A few days ago, I was in a local used electronics/Junque (only
high-class stuff here :-)) and found a rackmount case with PS, SCSI
cables, and three devices for five bucks. Took it home, blew the dust
out, and found I'd gotten a Exabyte 8mm tape that worked perfectly with
my VAXCluster (once I'd reseated the cards, blew the dust out and ran a
cleaning tape through it), an Archive 160 meg QIC drive (have no use for
this, anyone want it?) and a 5.25 in floppy with what claims to be an
NCR SCSI intereface bolted to it. It's this last I need info on.
This interface board is the same size as the drive; at one end is the
power plug (it appears to be powered independently of the floppy) and
the SCSI header. The other end has a 34 pin header with a standard cable
going back to the 34-pin edge connector on the floppy. Has an NCR 5380
and an Intel 85272 as the main chips, with a lot of glue, as well as a
80188 CPU with ROM. There are two switch pack, one 4-pos, one 8-pos.
The 4-pos pack has the first three positions labeled FT and the last
position is labeled EXT PF.
The 8-position pack has the last three switches labeled ID (almost
certainly the SCSI address). Anyway, anyone ever seen one of these
before? I'm a little scared to just plug it in; I've seen lots of tape
drives but this is the only SCSI floppy I've ever seen, and I want to
take good care of it :-). Any info greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Dann Lunsford
As far as aesthetic appeal goes, to my taste absolutely nothing beats
a Cray-2 !! Next would be the CDC 3000 series with its tinted glass panels,
next the Cray-1. (Ranking according to my personal taste, of course).
There are quite a few more aesthetically interesting
supercomputers; maybe if you spend so many millions of US$
(and in particular since buying supercomputers is or has been mostly a
prestige matter) aesthetically pleasing design can be expected.
John G. Zabolitzky
<> A RCA COSMAC 1802 is a microprocessor, right? And I still
<> have not find any evidence that there was a kit for the ELF,
<> the Popular Electronics ELF was just plans in a magazine.
<> You could say "ELF II/Super ELF".
Quest Electornics, ELF as per the PE article. I have one.
Allison
--- KFergason(a)aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 6/20/99 12:26:19 AM Central Daylight Time,
> mranalog(a)home.com writes:
>
> > > 4) Available from a manufacturer (not just plans in a magazine)
> > > RCA COSMAC 1802 / ELF / Super ELF
> >
> > A RCA COSMAC 1802 is a microprocessor, right?
Right.
> > And I still have not find any evidence that there was a kit for the ELF,
> > the Popular Electronics ELF was just plans in a magazine.
I have a Quest Elf that I built from a kit as a kid. It was the Popular
Science design, pre-1861 video chip. It has a speaker, a Q LED, 8 toggle
switches for data, DMA/EF4 pushbutton, RUN/LOAD/MEMPROT toggles and the
original TIL311 latching hex displays. My PCB is rev 2.1, 1979. I bought
just the PCB and assembly plans for $35 around 1980. The entire kit was
available for $99.
> > You could say "ELF II/Super ELF".
The Elf II was a different manufacturer, Netronics, IIRC. Quest made the Elf
and Super ELF.
> It should probably say RCA COSMAC VIP, as I have several of them.
Right. An entirely different beast - keypad, ROM, 1861 video, I/O expansion
slot, up to 4Kb on the board, system expansion slot, cassette interface. I
have one, too.
-ethan
_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
Thanks to all the folks who replied with suggestions and advice on my 7900A
drive!
I had previously written:
>>He said I could use any 14" disk media that was the right
>>thickness. Can't remember if it was 50 mils or 75 mils. I
>>think it's the same as the RK05. I'll find out the mils number
>>tonight when I compare my 7900 cartridge with my 7905/6
>>one.
The 7900A platters are 50mils. So that I can keep an eye out for cartridges
that I could steal the media out of, does anyone know which commonly
available cartriges use a 50mil 14" platter? I thought the 75mil platters
were much more common, but don't know for sure.
Thanks in advance!
Jay West
<All are very reliable. To your surprise I'm sure. Win9x problems
<caused by addons that u don't need and many downloads s/w (recent one
W95 is not as robust as Linux however, it can be. I have 4 w95
(all Build 950-C with FAT32) print servers and one of they is also a
DOCument server along with the 3 w/Nt3.51 servers. Down time is near
zero (power failure caused last down time). However the hardware is all
very tried and proven Pent 133s and 166s and updated device drivers. Heck
the Domain and mail server is a 486dx/100!
Junk apps will however kill you. Way to little ram, 32mb is enough though.
What will really kill you is if there is not enough space on the disk,
between temporaries and swap space I've seen systems go unstable with 100mb
of free space. Also failing to install updates and service packs doesn't
help any.
I happen to really dislike MS and their products but they can and do work.
Allison
Hello,
Today I met a gentleman in Orange, CA that had the good fortune to acquire an 8800bt, three IMSAIs, a couple IMSAI floppy cabinets, and a few S100 boards. He also has a MITS hard disk drive and controller.
The equipment may end up on ebay, however I thought you might like an opportunity to make him an offer he can't resist.
Here is his contact information:
Bob Muse
Machine-Tech Engineering
Orange, CA
714-633-2960
mtebob(a)earthlink.net
Regards,
Tom Sanderson
Virtual Altair Museum
< For C, you can't beat _The C Programming Language_ by Kernighan and
<Ritchie (creators of the C langauge). It covers the entire language and
<does include exercises to work on. It is perhaps the best book on C.
I have that and the original Bell labs report (internal) describing C
and the basics of programming with it. Good book K&R did, small too!
Allison
I got a few fun bits from the Milford Amateur Radio Club Hamfest today...
besides a nice 386 laptop w/ docking station for $20 (which I probably
shouldn't mention.. don't think it's over 10.) I also got a TRS-80 model 2
with one floppy drive... my first machine (now sadle departed..) was a
model 3. I would like to do something with this machine... just about
anything ;) as I don't have any software for it. Any sources? Can a Pc
floppy drive read/write TRS-80 disks? And where can I get a serial cable
to hook it up to a modem / one of the serial ports on my Linux machine?
Thanks,
Kevin
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It's you isn't it? THE BASTARD OPERATOR FROM HELL!"
"In the flesh, on the phone and in your account..."
-- BOFH #3
>On Mon, 21 Jun 1999, W. Tom Sanderson wrote:
>
>> Today I met a gentleman in Orange, CA that had the good fortune to
>> acquire an 8800bt, three IMSAIs, a couple IMSAI floppy cabinets, and a
>
>"Good fortune" being because these are historically significant machines,
>or "Good fortune" being because he can whore them on ebay for a quick
>buck?
>
>Pfeh.
>
>Sellam
>
What's all the fuss Sellam? Good fortune here probably means precisely
that, in the sense of "how many of us had the opportunity to acquire such
computers."
Lighten up, and as a Canadian I am obligated to say, please.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------
Kevin Stumpf * Unusual systems * www.unusual.on.ca
+1.519.744.2900 * EST/EDT GMT - 5
Collector - Commercial Mainframes & Minicomputers from
the 50s, 60s, & 70s and control panels and consoles.
Author & Publisher - A Guide to Collecting Computers &
Computer Collectibles * ISBN 0-9684244-0-6
.
