test-drb October 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

264 participants
655 discussions

8" floppy system needed to recover old game data

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

At 12:07 PM 10/6/05 +0100, you wrote: > >> I'm located in DK > >Is that Dakota? Not likely. More like Denmark! A LONG ways from San Fransisco! Is that a long way? I'm pretty sure the person who has >the disks are not going to be willing to send them by post. They are >very precious - being the only copies of this stuff in existance. That's rather silly. The disks are worthless where they're at now. Find a reliable shipper, such as FedEx, insure the hell out of the package and ship them. I've shipped handreds of pounds (weight) of one of a kind books and disks to Al Kossow and others with no problems. Strong containers, good packing and insurance are the key factors. Joe

18 years, 9 months

Analyzer was Re: KIM-1 repair advice wanted

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Analyzer was Re: KIM-1 repair advice wanted > From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwight.elvey at amd.com> > Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:29:36 -0700 (PDT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >>From: "Hans Franke" <Hans.Franke at siemens.com> >---snip--- >> First thing would be >>to connect a logic analyzer to see if the CPU is still running >>a programm in ROM or not. > >Hi > What is it with logic analyzers. Why not just an >oscilloscope. In most cases, one can be farther along >with an 'oscope in finding what is wrong by the >time one can get an analyzer connected and setup. >I've only had one time that I ever needed an analyzer >and even that time, it didn't work well because >of the complexity of the problem ( design not failure ). > I'll admit that I've often thought of making one >of those address compare circuits to trigger the 'scope >but by the time I'd get serious, I'd found the problem. > Am I alone here or does everyone else think that an >analyzer is the ultimate tool? >Dwight Hi, ;) Yes, the analyser is the ultimate tool, biggest hammer and all that. With all that in the case of 'shooting a KIM-1 the first tool I'd grab is the trusty VOM to check power and then the logic probe (you know those things that run off 5V and have three leds for logic levels aka logic dart) and proble around for the simple presence of pulses. If warrented then the O'scope. Last (by a lot) is the big gun logic machine as that also takes the longest time to drag out and set up. The other three live on the bench. One of the things to watch on the KIM-1 is a lot of the signals come to the edge unbuffered. Can you say ESD? I've also lost as much TTL as MOS to ESD as most TTL lives near accessable connections (edge connectors, Keypads and the like). Typical TTL ESD failures are "stuck input syndrome" and threshold shifts. Allison

18 years, 9 months

Great Shipment Today

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

A Budget rental truck pulled in today a load of items: 22 cases of books, 2 scopes (tube types-Teks), 2 printer/plotters, DATUM disk controller, Inex 6800 microcomputer system, Scientific micro system dual 8" floppy drive and controller, Atari Gravitar Video arcade game, and many other items. Took 3 1/2 hours to unload and store it all. From one of the book boxes I pulled digital logic handbook 1972 and it's a great read. There is a section on the LAB series with great pictures, one on hardware, power supplies, accessory modules, cables, and many other items. It's about 484 pages. Once I get a chance open all the book boxes and test out the hardware I will list the items fully.

18 years, 9 months

PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch at 30below.com> > Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 12:47:02 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Rumor has it that Chuck Guzis may have mentioned these words: >>On 10/9/2005 at 11:04 AM Scott Stevens wrote: >> >> >I've never seen a PCI card that had a floppy interface on it. I'm sure >> >they exist. Not in my junkbox, however, and I don't have the schematic >> >diagram for them. >> >>And there's a good reason for that. The PCI bus has no access to legacy >>8237-type DMA, so legacy driver code would not work on such a beast. > >I've seen several BIOSs can be set up for that - you can set the IRQ & DMA >on a per-slot basis. > >However, I'll admit that it's a crapshoot... you'd want to make sure that >the mobo supports what you want to do. ;-) I'm also *not* going to say that >WindersXP will actually support it, as you *might* have to disable >Plug-N-Pray to get it to work. > >Laterz, >Roger "Merch" Merchberger >-- Roger, you hit the nail on the head. If you want to use XP and the latest PentiumMMV at 200ghz and read old media it'seems there is an incongreuity there. It would appear more reasonable to use an older less underloaded machine and a more flexible version of winders for such a task. For tasks like this where the interface is going to be "unusual" XP, win2000 and NT are likely not the best choice as they are known to poorly or not support untested/certified hardware. Allison

18 years, 9 months

PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: Scott Stevens <chenmel at earthlink.net> > Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 09:52:22 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >One thing I am wondering is if an 8-bit floppy controller card (the ones >from the PC-XT generation, which didn't have floppy IO on the >motherboard) could be modified (if needed) and contrived to work in a >more modern system that still has the ISA bus. If the particular I/O >locations are being used, simple cuts and adds could re-direct the I/O >ports. This would give the enterprising programmer a 765 controller >with relevant hardware to plug additional drives into. The original >PC-PC/XT controller is fully documented in the TechRef, and even has all >the cabling in place to support four floppies. Gee I posted about doing just that. If the machine has ISA there is no need to mod the card. Just disable (in bios) the mainboard level FDC and plug in the ISA unit and go. Also PCI cards work nice for that. Allison

18 years, 9 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: "Joe R." <rigdonj at cfl.rr.com> > Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:06:17 +0000 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >>I'm afraid I am not very familiar with CPM systems. Could you please >>tell me why a conversion system is needed? > > It all depends on what system they were written on. There are hundreds >if not thousands of different CPM formats. Some of them are litterally one >of a kind and were only used on one type computer and can not be read on Hundreds but not thousands. It was not as bad as it seems as many systems could handle thir native formats plus a few. >anything else. A good example is the M2FM format that Intel used on their >MDS machines. That was a really breaker. As that could only read it's own. >Some also used hard sectored disks and there's no way that a >modern disk controller can deal with that. OTOH if you're lucky, they used In the 8" world there were fewer formats and most of the systems that were hard sector (altair and some text management systems) didn't run CP/M. Beside in the 8" world CP/M itself had established that 8" SSSD was the interchange format. For 8" stuff the prognosis is not so bad. However the media is so old that may be more of a problem with oxide shedding. Allison

18 years, 9 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: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> > Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 17:39:48 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Thu, 6 Oct 2005, Allison wrote: > >> For 8" stuff the prognosis is not so bad. However the media is so old that >> may be more of a problem with oxide shedding. > >I haven't yet seen a floppy disk (and I have some probably as old as 30 >years by now) that have shed oxide. I have. It's not common and some vendors were more prone to it and humidity is a big factor. The earlier quality stuff as I said before didn't do it. Bit I do have some crap Nashua stuff from around 84ish that was known for it. Allison

18 years, 9 months

MPX-16 census

by chenmel＠earthlink.net

Does anybody else on the list have an MPX-16 system? I recently acquired one from a list member and am wondering how many of these systems still exist. I have a large (relatively) collection of diskettes with mine. The MPX-16, for those not familiar with it, was published as a project in Steve Ciarcia's 'Circuit Cellar' column in Byte magazine. It was a three part 'construction' article and the machine was sold by MicroMint for a time. What I've heard is that about 500 machines in total were produced. It's an early 'IBM Compatible' in that they designed it to be similar to the PC, but only to a certain degree. It uses a serial console rather than keyboard/display adapter, and it runs CP/M-86 and supposedly MS-DOS though I don't have DOS diskettes for mine. It has ISA slots and a similar architecture to the IBM-PC, coming out of that early era before there were PC clones from the likes of Compaq. I'm curious of how many other MPX-16 systems have survived to today. There isn't a lot about it online. I can share what information I have, as I have manuals and docs with my system. I'm interested in hearing >from other people with this machine. Scott

18 years, 9 months

PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

On Oct 9 2005, 9:52, Scott Stevens wrote: > One thing I am wondering is if an 8-bit floppy controller card (the ones > from the PC-XT generation, which didn't have floppy IO on the > motherboard) could be modified (if needed) and contrived to work in a > more modern system that still has the ISA bus. If the particular I/O > locations are being used, simple cuts and adds could re-direct the I/O > ports. This would give the enterprising programmer a 765 controller > with relevant hardware to plug additional drives into. The original > PC-PC/XT controller is fully documented in the TechRef, and even has all > the cabling in place to support four floppies. It will work, at least on machines I've tried. I've had exactly the same problem as the restr of you -- only one pin for one drive select on the board, so only one floppy where I need (at least) two. And the BIOS behaved once it saw there were two floppies there. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

18 years, 9 months

PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: PCs that support only one floppy drive in hardware > From: Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> > Date: Sun, 09 Oct 2005 11:29:07 -0500 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Allison declared on Sunday 09 October 2005 10:39 am: >> >Though, I'll have to say that I've never seen a PCI card with a >> > floppy controller on it (well, um, other than the Catweasel, of >> > course). >> >> I have a few and JDRmicrdevices still sells them. > >They don't list any on their website. They have ISA floppy controllers, >and PCI IDE controllers, but no PCI floppy controllers. Never seen much of what they sell on the website because they list only volume sellers there but the hard copy catalog listed them. >I guess it's possible that they have existed, but I can't find any >reference to anyone actually *selling* them. Can you come up with a >link to one? Not a problem for me. I have spares. Maybe they discontined then since 2004. Next step if ISA is out is a USB to floppy thing. Then again maybe you could just scrounge an older machine that isn't so crippled. Allison

18 years, 9 months

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test-drb October 2005