I just picked up an Intel MCS-86 Microcomputer System Prototype Kit today.
It has a bunch of ICs in it and an Intel Product Description booklet. Does
anyone know if there are any instructions for this or is the PD book all
that came with them?
Joe
Having gotten an older Powerbook, I have been looking at Ethernet options
and have decided that I'd like to find a used Kinetics EtherSC (SCSI
Ethernet adapter).
Why such and old one, especially when I can pick up an Asante on eBay?
Various reasons... mainly the fact that it appears to be one of the
few which would be supported by the NetBSD 'se' driver.
So, if you have one that you'd like to get rid of, let me know what it's
worth to you. I'm open to cash or trades (depending on what you're looking
for); I can even trade a DaynaPORT SCSI/Link-T (another SCSI Ethernet
box, but somewhat newer).
Thanks in advance...
<<<John>>>
I have a box of QIC tapes that claim to contain old versions of Irix,
mostly circa version 4.0.x, with a few random Sun and IBM tapes from
around the same era (late 1980s) thrown in. Does anyone want them?
eric
I alttended the Syscon/Buscon convention at LAX in 1986 and found that IEEE
696 board manufacturers were fairly well represented. Nevertheless, most of
them conceded that (1) their new boards wouldn't work with their old ones,
thereby quashing any hope one might have held of "upgrading" to reduce cost,
and (2) their new boards generally varied in one respect or another from the
standard, hence defeating features which had to be sacrificed in order to
make others work, but ultimately defeating interoperability between vendors.
I didn't attend the '696 standards committee meetings, but did attend SCSI
and Optical Disk standards committee meetings, so I have a pretty good idea
of the games which are typically played at these affairs.
What happened with S-100 was that unlike the SCSI standards committee, which
was ultimately beaten into submission by one major vendor of controllers and
interface IC's, was that a standard was patterned around hardware already in
the field. They could do this because of their position which was quite
unyielding due to their already installed base. This same sort of thing
caused '696 meeting attendees to conclude that, while there was a standard,
there was no need to adhere to it because the goal of inter-vender
interoperability was not likely to be attained, and the market window for 8
and 16 bit computers was closing due to the advent of the IBM PC and PC/AT.
The Macintosh was not yet a force they felt had to be reckoned with, though
it certainly developed into one. Their market was seriously eroded by the
single-board boxes offered by many manufacturers late in the market cycle,
because, like it or not, large-volume hardware is sold by the pound, and
S-100 stuff always weighed a lot.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Sellam Ismail <dastar(a)ncal.verio.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Thursday, March 18, 1999 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: Cromemco (was Re: S-100 bus specs)
>On Thu, 18 Mar 1999, James Willing wrote:
>
>> > ...Cromemco actively manufactured S-100 systems
>> > until they went out of business in around 1986 or so.
>>
>> as much as I absolutely hate to contradict... <BIG B^} >
>>
>> You may want to take a look at www.cromemco.com before you cast the
>> previous thot in stone...
>
>You're kidding!
>
>Wow, you're not. But this is a far different company than us old tech
>nerds know and love. Most of the business base seems to be European
>these days. But hey, this is significant. A micro/mini-computer company
>that's been around longer than Apple and is still alive and kicking.
>That's more than you can say for any other computer comapnies that sprang
>up around the same time, save for the obvious.
>
>I stand corrected (yet again :)
>
>Sellam Alternate e-mail:
dastar(a)siconic.com
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
>Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out.
>
> Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
> See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
> [Last web site update: 02/15/99]
>
Sellam Ismail <dastar(a)ncal.verio.com> wrote:
> Godbout, Cromemco, etc. Cromemco actively manufactured S-100 systems
> until they went out of business in around 1986 or so.
Uh, Cromemco had an office with prominent sign at the corner of
Bernardo and Central Expressway in Mountain View, CA 'til about 1992.
I've wondered why I didn't see much of their detritus turn up on the
surplus circuit, maybe it all went overseas to the new HQ.
-Frank McConnell
II have the Motorola book here and it is 4 pages with all the data and
curves you could possibly want. I could do a quick scan and email it. What
format is good for you.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Dwight Elvey <elvey(a)hal.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Thursday, March 18, 1999 3:44 PM
Subject: Transistor help
>Hi All
> I have been looking for the specs of a transistor
>that burned out on my Cromemco board. It seems to
>be obsolete. I tried the NTE suggested replacement
>but that didn't seem to have enough gain to work
>correctly. None of the books I have show it.
> It is a MPS6560.
>
>I'm looking for max current, Vcbo and hfe.
>Thanks
>Dwight
>
Please see imbedded comments below.
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence LeMay <lemay(a)cs.umn.edu>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Thursday, March 18, 1999 11:43 AM
Subject: sellers market
>> Ward D. Griffiths III wrote:
>>
>> ePay seems to be a seller's market. There's nothing inherently wrong
with
>> that, but nevertheless I think it sucks. Of course, my opinion is very
>> biased, since I'm generally on the buying end of the deal.
>>
>
>So someone needs to create another web site that is the opposite
>of what eBay provides. A site where you can advertise that you're
>looking for an Exidy Sorcerer computer, and woould be willing to
>pay about $15 plus $10 shipping. I suggest you call this new
>site yaBe.com ....
>
I don't know about that name, but that might be an excellent idea.
Selling your stuff comes down to finding someone who wants it more than you
do, doesn't it? Likewise, doesn't buying someone's property come down to
finding someone who wants what you're willing to pay more than he wants the
property in question.
The REAL trick, though, is ensuring that neither party disrupts the
transaction before it is consumated. Ebay doesn't do that, nor does
Haggle.com. They both put on a show, but neither service provides much to
protect either party nor do they protect the integrity of the transaction
>from which the money ostensibly is generated to support the service. These
transactions are based on trusting someone whom you've never met, and whom
nor not likely to meet, and therefore the transactions are VERY fragile.
Ebay claims a 70% completion rate, and I expect that's inflated. I think a
service which protects the buyer and the seller, by ensuring the funds and
the merchandise as represented are there and by ensuring the parties
complete the transaction to which they're supposedly committed, would be
VERY valuable and would take a BIG bite out of Ebay's share. That's not an
easy task, however.
>
>-Lawrence (yes I want an Exidy, who doesn't?) LeMay
I don't believe it's a seller's market. The seller has to pay Ebay
regardless of whether a transaction is satisfactorily completed. They
freely admit that their success rate is only about 70%. I'd be willing to
bet that when a transaction falls through, it's the buyer who caused the
transaction to fail, not the seller. Further, since we live in a capitalist
society, it's the market that determines the value, not the utility. What I
dislike about the Ebays of the world is that they take their cut from the
seller in advance, and not from the transaction itself.
In a real estate transaction, where you similarly have a bidding system for
the right to purchase a house, and where you similarly involve one or more
agents on behalf of the buyer or seller, the buyer has to put down "earnest
money" indicating that he's really serious. On the web auctions, they don't
generally do that. What they do, is collect a fee from the would-be seller.
The real-estate guys take their money from the seller, since that's the one
place where there's bound to be some money at the end of the day. In the
antique computer parts market, there's no attempt to ascertain whether the
purported buyer even has the funds he's bidding. They do have an escrow
service which holds the buyer's money in case the seller fails to ship what
was promised. Does any of this sound like an arrangement favoring the
seller?
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Thursday, March 18, 1999 11:36 AM
Subject: Re: Leo Computers
>Ward D. Griffiths III wrote:
>> Since E-slay buyers show no evidence
>> of giving a damn about value rather than cost.
>
>John Foust <jfoust(a)threedee.com> replied:
>> You'd think the average libertoonian would be ready to "defend the
>> undefendable".
>
>Hey, just because us "libertoonians" defend people's right to do whatever
>dumbass things they want to do in the privacy of their own home, doesn't
>mean that we like or approve of their actions. :-)
>
>ePay seems to be a seller's market. There's nothing inherently wrong with
>that, but nevertheless I think it sucks. Of course, my opinion is very
>biased, since I'm generally on the buying end of the deal.
>
Hi,
You may remember that I posted a message about this a while ago.
Well, it turns out the the boot ROM can be made to appear on any A1000. The
A-Max Mac emulator has a special bootblock which does this, in order to allow
the Kickstart memory to be used under Mac emulation. (When the boot ROM is
visible, the Kickstart area is writeable.)
I have written a tiny program to save out the boot ROM data, in conjunction
with this special bootblock. The program dumps the A1000's boot ROM (in fact
the region $F00000-$FBFFFF) to disk.
The actual boot ROM appears to be 64K long, and appears at (at least) $F80000-
$F8FFFF and $FA0000-$FAFFFF. There is seemingly garbage at $F90000-$F9FFFF
and $FB0000-$FBFFFF.
My program saves the 768K from $F00000-$FBFFFF, in order to investigate what is
there; the boot ROM may also appear somewhere in the $F00000-$F7FFFF region.
If you want to dump your A1000's boot ROM, get this file:
http://home.freeuk.net/markk/A1000_Boot_ROM_Dumper.DMS
(It is 3821 bytes long.)
Unpack it to a floppy disk and boot your A1000 with it, after loading
Kickstart. Leave the disk write-enabled; a 768K file will be saved to it.
I would be interested to see whether there are different versions of the A1000
boot ROM. If you dump yours, it would be nice if you could compress it and
upload to your web space (or if that isn't possible, mail it to me).
I am working on disassembling the boot ROM, and if anyone is interested I can
send them the current work-in-progress.
-- Mark
