test-drb May 2002

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

246 participants
947 discussions

by Antonio.Carlini＠riverstonenet.com

>I know how to boot a CD-ROM in a VAX. I've got the VMS 7.2 hobbyist, VMS >7.2 regular distrib, and VMS 7.3 regular distrib, and when I boot them >all, I just go into standalone backup. I thought maybe there was some >"trick" I didn't know about to boot into a regular VMS system. The trick is that instead of booting with: >>> BOOT DKA100: you do something like: >>> BOOT/R5:10000000 DKA100: assuming that the alternate root is [SYS1]. I just looked on a V7.1 VAX binary disk and it looks very much like [SYS0] (i.e. the default boot) is S/A BACKUP and [SYS1] (i.e. as above) is a full OpenVMS boot. Obviously it's booted off a read-only medium so you do not get to mess around too much, but it should be enough to get your install done or fixup your disk or whatever. Antonio

22 years, 1 month

How do VMS Condists work?

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Bob Lafleur [mailto:bob_lafleur@technologist.com] > I know how to boot a CD-ROM in a VAX. I've got the VMS 7.2 > hobbyist, VMS > 7.2 regular distrib, and VMS 7.3 regular distrib, and when I boot them > all, I just go into standalone backup. I thought maybe there was some > "trick" I didn't know about to boot into a regular VMS system. The 7.2 discs also kick me into standalone backup -- not that I have a problem with that, of course. I'm pretty sure it's not "normal" VMS, though, since, IIRC, the only command I could get to work is BACKUP. (Characteristic of standalone backup, of course) Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 1 month

(no subject)

by JBrain＠aegonusa.com

Testing work account, ignore. Jim Brain, jbrain(a)aegonusa.com "Researching tomorrow's decisions today." (319) 369-2070 (work) SYSTEMS ARCHITECT, ITS, AEGON FINANCIAL PARTNERS

22 years, 1 month

SYM-1 power connector?

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

Hi Dan I have a SYM-1. You need to get a 44 pin connector ( I think it is .153 spacing ). These were quite common until everyone started uning 0.100 spacing. You can't have my connector though. I can get the pinouts for you but I don't have them here ( I'm at work ). I can get them to you tomorrow. What other requirements do they have for running the games. If it only needs the keypad and display, you can just connect +5V and ground. If it requires a terminal, you'll need +/- 12V as well. If you only need the +5V, you can clip onto the protection diode that is between the two connector. The + side it the side with the band ( Cathode ) and the ground is the other side ( Anode ). This diode is normally reverse biased. Also, check to see if you need to have the BASIC ROM's. These boards normally only came with the monitor ROM and minimum RAM. One usually added the parts for the serial as well ( some transistors and resistors ). Dwight >From: "Dan Veeneman" <dan(a)ekoan.com> > >I recently acquired a Synertek SYM Model 1 but it came without >a power connector. Before I try to locate an edge connector and >wire one up, I wanted to check to see if anyone had an extra one >made up that they wouldn't mind parting with. > >The board also came with a seminar workbook from the American >Institute for Professional Education. The course is entitled >"Microprocessing Fundamentals: A Short Course for Scientists >and Engineers" by Raymond Bennett and John Stockdale, dated >December 1, 1979. It's eleven chapters and some appendices >with exercises and program listings for the SYM-1, including the >ever-popular Lunar Lander. > > >Cheers, > >Dan >www.decodesystems.com/wanted.html > >

22 years, 1 month

A couple of firsts for me (Commodore)

by csmith＠amdocs.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: Don Maslin [mailto:donm@cts.com] > > You can also get CP/M for it, as some other people have said. Don > > Maslin probably has the disk, and he's usually willing to send them > > for (very reasonable) media/copying cost. > No, regrettably, I have nothing for Commodore. Oops, then let me say instead that anyone who's got this disk should consider sending it to Don ;) Chris Christopher Smith, Perl Developer Amdocs - Champaign, IL /usr/bin/perl -e ' print((~"\x95\xc4\xe3"^"Just Another Perl Hacker.")."\x08!\n"); '

22 years, 1 month

IBM 026 Printing Card Punch

by dougq＠iglou.com

> Here is the latest acquisiton of the VCF Archives: > > > http://www.vintage.org/gallery.php?title=IBM%20026%20Printing% > 20Card%20Punch&grouptag=IBM026 > > A very neat machine. John Lawson helped me clean it up a bit over the > weekend and we got it to do "stuff" but it's still not printing or > punching so it definitely needs some more TLC. > > Look for it to be operational by and on display at VCF 5.0 > this September (dates to be announced very, very soon). My First Computing Experience. Sitting down to one of these to punch a set of job cards and input data values to run a program that taught us the binary search algorithm. It was a Purdue University during the Summer Engineering Seminars, June 1974. The job was processed by PUFFT, Purdue University Fast FORTRAN Translator, a system that ran on a beautiful IBM 7094. Later that same day, I was typing ALFIE programs on an ASR33 hooked to their CDC 6500 via PROCSY, Purdue Remote Online Console SYstem. All my program did was accept some input and display vulgar expresssions. Later that week though, I was printing roots tables to tale back and use in my Physics class my senior year in high school. -dq

22 years, 1 month

VAXBI trouble -- I just killed a bunch of boards -- haunted VAX in my basement

by gunther＠aurora.regenstrief.org

Hi, my pulse is still at 100. Today I brought my second VAX 6000-400 into the basement. That thing is haunted! Bringing into the basement entails screwing everything off and then back on. Everything went so beautifully. Having it done the second time I noticed that the cables almost find their way by themselves, just listen to them and they show you how they want to be plugged in :-). Anyway, it didn't work very well. The XMI side alone could be made to work fine, but the VAXBI side doesn't want to work. I checked the wiring once, twice, there is really not much to it, just one big plug that goes into the power regulator and the two HUGE contacts for the actual power. Nothing difficult. I think I burned a couple of XBIA and XBIB boards today. Nothing went off in smoke or flames but one spare after the other would stop working right. I thought I'd do a little board-testing in my working VAX, but even there the things behaved strangely, even to the extent where I thought that may be one XBIA board destroyed the attached XBIB board and vica versa. Although I have accumulated a load of XBIA/XBIB boards my reserve went preciously low. I shot with almost all I had and there were quite a few casualties in the battle. But all to no avail. I'm lucky my working machine is back working again. But I should find a more efficient and less dangerous way to debug that other machine. There is just too much combinatorics involved in the trial and error method. There are 1 XMI bus 2 positions for XBIA 2 VAXBI busses, that are interconnected everything seems dependent on everything else here. How can this be decoupled so that I can test one thing at a time? The next I'll try is actually replace the VAXBI backplane cage. But what would DEC field service have done? Is there a technician's handbook that would give some ideas? thanks, -Gunther -- Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D. gschadow(a)regenstrief.org Medical Information Scientist Regenstrief Institute for Health Care Adjunct Assistant Professor Indiana University School of Medicine tel:1(317)630-7960 http://aurora.regenstrief.org

22 years, 1 month

Enemies Unknown

by foo＠siconic.com

Searching for information on the Tektronix 4025A terminal, I cam across the following website: http://www.enemiesunknown.com/ (The page my search returned was http://www.enemiesunknown.com/terminals.php). It appears this is a text-based adventure game (still under development) that is played over a telnet connection. The page I was directed to lists all of the termainls that are supposedly compatible with the game. Kinda cool, but I can't play it right now because according to the site the server is down as of the time of this posting. Since the last build is 16 Dec 2001, it may be that this is a dead project. Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

22 years, 1 month

First IBM PS/2 Mouse

by pat＠purdueriots.com

These mice were also used on early IBM PS/1's (the ones with PC-DOS in ROM). My parent's 286-based PS/1 had one of these. Unfortunately, that found the way of the trash hopper when they moved a year ago. -- Pat On Tue, 28 May 2002 torquil(a)rockbridge.net wrote: > Hi, > > I am looking for a few of the first mouses IBM made. I would like to acquire one or two of the mouse in this picture. http://members.aol.com/phwimage1/mouse1.jpg . I am using one on this terminal in the library and I just could not get over how cool the mechanical click noise is. > > > Thanks, > Torquil MacCorkle III > Lexington, Virginia > >

22 years, 1 month

Fujitsu HALstation 330

by dwightk.elvey＠amd.com

Hi As I recall, during the disk building process, you tell it if it is going to run stand alone or used on a network. That way, you don't waste space on the internal disk for code that you could easily access from the local net. I've gone through the stand alone disk building process in the pass but don't recall all of what was needed. I used the Sun documents to do it with. You need to have a CD ROM drive to get the disk built. Some machines didn't have the drive. In the lab, we had a machine that we always used to build disk on and we would then move it to the machine we were testing. We always had a stack of disk that could boot from disk or the net. As far as password, you'd have to clear the NOVRAM. Setting this up again would be tough, without knowing the magic. I don't recall how to do this but I can ask around. Maybe one of the others remembers. Dwight >From: "Dan Wright" <dtwright(a)uiuc.edu> > >Thanks all for the info. So, it turns out that it has a copy of SPARC64 >Solaris 2.4 on it. Does anyone know how to convince Solaris 2.4 to boot up in >single user mode without asking for the root password, and without an OS disk? >from the hostname I can find what domain it was on so I should be able to >h4x0r it from the network, but I'd rather get into it on console before >networking it because I don't have a machine I can convienently do that with >at hand. > >Dwight K. Elvey said: >> Hi >> I used to work at HaL. I don't have any of the stuff >> you need but I'll ask around. It is funny that when working >> on some of the machines made by other people I can't understand >> why they didn't save some of the information for future >> use. Here I was working there and I don't think I saved >> anything. >> The HaL boxes were the first Sparc64's. Still they did >> take a specialized OS. This was mainly for the I/O drivers. >> The processors used in the early machines were some >> of the first to use such things as out of order execution. >> Basically, the processor would prefetch a number of >> instructions ahead of time. If it saw an instruction that >> didn't seem to have dependencies on previous results that >> might not be available yet, it would execute them to fill, >> otherwise, dead processor time. This was fine for most >> everything but I/O and some process handshake in multitasked. >> Someone forgot the I/O problem. I/O that needed to >> be ordered had to have enough 'nop's inline so that the >> next I/O was not in the prefetch. This required special >> I/O routines, even though the machines were otherwise compatible >> with other Sun code. >> I don't even recall if the 330 was a R1 or a R2 processor. >> I guess I can't blame others for losing computer history >> when I'm part of the problem. I guess we should all make >> efforts to save information as we go along. The hard >> part is to recognize when we are at a significant point >> in time. >> Dwight >> >> >From: "Dan Wright" <dtwright(a)uiuc.edu> >> > >> >I just picked up one of those today. I'm not sure of the date, but I think it >> >might only be 7.5-8 yrs old, making it slightly OT... >> > >> >anyway, does anyone know anything about this box? All I've been able to find >> >out so far is that it was the first marketed SPARC64 machine, it was >> >technically very good, but was a total market failure. In other words, it's >> >obscure and weird, perfect for a classiccmp find ;) It's a sun-compatible box >> >-- I've fired it up with a serial console and I get a sun-ish OpenBoot prompt, >> >etc. >> > >> >So, my question is, does anyone know more about this thing? Anyone have docs, >> >OS media (if it won't run normal solaris...not sure), or anything? >> > >> >Thanks! >> > >> >- Dan Wright >> >(dtwright(a)uiuc.edu) >> >(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright) >> > >> >-] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [- >> >``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, >> > For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.'' >> > Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan >> > >> >- Dan Wright >(dtwright(a)uiuc.edu) >(http://www.uiuc.edu/~dtwright) > >-] ------------------------------ [-] -------------------------------- [- >``Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, > For he on honeydew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.'' > Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan >

22 years, 1 month

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test-drb May 2002