> Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 15:09:49 -0800
> From: Mike Ford <mikeford(a)socal.rr.com>
>
> Got any FastPath docs?
I do, plus, I was software lead on the FastPath at Shiva in the early
90s. I did the FastPath 4+ and FastPath 5.
-phil
Hi;
I have run across a lot of DEC that is available at a Government agency that
is available for negotiated sale. Unfortunately, there are some units I know
little about. Since it is the government there are complications with the
hard drives that I will mention after the list.
The lot is;
one Microvax II in a BA123 cabinet
two VAX 4000/200s small square floor towers
one VAX 4000/100 Desktop
two DEC 2000 AXP
one DEC PC AXP 150
one DEC 486 PC
one DEC Storage works small drive tower w/o drives
one CD tower with 3 or 4 CD drives in it, I think DEC mfg. but not sure.
The limitations are no keyboards, mice or monitors. Otherwise the equipment
seems complete. I will not have the opportunity to list boards, drives, etc.
It is supposed to be working equipment.
I was told by the property manager that the drives will have to be removed,
or if I wanted the drives they would have to be erased to his satisfaction.
No Government software can get out of the agency.
Does anyone know how to clean the drives in situ given the limitations. I
could probably scrounge up a terminal but I don't have one easily accessible.
Not to mention I have no experience in reformatting vaxes. Would a honking
big magnet trash the drives? If I can't clean the drives they will keep them.
What I really need is an idea of the value of the units. It has to be more
than scrap otherwise they will go for recycling.
They have a contract with a scrap recycler that lets them deduct the value of
the machines from their budget if they go to this recycler so it is too their
advantage to recycle them. However the Property manager likes me and is
willing to help if I can satisfy his requirements.
I have little interest in keeping them so they would be offered to the list
first. If you want to make an offer on any please contact me off list at
whoagiii(a)aol.com.
Speculation of their value on list is OK by me if it is OK with the
listmembers.
What are the AXP units? I have no idea what AXP means or what processors are
in them?
Thanks for the help.
Paxton
Portland, Oregon
--- "Russ Blakeman" wrote:
I've seen NuBus centronics adapters on ebay that allow you to have a
standard 25 pin centronics compatible parallel port - you might look around
for one. I'm not sure if your machine has NuBus or PCI but I'm guessing that
it's NuBus.
------
PCI actually. The question then becomes, how does the driver deal with it -- I mean, the LaserWriter 8 driver for this printer looks at the printer port, so how would it "know" to look at an adapter card...hmmm.
------
Why is she worried about upgrading if the OS doens't suit her
needs?
--- end of quote ---
She's in no rush, but clearly the software developers will eventually no longer support the old OS and then she will have to upgrade. So it's good to find out what will happen when the time comes. She is a graphic designer and webmaster so it matters that she be able to run new versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, etc. and at some point OS 9 will be obsolete.
Thanks,
-- MB
Evening folks, I am looking for a circuit using the parallel port on a
pc to Ide interface, does anyone have a schematic for one?
I also have 20 (2.5 in) toshiba 4.8 gig drives (new and in sealed
antistatic). these are 2 mm interface ata4 44pin that I will offer to
sell to the group before listing them at ebay. ($75 ea + shipping)
I also have AMD K6-2 233 AFR Socket 7 processors (new) these also will
be offered to the group for ($20 ea), before I place them on ebay as
well.
I am going to put them up in two weeks, so if any one is interested
please email me at
elecdata(a)kcinter.net
Thanks
Bill Claussen
Elecdata1 (ebay)
Hi,
I'm a long time lurker, first time poster. I recently obtained a mobo that
was sitting around a local computer store, and am having a little trouble
with it. It's a 386SX motherboard, with onboard parallel, serial, and PS/2
connectors. I was planning on building a little box based on this, but the
problem is the lack of ISA or PCI (obviously) slots. Instead, what i have is
a bigass connector. It's about 2 1/2 times bigger than a PCI slot. I'm
thinking this may be an extension to plug in another card with slots, but I
have no idea. Can anyone help me? If you need more info let me know, i can
supply it. The brands Faraday and WDC are displayed prominently on a lot of
the ICs.
-Lanny
Hi,
Does anyone know where I can find a Prolinea 4100 setup disk? Dozens of
those computers around but everybody seems to have thrown away the setup
disks.
Thanks in advance
Wim
> I would really like to learn how to use these devices, so any tips on
> getting started, words of wisdom RE different roms etc.?
A good place to start.
FP4's will probably have PROM 4.1, or perhaps 4.1.2. You can manage
them from a DIRECTLY connected LocalTalk or EtherTalk (Phase I)
connected Mac running FastPath Manager (FPM). [This is also true for
FP2's or FP3's which were upgraded to 2U's or 3U's] FPM uses "KLAP" --
a packet with "LAP" type 0x4b (the letter 'K'), which cannot be
routed.
An FP4 could be upgraded in two ways; Just a new PROM (5.1), or a new
PROM, and a 256K SRAM memory board (for a total of 512K), which came
with a new case, and a fan. A box with PROM v5.1 can be managed with
FPM, or via Shiva Net Manager (SNM). SNM only speaks KLAP over DDP
(or was that ATP). DDP is the regular AppleTalk network layer, so you
can speak to boxes via intervening AppleTalk routers. ATP is the
transaction protocol, layered on DDP. The CPU clock on the FP4 68000,
was, I believe 8MHz.
FP5's started with PROM v5.0 [FP5's use their PROM only to load the
"VROM" -- a protected memory version of the PROM code]. FP5's came
with 512K standard, and could be built with (or, I suppose upgraded
to) up to 1MB, and the CPU clock was, I believe 10MHz.
The FP4 is perhaps, more flexible in the hands of a hacker, since you
could take direct control of the SCC, and do async or perhaps sync
serial. On the FP5, the SCC is part of the I/O Processor (a Zilog
Z181), and I never did an API to load code into the IOP. All versions
of the FastPath PROM provide a vector of routines which the download
can call. In PROM v4 and up, this includes access to the Ethernet
driver, which is how we got away with replacing the iNTEL Ethernet
controller from the FP1/2/3/4 with the Fujitsu EtherStar -- the
download (K-STAR) doesn't care what the hardware is (direct SCC and
i82586 on the FP4, or IOP and EtherStar in the FP5).
On powerup, the PROM spends 20(?) seconds flashing LEDs, then starts
the download, or the built in PROM GW (removed in v5), which is a
simple Phase1/LocalTalk router (with no IP capabilities). Its's best
to pause or reset the box before it gets rolling, in case it's
misconfigured or otherwise frotzed. Once you have it paused, you can
set the configuration and download K-STAR (NOTE!! With FPM and K-STAR
8+, the Phase II zone list is sent appended to the download, so it
only gets set when downloading code!! -- SNM can set the zone list any
time -- although the details of how we did that escape me at the
moment).
AppleTalk routing; If you set VERY LITTLE configuration, K-STAR will
autoconfigure, either learning information, or supplying it. If you
set some things, but not others, autoconfiguration may be disabled.
IP; Most people will probably want to use the box to IP-enable
LocalTalk Mac's. The simplest way is to use K-STAR IP, and supply
"dynamic" addresses. The Mac IP addresses will directly follow the
FastPaths, so assign a big enough block. MacTCP has an option
"dynamic", which you DO NOT want to use (it means randomly pick an
address to use!!) -- you want to use a "server" assigned address.
I can't (off the top of my head) think of any other pitfalls.
-phil
On Mar 27, 22:02, Mike Ford wrote:
> >I'm old, dirts older. When I was in school you were really cool of your
> >radio
> >had six transistors, cooler if it had FM and rich if your portable tape
>
> Are you sure you weren't trying to impress people with the catwhisker on
> your crystal set? ;)
Don't be silly. My crystal set had a germanium diode, and I bet Allison's
did too :-)
I do remember my father buying a Philips Compact Cassette recorder when
they were new and even cooler than my 7-transistor radio finished in red
artificial leatherette. A cassette recorder of the same model still
happily reads and writes tapes on some of my older home micros, despite
being old when they were new (if you see what I mean).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
I have three of the "old style" touch tone phones available (real bell, can be used with an acoustic modem),
If anyone wants them please let me know, we can work something out.
--Chuck
From: Lanny Cox <chronic(a)nf.sympatico.ca>
>It's about 2 1/2 times bigger than a PCI slot, as i originally
mentioned. It
>looks a lot like an ISA port (ISA style connectors and black casing),
but is
>a lot bigger. There's only one connector on the mobo, which does support
the
>riser card theory. Luckily, the system has onboard video, serial and
>parallel ports, etc. so it won't be so bad.
Thats the case. Most pizza boxen that are under 5" high have to mount the
card
horizontally so the do the 120 pin connector and riser with the cards
plugging into
the riser sideways.
I have a AT&T P100, Dell 486DX and Dell 386sx/16 all using risers like
that.
Allison
