test-drb January 2006

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

240 participants
511 discussions

by coredump＠gifford.co.uk

I have a fine old Stag PPZ modular EPROM programmer: http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/inst.htm#PPZ It takes plug-in EPROM (model Zm2000) and PAL (Zm2200) modules, called Z-modules by Stag. I've recently acquired a new module, Zm3000, which looks like a more recent EPROM module. The chips in the Zm3000 are date coded in 1993, whereas the Zm2000 is nearer 1988. The PPZ main unit contains a 6809 CPU and a small CRT display. Does anyone know anything about this system? What about other Z-module types? In particular, should the Zm3000 work with the PPZ, because I currently get an error message "Incorrect Mainframe"? Thanks in advance for any clues! (Virtually all I get from Google is a link back to my own web page!) -- John Honniball coredump(a)gifford.co.uk

13 years, 8 months

IBM PC Convertible Speech Module.

by netsurfer_x1＠fastmailbox.net

Anyone here have the speech module for an IBM PC Convertible they want to get rid of? I just got one of these laptops & was hoping to score one. David M. Vohs Digital Archaeologist & Computer Historian Computer Collection: "Triumph": Commodore 64, 1802, 1541, Indus GT, FDD-1, GeoRAM 512, MPS-801. "Leela": Original Apple Macintosh, Imagewriter II. "Delorean": TI-99/4A, TI Speech Synthesizer. "Spectrum": Tandy Color Computer III. "Monolith": Apple Macintosh Portable. "Boombox": Sharp PC-7000. "Butterfly": Tandy 200, PDD-2. "Shapeshifter": Epson QX-10, Comrex HDD, Titan graphics/MS-DOS board. "Scout": Otrona Attache. (prospective) "Pioneer": Apple LISA II. "TMA-1": Atari Portfolio, Memory Expander + "Centaur": Commodore Amiga 2000. "Neon": Zenith Minisport.

13 years, 9 months

I'm so stupid...

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Back in 1998 (actually more like from summer 1997 until summer 1998, i.e., the 1997-98 school year), before I started Quasijarus Project, I was searching the World high and low for a copy of the 4.3BSD tape set. That was before PUPS got its momentum with getting the $100 "Ancient UNIX" license deal from SCO, and more importantly, getting people interested in preserving and working with Original UNIX, and at that time the entire world was basically in a conspiracy of anathema against original Bell/Berkeley UNIX, everyone just wanted it to stay buried in its grave and not come up. Getting a copy of the 4.3BSD tape set seemed next to impossible. www.berkeley.edu was shockingly silent about the fact that Berkeley UNIX aka BSD, UC Berkeley's greatest accomplishment in all of its history, ever existed, much less saying how to order a tape. Finally I found a phone number and a couple of E-mail addresses for some office at UCB that was apparently kept for sending out tapes after CSRG itself was gutted. The office was basically a voice mailbox and a couple of E-mail addresses, with the two people who were actually supposed to get those E-mail and voice messages being away somewhere in San Francisco and taking a few weeks to answer inquiries. Finally they got back to me and told me to send a check for $2400 for 4.4BSD and $1000 for 4.3BSD. Ouch! And of course some murky business about licenses. At that time, however, I attended Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) and had a semi-staff relationship with their computer science department. I realised that the university must have had a UNIX source license from back in The Days, and most probably had the actual 4.3BSD tapes at some point as well, especially given that the old-timers told me that they were indeed running 11/780s before. But again the conspiracy of anathema was working: everyone had completely forgotten about it, and no one on the entire campus even knew that the university had a UNIX source license (and old-timers confirmed that indeed there was one). When spring 1998 came around, PUPS was making its debut with the $100 license deal from SCO. I didn't care so much about license stuff, but it meant a resurgence of interest in Original UNIX and a community of people involved with it, something that was completely lacking only a few months prior. I wanted access to the PUPS archive, and I wanted to use the university's license rather than fork over $100 for a personal one. The only issue was *finding* that license. Then I got a bright idea: since the license agreement was between CWRU and AT&T, there must have been copies of it on both sides. If CWRU had chosen to forget about the license they once paid big money for, how about if I dig up a copy of the license agreement from AT&T side? So I asked SCO's Dion Johnson about it, and lo and behold, a few days later a copy of CWRU's original UNIX license agreement shows up in my box in the computer science department mail room! Warren Toomey got another copy and soon I got an overseas fax from him with passwords for his PUPS Archive! Whoo-hoo! But I still needed 4.3BSD. It wasn't in Warren's archive since they were still PDP-only at that time, and me holding a copy of my school's AT&T UNIX license agreement didn't help convince anyone I knew who might have had 4.3BSD tapes to share them with me. In late 1997 I got myself an office at CWRU, it was the CES department's computer junkyard room. I was quite happy, a room full of classic computers was the best office I could get. It was actually two rooms, 411 and 412. Only 411 was accessible from the hallway, the entrance to 412 was inside 411. Both rooms were filled with classic computer gear, but 411 was a little less full and actually had some room for a desk and was usable as an office. 412, on the other hand, was *completely* filled with classic computer gear (mostly Sun 3) and it was difficult for a person to make it through to the end of the room. At the very end of room 412 (the end opposite the entrance door from 411) there was something that looked like a plastic curtain or plastic window blinds. The architecture of that building was really intriguing, the kind one finds only on good old university campuses, and I couldn't really tell if there was supposed to be a window there or not. I just never gave it much thought, and it was too difficult to climb over all that Sun 3 gear in the way to see exactly what it was. On a shelf in room 411 there were some magtape reels, and I thought that if they ever had 4.3BSD tapes, they ought to be there. But I looked through all the tapes I could see and 4.3BSD wasn't there. Bummer. Then one day in summer 1998 I came to work in the morning, went up the stairs to my beloved Computer Engineering and Science department 4th floor, went to the end of the hallway to my office, and got in. I turned on the lights and per my usual habit, peeked all over the room to make sure all the fun classic computers were still there. And lo and behold, at the very end of room 412, where I previously saw those plastic curtains or window blinds or whatever, I now saw two racks full of magtapes! It turned out that the plastic "curtains" were actually vertically sliding doors (kinda like garage doors) of two huge magtape cabinets! Another staff member must have had a need to get some old magtape and didn't close the cabinet after he was done. With trembling hands, I raced there and started looking through all the tapes. And sure enough, in a few minutes I found all 3 tapes of the 4.3BSD 1600 BPI distribution. I spent pretty much the whole year prior to that moment searching the World high and low for 4.3BSD tapes when they were sitting the whole time in my own office! Now that's a "Duh!" moment. MS

15 years, 3 months

Bernoulli/Syquest carts available

by SUPRDAVE＠aol.com

I've more of these than anyone will need and they're all brand new. 3 packs of Bernoulli 5.25 44meg disks KAO 5.25 88meg syquest disks. The label inside says they are formatted for Macs but includes software for wintel machines also. $1 each plus whatever for shipping and they're yours. Just say how many you want. -- I am not willing to give up my privacy for the false promise of 'security'

16 years, 5 months

Quadram Quadboard

by geoffr＠zipcon.net

Does anyone have docs for this beastie? it's an apple-II on a card that goes into an XT... or does anyone have any interest in it? it's been sitting on my shelf for ~ 12 years now...

17 years, 1 month

Re-finding more items as I open boxes

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> ---------- > From: John R. Keys Jr. > Reply To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 2:54 PM > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Subject: Re-finding more items as I open boxes > > Found the following while unpacking in the warehouse: <<<<<clipped>>>>>> > Took some other goodies home to play with like the 20th Annv. MAC,... > --- 20th Anniversary Mac? You booger... I may have to grab it when you're not looking. ;-) --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 Mac OS X 10.1.2 - Darwin Kernel Version 5.2: Fri Dec 7 21:39:35 PST 2001 Running since 01/22/2002 without a crash

17 years, 3 months

The Univac III (in trailer) is back

by ssj152＠charter.net

Well, the Univac III is back: UNIVAC III Computer (In Storage since 1975), eBay auction Item # 2733726990. This time the starting price is $7,500 and the buy-it-now is $11,000. The URL is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2733726990&category=1247 OK, somebody, jump right on it! :-) (Not me, I'm into LITTLE computers like PDP-11's and VAXen, with an occasional side dish of 6502 or 8085) Stuart Johnson

17 years, 7 months

Gould Biomation K-105D Logic Analyzer Available

by sloboyko＠yahoo.com

Certainly, there are a lot of logic analyzsers (or analysers, if you are English) floating around. I was told by a guy who specializes in "refurbished" (i.e. dusted off) test equipment that this is because a lot of it is gov't surplus where they just grab the unit. He also mentioned that a lot of university surplus has partially blown pods because of carelessness - due to the nature of what they do, not much protection on the inputs. I have a Tek 1230 which I was lucky enough to get some pods with. I had another one w/o pods and GOOD LUCK on getting schematics, etc on this stuff - it's a "black art" proprietary sort of thing. ===== -Steve Loboyko Incredible wisdom actually found in a commerical fortune cookie: "When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day." Website: http://juliepalooza.8m.com/sl __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing. http://photos.yahoo.com/

18 years, 1 month

ISA bus throughput

by mbbrutman-cctalk＠brutman.com

I revived an old 6Mhz PC AT today by removing the original Western Digital based hard disk controller and replacing it with a newer, generic IDE controller. The large boat-anchor class 5.25" full height hard disk had died, and without a suitable replacement a small IDE drive was chosen. The rest of the machine is original, including the EGA card with the extra memory daughterboard and the full slot monochrome card. While discussing this beast, the topic of putting a CD-ROM on it came up. (I would never do such a thing except for giggles.) The topic of the CD-ROM led to a throughput question - could this old monster even do it? As in, is the ISA bus up to reading from the CD-ROM at a reasonable speed? Well, let's go throught some quick math. 6 million clock cycles per second is a lot, but when you consider that each transation on the bus takes 4 to 5 cycles, and instructions take 4 to 5 cycles (average) on a 80285, the throughput might not be so hot. Forget the CD-ROM and let's just pretend it's an I/O device on the bus, like a fast hard disk. Given a PC AT running at 6Mhz, what can reasonably be expected for bus throughput? (Obviously this depends on the loop and the instructions used.) I would have guess 500K or so per second, but now I'm second guessing myself and I'll actually have to write a small benchmark to try it. When writing to a hard disk, would this machine have used a tight processor loop, or would it have used DMA? Under what circumstances would it use DMA to transfer data to a hard disk? And one last question .. Unlike the PC and XT, the AT BIOS handles hard drives. It didn't blink when I removed the crusty WD based controller and replaced it with a no-name WinBond based controller. Does the new IDE controller really look that much like the old controller that the BIOS can't tell? -Mike

18 years, 8 months

downloading & installing using VMSINSTAL problems

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

I am trying to install some layered products on my AXP-VMS machine (VX42 Multia running v7.3-1) and I keep running into the same error. for $@sys$update:vmsinstal (product, tried with CXX065 and AXP_DECWRITE31A) dka0:[install_sets] options n it prints "error reading dka0:[install_sets] AXP_DECWRITE31A.A software block CRC error invalid block size in save set invalid record size in save set invalid record size in save set" several times and then errors out to DCL. I'm getting the sets from vmsone.com, but I do have to launder them through other machines, as Bet doesn't have internet access or a web browser. I've tried Windows at work (high-speed network access), thought it was the Windows bitrot that sometimes occurs, but the "A" saveset of DECWRITE31A doesn't even work when downloaded from a Macintosh (tried with VMSINSTAL and BACKUP). What am I doing wrong, or is it just my cheap equipment (other weirdness- when DECwindows starts it locks up the keyboard - bizarre, don't know if this is a Multia+VMS problem or an issue with the Multia+VMS+SGI keyboard. I'll have to do some testing), What's a good baseline for Alphas in terms of usability with VMS7.3+? the 233MHz LCA seems to be not much faster than a VAXstation 3100/76, and if I do find another Alpha, I don't want to spend a lot on something that creaks along (and I know what the SPEC scores say- but this VX42 is not up where other machines scoring ~100 SPECxx 92 are in basic useability)

18 years, 8 months

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test-drb January 2006