test-drb April 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

248 participants
481 discussions

by news＠computercollector.com

Hi everyone, Having conferred with Jay West, I'd now like to introduce the readers of this mailing list to a new publication, the Computer Collector E-Mail Newsletter. A few of you already know me as evan947@yahoo, the guy who collects handhelds/PDAs. More than a few of you know Michael Nadeau, formerly of Byte magazine, who founded the Classic Tech E-Letter a few years ago. Meanwhile, I and Sellam Ismail (who EVERYONE knows) pondered starting a print magazine for the hobby last fall. Ultimately we decided the hobby just isn't big enough yet to support that. Instead, early this year Mike handed over the reigns of his newsletter to me. For those who don't know me, besides being a computer collector, I (like Mike) am a veteran technology reporter. Paid my dues at Gannett (which owns USA Today and other papers), was a staff engineer at a product review lab for telecom gear, and spent 3.5 years at eWeek (formerly PC Week.) I'm 29 and grew up on Apple and Atari. The first thing I did as the new editor is change the name. I think "Computer Collector E-Mail Newsletter" is more intuitive and will help attractive people who aren't necessarily familiar with our growing hobby. I also changed some of the fundamentals. Before, the newsletter had infrequent publishing, and in each issue an attempt was made to cover all of the news out there. That's a difficult way to run things. So now, the newsletter is published every Monday. Also, in every issue we have one main article (news, opinion, etc.), vs. trying to be a comprehensive news outlet every single week. By "we" I mean myself, Mike, Sellam, and author Christine Finn (Christine's known for writing the book "Articacts: An archeologist's year in Silicon Valley"), and Erik Klein, who runs www.vintage-computer.com. Of course we did not want to overlap with this mailing list. Tech tips are clearly this list's domain. So with the newsletter we're sticking to the root word: news. To be crystral-clear, we're not a forum, and we're not going to duplicate existing efforts. We also didn't want to duplicate fragment the existing online classified ads and marketplaces of Sellam's and Erik's web sites. So instead they each send me their top three or four ads on alternate weeks, which I publish in the newsletter. Along with the ads there's a link that says "click here for more," taking readers to their respective sites. So as you can see, we've revamped the old Classic Tech E-Letter into something that's fresh, consistent, and clearly carving out its own niche. Besides the few of us behind the scenes, we also solicit guest writers. For example, Visicalc legend Dan Bricklin gave us a column, as did the Digibarn's Bruce Damer. Macintosh inventor Jef Raskin did an interview with us. We interviewed the CTO of Hewlett-Packard's printer division, and even IBM's David Bradley -- better known as the guy who invented Ctrl-Alt-Delete. We also went to suburban Philadelphia to write about a video game conference. We currently have about 450 subscribers. On our informational site, which is news.computercollector.com, there is additional content. There's a computer history bookstore, a small but growing page of tales from collectors, an events calendar, a summary of our articles to date, and yes, some lame Google ads to help us pay for the hosting. Anyway, the newsletter is FREE, and if you subscribe we promise to never, ever give away your email address or send you spam. We also would love to have some of you write guest columns. The slate is wide open; write about anything you're passionate about in the hobby. If you're not a writer, then just send us your ideas for articles, and/or news we should be aware of. Sometimes, we'll make factual mistakes, and we promise to be vigilant about identifying and correcting those. As I told Sellam, I respect and fear that most of the readers of the classiccmp lists know way more about computer history than I ever will. So please bear with us when, not if, we mess up. Thanks for taking this time to read this long message. To subscribe to the newsletter, go to our site (again, that's news.computercollector.com), click the subscribe link, and just put in your email address. Thanks again, Evan Koblentz PS -- I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If you visit the area and want to chat about vintage computing over a drink, I'm always interested.

20 years, 8 months

Wanted: RL02K (Re: WTB/T: RL02/01, QBUS SMD)

by workstations＠sbcglobal.net

55- Dec 10gb drives interested? make offer Frank Stotts Workstations Hardware Services e-mail>frank(a)wrksta.com (405) 842-5151

20 years, 8 months

DEC Mini Exchange info?

by jba＠sdf.lonestar.org

Does anyone out there have any information on the escape sequences needed to control a DEC Mini Exchange? These are the serial switches that were often used for printer and modem sharing on Rainbow 100 systems. I'm trying to write a program to access it, but no luck. Any help is appreciated! -Jeff Armstrong jba(a)sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

20 years, 8 months

Making foreign DOS boot floppies (IBM).

by cb＠mythtech.net

>Apparently all DOS 3.5" floppies are FAT format with the capacity >is 1,457,664 bytes, regardless the version, after accounting for the >two hidden files, so... >Is there a way I can patch or debug the floppy after generic >format to make it look bootable? I thought there was a Format /b switch to set a floppy as bootable (which is different then Format /s which sets as bootable AND copies system files). Of course, I seem to recall that as an option with DOS, so I don't know if it is an option with something higher. A quick look in Win2k doesn't list /b as an option (or /s, and neither seem to work when tried). -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

20 years, 8 months

HP 64000 in Kansas City

by jdbryan＠acm.org

On 12 Apr 2004 at 10:45, I wrote: > If you look on the lower left-rear of the big unit below the serial > plate, you'll see that it says "64100A Mainframe." :-) I've never owned a 64110A (portable) mainframe. Pictures in the sales literature of the time, though, show the model number plate on the lower right-hand side of the fold-down keyboard below the cursor keys. -- Dave

20 years, 8 months

Burroughs head-per-track disks

by coredump＠gifford.co.uk

Does anyone know anything about the Burroughs head-per-track disk drives? Must be 1960s mainframe technology. We had two of these gadgets attached to a (modified) CTL Modular One at Westfield College, London. It was all scrapped out in the 1980s, but I still have a power supply from one of the drives. Is it any use to anybody (it's now in Bristol)? It's a massive transformer, rectifier and capacitor setup. -- John Honniball coredump(a)gifford.co.uk

20 years, 8 months

Can anyone identify this IBM magnetic tape cartridge?

by gbasesmith＠zoomtown.com

The magnetic tape you have is for the IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriter. This machine was the first "Word Processing" device ever marketed. It was introduced 40 years ago in May of 1964! Neither the term "word processor" or "text editor" existed at that time. After being on the market for about two years IBM sales representatives familiar with "data processing" began to call the concept "word processing", thus the term evolved. The product was priced at $10,500 (in 1964 dollars!) It included a full size Steelcase desk with a recessed typewriter and a tape console 1' w x 2.5' d x 3' h that weighed about 100 lbs. Text was entered on the typewriter keyboard, recorded on the tape and edited by playing text back from the tape a character, word, line, etc. at a time. Print speed was an awsome 15 characters per second.

20 years, 8 months

IC collectors? white ceramic Rockwell R6500/1EAC

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

Any IC collectors here? I have a white ceramic Rockwell 64-pic IC, R6500/1EAC you can have if it's desireable. The R6500/1E is a 1 MHz "emulator device", the /1EAC is the 2MHz version. http://68.109.73.245:8000/test/6500-1.jpg http://68.109.73.245:8000/test/6500-2.jpg Steve. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online by April 15th http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html

20 years, 8 months

Sharp 7100

by violinisgood＠senet.com.au

Not sure what happened to your query in 2002 but I found it now. Not even sure which message treading service I am looking at (via Google). Wondered if you still have the 7100 as I have just acquired one. It does boot (from the 20M HD) and seems to work fine. I also wondered if there was some legacy software to boot it from in the event that its rom battery goes flat. Maybe you can help? I imagine that the boot info could be retrieved from the rom via a ZIP disk from the parallel port if I knew how. Bob Barrett, Adelaide

20 years, 8 months

AIX

by jwest＠kwcorp.com

I'm sorry, but I've worked extensively on many differen't unices, and AIX is truely evil. Guess if it's the only unix you deal with so you don't keep having to switch mentality between AIX and everything else... Jay --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]

20 years, 8 months

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test-drb April 2004