Bound to happen! A few odd charges showed up on my business
credit card. I caught it quickly, then went into gumshoe mode.
The largest charge was to Staples.com. Someone knew all my info:
name, address, credit card number, three-digit code from the back,
so Staples processed the order. They had the new iPod sent to a
fellow in Los Angeles.
Said fellow was surprised to hear my card had been used:
Why, he'd recently bought an iPod on eBay at a great price.
The seller wanted to be paid via eGold.com, and had sent detailed
instructions as how to send money to an exchange company that
would convert dollars to eGold, which could be used to pay him.
I tracked down several other eBay buyers who had the same
experience with the seller. In three of four cases, the buyers
somehow screwed up the payment process, yet had received their
goods (directly from Staples or BestBuy) in the same fashion.
Meanwhile the seller has disappeared: Yahoo email unanswered,
fake phones and addresses.
This may never happen with classic goods, of course, but you
can see how the scam will work with new goods. It also makes
me wonder if some of the "how to get stuff for free" packages
on eBay aren't promoting this sort of scam. You can see how
thieves could make a lot of money, converting credit card
info to cash.
- John
On Dec 5 2004, 13:31, Bert Thomas wrote:
> > However, if I want it to look neater (I meant to mention this in my
> > previous message) -- though goodness knows who would care -- I have
> > been known to use a scalpel or craft knife to cut the copper either
> > side of a hole and then lift off the small redundant piece. I've
also
> > done that between holes, when I wanted to use two adjacent holes
but
> > isolated from each other.
>
> Aaarggghhh, <undo><undo><undo><undo><undo>... ;-)
Why "undo"? Great minds obviously think alike, and two posts just
reinforce the value of the advice :-)
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
On Dec 5 2004, 7:19, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 01:00:30 +1300, Dave Brown <tractorb(a)ihug.co.nz>
wrote:
> > Ethan
> > RS (RadioSpares) Stock No. 543-535- $NZ19.50. I've been meaning to
get
> > another one myself although I've tended to use 'blob' board more
often
> > these days.
>
> RS? I've heard it referenced on the list... is that the name of a
> particular brand of shop?
Used to stand for Radio Spares, later Radiospares, RS Components. A
phone/mail-order trade supplier, originally specialising in parts for
radios and TVs, but now selling everything from resistors to car park
furniture. They had a separate sell-to-the-public offshoot called
Electromail for a while, but now RS will take almost anyone's money (I
think you might need to open an account, though). Lots of electronics
shops will order RS parts for you. Their paper catalogue is 1cm wider
than Farnell's (16cm as opposed to 15cm). http://rswww.com
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Hi:
A gentleman in Arizona contacted me about divesting himself of his
S100 stuff, including most of my missing BYTE magazines (and 2 copies of
Issue #1), the entire run of Micro Cornucopia (which I haven't received
yet), a few Kilobauds and Interface Ages. He has also sent me a SSM VB1B
video board, a Computer Systems Inc. Clock/Calendar board, an IMS PIC-8 Rev
3 interface board and a Cromemco Dazzler board set. Supposedly there's lots
more, including tons of software on 8" disks and two complete S100 systems.
Back to the Micro Cornucopia. I've heard of the name, but what was
the focus of it?
Regarding my BYTE collection, with these additional issues, I have
nearly a complete set from 9/75 through 1/88. So far, my "interesting
article" database has about 700 entries. At some point, I will make this
available on my Web site and if someone needs an article reprint, I can do
that.
I thought I'd mention the issues of BYTE I'm still missing in case
anyone has dupes: most of 1976 (except 1, 3, 4), 7/77, 6/80, 2/82, 1/86, and
3/86.
Rich
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
/************************************************************/
On Dec 5 2004, 5:57, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> Does anyone know where I can locate a genuine tool for severing the
> traces on veroboard? I know I can make do with a drill bit, but that
> puts a tapered hole in the resin board underneath.
So does the genuine Veroboard cutter. It's just a stub drill mounted
in a blue plastic handle, and its only advantage is that it's easier to
hold. There's quite a good picture at
http://www.zen22142.zen.co.uk/Prac/vero_circ/vero.htm
You can probably get one from Farnell in NZ. The part number from the
(UK, Farnell-In-One) catalogue is 329-538. It looks similar but not
identical in my catalogue to the one in the CPC catalogue, which is
interesting because Farnell and CPC are part of the same group and
share stock. Same price, though, UKP 6.60 (and the NZ price is
NZ$25.94).
http://nz.farnell.com/jsp/endecaSearch/searchPage2.jsp?Ntt=spot+face+cutter…
Vero Electronics is now a subsidiary of APW:
http://www.apw.com/aboutAPW/familiarBrands/vero.jsp
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Does anyone know anything about the protocol that the IBM 3270 terminals
uses on the BNC ports labelled I/O? Is there any possibility of hooking
this up to anything modern?
--
Tore S Bekkedal <toresbe(a)ifi.uio.no>
I was going through various miscellaney and found a box labeled
"MISC PC BOARDS". On opening it up, I found a number of boards which
may of interest to the list. With one possible exception, they are all
up for grabs, on the same conditions as my last pile of stuff: cover
shipping and it's yours (including free if you pick it up in Montreal).
Except where noted, this is all "no obvious physical damage, but
completely untested and has been sitting idle for some unknown number
of years, probably at least ten".
First, the board I suspect I want to keep - I have some questions about
it, if anyone can answer them.
It's apparently from an outfit called MICRO WORKS, and is a "2708 EPROM
BURNER". It has onboard a 6821, two 7474s, a 7406, a 555, a 7805, a
7904, a 7812, a 3904 transistor, various two-terminal devices (caps,
resistors, diodes, a LED), and a switch (apparently SPDT used as SPST)
marked "HV OFF" and "HV ON". Oh, and a rather nice 24-pin ZIF DIP
socket. It has a card-edge connector that makes it look as though it
goes with the SwTPc stuff listed below - its only 30-pin, but has the
same pin pitch and blocked pin.
Basically, what I want to know is, how much hackery would it take to
turn this into something I could attach to, say, a parallel port, and
use to burn EPROMs?
Next, the stuff that's definitely up for grabs.
Of these, to start, four Wang boards:
A board in the shape of a rectangle about 20"x13" with a rectangle of
about 12"x5" cut out of one corner - or, equivalently, a rectangle of
20"x8" overlapped with a rectangle of 8"x13" (where in all four cases
the dimensions are in the same order). On the 12" edge there is a
connector that looks physically like a 3U VME connector to my (not very
used to VME) eye. On the 8" edge there is a DB25F, what I might call
(quite possibly improperly) a DIN-4, and a 36-pin Centronics. At the
end of the 20" edge farthest from the 8" edge, there are two 34-pin
(17x2) 0.1"-pitch connectors of the sort I learned to call Bergs.
According to the solder side, this is an "8221-R2" and bears the Wang
name; on the component side, I also see the Wang logo and the markings
"8221- -R2M2", where the number 14, or perhaps the letter A, has been
hand-written into the gap, and the last 2 is in a different font from
the rest. Following that is a box into which has been handwritten
J05796. Silkscreened - not part of the foil pattern - I see
"CPU/SYSTEM BOARD" and "8221-R1 SILK SCREEN". There is one empty
socket, a 40-pin DIP; the other seven sockets are filled. Based on the
datecodes I see on the soldered-in chips, this dates from mid-'82.
A board which I speculate is a backplane to go with the previous board.
It bears no active components, only connectors and resistors. It has a
connector physically compatible with the VME-like connector on the
above board, five 86-conductor card-edge connectors (43 pins on each
side, with approximately S-100 pin spacing), and three connectors that
look like power connectors: one each of five, three, and two pins. In
the foil patterns on the compoent side, this is marked
COMP. SIDE 8241- -R?M
and the Wang logo (where ? may actually be intended to be a 0). In the
foil on the solder side I see the Wang logo and
8241-R? MADE IN USA CIRCUIT SIDE
This baord is about 6"x7".
Another Wang board. This one is about 8"x12" and has two card-edge
connectors, one physically compatible with the 86-pin connectors on the
previous board and one 20-pin one with much narrower spacing on the
other edge. It has what appears to be a back-panel connector with a
metal shield on the 8" edge (which is not included in the 12" dimension
- it adds maybe 5/8") bearing a DA15F connector. This baord is marked
"8223- -R?M" on the component side and "8223-R?" on the foil side, and
has numerous patches applied in the form of etch run cuts and
soldered-on wires. Almost everything is soldered in, but there is one
socket, bearing a crystal oscillator marked "19.200 MHZ".
Another board which looks very much like 8241 board above which I
speculated was a backplane, except that instead of the VMEish connector
it has a sixth 86-pin card-edge connector. It is marked as 8229
instead of 8241, but otherwise looks basically identical to the 8241
described above.
Three boards which I expect are from an SwTPc. Each bears the SwTPc
logo somewhere in the component-side etch.
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.
A board with 39 empty DIP sockets (mostly 16-pin, at least one 14-pin),
no filled sockets, and two 7805s apparently connected in parallel.
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).
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.
Finally, two miscellaneous boards.
One I suspect of being an S-100 prototyping board. It has a 7805 and
numerous power decoupling caps, a lot of uncomitted solder pads, and a
100-pin card-edge connector that looks like S-100 to my inexperienced
eye. It is silk-screen labeled "CROMEMCO WRAP BOARD" on the component
side and "CROMEMCO WWB-2" on the solder side.
The other is a mystery to me. It looks like a module from a very early
modular computer of some sort. It dates from the very early IC days, I
would say - the days when an IC package would contain maybe five to ten
transistors and not much else. It bears a logo that consists of the
letters A and M, stacked with the A over the M, inside an octagon whose
vertices are at (cos(k*pi/4),sin(k*pi/4)) - ie, turned 22.5? relative
to stop-sign orientation. It has been robbed of one component, a
transistor to go by the labeling ("Q5" on the component side), but I
think everything else is present.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
Today at auction I acquired a MicroVAX 3100 system. It's my first VAX
hardware.
I don't know a lot about it and thought I would ask here for help.
I put up a picture of the system on some personal webspace. The page
is: http://sasteven.multics.org/MicroVAX/MicroVAX3100.html
The system is a low-profile box, with one opening in the front face
with a 5-1/4" form factor tape drive presently installed. There are
free connectors and space inside for a single narrow SCSI drive. The
system has two mezzazine-mounted memory cards inside and appears to
have 16 megs of RAM on the cards.
The model plate on back (one of the pictures on the page I put up)
reads:
Model- DV031DTA-A - A01
S/N- KA324TJ182
Some questions:
1. I notice on the Web that there is quite a bit of info about
MicroVAX 3100 systems. I also see that there are a variety of models.
Is there an easy way to figure out which one I have?
2. Would it be possible and/or work to replace the tape drive with a
SCSI CD-ROM reader? I don't have a source for tapes.
3. Is it worth putting VMS on this box? It looks like it could run
NetBSD as well. I also have McKusik's BSD archive CD set that he
sells. Is there a flavor of vintage UNIX that I could put on the
system?
4. What is the console on this hardware? It has the three serial
ports on RJ-type connectors, and from what I gather this is a TTY-only
machine, no framebuffer, etc.
5. Is there a thorough hardware reference for this machine out there
on the net that I should get? I looked on the HP/Compaq site, and it
appears that they pay a small amount of homage to the system, but
without much substancial info. A hardware reference manual in PDF
would be great.
Any and all info would be appreciated. If there's a good site that I
should be pointed to (there seems to be tons and tons of info out
there, which results in Google pulling up a huge mass of stuff to weed
through) instead of answering these specific questions, a pointer to
it would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Scott.
Found a classic book at a used book shop - "Logic & Memory Experiments
using TTL ICs, Book 2", Howard W. Sams & Co, 1979. The style is
familiar - I'm sure I have other books in the series at home. I'm
curious if anyone has "Book 1" and what's in it - book 2 is LED
decoders, flip-flops, one-shots, and 1/4K - 16K SRAMs and EPROMs
(2101s, 2708s, larger devices in similar families, etc.)
Fun stuff to reminisce about - I remember reading books like these as
a kid to take my fun beyond built computers like the PET.
-ethan
Hello all,
Recently I got a VAX 11/725, a small model VAX that was produced around 1983.
I intend to try to boot this machine again after many years.
- Does anyone have a 11/725?
- Does anyone have 11/725 related documentation?
- How do you check in a few steps with this computer whether it is still functioning properly?
Thanks,
Jeroen
--
