At 09:59 PM 6/8/98 -0500, Allison wrote:
>I earned my keep fixing commercial VHF and UHF radios which from call to
>call could be dynamotor and tubes or the lastest IC and solid state
>usually no prints and under time pressure. It paid for college.
>
>FYI I was at DEC from 83->93 CSSE ML0 Printing systems along with
>Pattenden, Howard, Preece and Paul Nelsons merry crew.
>
>
>Allison
>
>
>
I know this isn't a 'vintage radio' list, but . . .
So, were you in the Motorola camp (Twin-V, T-Power, Motrac, Motran) or
were you GE (Prog Line, TPL, Mastr? Or possibly one
of the few in the RCA arena (CarFone, SuperCarfone, etc.)?
I was Motorola, in the Mid 80's myself . . .
Jeff
<I make things less original in one way, but easier to spot as well. I put
<the replacement chip in a socket (a good turned-pin socket). IMHO a board
<of TTL with one odd chip in a socket that looks to have been
<hand-soldered is likely to suggest that the chip has been replaced at
<some point, even if the notes documenting the repair are missing.
I'm one to both restore and modify. I ahve two CCS s100 systems one is
stock and the other is in the proces of recieving some mods like a IDE
adaptor. Why? The second is sans hard disk and for what I do it would
be a nice box with a hard disk as it's small. it's also reversable as
the front pannel that will also be modified will really be a new one and
not the original one.
If I had a PDP-8 and no disks I'd likely make a IO interface for a modern
drive becuase PDP-8s are easy to hack that way and it's also reversable.
The real trick would be using whatever micros so that the new disk
interfaced and behaved like an older one so I could run old code as is.
Allison
<I read about a multitasking kernel for the Microchip PIC microcontroller.
<I think it used the counter/timer as a heartbeat, and could also do task
<switched on the port change-of-state interrupt. No idea how big it is,
<but I guess it's pretty small.
It can be done on most CPUs no matter how small. Dynamic multitasking
like Unix or VMS does is far more complex. The basic principles are the
same.
Allison
<I watched them swap memory, power supply, motherboard, hard disk controll
<and such for an hour.
LN01 training, I goosed the trainer that I could create a fault he
couldn't find in excange for one. I found mine in and he was still
going later. the bug, lead pulled off the fuse holder in the main PSU.
I earned my keep fixing commercial VHF and UHF radios which from call to
call could be dynamotor and tubes or the lastest IC and solid state
usually no prints and under time pressure. It paid for college.
FYI I was at DEC from 83->93 CSSE ML0 Printing systems along with
Pattenden, Howard, Preece and Paul Nelsons merry crew.
Allison
<OK, I'll give you that it's possible. But it would be very slow (TeX
<contains a lot of routines that are executed when it sees keywords in
<the input file, so you'd be for ever swapping things in), and I doubt it
<would be practical on a floppy-disk only system.
Considering the size of the data file and the DVI result... floppy? Nope.
Hard disk or large ram disk(1mb better).
Allison
Bit of a different note here. I've got someone that is interested in
shipping me some RL02 packs for my systems, but is concerned about packing.
Does anyone have any advice on the subject.
Well if they arent keeping it, it should go to a museum like the one at
Boston.....
One question though, wasent the Xerox 820 basically the same as the Alto?
-----Original Message-----
From: Max Eskin <maxeskin(a)hotmail.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Tuesday, June 02, 1998 8:53
Subject: Re: Final Xerox Star demo
>
>
>
>
>What processor did it use?
>Also, what will be done to the machine after the "last run"?
>>On Mon, 1 Jun 1998, Larry Groebe wrote:
>>
>>> >Is there someone to contact by phone to see if there will be
>videotapes
>>> >available?
>>> >
>>> >thanks
>>> >
>>> >Kai
>>> >
>>> >-----Original Message-----
>>> >From: Doug Yowza [mailto:yowza@yowza.com]
>>> >Sent: Monday, June 01, 1998 3:17 PM
>>> >To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
>>> >Subject: Final Xerox Star demo
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >>Xerox PARC is giving one final demonstration of the original Xerox
>Star
>>> >>workstation built in 1981. This may be the last time it gets
>>> >>demoed, as the hardware has begun failing due to its age. Don't
>miss
>>> >>this opportunity to witness one of the most important steps ever
>taken in
>>> >>the history of computing and user interface design.
>>>
>>>
>>> Better yet, has anyone given thought to the viability of building a
>Star
>>> emulator? How fast could those things have been?
>>
>>Not terribly. IIRC, there was a discernable lag between keystroke and
>>the appearance of the character on the monitor screen!
>>
>> - don
>>> --Larry
>>>
>>
>> donm(a)cts.com
>>*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
>> Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
>> Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
>> Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
>> Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
>>*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*--*
>> see old system support at http://www.psyber.com/~tcj
>> visit the "Unofficial" CP/M Web site at http://cdl.uta.edu/cpm
>> with Mirror at http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/~cfs/cpm
>>
>>
>>
>
>______________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
A few months ago, PC World did a similar thing, only they made real
hardware problems. Cutting the IDE cable on some machines, and
rearranging RAM in others (so the SIMMS were no longer paired). Noone
solved this. Better yet, the next issue, they published a letter
saying that these were clearly artificial problems, and I quote,
"IDE cables just don't fail". The guy said that a tech would never
think to look at it.
BTW, do you train service techs?
>>
>> Allison
>>
>>
>
>Actually I agree with you. I put the following problem in front of
some
>techs at TRW who did dos PC's as part of some in-house training.
>
>I wrote a program that did a cold boot. I attached it to the
>ANSI.SYS driver. I gave this PC to them to fix.
>
>I watched them swap memory, power supply, motherboard, hard disk
controller
>and such for an hour.
>
>After they got tired... I closed the floppy door an a write protected
>MS-DOS 3.3 floppy and it booted.
>
>They never once looked at a software problem. I guess doing mini
systems
>taught me something.
>
>Bill
>
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07724 |
>| 908-389-3592 | Save computing history, give an old geek old
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>I have one--in pieces. I don't know if it works but I got it all
>disassembled with cables hanging out of it. A neat unit. Hopefully I'll
>find a complete one some day, or get this one working. There were not Mac
>ROMs in it by the way. I paid $5.
Do you mean they were cloned or just weren't any there?
>What specifically did you want to know?
Anything not already mentioned. The Outbound I've read about, but the
other clones are entirely new to me.
Tom Owad
