"Jason Willgruber" <roblwill(a)usaor.net> writes:
> -Networking software compatible with the internal networking card (there"s a
> plug next to the keyboard connector that looks like it wants to be connected
> to some sort of network hub).
Looks can be deceiving. That might be an HP-HIL connector -- does it
have a picture of the corresponding plug with one or two dots on the
cable, or maybe just the one or two dots? If so, it's HIL, and is
there so you can hook up a Vectra HIL keyboard (as shipped with the
real original Vectras that don't have alphabet soup after the word
"Vectra") or an HIL mouse or an HIL monitor w/touchscreen.
-Frank McConnell
>The main hardware used was an ALTAIR 8800A Computer
>(INTEL 8080 chip). The software was an MITS Package
>I Monitor, enhanced with JAMON (written by Jerry A. Ford,
>MITS Program #117752). The synthesizers consist of 3
>identical voice circuits (pictured on the front of the
>album cover).
This is an Altair controlled hardware synth I take it?
Now *MY* Altair Synth (pardon the ego!) was all done in
software, with a simple 8-bit d/a converter on an i/o
port. It used 256 bytes of a waveform (fundamental sin(x)
plus some harmonics) that were stepped thru by up to
4 pointers at various rates and added up to get 4 part
harmony. Took a lot of instruction cycle counting to
get the timing just right and was worked up to where
one could, with a lot of tedious data entry, type in
a Bach invention (#8 - was on 'Switched on Bach') and
have it play perfectly. Now, being a 2Mhz machine it
sang bass and tenor mostly.
Spent many a long night getting one together for a
school software contest and the prof. gave the prize to
a lousy serial auto-baud detector (probably because HE
suggested it). So we learned that demo's need BIG
speakers to make an impression :))
A# = (12th root of 2) * 440Hz
B = " * A#
Chuck
cswiger(a)widomaker.com
This is giving me fits. There's something strange with my minivan, that it
generates a *ton* of static electricity whenever I drive even a few
blocks. When I touch the metal of the door upon getting out, I get a
shock that hurts all the way up to the shoulder. The real problem, and
what makes this on topic, is that I use this vehicle to pick-up/transport
my classic beauties everywhere. I'm terrified that I'm going to pick up
that once-in-a-lifetime S-100 rescue or something and kill the guts with
one of these lightning bolts. What I do now is keep a wrist-strap and a
box of Bounce dryer sheets (don't laugh) in my jockey box. Does anyone
know what could be causing this?
Aaron C. Finney Systems Administrator WFI Incorporated
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"UNIX is an exponential algorithm with a seductively small constant."
Doug Spence wrote:
>> The original PET came with four different motherboard variations, viz:
>>
>> RAM = 6550, ROM = 6540
>
> Both of my PETs are of this type, but one has the small keyboard and
> internal tape drive, and the other has the big keyboard.
Large keyboard on a machine that early is a new one on me!
>> My own is the third of those, a 1978 revision (a pity in a way - the
case
>> has the old tape deck, the blue screen surround and serial number
1000035,
>> one of the very first)
>
> Are you sure that 1000035 makes it one of the first? Perhaps it's one of
> the first of that revision or something?
Blue trim was dropped fairly early - both the machines we had at school
were black trim - as was the rebadged cassette deck with the lift-the-lid
eject mechanism, the latter being replaced by the C2N. I had always
assummed that 1000035 meant the 35th machine with the 220-240V power
supply.
> My PETs are 0014090 (small keyboard) and 0020272 (large keyboard). Both
> have the first motherboard variation, blue trim, and white screen.
Help. We need the Anderson. Larry, where are you? Can you help on this?
> Actually, IIRC my small-keyboard PET uses little rubber cups. But I
> suppose there may be springs as well. The keyboard didn't work when I
got
> it, so I had to disassemble it and wipe the circuit board clean. I never
> disassembled it beyond pulling the circuit board off.
No rubber cups. Rubber cups or domes always in my experience give some
sort of mechanical hysteresis when you press them. All PET keyboards I've
used are smooth until they hit the stop. Small keyboard had little black
rubber pads set into the plastic mouldings of the keys.
>> The top 4 address lines are decoded on the mobo by a 74154 to give block
>> select lines. The block select lines 0 (bottom 4K of RAM), 8 (screen
>> memory) C, D, E (I think) and F do _not_ appear on the expansion
connector.
>> All others do. The rest of the address lines (0 to 11) are also
present.
>
> Yup, you're right. Interestingly, Blocks 9, A, and B are listed as
> "Expansion ROM" on my PET memory map... I had a dream a while back where
> the university was throwing all kinds of neat old junk out, and I found a
> horde of PET cartridges(!) that plugged into the side expansion port.
> While I've never heard of such a thing, is there any reason a cartridge
of
> that type couldn't have been a reality?
Only the lack of power. Flying lead from cartridge to 2nd cassette port is
the usual solution AFAIK (it's what I did on my RAM expansion). No, I've
never heard of ROM cartridges like this but I've met other things I think.
ROM expansion usually went inside...
>> When I added a 62256 to my 8K PET, I encoded the block select lines for
24K
>> of RAM space and 8K of expansion ROM space (blocks 9 and A). Beware -
POKE
>> also fails here, not just PEEK, if you're accessing this RAM from BASIC.
>
> So you've actually already done something like this! Excellent!
Indeed I have. Tony Duell helped with one or two tips, I think. Such as,
65256 doesn't work, use 62256 instead. And the way of avoiding the need
for inverters if you use the right sort of gate when re-encoding your
address (but I may have failed to implement that).
> Why do POKE and PEEK fail there? Was that done on purpose or is it just
> the result of something lame like using a signed value to represent
> addresses?
No, it's software. It was a feature that was supposed to prevent
inquisitive geeks disassembling the BASIC ROM between $C000 and (I think)
$E7FF. The OS ROMs, above $F000, were peekable, though, as was the I/O
space in the E block. You could of course peek and poke the screen, $8000
- $83E7 inclusive.
> I think *all* of the 6550s in that machine are duds, but I could move 4K
> over from the working machine. (I've tried the dead ones in many, many
> combinations but perhaps not all.)
Zog! You'll have to pull block select 0 from somewhere on the motherboard
then. You might as well take +5V from there while you're at it.
I'll try and dig out my RAM expansion board, and work out what it did.
Meanwhile, have fun!
Philip.
Zane;
I just got in the whse two reader printers (dry toner) that print on plain
paper. I buy and sell microfilm equipment also. If you wanted to rig a parts
scanner to a Microfilm reader I have both parts too.
However I would recommend a service bureau that could turn the Microfilm into
CDs. You should get high quality documents that way. This should not be too
expensive, particularly if you have a lot of pages. Archiving technology has
pretty much moved to CDs. Service companies that used to film documents
nowadays image documents to CDs. I have one of these companies interested in
purchasing one of the reader printers I got in. I expect to be talking with
him tomorrow. I will ask about getting MF data into the computer, costs and
turnaround.
Paxton
< The correct URL is:
<
< http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=45456336
what the frap is it?
peersonally if people post the item a short description of 25 words or
less would be nice. Its a pain for me to crank up the winsock just to
see what the silly thing is.
< This is an incredible artifact.
Then mine must be worth a bomb. then there are the two floppy roms
(sheet disks with audio casette data on them).\
Allison
I guess I'm being a bit whimsical.
But I was intrigued and impressed with the recent NASA super-resolution
images, generated from the Pathfinder pictures. The basic gist of it, as
far as I understand it, is that given an unchanging target (the fiche, for
example), you can build up a much higher resolution image than your scanner
is capable of simply by making multiple scans and processing them together.
Each will be offset from the others by fractions of a pixel (assuming you
move the fiche ;). Software to combine multiple lores images into a highres
image would be fairly straightforward.
I guess the more scans you do, the better resolution you can obtain. Yes,
its tedious - but should work.
A
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Richman <bill_r(a)inetnebr.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Monday, December 07, 1998 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: Scanning Fiche
>We installed a document imaging system at my office about a year ago; it
>has a Kodak double-sided paper scanner and a fiche scanner. The fiche
>scanner (admittedly low-budget compared to the $50K+ fully-automated
>scanner) is called a "ScreenScan". It's basically a standard fiche
>reader with what looks like the guts of a flatbed scanner mounted across
>the front. You insert a sheet of fiche, position and focus the page you
>want, and hit the "scan" button. It scans a linear image sensor array
>like the one in a flatbed scanner down the screen from top to bottom, at
>pretty much standard flatbed scanning speed. I think it's set up to do
>200 or 300dpi; not the world's sharpest images, but most of this stuff
>is just for backup records of stuff that happened 20 years ago, so it's
>not critical that it be pretty - just readable. I wouldn't be surprised
>if you could rig up something like this pretty easily yourself; pick up
>one of the fiche viewers that they can't give away at most university
>and government auctions, get a cheap flatbed scanner (even pretty good
>new ones can be had for under $100), take the mechanism out of the case,
>and bolt it to the front of the fiche viewer. You'd have to remove or
>disable the light source, since the bulb in the fiche viewer provides
>the illumination. I don't think you'd even have to mess with the focal
>length much; the fiche viewers normally do a rear-projection on frosted
>glass, and the scanner is set up to focus on a sheet of paper an inch or
>two away from the sensor, so with a spacer or two it should just work.
>That sounds like an interesting enough project that I might even build
>one if I had anything on fiche to scan. (I'm more interested in getting
>my 2,000-3,000 science fiction and computer books on CD-ROM, personally,
>but I have yet to come up with a non-destructive method that's
>reasonably fast. I could take them to work, use the hydraulic paper
>cutter in the print shop to cut the spines off all of them, and then jam
>them through the auto-feeder on the Kodak scanner, but I'd hate to.
>I've even gone as far as scanning all sides of a couple of books and
>using a 3D drawing program to make a rotatable, zoomable "virtual book"
>that I could put on a "virtual shelf" in a "virtual library" and use as
>an index to the scanned text, but there's still something about touching
>an actual paper book that I can't let go of...)
>
>On Sun, 6 Dec 1998 15:15:17 -0800, Zane H. Healy wrote:
>
>>While this might be considered more than a little off topic, I don't think
>>so, since a lot of us have classic computer documentation in the form of
>>MicroFiche. Does anyone know of a method of scanning this stuff into a
>>computer, or any idea as to what resolution of a scanner such a project
>>would require?
>
>
> -Bill Richman (bill_r(a)inetnebr.com)
> http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r - Home of the COSMAC Elf
Microcomputer
> Simulator, Fun with Molten Metal, Orphaned Robots, and Technological
Oddities.
>
>
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard A. Cini, Jr. <rcini(a)msn.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, December 06, 1998 1:11 PM
Subject: Anyone have 1/83 Byte Mag?
>Does anyone have the 1/83 issue of Byte Magazine? In it is part 3 of an
>article by Steve Ciarcia about the MPX-16 PC-compatible SBC. I have parts 1
>and 2, so I need the third.
>
> Thanks!
>
>[ Rich Cini/WUGNET
>[ ClubWin!/CW7
>[ MCP Windows 95/Windows Networking
>[ Collector of "classic" computers
>[ http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
>[ http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/pdp11/
><================ reply separator =================>
The local library has Byte on micrfiche. If you live in the Vancouver
Area, you can get a printout or just read it. It is at the Surrey library
in Guilford.
Any idea where to get these any of these HIL devices?
--
-Jason Willgruber
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#: 1730318
<http://members.tripod.com/general_1>
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Sunday, December 06, 1998 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: OT HP vectra networking
>
>It's probably an HP-HIL (Hewlett-Packard Human Interface Link IIRC)
>connector. This was an HP interface used for keyboards, mice,
>touchscreens, digitising tablets, security dongles, etc. You can
>daisy-chain several devices off the same connector.
>
>-tony
>
>
At 01:13 PM 12/6/98 -0500, you wrote:
>On a related note, wasn't there a electronics surplus dealer of some
>sort, perhaps based in Massachusetts, called "Meshna"? I'm wondering if
>someone knows whether they are still in business. Any web search turns
>up nothing.
>
>
> -- Stephen Dauphin
Several years ago I looked for Meshna without luck. They had computer boards
(transistor, TTL, etc and parts for a vector graphics terminal, Sanders
IIRC. I think I had bought in the mid 70's a computer cassette deck, new in
the box packed with foam cutouts from them. This has long vanished as well.
I did find a similar company, B and F (Peabody, MA) thay still exists,
www.BNFE.com.
-Dave
