test-drb January 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

189 participants
897 discussions

by KFergason＠aol.com

In a message dated 1/5/99 12:40:49 AM Pacific Standard Time, Its an interesting thought, and I know from personal experience that a set of Kenwood Twins operating at 100Watts about 4 ft from a TRS80 Model 1 can cause it to crash. I would think its possible for a big solar flare to at least affect an old TRS80. unlikely, though. kelly dastar(a)ncal.verio.com writes: > > >>> > > Every 11 years the sun sends storms of cosmic rays which disrupt all sorts > > of electrical devices. The last was in 1989, and they are due again in <snip> > > >>> > > As Bill Gates would say, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. If > cosmic rays were to blame for the EIs suckiness then every computer back > then would have had similar problems. No, you can't blame Radio Shack's > sorry-assed engineering on cosmic rays, but nice try. > > Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar@siconic. > com >

25 years, 11 months

ST506 on a modern system

by jolminkh＠nsw.bigpond.net.au

>Jerome Fine replies: > >I realize this may be a very dumb question, BUT if I have an ST506 >Qbus controller (either DEC RQDX1,2,3 OR 3rd party compatible >like Dilog or Emulex), would it be possible to change the 34/20 pin >cables (NOTE: On the Emulex DM01, there is already ONLY a >SINGLE 50 pin cable which is split 34/8/8) and connect those >cables in some manner to an IDE drive? Thats a dumb question. The situation is that an IDE drive has it's controller on board the drive and it is proprietary. The purpose of the IDE "controller" card is only to provide a standard interface. Hans

25 years, 11 months

NorthStar Horizon incoming

by allisonp＠world.std.com

Bruce, FOLD THE LINES! MY screen is not 200 chars wide and I really hate horozontal scrolling! < Here's what I remember about Horizons: S100 bus, CP/M for an OS, built pre < The native OS was NS* DOS not cp/m though there were several vendors of CPM configured for horizon. Generally they were z80/4mhz cpucard, MDS hard sector disk of 80k for the older single density controller or up to 800k for the later DD controller. Ram minimum for running NS*dos was 16k orged at 2000h while cpm required 20k(minimum and 56k max due to memory mapped disk controller). The s100 backplane was not IEEE696 complient but pretty close considering its design window was many years earlier. The mackplane also carried the logic for two serial ports, parallel port, interrupt logic and a heartbeat timer. A minimum system could then be the box and three cards and the most often cards added were ram. Theses systems use an external terminal though I'd set mine up with a VDM-1 video card and a encoded parallel keyboard. Another OS that ran on the NS* was UCSD PASCAL P-system. The basic system for that required 48k ram and two floppy disks minimum and three(or four if it was the DD version) were more useable. Allison

25 years, 11 months

X.25?

by fmc＠reanimators.org

"Max Eskin" <kurtkilgor(a)bigfoot.com> wrote: > Wired (no, I don't usually read it) reports that hackers were intending to > disable Iraqui computer networks, which were supposedly accessible by > dialup, and using a 'vintage' protocol called X.25. Could someone tell me > what sort of protocol this is and what machines it's likely to involve? There used to be (probably still are) X.25 public data networks. "Public" means "not private" -- effectively, the network owner sells connections and bandwidth to paying external customers, not just to users within the owner's company. You as a customer would pay your money, and the network owner would deal with details like telco so that you effectively get RS-232 synchronous serial port(s) that want to see and hand out X.25 packets at your various locations, and X.25 network addresses corresponding to those ports. Or maybe you would pay for the telco stuff and an access charge to the network provider, and get a port on the network provider's X.25 packet switch. This might be of use to you if you had a need for computer/computer or computer/terminal communication between distant locations. Host computers (minicomputers and larger) often had X.25 network interfaces available as an option, and software that supported computer-to-computer communications and/or terminal-to-computer communications over it. Terminals didn't, but you could get devices called PADs (Port Access Devices? I can't remember) that had connections for terminals, an X.25 connection for the network, and could either act something like a multiplexer, running all the terminal sessions over a permanent virtual circuit (PVC) to a host's address, or like a terminal server, using switched virtual circuits (SVCs) to connect to any host address on the network. Or you might just have a host and a casual need for connectivity from terminals in remote locations, e.g. you've got some database and you sell access to it. So rather than installing a modem rack, you get a connection to Telenet and tell your customers that they need to dial in to their local Telenet access number (which is really a Telenet-owned modem pool with something-like-PADs behind it) with a terminal and modem and connect to such-and-such address. Either way, the X.25 public data network solution could be cheaper than installing point-to-point telco data lines between your hosts and terminals, and the X.25 network provider could offer internal redundant routing that might be prohibitively expensive for you to implement on your own. Now, that said, X.25 networks do not need to be public. If you have the wherewithal, you can build your very own X.25 network out of the same sorts of hardware that the public data network providers use. I guess the Iraqi government could have one or several. And I remember a data center that, in the late 1980s, got fed up with its computer-to-computer communications being done entirely of point-to-point links between computers (with a protocol that wasn't smart enough to forward messages -- if you wanted to go from host A to host C, and the only connection was through B, you had to log on to B >from A then C from B) and bought a small Dynapac X.25 switch to sit between the computers. X.25 can also be used to transport other protocols' datagrams, e.g. IP. In fact the US Defense Data Network was IP-over-X.25 and may still be for all I know. I think this sort of thing is either incompatible with or distinct from using X.25 to carry host/terminal traffic (in much the same way that e.g. rlogin and telnet are distinct -- they both run over TCP but use different protocols, and different ports so TCP can multiplex them), so you can't just dial into a PAD and telnet to a host doing IP over X.25, unless the PAD also does telnet and IP over X.25. -Frank McConnell

25 years, 11 months

Digital handbooks available

by meo＠netads.com

I have a pair of 1981 Digital handbooks: VAX Architecture processor handbook pdp11/04/24/34a/44/70 Instruction sets, addressing modes, all that jive. Don't recall where I got them, except that I saved them from a circular file. I don't need them (I have plenty of books on the VAX and I never got into the PDPs). Anybody need them? -Miles

25 years, 11 months

Message formats

by sinasohn＠ricochet.net

At 02:47 AM 1/9/99 -0500, you wrote: >> understand your subject well enough. If you need to include formatting >> (such as Word files or data or even code) it can be sent as an attachment > >What code (I assume we mean programming, not encryption) could ever >need formatting aside from appropriate indents? (The progam's >compiler shouldn't even require those). Sorry, I meant *compiled* code, as in executables... You'd think I would have learned by now not to respond to e-mail when I'm exhausted. (Of course, that would mean never responding... If life ain't interesting, it probably ain't worth living.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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, 11 months

Want _Fire in the Valley_

by dastar＠ncal.verio.com

Anyone know where I can get or have a spare copy of _Fire in the Valley_? Someone was going to send me one a while back but never did. Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Always being hassled by the man. Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0 See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details! [Last web site update: 12/27/98]

25 years, 11 months

NorthStar Horizon incoming

by kyrrin＠bluefeathertech.com

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25 years, 11 months

micro PDP-11 "Fatal RSTS/E system initialization error!"

by tomowad＠earthlink.net

I powered my micro PDP-11 up for the first time, today. Here's what happens (please keep in mind I have no manuals or familiarity with the PDP-11): Memory Test Message: "Booting from DU0" Message: "Device XK0: does not interrupt - device disabled" Message: "RSTS v8.0-07 Micro/RSTS (DU0) INIT v8.0-07" "Option" prompt. At the "Option" promt, I typed "Help", bringing up a list of options. {To actually begin "using" the computer, am I correct in assuming I want to select the option "Start" to start timesharing?} At the "Option" prompt, I typed "Start". Here's what the screen looks like, afterwards: Option: START Disk is being rebuilt - wait... DU0 error UDASA P.OPCD P.STS P.BCNT P.BUFF P.BUF2 P.LBN 000000 000242 020006 000000 044000 000000 000001 Unrecoverable disk error on DU0 PC=121232 PS=030341 OV=000022 M5=001600 M6=003242 SP=041274 R0=000000 R1=077777 R2=042125 R3=172150 R4=041410 R5=140026 Fatal RSTS/E system initialization error! Option: -------End. Now to me, this sounds like a bad hard drive, but I'm not at all familiar with this. If somebody could offer their opinion as to what's wrong here (and what to do about it) I'd be most appreciative. Thanks! Tom Owad -- Sysop of Caesarville Online Client software at: <http://home.earthlink.net/~tomowad/>

25 years, 11 months

North Star Horizon

by jonathan＠canuck.com

Bruce Lane <kyrrin(a)bluefeathertech.com>, a voice of desperation in this data wilderness, cried: >Looks like I'm getting a Northstar Horizon box come July. Friend of mine's holding it for me until I can get down south and pick it up. >Here's what I remember about Horizons: S100 bus, CP/M for an OS, built pretty well. >More info would be most welcome. My specialties for 'classic' systems are with DEC and Sun. Close. The Horizon was definitely one of the better-built and more reliable S100 boxes of the time. 10 slots (I think), and a little unusual in that the serial and parallel I/O were built into the motherboard. Most had a wood case. (I once had to replicate all that stuff on a wirewrap board for a client who needed more than 10 card slots and had to migrate to a Cromemco Z2 chassis while maintaining I/O compatibility. I also discovered with that system that their hard disk - a 14" 20(?)meg Century drive - suffered from serious read/write problems due to ground loops. Annoying but solvable. I digress...) CP/M was available, but not the stock OS. North Star (originally Kentucky Fried Computers - swear to god) designed their own unique floppy controller (it was their entry into the S100 market) and had a proprietary OS to go with it. The controller was a full S100 board to run the 5" drives alone, and the weird and difficult thing was that they used HARD sectored floppies, 10 sectors per track (not to be confused with the 16 sector floppies used by Micropolis). Jonathan

25 years, 11 months

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test-drb January 1999