test-drb July 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

259 participants
518 discussions

what the heck!? (bodged eurocard system)

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Any ideas what system these boards are for? http://www.moosenet.demon.co.uk/temp/comps/eurocard (sorry for bad photos - in a rush!) Looks to have been homebrewed into an XT clone case. Bus connectors are 96 way. Memory card DRAMS are 21256's, so I presume that's 1MB on the board. CPU card has a Z80B on board plus memory - and a D765 IC, which I think is an FDC chip IIRC. ROM is labelled "Prof MON 1.3" Larger chips on the I/O board are a 6845 CTRC, 8255 (PIA IIRC), Mostek MK3801 (no idea!), Z80A CPU, 6116 SRAM, and a EPROM (with no label). There's a homebrew card right at the back with nothing much more than a ROM on it - unfortunately I can't read the handwritten label, but the first three letters are "tas". Anyone able to tell me what the machine is or anything about it? cheers, Jules

20 years, 5 months

NCD 88k Xterminals available (Cambridge, UK)

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

I saved three NCD 88K Xterminals from the tip earlier (some of those mentioned on here last week). Or at least gave them a stay of execution - I can't hang onto them for more than a few days unfortunately. Now, someone on here said they might be interested in an xterm if there were any keyboards with them. Only prob is I've gone and lost your email, whoops. Shout if you read this. These NCD's work with standard PC keyboards (PS/2 connector) and mice (9 pin D-type) - I know they do as they're the same model as I have already. Anyway, two of the machines have coax / AUI Ethernet, and one has twisted pair / AUI. They all have memory and boot ROMs. The only annoying thing about them is they use DA26 connectors for video (I soldered a trailing video lead directly onto the board of mine with a VGA connector on the end - messy but chances of finding a scrap DA26 to use were around zero). The DA26 side of things means I can't test them, but the fans on them work as do the power LEDs, so no reason to suspect them being bad. I almost certainly have all of the info archived locally that used to be on NCD's site - including the video connector pinout and the Xncd19c server boot image. >From memory they run at 1024x768 resolution with 8-bit colour. Oh, they're about the same dimensions as a NeXT slab. Spray them black, and you'd almost be fooled into thinking they were! (given they were heading for the tip, I wouldn't be offended if people took them to put PC boards into in order to make firewalls, mp3 jukeboxes etc. - although other list members might :) Anyone want? I can't really keep them longer than a week unless I know they have homes though. cheers Jules

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

Free stuff (UK) again

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jul 8, 19:10, Jules Richardson wrote: > I believe the laws are changing fairly soon here so that it costs money > to dispose of unwanted computer equipment. I'm not sure how such charity > organisations will be hit when they have to pay to dispose of any bits > which are donated and they find to be unsuitable or non-working. It's hitting now. We have too many monitors (anyone want a not-very-good mnonitor?) and some crap even the charities don't want. Therefore we have a skip (dumpster) outside. In years past, we had an ordinary skip once every year or two -- the "topless" sort you see full of building rubble and garden refuse -- and CompServ staff used to place things in it carefully and watch people removing things from it to reuse. This was a good thing; it kept the audience amused, it preserved some interesting "stuff", it let things be recycled instead of putting them in landfill, and it saved a lot of space in the skip so CompServ only had to hire one instead of two :-) On one occasion, when I was still finishing my degree up the hill at CompSci, my tutor (now a senior professor), his colleague, myself and two other students , emptied the entire skip, spread the contents across the car park, and spent a couple of hours sorting it. We had quite a large audience most of the time. Now, alas, that's illegal. There are too many regulations about disposal of electrical waste, electrical safety testing, and liabilities, so we are required to have a totally enclosed skip that's padlocked. Nowadays we would have to rely on the grapevine to let interested parties know in advance so they can intercept items of interest between the back door and the skip. Not that we would be so irresponsible as to allow any dangerous items, eg terminal servers, hubs, or PCs to go astray, of course. Bringing this back to what Jules mentioned specifically, we're not allowed to put monitors in the skip. They have to go somewhere else to be properly disposed of, at ?15 a pop (pun intended). > Uh huh! Personally I'd find 100Mbit to be handy between a couple of my > modern machines just because I shift a lot of large images around - but > the 10Mbit serves me quite well otherwise. Same here. Indeed, some of the older machines in my collection that do have 100baseTX (or in a couple of cases 100baseFX, 100Mbps FDDI, or 155Mbps ATM) can't drive the network at much more than 15-20Mbps. And since only a couple of devices at home use wireless, 802.11g is more than adequate for any practical purpose. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 5 months

Free stuff (UK) again

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jul 8, 14:01, Rob O'Donnell wrote: > Most dodgy connection I know of was put in at a customer ages back.. they > had two separate units on an industrial estate. Line of sight, barely, > from back of one, to front of the other, but about 200M distance, with > other units and a road and car-park in the way. You should actually get quite decent results -- much better than 128kbps ISDN -- at that range with even a cheap and cheerful directional antenna on the AP. You can make most APs work in bridge mode (which is what you want for point to point), and a cheap AP would only cost ?60-?100; you can also get cards that can be connected to an external antenna. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 5 months

LGP-30 software

by jpaul.tardif＠sympatico.ca

Christian, I used to work on an LGP-30 over 37 years ago and was fortunate in having ACT V as the complier for the machine. You will see Graeme Scott's name in the first part of the ACT V compiler tape on your website. After joining IBM in 1969 I happened to encounter Graeme working for Bell Northern Research in Ottawa in 1972 or 1973. He mentioned that he had written ACT V in a rather short time as he was frustrated at how long it took to do things in ACT III. He turned out what I still believe was a masterful piece of software that exploited the LGP-30 hardware capability to its maximum. You will see that the compiled code branches to highly optimized run-time subroutines in the ACT V Run Time portion of the package. The compiled code executed at a very reasonable rate for such a slow machine as every floating point operation ran optimized. The compiler itself used HASH coding to determine if a variable was a reserved word in the language and if not, was stored away in the hash table of variables. Optimal Assembly routines were devised for most drum memory machines like the LGP-30, IBM 650 and Bendix G-15. The ACT V compiler made assembly coding on the LGP-30 unnecessary. It was hard to outperform the compiled ACT V code. Compile times for ACT V were about 1/3 that of ACT III. And with the Load & Go compiler, you didn't need to reload the run-time routines [or the compiler after execution]. The 4096 word machine seemed reasonably sized for many problems. Unfortunately I had lost any and all LGP-30 documentation many years ago but if you put up the ACT V material you have on your web-site, I can probably offer some additional comments as it will likely jog my brain cells that haven't thought about these things for many years. Paul Tardif [former LGP-30 programmer and technician] -- J.Paul Tardif 17 Lyall Avenue Toronto, Ontario CANADA M4E 1V7 (416) 694-5309 FAX: 416 694-2381

20 years, 5 months

Software License Update.

by aek＠spies.com

Some people at Hewlett Packard are willing to explore an updated "Non-Commercial Technology Enthusiast Software License" for older software products. == This is wonderful news. == We would also like to ask if anyone knows the date of release of the last version of HP1000 RTE == As of a few months ago, this was still on HP's web site. There has also been a release of RTE 6 to Interex (w/o sources though) RTE for the A series is a very different beast, and I beleive that was what HP was supporting up until a few years ago. There were many, many versions before that. I'd also be interested in their feelings about software from non-HP product lines that they've purchased. Apollo DOMAIN, and the various TI 9xx/1500/Explorer would also nice to be released.

20 years, 5 months

DECstation

by KParker＠workcover.com

Thanks Antonio - I did locate that site but as you pointed out it doesn't specifically mention the 125 but thanks for your advice that they are all much of the much - I wasn't sure - so I'll dig around a couple of those. +++++++++++++++++++ Kevin Parker Web Services Manager WorkCover Corporation p: 08 8233 2548 e: webmaster(a)workcover.com w: www.workcover.com +++++++++++++++++++ -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Antonio Carlini Sent: Thursday, 8 July 2004 4:48 AM To: 'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts' Subject: RE: DECstation > Looking for owner manuals for a DECstation 5000/125 IIRC the DECstation 5000-1xx machines are all much of a muchness, differing mainly in processor speeds. You can find manuals for almost any one of them (except, ironically, the 125) over at Manx: http://vt100.net/manx. Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini(a)iee.org ************************************************************************ This e-mail is intended for the use of the addressee only. It may contain information that is protected by legislated confidentiality and/or is legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient you are prohibited from disseminating, distributing or copying this e-mail. Any opinion expressed in this e-mail may not necessarily be that of the WorkCover Corporation of South Australia. Although precautions have been taken, the sender cannot warrant that this e-mail or any files transmitted with it are free of viruses or any other defect. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and destroy the original e-mail and any copies. ************************************************************************

20 years, 5 months

Free stuff (UK) again

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jul 8, 21:11, Jules Richardson wrote: > On Thu, 2004-07-08 at 20:03, Pete Turnbull wrote: > > Yeah, we keep getting asked why we're not putting wireless in our > > residences, offices, and everywhere else.. > > Glad it's not just me :) > > > The fact is that wired is > > cheaper, especially given the steel in many of the buildings, > > I wonder if it is that buildings in the UK tend to have a lot more steel > in the walls than elsewhere in the world? No, I don't think so :-) We had a guy from Intel here a few weeks ago, talking about Centrino technology, and wireless is a key part of that. He was someone senior from EMEA marketing but was well genned-up technically, and was quite open about some of the limitations nd what people had found in practice. > Thing the worries me is that a lot of schools seem to be upgrading here, > presumably at vast expense, only to find that it doesn't do the job. Well, it depends what the job is, how many users there are simultaneously, and so on. If you're talking about a primary school where there's one incoming 512kbps broadband line, only a few computers, and they get moved about, it might make sense to put in minimal cabling to a couple of staff rooms, and use wireless for the rest. If you're talking about our offices and study bedrooms, where there will be lots of simultaneous users (and students generate an amazing amount of traffic), wiring is cheaper. We did the study. Twice. Don't forget you need an infrastructure to support the wireless APs. In fact, I came across a paper by one of the members of the 802.whatever committe which indicated that in many contexts, wireless mean more infrastructure, not less (because of the number of APs, power points or power-over-Ethernet, etc etc, and you still need the backbone and the fibre between buildings). > I'm not actually aware how the prices for wireless compare to Ethernet > cards, hubs, cabling etc. so I can't say how much a fresh wireless > installation would cost against a more traditional setup. Depends on the facilities and bandwidth you need. We get a very good deal on certain types of switches, and cabling isn't very expensive per outlet if it's done in harmony with other works. On the other hand, to use wireless for the student network, we'd need an awful lot of APs, still need cable to get to them, fibre between the buildings, and although the switches would be fewer in number, we'd need a lot of PoE ports which cost money, and we'd be using Cisco Aironet 1200s or similar (I forget what the model number is for the 11a/b/g version), with full management facilites, VLAN support, panel antennae, etc. We get a really good price on those too, but they still cost several times as much as SOHO APs and either don't give a great bandwidth or don't cover a large number of users. Plus it takes just one oik with his own AP (which we ban, for reasons that have to do with experience :-)) to disrupt our nicely laid out coverage. This is getting a bit off-topic :-) Wireless may be classic, but I'm not sure wireless ethernet is ;-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 5 months

Free stuff (UK) again

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Jul 8, 9:40, Jules Richardson wrote: > (Interestingly, there seems to be a huge drive toward wireless at the > moment, and people only find out how slow and unreliable it is when it's > too late - all I've heard from real installations so far are horror > stories and nothing along the lines of "oh yeah, it works fine") Yeah, we keep getting asked why we're not putting wireless in our residences, offices, and everywhere else.. The fact is that wired is cheaper, especially given the steel in many of the buildings, which limits wireless range. Many people who've tried wireless see 54Mbps and think it's fine; even if they realise that the true throughput is limited to about half that, they've usually never seen the graphs that show what happens when you have multiple clients (for those who don't know, the total useful bandwidth falls dramatically for every client you add; the net effect is that bandwidth per client falls off approximately exponentially). And when we upgraded our Cisco access points it took us a day or so to realise why the range dropped off -- it turns out Cisco made a small miscalculation, and all our tests done with the old firmware were using illegally high power levels. Someone at Cisco hadn't realised the difference between radiated power and EIRP when you have 2.2dB antennae. Wireless is great for some types of point-to-point, casual use, a very small number of users in a small area, or devices that must remain in contact while moving about. Otherwise it sucks. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 5 months

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test-drb July 2004