test-drb December 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

243 participants
530 discussions

by wrm＠ccii.co.za

Hiya >Three boards which I expect are from an SwTPc. Each bears the SwTPc >logo somewhere in the component-side etch. Well, that's easy then :-) >One I feel sure is a CPU board. It bears many DIPs, all socketed (and >all sockets populated), a 7805 and four discrete transistors or similar >devices soldered in, and miscellanous two-terminal devices (resistors, >caps, a crystal, maybe some others I don't recognize). The "big chip" >is an MC6800P; I also see an HM46810P, an MC14411P, and a chip labeled >with the motorola logo and the text "SWTBUG 1.0" and a "7748" which I >imagine is a datecode. Everything else is in the 8- to 20-pin range. >On the card edge is a 50-pin single-row connector with slightly over >2.5 pins to the centimetre, with one pin space filled with plastic. Yup, it's a CPU all right. SS-50 bus. >Next to the SwTPc logo is the text "MP-M". I suspect the 7805s are >intended to have heatsinks which the board has been robbed of, probably >at the same time as the socketed chips were removed. This has a >card-edge connector apparently identical to that on the CPU board (just >above). Yup, memory board. >A board which I feel sure is memory. It's marked "MP-8M2" and has a >SPDT switch with the positions marked "WRT. PROTECT" and "NORMAL"; next >to one row of 8 DIPs is "UPPER 4K" and next to another is "LOWER 4K". >It also has two 7805s, each driving power to some of the chips - their >outputs aren't wired together. There is also a DIP bank of four >switches. Yup, more memory. The 30-pin card is an I/O card for the same box. The motherboard ran the SS-50 bus, plus a decoder to eight SS-30 I/O sites, mem mapped of course. http://www.retro.co.za/6809/documents/ct-apr81.pdf W

19 years, 7 months

Free DEC/mini stuff in Washington DC area

by shoppa_classiccmp＠trailing-edge.com

>> for free, you must pick up > No shipping? Right, I just don't have the time. I'm starting to think that by insisting that no money can change hands that as a result there are fewer interested. Single vintage chips go for multi-hundred dollars on E-bay and get talked about here a lot, then I go and try to give away a quarter-ton of hardware and software for free and get ignored :-). Tim.

19 years, 7 months

5-1/4' drive on modern PC

by r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com

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

19 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) -- TTFN - Guy

19 years, 7 months

hardware fault on SGI Indigo?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Nov 24 2004, 17:30, Fabian H?nsel wrote: > I have an old SGI Indigo (IP12) which refuses my attempts to populate > the harddisk with Irix 5.3. The harddisk doesn't boot, so I assume it to > be empty. > > I get sashIP12 and fx.IP12 to load from cd, but using fx with that hd fails: > > SGI Version 5.3 IP12 Oct 31, 1994 > fx: "device-name"= (dksc) > fx: ctrl#= (0) > fx: drive#= (1) > ... opening dksc(0,1,) > dks0d1s10: Drive not ready: RAM failure, ASQ=0x80. > fx: warning: Failed to open dksc(0,1,10) > SGI Version 5.3 IP12 Oct 31, 1994 > > (and the same again, if I want) > > Is it trying to open a non-existent partition dks0d1s10? Is it a > software-fault? If it's a hardware fault: What's broken: hd or ram? That looks like a faulty drive. Does it spin up? fx is trying to read the status from the drive, and getting a message to say that the drive has an error and is "not ready". "Not ready" means either not spinning, or not able to initialise itself for some other reason, like a fault in the drive's own RAM). If it were just because the drive isn't set for auto-spinup, fx would issue a spinup command, so it would seem in this case there is some other drive problem. dks0d1s10 is the first disk (dk) unit (d1), on the first SCSI controller (s0), partition 10. Partition 10 is "the whole of the disk". Once the disk has an SGI label structure written to it, things will be able to find the volume header, but initially fx just accesses "the whole disk", ie ignoring any partition table (since such things are OS-dependant). > The hd is in the bottom drive bay. After my enter keystroke in line 4 > (drive#=1) the led flashes for a short time and at the same time (or > maybe some millisecconds later) the error message appears. As you probably know, the SCSI ID is automatically determined by the bay you put the drive in. At least, it is if you use standard sleds, which have a connection from the ID pins on the drive, via the sled connector, to the backplane. A few (genuine SGI) sleds have a selector switch instead. The flash from the LED is the drive responding to the command sent by fx to read the status from the drive, so the chances are that the drive is being correctly addressed. If its address was mis-jumpered, which can happen if you didn't connect the drive ID jumpers to the sled, it either wouldn't respond, or would respond to address 0 (which is the Indigo's SCSI controller's address) which would cause different problems. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

19 years, 7 months

Wanted: TI-99/4A Solid State thermal printer - PHP1900

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

Hello, Anyone have one of they are willing to trade or part with? Thanks- Steve. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo

19 years, 7 months

Irix-Install on SGI Indigo: RAM failure, ASQ=0x80

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Dec 11 2004, 18:06, Fabian H?nsel wrote: > Jules Richardson wrote: > >of our Indigos have 450MB drives, so they don't need anything > >particularly big. > > > I'll take a big one to install nearly all packages available on the cds, > as the cd drive isn't my own one. I have 1GB drives in most of my Indigos, but they NFS-mount /usr/local with lots of locally-compiled stuff, and /usr/people with home directories, from another machine. BTW, if you're looking for packages, there are still a few sites with packages for 5.3 (is this an R3000 Indigo?) and I have quite a few that I've compiled here. You can even get the IDO (Irix Development Option, ie the compilers) for free from SGI's website -- and it's significantly better than gcc. You can also still get all the patches from SGI (there's a LOT -- I know because I just re-installed all the Y2K and security patches for one of my machines). But remember that for an R3000 you need things compiled -mips1, not -mips2 (which some 5.3 systems default to) or mips3/4 (later versions of IRIX). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

19 years, 7 months

hardware fault on SGI Indigo?

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Dec 11 2004, 17:58, Fabian H?nsel wrote: > Pete Turnbull wrote: > >As you probably know, the SCSI ID is automatically determined by the > >bay you put the drive in. At least, it is if you use standard sleds, > >which have a connection from the ID pins on the drive, via the sled > >connector, to the backplane. > > > My drive has a 50 pin scsi, a 4 pin power supply and a 10 pin cable (I > did not know what it is used to) - that connects to those ID pins, > doesn't it? A new drive does not have to have such ID pins, as long as I > can set the scsi id with jumpers, is that right? Yes, that's right, just remember what you set it to, because (obviously!) it will no longer be automatically set by the slot. Don't use ID 0, because that's the controller. By convention, the boot drive is ID 1, a CDROM is 5 or 6, a tape is usually 4, but you needn't stick to those. IRIX will work out what type of device (disk, removable disk, CDROM, tape) is at each ID. You can change the drive ID that's used for booting, by changing a couple of PROM variables. On my Indy here (sorry, haven't got an Indigo handy that I can power up, but it should be very similar) they are (these viewed from IRIX rather than >from the PROM): SystemPartition=scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(8) OSLoadPartition=scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0) NB they are case-sensitive. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

19 years, 7 months

What the Lady has in her collection

by Ladyelec＠aol.com

I am on digest and a bit behind. I am a journeyman electrician due to health reasons had to close my business of 16 years. I started collecting because I was trying to find a way to make money that corresponds with my body which only gives me about 4 to 5 good working hours a day and a friend of mine on the net suggested ebay seller. Good idea, I can combine my love of garage sale shopping and junk shopping and make some cash to boot. What started my vintage computer collection was one day I found a Compaq Lunchbox computer and had it sitting on the floor when some of my many nephews (hubby is one of 24, 19 currently living) came by and wanted to know what it was. I told them a computer and they said no--it's a sewing machine. I set it up and showed them how it worked. They were fascinated by the monochrome monitor! LOL It's like explaining that if it were not for Pong and Atari they wouldn't have Playstation and X-Box. I am also a crafter so due to limited space I collect the Ladylike dainty computers that I can pick up. I currently have: Compaq II and an III Portable Tandy 1000 HX Sr. Partner Panasonic Portable Timex Sinclair 1000 in box with marked Styrofoam IBM PS/1 Apple IIe and an SE Zenith Data System Laptop Atari and the works all on original in boxes with Styrofoam. Commodore HP -87 Digi-Comp II that I have not even had the time to mess with yet. A small yet growing collection. I have more fun on "THE HUNT" than I anything else. Second most fun is showing the youngsters where computers have come from. I also have started a "Tech" signature collection. I have: Patrick Norton signed PIC Michael Garfield the High Tech Texan signed PIC Michael Nadeau signed book I need to see if I can get the good looking TV star, magnificent,hairy, intelligent, smooth, ever so popular International Man of Intrigue and Danger , Sellam Ismail to sign a book or picture or something for me. If I had not seen him on TechTV I would have never found this list. I am a firm believer if you want to have an interest in something--READ! Educate yourself! I have learned a lot from ya'll and even enjoy off-topic stuff cuz ya'll can get to be down right a hoot at times. I think I have been on the list for close to a year now. I am old and don't remember well. I am going to find me a dadburn Apple 1 if it kills me. I know there are only a few but one of them has MY name on it! Just a beginner, Back to lurking, Isa

19 years, 7 months

TTYs for the deaf

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Fred Cisin <cisin(a)xenosoft.com> wrote: > Do you know of any timesharing host or BBS that is compatible with TTY? Sure, any PDP-11 or VAX UNIX timesharing host with a Bell 103 modem attached to one of its RS-232 ports will happily accept calls from an ASR33 TTY. It's a pity that the deaf TTYs are 5-bit rather than ASCII. The reason for my question had to do with my campaign to get the few people I care about to switch from PeeCees to timesharing computing, i.e., instead of using a PeeCee, paying for Internet service, etc., get an account on my VAX and dial into it from a Teletype. One of the problems is of course that no one has Teletypes any more. I was wondering if the deaf ones could be used, as in the current horrible state of the world it seems like Teletypes are now only used by the disabled, rather than by 100% bodily abled people who are more intelligent than the masses and want to use timesharing UNIX (or VMS or RSX or TENEX or ...) instead of a pee sea. BTW, has there ever been a Teletype model that did 300 baud instead of 110? Perhaps Model 35 or 37? My Courier V.Everything modems are great, and they can go down to Bell 103 or V.21, but to my knowledge they do not have an asynchronous pass-thru mode between the RS-232 TxD/RxD lines and the Bell 103 FSK modulator/demodulator, it always has to go through the modem's internal buffers, which requires it to know the baud rate, and as a result it can only operate at 300 baud with Bell 103 / V.21, even though this modulation scheme is in fact asynchronous and baud rate-oblivious for the range 0-300 baud. The end result is that they can't answer 110 baud calls >from ASR33s. Bummer. MS

19 years, 7 months

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test-drb December 2004