- cctalk - classiccmp.org

by Murray McCullough

A lot has been written about the origins of the microcomputer. I wrote a book on the topic. Many thanks for mentioning Canada. Whether one is playing games or doing something else micro-computing is usually associated with a microprocessor as CPU. Anything earlier is a minicomputer or something else. Yet this is not the point of the video. Let’s enjoy what has been created and give encouragement to the creators. Kudos to them. Murray 🙂

2 years, 9 months

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Re: IBM PS/2 Model 80 (8580-071) restoration

by Gregory Beat

It has been a long-time (almost 40 years now) since I worked part-time at an IBM dealer, BUT attended ALL the IBM hardware training (and later as an early corporate PC center manager), including the wonderful OS/2 presentations. I also selected that IBM model for my father’s business software, which required IBM hardware in late 1980s. Most of my documents went to on-line resources, like Tomáš Slavotinik (Ardent Tool). Start with reading Tomáš reference documents … to understand what you have. Ardent Tool of Capitalism maintained by Tomáš Slavotinik current as of 3 March 2023 IBM PS/2 model 80 [8580] : “Wrangler” https://www.ardent-tool.com/60_65_80/ 8580-071 Type 1 Planar https://www.ardent-tool.com/8580/Planar_T1.html — The Diagnostic Disk and Support information for that model can be found there. That Disk and a Fresh battery (as required) is a Good Start. greg chicago == Hi, I acquired an IBM PS/2 Model 80 (8580-071) today and am looking for advice on what I should do to check it out before, during, and after applying power for the first time. I'll try to get some pictures if anyone is interested. The label near the power switch says that it's an 8580-071. I have no idea how that compares to the hardware that's in it. There are two full size (5¼) hard drives, the controller card. I don't know what type of drives they are yet, they look to be MFM / RLL like in that they have the common cable and a per drive cable. There is a video card that has a daughter-card in the same slot like a thick sandwich. There is another card that I don't recognize. The card doesn't have any external connectors and it looks like it takes multiple (approximately 4"x4") daughter-cards. I am wondering if this is a memory expansion of some sort. There are two of what I believe are the memory boards between the back hard drive and the power supply. The battery is still in the system, but I didn't see any corrosion and it's away from the motherboard. There is also the degrading black foam used for air ducting. Blech. Q: What things should I do as part of checking out this system. I'd like to eventually power it up and see what is on the drives (if they will spin). I need to physically clean it with a damp rag and get some pictures of the system. Please share any pro-tips / gotchas / etc. that you think I could benefit from knowing. Thank you and have a good day. -- Grant. . . . unix || die

2 years, 9 months

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Re: Age of Tape Formats?

by Chuck Guzis

On 3/8/23 06:19, Paul Koning wrote: > I wouldn't exclude those, certainly not if they are relevant to the evolution of the technology. Are X1 tapes (and Eliott tapes if they are the same format, which I don't know) in some way anticipating LINCtape and DECtape? Are they an independent invention of roughly the same concept? For that matter, would you exclude DECtape on the grounds that it's single vendor? I hope not. For that matter, I suspect the Uniservo I format is specific to Univac, yet you can't very well exclude that from a history of magnetic tape data recording. I view "captive formats" such as DECtape to be evolutionary dead ends. Consider, for example, the Datamatic 1000 tapes--I doubt that more than a handful of people here have ever heard of the system. A captive format. Or the early Uniservo metal tapes? Or the tapes used in the IBM 2321 Data Cell or 3850 MSS? Captive formats and evolutionary dead-ends. How about the stuff that never made it out of the lab? Such as the CDC SCROLL? I suspect that I may be one of few who even have heard of the beast--yet it was included in our forward-looking boilerplate in STAR proposals. How about the 9 track 1/2" 3200 fci tapes? Not mentioned yet. Quarter-inch cartridge tapes were quite varied. Although looking the same at first glance, there were significant differences. Consider the Alphamat...Zetamat 3M series of quarter inch tapes. (e.g. DC600HC). No optical sensing of BOT/EOT/media type holes--all done with preformatting. Those were popular with ADIC crowd--I have a couple of those drives in the eventual case that someone digs a tape up from the trash heap of history. How about the adapters that allowed use of VHS cassette equipment for backup? All dead-ends. Before disks were affordable, or even available, half-inch tape was used as primary storage. Consider the 7090 IBSYS shops--all tape operations. --Chuck

2 years, 9 months

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NOS Tapes 3 X 3M DC 600A 60MB Cartridges (1991)...(speaking of tapes)

by John Robertson

Anyone interested in 3 tapes - has Olympics logo - still in original wrapping? Ether pick up at my shop or pay for postage and handling... John :-#)# -- John's Jukes Ltd. 7 - 3979 Marine Way, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5J 5E3 Call (604)872-5757 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games) flippers.com "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out"

2 years, 9 months

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Using Flashfloppies on Professional 350 and 380--SOLVED

by Chris Zach

Ok, after banging my head against the wall for awhile this evening it looks like I have two flashfloppy drives working on my Pro/380. Well enough to boot from and install 3.2 options. The keys are these: 1) Use a flat 34 pin ribbon cable with three plugs in a straight line. I tried using one with the traditional flip, got frustrated at the extra complexity, and reterminated it as straight through all the way. 2) Set one drive to unit 0 (J2 installed) and the second to unit 1 (J3 installed) 3) This is the kicker: RX50's are Shugart drives. You have to go into the configuration and set the drives to Shugart. IBMPC doesn't work properly with the disk ready and disk swap signal, I stumbled on this when I found that flipping the disk image while it was seeking produced a brief access. Hah. 4) I set the ff.cfg also to read only to avoid stepping on the images by accident. So far it seems to be working, saw both drives in the file manager (I had built a minimum system with the floppies I had) and now I'm reformatting the RD53 drive and doing a full install. Should be as simple as turning the knob and hitting resume. Thanks to Bjoren for letting me know it kind of worked for him years ago which gave me the knowledge that it could work. One issue I can see is that since both "drives" use the same head, stupid software could assume that since drive 0 was seeked to track 30 then drive 1 should be at track 30 and thus no need to change tracks. So far I haven't seen this happen, but we shall see. Interesting. CZ

2 years, 9 months

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Re: on the origin of home computers

by Tarek Hoteit

:) it makes sense, Sellam, to inform her rather than she telling us, but again she and others her age are the future. She will do it her way just like we, at her age, did it our way. Funny: i just remembered a quote from Goonies - “this is our time” It is their time Regards, Tarek Hoteit > On Mar 8, 2023, at 12:22 PM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > On Wed, Mar 8, 2023 at 11:55 AM Will Cooke via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> > wrote: > >>> On 03/08/2023 11:59 AM CST Tarek Hoteit via cctalk < >> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: >>> We probably need to get more advice from her on what we all, old-school >> timers, should do to help keep the legacy going on ! >>> Regards, >>> Tarek Hoteit >> That statement may be the most important one on this list in a long, long >> time. >> Will > > Huh? That makes less than zero sense. > > We're already doing what we're doing. She should be asking US what SHE > should do to preserve the legacy we've carried on to her and her generation. > > I mean, is anyone actually serious about asking Greta how to save the > planet? > > Don't abdicate your responsibilities as an experienced adult over to > inherently naive children. > > Sellam

2 years, 9 months

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Spurious spam filters

by Paul Koning

The notion that mailing lists can filter spam by sender email address is fundamentally broken, at least when the addresses filtered are those of major ISPs. The mistake is that the fact a particular ISP customer sends spam doesn't mean that the millions of other customers do. Since the antispam "service" currently used by the cctalk list doesn't understand this, can it be leaned on to fix their mistake? If not, could it be scrapped? Unfortunately, this sort of wrongheaded behavior goes back decades; one wonders what's wrong with the people who run these so-called services. paul

2 years, 10 months

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CTS-300 / DIBOL for RT-11 V5.x - Any source or downloads please?

by Robin Downs

Hi all and thank you for reading I am trying to get my rebuilt PDP-11/23 running and able to compile and run DIBOL code... I have RT11 up and working again, but cannot find a complete set of CTS-300 files, with the DIBOL compiler FYI, I'm in the UK - and help greatly appreciated! Regards, Robin

2 years, 10 months

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Wanted: Apple III 5MB Profile HD driver file

by steven stengel

The title says it all - the Apple III has an external hard drive called the Profile, but a driver has to be installed on the boot floppy - it won’t boot from the HD. There were also 10MB Profiles, with a different driver file I’m guessing. I have the driver file for the 10MB, but it doesn't seem to work with my 5MB drive. Please help if you can. Thanks- Steve.

2 years, 10 months

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QIC tapes

by Steve Lewis

Is there anyone familiar with restoring or recovering QIC tapes? I have some original tapes from an IBM 5100. (DC300 media, I think?) A couple of them have the band loose -- I've seen these replaced in the past. One of them looks in decent condition, but want a second opinion before trying to read it in the IBM 5100. Can send preview images of the conditions. I do also have an external 5106 and, if the tapes are still readable, I should be able to make "fresh" backup copies (as far as the DC6150 media that I have which is from the 90's). From there, I'm not exactly sure how to digitally extract the content to have preserved. -SL

2 years, 10 months

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