test-drb November 1998

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

185 participants
940 discussions

Favorite Head Crash | reply somewhat Off Topic

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< of humorous stories of misadventures involving classic equipment.. < At DEC, we had loads of them.. Hey Allison, I bet you've got a few! I didn't live in the field so they are few. The best ones I can't repeat as they can from product safety. Suffice to say that the words it can hurt you are about as meaningfull to a three year old as some field engineers. Though the woman that wanted a lead vest to work on a laser printer due to "radiation" was always a good laugh. My favorite, was CSSE support room with mostly dead out of rev systems. Of course we had the best (cheap management) so our 11/70 had three RM03s two in use... the third for backup. Why? It had a bad spindle bearing as was too loud to use continuosly! I supported the roll out of the LPS40 40ppm network laser printer. We had a site in utah that had a printing defect and I was sent to see what the story was. Never got to see it... the night I arrive the building had a water main burst on the top floor causing a collapse to the floor below it crushing the printer. The MicroVAXII in the bottom was unscathed! I remember warstories and a few other sites... ;) Allison

25 years, 7 months

Devices with 4004 chips

by Innfogra＠aol.com

In 1990 scrapped an AM Jacquard 100 word processor that had one in it. Nice gold chip with intel & 4004 on it. I did not think to save it at the time. I have a couple of 8008s saved now. Paxton

25 years, 7 months

Microvaxen bits etc.

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< I've got cabling installed all over the place. I just need to work out < what I want to use it to connect to what... I have it beat... Beige RG58 for 10b2 and I am Da Wife!!! Actually due to the construction of the house it's pretty easy to string wire as needed to any room through the attic. I've had to do it for the TV distribution. My .02 is why did they go with BNC? Eithernet would do as well with F connectors and they are cheaper and easier to affix. I've done my share of connectors for RF in 25+ years from TNC, BNC, N, F, PL259s, RCA and XLRs to name a few. Allison

25 years, 7 months

Apple //c pinouts

by roblwill＠usaor.net

I know I asked this question before, but I lost the message when I got a new HD. 1.) What are the pinouts on the RGB port on the //c? 2.) What is the pinout on a standard CGA monitor? ThAnX, -- -Jason Willgruber (roblwill(a)usaor.net) ICQ#: 1730318 <http://members.tripod.com/general_1>

25 years, 7 months

Subscription issues

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

I'm changing my e-mail address to kurtkilgor(a)bigfoot.com, everyone. Now, should I subscribe to majordomo(a)nut.net? Does that forward mail from u.washington.edu? Also, if anyone here can help me with getting mail to work under Linux, please email privately. Thanks. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

25 years, 7 months

Devices with 4004 chips

by mark_metzler＠xoommail.com

I have come to understand that shortly after the original Busicom calculator came out with the 4004 chip, very quickly, many more devices used the chip...everything >from research machines that measured how much food cattle consume, to, I guess, Traffo-Data devices. I think anyone of these devices would become a museum piece. I would like to find a list of such devices, to keep a look-out for them, as they may be disappearing quickly. I have an old line-printer burried in my mini-storage, which is supposed to have that chip. I opened it up to look, a few years ago, and it did have a white chip, which ressembled the 4004 chip that I saw on display in the Intel Museum in Santa Clara, however, unlike the one in the museum, this chip had no writing on it. I also know a man who says he has an old printer with a 4004 chip in it. (He says his sister is still using it, and doesn't want to give it up just now. But I think he is really saying she doesn't want to give it up at all.) Anybody know any more printers or other devices with the 4004 chip? ---Mark Metzler ______________________________________________________ Get your free web-based email at http://www.xoom.com Special clipart offer: http://orders.xoom.com/email

25 years, 7 months

modern removable media drives

by netcafe＠pirie.mtx.net.au

-----Original Message----- From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Saturday, 14 November 1998 13:59 Subject: Re: modern removable media drives >> I can relate to that. I have an RA81 here that sounds like fingernails on a >> blackboard when it runs, but still works perfectly. I can still boot VMS > >A screech on an RA81 needn't be a headcrash, or in fact anything in the >HDA. Motor bearings, Pretty sure it's not a head crash, platter spindle bearing gone dry I'd say. >and even cooling fans can make some pretty nasty noises. And they're a lot easier to fix >(often a drop of oil) than HDA problems. Without a doubt. PC power supply, and increasingly, CPU cooling fans also suffer from this disease. There is a big problem with cpu cooling fans in that sometimes they fail without making noises, and the user is blissfully unaware his cpu is having a meltdown. Screeching power supply fans are becoming a significant amount of my work on older systems. Cheers Geoff Computer Room Internet Cafe Port Pirie South Australia. netcafe(a)pirie.mtx.net.au

25 years, 7 months

Minimum hardware requirements (Was: Old, but not "Classic"

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< Very rarely you see a cached 386sx boards. I have once or twice, Cached SX is an oxymoron. They are cheap and handy. Often speed is not a requirement, just being able to is enough more often than not. < But 386sx still have no HP oomph even running netscape 3.x is like < watching the frozen molsses flow even with 10MB ram. It's not that bad unless you used to PII/300 as your standard. Watching 3.0 run on a 8088/4.77 with a st225...that's slow! < > Acrobat, runs on any 386 and maybe lower. Unfortunatly it's so damm b < > and slow that it's painful even on high end 486s! < < No no... is there other programs that can read the PDF besides < Adobe's? That's the key. I've used Ghostscript for that but that's bulky as Acrobat too and slower. < Hey, I was able to find bunches of 486 w/o cpu but has cache < chips boards and many all in one for 386dx or 486 at 5 CDN each. Cheap is better even 486sx beats a 386dx for the same clock as the 486sx still has a small (4 or 8k) internal cache. < > Gads no. I have a 386sx/16 (intel inboard PC) that can march circles < > around any 286. That has to be the most handicapped 386 around. < < May not be good comparsion because many low end boards often have < no cache. That board of yours must have cache which "breaks" out of < that group to between 20 to 25mhz range uncached. Can you find any < cache on yours? The 386inboard PC does not have cache. It's designed to replace the 8088 in an XT. < True...but I don't want to wear out those drives from all that < seeking, used ram is cheap, try to pile up on that one much as you < can afford. Ram is faster than any drives by long run. DRAM is not cheap. Around here 30pin simms stack up like this 256kx9 free to $1.00 each, 1mx9 $1-3$, 4mx9 $10-15 (if you can find them). It's a local thing. I can get 32mb 72 pin simms for less than the equivalent in 30 pin simms. I do use the seperate swap disk on most of my systems even VAXen as heads take time to move and if the disk is even 50% full the travel time from the current spot to the swap area can be pretty long. A swap drive can be smaller and if it's one that has a lot of heads switching heads is faster than moving them so it's cheap speed even where there is a lot of ram. It can also buy disk space on the main drive. I used to use a 486dx2/50 with a 528mb disk some of the graphic stuff (CADD) needed big swap space to make up for only 8mb of ram so the swap space ate 24mb of an already cramped disk. Putting in a small 60mb drive as D: solved several problems and also allowed me to put a infrequently used temp directory there. I've been one to squeeze older hardware for their best performance and generally I do get a better system often more stable than the previous owner would believe. Allison

25 years, 7 months

modern removable media drives

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>If we began to discuss the agents that can *actually* destroy data >on floppies or other media, as opposed to what urban legend and >"conventional wisdom" maintains as dangerous, that would be fun! Two categories come to mind: 1. Something that physically or chemically removes or obscures the magnetic media. Gouging or scraping off the oxide coating qualifies, as does a chemical strong enough that it will dissolve the binder holding the oxide to the disk. Dust, hair, pepsi, and organge juice are generally too weak to do the damage necessary to prevent using the floppy (after cleaning, of course!). Aluminum oxide will do it :-). 2. Magnetic fields that are strong enough to overcome the coercivity of the media. I find that refrigerator magnets, in direct contact with low-density media (i.e. 5.25" 360Kbyte disks) will usually result in some bad sectors. With higher-density media, which has a higher coercivity, refrigerator magnets aren't strong enough in my experience. And unless you put the floppy in direct physical contact with the magnets in a PM motor or speaker, you aren't going to cause any damage. (I've worked with floppies and hard drives in close proximity to multi-Tesla cryogenic superconducting magnets without any problems, so speakers and motors don't scare me!) Tim.

25 years, 7 months

slashdot

by dwollmann＠ibmhelp.com

Just thought I'd let you all know that I posted info on this list and the one at nut.net to slashdot. There seem to be quite a few old hackers hanging around there, so I expect several will subscribe. -- David Wollmann DST / DST Data Conversion ICQ: 10742063 http://www.ibmhelp.com/ Information on Open Source(TM) software: http://www.opensource.org/

25 years, 7 months

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test-drb November 1998