test-drb October 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

264 participants
655 discussions

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

Wow. Thanks to the 10's (!!) of people who have offered to help me with this! I still need to wade my way though all the replies :) Anyway, I have had an offer for somebody who can go round there personally. Hopefully the disks are not already stuffed so we can get a copy of this previously-thought-lost game! I'll post an update on this list when I know more. I very much appreciate the great response! Kieron Wilkinson ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

19 years, 2 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > From: "Kieron Wilkinson" <Kieron.Wilkinson at paretopartners.com> > Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 14:33:53 +0100 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >Not sure if I repled to this... But anyway, I founf somebody who can do >it, but thanks anyway! > >Kieron > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org >> [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis >> Sent: 06 October 2005 16:53 >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data >> >> If your customer will ship the media up the coast to Eugene, >> OR, we'll do the conversion, no matter what the format is, >> even if it isn't CP/M. Our fee depends on the number of diskettes. >> >> We've had a little experience at this. :) >> >> Cheers, >> Chuck >> >> >> >> > >============================ >Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message. >

19 years, 2 months

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by Kieron.Wilkinson＠paretopartners.com

Not sure if I repled to this... But anyway, I founf somebody who can do it, but thanks anyway! Kieron > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chuck Guzis > Sent: 06 October 2005 16:53 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: RE: 8" floppy system needed to recover old game data > > If your customer will ship the media up the coast to Eugene, > OR, we'll do the conversion, no matter what the format is, > even if it isn't CP/M. Our fee depends on the number of diskettes. > > We've had a little experience at this. :) > > Cheers, > Chuck > > > > ============================ Pareto Investment Management Limited is a Mellon Financial Company. Pareto Investment Management Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (Firm Ref. No. 416024), and registered in England and Wales with Number 03169281. Registered Office: Mellon Financial Centre, 160 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4V 4LA, United Kingdom. Pareto is the registered trademark of Pareto Investment Management Limited. This message may contain confidential and privileged information and is intended solely for the use of the named addressee. Access, copying or re-use of the e-mail or any information contained therein by any other person is not authorised. If you are not the intended recipient please notify us immediately by returning the e-mail to the originator and then immediately delete this message.

19 years, 2 months

ACMS: Dispersal Day at Homebush. (fwd)

by vcf＠siconic.com

FYI to all you Aussies...see below. -- 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 ] ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:49:07 +1000 From: "John Geremin, Computer Engineer." <geremin at iprimus.com.au> Reply-To: VCF-OZ at yahoogroups.com To: VCF-OZ at yahoogroups.com Subject: [VCF-OZ] ACMS: Dispersal Day at Homebush. Greetings friends, The President has decided that there is to be a Dispersal Day at the Australian Computer Museum Society storage shed at Homebush (due to lack of financial support from State or Federal governments). Items - include Hardware, Software, Media, Documentation, Furniture. Place - Rear, 6 Parramatta Road, HOMEBUSH, 2140. Entry via Columbia Lane, [next to Kennards Self Storage] Time - approx 9am to 4pm, Date - Sunday, 16th October, 2005 Prices - starting at $1 - all reasonable offers considered. Bring - your own transport and muscle power for moving items. Regards, John G. John GEREMIN, Ph 02-9758 5686 or 0427 10 20 60 note: new E-MAIL address geremin at iprimus.com.au ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Australian COMPUTER MUSEUM Society Inc. ABN 89 972 080 502. Looking for a site for 'A Working Australian Computing Museum'. http://www.acms.org.au/ my mobile: 0427 10 20 60 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ My web page http://home.iprimus.com.au/geremin/ -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.11.13 - Release Date: 09-Oct-05 ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/S_NqlB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VCF-OZ/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: VCF-OZ-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

19 years, 2 months

8 old computers to go, and vaxstation stands. Dallas TX

by recycler＠swbell.net

where else ya gonna get 8 PCs for $1 ? compaq luggables and deskpros, XT to 386 types, all for one deal. ebay Item number: 8707188867 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8707188867 and if you want stands for your 4000 series vaxstations, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8707191662 PJ

19 years, 2 months

identifying PC Simms

by trag＠io.com

>Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:53:00 -0400 >From: "Joe Stevenson" <ikvsabre at comcast.net> >I have 16 30-pin simms left over from various past incarnations of >my PCs, and I'm > trying to figure out what I've got. > I no longer have a motherboard to test them, so I have no idea what is what. > >Is there any not-to-painless way to figure out what I've got? Not all that painless, but the only way I know that works... Take a SIMM. Count the number of chips. Find the model markings on one of the chips. There are usually two or three lines of writing on a chip. One of these will be a date or batch code and is irrelevant. The line you want will start with a one, two or three (usually two) character manufacturer code (e.g., K or KM for Samsung, TC for Toshiba, M(numeral)M for Mitsubishi, HM or HN for Hitachi, etc.), followed by some longish, about four to eight, alphanumeric code which is mostly numerals, then a dash or space and a speed number in nanoseconds, which may or may not have the trailing zero truncated. For example: HM5116400BS-8, MSM511000C-7, KM44C16100B-5, TC514400AJ-6. Then go to a datasheet archive such as <http://www.datasheetarchive.com/> and enter the part number in the search field. It often helps to truncate the trailing characters back to the first number in the body. E.g. HM5116400, MSM511000, KM44C16100, etc. The datasheet will tell you the capacity and organization of the chip. For example, a 1 MB 30 pin SIMM with eight chips on it will be composed of 1M X 1 chips. These have one million addresses with 1 bit at each address. Eight of them working in parallel provide 1 million addresses with eight bits at each address or 1 megabyte. Multiply the total capacity of the chip by the number of chips on the SIMM. Remember that you're working with bits here, not bytes. Divide by 8 and you've got the capacity in megabytes--except... Some SIMMs are parity SIMM and they are based on 9 bits of data rather than 8 bits of data, so you'll need to divide that capacity by 9, not by eight for a parity SIMM. A 30 pin parity SIMM will have nine or three chips instead of eight or two, so they're fairly easy to identify. However, a three chip 30 pin SIMM will have two chips with a certain capacity and a third chip with 1/4 the capacity or either of the other two. In this case, calculate the total capacity of the two larger chips and divide by eight. Or find the capacity in bits of one big chip and divide by four. In most cases, if the SIMM has eight or nine chips, then the capacity in bytes is equal to the number of addresses any of the chips supports (see the datasheet). If the SIMM has three chips, then the capacity in bytes is still equal to the number of address which any of the three chips supports. For example, you find a three chip SIMM with two 4M X 4 chips and one 4M X 1 chip on board. The capacity of this SIMM is 4MB or 4 Megabytes. You find a SIMM with eight or nine 4M X 1 chips on board, its capacity is also 4MB. The real trick is figureing out the capacity of the chips from the markings on them. Google searches sometimes help, but often (almost always) just lead you to chip distributers spamming the search engine space with part numbers to lead part searches to their sites. They often don't even have the chip in question, and rarely have any useful information available on their website. SIMMs that can steer you wrong are composite SIMMs where groups of smaller capacity chips are used to build a higher capacity SIMM. For example, building a 16 MB 30 pin SIMM out of eight 4M X 4 chips. These are rare and should be easily identified because there should be a non-memory chip on board to handle the address translations. Jeff Walther

19 years, 2 months

OT for a sec: US wiring sources of info

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

One for the US members... any idea of a good usenet resource for questions relating to US wiring / electrics? (I'm thinking an equivalent to uk.d-i-y) We've got a cable decoder box here that trips out the house breakers when plugged into certain outlets - irrespective of whether it's via a surge protector (probably not surprising there) or of what other loads might be sharing the same wiring to that outlet. It works fine in other outlets though, which seems like a strange problem - but I have no idea how US houses are wired (and the wiring in this place is ancient anyway!) Be nice to get it sorted out as the cable box currently requires a cable trailing across the lounge from an outlet in another room! cheers Jules

19 years, 2 months

Unix on BBC micro with 16032 coprocessor

by ken＠seefried.com

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> >Would Xenix likely even run in the 1MB of the BBC Micro's 32016 copro? I >can believe it'd be usable on the 4MB of the ACW, but might be pushing >it a bit in 1MB. Xenix would certainly run in 1MB of memory. That is...at least on the i286 (512K was the minimum when I was subjected to Xenix). As I recall, it ran in even less on the 8086. On the Tandy 16 (68000), I *think* it ran in 256K, but please don't hold me to that. I understand that it also ran on the z8000, but I never saw that. I don't recall ever seeing that Xenix was ported to the 32016 for any machine. BSD4 was, of course, among other Unixen of dubious lineage. Considering the bugs, it's amazing any of them worked. Of course...why you would want to run Xenix on something other than a PoS system, other than to say you did, is a bit beyond me...;-)

19 years, 2 months

Dying PCjr drive; options?

by dave04a＠dunfield.com

>As the subject implies, I've got a PCjr with a floppy drive that is having >trouble reading disks and fails the internal CTRL-ALT-INS diagnostics. >Symptoms include a very loud/bad noise at first seek (rest of seeks sound ok), A failed track-0 detector can cause a drive to make loud noises at first seek, and to misalign on subsequent track accesses - if the drive hits the physical stop before the track-0 sensor trips, then the head will "rattle" against the stop until the controller gives up trying (usually around 77-80 steps). If the physical setup of the drive is such that the stepper is able to "make a step" past track-0 in this case, the alignment for subsequent accesses will be off as well. >Another related question: When I was first getting started with personal >computers 25 years ago, I seem to recall that track alignment was a common >problem and could be fixed by using a calibration diskette and special software >that you could monitor as you turned the alignment screw. Without one of those >factory calibration diskettes, is it even possible to align/calibrate a floppy >drive for track alignment? You can't do a proper job of drive alignment without an alignment disk and a scope. As with most things, there are fine to not-so-fine lines between "proper" and "passable". I've built a Align/Test function into ImageDisk which will let you do a reasonable job of track-to-track alignment of the drive to a known good disk (alignment is at best only as good as the disk you are using). With a known good disk in the drive (I would suggest using a factory original diskette from a high-profile software vendor, or a disk freshly formatted on a NEW high-quality drive): - Run ImageDisk, select the drive etc. and execute the A)lign/Test function. - Step out the middle of the disk. 'S2' will step to track 20. - Execute 'A'nalyze. This will identify the format of the track, which will be displayed at the top of the screen. - ImageDisk will continue reading the track, and will beep at about a 2hz rate, with a tone which is 500hz + 100hz for every unique sector which it reads that matches the cylinder id of the track you have stepped to. It will also show counts of matching and non-matching cylinder sectors. - If your disk is far out of alignment, you may need to start at the inside or outside edge to get matching sectors. In really bad cases you may need to fiddle with the drive alignment in order to get to this point. - Once you are reading sectors, listing to the audible tones while slowly adjusting the position of the head will allow you to determine the limits of where the head can read the track without taking your eyes off of it. Set the position to the 1/2 way point between these limits. - Repeat on inner and outer tracks, working toward the best compromise that you can achieve. - To adjust the track-0 switch, use 'Z'ero (recalibrate) and '+' (step out) to move the head back and forth between track-0 and track-1 at each track ImageDisk will beep as described above, and display a running count of the matching and non-matching sectors read from the tracks. When the sensor is set correctly, the counts will be correct (all matching, no non-matching) and the head will perform a single step in each direction, without banging against the stop. - If the head "rattles" against the stop on 'Z', move the track-0 sensor slightly toward the center of the disk. - If the head does not step out to track-0 on 'Z', then move the track-0 sensor slightly away from the center of the disk. The adjustments are interrelated, in that the drive has to find track-0 before it can reliably seek to any track - some going back and forth is to be expected (you get MUCH better at it after having done it a few times). Nowhere near as good as using a proper alignment disk, however I have used variations of this technique a number of times on drives that have worked reliably for many years afterward. As always, your mileage may vary. Regards, Dave -- dave04a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html

19 years, 2 months

Unix on BBC micro with 16032 coprocessor

by gtoal＠gtoal.com

> On Sat, October 8, 2005 6:32 pm, Pete Hollobon said: >> Does anyone know if Xenix / Unix were ever available on the NS 16032 >> second >> processor for the BBC micro? I remember reading that it was intended to be >> made available in the user's guide years ago. > It was supposed to be an option for the Cambridge Workstation since that > also had a 16032/32016 2nd processor but I don't know if it ever made it > into the wild. Graham Toal's the man who'll know I suspect, also Paul > Williams (if he's around) and Jules R. To the best of my recollection this was only ever talked about but never implemented by anyone at Acorn. If it was done externally I have no knowlege of it. I was one of the 3 or 4 people who argued in favour of us selling the systems with Unix but Acorn was very much a 'not invented here' company. I think way back then there were also significant costs associatated with licensing Unix, plus there were few ports to archiectures other than Vax and 68000. While we're on the subject of the NS processor... A couple of years ago I got in touch with Peter Robertson, the author of Acorn's compilers for that system (Pascal, C and Imp77) in the hope of getting the source of the compiler from him. Unfortunately he had not kept a copy of that code generator. I vaguely remember that there were sources escrowed somewhere at the time. Obviously the escrow will be long gone, but on the vague offchance that someone from Acorn retained a copy... does anyone have the source code for that compiler? (Really just the back-end Icode to binary Pass3, but _anything_ anyone has is wanted for the Edinburgh Computer History Project!) By the way I have copies of quite a few binaries for this platform. Has anyone ever written an emulator for this architecture? I haven't found one. It ought to be an easy one to write, it was a very regular instruction set. My guess for why there isn't one is that it was never a very popular chip, but that hasn't stopped emulators being written for lots of other obscure architectures! I can imagine that it wouldn't take much more than just a basic instruction set emulator to make Panos live again, as the I/O could be done by emulating an I/O processor Beeb and the tube chip. There must be several Beeb emulators around that can handle second processors to which we could graft a NS emulator? I think somewhere I have a paper listing of Mark Taunton's linker for Panos. It was a very well written piece of code. I think it was Acorn's only piece of Panos code (except for the compilers themselves) that was written in Imp77. Everything else was in Modula II. I also recently discovered Keith Rautenbach's & my editor for Panos, the one which was a sort of EMACS-alike written in ModII with a built-in mock LISP. I have all the sources *except* the LISP init files needed to start it up :-( Also, the editor shot some code over to the IO processor when it was invoked, which did some extended keystroke handling - that part I do have... A small aside: when I built my 6809 second processor for the Beeb, while I was waiting for the chips to arrive I wrote a 6809 emulator that ran on the 16032, written in Imp77. It was faster than the real chip! Also it was my first emulator. I wrote it on a 32016 2nd proc that was on a Beeb with one of the early experimental Winchester disks. Of course the disk died, - about 2 days after I finished the emulator - and the backup floppy was corrupt and the only source I had was on paper. I was too depressed to key it all in again (and the paper listing was about a week from the final version) and what's worse I lost the paper listing along with *all* my historical computing papers when I emigrated from the UK to the US 10 years ago :-/ Anyway, moral of this story was that it was a very early wake-up call for me on the value of backups :-) Ever since then I have always had two hard drives containing everything I've ever written, with one of them offline so they don't both get taken out by the same lightning strike! I am so glad that disk drives are getting bigger faster than I can fill them - I've always been able to keep everything I've ever done and just move it over to the latest biggest drive when it becomes cheap enough to afford. I saw 500Gb hitachi drives at $260 today so I'm thinking it's time to migrate again :-) Graham PS Joe Rigdon, the US Beeb you loaned me will be sent out in tomorrow's mail. Thanks very much for letting me use it!

19 years, 2 months

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test-drb October 2005