test-drb April 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

269 participants
730 discussions

Questions - Universe/68, HP-9134A,VT420 composite video

by david_comley＠yahoo.com

--- "J. David Bryan" <jdbryan at acm.org> wrote: > Note that for use on the HP 64000, the 9134A must > have been built with > Option 010. That configures the drive as a single > 4.8 MB unit. The > standard configuration 9134A appears to the host as > four 1.15 MB volumes to > emulate four 9895A floppy drives. And that may be the problem. When I had this pointed to the 1631, it reported itself as a 9895. I do have the sticker on the back of the unit - can't recall which option was checked on it though so I will have to look when I get home. Can the option setting be tweaked ? Is it something as simple as a jumper setting ? Regards, Dave __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/

20 years, 1 month

HP 700/RX xterm - RAM failure

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Just picked up an HP 700/RX xterm (would be nice with our big HP T500) - it's failing on-board RAM test saying that DRAM #6 is bad. Obvious question - anyone have manuals or other docs and can tell me which #6 is? :-) There are 16 ram chips on the board in a square, but no indication as to which number 1 is or how the numbering goes... None are obviously hotter than the others. (they're standard SMD parts, so I should be able to cull one from an old PC SIMM) cheers Jules

20 years, 1 month

paging Jay: mail server change??

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Jay, Has something changed with the list software setup? Since Sunday night or thereabouts Yahoo seems to be tagging *all* messages from the list as spam for some reason. Could well be that someone at Yahoo screwed up of course (although messages to my other mailing lists seem ok) and blacklisted everything >from classiccmp.org :-( (copied to the list in case this has suddenly started affecting anyone else) I can't see anything obvious in the headers from having a (really) quick glance. Last 'normal' message I seem to have was at 'Sun, 17 Apr 2005 21:48:11' (classiccmp time :-) - after that time everything's being tagged as spam. cheers Jules

20 years, 1 month

quality of writeable optical media (was Re: SCSI CD drive capable of reading CD-R)

by bpettit＠ix.netcom.com

Eric wrote: > > And the composition, thickness and uniformity of the reflective layer, > and the tolerance of the centering (spiral center vs. spindle hole > center), and the wear of the stamper, and a myriad of other > characteristics. The Red Book and Orange Book have a huge list of > parameters and their allowable ranges, and any one of them screwed up > will yield unreliable media. It's not just the dye and deposition > process by a long shot. Of course I simplified to keep this at a reasonable length. There are dozens of parameters requiring control to make readable media. But the major one that differs by brands from the same factory is dye formula. Most of the other parameters would be the same. One key your didn't mention is hardness and scratches. But the parameters you did mentioned ARE controlled by the tolerances in the Red/Orange/White etc books. If the witness disks don't meet the standard, the license could be pulled. These parameters have to be in control to qualify for carrying the logo. More importantly, they have to be in control to go into high volume production and get decent yields. Without tight quality, a factory can't meet its own numbers. > What you're saying about recent writable DVD media is not unlike > how the situation used to be with writable CD media. But there *are* > a lot more manufacturers of writeable CDs now. Maybe there aren't > many sources of bare polycarbonate discs, but everything else in the > process is done by many vendors. > >> Thus, most CD-Rs and DVD+/-Rs come from a small number of physical >> plants. In 2000, you could count them on one hand. Since then, they >> may have doubled. > > For CD-R and CD-RW, it has far more than doubled. > I think we may be talking apples and oranges. I'm refering to high volume plants - 100+ million units a year. The last industry survey I saw showed only 8 such plants. > Rare, my ass! In six different stores in three different major > US cities I have had no trouble spotting multiple brands of that crap. > It's routinely advertised as store specials in the local newspapers. > Usually with "no returns" in fine print.> Again, the factories and media I'm talking about are mainland China. They don't make it to the US because among other reasons, they don't pay the license fees. The Optical Storage forums watch very closely. As soon as they spot one, they head straight to Customs and plug it. Lots of cooperation these days from Customs given the current political situation. I'm not certain what brand names you are talking about. Two that are showing up in Silicon Valley but aren't very good are GQ and kHypermedia. Are these who you mean? > Lots of the stuff *does* make it to the US, precisely because there > isn't any accountability for it. If you have a bad disc (or a bad > spindle), who are you going to complain to? Stores buy it because > they know there are gullible customers they can flog it off to. For my personal use, I've had no problem taking a spindle back if I get a coaster. Both CompUSA and Fry's have stood behind their sales. Best Buy - I've never had a bad disk. Until I retired, I bought 1.5-2K work disks a month, most through dummy accounts. The people I dealt with were always willing to give a refund. > No. Saying that media from CMC Magnetics is crap is a statement of fact, > backed up by much evidence collected over a period of years. CMC Magnetics > discs purchased last month were not any better than those purchased > three years ago. I just looked at my test numbers from 2002-2004, and I don't see the problems you describe. CMC is not at the top of the list, but neither is close to the bottom. And the tolerances are tighter on more recent disks. > Multiple sources of CMC Magnetics media tested on thirteen different > drives from multiple vendors and of different generations from 1994 > through 2005. The CMC Magnetics discs are just crap, pure and simple. > > Readers: Toshiba, TDK, Teac, Philips, Sony, Plextor > > Burners: Yamaha, Plextor, Toshiba, TDK, Liteon, Sony, Plextor I've tested all those units, though mainly with Philips. Again, my data doesn't match yours. I'm especially surprised that you had burn problems with the Yamaha drive. They are by far the most roboust unit of those you tested. > Also, the fact that TDK has at times in the past shipped CMC Magnetics > media under the TDK brand does tell me something very important about > the TDK brand. Even though TDK might not be shipping CMC Magnetics > media today, there's no way in hell I'll ever buy writable optical media > from TDK again. Not because it's crap today; since I haven't tried it > recently I don't know. But instead, because it is proof positive that > TDK does not perform adequate qualification of their suppliers. Thus > there is no way to buy TDK optical media and have any reasonable > expectation that it is not crap. This is where I cannot agree with you. At Quantum, I had an opportunity to visit TDK head and magnetic media factories in Japan and China. I also took customers with me and they went through the Quality processes of TDK with a fine tooth comb. TDK has a world class quality organization. Later I tested their optical drives and media. Their quality is some of the best in the field. I just looked at the numbers on my DVD Recorder. In the last 18 months, I've used 1200+ DVD+R disks. About 250 of those were TDK. I had 2 bad burns, both just before I lost an OPU. The only other media that I've better luck with is Sony (who doesn't make their own anyway). Look, I'm not trying to change your opinion. You don't like CMC and TDK and feel you have results to prove your case. That is what I was suggesting people should do. My own data doesn't match yours. I don't agree with your conclusions about CMC or TDK. So what? You should buy what you like. I'll buy what I'm comfortable with. I've had good experiences with both. When the price is right, I'll buy them again. Interestingly, I just recieved an eMail with a long complaint about Memorex and how they've never made a good recordable media, DVD or CD. Yet Memorex usually came out high on our testing. By the way I'm curious, what software did you use for this testing - Roxio, Mediostream, Nero, Neo, Pinnacle, Sonic? This is one area where you can get widely divergent results from the same batch of media. Billy

20 years, 1 month

Jupiter J12

by aek＠spies.com

Jupiter Systems was a company started by people who originally developed the AED 512 graphics display (I worked at AED in '84 and '85) Looking at the pics, the CPU is an Integrated Solutions QBus 68000 CPU board.

20 years, 1 month

HP-2116A manuals

by aek＠spies.com

I have the manuals scanned, I'll see about getting them on line.

20 years, 1 month

Sky Technical EBD

by cobb＠corning.us

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20 years, 1 month

Attn: Sellam

by bpettit＠ix.netcom.com

Sellam, Are you still interested in the Bernolli box? I have one sitting in the pile waiting for the next freebie electronic garbage run. Alameda county has one every few months. Any way, it's yours if you want it. Was working when last used. Have a few piecces of media buried in the garage - saw them a few weeks ago. If Sellam doesn't want it, anyone else want it? I'll toss in the disks when I find them. Billy

20 years, 1 month

Osborne 4 circuit diagram wanted

by swebb＠cix.co.uk

Does anyone have a circuit diagram for an Osborne 4 (otherwise known as Osborne Express, and in the States as Osborne Vixen) we could borrow? Simon Webb Curator, Museum of Computing www.museum-of-computing.org.uk

20 years, 1 month

Altair MBL source

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Altair MBL source > From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> >On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 rcini at optonline.net wrote: > >> I was able to get binary copies of some Altair paper tapes but none of >> them came with manuals. I believe that they can be loaded with the >> Altair Multi-Boot Loader, which I do not have. > >Did you pay a license fee to Bill Gates? If not, he might get very angry >with you and post a long diatribe to the CC list about how software >pirates are a hurting good software developers. > >"Nothing would please me more than being able to hire ten programmers and >deluge the hobby market with good software."* > >Hahahaha. I laugh too. Myself as one that did buy the first three offered versions of MITS BASIC at the discounted extortion of additional memory I'll say this. It's 30 years later, I stull ahvent gotten a copy of MITS BASIC that wasn't buggy! I'd add that among the users of the day everyone lusted for it and then got is to say "this is really poor" then go of and type in a copy TBX, LLL-basic, or TDL 5k basic and there were more some distinctly better. Many of those were free, some cost money but, on the whole were cheap. When I got my NS* Minidisk system it had basic with the DOS I figured it was just another crappy basic. Turns out it was different than many but it worked, and worked well. Those of us remember when DRI was OS and MS was languages. Some of also remember that many of the MS languages were just a expensive and always a little off from the base languages we knew from minis and the like. So after all these years I'm not surprized nor disappointed. It's what we expected would happen. Allison

20 years, 1 month

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test-drb April 2005