At 10:52 AM 11/16/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>I miss the really insane BBS battling that went on back then. I'm hoping
>that _real_ bulletin board systems will start a slow comeback, but I'm
>probably just wishing in the wind. :)
www.slashdot.org
What you perhaps fail to realize is the a "BBS" is an expression of an
extremely ancient human trait (sit around and flame each other :-) The dial
in kind of the 70's gave way to vastness of Usenet and are now being
replaced by web sites that behave in much the same way. All we've done is
removed the modem and xmodem and replaced them with web browsers and ftp. A
telnet version of a BBS would be even easier. I think this is sort of
exemplified in what Slashdot does.
--Chuck
Hello all,
Recently I acquired an ICOM Attache (the one on eBay right now is NOT
mine!). I had some questions, and posted in com.os.cpm, since I figured
someone would know, even though it was off-topic (sorry :-) ).
Since then, through other sources, I got my questions answered, and even
found two places to get manuals for this beast (shameless plug: Herb
Johnson -- http://pluto.njcc.com/~hjohnson and Steve Shepard --
http://home.earthlink.net/~steveshepard/MITSmanuals/MANUAL.htm).
However, since this machine is basically an Altair 8800b Turnkey with a
Keyboard and Video Card, I thought I'd share the information here... I will
be completely documenting this, and adding it to my web site, but I don't
know when that will be...
>From the back panel label:
PCC Microsystems Division
Model #: 600
Part #: 200801
Serial #: 100-000032
115V / 60Hz
The backplane is a 10-slot MITS S-100 backplane. The power supply is what
appears to be a standard S-100 supply.
The cards inside:
- MITS 88-VI (RTC), 1975
- MITS 16MCS Static, 1977
- MITS Altair 8800b Turnkey Module, 1976 (contains two 1702A EPROMs --
TURMON and MBL)
- MITS 88-4 PIO, contains two MC6820 chips, dated 7646
- MITS 88 UIO, 1977, contains an AY-5-1013A (UART?), and a MC6850 -- Also
cables to what is labeled a cassette interface on the back panel.
- MITS A/D D/A Converter, 1976
- MITS 8800b CPU Board, contains AMD 8080A dated 7636
- another MITS 16MCS Static, 1977
- Two boards bolted together, labeled "Video Bd. 1" and "Video Bd. 2".
Board "2" has a coax cable attached that ends in a BNC connector on the back
panel (composite video out?) The internal keyboard also connects via ribbon
cable to this assembly, as does the Turnkey Module.
Boards and backplane are very clean, no heat spots, no damage that I can
tell. Power supply also very clean, and no visible damage.
Back Panel contains:
3 25-pin "D" connectors labeled "Analog I/O", "No. 1 I/O", and "No. 2 I/O"
3 jacks labeled "Cassette" and "In", "Out", and "Rem." (remote?)
Another 25-pin "D" connector labeled "SIO Port 30"
A momentary reset switch, a power switch, power cord receptacle.
A BNC connector
Rich B.
(I subscribe to the digest, so I can't reply instantly...)
Subject: First personal computer nostalgia
the brief history of my adventures in computers...
1968 late, PDP-8 and basic. Early Boces LYRICS also
known as the Huntington computer project.
1969 early, PALIII on said 8 and early fortran.
1970 fall, PDP-10 TOPS10 what a machine and I had
hands on access at site. macro-10, Algol, basic
1972 Cincinatti Millicron 16bitter mini (2000 series)
1973 fall, first pass at intel 8008, real hardware!
company machine, still have the chip.
1974 December, Poptronics cover... ALTAIR I had
to have one Delivered in January '75, completed
four days later. I would add peripherals an
memory. form the small 4k, and CT1024 start.
1975 (september) helped friend build Altair.
1976 started getting involved with LICA (LI computer assoc).
built first block replaceable mass storage using phillips
cassette. Big 64k of storage per tape.
1976 fall, started working with tandy computer.
1977 mar, NS* z80 board and one month later MDC-A
Disk. First CPM system (V1.4)
1977 PCC 77, Picked up Technico Superstarter board
(TI9900, 2 kbytes ram, 2708 burner with Monitor roms).
1978 dumped altair flakies for a NS horizon-I Crate.
First UCSD pascal system. still a great package.
1979 added Netronics explorer 8085, National SC/MP.
started as Apps Engineer with NEC Microcomputers.
1979 (august) Helped build first H11 on LI that I knew of.
Got H19 terminal to replace TTY.
1980 Cosmac ELF, NEC TK80 added to collection.
1981 IMSAI-imp48 added, started SS100 (multicpu,
multitasking Z80 super crate)
1981 (late) Multibus, 8088/8mhz, 512k 4 NEC 8" DSDD
CPM-86 up and running. NSC 8073 (sc/mp with
NIBBLE). Also TI99/4A with disk.
1982 sept, added LSI-11/2 system from scraps.
Added SBC built with NEC 7800 cpu.
1983 11/23 built from DEC salvage. Online, Compuserve
account!
1984 AmproLB+ on line. PDP-8E (Megan has it now)
DEC LA100-RO printer (still runs great!).
1985 Vt100/125 with VT180 boards. bought box of VT180
boards (all good 20+ of them) for 25$.
1986 pz80 running, real z80 code, started in 82 it was a
bit slice z80 @10mhz. Retired many micro code
experiments later.
1989 first VAX! (dec loner it's later buy in '93 for 100$).
1991 first PC, a retired Leading Edge Model D (XT clone)
I still have it. Actively started collecting systems
that were turning up cheap that I couldn't previously
afford.
The rest... well its a disease.
Allison
1978: As a Junior in HS, I learned BASIC+ on a timeshared
PDP-11 running RSTS, connected via an acoustic modem
to an ASR-33. Pissed off the 'teechur' by using the
'chad' for confetti. . .
1979: Timeshare company fired; school aquires two OSI C4P's (?).
As a senior, I have little time to play with them,
but seriously covet the OSI SBC's being sold at the
OSI dealership across the street (Back then, HS kids
didn't have the $$$ like they have now).
1980: I flunk out of college, but not before I manage to
finish a programming assignment on the school's
PDP-11 (again running RSTS). I end up playing
Dungeons & Dragons on it all through the winter
recess (sometimes all nite . . .).
1982: I move to California, get a job at a calibration lab.
Purchase a VIC-20 from a co-worker, for $200. Spend
more than that on a 1541 FDD. SPend almost *twice*
that on a VideoPak from Data-20: I get an 80-column
display, and 64k of *paged* RAM (hey, I was single . . .)
1984: Changed jobs, but this new workplace has *no* office
automation whatsoever. We need something to make
plots of test data; my VIC is pressed into service.
The secretary (my future wife) is pleased to learn
that this 'toy' computer can also do invoices.
Boss is too stoned on coke to notice.
1985: I purchase my first SS-50 box at the TRW swapmeet for
$50. I get a Soroc IQ-120 in the deal. I have to shell
out almost $400 for a pair of 400k floppy drives for it.
Mike Evenson introduces me to the wonderful world of
the FLEX OS. I'm seriously hooked.
1986: Stoned boss get fired. New boss orders me to take
my 'toys' home. An IBM-PC/XT is ordered from the home
office. (This is the beginning of the end, folks . . )
1987: Bought another SS-50, and a bunch of parts. I wirewrapped
a centronics printer interface for it, and it works
the first time I try it. Girlfriend can't understand
what all of the yelling and screaming is about . . .
1988: AN aquaintence gives me a TELEX-1186 (actually a re-badged
MAD-186). I add a hard disk, and I now have MS-DOS
at home. Later that year, I bought our first PC: An
80286-12 by DTK.
1989: I get fired from my new job as a sysadmin after only 5
months. Convinced that only masochists (or the mentally ill)
take sysadmin jobs. AT this point a whole room of our
apartment is dedicated to my computers: an H-89, *three*
SS-50's of various makes, and the DTK.
What happens after this isn't important-- like someone else here
said: "It's a disease". Today, my 'collection' fills an entire
basement, and ranges from the original VIC which I bought in 1982
to HP-9000/300's to even a couple of PDP-11 and MicroVAX machines.
My favorite 'big' machines, though, are my DG 88k AViiON's.
They're uncommon, *very* cheap, and (to me, anyway) just *too*
cool!
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Hi Everyone, and especially anyone who has looked into the "guts" of a
VT320. I picked up some pristine VT320s (one in the protective bag with
Silica Gel) and the only problem with them is that they are 220V units and
unlike everything else these days they don't run on anything from 108 - 240
just 220 to 240. However, I've also got a couple of 320's that have really
burned tubes and aren't that useful but they run at 120. So my question is
has anyone swapped a 120 supply for a 220 supply. (Can this be done?) and
alternatively does anyone need a 220 supply if I succeed in swapping mine out.
--Chuck
I haven't played with mine in a while, but was reminded
of this by a comment in a current ebay auction. Whenever
I put a Cromemco 16FDC or 64FDC in an IMSAI box, the front
panel stops working (the 4FDC doesn't do this). Looking
at the schematics for the Cromemco boards, I can't see any
reason for this, but watching the behavior of the FP lights,
it looks like the board is driving the data bus whenever a
wait is asserted. Can somebody else with the 16FDC or 64FDC
schematics take a look?
Thanks,
Bill Sudbrink
OK... my turn
1976, brief access to a computer at school that read mark-sense cards
and had a "Lazy T" prompt (so the teacher called the sigil on the
left edge of the one-line display). I remember virtually nothing
else of it, so I have no idea what it was.
1977, weekly access to a pair of original 4K PETs at the downtown public
library
1978, A friend of mine and I discover a DECwriter w/integral acoustic
coupler and unearth a dialup number and account to a RSTS machine
somewhere with a full suite of BASIC games. Many trees are sacrificed.
1978, A year-and-a-half of savings plus matching funds result in me
buying a 30-day-used 32K BASIC 2.0 PET and C2N tape drive.
1979, An older friend loans me his Quest Elf that he used to use to control
a simple robot (he gets it back twelve years later)
1981, I build my own Quest Elf kit.
1982, I bring home a C-64 from my first job - my employer (Bruce and James,
the creators of WordVision, a word processor for PC-DOS 1.0) received
C-64 S/N 00002007 as a free development machine from Commodore. It
is so flakey (I'm told there's a bug in the first rev of VIC-II chips)
that we replace it at the dealer for S/N 00002345 (which I still have).
WordVision is announced for the C-64. My demo of it shows at Comdex.
The product is never started.
1982, I find a PDP-8/L at the Dayton Hamvention which takes two years of
fiddling to fix (finally got a print set and had it working in days)
1983, I get a 300-baud VIC modem and discover BBSes.
1983, I rescue a PDP-8/i with a rack of DF-32 fixed-head disks because the
owner doesn't want to pay to replace the burned-out front panel bulbs.
1984, Bruce and James folds and I keep the C-64 in lieu of pay.
1984, My next job is programming kids games under the Reader's Digest brand
for the C-64 and Apple ][.
1984, The longevity of software companies being legendary, six months after
I start on the kids games, Reader's Digest stops selling software and I
get a new job working with MC68000s (the COMBOARD) PDP-11s (11/04, 11/34a
primarily) and VAXen (11/750, 11/730). My first exposure to VMS is V3.6.
1984, My boss gives me a PDP-8/a that's rotting on the shelf. I learn the joys
of being a hobbyist and buying from DEC resellers as I aquire an RX8E
and RX01 (and eventually RL8A, RL01, KT8A, etc.)
1985, I get an account on a 2Mb 11/750 w/dual RK07s that runs three flavors
of UNIX (4.0BSD, 4.1BSD and SYSV) depending on what customer bugs were
being worked on at the moment. (I still have _this_ 11/750, too (S/N
BT0000354), which I've upgraded to 8Mb w/new mem controller and wire-
wrap wire). I begin to learn C.
1986, Amiga 1000 w/256K and one floppy. It doesn't become useful until I
bump the RAM to 2Mb and get a hard disk the next year... a WEDGE 8-bit
ISA adapter and Everex XT MFM controller w/ST-225 (for $15/Mb) - cheaper
than a commercial 20Mb SCSI drive kit from CLtd - $1,000 at the time)
1986, I put up UUCP on an 11/730 at work and discover Usenet.
1987, I run UUCP on the Amiga 1000 at home (and am known to the world as
...ihnp4!cbosgd!osu-eddie!giza!kumiss!erd). I add a second ST-225
to my MFM controller and learn the joy of buying new disks on a
reoccurring basis (latest one - last week: 80GB)
It's all downhill from there
-ethan
=====
Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to
vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com
The original webpage address is still going away. The
permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/
See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details.
__________________________________________________
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Speaking of PAL... a couple weeks ago I got a VHS movie (Barber of
Siberia... I'm trying to learn Russian and thought it might help) on ebay,
played it on my NTSC VCR, and noticed that the picture looked funny;
people's faces looked like melting plastic, and high-contrast edges were
somewhat haloed, etc. Then I noticed the box was labeled PAL. So I'm
wondering if it was dubbed to NTSC (with poor quality), was the wrong box
for the tape and was actually NTSC despite the labeling, or if my VCR
actually managed to play a PAL tape, with the quality being the result
of the higher-bandwidth video signal going through lower-bandwidth NTSC
electronics, and probably also speeding up the movie by 20% or so?
I didn't think NTSC VCRs could play PAL tapes at all.
--
_______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud(a)bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd(a)kb7pwd.ampr.org
__) | | \________________________________________________________________
At 12:35 PM 11/15/00 -0600, Kevin L. Anderson wrote:
>Maybe, since DEC no longer exists (well sorta in Compaq),
>we can create an e-DEC company, and those of us who use
>software simulators for these non-existent computers
>are really using e-computers.
Sorry, edec.com, .net and .org are already taken.
- John
