test-drb December 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

250 participants
519 discussions

by hansp＠aconit.org

I found this on a recent CUO/DECUS mailing: Freeware for Vax Computer Communications Limited (CCL) the UK developer of Electronic Document Distribution software for HP Open VMS, has announced the availability of a Freeware version of its software. The Freeware version is available to companies that are still using OPENVMS on the VAX hardware platform. The software allows data to be sent via Fax, Telex, E-mail (with Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange interfaces) EDI and Text messaging to Mobile Phones. Further information about their solution can be obtained from CCL's web site: www.ccl.co.uk

22 years

Acquired a PDP11/44, but missing M7095

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

>From: ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk > >> Jesus H Kraist!!!!! Zane, you need to stick with shit you know about, >> and leave the electrical advice to folks who understand the difference >> between voltage and current. >> >> >> DO NOT plug your 120v PDP11 into a 220V Dryer Outlet!!!!! >> >> DO NOT plug your 120v PDP11 into a 220V Dryer Outlet!!!!! > >I will agree with that, _but_ > >(1), IIRC the 11/44 has a handy switch on/in the PSU to select between >115V and 230V input. It would be easy to flip that. > >(2) I was under the impression that US dryers, while using 230V for the >heating elements, used 115V for the timer. And that US domestic mains was >a centre-tapped (The tap being called 'neutral') 230V supply. > >In which case, if there's a neutral feed to the dryer socket which can >carry the same current (20A) as the 2 live feeds (one from each side of >the mains), then you could run the 11/44 between one live feed and >neutral. This probably breaks code in a dozen places, but.... > Hi My drier has a three pin plug, Two hots and one ground, No Neutral! I would assume that if anyhting ran on 115, it would be through a transformer but I think the time is 230V as well. Dwight

22 years

More dumb VAX 11/750 questions

by alanp＠snowmoose.com

Hi guys, Finding this list has encouraged me to try and get some stuff together on my VAX. Sorry for the extra traffic. Q1. Right now I have a UNIBUS expansion cabinet attached to the primary 11/750 cabinet. I would like to replace it with my TU80 (with a RA82 in the lower drive bay). Can I just move the UNIBUS cards that I want to keep to the primary UNIBUS and pull the DW750 from the CPU back plane and be good? The James Lothian FAQ mentions something about reconfiguring some jumpers if you install a DW750, so I would probably need to change them back if I remove it, right? Q2. Right now I have a DEUNA, UDA50/UDA52 and DHU11 in the primary UNIBUS with those bus continuity cards installed in the open bus slots. On the secondary UNIBUS, I have the TU80 controller, another DHU11 and a DMF32. Can I just pull the bus continuity cards from the primary UNIBUS and install the TU80 controller and DMF32 in those slots? Q3. Right now the memory slots have M8750s CJs in both end slots and 6 six National Semiconductor 753 1M boards in between. Does it have to be this way? I have two spare M8750s. Are there any advantages between the DEC memory boards and the NS boards? Q4. I have a floating point option board (L0001) that is supposedly intermittently bad. Anyone know what kinds of things fail on these boards? Q5. Should I use or not use some kind of contact cleaner on the board fingers and the sockets they go in? Thanks, alan

22 years

BBC Acorn

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Dec 13, 0:57, Tony Duell wrote: > One you missed (I am not sure if you count it as 3rd party...) is the > IEEE-FS. It was used with the IEEE-488 interface (which, IIRC, was > technically a 3rd party product sold by Acorn [1]) and allowed you to > open 'files' to devices on the IEEE-488 bus, etc. Yes, it was sold by Acorn, and it was in the official price list. It was unusual in that it was sold both by Acorn and by the original devloper, Intelligent Interfaces. The manual says it was developed jointly, so I imagine that's why. The oldest price list I can lay my hands on quickly is January 1988, and it lists it at UKP325.00. > [1] Or at least that's what I was told when I asked a friend of mine who > worked at Acorn about getting a schematic for this interface. I then > found the schematics had been published in Wireless World... :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years

MicroVAX II

by Antonio.Carlini＠riverstonenet.com

>only the power harness. And assuming one couldn't find a replacement power harness for the bad >one, what would it take to modify/repair the bad one to make it safe to use? Is it just the matter >of replacing some of the existing wire with something of a heavier gauge? I believe the problem is that the wires are of differing lengths and hence resistance. Plus they were (or may have been) specced a tad to near the limit. The end result was that the longest wire (greatest resistance) heated up the most and eventually went phut, leaving the other five (or so) to go pop shortly thereafter. So heavier gauge and same length would seem to be required. OTOH if the problem was that bad (none of mine in the lab ever exhibited any pyrotechnic tendencies) would it not have corrected itself by now :-) Antonio

22 years

SCSI CDROM 'juke box' setup

by donm＠cts.com

A while back, I acquired a 7-disk NEC MultiSpin 2Xc drive which uses a SCSI interface. With no particular difficulty, I installed the WD SCSI card and the drive, the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT patches and quickly had access to the drive. Well, I had access to the first disk in the drive. The existence of the remaining six were not acknowledged! The WD diagnostic program sees all seven, so I tend to doubt that it is a SCSI problem, but nothing that I have done relative to MSCDEX has had any useful effects either. For perspective, this testing is being done on a Pentium II 133MHz equipped motherboard with 16Mb memory running PCDOS 6.3. I have yet to try it with W98. Can anyone offer any hints, kinks, experience, or clues of any variety as to how to access the remaining 86% of this 'juke box'? Thanks! - don

22 years

The Ne[w|utered] HP (was: RE: The effects of employment)

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

At 03:35 PM 12/12/02 +0100, Fred wrote: >Hi all, > >What stuns me about this what seems to be a national effort to wipe >out existing knowledge and experience in the various U.S. companies >trying to clean up their EOY numbers, is that they truly dont KNOW >what they're doing. I knew that when they appointed a woman CEO that knew NOTHING about computers or test equipment, the two items that HP was built on and reached major success with. It was again confirmed when they threw away the HP name (and outstanding reputation) and renamed it Agilent. Joe

22 years

BBC Acorn

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Dec 12, 7:40, Joe wrote: > It does appear to be a B. It has two rows of (mumble)16 memory chips so it has 32k of RAM. It probably is a B if that's the case (and the part number certainly is a "B" part number) but just having the RAM doesn't make it so. The chips are 4116s, BTW. As Tony said, there are lots of differences between an A and a B, but all the upgrades are/were available and there is no difference between an upgraded A and a B (except perhaps the date codes on some chips, how many are socketed, and maybe a little flux residue on the board). I thought I had a document listing the exact differences between UK and US versions, but I can't find it :-( However, the differences are small: different MOS (mainly video timings to be programmed into the CRTC), different colour crystal, different BASIC ROM (American spellings added, version number changed from II to III). IIRC the US version also had Econet and speech synthesis fitted (otions on the UK version). It didn't sell very well, and eventually a lot were re-imported to the UK becasue there was a boom in demand around 1986-87, which rather surprised Acornm, as they'd had two successor models since the original Model B in 1981! > What is "DFS OS"? Something is wriong if it says "DFS OS", I think. See below. DFS = Disc Filing System ("disc" has a "c" in English :-)). A single-density dis[ck] filing system, with a fairly simple flat directory structure. It can handle two 5.25" floppies, which may be any mixture of double- or single-sided, 40- or 80-track, so long as they have a standard SA400-type interface. Capacities are 200K for 40-track discs, 400K for 80-track. The two sides are treated as separate disks (so Drive 0 and Drive 2 are opposite sides of the same physical unit, and 1 and for the other unit). > I was surprised to find that it uses an intel 8271 for floppy drive controller. It's based on an earlier Acorn design. It's possible to replace the 8271 and some parts with others, plus a daughterboard carrying a 1770. You need the "1770 DFS" to drive it, still single density (in fact, compatible in almost every way) but you can then also add the ADFS (Advanced Disc Filing System) ROM to get double-density and a fully hierarchical directory structure. Capacities range from 160K (40-track, SS) to 640K (DS 80-track), called "S" (small), "M" (medium), "L" (large). As you may have guessed by now, if you didn't already know, many parts of the MOS are modular, and it's possible to add many other ROMs with languages, service utilities, and filing systems. FS's I can think of off the top of my head include TAPE (cassette filing system, built-in), RFS (ROM Filing System, also built in), DFS (you've met), ADFS (see above), TFS (Telesoftware, with a teletext adaptor), NFS (Econet networking), DNFS (combined DFS, NFS, and 2nd Processor handler), VFS (Video Filing System, of Domesday fame), "Advanced" versions of some of these, and various third-party equivalents. > It powered up up but isn't recognizing any keys except the BREAK key. I ran it for over an hour then one of the rectangular tantalum filter caps in the PSU blew. Fixing the PSU shouldn't be a problem. Does anyone know what they use for a keyboard interface (if it even uses one)? or if there's any schematics posted anywhere for it? You want to look at a couple of sites in particular, starting with The BBC Lives! at http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/bbc/ and The BBC Documentation Project at http://www.bbcdocs.com/ There you'll find many things, including the Service Manuals (look under "Essentials"), which include the schematics. Also 8BS Software at http://8bs.com , where you'll find a nicely annotated set of pictures of the BBC B motherboard (http://8bs.com/inbbc.htm). Chris Richardson at 8BS lives not far from me, and he's scanned a lot of my manuals and contributed them to The BBC Documentation Project. When you power up a working Beeb, it should make a double "beep" and then display something like BBC Microcomputer 32K Acorn DFS BASIC > If you get nothing, check power. If you get a continuous tone and not much more, or just get a flashing cursor at top left, check the keyboard cable, IC3, and other keyboard-related stuff. The way the keyboard works is quite neat. Like almost everything on a Beeb, it's interrupt-driven (unlike Apples and PETs, which are much slower -- even allowing for clock speed differences -- becasue they use polling loops). I wrote the following to explain it on a BBC mailing list recently, when someone had a faulty one. This particular fault was heat-related, hence the notes at the end; note that the most common fault is a broken or mis-fitted 17-way ribbon cable between keyboard and motherboard or a cracked track near a key: A 74LS161 (or 74163, they're interchangable for this purpose) 4-bit pre-loadable counter is clocked at 1MHz, and its outputs drive a 7445 (or 74145, again they're interchangable for this purpose) one-of-ten decoder. For each state "0" to "9" generated by the counter, one of the open-collector outputs of the 7445 is pulled low, and the corresponding keyboard column goes low. If a key in that column is pressed at the time, one of the row inputs of a 74LS30 is also pulled low, which signals to the system VIA on its CA2 handshake pin, and generates an interrupt. When the MOS services the interrupt, it uses PA0-PA3 to drive the 74LS161 like a latch, and tests each column in turn. For each column, it also selects each row in turn. Each row is connected to one input of a 72LS251 multiplexer, and by using PA4-PA6 to address the MUX, the MUX output, which is conected to PA7, can be sampled. When the MUX output is low, you've found the row and column of the key that was pressed to generate the interrupt. The most likely fault is a cracked track near the counter or MUX; I've seen similar situations where a crack right beside an IC becomes heat sensitive (when it warms up, the metal expands and -- counterintuitively -- widens the crack. Second most likely is the chip itself. If all the keys in one column are faulty, suspect the decoder (7445). If all the keys in several columns are bad, suspect the counter (74LS161). If some keys in a column are good but some are bad, but all the keys in a row are bad, suspect the MUX (74LS251). If it's just a mixture, suspect the VIA (which is usually socketed, so easy to swap with the user VIA). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years

Tonight: Hackers TV show

by classiccmp＠crash.com

[ Spoiler alert - contains details of the program. I caught the [ rebroadcast at 1AM. > > [ Sellam indicates for some program, he supplied old PCs ] > > Even more reasons for any kind US resident person to make an > mpeg of it [...] Or maybe not. I don't think I missed the beginning, and there was nothing about Woz, Cap'n Crunch, etc. It started off with a camera following some PHB through security checkpoints. It was mostly hype, glorifying the "white hats" like Internet Security Systems (www.iss.net) and making their NOC look like the next best thing to 007 and Q. Their handling of the "black hats" wasn't as shrill or alarmist as I'd have expected after the first bit covering ISS' NOC and "AlertCon." The production value was high - they used lots of flashy visual gimickry to let you know how cool this topic and the production team is/was. Didn't do squat for content, but someone had fun inverting color maps, solarizing and posterizing images, making lots of jump cuts, etc. But don't worry, they harped on the potential for an "electronic Pearl Harbor" quite a bit. They had a very touching bit about how the top-level hackers cherish their anonymity because, when they achieve underworld fame, they would be harassed by the hordes of wannabees and ankle-biters... I felt so sorry for them. :^/ I really disliked how they lumped Eric Raymond, John Perry Barlow, and the EFF in as somehow defending these "black hats" and their desire to commit real, traditional crime. They did let ESR get in a couple words expressing the difference between cracker and hacker, but I wouldn't expect my mother to have understood it and they quickly moved on. And then they made his guest accomodations, described as they walked into his office, sound like a stop on some sort of hacker underground railroad... The worst part? They had a guy from the MPAA on describing piracy, and the response from the other side was clearly aimed at the strategy of using DRM to gain control of the desktop by Hollywood. But they didn't explain that they were presenting responses to two different issues, so it looked like the EFF was somehow trying to support people ripping off movies before they're released to the theater. Not good. There's a nutshell review. My opinions, YMMV. --Steve.

22 years

The Ne[w|utered] HP (was: RE: The effects of employment)

by Fred.van.Kempen＠microwalt.nl

> The problem there being, if they loose customers, it's going > to either be to > IBM or Linux (or maybe Sun, but that strikes me as a big > maybe, and I for > one prefer Solaris). Killing the Alpha is the one that ticks > me off, but > I'm not to sure if it's Compaq or HP that should get the blame there. Hmmm.... you know, I think I'll hold on to my Linux-based stock and other "assets" in that area... :) Or, maybe, buy Tru64 from HP. [no discussion, please.. YES, i CAN...] --fred

22 years

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test-drb December 2002