test-drb November 2001

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

247 participants
886 discussions

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

Noteably the Bridgeport company consumed some 100,000 LSI-11 card sets for their NC systems. Later I think Falcon(T11) cards were also used and I've seena fair number of PDP-8s mated to the larger vertical mills. Thats not even close to exhaustive list. Other cpus (HP, Cincinatti Millichron, Z80 based, 6800 and 6502 as well). Allison -----Original Message----- From: Ian Koller <vze2mnvr(a)verizon.net> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 4:46 AM Subject: Re: HP 3000 No More (legacy) > > >ajp166 wrote: >> For those CNC tools with PDP-8 or PDP11s running them > >What mfg. model CNC machines run on PDP's? > > > >ajp166 wrote: >> >> From: Dave McGuire <mcguire(a)neurotica.com> >> >> >On November 17, Stan Sieler wrote: >> >> PA-RISC is dead/dying ... HP has said so. IA-64 killed it. >> > >> > [knee-jerk reaction to a pet peeve follows] >> > >> > Well, as long as "dead" can be defined as "salespeople don't want to >> >sell you a new one". For me, it can't. I can pick up the phone and >> >buy PDP8 equipment from a commercial vendor. How long ago was THAT >> >architecture discontinued? >> > >> > For me, something is "dead" (or "obsolete" or whatever you want to >> >call it) when it can no longer do its job adequately and >> >> Dead to me is broken. Obsolete is when it cant forfill the intesded task >> or when it has reached a level of repair difficulty where replacement is >> an option. For those CNC tools with PDP-8 or PDP11s running them >> that number is still over $50,000 to upgrade and 100s of thousands of >> dollars to replace. In the face of that the PDP-8 that still makes good >> flanges is cheap at $2000 for a working cold spare. >> >> For example I was given three working 386(mono) and 486(color) laptops >> as too weak to be useful. Fully working machines with Xircom network >> adaptors and all! >> >> Allison >

22 years, 8 months

PDP-8 backplane -- was Re: PDP-8 case

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

Omnibus dones not have a unibus/qbus grant chain. the general organisation is anywhere it fits generally works save for cards that have over the top connections. Allison -----Original Message----- From: Pete Turnbull <pete(a)dunnington.u-net.com> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Tuesday, November 20, 2001 3:52 AM Subject: PDP-8 backplane -- was Re: PDP-8 case >On Nov 20, 0:53, Tony Duell wrote: >> Since you can put options with top connectors anywhere in the backplane, >> there would seem to be little point in having special foam over the front >> slots only. > >That reminds me... supplementary question: The machine had gaps between >some of the cards. It's over 20 years since I used a PDP-8 for real, and >in those days I wasn't usually allowed at the innards. The gaps don't >matter, do they? There's no grant chain like in a Unibus, AFAIR. The >-8/E is an Omnibus machine, of course. > >-- >Pete Peter Turnbull > Network Manager > University of York >

22 years, 8 months

OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa?

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> WDEF could do this, but it was rendered dead by System 7 (it infected the > System 6 and earlier desktop database, so when a disk was inserted, it > could spread to any uninfected desktop databases) This caused me much grief, as I had a customized WDEF routine I'd edit into every System file; it was Andy's source, modified to do the Lisa-styled titlebar and widgets. But anti-virus software of the day gave false positives for my WDEF. -dq

22 years, 8 months

OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa?

by mythtech＠Mac.com

>They both have Claris Works loaded, but since >there's no CD and no doc, I have to say it's got to be flushed. NO NO NO NO... Claris Works shipped with EVERY performa... but since it was an Apple product, it was tied into that damn Backup program, and no install disks were supplied. (There should be a simple manual, but the previous owners may have lost it). Don't flush it, it is legal (and again, I can supply you with a replacement copy if need be, it came with Claris Works version 2.1) >One has a Stylewriter II and the other has a Color >Stylewriter 2400, not that I know what the differences are. The 2400 is the better of the two. Check Apple's web site for specs. The goofy catch with the 2400 is, it has no direct printer driver, you need to use the driver for the 2500 (go figure) > They have >essentially useless (2400 Baud) GV Teleport Bronze modems, which I guess I'll >upgrade in order to make the system useful for internet browsing If you are dumping the GV Bronze modems, I would be interested in aquiring them from you. They are FANTASTIC fax modems, so I use them on old Mac SE's as fax stations. >I'm still in the throes of figuring out how, exactly to equip these things >with >"legal" software Accordng to Apple, the 630CD comes with a Restore CD. Run that, and you will get all the shipped "legal" software the machine came with. The 630CD shipped with the following software: Performa 630CD - M3424LL/A ? ? ? ? ? Includes ClarisWorks 2.1, American ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Heritage Dictionary 3rd Edition, Quicken ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?4, MacLink Translators, Mac Gallery Clip ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Art, Click Art Performa Collection, ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?KidWorks 2, Thinkin' Things, The Writing ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Center, Spectre Challenger, Spin Doctor ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Lite, TelePort Fax Send, At Ease 2.0, PC ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?Exchange, and eWorld. It also orginally shipped with System 7.1, but 7.5.5 is now free off Apple's web site, so you can upgrade to it without legal fear. If you don't have the restore CD, let me know, I can look and see if I have one. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

22 years, 8 months

Altair32 Emulator - StarTrek Runs!

by rcini＠optonline.net

Hello, all: Another minor success. With the help of Mike Dogas, I was able to get Altair BASIC 4.0 (8K BASIC) running in the emulator. With that comes support for strings. With strings, Super StarTrek. Whoo, hoo! Thanks Mike! Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ /************************************************************/

22 years, 8 months

Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: John Galt <gmphillips(a)earthlink.net> >There's a rather small community of chip collectors. > >However, there are a few collectors who have been >collecting for over 10 years now who have put togather >pretty vast collections of literally thousands of chips. My only concern is they may be collecting junk, IE: chips that look good, may be rare but are DEAD/useless electronically. >It would be the same as if suddenly someone found >two Intelec bit slice 3002 computers dated 1975 in a closet or something. >Sure, there might could be more, but if they were common, you guys would >have already seen one. These were quite common and the basic chipset on an experimentors board was around $495 in 1977. Most were used then relagated to the engineering junk box. So I'd presume when you say rare, your referring to actively traded survivors as SBC colltors like me may already have one (not yet!). >As far as the color, chip collectors refer to that color >chip as "purple". If you look at it next to a normal >"gray" CerDIP, you can see the difference. Besides, >it would not have mattered had it been black. The fact >is, it's not the white/gold color of a normal Intel >C8080A. The printing on the chip is also somewhat different. My guess is >it's a late run C8080A that was It's very late run ceramic. Ceramic for chip substrates only comes from a few vendors one being a beer maker in the rockies a few in the far east and Europe. It was part of the reason why ceramic parts were more expensive and also a near must if the part was required to pass tests for hermetic sealing (military, space or other high stress apps). Ceramic aging/dating: Starting with the 1960s ceramic was white. early White examples were early military Flatpacks(RTL/DTL/TTL) 1101, 1103 ram 1702 eprom first brown parts I'd seen were 2708s brown (light) later dark brown Gray Gray with brownish cast Gray with purplish cast Those were the most common. Eproms were generaltionally in the common ceramic of the time. Allison

22 years, 8 months

OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa?

by Joanne.Renardson＠grangewintringham.com

This came to me in error. Regards, Jo. -----Original Message----- From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com] Sent: 20 November 2001 01:08 To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa? If you're meaning operating on the tape contents, you're talking about weeks to months. The bits of a file are scattered around the disk, since it's random access, albeit in "clusters" or whatever you choose to call them, and in blocks, as the data buffer stores them, but unless you KNOW where the directory is in the bitwise image of the disk, and unless you know where all the pieces of the drive are to be found in the tape image, I'd submit it would be a mite tedious. The problem, of course, with image backup, is that the bits have to be extracted >from the drive at the raw data level, i.e. with controller commands you normally don't deal with, and they can't be faithfully restored to a drive that's not physically identical to the one you started with, i.e. same number of heads, cylinders, sectors, etc, PHYSICALLY, else things fall apart, since we don't know how the drive firmware deals with translating from the block-level commands the OS may choose to send it, though it doesn't have to, to the buffers-full of data that the drive coughs up. Remember, when you restart the system, it has no OS other than what you can load >from a floppy. IF that's the same, which certainly isn't the case under WIndows, as what you used to do the backup, then you're able, potentially, to deal with the data to be transferred to the newly cleaned drive in the same way that this particular OS deals with it. Of course, the OS doesn't know what you're doing, and doesn't know how to read the data on the disk, except as raw data, dealt with in buffer-fulls, and than only using the code you've written. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Christopher Smith" <csmith(a)amdocs.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 4:00 PM Subject: RE: OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa? > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com] > > > If your recorded "backup" is a bit-for-bit image of the disk contents, > > transferred to and from tape, there's no interpretation of > > the contents into > > files that can take place, is there? > > That's an interesting way to phrase this particular question, since the > contents are already in the form of "files" -- that is, if you ask the set > of drivers that got them to the disk in the first place. :) > > I believe it's possible (though it would be slow) to interpret a bit-for-bit > image directly on a tape and extract any given file, along with attributes, > etc. In fact, any operation that would be possible on a disk, in this case, > could be handled on a tape. The clincher is that it would involve a lot of > seek/rewind/seek/etc/etc.. > > The underlying O/S need not even know the difference between the disk and > tape, except to know that the tape is removable (...that's not absolutely > required), and perhaps that it's incredibly slow. > > The worst that would be required is a device abstraction layer or the like. > You could write one yourself which would make the tape device "look" like a > disk device, for systems which don't have such a thing, and that would be > enough. > > How would you like to be able to mount your backup tape, and use a > file-manager on it? ;) > > > The Microsoft Backup that came with DOS, (a) never really was > > a backup, but, > > rather, was just a copy, and (b) never worked together with > > its "restore" > > function. Under DOS, copies were adequate, since the context > > didn't matter. > > If you mean that it didn't store attributes, or that sort of thing, you may > be right (never paid attention.) On the other hand, you're also right to > say that it wouldn't particularly matter under MS-DOS. > > Regards, > > Chris > > > Christopher Smith, Perl Developer > Amdocs - Champaign, IL > > /usr/bin/perl -e ' > print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); > ' > > >

22 years, 8 months

HP 3000 No More (legacy)

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Dave McGuire <mcguire(a)neurotica.com> >On November 17, Stan Sieler wrote: >> PA-RISC is dead/dying ... HP has said so. IA-64 killed it. > > [knee-jerk reaction to a pet peeve follows] > > Well, as long as "dead" can be defined as "salespeople don't want to >sell you a new one". For me, it can't. I can pick up the phone and >buy PDP8 equipment from a commercial vendor. How long ago was THAT >architecture discontinued? > > For me, something is "dead" (or "obsolete" or whatever you want to >call it) when it can no longer do its job adequately and Dead to me is broken. Obsolete is when it cant forfill the intesded task or when it has reached a level of repair difficulty where replacement is an option. For those CNC tools with PDP-8 or PDP11s running them that number is still over $50,000 to upgrade and 100s of thousands of dollars to replace. In the face of that the PDP-8 that still makes good flanges is cheap at $2000 for a working cold spare. For example I was given three working 386(mono) and 486(color) laptops as too weak to be useful. Fully working machines with Xircom network adaptors and all! Allison

22 years, 8 months

Dead Intel MDS controller board

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Nov 19, 20:52, Dave Mabry wrote: > I have that manual (98-422A) and that is the correct one for the > SBC-202. I think Intel just gave the 202 name to that board set when it > was bought for integration into an application. > > I am anxious to try to troubleshoot this, but I'm not sure how to go > about it. [...] > FWIW, this seems to be the exact failure mode I've seen in every one > I've had fail. > Note to list: Should we take this private or do you all want to see it? I'd say "let's see it". You might get more than onme opinion, and in any case if the fault is relatively common, there's a good chance someone else can make use of the information later. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 8 months

PDP-8 case

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Nov 19, 18:35, Richard Erlacher wrote: > From: "Greg Ewing" <greg(a)cosc.canterbury.ac.nz> > > I think so-called "conductive" foam actually has quite > > a high resistance. If that's so, it would be unlikely > > to upset any ordinary logic circuit. > ISTR something about megohms per linear inch... > I doubt that will bother PDP-8 circuits much. Resistivity is normally measured "per square" (if it's linear, how wide should the strip be?) And this stuff is about 25 megohms per square, according to my measurements. So, no, I don't see how it could bother 7400 TTL. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 8 months

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test-drb November 2001