test-drb July 2000

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

155 participants
521 discussions

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

*>As for the $0.07 per page, maybe Tim should indeed buy his own scan/copying *>machine for many thousands of bucks. Well, I already do have a fiche viewer, I was just looking at a way of making it more widely available, and making it digital, with the intention of putting it on modern/denser digital media as time goes on. I can duplicate/enlarge the fiche in my darkroom, the material cost for a duplicate 4"x5" sheet is about $0.50. The stuff prints onto conventional photographic paper really nicely, although at about $0.50 per 8"*10" print it isn't cheap to do even a single sheet of fiche (somewhere between $50 and $100) photographically. Those Xerox-machine based page-printers are the real winner costwise, though I'm not real happy with the printed pages I've had made for me in the past quality-wise. As to the quantities, there seem to be about 250 fiche sheets in a one-inch stack, and my stack is about 18" high. That's 250*18=4500 pieces of fiche. And each piece of fiche is somewhere between 50 and 200 printed pages of text; that's about 450 thousand printed pages, by my calculations, using an average of 100 printed pages per fiche. In my experience, a 300 DPI scan of a page of text or line drawings reduces down to about a 30 Kbyte GIF. As Eric pointed out, there are more efficient ways to compress images, maybe 10Kbytes is reasonable. 10 Kbytes * 450000 pages = 4.5 Gigabytes. So it'd fit on a 8 or so CD-ROM's. As a smaller sub-example: The stack of fiche containing all the PDP-11 related pocket service manuals (CPU's, boxes, terminals and peripherals) is only about 45 pieces of fiche. They're packed pretty full, so that's about 10000 printed pages. They'd all fit nicely onto a fraction of single CD-ROM, by my calculations, even if it was as crude as a 30 kByte .GIF per page. OCR would be nice for keyword searching, too... * I would certainly kick in $1K toward such a project. My experience is that * you _have_ to have an auto scanner, this move/frame/press stuff is just too * hard to keep your brain focussed. I was thinking (I could be wrong) that a scanner could take in the whole 4" x 5" microfilm sheet at once, and then I could write some software that would parse the whole-sheet image into frames, do some automatic cleanup on each individual frame, and compress. Am I walking down the wrong path? Tim.

24 years, 4 months

Kewl new find

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jul 29, 19:56, Tony Duell wrote: > > http://www.siconic.com/crap/BMC-1.jpg > > http://www.siconic.com/crap/BMC-2.jpg > > http://www.siconic.com/crap/BMC-3.jpg > > http://www.siconic.com/crap/BMC-4.jpg > > http://www.siconic.com/crap/BMC-5.jpg > > http://www.siconic.com/crap/BMC-6.jpg > > The right-hand side has three DIN connectors, labelled L-PEN (lightpen), > > TV (probably an RF connector), A-CMT (?). Finally, there is a DB-25 > > CMT _might_ be a for a cassette recorder. Firstly that would be an > 'expected' interface on this sort of machine, and I think I've seen a > similar label in some Epson or Sharp manuals > It would be unusual to have RF on a DIN connector -- I'd expect composite > video, or maybe separate video and sync. How many pins are on this > connector? And are there any connectors (again, how many pins) on the > C-CRT board? Tony, if you can't view the JPEGs that Sellam put up, I can tell you that they show: the L-PEN socket is a 180-degree 5-pin DIN the TV socket is a 6-pin DIN the A-CMT socket looks like an 8-pin DIN (same form factor as a 7-pin DIN) the RS-232C socket is a DB-25S the socket on the back of the FDD card is a 34-pin 3Com header, like the ones on a Beeb the socket on the back of the C-CRT card is single-in-line 18-pin connector, looks like about 0.1" pitch, male pins, green shroud with male pins, keyed by having cutouts in two corners (in the same way a 64-pin DIN header is keyed) -- I can't remember what these are called but I've seen them before. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

24 years, 4 months

Any sources for used raised flooring?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jul 29, 20:17, Eros, Anthony wrote: > With any luck, I may be putting up a small building to use as a computer > room in the next few months. It won't be huge (24 x 12), but I'm toying > with the idea of putting a raised floor in it. Does anyone know of a source > for surplus raised flooring? That's not very much bigger than mine. I got mine from someone (in the UK) who clears commercial/industrial buildings before they're reused or demolished. It was very cheap (compared to new prices) but there was a fair amount of work involved in cleaning the glue off the old supports, checking all the screw threads, cutting the supports to the right length [1], sorting out the damaged/warped panels [2] and those that were slighly odd sizes (mine are nominally 600mm square but a few turned out to be 590 x 600 or 610 x 600, presumably for edges). And don't forget that you need different supports for edges and corners, for most types. BTW, the same source I used had lots of fancy lighting fittings, suspended ceilings, air ducting and fittings, electrical fittings (including floor boxes), doors, etc at knockdown prices. Since there's a lot of metal in the supports, and the panels are normally steel-clad, you might indeed find something at a scrapyard, as Sellam suggests. One of my friends got secondhand flooring from a university that was moving its computer room. Ask around -- I've heard of places that take up the floor and fill it in with concrete screeding to reuse the room. If you can make your want known before that happens, you have the opportunity to remove the panels and supports. If you get second-hand flooring, mail me for tips. I now know more than I really wanted to about the do's and don't of secondhand computer floors :-) It *is* worth doing, though, if you can find some. I'm really pleased with mine now it's all done. [1] You might not have to do this -- my floor had originally been raised about 20" high and I only wanted a little over 6". [2] The panels are pretty heavy, and if not stacked sensibly -- mine were in 8' high stacks -- they have a tendency to warp over a long period of time. Warped tiles mean uneven floors or tiles that rock slightly. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

24 years, 4 months

FW: Got some old Q-Bus boards here. Any value? Anybody want to make offers?

by kyrrin＠bluefeathertech.com

Heads up, LSI-11/PDP-11 folk: Found this on Usenet. I've dealt with Ben on other stuff, and have found him to be very reliable and quick with shipping. If you want any of the stuff listed, contact him quick! He may end up sending it the gold scrapper otherwise. -=-=-=- <snip> -=-=-=- In article <3983748d.32999379(a)news.ma.ultranet.com>, you say... > Subject: Got some old Q-Bus boards here. Any value? Anybody want to make offers? > From: benmyers(a)ultranet.com (Ben Myers) > Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec > > I picked up some old Q-bus gear locally here today. Several systems, > two of which are home-grown, mounted on large sheets of particle > board. Many are DEC boards, some are made by long-gone companies, > names I do not even recognize with my longevity in this business. > Here's what I've got in DEC boards. Some boards are full-width with 4 > edge connectors. Other are half-width with 2 edge connectors. > > First, the half-width cards, showing quantity, part#, description: > (2) M8017 (50-12499, ASYNCHRONOUS LINE INTR) > (4) M8047 (50-13128, 32K 18-bit MOS MEM) > (3) M7270 (50-13004, LSI-11 CPU) > (3) M7941 (50-11573, PARALLEL LINE INPUT) > (1) M8186 (50-13326, KDF11 CPU) > > Now for the full-width cards, one of each: > M8012 (50-12569, BOOT TERMINATOR AND DIAGNOSTIC MODULE) > M7948 (50-11994, LSI-11 FOUNDATION MODULE) > M8189 (50-14313, KDF11-B) > > If you're also interested in the non-DEC Q-Bus boards, let me know. > > Oh, yeah. Also a Maxtor XT1140 disk drive, a venerable Seagate > ST251-1, an apparent Rodime drive, a Micropolis 1304, a DEC RZ57, and > a pair of 8" floppy diskette drives. > > I also have a couple of backplane/card cage items. > > Worse comes to worse, I can always pull the gold chips, sell the whole > collection to my corner electronic scrap dealer. But if you can put > it to good use, make me an offer on one or all boards. All boards > APPEAR to be in good condition, but I can't give any warranties on > this stuff... Ben > > > Ben Myers > Spirit of Performance, Inc. > 73 Westcott Road > Harvard, MA 01451 > tel: 978-456-3889 > eFax: 810-963-0412 (preferred; to send a fax, use like any FAX number) > fax: 978-456-3937 > MC, VISA, AMEX accepted. > > -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner/Head Honcho, Blue Feather Technologies (http://www.bluefeathertech.com) kyrrin [a-t] bluefeathertech {d=o=t} com "I'll get a life when someone demonstrates that it would be superior to what I have now..." (Gym Z. Quirk, aka Taki Kogoma)

24 years, 4 months

Any sources for used raised flooring?

by Anthony.Eros＠compaq.com

With any luck, I may be putting up a small building to use as a computer room in the next few months. It won't be huge (24 x 12), but I'm toying with the idea of putting a raised floor in it. Does anyone know of a source for surplus raised flooring? -- Tony

24 years, 4 months

Scanning microfiche?

by CLASSICCMP＠trailing-edge.com

* Want an old Beseler 4x5 enlarger? As the French said, "We've already got one" :-) * You would need to use a short focal *length lens ( < 50mm) to do the frames one at a time. The enlarger is located at the one place in the basement where I can crank the head all the way up to the top of the column. At that height a 50mm is just about right for each frame. Tim.

24 years, 4 months

Scanning microfiche?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jul 29, 8:05, CLASSICCMP(a)trailing-edge.com wrote: > Finally, do *any* scanners have documented interfaces? i.e. say I find myself > a nice SCSI-connected high-speed high-resolution scanner. Am I going to be > reduced to point-and-drool with Windows 98, or can I actually hook the > scanner up to a real computer? We're talking about many tens or hundreds > of gigabytes of data here, so I'm willing to invest some effort to automate > the acquire/compress/archive process. Yes, some HP scanners, U-Max, Mustek, Plustek, and a few others are documented. You should probably look at the SANE project (Scanner Access Now Easy) which runs on various flavours of Unix (and there was a WinSane project under way last time I looked, but you asked about real operating systems so I won't mention it :-)). http://www.mostang.com/sane/ is the homepage, but it doesn't seem to want to talk to me just now, so you might try ftp://ftp.mostang.com/pub/sane/ or http://linux.com/howto/Hardware-HOWTO-22.html -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York

24 years, 4 months

OT: notebook floppy drive pinout

by richard＠idcomm.com

Has anybody got the pinout for a TEAC FD05HF -030-U FDD? It appears there are 26 conductors including power on its fine-pitch single-in-line single-sided flat cable. I got a wild hair and decided to adapt it to my S-100 hard-card board, since there's room. Thanx Dick

24 years, 4 months

Remote Services Consoles REVEALED!

by cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com

:-) I found DEC document EK-KCRSC-FS-001 "Remote Services Console: Field Service Manual." Sometimes I'm sure God is a computer collector. Connections: Connector Local Console Terminal A1 CPU Conole Port A2 Optional to Comm port B1 Connection to modem B2 Now the way it works is it can use the modem from an existing dial-in line which presumably the customer would already have. So where you would normally have: Console >-------------> Computer Modem >-----------==> Comm port You get +---+ Console >---+ R +------> console | S | Modem >----+ C +------> comm port +---+ This lets the modem be used to dial in the console or on the comm port when not remotely diagnosing issues. Buttons on the front control baud rate, the mapping is: out out out 300 in out out 1200 out in out 2400 out out in 4800 in in in 9600 Baud T is the terminal and should match the console port setting Baud M is the modem (1200 baud preferred :-) The various modes: REMOTE - modem can dial into the console. Light blinks when no one is dialed in REMOTE USER - modem is connected to the comm port USER PORT - all operation is transparent console and modem connect "straight through" to the other connector LOCKOUT - modem can't be used to get to the system. The dial in line uses the DDCMP protocol to insure data integrity. I'm not sure what this means in terms of being able to dial it from a PC. --Chuck

24 years, 4 months

Scanning microfiche?

by djg＠drs-esg.com

Looks like people have answered all execept >Finally, do *any* scanners have documented interfaces? i.e. say I find myself >a nice SCSI-connected high-speed high-resolution scanner. Am I going to be >reduced to point-and-drool with Windows 98, or can I actually hook the >scanner up to a real computer? > Some companies do allow the information out or people reverse engineer it. I have used http://www.mostang.com/sane/ with my scanner under Linux. Not a huge number are supported. I have also seen a shareware one http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html for the film scanners but never used it. If you find a good solution to OCR let me know, I have looked at it a few times and it always looks like too much work to clean up after it. 300 DPI true resolution is what I considered the minimum for an acceptable looking scan. David Gesswein

24 years, 4 months

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test-drb July 2000