test-drb June 1998

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

158 participants
941 discussions

MicroVAX 2000

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<VMS 5.5-2 installation. I really don't know about the resistor board, <though -- I'm afraid I've never seen one. It's there to load the switcher, a disk will do that too! Allison

27 years

MicroVAX 2000

by allisonp＠world.std.com

< A uVAX 2000 uses MFM drives, either a <Microplis 1325/DEC RD53 (70MB) or a Maxtor 2190/DEC RD54 (159MB). In <order to load VMS you really need the RD54, 70MB is too small. The HD You can load v5.4 on to a RD53 if DECwindows is tailored off. You get about 20k blocks that way. A RD54 is better though. I have three of them, nice uVAX two running VMS (rd53), one Netboots off the 3100m76. The third has ultrix V4.2 in rd53(70mb). Allison

27 years

available 8" disks

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Next question? WFERE is 'local'?? I keep forgetting that no matter how often I've posted my location it's never read... Eastern MA about 25 west if boston. Allison

27 years

Apollo again.

by DSEAGRAV＠toad.xkl.com

How nice: Both of the video cards I got are toast. One acts completely dead, the other shows a series of red vertical bars about .25" apart, with crap in between. Apparently, these were decommissioned for a reason... -------

27 years

MicroVAX 2000

by peacock＠simconv.com

> This one is a Model 625NT-AA, and comes without harddisk. It appears that there is a resistor board installed to provide a load comparable to the drive on the power supply. According to a rather sketchy spec sheet that I d/l'd from DEC, it can handle a maximum 318mb local disk. Based on the 53C80 chip installed, I presume that the drive should be SCSI. > Not exactly, the SCSI port is only for a tape drive, a TK50Z (an early ancestor to modern DLT drives). A uVAX 2000 uses MFM drives, either a Microplis 1325/DEC RD53 (70MB) or a Maxtor 2190/DEC RD54 (159MB). In order to load VMS you really need the RD54, 70MB is too small. The HD controller is the 40 pin SMC chip on the motherboard. Oddball MFM format, not compatible with WD HDCs, but the 2000 has a formatter in the ROM. The 318MB figure comes from using two RD54 drives (159 each). > At the rear of the machine are three sub-D connectors, one each 25-pin, 15-pin, and 9-pin. What are their functions? The 15 and 9 are presently encumbered by a plugin box that has three RJ45(?) connectors. Network link? > The 25 pin is the TTA2 port, RS423 (close to RS232) with full modem support (sort of). The 9 pin is TTA3:, another RS423 serial port for a local printer or terminal, but not wiored like a PC 9 pin serial. The 15 pin is for a workstation cable and carries the video (the coax connector on the little box), plus a keyboard and mouse connector (TTA0: and TTA1: serial ports). They are not RJ45s. You should also have a BNC coax connector for 10Base5 thinwire ethernet. For more info check the comp.os.vms and comp.sys.dec newsgroups, they have lots of FAQs for uVAX 2000s. I don't know the URLs but if you post a question on one of the ngs they will direct you to the web page. BTW, I might have an expansion memory board left for a uvax 2000, i'll check the old DEC scrap box. IIRC it brings one up to either 8 or 14MB of RAM. (a uVAX II maxes out at 16MB of RAM) Jack Peacock

27 years

new additions, info wanted

by g＠kurico.com

More fun stuff picked up this weekend: Canon Cat - A glorified word processor that was created by one of the original members of the Macintosh team. Mentor Graphics badged Apollo DN300 workstation. Whole box of Apple II cards and other misc stuff. Anyone have any info the the Canon Cat? Or manuals/software for the Apollo? Oh, I also have a couple of AT&T 6300 cpu's that I'll give to anyone who wants them (don't know if they work, don't have time to check them out). I also have a AT&T 3B2-310 with external expansion unit (XM something or other) for sale or trade, make me an offer I can't refuse :) BTW I'm in Austin, TX. George

27 years

Intelus/NEC laptop

by gpine＠gri.org

I recently acquired a laptop that appears to be an NEC PC-8201 with a label of a company named Intelus on the front where the PC-8201 label would be. There is also a serial number label on the back that lists the address of Intelus as in Rockville, Maryland. In addition, it has a miniature connector labeled phone on the back in place of the second SIO connector (maybe the unit has an internal modem? I haven't opened it up to check), and it has an additional small removable panel on the back that provides access to an edge-card connector on the motherboard. My machine has nothing plugged into this connector. The machine fires up showing BASIC, TELCOM, and TEXT programs in ROM, and the BASIC program even says PC-8201 Basic, verson 1.1. The machine is in all other respects (keyboard, display, battery pack, ROM access, and external connectors) identical to my PC-8201. Is anyone familiar with this machine?

27 years

Quarter classics (was: Big Iron Was:RE: Backwater areas Wa

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 08:01 PM 6/18/98 +1, you wrote: >Robotron ? > >Talking about the East German Computers ? Robotron is also a video game ca. 1981-2 (Williams, iirc) that was semi-unique in that it used dual joysticks -- one to control movement and one to control firing direction -- and in order to be at all successful at the game one had to be able to operate the two completely independantly of each other. Other, similar games included Sinistar (no relation, and don't even go there) and one whose name I forgot that had to do with spiders and webs. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/

27 years

Quarter classics (was: Big Iron Was:RE: Backwater areas Was: Re: Cross listing Ebay items)

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 07:56 PM 6/18/98 -0700, you wrote: >I've got a Joust I might let go for something tasty. It's the same >system board, you only need to swap the ROMs and re-work the control >panel ;) ROM's might be possible, but a Robotron game gets a lot of heavy-duty usage; I don't think I could trust any mods I would make to the controls. 8^( --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/

27 years

What is the first computer?

by Philip.Belben＠powertech.co.uk

>>Yes, but Pascal was born in 1623 so Schickard's device most likely beats >>whatever Pascal developed in his lifetime (I think he was 18 when he >>invented it). > > Late-comers, all of them. My vote for the earliest computer is the > Antikythera Device, a bronze mechanical lunar month calculator built in > Greece about 80AD. > > Shickard's "Calculating Clock" was the next mechanical calculator of record > in 1623, followed by Blaise Pascal's "Pascaline" in 1642, Samuel Morland's > mechanical calculator in 1666, Gottfried Leibnez' "Stepped Reckoner" in > 1674, Phillip-Malthus Hahn's calculating machines (the first sold > commercially) in 1774, and the third Earl of Stanhope's multiplying > calculator in 1777. The first mass-produced calculating machine was Thomas > de Colmar's "Arithmometer" in 1820. Good point. Many early clocks were (or contained) primitive analogue computers, so I think you win there... sort of. Two books to look at: "The Mediaeval Machine" by J. Gimpel and "A History of Engineering in Classical and Mediaeval Times" by D. R. Hill. Gimpel will fill several holes in your timeline - Su Sung made quite a complicated astronomical clock in c. 1090; the middle ages saw a sizeable crop of similar machines in the west, culminating in that of Giovanni Dondi, under development from 1348 until 1364. Hill's treatment of clocks is also interesting. He points out that the Classical civilisations had (presumably inherited from the ancients) a system by which the hour changed in length depending on the date so that sunrise to sunset was always twelve hours. Thus ordinary timekeeping clocks had to combine time and date in an analogue computer to get hour-number out at the end. Some of the mechanisms Hill describes get this quite wrong! (I don't recall any of these clocks also taking account of lattitude...) OK. I'll go for the Z1 as the first _general purpose_ computer. Philip.

27 years

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test-drb June 1998