test-drb May 2001

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

273 participants
642 discussions

by jeff.kaneko＠juno.com

On Mon, 28 May 2001 22:14:45 -0400 Jeff Hellige <jhellige(a)earthlink.net> writes: > >I've had a couple or 3 3-1/2" RODIME drives for quite some time. > The configuration 320 cyl, 4 Heads comes to mind for two of them, but I > don't remember the configuration of the other one. > > The Kalok is 615 cylinders and 4 heads. It's currently > connected to a converter board, similar to the ones that Adaptec > used to make for connecting MFM drives up to various other interfaces. Yeah? Which make/model? If it *were* Adaptec, I'd bet it's an ACB-4000, in which case it's MFM<->SCSI (sortof). What sort of machine is it going into? Jeff ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.

22 years, 11 months

Heathkit Fall 1978 catalog now on-line; H-8, H-11, H-9 and ET-3400.

by s.lowenstein＠patriot.net

I have been looking all over for the model number of a fancy digital fm tuner that heathkit made about 1978. It was unusual because it had a keypad on it to punch in the station you wanted. Is it possible for you to look in your 1978 heathkit catalog and see if such a thing is in there. If you could put it on your site it would be great! Thanks, Sam Lowenstein

22 years, 11 months

you vs. museums

by LFessen106＠aol.com

In a message dated 5/29/01 2:44:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time, ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk writes: > > In the end, I figured it was more trouble that it's worth. I've got my > own machines to keep running. I'll still help people -- anyone -- who is > trying to restore an old machine, no matter if they're associated with a > museum or not. I'd volunteer again if the above points (and a couple > more) were officially sorted out. > > -tony > I will agree here as well. You will find that most "museums" may show the computer, but probably not running, and you can't get a hands on feel for it. Also many older machines can still be providing usefull services for people but won't do that sitting in any museum. You can come and see my :museum" pieces anytime , and I'll even let ya "touch" them :-) -Linc Fessenden In The Beginning there was nothing, which exploded - Yeah right... Calculating in binary code is as easy as 01,10,11.

22 years, 11 months

Need help

by cmcmanis＠mcmanis.com

Deer Sir; I have just been given three ENIAC machines to display in a museum but they are currently in Nigeria where they were used for nuclear weapons testing. I can get them and preserve them for the National Museum of Science but I need your help. They won't believe I am a serious collector unless I can show them that I own a working PDP-1. I need you to box up and ship me a working PDP-1 so that I can set it up and show it to them. Then they will send me the three ENIACs by first class air mail. I will keep one, send one to the museum and you can keep one. You will agree that an ENIAC, the first digital computer, is much more valuable than a PDP-1 so you will understand that I must keep the PDP-1 just in case they do a "surprise" inspection. Thank you for your help, it is a good cause. Sincerely, Prof. Peabody. ----------------------------------------------------------- :-)

22 years, 11 months

Core Memory ID

by djg＠drs-esg.com

> From: Eric Dittman <dittman(a)dittman.net> > I was looking around my box of old boards and > found a core memory set I've had since about > '84. > > The handles also has "W025" on them. > > Is this a PDP-8 board, and was it an OEM part > supplied to DEC or from DEC? > Sound like a PDP-8/I Core stack. I think it was an OEM part supplied by digital. They seemed to use several different manufactures. The one I have in front of me is Core Memories LTD Dublin Ireland. 8/I picture with core modules visible (core is blocks with wire bundles leading to white handles on top left). http://www.pdp8.net/pdp8i/pdp8i.shtml David Gesswein http://www.pdp8.net/ -- Run an old computer with blinkenlights

22 years, 11 months

3.5" MFM hard disk

by jeff.kaneko＠juno.com

That's possibly the RLL version of the same card; ACB-4070. These were used alot on fileservers in the mid-80's (although, I must admit I've never seen one with a 3.5" formfactor). Oh yeah, there's also an ACB-55xx series, this family was more diverse: They made a model that could do SMD<->SCSI, f'rinstance. I have one of these, but it doesn't work. These were all *partial* SCSI implementations. The *real* scsi boards were the ACB-4520/25's. These were for ESDI drives, though. On Tue, 29 May 2001 08:38:58 -0600 "Richard Erlacher" <edick(a)idcomm.com> writes: > That's not necessarily the case! > > I recently got a SCSI box, originally designed as an attachment for > a MAC, that > had a 3-1/2" drive (the one the configuration of which I don't > recall) on the > order of 40 MB, but which had a board that I remember as NOT being > an ACB-4000, > though it was of the 40xx series. It was, IIRC, an ADAPTEC board, > but an RLL > board and, oddly enough, of a 3-1/2" form factor. > > I'll look at it and let you know what it is. > > Dick > ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.

22 years, 11 months

OT: Widnows Checkbox

by jhellige＠earthlink.net

Got prompted with a nice Windows checkbox today while upgrading an NT workstation to Service Pack 6a...it said: "Always trust content from Microsoft Corporation?" Yeah right....that little choice remained unchecked... Jeff

22 years, 11 months

3.5" MFM hard disk

by jhellige＠earthlink.net

>> The Kalok is 615 cylinders and 4 heads. It's currently >> connected to a converter board, similar to the ones that Adaptec >> used to make for connecting MFM drives up to various other interfaces. > >Yeah? Which make/model? If it *were* Adaptec, I'd bet it's an ACB-4000, >in which case it's MFM<->SCSI (sortof). What sort of machine is it >going into? The board is from Sun Remarketing and is labled as being manufactured by them. It is in an Apple Lisa and converts the signals from the external parallel port to those of the MFM drive. The converter and hard disk are mounted directly above the floppy drive internally with a ribbon cable going out the back of the case to the external port. I'll look at it again when I get home and post specifics on it. Unfortunately, I don't have any documentation on the hard disk setup. I've had a few of the Adaptec boards, including one mounted in an Atari SH-204 hard disk, converting from the ST's interface to the MFM drive mounted in the enclosure. Jeff

22 years, 11 months

Apple Turnover?

by vcf＠siconic.com

I have here an ISA card labelled "APPLE TURNOVER" on the lower inner part of the board (on the inside of the edge connector" and "(C) 1984 VERTEX". It has what looks to be a standard floppy edge connector/pin connector (either can be used). I'm thinking (and hoping) this is a card that allows one to read Apple ][ floppies with a standard PC drive on the PC. Anyone ever heard of this? Am I right? Does it require software? If so, anyone got it? Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org

22 years, 11 months

PERQs and software preservation (was: Xerox Star)

by Alan.Pearson＠cramersystems.com

On Fri, 25 May 2001, R. D. Davis wrote: > In what way is it ahead of X11 combined with xterms? Graphical-only > user interfaces are useful for those who don't do much wiht their > computers, such as those with a few data dozen files here and there, > who just access the 'net, use a word processor or spreadsheet now and > then, etc. - such as the typical biz-'droid. Yup, that's exactly what VP was for, and IMHO it did it way better than the current set of tools for the masses (Office etc). It kept you well away from the guts of the machine, there wasn't a command line option at all - everything that was locally installed was somewhere in the "Directory" icon, which you opened up and used the click-COPY-click mouse action to put it on your desktop to use. Piece of cake. > However, anyone who has lots of data files, programs, scripts, etc. > needs something more useful that allows more reasonable, e.g.quicker, > access to their data. Absolutely, if you were a developer you'd almost never use VP unless you had to put together a fancy-looking presentation or report for the boss :-) All my development work was done in the Tajo (XDE) environment where I had access to a command line (well, as many as I wanted), file tool, editor, and the usual slew of compiler/binder/debugger tools. On top of that there was a hefty fileserver somewhere on the West Coast where we could get hold of the "Hacks" tools. Lovely :) > the PERQs themselves were great improvements over what I've seen of > the Xerox systems - truly hackers systems were, and are, the PERQs. There isn't much difference between my T2 running POS and a Dbox running XDE, they have the same basic set of tools and utils. Obviously the PERQ tools are for Pascal and the Dbox's are for Mesa, and the PERQ UI looks like an XDE Executive full-screened :-) Heck, even the directory names follow the "{volume}<top>sub>file.ext" format :-) > Why Word format? Aren't you able to convert it to LaTeX format which you > can then use something useful like Emacs with? Ha ha, Word goes to the sad people who occasionally ask me to put stuff together for them. They can only handle Word, and the customer is always right ;-) Emacs? Nah, I used to use it at AT&T a long time back but got fed up of never having it installed as standard on each of the various development machines I had to use. In the end I was forced to get to grips with vi simply because it was on every development box, and after that I've never really seen the point in trying to re-learn all the emacs stuff. As for LaTeX, that was another thing I never got to grips with. I looked at it once about 10ish years ago and took a sharp step back when it seemed to be yet another bunch of *roff-style formatting macros. Again at AT&T we had to do all our docs on a VT220 using "memorandum macros" which I found hard to get used to after my spell at Xerox using the Star. Never really liked seeing all that clutter in my documents, and couldn't be bothered to run it all through a formatter to see what an approximation of the end result would look like on a VT220. I know I'm just asking to be flamed here, but I never saw the point of the whole TeX thing :-) <ducks to avoid flying furniture> Al.

22 years, 11 months

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test-drb May 2001