test-drb February 2006

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

224 participants
452 discussions

by legalize＠xmission.com

ebay item #8760295547, prototyping board Card edge connector with 44 contacts, 22 per side, 0.156" spacing Is this STD bus? I'm not planning on buying it, I was just curious :) -- "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, 3 months

Old Computer Collecting vs Electronics Building

by marvin＠rain.org

This is good news, and I would very much like to be wrong on this! But I see it at hamfests, swapfests, etc. where people who are selling components, kits, etc. designed for the homebrew projects. The TRW swapmeet in El Segundo, CA has gone from a great source of "good stuff" to more cheap tools, computers and parts, and a lot of other things unrelated to electronics. BTW, buys there by myself and others include a lot of classic computer stuff including S-100 cards, DEC stuff, Imsai, Alpha Micro, Atari 400/800 computers, Cosmic Elf, Popular Electronics including the Jan/Feb 1975 Altair issues, and the list goes on. Now, it is rare to find anything classic computer related or the parts to build stuff with. What are the right places to look (excluding online Internet sites)? > I disagree with this quite a bit. There are plenty of projects out > there people are doing. I see lots of stuff on hackaday.com, > avrfreaks.com, people in the Microchip forums, homebrew CPUs, etc. > There's no loss of desire at all. Sure, maybe it's not all built of > TTL, but so what? TTL is slowly going away (IMHO), in favor of micros, > FPGAs, and PLDs. To say the interest in building skills is waning just > says to me you're not looking in the right places. > > --jc > > On Thursday 02 February 2006 04:12 pm, Marvin Johnston wrote: > > >One thing I've been concerned about for a while is what seems to be > the lack of electronics building skills. *My* feeling is the desire to > work on this stuff is going away and I'm not sure why. I DO NOT BUY the > argument that components are so small now that nobody can build or hack > equipment anymore as I view that more of an excuse for not building.

18 years, 3 months

Apple USB keyboards (was Keyboard Converters (was Re: IBM RS/6000))

by aek＠bitsavers.org

I never had much luck using a PS2 keyboard + USB converter on my G4 tower. Any particular brands which seem to work better than others? Any which map to the Apple / Command keys? -- Every keyboard and mouse Apple shipped since Steve came back are crap, esp the puck 'cripple-mice'. My wrists hurt so bad after using one when we first released them that I refused to use them, or any of their descendants. The travel is too short, and the key shafts bind at normal typing speed. Find a macally ikey and a logitech m-bj69 roller mouse. The macally has they key layout of the adb extended kb and has the same key pressure and travel. I've been picking them up fairly cheap in surplus places and on eBay as people dump their iMacs and early G4s. If you're using OSX, the roller mouse does what it's supposed to. What pisses me off is we had a prototype ADB roller mouse that did all the stuff you can do now with the Logitech 15 years ago, including programmable detents on the roller (it actually had a little motor inside..) but couldn't convince people it was useful.

18 years, 3 months

IBM RS/6000

by r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com

The best mouse/trackball I had was an Atari video arcade trackball that I got from Happ Controls and wired to the guts of a cheap PC serial mouse (optical sensors on the track ball, electronics from the mouse). This trackball measures about 6" x 6" x 2.5" and I had it in a foamcore box. Used 1" diameter arcade buttons to replace the mouse buttons. I made it as a prototype for a dozen or so that I wired up for use in exhibits at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago with the computer games I wrote. I used the track ball for more than 10 years before I even needed to clean it. Message: 19 Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:31:24 -0600 From: Doc Shipley <doc at mdrconsult.com> Subject: Re: IBM RS/6000 To: General at mdrconsult.com, "Discussion at mdrconsult.com":On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <43E25E0C.70805 at mdrconsult.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Teo Zenios wrote: > >I have one of those Logitech marbles, they work well enough. In general I >like using Microsoft optical on anything they will pug into. The other day >I >replaced my older belkin KVM with a newer version that does serial to PS2 >mouse conversion so that my MS optical USB with PS2 adapter is connected to >the KVM and my old 486/133 DOS/Windows 3.1 machine (using the old MS mouse >driver disk) connected to the KVM with a serial cable works with it. There >is just nothing smoother then an optical mouse in my opinion, and no balls >that need cleaned (or mousepads full of cheet-os to dust off). Mmmm, Cheet-Os! You're right about the optical smoothness, which is why I like the Marble. It does need cleaning every couple of months, but it's worth it to avoid the wrist movement of a normal mouse. ObCC: And it works perfectly with RS/6000s, SGIs, NeXTstations, SPARC (with adapter), AXP, Mac, and even PeeCees! Doc

18 years, 3 months

Old Computer Collecting vs Electronics Building

by lee＠geekdot.com

> Actually, I saw an article (I have to find out where it was) where I > guy used an old toaster oven as a basis for soldering all sorts of > surface mount components at once...ie just like the "real" assembly > houses do it. http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/200006/oven_art.htm Lee.

18 years, 3 months

Old Computer Collecting vs Electronics Building

by marvin＠rain.org

A friend of mine got an article published in the September 2005 issue of QST Magazine describing how to build an 80M DF receiver and asked if I would be interested in supplying kits. The supplier of the circuit boards told me he had maybe a half dozen or so calls for the circuit board. I sold about 40 kits of which about half were ordered assembled and tested. FWIW, about half of those that ordered the unit were using it for interference tracking with the remainder using it for direction finding. Another friend of mine designed a single board computer and put it up on his website; I don't know if anyone has ordered a board or built it. I am planning on being at the Dayton Hamvention this year to sell DF equipment, and it will be *very* interesting to see what kind of a response I get. Of course, I also plan on checking out the 2000+ vendors for any classic computer stuff too :). > I was talking to a buddy of mine about this at lunch. He's an old ham and > used to build a lot of stuff. We were noting how people don't buy their > kids things like Tinker Toys or Erector sets or anything that encourages > them to build things. I don't know all the reasons why but I've been > noticing for years that FEW people build or repair things. I've tried to > Joe

18 years, 3 months

old drives and interfaces

by rtellason＠blazenet.net

Since the subject has come up, maybe somebody can shed some light on this... I have a box around here, containing what I *think* is a WD-1000 controller card, which interfaced to my Osborne Executive through the printer/IEEE port. When I first got this box, the drive in it (a "Tulin", which I've never heard of before or since) had such bad bearings that you really didn't want to run it at all. So I stuck an ST225 in there. So far so good, I got it working by hacking away at some copy of the boot disk, which was enough to let me make the HD be drive C:, and I had it partitioned up into four chunks, giving me C:, D:, E:, and F:. A problem surfaced in trying to use that last one, though -- I can't seem to get any reasonable access to the last bit of the drive, about the last 3M or so. Am wondering if maybe write precomp (which the '225 needed IIRC) might have something to do with this? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

18 years, 3 months

Speaking of mice & keyboards

by doc＠mdrconsult.com

Is there an adapter to use PS/2 or AT/serial input devices with an ADB Mac? If I could plug it into my KVM, my A/UX box would get a lot more use. Doc

18 years, 3 months

what bus is this for?

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com> > > ebay item #8760295547, prototyping board > > Card edge connector with 44 contacts, 22 per side, 0.156" spacing > > Is this STD bus? I'm not planning on buying it, I was just > curious :) This 44-pin protoboard system was popularized by Vector and you could buy "backplanes" (either bare or bussed) as well as several different types of proto boards up through the 90's. They were on the shelves at Radio Shack for a couple decades. I think the boards are still available but the backplanes are not ready-made anymore. These were largely used for special-purpose one-off hardware designs, although certainly some did use them in bussed systems. 44 pins is a little sparse for a bus for an 8-bit-data-16-but-address system (although doable). Even the 100-pin S-100 bus didn't have enough grounds! Tim.

18 years, 3 months

what bus is this for?

by ken＠seefried.com

18 years, 3 months

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test-drb February 2006