test-drb October 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

216 participants
748 discussions

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Not to put to fine a point on it, but is there really such a thing <as a "nice BA23"? Why? BA23 is a fairly decent box for its size. <> Now I just need to find out what an AIM 65 is! Aim-65, a small system with keyboard, display and I remember a small printer that used the 6502 cpu and usually had 4-16k of ram and a ROM BASIC. Nice box and it was the next logical step up for those that used KIM-1/SYM-1 for embedded systems or exprimentation. Allison

25 years, 2 months

Seagate ST41200N and ST4766N

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Oct 9, 19:56, R. D. Davis wrote: > While trying to make my Sun 4/110 bootable again, I ran into a slight > problem with Seagate's web page: their documentation for older drives, > such as the jumper info., is somewhat undecipherable for someone using > UNIX... perhaps it's readable by MS-DOS/Windows systems, not sure. It is, if they are using "standard" (for MS-DOS) fonts, such as the normal VGA font. > BTW, can anyone tell me what format their web page us using to display > the info? Does Microsoft windows use some sort of unusual ASCII? It's not ASCII, it's using characters in the range 128-255, which in the original PC include line drawing characters. You can download a character set with the line drawing chracters for Windows by following the link near the top of each of Seagate's spec pages. Eg, on http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/specs/st41200n.shtml, there's a line with two links: "Odd characters? _Click_here_for_help_. A version of this specification with the linedraw characters approximated by text is available by _clicking_here_." The first link takes you to a help page for Windoze users, the second takes you to a CGI program that fetches the flat-ASCII version from Seagate's FTP site, ftp://ftp.seagate.com/techsuppt/scsi/st41200n.txt Another way to deal with the problem (if you're using X Windows) is to find and install a font with the line drawing characters. There's one called vga.pcf.Z floating around the web somewhere. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

25 years, 2 months

Getting a Sun 4/110 to boot

by rdd＠smarty.smart.net

Greetings, After changing removing a jumper on my Sun 4/110's boot drive *running Solaris 2.4)so that it spins up with no motor control, I still can't get the system to boot from the CD-ROM as I did in the past when I originally installed the OS. I've disconnected all other hard drives and tape drives, so it's just the one hard drive and CD-ROM. The hard drive is SCSI ID 0, with terminating resistors, no parity, as it was before. The CD-ROM is SCSI ID 6, no parity (Toshiba XM-4101B). The hard drive was bootable, although it had lots of errors reported by fsck; when I ran fsck manually, I made a mistake that resulted in "device not found" when attempting to boot the system. Simple to fix, I thought... just reinstall the OS from CD-ROM as an "upgrade," thus preserving data on the drive (am I right about this part?). When I attempted to boot from the CD-ROM, b sd(0,6,n) and b sd(0,31,n) where I tried 0, 1 and 2 for n, the system tries to access the hard drive, as I can hear it trying to do so, in addition to the CD-ROM making a noise. Then, the following error message appears: sd: sense key=5 error=25, block 0 [repeated over and over, then:] Waiting for disk to spin up {and tells me to start it if necessary] Please start it, if necessary, -OR- press any key to quit sd: sense key=5 error=25, block 0 [keeps being repeated] Does anyone have any idea or suggestions? The next thing I'm going to try is to install another hard drive and try to install Solaris on it, but it seems to me that if I could boot from the present drive before the fsck mess, I should still be able to boot from the CD-ROM with that installed. Is there something I'm overlooking? -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com Be careful what you wish for --- you http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd may get your wish ...and it might not Tel: (410) 744-4900 be what you were expecting.

25 years, 2 months

IBM 4701-1

by rdd＠smarty.smart.net

Greetings, Is anyone here familiar with modifying an IBM 4701-1 to do anything useful other than its intended purpose of connecting bank terminals to a mainframe? Given that it has a floppy drive (8"), memory and a CPU, and has the capability to load some sort of software, there must be some use for it, such as a dedicated controller of some sort. It came with some small Apricot displays but no keyboards. -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com Be careful what you wish for --- you http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd may get your wish ...and it might not Tel: (410) 744-4900 be what you were expecting.

25 years, 2 months

What's the best RS-232 terminal?

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Anybody have a favorite? Why? Vt340 (color! dual session via two serial ports) Vt1200 (Xterm LAT, TCPIP or DCE, multisession) Vt100 (still the best tube around) Vt320 (smaller Vt100!) vt220 (small) H19 (my first CRT, also supports 19.2k without xon/xoff) in that order. Experience and the fact that they have the commonality of VT52/VT100 capability. The Vt340 has color so that makes it somewhat special. The remainder I like for Network connectivity (vt1200), keyboard (vt100), Display (VT320) orsize (vt320, 220). They all have printer ports and on screen programming. Allison

25 years, 2 months

Fw: Another loaf of free stuff!

by peter.pachla＠wintermute.org.uk

Posting this on behalf of Matthew, please contact him directly if you're interested in any of this stuff. ----- Original Message ----- From: Matthew Saxby <saxby(a)vossnet.co.uk> Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.ps2.hardware Sent: Friday, October 08, 1999 11:08 PM Subject: Another loaf of free stuff! > Sorry, for those of us in the UK only. Just come and pick up from Slough, > Bucks, England. > > IBM AT > 6 CGA Cube type monitors for the AT > Plus, a load of RM 186 machines. > > > If they aren't collected by next Friday, then they will go in the skip... > So, > someone please take them. > > > --- > Matthew TTFN - Pete. -- Hardware & Software Engineer. Sound Engineer. Collector of Arcade Machines, Games Consoles & Obsolete Computers (esp DEC) peter.pachla(a)wintermute.org.uk | peter.pachla(a)vectrex.freeserve.co.uk | peter.pachla(a)virgin.net | peter.pachla(a)wintermute.free-online.co.uk | www.wintermute.free-online.co.uk --

25 years, 2 months

Seagate ST41200N and ST4766N

by rdd＠smarty.smart.net

Greetings, While trying to make my Sun 4/110 bootable again, I ran into a slight problem with Seagate's web page: their documentation for older drives, such as the jumper info., is somewhat undecipherable for someone using UNIX... perhaps it's readable by MS-DOS/Windows systems, not sure. Can anyone kindly tell me which jumpers on the ST4766N and ST41200N drives are which? I think both are identical as far as jumpering for SCSI ID, etc. goes. At one time, I had this info., but have misplaced it, and need to change SCSI IDs and also get the drive to spin up by itself with no delay. BTW, can anyone tell me what format their web page us using to display the info? Does Microsoft windows use some sort of unusual ASCII? -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com Be careful what you wish for --- you http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd may get your wish ...and it might not Tel: (410) 744-4900 be what you were expecting.

25 years, 2 months

"Solderpooling" (was Re: Running a 220v computer in a 110v environment)

by mtapley＠swri.edu

Tony Duell wrote: > But I am >suggesting that _everyone_ here is intellegent enough to understand a >book on electrical wiring and then to do such wiring themselves. As a recent perpetrator of some particularly egregious stupidity (everyone *did* get their resistor color-codes straightened out after that, right?) I can claim that intelligence and the advisability of any single isolated act may not necessarily be corellated. (I can hope, anyway.) I therefore have a minor suggestion to make here. Call it "Solderpooling". Anyone intent on reworking mains power, moving full-height racks, or otherwise dealing with lethal quantities of energy, at least for the first time, put out an announcement and invitation here. If there is another local list member, arrange a visit for the duration of the risky part. We tend to do this for moving big stuff anyway, but I'm proposing it also for rewiring houses, repairing monitors, gluing with sodium cyanide (!), etc. Two pairs of eyes looking at the same procedure are much more likely to catch errors than one, even if neither is a "trained professional" (or proficient amateur). Add to that the psychological desire to do things properly in front of a visitor vs. taking short-cuts by one's self and the liklihood of mistakes might really go down. There's also the pleasant prospect of a shared victory if whatever it is works and the unpleasant but comforting availability of someone to do CPR if it *really* doesn't work. - Mark

25 years, 2 months

Seagate ST41200N and ST4766N

by lance＠costanzo.net

At 07:56 PM 10/09/1999 -0400, you wrote: >While trying to make my Sun 4/110 bootable again, I ran into a slight >problem with Seagate's web page: their documentation for older drives, >such as the jumper info., is somewhat undecipherable for someone using >UNIX... perhaps it's readable by MS-DOS/Windows systems, not sure. >Can anyone kindly tell me which jumpers on the ST4766N and ST41200N >drives are which? I think both are identical as far as jumpering for One of the best places to get drive info is http://www.thetechpage.com (formerly blue-planet.com) They just happen to have your drives listed! (Hey Stan - point the guy in the right direction and let him do the work!) Lance Costanzo http://www.webhighrise.com System Administrator Website and Virtual Domain Hosting lance(a)costanzo.net starting at $5/month, no setup fees

25 years, 2 months

ISA expansion boards/cases

by edick＠idcomm.com

The backplanes having more than 8 ISA slots tended to work badly, as a function of how full and how long they were. Notable exceptions are/were the 12-slot passive backplanes sold by at least one manufacturer, which managed to operate quite well. The key is that these were not on a motherboard and thereby allowed, among other things, placement of the main CPU close to the center of the backplane while the remaining cards were installed working inward from the ends. These things have always been ridiculously expensive due to the low volumes in which they're produced. There were a few expansion boxes built with a cable having a bus interface at each end, capable of converting the differential signals on the cable betwen them back to single-ended TTL levels. These didn't ever work particularly well, i.e. were very fussy about what was in the expansion chassis, as the bus timing was altered by the cable delays. I wouldn't expect such an item to be low-priced, though, just because of its relative rarity. Dick -----Original Message----- From: Adam Fritzler <mid(a)auk.cx> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Saturday, October 09, 1999 12:07 PM Subject: ISA expansion boards/cases > >Is there a good place to find boards that plug into a 16bit ISA slot and >let you have another 8 or so slots? (without building your own) > >I would think there'd be a fair number of these floating around now that >ISA is nearly dead in the mainstream, but aparently not. The >cheapest I saw one new for $496. Bit ridiculous, imho. > >All I need is both end-boards (host end and backplane end) and a >backplane. (I certainly don't need anymore cases...) > >Can anyone help? > >af > >--- > Adam Fritzler > { mid(a)auk.cx, afritz(a)iname.com} > http://www.auk.cx/~mid/ > "Something in my systray is blinking wildly." -- DS >

25 years, 2 months

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test-drb October 1999