Lee,
I'm posting a copy of this on the CC list as well as replying directly
to you since this is of interest to several of the list members.
At 11:20 PM 6/11/03 +0100, you wrote:
>Hello Joe,
>
>> I missed the first part of this thread but if you're talking about HP
>> 9121 disk drives ...
>
>We were. I dragged one out of a dumpster on Sunday.
Oh. I did see your message about that.
As far as I can see
>the only thing wrong is a crack in the case top where someone stood on
>it.
I just tossed a complete but GRUNGY 9121 in the trash. If you want the
case let me know before the trashman gets here and I'll rescue it for you.
It was FILTHY. The outside cleaned up pretty well but bugs had been living
inside and it was full of dirt and debris. I took it apart and tried to
clean it up but finally gave up in disgust. The drives were packed full of
crud. I cleaned them as best as I could without going through a complete
rebuild. One drive seems to work but the head wouldn't seek on the other
and it's pulling too much current. Both had gobs of stuff wound up on the
lead screw and that may be what's jamming it. I spent several hours working
on the thing and finally decided that it just wasn't worth the trouble so I
tossed the whole mess.
>
>> What kind of docs are you looking for?
>
>I'm looking for the Amigo and/or SS/80 protocoll docs so I can roll my
>own code to drive the HP 9121 from a PC using an HP-IB card. I just
>want to test the thing, it would be nice if it works.
Well you're in the right place at the right time. We were discussing
these protocalls on the list a few weeks ago. Peter Brown asked some
questions some of the protocalls and that's what started that entire
discussion. Frank McConnel scanned and posted one of the protocalls on a
web site. Contact him and ask about the address. I THINK it was the SS-80
protocall. Peter is working on a program to read CS-80 disks on a PC via a
GPIB card and he has a working version of it. He's sent me a copy but I
have to set up a W'98 machine to run it on. I think Peter wants to add
Amigo and SS-80 support in addition to the CS-80. ALSO FWIW several of us
including Steve Robertson have been playing around with the old HP 1000
computers and are writing our own operating system for it. Steve has
written a driver for the CS-80 hard drives and has it working (crude but
workable he says).
Also I've been playing around with the old HP LIF Utilities. LIF stands
for Logical Interchange Format and was widely used by HP for some of their
early disk drives. LIF is a real simple format and it's also like the old
tape format. HP has now placed the LIF Utils in the public domain and you
can download them from HP for free. The utils are supposed to alow you to
read, write, initialize and format LIF disks on a PC but the other day I
noticed that it also said that it would support LIF disk drives connected
to a PC via a HP-IB card so I decided to try it. I've played with that a
little but I haven't been able to get it to work. I posted a question about
it on the list a couple of days ago but didn't get any responses. I got the
PC to recognize the drive but it keep saying that the disk was
incompatible. I used THE SAME drive and disk with a HP-85 so I know they're
compatible. I don't think the HP-85 writes a LIF format so I can understand
why the PC couldn't read the disk but I should have been able to format and
initialize it but couldn't so there's something else going on. I was using
a National Instruments GP_IB card and that might be the problem but the
utils recognized it and didn't complain about it so I don't know for sure.
I some HP HP_IB cards so I'll have to install one, find the drivers for it
and see if that's the problem but that's going to take some time too.
I've got several projects cooking right now that take priority but when I
get time I'm dabbing around with trying to interchange files between the
HP-85, 9000 200s and a PC. I've done some work on it but at the moment I'm
mostly just gathering up drives, systems and SW to try out. When I get
everything I'll sit down and do some serious research. FWIW I can read a
disk written by a HP-85 on a 82901 disk drive in a PC drive using LIF but
the programs are stored in a tokenized format so it comes out as mostly
garbage. There's no option on a 85 to save the program files in an ASCII
format but there is one in the HP 9000 200s so I should be able to trasnfer
files between the 9000 200s and a PC via sneaker net. One the things that
I'm going to try is to read a tokenized HP-85 file into a 9000 200 (or
something else like an Integral PC) and then resave it in an ASCII format
so that it can be transferred to a PC.
So there you go. Lots of avenues to pursue! Let me know what you come up
with.
>
>Then I'll have to get an HP computer.
Good! Go to it. A LOT of HP computers support that HP 9121 drive. The
HP 85*, 86, 87 or any of the HP 9000 200 or 300 series. I'm sure that many
of the newer 9000 series also support it but I'm not familar enough with
them to tell you which ones.
* The original HP-85 needs a Mass Storage ROM but the 85B has it built
in. I think all the 86s and 87s have it built in.
Joe
Hi
More back on subject, the MRAM looks like it is
a non-distructive read, unlike the core.
Back on cores:
It seems like they also used a 1/2 opposite
inhibit while doing reads to give them a little
more noise margine. This way, cores without a
x or y would have a 1/2 wrong way and those
with only x or y driven would have 1/2 positve.
The matching would get 2 - 1/2 or a full 1.5
write. Both X and Y would be driven with the
average Im, of all of the cores, and not half.
Dwight
Well today I got the last piece of news about starting my non-profit museum
here in Texas and I have got all the official okays from Austin (Secretary
of State and Texas Comptroller). Now all that is left is to get the
non-profit status ok from the IRS. I hope to start fund rising here in Texas
first since they can get tax right off here and then nationwide after I get
the IRS OK. So far my only cost was a $25 fee to the State plus the cost of
priority mail. The IRS is going to be a little more costly with a minimum
fee of $500 to file. Since I still do not have a job it's hard to spend that
kind of cash right now but the cost of keeping the collection is getting
higher and higher plus no one can really se it right now.
> These drives are notorious for having broken mounts at
> the heads.
The only damage is a crack in the back of the case top
where someone planted his/her size 12 boot on it.
Everything else is intact, even the cageless fan.
Cheers,
Lee.
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I have been monitoring this new problem for a few days. Actually,
it first surfaced weeks ago, but I had zero time to look into it.
Anyway, I have a three drive Smoke Signal Broadcasting disk system,
in which one drive, 2 (last one on 0,1,2 chain), has this nasty whine
when
powered on. The other two drives work and sound fine.
The faulty one's driver motor never stops when powered on whereas the
other two do. The others must have the last one due to the terminator
which functioned correctly in the chain. I have managed to pull the bad
drive and managed to get the two working ones to work with terminator
resister moved to drive 1. I put 2's (bad drive) large electronics board
onto 1's drive mechanism and it works fine. That leaves 2's drive
mechanism
as being bad; either the small circuit board or the drive motor.
Also, when 2 is selected the red LED does light up, but no diskette can
be read.
Something is forcing the drive motor to stay on or the drive motor
itself is defective.
Any suggestions? I plan to put 1's (good drive) small electronics board
onto 2's drive mechanism to see if the drive motor control or the drive
motor itself is bad. Left my soldering iron at work. :^(
While dumpster diving at the end of a radio rally (what,
doesn't everyone do this?) I found, in with the usual PC
scrap, an HP 9121 dual disk unit.
The unit powers and a small LED flashes five times but
that's as far as I've got because I've not got anything
to plug it into.
I take it I can use DSDD 3.5" disks in this and that with a
General Instrument HPIB card and some hand rolled code I can
try it out. Anyone done this? Any pointers to where to start?
Any online docs for the command set/protocols?
Cheers,
Lee.
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>From: "Brian Chase" <vaxzilla(a)jarai.org>
>
>On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, TeoZ wrote:
>
>> Never heard of the lower pressure before. I thaught humans breath
>> because of the buildup of co2. So lowering the pressure and just using
>> oxygen wouldnt help much would it? Besides 100% oxygen makes things
>> that are normally low combustible highly combustible.
>
>Take a cubic meter of air at STP. Remove all the non-essential gasses,
>leaving only the oxygen behind. You'll end up with same amount of
>oxygen necessary to support human life, but the overall pressure will
>be lower owing to the lack of those useless gasses.
>
>Well, that's my educated guess at least.
>
>-brian.
>
Hi
Brian is correct. They run the capsules at lower pressure
so that they don't have to make the skins as thick and can
reduce overall weight.
Humans also breath to bring in oxygen as well as to exhale
CO2. It is kind of a dual purpose.
Dwight
>From: "William Donzelli" <aw288(a)osfn.org>
>
>> Well I would be more worried about the guy with the methane farts next to me
>> then the stray pencil lead dust.
>
>NASA was also very concern about the conductive carbon dust or particles
>causing electrical problems.
>
>> Some of the things the russians did were low tech but usefull. Whose smart
>> idea was it to fill a capsule full of electical boxes with 100% oxygen
>> environment for no particular reason?
>
>There was a sound reason - use a high oxygen atmosphere, so you can lower
>the pressure inside the capsule and still have it breathable. With a
>lower pressure inside, the walls of the capsule can be much thinner,
>saving weight.
>
>William Donzelli
>aw288(a)osfn.org
>
Hi
The big error was having a bunch of wires dangling
through the hatch where they could get squished. The
oxygen was a contributing factor.
They were practicing in reduced atmosphere to look
for potential problems. As William stated, they needed
the increase oxygen level to keep from passing out.
I zero G, fire doesn't spread much.
Dwight
