Whew! The uVax II is talking to me again. With Megan's help and a couple of
others the boards have been correctly arranged and once again I get the
'chevron' prompt. I use the following magic to get into WOMBAT on the
controller:
>>> D/P/W 20001F40 20
>>> D/L 20088008 80000002
>>> D/W <csr> AC
>>> S 400
Where <csr> is replaced with 20001468 in my case. It varies based on how
the switches are set. The WQESD manual claims you can get into WOMBAT by
typing 'W' if the right switch is set but my VAX just says "illegal command"
The disk controller doesn't "see" my ESDI disk but I've got some cable
damage on the 34 pin cable that I need to repair. (replacing the cable)
However, after the mistake of connecting the QTO card in backwards I'm
trying to find some way to test it. My best guess is to put a tape in the
drive and try to boot from it but I don't know what the device name would
be... any help here would be good.
--Chuck
Heads Up!!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 14:57:29 -0800
From: E.B. Lieberman <ebliebe(a)jps.net>
To: Info-PDP11(a)transarc.com
Subject: PDP-11/70's - Now you can own one of these great work horses
Now you can own a PDP-11/70! Yep, that's right.
I'm not talking about those little 11/8x and 11/9x Q-bus jobs.
I'm talking about the real thing; you know with MASSBUS and all.
A global financial institution, previously headquartered in Northern
California, is getting ready to say goodbye to the last of its
PDP-11/70's. These machines (there are eight of them), were used as
message store and forward switches for nearly 20 years. Great minds
have tried to count the number of times the world wide GNP have flowed
through these systems; and failed !!!
Each CPU has roughly the same configuration as follows:
QED 11/70 processor upgrade with 4Mb memory plus cache running at
multiple VUP speeds. (Wow, faster than a 11/780, VAX engineering -
eat your hearts out);
Two System Industries CLUSTOR III MASSBUS disk controllers with 16
Seagate 1.0 Gig drives built with SMD interfaces. Ten drives are
fixed
while the remaining are in removable canisters;
One Fujitsu 2480M/3480 SCSI tape drive (emulates a TU81) plus
SCSI-UNIBUS controller;
One TE16 or TU16 magtape drive (MASSBUS);
Two DV-11's with modem control (16 channel sync or async adapters)
and custom drivers set up for a variation on IBM BISYNC;
Three DZ-11's and an ETHERNET DELUA;
Plus software to show you that all hardware components are
functional;
Did I say eight (8) CPU's? There's more !!
For a short time only, we can throw in tons of spares that include:
More QED's, SETASI memory (2Mb and 4Mb), more DV-11's, more DZ-11's,
full 11/70 CPU kits, DH-11's, DHQ-11's, 50-60 extra Seagate drives,
as described above, in removable canisters, 24 or so extra SI
CLUSTOR controllers, 3 to its own 19" rack.
Am I finished? No way !!!
I'll even throw in a few RP06 disk packs. The platters are great
for making Frisbee's out of
(kids, don't play with these without adult supervision).
Boxes of hardware manuals and even a TECO manual (the first real
editor that today still has the best macro generator going).
So if you are interested in taking the entire lot (en masse), then drop
me a line and we can talk about it.
At 09:35 AM 3/8/99 -0800, Sellam Ismail wrote:
>How "rare" can something be when an instance of it goes up for auction
>every damn week!? Doug Yowza noted that there is one Altair or another on
>sale at ebay every day!
This is the point isn't it? Finding an Altair at a garage sale or swap
meeting in Bloomington Indiana would be like finding the Holy Grail in a
pawn shop, not friggin likely. But when you expand the garage sale to cover
the whole freakin planet the chances go up to about 1.0. Added to that is
that while only about 130 to 200M of us are actually online, given the
natural connectivity of the human race we probably have access to the
garages of more than 40% of the developed nations.
That sort of re-defines rare in a different way, and after the orgasmic
frenzy has passed of finding things that used to be incredibly hard to find
in your local neighborhood, expectations will get reset and the market will
rationalize and the so called "bottom" will drop out of Altair prices.
--Chuck
I've got several PDP-11's, all unibus - that use the RQDX2 controller.
A friend of mine just came up with a 380mb Maxtor ESDI drive. Will the RQDX2
support it?
Jay West
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
> My idea of a perfect computer is the Amiga (or it's the closest thing yet
>I've found). Enough hardware to keep the hardware guys happy, and the best
>kernel design I've seen in a long time to keep the software guys happy.
>Heck, the AmigaOS even has controlled ways for programs to take over the
>hardware. And it's still a great gaming system.
Then you're going to be very happy this November when the next generation
Amigas are launched.
--
Gareth Knight
Amiga Interactive Guide | ICQ No. 24185856
http://welcome.to/aig | "Shine on your star"
Chris Halarewich wrote:
> Howdy
>
> Just wondering if someone out there would have a extra kickstart
> disc for an amiga 1000 that they could spare to loose or copy for the
> cost of
> shipping + a few bucks?
>
> thanx in advance
>
> Chris
> Castlegar BC CANADA
-----Original Message-----
From: Sellam Ismail <dastar(a)ncal.verio.com>
>I gather from many conversations I've had that many people buying the
>Altairs see them as historic becaiuse of their connection to Microsoft.
>Some think that it marked the beginning of the microcomputer revolution
>because it launched the career of Gates. What these foolish speculators
>fail to realize is that the game is not yet won, and they are leaving the
>arena at halftime thinking their investment is secure. History will place
>a very different value on their Altair because of what Linux will do to
>Microsoft, far less than the tens of thousands that I imagine some people
>think they may be worth some day.
This may be halftime in a game that turns around but you still can't
disparage some of the plays during the first half. I don't know how bg's
career if factored into an altair's value nor do I really care. It dosen't
seem much of a reason to me to go for a MITS.
- Mike: dogas(a)leading.net
Since it's the GUI that attracts the idiots, I'd get behind an os that has
features which would defeat any attempt at GUI operation. The real problem
is that the people who buy the desktop systems don't use them. They
specify them and then collect a bonus, quit, and go to work for the vendor
of those systems.
Back about 15 years ago we started seeing some really decent engineering
software for DOS. You could buy a VERY good schematic capture package for
$500 (I still use mine and have yet to see anything better, even at prices
> $500k) and a serviceable PCB router for $1200. Today you can easily
spend $2e6 and end up with something which does NOTHING useful at all under
UNIX and does little more under NT. It's the GUI, stupid . . . that's the
excuse. Today you routinely pop into the GUI, run the help and find there
isn't any. Many of the software vendors of the mid-80's have taken their
fairly decent products, reduced their capabilities, introduced countless
bugs and octupled the price, relative to inflation.
We need some really stiff legislation making it an unconditional,
immediate, and irrevocally hanging offense for ALL employees of any
corporation any employees of which endeavor to sell software which is not
fully documented. That means that documentation must predict the behavior
of their software precisely to a depth of all of 2^32 inputs. That will
certainly eliminate the use of a generalized GUI!
How many times have you been told " well . . . that's interesting . . . we
didn't know that it does THAT!"
Dick
----------
> From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel(a)u.washington.edu>
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Re: Interesting to note about Altairs...
> Date: Monday, March 08, 1999 3:58 PM
>
> Arfon wrote:
> > Micro$oft and Windblows. Now that I put that disclaimer out, Linux
doesn't
> > have a chance against Micro$oft. The vast majority of computer users
(now
> > and in the future) are idiots who don't care to learn anything other
that
> > 'click on this little picture to make it go'. Linux will do some
damage in
> > the server market and other places where you have to have someone with
some
> > computer smarts but, most corporate purse strings are again controlled
by
> > those same 'click-idiots'.
> >
> > I really wish GNU would take a good command line OS (like CP/M), make
it
> > 32/64 bit, and multi-tasking/user and add a GUI and try and compete
with
> > Winblows.
>
> This is barely on topic, but it was too tempting to reply and not just
hit
> 'd'. You have a good point, but it only leads to two objections in my
mind:
>
> 1) The 'idiotification' process is already happening with Linux; there
are
> various projects out there (like KDE and GNOME and various other window
> managers and package managers) that are attempting to make Linux look
better
> and present a "point-and-click" appearance. I mention package managers
> because click-idiots certainly don't want to deal with the compiler.
>
> 2) Your second paragraph describes a process which is already happening
with
> Linux. What did you have in mind that is different? A different
starting
> OS? (CP/M, some free version of MS-DOS) An OS that's more intelligent
> about hardware? I'm not being rude -- your ideas are probably good but
you
> need to spell them out.
>
> Then there's the matter of software. If your new OS is going to have
> commercially-written software, that provides an arena for the evil forces
> you described. (We might be able to avoid them, but the potential for
them
> is certainly there.) If you're going to stick to free software, well,
> that's mainly written by idealistic geeky people who like to mess around
in
> the source. :) So that conflicts with the design decision of writing for
> idiots.
>
> To keep this on topic -- What do you think will happen to the values of
> classic computers?
>
> -- Derek
-----Original Message-----
From: Megan <mbg(a)world.std.com>
> ...<ETA-3400 snips>...
>Now I really want to find one... <sigh>
After I get it built and have a chance to grok and run a few laps in it,
I'll let you *BORROW* it if you wish...
- Mike: dogas(a)leading.net
