test-drb December 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

243 participants
530 discussions

by RCini＠congressfinancial.com

Any of the CGA monitors I have at home have a captive cable with, IIRC, a female DB9. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Eric Smith Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 4:39 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Off the wall CGA monitor question Scarletdown wrote: > All of the CGA cards that I can recall seeing had female connectors, so > most likely, the monitors have male connectors. That only implies that the *cable* has a male connector on one end; it doesn't really tell you anything about the monitor. I'd be inclined to expect that most CGI monitors either had a captive cable, or had a female connector on the monitor as well. But it's been so long since I looked at CGI monitors that I don't recall. Eric

20 years, 7 months

Looking for an Intel C4040 processor

by anheier＠owt.com

Anyone have an Intel C4040 processor that they would be interested in trade or selling??? Thanks Norm

20 years, 7 months

DEC computer related injury

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

Pulled out the drawer in the expansion chassis on our PDP-11/70 and then attempted to squat down behind it. Since I have such great balance I fell forward and leaned into/onto the PDP-11/70 backplane and punctured my palm many times with the nice little wire wrap pins. Interesting pattern, very little blood, I thought of a tattoo. Pins are nicely tipped with pyramid suitable for puncturing skin. No worry in those days about any infections since I was young an invincible. Maybe a slight variation on an old adage: Blood, sweat and tears must be shed for the computer to compute correctly. Mike

20 years, 7 months

electro-Physics: 17.3409 volts

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Tore S Bekkedal <toresbe(a)ifi.uio.no> wrote: > Norwegian trains run DC... As do Russian electric trains. 4 kV. > I've seen a tagger actually climb up on the > roof of a train, and before I could run to the veranda of my appartment > to tell him to get the fuck down, the dumb fuck stood up. He illuminated > the entire train exchange for a millisecond, and then all that was left > of him was one of his feet, that apparently hadn't made contact with the > grounded train roof. His charred remains were still burning 20 minutes > later, until the firemen came and cleaned up the mess. Ouch. My dad told me a story of something similar happening in Russia with an unlucky railroad maintenance worker. Apparently the vertical spacing between the roof of a train car and the high voltage wire is high enough for workers to be able to walk on the roof under the wire and not touch it, even though it doesn't seem that high when looking from the ground. But that unlucky worker was carrying a wrench in his hand and had it stuck up in the air... When I was an intern on the Moscow railroad I witnessed another incident, this one fortunately without fatalities or human injuries, but demonstrating the power of that DC supply. On Russian and probably many other railroads the rails carry both the power current (return) and signaling current. The power current is DC, the signaling current is AC (at very low voltage of course, 6V). The track is divided into block-sections, each block-section monitored as a unit and reported as free or occupied to the rail traffic control system. Block-sections are separated by insulated rail joints. Each end of a thus isolated block-section is connected to a transformer whose other (higher voltage) winding is connected to a wire pair going back to the rail traffic control centre. Simple enough on diesel-powered railroads. It was a little more complicated on electrically powered railroads. The thick copper wires from the ends of each insulated joint were connected to transformer windings like before, with a separate transformer for each side of the insulated joint. The high-voltage windings were connected to signaling lines like before. But the low-voltage windings, the ones connected to the rails, were centre-tapped, and the centre tap from the transformer on one side of the insulated joint was connected with a thick copper wire to the centre tap on the other side. This way the DC power current effectively passes right through while the insulated joint acts as a barrier to the signaling AC current. The town where I lived and the railroad station on which I had my internship was on the end of a low-traffic branch of Moscow railroad. The station itself had electric centralisation, the term used in the Russian railroad technical documentation for the rail traffic control system at a station. The track stage between that station and the next, however, was unmonitored. What this means is that at the station the left and right rails had the low signaling AC voltage between them, but out on the stage the two rails were simply connected. Thus the last insulated joint at the station boundary had only one transformer box next to it, the ends of the winding connected to one side and the centre tap connected to the other side. Well, one fine day a track maintenance vehicle knocked that transformer box down, and it fell tumbling down into the ditch. Apparently the track maintenance workers didn't notice it and went on with their business. But the monitoring circuit was broken of course. Rail circuits are normally closed. An open rail circuit corresponds to a track section that is either busy (the train axles short the circuit and all the current goes through them rather than through the relay on the other end, so it reports as open) or broken (a rail broke under load or was removed by terrorists, etc). So when that transformer box got knocked down and the circuit broke, it just lit a red light on the panel in the rail traffic control room indicating a busy track section. We (the traffic controller lady and me-the-intern) noticed it and went to check it out, but the trains still had to go on schedule while a crew was dispatched to mount the transformer box back where it belongs. So we let one or two trains through, using the manual override button to override the track busy status. (The manual override buttons have seals on them that you have to break in cases like this when you have to use them, and LOTS of paperwork must be generated.) So we let those trains through. Now think what happened when the train crossed that insulated joint and continued on our side, our station being the end of the line. From what I understood when I was there, our end was not the one supplying train power, so when a train was on our side, its return current had to go through that insulated joint, i.e., through the transformer centre tap. With the transformer gone, where did the current go? Well, it arced right through the insulated joint and melted the ends of the rails. Pretty impressive. MS

20 years, 7 months

KM11 Clone

by ggs＠shiresoft.com

> I've been working on creating a clone of DEC's maintenance panel > (KM11) > for some time now. I intended it to be used as my "hello world" board > to get familiar with EagleCAD and the board fab process. > > On Friday my first boards arrived from the fab house. I spent this > weekend building up 2 boards and both worked perfectly the first time. > It was so cool to be able to single step the microcode in an 11/40! > > It's up on my web site > (http://www.shiresoft.com/pdp-11/boards/index.html) for those that > want > to see what it looks like. Sometime this week I'll take a picture of > the 11/40 with 2 KM11's hanging out of it! > > My first batch of boards/parts has already been spoken for. But for > any > who are interested, I'll place another order for parts/boards for > delivery sometime in January. > > Each board will come with complete schematics, parts list and assembly > instructions. I will also have collected drawings for the overlays > and > instructions on use for the various processors (11/20, 11/05, 11/40, > 11/45 and 11/70). > > I'm pricing as follows: > "Bare" Board $75 > "kit" (includes all the parts) $125 > assembled and tested $250 (I really don't want to) > OK, I just got a couple of board quotes with larger quantities. If I can get an order of ~50 boards, I can drop the prices by $40! So the pricing would be: "Bare" Board $35 "kit" (includes all the parts) $85 assembled and tested $250 (I still don't want to) If I can get a preliminary count of folks who want one (or two or ...) I can get the boards and parts ordered. I'd like to place the orders during the first week of January. -- TTFN - Guy

20 years, 7 months

Stupid TI power supply

by vcf＠siconic.com

So after beating the shit out of this stupid TI power supply (none of your suggestions worked, thanks) I come to find that it does have an internal fuse and that it is complete intact. Wonderful. This thing is shot beyond repair at this point. It wasn't intended to ever be opened apparently. Anyway, hopefully I can figure out what this pile of garbage was supposed to be putting out. Of course, there are no markings on the housing of the transformer. There is an IC in here. It's inline with the hot side of the input voltage. The markings are thusly: UMI EI X25 150(degree symbol)C 2.5A 250V~ A varistor? Anyway, this is a heap of junk now. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

20 years, 7 months

Cooking, fractions & reply attribution... (was: electro-Physics: 17.3409 volts

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Roger Merchberger" <zmerch(a)30below.com> > >Dyslexia. There are a lot more kinds of it than just writing your letters >backwards (my type) -- I have two friends that *just can't spell*, and my >wife is LD in math; she can't handle decimals or fractions! Oh, guess who >has the most college degrees of the 4 people I just mentioned: my wife. > >Some people's brains are just plain *wired funny* -- sometimes it's a good >thing, sometimes it's not. > >Laterz, >Roger "Merch" Merchberger Hi When I was in grade school, I used to get B+'s on my math test. The teacher told me to write down the intermediate steps so that I could get more credit for partial solutions. Up till then I'd been working the problems out in my head and then just writing out the answer. An interesting result happened. My intermediate work had the same number or percentage of errors as my final results. Of course, I still worked them in my head or the final results would have been worse because of the cumulative effects. This was one of the first indications that I was dyslexic and not just lazy ( I was that as well ). I just made errors in translating what was in my head to the paper. Later, I found simple ways to check my results and got 100% on my test :) Dwight

20 years, 7 months

5-1/4' drive on modern PC

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Gene Ehrich" <gehrich(a)tampabay.rr.com> > >Is there anyway that it can be attached external to the PC through serial, >parallel or USB ports > > Hi Yes and No. Of course, one can make some hardware to handle the drive and connect it to anything. There are 3-1/2 inch drives for the USB. It might be that the software would see a 5-1/4 drive as it is through one of these interfaces. Remove the 3-1/2 and wire it to the 5-1/4. For the parallel, I have some hardware someplace that can connect an IDE drive to the parallel port. I don't think I've seen anything for a floppy. Although, I've seen tape drives that connect to the parallel port. These normally connect to a floppy port. One might be able to do something with one of these interfaces. One of the catalogs that I've seen recently had a USB experimenters kit. One could most likely use one of these with a PIC and a controller chip to interface to just about any drive. Does anyone recall if the ZIP drives were on the floppy ports? If so, one could take a parallel ZIP dive and remove the drive part to connect a floppy drive. One still needs to create some software. It is still just a problem of hardware and software. A better idea might be to locate an older machine at one of the second hand stores and use that. Dwight

20 years, 7 months

Zitel card?

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

Does anyone know anything about Zitel? Pr what bus this card uses or anything about the card? <http://www.classiccmp.org/hp/a4/zitel.jpg>. I seem to remember that Zitel was a copy cat of Intel. Joe

20 years, 7 months

about iSBC 86/30 single board computer

by xiaohancs＠163.com

Dear sir, There is a message on http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2003-January/008285.html I am wondering whether it is still effctive or not.Now I am eager for iSBC 86/30 single board computer hardware reference manual.So can you be so kind to give me a reply? Yours sincerely 　　　　　　 D.P.-Han 　　　　　　 xiaohancs(a)163.com 　　　　　　 2004-12-14

20 years, 7 months

KM11 clone

by GOOI＠oce.nl

Yep, a PDF file for the overlays would be OK for me. Saves shipping/handling. We can print the file(s) ourselves. What I wanted to say: I hope I will not have to search all documents on bitsavers to get the overlays. The parts list and an assembly instruction would be nice though. I hate to be surprised like "Ahh, I should have soldered that component afterwards...!^#%$ :-) - Henk. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Ethan Dicks > Sent: dinsdag 14 december 2004 11:49 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Re: KM11 clone > > > On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 09:52:59 +0100, Gooijen H <GOOI(a)oce.nl> wrote: > > Ok Guy, hold your breath ... I want 5 bare boards !! > > I assume that the bare board includes the overlays, > instructions, etc. > > I don't mean to speak for Guy, but all I am expecting is the boards > themselves, plus a parts list, plus a .pdf or something similar to > print my own overlays (on clear laser-printer acetate). > > Guy... are my expectations reasonable? > > -ethan

20 years, 7 months

KM11 clone

by GOOI＠oce.nl

> OK, I just got a couple of board quotes with larger quantities. If I > can get an order of ~50 boards, I can drop the prices by $40! So the > pricing would be: > "Bare" Board $35 > "kit" (includes all the parts) $85 > assembled and tested $250 (I still don't want to) > > If I can get a preliminary count of folks who one (or two or...) I can > get the boards and parts ordered. I'd like to place the orders during > the first week of January. > -- > > TTFN - Guy Ok Guy, hold your breath ... I want 5 bare boards !! I assume that the bare board includes the overlays, instructions, etc. I am in The Netherlands, and assume that you will ship the boards in a US Priority Mail enveloppe, just as Vince did with the blinkenlight project (Core and I/O Board). You did not yet mention payment instructions; I guess PayPal is fine? - Henk, PA8PDP. www.pdp-11.nl

20 years, 7 months

KM11 Clone

by GOOI＠oce.nl

> It's the RK11-C... there's a single slot facing the front of the rack > that I expect is where it goes. The RK11-D is a quad backplane > thingie that goes inside a BA-11 or some such (and the RKV11-D is a > version of it that fits in an external 4-slot enclosure with a set of > cables and a paddle card that go to a host's Qbus. > > I'd be interested to know what _other_ peripherals have a KM11 slot. > I personally want one to debug my RK11C (even though I am usually > using my RK05s with the aforementioned RKV11-D) just for the sake of > doing it. I do _have_ at least one RK11D that I could use for "real > work", but I'd like to get the -C working nonetheless. > > -ethan I read that the 11/40 CPU has 2 positions in its backplane for KM11's. In slot 1 (the first), position F the KM11 is used as a monitor for the KD11-A CPU and it allows to microstep the CPU instructions. When the KM11 is installed in slot 1, position E, the KM11 monitors KT11-D (the MMU), KE11-E (EIS optin) and KE11-F (FIS option). So, to go the full stretch you'd need 2 boards to watch everything in a PDP-11/35 (or /40), but I wonder if you'll ever need/do that ... except to see it once in actual operation :-) Note that DIGITAL writes that in normal operation the KM11 is *not* part of the system. - Henk, PA8PDP.

20 years, 7 months

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

(1) The copyright of a photograph is held by the photographer, hence, in this case, CNN (2) The first amendment ONLY APPLIES TO GOVERNMENT. For private property, trespass laws do apply, and unwanted press can be barred or removed. (3) There is no need to be rude. I fail to see how an attitude like that taken by Even can aid his career. Scott Quinn

20 years, 7 months

Model 129 Keypunch on eBay with 30 minutes to to!

by wmaddox＠pacbell.net

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=5145489194&ssPageNa… eBay item 5145489194 (Ends Dec-12-04 19:00:00 PST) - IBM 129 keypunch verifier vintage card punch

20 years, 7 months

HP9845 service toolkit

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

My workbench is currently covered with a 9845 is many bits :-). And I am slowly figuring out just what's inside that darn machine... Anyway, I believe there was an HP service toolkit for it (based on the markings on the PSU cover). Does anyone have it? If so, I have some questions 1) What did said kit contain (other than normal hand tools, which I have anyway). I am almost sure 2 of the items in the kit were a 'Discharge Tool' for the power supply and a 'Turn on fixture' to run the machine without a monitor 2) What does the 'Discharge Tool' consist of? I'll guess it was just a reisstor connected to a couple of isulated probes, or a plug, or something. There are some insulated holes on the SPU cover, under them are bare pads on the PCB connected to the terminals of the mains smoothing capes. The instructions are to insert the tool into 2 of the holes, then into the other pair, then to check the voltage between the holes you put the tool in (basically, check the caps are discharged) before removing the PSU. From the size of those capacitors (1800uF, 200V, small coke-can size), I would agree! 3) More importantly, what does the 'Turn On Fixture' consist of? Again I'll make a gues. It's a little PCB that goes into one of the edge connectors in the monitor pillars. But which connector, and what's on the PCB? Does it just short a couple of pins together to complete some kind of interlock circuit, does it contain load resistors, or worse, does it contain ICs? HAs aonone else been foolish enough to dismantle the printhead? Suffice it to say it consists of a normal PCB that connects to the printer cable, a seramic substrate containing the (thermal) printhead heater elements, 7 seramic hybrid circuits that contain the driver cirucits, and something like 35 of those metal-rings-round-elastomer connectors (like those between an HP41 logic board and keyboard) to link everything up... -tony

20 years, 7 months

electro-Physics: 17.3409 volts

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Tom Jennings" <tomj(a)wps.com> > >On Mon, 13 Dec 2004, Carlos Murillo wrote: > >> > It isn't much good for home use. In fact, lamps don't >> > do as well on DC as AC because of the electrical effects >> > of the wire evaporating ( not sure which end goes first ). >> >> Ah, the "Edison Effect". > >I'd heard of the effect, but not for a long time, and probably paid little >attention to it :-) > >So, how pronounced is this DC-filament effect? If I collect >dead lightbulbs from my cars, should I see filaments with gaps >burned towards the ground end more often than not? > >(Tapered filaments would fix this.) > > Hi I would think the effect is smaller today since we don't still use high vacuum bulbs. Most have a partial atmosphere of an inert gas. The Edison effect is the same as used in vacuum tubes. You still might see a slight bias towards one or the other end. You have to realize that work hardening and fracturing of the filament in an auto is a large factor in shortening the life of these lamps. Dwight

20 years, 7 months

NEXT@CNN

by classiccmp＠vintage-computer.com

CNN has a magazine style show called NEXT@CNN that has a gaming theme this week. Included is, of course, a discussion of vintage gaming and what the kids today think of the old stuff. It's funny to see the old Atari X-Wing run side-by-side with the modern version. About 20 minutes into the show is a "bump" for the 30th anniversary of the Altair computer featuring a machine from my collection including a shot from this year's VCF! Erik Klein www.vintage-computer.com www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum The Vintage Computer Forum

20 years, 7 months

Lisp machine wisdom

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Makes perfect sense :) A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly: "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The machine worked.

20 years, 7 months

electro-Physics: 17.3409 volts

by melamy＠earthlink.net

the only sound physical reason for fractions is cooking... the general populace is so technically illiterate that is really doesn't make a difference whether things are in fractions or decimal. They really don't have a clue anyway. When was the last time you heard any clerk actually count change out or someone realize that 1/4 cup is 1/2 of a 1/2 cup... The people that like decimal systems don't understand fractions and the fractional people don't know what to do with a decimal point. As for eight fingers, I like my thumbs... -----Original Message----- From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwight.elvey(a)amd.com> Sent: Dec 13, 2004 3:12 PM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: electro-Physics: 17.3409 volts >From: "Paul Koning" <pkoning(a)equallogic.com> ---snip--- > >Some of this discussion reminds me of the "arguments" why the metric >system is inferior to the US system of measures. Contrary to what Tom Jennings states in a later post, there are sound physical reasons for using fractional systems when dealing with the physical world.

20 years, 7 months

Old Dos Programs

by ron.hudson＠sbcglobal.net

anyone have the DOS version of Empire, Nethack (an older version that does not need dpmi), I had a DOS version of tetris too (using regular characters in 40 char mode) so I am looking for that too. Any websites that provide old DOS programs for download? Thanks!

20 years, 7 months

Older floppies, newer hardware...

by zmerch＠30below.com

All this talk about getting older drives to work on newer hardware got me thinking about a totally different track on how to get this done (not to mention the previous subject was referencing a 5 foot, 3 inch floppy drive... ;-) ) There are VAXen that have SCSI bridgeboards to control 3.5" 1.44Meg floppy drives via the SCSI bus - how "controllable" are those, WRT different drives, data rates & low level programmability? I have one, but other than "it gives my VAX a floppy drive" I know very little about them. (I know I'd been thinking of getting another one so I could use 1.44Meg drives on a CoCo system under OS-9 equipped with a SCSI board... but have yet to get around to it.) Also, would those bridgeboards support 2 drives? Just an "out of box" thought... Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy... zmerch(a)30below.com | ...in oxymoron!"

20 years, 7 months

Iomega ZIP drives

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

They also made SCSI ZIPs - used on Macs and SGIs, etc. The parallel models used a proprietary SCSI over parallel protocol, at least on the early ones, and were slower than snails. I've never popped one open to see if it is possible to revert to SCSI, though (probably not). I think I heard that later models used an encapsulated IDE protocol. I'm not sure if it is still the case, but I think some of the old (2.2.x) Linux kernels had some documentation about the protocol. It could be possible to hack together a similar interface for floppies, though (encapsulate over parallel port)

20 years, 7 months

5-1/4' drive on modern PC

by melamy＠earthlink.net

the one floppy deal is not really a bios issue, it is a hardware issue. As long as there are two drive select lines coming from the hardware, then the mb can supprt two drives even if there is not bios support. My ASUS P4 mb only supports one drive and I suspect that there is only one drive select. Bios code is meant to support the hardware that is present. At least that is the way is has been for 23 years... -----Original Message----- From: Robert Feldman <r_a_feldman(a)hotmail.com> Sent: Dec 12, 2004 11:13 PM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: 5-1/4' drive on modern PC I've been wading through a lot of digests, catching up with the list, so this post is a bit late in the thread. One thing to watch out with on recent PC's is that the BIOS might not support more than one floppy drive. I found that out on a SOYO motherboard I got last year. The BIOS can handle 360KB and 1.2 MB 5 1/4" drives, as well as 3.5" drives, but you can have only one drive attached at a time. Bob

20 years, 7 months

8" floppy drive

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

If you can read the disks, this might be of interest http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/8-525.html - cabling to use a 5.25" HD (1.2MB) drive in place of an 8" and http://nemesis.lonestar.org/computers/tandy/hardware/model16_6000/floppyfix… ml hints specific to the TRS80 Found it on the web and have it in the pile of projects to try out on my Z-80 when I get around to it. although I don't know how much longer 5.25 HD diskettes will be easy to get- Scott Quinn P.S. I'm new to Classic Computing, so don't take my word for it-please double check before risking your machine

20 years, 7 months

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test-drb December 2004