test-drb June 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

281 participants
616 discussions

Buying in the States was Re: HP analyzer probes

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

der Mouse <mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca> wrote: > I don't even own a working television, > haven't for decades. Wow! I'm not the only one! (Though it hasn't been decades for me yet, as I only stopped having a TV in my home in 2000.) MS

20 years, 5 months

USB 5.25" floppy drive

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Ok, now you have to promise not to laugh too hard. Does anyone know if it's possible to make a USB Floppy Disk Drive. Oh, ...... I mean a 320k/360k 5.25" USB floppy disk drive. [hey, you promised .....] I occasionally need to transfer things between my PC and an old S-100 system, or a Z-100. The Z-100 has 5.25" disks, but not 3.5". So ..... I actually wondered if one could buy a USB 3.5" floppy and use the "controller card" with a 5.25" drive, since the interface is nominally the same. However, these mostly use notebook drives, and while they may have the same electrical interface, the physical interface is a flex cable. Worse, some of the USB 3.5" drives may "integrate" the USB controller and drive mechanism so that there is no standard floppy interface at all. There may also be software issues. Anyway, it seems like a question to post to this group, and in a few other places. [Next I will want a USB 8" drive ..... which, actually, with the right software, would not be a bad idea !!]

20 years, 5 months

New Finds: Mentis wearable computer!

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

I got a call from one of my sources today. They had a new load of stuff for me to check out so I went out there LATE today and stayed till well after dark. One of the more intersting things that I found is a Mentis wearable computer! Pictures to follow when time permits. TELTRONICS - INTERACTIVE SOLUTIONS Mentis, fully functional wearable computer, Intel Pentium 166 MHz MMX, includes CD capability. "The Mentis system is created and manufactured by Interactive Solutions, a subsidiary of Teltronics, Inc. Belonging to the new generation of wearable computers, the Mentis system takes "wearable" to new dimensions. Multimedia dimensions. With the Mentis solution, users gain the portability of a laptop, the ruggedness of a wearable computer, and the full multimedia capabilities of a desktop system. It is a truly universal computing platform. And, it's ideal for any environment, any occasion where users need real-time, interactive information, in the field or on the fly. The Mentis processing unit is little more than an inch thick and measures 7? by 5? inches. This compact system houses a Pentium?-based, fully multimedia-equipped, single-board computer." (Home Page) Joe

20 years, 5 months

VCF East, ASR33 help wanted

by wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net

I have an ASR33 that exhibits the following symptoms in local mode (I have not attempted to test online): 1) Paper will not advance (roller seems to move OK when turned by hand) 2) Bell will not ring 3) When at the start of a line (carriage to the left) it will over print several characters before it starts moving to the right 4) Carriage returns very slowly and sometimes does not make it all the way back 5) Filthy inside (although not as bad as when I got it... I've vacuumed and blown a lot of crud out of it) 6) Smells a little funky... not the clean warm oil smell that I remember from high school days As well as being dirty, I suspect that it was improperly lubricated by the previous owner as it seems to be particularly sticky inside. I also have a nearly new KSR33 from the same source that was improperly handled to the extent that its plastic shell was shattered (it was in a cardboard box with some newspaper, none of the shipping bolts in place, and apparently roughly moved around his ham shack). I have made no attempt to power up the KSR (in case stuff got bent) but I think that it could be used as a source of replacements if some of the parts of the ASR are badly worn. I would like to recruit 3 or 4 knowledgeable and highly motivated classiccmpers (motivated by the prospect of DINNER and BEER on me) at VCF East to completely tear down, clean, adjust, lubricate and reassemble the ASR. I will supply all of the tools and materials (unless you have special purpose tools that will help). I picture a marathon operation, with the experts doing the disassembly, assembly and adjustment work and me with a toothbrush and a pan of Simple Green (or alcohol or kerosene or whatever solvent the experts suggest) busily scrubbing parts as they are handed to me. With four guys and one scrubber, could this be accomplished in a couple of hours? Why don't I do this myself? 1) I don't really have the space. Having the entire interior of a hotel room to myself will be something of a luxury to me (I have two kids). Or maybe I can ask Sellam for some space at the festival and we can make it a spectator sport. It could even become sort of a challenge... "The crew at VCF East was able to rebuild an ASR33 in two hours, how fast can the West or Europe do it?" 2) I don't have the unbroken periods of time. I have the fear that I would get it all apart, have one of my all too frequent family "emergencies" and then have to pack it up, resulting in lost parts when I finally get back to it. 3) I'm a gutless wimp. If I get it apart, I'm not sure I could get it all back together, even with the docs. I have original prints of some of the docs and the rest in electronic form. Email me if interested, Thanks, Bill

20 years, 5 months

Head Cleaners

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jun 28, 13:16, Teo Zenios wrote: > How often do you people use a head cleaner to keep your floppy drives running Never. You shouldn't need to clean the heads, in normal use. If you do, you have a damaged diskette (or possibly a damaged head, which is scraping oxide off your floppies) which you should track down, cut up, burn, and discard. Of course, sometimes oxide from a damaged floppy will stick to the head, and that will then damage any other disks you put in that drive. (or what do you use to clean them when they don't read disks correctly)? Cotton bud and iso-propyl alcohol. Head-cleaning disks don't do a very good job, especially if the head is really dirty. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 5 months

TI calculator repair anyone?

by vcf＠siconic.com

See below... Reply-to: JWLane43(a)aol.com ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2004 12:11:02 EDT From: JWLane43(a)aol.com To: vcf(a)vintage.org Subject: (no subject) Hello! I would be very grateful if you could help me. Do you know of any company or individual that repairs old calculators. I have two Texas TI-58 Programmable calculators that do not work and I am very keen to make contact with anyone that has a working knowledge of the internal workings of these machines. Thanks very much for any help you can give me. Jonathan -- 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, 5 months

XTerms + DEC stuff + misc available (Cambridge, UK)

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

I'm aware of the following up for disposal (I think they're off to landfill at the end of next week by the sounds of it) in Cambridge, if anyone's interested: 17 HP Xterminals 5 HP 700RX (Xterminals) 3 Vaxstation 3100 4 Large SCSI boxes 4 Medium SCSI boxes 6 BBC Bs 16 BBC type monitors 4 NCD Xterms 1 HP Entria Xterm 8 Dot matrix printers 1 DEC 3000 1 Sparc 4 1 Extremely spiky thing 1 Olivetti drive of some description 1 huge monitor box of cables Lots of random software I should be meeting with the chap tomorrow as I'm picking up some other stuff from him, so hopefully I can look over everything. I *may* grab the software and cable boxes just so I can take a proper inventory, although I have no desire to hang onto anything other than a SCSI cable or two. Note 1: this is the *UK* Cambridge (I always put that in the subject, and people always miss it :-) Note 2: various people know about this stuff, so it's a case of first come, first served. I can put you in touch with the chap if there is anything you want from the list. ps. I too am curious to know what the spiky thing is! cheers Jules

20 years, 5 months

manuals in pdf (resolution, compression)

by owad＠applefritter.com

I have a lot of manuals I want to scan and am trying to decide upon the best format. I'd like some opinions on the following scans of a 128-page Franklin AceWriter manual. On the low end is a pdf of bitmap images. It's hideous, but only 3.5 MB. The high end is a 40 MB pdf of jpeg images. This one's easy on the eyes, but is an awfully large download and I'm wondering if it might not print as nicely as the bitmap. In the middle is a pdf of compressed jpegs at 15 MB. This looks good to my eyes, I just wonder about using compressed jpegs for archiving... <www.applefritter.com/temp/acewriter_lo.pdf> (3.5 MB) <www.applefritter.com/temp/acewriter_med.pdf> (15 MB) <www.applefritter.com/temp/acewriter_hi.pdf> (40 MB) (Disregard the incorrect ordering of the pages.) Thoughts? Which of the three would you most want to download? Tom Applefritter www.applefritter.com

20 years, 5 months

VCF East preparations are afoot...

by vcf＠siconic.com

Ok, I'm finally catching up with VCF East planning. Sorry for all the delays. The dates for VCF East are July 16-17 (FRIDAY and Saturday). The location is Burlington, Massachusetts, at Sun Microsystems' corporate campus. Sun is sponsoring the event. Those who have already submitted exhibit entries have just been replied to (Tom Uban: you probably won't get my e-mail due to spam blocks but rest assured you're in there). Current exhibitors can be seen on the VCF East 2.0 exhibits page: http://www.vintage.org/2004/east/exhibit.php We've got ten exhibitors so far (2 pending approval) which is a good start, but I'd like to see more. So if you're planning to exhibit at VCF East, now's the time to register. I'm also putting together the speaker roster. If you have someone you'd like to suggest as a speaker, or you'd like to give a talk yourself, please e-mail me. Things will start moving fast from this point forward. The next VCF Gazette will be coming out soon with more information. Hope to see you all at VCF East 2.0! -- 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, 5 months

HP analyzer probes

by sloboyko＠yahoo.com

philpem(a)dsl.pipex.com stated: >Drat. Apparently the cabling for the data lines is >nichrome. Whether >that's >for mechanical, reliability or electrical reasons I >have no idea. >Later. The only reason I can think of for nichrome is that there would be a uniform resistance in the wire (likely) or (unlikely) nichrome is a poor (for a metal) conductor of heat. My Tek 1230 is definitely plain old IDC, and that model is worth up to and including nothing without the probes. Probes are $400+ (without the grabbers!). I have 3 and have turned down an offer for $300 for one of them. I spoke with a surplus test equipment supplier and he told me that these are almost always lost when they go up for auction, especially military. Off lease, they just bill the customer and dump them surplus anyway. I actually looked into building a probe - no schematics, no info from TEK, custom and proprietary IC's, and I suspect absolute analog comparator voodoo designed for clean and fast risetimes. Bottom line: you need to get your dough back. Accept no less. ===== -Steve Loboyko Incredible wisdom actually found in a commerical fortune cookie: "When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day." Website: http://juliepalooza.8m.com/sl __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

20 years, 5 months

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test-drb June 2004