All,
Got this from the guy in Houston who supplied the VAX VLC machines.
Contact him (best) or me if you are interested.
>Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 23:33:16 -0500 (CDT)
>From: sandmann(a)clio.rice.edu (Charles Sandmann)
>Subject: More DEC Stuff Coming
...
>
>I was just notified today by the ChemE department head at Rice that it
>is time to clean out one of the labs. It has mostly PDP stuff, some
>VAX stuff, documentation, some media. KZ's going to make a rough list
>so we can estimate the volume. The VAX stuff has been used in the last
>year, but most of the PDP stuff has been off for 8 years or more, so
>may need some TLC when being checked out the first time (if you don't
>know about power supply caps, you probably shouldn't ask :-) I've made
>some promises for some of this stuff already - but if there is something
>you are dying for, it might be a good time to remind me. Between the
>Rice stash and the AspenTech stash, there should be lots of machines
>for everyone.
>
>If Intel IRMX (?) means anything to anyone, bug me. I think thats the
>system name - and they are rare (but not DEC stuff ...)
>
>I think we will keep the extra RS6000/AIX IBM systems for spare parts
>for clio - but you never know...
>
>I know there are some VT103s (VT100 systems with built in dual TU58s
>and QBUS backplanes) - lots of QBUS cards, an 11/23+ rack mount system,
>BA123 based MicroVAX II with ESDI and RQDX3/RD54 disks. I think the
>11/23+ has an RQDX1 with RD51 drive (don't cringe!), dual RX02s
>(I have a requirement to be able to read some media on these first!)
>
>There is a requirement to take lots of pictures for our scrapbook :-)
Forgive me if this has already been discussed today; I don't have time at
the moment to scan the entire thread.
With this latest round of discussion about eBay, the thought crossed my mind
that maybe we need our own WWW auction site. It would only contain classic
computers and related items, and it could be designed in such a way that
would please a large number of list members and colleagues, including those
who avoid eBay. Could I hear some opinions on this, please?
My WWW-related programming skills -- not my traditional forte -- have
seriously improved since the last time we discussed ideas for the CC site.
In fact, I've been doing it for money at my workplace for the last few
weeks. For several months now, I've been increasingly interested in
implementing some of the ideas I've had for ClassicCmp improvements, and if
people think it is a good idea, an auction subsite would make for a very
interesting project. Don't worry; there are no weblogs up my sleeve. :-)
--
Jeffrey Sharp
On Wed, 30 Apr 2003 philip(a)awale.qc.ca wrote:
>
> On 29-Apr-2003 Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> > I'm looking for either QBUS parts, or $5 + shipping for each of the
> > following.. Trying to clean out my room before I have to move in a few
> > months.
> >
> > - SparcStation 20, 32MB ram, 1x50MHz proc, floppy, 2GB HDD.
> > I have 2 of these to get rid of.
>
> I'd be interested in one of these. Or have they be claimed already.
> Could you give me an estimate on shipping to Québec (J0B 2C0) ?
All of the sparcstation 20's have been taken.
Pat
--
Purdue University ITAP/RCS
Information Technology at Purdue
Research Computing and Storage
http://www-rcd.cc.purdue.edu
Hello,
I would like to announce a new message board that I have created in
support of our community.
During the past couple of years I?ve been participating as a member of
this mailing list as well as several related ones. I have made a few
observations that I felt needed addressing including:
- the need for a better way to advertise items or help (wanted or
offered)
- the ability to support off topic conversations along with on-
topic ones without burdening those not interested in one or the other
- the ability to easily search archives for topics of interest
- the ability to keep ?threads? of discussion together
- the ability to categorize these threads for easier research
With the above in mind I decided to experiment with a web based
bulletin board (a long way from my days with RBBS and WWIV). Over the
past month or so I have changed my web hosting service for www.vintage-computer.com in order to work with a hosting company that could support
the new forum I was considering. Over this past weekend I finished the
initial phases of moving my site and configuring the boards. The
result is now available for use at www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum. A
link is also available from my www.vintage-computer.com front page.
Since my web hosting has been recently moved the new DNS information
may not have completely propagated yet. If you get an error trying to
access the above address or if the message board link from my home page
refers you to an ezBoard page, please try back a little later.
There are two things that I would like to stress about the new forums.
First, I don?t envision them as a threat to this mailing list or the
community that supports it. I see it as another tool in our toolbox
(or toy in our toy chest) to enhance our enjoyment of our hobby.
Second, although I set up these forums I consider them to be ?ours? in
as broad a sense as that is possible. I am not only willing, but
anxious to have others participate in these forums as administrators,
moderators and contributors. Volunteers are welcome and operators are
standing by!
Hopefully if you are reading this you will see your way clear to
popping over for a visit and supporting this effort with whatever you
are willing to offer, be that participation, suggestions or criticism.
Again, this is our community and I will do my best to make these forums
reflect that.
Thank you and best regards,
Erik S. Klein
www.vintage-computer.com
>From: "Don Maslin" <donm(a)cts.com>
>
>On Tue, 29 Apr 2003, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
>
>> Hi
>> I've been looking at a pile of disk that I'd
>> collected over a period of years. Most are the
>> typical 10 hard sectored disk, formatted in the
>> same way as HDOS uses. In the pile, I found a
>> few that are marked "format 96". These have the
>> 10 plus index holes but they don't seem to be
>> the normal format. When I attempt to read them,
>> I can only read the first sector. All of the rest
>> don't seem to read. Does anyone know what this
>> was all about?
>> Dwight
>
>Dwight, I would assume that they were done on a 96tpi
>floppy drive.
> - don
>
Hi Don
That is what I figured. I've been working on my serial
bootstrap and transfer program. I'm able to read and
write an image to the H89 but I'm still having issues
getting the formatting to work. I copied some old
code that I have in the Fig-Forth that I did but it
is still missing something. I even went back and ran
the Forth FORMAT and it works fine. I suspect there is
some other initialization that I'm missing. I looked at
one stretch of code and there is an operation that should
always hang. Can't figure why the original works. It
may be something connected to the timer interrupt that
isn't normally there. I wish I'd made good notes when
I did the original but this was one of my first computer
projects, after working on my Poly88, and brain rot
is now catching up with me.
Once I get the format working, I can work on cleaning
up the user interface. Looking at the 96 stuff is a
little later on the list.
Dwight
Hi Jules,
To my knowledge the largest hard drive platter was 24". IBM the inventor may have produced
an experimental platter of ~1 m as a demonstration project to management and maybe these platters
were 'sold' or distributed to IBM employees?
Murray--
cctalk-request(a)classiccmp.org wrote:
> Send cctalk mailing list submissions to
> cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
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> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
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>
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> cctalk-admin(a)classiccmp.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of cctalk digest..."
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 17:55:18 +0000 (GMT)
> From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Jules=20Richardson?=
> <julesrichardsonuk(a)yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: large disk platters?
> To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
> Reply-To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
>
> I just randomly remembered the other day that when I was at uni one of the
> computing lecturers one day rolled out an enormous disk platter to demonstrate
> how hard disk technology has changed over the years.
>
> The platter was pretty huge - around 1m in diameter. Any ideas as to what
> system it may have come from?
>
> Im just curious really - I've not seen much really old hardware up close, but
> the impression I got from the pictures I've seen is that drive technology
> didn't typically use platters *that* large.
>
> (and hell, this beats talking about the war :)
>
> cheers
>
> Jules
> Everything you'll ever need on one web page
> from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
> http://uk.my.yahoo.com
>
> End of cctalk Digest
Are you interested in magtape just for the media [has old National
Library
of Medicine stuff? (this would be at least another box)
==================================================
I have been advised that the above tapes are available, probably about
at least a dozen tapes for either the contents or for scratch. The cost
will be for shipping. They are in New York City, but may need to
first be sent to Buffalo.
If they are of interest, please advise and I will try and find out
what arrangements can be made.
I might also be looking to have 3 or 4 magtapes copied to a TK50
(or other suitable media) and might need some help in this regard.
They have RT-11 file labels if that is helpful information, so probably
RT-11 would be needed to make to copies. Eventually, I would like
to copy the contents to a CD.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
--
If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail
address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk
e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be
obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the
'at' with the four digits of the current year.
While looking for something else, I accidentally happened upon a
web site pertaining to a "Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers." The
URL is:
http://theuser.silophone.net//dotmatrix/en/intro.html
--
Copyright (C) 2003 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals:
All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature &
rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Stan Sieler wrote:
> Re:
> > - the ability to support off topic conversations along with on-
> > topic ones without burdening those not interested in one or the
other
> > - the ability to easily search archives for topics of interest
> > - the ability to keep ?threads? of discussion together
> > - the ability to categorize these threads for easier research
>
> That's all easily achievable with the current CC-TALK/CC-TECH.
> ...just use a small prefix (from a small set of group endorsed ones).
>
> E.g.: OT: iraqi playing cards
> where "OT" means "Off Topic"
>
I agree that we could implement that. It becomes a little more
complicated when you try to generate the "group endorsed" prefixes and,
once you do, keeping those in the public eye so folks use them. I like
the idea, though, and think it would make the list easier to use.
We already have OT, FS and FA of course. What other prefixes could we
have? HW and SW? OS? PRG? HLP?
> The inherent problem with the current vcforum web interface is the
large
> amount of extra work that people need to do to use it. With CC-TALK,
all the
> current posts are visible (one per line) on my screen. With vcforum,
I
> have to scroll the index web page to see what sections have new posts.
> For each section with a new post, I have to click on it (deciding
whether or
> not to click-into-new-window or click-into-same-window), just to see
the list
> of topics in that section. Then I have to potentially scroll (not
now, but
> later, as more topics are posted) to see which topics have new
posts ...
> the end result it that it takes me 10 to 20 times longer to "catch
up" as
> it does with CC-TALK/CC-TECH.
I don't think it's all that difficult to navigate although it is
different from an email interface and there are disadvantages inherent
in the greater flexibility. Once you get used to it, however, I think
it takes just as much time to remain "caught up."
On the other hand, you can eliminate topics you don't care about a lot
easier by simply tracking messages in the forums you are most
interested in. If you have no interest in Apple or Unix or the Off
Topic discussions you need never visit those boards. CCTalk will
always send you those messages.
The thing that I like the most about a threaded message board is that
you can view the entire discussion without any heavy manipulations. If
I want to do that with the mail list I have to either visit the
archives or use my mail program to sort on message header (assuming
that hasn't been changed mid-thread). As of right now I have nearly
29,000 CCTalk messages in my outlook CCTalk folder. Even with a P4 2.4
and 1GB of RAM resorting that list is slow.
> Could this be fixed? Yes. There could be an alternate presentation
page which
> lists all new posts, one per line ... sortable by topic or date-
posted.
> I should be able to quickly mark any I wish as "ignore" (aka "delete"
in a
> mail reader). However, most web based forums use the server to
accomplish
> updates, as opposed to doing more work just behind the glass (e.g.,
java
> to collect the updates/markings/wishes and then upload the set to the
server).
> That's easier, of course, but clearly makes for more work and/or
slower
> response for the user.
The "new posts since my last visit" link is my favorite on bigger
boards. I hope that this new forum gets the kind of reception that
makes that feature useful. If enough people sign up and start using
the forums they'll hit "critical mass" which will make them that much
more useful.
> One person's comments, anyway :)
Thanks, Stan! I do appreciate the feedback!
Erik
