>From: "Randy McLaughlin" <cctalk at randy482.com>
>
>From: "Wai-Sun Chia" <waisun.chia at gmail.com>
>Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 10:36 PM
>> On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 21:09:01 -0500, Dave Dunfield <dave04a at dunfield.com>
>> wrote:
>>> All the discussion on stacking two PC supplies and cutting
>>> grounds to try and keep them isolated seems like asking
>>> for trouble....
>>
>> Asking for trouble is correct.
>> After all, to get 24V and I don't think a typical 8" drive will
>> surpass 1A anyway, a LM317 plus a couple of passives and a small
>> transformer is more than enough to do the job. If you get the LM317K,
>> then it'll even do up till 1.5A provided you give it an
>> appropriately-sized heatsink.
>>
>> /wai-sun
>
>
>SA800's require 1.7A on the 24v line.
>
>Randy
>
Hi
Randy is right. They used the 24V line for the stepper.
The 12V line was used for the analog electronics.
Still, as I recall, the 24V didn't need exact regulation.
I'd have to check my schematics for the drives.
Dwight
>
>
Went digging in the attic again, mainly looking for my serial EPROM burner
which has the built-in eraser... and I found a goodly chunk of everything but.
:-/
However, I did find my HHC, no power supply. It takes a rather odd critter,
too; 9V DC ; and I believe the correct terminology is called "Drum
Positive" i.e. on the outside connection of the barrel connector. Most
barrel connector PSs have the ground on the outer conductor to help protect
it from shorting out; the Tandy 10x/200 are also notable in being wired
"drum positive."
As I just got done hooking up my Xeltek Superpro L EPROM burner, it's
sitting on my desk, with the PS sitting on top of my PC case -- I take a
look at the sucker -- *Exactly* what the HHC needs! :-O I check the
connector - perfect fit!
OK Everybody! Let's all collectively watch Tony jump out of his skin!
;-) I plugged the sucker in, to see if it worked! It does! I set the time,
and it keeps between short unplugs (had to test a few ROMs, you know...
;-). I'm guessing the NiCds won't hold much of a charge at all, tho.
It's got a smokin' 4K RAM - any upgrades for that, or was that all you got?
=-=-=-=-=
Found my PC-DOS 7 diskettes - prolly set up a second virtual PC to test 'em
out... (it's ontopic this year...)
=-=-=-=-=
Found lots of my CoCo stuff, I'm trying to get back into that...
=-=-=-=-=
More shiznit later, but if I don't find my eprom eraser soon, whomever
would be willing to burn me a copy of that BASIC might get his/her for
free... ;-)
Time for bed, gotta be up in a few hours anyway... Laterz,
"Merch"
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate."
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch at 30below.com |
Pardon me while I step back into my past a bit. I really
enjoyed working with the 990, and want to share some of my
experiences with anyone else that enjoyed the 990 as well.
> I'm in contact with two gents who worked on TI-990's back in
> the 80's. Since this platform doesn't get a lot of traffic on
> the list, I thought I'd share their recollections of working
> on these systems.
>
> ======== Gentleman N
>
> [ Referring to the pictures/links posted a few days ago of a
> [ TI-990 in L.A. ...
>
> The disk drives for this computer is actually a pair of drives in one
> enclosure. One removable and the other "fixed" internally. They
both
> have the same capacity (5MB I think).
You're dead on. If memory serves (and more and more, it doesn't :-)
the drive was the CDC "Hawk" drive -- five up, and five down. The
bottom platter was fixed; the top was removable.
> The funky terminal is just that. It's a great monochrome terminal
with
> addressable cursor and it is fast for its day when compared to
> VT52/VT100s.
Yeah baby! The 911/VDT. It was pretty sweet. I believe the cable
>from the tube to the system was coax for the video, plus a few lines
for the kbd. The tubes were fast to display information. And a
really lovely green color.
I remember that DX-10 had a really nice user interface, and the
commands were quite mnemonic. You could even write your own little
shell scripts and they would integrate nicely with the existing
system utilities.
I always thought (and still do) that it was a well engineered
system.
> The OS seemed decent from what little I used it but I never did any
> programming with it. In 1986 I helped out Bryan with an old client
in
> Honolulu who had a rack mounted version with three DS10's where two
of
> the unit (four drives) had failed with head crashes (don't move packs
> between drives after those funny scrapping sounds begin). The
service
> guy had the system already repaired and I helped get the their
> accounting system going again. I went back 1987-89 and wrote a new
> version running on i386/AT&T Unix System V Release 3 so they could
have
> more modern hardware.
>
> It was a nice system...but not an IBM 1401 (or CDC 8090)!
My brother and I did similar things with his system. We were writing
accounting packages in Ryan-McFarland ("RM") Cobol. It was really a
lot of fun, and I was writing an average of one good-sized file
maintenance application per day. I believe it really was a pretty
productive system for its time. It even had a decent keyed file
capability (one primary key, multiple secondary keys) that we
really exploited in our work.
We wrote systems for several companies in Seattle. One of them was
a company that manufactured blue jeans -- they were quite a cast of
characters. At one time, the company name was "Bearbottoms", then
it was "James Jean", and then something else.
The guy that owned the company made money hand over fist -- it was
said that he paid something like $2.00 to get a pair of jeans sewn
in Mexico, which then sold at the Bon or Nordstroms for something
like $30.00.
> ========
>
> ======== Gentleman A
>
> Wow, that's a (nice) blast from the past. And to help connect the
dots,
> I am a friend of Bill's who handed over a customer with one of these
for
> Bill to provide software support.
>
> I had a 2 person company (sales guy and me) that developed business
> applications for a chain of radio stations, and we needed a system
that
> we could resell 1) quickly; 2) with no cash upfront; 3) that was
> reasonably powerful for a multi-user terminal based application.
>
> This was around 1980, and we talked to all the usual suspects, DEC,
Data
> General, HP, maybe Wang... It's been a while. Anyway the TI folks
> basically sold us a machine and delivered it, no cash down, 120 days
to
> pay, lots of support, etc. I had the thing in my living room of my
> bachelor-pad apartment for a few months of development and testing,
then
> we delivered it to the client.
>
> The application was in Fortran (is that correct Bill?), but I
remember
> writing a few little assembler tools and twiddling a few bits here
and
> there. Once we delivered it to the customer my access was somewhat
> limited to bug-fix and enhancements during evenings and weekends, so
I
> didn't get to play with it as much as I would have liked.
>
> The coolest thing I remember from the OS was a near real-time
display
> of in-memory processes. Sort of a graphical version of 'top' mapped
> onto physical addresses.
I know *exactly* what command you are talking about. That would be
the "Show Memory Map" command, and it *was* a heck of a lot of fun
to watch.
You could really get a feel for exactly what the machine was doing,
when it was rolling jobs in and out of memory. You'd see big chunks
of the screen change (from bright green (reverse video) to darker
green, IIRC) as the system rolled jobs between disk and memory.
I remember one of the companies we worked with, IALC, had a 990/12,
and they bought a 911 VDT to do nothing but sit in the glass computer
room and run SMM all day long :-)
I'm currently talking with someone about getting a 990/10 of my own.
Don't know if it will happen (the system is pretty far away), but I
am excited at the possibility of getting my hands on one of these
systems again.
Well, that's enough for now. Thanks for letting me relive some
old memories.
John Sambrook
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
I know I'm beating a dead horse with the "can't we be a little nicer" question, but...
Since _he_'s not going to get your reply (unless you CC'd him?), I assume
you're just trying to impress the rest of us with your knowledge of RFC's?
OK, I'm impressed, in more ways than one; you must have a lot of time on
your hands to type all that instead of just cutting & pasting a message
header.
I'll send him the info, but if I were he and saw your reply in the archives I'd
promptly unsubscribe and find some other place to discuss my classic
computers.
mike
-----------Previous Message:
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 04:54:54 -0500 (EST)
From: der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Subject: Re: joining the list ?
> How does somebody new join this list.
> Who do they write to, etc ?
Well, you could always try the standard -request address, as outlined
in the last paragraph on page 5 of RFC 1118; the second question in
section 9 of RFC 1206; the "mailing list" entry in RFC 1392; question
9.2 in RFC 1594; section 3.1.2 and 3.2.2 of RFC 1855; section 6 of RFC
2142; the last paragraph of section 1 of RFC 2369; and probably other
places I didn't pick up offhand.
If wherever you found out about the list includes messages with
headers, you could also use either of the links present in the
List-Subscribe: header of every list message.
Not that it couldn't be taken care of.. Bamboo has "partitions" every
foot to 6", you'd have to
split it, cut out the partitions, and tie it back together.
If the desert island has vines you could make a rope computer, as
described in a
Scientific American, I don't remember the issue.
I have a reader power supply for the 33, you can have it for $20 + shipping.
Also have a copy holder that I'll throw in. As for running open in local mode,
I'd start at the H lever especially after just being shipped, they seem to
pop out. FYI, the H lever mechanically connects the keybd. to the printer.
On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 19:40:54 -0800, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
> At 11:15 AM +0800 3/9/05, Wai-Sun Chia wrote:
> >I'm building my personal library for vintage computing. I need to
> >probe the collective wisdom of the list in what books must a "wannabe"
> >collector (like me) should have on his/her bookshelf.
> >
> >Although I collect primarily DEC stuff, I don't want my knowledge to
> >be just restricted to what DEC had to offer.
>
> If you're primarily interested in DEC stuff, a good collection of DEC
> Handbooks is a must, as is a Doc Set for each of the OS's that you're
Yeah. I do have a growing collection of handbooks. But I'm missing on
the peripherals side for the mid-70s; i.e. between 75-79. Do you have
surplus?
> interested in. If you're into PDP-8's, the 3 Volume -8/e/f/m
I have printed vol1 from bitsavers. The few that came up on ePay was
way out of my budget. I did, however scarfed an original vol2. I also
noticed that vol3 in bitsavers are not really complete though...but
good enough for a working copy I suppose.
The 8/m/e/f engineering docs are also something that I have been
searching for 1 year plus already...all the usual places don't have
it. And the only person I know who has it doesn't have a scanner.. :-)
Can anyone contribute the 8/e/m schematics to bitsavers?
> Maintenance Manual set is excellent as well. Remember any DEC
> hardware from before the 90's is going to be *well* documented, if
> you can find copies of the books!
>
> >p.s. Don Lancaster's books are the first on my list. :-)
> >
> >/wai-sun
>
> I've got the TV Typewriter book, and I think some other stuff by him,
> and as a DEC collector it's only of mild interest.
Ah. But I'm also an electronics tinkerer too.... :-)
/wai-sun
Kevin's book is out of print, however, I've been talking with him lately about
posting it on the newsletter web site. I should know more in the next week or
two and will announce it here.
- Evan
>
> "A guide to collecting computers and computer collectibles",
> by Kevin Stumpf. quirky, quirky.
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
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Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> In case no one caught my previous post on this, a few days ago I moved =
> the queue retention time back up to a reasonable value.
Thank you!
> I suspect Michael Sokolov is testing this out for me, his name servers =
> (and thus email) have been down a few hours.
Do you really think that I, after having earned the trust of my circle of
friends (who all have accounts on my various servers, and use and depend on
various services hosted at my data centre) as a competent, reliable and
trustworthy professional system and network administrator for our Circle,
would deliberately shut it down, screwing all our users?! There must be
something seriously wrong with your thinking if you indeed thought so.
We (yes, we, not I, I'm not the only person at Harhan, and this server is
not the only one) had been down from about 02:30 UTC to 21:42 UTC (2005-03-08)
due to our enemies tampering with the SDSL line that connects our data
centre to the outside world. All of our servers were still running, but
the entire facility was isolated from the net for about 19 hours.
Apparently someone tried to wiretap the SDSL line and broke it in the process.
Time domain reflectometry indicated a problem in the line somewhere between
our facility and the local telco's CO from which the SDSL line is served.
The techs at the SDSL NOC assumed it was an open circuit, but I know this
was not the case, since during the downtime there was still *some* signal
coming from the SDSL line, it was just apparently too distorted for the
DSLAM and the CPE to sync up. So the problem detected by TDR, which they
dispatched a local telco tech to fix, was NOT an open, but something else.
I very strongly suspect foul play.
The fix took so long because the ISP apparently considers business SDSL
customers not worthy enough to fix in the middle of the night, so even
though I reported the problem last night, it wasn't until this morning EST
that they even looked at it, and then they had to have the local telco
dispatch a technician, and the tech had to get to it... I'm glad they fixed
it, but it's too bad I was at school at the time so I didn't catch the
telco tech and thus wasn't able to ask him what he found as the source of
the problem.
I'm now catching up with the backlog of mail...
MS
>From: msokolov at ivan.harhan.org
>
>Jay West <jwest at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>> In case no one caught my previous post on this, a few days ago I moved =
>> the queue retention time back up to a reasonable value.
>
>Thank you!
>
>> I suspect Michael Sokolov is testing this out for me, his name servers =
>> (and thus email) have been down a few hours.
>
>Do you really think that I, after having earned the trust of my circle of
>friends (who all have accounts on my various servers, and use and depend on
>various services hosted at my data centre) as a competent, reliable and
>trustworthy professional system and network administrator for our Circle,
>would deliberately shut it down, screwing all our users?! There must be
>something seriously wrong with your thinking if you indeed thought so.
Lighten up. Jay was just kidding.
---snip---
>DSLAM and the CPE to sync up. So the problem detected by TDR, which they
>dispatched a local telco tech to fix, was NOT an open, but something else.
>I very strongly suspect foul play.
>
---snip---
Wow, you are paranoid. It was more likely that some other
tech ( while trying to find another clean line to fix
a complain about noise ) accidentally bent a wire to cross
your line at one of the junction boxes. This kind of thing
happens regularly ( about every 6 months or so ) to my home
line because I live in an area with a lot of noisy line ( water
in cable ).
Why does everything that happens need to be a conspiracy.
Clumsy techs are much more common than sneaky people. If someone
was actually doing what you suggest, they would most likely have
done a better job. If it wasn't working for you, it most likely
wasn't working for them either.
Dwight
