test-drb October 2003

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

252 participants
500 discussions

by vax＠onthenet.com.au

Mike, I just found you message about having the ciruit diagrams for a Disk Smith System 80. I found one of these the other day in a recyling center and always had a soft spot for them as it was first computer. The one I found works, but has a problem in the video circuit. It is repairable, but would be a lot easier if I had schematics to work from (I collect video games from the same era as well so my skills in repairing these would help me a great deal :) If you have a scan or even a photocopy of this manual, I would glady purchase it off you. Cheers, Geoff

20 years, 9 months

Mac SE/30 revival

by liste＠artware.qc.ca

I was driving into town when I spoted the aforementioned computer in some phule's garbage. I stopped and pulled it out. However, when I turn it on, the screen comes up 4 grey scan lines, then alternating 8 black scan lines and 8 grey scan lines. A friend mentioned that this is normal boot config, that it should then proceed to the happy mac icon and so on. He asked if the ROM was still in it. I can't get the box open though : I don't have the extra special long torx driver to get at the 2 top screws. And the hex extention bits I have don't fit into the hole. Anyone have a clue about how to revive this? I'd love to get netbsd running on it. Or is it hopeless? -Philip

20 years, 9 months

IBM System/23 ROM help needed

by ian_primus＠yahoo.com

This is yet another incomplete project that I am trying to finish... I have an IBM System/23 Datamaster, and I am attempting to get it to work. When turned on, it displays a series of numbers on the screen, and stops at "FD". Of the numbers printed, "0B" is inverted and flashing. I found a listing of the error codes in google's cache of classiccmp.org (part of the archive seems to be down). http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:83dbK69EHG8J:www.classiccmp.org/ mail-archive/classiccmp/1997-07/0566.html+IBM+System/ 23+error+site:www.classiccmp.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 According to this, the error code "0B" indicates that one of the ROM chips on the logic board has failed. The chip is soldered to the board, but replacing it with a socket and an EPROM shouldn't be a problem, but I don't know anything about these chips, or if they have an EPROM equivalent. I have repaired my EPROM programmer, so I now have the ability to burn my own EPROM chips. The problem I face now is that I need the data for the new chip. Does anyone have a ROM image of this chip that they could send me? Also, does anyone know the pinouts of these ROM chips on the System/23 board? (or as IBM calls them, ROS modules, for Read Only Storage). Thanks! Ian Primus ian_primus(a)yahoo.com

20 years, 9 months

The UNIBUS FAQ is wrong about grant cards, isn't it?

by gunther＠aurora.regenstrief.org

Hi, the UNIBUS FAQ sais that the grant cards G727A is a dual-height card with NPG grant. But from the cards I have I see the G727A is a single height card with only bus grant, not NPG, and it is a knucklebuster. The one that's dual-height and has handles is the G7273. I also have a 3rd party vendor dual height bus+NPG grant card. I suppose it shouldn't be too hard to make grant cards yourself. I think I have my VAX11/780 UNIBUS under control now. I threw out all cards except for the UDA50 pair, put in a new terminator and filled all with appropriate grant cards. Now the UDA50 initializes fine and I get the 8/9 blink fine the port-A light goes on on the RA90. Still the VAX doesn't seem to get anywhere and after a while the lights go off. May be I'm too impatient and should just wait long enough? -Gunther

20 years, 9 months

Naming schemes (was upcoming classiccmp wierdness)

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

> > I'd be interested to find out what network names/nicknames some other > > classiccmpers have given their machines. Mine are an assortment of groups. The SGIs, which are the largest group that are networked, are mindy (my original Indy), mork (another Indy), mearth (another!), orson (Origin 2000), volgar and exidor (O2s), but the Indigos mostly still have the names they were given by previous owners (dopey, ziggi, mrtoad, ...). My laptop is called dancer because it moves about; the windows PC is called floorbox because it's just a box that sits on the floor. The NeXT slab is predicably called monolith (blame the previous owner). I have a few Acorn machines named after districts around Newcastle (which is where a couple of them came from), and a few other machines (PDP-11s, microVAXen, a couple of Suns, a Mac, etc) named by their previous owners. The network printers are star (a Star Laserprinter8), twinkle (big HP colour deskjet), and coruscor (made up word, an HP LJ5M PostScript printer). Most of the rest are functional names (the GatorBox is gator, the LANmodem is lanmodem, and the ATM switches and bridges are named after their colours: orange (ATM-Ethernet), red (ATM-FDDI), purple (route server), magenta (ATM switch)). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 9 months

Naming schemes (was upcoming classiccmp wierdness)

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Oct 18, 18:47, Jochen Kunz wrote: > On 2003.10.18 06:40 Pete Turnbull wrote: > > > Mine are an assortment of groups. > My "primary" names are James, MissSophie, SirTobie, MrWinterbottom and > AdmVonSchneider. If you don't know these names, well, I can't explain > the origin. You have to see the film. ;-) "Dinner For One". I've not see it for years, though. It should be "Toby" though, not "Tobie" :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 9 months

OT, but REALLY funny -- Killer Helium Blimps!

by kyrrin＠bluefeathertech.com

I know this is off-topic, but we all could use a good laugh. NOTE: Remove all furry, feathered, or scaly critters from your lap, shoulders, or wherever, and put down all spillable and snortable substances, BEFORE you read this! http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=160851 Other than that, enjoy! ;-) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com ARS KC7GR (Formerly WD6EOS) since 12-77 -- kyrrin(a)bluefeathertech.com "Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati" (Red Green, aka Steve Smith)

20 years, 9 months

PDP-11/34A's, 11/05, PDP-8/I backplane for sale in Northern VA

by wrljet＠yahoo.com

Thanks for all the replies to my post. All the PDP-11 stuff has been paid for, picked up, and has gone to a good home. The PDP-8/I backplane is most likely spoken for. Bill

20 years, 9 months

list status

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Well, I had a very bad time with mailman and sendmail today. I was assuming the problem was with sendmail. After screwing around with it all day, I'm not so sure the problem is sendmail. I found the following items: 1) A LOT of people on the list have very slow mailservers. This is bad in conjuction with the way mailman queues messages. 2) All the junk email coming into the list gets a "your post awaits moderator approval" return email, and most of those domains don't exist, or have servers that are extremely bogged down, also causing a problem with the way mailman queues messages. 3) Mailman queues messages in very large groups. A single post to the list generates 4 emails, each one with around 150 recipients. When sendmail processes one of these single messages, as it sends to one of the recipients and encounters a VERY slow mail server, everyone else on the recipient list just sits and waits. The delays are... to me... well... horrid. 4) When I set mailman to send one email per recipient, sendmail still only had one runner processing the queue. Of course, the same problem exists them as #3. Everything I tried seemed to make it the same or worse. I tried starting a separate localhost only daemon of sendmail which doesn't do DNS lookups, setting the outbound sendmail daemon for persistant queueing, put in a caching only nameserver on the mailserver, set mailman to send one recipient per message, etc. before running out of time to work on this. I suspect that this all started with the upgraded mailman, this version apparently has it's own message queueing and is very different from previous versions. I've kinda hit the point of not being able to see the forest for the trees, so if someone is up on mailman and sendmail I'd appreciate some insight. If you have some thoughts (besides "dude, switch to using XXXXX for your MTA"), please email me directly so I get the email quickly. In response to the people who have suggested replacing sendmail... I would like to call attention to what the website for mailman says. Bear in mind, the mailman camp is somewhat anti-sendmail, instead favoring qmail, exim, and postfix. However, note what THEY say about sendmail... "Moreover, with appropriate work, sendmail can be configured to be the fastest and highest-volume general-purpose MTA on the planet." This is in the section where they compare sendmail to exim, qmail, and postfix. So I'm not the only one who believes in sendmail. I put things back the way they originally were. I'll ponder it over the weekend. Regards, Jay West jwest(a)classiccmp.org --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]

20 years, 9 months

TinyC, port to HP

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

Hi Bob The boot loader for my Nicolet is similar in that it over writes itself. It fits into about 15 words so it is quite easy to toggle in. They even took advantage of the 'don't care' fields in some instructions to take advantage of minimizing switch changes. Even the memory location is chosen because it is has bits that fit well in adjacent instructions. It is quite remarkable that they can squeeze so much into so few instructions. I have written a boot loader that I use to transfer data to and from an H89 ( Heathkit ) computer that takes about 52 bytes. Most is com port initializing. It was nice when the hardware was jumper configured. The loader would be much smaller. The loader is such that I can send it by email and someone can bring a H89 up from scratch. They just need a couple of blank 10 sectored disks and my code. Later Dwight >From: "Bob Shannon" <bshannon(a)tiac.net> > >Oh no, many HP boot loaders use self modifying code. > >Take a look at the source for the H 264X terminal boot rom, it alters an >instruction by >using it as the target for an increment-and-skip-on-zero instuction. HP >took great pains >to squeeze some boot loaders into only 64 words. As a result you have >to reload these >loaders from ROM each time they run. > >ben franchuk wrote: > >> Tony Duell wrote: >> >>>>> C requires a stack pointer and a index register.Offhand I don't >>>>> think your hardware supports that. >>>> >>>> >>>> Certain HP2xxx do have index registers (the ones with the EIG >>>> instructions >>>> IIRC), but guess how FORTRAN compilers handle indexed array accesses >>> >>> >>> >>> Err, self-modifying code? That was the traditional way to do this >>> sort of thing. >> >> >> I think the PC is noted more more self-modifying code than the old >> machines. The only real self modifying code (on your typical early >> machine) is the fact the return address is placed in the first word >> of subroutine code. >> >>> -tony >>> >> >> >> >> >> > > >

20 years, 9 months

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test-drb October 2003