test-drb February 1998

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

147 participants
783 discussions

Can I spin an RL02 up without it connected to the PDP?

by DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com

Just to see if it worked, I showed up at SSI and turned the RL02 on. I'd planned to spin up the pack I have to see if the drive was good. There was a terminator on the OUT port of the drive, and nothing on the IN. I haven't attached it to either PDP yet (I will be this weekend!). I got an error light. So I pulled the manual I have for it, and it's not a diag manual, just a user manual. It says one reason is a loss of clock. Does that clock come from the host computer, or should I be able to spin it up without a host? -------

26 years, 4 months

System/34 contd.

by maxeskin＠hotmail.com

Please don't tell me that there' something on the side opposite the floppy drive that I need access to! BTW, how would I take the thing apart to get to the PSU? Note that the CE side is against a wall. Do you know how much the thing weighs? Is there a way to move it after it's probably made dents in the floor, short of pyrotechnic charges? What do you suppose is the heaviest part of it, after PSU and case? >[Removing PSU for testing] >That may not be possible. A Sys/34 PSU takes about 1/4 of the machine's size - >It's about 1/2 of the front section of the CPU box. >There's additional parts to it in the rear section. Oh, and there's a small >red switch toward the top center of the non-CE panel side of the machine, see >that? It *HAS* to be on to power the machine up. It'll say "power check" >on the frontpanel if you don't. Oh, another thing: See the big LOAD button >on the frontpanel next to the FDD? You think that's to LOAD a floppy, right? >WRONG, read LOAD as RESET... (I found this out the WRONG way...) >you push it to reload the O/S. >------- > ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

26 years, 4 months

Micropolis Disk Storage Module Model No. 1023-II

by wts＠exo.com

I have a Micropolis Disk Storage Module Model No. 1023-II that I got 10 years ago with an Altair. I would like to get it running again. It is a 5.25-inch drive that looks very similiar to the ones used in early Vector Graphic S-100 systems. Does anyone have a manual or information about this drive? Tom

26 years, 4 months

GP-IB (was Re: Atari 8-bit Find)

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 02:27 AM 2/15/98 -0600, you wrote: >Which reminds me: why didn't IEEE-488 ever become a big hit in the >computer biz? It's been around since the 60's, is standard, has good It's used by: Commodore Pets GRiD Compass HP 3000 HP 1000 (I think) Probably others... --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.sinasohn.com/

26 years, 4 months

System/34 contd.

by Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk

> For one thing, what is the CE Panel? The thing is in a corner, with > the end that has the floppy drive on it visible, as well as the side Someone else has already given a far better reply than I could. > that has a small power switch on it. I went down to Radio Shack, they > only had 220-110 transformers that could handle up to 40 Watts. I have > a hint this might not be enoug ;) Also, they had 110-220 transformers. > Could I just wire one of those backwards and get the same result? Possible but not a good performer. Step-down transformers are usually wound for around 220-120V and allow for 10V or so of voltage drop. You'd be lucky to get more than 200V out on any sort of load. Also, 40VA is about 100 times too small :-( Try industrial equipment suppliers - 1kVA, 3kVA, even 5kVA transformers should be obtainable. And the bigger it is the less it'll suffer from voltage drop. > Wouldn't it be easier to just wire two 110 volt plugs together like > I was told I could try if I like "but I would far better notter"? > IS this indeed like trying to move heat from a cold to a hot object? Yes, insofar as it can be done, but don't just connect it up and expect it to happen. And if you get it wrong you'll probably melt the cold object, um, I mean wiring, not to mention causing a big flash and bang and/or your death. The two sockets to which you'd have to connect are almost certain not to be in the same room. If you really want to go down this route, here are some things to think about: First, use 3 pin plugs wherever possible - reversing the polarity of a 2 pin plug at any point during the following procedure could quite literally be fatal. One pin of every 110V socket in the house is a "neutral" pin - at ground potential but not part of the ground connection. The other pin of each socket is "live" at 110V to ground. In each socket, identify the neutral pin if you can (a voltmeter between power pin and ground _should_ do it - if you get 0V or something silly like 40V on each side, you haven't found ground) To evaluate a pair of sockets connect the voltmeter between the live pin of one and the live pin of the other. You should get either 0V or 220V (+/- about 20V in each case). If you get 220V you _may_ be onto a winner. The final barrier is protection. Earth leakage protection (GFCI I think it's called in the US) is almost universal. If the two circuits are on the same GFCI relay, you're OK. If they are not, you're not. The test is, connect an ordinary table lamp (or similar) between live on one socket and neutral on the other. (Check with voltmeter first - it should give 110V.) If the GFCI trips, you can't get 220V by this method. If the GFCI remains stable, you wire up a junction box that takes live >from each socket plus ground from somewhere safe and feeds a 220V socket. Now, are you still thinking of using that method? If so, you shouldn't be! Seriously, I'd recommend extracting the PSU from the machine and opening it up. You never know, it may be easily modifiable to 110V operation. Alternatively, you may be able to substitute one or more 110V PSUs to power the LV outputs in the same manner. Finally, if the machine hasn't been powered up for a few years, you should definitely remove the PSU, power it up with no more than light bulbs on the outputs, and measure voltages. Philip.

26 years, 4 months

Cray articles

by dastar＠wco.com

Here is a series of articles from the Memorybilia web page (http://www.memorybilia.com) about the Cray's Tony Cole bought. Too bad he's doing what he's doing, but then again, nobody drops $15,000 without the intention of making it back. This Cray has had its day What was once the world's fastest computer is sold by Livermore Lab for its scrap value By Tom Abate EXAMINER TECHNOLOGY WRITER Call it a symbol of technology obsolescence, or a museum piece, perhaps. But a Cray1 supercomputer, once the world's fastest computational device, is now sitting in a South San Francisco warehouse, where it will either be sold to a collector or get melted down to recover the five tons of copper and gold inside. Hayward businessman Tony Cole bought the supercomputer for $10,000 at a surplus equipment auction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. When purchased new in the late 1970s, the Cray 1 cost $19,000,000, lab officials said. "We got our money's worth out of it," said Derrol Hammer, a purchasing agent at the lab. "We ran that machine for over 10 years at 24 hours a day." But Hammer said it cost more that $35,000 a month to run the Cray 1, a cylindrical machine that is 7 feet tall and 9 feet in diameter, and requires its own electrical substation to provide it with power. "A desktop workstation of the Sun type, or a Silicon Graphics workstation that we can put on a desk, is a Cray 1 equivalent." Hammer said. "You can buy a workstation for the monthly cost of maintenance" on the Cray 1. So in 1990 Livermore pulled the plug on the aging supercomputer, and began asking other government and university labs if they wanted the 10,000 pound digital dinosaur. When no takers surfaced, the lab auction off the machine in February. Enter Tony Cole, 29 founder of VIPC Computers, a 10-year-old Hayward firm that salvages useful components or scrap metals from surplus machines. Cole offered the highest of seven bids, and drove away on a flat-bed truck with several tons of supercomputer and associated peripherals. "We're sure to make our money back on the scrap value of the metal alone," Cole said. "There's at least $15,000 worth of gold in that thing." Because it is an excellent conductor, gold was used to coat the edge connectors on the more that 1,600 circuits cards that made up the Cray's innards. Cole said each circuit card also contain about 2 pound of valuable copper. But rather than crush the machine for its metals, Cole would like to sell it intact as a relic or the early supercomputer age. "The Cray system is the granddaddy of all of them." Cole said. "I would like to sell it to somebody like Bill Gates or Ross Perot. "It would make a great center-piece." But so far the Hayward entrepreneur has had trouble even giving the Cray away. Gloria Chun Hoo of the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose said Cole had offered to loan the machine to her institution, but the museum thinks it is too heavy. "We thought we could put in our lobby," she said. "But occasionally people have evening receptions here, and we couldn't keep moving it out of the way." The Oakland Tribune, Wednesday April 14th. 1993 Lab sells its supercomputer at a bargain-for $10,000 After 10 years or use, the one-time $19 million machine was just too outdated and costly to keep By David Berkowitz STAFF WRITER Was it colossal government waste or just the price of staying in the research game? About 10 years ago, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory paid $19 million for a Cray-1 supercomputer, then the fastest, most complex computer available in the world. In late February, the lab sold that same computer at auction-less a few key propriety components-for $10,000 to Hayward computer reseller. Tony Cole, 29, said he bought the machine figuring that at the very least he could break it down and sell its gold and other metal parts for $16,000 to $20,000. At best, Cole hopes to deal the 30-ton machine to a technology museum or some domestic company able to foot the $100,000 to $500,000 tab of restarting the now-obsolete machine. Seven parties submitted sealed bids to buy the supercomputer at the auction, a lab spokeswomen said. "Normally you can't get hold of one of these, regardless of the age, because of the nature of it." Said Cole, only the second private citizen to buy a Cray-1. Cray Research Inc. installed about 40 Cray-1s between 1976 and 1982, after which it released the more Cray X-MP and the Cray-2, said Ron Rayome, an analyst with Cray in San Ramon. The computer was used to simulate physical events, such as airflow over an airplane's wing or a missile's casing. "The thing that made the Cray-1 unique was that it was products that exhibited a clear superiority to any other previous technology," said Alan Geller, a sales representative for Cray. Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, deeply entrenched in weapons research during the Cold War era, considered the supercomputer crucial to its design efforts. For the lab, it wasn't a matter of paying $19 million for a machine that would lose nearly all of its value in 10 years: it was a matter of getting the most possible use from a top computer for $1.9 million a year, plus maintenance cost, said Mike May, a former lab director. "You don't really buy it with the idea of reselling it," said Gary Dvorchak, an industry analyst with Hambrecht & Quist in San Francisco. "Presumably, they got the full value they were looking for in terms of the projects they were working on. There are things you can't do without a supercomputer. That's why they're buying them." "There's not much choice," agreed Bruce Kelly, a computer scientist at the lab. "That's the price tag they put on those types of machines. And we need the machine. They do large scientific calculations, real number-floating point calculations. They do them very fast, and they can do a lot of them." Today, the lab uses newer versions of Cray supercomputer, including the latest $30 million YMP-C-90, which is 100 times more powerful than the Cray-1. The Cray-1 that Cole bought was actually one or two the lab retired to a warehouse in 1990 because the were outdated and too costly to maintain. The other was sold three years ago. Darrol Hammer, a technician who works with supercomputers, said the lab was paying more than $30,000 a month to keep the Cray-1's running. Meanwhile, he said many modern desktop computers were able to perform the same functions as quickly and accurately as the Cray, he said. "It just does not pay to keep something like that going." Hammer said. "The power requirements on one of those is incredible." Computer Currents Volume 10 Number 23, April 20, 1993 NEWS & INDUSTRY SILICON VALLEY NEWS "Look Honey, I Bought A Cray 1 Supercomputer!" Tony Cole of Hayward, California says he is the first individual on record to own a Cray Model 1 supercomputer. Though the supercomputer doesn't work, Cole says the gold in it alone could be worth as much as $60,000. Cole bought the Cray at a government auction held by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, Calif.) in February of this year. Cole says the Cray can be fixed, and he plans to sell it to the highest bidder. It stands about seven feet high, weighs in at 20,000 pounds, and cost the government an estimated $19 million new in 1976. Cole said he bid a binary amount, $10,101.01, for the Cray in sealed bids accepted by Lawrence Livermore, figuring the binary number would be lucky. He won the bid, but it took a week for Livermore Labs to requisition a forklift big enough to move the supercomputer the 100 feet to the dock where Cole could load it. The Cray 1 was billed as the first "designer" computer with its cylindrical shape and custom genuine leather upholstery. It took four years for Seymours Cray to build the first Cray 1 when he started Cray Research in 1972. When the first Crays were delivered, they were the world's fastest supercomputers, but only three were known to be still operational in 1991, while others have become museum pieces. The Cray 1 is cooled be liquid nitrogen, and offers 29 14-inch removable media disk drives systems weighing in at 600 pounds each. The main computer housing holds 20 panels with 2,800 printed circuit boards with gold connectors. As for processing speed, Digital Equipment Corporation's new 64-bits Alpha chip, 21064, offers the same processing speed as the Cray 1. Cole says while he could get his money back be selling the Cray for scrap metal, he is hoping to get more. "Selling a Cray just to get gold out of it would be like selling a Model-T Ford for the scrap iron," Cole said. He's hoping Ross Perot or Bill Gates might be interested in having the Cray for their offices. An old Cray employee has even contacted him to offer to get the Cray working again. "I'm waiting to see what happens," Cole added. Own a Piece of History Dept: A couple of years ago, Tony Cole of Hayward, California, became the first and only citizen to own a Cray-1 supercomputer. He bought it at an auction, over the protest of the government. Apparently, the thing is supposed to be sold to the military or who knows what other authorized organizations. Anyway, Tony has taken the printed circuit boards (cards) out of it and selling them enclosed between two thick slabs of Lucite as collectors items, conversation pieces, or whatever you want to call them. These are probably the only cards from a Cray-1 ever to be sold this way, and there are fewer than thousand available. Each one is different, two-sided, and cool looking. Each original card seems to have been mounted on 1 1/2 pound copper plate. Cole is selling them for $xxx.xx each plus $10.00 shipping fee (they weight a lot). Each is about 8 by 10 inches. Grab a piece of history for your desk or wall while you can. Tony can be contacted at Memorybilia Computers, P. O. Box 25554, San Mateo, Ca 94402; 415 525-1212, Pager 415 377-7701. This is one unique and outstanding gift idea for the Techie. Seriously cool. A piece of history TONY COLE IS A COMPUTER freak supercomputers that is. Fascinated with the supercomputers that Lawrence Livermore Laboratory was using to test weapons during the height of the Cold War, Cole bought a 10-ton Cray-1 computer at auction three years ago for $10,101.01. The government originally paid $23 million for the supercomputer. But advances in technology made it obsolete. At the time, Cole told Alameda Newspaper Group he'd melt down it's gold content, sell it and put the Cray's hulk in the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation. Bill Gates, Microsoft's founder and a history buff, told him to do the same thing. Cole quickly found out that wouldn't work, thought, because his 10-ton baby was to heavy for the museum's floors. THE OPEN SOLUTION: Cole founded Memorybilia Computers, a Hayward company built around his Cray. He is breaking that discarded hunk of machinery into parts, mounting it in acrylic and selling it as historical art. Don't laugh. If you've ever visited a top Silicon Valley firm, you know this stuff is everywhere. And Cole is sure tech-art's popularity will continue that he's just bought three, later model supercomputers from Cray itself for a lowly $5,000. The cost to own a piece of technology history? About $200 to $250. Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Computer Historian, Programmer, Musician, Philosopher, Athlete, Writer, Jackass Coming Soon...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0 See http://www.siconic.com/vcf for details!

26 years, 4 months

Linux, Apache, Scripting books (Off-Topic)

by photze＠batelco.com.bh

No, it's OK... I'm happy with the web. After all, it's getting to be classic, and is probably the future. > >Atari BBS* instead. Mine was a 130XE with 384K ram (I did the upgrade > >myself - had to run it with the cover off because of the heat), 4 1050 > >disk drives, and a single 2400b Codex modem. I was 13 years old, I don't > > ABACUS (the Atari Bay Area Computer Users Society) still runs it's BBS on > an Atari 1040ST. (Though, to keep this off-topic, we're thinking of moving > to a linux box.) A travesty !! Or do you mean minix. The Toronto Atari Federation still uses FoRem on a TT. (still sucks) (The sys-op will get me for that ! ) ciao larry lwalkerN0spaM(a)interlog.com

26 years, 4 months

Anyone want a Cray

by fmc＠reanimators.org

Ward Donald Griffiths III <gram(a)cnct.com> wrote: > Did the cops catch up with you after you caught up with him? Did he die > slowly enough to encourage the rest of us to discourage the metal dealers? We all start dying the moment we're born, how do you expect Sam to slow that down? Anyway, this thread got me thinking about a note I saw in comp.sys.super a couple of weeks back. Here it is, cut'n'pasted from DejaNews. Just some things for y'all to think about. -Frank McConnell --- cut here --- Subject: Re: Thinking Machines... From: eugene(a)george.arc.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) Date: 1998/02/04 Message-ID: <6b9dut$k445(a)news.arc.nasa.gov> Newsgroups: comp.sys.super In article <34de7adc.64515852(a)news-s02.ny.us.ibm.net> abaddon(a)ibm.net (Michael Ross) writes: >Several Cray beasts have found their way into museums, but I am >unaware of any TMC machines that have been preserved - and I know of >several that have been scrapped... Several. TCM has a CM-1, a CM-2, and a CM-5 by recollection. Brewster Kahle has kept at least one in his basement (so told). I have yet to attend one of his parties to examine it. The fundamental problem appears to be a guy in Hollywood who has taken to supply electronics as props for movie sets who is attempting to corner the market. I can view a piece of the SAGE system, and I think similar panels have been used on television like the Irwin Allen series Time Tunnel. >Does anyone know of any that may be got rid of in the near (or >not-so-near) future? Preferably in Europe? Particularly the earlier >CM-2 and CM-200 models (pre-sparc). Someone has got to make a point of >saving one, and I would fancy the job ( It'll make a change from >saving pdp-8's and DEC 10's :-) > >Come to think of it, if anyone knows any other serious boxes being got >rid of, please let me know... "That would be telling." Oh, there are several people working on this. It depends on your intent. I can tell you, you have "heavy-weight" competition. Saving this stuff is a lot more expensive than most people realized. And then there is Tony Cole..... --- cut here ---

26 years, 4 months

Anyone want a Cray

by foxvideo＠wincom.net

At 08:56 PM 2/17/98 -0500, you wrote: >> Well, I personally doubt anyone will actually pay that amount since you >> could get similar computing power from a contemporary PC for a fraction of >> that price > >Umm, really... > >Even a low end EL would waste a hotshot PeeCee in a real world number >crunch contest. A Pentium II (or Alpha, or UltraSPARC II) just can not >keep up a good, sustained vector flow like a Cray. Getting a decent 100 >Mflops is very hard to do on a desktop system today, but not for a ca. >1976 Cray-1. If this Cray for sale is a decent Y/MP type, it could >probably sustain many hundreds of Mflops, perhaps into a Gflop. > >And then there is the issue of the memory bandwidth... Seems to me I recall reading a bit of folklore where someone at Apple told Cray that they had used their new Cray to help design their new Apple and Cray replied that they had used an Apple to help design the Cray. Cheers Charlie Fox PS... Sam, did you get your copy of the videotape? > > >

26 years, 4 months

IEEE-488 and Commodore (was: GP-IB)

by Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk

>> Pardon me if I ask a stupid question, but If they were going to >> implement a high-speed serial bus for the C64/VIC/1541's, why would >> they use a device that was primarily designed for PARALLEL >> operation? >> >> It seems that a 6850/6851 ACIA would have been much more appropriate, >> and would have not been such a software mess. > > If computer holy war zealots knew the story behind this Commodore debacle > back in the 80's when the flames were at their highest temperatures, the > anti-C64 contingent would have had a field day. Wouldn't they just! It seems to me that if it's anything like the PET, they were using this parallel chip for all sorts of functions - keyboard scanning for a start - and they were trying to save a chip by putting the high speed serial link onto the shift register function. <rant> It doesn't take that much more time/effort/money to do it properly.... <\rant> Philip.

26 years, 4 months

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test-drb February 1998