test-drb December 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

186 participants
742 discussions

VAXstation 3100 history (Was ... different)

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com wrote: > If you want to see slow, remember the process of building standalone > backup on TU58's on a 11/750 or 11/730? We're talking most of a *day*! > No wonder we've tried to erase those times from our memories :-). Ah... you needed the scripts I wrote eleven years ago... they would build a console TU58 with EXCHANGE and sling the files out to the tape in the right order. The benefit was that apparently the microprocessor in the TU58 (at least on the 11/730, don't know about the 11/750) would buffer the directory so that the only seeks were to *read* files, not to *locate* the files. Our 11/730 reboot time went from 18 minutes to under six with properly constructed tapes. It became a function of the serial line speed and tape velocity, not of random seek times on a 250-foot tape. You heard the drive go and go and go with occasional pauses at each new file. Every time I rebooted I was glad I'd taken an afternoon to automate the building process (which I had to re-do with every VMS major update). Boy... lots of VAX stuff flying the past few days. I'm going to have to fire something up and remind myself why I don't use 1980-vintage hardware on a daily basis. It was fun, but *damn* it was slow. I got a lot of reading done back in those days... seven hour offline backups, five hour upgrades... oh, yeah... the "good" old days. ;-) At least the stuff stayed up for more than ten minutes. Our record was 45 days between VAX reboots, but only because we were developing software and would have periods of several reboots per day to clear device drivers. Since then, I've seen uptimes on the cluster at Lucent measured in months. -ethan ===== Infinet has been sold. The domain is going away in February. Please send all replies to erd(a)iname.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place. Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com

24 years, 5 months

[OT] They're restarting Chernobyl?

by truthanl＠oclc.org

oops - meant St Clair River. Port Huron / Sarnia. -----Original Message----- From: Roger Merchberger [mailto:zmerch@30below.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 10:12 PM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: RE: [OT] They're restarting Chernobyl? Rumor has it that Truthan,Larry may have mentioned these words: >Fact: Canada's largest Oil terminal and Refinery is on the St Mary's River >in Sarnia Ont. Fact: you've oopsed your Great Lakes geography... ;-) I was raised on the St. Mary's River (from age 7 up)... Still live nearby. Sarnia is across >from Port Huron, MI. Urmmm... Dahhh... According to the quickie mileage graph I have, Port Huron & DeTour Village (southern outlet of St. Mary's River) are 349 Miles away... a goodly 275+ miles by water I'd guess. Fact: If the oil terminal is in Sarnia, it's on a different river... :-) Prost, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig. If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.

24 years, 5 months

[OT] They're restarting Chernobyl?

by truthanl＠oclc.org

I have found that the Canadians call all thier electric power "hydro". The term is probably rooted in the early use of the Niagara escarpment for actual hydo-electric power. But, IMHO it definately puts "Clean Spin" on thier NOW heavy use of Nuclear power. To Americans, It seems inherent that Canadian water is pure. Hydro says "water" = pure. When in reality Canada runs a goodly risk of contaminating the Great Lakes. Fact: Canada has a huge nuke plant north of Kincardine Ont. on the Bruce Penninsula. Fact: Canada's largest Oil terminal and Refinery is on the St Mary's River in Sarnia Ont. Fact: The Canadians have a network of gas wells "under" their side of Lake Erie - east of Long Point. The wells actually break the surface of Lake Erie with White and Orange pipes about the size of Canadian Spar Bouys. Occasionally these gas wells are struck by ships & boats (coming in or out of the Welland Canal)during storms - and they do leak (I Monitored such a leak being checked out by the Canadian Coast Guard on Marine VHF July 1-3,1998, while at Sugarloaf Harbor in Port Colbourne.) To me, all of these are higher risks for water pollution throughout the Great Lakes Area. Yet, Canadians keep blasting the USA for Coal use causing acid rain. I guess its all in the way the wind blows, and who is monitoring the leaks, spills and resource quality. OTOH, I wonder how many computerised process controllers were/are used in Power generation. I had seen an internet report on the Perry Nuclear Plant(Port Clinton, Ohio,USA) recommending taking a microVAX offline for Y2K compliance sake. Ironic, I found this list while searching on MicroVAX as well. Sincerely Larry Truthan -----Original Message----- From: Roger Merchberger [mailto:zmerch@30below.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 10:28 PM To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers Subject: Re: [OT] They're restarting Chernobyl? ... Charles E. Fox may have mentioned these words: > Here in Windsor, Ontario, we have some of the worst air in Canada. Most of >it comes from Michigan and Ohio on the westerly winds. > (Snip) Here in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan we have the worst air in the U.P. of Michigan. It all comes from Sault, Ontario thanks to Algoma Steel, Abitibi-Price Paper & the northern winds to bring it all across. Thankfully, we've had hydro-based power (water-spun turbines - great for alleving those Y2K fears... ;-) since before 1900 - The Canadians finally built a hydro plant a few years ago, too. ...If most parts of Canada are powered by non-hydro-based means, why do you call it a "hydro bill?" I always wondered that... --

24 years, 5 months

VAXstation 3100 history (Was ... different)

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh(a)aracnet.com> wrote: > >I believe someone gave an earlier response that the MicroVAX I was too > >small to run openVMS alone. > > Well, you're not as bad off as I was thinking, must have been mixing you up > with a VAX-11/725. Hey! What's wrong with the 11/725? I used to have one until the company that was borrowing it folded. I didn't find out until my VAX was gone. :-( Essentially, it was an 11/730 w/RC25 as the primary disk device, but you *could* stick other stuff in there. I even knew a company that ran a BA-11 box off of theirs, but DEC *did not* support that configuration. It was a packaging issue. There should be no way to tell an 11/725 from an 11/730 in software. -ethan ===== Infinet has been sold. The domain is going away in February. Please send all replies to erd(a)iname.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place. Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com

24 years, 5 months

uVAX-I and Plessy systems (was RE: VAXstation 3100 history)

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- "Truthan,Larry" <truthanl(a)oclc.org> wrote: > Allison,or Anyone > > I recently got my MicroVAX I up and running it's MicroVMS 4.1 Congrats! > I listed devices and have an RD52 as DUA0. > and an RX50 as DUA1 and DUA2 Pretty standard. > I did not see any directory commands to tell how much disk space is > used/available. Are there any? SHOW DEVICE/FULL DUA0: > Nor did I see any FORMAT command. (Which at this point I want to AVOID, > because I don't understand the Backup process or target backup media > capacity constraints. It sounds like backup clones the OS on the same drive > in "renewed" and/or "rebuilt" files ) There is no low-level format commands (like a BIOS format) from within VMS. That stuff is all done from rare Field Service diagnostics. I don't know how to do it from a MicroVAX-I. With the right tape, it's just a bunch of menu questions for a MicroVAX-II w/RQDX3. > According to Allison's prior post, should I assume this RD52 is a 30MB MFM > non SCSI drive? Right. > I also have a Plessy 6600/6700 system which has a 84MB-90MB drive which I > think hangs on a DEC compatible SCSI controller. Cool. It might be an Emulex SMD drive interface (they were common third- party devices at one point). If the cables to the drive itself are a 60-pin and a 26-pin, it's SMD. If the cables are 34-pin and 20-pin, it's most likely ESDI. > Is there a chance I could Load the Hobby openVMS on either one, or both of > these systems in a cluster? AFAIK, yes. The issue becomes distribution. The hobby OpenVMS distro is on CD-ROM with the possibility of TK50 (OS only, no layered products) in the future. > It seems to me the more capable system would be the Plessy with larger HD > and Tape Unit already installed, (However I have never booted it, and I > have no Idea what OS currently resides on it.) Except that the Plessy system is a PDP-11 and not a VAX. It will run RT-11, RSX-11 and RSTS, among others, including 2BSD Unix ($100 hobby licenss from PUPS) I can help you with 2BSD. I have original 9-track 2.9 tapes (if your hardware is supported with the RP or XP drivers). Since we are in the same town, perhaps I can come over and give your stuff a look-see. I do have full docs for the 11/34 and attendant OSes of the era. > I believe someone gave an earlier response that the MicroVAX I was too > small to run openVMS alone. I don't know the minimum system requirements, but I would expect that you need 200Mb to load OpenVMS. VMS 6.1 barely fits on an RD54 - 154Mb, the largest you can use on your MicroVAX-I if you happen to have an RQDX3 (you probably have an RQDX1 or RQDX2 - quad-width cards). One of the reasons I'm looking forward to getting that MicroVAX 3100 is it will free me from the tyranny of small, slow, fragile and increasingly rare MFM disks. One downside I caught from a FAQ is that SCSI MicroVAXen don't like disks over 1.07Gb - too many blocks to keep track of with a 21-bit pointer. Fortunately, I have a couple of old DEC 3105's I can pull off of an Amiga. Quite the disks in their day, but discards now. Cheers, -ethan ===== Infinet has been sold. The domain is going away in February. Please send all replies to erd(a)iname.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place. Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com

24 years, 5 months

classic basic games

by jim＠calico.litterbox.com

I just stumbled across an archive of classic computre games in basic at ftp://ftp.rahul.net/pub/rhn/classic.basic.programs/ -- Jim Strickland jim(a)DIESPAMMERSCUMcalico.litterbox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BeOS Powered! -----------------------------------------------------------------------

24 years, 5 months

Basic Source for Super Star Trek

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- "Richard A. Cini" <rcini(a)msn.com> wrote: > Hello, all: > > Does anyone have a copy of the Basic source for Super StarTrek? It's > included in the book "BASIC Computer Games" by David H. Ahl (Creative > Computing). I don't have a copy in the original dialect, but I do have a machine-readable copy for the PET. I typed it in and modified it about twenty years ago. -ethan ===== Infinet has been sold. The domain is going away in February. Please send all replies to erd(a)iname.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place. Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com

24 years, 5 months

DEC Backplane cleansing

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

The ongoing PDP-8/L restoration saga adds a new chapter. I was working on a pair of them the other night and ran into an aggravating problem. The area of the backplane around D-02 through D-15 that holds the M310 delay line modules is giving me fits. I have the power-restart option in and on. I turn a machine on and it runs the lights in a random and pleasing fashion - the MA register shows some lights brighter than others and the AC occasionally shows changes. After a few seconds, the display gets more static - some of the lights in the MA get brighter than they were; some get dimmer. This indicates to me that the same region of memory is getting hit with a higher frequency. Now, here's the annoying part: if I stroke the M310 cards, the display usually goes back to a more random distribution of bits in the MA. The M310 cards are instrumental in the timing flow of TTL -8s. I appear to have a dirty backplane or loose backplane connector fingers. Without replacing sections of the backplane (don't laugh - I have at least one new-in-the-box p/N CAC-1 backplane section), how can I increase my connection reliability? The card fingers don't show any visible corrosion; the gold looks intact. I suspect the quality of the tin-plated steel in the backplane. Can say that these are especially tight, either. I'm not even as far as being able to reliably change and examine memory with the frontpanel. Diagnostics are somewhat distant aids at this point. I'm relegated to an oscilloscope and hand tools. Any tips? Thanks, -ethan ===== Infinet has been sold. The domain is going away in February. Please send all replies to erd(a)iname.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place. Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com

24 years, 5 months

The good old days of tape players

by Glenatacme＠aol.com

Zane wrote: > Hmmm, do I understand that first part correctly that you're essentially > using the PC as a cassette recorder? That *REALLY* appeals to my sick sense > of humor. Now what machines do I have that can use cassette tapes.... :^) Well, you can still buy brand-new ZX81 kits for $49.95 . . . and the 16 KB RAM expansions are readily available for about US$5-10 ;>) Essentially, I use the PC as a device to transfer programs from FTP or Web sites to my small computers: download the program, send it out the sound card to a tape, then load that tape into the smaller computer. There are presently over 10,000 programs available -- all free -- on FTP/Web sites for the small computers I collect. Unfortunately there are groups in the US which oppose this activity -- not because any of the program authors are objecting at this late date -- but because these groups propose that *any* form of emulation, or use of *alien* hardware, to run, store, or transfer these programs is illegal and should be stopped. Their reasoning is: if I never bought a ZX81, but I use a ZX81 emulator on my PC to run ZX81 programs, then what is to stop me from using a Sony Playstation emulator on my PC to avoid buying a Playstation? My opinion is: the major game producers are afraid that if the public finds out that for well under US$100 anyone with a PC and a modem can pick up an "obsolete" computer and get 10,000 games, free, the new hot-rod game machines might lose a few sales. Regards, Glen Goodwin 0/0

24 years, 5 months

3100 SCSI and 1.07GB (was RE: VAXstation 3100 history)

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh(a)aracnet.com> wrote: > >I caught from a FAQ is that SCSI MicroVAXen don't like disks over 1.07Gb - > >too many blocks to keep track of with a 21-bit pointer. > Actually, that's not quite right. Plus I think the 3100/90 is likely to be > new enough that this isn't a problem. Most 3100's can't have a boot disk > that is over 1.07GB. The data disks can be over that. I wasn't clear. Sorry. Yes, the *boot* device can't be over $1FFFFF blocks long because of the limitation in the SCSI commands used by older firmware. One reason pointed out in the FAQ is that the system dump *could* overwrite the first couple of tracks if the disk is over 1.07Gb and conditions are right. As has been pointed out, VAXstation 3100s are not upgradable; later MicroVAXen are either upgradable or no upgrade is necessary. -ethan ===== Infinet has been sold. The domain is going away in February. Please send all replies to erd(a)iname.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place. Yahoo! Shopping: http://shopping.yahoo.com

24 years, 5 months

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test-drb December 1999