test-drb September 2004

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

268 participants
648 discussions

by Innfogra＠aol.com

I had a couple of SMS boxes in my warehouse that had hard drive and a floppy drive and I think a 4 slot qbus backplane. One had 8 inch drives and the other 5 1/4 inch drives. When I got them I think they had 11/23+ CPUs. They were 19" rackmount and about 5 inches tall. Fairly deep as thery were designed for 8 inch drives in front with the cardcage in back. I think you could put an 11/73 card in one. Zane, did you buy those from me years ago? They sold in one of my final warehouse sales. Paxton Astoria, OR

20 years, 3 months

Rescue of a life-time.. or the year at the very least.

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

So, after forgetting to bid on the 11/780 that was on eBay, ending on Sunday (I slept in 15 minutes too late), I decided to drop the guy a message and see if he had another 11/780. Much to my amazement he did, and when I asked if he had any other DEC equipment, he replied that he had an 11/750 (which it turned out he had two, but I only took one of), and that I should "bring the largest truck I could find, and he'd get me loaded up. So, I spent Sunday night looking at options for rental or borrowed trucks, and times, and decided that it was cheap enough to get a 15' Budget Truck (which was a lot cheaper than what Penske or UHaul wanted for a similar size), and after finding out he'd be leaving Friday for a month, I decided I needed to go get the stuff now. So, I reserved the truck for Tuesday. Having done this "move computer that weighs a lot" thing a few times before, I put together some tools Monday night, 10 or 12 ratchet straps, hard packing foam to keep stuff from scratching too badly, tape for marking things, along with some cardboard boxes, ziploc bags, masking tape and a sharpie and 2 friends (well one was my roommate). We left here at 8am on Tuesday morning, picked up the Truck in Waukesa, WI, around 12:15, and got to the place before 12:30, avoiding too much bad traffic driving through Chicago a bit after morning rush hour. The building the machines have been stored in for the last decade (or more) is an old limestone building in downtown Waukesa, which according to the guy who was trying to clear out the stuff used to be a brewery - fitting for an old building near Milwaukee. : ) Anyhow, the guy is a landlord, and some company was using the building as storage. He said that there used to be a lot more machines there before - some had been scrapped, and he had been able to sell some things using eBay. So, after getting there we loaded up the 11/750, and UNIBUS expansion rack that appeared to go with it, and headed to the "large pile" to look through more things. In that pile were the two 11/780s, another 11/750, a Systems Industries disk rack with some sort of controller, which I'm guessing goes with the VAXen, a 5ft DEC rack with a Cipher tape drive in the top and a UNIBUS box at the bottom. Aparently, attached to all the VAX hardware was some Intergraph and Synercom CAD "workstations", which consisted of an approx. 4x2x3ft (WxDxH) box that contained the "main electronics" with a 4x2 ft digitizing tablet, and two monitors which were 20-24" on top of the main 4x2x3ft box. The Intergraph ones were somewhat plain, with the two monitors in one enclosure, but the Synercom ones had a very "Bat-Cave" feel to them, and were separate monitors on swivel posts. If I had room for one, I would have grabbed one of them. I didn't get a chance to look too closely, or take a picture either, which I do somewhat regret. In the back corner behind that stuff was a CDC 14" disc cartridge drive of some sort (which was rated 1phase, 208VAC.. I didn't have room for it, or disk carts), a Sun 3/180 with a pair of 800MB-ish Fujitsu SMD drives and a Sun-branded 9-track tape drive. The final item I found there was a Data General Eclips MV/4000. It had two 19" rack mount disk drives, which appeared to possibly be SCSI (?), a 9-track drive, and the CPU. So, I managed to bring home one of the 11/750s, its expansion cabinet, one 11/780, the Systems Industries disk rack, the DEC rack with the Cipher drive and UNIBUS box, the Sun 3/180 rack, and the DG Eclipse. All in all, I'd say I made out fairly well. The truck was probably a bit overloaded (I'm certain we had more than 3500lbs of stuff in the truck, which what it's "suggested capacity" was, as the leaf springs on the back tires were arcing upwards slightly, instead of downwards... I'm glad it's a rental. : ) The ride home brought us right through rush-hour traffic on Chicago's loop (I-90/94), and we got back here around 10pm; we left for home around 5pm after some lunch. I spent the next day (Wednesday) working all day, and then came home and unloaded the truck with some help from friends. We removed as much weight as we could from the racks before taking them down the ramp, which was actually wide enough to be of some help, and was strong enough to hold up to the mostly-intact 11/780. I've got a picture of the 11/780 up, with the front doors removed: http://computer-refuge.org/compcollect/dec/vax/11780/vax11780-front-open.jpg I don't yet have pictures of anything else, nor do I have most of it reassembled yet. I spent this afternoon testing the 11/780's power supplies with a dummy load - they all appear to work - and then running a 30A 220V line from where there used to be an electric range in this house to the garage so I can try to power it up. I noticed when I was working on the VAX (I had to look at what cards are in it!) that it has a full complement of 32MB of ram (8 x 4MB boards), made by EMC Corp, along with a memory backplane power supply by EMC and a battery-backup power supply box for the memory, which was the same as what the 11/750 used for its memory backup (the 11/750 I got also had a memory backup battery power supply). I took the batteries out of those, along with the TODC power supply, as I'm quite certain that they need to be replaced. If I can remember, tomorrow I'll be fetching a new battery for the TODC power supply in the 11/780 and fitting that. Tomorrow I'll be finishing that up, wiring up an adaptor so I can plug in the 11/780's PDU (I "fixed" it a bit - moved plugs around - so I can use it with 1-phase 220 instead of 3-phase 208), and potentially re-racking some of the rest of what I have. I hope to have the 11/780 cleaned up and ready to try powering up before the end of the weekend. After that will be the Eclipse, the 11/750, and the Sun 3/180 (in no particular order). As I set up my 11/780, I'm gonna try to put together a page on it like the 11/750 page I have on my site right now, I'll probably do something similar for the Eclipse too once I get that far. One thing I noticed after getting home is that I should have engaged the shipping locks on the disk drives... so I don't know how well they faired, but that'll be something I can worry about later, as it's too late to do anything about it now. In one of the UNIBUS boxes (presumably for the 11/780) I got, there was a Emulex UC18 UNIBUS SCSI card, so if all else fails, I should be able to put some low-power disk drives (even FH 5.25" drives are low power for it! :) on that thing, and I *think* (but am not yet sure because I haven't checked it out) that the Eclipse also uses SCSI disks. I realize how much the UC18 is probably worth, and would consider selling it if I had another form of mass-storage for the 11/780, but I'm not sure I do.... that's something I still have to look into. Since the stuff I got is now blocking my roommate from parking in the garage, I'm gonna have to start purging some of the smaller / less interesting things I've got laying around here, so look out for postings of stuff available from me soon. As well, if you're interested in the Intergraph or Synercom stuff, or those disk drives (sorry I didn't look closely enough for a part #), you might want to look the guy up via the 11/780 auction and send the guy a message. Just remember that someone already has the other 11/780 and 11/750 going to him. :) Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCS --- http://www.itap.purdue.edu/rcs/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

20 years, 3 months

QBus chassis and backplanes

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

In view of the recent discussion about which backplane(s) go with which CPU(s) and some similar discussion on alt.sys.pdp11, I've collected together some of my data on backplanes and chassis. They're in a text file at http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/PDP-11/QBus_chassis If anyone wishes to add to that, feel free to send me information :-) -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 3 months

Searching for LapTop manual (IBM T21)

by Innfogra＠aol.com

Do go to the IBM website! All the drivers are there in support and I think the manuals are in the tech database. It is kept up to date. You can search by your model number. Paxton Astoria, OR

20 years, 3 months

Real PDP11 model question

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Sep 19 2004, 15:03, Zane H. Healy wrote: > To the best of my knowledge the smallest possible PDP-11 made out of > real hardware would be a 4-slot dual-height backplane, with a > dual-height CPU (ideally a PDP-11/73), DLV-11J (providing console > port), 3rd party disk controller w/bootstrap (preferably SCSI). That > would leave room for one additional dual-height board. What about memory? All the dual-height CPUs including the KDJ11-A are CPU-only. You'd be better using an MXV11-B (you can disable the bootstrap) instead of the DLV11-J. Smallest of all would be a Falcon or one of the other KXT11 series. Everything on one card, and you could add a disk controller if you wanted. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 3 months

Atari Unix

by KVanMersbergen＠RandMcNally.com

According to the HP Service Guide a 50 message is: 50 Error/Service (Fuser Malfunction) 1. Temporary Error Power off for 20 minutes to clear temporary 50 error 2. Low/unstable power (brownout) Locate/verify stable power source I hope that can help you -Ken V. -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org] Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2004 11:36 AM To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Atari Unix I am trying to resurect some ancient HP laserjets. Two Laserjet II's and one Laserjet 4v. Prior to failure they were all three running fine and giving nice output. Then each just stoped and began to give the same error message, "50 Service". Just what does this mean? Is it a counter that has to be reset or is there really something wrong with them. If the latter I am going to pull the ink cartridges and set them out by the curb. If the former, can someone shed some light on the correct procedure to get them going again. Jason McBrien wrote: > How about dd'ing it to a file, transferring it to another computer and > pressing a CD? > > >> From: luke <etyrnal(a)ameritech.net> >> Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic >> Posts"<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> >> To: cctech(a)classiccmp.org >> Subject: Atari Unix >> Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 22:48:34 -0500 >> >> "For those who own Atari TT030 workstations, I have finally gotten a >> hard >> disk with Atari's version of Unix System V on it running along with a >> diskette with setboot.prg utility that sets the nvram in the TT030's to >> recognize and boot from the Unix Hard Disk. >> >> If anyone is interested, I can make ghost images of the 300MB SCSI >> hard disk >> for you. One word of caution, according the Atari engineer who >> wrote Atari >> Unix, it does not work on all TT030's. Some of the units had bugs and >> issues, most came back into Atari's service center where the -33 68030's >> were replaced with slower 16mhz CPU's, so while I will guarantee that >> the >> image works, I cannot guarantee if your TT will have a problem or >> not. So >> far I've tried it out with 3 TT's and they all work. Also Atari >> Unix will >> recognize Riebl VME ethernet cards and set them as /dev/en0 so you >> can hook >> the TT up to the internet directly. I personally am going to see if >> I can >> get Apache to work on the TT as it would be great to run a website for >> Atari's on an actual Atari computer. >> >> If you want a copy, I need a 300mb SCSI HD to Ghost the image to and >> you pay >> shipping to and from me. >> >> >> Curt >> " >> >> Hi >> >> my friend and i have been looking for this for a while... >> >> is there a way to create a ghost image that is downloadable? >> >> this way we can ghost it into our own drive ourselves? >> >> there are two tt's we are trying to get going... >> >> thanks for any info >> >> - luke >> > > _________________________________________________________________ > Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the > Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx > >

20 years, 3 months

RSTS strange problem

by ron.hudson＠sbcglobal.net

Ok, I have repeated it again... and typed out all the files before I rebooted - they disappeared again. I ran option:RES Clean then booted again. They were still gone. It's funny that all the files I touched disappeared.. Perhaps this is a clue... What is SY0: as contrast to SY: and DL0: (all the same drive?)

20 years, 3 months

BA356 SCSI

by Pres＠macro-inc.com

Just got an Emulex UC08 SCSI <--> QBus. Has the S handles on it and all I have is BA23. So, I'm waiting for drill to charge so I can drill out the 4 rivets that hold on the S handle stuff. Not having any experience with SCSI, I have a question. Could I use a BA356, with 8 bit personality module, with RZ29B-VW 4gb drives, with the UC08? From what I can find, the drives are 50 pin, wide SCSI, but I'm guessing that's what the personality module would handle. The UC08 has 2 HPDB50M connectors. It has 2 SCSI ports, typically one TMSCP, the other MSCP. If the BA356 and those drives should work, anyone know what the connector is on the BA356 going to the host adaptor? Ed K.

20 years, 3 months

QBus chassis and backplanes

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Sep 19 2004, 5:24, Ed Kelleher wrote: > At 01:04 PM 9/18/2004, you wrote: > >In view of the recent discussion about which backplane(s) go with which > >CPU(s) and some similar discussion on alt.sys.pdp11, I've collected > >together some of my data on backplanes and chassis. > Bravo! What an excellent piece of work. > Thank you. Thanks! It's not complete, though. For example, I don't know what's in a BA212/BA213 (I believe it's a 12-slot straight Q/CD, but I don't know the number), BA215 (6 slot?) or BA440 (same as BA213?), or in a PDP-11/93 (I assume it's the same as an 11/83). And wasn't there a very small backplane in one of the PDTs or Pros, or am I misremembering? -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

20 years, 3 months

BBC printer port (ever used for anything else?)

by gtoal＠gtoal.com

ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > I am suprised a sound sampler used the printer port -- there's only 2 > bit of input (the ACK line). Why not use the user port? My memory is really starting to fade. Now I think about it more, it was an ARCHIE peripheral! :-/ > It's brought off-board. It's linked to a 24 pin Blue Ribbon connector > (looks like a GPIB connecotr, but isn't the same wiring, of course) on > the back. I will certainly make a cable to link it to a printer... I may have the proper cable. I have an ACW but I think I finally scrapped the printer I was using with it. (One of those crummy Olivetti inkjets - really not worth repairing) > > By the way I'm borrowing Joe Rigdon's US Beeb so I can recover the code > > on my BBC 5.25" floppies, which is where the sideways RAM loading code > > you were looking for is stored. Unfortunately I did't have any copies > > Ah, so there is a loader program. I will dig about on the 'BBC Lives' > website, I can't believe there's nothing suitable there. There are *many* loader programs and they're easy to write. This particular one was one of mine and I don't think the source ever made it anywhere public. Fortunately I have at least 20 floppies containing the source and one of them is surely still readable! As well as a small stand-alone utility I wrote myself, a friend I was working with wrote a clone of the Master rom extensions, including SRLOAD etc, that I supplied with my Rom/Ram board. > If you want to transfer individual files, there is a kermit for the beeb > (and for that matter for the ACW's 32016 side...). Kermit may not be > efficient, but it's available for anything.... I know, look in the sources of ACW kermit and see who ported it :-) I was amazed (and depressed) that the ARM port of Kermit was simply my ACW port with another layer added to fake out the ACW routines, which themselves were just a veneer over BBC OSBytes! What a mess! But my experience has been that sucking off the entire disk as an image is not only faster, its more reliable in terms of disk errors, plus you find interesting deleted files that way :-) G

20 years, 3 months

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test-drb September 2004