> On the other hand, wearing a name tag that says "John Galt"
> in a room full of techies is an unpardonably cheesy offense.
What would Bob the Lizard say? "...more gin..."
--
No Tourbots
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com]
> I'm concerned mainly about Win9x. There were numerous backup
> packages that
> worked VERY well under [DOS6.22/Win3.11]. Since the release
> of Win9x, I've
> bought several backup packages, and a couple of releases of
> each, yet not seen
> one that even barely worked on any sort of consistent basis.
Ahh, well if you allow third-parties into the picture, it changes somewhat.
[Backup utility problems snipped]
> There's something about the OS that interferes with a backup.
> The Microsoft
> Backup for Win98 seems to work ...sorta... but it only works
> ...sorta... and
> falls down many times, misinterpreting a drive that the OS
> recognizes correctly
> to be a 2GB partition to be 300+ Terabytes. Naturally it
> falls down later
> because of that problem. <sigh>
Since it's a microsoft utility, you can bet that the moment you upgrade
windows, the backups will be unusable, since the new, improved version will
be completely incompatible.
> An OS without a real backup utility is of little use because
> you have to have
> backup ... not just copies of things, but a real backup,
> context and all, that
Bingo. Windows is not an enterprise class system, nor, IMNSHO, is it even
worthy of being used in a production context. ... but back to the topic at
hand. :)
> enables you to get back to where you were. DOS didn't have
In a single utility? Perhaps not, but how much "context" do you expect from
DOS? :) The built-in backup program would copy files onto some other
medium, and a recovery disk could at least be made relatively simply. Maybe
I'm misunderstanding your complaint, though.
My problem with the DOS backup utility was that every time somebody at m$
re-compiled something, your old backups were useless.
I assume a third-party add-on would fix that.
> that, UNIX doesn't
> have it (though it does have TAR, which makes copies to
I find that TAR gives me useable backups in general. Again, there's no such
thing as a "standalone tar," so you'll need a recovery disk/tape/something.
It also has CPIO if you're into that sort of thing, and several third-party
things.
> tape), OS/2 doesn't have
> it, LINUX doesn't have it ... I don't know what a guy's to
See unix above... also note that TAR may be available for OS/2.
It is slightly harder to build an OS/2 recovery disk.
> do. I guess
> image-copying the disk to tape, empty space and all, is the
> only solution. Of
> course that means the files are replaceable only on an all or
> nothing basis.
Well, do you consider that space part of your "context?" Where is the line
drawn? Also note that the empty space isn't exactly empty in most cases.
As for "all-or-nothing" replacement, that's not exactly the case. You
certainly could mount an image right from the backup device (very slowly for
tape ;) and read files out. It would be a larger problem if your backups
don't fit filesystem-for-cartrige.
I'm relatively convinced that as long as you can backup files and attributes
(including ACL, etc), treating special files as if they were (special, that
is...), you ought to be ok.
The only place you'd get bitten is in systems that need to know an exact
location of a bootable image, or other such special file. That can probably
be handled in the restore procedure, though.
So I think DOS and Unix can be backed up pretty well. Windows is a
different story, I guess. It would help, for windows, of course, if they'd
provide a decent, uniform, block-device access method. Don't hold your
breath, though.
> ^%$#@! ... what a bunch of crap!
What really makes it inexcusable is the fact that a backup utility shouldn't
be too difficult to cook up.
Regards,
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
>I have yet to figure out why they couldn't have done the disk reads/writes
>in the background while you do some other things. I believe it's likely to
>be a "left-over" from early days.
Certain hardware could do background read/write starting with 7.5.3 (?
maybe .5). I used to do it with my Quarda 610. Also, as of OS 8.0,
read/write can be done in the background on all hardware that supports OS
8.0 (32 bit clean, 040's or better). I regularly put long file copies in
the background and continue doing other things.
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
It was nowhere near that frequent. We used number like 1/10^6
device hours for occurance rates. Often they found minor burps
in the system were at fault.
As to the ceramic VS plastic you have to looks carefully at the
system as the two have different leadframes, operating temps,
likely timing and bus capacitance. All of those things for a given
system interact. The worst example was early intel ceramic
parts (8755, 8748, 8749 and 8751) where the lid was floating
(not attached to any pin), they were quite sensitive to small
static charges accumulating on the lid! People thought it was
radiation doing it! Simple ESD problem.
The reason it's less a problem is ECC is common as is error
scrubbing and fewer interconnects, packages and die. Then
again do we know that the last Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD)
was really a MS OS burp or some system data error? :-) Try
and buy memories larger than say 1Mbit in ceramic now.
In all the systems I've encountered denser memories went
hand in hand with better reliablity of that part of the system.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Monday, November 19, 2001 2:13 PM
Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>Gee, Allison, that's not how I remember that stuff at all. We had a dozen
or
>more machines running a really thorough memory tests in the early '80's and
the
>purpose was to quantify the difference in error rates between ceramic and
>plastic parts. In order to do that, all you needed was a big enough DRAM
array,
>and you'd see them at a rate of about one or two per minute from among
those
>machines. Of course we'd be using about 8 boards measuring about 16" x 22"
with
>288 devices per board, then tracking the locations of the corrected errors.
If
>you used plastic parts, the error rate dropped, comparatively, by about
90%.
>That's the reason the problem was so widely discussed. It's odd that it
doesn't
>exist anymore, with the typcial home computer having about as much RAM
nowadays
>as all the computers in the world had when I was in college. BTW, that
entire
>problem went almost completely away once the DRAMs were redesigned with
that
>checkerboarding mod I mentioned.
>
>Dick
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Allison" <ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net>
>To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
>Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 10:31 AM
>Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>
>
>> back then I was involved in that stuff and 99% of the Dram problems were
>> design
>> related and not alpha particle. To see the alpha particle in real apps
>> you'd need
>> a box that had thouands of them running 7x24 for weeks! S100 systems
that
>> ran
>> that well were prone to the power company failing to deliver before ram
>> failure was
>> a problem!
>>
>> Back in that time frame I used static ram due to the general flakyness I
>> preceived
>> of most S100 cards. The best S100 ram I'd used for that time frame
(1980)
>> had an 8202( Netronics DRAM using 16Ks).
>>
>That board (I've still got a couple, 1 still unbuilt) was very, Very, VERY
slow,
>and used somebody's rather lame DRAM controller IC. The boards from CCS
had
>timing adquate for use with 64K parts if you didn't mind making the mod's,
AND
>they worked. The stock and unmodified version of those boards ran in a set
of 8
>boards for one of my clients running something like Mmmost or whatever it
was
>called, for several years and, since they had a UPS, never experienced a
failure
>in the time I worked with them. The Systems Group stuff worked really
well, and
>I still like 'em, though the boards are 512K boards rather than the 128K
ones
>they were then, having been designed with the eventual emergence of 256K
parts
>in mind.
>
>The main problem with S-100 DRAM boards was that designers seldom
understood
>both the S-100 timing and the proper use of DRAMs. Frankly, since there
wasn't
>a standard, it is understandable that nobody could get complete
interoperability
>from DRAMs with reasonable timing, since the S-100 had been designed around
one
>CPU and then the most popular CPU was promptly replaced by another one with
>completely different timing.
>>
>> Allison
>>
>>
>> From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com>
>>
>> >> Back in the early days of 64k DRAMs, the COORS ceramics were described
as
>> >having
>> >> too much radioactivity for use in high-density memories. I'm not sure
>> that
>> >was,
>> >> in fact, the case, but somebody seems to have thought so. Do you
suppose
>> >they
>> >> fixed that? Coors was a leader, in the '60's in porcelain tooling and
>> other
>> >> such oddities, not to mention having "perfected" the draw-and-iron
>> process
>> >for
>> >> making thin-walled aluminum beverage cans.
>> >
>> >My 8k EconoRAM IV, one of the first S-100 boards to use DRAM, used the
>> >very chips that supposedly had that problem. I've been told mine are
>> >OK, but it used to be a bit flaky; however, I always blamed that on
>> >the state of the early S-100 systems and my soldering work on the SOL
>> >to which it was attached... I solder *much* better now... -dq
>> >
>>
>>
>
It was easy to buy into but, it wasn't supported by research.
I was with NEC at that time and Dram was one of the hot
products and they were pretty good at it. Tyrns out the gold
braze for the lid and the gold based eutectic for the die bond
were the real source and it was Alpha particles (most easily
stopped) as a primary source of "soft" errors. Since then tricks
like memory scrubbing in ECC systems and better controls
on charge refresh have burried the problem even though the
features are several orders smaller. That very smaller means
less charge and there for more problems but it also means
a smaller target meaning a more likely miss.
In 1981 it translated to you had to have a lot of chips, running
for a long time to get a radiation induced soft error and even then
parity or better yet ECC was the way out. In the end, not a
problem for most systems.
Really interesting if your into statistics and probability.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Monday, November 19, 2001 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>I don't remember that explanation, though I guess it could be plausible.
What I
>remember reading was that, since western Colorado and eastern Utah, where
they
>were getting some of their materials was also an area of relatively high
>concentration of radioactive minerals, which certainly lines up with the
1950's
>activity in uranium prospecting/mining in that area. It was easy for me to
buy
>into during that period. The problem was found in almost all ceramic
packages
>made from materials acquired in that part of the country, so it seemed
>reasonable enough. It doesn't matter now, of course.
>
>Dick
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Allison" <ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net>
>To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
>Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 10:24 AM
>Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>
>
>> Not quite true.
>>
>> The Dram problem was one of those "we knew it was comming" due
>> to shrinking geometry items. The source of the radiation was the Gold
>> eutectic braze. The specific radiation was alpha particles. FYI the
>> solution was organic based die overcoat. Testing for the phenomina was
>> undertaken to verify and analyze the phenomina by NEC,IBM and MOTO
>> (to name a few) using initally small geometry 16k single voltage (i2118
>> style) parts.
>>
>> FYI: the coors ceramic parts were morecostly due to the gold! They
>> however were better for hermetic performance than slab with glass frit
>> sealed packages.
>>
>> Allison
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com>
>> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
>> Date: Monday, November 19, 2001 11:00 AM
>> Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>>
>>
>> >Back in the early days of 64k DRAMs, the COORS ceramics were described
as
>> having
>> >too much radioactivity for use in high-density memories. I'm not sure
that
>> was,
>> >in fact, the case, but somebody seems to have thought so. Do you
suppose
>> they
>> >fixed that? Coors was a leader, in the '60's in porcelain tooling and
>> other
>> >such oddities, not to mention having "perfected" the draw-and-iron
process
>> for
>> >making thin-walled aluminum beverage cans.
>> >
>> >Dick
>> >
>> >----- Original Message -----
>> >From: "Douglas Quebbeman" <dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com>
>> >To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
>> >Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 7:37 AM
>> >Subject: RE: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>> >
>> >
>> >> > 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.
>> >>
>> >> heh... actually, Adolph Coors spun-off its non-brewery assets in 1992
>> >> into ACX Technologies, and most recently, CoorsTek (formerly Coors
>> >> Ceramics) was spun-off into a wholly separate company on Jan 1, 2000.
>> >>
>> >> -dq
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com]
> version of the OS. surely there's some way to determine what
> hardware the
> machine thinks it "sees," though.
No. It's one of the things that Apple decided to leave out in the name of
simplicity. You'll need to find a program to do it. "Apple System
Profiler" as suggested, will likely work. You may have to go find yourself
a copy. Have you checked Apple's web-page?
Regards,
Chris
Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL
/usr/bin/perl -e '
print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n");
'
Newsgroups: mailinglist.classiccmp
Path: gateway
From: ajp166(a)bellatlantic.net (Allison)
Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
Date: 19 Nov 01 13:38:45 GMT
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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
back then I was involved in that stuff and 99% of the Dram problems were
design
related and not alpha particle. To see the alpha particle in real apps
you'd need
a box that had thouands of them running 7x24 for weeks! S100 systems that
ran
that well were prone to the power company failing to deliver before ram
failure was
a problem!
Back in that time frame I used static ram due to the general flakyness I
preceived
of most S100 cards. The best S100 ram I'd used for that time frame (1980)
had
an 8202( Netronics DRAM using 16Ks).
Allison
From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com>
>> Back in the early days of 64k DRAMs, the COORS ceramics were described as
>having
>> too much radioactivity for use in high-density memories. I'm not sure
that
>was,
>> in fact, the case, but somebody seems to have thought so. Do you suppose
>they
>> fixed that? Coors was a leader, in the '60's in porcelain tooling and
other
>> such oddities, not to mention having "perfected" the draw-and-iron
process
>for
>> making thin-walled aluminum beverage cans.
>
>My 8k EconoRAM IV, one of the first S-100 boards to use DRAM, used the
>very chips that supposedly had that problem. I've been told mine are
>OK, but it used to be a bit flaky; however, I always blamed that on
>the state of the early S-100 systems and my soldering work on the SOL
>to which it was attached... I solder *much* better now... -dq
>
Not quite true.
The Dram problem was one of those "we knew it was comming" due
to shrinking geometry items. The source of the radiation was the Gold
eutectic braze. The specific radiation was alpha particles. FYI the
solution was organic based die overcoat. Testing for the phenomina was
undertaken to verify and analyze the phenomina by NEC,IBM and MOTO
(to name a few) using initally small geometry 16k single voltage (i2118
style) parts.
FYI: the coors ceramic parts were morecostly due to the gold! They
however were better for hermetic performance than slab with glass frit
sealed packages.
Allison
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Monday, November 19, 2001 11:00 AM
Subject: Re: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>Back in the early days of 64k DRAMs, the COORS ceramics were described as
having
>too much radioactivity for use in high-density memories. I'm not sure that
was,
>in fact, the case, but somebody seems to have thought so. Do you suppose
they
>fixed that? Coors was a leader, in the '60's in porcelain tooling and
other
>such oddities, not to mention having "perfected" the draw-and-iron process
for
>making thin-walled aluminum beverage cans.
>
>Dick
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Douglas Quebbeman" <dhquebbeman(a)theestopinalgroup.com>
>To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
>Sent: Monday, November 19, 2001 7:37 AM
>Subject: RE: Intel C8080A chip brings $565 on EBAY
>
>
>> > 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.
>>
>> heh... actually, Adolph Coors spun-off its non-brewery assets in 1992
>> into ACX Technologies, and most recently, CoorsTek (formerly Coors
>> Ceramics) was spun-off into a wholly separate company on Jan 1, 2000.
>>
>> -dq
>>
>>
>
>
All,
....and then there's the rest of the tape. Miles and miles of
9-track tapes are stacked in my office and I want my office back. I rescued
about 1/3 of the to-dispose pile, the rest went to the dumpster. If I'm
industrious, I may try ebaying this if you guys don't want it, but I'd
rather it go to a classic-comp-er. If I'm not industrious, I'll dumpster it
when I need my office bad enough.
Mostly Scotch Black Watch 700 or 777 tape, mostly 12-inch reels,
but lots of Memorex and smaller reels available too. Practically all is
6250 or 1600 cpi certified. A variety of closures, mostly the plastic rings
and hangers. Write-enable rings mostly in place. The first 2 orders will
get a bonus black 3-tape carrying case with nice webbing straps to hold it
closed and serve as a handle.
I have around 400 of these tapes, so please do not be shy about how
many you request, at least within the constraints of your shipping budget.
- Mark
