HI
I used this machine 1989-1991 in London at a company in London called
Electric Image.
Its major problem was the bottle kneck in the transferring of data from
the Sun, to the machine itself.
A ray traced render would indeed be quite fast, but passing any complex
data to it, just took forever.
Interesting machine tho..Nice images.
Simon
Got a call from Mark Wagner, a tech at George Washington University in DC.
He has 2 RX02 (dual drive rack mount 8" floppy units) available.
They are pretty much dead.
They are what's left over after getting one unit fully operational.
The power supplies are good, and he might keep one.
If they could be of any use to you, and you're nearby, drop him a line at:
qedqcd(a)gwu.edu
Ed K.
Cameron Kaiser <spectre(a)floodgap.com> wrote:
> And a babe and/or stud quotient, too.
Not sure about that, here is what I have at this early design stage
(the list of properties will definitely grow, these were just the
first that popped into my head):
StarMatch profile format:
First line: M for member, A for applicant, C for new E-mail address for a
member pending confirmation.
Followed by information lines, then a blank line, then the essay until EOF.
Each information line begins with a type letter followed immediately by data.
The first letter is A for internal administrative data like the password,
everything else is the user's input. All administrative lines must precede
the user's lines.
The following lines are defined:
ACcookie expire Indicates that E-mail confirmation is required. cookie
must be supplied in the E-mail, expire is time_t in
decimal.
AM If present, subscribe to starmatch-ml
AOoldemail Only in 'C' files, specifies the old E-mail address.
APpassword
BMJD x Birthdate as MJD (canonical)
BYYYY-MM-DD Gregorian birthdate allowed in input, converted to MJD
D (for date) single and looking if present, looking for
friends only otherwise.
Hurl Home page
Iurl Picture URL, may be on our site if we host it
Llat[NS]long[EW] Location, lat and long are atof-able floating point
latitude and longitude in degrees. Alternatively, in
input lat and long may be <num>d<num>'<num>" or
<num>d<num>m<num>s, converted to floating point.
NReal Name Real name
Pproperty=value Any properties one can think of
Pproperty (without value) flag properties
Scode Sex and orientation, code is M/F for straight, MB/FB
for bi, L for Lesbian, G for gay male.
Properties currently defined:
baue=<n> Been to Bay Area UFO Expo <n> times
baue=S Been a speaker at Bay Area UFO Expo
cbbw Is a proud CBBW
concon=<n> Been to Conspiracy Con <n> times
concon=S Been a speaker at Bay Area UFO Expo
courage Courageous freedom fighter, not afraid of the shadow
govt
exop active interest in exopolitics
height=<num>cm Canonical, num may be integer or float
height=<int>'<int>" allowed in input, converted to cm
iufoc=<n> Been to the International UFO Congress <n> times
iufoc=S Been a speaker at the International UFO Congress
mufon Member of
pagan self-explanatory
ufo active interest in UFOs
weight=<num>kg Canonical, num may be integer or float
weight=<num>{lb,lbs,#} allowed in input, converted to kg, num may be int or
float
wiccan self-explanatory
xconf=<n> Been to the X-Conference <n> times
xconf=S Been a speaker at the X-Conference
>> >>> I don't like the fact that you're supposed to pay for an ID
>> >>> (and have thr device 'certified') if you want to make your
>> >>> own stuff. Never had this problem with RS232 :-)
>> You need to pay for and get certified if you are going to make a legitimate
>> network appliance also [MAC ID]. Of course most products purchase a
> You didn't need to pay for anything if you wanted to make an RS232 device.
Nor do you for USB. Just use one of the existing USB/Paralell
or USB/Serial modules, add a serial EEPROM with the needed
device strings, and you have your custom USB device. Then
take their generic driver, add whatever funcionality your device
should support and you get all the bonuses of USB (easy use,
plug and Pray, and so on) plus no USB specific development.
>> >>> And the fact that you seem to need special drivers for many
>> >>> devices which you can bet are not available for any of my machines.
>> Although I can not find the link at presend, there is source code for low
>> level drivers. Since your environment (by choice) is the use of equipment
> Ah, sop now if I buy a product the first thing I have to do is write
> special drivers for it..... And hope that I can get enough of a spec on
> the product to allow me to do this.
??? Isn't that the same for any device? I mean, if I get me a camera
with a RS232 interface (if such thing is still arround, but I can just
use my old Olympus as example :) I still have to write my own drivers
(unless useung Wn/Mac) ... that's nothing new to USB or whatever.
On a closer look, doing a USB driver is even a bit more simple than
for any older infervace, since not only the electrical parameters, but
also all basic messages are described.
>> >>> And the fact that it's very assymmetric (there are 'masters' and
>> >>> 'slaves') is something I don't like either. RS232 was much
>> >>> more symmetrical.
>> RS-232 is an ELECTRICAL Specification. The protocols that are run on
>> This are independand. Lets keep it apple and apples.....
> OK, Asynchronous bit-serial data, sent LSB first, using the RS232 voltage
> and connector specifications :-)
*G* and USB is the same, plus a well defined protocoll for messages,
which allows software development on specific levels with a great speed.
>> >>> More modern palmtops have USB ports. They're slaves,
>> >>> designed to hang off a PC. You can't link them directly to
>> >>> a printer. It's interesting that some of my older handhelds
>> >>> have HPIL ports, but by default the handheld is the loop
>> >>> controller ('master'), so you can link them straight to a
>> >>> printer. But they can be 'slaves' if you want to link them
>> >>> to a larger machine. We've gone backwards (as usual)
>> To be honest, I have not looked into the electricals on this. I am NOT sure
>> that they are *REQUIRED* to be slaves.
> There is, of course, nothing rreally to stop you making a handheld
> 'master' (althoguh the master has to supply power to all devices on the
> USB chain), but the fact remains that AFAIK all handheld machines
> currently on sale are 'slaves'
That's where on-the-go comes into the play, an extension of the electrical
spec (so the device can see if the other end is a host or a device and select
the oposite role) and a protocoll extension, for negotiation if both sides
are able to act as host/device. It even allows switching roles while running
(of course after closeing all open transactions).
OTG makes the low level driver a bit more complicated, but these have
only to be made once for any new machine (and adds a little hardware for
switching the power on and off).
OTG is ment that a camera can be a device to a PC, and a host for a
printer ... and so on.
>> >>> All my PCs have ISA slots only. Other machines have Unibus,
>> >>> Qbus, BBC 1MHz bus/Torch X-bus, various custom I/O slots
>> >>> (like on th HP9830), HPIL, PERQlink, etc. Just about all of
>> >>> those have RS232 (or compatible) ports, I've nver seen USB
>> >>> for any of them
>> Again, development boards ARE out their that give you everything you need to
>> interface to nearly any host...
> Most of the developemnt boards I've looked at assume you're making a
> slave device. This is not what I need.
Shure, most ICs sold are slave controlers ... If you realy want to look
into that, I recomend the Transdimension UHC 124 controler. It handles
already the most nasty parts of the low level protocoll, so even the basic
drivers are easy to do. also it features an 8 Bit Interface, so it's great for
every computer arround. The only feature missing is OTG. It's a host only
controller, but has already a 4 port hub integrated (oh, and it's only good
for low/full speed, but 1 MB/s is more than most old computers can handle
anyway).
Transdimension offers a real neat Evaluation board
http://www.transdimension.com/products/semiconductors/uhc124/evalboard/inde…
But more important is their 'Exerciser' Board
http://www.transdimension.com/products/semiconductors/uhc124/exerciserboard…
a full figured USB training and Protocoll/Trafic analyzing tool.
All you need is a dumb terminal (or a PC) and you can dig deep into
USB.
My recomendation for anyone who realy wan't so know how USB ticks.
better than any Windows based tool I found (if you're able to handle a
classic text based UI - not necersarry true for everyone nowadays).
The TD243 is a nice upscale controler, but I haven't done anything with it.
Also it features a 32 Bit interface :( Theoreticaly the Atmel 370 (*G*) would
make an even better controller, since it freatures OTG and an even higer level
interface - just, I haven't had a chance to get the needed interface level decription,
and I don'T want to use their C libraries. they are worthless for the machines
I play with.
>> >>> > I also don't understand your statement that it is not a bus.....
>> >>> Electrically it's not a bus. If it was, I could just parallel up
>> >>> connectors and plug in several devices, there'd be no need
>> >>> to _always_
>> >>> have a hub (which, from what I've seen, contains a fair
>> >>> amount of logic).
>> By that argument (which has valid aspects), then ArcNet was not a bus
>> either, and RS-232 is DEFINITELY not a bus architecture (it is purely point
>> to point).
No argument there. But neither of those claim to be a bus.
Well, logicaly I considere USB a bus. from a host perspective all devices are
available in paralell, and you talk out of one port. that it'S bade up from point
to point connections is not realy a criteria - If you look arround, nowadays
Ethernet is also almost always a point to point with switches, still for each
connected computer it looks like a bus.
Hans
Ed Kelleher <Pres(a)macro-inc.com> wrote:
> The Iraqi's will receive a great deal more benefit from the oil than the
> museums.
Iraqis maybe, but not the humanity. The secret tablets and hi-tech
artifacts from Eden looted from that museum were this planet's greatest
treasure.
> Oh, and who was it that was looting the museums?
Special Ops who knew exactly what they were doing, who passed up very
beautiful and expensive golden statues and other very valuable artifacts
of the mundane kind and went straight for the ancient extraterrestrial
stuff in the basement. They also took the extra effort to destroy the
museum computers and CDs with catalogs so no one can figure out just what
they stole. They also had keys and codes to safes, office locks, etc.,
so they were pros with inside access.
MS
Gene Buckle <geneb(a)deltasoft.com> wrote:
> Let me guess, you're not exactly popular with the ladies, are you?
Only the ones who go to Bay Area UFO Expo and Conspiracy Con.
Those conferences draw a very good gender balance, but more work
is needed on making us ufologists match. I'm planning to create a new
and exciting matchmaking site (hosted at Harhan and powered by
4.3BSD-Quasijarus on a VAX of course) specifically catered to this
community. Instead of stupid useless questions like height, eye color,
etc. the member profile form will ask questions about UFOs,
conspiracies, psychic powers, alternative medicine, etc.
MS
Forwarded from Bob Supnik...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:38:48 +0000
From: bsupnik(a)comcast.net
To: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com>
Subject: Re: simh simulation speed
Unless the simulator writer inserts timing (delay) code, as Phil did for
the PDP11, SIMH runs as fast as possible. In the case of the LGP30, this
is many, many times faster than the real machine.
/Bob
> On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
>
> > I haven't had a chance to get back and debug, but is it true that simh
> > does NOT simulate the target machine's execution speed? I wrote a simple
> > 'sum all words in track N' program for the LGP and it completed as soon
> > as I hit return! It should have taken many seconds... I did RTFM, so no
> > reference to it, but I haven't had time to go look at the source. Got
> > lazy and decided to post instead of research (typical, huh :-)
>
> I wondered that myself. SpaceWar! on the PDP-1 seems to run at its
> original speed.
>
> --
>
> 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 ]
>
On 26/09/2004 Stephane Tsacas wrote:
>Jos, I think you missed the following email.
>Stephane
I think you're missing the point. I was merely pointing out that
contacting a family in mourning about such unimportant matters is,
in my opinion, pretty tasteless and could cause unwanted effects.
Greetings, Jos
_________________________________________________________________
Easily share your photos and music - get MSN Hotmail Plus!
http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-xe
> I noticed all of you had nostalgic interest in the Synertek VIM-1. I have one, in its old
> yellowed box, postmarked July, 1978. While I had grandiose intentions when I
> originally got it, I never put it to use. If any of you have an interest in it, let me know.
Well, there's definite interest here, but without a return Address, it's hard to answer :)
Servus
Hans
you create your OR functionality with diodes - use two diodes (or as many inputs as you need) such as the 1N4001 for your inputs. Tie the cathodes together and attach that to the relay coil. Apply "logic high" (whatever voltage your relays operate at) to either (or any) diode anode and the relay will turn on. The relay can be the next stage and does not have to be there to implement the OR.
best regards, Steve Thatcher
Question: Wouldn't it be easier to implement an OR gate with no relays at
all (just two wires joining together)? Or would you need to use the relays
to keep the output voltage/amperage regulated?
Cheers,
Ade.
