll know what to do. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_video_042008 From Arno_1983 at gmx.de Fri Apr 11 02:34:46 2008 From: Arno_1983 at gmx.de (Arno Kletzander) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:34:46 +0200 Subject: Fwd: [comp.sys.sgi.hardwar...] Power Challenge XL available Message-ID: <20080411073446.159270@gmx.net> Richard wrote: > This message has been forwarded from Usenet. To reply to the > original author, use the email address from the forwarded message. > > Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 00:39:44 -0700 (PDT) > Groups: comp.sys.sgi.hardware,comp.sys.sgi.admin > From: "fischerc at itam.cas.cz" > Org: http://groups.google.com > Subject: Power Challenge XL available > ======== > Hi everybody > We have a rather big piece of HW: SGI Power Challenge XL (6 x R8000 at 75 > MHz, 1G ram, a few 2-4Gb SCSI discs) available here in Prague (CZ, > EU). > The computer was cleanly shut down on May 5, 2004 and since that time > was not touched. We intend to scrap it now. If anybody wants to have > some spare parts or even the complete beast, let me know within 1-2 > months. > I regret to say, that this was the last SGI machine we have here. > > Anyway, I would like to express my thanks to the SGI admin comunity > for all the help I've received in past years. > > Sincerely yours, > Cyril F. Hey, Prague - we have relatives there! Unfortunately the machine seems to be a bit too big to fit into a Volkswagen Golf Variant, else we could have offered to rescue it on our next visit there. If somebody feels like it's road trip time for this baby and an appointment can be made, I'm volunteering as a loading and handling assistant! There are stacks of testimonials from satisfied customers ;-) So long, Arno -- Arno Kletzander Student Assistant // Studentische Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de Psst! Geheimtipp: Online Games kostenlos spielen bei den GMX Free Games! http://games.entertainment.gmx.net/de/entertainment/games/free From jwallis at fbiacademy.edu Thu Apr 10 08:14:16 2008 From: jwallis at fbiacademy.edu (Wallis, Jane ) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:14:16 -0400 Subject: IS32 Optic RAM Datasheet and Steve Ciarcia's Micro D-CAM Artical Message-ID: Mr. Dunfield, In a 2004 posting you indicated that you had a copy of the Micron Technology IS32 OpticRAM data sheet. Have you ever scanned the document? Would it be possible to obtain a copy? Your assistance would be appreciated. Jane Wallis From jfk at kuenzigbooks.com Thu Apr 10 08:18:00 2008 From: jfk at kuenzigbooks.com (John F. Kuenzig) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:18:00 -0400 Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <16102.88533.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <47FE1388.8060309@kuenzigbooks.com> Perhaps the Dead Mac Scrolls? John >But I have a >book at home, forget the name, but it's a Macintosh >repair guide that has a lot of good info to help >pinpoint failed parts. It has a purple cover. Anyone >remember this book? This is going to drive me nuts all >day. :) > >-Ian > > > > -- Sincerely, John Kuenzig, Bookseller Kuenzig Books PO Box 452, Topsfield, MA 01983 978-887-4053 9am-7pm Eastern Standard Time 866-512-3053 tollfree 9am-7pm EST orders at kuenzigbooks.com (orders or inquiries) Important Books in Science, Technology and Speculative Fiction Secure ordering at http://www.kuenzigbooks.com Save time, money and earn other exclusive benefits. Members of: ABAA http://www.abaa.org MARIAB http://www.mariab.org ESA http://www.ephemerasociety.org Buying 18th-21st century books, manuscripts, ephemera, scientific instruments, artifacts, and related material From charlene at dontmissyourlife.com Thu Apr 10 08:42:35 2008 From: charlene at dontmissyourlife.com (Charlene Ann Baumbich) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:42:35 -0500 Subject: HP Portable Vectra CS Model 20 Message-ID: <001401c89b10$bbff9390$020fa8c0@your03667082de> Via Google, I just found a two-year-old post of yours (http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2005-December/208439.html), which was in response to a four-years'-previous post about an HP Portable Vectra. You said you collect them. Well, I just unearthed my old one from the back of a closet. Interested in buying it? I see one listed on e-Bay for $499.99 OBO. I'm certainly not looking for that much! Charlene From steerex at ccvn.com Thu Apr 10 12:09:36 2008 From: steerex at ccvn.com (Steve Robertson) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:09:36 -0400 Subject: PC <-> HPIB <-> CS80 stuff ; was HP-IB drive simulator References: <47D04517.7010509@Rikers.org> <47D04B63.3030100@Rikers.org><8E8FF5A2-B710-4AD5-B5C6-03EBDAB2FC24@xlisper.com> <47D9A7FE.2060102@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <002401c89b2d$a7ad86a0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> > Keep us posted on progress. What card do you have on the PC side? I'm > very interested to hear your progress. I've been watching for a good > cheap hp-ib pci or usb adapter, but I've not picked one up yet. > > Can't seem to find a good _and_ cheap one. :) > > -- > Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org > Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ > BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! Yo, This thread got me interested in playing with HP-IB stuff again so, I installed an ISA board in a Linux system and tried to see if I could make it do something useful. After days of tinkering, I've finally had some moderate success. The card I have uses a NEC7210 HP-IB controller chip which in it's self is a problem. There is very little documentation on the web for this chip, and the register / function assiociations are pretty funky. I found a few code samples but, in my opinion, they aren't very well documented. For instance, to make the board a CIC (Controller In Charge), where it will send command strings (data + ATN aserted), you set the chip to assert the IFC (Interface Clear). When you clear the IFC, the board remains in the CIC mode. A found just one comment in one document that briefly mentions this mechanism. To make the chip send data (non-commands), you put it in standby mode (I think?)... WTF...It's just screwy! The programming model for the 9914 is much simpler and I have considerable documentation (and some experience) to support that chip. I do have several STD bus HPIB interface cards w/docs but, no ISA 9914 cards. So, I'm stuck with the board I have. Last evening, I finally got the board to talk to a simple instrument (HP 3437 multimeter). It will send the meter's Talk Address and then listen to the data coming back from the meter. Comparitively, it's a simple protocol but, you wouldn't believe how long it took to get that far :-) I hope in the next few days to get PC to talk to a more complicated device. At this time, the intended target is a CS80 harddrive. I do have experience with those drives so, I only have to learn the programming model for the card and not the device. I'm gonna see if I can write a bootable image to the disk and then boot a HP1000 from it. BTW: I did look at the HP-IB disk simulator project but, didn't find it useful for my goals. I also took another look at the Linux-HPIB project and see that it has been rekindled. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a good build on my system. It's probably an incompatability in the kernel... Somewhere... That project is fairly complex in that it installs device drivers for the card where the user can make highlevel system calls and talk to devices. I'm more interested in standalone applications specific to each device. The programs would use a common library for the functions but, that's all. If anyone's interested, let me know and we can discuss the internals in more detail. See yas, Steve Robertson steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com From derschjo at msu.edu Fri Apr 11 01:10:27 2008 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:10:27 -0700 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> Message-ID: <47FF00D3.6030300@msu.edu> jpero at sympatico.ca wrote: >> Title says it all... I picked up a "new" (still in shrink-wrap) >> AboveBoard MC with the intent of using it in my PS/2 model 80 and I'm >> having serious issues getting it to function properly. >> >> >> I've read that the Model 80 has trouble (not sure precisely /what/ >> trouble) with more than 16mb of memory, but even limiting the AboveBoard >> to 4mb is problematic. >> >> Anyone have any ideas? Similar/different experiences? >> >> Thanks, >> Josh >> > > 1. The card is 32 bit not 16 bit MCA? Have to be 32 bits for > stablity and speed in your 386 (model 80 are.), on this reason I went > with 32 bit MCA memory card in my 70-Axx. You need to get a memory > card of 32bit MCA using 72 pin SIMMs. This ram card model you got is > specifically made for 8088 and 286 models. > Card is 32 bit, but also works in 16-bit slots (according to the manual and my experiences). The model 80 is specifically listed in the manual as being compatible, so I'd hope that it is :). The card takes up to 8 30-pin simms, and came populated with 4 1mb simms. > 2. The simms have to be 9 chips ONLY and speed 80ns or less for this > aboveboard/MC. Nothing else will work right on these models. If you > get 32bit MCA ram cards using 72 pin simms, if you got quality > generic ones, modify them to IBM specs by arranging the presence > sense lines via 0 ohm SMD resistors. Info are out there on 'net. > The manual says it'll work with 100ns or 85/80ns (or less) simms; selectable in setup. I've tried mostly 9-chip simms, but I have a few 3-chip ones that yield similar results. Additionally, I get the same results with the RAM that shipped in-box with the board, so I don't think the simms are the problem. > 3. That card is good as expanded ram card in 386 machines. > The manual says it'll work as either extended or expanded memory. > 4. You are correct that these older machines have hard 16MB > limitations due to DMA limited to 24bits I think (same as 286) that > as far as I know. > > Yeah, that's what I read. I don't know what issues that will cause for operating systems running with more than 16mb installed. I guess I'll find out if I can get this to run at all :). > Linky: > http://ps-2.kev009.com:8081/ohlandl/misc/Intel_Aboveboard-MC.html > > Cheers, Wizard > > Thanks for the link and the suggestions; the link indicates that the ROM is software-updatable, I'll see if any updates were released (mine has rom 1.00, so maybe it's a bit buggy.) Thanks, Josh From pcoghlan+cctech at vms.eurokom.ie Fri Apr 11 04:39:38 2008 From: pcoghlan+cctech at vms.eurokom.ie (Peter Coghlan) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:39:38 +0100 (WET-DST) Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) Message-ID: <01MTHSIJGVKIKGYOO7@vms.eurokom.ie> > >One way to achieve isolation is to get a couple of filament transformers that >are of similar voltage ratings and use them both, tying both low-voltage >windings together and using one primary as the output. I'd think that they >wouldn't need to be particularly hefty if you're not going to load the supply >much. > Another approach I keep meaning to try out, also for small loads, is a bathroom shaver outlet isolating transformer. Many, like the one in my junk box, also have the advantage of providing a choice of output voltages so that equipment designed for the other side of the Atlantic only can also be tested. (I last thought of this approach just after I blew the input fuse in a small SMPSU after somehow managing to confuse myself about which were the input rectifiers and which were the output rectifiers. But it was too late then so I didn't bother...) One thing that puts me off though is that I vaguely remember reading a report from someone who had a SMPSU that behaved even more bizarrely than these things usually do when it was powered through a less than ideal isolating transformer. Regards, Peter. From dave06a at dunfield.com Fri Apr 11 07:47:00 2008 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:47:00 -0500 Subject: IS32 Optic RAM Datasheet and Steve Ciarcia's Micro D-CAM Artical In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Mr. Dunfield, > > In a 2004 posting you indicated that you had a copy of the Micron Technology IS32 OpticRAM data > sheet. Have you ever scanned the document? Would it be possible to obtain a copy? > > Your assistance would be appreciated. > Jane Wallis I have placed the IS32 and Micro D-CAM articals at: http://www.dunfield.com/pub/index.htm I will leave them there for a few days - please download asap. -- 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 ian_primus at yahoo.com Fri Apr 11 08:57:38 2008 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:57:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <213106.38790.qm@web52702.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- David Griffith wrote: > I haven't opened it up yet. In case you've never dismantled one of these Macs, you need a really long Torx T-15 screwdriver to remove the two screws in the handle area. If you don't have one, here's how you can make one: Take a Bic stic pen, the kind with the white round barrel, and pull out the pen part and the cap on the other end, leaving only a hollow tube. Jam a 1/4" drive T-15 driver bit into one end of the pen. It will wedge in nicely. Partially sharpen a new, hexagonal wooden pencil (think the yellow kind), and ram it into the other end of the pen barrel. It will also wedge in nicely. You now have a Mac opener tool that can remove and reinstall those two Torx screws in the handle. As stupid as this tool looks, it is strong enough to do this, and last for many Macs. Once you get all the screws out (there are five, three you can get with a normal Torx driver, and two you need the long tool for), lay the mac face down on a soft towel and use the heel of your hand to bang on the case around the seam. Once the case starts to loosen, you can grab the case and push down on the motherboard ports with your thumbs, and the case should slide off. On early Macs (128k, 512k, Plus), there is one screw behind the battery door. Don't forget it. Also, don't push on the battery compartment to assist in removing the case. It's not going to be strong enough, and the holder could break. -Ian From rdawson16 at hotmail.com Fri Apr 11 10:21:38 2008 From: rdawson16 at hotmail.com (Randy Dawson) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:21:38 -0500 Subject: IS32 Optic RAM Datasheet and Steve Ciarcia's Micro D-CAM Artical Message-ID: Thanks Dave! What a trip down memory lane (pun intended) I worked for Micron in the Imaging Group until July, when the whole camera / cell phone market had a meltdown. The imaging group was spun off as a separate company, and we were to move from Boise Idaho to San Jose. Needles to say, most of us in my group that built new silicon test probe and DUT cards left. Like sure, are you going to double our salary to afford to live in San Jose? And leave beautiful Idaho? Micron Imaging is now Aptina: http://www.aptina.com/ You might get to see our last project filming the athletes at the Beijing Olympics. We built a ultra high resolution imager as a technology demo, Ultra HD resolution, 16x HD, 4k x 4k resolution. Its also very high framerate, 1K frames per second. I did the data pipes to stream the video off of the part, 16 750MHz LVDS differential pairs.... Randy > From: dave06a at dunfield.com > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:47:00 -0500 > CC: jwallis at fbiacademy.edu > Subject: Re: IS32 Optic RAM Datasheet and Steve Ciarcia's Micro D-CAM Artical > > > Mr. Dunfield, > > > > In a 2004 posting you indicated that you had a copy of the Micron Technology IS32 OpticRAM data > > sheet. Have you ever scanned the document? Would it be possible to obtain a copy? > > > > Your assistance would be appreciated. > > Jane Wallis > > I have placed the IS32 and Micro D-CAM articals at: > > http://www.dunfield.com/pub/index.htm > > I will leave them there for a few days - please download asap. > > -- > 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 _________________________________________________________________ Get in touch in an instant. Get Windows Live Messenger now. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_getintouch_042008 From maurice.smulders at gmail.com Fri Apr 11 10:46:42 2008 From: maurice.smulders at gmail.com (maurice smulders) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:46:42 -0600 Subject: PC <-> HPIB <-> CS80 stuff ; was HP-IB drive simulator In-Reply-To: <002401c89b2d$a7ad86a0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> References: <47D04517.7010509@Rikers.org> <47D04B63.3030100@Rikers.org> <8E8FF5A2-B710-4AD5-B5C6-03EBDAB2FC24@xlisper.com> <47D9A7FE.2060102@Rikers.org> <002401c89b2d$a7ad86a0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> Message-ID: <7d9403580804110846w5fd05544tf672c78e7af4213f@mail.gmail.com> Steve, NI has fairly decent doc: http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/10626 Maurice On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 11:09 AM, Steve Robertson wrote: > > > Keep us posted on progress. What card do you have on the PC side? I'm > > very interested to hear your progress. I've been watching for a good > > cheap hp-ib pci or usb adapter, but I've not picked one up yet. > > > > Can't seem to find a good _and_ cheap one. :) > > > > -- > > Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org > > Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ > > BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! > > Yo, > > This thread got me interested in playing with HP-IB stuff again so, I > installed an ISA board in a Linux system and tried to see if I could make it > do something useful. After days of tinkering, I've finally had some moderate > success. > > The card I have uses a NEC7210 HP-IB controller chip which in it's self is a > problem. There is very little documentation on the web for this chip, and > the register / function assiociations are pretty funky. I found a few code > samples but, in my opinion, they aren't very well documented. For instance, > to make the board a CIC (Controller In Charge), where it will send command > strings (data + ATN aserted), you set the chip to assert the IFC (Interface > Clear). When you clear the IFC, the board remains in the CIC mode. A found > just one comment in one document that briefly mentions this mechanism. To > make the chip send data (non-commands), you put it in standby mode (I > think?)... WTF...It's just screwy! > > The programming model for the 9914 is much simpler and I have considerable > documentation (and some experience) to support that chip. I do have several > STD bus HPIB interface cards w/docs but, no ISA 9914 cards. So, I'm stuck > with the board I have. > > Last evening, I finally got the board to talk to a simple instrument (HP > 3437 multimeter). It will send the meter's Talk Address and then listen to > the data coming back from the meter. Comparitively, it's a simple protocol > but, you wouldn't believe how long it took to get that far :-) > > I hope in the next few days to get PC to talk to a more complicated device. > At this time, the intended target is a CS80 harddrive. I do have experience > with those drives so, I only have to learn the programming model for the > card and not the device. I'm gonna see if I can write a bootable image to > the disk and then boot a HP1000 from it. > > BTW: I did look at the HP-IB disk simulator project but, didn't find it > useful for my goals. I also took another look at the Linux-HPIB project and > see that it has been rekindled. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a good > build on my system. It's probably an incompatability in the kernel... > Somewhere... That project is fairly complex in that it installs device > drivers for the card where the user can make highlevel system calls and talk > to devices. I'm more interested in standalone applications specific to each > device. The programs would use a common library for the functions but, > that's all. > > If anyone's interested, let me know and we can discuss the internals in more > detail. > > See yas, > Steve Robertson > steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com > > From jdbryan at acm.org Fri Apr 11 11:06:30 2008 From: jdbryan at acm.org (J. David Bryan) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:06:30 -0400 Subject: PC <-> HPIB <-> CS80 stuff ; was HP-IB drive simulator In-Reply-To: <002401c89b2d$a7ad86a0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> References: , <002401c89b2d$a7ad86a0$0201a8c0@disa4g72s8xldv> Message-ID: <200804111606.m3BG6XkC008140@mail.bcpl.net> On 10 Apr 2008 at 13:09, Steve Robertson wrote: > The card I have uses a NEC7210 HP-IB controller chip which in it's > self is a problem. There is very little documentation on the web for > this chip.... The 1987 NEC Microcomputer Products data book has 12 pages on this part. Would a scan of the data sheet be helpful? -- Dave From aek at bitsavers.org Fri Apr 11 11:19:12 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:19:12 -0700 Subject: PC <-> HPIB <-> CS80 stuff ; was HP-IB drive simulator Message-ID: <47FF8F80.9090708@bitsavers.org> > I also took another look at the Linux-HPIB project and > see that it has been rekindled. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a good > build on my system. It's probably an incompatability in the kernel... I would suggest looking at this more seriously. Eric Smith wrote a program using this to do block level reads of 914x tapes a few years ago. From aek at bitsavers.org Fri Apr 11 11:24:39 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:24:39 -0700 Subject: eric's read9144 program Message-ID: <47FF90C7.8020709@bitsavers.org> here http://svn.brouhaha.com/viewvc/read9144/ There is a known problem with it dealing with HP backup tapes that have end of file set on the first block, but it knows how to talk CS80 through the linux library. From cclist at sydex.com Fri Apr 11 11:31:49 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:31:49 -0700 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: <200804110753.m3B7r2xr099542@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804110753.m3B7r2xr099542@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <47FF3005.8048.41AD2CD@cclist.sydex.com> On 11 Apr 2008 at 2:53, Tony wrote > The right way to do it, of course, is to use an isolating transformer, but > not everybody has one of those in the workshop. This is something that anyone who owns a screwdriver and a soldering iron should have if one intends to go poking around in the "guts" of powered equipment. Fortunately, it's easy for us in the US and Canada (and Japan) where mains power is 120v. Just about anything with a transformer in the PSU (still pretty common in audiophile gear, as are large electrolytics) has been constructed with a "universal" 100/120/220/240 transformer, meaning that there's usually a split primary, so one primary winding can be used as input and other, as output. (the other windings can be left NC). Those in 220/240 volt-land can use two transformers of the same secondary voltage connected back-to-back as an isolation method. Another option is to scavenge a transformer from a UPS--it's very common that the same transformer is used to charge the batteries and as an inverter output, meaning that there are often two sets of line- voltage windings present. I have a box with a large scavenged UPS transformer and a Variac for my workbench--and its own 5 amp fuse. Not only do I get isolation, but I can adjust the output voltage--and I don't have to rely on tripping the 20A distribution panel breaker when something goes wrong. This is particularly important with some of the old hobbyist gear-- IIRC, the MITS Altair ran a couple of bare PCB traces at line voltage to the front-panel power switch. Those with big iron with high-current line-side requirements are advised to use the "one hand in a rear pocket" technique when poking around in a PSU. Cheers, Chuck From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Fri Apr 11 11:40:47 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:40:47 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Fwd: [roys-tech-chat] Building replacement for TTL counter DM8552 (National Semiconductor) In-Reply-To: <41184.64.62.206.10.1207851277.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804101256.25228.rtellason@verizon.net> <41184.64.62.206.10.1207851277.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <200804111651.MAA15034@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Because Motorola was already using 4000 series numbers for their TTL, > when they added CD4000 equivalent CMOS parts to their product line, > they added a leading one, making it the MC14000 series. Ah! I'd recently been going through my "miscellaneous ICs" collection, after getting an few hundred dollars in chips from Digikey as a refill, as it were, of my stock of logic. I'd come to a kind of suspicion that MC14xxx could be looked up by stripping the MC1, but it was just a suspicion, and I think I have a few MC4xxx parts as well. I'm glad to have that straightened out. Thank you. /~\ 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 rdawson16 at hotmail.com Fri Apr 11 12:06:15 2008 From: rdawson16 at hotmail.com (Randy Dawson) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:06:15 -0500 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: <47FF3005.8048.41AD2CD@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804110753.m3B7r2xr099542@dewey.classiccmp.org> <47FF3005.8048.41AD2CD@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: remember in a pinch you can wire two step down transformers back to back... > From: cclist at sydex.com > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:31:49 -0700 > Subject: Re: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) > > On 11 Apr 2008 at 2:53, Tony wrote > > > The right way to do it, of course, is to use an isolating transformer, but > > not everybody has one of those in the workshop. > > This is something that anyone who owns a screwdriver and a soldering > iron should have if one intends to go poking around in the "guts" of > powered equipment. > > Fortunately, it's easy for us in the US and Canada (and Japan) where > mains power is 120v. Just about anything with a transformer in the > PSU (still pretty common in audiophile gear, as are large > electrolytics) has been constructed with a "universal" > 100/120/220/240 transformer, meaning that there's usually a split > primary, so one primary winding can be used as input and other, as > output. (the other windings can be left NC). > > Those in 220/240 volt-land can use two transformers of the same > secondary voltage connected back-to-back as an isolation method. > Another option is to scavenge a transformer from a UPS--it's very > common that the same transformer is used to charge the batteries and > as an inverter output, meaning that there are often two sets of line- > voltage windings present. > > I have a box with a large scavenged UPS transformer and a Variac for > my workbench--and its own 5 amp fuse. Not only do I get isolation, > but I can adjust the output voltage--and I don't have to rely on > tripping the 20A distribution panel breaker when something goes > wrong. > > This is particularly important with some of the old hobbyist gear-- > IIRC, the MITS Altair ran a couple of bare PCB traces at line voltage > to the front-panel power switch. > > Those with big iron with high-current line-side requirements are > advised to use the "one hand in a rear pocket" technique when poking > around in a PSU. > > Cheers, > Chuck > _________________________________________________________________ Pack up or back up?use SkyDrive to transfer files or keep extra copies. Learn how. hthttp://www.windowslive.com/skydrive/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_skydrive_packup_042008 From eric at brouhaha.com Fri Apr 11 12:38:12 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:38:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Ultra HD resolution sensor (was RE: IS32 Optic RAM Datasheet and Steve Ciarcia's Micro D-CAM Artical) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <48224.64.62.206.10.1207935492.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Randy wrote: > Ultra HD resolution, 16x HD, 4k x 4k resolution. Its also very high > framerate, 1K frames per second. Sounds pretty awesome, but standard HD camera resolution is 1920x1080, so 4Kx4K is only about 8.1x HD resolution. > I did the data pipes to stream the video off of the part, 16 750MHz LVDS > differential pairs.... Impressive. What kind of hardware would typically be used at the other end of those pairs (aside from the obvious LVDS receivers)? Eric From rdawson16 at hotmail.com Fri Apr 11 13:05:20 2008 From: rdawson16 at hotmail.com (Randy Dawson) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:05:20 -0500 Subject: Ultra HD resolution sensor (was RE: IS32 Optic RAM Datasheet and Steve Ciarcia's Micro D-CAM Ar In-Reply-To: <48224.64.62.206.10.1207935492.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <48224.64.62.206.10.1207935492.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: > Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:38:12 -0700 > From: eric at brouhaha.com > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > CC: > Subject: Ultra HD resolution sensor (was RE: IS32 Optic RAM Datasheet and Steve Ciarcia's Micro D-CAM Artical) > > Randy wrote: > > Ultra HD resolution, 16x HD, 4k x 4k resolution. Its also very high > > framerate, 1K frames per second. > > Sounds pretty awesome, but standard HD camera resolution is 1920x1080, so > 4Kx4K is only about 8.1x HD resolution. > > > I did the data pipes to stream the video off of the part, 16 750MHz LVDS > > differential pairs.... > > Impressive. What kind of hardware would typically be used at the other > end of those pairs (aside from the obvious LVDS receivers)? > > Eric > Altera Cyclone II FPGAs and component DDR-2 for the image buffer. We could only grab 20 seconds or so at 1K FPS with this setup, but we did drop some water baloons for our demo. Cool! Randy _________________________________________________________________ More immediate than e-mail? Get instant access with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_instantaccess_042008 From roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk Fri Apr 11 13:35:22 2008 From: roger.holmes at microspot.co.uk (Roger Holmes) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:35:22 +0100 Subject: Safety precautions. Was: Help with ICL power supply faul In-Reply-To: <200804111700.m3BH0OoA003676@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804111700.m3BH0OoA003676@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <0A6FDFBB-0BE3-4EEB-AA5C-3EB5478C39F8@microspot.co.uk> On 11 Apr, 2008, at 18:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > Message: 12 > Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:31:49 -0700 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > > Those with big iron with high-current line-side requirements are > advised to use the "one hand in a rear pocket" technique when poking > around in a PSU. Good idea, thanks for that. Last time I poked around in one of my 1301's PSUs it was seven feet up in the air and I jiggled the stabiliser rack and the -22.6v, quarter inch bus bar touched the frame, showering me with sparks and burning a notch into the angle iron frame :-) Its not just AC that's dangerous on big iron. Over the years I've been bitten many times by 240v and no ill effects but I get very careful when near the three phase 440v supply, or near car H.T. leads or any thermionic valves, especially CRTs. Roger Holmes. From lproven at gmail.com Fri Apr 11 14:59:14 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:59:14 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: References: <1481.1207762811@mini> Message-ID: <575131af0804111259k2a418961v2b0d3dac72563e0b@mail.gmail.com> On 09/04/2008, Richard wrote: > > In article <1481.1207762811 at mini>, > > Brad Parker writes: > > > So I'd offer that info pages are more than just cumbersome poorly > > hypertext'd documents. They are part of a larger system which has goals > > beyond just simple man pages. > > > In theory I don't disagree with what info pages *could* be. In > practice though, they end up being vastly inferior to the man pages > that they replaced. A man page is best at succinctly communicating > important information about a utility: summary of usage, command-line > options supported, environment variables consumed, etc. I wouldn't > want to write a book using the an macro set for troff, but every time > I just need a quick piece of information about a command-line utility > and try to get it out of info, its a huge PITA. > > Of course some things need a bona-fide full-featured cross-linked > manual -- just look at how many man pages perl sprawls across these > days. I have no objection to 'man' pages, although many of them badly need a concise clear overview when they actually leap into a list of switches. The thing is, it's 2008. I object to having to quit out and type 'man 3 command' when I should just be able to tab over to the referred subpage and hit Enter. I'm not asking for it all to be turned into fully-crosslinked indexed hypertext, I'm just asking for some tiny bit of heed to be paid to 30y of progress in HCI and UI design! -- 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 rtellason at verizon.net Fri Apr 11 14:58:13 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:58:13 -0400 Subject: a printer oddity Message-ID: <200804111558.13240.rtellason@verizon.net> Some of you may already be aware that I have a whole pile of dot-matrix printers kicking around (http://mysite.verizon.net/rtellason/w4s.html has a list of them on there), and in moving some of them yesterday I noticed some rather odd things about one of them. It's an Okidata 391, one of the few that are wide-carriage, and it's 24-pin as well. Where before I'd had most of them facing front-outwards I now have this one sitting there with the rear facing where I can see it, and have noticed a couple of odd things: First is that right next to the usual parallel connection there's another connector, a DB25. That bit seems to be a little loose, and I'm thinking plug-in board maybe? Something's not quite right. Anyhow, I was wondering if this was a serial interface adapter, and if it might be usable in any of the other units I have on hand as well. I have, unfortunately, no documentation on any of these at the present time. The other thing is that attached to that connector is a little adapter, which has an RJ-45 socket on the back side of it. The plug side of it has only a small number of the 25 pins actually installed. If I can figure out a way to pop the shell open maybe I'll trace it out, otherwise I'll probably take the ohmmeter approach. :-) Was it at all common to use these for serial connections? Anybody have docs on those 300-series Okidata printers? -- 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 lproven at gmail.com Fri Apr 11 15:11:07 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:11:07 +0100 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <575131af0804111311r7947384el9652a3ae0ad79ec6@mail.gmail.com> On 10/04/2008, David Griffith wrote: > > I'm trying to find a Micron Xceed Color30 card and Greyscale30 card for a > Mac SE/30. What I'm trying to do is enable 8-bit greyscale on the > internal monitor. I've seen brief references to a clone of this sort of > thing, but nothing more. Yeah, aren't we all! :?) It /is/ possible to clone one - q.v. http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/microngray.html (Which I assume you've probably seen.) However, I know of no details on how. I suspect it may be easier to clone one than buy one, these days. -- 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 ian_primus at yahoo.com Fri Apr 11 15:14:12 2008 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:14:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: a printer oddity In-Reply-To: <200804111558.13240.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <833485.46053.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > First is that right next to the usual parallel > connection there's another > connector, a DB25. That bit seems to be a little > loose, and I'm thinking > plug-in board maybe? Yup. A lot of OkiData printers had their parallel ports on a plug in card, which in turn has a connector on it for a piggyback serial interface board. IIRC it's held in with some plastic clips. > The other thing is that attached to that connector > is a little adapter, which > has an RJ-45 socket on the back side of it. The > plug side of it has only a > small number of the 25 pins actually installed. If > I can figure out a way to > pop the shell open maybe I'll trace it out, > otherwise I'll probably take the > ohmmeter approach. :-) That's pretty common as well for serial interfaces. Using these little RJ45 adapter dongles made serial cables much easier (and cheaper). Need null modem? Change the dongle. In-wall wiring was easier, with RJ45's at the wall. There isn't much of a standard wiring for these, unfortunately. They were sold as "kits" with no pins inserted, and a prewired RJ45 connector. You inserted the pins into the DB25 and clipped the thing together. -Ian From rtellason at verizon.net Fri Apr 11 16:04:12 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:04:12 -0400 Subject: a printer oddity In-Reply-To: <833485.46053.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <833485.46053.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200804111704.12553.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 11 April 2008 16:14, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > --- "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > First is that right next to the usual parallel connection there's another > > connector, a DB25. That bit seems to be a little loose, and I'm > > thinking plug-in board maybe? > > Yup. A lot of OkiData printers had their parallel ports on a plug in card, > which in turn has a connector on it for a piggyback serial interface board. > IIRC it's held in with some plastic clips. The one I know most intimately is my old 92, which had such an arrangement. You'd plug that board in and flip one DIPswitch in there someplace. > > The other thing is that attached to that connector is a little adapter, > > which has an RJ-45 socket on the back side of it. The plug side of it has > > only a small number of the 25 pins actually installed. If I can figure > > out a way to pop the shell open maybe I'll trace it out, otherwise I'll > > probably take the ohmmeter approach. :-) > > That's pretty common as well for serial interfaces. Probably got common after I stopped working on this stuff a lot. :-( > Using these little RJ45 adapter dongles made serial cables much easier (and > cheaper). Need null modem? Change the dongle. In-wall wiring was easier, > with RJ45's at the wall. There isn't much of a standard wiring for these, > unfortunately. It figures. Somewhere buried in a box I have some other cables, RJ45 on one end of a short (2-3 feet?) cable and a DB25 on the other, I think it was. I never traced those out either. > They were sold as "kits" with no pins inserted, and a prewired RJ45 > connector. You inserted the pins into the DB25 and clipped the thing > together. Some of those connector shells can be opened easier, some are pretty much necessary to destroy to open it. If I can get it open, I also have the tool to remove those pins, if necessary. :-) -- 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 Fri Apr 11 16:54:35 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:54:35 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <47FF00D3.6030300@msu.edu> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FF00D3.6030300@msu.edu> Message-ID: <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> Josh Dersch wrote: >> 4. You are correct that these older machines have hard 16MB >> limitations due to DMA limited to 24bits I think (same as 286) that as >> far as I know. >> >> > Yeah, that's what I read. I don't know what issues that will cause for > operating systems running with more than 16mb installed. I guess I'll > find out if I can get this to run at all :). I am running a Model 80-061 with many (4?) IBM 80386 XMAs and the machine is perfectly stable running Linux with 46MB RAM. If I had an 80-Axx (which I would love to get, for the cache), it would be 48MB. Peace... Sridhar From lproven at gmail.com Fri Apr 11 17:58:45 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:58:45 +0100 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FF00D3.6030300@msu.edu> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> Message-ID: <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> On 11/04/2008, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Josh Dersch wrote: > > > > > > 4. You are correct that these older machines have hard 16MB limitations > due to DMA limited to 24bits I think (same as 286) that as far as I know. > > > > > > > > > > > Yeah, that's what I read. I don't know what issues that will cause for > operating systems running with more than 16mb installed. I guess I'll find > out if I can get this to run at all :). > > > > I am running a Model 80-061 with many (4?) IBM 80386 XMAs and the machine > is perfectly stable running Linux with 46MB RAM. If I had an 80-Axx (which > I would love to get, for the cache), it would be 48MB. [Gasp] *Envy!* Not only could I only find the one memory adaptor board, I've never been able to get any Linux distro to even boot on my 80-A21. I was recommended to Slackware but I got nowhere. Still, NT3 runs very nicely on it. Much better than Warp Server did, which could not drive my obscure, unheard of network card, a certain "Novell NE2000/MCA". I mean, who's ever heard of Novell? I never got Warp running properly on my Thinkpad Butterfly either. It's only VGA res, but I wanted at least 16k or 32k colours, sound and the modem, but nope. IBM O/S on IBM H/W, but no joy. I recently rescued one of the little 386sx or 486slc desktops from a skip. Model 56? I don't recall. I shall try OS/2 on it at some point, if I can max out its RAM. -- 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 rtellason at verizon.net Fri Apr 11 19:36:46 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:36:46 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 11 April 2008 18:58, Liam Proven wrote: > On 11/04/2008, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > > Josh Dersch wrote: > > > > 4. You are correct that these older machines have hard 16MB > > > > limitations due to DMA limited to 24bits I think (same as 286) that as > > > > far as I know. > > > > > > Yeah, that's what I read. I don't know what issues that will cause for > > > operating systems running with more than 16mb installed. I guess I'll > > > find out if I can get this to run at all :). > > > > I am running a Model 80-061 with many (4?) IBM 80386 XMAs and the > > machine is perfectly stable running Linux with 46MB RAM. If I had an > > 80-Axx (which I would love to get, for the cache), it would be 48MB. > > [Gasp] > > *Envy!* > > Not only could I only find the one memory adaptor board, I've never > been able to get any Linux distro to even boot on my 80-A21. I was > recommended to Slackware but I got nowhere. I've been running Slackware since 1999 when I started with 4.0. And there was an awful lot of that setup that turned out to be very much DIY. I also added stuff later on that wasn't present during the install (like an ISA sound card) so that and X and a bunch of other stuff all turned out to be DIY as well. > Still, NT3 runs very nicely on it. Much better than Warp Server did, > which could not drive my obscure, unheard of network card, a certain > "Novell NE2000/MCA". I mean, who's ever heard of Novell? Heh. > I never got Warp running properly on my Thinkpad Butterfly either. > It's only VGA res, but I wanted at least 16k or 32k colours, sound and > the modem, but nope. IBM O/S on IBM H/W, but no joy. > > I recently rescued one of the little 386sx or 486slc desktops from a > skip. Model 56? I don't recall. I shall try OS/2 on it at some point, > if I can max out its RAM. Anyhow, I'm not sure what the hardware is that you're messing with there, but if you want to get some Slackware running on it let me know. -- 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 rescue at hawkmountain.net Fri Apr 11 19:59:50 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:59:50 -0400 Subject: Mac Plus ozone? Message-ID: <48000986.7080203@hawkmountain.net> I was given a Mac Plus a while back... and never tested it.... Decided to give it a quick test... Other than needing a boot floppy which I'll have to dig up.... it powers on, video looks good, monitor is stable and all... But there is a faint sound (think of it as a cross between crickets chirping and clicks) and after a while, it smells to me a bit like ozone at the top of the Mac. I'm thinking maybe high voltage leakage ? Anyone have any experiences with these old Macs that can point me at what to look for ? It might well be OK as it is... but I don't want to risk damage occuring as other than a few dings and scrapes and a bit of yellowing, it is in remarkable condition. -- Curt From bob at jfcl.com Fri Apr 11 21:50:58 2008 From: bob at jfcl.com (Bob Armstrong) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:50:58 -0700 Subject: OK, now this is impossible (11/23+ and RL02-RLV12 problem) Message-ID: <003901c89c48$09ae10c0$1d0a3240$@com> I have this 11/23+ system with an RL02 drive and the RLV12 controller that won't boot XXDP. Attempting to boot XXDP v2.5 either halts at 000154 during the initial boot, or gives ?RD ERR messages from XXDP. The behavior is a little random - sometimes it halts at 154, sometimes you'll get a few ?RD ERRs and then it'll lock up, and sometimes you'll get far enough to get an actual prompt from the XXDP monitor, but even then you can't run anything. You just get more RD ERRs. OK, I know - bad drive or bad pack, right? Well, I've tried two different RL02 drives and two different XXDP packs with the same results. Better yet, I've connected one of those RL02 drives to another -11 (this time a 11/04 w/RL11) and that same drive with those same packs boots and runs with no complaints. The drive even passes all the ZRL??? diagnostics and ZRLM?? can scan the entire pack and finds no bad sectors. Better yet, I have another RL02 pack with RSX-11M v3.5 and that boots and runs on the 11/23 with the same RL02 and RLV12 with no apparent problems. Now that's really impossible - the same drive that won't boot XXDP will boot RSX? How can this be? It almost seems like it has to be a software problem with XXDP, but XXDP obviously works on a 11/23 and the RLV12/RL02. Is there some strange hardware compatibility or ECO issue with the RLV12 or the 11/23+? Is there something XXDP does with the drive that RSX doesn't? I'd run diagnostics on the RL subsystem, but I don't really have any other load path for XXDP on this system. I did pare the system down until there are only three cards in the backplane - CPU, memory and RLV12. No joy. And just on a whim I tried a different cable for the RL02 - still no joy. Thanks much, Bob Armstrong From lproven at gmail.com Fri Apr 11 21:55:20 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:55:20 +0100 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> On 12/04/2008, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I've been running Slackware since 1999 when I started with 4.0. And there was > an awful lot of that setup that turned out to be very much DIY. I also added > stuff later on that wasn't present during the install (like an ISA sound > card) so that and X and a bunch of other stuff all turned out to be DIY as > well. The first Linux distro I ever tried to actually /install/ was Slackware, on my notebook: a very odd 486DX50 (not DX2/50) with 8MB of RAM and onboard SCSI. I never did get it to run. That was '97 or so, and while I knew some UNIX, I knew next to nothing about Linux. I ghad played with Lasermoon's Linux-FT, an early LiveCD - in fact, I think the very first - but that doesn't really count as an "install". I never got it booting off my hard disk. However, I have tried Slackware since then, on some fairly recent version - 10.0, I think. I found it nearly as forbidding as it was a decade ago, and these days, I'm fairly well-used to Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva and many others. > Anyhow, I'm not sure what the hardware is that you're messing with there, > but if you want to get some Slackware running on it let me know. Well, hey, if Slackware is the only modern that still supports MCA, I might give it a shot. Does it? I don't think modern Debian does... -- 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 ggs at shiresoft.com Fri Apr 11 22:01:56 2008 From: ggs at shiresoft.com (Guy Sotomayor) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:01:56 -0700 Subject: OK, now this is impossible (11/23+ and RL02-RLV12 problem) In-Reply-To: <003901c89c48$09ae10c0$1d0a3240$@com> References: <003901c89c48$09ae10c0$1d0a3240$@com> Message-ID: <3A74D4C7-C5C1-49E4-82F1-B0C6F5CAD601@shiresoft.com> It could be memory or it could be the fact that the RLV12 isn't quite the same as the RL11 in the 11/04 from a software/driver perspective and XXDP's driver isn't happy with the RLV12. On Apr 11, 2008, at 7:50 PM, Bob Armstrong wrote: > I have this 11/23+ system with an RL02 drive and the RLV12 > controller that > won't boot XXDP. Attempting to boot XXDP v2.5 either halts at 000154 > during the initial boot, or gives ?RD ERR messages from XXDP. The > behavior > is a little random - sometimes it halts at 154, sometimes you'll get > a few > ?RD ERRs and then it'll lock up, and sometimes you'll get far enough > to get > an actual prompt from the XXDP monitor, but even then you can't run > anything. You just get more RD ERRs. > > > > OK, I know - bad drive or bad pack, right? Well, I've tried two > different > RL02 drives and two different XXDP packs with the same results. > Better yet, > I've connected one of those RL02 drives to another -11 (this time a > 11/04 > w/RL11) and that same drive with those same packs boots and runs > with no > complaints. The drive even passes all the ZRL??? diagnostics and > ZRLM?? > can scan the entire pack and finds no bad sectors. > > > > Better yet, I have another RL02 pack with RSX-11M v3.5 and that > boots and > runs on the 11/23 with the same RL02 and RLV12 with no apparent > problems. > Now that's really impossible - the same drive that won't boot XXDP > will boot > RSX? > > > > How can this be? It almost seems like it has to be a software > problem > with XXDP, but XXDP obviously works on a 11/23 and the RLV12/RL02. > Is there > some strange hardware compatibility or ECO issue with the RLV12 or the > 11/23+? Is there something XXDP does with the drive that RSX doesn't? > > > > I'd run diagnostics on the RL subsystem, but I don't really have > any other > load path for XXDP on this system. I did pare the system down until > there > are only three cards in the backplane - CPU, memory and RLV12. No > joy. And > just on a whim I tried a different cable for the RL02 - still no joy. > > > > Thanks much, > > Bob Armstrong > > > > From tiggerlasv at aim.com Fri Apr 11 22:04:48 2008 From: tiggerlasv at aim.com (tiggerlasv at aim.com) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:04:48 -0400 Subject: a printer oddity Message-ID: <8CA6A611A31A8AA-CAC-43DB@webmail-ne14.sysops.aol.com> Most of the Okidatas from the period (Microline 320, 520, etc.) had a standard Parallel port built in on the back of the printer. Right next to it is usually a plastic knockout. If you get the RS232 serial port option for this printer, you remove the plastic knockout, and slide the RS232 board into the opening. There is a card-edge connector that it mates with. You don't have to set any switches to use it. I don't really know if it will let you do "dual porting" or not. (i.e., 2 computers printing to it, one via serial, one via parallel.) As for the RJ45 adapter; those are fairly common. The serial port probably only needs 3 pins for printing, Ground, TXD, and RXD . . (7, 2, and 3), although they may have included handshaking signals. Who knows. A standard serial cable to/from your computer should work, as well as a parallel cable. Documentation should be readily downloadable from the Okidata website. As info. . . . T From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Fri Apr 11 22:34:07 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:34:07 +0000 Subject: modular serial hardware (was Re: a printer oddity) In-Reply-To: <200804111704.12553.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <833485.46053.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200804111704.12553.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20080412033407.GB27787@usap.gov> On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 05:04:12PM -0400, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Friday 11 April 2008 16:14, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > > --- "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > > The other thing is that attached to that connector is a little adapter, > > > which has an RJ-45 socket on the back side of it. The plug side of it has > > > only a small number of the 25 pins actually installed. If I can figure > > > out a way to pop the shell open maybe I'll trace it out, otherwise I'll > > > probably take the ohmmeter approach. :-) > > > > That's pretty common as well for serial interfaces. > > Probably got common after I stopped working on this stuff a lot. :-( We were using RJ-11-based serial gear from Nevada Western in the mid-1980s. I still have it, and have a bunch in use (a 25-pair telco cable going from a wall box in my computer room with 8 RJ-11s to a 19" panel with groups of RJ-11s mounted in the space behind my VAXen in the basement). We had two successive buildings wired with the stuff - we made our own pin swabbers to take Emulex CS21 cables and fit them into the pattern needed by those telco adapter blocks, and filled an entire relay rack with the 19" panels... to add a new interface, we'd throw the card in a VAX or PDP-11, cable it up to the back of the relay rack, then install RJ-11 patch cables to route TX0 or TTA0 or whatever to whatever room we wanted to login from. Very, very handy. > > They were sold as "kits" with no pins inserted, and a prewired RJ45 > > connector. You inserted the pins into the DB25 and clipped the thing > > together. > > Some of those connector shells can be opened easier, some are pretty much > necessary to destroy to open it. If I can get it open, I also have the tool > to remove those pins, if necessary. :-) You might check the pins before randomly rewiring them... For RJ-45s, the most common arrangement I've seen is the one presently used by Cisco - the center two conductors on the cable are both ground, then flanked by TxD and RxD, then flanked by handshaking lines. Most of the gear I've seen lately that uses RJ-45s for serial, though, stops with the inner 4 pins. One handy thing about this interconnection scheme is that you don't _need_ to change the shells for null modems (though you can). You can flip one end of an RJ-45 cable (making it unsuitable for Ethernet use) to make the cable a null modem - the signals are arranged in a "paired" fashion to make that work. In practice, the flat cables that Cisco ships are assembled inverted compared to "Ethernet" cables, so it matters what you grab when you link up two devices. OTOH, I rarely use the RJ-45 scheme with DB25 connections, since the shells are rarer, in my experience, compared to DE9 shells (which are *quite* common in the Cisco world). At home, for DB25 stuff, I tend to use my boxes and boxes of RJ-11 stuff, unless I have a connection that needs "proper" hardware handshaking - then I usually bust out a "real" cable. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 12-Apr-2008 at 03:20 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -61.4 F (-51.9 C) Windchill -95.8 F (-71.0 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 11.2 kts Grid 34 Barometer 679.2 mb (10658 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From tiggerlasv at aim.com Fri Apr 11 22:48:34 2008 From: tiggerlasv at aim.com (tiggerlasv at aim.com) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:48:34 -0400 Subject: OK, now this is impossible (11/23+ and RL02-RLV12 problem) Message-ID: <8CA6A6737A82533-CAC-4624@webmail-ne14.sysops.aol.com> Equally annoying -- I've had that problem before, but it was so long ago, I can't remember what the problem was. I have some suggestions. They are admittedly shots-in-the-dark. Some may not even seem logical, based on your symptoms, but it can't hurt to try them. . . Physically disconnect all but one drive. Make that unit "Drive 0", and try booting. (Don't forget to move your terminator over.) If it still gives you the problem, change out the drive select cap, and make it drive 1. Try again. Make sure all of the other drives are powered down and disconnected during the attempt. I seem to remember having either XXDP or RT11 wig-out, because of some quirk with the number of drives attached to the controller, and/or something flaky with the drive select caps. I also had some problem with boot errors when I had two adjacent drives in the rack. It turns out, I had the boot drive positioned half-way out of the rack on the sliders, and it was picking up noise from the drive above or below it.) I'd try "rolling your own" pack with SIMH, and VTServer. Boot XXDP under SIMH using 11/23 emulation with 512K, and make a new XXDP disk on an emulated RL02 pack. Then try transferring it to a blank RL02 with VTServer. NOTE: VTserver will blindly write to the disk, and completely ignores any BAD SECTOR information on the existing pack. So, if you're using a pack with bad spots, it's going to write data over the bad areas, and you'll wind up with an unreliable pack. I hope this helps. . . . T From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sat Apr 12 03:58:34 2008 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:58:34 +0100 Subject: OK, now this is impossible (11/23+ and RL02-RLV12 problem) In-Reply-To: <003901c89c48$09ae10c0$1d0a3240$@com> References: <003901c89c48$09ae10c0$1d0a3240$@com> Message-ID: <480079BA.1060903@dunnington.plus.com> On 12/04/2008 03:50, Bob Armstrong wrote: > I have this 11/23+ system with an RL02 drive and the RLV12 controller that > won't boot XXDP. Attempting to boot XXDP v2.5 either halts at 000154 > during the initial boot, or gives ?RD ERR messages from XXDP. The behavior > is a little random - sometimes it halts at 154, sometimes you'll get a few > ?RD ERRs and then it'll lock up, and sometimes you'll get far enough to get > an actual prompt from the XXDP monitor, but even then you can't run > anything. You just get more RD ERRs. > > OK, I know - bad drive or bad pack, right? Well, I've tried two different > RL02 drives and two different XXDP packs with the same results. Better yet, > I've connected one of those RL02 drives to another -11 (this time a 11/04 > w/RL11) and that same drive with those same packs boots and runs with no > complaints. The drive even passes all the ZRL??? diagnostics and ZRLM?? > can scan the entire pack and finds no bad sectors. Is it the correct backplane in the 11/23+ system? Correctly terminated? Are the PSU voltages in tolerance? To be honest, I'd expect problems of that sort to affect any O/S, but worth checking if you've not already done so. I assume the RL cabling is terminated, because they usually just go into "FAULT" state if not. Have you got the right bootstrap (any of the KDF11 bootstraps) in the CPU card? Have you got W1 and W2 on the CPU set correctly for whichever backplane you have? > Better yet, I have another RL02 pack with RSX-11M v3.5 and that boots and > runs on the 11/23 with the same RL02 and RLV12 with no apparent problems. > Now that's really impossible - the same drive that won't boot XXDP will boot > RSX? Hmm... You need the Line Time Clock running to boot RSX. Turn it off, either with the LTC switch (AUX switch) on the front panel, or better still disable it on the M8189 -- remove the wire on J11 -- before you boot XXDP. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sat Apr 12 03:58:38 2008 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:58:38 +0100 Subject: OK, now this is impossible (11/23+ and RL02-RLV12 problem) In-Reply-To: <3A74D4C7-C5C1-49E4-82F1-B0C6F5CAD601@shiresoft.com> References: <003901c89c48$09ae10c0$1d0a3240$@com> <3A74D4C7-C5C1-49E4-82F1-B0C6F5CAD601@shiresoft.com> Message-ID: <480079BE.4020601@dunnington.plus.com> On 12/04/2008 04:01, Guy Sotomayor wrote: > It could be memory or it could be the fact that the RLV12 isn't quite > the same as the RL11 in the 11/04 from a software/driver perspective and > XXDP's driver isn't happy with the RLV12. It's not that. XXDP runs fine with an RLV12. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From adamgolas at earthlink.net Fri Apr 11 07:51:23 2008 From: adamgolas at earthlink.net (Adam Golas) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:51:23 -0400 Subject: Hitachi HN27C1024HG-85 Message-ID: <000501c89bd2$bfbcad70$860a010a@adamzag> You've written me that you have HN27c1025HG-85 but I am looking for HN27c1024HG-85. If you have what I am looking for please let me know the price. Thank you, Adam Golas From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Fri Apr 11 09:57:51 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:57:51 +0100 Subject: PDP-8/E Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF98@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Hi Could anyone out there with an 8/e confirm the following: 1. Knob set to STATE, SR Keys Down 2. Press ADDR LOAD - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? 3. Press EXAM - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? 4 Raise DEP - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? Rod Smallwood From derschjo at msu.edu Fri Apr 11 23:11:00 2008 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:11:00 -0700 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <48003654.5070705@msu.edu> Liam Proven wrote: > >> Anyhow, I'm not sure what the hardware is that you're messing with there, >> but if you want to get some Slackware running on it let me know. >> > > Well, hey, if Slackware is the only modern that still supports MCA, I > might give it a shot. Does it? I don't think modern Debian does... > > > I got Debian (Sarge, not Etch) running on my Model 80 (even with just the 12mb of RAM). None of their boot floppies supports MCA so I ended up doing the install on another machine (cheating, I suppose) and compiling a custom 2.4 kernel that supports MCA, compiled specifically for i386 (with 486 emulation). The 486 emulation proved necessary because a lot of the base utilities aren't compiled for 386 anymore so they would die with an illegal instruction fault :). (Guess the optimal distro would be Gentoo so I can make sure everything's compiled for a bare 386, but I can't imagine how long that would take.) Oh, and I had to fix the ibmmca SCSI driver so it wouldn't kernel panic on boot. Whew. This took a long time to get running. (I tried the latest Slackware first, but they don't even support booting from floppy anymore :(. I considered digging out my Slack 3.0 floppy set but decided to try for something a little more modern.) I have this running on a 4gb scsi drive (updated the bios on my controller to get past the 1gb limit -- it's really hard to get a modern linux distro, compilers, and kernel source on a 1gb disk and still have room to compile it.). The result is a working Linux, but it's quite slow. (That's an understatement - it takes 25% of the CPU just to run 'top'.) I'm in the middle of installing gnome on it just to see how long it takes to start up on a 20Mhz 386 with 12mb of ram. Yes, there's something horribly, horribly wrong with me. And if you want to torture it: http://yahozna.dyndns.org:8080/ ! I'd rather run NetBSD on a machine like this, but they don't support the IBM SCSI controllers at all. Josh From eberhard.hewicker at t-online.de Sat Apr 12 00:44:04 2008 From: eberhard.hewicker at t-online.de (Eberhard Hewicker) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 07:44:04 +0200 Subject: INL0397-1 Message-ID: Hi Randy, I have come across your below posting. Can you offer INL0397-1 for a favourable price? I would need 20 ea. Can you offer TIL308 or TIL309? Mit freundlichem Gru? Eberhard Hewicker Obere Waldstra?e 3 56424 Mogendorf Deutschland Subject: replacement for TIL311 display From: cctech (at) classiccmp.org (Randy Gill) Message-id: <012701c30e56$5b3a4e70$c302010a (at) innocor.com> Date: 2003-01-03 17:00:23 _____ Hello; I just noticed your e-mail on the web. I wanted to inform you that Innocor manufactures a direct, drop-in replacement for the TIL311 (INL0397-1) featuring less power, brighter LEDs, lower cost and higher reliability. Pls find the link to our datasheet. If you have any requirements, pls let me know. Regards; Randy http://www.innocor.com/documents/inl0397_v2_iss2.pdf From derschjo at msu.edu Sat Apr 12 01:42:08 2008 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:42:08 -0700 Subject: Resolved: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <480059C0.1090006@msu.edu> Figured out my problem: The AboveBoard ROM by default was calculating the wrong address for the start of its memory (it was top of planar memory + 128k, creating a hole which obviously would cause problems). The AboveBoard option diskette has a DOS utility (softset.exe) that lets you adjust this. I've done so and now everything seems to work... Yay! Thanks for all the helpful suggestions! Josh From snhirsch at gmail.com Fri Apr 11 20:07:03 2008 From: snhirsch at gmail.com (Steven Hirsch) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:07:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, David Griffith wrote: > > I'm trying to find a Micron Xceed Color30 card and Greyscale30 card for a > Mac SE/30. What I'm trying to do is enable 8-bit greyscale on the > internal monitor. I've seen brief references to a clone of this sort of > thing, but nothing more. In my Mac SE/30 collection, I have: Mobius Technologies MD012 - Some sort of PDS slot video card w/ rear bracket mounted DB9F connector Lapis Technologies PDS/30 "Full Page" - Another PDS slot video card w/ rear DB9F Question is: What are these? Sounds like you folks might know :-) Steve -- From nanoman at stny.rr.com Fri Apr 11 20:28:44 2008 From: nanoman at stny.rr.com (Mr. Sub Micron) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:28:44 -0400 Subject: Some information on Micron Optic Rams Message-ID: <20080412013006.VQOT21224.hrndva-omta02.mail.rr.com@D40ZSC81.stny.rr.com> Jane, If you are interested. As a student (several decades ago) I developed several 64K and 512K DRAM cameras. I used TI and Intel DRAMs (at the time I was unaware of the Micron opticRAM). In its day, I thought this was pretty cool. The DRAM was attached via tether to my computer and I varied the refresh rate to get gray scale. Assembly language is a beautiful thing (or a nightmare). Of course the real trick was to remove the ceramic package lid and polyimide protective "goop" to reveal the chip die imaging surface (without damaging the die). Anyway, I have attached the covers of Mircro IS32 and IS256 information that I readily found. I believe I may still have the MicronEye Camera and Manual, as well as other information. If you would like copies of this information let me know. I will be out of town for a week or so (and I will have to recall where I have stuff the other information). Why are you interested in the OpticRam? Enjoy, Jim From jrr at flippers.com Fri Apr 11 10:33:21 2008 From: jrr at flippers.com (John Robertson) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:33:21 -0700 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <47FF84C1.8070203@flippers.com> John S wrote: > Hi, > > I have an ICL PC2 CP/M box (like this: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=752) which has a faulty PSU, I am hoping someone here can advise me. > > The PSU is a Farnell N100/F4190 SMPS, looks like a high quality unit with nice screw terminals for mains in and DC out. > > When fired up with 240V AC and a dummy load the output voltages are: > > 12V output=1.1V > 5V output=2.3V > -12V output=-5.9V > > The other worrying thing is it is also drawing 100W power (measured with a one of those plug in mains meters from Maplin), whilst the dummy load is around 20W (split between +12V and +5V). > > I've checked all the capacitors with multimeter and ESR meter, and all seem fine, and none are bulging or obviously overheating, DC resistance on each of the output connections to ground is around 60 ohm. > > I couldn't find a short so I don't know where all the power is going to, I suspect there is some protection circuit kicking in? > > I don't have a circuit diagram, so my first plea does any one have one please? > > ... Have you looked at the capacitors in this unit? A ESR meter can help a lot. Capacitors age and loose their ability to filter AC ripple and this will lead to a switching supply shutting down - and drawing more current than it should. There are a number of ESR meters on the market, from Anatek's BLUE Esr (which we happen to sell) and others. I suspect one of your compatriots on your side of the pond has a meter they could lend you...You could simply replace all the capacitors with low ESR caps, but metering the caps would be cheaper... 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 rtellason at verizon.net Sat Apr 12 08:45:18 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:45:18 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804120945.18919.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 11 April 2008 22:55, Liam Proven wrote: (Snip) > However, I have tried Slackware since then, on some fairly recent > version - 10.0, I think. I found it nearly as forbidding as it was a > decade ago, and these days, I'm fairly well-used to Debian, Ubuntu, > Red Hat, SuSE, Mandriva and many others. I've not messed with most of those, though occasionally I'll get some kind of current CDs and boot them just to see what they look like... > > Anyhow, I'm not sure what the hardware is that you're messing with > > there, but if you want to get some Slackware running on it let me know. > > Well, hey, if Slackware is the only modern that still supports MCA, I > might give it a shot. Does it? I don't think modern Debian does... I don't know offhand without digging into things. And we might want to take this off-list, perhaps. :-) -- 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 Apr 12 08:47:30 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:47:30 -0400 Subject: a printer oddity In-Reply-To: <8CA6A611A31A8AA-CAC-43DB@webmail-ne14.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CA6A611A31A8AA-CAC-43DB@webmail-ne14.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <200804120947.30323.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 11 April 2008 23:04, tiggerlasv at aim.com wrote: > Most of the Okidatas from the period (Microline 320, 520, etc.) > had a standard Parallel port built in on the back of the printer. > Right next to it is usually a plastic knockout. > > If you get the RS232 serial port option for this printer, > you remove the plastic knockout, and slide the RS232 board > into the opening. There is a card-edge connector that > it mates with. > > You don't have to set any switches to use it. Ok, then in that respect it's different than my old 92... > I don't really know if it will let you do "dual porting" or not. > (i.e., 2 computers printing to it, one via serial, one via parallel.) I have a major pile of those 3xx printers and no docs on them at all. > As for the RJ45 adapter; those are fairly common. The serial port probably > only needs 3 pins for printing, Ground, TXD, and RXD . . (7, 2, and 3), > although they may have included handshaking signals. Who knows. Yeah, a hardware handshake line or two is a nice thing to have. > A standard serial cable to/from your computer should work, > as well as a parallel cable. > > Documentation should be readily downloadable > from the Okidata website. I'll have to have a look, then. One other oddity I noticed on that particular printer is a "slot" in the front of it. Might be for some sort of a font cartride maybe? Darned if I know... -- 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 Apr 12 08:51:38 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:51:38 -0400 Subject: modular serial hardware (was Re: a printer oddity) In-Reply-To: <20080412033407.GB27787@usap.gov> References: <833485.46053.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200804111704.12553.rtellason@verizon.net> <20080412033407.GB27787@usap.gov> Message-ID: <200804120951.38763.rtellason@verizon.net> On Friday 11 April 2008 23:34, Ethan Dicks wrote: (Snip) > > > They were sold as "kits" with no pins inserted, and a prewired RJ45 > > > connector. You inserted the pins into the DB25 and clipped the thing > > > together. > > > > Some of those connector shells can be opened easier, some are pretty > > much necessary to destroy to open it. If I can get it open, I also have > > the tool to remove those pins, if necessary. :-) > > You might check the pins before randomly rewiring them... I had intended to, if I go so far as to dig into this thing. > For RJ-45s, the most common arrangement I've seen is the one presently used > by Cisco - the center two conductors on the cable are both ground, then > flanked by TxD and RxD, then flanked by handshaking lines. Most of the gear > I've seen lately that uses RJ-45s for serial, though, stops with the inner 4 > pins. > > One handy thing about this interconnection scheme is that you don't > _need_ to change the shells for null modems (though you can). You > can flip one end of an RJ-45 cable (making it unsuitable for Ethernet > use) to make the cable a null modem - the signals are arranged in a > "paired" fashion to make that work. Yup. > In practice, the flat cables that Cisco ships are assembled inverted > compared to "Ethernet" cables, so it matters what you grab when you > link up two devices. Is that the same as a "crossover" cable for LAN use or different? I've not really looked at the wiring of those things much. > OTOH, I rarely use the RJ-45 scheme with DB25 connections, since the > shells are rarer, in my experience, compared to DE9 shells (which are > *quite* common in the Cisco world). At home, for DB25 stuff, I tend > to use my boxes and boxes of RJ-11 stuff, unless I have a connection > that needs "proper" hardware handshaking - then I usually bust out a > "real" cable. Thanks for the info, I have no experience with Cisco stuff and wasn't aware that these were that common. -- 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 Apr 12 08:54:47 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:54:47 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <48003654.5070705@msu.edu> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> <48003654.5070705@msu.edu> Message-ID: <200804120954.47973.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 12 April 2008 00:11, Josh Dersch wrote: > (I tried the latest Slackware first, but they don't even support booting > from floppy anymore :(. I considered digging out my Slack 3.0 floppy > set but decided to try for something a little more modern.) They don't assume that anybody's going to be doing it that way, as an awful lot of machines will boot from CD any more, but I still have and use some that won't, and it's still quite possible to make images that you'll need to boot from floppy from what's contained on the ISO images, no problem... -- 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 silent700 at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 12:44:06 2008 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:44:06 -0500 Subject: FS/T: SGI IRIS 4D Boards Message-ID: <51ea77730804121044u6b562f42rf785100d798cf0db@mail.gmail.com> My attempt to give away my Iris non-op 4D310/VGX was unsuccessful (although that offer still stands for local pickup in 60074,) so now I'd like to find the individual boards a home. I don't believe there is anything special here - CPU board, RAM board, VGX 3-layer video (with 2 sets of BNCs on panel headers.) I'll take any nominal price for them (seriously - $1 + shipping would do it if you can make use of them) or would be happy to trade for pretty much anything. Don't let these lovely boards meet the dumpster! From silent700 at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 12:44:06 2008 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:44:06 -0500 Subject: FS/T: SGI IRIS 4D Boards Message-ID: <51ea77730804121044u6b562f42rf785100d798cf0db@mail.gmail.com> My attempt to give away my Iris non-op 4D310/VGX was unsuccessful (although that offer still stands for local pickup in 60074,) so now I'd like to find the individual boards a home. I don't believe there is anything special here - CPU board, RAM board, VGX 3-layer video (with 2 sets of BNCs on panel headers.) I'll take any nominal price for them (seriously - $1 + shipping would do it if you can make use of them) or would be happy to trade for pretty much anything. Don't let these lovely boards meet the dumpster! From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 13:17:35 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:17:35 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FF00D3.6030300@msu.edu> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4800FCBF.4090905@gmail.com> Liam Proven wrote: >> I am running a Model 80-061 with many (4?) IBM 80386 XMAs and the machine >> is perfectly stable running Linux with 46MB RAM. If I had an 80-Axx (which >> I would love to get, for the cache), it would be 48MB. > > [Gasp] > > *Envy!* > > Not only could I only find the one memory adaptor board, I've never > been able to get any Linux distro to even boot on my 80-A21. I was > recommended to Slackware but I got nowhere. I have a whole load of memory expansion boards and an Intel 80486DX-33 upgrade for a Model 80 (! -- I used to use this in my 80-061, but I've since found an 80486BL2-66 upgrade for my 80, which is what I now use), which I would be willing to trade if you could get me an 80-Axx system. I've been looking for some time. > Still, NT3 runs very nicely on it. Much better than Warp Server did, > which could not drive my obscure, unheard of network card, a certain > "Novell NE2000/MCA". I mean, who's ever heard of Novell? The problem with the NE2000/MCA, is that it calls itself "NE2000", but yet is not fully compatible with the original 8-bit ISA NE2000. They should have called it "NE2100" or something. > I never got Warp running properly on my Thinkpad Butterfly either. > It's only VGA res, but I wanted at least 16k or 32k colours, sound and > the modem, but nope. IBM O/S on IBM H/W, but no joy. I thought the Thinkpad 701C doesn't have an SVGA chip. Does it indeed have one? > I recently rescued one of the little 386sx or 486slc desktops from a > skip. Model 56? I don't recall. I shall try OS/2 on it at some point, > if I can max out its RAM. The 16-bit 486SLC boxes are the 56 and 57. (The 32-bit versions of the same are the 76 and 77). The difference between the 56 and 57 are the chassis and number of slots. Maybe number of bays too, but I can't remember clearly. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 13:19:55 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:19:55 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4800FD4B.1000505@gmail.com> Liam Proven wrote: > On 12/04/2008, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > >> I've been running Slackware since 1999 when I started with 4.0. And there was >> an awful lot of that setup that turned out to be very much DIY. I also added >> stuff later on that wasn't present during the install (like an ISA sound >> card) so that and X and a bunch of other stuff all turned out to be DIY as >> well. > > The first Linux distro I ever tried to actually /install/ was > Slackware, on my notebook: a very odd 486DX50 (not DX2/50) with 8MB of I *love* 486DX-50 machines. I've had some success in the past installing Am5x86-133 chips in these machines running at 200MHz. They're quite a bit faster than the first couple of generations of Pentium chips. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 13:23:36 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:23:36 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <48003654.5070705@msu.edu> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> <48003654.5070705@msu.edu> Message-ID: <4800FE28.90101@gmail.com> Josh Dersch wrote: > I'd rather run NetBSD on a machine like this, but they don't support the > IBM SCSI controllers at all. Which is why looking for an Adaptec 1640-series card is a very good idea. I have two, and they're going to the grave with me. I keep hoping I'll find a pallet of "new old-stock" cards somewhere, in which case I'll share. On a side note, if you ever want to hook an MCA PC of any kind (PS/2, Tandy 4000, NCR, etc.) to a 100Mbps ethernet network, I have 100Mbps ethernet cards for MCA from Olicom available, new-in-box. Peace... Sridhar From curt at atarimuseum.com Sat Apr 12 13:27:12 2008 From: curt at atarimuseum.com (Curt @ Atari Museum) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:27:12 -0400 Subject: Corvus Series 386 Fileserver In-Reply-To: <4800FD4B.1000505@gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <47FFDE1B.4030203@gmail.com> <575131af0804111558l56dfb9ack2f25c91691a4aaf@mail.gmail.com> <200804112036.46305.rtellason@verizon.net> <575131af0804111955s379accc1o9949cfc8096dbb45@mail.gmail.com> <4800FD4B.1000505@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4800FF00.3010109@atarimuseum.com> Anyone seen or have one these? Its a generic 386 processor system, 2.5mb RAM a 70 or 120mb HD, floppy and with 8 slots and ran Netware on it. Had available a Green, white or Amber Monitor. Its also referred to as Series 386 Omniserver Curt From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Apr 12 14:14:36 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:14:36 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <4800FE28.90101@gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <48003654.5070705@msu.edu> <4800FE28.90101@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804121514.36338.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 12 April 2008 14:23, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Josh Dersch wrote: > > I'd rather run NetBSD on a machine like this, but they don't support the > > IBM SCSI controllers at all. > > Which is why looking for an Adaptec 1640-series card is a very good > idea. I have two, and they're going to the grave with me. I keep > hoping I'll find a pallet of "new old-stock" cards somewhere, in which > case I'll share. I know the 15xx numbers some, but not those that you refer to here -- what are they like? > On a side note, if you ever want to hook an MCA PC of any kind (PS/2, > Tandy 4000, NCR, etc.) to a 100Mbps ethernet network, I have 100Mbps > ethernet cards for MCA from Olicom available, new-in-box. I have one MCA card which I think is that brand here also, not 100mbps, but still new-in-box, if anybody can use 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 ljw-cctech at ljw.me.uk Sat Apr 12 14:18:05 2008 From: ljw-cctech at ljw.me.uk (Lawrence Wilkinson) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:18:05 +0100 Subject: 360/30 Console Display in Auckland, NZ Message-ID: <1208027885.4061.14.camel@ljw.me.uk> After many, many years part of the 360/30 has surfaced in the form of the console on display at the University of Auckland Computer Science department. If you follow the link in my signature, you can find a photo of the console display. Of course you will notice it's missing the proper central two-piece knob, so if anyone knows were we can get one then let me know. Thanks to Bob Doran (one of my lecturers way back then) who organised this. If anyone's in Auckland you may want to go and visit it! (As far as I know it's at the City campus, so only a couple of minutes walk from Queen Street.) While you're in Auckland you should also visit MOTAT and see the /40 and other goodies there. -- Lawrence Wilkinson lawrence at ljw.me.uk The IBM 360/30 page http://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360 From silent700 at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 14:33:11 2008 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:33:11 -0500 Subject: FS/T: SGI IRIS 4D Boards In-Reply-To: <51ea77730804121044u6b562f42rf785100d798cf0db@mail.gmail.com> References: <51ea77730804121044u6b562f42rf785100d798cf0db@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <51ea77730804121233y48c358b5u1f0f07755e03bc0c@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Jason T wrote: > My attempt to give away my Iris non-op 4D310/VGX was unsuccessful > (although that offer still stands for local pickup in 60074,) so now The boards have been claimed. Will re-post if it doesn't work out. Thank you! j From silent700 at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 14:33:11 2008 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:33:11 -0500 Subject: FS/T: SGI IRIS 4D Boards In-Reply-To: <51ea77730804121044u6b562f42rf785100d798cf0db@mail.gmail.com> References: <51ea77730804121044u6b562f42rf785100d798cf0db@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <51ea77730804121233y48c358b5u1f0f07755e03bc0c@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Jason T wrote: > My attempt to give away my Iris non-op 4D310/VGX was unsuccessful > (although that offer still stands for local pickup in 60074,) so now The boards have been claimed. Will re-post if it doesn't work out. Thank you! j From spectre at floodgap.com Sat Apr 12 14:49:07 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:49:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <4800FD4B.1000505@gmail.com> from Sridhar Ayengar at "Apr 12, 8 02:19:55 pm" Message-ID: <200804121949.m3CJn8cM005782@floodgap.com> > I *love* 486DX-50 machines. I've had some success in the past > installing Am5x86-133 chips in these machines running at 200MHz. What did you change on the board to get the 200MHz speed? I have a -133 here that I'd love to try that on. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Business is war. -- Jack Tramiel ------------------------------------------- From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Apr 12 14:50:23 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:50:23 +0100 (BST) Subject: Mac Plus ozone? In-Reply-To: <48000986.7080203@hawkmountain.net> from "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." at Apr 11, 8 08:59:50 pm Message-ID: > > > I was given a Mac Plus a while back... and never tested it.... > > Decided to give it a quick test... > > Other than needing a boot floppy which I'll have to dig up.... it powers > on, video > looks good, monitor is stable and all... > > But there is a faint sound (think of it as a cross between crickets > chirping and clicks) > and after a while, it smells to me a bit like ozone at the top of the Mac. > > I'm thinking maybe high voltage leakage ? I'm thinking the same thing. WHat _I_ would do is pull the case (we've had a discussion on opening classic Macs recently) and the cardboard cover over the vertically-mounted 'analogue board' (PSU and monitor circuits). Then power the machine up -- touch _NOTHING_ inside -- and if possible darken the room. Look for sparking, corona discharge, and the like. It might be leackage from the flyback transformer, for example. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Apr 12 14:35:28 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:35:28 +0100 (BST) Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: <200804101816.21352.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Apr 10, 8 06:16:21 pm Message-ID: > > > Scoping tbings in there would sure be informative. > > > > The prolem is that if this is like most small SMPSUs, then almost all t= > he > > 'interesting' circuitry (oscillator, etc) is on the mains side of the > > isolation barrier. And therefore you can't just connect a 'scope to it, > > not unless you like shorting out the mains via one of the rectifier > > diodes and the earth (ground) lead of the 'scope. > > This is true, though at the time I wrote that I was thinking about scopi= > ng=20 > the outputs. Most of the tiem, if the outputs are pulsing, they're doing so quite slowly (~1Hz), so a non-storage 'scope won't tell you anything more than an analouge meter. I suppose it's possible you might see a higher-than-normal voltage spike on one of the outputs which will trip the crowbar, but I think it would be very easy to miss that. -tony From classiccmp at philpem.me.uk Sat Apr 12 15:30:35 2008 From: classiccmp at philpem.me.uk (Philip Pemberton) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:30:35 +0100 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <48011BEB.6090905@philpem.me.uk> Tony Duell wrote: > The prolem is that if this is like most small SMPSUs, then almost all the > 'interesting' circuitry (oscillator, etc) is on the mains side of the > isolation barrier. And therefore you can't just connect a 'scope to it, > not unless you like shorting out the mains via one of the rectifier > diodes and the earth (ground) lead of the 'scope. If you don't mind losing your second channel, you can always apply one input to channel A and the ground reference to channel B, then set the scope to "A-B" mode (ChA subtract ChB). Most scopes can do this, and this is exactly what it's meant for. The idea is that your ground reference remains mains earth, while one scope probe measures the ground level, and the other measures the signal you're actually interested in. I suppose you could build an isolator of some form, but that sounds like it might not be as easy as it seems. -- 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 rescue at hawkmountain.net Sat Apr 12 15:45:32 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:45:32 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <200804121949.m3CJn8cM005782@floodgap.com> References: <200804121949.m3CJn8cM005782@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <48011F6C.2020907@hawkmountain.net> Cameron Kaiser wrote: >> I *love* 486DX-50 machines. I've had some success in the past >> installing Am5x86-133 chips in these machines running at 200MHz. >> > > What did you change on the board to get the 200MHz speed? I have a -133 > here that I'd love to try that on. > > My guess is he is running the front side bus at 50mhz (as genuine DX50 systems do) vs the 33mhz fsb that the Am5x86-133 is designed for (33.3*4 = 133, 50*4 = 200). I wouldn't have imagined that part would handle a 50% overclock. I have not found many processors in my limited overclocking experience that exceed 20% overclock w/o fiddling with "excessive" cooling, increasing core voltage, etc. I have been running a 2.4 Prescott P4 at 3.0Ghz... but once in a while until it is warmed up it will blue screen and reboot.... so I've backed it off to 2.8 to see how it goes.... I'm wary of jacking the core voltage... (although it isn't a northwood so I don't have to worry about SNDS). I may inherit some 2.8GHZ Prescott P4s with 800mhz fsb (vs the 2.4/533 I have now OC'd to 2.8)... so may go with one of those :-) (plus they have HT (woo... moan...). -- Curt From rescue at hawkmountain.net Sat Apr 12 15:47:07 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:47:07 -0400 Subject: Mac Plus ozone? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <48011FCB.8000907@hawkmountain.net> Tony Duell wrote: >> I was given a Mac Plus a while back... and never tested it.... >> >> Decided to give it a quick test... >> >> Other than needing a boot floppy which I'll have to dig up.... it powers >> on, video >> looks good, monitor is stable and all... >> >> But there is a faint sound (think of it as a cross between crickets >> chirping and clicks) >> and after a while, it smells to me a bit like ozone at the top of the Mac. >> >> I'm thinking maybe high voltage leakage ? >> > > I'm thinking the same thing. > > WHat _I_ would do is pull the case (we've had a discussion on opening > classic Macs recently) and the cardboard cover over the > vertically-mounted 'analogue board' (PSU and monitor circuits). Then > power the machine up -- touch _NOTHING_ inside -- and if possible darken > the room. Look for sparking, corona discharge, and the like. > That's what I was thinking of doing. > It might be leackage from the flyback transformer, for example. > > If so... how much are flybacks for these ??? Where to get them ? I like the machine, but other than occasionally playing with it, I don't want to drop $$$ into it (a few is OK... but I don't want to spend $50 on it for instance). -- Curt > -tony > > From trag at io.com Sat Apr 12 16:57:12 2008 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:57:12 -0500 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: <200804121032.m3CAWVjd012273@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804121032.m3CAWVjd012273@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:11:07 +0100 >From: "Liam Proven" >> >> I'm trying to find a Micron Xceed Color30 card and Greyscale30 card for a >> Mac SE/30. >It /is/ possible to clone one - q.v. > >http://home.earthlink.net/~gamba2/microngray.html Actually, that project was just to clone the Grayscale adapter card. It did not include the frame buffer main card. The main card was based on a custom chip by Micron--not an FPGA unfortunately. So the chances of cloning it without having to redesign the bulk of the logic is nill. Now, it really shouldn't be that hard to whip something up with an FPGA and either some fastish SRAM or an open core DDR2 controller and one DDR2 memory chip. However, figuring out all the ins and outs of properly interfacing to the Mac OS of the time has had me slowed and stopped for a while. It's probably not all that difficult, but it is tedious and there is a lot of information to sort through. One of the hardest parts is knowing which information I actually need. For every useful tidbit I find, I've gone through 20 chunks of old Mac knowledge which don't apply but were in the way. Jeff Walther From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sat Apr 12 17:04:29 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:04:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: References: <200804121032.m3CAWVjd012273@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: On Sat, 12 Apr 2008, Jeff Walther wrote: > Actually, that project was just to clone the Grayscale adapter card. > It did not include the frame buffer main card. The main card was > based on a custom chip by Micron--not an FPGA unfortunately. So the > chances of cloning it without having to redesign the bulk of the > logic is nill. > > Now, it really shouldn't be that hard to whip something up with an > FPGA and either some fastish SRAM or an open core DDR2 controller and > one DDR2 memory chip. However, figuring out all the ins and outs > of properly interfacing to the Mac OS of the time has had me slowed > and stopped for a while. It's probably not all that difficult, but > it is tedious and there is a lot of information to sort through. One > of the hardest parts is knowing which information I actually need. > For every useful tidbit I find, I've gone through 20 chunks of old > Mac knowledge which don't apply but were in the way. How far did you get with this project? I'd love to see something that just does greyscale. That and smaller modern parts would allow a lot more to be crammed into that PDS slot. -- 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 pete at dunnington.plus.com Sat Apr 12 19:15:44 2008 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:15:44 +0100 Subject: modular serial hardware (was Re: a printer oddity) In-Reply-To: <200804120951.38763.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <833485.46053.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200804111704.12553.rtellason@verizon.net> <20080412033407.GB27787@usap.gov> <200804120951.38763.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <480150B0.6040600@dunnington.plus.com> On 12/04/2008 14:51, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > Someone else wrote: >> For RJ-45s, the most common arrangement I've seen is the one presently used >> by Cisco - the center two conductors on the cable are both ground, then >> flanked by TxD and RxD, then flanked by handshaking lines. Most of the gear >> I've seen lately that uses RJ-45s for serial, though, stops with the inner 4 >> pins. >> >> One handy thing about this interconnection scheme is that you don't >> _need_ to change the shells for null modems (though you can). You >> can flip one end of an RJ-45 cable (making it unsuitable for Ethernet >> use) to make the cable a null modem - the signals are arranged in a >> "paired" fashion to make that work. [ ... ] >> In practice, the flat cables that Cisco ships are assembled inverted >> compared to "Ethernet" cables, so it matters what you grab when you >> link up two devices. Ask Google about "YOST", which is where Cisco and Sun copied the scheme. But be aware that almost every way you could think of to use an RJ45 for serial has been tried by someone -- and if you want a laugh of the "I don't believe it" sort, look up EIA/TIA-561. > Is that the same as a "crossover" cable for LAN use or different? I've not > really looked at the wiring of those things much. No, LAN cables are wired with twisted pairs for 1+2, 7+8, 3+6 and 4+5. To make an Ethernet crossover, you swap 1+2 with 3+6 but you leave the others as-is. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From pat at computer-refuge.org Sat Apr 12 19:32:42 2008 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:32:42 -0400 Subject: modular serial hardware (was Re: a printer oddity) In-Reply-To: <480150B0.6040600@dunnington.plus.com> References: <833485.46053.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200804120951.38763.rtellason@verizon.net> <480150B0.6040600@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <200804122032.42770.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Saturday 12 April 2008 20:15, Pete Turnbull wrote: > Ask Google about "YOST", which is where Cisco and Sun copied the > scheme. But be aware that almost every way you could think of to use > an RJ45 for serial has been tried by someone -- and if you want a > laugh of the "I don't believe it" sort, look up EIA/TIA-561. Uhm, did "YOST" precede DECconnect? MMJ cables are wired the same way as the inner 6 pins on Sun, Cisco, Xyplex, etc RJ45 serial connectors. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 19:39:21 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:39:21 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <200804121514.36338.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <48003654.5070705@msu.edu> <4800FE28.90101@gmail.com> <200804121514.36338.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <48015639.8010202@gmail.com> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > On Saturday 12 April 2008 14:23, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> Josh Dersch wrote: >>> I'd rather run NetBSD on a machine like this, but they don't support the >>> IBM SCSI controllers at all. >> Which is why looking for an Adaptec 1640-series card is a very good >> idea. I have two, and they're going to the grave with me. I keep >> hoping I'll find a pallet of "new old-stock" cards somewhere, in which >> case I'll share. > > I know the 15xx numbers some, but not those that you refer to here -- what > are they like? The 15xx is the ISA version. The 16xx is MCA. Otherwise, very similar. Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 19:42:18 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:42:18 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <200804121949.m3CJn8cM005782@floodgap.com> References: <200804121949.m3CJn8cM005782@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <480156EA.9040404@gmail.com> Cameron Kaiser wrote: >> I *love* 486DX-50 machines. I've had some success in the past >> installing Am5x86-133 chips in these machines running at 200MHz. > > What did you change on the board to get the 200MHz speed? I have a -133 > here that I'd love to try that on. Because the DX-50 had a core speed of 50MHz, nothing needed to be done. If you start from a board that has a core speed of 33MHz (like a DX2-66 or DX-33), you would need to set a core speed of 50MHz. Boards where this is possible are actually reasonably rare. Peace... Sridhar From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sat Apr 12 19:41:59 2008 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:41:59 +0100 Subject: modular serial hardware (was Re: a printer oddity) In-Reply-To: <200804122032.42770.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <833485.46053.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <200804120951.38763.rtellason@verizon.net> <480150B0.6040600@dunnington.plus.com> <200804122032.42770.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <480156D7.8060801@dunnington.plus.com> On 13/04/2008 01:32, Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Saturday 12 April 2008 20:15, Pete Turnbull wrote: >> Ask Google about "YOST", which is where Cisco and Sun copied the >> scheme. But be aware that almost every way you could think of to use >> an RJ45 for serial has been tried by someone -- and if you want a >> laugh of the "I don't believe it" sort, look up EIA/TIA-561. > > Uhm, did "YOST" precede DECconnect? MMJ cables are wired the same way > as the inner 6 pins on Sun, Cisco, Xyplex, etc RJ45 serial connectors. I don't think so, but YOST isn't the same as DECconnect and neither is Cisco. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From ploopster at gmail.com Sat Apr 12 19:47:18 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:47:18 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <48011F6C.2020907@hawkmountain.net> References: <200804121949.m3CJn8cM005782@floodgap.com> <48011F6C.2020907@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: <48015816.10508@gmail.com> Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: > Cameron Kaiser wrote: >>> I *love* 486DX-50 machines. I've had some success in the past >>> installing Am5x86-133 chips in these machines running at 200MHz. >>> >> >> What did you change on the board to get the 200MHz speed? I have a >> -133 here that I'd love to try that on. >> >> > My guess is he is running the front side bus at 50mhz (as genuine > DX50 systems do) vs the 33mhz fsb that the Am5x86-133 is designed for > (33.3*4 = 133, 50*4 = 200). Exactly. > I wouldn't have imagined that part would handle a 50% overclock. I > have not found many processors in my limited overclocking experience > that exceed 20% overclock w/o fiddling with "excessive" cooling, > increasing core voltage, etc. Considering that the Am5x86 ran reasonably reliably with no heatsink at all, running with a minimal heatsink and fan, it's not that big of a deal. > I have been running a 2.4 Prescott P4 at 3.0Ghz... but once in a > while until it is warmed up it will blue screen and reboot.... so > I've backed it off to 2.8 to see how it goes.... I'm wary of jacking > the core voltage... (although it isn't a northwood so I don't have to > worry about SNDS). I may inherit some 2.8GHZ Prescott P4s with > 800mhz fsb (vs the 2.4/533 I have now OC'd to 2.8)... so may go with > one of those :-) (plus they have HT (woo... moan...). Back then, processors weren't so high-strung from the factory. Peace... Sridhar From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Apr 12 20:32:21 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:32:21 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <48015639.8010202@gmail.com> References: <6bpm1d$5jbkcq@toip4.srvr.bell.ca> <200804121514.36338.rtellason@verizon.net> <48015639.8010202@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804122132.21317.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 12 April 2008 20:39, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > On Saturday 12 April 2008 14:23, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >> Josh Dersch wrote: > >>> I'd rather run NetBSD on a machine like this, but they don't support > >>> the IBM SCSI controllers at all. > >> > >> Which is why looking for an Adaptec 1640-series card is a very good > >> idea. I have two, and they're going to the grave with me. I keep > >> hoping I'll find a pallet of "new old-stock" cards somewhere, in which > >> case I'll share. > > > > I know the 15xx numbers some, but not those that you refer to here -- > > what are they like? > > The 15xx is the ISA version. The 16xx is MCA. Otherwise, very similar. Ah, okay, gotcha. I've overall done very little with MCA stuff, and in fact got rid of my one MCA machine to a listmember some time back. Now all I need to do is find a home for this network card... :-) -- 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 Apr 12 20:35:59 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:35:59 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <480156EA.9040404@gmail.com> References: <200804121949.m3CJn8cM005782@floodgap.com> <480156EA.9040404@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804122135.59932.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 12 April 2008 20:42, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Cameron Kaiser wrote: > >> I *love* 486DX-50 machines. I've had some success in the past > >> installing Am5x86-133 chips in these machines running at 200MHz. > > > > What did you change on the board to get the 200MHz speed? I have a -133 > > here that I'd love to try that on. > > Because the DX-50 had a core speed of 50MHz, nothing needed to be done. > If you start from a board that has a core speed of 33MHz (like a > DX2-66 or DX-33), you would need to set a core speed of 50MHz. Boards > where this is possible are actually reasonably rare. Hmm. I have this box around here someplace, ISA-only (no VLB in there) that has the CPU on a daughterboard with some jumpers on it. Currently there's a 486dx2/66 chip in there, and I know that moving the jumper to other positions makes it run slower, faster but way more flaky, and not at all (in what I assumed at that time was a 100 MHz position). Nice box, built like a tank, and I'd love to find some info on ie one of these days. Oh yeah, and it says "digital" on the front. Anybody know if DEC made this sort of thng ever? The only downside to it is that it will only recognize parity RAM. Of which I don't have enough, so there's two 16s and two 4s in there. I was gonna run OS/2 on that box at some point but may try running linux in there, maybe. Might try one of those 5x86/133 chips, too. -- 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 ak6dn at mindspring.com Sat Apr 12 20:46:05 2008 From: ak6dn at mindspring.com (Don North) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 18:46:05 -0700 Subject: PDP-8/E In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF98@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF98@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <480165DD.1060104@mindspring.com> Rod Smallwood wrote: > Hi > Could anyone out there with an 8/e confirm the following: > > 1. Knob set to STATE, SR Keys Down > 2. Press ADDR LOAD - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? > Neither > 3. Press EXAM - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? > Only DATA CONT while switch is down > 4 Raise DEP - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? > > Neither > > > Rod Smallwood > > > > > From rborsuk at colourfull.com Sat Apr 12 20:59:58 2008 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:59:58 -0400 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: References: <200804121032.m3CAWVjd012273@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <65B4981D-C2EF-431D-A6D9-648F0F83DD2C@colourfull.com> On Apr 12, 2008, at 5:57 PM, Jeff Walther wrote: > Actually, that project was just to clone the Grayscale adapter card. > It did not include the frame buffer main card. The main card was > based on a custom chip by Micron--not an FPGA unfortunately. So > the chances of cloning it without having to redesign the bulk of the > logic is nill. > > Now, it really shouldn't be that hard to whip something up with an > FPGA and either some fastish SRAM or an open core DDR2 controller > and one DDR2 memory chip. However, figuring out all the ins and > outs of properly interfacing to the Mac OS of the time has had me > slowed and stopped for a while. It's probably not all that > difficult, but it is tedious and there is a lot of information to > sort through. One of the hardest parts is knowing which information > I actually need. For every useful tidbit I find, I've gone through > 20 chunks of old Mac knowledge which don't apply but were in the way. > > Jeff Walther > From rborsuk at colourfull.com Sat Apr 12 21:05:59 2008 From: rborsuk at colourfull.com (Robert Borsuk) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:05:59 -0400 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: References: <200804121032.m3CAWVjd012273@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: On Apr 12, 2008, at 5:57 PM, Jeff Walther wrote: > > Actually, that project was just to clone the Grayscale adapter card. > It did not include the frame buffer main card. The main card was > based on a custom chip by Micron--not an FPGA unfortunately. So > the chances of cloning it without having to redesign the bulk of the > logic is nill. > > Now, it really shouldn't be that hard to whip something up with an > FPGA and either some fastish SRAM or an open core DDR2 controller > and one DDR2 memory chip. However, figuring out all the ins and > outs of properly interfacing to the Mac OS of the time has had me > slowed and stopped for a while. It's probably not all that > difficult, but it is tedious and there is a lot of information to > sort through. One of the hardest parts is knowing which information > I actually need. For every useful tidbit I find, I've gone through > 20 chunks of old Mac knowledge which don't apply but were in the way. > > Jeff Walther > Previous blank email was a whoops. Let me first start by saying that I'm sorry Jeff and Teo, I've got your stuff and have been bad about sending it out. I have all the design info on the Xceed SE/30 card(s). Including my original source code for the roms, schematics, and yes (here's the big one) I have the design files for the custom asic. There were two or three variations of the asic. Two of them were for the SE/30 while another variation was for the Nubus cards. On the SE/30 cards, we also used (if I remember right) a couple of pals to help out with timing on the card. I'll get this info out this week so maybe Jeff can get busy with his design. Rob From swtpc6800 at comcast.net Sat Apr 12 21:50:41 2008 From: swtpc6800 at comcast.net (Michael Holley) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 19:50:41 -0700 Subject: The history of the double sided floppy given under oath Message-ID: <009101c89d11$2f320030$6601a8c0@downstairs2> Here is some interesting history on the development of the double sided floppy drive. I Googled for - shugart sa450 1976 Start reading around page 170 In the Matter of "Certain Double-Sided Floppy Disk Drives and Components Thereof" Investigation No. 337-TA-215 USITC Publication 1860 May 1986 United States International Trade Commission, Washington DC Michael Holley www.swtpc.com/mholley From aek at bitsavers.org Sat Apr 12 22:08:20 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:08:20 -0700 Subject: The history of the double sided floppy given under oath Message-ID: <48017924.2070506@bitsavers.org> The problems with SA850's eating media was well known at the time, as well as the switch to a bicompliant head. If anyone cares, there are still folks around the Valley that worked on the problem. Apple got around the problem with by putting the heads on opposite ends of the media on the Twiggy, but it had other well-known problems. From legalize at xmission.com Sat Apr 12 22:25:24 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:25:24 -0600 Subject: govliq: HP disk alignment pack (Clearfield, UT) Message-ID: If anyone wins this, I can help pick up/ship it for you. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From legalize at xmission.com Sat Apr 12 22:42:51 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:42:51 -0600 Subject: govliq: HP-1000 (Mechanicsburg, PA) Message-ID: Buried in a giant lot of other stuff, 17 pallets, 7000 lbs. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From rescue at hawkmountain.net Sat Apr 12 23:42:03 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:42:03 -0400 Subject: Anyone using an Intel AboveBoard MC on a Model 80? In-Reply-To: <48015816.10508@gmail.com> References: <200804121949.m3CJn8cM005782@floodgap.com> <48011F6C.2020907@hawkmountain.net> <48015816.10508@gmail.com> Message-ID: <48018F1B.6080702@hawkmountain.net> Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: >> Cameron Kaiser wrote: >>>> I *love* 486DX-50 machines. I've had some success in the past >>>> installing Am5x86-133 chips in these machines running at 200MHz. >>>> >>> >>> What did you change on the board to get the 200MHz speed? I have a >>> -133 here that I'd love to try that on. >>> >>> >> My guess is he is running the front side bus at 50mhz (as genuine >> DX50 systems do) vs the 33mhz fsb that the Am5x86-133 is designed for >> (33.3*4 = 133, 50*4 = 200). > > Exactly. > >> I wouldn't have imagined that part would handle a 50% overclock. I >> have not found many processors in my limited overclocking experience >> that exceed 20% overclock w/o fiddling with "excessive" cooling, >> increasing core voltage, etc. > > Considering that the Am5x86 ran reasonably reliably with no heatsink > at all, running with a minimal heatsink and fan, it's not that big of > a deal. > >> I have been running a 2.4 Prescott P4 at 3.0Ghz... but once in a >> while until it is warmed up it will blue screen and reboot.... so >> I've backed it off to 2.8 to see how it goes.... I'm wary of jacking >> the core voltage... (although it isn't a northwood so I don't have to >> worry about SNDS). I may inherit some 2.8GHZ Prescott P4s with >> 800mhz fsb (vs the 2.4/533 I have now OC'd to 2.8)... so may go with >> one of those :-) (plus they have HT (woo... moan...). > > Back then, processors weren't so high-strung from the factory. I tended not to get more than about 20% out of 286s, 386s, 486s, Pentiums, PIIIs, etc... I've generally used 20% as a rule. 33% was the 2.4 Prescott P4 at 3.0GHz... I considered that pretty good. It might have gone farther, but I only have DDR333 in that system. Approaching 3GHz, it would get picky about startup... process was, hit power button, count to 5, press reset button and it would come up fine.... however the first minute or two would be touch and go... 10-20% of the time if you logged into quick it could blue screen and reboot. After that first couple of minutes it was stable.... I now have it at 2.8 and we'll see how startup and stability are. I'm still quite surprised you got a 50% overclock. I have an upgrade (little PCB with the surface mount Am586 on it, and a cpu pin header for the cpu socket... along with a few jumpers/etc. I might have to try it at 50mhz fsb... I'd think that would make a pretty quick 486 based system. -- Curt > > Peace... Sridhar > From rescue at hawkmountain.net Sat Apr 12 23:56:47 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:56:47 -0400 Subject: modern switching power supply faults Message-ID: <4801928F.6000807@hawkmountain.net> I have two Dell switchers out of P4 based 1U servers. The first one has a failure in the startup circuit... pressing the power button will lead to a flash of the power light... and that's it. The second one failed spectacularly.... There is a wire wound power resistor (5W15RJ) near the AC input... it cooked... and I do mean cooked. It came out in pieces (with almost no effort), melted the nearby capacitor and a nearby relay. It also did a pretty good job of puckering/burning the PCB (but not bad enough it could not be used). I suspected maybe shorted primary full wave rectifier... but I used the DVM on diode test and got what I'd expect. Oddly, despite there being a fuse on the primary side... it's still good... it wasn't taken out. That resistor got hot hot hot. Could that resistor have failed on it's own ? I suspect something further down the circuit must have a problem. I'd be happy if I could make one power supply out of the two. These are not simple supplies however. While much of the switching transistors, regulators, bridge rectifiers, capacitors and the usual fair in a switcher are pretty readily identified, there is a 6" x 1" "brain" board (I'll call it that as it has adjustment pots, the ps fan circuit, quite a # of surface mount components on both side of it, and it interfaces with the main PCB with 34 connections. These are Dell W5916 supplies. Unsure who really makes these for Dell, only other marking is Model: HP-U280EF3. Both these supplies had been cycled 4 times on/off the mains due to a power failure (power fail, generator cycled on, power restored, generator cycled off, repeat process one more time) within a few minutes of each other. The first one was dead immediately after this (the one that has a problem in the start circuit (or a monitor/etc is shutting it down when it detects a problem during turn on). The second one failed almost two weeks after. I know this isn't particularly classic... but I know that there are those out there much wiser than me in switchmode power supplies. So lets pretend it is 2014 that way the supplies will be 10 years old :-).... -- Curt From rescue at hawkmountain.net Sat Apr 12 23:59:11 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:59:11 -0400 Subject: FS: SGI XZ video for Indy new in box Message-ID: <4801931F.9030208@hawkmountain.net> I have one of these new in the box, only opened for inspection. Has all SGI docuemntation, boot rom, video board, all new in the original massive box (about 20x20x4). If your interested make an offer. I'm only keeping one of my Indy's, and that one already has XZ so I don't need this new one. -- Curt From Tim at Rikers.org Sun Apr 13 01:20:36 2008 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:20:36 -0600 Subject: govliq: HP disk alignment pack (Clearfield, UT) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4801A634.7070800@Rikers.org> Appears to be 5 alignment packs for HP-7806 drives. Alas, I only have 7900 and 7901 drives. Still, will likely sell at bargain prices. :) -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! ????????u poo? ??n??u??s ?no? u? 8-??n ?u???? s? From Tim at Rikers.org Sun Apr 13 01:47:53 2008 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:47:53 -0600 Subject: pcmcia gpib on govliquidation Message-ID: <4801AC99.4050300@Rikers.org> Is there any way to contact those who win an auction on govliquidation? If I read this right, this auction includes approximately 24 pcmcia GB-IP interface cards and cables: http://cgi.govliquidation.com/auction/view?id=1654940 It also includes a ton of other things I don't want. I'd love to get my hands on 2 of those pcmcia card+cables. I don't want to even consider shipping the rest of the lot from Mechanicsburg, PA though. -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! ????????u poo? ??n??u??s ?no? u? 8-??n ?u???? s? From Tim at Rikers.org Sun Apr 13 01:49:45 2008 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:49:45 -0600 Subject: govliq: HP disk alignment pack (Clearfield, UT) In-Reply-To: <4801A634.7070800@Rikers.org> References: <4801A634.7070800@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <4801AD09.20804@Rikers.org> ugh. make that HP-7906 drives. sorry for the typo. http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=402 I wish URLs at hp museum had something to do with the product name or manual name etc. :) -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! ????????u poo? ??n??u??s ?no? u? 8-??n ?u???? s? From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sun Apr 13 03:27:38 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:27:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Zenith Z100 user manual with winchester supplement Message-ID: I have a Zenith Z100 user manual (with some pages still in shrinkwrap) and a winchester supplement that I've run on Ebay a couple times. Is anyone here who's not on speaking terms with Ebay who'd like 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 pichotjm at free.fr Sat Apr 12 05:47:12 2008 From: pichotjm at free.fr (pichotjm) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:47:12 +0200 Subject: Schematics and description of an acoustic memory (1k byte, Display terminal, 1969) Message-ID: <005d01c89c8a$90db9a30$2601a8c0@JM3800> Hi,If there are some electronic enginneers here, they may be interested by this descritption of an alphanumeric display terminal using acoutic delay lines. (used in european TV sets)This display terminal was designed in 1969, and uses 32 TV delay lines as memory! The memory size is 16 rows of 80 characters coded in 6 bit ascii: 1280 words (6 bits)If you are interested, have a look there: http://pichotjm.free.fr/DisplayDL/DisplayDLus.htmlYou will find the complete set of schematics and deep explanations. Remember, in that time, there are no micro-processor, neither RAM chips! Only few gates (or, and, nand, JK flip-flop,...) Sorry, i have no photos of the terminal.As you can read, i have a poor english, you can help me in correcting the text.Have a good trip in 1969.Jean-Marie PICHOT From julianskidmore at yahoo.com Sat Apr 12 06:55:25 2008 From: julianskidmore at yahoo.com (Julian Skidmore) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:55:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: MicroPdp-11 H7864 power supply question. Message-ID: <593727.29028.qm@web36806.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi folks, I have a H7864 PSU for a pdp11 (Rev C1 or Rev-12) which blew up last friday. A friend and I found out that the only thing that had gone wrong was that a 0.47uF X2 Cap had failed, so I bought a replacement and I've soldered it on now. So, maybe the PSU will work! However, there's an internal lead called J11 with a funny socket on the end: It looks like this (if you view in fixed point) [Side view] [Front view] [Plugs into ] [Which looks like on the outside of the casing] +------+ _____ | : : | / 230 \ _____ | : : | > < __/\ | " " | | : : | \_____/ =======| / ------- +------+ \_/ \###/ The far end of the lead connects to a PCB where it says "+Fan 1-" Now I think that when I dismantled the PSU I unplugged it from the bottom two prongs of a 6 pronged plug of which the other side displays "230" through a glass panel on the outside of the casing. There are connections and a resistor across the other 4 prongs of that plug. I figure that the the 6-pronged plug is for selecting the mains voltage, which in my case is 230-250v as I'm in Europe, but what are the bottom two prongs for - how could they power the fan? I was pretty sure I needed to plug J11 in - and this is the only place I could find and it's a tight fit! However, when I dismantled the PSU for my microVax II I found that J11 isn't plugged in at all! So, I'm not sure what the correct connections are. My choices are: 1. It doesn't matter if it's plugged in or not (unlikely, since fan cooling is important). 2. It should be plugged in on the pdp11 AND the microVax, so I should plug it in on the MicroVax II too. It'll only go in one way, it'll collide with the PCB with the 0.47uF X1 cap if I try it upside down. 3. It shouldn't be plugged in either of the machines and so the microVax is correct and the pdp11 is wrong. 4. It should be plugged in the pdp11, but not the microVax. Note: the MicroVax has a later power supply, Rev E1 from 1983. Sorry to be pedantic about all the connections, but advice would be helpful! -cheers from julz @P __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From djg at pdp8online.com Sat Apr 12 11:24:09 2008 From: djg at pdp8online.com (David Gesswein) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:24:09 -0400 Subject: PDP-8/E Message-ID: <200804121624.m3CGO9316888@h-68-165-246-86.mclnva23.covad.net> > Could anyone out there with an 8/e confirm the following: > > 1. Knob set to STATE, SR Keys Down > 2. Press ADDR LOAD - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? > DATA comes on. If DIR is off it will come on > 3. Press EXAM - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? > DATA comes on. If DIR is off it will come on > 4 Raise DEP - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? > No change in those lights Not quite sure what is up with DIR. On my online PDP-8 it seems to always be on. The web front panel seems to be working fine (http://www.pdp8.net/run.shtml) which should act the same as the real front panel. I tried to verify with the real front panel but its not operating reliabily. I tried the 8/M and it acted the same except sometimes when I did things on the front panel DIR would change state but not in any obvious pattern. If it was off the ADDR LOAD and EXAM would make it turn on while the switch was held. Looks like more things for the todo list. From jrr at flippers.com Sat Apr 12 11:32:13 2008 From: jrr at flippers.com (John Robertson) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:32:13 -0700 Subject: Mac Plus ozone? In-Reply-To: <48000986.7080203@hawkmountain.net> References: <48000986.7080203@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: <4800E40D.1060400@flippers.com> Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: > > I was given a Mac Plus a while back... and never tested it.... > > Decided to give it a quick test... > > Other than needing a boot floppy which I'll have to dig up.... it > powers on, video > looks good, monitor is stable and all... > > But there is a faint sound (think of it as a cross between crickets > chirping and clicks) > and after a while, it smells to me a bit like ozone at the top of the > Mac. > I'm thinking maybe high voltage leakage ? > > Anyone have any experiences with these old Macs that can point me at > what to look > for ? > > It might well be OK as it is... but I don't want to risk damage > occuring as other > than a few dings and scrapes and a bit of yellowing, it is in > remarkable condition. > > -- Curt > > > Ozone smell is just the high voltage at work. A slight leakage that may indicate moisture or excessive dust on the monitor where the HV lead clips to the side of the picture tube. You might be able to reduce the smell by opening the case and (after waiting 24 hours to discharge) clean the glass around the HV Anode clip (may have a rubber disc protecting the clip) with a red (usually red) fat insulated wire coming out of the picture tube cone. There is a special coating on the tube that starts about 2 inches away from the anode clip and coats the glass cone - do not remove or damage this if possible. It is 1/2 of the capacitor element of the picture tube Lyden jar type capacitor. Alternatively the flyback could be damp or filthy with dust. This is found at the other end of the fat wire (normally red) leading from the cone of the picture tube. You can wipe it with a damp cloth, taking particular care not to rotate or move it relative to the frame - as this will break wires and cause it to fail. Most flybacks are solid enough that this is not a concern but in my early B&W video game monitors the flyback coil was not well secured and subject to failure from being turned or twisted whilst cleanig or just day to day bouncing around... 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 hardware at ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu Sat Apr 12 16:49:34 2008 From: hardware at ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu (Kurt Rosenfeld) Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:49:34 -0400 Subject: PDP11/23+, Kennedy 9000, RX02, hard drive for trade Message-ID: <20080412214934.GA3602@eesfc24.engr.ccny.cuny.edu> Dear cctalk people, We have here three PDP11/23+ machines. One might have had the CPU upgraded. There is also a Kennedy 9000 tape drive. A compatible hard drive is included that supposedly works and supposedly contains RT-11. Also included is a RX02 floppy drive, also supposedly working. The previous owner said that everything was working when it was cleanly shut down several years ago. My interest has shifted more toward analog electronics, particularly old Tektronix stuff, scopes, plugins, etc. If anybody wants to do some kind of trade, that's great. Needless to say, this stuff is heavy, so local pickup is probaly the only practical way. I am in New York City. -kurt From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Sun Apr 13 04:29:14 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:29:14 +0100 Subject: Bringing up an older Mac In-Reply-To: References: <200804101700.m3AH0XXw090996@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <1208078954.27131.24.camel@elric> On Thu, 2008-04-10 at 12:57 -0500, Mark Tapley wrote: > I had a long, long series of problems with my Mac Plus. They > got pretty much cured when I took loose the power cable connecting > the Analog/video board to the digital board, cleaned the pins (sanded > lightly and wiped with ethanol), and put some silicone oil spray on > to inhibit corrosion. I had previously done this at the digital board > end, but the resistance (ohms to tens of ohms, and variable, > responding to temperature and vibration) was at the analog board end. > I finally discovered I could diagnose these by using an ohmmeter > between the solder pads on the back sides of the boards at either end > of the cable. Anywhere you get tinned connectors that are even a little bit exposed to the outside environment (near a ventilation grille), you get problems. Or at least, that's been my experience. The problems caused by the capacitive keyboards on Ensoniq ESQ- and VFX-family synths nearly sunk the company (maybe they did, at that). All this because of a little multiplug between the two halves of the keyboard PCB, positioned right under the key bed where moisture would get at it. Nearly all of these have had the plugs removed and the connection hardwired. Gordon From eric at brouhaha.com Sun Apr 13 04:36:22 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 02:36:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Schematics and description of an acoustic memory (1k byte, Display terminal, 1969) In-Reply-To: <005d01c89c8a$90db9a30$2601a8c0@JM3800> References: <005d01c89c8a$90db9a30$2601a8c0@JM3800> Message-ID: <34014.68.121.162.227.1208079382.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Jean-Marie Pichot wrote: > This display terminal was designed in 1969, [...] Remember, > in that time, there are no micro-processor, neither RAM chips! There were RAM chips in 1969. Most of them stored 16 bits or less. I have not been able to determine when the first 64-bit RAM appeared, but it might have occurred by then. Examples of RAM chips available in 1969 were the Fairchild U6A903059X 8-bit RAM and U6A903359X 16-bit RAM. The base part numbers were 9030 and 9033, respectively. These were part of the CTuL Complementary Transistor Logic (CTuL or CTL) family. Don't get confused by that name; these were complementary *bipolar* transistors, not CMOS. Many years later Fairchild reused the CTL abbreviation for something entirely different, Current Transistor Logic. By the time of the 1972 Fairchild TTL Data Book, the 9033 designation was changed to 93433. The 9030 was used in the KM10 fast memory "option" for the DEC KA10, the first PDP-10 processor, designed in 1967. For a raster display terminal in 1969, delay line memory was obviously more practical than semiconductor memory, since the density of available RAM chips was too low. This started to change in 1970 when Intel introduced the 1101 static RAM (256 bit) and the 1103 dynamic RAM (1024 bit), though there were initially a lot of reliability problems with the latter. The next generation of raster display terminals used MOS dynamic shift register memory, which was less expensive than RAM. As far as I'm aware, not many display terminal designs used RAM chips before 1977, and MOS shift registers were still being sold into the mid 1980s. Eric From pete at dunnington.plus.com Sun Apr 13 06:30:45 2008 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 12:30:45 +0100 Subject: PDP-8/E In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF98@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DF98@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <4801EEE5.8090502@dunnington.plus.com> On 11/04/2008 15:57, Rod Smallwood wrote: > Could anyone out there with an 8/e confirm the following: > > 1. Knob set to STATE, SR Keys Down > 2. Press ADDR LOAD - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? On my PDP-8/E, yes, until you release ADDR LOAD. > 3. Press EXAM - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? Yes, until you release ADDR LOAD. > 4 Raise DEP - do MD DIR and DATA CONT light up? No. That's just the same as David reported, I think. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From rtellason at verizon.net Sun Apr 13 06:58:05 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:58:05 -0400 Subject: govliq: HP-1000 (Mechanicsburg, PA) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804130758.05630.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 12 April 2008 23:42, Richard wrote: > > > Buried in a giant lot of other stuff, 17 pallets, 7000 lbs. I'm local to this, though currently hauling 17 pallets is a bit beyond my capabilities. :-) -- 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 Apr 13 07:03:21 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:03:21 -0400 Subject: Zenith Z100 user manual with winchester supplement In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804130803.21646.rtellason@verizon.net> On Sunday 13 April 2008 04:27, David Griffith wrote: > I have a Zenith Z100 user manual (with some pages still in shrinkwrap) and > a winchester supplement that I've run on Ebay a couple times. Is anyone > here who's not on speaking terms with Ebay who'd like this? Speaking of which, I may have a whole mess of Zenith manuals not too far off in the near future, covering the 89/90 stuff on up through their early 286 stuff, plus all the monitors that were current then. If any of this is of interest feel free to drop me an email offlist and if it comes through I'll get back to you... -- 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 mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com Sun Apr 13 09:05:22 2008 From: mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:05:22 -0600 Subject: IBM 6094 Lighted Programmable Function Keypad - bulk buy on eBay In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <48021322.9090307@brutman.com> listmailgoeshere at gmail.com wrote: > Hi cctalkers, > > The 6094 LPFK has been discussed on this list before (see thread "IBM > 6094-020 Lighted Program Function Keys"). > > I notice that there's a bulk lot of 19 of them on ePay (see > 180215874744) - now, I don't want 19, but I'd like one. I'm sure there > are others on this list who would as well. > > Who else is game? This seller will only ship to the US, so someone > within the US (I'm not) would need to receive them and reship - I'll > happily pay a few $ on top of the onward postage for the trouble. > > Any volunteers? > > Ed. > > Did anybody purchase one of these? How about getting it to work on a machine with a serial port not running AIX? I had another frustrating debug session with mine yesterday, and I still can't get it to talk. I'd love to know what the secret is. Mike From rescue at hawkmountain.net Sun Apr 13 08:32:36 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:32:36 -0400 Subject: Mac Plus ozone? In-Reply-To: <4800E40D.1060400@flippers.com> References: <48000986.7080203@hawkmountain.net> <4800E40D.1060400@flippers.com> Message-ID: <48020B74.1000206@hawkmountain.net> John Robertson wrote: > Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: >> >> I was given a Mac Plus a while back... and never tested it.... >> >> Decided to give it a quick test... >> >> Other than needing a boot floppy which I'll have to dig up.... it >> powers on, video >> looks good, monitor is stable and all... >> >> But there is a faint sound (think of it as a cross between crickets >> chirping and clicks) >> and after a while, it smells to me a bit like ozone at the top of the >> Mac. >> I'm thinking maybe high voltage leakage ? >> >> Anyone have any experiences with these old Macs that can point me at >> what to look >> for ? >> >> It might well be OK as it is... but I don't want to risk damage >> occuring as other >> than a few dings and scrapes and a bit of yellowing, it is in >> remarkable condition. >> >> -- Curt >> >> >> > Ozone smell is just the high voltage at work. A slight leakage that > may indicate moisture or excessive dust on the monitor where the HV > lead clips to the side of the picture tube. You might be able to > reduce the smell by opening the case and (after waiting 24 hours to > discharge) clean the glass around the HV Anode clip (may have a rubber > disc protecting the clip) with a red (usually red) fat insulated wire > coming out of the picture tube cone. There is a special coating on the > tube that starts about 2 inches away from the anode clip and coats the > glass cone - do not remove or damage this if possible. It is 1/2 of > the capacitor element of the picture tube Lyden jar type capacitor. Called DAG I believe. I'll have to open this up, probably check it out in a dark room, then I can always discharge with my hv meter or wait patiently for at least a day (and then double check with the hv meter :-) ). > > Alternatively the flyback could be damp or filthy with dust. This is > found at the other end of the fat wire (normally red) leading from the > cone of the picture tube. You can wipe it with a damp cloth, taking > particular care not to rotate or move it relative to the frame - as > this will break wires and cause it to fail. Most flybacks are solid > enough that this is not a concern but in my early B&W video game > monitors the flyback coil was not well secured and subject to failure > from being turned or twisted whilst cleanig or just day to day > bouncing around... > which B&W video games ? Vectors or Rasters ? I have an Asteroids I haven't repaired yet. (I have around 12 vids, aprox half rasters, half vectors) I am the 'repair shop' for them (but sadly get very little time, so several or awaiting repair). Currently (off topic, but possibly of interest to some) on the repair room floor: Star Wars (mathbox probs), Rip Off (sound problems), Tempest (flakes out with large vectors and crashes randomly, might be bad ram socket from a ram someone replaced), Major Havoc (mainboard problems, to be built into a Tempest cab), Xevious (the dreaded Matsushita monitor is slewing video at the edge of the (rotated) screen), and I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple. My Joust leaks HV... I think the DAG coating has become damaged (flaked off, or partially 'cleaned' off by someone). Especially if there is moisture in the air, it crackles, and IIRC I observed a faint lighting show around the DAG coating. I believe you can get a coating to redo the DAG, but I haven't researched that far yet. OK.. enough off topic (hrm... maybe not too of topic.. they are essentially computers :-) ). -- Curt > John :-#)# > From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Apr 13 09:16:31 2008 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:16:31 -0700 Subject: modern switching power supply faults In-Reply-To: <4801928F.6000807@hawkmountain.net> References: <4801928F.6000807@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: > Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:56:47 -0400 > From: rescue at hawkmountain.net > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: modern switching power supply faults > > > I have two Dell switchers out of P4 based 1U servers. > > The first one has a failure in the startup circuit... pressing the power > button will > lead to a flash of the power light... and that's it. > > The second one failed spectacularly.... > Hi I to have a problem with one. It is similar to your first one. Basically, the first problem is that something is failing to start the switcher feedback. What happens on powerup is that it is given one kick. This gets the 12v going to the regulator circuit. It is then suppose to send pulses through the pulse transformer to fire the switching transistors. It could be most anything in the regulation loop. I fixed one in the past when I found an open wire in the pulse transformer. Still, it could have been anything in the feedback path, including regulator ICs, filter caps, diodes, resistors, etc. Mine is failing on a load related problem. As I connect more load, it fails to powerup. It is funny that it seem to be more sensitive to the loads that use the 12V. It seems to run the 5V loads fine. Your second one has most likely had a failed switching transformer and switching transistor. There could also be a load issue, such as shorted rectifier diodes on the secondary but that is unlikely. This would tend to keep the 12V from coming up and you'd get no pulses to fire the switching transistors. They're unlikely to fail if not turned on. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ More immediate than e-mail? Get instant access with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_instantaccess_042008 From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 13 11:41:42 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:41:42 +0100 (BST) Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) In-Reply-To: <48011BEB.6090905@philpem.me.uk> from "Philip Pemberton" at Apr 12, 8 09:30:35 pm Message-ID: > If you don't mind losing your second channel, you can always apply one input > to channel A and the ground reference to channel B, then set the scope to > "A-B" mode (ChA subtract ChB). Most scopes can do this, and this is exactly > what it's meant for. If you do this, make sure the 'scope can stand a 'common mode voltage' of a few hundred volts, because that's what it's going to be seeing. I would think a fair number of 'scopes will not be happy looking at a signal of a few volts (so the Y attenuators are set to, perhaps, 1V/cm) with a common mode voltage of the full mains. -tony From legalize at xmission.com Sun Apr 13 12:23:14 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:23:14 -0600 Subject: pcmcia gpib on govliquidation In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:47:53 -0600. <4801AC99.4050300@Rikers.org> Message-ID: In article <4801AC99.4050300 at Rikers.org>, Tim Riker writes: > Is there any way to contact those who win an auction on govliquidation? Nope. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From legalize at xmission.com Sun Apr 13 12:24:28 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:24:28 -0600 Subject: govliq: HP-1000 (Mechanicsburg, PA) In-Reply-To: Your message of Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:58:05 -0400. <200804130758.05630.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: In article <200804130758.05630.rtellason at verizon.net>, "Roy J. Tellason" writes: > On Saturday 12 April 2008 23:42, Richard wrote: > > D> > > > > Buried in a giant lot of other stuff, 17 pallets, 7000 lbs. > > I'm local to this, though currently hauling 17 pallets is a bit beyond m= > y=20 > capabilities. :-) You can enquire through the location if they allow you to haul it away incrementally, otherwise I guess you have to rent a truck and manually unpack it from the pallets into the truck. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From innfoclassics at gmail.com Sun Apr 13 12:44:06 2008 From: innfoclassics at gmail.com (Paxton Hoag) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:44:06 -0700 Subject: IBM 6094 Lighted Programmable Function Keypad - bulk buy on eBay In-Reply-To: <48021322.9090307@brutman.com> References: <48021322.9090307@brutman.com> Message-ID: > Did anybody purchase one of these? How about getting it to work on a > machine with a serial port not running AIX? I got both lots. There were 11 people interested and I have filled about 7 of the orders as people pay me for what they want. If you are still interested let me know at paxton.hoag at gmail.com. I have not tinkered with one except to take one with a broken key apart. Parts available if needed. I still have a lot of them. Pax -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA From cclist at sydex.com Sun Apr 13 13:03:19 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:03:19 -0700 Subject: Mac Plus ozone? In-Reply-To: <200804131701.m3DH0rAl034683@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804131701.m3DH0rAl034683@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4801E877.150.EBB4D0D@cclist.sydex.com> Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:32:36 -0400 > From: "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." I believe the proper name for the water-based colloidal graphite suspension used to coat CRT surfaces is "aquadag". "Dag" is probably just a shortened form. Aquadag paint for repair should still be available. Some old HOTs (horizontal output transformers/flyback transformer) in CRT HV supplies develop cracks in the potting material with age and sometimes expose the connection of the winding to the HV anode lead. This can cause a corona discharge and the ozone smell. There can also be arcing from the HV lead to the chassis. A lights-out inspection will sometimes yield the telltale purple glow of corona discharge. Often, the discharge can be heard by young ears as a "hissing" sound. Good old red glyptal HV dope is the most commonly prescribed cure for insulation failures. I think GC still sells the stuff. Cheers, Chuck From trag at io.com Sun Apr 13 14:02:37 2008 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:02:37 -0500 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: <200804130853.m3D8qm0p025560@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804130853.m3D8qm0p025560@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:04:29 -0700 (PDT) >From: David Griffith >On Sat, 12 Apr 2008, Jeff Walther wrote: >> Now, it really shouldn't be that hard to whip something up with an >> FPGA and either some fastish SRAM or an open core DDR2 controller and >> one DDR2 memory chip. >How far did you get with this project? I'd love to see something that >just does greyscale. That and smaller modern parts would allow a lot more >to be crammed into that PDS slot. I would say I'm still in the conceptual stage. I've examined the Is and the Os in the documentation and I pretty much know what I want to build, with a few choices still remaining (e.g. SRAM vs. DDR2). But I'm stymied by the details and by the fact that when I started this I was unemployed and had time, although my motivation was low due to the associated emotional challenges. Now I am wonderfully employed, and very happy, but have very little spare time. I've read through "Designing Cards and Drivers for the Macintosh" (IIRC) but I need to go through in more detail and draw a diagram of the ROM structure. But it seems to me that some of what I need to know is in Inside Macintosh and extracting those tidbits is difficult (for me). Also, some of the information I want to examine is contained in Pascal coding examples, and I don't know Pascal. It will be easy enough to pick up, but it's another step back from the actual project. Of course, all of the Apple documentation assumes that the audience is already an expert at building the component they want to build and only needs the Apple specifics, and I've never designed a video card. I haven't found any kind of book about it anywhere. I picked up whatshisnames book about the video typewriter and the follow up book, but it doesn't seem quite applicable to this application. So I'm in one of those situations where I need bits of information in order to truly understand other bits of information. But I don't know in what order I really need the bits in order to make them comprehensible. Worse, I don't actually know which piece will be in which resource. So I need to find all the pieces of information, fail to understand them as I find them, but identify them, then after they've all been found, reorder them and go back, this time in logical sequence and put it all together. Maybe if I was smarter, one pass would be enough... I'm somewhere late in the finding all the pieces without understanding them yet stage, paused just before doing a quick learn of Pascal so I can examine/understand the examples in Inside Macintosh. But I still lack a resource on the finer points of video card design. I understand the basic fucntion, but there are always details which clever people have worked out, which a latecomer like me can greatly benefit from. For example, the various schemes to avoid drawing the top half of the screen and then using changed data for the bottom half of the screen. I'm familiar with the simple expedient of having two screen buffers. But I understand that there are more elegant solutions in use, otherwise video cards would need twice as much VRAM. Is it really all about tracking updates as they come in and only allowing ones which are earlier in the buffer than the current draw point, and delaying the others until the drawing point passes? If so, one would either hold up the host system, or need an additional buffer for the delayed changes. Yes? No? As far as cramming a lot more into the PDS slot with smaller components... Yes, the thing holding folks back is the time and skill to code, not the available technology. Taken to its logical conclusion, we would take a moderate sized FPGA, emulate the 68030 and FPU on board, put a fast memory interface on the FPGA, add a USB2 chipset and fast ethernet I/O, plus an ATA interface and video outputs, then just use the SE/30 board as an I/O peripheral and home to the Apple ROM, with the built-in 9" screen as one display and a connector for a large color display if desired. Alternatively, use a Coldfire MCU, patch the unimplemented 68030 instructions with the exception handler (there's a library at Freescale for this) and then copy the basic design of the Daystar CPU upgrades which already worked out how to put a faster 68030 into the PDS slot. With a little more work patching the firmware, one could use a Coldfire with built in USB and ethernet, but that's a lot more software work. One also loses the FPU functionality, and if your code calls many of the unimplemented instructions it could be pretty slow. But all those projects are dauntingly large. For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. Eventually, it could all go on one card. Jeff Walther From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sun Apr 13 11:51:44 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:51:44 +0100 (BST) Subject: modern switching power supply faults In-Reply-To: <4801928F.6000807@hawkmountain.net> from "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." at Apr 13, 8 00:56:47 am Message-ID: > > > I have two Dell switchers out of P4 based 1U servers. > > The first one has a failure in the startup circuit... pressing the power > button will > lead to a flash of the power light... and that's it. > > The second one failed spectacularly.... > > There is a wire wound power resistor (5W15RJ) near the AC input... it > cooked... Di U deduyce from that marking that it's a 15 Ohm resistor? Is it possibly part of a soft-start circuit, to be shorted out by a triac or similar once the supply has got going. If so, then if that fails and the resistor is left in circuit, it will overheat. There have been supplies where there's a startup resistor -- to power the control circuitry until the rest of the supply gets going -- which would overheat if said supply took too long to get goiog. The resistor simply couldn't power the circuitry for long on its own. But I would expect such a resistor to be a lot more than 15 ohms > and I do mean cooked. It came out in pieces (with almost no effort), > melted the > nearby capacitor and a nearby relay. It also did a pretty good job of > puckering/burning > the PCB (but not bad enough it could not be used). What is that relay connected to/used for? It doesn't short out the reistor by any chance as part of a soft-start circuit, does it? > > I suspected maybe shorted primary full wave rectifier... but I used the > DVM on > diode test and got what I'd expect. > > Oddly, despite there being a fuse on the primary side... it's still > good... it wasn't > taken out. > > That resistor got hot hot hot. Could that resistor have failed on it's > own ? > I suspect something further down the circuit must have a problem. > > I'd be happy if I could make one power supply out of the two. These are not > simple supplies however. While much of the switching transistors, > regulators, > bridge rectifiers, capacitors and the usual fair in a switcher are > pretty readily > identified, there is a 6" x 1" "brain" board (I'll call it that as it > has adjustment > pots, the ps fan circuit, quite a # of surface mount components on both > side of > it, and it interfaces with the main PCB with 34 connections. > Any recognisable chips on that board? FWIW, there have been some very complicated SMPUs in classic machines. The HP9845B, a complicated machine in all respsects, has a PSU on a 3-dimentional sculpture of PCBs, with 4 chopper transistors, 2 main chopper transformes, and IIRC 17 ICs on the control PCB. -tony From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Sun Apr 13 16:02:26 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:02:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: References: <200804130853.m3D8qm0p025560@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: On Sun, 13 Apr 2008, Jeff Walther wrote: > For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe > USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's > help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. > Eventually, it could all go on one card. I wonder how much trouble it would be to figure out what's inside that custom chip that Micron used. Suitable SCSI drives are fortunately still readily available. I don't think USB was ever available for System 6. -- 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 Sun Apr 13 18:09:22 2008 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:09:22 -0400 Subject: Bay Area collection viewing? Message-ID: Once again, this year I will be in the Bay Area for a few days, basically most of the week of the 4th of May. In the past, a couple of computer collectors opened their doors to me and did a show and tell. Once again, thank you much. So, does anyone else want to show of their machines to an East Coast weenie? Remember, bigger is better. Microcomputers are only shims for real computers. Computers with big blue skins are extra cool. Old is good. Let me know as soon as possible. I will have some email access as I cross the country, but I always like to have things planned out before I leave my driveway. -- Will From spectre at floodgap.com Sun Apr 13 19:38:39 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:38:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: from David Griffith at "Apr 13, 8 02:02:26 pm" Message-ID: <200804140038.m3E0cd9d012732@floodgap.com> > > For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe > > USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's > > help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. > > Eventually, it could all go on one card. > > I wonder how much trouble it would be to figure out what's inside that > custom chip that Micron used. Suitable SCSI drives are fortunately still > readily available. I don't think USB was ever available for System 6. I don't believe I have ever seen USB drivers for System 7 either. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Once used rectally, [it] should not be used orally. --Real thermometer label From bobalan at sbcglobal.net Sun Apr 13 20:25:10 2008 From: bobalan at sbcglobal.net (Bob Rosenbloom) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:25:10 -0700 Subject: Big, heavy HP 7974 tape drive at BDI In-Reply-To: <4801E877.150.EBB4D0D@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804131701.m3DH0rAl034683@dewey.classiccmp.org> <4801E877.150.EBB4D0D@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4802B276.9000503@sbcglobal.net> See: http://www.auctionbdi.com/getpictures.asp?aucid=100131 Bidding ends tonight so if anyone's interested..... Bob From bob at jfcl.com Sun Apr 13 21:21:11 2008 From: bob at jfcl.com (Bob Armstrong) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:21:11 -0700 Subject: OK, now this is impossible (11/23+ and RL02-RLV12 problem) In-Reply-To: <480079BE.4020601@dunnington.plus.com> References: <003901c89c48$09ae10c0$1d0a3240$@com> <3A74D4C7-C5C1-49E4-82F1-B0C6F5CAD601@shiresoft.com> <480079BE.4020601@dunnington.plus.com> Message-ID: <000001c89dd6$354537b0$9fcfa710$@com> >It's not that. XXDP runs fine with an RLV12. Thanks, Pete, Guy and Lyle (who phoned me) for the suggestions. After some poking around and much time spent peering into dark corners with a flashlight, it turns out that the RLV12 is the source of the problem. I managed to borrow another RLV12 board and that one works fine, for both RSX and XXDP. So, option #1 is that the first RLV12 is just bad, although oddly so as it apparently works for RSX but not XXDP. However, I notice that the working RLV12 has a couple of ECO wires on it that are absent from the "non-working" RLV12, and I can't help but wonder if that has something to do with it. Does anybody know the ECOs for the RLV12/M8061 and whether they have any bad effects on XXDP? Thanks again, Bob From dkelvey at hotmail.com Sun Apr 13 21:59:20 2008 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:59:20 -0700 Subject: modern switching power supply faults In-Reply-To: References: <4801928F.6000807@hawkmountain.net> from Message-ID: > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk ---snip--- > > FWIW, there have been some very complicated SMPUs in classic machines. > The HP9845B, a complicated machine in all respsects, has a PSU on a > 3-dimentional sculpture of PCBs, with 4 chopper transistors, 2 main > chopper transformes, and IIRC 17 ICs on the control PCB. Hi Tony I have a HP 21mx. The switcher in there is one of the most complicated that I've ever seen. When I first got it, it took me a while of studying the schematics before I realized it needed the resistor that was suppose to be the thermal sense in the battery pack. This group was great in helping get the right value and connector. I think the switcher the fellow is looking at is the typical type used in most PC's. It does sound like he may be able to get enough parts to put together a working PS. It is at least worth a try. Both cases may have issued in the primary side though. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Pack up or back up?use SkyDrive to transfer files or keep extra copies. Learn how. hthttp://www.windowslive.com/skydrive/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_skydrive_packup_042008 From teoz at neo.rr.com Mon Apr 14 00:56:55 2008 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:56:55 -0400 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card References: <200804140038.m3E0cd9d012732@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <000801c89df4$5897bee0$c600a8c0@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cameron Kaiser" To: Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 8:38 PM Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card > > > For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe > > > USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's > > > help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. > > > Eventually, it could all go on one card. > > > > I wonder how much trouble it would be to figure out what's inside that > > custom chip that Micron used. Suitable SCSI drives are fortunately still > > readily available. I don't think USB was ever available for System 6. > > I don't believe I have ever seen USB drivers for System 7 either. > I think Mac OS 8.5/8.6 was the 1st to enable USB support. From eric at brouhaha.com Mon Apr 14 00:58:10 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:58:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 Message-ID: <34656.68.121.162.227.1208152690.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> It was recently asserted here that TTL parts aren't hard to find, but I'm having a heck of a time finding the 74S01 and 74S73. As far as I can tell from the data sheets, the 74S103 is functionally and pin-compatible with the 74S73, but a little faster. I wouldn't mind substituting that, but it doesn't seem any easier to find. The 74S03 and 74S107 are non-pin-compatible replacements for the 74S01 and 74S73, but I'd much prefer to stick with pin-compatible parts. I'm also looking for the 2518 and 2533 shift registers. The 2518 is a hex 32-bit static shift register, and the 2533 is a 1024-bit static (not dynamic!) shift register. The original parts were Signetics, but I don't mind using other sources: Signetics 2518 2533 TI TMS3122 TMS3133 Fairchild 3349 3533 National - MM5058 GI - 2533 AMD - Am2833 Eric From pichotjm at free.fr Sun Apr 13 09:02:08 2008 From: pichotjm at free.fr (pichotjm) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:02:08 +0200 Subject: Schematics and description of an acoustic memory (1k byte, Display terminal, 1969) References: <005d01c89c8a$90db9a30$2601a8c0@JM3800> <34014.68.121.162.227.1208079382.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <014b01c89d6e$f70fcb70$2601a8c0@JM3800> > Jean-Marie Pichot wrote: >> This display terminal was designed in 1969, [...] Remember, >> in that time, there are no micro-processor, neither RAM chips! It was just to remind the common design context in 1969. There were some registers for computers or military products. I have many young readers... > There were RAM chips in 1969. Most of them stored 16 bits or > less. I have not been able to determine when the first 64-bit RAM > appeared, but it might have occurred by then. Are they named RAM in databooks? or registers? I think i have one, 4 bits but without adress decoding. There are 4 register selects! > Examples of RAM chips available in 1969 were the Fairchild U6A903059X > 8-bit RAM and U6A903359X 16-bit RAM. The base part numbers were 9030 > and 9033, respectively. These were part of the CTuL Complementary > Transistor Logic (CTuL or CTL) family. Don't get confused by that > name; these were complementary *bipolar* transistors, not CMOS. Many > years later Fairchild reused the CTL abbreviation for something entirely > different, Current Transistor Logic. > By the time of the 1972 Fairchild TTL Data Book, the 9033 designation > was changed to 93433. > > The 9030 was used in the KM10 fast memory "option" for the DEC KA10, the > first PDP-10 processor, designed in 1967. Interesting! > For a raster display terminal in 1969, delay line memory was obviously > more practical than semiconductor memory, since the density of available > RAM chips was too low. This started to change in 1970 when Intel > introduced the 1101 static RAM (256 bit) and the 1103 dynamic RAM > (1024 bit), though there were initially a lot of reliability problems > with the latter. I have a lot of MK4007 by Mostek. 256x1 i think similar to the 1101 by Intel. They are used in the Beryllium board: http://pichotjm.free.fr/1975-1980/Beryllium/PICT8117.html > The next generation of raster display terminals used MOS dynamic > shift register memory, which was less expensive than RAM. As far > as I'm aware, not many display terminal designs used RAM chips before > 1977, and MOS shift registers were still being sold into the mid 1980s. I have specification of a 32x4 bit shift register from RTC (FDN 106, 240.00 francs/1 # $50/1) dated 1970. Other specs are for 256x4 512x2 and 1024x1 but unusable for raster scans. In that time (1970) i remember to ask a company to develop a custom 80x8... but the cost was too heavy. Btw, i have specs of TTL used in that design, if anybody need them... (in french!) JMP From grant at stockly.com Mon Apr 14 02:28:20 2008 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:28:20 -0800 Subject: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 In-Reply-To: <34656.68.121.162.227.1208152690.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.c om> References: <34656.68.121.162.227.1208152690.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <0JZB00JP30R4OIA0@msgmmp-1.gci.net> At 09:58 PM 4/13/2008, you wrote: >It was recently asserted here that TTL parts aren't hard to find, but >I'm having a heck of a time finding the 74S01 and 74S73. > >As far as I can tell from the data sheets, the 74S103 is functionally >and pin-compatible with the 74S73, but a little faster. I wouldn't mind >substituting that, but it doesn't seem any easier to find. > >The 74S03 and 74S107 are non-pin-compatible replacements for the 74S01 >and 74S73, but I'd much prefer to stick with pin-compatible parts. Unicorn Electronics can get all of those ICs, but you'll have to order a minimum quantity. http://www.unicornelectronics.com/prod.htm From eric at brouhaha.com Mon Apr 14 02:36:42 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:36:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 In-Reply-To: <0JZB00JP30R4OIA0@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <34656.68.121.162.227.1208152690.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <0JZB00JP30R4OIA0@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: <39040.68.121.162.227.1208158602.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Grant wrote: > Unicorn Electronics can get all of those ICs, but you'll have to > order a minimum quantity. None of them (other than the 74S03, which has the wrong pinout) are listed on their web site. If you mean that they can deal with parts brokers at my request, I've tried dealing with the parts brokers myself, and had poor results. I'm willing to place an order for $250 total, but not for $250 for each line item, which seems to be the minimum the brokers are willing to consider. Eric From eric at brouhaha.com Mon Apr 14 02:51:33 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:51:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Schematics and description of an acoustic memory (1k byte, Display terminal, 1969) In-Reply-To: <014b01c89d6e$f70fcb70$2601a8c0@JM3800> References: <005d01c89c8a$90db9a30$2601a8c0@JM3800> <34014.68.121.162.227.1208079382.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <014b01c89d6e$f70fcb70$2601a8c0@JM3800> Message-ID: <45219.68.121.162.227.1208159493.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> JMP wrote: > Are they named RAM in databooks? or registers? The Fairchild 9030 and 9033 are described in the databook as an "8 Bit Memory Cell" and "16 Bit Memory Cell", respectively. They're obviously read/write memory that is randomly addressable, so they are RAM. I'm not sure about the 9030, but the 9033 uses "coincident select", like core memory. You provide a decoded one-of-four row address and a decoded one-of-four column address. "As many as four locations may be addressed simultaneously without destroying stored information." It was common for early RAM chips not to use a linear address. Those that did were often described as "fully decoded RAM". The 9033 is thus a "not fully decoded RAM". Eric From grant at stockly.com Mon Apr 14 11:33:44 2008 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:33:44 -0800 Subject: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 In-Reply-To: <39040.68.121.162.227.1208158602.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.c om> References: <34656.68.121.162.227.1208152690.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <0JZB00JP30R4OIA0@msgmmp-1.gci.net> <39040.68.121.162.227.1208158602.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <0JZB00DNTQ039T20@msgmmp-1.gci.net> At 11:36 PM 4/13/2008, you wrote: >Grant wrote: > > Unicorn Electronics can get all of those ICs, but you'll have to > > order a minimum quantity. > >None of them (other than the 74S03, which has the wrong pinout) are >listed on their web site. If you mean that they can deal with parts >brokers at my request, I've tried dealing with the parts brokers >myself, and had poor results. I'm willing to place an order for $250 >total, but not for $250 for each line item, which seems to be the >minimum the brokers are willing to consider. Every single part I have bought for my kits has come from Unicorn. Exotic ram, 8008s, L series TTL, 200+ 1702s, etc. TTL L series chips are usually $1 a piece with a 100 quantity minimum. The S series looks cheaper. You'll have to give them a call. The parts brokers in a google search do not have what they list. They buy from someone else and mark the price up. From lbickley at bickleywest.com Mon Apr 14 11:42:58 2008 From: lbickley at bickleywest.com (Lyle Bickley) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:42:58 -0700 Subject: XXDP In-Reply-To: <000b01c89e41$45e864a0$d1b92de0$@com> References: <000b01c89e41$45e864a0$d1b92de0$@com> Message-ID: <200804140942.59173.lbickley@bickleywest.com> On Monday 14 April 2008 08:07, Bob Armstrong wrote: > Lyle, > > > > Thanks for the suggestions on the RLV12 - 11/23+. In case you > haven't seen my posting, it turns out that the RLV12 is to blame, > although I don't know exactly what's wrong with it. Just saw it - after reading this ;-) I just checked uNotes through #115 and no mention of this problem w/RLV12 or ECOs. I checked my two spare RLV12/M8061 boards and there are no ECOs on either of them. I have another in a 11/83 - but it's too difficult to get to it to check (moving racks, etc.). The one in my 11/83 runs XXDP 2.5, RT, RSX and RSTS/E w/o any issues. I would be interesting to investigate what the "ECO" is on your RLV12. In your "spare time" how about tracing it out ;-) > BTW, I did try XXDP v2.2 and v2.5 - same results with either. Interesting... Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero" From michaelgreen42 at comcast.net Mon Apr 14 12:35:06 2008 From: michaelgreen42 at comcast.net (Mike) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:35:06 -0700 Subject: cctech Digest, Vol 56, Issue 17 In-Reply-To: <200804141700.m3EH0d1d049918@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804141700.m3EH0d1d049918@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: I've got a xceed setup I've been trying to figure out what to do with. Might just end up on Ebay. -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of cctech-request at classiccmp.org Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 10:01 AM To: cctech at classiccmp.org Subject: cctech Digest, Vol 56, Issue 17 Send cctech mailing list submissions to cctech at classiccmp.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctech or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to cctech-request at classiccmp.org You can reach the person managing the list at cctech-owner at classiccmp.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of cctech digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) (Tony Duell) 2. Re: Mac Plus ozone? (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) 3. Re: Schematics and description of an acoustic memory (1k byte, Display terminal, 1969) (pichotjm) 4. RE: modern switching power supply faults (dwight elvey) 5. Re: pcmcia gpib on govliquidation (Richard) 6. Re: govliq: HP-1000 (Mechanicsburg, PA) (Richard) 7. Re: IBM 6094 Lighted Programmable Function Keypad - bulk buy on eBay (Paxton Hoag) 8. Re: Mac Plus ozone? (Chuck Guzis) 9. Re: modern switching power supply faults (Tony Duell) 10. looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 (Eric Smith) 11. Re: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 (Eric Smith) 12. Re: Schematics and description of an acoustic memory (1k byte, Display terminal, 1969) (Eric Smith) 13. Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card (Jeff Walther) 14. Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card (David Griffith) 15. Bay Area collection viewing? (William Donzelli) 16. Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card (Cameron Kaiser) 17. Big, heavy HP 7974 tape drive at BDI (Bob Rosenbloom) 18. RE: OK, now this is impossible (11/23+ and RL02-RLV12 problem) (Bob Armstrong) 19. RE: modern switching power supply faults (dwight elvey) 20. Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card (Teo Zenios) 21. Re: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 (Grant Stockly) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:41:42 +0100 (BST) From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Subject: Re: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain > If you don't mind losing your second channel, you can always apply one input > to channel A and the ground reference to channel B, then set the scope to > "A-B" mode (ChA subtract ChB). Most scopes can do this, and this is exactly > what it's meant for. If you do this, make sure the 'scope can stand a 'common mode voltage' of a few hundred volts, because that's what it's going to be seeing. I would think a fair number of 'scopes will not be happy looking at a signal of a few volts (so the Y attenuators are set to, perhaps, 1V/cm) with a common mode voltage of the full mains. -tony ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:32:36 -0400 From: "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." Subject: Re: Mac Plus ozone? To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Message-ID: <48020B74.1000206 at hawkmountain.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed John Robertson wrote: > Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: >> >> I was given a Mac Plus a while back... and never tested it.... >> >> Decided to give it a quick test... >> >> Other than needing a boot floppy which I'll have to dig up.... it >> powers on, video >> looks good, monitor is stable and all... >> >> But there is a faint sound (think of it as a cross between crickets >> chirping and clicks) >> and after a while, it smells to me a bit like ozone at the top of the >> Mac. >> I'm thinking maybe high voltage leakage ? >> >> Anyone have any experiences with these old Macs that can point me at >> what to look >> for ? >> >> It might well be OK as it is... but I don't want to risk damage >> occuring as other >> than a few dings and scrapes and a bit of yellowing, it is in >> remarkable condition. >> >> -- Curt >> >> >> > Ozone smell is just the high voltage at work. A slight leakage that > may indicate moisture or excessive dust on the monitor where the HV > lead clips to the side of the picture tube. You might be able to > reduce the smell by opening the case and (after waiting 24 hours to > discharge) clean the glass around the HV Anode clip (may have a rubber > disc protecting the clip) with a red (usually red) fat insulated wire > coming out of the picture tube cone. There is a special coating on the > tube that starts about 2 inches away from the anode clip and coats the > glass cone - do not remove or damage this if possible. It is 1/2 of > the capacitor element of the picture tube Lyden jar type capacitor. Called DAG I believe. I'll have to open this up, probably check it out in a dark room, then I can always discharge with my hv meter or wait patiently for at least a day (and then double check with the hv meter :-) ). > > Alternatively the flyback could be damp or filthy with dust. This is > found at the other end of the fat wire (normally red) leading from the > cone of the picture tube. You can wipe it with a damp cloth, taking > particular care not to rotate or move it relative to the frame - as > this will break wires and cause it to fail. Most flybacks are solid > enough that this is not a concern but in my early B&W video game > monitors the flyback coil was not well secured and subject to failure > from being turned or twisted whilst cleanig or just day to day > bouncing around... > which B&W video games ? Vectors or Rasters ? I have an Asteroids I haven't repaired yet. (I have around 12 vids, aprox half rasters, half vectors) I am the 'repair shop' for them (but sadly get very little time, so several or awaiting repair). Currently (off topic, but possibly of interest to some) on the repair room floor: Star Wars (mathbox probs), Rip Off (sound problems), Tempest (flakes out with large vectors and crashes randomly, might be bad ram socket from a ram someone replaced), Major Havoc (mainboard problems, to be built into a Tempest cab), Xevious (the dreaded Matsushita monitor is slewing video at the edge of the (rotated) screen), and I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple. My Joust leaks HV... I think the DAG coating has become damaged (flaked off, or partially 'cleaned' off by someone). Especially if there is moisture in the air, it crackles, and IIRC I observed a faint lighting show around the DAG coating. I believe you can get a coating to redo the DAG, but I haven't researched that far yet. OK.. enough off topic (hrm... maybe not too of topic.. they are essentially computers :-) ). -- Curt > John :-#)# > ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:02:08 +0200 From: "pichotjm" Subject: Re: Schematics and description of an acoustic memory (1k byte, Display terminal, 1969) To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" Message-ID: <014b01c89d6e$f70fcb70$2601a8c0 at JM3800> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original > Jean-Marie Pichot wrote: >> This display terminal was designed in 1969, [...] Remember, >> in that time, there are no micro-processor, neither RAM chips! It was just to remind the common design context in 1969. There were some registers for computers or military products. I have many young readers... > There were RAM chips in 1969. Most of them stored 16 bits or > less. I have not been able to determine when the first 64-bit RAM > appeared, but it might have occurred by then. Are they named RAM in databooks? or registers? I think i have one, 4 bits but without adress decoding. There are 4 register selects! > Examples of RAM chips available in 1969 were the Fairchild U6A903059X > 8-bit RAM and U6A903359X 16-bit RAM. The base part numbers were 9030 > and 9033, respectively. These were part of the CTuL Complementary > Transistor Logic (CTuL or CTL) family. Don't get confused by that > name; these were complementary *bipolar* transistors, not CMOS. Many > years later Fairchild reused the CTL abbreviation for something entirely > different, Current Transistor Logic. > By the time of the 1972 Fairchild TTL Data Book, the 9033 designation > was changed to 93433. > > The 9030 was used in the KM10 fast memory "option" for the DEC KA10, the > first PDP-10 processor, designed in 1967. Interesting! > For a raster display terminal in 1969, delay line memory was obviously > more practical than semiconductor memory, since the density of available > RAM chips was too low. This started to change in 1970 when Intel > introduced the 1101 static RAM (256 bit) and the 1103 dynamic RAM > (1024 bit), though there were initially a lot of reliability problems > with the latter. I have a lot of MK4007 by Mostek. 256x1 i think similar to the 1101 by Intel. They are used in the Beryllium board: http://pichotjm.free.fr/1975-1980/Beryllium/PICT8117.html > The next generation of raster display terminals used MOS dynamic > shift register memory, which was less expensive than RAM. As far > as I'm aware, not many display terminal designs used RAM chips before > 1977, and MOS shift registers were still being sold into the mid 1980s. I have specification of a 32x4 bit shift register from RTC (FDN 106, 240.00 francs/1 # $50/1) dated 1970. Other specs are for 256x4 512x2 and 1024x1 but unusable for raster scans. In that time (1970) i remember to ask a company to develop a custom 80x8... but the cost was too heavy. Btw, i have specs of TTL used in that design, if anybody need them... (in french!) JMP ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:16:31 -0700 From: dwight elvey Subject: RE: modern switching power supply faults To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:56:47 -0400 > From: rescue at hawkmountain.net > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: modern switching power supply faults > > > I have two Dell switchers out of P4 based 1U servers. > > The first one has a failure in the startup circuit... pressing the power > button will > lead to a flash of the power light... and that's it. > > The second one failed spectacularly.... > Hi I to have a problem with one. It is similar to your first one. Basically, the first problem is that something is failing to start the switcher feedback. What happens on powerup is that it is given one kick. This gets the 12v going to the regulator circuit. It is then suppose to send pulses through the pulse transformer to fire the switching transistors. It could be most anything in the regulation loop. I fixed one in the past when I found an open wire in the pulse transformer. Still, it could have been anything in the feedback path, including regulator ICs, filter caps, diodes, resistors, etc. Mine is failing on a load related problem. As I connect more load, it fails to powerup. It is funny that it seem to be more sensitive to the loads that use the 12V. It seems to run the 5V loads fine. Your second one has most likely had a failed switching transformer and switching transistor. There could also be a load issue, such as shorted rectifier diodes on the secondary but that is unlikely. This would tend to keep the 12V from coming up and you'd get no pulses to fire the switching transistors. They're unlikely to fail if not turned on. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ More immediate than e-mail? Get instant access with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh _instantaccess_042008 ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:23:14 -0600 From: Richard Subject: Re: pcmcia gpib on govliquidation To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: In article <4801AC99.4050300 at Rikers.org>, Tim Riker writes: > Is there any way to contact those who win an auction on govliquidation? Nope. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:24:28 -0600 From: Richard Subject: Re: govliq: HP-1000 (Mechanicsburg, PA) To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: In article <200804130758.05630.rtellason at verizon.net>, "Roy J. Tellason" writes: > On Saturday 12 April 2008 23:42, Richard wrote: > > D> > > > > Buried in a giant lot of other stuff, 17 pallets, 7000 lbs. > > I'm local to this, though currently hauling 17 pallets is a bit beyond m= > y=20 > capabilities. :-) You can enquire through the location if they allow you to haul it away incrementally, otherwise I guess you have to rent a truck and manually unpack it from the pallets into the truck. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! ------------------------------ Message: 7 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:44:06 -0700 From: "Paxton Hoag" Subject: Re: IBM 6094 Lighted Programmable Function Keypad - bulk buy on eBay To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > Did anybody purchase one of these? How about getting it to work on a > machine with a serial port not running AIX? I got both lots. There were 11 people interested and I have filled about 7 of the orders as people pay me for what they want. If you are still interested let me know at paxton.hoag at gmail.com. I have not tinkered with one except to take one with a broken key apart. Parts available if needed. I still have a lot of them. Pax -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA ------------------------------ Message: 8 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:03:19 -0700 From: "Chuck Guzis" Subject: Re: Mac Plus ozone? To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: <4801E877.150.EBB4D0D at cclist.sydex.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:32:36 -0400 > From: "Curtis H. Wilbar Jr." I believe the proper name for the water-based colloidal graphite suspension used to coat CRT surfaces is "aquadag". "Dag" is probably just a shortened form. Aquadag paint for repair should still be available. Some old HOTs (horizontal output transformers/flyback transformer) in CRT HV supplies develop cracks in the potting material with age and sometimes expose the connection of the winding to the HV anode lead. This can cause a corona discharge and the ozone smell. There can also be arcing from the HV lead to the chassis. A lights-out inspection will sometimes yield the telltale purple glow of corona discharge. Often, the discharge can be heard by young ears as a "hissing" sound. Good old red glyptal HV dope is the most commonly prescribed cure for insulation failures. I think GC still sells the stuff. Cheers, Chuck ------------------------------ Message: 9 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:51:44 +0100 (BST) From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Subject: Re: modern switching power supply faults To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain > > > I have two Dell switchers out of P4 based 1U servers. > > The first one has a failure in the startup circuit... pressing the power > button will > lead to a flash of the power light... and that's it. > > The second one failed spectacularly.... > > There is a wire wound power resistor (5W15RJ) near the AC input... it > cooked... Di U deduyce from that marking that it's a 15 Ohm resistor? Is it possibly part of a soft-start circuit, to be shorted out by a triac or similar once the supply has got going. If so, then if that fails and the resistor is left in circuit, it will overheat. There have been supplies where there's a startup resistor -- to power the control circuitry until the rest of the supply gets going -- which would overheat if said supply took too long to get goiog. The resistor simply couldn't power the circuitry for long on its own. But I would expect such a resistor to be a lot more than 15 ohms > and I do mean cooked. It came out in pieces (with almost no effort), > melted the > nearby capacitor and a nearby relay. It also did a pretty good job of > puckering/burning > the PCB (but not bad enough it could not be used). What is that relay connected to/used for? It doesn't short out the reistor by any chance as part of a soft-start circuit, does it? > > I suspected maybe shorted primary full wave rectifier... but I used the > DVM on > diode test and got what I'd expect. > > Oddly, despite there being a fuse on the primary side... it's still > good... it wasn't > taken out. > > That resistor got hot hot hot. Could that resistor have failed on it's > own ? > I suspect something further down the circuit must have a problem. > > I'd be happy if I could make one power supply out of the two. These are not > simple supplies however. While much of the switching transistors, > regulators, > bridge rectifiers, capacitors and the usual fair in a switcher are > pretty readily > identified, there is a 6" x 1" "brain" board (I'll call it that as it > has adjustment > pots, the ps fan circuit, quite a # of surface mount components on both > side of > it, and it interfaces with the main PCB with 34 connections. > Any recognisable chips on that board? FWIW, there have been some very complicated SMPUs in classic machines. The HP9845B, a complicated machine in all respsects, has a PSU on a 3-dimentional sculpture of PCBs, with 4 chopper transistors, 2 main chopper transformes, and IIRC 17 ICs on the control PCB. -tony ------------------------------ Message: 10 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:58:10 -0700 (PDT) From: "Eric Smith" Subject: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: <34656.68.121.162.227.1208152690.squirrel at ruckus.brouhaha.com> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 It was recently asserted here that TTL parts aren't hard to find, but I'm having a heck of a time finding the 74S01 and 74S73. As far as I can tell from the data sheets, the 74S103 is functionally and pin-compatible with the 74S73, but a little faster. I wouldn't mind substituting that, but it doesn't seem any easier to find. The 74S03 and 74S107 are non-pin-compatible replacements for the 74S01 and 74S73, but I'd much prefer to stick with pin-compatible parts. I'm also looking for the 2518 and 2533 shift registers. The 2518 is a hex 32-bit static shift register, and the 2533 is a 1024-bit static (not dynamic!) shift register. The original parts were Signetics, but I don't mind using other sources: Signetics 2518 2533 TI TMS3122 TMS3133 Fairchild 3349 3533 National - MM5058 GI - 2533 AMD - Am2833 Eric ------------------------------ Message: 11 Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:36:42 -0700 (PDT) From: "Eric Smith" Subject: Re: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: <39040.68.121.162.227.1208158602.squirrel at ruckus.brouhaha.com> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Grant wrote: > Unicorn Electronics can get all of those ICs, but you'll have to > order a minimum quantity. None of them (other than the 74S03, which has the wrong pinout) are listed on their web site. If you mean that they can deal with parts brokers at my request, I've tried dealing with the parts brokers myself, and had poor results. I'm willing to place an order for $250 total, but not for $250 for each line item, which seems to be the minimum the brokers are willing to consider. Eric ------------------------------ Message: 12 Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:51:33 -0700 (PDT) From: "Eric Smith" Subject: Re: Schematics and description of an acoustic memory (1k byte, Display terminal, 1969) To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: <45219.68.121.162.227.1208159493.squirrel at ruckus.brouhaha.com> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 JMP wrote: > Are they named RAM in databooks? or registers? The Fairchild 9030 and 9033 are described in the databook as an "8 Bit Memory Cell" and "16 Bit Memory Cell", respectively. They're obviously read/write memory that is randomly addressable, so they are RAM. I'm not sure about the 9030, but the 9033 uses "coincident select", like core memory. You provide a decoded one-of-four row address and a decoded one-of-four column address. "As many as four locations may be addressed simultaneously without destroying stored information." It was common for early RAM chips not to use a linear address. Those that did were often described as "fully decoded RAM". The 9033 is thus a "not fully decoded RAM". Eric ------------------------------ Message: 13 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:02:37 -0500 From: Jeff Walther Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card To: cctech at classiccmp.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" >Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:04:29 -0700 (PDT) >From: David Griffith >On Sat, 12 Apr 2008, Jeff Walther wrote: >> Now, it really shouldn't be that hard to whip something up with an >> FPGA and either some fastish SRAM or an open core DDR2 controller and >> one DDR2 memory chip. >How far did you get with this project? I'd love to see something that >just does greyscale. That and smaller modern parts would allow a lot more >to be crammed into that PDS slot. I would say I'm still in the conceptual stage. I've examined the Is and the Os in the documentation and I pretty much know what I want to build, with a few choices still remaining (e.g. SRAM vs. DDR2). But I'm stymied by the details and by the fact that when I started this I was unemployed and had time, although my motivation was low due to the associated emotional challenges. Now I am wonderfully employed, and very happy, but have very little spare time. I've read through "Designing Cards and Drivers for the Macintosh" (IIRC) but I need to go through in more detail and draw a diagram of the ROM structure. But it seems to me that some of what I need to know is in Inside Macintosh and extracting those tidbits is difficult (for me). Also, some of the information I want to examine is contained in Pascal coding examples, and I don't know Pascal. It will be easy enough to pick up, but it's another step back from the actual project. Of course, all of the Apple documentation assumes that the audience is already an expert at building the component they want to build and only needs the Apple specifics, and I've never designed a video card. I haven't found any kind of book about it anywhere. I picked up whatshisnames book about the video typewriter and the follow up book, but it doesn't seem quite applicable to this application. So I'm in one of those situations where I need bits of information in order to truly understand other bits of information. But I don't know in what order I really need the bits in order to make them comprehensible. Worse, I don't actually know which piece will be in which resource. So I need to find all the pieces of information, fail to understand them as I find them, but identify them, then after they've all been found, reorder them and go back, this time in logical sequence and put it all together. Maybe if I was smarter, one pass would be enough... I'm somewhere late in the finding all the pieces without understanding them yet stage, paused just before doing a quick learn of Pascal so I can examine/understand the examples in Inside Macintosh. But I still lack a resource on the finer points of video card design. I understand the basic fucntion, but there are always details which clever people have worked out, which a latecomer like me can greatly benefit from. For example, the various schemes to avoid drawing the top half of the screen and then using changed data for the bottom half of the screen. I'm familiar with the simple expedient of having two screen buffers. But I understand that there are more elegant solutions in use, otherwise video cards would need twice as much VRAM. Is it really all about tracking updates as they come in and only allowing ones which are earlier in the buffer than the current draw point, and delaying the others until the drawing point passes? If so, one would either hold up the host system, or need an additional buffer for the delayed changes. Yes? No? As far as cramming a lot more into the PDS slot with smaller components... Yes, the thing holding folks back is the time and skill to code, not the available technology. Taken to its logical conclusion, we would take a moderate sized FPGA, emulate the 68030 and FPU on board, put a fast memory interface on the FPGA, add a USB2 chipset and fast ethernet I/O, plus an ATA interface and video outputs, then just use the SE/30 board as an I/O peripheral and home to the Apple ROM, with the built-in 9" screen as one display and a connector for a large color display if desired. Alternatively, use a Coldfire MCU, patch the unimplemented 68030 instructions with the exception handler (there's a library at Freescale for this) and then copy the basic design of the Daystar CPU upgrades which already worked out how to put a faster 68030 into the PDS slot. With a little more work patching the firmware, one could use a Coldfire with built in USB and ethernet, but that's a lot more software work. One also loses the FPU functionality, and if your code calls many of the unimplemented instructions it could be pretty slow. But all those projects are dauntingly large. For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. Eventually, it could all go on one card. Jeff Walther ------------------------------ Message: 14 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:02:26 -0700 (PDT) From: David Griffith Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Cc: cctech at classiccmp.org Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 13 Apr 2008, Jeff Walther wrote: > For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe > USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's > help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. > Eventually, it could all go on one card. I wonder how much trouble it would be to figure out what's inside that custom chip that Micron used. Suitable SCSI drives are fortunately still readily available. I don't think USB was ever available for System 6. -- 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? ------------------------------ Message: 15 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:09:22 -0400 From: "William Donzelli" Subject: Bay Area collection viewing? To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Once again, this year I will be in the Bay Area for a few days, basically most of the week of the 4th of May. In the past, a couple of computer collectors opened their doors to me and did a show and tell. Once again, thank you much. So, does anyone else want to show of their machines to an East Coast weenie? Remember, bigger is better. Microcomputers are only shims for real computers. Computers with big blue skins are extra cool. Old is good. Let me know as soon as possible. I will have some email access as I cross the country, but I always like to have things planned out before I leave my driveway. -- Will ------------------------------ Message: 16 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 17:38:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Cameron Kaiser Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: <200804140038.m3E0cd9d012732 at floodgap.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe > > USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's > > help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. > > Eventually, it could all go on one card. > > I wonder how much trouble it would be to figure out what's inside that > custom chip that Micron used. Suitable SCSI drives are fortunately still > readily available. I don't think USB was ever available for System 6. I don't believe I have ever seen USB drivers for System 7 either. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Once used rectally, [it] should not be used orally. --Real thermometer label ------------------------------ Message: 17 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:25:10 -0700 From: Bob Rosenbloom Subject: Big, heavy HP 7974 tape drive at BDI To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Message-ID: <4802B276.9000503 at sbcglobal.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed See: http://www.auctionbdi.com/getpictures.asp?aucid=100131 Bidding ends tonight so if anyone's interested..... Bob ------------------------------ Message: 18 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:21:11 -0700 From: "Bob Armstrong" Subject: RE: OK, now this is impossible (11/23+ and RL02-RLV12 problem) To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" Message-ID: <000001c89dd6$354537b0$9fcfa710$@com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >It's not that. XXDP runs fine with an RLV12. Thanks, Pete, Guy and Lyle (who phoned me) for the suggestions. After some poking around and much time spent peering into dark corners with a flashlight, it turns out that the RLV12 is the source of the problem. I managed to borrow another RLV12 board and that one works fine, for both RSX and XXDP. So, option #1 is that the first RLV12 is just bad, although oddly so as it apparently works for RSX but not XXDP. However, I notice that the working RLV12 has a couple of ECO wires on it that are absent from the "non-working" RLV12, and I can't help but wonder if that has something to do with it. Does anybody know the ECOs for the RLV12/M8061 and whether they have any bad effects on XXDP? Thanks again, Bob ------------------------------ Message: 19 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:59:20 -0700 From: dwight elvey Subject: RE: modern switching power supply faults To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk ---snip--- > > FWIW, there have been some very complicated SMPUs in classic machines. > The HP9845B, a complicated machine in all respsects, has a PSU on a > 3-dimentional sculpture of PCBs, with 4 chopper transistors, 2 main > chopper transformes, and IIRC 17 ICs on the control PCB. Hi Tony I have a HP 21mx. The switcher in there is one of the most complicated that I've ever seen. When I first got it, it took me a while of studying the schematics before I realized it needed the resistor that was suppose to be the thermal sense in the battery pack. This group was great in helping get the right value and connector. I think the switcher the fellow is looking at is the typical type used in most PC's. It does sound like he may be able to get enough parts to put together a working PS. It is at least worth a try. Both cases may have issued in the primary side though. Dwight _________________________________________________________________ Pack up or back upuse SkyDrive to transfer files or keep extra copies. Learn how. hthttp://www.windowslive.com/skydrive/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refres h_skydrive_packup_042008 ------------------------------ Message: 20 Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:56:55 -0400 From: "Teo Zenios" Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Message-ID: <000801c89df4$5897bee0$c600a8c0 at game> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ----- Original Message ----- From: "Cameron Kaiser" To: Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 8:38 PM Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card > > > For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe > > > USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's > > > help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. > > > Eventually, it could all go on one card. > > > > I wonder how much trouble it would be to figure out what's inside that > > custom chip that Micron used. Suitable SCSI drives are fortunately still > > readily available. I don't think USB was ever available for System 6. > > I don't believe I have ever seen USB drivers for System 7 either. > I think Mac OS 8.5/8.6 was the 1st to enable USB support. ------------------------------ Message: 21 Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:28:20 -0800 From: Grant Stockly Subject: Re: looking for replacement parts - 74S01, 74S73, 2518, 2533 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" Message-ID: <0JZB00JP30R4OIA0 at msgmmp-1.gci.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed At 09:58 PM 4/13/2008, you wrote: >It was recently asserted here that TTL parts aren't hard to find, but >I'm having a heck of a time finding the 74S01 and 74S73. > >As far as I can tell from the data sheets, the 74S103 is functionally >and pin-compatible with the 74S73, but a little faster. I wouldn't mind >substituting that, but it doesn't seem any easier to find. > >The 74S03 and 74S107 are non-pin-compatible replacements for the 74S01 >and 74S73, but I'd much prefer to stick with pin-compatible parts. Unicorn Electronics can get all of those ICs, but you'll have to order a minimum quantity. http://www.unicornelectronics.com/prod.htm End of cctech Digest, Vol 56, Issue 17 ************************************** From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Mon Apr 14 15:56:01 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:56:01 +0200 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) Message-ID: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> I aquired a HP 9816 with a faulty power supply. Thanks to the diagrams of Tony I found out that the switching transistor QP1008 is shorted and a 2n2222 but thats no problem. I googled for it and searched my datbooks but can't find any replacement or datasheet for it. So does somebody knows the specs or a replacement for this transistor ? There was also a second processorboard in it from Newport Digital with a 68020 at 33Mhz, does anybody know these boards? Rik From eric at brouhaha.com Mon Apr 14 16:13:56 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:13:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> References: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> Message-ID: <33237.64.62.206.10.1208207636.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Rik wrote: > I aquired a HP 9816 with a faulty power supply. > Thanks to the diagrams of Tony I found out that the switching transistor > QP1008 is shorted and a 2n2222 but thats no problem. > I googled for it and searched my datbooks but can't find any replacement > or > datasheet for it. > So does somebody knows the specs or a replacement for this transistor ? Maybe I don't understand what you're asking, but the replacement for a 2N2222 is a 2N2222. They're still made, and not at all hard to find. If that's not what you're trying to replace, what is the part number you're replacing? I could be wrong, but QP1008 looks like a component designator, not a part number. Even if there's only an HP part number (e.g., 181x-xxxx), that's more useful for finding a replacement than a component designator. Eric From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Mon Apr 14 16:16:36 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:16:36 +0100 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> References: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> Message-ID: <1208207796.24092.5.camel@elric> On Mon, 2008-04-14 at 22:56 +0200, Rik wrote: > I aquired a HP 9816 with a faulty power supply. > Thanks to the diagrams of Tony I found out that the switching transistor > QP1008 is shorted and a 2n2222 but thats no problem. > I googled for it and searched my datbooks but can't find any replacement or > datasheet for it. Uhm, a 2N2222 is incredibly common, and is pretty much just a generic NPN small-signal tranny. Use anything. Unless of course Tony points out some clever idiosyncrasy that makes it the only part to use here ;-) Gordon From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Mon Apr 14 16:35:19 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:35:19 +0200 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) References: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> <33237.64.62.206.10.1208207636.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <000a01c89e77$6ff0ad80$0501a8c0@xp1800> Sorry, I need to replace both and ment that the 2n2222 isn't a problem, but the QP1008 is. The PSU isn't build by HP but by RTE POWER/MATE a firm with doesn't exist any more. The text on the QP1008 (TO3) is QP1008 and the date stamp 8413 and the Motorola sign. I do have a Motorola component cataloge from '83 but can't find the part in there and in my other books. On the schematics of Tony the part is mentioned as QP1008 http://www.hpmuseum.net/document.php?hwfile=4020 I need to know witch transistor I can use to replace it. Rik ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Smith" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 11:13 PM Subject: Re: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) > Rik wrote: >> I aquired a HP 9816 with a faulty power supply. >> Thanks to the diagrams of Tony I found out that the switching transistor >> QP1008 is shorted and a 2n2222 but thats no problem. >> I googled for it and searched my datbooks but can't find any replacement >> or >> datasheet for it. >> So does somebody knows the specs or a replacement for this transistor ? > > Maybe I don't understand what you're asking, but the replacement for a > 2N2222 is a 2N2222. They're still made, and not at all hard to find. > > If that's not what you're trying to replace, what is the part number > you're replacing? I could be wrong, but QP1008 looks like a component > designator, not a part number. Even if there's only an HP part number > (e.g., 181x-xxxx), that's more useful for finding a replacement than > a component designator. > > Eric > > > From eric at brouhaha.com Mon Apr 14 16:58:57 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:58:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <000a01c89e77$6ff0ad80$0501a8c0@xp1800> References: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> <33237.64.62.206.10.1208207636.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <000a01c89e77$6ff0ad80$0501a8c0@xp1800> Message-ID: <40815.64.62.206.10.1208210337.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Rik wrote: > The PSU isn't build by HP but by RTE POWER/MATE a firm with doesn't exist > any more. That explains it. If HP bought the PSU as an assembly, there wouldn't be HP part numbers for its components, as it would be considered a single FRU. >From Tony's schematic, I'd guess that it's a semi-custom part. Motorola probably binned one of their standard parts to a higher spec for RTE. Perhaps you can look at schematics for other switching PSUs with similar ratings and determine what transistor they use. The safety-critical parameters are breakdown voltage and maximum current. If the PSU is rated at less than 500W, I suspect you could use a BU208A, which costs less than $3 from Digikey, but don't take my word for it. Eric From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Apr 14 17:03:59 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:03:59 +0100 (BST) Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> from "Rik" at Apr 14, 8 10:56:01 pm Message-ID: > > I aquired a HP 9816 with a faulty power supply. I asusme this is the SMPSU board in the metal case at one side of the machine, and not the +/-12V regulators on the monitor PCB. > Thanks to the diagrams of Tony I found out that the switching transistor > QP1008 is shorted and a 2n2222 but thats no problem. As you've probably noticed by now, this PSU was not made by HP. At least in my machine it was made byt 'Power/Mate'. Not that this helps very much. > I googled for it and searched my datbooks but can't find any replacement or > datasheet for it. Nor can I. My guess is that the it's a 'house number', and that the trnasistor was selected for some particular characteristic. My furst guess would be a 2SC1942, since that seems to work in many small SMPUS, but don't blame me if it shorts at switch-on. And of course if it doesn't you won;t know if that was becuase it was an unsuitale transistor or because the origianl fault is still there. I would certainly check all the secondary-side rectifiers and smoothing capacitors. And the snuber componets (R6, CR4, C12, C3, CR5) I assume that some of the low-value resistors in the Q2's emitter circuit have burnt out too. Any open PCB traces? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Apr 14 17:18:38 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:18:38 +0100 (BST) Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <33237.64.62.206.10.1208207636.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> from "Eric Smith" at Apr 14, 8 02:13:56 pm Message-ID: > > Rik wrote: > > I aquired a HP 9816 with a faulty power supply. > > Thanks to the diagrams of Tony I found out that the switching transistor > > QP1008 is shorted and a 2n2222 but thats no problem. > > I googled for it and searched my datbooks but can't find any replacement > > or > > datasheet for it. > > So does somebody knows the specs or a replacement for this transistor ? > > Maybe I don't understand what you're asking, but the replacement for a > 2N2222 is a 2N2222. They're still made, and not at all hard to find. Err, no.... This PSU [1] has 2 transistors on the primary side. The chopper, component reference Q2, is a TO3 can marked 'QP1008'. There's also a current-sense transistor, Q1, a 2N2222 The latter is not a problem to replace. The 2N2222 is trivial to find, and it's not _that__ critical anyway. But the chopper transistor is almost certainly selected for some parameter, but I have no idea what (so that, for example, taking the chopper out of a good 9816 PSU board and sticking it on a curver tracer won't help, you don't know what you're looking for) [1] A Power/Mate EVD-6S-300S IIRC. And before someody suggests replacing the complete PSU, I should point out hat this thing has strange outputs. +5V (normal), +15V and -15V (or +14.4V, -14.4V?). The latter 2 are regulated down by linear regulator circuits on the monitor PCB to give +/-12V. [An aside for those who don't know the HP9816. It's a 68K computer with uilt-in monitor, although no built-in drives (those connect via an HPIB port). There are 6 PCBs in the case, and 2 expansion slots for HP DIO boards. Flat in the bottom of the case is the processor board, which contains the CPU, RAM (normally 256K bytes, it's possible to get 1M on there), boot ROMs, HPIB port, RS232 port, keyboard port, etc. THis plugs into a little backplane which carries the DIO slots On top of that, also plugging into the backplane is the monitor PCB, which contaisn the CRT drive circuitry and the +/-12V regulators) Plugged into that are 2 more boards of mostly digital ICs. The larger one is the text video circuitry, the smaller one the graphics video. And finally there's a metal box down one side of hte mchine (LHS seen from the back IIRC) that contains the SMPSU we're discussing here. It connectes by 2 camels (mains in, DC out) to connectors on the monitor PCB] > > If that's not what you're trying to replace, what is the part number > you're replacing? I could be wrong, but QP1008 looks like a component > designator, not a part number. Even if there's only an HP part number > (e.g., 181x-xxxx), that's more useful for finding a replacement than > a component designator. There are no HP part numbers on the PSU board components. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Mon Apr 14 17:24:36 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:24:36 +0100 (BST) Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <40815.64.62.206.10.1208210337.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> from "Eric Smith" at Apr 14, 8 02:58:57 pm Message-ID: > > Rik wrote: > > The PSU isn't build by HP but by RTE POWER/MATE a firm with doesn't exist > > any more. > > That explains it. If HP bought the PSU as an assembly, there wouldn't > be HP part numbers for its components, as it would be considered a single > FRU. Is that _always_ the case? I think I've seen a Tandon TM100 drive where the logic board is identical in layout and circuitry to a standard one, but is gold-plated (like most HP boards of the time), has an HP part number in the etch and 1820-xxxx chips on it. I would be very suprised if HP made that board themselves. > > >From Tony's schematic, I'd guess that it's a semi-custom part. Motorola > probably binned one of their standard parts to a higher spec for RTE. And alas we have no idea what it needs to be selected for, so there's no point in making measurements on a good PSU or its transistor. > > Perhaps you can look at schematics for other switching PSUs > with similar ratings and determine what transistor they use. The > safety-critical parameters are breakdown voltage and maximum current. Too low a current gain may mean the transistor operates in the linear part of its chracteristic, and promptly overheats. > If the PSU is rated at less than 500W, I suspect you could use a BU208A, > which costs less than $3 from Digikey, but don't take my word for it. I am almost sure it's less than 500W. It's quite a small supply. A BU208A is a good suggestion. As is a 2SC1942. And there are many others. The problem is it gets expensive if one fials after another. And you don't know if they're failing becuase they're unsuitable or because the original fault, the one that caused the original transistor to fail, is still there. -tony From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Mon Apr 14 18:41:34 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:41:34 +0000 Subject: Big fat resistor question Message-ID: <20080414234134.GA30774@usap.gov> Hi, all, I'm looking to throw in a current limiting resistor on an LED backlight for an LCD. I'm going through my stash of parts and fished out some power resistors of a style I'm not familiar with. I think they might be suitable, but I can't tell for certain. The LED backlight pulls about 800mA @ 4.2V. The resistors I have are marked "WW2 4 Ohms 5%". The body is about the size of a 1/2W carbon- omposite resistor, all black, with the legend in white paint. I'm guessing that the "WW" means wire-wound, but the resistor looks a little small for me to be sure that "2" might mean 2W (even though I only need 1W). >From the description of the resistor style, can anyone tell what the wattage might be? Thanks, -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 14-Apr-2008 at 23:20 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -71.0 F (-57.2 C) Windchill -109.6 F (-78.7 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 12.5 kts Grid 84 Barometer 682.6 mb (10530 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From lee at geekdot.com Mon Apr 14 19:34:24 2008 From: lee at geekdot.com (Lee Davison) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:34:24 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Big fat resistor question Message-ID: <3051.62.136.196.99.1208219664.squirrel@webmail.geekdot.com> > From the description of the resistor style, can anyone tell > what the wattage might be? A WW2 should be 2.4W. The wattage is n*1.2 Lee. From trixter at oldskool.org Mon Apr 14 20:03:17 2008 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:03:17 -0500 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question Message-ID: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> I have a need to record the output of a (5150) speaker. Although I thought that I could just alligator-clip a positive lead to one speaker terminal and the negative to the case/ground, the output was decidedly "buzzy" (I assumed it was too "hot" and overmodulating). I routed it into a mixer and turned it down (speaker is 5v, not sure what line input is) but it still didn't sound right. I found some old directions on hooking up a PC speaker to a line input, and was confused by the use of a capacitor -- I would have thought that a resistor would have been more appropriate, to limit the signal perhaps? In any case, here are the instructions, followed by my question: Parts required: - 6' to 12' shielded cable with RCA plug (male) on one end - Two alligator clips - One 4.7 uf capacitor 1. Connect one alligator clip to the shielded portion of the cable. 2. Connect the (-) minus side of the capacitor to the center conductor of the cable and then connect the (+) side of the capacitor to the second alligator clip. 3. Attach the clip with the capacitor to one of the wires going to your computer's speaker. Attach the other clip to the metal case (ground) somewhere (such as a screw or bolt connection). 4. Connect the RCA plug to the auxiliary input on your stereo system or boom box. While I have read the wikipedia entry on capacitors, I'm missing something obvious. My question: Why the 4.7uf capacitor? Does it serve to limit the signal? Reduce it's voltage? (or increase it?) Filter the signal in some way? -- 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 ethan.dicks at usap.gov Mon Apr 14 20:08:53 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:08:53 +0000 Subject: Big fat resistor question In-Reply-To: <3051.62.136.196.99.1208219664.squirrel@webmail.geekdot.com> References: <3051.62.136.196.99.1208219664.squirrel@webmail.geekdot.com> Message-ID: <20080415010853.GA8449@usap.gov> On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 02:34:24AM +0200, Lee Davison wrote: > > > From the description of the resistor style, can anyone tell > > what the wattage might be? > > A WW2 should be 2.4W. The wattage is n*1.2 Excellent. Thank you. I think this will work perfectly (turns out I copied the wrong spot from the spec sheet... it's 800mW, or 190mA @ 4.2V, which means a 1W 4 Ohm would be all I need, but I _have_ the 2.4W resistors in hand). Thanks. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 15-Apr-2008 at 00:40 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -70.8 F (-57.1 C) Windchill -102.4 F (-74.7 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 8.0 kts Grid 100 Barometer 682.5 mb (10534 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Mon Apr 14 20:23:32 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:23:32 -0500 Subject: Big fat resistor question In-Reply-To: <20080415010853.GA8449@usap.gov> References: <3051.62.136.196.99.1208219664.squirrel@webmail.geekdot.com> <20080415010853.GA8449@usap.gov> Message-ID: <48040394.9000906@gmail.com> Ethan Dicks wrote: > On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 02:34:24AM +0200, Lee Davison wrote: >>> From the description of the resistor style, can anyone tell >>> what the wattage might be? >> A WW2 should be 2.4W. The wattage is n*1.2 > > Excellent. Thank you. Sure beats "test it until destruction, then back off a little" :-) From rtellason at verizon.net Mon Apr 14 20:35:24 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:35:24 -0400 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804142135.24642.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 14 April 2008 18:18, Tony Duell wrote: > > Rik wrote: > > > I aquired a HP 9816 with a faulty power supply. > > > Thanks to the diagrams of Tony I found out that the switching > > > transistor QP1008 is shorted and a 2n2222 but thats no problem. > > > I googled for it and searched my datbooks but can't find any > > > replacement or > > > datasheet for it. > > > So does somebody knows the specs or a replacement for this transistor ? > > > > Maybe I don't understand what you're asking, but the replacement for a > > 2N2222 is a 2N2222. They're still made, and not at all hard to find. > > Err, no.... > > This PSU [1] has 2 transistors on the primary side. The chopper, > component reference Q2, is a TO3 can marked 'QP1008'. There's also a > current-sense transistor, Q1, a 2N2222 > > The latter is not a problem to replace. The 2N2222 is trivial to find, > and it's not _that__ critical anyway. But the chopper transistor is > almost certainly selected for some parameter, but I have no idea what (so > that, for example, taking the chopper out of a good 9816 PSU board and > sticking it on a curver tracer won't help, you don't know what you're > looking for) > > [1] A Power/Mate EVD-6S-300S IIRC. > > And before someody suggests replacing the complete PSU, I should point > out hat this thing has strange outputs. +5V (normal), +15V and -15V (or > +14.4V, -14.4V?). The latter 2 are regulated down by linear regulator > circuits on the monitor PCB to give +/-12V. > > [An aside for those who don't know the HP9816. It's a 68K computer with > uilt-in monitor, although no built-in drives (those connect via an HPIB > port). There are 6 PCBs in the case, and 2 expansion slots for HP DIO > boards. > > Flat in the bottom of the case is the processor board, which contains the > CPU, RAM (normally 256K bytes, it's possible to get 1M on there), boot > ROMs, HPIB port, RS232 port, keyboard port, etc. > > THis plugs into a little backplane which carries the DIO slots > > On top of that, also plugging into the backplane is the monitor PCB, > which contaisn the CRT drive circuitry and the +/-12V regulators) > > Plugged into that are 2 more boards of mostly digital ICs. The larger one > is the text video circuitry, the smaller one the graphics video. > > And finally there's a metal box down one side of hte mchine (LHS seen > from the back IIRC) that contains the SMPSU we're discussing here. It > connectes by 2 camels (mains in, DC out) to connectors on the monitor PCB] > > > If that's not what you're trying to replace, what is the part number > > you're replacing? I could be wrong, but QP1008 looks like a component > > designator, not a part number. Even if there's only an HP part number > > (e.g., 181x-xxxx), that's more useful for finding a replacement than > > a component designator. > > There are no HP part numbers on the PSU board components. > > -tony You did those schematics? I'm impressed. It's been quite some time since I've been quite that ambitious... :-) -- 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 Mon Apr 14 20:47:00 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:47:00 -0400 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <200804142147.00464.rtellason@verizon.net> On Monday 14 April 2008 21:03, Jim Leonard wrote: > I have a need to record the output of a (5150) speaker. Although I > thought that I could just alligator-clip a positive lead to one speaker > terminal and the negative to the case/ground, the output was decidedly > "buzzy" (I assumed it was too "hot" and overmodulating). I routed it > into a mixer and turned it down (speaker is 5v, not sure what line input > is) but it still didn't sound right. "Line input" is typically no more than a volt or so... The output being buzzy -- do you mean while the speaker was sounding or all the time? It's quite possible that the mixer was picking up other stuff from inside the case. Or if it's only when sounding then you're probably overdriving the mixer input which could have all sorts of effects depending on the circuitry there. > I found some old directions on hooking up a PC speaker to a line input, > and was confused by the use of a capacitor -- I would have thought that > a resistor would have been more appropriate, to limit the signal > perhaps? In any case, here are the instructions, followed by my question: > > Parts required: > - 6' to 12' shielded cable with RCA plug (male) on one end > - Two alligator clips > - One 4.7 uf capacitor > > 1. Connect one alligator clip to the shielded portion of the cable. > 2. Connect the (-) minus side of the capacitor to the center conductor > of the cable and then connect the (+) side of the capacitor to the > second alligator clip. > 3. Attach the clip with the capacitor to one of the wires going to your > computer's speaker. Attach the other clip to the metal case (ground) > somewhere (such as a screw or bolt connection). > 4. Connect the RCA plug to the auxiliary input on your stereo system or > boom box. > > While I have read the wikipedia entry on capacitors, I'm missing > something obvious. My question: Why the 4.7uf capacitor? Does it > serve to limit the signal? Reduce it's voltage? (or increase it?) > Filter the signal in some way? That's a rather odd way of doing things. I had thought iniially when I read this that you were looking at perhaps blocking DC with a capacitor, which would probably be a good thing anyhow. I could be mistaken about this, but my recollection is that they drove that speaker with one wire tied to +5V and the other coupled to ground through an open-collector device such as one section of a 7405 inverter, or similar. What I would suggest is that you use both resistance and capacitance there, you want to attenuate that signal downwards some (probably by at least a factor of 5-10) and you also likely want to block DC from the input of your mixer, though there may possibly already be a DC blocking capacitor at that input. I'd try say a 10K resistor connected to the speaker, a 1K resistor connected to ground, and the mixer connected to the common junction of the two. Maybe even make that 1K a trimpot, if you want to be able to adjust the level downward further. Is there some reason you don't want to just use a microphone? -- 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 rdawson16 at hotmail.com Mon Apr 14 21:54:15 2008 From: rdawson16 at hotmail.com (Randy Dawson) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:54:15 -0500 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <200804142147.00464.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <200804142147.00464.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: Connect a series cap to BOTH leads, this will isolate your input from any ground fault. Connect a pot across the input to your RCA, 1K to start, if nothing happens untill you twist to the bottom end, use a 500 ohm pot, this is your attenuator so you are not overdriving your input Randy > Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:47:00 -0400 > From: rtellason at verizon.net > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: Beginner's capacitor question > > On Monday 14 April 2008 21:03, Jim Leonard wrote: > > I have a need to record the output of a (5150) speaker. Although I > > thought that I could just alligator-clip a positive lead to one speaker > > terminal and the negative to the case/ground, the output was decidedly > > "buzzy" (I assumed it was too "hot" and overmodulating). I routed it > > into a mixer and turned it down (speaker is 5v, not sure what line input > > is) but it still didn't sound right. > > "Line input" is typically no more than a volt or so... > > The output being buzzy -- do you mean while the speaker was sounding or all > the time? It's quite possible that the mixer was picking up other stuff from > inside the case. Or if it's only when sounding then you're probably > overdriving the mixer input which could have all sorts of effects depending > on the circuitry there. > > > I found some old directions on hooking up a PC speaker to a line input, > > and was confused by the use of a capacitor -- I would have thought that > > a resistor would have been more appropriate, to limit the signal > > perhaps? In any case, here are the instructions, followed by my question: > > > > Parts required: > > - 6' to 12' shielded cable with RCA plug (male) on one end > > - Two alligator clips > > - One 4.7 uf capacitor > > > > 1. Connect one alligator clip to the shielded portion of the cable. > > 2. Connect the (-) minus side of the capacitor to the center conductor > > of the cable and then connect the (+) side of the capacitor to the > > second alligator clip. > > 3. Attach the clip with the capacitor to one of the wires going to your > > computer's speaker. Attach the other clip to the metal case (ground) > > somewhere (such as a screw or bolt connection). > > 4. Connect the RCA plug to the auxiliary input on your stereo system or > > boom box. > > > > While I have read the wikipedia entry on capacitors, I'm missing > > something obvious. My question: Why the 4.7uf capacitor? Does it > > serve to limit the signal? Reduce it's voltage? (or increase it?) > > Filter the signal in some way? > > That's a rather odd way of doing things. I had thought iniially when I read > this that you were looking at perhaps blocking DC with a capacitor, which > would probably be a good thing anyhow. > > I could be mistaken about this, but my recollection is that they drove that > speaker with one wire tied to +5V and the other coupled to ground through an > open-collector device such as one section of a 7405 inverter, or similar. > What I would suggest is that you use both resistance and capacitance there, > you want to attenuate that signal downwards some (probably by at least a > factor of 5-10) and you also likely want to block DC from the input of your > mixer, though there may possibly already be a DC blocking capacitor at that > input. > > I'd try say a 10K resistor connected to the speaker, a 1K resistor connected > to ground, and the mixer connected to the common junction of the two. Maybe > even make that 1K a trimpot, if you want to be able to adjust the level > downward further. > > Is there some reason you don't want to just use a microphone? > > -- > 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 > _________________________________________________________________ Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_video_042008 From tpeters at mixcom.com Mon Apr 14 22:39:35 2008 From: tpeters at mixcom.com (Tom Peters) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:39:35 -0500 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: References: <200804142147.00464.rtellason@verizon.net> <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <200804142147.00464.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20080414223138.00c071b8@localhost> You're recording the output of a 5150?? You mean the original IBM PC? Have we forgotten how the PC generated audio, until real audio cards were generated? They just toggled a line connected to the speaker-- thereby pumped square waves at it. Squarewaves are rich in harmonics, and sound very harsh. They were reliant on the fixed response of the speak to smooth it out mechanically. Recording that properly will be pretty hard. You need an RC filter to try and smooth that out, and I'm not sure what that would look like. Probably a capacitor from the hot lead to ground, with resistor in the hot lead before the cap. It's still going to be harsh. It will be too "hot" certainly, and you will have to pad it down with a series resistor followed by one to ground. But as much of the distortion is coming from trying to record squarewaves as from overdriving the recorder's input stage. Series resistors or pots won't help enough. You need a T or Pi network with a loading resistor across the speaker. -T At 09:54 PM 2008-04-14 -0500, Randy Dawson wrote: >Connect a series cap to BOTH leads, this will isolate your input from any >ground fault. > >Connect a pot across the input to your RCA, 1K to start, if nothing >happens untill you twist to the bottom end, use a 500 ohm pot, this is >your attenuator so you are not overdriving your input > >Randy > > > > Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:47:00 -0400 > > From: rtellason at verizon.net > > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > > Subject: Re: Beginner's capacitor question > > > > On Monday 14 April 2008 21:03, Jim Leonard wrote: > > > I have a need to record the output of a (5150) speaker. Although I > > > thought that I could just alligator-clip a positive lead to one speaker > > > terminal and the negative to the case/ground, the output was decidedly > > > "buzzy" (I assumed it was too "hot" and overmodulating). I routed it > > > into a mixer and turned it down (speaker is 5v, not sure what line input > > > is) but it still didn't sound right. > > > > "Line input" is typically no more than a volt or so... > > > > The output being buzzy -- do you mean while the speaker was sounding or > all > > the time? It's quite possible that the mixer was picking up other > stuff from > > inside the case. Or if it's only when sounding then you're probably > > overdriving the mixer input which could have all sorts of effects > depending > > on the circuitry there. > > > > > I found some old directions on hooking up a PC speaker to a line input, > > > and was confused by the use of a capacitor -- I would have thought that > > > a resistor would have been more appropriate, to limit the signal > > > perhaps? In any case, here are the instructions, followed by my > question: > > > > > > Parts required: > > > - 6' to 12' shielded cable with RCA plug (male) on one end > > > - Two alligator clips > > > - One 4.7 uf capacitor > > > > > > 1. Connect one alligator clip to the shielded portion of the cable. > > > 2. Connect the (-) minus side of the capacitor to the center conductor > > > of the cable and then connect the (+) side of the capacitor to the > > > second alligator clip. > > > 3. Attach the clip with the capacitor to one of the wires going to your > > > computer's speaker. Attach the other clip to the metal case (ground) > > > somewhere (such as a screw or bolt connection). > > > 4. Connect the RCA plug to the auxiliary input on your stereo system or > > > boom box. > > > > > > While I have read the wikipedia entry on capacitors, I'm missing > > > something obvious. My question: Why the 4.7uf capacitor? Does it > > > serve to limit the signal? Reduce it's voltage? (or increase it?) > > > Filter the signal in some way? > > > > That's a rather odd way of doing things. I had thought iniially when I > read > > this that you were looking at perhaps blocking DC with a capacitor, which > > would probably be a good thing anyhow. > > > > I could be mistaken about this, but my recollection is that they drove > that > > speaker with one wire tied to +5V and the other coupled to ground > through an > > open-collector device such as one section of a 7405 inverter, or > similar. > > What I would suggest is that you use both resistance and capacitance > there, > > you want to attenuate that signal downwards some (probably by at least a > > factor of 5-10) and you also likely want to block DC from the input of > your > > mixer, though there may possibly already be a DC blocking capacitor at > that > > input. > > > > I'd try say a 10K resistor connected to the speaker, a 1K resistor > connected > > to ground, and the mixer connected to the common junction of the > two. Maybe > > even make that 1K a trimpot, if you want to be able to adjust the level > > downward further. > > > > Is there some reason you don't want to just use a microphone? > > > > -- > > 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 > > > >_________________________________________________________________ >Use video conversation to talk face-to-face with Windows Live Messenger. >http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_messenger_video_042008 ----- 36. [Philosophy] Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. --Oscar Wilde --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... 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 chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Apr 1 19:08:17 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 17:08:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess Message-ID: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> any thoughts on vintage chess games? I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er back up. ____________________________________________________________________________________ You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost. http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com From jwallis at fbiacademy.edu Mon Apr 14 08:26:57 2008 From: jwallis at fbiacademy.edu (Wallis, Jane ) Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:26:57 -0400 Subject: Some information on Micron Optic Rams Message-ID: I'm sorry Jim, but I can't answer your last question. However, I do appreciate the extra information you have provided. The information I have received to date has met my requirements. Thank you very much for the offer of additional project sheets. Once again - Thank You. Jane Wallis -----Original Message----- From: Mr. Sub Micron [mailto:nanoman at stny.rr.com] Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 9:29 PM To: Wallis, Jane ; dave06a at dunfield.com; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Cc: nanoman at stny.rr.com Subject: Some information on Micron Optic Rams Jane, If you are interested. As a student (several decades ago) I developed several 64K and 512K DRAM cameras. I used TI and Intel DRAMs (at the time I was unaware of the Micron opticRAM). In its day, I thought this was pretty cool. The DRAM was attached via tether to my computer and I varied the refresh rate to get gray scale. Assembly language is a beautiful thing (or a nightmare). Of course the real trick was to remove the ceramic package lid and polyimide protective "goop" to reveal the chip die imaging surface (without damaging the die). Anyway, I have attached the covers of Mircro IS32 and IS256 information that I readily found. I believe I may still have the MicronEye Camera and Manual, as well as other information. If you would like copies of this information let me know. I will be out of town for a week or so (and I will have to recall where I have stuff the other information). Why are you interested in the OpticRam? Enjoy, Jim From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Apr 15 02:15:21 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:15:21 +0100 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20080414223138.00c071b8@localhost> References: <200804142147.00464.rtellason@verizon.net> <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <200804142147.00464.rtellason@verizon.net> <5.1.0.14.2.20080414223138.00c071b8@localhost> Message-ID: <1208243721.24092.16.camel@elric> On Mon, 2008-04-14 at 22:39 -0500, Tom Peters wrote: > You're recording the output of a 5150?? You mean the original IBM PC? Have > we forgotten how the PC generated audio, until real audio cards were > generated? They just toggled a line connected to the speaker-- thereby > pumped square waves at it. Squarewaves are rich in harmonics, and sound > very harsh. They were reliant on the fixed response of the speak to smooth > it out mechanically. Recording that properly will be pretty hard. You need > an RC filter to try and smooth that out, and I'm not sure what that would > look like. Probably a capacitor from the hot lead to ground, with resistor > in the hot lead before the cap. It's still going to be harsh. I don't know about harsh, but it won't sound like a PC speaker. If you want it to sound exactly right you're going to have to mike it in a quiet room. > It will be too "hot" certainly, and you will have to pad it down with a > series resistor followed by one to ground. But as much of the distortion is > coming from trying to record squarewaves as from overdriving the recorder's > input stage. You know that most synthesizers produce squarewaves, and they can be recorded without any problems at all, right? Jim: try this - 4.7k resistor onto the hot side of the speaker, 1k resistor from the "free" end of the 4.7k resistor to ground, 1uF cap from the junction of the two resistors to the line in on your desk (and obviously ground to ground on the desk). You may need to fiddle with the EQ to get a nice sound. Gordon From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Tue Apr 15 04:05:30 2008 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:05:30 -0800 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) References: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800> <33237.64.62.206.10.1208207636.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <000a01c89e77$6ff0ad80$0501a8c0@xp1800> Message-ID: <48046FDB.11960D74@cs.ubc.ca> Rik wrote: > > Sorry, I need to replace both and ment that the 2n2222 isn't a problem, but > the QP1008 is. > The PSU isn't build by HP but by RTE POWER/MATE a firm with doesn't exist > any more. > The text on the QP1008 (TO3) is QP1008 and the date stamp 8413 and the > Motorola sign. > I do have a Motorola component cataloge from '83 but can't find the part in > there and in my other books. > On the schematics of Tony the part is mentioned as QP1008 > http://www.hpmuseum.net/document.php?hwfile=4020 > I need to know witch transistor I can use to replace it. A line of speculation, FWIW: 1. Looking through the cross-refs of the 1984 Moto Bipolar Power Transistor and Thyristor databook, the only part I spot with a number portion of 1008 is UMT1008. Yes, that's a speculative and questionable association in-and-of itself, but sometimes house or custom-request numbers bear some inheritance from the common part number. 2. The "Motorola Similar Replacement" for UMT1008 is MJ13014. 3. Basic specs on the MJ13014: "Switchmode Series NPN Silicon Power Transistor" "..designed for high-voltage, high-speed, power-switching in inductive circuits where fall-time is critical.." "..particularly suited for switchmode applications such as: switching regulators, inverters.. [etc]" TO-3 package VCEO: 350V IC: 10A Pd @ 25C: 150W hfe: 12 min 60nS inductive fall time @ 25C 800nS inductive storage time @ 25C Perhaps Moto was asked to supply something that looked-like/similar-to/spec'ed-version-of a UMT1008. The basic specs would suggest it passes a sniff test, but I'm not familiar with the actual power supply so I'll leave it to others to perhaps comment on applicability in the specific. From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Tue Apr 15 03:43:28 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:43:28 +0200 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) References: <002e01c89e71$f2898150$0501a8c0@xp1800><33237.64.62.206.10.1208207636.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com><000a01c89e77$6ff0ad80$0501a8c0@xp1800> <48046FDB.11960D74@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <001401c89ed4$c9e91450$0501a8c0@xp1800> Based on the specs placed on the board 5V/6A +14/1.6A -14/0.5A and a assumed ~80% efficiency, simple power calculation give (30W + 22,4W + 7W)/0.8 = 74,25 say 75-80W. So I think I'll use one of the supposed replacements. Rik ----- Original Message ----- From: "Brent Hilpert" To: ; "Discussion at priv-edtnaa03.telusplanet.net :On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 11:05 AM Subject: Re: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) > Rik wrote: >> >> Sorry, I need to replace both and ment that the 2n2222 isn't a problem, >> but >> the QP1008 is. >> The PSU isn't build by HP but by RTE POWER/MATE a firm with doesn't exist >> any more. >> The text on the QP1008 (TO3) is QP1008 and the date stamp 8413 and the >> Motorola sign. >> I do have a Motorola component cataloge from '83 but can't find the part >> in >> there and in my other books. >> On the schematics of Tony the part is mentioned as QP1008 >> http://www.hpmuseum.net/document.php?hwfile=4020 >> I need to know witch transistor I can use to replace it. > > A line of speculation, FWIW: > > 1. Looking through the cross-refs of the 1984 Moto Bipolar Power > Transistor and > Thyristor databook, the only part I spot with a number portion of 1008 is > UMT1008. Yes, that's a speculative and questionable association in-and-of > itself, but sometimes house or custom-request numbers bear some > inheritance > from the common part number. > > 2. The "Motorola Similar Replacement" for UMT1008 is MJ13014. > > 3. Basic specs on the MJ13014: > "Switchmode Series NPN Silicon Power Transistor" > "..designed for high-voltage, high-speed, power-switching in inductive > circuits where fall-time is critical.." > "..particularly suited for switchmode applications such as: switching > regulators, inverters.. [etc]" > TO-3 package > VCEO: 350V > IC: 10A > Pd @ 25C: 150W > hfe: 12 min > 60nS inductive fall time @ 25C > 800nS inductive storage time @ 25C > > Perhaps Moto was asked to supply something that > looked-like/similar-to/spec'ed-version-of a UMT1008. > > The basic specs would suggest it passes a sniff test, but I'm not familiar > with > the actual power supply so I'll leave it to others to perhaps comment on > applicability in the specific. > > > From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Tue Apr 15 03:58:54 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:58:54 +0200 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) References: Message-ID: <001b01c89ed6$eef8c590$0501a8c0@xp1800> I'm replacing the elco C11 because it's expanding and I suspect it to leak , and yes I'm going to check the other components. I didn't find any open pcb-traces yet but will check this too . I'll keep you posted on this. Thanks, Rik ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Duell" To: Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:03 AM Subject: Re: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) >> >> I aquired a HP 9816 with a faulty power supply. > I asusme this is the SMPSU board in the metal case at one side of the > machine, and not the +/-12V regulators on the monitor PCB. YES, your right. >> Thanks to the diagrams of Tony I found out that the switching transistor >> QP1008 is shorted and a 2n2222 but thats no problem. > > As you've probably noticed by now, this PSU was not made by HP. At least > in my machine it was made byt 'Power/Mate'. Not that this helps very much. > >> I googled for it and searched my datbooks but can't find any replacement >> or >> datasheet for it. > > Nor can I. My guess is that the it's a 'house number', and that the > trnasistor was selected for some particular characteristic. > > My furst guess would be a 2SC1942, since that seems to work in many small > SMPUS, but don't blame me if it shorts at switch-on. And of course if it > doesn't you won;t know if that was becuase it was an unsuitale transistor > or because the origianl fault is still there. I won't, I'm happy with every suggestion. > I would certainly check all the secondary-side rectifiers and smoothing > capacitors. And the snuber componets (R6, CR4, C12, C3, CR5) > > I assume that some of the low-value resistors in the Q2's emitter circuit > have burnt out too. Any open PCB traces? > > -tony > > From dave06a at dunfield.com Tue Apr 15 04:53:07 2008 From: dave06a at dunfield.com (Dave Dunfield) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:53:07 -0500 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: > any thoughts on vintage chess games? One of the earliest ones that I used was called: CHESS MASTER Copyright 1978 by SOFTWARE SPECIALISTS, Norco, California and sold by Dynacomp for NorthStar DOS. I ran it using a single-density N* controller in my Altair. It plays a fairly decent game of chess, especially at the higher levels. Not bad considering it's only about 5K of 8080 code. It has 5 levels. At level 1, moves take only a few seconds, at level 5, moves can take MANY minites. If you'd like to experience it, you can load it under my Altair simulator - available on my web site. I've also included a scan of the documentation in the docs section. I've also ported it to the H8 where it can be loaded from tape (simulation also available on my site). 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 james at jfc.org.uk Tue Apr 15 09:11:49 2008 From: james at jfc.org.uk (James Carter) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:11:49 +0100 Subject: Two recent vintage computer sightings in movies In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1208268709.2578.3.camel@pc004.cs.york.ac.uk> On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 21:30 -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote: > > Isn't someone maintaining a list of these somewhere? jimw has his "computer in the media" page. http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw/j-media.shtml i've been working on a site that catalogues computers (not specifically classic, but most are) in movies and tv. http://www.starringthecomputer.com/ -- James F. Carter http://www.jfc.org.uk/ http://www.podquiz.com/ From frustum at pacbell.net Tue Apr 15 09:59:17 2008 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:59:17 -0500 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4804C2C5.3000605@pacbell.net> Dave Dunfield wrote: >> any thoughts on vintage chess games? > > One of the earliest ones that I used was called: > > CHESS MASTER > Copyright 1978 by SOFTWARE SPECIALISTS, Norco, California > > and sold by Dynacomp for NorthStar DOS. I ran it > using a single-density N* controller in my Altair. Processor Technology had a chess program. I have the program and manual on my sol web site (http://www.sol20.org/programs.html, look for "chess"). The manual was recreated from a xeroxed copy of the original, sans covers, so if there is a date for the program, I don't know it. However, there was an errata published 9/78, so the program must predate that. Here is a screen capture of a game just in progress: http://www.sol20.org/screens/chess.gif I recall a 6502 "microchess," although I never used it. A quick google shows it was originally written for the KIM-1, using about 1KB of RAM. It came out in 1976. http://www.benlo.com/microchess/Kim-1Microchess.html http://6502.org/source/games/uchess/uchess.htm and plenty of others. From bbrown at harpercollege.edu Tue Apr 15 10:41:30 2008 From: bbrown at harpercollege.edu (Bob Brown) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:41:30 -0500 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <4804C2C5.3000605@pacbell.net> References: <4804C2C5.3000605@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <3E7B329687F1C541A9F1251B3A2A201E023F7CDB@admexchs1.admdom.harpercollege.edu> I had microchess on my trs-80 model I (on cassette, of course)...one evening, we few of my friends got together..one of them also had an Apple II....we had the trs-80 take-on the apple-II in microchess (I think the Apple won, but I'm not sure).. (we would key one computer's moves into the other computer as "our" move). Retro-fun! -Bob bbrown at harpercollege.edu #### #### Bob Brown - KB9LFR Harper Community College ## ## ## Supervisor of Operations Palatine IL USA #### #### Saved by grace -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jim Battle Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:59 AM To: General at harpercollege.edu; On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Chess Dave Dunfield wrote: >> any thoughts on vintage chess games? > > One of the earliest ones that I used was called: > > CHESS MASTER > Copyright 1978 by SOFTWARE SPECIALISTS, Norco, California > > and sold by Dynacomp for NorthStar DOS. I ran it using a > single-density N* controller in my Altair. Processor Technology had a chess program. I have the program and manual on my sol web site (http://www.sol20.org/programs.html, look for "chess"). The manual was recreated from a xeroxed copy of the original, sans covers, so if there is a date for the program, I don't know it. However, there was an errata published 9/78, so the program must predate that. Here is a screen capture of a game just in progress: http://www.sol20.org/screens/chess.gif I recall a 6502 "microchess," although I never used it. A quick google shows it was originally written for the KIM-1, using about 1KB of RAM. It came out in 1976. http://www.benlo.com/microchess/Kim-1Microchess.html http://6502.org/source/games/uchess/uchess.htm and plenty of others. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Apr 15 11:07:17 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:07:17 -0600 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> John Floren wrote: > No news is good news. Sure, you could make grep blather all over > stderr or something, but why? If you don't get any errors, the program > completed correctly. If you screwed up the syntax or specified a > nonexistent file, you get an error. > However, since GNU tools are so utterly goddamn broken, this may or > may not be the case on any given tool. Try Plan 9 some time and you'll > have a lovely experience... for example, see > http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/cat for the proper way to > implement cat. I have been sick for the last few weeks, so I have been off this list for a while. My view is unix on the 11 still is the best because the tools worked as a system rather than being a copy of copy ... of the original. I have PDP-8 clone and figuring how to get kermit from a Dos laptop to the machine over the serial link is more important to me than 'the best version of cat'. Lets talk about non-broken tools so that we can run the old machines properly like a terminal emulator that works like a real terminal? Linux to my knowlage has none. My only gripe about the UNIX mind set is that they did not have a small screen editor. From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Apr 15 11:22:02 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:22:02 -0600 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <4804D62A.6010309@jetnet.ab.ca> Chris M wrote: > any thoughts on vintage chess games? > > I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang > thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle > of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that > got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er > back up. have it play chess with a PDP-8 :) > From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 15 11:25:57 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:25:57 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:07 PM, woodelf wrote: > Lets talk about non-broken tools so that we can run the old > machines properly > like a terminal emulator that works like a real terminal? > Linux to my knowlage has none. Sheer madness. I use kermit in an xterm window all the time...works great.. I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Apr 15 11:50:55 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:50:55 -0600 Subject: Big fat resistor question In-Reply-To: <48040394.9000906@gmail.com> References: <3051.62.136.196.99.1208219664.squirrel@webmail.geekdot.com> <20080415010853.GA8449@usap.gov> <48040394.9000906@gmail.com> Message-ID: <4804DCEF.6080508@jetnet.ab.ca> Jules Richardson wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: >> On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 02:34:24AM +0200, Lee Davison wrote: >>>> From the description of the resistor style, can anyone tell >>>> what the wattage might be? >>> A WW2 should be 2.4W. The wattage is n*1.2 >> >> Excellent. Thank you. > > Sure beats "test it until destruction, then back off a little" :-) Well He has plenty of ICE around for cooling. :) From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Apr 15 11:53:29 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:53:29 -0600 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> Dave McGuire wrote: > > I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. > -Dave What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 15 11:58:46 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:58:46 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:53 PM, woodelf wrote: >> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. > > What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to find. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Apr 15 12:05:58 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:05:58 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4804E076.8070707@gmail.com> woodelf wrote: > Dave McGuire wrote: >> >> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. > >> -Dave > What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? I mostly use VT420s, but I'm in the process of switching to IBM 3151s, because the keyboards are a lot nicer. Peace... Sridhar From slawmaster at gmail.com Tue Apr 15 12:06:03 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:06:03 -0700 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804151006v772b61cfod58e45848aac2d66@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Dave McGuire wrote: > On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:53 PM, woodelf wrote: > > > > > > > > I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. > > > > > > > > > What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? > > > > DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to find. > > -Dave > No love for the VT220? That's what I have, and although it's pretty slow, I still like it... the VMS keyboard is an obstruction sometimes, though. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Apr 15 12:06:38 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:06:38 -0600 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <4804E09E.4070603@jetnet.ab.ca> Dave McGuire wrote: > DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to find. Except here! > -Dave From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 15 12:18:05 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:18:05 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <4804E09E.4070603@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> <4804E09E.4070603@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <68D61ECD-BC64-4D80-B348-2179E1E3A099@neurotica.com> On Apr 15, 2008, at 1:06 PM, woodelf wrote: >> DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy >> to find. > Except here! Just how far out into the wilderness ARE you? Surely someone must be willing to ship to .ca land. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From scheefj at netscape.net Tue Apr 15 12:27:48 2008 From: scheefj at netscape.net (scheefj at netscape.net) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:27:48 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4804E594.6040204@netscape.net> This demonstrates the dangers of using relative terms like 'available' and 'afford'. woodelf wrote: > Dave McGuire wrote: >> >> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. > >> -Dave > What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? > > From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Apr 15 12:30:08 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:30:08 -0400 (EDT) Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > [Let's] talk about non-broken tools so that we can run the old > machines properly like a terminal emulator that works like a real > terminal? I built a terminal emulator for X that is pretty close to a VT-100. There are closer VT-100 emulators out there - or so I'm told; I've never bothered to go look, since my own works well enough for what I use it for. I believe there are people here who have come substantially closer than I to the real thing; indeed, there is likely someone, perhaps even here on this list, running real terminal firmware under emulation. /~\ 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 scheefj at netscape.net Tue Apr 15 12:34:05 2008 From: scheefj at netscape.net (scheefj at netscape.net) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:34:05 -0400 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <4804D62A.6010309@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <4804D62A.6010309@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> Chris, Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How fast would it be on a modern PC? Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master. I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon in the "good" ones. Jim woodelf wrote: > Chris M wrote: >> any thoughts on vintage chess games? >> >> I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang >> thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle >> of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that >> got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er >> back up. > > have it play chess with a PDP-8 :) > >> > From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Tue Apr 15 12:32:14 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:32:14 -0500 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <4804E69E.8060107@gmail.com> Dave McGuire wrote: > On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:53 PM, woodelf wrote: >>> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. >> >> What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? > > DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to find. Don't they have a nasty habit of blowing the flyback transformer, though? Or is that just the VT220? I had a VT220 for years as a console to my NCR Tower machine though; lovely little terminal. Switched to jump scrolling, of course - smooth scrolling makes me want to barf. What *were* DEC thinking? :-) cheers Jules From mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Tue Apr 15 12:45:57 2008 From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us (Mike Loewen) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:45:57 -0400 (EDT) Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 15 Apr 2008, Dave McGuire wrote: > On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:53 PM, woodelf wrote: >> >> What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? > > DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to find. I'll second that. I use a VT420 whenever I need to plug in a serial terminal. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ From austin at ozpass.co.uk Tue Apr 15 12:56:36 2008 From: austin at ozpass.co.uk (Austin Pass) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:56:36 +0100 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <4804D62A.6010309@jetnet.ab.ca> <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> Message-ID: On 15 Apr 2008, at 18:34, scheefj at netscape.net wrote: > > Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be > vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How fast > would it be on a modern PC? > > Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master. > > I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon > in the "good" ones. > > Jim Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 cluster for GFlops, Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - 480 "special" VLSI chips if Wikipedia is to be believed. -Austin. From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 15 13:11:50 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:11:50 -0700 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <200804151701.m3FH0lla063496@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804151701.m3FH0lla063496@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <48048D76.5029.690791@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 17:08:17 -0700 (PDT) > From: Chris M > any thoughts on vintage chess games? I used one back in the early 70s that was pretty decent with a nice display. But you needed a CDC 6000-series system to run it; it was a real cycle hog, IIRC. Wonder if anyone bothered to preserve the game? It was by-and-large written in CDC FORTRAN. It originally had its own PP display driver (CHD); later versions used the programmable "T"(on SCOPE 3.3, anyway) DSD screen. Cheers, Chuck From pat at computer-refuge.org Tue Apr 15 13:50:09 2008 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:50:09 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <200804151450.09891.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Tuesday 15 April 2008, Dave McGuire wrote: > On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:07 PM, woodelf wrote: > > Lets talk about non-broken tools so that we can run the old > > machines properly > > like a terminal emulator that works like a real terminal? > > Linux to my knowlage has none. > > Sheer madness. I use kermit in an xterm window all the > time...works great.. > > I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. Am I the only one who can't stand not being able to have a log of output that I can scroll back through, and not being able to cut and paste text from the terminal window? Those are the two main reasons I normally rather use a laptop or $macine_with_windowing_environment than a real serial terminal. (This doesn't mean I don't have and don't use serial terminals, just that a real serial terminal is rarely my first choice for something that I want to be functional, instead of just "neat" and "pretty". :) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From rickb at bensene.com Tue Apr 15 14:08:06 2008 From: rickb at bensene.com (Rick Bensene) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:08:06 -0700 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <48048D76.5029.690791@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804151701.m3FH0lla063496@dewey.classiccmp.org> <48048D76.5029.690791@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: Chuck wrote: >I used one back in the early 70s that was pretty decent with a nice >display. But you needed a CDC 6000-series system to run it; it was a >real cycle hog, IIRC. >Wonder if anyone bothered to preserve the game? I played this a lot on weekends when I was the Cyber 73 weekend operator at Tektronix. This was under KRONOS rather than SCOPE. I believe that the console command was X.CHESS It used both CRT's, the left for a nice vector display of the game board, and the right for a listing of the moves made thus far, elapsed time, and for entering moves. I believe that the main program ran all of the chess processing, and that a PPU program communicated with the main program. The PPU took care of keeping the display updated. It offered, IIRC, ten different levels of play. The highest level I ever beat the machine at was level 4. Above level 4, it'd beat me quite easily. At level 10, I had no chance at all. The Cyber 73 had two main CPUs, and 20 PPUs (10 for each CPU). The CPUs were essentially 6600-design, with some enhancements for certain types of vector operations, as well as dealing with shared main memory. The load on the machine was pretty light on the weekends, and the operator didn't have much to do other than mount an occasional tape, or tend to the printer. The main program did load the machine a bit, but didn't seem to have any effect on interactive users. May have slowed down some big (run for a few days) circuit simulation jobs, but no one ever complained, and it was a good way to beat the boredom of sitting in a LOUD (lots of equipment), COLD (these machines like to run in a very cool room...even though they had their own refrigeration system for cooling) data center. I do recall once printing out a copy of the source. It was mostly FORTRAN-77, but there were some sections of assembly code if I remember correctly. I spent quite a bit of time studying the code. It was remarkably well-documented. Someone spent a lot of time on writing this program. The PPU code was indecipherable for me, as I never really learned much about the PPU instruction set. Sadly, I don't have this printout. I kept it for a while, but it ended up going to recycle during one of my moves. Bad me. I also wonder if there's any archive out there for it? There's a pretty good Cyber simulator out there that I've seen. Even a fairly modest PC today should be able to run this thing at least at "Cyber" realtime, if not faster. The machine did take a little time at level 10 once you got past the opening move book section of the program...machine moves would take from 5-10 seconds, to up to 90 seconds or so, but I never made it into level 10 deep enough to really exercise the machine hard. I think that the level setting simply put limits on the look-ahead tree branches. At level 10, it looked as far forward as the algorithms (and main memory) would allow. I also seem to recall there was some command you could put into it that would change the left screen from the view of the chessboard, to a "debug" view, that showed the evaluation processes involved in the machine determining its move. It was nicely organized to show a ranked listing of the best possible moves by its scoring algorithm, and below that it showed a text-representation of the board, with the machine making theoretical moves, then scoring the outcome. At the time, it was simply amazing the computing power that this machine had. How far we've come, and how much we've lost. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com From javickers at solutionengineers.com Tue Apr 15 14:53:52 2008 From: javickers at solutionengineers.com (Ade Vickers) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:53:52 +0200 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200804151954.m3FJs2xX041076@keith.ezwind.net> Psion Chess, on the Sinclair QL. Loved the 3D graphics board, even though the game thrashed me, even on the easiest level... I don't know how big it was, in size terms, but it all fitted into 128k of RAM, and onto a 100k microdrive. The only screenshot I can find is here: http://terdina.net/ql/qchess.gif And that's on a Mac running a QL emulator... Amazing how primitive the graphics look now, compared to how advanced they seemed at the time. Cheers, Ade. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chris M Sent: 02 April 2008 02:08 To: talk Subject: Chess any thoughts on vintage chess games? No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.13/1377 - Release Date: 14/04/2008 09:26 From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Tue Apr 15 15:16:33 2008 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:16:33 +0200 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <20080415221633.2f5317b6@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:03:17 -0500 Jim Leonard wrote: > While I have read the wikipedia entry on capacitors, I'm missing > something obvious. My question: Why the 4.7uf capacitor? Does it > serve to limit the signal? Reduce it's voltage? (or increase it?) > Filter the signal in some way? The capacitor simply eliminates the DC offset on the signal. Most likely the speaker is connected to a digital (totem-pole) output that switches between 0 V and 5 V. So you get a squere wave signal from 0 V to 5 V. I.e. a squere wave signal with 5 V amplitude peek-to-peek with 2.5 V DC offset. A large DC offset can drive a line input out of range. Therefore you add a capacitor in series to filter out any DC on the signal. Also: If your amplifier chain is completely DC coupled you will end up with considerable DC current on your speakers. This can damage the speakers. (Overheat, drive the moving parts to there extreme positions.) -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Tue Apr 15 14:48:19 2008 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:48:19 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? Message-ID: A very generous chap here (thanks Steve) sent me a bunch of media for my Victor 9000, as I've had no bootable software for it. Most of the new disks are application programmes, but there's one labelled: SYSGEN 5/20/82, CP/M 86 2.2, BACKUP Which I figure should be on the money (although, admittedly, I've never used CP/M before, so I may have it wrong). The Victor has a pair of Tandon TM100-3's, which as far as I can find online are SS/DD - and the diskettes I have are also labelled SS/DD, so that lines up. I have read (in the Vector Tech Ref, thanks BitSavers) that the machine will boot from either diskette drive, which is good since the drive latch mechanism on my left-hand drive is damaged and won't allow the drive to engage. Anyways. I stick in the CP/M floppy and hit the switch. The VDU warms up and, after it checks out the disk drive with the floppy in it, I get a cute little floppy disk logo in the bottom-right hand corner of the screen and next to it is "x 01", as in, "disks times one". From there, nothing. I've tapped all the keys on the keyboard without any apparent change. If I remove the floppy the disk with 'x 01' disappears and I get a blinking floppy logo, so it certainly appears functional in that respect. The Tech Ref manual on BitSavers tells me how to low-level access graphics and helpful things like that - but I need the "Victor9000 for Dummies" guide to tell me what in the heck I'm even looking at. Can anyone help? Thanks much! - JP Iowa From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Apr 15 15:20:18 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:20:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> from "scheefj@netscape.net" at "Apr 15, 8 01:34:05 pm" Message-ID: <200804152020.m3FKKIbm006040@floodgap.com> > Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be > vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How fast > would it be on a modern PC? > > Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master. > > I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon in > the "good" ones. I'm surprised no one has mentioned MicroChess unless I totally missed it. Peter Jennings' page: http://www.benlo.com/microchess/microchess.html and my own: http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/microchess.html -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Seen on hand dryer: "Push button for a message from your congressman." ----- From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Apr 15 15:23:00 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:23:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> from "scheefj@netscape.net" at "Apr 15, 8 01:34:05 pm" Message-ID: <200804152023.m3FKN0aA012002@floodgap.com> Whoops, a whole punch of Microchess replies. Well, never mind. ^_^;; -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- If I wanted your opinion, I'd have beaten it out of you. ------------------- From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 15 13:06:00 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:06:00 -0700 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <200804151701.m3FH0lla063496@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804151701.m3FH0lla063496@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <48048C18.26795.63B1A8@cclist.sydex.com> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:39:35 -0500 From: Tom Peters > You're recording the output of a 5150?? You mean the original IBM PC? Have > we forgotten how the PC generated audio, until real audio cards were > generated? They just toggled a line connected to the speaker-- thereby > pumped square waves at it. Squarewaves are rich in harmonics, and sound > very harsh. They were reliant on the fixed response of the speak to smooth > it out mechanically. Recording that properly will be pretty hard. You need > an RC filter to try and smooth that out, and I'm not sure what that would > look like. Probably a capacitor from the hot lead to ground, with > resistor in the hot lead before the cap. It's still going to be harsh. I'll humbly submit that I believe that Tom has hit the nail on the head, even if he wasn't aiming for it. :) That little speaker in the 5150--and the 5150 case itself--is as much a part of the "sound" as the brutally simple circuitry driving it. If one wants to record the "authentic" 5150 sound, it might be better to use a microphone and place the power supply and any hard disks outside the case to reduce background noise. Cheers, Chuck From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Tue Apr 15 15:43:04 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:43:04 -0500 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <48048C18.26795.63B1A8@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804151701.m3FH0lla063496@dewey.classiccmp.org> <48048C18.26795.63B1A8@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <48051358.1040509@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > If one wants to record the "authentic" 5150 sound, it might be better > to use a microphone and place the power supply and any hard disks > outside the case to reduce background noise. Hmm, moving the speaker outside of the case and into some form of soundproofed box (along with the mic) might be a lot easier - not sure what the limit on the speaker cable length would be, but it's probably a fair distance. J. From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Apr 15 15:57:31 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:57:31 -0400 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <20080415221633.2f5317b6@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <20080415221633.2f5317b6@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <200804151657.32258.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 15 April 2008 16:16, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:03:17 -0500 > Jim Leonard wrote: > > While I have read the wikipedia entry on capacitors, I'm missing > > something obvious. My question: Why the 4.7uf capacitor? Does it > > serve to limit the signal? Reduce it's voltage? (or increase it?) > > Filter the signal in some way? > > The capacitor simply eliminates the DC offset on the signal. Not the way he described it being connected, across the speaker. If it'd been between the speaker and whatever was processing the signal subsequently, I'd have to agree, but that's not what was described. > Most likely the speaker is connected to a digital (totem-pole) output that > switches between 0 V and 5 V. So you get a squere wave signal from 0 V to 5 > V. I.e. a squere wave signal with 5 V amplitude peek-to-peek with 2.5 V DC > offset. A large DC offset can drive a line input out of range. Therefore you > add a capacitor in series to filter out any DC on the signal. Also: If your > amplifier chain is completely DC coupled you will end up with considerable > DC current on your speakers. This can damage the speakers. (Overheat, drive > the moving parts to there extreme positions.) -- 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 drb at msu.edu Tue Apr 15 16:06:46 2008 From: drb at msu.edu (Dennis Boone) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:06:46 -0400 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: (Your message of Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:03:17 CDT.) <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <200804152106.m3FL6k2d020513@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> > I found some old directions on hooking up a PC speaker to a line input, > and was confused by the use of a capacitor -- I would have thought that > a resistor would have been more appropriate, to limit the signal > perhaps? In any case, here are the instructions, followed by my > question: > Parts required: > - 6' to 12' shielded cable with RCA plug (male) on one end > - Two alligator clips > - One 4.7 uf capacitor Others have pointed out that an electrical connection isn't going to achieve what you want, but some background on the capacitor: It will, of course, block DC. If I'm not mistaken, mathematically, it's a high pass filter, with a half-power (3dB down) cutoff frequency of 1/(2*pi*R*C), where R is the impedance of the load (speaker, mixer, whatever) and C is the value of the capacitor in Farads. You would have to work out the impedance, select the desired 3db point, and turn the crank to calculate the needed cap value. You would want to keep in mind that the graph of the filter effect has a shoulder, so that response won't be flat toward the low end of the passband. Their capacitor value would make sense for an 8 ohm speaker and a 4 Hz cutoff. My recollection is that the basic interpreter didn't let you go below about 16 Hz, so that would give you two octaves of "footroom" if you will. Since the signal is apparently 0-5V, based on other posts, you would need to pad it down, but you'd probably want to try to more or less match the impedance the driver circuit expects. That sort of thing is accomplished with a resistor voltage divider. Line inputs are usually 1 V peak-to-peak. Again, I think others have this right: put the machine in one room, extend the speaker into a quiet recording space, mic it. Or just mic machine and all, since its noise was part of the original experience. ;) De From doc at mdrconsult.com Tue Apr 15 16:16:55 2008 From: doc at mdrconsult.com (Doc Shipley) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:16:55 -0500 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <48051358.1040509@gmail.com> References: <200804151701.m3FH0lla063496@dewey.classiccmp.org> <48048C18.26795.63B1A8@cclist.sydex.com> <48051358.1040509@gmail.com> Message-ID: <48051B47.7070504@mdrconsult.com> Jules Richardson wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: >> If one wants to record the "authentic" 5150 sound, it might be better >> to use a microphone and place the power supply and any hard disks >> outside the case to reduce background noise. > > Hmm, moving the speaker outside of the case and into some form of > soundproofed box (along with the mic) might be a lot easier - not sure > what the limit on the speaker cable length would be, but it's probably a > fair distance. Well, I've always thought that part of that sound was due to reverb off the side of the steel case. Doc From legalize at xmission.com Tue Apr 15 16:26:28 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:26:28 -0600 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:50:09 -0400. <200804151450.09891.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: In article <200804151450.09891.pat at computer-refuge.org>, Patrick Finnegan writes: > Am I the only one who can't stand not being able to have a log of output > that I can scroll back through, and not being able to cut and paste > text from the terminal window? This is why I use SecureCRT for Windows. It can telnet, ssh or talk to the serial port. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From javickers at solutionengineers.com Tue Apr 15 16:26:39 2008 From: javickers at solutionengineers.com (Ade Vickers) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:26:39 +0200 Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200804152126.m3FLQocQ051543@keith.ezwind.net> The flashing disk icon, as you've ascertained, suggests the machine would quite like a disk, please... I *think* the "x01" means that it's found a disk in drive 1. The fact it's not booting suggests that either the disk label is in error, or it's not a Victor/Sirius disk, or the disk has corrupted over time and is no longer bootable, or being a backup it was never bootable in the first place. My knowledge of CP/M is also derisory, my machine came with an MSDOS disk (v2.1 IIRC). I can't give you any further advice just now, as a) my Sirius is in bits in England, and b) I'm not in England.... However, one of the jobs I have to do is re-assemble it after I return; and since I've successfully booted it from floppy disk in the past, I'll check out what actually happens. One question - if you listen to the drive, is it spinning, and are the heads moving? Cheers, Ade. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of JP Hindin Sent: 15 April 2008 21:48 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? A very generous chap here (thanks Steve) sent me a bunch of media for my Victor 9000, as I've had no bootable software for it. Most of the new disks are application programmes, but there's one labelled: SYSGEN 5/20/82, CP/M 86 2.2, BACKUP Which I figure should be on the money (although, admittedly, I've never used CP/M before, so I may have it wrong). The Victor has a pair of Tandon TM100-3's, which as far as I can find online are SS/DD - and the diskettes I have are also labelled SS/DD, so that lines up. I have read (in the Vector Tech Ref, thanks BitSavers) that the machine will boot from either diskette drive, which is good since the drive latch mechanism on my left-hand drive is damaged and won't allow the drive to engage. Anyways. I stick in the CP/M floppy and hit the switch. The VDU warms up and, after it checks out the disk drive with the floppy in it, I get a cute little floppy disk logo in the bottom-right hand corner of the screen and next to it is "x 01", as in, "disks times one". From there, nothing. I've tapped all the keys on the keyboard without any apparent change. If I remove the floppy the disk with 'x 01' disappears and I get a blinking floppy logo, so it certainly appears functional in that respect. The Tech Ref manual on BitSavers tells me how to low-level access graphics and helpful things like that - but I need the "Victor9000 for Dummies" guide to tell me what in the heck I'm even looking at. Can anyone help? Thanks much! No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.13/1377 - Release Date: 14/04/2008 09:26 From legalize at xmission.com Tue Apr 15 16:28:27 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:28:27 -0600 Subject: Two recent vintage computer sightings in movies In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:11:49 +0100. <1208268709.2578.3.camel@pc004.cs.york.ac.uk> Message-ID: In article <1208268709.2578.3.camel at pc004.cs.york.ac.uk>, James Carter writes: > jimw has his "computer in the media" page. > http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw/j-media.shtml I get tons of preprocessing errors on pages and invalid URLs on images when I view this page. The page itself is almost "vintage" since it was last updated in 1999. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From cisin at xenosoft.com Tue Apr 15 16:40:12 2008 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:40:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <200804152126.m3FLQocQ051543@keith.ezwind.net> References: <200804152126.m3FLQocQ051543@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <20080415143842.F51308@shell.lmi.net> > The Victor has a pair of Tandon TM100-3's, which as far as I can find online > are SS/DD - and the diskettes I have are also labelled SS/DD, so that lines > up. TM100-3 is single sided 96tpi. ""quad" density" From aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Tue Apr 15 16:42:59 2008 From: aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk (Andrew Burton) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:42:59 +0100 (BST) Subject: Two recent vintage computer sightings in movies In-Reply-To: <1208268709.2578.3.camel@pc004.cs.york.ac.uk> Message-ID: <582502.79783.qm@web23407.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Cool looking site. Will bookmark it :) Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk James Carter wrote: i've been working on a site that catalogues computers (not specifically classic, but most are) in movies and tv. http://www.starringthecomputer.com/ -- James F. Carter http://www.jfc.org.uk/ http://www.podquiz.com/ From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Apr 15 16:46:07 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:46:07 -0600 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <68D61ECD-BC64-4D80-B348-2179E1E3A099@neurotica.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> <4804E09E.4070603@jetnet.ab.ca> <68D61ECD-BC64-4D80-B348-2179E1E3A099@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <4805221F.3030100@jetnet.ab.ca> Dave McGuire wrote: > Just how far out into the wilderness ARE you? Surely someone must be > willing to ship to .ca land. Well the odd thing is I am at Cold Lake, Alberta The Air Force base is only a few miles away and guess what brand most the equiment was. Had I been here in the 70's, buying real DEC equipment would have been no problem other than the $$$$'s. > -Dave > From jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com Tue Apr 15 16:19:18 2008 From: jplist2007 at kiwigeek.com (JP Hindin) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:19:18 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <200804152126.m3FLQocQ051543@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: Thank you, Ade. On Tue, 15 Apr 2008, Ade Vickers wrote: > The flashing disk icon, as you've ascertained, suggests the machine would > quite like a disk, please... > > I *think* the "x01" means that it's found a disk in drive 1. > > The fact it's not booting suggests that either the disk label is in error, > or it's not a Victor/Sirius disk, or the disk has corrupted over time and is > no longer bootable, or being a backup it was never bootable in the first > place. My knowledge of CP/M is also derisory, my machine came with an MSDOS > disk (v2.1 IIRC). I spoke to the chap that send me the floppies and he said each of the diskettes should be bootable, as he tried them in his Victor before sending them to me. Damning evidence. > I can't give you any further advice just now, as a) my Sirius is in bits in > England, and b) I'm not in England.... However, one of the jobs I have to do > is re-assemble it after I return; and since I've successfully booted it from > floppy disk in the past, I'll check out what actually happens. > > One question - if you listen to the drive, is it spinning, and are the heads > moving? I know I heard the unit spin up, and I -think- I heard head movement. Right now the machine is spread across my office in pieces as I was working out why the left-hand drive didn't engage. I think what I _might_ do is take the latch mech from the right-hand drive and put it on the left-hand to see if the right-hand drive has read problems. Again, thank you for your thoughts! - JP > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] > On Behalf Of JP Hindin > Sent: 15 April 2008 21:48 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? > > > A very generous chap here (thanks Steve) sent me a bunch of media for my > Victor 9000, as I've had no bootable software for it. Most of the new disks > are application programmes, but there's one labelled: > SYSGEN 5/20/82, CP/M 86 2.2, BACKUP > Which I figure should be on the money (although, admittedly, I've never used > CP/M before, so I may have it wrong). > > The Victor has a pair of Tandon TM100-3's, which as far as I can find online > are SS/DD - and the diskettes I have are also labelled SS/DD, so that lines > up. > > I have read (in the Vector Tech Ref, thanks BitSavers) that the machine will > boot from either diskette drive, which is good since the drive latch > mechanism on my left-hand drive is damaged and won't allow the drive to > engage. > > Anyways. I stick in the CP/M floppy and hit the switch. The VDU warms up > and, after it checks out the disk drive with the floppy in it, I get a cute > little floppy disk logo in the bottom-right hand corner of the screen and > next to it is "x 01", as in, "disks times one". From there, nothing. > I've tapped all the keys on the keyboard without any apparent change. If I > remove the floppy the disk with 'x 01' disappears and I get a blinking > floppy logo, so it certainly appears functional in that respect. > > The Tech Ref manual on BitSavers tells me how to low-level access graphics > and helpful things like that - but I need the "Victor9000 for Dummies" > guide to tell me what in the heck I'm even looking at. > > Can anyone help? > > Thanks much! > > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG. > Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.22.13/1377 - Release Date: 14/04/2008 > 09:26 > > > > > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Tue Apr 15 16:50:55 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:50:55 -0600 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <4805233F.2010202@jetnet.ab.ca> der Mouse wrote: > I believe there are people here who have come substantially closer than > I to the real thing; indeed, there is likely someone, perhaps even here > on this list, running real terminal firmware under emulation. My problem when using LINUX, is all the emulators don't give a 80x24 text screen as you tend to be X-windows for web-browsers and other asorted stuff. From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Apr 15 17:06:12 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:06:12 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <200804151450.09891.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <200804151450.09891.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <480526D4.2030407@gmail.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Tuesday 15 April 2008, Dave McGuire wrote: >> On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:07 PM, woodelf wrote: >>> Lets talk about non-broken tools so that we can run the old >>> machines properly >>> like a terminal emulator that works like a real terminal? >>> Linux to my knowlage has none. >> Sheer madness. I use kermit in an xterm window all the >> time...works great.. >> >> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. > > Am I the only one who can't stand not being able to have a log of output > that I can scroll back through, and not being able to cut and paste > text from the terminal window? > > Those are the two main reasons I normally rather use a laptop or > $macine_with_windowing_environment than a real serial terminal. (This > doesn't mean I don't have and don't use serial terminals, just that a > real serial terminal is rarely my first choice for something that I > want to be functional, instead of just "neat" and "pretty". :) If I'm on a console, it's usually enough of an emergency that cut-n-paste is not really going to be the right tool. Peace... Sridhar From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Apr 15 17:09:53 2008 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:09:53 -0700 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> Message-ID: At 1:45 PM -0400 4/15/08, Mike Loewen wrote: >On Tue, 15 Apr 2008, Dave McGuire wrote: >>On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:53 PM, woodelf wrote: >>> >>>What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? >> >>DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to find. > > I'll second that. I use a VT420 whenever I need to plug in a >serial terminal. Agreed. I've used a huge array of terminals over the years from many different manufactures, connected to may different types of computers. Hands down the VT420 is my favorite. I was lucky enough to be given a pile of them when a friend was having some troubles in the late 90's. My only problem with VT420's is that I no longer have enough desk space for as many as I'd like to be able to 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 ploopster at gmail.com Tue Apr 15 17:04:32 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:04:32 -0400 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <4804D62A.6010309@jetnet.ab.ca> <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> Message-ID: <48052670.1060903@gmail.com> Austin Pass wrote: > On 15 Apr 2008, at 18:34, scheefj at netscape.net wrote: >> >> Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be >> vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How fast >> would it be on a modern PC? >> >> Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master. >> >> I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon in >> the "good" ones. >> >> Jim > > Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 cluster for GFlops, > Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - 480 "special" VLSI > chips if Wikipedia is to be believed. I don't know. One PC? It would be a very large PC. Pushing the boundaries of what a PC is. Peace... Sridhar From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Apr 15 16:58:51 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:58:51 +0100 (BST) Subject: Big fat resistor question In-Reply-To: <48040394.9000906@gmail.com> from "Jules Richardson" at Apr 14, 8 08:23:32 pm Message-ID: > > Ethan Dicks wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 02:34:24AM +0200, Lee Davison wrote: > >>> From the description of the resistor style, can anyone tell > >>> what the wattage might be? > >> A WW2 should be 2.4W. The wattage is n*1.2 > > > > Excellent. Thank you. > > Sure beats "test it until destruction, then back off a little" :-) Isn;t that how you get the right torque on a deflection yoke clamp screw? You know, tighten it until the CRT implodes then back off 1/4 of a turn :-) -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Apr 15 17:01:47 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:01:47 +0100 (BST) Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <200804142135.24642.rtellason@verizon.net> from "Roy J. Tellason" at Apr 14, 8 09:35:24 pm Message-ID: > You did those schematics? I'm impressed. It's been quite some time sinc= > e=20 > I've been quite that ambitious... :-) Err, no. My cat drew them, and I simply plagarised them :-) More seriously, yes, I've traced out the 9816 scehmatics. And many other machines. The larger stuff is on the hpmusuem.net website, you can also get a CD-ROM of everything from HPCC. The 9816 was by no means the most complicated machine either (there were a lot of helpful clues too : the DIO slot pinout was known, that gave a lot of the signals on the CPU boartd DIN41612 connector, for example). If you want a raal challenge, try an HP9100... Or even an HP9845 -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Apr 15 17:16:09 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:16:09 +0100 (BST) Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> from "Dave McGuire" at Apr 15, 8 12:58:46 pm Message-ID: > > On Apr 15, 2008, at 12:53 PM, woodelf wrote: > >> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. > > > > What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? > > DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to > find. And eat flyback trasnformers like they're going out of fashion. FWIW, I've not managed to obtain any VT2xx or later DEC terminal with the exception of the VT240. THey're not that common in .uk -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Tue Apr 15 16:53:34 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:53:34 +0100 (BST) Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> from "Jim Leonard" at Apr 14, 8 08:03:17 pm Message-ID: > > I have a need to record the output of a (5150) speaker. Although I I would think the characteristics of the (small, low quality) speaker in a 5150 would affect the sound, and that if you want the result to sound like a 5150, you should proably record the sound produced by said speaker using a microphone. But that leads to all sorts of other problems > thought that I could just alligator-clip a positive lead to one speaker > terminal and the negative to the case/ground, the output was decidedly > "buzzy" (I assumed it was too "hot" and overmodulating). I routed it > into a mixer and turned it down (speaker is 5v, not sure what line input > is) but it still didn't sound right. Line input is about 0.75V to 1V RMS IIRC. The 5150 speaker, IIRC, is connected between the +5V line and an open-collector output. > While I have read the wikipedia entry on capacitors, I'm missing > something obvious. My question: Why the 4.7uf capacitor? Does it > serve to limit the signal? Reduce it's voltage? (or increase it?) > Filter the signal in some way? One property of a capacitor is that it'll pass AC (the changes in a signal) while 'locking' DC (the steady, average, voltage of the signal). And I think that's the main use here, to remove that 5V standing voltage. I think I would try the following circuit if I wanted to record my PC speaker output : 1uF + || | 10k o------|| |----------/\/\/----+----- Output 'hot' (centre of RCA plug) Hot || | | Side of PC | Speaker / \ 1k / \ | o------------------------------+------ Output ground PC ground Where the hot side of the PC speaker is the terminal _not_ connected to +5V. If youy get that wrong, you'll get no sound, but it shouldn't do any damage. -tony From pat at computer-refuge.org Tue Apr 15 17:49:34 2008 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:49:34 -0400 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <48052670.1060903@gmail.com> References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <48052670.1060903@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804151849.34874.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Tuesday 15 April 2008, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > Austin Pass wrote: > > On 15 Apr 2008, at 18:34, scheefj at netscape.net wrote: > >> Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be > >> vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How > >> fast would it be on a modern PC? > >> > >> Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master. > >> > >> I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon > >> in the "good" ones. > >> > >> Jim > > > > Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 cluster for > > GFlops, Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - 480 > > "special" VLSI chips if Wikipedia is to be believed. > > I don't know. One PC? It would be a very large PC. Pushing the > boundaries of what a PC is. You can get a PC with 32 cores in it right now, which would handily beat any stack of 30 POWER or POWER2 boxes many many times over. The custom logic on MCA boards in Deep Blue is another matter completely. (Eight socket quad core opteron...) Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Apr 15 17:50:29 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:50:29 +0100 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <200804152106.m3FL6k2d020513@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <200804152106.m3FL6k2d020513@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> Message-ID: <1208299830.27664.3.camel@elric> On Tue, 2008-04-15 at 17:06 -0400, Dennis Boone wrote: > Again, I think others have this right: put the machine in one room, > extend the speaker into a quiet recording space, mic it. Or just mic > machine and all, since its noise was part of the original experience. ;) Oh yeah, make it sound easy, why don't you? To properly capture it, you're going to need a decent mike near the speaker. Of course this is going to catch a certain amount of hard disk noise too, but to get the noise of the floppies right, you're going to want another mike there too. These should be panned left and right, about 40% each way. The fan is a significant noise, so you're going to want a good condenser mike with a popshield somewhat off-axis - this will probably catch the satisfying *clunk* of the Big Orange Switch. Case resonances make up a huge part of the sound - what's the case lid, but a little reverb plate? So, you're going to want a couple of overheads on that panned hard left and right, and maybe a PZM stuck right to the case to bring out some of the warmth. You're only looking at six channels there, but it should mix down into a nice clean recording of the *real* sound of an IBM 5150. Gordon From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 15 18:09:10 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:09:10 -0700 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <200804152147.m3FLlJuF068012@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804152147.m3FLlJuF068012@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4804D326.16812.1793DB5@cclist.sydex.com> Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:08:06 -0700 > From: "Rick Bensene" > I played this a lot on weekends when I was the Cyber 73 weekend operator > at Tektronix. This was under KRONOS rather than SCOPE. I believe that the > console command was X.CHESS It used both CRT's, the left for a nice vector > display of the game board, and the right for a listing of the moves made > thus far, elapsed time, and for entering moves. I believe that the main > program ran all of the chess processing, and that a PPU program > communicated with the main program. When I got the Chess bootleg release tape from a friendly site analyst (they always got the good stuff first), I had to rework the display driver to work with our own OS, which used much of the PP code from Scope 3.1.6. It wasn't difficult, but the presence of a dedicated display driver required that one EDITLIB the driver into the system library--something you weren't likely to be able to do on someone else's system. I can't say for sure, but I believe that I was the one to modify the code to use the "T" display, so that Chess could be run without any special system modifications. I had to give up one or two fancy display features, but generally, it worked pretty well. > The Cyber 73 had two main CPUs, and 20 PPUs (10 for each CPU). The > CPUs were essentially 6600-design, with some enhancements for certain > types of vector operations, as well as dealing with shared main memory. Small nit, Rick. Depending on the model, the 73 was either a 6400 or 6500 (2 CPU) machine. It was the Cyber 74 that was the 6600 10- functional-unit system. You can check Bitsavers for the docs, but I'm certain of it. The "vector extension" wasn't really one--it was called the "Compare/Move Unit" or CMU. It really didn't do much other than give one the ability to perform non-word aligned moves and compares. It had no arithmetic capabilities (other than the compare). Really, no practical performance benefit on the 6600/74, but it made a difference on the serial-issue 6400/73. The fly in the ointment was that while it was standard on the 73, it was not available on the 74. In the COBOL run-time library, we had some fancy code worked out by Rick James that would check for the CMU (which was triggered by a no-op (46 opcode) with some nonzero bits in the normally-zero operand field. Detecting the thing was interesting. You couldn't say that "if it's not a Cyber 74/6600, then there's a CMU", since you still had the issue that the 6400 and 6500 didn't have it either. The technique was to code a word so that the first parcel was a CMU instruction (didn't matter what flavor), the second parcel was a no-op (46000) and the third and fourth parcels contained an uncondition jump. If a CMU was present, the next instruction would be taken from the next word; if not present, from the succeeding parcels, which would cause the jump to be taken. Worked just fine until some idiot at Arden Hills decided to work up an FCO to the Cyber 74 to trap "CMU not present". Sigh--after that, it was determined as part of deadstart. Cheers, Chuck From rtellason at verizon.net Tue Apr 15 18:12:00 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:12:00 -0400 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804151912.01179.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 15 April 2008 18:01, Tony Duell wrote: > > You did those schematics? I'm impressed. It's been quite some time > > sinc= e=20 > > I've been quite that ambitious... :-) > > Err, no. My cat drew them, and I simply plagarised them :-) > > More seriously, yes, I've traced out the 9816 scehmatics. And many other > machines. The larger stuff is on the hpmusuem.net website, you can also > get a CD-ROM of everything from HPCC. > > The 9816 was by no means the most complicated machine either (there were > a lot of helpful clues too : the DIO slot pinout was known, that gave a > lot of the signals on the CPU boartd DIN41612 connector, for example). If > you want a raal challenge, try an HP9100... Or even an HP9845 > > -tony Well, there was a time when I might have given something like that a good shot, but not any time recently... On top of everything else my eyes aren't what they used to be. :-( -- 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 Tue Apr 15 18:15:52 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:15:52 -0400 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804151915.53105.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 15 April 2008 17:53, Tony Duell wrote: > > I have a need to record the output of a (5150) speaker. Although I > > I would think the characteristics of the (small, low quality) speaker in > a 5150 would affect the sound, and that if you want the result to sound > like a 5150, you should proably record the sound produced by said speaker > using a microphone. But that leads to all sorts of other problems > > > thought that I could just alligator-clip a positive lead to one speaker > > terminal and the negative to the case/ground, the output was decidedly > > "buzzy" (I assumed it was too "hot" and overmodulating). I routed it > > into a mixer and turned it down (speaker is 5v, not sure what line input > > is) but it still didn't sound right. > > Line input is about 0.75V to 1V RMS IIRC. > > The 5150 speaker, IIRC, is connected between the +5V line and an > open-collector output. I thought I'd remember that as being the case, nice to have my vague recollection confirmed. :-) > > While I have read the wikipedia entry on capacitors, I'm missing > > something obvious. My question: Why the 4.7uf capacitor? Does it > > serve to limit the signal? Reduce it's voltage? (or increase it?) > > Filter the signal in some way? > > One property of a capacitor is that it'll pass AC (the changes in a > signal) while 'locking' DC (the steady, average, voltage of the signal). > And I think that's the main use here, to remove that 5V standing voltage. > > I think I would try the following circuit if I wanted to record my PC > speaker output : > 1uF > + > > || | 10k > > o------|| |----------/\/\/----+----- Output 'hot' (centre of RCA plug) > Hot || | | > Side of PC | > Speaker / > \ 1k > / > \ > > o------------------------------+------ Output ground > PC ground > > Where the hot side of the PC speaker is the terminal _not_ connected to > +5V. If youy get that wrong, you'll get no sound, but it shouldn't do any > damage. That's pretty close to what I came up with. -- 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 Tue Apr 15 18:17:28 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:17:28 -0400 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <1208299830.27664.3.camel@elric> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <200804152106.m3FL6k2d020513@yagi.h-net.msu.edu> <1208299830.27664.3.camel@elric> Message-ID: <200804151917.28724.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 15 April 2008 18:50, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > You're only looking at six channels there, but it should mix down into a > nice clean recording of the *real* sound of an IBM 5150. :-) -- 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 jrkeys at concentric.net Tue Apr 15 18:35:44 2008 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:35:44 -0500 Subject: Chess References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <01a601c89f52$f30ded50$02406b43@66067007> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris M" To: "talk" Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 7:08 PM Subject: Chess > any thoughts on vintage chess games? > > I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang > thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle > of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that > got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er > back up. > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster > Total Access, No Cost. > http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com I have about 6 or so different ones in storage right now. John I From mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com Tue Apr 15 20:59:02 2008 From: mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:59:02 -0600 Subject: Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace Message-ID: <48055D65.10803@brutman.com> Just a quick introduction - besides being the guy who can't make his IBM 6904-20 Lighted Programmable Function Keyboard work on a serial port and writing a TCP/IP stack from scratch that runs on a PCjr, I am also a moderator at The Vintage Computer Forums web forum ( http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/ ) . Some of you are regulars there too, but it is more PC and smaller computer oriented than most of you on this list are. We have many of the same problems with well known auction sites that many subscribers here have. We also have enough traffic in our 'for sale' section of the forum to finally warrant a more structured auction type service. So we are happy to announce "The Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace" at http://marketplace.vintage-computer.com/ . The idea is give vintage computer collectors an alternative to your favorite big site that is more targeted to our specific interests. It is simple to use, it supports auctions and normal fixed price sales, and there is none of this sniping bogusness that happens on eBay. Best of all, it's completely free to use - no listing fees. Thanks for reading, Mike PCjr nutcase and soon to be TRS-80 Model 4 nutcase From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Apr 15 19:45:19 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:45:19 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Gerber help sought Message-ID: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Prompted by my latest project (a cable pinout sensor - just plug a cable into it and you get the pinout), I want to look into the possibility of having one-off PC boards made. Everyone seems to want Gerbers, but without documenting exactly what they are. I found a PDF describing "RS-274X", which appears to be most of it, but there are lots of conventions it doesn't describe. I've found indications that there exists some open-source software, but extracting documentation from code is a mess. I'm going to be asking various people whose addresses I've found in various places. But you people are documentation packrats, so I'm asking here as well: anyone have any such doc? /~\ 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 eric at brouhaha.com Tue Apr 15 20:30:48 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:30:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> der Mouse wrote: > Everyone seems to want Gerbers, but without documenting exactly what > they are. I found a PDF describing "RS-274X", which appears to be most > of it, but there are lots of conventions it doesn't describe. That's the spec. What is missing? The Wikipedia page has useful links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerber_File You also need an Excellon drill file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excellon > I've found indications that there exists some open-source software, but > extracting documentation from code is a mess. I dunno about extracting documentation, but gEDA is purportedly useful for doing board layout. I use Eagle (from CadSoft). It's not open source, but it's less expensive than most commercial alternatives, and it seems to work well. For nonprofit use, there's a "free" version that's limited to 100x80 mm double-sided boards, or a US $125 version that can do 160x100 mm boards of up to four layers. Beyond that, there are two levels of commercial versions. From vrs at msn.com Tue Apr 15 21:19:18 2008 From: vrs at msn.com (Vincent Slyngstad) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:19:18 -0700 Subject: Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace References: <48055D65.10803@brutman.com> Message-ID: From: "Michael B. Brutman" > So we are happy to announce "The Vintage Computer and > Gaming Marketplace" at http://marketplace.vintage-computer.com/ . Cool! Needs an RSS feed, though :-). Vince From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Tue Apr 15 21:27:15 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:27:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <200804160227.WAA18675@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> Everyone seems to want Gerbers, but without documenting exactly what >> they are. I found a PDF describing "RS-274X", which appears to be >> most of it, but there are lots of conventions it doesn't describe. > That's the spec. What is missing? - How do I specfy which layer is which? - How do I specify soldermask? - ...holes and vias? - Is the PDF I have accurate and complete? (Okay, it probably is not complete; it even says it contains just (someone's idea of) the commonly-used directives.) > The Wikipedia page has useful links: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerber_File > You also need an Excellon drill file: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excellon I'll have a look. Thank you. (Duh...I really should have thought of Wikipedia myself.) >> I've found indications that there exists some open-source software, >> but extracting documentation from code is a mess. > I dunno about extracting documentation, but gEDA is purportedly > useful for doing board layout. It probably would be for me too, if it were to build painlessly. That is extremely unlikely. Also, I like to understand things all the way down - even if I almost never actually use that understanding, it informs everything I do, and can border on essential when debugging. > I use Eagle (from CadSoft). It's not open source, but it's less > expensive than most commercial alternatives, and it seems to work > well. For nonprofit use, there's a "free" version that's limited to > 100x80 mm double-sided boards, Even if I were willing to run code I don't have source to (I'm not; I'd sooner throw some money to someone on the list to do it for me than run something I don't have source to), it wouldn't be free even as in beer, because (AIUI) Eagle is a Windows program, and Windows ain't cheap. Is there anyone who'd be willing to exchange some files with me - sample files for me to sanity-check my understanding, in one direction, and tests to see if my generation is correct, in the other? I'd just as soon not have a board made until I'm reasonably sure I've got the board description right. :) /~\ 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 eric at brouhaha.com Tue Apr 15 22:22:01 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:22:01 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <200804160227.WAA18675@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <200804160227.WAA18675@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <40531.64.62.206.10.1208316121.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> der Mouse wrote: > - How do I specfy which layer is which? One Gerber file per layer. The file doesn't know which layer it is; you have to either use some naming convention for the files, or supply a human-readable file giving the designations. > - How do I specify soldermask? It's just another layer. > - ...holes and vias? Holes are in the Excellon drill file. Vias consist of holes in the drill file and pads (etc.) in the Gerber files for the appropriate layers. > - Is the PDF I have accurate and complete? Heck if I know. > [gEDA] probably would be for me too, if it were to build painlessly. That > is extremely unlikely. I don't know. I last tried to use gEDA two or three years ago, and it wasn't mature enough then, so I bought Eagle. gEDA is reported to be much better now, but since I already have Eagle I'm not inclined to try it. > Even if I were willing to run code I don't have source to (I'm not; I'd > sooner throw some money to someone on the list to do it for me than run > something I don't have source to), it wouldn't be free even as in beer, > because (AIUI) Eagle is a Windows program, and Windows ain't cheap. Actually Eagle is available for Linux. That was the main reason I chose it. You still don't get source, though. I generally won't run kernel code for which I don't have source, but I'm more willing to run user-space code without source, since I can use various tools to make sure it can't do things it shouldn't, e.g., a chroot jail, and a library preload that prevents network access other than to the local display. Eric From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 15 22:45:16 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:45:16 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 15, 2008, at 6:16 PM, Tony Duell wrote: >>>> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. >>> >>> What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? >> >> DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to >> find. > > And eat flyback trasnformers like they're going out of fashion. I've seen exactly three fail...I've had dozens upon dozens of those terminals go through my hands. Mind you, I think that's an excessive failure rate for "adult" (as opposed to "PC") computer equipment, but still. I guess I've just had better luck. > FWIW, I've not managed to obtain any VT2xx or later DEC terminal > with the > exception of the VT240. THey're not that common in .uk Really? That surprises me. They're all over the place here. A fellow with whom I've sadly lost touch had a warehouse containing well over a thousand VT320s maybe eight years ago. I think it was in Virginia. I wonder what happened to those. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 15 22:46:07 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:46:07 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <4805233F.2010202@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <4805233F.2010202@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: On Apr 15, 2008, at 5:50 PM, woodelf wrote: >> I believe there are people here who have come substantially closer >> than >> I to the real thing; indeed, there is likely someone, perhaps even >> here >> on this list, running real terminal firmware under emulation. > My problem when using LINUX, is all the emulators don't give a > 80x24 text screen > as you tend to be X-windows for web-browsers and other asorted stuff. Ben, what are you talking about? Exactly what X-based terminal program *doesn't* (or can't) give you an 80x24 screen?? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 15 22:50:13 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:50:13 -0400 Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <14A53271-6B3A-49D6-BF71-AFDA5B47A393@neurotica.com> On Apr 15, 2008, at 9:30 PM, Eric Smith wrote: >> Everyone seems to want Gerbers, but without documenting exactly what >> they are. I found a PDF describing "RS-274X", which appears to be >> most >> of it, but there are lots of conventions it doesn't describe. > > That's the spec. What is missing? The Wikipedia page has useful > links: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerber_File > > You also need an Excellon drill file: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excellon > >> I've found indications that there exists some open-source >> software, but >> extracting documentation from code is a mess. > > I dunno about extracting documentation, but gEDA is purportedly useful > for doing board layout. I missed the original post somehow, but I work with Gerber files extensively and can probably help here. FWIW, I generate Gerber files all the time using free software under UNIX. I use gEDA for schematic capture and PCB for PCB layout and gerber file generation. PCB is separate from gEDA, but it's distributed with gEDA due to significant developer overlap. I use this suite for personal stuff as well as commercial designs. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 15 23:02:50 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:02:50 -0400 Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <40531.64.62.206.10.1208316121.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <200804160227.WAA18675@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <40531.64.62.206.10.1208316121.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <50A9182B-D2F2-4FFE-B602-9A052861067D@neurotica.com> On Apr 15, 2008, at 11:22 PM, Eric Smith wrote: >> [gEDA] probably would be for me too, if it were to build >> painlessly. That >> is extremely unlikely. > > I don't know. I last tried to use gEDA two or three years ago, and it > wasn't mature enough then, so I bought Eagle. gEDA is reported to be > much better now, but since I already have Eagle I'm not inclined to > try it. If we're talking about doing PCB layout, the program you're probably thinking of is (poorly) named "PCB", which is not part of gEDA. They have been distributed together for the past few years because there's significant overlap in the developer base. I use these tools daily, so I'll blab about them a bit. gEDA itself was pretty immature a few years ago...I played with it a bit and dropped it back in 2004. Since then, however, a HUGE amount of progress has been made. Right now I'd rate it as good as or better than any commercial schematic capture package I've seen. PCB is right up there too, but it has been there for a long time. It got its start in the Amiga world many years ago, and has benefitted from very active development in the past 3-4 years in particular. Nowadays, both PCB and the gEDA suite are absolutely capable of supporting commercial-level development. I know of a few people (myself included) who have been doing real commercial design work with them for some time. I run these tools under both MacOS X on PPC and Solaris on UltraSPARC, and the other engineer on my team them under Linux on x86. They are reasonably portable and not difficult to build on a modern system. I always build them from source. Incidentally, the two most active developers of both gEDA and PCB these days are DJ Delorie, of DJGPP fame, and Dan McMahill, a chip designer at Maxim. This constitutes very serious developer firepower, and it shows. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de Wed Apr 16 00:34:25 2008 From: jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de (Jochen Kunz) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:34:25 +0200 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <200804151657.32258.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <20080415221633.2f5317b6@SirToby.dinner41.local> <200804151657.32258.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <20080416073425.75f0f942@SirToby.dinner41.local> On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:57:31 -0400 "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > The capacitor simply eliminates the DC offset on the signal. > Not the way he described it being connected, across the speaker. Correct. I missread the original post. This is just a guess: If there is some series resistor (for current limiting) in line with the speaker, this resistor and the capacitor should construct some sort of low pass filter. I.e.: The speaker is driven with a square wave voltage that has many harmonics. The low pass filter can cut off may of the harmonics making a better "sound". The speaker, as beeing an inert mechanical system, has a low pass filter "build in". -- tsch??, Jochen Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/ From huw.davies at mail.vsm.com.au Tue Apr 15 08:35:09 2008 From: huw.davies at mail.vsm.com.au (Huw Davies) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 23:35:09 +1000 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 15/04/2008, at 7:53 PM, Dave Dunfield wrote: >> any thoughts on vintage chess games? > > One of the earliest ones that I used was called: > > CHESS MASTER > Copyright 1978 by SOFTWARE SPECIALISTS, Norco, California I wonder if anyone has pointers to chess programs written in less common 3G languages? I know of many chess programs in C and Pascal but what about more interesting languages (BCPL, Algol-*, PL/I etc)? Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the Australia | air, the sky would be painted green" From jefferwin at gmail.com Tue Apr 15 08:54:19 2008 From: jefferwin at gmail.com (Jeff Erwin) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:54:19 -0700 Subject: CEPC s-100 serial card Message-ID: <7c7c96a50804150654x769f0c46xe5a3392db35e22ec@mail.gmail.com> A question for the S-100 experts out there. I have come across a serial I/O card that has 4 serial ports on it. The only markings on the card are: C.E.P.C. 4-SIO-2 Rev 2A The board is in excellent condition. I know of most of the sites that house documentation for the S-100 cards, but I cannot figure out what manufacturer CEPC is. Any clues as to what this card is and where I can find docs for it? Jeff Erwin From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Apr 15 15:39:58 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:39:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <728986.71894.qm@web65509.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> there certainly are those that can help on this list, but I'm not amongst them. I can answer your question though - I have definitely seen a V9K in operational mode. Moreover...muahahahahaha...I've seen a Vicki work too. That be the portable version. Rarer then shark's nipples. But no I never managed to boot any of these :( either. Glory days are coming though. --- JP Hindin wrote: > > A very generous chap here (thanks Steve) sent me a > bunch of media for my > Victor 9000, as I've had no bootable software for > it. Most of the new > disks are application programmes, but there's one > labelled: > SYSGEN 5/20/82, CP/M 86 2.2, BACKUP > Which I figure should be on the money (although, > admittedly, I've never > used CP/M before, so I may have it wrong). > > The Victor has a pair of Tandon TM100-3's, which as > far as I can find > online are SS/DD - and the diskettes I have are also > labelled SS/DD, so > that lines up. > > I have read (in the Vector Tech Ref, thanks > BitSavers) that the machine > will boot from either diskette drive, which is good > since the drive latch > mechanism on my left-hand drive is damaged and won't > allow the drive to > engage. > > Anyways. I stick in the CP/M floppy and hit the > switch. The VDU warms up > and, after it checks out the disk drive with the > floppy in it, I get a > cute little floppy disk logo in the bottom-right > hand corner of the screen > and next to it is "x 01", as in, "disks times one". > From there, nothing. > I've tapped all the keys on the keyboard without any > apparent change. If I > remove the floppy the disk with 'x 01' disappears > and I get a blinking > floppy logo, so it certainly appears functional in > that respect. > > The Tech Ref manual on BitSavers tells me how to > low-level access graphics > and helpful things like that - but I need the > "Victor9000 for Dummies" > guide to tell me what in the heck I'm even looking > at. > > Can anyone help? > > Thanks much! > > - JP > > Iowa > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Apr 15 15:45:09 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:45:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> Message-ID: <929836.14889.qm@web65508.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- scheefj at netscape.net wrote: > Chris, > > Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue > emulator/simulator be > vintage? The original computer is more than ten > years old. How fast > would it be on a modern PC So this thing exists? Zounds. > Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess > Master. > > I only play using really lousy chess games because I > lose too soon in > the "good" ones. I just started playing again, and phew do I stink. At one time I wasn't all bad. No I guess this has nothing to do with the thread, and I guess I should have started one concerning board games in general, but on the topic of Tandy 2000s, a guy at NASA wrote a Monopoly game for it years ago. I know no one on this list is going to know what I'm talking about, much less have an image of it though :( > > Jim > > woodelf wrote: > > Chris M wrote: > >> any thoughts on vintage chess games? > >> > >> I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. > Dang > >> thing caused a memory parity error right in the > middle > >> of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip > that > >> got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I > fixed 'er > >> back up. > > > > have it play chess with a PDP-8 :) > > > >> > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Apr 15 15:47:24 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:47:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <26330.84590.qm@web65506.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- Austin Pass wrote: > Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 > cluster for GFlops, > Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - > 480 "special" > VLSI chips if Wikipedia is to be believed. Curious what portion of that made up the *processor* section. I can't say I'd mind looking at a schematic or block diagram of it's innards. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Apr 15 15:51:33 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:51:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <48048D76.5029.690791@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <100776.3128.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 17:08:17 -0700 (PDT) > > From: Chris M > > > any thoughts on vintage chess games? > > I used one back in the early 70s that was pretty > decent with a nice > display. But you needed a CDC 6000-series system to > run it; it was a > real cycle hog, IIRC. > > Wonder if anyone bothered to preserve the game? > > It was by-and-large written in CDC FORTRAN. It > originally had its > own PP display driver (CHD); later versions used the > programmable > "T"(on SCOPE 3.3, anyway) DSD screen. If it was written in FORTRAN it must have been kewell. Apples, Oranges, IBMers, etc. etc. What about HP versions of chess? At one time there used to be a world of shareware/freeware out there, and I'm again drifting off-topic, some real esoteric stuff (like analyzing ancient manuscripts/parchments on an early Mac II). Curious what has been done to catalog all the weird stuff that's out there, presumably floating around. The program I mentioned was written for the gov't, so the author couldn't sell it. IINM (and no I don't remember the title) it did wind up as freeware...of sorts methinks. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Tue Apr 15 15:56:10 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:56:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <200804151954.m3FJs2xX041076@keith.ezwind.net> Message-ID: <307435.85544.qm@web65503.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- Ade Vickers wrote: > Amazing how primitive the graphics look now, > compared to how advanced they > seemed at the time. What was that whacked out version for the pc called, BattleChess, where the queen got devoured by the rook ... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From jlobocki at gmail.com Tue Apr 15 22:14:55 2008 From: jlobocki at gmail.com (joe lobocki) Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:14:55 -0500 Subject: SGI INDY top lid in good condition? Message-ID: hello, I am looking for the lid to an SGI indy, but cant seem to find one anywhere. does anyone have any they could sell me, or know where i could find one? thanks From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Apr 16 01:07:14 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:07:14 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <50A9182B-D2F2-4FFE-B602-9A052861067D@neurotica.com> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <200804160227.WAA18675@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <40531.64.62.206.10.1208316121.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <50A9182B-D2F2-4FFE-B602-9A052861067D@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <200804160627.CAA20012@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > Right now I'd rate [gEDA] as good as or better than any commercial > schematic capture package I've seen. PCB is right up there too, but > it has been there for a long time. PCB looks promising. Its bar is set too high for me to try installing it as-is (to name just the three major problems: (1) the GUI interfaces; (2) ./configure; (3) all the GNU tools needed). But given what the INSTALL file says about its architecture, it may well be close enough that it's less work to adapt it than to create something new. > They are reasonably portable and not difficult to build on a modern > system. Only if "modern" means "with a pile of GNU tools installed, an ugly bloated GUI library kicking around, and an installer who's willing to accept low-to-medium security risks". I'm wondering if it's worth setting up an isolated machine to see if I can stand to use PCB out of the box. (Most popular programs with GUI interfaces have interfaces I find somewhere between obnoxious and intolerable - this is whence the "ugly" characterization - so my choice of wording should be taken as being more about me than about PCB.) This is very encouraging. I was expecting to be constructing the Gerbers for this latest project manually; given the maturity you describe in PCB, it probably is worth at least looking at adapting it before falling back on manual construction. /~\ 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 javickers at solutionengineers.com Wed Apr 16 02:09:30 2008 From: javickers at solutionengineers.com (Ade Vickers) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:09:30 +0200 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <307435.85544.qm@web65503.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200804160709.m3G79mv3003494@keith.ezwind.net> Chris M wrote: > --- Ade Vickers > wrote: > > > Amazing how primitive the graphics look now, compared to > how advanced > > they seemed at the time. > > What was that whacked out version for the pc called, > BattleChess, where the queen got devoured by the rook ... Yep - Battlechess. And all the pieces got eaten or dismembered in some manner... I remember playing that in the early '90s, although it's a product of the late '80s... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess Great game - it'd probably be banned in this day & age :( Cheers, Ade. No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.23.0/1379 - Release Date: 15/04/2008 18:10 From grant at stockly.com Wed Apr 16 03:12:27 2008 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:12:27 -0800 Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <200804160627.CAA20012@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <200804160227.WAA18675@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <40531.64.62.206.10.1208316121.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <50A9182B-D2F2-4FFE-B602-9A052861067D@neurotica.com> <200804160627.CAA20012@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <0JZE0053VS4K9490@msgmmp-1.gci.net> At 10:07 PM 4/15/2008, you wrote: > > Right now I'd rate [gEDA] as good as or better than any commercial > > schematic capture package I've seen. PCB is right up there too, but > > it has been there for a long time. > >PCB looks promising. Its bar is set too high for me to try installing >it as-is (to name just the three major problems: (1) the GUI >interfaces; (2) ./configure; (3) all the GNU tools needed). But given >what the INSTALL file says about its architecture, it may well be close >enough that it's less work to adapt it than to create something new. > > > They are reasonably portable and not difficult to build on a modern > > system. > >Only if "modern" means "with a pile of GNU tools installed, an ugly >bloated GUI library kicking around, and an installer who's willing to >accept low-to-medium security risks". I'm wondering if it's worth >setting up an isolated machine to see if I can stand to use PCB out of >the box. (Most popular programs with GUI interfaces have interfaces I >find somewhere between obnoxious and intolerable - this is whence the >"ugly" characterization - so my choice of wording should be taken as >being more about me than about PCB.) > >This is very encouraging. I was expecting to be constructing the >Gerbers for this latest project manually; given the maturity you >describe in PCB, it probably is worth at least looking at adapting it >before falling back on manual construction. If you need a program to "draw" a PCB, then Pentalogix has ViewMasterEZ. Its not for Linux, but it is the best deal for what it does. They dropped the price from $500 to $50, but with the addition of a node locked licnese. Its more of a WYSIWYG CAM/CAD program than a cad program. There are no "parts". You can download the free version called ViewMate. Its mostly the same thing but without the ability to save. Use it for verifying the integrity of your gerber files before sending them out. I haven't found a single program to do everything, and none of them are compatible with each other. : ( From fryers at gmail.com Wed Apr 16 03:36:14 2008 From: fryers at gmail.com (Simon Fryer) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:36:14 +0100 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: G'Day, On 16/04/2008, Dave McGuire wrote: > On Apr 15, 2008, at 6:16 PM, Tony Duell wrote: [VT series terminals] > > FWIW, I've not managed to obtain any VT2xx or later DEC terminal with the > > exception of the VT240. THey're not that common in .uk > > > > Really? That surprises me. They're all over the place here. A fellow > with whom I've sadly lost touch had a warehouse containing well over a > thousand VT320s maybe eight years ago. I think it was in Virginia. I > wonder what happened to those. I am in the UK and seem to have aquired a few VT320's and a VT420 without any difficulty. The VT420 is in use. I think the VT320's may have problems but I haven't had a chance to fully test them. If anyone wants at VT320 in southern England (Cheltenham, Witney, Milton Keynes, Bristol, Swindon, London) areas, I would be more than happy to gain some space back. Simon -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Well, an engineer is not concerned with the truth; that is left to philosophers and theologians: the prime concern of an engineer is the utility of the final product." Lectures on the Electrical Properties of Materials, L.Solymar, D.Walsh From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Wed Apr 16 05:02:21 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:02:21 +0200 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) References: Message-ID: <003a01c89fa8$f6b37fa0$0501a8c0@xp1800> Update, the PSU works again. I used a BU208A witch seem to function fine. As I supposed earlier C11 (220uF/16V) was leaking and destroyed the 2n2222 witch blew the QP1008. On the secondery side there were some elco's going bad, after replacing them the PSU is regulating ok?. Everybody thanks for the advise (and of cause Tony's cat for the schematics) Rik From jack.rubin at ameritech.net Wed Apr 16 08:01:04 2008 From: jack.rubin at ameritech.net (Jack Rubin) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:01:04 -0500 Subject: Atari history Message-ID: <000701c89fc1$edadbd30$176fa8c0@obie> This was pointed to on another list - some great stories and a slightly different perspective on (late) DRI - http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?s=atari+st Jack No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.0/1379 - Release Date: 4/15/2008 6:10 PM From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Apr 16 08:18:46 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:18:46 -0400 Subject: Beginner's capacitor question In-Reply-To: <20080416073425.75f0f942@SirToby.dinner41.local> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <200804151657.32258.rtellason@verizon.net> <20080416073425.75f0f942@SirToby.dinner41.local> Message-ID: <200804160918.46296.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 16 April 2008 01:34, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:57:31 -0400 > > "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > > The capacitor simply eliminates the DC offset on the signal. > > > > Not the way he described it being connected, across the speaker. > > Correct. I missread the original post. > > This is just a guess: If there is some series resistor (for current > limiting) in line with the speaker, this resistor and the capacitor > should construct some sort of low pass filter. I.e.: The speaker is > driven with a square wave voltage that has many harmonics. The low pass > filter can cut off may of the harmonics making a better "sound". The > speaker, as beeing an inert mechanical system, has a low pass filter > "build in". That makes some sense to me... And it's likely that there is a series resistor in there, typical speaker impedances being on the low side and a bit much in terms of loading for the output of a TTL gate... -- 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 Apr 16 08:22:15 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:22:15 -0400 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <100776.3128.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> References: <100776.3128.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200804160922.16040.rtellason@verizon.net> On Tuesday 15 April 2008 16:51, Chris M wrote: > At one time there used to be a world of shareware/freeware out there, Back when I was running a BBS I had piles of that stuff on my system, in the files sections. I still have a fair amount of that stuff stashed away, if there's any interest. Much of it was for CP/M and DOS platforms, with a small scattering of other stuff. I'd eventually intended to extend that to other platforms, but never did get around to accumulating much of that. If there's enough interest I can put a list online someplace. -- 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 trebor72 at execpc.com Wed Apr 16 08:11:52 2008 From: trebor72 at execpc.com (Robert J. Stevens) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:11:52 -0500 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute Message-ID: <4805FB18.3070708@execpc.com> I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. I am hoping someone has one in their Parts Box TIA Bob in Wisconsin USE trebor07 at execpc.com From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Apr 16 08:02:12 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:02:12 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <4804E594.6040204@netscape.net> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <4804E594.6040204@netscape.net> Message-ID: <34AE77C2-4C7B-4125-BBD4-E2A1C6D143D6@neurotica.com> Well, let's see...there are quite a few VT320s on eBay right now, starting from $30. There are also VT420s in the same price range, with one at $20 buy-it-now. There's a listing on there for VT420 bases for $24/ea, and the seller has ten available. If someone as broke as I am can call that "affordable", anyone can. -Dave On Apr 15, 2008, at 1:27 PM, scheefj at netscape.net wrote: > This demonstrates the dangers of using relative terms like > 'available' and 'afford'. > > woodelf wrote: >> Dave McGuire wrote: >>> >>> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. >> >>> -Dave >> What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? >> >> -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Apr 16 07:58:21 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:58:21 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804151006v772b61cfod58e45848aac2d66@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <1A47583D-EDBB-4432-877E-96454AEBC2FC@neurotica.com> <4804DD89.4060005@jetnet.ab.ca> <221245B3-1FEB-40D7-A503-3CAA863351A8@neurotica.com> <7d3530220804151006v772b61cfod58e45848aac2d66@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4236C75A-DD3E-4DC3-B31B-005C2CC74585@neurotica.com> On Apr 15, 2008, at 1:06 PM, John Floren wrote: >>>> I always use a real terminal when one is available, though. >>>> >>> What is a good real termial ( that you can afford )? >>> >> DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy >> to find. >> > No love for the VT220? That's what I have, and although it's pretty > slow, I still like it... the VMS keyboard is an obstruction sometimes, > though. Sure, I think VT220s are great terminals. I'd classify them more as "collectible antiques", though, than "use it at my day job" equipment like the '320 and '420. The VT220 also pulls a LOT more power than the VT320, which is a consideration for me these days. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From trebor72 at execpc.com Wed Apr 16 11:17:07 2008 From: trebor72 at execpc.com (Robert J. Stevens) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:17:07 -0500 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute In-Reply-To: <4805FB18.3070708@execpc.com> References: <4805FB18.3070708@execpc.com> Message-ID: <48062683.5020900@execpc.com> Robert J. Stevens wrote: > I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I > found a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. > I am hoping someone has one in their Parts Box > TIA > Bob in Wisconsin > USE > trebor07 at execpc.com > OOPS Better use trebor72 at execpc.com trebor07 wont work From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Wed Apr 16 11:55:55 2008 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:55:55 +0200 Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <48062F9B.8010905@bluewin.ch> > I use Eagle (from CadSoft). It's not open source, but it's less > expensive than most commercial alternatives, and it seems to work > well. For nonprofit use, there's a "free" version that's limited > to 100x80 mm double-sided boards, or a US $125 version that can do > 160x100 mm boards of up to four layers. I also like Eagle. Too bad they charge twice that amount here in Europe.... I could use an upgrade to Eurocard format. Jos From sellam at vintagetech.com Wed Apr 16 12:52:20 2008 From: sellam at vintagetech.com (Sellam Ismail) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:52:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: The history of the double sided floppy given under oath Message-ID: I sent this to my friend Shrikant who worked at Shugart back during this time and this is how he replied: "Yes, I demonstrated and explained the reason why but the decision to use Tandon's technology was a business decision. We swapped the licenses for Tandon's "Bi-compliant" head actuator patent and Xerox/Shugart's "Band Actuator" patent of Warren Dalziel "I will explain more to you when I return.. "One lesson to learn from this episode was that as Goethe said in Faust and I only paraphrase him: One has to work to make one's own what we inherit from our forefathers. "In context of Shugart, the "Tri-compliant" design a la IBM was implemented without knowing its subtleties and slider/spring behaviour. I think Shugart did learn the lesson as far as egos would permit." I'll post the remainder of his reply when I receive it. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ] From cclist at sydex.com Wed Apr 16 13:01:54 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:01:54 -0700 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute In-Reply-To: <200804161700.m3GH0FIT084167@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804161700.m3GH0FIT084167@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4805DCA2.9953.56055A@cclist.sydex.com> Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:17:07 -0500 From: "Robert J. Stevens" > I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found > a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. I am hoping someone > has one in their Parts Box TIA Bob in Wisconsin USE trebor07 at execpc.com My cross-reference charts say that the TI OPA704PA (in current production and available from Digi-Key) is a drop-in substitute. The Philips ECG944M may also work. Cheers, Chuck From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Wed Apr 16 14:33:41 2008 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:33:41 -0800 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute References: <4805FB18.3070708@execpc.com> Message-ID: <48065494.EE7CD35D@cs.ubc.ca> "Robert J. Stevens" wrote: > > I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found > a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. > I am hoping someone has one in their Parts Box > TIA > Bob in Wisconsin > USE > trebor07 at execpc.com I have several NOS LM4250CN, date code 8121. The CN in plastic 8-pin DIP, 0C to +70C. According to the NS book, the H is metal can, -55C to +125C. Can throw a couple in the mail from Vancouver, Canada, if you don't find anything faster/closer. What's the app?, does it really have special requirements? So many op-amp types have been produced over the years. Perhaps I exagerrate, but they seem like transistors in that a dozen modern types could cover substitution for the entire range of types. From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Apr 16 13:50:01 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:50:01 -0400 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute In-Reply-To: <48065494.EE7CD35D@cs.ubc.ca> References: <4805FB18.3070708@execpc.com> <48065494.EE7CD35D@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <200804161450.01968.rtellason@verizon.net> On Wednesday 16 April 2008 15:33, Brent Hilpert wrote: > "Robert J. Stevens" wrote: > > I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found > > a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. > > I am hoping someone has one in their Parts Box > > TIA > > Bob in Wisconsin > > USE > > trebor07 at execpc.com > > I have several NOS LM4250CN, date code 8121. > The CN in plastic 8-pin DIP, 0C to +70C. > According to the NS book, the H is metal can, -55C to +125C. > > Can throw a couple in the mail from Vancouver, Canada, if you don't find > anything faster/closer. > > What's the app?, does it really have special requirements? So many op-amp > types have been produced over the years. Perhaps I exagerrate, but they > seem like transistors in that a dozen modern types could cover substitution > for the entire range of types. I've felt that way too, at times, but haven't got the ambition at the present time to try and build that list, or chart, or however it works out. I sure wouldn't mind seeing that info, though, if somebody else does it, and might even be able to help with organizing it, hosting, whatever... -- 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 eric at brouhaha.com Wed Apr 16 14:26:54 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:26:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <50A9182B-D2F2-4FFE-B602-9A052861067D@neurotica.com> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <200804160227.WAA18675@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <40531.64.62.206.10.1208316121.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <50A9182B-D2F2-4FFE-B602-9A052861067D@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <42299.64.62.206.10.1208374014.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> I wrote: > I don't know. I last tried to use gEDA two or three years ago, and it > wasn't mature enough then, so I bought Eagle. gEDA is reported to be > much better now, but since I already have Eagle I'm not inclined to > try it. Dave wrote: > If we're talking about doing PCB layout, the program you're > probably thinking of is (poorly) named "PCB", which is not part of > gEDA. No, I was talking about gEDA. Pretty much all of the gEDA tools were very crash-prone when I tried them, most notably gschem. I didn't get far enough with those to even bother with PCB. I fully expect that the gEDA tools are usable now, but at the time they weren't, so I purchased Eagle. Eric From austin at ozpass.co.uk Wed Apr 16 15:02:52 2008 From: austin at ozpass.co.uk (Austin Pass) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:02:52 +0100 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <48052670.1060903@gmail.com> References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <4804D62A.6010309@jetnet.ab.ca> <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> <48052670.1060903@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 15 Apr 2008, at 23:04, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > I don't know. One PC? It would be a very large PC. Pushing the > boundaries of what a PC is. > > Peace... Sridhar I don't know Sridhar, PC's are pretty fruity these days. I know it's like comparing apples and oranges, but Deep Blue sans specialist chess hardware was rated at 11.38 Gigaflops (Linpack? Double precision floating point? Only Wikipedia knows.....) My 8 core MacPro downstairs allegedly churns through 81 GFlops/cpu in Linpack "Dense Floating Point Operations". A figure often bandied about regarding double precision floating point Linpack score on the Sony Playstation 3 is 24 GFlops. -Austin. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Apr 16 15:51:58 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:51:58 +0100 (BST) Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <003a01c89fa8$f6b37fa0$0501a8c0@xp1800> from "Rik" at Apr 16, 8 12:02:21 pm Message-ID: > > Update, the PSU works again. Excellent... > I used a BU208A witch seem to function fine. I'll make a note of that. BU208As are pretty easy to find, and it'll be one to try if my 9816 ever has PSU prolems. > As I supposed earlier C11 (220uF/16V) was leaking and destroyed the 2n222= > 2=20 > witch blew the QP1008. > On the secondery side there were some elco's going bad, after replacing t= > hem=20 > the PSU is regulating ok=E9. It's actually a fairly standard SMPSU design, I think. > Everybody thanks for the advise (and of cause Tony's cat for the schemati= > cs) Enjoy the mahcine. It's one of my favourite 68K boxes. I have a 256K RAM card in one slot of mine, and a GPIO (16 it parallel) interface in the other. RS232 and GPIB are of course built-in. How much memory do you have on the provessor board? Most came with 256K (all loctaions filled with 4164s). You can increase it to 1M by replacing all the RAMs with 41256s, fitting a 74F158 in the spare location at one side of hte PCB, fitting a 33 Ohm (I think originally 31.6 Ohm, but it makes no difference) resistor in the ovious positon, and cutting a couple of jumpers (I can look up details). I've done this to my machine. And which keyoard do you have? The 'compact' keyoard is odd in that it's not scanned. One side of each switch is grounded, the other sides feed banks of 4051 multiplexers. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Apr 16 15:43:20 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:43:20 +0100 (BST) Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: from "Dave McGuire" at Apr 15, 8 11:45:16 pm Message-ID: > >> DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and easy to > >> find. > > > > And eat flyback trasnformers like they're going out of fashion. > > I've seen exactly three fail...I've had dozens upon dozens of > those terminals go through my hands. Mind you, I think that's an When I was at Bristol, we had DEC terminal everywhere. Mostly VT220s, which were extremely reliable, I think I had to fix _2_ in all my time there. I had a real VT100 on my bench, and there were a few VT3xx's. All of the latter (perhaps 10 units) suffered from flyback problems. > excessive failure rate for "adult" (as opposed to "PC") computer > equipment, but still. I guess I've just had better luck. > > > FWIW, I've not managed to obtain any VT2xx or later DEC terminal > > with the > > exception of the VT240. THey're not that common in .uk > > Really? That surprises me. They're all over the place here. A > fellow with whom I've sadly lost touch had a warehouse containing > well over a thousand VT320s maybe eight years ago. I think it was in > Virginia. I wonder what happened to those. You could find them 8 yeas ago, can you find them _now_? -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Wed Apr 16 15:45:48 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:45:48 +0100 (BST) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <100776.3128.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Apr 15, 8 01:51:33 pm Message-ID: > Apples, Oranges, IBMers, etc. etc. What about HP > versions of chess? Mildly off-=thread, but there's a mini-chess (5*5 oard, each player has king, queen, bishop, knight, rook and 5 pawns, no castling, no en passant capture) for the HP41 calculator (!). I think it meeds a CV (or a C with 3 RAM moudles?) and will print the board on the HP41 thermal printer. It's hardly a good player, but it's impressive (to me) that it could be done at all). -tony From mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Wed Apr 16 15:42:03 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:42:03 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <4804D62A.6010309@jetnet.ab.ca> <4804E70D.2000504@netscape.net> <48052670.1060903@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804162102.RAA24249@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> > I know it's like comparing apples and oranges, but Deep Blue sans > specialist chess hardware was rated at 11.38 Gigaflops ...which is pretty meaningless, since (a) much of the speed came from the custom silicon (it's a bit like saying "without the fancy graphics hardware my gaming system cranks 15 fps") and (b) chess code normally doesn't use all that much floating point anyway. /~\ 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 mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Apr 16 16:04:09 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:04:09 -0400 Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <42299.64.62.206.10.1208374014.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804160107.VAA18024@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <53065.64.62.206.10.1208309448.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <200804160227.WAA18675@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <40531.64.62.206.10.1208316121.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <50A9182B-D2F2-4FFE-B602-9A052861067D@neurotica.com> <42299.64.62.206.10.1208374014.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <2E165973-95AA-4F45-8E0E-4FB84E4C3A09@neurotica.com> On Apr 16, 2008, at 3:26 PM, Eric Smith wrote: >> I don't know. I last tried to use gEDA two or three years ago, >> and it >> wasn't mature enough then, so I bought Eagle. gEDA is reported to be >> much better now, but since I already have Eagle I'm not inclined to >> try it. > > Dave wrote: >> If we're talking about doing PCB layout, the program you're >> probably thinking of is (poorly) named "PCB", which is not part of >> gEDA. > > No, I was talking about gEDA. Ahh ok. gEDA doesn't have another PCB layout tool. > Pretty much all of the gEDA tools were > very crash-prone when I tried them, most notably gschem. I didn't > get far enough with those to even bother with PCB. Yes it was pretty bad back in those days. PCB was much more stable at that time. Both are pretty much rock-solid now. > I fully expect that the gEDA tools are usable now, but at the time > they weren't, so I purchased Eagle. Sounds like a good thing to do. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Apr 16 16:05:33 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:05:33 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Apr 16, 2008, at 4:43 PM, Tony Duell wrote: >>>> DEC VT320 or VT420. They are reliable, small, cheap, and >>>> easy to >>>> find. >>> >>> And eat flyback trasnformers like they're going out of fashion. >> >> I've seen exactly three fail...I've had dozens upon dozens of >> those terminals go through my hands. Mind you, I think that's an > > When I was at Bristol, we had DEC terminal everywhere. Mostly VT220s, > which were extremely reliable, I think I had to fix _2_ in all my time > there. I had a real VT100 on my bench, and there were a few > VT3xx's. All > of the latter (perhaps 10 units) suffered from flyback problems. Ugh. Bad production run, perhaps? >>> FWIW, I've not managed to obtain any VT2xx or later DEC terminal >>> with the >>> exception of the VT240. THey're not that common in .uk >> >> Really? That surprises me. They're all over the place here. A >> fellow with whom I've sadly lost touch had a warehouse containing >> well over a thousand VT320s maybe eight years ago. I think it was in >> Virginia. I wonder what happened to those. > > You could find them 8 yeas ago, can you find them _now_? Well, 8 years ago, I happened to know someone who happened to have a warehouse full of them. They're available *now* on eBay all day long. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Wed Apr 16 16:36:13 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:36:13 +0000 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 09:43:20PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > When I was at Bristol, we had DEC terminal everywhere. Mostly VT220s, > which were extremely reliable, I think I had to fix _2_ in all my time > there. I had a real VT100 on my bench, and there were a few VT3xx's. All > of the latter (perhaps 10 units) suffered from flyback problems. When I worked with DEC equipment every day (1984-1994), we had a few terminals die. The bulk of our stash was VT100-family terminals and CiTOH clones, with a few VT220s. We never moved to anything newer since they did everything we needed, and by the time the VT320s were available for less than retail, we were on such hard times, that there was no way to justify the cost of a newer terminal. My recollection is that we had very few video problems with VT1xx terminals. I think the only common problem we ran into was dead keyboards or dead keyboard circuits in the terminals themselves. We had enough spares lying around that we never investigated the faults. We just swapped out the hardware and put the broken stuff on the bench for the hardware guys (who never got around to poking inside). The two faults I remember with VT220 terminals were dead 9636/9737 EIA chips, and loss of horizontal hold. It was tough getting the old EIA chips out to mount sockets (must have had heavy copper inner layers on the mainboard PCB), but once that was done, those were easy to fix. We only lost about one a year, anyway. The video, I was never able to fix myself with what I knew then. Perhaps I could fix it now. I don't think we ever had a total loss of video on any model of terminal, mostly just the faults I described. Hardly scientific, but it was a sample size of several dozen terminals, in operation for at least 10 years. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 16-Apr-2008 at 21:20 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -69.7 F (-56.5 C) Windchill -111.2 F (-79.6 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 15.2 kts Grid 72 Barometer 679.1 mb (10662 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From eric at brouhaha.com Wed Apr 16 17:05:46 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:05:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> References: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> Message-ID: <45584.64.62.206.10.1208383546.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Ethan wrote: > It was tough getting the > old EIA chips out to mount sockets (must have had heavy copper > inner layers on the mainboard PCB), I haven't repaired any VT100 or VT220 termainals, but in general I've found that removing dead parts from boards like that is easiest if you remove the part with diagonal cutters first, then desolder the pins individually. Eric From lynchaj at yahoo.com Wed Apr 16 17:08:06 2008 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:08:06 -0400 Subject: FW: Gerber help sought Message-ID: <002001c8a00e$59dc3850$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of der Mouse Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:45 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Gerber help sought Prompted by my latest project (a cable pinout sensor - just plug a cable into it and you get the pinout), I want to look into the possibility of having one-off PC boards made. Everyone seems to want Gerbers, but without documenting exactly what they are. I found a PDF describing "RS-274X", which appears to be most of it, but there are lots of conventions it doesn't describe. I've found indications that there exists some open-source software, but extracting documentation from code is a mess. I'm going to be asking various people whose addresses I've found in various places. But you people are documentation packrats, so I'm asking here as well: anyone have any such doc? /~\ 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 -----REPLY----- Hi, I recently had to do something very similar. Maybe I can help you with Gerber file generation. I have recently designed a PCB version of my Z80 home brew computer using a free/open source EDA program called KiCad. The latest version is excellent and now includes an autorouter & optimizer for PCBs. Get the latest versions from the sourceforge site as the "stable" version is pretty stale, I think. Linux and Windows versions are available. http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/ It uses the awesome free PCB routing tool at: http://freerouting.net I have an example circuit board up on my project site. http://groups.google.com/group/n8vem The gerber files are bundled in the ZIP file. KiCad includes a gerber file viewer utility. KiCad and freerouting.net are a great combination and are easy to use and learn. I was able to learn the program from a total cold start to nearly complete project (schematic, PCB layout, part selection, routing traces, gerber file creation, drill file, etc) in just a few days. My plan is to have the PCBs made at (they seem pretty inexpensive, if there are cheaper / better options available, I would like to hear them) https://www.barebonespcb.com/!BB1.asp Thanks and good luck! Andrew Lynch PS, if there are any experienced CCTALK veterans who'd like to review & critique my home brew Z80 SBC design, I would much appreciate your comments. I have completed PCB routing & optimization but haven't placed the order yet. A little peer review from knowledgeable person(s) would definitely be a big help. I'd rather find the faults *before* the boards a cut! From lynchaj at yahoo.com Wed Apr 16 17:08:06 2008 From: lynchaj at yahoo.com (Andrew Lynch) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:08:06 -0400 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute Message-ID: <001c01c8a00e$59650c80$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Wed Apr 16 08:11:52 CDT 2008 * Previous message: Atari history * Next message: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute * Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] ________________________________ I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. I am hoping someone has one in their Parts Box TIA Bob in Wisconsin USE trebor07 at execpc.com ________________________________ -----REPLY----- Bob, I bought some a while back from UnicornElectronics.com. They are really cheap parts and it fixed my home brew S-100 bus terminator with no problems. Apparently those op-amps get worn out over time and just die occasionally, I guess. At least replacing the one on mine worked. Thanks and good luck! Andrew Lynch From eric at brouhaha.com Wed Apr 16 17:49:42 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:49:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: FW: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <002001c8a00e$59dc3850$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> References: <002001c8a00e$59dc3850$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Message-ID: <38049.64.62.206.10.1208386182.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Andrew wrote: > PS, if there are any experienced CCTALK veterans who'd like to review & > critique my home brew Z80 SBC design, I would much appreciate your > comments. The most common error I've seen in Z80 designs is to drive the clock input directly from a TTL part. The minimum Vih for the Z80 clock input is higher than the minimum Voh for a TTL part. The Mostek Z80 CPU manual shows a circuit using a transistor as an active pullup to increase the clock swing. If you're using CMOS (e.g., 74HC, 74AC, etc.) to drive the clock, it's not an issue, since the minimum Voh on those is near the positive rail (5V). I haven't looked at the Vih spec for the clock on CMOS Z80 parts; it's possible that they might have changed them to 2.0V. Eric From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Wed Apr 16 18:01:11 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:01:11 +0000 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <45584.64.62.206.10.1208383546.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> <45584.64.62.206.10.1208383546.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <20080416230111.GA6707@usap.gov> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 03:05:46PM -0700, Eric Smith wrote: > Ethan wrote: > > It was tough getting the > > old EIA chips out to mount sockets (must have had heavy copper > > inner layers on the mainboard PCB), > > I haven't repaired any VT100 or VT220 termainals, but in general I've > found that removing dead parts from boards like that is easiest if you > remove the part with diagonal cutters first, then desolder the pins > individually. That is an excellent technique, and I don't recall having real problems lifting the pin from the Vcc or GND holes (signal pins are easy) - I recall having problems getting the power through-holes clean enough to install a socket. I think I had to resort to heating one side of the board and sucking the solder from the other side - much easier with the board in a vise. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 16-Apr-2008 at 22:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -69.2 F (-56.2 C) Windchill -107.9 F (-77.7 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 13.0 kts Grid 72 Barometer 679.5 mb (10647 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From ak6dn at mindspring.com Wed Apr 16 18:28:18 2008 From: ak6dn at mindspring.com (Don North) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:28:18 -0700 Subject: FW: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <002001c8a00e$59dc3850$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> References: <002001c8a00e$59dc3850$a903a8c0@andrewdesktop> Message-ID: <48068B92.9040505@mindspring.com> Andrew Lynch wrote: > ..... > > My plan is to have the PCBs made at (they seem pretty inexpensive, if > there are cheaper / better options available, I would like to hear them) > > https://www.barebonespcb.com/!BB1.asp > > Thanks and good luck! > > Andrew Lynch If you don't mind waiting a few weeks try http://www.batchpcb.com I've used them for several small board designs and they are pretty good for one-off smaller boards. Their fee is $10 + $2.50/sqin + shipping. Very competitive for smaller designs but the per sq in fee becomes prohibitive for larger boards (ie, beyond 8"x8" or so it is better to go with a standard fast-proto board house). Dual sided copper, dual soldermask, and dual silk. The downside is the waiting time. They panelize designs, send to China (Gold Phoenix fab) and then ship your boards out (I use USPS) when ready. Typically it has taken 2-3 weeks from submit to receipt. From aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk Wed Apr 16 19:58:30 2008 From: aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk (Andrew Burton) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:58:30 +0100 (BST) Subject: Mark 1 TR-107 Message-ID: <342819.35550.qm@web23404.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Hi, Since this was a) based on the Star Trek Tricorder; b) made in 1996 and; c) the company behind it has gone belly-up, I figured this would be classed as on-topic. "Here's a direct example of life imitating art. The Mark 1 TR-107 tricorder from Vital Technologies was unveiled in 1996 as a real scientific device. It could monitor electromagnetic fields, weather, color and light. The company apparently made 10,000 of them before going out of business. Vital's product was modeled on the tricorders used in the 'Star Trek' series." http://www.news.com/2300-11395_3-6121389-6.html and here's another page about it: http://www.stim.com/Stim-x/0996September/Sparky/tricorder.html I don't suppose anyone here has one of these? Regards, Andrew B aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk From eric at brouhaha.com Wed Apr 16 20:12:31 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:12:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Mark 1 TR-107 In-Reply-To: <342819.35550.qm@web23404.mail.ird.yahoo.com> References: <342819.35550.qm@web23404.mail.ird.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49563.64.62.206.10.1208394751.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Andrew B wrote: > The Mark 1 TR-107 > tricorder from Vital Technologies was unveiled in 1996 as a real > scientific device. It could monitor electromagnetic fields, weather, color > and light. Well, sure, but would it help me in any way if I was trying to construct a mnemonic memory circuit out of stone knives and bearskins? Eric From mcguire at neurotica.com Wed Apr 16 22:22:52 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:22:52 -0400 Subject: Mark 1 TR-107 In-Reply-To: <49563.64.62.206.10.1208394751.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <342819.35550.qm@web23404.mail.ird.yahoo.com> <49563.64.62.206.10.1208394751.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <6F98FB56-BDA9-44FD-820D-6DB71ED93846@neurotica.com> On Apr 16, 2008, at 9:12 PM, Eric Smith wrote: >> The Mark 1 TR-107 >> tricorder from Vital Technologies was unveiled in 1996 as a real >> scientific device. It could monitor electromagnetic fields, >> weather, color >> and light. > > Well, sure, but would it help me in any way if I was trying to > construct > a mnemonic memory circuit out of stone knives and bearskins? soda -> monitor -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From marvin at west.net Wed Apr 16 22:42:36 2008 From: marvin at west.net (Marvin Johnston) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:42:36 -0700 Subject: Scion MicroAngelo S-100 Board Message-ID: <4806C72C.1E4EC3B1@west.net> For anyone that is interested, I just posted the subject board over on Erik's new site, The Vintage Computer and Gaming Marketplace at: http://marketplace.vintage-computer.com/ I'll be starting to list other items there during the coming days as well. From jpero at sympatico.ca Wed Apr 16 07:50:33 2008 From: jpero at sympatico.ca (jpero at sympatico.ca) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:50:33 +0000 Subject: few old stuff to sell or take. microsolutions backpack hd, IBM s In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6bpki0$87970g@toip3.srvr.bell.ca> Here's the stuff: for IBM PC & XT card One: comp serial/parallel p/n on white sticker: B1090205304 uses 16450N serial IC. Condition unknown. MIcrosolutions Backpack 3.5" beige, currently a sick WD 1.6GB in it with parallel cable and driver disk, no power supply. Does work. 5 bucks for it. Hitachi 5 head model VT-8A. Half of a early portable VHS video recorder/player for camera. No power supply but you can supply 12VDC of sufficient current to play tape or composite to RF output. It has a compartment to take sealed lead acid battery brick (don't have this). Have stereo audio output with composite output. Also useful as RF converter because of composite input with stereo audio. Working, I've fixed a loose connection long ago but haven't used it much since. Gear drive tape mechanism, no belts to snap or slip. Casing condition is average but intact and functional. Take it for 10. Cheers, Wizard From glen.slick at gmail.com Thu Apr 17 00:04:24 2008 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:04:24 -0700 Subject: Anyone know where to find software for an hp 16505a prototype analyzer? In-Reply-To: <1208366505.4827.3.camel@debian> References: <1208366505.4827.3.camel@debian> Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90804162204v6e9fb73cw76700521eaff8c9@mail.gmail.com> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Cunha Fernando wrote: > Hello > I'm french and i've be seen your comments in last year what about > hard disk problem of HP 16505A. > Can you help me > Try to contact me please > I search any information about this device > thanks > Fernando from Paris > If anyone happens to have an OS install CD (I believe that is "reignite" in HP-UX terms) I'd like to get an .ISO image of that. I have an HP 16505A with the software already installed but it would be nice to be able to reinstall a fresh image on a bare hard drive. An HP 16505A is really just an HP 712/60, 712/80, or 712/100 workstation running HP-UX 9.x with a special application to control an HP16500B or 16500C through a SCSI interface connection. From eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 17 00:12:20 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:12:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Anyone know where to find software for an hp 16505a prototype analyzer? In-Reply-To: <1e1fc3e90804162204v6e9fb73cw76700521eaff8c9@mail.gmail.com> References: <1208366505.4827.3.camel@debian> <1e1fc3e90804162204v6e9fb73cw76700521eaff8c9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <38550.68.121.162.227.1208409140.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Glen Slick wrote: > If anyone happens to have an OS install CD (I believe that is > "reignite" in HP-UX terms) I'd like to get an .ISO image of that. I > have an HP 16505A with the software already installed but it would be > nice to be able to reinstall a fresh image on a bare hard drive. Same here. I'd like the ISO image as well. > An HP 16505A is really just an HP 712/60, 712/80, or 712/100 > workstation running HP-UX 9.x with a special application to control an > HP16500B or 16500C through a SCSI interface connection. I want to use the 16505A with the logic analyzer, so I want the actual 16505A software image, not generic HP-UX. Thanks, Eric From les at frii.com Wed Apr 16 10:05:32 2008 From: les at frii.com (les at frii.com) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:05:32 -0600 (MDT) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <200804161429.m3GET2gR082696@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804161429.m3GET2gR082696@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <7744.72.16.194.2.1208358332.squirrel@users.frii.com> I have seen them working. In the day, I worked for a store which sold them, so I saw quite a few working ones. We also added touch screens (with s stylus) to quite a few of them. I remember discovering that the index detector on the floppy drives was not connected, like on an apple 2. The formating was completly soft sectored, which did not rely on a index pulse from the disk. I got in an argument with a Victor rep once about this. He was telling a story about an "idiot" customer, who was using 10 sectored hard sectored floppies (ala Northstar), and he told the customer that this was the problem. After some discussion with him, I opened a unit up, unplugged the wires from the index photosensor, and the unit still worked. He still didn't want to believe me. It also seems like the floppy used different speeds (rpm) on different tracks, running slower on the inside tracks and faster on the outside tracks to keep the same bit density at all places on the disk. There were more sectors on the outside tracks than the inside tracks. This would seem to preclude using a standard floppy drive. From les at frii.com Wed Apr 16 10:21:28 2008 From: les at frii.com (les at frii.com) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:21:28 -0600 (MDT) Subject: Gerber help sought In-Reply-To: <200804161429.m3GET2gR082696@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804161429.m3GET2gR082696@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <9081.72.16.194.2.1208359288.squirrel@users.frii.com> There are two gerber standards, 274D and 274X. 274X has the aperture information embedded in the gerber file, 274D has a seperate aperture file. I have a program I wrote to merge 274D files and aperture files into a 274X file, as many board houses no longer accept 274D files. The PCB package I use only generates 274D files. http://www.lh1.org/autotrax/autotrax.html I use Protel Autotrax. This is a formerly commercial program, which is now public domain. It is a DOS application. It supports up to eight layer PCBs, with no limit on the number of components or board size (up to 32 inches by 32 inches). It has an autorouter, which I never use. I have created PCBs up to 12 inches by 12 inches with over 1200 components using this package. Although the 274 spec allows multiple layers to be placed in one file, I don't know of any board houses which support that format. I use a standard file naming convention, but board houses usualy like to get a text file listing which file is which layer. Advanced circuits has you assign layers to files when you upload your data. Here is a typical readme file: GERBER TOP LAYER FILE NAME ;FLUXGATE.GTL GERBER BOTTOM LAYER FILE NAME ;FLUXGATE.GBL GERBER TOP SOLDER MASK FILE NAME ;FLUXGATE.GTS GERBER BOTTOM SOLDER MASK FILE NAME ;FLUXGATE.GBS GERBER TOP COMPONENT MASK FILE NAME ;FLUXGATE.GOV GERBER BOTTOM COMP MASK FILE NAME ;FLUXGATE.GBO ASCII NC DRILL FILE NAME ;FLUXGATE.TXT NC DRILL TOOL SIZE FILE NAME ;FLUXGATE.TOL A friend of mine maintains a open source pcb layout program, available at: http://opencircuitdesign.com/pcb/ From batata1 at free.fr Wed Apr 16 12:21:45 2008 From: batata1 at free.fr (Cunha Fernando) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:21:45 +0200 Subject: Anyone know where to find software for an hp 16505a prototype analyzer? Message-ID: <1208366505.4827.3.camel@debian> Hello I'm french and i've be seen your comments in last year what about hard disk problem of HP 16505A. Can you help me Try to contact me please I search any information about this device thanks Fernando from Paris From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Wed Apr 16 19:28:13 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:28:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <766966.72171.qm@web65512.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> fyi there happens to be a .pdf at the bottom of the Wiki article describing Deep Blue (31 pages), but no diagrams of any sort (that would be asking too much I guess). A bit of code though. And my next question was going to be what is BB up to these days? It seems such a waste to let all that computing power sit idle. Apparently they dismantled it...doodoodoodoo doodoodoodoo ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Wed Apr 16 19:33:29 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 17:33:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <253342.75314.qm@web65503.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- Tony Duell wrote: > > Apples, Oranges, IBMers, etc. etc. What about HP > > versions of chess? > > Mildly off-=thread, but there's a mini-chess (5*5 > oard, each player has > king, queen, bishop, knight, rook and 5 pawns, no > castling, no en passant > capture) for the HP41 calculator (!). I think it > meeds a CV (or a C with > 3 RAM moudles?) and will print the board on the HP41 > thermal printer. > It's hardly a good player, but it's impressive (to > me) that it could be > done at all). I vaguely remember the 41 coming in different models (*C, *CV), so I assume that's what you're referring to. Pity I didn't buy one back in the day. Hmm got to see if there's anything available for my 49G. It does sport 2.5 megs of memory after all (or was it 1.5?). The instructor who tried to teach us assembler made mention of, and I can't swear to this, some imbedded system for which a chess implementation was devised (in assembler or machine code of course). The coder ran into a problem of needing 1 more byte after his first attempt, and alleviated the problem by recoding. I could swear it was something *small*, but in fact maybe it was actually some big iron. Can't remember. Maybe I should e-mail him and find out... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From hcchandler at mac.com Wed Apr 16 20:52:28 2008 From: hcchandler at mac.com (hcchandler at mac.com) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:52:28 -0700 Subject: Monroe electromechanical calculators Message-ID: I was reading a 3 year old message you had written where you had acquired a Monromatic 8N-3-213 that was "broken". If you still have it I might be able assist you to get it working. Former service manager of Boston,Detroit and Seattle for Monroe. Harry Chandler P.S. I'm a friend of Ernie Jorgens From eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 17 01:18:46 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:18:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <7744.72.16.194.2.1208358332.squirrel@users.frii.com> References: <200804161429.m3GET2gR082696@dewey.classiccmp.org> <7744.72.16.194.2.1208358332.squirrel@users.frii.com> Message-ID: <45813.68.121.162.227.1208413126.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> les at frii.com wrote about the Victor 9000: > It also seems like the floppy used different speeds (rpm) on different > tracks, running slower on the inside tracks and faster on the outside > tracks to keep the same bit density at all places on the disk. There were > more sectors on the outside tracks than the inside tracks. As was the case on the "twiggy" drives in the Lisa (officially known as "FileWare"), and the 400K and 800K 3.5" drives used on the Macintosh and Apple II. > This would seem to preclude using a standard floppy drive. Depending on the range of speeds the Victor used, it might be possible to replace the motor control circuit on a standard floppy drive. Eric From cclist at sydex.com Thu Apr 17 01:59:16 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:59:16 -0700 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute In-Reply-To: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <480692D4.31449.31DB052@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:33:41 -0800 > From: Brent Hilpert > What's the app?, does it really have special requirements? So many op-amp > types have been produced over the years. Perhaps I exagerrate, but they > seem like transistors in that a dozen modern types could cover > substitution for the entire range of types. The audio folks get very picky about brands of op-amps and swear there are audible differences between brands of the same op-amp. My response to those who say "just listen, you can tell" is usually "What?" Cheers, Chuck From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Thu Apr 17 02:25:48 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:25:48 +0100 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute In-Reply-To: <480692D4.31449.31DB052@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> <480692D4.31449.31DB052@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <1208417148.30197.22.camel@elric> On Wed, 2008-04-16 at 23:59 -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:33:41 -0800 > > From: Brent Hilpert > > > What's the app?, does it really have special requirements? So many op-amp > > types have been produced over the years. Perhaps I exagerrate, but they > > seem like transistors in that a dozen modern types could cover > > substitution for the entire range of types. > > The audio folks get very picky about brands of op-amps and swear > there are audible differences between brands of the same op-amp. > > My response to those who say "just listen, you can tell" is usually > "What?" Think this is more a discussion for roys-tech-chat. My 2p worth, though, is that you can only tell the audible differences in opamps when you push them into clipping. Then it becomes really noticeable. Other than that, some opamps are really noisy, which you can hear, and some have poor slew rates when used in marginal designs which can cause weirdness with high frequencies. Gordon From cclist at sydex.com Thu Apr 17 02:33:57 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:33:57 -0700 Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 56, Issue 26 In-Reply-To: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <48069AF5.9052.33D7101@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:49:42 -0700 (PDT) > From: "Eric Smith" > The most common error I've seen in Z80 designs is to drive the clock input > directly from a TTL part. The minimum Vih for the Z80 clock input is > higher than the minimum Voh for a TTL part. The Mostek Z80 CPU manual > shows a circuit using a transistor as an active pullup to increase the > clock swing. With the clock driven by standard TTL, Zilog specified a 330 ohm pullup. I've seen lots of instances where the Z80/Z80A clock was driven from an LSTTL or even a "canned" crystal oscillator with no pullups at all. It might be that later steppings were more tolerant of clock voltage. If one had an 8284A in the hellbox, it would also make a good choice; Voh(min) for the CLK output is 4v--but that might not be considered to be "vintage". Some early S100 boards used an 8224 to generate the Z80 clock. Cheers, Chuck From hilpert at cs.ubc.ca Thu Apr 17 03:52:42 2008 From: hilpert at cs.ubc.ca (Brent Hilpert) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:52:42 -0800 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> <480692D4.31449.31DB052@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <48070FDB.84825E4@cs.ubc.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: > > > Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:33:41 -0800 > > From: Brent Hilpert > > > What's the app?, does it really have special requirements? So many op-amp > > types have been produced over the years. Perhaps I exagerrate, but they how did I do that? --> exaggerate > > seem like transistors in that a dozen modern types could cover > > substitution for the entire range of types. > > The audio folks get very picky about brands of op-amps and swear > there are audible differences between brands of the same op-amp. > > My response to those who say "just listen, you can tell" is usually > "What?" I didn't know they had condescended to tolerate op-amps in the signal path, or do they use them as the error amps in regulators for tube filaments? From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Thu Apr 17 03:17:34 2008 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:17:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Atari SLM 804 Message-ID: <742045.86406.qm@web56207.mail.re3.yahoo.com> There is an Atari SLM 804 on ebay (item 220224227774), I'm not the seller, but as these are quite rare thought the list should know. The SLM 804 is an early Atari laser printer using the ACSI (DMA style) interface. Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 17 03:27:14 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:27:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 56, Issue 26 In-Reply-To: <48069AF5.9052.33D7101@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> <48069AF5.9052.33D7101@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <47466.68.121.162.227.1208420834.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Chuck wrote: > With the clock driven by standard TTL, Zilog specified a 330 ohm > pullup. For 2 MHz operation. At 4 MHz, it doesn't meet the spec. You can see that on a scope; the voltage doesn't get to Vih until well into the high phase, thus violating the clock rise time spec. > I've seen lots of instances where the Z80/Z80A clock was > driven from an LSTTL or even a "canned" crystal oscillator with no > pullups at all. I've seen them, and I've seen them act flaky. Even if it works fine at room temperature and 5.0V supply on one day on with a particular Z80 CPU, who knows whether it will work next month at a different temperature with a less well adjusted power supply and a different CPU chip. A good engineer wouldn't use a TTL output directly, but a lazy one might. > It might be that later steppings were more tolerant > of clock voltage. Maybe. More likely of the CMOS parts than the original NMOS. I doubt they changed the masks of the NMOS part very much over the product life. I don't think they ever did a die shrink, since with NMOS that required almost completely redoing the layout. The CMOS parts may well have had die shrinks that would affect the electrical parameters, as CMOS would scale over a fairly wide range. > If one had an 8284A in the hellbox, it would also make a good choice; > Voh(min) for the CLK output is 4v--but that might not be considered > to be "vintage". Some early S100 boards used an 8224 to generate the > Z80 clock. If you're not concerned with it being "vintage", just use a 74HC(T), 74AC(T), or 74FC(T) part to drive it. Eric From eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 17 03:33:25 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:33:25 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Anyone know where to find software for an hp 16505a prototype analyzer? In-Reply-To: <38550.68.121.162.227.1208409140.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <1208366505.4827.3.camel@debian> <1e1fc3e90804162204v6e9fb73cw76700521eaff8c9@mail.gmail.com> <38550.68.121.162.227.1208409140.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <47877.68.121.162.227.1208421205.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Glen Slick wrote: > If anyone happens to have an OS install CD (I believe that is > "reignite" in HP-UX terms) I'd like to get an .ISO image of that. I > have an HP 16505A with the software already installed but it would be > nice to be able to reinstall a fresh image on a bare hard drive. By the way, the 16505A software install/upgrade requires booting from a floppy, so we need the image of that too. From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Thu Apr 17 07:46:17 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:46:17 +0200 Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) References: Message-ID: <000f01c8a089$0b0aa5b0$0501a8c0@xp1800> > > Enjoy the mahcine. It's one of my favourite 68K boxes. I have a 256K RAM > card in one slot of mine, and a GPIO (16 it parallel) interface in the > other. RS232 and GPIB are of course built-in. > > How much memory do you have on the provessor board? Most came with 256K > (all loctaions filled with 4164s). You can increase it to 1M by replacing > all the RAMs with 41256s, fitting a 74F158 in the spare location at one > side of hte PCB, fitting a 33 Ohm (I think originally 31.6 Ohm, but it > makes no difference) resistor in the ovious positon, and cutting a couple > of jumpers (I can look up details). I've done this to my machine. > > And which keyoard do you have? The 'compact' keyoard is odd in that it's > not scanned. One side of each switch is grounded, the other sides feed > banks of 4051 multiplexers. > > -tony It's a 256kB processorboard, but I have a 2M Ram board with it. I also have a 'secondary processorboard' with a 68020 and 68882 at 25Mhz with 4M on it from Newport Digital. I got the small keyboard and have to share it with my 220 so if somebody has a spare I'm in for it. I like the machine also because it's a very compact design, and takes not much deskspace. Rik From trebor72 at execpc.com Thu Apr 17 08:09:26 2008 From: trebor72 at execpc.com (Robert J. Stevens) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:09:26 -0500 Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 56, Issue 26 Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP In-Reply-To: <200804170619.m3H6JM1Y091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1Y091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <48074C06.3000809@execpc.com> cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:01:54 -0700 > From: "Chuck Guzis" > Subject: Re: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute > Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:17:07 -0500 > From: "Robert J. Stevens" >> I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found >> a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. I am hoping someone >> has one in their Parts Box TIA Bob in Wisconsin USE trebor07 at execpc.com >> > > My cross-reference charts say that the TI OPA704PA (in current > production and available from Digi-Key) is a drop-in substitute. The > Philips ECG944M may also work. > > Message: 3 > Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:33:41 -0800 > From: Brent Hilpert > Subject: Re: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute > > >> I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found >> a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. >> I am hoping someone has one in their Parts Box >> > > I have several NOS LM4250CN, date code 8121. > The CN in plastic 8-pin DIP, 0C to +70C. > According to the NS book, the H is metal can, -55C to +125C. > > Can throw a couple in the mail from Vancouver, Canada, if you don't find > anything faster/closer. > > What's the app?, does it really have special requirements? So many op-amp types > have been produced over the years. Perhaps I exagerrate, but they seem like > transistors in that a dozen modern types could cover substitution for the > entire range of types. I am trying to build a Clone of the Godbout S-100 Terminator for my Byte-8 Box. Looks like Unicorn may have what I want Thanks for all the replies Bob From trebor72 at execpc.com Thu Apr 17 08:16:16 2008 From: trebor72 at execpc.com (Robert J. Stevens) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:16:16 -0500 Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 56, Issue 26 Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP In-Reply-To: <200804170619.m3H6JM1Y091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1Y091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <48074DA0.40508@execpc.com> Message: 16 Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:08:06 -0400 From: "Andrew Lynch" Subject: RE: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute I am Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute. I found a Data Sheet but having trouble locating any Parts. I am hoping someone has one in their Parts Box Bob, I bought some a while back from UnicornElectronics.com. They are really cheap parts and it fixed my home brew S-100 bus terminator with no problems. Apparently those op-amps get worn out over time and just die occasionally, I guess. At least replacing the one on mine worked. Thanks and good luck! Andrew Thanks I must have missed them; I just rechecked and they are listed on page 12 of my Catalog. I am adding a Terminator circuit to a Board I had made up for my BYTE-8 S-100 box Thanks Bob From ploopster at gmail.com Thu Apr 17 09:06:12 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:06:12 -0400 Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <200804151849.34874.pat@computer-refuge.org> References: <68211.60983.qm@web65501.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <48052670.1060903@gmail.com> <200804151849.34874.pat@computer-refuge.org> Message-ID: <48075954.5080800@gmail.com> Patrick Finnegan wrote: > On Tuesday 15 April 2008, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >> Austin Pass wrote: >>> On 15 Apr 2008, at 18:34, scheefj at netscape.net wrote: >>>> Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be >>>> vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How >>>> fast would it be on a modern PC? >>>> >>>> Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master. >>>> >>>> I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon >>>> in the "good" ones. >>>> >>>> Jim >>> Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 cluster for >>> GFlops, Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - 480 >>> "special" VLSI chips if Wikipedia is to be believed. >> I don't know. One PC? It would be a very large PC. Pushing the >> boundaries of what a PC is. > > You can get a PC with 32 cores in it right now, which would handily beat > any stack of 30 POWER or POWER2 boxes many many times over. The custom > logic on MCA boards in Deep Blue is another matter completely. > > (Eight socket quad core opteron...) Which is a very large PC indeed. Far and away waaay above average. Peace... Sridhar From glen.slick at gmail.com Thu Apr 17 10:45:58 2008 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 08:45:58 -0700 Subject: Anyone know where to find software for an hp 16505a prototype analyzer? In-Reply-To: <47877.68.121.162.227.1208421205.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <1208366505.4827.3.camel@debian> <1e1fc3e90804162204v6e9fb73cw76700521eaff8c9@mail.gmail.com> <38550.68.121.162.227.1208409140.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <47877.68.121.162.227.1208421205.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90804170845j2ddcf373l3de44625058a98c8@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 1:33 AM, Eric Smith wrote: > > By the way, the 16505A software install/upgrade requires booting from > a floppy, so we need the image of that too. > Are you sure about that for the original 16505A software image install? I never had a copy of the original 16505A software so I don't know exactly how it is (re)installed. I know for the 16700 series you just boot directly from the CD and it installs the OS and the everything. I do have a "16505A CD INSTALL UTILITY" floppy disk for update A.01.40, floppy part number 16505-17571, and a "Agilent 16505A Prototype Analyzer System Software" CD A.01.40, part number 16505-14601, which does require the floppy, but the floppy was read by the already installed software to start the update from the CD. As far as I could determine the last time I looked at this CD there was no way to install the OS and software from the CD on a bare system, it was an update only. From rogpugh at mac.com Thu Apr 17 12:01:06 2008 From: rogpugh at mac.com (Roger Pugh) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:01:06 +0100 Subject: Atari SLM 804 In-Reply-To: <742045.86406.qm@web56207.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <742045.86406.qm@web56207.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <85e7f50f3fb6cd20998636f1c0bc827e@mac.com> It was i who advised the seller to ebay it, he was about to throw it away!! I cant advise on its condition but the seller is an enthusiastic modern computer repairer and just wants a good home for it. He cannot, however even lift it onto the table! roger On 17 Apr 2008, at 09:17, silvercreekvalley wrote: > There is an Atari SLM 804 on ebay (item 220224227774), > I'm not the seller, but as these are quite rare > thought > the list should know. The SLM 804 is an early Atari > laser printer using the ACSI (DMA style) interface. > > Ian. From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Thu Apr 17 12:21:35 2008 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:21:35 +0200 Subject: Medos source code recovered. Message-ID: <4807871F.4020202@bluewin.ch> Probably not too important, given that there are next to none running machines left, but I was able to recover source code for Medos 4.2, the operating system fot the ETH Lilith computer. No prizes for guessing that is coded in 100% Modula-2.... Jos Dreesen From cclist at sydex.com Thu Apr 17 13:04:00 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:04:00 -0700 Subject: Exabyte 8200 vs. 8205 Message-ID: <48072EA0.32544.57E44D8@cclist.sydex.com> For you 8mm tape fans out there, is the Exabyte 8205 drive simply an 8200 with different firmware--or are the electronics completely different? In other words, can I upgrade an 8200 to an 8205 without changing the PCB out? More of an item of curiosity now--I've got a bunch of Solaris tapes written on an 8205, but they're written in 8200 mode, so it doesn't really matter. Thanks, Chuck From eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 17 14:22:45 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:22:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Anyone know where to find software for an hp 16505a prototype analyzer? In-Reply-To: <1e1fc3e90804170845j2ddcf373l3de44625058a98c8@mail.gmail.com> References: <1208366505.4827.3.camel@debian> <1e1fc3e90804162204v6e9fb73cw76700521eaff8c9@mail.gmail.com> <38550.68.121.162.227.1208409140.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <47877.68.121.162.227.1208421205.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <1e1fc3e90804170845j2ddcf373l3de44625058a98c8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <42184.64.62.206.10.1208460165.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> I wrote: > By the way, the 16505A software install/upgrade requires booting from > a floppy, so we need the image of that too. Glen Slick wrote: > Are you sure about that for the original 16505A software image > install? It's what I've been told, but I don't have any independent confirmation. Eric From eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 17 14:26:11 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:26:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Exabyte 8200 vs. 8205 In-Reply-To: <48072EA0.32544.57E44D8@cclist.sydex.com> References: <48072EA0.32544.57E44D8@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <42201.64.62.206.10.1208460371.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > For you 8mm tape fans out there, is the Exabyte 8205 drive simply an > 8200 with different firmware--or are the electronics completely > different? They're not completely different, but they're not identical either. I doubt that 8205 firmware will work in an 8200. From Tim at Rikers.org Thu Apr 17 15:37:29 2008 From: Tim at Rikers.org (Tim Riker) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:37:29 -0600 Subject: Exabyte 8200 vs. 8205 In-Reply-To: <42201.64.62.206.10.1208460371.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <48072EA0.32544.57E44D8@cclist.sydex.com> <42201.64.62.206.10.1208460371.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <4807B509.2010303@Rikers.org> I was thinking the 8205 was a half height and the 8200 was a full height. -- Tim Riker - http://Rikers.org/ - TimR at Debian.org Embedded Linux Technologist - http://eLinux.org/ BZFlag maintainer - http://BZFlag.org/ - for fun! ????????u poo? ??n??u??s ?no? u? 8-??n ?u???? s? From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 17 16:30:22 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:30:22 +0100 (BST) Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> from "Ethan Dicks" at Apr 16, 8 09:36:13 pm Message-ID: > The two faults I remember with VT220 terminals were dead 9636/9737 > EIA chips, and loss of horizontal hold. It was tough getting the > old EIA chips out to mount sockets (must have had heavy copper > inner layers on the mainboard PCB), but once that was done, those > were easy to fix. We only lost about one a year, anyway. The > video, I was never able to fix myself with what I knew then. Perhaps > I could fix it now. I've had to repair a few VT220s with no horizontal hold. It seems to be due to bad contact at the horizontal hold preset. Pull the case, note the positon of this preset, and turn it from end to end a few times, finally putting it back to the original postion. Power up and most likely the picture will be locked. If it is, put the case back on. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 17 16:33:14 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:33:14 +0100 (BST) Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <20080416230111.GA6707@usap.gov> from "Ethan Dicks" at Apr 16, 8 11:01:11 pm Message-ID: > That is an excellent technique, and I don't recall having real problems > lifting the pin from the Vcc or GND holes (signal pins are easy) - I > recall having problems getting the power through-holes clean enough to > install a socket. > > I think I had to resort to heating one side of the board and sucking the > solder from the other side - much easier with the board in a vise. Isn't that how you're supposed to do it? It's certainly how I clean out PCB holes if I need to add extra chips to a wave-soldered board (the most recent example being upgrading my 512K HP Integral memory PCB to 1M). -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 17 16:45:57 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:45:57 +0100 (BST) Subject: HP41 (was Chess) In-Reply-To: <253342.75314.qm@web65503.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Apr 16, 8 05:33:29 pm Message-ID: > > Mildly off-=thread, but there's a mini-chess (5*5 > > oard, each player has > > king, queen, bishop, knight, rook and 5 pawns, no > > castling, no en passant > > capture) for the HP41 calculator (!). I think it > > meeds a CV (or a C with > > 3 RAM moudles?) and will print the board on the HP41 > > thermal printer. > > It's hardly a good player, but it's impressive (to > > me) that it could be > > done at all). > > I vaguely remember the 41 coming in different models > (*C, *CV), so I assume that's what you're referring > to. Pity I didn't buy one back in the day. Yes. THe original HP41 was the HP41C (C = Continuous Memory -- that is, the memory contents are preserved when you turn the machine off). It has 64 'registers' of memory, 1 'register' being 7 Bytes (don't ask...) All HP41s have 4 module sockets, and one module available for the 41C was a memory module containing another 64 registers of RAM. You could plug 4 of those into the HP41C, but of course you then had no spare sockets for ROMs or peripherals. Later on there was a 'quad memory module' which added 256 registers, using only 1 socket. You could only plug one of those in (so you were limited to the same total memory), but of course you had 3 sockets empty if you sued that. The HP41CV ('V' = 5 in roamn numerals) was effectively a 41C with a quad memory module built-in (and thys 5 times the memory of a C). You couldn't add any more RAM to this machine [1] but of course you had 4 empty sockets for ROMs and peripherals [1] Later on there was something called 'Extended Memory Modules'. These appeared to the user ad a file-structured device. There was an extended functions/memory moduel, which added the commands needed to access this memory (and other useful commands as well) along with some extended memory. You could add 2 further extended memory modules. This would work in any HP41 machine. Fianlly there was the HP41CX. This was an HP41CV with an extended functions/memory module uilt in (you could add the 2 extra extended memory modules in the sockets if you wanted them), a time module built in (real time clock, alarms, stopwatch) and some extra functions not available on any other HP41 or module. All these machines exist in the original 'Fullnut' construction (seaprate logic PCB connected to the keyoard/display by zebrastrip-like connectors) and the later 'halfnut' construction (everything on one PCB. SOme enthusiasts i nthe user groups did some very non-HP things. Like putting 2 memory modules, or 2 extended memory modules, into one casing, thus saving a socket. Or making a 'port extender' -- a unit that allowed several physical modules to be connected to one socket on the HP41. THere were many restrictions on what you could and could not do, which is one reason HP never sold such a unit (although the HP41 service manual mentions it at one point). IMHO these machines are classic computers. They're over 10 years old, they have a microcomputer-like architecture. They handle text as well as numbers. ANd they'll link to peripherals -- disk drives, tape drives, printers, plotters, RS232 interfaces, HPIB interfaces, GPIO interfaces, video display interfaces, data loggers, and so on. The machines are not rare in my experience. But fiding some of the add-ons is non-trivial. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 17 16:55:16 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:55:16 +0100 (BST) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <45813.68.121.162.227.1208413126.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> from "Eric Smith" at Apr 16, 8 11:18:46 pm Message-ID: > > This would seem to preclude using a standard floppy drive. > > Depending on the range of speeds the Victor used, it might be possible > to replace the motor control circuit on a standard floppy drive. The floppy drives in my Sirius are Tandon TM100 _chassis_ with the standard heads. stepper, track 0 switch, write protect sensor, etc. IIRC there is no index sensor. I don't know how many TPI the drives are designed for, they are single head, but the control PCB is designed for 2 heads per drive, so clearly a double-sided version was planned There is no stnadard Tandon logic board. Instead there's a Sirius board on top of the deives. The little 0.1" molex connectors from the various drive components connect to this, there's a 50 way ribbon cable down to the mainboard, and a power connector. AFAIK the spindle motor is the stnadard one, but obviously with some special control circuitry on the controller board (whcih includes an 8048 microcontroller , a couple of 8 bit DACs ad a coupleof LM2917 tacho ICs. The stepper motor driver circuitry seems to have been designed to use either 5 wire unipolar motors (Tandon) or 4 wire bipolar motors (MPI, Micropolis, etc). So unlike the Commodore drive units (Which this has some similarlites to, of course), it appears there aren't 2 versions of the controller board for different drives (the CBM 8050, for example, had 2 versions of the analogue board to cater for different types of stepper motor). I don't know if there was a ROM change for different steppers on the Sirius, though. To get back to the origianl comment, I see no problem in _repairing_ the original drives using Tandon parts. Said drives are very easy to work on, and the parts are common. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Thu Apr 17 17:21:34 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:21:34 +0100 (BST) Subject: Replacement for QP1008 (HP9816 PSU) In-Reply-To: <000f01c8a089$0b0aa5b0$0501a8c0@xp1800> from "Rik" at Apr 17, 8 02:46:17 pm Message-ID: > It's a 256kB processorboard, but I have a 2M Ram board with it. I'll include the notes I made on upgrading my 9816, but quite how you set the switches if you have 2M RAM boaurd (which AFIAK HP never made) I don't know. > I also have a 'secondary processorboard' with a 68020 and 68882 at 25Mhz > with 4M on it from Newport Digital. I'e never seen one of those (and thus can't help with schematics), but it sounds rather nice! > I got the small keyboard and have to share it with my 220 so if somebody has > a spare I'm in for it. Well, there's no microcontroller in the _keyboard_ (there is one on the processor board in the mahcine, talking to the keyboard connector), so I suppose it would be possible to make some kind of interface to another keyboard. The interface is quite simple, after all. > I like the machine also because it's a very compact design, and takes not > much deskspace. It's a very neat deisgn. I'm undecided as to whether I prefer this machine or the 9817, which has a 68010 processor, MMU and 6 DIO slots in an 'HP shoebox' case. It has an exernal composite monitor of course and an HP-HIL keyboard. Interestingly, the CPU boards of the 9816 and 9817 are the same size, and have very similar connecotr pinouts (the main difference being the audio, but there are links to correct this). It appears you could make a 9816 with a 9817 processor board or vice versa... My 9817 has the higher-resolution video board, which uses a special monitor, actually a Samsung chassis. And that is not pleasant to work on... Anyway, here are the memroy upgrade notes : Upgrading a 9816 to 1M RAM on the processor board ------------------------------------------------- These instructions assume you're starting with a 256K processor board, that is one with 32 4164 DRAMs fitted. Firslty remove the processor board. To do this, disconnect all cables from the rear of the 9816, then remove the DIO slot cover plate (or a DIO board witu an external connector). Remove any DIO boards in the slots -- memory voards will need to have their addresses chaged after this modification. Release the 2 quarter-turn fasteners on the rear of the machine and free the top cover from the clips under the back edge of the machine. Slide the cover rearwards, lift it off, and unplug the fan cable from the monitor PCB. Pull the processor board -- at the very bottom of the machine -- rearwards, unclip the earth wire fromthe faston tab on the RS232 connector. Slide the processor board all the way out. Now to upgrade the RAM. Desolder all 32 DRAMs from the board. These are in 2 rows at the very front edge. Leave the clock oscillator can, reset-circuit transsitor array, and resistor pack in place. Clear out the pads for U122 (to the right of the rear row of DRAMs) and R47 (leftmost resistor in the block of 3 resisotrs to the left of the ROMs) At this stage both of those locations should be empty. Fit 32 41256 (256K*1) DRAMs in place of the 64K ones that were just removed. Fit a 74F158 at U122 and a 33 Ohm resistor at R47 Cut J11 and J12 (in front of the DIP switch array). Cut J8 1-2 and link 2-3 (this likn is in fornt of U34, near the ROMs). Turn off all sections of SW3 (frontmost DIP switch). Sections 5-7 _must_ be off or the RMA will be diabled, sections 1-4 set the address of the RAM. It's simplest to have them all off, which makes the processor board RAM appear at the top of the memory map, then to address all other boards following the HP instructions, regarding the processor board RAM as a 1M board set to '0'. Refit the processor board, conencting the ground wire. Plug in the mains cable and power up. The screen should report a little under 1M free. If all appeears to be working, switch the unit off, unplug the mains cable, and refit the covers, DIO board(s) and cables. -tony From andreww591 at gmail.com Thu Apr 17 17:26:21 2008 From: andreww591 at gmail.com (Andrew Warkentin) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:26:21 -0600 Subject: Medos source code recovered. In-Reply-To: <4807871F.4020202@bluewin.ch> References: <4807871F.4020202@bluewin.ch> Message-ID: <4807CE8D.3040104@gmail.com> Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel wrote: > > Probably not too important, given that there are next to none running > machines left, but I was able to recover source code for Medos 4.2, > the operating system fot the ETH Lilith computer. > > No prizes for guessing that is coded in 100% Modula-2.... Maybe you should post it somewhere. If there's enough documentation on the hardware, someone could probably write an emulator. From coredump at gifford.co.uk Thu Apr 17 18:34:42 2008 From: coredump at gifford.co.uk (John Honniball) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:34:42 +0100 Subject: Exabyte 8200 vs. 8205 In-Reply-To: <4807B509.2010303@Rikers.org> References: <48072EA0.32544.57E44D8@cclist.sydex.com> <42201.64.62.206.10.1208460371.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <4807B509.2010303@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <4807DE92.2090806@gifford.co.uk> Tim Riker wrote: > I was thinking the 8205 was a half height and the 8200 was a full height. I think that's correct -- we used both types on a sonar system that I worked on (1995-1998). We had a special "code load tape" that would make an 8205 behave like an 8200, that is, not use the higher density recording modes. Sort of a firmware downgrade. The tape had to be written on an 8205 using a special cable plugged in to a port on the back of the drive. It loads as soon as you put it in the drive, then ejects, so you can't just copy it! The 8205 is definately half-height and the 8200 full-height, but there are other differences too. -- John Honniball coredump at gifford.co.uk From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Thu Apr 17 18:56:06 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:56:06 +0000 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: References: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> Message-ID: <20080417235606.GA4401@usap.gov> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:30:22PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > I've had to repair a few VT220s with no horizontal hold. It seems to be > due to bad contact at the horizontal hold preset. Pull the case, note the > positon of this preset, and turn it from end to end a few times, finally > putting it back to the original postion. Power up and most likely the > picture will be locked. If it is, put the case back on. I'll certainly give that a try the next time I have a VT220 flake out on me. Thanks for the tip. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 17-Apr-2008 at 23:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -76.5 F (-60.3 C) Windchill -110.5 F (-79.1 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 8.5 kts Grid 106 Barometer 680.2 mb (10621 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Thu Apr 17 18:58:42 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:58:42 +0000 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: References: <20080416230111.GA6707@usap.gov> Message-ID: <20080417235842.GB4401@usap.gov> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:33:14PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > > I think I had to resort to heating one side of the board and sucking the > > solder from the other side - much easier with the board in a vise. > > Isn't that how you're supposed to do it? It's certainly how I clean out > PCB holes if I need to add extra chips to a wave-soldered board. For non-difficult vias, I typically apply heat and suction from the same side - less juggling. I am accustomed to good results with this technique (and can commonly recover intact parts from intact boards, if that's the goal, like the time I extracted an IM6120 from a DecMate III board - I wanted _both_ to survive so I could mount a socket and replace the CPU later). I find I only have to do the double-sided technique with tiny vias or vias that are tied to inner fill layers (Vcc and GND, typically). -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 17-Apr-2008 at 23:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -76.5 F (-60.3 C) Windchill -110.5 F (-79.1 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 8.5 kts Grid 106 Barometer 680.2 mb (10621 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From tiggerlasv at aim.com Thu Apr 17 21:22:52 2008 From: tiggerlasv at aim.com (tiggerlasv at aim.com) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:22:52 -0400 Subject: Exabyte 8200 vs. 8205 Message-ID: <8CA6F123CF51D6F-F88-54AB@webmail-ne09.sysops.aol.com> Exabyte (now Tandberg Data) still has firmware images for the various drives that support firmware updates. I went there, and grabbed some images for the 8505XLS, in order to fool it into thinking it is an 8200. Be warned: The "EXPERT FOR DOS" utility, for updating firmware has a glitch in it which may leave you with an unuseable drive, if you choose the wrong update the first time around. The program greys-out the "Firmware update" button on drives that don't support firmware updates, such as the 8200. So, if you flash your 8505 with 8200 compatability firmware, EXPERT FOR DOS will read your drive as an 8200, and won't let you re-flash the firmware a second time ! EXPERT will politely show you the HARDWARE model number of your drive to be an 8505, but relies on the ID string that the drive returns, to determine if your drive is a model that supports flashing. A very stupid oversight on their part. So now I have an 8505, that is "sort of" flashed as an 8200, but not with the features I need. What's that you say? Simply re-flash the firmware, using the "special cable" that connects to the back of the drive? Easy enough if you have a 4-pin connector on the back. It's standard RS232. Of course, I have to have the older 3-pin model, which is TTL, and needs a leveling adapter. . . It's cheaper and easier for me to buy a different drive, than it is to assemble the required programming to fix the glitch. T From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Apr 17 21:50:12 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:50:12 -0600 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <4805233F.2010202@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <48080C64.6020202@jetnet.ab.ca> Dave McGuire wrote: > Ben, what are you talking about? Exactly what X-based terminal > program *doesn't* (or can't) give you an 80x24 screen?? I require a third opion: You can read the screen. I am not a fan of tiny fonts, reading glasses is a must for me. > -Dave > From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Apr 17 22:01:55 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:01:55 -0600 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute In-Reply-To: <480692D4.31449.31DB052@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> <480692D4.31449.31DB052@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <48080F23.80400@jetnet.ab.ca> Chuck Guzis wrote: >> Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:33:41 -0800 >> From: Brent Hilpert > >> What's the app?, does it really have special requirements? So many op-amp >> types have been produced over the years. Perhaps I exagerrate, but they >> seem like transistors in that a dozen modern types could cover >> substitution for the entire range of types. > > The audio folks get very picky about brands of op-amps and swear > there are audible differences between brands of the same op-amp. > > My response to those who say "just listen, you can tell" is usually > "What?" I think it more of the case 10 cents for the cheap part, $1.00 for the real part. Guess where the $proft$ goes ... Bean Counters. > Cheers, > Chuck From bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca Thu Apr 17 22:05:07 2008 From: bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca (woodelf) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:05:07 -0600 Subject: Looking for a LM4250H 8 Pin DIP or A real good substitute In-Reply-To: <48070FDB.84825E4@cs.ubc.ca> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1W091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> <480692D4.31449.31DB052@cclist.sydex.com> <48070FDB.84825E4@cs.ubc.ca> Message-ID: <48080FE3.6040505@jetnet.ab.ca> Brent Hilpert wrote: > I didn't know they had condescended to tolerate op-amps in the signal path, or > do they use them as the error amps in regulators for tube filaments? In my case, a good op amp in my CD player, Simple RC filtering for my filaments. I beleve in less feedback the better. From steerex at ccvn.com Thu Apr 17 09:31:54 2008 From: steerex at ccvn.com (Steve Robertson) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:31:54 -0400 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> References: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> Message-ID: <1208442714.4327.18.camel@bart> > The two faults I remember with VT220 terminals were dead 9636/9737 > EIA chips, and loss of horizontal hold. It was tough getting the > old EIA chips out to mount sockets (must have had heavy copper > inner layers on the mainboard PCB), but once that was done, those > were easy to fix. We only lost about one a year, anyway. The > video, I was never able to fix myself with what I knew then. Perhaps > I could fix it now. > > I don't think we ever had a total loss of video on any model of > terminal, mostly just the faults I described. Hardly scientific, > but it was a sample size of several dozen terminals, in operation > for at least 10 years. > > -ethan Hey, Whatever the brand or model, I absolutely must have a terminal with a "green screen". I don't know if other members have this problem but, it really strains my eyes to read an amber or white CRT. A few years ago bought some "Versys" terminals for about $5 each. I believe they are a LinkSys clone. They have proved to be excellent. The screens are bright, the fonts are sharp and very readable. The only repairs I've made is to replace some 1488s and 1489s. I think that's because of a ground loop problem in my old house. The computer was in one room, the terminal(s) in another. Whatever terminal you use, it should have VT100 emulation. It seems like most classic OS's and applications will have support for the VT100. -- Steve Robertson steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com From jws at jwsss.com Thu Apr 17 17:32:42 2008 From: jws at jwsss.com (jim s) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:32:42 -0700 Subject: Exabyte 8200 vs. 8205 In-Reply-To: <4807B509.2010303@Rikers.org> References: <48072EA0.32544.57E44D8@cclist.sydex.com> <42201.64.62.206.10.1208460371.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <4807B509.2010303@Rikers.org> Message-ID: <4807D00A.2090706@jwsss.com> The 8205's I have are. Arent there also 8505's too? The biggest problem with exabyte was that they seemed to license bunches of customized versions of their firmware. If you bought an OEM drive you got a pretty vanilla unit, but some of the drives in such as IBM and some mainframe devices I have had custom firmwares which had to be duplicated into the drives to make them work properly. Later versions of AIX didn't care, but some of the earlier versions would not talk to the non IBM version of the exabyte properly. It took over a year in the mid 80's time frame for them to get both AIX and the tape drives they built with their badge to work with our software. The main problems were unreliable tape mark and end of tape behavior. It would miss tape marks all the times when we would read the tapes back, and frequently the end of tape would miss records and tape marks as well. We did not use the tapes with a preformatted capacity but relied on finding the EOT when writing to completely fill the tape. So the latter problem with EOT errors made things pretty miserable. Jim Tim Riker wrote: > I was thinking the 8205 was a half height and the 8200 was a full height. -- ********************************** * * note my email address is changing to jws at jwsss.com * ********************************** From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Thu Apr 17 19:03:30 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:03:30 -0700 (PDT) Subject: HP41 (was Chess) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <854532.55682.qm@web65514.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> the gentleman who sold me a pair of NEC APC's kept what I think was a 28 (28c?) next to his *drafting* appliance (he was an architect). Whatever the model was, it had a green nixy tube display (probably common amongst early HP stuff). I tried to get him to sell me it, but no dice. He loved the thing too much. He originally hailed from England by the way. Having a 41* would be nice I guess, but having a 49G already would probably render the 41 as a display piece. And I have yet to plum the depths of it's capabilities (buggy firmware - the thing locks up for a short time quite frequently). No doubt the 41 is a vintage piece though. You could even probably add later models like the 10s, 48's. I bought a 10s in 1990, and I doubt it was brand spanking new then. I wouldn't mind having a 48GX though. I have dreams of finding one still in the original package. I think something like that could fetch upwards of 600$ on ePay. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Apr 18 01:56:49 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 07:56:49 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <48080C64.6020202@jetnet.ab.ca> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <4805233F.2010202@jetnet.ab.ca> <48080C64.6020202@jetnet.ab.ca> Message-ID: <1208501809.30197.33.camel@elric> On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 20:50 -0600, woodelf wrote: > Dave McGuire wrote: > > > Ben, what are you talking about? Exactly what X-based terminal > > program *doesn't* (or can't) give you an 80x24 screen?? > > I require a third opion: You can read the screen. > I am not a fan of tiny fonts, reading glasses is a must for me. Turn the font size up then. It's very, very simple. I often marvel at the mentality of people who are prepared to scour the earth for an obscure part to repair one of three remaining obscure computers, but throw their hands up in horror when asked to go Edit->Profile->Font Size. Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Apr 18 02:29:21 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:29:21 +0100 Subject: Exabyte 8200 vs. 8205 In-Reply-To: <8CA6F123CF51D6F-F88-54AB@webmail-ne09.sysops.aol.com> References: <8CA6F123CF51D6F-F88-54AB@webmail-ne09.sysops.aol.com> Message-ID: <1208503762.30197.46.camel@elric> On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 22:22 -0400, tiggerlasv at aim.com wrote: > What's that you say? Simply re-flash the firmware, using > the "special cable" that connects to the back of the drive? > > Easy enough if you have a 4-pin connector on the back. > It's standard RS232. > > Of course, I have to have the older 3-pin model, > which is TTL, and needs a leveling adapter. . . Two options. No, three actually. 1) get a single-chip RS232-to-TTL converter like a MAX232 2) (the third one I thought of) get an el-cheapo USB GPS. These have a very handy little USB-to-TTL serial interface in the screwed-together blob in the cable. The GPS speaks TTL and the CP2102 interface turns it into a USB serial port. 3) Get a serial card. Break TXD and RXD out from the UART. Bring it out to a socket. (I did this, and changed the 14. crystal for a 16MHz crystal so I could make a 62500-baud link to talk to a synthesizer display). Gordon From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Apr 18 02:38:46 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:38:46 +0100 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1208504326.30197.55.camel@elric> On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 22:30 +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > > The two faults I remember with VT220 terminals were dead 9636/9737 > > EIA chips, and loss of horizontal hold. It was tough getting the > > old EIA chips out to mount sockets (must have had heavy copper > > inner layers on the mainboard PCB), but once that was done, those > > were easy to fix. We only lost about one a year, anyway. The > > video, I was never able to fix myself with what I knew then. Perhaps > > I could fix it now. > > I've had to repair a few VT220s with no horizontal hold. It seems to be > due to bad contact at the horizontal hold preset. Pull the case, note the > positon of this preset, and turn it from end to end a few times, finally > putting it back to the original postion. Power up and most likely the > picture will be locked. If it is, put the case back on. me too I gave them a scoosh of pot cleaner and worked them backwards and forwards before returning to approximately the original position. They always worked for years after that. Same goes for the DECMate monitors (VR201?). They're nearly the same shape and have nearly the same monitor chassis. Strange that... ;-) Gordon From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Fri Apr 18 08:12:25 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:12:25 +0000 Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <1208442714.4327.18.camel@bart> References: <20080416213613.GA28082@usap.gov> <1208442714.4327.18.camel@bart> Message-ID: <20080418131225.GA10643@usap.gov> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:31:54AM -0400, Steve Robertson wrote: > Whatever terminal you use, it should have VT100 emulation. It seems like > most classic OS's and applications will have support for the VT100. I mostly agree. The one large exception is if you fiddle with PDP-8s. The 'vtedit' macro for TECO expects a VT52, and does *not* work with VT220s in VT52 mode. Nearly everything else I've played with expect either an ASR-33 (i.e., no cursor positioning), or a VT100. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 18-Apr-2008 at 13:10 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -83.9 F (-64.4 C) Windchill -118.4 F (-83.6 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 7.9 kts Grid 87 Barometer 678.2 mb (10696 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From bpope at wordstock.com Fri Apr 18 10:15:23 2008 From: bpope at wordstock.com (Bryan Pope) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:15:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Chess In-Reply-To: <307435.85544.qm@web65503.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20080418151524.0CC6956F8A@mail.wordstock.com> And thusly were the wise words spake by Chris M > > > --- Ade Vickers > wrote: > > > Amazing how primitive the graphics look now, > > compared to how advanced they > > seemed at the time. > > What was that whacked out version for the pc called, > BattleChess, where the queen got devoured by the rook ... > Don't forget Archon, where you also had to fight the other playing piece before you could take it.. :) Cheers, Bryan P.S. I also loved Electronic Art's awesome packaging back then! From slawmaster at gmail.com Fri Apr 18 10:29:32 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 08:29:32 -0700 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <1208501809.30197.33.camel@elric> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <4805233F.2010202@jetnet.ab.ca> <48080C64.6020202@jetnet.ab.ca> <1208501809.30197.33.camel@elric> Message-ID: <7d3530220804180829m2e743defq6b1114e54100c14e@mail.gmail.com> On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 11:56 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > > On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 20:50 -0600, woodelf wrote: > > Dave McGuire wrote: > > > > > Ben, what are you talking about? Exactly what X-based terminal > > > program *doesn't* (or can't) give you an 80x24 screen?? > > > > I require a third opion: You can read the screen. > > I am not a fan of tiny fonts, reading glasses is a must for me. > > Turn the font size up then. It's very, very simple. > > I often marvel at the mentality of people who are prepared to scour the > earth for an obscure part to repair one of three remaining obscure > computers, but throw their hands up in horror when asked to go > Edit->Profile->Font Size. > Is this a Konsole user which I see before me? -- Macbeth Personally, I just hold Ctrl and right-click in the xterm :) I usually leave the fonts on the default, unless I want to play Nethack. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From cclist at sydex.com Fri Apr 18 13:06:38 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:06:38 -0700 Subject: Exabyte 8200 vs. 8205 In-Reply-To: <200804181700.m3IH0NMR011439@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804181700.m3IH0NMR011439@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <480880BE.291.389A2B@cclist.sydex.com> Ah, no biggie--I have other Exabyte drives that will handle 8205 tapes. The 8200 that I have isn't a bare drive--it's in a "Contemporary Cybernetics" external box, complete with linear PSU and 2-line LCD display. The display seems to be controlled by what looks to be an 8051 connected via a 3-wire cable to the drive. It's interesting--lets you know, for example, how much tape you have left as you're writing, how many MB you've written and the current operation. However, on the subject of compression and 8200/8500 drives, I found the following thread on the Sun Managers list from 1992: http://www.sunmanagers.org/archives/1992/0017.html which mentions external third-party compression modules for the Exabytes. This is the first time I've heard of this--does anyone know anything about it? Nothing like being 16 years behind the time. :) Cheers, Chuck From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Fri Apr 18 13:19:19 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:19:19 +0100 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804180829m2e743defq6b1114e54100c14e@mail.gmail.com> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804051504o68572aa2v9a4c6f6762a01f55@mail.gmail.com> <47FA6211.4080102@gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <4805233F.2010202@jetnet.ab.ca> <48080C64.6020202@jetnet.ab.ca> <1208501809.30197.33.camel@elric> <7d3530220804180829m2e743defq6b1114e54100c14e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1208542759.30197.59.camel@elric> On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 08:29 -0700, John Floren wrote: > On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 11:56 PM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > > > > On Thu, 2008-04-17 at 20:50 -0600, woodelf wrote: > > > Dave McGuire wrote: > > > > > > > Ben, what are you talking about? Exactly what X-based terminal > > > > program *doesn't* (or can't) give you an 80x24 screen?? > > > > > > I require a third opion: You can read the screen. > > > I am not a fan of tiny fonts, reading glasses is a must for me. > > > > Turn the font size up then. It's very, very simple. > > > > I often marvel at the mentality of people who are prepared to scour the > > earth for an obscure part to repair one of three remaining obscure > > computers, but throw their hands up in horror when asked to go > > Edit->Profile->Font Size. > > > > Is this a Konsole user which I see before me? -- Macbeth Actually gnome-terminal, but I believe Konsole works the same way. It's a pretty standard thing in modern terminal emulators, at least on Unixy systems. > Personally, I just hold Ctrl and right-click in the xterm :) I usually > leave the fonts on the default, unless I want to play Nethack. That works too... Gordon From aek at bitsavers.org Fri Apr 18 13:44:06 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:44:06 -0700 Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? Message-ID: <4808EBF6.3010703@bitsavers.org> Has anyone ever documented what the encoding and disk format is on these floppies? From joachim.thiemann at gmail.com Fri Apr 18 13:44:27 2008 From: joachim.thiemann at gmail.com (Joachim Thiemann) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:44:27 -0400 Subject: The Unix Haters' Handbook In-Reply-To: <1208542759.30197.59.camel@elric> References: <575131af0804051441m58731d89k9a4530d6ee677e03@mail.gmail.com> <7d3530220804071115y640ab3dbt4b76c00e5c49c72f@mail.gmail.com> <4804D2B5.6070802@jetnet.ab.ca> <200804151732.NAA15868@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> <4805233F.2010202@jetnet.ab.ca> <48080C64.6020202@jetnet.ab.ca> <1208501809.30197.33.camel@elric> <7d3530220804180829m2e743defq6b1114e54100c14e@mail.gmail.com> <1208542759.30197.59.camel@elric> Message-ID: <4affc5e0804181144h7c940bc6m3654a0a01a0fd3af@mail.gmail.com> > > > > I require a third opion: You can read the screen. > > > > I am not a fan of tiny fonts, reading glasses is a must for me. Mac users can always use glterminal for kicks :-) http://ldopa.net/2006/01/14/glterminal/ On linux & friends, if you have certain bits of xscreensaver installed, try /usr/lib/xscreensaver/phosphor -program bash -scale 2 -delay 1 (I think there is a way to do this with the apple2 screensaver as well...) Joe. From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Apr 18 15:55:55 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:55:55 +0100 (BST) Subject: A good real terminal In-Reply-To: <20080417235842.GB4401@usap.gov> from "Ethan Dicks" at Apr 17, 8 11:58:42 pm Message-ID: > > On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:33:14PM +0100, Tony Duell wrote: > > > I think I had to resort to heating one side of the board and sucking the > > > solder from the other side - much easier with the board in a vise. > > > > Isn't that how you're supposed to do it? It's certainly how I clean out > > PCB holes if I need to add extra chips to a wave-soldered board. > > For non-difficult vias, I typically apply heat and suction from the > same side - less juggling. I am accustomed to good results with this > technique (and can commonly recover intact parts from intact boards, > if that's the goal, like the time I extracted an IM6120 from a DecMate III > board - I wanted _both_ to survive so I could mount a socket and replace > the CPU later). Agreed my comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek last night. I routinely desolder parts from a PCB (using a solder sucker and iron on the same side) without damaging either. But if I'm cleaning out holes to add extra parts (e.g. memory upgrades, adding some option that wasn't presnet in my machine, whatever), then I normally heat from the 'solder' side and scuk on the 'component' side. I find it's easier, and more importantly involves less heating of the board, so less risk of damage. -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Apr 18 16:03:31 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:03:31 +0100 (BST) Subject: HP41 (was Chess) In-Reply-To: <854532.55682.qm@web65514.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> from "Chris M" at Apr 17, 8 05:03:30 pm Message-ID: > > the gentleman who sold me a pair of NEC APC's kept > what I think was a 28 (28c?) next to his *drafting* > appliance (he was an architect). Whatever the model > was, it had a green nixy tube display (probably common Whatever it was, that description does not match the 28C. The 28C is a pocket mackine that opens like a book with a keyoard in each half. And a 4-line LCD display in the right-hand half. The 28C has the destiction of being HP's first user RPL machine, and the first machine to do symbollic (as opposed to purely numerical) operations. IT's a fairly common machine (as is the 28S, which has moro memory). No HP calculator ever had a vacuum fluorescent display. And no HP calculator eeer used nixie tubes. There was one model -- the HP9815 -- which used a gas discharage Panaplex display. Most other older models (desktop and handheld) used red LEDs. The only machine I can think of with a green display was the 9100 family, which used a CRT. The digits were drawn using a 7-segment font, vector, not raster, scanned. The HP9100 is a very interesting machine what I've rambled on about in the past... > amongst early HP stuff). I tried to get him to sell me > it, but no dice. He loved the thing too much. He > originally hailed from England by the way. > > Having a 41* would be nice I guess, but having a 49G > already would probably render the 41 as a display > piece. And I have yet to plum the depths of it's Actually, I disagree. I have a 49G -- one of the worst purchases I ever made, and the only time I wrote a letter of complaint to HP about one of their products (and for the record, they never bothered to reply...). I use it from time to time, but I use my 41s (and for that matter 16C) a lot more. The 41 has a much wider range of useful peripherals. > capabilities (buggy firmware - the thing locks up for > a short time quite frequently). > > No doubt the 41 is a vintage piece though. You could > even probably add later models like the 10s, 48's. I > bought a 10s in 1990, and I doubt it was brand > spanking new then. I wouldn't mind having a 48GX > though. I have dreams of finding one still in the > original package. I think something like that could > fetch upwards of 600$ on ePay. I don;t see the point of the original box. You;'d lower the vlaue as soon as you ripped off the shrinkwrap and started to use it, and what the heck's the point of a calculator you don't use? If you want a 48GX to use, they're not that rare... -tony From ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Fri Apr 18 16:18:23 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:18:23 +0100 (BST) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <4808EBF6.3010703@bitsavers.org> from "Al Kossow" at Apr 18, 8 11:44:06 am Message-ID: > > Has anyone ever documented what the encoding and disk format is on > these floppies? I haven't, but it's clearly GCR, and the encoder/decoder circuit is very similar ot that used in a Commodore disk drive (for example an 8050). I have no idea if the encoder ROM cotnents are the same. -tony From slawmaster at gmail.com Fri Apr 18 16:39:55 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:39:55 -0700 Subject: HP41 (was Chess) In-Reply-To: References: <854532.55682.qm@web65514.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804181439x541f7ekba019798e7e808c0@mail.gmail.com> On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Tony Duell wrote: > > No doubt the 41 is a vintage piece though. You could > > even probably add later models like the 10s, 48's. I > > bought a 10s in 1990, and I doubt it was brand > > spanking new then. I wouldn't mind having a 48GX > > though. I have dreams of finding one still in the > > original package. I think something like that could > > fetch upwards of 600$ on ePay. > > I don;t see the point of the original box. You;'d lower the vlaue as soon > as you ripped off the shrinkwrap and started to use it, and what the > heck's the point of a calculator you don't use? > > If you want a 48GX to use, they're not that rare... > I got a 48S on ebay for $35 or so and in my opinion the 48 series is great. I use it for all my engineering courses (fastest calculations in the class, everyone else has to fight those stupid TI-89 things). Although they look kinda nice, there's no reason to have a 48-anything unless you're going to use it, so just look for used, known-to-work calculators. John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From rogpugh at mac.com Fri Apr 18 16:52:28 2008 From: rogpugh at mac.com (Roger Pugh) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:52:28 +0100 Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <4808EBF6.3010703@bitsavers.org> References: <4808EBF6.3010703@bitsavers.org> Message-ID: <64f74adc38e2245dbd10661ec337067b@mac.com> I have a Victor vicky about, I'm sure the floppies are variable speed and that they prefer DSDD to DSHD disks. roger On 18 Apr 2008, at 19:44, Al Kossow wrote: > Has anyone ever documented what the encoding and disk format is on > these floppies? > > From ray at arachelian.com Fri Apr 18 18:12:41 2008 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:12:41 -0400 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? Message-ID: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? From cisin at xenosoft.com Fri Apr 18 18:34:53 2008 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:34:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <64f74adc38e2245dbd10661ec337067b@mac.com> References: <4808EBF6.3010703@bitsavers.org> <64f74adc38e2245dbd10661ec337067b@mac.com> Message-ID: <20080418163308.J13413@shell.lmi.net> On Fri, 18 Apr 2008, Roger Pugh wrote: > I have a Victor vicky about, I'm sure the floppies are variable speed > and that they prefer DSDD to DSHD disks. DO NOT USE DSHD (600 Oerstedt) disks with it. They may appear to work fine, but will typically not be readable within a few weeks. DSDD will work, but 2DD (double sided, double density 96tpi) are best for it. From ray at arachelian.com Fri Apr 18 18:39:13 2008 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:39:13 -0400 Subject: video - Turing's Cathedral Message-ID: <48093121.4020106@arachelian.com> I stumbled across this today, if you can get past the light stuttering, it's a fascinating watch. There are some notes here: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dyson05/dyson05_index.html If you want to download this, copy the url below and feed it into keepvid.com. :) http://youtube.com/watch?v=KRBR4W8ft2g&feature=user Added: April 18, 2008 (Less info) Google Tech Talks April, 9 2008 ABSTRACT New Light on the Dawn of Digital Computing, 1945-1958 The digital universe consists of two kinds of bits: differences in space and differences in time. Digital computers translate between these two forms of information--structure and sequence--according to definite rules. Sixty-three years ago, at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, John von Neumann and a small group of nonconformists launched a project to do this at electronic speed. The resulting architecture and coding has descended directly to almost all computers now in use. Von Neumann succeeded in jump-starting the computer revolution by bringing engineers into the den of the mathematicians, rather than by bringing mathematicians into a den of engineers. The stored-program computer, as conceived by Alan Turing and delivered by John von Neumann, broke the distinction between numbers that *mean* things and numbers that *do* things. Our universe would never be the same. With a mere 5 kilobytes of random access memory, von Neumann and colleagues tackled previously intractable problems ranging from thermonuclear explosions, stellar evolution, and long-range weather forecasting to cellular automata, genetic coding, and the origins of life. Programs were small enough to be completely debugged, but hardware could not be counted on to perform consistently from one kilocycle to the next. This situation is now reversed. Speaker: George Dyson Category: People & Blogs Tags: google techtalks techtalk engedu talk talks googletechtalks education From chris at mainecoon.com Fri Apr 18 18:43:20 2008 From: chris at mainecoon.com (Chris Kennedy) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 16:43:20 -0700 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> Message-ID: <48093218.9090306@mainecoon.com> Ray Arachelian wrote: > Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were built > from multiple MC68000's CPU's? I had the questionable fortune of working on a multiple 68000 machine of sorts; it consisted of multiple processor boards stuffed into a Q-bus machine. The 68000 side ran a (I am not making this up) multiuser PICK interpreter; the PDP-11 side ran code under RSX that essentially turned the PDP-11 into a disk I/O processor. Yeah, I was pretty hungry when I signed up for that one. -- Chris Kennedy chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP/AFA6KY 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 ray at arachelian.com Fri Apr 18 19:04:05 2008 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:04:05 -0400 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <48093218.9090306@mainecoon.com> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <48093218.9090306@mainecoon.com> Message-ID: <480936F5.6080409@arachelian.com> Chris Kennedy wrote: > I had the questionable fortune of working on a multiple 68000 machine > of sorts; it consisted of multiple processor boards stuffed into a > Q-bus machine. The 68000 side ran a (I am not making this up) > multiuser PICK interpreter; the PDP-11 side ran code under RSX that > essentially turned the PDP-11 into a disk I/O processor. > > Yeah, I was pretty hungry when I signed up for that one. > Wow. So was it one 68000 per user, or did it actually do proper multitasking? I'm sort of asking the original question because I'm ripping LisaEm apart into its components so that they may be usable in other emulation projects. One of is a CPU library based on Generator, so I was wondering if it's worthwhile to make the library capable of supporting multiple virtual 68000's. (The trade off is a loss in execution speed.) From chris at mainecoon.com Fri Apr 18 19:33:45 2008 From: chris at mainecoon.com (Chris Kennedy) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:33:45 -0700 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <480936F5.6080409@arachelian.com> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <48093218.9090306@mainecoon.com> <480936F5.6080409@arachelian.com> Message-ID: <48093DE9.6090401@mainecoon.com> Ray Arachelian wrote: > Wow. So was it one 68000 per user, or did it actually do proper > multitasking? Each board multitasked, but each board was also independent of the others, competing for bandwidth on the Qbus. Each board had two octarts and could support (in terms of connectivity at least) 16 serial devices. That would have been about 20 years ago. Man, time flies when you're having fun. -- Chris Kennedy chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP/AFA6KY 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 jws at jwsss.com Fri Apr 18 21:45:03 2008 From: jws at jwsss.com (jim s) Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:45:03 -0700 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <48093218.9090306@mainecoon.com> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <48093218.9090306@mainecoon.com> Message-ID: <48095CAF.9080002@jwsss.com> which pick company was that? Ultimate owned the Qbus and such, but never did a 68000 coprocessor for the qbus or any dec machine. Jim Chris Kennedy wrote: > Ray Arachelian wrote: > >> Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were >> built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? > > I had the questionable fortune of working on a multiple 68000 machine > of sorts; it consisted of multiple processor boards stuffed into a > Q-bus machine. The 68000 side ran a (I am not making this up) > multiuser PICK interpreter; the PDP-11 side ran code under RSX that > essentially turned the PDP-11 into a disk I/O processor. > > Yeah, I was pretty hungry when I signed up for that one. > -- ********************************** * * note my email address is changing to jws at jwsss.com * ********************************** From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Sat Apr 19 00:41:48 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:41:48 +0100 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFE9@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> I have recently restored a VAXStation 3100. The 200Mb drive was replaced by a 1.05Gb (that's the biggest boot drive size) I made up a cable to connect a colour monitor to the 15Way plug on the 3100. Switch on and it ran the diagnostics and gave the familiar three chevron prompt. T 75 reformats the drive. (takes forever) I used the second drive position to connect a RRD-42 CD drive and booted from my VAX -VMS hobbyists disk. I then loaded VAX-VMS 7.3. So far so good. It works just fine. Now for my ultimate goal; load and run DECWindows. I ran the install as per the manual (that's a book that tells you everything you don't need to know and nothing that you do). It completed. I then ran the IVP as per instructions. Its at this point that the book is a bit ambiguous. its not clear how to tell if the system is a work station or a server and how to start up DECWindows from a VMS $ prompt in either case. If anybody has installed and run DECWindows on a 3100 under VMS 7.3 I'd be very pleased hear how they did it from the point where DECWindows was installed. Rod Smallwood From arcarlini at iee.org Sat Apr 19 03:40:43 2008 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:40:43 +0100 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFE9@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <002d01c8a1f9$0f7da400$5b01a8c0@FLEXPC> Rod Smallwood wrote: > Switch on and it ran the diagnostics and gave the > familiar three chevron prompt. Did the dead sergeant come up on the monitor? If not then the switch at the back is set to be a VAXserver. > T 75 reformats the drive. (takes > forever) Not necessary (although apparently harmless, since you've done it :-)) > Its at this point that the book is a bit > ambiguous. its not clear how to tell if the system is a work station > or a server and That switch at the back. What does $ WRITE SYS$OUTPUT f$getsyi("hw_name") say? > how to start up DECWindows from a VMS $ prompt in either case. I _think_ that if you do nothing then DECwindows just starts (as long as it thinks this is a workstation). If you've defined the logical DECW$IGNORE_DECWINDOWS to TRUE then you'll need to start it manuall with @SYS$MANAGER:DECW$STARTUP.COM. Try running this manually from the $ prompt: it may tell you what's wrong. Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.2/1386 - Release Date: 18/04/2008 17:24 From ats at offog.org Sat Apr 19 04:07:52 2008 From: ats at offog.org (Adam Sampson) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:07:52 +0100 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> (Ray Arachelian's message of "Fri\, 18 Apr 2008 19\:12\:41 -0400") References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> Message-ID: Ray Arachelian writes: > Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were > built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? It might not be quite what you were thinking of, but grepping the MAME source code finds a few arcade game systems that used multiple 68000s -- for example, Sega's X-board, used in "After Burner II", has two 68000s and a Z80. -- Adam Sampson From davis at saw.net Sat Apr 19 06:38:51 2008 From: davis at saw.net (davis) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 03:38:51 -0800 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> Message-ID: <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> Ray Arachelian wrote: > Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were > built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? > > > In 1983, Metheus corp, did the classic 68k X 2 cpus to fix the double bus fault problem on their VLSI design workstation. I never could figure out how you could get the system into a double page data/code/stack fault in the exception handler, but it's a known problem. It just seemed like a lot of bad hardware and OS chicken shit/walk the line porting of BSD. I suspect the double 68K bus fault problem solution was a common Berkeley/USC grad hack. Metheus was killed by the 87 stock crash and poor hardware design and was purchased by ball computer in a fire sale. Jim. From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Sat Apr 19 05:57:10 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:57:10 +0000 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> Message-ID: <20080419105710.GA14858@usap.gov> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 03:38:51AM -0800, davis wrote: > Ray Arachelian wrote: > >Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were > >built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? > > > In 1983, Metheus corp, did the classic 68k X 2 cpus to fix the double > bus fault problem on their VLSI design workstation. > I never could figure out how you could get the system into a double page > data/code/stack fault in the exception handler, but it's a known > problem. It just seemed like a lot of bad hardware and OS chicken > shit/walk the line porting of BSD. > > I suspect the double 68K bus fault problem solution was a common > Berkeley/USC grad hack. I have a Perkin-Elmer workstation (7350?) that has a dual-68K bus-fault recovery design. It's running System III UNIX. We bought it, way back, as the cheapest way of getting a multi-user cross-development platform for our products after COMBOARDs. It has a console screen and keyboard, and four serial ports for dumb terminals. ISTR the disk is SASI (but there's probably a SASI<->ST506 converter buried in there somewhere). I _think_ it shipped with a 15MB disk, but mine had its disk replaced when it was still a full time development platform, so might have 20-30MB at present. The screen is mostly text (there might be some limited graphics capabilities), but has the curious feature of "soft buttons" built into the monitor's frame, so you apparently _have to_ use their monitor (it's not a generic sort of plug, either - perhaps a DB25 or DA15). It booted up the last time I turned it on. I tried to sell it at a hamfest a while back, but couldn't get an interest in it. Ah well... fun little box. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 19-Apr-2008 at 10:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -84.1 F (-64.5 C) Windchill -122.7 F (-85.9 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 10.1 kts Grid 10 Barometer 676.2 mb (10772 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From davis at saw.net Sat Apr 19 07:33:28 2008 From: davis at saw.net (davis) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 04:33:28 -0800 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <20080419105710.GA14858@usap.gov> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> <20080419105710.GA14858@usap.gov> Message-ID: <4809E698.40003@saw.net> Ethan Dicks wrote: > On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 03:38:51AM -0800, davis wrote: > >> Ray Arachelian wrote: >> >>> Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were >>> built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? >>> >>> >> In 1983, Metheus corp, did the classic 68k X 2 cpus to fix the double >> bus fault problem on their VLSI design workstation. >> I never could figure out how you could get the system into a double page >> data/code/stack fault in the exception handler, but it's a known >> problem. It just seemed like a lot of bad hardware and OS chicken >> shit/walk the line porting of BSD. >> >> I suspect the double 68K bus fault problem solution was a common >> Berkeley/USC grad hack. >> > > I have a Perkin-Elmer workstation (7350?) that has a dual-68K bus-fault > recovery design. It's running System III UNIX. We bought it, way back, > as the cheapest way of getting a multi-user cross-development platform > for our products after COMBOARDs. > > It has a console screen and keyboard, and four serial ports for dumb > terminals. ISTR the disk is SASI (but there's probably a SASI<->ST506 > converter buried in there somewhere). I _think_ it shipped with a 15MB > disk, but mine had its disk replaced when it was still a full time > development platform, so might have 20-30MB at present. > > The screen is mostly text (there might be some limited graphics capabilities), > but has the curious feature of "soft buttons" built into the monitor's > frame, so you apparently _have to_ use their monitor (it's not a generic > sort of plug, either - perhaps a DB25 or DA15). > > It booted up the last time I turned it on. I tried to sell it at a hamfest > a while back, but couldn't get an interest in it. > > Ah well... fun little box. > > -ethan > > Hi Ethan, Didn't HP have a 68K box that had buttons around the crt? Sort of a poor-man's touchpanel? totally Off-T: You replied before I sent the message. Are you playing with alien junk you found out at the site the Norwegians blew up? Unseasonable weather: It's still cold here(Goldendale Wa, USA) with low 20's at night and occasional snow. The cherry, pear and apple growers are probably going to get wiped out this year. Cheers, Jim From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Sat Apr 19 06:56:00 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:56:00 +0200 Subject: HP41 (was Chess) References: <854532.55682.qm@web65514.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> <7d3530220804181439x541f7ekba019798e7e808c0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <002101c8a214$568547c0$0501a8c0@xp1800> I've got several HP calculators but my favourit is the HP67 for normal calculations . I like of cause the LED display and it's a very handy machine small programs are no problem and the card reader is integrated. For solving and plotting graphics I find the HP48 an nice machine, but classic calculators just have more 'feeling'. I do have a 'mint' 48GX bought from the dutch marketplace called 'marktplaats' for 30,- euro's with new manuals just lucky I guess. >From the same list I bought my 97 and 91 for 40,- euro together with a lot HP41 stuff, that is what keeps things affordable. But other stuff I bought from epay and sometimes payed to much because of the love and adiction for vintage calculators and computers and having 'the maybe this is the lost one ever and I want it feeling' ;-) Sometimes I buy some stuff on a fleemarket and sell it on epay, nothing wrong with that I think because it is kepping the hobby affordable. And of cause there are the 'small' diamonds you get from friends and total strangers. One of my Compucorps was donated by a insurance salesman who used it for calculating morgages including the tape with the morgage program, jus because he heared I was collecting calculators. Rik ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Floren" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 11:39 PM Subject: Re: HP41 (was Chess) > On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Tony Duell > wrote: >> > No doubt the 41 is a vintage piece though. You could >> > even probably add later models like the 10s, 48's. I >> > bought a 10s in 1990, and I doubt it was brand >> > spanking new then. I wouldn't mind having a 48GX >> > though. I have dreams of finding one still in the >> > original package. I think something like that could >> > fetch upwards of 600$ on ePay. >> >> I don;t see the point of the original box. You;'d lower the vlaue as >> soon >> as you ripped off the shrinkwrap and started to use it, and what the >> heck's the point of a calculator you don't use? >> >> If you want a 48GX to use, they're not that rare... >> > > I got a 48S on ebay for $35 or so and in my opinion the 48 series is > great. I use it for all my engineering courses (fastest calculations > in the class, everyone else has to fight those stupid TI-89 things). > Although they look kinda nice, there's no reason to have a 48-anything > unless you're going to use it, so just look for used, known-to-work > calculators. > > John > -- > Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn > > From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Sat Apr 19 07:16:05 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:16:05 +0000 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <4809E698.40003@saw.net> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> <20080419105710.GA14858@usap.gov> <4809E698.40003@saw.net> Message-ID: <20080419121605.GB24970@usap.gov> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 04:33:28AM -0800, davis wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: > >I have a Perkin-Elmer workstation (7350?) that has a dual-68K bus-fault > >recovery design... running System III UNIX. > > > > (it) has the curious feature of "soft buttons" built into the monitor's > >frame... > > Didn't HP have a 68K box that had buttons around the crt? Sort of a > poor-man's touchpanel? Perhaps, but I'm not an HP expert. I _do_ recall an HP CRT with LEDs and phototransistors around the rim for a low-res touchscreen (32x32?) I have one of the screen bezels, but not the HP machine it goes with. Someday, I think about dusting it off and trying to get it to work, but I haven't managed to find the time yet. > totally Off-T: > You replied before I sent the message. Are you playing with alien junk > you found out at the site the Norwegians blew up? Shh.... ;-) -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 19-Apr-2008 at 12:10 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -82.7 F (-63.7 C) Windchill -118.0 F (-83.4 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 8.5 kts Grid 92 Barometer 676.1 mb (10776 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From cctech at vax-11.org Sat Apr 19 07:21:23 2008 From: cctech at vax-11.org (cctech at vax-11.org) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:21:23 -0600 (MDT) Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFE9@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFE9@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: There is a switch on the motherboard which determines if it is a vaxstation or microvax. The only difference is the microvax won't run decwindows. Sorry I don't have anymore information than that.... Clint From dr.emiel at xs4all.nl Sat Apr 19 07:23:28 2008 From: dr.emiel at xs4all.nl (Rik) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:23:28 +0200 Subject: HP thinkjet NIB on epay Message-ID: <002701c8a218$2faa1690$0501a8c0@xp1800> http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260231490209 Boxed thinkjets with I think good printhead cables. Rik From ray at arachelian.com Sat Apr 19 09:12:03 2008 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:12:03 -0400 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <4809E698.40003@saw.net> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> <20080419105710.GA14858@usap.gov> <4809E698.40003@saw.net> Message-ID: <4809FDB3.2070103@arachelian.com> >>> Ray Arachelian wrote: >>> >>>> Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were >>>> built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? >>>> Ok, so from the sounds of this thread, perhaps there is a need for multi--cpu support. I think I'll build the library as two libraries, perhaps controlled by a #define. From ray at arachelian.com Sat Apr 19 09:14:04 2008 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:14:04 -0400 Subject: Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Message-ID: <4809FE2C.3010006@arachelian.com> http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/ From an anonymous source close to the company, I've found myself in possession of the "Infocom Drive" ? a complete backup of Infocom's shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I've ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released /and unreleased/ game Infocom made. For obvious reasons, I can't share the whole Infocom Drive. But I /have to/ share some of the best parts. It's just /too good/. There are downloads of the Milliways game at the bottom of the web page, right before the comments. You'll need a Z-Machine interpreter to play them, as usual. From chris at mainecoon.com Sat Apr 19 09:37:56 2008 From: chris at mainecoon.com (Chris Kennedy) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:37:56 -0700 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <48095CAF.9080002@jwsss.com> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <48093218.9090306@mainecoon.com> <48095CAF.9080002@jwsss.com> Message-ID: <480A03C4.6080101@mainecoon.com> jim s wrote: > which pick company was that? I don't know the ultimate source for the pick interpreter itself. The project was commissioned by DEC through VMI; VMI designed and manufactured the boards and the glue code on both the 68000 and PDP11 side. The whole thing was stuffed into an sbox chassis designed for wall mounting. -- 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 mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA Sat Apr 19 10:02:59 2008 From: mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA (der Mouse) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:02:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> Message-ID: <200804191503.LAA21529@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> >> Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were >> built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? > In 1983, Metheus corp, did the classic 68k X 2 cpus to fix the double > bus fault problem on their VLSI design workstation. Were they 68000s, though? All the ones double-fault-fix machines I know of were, I think, using 68010s. /~\ 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 ethan.dicks at usap.gov Sat Apr 19 09:59:49 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:59:49 +0000 Subject: Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy In-Reply-To: <4809FE2C.3010006@arachelian.com> References: <4809FE2C.3010006@arachelian.com> Message-ID: <20080419145949.GA16716@usap.gov> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 10:14:04AM -0400, Ray Arachelian wrote: > http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/ > > From an anonymous source close to the company, I've found myself in > possession of the "Infocom Drive" ? a complete backup of Infocom's > shared network drive from 1989... and the source code and > game files for every released /and unreleased/ game Infocom made. > > > > There are downloads of the Milliways game at the bottom of the web page, > right before the comments. You'll need a Z-Machine interpreter to play > them, as usual. I noodled around in the game files with a bit (with 'jzip' for UNIX). What I would _really_ like to see is the ancient source code (and if the compilers survived on that disk). -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 19-Apr-2008 at 14:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -85.4 F (-65.2 C) Windchill -112.9 F (-80.5 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 5.0 kts Grid 77 Barometer 675.9 mb (10783 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com Sat Apr 19 11:17:32 2008 From: mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:17:32 -0600 Subject: IBM 6094 Lighted Programmable Function Keypad - bulk buy on eBay In-Reply-To: References: <48021322.9090307@brutman.com> Message-ID: <480A1B1C.6090405@brutman.com> Paxton Hoag wrote: > I got both lots. There were 11 people interested and I have filled > about 7 of the orders as people pay me for what they want. If you are > still interested let me know at paxton.hoag at gmail.com. > > I have not tinkered with one except to take one with a broken key > apart. Parts available if needed. I still have a lot of them. > Pax I would be really interested to know if anybody in the group who received one from you was able to make it talk. I have too many here already, and they all behave the same way ... They seem to function in the 'loopback' mode, but will not send bits in the other mode. (Look for the switch on the backside to determine what mode it is in.) All of mine came with what look like serial cables and the external 5v wall wart. I don't have to chop the cable like the guy on the 'codeninja' page did. (I'm trying to start a conversation with him to see what I'm missing.) Mike From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Sat Apr 19 10:29:20 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:29:20 +0000 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <200804191503.LAA21529@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> <200804191503.LAA21529@Sparkle.Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> Message-ID: <20080419152920.GA19544@usap.gov> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 11:02:59AM -0400, der Mouse wrote: > >> Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were > >> built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? > > In 1983, Metheus corp, did the classic 68k X 2 cpus to fix the double > > bus fault problem on their VLSI design workstation. > > Were they 68000s, though? All the ones double-fault-fix machines I > know of were, I think, using 68010s. I've never seen a Metheus machine, but I am *certain* the Perkin-Elmer was dual MC68000 processors, not MC68010. Besides... you don't _need_ to do funky tricks to implement paged-demand VM on a 68010... it saves enough state on the stack during a page fault to restart where it left off when it crossed the page boundary. That should be one of the reasons the AT&T UNIX PC (7300?) had a 68010 in it - easy-to-implement VM. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 19-Apr-2008 at 15:20 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -85.7 F (-65.4 C) Windchill -116.4 F (-82.5 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 6.1 kts Grid 81 Barometer 675.9 mb (10783 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Sat Apr 19 10:31:02 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:31:02 +0000 Subject: IBM 6094 Lighted Programmable Function Keypad - bulk buy on eBay In-Reply-To: <480A1B1C.6090405@brutman.com> References: <48021322.9090307@brutman.com> <480A1B1C.6090405@brutman.com> Message-ID: <20080419153102.GB19544@usap.gov> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 10:17:32AM -0600, Michael B. Brutman wrote: > Paxton Hoag wrote: > >I got both lots. There were 11 people interested and I have filled > >about 7 of the orders as people pay me for what they want. If you are > >still interested let me know at paxton.hoag at gmail.com. > > I would be really interested to know if anybody in the group who > received one from you was able to make it talk. I wish I could help, but mine went to my house in the States. I won't be able to play around with them until I get home. > All of mine came with what look like serial cables and the external 5v > wall wart. I don't have to chop the cable like the guy on the > 'codeninja' page did. (I'm trying to start a conversation with him to > see what I'm missing.) If yours have a different cable arrangement than codeninja's, is it possible that there are firmware differences, too? -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 19-Apr-2008 at 15:20 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -85.7 F (-65.4 C) Windchill -116.4 F (-82.5 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 6.1 kts Grid 81 Barometer 675.9 mb (10783 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From cclist at sydex.com Sat Apr 19 10:55:15 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:55:15 -0700 Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <200804191441.m3JEfEYM023828@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804191441.m3JEfEYM023828@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4809B373.22988.19FDFB@cclist.sydex.com> Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:44:06 -0700 From: Al Kossow > Has anyone ever documented what the encoding and disk format is on > these floppies? I was approached several years ago to decode a pile of Victor 9000 diskettes and got as far as deciphering the GCR. The customer then decided to abandon the project, so I never got any farther than that. I think that I still have the samples I worked with in my collection. GCR wasn't terribly unusual in the 70s. Commodore was definitely not the first to use it on disk drives, in spite of what some may claim (it may have been Sperry/ISS). ISTR that one of the rags (EDN, perhaps) had a great article at the time on exactly how the whole Victor disk thing worked. I never bothered to keep a copy of it, unfortunately. I never liked Victor as a company. Early on, they made it a point to file suit for trademark infringement against any US electronics operation with the name "Victor", including, IIRC, an appliance store owner who had been using the name for 20 years. It was a bullying tactic that I found distasteful. I remember that the sign on their building was quite visible as you drove on highway 17 through Scotts Valley. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Apr 19 10:59:18 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 08:59:18 -0700 Subject: HP41 (was Chess) In-Reply-To: <200804191441.m3JEfEYM023828@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804191441.m3JEfEYM023828@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4809B466.12107.1DB1E8@cclist.sydex.com> Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:03:31 +0100 (BST) From: (Tony Duell) > No HP calculator ever had a vacuum fluorescent display. And no HP > calculator eeer used nixie tubes. No, but a few TI desktop models did, including one that did hexadecimal math that we used. Personally, I'd love to find one of those in working condition--I could use it today, to supplement my HP 16C, but I suspect they're rarer than hens' teeth. Cheers, Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Sat Apr 19 11:24:44 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:24:44 -0600 Subject: AT&T/Olivetti terminal? PC? what is it? Message-ID: Ebay # 130215811399 It looks like it has a motherboard and a single card plugged into it, but I don't know if its really a terminal or not... -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From brad at heeltoe.com Sat Apr 19 11:35:24 2008 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:35:24 -0400 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <4809FDB3.2070103@arachelian.com> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> <20080419105710.GA14858@usap.gov> <4809E698.40003@saw.net> <4809FDB3.2070103@arachelian.com> Message-ID: <9999.1208622924@mini> Ray Arachelian wrote: > >>>> Ray Arachelian wrote: >>>> >>>>> Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were >>>>> built from multiple MC68000's CPU's? >>>>> > >Ok, so from the sounds of this thread, perhaps there is a need for >multi--cpu support. I think I'll build the library as two libraries, >perhaps controlled by a #define. I think of the talk so far has been about pre-68020 designs which used one 68k to "cover" the other during an exception, which is different from SMP. I'm surprised no one mentioned Apollo's; didn't they do that also? (early apollo workstations) -brad From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Sat Apr 19 11:33:36 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:33:36 -0500 Subject: AT&T/Olivetti terminal? PC? what is it? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <480A1EE0.9040806@gmail.com> Richard wrote: > Ebay # 130215811399 > > It looks like it has a motherboard and a single card plugged into it, > but I don't know if its really a terminal or not... Olivetti M24 / AT&T PC3600: http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?st=1&c=535 ? Sounds like the actual 'guts' of the system are all beneath the backplane (and accessed from the underside of the machine) cheers Jules From pat at computer-refuge.org Sat Apr 19 11:40:19 2008 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:40:19 -0400 Subject: AT&T/Olivetti terminal? PC? what is it? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200804191240.19620.pat@computer-refuge.org> On Saturday 19 April 2008, Richard wrote: > Ebay # 130215811399 > > It looks like it has a motherboard and a single card plugged into it, > but I don't know if its really a terminal or not... It looks like an AT&T PC 6300 to me... http://www.obsoletecomputermuseum.org/att-6300/ It looks basically the same as the ones I've got. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From cclist at sydex.com Sat Apr 19 11:42:16 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:42:16 -0700 Subject: More on Exabyte 8200 Message-ID: <4809BE78.12153.45087B@cclist.sydex.com> On the Exabyte ftp site, one can find several EPROM images for the 8200 tape drive. They're the files ending in .HEX in the pub/firmware/8mm directory on ftp.exabyte.com. Looks like one servo board PROM image and three firmware PROM images. It's probably a good idea to grab the contents of the exabyte ftp site if you have any of these drives. You never know when these things will suddenly go away. Does anyone have any electronic docs for the Tandberg QIC-24 drives? Cheers, Chuck From legalize at xmission.com Sat Apr 19 11:48:04 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:48:04 -0600 Subject: AT&T/Olivetti terminal? PC? what is it? In-Reply-To: Your message of Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:33:36 -0500. <480A1EE0.9040806@gmail.com> Message-ID: In article <480A1EE0.9040806 at gmail.com>, Jules Richardson writes: > Olivetti M24 / AT&T PC3600: > > http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?st=1&c=535 Thanks Jules, that looks like it. I suspected it was a PC (and less interesting to me) than a terminal (more interesting to me :-). -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Apr 19 11:45:02 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:45:02 -0400 Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working? In-Reply-To: <4809B373.22988.19FDFB@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804191441.m3JEfEYM023828@dewey.classiccmp.org> <4809B373.22988.19FDFB@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200804191245.02879.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 19 April 2008 11:55, Chuck Guzis wrote: > ISTR that one of the rags (EDN, perhaps) had a great article at the > time on exactly how the whole Victor disk thing worked. I never > bothered to keep a copy of it, unfortunately. Is any of the stuff typical of such publications available online someplace? I used to get those, years ago, but never kept any of them. Some of the occasional bits might be nice to have, though. (As in, it ain't worth me chasing it down but if you happen to have links handy... :-) -- 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 Apr 19 12:09:06 2008 From: wdonzelli at gmail.com (William Donzelli) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:09:06 -0400 Subject: Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy In-Reply-To: <4809FE2C.3010006@arachelian.com> References: <4809FE2C.3010006@arachelian.com> Message-ID: > From an anonymous source close to the company, I've found myself in > possession of the "Infocom Drive" ? a complete backup of Infocom's shared > network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I've ever > seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary > interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design > documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal > meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for > every released /and unreleased/ game Infocom made. > > For obvious reasons, I can't share the whole Infocom Drive. But I /have to/ > share some of the best parts. It's just /too good/. Activision lawyers, start your engines! Announcing this find publicly might end up being bonehead move of the month. -- Will From cclist at sydex.com Sat Apr 19 12:31:49 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:31:49 -0700 Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 In-Reply-To: <200804191700.m3JH0LwJ025814@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804191700.m3JH0LwJ025814@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4809CA15.31077.7265BE@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:45:02 -0400 > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > Is any of the stuff typical of such publications available online > someplace? I used to get those, years ago, but never kept any of them. > Some of the occasional bits might be nice to have, though. (As in, it > ain't worth me chasing it down but if you happen to have links handy... > :-) EDN is online only back to about 1996 or so. Electronic Design keeps much less online, perhaps a year or two. IEEE Computer keeps the whole shebang online--you need to be an IEEE CS member to access the content however. Some of the old 1970s-vintage stuff is a lot of fun to read--and is often a way to research a now-forgotten product or company. Nothing like reading about things when they were happening; not at all like relying on (ahem) some gray-haired guy's faulty memory of events. Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Sat Apr 19 12:41:29 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 10:41:29 -0700 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <200804191700.m3JH0LwJ025814@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804191700.m3JH0LwJ025814@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4809CC59.8876.7B3FD0@cclist.sydex.com> From: der Mouse: > Were they 68000s, though? All the ones double-fault-fix machines I > know of were, I think, using 68010s. The early Apollo systems were, I believe. I recall talking to one of the "guys behind the table" at Wescon when the 68000 came out. He said that the most commonly asked question by customers concerned using the large addressing space and fault mechainsm on the 68K for virtual memory--and that he was getting tired of saying that it couldn't be done. It was certainly one of the first questions out of my mouth. Although it was kind of a kludge, he was proved wrong if one used two of the beasts. Does anyone remember the speculation that the feature size of the 68K was getting close to the limit of IC fabrication technology? It was, what, 3 micron? Cheers, Chuck From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Apr 19 12:41:30 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:41:30 -0400 Subject: Sirius1/Victor 9000 In-Reply-To: <4809CA15.31077.7265BE@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804191700.m3JH0LwJ025814@dewey.classiccmp.org> <4809CA15.31077.7265BE@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <200804191341.30646.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 19 April 2008 13:31, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:45:02 -0400 > > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > > > > Is any of the stuff typical of such publications available online > > someplace? I used to get those, years ago, but never kept any of them. > > Some of the occasional bits might be nice to have, though. (As in, it > > ain't worth me chasing it down but if you happen to have links handy... > > > > :-) > > EDN is online only back to about 1996 or so. Electronic Design keeps > much less online, perhaps a year or two. Bummer. > IEEE Computer keeps the whole shebang online--you need to be an IEEE CS > member to access the content however. Don't think I'm going there any time soon. > Some of the old 1970s-vintage stuff is a lot of fun to read--and is often a > way to research a now-forgotten product or company. Yup! > Nothing like reading about things when they were happening; not at all like > relying on (ahem) some gray-haired guy's faulty memory of events. Gray only in the beard (so far)... :-) -- 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 eric at brouhaha.com Sat Apr 19 13:09:33 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:09:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> <4809D9CB.80209@saw.net> Message-ID: <50998.64.62.206.10.1208628573.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Jim wrote: > In 1983, Metheus corp, did the classic 68k X 2 cpus to fix the double > bus fault problem on their VLSI design workstation. > I never could figure out how you could get the system into a double page > data/code/stack fault in the exception handler, but it's a known > problem. The MC68000 didn't have a double bus fault problem. It had a *single* bus fault problem! On either a bus error or an address error exception, the information the processor puts in the exception stack frame is not sufficient to either resume or undo the faulted instruction. [*] These errors were considered fatal, and the typical "recovery" was to kill the process that faulted. Obviously this is not conducive to implementation of virtual memory. What some companies did, perhaps including Metheus, was to use two MC68000 processors. When a page fault occurs, rather than signalling a bus error to the running processor, the hardware "suspends" that processor (disconnects it from the bus, but leaves it waiting for the memory cycle to complete). The hardware enables the other processor, which runs the page fault hander. When the fault handler completes, the hardware switches back to the first processor, which can then complete the cycle. The MC68010 was introduced largely to fix this problem, though it had a few other enhancements as well. In the MC68010 (and MC68012, MC68020, MC68030, and CPU32), on a bus error or address error the processor pushes enough of its internal state onto the stack that an page fault handler can determine exactly what memory access had an error, fix the problem (e.g., by bringing in a page from disk and updating the page tables), and resume the faulted instruction from where it left off. The bus error stack frame was affectionately known as the "stack puke". On the MC68010, this occupied 29 16-bit words, although only 26 of them were written, and 3 were reserved. About 16 words of it were undocumented internal state that the software was not supposed to touch. On the M68K family processors, if a bus error occurred while the processor was already handling a bus error, that was a double bus fault and would cause a processor halt. This would normally only happen due to a software bug, such as a failure to allocate enough pages for the supervisor stack, and there was no means of recovery other than a hardware reset. In principle a multiple processor hack as described above could be used to allow recovery from this condition, but there wasn't really any reason to do so. Eric [*] If you write software such that only specific, known instructions can generate bus faults, you can recover from them. This technique is called probing, and is used in the Apple Lisa operating system. From trixter at oldskool.org Sat Apr 19 15:07:51 2008 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:07:51 -0500 Subject: AT&T/Olivetti terminal? PC? what is it? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <480A5117.40002@oldskool.org> That is an AT&T PC 6300, my first computer. It is decidedly MORE than a dumb terminal :-) although it will only work with an AT&T monitor of similar vintage. Richard wrote: > Ebay # 130215811399 > > It looks like it has a motherboard and a single card plugged into it, > but I don't know if its really a terminal or not... -- 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 ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk Sat Apr 19 15:14:30 2008 From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:14:30 +0100 (BST) Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <20080419121605.GB24970@usap.gov> from "Ethan Dicks" at Apr 19, 8 12:16:05 pm Message-ID: > > Didn't HP have a 68K box that had buttons around the crt? Sort of a > > poor-man's touchpanel? Not that I am aware of. There is at least HP machine with a row of physical buttons along the bottom of the CRT bezel (to be used as Softkeys), that's the HP9845. But it's not a 68K machine, it uses a pair of custom HP CPU hybrid modules, or sone such module and 3 PCBs of 2900-series bit-slice chips. > > Perhaps, but I'm not an HP expert. I _do_ recall an HP CRT with LEDs > and phototransistors around the rim for a low-res touchscreen (32x32?) The common HP to have that was the HP150 family, which were 8088 machines. The origianl HP150 (9" CRT) has the touchscreen as standard, it has a custom interface. The later HP150-II (12" CRT) has an optional touchscreen with an HP-HIL interface. That bezel could also be fitted to at least one HP monitor used with the HP9000/200 machines. The monitor has the SIL connectoer for the touchscreen cable and a pair of HP-HIL connectors on the back. I have the monitor, (I use it with mu 9817, which is a 68010 box), but alas not a spare touchscreen bezel to put on it. > > I have one of the screen bezels, but not the HP machine it goes with. > Someday, I think about dusting it off and trying to get it to work, > but I haven't managed to find the time yet. If it's the smaller one, from an original HP150, then the interface is essentially 3 signales (clock, sync, data). The conenctor is a 5*2 pin 0.1" header plug. I have a specification for that, pinouts, timing, etc. If it's the larger one, it's HP-HIL, the connector is a 10 pin (? maybe 9 pin) SIL socket on a pit of flexible ribbon cable. I can fidn a pinout, but I _don't_ have the HP-HIL specification. Does anyone -- please not it's not the HP-IL spec, I have that... -tony From ball.of.john at gmail.com Sat Apr 19 16:03:32 2008 From: ball.of.john at gmail.com (John Ball) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:03:32 -0700 Subject: IBM-9000 Computer System Message-ID: <000201c8a260$d53883b0$6a01a8c0@johnpc> I'm trying to find one of these systems and so far I am having absolutely no luck at all. Aside from some info and a few photos on the Old-Computers.com website I can't find anything else relavent to this system and so far I can't find anyone who has even heard of the things let alone seen one. Has anyone here ever seen or used one and does anyone here even own one? I want to use one to replace my unreliable VT510 serial terminal as well as try out the IEEE-488 port. Oh yeah, here is a link to that info on the system. http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1 &c=623 John. From rtellason at verizon.net Sat Apr 19 16:27:02 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:27:02 -0400 Subject: AT&T/Olivetti terminal? PC? what is it? In-Reply-To: <480A5117.40002@oldskool.org> References: <480A5117.40002@oldskool.org> Message-ID: <200804191727.02887.rtellason@verizon.net> On Saturday 19 April 2008 16:07, Jim Leonard wrote: > That is an AT&T PC 6300, my first computer. It is decidedly MORE than a > dumb terminal :-) although it will only work with an AT&T monitor of > similar vintage. > > Richard wrote: > > Ebay # 130215811399 > > > > It looks like it has a motherboard and a single card plugged into it, > > but I don't know if its really a terminal or not... I distinctly recall at least one occasion where I got a CGA monitor (?) to somebody for use with one of those machines, though I don't recall now whether she had to install a separate video card to make that happen or not. I also remember making some adapters for using regular PC type keyboards (XT-class ones) for use with that machine. Both of these were a LONG time ago, though. -- 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 slawmaster at gmail.com Sat Apr 19 17:00:51 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:00:51 -0700 Subject: IBM-9000 Computer System In-Reply-To: <000201c8a260$d53883b0$6a01a8c0@johnpc> References: <000201c8a260$d53883b0$6a01a8c0@johnpc> Message-ID: <7d3530220804191500p59a3f6b0p5c358dbc0405dfc@mail.gmail.com> On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 2:03 PM, John Ball wrote: > I'm trying to find one of these systems and so far I am having absolutely no > luck at all. > Aside from some info and a few photos on the Old-Computers.com website I > can't find anything else relavent to this system and so far I can't find > anyone who has even heard of the things let alone seen one. Has anyone here > ever seen or used one and does anyone here even own one? I want to use one > to replace my unreliable VT510 serial terminal as well as try out the > IEEE-488 port. > > Oh yeah, here is a link to that info on the system. > http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1 > &c=623 > > > John. > Between the name and the design, it looks like somebody liked science fiction movies too much :) I want one! John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From fu3.org at gmail.com Sat Apr 19 20:34:49 2008 From: fu3.org at gmail.com (Chris H.) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 03:34:49 +0200 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFE9@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFE9@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <310f50ab0804191834x17439a2pad058145d03b9636@mail.gmail.com> 2008/4/19, Rod Smallwood : > Now for my ultimate goal; load and run DECWindows. I ran the install as > per the manual > (that's a book that tells you everything you don't need to know and > nothing that you do). - http://icanhaz.com/decw_cookbook (Maybe this could come in handy.) From shumaker at att.net Sat Apr 19 20:44:58 2008 From: shumaker at att.net (Steve Shumaker) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:44:58 -0400 Subject: Early spring cleaning... In-Reply-To: <480A5DD0.2030406@msu.edu> References: <480A5DD0.2030406@msu.edu> Message-ID: <480AA01A.3060205@att.net> would you be willing to have a local UPS Store pick up and ship something? (interested in the Pet) Steve Shumaker Boulder Creek CA Josh Dersch wrote: > Hey all -- I'm trying to free up some space so I have some stuff I'm > looking to give away. Local pickup in the Seattle area only, please. > > Computers: > - Commodore PET 8032. Works, someone managed to do a bit of damage to > the PCB when replacing a RAM chip or two. Seems to work fine. > - Miscellaneous 386 & 486 laptops. Most with 4/8mb ram & hard disks, > some missing AC adapters. If you're interested, I can provide more detail > - HP 9000/236. W/monitor. Worked last time I powered it up. Missing > the "S" key on the keyboard, otherwise in good shape. > > > Terminals: > - 2 TRS-80 DT-1 terminals. With dust covers! Powered up the last time > I tried them over a year ago. > - Wang 2256-C terminal. Heavy. Not sure it's an actual dumb terminal, > I get the impression it goes with a word-processing system. As it is it > powers up, displays a green screen, and beeps once. (CRT needs a tune-up) > > Monitors: > - Gateway SVGA, 15". Trinitron, works well. > - Mitsubishi Diamond Scan something-or-other. CGA/EGA, composite, TTL, > etc. 12 or 13". Works, a bit scuffed. > > Misc: > - IBM Microchannel Token Ring cards. Probably work, I don't have any > token ring hardware to test with. > > Let me know if anything strikes your interest... > Thanks, > Josh > From hardware at ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu Sat Apr 19 12:03:32 2008 From: hardware at ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu (Kurt Rosenfeld) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 13:03:32 -0400 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? Message-ID: <20080419170332.GA5172@eesfc2.engr.ccny.cuny.edu> My undergrad school had a Stardent with four 68k processors. It ran some sort of Unix. They used it for simulating nonlinear optics. I took posession of the manual before they discarded the whole system. Property accounting bureaucracy prevented me from keeping system hardware. -kurt From derschjo at msu.edu Sat Apr 19 16:02:08 2008 From: derschjo at msu.edu (Josh Dersch) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:02:08 -0700 Subject: Early spring cleaning... Message-ID: <480A5DD0.2030406@msu.edu> Hey all -- I'm trying to free up some space so I have some stuff I'm looking to give away. Local pickup in the Seattle area only, please. Computers: - Commodore PET 8032. Works, someone managed to do a bit of damage to the PCB when replacing a RAM chip or two. Seems to work fine. - Miscellaneous 386 & 486 laptops. Most with 4/8mb ram & hard disks, some missing AC adapters. If you're interested, I can provide more detail - HP 9000/236. W/monitor. Worked last time I powered it up. Missing the "S" key on the keyboard, otherwise in good shape. Terminals: - 2 TRS-80 DT-1 terminals. With dust covers! Powered up the last time I tried them over a year ago. - Wang 2256-C terminal. Heavy. Not sure it's an actual dumb terminal, I get the impression it goes with a word-processing system. As it is it powers up, displays a green screen, and beeps once. (CRT needs a tune-up) Monitors: - Gateway SVGA, 15". Trinitron, works well. - Mitsubishi Diamond Scan something-or-other. CGA/EGA, composite, TTL, etc. 12 or 13". Works, a bit scuffed. Misc: - IBM Microchannel Token Ring cards. Probably work, I don't have any token ring hardware to test with. Let me know if anything strikes your interest... Thanks, Josh From billdeg at degnanco.com Sun Apr 20 07:42:06 2008 From: billdeg at degnanco.com (B. Degnan) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:42:06 -0400 Subject: IBM-9000 Computer System In-Reply-To: <200804200923.m3K9MqsS039766@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20080420083436.031b4e88@smtp.degnanco.com> > >I'm trying to find one of these systems and so far I am having absolutely no >luck at all. >Aside from some info and a few photos on the Old-Computers.com website I >can't find anything else relavent to this system and so far I can't find >anyone who has even heard of the things let alone seen one. Has anyone here >ever seen or used one and does anyone here even own one? I want to use one >to replace my unreliable VT510 serial terminal as well as try out the >IEEE-488 port. > >Oh yeah, here is a link to that info on the system. >http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1 > &c=623 > > >John. > John, I too have been looking for one of these. There is a detailed article about the 9000's in the special issue of Byte, BYTE Guide to the IBM PC, fall 1984. Page 219 there is an article titled "Number Crunching on IBM's New S9000. "IBM joins with MIT's National Magnet Lab to develop spectrometers for imaging systems" by David J States. I have this as one of my "10 Most Collectible Micro Sleepers" ... http://vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread_record.cfm?id=94&tid=1 ...which was my response to PC World's article titled "The Most Collectible PCs of All Time" If you find two, let me know! Bill From ploopster at gmail.com Sun Apr 20 09:04:44 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:04:44 -0400 Subject: IBM-9000 Computer System In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20080420083436.031b4e88@smtp.degnanco.com> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20080420083436.031b4e88@smtp.degnanco.com> Message-ID: <480B4D7C.8040306@gmail.com> B. Degnan wrote: >> I'm trying to find one of these systems and so far I am having >> absolutely no luck at all. Aside from some info and a few photos on >> the Old-Computers.com website I can't find anything else relavent >> to this system and so far I can't find anyone who has even heard of >> the things let alone seen one. Has anyone here ever seen or used >> one and does anyone here even own one? I want to use one to replace >> my unreliable VT510 serial terminal as well as try out the IEEE-488 >> port. >> >> Oh yeah, here is a link to that info on the system. >> http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1 >> >> &c=623 > > I too have been looking for one of these. There is a detailed > article about the 9000's in the special issue of Byte, BYTE Guide to > the IBM PC, fall 1984. Page 219 there is an article titled "Number > Crunching on IBM's New S9000. "IBM joins with MIT's National Magnet > Lab to develop spectrometers for imaging systems" by David J States. > > I have this as one of my "10 Most Collectible Micro Sleepers" ... > http://vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread_record.cfm?id=94&tid=1 > ...which was my response to PC World's article titled "The Most > Collectible PCs of All Time" > > If you find two, let me know! I have what might be a keyboard from one of these. It's an 84-key IBM PC keyboard with a label that says "IBM Instruments Inc." Peace... Sridhar From ploopster at gmail.com Sun Apr 20 09:04:44 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:04:44 -0400 Subject: IBM-9000 Computer System In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20080420083436.031b4e88@smtp.degnanco.com> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20080420083436.031b4e88@smtp.degnanco.com> Message-ID: <480B4D7C.8040306@gmail.com> B. Degnan wrote: >> I'm trying to find one of these systems and so far I am having >> absolutely no luck at all. Aside from some info and a few photos on >> the Old-Computers.com website I can't find anything else relavent >> to this system and so far I can't find anyone who has even heard of >> the things let alone seen one. Has anyone here ever seen or used >> one and does anyone here even own one? I want to use one to replace >> my unreliable VT510 serial terminal as well as try out the IEEE-488 >> port. >> >> Oh yeah, here is a link to that info on the system. >> http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1 >> >> &c=623 > > I too have been looking for one of these. There is a detailed > article about the 9000's in the special issue of Byte, BYTE Guide to > the IBM PC, fall 1984. Page 219 there is an article titled "Number > Crunching on IBM's New S9000. "IBM joins with MIT's National Magnet > Lab to develop spectrometers for imaging systems" by David J States. > > I have this as one of my "10 Most Collectible Micro Sleepers" ... > http://vintagecomputer.net/browse_thread_record.cfm?id=94&tid=1 > ...which was my response to PC World's article titled "The Most > Collectible PCs of All Time" > > If you find two, let me know! I have what might be a keyboard from one of these. It's an 84-key IBM PC keyboard with a label that says "IBM Instruments Inc." Peace... Sridhar From mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com Sun Apr 20 11:26:36 2008 From: mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com (Michael B. Brutman) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:26:36 -0600 Subject: IBM 3852 Color Printers Message-ID: <480B6EBC.1040309@brutman.com> I have two of these - a Model 1 and a Model 2. I never used them - it's an interesting project, but I don't have the ability to clean and repair something as delicate as an inkjet nozzle. Does anybody have any interest in these? If so, email me off list. I'm in Rochester, MN (55902) - shipping will be pricey, as these units are heavy. Mike From kenziem at sympatico.ca Sun Apr 20 10:43:21 2008 From: kenziem at sympatico.ca (Mike) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:43:21 -0400 Subject: Monitors to go Message-ID: <200804201143.21494.kenziem@sympatico.ca> As part of Earth Day celebrations I have a chance to recycle stuff without the normal charges for monitors Sun M19P114 Sun CD1 version C Sun GDM 1604-15 HP 98754A Digital VRT19-ha Nec Multisync Jc1401P3A Unisys - was off of an ICON a bunch of other 12-14" PC/Apple monitors If anyone wants one of these first, let me know before Wednesday evening. They are located in Ottawa, but a few list members do make trips this way. Mike From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Sun Apr 20 10:44:27 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:44:27 -0500 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <20080419170332.GA5172@eesfc2.engr.ccny.cuny.edu> References: <20080419170332.GA5172@eesfc2.engr.ccny.cuny.edu> Message-ID: <480B64DB.4060007@gmail.com> Kurt Rosenfeld wrote: > My undergrad school had a Stardent with four 68k processors. Interesting - any idea what model? I didn't think they ever used anything except MIPS and i860 CPUs in their stuff. (I've had someone contact me recently about an [St]ardent Titan machine they have available, but I'm still trying to work out the logistics of moving* it - it's not exactly a small beast) * If anyone here ever does a Colorado -> Minnesota run with a van/truck and might be able to help out, yell :-) cheers Jules From brad at heeltoe.com Sun Apr 20 11:08:40 2008 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:08:40 -0400 Subject: Monitors to go In-Reply-To: <200804201143.21494.kenziem@sympatico.ca> References: <200804201143.21494.kenziem@sympatico.ca> Message-ID: <23463.1208707720@mini> Mike wrote: > >Sun M19P114 If that's a Sun-2 monitor, I'd be interested. (I've been looking for sun-2 hw) I think it's a 19" Philips mono but I'm not sure it's for a Sun-2. I'd like one of the original "hooded" versions. -brad From innfoclassics at gmail.com Sun Apr 20 11:47:08 2008 From: innfoclassics at gmail.com (Paxton Hoag) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:47:08 -0700 Subject: IBM-9000 Computer System In-Reply-To: <480B4D7C.8040306@gmail.com> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20080420083436.031b4e88@smtp.degnanco.com> <480B4D7C.8040306@gmail.com> Message-ID: > I have what might be a keyboard from one of these. It's an 84-key IBM PC > keyboard with a label that says "IBM Instruments Inc." > > Peace... Sridhar > I think you do have an original 9000 keyboard. I had one of these computers in the mid 90s. It came with an IBM HPLC (high Pressure Liquid chromatography) lab instrument. I finally sold it on the LabX Auction site. You might post a wanted ad there. IBM's lab equipment was a very short lived product line that ended about 1985. Paxton -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA From trixter at oldskool.org Sun Apr 20 16:57:18 2008 From: trixter at oldskool.org (Jim Leonard) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:57:18 -0500 Subject: Recording the PC Speaker In-Reply-To: <200804160918.46296.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <200804151657.32258.rtellason@verizon.net> <20080416073425.75f0f942@SirToby.dinner41.local> <200804160918.46296.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <480BBC3E.7050308@oldskool.org> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > And it's likely that there is a series resistor in there, typical speaker > impedances being on the low side and a bit much in terms of loading for the > output of a TTL gate... BTW I wanted to thank everyone who gave a response last week; I collected most responses into an article here: http://www.oldskool.org/guides/speakerrecording/ Thanks again! -- 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 pat at computer-refuge.org Sun Apr 20 17:17:36 2008 From: pat at computer-refuge.org (Patrick Finnegan) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:17:36 -0400 Subject: Vintage Computer Festival/Midwest 4 - Just one week away Message-ID: <200804201817.36632.pat@computer-refuge.org> Just a reminder that next weekend is my 4th annual Vintage Computer Festival/Midwest, held at Purdue University's Stewart Center. The event has speakers from 11am until 1pm each day, and the exhibits are open from 1pm until 5pm. The ticket price is $5 per day, or free if you're 17 or under, or have a valid Purdue student ID. The event is a celebration of the history of computing, and the machine and people that got us to where we are today. There will be lots of neat technology, and this year we have a door prize of an IBM PCjr from 1983! The PCjr was IBM's first attempt at an inexpensive home computer. I've got several exhibitors signed up, but still have room for more; if you want to show up to show off your collection, or have a few things to sell off at the consignment sale, sign up to be an exhibitor at http://vintage.org/2008/midwest/, or send me an email at this address. Exhibitors get one free t-shirt and free admission, which is included in the $10 per table fee. Pat -- Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org From tpeters at mixcom.com Sun Apr 20 18:39:18 2008 From: tpeters at mixcom.com (Tom Peters) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:39:18 -0500 Subject: Recording the PC Speaker In-Reply-To: <480BBC3E.7050308@oldskool.org> References: <200804160918.46296.rtellason@verizon.net> <4803FED5.4080204@oldskool.org> <200804151657.32258.rtellason@verizon.net> <20080416073425.75f0f942@SirToby.dinner41.local> <200804160918.46296.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20080420183503.102670a8@localhost> At 04:57 PM 2008-04-20 -0500, you wrote: >Roy J. Tellason wrote: >>And it's likely that there is a series resistor in there, typical >>speaker impedances being on the low side and a bit much in terms of >>loading for the output of a TTL gate... > >BTW I wanted to thank everyone who gave a response last week; I collected >most responses into an article here: > >http://www.oldskool.org/guides/speakerrecording/ Nice! Got it all collected in one place. Appreciate being cited too. "Peek to peek" should probably be "peak-to-peak" however, if you want to be correct about it. You got it right in one other place. -Tom ----- 449. [Humor] I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing "Happy Birthday". --Steven Wright --... ...-- -.. . -. ----. --.- --.- -... 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 trag at io.com Mon Apr 21 00:39:59 2008 From: trag at io.com (Jeff Walther) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:39:59 -0500 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <200804201701.m3KH1Xg0043695@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804201701.m3KH1Xg0043695@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: >Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:12:41 -0400 >From: Ray Arachelian >Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? >Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were built >from multiple MC68000's CPU's? There was the MassComp from Massachusets Computer, IIRC. However, it wasn't exactly a multi-CPU system. It used one 68000 for processing and another one to handle the very fancy (at the time) color graphics system. It ran some flavor of Unix. I learned (taught myself) C on that machine. We had several of them at NASA JSC around 1984 - 1985. Jeff Walther From chrism3667 at yahoo.com Sat Apr 19 13:13:32 2008 From: chrism3667 at yahoo.com (Chris M) Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:13:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: HP41 (was Chess) In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804181439x541f7ekba019798e7e808c0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <311753.65468.qm@web65506.mail.ac4.yahoo.com> --- John Floren wrote: > I got a 48S on ebay for $35 or so and in my opinion > the 48 series is > great. I use it for all my engineering courses > (fastest calculations > in the class, everyone else has to fight those > stupid TI-89 things). > Although they look kinda nice, there's no reason to > have a 48-anything > unless you're going to use it, so just look for > used, known-to-work > calculators. the 48 series is eminently expandable, as is the newer 49G+ (takes cflash cards), and I suspect this is why they're favored amongst certain trades. Arguably the most supported HP model in history (don't beat me up too much if I'm wrong). Yeah they built like tanks. I actually owned one for a bit, can't remember which model exactly, but returned it cuz it was a slippery slope using one in certain math classes due to it's ability to do symbolic math. I just bloody want one. And I wanna a bloomin' new one. I don't need an excuse. Nyeh. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From jamesmavery at mchsi.com Sun Apr 20 12:13:54 2008 From: jamesmavery at mchsi.com (jamesmavery) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:13:54 -0500 Subject: Paratronics Logic Analyzer Message-ID: <480B79D2.6040507@mchsi.com> I need a copy of the paratronics PI-540 logic analyzer From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Sun Apr 20 13:32:19 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 19:32:19 +0100 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFF1@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Very interesting but no reference to my problem I'm afraid. I have gone back to the start, cleared the hard drive, installed VMS 7.3 and registered the license (choosing the right support files etc.) Then I loaded the DW-MOTIF layered product and registered the license. In both cases I followed the install instructions to the letter. 1. It does not come up or even attempt to come up in windows. 2. If you run the IVP and enter the node name or WSA0 (the device name) it simply says "cannot open display" 3. I am exactly where I was on Friday. 4. Until I find out what "Cannot open display" means I'm stuck Regards Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chris H. Sent: 20 April 2008 02:35 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows 2008/4/19, Rod Smallwood : > Now for my ultimate goal; load and run DECWindows. I ran the install > as per the manual (that's a book that tells you everything you don't > need to know and nothing that you do). - http://icanhaz.com/decw_cookbook (Maybe this could come in handy.) From john_a_s2004 at hotmail.com Sun Apr 20 15:18:27 2008 From: john_a_s2004 at hotmail.com (John S) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:18:27 +0000 Subject: Help with ICL power supply fault (Farnell SMPS) - now working Message-ID: Hi again, Thanks for the tis on SMPS faults, I have now got it up and running. The first fault was a failed Y suppresion capacitor on the input - this had split open with a 'pop', easy to spot and replace. Then the PSU gave 1.1V on its 5V output, this was because the output was not regulated and went over volts, which triggered an SCR on the 12V rail. I removed the SCR and thought it was faulty, but the replacement had exactly the same resistance (80 ohm from gate to cathode in either polarity) so I fitted it anyway. I checked the voltage at the opto isolator and saw it vary as a changing voltage was applied to the 5V output, so this looked good. I tried drawing a circuit diagram based on the layout, but found this very difficult. However, I found two bad soldering joints when tracing the circuit. These were both at points when a trace on top of the PCB met a component then carried on underneath the PCB - ie the circuit relied on the solder forming a joint both under and on top of the PCB. I then applied varying DC to the input (up to 110V, this is a 230V supply). At around 80V, the board made a loud whistling noise, and the 5V and 12V outputs came up. However, as the input voltage was varied the output varied in step. I then checked the quad comparator chip (CA338, equivalent to LM338) and decided it was faulty. This was soldered in so replacing it with a socket was a pain. Anyway, with a new chip fitted the PSU came up fine. I still don't understand the whole circuit, there were around 5 transistors in an ossicaltor circuit which I couldn't get to grips with. I found the following sites helpful: http://www.sencore.com/custsup/techtips.htm - I used the 'dynamic testing' approach, looking at the SU in blocks. http://www.datasheetarchive.com/ Once back in the machine everything seemed normal again. I dnt seem to have a boot disk, but that is another story! Thanks, John _________________________________________________________________ Get Hotmail on your mobile. Text MSN to 63463 now! http://mobile.uk.msn.com/pc/mail.aspx From huxuelei630 at gmail.com Sun Apr 20 22:30:45 2008 From: huxuelei630 at gmail.com (Hu Xuelei) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:30:45 +0800 Subject: About Intel386 Family System Builder User's Guide Message-ID: Dear sir, I am sorry to bother at this time. I have read about your arctile at http://www.classiccmp.org. I wonder whether you have the document Intel386 Family System Builder User's Guide? If you have, could you please send me a copy of it? I have been looking for the document for a long time. Thanks. Huxuelei From arcarlini at iee.org Mon Apr 21 02:17:50 2008 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:17:50 +0100 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFF1@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <006501c8a37f$d009dae0$5b01a8c0@FLEXPC> Rod Smallwood wrote: > I have gone back to the start, cleared the hard drive, installed VMS > 7.3 > and registered the license (choosing the right support files etc.) > Then > I loaded the DW-MOTIF layered product and registered the license. In > both cases I followed the install instructions to the letter. > > 1. It does not come up or even attempt to come up in windows. > > 2. If you run the IVP and enter the node name or WSA0 (the device > name) > it simply says "cannot open display" > > 3. I am exactly where I was on Friday. > > 4. Until I find out what "Cannot open display" means I'm stuck Have you checked the switch on the back as I suggested? Does your hardware think it is a VAXserver rather than a VAXstation? Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.2/1386 - Release Date: 18/04/2008 17:24 From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Mon Apr 21 10:37:08 2008 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:37:08 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TK50 with SCSI Message-ID: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Sorry if this has been asked before... I have a few spare TK50 drives, and wondered if these could be interfaced in some way to a regular Linux box. I know the PDP's use a special interface card, but I seem to recall it was some kind of SCSI variant. My reason for interfacing is that I have a few TK50's on PDP 11's and it would be useful to be able to transfer software. Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From ian_primus at yahoo.com Mon Apr 21 10:52:38 2008 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:52:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TK50 with SCSI In-Reply-To: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <361038.42090.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- silvercreekvalley wrote: > Sorry if this has been asked before... > > I have a few spare TK50 drives, and wondered if > these could be interfaced in some way to a regular > Linux box. > I know the PDP's use a special interface card, but > I seem to recall it was some kind of SCSI variant. It's a special interface, and you're not going to be able to build just a simple adapter cable. But, they DID make a SCSI TK-50. I have one, and I have used it with Linux. The SCSI TK-50 drive is an external box with a standard TK-50 mechanism and a special controller/interface board that controls the drive and groks SCSI back to the computer. Even then, it's not the greatest SCSI tape drive interface, but it will work. One thing you have to remember to do though, is to turn on the buffer. The drive doesn't have one. mt -f /dev/nst0 drvbuffer 1 If you don't do this, the drive will shoeshine for an hour writing even a small file... -Ian From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Apr 21 11:01:26 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:01:26 -0400 Subject: TK50 with SCSI In-Reply-To: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <480CBA56.6010902@gmail.com> silvercreekvalley wrote: > Sorry if this has been asked before... > > I have a few spare TK50 drives, and wondered if > these could be interfaced in some way to a regular > Linux box. > > I know the PDP's use a special interface card, but > I seem to recall it was some kind of SCSI variant. > > My reason for interfacing is that I have a few > TK50's on PDP 11's and it would be useful to > be able to transfer software. The TK50 interface is not any variety of SCSI. The TK50Z drive is a TK50 drive with a TK50<->SCSI bridge board. The TZ30 is a half-high SCSI version of the TK50. You're probably going to want to look for a TZ30. In my experience, it's a bit more reliable than a TK50Z. Peace... Sridhar From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Mon Apr 21 11:02:03 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:02:03 +0000 Subject: TK50 with SCSI In-Reply-To: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20080421160203.GA11807@usap.gov> On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 08:37:08AM -0700, silvercreekvalley wrote: > Sorry if this has been asked before... It has... > I have a few spare TK50 drives, and wondered if > these could be interfaced in some way to a regular > Linux box. Do you have bare drives (as one would mount in a BA-23) or external drives (as one would attached to a MicroVAX 2000)? > I know the PDP's use a special interface card, but > I seem to recall it was some kind of SCSI variant. I don't know how the TQK50 might be thought of as a SCSI variant, unless from a high-level design angle (perhaps). > My reason for interfacing is that I have a few > TK50's on PDP 11's and it would be useful to > be able to transfer software. If you have a bare drive, I don't know what to suggest except to find the board from an external drive. If you already have an external drive, I recall two variants... the TK50Z-FA and TK50Z-GA. The -FA and -GA ROMs are different, but the internal drives are identical, and the interface converter boards are quite similar. The TK50Z-FA shipped with the MicroVAX 2000, and is nearly, but not quite, SCSI. I think the largest problem is sharing the bus with other drives (but it could be more than that). We had some limited success 20 years ago, hanging a TK50Z-FA as a lone device off of an Amiga SCSI controller, if I am remembering correctly. The TK50Z-GA was *designed* to be a SCSI drive. It has, I think, a drive unit select switch of some sort, and _should_ play nice on a bus with other drives (can't be sure about "disconnect" and bus blocking, though). I have not tried it, but I understand that you can drop -GA ROMs into an -FA and it will work as a -GA, but I don't think you can change the drive's SCSI address without some board hacking. Another alternative would be to find a TK30Z drive somewhere. That should be a) more mechanically reliable than a TK50, and b) ready to go in a SCSI environment. If you wanted to read/write install tapes and such, a TK50ish drive on a modern machine could be handy. OTOH, you might find that a spare serial port and KERMIT might be easier to work with than hanging an ancient tape drive on a modern machine, especially since the TK50 holds *at most* 95MB. With time and wear and tear, etc., even a 9600 bps serial line might seem fast. Hope this helps clarify some of the details of TK50s. Good luck with whatever approach you take. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 21-Apr-2008 at 15:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -91.8 F (-68.8 C) Windchill -131.1 F (-90.6 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 9.4 kts Grid 53 Barometer 676.3 mb (10768 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From cclist at sydex.com Mon Apr 21 12:33:55 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:33:55 -0700 Subject: WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller Message-ID: <480C6D93.10920.AC10233@cclist.sydex.com> I've got a bunch of Tandberg QIC-02 interface drives here and would like to box one up as a SCSI unit. The only QIC02-to-SCSI controller that I'm aware of was the Emulex MT-02 used on early Sun workstations, so I'd like to see if anyone has one that they'd like to be rid of. Drop me an email if you've got a candidate. Thanks, Chuck From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Mon Apr 21 12:37:39 2008 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:37:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Removing side panels of DEC mini rack Message-ID: <466453.48367.qm@web56213.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Thanks for the info on TK50 SCSI tapes, I need to think on that... Another quick question. I have a half height DEC rack its probably from the late 80's early 90's. It has brown side panels (and a brown rear panel). I'm wondering if there is a way to remove the side panels, the rear panel comes off easily. Thanks Ian ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From ian_primus at yahoo.com Mon Apr 21 12:46:28 2008 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:46:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Removing side panels of DEC mini rack In-Reply-To: <466453.48367.qm@web56213.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <11120.34109.qm@web52706.mail.re2.yahoo.com> > Another quick question. I have a half height DEC > rack its > probably from the late 80's early 90's. > > It has brown side panels (and a brown rear panel). > I'm > wondering if there is a way to remove the side > panels, > the rear panel comes off easily. Brown side panels? I always thought of them as a blackish color. White trim all around the sides of the panels, white front and top? Lift up on the panels, they pop right off. Sometimes they're pretty stuck, but they just lift off. -Ian From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Apr 21 12:48:38 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:48:38 -0400 Subject: Removing side panels of DEC mini rack In-Reply-To: <466453.48367.qm@web56213.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <466453.48367.qm@web56213.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <480CD376.4030005@gmail.com> silvercreekvalley wrote: > Thanks for the info on TK50 SCSI tapes, I need to think on > that... > > Another quick question. I have a half height DEC rack its > probably from the late 80's early 90's. > > It has brown side panels (and a brown rear panel). I'm > wondering if there is a way to remove the side panels, > the rear panel comes off easily. Check to see if it has posts on the panels which fit into keyhole slots on the chassis. If it is indeed set up that way, you should be able to loosen a couple of nuts and then just lift them off. It would be easier if you could put pictures of said rack up on the web and send a link to the list. It would enable us to see to what model rack you're referring. Peace... Sridhar From legalize at xmission.com Mon Apr 21 12:49:48 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:49:48 -0600 Subject: duplicate ebay search result email? Message-ID: Is anyone else noticing that they get a lot of duplicate email from their ebay canned searches? They did something to their categories and search engine, apparently. I used to be able to search in a Commodore category under vintage computers, but that category appears to have disappeared. Since then, I have been getting a lot of duplicate email from my searches all containing the same items. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From ethan.dicks at usap.gov Mon Apr 21 13:00:12 2008 From: ethan.dicks at usap.gov (Ethan Dicks) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:00:12 +0000 Subject: Removing side panels of DEC mini rack In-Reply-To: <466453.48367.qm@web56213.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <466453.48367.qm@web56213.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20080421180012.GB6950@usap.gov> On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:37:39AM -0700, silvercreekvalley wrote: > Thanks for the info on TK50 SCSI tapes, I need to think on > that... Sure thing. > Another quick question. I have a half height DEC rack its > probably from the late 80's early 90's. > > It has brown side panels (and a brown rear panel). I'm > wondering if there is a way to remove the side panels, > the rear panel comes off easily. If you can find an identifying number, or at the very least, provide dimensions (to the nearest inch), there were several types of cabinets in the "corporate cab" line from that time frame. Some of them have snap-out sides - the white rims don't come off without tools, but the brown panels push out (perhaps after removing a couple of small bolts). Others, probably the majority, have large mushroom-headed studs on the racks that mate with tapered slots on the side panels. Many of those are difficult to remove. We always used a couple of 2x4s, one on the ground as a fulcrum, the other used as a lever. You drop the fulcrum timber on the ground parallel to the side, a few inches away, then only put about 1/2" of the lever under the white lip of the side panel, and apply a moderate amount of steady force. I'd check the inside area of the rack first, for any possible bolts that might mate the side to the rack. There was another style of cabinet that height, several inches longer than usual to accomodate things like RA60 drives. Those might need tools to get the sides off. To help narrow down what you have, there might be (should be) a 1"x3" label with a DEC logo, possibly a serial number, and a model number that might look like "H-xxxx" or "BTXXX" or something like that. You can look up that number to see what was originally in the cabinet, or at least what style of cab it is. Thinking back, the type with the press-in sides might have been a PDP-8-only variety, but I suppose it could have been loaded with an -11 of some flavor. I never saw one of those full of VAX peripherals. If you know what your rack was doing when it was new, that might help narrow down which type it is, too. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 21-Apr-2008 at 17:50 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -90.6 F (-68.1 C) Windchill -128.4 F (-89.1 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 8.8 kts Grid 50 Barometer 676.9 mb (10745 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html From brad at heeltoe.com Mon Apr 21 13:30:49 2008 From: brad at heeltoe.com (Brad Parker) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:30:49 -0400 Subject: TK50 with SCSI In-Reply-To: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <10639.1208802649@mini> silvercreekvalley wrote: >Sorry if this has been asked before... > >I have a few spare TK50 drives, and wondered if >these could be interfaced in some way to a regular >Linux box. ... >My reason for interfacing is that I have a few >TK50's on PDP 11's and it would be useful to >be able to transfer software. I have a scsi tk50 box; I've used it to make pdp-11 boot tapes by connecting it to a linux box. It was bit clunky but seemed to work fine. I used the stock "dd" and "mt" in a shell script. As I recall this is pretty common (i.e. many others have done the same) -brad Brad Parker Heeltoe Consulting +1-781-483-3101 http://www.heeltoe.com From ploopster at gmail.com Mon Apr 21 13:39:51 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:39:51 -0400 Subject: TK50 with SCSI In-Reply-To: <10639.1208802649@mini> References: <494425.13590.qm@web56211.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <10639.1208802649@mini> Message-ID: <480CDF77.4000802@gmail.com> Brad Parker wrote: > silvercreekvalley wrote: >> Sorry if this has been asked before... >> >> I have a few spare TK50 drives, and wondered if >> these could be interfaced in some way to a regular >> Linux box. > ... >> My reason for interfacing is that I have a few >> TK50's on PDP 11's and it would be useful to >> be able to transfer software. > > I have a scsi tk50 box; I've used it to make pdp-11 boot tapes by > connecting it to a linux box. It was bit clunky but seemed to work > fine. I used the stock "dd" and "mt" in a shell script. > > As I recall this is pretty common (i.e. many others have done the > same) I prefer using a VAX myself, but it should work in Linux without too much trouble. Peace... Sridhar From uban at ubanproductions.com Mon Apr 21 01:39:37 2008 From: uban at ubanproductions.com (Tom Uban) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:39:37 -0500 Subject: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> References: <48092AE9.50008@arachelian.com> Message-ID: <480C36A9.7080505@ubanproductions.com> Back in the late '80s and early '90s, I worked for BBN Advanced Computers Inc where we build a NUMA parallel processor called the Butterfly. The first incarnation of the machine ran utilized 68k CPUs and ran a proprietary OS. Later versions of the 68k machine used the 020 with memory management and ran a variation of Mach/Unix. The largest of this machine was 128 processors. The follow on to the 68k machine was called the TC2000 and used 88k CPUs, the largest machine sold running with 256 processors. It was pretty impressive! Ray Arachelian wrote: > Just out of curiosity, were there any machines out there that were built > from multiple MC68000's CPU's? > > > From eric at brouhaha.com Mon Apr 21 13:43:02 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:43:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: TK50 with SCSI In-Reply-To: <361038.42090.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <361038.42090.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <59387.64.62.206.10.1208803382.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Ian wrote: > But, they DID make a SCSI TK-50. The TK50Z. DEC used "Z" to designate SCSI, though on later products it was the second letter rather than a suffix. The TK50Z which came in -FA and -GA variants with different firmware. The SCSI command set implementation is atrocious; it will work with some host systems and not others. IIRC, the -GA was much closer to meeting the SCSI spec. In 2001, Pete Turnbull posted here that the firmware for the -GA is a 27C256 with DEC part number 23-261E6. There was also a TZ30. From dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu Mon Apr 21 13:44:54 2008 From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu (David Griffith) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:44:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: duplicate ebay search result email? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, Richard wrote: > Is anyone else noticing that they get a lot of duplicate email from > their ebay canned searches? > > They did something to their categories and search engine, apparently. > I used to be able to search in a Commodore category under vintage > computers, but that category appears to have disappeared. Since then, > I have been getting a lot of duplicate email from my searches all > containing the same items. Ebay recently lumped all the vintage stuff into a single category -- 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 mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Apr 21 14:06:19 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:06:19 -0400 Subject: TK50 with SCSI In-Reply-To: <59387.64.62.206.10.1208803382.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <361038.42090.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <59387.64.62.206.10.1208803382.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: On Apr 21, 2008, at 2:43 PM, Eric Smith wrote: > The TK50Z. DEC used "Z" to designate SCSI, though on later > products it > was the second letter rather than a suffix. The TK50Z which came > in -FA > and -GA variants with different firmware. The SCSI command set > implementation is atrocious; it will work with some host systems > and not > others. IIRC, the -GA was much closer to meeting the SCSI spec. > In 2001, Pete Turnbull posted here that the firmware for the -GA is > a 27C256 with DEC part number 23-261E6. It might not be a bad idea for someone to archive that ROM image. Does anyone have one handy? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Mon Apr 21 14:23:11 2008 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:23:11 -0700 (PDT) Subject: DEC mini cabinet Message-ID: <966964.46051.qm@web56208.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Just a little more info on the DEC cabinet, it does appear to have a part number H9642-DC if that is of any help. The side panels do appear to be quite well 'stuck' and I cant see any obvious bolts, but I did notice that the cross bars on the panels have slots (one is visible). Thanks Ian ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From pete at dunnington.plus.com Mon Apr 21 14:28:00 2008 From: pete at dunnington.plus.com (Pete Turnbull) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:28:00 +0100 Subject: TK50 with SCSI In-Reply-To: References: <361038.42090.qm@web52705.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <59387.64.62.206.10.1208803382.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <480CEAC0.6060506@dunnington.plus.com> On 21/04/2008 20:06, Dave McGuire wrote: > On Apr 21, 2008, at 2:43 PM, Eric Smith wrote: >> The TK50Z. DEC used "Z" to designate SCSI, though on later products it >> was the second letter rather than a suffix. The TK50Z which came in -FA >> and -GA variants with different firmware. The SCSI command set >> implementation is atrocious; it will work with some host systems and not >> others. IIRC, the -GA was much closer to meeting the SCSI spec. >> In 2001, Pete Turnbull posted here that the firmware for the -GA is >> a 27C256 with DEC part number 23-261E6. Did I? One list I have says 23-453E6 for the -GA and 23-254E6 for the -FA. At least I got the 27C256 part right, but I wonder where I found 23-261E6... > It might not be a bad idea for someone to archive that ROM image. > Does anyone have one handy? http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/DECROMs/23-453E6.bin -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York From legalize at xmission.com Mon Apr 21 15:08:30 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:08:30 -0600 Subject: duplicate ebay search result email? In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:44:54 -0700. Message-ID: In article , David Griffith writes: > On Mon, 21 Apr 2008, Richard wrote: > > > Is anyone else noticing that they get a lot of duplicate email from > > their ebay canned searches? > > > > They did something to their categories and search engine, apparently. > > I used to be able to search in a Commodore category under vintage > > computers, but that category appears to have disappeared. Since then, > > I have been getting a lot of duplicate email from my searches all > > containing the same items. > > Ebay recently lumped all the vintage stuff into a single category Yeah, but I still should only get 1 email per search, not 2. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From legalize at xmission.com Mon Apr 21 15:09:46 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:09:46 -0600 Subject: BBN Butterfly (was: are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there? In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:39:37 -0500. <480C36A9.7080505@ubanproductions.com> Message-ID: In article <480C36A9.7080505 at ubanproductions.com>, Tom Uban writes: > Back in the late '80s and early '90s, I worked for BBN Advanced Computers Inc > where we build a NUMA parallel processor called the Butterfly. [...] Ah yes, I remember this machine! Anyone got one in their collection? ISTR it was quite popular for people doing parallel processing research. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From uban at ubanproductions.com Mon Apr 21 03:25:08 2008 From: uban at ubanproductions.com (Tom Uban) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 03:25:08 -0500 Subject: BBN Butterfly In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <480C4F64.305@ubanproductions.com> Richard wrote: > In article <480C36A9.7080505 at ubanproductions.com>, > Tom Uban writes: > >> Back in the late '80s and early '90s, I worked for BBN Advanced Computers Inc >> where we build a NUMA parallel processor called the Butterfly. [...] > > Ah yes, I remember this machine! > > Anyone got one in their collection? ISTR it was quite popular for > people doing parallel processing research. Yes, I have both a 68k Butterfly and an 88k TC2000. I began the restoration of the 68k machine, but was thwarted by the lack of the multibus interface card. From mcguire at neurotica.com Mon Apr 21 15:38:40 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:38:40 -0400 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFF1@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D3905DFF1@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <554C7C1B-CC5E-421E-8B76-7E6826301E84@neurotica.com> On Apr 20, 2008, at 2:32 PM, Rod Smallwood wrote: > 2. If you run the IVP and enter the node name or WSA0 (the device > name) > it simply says "cannot open display" > > 3. I am exactly where I was on Friday. > > 4. Until I find out what "Cannot open display" means I'm stuck That sounds suspiciously like what X libraries say when they...well, can't open the display. ;) In a UNIX-ish OS, here's what happens when one starts an X app when the DISPLAY environment variable isn't set, and a display isn't specified on the command line: g5$ unset DISPLAY g5$ xterm xterm Xt error: Can't open display: g5$ -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Mon Apr 21 15:49:05 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:49:05 -0500 Subject: BBN Butterfly In-Reply-To: <480C4F64.305@ubanproductions.com> References: <480C4F64.305@ubanproductions.com> Message-ID: <480CFDC1.7040306@gmail.com> Tom Uban wrote: > Richard wrote: >> In article <480C36A9.7080505 at ubanproductions.com>, >> Tom Uban writes: >> >>> Back in the late '80s and early '90s, I worked for BBN Advanced >>> Computers Inc >>> where we build a NUMA parallel processor called the Butterfly. [...] >> >> Ah yes, I remember this machine! >> >> Anyone got one in their collection? ISTR it was quite popular for >> people doing parallel processing research. > > Yes, I have both a 68k Butterfly and an 88k TC2000. I began the restoration > of the 68k machine, but was thwarted by the lack of the multibus interface > card. Is there theoretically enough documentation left to build such a card? That would at least bring such a restoration into the realms of 'possible' (albeit a lot of work!) m88k-based hardware really appeals, for some odd reason... cheers Jules From uban at ubanproductions.com Mon Apr 21 04:00:04 2008 From: uban at ubanproductions.com (Tom Uban) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 04:00:04 -0500 Subject: BBN Butterfly In-Reply-To: <480CFDC1.7040306@gmail.com> References: <480C4F64.305@ubanproductions.com> <480CFDC1.7040306@gmail.com> Message-ID: <480C5794.7030405@ubanproductions.com> Jules Richardson wrote: > Tom Uban wrote: >> Richard wrote: >>> In article <480C36A9.7080505 at ubanproductions.com>, >>> Tom Uban writes: >>> >>>> Back in the late '80s and early '90s, I worked for BBN Advanced >>>> Computers Inc >>>> where we build a NUMA parallel processor called the Butterfly. [...] >>> >>> Ah yes, I remember this machine! >>> >>> Anyone got one in their collection? ISTR it was quite popular for >>> people doing parallel processing research. >> >> Yes, I have both a 68k Butterfly and an 88k TC2000. I began the >> restoration >> of the 68k machine, but was thwarted by the lack of the multibus >> interface >> card. > > Is there theoretically enough documentation left to build such a card? > That would at least bring such a restoration into the realms of > 'possible' (albeit a lot of work!) > > m88k-based hardware really appeals, for some odd reason... > > cheers > > Jules > > I believe that the card is still in existence, but the person who originally collected the machine kept the card out for some reason. I believe that I have everything necessary to restore the 88k machine, with the possible exception of time (at the moment:-). From spectre at floodgap.com Mon Apr 21 16:30:32 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:30:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: BBN Butterfly In-Reply-To: <480CFDC1.7040306@gmail.com> from Jules Richardson at "Apr 21, 8 03:49:05 pm" Message-ID: <200804212130.m3LLUXwN020390@floodgap.com> > m88k-based hardware really appeals, for some odd reason... I've always found the 88K fascinating, if for no better reason than it's so unusual. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- 1-GHz Pentium-III + Java + XSLT == 1-MHz 6502. -- Craig Bruce -------------- From eric at brouhaha.com Mon Apr 21 17:33:55 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:33:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: BBN Butterfly In-Reply-To: <200804212130.m3LLUXwN020390@floodgap.com> References: <200804212130.m3LLUXwN020390@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <57212.64.62.206.10.1208817235.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Cameron wrote: > I've always found the 88K fascinating, if for no better reason than it's > so unusual. In what way? To me it seems fairly ordinary as early RISC processors went. Eric From rescue at hawkmountain.net Mon Apr 21 20:37:20 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:37:20 -0400 Subject: Colorbus card and cables for SGI Indy Message-ID: <480D4150.9030405@hawkmountain.net> anyone have any interest ? -- Curt From glen.slick at gmail.com Mon Apr 21 22:22:13 2008 From: glen.slick at gmail.com (Glen Slick) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:22:13 -0700 Subject: DEC mini cabinet In-Reply-To: <966964.46051.qm@web56208.mail.re3.yahoo.com> References: <966964.46051.qm@web56208.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1e1fc3e90804212022u6e7691aak678b4cf8fe8b38b2@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 12:23 PM, silvercreekvalley wrote: > Just a little more info on the DEC > cabinet, it does appear to have a > part number H9642-DC if that is > of any help. > > The side panels do appear to be quite > well 'stuck' and I cant see any obvious > bolts, but I did notice that the cross > bars on the panels have slots (one is > visible). > Did you remove the rear door? After removing the rear door are there two end panel locking brackets bolted to the bottom rear of the cabinet, one on the left side and one on the right side, each with two bolts? They are L shaped with the shorter side of the L bolted to the cabinet and the longer side projecting backwards from the rear of the cabinet. You don't need to remove the two bolts completely, just loosen the two bolts on each bracket and slide the brackets upward to remove them. Then you can remove the side panels of the H9640 series cabinet. I was just stumped by this myself. It wasn't obvious to me that those two brackets were what was blocking the removal of the side panels. I have a copy of EK-H9642-IN DEC DATASYSTEMS INSTALLATION MANUAL H9640 SERIES CABINET which what I looked at to figure out how to remove the side panels of a cabinet I have. From rescue at hawkmountain.net Mon Apr 21 22:36:35 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:36:35 -0400 Subject: DEC LN03 toner, maintenance kits, and font/etc cartridges Message-ID: <480D5D43.7090403@hawkmountain.net> I have the following: LN03X-TA (qty 3) toner LN03X-AD (qty 2) maintenance kit (I believe this includes toner) LN03X-CR (qty 2) memory font cartridge LN03X-CX (CG Times 24) font cartridge LN03X-CW (CG Times 14 18 18bold) font cartridge LN03X-CY (CG Triumvirate 8 10 10bold 12 12bold) font cartridge LN03X-CB (CG Times 8 10 10bold 10italic 12 12bold) font cartridge I no longer have an LN03. If you are interested in one or more of these items, make an offer. -- Curt From rescue at hawkmountain.net Mon Apr 21 22:44:23 2008 From: rescue at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:44:23 -0400 Subject: Supra 33.6K external modems available Message-ID: <480D5F17.5090106@hawkmountain.net> Anyone want any of these. Nice old classic modem in extruded aluminum housing. I have power supplies (might have more modems than supplies however). If these don't move, I'm going to reclaim the aluminum. If you want one or more, make an offer, I'm looking to reclaim space. Located in Sharon, MA 02067. -- Curt From steve at radiorobots.com Mon Apr 21 23:16:57 2008 From: steve at radiorobots.com (Steve Stutman) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:16:57 -0400 Subject: Supra 33.6K external modems available In-Reply-To: <480D5F17.5090106@hawkmountain.net> References: <480D5F17.5090106@hawkmountain.net> Message-ID: <480D66B9.70308@radiorobots.com> Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote: > > Anyone want any of these. Nice old classic modem in extruded aluminum > housing. > I have power supplies (might have more modems than supplies however). > > If these don't move, I'm going to reclaim the aluminum. > > If you want one or more, make an offer, I'm looking to reclaim space. > > Located in Sharon, MA 02067. > > -- Curt Hi Curt, I'll buy you lunch at some Chinese or Indian restaurant near Sharon, Canton, or Norwood in exchange for one with a supply. Steve Sudbury From slawmaster at gmail.com Mon Apr 21 23:51:07 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:51:07 -0700 Subject: reel to reel Message-ID: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> So I'm looking at a Teac reel to reel deck going for $25. It comes with 6 tapes, which judging from the prices on ebay is a pretty good deal. What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of life I'd be getting out of these tapes. I don't plan to record too much (I'm not in a band or anything) but my friends and I would probably be making recordings from time to time and I expect that I would eventually want to reuse some of the tapes; how many times can you usually write to these before you start seeing a noticeable degrading in sound quality? John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From eric at brouhaha.com Tue Apr 22 00:39:37 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:39:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: reel to reel In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> References: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <35519.71.139.37.220.1208842777.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> John Floren wrote: > What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of > life I'd be getting out of these tapes. Recording using the Kansas City standard? From slawmaster at gmail.com Tue Apr 22 01:16:59 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:16:59 -0700 Subject: reel to reel In-Reply-To: <35519.71.139.37.220.1208842777.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> <35519.71.139.37.220.1208842777.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <7d3530220804212316u56338f88u8c01cf1cfd4485a7@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:39 PM, Eric Smith wrote: > John Floren wrote: > > What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of > > life I'd be getting out of these tapes. > > Recording using the Kansas City standard? > Recording analog audio, not data, which is what the Kansas City standard seems to be. Although it *could* be cool to store some programs on there... John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From lee_courtney at acm.org Mon Apr 21 12:57:35 2008 From: lee_courtney at acm.org (Lee Courtney (ACM)) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:57:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: HP7978 Available in Menlo Park CA (94025) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <775328.91658.qm@web35304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I have an HP7978 1/2 tape drive available for free in Menlo Park, CA (94025) - pickup only. Caveat - passes power-on self-test and loads tape, but doesn't hold tension. Nice HP cabinet. See a pictures at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lee_courtney/sets/72157604661737391/ Will go to scrap soon if not claimed and picked up. Contact me to view in person. Lee Courtney lee_courtney at acm dot org From curtis at hawkmountain.net Mon Apr 21 20:31:00 2008 From: curtis at hawkmountain.net (Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.) Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:31:00 -0400 Subject: QMS PS810 printer parts Message-ID: <480D3FD4.3070502@hawkmountain.net> Anyone need any ? mainboard is good, front display is good, fuser gone, power supply unknown. It is my way and I don't want it (I have too many printers already). Let me know ASAP if there is anything you want of it. Free if you pickup (the whole printer). If you want a specific part removed, $10 + actual ship (for as many parts as you want off it, I'll remove what you want and ship it). If you want it and are picking it up, you can pick up in Sharon, MA (evenings/weekends) or Cambridge, MA (days). -- Curt From gordonjcp at gjcp.net Tue Apr 22 02:24:03 2008 From: gordonjcp at gjcp.net (Gordon JC Pearce) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:24:03 +0100 Subject: reel to reel In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804212316u56338f88u8c01cf1cfd4485a7@mail.gmail.com> References: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> <35519.71.139.37.220.1208842777.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7d3530220804212316u56338f88u8c01cf1cfd4485a7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1208849043.12135.4.camel@elric> On Mon, 2008-04-21 at 23:16 -0700, John Floren wrote: > On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:39 PM, Eric Smith wrote: > > John Floren wrote: > > > What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of > > > life I'd be getting out of these tapes. > > > > Recording using the Kansas City standard? > > > > Recording analog audio, not data, which is what the Kansas City > standard seems to be. Although it *could* be cool to store some > programs on there... Probably more a discussion for Roy's Tech Chat list ;-) Gordon From healyzh at aracnet.com Tue Apr 22 02:49:06 2008 From: healyzh at aracnet.com (Zane H. Healy) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:49:06 -0700 Subject: reel to reel In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> References: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: At 9:51 PM -0700 4/21/08, John Floren wrote: >So I'm looking at a Teac reel to reel deck going for $25. It comes >with 6 tapes, which judging from the prices on ebay is a pretty good >deal. What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of >life I'd be getting out of these tapes. I don't plan to record too >much (I'm not in a band or anything) but my friends and I would >probably be making recordings from time to time and I expect that I >would eventually want to reuse some of the tapes; how many times can >you usually write to these before you start seeing a noticeable >degrading in sound quality? I've no idea, but if anyone has any links to good sites with preservation tips, or info on restoring the machines I'd be interested. The Library received a donation of 2 or 3 units (different makes), and boxes of tapes. One of these days I need to start work on restoring them. Of course first I need to sort out all the magnetic media (data and audio) that came with that donation. 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 cfox1 at cogeco.ca Tue Apr 22 05:23:31 2008 From: cfox1 at cogeco.ca (Charles Fox) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:23:31 -0400 Subject: reel to reel In-Reply-To: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.co m> References: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20080422102337.F277C9AE@fep9.cogeco.net> At 12:51 AM 4/22/2008, you wrote: >So I'm looking at a Teac reel to reel deck going for $25. It comes >with 6 tapes, which judging from the prices on ebay is a pretty good >deal. What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of >life I'd be getting out of these tapes. I don't plan to record too >much (I'm not in a band or anything) but my friends and I would >probably be making recordings from time to time and I expect that I >would eventually want to reuse some of the tapes; how many times can >you usually write to these before you start seeing a noticeable >degrading in sound quality? > >John >-- >Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From experience with endless loop tapes, I would say you are safe with several hundred plays. i would also suggest you line up spare capstan belts for your Teac recorder. Charles E. Fox Video Productions 793 Argyle Rd. Windsor, Ontario 519-254-4991 N8Y 3J8 www.chasfoxvideo.com From slawmaster at gmail.com Tue Apr 22 09:02:07 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:02:07 -0700 Subject: reel to reel In-Reply-To: <1208849043.12135.4.camel@elric> References: <7d3530220804212151u7b7ac4e4k2f11d78a2271ceb3@mail.gmail.com> <35519.71.139.37.220.1208842777.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <7d3530220804212316u56338f88u8c01cf1cfd4485a7@mail.gmail.com> <1208849043.12135.4.camel@elric> Message-ID: <7d3530220804220702q396b1adfn7d9ddc341ceef8d9@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 12:24 AM, Gordon JC Pearce wrote: > On Mon, 2008-04-21 at 23:16 -0700, John Floren wrote: > > On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 10:39 PM, Eric Smith wrote: > > > John Floren wrote: > > > > What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of > > > > life I'd be getting out of these tapes. > > > > > > Recording using the Kansas City standard? > > > > > > > Recording analog audio, not data, which is what the Kansas City > > standard seems to be. Although it *could* be cool to store some > > programs on there... > > Probably more a discussion for Roy's Tech Chat list ;-) > > Gordon > > Maybe, but it's a classic technology and I figured it wouldn't be the most inappropriate topic that's been posted here ;) John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From bob at jfcl.com Tue Apr 22 09:57:28 2008 From: bob at jfcl.com (Bob Armstrong) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:57:28 -0700 Subject: Removing side panels of DEC mini rack In-Reply-To: <20080421180012.GB6950@usap.gov> References: <466453.48367.qm@web56213.mail.re3.yahoo.com> <20080421180012.GB6950@usap.gov> Message-ID: <001e01c8a489$2f0439a0$8d0cace0$@com> >Others, probably the >majority, have large mushroom-headed studs on the racks that >mate with tapered slots on the side panels. One tip - the bottom brackets on the back of the rack that hold up the rear door often block the side panels from lifting. These brackets have to be removed (two hex head bolts each) before you can remove the side panels. As Ethan and others said, there are several different styles and not all styles have these brackets, but you might want to check before resorting to 2x4s... Bob From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 22 09:58:31 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:58:31 -0400 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D39081F2D@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> References: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D39081F2D@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <43569EDD-73DF-459F-8DE5-01758E5D6049@neurotica.com> On Apr 22, 2008, at 6:20 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: > I'm past that hurdle. It seems you have to have a console connected > and > define the display from there. > Its just a license problem now. I've been advised to load a couple > more > appliaction and license them. That is great news! Let us know how things go after you've loaded the licenses. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mnusa2 at hotmail.com Tue Apr 22 10:17:01 2008 From: mnusa2 at hotmail.com (Matti Nummi) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:17:01 +0300 Subject: Data General 5 1/4 in external diskette unit available Message-ID: Hi All, I found an external 5 1/4 in. diskette unit in a Data General enclosure. Model no 2233 Serial no 5010367 220-240 V unit. Teac drive and teac controller inside. ICs have -84 codes in them. D37 connector in the back. Not tested. Followups by email if anyone is interested. BR. Matti Nummi _________________________________________________________________ Liity perheeseen - Hanki nyt seuraavan sukupolven ilmaiset Windows Live -palvelut http://get.live.com From silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com Tue Apr 22 15:18:47 2008 From: silvercreekvalley at yahoo.com (silvercreekvalley) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:18:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Removing the sides of a DEC mini rack Message-ID: <904027.1761.qm@web56208.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Thanks for all the tips. I removed the two brackets on the rear of the cab, and then turned the cab on its side and gave the underside of the sides a sharp tap with a hammer (cushioned). Eventually the sides came off. They were quite tight - but came off in the end without damage. Many thanks for the help! Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Tue Apr 22 05:20:06 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:20:06 +0100 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D39081F2D@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> I'm past that hurdle. It seems you have to have a console connected and define the display from there. Its just a license problem now. I've been advised to load a couple more appliaction and license them. Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire Sent: 21 April 2008 21:39 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Re: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows On Apr 20, 2008, at 2:32 PM, Rod Smallwood wrote: > 2. If you run the IVP and enter the node name or WSA0 (the device > name) > it simply says "cannot open display" > > 3. I am exactly where I was on Friday. > > 4. Until I find out what "Cannot open display" means I'm stuck That sounds suspiciously like what X libraries say when they...well, can't open the display. ;) In a UNIX-ish OS, here's what happens when one starts an X app when the DISPLAY environment variable isn't set, and a display isn't specified on the command line: g5$ unset DISPLAY g5$ xterm xterm Xt error: Can't open display: g5$ -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From jonas at otter.se Tue Apr 22 13:20:43 2008 From: jonas at otter.se (Jonas Otter) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:20:43 +0200 Subject: reel to reel In-Reply-To: <200804221702.m3MH1Yjc068931@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804221702.m3MH1Yjc068931@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <480E2C7B.30502@otter.se> "John Floren" wrote: > So I'm looking at a Teac reel to reel deck going for $25. It comes > with 6 tapes, which judging from the prices on ebay is a pretty good > deal. What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of > life I'd be getting out of these tapes. I don't plan to record too > much (I'm not in a band or anything) but my friends and I would > probably be making recordings from time to time and I expect that I > would eventually want to reuse some of the tapes; how many times can > you usually write to these before you start seeing a noticeable > degrading in sound quality? > > John > Many times, probably hundreds, as long as the magnetic layer doesn't begin to come off. Old tapes may be at risk of deteriorating. To get the best recordings possible, use a bulk eraser to erase the tapes before reusing them, and make sure that all parts of the deck that come into contact with the tape, such as heads, tape guides, capstan etc are regularly demagnetised. Jonas From wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu Tue Apr 22 16:00:35 2008 From: wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu (Martin Scott Goldberg) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:00:35 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Rescued a Tandy System II In-Reply-To: <53F538DE-9A6F-40D8-9204-267D7EE71A90@xlisper.com> from "David Betz" at Mar 10, 2008 09:24:10 AM Message-ID: <200804222100.m3ML0Zwg032382@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> Just rescued a Tandy System II, its a Tandy badged version of the TRS-80 Model II it looks like. Anyone familiar with this version? I had heard there were some Tandy branded models of the TRS-80's, but had never ran across one in person before. The front badge says: Tandy 2 Microcomputer System Also accompanied with a TRS-80 Disk System II, with two of the three available 8" drives installed. I left the lineprinter, just didn't have a use for it to try and get it running again. And truthfully, this lot was heavy enough as it is - christ, I thought my IMSAI 8080 and drives unit were heavy. ;) It was sitting in this guy's attic since 1981, so it needs a thorough cleaning. Got the whole setup for $50. Anyone have any system disks to spare (or copy) in case everything powers up ok after cleaning it? Marty From silent700 at gmail.com Tue Apr 22 16:24:37 2008 From: silent700 at gmail.com (Jason T) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:24:37 -0500 Subject: Rescued a Tandy System II In-Reply-To: <200804222100.m3ML0Zwg032382@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> References: <53F538DE-9A6F-40D8-9204-267D7EE71A90@xlisper.com> <200804222100.m3ML0Zwg032382@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> Message-ID: <51ea77730804221424v2231e1d2j746453bb8e0e083d@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 4:00 PM, Martin Scott Goldberg wrote: > Just rescued a Tandy System II, its a Tandy badged version of the TRS-80 > Model II it looks like. Anyone familiar with this version? I had heard > there were some Tandy branded models of the TRS-80's, but had never ran > across one in person before. Put up some pics if you can! I've wanted a Model II forever, if for nothing else that it has 8" drives and to see it run Xenix :) I have never heard of a Tandy badged system. Seems kind of redundant given that RS=Tandy, although at that time maybe the brands were more separate. Surely a TRS fan can tell us more. j From slawmaster at gmail.com Tue Apr 22 16:37:09 2008 From: slawmaster at gmail.com (John Floren) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 14:37:09 -0700 Subject: reel to reel In-Reply-To: <480E2C7B.30502@otter.se> References: <200804221702.m3MH1Yjc068931@dewey.classiccmp.org> <480E2C7B.30502@otter.se> Message-ID: <7d3530220804221437m212d2a6bga687d59b3e9a7a05@mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Jonas Otter wrote: > "John Floren" wrote: > > > > So I'm looking at a Teac reel to reel deck going for $25. It comes > > with 6 tapes, which judging from the prices on ebay is a pretty good > > deal. What I'm wondering is if anyone can tell me about the kind of > > life I'd be getting out of these tapes. I don't plan to record too > > much (I'm not in a band or anything) but my friends and I would > > probably be making recordings from time to time and I expect that I > > would eventually want to reuse some of the tapes; how many times can > > you usually write to these before you start seeing a noticeable > > degrading in sound quality? > > > > John > > > > > Many times, probably hundreds, as long as the magnetic layer doesn't begin > to come off. Old tapes may be at risk of deteriorating. To get the best > recordings possible, use a bulk eraser to erase the tapes before reusing > them, and make sure that all parts of the deck that come into contact with > the tape, such as heads, tape guides, capstan etc are regularly > demagnetised. > > Jonas > Thank you; assuming the seller has treated the tapes and equipment well (they certainly look well taken care of) and hasn't made a lot of recordings, it sounds like those 6 tapes should last a long time. Looking online gives me the impression that audio stored on the tapes, if properly cared for, will stay at a high quality for decades, which is pretty cool. I was thinking back to my experiences with cassette tapes, which seemed to degrade after just a few uses. I'll be returning to school in about a month and a half; I'm gonna bet there's a bulk eraser somewhere that I could use. As for demagnetizing... well, there's a couple recording studios on campus, and I wouldn't be surprised if the campus radio station still had a reel-to-reel rig. Thanks to everyone for responding to my kinda off-topic question :) John -- Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn From mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Tue Apr 22 16:58:18 2008 From: mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us (Mike Loewen) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:58:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Rescued a Tandy System II In-Reply-To: <51ea77730804221424v2231e1d2j746453bb8e0e083d@mail.gmail.com> References: <53F538DE-9A6F-40D8-9204-267D7EE71A90@xlisper.com> <200804222100.m3ML0Zwg032382@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> <51ea77730804221424v2231e1d2j746453bb8e0e083d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Tue, 22 Apr 2008, Jason T wrote: > Put up some pics if you can! I've wanted a Model II forever, if for > nothing else that it has 8" drives and to see it run Xenix :) A stock TRS-80 Model II is a single processor (Z80A) system, and doesn't run Xenix. In order to run Xenix, you had to install an option (26-6010) which added a 68000 CPU and additional memory. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/ From ray at arachelian.com Tue Apr 22 17:29:09 2008 From: ray at arachelian.com (Ray Arachelian) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:29:09 -0400 Subject: Motorola 88K programmer's/reference PDF's? (was Re: BBN Butterfly) In-Reply-To: <57212.64.62.206.10.1208817235.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <200804212130.m3LLUXwN020390@floodgap.com> <57212.64.62.206.10.1208817235.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <480E66B5.2040903@arachelian.com> So speaking of which, I poked around and realize that I don't have any manuals for this CPU, and sadly it seems I couldn't find them online either. Before the whole Freescale thing, Motorola used to have PDF's for lots of their manuals including PPC and 68k. Anyone know where the 88K manuals can be found today? (Not that I'm planning to do anything specifically with them, so much as I realize that I don't have any docs for them around, just incase some use for such docs might pop up.) From arcarlini at iee.org Tue Apr 22 17:30:03 2008 From: arcarlini at iee.org (Antonio Carlini) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:30:03 +0100 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows In-Reply-To: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D39081F2D@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Message-ID: <002101c8a4c8$69a5d7f0$5b01a8c0@FLEXPC> Rod Smallwood wrote: > I'm past that hurdle. It seems you have to have a console connected > and define the display from there. Not sure what you mean by this, but if it's running ... > Its just a license problem now. I've been advised to load a couple > more appliaction and license them. DW-MOTIF will almost certainly be the one you need. (In addition to VAX-VMS, obviously). Antonio No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.524 / Virus Database: 269.23.3/1390 - Release Date: 21/04/2008 16:23 From eric at brouhaha.com Tue Apr 22 18:15:53 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:15:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Rescued a Tandy System II In-Reply-To: <51ea77730804221424v2231e1d2j746453bb8e0e083d@mail.gmail.com> References: <53F538DE-9A6F-40D8-9204-267D7EE71A90@xlisper.com> <200804222100.m3ML0Zwg032382@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> <51ea77730804221424v2231e1d2j746453bb8e0e083d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <48109.64.62.206.10.1208906153.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Jason T wrote: > Put up some pics if you can! I've wanted a Model II forever, if for > nothing else that it has 8" drives and to see it run Xenix :) For Xenix you need a Model 16 or 6000, since Xenix runs on an MC68000 processor that is not present in the Model 2 or 12. The Model 2 could be upgraded, though. Not sure about the 12; it was a cost-reduced 2, and an upgrade would probably require completely replacing the power supply and card cage. From grant at stockly.com Tue Apr 22 19:54:56 2008 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:54:56 -0800 Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS Message-ID: <0JZR00IBA6JC1OA0@msgmmp-1.gci.net> I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter DOS compatible? What would that take? I have two of these things with a letter quality daisy wheel and the giant sheet feeder. SuperCalc and TextPack are boring. Is there anything else that can be done with them? CP/M? Grant From cclist at sydex.com Tue Apr 22 20:14:41 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:14:41 -0700 Subject: WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller Message-ID: <480E2B11.28440.1D048A6@cclist.sydex.com> Scratch the request for an Emulex MT-02. Looking at the Bitsavers tech ref for this board shows it to be a QIC-36 interface, not a QIC- 02. I should have checked before I posted, sorry. A great big "Doh!" Does anyone know of a QIC-02 to SCSI converter? I'm not finding anything. Thanks, Chuck From mcguire at neurotica.com Tue Apr 22 22:25:18 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:25:18 -0400 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 Message-ID: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> I just remembered that I'd wanted to mention this, but things have been busy and I forgot. My mother knows of my fondness for antique computers, and she keeps her eyes open at thrift stores and related places. She picked up a Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 for me and presented it to me for my birthday a month ago. I had never heard of this machine, but now I've done some reading and I've played with it a bit. It's pretty neat! Has anyone else here messed with one? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From evan at snarc.net Tue Apr 22 22:34:26 2008 From: evan at snarc.net (Evan Koblentz) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:34:26 -0400 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <007d01c8a4f2$ef69ac20$f750f945@evan> Yes, they're not so uncommon. -----Original Message----- From: Dave McGuire [mailto:mcguire at neurotica.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 11:25 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 I just remembered that I'd wanted to mention this, but things have been busy and I forgot. My mother knows of my fondness for antique computers, and she keeps her eyes open at thrift stores and related places. She picked up a Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 for me and presented it to me for my birthday a month ago. I had never heard of this machine, but now I've done some reading and I've played with it a bit. It's pretty neat! Has anyone else here messed with one? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Apr 22 22:35:19 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:35:19 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> from Dave McGuire at "Apr 22, 8 11:25:18 pm" Message-ID: <200804230335.m3N3ZJ3J016382@floodgap.com> > I just remembered that I'd wanted to mention this, but things have > been busy and I forgot. My mother knows of my fondness for antique > computers, and she keeps her eyes open at thrift stores and related > places. She picked up a Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 for me > and presented it to me for my birthday a month ago. > > I had never heard of this machine, but now I've done some reading > and I've played with it a bit. It's pretty neat! Has anyone else > here messed with one? Yup, I find it fun. I just wish they'd released that wafertape drive because it has no storage options *at all* (unless you count hard copy on the printer, which is also cute). -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- The best of all: God is with us. -- John Wesley ---------------------------- From jrkeys at concentric.net Tue Apr 22 22:51:53 2008 From: jrkeys at concentric.net (Keys) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:51:53 -0500 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 References: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <009901c8a4f5$60a3f600$5a57ef42@66067007> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave McGuire" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 10:25 PM Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 > > I just remembered that I'd wanted to mention this, but things have been > busy and I forgot. My mother knows of my fondness for antique computers, > and she keeps her eyes open at thrift stores and related places. She > picked up a Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 for me and presented it > to me for my birthday a month ago. > > I had never heard of this machine, but now I've done some reading and > I've played with it a bit. It's pretty neat! Has anyone else here > messed with one? > > -Dave > > -- > Dave McGuire > Port Charlotte, FL > I just put on a showing at the Museum Of Science here in Houston and had a CC40 on display and got a few questions about it. From frustum at pacbell.net Tue Apr 22 23:04:35 2008 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:04:35 -0500 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> References: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <480EB553.2080303@pacbell.net> Dave McGuire wrote: > > I just remembered that I'd wanted to mention this, but things have > been busy and I forgot. My mother knows of my fondness for antique > computers, and she keeps her eyes open at thrift stores and related > places. She picked up a Texas Instruments Compact Computer 40 for me > and presented it to me for my birthday a month ago. > > I had never heard of this machine, but now I've done some reading and > I've played with it a bit. It's pretty neat! Has anyone else here > messed with one? > > -Dave They are pretty common on ebay -- in fact, they often show up NIB, often for under $50. Tell your mom to try harder next year. :-) Actually, it is quite impressive that she identified it as something interesting. If you like the CC40, keep your eyes peeled for the TI-74. It is basically a CC40 with a few enhancements stuffed into a largish calculator format, instead of a miniature laptop. One thing that is charming about it is TI's BASIC. Microsoft so dominated the 8 bit micro world with its BASIC that most such machines kind of bore me because they are all so similar. The CC40 and TI-74 BASIC are highly similar to the advance BASIC of the TI 94/A, so I'm told (I've never used one) even though they have different uPs. What is cool about the BASIC? Long variable names, proper subroutines with local variables, good extensability. There is a lot more, but I don't have the manual at hand to refresh my memory. The hexbus interface is pretty cool too, really well thought out. Recently I scored a rare wafertape drive for the CC40, although I haven't tried it out yet ... too much work to address first. Going a bit further down the line, some European TI employees formed a company to make a microcomputer, called the Exelvision EXL100. It contained two 70C20 (or similar) microprocessors, from the same family as the CC40 and TI-74. It has an enhanced version of the same BASIC. This is a real micro, with a color PAL output, IR keyboard and joysticks. I have a EXL100 and a number of games, but no floppy subsystem (yet). Perhaps in the distant future I'll write an emulator for it if someone doesn't beat me to it. It seems like an interesting machine. From warren at databasics.us Tue Apr 22 23:08:10 2008 From: warren at databasics.us (warren at databasics.us) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:08:10 +0000 Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS Message-ID: <20080423040810.12023.qmail@server318.com> Grant Stockley wrote: "I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter DOS compatible? What would that take?" IBM produced an IBM PC program called DisplayWrite (DW IV was the last version, IIRC.) This allowed document interchangability with other IBM platforms, including the DisplayWriter and 5520. It was NOT a method to make the DisplayWriter DOS compatible, however. It let the PC act like a DisplayWriter, and produced format compatible documents. Sadly, I think this must be what you read about. I suppose a retro-fit kit to make the DisplayWriter PC compatible, but I've not heard of it. If you find anything like this, let us know... Peace, Warren E. Wolfe, warren at databasics.us From ploopster at gmail.com Tue Apr 22 23:18:03 2008 From: ploopster at gmail.com (Sridhar Ayengar) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:18:03 -0400 Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS In-Reply-To: <20080423040810.12023.qmail@server318.com> References: <20080423040810.12023.qmail@server318.com> Message-ID: <480EB87B.1010806@gmail.com> warren at databasics.us wrote: > Grant Stockley wrote: > > "I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter > DOS compatible? What would that take?" > > IBM produced an IBM PC program called DisplayWrite (DW IV was the > last version, IIRC.) This allowed document interchangability with > other IBM platforms, including the DisplayWriter and 5520. It was > NOT a method to make the DisplayWriter DOS compatible, however. It > let the PC act like a DisplayWriter, and produced format compatible > documents. Sadly, I think this must be what you read about. I > suppose a retro-fit kit to make the DisplayWriter PC compatible, but > I've not heard of it. If you find anything like this, let us know... DisplayWrite was reasonably powerful. I've seen versions for DOS, OS/2 and Mainframe. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a Windows version in there somewhere. Peace... Sridhar From spectre at floodgap.com Tue Apr 22 23:22:57 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:22:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <480EB553.2080303@pacbell.net> from Jim Battle at "Apr 22, 8 11:04:35 pm" Message-ID: <200804230422.m3N4Mvom016162@floodgap.com> > The hexbus interface is pretty cool too, really well thought out. > Recently I scored a rare wafertape drive for the CC40, although I > haven't tried it out yet ... too much work to address first. Wow! Where did you score that from?? -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- PowerPC inside! ------------------------------------------------------------ From wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu Tue Apr 22 18:42:06 2008 From: wgungfu at csd.uwm.edu (Martin Scott Goldberg) Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:42:06 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Rescued a Tandy System II In-Reply-To: <48109.64.62.206.10.1208906153.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> from "Eric Smith" at Apr 22, 2008 04:15:53 PM Message-ID: <200804222342.m3MNg6PP018434@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> >Jason T wrote: >> Put up some pics if you can! I've wanted a Model II forever, if for >> nothing else that it has 8" drives and to see it run Xenix :) > >For Xenix you need a Model 16 or 6000, since Xenix runs on an MC68000 >processor that is not present in the Model 2 or 12. The Model 2 could >be upgraded, though. Not sure about the 12; it was a cost-reduced 2, >and an upgrade would probably require completely replacing the power >supply and card cage. > > Not sure of the internals yet, its definetly been opened already though. The "only service at Radio Shack" tag it split. Right now, I'm busy soaking the Model 2 dust cover that came with it. Gross oily substance all over it, but it was over the unit all these years, so it did its job. ;) Marty From wordorama at optusnet.com.au Wed Apr 23 00:46:20 2008 From: wordorama at optusnet.com.au (Justine Stewart) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:46:20 +1000 Subject: Radio Shack Science Fair manuals Message-ID: <00e401c8a505$5bd5b1d0$562e31d2@BENQLAPTOP> Hi Brian - found an email you wrote on classiccmp.org website re Radio Shack Science Fair kits. My dad has just found an old 200-in-one kit that he wants to donate to my son but there is no manual. Any chance we could obtain a copy of the manual from you at all? Thanks and kind regards J Stewart Brisbane, Australia From RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk Wed Apr 23 01:01:59 2008 From: RodSmallwood at mail.ediconsulting.co.uk (Rod Smallwood) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:01:59 +0100 Subject: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows Message-ID: <86505602FE0FBB4CB9DE54636AA48D39081F36@EDISERVER.EDICONS.local> Down to a product not being loaded (It also shows a missing product in the boot sequence) But it does not tell you which one!!! Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Dave McGuire Sent: 22 April 2008 15:59 To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Re: VAXstation 3100 and DecWindows On Apr 22, 2008, at 6:20 AM, Rod Smallwood wrote: > I'm past that hurdle. It seems you have to have a console connected > and define the display from there. > Its just a license problem now. I've been advised to load a couple > more appliaction and license them. That is great news! Let us know how things go after you've loaded the licenses. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From frustum at pacbell.net Wed Apr 23 01:11:06 2008 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:11:06 -0500 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <200804230422.m3N4Mvom016162@floodgap.com> References: <200804230422.m3N4Mvom016162@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <480ED2FA.20606@pacbell.net> Cameron Kaiser wrote: >> The hexbus interface is pretty cool too, really well thought out. >> Recently I scored a rare wafertape drive for the CC40, although I >> haven't tried it out yet ... too much work to address first. > > Wow! Where did you score that from?? > It was on ebay. It was for a CC40 with a 16KB RAM cart, a pen plotter/printer, wide carriage printer, modem, the wafertape drive, and some wafertapes. The main thing I was interested in was the wafertape drive -- I already have the other items. It was originally an open-ended auction, and nobody had bid on it yet, so I mailed the seller and said: put a $120 buy it now price and I'll buy it. I should have shot lower, because he agreed too readily. :-) In retrospect, it was more than I really should have spent on it, but they are hens teeth, so I bought it. The timespan from listing until purchase was probably about an hour. From lproven at gmail.com Wed Apr 23 02:47:54 2008 From: lproven at gmail.com (Liam Proven) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:47:54 +0100 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: <000801c89df4$5897bee0$c600a8c0@game> References: <200804140038.m3E0cd9d012732@floodgap.com> <000801c89df4$5897bee0$c600a8c0@game> Message-ID: <575131af0804230047o1045c2eatd6b2f83d65e077a4@mail.gmail.com> 2008/4/14 Teo Zenios : > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Cameron Kaiser" > To: > Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 8:38 PM > Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card > > > > > > For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe > > > > USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's > > > > help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. > > > > Eventually, it could all go on one card. > > > > > > I wonder how much trouble it would be to figure out what's inside that > > > custom chip that Micron used. Suitable SCSI drives are fortunately > still > > > readily available. I don't think USB was ever available for System 6. > > > > I don't believe I have ever seen USB drivers for System 7 either. > > > > I think Mac OS 8.5/8.6 was the 1st to enable USB support. I think it's in OS8. Couldn't swear to it, but the iMac shipped with MacOS 8.1 so it had to be in there at least that early. -- 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 grant at stockly.com Wed Apr 23 05:23:50 2008 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:23:50 -0800 Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS In-Reply-To: <20080423040810.12023.qmail@server318.com> References: <20080423040810.12023.qmail@server318.com> Message-ID: <0JZR00JKIWVIVK90@msgmmp-1.gci.net> >IBM produced an IBM PC program called DisplayWrite (DW IV was the >last version, IIRC.) This allowed document interchangability with >other IBM platforms, including the DisplayWriter and 5520. It was >NOT a method to make the DisplayWriter DOS compatible, however. It >let the PC act like a DisplayWriter, and produced format compatible >documents. Sadly, I think this must be what you read about. I >suppose a retro-fit kit to make the DisplayWriter PC compatible, but >I've not heard of it. If you find anything like this, let us know... How did people transfer files from the 8" disks into the PC? Are the disks DOS format? Grant From trebor72 at execpc.com Wed Apr 23 06:45:17 2008 From: trebor72 at execpc.com (Robert J. Stevens) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 06:45:17 -0500 Subject: cctalk Gifford Computer Systems Multiuser Concurrent DOS User's Manual In-Reply-To: <48074DA0.40508@execpc.com> References: <200804170619.m3H6JM1Y091892@dewey.classiccmp.org> <48074DA0.40508@execpc.com> Message-ID: <480F214D.6090401@execpc.com> The following was posted 21 Mar 1997 Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm > /From: gee at linda.teleport.com > (Chuck Gee) /Date: 21 Mar 1997 10:48:15 -0800 Gifford Computer Systems Multiuser Concurrent DOS User's Manual (includes a pile of 8" diskettes) ================================================================= 6 assorted S-100 motherboards ================================================================= A "pile" of 14 assorted S100 cards that have never been used by me and are untested. I picked them up (used) for future use, but never got around to firing them up. Their condition is unknown, and I'd like to sell them as one batch. They've been sitting in my warehouse for 15 years, and are pretty dusty. ================================================================= Does anyone Know what happened to the S-100 Boards and Manuals. Bob in Wisconsin USE trebor72 at execpc.com From ian_primus at yahoo.com Wed Apr 23 07:23:03 2008 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:23:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Rescued a Tandy System II In-Reply-To: <200804222342.m3MNg6PP018434@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu> Message-ID: <222164.28634.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- Martin Scott Goldberg wrote: > Right now, I'm busy soaking the Model 2 dust cover > that came with it. > Gross oily substance all over it, but it was over > the unit all these > years, so it did its job. ;) I've found the same thing with some of those TRS-80 dust covers, I had one that came with a Model 3 that was all oily and gooey. As far as I can tell, it didn't accumulate that gunk, it created it! I find the same kind of gunk on old plastic covered wiring in TV sets. I think it has something to do with the plasticiser leeching out of the plastic. The only thing that I have been able to find that will remove it is tetrachloroethylene (better known as brake parts cleaner). Dunno what it will do to a dust cover, but it cleans the goo of old wire in TV's... -Ian From spectre at floodgap.com Wed Apr 23 07:42:20 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:42:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <480ED2FA.20606@pacbell.net> from Jim Battle at "Apr 23, 8 01:11:06 am" Message-ID: <200804231242.m3NCgKPN015686@floodgap.com> > > > The hexbus interface is pretty cool too, really well thought out. > > > Recently I scored a rare wafertape drive for the CC40, although I > > > haven't tried it out yet ... too much work to address first. > > Wow! Where did you score that from?? > It was on ebay. It was for a CC40 with a 16KB RAM cart, a pen > plotter/printer, wide carriage printer, modem, the wafertape drive, and > some wafertapes. I am openly jealous. If you decide you're not interested in the wafertape anymore, I would be delighted to negotiate further ;-) -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim. -- M:I ---- From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Wed Apr 23 09:30:23 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:30:23 -0500 Subject: WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller In-Reply-To: <480E2B11.28440.1D048A6@cclist.sydex.com> References: <480E2B11.28440.1D048A6@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <480F47FF.1050908@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > Scratch the request for an Emulex MT-02. Looking at the Bitsavers > tech ref for this board shows it to be a QIC-36 interface, not a QIC- > 02. I should have checked before I posted, sorry. > > A great big "Doh!" > > Does anyone know of a QIC-02 to SCSI converter? I'm not finding > anything. Sigh.. no. I had it in my head that one of the OMTI 5300 / 5400 boards would do it - I checked though and they *are* QIC-02, but the interface is only SASI, not SCSI :-( Hazy memory says that one vendor did do a QIC-02 - QIC-36 bridge, but including one of those *and* a suitable SCSI bridge in whatever you're doing might be a bit silly. It does seem there were a few QIC-02 ISA tape controllers around, though - so you'd think that someone must have done a SCSI bridge! From cclist at sydex.com Wed Apr 23 09:54:04 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:54:04 -0700 Subject: WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller In-Reply-To: <200804231436.m3NEa1Jk080936@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804231436.m3NEa1Jk080936@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <480EEB1C.20608.30A6C8@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:30:23 -0500 > From: Jules Richardson > Sigh.. no. I had it in my head that one of the OMTI 5300 / 5400 boards > would do it - I checked though and they *are* QIC-02, but the interface is > only SASI, not SCSI :-( Or "brain dead" SCSI, in the case of the 7400. Sigh. I'm not turning up anything on the web on QIC-02-to-SCSI bridges. > Hazy memory says that one vendor did do a QIC-02 - QIC-36 bridge, but > including one of those *and* a suitable SCSI bridge in whatever you're > doing might be a bit silly. I think the QIC-bridges go the other way. I've got a Wangtek QIC-36- to-QIC-02 bridge board (QIC-36 is the "basic stupid" interface, while QIC-02 is the "intelligent buffered" interface). > It does seem there were a few QIC-02 ISA tape controllers around, though - > so you'd think that someone must have done a SCSI bridge! That's mostly because there's nothing much on a QIC-02 ISA tape controller; just address-decoding logic and DMA and IRQ handshake; think something on the level of your basic IDE controller. The smarts are in the drive. Ah, well. Time to look for a nice SCSI QIC drive. Personally, I like Tandberg over Wangtek. Anyone have any other preferences? Cheers, Chuck From cclist at sydex.com Wed Apr 23 10:16:54 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:16:54 -0700 Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS In-Reply-To: <200804231436.m3NEa1Jk080936@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804231436.m3NEa1Jk080936@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <480EF076.8538.458B7D@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:54:56 -0800 > From: Grant Stockly > I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter > DOS compatible? What would that take? There were versions of some DOS programs that would run on the DW, such as VEDIT come to mind. Unless my memory is faultly, one of the hurdles that you're likely to run into is that the system (including that daisy wheel) is EBCDIC- based, not ASCII. But I don't think it's impossible to get MS-DOS going on one; it wouldn't surprise me if someone actually did at some point. "PC compatible" MS-DOS is a whole 'nother matter, however. IIRC, IBM had a setup that would allow one to attach a PC to a DW and use the DW keyboard and display to run DOS applications on the PC. Cheers, Chuck From aek at bitsavers.org Wed Apr 23 11:24:07 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:24:07 -0700 Subject: WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller Message-ID: <480F62A7.2070409@bitsavers.org> > Ah, well. Time to look for a nice SCSI QIC drive. Personally, I > like Tandberg over Wangtek. Anyone have any other preferences? I assume this is for data recovery. Archives seem to be better than Wangtek. Lots of Sun 150 meg ones in peripheral boxes. Most of my DCxxx recovery lately has been done with Archive 20150's. Usual problem with the rubber rollers. Early Sun 2's used a QIC bridge board with an Archive drive. This was early enough to have been SASI. May have been from Sysgen. The early Sun FE ref manual shows the board, but I don't have my copy anywhere handy. SMS 7300 and 7400 SCSI adapters supported QIC02 tape. From legalize at xmission.com Wed Apr 23 11:43:15 2008 From: legalize at xmission.com (Richard) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:43:15 -0600 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:25:18 -0400. <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> Message-ID: Hadn't heard of this one before, but there are some nice photos at -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download Legalize Adulthood! From aek at bitsavers.org Wed Apr 23 12:02:07 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:02:07 -0700 Subject: ISO Intel MDS hard disk controller docs Message-ID: <480F6B8F.40901@bitsavers.org> Does anyone have the reference manual and schematics for the CDC Hawk controller board set for an Intel MDS2 ? I've turned up most of the other docs except for that. From cclist at sydex.com Wed Apr 23 12:29:19 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:29:19 -0700 Subject: WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller In-Reply-To: <200804231700.m3NH06Y5082301@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804231700.m3NH06Y5082301@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <480F0F7F.14684.BEC86C@cclist.sydex.com> > Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:24:07 -0700 > From: Al Kossow > Archives seem to be better than Wangtek. Lots of Sun 150 meg ones > in peripheral boxes. Most of my DCxxx recovery lately has been done > with Archive 20150's. Usual problem with the rubber rollers. > Early Sun 2's used a QIC bridge board with an Archive drive. This > was early enough to have been SASI. May have been from Sysgen. The > early Sun FE ref manual shows the board, but I don't have my copy > anywhere handy. That was the MT-02 and QIC-36, not QIC-02 interface. > SMS 7300 and 7400 SCSI adapters supported QIC02 tape. That's a thought. My experience with the OMTI/SMS adapters have mixed results. Mostly, the command set they support does not include the IDENTIFY command, which leads to all sorts of problems if your software or SCSI controller locates peripherals in this manner. A Tandberg 4220 looks like a pretty good bet for a "read anything/write some" drive. Cheers, Chuck From billdeg at degnanco.com Wed Apr 23 12:51:47 2008 From: billdeg at degnanco.com (Bill Degnan) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:51:47 -0400 Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS Message-ID: <8903bb134b514ccabfb0deaae0890b8f@sm-mail.degnanco.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed > > I read that there was something sold to make the IBM DisplayWriter > DOS compatible? What would that take? > > I have two of these things with a letter quality daisy wheel and the > giant sheet feeder. SuperCalc and TextPack are boring. > > Is there anything else that can be done with them? CP/M? > > Grant > No. I used to teach Display Write 4 when I worked at IBM, and this came up from time to time in class. There may be a hack where you send the print output to a memory buffer, etc., but nothing official. Bill From aek at bitsavers.org Wed Apr 23 12:54:14 2008 From: aek at bitsavers.org (Al Kossow) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:54:14 -0700 Subject: WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller Message-ID: <480F77C6.6020306@bitsavers.org> > That was the MT-02 and QIC-36, not QIC-02 interface. They used the Sysgen (4000?) cards before switching to MT-02's. From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Wed Apr 23 13:29:37 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:29:37 -0500 Subject: WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller In-Reply-To: <480EEB1C.20608.30A6C8@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804231436.m3NEa1Jk080936@dewey.classiccmp.org> <480EEB1C.20608.30A6C8@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <480F8011.4050202@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: >> Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:30:23 -0500 >> From: Jules Richardson > > >> Sigh.. no. I had it in my head that one of the OMTI 5300 / 5400 boards >> would do it - I checked though and they *are* QIC-02, but the interface is >> only SASI, not SCSI :-( > > Or "brain dead" SCSI, in the case of the 7400. I don't think I've ever had any of the 7xxx-series boards, just the 5xxx ones. "brain dead" in what way? Just the lack of Identify that you mentioned in reply to Al? I've found so many "SCSI" devices of that era which lack Identify but appear to be otherwise SCSI-compatible. I'm yet to find a way (or find anyone who's done it) of working around that limitation in Linux - it'd solve a lot of problems (even if I had to somehow hard-code fake Identify responses into the kernel driver and compile different kernels for talking to different devices!) I *think* the way it worked was that there was SASI, then SCSI, then SCSI with the Common Command Set - and it's the latter which dictates Identify support (and that modern hardware/software expects). Anything from the "just SCSI" days doesn't quite cut it... >> Hazy memory says that one vendor did do a QIC-02 - QIC-36 bridge, but >> including one of those *and* a suitable SCSI bridge in whatever you're >> doing might be a bit silly. > > I think the QIC-bridges go the other way. I've got a Wangtek QIC-36- > to-QIC-02 bridge board (QIC-36 is the "basic stupid" interface, while > QIC-02 is the "intelligent buffered" interface). Entirely possible. I've got various QIC drives that I use occasionally, but nothing that's '02 or '36. I suppose in theory the protocol/interface might be documented somewhere such that a suitable high-speed parallel port (of sufficient data width) might be able to talk to a QIC-02 drive - but that's a lot of effort for something that then wouldn't be particularly portable. > Ah, well. Time to look for a nice SCSI QIC drive. Personally, I > like Tandberg over Wangtek. Anyone have any other preferences? Can't comment on those two, but I've got a pair of SCSI-interfaced Archive ones (such as Al mentioned) which have always done me proud (plus a 'just in case' dead one in the junk pile for a source of donor bits) cheers Jules From steve at radiorobots.com Wed Apr 23 14:14:10 2008 From: steve at radiorobots.com (Steve Stutman) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:14:10 -0400 Subject: DEC HSZ20 Message-ID: <480F8A82.3080600@radiorobots.com> Still looking for any doc related to above. Thanks, Steve From teoz at neo.rr.com Wed Apr 23 14:28:22 2008 From: teoz at neo.rr.com (Teo Zenios) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:28:22 -0400 Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card References: <200804140038.m3E0cd9d012732@floodgap.com><000801c89df4$5897bee0$c600a8c0@game> <575131af0804230047o1045c2eatd6b2f83d65e077a4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <000701c8a578$31ffded0$c600a8c0@game> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Liam Proven" To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 3:47 AM Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card > 2008/4/14 Teo Zenios : >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Cameron Kaiser" >> To: >> Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 8:38 PM >> Subject: Re: Seeking Xceed Color30 card >> >> >> > > > For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe >> > > > USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's >> > > > help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers. >> > > > Eventually, it could all go on one card. >> > > >> > > I wonder how much trouble it would be to figure out what's inside >> that >> > > custom chip that Micron used. Suitable SCSI drives are fortunately >> still >> > > readily available. I don't think USB was ever available for System >> 6. >> > >> > I don't believe I have ever seen USB drivers for System 7 either. >> > >> >> I think Mac OS 8.5/8.6 was the 1st to enable USB support. > > I think it's in OS8. Couldn't swear to it, but the iMac shipped with > MacOS 8.1 so it had to be in there at least that early. > OS 8.1 supported USB only on the Bondi Imac. The add-on PCI USB cards for mac that I have state they need OS 8.5 or 8.6 for USB support. From jos.mar at bluewin.ch Wed Apr 23 14:51:39 2008 From: jos.mar at bluewin.ch (Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:51:39 +0200 Subject: WTB ( and some questions ) WD1002-05 / HDO Message-ID: <480F934B.3010500@bluewin.ch> I am in the market for a WD1002-05 or WD1002-HDO controller. Are these software compatible to the WD1002-27x ( of which I have 2 ) ? Does anyone have a software and/or schematics manual for the -27x ? I do realize the -27x is RLL, the others are MFM, but then I have a choice of disks to use. Or could the -27x be jumpered for MFM compatibility ? Target : - Obtain a harddisk with 100 sectors (@ 256 bytes/sect) per cylinder. 4 heads with 25 256-byte-sectors-per-tracks should do the trick. I do no care about lost space on the disk. Jos From spectre at floodgap.com Wed Apr 23 15:04:50 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:04:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Seeking Xceed Color30 card In-Reply-To: <000701c8a578$31ffded0$c600a8c0@game> from Teo Zenios at "Apr 23, 8 03:28:22 pm" Message-ID: <200804232004.m3NK4oYe016882@floodgap.com> > > I think it's in OS8. Couldn't swear to it, but the iMac shipped with > > MacOS 8.1 so it had to be in there at least that early. > OS 8.1 supported USB only on the Bondi Imac. The add-on PCI USB cards for > mac that I have state they need OS 8.5 or 8.6 for USB support. Right, because I don't think OHCI was supported on 8.1. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Statistics means never having to say you're certain. ----------------------- From spectre at floodgap.com Wed Apr 23 15:08:13 2008 From: spectre at floodgap.com (Cameron Kaiser) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:08:13 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Tandberg QIC was WTB: Emulex MT-02 controller In-Reply-To: <480F8011.4050202@gmail.com> from Jules Richardson at "Apr 23, 8 01:29:37 pm" Message-ID: <200804232008.m3NK8DN8016744@floodgap.com> > > Ah, well. Time to look for a nice SCSI QIC drive. Personally, I > > like Tandberg over Wangtek. Anyone have any other preferences? > > Can't comment on those two, but I've got a pair of SCSI-interfaced Archive > ones (such as Al mentioned) which have always done me proud (plus a 'just in > case' dead one in the junk pile for a source of donor bits) I like Tandbergs quite a bit (long history with them from my Alpha Micro forays). I have a couple here doing nothing that I could part with cheaply if people are interested. They were working pulls originally and I have enough spares of the 4xxx drives I normally use in my AMOS boxen. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- You cannot trust this technology stuff. -- Ira Oldham ---------------------- From witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk Wed Apr 23 15:35:22 2008 From: witchy at binarydinosaurs.co.uk (Adrian Graham) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:35:22 +0100 Subject: DEC HSZ20 In-Reply-To: <480F8A82.3080600@radiorobots.com> Message-ID: On 23/4/08 20:14, "Steve Stutman" wrote: > Still looking for any doc related to above. > How closely is the HSZ20 related to the HSZ22? -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection? From rtellason at verizon.net Wed Apr 23 16:18:58 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:18:58 -0400 Subject: Fwd: [Electronics_101] Digiencabulator Message-ID: <200804231718.58920.rtellason@verizon.net> Thought this might be of some interest in here... :-) ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: [Electronics_101] Digiencabulator Date: Wednesday 23 April 2008 13:21 From: "Bob Hyland" To: Electronics_101 at yahoogroups.com FOLKS! In case anyone missed the recent announcement (on or about April 1st), Parallax has been working (in secret) on building a digital version of the original GE Turbo-Encabulator. Nuts & Volts magazine recently ran an article on the effort -- thereby breaking the veil of secrecy! I contacted N&V and obtained permission to post a link to the article that is hosted on their site: http://www.nutsvolts.com/media-files/905/042008-PersonalRobotics.pdf Their only request was that I post the link to the article instead of sending the article to people. So, if (and when) anyone passes along the article, please send the link and not the physical PDF file. Enjoy! Bob H. (moderator Electronics_101) P.S. Does anyone have the specifications handy for the original, 1962 version of the Turb-Encabulator? The best copy I could find is here: http://www.floobydust.com/turbo-encabulator/ge_turbo-encabulator.pdf ------------------------------------ Please trim excess when replyingYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Electronics_101/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Electronics_101/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:Electronics_101-digest at yahoogroups.com mailto:Electronics_101-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: Electronics_101-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 rdawson16 at hotmail.com Wed Apr 23 17:13:59 2008 From: rdawson16 at hotmail.com (Randy Dawson) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:13:59 -0500 Subject: [Electronics_101] Digiencabulator In-Reply-To: <200804231718.58920.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200804231718.58920.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: Rory, You may not have heard of Rockwell Automation's advances in this field: http://www.flixxy.com/rockwell-automation-systems.htm ;) Randy > Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:18:58 -0400 > From: rtellason at verizon.net > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Fwd: [Electronics_101] Digiencabulator > > Thought this might be of some interest in here... :-) > > ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- > > Subject: [Electronics_101] Digiencabulator > Date: Wednesday 23 April 2008 13:21 > From: "Bob Hyland" > To: Electronics_101 at yahoogroups.com > > FOLKS! > > In case anyone missed the recent announcement (on or about April > 1st), Parallax has been working (in secret) on building a digital > version of the original GE Turbo-Encabulator. Nuts & Volts magazine > recently ran an article on the effort -- thereby breaking the veil of > secrecy! > > I contacted N&V and obtained permission to post a link to the article > that is hosted on their site: > > http://www.nutsvolts.com/media-files/905/042008-PersonalRobotics.pdf > > Their only request was that I post the link to the article instead of > sending the article to people. So, if (and when) anyone passes along > the article, please send the link and not the physical PDF file. > > Enjoy! > > Bob H. > (moderator Electronics_101) > > P.S. Does anyone have the specifications handy for the original, 1962 > version of the Turb-Encabulator? The best copy I could find is here: > http://www.floobydust.com/turbo-encabulator/ge_turbo-encabulator.pdf > > > ------------------------------------ > > Please trim excess when replyingYahoo! Groups Links > > <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Electronics_101/ > > <*> Your email settings: > Individual Email | Traditional > > <*> To change settings online go to: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Electronics_101/join > (Yahoo! ID required) > > <*> To change settings via email: > mailto:Electronics_101-digest at yahoogroups.com > mailto:Electronics_101-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com > > <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > Electronics_101-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 > _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself wherever you are. Mobilize! http://www.gowindowslive.com/Mobile/Landing/Messenger/Default.aspx?Locale=en-US?ocid=TAG_APRIL From cisin at xenosoft.com Wed Apr 23 19:05:46 2008 From: cisin at xenosoft.com (Fred Cisin) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:05:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS In-Reply-To: <8903bb134b514ccabfb0deaae0890b8f@sm-mail.degnanco.net> References: <8903bb134b514ccabfb0deaae0890b8f@sm-mail.degnanco.net> Message-ID: <20080423170213.B74049@shell.lmi.net> If there was a package that could make the Displaywriter work as a terminal for a PC, then the marketing people would probably market that PC as "a peripheral for your DisplayWriter that lets your DisplayWriter run DOS"! I'm serious. Exactly that was done to peddle Ampro LittleBoards, Quarks, etc. to Macintosh owners! "A drive that you can add to your Macintosh, that lets your Macintosh run PC software". -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com From grant at stockly.com Wed Apr 23 21:58:56 2008 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:58:56 -0800 Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS In-Reply-To: <8903bb134b514ccabfb0deaae0890b8f@sm-mail.degnanco.net> References: <8903bb134b514ccabfb0deaae0890b8f@sm-mail.degnanco.net> Message-ID: <0JZT002506XZCU90@msgmmp-1.gci.net> >No. I used to teach Display Write 4 when I worked at IBM, and this >came up from time to time in class. There may be a hack where you >send the print output to a memory buffer, etc., but nothing official. >Bill So it really is a huge word processor... : ( I'm going to write a few messages on usenet about needing a DisplayWriter for time traveling and then sell it on e-bay. ; ) How common are these things? Are they valuable beyond $15-$20? I had to pay $15 or $20, I can't remember, because that's how much it was worth to the computer killing company. Could have walked out with a pallet of laptops for that price. ; ) Grant From tiggerlasv at aim.com Thu Apr 24 00:14:24 2008 From: tiggerlasv at aim.com (tiggerlasv at aim.com) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:14:24 -0400 Subject: VT100 board horrors ! Message-ID: <8CA73E12CE09CD2-AE8-5BC9@webmail-nd11.sysops.aol.com> Check out e-bay 280220921661 . . . VT100 logic boards, that someone decided to cut the card-edge connectors off of. . . *Sigh* T From grant at stockly.com Thu Apr 24 00:57:42 2008 From: grant at stockly.com (Grant Stockly) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:57:42 -0800 Subject: 82706 Data sheet Message-ID: <0JZT005ZYF7XDMB0@msgmmp-1.gci.net> I'm looking for a data sheet on the 82706 Intel VGA Controller. Does anyone know where I could get this? Sometimes data for a chipset is buried within a larger data book. Any ideas? If you don't know why I would want this... ; ) I've seen that chip on some 8bit ISA VGA cards. Unicorn Electronics sells them for $19.99, so its a plan! Grant From letiathome at yahoo.com Wed Apr 23 22:14:54 2008 From: letiathome at yahoo.com (Leti Meyer) Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:14:54 -0700 Subject: Apple II Echo II card and speaker Message-ID: Hello My name is Leti Meyer and teach Moderately Mentally Impaired folks in Chandler AZ. During the 80's a Company named Edmark made a great functional reading series for the Apple II. I have the soft ware - I have and apple IIgs computer and I have an Echo II card and speaker. What I don't have is drivers to install the echo II device and no clue what slot to put in the computer and how to get it to work. Can you help me??? I would be very grateful. I have 3.5 drive and 5 floppy drives but no way to get the appleIIgs on the web to download the drivers. I will send a picture of my students using it if someone helps me :) From ahling at eadc.se Thu Apr 24 00:59:21 2008 From: ahling at eadc.se (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=F6ran_=C5hling?=) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:59:21 +0200 Subject: CQD-440 manual? Message-ID: <481021B9.8080608@eadc.se> Hi, In reading /searching the net for a manual for CMD CQD 440 / 443, I come quite close in an old writing of yours... You write something about the HTML version of this manual also. If that contains any more information than the text-file, (picturers/schetces and locations of the various connectors/switches for instance), would it be to much to ask for an E-mail? All my best, G?ran ?hling From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Thu Apr 24 08:38:36 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:38:36 -0500 Subject: IBM 5150 maximum memory? Message-ID: <48108D5C.6040905@gmail.com> Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an original IBM 5150 PC at launch time? The way I recall it, IBM only offered 64KB expansion cards back in the day (256KB ones came later) and the 5150 would only take four of them (wasn't the fifth expansion slot wired differently or something)? That still gives a maximum of 320KB of memory though (4 x 64KB, plus 64Kb on the motherboard) - yet I was remembering the maximum total memory as being 256KB. Maybe just bit-rot on my part. Or did the motherboard memory somehow get disabled if memory expansion boards were in use? Or was there some kind of maximum limit dictated by the 5150's BIOS? I'm sure other things could be done later on via third-party boards of course (or via the 256KB expansion boards), but in the context of the thread that I found myself involved in, the question was what the maximum memory config in a 5150 at launch time was... cheers Jules From dkelvey at hotmail.com Thu Apr 24 09:06:23 2008 From: dkelvey at hotmail.com (dwight elvey) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:06:23 -0700 Subject: VT100 board horrors ! Message-ID: Hi I doubt there is 39+13$ worth of gold on these boards. There have been a few items that were close. There was a pile of wire wrap pins. I figured that if the pins had 15 uinch of gold, one could cover shipping and still make about $2 on the deal. Most boards are to sparse to pay for shipping. Card edge connectors at least have about 20-50 cents worth of old. Scrappers rarely see that a board may have value as the original board. I had a neighbor once that was a scrapper. He had a pile of boards with one 80C187 on each of them. He'd crunched most down to dust before I'd seen them. Just one chip was worth more than the pile of dust he'd made. > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:14:24 -0400 > From: tiggerlasv at aim.com > Subject: VT100 board horrors ! > > > > Check out e-bay 280220921661 . . . > > VT100 logic boards, that someone decided to cut the card-edge > connectors off of. . . > > *Sigh* > > > > > T _________________________________________________________________ Spell a grand slam in this game where word skill meets World Series. Get in the game. http://club.live.com/word_slugger.aspx?icid=word_slugger_wlhm_admod_april08 From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 24 11:32:19 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:32:19 -0400 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <480EB553.2080303@pacbell.net> References: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> <480EB553.2080303@pacbell.net> Message-ID: On Apr 23, 2008, at 12:04 AM, Jim Battle wrote: >> I just remembered that I'd wanted to mention this, but things >> have been busy and I forgot. My mother knows of my fondness for >> antique computers, and she keeps her eyes open at thrift stores >> and related places. She picked up a Texas Instruments Compact >> Computer 40 for me and presented it to me for my birthday a month >> ago. >> I had never heard of this machine, but now I've done some >> reading and I've played with it a bit. It's pretty neat! Has >> anyone else here messed with one? >> > They are pretty common on ebay -- in fact, they often show up NIB, > often for under $50. Tell your mom to try harder next year. :-) ;) Well for Christmas, she showed up here with an Osborne-1 with manuals, software, an external (green-screen) monitor, and an Epson RX-80, including all cables, all in near-perfect condition! Apparently she scored that system at a thrift store for something like ten bucks. One can't argue with that. > Actually, it is quite impressive that she identified it as > something interesting. She has a good eye for stuff like that. > If you like the CC40, keep your eyes peeled for the TI-74. It is > basically a CC40 with a few enhancements stuffed into a largish > calculator format, instead of a miniature laptop. Hmm, interesting, I'll look for one. > One thing that is charming about it is TI's BASIC. Microsoft so > dominated the 8 bit micro world with its BASIC that most such > machines kind of bore me because they are all so similar. The CC40 > and TI-74 BASIC are highly similar to the advance BASIC of the TI > 94/A, so I'm told (I've never used one) even though they have > different uPs. > > What is cool about the BASIC? Long variable names, proper > subroutines with local variables, good extensability. There is a > lot more, but I don't have the manual at hand to refresh my memory. Subroutine-local variables in a BASIC interpreter?? Wow, that's something I'll need to try. That's cool. I agree with your take on Microsoft BASIC. I think it is a good BASIC, but it's just so common, on so many different types of systems, that it has become "old hat". I have been working (off-and- on, very sporadically) on extending the BASIC used in Intel's 8051AH- BASIC chip with some new functionality; I'm interested in studying unusual BASIC features. > The hexbus interface is pretty cool too, really well thought out. > Recently I scored a rare wafertape drive for the CC40, although I > haven't tried it out yet ... too much work to address first. Are there specs available for hexbus? > Going a bit further down the line, some European TI employees > formed a company to make a microcomputer, called the Exelvision > EXL100. It contained two 70C20 (or similar) microprocessors, from > the same family as the CC40 and TI-74. It has an enhanced version > of the same BASIC. This is a real micro, with a color PAL output, > IR keyboard and joysticks. I have a EXL100 and a number of games, > but no floppy subsystem (yet). Perhaps in the distant future I'll > write an emulator for it if someone doesn't beat me to it. It seems > like an interesting machine. Neat! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 24 11:32:45 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:32:45 -0400 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <480ED2FA.20606@pacbell.net> References: <200804230422.m3N4Mvom016162@floodgap.com> <480ED2FA.20606@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <3D71CAE8-D893-4F85-9857-1D75C06E6CC2@neurotica.com> On Apr 23, 2008, at 2:11 AM, Jim Battle wrote: >>> The hexbus interface is pretty cool too, really well thought out. >>> Recently I scored a rare wafertape drive for the CC40, although I >>> haven't tried it out yet ... too much work to address first. >> Wow! Where did you score that from?? > > It was on ebay. It was for a CC40 with a 16KB RAM cart, a pen > plotter/printer, wide carriage printer, modem, the wafertape drive, > and some wafertapes. The main thing I was interested in was the > wafertape drive -- I already have the other items. It was > originally an open-ended auction, and nobody had bid on it yet, so > I mailed the seller and said: put a $120 buy it now price and I'll > buy it. I should have shot lower, because he agreed too > readily. :-) In retrospect, it was more than I really should have > spent on it, but they are hens teeth, so I bought it. > > The timespan from listing until purchase was probably about an hour. Huh? I thought the wafertape was never released. Did this one get leaked or something? -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 24 11:34:24 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:34:24 -0400 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <200804231242.m3NCgKPN015686@floodgap.com> References: <200804231242.m3NCgKPN015686@floodgap.com> Message-ID: <4BBBCB77-A271-4690-84B1-286EEB7192FA@neurotica.com> On Apr 23, 2008, at 8:42 AM, Cameron Kaiser wrote: >>>> The hexbus interface is pretty cool too, really well thought out. >>>> Recently I scored a rare wafertape drive for the CC40, although I >>>> haven't tried it out yet ... too much work to address first. > >>> Wow! Where did you score that from?? > >> It was on ebay. It was for a CC40 with a 16KB RAM cart, a pen >> plotter/printer, wide carriage printer, modem, the wafertape >> drive, and >> some wafertapes. > > I am openly jealous. If you decide you're not interested in the > wafertape > anymore, I would be delighted to negotiate further ;-) Me Too! -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From frustum at pacbell.net Thu Apr 24 12:07:28 2008 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:07:28 -0500 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <3D71CAE8-D893-4F85-9857-1D75C06E6CC2@neurotica.com> References: <200804230422.m3N4Mvom016162@floodgap.com> <480ED2FA.20606@pacbell.net> <3D71CAE8-D893-4F85-9857-1D75C06E6CC2@neurotica.com> Message-ID: <4810BE50.7090902@pacbell.net> Dave McGuire wrote: [ re: getting a wafertape drive for the cc40 ] > Huh? I thought the wafertape was never released. Did this one get > leaked or something? I'm not sure how it got into the wild, but I know this isn't the only one. perhaps it was test marketed for a while before they decided to shut it down. From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Apr 24 11:58:13 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:58:13 -0400 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: References: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> <480EB553.2080303@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <200804241258.13237.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 24 April 2008 12:32, Dave McGuire wrote: > Well for Christmas, she showed up here with an Osborne-1 with > manuals, software, an external (green-screen) monitor, and an Epson > RX-80, including all cables, all in near-perfect condition! > Apparently she scored that system at a thrift store for something > like ten bucks. One can't argue with that. Cool. Does it have the DD card and the Screen-Pac upgrade? I have some nontrivial amount of software 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 cclist at sydex.com Thu Apr 24 12:24:11 2008 From: cclist at sydex.com (Chuck Guzis) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:24:11 -0700 Subject: IBM 5150 maximum memory? In-Reply-To: <200804241700.m3OH08B8094797@dewey.classiccmp.org> References: <200804241700.m3OH08B8094797@dewey.classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <48105FCB.26225.5E06B2C@cclist.sydex.com> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:38:36 -0500 From: Jules Richardson > Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an original IBM 5150 PC > at launch time? Vividly. 64K of 4116-type DRAM chips. The first row was soldered in, the remainder were in sockets. It was possible to purchase a really-stripped-down 5150 through various sources (probably gray- market as I doubt that IBM sold them that way) with no cards or disk drives and only the first 16K installed on the planar. I believe that the San Jose Computerland offered that deal fairly early on. I was never able to determine if they purchased the boxes that way or canibalized the RAM for other machines. There was a DRAM shortage on at the time. Cheers, Chuck From frustum at pacbell.net Thu Apr 24 12:29:22 2008 From: frustum at pacbell.net (Jim Battle) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:29:22 -0500 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: References: <84497FA7-D87D-4B25-A956-9B908CA3092C@neurotica.com> <480EB553.2080303@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <4810C372.6010800@pacbell.net> Dave McGuire wrote: > On Apr 23, 2008, at 12:04 AM, Jim Battle wrote: ... >> What is cool about the BASIC? Long variable names, proper subroutines >> with local variables, good extensability. There is a lot more, but I >> don't have the manual at hand to refresh my memory. > > Subroutine-local variables in a BASIC interpreter?? Wow, that's > something I'll need to try. That's cool. I recall reading through the manual a bit and inferring something about the interpreter's structure. Like most BASICs, it is tokenized in memory. Variables aren't stored as literals, unlike MS basic. Instead, there is a byte token meaning: a variable, and the next byte is an index into the symbol table. Thus a given program can have no more than 254 unique variable names, or something like that. With a 8K computer, that seems unlikely to be a problem. The symbol table has the variable name, attributes, and value. Thus if you have something like 10 THISREALLYLONGVARIABLENAME = 1 20 THISREALLYLONGVARIABLENAME = THISREALLYLONGVARIABLENAME + 1 the name is stored only in the symbol table, so there is very little penalty for long names. Accessing vars can be done quickly too, potentially just a double index, but perhaps it is not implemented that way. The down side is that if you enter this line: 30 FRISTAJAMTHINGAMABOB = 3.14 and then change the line 30 FOO = 3.14 the FRISTAJAMTHINGAMABOB var is still in the symbol table, even though nothing references it. There is a command that cleans up dead vars in the symbol table. It has been too long to recall the details, but there is something about attaching and detaching subroutines that seemed interesting. It wasn't a matter of threading, it had something to do with scoping, but I forget now. It seemed interesting. Another fun thing is that the FP format is decimal, but it doesn't use BCD. It uses base-100 digits, one digit per byte. It saves a lot of nibble level mucking around, but it does hurt a bit in that the mantissa are effectively normalized by pairs of digits, instead of a single digit. I don't recall if the CC-40 has it, but the TI-74 has a debug mode that can be entered, such that you can access register state, change the PC, inspect memory, set a breakpoint, etc. If you like quirky BASIC's, check out Wang BASIC and BASIC-2. It starts with the classic Dartmouth basic, including MAT statements, but then adds on a lot of Wang's own syntax. Here was my attempt at a comparison between MS BASIC (say, the kind found on TRS-80 Level 2 BASIC), and Wang BASIC. BASIC-2 enhances BASIC in many ways, including adding the ELSE clause and allowing conditional conjunctions, but I didn't get into that. http://www.wang2200.org/basic_comparison.html Wang BASIC itself evolved over time before BASIC-2 came out. Here is my terse summary of that: http://www.wang2200.org/versions.html Here are some examples of the crazy syntax that Wang had for searching and sorting array data. It is an extension of the MAT command syntax: MAT CONVERT A() TO A$()(6,8) MAT COPY A$() TO -A$()<10,20> MAT MERGE A$ TO W1$(), W2$(), S$() MAT MOVE A$(), L$(2,3), M TO B$(1,1) MAT MOVE A(), L$(1) TO A1(1) MAT SEARCH A$()<1,5>,=STR(Z$,1,5) TO B$ STEP 5 MAT SORT A$() TO W$(), L$() Want to convert a number to a string with formatting? Here it is: 10 CONVERT A TO A$,(+#.#####^^^^) Want to fill a string with a character? INIT("x") A$ Want to rotate each byte of a string left three bits? ROTATE(A$,3) Want to translate an array of strings from EBCDIC to ASCII? The $TRAN statement will do that (or any other byte mapping). On the other hand, they kept some of the worst features of Dartmouth BASIC: variables are all either a single letter, or a letter and a digit. There are no local variables, except for the "10 DEFFNA(x) = SQR(x)/3" type of statement. Strings are statically allocated, and can be at most 64 characters long (in BASIC; BASIC-2 allows 124 bytes per string). From eric at brouhaha.com Thu Apr 24 12:39:23 2008 From: eric at brouhaha.com (Eric Smith) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:39:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: IBM 5150 maximum memory? In-Reply-To: <48108D5C.6040905@gmail.com> References: <48108D5C.6040905@gmail.com> Message-ID: <44216.71.139.37.220.1209058763.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Jules wrote: > Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an original IBM 5150 PC > at launch time? My vague recollection is somewhere around (but NOT equal to) 512KB, but I could be wrong. The memory expansion cards IBM sold at the time weren't sufficient to get there, but third party cards would (and beyond). > The way I recall it, IBM only offered 64KB expansion cards back in the day > (256KB ones came later) and the 5150 would only take four of them (wasn't > the fifth expansion slot wired differently or something)? You could put five of them in, but then you had no video display and no floppy controller. Thus normally you didn't see more than three of them in one machine. > Or was there some kind of > maximum limit dictated by the 5150's BIOS? The BIOS would only test the amount of RAM specified by a DIP switch on the planar (IBM-speak for "motherboard"), and the switch settings didn't go to 640KB. At least one online source claims that the switch settings did go to 640KB. Possibly that was only on the later revision of the planar and BIOS? The company I worked for at the time bought a PC on the day of release (August 12, 1981), specifically to develop third-party peripherals and software. The company was one of the first to market with a "combo card", but was never as successful with it as AST, Quadram, etc. Eric From mcguire at neurotica.com Thu Apr 24 12:55:00 2008 From: mcguire at neurotica.com (Dave McGuire) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:55:00 -0400 Subject: Texas Instruments CC40 In-Reply-To: <4810BE50.7090902@pacbell.net> References: <200804230422.m3N4Mvom016162@floodgap.com> <480ED2FA.20606@pacbell.net> <3D71CAE8-D893-4F85-9857-1D75C06E6CC2@neurotica.com> <4810BE50.7090902@pacbell.net> Message-ID: <5CBC947B-0A79-4958-8011-F34EFF3E1E56@neurotica.com> On Apr 24, 2008, at 1:07 PM, Jim Battle wrote: >> Huh? I thought the wafertape was never released. Did this one >> get leaked or something? > > I'm not sure how it got into the wild, but I know this isn't the > only one. perhaps it was test marketed for a while before they > decided to shut it down. Absolutely fascinating. I hope you plan to put up some detailed pics of this beast. :) -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Apr 24 13:20:17 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:20:17 -0400 Subject: tape drives Message-ID: <200804241420.17539.rtellason@verizon.net> I saw some conversation going by in here recently about Exabyte drives, only the numbers don't sound anything like what I have, which is marked "Model: HH CTS". There are all sorts of other numbers on there, for various aspects of it. There are two of them, and this was a part of a whole IBM SSA system that I've been dealing with bits of here. Pushing open the little door I see something that sure looks like a helical-scan head, though somewhat smaller than the one normally seen in a VCR. I'm told that these hold 20G on a tape. The guy I got 'em from unfortunately doesn't have any tapes to go along with them. One of those tapes would back up pretty much of what I have on my LAN here, or whole machines, as they sit. I'm guessing that the interface I'll be looking at after I take it off of the current mounting plate will be SCSI-wide, like the CD drives and some of the other stuff I have with it. Does anybody have any tapes that will work on these, or can any of you guys point me toward where I could get a hold of some without getting into crazy expense? I'd sure like to make some backups with one of these units. Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-) -- 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 jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Thu Apr 24 13:31:48 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:31:48 -0500 Subject: IBM 5150 maximum memory? In-Reply-To: <48105FCB.26225.5E06B2C@cclist.sydex.com> References: <200804241700.m3OH08B8094797@dewey.classiccmp.org> <48105FCB.26225.5E06B2C@cclist.sydex.com> Message-ID: <4810D214.3030201@gmail.com> Chuck Guzis wrote: > Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:38:36 -0500 > From: Jules Richardson > >> Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an original IBM 5150 PC >> at launch time? > > Vividly. 64K of 4116-type DRAM chips. The first row was soldered > in, the remainder were in sockets. It was possible to purchase a > really-stripped-down 5150 through various sources (probably gray- > market as I doubt that IBM sold them that way) with no cards or disk > drives and only the first 16K installed on the planar. Yep, I'm pretty sure the first machines were offered as a bare config, with everything else as extras (including more than 16KB). I'm not sure if IBM considered the keyboard an 'extra', but they may well have done. Later I had a 5150 myself, although it came with a FDC and MDA boards, and 64KB fitted. Sadly I sold it late last year. I never did explore expansion possibilities though - I picked up a 5160 at the same time, so that one became the machine that I normally played with. *somewhere* I think I still have the original invoices for those two machines from when their original owner bought them, but it'd be a few months before I stood a chance of unearthing them (I believe that particular 5150 was bought in the UK for around 1,600 pounds, and the 5160 XT was about 2,400) cheers Jules From innfoclassics at gmail.com Thu Apr 24 13:38:43 2008 From: innfoclassics at gmail.com (Paxton Hoag) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:38:43 -0700 Subject: IBM DisplayWriter DOS In-Reply-To: <0JZT002506XZCU90@msgmmp-1.gci.net> References: <8903bb134b514ccabfb0deaae0890b8f@sm-mail.degnanco.net> <0JZT002506XZCU90@msgmmp-1.gci.net> Message-ID: > So it really is a huge word processor... : ( > > I'm going to write a few messages on usenet about needing a DisplayWriter > for time traveling and then sell it on e-bay. ; ) > > How common are these things? Are they valuable beyond $15-$20? I had to > pay $15 or $20, I can't remember, because that's how much it was worth to > the computer killing company. Could have walked out with a pallet of > laptops for that price. ; ) It is a big Word Processor. I think collectible because there are few left. It did have serial ports ISTR. I had several of them go through my hands in the early 90s. Very poor scrap. They used IBM mainframe technology for the circuit cards, not discrete ICs. and I think there are only two to four small cards for all the plastic, huge unrecycleable filled plastic castings. It is probably only valuable as a complete unit with the printer, drives, Monitor/CPU and keyboard. Its major negative value is the size. Otherwise I bet there would be a computer museum interested. Paul Pierce in Portland Oregon has several word processing units for his future museum. Paxton -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Thu Apr 24 13:45:10 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:45:10 -0500 Subject: IBM 5150 maximum memory? In-Reply-To: <44216.71.139.37.220.1209058763.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> References: <48108D5C.6040905@gmail.com> <44216.71.139.37.220.1209058763.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> Message-ID: <4810D536.1060903@gmail.com> Eric Smith wrote: > Jules wrote: >> Does anyone recall what the maximum memory was for an original IBM 5150 PC >> at launch time? > > My vague recollection is somewhere around (but NOT equal to) 512KB, but > I could be wrong. The memory expansion cards IBM sold at the time > weren't sufficient to get there, but third party cards would (and beyond). Indeed - in the context of the discussion I got involved in (which was actually about memory prices, not the PC specifically), we were just interested in what could be done with a 5150 *when it was new* - and I think all that IBM offered then was the 64K boards (and of course third parties didn't exist!) > You could put five of them in, but then you had no video display and > no floppy controller. Thus normally you didn't see more than three > of them in one machine. You know, I had a thought - I wonder if those 64K boards can't be jumpered beyond the 256KB boundary? Maybe that's why I'm remembering a 256KB limit on the original machines (and using original IBM expansion boards). Getting around that would mean physically hacking the address lines / decoding of the boards... But yes, fair point about the expansion boards. I expect it was unusual to see a 5150 without floppy drives, and I don't think the things would even boot without a display adapter (something that's plagued server PCs ever since!) > At least one online source claims that the switch settings did go > to 640KB. Possibly that was only on the later revision of the > planar and BIOS? The problem I find is that people tend to mix up the 5150 and 5160 - so things often get quoted in the context of the 5150 that weren't true. > The company I worked for at the time bought a PC on the day of release > (August 12, 1981), specifically to develop third-party peripherals and > software. The company was one of the first to market with a "combo > card", but was never as successful with it as AST, Quadram, etc. I wonder how many such vendors there were? Every (IBM) PC I've ever looked in seems to have a different multi-function board from a different vendor in :) (and of course the documentation on how to set it up is long gone) Odd that the 5150/5160 docs/techrefs aren't on bitsavers - anyone know if they're archived elsewhere, or are they just something that IBM still get really upset about? cheers, Jules From jules.richardson99 at gmail.com Thu Apr 24 13:53:33 2008 From: jules.richardson99 at gmail.com (Jules Richardson) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 13:53:33 -0500 Subject: tape drives In-Reply-To: <200804241420.17539.rtellason@verizon.net> References: <200804241420.17539.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <4810D72D.4010209@gmail.com> Roy J. Tellason wrote: > I'm told that these hold 20G on a tape. "hold" being a pretty loose definition when it comes to a lot of high-capacity tape technologies, of course :-) There was some real junk out there that made promises of high-capacity low-cost tape storage. > Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-) If they're SCSI and appear as a sequential-access device, I'd say chances are pretty good. cheers Jules From ian_primus at yahoo.com Thu Apr 24 14:07:35 2008 From: ian_primus at yahoo.com (Mr Ian Primus) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:07:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: tape drives In-Reply-To: <200804241420.17539.rtellason@verizon.net> Message-ID: <640155.18809.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> --- "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > There are two of them, and this was a part of a > whole IBM SSA system that > I've been dealing with bits of here. Pushing open > the little door I see > something that sure looks like a helical-scan head, > though somewhat smaller > than the one normally seen in a VCR. Yup. That's an Exabyte. It's a helically scanned 8mm tape media, based closely on video-8. > I'm told that these hold 20G on a tape. The guy I > got 'em from unfortunately > doesn't have any tapes to go along with them. > Does anybody have any tapes that will work on these, > or can any of you guys > point me toward where I could get a hold of some > without getting into crazy > expense? I'd sure like to make some backups with > one of these units. Depends on the drive. If the drive you have is really capable of holding 20 gigs of data, then it's going to be a "Mammoth" drive. The earlier drives (8200, 8500, 8505, etc.) all used Metal Particle (MP) tape. This was pretty much the same as 8mm video tape, and yes, you CAN use regular 8mm video tape in these drives. It works fine, although some brands aren't as reliable. I found that the Fuji tapes at my grocery store work just fine in the 8200 drives on my Prime computers. The "Mammoth" drives, on the other hand, store more data by using a more advanced type of tape. These are called AME tapes. (Advanced Metal Evaporated, or something like that). You need to find some AME tape. Shouldn't be too expensive on eBay, although I have never looked for any. > Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-) You most definitely can. I have done it many times with 8200, 8500 and 8505 drives. Works just fine with normal *nix tape commands - tar, mt and the like. I've even used an ancient 8200 drive with a commercial backup software on a Macintosh, just for fun. It works fine. -Ian From rtellason at verizon.net Thu Apr 24 14:26:02 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:26:02 -0400 Subject: IBM 5150 maximum memory? In-Reply-To: <4810D536.1060903@gmail.com> References: <48108D5C.6040905@gmail.com> <44216.71.139.37.220.1209058763.squirrel@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <4810D536.1060903@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804241526.02420.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 24 April 2008 14:45, Jules Richardson wrote: > But yes, fair point about the expansion boards. I expect it was unusual to > see a 5150 without floppy drives, and I don't think the things would even > boot without a display adapter (something that's plagued server PCs ever > since!) Heh. I have one machine (the firewall/router) that's built around a 486 board that although it does indeed have a monitor attached it's almost never turned on. I can see the utility of some boxes here that wouldn't even have a monitor attached at all, too. (Snip) > > The company I worked for at the time bought a PC on the day of release > > (August 12, 1981), specifically to develop third-party peripherals and > > software. The company was one of the first to market with a "combo > > card", but was never as successful with it as AST, Quadram, etc. > > I wonder how many such vendors there were? Every (IBM) PC I've ever looked > in seems to have a different multi-function board from a different vendor > in :) (and of course the documentation on how to set it up is long gone) I have actually a bunch of those old boards around _and_ docs for them, if somebody needs some help with that, either in terms of taknig some of that old hardware off my hands or getting something working. OTOH I remember well repeatedly rebooding some clone or other while trying one jumper or switch setting at a time and then running some diagnostic program to try and figure things 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 rtellason at verizon.net Thu Apr 24 14:26:51 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:26:51 -0400 Subject: tape drives In-Reply-To: <4810D72D.4010209@gmail.com> References: <200804241420.17539.rtellason@verizon.net> <4810D72D.4010209@gmail.com> Message-ID: <200804241526.51480.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 24 April 2008 14:53, Jules Richardson wrote: > Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > I'm told that these hold 20G on a tape. > > "hold" being a pretty loose definition when it comes to a lot of > high-capacity tape technologies, of course :-) There was some real junk out > there that made promises of high-capacity low-cost tape storage. Yeah, well... :-) > > Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-) > > If they're SCSI and appear as a sequential-access device, I'd say chances > are pretty good. But first I need to get my hands on some tapes! -- 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 Apr 24 14:30:06 2008 From: rtellason at verizon.net (Roy J. Tellason) Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:30:06 -0400 Subject: tape drives In-Reply-To: <640155.18809.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <640155.18809.qm@web52708.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200804241530.06820.rtellason@verizon.net> On Thursday 24 April 2008 15:07, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > --- "Roy J. Tellason" wrote: > > There are two of them, and this was a part of a whole IBM SSA system that > > I've been dealing with bits of here. Pushing open the little door I see > > something that sure looks like a helical-scan head, though somewhat > > smaller than the one normally seen in a VCR. > > Yup. That's an Exabyte. It's a helically scanned 8mm tape media, based > closely on video-8. Does that mean I can just go for an 8mm tape? > > I'm told that these hold 20G on a tape. The guy I got 'em from > > unfortunately doesn't have any tapes to go along with them. > > > > Does anybody have any tapes that will work on these, or can any of you > > guys point me toward where I could get a hold of some without getting into > > crazy expense? I'd sure like to make some backups with one of these > > units. > > Depends on the drive. If the drive you have is really capable of holding 20 > gigs of data, then it's going to be a "Mammoth" drive. The earlier drives > (8200, 8500, 8505, etc.) all used Metal Particle (MP) tape. This was pretty > much the same as 8mm video tape, and yes, you CAN use regular 8mm video tape > in these drives. It works fine, although some brands aren't as reliable. I > found that the Fuji tapes at my grocery store work just fine in the 8200 > drives on my Prime computers. > > The "Mammoth" drives, on the other hand, store more data by using a more > advanced type of tape. These are called AME tapes. (Advanced Metal > Evaporated, or something like that). You need to find some AME tape. > Shouldn't be too expensive on eBay, although I have never looked for any. Ebay, huh? Hmm. Is there any easy way to tell for sure that's what kind of a drive it is? > > Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-) > > You most definitely can. I have done it many times with 8200, 8500 and 8505 > drives. Works just fine with normal *nix tape commands - tar, mt and the > like. I've even used an ancient 8200 drive with a commercial backup software > on a Macintosh, just for fun. It works fine. Cool. Now all I need to do is get my hands on some tapes, and install one of these into something or other with a SCSI card, which I need to have in a box anyhow, so I can play with a RAID 5 array I want to build. -- 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 P