test-drb January 2006

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

240 participants
511 discussions

by news＠computercollector.com

Amazingly, next Monday (Feb. 6) will our 100th issue of Computer Collector Newsletter. Let me tell you, that milestone blows away my feeble mind! But it is true. So, if you haven't signed up before, then please do so now. The 100th issue will be much longer than usual. Also, we're up to 920 subscribers worldwide. Obviously our next milestone will be 1,000. Please spread the word! (Feedback / suggestions / critiques / donations are always welcome.) http://news.computercollector.com Thanks, - Evan ----------------------------------------- Evan Koblentz's personal homepage: http://www.snarc.net Computer Collector Newsletter: >> http://news.computercollector.com Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists & Museum: >> http://www.marchclub.org >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/midatlanticretro/

18 years, 10 months

Common items you passed up that turned rare when you wanted them

by dwight.elvey＠amd.com

>From: "Richard" <legalize at xmission.com> > > >In article <43DFACB5.4000904 at bluewin.ch>, > Jos Dreesen / Marian Capel <jos.mar at bluewin.ch> writes: > >> > Ooh! A Lilith. I lucked out and have 4 main units, but I need docs, >> > and information on hooking up keyboards, mice and monitors. I think >> > the monitors are special for the Lilith. What did you get besides the >> > main unit? >> >> >> Richard, >> >> yours are Eves, the followup on the Lilith. > >Yes, I should have been more specific, my mistake :-). At least a >couple of them are Eves, I am not 100% certain that all of them are >Eves because I didn't do a board inventory on all the units. I have >about 10-15 spare boards besides the 4 main units that I have, so if >someone needs one for a board swap (shhhhhh don't tell Tony Duell :-) >drop me an email. > >> Keyboard, mice and monitors are indeed special to the Lilith. >> >> The keyboard has a serial, straight ASCII output and goes to the >> monitor. In the monitor is a serial to parallel convertor and the >> keyboard data then goes in parallel to the main unit ! > >Holy shit, that's crazy! I thought it was a straight serial ASCII >into the box. Well that puts the bamboozle on my idea of just hooking >up a keyboard to it straight! I do have one monitor. I haven't tried >to power it up, but written on the case is the word "DIM", presumably >identifying a failure in the monitor somewhere. I've never repaired >monitors, so I'm not sure what a dim image is suppose to indicate. >Failing HV drive circuitry? Hi HV would cause blooming of the image. Dim image is weak cathode in the tube or problems in the circuits controlling the cathode to gate voltage levels. Dwight > >> The mouse is a 3 key straight quadrature output thingie. > >Do you have any ideas on what kind of commercially available mice >would be compatible? > >> The (external) floppy is very particular: it has an Apple II floppy >> controller card, a small 6502 motherboard in which the apple floppy unit >> plugs and a serial connection . > >Umm... mine don't have floppy drives :-). It looks like they have >been fitted with SCSI interfaces, SCSI hard drives and Bernoulli Box >removable cartridge drives. > >> The backplane has a 200 contact connector, the force required to insert >> PCB is incredible. > >Yeah, I notice that when looking in the unit I have that is missing >its power supply. > >> My Lilih is once again playing up, I will have to bite the bullet and >> draw the schematics. Cheap IC sockets might play a role, but >> substituting a few hundred of them is also a PITA. > >Woo hoo! Docs would be great as these machines came to me with no >information, but plenty of hardware. I also have several complete >sets of video, etc., cabling, so if someone needs cables give me a >hollar. >-- >"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: > <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> > Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty > <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

18 years, 10 months

Common items you passed up that turned rare when you wanted them

by korpela＠ssl.berkeley.edu

On 1/31/06, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > If you want to talk about SIMM's that are rare as hens teeth, how > about the 128M 72-pin SIMM's? I managed to get ahold of either 2 or > 4 of them for my one AlphaStation 200 4/233. Rare if you want to pull them from old equipment or get them free. But not so rare if you're willing to by them new for ~$50 apiece. (Enter "72 pin SIMM 128MB" at pricewatch.com).

18 years, 10 months

PLATO system / CDC mainframe / PLATO terminals

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> OK, now I know there are some mainframe freaks out ther google for 'controlfreaks', which is the mailing list for people using the CDC 6600/cyber simulator one of the controlfreaks has a complete Plato system running on the net http://www.cyber1.org/

18 years, 10 months

List of emulators and/or OSes available to hobbyists?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I've also started the following webpage (and am looking for additional > links). http://www.mess.org/main.php There are several non-micro emulations in there, including PDP-1 TX-0 and 990/10 http://www.cozx.com/~dpitts/ibm7090.html http://www.cozx.com/~dpitts/ti990.html Dave Pitts' 7090 and TI990 pages http://www.unlambda.com/ Brad's Lisp Machine pages

18 years, 10 months

List of emulators and/or OSes available to hobbyists?

by Kevin＠RawFedDogs.net

Fellow RetroComputer enthusiasts, Hello, my name is Kevin, and I'm a RetroComputerHolic. Sadly my limited funds and limited space prevents me from collecting much in the way of hardware. My hardware collection is small. I have a VAXStation 3100/M76 running VMS, a TRS-80 Model IV, and a TI-99/4A. So, the majority of my RetroComputer fix comes from running the various emulators available to hobbyists. As I do occasionally I recently started combing the web in search of emulators and/or OSes available to hobbyists that I'm not already familiar with. I thought this list might have a few pointers to usefil information. I'm currently familiar with Hercules and SIMH emulators. In real life I work as a mainframe operator in a zOS shop and back in college I worked as a volunteer operator on a VAX 11/750 running VMS. So, MVS and VMS are the most familiar to me. But, I enjoy exploring unfamiliar OSes, even if I feel like a fish out of water trying to interact with them them. I have all the freely available IBM OSes, and the non-IBM Music/SP, available for Hercules. I've downloaded all the "Software Kits" listed on the SIMH website. I've joined the HP2000 Family mailing list and have downloaded the HP2000_E and HP2000_F OSes available from the links section of that list. Thanks to a recent e-mail to this list I've been checking out the dtcyber emulator also. So far the only OS I've found to run on the dtcyber emulator is the Chippewa OS. Are there any other OSes available to hobbyists available for the dtcyber emulator? Does anyone have any pointers to other emulators/OSes available to hobbyists? Kevin http://www.RawFedDogs.net http://www.WacoAgilityGroup.org Bruceville, TX

18 years, 10 months

Quick FM capability test

by cclist＠sydex.com

List - I needed a quick way to sort out which PC's had reliable FM/single density capability, so I put together a little utility (<14K), testsd.exe: http://www.sydex.com/download/testsd.exe No command line arguments; it searches for the first 1.44MB-capable 3.5" drive (usually A:) and prompts for a diskette insertion. After a keypress is given, cylinders 74-79 of the diskette are formatted in 2/16/256 single-density, written with a test pattern and read back. If any errors crop up, you've either got a bad diskette or the controller setup doesn't support FM recording. Note that reading alone isn't good enough--some controllers support reading, but not writing FM data. I make a DOS boot diskette and include this program on it and invoke it >from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Quick and simple--and I've been surprised by the number of modern mobos that have FM support on them. This little utility also supports secondary controllers and DISKETTE.CFG files, so one could dummy a configuration file up to test only secondary controllers, I imagine. Enjoy, Chuck

18 years, 10 months

one way to do a benchmark

by spectre＠floodgap.com

http://www.geekpatrol.ca/article/101/geekbench-comparison Scroll down to "More Integer Performance." Presented without further comment. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- The only thing to fear is fearlessness -- R. E. M. -------------------------

18 years, 10 months

RX02 and intel hex file tools

by chd_1＠nktelco.net

I am building an eprom adapter for a DEC Unibus M9301 bootstrap terminator so I can use 8bit wide 2732 eproms in place of the 4bit wide fuse proms. The goal is to boot RX02 disks which the M9301 roms don't support Are there any good unix tools for manipulating intel hex files or any binary image files? I have the M9312 boot/diagnostic prom images which are intel hexfile. I modified Eric Smith's program so that I could obtain intel hexfile images of the proms that are not scrambled for the M9312. I need to join them and then create an image file so that my DataIO 201 burner will accept them. The burner can accept intel, motorola and tektronix formats. I have used the intel format, but not the other two with this burner. A quick search found srecord which claims to manipulate various formats, but is written in C++ (which I don't speak) and does not compile in Linux (Fedora Core 3). Basically, I need to take several binary images (now in intel hex), move them to a different address, join them together, and then burn them on an eprom. -chuck

18 years, 10 months

SIMMs and other memory dongles (was: Common items you passed up that turned rare when you wanted them)

by legalize＠xmission.com

and another one <http://computerjunk.com/catalog/subcat37.htm> I'm including these links as I find them as they are rather scattered about and not necessarily easy to locate. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>

18 years, 10 months

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test-drb January 2006