Hi all,
Once I visited LCM some years ago I was allowed to visit their repair laboratory.
I was introduced to an approach to substitute DEC BA11 PSU modules by modern DC-DC converter modules.
They used a 3D printed plastic chassis to mount the converter, electrolytic as well as the connectors to be fitted into the psu chassis of a BA11 enclosure, quite nice.
See photo attached …
Does someone knows if this stl or design has been saved while or after LCMs closure?
Best
Andreas
> Oh, my, of course yes.
> This is sad news. I wonder if I can talk my editor into a belated
> obit? I feel too ignorant though...
I guess you could try
I'm a nobody but De Castro was important
First person (I think) to put a whole CPU on a single card, at least in a mass-produced machine
I was surprised to find out this morning that it seems Ed De Castro has passed on September 6 this year.
I can't see any reference to this in cctalk, so I'll try to give a short summary of Ed's accomplishments.
Many here would know that Ed worked for DEC and was project manager in charge of developing the PDP-8.
He left DEC to found DG in the late 60's and was the original designer of their Nova system, introduced to the marketplace when he was 29.
Ed was obviously a highly talented engineer, but it was the founding of DG that I would imagine was his most outstanding accomplishment.
DG wasn't the first disruptive new entrant in the computing marketplace in that period, or the largest for example with DEC and HP preceding them.
In order to stand out, DG used every trick in the marketing/advertising book that they could think of.
It seems that DG may have been the first disruptive tech startup to also display a very high level of cheeky confidence as being central to their brand.
I get the impression that DG staff took up this spirit and ran with it, at times even faster than management might have liked them to.
DG also sounds like a company that required high performance - everyone there knew what the expectations were.
Somehow a generally quiet, matter of fact engineer like Ed created a 'pirate ship' that people absolutely thrived in.
Perhaps it could even be said that DG were the template, in terms of culture, for what we imagine tech startups to be striving for even today.
There are numerous videos on YouTube that give a sense of this, including regarding the Talking Propeller Heads, the inhouse DG rock/comedy band.
Looking also at early Apple advertisements, for example, I was struck personally with the similarity in tone and style to DG's advertisements.
This quote from http://www.teamfoster.com/billteamfostercom sums up the company well:
"The company was a puzzle. It broke all the rules and yet was extremely successful. It had the reputation of being the "bad boy" of the computer industry -- heck, of any industry. And it enjoyed this reputation. DG became a public company less than two years after it was founded and shattered records in making it to the Fortune 500. Too bad Harvard never wrote a case study. It would have been groundbreaking! But if they did Harvard would have had to admit that EVERYTHING they taught about how to run a business could be wrong…"
Also this quote from https://www.ithistory.org/honor-roll/mr-edson-ed-de-castro:
"Steve Wozniak, Apple's future co-founder, (in high school at the time) was said to be enchanted with the Nova's elegantly designed architecture, and had photos of the machine taped on his bedroom wall."
And of course most of us know of Tracy Kidder's Pulitzer prize-winning book, The Soul of a New Machine.
These are just some short thoughts from someone who never worked at DG.
Hopefully some others here with deeper experience can comment also.
Vale Ed De Castro
I meant to reply-all for this.
paul
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> On Oct 9, 2024, at 5:27 PM, Zane Healy <healyzh(a)avanthar.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Oct 9, 2024, at 10:22 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Earlier there was a question about MSCP disk sizes. I did some checking.
>>>
>>> RSTS understands all the devices known by name in SIMH, including the "giant" RF73. As of the "big disk" support, which is in V10.1 and I think a few earlier versions, it can handle something that big. It draws the line at 4096 MB; bigger than that and it will tell you the disk is too big when you try to initialize it. I thought it might use only the part it can handle, but no, it simply refuses entirely.
>>>
>>> Paul
>>
>>
>> I hate to think what setting up a 4GB drive would look like. I have a 1GB SCSI HD for my PDP-11/73 (assuming the drive isn’t dead). I still remember just how long it took the RSTS/E 10.1 install to prepare that drive (so long I only did a single pass on the drive test).
>>
>> On a related note, Paul, do you have any idea if RSTS/E can be installed from a CD-ROM? I’ve done installs of RT-11 and RSX-11M+ from CD, but couldn’t figure out how to do a RSTS/E install from CD. I can’t remember if I was able to use 4mm DAT, or if I had to use a TK50 (it’s been a *LONG* time since I did any installs).
>
> I have never seen a RSTS kit on CD-ROM, but it should work just fine. At one time I worked with Fred Knight to help create a "combined kits" CDROM -- one that would hold RSTS plus all the layered products on a bootable CD, including at least a dummy standard CDROM file system so you could recognize it. That required placing two file systems on one device, which turns out to be possible because the starting points ("superblock") of the two are in different blocks. My RSTSFLX V2.x supports creating such a thing.
>
> While I knew of the plans, I don't think they were ever completed; I certainly never saw any actual delivery.
>
> So anyway, if you were to create a RSTS disk image file with kits on it and an MSCP bootstrap, and burn that to CDROM, I would think it would be bootable and useable. You might give it a try!
>
> paul
Earlier there was a question about MSCP disk sizes. I did some checking.
RSTS understands all the devices known by name in SIMH, including the "giant" RF73. As of the "big disk" support, which is in V10.1 and I think a few earlier versions, it can handle something that big. It draws the line at 4096 MB; bigger than that and it will tell you the disk is too big when you try to initialize it. I thought it might use only the part it can handle, but no, it simply refuses entirely.
paul
Hi folks,
I have a floppy disk data archiving project to undertake, and although I'm
aware that this can sometimes lead to spirited discussion (and hope to
avoid that!), I'm interested in current good practices for pulling data off
of hard-to-replace disks.
In this situation, the disks are 8" floppies likely in ordinary IBM
26-sector, 77-track, 128-bytes/sector, double-sided FM format. I have a
flux reader and will have a pair of Shugart 851 drives for the job; these
likely haven't been used for a while, though. At this stage I'll consider
the job done if I manage to get good low-level recordings from the disks:
assuming the FM data decodes well and sector CRCs look good, further
analysis can come later.
The main risk I'm worried about is physical damage to the media. While
reportedly the disks don't show visible defects (nb: they belong to someone
else so I can't inspect them myself right now), I'm still anxious about any
chance I might find the binder that secures the magnetic material to the
cookie degraded to the point of allowing the oxide to come free. Most other
situations I think I can deal with, but I'd like to have a more concrete
plan if I start to find oxide building up on the heads.
I'd be interested to know what precautions people might take for common
data recovery problems. One option is cyclomethicone for cleaning and
lubrication if necessary, but other than "you could use this", I'd be
interested to know details of how people put it to use if they are worried
about media failure. Meanwhile, I'm disinclined to use isopropanol or other
more aggressive solvents given received wisdom, although I know opinions
differ here.
The disks are boot media and other materials relating to the RSRE Flex
operating system <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_machine> as developed
for PERQ workstations. I'm not aware of other copies of this OS being
available, though it would relieve some of the pressure to learn that these
weren't the only ones. The disks themselves are primarily ICL-branded
although a few indicate manufacture or resale by Maxell, DEC, Inmac, among
other brands.
Is there anything else that people would advise me to look out for?
I did find this thread
<https://classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2018-July/040673.html>, but
practices may have advanced in the past six years. I know the whiteboard
cleaner that folks seem to have liked is difficult to find these days,
particularly here in Britain. I've also had a hard time finding Photo Flo
or similar photographic wetting agents and have used deionised water with a
drop of dish soap instead.
Thanks for any advice,
--T
