> Okay, everyone with a spare IMSAI, let's all get together and have a few
> "auctions" on e-bay. How about a reserve of $50K, starting bid at $15K,
> $1K increments. That's just for a box, cards are extra.
> Jack Peacock
I think I should realy try to evaluate the value of
one of my Pascal Micro Engines (btw: Has anyone out
there one ? ).
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
< Now *that's* historic! Western Digitals first (and last) CPU effort, th
< first HLL ever implemented as an instruction set on a chip (afaik, anywa
< rare as hen's teeth (I'll bet it's scarcity is on the order of the Apple
< not to mention that it was a *very* early 16-bit system that was actuall
< available to mere mortals.
BZZT!!! first the PDP-11/03 is the WD chipset, the alpha microsystems
s100 crate used the same WD chipset. The WD chip set alloed you to create
your own microcode based cpu. It was the only whole computer WD marketed.
The chipset had a basic cpu/datapath and microms that contained the
microcode. So the basic chips with differing microcode could be literally
be different systems. Even DEC had both a WCS and EIS/FIS microm
extensions for the 11/03.
It didn't run pascal it ran the compiled result P-code which was a stack
machine.
Scarce, they did make a few. They were expensive though.
< It was a good idea; but as is so common in this business, the old axiom
< held true:
< No good deed goes unpunished.
<
< I think WD lost their shirt on this one . . .
About right. It's was not cheap and hard to expand. However the sales
of the chipsets to outside producers (DEC and AMS) made them a bundle.
I'd love to see a manual for the chipset and microcode information.
Allison
< > I've seen it on PC xts, DEC VAXmates and S100 8086 boxen.
<
< S100 8086 boxes ?
< Are there still some left ?
< I never thought they had shown up in a big mass.
define big mass. Compupro did a bunch of card all the way to 386s for
s100 as did macrotech and others.
I even have a compupro 8085/8088 box that runs at 10mhz, built at a time
when the xt was still 4.77 or maybe the clones at 8mhz.
It runs CPM80, CPM86, Turbodos, MSdos, CCPM.
Allison
> < Someone posted saying that there in fact was a 2.11 which I've not been
> < able to find reference to. By any chance was that what came with a PCjr
> I've seen it on PC xts, DEC VAXmates and S100 8086 boxen.
S100 8086 boxes ?
Are there still some left ?
I never thought they had shown up in a big mass.
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
IMHO, the Sol is the next most important early commercial microcomputer
after the Altair and IMSAI. Although it had 5 S-100 slots, it really was a
single-board computer with built-in 64x16 video, serial and parallel ports,
keyboard, cassette tape interface, and ROM monitor which supported its use
as a serial terminal supporting VDT escape sequences as well as being usable
as a true computer. Cassette-based software included 5k BASIC, 16k Extended
BASIC, FOCAL, PILOT, ALS-8 (Assembly Language System), arcade style "real
time" games (Target, Trek80) as well as BASIC games and 8080 Chess. Its 8"
Helios disk system was expensive and the PerSci drives finicky - which is
why so many SOL users opted for a NorthStar controller and 5.25" drives.
Contact jordan_ruderman(a)supermac.com - he has been compiling an audio CD-ROM
of all the cassette software. You can substitute a portable CD player in
place of the SOL's cassette player, or just dub copies onto cassette (to
capture that ol' time flavor!). Also, if your keyboard is acting flakey, it
may be because the little foam pads inside have deteriorated over the years.
Contact Jim Willing at the Computer Garage http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw for
DIY replacements or he will do it for you. Jim is very knowledgable about
SOLs.
Bob Stek
Saver of lost SOLs
On 25 Aug 1998 22:29:33 GMT, george(a)agora.rdrop.com (George Rachor) wrote:
>I've got a SOL Terminal computer dug out from a pile of stuff I obtained
>from a
>Goodwill several years ago. Unfortunatly there is no disk drive with it.
Ie:
>I don't want to part with it but surely I can do something with it besides
>displaying it. Is there anything I can do with this critter without a disk
>this creature usuable for anything?
>
>George Rachor
>
>george(a)racsys.rt.rain.com
At 05:15 PM 8/26/98 -0500, you wrote:
>> Okay, everyone with a spare IMSAI, let's all get together and have a few
>> "auctions" on e-bay. How about a reserve of $50K, starting bid at $15K,
>> $1K increments. That's just for a box, cards are extra.
>> Jack Peacock
>
>I think I should realy try to evaluate the value of
>one of my Pascal Micro Engines (btw: Has anyone out
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Now *that's* historic! Western Digitals first (and last) CPU effort, the
first HLL ever implemented as an instruction set on a chip (afaik, anyway),
rare as hen's teeth (I'll bet it's scarcity is on the order of the Apple I),
not to mention that it was a *very* early 16-bit system that was actually
available to mere mortals.
It was a good idea; but as is so common in this business, the old axiom
held true:
No good deed goes unpunished.
I think WD lost their shirt on this one . . .
Jeff
I agree that there is no cure for stiction but on the older 3 1/2" FF
HDD's I used to gently nudge the spindle flywheel under the drive
board. This would free the head of the platter goo and typically the
drive would spin up and boot at which point a complete backup was
made.
______________________________ Reply Separator
_________________________________
Subject: Re: I'm Back!
Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet
Date: 8/23/98 1:25 PM
> certain hard drive of mine won't spin up unless whacked firmly
> against a table? Is there anything I can do? This is a laptop drive. >>
>
> stiction. nothing you can do about it.
>
Actually an ex-friend of mine had a technique to 'sticky' drives. The
theory goes if it's hosed anyway and you need to get data off it, you can
do things to it that you wouldn't ordinarily do and what do you have to lose?
At any rate, I've used it before and it seems to work on X percent of
drives that are totally stuck (especially ones that won't start up even
when whacked). You put the drive top-down (circuit side up) on top of a
nice toasty monitor and just leave it there for several days or weeks. I
don't know if this loosens up some lubricant, expands whatever's sticky
or what but if you take the drive off the monitor and hook it up
immediately and start it up immediately...occasionally you can get it to
spin up and give you your data.
The opposite of this is a drive I had (old Miniscribe 20 meg SCSI) that
would run for about 2 hours, overheat and 'shut down' (it wouldn't spin
down...it'd just start giving errors and was generally useless). I knew
it was heat because I could extend the time-till-shutdown to about 3
hours by pointing a small muffin fan at it. I had NO money at the
time...except for rent money I was flat broke...and couldn't afford to
replace the drive and...seeing how it was 1991 and I live in the
backwater state of Iowa, nobody would loan me a replacement. The Mac SE
it was in was also out of warranty.
At any rate, since it was winter it was cold outside so I wrapped the
drive in a plastic bag, sealed it up with duct tape around the SCSI
cable, set it on the ledge outside the window, closed the window without
squishing the cable and sealed up the crack with duct tape. Left the
machine and the drive on for something like 2 months that way (though my
memory is a bit rusty there) until I could save enough money for a
replacement. I was worried about condensation inside the bag but it
never caused a problem. At one point, the drive slid off the ledge and
was dangling by the SCSI cable and power cable but the duct tape held it
firm. It ran like that for several days until I noticed it wasn't on the
ledge.
On a related subject, I've seen and had several Syquest 40 meg drives
that wouldn't work and wouldn't work and wouldn't work until you flipped
them upside and then they'd work just fine. Not the cartridge...the
whole drive.
Which reminds me...I worked at a typesetting shop once and a guy from
another department walks in and tells me he's accidentally formatted his
syquest cartridge and is there any way to get the data back? So, with a
room full of people who knew better I told him, "Oh yeah...if you just
flip the cartridge over, that'll run it backwards so that if you format
it again, that'll do the reverse of formatting it and you data will be
back." I figured he'd know I was kidding but he DIDN'T and starting
walking away to DO IT! I stopped him fortunately and recovered his data
with proper tools. Of course, a couple months later he thrashed the
innards of a $1500 magneto-optical drive by jamming an 80 meg syquest
cartridge into it REAL HARD. I patiently explained to him that when you
hear snapping sounds and grinding metal you're generally doing something
wrong.
Anthony Clifton - Wirehead
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From: Wirehead Prime <wirehead(a)retrocomputing.com>
To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: I'm Back!
In-Reply-To: <57d773ed.35dfd743(a)aol.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 beta -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN
well, I found out none of the NEC versa laptops are for sale;
apparently some VP is holding onto them for some reason. We have maybe
30 7100/66or80 PPC macs; most with 16-32 mb ram, additional vid cards,
token ring. IIci's, about 15? with 20mb ram each. 6 Quadra 950 servers
with typically 2 300mb scsi drives and between 25-50 mb ram. ummm...
maybe 50? or more DuoDocks, both the Duo 230 or 280, and the Dock. don't
know the possibility status of selling these. several sony video
monitors that are touch screens, accept various inputs, came with weird
computerized videodisc systems.
we used to sell these things as scrap, and paid! them to take them, and
then got rebates for 10cents a pound, or sometimes we ended up owing
them. He is actively looking for vendors to buy, so we could probably
make an offer for pallet(s) since I'm the only one doing any work with
them. I will also do the legwork in my spare time, for this.
However, someone else should be the point man, so to speak... I can't
really get involved. I've tried, believe me. I'll try to do some more
inventory type stuff... But there's alot. Also a whole room full of an
IBM 3480? mainframeish type of thing, with disk boxes etc. looks like a
room full of washing machines...
-Eric
> Know those lame "JoeBob's_Random_Browser_NOW!" buttons?
> I slightly edited one (Yes, this is relevant.)
> Go look at http://makoto.umtec.com
> This is really interesting coming from my MicroVAX...
> I think I'll do a ITS-NOW! button next, with a link to a copy of "The HACRTN"...
36 Bits Now ?
Let me guess - You own one of these nice old BULL minis
using 9 Bit Bytes ?
Gruss
H.
--
Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
It's a really wacky IC. It's a 68 pin package.
Looks kinda like this
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| +----------+ |
| +-----+ | | |
| | | R | | |
| +-----+ | | |
| +----------+ |
+-----------------------------------------------+
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
Both the boxes are ceramic squares (grey ceramic, like an eprom or
something). The little R looks like a surface mount resistor or cap. The
bigger ceramic square has:
SMS300-1
0002624
001 A 7620 on it
The field of the chip is white with grey zebra stripe lines running to
each of the pins. On the top of the IC is screened:
00020730001C
In gold and on the bottom:
SMS INC 2075-0001
In black.
What the heck is this thing?!?!? I know it's probably an engineering
sample, but of what?
Tony
