- cctalk - classiccmp.org

by steve shumaker

Popped up in a search: A DEC LINC Eight up for auction in Friedens, PA. https://hibid.com/lot/143159802/digital-equipment-corp-linc-eight-vintage Currently has a single bid for $1.00.... They are even offering shipping! Visually looks to be in excellent shape https://cdn.hibid.com/img.axd?id=7750162854&wid=&rwl=false&p=&ext=&w=0&h=0&… Steve

2 years, 3 months

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Restoring unknown format backup tapes

by John Herron

This may be a larger conversation than I intend but how would you all generally start if you ha backup tapes that you wanted to try and read/restore? Supposedly they're Amiga qic tapes. I'm a little worried about the structural integrity of the tapes. Not knowing what software was used, would this be a literal job for something like tar via a Linux system? Then see if I can interpret the dump and sort out files afterwards? I might see if a local group wants to help play with this effort since I think I only have 1 drive in unknown condition.

2 years, 3 months

6
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Diablo series 30 or Dec RK03

by jake utley

Hello everyone I’m a young collector (18) of 60s and 70s minicomputers and micros. I have been restoring a PDP-8L and would love to find ether a Diablo series 30 or Dec RK03 removable cartridge drive to go with this system. I am in the uk South Yorkshire to be precise and would love any leads anyone could provide on where I could find one would very much appreciated. If nobody know where one of these drives can be located any means of mass storage for a pdp 8L and data general nova system will be appreciated since I want to move my collection forward and have the systems set up with full period setups. Thanks very much in advance. Jake

2 years, 3 months

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Re: PT-68K

by Wouter de Waal

Hi all I get the digest so I lag. >From: skogkatt007(a)yahoo.com > >It's a IBM PC form factor 68000 based project that was featured in >Radio Electronics. Anyone remember it or even know what I'm talking >about? It would be a fun prokect. Come on over to "List: <fufu(a)flexusergroup.com>" there are people still running those. Peter Stark passed away September last year. There's also Ingo Cyliax' 68030 box, also PC form-factor and ISA. W

2 years, 3 months

4
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DEC/HP computers from deceased collector (nr Andover UK)

by Chris Bryant

Through a mutual friend I've been shown a collection of computers: MicroVAX 3400 - the module complement is KA640-AA/MS650-AA, MS650-AA, CXY08-M, TQK70 (with a TK70 drive), M9060-YA. In a floor-standing enclosure with "BA213 CPU Mod" on the label, and Model 640QS-B3 Alphastation 200 4/233 - there are three of these Compaq AlphaServer DS10 Vaxstation 3100 also HP Visualise C3000 - a pair The widow believes they were working when last used. They are available free to a good home/modest donation. Photos etc available. Chris

2 years, 3 months

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WTB: IBM 700/c

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

preferably working. Or known screen issues but otherwise working. the mono version intrigues me (model 700). But I need a color unit to test out all these screens I have sitting here. Now if anyone should need a NOS screen for a 700c, email me directly. No flim flam on everyone's screen.

2 years, 3 months

2
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Downsizing "feeler"

by George Currie

Greetings all, it's "that time", the time I've finally accepted that I no longer have the time/energy/space to devote to this collection/restoration hobby that I've been able to enjoy for several decades now.During this time, I've managed to amass a pretty sizeable amount of hardware, software, manuals, etc. We're talking half a garage, part of a large shed and a storage rental's worth of stuff. I need to go through and hit some highlights, but there are things from rack mount PDP-10's, an SGI (Challenge XL rack, Indy's), tons of old Macs (original, 512, original, Portable, etc), Lisa, Apple II, Commodore, TRS80, Grid, HERO robots, DG Aviion, HP PA-RISC, MIPS system, early luggables (e.g. Zenith), boxes of ISA cards, etc, etc, etc. A good 20ft uhaul trucks worth of stuff.There is no way I can piece meal stuff, so I'd be looking for someone, or an org like a museum, who is willing to take the whole enchilada.This is an early feeler before I start doing actual inventory to see if a) is anyone interested in/capable of dealing with a large collectionb) is anyone aware of someone, or a museum, that may be interestedI know I'm a bit light on the details, and we all know where the devil lives. But this is the first step.The collection is located in Central Texas.TIA for any interest, leads, pointers, sympathy, ridicule, etc.George

2 years, 3 months

7
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loading vt220 fonts

by David Griffith

I'm trying to figure out how to created and load a "soft character set" into a vt220 terminal. These documents: https://vt100.net/shuford/terminal/dec_vt220_codes.txt, and https://vt100.net/docs/vt510-rm/DECDLD.html, seem to talk about how to do it, but I don't follow this well. I'm guessing the fonts are made up of escape sequences. Then I guess they are loaded by simply printing them to the terminal. If that's the case, where are the examples of such sequences? Playing around with vttest, there's an option to "Test Soft Character Sets" in the "VT220 Tests" menu. But I get the error message "You did not specify a font-file with the -f option". Where can I find examples of that file? Putting these together, I'm guessing what vttest wants is a file containing sequences described in those two documents. So, where do I go from here? -- David Griffith dave(a)661.org 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?

2 years, 3 months

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How to print old files.

by ben

How do you print old files in ASCII 63 to modern devices, so you keep the ← and ↑ 's and not printing _ and ^ ? Ben.

2 years, 3 months

7
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DEC and compatible boards for sale

by Mike Katz

An acquaintance of mine as the following boards for sale. Please email him directly at bojo7777(a)yahoo.com if you are interested. Please mention the board number and box when emailing him. Please forgive any cross posting. DEC Boards Box QTY. DEC # BUS Number Description d 1 3010-5004 d 2 3010-6001 d 3 3010-6002 d 1 3010-6003 d 2 3010-6006 d 3 3010-6007 d 1 3010-6008 c 1 9400-6201 c 1 9400-6202 c 1 9400-6203 c 1 9400-6214 d 1 9901-5040 d 1 9901-6047 e 1 B212 Dual RS FF, Dus Driver Out, Delayed & Not Delayed RS Inputs b 1 G190Control & Data card Loops G109 / 5009709H f 1 U G7273 Bus Grant and Non-Processor Grant Jumper i 1 LPWR GS-2 e 2 M101 (one has front half of tab broken) Bus Data Interface (2 inpout gates, 15 circuits, 1 common and 1 independent input e 4 M111 16 Independent Inverters e 5 M113 10-2 Input NAND Gates e 1 M302 2 One Shot Delays i 1 M3110 i 1 M3111 b 1 M3112 j 1 U M5903 MASSBUS Terminal Transceiver g 3 U M5922 RM03 Transceiver Port A b 1 VMV21 U M7067 Video Display Sys:Sync Generator & Character Generator (64-Char x 25 lines) i 1 KDF11-UA U M7133 11/24 CPU Board, line clock & 2 SLUs i 1 KDF11-UA U M7133 11/24 CPU Board, line clock & 2 SLUs g 1 RK11-D U M7255 RK05 Disk Control Module b 1 M7684 control sequencer RM02/RM03 Control Sequencer i 1 M7686 control interface RM02/RM03 Control Interface i 1 RL11 U M7762 RL01/02 Disk Drive Controller i 1 DEUNA U M7792 DEUNA Port Module.Unibus to Ethernet Controller e 1 U M783 Bus Transmitters 12 Drivers e 1 U M783 Same part# as above but longer version board Bus Transmitters 12 Drivers e 1 U M785 Bus Transceiver, 8 Drivers/8 Receivers e 3 U M785 Same part# as above, but longer version board Bus Transceiver, 8 Drivers/8 Receivers g 1 DL11-W U M7856 SLU & Realtime Clock Option c 1 DUP11-DA U M7867 SDLC or DDCMP Synchronous Interface h 2 DRV11-B Q M7950 16-bit DMA Parallel Gneral Purpose Interface a 1 MSV11-CD Q M7955 LSI MOS memory (missing tabs on front) 16K x 16 MOS RAM with on board refresh h 1 RLV11 Q M8014 RLV11 Bus control RL01 Bus Controller Board 2 f 1 MSV11-DD Q M8044 DC 32K x 16 MOS RAM f 1 MSV11-DD Q M8044 DM 32K x 16 MOS RAM h 1 RLV12 Q M8061 RL01/RL02 Disk Control, 22 bit address a 1 M8093 RM02/RM03 c 1 M8278 RM02/RM03 a 1 TM02-FE U M8901 Data Synchronizer 75 IPS Drives (Tu16) a 1 TM02-FE U M8901 YB Data Synchronizer 75 IPS Drives j 1 M8912 TU16 Slave Test Function Generator b 1 M8916 Logic and Write RM02/RM03 Logic And Write g 1 M8932 RM02/RM03 a 1 M8934 RM02/RM03 f 1 M9001 YC Bus Conneector, 2 H854's Bussed Together, All signals come out, 8 lines jumpered to ground, terminated. j 1 Q M9047 Grant Continuity f 1 U M9312 Bootstrap Terminator w/5 ROM Sockets e 2 NAND gates If this is an M937 it is an internal PDP-8/E Internal Bus Connector Mirror of M936 i 1 G231EPDP II memory driver G231E XY Selection, Current Source, Address Latch & 8K Decode b 1 S TK TU16 Read Amp board 5012235C RM02/RM03 Tk Tu Read Amp Board C e 1 TP-0109 8 bit counter regulator RM02/RM03 Bit Counter Regulator g 1 W940 * Has 10 rows of 5 per row inserts for ic chips, but no chips on board.* Wire Wrap Board with pins on component side f 1 W941 Wire Wrap Board with holes for 25 16 pin Ics j 1 W943 Wire Wrap Board with sockets for 25 16 pin Ics h 1 Q W9514 W912 Wire Wrap Module with 25 pre-mounted DIP sockets Stu Phillips Quantity Description Bus Additional Description 1 306A 1 DAC-II Rev-B Andromeda systems Q Digital to Analog Converter (4 Channels, 12 bits) 1 MSI-11 Andromeda systems Q Multiple Serial Interface (4 Serial, 1 can be used for parallel printer) 4 303-0225 2 303-0171-001P5 has 4 rows of 8 chips 1 No PN: looks identical to 303-0171P5 but no chips on it. ADAC Quantity Descripton 2 MO: 1900 D4-10060 rev-7 U Unibus from qbus translator 1 MO: 1012 EX C3 10112 rev-1 LSI-11 12 bit ADC, 16 single ended or 8 double ended channels 2 1616 / 32 HCO LSI-11 16 channel High Current latched outputs 4 1632TTL D4-10035 Rev-2 LSI-11 32 I/O lines, 8 latched outputs.DRV11 compatible 3 1616CCI C4-10064 Rev-2 LSI-11 16 contact closure inputs, debounced and latched 1 1604 POC C3-10198 Rev-1 Misc. Boards Quantity Description 1 MDA / ICRO Development Associates MXV21 LSI-11 Dual Density RX02 Compatible controller 1 Babbl-Pac MBB-11A LSI-11 46K Bubble Memory Board (needs MBC-11 Controller) 1 Southern Systems Inc. PDP Line Printer controller assy No: 9060 rev-B 1 Kennedy Co. Ramp Generator 5733 Part of a Kennedy Magnetic Tape Drive I think 1 Texas Instruments Remote Device control Bd# 973900 1 ? AYMV MIC-1-1 is only thing written on board 1 Computer Technology DMA-L11 LSI-11 16 bit DMA PIO Interface 1 Nortek AAM-11L LSI-11 Auto-answer/Auto-Dial low speed modem/serial interface 1 AKCX 76972300FPPGRX32 and 7692202 rev-A are only things written on board 1 PPDRX18RB / 54302906B 2 Applicon Extender short PL-31370-001

2 years, 3 months

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PDP-11 System Identification Register

by Martin Bishop

Can't find very much information about the PDP-11 System Identification Register : RO at 77777764 The occasional processor handbook says not implemented or the 11/xy reports num. Interogative : information sources, e.g. a tabulation of known values Martin

2 years, 3 months

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Thinking of selling my 11/23+

by Charles

Is there any interest in my working 11/23+ system? I rarely run it any more, but don't know what it's worth. Corporate cabinet, VT220 console, 4 MB RAM, two RL02 drives (RT-11XM, TSX-Plus 6.50), interface for 3.5" floppy drive, 16 serial ports. Located in south central Missouri so pickup would be greatly preferred :) thanks Charles

2 years, 3 months

2
1
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Altos 386 series 1000 installation disks & tape

by BogDan Vatra

Hello there, Earlier this December I got an Altos 386 series 1000 with lots of documentation and some installation floppy disks and one tape. I must say that it's an amazing machine! I'd like to reinstall the os but I have two problems: 1. It can not access the floppy drive. I tried it with another one, but still no joy. Does anyone have any schematics of the motherboard? I ordered a new floppy controller but in case the controller is not the faulty piece I'll need some schematics to track the problem. 2. I could clone some of the floppy disks on another computer but not all of them. I also found that the tape is overwritten with something else. Does anyone have these installation media? I'm missing sdx v3.6s0, aom menu shell v 3.0s2, Altos system v rts upd V5.3es2 and the tape Altos system v rts v5.3eT2 (utilities). Anyone know how to contact the Altos folks? Maybe they still have and are kind to share the installation media and the schematics. I have cloned Altos system v rts v5.3es2 (root), Altos multiview 1.6.2s0 two disks and the HDD. Btw, none of the Linux filesystem modules could not mount the hdd, therefore I created one based on fuse. If anyone needs such a thing you can find the srcs here : https://github.com/bog-dan-ro/altos . Happy new year! Yours, BogDan. P.S. I contacted Al from bitsavers, and my floppy disks clones will land to his collection (http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/bits/Altos/386-series/) P.S.' Al's tape image clone has a strange tar like format, does anyone know what's the exact format? I'd like to create a tool to extract them...

2 years, 3 months

3
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Old QIC02 tape drive problems

by Nigel Johnson Ham

Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591 Happy New Year everybody. Pleased with my success at getting a QIC02 drive running through an MTI MSV05B on my RT11 system today, my jaw dropped when I did a DIR MS0: and saw the pulley turning and the tape not moving, as liquid rubber starting accumulating on the drive belt! It turns out that the rubber wheel inside the TK25 cartridge had melted. OK, the cartridge goes in the bin, but has anybody found a way to clean the residue off the drive without damaging the drive belt? As always, any advice (other than to dump the whole thing :-) ) gratefully accepted. Nigel

2 years, 3 months

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Re: How to print old files.

by Alan Frisbie

ben <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca> wrote: > What I would like to get is a serial printer (rs232), with a definable > character set. Does any one know of a cheap one? Probably not cheap unless you get lucky, but an excellent choice would be the Toshiba P1351 (not to be confused with their later 1351 laser printer) or the narrower P1340. They are 24-pin dot-matrix printers that feature downloadable fonts and both serial and parallel interfaces. I got my P1351 in 1984 and it has served me well. I created (OK, stole from Xerox) a double-high double-wide font that I used for printing box labels when I moved. You could also do really nice graphics with it, at a resolution of 180 x 180. CCSI (Cerritos Computer Systems Inc.) wrote a driver for the P1351 for their CCSI-Plot (Plot-10 compatible) plotting package. I can provide a copy of the software (in Fortran for PDP-11) and scans of the manuals for both the software and printer, should you get one. You can still buy ribbons for it, so it would be a really good choice. Alan Frisbie

2 years, 3 months

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Space-Time Productions Z80 board

by David Ray

Amardeep S Chana, I have the Joel Owens’ Z80 Master Controller Board that you asked about back in October of 2017. I have a folder of collected documents. If you are still interested I could share those some place. /David Ray

2 years, 3 months

1
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OT but FREE: really beat up Asus eeePC 900A (Linux)

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

Broken monitor hinges. All sort of madness. No screws. No structural integrity whatsoever. But the sucker works. Assuming you glue it all to the point it'll sit up strait on it's lonesomes, plan on an external mouse and keyboard (kb works though afaik). You pay shipping from 08758. Check or m.o. only.

2 years, 3 months

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Fixing a MSV11-QC, tables wrong?

by Chris Zach

So I have an MSV11-QC (the 4gb Q Bus memory board) that has a failed bit. On an 11/73 it throws the following error: Expected data = 125252 (1010 1010 1010 1010 Bad data = 121252 (1010 0010 1010 1010) Address = 10015140 Which puts the error in the top 2mb (1mw), bit 4000. No biggie, consulting the matrix at: https://gunkies.org/wiki/MSV11-Q_QBUS_memory Shows this to be bank 4, bit 4000 or E85. Cut out E85, popped the board in (to double check before replacing) and I see this: Expected data = 125252 Bad data = 121252 Address = 02015140 Ooops. That would be decimal 531,040 which puts it in bank 1? Which should be E88, where did I go wrong here? Or is the table for the MSV11-Q only valid for the 64k ones and not the 256k ones? If so the bits may be right, but the banks are different. Anyone want to cross-check this or my maths? Thanks! CZ PS: Sorry if duplicates are getting sent to the list. I'm retiring cz(a)alembic.crystel.com and replacing it with cz(a)beaker.crystel.com. If the list manager could update my email I would appreciate!

2 years, 3 months

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Re: How to print old files.

by Martin Bishop

Ben I think you have the essence of a solution, using the Unix filter paradigm at user or driver level. Your desire to retain the original file format(s) is very sensible, it is always best to record "raw" data - for the greatest fidelity. The ISO 7-layer model provides a paradigm for data transport/storage formats and derived (presentation) formats. Good luck with the weather Martin -----Original Message----- From: ben [mailto:bfranchuk@jetnet.ab.ca] Sent: 01 January 2023 14:27 To: Martin Bishop <mjd.bishop(a)emeritus-solutions.com>; General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Subject: Re: [cctalk] Re: How to print old files. On 2023-01-01 6:53 a.m., Martin Bishop wrote: > Folks - wishing all a Good New Year > > Ben > The first ingredient must be a printer with a a suitable font table, in these times of soft fonts that should be a given or tractable. > The second element is to convert to and use an MCS / multibyte character representation - which can differentiate _ ^ and the desired arrow marks. > To do this you could: > - load the file into an editor, save it in MCS format, perform the > necessary substitutions (two global replaces) > - write a program / script to achieve the same effect, read char and convert/translate to MCS octets. > Note. It is just possible you will find a font with the arrows in the upper 128 glyphs of 8 bit "ascii", in which case you can skip the MCS conversion. > HtH > > Martin A filter of some kind is needed. With the rise of emulators for old machines,I can see text being written with terminal emulation of the orginal i/o devices, but that leaves printing or tranfering text files a problem. JOE could have a REAL - big iron 67, SAM runs windows 2000, TOM has a micro VAX. Every thing gets dumped to the cloud. One must keep data as files, none of this crappy mess that this modern 'buy a app' to print,or read. How does one share binary and paper tape/cards as files? Ben. PS: Back to inventing big iron 67. tag line: Cloud computing delayed to to bad weather, server is under 3 feet of snow.

2 years, 3 months

1
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Fixing a MSV11-QC, tables wrong?

by Chris Zach

So I have an MSV11-QC (the 4gb Q Bus memory board) that has a failed bit. On an 11/73 it throws the following error: Expected data = 125252 (1010 1010 1010 1010 Bad data = 121252 (1010 0010 1010 1010) Address = 10015140 Which puts the error in the top 2mb (1mw), bit 4000. No biggie, consulting the matrix at: https://gunkies.org/wiki/MSV11-Q_QBUS_memory Shows this to be bank 4, bit 4000 or E85. Cut out E85, popped the board in (to double check before replacing) and I see this: Expected data = 125252 Bad data = 121252 Address = 02015140 Ooops. That would be decimal 531,040 which puts it in bank 1? Which should be E88, where did I go wrong here? Or is the table for the MSV11-Q only valid for the 64k ones and not the 256k ones? If so the bits may be right, but the banks are different. Anyone want to cross-check this or my maths? Thanks! CZ

2 years, 3 months

1
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Debugging possible RAM faults on OCC1

by Steve Platz

I recently got an Osborne 1a, which needed a lot of cleaning and had probably been stored in a barn for some time. After getting the drive parts to move freely again and removing a blown cap on the power supply, the machine will start up and the screen is green, although it's just showing some random characters. I understand from someone's advice that some RAM may have gone bad. At this point I'm not sure if I should continue to try to get this going, or just resign it to someone with better resources for diagnosing the issues. If anyone has some advice for moving forward with this, I'd be interested to listen. Some context: this is my first such restoration endeavor. Thanks - Steve On Sat, Dec 31, 2022 at 12:00:07PM -0600, cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org wrote: > Send cctalk mailing list submissions to > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via email, send a message with subject or > body 'help' to > cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > cctalk-owner(a)classiccmp.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of cctalk digest..." > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Saturn-Calc (Mark Matlock) > 2. Restoring unknown format backup tapes (John Herron) > 3. Re: cctalk Digest, Vol 147, Issue 1 (Malcolm Macleod) > 4. Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes (Chuck Guzis) > 5. Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes (Bill Degnan) > 6. Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes (John-Paul Stewart) > 7. Re: Saturn-Calc (Kenneth Gober) > 8. Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes (Chuck Guzis) > 9. Re: SGI vs. Mac (Christian Liendo) > 10. Re: Saturn-Calc (Chris Zach) > 11. How to print old files. (ben) > 12. Re: How to print old files. (Hugh Pyle) > 13. Re: How to print old files. (Scott LaBombard) > 14. Re: Manual for MDB MLSI-LP11 (Douglas Taylor) > 15. Re: Saturn-Calc (Douglas Taylor) > 16. Re: Saturn-Calc (Bill Gunshannon) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 13:40:38 -0600 > From: Mark Matlock <mark(a)matlockfamily.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Saturn-Calc > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <20082909-144D-498A-A264-51CB187B9325(a)matlockfamily.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > > > On Dec 30, 2022, at 12:00 PM, cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > > > My 11/73 restoration has got to the point that I am loading stuff from RT11 backups, and I have a lot of Saturn-calc and wp data that I would like to see again. My licensed copy and the manual are long gone! > > > > I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. > > > > Does anybody know of a source? > > > > cheers, > > > > Nigel > > Nigel, > I’ve been trying to find a working distribution for PDP-11 Saturn-Calc and Graph for some years now. I had a licensed copy many years ago for RSX11M but it no longer works. I do have a working copy of Saturn-Calc and Graph (but not WP) for VMS on my MV3100-80 but not the VMS distribution. > > I have managed to contact the lead programmer that developed Saturn’s software through a former president of the company. The programmer believes he has a copy of the source code for PDP-11 and VAX on a CDROM that is in a storage unit. He has retired overseas and come back home where the storage unit is a couple times a year and I’m hoping he can find the CDROM on his next trip back. I can keep you posted on our progress in trying to recover this software. It helps that the programmer is interested in making the Saturn products available as it may need to be recompiled or at least relinked to be compatible with the newest versions of PDP-11 operating systems with Y2K etc. > > We thought we had it recovered a couple years ago when nine RX50 floppies were found in Australia that were from a distributor that could be used to generate new customer distributions, but there was no documentation and some info was missing. Also, manuals for the Saturn products have not been scanned so we are looking for them as well. > > If you had some specific Saturn Calc spreadsheets that you wanted data extracted from, I might be able to help you with my working VMS version of Calc. Saturn Calc was a great product that we used a great deal back in the day. The Saturn Graph product supported VT340s with the mouse and could generate plots a wide variety of HP and other plotters, printers, etc. > > Best Regards, > Mark > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 14:17:40 -0600 > From: John Herron <barythrin(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Restoring unknown format backup tapes > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: > <CAEOGs+jg=e6d4NQVz3+sn61Zw3naJXAWoP0SWyGfBg=N2N+kpw(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > This may be a larger conversation than I intend but how would you all > generally start if you ha backup tapes that you wanted to try and > read/restore? > > Supposedly they're Amiga qic tapes. I'm a little worried about the > structural integrity of the tapes. Not knowing what software was used, > would this be a literal job for something like tar via a Linux system? Then > see if I can interpret the dump and sort out files afterwards? > > I might see if a local group wants to help play with this effort since I > think I only have 1 drive in unknown condition. > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2022 08:49:35 +1100 > From: "Malcolm Macleod" <malcolm(a)avitech.com.au> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: cctalk Digest, Vol 147, Issue 1 > To: <g4ajq1(a)gmail.com> > Cc: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <0edb01d91c98$9d4d8410$d7e88c30$(a)avitech.com.au> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > > >Message: 4 > >Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 07:23:28 -0500 > >From: Nigel Johnson Ham <g4ajq1(a)gmail.com> > >Subject: [cctalk] Saturn-Calc > >To: cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > >Message-ID: <4c5f94c9-7406-f409-cbee-0fb6299618ac(a)gmail.com> > >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > > >Hi all, > > > >My 11/73 restoration has got to the point that I am loading stuff from > >RT11 backups, and I have a lot of Saturn-calc and wp data that I would like > to see again. My licensed copy and the manual are long gone! > > > >I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks appear > to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. > > > >Does anybody know of a source? > > > >cheers, > > > >Nigel > > Hi Nigel, > > I have what appears to be a complete set of RX50 disks for CAL, WPS and GRF. > > Images are here -> http://avitech.com.au/?page_id=2570 > > I haven't tried them. > > Regards, > Malcolm > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 17:01:35 -0800 > From: Chuck Guzis <cclist(a)sydex.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes > To: John Herron via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <67281402-437f-ebdf-777b-2f8006e751e3(a)sydex.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On 12/30/22 12:17, John Herron via cctalk wrote: > > This may be a larger conversation than I intend but how would you all > > generally start if you ha backup tapes that you wanted to try and > > read/restore? > > > > Supposedly they're Amiga qic tapes. I'm a little worried about the > > structural integrity of the tapes. Not knowing what software was used, > > would this be a literal job for something like tar via a Linux system? Then > > see if I can interpret the dump and sort out files afterwards? > > > > I might see if a local group wants to help play with this effort since I > > think I only have 1 drive in unknown condition. > The tape substrate itself, being mylar, is very durable, but it's toast > if stretched. Most likely, the internal tension band has either gone > slack or has broken and should be replaced, or else tape tangles can > result. Most importantly, details are necessary (what kind of carts, > what drive manufacturer and model, etc.) There are lots of potential > variations. To be frank, I hate the damned stuff. > > --Chuck > > > -- > --Chuck > > Sent from my digital computer > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 5 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 20:37:01 -0500 > From: Bill Degnan <billdegnan(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: > <CABGJBuds2rt87icXc0qNmT1iosW0Bz1Jcn6OCXjFnEr_3kQ52A(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > THere were certain tape manufacturers and plastic/metal clip marks and wear > patters that were typical of certain types of drives reading certain types > of tapes. Maybe high resolution photos of a few used tapes will reveal > clues. A tape ejected 30 times will have certain patterns of wear in > certain places. I have lots of different types of tapes, I am happy to > compare your used tape photos with anything I might have that would be > similar. > Not a guaranteed solution, but it might help narrow down candidate systems. > Bill > > On Fri, Dec 30, 2022 at 8:01 PM Chuck Guzis via cctalk < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > On 12/30/22 12:17, John Herron via cctalk wrote: > > > This may be a larger conversation than I intend but how would you all > > > generally start if you ha backup tapes that you wanted to try and > > > read/restore? > > > > > > Supposedly they're Amiga qic tapes. I'm a little worried about the > > > structural integrity of the tapes. Not knowing what software was used, > > > would this be a literal job for something like tar via a Linux system? > > Then > > > see if I can interpret the dump and sort out files afterwards? > > > > > > I might see if a local group wants to help play with this effort since I > > > think I only have 1 drive in unknown condition. > > The tape substrate itself, being mylar, is very durable, but it's toast > > if stretched. Most likely, the internal tension band has either gone > > slack or has broken and should be replaced, or else tape tangles can > > result. Most importantly, details are necessary (what kind of carts, > > what drive manufacturer and model, etc.) There are lots of potential > > variations. To be frank, I hate the damned stuff. > > > > --Chuck > > > > > > -- > > --Chuck > > > > Sent from my digital computer > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 6 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 20:02:37 -0500 > From: John-Paul Stewart <jpstewart(a)personalprojects.net> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes > To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Message-ID: > <dc496dec-d5f3-a71a-ce7c-a808488e062e(a)personalprojects.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On 12/30/22 15:17, John Herron via cctalk wrote: > > This may be a larger conversation than I intend but how would you all > > generally start if you ha backup tapes that you wanted to try and > > read/restore? > > > > Supposedly they're Amiga qic tapes. I'm a little worried about the > > structural integrity of the tapes. Not knowing what software was used, > > would this be a literal job for something like tar via a Linux system? Then > > see if I can interpret the dump and sort out files afterwards? > > It is unlikely that the tapes are in tar format, so tar on Linux won't > help. The chance that they are in tar format is much higher if they're > from Amix (Amiga Unix) instead of AmigaOS. > > There is a better possibility that the tapes were created by BRU since > AmigaOS 2.x (and maybe later) included a version of that. BRU is now > Argest Backup, if you need to go down that road. > > It is also possible that the tapes were created with any of the many > third-party backup applications that existed for AmigaOS. > > In any case, using dd (not tar) on Linux to copy the tapes to disk to > "interpret" and "sort out files afterwards" is at least a starting point. > > Other list members are better qualified to comment on the physical > aspects of doing that without destroying the fragile old tapes. > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 7 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 21:03:37 -0500 > From: Kenneth Gober <kgober(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Saturn-Calc > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: > <CANHrbpei_uoTLKAF8a9Et_gBrXXJjsTZnsKoZDzhguHTvPFMFA(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > On Fri, Dec 30, 2022 at 7:23 AM Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks > > appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. > > > > Is it possible the images are 'physical' disk images rather than 'logical' > disk images and have > sector interleaving applied? That can cause things to appear in odd places. > > -ken > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 8 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 18:04:06 -0800 > From: Chuck Guzis <cclist(a)sydex.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Restoring unknown format backup tapes > To: Bill Degnan via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <46b41622-ce30-28f7-5357-ea2623bda12b(a)sydex.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > On 12/30/22 17:37, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote: > > THere were certain tape manufacturers and plastic/metal clip marks and wear > > patters that were typical of certain types of drives reading certain types > > of tapes. Maybe high resolution photos of a few used tapes will reveal > > clues. A tape ejected 30 times will have certain patterns of wear in > > certain places. I have lots of different types of tapes, I am happy to > > compare your used tape photos with anything I might have that would be > > similar. > > Not a guaranteed solution, but it might help narrow down candidate systems. > > Bill > > > Heck, I'd just unspool a bit of the stuff, drop some Kyread on it and > have a gander with the old microscope. That can at least tell me how > many tracks are involved. > > But being a quarter-inch cartridge leaves a lot of ground open. For > instance, what if these tapes are Iotaamat-formatted? A regular QIC > drive will have nothing to do with them. There were other manufacturers > (Cipher 525) comes to mind that do not use standard formatting > techniques. On some of the later 8mm Travan carts, the tape is > will-o'-the-wisp thin. > > FWIW, > Chuck > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 9 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 22:48:23 -0500 > From: Christian Liendo <cliendo(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: SGI vs. Mac > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Cc: skogkatt007(a)yahoo.com > Message-ID: > <CAA9iAfuBwoa7+MkU=zU64ktOoQKA5Cx6KAFVM0vMqrL7W7+aCQ(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > I went to Onyx2/Origin 2000 training in Mountain View in the building that > is now the Computer History Museum and I met a lot of Gov folks but I also > met a lot of oil people who used SGIs to crunch data. At the time no one > could touch them but that too changed > > As for workstations the one I remember being a real competitor was > Intergraph. They had dual pentium pro boxes with proprietary cards that ran > NT and Softimage. Microsoft bought Softimage to compete with SGI and SGI > bought Alias Wavefront > > On Sat, Dec 24, 2022, 4:15 PM Ethan O'Toole via cctalk < > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > > Really without the US government as a customer I wonder how many of these > > companies could have made it on industry alone. > > > > - Ethan > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 10 > Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 23:44:03 -0500 > From: Chris Zach <cz(a)alembic.crystel.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Saturn-Calc > To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <f8b7c3ed-3b2c-1cbd-352e-5a683d697610(a)alembic.crystel.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > I think I have TSX/RX02 versions of Saturn stuff out there already. > Where is it.... > > Ah here: https://www.crystel.com/pdp/ > > Wow, I have a dsm11 disk image there too? Weird. And the XT Tool kit > guide (prior to when it was called the Pro/350). > > Let me know if those contain anything interesting. > > Chris > > On 12/30/2022 9:03 PM, Kenneth Gober via cctalk wrote: > > On Fri, Dec 30, 2022 at 7:23 AM Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk < > > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > >> I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks > >> appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. > >> > > Is it possible the images are 'physical' disk images rather than 'logical' > > disk images and have > > sector interleaving applied? That can cause things to appear in odd > > places. > > > > -ken > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 11 > Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2022 02:00:22 -0700 > From: ben <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca> > Subject: [cctalk] How to print old files. > To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <77511893-b967-7349-2bb0-a6d0f7af2905(a)jetnet.ab.ca> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > How do you print old files in ASCII 63 to modern devices, so you keep > the ← and ↑ 's > > and not printing _ and ^ ? > > Ben. > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 12 > Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2022 09:33:35 -0500 > From: Hugh Pyle <hpyle(a)cabezal.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: How to print old files. > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: > <CALvn94+WB5mOiNSer6Gsm2t-2=wUnFoTg9Hi7tXZv6m2VZEAmw(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > There's a 'Teleprinter' font, which is close, but doesn't include the > backward arrow: > https://web.archive.org/web/20000819043545/ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage… > > > > On Sat, Dec 31, 2022 at 4:00 AM ben via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > wrote: > > > How do you print old files in ASCII 63 to modern devices, so you keep > > the ← and ↑ 's > > > > and not printing _ and ^ ? > > > > Ben. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 13 > Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2022 14:56:24 +0000 (UTC) > From: Scott LaBombard <labomb_s(a)yahoo.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: How to print old files. > To: ben via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <1139967668.3339176.1672498584861(a)mail.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > I remember having to do something like that some years ago. If the ASCII file isn't too long and you can manage with manual edits, you can load the document into an editor that supports 'alt' codes. On Windows, I just tried Microsoft Word. > Hold the alt key down and enter the 2-digit code (on the numeric keypad) for the symbol you wish... ↑ is 24, and ← is 27. Just did a quick test and both printed fine on my HP printer, although as I recall the resulting symbols didn't look quite like the arrows in the original document. > On Saturday, December 31, 2022 at 04:00:33 AM EST, ben via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > How do you print old files in ASCII 63 to modern devices, so you keep > the ← and ↑ 's > > and not printing _ and ^ ? > > Ben. > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 14 > Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2022 11:23:57 -0500 > From: Douglas Taylor <dj.taylor4(a)comcast.net> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Manual for MDB MLSI-LP11 > To: Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <1903bca7-bf1c-a1b6-fbd7-b33498ba7412(a)comcast.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > On 12/29/2022 9:33 AM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote: > > My re-build of a BA23 11/73 system continues. I have one of these MDB > > printer controllers but cannot make it do anything more that home page > > on the laser using RT-11 > > > > Does anybody have a manual or know where I can download one. > > > > An extensive search using google just brings up a data sheet. > > > > Happy New Year to all, > > > > Nigel > > > > > I remember having a 11/03 system at work back in 1984 that had an > attached printer with what looked like an ordinary parallel printer > connector. However, the signal protocols for the printer interface were > different than the standard parallel interface everyone was using on > their PC's. I think they were close but you needed a printer that > understood the DEC protocols. Shouldn't be surprising to anyone from > that era. > > Doug > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 15 > Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2022 11:28:25 -0500 > From: Douglas Taylor <dj.taylor4(a)comcast.net> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Saturn-Calc > To: Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <35185fa8-dc89-5a1d-a7f8-a17e7a6f3c6f(a)comcast.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > On 12/30/2022 7:23 AM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > My 11/73 restoration has got to the point that I am loading stuff from > > RT11 backups, and I have a lot of Saturn-calc and wp data that I would > > like to see again. My licensed copy and the manual are long gone! > > > > I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks > > appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. > > > > Does anybody know of a source? > > > > cheers, > > > > Nigel > > > > > I have some DEC format 8 inch floppies from the mid 1980's that may have > Saturn WP on it. It rings a bell, I think I had a copy at one time. > Long, long time ago. I can't read the floppies (got no drive), anyone > in the Wash DC area that can read them would help. > > Doug > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 16 > Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2022 11:39:04 -0500 > From: Bill Gunshannon <bill.gunshannon(a)hotmail.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Saturn-Calc > To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <DM6PR06MB5580AAB10CA87FC8FAA4DF21EDF19(a)DM6PR06MB5580.nam > prd06.prod.outlook.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > On 12/31/22 11:28, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote: > > On 12/30/2022 7:23 AM, Nigel Johnson Ham via cctalk wrote: > >> Hi all, > >> > >> My 11/73 restoration has got to the point that I am loading stuff from > >> RT11 backups, and I have a lot of Saturn-calc and wp data that I would > >> like to see again. My licensed copy and the manual are long gone! > >> > >> I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks > >> appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. > >> > >> Does anybody know of a source? > >> > >> cheers, > >> > >> Nigel > >> > >> > > I have some DEC format 8 inch floppies from the mid 1980's that may have > > Saturn WP on it. It rings a bell, I think I had a copy at one time. > > Long, long time ago. I can't read the floppies (got no drive), anyone > > in the Wash DC area that can read them would help. > > Tim Shoppa? > > bill > > > > End of cctalk Digest, Vol 148, Issue 1 > **************************************

2 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

Saturn-Calc

by Nigel Johnson Ham

Hi all, My 11/73 restoration has got to the point that I am loading stuff from RT11 backups, and I have a lot of Saturn-calc and wp data that I would like to see again. My licensed copy and the manual are long gone! I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. Does anybody know of a source? cheers, Nigel -- Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591

2 years, 3 months

6
6
0 0

Manual for MDB MLSI-LP11

by Nigel Johnson Ham

My re-build of a BA23 11/73 system continues. I have one of these MDB printer controllers but cannot make it do anything more that home page on the laser using RT-11 Does anybody have a manual or know where I can download one. An extensive search using google just brings up a data sheet. Happy New Year to all, Nigel -- Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591

2 years, 3 months

2
1
0 0

SGI vs. Mac

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

An Indy for instance, is it much faster then a similarly clocked PowerMac? What about an Indigo 2 IMPACT 10000. Does that blow most PMs away? Anyone using an I2 or Indy with regularity? I have a purple box somewhere. I foumd the teal boxes much more visually appealing.

2 years, 3 months

9
13
0 0

Re: cctalk Digest, Vol 147, Issue 1

by Malcolm Macleod

>Message: 4 >Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2022 07:23:28 -0500 >From: Nigel Johnson Ham <g4ajq1(a)gmail.com> >Subject: [cctalk] Saturn-Calc >To: cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> >Message-ID: <4c5f94c9-7406-f409-cbee-0fb6299618ac(a)gmail.com> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > >Hi all, > >My 11/73 restoration has got to the point that I am loading stuff from >RT11 backups, and I have a lot of Saturn-calc and wp data that I would like to see again. My licensed copy and the manual are long gone! > >I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. > >Does anybody know of a source? > >cheers, > >Nigel Hi Nigel, I have what appears to be a complete set of RX50 disks for CAL, WPS and GRF. Images are here -> http://avitech.com.au/?page_id=2570 I haven't tried them. Regards, Malcolm

2 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Re: Saturn-Calc

by Mark Matlock

> On Dec 30, 2022, at 12:00 PM, cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org wrote: > > Hi all, > > My 11/73 restoration has got to the point that I am loading stuff from RT11 backups, and I have a lot of Saturn-calc and wp data that I would like to see again. My licensed copy and the manual are long gone! > > I downloaded some RX02 images posted by Mark Matlock, but the disks appear to be all zeroes where I expect the directory to be. > > Does anybody know of a source? > > cheers, > > Nigel Nigel, I’ve been trying to find a working distribution for PDP-11 Saturn-Calc and Graph for some years now. I had a licensed copy many years ago for RSX11M but it no longer works. I do have a working copy of Saturn-Calc and Graph (but not WP) for VMS on my MV3100-80 but not the VMS distribution. I have managed to contact the lead programmer that developed Saturn’s software through a former president of the company. The programmer believes he has a copy of the source code for PDP-11 and VAX on a CDROM that is in a storage unit. He has retired overseas and come back home where the storage unit is a couple times a year and I’m hoping he can find the CDROM on his next trip back. I can keep you posted on our progress in trying to recover this software. It helps that the programmer is interested in making the Saturn products available as it may need to be recompiled or at least relinked to be compatible with the newest versions of PDP-11 operating systems with Y2K etc. We thought we had it recovered a couple years ago when nine RX50 floppies were found in Australia that were from a distributor that could be used to generate new customer distributions, but there was no documentation and some info was missing. Also, manuals for the Saturn products have not been scanned so we are looking for them as well. If you had some specific Saturn Calc spreadsheets that you wanted data extracted from, I might be able to help you with my working VMS version of Calc. Saturn Calc was a great product that we used a great deal back in the day. The Saturn Graph product supported VT340s with the mouse and could generate plots a wide variety of HP and other plotters, printers, etc. Best Regards, Mark

2 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

wtb: Panasonic 15" TTL (5151 compattible) open frame monitor

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

Send an email please.

2 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

fs: Panasonic/Matsushita 9" open frame monitor

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

40$ + usps. New in battered box. Apparently this is monochrome and composite (ntsc). It will require a wired connector, or simply soldering wires to a 1 sided card edge connection. Also requires an external 12vdc 1amp supply. A few components are required, potentiometer, 3 diodes, and a resistor if you want graphics. Best done by someone with prior wirimg/soldering experience, but not much. As is, final sale. Check or m.o. Ships from 08758.

2 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

wtb: mainly Intel branded 80x86 based Multibus boards

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

And if Jonas (Stynx) from Germany is on here, please send me an e-mail. I'll reply to private e-mails only (from anyone).

2 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

PT-68K

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

It's a IBM PC form factor 68000 based project that was featured in Radio Electronics. Anyone remember it or even know what I'm talking about? It would be a fun prokect.

2 years, 3 months

10
35
0 0

imd2raw.c correction - linearizing ImageDisk images

by David Schmidt

There have been a few versions of the utility imd2raw.c floating around that will take Dave Dunfield's ImageDisk-created images (i.e. an .IMD file) and make a linear binary image devoid of any metadata. This is similar to the function of Dave's IMDU.COM program's /b switch. I've corrected a problem with the assumption that all imd2raw.c descendants to date have made: sectors that have a skew (i.e. not 1-1 interleaved) weren't linearized correctly. The skewed sectors need to be written out in "sorted" order, which is not necessarily captured/physical order. This is easily verified by comparing output from "IMDU /b" to earlier imd2raw outputs on any .IMD that has a sector skew that isn't 1, 2, 3 [...]. It's up on github here: https://github.com/RetroFloppy/imd2raw

2 years, 3 months

3
5
0 0

best C compiler(s) for varied vintage programming

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

It cannot rely on bios/ms-dos services for compiling preferably. Iow I'd like to perform what I want to do on the target machine itself, LOL which is hysterical as I've never even seen it boot even once. I could complie on a standard pc I suppose and pop a disk in the Northstar Dimension. It would be nice if it's optimized for it's 80186. Or at least supports it's instructions. My goal is to get MINIX running on it, as the original Netware-86 OS has proven to be more rare then really anything else. From there I'd like to figure out how to support the pc compatible (or so we're told) logic boards that are plugged into the motherboard like standard isa cards, and even have 34 contacts on their card edge. It would be nice if someone had the ideal compiler package they don't need and could sell.

2 years, 3 months

11
28
0 0

Searching for Cisco Catalyst 3920 Token Ring switch firmware

by John P. Willis

Hello all, As the subject implies, I'm on a search for Cisco Catalyst 3920 Token Ring switch firmware. AFAIK, these units are actually from a company Cisco acquired. They definitely don't run IOS or CatOS, and have an odd full-screen interactive menu interface. It worked when I received it, but after a power outage, the firmware got corrupted, leaving all interfaces effectively dead. It seems that there is no official way to get a copy of the image from a working unit, either, as I've had people attempt it. The general naming pattern is supposedly cat3900-main-gz.x-y-z.bin, where [I believe] x, y, and z would represent some sort of version information. If anyone has this file, or any leads as to where I might find it, I'd be forever grateful. Apparently, even Cisco employees cannot find it nowadays. Thanks much, jpw

2 years, 3 months

1
0
0 0

Re: Searching for a few good TI Silent 700 parts

by Charles

In fact it is a 745 :) If the printhead has all its pixels working, I'd like to buy it. No keyboard at all, or just nonfunctional? Those particular keyswitches seem to be unobtainium nowadays... thanks Charles On 12/24/22 12:00, cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org wrote: > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2022 10:56:19 -0800 > From: Sellam Abraham<sellam.ismail(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: Searching for a few good TI Silent 700 parts > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: > <CAHJBWnT0UF8_89CO8FN8g3Bdo63OskjkZPoF9WEODNXEwdpFgw(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > Hi Charles. > > Which specific model? > > I have a 745 sans keyboard that can be parted out further. > > Sellam > > On Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 10:54 AM Charles via cctalk<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > wrote: > >> I have a Silent 700 terminal that only needs a printhead (several >> missing pixels on mine) and three keyswitches (I have the keytops so it >> doesn't matter which ones). >> >> My other 700 is fully functional and it'd be nice to finish fixing the >> other one too! Can anyone help? >> >> thanks >> >> Charles >> >>

2 years, 3 months

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Replacing NiCd with NiMH in a pro way.

by Cedric Amand

Hey everyone, No - I won't ask if this is on topic or not :) I'm currently reparing an ALPS plotter ( a Tandy "ce 150" equivalent ) and it's not the first time I face the same problem ; how to replace NiCD batteries. In the past what I did is actually order new NiCd ( you can still find them here in Europe, well actually out of europe but in eastern countries close to europe ) However they are at best NOS nowadays, that does "work" enough for moderate use (I've done that on vintage laptops) This time I'd like to go a bit beyond that and replace the NiCd with modern NiMH (the plotter coils and motors will benefit the extra power) However the trickle chagre of NiCd applied to NiMH will either kill my batteries or kill me in a house fire. I see small $1 NiMH 5S charging boards on Aliexpress, I thought I might use that, try to shove it it the CE150 (or other devcies with the same problem) TL-DR : Before I re invent the wheel here ; Has anyone developed a proper way to replace NiCd with N iMH in vintage (mostly portable) equipment ? And I mean not simply swapping the batteries, I don't want that, I want a proper charge process.

2 years, 4 months

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Toronto CompuFest ads

by Ryan de Laplante

I remember seeing full page CompuFest ads in the Toronto Star back around 1996-1997. CompuFest was one of the highlights of the year for me and I tried to go every year with friends. Has anyone ever seen one of those old ads online anywhere? Or maybe you have a newspaper or magazine with the ad that I might be able to buy from you? obsol33t

2 years, 4 months

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Searching for a few good TI Silent 700 parts

by Charles

I have a Silent 700 terminal that only needs a printhead (several missing pixels on mine) and three keyswitches (I have the keytops so it doesn't matter which ones). My other 700 is fully functional and it'd be nice to finish fixing the other one too! Can anyone help? thanks Charles

2 years, 4 months

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pc magazine Nov 1983

by Steve Lewis

Does anyone have a November 1983 issue of PC Magazine? I did find one on eBay, but it apparently got lost in transit during recent storms. That issue has been digitally archived https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1983-11/ But I was hoping to come across a physical copy. Thanks!

2 years, 4 months

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looking for a laptop

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

Anyone partimg with some dang-old thing? It has to work. I'm leaning towards a mono screen. I'm leaning against Zeniths, got 2 Minisports. But anything is possible. IBM produced a Kanji subbish laptop some years ago. I want to say it had a 286. Anyone know?

2 years, 4 months

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Re: DLV11 M7940 SLU header wire colours?

by steven＠malikoff.com

Thank you Martin and Fritz for figuring out the DLV11 wiring colours, that's exactly what I needed and I appreciate it very much! Also there is a lot that I hadn't looked at before in those links, much appreciated. Certainly hadn't considered the wire gauge size too critically but I'll use what I've got for starters. Chasing up the BC0n cable details led me to Malcolm/Avitech's BC01 cable page, which also helps. I hope to power it up before Christmas, fingers crossed the M7270 and M8044 boards work. I have yet to check the jumpers on these. I can relate to the locomotive paint story in a way. I have an old WWII jeep, and rivet counters obsess over the _exact_ shade of WWII Olive Drab paint. This is exacerbated by most WWII film being black and white, and period colour film may not be regarded as perfect (although George Stevens' WWII footage on Kodachrome might come close) so finding good unfaded/undamaged paint examples isn't always easy. Now I had someone tell me they really thought my jeep was a great match to "real" OD, to which I replied that I had actually painted it in Khaki, which is closer to a brown than a green. Being a completely flat paint, when it's wet it temporarily changes appearance to gloss dark green. So I just say to people not to worry too much and the OD paint they use is bound to match exactly to at least one of the ~650,000 jeeps produced. Thanks cctalk list, wishing you all ice-cold Chrissie beers and barbie (Oz BBQ) for the season, Steve

2 years, 4 months

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painting computer cases

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

I must have asked numerous times on numerous forums how this is done. Did you ever take a close look at the paint on a 5150 or 5170 (or hell even any IBM monitors that are age appropriate, but those aren't metal). Did you notive the wormy, orange pealy finish. I don't think anyone has seriously attempted to explain how to accomplish that. It's not simply a sligjtly gritty texture as in the case of modern atx cases, that can be done with a spray can, sort of. Do they simply cause the spray gun to spit on the final coat, perhaps while the previous coat is still tacky?

2 years, 4 months

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Using Gesswein board with RQDX3

by Nigel Johnson Ham

Merry Christmas, everybody, I am trying to do the above. ZRQC comes up and says four drives of unknown type. Has anybody done this? I figure there must be a configuration that needs to be done, but found nothing in the documentation to do it. cheers, Nigel Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591

2 years, 4 months

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Re: what is on topic?

by Marvin Johnston

After all is said and done, my observations since the time this listserver was up in Washington is that anything OT has a very short "shelf life." That would suggest most people here have a working brain and thus, like the definition of pornography, they know OT when they see it. A long way of saying OT or not is being well served by the choice of most people here on what they post... with the exception of the waaay too long discussion, Re: what is on topic?, currently taking place.

2 years, 4 months

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DLV11 M7940 SLU header wire colours?

by steven＠malikoff.com

Sorry this post isn't about whether something is regarded as classic or not. I am almost done putting together a little 4-card Qbus machine using a H9281-BA card frame. Eschewing a piece of plywood, the frame, power supply, fans, Heeltoe POR board are all mounted on a clear acrylic A4-sized office 'In Tray' I picked up at a recycling centre. Hence I've named it PERSPEX-11 :) So.. For a DLV11 EIA serial connection, I am about to wire up a fly lead cable to go from an M7940 SLU (no dash version) 40-pin header to a DB25P. After finding the pinout on page 178 in the 1980 Interfaces Handbook, on header J1 I know only need the usual basic RS232 setup: J - Received Data F - Transmitted Data B - Signal Ground M to E loopback I have a blank 40-pin header shell and a pile of DuPont leads of all colours ready to slot into their respective locations in the header. I could use any colours but I'd really like to use the original colours for the above wires. So, the only wire colour reference in the handbook is for a J1 and J2 header DRV11 pinout on page 275. Pin B is Black, and Transmit is Red but Pin J Receive is marked as Orange/Ground, for that device. Also M and E don't have their colours specified for the loopback wire. I've also looked at the Gunkies 'DEC asynchronous serial line pinout' page which has the pinout but it doesn't mention the original wire colours sadly. Could someone point me to what colours the M7940 cable should be? Thanks for any help, Steve.

2 years, 4 months

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"Classic" RAM chips, #FREE, #RARE, #VINTAGE

by wrcooke＠wrcooke.net

I think my original message didn't go through (forgot to select plain text instead of html.) If it did I apologize for spamming the list. I'm clearing out some clutter so I can get to some more clutter to clear it out. Much of my clutter is classic computer related (at least by my definition.) But it needs to go. I have an assortment of old dynamic RAM chips: 1M x 1 approx 35 256K x 4 approx 40 to 50 256K x 1 approx 80 to 100 They are various speeds, mostly between 100ns and 150 ns If anyone wants them, let me know. You pay shipping. Otherwise they go to the landfill. You can contact me off-list. Will I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men. Nikola Tesla

2 years, 4 months

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unpleasant odor from VT100

by hush hush

i have a VT100 that is working fine (powers on, navigates setup, saves/restores settings, etc) but has an unpleasant burning/ozone odor coming from the rear of it. i suspect something is running hot but i am not sure what, i do not currently have an IR camera in my hands- working on that. the original power supply has failed and is currently in storage, so the terminal is being powered by an ATX power supply and adapter board for the time being. this eliminates the usual R27 as being the culprit. as best i can tell, the smell is strongest just above the power distribution board, around the neck of the CRT. appreciate any suggestions you might have!

2 years, 4 months

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Win2K+3 on a Dell Poweredge 2600

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

This beast was given to me by a neighbor. Dual socket 604. Windows 2003 in some RAID configuration. I understand (or used to understand) RAID levels somewhat. But iinm he tells me the OS is "split" over 6 scsi drives. Not getting this, but I don't need all the redundancy/striping. I want it all on 1 drive. What to use to image what comstitutes 1 volume I guess. Norton Ghost? I have an extra scsi drive, I can always restore the image to the 1 drive (yes?), before or without alterimg the currently embedded stack. This thing is heavy. I secured a copy of the Corel Linux Starter Kit and want to load it into the Poweredge. For chips and pringles. I have other pre uefi boxes around but this is lying dormant. And 6 drives for my purposes is stupid. And heavy.

2 years, 4 months

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what is on topic?

by skogkatt007＠yahoo.com

Specifically as pertaining to old/vintage/classic/retro compuing discussion, what exactly is on topic? On top of my head as a for imstance I have some questions pertaining to Windows 2003 and socket 603/604. Something tells me that doesn't qualify, so it behooves me to ask.

2 years, 4 months

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BSD 2.11 on the DEC PRO

by Cameron Kaiser

My PRO 380 runs Venix/PRO. Which is cool, but someone sent me this: https://www.frijid.net/blog/index.php/2015/06/07/182/ Allegedly this gets BSD 2.9 on, at least, the PRO 350. I'm particularly interested because it supports networking. Anyone tried this on their PRO? Or better still, an actual 380? -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com -- Male Macintosh geeks are so predictable. All we think about is X. ----------

2 years, 4 months

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Digests?

by Bill Gunshannon

Why have I started receiving virtually unreadable digests all of a sudden? I have made no changes to my preferences. bill

2 years, 4 months

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Re: pc magazine Nov 1983

by Smith, Wayne

Great article on SCAMP - thanks for posting the link! -W Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2022 17:50:46 -0600 From: Steve Lewis <lewissa78(a)gmail.com> Subject: [cctalk] pc magazine Nov 1983 To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <CACG-qZzseNpof-zyRfomOgisB=3zf+BN6BhSrATbWA_SvoVN7g(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Does anyone have a November 1983 issue of PC Magazine? I did find one on eBay, but it apparently got lost in transit during recent storms. That issue has been digitally archived https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1983-11/__;!… But I was hoping to come across a physical copy. Thanks!

2 years, 4 months

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looking for DQ696 and RQDX3

by Nigel Johnson Ham

Hi folk, I am still looking for a DQ696 to allow me to get ESDI drives going on both my microVAX and 11/73 since the Webster RQD11 controller failed I only have the one. I'd also like to get old of an RQDX3 since I built a Gesswein emulator and have nothing to test it with :-) Any help appreciated, Nigel -- Nigel Johnson, MSc., MIEEE, MCSE VE3ID/G4AJQ/VA3MCU Amateur Radio, the origin of the open-source concept! Skype: TILBURY2591

2 years, 4 months

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Microinterfaces Corp Run/CPM/Z80 Software?

by Christopher Satterfield

Was wondering if anyone had one of these and/or maybe had the software floppy kicking around? It's an ISA card with a Z80 + RAM to shove into an ISA slot for CP/M compatibility. Of course, information's sparse online and forget software. Here's a picture of said card, https://i.imgur.com/eJh2on5.jpg . -Chris

2 years, 4 months

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Beehive Terminal Manual

by Bill Degnan

Useful? https://www.vintagecomputer.net/cromemco/3102/1979%20Beehive%20MicroB%20DM1… Bill

2 years, 4 months

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Four-Phase Systems

by John Ball

I've been working on a machine since early October that has seen a very rough life. My inventory found it to be an IV/70 that was upgraded with an IV/90 expansion chassis, an NP80 peripheral controller and a Wangco tape system that I only received the the formatter for. I've been trying to document most of the work so far on the vcfed forum and have a massive payload of board and cable photos & board slot arrangements. There was also boards for additional communication, disk and printing options I did not receive and by backwards chance whie I do not have a terminal display I DO have a keyboard, so that suddenly makes a keyboard-less terminal considerably more desireable to me. I've sent a copy of the images off to Al and to Gil Carrick over at the MITA but if anyone here wants a copy I can send them a compressed file. It's 720mb in total. He has also supplied me with some extra information and offered to loan a few items to assist in testing but he has software and card stacks I currently cannot image and are currently not imaged anywhere else that I have found. At this point I've nailed down power supply and capacitor issues and am still working with cabling and very, very little documentation, so I'm starting to run into problems finding solutions for a number of problems regarding damaged components and the IV/90 interconnect. I don't have the original IV/70 boardset for debugging. Sellam, it was alluded that one point you also had a system. Is that still the case? Does anyone have any additional information that can be grouped together while I'm working to get this machine running again? -John

2 years, 4 months

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Free Tandem NonStop Himalaya K-Series Cyclone systems

by Larkin Nickle

This eBay seller reached out to me and said they had 4 of these things + a disk controller that they’re trying to get rid of ASAP, ignore the list price and message them. I am not affiliated, had just previously messaged them inquiring if they had NonStop media for it and they do. I don’t have the means to go get these things so figured I’d post here so hopefully they don’t end up scrapped. [https://www.ebay.com/itm/255471320134](https://www.ebay.com/itm/25547132013…

2 years, 4 months

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Re: Old Silicon Valley poster

by Sellam Abraham

Commodore 64's generally sell for between $75-$200 these days on eBay. Finding good, working ones (working SID, VIC-II, etc.) with clean cases that don't have broken edges or inner tabs is getting harder. The C128D is a much different story. Those were not produced in nearly the numbers of the C64. I only came across one in all my days of collecting (that used to be in my collection). Sellam On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 2:02 PM John Foust <jfoust(a)threedee.com> wrote: > At 03:30 PM 12/12/2022, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: > >$700 for a C64? Egads, you've been watching too much bad cable TV. > > Hmm, not really. My memory was a little off... it was a C-128D > system from my warehouse that sold a year ago for almost $700. > > - John > >

2 years, 4 months

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Re: Old Silicon Valley poster

by John Foust

At 03:30 PM 12/12/2022, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: >$700 for a C64? Egads, you've been watching too much bad cable TV. Hmm, not really. My memory was a little off... it was a C-128D system from my warehouse that sold a year ago for almost $700. - John

2 years, 4 months

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Re: Old Silicon Valley poster

by John Foust

At 09:53 AM 12/12/2022, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: >No wonder the prices on vintage computer stuff has been going through the >roof on eBay over the past couple years. If you spent $1,000 on a Commodore 64 system in 1985, that's about $2,800 in today's dollars, courtesy of inflation. A working C-64 system might go for $700 on eBay today? But people were giving them away not long ago. It's the bathtub curve. I have a bunch of old Amiga posters up there now. I thought they'd fetch nice prices but they've seen little interest so far. I have other R@RE items I'll list. Who knows how they'll do. I have a NewTek Digiview digitizer that is the populated circuit board. The chips have not been sanded to remove their numbers, nor is it potted in epoxy like all the retail production units. I saw a recent sale of a Digiview-labelled parallel port gender-changer that went for $30. Go figure. I have at least one. At 10:06 AM 12/12/2022, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: >Holy crap, someone actually paid $810 for it? They paid almost another $200 on top for the eBay global shipping program and custom duties, too, as I had said I'll only ship to the USA. - John

2 years, 4 months

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Soviet PDP clones

by Joshua Rice

Hi all, After some discussion on reddit about russian PDP-11 clones, i made the (perhaps erronous) claim that the PDP series in general was cloned by the Soviets. I’m aware that there was a lot of QBUS/LSI PDP-11 clones, and depite poor documentation, there is significant evidence of PDP-8 clones. Also, depite not strictly a “PDP”, the VAX series was also cloned. However, i’m curious whether anyone has any evidence of either the 18-bit or 36-bit PDP machines being cloned? I imagine that given the rather lacklustre success of the 18-bit series, that there would have been less demand for an 18-bit PDP machine in the Soviet Union, but i find it quite hard to believe that no attempt to clone the PDP-6 and PDP-10 machines would have been attempted. Does anyone here have any information on such clones? Cheers, Josh Rice

2 years, 4 months

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Re: Old Silicon Valley poster

by John Foust

At 01:20 AM 12/12/2022, John Herron via cctalk wrote: >I haven't found the episode yet but this is their website with what I >assume is the poster. >https://gspawn.com/products/apple-computer-poster-map-of-silicon-valley-in-…. >They are asking $799.00. That is a similar style, but not my poster. Mine was landscape, larger, not branded by Apple. I can't read the copyright in the lower left. My listing is still up: https://www.ebay.com/itm/334649989332 - John

2 years, 4 months

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Re: Old Silicon Valley poster

by Sellam Abraham

I watched the correct episode but posted the wrong link. Here is the link to the SF episode ==> https://play.history.com/shows/pawn-stars-do-america/season-1/episode-3 Sellam On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 5:00 PM ED SHARPE <couryhouse(a)aol.com> wrote: > I said > Sf. You have link for Seattle. Try the sf one! > > > Sent from the all new AOL app for Android > <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aol.mobile.aolapp> > > On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 5:45 PM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk > <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > Thanks for the tip. > > I found the episode ==> > https://play.history.com/shows/pawn-stars-do-america/season-1/episode-4 > > I watched through the entire insidious thing. Unfortunately, the Silicon > Valley poster never comes up. > > However, there is a Apple ][+ that they buy for $700 (lol) at timemark > 1:55, and at 17:21 some jabronis bring in some mini stand-up arcade games > and then they eventually end up in their warehouse full of pinball > machines. > > What an obnoxious show. It's just Antiques Roadshow but with bad dialogue > and annoying personalities. > > Regardless, if you can remember which episode the poster was in, I'd > still like to watch that. > > Sellam > > On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 12:19 PM ED SHARPE <couryhouse(a)aol.com> wrote: > > > Sellam, Yes the episode was there special held in San Francisco in the > > pawn stars do America series that aired a week or so before the list > > member was selling these? Ed# > > > > Sent from the all new AOL app for Android > > <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aol.mobile.aolapp> > > > > On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 12:40 PM, Sellam Abraham > > <sellam.ismail(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Ed, > > > > Do you remember the episode? > > > > Sellam > > > > On Sun, Dec 11, 2022 at 10:37 AM ED SHARPE via cctalk < > > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > Having a good hi Def scan would indeed be nice. > > Having this thing show up on pawn stars probably helped kick the price > > up.Ed# > > > > Sent from the all new AOL app for Android > > > > On Sat, Dec 10, 2022 at 6:18 PM, Don R via cctalk<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > > > > wrote: I’m surprised no one has scanned one for upload to archive.org. > > Would that reduce its auction value? ;) > > > > Don Resor > > > > Sent from someone's iPhone > > > > > On Dec 10, 2022, at 5:01 PM, Warner Losh via cctalk < > > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > > > On Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 5:59 PM Bill Gunshannon via cctalk < > > > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > > >>> On 12/10/22 18:27, John Foust via cctalk wrote: > > >>> > > >>> Well, she went for $810 to a map dealer in London, and he had to pay > > >>> about another $200 for the eBay global shipping program and duties. > > >>> > > >>> I asked one of the other losing bidders about what I had here and why > > it > > >>> was popular... he said "Dealers are collecting them and > > >>> trying to sell them at various price points. So far sales > > >>> have been pretty minimal at anything over $1000. The > > >>> exception is that some libraries are starting to collect > > >>> them with an eye on the future." > > >>> > > >>> I'll see if I can stitch a good scan before I ship it out. > > >>> > > >> > > >> I wonder what my Unix Wizard poster is worth? (not that I would ever > > >> part with it!!) > > >> > > > > > > Last I priced mine, they were going for 100-200 USD. But there aren't > > many > > > for sale ... > > > > > > Warner > > > > > >> > > > > > > > > > > >

2 years, 4 months

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Unable to substitute a RaSCSI device for the hard drive in an HP Series 300 workstation

by Stan

I have an HP R/382 workstation with a defective SCSI hard drive. I'd prefer to replace it with a RaSCSI instead of another ancient and failure-prone rotating hard drive. Unfortunately, I my R/382 can't find the RaSCSI virtual drive to initialize it. Has anyone successfully used an RaSCSI in an HP workstation? If so, how did you do it? Thanks for your insights! Stan

2 years, 4 months

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Re: digest problem, starting with #115

by Stan Sieler

Hi Dennis, The change to "Plain Text Digests" worked, thanks! Stan

2 years, 4 months

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reset "pulse" stretcher need

by Jim Brain

This might be a bit off topic, so forgive me if so. The issue is a 24VAC motor with one connection to 24VAC and the other gated via two switches. The first switch is a momentary one and the second is in parallel and connected to the motor. A long enough momentary depression on the first switch actuates the electric motor enough to close the second switch, which then stays closed for 1 revolution. The problem is that a quick enough press and release of the first switch does not allow the motor to move far enough to close the second switch. Given the configuration, my general plan was a small one shot timer circuit that energized when the switch was initially depressed and then closed a relay in parallel with the first 2 switches, with a time period that was 1/10 to 1/2 the time of the motor revolution. a quick close and release of the first switch would start the timer, which would then close the parallel switch and then open it a short time later, and then the motor switch, which would still be closed, could signal the end of the cycle. But, I thought I'd ask around and see if a simpler option was available. Jim -- Jim Brain brain(a)jbrain.com www.jbrain.com

2 years, 4 months

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digest problem, starting with #115

by Stan Sieler

Hi, Has anyone else noticed that the list server is screwing up digest emails, starting with Volume #115? Prior to #115, each message would start with: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2022 18:49:31 +0000 (WET) From: ... Subject: [cctalk] Re: Ident... To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <01SKKMC7X5CG8WYOLI(a)beyondthepale.ie> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN As of 115, that demarcation has disappeared. Here's an example from #119, message #6: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Devin D <lyokoboy0(a)gmail.com> To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Cc: Bcc: Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2022 12:48:23 -0500 Subject: [cctalk] Guidance on repairing Dec PDP 11 System Greetings, Note that that's *NOT* a "forwarded" message (in the normal CCTALK digest sense), but the start of a new message. Since most people are *EXTREMELY BAD* at trimming the messages they are replying to, the lack of proper message demarcation makes reading the digest quite difficult. Sadly, the listserver doesn't post the version number of the its code with each digest (well, as far as I could see), so I can't definitively tie this to a version change. Can this be reverted/fixed, please? thanks, Stan

2 years, 4 months

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Stuff available in Somerset, England - Update and MORE STUFF

by Philip Belben

Dear all, I am still trying to declutter enough to empty the storage container, and have room to move around in my basement. I have decided not to renew the lease on the storage container on 10 January, so stuff needs to go by then. The following stuff will go in the skip if no one comes and collects it by early January: D-Scan video printer DECwriter 2 printing terminal A device for cleaning DEC RK05 platters, poor condition, mechanicals corroded, no cleaning pads or fluid - probably display only. The following stuff will probably also go in the skip: Teletype 43 (the dot-matrix Teletype - this is rare but boring; probably rare because boring) A wide range of other small dot-matrix printers - let me know if you are interested in anything of that nature, and I'll try and make a list. The following are available free to anyone prepared to collect: IBM System/23 Datamaster - complete with (yet another!) dot matrix printer. I have some software for this as well. ACT Sirius 1. A fairly complete system including some software (Wordstar and some accounting packages). I may need help disentangling Sirius stuff from Apricot stuff, since the same ACT logo often appears on both. The following are available, but I'd like to be offered a non-negative amount of money: Apple II systems. Four system units (I think they are two //e, one ][ plus and one ][ Europlus, but I can check. Some disk drives. I should be able to find a monitor or two. Quite a lot of manyals, plug-in cards, probably some software disks - but I may need help sorting out Apple II disks from others. Some of the plug-in cards are prototyping cards, and I think one has been set up to talk to some analogue gaming paddles. Research Machines 380Z. (One of the people who collected other stuff from me has expressed an interest in this, and his prior interest will be taken into account in considering offers.) I have a system box (I haven't yet looked inside) with diskette drives on the front; I also have a GIPB (IEEE-488) card and a rather nice I/O prototyping card - it is pre-populated with three PIO chips and one other large chip, all in wire-wrappable sockets, and lots of space for a homebrew interface. A Victor V86P laptop. I know nothing about this machine, but it has the Sirius logo on it (I think the Sirius 1 was sold under the Victor brand in some places, so this figures) As before, please reply to declutter(a)axeside.co.uk, whether or not you reply here. If I get interest in some of the machines, I'm happy to look more closely at them and try to answer queries. In general, I'd prefer people to come and collect stuff, but for the smaller items (e.g. the Victor laptop) I'd be happy to discuss shipping. Collecting stuff yourself is a more reliable way of getting the parts you need (e.g. cables), and of finding other stuff that I don't mind getting rid of. As regards the systems for which I want money, I do not guarantee to accept the highest offer; as I said, I have already had interest in the 380Z and this will be taken into account. Finally, I am trying to contact Anthony Sibley. We started making arrangements for him to collect some stuff, and then I stopped getting replies to my e-mails. Either he is not receiving them or I am not receiving his replies. Please get in touch, or your TU16 will go elsewhere, maybe even in the skip. Philip.

2 years, 4 months

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Need power supplies?

by Van Snyder

I have two Power General FLU4-150 power supplies, apparently set up to be used in some kind of a server. They have an extra board that includes some Schottky diodes, presumably so they can be used in parallel without a failing one damaging a working one. I don't know the precise model numbers, but they provide +/- 5v and +/- 12v. One (or maybe both) would fit in a Postal Service medium flat-rate box. Yours for the price of a PDF shipping label. I also have five power supplies that appear to have come from Dell servers. I don't know their specs. They have a weird connector that actually has a Molex number (that I have forgotten). Let me know if you might want any of the Dell power supplies and I'll work out which box would be needed for shipping. If you can't use them for their originally-intended purposes, maybe you can convert them to lab-bench supplies. Van Snyder

2 years, 4 months

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REPLICA Cromemco Cyclops Camera

by William Sudbrink

Sorry to spam the list, but I find myself in need of some holiday cash (or positive PayPal balance, anyway) so I am offering a REPLICA Cromemco Cyclops Camera for sale. This is ONLY THE CAMERA. You will need to have your own Cyclops interface board set or build an XYZ scope interface as in the manual: https://www.autometer.de/unix4fun/z80pack/ftp/cromemco/Cromemco%2088%20ACC%2 0Manual.pdf This will be the camera I demonstrated at 2018 VCF East. All three circuit boards are clearly labeled REPLICA in the copper layer. Details of the construction and other photographs are on my web page: http://wsudbrink.dyndns.org:8080/cyclops/index.html#Cromemco I would much rather sell it here to someone who clearly understands what they are getting, rather than dealing with ebay. I will also include a pair of REPLICA side panels (made from measurements of an original) that I had made last year. I would be happy to zoom with the buyer and demonstrate the camera in operation. Email me directly if interested. Thanks, Bill S. -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

2 years, 4 months

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A UK Vintage Computer exchange buddy?

by Ethan O'Toole

Hello, I have looked at vintage UK computers on Facebook Marketplace and the like. The people usually will not post, especially to me in the USA. They are normally looking for local collection. Anyone in the UK want to be a vintage computer swap friend? Looking to get some systems from there and could help get systems from here in return. I am in the USA. Private message if interested! - Ethan -- : Ethan O'Toole

2 years, 4 months

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CORRECTION: Peripherals available in Dorset, England : Free to a Good Home

by Martin Bishop

ftagh(a)janefield.net (NOT .org) Martin -----Original Message----- From: Martin Bishop via cctalk [mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org] Sent: 03 December 2022 18:07 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts (cctalk(a)classiccmp.org) <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Cc: Martin Bishop <mjd.bishop(a)emeritus-solutions.com> Subject: [cctalk] Peripherals available in Dorset, England : Free to a Good Home Folks The following job lots are available as described but untested, stored in the attic / house since last use : UMMV Lot A : Matsui B&W 13" 1420T SIL UHF & Scart 230V (may be useful as a retro monitor esp as exhibit) [operable when last in service ~?] Lot B : Samsung CLP-350 A4 Color Laser Enet 230V - contains consumables, level unknown - very streaky when last used + CLP-R350A Imaging Unit + CLP-W350A Waste Bin + CLP-C350A Cyan toner + CLP-Y350A Yellow toner + CLP-M350A Magenta toner [consumables BNIB] [operable but streaky when last in service ~2015] Lot C : Samsung CLP680 A4 Color Laser Enet 230V - contains consumables, level unknown - motion fault when last used "A1-4112" + CLT-K506L Black toner [consumable BNIB] [defective "A1-4112" when last in service ~2022] While these are on the margins of classic, I'm happy to give the community first refusal on a free to a good home basis. Collection needs to be no later than next Thursday 8 December. If firm collection arrangements have not been made by CoP Sunday they will be offered on Gumtree ... If they are still here after Thursday, they may go wheee. Apologies for the short notice. Replies to ftagh(a)janefield.net will be regarded as offers. Collection offers will be considered in the round, but the early bird is likely to have an advantage, accepted offers will be honoured until the agreed collection time passes, thereafter the acceptance will lapse and they will be back in play. Martin

2 years, 4 months

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Peripherals available in Dorset, England : Free to a Good Home

by Martin Bishop

Folks The following job lots are available as described but untested, stored in the attic / house since last use : UMMV Lot A : Matsui B&W 13" 1420T SIL UHF & Scart 230V (may be useful as a retro monitor esp as exhibit) [operable when last in service ~?] Lot B : Samsung CLP-350 A4 Color Laser Enet 230V - contains consumables, level unknown - very streaky when last used + CLP-R350A Imaging Unit + CLP-W350A Waste Bin + CLP-C350A Cyan toner + CLP-Y350A Yellow toner + CLP-M350A Magenta toner [consumables BNIB] [operable but streaky when last in service ~2015] Lot C : Samsung CLP680 A4 Color Laser Enet 230V - contains consumables, level unknown - motion fault when last used "A1-4112" + CLT-K506L Black toner [consumable BNIB] [defective "A1-4112" when last in service ~2022] While these are on the margins of classic, I'm happy to give the community first refusal on a free to a good home basis. Collection needs to be no later than next Thursday 8 December. If firm collection arrangements have not been made by CoP Sunday they will be offered on Gumtree ... If they are still here after Thursday, they may go wheee. Apologies for the short notice. Replies to ftagh(a)janefield.org will be regarded as offers. Collection offers will be considered in the round, but the early bird is likely to have an advantage, accepted offers will be honoured until the agreed collection time passes, thereafter the acceptance will lapse and they will be back in play. Martin

2 years, 4 months

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RIP Fred Brooks (1931-2022)

by Tomasz Rola

As the subject (and wikipedia) say: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Brooks -- 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 **

2 years, 4 months

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Re: Fwd: Philips P2000C carrying strap

by Smith, Wayne

Found an ad from 1984 - poor resolution but gives you an idea of what the strap looked like. -W https://photos.app.goo.gl/NG7kCK4qHyDgNKxb6 Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2022 16:25:59 +0100 From: Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1(a)gmail.com> Subject: [cctalk] Fwd: Philips P2000C carrying strap To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <CAHkUCCzHdS2ayzu=pguLaj_KEHqGv-TZxE8Bv2ap8hUKL=CYDw(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Does anyone have a Philips P2000C CP/M luggable with the carrying strap? I will be restoring such a machine in the near-ish future and mine is lacking the strap. Clear photos of the end fittings that slot into the machine, the dimensions of them, etc would be a great help in making something up. -tony

2 years, 4 months

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Guidance on repairing Dec PDP 11 System

by Devin D

Greetings, Been a while since i have posted here. I have several PDP11 systems and peripherals. I picked the original lot of a system 34 and related tech in Miami FL a couple years back, and have since found several more pdp 11/34 machines, and a pdp 11/05, 11/85, and others. It has been a goal to get the original PDP 11/34 system up and running, however my job schedule kept getting in the way of my repair efforts, making it easy to loose track of where i was at with the repair progress. Thankfully i no longer work in a datacenter in a 10 hour overnight shift, so it should be much easier to devote my time to this repair. I am looking for advice to get the 11/34 system up and running. I have started to put together a site to document my progress, to stay on track with the repair effort. The system has 2 rl02 drives, and an attached 9 track tape drive. I had worked to repair a power supply issue at first, there was a problem with the main transformer, as well as one of the smaller voltage "bricks". Thankfully i have many systems and i was just able to swap in the needed working parts. So this is about as far as I got, I had a minimal config of the 11/34 machine running, with not much more than the cpu, and a serial card to talk to attached terminal. Power supply works, and i was able to toggle in programs from the front panel to output characters to the attached terminal. I believe the next logical step was to try and attach the rl02 controllers, and see if the disk packs still have working installs of RSX installed. I am not sure how to proceed with this though. I have mainly been following the advice of Paul Anderson, who has been a godsend in regard to advice and guidance with getting these old systems fixed up. I hope that if i keep a log of the repair effort on my site, it will allow me to pick up where i leave off with the repair much more easily. So that is the present condition of the machine. Good power supply, can toggle in simple programs to print to the attached terminal. Any advice on how to proceed is much appreciated. I Need to get an itemized list of what hardware and cards i have on hand, and post that here so its understood what i have. Thanks, Devin D.

2 years, 4 months

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Box of SCSI stuff

by Van Snyder

I have a box of SCSI stuff that I'm no longer using. PCI adapters (Adaptec, Symbios) Cables -- 68-pin, 50-pin Centos, 50-pin Mac-Centos, 50-pin ribbon cable, .... Terminators Yours in exchange for a PDF of a USPS flat-rate box shipping label. Everthing might fit in a medium flat-rate box, but just to be sure send a PDF for a large flat-rate box. Van Snyder

2 years, 4 months

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Identifying a Failed Diode in a Rainbow H7842 Power Supply

by Rob Jarratt

The H7842 PSU in my Rainbow failed yesterday. At first the machine just powered down and there was a slight burning smell, I wasn't next to the machine when this happened, so I didn't see or hear anything to tell me where the problem might be. Not being sure if there was a short in the machine or a problem in the PSU, I disconnected the fans, FDD and HDD and, probably foolishly, I applied power again to see if the machine would work. At this point there was a bang and a flash in the PSU. On opening up the H7842 power supply I found that one of the transistors had completely disintegrated. It looks to be the main switching transistor, here is a picture of it: https://rjarratt.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/img_20221120_165850.jpg. I have identified a source for this transistor, but if anyone can suggest a modern replacement that would be useful too. However, that is not my main problem. Given that before the transistor blew up there had clearly been another failure somewhere else, I tried to find the original failure. There were no obviously damaged parts, so I just probed around near the transistor for any parts that were open circuit or short circuit. I found a diode connected to the base of the transistor that appeared to be short circuit. So, I decided to lift one end to check it. As I de-soldered one of the leads, the diode broke in two. So clearly the diode was either damaged by the failure of the transistor, or it was the cause of the failure. This is the diode: https://rjarratt.files.wordpress.com/2022/11/img_20221120_165913.jpg. I can't quite make out the markings on the diode to know what to replace it with. I think it says "D610". Would that be the right designation? If so, can anyone suggest a suitable replacement please? The diode seems to connect an inductor to the base of the switching transistor and the collector of the transistor is connected to a transformer. Should I be looking for other failed parts? Not sure if the diode failed first and then caused the transistor to fail? Or if something else has failed which caused these parts to fail? I do know that there are no shorts in the Rainbow itself, because I have a spare PSU that still works fine in the same machine. I blogged this here (it repeats most of that I have said above): https://robs-old-computers.com/2022/11/20/dec-rainbow-h7842-power-supply-fai lure/ Thanks Rob

2 years, 4 months

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To cctalk owner: There's a problem subscribing

by Toby Thain

Clicking Subscribe goes to a Not Found page. I found this out because I'm trying to subscribe with a new email address. --Toby

2 years, 5 months

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Help! Mentec and GRC DEC compatible manuals not in usual places...

by Robin Downs

Hi and thanks for reading... I am on the way to getting a small Q-Bus PDP11 up and running (I used to work on and repair then in the 1980s) and have some boards and a chassis now, but I cannot find any documentation for a couple of less common boards I have got - any help would be greatly appreciated - but I have looked in the usual places... The main issues are: Mentec M70 CPU - There are jumpers for serial port config and speed.. I have got a glossy leaflet for it but no jumper info.. GRC MLV11 - two serial lines and 128KB memory, but configured with switches - lots of switches... Also is anyone has any old Q-Bus parts in the UK (particularly any Baydel parts) that are looking for a good home, I would love to hear from you! Thanks for reading - any help or info much appreciated! Regards, Robin Downs Email: rdowns(a)radix.co.uk<mailto:rdowns@radix.co.uk>

2 years, 5 months

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Holmes Engineering CP/M

by Mike Loewen

I'm still looking for a copy of CP/M for the Holmes Engineering VID-80 board for the TRS-80 Model III. A manual would be helpful, as well. Mike Loewen mloewen(a)cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

2 years, 5 months

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digital group's Richard Bemis

by Whitney Scharer

Hi Brad, I just came across your post from last year about my father, Richard C. Bemis. He passed away in June. I wish I knew more about the digital group and would love to see the video or article you are working on. I can also fill you in on what my dad did after dg. Thanks, Whitney ___ Whitney Scharer *The Age of Light* Order today from Bookshop.org <https://bookshop.org/shop/whitneyscharer> or Amazon <https://www.amazon.com/Age-Light-Novel-Whitney-Scharer/dp/031652414X/ref=sr…> whitneyscharer.com <http://www.whitneyscharer.com/> | @wscharer <http://www.twitter.com/wscharer> | instagram.com/wscharer

2 years, 5 months

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Nova and Eclipse Emulator beta release

by Bruce Ray

Wild Hare Computer Systems is pleased to announce the public beta release of its Data General Nova and Eclipse emulator. This emulator allows the full range of DG 16-bit Nova and Eclipse computer software to run on Microsoft Windows and Linux platforms, and will become a major part of Wild Hare's increased efforts to preserve Data General's significant contributions to computer history. The emulator combines portions of Wild Hare's commercial products with the SimH project structure to create a single emulator for the 16-bit Nova and Eclipse computers. The program supports a wide range of features, including: Processors: unmapped Nova, SuperNova, Nova 1200, Nova 800, Nova 2, Nova 3, Nova 4 mapped Nova 840 mapped Nova 3/D mapped Nova 4/X Eclipse S/130 Eclipse S/140 Eclipse S/150 Eclipse S/120 Eclipse Desktop Generation Model 20 and Model 30 Peripherals: TTI/TTO primary console (TeleType) input/output RTC real-time clock TTI1/TTO1 secondary console (TeleType) input/output PTR paper tape reader PTP paper tape punch PLT plotter LPT line printer MTA mag tape unit DSK fixed-head disks DKP moving head disks DEP Desktop Generation disks DZP popular "Zebra" moving head disks QTY 4060 "Quad" asynchronous multiplexers ALM 4255 Asynchronous Line Multiplexers Software: Operating Systems DOS Novas (first DOS written for Nova) URDOS RDOS for Novas and Eclipses (in unmapped mode) MRDOS RDOS for Mapped Nova 840 NRDOS RDOS for Mapped Nova 3/D and Nova 4/X ZRDOS RDOS for Mapped Eclipses MP/OS Nova 4 DG/RDOS Eclipses AOS Eclipses MP/AOS Eclipses Languages ASM (Assembler) MAC (Macro Assembler) ALGOL DG/L FORTRAN 4 FORTRAN 5 FORTRAN 77 Extended BASIC Business BASIC MP Pascal SP Pascal COBOL Interactive COBOL (ICOBOL) PL/1 RPG II IDEA INFOS II CEO Prior Data General knowledge is beneficial to using the emulator and corresponding DG software. For convenience, Wild Hare has created container files of pre-configured operating system environments and their corresponding languages to minimize the time needed to enjoy the full DG "experience". This "beta-level" software release is intended to gather user feedback to help guide future product development. Bug reports, comments, suggestions, ridicule and giggles can be sent to beta(a)WildHareComputers.com. Further information is contained in the emulator beta release web page: www.NovasAreForever.org/dgbeta Bruce Ray Wild Hare Computer Systems, Inc. Denver, Colorado USA bkr(a)WildHareComputers.com ...preserving the Data General legacy: www.NovasAreForever.org

2 years, 5 months

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Is this a RIFA (uV3100-10 PSU)?

by Antonio Carlini

I'm working on cleaning up a bit of battery leakage in a MicroVAX 3100 Model 10 and while it's apart I decided to look inside the PSU (an H7822-00). It's nice and clean inside with no bulging caps. What it does have is an X2 capacitor, as shown here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/dpdqJ3tuGfsRDR3Y6. It doesn't appear to be damaged and I can't see the word "RIFA" on it anywhere but I can't see two of the sides because of other components that get in the way. So does anyone know for sure whether it is a RIFA brand or not, or do I have to desolder it to be sure? Thanks Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio(a)acarlini.com

2 years, 5 months

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Looking for NORTRONICS Read/Write head for IBM 5100/5110/5106 tape unit

by Steve Lewis

I have a 5100 and 5106 both with a working tape unit. But the tape unit in my 5110 is not working, and I believe it is the read/write head. The REWIND command works, but the MARK command does not (ERR 3). I took the Tape Card from the 5110 and swapped it into the 5106, and the 5106 continued to work (and 5110 then had same result, ERR 3). This tells me the issue isn't any electronics in the Tape Card electronics (such as bad IC's). Swapping the electronics card is easy. But I haven't yet tried taking the read/write head from the 5106 and putting it into 5110's tape unit (they both use all the same components) -- it's not that difficult, but I don't really want to put a working 5106 at more risk of becoming non-working. Hence, that's why I'm asking around first if anyone might happen to have one of these NORTRONICS or a suitable substitute to try. For example, it may be the same kind of read/write head used in some reel-to-reel systems of that era (early/mid 1970s). The various numbers on the read/write head are as follows: NORTRONICS PN 1608752 C584980 269 24256 I have measurements and photos of what I'm looking for at the bottom of this link: https://voidstar.blog/ibm-5100-internal-tape-and-5106/ The head is about a 15mm x 20mm, with a 26mm ground extension on one side for mounting. A few months ago I contacted Nortronics. They had some stock that was close, but not this exact pin out (4-pins on one side, 6-pins on the other; not sure which is read vs write). I think all the ones they had were 4-pin/4-pin. I've also tried different brand tapes, DC6150 vs DC600A (which all of them do work in the 5100, but not the 5110). -Steve

2 years, 5 months

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Apple AWACS register documentation

by Cameron Kaiser

Any Apple alumni (Al?) with documentation on AWACS registers? I'm trying to figure out why the BeOS AWACS sound driver works on some Power Mac 6500s and TAMs but not others (but works fine on 6400s and everything previously). Yes, I'm aware that Be considered the 6500 "Unsupported but Compatible" and it boots fine on my 6500/275 but is totally mute. An instrumented driver in debug mode yielded little insight. The driver thinks it's initialized everything correctly and reports no errors. I wonder if there's something about the SRS sound enhancement that's different on later 6500s/TAMs. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com -- God made the integers; all else is the work of Man. -- Kronecker -----------

2 years, 5 months

1
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ESD Bags

by Ali

Hello, Does anyone have a REASONABLY priced source for 6" x 14" anti-static bags with zip lock tops? I've looked on eBay and Amazon with no luck. I have also looked online and have only found heat sealable bags. I am not sure if it is the sizing which the issue or what as other size bags seems to be easy to find. TIA! -Ali

2 years, 5 months

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100% Tape Seal (soft kind) failure

by Shoppa, Tim

I've been reporting on 9-track tape seal failures over at least the past 2 decades here. I first noticed the problem in the very early 2000's, and thought it was just random onesy-twosy failures, possibly contributed to by ozone in LA region, but over the past 20 years the failures have progressed. Sometime in the past couple weeks the last of my "soft" 9-track tape seals failed, because there is nothing but broken tape seals left hanging in the Wright-Line rack that had all my "new" aka 3M Blackwatch 703 tapes. Very very few of the older (I think of them as IBM or 70's/80's style) "hard plastic" tape seals failed. Tim N3QE

2 years, 5 months

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Any working Datapoint 2200 systems?

by Steve Lewis

I've been looking for a video or image that shows what font the original Datapoint 2200 used. It's not shown in the manual. There is one vintage image with the office lady and the DP2200 on the desk- but the font isn't very clear in that. In any modern video about the DP2200, none of them seem to power it on -- which is certainly understandable. From what I've read, the power supply of that system is prone to failure. Also, the system is hard-coded to load from Tape 1 -- which means both the tape drive, and tape media, still needs to be in good working order (which would be pretty rare after this time). In "the" DP2200 book, it only briefly mentions that the original tape software was developed "on an HP system" (without any elaboration that I could tell on which HP system that was). Nothing in the manual suggests the original DP2200 could "program itself" (i.e. no built in machine code monitor -- those TTL chips had one strict boot up sequence: load from tape 1). If there was a read error or no tape available, I'm curious if any message showed on the CRT. So, I was just wondering if there was any known pre-1973 Datapoint 2200's that are still working? (and/or if any HD video of them powered on and legible font can be seen) Or any other more current system that we know for sure used the same font? Thanks! -Steve

2 years, 5 months

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Modern Replacement for H7140 in PDP 11/24

by Rob Jarratt

Given all the troubles I have had with the H7140 in my PDP 11/24 I am considering whether to replace it with modern equivalents, installed inside the H7140 enclosure. I am a bit puzzled by the specs listed in the PDP 11/24 Maintenance Card, it suggests the PSU outputs +12V and -12V from the memory inverter/memory regulator, but the specs for the cards don't mention 12V so I don't know if I need 12V from the PSU. My memory board is an M8722-BC (MS11-MB). I can't find a manual or printset for this memory, so I am not sure what voltages it will need, although I suspect it only needs +5V, +15V and -15V. Is that right? I know I will also have to replace the fans, because the ones in the machine are AC and need 35V. Thanks Rob

2 years, 5 months

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Inline Serial Device?

by W2HX

Hello all, I am looking for a device that sits transparently in an RS-232 serial line and upon seeing a particular code go over the serial line ((or sequence of codes) will actual a relay (or a transistor). Something with two DB25s or DE9s and is configurable to what code will trigger the output? Some kind of box? Does anyone know of such a thing? I guess it could be cobbled up with a microcontroller, but hoping to just get something "off the shelf." Thank you 73 Eugene W2HX Subscribe to my Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@w2hx

2 years, 5 months

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NEC APC I / III available USA Massachusetts

by Rich Bramante

I am downsizing. These have been in storage for quite some time. I am about 25 miles N of Boston, MA and S of Nashua NH. These are both extremely heavy so no interest in shipping. Unfortunately I do not have any software for either system. The I is fairly clean and the kb is effectively new-old-stock with the box. Possibly unused. Powers on, green mono, single drive. The III powers on but I can't get a cursor on video (there is a flash at power cycle). It has seen more use than the I (yellowing, case screws missing). Photos here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/6vbMnVZsZEkrpFGc8 e-mail if interested rich.bramante+cctech(a)gmail.com. Thank you.

2 years, 5 months

1
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Seeking a Sun monitor with 13W3 interface

by hi＠senzilla.io

Hi everyone, I'm seeking to buy a Sun Microsystems monitor with a 13W3 interface. Ideally somewhere around central Europe for pickup in person. But I'm happy to consider shipping options as well. Background: I'm looking to complete a Sun Ultra 1 build that I've been collecting parts for 🙂 Best regards, D.O.

2 years, 5 months

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HP Computer Museum update

by davidkcollins2＠gmail.com

Those who have an interest in vintage HP computing will most likely know of the HP Computer Museum (www.hpmuseum.net). The HP Computer Museum is the result of over 30 years of work by Jon Johnston who collected HP equipment and documentation and systematically catalogued, photographed and commented on almost all of the over 7,000 items in the collection. After Jon's death in 2016, I kept the museum website going and worked on restoring many of the more notable items in the collection to working order, but the museum has largely been static for the last six years. Jon's wish was that the collection would eventually find its way either to HP or to one of the major computer museums, and I'm pleased to advise that the Hewlett Packard Company Archives (HPCA) has agreed to take over the entire collection and website. With only a few exceptions, the museum's entire collection of HP hardware, software and manuals has now been shipped from Melbourne, Australia, to HPCA's archival company - Heritage Werks Inc, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The equipment will be catalogued and preserved as a record of HP's early years in computing, with the ability for HP offices to borrow equipment for display purposes. The HP Computer Museum website (www.hpmuseum.net <http://www.hpmuseum.net> ), which has long been a popular reference resource for enthusiasts and industry on HP's computing history, will continue and be maintained by the HPCA, through Heritage Werks, with the intent of ensuring ongoing access to the wealth of information collected by Jon and many other HP enthusiasts over the last 30 years. Over the coming weeks and months, the website will be relocated to new hosting platforms and the curatorship will transfer to Heritage Werks. This will bring to a close my role in maintaining Jon's legacy in HP computing. It's been a privilege to be responsible for the collection and the website and to see the value they bring to the vintage computing community. David Collins

2 years, 5 months

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Exabyte recovery

by Warner Losh

I have a few old exabyte tapes of possible historic value. Who can I pay to get them recovered that has the best chance of success? Warner

2 years, 5 months

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GLACIER-01 in the DataRover 840

by Cameron Kaiser

Cracked open my General Magic DataRover 840 to find out what specific MIPS R3000 variant is in it. However, the only chips that are large enough to be CPUs are *two* with Bowser logos marked (C)GMI JAPAN GLACIER-01 F840276. The other chips of notable size are easily identified as RAM, a sound/modem codec and the inverter for the LCD backlight. I've seen systems with two CPUs that handle two halves of an LCD (the Tandy PC-1 and Laser 50 come to mind), but none with a CPU this large. Any General Magic alums on the list who can explain more about these? -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com -- "Endian Little Hate We" -- credits from Connectix Virtual PC 6 for Mac -----

2 years, 5 months

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CoreNET PC-51 info (IBM 5110)

by Steve Lewis

Is anyone familiar with PC-51 and/or CoreNET? These are IBM 5110/5120 related tools developed by an individual in the early 1980s. My understanding is PC-51 was an emulator that ran BASIC programs from the IBM 5110. One keyword new in the IBM 5110 was the "FORMS" keyboard, and you could define input fields (including type-formatting constraints, like sequence of letters and numbers) -- and once defined, you could relatively-easily store all the contents of the fields to a file (on tape or disk). I'm not entirely sure what format PC-51 supported (e.g. could read in ASCII text files containing the BASIC programs?). But I always imagined those customer data entry forms in old Radio Shack or Sears stores -- large department stores -- being developed in something like this. And CoreNET, I think was some kind of "null modem cable" that let the IBM 5110 communicate with an IBM PC 5150. The IBM 5110 has 3x DB25 connectors at the backside (and 1x DB15 cable like what became the "standard" joystick port on some systems in mid-late 1980s). The external tape and disk system would use these connectors -- with software driven from the ROS. I've always imagined it would be possible to "bit bang" across these external IO pins with some PALM-assembly -- the machine should be fast enough to encode 7-bit ASCII at 300 baud across those pins, maybe 1200. I'm not sure if CoreNET used or required any async card or the parallel communication card (that did IEEE-488), i.e. not sure if it was more than just a cable. But what's more interesting - apparently Sony is now the owner of both these assets, PC51 and CoreNET. Maybe Hal Prewitt sold it to them? Why would Sony be interested in it? Anyone happen to know anyone who works at Sony, or ideas on where to start on even "asking them" about it? Might be a lost cause these days. Anyone happen to have a copy of the old manuals of either of these? -Steve

2 years, 5 months

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Alacron i860 boards

by Tony Jones

I recently bought an Alacron FT200-AT dual i860 card. Basically the earlier ISA version of this: http://www.alacron.org/clientuploads/FT-200-PCI.PDF It included two manuals but no software. Alacron seems still in business but they didn't reply to email. I've called twice and noone answers their phone, it just goes to an anonymous voicemail. Does anyone have any software? I couldn't find anything via Google or on bitsavers. Thanks Tony

2 years, 5 months

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Replacement tachometer sensor for DEC RA80/1/2 drives ...

by Robert Armstrong

I have three DEC RA8x drives that have failed (all of them fault with "spin error") because of bad photo-interrupter tachometer sensors. After talking to a few friends, it sounds like this is a pretty common fault. Photo sensors like this are fairly common, even today, but the specific parts DEC used are weird and unobtainable. I designed a little PC board that uses an ITR9606 photo interrupter, a 2N3904 and a resistor as a replacement. Works great - gives a beautiful 5V P-P clean waveform and with the PCB it's a mechanical drop in replacement. Just screws right onto the original mounting holes and plugs into the original connector. I put the PCB design up on OSH Park https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/z8DSkQsP If anybody needs one you're welcome to order some PCBs and build your own. The ITR9606 is as common as dirt, and you can buy bags of ten on Amazon for a few bucks. I've also put a few pictures on the Facebook DEC Computer Users group. I'd post the pictures here, but I don't think cctalk accepts attachments. It's not really worth making a web page for it. Bob

2 years, 5 months

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IBM 4863 monitor sync problem (PCjr display)

by Cameron Kaiser

Got the Peanuts out today for a shakedown. They work well, or at least they did until about 5 minutes into playing Kings Quest when the h-sync on the monitor suddenly went out. Colours show and match what should be on screen but the horizontal display is scrambled. It does it on both Peanuts, so I think something in the display blew. Anyone recognize this issue? Seems like it should be a straightforward fix; I can't imagine this monitor is particularly complex internally. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com -- Put down your guns, it's Weasel Stomping Day! ------------------------------

2 years, 5 months

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Shipping help in Brunswick, GA

by John H. Reinhardt

So, I screwed up and in my excitement to find a DEC BA123 chassis (and MVII parts) I bid on an Ebay auction where there is no shipping and it's "Local Pickup Only". The problem is that I'm near Fort Worth TX and the MVII/BA123 is in Brunswick, GA and I don't really have the time to make the 2000+ mile round trip drive to pick it up. Does anyone here know of a reliable shipping service in Brunswick, GA? Or suggestions for outfits to check out? Google hasn't shown me much other that UPS and FedEx stores. Failing that, is there anyone near enough willing to pick it up in Brunswick that might want it for themselves? Ebay listing https://www.ebay.com/itm/334615827742? -- John H. Reinhardt

2 years, 5 months

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Re: Seeking DEC BN25B-nn Optical Fiber Cable

by pbirkel＠gmail.com

> From: pbirkel(a)gmail.com > Sent: Sunday, November 6, 2022 2:50 AM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > Subject: Seeking DEC BN25B-nn Optical Fiber Cable > > This is a twin/duplex cable of varying length with 100/140 um "multimode" cores and > SMA-906 connectors. SMA-906 connectors have the stepped center-pin, compared to > the SMA-905 which is a simpler straight pin. It's used, for example, by the LAN Bridge 100. > > For additional information see pages 169 through 335 (of 452) in > http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/comm/EK-CMIV7-RM-005_Communications_Options _Minireference_Manual_Vol7_Aug88.pdf I'm reliably informed that the cable actually has a light beige jacket (not orange), so not so easy to spot in your tangled pile of cables :-{. paul

2 years, 5 months

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Beehive Topper help needed

by Harten

Hi folks! Is there anyone out there, who can help me with my Beehive Topper CP/M machine? The machine starts up with his self-test going o.k. Then it requests for the boot disk or pressing RETURN to start the Monitor V2.0 program. The Monitor program seems to work o.k. Booting a disk (written from the images out of the Maslin archive) puts some cryptic characters of the screen and hangs the machine. The images are for a Topper II, mine is a model Topper. Is this the problem? I have found very very little about the Topper machines, no manuals, no software, no schematics. R. Harten --

2 years, 5 months

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Beehive Topper help needed

by Harten

Liam, i'm sorry, but Chuck is right. Your link directs to a photo showing a terminal. The Topper was put into market as a intelligent terminal for stand alone use as a CP/M machine and for remote issues as a IBM compatible terminal. In fact the Topper has a 8085 CPU for the terminal part and a Z80 for the CP/M part. On booting the system disk you should be asked which functionalilty you want. There is a marketing brochure i have found in the www, where the Topper is mentioned beside some other Beehive terminals. Rolf

2 years, 5 months

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Seeking DEC BN25B-nn Optical Fiber Cable

by pbirkel＠gmail.com

This is a twin/duplex cable of varying length with 100/140 um "multimode" cores and SMA-906 connectors. SMA-906 connectors have the stepped center-pin, compared to the SMA-905 which is a simpler straight pin. It's used, for example, by the LAN Bridge 100. For additional information see pages 169 through 335 (of 452) in http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/comm/EK-CMIV7-RM-005_Communications_Options _Minireference_Manual_Vol7_Aug88.pdf Probably it has an orange sheath so it would be somewhat distinctive in your tangled pile of cables :-}. Thank you for looking, paul

2 years, 5 months

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Re: Whitechapel Computer Works

by Tony Jones

I attended Queen Mary College from 86-89. They had just received several dozen MG1s. I believe the WCW founders came from QMC. By the final year a good 1/4 we're non-functional as the keyboards has failed and by then WCW has gone bankrupt a second time (for good). I remember one the programmers trying to encourage the more enterprising 3rd year students to take on building a IBM keyboard adapter as their final year project :-) I'd love one for nostalgias sake but I live in the US now though shipping to my mum's may be possible though no clue if they can handle 120v. Lots of good memories. Eliot Miranda worked at QMC and had ported his BrouHaHa smalltalk to the MG1. I remember using Occam (emulator), Lisp, ML, Modula2 and C plus of course Smalltalk 80 all on the MG1. Tony

2 years, 5 months

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Whitechapel Computer Works

by Jonathan Katz

Hi everyone! I'm curious; other than Wikipedia what do we know about Whitechapel workstations? Do any of us have some working in our collections, with software, disk dumps, etc? Cheers!

2 years, 5 months

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Disk imaging n00b

by Grant Taylor

Hi, n00b alert Does anyone have a 101 level boot strap guide for someone wanting to get into creating better-than-dd disk images? I'm finding myself back in a position where I want to image / preserve multiple 5¼ & 3½ inch disks. I think all of them are PC compatible disks. Probably standard FAT-12 and a handful of super capacity disk formats from the likes of IBM / Microsoft where they tried to squeeze 1.6 (?) MB on a 3½ inch disk. I have an internal 5¼ inch floppy drive that is in unknown condition (I've never used / tested it since I got it). I also have (at least one) 5¼ disk that I acquired as a scratch monkey disk to test on before working on disks that I care more about. I was thinking about acquiring a Kryoflux in the next few months and starting to collect better quality images of disks. I recently saw someone on Twitter suggest that Kryoflux wasn't the best route to go and suggested a SuperCard Pro instead. I had been using the dd command under Linux against a USB connected 3½ inch floppy drive for most things. But I've come to learn that's not as good as some people would like to see preserved. So, does anyone have a 101 level boot strap guide for someone wanting to get into creating better-than-dd disk images? -- Grant. . . . unix || die

2 years, 5 months

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Re: Whitechapel Computer Works

by Tom Stepleton

On Fri, 4 Nov 2022 17:53:10 PM Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1(a)gmail.com> wrote: > More seriously I have a working (last time I turned it on) MG1 with > monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Also have the technical notes manual and > an installation disk kit. Another chap I know (I think he's here but > I'll let him speak up) scanned the manual and coppied the disks last > year, so there is a backup.This is a 32016-based machine of course. It > Yes hello, this is me. In fact, if you would like to see the Whitechapel MG-1 in my possession in operation, come up tomorrow (Sunday) to the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, where the system is on public display alongside an AT with a busy bunch of Transputers in it. It's all part of the Retro Computing Festival that's underway this weekend: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/69485/Retro-Computer-Festival-2022-S… If you can't make it to Cambridge, then when the machine is running (which it isn't at the moment --- wait for between 10 AM and 5 PM GMT Sunday), you can visit the machine over HTTP at http://mg-1.uk . (Note no https.) Working MG-1s and related machines (like the colour CG-1) are rare owing to leaky batteries (what else). I'm very grateful to Tony for his generous sharing of MG-1 materials --- it helps make it possible to show off the MG-1 in this way! I've got everything on Google Drive, with links available on the website just mentioned. Since it's liable to be down when you're reading this, here's an archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124716/http://mg-1.uk/ Note also this page with links to 42nix 2.6 OS media, also owing to Tony: https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124758/http://mg-1.uk/42nix/42nix.html You will probably have to edit archive.org's links out to Google Drive in order for them to work, but I think it should be pretty easy to do this. I have been meaning to make disk images of my best-effort reconstruction of a clean 42nix 2.5 installation (a predecessor to the version linked above), which I derived from a disk image taken from one of Jim Austin's MG-1s. There is not a vast difference for the user at the console between 2.5 and 2.6, although they did fix a bug in the TCP/IP implementation that allows a forking HTTP server running on 2.5 to cause a kernel panic. I suspect revisions to TCP/IP were required to get NFS working, which, I remember concluding, had been a new feature for 2.6. I've never been able to get my hands on GENIX. All sorts of spare boards, including things like never-populated bare > RAM boards for the Hitech,. > It took me a lot longer than I like to admit to realise that HITECH was derived from wHITECHapel... Speaking of discoveries, I found out today that the Centre for Computing History is in possession of a couple Hitech MIPS machines (sans cases). Apparently they might have some media on QIC tapes as well. Tony, I'll try to get you in touch with the person I was speaking with about this. Meanwhile TNMOC at Bletchley are in possession of three MG-1s. --Tom

2 years, 5 months

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LC:M+L (Living Computer Museum)

by Michael Brutman

My apologies if this topic is a sore point for some of you. Their abrupt closing wasn't that long ago. Does anybody have any insight on what is going on there? The web site has not been updated in about 2.5 years. The world seems to be moving on; it would be nice to know if we're ever going to see the museum re-open, and in what capacity. I realize the people are gone and scattered and it's never going to be the same experience if it re-opens. But there are plenty of us who still believe in the need for such a place, and starting from scratch would be difficult. -Mike (Off-list replies are welcomed if that makes the discussion easier ...)

2 years, 5 months

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Re: list problem with digestmode

by Robert Feldman

>Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2022 20:44:34 -0700 >From: Stan Sieler <sieler(a)allegrosupport.com> >Subject: [cctalk] list problem with digestmode > >Hi, > >Is anyone else getting 4 to 10 digest emails a day, each with 4 to 8 >messages? >(cctalk) (Instead of one a day) <snip> >Stan Sieler Same here. I have not changed my email service, so that is not the cause. The change began when the new list server went online. Bob

2 years, 5 months

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list problem with digestmode

by Stan Sieler

Hi, Is anyone else getting 4 to 10 digest emails a day, each with 4 to 8 messages? (cctalk) (Instead of one a day) I have received four digest emails since noon: 2:57PM (8 msgs), 3:47 PM (7 msgs), 5:44 PM (7 msgs), and 8:24 PM (6 msgs). (Yes, all embedded messages are different.) I tried emailing the list owner, but the only response I got was from a moderator (Lawrence W, who specifically said he wasn't the owner), who wasn't able to help me. (He did suggest checking my mode...see below.) I tried going to the website to "login" and check my status...it said my email address wasn't known (which, of course, was patently false...since I'm receiving emails :) So, I tried: subscribe with sieler(a)allegro.com, ensure I have 'digest' mode on. And.....still get multiple messages per day ... *not* what a digest is! This started happening on the order of 3 to 6 months ago. I used to get a single digest a day, with 20 to 50 messages in it. The multiple messages (even though they're smaller) are really annoying. As a possible clue...somewhere around March we (my business partner and I) sold our domain, allegro.com, in the process of retiring. The new owner is providing two years of email forwarding of sieler(a)allegro.com to sieler(a)allegrosupport.com (the latter is a gmail corporate managed account, as allegro.com had been prior to March). (Oh, I tried "logging" in via both domains with no luck.) If the forwarding is a factor, I could try to get allegro/allegrosupport unsubscribed and use a third account :) thanks! Stan Sieler sieler(a)allegro.com sieler(a)allegrosupport.com sieler(a)gmail.com

2 years, 5 months

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Re: 50 Years of the HP 3000

by mark＠markesystems.com

From: Gavin Scott <gavin(a)learn.bio> Subject: [cctalk] 50 Years of the HP 3000 > Well, here we are. If you boot up a classic HP 3000 system and simply > hit return when it asks you for the date and time, it will default to: As it turns out, I have a complete, working HP 3000 917/LX system, with printers, a line printer with stand, 14-port terminal concentrator, four HP 700-series terminals (one new in box, one likely dead), SCSI disk storage module with a couple of 2GB drives, DAT drive, and all of the necessary cables. It all seems to work perfectly (with the exception of the one worn-out terminal), and I booted it up a couple of months ago with no problems. The passwords have been removed from the MANAGER.SYS account, so the system is now wide open. There's also some software: ASK/ManMan, FORTRAN, and of course TurboIMAGE and Query; also a copy of Reflection (Windows emulator for HP terminals). There's also in excess of 100 pounds of documentation, and some boxes of paper, including green-bar (remember that?). The thing is, despite aspirations from my youth, I really don't need a complete timesharing computer system in my house, so I'm looking to sell the whole thing as a package. It seems possible that someone on this list might be interested, and I'm also open to suggestions about other places I could list it. I took it to the west coast Vintage Computer Faire this year, and there were several nibbles, but obviously I still have it. It's currently located in the San Francisco Bay area, but I commute semi-regularly between there and Portland OR, and could be fairly easily persuaded to deliver it anywhere in either of those areas, or in between. (The system will fit in a mini-van - barely - or comfortably in a full-sized pick-up truck with room to spare.) I'd like to see $2000, but will cheerfully entertain offers (cheerfully if they're reasonable, or met with hysterical laughter if not). Feel free to contact me off-list if you'd like more details and/or pictures. Thanks! ~~ Mark Moulding

2 years, 5 months

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14 DZ11's for sale/whatever

by Chris Zach

I have a box here of 14 DZ11 Unibus 8 line serial port interfaces. And I have no clue why I have them. Anyone need some? Otherwise I'll Ebay/recycle them. CZ

2 years, 5 months

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50 Years of the HP 3000

by Gavin Scott

Well, here we are. If you boot up a classic HP 3000 system and simply hit return when it asks you for the date and time, it will default to: HP32002E.01.00 WHICH OPTION <WARMSTART/COOLSTART>? COO ANY CHANGES? N DATE (M/D/Y)? WED, NOV 1, 1972, 12:00 AM LOG FILE NUMBER 64 ON *WELCOME* :HELLO OPERATOR.SYS;HIPRI 0:00/13/SP#6/SPOOLED OUT 0:00/#S1/14/LOGON FOR: OPERATOR.SYS,OPERATOR ON LDEV #20 HP3000 / MPE V E.01.00 (BASE E.01.00). WED, NOV 1, 1972, 12:00 AM which is exactly 50 years ago today. November 1972 was the month that the very first HP 3000 systems were shipped to customers. Shortly after this, those initial deliveries were all hastily recalled when it quickly became clear that they were not yet capable of living up to their specifications. The 3000 however would go on to recover from this event and eventually became one of HP's most successful and profitable product lines, and one of the most beloved computer systems of all time, regularly beating out IBM, DEC, DG, and others in customer satisfaction surveys. For some stories about the earliest days of the platform, I refer you to the words of Bob Green http://www.robelle.com/smugbook/classic.html and Bill Foster http://www.teamfoster.com/hewlett-packard who were there. The original "Classic" CISC HP 3000 systems live on today through Dave Bryan's most excellent SIMH simulation http://simh.trailing-edge.com/hp/ and I have a turn-key setup which will let you have your own 1980-vintage HP 3000 system up and running in a couple minutes which is downloadable from my Google Drive at https://drive.google.com/file/d/16vaNUrmfs2aQpjdQijG4PZmJaNu3hfcz (Save the zip file using the download link in the upper right then extract it anywhere convenient and see the README file for further instructions) This only includes a SIMH binary for Windows, but you can also build a SIMH executable from Dave Bryan's source above for your platform of choice and use the rest of my infrastructure. MPE Forever. G.

2 years, 5 months

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LC:M+L (Living Computer Museum)

by Kevin Anderson

The LCM has some of stuff (a Zenith Z150 PC computer, including monitor and an early paged memory expansion that I installed, a couple of Apple IIc computers and monitors, a printer, but probably more important, a bunch of original MS-DOS software diskettes and manuals from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s (including several versions of MS-DOS, FORTRAN, MS Word for DOS, an early version of Lotus-123, and other earlier software) that I used to complete my doctoral degree and first start my college teaching position. But I understood at the time that Paul's LCM was actually "buying" my computer stuff, as they reached out to me in interest to acquire the entire lot of materials (after I had emailed an availability list to this very same cctalk group) and accepted the prices I requested without question as I recall, plus I was reimbursed for all shipping costs. And so I interpreted the transaction at the time that I no longer had rights (other than visitation rights should I ever visited Seattle) to these items. I may be unclear in my understanding from the time, but at the same time none of what the LCM received from me was so rare or unique as to my wanting to ever request it back again. I was thankful at the time that I had a place for this computer stuff to go. I would be sad, however, if any of it might be now in a dumpster or landfill, or has been sold to someone else, and so I guess I also don't want to hear that news either way. Kevin Anderson Dubuque, Iowa

2 years, 5 months

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Re: LC:M+L (Living Computer Museum)

by Kevin Anderson

The LCM has some of stuff (a Zenith Z150 PC computer, including monitor and an early paged memory expansion that I installed, a couple of Apple IIc computers and monitors, a printer, but probably more important, a bunch of original MS-DOS software diskettes and manuals from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s (including several versions of MS-DOS, FORTRAN, MS Word for DOS, an early version of Lotus-123, and other earlier software) that I used to complete my doctoral degree and first start my college teaching position. But I understood at the time that Paul's LCM was actually "buying" my computer stuff, as they reached out to me in interest to acquire the entire lot of materials (after I had emailed an availability list to this very same cctalk group) and accepted the prices I requested without question as I recall, plus I was reimbursed for all shipping costs. And so I interpreted the transaction at the time that I no longer had rights (other than visitation rights should I ever visited Seattle) to these items. I may be unclear in my understanding from the time, but at the same time none of what the LCM received from me was so rare or unique as to my wanting to ever request it back again. I was thankful at the time that I had a place for this computer stuff to go. I would be sad, however, if any of it might be now in a dumpster or landfill, or has been sold to someone else, and so I guess I also don't want to hear that news either way. Kevin Anderson Dubuque, Iowa

2 years, 5 months

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Does anyone have a copy of DAEMON Tools Ultra 4.x install file(s)?

by Grant Taylor

Hi, Does anyone have a copy of DAEMON Tools Ultra 4.x install file(s)? I just purchased a lifetime license based on the documentation on their site. The problem is that they don't have 4.x available for download. I just need the install files and I'll use my personal license. N.B. I need this to work on an ancient Windows XP system that I'm messing with as part of retro computing. -- Grant. . . . unix || die

2 years, 5 months

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Bubble Memory

by Anders Nelson

On eBay, 10pcs for $75: https://www.ebay.com/itm/394216367144 =] -- Anders Nelson

2 years, 5 months

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[FS] Power Macs in Victoria, Australia - Apple Workgroup Server 9150 also 8100, 7100, 6200

by Toby Thain

Hi list A relative is selling these Macs in Victoria, Australia: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/204136123378 Hoping they can find a good home. --Toby PS. Sorry if posted twice, I am in the middle of changing my email address to toby -at- telegraphics dot net

2 years, 5 months

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[FS] Power Macs in Victoria, Australia - Apple Workgroup Server 9150 also 8100, 7100, 6200

by Toby Thain

Hi list A relative is selling these Macs in Victoria, Australia: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/204136123378 Hoping they can find a good home. --Toby

2 years, 5 months

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RDI BriteLite IPX keeps going to white screen

by Cameron Kaiser

I've been trying to do a little work on the RDI BriteLite IPX I have here, but when it runs more than a few minutes the LCD just blanks out white. The machine seems to still respond to commands, so it seems like it's something with the display hardware. Even powered off and back on it won't go back to normal until I let it sit for awhile. I suspect heat is part of the issue and it certainly feels warm; there are two loud cooling fans inside, but with the case off and checking airflow the fans do seem to be working. Having the case off doesn't make the display any happier though. One fan is in the power supply and another fan is in the (LCD?) inverter board. Finger-checking large chips while in operation doesn't burn the skin. Anyone familiar with this issue? I suppose I could look for a SPARCstation IPX to take the motherboard out of and replace this one with it, but it seems more like the problem is in the display, which is a custom part. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com -- Fish will never understand fear of deep water. -- Tanner Greer -------------

2 years, 5 months

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WTB: Kinetics/Shiva FastPath 4 or 5

by Jonathan Chapman

All, I've been looking for a Kinetics or Shiva FastPath 4 or 5 for a while, without luck. Don't know why I didn't think to ask on the various lists! If anyone has one they'd like to part with, let me know off-list. Thanks, Jonathan

2 years, 5 months

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Great Vintage Computer Heist of 2012

by Tom Hunter

Sellam Abraham referred to a "Great Vintage Computer Heist of 2012". What was that about? Who stole what and where and why?

2 years, 5 months

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ISO someone to refurbish two IBM 010 card punches

by LJW cctech

Hello all, Is there anyone out there that would be prepared to tackle restoring a couple of IBM 010 card punches functionally and cosmetically? This is a paying job! These are the small tabletop units. One is manual: https://flic.kr/p/2nVAJeg The other is motorised: https://flic.kr/p/2nVB8Pa They are apparently complete but will need cleaning, repainting and adjusting, and whatever you can do with the key-tops. The manual one was used by the current owner in 1962 so has some sentimental value! They are in the USA but we can get them to you wherever you are. If you know of anyone who might be interested then feel free to forward this email. -- Lawrence Wilkinson lawrence(a)ljw.me.uk The IBM 360/30 page http://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360

2 years, 5 months

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Re: cctalk Digest, Vol 97, Issue 67

by Mark Kahrs

Let me add that Howard Sturgis' dissertation "Post-mortem for a Time-sharing System" is great reading. It's unusual that failures are documented but this case study is worthy. On Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 1:00 PM <cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > Send cctalk mailing list submissions to > cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via email, send a message with subject or > body 'help' to > cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > cctalk-owner(a)classiccmp.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of cctalk digest..."Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: CAL TSS information and source listings (paul(a)mcjones.org) > 2. ISO someone to refurbish two IBM 010 card punches (LJW cctech) > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: paul(a)mcjones.org > To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Cc: > Bcc: > Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 16:13:06 -0000 > Subject: [cctalk] Re: CAL TSS information and source listings > Lars Brinkhoff wrote: > > Paul McJones posted this recently: > > https://mcjones.org/CalTSS/ > > > > There aren't a lot of machine readable media, but many listings: > > https://mcjones.org/CalTSS/source/ > > I hesitated to post here -- was the CDC 6400 a classic computer? :-) -- > but Lars broke the ice. The system ran on a 6400 with Extended Core Storage > and Central Exchange Jump (most of the operating system ran on the CPU, > counter to normal CDC 6000 practice). The project took place at UC Berkeley > between 1968 and 1971 (although hardware acquisition began in 1966). What > the university really wanted was simple interactive service (editing, > BASIC, remote job submission, etc.) in conjunction with batch jobs running > on SCOPE on the main, larger 6400, but what they got was a state-of-the-art > research system offering capability-based protection, multiple protection > domains per process, and more. Unfortunately, it couldn't support enough > concurrent users to be economical. > > The technical ideas are well-described here: > > Butler W. Lampson and Howard E. Sturgis. Reflections on an operating > system design. Communications of the ACM, 19(5):251-265, January 1976. > https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/360051.360074 (open access) > > The project history is described here: > > Paul McJones and Dave Redell. History of the CAL Timesharing System. > Submitted to: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. > https://www.mcjones.org/CalTSS/paper/cal_tss_history.pdf > > Through heroic effort, Terry Heidelberg has managed to create an emulation > environment and boot the system and run some programs, but it's not ready > for prime time! > > > Paul > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: LJW cctech <ljw-cctech(a)ljw.me.uk> > To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Cc: > Bcc: > Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 18:05:58 +0200 > Subject: [cctalk] ISO someone to refurbish two IBM 010 card punches > Hello all, > > Is there anyone out there that would be prepared to tackle restoring > a couple of IBM 010 card punches functionally and cosmetically? > > This is a paying job! > > These are the small tabletop units. > One is manual: https://flic.kr/p/2nVAJeg > The other is motorised: https://flic.kr/p/2nVB8Pa > > They are apparently complete but will need cleaning, repainting and > adjusting, and whatever you can do with the key-tops. > > The manual one was used by the current owner in 1962 so has some > sentimental value! > > They are in the USA but we can get them to you wherever you are. > > If you know of anyone who might be interested then feel free to > forward this email. > > -- > Lawrence Wilkinson lawrence(a)ljw.me.uk > The IBM 360/30 page http://www.ljw.me.uk/ibm360 >

2 years, 5 months

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CAL TSS information and source listings

by Lars Brinkhoff

Paul McJones posted this recently: https://mcjones.org/CalTSS/ There aren't a lot of machine readable media, but many listings: https://mcjones.org/CalTSS/source/

2 years, 5 months

2
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PALM assembler now available (5100/5110/5120)

by Steve Lewis

Wanted to pass along that PALM has been added as a target to the Macro Assembler AS. This means writing some assembly stuff for the old IBM 5100/5110/5120 systems. Assembler available here: http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/as/ So no one has to re-type it, the "bounce" sample is located here: https://github.com/voidstar78/5110VEMU/blob/main/bin/sample1_palm.asm Norbert has the online IBM5110 emulator, but it doesn't have a way to "script inputs". Not sure if he's in the mood to crack that open again, but it would be a nice feature to add (a kind of "File Open" and just script the content of the file like typing on its emulated keyboard).. Alternative way to test some compiled assembly is to script it into the 5110VEMU located here: https://github.com/voidstar78/5110VEMU/tree/main/bin (Wintel builds, uses pdcurses which might not be too hard to port to other systems) Or if have a physical system willing to power up, you can use a serial port as a proxy to the keyboard: https://github.com/voidstar78/KBD5110/tree/main/CODE Screen is port mapped at 0x0200, so drawing stuff is easy. I'll work on an example to poll keyboard inputs - then we're in business for some interactive software content :D (well, will need some RNG solution next) Cheers!

2 years, 5 months

3
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Data General Nova and Eclipse Hobbyist License, update 2

by Bruce Ray

Data General public archive Update 2 has been uploaded to the web site, and includes the following additions: Software added: - MRDOS and TRDO - AOS IDEA - AOS INFOS II - RTOS Datagen - RTOS - AOS CEO - AOS RPG II - diagnostic software, paper tape Documentation/manuals added for: - computer reference manuals - RTOS Datagen - RTOS - DOS - SOS - DOS [Diskette] - DG/RDOS - MP/OS - MP/AOS - AOS IDEA - AOS INFOS II - AOS CEO - AOS RPG II -- Bruce Ray Wild Hare Computer Systems, Inc. Denver, Colorado USA bkr(a)WildHareComputers.com ...preserving the Data General legacy: www.NovasAreForever.org

2 years, 6 months

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LCM news?

by Ian McLaughlin

Did anyone else just get the semi-automated-looking email from the Living Computer Museum reminding that the online collection is still online and how to access it? It was a bit of a shock to me - I was aware that the online collection was still accessible, but it just seems ‘strange’ to get an email from them out of the blue. Oh how I wished it was some good news. Here’s hoping that one day Vulcan realize what they have. Ian

2 years, 6 months

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Large private collections

by Bill Degnan

Who presently has the largest predominantly "vintage computing" collections in 2022? I sometimes wonder what the cutoff definition is for "very large collection" ... 1000 individual computers? Or do you judge by square feet filled? I have seen entire houses full, 5000sq ft warehouses, entire homes.stuffed to the brim. But there is a price to pay. Free stuff has a storage cost until it ain't so free anymore. It's hard to maintain a large collection and prevent its deterioration. Reminds me of the consolidation of planetary debris into the solar system. By 2022 there has been a lot of consolidation. Some of us started accumulating systems in the 1990s or even before, and are still at it. From.the looks.of what was being sold at vcfmw we're a ways off from running out of stuff. Bill

2 years, 6 months

8
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datapoint 2200 programming

by Steve Lewis

Does anyone know how the 1970/1971 original Datapoint 2200 was programmed? It had tapes containing terminal programs to access different types of systems. And the instruction set was said to be similar what became the 8008. But how were these terminal programs created and how were the tapes written? Were they under emulators on larger systems, like a PDP-10? Were there any tapes that had something like a machine code editor and tape-write routines? I assume no kind of ROM was built into the system (unless it had a built in machine code editor, and routines to write that content to a tape?) Was a version of BASIC ever built for the 8008 that ran on a Datapoint 2200 or similar system? -Steve

2 years, 6 months

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FW: [EXTERNAL]Fwd: HP 2000 hardware in Salt Lake

by Daryl Faulkner

Hi Everyone, I'm Daryl and I'm with the Hewlett-Packard Company Archives. David Collins forwarded your email to me in the event that the archives might be interested in acquiring this impressive collection that is listed below. I'm going to forward this to our archives team to have them give their input on which of these instruments we would be most interested in and then get back to you. Provided, that this inventory is still available. I look forward to staying in touch. Daryl Daryl Faulkner Account Director Heritage Werks, Inc. Specialists in Archival Services 503.501.9216 (cell) daryl.faulkner(a)heritagewerks.com<mailto:daryl.faulkner@heritagewerks.com> HeritageWerks.com<http://www.heritagewerks.com/> Legally privileged/confidential information may be contained in this message. It is intended solely for the addressee(s); access to anyone else is unauthorized. If this message has been sent to you in error, do not review, disseminate, distribute or copy it. Please reply to the sender that you have received the message in error, and then delete it. Thank you. From: David Collins <davidkcollins2(a)gmail.com> Sent: Monday, September 19, 2022 10:09 PM To: Daryl Faulkner <daryl.faulkner(a)heritagewerks.com> Subject: [EXTERNAL]Fwd: [cctalk] HP 2000 hardware in Salt Lake CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. FYI in case you are after more HP kit! ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Tim Riker via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org<mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> Date: Tue, 20 Sept 2022 at 11:22 Subject: [cctalk] HP 2000 hardware in Salt Lake To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org<mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org>> Cc: Tim Riker <Tim(a)rikers.org<mailto:Tim@rikers.org>> All, I'm not getting around to working on this hardware. Another potential move coming up. What's the interest level out there for HP 1000/2000 hardware? Computers: * HP-2116A 8kB - the original HP computer. There is only one other that I am aware of in existence. David Collins got theirs up and running. Mine still blows fuses on startup. * http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=95<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fhpmuseum.n…> * HP-2100A - untested * HP-2108 - working last I checked 64kB (I might keep this one) * HP-2112 - working last I checked 64kB Others: * HP-7901A disc drive - untested (2.5mB) * HP-7900A disc drive - untested, with external power supply (5mB) * HP-7900A disc drive - untested, with external power supply * HP-2748B paper tape reader - spins up, does not seem to pass data * CCC tape punch - untested * HP-2761A Optical Mark Reader - punch card reader. loading wheel turned to goo long ago. probably restorable * card slot expansion chassis. I forget the part number. * dual 3 1/2" drive in hpio chassis might someday work with these systems * non-hp 19" rack holding most equipment * lot's of peripheral cards including interfaces for disc drives, punch, tape, card, etc. Photos on Google Photos. My Gallery App is down at the moment. https://photos.app.goo.gl/ry648oCejfmjnuNf9<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fphotos.ap…> I'd guess it's about 1500 pounds of hardware. So, pickup in Salt Lake only.

2 years, 6 months

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seeking: vme chassis, in seattle

by æstrid smith

hi folks, i'm looking for a vme chassis. i have a we 321sb vme cpu card (derivative of a 3b2) and it wants to run! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:3b2-vme.jpg not super picky about the details but if it matches aesthetically that would be neat. should be functional, i'd rather not start another electronics project right now. also interested in peripheral cards. ideally, somewhere in seattle that's reasonably accessible by transit, or if you're willing to ship that would work too. thanks! -- æstrid smith (she/her) =<[ c y b e r ]>= antique telephone collectors association member #4870

2 years, 6 months

2
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Re: Large private collections

by Ali

>I think one of the primary factors is >how much time the collector has to dedicate to> their collection.And how much money....-Ali

2 years, 6 months

1
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Sun Fire V100 CPU not coming up on poweron

by Alexander Schreiber

Hi, I've got Sun Fire V100 that I'm pretty sure at some point in time actually worked, since I loaded the board with the maximum amount of memory supported (2G). Now, however, when powering on, the LOM comes up but upon issuing the poweron command the main CPU apparently doesn't, all I get is either 1. print_message: Wrong message ID 2. or continuous scrolling of what look like blocks of register dumps I can reliably get effect 1, but the effect 2 is not easy to reproduce. The memory itself seems ok - transplanted it into a known good V100 board and that booted up to readiness (no OS installed yet), included full memory init. Just on general principle (i.e. try the obvious things first) I also retried with known good PSU, same result. There are no obvious signs of trouble (e.g. bulked up or leaky electrolytic capacitors, scorch marks). Any ideas what that message wants to tell me? Full bootup transcript below, note the fan failure is due to this being run as a naked board removed from the case, so the case fans are 'missing'. -------------------------- cute here for new monitor -------------------- LOMlite starting up. CPU type: H8/3437S, mode 3 Ram-test: 2048 bytes OK Initialising i2c bus: OK Searching for EEPROMs: 50(cfg) I2c eeprom @50: OK i2c bus speed code 01... OK Probing for lm80s: none Probing for lm75s: 48 Initialising lm75 @48: OK System functions: PSUs fans breakers rails gpio temps host CLI ebus clock Power restored LOMlite console lom> LOM event: +0h0m0s LOM booted lom> LOM event: +0h0m0s host power on � LOM event: +0h0m7s Fan 1 FATAL FAULT: failed 0% LOM event: +0h0m7s Fault LED 3Hz print_message: Wrong message ID lom> lom>poweroff lom> LOM event: +0h0m50s host power off lom>poweron lom> LOM event: +0h0m55s host power on � LOM event: +0h0m56s Fan 1 recovered LOM event: +0h1m2s Fan 1 FATAL FAULT: failed 0% print_message: Wrong message ID lom> lom>poweroff -------------------------- cute here for new monitor -------------------- Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

2 years, 6 months

2
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8" floppy diskette storage cases

by D. Resor

Does anyone have, or know of a reasonably priced supplier of good clean used, or new 8" floppy diskette boxes? The kind made of plastic like these? https://www.ebay.com/itm/134258177087 I have one 8" box with Xerox software in which the plastic literally crumbling. The price this seller wants for the case itself is reasonable but I find the price of shipping outrageous. Total shipping price for three boxes is shown to be $21.35. I may be crazy, but this seems nuts for something so light. Thank You Don Resor

2 years, 6 months

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Floppy disks for sale [WAS:RE: cctalk Digest, Vol 97, Issue 35]

by Tom Gardner

Tom Persky at https://www.floppydisk.com/ sells all types of FDs, albeit well above the AOL price :-) Interesting article about this last man standing in the business: https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/we-spoke-with-the-last-person-standing-in-the-f loppy-disk-business/#:~:text=Tom%20Persky%20is%20the%20self,and%20recycling% 20of%20floppy%20disks. BTW, there are still four companies making iron oxide tape, but just currently for audio/video/instrument usage. If the demand for FDs continues past Tom's inventory then I wouldn't be surprised to see one of them make some FDs too. Tom -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-request@classiccmp.org] Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:00 AM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: cctalk Digest, Vol 97, Issue 35 Send cctalk mailing list submissions to cctalk(a)classiccmp.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org You can reach the person managing the list at cctalk-owner(a)classiccmp.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of cctalk digest..."

2 years, 6 months

1
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Re: Xerox 820II U07 Power Supply magic smoke....

by D. Resor

Best I can tell the diodes are Passivated Silicon, Bead diodes, of which there are three flavors. https://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/1073401/NJSEMI/A15A.html On EEVBlog it was suggested that these were Sintered Glass Bead diodes. I do believe they are still in okay working condition. My thought process is that they are probably quite noisy. Installing a modern type of diode would also I believe dramatically reduce generation of heat. It is nice that a Power Supply board is laid out in a way that you can access all of the components. Nothing like some of the small 5v switching supplies in which most of the components are shoved close together. I downloaded the 1977 GE Semiconductor manual, but it’s not easy to find it without a part number. Back when I was in my early 20’s a neighbor whom was an Engineer at Xerox in the power supply division at 701 South Aviation Blvd. El Segundo, gave me a bundle of those soft bound Motorola reference manuals, some RCA TTL manuals, Zener Diode reference etc. The books sat on my shelf for many years until I ran out of room. I moved them to my shed which at the time was safe from the weather. After years of storage many of them were damaged from dampness etc. In the last 10 years I realized I should have taken better care of them. I realize they are almost worth their weight in gold. I was able to find a few of those books used and purchased them at (luckily) reasonable prices. I regret that and a home brew vacuum tube combo preamplifier/amplifier stereo unit. I was forced to part with. My father referred to it as “junk taking up space”. It contained 4 6V6GTs, 2 12AU7As, and a 5U4 Rectifier. The front end was early GE (germanium I suppose) transistors. They were of the metal oval shaped black painted metal can type with the pinched evacuation nipples. Don Resor From: Joshua Rice <Rice43(a)btinternet.com> Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2022 9:44 AM To: D. Resor <organlists1(a)sonic.net> Subject: Re: [cctalk] Re: Xerox 820II U07 Power Supply magic smoke.... On Oct 13, 2022, at 2:32 PM, D. Resor <organlists1(a)sonic.net <mailto:organlists1@sonic.net> > wrote: A couple reasons I'd like to have a circuit diagram is to know what the RIFA capacitors purpose are. The other is, a couple of the electrolytic capacitor are double covered with what appears to be rubbery heat shrink tubing, therefore I cannot read what their value are. Generally, though not always, these are simply “coupling” capacitors, that are used to limit RF interference from appearing on the mains supply. Most, though not all, PSUs will work fine without them. Some others won’t function right as they’re used for generating clock signals from the mains supply. I believe that some PDP-11 supplies use them for this purpose. One of these two electrolytic capacitor appears to have a dried substance around the top. The over-pressure venting cuts in the top of these two capacitors are not split. At this point I cannot tell if it is dried electrolyte, cement to hold the sleeve on, or possibly paper. Sometimes it’s just glue , but better safe than sorry, Cut off the sleeving (it’s used for electrically isolating the cap from other components), get the rating off of it, and replace with like. Probably worth heatshrinking them again as well. Seems someone was in hurry on the day this PS was tested. I cannot make out date, is it 1983? <https://www.dropbox.com/s/zlt2ocpqulil13j/pssticker.jpg?dl=0> https://www.dropbox.com/s/zlt2ocpqulil13j/pssticker.jpg?dl=0 Looks like ‘85 What type are the diodes, their rating etc.? I seem to remember this type with a black band were rated at 3 amps, but that's all I remember. The TO-3 transistor/regulator has no P/N silkscreened on it. Having a circuit diagram helps to cover many bases. Apparently it's an Astec AA12070. It’s unlikely that these would have failed. If they have, i would (as another person suggested,) just replace the unit with a modern Meanwell supply. At that point, it’s probably not worth the time and effort to replace all the parts. Placed the PS board back in the garage to continue airing out! 😉 Don’t fear the RIFA, but keep the windows open, just in case. Josh.

2 years, 6 months

1
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Xerox 820II U07 Power Supply magic smoke....

by D. Resor

Where might I find a schematic diagram for the Xerox U07 8" FDD,HDD expansion cabinet for the 820II, and/or the 105P80450 power supply? The Xerox Professional Computer Technical Reference Manual I downloaded from bitsavers.org doesn't seem to have those particular schematic diagrams. For your enjoyment the part which smoked. https://www.dropbox.com/s/al9kx3yw9ypwp89/Xerox105p80450.jpg?dl=0 I certainly am glad I have the lid off while testing. Unfortunately these capacitors which appear to be film type were hidden from view. The fuse didn't blow, but that .22uf 250v capacitor certainly stunk up the house. It smelled like burnt popcorn, plastic and the bottom of a coffee pot which has boiled dry, yech! I know that if I had pulled the power supply board first I might have seen the physical cracks in these boxed capacitors. Wasn't it Marc V. that said in one of his videos, you don't need to shotgun them all! Oi, lol It's when things like this happen that I most always worry about not going over vintage equipment fine tooth comb. Don Resor

2 years, 6 months

5
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Intel's i860, Cray-On-A-Chip

by emanuel stiebler

Hi all, anybody has some GCC or any other tool chain for the above? Or some pointers, which was the last version of the GCC tool chain which supported the i860, and would be still compile-able on this days tools/OS's? Anything? Thanks in advance!

2 years, 6 months

12
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Re: datapoint 2200 programming

by Dave Mitton

> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2022 15:54:33 -0500 > From: Steve Lewis <lewissa78(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [cctalk] datapoint 2200 programming > > Does anyone know how the 1970/1971 original Datapoint 2200 was programmed? > It had tapes containing terminal programs to access different types of > systems. And the instruction set was said to be similar what became the > 8008. But how were these terminal programs created and how were the tapes > written? Were they under emulators on larger systems, like a PDP-10? > Were there any tapes that had something like a machine code editor and > tape-write routines? I assume no kind of ROM was built into the system > (unless it had a built in machine code editor, and routines to write that > content to a tape?) Was a version of BASIC ever built for the 8008 that > ran on a Datapoint 2200 or similar system? > > -Steve While in college, 1973 to 77, I had a part-time job where one of the things we did was use a Datapoint 1100 dual cassette model to act as a data entry terminal for a database system running on a Cascade 80 minicomputer. I did the Datapoint programming, which was to query the db over an async line for a form template, allow the operator to fill in the form, then upon entry, send the data back. The db would provide the next form to display. A rudimentary state machine at several levels. The Datapoint came with a Cassette Tape operating system, called CTOS I believe. You booted it up, and the second drive was your working drive. The Programmer’s manual referenced shows you the commands. There was an simple tape file system, Editor, Assembler, Debugger, and a library of subroutines for common access to the system’s I/O. I remember very little about the details of working on it, but I had no problems getting the data entry system working. You just sat down and started programming it. The instruction set was the model for the 8008, but it preceded the popularity and availability of that chip. My boss did some real inspired work on the Cascade Data side. He managed to insert the database access code into high memory of the system, and hook into the native OS. So we could use the system normally, but the database serviced the terminal in the background. I did other Cascade programming in assembly, I wrote my own instruction card for the system. In my senior year, the facility switched over to using IBM System 3 equipment, and I got to work with RPG, 8-inch diskettes, and 96-column cards. Dave. Sent from Mail for Windows

2 years, 6 months

1
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Figured out the Sun 386i supply, how to update the FAQ?

by Chris Zach

Hi all! Been working on my 386i's, all the power supplies are smoked, so I bought a totally burned out one, gutted it, and connected a PC/AT power supply up to the card edge. Sure enough it works, and I now know that it needs +5, +12, -5, -12 (for the ISA bus) and a 5 volt "supply ready" signal as well. Also found the serial console interface works, and realized I should update the 386i FAQ with this information. So what would be the best way to do that in this day and age? CZ

2 years, 6 months

2
1
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Finding tar block size.

by Chris Zach

Trying to tar a directory and transfer it to my AT&T 7300 (SVR2 unix). Tar -tf works fine on the Mac OSX, but when I copy it over the Unix (not gnu) tar gives me a: Tar: blocksize = 20 directory checksum error When I try to tar -tf the file. Which usually means the block size is off. Any way I can check to see what the block size is on a modern system (like a Mac)? tar -tvf doesn't seem to tell me. Thanks! C

2 years, 6 months

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Re: Seattle Computer Products!

by Ethan O'Toole

> Yes. I have a description of my recreation of the Gazelle on my web site, as well as notes on restoring the one for > VCFe. > Rich Very interesting! Reading through it all now. I notice you use Tarbell disk controller... difficult to use the SCP DiskMaster? I don't find many references to systems running it. It supports SD/DD 5.25/8... I had planned to go 5.25" - Ethan

2 years, 6 months

1
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Re: 8" floppy diskette storage cases

by John Foust

At 09:16 AM 10/11/2022, Sellam Abraham via cctalk wrote: >Yes, eBay charges the seller the same commission on shipping as it does for >the item price, and the taxes charged to the buyer as well. A year or so ago, I tried to figure out how to even see a detailed breakdown of eBay's costs and commissions on several servers I'd sold for a client. I gave up. I'm convinced it is purposefully opaque. You get what you get. - John

2 years, 6 months

2
1
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PDP 8a front panel hardware

by Bill Degnan

Is there a 3D print gcode for the hardware that connects a PDP8a front panel to the chassis? Is there anyone who has a spare clips/clamps hardware to attach a PDP 8a console to the chassis? I picked up the donated PDP 8a mentioned earlier on this list, I got it up and running. I need to track down the hardware to attach the front panel to the chassis. I do have spares of the hardware that attaches the ON/OFF panel to the chassis. AS with all "free" donations it's the final mile that costs the big $$ Thanks Bill

2 years, 6 months

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Seattle Computer Products!

by Ethan O'Toole

At this point I have achieved the SCP CPU card, a CPU support card and a Disk Master card. So hopefully all I need is some kind of 16 bit RAM board and a 4 slot S100 backplane and I can boot 86-DOS. I have started to read through the documentation on the hardware. Has anyone else been down this road and built a system to run this? - Ethan -- : Ethan O'Toole

2 years, 6 months

1
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Apple G5 Rebuild

by Kevin Parker

Hoping there's an Apple enthusiast out there somewhere please. A friend gave me a PM G5 which I'd love to add to the Apple corner of my collection. Must admit I love the G5 case. Problem is the internals are in a million pieces but everything seems to be there. Its not a basket case, more like a bucket case because I took the side off and basically poured it all out. My options are. > Toss it > Use the case for an ATX conversion > Use it for a letter box > Have a crack at fixing it. I like having a crack at fixing things first. I'm a preservationist first. Problem is my GoogleFoo can't find any diagrams, illustrations etc on how the internals are put together and I'm hoping some Apple person out there might have something or be able to point me somewhere. (I did find some photos at https://www.overclock.net/threads/power-mac-g5-build.1452312/ for a twin CPU model but I need more detail for a single chip 2.0 GHz PowerPC 970MP (G5) model.) Thank you. Kevin Parker

2 years, 6 months

9
12
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PALM assembler (IBM 5110)

by Steve Lewis

There is a note from Christian Corti last updated 2017: "..assembler listing generated with AS V1.41 from Alfred Arnold. ...which I have added a code generator for the PALM processor." I believe I've found a V1.42 of this on github. But the 5110 support is not listed in the github or pre-packaged builds. If Corti is available to help resurrect the notes on doing this, or if is more familiar with AS and can help get things going? Thanks! Steve

2 years, 6 months

1
0
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Bendix G-15 Restoration

by stephenbuck＠mac.com

Hi All, I wanted to let the group know about a Bendix G-15 Restoration project I just launched: https://headspinlabs.wordpress.com/bendix-g-15-restoration/ It's a pretty intimidating restoration (do no harm and all), so I'm reaching out to related sources, such as this group, for any suggestions or interest. Thanks, Steve

2 years, 6 months

18
33
3 0

Copy of the 8080 instruction encoding reference from /dunfield

by Manna5＠Safe-mail.net

In the past, I have found a well written Intel 8080 instruction set reference on the ClassicCmp website (at http://classiccmp.org/dunfield/r/8080.txt). But now that URL returns "not found" message. Fortunately, I have already saved that document on my PC local disk, and now you can get its copy from http://manna5.c1.biz/8080.txt . Also, I want to ask if mirroring content from ClassicCmp is OK for the ClassicCmp community, or maybe it isn't OK and I should remove that copy from my site? _____________________________________________ Jan "Manna5" Mleczko, http://manna5.c1.biz/

2 years, 6 months

2
1
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AMP Punched Card Reader

by Cory Heisterkamp

Hey Guys, I was curious if anyone recognizes this punched card reader. Marked: AMP Incorporated - SYSCOM Division. It’s extremely well-built; pulling the lever at right moves the chrome lip forward and ejects the card. Case is rather stylized which suggests it was free-standing. Pics here: http://www.ht4100.com/temp/ Thanks, Cory Heisterkamp

2 years, 6 months

7
10
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Fwd: Bendix G-15 Documentation

by Van Snyder

-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: rob.kolstad(a)gmail.com To: van.snyder(a)sbcglobal.net Subject: Bendix G-15 Documentation Date: Mon, 3 Oct 2022 19:09:34 -0600 Bendix G-15 DocumentationDear Fellow G-15 Enthusiast, I'm Rob Kolstad, and I am sending you this little informational blurb because I think you are interested in Bendix G-15 projects (sometimes because I have seen someone messaged you about such things in the last two decades). Feel free to send me an 'unsub' note to never hear again about such things. This note announces the beta test of the first set of the documentation collection: https://rbk.delosent.com/g15doc.html The collection includes 161 source documents (some duplicates) comprising some 10,566 pages (including blanks). I have broken some of the source documents into their constituent sub-documents (e.g., the Technical Application Memos) for easy access, yielding 1,414 documents in total. The collection is by no means complete (coming soon: good large-format schematics and perhaps a search bar), but it's a good start. I'll try to scan the rest before the year is out. The fine folks at the System Source Computer Museum in Baltimore have gained, at least for now, several Bendix G-15's (and peripherals) along with more than two dozen boxes of Bendix documentation mingled with documentation of a large highway engineering firm's projects. The collection also has hundreds of paper tapes in fabulous condition. I scanned a fraction of these documents back in June and combined them with my personal collection (thanks to Bob Sander-Cederlof in Texas) and the documents from bitsavers.org and the Computer History Museum (among others). This documentation section forms one of the main parts of the soon-to- be-released (2022) bendixg15.com website for all things G-15, including software, hardware/restorations, emulators, news, photos, and notes. Please feel free to check out the documents. I'll let you know in a few months when the general web-site is available. Comments, questions, and suggestions are always welcome. RK ==================================================================== /\ Rob Kolstad Delos /\ / \ rob.kolstad(a)gmail.com 15235 Roller Coaster Road / \/\/ \ Colorado Springs, CO 80921 / \ \ \ Phone: +1 719 481 6542 ====================================================================

2 years, 6 months

2
1
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Lecture: Who am I? CPUID on the PDP-8, 2022-10-09, 14:00

by Anke Stüber

Hi all, you're invited to the Update computer club[0] public lecture series "Updateringar"[1]! Please note that this talk is given as a part of the Vintage Computing Festival Berlin 2022[2] this coming weekend, the time and place for watching the lecture stream are different than usual. When: 2022-10-09, 14:00 CEST Where: Stream: https://streaming.media.ccc.de/vcfb2022/Signallabor Q&A: https://bbb.cryptoparty.se/b/upd-0mo-m2u-aq8 Who am I? CPUID on the PDP-8 Portable software must adapt to peculiarities of the target platforms. Even variations within a "compatible" family of computers may require specific code. But how does a program identify which machine is executing it? In this presentation we will dissect, line by line, a subroutine written by the late Charles Lasner (CJL) as part of the Kermit implementation for the PDP-8 family of computers. The subroutine, "MACHINE", is capable of identifying all DEC PDP-8 models. Some familiarity with programming will benefit the listener, but the presentation includes the basics of PDP-8 assembly and the level should be approachable to most. Pontus Pihlgren (Update) The lecture is free and open to everyone. Don't want to miss upcoming events? Subscribe to our low-traffic announcement list here[3]! Hope to see you there, Anke/zeltophil [0] https://www.dfupdate.se/en/ [1] https://wiki.dfupdate.se/projekt:updateringar [2] https://vcfb.de/2022/index.html.en [3] https://lists.dfupdate.se/postorius/lists/announce.lists.dfupdate.se

2 years, 6 months

1
0
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Need 8mm or DLT-II tape?

by Van Snyder

I have many 8mm tapes. A few are new. First comers get new ones. I have a few 8mm cleaning cassettes I have about a dozen DLT-II tapes. I have some Ultrium LTO fibre-channel SCSI drives that were removed from a tape-mounting robot several years ago. I never used them in my computers because I don't have a fibre-channel SCSI card. The mounting bracket for one was modified to have an internal power supply -- which might be inadequate. I have two Fujifilm 200/400 GB Ultrium 2 LTO tapes. I have a 5.25" floppy drive. Any of these are yours for the price of shipping; local pickup is OK too. Van Snyder van.snyder(a)sbcglobal.net La Crescenta, CA

2 years, 6 months

2
1
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z9 (s390x) mainframe up for grabs in Melbourne, FL

by Adam Thornton

From the "Mainframe Enthusiasts" Discord; I don't have any other contact for him but I can send you a link to the Discord if you can't get there yourself. This is one of the first (maybe the first) of the 64-bit zSeries (descendant of S/360, S/370, S/390) machines. You would have to pay IBM a lot of money to legally run a modern z/OS or MVS or VM or z/VM or VSE or z/VSE on it (and current versions won't work, but, like, z/VM 4.4 would). You could run MUSIC/SP for free, and of course VM/370 and MVS 3.8 are in the public domain (although I do not know offhand if the z9 can run those late-70s OSes). It will also run S/390 and z/Linux of the right vintage, which are free but maybe difficult to acquire these days. From Member @Booper : Z9 mainframe, ds8000 storage array , tape drive and misc components are scheduled to go to scrap at the end of the month. If someone wants to chime in and throw some money my way, i can sign the whole storage unit over to you. Located in melbourne fl.

2 years, 6 months

3
2
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Microangelo MA520...

by William Sudbrink

Anyone familiar with this board (S-100 graphics adapter) knows that the schematics and documentation for it and the matching palette board are unavailable. I recently made a remarkable discovery on the web: https://store.gepower.com/mpps/parts/en/USD/search?sortParam=relevance <https://store.gepower.com/mpps/parts/en/USD/search?sortParam=relevance&solr sortby=&inValidProductsList=&isSearchTypeAdv=false&recentSearch=&defaultStor e=parts&shipToAddrCodeHdnSearchPg=&soldToCompanyIdHdnSearchPg=&soldToCompany CurrencyHdnSearchPg=&text=60628&CSRFToken=3b6088cc-11d1-42c2-8a92-acab81491e 0a> &solrsortby=&inValidProductsList=&isSearchTypeAdv=false&recentSearch=&defaul tStore=parts&shipToAddrCodeHdnSearchPg=&soldToCompanyIdHdnSearchPg=&soldToCo mpanyCurrencyHdnSearchPg=&text=60628&CSRFToken=3b6088cc-11d1-42c2-8a92-acab8 1491e0a If you follow that link, you will see that GE Power seems to have them in stock in their parts store. My guess is that, at one time, they used them as part of a power plant control room. What I'm hoping is that they have one with the original documentation. Unfortunately, despite several enquiries, I have been unable to make any contact with anyone in GE Power that might offer me one for sale or otherwise help. So, I'm throwing it out to the general community of collectors. You need to be a certified GE Power customer, contractor or a GE Power employee to access the web store any further than that link. Anybody know someone who could sign and check? Thanks, Bill Sudbrink -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

2 years, 6 months

2
2
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bubble memory stable?

by Steve Lewis

How "stable" is bubble memory, over decades? There is a Sharp PC-5000 that may be available, I believe from 1983-1985 era, which is said to have bubble memory. But the owner can't find a power cable, to verify if anything still works. I have older systems with ICs that are still working OK, but I was wondering thoughts on any risk associated with bubble memory? (likelihood of not working at all, or being damaged in long distance shipping) Actually another thought, can any "normal" ICs be used to replace/substitute the bubble memory? Regards, Steve

2 years, 6 months

4
4
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Fwd: Philips P2000C carrying strap

by Tony Duell

Does anyone have a Philips P2000C CP/M luggable with the carrying strap? I will be restoring such a machine in the near-ish future and mine is lacking the strap. Clear photos of the end fittings that slot into the machine, the dimensions of them, etc would be a great help in making something up. -tony

2 years, 6 months

5
8
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7485 chip history??? (Solid State Music SB-1)

by William Sudbrink

Hi, I recently acquired a Solid State Music SB-1 from which all the chips had been removed. I've reinstalled all of the chips (I located an SSM2000) and I've been trying to figure out why this board crashes my computers. The conclusion that I've come to is rather astounding. The board specifies two 74ls85 4 bit binary comparator chips to perform address decoding. The designers of this board seem to have had incorrect pinouts for it. Every source that I can find specifies: B3 1 16 VCC A<B (in) 2 15 A3 A=B (in) 3 14 B2 A>B (in) 4 13 A2 A>B (out) 5 12 A1 A=B (out) 6 11 B1 A<B (out) 7 10 A0 GND 8 9 B0 The 7485s that I was able to get have this pinout. BUT! The SB-1 is designed as: B2 1 16 VCC A2 2 15 A3 A=B (out) 3 14 B3 A>B (in) 4 13 A>B (out) A<B (in) 5 12 A<B (out) A=B (in) 6 11 B0 A1 7 10 A0 GND 8 9 B1 I Ohm'd out the board to verify this and it matches the schematic here: https://wiki.theretrowagon.com/wiki/Solid_State_Music_SB1 What the heck??? Did the pinout of the 7485 just arbitrarily change at some point? Was this some competition between manufacturers? Is there any way to get the "right" 7485? Thanks, Bill -- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com

2 years, 6 months

5
9
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Animatics motion controllers

by Tony Jones

A bit off topic but I'm curious if anyone has any technical information on Animatics motion controllers. Animatics was based in (Santa Clara) in the 1990s. They were bought by Moog sometime around 2000 and all the old info was thrown out. A support engineer working for Moog (who had worked for Animatics before the buyout) provided a bunch of DOS utilities and info on the RS232 programming that he found on a backup, but this is all the info that exists. Schematics for the hardware (CPU is a Phillips SCC68070 with a MC68881 math coprocessor), firmware code and any other technical info would be great. Wayback machine link: http://web.archive.org/web/19990218104405/http://www.animatics.com/5000list… eBay link to an actual controller: https://www.ebay.com/itm/124030784795

2 years, 6 months

1
0
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Timeline of Computer History

by Tom Hunter

I have just stumbled across this nice "Timeline of Computer History" from the CHM: https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/computers/ I have not seen this before and thought it may be of interest to this list. Tom

2 years, 6 months

1
0
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Response from the list manager

by Peter Van Peborgh

Is it just me? I have recently sent an email to this guy about two different topics. There was no response in either case. What is going on? Or am I missing something? Many thanks, peter vp

2 years, 6 months

3
2
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Minicomputer front panel.

by Peter Van Peborgh

I know this is sacrilege but I am looking for the front panel of a *Data General Nova *and/or *a DEC PDP 8/11/12/15*. Why? I collect artefacts from the days of the minicomputer and earlier and I want them for my collection/display. They should be not too damaged and of course do not need to be functional. I would be willing to pay postage/freight. Any offers? Any offers? Peter PS Please don't shout at me!

2 years, 6 months

31
79
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Project Monterey booting in 2022

by Liam Proven

https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2022/09/24/ibm-aix-for-ia64-itanium-aka-… -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053

2 years, 7 months

1
0
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8" disk question!

by geneb

All the discussion around 8" disks reminded me about a question I've not been able to find an answer to. I've got a Qumetrak 842 drive that I use for imaging 8" disks with either ImageDisk or AppleSauce. When I first tried it out with AS, the listed RPM was > 7K. It turns out that the disk I was working with was a NOS Dysan that had both the single and double-sided index windows punched in the jacket. The 842 has both of those index sensors, so both were being triggered one after the other. The solution was to cover one of the index windows on the disk. The question I have is how did a contemporary system deal with the combination of a disk with both index windows and a drive with both index sensors? tnx! g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

2 years, 7 months

8
11
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11/45 and 11/34 Taken!

by Kevin McQuiggin

Hi All: I’m pleased to report that my 11/45 and 11/34 which were in need of a new home have been taken by another collector here in BC. They will be off to a very good home! Thanks for reading my post. Kevin

2 years, 7 months

4
3
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pdp-11/45 and pdp-11/34 Available - Free! (Vancouver, BC)

by Kevin McQuiggin (SFU)

Hi All: I’ve been a collector of old DEC systems for about 30 years. I haven’t been active on the list for the last decade or so due to work, but am “surfacing” now as my wife and I are moving and I need to find a good home for two of my systems and their peripherals. I can follow up with photos et cetera if necessary, but the subject line really says it all: a functional 11/45 in a 6’ standard DEC rack, and an 11/34 in a shorter DEC rack. Both systems are functional. The 11/45 has an RK05. The 11/34 has a TS03. I also have a TU80 9-track tape drive (short rack), and dual RL02 drives in another short rack that go with the systems. These would come with a couple dozen tapes, and about 10 RL02 packs. I have a few RK05 packs as well. I would like these systems to go to someone who understands them and will use them. As members on this list will know, they exemplify computing in the 1970s through the 1980s, and it would be nice to keep them running for educational and historical purposes. The systems and peripherals are free, but they must be picked up. I cannot ship, nor do I have time to separate components. If I cannot find a home for these systems then they will, unfortunately, be headed to the metal recycler. I have tried museum donation but bureaucracy gets in the way and decisions take far too long. Hence I am offering the systems here on the list. The deadline for pickup is October 15th. This is a hard deadline as we must vacate our house. I would take the machines with me if I could! Kevin Sent from my iPad

2 years, 7 months

1
0
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Looking for Fred N van Kempen ... (pdp11, GUTS)

by Graham Toal

20 years ago I loaned Fred van Kempen a pdp11 disk pack (RK11?) to try recovering for me. We think it may have the Dutch "GUTS" operating system (Groningen University Timesharing System - https://gtoal.com/history.dcs.ed.ac.uk/archive/scans/guts/*.pdf ) and sources on it. My Dad carefully hand-carried it to the Netherlands from Scotland by boat and bicycle!, avoiding any magnetic scanning on the way. I never heard back from Fred and every now and then (some years apart) I try to contact him but all the mail addresses I've tried go unreplied or bounce. Does anyone here know him and have a reliable way to contact him? He might be in the USA now and the only indication I have that he's still alive is a github update in Jan of this year (and happily a lack of hits when looking for an obituary!). I'm assuming he never extracted the disk contents because if he had I'm sure he would have contacted me. If the disk has not degraded too much over the last 20 years since I last saw it, I'ld still like to recover it and so I'ld like to get it back from Fred and give it to whoever else might be able to read it. Thanks, Graham

2 years, 7 months

2
2
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Data Systems Designs floppy interface cross-compatibility?

by Ethan Dicks

Greetings, all, While getting ready for VCF Midwest etc, I have been spending a lot of hobby time in the past year digging out various DEC minicomputer items and testing/repairing them. To that end, I've been staring at a DSD480 on top of a PDP-8 rack. It's one of the ones with the DSD 26-pin interface. My question is that since there are several different devices with that connector, are any of them compatible with each other? Specifically, here are the DSD interfaces with a 26-pin connector: 802130 DSD210 PDP-11 Interface (26 pin) (2130) 802131 DSD440 DSD210 PDP-8 Interface (26 pin) (2131) 802132 DSD210 LSI-11 Interface (26 pin) (2132) 804430 DSD440 PDP-11 PDP-11 Interface (26 pin) (4430) 804432 DSD440 LSI-11 LSI-11 Interface (26 pin) (4432) 808830 DSD880 (SA850/SA1004) PDP11 Interface Card (26 pin) (8830) 808832 DSD880 (SA850/SA1004) LSI-11 Interface Card (26 pin) (8832) 808836 DSD880/20/30 (SA850/Q240) LSI-11 Interface Card (26 pin) (8836) It looks like the 2131 board is Omnibus and works with either the DSD440 or DSD210, but on the PDP-11, can the 883x interfaces work with older drives or do they only work with the DSD880 floppy/hard drive box? I remember where/when I got this DSD480, so it seems likely to me that I have a PDP-11/34 with an 4430 board in it. I could probably use an 2131 board just so I have an Omnibus interface. I also have an 808836 board but do _not_ have a DSD880. I've found the prints on bitsavers that cover the DSD440/480 interface so I know what signals are there, but I haven't found the equivalent docs for the DSS880, just user guides. Anyone here know enough about DSD products to shed some light? Thanks, -ethan

2 years, 7 months

2
2
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HP 2000 hardware in Salt Lake

by Tim Riker

All, I'm not getting around to working on this hardware. Another potential move coming up. What's the interest level out there for HP 1000/2000 hardware? Computers: * HP-2116A 8kB - the original HP computer. There is only one other that I am aware of in existence. David Collins got theirs up and running. Mine still blows fuses on startup. * http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=95 * HP-2100A - untested * HP-2108 - working last I checked 64kB (I might keep this one) * HP-2112 - working last I checked 64kB Others: * HP-7901A disc drive - untested (2.5mB) * HP-7900A disc drive - untested, with external power supply (5mB) * HP-7900A disc drive - untested, with external power supply * HP-2748B paper tape reader - spins up, does not seem to pass data * CCC tape punch - untested * HP-2761A Optical Mark Reader - punch card reader. loading wheel turned to goo long ago. probably restorable * card slot expansion chassis. I forget the part number. * dual 3 1/2" drive in hpio chassis might someday work with these systems * non-hp 19" rack holding most equipment * lot's of peripheral cards including interfaces for disc drives, punch, tape, card, etc. Photos on Google Photos. My Gallery App is down at the moment. https://photos.app.goo.gl/ry648oCejfmjnuNf9 I'd guess it's about 1500 pounds of hardware. So, pickup in Salt Lake only.

2 years, 7 months

2
2
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IBM 5100 emulation

by Steve Lewis

Greetings, we've extracted the Executive ROS of the IBM 5100. The PALM opcodes between the 5100 and 5110 should be identical. So we have used Christian Corti emulator code to run that Executive ROS (under Wintel environment). However, the CRC checks and transition to the Language ROS apparently works a little differently on the IBM 5100 (compared to the 5110). Not the CRC check method itself, but perhaps the addressing used to look for the Common ROS. In the 5110, the Common ROS is more obviously a separate device/card. For the 5100, I'm not exactly sure where the Common ROS is (part of the Executive ROS card, or part of the BASIC ROS card?). I've seen some APL-only 5100's, so I think that system could operate with the BASIC card (but maybe that device slot still would have the Common ROS segments?). Hoping someone is available to maybe give suggestions or tips in how to get this emulator code going with the IBM 5100 ROS's (see EMUV5110 in github; trying to use that to run the IBM 5100 ROS's that are at archive.org). NOTE: The Executive ROS for the IBM 5100 is a 64K binary (I think the last 20K of that is blank, all 0's). In contrast, the Executive ROS for the IBM 5110 is 32K.

2 years, 7 months

3
2
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KIM-1 Boards of the Past

by Jonathan Chapman

I finally herded together the extant pictures of the KIM-1s I've had in the past and did a writeup: http://www.glitchwrks.com/2022/09/18/kim1-boards-past TL;DR is that during college I found a KIM-1 in an employer's warehouse. Later, I found a box with five more! These were all Virginia Tech surplus, and one of them is likely the first KIM-1 used for classroom instruction there. I'd intended to sell some of them, since who needs six, right? Unfortunately, I was forced to sell all of them, including the one I'd intended to keep for myself, due to economic/financial situations after graduation. I've never seen anyone post about these particular machines, and I haven't seen them exhibited at VCF East, VCF Midwest, or HOPE. None of the sellers contacted me about them after the sale concluded. Is anyone here the owner of one of these particular KIM-1s? Do you know the owner? Did you use KIM-1s while at Virginia Tech? Please let me know! Thanks, Jonathan

2 years, 7 months

1
0
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9-pin mini-DIN serial?

by Cameron Kaiser

Trying to identify two cables I ended up with, one to DE-9 and one to Mac 8-pin mini-DIN. The other end on both is a male 9-pin mini-DIN. These clearly look like serial cables, but to what? A cursory Google didn't come up with anything obvious. They don't fit the Mac GeoPort or Sun SPARC serial ports because the pins are slightly out of place. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser(a)floodgap.com -- Don't let 'em drive you crazy when it's within walking distance. -----------

2 years, 7 months

5
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Re: 9-pin mini-DIN serial? (Cameron Kaiser)

by Fred Jan Kraan

On 9/16/22 6:37 PM, Cameron Kaiser <spectre(a)floodgap.com> wrote: > These clearly look like serial cables, but to what? The Epson PX-16 used a 9-pin mini-DIN for the serial port: https://electrickery.nl/comp/px16/px16org.html. Fred Jan

2 years, 7 months

1
0
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Test Message

by Kevin McQuiggin

Pardon the test message, I have just re-subscribed to the list but have seen no traffic on it for a couple of days. Kevin McQuiggin

2 years, 7 months

5
4
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TVI-921C

by Jonathan Katz

All, I have a TVI-921C at the museum. I power it on and it beeps continuously. One long, solid tone that does not stop until I power it off. How do I start diagnosing this? -- -Jon +44 7792 149029

2 years, 7 months

7
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Please unsubscribe: barry@csguy.org

by Barry Hills

2 years, 7 months

1
0
0 0

Replacement tachometer photosensors for RA8x drives?

by Robert Armstrong

I've discovered that three of my four RA8x drives (one 82 and two 81s) now refuse to spin up. All the failing drives give "SPIN ERROR" as the reason and I've discovered, by an combination of educated guessing and parts swapping with the working drive, that all three have bad optical sensors for the tachometer disk. Surfing around I see that this is a known problem. Apparently the compound that was originally used to pot these sensors turns opaque over time and, being as they're optical sensors, that really reduces their effectiveness. I've seen some reports of people trying to repair the sensors by either sanding off a layer of the epoxy potting compound, or even trying to dissolve it somehow, but that seems to be a little bit hit or miss. Doesn't seem like these should be hard to replace though. They're just an infrared LED and a phototransistor in a cute plastic case, and that technology is still pretty common today. Has anybody found a replacement for them? Does anybody have any suggestions? Thanks, Bob

2 years, 7 months

2
1
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Bubbl-Tec bubble memory (QBus)

by Chris Hanson

I just acquired the several Bubbl-Tec bubble memory boards for QBus, and was wondering if anyone had manuals or more information than the couple of web pages I've found with high-level descriptions: MBC-11A bubble memory controller MBB-11A bubble memory board for use with MBC-11A QBI-11C bubble memory board QSB-11A bubble memory board with RX01/02 emulation It looks like I can just drop the QSB-11A into a system and it should work as if it's an RX01 attached to a controller, but the other boards appear to need cabling and possibly jumpers to configure them for use, and maybe custom drivers/code too. -- Chris

2 years, 7 months

1
0
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Odd free docs

by Chris Zach

Found some documentation relating to Sturthers-Dunn Director 4001 PLC and a SixNet technical config guide, all from the 1980's. Anyone want it for shipping or pickup in MD? C

2 years, 7 months

4
5
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Identity of this PII PC Main board?

by D. Resor

The seller has this listed as a Gigabyte GA-6BXU Rev 1.5 mainboard. https://www.ebay.com/itm/195259246091 According to Gigabyte's website the GA-6BXU has only one CPU slot. This one as you can see has two. The only dual Pentium II slot main board I could find manufactured by Gigabyte is the GA-6BXDS shown here: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-6BXDS#ov Notice the number of electrolytic capacitors beside one of the CPU slots is different from that shown in the main board for sale. The seller has not responded to my inquiries which may be a tip off in itself. Thanks Don Resor

2 years, 7 months

3
3
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Identity of this PII PC Main board?

by D. Resor

The seller has this listed as a Gigabyte GA-6BXU Rev 1.5 mainboard. https://www.ebay.com/itm/195259246091 According to Gigabyte's website the GA-6BXU has only one CPU slot. This one as you can see has two. The only dual Pentium II slot main board I could find manufactured by Gigabyte is the GA-6BXDS shown here: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-6BXDS#ov Notice the number of electrolytic capacitors beside one of the CPU slots is different from that shown in the main board for sale. The seller has not responded to my inquiries which may be a tip off in itself. Thanks Don Resor

2 years, 7 months

4
4
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Symbolics (Lisp) manuals, flyers available

by Stan Sieler

Hi, I have 15 manuals, flyers, and miscellaneous papers from/about the Symbolics, Inc computer(s), database, and more. Pictures at http://www.sieler.com/symbolics If anyone's interested, please email me (sieler(a)gmail.com) List: Concordia__Object-Oriented_Document_Management___Symbolic_Inc__copy Introducing_Statice___The_first_Object-Oriented_Database_System__copy Lisp_Machine_Summary Lisp_Machine_Summary__a_bit_rough Program_Development___Help_Facilities Program_Development___Tools_and_Techniques Reference_Guide_to_Symbolics-Lisp Symbolics_Concordia Symbolics_Marketing Symbolics___3600_Symbol_Processing_Systems Symbolics__a_brochure Symbolics__flyer The_Symbolics_3670__Discover_the_power_of_symbolic_processing The_Symbolics_Genera_Programming_Environment__from_a_magazine VERAC_Announced_GeoFlavors___on_Your_Symbolics_Lisp_Machine__flyer thanks, Stan

2 years, 7 months

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IMSAI 8800b with floppy for sale near Chicago

by steven stengel

Anyone near Chicago want to pick-up a nice Altair 8800B with Altair floppy drive for $1500? It isn't mine, and the working status is unknown. They don't want to ship it. Pictures available here: http://oldcomputers.net/temp/ Let me know and I'll connect you. Thanks- Steve.

2 years, 7 months

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VCF Swap Meet October 8, 2022 @ InfoAge

by Jeffrey Brace

The following info is found here: https://vcfed.org/vcf-swap-meet/, but I'm pasting here for your reference. VCF’s Annual Swap Meet Vintage Computers & Electronics, Radios, TVs, Amateur Radio, Other Tech October 8 8AM to 2PM (General Public) 7AM (Setup for Vendor) VENDOR REGISTRATION HERE <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeMNS0XBHc2enjQjhTYiFON-T0v2YTYAw4…> *$5 GENERAL ADMISSION per person!* *ADDRESS*: **OUTDOOR Swap Meet** *GPS location*: Google Maps <https://www.google.com/maps/place/40%C2%B011'05.5%22N+74%C2%B003'47.9%22W/@40.1848619,-74.0643212,350m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m13!1m6!3m5!1s0x89c228394afc24b3:0x793045909b6e8fba!2sInfoAge+Science+and+History+Museums!8m2!3d40.1857343!4d-74.0593097!3m5!1s0x0:0xbe14db9783fe1872!7e2!8m2!3d40.18486!4d-74.0633081> *Satellite Map*: *Street Map*: Swap Meet Parking *EMAIL*: swapmeet AT vcfed DOT org *PHONE*: 732-722-5015 *Flyer:* 2022-VCF-Swap-Meet-Flyer <https://vcfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022-VCF-Swap-Meet-Flyer-1.pdf> *VENDOR COST* is per space. First space is $20, each additional space is $10. This time it is an *outdoor *swap meet. *Bring your own table!* Table isn’t required, but recommended. A space is considered a 18 feet by 9 feet (the general size of a parking space). * Reservation doesn’t guarantee sales. * The Vintage Computer Federation is only providing a space, vendors must bring their own tables. * In case of inclement weather, money paid will be refunded. * All items that you bring must be taken with you. No items are to be left behind. * Porta Potties on site Free Pile Policy <https://vcfed.org/2022/02/25/vcf-swap-meet-free-pile/> *AFTER THE SWAP MEET, COME VISIT OUR VCF MUSEUM @ INFOAGE!* We are open from 12PM to 5PM: VCF Museum <https://vcfed.org/vcf-museum> The Vintage Computer Federation Museum is located near the swap meet and is part of InfoAge Science and History museums. InfoAge and VCF Museums are open every Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday from 12PM to 5PM InfoAge museums: infoage.org. ========================================= Jeff Brace VCF National Board Member Chairman & Vice President Vintage Computer Festival East Showrunner Vintage Computer Federation is a 501c3 charity https://vcfed.org/ <http://www.vcfed.org/>

2 years, 7 months

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Re: MicroVAX CTI (DEC Professional) card

by Lee Gleason

> Message: 6 > Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2022 19:32:47 -0500 > From: Chris Zach <cz(a)alembic.crystel.com> > Subject: Re: MicroVAX CTI (DEC Professional) card > To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <448ec9e0-a5df-7dd2-65f4-6294e6ebec82(a)alembic.crystel.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > Well, auction is over, I didn't bid on it, and I hope someone here got it. > > That said, the more I look at it, and the more I look at a true MVII > card the more I wonder just what was missing on this card. A true MVII > has a pair of rather large custom ASICs in the center of the board and I > can't believe the 80186 (or whatever that chip is on the top center of > the board) could emulate it all. > > So it would be interesting to see what this thing was and what it did. > > I bought it. I know it's long odds that I can get it to do anything, especially without that daughter card, but, waddahell, it's an interesting DEC PRO collectible. I reckon I'll plug it into a PRO and see if it responds to attempted accesses. If the ROM contains PDP11 or VAX code, I'll disassemble it and see if there are any clues there. -- Lee K. Gleason N5ZMR Control-G Consultants lee.gleason(a)comcast.net

2 years, 7 months

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Pre 5.1 HP-UX media?

by Martin.Hepperle＠dlr.de

Myself and some more people would be very interested in finding a set of installation disks (or disk images) for HP-UX 2.0 and 2.1 and later up to 5.0. Obviously these have never been or made available, but maybe someone still has a set. These early HP-UX versions were used on HP 9000/200 systems with floppy disks like HP 9826 and HP 9836 as well as on 9000/217 boxes. Later versions work fine on HP 9000/300 systems, but not on the 9000/200 systems with Motorola 68010 CPUs. Martin

2 years, 7 months

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You have Apple Lisa 1 "twiggy" system to trade for my IBM 5100 Portable PC?

by steven stengel

This seems like a good place to ask this question - I'd like an Apple Lisa 1 "twiggy" system for my collection, and can trade a working IBM 5100 Portable PC. We'd probably have to meet in person to make the transaction. I'm in So CA. Thanks- Steven Stengel http://oldcomputers.net

2 years, 7 months

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COMAL language in the UK?

by Jonathan Katz

This is a query which came into TNMOC, but I'm wondering if there are people here who can assist. From: <mikkel(a)mikjaer.com> Date: Thu, 1 Sept 2022 at 22:05 Subject: Comal 80 in Great Britain Hey there, my name is Mikkel, I am working on a book about a series of danish micro computers where the history of the programming language "Comal" will be a part of, and i just discovered that there was a UK Comal User groups and also a periodical called "Comal Bulletin", ive searched the internet i cannot find anything. But i hope that you might know some historians or hobbyist? or even online databases? you can refer me to? I would like to know all there is to know about Comal in UK? And as a sidenote, if somebody knows something about danish computers in uk from the 70s and 80s i would of course like to hear about that to. Hope you can help me, more info about my book is here : https://www.thedanishcomet.com -- -Jon +44 7792 149029

2 years, 7 months

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HP 150 software

by Stan Sieler

Hi, I found a bunch of original HP 150 software on 3.5" floppies ... any HP 150 collectors here? Free, pickup, Cupertino. Includes the following. About 1/2 are original disks. The most unusual are probably the compilers from Prospero, and the IMAGE-like database (Mirage?) from Datasoft International (the developer was likely Michel Kohon, from France, and a member of the HP 3000 community). Datacom: DSN/Link HP PCLink Kermit PC2622 Reflection 1 Plus Misc / Unknown: Ally/150 Application Master Extended I/O Application Cardfile (full app) Cardfile demo Computer tutor 150 Edit/150 from KSD systems Limited Infocom sampler Interex CSL/100 volume 56 Interex CSL150 (contributed library) Mentor version 1.E.1 from KSD systems Limited System demo Thinkjet demo Visicalc Games: Tick Tock, Radar, Othello, others Type attack, Temple of Apshai, Ricochet Winning Deal Zork Programming... C (unknown...just says "C" on label) Lattice C MASM Modula 2 MVP Forth (on misc games floppy) Pro Fortran from Prospero Pro For 1 (possibly same as above) Pro Pascal from Prospero Borland Turbo Pascal 2.0 ISV Development (from HP) ISV revision A.1.2 (Independent Software Vendor toolkit from HP?) Programmers Toolkit (HP) Programmers tools: debug, sort, find, edlin, ece2bin, ...more... (HP) Database: ??? Mirager Version ii 2.A.1 Datasoft International Mirage Library Mirage I //

2 years, 7 months

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Re: You have Apple Lisa 1 "twiggy" system to trade for my IBM 5100 Portable PC?

by Tom Stepleton

> >> Are you sure about that? The 5100 doesn't support floppy drives. And > I've > >> never heard of third-party drives (that would need IMFs, too) for the > 5100. > > > > $3100 is about what IBM charged for a fully loaded 5150. (PC) > > THAT is not a 5100! $3100 for a 5100 would have been a bargain. > > We are neither talking about the 5150, nor about $3100 but $31,000 for a > 5100 (see above). Or did I miss something? > There was a third-party floppy drive for the IBM 5100 :-) Or at least there as something that was sold in this way. Here is its brochure: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/sykes/brochures/Sykes_Comm-Stor_5100_Brochure.… Note that it "plugs directly into the Serial I/O Adapter of the IBM 5100 with no hardware or software changes". So it's a serial-port connected floppy drive that talks to the 5100 in a format that it likes. (What is an IMF?) --Tom

2 years, 7 months

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Re: VAXstation 100 ROM image

by Glen Slick

On Tue, Sep 21, 2021 at 10:18 AM Al Kossow via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > On 9/21/21 9:58 AM, Chris Zach via cctalk wrote: > > How the hell did I miss *that*? Cool beans device, I've never heard of a VS100. Was it in a Rainbow sized box or a Pro/350 box? > > Smaller. I have access to one to take pictures and dump the firmware Reviving a year old thread, did anyone get around to dumping the VAXstation 100 firmware? I don't see it where I looked here: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/vaxstation100/ http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/DEC/

2 years, 7 months

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Next Week: VCF Midwest

by Jason T

Hello vintage computing fans across the country and around the globe (that's right - we're international!) The 17th Vintage Computer Festival Midwest is coming up in just two weeks! The hotel is sold out (months ago!), the tables are all booked (and then some!), now all we need is YOU! View over 80 exhibits and vendors, witness more talks than we've ever had before and observe in person the Fabulous VCFMW Auction! And the show is FREE, to boot! All you need to do to participate and receive the full benefit of retrocomputing in the Midwest is...show up. Find out more at vcfmw.org! [September 10-11, 2022 in Elmhurst, IL, right outside of Chicago]

2 years, 7 months

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FS IBM 5100 Printer

by Marvin Johnston

I've got a printer for the IBM 5100 that I would like to sell. I can bring it to VCFMW, but only if it is sold ahead of time (too heavy to comfortably bring on spec.) Best reasonable offer. Marvin

2 years, 7 months

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Bringing up a Sun 386i: Can I use a modern monitor

by Chris Zach

Continuing my exploration of my old stuff pile I'm starting to work on my Sun 386i systems. Old, no doubt but still there. First step would be finding a monitor for them. The video cards I have are the monochrome one, the CGI3 and a CGI5 board. For the color monitors the cable I have goes to the RGBSync and of course to the keyboard/mouse combination. Question: Is there an adapter that can turn the Sun's output to HDMI or VGA for a more modern monitor? C

2 years, 7 months

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Floppy Disk Drive Controller History

by Tom Gardner

Im working on an update to Wikipedia on floppy disk drive controllers there is a nice section on WD but nothing on Intel/NEC Anyone know the history of how the NEC µPD765 and the Intel 8272 became compatible devices? AFAICT it was IBM's August 1981 adoption of the NEC µPD765 in the PC that drove the industry to standardize on the device. The earliest dates I can find for the two devices are: Jan 1981 8272 listed in Intel catalog (not in 1979 catalog) 1979 µPD765 listed in NEC catalog <http://www.bitsavers.org/components/nec/_dataBooks/1979_NEC_Microcomputer_C atalog.pdf> Dec 1978 µPD765 Data Sheet <http://www.bitsavers.org/components/nec/_dataSheets/uPD765_Data_Sheet_Dec78 .pdf> As described in the 1978 data sheet the NEC device was 8-inch FD compatible and of course the PC used 5¼-inch drives but I suspect the differences could be worked around It may well be that they were compatible in previous versions (µPD372 and 8271) Any recollections and links would be appreciated Tom

2 years, 7 months

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Next Week: VCF Midwest!

by Jason T

Hello vintage computing fans across the country and around the globe (that's right - we're international!) The 17th Vintage Computer Festival Midwest is coming up in just two weeks! The hotel is sold out (months ago!), the tables are all booked (and then some!), now all we need is YOU! View over 80 exhibits and vendors, witness more talks than we've ever had before and observe in person the Fabulous VCFMW Auction! And the show is FREE, to boot! All you need to do to participate and receive the full benefit of retrocomputing in the Midwest is...show up. Find out more at vcfmw.org! [September 10-11, 2022 in Elmhurst, IL, right outside of Chicago]

2 years, 7 months

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Stuff available in England

by David Gesswein

I got this message and in wrong country. They said ok to post to lists where local people might be able to pick up. I have 19 rolls of teletype asr 33 paper, and 24 rolls of tape white 1 inch, and various brochures for PDP 8 TSS, and PDP 11 Infos.and 1 box of 2000 sheets of paper fan fold. I am currently in Fareham Hampshire, but will soon be on my way to Germany in a few days. Please let me know. They would prefer one person takes all. andrew_baust(a)hotmail.com Pictures here http://www.pdp8online.com/ftp/misc/supplies/

2 years, 7 months

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Re: Flipping an 8" diskette

by Alan Frisbie

jim stephens <jwsmail(a)jwsss.com> wrote: > Sad day when AOL changed to CDs and you then had to make > coasters or trash them. My wife and our neighbor use them as reflectors to scare birds away from her garden. We finally ran out of the AOL CDs and are now working on my backlog of MSDN CDs. I keep them stacked on a 1/2" wooden dowel, and still have a roughly 4' high stack. That should last us for a few years. Alan Frisbie

2 years, 7 months

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