test-drb December 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

235 participants
580 discussions

Oldest serial number (Apple II Serial Number 2)

by swtpc6800＠comcast.net

Back in June of 1977 I had Apple II Serial Number 2 for a few weeks. The power supply failed and it when back to Apple. I never saw that unit again. In January 2005 Bruce Damer visited Jef Raskin and saw this unit. Here is a web page with about this unit. http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/Apple/allied_computer.htm The early Apple II power supplies had RFI problems. They were a radio transmitter that also put out 5 volts. Michael Holley

18 years, 9 months

Q-18 to Q-22 backplane conversion

by jclang＠notms.net

Before I put all the screws back in this thing...... I'm converting a H9273 Q-18 backplane to use a 11/23 Q-22 CPU and MSV11-LK memory. (and RQDX3 and DELQA ) >From the prints I can find ,It looks like all I have to do is bus the BDAL18 through BDAL21 lines, and add an ECO to the BDV11 that terminates the additional BDAL lines. Am I missing something? joe lang

18 years, 9 months

ImageDisk project is canceled

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:24:09 -0500 From: "Teo Zenios" <teoz at neo.rr.com> Subject: Re: ImageDisk project is canceled >Well lets be honest here, people do not do anything for "free".... I actually feel a little sorry for someone who sees the world like that... So, donating anonymously to charity or just picking a piece of garbage off the street and putting it into the nearest receptacle is not merely doing the right thing or just being who you are, but "buying" a good feeling? How cynical... >...friends who keep taking up your personal time fixing their computers as long >as you do it for free but once a token amount is asked for the time involved >(even just a free lunch) these same people get pissy and refuse... Well, since you're apparently one of those people who doesn't do anything for free and expects some form of payment from your "friends," perhaps you could either make that clear in the beginning or just refuse. Or perhaps find new "friends;" I usually say that, half-seriously, "this is gonna cost you a lunch," and I've never had any of my friends refuse - quite to the contrary. >I always thought that if there really is demand for a utility then at least a >token amount of money should be charged for that utility. So now another of the many things that Dave did wrong was to offer it for free... This gets more and more bizarre; a fascinating insight into the mentalities and perspectives of the writers though... mike

18 years, 9 months

ImageDisk project is canceled

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Christer O. Andersson" <christer at a-son.net> > >On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 11:42:13AM +0000, Jules Richardson wrote: > >> care about having source. The only people it would seem to affect are those >> who wanted to take Dave's code, modify it, and release it as though it were >> all their own work - and I doubt anyone on this list would be happy with >> someone who did that. > >You don't get it - that's exactly what GPL protects against. Hi Again Maybe that isn't important to him. He might have other reasons to not use GPL. I've never used it and don't ever expect to. I see no reason that any of the code that I've published can't be used by anyone for whatever reason they like. I know that some bits and pieces have made it into commercial software. That is OK with me. They can copy the entire thing if they like. Dave has his reasons for how he is doing this. The fact that he doesn't have the software source available does little to diminish the work that he has done. He is in the process of developing his code and has stated that he would not like to release it right now. I'd feel the same myself, even if I later planned release it to public domain. As for project help during developement, I've tried it twice myself. In both cases, the help that was promised never completed. I'm not mad about it but I realize that I could have completed it faster on my own. I may try it again in the future but like a lot of things. Offers of help are just that, offers. I have not completed some help projects for others myself. I know why but that doesn't change the facts. IMHO Dwight

18 years, 9 months

GPL or BSD: What license do you prefer for the MSCP SCSI project?

by vax9000＠gmail.com

List members, I reach the point that I need to decide what license I will use when I release my project. I myself do not have a preference. I am planning to replace the unknown-license 53C90 sample code with linux or NetBSD 53C90 driver code. If I use the linux code, I have to release it with GPL. If I use the NetBSD code, I am not able to release it in GPL. I will let you guys decide, since you are the end users. To avoid flooding the mailing list, you can send me private email if you do not have a public message. When I release the project, only 512 B/B CDROM and HD will be supported. There might be a need to add support for other format CDROMs (easy) or SCSI tapes (difficult) or other devices down the road. Bear this in mind when you vote. cheers, vax, 9000

18 years, 9 months

Archiving Software

by dm561＠torfree.net

--------------Original Message---------------- Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 21:11:58 -0600 From: Jim Battle <frustum at pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Archiving Software (Dave wrote) >>I used to release source code to nearly all of my stuff, but not any more. >>I just don't need the hassles. (Tony Duell wrote) > You have just lost any respect I may have had for you. > > -tony The logic of this, coming from an adult, is astounding. Dave can and is defending himself, but as a happy "customer" of his free tools, I can't let this slide by. I often use an analogy with my six year olds: imagine we are going to the ice cream store (which in our case is not often), and you really want strawberry ice cream. We get there only to find out they are all out of strawberry, but how about chocolate instead? Are you going to cry and whine that you want strawberry, or are you going to be happy that you are still getting a nifty chocolate one? That makes a lot more sense to them than the adage, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Dave has worked selflessly to produce a professionally done, well documented program for the benefit of us all. It is peerless; there have been similar programs in the past, e.g. teledisk, but they are not actively developed and the resulting disk image format is not documented. Imagedisk works, it is free and is unencumbered by questions of the right to use. OK, we are not in utopia. Dave isn't comfortable releasing the source code ... yet. And yet you complain about it. You say judgementally that if *you* had written the program, the you'd certainly release the source code. That is great except you *haven't* spent the time to write the program. So until you go and do it, you are just posturing. ----------------Reply-------------- Amen/ditto that! Although I (still :) have a great deal of respect for Tony, I think an off-list note to Dave asking if he could look at the source code would have been more appropriate than his complaint. Then again, that seems to be a requirement for posting on this list, making sure there is always more complaining/kvetching etc. than kudos and appreciation... (except for model M IBM keyboards :) And that is Tony's oft-stated opinion after all, that if he doesn't have (or can't get/create) the inner details of whatever, he won't use it no matter how useful it might be, and this _is_ mostly a place for airing opinions... C'mon Tony, not even a tiny bit of respect for the great job Dave's done and continues to do, mostly for the benefit of the rest of us (some of whom just want to _use_ his excellent tools)? m

18 years, 9 months

VCF server crash

by vcf＠vintagetech.com

Sorry for the lame intrusion :) Last week my server hard drive crashed mysteriously and I've been recovering ever since. Although my websites don't yet reflect it, I've recovered most of my important files and data; I just need to put everything back into its proper place. This would have been a much easier process had my last full backup been more recent than August 8 :( At any rate, I apologize if you tried to contact me and couldn't (my e-mail was down for almost 3 days). Also, if you were waiting for me to get back to you on something, please know that I've basically lost the last four months of my e-mail (it's on my hard disk, somewhere, but finding it will be a manual block-by-block process), and I'd appreciate it if you could send me a reminder message of what you were expecting from me. I had about 800 messages in my inbox going back to 2000 that I was determined to eventually address (obviously not all of them were people waiting for replies...I use my inbox as sort of a to-do list ;) so until I recover my mbox file I pretty much don't remember what was in there. Going forward, I'm now situated on a fault-tolerant server with RAID, and am implementing a more regular backup process. Whoopee for me. With my new server come some minor changes (initially), specifically with my e-mail addresses. I've retired siconic.com as my primary domain and have now adopted vintagetech.com as my primary domain. My primary e-mail address is now <vcf at vintagetech.com> or <sellam at vintagetech.com>, with the latter likely to become my defacto e-mail address for all things VCF and VintageTech (currently, my outbound mail comes from <vcf at vintagetech.com>). Anyway, while <vcf at siconic.com> will not be going away anytime soon (if ever) you should update your address book with <sellam at vintagetech.com> as my primary e-mail address. Finally, with the new year will come a renewed and intensive effort to catch up on long-promised projects. I have re-organized and re-focused my life so that I can get back to the things I've been wanting to get done, including FutureKeep as well as some so far unannounced projects (ooh, the suspense!) I started a blog on the VCF website (currently unavilable due to crash but coming back very soon) where I keep people posted on VCF happenings behind the scenes plus my usual obnoxious commentary, so you can follow that to keep abreast of what's going on in my realm (I should be so flattered). I also have plans to start hosting more content from my server, once I've upgraded my internet pipe to handle way more bandwidth than I currently have. And of course the VCF will continue, with VCF Europa 7.0 being the next stop closely followed by VCF East 3.0 (hosted by Evan Koblentz and the rest of MARCH). I remain unsubscribed from the CC list but occasionally follow it in the archives just to see what's going on. That doesn't mean I'm cut off from the community. As ever, if anyone needs anything from me or if I can be of assistance with something, please do drop me a line. Now back to your regularly scheduled meditations on vintage computing... -- 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 ]

18 years, 9 months

ImageDisk project is canceled

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Christer O. Andersson" <christer at a-son.net> > >On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 07:10:36AM -0600, Doc Shipley wrote: > ---snip--- >And that is a problem. If you rely on his tools, and find it >malfunctions in some way, you cannot fix the problem without the >source. If Dave is not supporting his tool anymore for some reason, >your stuck. Your saved disk might be lost. If the source is available >you can either fix it yourself or arrange with somebody to fix it >for you. Hi That is just plan silly. He has stated that he is openly providing all the information about the format. If you have the image and the information about the format, all that is lost is the means of transfer. There are many on this group that could, if needed, provide that for you ( or you could learn enough to do it for yourself ). As Dave has stated, the actual transfer program itself is nothing revolutionary. What is a lot of work is providing all the options and variations that are out there. Even with the source code, if you didn't understand how to talk to disk and DMA controllers, it is doubtful that you could fix a bug in the program. Of course, if you did understood these things, you could, knowing the image format, write your own transfer program. Lets get real. He has provided a useful format for image storage. The methods of transferring the information could be varied. Dwight

18 years, 9 months

Partially-bad chips; was: repairing early HP calcs

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> > >On Tue, 20 Dec 2005, Dwight Elvey wrote: >> Hi >> I don't want to bust anyones bubble but many low end computers >> sold as desk tops have partially bad chips. The term used >> is "down graded". It is still standard practice in the industry. >> Many of you may have a down graded part in your machine and >> not even know it. > >How about the 32K RAMs in the RS Coco > > Yes Fred, that includes your Coco ;0 I'd really meant current machines but as Fred notes, it has been going on for a number of years and it is going on today. Dwight

18 years, 9 months

Really want to critique? Do it here!

by news＠computercollector.com

Since all the critics, naysayers, and pundits are out in force today, I thought I'd make some constructive use from it. (Imagine that!) The year 2006 is winding down, and early January is the second birthday of Computer Collector Newsletter. Sometime in later January will be our 100th issue, a fact which realy blows my mind. I, Mike Nadeau, Sellam Ismail, Erik Klein, Christine Finn, and Bill Logidice take great pride in this volunteer endeavor. We started in early January 2004 with about 345(-ish) members. Now there are 870. So getting back to the point: what can we do to make it better? What do you love, what are you ambivalent about, what sucks in our newsletter? What would you add or do less of or otherwise change if you were in charge? By all means, bring it on. Bring it on very bluntly if you want. We'd prefer that you are polite, but if you sincerely think we all stink, then we'd rather hear the truth than some buttered-up politically correct version. No matter what people say, we promise not to "take our ball and go home," although we strongly support Dave's work and his right to do whatever he chooses with it. :) Got something to say? Say it to us. We wanna hear it, really. But jeesh, give the ImageDisk thing a rest. The guy tried to be nice and do something good for our community and instead a few self-important imbeciles had to go and ruin it. - Evan ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: >> http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >> http://www.marchclub.org >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/

18 years, 9 months

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test-drb December 2005