test-drb December 2001

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

243 participants
1096 discussions

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

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On December 15, Boatman on the River of Suck wrote: > > > I know that a good percentage of you are skeptical. Every one of my > > > games in my arcade collection had at least the CPU boardset in the > > > dishwasher. Several others had every single board through the wash. > > > All of them work, and did so before going into the dishwasher and > > > immediately after drying. Others had the monitors powerwashed. I took > > > an entire 11/780 out into my driveway and I powerwashed the chassis > > > AND backplane! > > > > I thought we weren't supposed to use the dishwasher on anything with > > capacitors. > > It's fine, as long as the capacitors aren't charged. ...and as long as they're not paper capacitors. Most paper capacitors are dipped in wax, but that won't always make a perfect waterproof seal. -Dave -- Dave McGuire St. Petersburg, FL "Less talk. More synthohol." --Lt. Worf

22 years, 9 months

HP Piecemeal auction ?

by CLeyson＠aol.com

Anybody have a spare HP 9825 16-bit hybrid processor ? I have a machine that needs one. Best regards Chris Leyson

22 years, 9 months

Hardest to Find Classic Computers

by mythtech＠Mac.com

>What are the hardest to find Classic Computers? I would have to go for the Lisa, and the Mac TV. I see both on ebay from time to time, but never at a price I personally can afford (but at affordable "collector" prices, usually around $200 for a Mac TV). I think the Mac TV gets special mention, because it is VERY hard to find a properly complete one, one that has the black keyboard and mouse, and even harder to find one with manuals and CDs (although a totally complete, just shy the packing materials one just sold on ebay for a little over $200 IIRC on the price). There were enough made and sold commercially that it should be out of your restrictions (I remember them being available new at the local Computer City when they came out). And I might also include a TAM (20th Anniversaty Mac), but I haven't searched enough to know for sure that they are hard to get (when I do look, if they are there, they usually sell for $1500, which puts them WAY out of my price range, so I don't look very often) >Also not intended as the thrust of the topic: > Systems you most of all want Unfortuantly, all three of my mentions fall into this catagory... but then, if they weren't hard for me to find, I would have one of each already, and then I wouldn't want them... so I guess by default, the hard to find are going to be the ones I most want. Anything outside Mac stuff, I dont pay enough attention to to know if it is hard to find (I can tell you a few things that AREN'T hard to find... 486's, 14" VGAs and inkjet printers out the ass in the local curbside pickups) -c

22 years, 9 months

Hardest to Find Classic Computers (Was: RE: Way OT: Just say

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

They generally go for fairly big bucks. I sold two of them (HP 88780B drives) about a year ago for around $350/ea. They're all over...just not for free. -Dave On December 14, Christopher Smith wrote: > Right. I know they exist... just can't find them. :) > > Regards, > > Chris > > Christopher Smith, Perl Developer > Amdocs - Champaign, IL > > /usr/bin/perl -e ' > print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); > ' > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Eric Dittman [mailto:dittman@dittman.net] > > Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 1:37 PM > > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > > Subject: Re: Hardest to Find Classic Computers (Was: RE: Way OT: Just > > say > > > > > > > Do peripherals count too? If so, try finding a 9-track > > drive that doesn't > > > take up as much room as your fridge. Any EDSI hardware and > > controllers have > > > been very elusive to me as well. > > > > Actually, there are some table-top 9-track drives. There is > > a limit on how > > small a 9-track drive can be since you have to accommodate > > two large reels. > > > > In fact, next week I'm picking up a table-top 9-track SCSI > > drive for $75. > -- Dave McGuire St. Petersburg, FL "Less talk. More synthohol." --Lt. Worf

22 years, 9 months

Is there no end

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On December 14, Pat Finnegan wrote: > I am pretty sure it runs on some IBM PPC proc... At least that's what I > gathered when IBM sent some guy to give what amounted to a sales pitch to > our LUG. Could be wrong, but I dont really think so. BTW I mean MODERN > eg. zSeries, not old. Umm, not as far as I'm aware, no. The S/390 is a mainframe architecture, not a large microprocessor-based system. While I have a lot of respect for PPC processors, they don't have quite *that* much horsepower. > Anyways, IBM did have their S/390 on a card that > they sold with their P/390 'developer's systems' in the early 90s. I'd > imagine those used a microprocessor... I have one in front of me. It's not a PPC. -Dave -- Dave McGuire St. Petersburg, FL "Less talk. More synthohol." --Lt. Worf

22 years, 9 months

if you hadn't already known this about the PDP-8

by gunther＠aurora.regenstrief.org

Hi, I found this really interesting: The PDP-8 has no concept of a stack. It does have sub-routines though. Instead of pushing the instruction pointer onto a stack, it's being written at the location to which the call is directed (first address of the subroutine). Then a return is simply an indirect jump to that first address of the subroutine. This is hillarious! Wasn't the notion of a stack arond already before 1965? The coolest thing is that inspite of this "unique" way of handling subroutines, the PDP-8 had a timesharing system TSS-8. I suppose they could not share code segments then, so if three users were doing FOCAL, they would have 3 instances of the FOCAL code in memory (or swapping in and out to disk.) And all this at maximally 32 kB of memory! Amazing. I just wonder how the kernel calls were handled. The kernel was called "Monitor." That may be the revealing piece of it: perhaps the Monitor was a monitor, so only one thread could ever execute any of the monitor's code at the same time. That raises a last question: what was first, the TSS-8 kernel called "Monitor" or the operating system technical term "monitor"? Dijkstra's classic semaphore paper was back in 1968, and my "new" Introduction to Programming book is printed 1968 too. AFAIK the monitor construct is younger than the semaphore, right? So, could it be that the technical term "monitor" comes from taking the functioning of the TSS-8 kernel as a paradigma? fun stuff, isn't it? -Gunther PS: I think one could emulate something like a stack on the PDP-8 using the auto-increment registers in the PDP-8's zero page. Of course it would work without them, but it may make the one of the operations push or pop more efficient... -- Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org

22 years, 9 months

if you hadn't already known this about the PDP-8

by msell＠ontimesupport.com

Serial terminals have worked with Linux for a few years now. Heck, in the 1.x days I was running serial terminals under Linux, and even using modems and VT100 emulators on PC's on the other end..... - Matt >I believe Linux will now run with a serial terminal. NetBSD certainly >does. > > > Thirdly, is there any good reason why you can't use a serial terminal > > linked to an RS232 port any more? In which case the PC wouldn't need a > > video card at all, unless it needs one to pass the POST (and you don't > > know how to patch the bios to get round it). > >This should work just fine. You just have to compile the kernel with the >necessary options. > >Peace... Sridhar Matthew Sell Programmer On Time Support, Inc. www.ontimesupport.com (281) 296-6066 Join the Metrology Software discussion group METLIST! http://www.ontimesupport.com/cgi-bin/mojo/mojo.cgi "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitler Many thanks for this tagline to a fellow RGVAC'er...

22 years, 9 months

Color Coding, A/C (Mains) Leads, USA ONLY, Redux

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> The blade that's keeping you from fitting it into a USA 15A > 120V outlet > should be the neutral. Sorry I wasn't clear, my custom-made A/C line has a box with two duplex outlets that match the line cord. And thanks to everyone who chimed in, it turns out my cord is wired correctly to the PSU. And the line tester from Radio Shack says the line is correct and not reversed and properly grounded. Gott be something else... -dq

22 years, 9 months

Hardest to Find Classic Computers

by mythtech＠Mac.com

>Just because you cannot afford them does not mean they are hard to find. >The fact that you do see them on eBay from time to time actually means >that they are more common than you think. Lisa's are not at all "rare", >despite what the geographically challenged claim. However, it depends on >what model of Lisa we are talking about. Around here (NJ) Lisa's (any model) and Mac TV's are rare, at least as far as what I have found... and that goes beyond eBay (ebay isn't regional, local used shops, garage sales, junk yards, newspaper ads, flea markets... those are all regional). It is quite possible these things are readily available else where in the world, but here, they are not. If there is some magic land where these things go apleanty, PLEASE fill me in, as I would love to get them for shipping cost or just above... but I asked about that once before on this list when I was told shortages of lisa's were a regional thing... and no one told me where to get one, or offered me one... so I tend to think, there is no land of pleanty outside of collector mythos. As for affording them, that was just commented on because IIRC one of the criteria was that they should be collector affordable. I myself can't afford squat, but the prices I have seen them go for, when I have seen them (which happens to ONLY be online stores/auctions... ebay included) they are affordable for an average collector... I am just a very destitute collector so I have always had to pass on them. I am very sure that they are much more readily available than many other systems (as evidenced by the fact that they show up at all on ebay), but like I ended my first email with... outside of mac stuff, I really don't pay attention, so I can't say what is rare. That basically means, my rare statements were perspective of Mac's, and NOT of the entire computer field. -c

22 years, 9 months

Color Coding, A/C (Mains) Leads, USA ONLY, Redux

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

Hello, This topic was rehashed not too long ago, but rather than read 6 weeks worth of thread on it, let me star it again. I have a PSU, the input leads (part of the EMI filter I think) are labeled L, G, and N. G is I am sure, the ground. Of N and L (beutral and low?), which goes to thewhite wire, and which goes to the black wire? The A/C cord is a 20amp type with the two blades at 90 degrees to each other as in "| -". Thanks, -doug q

22 years, 9 months

Jump to page:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

test-drb December 2001