test-drb June 2001

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

273 participants
682 discussions

by KenzieM＠sympatico.ca

Well I just picked up a car load of stuff. Manuals, disks and paper tapes, a VT100 terminal and 2 8" floppy drives. I left 4 RL05 drives, 2 racks and card cages behind for another trip. The 2 racks are not quite the same size but I didn't think that they'd tie to the roof of the Toyota. So I'll get a mover to haul the rest. In one of the boxes was what looks like a pair of electric pencils? Anyone in the Ottawa area interested in helping assemble these? How much of this do I need to get the system working, ie. can I put the a card cage and a drive in a smaller rack that will fit in the basement?

23 years, 2 months

Fastpath 4 boxes available

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

In a message dated 6/13/01 1:30:09 PM Central Daylight Time, jott(a)mastif.ee.nd.edu writes: << I have a micro channel 3com etherlink II and sound card for trade. They came out of an IBM ps/2 model 77. >> have you any details on the sound card? FRU number, or name of it.

23 years, 2 months

Looking for info - En-link Ethernet card for the Apple II

by celt＠chisp.net

Found a card in the local thrift store's '99-cent grab-box-o-cards', labelled 'En-link Apple II Interface'. On the back is a rubber-stamped 'Protoype' label. A Google search turned up nothing - the only thing I could find was an obscure reference to the board in my Softalk article database: July 84, P 68 'Marketalk News' "An Ethernet-compatible interface that can make the Apple an intelligent terminal in a local-area network has been manufactured by En-Link (4706 Bond Street, Shawnee, KS 66203; 913-268-6606). Utilizing current standard LSI integrated circuits designed for Ethernet, the board performs the necessary framing, retries, and error checking required of the system. Other applications for the board include communication with remote printers and terminals, $1,250. $750 each in quantities of 100 or more." Anyone have more information about this thing? Specifically, I'd like to get my hands on a manual and software (does software even exist?) Mike http://tarnover.dyndns.org/ Tarnover - The Apple II Repository

23 years, 2 months

Speech chips again

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

A few days ago there was some discussion of speech and sound chips, which prompted me to dig in the spares box and extract a TMS5220 speech processor and the ROM that goes with it, made by Texas Instruments. For those who don't know, this was a rather interesting speech processor: it worked by setting up digital filters to model certain characteristics of the human vocal tract, and then used those filters (dynamically adjusted) to turn white noise (simulating moving air) or other sounds into speech. The ROM didn't store digitised sound at all, instead it stored the information about what type of source to use and what filter parameters to set up. Hence it was not much use for anything except speech, but it did a pretty good job of that and used less memory than, say, a Digitalker did (I have a Digitalker chip set as well). The TMS5220 was most often used with special serial ROMs, and was used as the (optional) speech processor in the BBC Microcomputer -- that's why I have a couple of sets. It was also used in some arcade machines, in one if the Texas home micros (TI99/8?), one of the Coleco machines (I think), and an obscure British 68000-based machine called a uMicro 2000. Texas made a couple of standard vocabulary Phrase ROMs, and custom ones for particular pusposes. The arcade machines and BBC Micro used custom PHROMs, -- TMS6100NLL in the Beeb -- but one I have out of a uMicro 2000 has a generic part number: VM61002NL. I know that the first standard vocabulary ROM was type VM61001NL so I imagine what I have is another standard part. Alas, I can no longer find the data sheets for either the TMS5220 or the PHROMs, and a web search hasn't turned up anything useful. Texas' website no longer has any info on those devices, neither does the company who deal with their obsolete products. Does anyone have any information about these things? I'd like to see (or hear!) what's in the PHROM I've found. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

23 years, 2 months

Source for anti-static bags?

by jss＠ou.edu

So... where do I get anti-static bags that for hex-height Unibus and other big boards? -- Jeffrey S. Sharp jss(a)ou.edu

23 years, 2 months

Eproms Available (was RE: IMSAI EPROMS)

by Mzthompson＠aol.com

I fell behind in my reading and was catching up today when I came across Joel A. Weder's <jweder(a)telusplanet.net> posting from 8 Jun 2001 and the responses on Eproms. One of my recent hauls included a box of Eproms. There was around 100 tubes of 2708/2716/2732. A rough count shows around 1000 2708's, and 125 or so each of the 2716's & 2732's. Since I will never need that many, I would like to make them available to the list. For now and to be fair to all list members, I was thinking of dividing them up into 45 (2708 35 ea, 2716 5 ea, 2732 5 ea) to a small box. I'll ask $5 per box to cover shipping and handling. If you really want more than one box, we'll wait and see after those wanting just one box have had their chance and then figure out shipping for 'bulk' orders. Mike Thompson

23 years, 2 months

classiccmp list archive, digest changes, and a free offer

by west＠tseinc.com

Greetings! Several changes people have been asking about... here's the status.... 1) The classiccmp mailing list archives at www.classiccmp.org are now reworked and up to date. We are still using hypermail which takes the mailing list traffic and automagically creates the website, organized by year, month, thread, etc. etc. A background process is *STILL* running to populate the rest of year 1999 (other years, including 2000, are already done) but it should be done in an hour or two perhaps (theres a LOT of mail to process in portions of that year). There is a month or two missing, but those months are actually missing from the raw datafiles. I assume that the list was not functioning during those times (before [and perhaps while] it was being moved to my servers). 2) The hypermail task has been set up as a cron job to keep the mailing list archives at www.classiccmp.org up to date without operator intervention. Because the mailing list is hosted by a server sitting right next to the classiccmp webserver, updates to the archive will be especially fast. 3) Previously, digest subscribers could get multiple digests per day if the size of the digest was large (ie. it could be split into multiple emails if the size went over a threshold). Due to popular request, that is no longer the case. The digest will now send only one email per day to digest subscribers no matter what the size. 4) Several people have asked - I don't have their email addresses here... so once again - publicly, to subscribe or unsubscribe send an email to majordomo(a)classiccmp.org. Any list traffic should go to classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org. When subscribing you tell it which list you want to subscribe to, either the normal list or the digest list. Hope this gets everything in order. Once again, I will gladly host any website, ftpsite, mailinglist, etc. that has to do with classic computers at no charge - unlimited traffic, unlimited storage, no fees of any kind. I am currently connected to 5 major backbones via 100mb ethernet (and offer local dialup in over 152 US cities [shameless plug]), so the transfer speeds should be acceptable. The only thing I ask is that if the disk storage requirements are unusually large (say, greater than 10gb) that you buy your own hard drive and ship it to me. I'll mount it in one of our servers and the drive will still belong to you and be dedicated to your use only. If you decide to move, you get the drive back of course. I'll do this for free, I feel it's something I can give back to the folks on the list for all the endless advice I've gotten out of it. Ok, if a few RK05's and 7900A disc drives show up anonymously, I won't complain either <grin, just kidding>. It would be nice if we could get a lot of subsites under the www.classiccmp.org site, sort of like a portal. At the very least we need some links to classiccmp sites there. Anyone care to throw together a main page for this (I'm not an html person, and our webdevelopment staff is working overtime already)? Then all the subsites that folks host on my server could be at www.classiccmp.org/mydecstuff and www.classiccmp.org/hprules for example. Of course, if you want your own domain name that's fine too. Regards! Jay West

23 years, 2 months

Strange device, stuff available FS or Trade

by ethan_dicks＠yahoo.com

--- Chuck McManis <cmcmanis(a)mcmanis.com> wrote: > Well the VAX fairy visited me and dropped off a "pile of junk". Inside the > junk were a couple of Unibus expansion bays and in those were a board from > MDB systems that asserts it connects a Unibus to a Q-bus. Unfortunately > I've only got the Unibus half apparently and there is a matching card that > plugs into the Q-bus. Univerter/Qniverter? Depending on what the docs say, would the Q-bus end be similar to what DEC used to connect BA-11N or BA-23 boxes together? It does kinda matter which way you are going (i.e., Unibus or Q-bus CPU)... mostly because the Unibus is 18-bit and the Q-bus is 18 or 22 bit (or 16 ;-) with completely different ideas about how to map space (which matters at the driver level, not the hardware level). We looked into such products at work, but we decided that the extra effort on the driver did not pay for saving a development box. > Apparently I also got a set of VAX 11/750 cpu cards and memory. Is this > something anyone is interested in? To rescue from oblivion, yes. To put to immediate use, no. I have two 11/750s and wouldn't mind spares, but space/cash is too tight for such an optional set of boards. I haven't even fired one up since I moved it to the Quonset hut. It sits, temporarily unloved, until I can wire a 30A Hubble receptacle for it. > Finally I got some docs on the VAX BI bus but I'm reserving those for Bill > if he wants them. If not, please let me know. I have an 8300. Thanks, -ethan ===== Even though my old e-mail address is no longer going to vanish, please note my new public address: erd(a)iname.com The original webpage address is still going away. The permanent home is: http://penguincentral.com/ See http://ohio.voyager.net/ for details. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites. http://invites.yahoo.com/

23 years, 2 months

Apple Recall of powerbooks

by fauradon＠mn.mediaone.net

Not ten year old yet but urgent... Seens like Apple is actively trying to eradicate the powerbooks 5300 and 190. The article at: http://www.pbzone.com/index.shtml#applestore States that apple will be destroying the PB that are sent back. Time to find those babies and protect them from doom. Francois

23 years, 2 months

Thoughts on a datascope

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Any thoughts on how I can back this beastie up? Anyone > done anything with this line of datascope? No experience with this device, but you could try this: Remove the HD and attached it as the second drive in an old bootable PC that already has one MFM drive. You'll need to get the drive parameters for the drive entered into the CMOS; I think I used to use SpeedStor (?) for that. Other utilities exist. Then, assuming this datascope doesn't turn out to be an embedded DOS machine (and thus the drive formatted as FAT12), use DEBUG under DOS to load the boot sectors, then write to a .BIN file and set aside. Load the partition table (assuming it has one) and save it. Do a quick- n-dirty disassembly of the boot code to see where it runs off to (that is what it loads from the drive), and if it's loading less than 64k, you should be able to do this easily in DEBUG. If it's loading more than 64k, you could just write a quick-n-dirty program using your favorite language (unless that's COBOL!) to read the datascope code in and store it in a binary file. However, as I said above, you may find this machine is an embedded DOS machine, and the drive may already be readable, file by file. hth, -doug q

23 years, 2 months

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test-drb June 2001