test-drb December 2001

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

243 participants
1096 discussions

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Rebuild a system the customer is satisfied with? Risk his > process again? Rather not. A special place in Hell awaits those unwilling to take risks... -dq

22 years, 10 months

Flashing Light Indicators un Simple Front Panels

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Dec 14, 16:16, Douglas Quebbeman wrote: > In particular, do any of you have familiarity with > systems that flash the on or power light as an > indicattor, sopecifiecally, of a power supply > problem? The only thing I can think of that's *designed* to do something like that is an SGI Indy; if you power one up and it can't even run the the code in the PROM, it flashes the power light (which is a two-colour LED). The usual cause id that there's no (recognisable) RAM at all in it. Probably not relevant to a PR1ME. Even less relevant, but in the same vein, is an Acorn Archimedes. If it can't boot, and can't set up the display, it flashes a 4-bit fault code on the floppy access LED. However, the code is RISC OS-specific. > Would anyone venture what a 2 Hz flash rate on the ON > LED of a Prime might mean? If it's a short "on" and a long "off", it might be a power supply that is starting up , detecting a problem, and shutting off again. And retrying, and ... Is there any accompanying, possibly fairly quiet, whistle/buzz/click that occurs at the same rate? -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 10 months

MITS 2SIO serial chip?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

-----Original Message----- From: Ben Franchuk <bfranchuk(a)jetnet.ab.ca> >> Sure its trivial to do now but we were talking 1981 when PALS were >> expensive. Yes, they were compared to random logic, but if board space was costly they were cheaper. >I never heard about pal's until about 1990. In some ways the peripheral PALS are 1970s technology, really old to some of us. >chips are in a really sorry shape. You have vintage slow I/O (2 MHZ?) >or PC motherboard chip sets. Nothing in between. On my FPGA I can run >with a 250 ns memory cycle, but need to stretch it to 625 ns for I/O. Actually thats not true. BY 1981 you have peripherals in the 125ns read write timing range. Then again Z80 at that time was just hinting at 6mhz so z80 peripherals were of an according spped for that cpu. However, other parts were faster and often far cheaper. Personally if I wanted the SIO functionality for a NON-z80 system I'd never use the zilog part. Reason it was not cheap,nor was it easy to use for non-z80 systems. They were designed for the Z80, period. Unfortunatly they were slow. If you wanted faster the 83xx or 85xx parts from Zilog were a far better choice but Zbus was scary to most people and they weren't cheap. The other part of this is NEC and Intel did the MPSC (NEC D7201, INtel 8274) which was functionally identical to the SIO and was "tuned" for 8080/8085/8088/8086 style busses and faster as well. It was a more generic part than the SIO. Also around that time Signetics and friends were doing the 2681 part that was cheap and available in various flavors. Peripherals back then were quite varied. Allison

22 years, 10 months

Plastic latches for the Osborne?

by gibbsjj＠u.washington.edu

Hi all, Has anyone out there found a replacement for the plastic latches on the Osborne 1? I just got this machine, and one of them is broken off. What a bad design... considering how solid the rest of the machine is I am surprised they did not put some big hinged metal suitcase latches on the sucker! Thanks. Josh gibbsjj(a)u.washington.edu

22 years, 10 months

Apple DuoDisk (was Re: Stacking Apple ][ stuff)

by erd_6502＠yahoo.com

--- SUPRDAVE(a)aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 11/8/2001 5:06:19 AM Central Standard Time, > foo(a)siconic.com writes: > I do remember reading something of a faulty/out of spec component > inside the duodisk that would cause some issues with the floppy drives > but like I said, coming up 404 on it. Think I'll ask in comp.sys..... > and find out for sure. I'd like to hear more about this. I always used individual drives (typically SA400 mechs) when I did Apple development. The IIe and DuoDisk were too new and expensive for a low-budget shop like us (but we did eventually support the //c _and_ the Apple mouse) I have a DuoDisk but no cable. What pins were used? I think I _might_ have a cable that was sacrificed to the Amiga gods by having one of the pins broken out of one end for use as a modem cable (since the Amiga puts voltage on some of the pins). It was a stupid thing to do, but it was more than 10 years ago when Apple stuff was underappreciated. Anyone have an Apple part number for a DuoDisk cable? Will a 25-pin straight-through work? -ethan __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send your FREE holiday greetings online! http://greetings.yahoo.com

22 years, 10 months

VS4000 hardware questions

by IVIE＠cc.usu.edu

> Well, I made room on my bench, opened up my grubby, new-to-me 4000/60, > and it only has one of the two RZ24 drives my partner paid for. I've > fired off email to the vendor asking him to ship the drive and mounting > hardware, but I don't expect that he'll have either. Take a closer look. Two drives can be attached to the plastic clip in the front middle of the machine, on on top and one underneath. Roger Ivie ivie(a)cc.usu.edu

22 years, 10 months

Hardest to Find Classic Computers (Was: RE: Way OT: Just say no t o squirrels & Pascal question)

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> When OT threads die and then get resurrected under even > wilder topics, its just not worth it. Ok, we've had threads similar to this one before, but maybe not quite... What are the hardest to find Classic Computers? What should not be counted: Systems that never went beyond prototype Systems that they made only one of Systems that were custom-designed for a single customer and were only in limited production Systems that were not "general purpose" computers Also not intended as the thrust of the topic: Systems you most of all want Rather, the systems I'me talking about would have been commercially produced, were general-purpose systems, made in quantity of say at least a baker's dozen. These systems might be generally available, and might go for a price you can afford, but you just can't *find* them where you're at. Around here for me, it would be PDP-8's and Lisa's. ??? -dq

22 years, 10 months

What 's a 3Com 3c515 worth these days?

by jhellige＠earthlink.net

>Well... I have no personal need for an ISA 10/100 in a WinTel box - I >have a 10BaseT network with 10Base2 and 10BaseFL branches going into >a port on my 10/100 switch. For old stuff, 10mbps is fine. If I were >going to buy this at all, I'd see about using it with AmigaDOS (and >working with Holger Kruse on an MNI driver, if he's still around) Holger isn't working on Miami any longer is he? I registered it a number of years ago but from the looks of it, it appears that development on it has stopped. I'm currently using an X-Surf with the MNI driver with the standard version of Miami (registered) on my A3000. Jeff

22 years, 10 months

Mike Stein

by mhstein＠usa.net

Sorry; trouble getting into ISP & mailbox filled up. OK now, c u off-list. m ---------------Original Message-------------- From: "Ernest" <ernestls(a)attbi.com> Subject: Mike Stein Hey, Mike. I've been trying to get ahold of you via email about your Apple II clone but your mail keeps bouncing back. Please contact me if you are still interested in selling those systems to me. Thanks. Ernest

22 years, 10 months

have a Happy ...

by oliv555＠arrl.net

>from Houston, wishing all list members a safe and happy holiday :) -nick o

22 years, 10 months

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test-drb December 2001