>D'Oh! I thought the Mac TV was a stripped-down Mac with AV in and AV out, in
>fact I recall seeing something on a website somewhere about a prototype Mac
>similar to what I have described. It was all-black with a plastic front
>panel and a metal top cover, not too unlike a Grundig GDS100 "SkyDigibox"
>digital satellite receiver. IIRC the machine was a Mac with custom boot
>ROMs, so it wouldn't run Mac OS. IIRC the hardware was near totally custom,
>too so swapping out bootROMs was not really an option. Oh, and the ROMs were
>on SIMMs. Again, IIRC...
Sounds like you are describing the Apple Set Top Box. A wonderfully
useless peice of hardware.
This box does in/out as it is a sort of cable TV tuner/interactive TV
device. But, as far as I know, there are no functional units in
existance. I think this is due mostly to the fact that they needed to be
connected to a special "server" of sorts to do anything. Mine powers up,
and does nothing from there (I can get a quick pop of audio on occasion,
but nothing more). I have heard rumor that some have gotten a blue screen
to be displayed, but really every one that I know about does the same as
mine... powers on and sits doing nothing.
The intent of them was to make an interactive TV unit for schools and
other groups. They never made it past the testing stage, and it would
seem that although a good number of the boxes made it into the public,
the server unit to make them do anything did not.
And these boxes I would think are also PAL compatible, at least mine has
SCART connectors on the back. They are covered by Do Not Remove stickers,
but the connectors appear to be there anyway.
I think Tom Owad had some info on them onhis AppleFritter site. If anyone
knows how to get one to do something, I'd be interested to hear... and if
anyone wants one, for a while there was someone selling them on eBay,
opening bid of $9.99, and I think most were closing with no bids. (I got
mine at a garage sale for $5... some poor kid went off to college, and
his mother was selling off everything he had, tons of old toys, baseball
cards, and odd computer parts. I'm sure he was NOT happy when he came
home for break!)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
---------------------Original message-------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 19:25:57 -0600 (CST)
From: Doc Shipley <doc(a)mdrconsult.com>
To: Classic Computers Mailing List <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Subject: Re: (no subject)
Reply-To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Sellam,
Sometimes you just need to shut the fuck up.
I generally just delete and move on, but it gets to me. This mailing
list is not your personal relief valve. The fact that you have a
keyboard really *doesn't* entitle you to insult at will.
Grow up, man!
Doc
---------------------------------------------------------------
Whoa! What'd he say? Ya shoulda copied the offensive remarks.
mike
--------------------Original message------------------
From: ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell)
Subject: Re: About Electronics Questions
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 21:36:13 +0000 (GMT)
Reply-To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
<snip (of some wonderful sarcasm!>
e.g.:
Cleaning-plastic(a)classiccmp.org
Love it!
More seriously, one of the great things about classiccmp is that it _is_
one list, and all sorts of loosely-related discussions go on here. I've
learnt a lot from threads about machines that I am not particularly
interested in...
-tony
-------------------------------------
Couldn't agree more!
I'm on the digest list, and download several times a day to read my
email off-line. If I have time, I read the entire digest and have indeed
learned a lot from posts I wouldn't normally be interested in and often
skip over when I don't have time.
Let's not get too fussy about what's OT and what's not. Actually,
except for the recent digression about muscle cars, it's been pretty
civilized lately; thanks guys (and gals, although the ladies have
never been a problem :)
And while I'm at it, I'd like to sincerely thank Tony for all the useful
tips and information he's given us; as he mentioned, he often takes
considerable time to look things up, and we should all show our
appreciation. Also to Don Maslin for his generous help with
obscure disks, Grumpy Old Fred for a lot of his tips, and everyone
else who's taken a little extra time and made an extra effort to
help us all out in some way. Thanks, guys (and gals)!
But if there's a way to strip the HTML from the double-format messages,
that'd be a good thing.
mike
On Jan 15, 22:40, Rob O'Donnell wrote:
> At 17:05 16/01/2003 +0000, you wrote:
> > > > ARM Evaluation Kit
> >
> >I just checked - mine's S/N 0184 according to the label where the cable
comes
> >out. If that started at 0 I guess they made a few...
>
> Hmm. That sounds like the PSU serial number. Mine is 0119. I have
another
> white
> sticker on the underside o the box itself, full number
> 25-anc13-1000038. (Which
> matches the format of the computer serial numbers.)
I finally remembered to check mine. It's 23-ANC13-1000034. All Acorn
retail product serial numbers of the era are of that form. The 25 tells
where it was made, ANC13 is the product code, the rest is a serial number,
which always starts at 1000000 for production systems or factory
prototypes. So my Archimedes 310 is 27-AKB10-1000002, my 440 is
27-AKB20-1000614, and my A3000 is 27-AKB01-1000028.
A in ANC says it's Acorn hardware (S for Acornsoft), N for the BBC Micro
series of machines (M for Master, D for Compact, K for Archimedes, E for
Econet, etc), C says it's a processor peripheral (A for model A, B for
Model B, F for peripheral, etc), 13 is a model code.
The third letter and the first digit change for variations, so a Model B is
ANB02, with disk interface factory fitted ANB05 (IIRC), Master 128 is
AMB15, and so on. A Domesday system or "BBC AIV System" (a Master 128 plus
interfaces, trackerball, LV player and disks) is AVC11.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
I've just run over probably 100-200lbs (45-90kg) of Motorola VME cards...
>from 68010 processor cards, to memory, and I/O cards. Now, there's not
chance I would want to hold on to these, so I'm wondering if anyone else
is interested in some of the cards. I can't guarantee anything now, just
tell me if you're interested or not. I'll try to get some cards to
whoever is interested.
I haven't looked at the cards much yet, so I don't exactly know what's
there for I/O and memory cards. There might also be a power supply or two
and maybe an intact backplane bus card (the few I saw were snapped in
half).
Pat
--
Purdue Universtiy ITAP/RCS
Information Technology at Purdue
Research Computing and Storage
http://www-rcd.cc.purdue.edu
I certainly hope that classiccmp does NOT go the direction
of a browser based forum... I don't know about others, but
I don't like having to use browsers to read newsgroups. I
prefer reading and responding to individual messages through
mail. Also, I'm not always at a machine at which I can run
a browser... Finally, even at some of them which do, the
software can't handle the overhead of browser pages and the
system freezes...
Please keep it as it is... (just my $.02)
Megan
I believe Sellam was cursing at a Maxtor drive a couple months back, and
now I know why.
The 60GB ATA/133 DiamondStar in my Power Mac 7300 (connected through a Sonnet
Tempo Trio) this evening made several hiccup-like noises and the computer
froze up. On the next power cycle, it didn't spin up and just sat there and
clicked. I suspected stiction (well, I prayed it was stiction) and tried
reorienting it and a few gentle taps. On the next power cycle, it didn't even
click anymore and made occasional soft grinding noises, and now it doesn't
even do that.
So, I'm typing this on my Power Book 1400, which I guess will be my desktop
system for the time being.
Any suggestions for ways to get it to spin up, one last time? Anyone know
what happened? I thought it had been a power problem because it made some
sounds like this a few weeks ago and replacing the power cable did seem to
cure it, but I'm mystified as to why it would die so fast. The drive was not
especially hot and it has plenty of ventilation.
I guarantee you my next drive will not be a Maxtor.
Sorry for the OT -- just looking for any desperation suggestions before I
make a new hard drive platter wall clock.
--
----------------------------- personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --
Cameron Kaiser, Point Loma Nazarene University * ckaiser(a)stockholm.ptloma.edu
-- Son, God's going to use you. Until He does, take this pill. -- Mark Lowry --
On Jan 16, 18:31, Tim Myers wrote:
> That looks a lot like the old Prestel Viewdata terminal I used to have.
> 1200/75 baud modem, I believe it was badged by Royal Bank Of Scotland
> for their Prestel banking service.
It's the father of that terminal. The BoS terminal is a badged successor
and is quite a lot smaller, about the size of a Sonclair Spectrum, and blue
in colour. BTW, I expect you mean Bank of Scotland, not Royal Bank.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
> > ARM Evaluation Kit - yep - that's the one. I do have various discs and
> I can copy the six disks for you, but as I mentioned in previous post, my
> Disc 1 has a corrupt track.
is there some sort of ftp site or something for BBC stuff that disk images
could go on? It'd be nice if they were archived somewhere so they (hopefully)
won't get lost!
how big is a track? trying every possible permutation of bytes you'll get a
working disk eventually ;-)
> Most of the Acorn add-ons came in the same housing. All the Second
> Processors (6502, Z80, 32016) and the Universal Second Processor box (so
> you could use Master Series upgrades like a Turbo, Master 512 80186 CoPro,
> or the Scientific), Teletext Adaptor, Prestel Adaptor, IEEE Interface, and
> probably others.
hmm, the Z80 and IEEE units both ring bells - could have been either one of
those (or both).
I'm feeling a little motivated to wade through all my junk and see what I have
got now, plus have a look at the serial number of the ARM box...
> :-) In my earlier reply, I was thinking of rather older Ferranti
> computers. At least a decade older, maybe two...
ha ha - thought you probably were. I don't know much about the history of
Ferranti unfortunately.
cheers
Jules
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
>from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com
Does that fact that I'm in Australia rule me out?
I could probably do with a couple of interesting 8-bit ISA cards for an Amstrad PC-20 I want to mod. Do you, in fact, does anyone have one of those old hard-drive-on-a-card things that still works?
And possibly a sound card might be interesting for the second slot. Again, something big would be cool, as the cards stick out of the case on the PC-20. LAPC-1?
Or maybe a big RAM expansion card. I used to have an old 1MB Expanded Memory RAM card for my first XT. Was there ever a processor upgrade card for 8-bit ISA?
TIA, Chris J.
> Norm wrote:
>
> I have a bunch of, I believe, XT parts available. For example ISA
> hard disk
> controllers, serial port and parallel port boards and cables
> available for
> trade. Drop me an email it you are looking for something specific.
