test-drb January 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

189 participants
897 discussions

by joe＠barrera.org

> Subject: PDP-8 on e-bay >Don't know what the reserve is. The same guy also has a SOL and a Rainbow for sale. I just found out... $900. :-) I actually work just down the hall from Gordon Bell... if he can't help me get it working, then probably no one can... :-) - Joe ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Robertson <steverob(a)hotoffice.com> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 1999 8:15 AM Subject: PDP-8 on e-bay >http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=58405239 > >Don't know what the reserve is. The same guy also has a SOL and a Rainbow for sale. > >Regards, > >Steve Robertson - QA Team Leader <steverob(a)hotoffice.com> >HotOffice Technologies, Inc. <http://www.hotoffice.com> >Phone: +1.561.995.0005 x228 Fax: +1.561.995.5990 > >HotOffice - The World's First Online Virtual Office Service > >

25 years, 7 months

OT, but info needed: RAM uprade

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Slower clock speeds. This means that you literally can have a plug in <upgrade. You could also make one with a larger micron process and more <vertical and not worry about heating, but that gets to be bone headed. A <better idea would be to learn from competitors, and start making a more <economical way of producing chips. Your way off. First off intel is the process leader. But when you require everything to be 16bits wide like memory, address latches, byte/word logic and other nifty things to get to 16bit wide the cost goes up for the system. the cost to produce the 8088 and the 8086 was nearly the same save for the 8088 was cheaper due to volumes and not technology. <But I see your point... but remember, before being used on the IBM PC the <8088 had been on the market for 3 years, and probably in OEM's hands a yea <before that. very true. I was running a 8086/8mhz Multibus based system with 512k of ram and a 5mb hard disk and 1mb 8" floppies when the IBM PC was introduced. Needless to say I was appalled at it's terminally poor performance. <>The 386? < <Lower clock speeds... kind of a all-solving solution. Not hardly. <>The 486? < <The 486 was just plain dumb. You didn't really need a 486SX at all. You <could keep on making a 386, but Intel was afraid of AMD catching up to the <(with their 40MHz 386's and all). You could have also made a 386 to go in <a 486 socket. nope. The 486 executed instruction in fewer cycles and had several features that made it faster internally for the same clock speed as a 386. <>The Pentium II? < <The Celeron was actually a pretty good idea, too good. They should have <made the 128K cache at half clock speed like in the PII. A Celeron 333 <will perform better than a PII 300 in the same system, and you can <overclock the Celeron to compete with almost all Intel processors. the celeron is a pentium! it's more integrated with the onboard cache but it's also a fixed configuration so expanding it is harder. <Well, they did have a lot of proffessionals a lot smarter than I am workin <on the problem, and I'm willing to bet they had good ideas, but may have <been shot down somewhere between 'cost' and 'competion'. Also they were trying to get the x86 into the other non PC markets. <I'll say that I don't really like it, and that we could have done much <better. MIPS, SPARC, Alpha, all better than x86, and if they had <competition like the x86 market does, then it'd be a good assumption to <guess that the cost might even be halfed and performance considerably faste The dynamics of the microprocessor market is more complex than you think. If MIPS was so good it would ahve pushed out x86. Alpha is a 64bit cpu targetted at high end systems and the MicroVAX (32bit) was already well established and faster than 386/486. <Well, I'm glad that Merced means the end to this lousy architecture. It <wasn't until this year that we began seriouly getting rid of ISA, which, <aside from going from 8 to 16 bit, hasn't changed all that much since the <days of the XT. Note this is good for the collector side of me, but very <bad for the 'innovative, creative, etc.' side of me. Yep! Now all your boards don't work in the new machine and most of the older PCI ones don't behave either. What will merced run... pentium emulator so there is software for it. Allison

25 years, 7 months

Merced - and the ol' Unix story (was Re: OT, but info needed: RAM uprade)

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jan 15, 19:35, Max Eskin wrote: > In fact, I've always found the limitations of DOS and PCs curious. Does > anyone know why: > > *They refuse to boot from anything but A: or C: > *DOS FDISK refuses to create more than 1 primary partition > *DOS can't find an ATAPI cd-rom without a driver, even though it's an IDE > device Pass. > *Why we are limited to 2 floppy drives in DOS Actually, you can have 4, if you have a controller at the secordary floppy controller address as well as at the primaryfloppy controller address. Each controller can only have two drives because of a silly hardware setup chosen by IBM. On a normal SA400-style interface, there are 4 drive selects, and one of each other control signal; each control signal is normally gated (on the drive) with the approriate select line. IBM chose to use an arrangement where completely separate motor-on signals were provided for the two drives. The way they did this was to arrange the signals in the cable such that one drive used a particular drive select and the motor signal in the standard place, and the other drive used a different select with the moror signal on a different wire. Hence the infamous cable twist, such that each drive sees a particular drive select (it's the second select line) and the motor-on signal in the standard place. However, from the point of view of either drive, there is another motor signal on a pin which would otherwise be a select line for another drive. Thus you can't use all 4 drive selects, and hence only two drives per controller cable. Another way to look at it, is to assume that IBM wanted all drives to have the same jumper settings, including the drive select jumper. But instead of putting a twist in the cable which would just swap some of the select lines, they used a twist over a wider section. Unfortunately that also moves the motor control line to where a select line would normally be. Thus they need another motor control line somewhere else (where a drive select would be, obviously), and end up only being able to put half as many drives on the bus. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

25 years, 7 months

PDP-8 on e-bay

by joe＠barrera.org

><rant> >Ok, maybe its just me. I'm a conniving, sniviling, wheez who would probably >step on my own mother to get at a cool computer (on my good days) and I >spend alot of time raking though the ebayish trash to come across something >tastey in a dark passed over corner of the sale. And just when you think >you got a line on something, some damn smaraitan decides to post a >billboard.... (no offense) ></rant> I completely understand... but you have to admit, "PDP" is not a very obscure search string (it's among the ones I usally check every day anyway). So chances are pretty small that the PDP-8 (if that's really what it is) would have gone totally unnoticed. Now, finding something listed only under "DEC" is another story, given how many false positives it turns up (playboys, national geographics, etc.) - Joe (fellow conniving wheez)

25 years, 7 months

More Books

by joe＠barrera.org

>BTW I'd never heard of CORAL or PARLOG before. Anyone with experience want >to comment? http://www.realtime-info.be/encyc/techno/terms/99/19.htm http://www.realtime-info.be/encyc/techno/terms/6/68.htm CORAL 66: A real-time system programming language derived from JOVIAL and ALGOL 60. It was adopted as the British military standard from 1970 until the arrival of Ada. Parlog: An AND-parallel Prolog, with guards and committed choice nondeterminism (don't care nondeterminism). Shallow backtracking only.

25 years, 7 months

PDP-8 on e-bay

by joe＠barrera.org

>Just out of curiosity, while the description says PDP-8, is it *really* a >straight "8" or did the seller forget to add on any important little >suffixes? Seems like that would make quite a difference in the price of the >unit. Good question... I've pointed him at a web site with PDP-8 pictures (Paul Pierce's) and asked him to identify the suspect. I've received at least one email asking whether I'm crazy. Well, clinically, yes. :-) But beyond that, I was severely traumatized as a child (well, in high school) and I'm still recovering. I spent most of my morning recesses (and many lunches) of my sophmore and junior years programming an IMSAI 8080 system, with North Star BASIC and floppy drive, Tarbell tape monitor, and a teletype for a printer. Then when I returned from Summer vacation my senior year, I found the IMSAI disappeared, replaced with (IIRC) an Altos MP/M machine. I was heartbroken. So now that I'm a grown-up and have a real job and some money to spend, I spend some of it on old computers. Perhaps I'm crazy. But not nearly as crazy, in my opinion, as people that buy mass-produced luxury cars for many tens of thousands of dollars... - Joe PS. Paul, are you on this list?

25 years, 7 months

Baa-aa-aad jokes...

by dogas＠leading.net

That shear is a turn for the worse.... ;) - Mike:dogas@leading.net -----Original Message----- From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Wednesday, January 20, 1999 10:17 AM Subject: Re: Baa-aa-aad jokes... >> > > But where can you find a drive that can read a sheep? >> > You mean you've not come across baa-code readers :-) >> I have...but didn't have enough RAM to use it! ;-) > >Never drive a RAM - to dangerous. > >Gruss >H. > >-- >Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut >HRK >

25 years, 7 months

GRID LAPTOP

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 04:30 PM 1/19/99 -0500, you wrote: > While out junking at lunch I met a gent who said he has a Grid Laptop > with a metal case (he said this model went to the moon) and uses > bubble memory. He said he'd entertain selling it but I've no idea what > to offer. Any ideas on what to offer or any info on this laptop? I'd > appreciate and info. Could be any one of several models. If it really uses Bubble Memory, it's probably a Compass (model 11xx). That, I'd pay a bit of money for, maybe as much as $50 if it's working. More likely, it's a GRiDCase and maybe worth $20 at most. If, on the other hand, it's a Convertible (2260 or 2270), you're talking real money again; I'd pay $100 for a 2270. The one that was used on the shuttle (I don't think the shuttle ever landed on the moon?) was (iirc) the GRiDPad 19xx, see my other message about those. If it turns out to be a 1535 (or other model with both the Gas Plasma screen and battery power), let Derek Peschel know; he's been looking for one for a while. (I have been trying to find one unsuccessfully for him.) Aside from the bubble memory and the magnesium case, btw, the Compass was the first of the clamshell style computers. Beat the Gavilan by half a year at least. (And no, the Gavilan wasn't the second clamshell either.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/

25 years, 7 months

PDP-8 on e-bay

by steverob＠hotoffice.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=58405239 Don't know what the reserve is. The same guy also has a SOL and a Rainbow for sale. Regards, Steve Robertson - QA Team Leader <steverob(a)hotoffice.com> HotOffice Technologies, Inc. <http://www.hotoffice.com> Phone: +1.561.995.0005 x228 Fax: +1.561.995.5990 HotOffice - The World's First Online Virtual Office Service

25 years, 7 months

GRID LAPTOP

by Marty＠itgonline.com

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Re: GRID LAPTOP Author: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu at internet Date: 1/20/99 10:40 AM > > The one that was used on the shuttle (I don't think the shuttle ever landed > > on the moon?) was (iirc) the GRiDPad 19xx, see my other message about those. > No, the shuttle never landed on the moon. (At least not that THEY've told > us about :-) Various shuttle missions have used the Compass, the 1910, > and the 1530. >>They have - I have seen in more than one movie a shuttle on >>the moon, and neither Hollywood nor my TV would lie (There is >>a nice >>B (?) picture, some kind of Dracula/Alien/Bermuda Triangle >>mxture, where they use Shuttles for moon missions, and from the >>inside they are bigger than the Nostromo ...). Thanks. At first I felt completely and totally foolish after stating the 'gent' told me the Grid had been to the moon. Now I feel vindicated. Hooray for Hollywood! Marty > In fact, NASA orignally funded GRiD to build the Compass just for this > purpose, AFAIK. GRiD stood for Graphical Retreival Information Display or > somesuch terribly strained acronym. Didn't know about that until now - I thought they where done as som high class luxury toys (liek mountain boots for the office:) Gruss H. -- Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut HRK ------ Message Header Follows ------ Received: from lists4.u.washington.edu by smtp.itgonline.com (PostalUnion/SMTP(tm) v2.1.9i(b5) for Windows NT(tm)) id AA-1999Jan20.104036.1767.93940; Wed, 20 Jan 1999 10:40:36 -0500 Received: from host (lists.u.washington.edu [140.142.56.13]) by lists4.u.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW97.07/8.8.4+UW98.06) with SMTP id HAA27710; Wed, 20 Jan 1999 07:37:34 -0800 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.1+UW98.09/8.9.1+UW98.09) with ESMTP id HAA2 1826 for <classiccmp(a)lists.u.washington.edu>; Wed, 20 Jan 1999 07:37:22 -0800 Received: from nixpbe.pdb.sni.de (nixpbe.pdb.sni.de [192.109.2.33]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.2+UW99.01/8.9.2+UW99.01) with ESMTP id HAA23 866 for <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>; Wed, 20 Jan 1999 07:37:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from M23769PP (m23769pp.mch.sbs.de [139.25.241.35]) by nixpbe.pdb.sni.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id PAA11093 for <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>; Wed, 20 Jan 1999 15:37:02 GMT Message-Id: <199901201537.PAA11093(a)nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 16:37:03 +1 Reply-To: classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu Sender: CLASSICCMP-owner(a)u.washington.edu Precedence: bulk From: "Hans Franke" <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de> To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers" <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Subject: Re: GRID LAPTOP In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.990119175753.27006B-100000(a)genco.haggle.com> References: <3.0.16.19990119145248.2a7f1538(a)ricochet.net> X-Listprocessor-Version: 8.1 beta -- ListProcessor(tm) by CREN

25 years, 7 months

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test-drb January 1999