test-drb January 2003

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

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Found a NCR system 3400 BoatAnchor

by WiIdcats＠aol.com

did you ever sell this boat anchor? i have one i want to sell also. -Johnny

21 years, 11 months

Got the second batch of -11 equipment

by mrbill＠mrbill.net

Unfortunately, the actual "machine" (the guy didnt know that the MINC-11 was a system as well) is just an 11/23 with some RL01s. Pictures: http://www.pdp11.org/minc/01-18-03/ I have no idea if the RL01 disk packs are any good, but I've got one DEC-labled RT-11 v4.0, and one hand-labeled RT-11 v4.0C "patched to level F". The top RL01 is missing the hinged cover. Anybody want two RL02s (by the way, how the hell do I get the top covers open? The "switch" on the top wont budge), and two RL01s? Pickup in Austin, Texas.. Not a bad haul for a total of $30, even if I do just keep the 11/23 and the MINC-11 and the racks. Bill -- bill bradford mrbill(a)mrbill.net austin, texas

21 years, 11 months

VXT X terminal question [VR219 blues]

by Fred.van.Kempen＠microwalt.nl

I wrote: > Although I have both the M38 and M76 set up, I cant get the video > part to work - tube (that is on a VXT2000 right now) doesn't seem > to sync on either model. The M38 is standard, the M76 is the SPX > model. Anyone have a clue? Hmm. OK... I used the monitor (VR320) that was connected to my VXT2000, and that seems to be a GPX tube. I dragged a (heavy !) VR219-D3 monitor out of storage, and connected that. No go, either, _and_ it wont sync either. Looks like that one is also GPX- its the old model, with the "sync rate" select switch at the rear. So, I'll have to find a VR219-DA or somesuch, first.. --fred

21 years, 11 months

"Piracy" (was: Unauthorized copying

by cb＠mythtech.net

>It is commonly believed that the very first time that unauthorized copying >of software was called "PIRACY" was the open letter by Bill Gates. > >Does anybody have an earlier referrent? When was that letter? I remember using the term back when I traded software with friends on the Apple II. So probably early 80's. I'm not sure where I heard it first, but I suspect from one of the people I used to trade with (who probably got it from a BBS or elsewhere). I seem to even recall a duplication program that I used to use that was quite good at getting around copy protection, was called something like "The Pirates Friend". I'd have to go thru old software floppies to locate it and confirm the name, but I do think it used pirate in the name. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

21 years, 11 months

Manuals becoming available via web (M4, Pick) and general pick info

by jwest＠imail.kwcorp.com

I had posted a while back about the manuals for M4 and Pick that I had just come across in the basement. Bruce Ray has agreed to scan them and make them available to people. Now that I'm packing them up to be sent to him, thought I'd post a more clear list as to what I have... M4 Data 1/2 tape drive diagnostics quick reference M4 Data 1/2 tape drive optional SCSI controller jumper/switch reference M4 Data 1/2 tape drive 9900 series field service manual Microdata Reality Assembly Language Reference Manual: This is the original definitive work, written by Dick and Chandru. Often called "The Rainbow Book" because of the color scheme on the front. A LOT of the nuances of the Pick Assembly environment were never really documented in later manuals from other vendors. Many of these nuances were absolutely essential to even write a simple program. The other vendors all stole the basic text of this book and reworked it. However, most of them left out many things that are critical, and most of those things ARE in this manual. I recall that most Pick Assembler programmers kept two books on their shelf. The assembly manual for whatever vendor they were using, AND this one. The progression of machines microdata put out was the Reality, Reality Royale, Sequel, Series 18, and Spirit (all that I recall). All of this hardware was of their own design (but I think they bought the M1600 cpu for reality from elsewhere). Ultimate Computer Systems Pick Assembler Manual: Ultimate was one of the few vendors who sold both firmware implementations and software implementations of Pick (referring to the translation between missionary and native instruction sets), so their assembler manual is quite interesting as it points out of lot of the differences between the two types of implementation. They called their pick operating system "Ultimate O/S". Their manual is probably the most complete for later implementations, because they still listed out process control block formats and such. The original rainbow book from micro data did this, but in later generations those formats changed very much - so this book's pcb format lists were about the only documentation of later generation (from other vendors too) internal structures. Ultimate released pick on "standard" hardware rather than building their own. I know I sold many systems based on PDP-11/03's, and Honeywell DPS-6's. I think I recall them releasing systems on Honeywell Bull too, a rebadged RS/6000 if memory serves. Oh yeah, and I remember doing the very first install of Ultimates version of Pick/370... Pick running on an IBM 4341, using two Series 1's as front end processors for terminal I/O... very cute system. It ran on top of VM, so you could literally have multiple Pick systems on the one machine. Ultimate Computer Systems Assembly Programming Notes: This is a 22 page handout... Ultimate gave it out as a "quick start" thing for pick programmers who were familiar with other vendors implementations but not ultimates. It also clarified a few things that weren't particularly clear in the original rainbow book. Alpha Microsystems Pick Open Architecture v1.3 Assembler Manual: Alpha Microsystems had a lot of different computer systems. I seem to recall they were more popular originally for an OS called AMOS, which was definitely not pick. I think they built their own computers originally, but I know most of the pick systems they came out with were 386/486 type machines, and they were not propietary, just off the shelf PC's. Well, except for the magical firmware board that kept you from running their pick version on just any old PC. They sold Pick R83, and Pick Open Architecture too. I can't recall what the big deal was about Open Architecture. I seem to recall it had something to do with being able to run in true protected mode with regards to the x86 chip. Their assembler manual, while being a bit skimpy, did happen to have a few nice tidbits of info in it that weren't obvious in other vendors manuals. That's the thing about Pick assembler - reading one manual you feel like something is left out, but by reading all the manuals available from all the different vendors, most of it came together. The rest was trial and error and digging through the OS source code (if you had it). General Automation 3.8 Assembly Changes: This is a set of notes, detailing for assembly programmers what they had to change in their software to make stuff written for prior than 3.8 release to run on 3.8 release. It has some particularly good info in it that is specific to GA implementations. General Automation 3.8 Assembler Manual: This is, somewhat unfortunately, a work in progress. Most of the Pick vendors/licensees restricted the use of the assembler to internal use only. There were two reasons for this - one, they considered even knowing the assembler a trade secret. Each vendor came out with their own modifications that they thought made their version of pick "better" than others, and they didn't want people knowing anything more than necessary about how they did it. The other reason was, the pick assembler was a totally unprotected programming environment. A small bug in your program would frequently destroy the entire system - it was a very "fragile" environment. Your code had to be very well behaved, and it had to follow strict guidelines for interfacing with other routines and the O/S itself. Of course, those guidelines weren't really documented anywhere at all, not even in the rainbow book. Nowhere did you generally find out that you couldn't use R12 when calling a particular system subroutine cause it used the contents as scratch, there was no memory or process protection, etc. This manual is somewhat odd in that GA finally "saw the light" that it was good to let 3rd party people enhance the OS with their own add-on software, for GA's own sake. So they took the Pick on the PC assembler manual and loaded it into a word processor and started to make all the changes necessary to make a new, fully documented assembler manual for GA's version of pick. This manual was printed in the middle of that effort. As a result, parts of it are very GA specific, but most of it is just a verbatim copy of the Pick on the PC manual (which I have somewhere, but haven't come across it yet). So, it's interesting as a "work in progress". GA's pick line was all software implementations, built around the MC68000. I remember models 1500, 2500, 3500, 5500, 7820, 8830, 2820, 3820, 1700, 1750. I'm sure I'm missing some. This was the vendor I had the most contact with, I still have a 1750 and a 2820 in my basement I need to get up and running. OMTI controller in them both :) I SEEM to recall a pertec to scsi interface in one, not sure. There is one manual I used to have but no longer do, so I'll throw up a hail-mary and see if anyone has it - I curse the day I lost it. It was the General Automation Firmware Executive manual, and documented the roms on the mainboard. It wasn't specific to pick, you could load programs in motorola S-record format from tape, etc. Any one have this perchance? Regards, Jay West --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]

21 years, 11 months

(no subject)

by vcf＠siconic.com

So the whores that are beholden to corporate interest...er, I mean the United States Congress has decided that copyrights in the US should be extended another 20 years beyond the limits they were set at, and those mental miscreants that put an ex-Coke junkie in the White House...er, I mean the US Supreme Court has upheld these extensions, saying it is Congress' duty to determine copyright lengths. So this means that, for instance, the software for Apple ][, Commodore 64, Atari 800, and TRS-80 (to name but a few platforms) will not be public domain until something like 2075, when computers as we know them today will not even exist. This makes so much sense that I just had an aneurysm. -- 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 *

21 years, 11 months

DOS 1.0

by bones＠northrock.bm

I do indeed remember those manuals - those sturdy binders which let you know these systems meant business. There were never enough of the binders available in the IBM PC dealership I worked in. And lest we forget: the infamous "This page intentionally left blank" page. What's up with that?? I do also memember Wordstar and it's arcane command sequences. Those commands persisted though, through a number of ordinary text editors for programmers & such. Speaking of infantile and utterly bizarre, does anyone remember that abysmal IBM attempt at a word processor, the name of which escapes me at the moment. I think it was vaguely based on their mainframe product, typical of IBM at the time. It's command set was last seen wandering about in their "e" editor in PC DOS 6.xx. It's an amazingly powerful editor in a lot of ways, loads of options and features if you can figure them out. But I'll be danged if I can get the thing to insert a new line... Cheers, Dennis

21 years, 11 months

Update: BBC Acorn

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jan 19, 11:12, Jules Richardson wrote: > > Well, someone else has offered to copy Disc 1 for me. I've also found a > > few other people who have ARM Evaluation Systems, so once I get a good Disc > > 1, I'll put the set of six on my website (and if anyone from any of the > > Beeb sites wants to make a copy, that's fine by me). Any suggestions as to > > format to use for the images? > > I expect you know far more about this than I do! "Pete's own undocumented image > format" is probably not a good idea :-) No, probably not :-) The trick with Acorn files is preserving the load and execute addresses. A spark archive will do that, but as far as I know, there's no spark dearchiver for a Beeb. It would be easy on an Archimedes or a RISC PC, but not everyone will have one of those -- and even if they did, they might not have a way to attach a 5.25" drive to it. I'm open to suggestions... -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 11 months

ADMIN: What if ClassicCmp were a blog?

by Pietje-Puk＠gmx.net

>Message: 28 >Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 23:13:38 -0600 >From: Jeffrey Sharp <jss(a)subatomix.com> >To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org >Subject: Re: ADMIN: What if ClassicCmp were a blog? >Reply-To: cctech(a)classiccmp.org > > >> You can't attach eMails to the list can you? > >Yes. If a message is accepted for deliver, it is delivered with only the >standard Mailman header modifications. No other filtering takes place. Of >course, we could do this now by piping messages through a filter before they >hit the Mailman posting script. Easy. > I am reading the list in digest-format. HTML and attachments are anoying in that list-format, therefore I would very much apreaciate a filter for HTML-parts of multi-part mails and attachments to be applied to a message before it is added to the digest. >What if ClassicCmp were a blog? If I had to choose between Web-access and mail-access, I would take the mail variant, as it is now. I like it. Thank you for providing the list! Frank Arnold

21 years, 11 months

Still more adventures in PDP-8/L repair

by charlesmorris＠direcway.com

I gave up (for the moment) trying to find the problem with the memory on my 8/L. It never returns anything but all-0's to the MB, but all the control pulses and timing are correct. To make matters worse, while scoping the output of the bit 5 sense amp I discovered it would change every time when I changed bit 0 of the switch register and hit DEP! Meanwhile I decided to go after another problem (when you hit START at 0000 it runs up to 0100 and "hangs" with the BREAK and RUN lights on.) If it's executing 0000's (AND instructions) it should just keep running. The only way to wake it back up is to flip the SING STEP switch (which is NOT how it's supposed to work; LOAD, EXAM, etc. should also clear the RUN flip flop). And nothing was requesting a data break, either! So after some scoping and extender card work, I found the backplane wire from the BRK SYNC flip flop was broken in two. This made for a continuous break request. I fixed it, now it starts and stops like it's supposed to,... And then I looked closely at the backplane and saw three more broken wires! All of them are crossing the gap between the AB row of sockets and the CD row. Guess 33 years of flexing and vibration did them in. They are buried too deep to be mouse bites (besides, the nest was in the back on the module side). Unfortunately I ran out of wirewrap wire and the wife rang the dinner bell. We'll see what ELSE is screwed up next week! -Charles

21 years, 11 months

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test-drb January 2003