test-drb January 2003

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

388 participants
970 discussions

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jan 13, 19:35, Rob O'Donnell wrote: > At 09:44 14/01/2003 +0000, you wrote: > >Is that the "ARM evaluation unit" (or labelled as something similar)? I've got > >one of those *somewhere* but no docs / software for it. Think it had 4MB of > >memory which was a reasonable amount in those days. > > ARM Evaluation Kit - yep - that's the one. I do have various discs and > manuals for it, too. I used to love the "twin" editor - several open files > at one, and could cut and paste between them. Ahead of it's time... > > It's all boxed up somewhere under the stairs though. If you could dig out Disc 1 and make a copy, I'd be very grateful. I have an ARM Evaluation Kit too, with most of the manuals, but my Disc 1 is corrupt (blank track right in the middle of the assembler file). > That was about the time I was still single, working for Ferranti Computer > Systems (and I've never seen ANY of their computers lying about > anywhere... ) Hmm... I know someone who has just acquired a chunk of one -- not sure how much, but "most of it" is possibly a fair description. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

22 years, 5 months

Shark Update

by avickers＠solutionengineers.com

Right. If you don't like tales of endurance, adventure, battle and gore, turn away now. Same thing goes if you don't like happy endings... A trilogy, in four parts: (orig. (c) Douglas Adams) Part 1: I decided that rather than wait for ICPUG to deliver a disk, I'd go ahead and try to make my X1541 cable, which would allow me to use either the 1541 I just got, or the 1541-II I already had to transfer the Mator "discdiag" program over to the PET. Rather than the plain old X1541 (which probably wouldn't work with my "big" PC, I decided on the XE1541, which should work. I'm not going the whole hog & making parallel drives, etc. I can afford the time. So: 5pm, trip to Maplins to get the components. "Sorry guvnor, no diodes in stock". OK - fall back to the plain X1541 then; at least it'll work on my 486. "Oh, and no D25 plugs either". FFS! OK, plan 'B' (made up on the spot) - use a D25 socket (available) & a male-male genderbender (available). Woohoo! That and some cable & a couple of 6-pin DINs (1 spare, 'cos I usually knacker one trying to solder them). Wait 1hr for train home. I *knew* I should have taken the car... Then again, the traffic jam was horrendus, so glad I didn't. Arrived home, found most of my soldering gear, except the tin of excellent tip cleaner/tinner. Nevermind, tip's still clean enough. Apply vice to desk, start soldering 6-pin DIN. Amazingly, I didn't completely wreck it (although some of the pins needed realigning afterwards). *Surely* there's an easier way?? Copious use of multimeter to ensure no shorts. Everything checks out, even with the connector all sealed up. Huzzah! OK, I took special care wiring up the D25 socket, making sure I had the exact right pins, everything. Since the X1541 requires the GND pin connecting across ALL of the data lines (well, that's what the diagram says, I'm not sure if it's optional or not), I improvise a bar using a regular staple & lots of solder. Hook everything up. Re-check all connections with multimeter - everything AOK! All pins connected, no pins shorting out, we're hot to rock! Dig the 486 out of the dim & distant corner it's lurking in. Power up, copy Star Commander across. Plug M-M genderbender into cable, plug into parallel port. Root 1541 out of cupboard, plug in. This is where things start to go wrong.... The power & drive lights come on, but the drive light fails to go out. Uh-oh. Unplug everything, re-check wiring. No problems. Re-connect everything - same behaviour. Download X1541test.exe, load it onto 486, follow bent paperclip instructions (only with a staple). No probs, p/port is compatible. Hmmm.... Finally, I re-test the cable with the genderbender still in place: Doh! It's mirror-imaged all the connections! So, my carefully soldered cable looks just like I'd made the most elementary f**kup imaginable. Grrr. Eat dinner in moody silence. Return to soldering iron. Getting that staple bus-bar out is a real pig. I'm probably lucky I didn't fry the LPT port. Or the 1541 for that matter... Anyway, finally it all works, so I format a disk, copy an image over, and wander upstairs to try it out. Part 2: Things start to go wrong again..... First, I try the disk in an 8050: No joy. So, back downstairs, pick up the 4040, back upstairs. If you know your Commodores, you will know that the 4040 should work. Well, it didn't. Getting a bit worried now, I wander back downstairs & re-check the disk; yep, still readable. Root a 3040 out of the cupboard, add plug. Take 3040 & disk upstairs. Plug 3040 in & switch on; there's a small "snap" noise, and FLAMES! Pull mains plug out in a hurry, but the fire continues; luckily, it's only small, and I can simply blow it out: No opening the window & slinging the drive into the street - phew!. Open 3040 up, it looks like an electrolytic cap has burned out (literally, there is smoke damage above it in the case). Still, that explains why the fuse didn't blow - the power side is still quite alright. So, 3040 down, 8050 no good, 4040 no good. Despairing, I turn to the net, to discover that the 4040 *should* be OK. Worried now that I didn't write the disk in GCR format... However, I re-try the disk, this time in drive 1, and after a couple of false starts it's away & working! Woohoo! Part 3: OK, now the drive is OK and I've got the program loaded, I start up the hard-drive. 25 seconds it takes, from power on to availablilty. Try a diR; get 2 chars then nothing, computer (CBM710) has crashed. Re-boot computer with power switch, try again - same problem. Uh-oh, has the HDD died? I try the only thing I know is different, switch off 4040 & try again (same problem), then physically disconnect 4040 - problem solved. So, the 4040 has an IEEE problem (or maybe a DOS problem, I don't know which). With that little dilemma solved, I re-load the diagnostics program from the 4040, save it to HDD (that works with the 4040 plugged in, for some reason). Unplug 4040, run diags program. Huzzah! Finally, we made it! (wipes sweat from brow). Old computers, eh? You just gotta love 'em. Part 4: I set the "bad sector report" going, then had a peek at the manual because it looks like the 710 has crashed again - however, it turns out it's going to take about 10mins for the HDD to locate all its duff sectors. So that's OK, leave it 10 mins. I'm expecting it to be in bad shape, but actually there are only about 17 reallocations. I can't remember how big a Commodore sector is, but given that there is nearly 82250 blocks of total disk space, that seems like a very low number (again, bear in mind this h/w is approaching 20 years old). I tried a few "random reads" (all reported no errors), and the machine literally shook about the place as the head moved back & forth. Wow.... Try doing that with a little IDE drive! So, that's it really. It looks like the Shark is in swimmingly (sorry) good order, and it does in fact work OK with the 8050; it's just the 4040 which causes it grief. --------------------End-------------------- If you found the above boring, then please don't read it. Thankyou. And now, some questions: 1) Is it actually possible to copy files from one unit (i.e. diskdrive) to another (i.e. Shark)? The COPY command can't (it even says so in the manual), and I guess it's understandable given that most people would have had a dual drive unit, and maybe a tape deck, but little else with their PETs. 2) Does anyone know anything about the "Interpod" IEEE-->Serial thing? I have one of these, and during Part 2 above, I tried using it to (a) connect the 8050 to the X1541 cable, and (b) connect the 1541 to the PET, but neither application worked in any way shape or form. So, do I have a duff Interpod, or does it require some s/w on the computer to operate correctly (if so, I suspect it's a C64 specific thing). I believe it was used to connect a C64 to the Shark hard drive. 3) Does *anyone* make DIN plugs which don't melt if you bring a soldering iron within 5ft of them? 4) Where's my coffee? That's all folks! Now I've verified the Shark is in pretty sound condition, I'll try taking some decent photos of it, inside & out. And yes Jeffrey, I'll try to make sure there's some good hi-res pictures of it :) Although I am a bit short of extra lighting, so we'll have to see what the built-in flash is capable of, I'm afraid. -- Cheers, Ade. Be where it's at, B-Racing! http://b-racing.com

22 years, 5 months

Update: BBC Acorn

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Rob, > BBC mostly, though not in a "must have everything" sense. Just because I > spent many years making a sort of living off them. I've got one of Acorn's > original ARM development systems though (connects to the BBC) which I've > had since they were hot off the press. Is that the "ARM evaluation unit" (or labelled as something similar)? I've got one of those *somewhere* but no docs / software for it. Think it had 4MB of memory which was a reasonable amount in those days. I've got a whole pile of other BBC and related stuff, but I've generally forgotten what I have - your posting made me remember the ARM unit. Funny how people don't remember the BBC systems that well - I suppose they were generally quite expensive to have at home (compared to the Spectrums and C64 machines) and in a school environment people didn't get much of a chance to really play about with them. They're certainly quite well designed machines... 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

22 years, 5 months

Guess What Operating System...

by Andreas.Freiherr＠Vishay.com

... uses a dot as a prompt and responds to each of the commands "dir", "date", "ver" and a lot of others only with a "?"...? This question was asked at the Frankfurt Meeting 2002, an event of the "realtime special interest group" (RT-SIG) within German DECUS. I wasn't there, but just read an article in the "DECUS Bulletin". It looks like the system was presented to the audience life from a networked notebook. The report has it that after some guessing, someone suggested to try uppercase, and "VER" lead to the solution: EURO-12, running on a real, still fully functional PDP-12, connected to a terminal server, allowing the notebook to display the dialog. There is a small, but high quality picture in the bulletin, showing the blinkenlights (some of them actually illuminated) and switches, a screen that might be a GT40 or something that looks similar, and a dual DECtape drive (TU56, I guess). WOW! -- Andreas Freiherr Vishay Semiconductor GmbH, Heilbronn, Germany http://www.vishay.com

22 years, 5 months

M100 Keys Sought

by echiodo＠optonline.net

I have a mint condition M100 that I would like to sell. One problem: the original keys were replaced with custom screened keys for an OEM application. Does anyone know of a source for replacement keys? - Ed

22 years, 5 months

OT: paging MAC expert(s) --- What's a Performa

by cb＠mythtech.net

> My main complaint: Other than adding RAM or PCI cards, upgrades are >nearly impossible with that impenetrable case. It isn't too bad once you have done it a few times... and having the take apart directions from Apple makes life SOOO much easier. The trick is popping that front panel off. Of course, the motherboard just slides out the back, so unless you are upgrading the drives, it is fairly easy access for RAM and PCI cards. If you want a copy of the Apple PDF on the 6400/6500 let me know, I'll dig mine out and send it over to you. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

22 years, 5 months

A Few New Finds Today

by cb＠mythtech.net

>I will gladly keep my eyes open for a set for you. At auction this only >cost me $10 because no one there wanted Mac stuff. Thanks. >As to were I get this stuff it's mostly at thrift's and auctions (the best >are schools and tech businesses The trifts around here never have anything that great, also tend to be expensive, and one of them won't even sell CPUs, just the rest of the stuff that went with it. (I finally got official word as to what happens when someone drops off a computer.. they told me it isn't an issue, they refuse them at the door, and they now chain off the lot at night and Sundays when they are closed so people can't drop off stuff and leave). Schools around here don't seem to auction things publically (once in a while they do them privately inside the school, but for the most part, they just throw stuff out... but at least I made a contact with someone at the school board of one of the local towns and told them to cut it out, if they are chucking things, give them to me, I'll take care of removal and disposal... they liked the idea as it reduced their costs, but I haven't heard from them since... maybe they just haven't tossed anything since I contacted them, I'll have to give them another call soon). And businesses... humm... around here, there are a few Pharmacutical companies, that is about it of size... and they destroy anything being disposed of (I tried REALLY REALLY hard to get stuff from one that was doing a major upgrade... they were literally throwing out brand new 15" LCD screens because they upped everyone to 17"s before all of the 15" were given out... but their policy dictated that they must be destroyed, so they were cracking them all before chucking them in the dumpster... I have a friend that works at the place, and he said it was killing him to do it and he and I made a number of calls to see if at the very least they would donate them to a local school or something... and people wonder why drugs cost so much in the USA!!). So it sounds like I am just in a crappy part of the country for computer salvage. I'll have to start poking around for other auctions... and maybe make a trip to the local land of landfills and see if any of the yards get machines they want to have removed. But at least I have been on the right track... I'm just going to have to try harder in the future. Thanks for the tips. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

22 years, 5 months

[dfevans@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca: Re: PDP-11 stuff to get rid of]

by mrbill＠mrbill.net

More details. Bill ----- Forwarded message from David Evans <dfevans(a)bbcr.uwaterloo.ca> ----- Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 11:22:46 -0500 From: David Evans <dfevans(a)bbcr.uwaterloo.ca> To: Bill Bradford <mrbill(a)mrbill.net> Subject: Re: PDP-11 stuff to get rid of On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 10:13:58AM -0600, Bill Bradford wrote: > I can find some people to get it, if its okay for me to forward your > mail to a couple of mailing lists. > Sure. It's just way too massive, I can't devote proper power to it, and I can get the same amusement value in my 11/73 using SCSI disks on an MSCP adapter. It's located in Waterloo, in southern Ontario, Canada. I'd love to trade it for a PDP-11 nameplate for a BA123 (mine right now claims to be a VAXstation II/GPX) or maybe some more memory for my KDJ11-B, but I wouldn't say no to somebody willing to take it for the price of helping haul it down the stairs. :-) I have the rack rails and some SDI cables, too. I guess I could throw in a KDA50, since I doubt I'll ever need that given that I have the SCSI controller, but I can just as easily hang on to those boards since they're little. -- David Evans (NeXTMail/MIME OK) dfevans(a)bbcr.uwaterloo.ca Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/ University of Waterloo "Default is the value selected by the composer Ontario, Canada overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual ----- End forwarded message ----- -- bill bradford mrbill(a)mrbill.net austin, texas

22 years, 5 months

[dfevans@bbcr.uwaterloo.ca: PDP-11 stuff to get rid of]

by mrbill＠mrbill.net

Contact David directly if interested. ----- Forwarded message from David Evans <dfevans(a)bbcr.uwaterloo.ca> ----- Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 10:06:15 -0500 From: David Evans <dfevans(a)bbcr.uwaterloo.ca> To: mrbill(a)pdp11.org Subject: PDP-11 stuff to get rid of You want to come and haul my RA80 away? :-) -- David Evans (NeXTMail/MIME OK) dfevans(a)bbcr.uwaterloo.ca Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/ University of Waterloo "Default is the value selected by the composer Ontario, Canada overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual ----- End forwarded message ----- -- bill bradford mrbill(a)mrbill.net austin, texas

22 years, 5 months

Richard Crandall just cancelled a payment to you

by rick＠jelcoventures.com

Richard Crandall cancelled the following payment to you: Amount: $29.95 Payments can only be cancelled if the recipient fails to sign up. To claim all future payments, sign up for PayPal today! It's fast, free and secure. PayPal lets you instantly and securely send money by email. We hope you'll join PayPal soon! Note: If you have already signed up for PayPal, you need to either add this email address to your PayPal account by going to the "Profile" subtab of the "My Account" tab or you need to confirm this email address so additional payments will not be cancelled. "Best of the Web" - Forbes "Using the service is actually safer than a check or money order." - Wall Street Journal "PayPal can play a major role in your life. You can use it to pay for stuff at auction sites, settle dinner debts with friends or nudge your cousin to repay that $50 he borrowed at the family reunion." - Time ---------------------------------------------------------------- PROTECT YOUR PASSWORD NEVER give your password to anyone and ONLY log in at https://www.paypal.com/. Protect yourself against fraudulent websites by checking the URL/Address bar every time you log in. ----------------------------------------------------------------

22 years, 5 months

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test-drb January 2003