There was a real brief discussion about this several months ago, and I
never followed through.
The broad strokes of my idea was to put together a questionnaire for
anybody who'll answer, with city of residence, area of collecting, maybe
real-world occupation and computing experience/expertise, etc. Gather
that into a running database, mostly for member consumption only. We
all seem to travel a fair amount, most of us seem to enjoy "hooking up"
with other collectors, and such a database seems like a natural thing to
do, and a very valuable resource. Personally, I'm really curious as to
what the map will look like. There seem to be some fair concentrations
in some not-obviously-reasonable places. Like the Great North Woods. :)
If there's reasonable interest and no huge objections, and someone
else will help design and implement the actual db, I'll put together the
questionnaire & collate the responses.
Preliminary ideas:
Public and private info. Some info, like my webpage, I might be
willing to put out as a public resource. My address I might make
available to list members, but not for publication on a website. So
the Q-sheet needs a flag for "privileged" info.
All info, obviously, is optional.
Areas of expertise & employment could be tricky. A lot of us are
contractors and consultants, and there's a fuzzy line between making
resources available and solicitation.
Whether your collection is organised for viewing, or, like mine, piles
here and there {and everywhere} that can be excavated for the needed
item, would be relevant info.
We'll need a hosting site. I might be able to provide that, but I'm
not sure.
So what do y'all think? Is it A Fun Thing To Do? Ideas about what
info we want/don't want? Volunteers?
Doc
Can somebody more familiar with such confirm whether that is indeed
Richard Erlacher's machine that sent the following copy of Klez? (Headers
only follow)
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From: JPLCSCH <JPLCSCH(a)aol.com>
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Does anyone here still use their old (say pre-1990) Macintosh as a regular
practice?
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 *
I've got a RX01-compatible dual-8" floppy drive unit made by Heath
in the bottom of my closet.. I do *not* have the required Heath-made
controller card to go with it...
Free, YOU MUST PICK IT UP, in Austin, TX. This is too heavy to ship -
heck, its almost too heavy to *move*. Probably weighs at least 75-100 lbs.
Bill
--
Bill Bradford
mrbill(a)mrbill.net
Austin, TX
Two things of note:
There is a warehouse in Northern New Jersey I am currently cleaning out
with lots of Teletypes in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. There are old
types, "new" types, 5 level, 8 level, probably some Kleinschmidts and
Seimens, paper tape readers, repeaters, test sets, even some of the weird
wall-mount Teletypes. And parts - thousands of parts, many never used,
still in the wrappings. Many of these units are military surplus, some
>from World War 2.
Prices are right - most of it can be had for a cold beverage. It all has
to go, and the scrap metal dumpster is calling.
Contact me off list for details. I can not ship anything - it is all
pick-up only. Hours are mostly Monday thru Friday 10 thru 5-ish, although
if you think you will take bunches of the stuff, Saturday *may* be an
option. There is a loading dock.
(if someone could post this to the Greenkeys list, that would be great)
In other news...
Somehow between days of backbreaking warehouse work in the Garden State, I
need to pick up a big old Univac 9300 soon. Loading should not be a
problem, but I may need a hand at my house, unloading, in Carmel, NY (that
is near Danbury, CT). Pizza and beer on me. Any takers?
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
As many folks might have already noticed, I've been a little absent from
the mailing list as of late. One reason is the current status of upgrading
my day to day workstation, but the other is the latest SGI system that I
got from Nick here in Houston.
The small amount of information I found on the web about SGI IRIS 1x00
line seems to indicate that the 1400 is the first "workstation" class
system SGI sold. The 1000 and 1200 were both GUI terminals without any
local storage. These systems were all made in the early 1980s, and no one
seems to know just how many were made.
For those folks who have never seen a 1x00 or 2x00 desk-side SGI IRIS, the
chassis is about twice the size of a DEC BA123 (not too much wider), but
it seems to weigh a little less. (The custom Hitachi monitor for the 1400
actually seems to weigh more than the system.)
This 1400 is more or less complete. It has it's monitor, all the cables
(except for the two power cords), the keyboard, mouse, and a set of
programmers manuals. If someone has an OS or diagnostics tape (of even
knows which versions of IRIX this system will support), please let me
know. A hardware manual would also be very nice, but I'm not going to hold
my breath...
While breaking the system down for a complete cleaning and inspection, I
found a couple of notes and tags in the system from a previous sysadmin.
One is a hand-drawn card cage ribbon cable/led diagram on a scrap of paper
(which might turn out to be useful ;) There was a tag attached to the
corner of the ST-506 interface board, that states something along the
lines of "Board removed from IRIS, suspect U/S, no prints.", and has a set
of initials on it. There was also a tag attached to the ribbon cable that
connects the AUI connector on the rear of the system to the network
interface board. The cable had been unplugged, and the tag stated
something along the lines of "This cable was found to be damaged when
removing the PSU, do not reconnect!", and showed a date of 1996 and two
sets of initials. It turned out the "damage" was minor, and could have
been safely ignored. The ribbon cable had originally been 15 conductor,
but had been stripped down to 14 conductors, except for one loose 8" wire
at the AUI end. That wire is connected to pin 1 of the AUI connector, and
it appears someone had crimped a 0.25" quick connect terminal to it and
connected it to an unused chassis ground terminal on the line filter. Pin
1 didn't even exist on the card end of the cable, so my guess is someone
modified the cable due to interference problems. When I found the loose
wire, it had been pulled loose from the quick connect terminal, and had
some (cheap) electrical tape wrapped around the end.
This particular system was located in England from around 1983 to 1998 or
so, and had been converted for 240V operation. It appears the conversion
was done by a SGI field tech, since the rear of the system has a sticker
that states "115V", while the metal plate with the IEC connector states
"230V". The PSU has a typewritten SGI sticker with a 184-260V(?) voltage
range covering the 115V rating next to the supply terminals. After looking
at the PSU itself, it appears conversion back to 115/120V requires little
more than desoldering/resoldering some jumper wires. The 3 system fans
will also have to be replaced when converting the system back to 120V. I
also noticed an extra white wire run up to the front panel where the power
switch is mounted. There is a black wire used for hot, and a red wire used
for the switched hot. The white wire is connected to the unswitched hot
(or what would be neutral for 120V operation), so I'm guessing this system
would have originally used a lighted rocker switch before the 240V
conversion (there are no power on indicators on the front of the system).
There are also 4 extra wires in the junction box behind the bottom rear
panel. Two are white and are on what would be the neutral side, one is
black, which is unswitched hot, and the other is red, again switched hot.
My guess is that these were originally used for accessory outlets on the
original panel, which was replaced during the 240V conversion.
I found quite a few things that had not been reinstalled properly at some
point, but one thing that really sticks out were the "missing" spacer
washers used for the 5V 100A power supply connections. I actually found
the pair of washers used under two of the bolts that mount the PSU to the
system chassis. I ended up replacing some of the crimp-on connectors for
some of the power supply connections. I think the original system builder
must have been having a bad day, because there were a number of those
terminals that were not crimped properly. About 50% of the screws that are
supposed to hold the system together were also missing. I guess one of the
former service techs in England didn't like removing/installing screws...
After completing the cleanup/inspection, I checked out the supply voltages
(without any boards installed in the card cage and without any drives
installed) and found all the supply voltages to be within spec. I
reinstalled all the boards, and checked it out again, at which point the
system appeared to be functioning properly (according to the diagnostic
display on the rear of the system). I then reinstalled the hard drive, and
connected the monitor. I got an image on the monitor, but the picture was
very, very poor. It looks like the monitor will need to be recapped. I was
able to read it well enough to see that I got the initial monitor display
with a 'boot>' prompt. I wasn't able to boot the system though, since
there does indeed appear to be something wrong with the ST-506 interface
(I got continuous "timeout" errors for md:0). There could also be
something wrong with the hard drive (which appears to have been serviced
at some point), but since there was a tag attached to the ST-506 interface
board, it is my primary suspect.
The SGI sticker under the front panel on this system shows it as serial
number 95 (same as on a rear sticker), and all the boards installed in the
card cage (with the exception of the ST-506 interface) appear to match the
numbers on that sticker. I'm kinda wondering if someone might have used
this 1400 as a source for a spare ST-506 interface, but I'll probably
never know. The ST-506 interface thats currently installed in this system
appears to be of 3rd party origin, though maybe all of the ST-506
interface boards for the 1x00 and 2x00 systems were. The SGI sticker also
shows the backplane cut to be 9/10, but inspection showed that it actually
has a 11/12 cut. There is also another SGI sticker underneath the visible
one, and it appears this system was originally serial number 47, also with
a 11/12 backplane cut.
Does anyone have any info on these systems? There doesn't seem to be much
information left, and very little can be found on the web. I'm somewhat
tempted to try contacting SGI for a little more information, but I don't
know if there would still be anyone still there who would know anything
about this system.
If there is any interest, I'll see about putting up some pictures of this
system over the next couple of weeks.
-Toth
> This is two years late, but the terminal the original poster describes
> sounds like an IST (model 1), a CRT-based CDC product, vintage about 1978.
> There was a later edition called the IST-II, also CDC. It had two 8" drives
> and a Z-80 CPU, as well as connectivity to CDC PLATO mainframe systems,
> either by dialup modem (1200 bps) or multiplexer.
Actually, I was the original poster; a reply to me mentioned the
terminal you're describing.
> The IST is not the oldest PLATO terminal, but it is the oldest that CDC
> manufactured, I suspect. Even my PLATO IV (Magnavox, 1971) is not the
> oldest, but only the first mass-produced machine. The earliest ones date to
> about 1961 and there are probably only two or three still in existence, if
> we're lucky enough to have that many. A precursor to these would be Norman
> Crowder's Auto-Tutor, vintage about 1958, which has characteristics very
> similar to the PLATO terminals (though it is not a computer terminal, it
> operates on filmstrip media), and PLATO's mechanisms are said to have been
> influenced by this machine.
It's one of the mid-70s Magnavox plasma displays I'm looking for...
Say, are you able to connect to NovaNET with the magnavox terminal? if
so, we should meet for a game of Empire or Avatar some time (although
I'm sure you'll wipe me out).... or maybe a more civilized game of chess...
Regards,
-doug quebbeman
Hi Sellam,
>
> Does anyone here still use their old (say pre-1990) Macintosh as a
> regularpractice?
I've got a couple of 128's that act as shelf supports for some of my
Commodore equipment - so I guess you could say that they are "still in
use" :-)
Lance
----------------
Powered by telstra.com
Yes, they are 80x24. I plan to scan one of them for netposterity. :)
Will post link when I get it done.
Anyone know where the genesis of 80x24/40x24 screen dimensions (and quite
a few other devices) has its origination in? I remember my old dot matrix
epson used to be 80 columns wide, and most of the older 8 bit computers
had 40 or 80 cols by 24 or 25 rows. "But why?" he cried...
Regards,
Louis
From: "Richard Erlacher" <edick(a)idcomm.com>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: Fortran Coding Form Pads...
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2002 21:45:07 -0600
Organization: Erlacher Associates
Reply-To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Are these the ones with 24 lines of 80 columns? Several major vendors
modeled their coding forms after the U.S. military coding forms,
presumably cooked up by the Navy. I've only seen the blue ones, (blue
lines) which I presume were patterned after the USAF ones. They worked
great for coding when the work product was going to that huge room full of
mini-skirted (back then) keypunch operators. (I'd have given a week's
pay for a couple of hours hours to fish around in that room ... <sigh> ...
)
I did, BTW, code in Fortran back then.
Dick
Hello everybody !
A Micropolis 8" HDD (1222-i), I got 1 year ago and anaother Quantum 8" drive
(Q2020) are equipped with a SA1000 Interface. I'd like to test (and save)
them but I don't know wich systems support that kind of interface.
Does anybody know any systems, which support these drives ?
I found manuals for the Quantum drive but I found nothing for the Micropolis
drive on google. What is the configuration for the power connector ?
Thanks alot for any help !
Pierre
--
GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet.
http://www.gmx.net
