test-drb June 1999

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

164 participants
610 discussions

by jhfine＠idirect.com

>Allison J Parent wrote: > <Believe it or not, it is possible to FORMAT an RX33 floppy under RT-11! > <Just a little side note which has nothing to do with the original question > <Also, you can't FORMAT an RX50 under RT-11 and it is much easier to > <FORMAT the RX50 floppy on a PC. Shout if you want instructions how! > > Both would handy to know as doing it under xxdp is terminally slow. Jerome Fine replies:

25 years, 11 months

Formatting disk on rt11

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<> <How can I format a rd54 disk on a rt11 5.3 ? <> You cannot unless you write your own utility. < <Jerome Fine replies: < <For novice PDP-11 folk, this part is incorrect, as Allison <surely knows, but probably just answered too quickly. <Technically, I suppose Allison is correct, but I have <never heard of anyone writing their own version of ZRQC?? No, I am correct. there is no formatter for RDxx drives under RT-11. XXDP does it really well but that is NOT RT-ll. There is a lot of work but writing a utility to format a RD under RT-11 is possible, though if you have the tools and info to do that you also know XXDP is available. <Just a note of clarification (again, Allison this is not a flame that you u <but just correcting your "spelling" - anyone who knows realizes and anyone <who doesn't understand - it doesn't matter). Allison was referring to the <SET DUn: UNIT=u, PART=p Actually I've never used a RD larger than 31mb on an RT11 system so the SET DUn would not have come to mind. Why no big disks? I have MANY MANY RD52s and an RD53/54 would be VAX fodder. Also while RQDX3s are RD54 aware, some of the RQDX1 and 2s are very much unaware of the RD54 and will produce errors. Allison

25 years, 11 months

Is anyone interested in military Compupro s-100 computers?

by rigdonj＠intellistar.net

I picked up a couple of Compupros that were used in a Titan missile test station. Each one has a Compupro 286 CPU, 64^H^H 128 K S-RAM card, EPROM card, system support card and Interfacer 4 card along with a number of custom cards. The operating system for them is in EPROM. These were used to operate a ultrasonic test machine by remote control. Each test stand had a turntable and gantry that would rotate the missile and run the test head up and down until it inspected the entire missile body. Each test head had four large ultrasonic transducers for detecting flaws in the missile. These computers generated the master timing for the ultra sonic pulses and converted the return signals from analog to digital then fed the data back to another computer for further processing. They could be operated at up to 200 MHz PRF. They also took care of things like controlling the programmable attenuators in the RF receiver. Most of the connectors on them were replaced with "Canon plugs" and an extra power supply added for use by one of the special cards. An extra fan was also added inside. All of the custom cards use gold SMA connectors to connect to each other and to carry the RF signals. The custom cards have some really neat devices on them such as flash A/D converters, very fast S-RAM for buffers, switchable attenuators, a crystal with 10-7 accuaracy, etc. I was going to convert these back to standard Compupro configuration but if anyone is seriously interested in them I will consider interesting trades or $$. PS I have lots of manuals for them too including schematics and theory of operation for the custom cards.

25 years, 11 months

Epson Equity LT-286 setup

by ds_spenc＠alcor.concordia.ca

I dropped by my old place of work yesterday, lugging my GRiDs and Toshiba laptop (and I'm still in pain). The accountant has a laptop that he wanted me to look at. It looks to me like there's nothing wrong with it except a dead CMOS battery. How do I get into the setup of an Epson Equity LT-286? And what kind of battery does it need? I tried most of the usual setup suspects. Does it require a setup progam on floppy? It was a 2nd hand machine and the owner doesn't have any disks for it or manuals (just the machine, power supply, and nice carrying case). -- Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/

25 years, 11 months

Northstar Horizon

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jun 4, 23:31, Tony Duell wrote: > I've had many tantalum capacitors catch fire over the years. They're > pretty spectacular (and smell horrible :-(), but they rarely do any more > damage. > > They seem to go low resistance both ways round (rather than becoming a > diode), and pass enough current to overheat. Then the burst and spray > burning bits out... > > I have never found a cause of this. I've had several boards that have > been working fine when put away, but when I pull the out of storage and > try them, the capacitors go up. They had a sufficiently high voltage > rating for the position, etc. > I don't think it happens to protect anything. The capacitor fails _at the > normal operating voltage_. Yes, I've seen several fail that way too. The most recent: A few months ago, we had a "fire" in our machine room over the weekend, which caused the systems to be automatically shut down. It turned out that one tantalum cap in one of the PSUs on our 32-processor Origin2000 server had burned up, the smoke detectors had been tripped, and the rest was obvious. When the power was restored, everything came back up as normal. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

25 years, 11 months

DEC treasure trove available

by manney＠hmcltd.net

Oh, you mean my father? P Manney "Y1K caused the Dark Ages." Thousands of discounted photo items at http://www.hmcltd.net/pgphoto >Are you trading (or trying to) your identity for Henry Manney who >wrote of exotic motorcars and sportscar racing in Europe more years ago >than I like to acknowledge?

25 years, 11 months

Seen at an NC establishment closing down later this year

by allisonp＠world.std.com

<Sorry, no external cases and I don't know what they are. These are specifi <to 220v 50hz. <I thought S100 style machines had drives with 12v connectors. These are older drives like the sugart sa800/850 series with line powered ac motors for the spindles. the rest of the hardware uses typically +24v, +5 and -5v. The later drives were DC motor spindles and very different. The ones you've found might fit a Heath H8/H11 early 8"disk system or an older altair/imsai 8" system. that of course is not an exclusive list. Allison

25 years, 11 months

Formatting disk on rt11

by edick＠idcomm.com

Oops! I forgot to change the subject . . . My apologies, gents. Dick <snip>

25 years, 11 months

Are you sitting down?

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: Originally, I wrote: > > The only use I would have for an RK05F is to read this _one_ 16-sector pack > Isn't the RK05F the fixed-pack version (i.e. the pack was designed to be > changed during repair operations, and not in normal use). Yes. > In which case it's not the best choice for reading a normal pack. The RK05j > (the other drive he mentioned) could read the pack, but not with a PDP11 > controller (which expects 12 sector packs). I did not mistype. I have a 16-sector RK05F pack. It was in the drive when my former employer bought it c. 1982 from Ohio State University surplus before I worked there. The tech guys removed the F pack and used the RK05J and RJ05F in the rack with an RK-11C (which I have somewhere). I got the pack off the shelf in 1984. I have never owned an RK8E, nor a working RK05F, but I do have at least one working RK05J (one's in the basement, almost certainly working, attached to an RKV11D, the other is in the shed and is of dubious value). > Was there ever a 16 sector version of the RK05f? All the ones I've seen > were 12 sector. The drive doesn't care except for number of tracks and magnetic gap (the F heads and J heads are different). The boards are the same (there are jumpers to select modes of operation). The controllers are the parts that care how many sectors of how many bytes there are. So... can *anyone* out there read a 16-sector RK05F pack? I have no use for it since. as I said, I have no RK8E nor working drive. -ethan _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

25 years, 11 months

Are you sitting down?

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- Jay West <jlwest(a)tseinc.com> wrote: > I would be very interested in the 11/34 rack with the two RK05's, and the > ASR33. The only use I would have for an RK05F is to read this _one_ 16-sector pack that I've had for 15 years and never owned the equipment to read it on (The drive died with a different pack in it before I got it). I already have an ASR33 (two, in fact, one with 20mA and one with a data set), so that's not a part I want. > I have no interest in the 11/84, and while I am somewhat interested in the > 8i, I already have an 8E so I should take a back seat to anyone who doesn't > have an 8. As I said before, I have 8's, but not any pre-OMNIBUS mass-storage devices. Presently, my -8/i has 4Kw, but I have all the parts to take it up to 8Kw. > I'm in Missouri, so Iowa wouldn't be that big of a deal for me. Indeed. > I would be willing to tandem up with others and take a hand in getting the > equipment and splitting it up with other collectors. If anyone wants to get > together on this, just let me know. Perhaps we could build an across-the-country rescue tour? If several people chip in together on the transport (based on a combination of distance and percentage of material benefit), it might be possible to move that kind of mass for less than megabucks. -ethan _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

25 years, 11 months

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test-drb June 1999