test-drb March 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

291 participants
840 discussions

by pete＠dunnington.u-net.com

On Mar 21 2005, 22:11, Dan Williams wrote: > I am getting an el98 cray from 1996 (I know it's OT). Anyone know > anything about these ?. I can't wait to take it up 3 flights of stairs > and I might need to slowly break it to the missus. But I couldn't > resist... Stairs? I have a friend, not far from here, who has two EL98s and a "small" T3E. They don't do stairs ;-) The 17" monitor on the top of the one in this picture: http://www.austinfs.fsnet.co.uk/machines/cray_el98.html will give some idea of scale. That's the smaller of the pair. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

21 years, 1 month

Looking for PERQ

by brian.russell＠iclway.co.uk

Hi Ian, I have just now managed to re-establish my link to cctech-classiccmp and found you posting. My reply has already been sent. yes, I still have two PERQs that I will be getting rid of once I have got the software archived. Regards, Brian.

21 years, 1 month

Rare Apples, eBay, Goodwill

by dvcorbin＠optonline.net

----- Original Message ----- David H. Barr wrote: <big snip> >>>outmoded technology, and some must needs simply wash their hands of >>> the whole mess. Alas, you are correct. But things can be a little better if.... a) Collectors such as those on this list make themselves known to organizations such as TheGoodwill b) "Managers" at the various facilities at least let people know of the existance of others who would / might have an interest in the items Not always possible...but always worth a try.

21 years, 1 month

Anyone know anything about crays ?

by williams.dan＠gmail.com

I am getting an el98 cray from 1996 (I know it's OT). Anyone know anything about these ?. I can't wait to take it up 3 flights of stairs and I might need to slowly break it to the missus. But I couldn't resist... Dan

21 years, 1 month

RS/6000 drive questions

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

Is it like a F30? I have a RS/6000 running AIX with a DDS2 DAT tape and CD-ROM drive running right behind me. It has a 3 1/2" floppy mounted on edge in the right most position, a SCSI CD-ROM drive mounted on edge next to the floppy, a DDS2 DAT tape drive and then an empty position. I'll attempt to find the manual. Thanks Mike

21 years, 1 month

Rare Apples, eBay, Goodwill

by news＠computercollector.com

I'd just call the stores and ask: http://locator.goodwill.org/ --- Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote: > William Layer wrote: > > - While eBay prices are to be taken as a general mix of legtimacy, > ignorance, greed, stupidity and outright scamming, Goodwill prices aren't > that much more 'helpful' either. Unless they have a good 'picker' doing the > pricing, Goodwill and their ilk have a mission to sell old junk for the > cheap. We've all had impossibly lucky finds at these places.. > > This is just killing me: What are common names/organizations for "goodwill" > stores? I have never once been to a goodwill place that had anything > computer-related, only clothing for the most part. I am clearly looking in > the > wrong places!! Where should I be checking in my local area? > -- > 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/ > Evan's personal homepage: www.snarc.net *** Tell your friends about the Computer Collector Newsletter! - It's free and we'll never send spam or share your email address - Publishing every Monday(-ish), ask about writing for us - Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all - W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news at computercollector.com - We're approaching 700 readers: win a prize!

21 years, 1 month

Flash longevity

by vp＠cs.drexel.edu

"Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote: > Ugggg... sorry. It wasn't a swap partition I created in flash. It was an OS > install partition (to install the OS FROM, not to). [...] This is very weird, although some automated installations perform a defect scan on the "target drive" and this will destroy the Flash. I tend to install the OS on a RAM disk and then dd the image to the Flash. If your system has vnconfig(8) you can create the RAM disk very easily, although you can get the same effect using VMWAre. **vp

21 years, 1 month

Light pens?

by kapteynr＠cboe.com

I have a "home made" light pen on my Altair. There was an article in one of the early BYTE magazines on how to do it. It is just a phototransistor stuck into a fat ballpoint pen body on a long wire. The circuitry is very simple -- you adjust a threshold at which the transistor triggers an processor interrupt. When you get the interrupt, you software reads the scan position of the monitor from a register in the video card. The Cromemco VDM-1 allows this. We had a very simple drawing program that read the pen position and toggled the background color of characters underneath. -Rob -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Tony Duell Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 6:09 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Light pens? > Okay, now my age and lack of experience is going to show: Can someone explain > to me exactly *how* a light pen works? What is the feedback mechanism if A light pen is beaically a small light detector (normally a phototransistor) that detects the ligth from the screen. Since the image on the screen is scanned (either as a raster, or as vectors), you get a pulse from the light pne output as the part of the image that the light pen is aimed at is being refreshed. Typcially, on raster scan systems (like almsot all microcomputers), the CRT controller takes the light pen signal and uses it to latch the current video RAM address, or the X/Y coordinates, or something like that. The latched values can then be read out by the processor. > drawing on, say, a completely black screen? How does the computer get It can't. Period. Any comptuer/light pen that claims to is doing one of 2 things. Either displaying, say, a 3*3 array of pixels under the light pen, and the computer moves said pattern to keep the middle pixel under the light pen (this is how a lot of vector displays did it -- if the light pen posiition is 'lost' for any reason, it was typical to sweep a line across the screen, then down the screen, to find it again) Or more likely, the 'black' screen isn't totally black, but a very dark grey or something. Dark enough that _you_ don't notice it, but the light pen does -tony

21 years, 1 month

Rare Apples, eBay, Goodwill

by news＠computercollector.com

That piqued my curiousity. So I just called the Goodwill hq's media department; they're allegedly calling me back soon. Going to seek clarification on their thoughts about collecting/collectors. --- "David H. Barr" <dhbarr at gmail.com> wrote: >>>> Yes, it is a regional decision. Evan's personal homepage: www.snarc.net *** Tell your friends about the Computer Collector Newsletter! - It's free and we'll never send spam or share your email address - Publishing every Monday(-ish), ask about writing for us - Mainframes to videogames, hardware and software, we cover it all - W: http://news.computercollector.com E: news at computercollector.com - We're approaching 700 readers: win a prize!

21 years, 1 month

archiving data, was RE: Media Longitevity/Care (Long perhaps OT)

by mmcfadden＠cmh.edu

I think one thing everyone forgets is there are appropriate high and low tech options for each archiving task. Example #1 About 10 years ago one of the university medical groups decided to scrap their old billing computer and I was tasked to come up with an archive media. I looked at microfiche, microfilm, and paper. Cost was a consideration. We also had a "large" dataproducts chain printer not being used. We finally decided on paper since we knew we would be going through 2 new billing systems in 4 years. Sorted all of the accounts by SSN and then printed out 57 boxes of green bar and placed it all in binders. Advantages It's a lot harder to loose a binder of greenbar than one microfiche. We would have to purchase a microfilm reader and capital expenditures were considered once a year. We had 10 clerks that might want to find an account, parallel usage easy. Disadvantages Lots of moving of binders sometimes to find the correct one, clerks just happened to find me when they needed to move a bunch. Nearly went deaf listening to printer. My time was not a consideration I was equivalent to a graduate student. Example #2 We collected thirty 12" CMSI optical disks of x-ray images from a medical scanner, 1 GB per disk. This was the required archive media for the system. We initially tried to move the data via thick cable DECNET and via a coax based Thomas Conrad Network systems network. Transfer was very slow. Decided to purchase an additional 12" drive and interface it to our MicroVax II, the dreaded sneakernet was then implemented. Our 9-track tapes would hold one 40 MB image per tape if we wanted to save any manipulated images. I offered to copy the disks from the 12" opticals to CD's however the hospital had film and decided that was sufficient. 12" media and drives are now long obsolete. I assume they still have the packs and no disk drives. Example #3 We still have 8" floppy, dat tapes, MO disks and CD's from different medical devices. I usually try to hang on to the tape drives when for example a mobile MRI scanner leaves. Biggest problem is that some of the disks are not file structured in the normal sense. They are some manufacturer's proprietary internal format. There is a standard but it's no help to understand usage of data. What do you do about numbers, special characters and non English characters in a patient last name? Mike

21 years, 1 month

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test-drb March 2005