Hi all,
I have this UD33 controller that works perfectly with another newer SMD
disk (CDC 9720), but when I try it against my beautiful old Fuji 160
(M2284K), It gets through format okay but has intermittent errors on verify
/ reliability test. If I reduce the number of cylinders / heads, I can get
it to pass, but not every time.
I have a good thick ground and same cables that worked perfectly with the
other disk, hoping that's enough of a sanity check on those.
I have the UD33 configured thusly:
type: 1
units: 1
sectors per track: 32
physical heads: 10
physical cylinders: 823
spare sectors per track: 1
spare cylinders: 2
configuration bits: 6
LOWER RPS: 3
UPPER RPS: 7
split into one drive with 1 head and the other with 9 heads to speed things
along :)
GAP 0: 259
GAP 1: 4112
GAP 2: 780
Spiral offset: 1
The drive's switches are set for soft sectoring and tag 4/5 enabled.
I had tried hard sector setting on the drive with 32 sectors / 640 bytes.
It's SO CLOSE to working I can taste it :).
I have another Fuji 160 that is doing basically the identical same
misbehaviour.
And as usual, I am just not quite understanding the final clincher piece.
Anyone know of better settings I should be using and most importantly Why?
thx
jake
P.S. I was hoping that somewhere someone would have written down what
controller settings work with the UD33 or QD32, etc, but no luck finding
them. You'd think despite the 3 or so years gap in the disk vs controller
that this would've been officially supported at some moment in the
universe, no? I just wish I knew how to calculate it properly myself!
I have a Rainbow 100A with the Univation hard disk. Works (wow!), but the
Univation HDD controller was not DEC compatible and you have to boot from a
floppy to get the disk drivers loaded. And of course, the 100A ROMs didn't
support any kind of hard disk, DEC or otherwise.
Did anybody ever make an updated ROM image for the 100A that supported
booting from the Univation directly? I think the 100A used 2716 EPROMs,
and it'd be easy enough to burn some new ones.
And is there any surviving documentation for the Univation? Bitsavers
seems to have nothing.
Thanks!
I was asked to examine a large core module, it has a UNIVAC label and part no, manufactured in 1971 but probably a little older in design. No providence known.
I suspect it is from an 1108 or perhaps an 1106, based on the reasoning presented in the web link below. I’m a little curious for a firmer confirmation though. 1108/6 documentation on bitsavers has been very useful, but what’s there doesn’t go deep enough into the hardware to provide a hard confirmation. Is there even an 1108 or 6 still in existence?
The module, and what I’ve figured out:
http://madrona.ca/e/coreUnivac/index.html <http://madrona.ca/e/coreUnivac/index.html>
Hi all,
I worked on system software at Burroughs in the late 80s and a couple weeks ago gave a talk about Burroughs history in computers and the Large Systems/A Series/B5000 and B6500 architecture at VCF PNW. There was enough interest that I am putting together another talk or two. One of the topics is Large Systems MCP and I am looking for other people who worked with it to give their own perspective and confirm things I am trying to remember from 40 years ago.
BTW, if you haven’t seen it, the trove of Burroughs documents in the bitsavers Burroughs collection on the Internet Archives is amazing. Unfortunately I still can’t find any documentation for most of the stuff that I worked on. I should have kept copies of those manuals when I left.
alan
Apologies for spamming this with a very specific hardware issue - but I
felt this was so unusual, that it was worth sharing the kind-of solution.
I have an old 386 running Solaris, works fine.
I swapped the VGA monitor it, didn't think much of it. VGA is VGA right?
(except old Compaq 286SLT have one of the VGA pins removed, but that's
another story)
The replacement monitor (19" Sun from c. 2001) worked fine. Booted system,
logged in. But - I Couldn't ping. No networking.
Checked the router. Check switch, all green lights. TV streaming still
working. No one else in the house screaming about no internet. Hmm... But
I couldn't ping out of that 386, nor FTP back into it, like I had been.
I consulted GPT on its thoughts. I swapped NIC cables, VGA cables, long
cables, short cables, moved the power brick of the 19" Dell. All same
result. Finally, GPT made this comment, that I'll summarize like this:
"If your NIC isn't working, try turning off your monitor."
I figured another dumb AI hallucination. But holy smokes, that actually
worked! It was a pure 1:1 correlation - whenever I turned that 19" Sun
monitor off, I could ping out of the box and ftp into it. As soon as I
powered it back on, all the network traffic stopped. It no fancy LCD - no
speakers, no USB, just a typical VGA/DVI connector heavy LCD with a Sun
Micro logo stamped on it.
So the specific test was this: prep a ping command, like "ping
192.168.1.1" turn the monitor off, press ENTER. Wait 2 seconds, power the
monitor back on. And yea, consistently, that worked. But when trying to
ping while the monitor was left on, I couldn't ping from the NIC in this
386.
GPT's only suggestion was some sort of grounding interference by this
particular 19" Sun monitor, and some blah-blah about how old 386's are more
impacted about EMI.
Just curious what other think on this - any particular known issue about
2001-ish period Sun 19 flat-panel LCDs? This one uses a 19V DC power brick
(and I tried using different outlets).
I never would have considered trying to solve the NIC issue by powering off
the monitor. So I have to put back on the widescreen for now - which
everything works fine with that. So not a real solution, but I gotta
admit that GPT did help uncover what was causing the issue.
Cheers,
Steve
I ran across an ad in the March 1979 Popular Electronics. It is for a small computer board called "MIMIC" from Real Time Intelligence Corporation of Rochester, NY. From the picture and small amount of information in the ad I am guessing it is a minimal 6802 processor system. I am interested in knowing more about it, but so far my searches have turned up nothing on the computer or the company. Does anyone know anything about it? Links to info? The magazine can be found here https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Popular-Electronics-Guide.htm and the ad is on page 6 (8 of the PDF.)
Thanks,
Will
You just can't beat the person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth
I have a ton of these covering the period from around 2000-2005. I may have
more. Are they of interest to anyone? They are in the UK. Would prefer local
collection, I could post them in the UK if needed. They are going to be
heavy, but if anyone *really* wants them then I might be prepared to ship
them internationally. Obviously shipping will be for the recipient to pay,
but the journals are free.
Thanks
Rob
This is a very poor machine transcription of a Zoom conversation I had with Charles about 5 years ago.
I went flying with him once a month.
00:15:04 Charles Simonyi
Yeah the yeah this uh this kind of third hand plane and then flying with him and.
00:15:15 Charles Simonyi
We were flying at night and we had a complete electrical failure.
00:15:21 Paul McJones
Oh, really.
00:15:22 Charles Simonyi
Yeah, in the San Jose airspace.
00:15:27 Charles Simonyi
And dum dum.
00:15:31 Charles Simonyi
There are actual procedures to come to.
00:15:37 Charles Simonyi
Do.
00:15:40 Charles Simonyi
You approach an airport with radio failure.
00:15:43 Charles Simonyi
He was supposed to fly by the You know lookout.
00:15:47 Charles Simonyi
Of course it was.
00:15:48 Charles Simonyi
It was completely beautiful weather, you know, zillion visibility and and you were supposed to fly by the.
00:15:57 Charles Simonyi
Uhm, he knew all the procedure.
00:16:00 Charles Simonyi
We fly by the the control tower and then they guide you down with this thing called the light gun.
00:16:07 Charles Simonyi
Which is a colored oh colored thing that actually you can see even in the movies.
00:16:13 Charles Simonyi
You can see it kind of hanging from the from the ceiling.
00:16:16 Charles Simonyi
There's this big flashlights, you know that you you can direct at planes and and and the weird thing is that that.
00:16:27 Charles Simonyi
I was learning to fly at the time, so I'm doing a little bit of knowledge and and the when you clear to land, it's a it's steady green.
00:16:38 Charles Simonyi
And flashing green means standby.
00:16:40 Charles Simonyi
OK, wait for the client and and we saw this.
00:16:45 Charles Simonyi
I saw flashing green.
00:16:47 Charles Simonyi
And I said, wait, wait, it's we are not clear.
00:16:50 Charles Simonyi
Yeah.
00:16:51 Charles Simonyi
And and how it said no, no, no.
00:16:53 Charles Simonyi
That's a steady light, except that they are not hitting us, right?
00:16:58 Charles Simonyi
Oh Oh yeah, yeah.
00:16:58 Charles Simonyi
Oh yeah.
00:16:58 Charles Simonyi
00:16:59 Charles Simonyi
So I've just realized and and he said just look very close to the source and you can see a little bit of of the beam and see that it's steady.
00:17:10 Paul McJones
OK.
00:17:10 Paul McJones
OK.
00:17:11 Charles Simonyi
And and I realized.
00:17:13 Charles Simonyi
I mean, I still remember how.
00:17:15 Charles Simonyi
You know, and then you would have to see this in a simulator or something.
00:17:19 Charles Simonyi
Otherwise you know if I had been alone, I would have never landed because they they can't take you straight.
00:17:26 Paul McJones
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:26 Charles Simonyi
And I was thinking about this silly, silly distinction.
00:17:31 Charles Simonyi
Because, operationally, it's it's very difficult to tell the difference, But anyway.