test-drb November 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

211 participants
749 discussions

by diplodocus1＠worldnet.att.net

I don't know if this has been already mentioned on this thread, since I have just discovered this site, but I operate my 1520 from a 12 V battery on my sailboat without any apparent problem. I've used it mainly to get radio weatherfaxes. I just bought a 22 mm female plug from Radio Shack, wired it to the 12 V power supply and stuck it into the jack on the back of the GRiD (next to the battery pack). One trhing that bothers me when receiving faxes is the screen going dark after a fes seconds. Anybody knows how to disable this battery-saving function ? (which I don't need since the 1520 consumes only 1 Ah, which is peanuts for a 100 A deep cycle battery). john

26 years, 1 month

[OT] They're restarting Chernobyl?

by edick＠idcomm.com

I agree, fundamentally, with what you say. I just don't see how letting what's essentially becoming a third-world nation after fifty years of being a technological leader, freeze because it displeases US for them to run their flawed reactor, for which they've already paid, is gong to help anyone, especially since they can't just build a replacement with any technology. Surviving to get there is more important than having a pristine "there" to get. It doesn't matter if we're all surely going to die if we're already dead. Dick -----Original Message----- From: Allison J Parent <allisonp(a)world.std.com> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Saturday, November 27, 1999 5:50 PM Subject: Re: [OT] They're restarting Chernobyl? ><It's just a different outlook, doncha know . . . they're looking at a reall ><cold winter for which they need the power to survive. If they don't ><survive, it's not going to help them that their grandchildren will have a ><cleaner planet, since their grandchildren will freeze too. > >Well, what you don't know. Chernobyl is 4 plants, one crashed due to >operator error. It was a hell of a mess that will take a long time to >disappear. In the meantime people are cold and hungry. Maybe it's not >right but, neither is sick people. Right now that country is trying to >make it as something other than communist I think they have enough right >at that. > >Allison >

26 years, 1 month

CP/M-80 drivers for WD33C93 ???

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<It would be interesting to see SOMETHING for the 33C93, but what puzzles m <more than anything else is the question of how to cook up a quick and dirt <translation from the CP/M drive/track/sector specification to a logical <block structure as is used on SCSI/SASI devices. CP/M 2.2 is so much nice This is real easy, first remember you going to be limited to 8mb unless you used something like P2DOS or ZRdos. With that said and done... This means there will be 65536 sectors to a logical disk (CP/M-80 V2). SPT set that to some handy number like 64, that means tracks will be expressed as 64 sector chunks. That means there has to be 1024 tracks. This will be the bios passed numbers for track and sector. Of course thats logical sectors (128bytes) this will have to be grouped 2 or 4 per physical sector (256 or 512bytes). Deblocking will be done locally on the host and all reads and writes will be at the disk physical level. Offset (reserved tracks) is sized as logical tracks (what ever sector amount has been set up) of course there is more work but those are the clues. By using binary sizes for sectors, them math to concatenate tracks and sectors into "blocks" is a matter of a few right or left shifts. <if you have a maximal TPA which won't happen if one's using table lookups <and stuff in place of computations to determine which block contains what <the OS is in sector ss of track tt on drive x. You see, if this is <implemented on a bridge controller which talks SCSI to the system, but whos <drives are ST-506 interfaced, there are good ways and bad ways to allocate <blocks. It's simple enough to do one layer, but if you have to deal with <two, how you do one will have substantial impact on how the other works out This is hard to follow but the bios does not have to be large and the real space grabber is the ALLOC vector. If the system has banking even a 4k or 16k bank in low memory can easily swallow the various host buffers and Allocation storage which can be large. Allison

26 years, 1 month

hey, have old computer stuff for sale, have to make some room here

by Maddog1331＠aol.com

Hey all, I have a bunch of old comptuer stuff that I need to move to make room here in the apartment...argh....I have some up for auction on EBAY, you can look at those auctions if you wish at: http://cgi3.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICommand=ViewListedItems&u… id=maddog1331&include=0&since=-1&sort=2&rows=25 Here is the other stuff I have here at the house, not yet up for auction. Please let me know if any of you are interested. Here is the stuff that I have, sorry, its in no particular order, and also it is just one item unless otherwise specified. All this stuff is untested as of yet, so if you are interested in anything here, I will test it for you if I can :-) Also any drives listed, except Amdek, are the big 5.25...the Amdeks are a weird size drive, like takes 3 in disks or something. Another thing, these are in order by what box I put them in...lol...it was a quick easy filing system...had to get the stuff sorted as best I could. Box 1 Intellivision II Atari 800 3 Atari 825 4 Unknown Floppy Disk Drives U-SCI Drive Rana Systems 1000 Drive Mirco Stuffer Printer Buffer Amdesk III unit, has no drives in it. 4 Atari 1020 Joystick controller thingy, its a Wico Command Control Tandy Joystick 2 Printer replacement parts, I think for the small Atari printer...these are metal bar looking things Atari 822 Atari 1027 Box 2 Atari 1029 Atari 820 2 Atari 65 XE Atari 800 XL (says 256k Rambo EX on a home made label on it...an upgrade maybe?) Atari 835 2 Big Blue Printers Percom Data Drive Epson Letter Jet Printer Amdek Amdisk III Dual Floppy Atari 1050 Alphacom Printer Atari 825 Atari CX85 Keypad Box 3 Atari 810 Amdek Amdisk III, no drives in it Universal Data Systems Model 212LP Atari 1027 4 Atari 1020 Percom Data Drive Unknown Dual Floppy Atari 800 2 Motherboards, I think...not sure what they go to...one is huge, the other is small. Power Supply, I think....its a board type thingy..dunno Replacement Keyboards: 2 510 ASCII, 6 other Various ones, Atari maybe? Some still in shrinkwrap. Box 4 TRS 80 Disk Video Interface Commodore 128 Radio Shack TRS 80 Color Computer 2 Atari Portfolio Boxed Smart Parallell Interface Model HPC-101. Box is rough, but all looks to be there Casadapter - Casette interface for all Atari computers (or so it says) De Re Atari Anno Domini MCMLXXXI: A Guide to effective programming for Atari 400-800 computers Boxed Star Raiders w/touchpad, for Atari 2600 Madness & the Minotaur TRS-80 Casette 2 Atari joystick sketchpad casette programs, casette only 16k Ram Board, Atari? not sure Parallell Printer Cable for Atari 850 Boxed, but box is rough Boxed Rampage (rough) 3.5 disk 2 Ribbons for Diablo Hytype II Daisywheel Printer TI 99 Speech Synthesizer NCR Keyboard Apricot Keyboard (looks like its remote controlled even, has a place for batteries) ApricotF2 Dual Disk drive, this is the system unit maybe? I am not sure Riteman LQ Printer CypherBowl Atari 16K casette game in Box, looks to be completel Book: Writing in the Computer age, 1983 Plotter Pens, Injector ink, various 24 Unknown casettes Spectra Strip Ribbon Cable (small box, but heavy as heck! Did they make these out of lead or something?! lol) Atari Personal Financial Management System Manual ( its Heavy also) 20+ Casette tapes, Some from Magatari Magazine, dunno about the others tho, but there are programs on one side of them according to the labels...they say Issue 44 or whatever number on the other side..I am thinking they are maybe all Magatari Magazine issues on casette, maybe they just got fancy with the labels in the later years..I think that there are Magatari casettes 1-12 in here, plus the others. Book-Executive Computing Loose stuff Boxed Riteman LQ Printer, looks new Boxed Alphacom 81 80 Column Printer, Also looks good. I also have various monitors, but dont have them stored here though...as soon as I can get to where they are I will get the info on them...I think 2 are Tandy monitors. Also, I have 2 fax machines, and a really really HUGE dot matrix printer stored with the monitors...I will go through and catalog that stuff as soon as I can. Mark

26 years, 1 month

PDP11 spotted today in Sunnyvale CA for SALE

by aek＠spies.com

">Weird Stuff Warehouse still exists??? Indeed they do. They're one of my regular annual scrounge-stops. They've long since moved from their original location across from Fly's, but they're still there. " A bit of history.. Many years ago, Richard Anderson (currently RA Enterprises) met an engineer that was just left Shugart named Chuck Schuetz and started Weird Stuff in Milpitas (next to Atari Games). It was an amazing place, problem is they wanted too much for most of the stuff, and it ended up getting sold for metal scrap after sitting around for months. The city was hassling them for running a retail operation in the area, so they did a HUGE downsizing, moved some stuff to a small warehouse in Sunnyvale, and set up shop at the place on Laurence Expr. Richard got out of the partnership around the time they moved, and started another place called A-Z Electronics on Bascom with Lila Zinter, who mostly deals in office stuff. A-Z moved to Milpitas into the same building that eventually became Surplus Stuff (Curtis Trading, mostly different folks except for Ron, the tech who used to work at Weird Stuff). Richard started a different place, called RA Enterprises, which was on De La Cruz Blvd in Santa Clara until a year ago, when it moved to Walsh (about a mile away). Latest word is Richard has sold the place to some folks working for him, and is going to retire (well, he says he's just going to broker test equipment now..) after doing this for over 25 years. ..oh, almost forgot about the little place Richard used to have in San Jose when he met Chuck... There are lots of little stories like this in the valley..

26 years, 1 month

[OT] They're restarting Chernobyl?

by edick＠idcomm.com

That's no secret, by the way. A few months ago public TV had a long program dealing with the misconceptions about nuclear power generation and how the press distorted all the "facts" surrounding 3-mile island and it's incident back in the '70's. They even stated that the dirt right around the nuclear power plant had the lowest radioactivity of any area within some substantial radius, since that's a coal-bearing area and normal ambient radiation levels are actually quite high. What's really important here, in the U.S. is that you have to get the GOV to keep the industry straight, but not get into the industry's pocket. The same sloppy work and corruption that caused the Chernobyl problem is what scares most of those who follow the truths of the situation. Dick -----Original Message----- From: Carlos Murillo-Sanchez <cem14(a)cornell.edu> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Saturday, November 27, 1999 5:45 PM Subject: Re: [OT] They're restarting Chernobyl? >Chuck McManis wrote: >> >> Consider it flame bait if you like, but if you run the numbers this country >> would be a lot better off (fewer people killed generating the power, fewer >> natural resources destroyed) with a nuclear power infrastructure than it >> would be with a fossil fuel powered one. >> >> --Chuck > >and, if you consider the possibility of catastrophic climate >change from global warming resulting by past and >present burning (the blame falling disproportionately on the US), >the number of casualties might be in the billions, due to >starvation. I know, nobody really knows what _could_ happen, >but nobody can deny that the possibility exists either. Well, >maybe some people deny it, but by and large they are linked to >the oil companies. > >To keep this on topic, I have been comparing daily electric load >profiles from 40, 30 and 20 years ago to the present ones. >Starting 40 years ago, profiles became bimodal (one peak at >11:00 AM, another (larger) around 5-6:00PM in winter, or 8:00PM >in the summer). So, turning the lights >on at home after work (and for preparing dinner) meant the >largest load. This second peak slowly evolved to an earlier >hour (2:00PM-4:00PM), while the earlier peak grew to a size >comparable to that of the second one in winter, and only slightly >smaller in the summer. Only two factors at work here: computers >and air conditioning. > >-- >Carlos Murillo-Sanchez email: cem14(a)cornell.edu >428 Phillips Hall, Electrical Engineering Department >Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853

26 years, 1 month

Wow, great way to get pictures of boards!

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

I was just wanting to make some notes on a picture of one of the Omnibus boards I'm trying to troubleshoot. I don't know if anyone has tried this, but I just carefully placed a Omnibus board on my scanner, and scanned it in. Had to adjust the brightness and contrast of the resulting image, but the results are fantastic! Zane | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator | | healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast | | healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

26 years, 1 month

OT: Sony VAIO

by cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com

This is fairly off topic but I just had to share it with a group that would appreciate a nice hack. On my new Sony VAIO laptop the wall paper is a picture of water with the VAIO logo floating above it (reflecting in the water). When I turned it on the first time it was a really cool night scene with stars and everything. When I turned it on this afternoon the scene was filled with virtual sunlight! The picture is synchronized with the clock to show the correct lighting based on the local time. Very clever... --Chuck

26 years, 1 month

CP/M-80 drivers for WD33C93 ???

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<I haven't heard about the bugs, though the device has been pretty much <obsolete since WD stopped selling chips and went to making drives instead. <If you have drivers for the 5380, I would appreciate a look at them as well <I've never looked at a BIOS using SCSI or SASI, both of which are <block-oriented rather than being cyl/hd/sector based. The best 5380 bios out there is the AmproLB, check the FTP sites first as wrapping them up to send them is a bit of a pain on this crate. Another systems that did SASI/SCSI is the VISUAL 1050. Of course the 5380 code is in Linux and MINIX sources, maybe 33C93 as well. Allison

26 years, 1 month

[OT] They're restarting Chernobyl?

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<It's just a different outlook, doncha know . . . they're looking at a reall <cold winter for which they need the power to survive. If they don't <survive, it's not going to help them that their grandchildren will have a <cleaner planet, since their grandchildren will freeze too. Well, what you don't know. Chernobyl is 4 plants, one crashed due to operator error. It was a hell of a mess that will take a long time to disappear. In the meantime people are cold and hungry. Maybe it's not right but, neither is sick people. Right now that country is trying to make it as something other than communist I think they have enough right at that. Allison

26 years, 1 month

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test-drb November 1999