Greetings,
A few minutes ago, I discovered that I received the following message.
Can anyone help to save these machines? While I'd love to have a DG
Eclipse, have wanted one for years---which was the first largish
system that I was ever paid to work with, there's no way that I can
get to N.Y. to retrieve then, but perhaps someone else on the list can
save these systems from being scrapped. Alas, there isn't much time to
rescue them, so time is of the essence; I wish I'd seen this e-mail
yesterday.
Quothe Eric Kotz, from writings of Wed, Nov 06, 2002 at 09:47:54AM -0500:
> Hello,
> I saw you are interested in many Data General systems. Where my dad
> works, they have a total of 5 Data General Eclipse systems that
> are being scrapped. 3 work, two are parts machines (parts machines are
> missing the actual racks). I see you guys want Data General hardware-I'm
> wondering if you have any interest in these machines.
> These would be free for the taking. We also have like lots of
> disks/manuals/etc for them.
>
> Now the caveat:These MUST DISAPPEAR by the weekend. If they are still here
> monday, they are scrap. Personally, I can't bear to see these go for
> scrap-they are so unique, and the fact that they work still must be more
> unique. They were in service up until a month ago.
>
> The machines are outside Buffalo, NY. If you have any interest, or know
> someone that does, please send me an email, or call me at 585-758-3274
>
> Thanks,
> Eric Kotz
> eric(a)erickotz.com
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> This message has been ROT-26 encrypted for security purposes. Any attempt
> to decrypt this message is illegal under the DMCA.
--
Copyright (C) 2002 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
ouch !
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vance(a)neurotica.com [mailto:vance@neurotica.com]
> Sent: Monday, November 04, 2002 5:32 AM
> To: Fred N. van Kempen
> Cc: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
> Subject: RE: Bringing up a 10 years dormant VAX 11/750
>
>
>
> What about being crushed by a PDP-11/70?
>
> Peace... Sridhar
>
> On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Fred N. van Kempen wrote:
>
> > > Agreed, I don't think it would be good if we were to have a
> > > list member killed by a classic computer... Directly or
> > > indirectly...
> > Well, I'd rather be zapped by an PDP-11/70 than a stray bullet
> > from some *hole "out there"..... just a thought :)
> >
> > Stone would read: "Here lies Fred, powered by PDP-11/70.. he couldnt
> > take the power..." :)
> >
> > --f
> >
>
>
John Lawson and I were wondering a short while back, how many Heathkit
ES-400 analog computers are known to still exist in the world? It's
basically the big fat brother of the EC-1.
Here's a picture:
http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw/P0758.JPG
This one was exhibited by John at VCF 3.0 but is now owned by our good
friend Hans and is residing in Munich.
There is another in the Computer History Museum's collection. And I have
just a front panel to one that I acquired several years back.
So how many other people have one of these? And what is the correct model
number? I've always known it as the EC-400, but Doug Coward's website
says it's correct model is ES-400, but then someone just came to me and
said he has a Heathkit catalog listing it as the HS-1. So I'm sure it's
either the ES-400 or HS-1, or perhaps both.
Anyway, are there any others floating around?
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
Mike (Kenzie?) asked:
>> If I connect a VT-100 to COMM can I still access the CPU's?
Tony (err... I guess Dr. Duell, unless I get that $%^& Stylewriter working
again... :-) ) replied:
>Alas not. It's an MS-DOS and CP/M machine, and doesn't support remote
>terminals.
Rainbow VENIX was rumored to exist.
1) Anybody know more than that about it?
2) If so, did it support remote terminals? Consoles?
UCSD P-system is on ftp.update.uu.se (for anonymous ftp)
Same questions as above?
- Mark
Sorry to just barge in - I'm an old S100-CP/M type who wishes
he had the time to spend here - but I don't.
I do have 3 Molecular servers with 20meg hard drives and tape
backup, and plenty of interface boards. I had intended some
years ago to put them in a 'senior citizens' complex as a LAN
but time and technology made the project implausible.
These must go - RSN. For sale REASONABLE, or amusing trade.
I'm in San Diego - and yes, Don Maslin has declined.
Vern Wright
vernon_wright(a)hotmail.com
_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
A heads up:
I will be appearing on TechTV this Thursday, November 7, between the hours
of 4:00p and 5:30p. I don't know the name of the program or the exact
time (I'll be finding out tomorrow) but this at least gives you advance
warning if you want to catch it.
I'll be bringing along some interesting old computer thingies to show. If
you want to suggest a personal favorite let me know ;)
TechTV is usually in the premium cable TV line-up, so you may not be able
to see the program if you don't have every stupid channel that your local
cable TV operator offers.
More info tomorrow.
Also, my domain name situation seems to have been ironed out. I can once
again receive e-mail (the website has been back for about a day and a half
now; I don't know why e-mail took longer).
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
Forwarding this to the classic cmp list 'cause I know some of you are
interested, but I'm not an active reader of this list.
> For anyone interested, here is the 0.3 snapshot of my alpha-micro am-100
> emulator.
>
> http://www.otterway.com/am100
>
> This is the first to boot AMOS and run BASIC! Here's the $README...
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> -------------------
>
> /* AM-100.doc (c) Copyright Mike Noel, 2001-2002 */
>
>
> PREFACE
>
> This software is an emulator for the Alpha-Micro AM-100 computer. It is
> copyright by Michael Noel and licensed for non-commercial hobbyist use
under
> terms of the "Q public license", an open source certified license.
>
> There exist known serious discrepancies between this software's internal
> functioning and that of a real AM-100, as well as between it and the
WD-1600
> manual describing the functionality of a real AM-100, and even between it
> and the comments in the code describing what it is intended to do! Notice
> that this software hasn't reached the 1.0 version yet. In fact it's a
long
> way from it. It's not beta; it's alpha. Use it at your own risk!
>
> Reliability aside, it is not the intent of the copyright holder to use
this
> software to compete with current or future Alpha-Micro products, and no
> such competing application of the software will be supported.
>
> Alpha-Micro and other software that may be run on this emulator are not
> covered by the above copyright or license and must be legally obtained
from
> an authorized source.
>
> As this is written I have permission from Alpha-Micro to distribute AMOS
5.0
> with the emulator so you can get that from me too - but it is subject to
> their terms and conditions.
>
>
> INSTALLATION
>
> Preferred installation is to compile the source on the target machine.
> Tested targets include Red Hat Linux (6.1, 6.2, 7.0, 7,1, and 7.2) and
> Microsoft Windows 98SE and 2000 using Cygwin 1.3.12-2 and 1.3.13-1.
Frankly,
> Windows 98 is not a good target. Windows 2000 and Linux are both OK.
>
> Step Zero. You have at least 12 megs free space - right?
>
> We will assume you have downloaded the source and
> AMOS into a directory on your (running, known good)
> linux or cygwin system; those files being
>
> ./AM-100-0.3.tgz
> ./amos50.tgz
>
> Step One. Create a sub directory and untar the source.
>
> mkdir am
> cd am
> mv ../AM-100-0.3.tgz .
> mv ../AMOS50.tgz
> tar -xzf AM-100-0.3.tgz
> tar -xzf amos50.tgz
>
> Step Two. Compile the source.
>
> make
>
> Step Three. Run it!
>
> ./AM-100
>
> Step Four. What's this message...
>
> "boot failed! Problem with 'dsk0-container' ?"
>
> dsk0-container is the name of the file that represents DSK0
> in the emulator. Similarly, dsk1-container represents DSK1,
> and dsk2-container and dsk3-container do the obvious. Each
> container is 10 megs (19980 blocks).
>
> Since you might already have a dsk0-container, I've packaged
> the AMOS release as dsk1-container. If you have enough free
> space just copy dsk1-container to dsk0-container - if not
> rename instead.
>
> Then run it again!
>
> cp dsk1-container dsk0-container
> ./AM-100
>
> Step Five. It booted - right?
>
> If not contact me & I'll try to help you figure out why...
>
>
> OPERATION
>
> The window you run this in (msdos? cygwin? xterm?) is probably defaulted
> to 25 lines x 80 columns. You need to shrink it to 24x80 (or vue and fix
> won't scroll correctly). One reason I don't like W98 is I haven't found a
> way to do that there...
>
> If you've other containers (dsk1-container, etal) you can mount and
unmount
> them as you like. Can't change without restarting the emulator thou...
>
> All the control keys should work. Esc should work. The Arrow keys,
Insert,
> Delete, Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn should work - at least as I would want
> them to!!
>
> Watch out for ALT keys. ALT C means quit the emulator. ALT T toggles
> instruction tracing. ALT S toggles instruction stepping (which doesn't
work
> in this release). See PS3.C for all the key mappings.
>
> Console output is to STDOUT. Traces go to STDERR. So if you want to try
a
> trace but don't want it mixed with your screen, start the emulator with
>
> ./AM-100 2>AM-100.log
>
> Then all the trace output goes into a file. Watch out - it gets huge very
> very fast. Actually there is also a "user" trace facility, but I'm not
> ready to try and document it yet.
>
> There are some other tricks you can play with STDOUT and STDERR. One is
to
> TEE the STDOUT so that all your console activity gets copied into a file.
> Like this:
>
> ./AM-100 | tee AM-100.lst
> or:
> ./AM-100 2>AM-100.log | tee AM-100.lst
>
> CUT and PASTE works with the STDOUT console window. Access them by
clicking
> on the little icon on the left of the window bar. They are under 'edit'.
> So copy that big basic program off your real machine and paste it into
AMOS
> basic (or edit) (or whatever).
>
> DO NOT USE DIRSEQ. It scrambles directories. I will track that down and
> fix it for the next release.
>
>
> PERFORMANCE
>
> Performance has not been a design consideration. There are dozens of
places
> it could be dramatically improved. My judgment is that's not worth the
> effort. But judge for yourself. On a Pentium 166 laptop with linux 6.2
it
> seems pretty close to what I remember my AM-100 being able to do. The
ways
> that AMOS loops when it doesn't have work are converted into sleeps, so
it's
> pretty low impact even on an old slow box.
>
> Of course on a 2.4 gig p4 it screams. Certainly much faster than the
> AM-1000 I traded in my old AM-100 to buy, but I've no idea how it compares
> to modern systems.
>
> Maybe someone will run some benchmarks???
>
>
> WHAT IS CHANGED/ADDED TO AMOS 5.0?
>
> Not much. The system.mon is a standard mongen of sysbsw.mon and my own
disk
> driver vdk.dvr[1,6]. I patched ps3.idv[1,6] to create ps3new.idv[1,6].
> Ansi.tdv[1,6] is a hack of a vt100 driver I wrote years ago.
System.ini[1,4]
> is a demonstration of bank switched memory. Spoolr.ini[1,4] is just a way
> to test lptspl with output to the console.
>
> Source for vdk.dvr, ps3new.idv and ansi.tdv are not provided simply
because
> I haven't had time. vkd is a one-instruction link to the container file
> disk system in hwassist.c. ps3new is just a branch back to output all
> waiting chars at once instead of just one per clock tick - a performance
> improvement. Ansi.tdv is just an ugly hack for the tcrt calls - the more
> difficult input processing is handled in the ps3.c module of the emulator.
>
>
> WHAT DO I **KNOW** DOES NOT WORK?
>
> Aside from DIRSEQ most stuff seems to work. LISP and PASCAL may not work
> but I know so little about them I'm not certain.
>
> Format 11 instructions (floating point) have only been working a few days.
> They are probably really sick and I just haven't noticed yet. But enjoy
> basic until they bite you!
>
> I also have pretty good reason to think PS.V handling (and 'over/under
flow'
> in general) is not quite right. What the book says is supposed to happen
is
> at odds with what diagnostics check for and what known running programs
do!
>
>
> HOW TO REPORT A NEW BUG
>
> Send me an email (mike(a)otterway.com) telling me what you did, what
happened,
> and why you don't think that should have happened. For example: "I
compiled
> and ran xyz.bas and it crashed saying it couldn't open file aaa.bbb, but
> aaa.bbb was there like it was supposed to be and this program and file
work
> on my real AM-100". So far I'm pretty prompt getting back to people who
> tell me about problems, hopefully that will continue...
>
>
> SOFTWARE DONATIONS
>
> Were you a software developer in the AM-100 heydays? Still have a copy of
> your pride and joy laying around? Why not let others remember with you!
> Let me post a copy for use with the emulator. All donations welcome!
>
>
> CREDITS
>
> A number of people have helped and/or inspired me to write this thing.
>
> There's Jim Battle, who's built web pages and emulators for several
machines
> including the Processor Technology SOL-20 (see
> http://www.thebattles.net/sol20/sol.html) . We share an interest in
> Processor Tech hardware and software and I really admire the way he has
> pulled all that arcane stuff together.
>
> There's Roger Bowler (etal) and the Hercules project (IBM mainframe
> emulator, see http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules). I spent a lot of my
career
> as an OS sysprog, and what that team of people have done is just
> magnificant. Many design elements of my emulator come from them - I even
> borrowed their use of the Q license!
>
> There's Harvey, a guy who saved some of my old books for 20+ years in his
> garage. Some were manuals for my old AM-100! There's Mike, who still has
a
> running AM-100, and was good enough to send me a copy of his wd16 manual.
> There's Rhett who found me a really clean complete copy of amos. There's
> Joe, another guy with a running AM-100 who sent me an assembled copy of
the
> cpu diagnostic and worked with me to get it to run without a monitor. And
> of course there's Alex who has given permission to distribute amos along
> with the emulator so more people can enjoy it.
>
>
>
Hi everyone, I am new to the board, and hope you might be able to help me figure something out.
I have bought locally and resold old computer items over ebay, and I have come across what looks to be an old Honeywell dummy terminal, with keyboard. Here is a link to a pic:
http://server3001.freeyellow.com/maddog1331/honeywell.JPG
What I would like to find out is exactly what I have here, what it hooked into, what kind of value, when it came out, etc...I have checked on the net but have came up with nothing on this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Sincerely,
Mark Saarinen
Kentucky, USA
