On April 18, Sridhar the POWERful wrote:
> > > Except that a real PDP-11 will probably be a good deal more stable than a
> > > PC. And how are PC's running windows at things like realtime data
> > > acquisition?
> >
> > My computer ( 600 Mhz ?? ) states not to use the seriel port faster than
> > 9600 because the internal modem uses the irq line. sigh!
>
> *shakes head*
>
> Pathetic.
Pathetic indeed. The pdp-11/34a that I had when I was in high
school...I think I babbled about that machine at one point. I had a
DH11-AD mux in there (16 lines, modem control, DMA...a 9-slot
backplane full of boards), it had my terminal and another terminal in
the house, both running at 9600 baud, and a 1200 baud modem for
dialin...It would keep up with me and two friends using kermit to move
stuff back & forth, or hacking code (yay Swedish Pascal and DECUS C!)
with no problems at all...three sessions, two at 9600 baud and one at
1200 baud...simultaneously. Without even feeling the bump.
Why do people use PeeCees, again? Pathetic, indeed.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire "Mmmm. Big."
St. Petersburg, FL -Den
Event #1
I went to OM earlier today to take pick up a UPS that was on sale.
Their ad from last Sunday's paper lists a unit at $20 off (and no
friggin' rebates to mess with). The ad listed the unit as 500VA.
When I get to the store, the clerk points it out to me and the unit is
350VA. I say whoa, it is listed in the ad as 500VA. Turns out they
list the model number for a 350VA unit and spec it at 500VA. I asked
to see the manager, who already knows me (more on that later). This
time I got stuck with the assistant manager. She states that it must
be a misprint and she can't be held responsible for printing errors.
I don't mind saying that I am getting tired of employees who will not
take responsibilty. So I read her my riot act mentioning that she is
standing here as a representive of OM and in my eyes is responsible.
I also point to Staples (across the street) and mention the fact
that a young man over there was also not responsible and after my
complaint to Staples on their web sight, he got lectures from the
higher ups, not to mention the phone calls that I got from district
and regional managers seeking to make sure I became a satisfied
customer.
Anyway, back to this gal at OM. I mentioned to her that listing the
model number of the 350VA unit and the spec of the 500VA unit might
be construed as "bait & switch". With that she looked up the price
of the 500VA unit and said she would sell it to me for 40 bucks off.
Event #2
A few weeks ago I want to OM to buy another sale item. They had a
CD-R 100 pack listed for $40 with a $30 rebate. What caught my eye
was that they were 650 mb. My CD Burner drive is an earlier model,
and does not like these new-fangled 700 mb thingies.
So I go into OM and can't find them. A clerk comes along and I show
him the ad and tell him that is what I want. He leads me to the big
display of 700 mb. I point to the ad and tell him I want what is
advertised, not these. You ever noticed how these clerks become
dumbfounded and clam up at this point. He suggests I talk to the
manager. I did and here again I mention that trying to substitute
750 mb for the advertised 650 mb might be construed as "bait & switch".
With that she took my name and phone number and said she would get
back to me. She did, she called two days later and said she had
2 100 packs for me. I indicated I only want the one because of the
rebate limit. She then explained that the 2nd one was complimentary
for my trouble. Now if I just get the rebate, that's 200 CD-R blanks
for $10.
Event #3
Speaking of rebates. I bought some memory at OM and sent in the rebate.
Three months later I had not received the money. So I took all the
paperwork into the store. Lo and behold, they have a form for just
that. I filled it out and they gave me the $50 rebate right there.
Why don't they just do that in the first place?
Why you ask am I still going into OM? In this town there just isn't
much else and they seem to have better sales.
I share all of this because you need to watch out if you are dealing
with OM. If they try to pull a fast one, namely "bait & switch", then
call them on it. Maybe they will learn to get their ads right, or at
least you may get a deal.
Mike
>1.) Run Norton WipeDisk pgm writing 1s & 0s three times.
>2.) Low level format
>3.) WipeDisk three more times.
>
>Trust me, when I was done, there wasn't anything recoverable there.
If you did:
4) Smash disk into small pieces and heat until
molten slag
then you protected yourself against people
armed with a scanning tunneling microscope
(which are surprisingly cheap these days ...)
Of course, that begs the question, why did
you bother with steps 1-3??
Or maybe things were just not as
secure as you thought?
Antonio
>
>"Erik S. Klein" <classiccmp(a)mail.vintage-computer.com> wrote:
>> code. The board has two sets of four dip switches. One is
>> labeled T1 to T4 and the other A12 to A15. A jumper on the
>> board that allows settings between 2k and 4k is set to 4k
>> (1702s vs 1701s?)
Hi
Both the 1702 and 1701 were the same size. There were
originally 4 parts; 1601, 1602, 1701 and 1702.
I forget which was which but I think it was that the
160x were syncronous bus and the 1x01's were open collector
as compared to 1x02's that were 3state. If anyone
cares, I can look it up in my doc's to get it right.
By the time the 1702A's came out, I don't think anyone
saw the others.
Dwight
On Apr 19, 13:52, Tom Uban wrote:
> >Peter Turnbull wrote:
> >They're not Molex, they're AMP, and since they're the pins for that
series
> >of connector they'll work fine.
> Yes, the connectors are AMP. Here is what I got back from Tyco/AMP when I
> made an inquiry about them:
> The item you are questioning was obsoleted in 1997 with no replacements.
I
> do not find anything similar to this item nor do we show any stock left
in
> inventory. I do not see where any distributor has any inventory either.
We
> would not be able to offer a solution unless you can change you design to
> one of the other Commercial MNL products.
Ms Hughes was referring to the housings of course; the pins that fit the
housings are still a current standard product. AMP changed some of the
part numbers some time ago, but they are still the same pins that fit the
rest of the Commercial Mate-N-Lok range, which includes the ones used for
drive power (not the little ones for 3.5" floppies, though -- those are
2.5mm AMP Economy Interconnect). The point being that if you can find some
old connectors, you can replace the pins.
The part numbers for the crimp contacts are:
socket connector, 18-20AWG 163304-2
socket connector, 14-18AWG 163306-2
pin connector, 18-20AWG 163305-2
pin connector, 14-18AWG 163305-2
and you should be able to find them in the AMP catalogue or any of several
dealer/distributor catalogues.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
> > >when Warp came out. It was so cool to be able to play a
> > game while using
> > >Prodigy on my Hayes Smartmodem 2400 at the same time.
> > >
> > >Peace... Sridhar
>
> > I see I wasn't the only one doing that :^) I also liked
> > being able to cut
>
> Careful, or you'll be setting around in a storage locker, writing
> BASIC programs on your PC Junior before you know it ;)
Not likely, I don't have electricity in my storage units, and the only
receptical is a LONG ways away! Besides my wife wouldn't like me hiding out
up there, she doesn't mind when I hid out in the computer room at home.
Oh, and then there is the fact that if I'm going to be writing something in
BASIC, it's going to be on a PDP-10, PDP-11 or a VMS box. Which brings up
the question of how do you clear the screen on a VT100 using BASIC-PLUS-2?
The following works on my Alpha using DEC BASIC, and looks like it should
work using BASIC-PLUS-2.
1 declare string constant CLS = ESC + "[H" + ESC + "[J"
110 print CLS
Zane
On Apr 19, 11:51, Douglas H. Quebbeman wrote:
> The end-result of this project will probably involve
> reading 7-track tapes in analog mode and digitizing
> the analog data stream in order to use modern computing
> power to reconstruct the data.
Well, if you're going to go into digital signal processing, why not just
use a 9-track head, and analyse the data from adjacent tracks to recombine
into 7 tracks? ;-)
I'll bet it's doable. My second-year second-term (10 weeks) assigned
project was to build a barcode reader, using a common slotted optosensor
with an active area whose diameter was about twice the width of the bars,
and a Z80 with 2K EPROM and 8K RAM. It's amazing what you can do with a
little circuitry and a little calculation. 9 tracks to 7 should be easier,
since I expect the top, bottom, and middle tracks will line up nicely. The
second track from the 9-track head would have a mixture of (mostly) 1st and
(a little) 2nd tracks of the 7-track signal; the next channel would have a
roughly equal mixture of data from tracks 2 and 3; the next channel would
be almost all 3; and so on.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
"Erik S. Klein" <classiccmp(a)mail.vintage-computer.com> wrote:
> code. The board has two sets of four dip switches. One is
> labeled T1 to T4 and the other A12 to A15. A jumper on the
> board that allows settings between 2k and 4k is set to 4k
> (1702s vs 1701s?)
In the absence of documentation, one trick is to examine memory
looking for plausible code for your processor. So you learn how to
use the front panel to examine memory (and maybe how to deposit too,
as that's one way to tell whether the address you're looking at might
be read-only) and maybe learn something about the processor's
instruction set too.
A12 to A15 likely set the board's base memory address at
a 4KB boundary with A15 being the most significant bit
(and A14, A13, A12 being the next three bits down). A
switch set to "on" or "closed" might be 0 or 1, so pick one
and write the bits out in A15 through A12 order. Then
invert it (1 becomes 0, 0 becomes 1) and write that group
of bits out. Now you have two ways to set the high four
address switches on the front panel, which cuts the amount
of address space you have to explore by 1/8.
A 1702 is, what, a 1Kbit device? That's 128 bytes. So start
with the low seven address switches set to 0. You can probably
assume that the ROMs are each based at a 128-byte boundary.
This leaves you five switches in the middle, so 32 steps for
each of the ways you can set the high four bits.
-Frank McConnell
From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke(a)mch20.sbs.de>
>> How about calling it a Babbage?
An idea!
>Well, I'd rather go for Zuse. Not only because he is
>German(*), but rather because there is still no basic
>or derivated SI unit starting with Z, so Z would give
It's sufficiently obscure and I like it. Lessee a 400milliZuse
system... Yep rolls on the tongue nicely and sounds oh
so technical.
>If this has to be successful we have to fit it into
>the SI system :)
Go with it and we also need a "standard".
Now combine that with TCP/IP over morse and we have
something.
Allison
In a message dated 4/19/2002 10:48:08 AM Central Daylight Time,
bpope(a)wordstock.com writes:
> And thusly Doc spake:
> >
> > On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, John Allain wrote:
> >
> > > I encoded some family geneology into set of frame HTML
> > > pages once. It turned out to be something line 600 small html
> > > files, 300 KBytes or so. When I went to put it on a floppy, it
> > > took over 30 Minutes to write!
> >
> > OK. This is completely off topic, but it has bugged me for years.
> > You guys are more likely to know, and care, than any other forum I hang
> > in. I use a Linux PC as my daily workstation, file server, DNS, MOP
> > server, etc. Given hardware limitations, it's stable enough.
> >
> > I can start a lowlevel format on a floppy, go and surf the net, read
> > my email, compile software, or play a game while (45-75 secs) that
> > happens.
> > Do that in Win<anyversion> on the same hardware, and I might as well
> > go make coffee. Same comparison applies to printing large documents.
> > WHAT is M$ doing that operating a floppy disk drive takes ALL of a
> > 1.4GHz CPU and 512M of memory? I wanna know!
> >
>
> It's a Windows things... For some reason they just can't multitask
> properly while doing a floppy disk format. Maybe they are still using DOS
> type format routines.
>
> With OS/2, you can also do a full format of a floppy and do anything else
> with
> no slowdown.
>
That was a big bragging point for us OS/2 users.
