So I made the adapter cable to connect an 8" drive to my PC. The basic
connections seem to be there. I can actually format a disk from MS-DOS,
at least halfway, meaning the drive goes through the motions of formatting
all 77 tracks but then when it goes to write the directory and other
whatnot it can't move the head back to track 0. The format aborts saying
it can't write the boot sector.
If I then try to DIR the disk the head backs up a track or so but can't
seem to recalibrate to track 0. The head vibrates as if the drive is
sending the signals to the stepper to retract the head but it only manages
to move back a track or so each time I issue DIR. If I do it enough it
eventually gets back to the stop position but it still gets sector errors.
I verified that the drive susbsystem I'm using is good by booting RT-11
off it. I was able to access both drives in the system from RT-11. The
PC system only sees drive B:, or at least when I try to access drive A:
(which is configured in the BIOS as a 1.2M 5.25" floppy, as is drive B:)
it does not engage the head. The notes I used to make my cable indicate
that this might be what I should expect, since it said to jumper the 8"
drive as Drive 1:
http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/8-525.html
"Set the drive to respond to Drive Select 1 (the default for PC drives)"
(under the "Drive links" section).
So I suppose it would make sense that the PC only sees drive B (drive
select 1). Or does it?
Any ideas?
--
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 ]
Recent discussion about photographing machines prompted this one.
Has anyone got any useful tips for photographing (with a digital camera)
running machines such that whatever's on the screen is captured with
some kind of decent quality?
I've been playing around with all the manual settings on my camera and
just experimenting (using any kind of auto mode results in banding on
the computer's display, and of course use of flash is no use for a shot
of a glass screen). So far results have been mixed though...
Any useful hints much appreciated!
cheers
Jules
I am going crazy trying to find the text of an article in the October 1992
issue of "The C Users Journal" without paying $80 (the official fee of the
CDROM containing all the texts). Does anyone have this issue and would be
willing to scan a few pages for me? I'd be willing to pay you $10 or so for
your time...
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
Sent this a few days ago & haven't seen it appear
on the list for some reason; apologies if I'm
duplicating.
m
------- Start of forwarded message -------
Subject: Cromemco Software - what to do with it?
From: mhstein at canada.com
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:46:26 -0800 (PST)
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
I've been cleaning up the hard disks in my Cromemco
systems in preparation for getting rid of them (no,
they're not available at this time), and I have a
question:
There are numerous systems out there, and Herb and
Howard et al are doing a great job of archiving the
documentation, but what about the software? Is
anybody archiving the various versions of CDOS,
Cromix & Unix, and the languages & applications?
For that matter, is there any point? I don't see
many people writing Cobol or Fortran programs to
run on a System 3...
So, any ideas what to do with it? (no obscene
suggestions, please!)
BTW, any news about what happened with Don Maslin's
collection?
mike
> It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list
> contributors, and how long we've had the computer virus
>under our skin.
37, been computing since 1981 when my dad brought a ZX80 into the house and
found meself to be amazed that I could tell it to do things in an english
like language and it would just work. No tape recorder though, so I sharp
learned the value of writing things down for later re-entry :) From there I
went to the ZX81, Spectrum, Amiga 500 and then (spit) pc.
However, I bought as many computing based magazines as I could afford, not
realising that 20 years later I'd be getting hold of quite a lot of the
machines featured in said magazines, though I still haven't tracked down a
DAI :)
Workwise I started in Operations on a dual-node ICL 2966 mainframe in 1984
then got the PDP bug when my old computing lecturer in college got me back
in because he'd seen (apparently) fledgling interest on my part. The rest is
all DEC based history.....
cheers
w
Does anyone have any information about this part? I've been told that
it's a high performance microprocessor. I found it on what looks like a hex
size DEC card made by Spectra Logic Corp. I found a picture of one on the
net but it's not very good.
<http://www.cpushack.net/gallery/showimg.php?file=/chippics/AMD/29K/AMDAM291
16DC.jpg>
Joe
Yes, but,...
In FORTRAN, columns 73 - 80 are reserved for housekeeping, such as
resequencing dropped decks.
THerefore, the information content in FORTRAN could be said to be 72 bytes
per card, NOT 80.
> It could be interesting to know the age"spread" of thist list contributors,
> and how long we've had the computer virus under our skin.
I am 43, born in 1961.
I got a small amount of exposure to coding in BASIC and FORTRAN in a
summer "computer camp" for high school students, but my serious hands-on
experience with computing really got underway when I built an IMSAI 8080
>from a kit in 1977. I attended college at Carnegie-Mellon University,
which was a hard-core DEC shopw during the time I was there, with
PDP-10s, DECSYSTEM-20s, PDP-11s, and VAXen everywhere. I also got to
play with the Altos and the PERQs, the latter sometimes more than I
cared to. I've had a longstanding interest in computer history, and
obtained my first classic machine, a PDP-8, while I was still living in
Pittsburgh. I put it in storage shortly thereafter, however, and moved
to California for graduate studies. I ended up staying and working in
the Silicon Valley, and for almost 20 years my historical interests
remained purely academic. VCF 6.0 changed that, and reawakened my
interest with the realization that not only were old computers more fun
back then, but they still are today! I started collecting old machines
again a little over a year ago, and haven't looked back.
Strangely, but like a few others here, my nostalgia is reserved
primarily for machines *earlier* than the ones I used. Switches and
blinkenlights, core memory, hardwired control, no LSI -- that kind of
thing. I think that I balk at thinking of anything I remember well as
being truly *old*. ;)
--Bill
At 11:48 PM 2/24/2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>Actually, it'd be interesting to see what some user interface gurus and
>human-computer interface types (i.e. people who study these issues in
>depth, including the psychology, physics, physiology, etc.) would say
>about this. From what little research I've done, I'll bet they'd say that
>top posting is inefficient and confusing in general.
I went looking to see if Tog ever talked about it. All I found
were these interesting and funny links.
http://www.asktog.com/Bughouse/bhWindows.htmlhttp://inconnu.isu.edu/~ken/sigs_page.html
- John
