test-drb February 2000

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

162 participants
585 discussions

by mikeford＠socal.rr.com

Last month at the Cal Poly Pomona hamfest I noticed one of the hams had a sign on the back of his car "Teletype 33 forsale", never found him at his spot though for any details, and the spot watcher didn't know anything. 3rd Saturday of the month, TODAY, is the hamfest at Cal Poly Pomona in soCal. I will be on a short leash, arriving a little after 7, and scheduled to be shot if I am not gone shortly after 9 am. Look for a big nerd with a bucket, stupid hat is optional (mine, not yours).

24 years, 10 months

YASBC Update

by rcini＠msn.com

Hello, all: I've posted the schematics and the beginnings of a kernel tonight. The c ode is not to a point where I can simulate it yet, but I have the reset, NMI , and IRQ routines done, as well as necessary modifications to Chris Ward's ACIA and Dallas RTC code. Please look at the schematics. There are 9 PDF files containing the 8 sc hematics and a component mask. I appologize in advance for using PDFs for sc hematics, but I've found that it's easier to print from EDWin to the PDF Wri ter driver and then to the printer than directly to the printer itself. See if there is anything glaring that I've missed. At this point, the My 6502 feature set is "frozen", but I'm open to circuit optimization ideas. I' ve gotten the board down to 6.5" x 7.5". When you look at it, you'll see tha t it's stuffed. Enjoy it and let me know what you think. Rich [ Rich Cini/WUGNET [ ClubWin!/CW1 [ MCP Windows 95/Windows Networking [ Collector of "classic" computers [ http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ <================ reply separator =================>

24 years, 10 months

WTB: 5 1/4" Magneto Optical Cartridges

by mark_k＠iname.com

On Thu, 17 Feb 2000 16:09:39 Joe wrote: > >>Jerome, > >> > >> What are you going to use the MO drive on? Just curious. I have a > >>SMO-501 also. It's SLOW!! The transfer rate and access time are WORSE > >>than a floppy drive. > > > >They weren't that slow. > > Mine is. The access time is something close to 100ms. The transfer rate > is about 2/3 that of a floppy drive. There is probably something wrong with your drive or disks. Try cleaning the surface of your disks, and if that doesn't help you might want to clean the drive lens. For this you can either obtain the appropriate lens cleaning cartridge (I can find the part number for this if necessary), or disassemble the drive to expose the lens and clean it manually. Using a cleaning cartridge is be less risky. If your disks are old, low-level format them after cleaning. >From memory, the (read) data transfer rate of my SMO-S501-11 drive with 600MB media is about 600K/sec; similar to a quad-speed CD-ROM. To put the access time into perspective, it is similar to that of a modern DVD-RAM drive. -- Mark

24 years, 10 months

scroungers -- a new chalenge

by edick＠idcomm.com

There's a tool made specifically for attaching ICD connectors that costs only $15-16. That's quite a bit less than what the fixe-grips cost. They're a parallel-jawed arrangement made of cleverly formed black sheet metal with a yellow plastic seat that fits in the jaws, hinged at the end, like a nutcracker, and which works MUCH better, faster, and more easily than a vise, plier, even a parallel-jawed pair, as they're usually too small. That seat is almost perfect, but it has a relief for the index tab in the middle of the odd-numbered side of most IDC connectors, but it won't take the ones with two such tabs. I've never seen one of these blister-packed wonders cost more than $19.95, and bought mine for $15 or so. Dick -----Original Message----- From: John Wilson <wilson(a)dbit.dbit.com> To: classiccmp <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Friday, February 18, 2000 7:28 PM Subject: Re: scroungers -- a new chalenge >On Fri, Feb 18, 2000 at 06:00:51PM -0700, Clint Wolff (VAX collector) wrote: >> IDC cables are pretty easy to crimp with a panavise, or bench vise and >> nylon jaws. > >Or a "duckbill" vice grip, available at welding supply shops and some auto >parts shops. Works nicely, and not too strong... A vice is OK but you >have to be really careful to listen for the clicks, the first one is the >connector seating, the second one is the connector shattering! > >John Wilson >D Bit

24 years, 10 months

TC11, TU56, was :(Re: WTB: 5 1/4" Magneto Optical Cartridges

by dylanb＠sympatico.ca

-----Original Message----- From: John Wilson <wilson(a)dbit.dbit.com> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Friday, February 18, 2000 1:01 PM Subject: Re: WTB: 5 1/4" Magneto Optical Cartridges >On Fri, Feb 18, 2000 at 10:56:44AM -0500, John B wrote: >> If you had said DECTape drives then I probably would have taken you up on >> it. I can *now* truly appreciate why many dec engineers, field service, and >> prior dec employees all call them junk. Many have been guilty of using >> Luttig's name in vane... now, me too! >> >> I wonder if TU56s float? > >What do you mean? Just because they break down a lot and have an ECO list a >mile long? Doesn't matter! Doesn't matter? People generally rate an old piece of equipment by the way it performed.. Most tape drives in the late 1960's were *not* that bad. > They're one of the coolest peripherals around >anyway! It's amazing the lengths DEC went to, to have a cheap removable >medium that only *slightly* pre-dated floppy disks. They made DECTape type drives since '62.. (555), TU55, then (after one would *think* they would get it right)... the TU56. > But then again they had >no choice... My only complaint is that the TC11 backplane has a full-height >bracket on only one side, if you take it out of the rack then the two halves >of the other side of the backplane is being held together by the wire wrap >wire alone. Solution -- don't ever take it out of the rack! That was not a blunder - it was a feature. DEC *knew* the drives were horrible so it only seemed fair to implement an upgrade strategy for the customer. One too many breakdowns... customer pulls the left side of the TC11 down and... presto! customer now has a valid reason to replace the entire tape system. I am working on a TC11 this very minute :-( I have a few to restore > And only DEC >would make a pretty lights 'n switches control panel and then hide it behind >a black block-out panel. DEC did a good job creating flashing light panels ... but, how many times did DEC want to light up a customers computer room with ENDZ, PAR, and other fault lights? This is the *only* lightbulb status panel they ever hid, wasn't it? > >Anyway I promise you TU56s don't float, not by a long shot! I know many DEC customers tried. Some also tried extreme heat or pressure... or both! ;-) I really feel sorry for the field service guy now... to take abuse from a customer looking over his shoulder while trying to repair *another* bad DECTape drive... BTW: Do you have a TC11 _working_ ? john PDP-8 and other rare mini computers http://www.pdp8.com > >John Wilson >D Bit >

24 years, 10 months

Software Results Corp Unibus 68000 board?

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com wrote: > >> I just found a "Software Results Corporation" Unibus board... > > > Cool. > > Even cooler that you know all about it :-). There aren't many people in the world who know more than I (at this point, probably nobody ;-) I never expected anyone to ever want to use this stuff ever again. > > Out of perverse curiosity, what's the S/N? > > SN 1245, Rev 3.0. I almost certainly made that board. I started there around 700-800. I even seem to remember that particular one. When I get around to snarfing up the backup tapes and sticking them on CD, I'll be sure to look that one up. It really does ring a bell. We only made that model up to around 1300-1400, IIRC (yes, starting at "1"; I still have some working Rev 1 boards with double digit serial numbers). The dates of the chips do _not_ reflect the manufacturing date, BTW. At one point, we had several *years* supplies of certain ICs due to aggressive overbuying by our comptroller to avoid the shortages that plagued us in the early days. It's why we had *tubes* of 50256 DRAMs that bought at $80 per chip that didn't get used until the price had fallen to $35 per chip. :-( Some of those same chips later ended up in my Amiga when I salvaged an engineering prototype from the dumpster. I know which ones they are by the hand-drawn "U number" identifying labels still stuck to the tops. > >I have all the software, firmware, schematics, wire-wrap prototypes... > > In that case, would anyone else on the list want to grab it? I haven't exactly agreed to post this stuff. It's a massive clot of MACRO, 68K assembler and C code that while not exactly commercially viable would be a major pain on my part to package up to be useful to anyone. As an employee, it took me weeks on the clock to get things to the point where I could build the software from scratch. Also, the C compiler used by the COMBOARD-I products is *not* VAX-C, it's Whitesmith's C and AFAIK I don't have the power to grant those licenses (SRC did, but the corporation dissolved years ago). We never ported our older products to VAX-C, only the newer Qbus and VAX-BI products. There was no point - the customer received binaries and _we_ had no problem using a 12-year-old compiler for 12-year-old code. It was ancient tools, but to the final days, I could incorporate changes to the source and have a new production tree ready to ship in 5 hours of disk thrashing (from typing *one* build command, I might add!) In short, it's possibly of archeological use, but unless you *really* want to speak Bisync to some IBM hardware with VMS 4.5 - 5.4, I don't know how useful any of it would be. There is source code for PDP-11 products, but I am even less confident of being able to even make a working binary distribution tape. I _have_ all the stuff but I haven't done a single thing with it since 1994. The original Unibus board is historically fascinating, but not very extensible. There's a later Unibus board, the COMBOARD-II, that has an entirely different and incompatible DMA interface (transparent to the user because those details are hidden in the driver) with 128K of 4164 DRAMs, but the same printer interface and COM5025. For me, at least, our final products, the COMBOARD-Q (Qbus w/Z8530 Dual SIO and 512K RAM) or the COMBOARD-BI (10Mhz 68010, BI interface, 2Mb RAM and Z8530) are the ones most likely to be turned into something interesting. Unfortunately, the worlds supply of available Q-boards (as we called them in-house) is approximately two, and one of *those* was removed from the walls of the trade show booth, and is lacking in the basic ECOs to be operational. I have crates of COMBOARD-I and COMBOARD-II models, but I do not have a working test bed since my DWBUA BI-to-Unibus adapter board smoked. :-( The VAX 8300 works just fine, but I have no way to test Unibus boards beyond basic boot functions in a PDP-11 test bed (with that Fluke 9010 that's been mentioned in the other thread). Sorry to rain on your parade, but given the freeze-dried nature of the software, you'd have to present a pretty convincing argument for me to divert the tens of hours it would take to whip up something useful and even then, you'd need at least another COMBOARD and modem-eliminator to do as much as demonstrate it (we used to use two COMBOARDs, of any variety, to move files between VAXen - SRC never evolved to using any sort of modern LAN technology like Ethernet - we had point-to-point Bisync links, at cost, between any machines we cared to have). > >Unless I am seriously misinformed, this board was the first single-board > >DMA device for the Unibus. > > The RL11 and RX211 both date from 1978 or so and do DMA from a single Unibus > slot. Seeing how the date on this 68000 board is 1982, does this mean that > a predecessor to this board was being made in 1978 or earlier? Well... The PCB you have is Rev 3. The Rev 1 boards are dated 1979, and the initial prototype originally had a .6" wide socket for the XC68000 processor because it was designed from the preliminary spec sheets from Motorola. It was quite a surprise to the COMBOARD-I designers when they learned that the chip was 1" wide! What may have happened is that the COMBOARD-I was designed before the RL11 or RX211 were available to the public, creating the external appearance that they were first. I am pretty certain that SRC had dual-height grant cards before DEC did because we had our own part number for them. The older, tiny DEC cards were GC727 cards and we called ours the "GC747" card because it was bigger (like Boeing airplanes). I've described the GC747 on the list before - the PCB itself had a built-in curved T-handle at the top and was stencilled in red with a face of a dinosaur and was called the "Grantasaurus Rex". It even made an appearance in a photo in "The DEC Professional", but there's no way I could cite issue and page numbers. As soon as I get my flatbed scanner back from loan, I'll slap it and the COMBOARD line on it and make some scans for the Field Guide. I at least have time to do that. I did find the "COMBOARD PROGRAMMER'S AND MAINTENANCE MANUAL" and the "COMBOARD HARDWARE SELF-INSTALLATION SUPPLIMENT" guides (35 double-sided pages, combined). I'd pass them along for the cost of duplicating/shipping. I could scan them, too, if anyone _really_ wanted to put third-party docs up on a web page. Trivia note: COMBOARDs met VAXen when a customer of DEC who was also a customer of Software Results Corp declined to buy a VAX unless it could talk to the IBM mainframe as well as the PDP-11 he already had. Because DEC wanted to migrate their customer base, one of the founders of Software Results went to Maynard to port the software. I'm told that he used VAX-11/780 S/N 6 for his efforts, a DEC in-house sales demo machine. Our hero was apparently puzzled that the sales staff was upset that he kept crashing the machine during driver development *while they were attempting customer demos* On most of our boards, there was our 800 number for service - 1-800-SRC-DATA. Up until a couple of years ago, it rang to my home office number. I finally disconnected it when I had no more paying customers and was tired of getting billed for other people calling the wrong number. -ethan ===== Infinet has been sold. The domain is going away in February. Please send all replies to erd(a)iname.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com

24 years, 10 months

Fluke 9010 Micro-System Troubleshooter ??

by aek＠spies.com

"Has anyone else got one other than Al and Jeff?" Yes, there are a bunch of arcade game collectors that have them. "Has anyone ever tried to built the probe for one?" Not that I know of. The probes always get separated from the units (along with the docs and pods). The probes are going for big bucks on eBay ($75-$100). Popular pods (6502,6809,Z80,68K) sell pretty high there as well. Of course, what this stuff sells for on eBay is LOW compared to what the used test equipment scalpers want for them ($250 and up for pods). 9010s are very useful when you're trying to debug embedded hardware (like video game boards) that have no I/O "Has anyone ever tried to repair the tape drive capstans on them?" They are Braemar mini-data cassette drives, you may still be able to get parts from them, and cassettes (which are NOT the same as mini dictation cassettes)

24 years, 10 months

HP 3000 MPE V: notes on Y2K Safe release

by fmc＠reanimators.org

Steve Robertson <steverob(a)hotoffice.com> wrote: > Since it's not too far away, I was thinking about grabbing the > system. So, can I use my 3000/42 FOS tapes to reinstall the OS on > the 37? Stan Sieler got me to re-read one of my manuals. I'm still not sure what it looks like on the tape, but it looks like a bootable tape can contain multiple WCS loads for different models of CPU and still support the models that have microcode in ROM. So this can work, if the /37 microcode is in its place on the FOS tape, and I think that's pretty likely for a (probably mass-produced) FOS tape. -Frank McConnell

24 years, 10 months

WTB: 5 1/4" Magneto Optical Cartridges

by dylanb＠sympatico.ca

PDP-8 and other rare mini computers http://www.pdp8.com -----Original Message----- From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Thursday, February 17, 2000 2:28 PM Subject: Re: WTB: 5 1/4" Magneto Optical Cartridges >At 11:16 AM 2/17/00 -0500, John B wrote: >>I am looking to buy one again now. I would like to back up all this dec >>software on them. I know the data won't be lost if it goes on one of those >>drives. I feel bad now because I chucked it in the garbage a couple of years >>ago.... It had a carrying case and 12 platters :-( > >I'll trade you a couple of MO drives for a PDP 11/20 with 8K of core :-) >--Chuck > Cute Chuck! I got quite a bit of interest for a "straight-11".. more than I thought. I know you indicated interest in one. When I know how many I will have total (first week in March) then I will set aside a couple for list members.. No idea what to trade or how much yet. But............................. If you had said DECTape drives then I probably would have taken you up on it. I can *now* truly appreciate why many dec engineers, field service, and prior dec employees all call them junk. Many have been guilty of using Luttig's name in vane... now, me too! I wonder if TU56s float? john PDP-8 and other rare mini computers http://www.pdp8.com >

24 years, 10 months

Source code for BASIC

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

>Looking at the tape, I see that the words "END OF FILE BAS65.PTP" >are punched at the end of the tape in sort of pseudo dot-matrix >characters. Does the "PTP" extension tell us anything? "Paper TaPe" in DEC-ese. > Looking at >the start of the tape: >"MICRO-SOFT BAS65.PTP [2601,1260] 29-JUL-77 15:27:58" That makes sense, Microsoft was cross-assembling on PDP-10's at the time, and [2601,1260] would be the PPN code for an account. For the first couple of years Microsoft was using the hyphenated form. >Looking through the first few feet of "real data"... > >No high bits, the first few bytes are: >00111011 x3b ';' (was hoping for the start of an assembly comment) >00110010 x32 '2' (nope, looks like some sort of hex...) >00110000 x30 '0' >01000001 x41 'A' >00110000 x30 '0' >00110000 x30 '0' >00110000 x30 '0' >00110011 x33 '3' >00111001 x39 '9' >01000001 x41 'A' That makes some sense, "20" is the 6502 opcode for a JSR (jump to subroutine). The next two bytes are presumably the subroutine's address, and "39" is the 6502 opcode for an AND abolute,Y instruction. Tim.

24 years, 10 months

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test-drb February 2000