Found the following on comp.sys.dec, anybody close to
Dover, Delaware?
Mike
=====================================================
Subject: Free to good home -- tons of DEC equipment
From: MegaGodzilla(a)Tokyo.com (Mega Godzilla)
Date: Wed, Dec 3, 1997 00:26 EST
Message-id: <3484e8a4.184368394(a)news.bdsnet.com>
OK. The powers that be no longer want to store this stuff, so the
time has come to make it go away.
We have around 5000 square feet of Vax and PDP equipment
that needs to find new homes. It's mostly older Qbus and Unibus
stuff, so don't expect to find state of the art stuff in here.
There is way too much stuff to list, but in a nutshell, there are
vaxen from 11/730 up to 8820, with many microvaxen in ba23's
and ba123's. There are many unibus pdp-11's, and some
pdp-8 stuff.
There is also a DEC-system 2020.
Many peripherals. TONS of books, manuals, and printsets.
Miles of tape, zillions of disk packs, many 8" floppies, etc.
If someone is looking for something in particular, let me
know and I can see if it is there. Your best bet, however,
is to come walk around and see what you can use.
Equipment is free for the taking and is located in Dover,
Delaware. Don't respond if you are only interested in
scrap. We want to get rid of it, but don't want to see
the stuff junked. Hell, we can junk the stuff ourselves
if that is what we wanted to do. We thought there should
be people out there that can use this equipment.
take one piece, or take everything. First come, first
served. You haul. Unfortunately, we do not have time to
package things for shipping, although if the item is small
enough, and you make a good enough case, exceptions
may be possible. :-)
We are interested in moving this stuff quickly, so please
respond if interested. Email address has been purposely
munged to prevent spam. Re-assemble the address
below to respond.
Thanks,
Jim Bender
jbender at
corpamerica dot com
=====================================================
I have what seems to me a 2400 baud Apple Powerbook modem with book,
drivers, cable and pretty corregated cardboard box.
I'll send it for the price of shipping.
Please get it out of my hair!
manney(a)nwohio.com
At 12:27 PM 12/2/97 -0500, you wrote:
>It's 800xl compatible _if_ you expand the memory, which IIRC was 64K
>standard in the 65xe but 128K (or bigger...) in the 800xl. However, you
I'm pretty sure the 800XL was 64K. The original 800 was 16K standard,
expandable to 48K. The 400 was 16K I think. The 600XL was 16K and not
expandable unless you had the expansion box (saw one once). The 1200XL
might be 128K, but I'm not sure.
P.S., this doesn't include 3rd party stuff. I've seen 1200XL's with the
6502-compatible 16-bit processors with internal hard drives hooked up to a
Pentium being used as a CD-ROM drive.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
At 11:49 AM 12/2/97 -0500, you wrote:
>While doing my usual thrift store rounds, i bought an atari 65XE, xmm801
The Atari 65XE is part of the same generation of 8-bit Atari computers as
the 130XE someone mention the other day. Compatible with the 400/800,
600XL/800XL/1200XL, and 130XE/130XEG. IIRC, the 130XE has 128K ram, the
65XE had 64K? I'm not sure, but the 65XE may be a bit of a rarity; I don't
remember them being sold much. Check with some of the atari sites on the web.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- O-
Uncle Roger "There is pleasure pure in being mad
roger(a)sinasohn.com that none but madmen know."
Roger Louis Sinasohn & Associates
San Francisco, California http://www.crl.com/~sinasohn/
While doing my usual thrift store rounds, i bought an atari 65XE, xmm801
printer, two disk drives, and joysticks, all for five bucks! a little surface
cleaning, and it will look like brand new. anyone know compatibility on this?
it uses the 1050 disk drives, which makes me think it's more or less
compatible with an 800xl, since it can run dos 2-3. i'm also missing the main
computer power supply, although i did get two for the drives. if anyone has a
copy of atari dos 2, 2.5 or 3, i'd need a copy mailed to me since i'd have no
other way of acquiring it.
david
I have a working harddisk, the Fuzzball source, and RT-11SJ. Now to
combine them. I am trying to transfer KSERVE to the PDP so I can use it.
But it won't take an ASCII transfer, I overrun the buffer.
VTCOM and KERMIT don't work, they need an XM monitor. Is there a way to
tell RT11 to increase the buffer size?
Here is the instructions for making the disks.
Keep in mind as you read this that one of my personal mottos
is that if I could write I'd be a writer.
Some of the directions are clearer if you are actually doing
it as you read them.
.............. CUT HERE .................................
PROCEDURE FOR CREATING HARD SECTORED FLOPPY
DISKS FROM SOFT SECTORED FLOPPY DISKS
by Doug Coward
For some time now I've thought about the possiblity of
creating my own hard sectored mini-floppies so that I
would not have to rely on being able to find disks at
surplus and thrift shops as they became more and more
scarce. It seem to me that the only difference between
a hard sectored disk and a soft sectored disk should be
the number of index holes. So I tried making 3 disks
and they worked.
So far this technique has only been used to create double
density 10 sector hard sector disks but there is no reason
I can think of that would keep this same technique from
working to create single density or 16 sector disks.
Currently, I don't own a Wang or any other computer that
would use a hard sectored 8" diskette, so I will not be
able to test this procedure on the larger diskettes. When
I have more time, I plan to try and use the pieces of an
old floppy disk drive to build a "punching gig" to make
the process of punching the index holes easier.
MATERIALS NEEDED
1 1/8" round hand operated paper punch
1 Soft sectored 5 1/4" floppy disk
1 Hard sectored 5 1/4" floppy disk to use as a template.
1 Plain piece of white paper
2 Pieces of 1/2" wide x 1/2" long clear adhesive tape.
The normal index holes from my measurements appear to be
between 3/32" and 4/32". So I decided to use a 1/8" punch
which will make the holes oversize by about 1/64" but
should not make any great difference. Most paper punches
are 1/4" so you will need to go to a large office supply
store to find this punch (like Office Max). The punch I
purchased had a plastic piece over the "female" jaw of the
punch to catch the material punched out. This I removed so
that I could see through the "female" jaw of the punch to
center the punch on the index hole.
PROCEDURE
The difficult part of punching the disk is guaranteeing
the placement of the holes. That is why I use a hard sectored
disk as a template.
1. With the two pieces of tape ready, take and rotate each
diskette in its jacket until an index hole is visible
in the center of the index hole aperture in the jacket.
2. Place the hard sectored disk on top of the soft sectored
disk so that the two visible index holes line up.
3. While holding the diskettes together, insert 3 finger tips
of one hand through the hub opening applying a slight
outward pressure to align the hubs of the two disks.
If the index holes are not aligned
go back to step 1. If they are slightly out of alignment
use the point of a pin or any object that can be inserted
through the two index holes and wiggled to realign the
index holes.
4. With the hubs and the index holes aligned, firmly pinch
together the two diskettes with your other hand, at the
hub. Remove your 3 fingers out of the hub.
5. While still pinching the diskettes together, apply 1 piece
of tape to the diskettes at the hub so that the tape
wraps around through the hub opening and sticks to both
diskettes BUT NOT THEIR JACKETS. Apply the other piece
of tape across the hub opening from the first piece of
tape in the same manner.
6. At this point the two diskettes should have their hub
openings and one index hole perfectly aligned. Also
they should be securely taped together but still be able
to rotate in their jackets. It's important that the
jackets be more or less aligned with each other while
punching the holes or you can finish with some extra
holes in the "new" diskette's jacket. You can, if you
need to, use a small piece of tape across the edge of
the two jackets in one corner to keep them aligned.
7. Now you're ready to punch some holes. Holding the two
diskette jackets in one corner with one hand, insert
2 fingers of the other hand into the hub opening and
rotate the diskettes until an index hole in the top
diskette (the hard sector template disk) appears in
the center of the index hole aperture of the jacket.
Hold the diskettes "template disk up" so that the
index hole aperture is on the other side of the hub
opening from you (away from you).
8. Insert the piece of plain white paper between the
diskettes from the side closest to the index aperture
until you can see the paper through the index hole in
the diskette. This is to make the index hole more visible.
9. Now with the jackets aligned, and the index hole (with the
paper visible) in the center of the index aperture, insert
the paper punch through the hub opening so that the
"female" jaw is positioned above the index hole and the
"male" jaw positioned below the index hole. You will
have to bend the diskettes slightly to get a clean punch.
As you slowly close the jaws of the paper punch you
will be able to sight through the "female" part of the
punch and line up the punch exactly to the existing index hole.
This is where the plain white paper really helps to see
that index hole.
PUNCH THE HOLE.
10. Repeat steps 7,8,9 until you have punched all of the holes.
Remember to keep rotating the diskettes in the same direction
after punching each hole.
Reposition the paper before punching each hole. When done,
peel the tape off carefully, most diskettes today don't
have a hub reinforcement ring and the hub opening can
be stretched or distorted. If you are careful the template
disk over and over again.
.............. CUT HERE .................................
=========================================
Doug Coward dcoward(a)pressstart.com
Senior Software Engineer
Press Start Inc.
Sunnyvale,CA
Curator
Museum of Personal Computing Machinery
http://www.best.com/~dcoward/museum
=========================================
ate: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 09:43:51 -0600 (CST)
From: Cord Coslor <coslor(a)pscosf.peru.edu>
To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu
Subject: Is anything wrong with the server?
This is basically a test to see if I am still subscribed, or if there are
other problems with the list. I haven't received any messages for a couple
of days, and was curious.
How can I contact the list 'grunt' to see if I am still on, to find out
the subscriber list, etc., etc.
Thanks,
CORD
//*=====================================================================++
|| Cord G. Coslor P.O. Box 308 - 1300 3rd St. Apt "M1" -- Peru, NE ||
|| (402) 872- 3272 coslor(a)bobcat.peru.edu 68421-0308 ||
|| Classic computer software and hardware collector ||
|| Autograph collector ||
++=====================================================================*//
This is basically a test to see if I am still subscribed, or if there are
other problems with the list. I haven't received any messages for a couple
of days, and was curious.
How can I contact the list 'grunt' to see if I am still on, to find out
the subscriber list, etc., etc.
Thanks,
CORD
//*=====================================================================++
|| Cord G. Coslor P.O. Box 308 - 1300 3rd St. Apt "M1" -- Peru, NE ||
|| (402) 872- 3272 coslor(a)bobcat.peru.edu 68421-0308 ||
|| Classic computer software and hardware collector ||
|| Autograph collector ||
++=====================================================================*//
<Small dia. hammered punches, called "arch punches" (try General Tool Co.)
<might be good. Any competent machinist should be able to convert a
That works as well. Small punches (I measured the hole at 0.096 +-.001)
are easily gotten.
But to do it correctly you have to position the hole reasonably
accurately. For that you need an indexer, so that the index hole
to sector 1 and the remaing nine fall at the correct places. An
old drive mostly stripped would do for that with the flywheel
marked using a known disk with the envelope removed. Perfect use
for a dead 5.25" drive of any type though some may provide better
mounting and access. The head, track00 sensor, index sendor, motor
and logic can be removed s all that is needed is the spindle and
door clamp assembly. The anvil for the punch can be mounted in the
drive and the clamp closed such that index hole is at the anvil
position in the index mark on the flywheel. With the door closed
the flywheel can then be rotated to each position and the hole
then punched. The correct position on the perimeter of the
flywheel can be notched at the 11(for 10 sector, 17 for 16 sector)
positions and a spring steel detent made. A precision of 1 degree
is easy to achieve and would insure good operation. Once done,
converting 360k soft sector media to 10 sector would be easy and fast.
Allison
