test-drb April 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

280 participants
1162 discussions

by spectre＠stockholm.ptloma.edu

I installed a PC HD 5.25" floppy in my long-suffering PCjr by replacing the old IBM drive. It all seems to work on DD disks, but not HD disks. Do I need to upgrade something else? (being somewhat ignorant on old PCs). PCjr with 128K RAM expansion, floppy card, parallel port module, Cartridge BASIC running IBM PC DOS 2.1. -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- This signature is free of dihydrogen monoxide! Ban it now! www.dhmo.org ----

22 years, 3 months

TTL computing

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) [mailto:cisin@xenosoft.com] > Since the it is for illustration, rather than for significant > real usage, > 16 bits should be plenty to show how it works. > Glass fuses don't blacken unless you really whack them with a lot of > current, and can sometimes be very hard to even see visually > whether they > are blown. > Ceramic fuses, such as what VW used to use would be the easiest to > visually check which ones are blown, but it's hard to find > them in smaller > sizes than 8 amps. > Would you be programming in place, or "cheating" and assembly the unit > with fuses that are already blown? Ideally programming in place, with a home-made "programmer" -- probably it would be mostly switches, etc, with no logic in it... very simple design. At least that was the idea. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 3 months

Does anyone have a live VT52?

by celigne＠celigne.freeserve.co.uk

Does anyone have a live VT52 to hand? I'm working on a patch for xterm, and I have a query about its behaviour that could be answered by having someone type five characters in local mode and reporting the results. Unfortunately my VT52 is dead and I haven't spent the time to discover why, yet. I promise that these five characters won't kill yours!

22 years, 3 months

An example of a computer recycling / resale shop

by jfoust＠threedee.com

This one is in Madison, Wisconsin. It looks like they're offering businesses 50% of the selling price on their old stuff: http://www.cascade-assets.com/ And at their spring cleaning round-up, they charge $5 per monitor. - John

22 years, 3 months

Does anyone have a live VT52?

by Antonio.Carlini＠riverstonenet.com

>Ooh, you tease! Any chance of that >document escaping altogether? Assuming it's still there, and that you get Boundless and/or COMPAQ (and/or HP if you don't get your skates on ...) to OK it, then there should be no problem :-) >They are online, but the schematics don't list the contents of the ROM I thought you had a VT52 - so just dump the ROM. Actually, dump the ROM anyway - it must be past its sell-by date by now! >Of course, deliberate decisions are made about how faithful a later >model would be when emulating an earlier one. After all, a VT220 in >VT100 mode doesn't emulate a VT100; it emulates a VT102 (or VT100 plus >Level 2 Editing Extension, if you like). Yes - and I doubt that the VT52 emulator makes *any* attempt at emulating the VT52 quirks. In fact, it's quite possible that noone knew all the VT52 quirks and so the VSRM may have required only adherence to the published VT52 information (which admittedly may have had internal-use-only enhancements). When I wrote that VT102 emulator, way back when, the customer for whom we were implementing it had requested VT103 emulation on the basis that it was a higher number than VT102 and so must be better. I never saw one in real life but the manual documented it as a VT100 + LSI bus (no, I did not implement the LSI bus ...). I suppose I should just count myslef lucky that they didn't happen to know about the VT105 or VT125 or VT131/VT132! Antonio

22 years, 3 months

Twinax (was Re: Last run at the local Uni Surplus for a while...)

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

On April 10, Geoff Roberts wrote: > I despair of ever getting my AS400 working. I have the machine, I have the > necessary adapter in the machine, I have terminals, I have twinax. > I don't have the 25 pin d to 8x twinax connector gizmo (I can supply an IBM > part no). I've had a few offered to me, but they all want very serious > money for it. Considering I paid $25AU for the lot I'm not that interested > in shelling out a couple of hundred for the terminal interface box and > cable. Is constructing the adapter an option? Twinax connectors can be had readily, at least on this side of the ocean. I actually have one of the adapter boxes you're talking about (for my AS/400); I'd be happy to crack it open and investigate its innards for you. -Dave -- Dave McGuire "Anybody who is willing to EAT YOU probably isn't St. Petersburg, FL such a good person to be hanging out with." -Sridhar

22 years, 3 months

ADM-3A: choose your colour?

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) [mailto:cisin@xenosoft.com] > Hmmm. Is the iMac available in ADM3a blue? and cream? I'm glad somebody else noticed this. Personally, I have my ADM-5 plugged into a VAXStation 2000 and a sign that says "iVAX" on it. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 3 months

Native CP/M

by cpg＠aladdin.de

Hi, On 04/09/2002 09:09:48 PM ZE2 "Hans Franke" wrote: >As a nice give away you also get an 8080 CPU for free. There >have been two solutions AFAIR. One was booting MS-DOS and >starting a bootloader for CP/M80 (a), the other was a CP/M >disguise for MS-DOS (b). > >The Bootloader programm loaded an 8080 BIOS which supported >hard MS-DOS Hard disks into memory, did setup the memory >tables for the 8080 and switched into 8080 mode to boot CP/M >from HD. There where several problems regarding disk storage, >so the system worked only reliable from floppy disks. I heared >also about a Version which booted from almost ordinary CP/M >floppies. All switching code fitted into the PC boot sector. >I never had this version, and I didn't play a lot with the >hard disk version, but I used the other programm (b) for >several years. > >You could start CP/M programms right from the MS-DOS command >line, or switch into CP/M command line. The Programm itself >replaced CP/M and redirected all CP/M functions to MS-DOS >functions - thanks to the similarities :) There where even >'utilities' to switch DOS pathes wihile in CP/M, etc. pp. >The performance was quite acceptable (faster than a 8080 at >5 MHz), and you could use almost all PC Hardware. > >I used this programm to run CP/M applications for several >years under MS-DOS - I never had the time to redo them for >the PC. I even kept the XT some time as CP/M machine when >I already had an 386. The machine was also equipped with a >screamer add on board, so the CPU was running most of the >time at 8 MHz. I have a V20 PC-XT in working order. Do you still have those tools. I'd like to try out CP/M on it. IIRC, the German c't magazine once had such tools. Back then I already had this V20 PC-XT, but didn't want to mess with CP/M. After just having made the transition from C64 to PC (MS-DOS), CP/M was "old stuff" back then :-) regards, chris

22 years, 3 months

Half on, half off -- New CD-R drive and 512-byte blocks

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com] > You may have the answer, here, in that IF it's a SCSI device > (which it is) and > IF it's capable of behaving as a reader (which it is) then > it's up to the SCSI > subsystem to move the data into the system. IF the device, > in whatever mode > it "comes up" in is able to read the SCSI CD, then it should > be no different > than any other CD drive, irrespective of the ability to write > the device. For what it's worth, I tried on a MicroVAX 3100 last night, but it didn't work too well. (Just set there, basically) I might try a few other things. Doc mentioned he had trouble booting VMS with some drives that would (somehow) otherwise work, so I'll probably try the SPARC (Really, would you consider running anything other than VMS on a VAX? :) Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 3 months

Last run at the local Uni Surplus for a while...

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Roger Merchberger [mailto:zmerch@30below.com] > AFAIK, you'll need to wait for a broken lap... the AS/400 > twinax runs at > 1.5Mbit and I don't think that changes at all; besides, I That's pretty impressive for a console connection... > thought that the > AS/400 ran EBCDIC, not ASCII, which could make for some > interesting looking > login screens... ;-) You could be right there, but it's a very nice terminal. :) I might be willing to write an EBCDICGetty for it, or something. Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 3 months

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test-drb April 2002