From: Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com>
>> At 01:34 PM 11/10/00 -0800, you wrote:
>> >I believe that the NEC V40 was a drop in (enhanced) replacement
>> >for it.
>>
>> Don,
>>
>> I thought that the V40 was supposedly an unreleased drop-in
replacement
>> for the 80286, meant to improve performance over the Intel parts the
way
>> the earlier chips did for the 8086/88?
>
>You may well be correct in part, Jeff. But since it was used in the
>Ampro Littleboard/PC I'm sure that it was released.
It was realeased. I have the NEC data book for V20 through V70.
Allison
Hi all,
(not sure if I have posting access here - guess I'll find out soon
enough!)
The recent messages about displays have made me recall a bunch of little
devices I have stashed in a box someplace...
They're mounted on a board in such a way that they look like they're the
display panel for an ancient fuel pump, but I could be wrong. There's
two sizes, one about an inch high and the other about 3/4", and some of
them are double-digit within the same housing.
These things are glass, with a black background and silver segments -
there's a lot of discolourment on some of them around the segments on
the rear of the glass facing. Pins come out of the rear of the devices.
Any ideas what these could be? Some sort of mercury vapour or something?
It'd be nice to hook them up - I bought them from a car boot sale a few
years ago and never got around to doing anything with them.
I can probably work out which pins drive what, but have no idea what
sort of voltage these things will need (I'll try to remember and get
whatever text info there is on the PCB itself - think it was just a
bunch of part numbers, but there might be something meaningful to
someone if the board didn't just come from something as mundane as a
fuel pump)
cheers
Jules
Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 09:44:24 +0000
From: Paul Williams <flo(a)rdel.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Old tandy 1000 keyboard 8 pin din pinout?
>>Tony Duell wrote:
>>
>> Of course there's an 80186, and for that matter an 80188, which is
>> the same chip with an 8 bit external databus. Both were more widely
>> used in things like X-terminals, laserprinters, etc rather than PCs
>> (I seem to remember there was something about the IBM PC architecture
>> that made it difficult to use an 80186, but I will have to check the
>> details)
>
>Research Machines produced a 80186-based PC called the Nimbus. If there
>were compatibility issues they may not have been visible in the
>locked-in education market.
The Nimbus was RM's later 486 and Pentium machine ISTR; the 80186 machine
was the PC1, a photo of which will appear on the museum site in the next few
days.
adrian
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the Online Computer Museum
"ajp166" <ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net> wrote:
> You can but nixies are a pita to drive. Of era lamping would be
> bulb per bit. cheaper too.
Hmm. I saw an interesting display device at a friend's the other day,
in some sort of Genrad whatsit that he was getting ready to scrap.
(He's keeping the display digits though.) Each digit is a box with a
bunch of tiny incandescent bulbs mounted in the back; each bulb
illuminates one layer of plastic at the front; these layers are
stacked and each has a digit (or other symbol, e.g. decimal point)
etched in it (as a bunch of etched dots). There's a diagram on the
side of each digit-box that indicates which bulb illuminates which
digit or symbol.
Anybody got any ideas about this thing? His speculation is that
somebody didn't want to pay for nixies (but he's amazed at what these
things must have cost to build in comparison), mine is that they
wanted something nicer than a column of digits 0-9 with a bulb behind
each.
-Frank McConnell
Hi All,
I've just started following this list again after a 6month absence.
Anyway, I recently picked up a very nice Lisa 2/10 in working order with
all its docs/manuals/disks etc. I simply followed the advice of people on
this list to "put an ad in the paper", and after a couple of goes I was
rewarded with this machine. I have it currently up and running with Lisa
7/7 v3.1 and Lisa Pascal Workshop. I have one strange thing about it tho,
it is a 2/10 which I thought were relased in early 1984, however the case
has a manufactured date of "4282", is this a 1982 date or something else?
Also, was there any 3rd party software for the Lisa available, and is
there still any out there?
Oh yeah, it also has a AST RAMstak card, giving it 2mb.
Regards,
Karl
From: Don Maslin <donm(a)cts.com>
>> Not all the same pin functions. Some internal differences, V40 has
>> async serial IO for example. Nicer part.
>
>Yes, I know about the serial IO. I've used it. But are the pin
>functions sufficiently different that you canmot use it as a direct
>replacement for the 80186? If so, it is a departure from what you could
>do with the V20 and V30.
Indeed it wasdeparture. the V20/30 was an attempt to wrest the 8086
market from intel... a few years in court NEC won as it was indeed
much different inside. What's bizzare is NEC also was licensed
for and made the 8088/6 fully compatable part too.
Anywho the differnces are enough that dropin is not done.
Allison
As the years roll by, more and more Apple /// and ][ users/collectors are
selling their holdings due to a lack of time and space. If you are in this
situation, I want to help. I am a young Apple collector who will provide a
good home for your treasures. I readily buy Apple hardware in good
condition.
Don't let uncertainty on the value of your hardware hold you back! I buy
often enough to know what it is worth. Ask for what you want for it. I
may suggest that you charge me more. (If you have working equipment that
is in excellent cosmetic condition, you _will_ get top dollar for it.)
If you live in or near Pennsylvania, I may be able to pick up at your home
to save you the bother of shipping. I will consider long-haul pick up
trips for exceptional hardware.
Help me build my collection, I'll help you clean out some needed storage space.
Regards,
Arthur Clark
On Wed, 8 Nov 2000 Lawrence Walker wrote:
> I have an old famicon game system that is PAL-compliant.
> Other than a PAL/NTSC converter or PAL TV is there any way of
> hooking this up. ?
Yes.
> I do have a kaleidoscopic collection of monitors as well as
> several VCR tape decks and a JDH Videomate external VGA/TV
> adapter which allows me to use my NEC multisync as an all-
> purpose viewer. It has an H-Phase pot whose response on the
> monitor is a shift to the side of the display and otherwise not
> causing any picture distortion. I recall on my Atari there were
> programs that shifted from 60mhz to 50mhz and allowed you to
> play PAL formatted games, but in this case there is no computer
> intervention with the JDH. It is a straight-thru switch.
The main issue here is the colour encoding. If you could get a usable display
>from your Atari in 50Hz mode, you will get a usable display from the Famicom.
If your VGA/TV converter only understands NTSC colour encoding, the picture
will be in black-and-white. (Assuming that it works with a 50Hz/625 line
picture.)
You can get analogue NTSC-to-PAL colour standard converters, which only change
the colour encoding, not the number of lines per field, for about US$80 if I
remember rightly; I believe MCM Electronics sell something like that. Short of
making/buying a PAL-to-RGB decoder, that is what you want and would give
better results more expensive standards converters.
Depending on exactly which console you have, it may be possible to modify it
to give true NTSC output; some Famicom clone consoles have this capability,
but a real one does not.
Oh, if your Famicom only has RF output, you'll need a TV tuner that is
compatible with its signal.
[Contact me by email if you need more help, and give a description of the
console.]
-- Mark
From: Frank McConnell <fmc(a)reanimators.org>
>
>(He's keeping the display digits though.) Each digit is a box with a
>bunch of tiny incandescent bulbs mounted in the back; each bulb
>illuminates one layer of plastic at the front; these layers are
>stacked and each has a digit (or other symbol, e.g. decimal point)
>etched in it (as a bunch of etched dots). There's a diagram on the
>side of each digit-box that indicates which bulb illuminates which
>digit or symbol.
These were common in the 60s. Driving nixies has one problem
you need a transistor that can handle at least 60-80V, early
transistors werent cheap (those that could). Also you needed
high voltage (170-220Vdc) for nixies, plus resistors for current
limiting all adding up to to a lot of space power and heat. Transistors
that could switch 100ma@6V were common and cheap so the
same diplay idea was used.
There were other reasons with respect to readability and diplay color
as well.
Another config that was used is a 7segment where each segment was
a wedge of plastic forming the bar and a lamp (or later led) behind it.
These preceded the LED based 7 segment at low cost.
For those that don't know there were also filliment based 7segment
displays (have a bunch) for the early growing display market. They
were aimed at the problem of good leds at that time being expensive
and not terribly bright. My first freq counter has four of these and
still works 27 years later.
>Anybody got any ideas about this thing? His speculation is that
>somebody didn't want to pay for nixies (but he's amazed at what these
>things must have cost to build in comparison), mine is that they
>wanted something nicer than a column of digits 0-9 with a bulb behind
>each.
You are closer to right.
Allison
One day I found someone throwing out an "Industrial Computer Source" SBC
(look at http://www.icsadvent.com/ and search for "sb586t"). There was a
passive backplane as well, but it was a 2 PCI 6 ISA slot backplane, which is
kinda large. PICMG is the designation for the form factor. I searched, and
found at least one company that sells a 2/1 slot backplane, but they're
industrial, and wouldn't sell a single quantity. My hopes was to build a
nice tiny box out of it. Given the form factor, it would be roughly the size
of a shoebox.
So, does anyone have a source for backplanes? I don't need any ISA slots,
and would rather have just two PCI slots. I could take a dremmel to the
existing backplane, but I would end up cutting off the headers for the power
switch, etc, due to the way the backplane is constructed.
