test-drb May 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

248 participants
723 discussions

by GOOI＠oce.nl

My guess is that Tony is thinking of the SCART plug. It has the green, blue and red connection pins and also the audio channel, IIRC. - Henk, PA8PDP. > -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Paul Koning > Sent: dinsdag 10 mei 2005 16:03 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Subject: Re: CGA monitor on eBay > > > >>>>> "Tony" == Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> writes: > > Tony> Don't US TVs have RGB inputs? Almost all UK/European ones > Tony> do. > > Interesting, that must be something new. Not around here; high end > monitors might, but your average TV set starts with an RF input, next > would add composite video, then S-video, finally "component video" > which is the 3 components of the color TV transmission split apart. > After that you might see the digital video interface, and RGB. > > paul

19 years, 7 months

DEC UNI/Q-BUS board physical size?

by ulf.andersson＠sodra-moinge.se

Hello Gents & Ladies, anyone here know anything about the physical dimensions of UNIBUS and Q-BUS boards? I'd like to know, that's all. Thank you for your time and efforts. /Ulf Andersson Classic Computing Wannabe :) Contemporary Computing Is ;)

19 years, 7 months

Digital Items (VaxServer 4000/200)

by Saquinn624＠aol.com

Picked up a VAX 4000/200 myself recently. Fairly nice machine, heavy, same processor type as a Vaxstation 4000-VLC. Each memory board is 16 MB, system can address up to 4. DSSI drives standard, probably also has SCSI Qbus card (the connector at the far side of the chassis is DSSI NOT SCSI). Rumor has it that there is some way to hack the SCSI through to the backplane shelf in lieu of the DSSI. Haven't put VMS on it yet (no drives installed), but for 32MB RAM it's much faster to the "dead sargent" (is it called SRM in VAX too?) than my 3100/76. Unfortunately, not upgradeable to better VAXen withoug a backplane swap (best thought of as the king of the classic Qbus MicroVAXen than a "real VAX") Won't run Ultrix so don't ask. Manx is great- looks like all manuals are there. If you can get it cheap, go for it- the BA430 really needs two people to load (over 100lbs, I'm still sore) but the 215 is probably a one-person deal. P.S.- it runs on 120- you need to get either a "keyed" CEE or hack a standard with a Dremel and drill. Does anyone here know if DSSI is worth the bother? seems to be hard to find, small and expensive but I have no experience with it. -Scott Quinn P.S. Note to all who asked for the Asimov archives- mine are a bit old, it seems. I'm trying to get them updated, that's what's taking a while.

19 years, 7 months

Paper tape punch interfacing?

by charlesmorris＠direcway.com

On Mon, 09 May 2005 12:07:36 -0500 (CDT), you wrote: >I knew I had the Tally Model 420 manual somewhere, and amazingly it was >where I thought I'd put it.... Thanks very much, this is exactly the kind of information I needed! >Don't ask me where to get these lubricants.... It won't be punching miles of tape so sewing machine oil will probably work in the mechanism (there is a sticker on the Lexan cover that indicates the "light turbine oil"). >Having built a PC04 (well, converted a PC05 into one...) I seem to >remember that the DEC punch mechanism is a synchronous one. The motor >runs all the time, turnign the camshaft, you get a pulse per revolution You recall correctly. I found the PC04/05 manual as well as the PC8E interface schematics on bitsavers.org. I think your approach to clock the interface card at slightly below the maximum punch rate is a good one. I would use a one-shot to "reply" the sync pulse to the PC8E but then it wouldn't have any way to start the first character. >Alas the manaul tells me that a mating connector is supplied with the >machine. Not a lot of help... It seems that Continental Connector is still in business and that 25034 is a member of their 250 series power connector family. I'm waiting for a reply from their sales dept. to find out where to buy a single quantity... thank goodness for the Web! -Charles

19 years, 7 months

Infocom on PDP-11

by bqt＠Update.UU.SE

On Mon, 9 May 2005 Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote: > On Mon, 9 May 2005, Christian Corti wrote: > > > Porting a Z-Code interpreter to a new machine is a nice exercise. In my > > case I ported the Infocom interpreter from the InfoTaskforce (written in > > C) to the IBM 5110 (yes, the 5110, not the 5150) in machine language (yes, > > you can program that beast in machine language, it has a very nice > > instruction set IMHO). The binary's size is only 9.5kB and will run any V3 > > games. It includes save/restore, a paging mechanism for fetching needed > > non-resident code parts from disk (and throwing out LRU ones), line > > wrapping / 'more'-style pausing for the 64x16 display etc. > > The interpreter requires at least one 5114 disk drive and 16kB of RWS. If > > more RWS is available, less page swapping is needed during the game. > > Totally cool! Was this just for fun or did Infocom suspect a 5100 series > market and hire you to do it? :) > > > Anyone interested in playing Zork on an IBM 5110 ? > > For certain. I just need to find a 5110 first :/ For that matter, I've written ZEMU, which is a Z-machine implementation for the PDP-11. Runs on RSX and RT-11. Should probably work on RSTS/E as well, but might need some tweaking. Plays anything from version 1 to 8, I believe. I've tested it some on Zork Zero (which is my only V6 game), and it works as far as expected, considering that it don't appear to work without special hacks that I haven't done. V3 to V5 has done major testing and works like a charm however. ZEMU is written entirely in MACRO-11, and is only understands DEC terminals. But it does do some pretty good work and tricks with the terminals. Very nice if I may say so myself. :-) Oh, and the source is available. The RT-11 work was done by Megan Gentry. Johnny Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at update.uu.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

19 years, 7 months

Now hard drives too. Re: Modern floppy disk question...

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Gavin Thomas Nicol" <gtn at rbii.com> > > >On May 4, 2005, at 6:12 PM, Philip Pemberton wrote: > >> I swear by Maxtors, but I always buy drives from the middle of the >> model >> range. > >About 3 years ago we bought about 40 Maxtor 20GB drives... about 100% >failure rate within 2 years, 60% within a year. I've not touched one >since. > > Hi Why doesn't anyone mention Micropolus. On, I think it was 2G drives, we had 100% failure in 2 weeks. Dwight

19 years, 7 months

Infocom on PDP-11

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Infocom on PDP-11 > From: Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> > Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 07:00:44 -0700 (PDT) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Mon, 9 May 2005, Christian Corti wrote: > >> Porting a Z-Code interpreter to a new machine is a nice exercise. In my >> case I ported the Infocom interpreter from the InfoTaskforce (written in >> C) to the IBM 5110 (yes, the 5110, not the 5150) in machine language (yes, >> you can program that beast in machine language, it has a very nice >> instruction set IMHO). The binary's size is only 9.5kB and will run any V3 >> games. It includes save/restore, a paging mechanism for fetching needed >> non-resident code parts from disk (and throwing out LRU ones), line >> wrapping / 'more'-style pausing for the 64x16 display etc. >> The interpreter requires at least one 5114 disk drive and 16kB of RWS. If >> more RWS is available, less page swapping is needed during the game. Well if you can do that then PDP-8 is doable. The constraints there is much of the "core" interpreter must fit in the 4KW Field and have the guts needed to do the EMA management for Field linkage. Definately a assembly languge project. One note it would coolest with TU55/56 dectape rolling for swapping but for speed the RK-08 or other databreak disk would be interesting. Allison Allison

19 years, 7 months

Infocom on PDP-11

by charlesmorris＠direcway.com

On Sun, 08 May 2005 12:00:47 -0500 (CDT), you wrote: >I once saw "Planetfall" on the wall of the local DEC >store for RT-11. Never seen any other Infocom games for the PDP-11 >anywhere else. > >-ethan Waaay back in 1981 I worked for a small defense contractor with an 11/03, later upgraded to 11/73. If I remember the name correctly, there was an Infocom game installed, called "Infidel" which started out in a desert somewhere in the Middle East. You had to dig into the sand to find the entrance to the tomb... -Charles

19 years, 7 months

IBM Manuals - et al, On EBay

by drb＠msu.edu

To make this quicker for others, here's a URL: http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZbilld2626 De

19 years, 7 months

Infocom on PDP-11

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Infocom on PDP-11 > From: Paul Koning <pkoning at equallogic.com> > Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 09:58:58 -0400 > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Allison> IBM360 like a PDP-8???? Explain please. > >Small directly addressable range (128 words for the 8, 4k for the >360) is what I was thinking about. Not unusual for machine that address a larger memory with shorter words or worse use a extended memory hack. However the PDP-8 is a bit different. You have a direct addressing of 128 words in the current field and Page zero field. Makes it easier to have variables that can be accesses from anywhere in the 4k frame and since the EMA allows for I&D you can still access the zero'th field from code anywhere in the 32kW space. Also the 8 autoindex memory locations are in zero field. Programming the -8 is a good exercise in what is really needed, and how to exploit it. >I believe the main reason is to make the code smaller. P-code >compilers have been used on the PDP-11 (the Algol compiler was ported >there, and Fortran-4 was P-code). Basic-Plus is P-code of course, and >so is Forth. Then there is UCSD Pascal. Actually it also allows one other thing. Machines like the PDP-8 only address 4k, they got to 32kW with EMA and using the IL interpreter to do the memory management so programs can exceed 4k hides a lot of stuff the compiler would have to deal with. The PDP-11 is a good stack machine so doing any programming style on that ends up compact and fairly fast. I used to run UCSD Psystem on an 11/23, not bad. >Sure. But my point is that, even when you have NO help from the >processor instruction set, you can do a block oriented language. The I figured that was a given if the basic addressing range was large enough to reasonably fit the code. >Cyber is about the most unhelpful architecture you can find: no stack, >no autoincrement registers, function call works by writing the return >address into the first word of the function, etc. And sure enough, Never looked at the Cyber, sounds like the other earlier PDP-n systems. The PDP-8 has the same subroutine call as Cyber, the return address is the first byte of the routine. The problem for the -8 programmer is that subroutine must be in the same 4k bank otherwise you have to invoke a small potload of code to set up a bank change then do the call (JMS I,target). >Wirth bitched a lot about that, but the compiler works, anyway. In >fact, it worked well enough that the first VMS Pascal compiler was a >quick hackjob on the Cyber compiler -- you can still see the Cyber >code patterns when you look at the VAX machine code that VAX Pascal >V1.0 generates -- which is quite hilarious. Never saw V1 of the VMS Pascal. Sound like the typical things that happen when you try to reuse code across widely different archetectures. I have to admit I'm a bit soft for anything PDP-8 or "8" like and as a result I have an 8f, DecmateIII, 6100 and 6120 based hardware. I suspect it was from my first contact with one 36 years ago. I've worked with just about every 8bitter save for the 2650. But the minis are definately different from any micro. Allison

19 years, 7 months

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test-drb May 2005