I've been corresponding with Bob Lilley, an LGP-30 programmer (no, not
still), who so kindly made me an electronic copy, and allowed me to post
it. It's available at:
http://wps.com/projects/LGP-21/Bob-Lilley/index.html
Sorry, it's in the form of three large PDFs.
I mailed this off to Phil Spanner in reply to his post, and just
realized I forgot the CC: I meant to give to the list. :) So
here goes:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 11:10:21 -0800 (PST)
From: O. Sharp <ohh(a)drizzle.com>
To: Phil Spanner <pspan(a)amerytel.net>
Subject: Re: DEC Equipment
Hi! Thanks for your posting to the ClassicComp mailing-list:
> A company that has been in the depot repair business of DEC equipment,
> for the last 20 years, is about to shut down their repair lines for the
> DEC equipment. They obviously have prints, diags and test beds that
> they are going to be selling.
I'm sorry to hear they're going out of business. My condolences.
[Late note: on re-reading this, I just realized it looks like
only the DEC repair line is shutting down, rather than the whole
company. <slaps forehead> Aiya! Silly me.]
I have kind of an unusual question. If this company, which has been
repairing DEC computers, is going out of business, it may mean that
their customers, having one less service option available, might soon
consider retiring whatever DEC machines they're presently using. I'm
currently looking for a PDP-12, and would hate to see one end up
being scrapped in the belief it was no longer useful. I don't doubt
that other DEC machines and other ClassicComp posters could make
useful connections as well.
Soooo... my question would be: Does the company have any idea what
their former customers are considering doing with their equipment,
and if any _are_ considering selling or scrapping - most particularly
the older DEC models, which are becoming of historic value - could
those customers somehow be made aware of the ClassicComp community's
interest in older equipment before they take irreversible steps?
I realize that may not be the sort of question you were expecting. :)
Nonetheless I'd appreciate it if you could consider it, and see if
there might be some sort of appropriate way to address it.
...On a much simpler note, if you have anything PDP-12 or DECTape-related
hanging around the warehouse, I wouldn't mind the chance to put in an
offer. :) :)
Thanks very much for your time, and for making yourself known to us!
It's appreciated!
-O.-
On 11/20/2003 01:19 AM -0600, cctech-request(a)classiccmp.org wrote:
>Date: 19 Nov 2003 16:00:12 -0800
>From: Tom Jennings <tomj(a)wps.com>
>Subject: Re: Dec Rainbow prehistory
>
>On Tue, 2003-11-18 at 22:29, Dave Mitton wrote:
>
>.<snip>..
>Yeah, they were stupid too. I've got two words for the IBM PC ROM code:
>ug lee. The biggest steamroller wins.
Well it wasn't obvious at first where we were going. I was not involved
with the design of the Rainbow, but I was involved with the New England
Computer Society, a some what professional hobbyist group. Many of us
thought the original IBM PC was not a serious product. Remember it wasn't
until the XT that it got a hard drive.
> > I remember the MHFU watchdog and the Vertical Retrace Interupt. The
> DECnet
> > kernel basically ran as an interrupt driven background TSR. On the IBM PC
> > we easily shelled off the 1C clock tick, but on the Rainbow, we had to
> > build "clever" reentrancy shells around several interrupts to avoid some
> > wierd stack overflow or reentrancy into the video BIOS.
>
>Ahh... now I get it. I wasn't told even this much back then!!
We weren't told. I/we had to figure it out. It became quickly apparent
there was a problem, and only by debugging around the system did we figure
out what to do.
The VR routine re-enabled interrupts and continued doing video memory things.
If you interrupted it, for say comm I/O, and then re-enabled interrupts
yourself, and you did not return to it by the next VR interrupt, it would
corrupt itself as it wasn't written for reentrancy.
How we dealt with this, changed over time, as some of my team got
"cleverer" in later releases. But even if it could be made re-entrant, you
really want it to run to completion instead of stack up anyways. A
semaphore shell on that interrupt routine, and cross-checking this flag in
our other interrupts, would make sure it was done before we did any major
time consuming work with interrupts re-enabled.
ohh gawd, you woke the forgotten memory of the shared HW/SW interrupt
vector.... noooo ... I won't go there..... <shreeking>
>I do recall some severe stack-depth problem, I had to switch stack
>pointers in the I/O drivers somewhere I recall. I think. Wish I had the
>code!
>
> > The Rainbow at least had a decent UART with a multicharacter FIFO. I had
> > no problem doing 19.2kbs using C routines. That stupid XT UART could
> > barely do 9600 with an optimized state driven assembly routine. UART
> FIFOs
> > didn't appear until the IBM PS/2 Model 50.
>
>Yes, when DEC applied themselves without weird non-functional agendas
>they made really nice stuff. It made a nice Fido bulletin board (umm but
>not the 100A's... :-(
I ran a FIDOnet on one replacing my S-100 CP/M CBBS system... The later of
which I just sold on eBay a few weeks ago.
Dave.
Hi All,
With the responses I realized more info is needed.
The equipment is located in the Upper Midwest. The closest, largest city would be Minneapolis/Saint Paul.
I do not currently have an inventory list but will try to obtain one.
Thanks again.
Phil
Hello to all,
This is my first post to the list, which I thought would be of interest.
A company that has been in the depot repair business of DEC equipment, for the last 20 years, is about to shut down their repair lines for the DEC equipment. They obviously have prints, diags and test beds that they are going to be selling.
If anyone has an interest please contact me, either on the list or privately at:
pspan(a)amerytel.net
Thank you for your time.
Phil Spanner
Hi Ben -
Our company is liquidating the inventory for a company we acquired a few years ago and while looking up parts to see what they were and their value, I googled your thread. I have 8 SSI-263AP's I need to get rid of. What are they worth to you?
Regards,
Jim Peterson
jpeterson(a)harshenviro.com
I WAS WOUNDERING IF YOU MIGHT HAPPEN TO HAVE A MANUAL FOR A TEKTRONIX P6465 PATTERN
GENERATOR PROBE? OR IF YOU DONT HAVE ONE WHERE I MIGHT BE ABLE TO GET ONE AT. I WOULD GREATLY APPRICIATE IF YOU WOULD E-MAIL BACK
AT THIS ADDRESS OR AT CTE20303(a)CENTURYTEL.NET
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR TIME.
Hi!
I'm trying to boot my VAXstation from CD-ROM since I don't have a tape
drive. It has an Emulex UC08 controller. The internal hd and an internal
MO drive are connected to the first port, to the second port I attached
an external Plextor UltraPlex 32.
I updated the UC08 to rom revision G143R, just to be sure and configured
a cd-rom drive on the second port, scsi id 1.
When I try to boot from the CD, it is ejected after a few seconds and
nothing more happens. Every time i put the cd back in it is ejected again.
The same happend when I tried a old SUN caddy CD drive (Sony OEM).
Any hints?
Regards,
Sebastian
----------
This is what the machine spits out:
>>>show device
UQSSP Disk Controller 0 (772150)
-DUA0 (RA81)
-DUA1 (RA81)
-DUA2 (RRD40)
UQSSP Disk Controller 1 (760334)
-DUB0 (RRD40)
Ethernet Adapter 0 (774440)
-XQA0 (08-00-2B-10-1B-D5)
>>>b dub0
(BOOT/R5:0 DUB0)
2..
Here it ejects the cd and hangs forever.
Sooooo not too long ago there was a neato discussion of the
differences between DECTape format and LINCtape format. I've got a
question that's a bit different: Physically speaking, how do you
tell the difference between a DECTape drive and a LINCtape drive?
It's been years since I've had a chance to see either kind of drive,
and since I'm doing more digging though surplus places lately I
thought it'd be good to be able to spot the difference in case
I actually get lucky and find one.
O'course, if they're actually _marked_ "DECTape" or "LINCTape",
it'd be relatively easy. :) Is it that straightforward, or
is the difference more subtle (or, indeed, is the difference at
the interface end and not with the drive unit at all)?
(And as long as we're on the subject, does anyone still manufacture
tape and reels for DEC/LINCTape users?)
-O.-
I've just posted the entire contents of every Otrona Attache 8:16
diskette I have, including factory distribution CP/M-80, proprietary
programs and sources of various small things. A few things were written
by my two brothers, Gregg and Frank, mixed in at random (this machine
kicked around the family before I got it back).
http://wps.com/archives/Otrona-Attache-8-16-diskettes/index.html
(There's something ugly with the HTML but it's functional.)
