test-drb April 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

280 participants
1162 discussions

by lemay＠cs.umn.edu

Well, I went and bought a ton of those pink anti-static bubble bags so I can properly store my spare DEC boards. If anyone wants to buy a bunch, just let me know. I'll have to go dig up the sales slip and figure out a cost. They just barely fit a hex DEC board, and thus they easily fit a Quad board. 10" X 15.5" plus a 1.5" sealable lip. Though personally I dont bother sealing the bags. -Lawrence LeMay lemay(a)cs.umn.edu

22 years, 8 months

"Toy" computers http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules

by rmoyers＠nop.org

On Saturday 27 April 2002 16:28, you wrote: > > Today that campus worth of hardware is emulated in the hercules > > s360/370/390/ zSeries emulator http://www.conmicro.cx/hercules > > running on a PC running linux or winbloZ > > > > OS, DOS, MVS, VM ... running on your pc, serves x3270 > > terms over the network etc etc. > > Ow! You're killing me! Actually, its sort of unexpected that you havent been pointed to this project or found this on your own. Its certainly a less cost option than a P370/390 card These guys for example have a turnkey cdrom image where you can go from the cd burner to a TSO login in only a few minutes. A real box can total flood a bundle of gigabit fiber the diameter of your right leg, its the I/O that sets these monsters apart really, their CPUs are no slouch, but not any faster than a common modern PC chip. Course there is their memory scrubing, the ability to hotspare memory modules on the fly, redundancy that can even deal with failed cache and buss lines. After reading about all the bother they go to to make these things survive failures and glitches, it brings to mind a senario where you wonder how many .45 cal pistol slugs the machine could absorb before the failure handler could no longer cope. There is a paper that explains the systems and schemes that go into the machines hardware fault tolerance that would leave the first time readers jaw agape, but i cant dig up the url at present. The emulator is still a very worthwhile project to look at however, and despite me using it first as a brickbat its rather cool and usefull for doing real work. (Development at home etc) Raymond -------------------------------------------------------

22 years, 8 months

IBM AT power supply case/cooling question

by mythtech＠mac.com

>If you're at all >worried about EMI, it might be reassuring to put some ferrous metal screen, >the sort used to repair, or scavenged from, OLD screen doors, not the new >ones, over the PSU's larger openings. Does the metal screen material you can buy at Home Depot or the likes work? I think it is made of Aluminum, but I've never really checked (as I find the nylon screen easier to work with, so that is what I have always bought when rescreening windows or doors) -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

22 years, 8 months

Starting point

by acme_ent＠bellsouth.net

> From: Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> > There was one big advantage to starting from a home computer rather than > just a CPU chip. You had a 'base system' that included enough software to > PEEK/POKE bytes to your homebrew add-on for testing. That alone made life > a lot easier when you wwre starting out. Tony! This is exactly the point I was making a few months ago about the ZX81. At that time, you said you'd prefer to start with a Z80 and build up >from there, while I suggested that the ZX81 was a better starting point for a homebrew system since the BASIC and video were built-in. Care to clarify? Glen 0/0

22 years, 8 months

Googling and "egg-sucking" (was Re: "Toy" computers...)

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> --- Doc <doc(a)mdrconsult.com> wrote: > > On Sun, 28 Apr 2002, Peter C. Wallace wrote: > > > On Sun, 28 Apr 2002, Doc wrote: > > > > Dude. > > > > Fire up your favorite Open Source browser. Go to http://www.google.com > > > > Do a search for this (quotation marks included): > > > > "Teach Grandpa to suck eggs" > > > BTW Google doesn't find the quoted string... > I got one hit with this... "teaching grandpa to suck eggs" > > And a bunch more by using the exact phraseology I heard growing up... > > "teach your grandma to suck eggs" > > With Google, spelling (and precise word selection) counts. > > > Argh. > > Once again, what I thought was a universal expression turns out to be > > a Texasism. > > I would count it as an American Colloquialism, but I don't think of the > phrase as uniquely Texan. Today, we might get more mileage out of this with a slight retooling: "You don't teach Gollem to suck eggses" ;)

22 years, 8 months

R.I.P. for D.I.Y."

by dquebbeman＠acm.org

> OK, but these are not the kind of devices I was refering to. > I have seen the immense effort that goes into prototyping GSM phones. That is > which lead to my opinion that such development is beyond any hobbiest means. I'm not sure I understand this. Are the GSM prototypes with which you are familiar, FINISHED prototypes, i.e. same size, circuits, etc, as the final product? If so, I'd understand the difficulty, but that is a form of prototyping that I'm only familiar with through the efforts of non-technical people to get involved in the hi-tech field. I guess it gets done that way a lot, and this is likely the source of the devices we swear at. Usually, the prototypes I've developed, are what we refer to as level-1 prototypes. They demonstrate the basic concept as being workable. At level-2. you bring in accountants and marketing people to work with the engineers to see if the device can be produced in a cost-effevtive manner, wherein the beanheads determine that they'll actually be able to make a profit >from the manufacture and sale of the item. Many otherwise promising designs die here because the engineer won't let the beancounter substitute that switch that will break at the device's half-life, or because the engineer won't let the marketing guy make the device purple and yellow. Good for the bloody engineer, too... -dq

22 years, 8 months

CP/M-86

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) [mailto:cisin@xenosoft.com] > On Sat, 27 Apr 2002, Pat Finnegan wrote: > > I've been playing around with cp/m-86, and was wondering if > anyone knew if > > a multiuser (like MP/M) version was available somewhere? > My next step is > > to try making it work under Dosemu on Linux if I cant... > Have you looked at "Concurrent CP/M-86"? "Concurrent DOS" in later versions, right? Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 8 months

M0006

by Antonio.Carlini＠riverstonenet.com

>Antonio, you spoilsport :-P > I was going to ask Alex for his phone number! So do you have the CSC-end of the kit that you will need to do that? I'm assuming that since they want to all the trouble of producing something marginally secure, the customer end of the secure connection cannot be used to dial out to some other customer end (otherwise it would not have been *that* secure). If you *do* have the CSC-end of the kit I'm seriously impressed :-) Although until Alex fixes his +2.5V regulator, there's not much you can do ! Antonio >

22 years, 8 months

Commodore PC-20-III

by spectre＠stockholm.ptloma.edu

Well, I'm now the (proud?) owner of a Commodore PC-20-III. Ironically, this is a Commodore I know little about although it is a more or less vanilla PC clone, but there are some weird things about it. First, there's a composite video out on it. What kind of graphics did these have in them? I haven't cracked the case yet, but there's also apparently a video card in one of the slots (with six DIP switches? used for what?) and a two-port card with two DB-15s on it that I can't immediately identify. Anyone out there own one of these and can tell me a little about it? -- ----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ -- Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu -- If at first you don't succeed, don't go skydiving. -------------------------

22 years, 8 months

Apple II Unidisk 3.5/LIRON card

by r_beaudry＠hotmail.com

Hello all (except Dick :-) ), I'm having a problem with an Apple IIe Platinum, and I hope you can help. I recently acquired a LIRON 3.5" floppy controller card, and was looking forward to using 3.5" disks on my AIIe. After some reading, it seemed that the LIRON card would only work with a Unidisk 3.5" (model number starts with "A2M"), and NOT with a 3.5" drive from, say, a IIgs (model number starts with "A9M"). So, of course, I went and found a Unidisk 3.5" drive... The combination doesn't work, *even with every other card pulled*, so here are my questions: - Will the LIRON card work with the Unidisk 3.5" drive? My reading of several FAQs says "yes", but maybe I misread something... - Does anyone have docs for either the drive, or the card? There are no switches or jumpers, and the installation seems obvious, but who knows, maybe I missed something.... - Can you boot from the 3.5" drive? Or is it only for storage, and you can only boot with 5.25" drives? Thanks for any help! Rich B. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.

22 years, 8 months

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test-drb April 2002