test-drb April 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

269 participants
730 discussions

OT Don't read this (was Re: Altair MBL source)

by technobug＠comcast.net

> If things had worked out differently we might be using > ultraminiature electron tubes. Imagine! An entire flipflop in one > package! In the '60s I saw a rocket control computer that was used in a high acceleration missile that was IIRC about 30 cm cubed. It was made up of layers of ceramic approximately 3-5 mm thick each containing around 50-100 "tubes" separated by a thin 2-3 mm layer of ceramic insulation. Each "tube" consisted of an Americium cathode, the necessary grids (perforated plates), and a plate evaporated on the wall of the cavity. Everything was interconnected by metalization on the insulating layer. The necessary resistors/capacitors were placed in cavities between the "tubes". What made this extremely interesting was that all circuitry was differential to exclude the common mode voltages that were generated by the compression of the ceramic block during launch. At that time, solid state devices self-destructed during the acceleration phase. I imagine that any "personal" computer made with that technology would self-destruct any savings one had... CRC

20 years, 1 month

Microfiche scanning

by benj＠vintagecomputing.com

Hey guys, Last year at a local hamfest I bought some DEC microfiche source code for $5 just as a vintage computer curiosity. Only last week did I pull it out of the closet and realized that it says, "VAX/VMS v2.0 SRC LST MCRF/226" -- and it occurred to me that it might be rare and somebody might want to see it for historical reasons. But I know nearly nothing about VAX stuff. Does that mean that I've got the source to the VAX/VMS 2.0 operating system itself? I do have a hefty little stack of fiche here. How common is this, and is it important that I archive it in some other medium while I have the chance? A few other things it says on the label are "AH-H159B-SE" and "Copyright 1980 Digital Equipment Corporation" and a printed "NR" up in the right corner of the label. Each fiche "slide" is numbered and they go up to about 192. Come to think of it, maybe it's the source for "AH-H159B-SE," whatever that is -- the more I think about how it's written on here, the more likely that seems. Thanks for your help, Benj On Apr 23, 2005, at 11:47 AM, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Message: 8 > Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 19:36:20 +0100 > From: "Antonio Carlini" <a.carlini at ntlworld.com> > Subject: RE: Microfiche scanning > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <001b01c5476a$2f3ed6c0$5b01a8c0 at flexpc> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >> DEC sold software listings on fiche, but not on paper. A lot of that >> software was either not available in machine readable form, or >> ridiculously expensive. For example, RSTS or VMS listing fiche can >> probably be found, but source kits of either are hard to come by. The >> same only more so is likely to be true for "layered products" >> (compilers etc.) > > The VMS listings switched from fiche to CD when the fiche had > grown to nearly two boxes per release. AFAICT the CD source > listings kit has the same stuff that went into the fiche: the > .LST files. > > There was a source kit, from which you could produce your > own VMS, but I believe that rather than being a $1K/annum > subscription, it was a $200K per release cost. I don't know > when the last one was done, but I do remember someone with > Engineering saying that they'll do another one when someone > actually asks. > > I don't know if all layered product groups used fiche as > an archival medium, but I know that PSI, DECnet-RSX and > ALL-IN-1 did on at least some oocasions. Just as well really, > because I'm willing to bet that most of the archived source > tapes have ended up in the bit-bucker. I remember hearing > (probably via Bob Supnik) that DEC had a big clear out of > the archives that they were paying someone (Iron Mountain?) > to maintain. > > Pity really, as I'd bet that the entirety of the sources > (and build tools etc.) for everything up to and including > the PDP-11 would have fit on a single CD, or at most, a > single DVD. > > Antonio > > -- > > --------------- > > Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org

20 years, 1 month

phase converters for big iron

by brian＠quarterbyte.com

Hi, Does anyone have any experience using motor-generator phase converters to produce 3 phase power from single phase power for running big iron? (e.g. IBM mainframe equipment). They seem reasonably priced -- about $1 per peak KW, at least on sale: http://www.phaseconverter.com I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has actual real experience with or knowledge about this. Thanks Brian =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- _| _| _| Brian Knittel _| _| _| Quarterbyte Systems, Inc. _| _| _| Tel: 1-510-559-7930 _| _| _| Fax: 1-510-525-6889 _| _| _| Email: brian at quarterbyte.com _| _| _| http://www.quarterbyte.com

20 years, 1 month

Old used laptops

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Re: "A friend in Mexico called me the other day, looking for a source of inexpensive laptops. He said there's quite a booming market for used laptops down there. Many people would prefer a small laptop over a full desktop for their home system. He thought that even if he had a source of $300-400 200-500 Mhz systems that he could mark them up 30%." I use old 386 and 486 laptops as "terminals" for my classic computers. Sure beats the size and weight of ADM-3 or an H-19, and you can pickup working 386 laptops for $10 on E-Bay (although the shipping will be $15 to $30). Z-Notes and old Toshiba laptops work nice. You can very readily buy laptops higher end than your friend's 200 to 500MHz for his price range. You can get many Toshiba 2805's (650MHz to 1GHz Pentium III's) for $250 to about $400. Those have DVD drives, USB ports, XGA active matrix screens (13" to 15") and are very serviceable machines, and very well built. Lots of older Thinkpads with Pentium II's and III's are in that same price range or less. Last weekend at a Hamfest I picked up a Toshiba 490CDT for $10. It was missing a power adapter and had a dead LCD inverter, but is otherwise fine. I picked up the power supply for $10 (same hamfest) and the inverter for $4.99 (on E-Bay, but shipping was $10). The machine is a Pentium II with 64 megs of RAM and a 4 gig drive, well worth what I will have invested in it.

20 years, 1 month

LCD monitors

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

LCD Monitors have gotten cheap. I'm regularly seeing 17" 1280x1024 monitors for $149 to $169 and 19" 1280x1024 for $249 to $279. Most of these are off-brand, but sometimes they are name-brand (Planar, Sceptre, Acer, even occasionally Samsung). The best sources are Tiger Direct (www.tigerdirect.com) and www.ecost.com. Both have relatively large quantities of "inexpensive" monitors (17" under $199 and 19" under $299). I've bought quite a few of them, and they have been ok. None have had more than 3 bad pixels (none have been "perfect", either). They are not "great" monitors, but they are not junk either, they are perfectly useable. My biggest complaint is that they don't have DVI inputs, but you can find monitors in the "cheap" price range (under $199 and 19" under $299) that do. My second biggest complaint is short or poor quality cables, which causes "ghosting" and "ringing" in the image. Cable quality is VERY important. You can almost judge this by the thickness of the cable. You want a cable that's like a garden hose, not like a (thin) soda straw. If you are going to use an analog LCD monitor, you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't get the test pattern generator available at: http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?500000030936 And use it to properly set the dot clock. After installation, select the leftmost of the 3 functions in the "Test" group and then check both check-boxes. This is a very old Windows 3.1 program written in visual basic. It runs under XP just fine. You need VBRUN300.DLL (the Visual basic version 3 runtime DLL library), which it may or may not come with it depending on where you download it from. This program is non-invasive, it's "installation" makes no changes to your registry or to any system components or files. In fact, if you just unzip the program and double click the exe file, it will run fine without actual "installation" (the program and the help file need to be in the same directory, and VBRUN300.DLL needs to be available). When you display this pattern, you should see an absolutely perfect and uniform field of alternating (but very, very fine) black and white vertical bars each only one single pixel wide. If you see "moir?" distortion, or smearing, your display isn't adjusted correctly. Digital monitors (with DVI interfaces) will always be "perfect". Analog monitors will usually show an initial moir? distortion pattern until they are adjusted (dot clock frequency and phase). In most cases, perfect adjustment can be achieved (and is "remembered" by the display), but in some cases you can't achieve this. Note that the "auto" (auto-adjust) function on almost all analog LCD monitors gets "close" but usually does not get to the best possible adjustment. The average life of the CCFT lamps used in monitors is about 25,000 hours. They can be replaced with varying degrees of difficulty (ranging from trivial to impossible). Newark Electronics carries a good selection of generic lamps (you need to know the diameter and length in mm). However, the usual failure mode is the inverter, not the lamp, and getting an exact replacement inverter is often difficult or impossible. The problem isn't cost ($30 to $80), it's pure availability, as many of these are custom parts only available from the manufacturer. It may be cheaper to buy a new monitor and sell the old one for parts on E-Bay (the LCD panel, which may still be good, may be worth more as a part than the cost of a new monitor).

20 years, 1 month

Free Book: Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering

by chenmel＠earthlink.net

To the first person who wants it and will pay shipping, I have a copy of: Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering, Second Edition. Edited by Ralston and Reilly. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983. This is a huge book, about the size of an oversized College Dictionary, a bit smaller than an unabridged dictionary. 1650 pages hardbound. Shipping weight looks like about 7 pounds (about that much overscale on my 5 pound scale). It should be of interest to people who participate on this list, because it dates from the Minicomputer/Mainframe era and hast lots of references to classic-era computing. It won't probably be expensive to ship media rate within the US. To calculate aprox. shipping you can use zipcode 46227. First person to respond gets first chance at it. -Scott

20 years, 1 month

Theos

by James＠jdfogg.com

Anybody ever hear of an OS called Theos that ran on the original IBM PC? Said to be *nix/CPM-ish but is neither? A friend has an old 5150 with this installed on the HD. He wants to copy it off and preserve it.

20 years, 1 month

phase converters for big iron

by n8uhn＠yahoo.com

Rotary phase converters or "phase masters" as they are sometimes refered to as, are widely used in the broadcast market. if the transmitter site can only be wired for 1 phase 220 because three phase does not run in the area (usually very remote) then a rotary or inverter phase converter is used. these can supply power in the three digit Kva's. i would avoid the inverter type as they are more pricey and suck alot of juice. goto www.broadcast.net and find the listserves. >from there join "radio tech" and "broadcast" and ask your question about phase converters there. a couble weeks ago, a station was selling one they no longer needed, don't remember the price but have seen them go for prices in the hundred's to the thousdands. Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 17:41:12 -0400 (EDT) From: William Donzelli <aw288 at osfn.org> Subject: Re: phase converters for big iron To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.4.20.0504231740020.16085-100000 at osfn.org> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who has actual > real experience with or knowledge about this. Whatever size of converter you figure you need, even with safety factor, slop, and such...get the next size up. William Donzelli aw288 at osfn.org __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

20 years, 1 month

Fwd: Free to a good home (vax4000/300 in Pittsburg, PA)

by vax9000＠gmail.com

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lord Isildur <mrfusion at vaxpower.org> Date: Apr 22, 2005 1:58 PM Subject: Free to a good home To: port-vax at netbsd.org I have a VAX 4000/300 that needs a new home. It has no memory, and I'm under pressure to either get it up and running or get it out of the machine room. Having not found reasonably priced memory anywhere in the last year, I think finally it has to go. alas! anyway, the machine is free for pickup in Pittsburgh, PA, on the CMU campus. Anyone want it? Isildur

20 years, 1 month

Apple // Questions

by cb＠mythtech.net

>I'd not realized it was the same footprint. In that case, this probably is >the best way for me to go. Plus I think I can easily get to at least one of >my //gs's. The doc's, and the box of stuff for it will no doubt be more >interesting... It isn't *exactly* the same footprint. The IIgs takes up the same amount of space for the computer as the IIc does. However, with the IIc you get the floppy drive and keyboard in that same space. The IIgs has external floppy and keyboard. Personally, I prefer the external keyboard anyway, as it gives more flexability to where the computer itself goes. -chris <http://www.mythtech.net>

20 years, 1 month

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test-drb April 2005