test-drb April 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

280 participants
1162 discussions

Guys take a look at this qbus cpu board on Ebay :-)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

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

22 years, 8 months

Office Max events

by Mzthompson＠aol.com

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

22 years, 8 months

Secret Mac

by Antonio.Carlini＠riverstonenet.com

>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

22 years, 8 months

Solid State Music MB-3 EPROM card question

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

> >"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

22 years, 8 months

20mA serial cable connector

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

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

22 years, 8 months

OT: Writing floppies on PC; Was Re: Guys take a look

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

> > >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

22 years, 8 months

Specifications Sought for 7-Track Tape Heads

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

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

22 years, 8 months

Solid State Music MB-3 EPROM card question

by fmc＠reanimators.org

"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

22 years, 8 months

The Unit (was: One-upsmanship (was: Secret Mac))

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

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

22 years, 8 months

OT: Writing floppies on PC; Was Re: Guys take a look

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

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.

22 years, 8 months

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test-drb April 2002