Well, you haven't been to the Boston Computer Museum is quite some time,
for it is no more. Several years ago the collection was shipped out to
Sunnyvale, where it is the nucleus around which The Computer History
Center is forming.
There are several private collectors in the Boston area (myself
included), but the only computer museums anywhere nearby are in Rhode
Island. I am Vice President of the Rhode Island Computer Museum in
North Kingston, RI (see www.osfn.org/ricm), and we have a large and
expanding collection (which grew by a VAX 11/780 just this past
weekend), and a display space which we have badly outgrown - a problem
we are working mightily to solve. In Providence, RI, is the
RetroComputing Society of Rhode Island (see www.osfn.org/rcs ), of which
I am a member. It too is rather pressed for space, thanks to zealous
collecting.
I'd like to invite everyone on this mailing list to come visit us both.
And while I can't say that we're anywhere near as sophisticated in our
presentations as the old Boston Computer Museum, there is plenty of
stuff of interest to all.
From: Bob Shannon <bshannon(a)tiac.net>
>I've been to the Boston Computer Museum many many times
>from the late 80's on.
>
>At one point I contacted the Curator to see if the museum would be
>interested in displaying some of the restored machines that several
>local collectors had at the time.
>
>The very notion of computer restoration struck the Museum as insane,
and
>they wanted nothing to do with such displays, nor even hosting meetings
>of collectors and restoration fans. One person even had a PDP 10, and
>really needed some space to set the thing up. I was going to put a MIT
>CADR on display, and perhaps my 1968 HP 2114, etc. The Museums
response
>was that unless we were crossing their palms with money, they wanted
>nothing to do with us, it was all about donations.
>
>It was not too long after this that I began to think vintage computer
>collecting was some sort of deviant behavior or something, and I became
>much less active (despite having a oversized 2 car garage to fill!).
>
>Not until many years later did I learn of the VCF events, and I joined
>the list.
>
>During that time, the PDP-10 my friend had was lost to scrappers
because
>he had no space to store it, and many other cool machines were lost as
>well.
>
>There have also been rumors of very nice machines being donated to the
>B.C.M only to be locked away, unrestored, and worse, sold off as scrap
>to feed the cash hungry so-called museum.
>
>Basically, the B.C.M was a social club for a select crowd, and its
>primary function was never to preserve and display computing history.
>
>John Allain wrote:
>
>> Derek Peschel wrote:
>> > Several years ago it was very good. Then it slipped.
>>
>> Bryan Pope
>> > I first came to Boston. It was only ..._okay_...
>>
>> Bob Shannon
>> > The Boston computer museum was a total joke.
>>
>> I went twice, perhaps 1983 and 1985.
>> 1985 it was rather good, with real historic interest
>> shown, none of the Bozo's playground stuff that
>> it apperently moved to in the early 90's.
>> 1983/2 was Before it officially opened, where it
>> was just Gwen and Gordon Bell's corporate
>> sponsored collection in Marlborough. Highly
>> recommended, though hard to get to now I'm
>> afraid.
>> When did you go and what was wrong?
>>
>> John A.
>
>
>
>
On February 2, Doc Shipley wrote:
> This is sort of a sanity check. I'm putting the question here because
> of the cumulative years of professional experience here, as well as an
> "international" perspective.
>
> How would you react to a guest in your (not normally open to the
> public) building plugging a computer into a random ethernet port and
> asking for a DHCP lease? Is there any non-emergency consideration that
> would make that appropriate?
In a well-designed network, I wouldn't worry too much about it. On
an unswitched network with unencrypted root passwords floating around,
though, I'd have...erm, "issues" with it.
You bring up an interesting point, however. A good (if somewhat
simplistic) goal for the security of a network might be to say if
you'd be nervous about someone doing this, then you still have things
left to fix. :)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL "Less talk. More synthohol." --Lt. Worf
> How would you react to a guest in your (not normally open to the
>public) building plugging a computer into a random ethernet port and
>asking for a DHCP lease? Is there any non-emergency consideration that
>would make that appropriate?
I think that all has to do with WHO the guest is, and WHY they plugged in.
My network (and building) is normally closed to the public, but when we
have clients in, and they bring their laptops, I generally allow them
access to use printers, or gain internet access. But then, this is
something that I plan to offer, so I actually have DHCP services
specifically for this (and keep the rest of the network locked down to
prevent them from wandering). So maybe I'm not as closed as you are.
BUT... even with my plans for outside people to be able to plug in... if
somebody walked in off the street, and tried to do the same... I would
NOT be happy and would promptly escort them out of the building (and
depending on what I thought they were up to... would probably call the
local PD to file a report against them).
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
B****r. Early boot Rom in my cube. Thats why it never worked with 4mb
Simms. It all becomes clear now.
Time to pester Rob at blackholeinc, I guess.....
//Rich
Jeff Hellige
<jhellige@earthlink. To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
net> cc:
Sent by: Subject: Re: cheap 16MB 30-pin RAM on eBay
owner-classiccmp@cla
ssiccmp.org
02/02/2002 19:13
Please respond to
classiccmp
>You are right, Sunguk doesn't suffer fools. He is however very good - one
>of the positives is from me - I bought 128mb of Sparc5 Ram (that rare-ish
>5volt Dimm stuff) from him a few months back and he made an exception and
>shipped internationally.
Is that the same 5V FPM 168pin DIMM as used in early
PowerMac's?
>Question is - does my '030 Cube take parity or non-parity.....eek! I used
>to know this...
Here's the FAQ at Peanuts concerning memory:
http://www.peanuts.org/faq-serve/cache/174.html
Jeff
--
Home of the TRS-80 Model 2000 FAQ File
http://www.cchaven.comhttp://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
On February 1, Gunther Schadow wrote:
> I read a web article the other day where the guy describes the
> various forms of the Qbus and he also said that you could fry
> certain cards when you stick'em in a wrong version of the Qbus.
This is indeed correct...if you plug an RLV11 into a Q/Q backplane
instead of a Q/CD backplane, for example, you'll let out the magic
smoke.
> Since I have a uVAX II and a PDP11/03 I would want to know if
> I can mix and much cards with thoese busses or if I would fry
> a K[ZF]QSA board sticking it into the wrong bus.
Dunno about the 'QSAs in particular...but in general things should
work, except for cards with 16/18/22 bit address issues.
> Also, why was the need for grant continuity cards an advantage?
It's not an "advantage" per se...just what the bus needs. Several
busses use schemes like this...for example, with some high-speed
peripheral controllers in VME Sun systems, you need to remove the BG3
and IACK jumpers from the other side of the backplane. There are no
grant "cards" but there are indeed grant jumpers.
> The OMNIBUS didn't need it but the UNIBUS (and Q-bus?) do.
Omnibus is a "straight" bus...pin 1 goes to pin 1 on all slots, pin 2
to pin 2, etc...there are no hardware-prioritized "daisy-chain"
signals like those found in some other busses.
> Also, what's the deal about grant continuity cards, they seem to
> just have a few lines shorted. In the UNIBUS box next to my
> VAX 11 it has some intermediary open slots but only one grant
> card plugged in. How could that work? Also, why can you stick
If those slots are all straight Unibus, it likely WON'T work. :)
> 1x or 2x cards into the different sections, is there a difference
> where you put them? Why is the feed to the UNIBUS only a 2x card
> and where must you plug that? Is it magic?
SPC slots..."small peripheral controller" I believe is the correct
expansion of that acronym...you'll want to grab a pdp11 unibus
processor handbook for that info...it's all in there.
> Are there UNIBUS backplanes with more than 9 rows?
None that I've seen. I've seen 4- and 9-slot ones.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL "Less talk. More synthohol." --Lt. Worf
There's another Nile with 4 large racks of drives in a scrapyard in
Ottawa. I doesn't look like it's been there long. I should have spent
more time checking it out.
Likely Mike Kenzie could take a look at it and report back since I only
get to Ottawa occasionally.
Please see my post to follow with questions on the Pyramid 90x.
Dan Cohoe
On February 2, jpero(a)sympatico.ca wrote:
> Trouble is, I don't have a vax. :-P
That can be fixed!! 8-)
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL "Less talk. More synthohol." --Lt. Worf
I have an Iomega Bernoulli hard drive that is not functioning properly. It
wants to format the disks. I have 230 and 150 MB disks that I want to
transfer the info to Zip disk, then CD. Can you help?
Thanks.
Wendy
On Sat, 2 Feb 2002, classiccmp-digest wrote:
> Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 08:19:18 -0800 (PST)
> From: Ethan Dicks <erd_6502(a)yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Anything special about converting VAX 11/780 to single phase?
>
> - --- Robert F Schaefer <rschaefe(a)gcfn.org> wrote:
> > ISTR there was a model that had 3-phase blower motors. A three-phase
> > motor will not operate on single-phase. It *has* to have all three legs
> > to run.
>
> We had an 8530 that needed 3-phase. I had to install the plug on the
> panel for our AC because our machine-panel only had two legs (everything
> we had was single-phase 120VAC except the TU78 - 220V). Our AC was
> large enough that it had a 3-phase compressor.
The 8530 don't *nned* 3-phase to run. It's normally equipped with a
3-phase connector, but it can be converted.
The machine Robert is thinking of is the 86x0 machine, which have 3-phase
motors in the fans.
Johnny
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt(a)update.uu.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Screen too small: need at least 10 lines
I'm trying to understand a PDP-10 machine-language program and I was hoping
someone had written a program to help with that. I already know about CREF.
What I want is more like a basic-block analyzer, since I want to find out
what code calls what other code. It would have to work with FAIL source,
.REL, or .EXE files.
And if anyone has a grammar for FAIL, that would be nice too.
Thanks,
-- Derek
