My understanding of the Mentec hobby license only covered use fo rthe
emmulators, not real hardware.
Am I mistaken?
Gary
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jerome Fine [mailto:jhfine@idirect.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 12:59 PM
> To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: New find: DECUS RSX SIG Tapes
>
>
> >William King wrote:
>
> > I recently acquired a load of 9 track tapes from eBay. What
> a deal, I only
> > paid 1 cent for a trunk load of tapes. In there, I found an
> original DEC
> > RSX11M+ (3.0) distribution! I won't be putting the RSX
> > distribution online due to the copyright infringement problems :-(
>
> Jerome Fine replies:
>
> Since I the only operating system I use from the PDP-11 is RT-11,
> I have no interest at all in RSX-11. But I have seen a
> number of others
> who are very interesting in running RSX-11 as a hobby user.
>
> Based on what Zane Healy just provided about the Mentec hobby
> license AND the fact that V5.03 of RT-11 is available from two
> sites to be downloaded. I just provided those URLs in my last post -
> if anyone missed them, here they are again:
> ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/digital/sim/software/
> for the file
> ftp://gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/digital/sim/software/rtv53swre.tar.Z
> And the other is:
> ftp://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/pub/PDP-11/Sims/Supnik_2.3/software/
> for the file
>
ftp://minnie.cs.adfa.edu.au/pub/PDP-11/Sims/Supnik_2.3/software/rtv53swre.ta
r.gz
>
> It seems to me (as a non-lawyer) that a similar download for RSX11M+ V3.00
> should be totally accepted by Mentec in the same manner.
>
> >Now the questions
> > 1.) Would having the RSX11M+ V3.00 tape on-line be useful?
>
> YES!
>
> > 2.) If so, what's the best way to dup them and make them available for
> > download?
>
> I don't know if Megan Gentry can arrange to add RSX-11, but probably
> "minnie" would be glad to accept the file. That way everything would be
> managed in the same manner.
>
> Sincerely yours,
>
> Jerome Fine
Test =99% ?
Hoping this turns off most if not all of the text encoding
that MS so thoughtfully provided for me <g>.
John A.
----- Original Message -----
From: John Allain <allain(a)panix.com>
To: John Allain <allain(a)panix.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:19 PM
>> Test
// Test \\
My take on learning microprocessors:
1) Pick a reasonable processor. An 8085, Z80,
6502, or 680x is reasonable. A Pentium III is
not.
2) Read the data sheets. Get an idea of what the
timing requirements are, how you interface to
the timing, address, data, and I/O. Don't rely
on other people's schematics unless you absolutely
have no idea what you should do. Make sure after
using other people's schematics that you do under-
stand what they did and why.
3) Build a simple circuit on a large wire-wrap
board. Include the processor, minimal ROM,
minimal RAM, and a simple I/O port with eight
LEDs attached. Write a small program to write
different values to the LEDs. Verify they are
correct. Use a wire-wrap board with enough room
to add lots of stuff later. You'll be glad of
the room later.
4) Add a serial I/O port. Write a small program to
read data from a terminal (or equivalent) and
echo the data back.
5) Start extending the program to write your own
machine language monitor. You've got the I/O
routines. Add the functions one or two at a
time, testing along the way. You'll want to
add memory read, memory write, memory fill,
register read, register write, port read,
port write, program start, breakpoints, but
not a disassembler or assembler. Learn the
machine code first. Later you can add the
assembler/disassembler.
6) Add some kind of program storage, either out
through the serial port, through an additional
serial port (adding another shouldn't be
difficult), or some other way. Be creative.
7) Go off on your own. Experiment. Add some
A/D converters. Add some D/A converters.
Whatever you find interesting. But the most
important point to remember is to understand
the whats and whys of everything you do.
Step (5) is probably the one you'd be most tempted to
cheat on, but it really isn't that difficult to roll
your own. If you'd like, after you've got the basic
functions going, you can either add features from
some other monitor program, or use a completely
different monitor program modified to work with your
system, but definitely write the basics yourself so
you know what's going on.
Any comments?
--
Eric Dittman
dittman(a)dittman.net
On Jul 19, 12:08, Jarkko Teppo wrote:
> Well, NeXT did a few things against unix traditions, NI didn't
> probably work out well
:-)
> but objc, developing environment and the
> windowing system certainly did. One really has to try those to see
> how badly X11 sucks.
I've heard good things about the development environment. I'm not overly
impressed with the window manager, but I've seen much worse. And I can
think of a few shortcomings of X11 (colour [mis]management for one)
> If you end up with a corrupted NI db (badly corrupted) you can reset all
> the NI information by booting single-user and
>
> cp -r /usr/template/client/etc/hostconfig /etc
> cp -r /usr/template/client/etc/netinfo /etc/netinfo
I did almost exactly that after poking about last week. Nice to know it
was the right guess!
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Hello Everyone,
I have more free stuff here in Michigan, plus some that I didn't get rid
of last time. As of now, everything that I have promised people has
been shipped. If I promised you something and you haven't been told a
shipping cost and that it is on its way, please email me. I did have
one guy that I couldn't seem to get an email through to.
I am advertising these items as free, but I ask that you would reimburse
me for shipping. Also please reply off list, as this will be going out
to 2 or 3 lists. This stuff probably won't interest Rescue very much,
but I figured it couldn't hurt to send it anyway.
-NEC IDE cd-rom model CDR-272 (4X, I think)
-generic serial mouse (9pin)
-paperwork for old Hercules Graphics Plus... looks brand new, has floppy
disk too. I bought what was supposed to be the Hercules card on Ebay,
turned out someone had simply stuck there old card in the Hercules box.
Maybe someone with the card might want the manuals?
-Sled for Optical drive for IBM 3510 external case, brand new
-sound card/modem from Packard Bell computer. I don't know how fast the
modem is, but I thought Linux or maybe even Win95 might detect the sound
card chip set. Could be a real cheap way to add sound to your
computer. I see Aztech and Crystal chips, if that means anything.
-Teac 1.2 meg floppy drive, model FD-55GFR, These drives are great if
you need to read and write to 360K floppies. I haven't had too much
trouble doing that, and I have always attributed it to the quality of
the Teac drives I use.
-GraphiCard by Practical Peripherals for the Apple // series. I think
it is some sort of parallel card. no documentation or cables, just the
card.
-3.5" 1.44meg floppy by Panasonic (white face, but whole thing could use
a cleaning)
-Astec PS/2 power supply, 150 watts, This is out of a Packard Bell, but
the only thing I have heard these referred to is PS/2 style. I don't
know why, as I have never seen real PS/2 use a power supply like this.
It has a remote power switch and 4 drive power leads. Looks pretty
standard for a newer, but not ATX, clone box.
-white power cord
-2 IDE cables, 40 pin, one long, one short, pretty generic
-floppy cable, controller end is a header type connector as is the last
floppy connector. The middle connector is the edge type.
-AC adapter for US Robotics Courier modem, output is 20 volts!
-external 3.5" drive for Apple //gs or I think Mac. Model# A9M0106
It's clean but a little beat up.
-Digital (Yes, as in DEC) "Full Video Elite" 16-bit ISA card for Mpeg
Playback practically new, in the original box has all software, manuals,
etc. I bought this at a computer show when it was already "obsolete".
I tried it out on my hoped up 386, but decided I didn't really want it.
It tried about 3 times to sell it on Ebay, but nobody would bid. Then
all of a sudden I saw a flood of them on Ebay going for next to nothing
if at all. I'm just tired of it sitting around! While using it I did
notice some interference in the video, I think the pass-through cable
may need shielding or something.
-black power cable
-baby AT 286 motherboard, has Harris 20mhz chip, uses 30-pin simms, have
4megs installed, 8 ISA slots, AMI bios, PC Chips chip set, will include
extra simms but am unsure of condition of extras. Board has never been
installed, but I did test it before putting it on Ebay. Didn't sell
obviously. I thought about making a little system out of it to use as a
terminal for my MicroVax 3400, but decided I don't need another PC.
-IBM serial/parallel board from IBM AT, uses 16450N uart chip, 8-bit
ISA. This isn't a cheap generic board. It's real IBM hardware.
-some sort of IBM memory board, has serial and parallel ports, 16-bit
ISA, uses 30-pin simms. I never got it to work, I don't know exactly
what kind of simms it uses either. I stuck some simms from a PS/2 Model
60 in it. It might need software too. Real IBM not generic
-full height face plate for Seagate ST-225, I think
-5.25" DD floppies, almost new or new. Not sure how many I'll let go,
maybe 20 to 25.
-springy contacts from the back of an Apple //e case, not sure exactly
which case... they changed it over the years. It's 10.75 inches long,
if that helps.
-Microchannel MFM drive controller FRU 6127874B, I think it's the older
one. It's from a Model 60
-Microchannel Adaptec 1640, I think this one is fried, I couldn't get it
to work, but maybe you want the slot cover or bios chips?
-SMC Microchannel Arcnet card
-Arco Electronics Microchannel IDE card
-2 Suncom Microchannel game cards. I bought these through Ebay, NIB.
They don't seem to work with my Reply Corporation Planer, However. They
don't use an ADF file either.
-Seagate Cabo ST3541A (CFS541A) It's IDE, but some IDE controllers
won't see it... don't know why. 540megs
-2 Miniscribe Model 8425F RLL I believe.
-uSpeed Fast88, I guess this is an accelerator of some sort for an 8088
system. I got it with a clone PC or XT system. Plugs into MB in relay
socket.
-STB video card, MVP2X, dual head card, Tseng Labs chip sets, 16-bit ISA
-ISA IDE and I/O card, almost new, I bought it from Walmart for my first
CD-ROM (32x, to give you an idea of it's age). It's in the box and has
the instructions, 16-bit ISA.
-3 Winchester drive controllers, RLL I think. 2 have floppy ports that
can't be disabled, one has no floppy port. Neat cards, I have one in my
socket 7 system because I blew the MB floppy controller out :-) 16-bit
ISA, and I have an instruction sheet I can make copies of.
-Still have the TIPC (Texas Instruments Professional Computer) No
monitor, keyboard, or OS.
-IBM PS/2 Model 9577, probably about 24megs of ram, 400meg HD, XGA2
card, both floppies, clean.
-Adaptec 2742W EISA wide SCSI card, but has no slot cover. I bought a
generic one, but it didn't have the hole in the correct spot. I have
heard it isn't to hard to make one using a drill press and a file, with
a blank cover.
Please help me clean up my apartment :-)
Chad Fernandez
Michigan, USA
Zane wrote:
>There are MP3 players for 68k Amiga's?!?! That's either rather gutsy, or
>pathetic, I'm not sure which. What do they do, decode them to another
>format and then play them?
There is an MP3 player for 68k NeXTs. See
http://www.wizards.de/~frank/download.html
to get it. The blurb says it runs realtime on Turbo, and 22kHz play
on 25 MHz systems.
- Mark
- Mark
>How can I write a zero-byte program? How does NAV identify this virus if
>it's zero bytes in length? What real threat to my PC is an
e-mail-propagated
>virus of length zero?
Sounds like it patches an existing file. One method of checking for a virus
is to scan files for a tell-tale set of bytes, I would guess that's how NAV
found this one. I just did a Google search for "Magistr" - a whole load of
sites all say the same thing - a month after infection the virus kicks in
and nobbles hard disk sectors, then has a go at the BIOS too. It doesn't
sound like it's that easy to fix :-(
Moral 1: never open an attachment from anyone unless you've confirmed in
advance what it is. It's not enough to say "never open attachments from
people you don't know" because most of these mail virii are spread by using
people's Outlook Address Books... if you're unlucky enough to have a mate
who's got you in his address book and s/he opens a virus attachment you're
going to get the virus delivered from a friendly source...
I used to get some stick from the lads when we go out for beers for never
opening the joke GIFs they mail me - one day I wrote a bit of VBA in a
Word document and sent it to them - all it did was list the contents of C:\
into the document in the same style as the DIR command, then pop up a dialog
saying "Do you want to delete these files?" with only a "Yes" button and the
"X" box system button. Either way once the dialog was closed it then put up
another dialog saying "Thanks for playing" at the same time as deleting each
line in the document (not the actual files, of course!), one a second. The
utter panic this caused amongst 4 supposedly experienced programmers was a
revelation - 4 "what the **** was that?" phonecalls later was enough to
convince me that
a) never trust your mates emails, it might not be from them
b) don't believe your eyes - Word isn't completely WYSIWYG, thankfully :-)
Moral 2: use alternatives to Microsoft, they've lost the plot - as if I
needed to say that on this list :-)
Moral 3: just because it's technically possible doesn't mean it's
particularly desirable. What possible justification can they have for
including a programming language in a word processor? What did Chuck Thacker
call it? Biggerism?
On topic: once I've fixed the PERQ's monitor I'll be hacking clones of elm
and lynx together. I'd like to see anyone infect that machine :-)
-- al
On Jul 19, 8:52, Jarkko Teppo wrote:
[ NeXT documentation ]
> If you install the whole shebang (at least on 3.3) you get the
documentation
> library in (I don't remember) /NextLibrary/something. It doesn't matter
> because the bookshelf-files are in /NextLibrary/BookShelves/. Just double
> click on SysAdmin.bshlf.
Thanks, I'll look tonight.
> > > Man-pages on niload and nidump might help too. Honestly, I never
> > remember
> > > how to do it so I just improvise and create a local NI hierarchy and
> > > use DNS for name resolution.
> >
> > I read them, and realised they didn't tell me enough, mainly because I
> > don't understand the rest of it.
>
> niload is just a helper for loading text-based configuration files into
> the NetInfo DB. nidump does the same in reverse.
I got that far from the man pages, but I need to know which files they
handle and what to turn them into for a single NeXT (in a sea of UNIX
varieties).
> Misc. link:
> http://enterprise.apple.com/NeXTanswers/HTMLFiles/1060.htmld/1060.html
That looks useful. Thanks!
> > No, NIS is *never* an option ;-)
>
> Heh :) I'm sometimes ready to put NI into same category but that's
> probably just because I have one (or two, if you count white boxes)
> NeXT(s). NI would probably kick ass in an installation with something
> like 100 machines.
Except that it breaks one of the golden UNIX rules; keep the config
information human-readable.
> I must admit that NetInfo can be quite confusing and I can screw up a
> machine pretty easily with it.
I did that too :-) By following the obvious option in the setup and
telling the machine it should use the network. I didn't realise what I was
telling it to use the network *for* :-)
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
> From the UK (ParcelForce):
I wouldn't use Parcel Force personally. Much better to use Amtrak, UPS,
FedEx, anyone ...! They regularly dump stuff on my doorstep without waiting
to see if anyone's in... doesn't matter if it's raining either (it often
is!) }:-|
I gave up complaining about it ages ago, and now just ask people to use
Amtrak instead if possible.
If Parcel Farce can't deliver something from Bristol to Bath without it
getting damaged there's not much hope of them getting it across the
Atlantic... use somebody else and do yourself a favour :-)
-- al
> > Ethan-
> >
> > Are you telling me you came down here to Louisville, KY and
> > grabbed a PDP-8 right out from underneath my nose?
>
> In 1986, yes, 3rd-party cabinet and all.
Oh. Well, ok, in 1986, my consciousness hadn't risen the level
it's on today.
> > Way to go, dude! But let me have the next one, OK?
>
> NP
Que?
