test-drb December 2001

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

243 participants
1096 discussions

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> FYI, I think it's a "made up" holiday and just wanted to know > what your thoughts were. The difference between "real" holidays and "made up" Holidays seems to be: if the Holiday was "made up" before you were born, then it's real (like Mother's Day, which was instituted by President Woodrow Wilson); if it was made up in your lifetime, then it's "not real, just made up." January 1 was "made up" into New Years Day by an act of fiat; New Years Day used to be April 1. I believe "Father's Day" was "made up" in the 50s... "President's Day" was "made up" by tightwad businessmen who wanted to combine two Holidays into one. "Washington's Birthday" was made-up into a Holiday by people who wanted to make a big deal out of Washington's Birthday; ditto Lincoln. I hope the pattern is clear... Kwanzaa is as valid a Holiday as any. Regards, -dq

22 years, 9 months

Way OT: Just say no to squirrels & Pascal question

by Robert_Feldman＠jdedwards.com

Last time I had horse meat was with a couple of my professors at the Faculty Club ar Harvard. It was a regular on the menu there. Bob -----Original Message----- From: Don Maslin [mailto:donm@cts.com] Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 12:51 AM To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org Subject: RE: Way OT: Just say no to squirrels & Pascal question <snip> Where on your scale do you put horse meat? The French love it. - don

22 years, 9 months

MITS 2SIO serial chip?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Richard Erlacher <edick(a)idcomm.com> >would have worked out. I think it might have given the Z80 and edge. Coming up >with a fair and general test might be difficult. I'd liken 6502 VS z80 as one of those depends on what you like things. Both have stood the test of time far better than many others. >The Z80 itself wasn't a bad CPU, but the peripheral set they built for it, with >its compromises in favor of the mode-2 interrupts meant that you couldn't use >wait-states on I/O cycles or on device chip selects to adjust the CPU to the I agree, most designers did too. Look at most Z80 designs out there and it was Z80 with NON-Zilog peripherals. Mode 2 with a little external glue to use with non zilog was a very potent config. >slower peripherals because it had to be looking over the CPU's shoulder to catch >the interrupt acknowledge and the RETI instruction. I've recently worked this >out by switching the clock rate during I/O and during a pending or current >interrupt, but it's still a PAIN! What's more, it seems to require more than >just a PAL. Handshake logic from a 4-bit wide FIFO (16 pins) seems to be the >tool for keeping track of interrupts and their dismissal. :) Me, I dont use slow Zilog peripherals. The last time I used Zilog IO it was the 5330 SCC that ran comfortably at 10mhz with it's own DMA. A TTL implementation of the mode 2 interrupts made for a nice system as it could run fast, though I never bothered with RETI, as that not required and adds much to the logic load. Allison

22 years, 9 months

How did they string core?

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> > It was done by hand I think. Mexico comes to mind. > > Some manfacturers did it by hand, some by machine. IBM had core stringing > machines during the S/360 era, for the huge stacks (about 1' by 4') used > in some of the storage units. They also had cores hand strung in the far > East, as the cheap labor was more economical than the robots. The far east manufacture of core lead to a long-running joke in the old mainframe days... the instance of it I will describe was only one of many... Anyway, when we'd boot the COPE (Harris) 1200 Remote Job Entry Station (a PDP-8 clone), there would be a message that would flash by on the console *very quickly*: HELP! HELP! I'm being held hostage in a Hong Kong Core House! Read this thinking "Mike Hunt" and "Amanda Huggenkiss" if you don't (by some chance) get it... -dq

22 years, 9 months

Is there no end

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Matter of fact AMD was subcontracted at one point to MAKE processors for > Intel, when demands were up and they couldn't meet market requirements - and > many of the AMD made Intel branded chips are better than many of the Intel > ones. I don't remember if it was the 386 era or 486 though. iAPX286 era... -dq

22 years, 9 months

Hardest to Find Classic Computers

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

Not likely! Sphere back then was the sloppy introduction and viewed as a grab the money and run, ship nothing operation. I'd say it was one of the first in the Vaproware realm. Many that ordered got skunked as Sphere hit with a splash and really did disappear pretty fast. They were the bad guys right up until the World Power Scam, thats another story. Allison -----Original Message----- From: Michael Nadeau <menadeau(a)mediaone.net> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Date: Monday, December 17, 2001 7:52 AM Subject: Re: Hardest to Find Classic Computers >Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer has a detailed account of the >Sphere's design flaws and other issues, including kits being sent out >incomplete. Veit was a retailer who sold the Sphere when new. Veit stopped >selling the Sphere and admits that the company might have fixed some of the >problems after that. > >Do you remember the issue in which the review that the former owner refers >to appeared? The earliest Sphere coverage in BYTE is positive, almost >fawning. > >Maybe if the Sphere had been on the cover of Popular Electronics instead of >the Altair people would have been more forgiving of its flaws. > >--Mike > >Michael Nadeau >Editorial Services >603-893-2379 >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Loboyko Steve" <sloboyko(a)yahoo.com> >To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> >Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 9:22 PM >Subject: Re: Hardest to Find Classic Computers > > >> I stumbled upon a link some time ago belonging to a >> very bitter former owner of Sphere. The gist of his >> article was that Byte Magazine destroyed Sphere with a >> very bad review, and, that most computers of that era >> took some hacking to work anyway (example: the "clock" >> - and I use the term clock charitably - of the >> original Altair 8800). >> >> --- William Donzelli <aw288(a)osfn.org> wrote: >> > > Ah yeah. Good pick. That is definitely a rare >> > beast. I've only ever >> > > known one person who had one (I forgot his name, >> > he used to be on the list >> > > a few years ago). He sold it off to someone else >> > and then got out of >> > > collecting computers. >> > >> > Was that me? I have/had three, but they are promised >> > to go out West. One of >> > those deals that seems to be taking a very long >> > time, mostly due to me >> > trying to unearth it all and boxing the stuff up. >> > >> > Anyway, Sphere aparently was one of the early bad >> > guys. The computers they >> > sold (many as kits, I think) basically did not work. >> > Unlike Altair, Sphere >> > was trying to break into the business sector, so >> > there really was not much >> > of an excuse for the crapiness. They all needed a >> > huge number of hacks to >> > get them to function (my favorite is a a few-mH coil >> > made of telephone >> > wire kludged onto one of the oscillators, in order >> > to keep the thing >> > going. Basically, wrap some wire around a pencil, >> > and tack solder it into >> > place, and adjust accordingly). >> > >> > William Donzelli >> > aw288(a)osfn.org >> >> >> __________________________________________________ >> Do You Yahoo!? >> Check out Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Auctions for all of >> your unique holiday gifts! Buy at http://shopping.yahoo.com >> or bid at http://auctions.yahoo.com >> > >

22 years, 9 months

Flashing Light Indicators un Simple Front Panels

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Actually, I think that's a good suggestion, if you can find someone with > the same ROMs. In my experience, most programmers actually do use the same > algorithm -- one of the common CRCs. At least, all three programmers I > regularly use do, and the checksums match the ones printed on SGI ROMs and > a few other ROMs I have that have printed checksums. Well, they wouldn't compare exactly- the microcode ROM sets are serialized... But when I disconnecte the cabinet airflow sensor, I get an error message displayed that's not in the VCP's Z-80 boot ROM, but is only in the microcode ROMs. Now, whether the Z-80 is retrieving and displaying that message, or the microcode is getting loaded and the Prime CPU is issuing the message, who can tell? -dq

22 years, 9 months

Flashing Light Indicators un Simple Front Panels

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Possible, of course, but in the case of an Indy, the processor and PSU are > working, and it gets only as far as the "I think, therefore I am a > processor; I wonder if I have any memory" test in the PROM, and then > executes a loop which controls the LED in the PSU if there's no RAM. At > least, that's what I believe; I've not seen a detailed description of the > PROM startup. I suppose your problem may be something similar, in that the > CPU is running but can't do anyting useful because either it's crippled or > some other part of the system is disfuntional. Does the CPU control the > power supply LED(s), like it does in an Indy? Yeah, pretty sure it does... Interestingly, I remove dthe two 4MB boards last night- no difference in bahavior. However, there are message strings in the ROMs dealing with RAM problems... -dq

22 years, 9 months

[PDP8-Lovers] Re: how to clean a PDP8/A, dishwasher?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

From: Johnny Billquist <bqt(a)update.uu.se> >> As has been said before, what do you think manufacturers do at the end of a >> production line? > >They wash them yes. They *don't* put them in a dishwasher. There is a >hughe difference. Many did as it was cheaper than the commercial version. >> Be careful about that. Allison's warning about ESD is quite real. Don't >> even think about a feather duster; at least, not if it's a synthetic one. > >ESD should never be ignored, but in the case of computer from the 60s and >70s, ESD is really not an issue. We don't have CMOS, we have old style MSI >TTL here... It is not ESD sensitive. You can literally zap those >circuits, and they will work just fine. Sorry, not so. DEC did a study in the logistics flow to see why DOA boards were a problem. The reason was ESD even on older PDP-8 and PDP-11 modules. The test and solution was ESD procedures or all modules and the fail rate went down significantly. Seems for TTL while ESD generally didn't kill it it can and did damage the passivation or input protection leading to longer term failures that were chalked up to infant mortality. Characateristics that were often seen degraded were input thresholds, input sink currents, output leakage for open collector and tristate devices. With the rarity and parts availability of older machines a bit of care is warrented if only to reduce troubleshooting time and 90 day failures. Allison

22 years, 9 months

Flashing Light Indicators un Simple Front Panels

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> > PC that's got my ROM burner/reader, and read each one (if the > > ROMs aren't too large a size for my Needham unit). I'm assuming > > I'll see all 00s or all FFs (or maybe something like FEs) if > > they're blown; been a long time since I've looked at popped > > ROMs... > > What kind of ROMs does it use? Another possibility might be to find > someone with the same model of PR1ME (how rare are they?) and checksum > the ROMs & compare them...most PROM burners will generate checksums, > but now that I think of it, PROM burner manufacturers have yet to > standardize on a checksumming algorithm so it'd probably be useless > unless they're summed with the same make/model of burner. :-( My ROMs are fine; they read OK and I can provoke an error condition that results in a message to the console, and said message string resides in one and only one place- the microcode ROMs. -dq

22 years, 9 months

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test-drb December 2001