test-drb December 2006

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

225 participants
420 discussions

by legalize＠xmission.com

I had a dead VT220 at some point (just the monitor, no keyboard). I kept the enclosure with the idea of making something out of it someday. Has anyone taken 'classic' terminal enclosures and put a Mini-ITX PC inside? I was thinking an appropriately sized LCD display and the ITX mobo and possibly a CD-ROM drive. See <http://www.mini-itx.com/projects.asp> for more on mini-itx projects. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

18 years, 5 months

What would it take...

by lee＠geekdot.com

> The downside, of course, is that as the hobbyist-end-user, you are > somewhat out in the cold if you don't own a GAL programmer. They can > easily run to hundreds of dollars for basic ones, and, unlike an old > 4K EPROM, they are not trivial to make programmers for from scratch. There are no excuses .. http://www.geocities.com/mwinterhoff/galblast.htm Lee.

18 years, 5 months

The power supply of my vax 3900 is making a weak squeaking sound

by vax9000＠gmail.com

It is on the CPU side. It sounds like there is a high voltage leakage problem. Before I open it for an investigation, could somebody with experience give me directions about what is the usual cause of this problem, which component to check, and how to fix the problem? I have experience with analog circuits. Thank you! vax, 9000

18 years, 5 months

History of EDA (electronic design automation)?

by legalize＠xmission.com

We have the chips produced from earlier eras, but what attempts have been made to preserve the design tools from those earlier eras? Schematic Capture PCB Layout Netlist Tools IC transistor-level design IC gate-level design etc. I know several of you out there have microprocessor development environments from Intel and TI, IIRC. Ditto for things like PROM programmers. What about the design software? I imagine the first generation of EDA software was created in-house by pioneers of VLSI design. But what about when the tools started to become commodities? What about early releases of software from a company like Mentor Graphics? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

18 years, 5 months

TI Silent 700 models

by sethm＠loomcom.com

I have two TI Silent 700s, both claim to be model 743 KSRs. One of them only produces upper case. The other does lower case with small caps. Did any model Silent 700 ever do "true" lower-case, with descenders and ascenders, as opposed to small-caps only? -Seth

18 years, 5 months

Needed: Tape drive for reading DC300 and DC600 tapes (SCSI?)

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

I've got a stack of DC300 and DC600 tapes which I'd like to get images, for archiving. I'd like to find a SCSI drive which can read the tapes, so I can archive them, and hopefully make images of some of them available (they're install media for the Intel iPSC/860, and ETA-10 supercomputers). Another option is to send tapes to someone to make images of, but I've got well over 100 tapes, and I'm not quite sure if any of them have data that shouldn't be made available (other than the source code tapes, which I may not be able to make available). After this, I'm hoping to make available whatever I can (I also have some 9-tracks of install media for the ETA-10 and CDC Cyber 205). Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

18 years, 5 months

I/O Selectric Typewriter

by rickb＠bensene.com

Billy Pettit wrote: >Many of the computer systems of the 1960's and and early 70's used the IBM >Selectric typewriter as a console device. A few even used it as a >peripheral ... Another source, although not exactly the same as a Selectric I/O, is the Wang Model 611/711 Input/Output writer. This was a rather standard IBM Selectric 72 modified by Wang with solenoids and various switches, which interfaced with a Wang 600 or 700-Series calculator, and provided full input/output capabilities. Like Selectric I/O's, these devices aren't common, but they add to the search base. The solenoids controlled the tilt/rotate action of the typeball, key activation, index, carriage return, tab set, tab clear, tab, and backspace. The interface used Wang-proprietary character codes, but was a very simple parallel interface. Datasheet at http://oldcalculatormuseum.com/a-wang711.html Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Web Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

18 years, 5 months

History of EDA (electronic design automation)?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Did anyone salvage any of the very expensive hardware simulators of > the mid 80's? Mentor and Valid both had systems which could integrate actual parts into a software simulation (Valid's was called RealChip). The largest of these sorts of things were seas of Xilix FPGAs that attemtpted to simulate entire designs. The software wasn't very good, and while they simulated the design a few orders of magnitude faster than software simulators, they still were not very fast. One of these showed up at BDI this past year, with absolutely no interest from bidders. I worked on MacOS bootstrapping of both the G3 at Somerset and the Exponential BiCMOS processors on those.

18 years, 5 months

vt52 7x7 font?

by brad＠heeltoe.com

Any chance anyone has the VT52 7x7 font in some digital form? (the actual prom would be nice but I doubt anyone has pulled the chip) -brad

18 years, 5 months

BASF 6114 disk drive

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Do you have a picture of it? I picture would be useful. If it's from Dortmund, I don't seem to have a picture of it. The 2311 drives I've been able to identify from the pics were made by are CDC, Century Data, and Memorex. > http://toresbe.at.ifi.uio.no/nd560-unproc.jpeg The 9766 is the drive with the pack on top. There is a CDC FSD drive directly below that. Someone at CHM is currently writing a history of the SMD interface for the mass storage SIG. The interface appears to originate with the 80mb 9762 and 40mb 9760 in 1973. Formatted capacity can vary on a number of factors, including number of sectors per track.

18 years, 5 months

← Newer
1
...
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
...
42
Older →

Jump to page:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

test-drb December 2006