test-drb April 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

170 participants
1190 discussions

by Philip.Belben＠pgen.com

I'll reply to Geoff, since he has covered more points than others. >> Do I need to insulate / heat the building? > > Not sure where you are, but I imagine insulation would be a good idea. My > experience with electronics/computers is that ideal storage is at a > relatively constant temperature, so extremes of heat (ie over 35c) or cold > (much below 10c) should be avoided where possible. I don't think it'll get over 35 deg C, even in a hot summer, although the thin roof may act like a solar panel. To look at it another way, domestic air conditioning is almost unknown here in the UK. (Nasos - I'm at Coalville, about 5 mi NW of M1 Jn 22) In winter, temperatures of -2 deg C are common, and -10 is not unheard-of. So that sounds like insulation would be a good idea. I am unlikely to operate computers in this building - no electricity or comms services as yet, so it would be expensive. I shall look into elec costs... > Some stuff is more tolerant, our Vax 6310 kept right on going despite the > a/c failing last summer during a long weekend. It was 44C in the computer > room on the Monday morning. The netware server in the same room died when > it's power supply failed, presumably due to overheating! Ha! I must admit I'd have thought that humidity would be more of a problem than temperature. An argument in favour of electric heating rather than gas, I suppose... >> Should I install a dehumidifier (I think I can get hold of one)? > > If the place is damp you need to either seal up each machine with > dehumidifying agent inside the seal, or dehumidify the environment > it's in. Dust/spiders/roaches/mice etc can be a problem with long term > storage too. I think my parents have a dehumidifier they no longer use. Again, electricity is needed - I'll try and plumb it in to discharge on the ground outside for water disposal. >> Do I need (for example) to wrap each computer up in plastic with a packet >> of silica gel? > > That's one way..... I was afraid of that. Dehumidifier is probably less work, but more money long-term... I think that controlled environment of some sort is probably more necessary for books/manuals etc. than for hardware (if you'll forgive the qualified absolute). >> The rent is very cheap - L2 (about $3.30) per square foot per year, and >> the building is only 10 min walk from my house. With luck, this will mean >> that I shall soon have a house with room for me as well as my junk... > > How big is this building? At that rate you could use quite a bit of it > without breaking the bank... That is cheap. Perhaps I wasn't clear. It's all or nothing. 300 sq ft for L600 ($1000) per annum. (FWIW it was built by a local toyshop to store excess stock, apparently. Most recent tenant was the local council, who stored polling booths there for use in local elections.) On top of the rent there is a property tax ("Uniform Business Rate") - the agent are finding this out for me - and I shall have to buy racking and things. But I think it's a good deal. Bob was paying L42 per month for 25 sq ft - roughly ten times as much on a per-square-foot basis! Philip

25 years, 2 months

digital bites the dust, finally

by djenner＠halcyon.com

Well, the two big signs that said |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| on the DECwest buildings in Bellevue, WA disappeared sometime in the last few days. Just big blanks there now, not even a Compaq, yet. Also, in case anyone's interested, here's a reference to the DECwest Alumni club. http://www.halcyon.com/edge/decwest_alumni Dave

25 years, 2 months

Description: Catalog of 11/45 Cards Installed

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>>So, I got a moment to list the 11/45 complement of cards mounted in >>the chassis. They read with the imprinted numberings properly >>oriented to the eye, and R to L they are: >You need a copy of the DEC Field Guide. It's available on metalab, I'm >sure someone else will pop up with the URL. http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-11/field-g… -- Tim Shoppa Email: shoppa(a)trailing-edge.com Trailing Edge Technology WWW: http://www.trailing-edge.com/ 7328 Bradley Blvd Voice: 301-767-5917 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817 Fax: 301-767-5927

25 years, 2 months

Restoration of an 11/34a

by mbg＠world.std.com

In the latest trip that Allison and I took to collect some hardware, I got an RL01 and an RL11. I've now installed the RL01 in the rack with the 11/34a and have plugged the RL11 into the machine. I haven't yet located a cable, but that shouldn't be too hard given some time (now where did I put my stockroom?) I've also prettied it up a little by adding another black plastic panel to the front, so it looks pretty good. Next step is to also locate a cable to connect the DL11-W to a terminal, and I can check if it boots with one of the numerous RL01 disks I got this weekend. In the same trip, I also got another 11/34a, which had numerous non-dec boards in it, but also had an FP11, which is now in the machine I've been working on. Since I may sell 11/34a I got the other day, I did some work on it this morning to clean it up and configure it with at least the processor, memory (16kw), boot board and a serial interface. I vacuumed all the old filter out of the backplane, put in the boards and it mostly worked... one strange thing is that when I put in the UNIBUS terminator, I get bus hangs. When I remove it, I don't... Anyway, I'll have to toggle in some short code segments to see if the CPU will execute code (actually, I think it was executing the boot cood...hmmm) Anyway, that's the latest on those machines... I'll have a newer picture of the 11/34a up on my web page later today... Megan Gentry Former RT-11 Developer +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Megan Gentry, EMT/B, PP-ASEL | Internet (work): gentry!zk3.dec.com | | Unix Support Engineering Group | (home): mbg!world.std.com | | Compaq Computer Corporation | addresses need '@' in place of '!' | | 110 Spitbrook Rd. ZK03-2/T43 | URL: http://world.std.com/~mbg/ | | Nashua, NH 03062 | "pdp-11 programmer - some assembler | | (603) 884 1055 | required." - mbg | +--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+

25 years, 2 months

Description: Catalog of 11/45 Cards Installed

by hhacker＠home.com

So, I got a moment to list the 11/45 complement of cards mounted in the chassis. They read with the imprinted numberings properly oriented to the eye, and R to L they are: 8114 8115 8112 8113 8100 8101 8102 8103 8104 8105 8106 8108 8107 8109 There are no other cards installed. All but the 8109 fill the entire slot, while the 8109 fills the lower three socket ranks. While I should find these answers amidst some of the email I have archived over my tenure on the list, I know that some of you know the URL backwards. Care to help me out? Also, is it true that all 11/45 systems sported the operators console, LED's, switches, the works? William R. Buckley

25 years, 2 months

stepping machanism of Apple Disk ][ drive (was Re: Heatkit 51/4

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Apr 11, 17:21, Cameron Kaiser wrote: > Allison wrote: > ::the oder of learning for me was PDP-8, PDP-10, CM2100, 8008, 8080 then > ::over a span of 6 years. From the 1975 to 1978 the list is z80, 8048, > :: 1802, sc/mp, 6800, 650x, 9900, pdp-11! > :: > ::I have fewer biases. ;) Well ok, if said 8085 for some, 804x for others, > ::T-11 (pdp-11 on a single chip), and z80. Never had more than the few 6502s > ::until recently but they are fun too. > > Heavily biased to 6502 myself :-) then Z80, 9995 and x86. I'll learm M68K > one of these days. I started on the Z80, then 6502, followed by ARM, 68K, 6809, 8048, PDP11, MIPS in no particular order. I still like the Z80 and 6502, but the ARM is one of my favourites. I've never written any serious code for x86, and what I've seen of the architecture fills me with loathing ;-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

25 years, 2 months

Computer Storage

by PB14＠leicester.ac.uk

On 13 Apr 99 at 9:32, Philip.Belben(a)PowerTech.co.uk wrote: > I am thinking of renting a building in which to store my computer collection, > together with that of a friend who has gone to Canada [Bob Manners, for P850UG > people]. The building is very simply constructed - single brick walls and sheet > asbestos roof - and currently has no supply of electricity or gas, but appears > fairly dry (at least at present). A couple of years ago I helped store some some PDP and RL02 stuff in a similar construction building in Nottingham, so I guess the climate is similar to Coalville :-) The precautions were pretty basic -- sealed cabinets etc in clingfilm, some plywood over the concrete floor to make things "warmer". The kit was stored in this condition for a year before being sold and resuming commercial service. I think you should even be able to store manuals/books (not those in ring binders of course) if they are sealed in clingfilm and kept away from damp surfaces. I have a couple of boxes of shrinkwrapped software that were stored in a damp shed but the shrinkwrap protected the packaging. As any old car owner will tell you, the worst thing about lock-up storage tends to metal doors which add to your condensation/damp problem more than anything. Mail me if you need a hand physically moving your kit. Phil ************************************************************** Phil Beesley -- Computer Officer -- Distributed Systems Suppport University of Leicester Tel (0)116 252-2231 E-Mail pb14(a)le.ac.uk

25 years, 2 months

Corvus Concept (was Re: Y2K stuff)

by fmc＠reanimators.org

Derek Peschel <dpeschel(a)u.washington.edu> wrote (after something I wrote a while ago): > > What do you think a Corvus Concept would bring to Blockout? I don't know, > > and it's been years since I played Tetris. > > Mostly the high-resolution graphics and possibly a tall aspect ratio of > the monitor. Radius Pivot monitors are very rectangular (they're either > very tall or very wide) -- does the Concept screen look the same way? Hmm, sort of -- it's a 15" monitor, but the bezel around the screen is such that it encompasses an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper with a little bit of border all the way around. Then again, so does the 17" Dell monitor that I'm using now...well, no, I think it has a bit more border to the left and right than the Concept monitor would (in landscape mode). > I just saw a picutre of a Concept, and it seemed to be running a decent- > looking GUI. Is that realistic? I think it's realistic (the hardware does bit-mapped 720x560 monochrome graphics), but I'm not sure it was typically done. Reading the manuals, I get a picture of a character- and screen-oriented UI that just happens to be done by drawing characters on a bit-mapped display. Navigation through applications seems to be done largely with character commands and function keys (w/on-screen labels). And there's no standard pointing device beyond the keyboard. Though I guess you could add something -- there are serial ports and the bus slots are close enough to Apple ][ slots that you might be able to plug an Apple-compatible interface in and write some code to make it work. Or you could do without, I can certainly work the GUI on my HP Integral PC without a rodent, and when I used to do stuff in HPDRAW using an HP graphics terminal with an HP3000 mini, there were a lot of things for which I preferred the keyboard cursor positioning over what I'd be able to do with a Mac and its mouse.

25 years, 2 months

stepping machanism of Apple Disk ][ drive (was Re: Heatkit 51/4 floppies)

by edick＠idcomm.com

You know what? I had completely forgotten about the Amiga. (Duhhh!) The Amiga did make a pretty good splash, AND it carved a niche for itself in the video processing area that even Apple couldn't penetrate. There were quite sophisticated gadgets available for the Amiga which you couldn't use with a MAC or a PC/AT. What's more, the "fancier" Mac's and PC's didn't make any headway in that arena either, as demonstrated by the lack of competition with the "gadgets" needed for some of these tasks. There was, of course, a major difference between the earlier Commodore products and the Amiga. A look under the hood would quickly reveal that. Dick -----Original Message----- From: Doug Spence <ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers <classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu> Date: Tuesday, April 13, 1999 1:56 AM Subject: Re: stepping machanism of Apple Disk ][ drive (was Re: Heatkit 51/4 floppies) > > >On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote: > >> In all the time I was involved in the microcomputer industry, I never saw a >> single Commodore ad that wasn't printed in a trade publication of some sort. > >What!? You mean there was a part of the world that WASN'T completely >saturated in Commodores? What part of the world do you live in? > >So I guess you missed "I adore my 64", the "Sweet 16" ads, and William >Shatner shilling for the VIC-20? > >Of course, I can still remember _Amiga_ ads on television. I wish I had >had a VCR back then, because some of those ads were pretty good. > >"Betcha can't do that with your Mac, Jack!" > ><snip> > >> Dick > >-- >Doug Spence >ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca >http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/ >

25 years, 2 months

Restoring an 8/E

by danburrows＠mindspring.com

>>That said, I would still use it (if available), use gloves and put a fan >>to blow the fumes away from me during assembly. But then, I do this kind >>of stuff every day. My job. > If you expect to get a lot on you use at least 2 layers of the usual lab gloves. They dissolve in methylene chloride. I commonly will use 3 layers and change them often. Then to I also end up using other much nastier solvents at them same time. 1,1,1 trichlor. will dissolve gloves in about 30 sec. and if not used in a good fume hood will give you a bad solvent headache in a short time. I can always tell how good each customers fume hoods are when I use it. Dan

25 years, 2 months

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test-drb April 1999