The GRiDCASE 1520 is back together.
I think it was easier to reassemble than to disassemble.
Condition: exactly the same as when I started, but with a little less
black paint (from where I used a screwdriver to try to pry the case
apart). I even left the battery in there.
Hard drive's still not spinning up, clock is still not set.
Oh, and the Compass still has a crazy clock, too.
--
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
Hello, I have the following for 1.2*shipping:
IBM PC/36 5364 miniframe
Amiga 500 in pieces, non-working
Kevin Stewart
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After sifting through the overwritten remaining blocks of Luke's
home directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface
of the Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop
at the edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp.
"Unix-to-Unix Copy Program;" said PDP-1. "You will never find a
more wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious."
-- DECWARS
____________________________________________________________________
| Kevin Stewart | "I am a secret |
| KC8BLL ----------| Wrapped in a mystery -Milford High School |
| a2k(a)one.net | Wrapped in an enigma Drama Tech Dept. |
|jlennon(a)nether.net| And drizzled in some tasty chocolate stuff.|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,
When I was using the GRiD Compass yesterday, I noticed that the system
clock was frozen at 17-Nov-1985, 9:01 p.m. I tried setting it for
14-May-1999, 9:46 a.m. I thought it would b frozen again at that time,
but when I powered the beast up again to make this call I was surprised to
see that the clock had advanced to 9:56 a.m.! :) And instead of the 15th,
it says it is the 25th! Is this an early Y2K problem? :)
Is there an evil battery inside, about to leak all over my precious bubble
memory modules?
Oh, and BTW, how much bubble memory am I supposed to have? Currently it
has "334 in use, 52 free". That's 386 units. It says "Usage (in 1000s
of characters)" beneath the system memory report (I can look at these
things from inside GRiDVT100, luckily) but I'm not sure if it applies to
bubble memory as well as normal system memory. After all, the bubble
memory is where the filesystem lives, which is a bit different.
My system mem is currently "System: 153 Application: 51 Data: 18 Free:
40". That's 262,000, which is about 256 when divided by 1024. Is GRiD-OS
eating most of my memory? What a hog! ;)
I found the little blurb in Popular Science, August 1982, p.42, and it
says that the machine comes with 256K each of bubble and normal memory.
And for $8000. Was there an expensive option to get more bubble memory?
Or is that what differentiates the 1100 from the 1101?
Oh yeah, where is the OS stored? And applications like GRiDWrite and
GRiDVT100? The VT100 emulator seems to load slowly enough, which implies
that it's in bubble. So, like, if I reformat my bubble memory, I'm toast,
right?
I would very much like to have some sort of backup of everything in bubble
memory. I don't seem to have XMODEM or any other transfer protocols on
this thing. Argh.
--
Doug Spence
ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca
http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/
On May 15, 0:45, Tony Duell wrote:
> To get back to the video ULA, it contains (AFAIK) no DACs, because the
> Beeb essentially worked with 3 TTL level signals for the video output
> (that were encoded outside the ULA for composite PAL). Said ULA contains
> just about all the video data path logic between the RAM data bus and the
> RGB outputs (in other words the palette, pixel mux/shift register,
> bits/pixel control logic, etc). That's most of the video data path. The
> other part of the display system - the address generation - is provided
> by the 6845.
Yes, you're right there, of course. I must remember to engage brain before
putting keyboard in gear ;-) Especially when short of sleep. I've worked
on literally hundreds if not thousands of the things, so I should have
remembered a bit better!
> I know that darn linear PSU. It had separate 7805s for the 3 outputs that
> fed the main board....
There were no less than three versions of the black linear PSU. None of
them were satisfactory, but only one, the "adapter and converter", earned
the obvious nickname.
> All the docs I've seen imply that any device connected to the tube or the
> 1MHz bus shouldn't draw significant power from the 5V line on those
> ports. Connecting to the 'disk drive power connector' on the PSU can was
> OK, of course. But most (all?) external devices had their own PSUs.
If you draw too much from one connector, on Issue 3 or earlier PCBs, you
can end up with a significant voltage drop. It's OK on later ones.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
This is mainly off topic, but deals with some interesting ways to find info
on the Internet. Plus I've got some cool classic computer related links.
After sitting at MacOS 8.1 on my PowerMac for around a year, thanks to 8.5
causeing some problems for me when I tried to upgrade when it came out
(these problems haven't been an issue since December), I went ahead and
went straight to MacOS 8.6 last night.
I've been hearing about this great new search tool that was introduced in
MacOS 8.5 and has been updated in 8.6. Last night briefly I gave it a try
and was impressed, so this morning while working on my morning pot of
coffee, I've been playing with it. I used PDP-11/44 as the seed, and have
dug up some really cool classic computer related stuff. If you get a
chance to try it out, I'd recommend running a few searches on computers
that you're interested in.
Here are a couple interesting links.
http://www.tec.puv.fi/~s99137/index1.html An interesting page of old
computers, including a PDP-11/44. This page led me to the next link.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/retro/ is "The Retrocomputing Museum", at first
I thought it was one of the listmembers pages, and then I found out it's
maintained by Eric S. Raymond (yes, of Open Source fame), and someone else.
http://www.vaxarchive.org/compmus/kees/garage.htmlhttp://www.vaxarchive.org/hw/index.html Nice page of links about VAX Hardware
http://www.telnet.hu/hamster/dr/ Akos Varga has been busy it looks like!
http://www.telnet.hu/hamster/dr/ka630.html Didn't someone recently want
info on the KA630 this page looks worth a look! Or for the KA650
http://www.telnet.hu/hamster/dr/ka650.html
OK, I'm done wasting everyones time, please forgive my enthusiasm for
something new and cool from Apple that is a cool way to find Classic
Computer stuff. Oh, and yes, I realize there is probably some web site out
there that will give you simular capabilities.
Zane
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Adminstrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | Linux Enthusiast |
| healyzh(a)holonet.net (alternate) | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
Hi Gang:
I learned recently of a number of pdp-11s and Vaxen going surplus in the
Vancouver area.
Looks like various LSI 11s, spare parts, boards, docs. Peripherals include
9 track and (likely) DAT tape, RD53 and RD54 drives, some SMD drives. Vaxes
are of the Microvax III type. Full set of VMS docs, version 4.x. Also an
optical disk drive, unknown make/model, WORM type, about 18" platters. A
total of about 4-5 systems.
More info will be posted as I get it.
Kevin
---
Kevin McQuiggin VE7ZD
mcquiggi(a)sfu.ca
I'm not sure if this in On-topic or Off- topic. What year was the Mac II
introduced?
Anyway -
Does anyone have, or know where I can get, for a fairly low price a MIDI
card for a Mac II? I'm also looking for a network card for a Mac II.
ThAnX,
--
-Jason Willgruber
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#: 1730318
<http://members.tripod.com/general_1>
Good morning. I received this address from Brian Mahoney and since I collect
old computers, he says I should be on your mailing list. I am always in
desperate need of restoration information. Can you please tell me how to
subscribe? Thank you, Tim Knight
On May 15, 0:47, Tony Duell wrote:
> I wasn't really moaning about the AUG - it's an excellent manual (and you
> get mine over my deaad body ;-)). It's just that most BBC hackers had
> that manual and not much else, so that stuff that wasn't covered in that
> book tends to be thought of as 'undocumented'.
I've still got mine, thanks! It's a pity some dealers were not inclined to
be more forthcoming, because Acorn did make a lot of documentation
available, and would often provide it to users who wrote in; but dealers
were always able to get it for customers, and even had a system (SID) to
obtain lots of information, upgrade software, etc, via dial-up. They also
had a large 2-volume set of 2" ring binders with diagrams, info, etc
(that's where those System diagrams I gave you came from).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
>Worse they give the specs of Megan's system, not the one they're trying to
>auction off. Who knows what they're trying to auction off! Wonder if they
>realize just how souped up Megan's system is.
Wow... you're right... they appear to have copied the description
for *my* pdp-11/23+ verbatim. I've sent them mail that they should
halt the auction immediately as they are misrepresenting their item.
They need to examine the 11/23+ they are trying to sell and figure
out what it really has....
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 |
+--------------------------------+-------------------------------------+
