test-drb September 2005

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

212 participants
437 discussions

Radio Shack TRS-80 Models I and III available near NE Ohio

by vcf＠siconic.com

See below. Contact original sender directly. Reply-to: Kirk Worcester <kirk at neo.rr.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:35:32 -0400 From: Kirk Worcester <kirk at neo.rr.com> To: vcf at vintage.org Subject: Radio Shack I have a RS Model I and Model III and I'm looking for a good home. Any suggestions? Ideally I'd like to find a local collector (NE Ohio) that could come and pick these up. Thank you, Kirk Worcester -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

18 years, 6 months

identifying PC Simms

by trag＠io.com

>Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:53:00 -0400 >From: "Joe Stevenson" <ikvsabre at comcast.net> >I have 16 30-pin simms left over from various past incarnations of >my PCs, and I'm > trying to figure out what I've got. > I no longer have a motherboard to test them, so I have no idea what is what. > >Is there any not-to-painless way to figure out what I've got? Not all that painless, but the only way I know that works... Take a SIMM. Count the number of chips. Find the model markings on one of the chips. There are usually two or three lines of writing on a chip. One of these will be a date or batch code and is irrelevant. The line you want will start with a one, two or three (usually two) character manufacturer code (e.g., K or KM for Samsung, TC for Toshiba, M(numeral)M for Mitsubishi, HM or HN for Hitachi, etc.), followed by some longish, about four to eight, alphanumeric code which is mostly numerals, then a dash or space and a speed number in nanoseconds, which may or may not have the trailing zero truncated. For example: HM5116400BS-8, MSM511000C-7, KM44C16100B-5, TC514400AJ-6. Then go to a datasheet archive such as <http://www.datasheetarchive.com/> and enter the part number in the search field. It often helps to truncate the trailing characters back to the first number in the body. E.g. HM5116400, MSM511000, KM44C16100, etc. The datasheet will tell you the capacity and organization of the chip. For example, a 1 MB 30 pin SIMM with eight chips on it will be composed of 1M X 1 chips. These have one million addresses with 1 bit at each address. Eight of them working in parallel provide 1 million addresses with eight bits at each address or 1 megabyte. Multiply the total capacity of the chip by the number of chips on the SIMM. Remember that you're working with bits here, not bytes. Divide by 8 and you've got the capacity in megabytes--except... Some SIMMs are parity SIMM and they are based on 9 bits of data rather than 8 bits of data, so you'll need to divide that capacity by 9, not by eight for a parity SIMM. A 30 pin parity SIMM will have nine or three chips instead of eight or two, so they're fairly easy to identify. However, a three chip 30 pin SIMM will have two chips with a certain capacity and a third chip with 1/4 the capacity or either of the other two. In this case, calculate the total capacity of the two larger chips and divide by eight. Or find the capacity in bits of one big chip and divide by four. In most cases, if the SIMM has eight or nine chips, then the capacity in bytes is equal to the number of addresses any of the chips supports (see the datasheet). If the SIMM has three chips, then the capacity in bytes is still equal to the number of address which any of the three chips supports. For example, you find a three chip SIMM with two 4M X 4 chips and one 4M X 1 chip on board. The capacity of this SIMM is 4MB or 4 Megabytes. You find a SIMM with eight or nine 4M X 1 chips on board, its capacity is also 4MB. The real trick is figureing out the capacity of the chips from the markings on them. Google searches sometimes help, but often (almost always) just lead you to chip distributers spamming the search engine space with part numbers to lead part searches to their sites. They often don't even have the chip in question, and rarely have any useful information available on their website. SIMMs that can steer you wrong are composite SIMMs where groups of smaller capacity chips are used to build a higher capacity SIMM. For example, building a 16 MB 30 pin SIMM out of eight 4M X 4 chips. These are rare and should be easily identified because there should be a non-memory chip on board to handle the address translations. Jeff Walther

18 years, 6 months

transputers

by RMeenaks＠OLF.COM

Come to my website at http://www.classiccmp.org/transputer. I havent set up a ST20 site yet, but what are you looking for? Datasheets, etc, etc.. Ram > -----Original Message----- > From: Brad Parker [mailto:brad at heeltoe.com] > Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 3:41 PM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: transputers > > > > Hi, > > I find myself, in real work, for money and everything, > working on an ST20 micro. > > Little did I know it was a transputer :-) > > I recall seeing some messages here from people who seemed to > be interested in transputers. > > I'm curious - is there any nice "hints & kinks" on the web > for transputers, or a good book or tutorial? It's not that > complex but I am curious to hear from anyone "in the know" as > it where about ways to make them go fast... > > (it's so rare when my hobbies cross my day gig. note to self... :-) > > -brad >

18 years, 6 months

Restoring (and I do mean 'Restoring!') Plastic

by James＠jdfogg.com

> From your description, it already sounds like I need to > start shopping for a bench grinder. A grinder is way too fast for polishing plastic (unless you mind divots and burns). Though it would be hand-held, you might want to try a buffer first (much slower).

18 years, 6 months

USB Stuff

by Watzman＠neo.rr.com

Re: "I've seen an LED map light that plugs into and gets its power from USB. It seemed to work OK." That's nothing. Computer Geeks is selling a motorized USB "Aquarium" .... a clear plastic "tank" in which motorized fish (or perhaps just a mural of fish) move, powered from a USB port.

18 years, 6 months

480z system disk on ebay

by williams.dan＠gmail.com

Anyone interested in this ? http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5270170547 Nothing to do with me . Dan

18 years, 6 months

DECassette pictures

by rigdonj＠cfl.rr.com

FYI: Frank Arnold recognized my description immediately and sent me this: "Deccasette should be TU60, see: http://www.iivs.de/home/fm.arnold/Fotoos/DEC/TU60/DSCN0870.JPG http://www.iivs.de/home/fm.arnold/Fotoos/DEC/TU60/DSCN0871.JPG http://www.iivs.de/home/fm.arnold/Fotoos/DEC/TU60/DSCN0872.JPG http://www.iivs.de/home/fm.arnold/Fotoos/DEC/TU60/DSCN0874.JPG And yes I know this beast pretty well, more than I liked in the old days. DEC made CAPS-11 "operating-system" especially arount this peripheral, basically the papertape programming software on casettes. I'm not aware of any surviving copy of this..."

18 years, 6 months

very neat classic computer book comparison

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Someone sent me this link... http://davidguy.brinkster.net/computer/ It is an online scan of the book "How it works - the computer", circa 1971. Very mini-computer oriented. What's even better, is they scanned both a 1971 and 1979 edition of the same book, so you can see how they revised it based on advances in technology. I thought it was neat in any case :) Some of the pictures are true porn for mini collectors :) Jay West

18 years, 6 months

Linux Floppy Install (Re: YATYRD)

by ken＠seefried.com

From: Doc Shipley <doc at mdrconsult.com> > IIRC, Slack v3.3 took 54 1.44MB disks. Interesting. I recall installing something I think was slack with a 0.99 kernel around 1993-4. The i386 with 5M ram and a 40MB HD that ran it was a sporty box back then. I remember bitching 'cause it was something more than a dozen floppies or so. But it had a C compiler, so I could do my homework (and not dial into an AT&T 3b20 or drive in to campus and use a Sun 3). And it was my UUCP node: ...!ucbvax!gatech!weasel!ken. Good times...good times... 54 floppies? Wow...you've got more patience than me. Ken

18 years, 6 months

Hero-Jr Parts Needed

by jrkeys＠concentric.net

Does anyone on the list have some spare Hero-Jr parts?

18 years, 6 months

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test-drb September 2005