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by Zane Healy

I wouldn’t normally post anything on eBay, but this looks like something someone should grab. I’ve no clue who the seller is, it’s in Massachusetts. https://www.ebay.com/itm/295558572706 DEC Digital Equipment Corp VaxStation II GPX system with boards & T K70 untested ebay.com It is currently at $300. It could also be converted to a PDP-11 with the right boards. My PDP-11/73 started life as a MicroVAX II, and the BA123 is a great chassis. Of course it’s big and heavy. Zane

2 years, 3 months

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bryanipad.shop site....

by rescue

Recently rejoined the list.... saw someone mention that site.... way too good to be true.... and with a bit of poking around .... looks like most if not all are scraped right from eBay. One item has the eBay price on the bryanipad.shop site crossed out and the lower price added..... I spent too much time on that site before vetting it.... Should have realized the pizza slice logo in the top left was a clear indicator to run away (faster) :-)

2 years, 3 months

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Why the Floppy Disk Just Won't Die

by RETRO Innovations

https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-floppy-disk-just-wont-die/ Take what you want from the article, but I thought the end paragraph, noting that Tom Persky of floppydisk.com is 73 and is only planning to handle things for 5 more years. After that, he thinks the company will not transfer to anyone. Interesting thoughts there. Jim -- RETRO Innovations, Contemporary Gear for Classic Systems www.go4retro.com store.go4retro.com

2 years, 3 months

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domesticating the computer

by Steve Lewis

(I think I prefer the original title of the video my daughter and I have been working on - but still open to opinions about it) Here is TAKE #10 (still AI narrated and a draft, but I found some Census data that may be interesting and had some other revisions that I hope some folks like!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eaolOAcvmg In the Description of the above, I have a note on where to get the image link if anyone is interested in that. Thanks again for the support and encouragement. Over the next week I hope to try out a Live Narration and wrap this up. -Steve summary of changes 0:28 expanded note on CRT (more time to press pause if you want to read) 5:04 new assembly line image, from actual TRS-80 "factory" (still using term "motherboard") 5:55 Apple2 date set to April (going with "announcement dates") revised "BYTE" quote (to be a little better organized) 6:46 revised intro of Z80 6:55 added Kildall image 7:12 revised intro of 6502 7:41 revised VisiCalc presentation (in 1979 he had split window, plotting, and freeze panes!) 9:42 clarify credit of suggesting 86-DOS to Paul Allen (instead of Bill) 10:11 minor revisions in Tandy 1000 presentation 12:31 revised wording of Alto description 13:35 shortend PC-5000 description slightly 13:47 added census report 13:55 (forgot delay in showing critters) 14:04 added online services note 14:22 (more personal computers! extra points if you can name them)

2 years, 3 months

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FD-55 360kB HLS spares for sale?

by Jim Brain

The USB FDC controller ICs finally arrived and I am working to clear the project desk to build a dev board. As part of testing, I'm wondering if anyone has any working FD55B drives for sale with the HLS? I am the market for 1-2 more, and I thought it'd be nice to get one for this project instead of trying to liberate one of my drives from a working machine. I see the links on eBay (a few untested HLS variants and a working non HLS one available), but would prefer a working HLS B. Jim -- Jim Brain brain(a)jbrain.com www.jbrain.com

2 years, 3 months

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Re: on the origin of home computers

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, 3 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, 3 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, 3 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, 3 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, 3 months

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