test-drb March 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

191 participants
1003 discussions

by jpl15＠netcom.com

Saturday evening I went to a friend's business who was subleasing part of his shop to a gentleman doing 'surplus' here in Southern California. The gentleman regretfully passed away suddenly around New Years, leaving a lot of Stuff behind, which we are liquidating for the man's estate and widow. So: here are some DEC/classiccmp related items, a few of which might be of some interest to list-members. I bought these items as a lot, and will indicate which are available to the Community. (*) Two Siemens System 300 desktop card readers, still set up for 230vac/50htz. * Some kind of DEC test box, in a large blue alum. case, marked only model 93-07402, containing an RX02 disk and a printset; the disk is marked DGSBA.A11 (S/X REC.) and the printsets are marked SX TRANSLATOR.* Three nice leather shipping cases containing RL01/2 disks: in one, three disks RLO1K DX-T502K-MC CZZLDK0 DLDP V2 RL1 DIAG Pkg 1 Pkg 2 Pkg 3 in the second, 2 disks RL02K BC-EH95I-MC CZZLOTTO DLDP V2 R2 DIAG Scratch In the third, 2 disks RL02K BC-FI18S-DE 000MUB9526 VAX 8600/8650 CNSL W/DIAG (Both disks marked the same) * A PMK05 Unibus Exerciser w/doc and two paper tapes marked: MAINDEC-11-DZKUA-C-PB 6/3/76 nr Unibus Systems Exerciser Diag. MAINDEC-11-DZKUB-A-PB 3/24/76 nr Unibus Exerciser Module Diag. A Wilson Laboratories SX-530 Disk Memory Exerciser, set and cabled for SMD devices (wooo-hooo!) With doc and adpaters, and a supplement for FUJI units. A Pertech card-sized laminator with a hundred DIGITAL logo cards and plastic carriers for them, waiting to be laminated. A Digital portable fiche reader w/two lenses (24x and 42x) [Visidyne]* A Massbus T.D.R. adapter for the PDP-10... hooks up to a Tektronix 1502 Time Domain Reflectometer to diagnose Massbus continuity and signal integrity. With docs and adapters. (No Tek 1502, though... damn!) Manual says: "TDR testing of Massbus I/O bus, Memory BUs, and Channel Bus. * A VAX 8600/8650 Backplane Repair kit and manual marked "Backplane Repair Seminar Manual" This kit is in a nice Halliburton case and is full of all those wierd and wonderful tools, all made of unobtanium. * A TU58 dual external drive with cables and M8043 and Pocket Service Guide. A PRS01 portable paper tape reader with service docs, many cables, and DLv11 card... geared for slow speed. A Digital-badged Termiflex handheld data display/entry device... looks brand new... two lines of about 24 Alpha LEDs. A Fluke 8020 Dig Multimeter in a leather case w/Dec markings. A T.I. Silent 700/707 Very Tiny terminal... about the size of an EPSON HX-10 or Radio Shack 100... in a well-worn heavy cloth carrying case, complete with detached acoustic phone coupler, power brick, and one unused roll of thermal paper. There is more DEC-related stuff still at the place, including maybe 6 or 7 temp/humidity circular chart recorders... more of the Termiflex units.. about ten more suitcase-type testers and exerciser boxes, and about a ton of non-list-realted test equipment I'm going to sort thru in the next few weeks. Any interest.. please e-mail and I will forward further info. Cheers John

25 years, 9 months

DEC LA36 Decwriter II

by jpl15＠netcom.com

I have a beutiful example waiting for a less crowded environment. I don't usually rate gear by appearance but this one's an 8 or 9. It has a spare 20ma card and complete oper and tech docs. This unit is 10/15/30 cps, 132 columns... classic DEC console. Yours for the asking in Southern California.. will deliver within a radius determined by your ability to bribe me. Can not ship... I have way too many items to ship to folks already. Let me know. Cheers John

25 years, 9 months

Help, need a Board ID from Data Systems Design

by cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com

I've got a Q-bus board I can't identify, its labelled: Data Systems Design 44432-4 Its a dual height card with a 26 pin idc connector on the top and two 82S100 chips. I'm guessing it is some sort of parallel interface... --Chuck

25 years, 9 months

18 Classic Computers Delivered, a beaut day.

by guerney＠uq.net.au

For so long on this list, I have been reading about peoples "good days", "lucky days" and so on. Now at last, I can talk about my "real beaut" day! A local collector, not known previously to me, put a post on one of the "aus.forsale" newsgroups saying he wanted to thin out his collection, and he preferred a person take the "off-load" as one lot. Thanks to a "heads-up" >from Andrew Davie, I got in first (as it turns out, no one else offered to take the lot) and the previous owner even volunteered to bring it all around in his van. The delivery consisted of: EACA Genie III, an all-in-one 2x5.25" and monitor (TRS-80 compatible and CP/M) CPT 8525, an all-in-one 2x8" drive and page-view monitor Spectravideo 328 with 605 Expander containing 2x5.25" drives and 80 column card Hitachi MB6890K ("Peach") with Hitachi MP-3550 dual floppy and Hitachi monitor Hitachi MB6890K (another) with 3rd party dual floppy unit and two other expansion cards IBM 5150, made in the Wangaratta plant in Australia that IBM ran for a few years, with a 64K-256K board and cassette connector IBM DisplayWriter (Model 6580) with 2 x 2 x 8" drive units (ie 2 lots of double 8" drive modules) Digital Professional 350 but without its hard drive (but a double floppy) and 2 x VR201 monitors TRS-80 MC-10 with 16K expansion TRS-80 Model III 16K with no drives TRS-80 Model III 48K with 2x5.25" drives TRS-80 Model 4 64K with 2x5.25" drives TRS-80 Color Computer 1 TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with NEC PC-8032B dual 5.25" disc unit and TRS-80 Line Printer VIII VIC-20 Dick Smith System 80 cassette system Microbee Series 2 Colour Microbee Series 3 128K with Microbee Disc System (5.25" in large shoebox) And all the previous owner wanted ... a swap for my Apple ][+ which he needed for a project he was working on now. Thanks Chris, if you are reading this, much appreciated and valued. Shouldn't be too hard to find another ][+. Of these computers, the CPT is the least known (to me). I can find only one mention of it on the Web and that guy didn't even have a boot disk for it. At least I have some 8" disks (don't know if it works yet, still got to do the preliminary check-out before applying power). One of the floppies says "Tandon CPT" on it (hand-written) and a sticker somewhere suggests it was built in Ireland. I'd appreciate some more info on it. Hardly anything on the net about this chunky IBM Display Writer either, its not even on the Comprehensive Computer Catalog as far as I can see ... Anyone got a spare monitor cable for the Hitachi Peach's? (Luckily, they also have B&W monochrome output so I can see that this system works). Now, I've got plenty to do for a while ... Phil Guerney in Brisbane, Australia

25 years, 9 months

old hp printer available, and...

by dogas＠leading.net

From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> >>However, the reason I've replied is that I have the tech manuals for the >HP150 (schematics, programming info, etc), so if there's anything you >need me to look up (or if you need help fixing it ever), feel free to ask. Thanks Tony, you'll be the first to know if I get stuck once I start digging in it. ;) I think it works. It comes up in some kind of terminal configuration mode and eventually fails on an OS load... ;( What do you expect for $18. - Mike: dogas(a)leading.net

25 years, 9 months

Help, need a Board ID from Data Systems Design

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<I've got a Q-bus board I can't identify, its labelled: < Data Systems Design < 44432-4 < <Its a dual height card with a 26 pin idc connector on the top and two <82S100 chips. I'm guessing it is some sort of parallel interface... Sounds like the interface card for the DSD-880 disks systems. They were RX01/2 floppy and RL02 workalikes though they were fixed disks not carts. Allison

25 years, 9 months

disassembling a monitor

by yakowenk＠cs.unc.edu

Okay, this is stupid. It should be a simple thing. But, as I always say, better safe than dead. So... Can anybody give me pointers on disassembling an IBM 5151 monitor? I rescued one from a dumpster, but it seems to have something metallic-sounding loose inside. Since it sounds like metal (and not glass, for instance), I want to remove it (or properly attach it wherever it belongs) before powering up. I can imagine all sorts of bad things that a loose bit of metal could do inside a monitor with the power on. I know enough to avoid the high voltages once I get inside, but would much prefer to get inside without breaking the CRT's neck. The enclosure is made of two parts; the front that fits around the face of the CRT and the front half of the bottom form one piece; the remainder is the second. When I set the thing on its face and remove all screws in the second piece, the front half of the bottom flexes inward under the weight of whatever is attached to it. It does this enough to worry me - any attached innards must be getting closer to the CRT's neck when that happens. Help? Thanks in advance. Bill.

25 years, 9 months

AMSOFT on DISK

by jim＠calico.litterbox.com

*nod* Ours were well into the million pages throughput. This was a college housing department, and we were running ALLIN1 desktop on our vaxcluster so an obscene amount of printing fell to our 2 LN03s (one per floor of the admin building). And yes again, the one that overheated DID have a fan motor problem. The fact that they stood up to this constant abuse speaks well of them, to be honest. And actually since I know the vaxcluster is still in place at that site (I ping it from time to time out of curiosity) I shouldn't be surprised if those printers are still there, 6 years later. ><Nice enough laser printers for their day, but they tend to overheat, if ><memory serves. If you get one, make SURE the fan works. Check. I seem ><to recall we had problems with those on a Vax site I worked on once. > >Only if the fans are missing or dead. I was part of that design team and >overheating was never a problem. The most common problem was a printer >designed for an peak use of 5,000 pages a month being used as a line >printer. They get a bit tired and cranky if they werent kept clean and >get over a million pages on them. Inshort they were commonly abused. > >Oh, one note... there are about 5 versions of the printer depeinding on the >logic (ansi, enhanced ansi, postscript, postscript/ansi hybrid, video engine ><part of QPSS package>). > >Oh the launch date is 1984 and production continued through 90-91 (memory >test). > > >Allison

25 years, 9 months

historical question - paper tape vs. punched cards

by jlwest＠tseinc.com

Just a curious question: Which came first, paper tape or punched cards? I'm not concerned about "invention" dates, I'm more interested in "came into very common use" dates. Actually, I'm not concerned about dates either - just which one came into very common use the first. Always wondered - thought people here may have an idea. Jay West

25 years, 9 months

Weitek array processor and IBM 8" floppy drive: clues wanted

by svs＠ropnet.ru

G'day, 1. Weitek Multibus Array Processor. A two-board set for 16-bit ISA bus. Until recently, resided in an IBM 5170. Part number is 3002-0025-02. On the top board two largest chips are Weitek WTL1066GCD's, "FP data paths / multiport register files". Technical manual and/or software (math library?) would be nice to have :) 2. 8" IBM floppy drive. Visible markings: IBM53 51TD EC 786450 85-W 23 P/N 4240513 Where does this come from? DejaNews gives a clue, but no definite answer. -- Sergey Svishchev -- svs{at}ropnet{dot}ru

25 years, 9 months

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test-drb March 1999