Quoth Paul Koning (i think), regarding LK401 some weeks back:
>Then again, if it's a stuck key or something like that, the keyboard
>is beyond repair. LK201 keyboards are cheesy low quality membrane
>switches that cannot be disassembled or cleaned or repaired. If
>moisture ever gets in them, your only option is to scrap the board. I
>found this out the hard way.
Does the same apply to LK401 keyboards? I have one with a
non-functioning key (try resetting passwords on VMS when you can't get
a 'Z'....), and the melted-post construction seems the same. Am I best
just looking for a replacement and if so, anyone in the UK got a spare
I can make an offer for? Be nice to the moderators and contact me
off-list :)
Cheers,
Pete
--
Pete Edwards
"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future" - Niels Bohr
>From: Saquinn624 at aol.com
>
>Coming in on this a little bit late, but if you haven't checked out the
>Library of Congress you should.
>www.loc.gov/preserv gives you a basic run down of ways to care for archived
>materials, and the NIST/CLIR puts out Special Publication 500-252 "Care and
>Handling of CDs and DVDs - A Guide for Librarians and Archivists" (e-version
>available). Other tips- gold disks, AZO dye are reputed to last longer.
>The phenomenon of failure from the outside in has interesting possibilities-
>have software write a known pattern in the outermost section of the disc and
>pop up a warning when it starts to deteriorate. Hopefully this would give
>enough time to move data to another disk.
>
>- Scott Quinn
>
Hi
This does require regular reading of the archived disk. This
is not necessarily an easy thing to do.
Dwight
Eric wrote:
> However, I don't *really* think you want to spend the rest of your
> life writing your own FPGA development software. It's a hard problem
> and there are hundreds of thousands of man-years of development effort
> in the Xilinx software. By the time you got your own software working
> for one family, that family would have long since been discontinued.
Scott wrote:
> I would suspect that while there might be hundreds of thousands of man
> hours, that there just can't possible be hundreds of thousands of man
> *years* involved.
Xilinx is putting in hundreds of man years this year alone. They have been
at it for over 20 years so their development software amounts to 1000s of
man years of work. (I was in the PLD/FPGA software development business
>from 1982 to 1997.)
>From the Xilinx Web page
http://www.xilinx.com/company/press/grounder.htm
Headquartered in San Jose, California, Xilinx is a publicly traded company
(NASDAQ: XLNX) with approximately 2,600 employees, with nearly half of its
engineers dedicated to software development.
Michael Holley
(Sorry about the last blank message)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5173766870&
It's quite overpriced, probably times 5 or times 10. I kindly and
tactfully wrote to the seller explaining this, but of course I'll
lack credibility with them.
The seller ("gold-snipper") is a recycler in Portland OR, maybe
someone could contact them and go visit?
If they're bothering to list on eBay, that's a good sign. They
know it might have some value other than by-weight. Who knows what
else they have up there.
There's a tape and an SMD interface, alarm/clock, and a lot of
memory. I'd be interested in a memory card, maybe a basic IO, on
the faint chance someone visits them, and gets a bargain on the
whole box, and wants to part it out.
Clearly it was chopped from some ssytem, there appears to be no
cables etc.
While it's missing peripherals, if someone could scrounge up a
disk or floppy system it would be a decent 1970's-era mini.
There's no shortage of software for it.
Is anyone interested in helping me do the
TU56/TC11 restoration as a "virtual restoration
project"? I know you California guys can get
together in person and meet and work on your
PDP-1 restoration. I'm stuck here in South
Carolina and don't have a face-to-face group
to interact with.
I'm going to add a projects page to my site,
and add the TU56 project under that. I've
taken some pictures of it the way it is today,
which is pretty much how it arrived, except
that I've located a couple cards that were
missing.
I don't know if anyone has ever done anything
like this remotely in a "virtual mode" before,
but the idea of a team project sounds interesting
to me. David in New York could restore his
TU56 in parallel. In my current job I work
daily with a team in India. We never see one
another face-to-face except when an occasional
developer comes to the U.S. to spend some time
learning our procedures and processes. We are
able to accomplish our goals with teams
working on opposite sides of the globe.
Several folks have already privately been in
correspondence with me and have already been
a big help. You know who you are.
If anyone's interested, let me know. The
project would have a plan that folks could
help me put together, to do things in a
reasonable and logical order. Things like
clean the backplanes, check the flip-chips,
re-form the capacitors, etc. I don't know
what would be in it for everyone else, other
than to know that you helped when it finally
spins up a DECtape and can read and write to
it as the unit is connected to one of my
PDP-11s.
Call me crazy if you wish. I suppose I've
been involved in too many group projects over
the past 20 years and this seems like a fun
opportunity to try out the group/team concept
in a different way.
Ashley
>From: "Randy McLaughlin" <cctalk at randy482.com>
---snip---
>
>Today density select is a general purpose IO pin, originally the 765 used
>the direction pin as a dual purpose pin.
>
>This dual purpose description is now gone but maybe not the action.
>
>There is no need for TG43 in todays PC's, at least not as far as the
>manufacturers are concerned. When the need for a "new" density select line
>came it was accomplished through a separate IO but was the old reduced
>current logic removed?
>
Hi Randy
That is a good question? I would guess that it went the
way of the FM ability. When they were looking for things
to cut, a magnitude comparitor would have sticked out
like a sore thumb.
Dwight
Coming in on this a little bit late, but if you haven't checked out the
Library of Congress you should.
www.loc.gov/preserv gives you a basic run down of ways to care for archived
materials, and the NIST/CLIR puts out Special Publication 500-252 "Care and
Handling of CDs and DVDs - A Guide for Librarians and Archivists" (e-version
available). Other tips- gold disks, AZO dye are reputed to last longer.
The phenomenon of failure from the outside in has interesting possibilities-
have software write a known pattern in the outermost section of the disc and
pop up a warning when it starts to deteriorate. Hopefully this would give
enough time to move data to another disk.
- Scott Quinn
I just received a pair of PerSci 8" floppy drives, with a PerSci 1070
S-100 controller (and a mountain of docs, including data sheets, sales
literature, and schematics).
Unfortunately, I won't have an S-100 system for a few more weeks.
It's stuck in Arizona till I get out there to ship it.
The question is, is this one of the drives that plays nicely with a
PC FDC? I have a couple of older ISA IDE/FD controllers, and an Adaptec
1542 if I can dig it up.
That would still entail getting one of the DBit cable adapters, but
it would nicely solve the issue of an enclosure and PSU for this YE-Data
YD-180.
When I get a hance to make a detailed list of this documentation,
I'll post it. I think that most of it's already out there, though.
Doc
>From: "Geoffrey Thomas" <geoffreythomas at onetel.com>
---snip---
>
>That is not quite as unusual for monolithic caps of that vintage. What you
>are seeing is silver dendrite growth through cracks in ceramic.
---snip---
Hi
This seems to be worse on the glass encapulated,
"Mil Spec" capacitors. I've replaced quite a few of
these. Many more than the older disc and epoxy ones.
In pinball machines, failed disc caps are quite common
on the switch sense lines.
So, it seems that this is a common source of failure.
Dwight
