On Apr 13, 16:42, Joel Ewy wrote:
> Pete Turnbull wrote:
> > Sage II
> Sage II -- I wonder if that's the same Sage that I'm aware of.
[...]
> It had an MC68000 and ran it's own proprietary operating system, as
> far as I can remember, and a Pascal P system. I remember that it used
> some kind of 80 track 5.25" floppy drives
I'm sure that's the same one. I didn't know about a proprietary OS, I've
only seen p-System on them, but I think you could get CP/M-68K. I met
someone who claimed to have CP/M-68K for a Sage but when pressed, he
couldn't find the Sage version.
> and there was this game on it called
> "Kings & Castles." It was just a little metal box with text terminals
> hooked up to it, I believe.
Yes, it has two (? I can't see it to check) RS232 ports for terminals, a
printer port, and an IEEE-488 port.
> Every now and then my friend and I talk
> about trying to get the thing to run again so we can play that game.
Probably not hard. It's a simple layout, it only uses standard ICs, and
it's easy to get into and get at the PCB.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com>
>Speaking of classic chips, I've got an 8080A and a TI 9918 I'd be
willing
>to trade for a DEC BCC08 cable (VAX 9 pin to female DB25 pin cable).
The cable you can make. 8080As are common enough I have a tube of them
as well as NEC8080, 8080AF and a few Intel White ceramic with date codes
in the 1975 region.
The 9918 however is a bit more scarce.
Allison
Welcome to TK50 terrorism. The only thing now is to rewind manually. I
typically use a battery drill with a Phillips bit. You will find a hole in
the center of the PCB directly under the cartridge that exposes a Phillips
screw. This is the cartridge drive spindle. On slow speed rewind it back
into the cart. with the drill.
What did you in are the sensors on the 2 tape rollers. If either of the
rollers stick in either direction the drive decides it does not know where
on the tape it is and shuts down. I use a marker on the top of the rollers
to determine which roller is causing the problem. Then just watch the marks
while loading a tape.
Don't feel bad - I have gone through over a dozen drives to get good ones
and the biggest cause failure are those roller bearings.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com>
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Date: Friday, April 13, 2001 8:03 PM
Subject: Re: Ya know, I really dislike TK50 drives...
>At 04:26 PM 4/13/2001 -0700, Zane wrote:
>>Have you powercycled the system and told it to unload the tape? I've seen
>>this before, unfortuantly I don't remember what I did to fix it.
>
>Yup, this was one of my first things I tried. Then running it not connected
>to the TQK50. Neither will get it to rewind.
>
>--Chuck
>
From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com>
>Regarding the port-vax development of GPX and SPX support for VAX. I
don't
>believe it is lack of information, Bruce Lane sent Ragge the complete
>technical manual on the frame buffer, rather the problem was motivation.
>Ragge has lots of stuff to do and framebuffers are fairly low on the
list.
I'd forgotten that. Unfortunately many NetBSD users want a canned
functional
OS and cannot contribute. Ragge has done a lot fo the work and could
really use help.
Allison
On April 14, Russ Blakeman wrote:
> You and I both Sellam - this is like looking at stuff when we were in grade
> school - like the fly that looked like a monster. Is this machine one the
> large heavy ones I've seen in older books or have they brought the
> electromicrograph machines to a reasonable size? I'd hate to even ask what
> one surplus would set a person back.
They're all large and heavy. Because semiconductor and computer
technology shrinks constantly, there's a natural assumption that
everything else does too, and thus anything that's large is ancient.
There's really no way to shrink the vacuum valves, pumps, high-voltage
power supplies, and stuff like that...what does shrink is the control
electronics, but that's really all. Generally speaking, there have
been NO applicable significant advances in the major technologies that
make SEMs work in the past 30 years...electron beam generation,
acceleration, and steering, vacuum chamber control, phosphorescent
electron->photon conversion, and high-speed scintillation detection.
Until fairly recently, all new SEMs had huge panels of lights,
switches, and knobs. Nowadays manufacturers are shipping SEMs with a
power switch and a PeeCee running Windows that does everything between
crashes. The average scientist hasn't really embraced this approach,
so there's a huge business building around maintaining older-style
manual-control SEMs. My SEM does happen to be pretty old, but not too
old as SEMs go. It was made in 1981. I have been in contact with the
guy who had maintained it under a service contract at its previous
installation. He is a former employee of the company that
manufactured the unit. He runs a fairly tidy business maintaining
only this make and model of SEM within driving distance (he's north of
me in Southern PA), he maintains fifty or sixty of them...indicating
that a significant number of these 20-year-old instruments are still
in service.
For your SEM hunting information, count on about a ten-to-one age
ratio compared to computer hardware...a 20-year-old SEM would be
approximately comparable to a 2-year-old computer.
> Maybe Dave can get a photo of his stuff in place and put it in the image
> library as well for use to take a look at.
I did that yesterday. Have a look at http://www.neurotica.com/sem.
-Dave McGuire
On April 13, Eric Chomko wrote:
> Interesting regarding chips and SBCs. Who collects them, other than
>Allison?
I collect SBCs, eval boards, and trainers. I find that, if
operable, they're a wonderful way to learn the architecture of a given
microprocessor, and an excellent way to compare architectural features
and shortcomings.
-Dave McGuire
>Is there anyone here with experience working on a PDP-11/24 in a BA11-A
>box?? I am trying to more mine from a broken BA11-L to a working BA11-A
>and I need some help with where one of the cables from the control panel
>goes.
>
>Anyone??
>
>bill
One goes to the CPU backplane and the other goes to the power supply. The
power supply connector is kind of hidden. You will need to slide the supply
out about 1.5 inches in order to see it.
I hope you are using a BA11-A that has the H7140-AA (IIRC) in it. IIRC the
H7140-CA is only for expansion chassis. IIRC the -CA has only +5 and
+/-15v. The -AA has +5, -5, +/-12v, +/- 15
Also be careful using backplanes from expansion boxes in the CPU box of the
11/24. They often have some jumpers on the supply lines ( soldered where
the supply wires meet the backplane) that short the 2 sets of +/- supplies.
A while back I scanned some stuff that may help you. Poke around
ftp://zane.brouhaha.com
I am sorry but most of the originals have been destroyed by a fire 2 months
ago. Not to mention a LOT of PDP11 equipment at the same time.
Dan
On 2001-04-14 classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org said to kees.stravers(a)iae.nl
8< snip >8
>I am also looking for the pinout of the TK50 connector if anyone
>has it.
>-tony
TUK50 board J1 Connector signals and pin numbering
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Pin number Signal name Pin number Signal name
-----------------------------------------------------------------
J1-01 Ground J1-14 DR RD CLK L
J1-02 WRT Data H J1-15 DR RD CLK H
J1-03 WRT Data L J1-16 Ground
J1-04 Ground J1-17 Read Data L
J1-05 DR CMD H J1-18 Read Data H
J1-06 DR CMD L J1-19 Ground
J1-07 Ground J1-20 DR Status H
J1-08 WRT Gate H J1-21 DR Status L
J1-09 WRT Gate L J1-22 Ground
J1-10 Ground J1-23 DR WRT CLK H
J1-11 Erase L J1-24 DR WRT CLK L
J1-12 Erase H J1-25 Ground
J1-13 Ground J1-26 Ground
-----------------------------------------------------------------
BTW, I am looking for a TUK50 board if anyone has a spare.
My 11/84 won't read TK50 tapes. The drive is OK, and sending
commands direct to the CSR of the board does not provoke a
reaction, so I assume the board is broken.
Kees.
--
Kees Stravers - Geldrop, The Netherlands - kees.stravers(a)iae.nl
http://www.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/ My home page (old computers,music,photography)
http://www.vaxarchive.org/ Info on old DEC VAX computers
(Mirrors: http://vaxarchive.khubla.com/ and http://vaxarchive.sevensages.org/)
Net-Tamer V 1.08.1 - Registered
From: Fred deBros <fdebros(a)bellatlantic.net>
Does anybody here have the sourcefiles (or a source for them) that drive
the SPX and GPX framebuffers of vax 3100 or so vintage (the terminal
vt1300 seems to support them too) ?
Possibly in ASCII, as I can't read microfiches...
I'd like to try my hand at an 8bit xserver on netBSD/vax on these
machines.
No: port-vax(a)netbsd.org is not a source.
I dont believe they ever got it working or at best only tentatively. If
memeory serves
a lack of information about it was a problem.
Allison
