- cctalk - classiccmp.org

by hupfadekroua

Hi all, today it happened to me I got a lot of stuff - spares for my HP9100, which do have the status of almost unobtanium: - three cathode ray tubes, just tested and working - two complete board sets - several core memory boards Andreas

5 months, 1 week

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VCF West 2026 Call for exhibitors: Aug 1 & 2, Mountain View, CA

by Jeffrey Brace

VCF WEST 2026 CALL FOR EXHIBITS! We have a new exhibit registration system: https://em.vcfed.org/events/vcf-west-2026/exhibitor-signup DATES: Aug 1st and 2nd at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. INFO: https://vcfed.org/vcf-west Jeff Brace

5 months, 1 week

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VCF Tech Swap Meet. Sat. May 30. Wall, NJ.

by Jeffrey Brace

VCF Tech Swap Meet. Sat. May 30. Wall, NJ. Vintage Computers, Electronics, Radios, TVs, Amateur Radio, Tech VENDOR REGISTRATION: https://forms.gle/v9U9ZPVFDTQu56hF9 INFO: https://vcfed.org/vcf-swap-meet/

5 months, 2 weeks

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Apollo DSP80A/90 documentation?

by Kurt Nowak

Just a shot in the dark, but does anyone here happen to have a collection of Apollo documentation, specifically for the DSP80A/90? According to the Apollo documentation index they would be: Operating the DSP80A/DSP90 - number 004957 Unpacking and installing the DSP80A/DSP90 - number 004958 and Servicing the DSP80A/DSP90 - number 005806. Unsurprisingly, between my collection and Bitsavers, I cant seem to find anything on line anywhere. I'd be pleasantly surprised if i wasn't the owner of the only remaining DSP90. -Kurt

5 months, 2 weeks

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Re: Looking for MULTICS "screenshots"

by Craig Ruff

You can also run Multics in a simulator: https://dps8m.gitlab.io/dps8m It's been a while since I've been actively involved in that project, but it ran nicely.

5 months, 2 weeks

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Looking for MULTICS "screenshots"

by Steve Lewis

I realize MULTICS is from teletype era - so probably no old photographs showing MULTICS output in that form. But looks like MULTICS was actually in use for a couple decades, maybe some photo of a CRT with aspects of MULTICS presentable? Mostly trying to verify what the "list" command output looked like. But it should have some way to list processes also. -Steve

5 months, 2 weeks

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pulling data from IBM 3480 tapes - anyone interested in $$

by Bill Degnan

I have an opportunity to read some 3480 and related IBM format tapes, looking for someone in the Phila area who has the hardware to archive/retrieve the data from this format. This would be a service for which you would get paid. Contact me privately through kennettclassic.com/contact.cfm Thanks BIll

5 months, 2 weeks

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Massbus emulation

by Jim Bender

Does anybody here still use Massbus? Or have a Massbus system you’d like to run, but the idea of dealing with washing-machine disk drives is a bit less appealing these days? In what may classified as a momentary lapse of reason, I have taken up the old Living Computer Museum Massbus emulator project and am in the process of resurrecting / modernizing it. Current progress photo here: http://www.dmv.net/mbe/mbe1.jpg Why, you ask? "Has he gone insane?" are you thinking? I have three PDP-11/70s that I would like to get running again. Sure, I could cheat and hang a UNIBUS SCSI controller with a ZuluSCSI disk simulator, but where is the fun in that? Also, the 11/70 was designed and optimized around Massbus for primary storage, so it seems only fitting to use it that way. The original LCM emulator used a PC with a Mesa 5I22 FPGA card as the Massbus interface. The FPGA implemented the drive-side bus logic, while the PC software emulated the backing disk or tape image. A driver/receiver (“D/R”) board sat in the middle to translate the Massbus differential signals into logic levels suitable for the FPGA. It worked... Since Mesa 5I22 cards are now pretty much unobtainium, I went looking for a cleaner and more modern approach. The result is a redesigned D/R board that accepts a Terasic DE10-Nano directly. The DE10-Nano is a small Linux SBC with a Cyclone V FPGA onboard, so it can host the emulator software itself while the FPGA handles the Massbus interface duties that were previously done by the Xilinx FPGA on the Mesa card. Same general architecture, but much tidier. There is still work to do, but it is coming along nicely. The board in the photo is not yet fully populated, since I am doing incremental testing before committing the rest of the parts. As I have gone down this rabbit hole, naturally a few questions in the “why did they do THAT??” category have come up... paging @Rich Alderson ... If anyone here is still actively using Massbus, has experience with the original LCM project, or just has relevant war stories, comments, warnings, or encouragement, I would be glad to hear them. Cheers! Jim

5 months, 2 weeks

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VCF West 2026 Registration is open!

by Jeffrey Brace

VCF West 2026 will be held on August 1st and 2nd at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. We have opened registration for exhibits, vendors, speakers, and volunteers. Please visit our event application at https://em.vcfed.org/events/vcf-west-2026 to register. Also, please note that this software is new, so there may be a bug or two. Please report any issues, or send any questions or comments to vcfwest(a)vcfed.org. Thank you! Jeff Brace VCF West co-showrunner

5 months, 3 weeks

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Re: Why do we do these things? (was: Massbus emulation)

by Kevin McQuiggin

It is nice to get back to these old programs. A few years ago I fixed a bug in an undergrad chess “knight’s tour” program I wrote when I was about 18. It was written in PL/I. Last edit: 1978; I happily added “bug fix, 2016”. I knew of the bug, just never got around to fixing it. I added some printout improvements too. I had the Hercules S/360 emulator running. MVS 3.7j I recall. Memory lane trip for sure. JCL? Had to find my “green book”! Kevin Sent from my iPhone > On Apr 24, 2026, at 12:34, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > >> On Apr 24, 2026, at 3:26 PM, Brian L. Stuart via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: >> >> Very cool. A while back, I resurrected one of my senior >> projects from 1984, a little Forth-based OS for the PDP-11. >> It was originally implemented on an 11/34 with an RK05, >> but now I've got it on a little LSI-11 in a BA11-VA box >> with a little 6809 board I build and wrote a TU58 emulator >> for. > > I recently started playing a lot more with Forth. The main reason is that I ran into a very nice extended Forth system for the Raspberry Pico, which makes for a much nicer development environment than the vendor-supplied C API. It's a bare metal system, implemented mostly in Forth with the low level bits in assembly language. No C or C++ anywhere. > > https://github.com/tabemann/zeptoforth > > It does networking, too. I've been using it to develop a nice NTP server (and disciplined oscillator), very nice and small. > > paul >

5 months, 3 weeks

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