Question: I just used a strong magnet to wipe an old Maxtor MFM drive
(magnet on outside of case). Now the drive will not even seek properly
on start up, just endlessly moves the heads..
Is the drive now toast? Do MFM drives have embedded servo information on
the platter formatted by the factory?
CZ
Friends,
The process of migrating the cctalk and cctech mailing lists to a new
host in Chicago is underway. This evening, I've moved the list mail
handling to the new server, and this message will be the first live
test. Assuming this works, you shouldn't have to change anything to
post to the list.
The green web pages, the old "pipermail" list archives, and web access
to archives of new postings from this point still require a little work,
which I hope to complete in the next day or two. I will eventually
import the old pipermail archives into the new posting archive, but that
may take a little longer.
The new hosting is provided by the Chicago Classic Computing group.
Many thanks to Jay West for hosting the lists for 20 years!
/Dennis Boone
The title says it all - the Apple III has an external hard drive called the Profile, but a driver has to be installed on the boot floppy - it won’t boot from the HD. There were also 10MB Profiles, with a different driver file I’m guessing.
I have the driver file for the 10MB, but it doesn't seem to work with my 5MB drive. Please help if you can.
Thanks-
Steve.
So I'm working on restoring a Compaq DeskPro/XE system to allow me to
use the 5.25 floppy to copy files from my 3.5 floppies which will come
from my Windows 10 system so that I can extract on the Deskpro/XE using
teledisk the .td0 files that make up a RX50 floppy disk set so I can
load POS 3.2 on my Pro/380 and see if the DECNA card works.
What a pain in the rear.
So far the XE boots but has no setup. Setup requires a special floppy
(Diagnostic disk) which mine was bad after 30 years so I'm trying to
create a new one. I have the official Compaq disk creation thing for a
floppy but it's in QRST format and the QRST under DOSBOX on Windows10
can't properly access a floppy even if "mounted" with a -t floppy extension.
Before I drag out my rusty and trusty Windows 95 Toshiba 660AV laptop,
is there another way to get this onto a floppy? I have an endless supply
of Rpi's, and doing a DD from a .img file works fine but this of course
is a QRST file.
Thoughts?
CZ
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 18:27:52 +0000
From: silcreval <silvercreekvalley(a)yahoo.com>
Subject: [cctalk] Re: PDP-8/A FPP8/A
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Message-ID: <4EF3AB13-972C-4EE0-8105-C11128DA4BFA(a)yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>Hi Bob
>Thanks - thats very interesting. I guess there was quite a >bit of overlap with the 11 and the 8/A so 'marketing' >stepped in :-)
Exactly what happened, you are correct. We did want to sell more 8 systems into labs... where small memory models made sense (256K words or less) and kept having this dream of a Fortran Machine that went fast for the times.
I don't recall exactly but I think one of the 11 models with FPU that got blown out of the water was the 11/60 (a harvard arch implementation by O'Loughlin iirc) that was a decent and very very reliable 11 (used pairs of them for a critical system and they were exceptionally reliable when compared with disk drives!!)
The 8A was (and still is) a good machine but some of us wanted to build a 10Mhz clock 8 but the cost would have put it in the wrong price range for the types of customers we were allowed to have.
bb
> Izzat a "SPARCBook II"? If so, I have one with 2 drives, and
> the /usr drive is failing. I can replace that but I have no
> idea how to reinstall SunOS/Solaris/Whatever.
I did that in the past using a network install. One will need
ftfp (for kernel) and bootp (for parameters and paths) as well
as old style nfs on a server with the installation media. Worked
nicely and is pretty fast if CDs are copied to harddrive before-
hand...
Best wishes and good luck,
Erik.
''~``
( o o )
+--------------------------.oooO--(_)--Oooo.-------------------------+
| Dr. Erik Baigar Inertial Navigation & |
| Salzstrasse 1 .oooO Vintage Computer |
| D87616 Marktoberdorf ( ) Oooo. Hobbyist / Physicist |
| erik(a)baigar.de +------\ (----( )---------------------------+
| www.baigar.de | \_) ) /
+----------------------+ (_/
Oi.
So after finally getting things going I started copying the Pro/380 OS
files to a bunch of 1.2mb floppies. Great. However after a bit I started
getting errors, and found that the disks were getting gouges in the
tracks. Sure enough disassembly of my 1.2mb Teac showed that debris had
become embedded in the disk head and cleaning is not possible.
Terrific. Tossing the drive, this is not the first time I have had this
problem with these disks so I am dumpstering all of the old floppies and
just bought 40 new ones in sealed boxes.
However I'm now in need of a 1.2mb floppy drive. Anyone have a good
working spare that I can beg/borrow/buy in the MD area?
Thanks!
CZ
(I really should have pitched these disks; they came from a basement
with an oil heater for 20 years and are quite honestly garbage. Only
thing worse were disks from Solarex which literally had silicon dust on
them that chewed any drive. Oh well, live and learn)
Well, the weekend of hardware sudden death continues. The reason for getting
the UltraBook IIi out was to do some more work on kOpenRay, the free Sun Ray
server software I very occasionally maintain. Among other devices I use(d) two
Accutech Gobi laptops to talk to it since they have an oddball VPN setup that
used to cause problems.
Unfortunately, neither will configure their network interfaces anymore and just
hang. The board is of course a cheap mass of unrepairable components.
If anyone has an Accutech Gobi (either the 7 or 8 model, both will suffice, I
don't need the 3.5G module but will use it if it's there) sitting around
gathering dust, I'd love to buy it off you. I have the power supply and
batteries already. Southern California.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com
-- And now for something completely different. -- Monty Python ----------------
