test-drb January 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

303 participants
1201 discussions

by vaxman＠earthlink.net

Anybody got one? TK50 would work too, but I'd prefer CDROM.... Contact me off-list, and we can discuss what I'll trade for it... Clint

22 years, 6 months

What exactly is a MINC-11, and does anyone need one?

by auringer＠tds.net

Hello all, Another item I keep forgetting about is a digital MINC-11. This appears to be a data acquisition system of some sort. The MINC chassis contains only a clock card and an AD card. The chassis is on a cart that also contains a digital RX02 dual 8" floppy drive enclosure. The most curious thing is that there is a label stuck to the front warning that the unit "220VAC/50Hz only". I don't know if this is the only voltage it will run at, or if it is simply set for this voltage. I don't believe we ever used this equipment. I think we acquired it when we purchased some other surplus equipment back in the 1980s. Can anyone use this thing? Later, Jon Jon Auringer auringer(a)tds.net Astronautics Technology Center Madison, WI

22 years, 6 months

Atari games in limestone cavern

by mythtech＠Mac.com

>Odd subject I know, but sometime last year there was a story of a guy in >California (ish) who had 2 million Atari 2600/7800 games in a cavern >somewhere and he was selling them for $2 a pop..... > >Anyone got a link to him? I just threw that link out yesterday! I will try to remember when I get back to work on monday to check my web history and pull it back up (that is, if someone else doesn't offer the link before then) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

22 years, 6 months

IBM System/34...

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

In a message dated 1/11/2002 9:24:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, out2sea00(a)yahoo.com writes: << >:-0 What a horror story. If I can be of help please let me know. I have no idea about the operating condition of the 5362 arriving next week. If it runs maybe I will be able to do a bit of data recovery through a 5152 emulation. But I don't have any docs at all so I haven't a clue how to hack the login and recover any OS still extant on the system. If you have docs or suggestions to that end, please share them. >> someone in alt.folklore.computers emailed me the instructions on how to crack the login passwoid. i'll see where I put that document. -- Antique Computer Virtual Museum www.nothingtodo.org

22 years, 6 months

5 inch CRT available

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

clearing more goodies out. such much faster and easier than epay, that's for sure. motorola 5inch display in a small cage with electronics like flyback, etc. has connector on back for interfacing. from a xeroxed paper that's in the box, it says standard CGA resolution and gives pinouts. label sez mod #MD1000-390a. from 1986 and is unused. make an offer which will allow me serveral steak burritos at taco bell and its yours. -- Antique Computer Virtual Museum www.nothingtodo.org

22 years, 6 months

Musicians (and computer music)

by mranalog＠attbi.com

M H Stein <mhstein(a)usa.net> > Don't I recall correctly that someone (Jay?) tracked him down > in Korea, but that he was going to be back soon? I said that when I talked to Hal Chamberlin in 1999 he was in Korea. When I talked to him last weekend he did not mention where he was, but I don't think he's still in Korea. Someone on the list is currently working on getting more information on the HAL-4096. That information should available soon. > Maybe he's got something to contribute to posterity when he gets > back from Korea. I thought he already had. Regards, --Doug ========================================= Doug Coward @ home in Poulsbo, WA Analog Computer Online Museum and History Center http://dcoward.best.vwh.net/analog Analogrechner, calculateur analogique, calcolatore analogico, analoogrekenaar, komputer analogowy, analog bilgisayar, kampiutere ghiyasi, analoge computer. =========================================

22 years, 6 months

IBM System/34...

by out2sea00＠yahoo.com

< ... I need to get my hands on disk images of the microcode, SSP, and RPG II diskettes for an IBM S/34.... > Daniel -- >:-0 What a horror story. If I can be of help please let me know. I have no idea about the operating condition of the 5362 arriving next week. If it runs maybe I will be able to do a bit of data recovery through a 5152 emulation. But I don't have any docs at all so I haven't a clue how to hack the login and recover any OS still extant on the system. If you have docs or suggestions to that end, please share them. Thanks, Colin Eby Senior Consultant CSC Consulting __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail! http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/

22 years, 6 months

Ugly Computers (Was: RE: Appropritate comic strip....)

by dhquebbeman＠theestopinalgroup.com

> Have a look at this comic strip... (Wednesday's strip) It's looking pretty certain that the Twentieth Anniversary Mac will be youngest Macintosh that will *ever* be in my collection... Lampintosh? Easily-Broken-In-Two-In-Tosh? Smackintosh? (what I want to do to it) <shudder> -dq

22 years, 6 months

VAX 6000-460 booting saga continues ...

by gunther＠aurora.regenstrief.org

Hi, after a quick excursion in getting a PDP8/A up and running (as far as that gets without any peripherals other than the programmers console :-), I'm now back to the big toy. The 6460 is still waiting to boot Ultrix. Recap: it's up and running from VMS 7.2 or VMX 5.6 from RA90 disks through KDB50 and KDM70. I don't have any working IP communication because the VMS 5.6 just doesn't have anything and 7.2 has MULTINET which just refuses to run with the old license key, nor with a cheat hack, nor with a hobbyist license key. So I'm now down to transferring files through modemspeed. (I could write a TK70 or 9-track tape at my workplace, but that's a hassle by itself, so I keep that as a last restort.) Luckily I have kermit on the VMS 7.2 so I have a convenient yet slow way of transferring files. I also have a boot tape from Isildur. That's Ultrix 4.1. That version seems to not support the 6400, it boots up until a certain point and then simply halts. I'm very sure it is *not* a tape read error and that the boot process fails somewhere after the VMB is loaded and probably at the point where vmunix is started. I assume it just can't get a hold of the console at that time to put out an error message and just dies. Even the primary ultrixload will dump an error message before it halts. The more recent developments: I also have an Ultrix-4.5 CD. But no CD ROM hooked to the VAX and no other VAX (InfoServer) with CD ROM and so I cannot boot that. I could possibly just write the CD ROM image onto a disk verbatim and fingers crossed boot from it. However, I cannot pump the 178 MB through the 9600 b/s line, or else I have to have that thing up for 2 days and two nights only for something that might just plain not work. Interestingly this CD is not an ISO file system but a simple UFS written to the CD in 10 kB blocks. FreeBSD's mount unfortunately cannot mount that. However, I just dd'ed an image onto disk and vnconfig - mount form there. It's read-only and disklabel doesn't make any sense out of it, but I can read everything just fine. Today's news: So, I decided I make myself a bootable tape from the reverse engineered Ultrix 4.1 boot tape and the new 4.5 files from the CD. The Ultrix boot tape comes with a vmunix that apparently has some sort of standalone memory root file system. Then it supposedly is able to set up a disk and install a dump backup onto that disk. That dump backup contains mkfs, disklabel, ifconfig, rcp, uncompress, and tar, so I have everything to set myself up even if the autoinstaller cannot deal with my hack. The boot tape I could read from VMS. $ MOUNT/FOREIGN/BLOCKSIZE=512/RECORD=512 MUC6 $ COPY MUC6: FILE.00 $ COPY MUC6: FILE.01 $ COPY MUC6: FILE.02 --> ERROR $ DISMOUNT MUC6: $ MOUNT/FOREIGN/BLOCK=10240/RECORD=10240 MUC6 $ SET MAGTAPE /SKIP=FILE:2 $ COPY MUC6: FILE.02 $ COPY MUC6: FILE.03 $ COPY MUC6: FILE.04 $ COPY MUC6: FILE.05 ... and so on. It's got some 40 or so files on it. What there files are we are being told from the ultrixload.c source code. FILE.00 is the ultrixload image, about 18 kB in size. Ultrixload is said to load either vmb.exe or a standalone kernel from a non-file structured device. The layout of the boot device is descibed as: FILE.00 - ultrixload FILE.01 - a combo consisting of - descriptor block 1 512 byte block - vmb.exe (optional) - vmunix (compressed if not a TK50) This magic descriptor block is described as: struct desc { union { char pad[512]; struct { struct exec x; /* a.out image header */ int nblks; /* num of 512 byte blocks on medium */ int vmbblks; /* size of VMB in 512 byte blocks */ int compressed; /* 1 = compressed, 0 = not compressed */ } d } un }; By loading the initial portions of the other files down to my BSD system and using file and stuff, I figured the other files: FILE.02 - the ROOT file system dump FILE.03 - an uncompressed tar of the instctl files (on the CD) FILE.04 - a compressed tar that is called ULTBASE450 on the CD FILE.05 - a compressed tar that is called ULTBIN450 on the CD ... and so on. The instctl tar begins with a file called ULT.image and that is just a list of files beginning with ROOT, ULTBASE, ULTBIN, that apparently correspond with the files on the tape in that order. So, my plan is to fiddle with files 0 and 1 only and keep the rest, as it should be compatible with the 4.5 kernel. That reduces the amount of data to transfer tremendously. Quickly I found that I have no ultrixload on the CD, so the old version will have to do. As I have strong indication that that works, I can leave it at that. Remains to work on file 1, that funny combo of descriptor, vmb.exe and vmunix. The tar file 4 (ULTBASE) contains a vmb.exe as well and so I could compare the two files that came with ultrix 4.1 and 4.5 respectively. They were both the same size and actually both the same. I successfully extracted another exact copy of vmb.exe using dd if=file.01 bs=512 of=vmb.exe skip=1 count=86 So, whatever VMB.EXE is for (sounds like a VMS boot block), I can reuse the old one. Given that I have a standalone vmunix, all I'd need to do is cut and paste that somewhere after block 86 to the end of file 1 with a few cat and dd operations. But here the problem starts. I cannot interpret the descriptor block very well. It tells me that the VMB.EXE is 86 blocks in size and that is exactly 44032 bytes, that corresponds with the actual size of the vmb.exe file from the tar archives. Good, but apparently the vmunix is not a complete piece. Apparently that descriptor block's a.out header slot actually holds the a.out header from the vmunix file and the vmunix file is right after the vmb.exe without it's a.out header. I also see a lot of 0 data in that region. So apparently I will have to fiddle with that a.out header and need to know just where to cut vmunix. That is a problem. I will try to figure that out somehow. My hunch is that the a.out block (which I haven't been fiddling with since I ported Kyoto Common Lisp to 386/BSD 0.1) allows for the executable to actually have some other stuff like that vmb.exe before the actual start of the executable image. I have no idea though what the purpose of this stupid vmb.exe is. All in all I'm optimistic. I'd love to make a boot tape with 4.5 Ultrix that I could then share with my friends (that is you) who also want to get their 6400s converted to Unix. As always I'd be thankful for any helpful ideas you might have. regards, -Gunther -- Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org

22 years, 6 months

Ugly Computers (Was: RE: Appropritate comic strip....)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On January 11, Brian Chase wrote: > I think it's a moderately ugly design, but I asked my employer to get > me one as I'm curious (though I'm not curious enough to get one for > home). They're happy to oblige, so I'll get a chance to see how durably > the critter is constructed. It does seem like it'd be likely to get > broken. I'm all for quality construction, but this makes me want to ask...just how rough ARE you with your computers? 8| -Dave -- Dave McGuire St. Petersburg, FL "Less talk. More synthohol." --Lt. Worf

22 years, 6 months

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test-drb January 2002