Hello,
I'm an employee with the National radio astronomy observatory here in Socorro New Mexico.
As part of our NGVLA upgrades, we are seeking to get rid of old data tapes from the tape reel days of Computing. These contain things such as the boot loaders, OS, specific collection programs and antenna movement programs.
I personally would hate to see these just wind up in the literal dumpster and would like to see them sent out to a museum or an archiving body that can preserve them and keep them safe as a dynamic part of history.
If anyone is interested or knows someone who would be interested in the VLAs data tape library please let me know.
V/R
Danielle Werts
Front end engineer
VLA Socorro New Mexico
I'm just starting to clean up a NeXT system that a friend has had in
storage for decades...
I assume the thing has a battery somewhere - I just hope it isn't Ni-Cad!
This is the original cube, monitor, keyboard (& mouse?), printer,
assorted cables, and a SCSI secondary hard drive box. So far the manuals
haven't shown up, but that is all online AFAICT.
My plan is to give them all a good cleaning, then open up and inspect
capacitors, look for batteries and any other perishable items, and then
do diode checks prior to considering powering up. The remembered
background story was a nearby lightning strike may have taken out the
(1200 baud?) external modem, so will be paying extra attention to the
serial ports! Sniff test may still be useful even after 20ish years.
Any suggestions on what else to watch for on this setup prior to first
power? I also will be using the Dim-Bulb setup once it seems safe to
turn on. Anyone seen a common problem in power supplies for these
components for example?
Planned destination is auction...
Thanks!
John :-#)#
This survey is in its final days. You are invited to add your anonymous
input by clicking here https://bit.ly/vcfm2026pre-en
Ce sondage entre dans ses derniers jours. Vous êtes invité à ajouter vos
commentaires anonymes en cliquant ici https://bit.ly/vcfm2026pre-fr
DATE: January 25 & 26, 2026.
LOCATION: Montréal, QC, Canada
Jeff Brace
VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President
Howdy,
The subject of Aleph Null's real identity appeared on HN...
:: Who was Aleph Null?
Posted on 2 September 2013 by Brian Hayes
http://bit-player.org/2013/who-was-aleph-null
::
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43195308
Intriguing. He must have been known by somebody, back in the day.
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **
Anybody need a dot matrix impact printer? Do you need to print multi-
part forms with carbon paper or NCR paper?
I have a Star Micronics SB-10 dot matrix impact printer. It has a
parallel port interface.
I have the cable, manual, and a spare ribbon.
None of my computers have a parallel port so I haven't tried to use it.
I put it on EBay, but mostly I don't want to throw it in the E-waste
bin. It's yours for pickup or shipping, but I won't complain if you
offer me something for it.
30lb. 20x20x10 inch box.
Thousands of new documents have been added to the DG legacy preservation
web site [www.NovasAreForever.org], including new sections for the Nova,
SuperNova, Nova 2, Nova 3, microNova, MPT, Eclipse S/130, Eclipse S/140,
Eclipse S/230, Eclipse C/330, Eclipse S/280, and Desktop Generation
computers.(!) Separate areas also now exist for DG disks, tapes and
other peripherals.
New archives for 3rd-party, DG-compatible hardware vendors have been
started with this release, including those for Keronix, DCC, Bytronix
and ROLM.
This update reflects Wild Hare's continuing dedication [obsession?] to
preserve Data General's significant part of computer history, and to
help museums, universities and "restorationists" preserve DG systems
worldwide.
Bruce Ray
www.NovasAreForever.org
--
Bruce Ray, President
Wild Hare Computer Systems, Inc.
Denver, Colorado USA
bkr(a)WildHareComputers.com
...preserving the Data General legacy: www.NovasAreForever.org
I have two SPST time delay 12-volt relays packaged like vacuum tubes
with octal bases, Amperite models 12N010 (ten seconds) and 12C5 (five
seconds).
They're in their original boxes.
I have no idea what devices used them.
It seems a shame to throw them in a recycle bin.
Does anybody want them?
Van Snyder
I have been trying to diagnose a video fault on my Rainbow 100A for some
time now. The monitor shows an error message and some of the attributes
displayed are wrong and displayed incorrectly on every line down the screen.
However, the attributes being presented to the DC012 appear to be correct
and the DC012 is good (I have replaced it with a spare and with a known good
one, all have the same behaviour), and yet the display is wrong.
I have posted this on VCF, but would like to reach a wider audience as I am
really at a loss now as to what the problem could be.
Picture of the problem here:
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/video-ram-fault-on-a-rainbow-100a.
1250713/post-1418966
Description of what I have found here:
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/video-ram-fault-on-a-rainbow-100a.
1250713/post-1433618
Thanks
Rob
As those of us with a few years will know, Tony Hoare (and Jill's)
implementation of Algol 60 on the Elliott 803 was a highly significant
event in the history of computer languages. It was the first practical
commercial Algol compiler, launched block structures languages, and
played a part in Elliott selling nearly 300 803B computers at a time
when 300 computers was a big number.
Obviously the US preferred Fortran and COBOL for commercial use, and
there were other Algol compilers in some shape or other knocking about
in universities. But I'd say this implementation put block structured
programming into the mainstream. (And it was the first high level
language I used, but that's beside the point).
Now some kid on Wikipedia thinks it's not notable and is trying to
delete it because he can't find much on it doing a Google search.
Wikipedia may be sinking under activists and egos, but I think we need
to put this misapprehension straight. Unfortunately we may be arguing
with an idiot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_ALGOL
If course, if anyone thinks it wasn't significant, that's an opinion
too, but I'd like to hear why.
Thanks, Frank.
On Fri, 21 Feb 2025 12:00:07 -0600
Paul Koning <paulkoning(a)comcast.net> wrote:
> > What is the problem with ISRs running in a user stack? The ISR
> > runs, exits, the stack is cut back, and net effect on the user's
> > stack is zero.
>
> A stack access fault in user mode kills the process, in kernel mode
> (certainly in an ISR) it kills the whole system. You can't leave the
> integrity of the OS at the mercy of the application having a valid
> stack.
Additionally, the ISR could leave potentially sensitive information in
user memory, depending on exactly how the stack and memory protection
are implemented. Consider an architecture where the stack pointer is a
normal address register (as on the -11, the 68k, etc.) and protection
is on a per-page basis with no bounds checking (i.e. there's no special
address space for the stack, just a particular chunk mapped into normal
user memory.) It'd be trivial for a user program to sit and "scrape"
the stack for stray bits left by passing ISRs - say, waiting to see if
the UART service routine happens to jot down something that looks like
an admin password coming off one of the terminals.
> On19 Feb 2025 18:39:08 -0500, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
>
>>>
>>>> One of most ingenious coding tricks to me was the problem of saving and
>>>> restoring all registers without resorting to an exchange jump. We used
>>>> that one as a test for applicants.
>>>
>>> Argh... I know I've seen this trick, but it's been too many years. How
>>> about a hint?
>>
>> It uses the RJ instruction to record register content, bit-by-bit.
>> Think about it--RJ is about the only instruction that can modify memory
>> without fiddling with the A6 and A7 registers.
>>
>
> Of course... I vaguely recalled there was a bit-by-bit save, but didn't
> think of the RJ. Thanks.
A full example of this code is in the DEBUG package of CAL SNOBOL <https://mcjones.org/CAL_SNOBOL/>, starting at label SAVEREG:
Original version: https://mcjones.org/CAL_SNOBOL/UArizona/SNOBOL.MAC.html
Revised version: https://mcjones.org/CAL_SNOBOL/UTexas/DEBUG.html
I saw an email posted to the predecessor mail list asking if anyone had a picture of an IBM 4506 terminal. I was looking through the September 1973 issue Modern Data and saw an article on page 70 about the New York Times’s indexing efforts. It said that they were using IBM 4506 terminals and it has a picture of a large workroom (identified as “The Times index room”) with a bunch of terminals which I assume must be 4506’s (although the caption does not explicitly state that). The magazine is available on BitSavers. Look for the issue with file name Modern_Data_1973_07.pdf.
Tommy Chang
Did any classic computers have a subroutine call as (S++)=PC, PC=(EFA)
as well as the standard call (--S)=PC,PC=(EFA) ?
One could have a virtual stack machine, using helper functions without
having to deal with return addresses on the stack.
Ben.
On Tue, 18 Feb 2025 12:00:10 -0600
cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org wrote:
> On the more than "one stack pointer" in the subject, it was a bit
> arbitrary on the PDP-11 (or VAX) as the pre/post indexed indirect
> addressing made every register a stack pointer. But this is where I
> get hazy between DEC and 68K, and I did a lot more 68K. I'm pretty
> sure you could do a move.l PC, An and you could certainly do an
> indirect jmp (An), so effectively you could have multiple call stacks
> if you wanted.
Almost, kinda-sorta. The JSR and RTS instructions are hard-wired to use
R6/SP, and there's nothing you can do about that. You *can* implement a
return off another "stack" by doing e.g. MOV @(Rn)+, PC as long as you
save the return address by hand, first - but this affects the flags,
unlike JSR/RTS.
> On 15 Feb 2025 18:41:21 -0800,Van Snyder <van.snyder(a)sbcglobal.net <mailto:van.snyder@sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>
> Harry Husky, the G15 designer, was one of the computer design pioneers.
> He became a professor (maybe adjunct) at UC Berkeley.
As far as I know, Huskey was a regular professor. Two of his Ph.D. students went on to win the ACM Turing Award: Niklaus Wirth and Butler Lampson:
https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=10185
Huskey went on to found the Computer Science department at U.C. Santa Cruz.
> On 16 Feb 2025 18:00:35 -0700,ben <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca <mailto:bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca>> wrote:
>
> I have trouble understanding the fine points of accessing a local
> variable in Algol with a display. Books tend to spend more time
> on the evils of a dangling else, and gloss over the run time action of
> a display.
> Have a good example or reference book I can find free on line.
The original book on that subject is ALGOL 60 Implementation by B. Randell and L. J. Russell. It’s available here with permission from the copyright holder:
https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/algol60impl/#ALGOL_60_I…
I am an old mainframe guy. I could give you my COBOL deck of cards or the compile listing. You could pour through the code looking for nefarious/malicious code. I then hand you the object deck. You have no idea if it matches the code you looked at. The only way you could be sure is to compile the code I gave you and use your own object deck.
So why is open source these days such a beneficial thing? DeepSeek may be open source but I have no way to create my own executable. Besides, I don’t know what language it is written in but I bet I have no expertise in it. No way to for me to identify nasty code.
Yes, many people may have reviewed the code but that does not mean what I am running is the result of that code.
Hi Van,
just wanted to point out, that there is a 803 emulator out there:
https://www.peteronion.org.uk/Elliott/
I have got a real 900 series machine running, which is from the very
early 1970ies and also runs a form of Elliott Algol:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-gF5g0nnoE
Best wishes,
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 | \_) ) /
+----------------------+ (_/
>Message: 31
>Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2025 07:29:15 +0000
>From: Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1(a)gmail.com>
>Subject: [cctalk] Re: RS232 then and now
>
>On Sat, Feb 1, 2025 at 10:54 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk
><cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> IBM used a DB25 socket for their printer port at the computer end,
>> (male on the card for serial, female on the card for parallel "Centronics")
>> THAT, of course caused some idiots to attempt to use the parallel port for
>> serial and vice versa. "I just need a 'gender changer'!" :-)
>
>The worst screw-up there (IMHO) came from HP in the HP150 series. This
>machine had 2 RS232 serial ports as standard on DB25 sockets, wired
>for some inexplicable reason as DTEs. There was an add-on board that
>included a parallel printer port. To avoid confusion, this was a DB25
>plug. But the board had been laid out for a DB25 socket using the IBM
>PC pinout. The result was that stb/ ended up on pin 13, D0 on pin 12,
>and so on.
>
>-tony
>
My vote for the worst connector screw-up is the AT&T (Olivetti) 6300. Its monochrome monitor used a DB25 to supply both the signals and 12 volts to power the monitor.
Bob
I was about to ask if anyone ever built a "Parallel Modem" - but I searched
around first, and lo and behold, Microcom did ! (v.fast / v.34 era, c.
1996)
The drivers refer to Win3.1/Win95 era (I'm not seeing where they had DOS
support).
But I'm still not sure if I'm understanding the product (which I found
described here
Microcom Parallel Port Modem <https://strom.com/pubwork/cw294.html>
From a programming perspective, you just set your parallel bits and mash
the STROBE pin, right? Then figure some reasonable delay between
iterations of doing that. You don't need starts/stop or parity bits. So
I get how that is more efficient (but question is, why wasn't it built
sooner? I think it's a long answer when you look at the historical build up
of modems, and that serial-port based modems were "fast enough" at the time)
So.. If you had a slow system that couldn't really take advantage of a
~7MHz 16550 serial card (or I guess like a laptop that was stuck with an
older UART) That might be the use-case where this parallel v.fast might
help (by being able to "feed the modem" fast enough to actually take
advantage of the faster modem speed?) Or is there some other scenario
NOTE, in the articled linked above, it does mention that it is only "value
added" if you have this parallel-modem on both sides of the connection.
(this is because you'll be flow controlled to whatever is the slower device
in the connection?)
Related but different question:
Is there any "natural rate" (Hz) of a modem? Meaning is 1200/2400
baud-equivalent modem an accelerated-by-enhanced-encoding version of 300
bps? and 9600 likewise an accelerated-by-encoding version of 2400? is
300bps itself some kind of special accelerated-by-encoding? I see 1200
baud was also still sub 3KHz (did any modem protocol go above 3KHz?).
Or maybe I need to ask it this way: did 300 baud modems use a more 1:1
translation of the data-word bits into Hz signal over the modem (giving a
more "natural" translation rate?) But then beyond that speed, does a modem
need to "cache" a few bytes and determine some encoding scheme to then give
modems an apparent speed boost? (is that "kind-of" like USB's 8B/10B?
(not in implementation, but in the general concept that a different
encoding can result in improved data throughput, without actual faster
movement of that data?)
I guess it gets into the "secret sauce" approaches of how vendors figured
out these encoding approaches (v.32bis, etc), and give their product
competitive advantages (but only if you could convince enough ISPs to adopt
your protocol, by buying your modem device).
My daughter made me finally watch Blackberry recently, it's an interesting
telling of that story (of a small business selling their tech to USR, and
also that they tackled a version of encryption)
-Steve
Al has a reader at CHM. They can read tapes too, my 7-track setup is now at System Source.
Paul
> On Sat, 2025-02-15 at 14:52 +0000, Sid Jones via cctalk wrote:
> > IIRC, I have a copy of the Elliot 803 A-103 Algol compiler on a five-
> > hole
> > tape in a drawer somewhere in my untidy office...
> >
> > As used in UCNW Bangor, 1971-1974.
>
> There might be a reader somewhere. If anybody has (or developes) an
> 803B emulator, it would be nice to have the compiler.
>
> Paul Pierce read several IBM 1401 tapes. The Computer History Museum in
> Mountain View, CA has two operating 1401s, and the SimH project has an
> emulator. It's nice to have the Autocoder assembler, FORTRAN II and
> FORTRAN IV compilers, COBOL compiler, ⦠to use. There are students at
> San Jose State University who go to classes in 1401 programming at CHM.
>
> Maybe Paul has a paper tape reader too.
>
>
>
>
https://thisistrue.com/sokol-behind-scenes/
It's probably not overly important how the 6502s got sourced for the
Apple I, but here's a different take. Debate as you see fit, I'm just
the messenger.
Jim
--
Jim Brain
brain(a)jbrain.com
www.jbrain.com
Hey all! So, I've found myself studying up on RS-232 this year for a few
reasons.
I'm mulling over doing an RS232 themed talk at June VCF. Not a super
exciting topic, but I do think that RS232 has an interesting history: In
the SAGE relationship, and as a follow up to (essentially) prior telegraph
communication.
From what I've read, "50 baud" was a kind of an initial goal to beat, since
that's what the top telegraph operators could achieve (in small burst,
probably not all day). And those operators did have to also deal with
things like start/stop "bits". Maybe it wasn't an intentional goal, but
just that it establishes why "50 baud" is generally the lowest we ever see
mentioned (or, if you go slower than that, might as well use the older
tech).
Then 75/110/130 baud to have digital-systems interoperate with classic
mechanical teletypes. Going any faster and those systems jam up or
overheat? These weren't yet called "serial ports", so I'm not sure what a
late 50s system would even call their equipment that facilitate this data
exchange (since I'm not sure what kind of crystal-clock they even had
yet).
Then, was it the SAGE program that demonstrated the idea of doing this kind
of data exchange across copper phone lines? That is, the idea of computers
collaborating not just in a room, but across long distances (miles)? And
doing so by using an audio tone presentation? (they settled on around
3100MHz, which ended up translating to 300 baud? hence, that's basically
why the first digital to digital system data exchange settled on that baud
rate, which was reliable on both 50 and 60Hz power systems, and
meaningfully faster than prior 110 baud - so a good milestone to turn it
into a product, which was the Bell Model 103?).
I couldn't find much details (like a manual) on the Bell 101 equipment
(anyone seen one or have a manual?). But I did find the Bell 103 manual -
the photo of its innards is grainy, so I don't understand how the Bell 103
did 300 baud without a UART (and one of the pinout lines I see did run
power, so not sure if that's-yet RS232 or not; I know RS232 was evolving
right at that same time circa 1962). I've about the 1970ish TR1402
initial DIP UART, with anything prior being an experiment (like a full
board concept by DEC).
I know from 1962, both RS232 and ASCII standards still took maybe another
decade to really gain traction as standards (at least, from what I've
read). Getting the world to comply with any standard always takes a lot of
effort (for a practical reason of everyone still having invested in the
older tooling that was still functional). But it's interesting how those
two standards are still in use (not in their original form, but least the
1967 revisions) - extending from Baudot.and late 1800s-tech on telegraphs.
Does anyone know of any grocery stories using RS232 in the 1960s? I think
barcode scanning was just introduced in that era. I can just imagine a
smart grocery store owner, in the backroom programming their minicomputer
for payroll and inventory management. In FORTRAN and without a CRT?
Actually, in the 60s, I think included software would be negotiated with
the provider of the computer (well, I'm not sure how that differed between
minis and mainframes).
I know early microcomputers used RS232 for keyboards (1974-1976 era). The
IBM PC keyboard is essentially another form of serial.
Well, sorry for the rambling - have other RS232 related questions, but
first wanted to focus on the historical aspects (and see if I'm somewhat on
the right track at least).
-Steve
