test-drb March 2001

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

214 participants
552 discussions

by bills＠adrenaline.com

For those in the Washington DC area, the 3/29 auction will include several pdp 11s. Look at: http://sales.gsfc.nasa.gov/items.cgi?salenumber=80322620010016 I've never been to one of these (I keep wanting to but can never seem to make the time), but I understand that stuff goes at scrap prices.

23 years, 9 months

10Base5/Thicknet (was Re: SUN networking problems)

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Mar 21, 9:26, Ethan Dicks wrote: > Is there currently a source for the tap part for the older, boxy transceivers > that have removable media bits? I remember reading in the O'Reilly Ethernet > book that it was common to remove the transceiver from the tap and leave the > tap on the Etherhose, presumably to avoid damage and in case someone wanted > a computer at that location again in the future. Yes, it was fairly common. And I've seen "boxy transceivers" recently in some network suppliers catalogues (but in the UK, which might not help Ethan). And they were pretty expensive in the catalogues (rarity value, probably). FWIW, all the ones I've seen which used the removable type of tap, had the same fiting, so my BICC, 3Com, and Cabletron transceivers and taps are interchangable. I never had any vampire taps (hint: I want one for my display) but I wouldn't be surprised to find they were interchangable too. If you didn't know, there are two screws visible near the top of the transceiver; take those out (they're quite long as they go almost all the way through the body) and the tap part should come off quite easily. The screws don't screw into the tap, they go through holes in it and screw into the rear of the transceiver body; they are only there to stop the tap falling off (or in the case of cables of the floor, to stop the transceiver falling off the tap it's hanging from!). > I have a couple of the > (Cabletron?) units of the same model, one with a vampire tap and one with a > BNC for 10Base2. Worst case, I guess I could make some N-to-BNC thing and use > a 10Base2 transciever. Yes, that would work. Some of my taps have an N connector on each end, some have a sort of BNC T-piece, and some just have a single BNC (bring your own T). N-to-BNC adaptors are fairly common and cheap. > I keep fostering this fantasy of putting up a 10Base5 > segment for Histerical Raisins. I don't have an operational 10base5 segment at the moment, but I do have all the bits, and I do use some of the old transceivers (with BNC fittings or adaptors) and real thick blue drop cables for my Vax and '11s. If it wouldn't cost so much to ship, I'd trade some of my thick yellow cable for a vampire tap :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager Dept. of Computer Science University of York

23 years, 9 months

NeXT '040 Cubes

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Mar 21, 10:07, MTPro(a)aol.com wrote: > << First, put a 50-ohm terminator on that connector, so the NeXT thinks it is connected to a live (but very small!) network. >> > > Is this something I can pick up at say Radio Shack? Does it looks kind of like a little metal cap that fits on the coaxial connector? Yes, it looks just like a BNC plug with either a metal or plastic cap. In fact, I have a couple that have been made by soldering a 1/4 watt 50-ohm resistor into an ordinary 50-ohm BNC plug (BNC connectors come in two types: those with a characteristic impedance of 50 ohms, used for test equipment, thin Ethernet, etc; and those with a characteristic impedance of 75 ohms, mostly used for TV and video signals). > "yp: server not responding for domain "sewp" ; still trying." > > This will just keep repeating, give a count as to trys, etc. Would a terminator stop this? Can I bypass it looking for a host? I don't think this is going to be solved by fitting a terminator, though it may help a little (by improving the timing!). What you need to do is find out what it's trying to do that it needs to find a NIS server. Most likely it's trying to look up a machine name, possibly to mount a remote filesystem. Now I haven't had my NeXT very long, so I'm not sure if the relevant files are quite the same as on the Unix systems I'm more familiar with, and it's not here to check. But I'd look at the file "/etc/resolv.conf" and see if there's a line that looks a bit like "hostresorder nis files" or "hostresorder nis local" -- if there is, change it to "hostresorder local bind" (or anything to remove the "nis"). That line tells the network software how to look up name-to-address mappings ("host resolution order"). the possible options are NIS (Network Information Service), "local" (a local file containing mappings, called "/etc/hosts"), and BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Daemon, which is what DNS servers use). Changing hostresorder will redirect the lookups, and the system may just stop trying. The real solution, though, is to prevent those lookups that aren't going to work. If the reason for the lookup is to mount a filesystem from a remote server's disk(s), the place to look (on a Unix system, at least) would be /etc/fstab. Remote filesystems are identifiable as type NFS or by having a server name and a colon ':' prefixing the filesystem name. Comment those out by prefixing the line with a hash symbol. > The other NeXT Cube is indeed a 25MHz 68040 logic board with 48mb of RAM and a 350mb hard drive. I have given it the command to boot from the hard drive "bsd -s" and it seems that it begins too by displaying "boot sd (0,0,0) -s", but then it has an exception error: > > "Exception #2 (0x8) at )x100b9dc" > > Is the hard drive bad? Is it just blank or in need of formatting? I appreciate all of the help. Possibly not. sd(0,0,0) may not be the correct partition to boot from -- what does the working one do? The numbers are the controller, drive ID, and partition (section) of the drive to load. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager Dept. of Computer Science University of York

23 years, 9 months

Tektronix 2213 Service Manual

by bob.renshaw＠dial.pipex.com

Hi, I am looking for a full service manual or the power supply diagrams for a Tektronix 2213 scope. Can anybody help? Regards Bob Renshaw UK

23 years, 9 months

Need Tandy 6000 Keyboard (fwd)

by vcf＠siconic.com

Can someone help this guy out? There may be a Tandy 6000 in it down the road. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 11:20:53 -0500 From: Club 27 <thomas_disher(a)sympatico.ca> Subject: Need Tandy 6000 Keyboard Dear Museum founder: Have a Tandy 6000 HD system operating in Xenix. Have all the original 8 1/2" floppies for the OS, and for 'Scripsit' (Word Processing), and for 'Unify' (a RDMS) -- including all the Owners Manuals, and even the Technical Service Manual. However, I really need to keep this old mini-computer working for another 2 years before I pass it along to some collector or museum. I am prepared to make a deal (YOU can set the terms) with the individual who is directly instrumental in providing the assistance I need to keep my keyboard operational or who can assist me to acquire one or preferably two old keyboards for this unit. The problem is that the individual key contacts are failing, one after another. They are easily repaired/replaced -- but I have run out of the ability to switch the sound contact pads from the seldom used redundant keys to those that have failed. I am unable to find a source for these wee electrical contacts, and am looking to - beg, borrow or steal, or buy - a whole keyboard or two >from which I can pirate the needed parts. Can you help me, and/or redirect me ? What would be your terms ? Tom - at Club 27 --- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

23 years, 9 months

Unix filesystem checks

by JRichardson＠softwright.co.uk

OK, calling all Unix people... See the other post on the status of the Tek Unix system - I got that going with another disk and it booted to single-user mode, complaining about filesystem errors. I ran fsck and it worked this time on the new disk (I vaguely remember before that it used to give up halfway with the old failing drive) Lots of errors, to which I just answered 'y' to each one (if that was the wrong thing to do then say - I still have an image of the old, corrupted drive). I now have a clean filesystem, and lots of stuff in /lost+found Any ideas what the next step is? Do I just have to look at the contents of files and directories in /lost+found (they're all numbered rather than named - by inode or something?) and try to figure out what everything in there is? (there's a lot of files there - I suppose I'm quite lucky the system even booted) That's going to be painful (and probably impossible for some of the data) - presumably the original filenames have been lost in the corruption? I'm only used to fsck on linux where it always seems to sort itself out - I've not had to rebuild a filesystem like this before! cheers Jules --

23 years, 9 months

pdp 11s to be auctioned at Goddard

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On March 21, Bill Sudbrink wrote: > > I've been to several of these. While otherwise wonderful, these > > auctions have classic "government auction" problems. You'll see, for > > example, a lot consisting of three pallets of stuff...one will contain > > a Dynabyte or something like that with ZERO cash value but that you'd > > really love to get, and the rest of it will consist of 2.5 pallets of > > dead VGA monitors. During the auction you'll find some guy who bids > > the lot up to $3,000. Wondering why, you watch him loading it into > > his truck at the end of the day...and underneath the dead VGA monitors > > will be one HP 8566B spectrum analyzer or something like that, that he > > will have ALREADY SOLD on his cell phone for $20,000. > > In your expirence, and using the above example, could you approach the guy > and make an offer for the Dynabyte or will he get pissy or greedy? That works sometimes...unless it's a big machine and the guy is planning on scrapping it for gold. I lost out on a gorgeous Convex C3800 supercomputer about two years ago that way. The $3000 I had in my pocket was less than the scrapper got for the gold in the machine. For smaller stuff, though, as long as they don't smell money, that approach does work. -Dave McGuire

23 years, 9 months

NeXT '040 Cubes

by MTPro＠aol.com

I would like to thank everyone who responded to my earlier post, I have made some progress with the cubes. << Those are not 'original 1988 boxes'. The original 1988 NeXTcomputer had a 25 MHz 68030 board in the backplane. >> Sorry, I described them poorly. They are indeed original 1988 NeXT Cubes, this copyright date is on the cases. I assume that their original logic boards were replaced by NASA with the '040 boards. << First, put a 50-ohm terminator on that connector, so the NeXT thinks it is connected to a live (but very small!) network. >> Is this something I can pick up at say Radio Shack? Does it looks kind of like a little metal cap that fits on the coaxial connector? <<Then read the NeXT FAQ: http://www.peanuts.org/faq-serve/cache/66.html>> Excellent stuff here! << Here is the procedure for breaking the password: . . .>> Thanks Lawrence! It worked well. I can get into the NeXT ROM monitor on both. So . . with the Turbo, it is indeed a 33MHz 68040 logic board with 32mb of RAM and a 350mb hard drive. I have reset the root password and can start system services. The only problem I am facing now is that it gets to a place where it is looking for a NASA domain server: "yp: server not responding for domain "sewp" ; still trying." This will just keep repeating, give a count as to trys, etc. Would a terminator stop this? Can I bypass it looking for a host? The other NeXT Cube is indeed a 25MHz 68040 logic board with 48mb of RAM and a 350mb hard drive. I have given it the command to boot from the hard drive "bsd -s" and it seems that it begins too by displaying "boot sd (0,0,0) -s", but then it has an exception error: "Exception #2 (0x8) at )x100b9dc" Is the hard drive bad? Is it just blank or in need of formatting? I appreciate all of the help.

23 years, 9 months

Syracuse big iron

by LFessen106＠aol.com

In a message dated 3/21/01 11:34:44 AM Eastern Standard Time, brian.roth(a)firstniagarabank.com writes: > I recall someone posted that he had seen some big VAX and IBM iron in a > Syracuse recycler yard. I live about two hours away and might be interested > in a rescue mission. > > Repost? > > > Brian. Ditto here.. I am 2 hrs away as well and would *love* to get another VAX (I have a 3100 now). -Linc.

23 years, 9 months

Syracuse big iron

by brian.roth＠firstniagarabank.com

I recall someone posted that he had seen some big VAX and IBM iron in a Syracuse recycler yard. I live about two hours away and might be interested in a rescue mission. Repost? Brian. Brian Roth Network Services First Niagara Bank (716) 625-7500 X2186 Brian.Roth(a)FirstNiagaraBank.com

23 years, 9 months

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test-drb March 2001