test-drb February 2006

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

224 participants
452 discussions

by eds_2＠yahoo.com

In Byte Magazine Vol. 3 Nos. 9, 10, and 11 (Sep 1978, Oct 1978, Nov 1978) there is an article written by Kin-Man Chung and Herbert Yuen describing a "Tiny Pascal" compiler. Tiny Pascal compiles a subset of pascal to p-code, and then translates that p-code into 8080 assembly. The compiler is written in North Star BASIC. I found the articles in the local library, but I noticed that the listings are incomplete (especially the p-code to 8080 translation program is absent) I'm interested in tracking down the history and sources of this compiler. I have heard that it was ported to many other 8-bit machines. I'm trying to track down working versions of this compiler and those from which it was derived. Any resources would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, -Eric __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

18 years, 9 months

VAXstations in London

by zmerch＠30below.com

Rumor has it that Liam Proven may have mentioned these words: >Oh, I am sure, but I'm sorry, it's 2006 and I am not prepared to use a >text-mode interface as my primary or only means of controlling a >workstation in the 21st Century! ;-) ;-) [[ Insert more smileys here... ;-) ]] With that attitude, Bill Gates must *love* you... ;-) >A server, yes, fine. A workstation, a terminal, no. :?) Pffft. I can get more done in Linux with Lynx than I can with firefox -- *unless* the page is b0rked or I wanna look at playboy.com - then there's `links -g`... Who needs winders to see nekkid chix?!?! Not me! ;-) I just *wish* I had room to set up my VaxStation again - but I have a CoCo to set up for the kids first. ;-) Laterz, "Merch" -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | A new truth in advertising slogan SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy... zmerch at 30below.com | ...in oxymoron!"

18 years, 9 months

early USRobotics history

by jack.rubin＠ameritech.net

Ah, the pleasures of being on the cc-tech digest! Kind of like retro-tivo... I'm not clear on the pre-history of USRobotics but I can tell you some of the early history. In the late '70s a group of UofC students (and near-students?) got together to do some computer stuff. When the name actually appeared and what the first "product" might have been I don't know, but apparently the group went from 7 to 5 to 3 members. I became aware of the company in 1982; at that time the principals were Casey Cowell, Paul Collard and Steve Muka and the only product was modems. A Hyde Park neighbor of mine, Stan Metcalf, had been a member of the earlier group(s) but we never really talked about what the group was doing when he was involved with them. The story told at that time was that the company had been formed to produce a home terminal based on Don Lancaster's TV typewriter which they would sell to UofC users for dial-up access to the campus mainframe. When the modem was finished, they realized they would do better selling it as a standalone product to be used with a standard terminal (eg the Bantams and Teleltypes) and stopped short of designing their own terminal. I never knew anyone named Terry who was involved with the company or knew of any other products. When I first learned of the company, they were in the process of moving >from Washington and Eagle Streets in Chicago, right around the corner >from what would become Oprah's Harpo Productions, to McCormick Street in Skokie. First location had been in Casey's apartment on Lincoln Avenue near the Biograph theater. I started with them in 1984; I don't think Bill Donzelli joined the company until a good bit after the move to Skokie. When _I_ cleaned out the basement on Eagle Street, I found a couple ASR-33s and some Perkin-Elmer Bantam terminals along with a fair number of bogarted doobies left by the shipping crew. The Bantams were still in use internally by the company and had been resold by them at one point when they were still selling the black, vacuum-molded "bathtub" modems. By the early 80s, the current product was the aluminum-cased (Hayes look-alike?) AutoDial series. The company ran on a couple of MP/M based Dynacomp systems with attached terminals (the Bantams and/or Televideos, later Wyse50s). My first job was to convert the single-user BASIC inventory program (a legacy of the first system, a TRS-80 Model III) to dBaseII and then multiuser DataFlex. When we moved to Skokie we also moved to a couple of Godbout-based S100 systems, running MP/M then MP/M II and finally the Gifford version of ConcurrentDOS. Skokie was a lot bigger and I installed DR-NET to link a couple remote systems; not long after we moved to an HP3000 and the ASK MANMAN (manufacturing management) system. ASK was FORTRAN based and used HP IMAGE for data management. Lots of hard work and good times. Jack Message: 1 Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 18:12:25 -0500 From: "Bob Bradlee" <Bob at BRADLEE.ORG> Subject: Re: US Robotics PC? To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <200602232323.k1NNNoZ1070982 at keith.ezwind.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Back in the late 70's the guy who started US robotics was building modem kits and systems with a guy names Terry who had a computer shop Midwest Micro Computer in lombard Il. It was second only to Itty Bitty Machine Company just off the Northwestern campus in Evenston as the first computer store in the Chicago area. Terry wanted me to help him fix a bunch of modem kits that were being solid the US Robotics name, I was shocked at the choice of name, and was told he went out of his way to secure the name and trademark, that was why we had to fix the kits he could not get working ASAP. Wish I could think of Terry's last name That one will bug me a while :( Any Old time Windy City hackers remember Terry ? Here is one for the crowd, Does any one else at the founding meeting of the Chicago Computer Society met for the first time at Devry and Ward C of CBBS and Modem1 through 7 fame asked everyone to stand up and sit down in response to what universal question ? BTW: the computer you are thinking about was z-80 ran cpm and wordstar and an early spread sheet and a hack of what became eventually Xmodem because that was about all there was then. I think the printer was the first used of the epxon FX80 not to be confused with the MX80 that came along a few years later. The FX printer was very popular in early Point of Sale systems. Thanks for bringing up a fresh batch of old memories. Bob Bradlee On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:08:21 -0800, Chuck Guzis wrote: >This was back, oh, in about 1978. I was at one of the trade shows >(don't remember which one) and there was a fellow with a computer with >integrated monitor, disk drives and a printer (sticking out of the top) >in a fairly large black box--probably Z80, but I can't be sure. >I remember that it was USR because of the unusual name of the company. >Has anyone else ever seen one of these beasts? >Cheers, >Chuck -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.0/269 - Release Date: 2/24/2006

18 years, 9 months

US Robotics PC?

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

IINM the founder (or something) of USR lives in this general vicinity (Ocean Cty., NJ). Doubt I could track him down solely based on the account of someone whn bought a bow of motors from him (:O),...but I could try. Maybe hed know... --- cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org <aw288 at osfn.org> wrote: > > I remember that it was USR because of the unusual name of the company. Has > > anyone else ever seen one of these beasts? > > Never saw one, and I often cleaned up USRs junk room. > > William Donzelli > ex integrat at usr.com > aw288 at osfn.org > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

18 years, 9 months

bogus auction for Altair system on eBay

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 09:57 PM 2/22/2006, vrs wrote: >> >Seconded. ebay and paypal exist for the buyer, not the seller. I had a >> >friend sell something online for $80, then take the money out. 2 weeks >> >later the buyer claimed that "his computer was taken over by hackers" >> >and denied ever buying the item (which was virtual, ie. no physical >> >product to ship or track). paypal tore the $80 out of his account, Welcome to credit card processing. It favors the customer not the seller. It doesn't get any better in real life. If your business accepts credit cards, you can bet that you'll be on the hook if the transaction is called into question for any reason. >PayPal has a different revenue model, and a different set of biases. >They also have to deal with restrictions imposed by credit card >transactions. As a result, PayPal is much more biased toward the >buyer. I don't know how you can have an auction process for relatively low-cost goods while keeping transaction costs low AND incorporating some kind of dispute resolution or escrow service. Good, fast, cheap; pick any two. It's even true of any mail order business: Customer says they opened the box and it was full of packing peanuts and a chunk of wood, not their computer part. What happens? - John

18 years, 9 months

stupid Ebay pus monkeys war Re: Stupid eBay user du jor

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

what about this larry.. guy on the west coast. What a friggin moron! He apparently bought up ALL the Zenith Z-100s west of the Mississippi (the rest belongs to another ass-carrot named Herb right here in the great state of NJ. But excuse me, I feel the sudden urge to projectile vomit). At each and every auction he says its the last one hes got. So I shoot him an e-mail question, and his reply begins with - understand...I dont know you. And he refused to give a shipping quote until after I bid. --- cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: > > > Even if the seller is not a collector and knows nothing about what he's > > > selling? > > > > Yep, even then. They should take a little bit of pride in their work, and also > > do the rest of us the common courtesy of first checking anything that they > > present as fact. > > > > If the former isn't possible, there's absolutely nothing wrong with listing an > > item and admitting that they know nothing about it! If the seller knows > > nothing about the item, there's no reason for not just saying so... > > Exactly. > > I've bought many things over the years -- at radio rallies (hamfests), in > second-hand shops, and on E-bay -- where the seller doesn't know much, if > anything, about it. Maybe it turned up in some scrap, maybe it came from > the estate of a relative, whatever. Often I've done rather well by > recognising something that others haven't recognised (equally, I've > kicked myself a few times for _not_ recognising something as the missing > part I need to complete a <foo>). > > And I have no problem with sellers not knowing much about the item. > Nobody can know everything. > > That does not excuse them from making up false information. IMHO they > should either take the time and trouble to check (which may boost the > final selling price, so it could be to their adbantage), or just say > noting. Present the facts (in this case just quote what it says on the > nameplate), let the buyers decide. > > IANAL but I think that presenting false information like this would be > classed as misrepresentation. And even 'innocent misrepresentation' -- > giving false information when you had no reason to suspect it was false, > is an offence. > > -tony > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

18 years, 9 months

C Compilers for (MS)DOS

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

dont know how small it is, but Herb Shildts C - the complete manual (I think thats the title, its orange, black and white) by Osborne has the source for a C interpreter (dont know if its 16 or 32 bit. My rather rotten guess is its meant to be compiled as a VC++ console app). There was also a C interpreter as part of some MS package (maybe Quick C?). Now everyone can jump for joy at such glad tidings. --- cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org <cclist at sydex.com> wrote: > On 2/23/2006 at 12:04 AM Gary Sparkes wrote: > > >How about anything that'd fit on an atari portfolio, in 64kb ram card?:) > > How about the Small-C interpreter? Should fit in 64K just fine: > > http://www.cpm.z80.de/small_c/smc88dos.zip > > Cheers, > Chuck > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

18 years, 9 months

Stupid eBay user du jor

by r_a_feldman＠hotmail.com

Except when you are talking about Ashton-Tate's DBaseII, where they felt no one would buy it if it were a first version, so they made it sound like a second version. :) Bob Message: 20 Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 04:19:47 -0500 From: "'Computer Collector Newsletter'" <news at computercollector.com> Subject: Stupid eBay user du jor <snip> ... but geez, the only research this doofus had to do is to read the big letters on the cover of the instruction manual ... Where it says "II" as in "not the first." :) <snip<

18 years, 9 months

Kaypro 10 Western Digital Hard Disk Controller WD 1002-HD0

by j.e.vandergeest＠zonnet.nl

Any schematic available for the WD 1002-HD0 Need them badly Jos

18 years, 9 months

Squeal on Older Hard Drives

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Tony Duell wrote: Is it, though? The spring is not to ground the whole drive, it's to ground the spindle/disks. Apparently, static buildyp on the disks can cause read errors (it induces small signals in the read heads), and the bearings may not be that good a conductor due to the lubricant forming an insulating film. Certainly just about all hard drives (including the demountable ones on my '11s) have grounding contacts. You would therefroe think they performed some useful purpose. -tony It was a lot more serious than mere read errors. The static charge on the surface of the disks could build up to thousands of volts in just seconds. And its main discharge path was through the heads - they were the closest to the charge. I changed many a head on the early 14 inch drives that had a clean little burn hole right through the flying surface. The static discharge springs had a metal button that fit on the end of the spindle shaft. It was metal to metal so there was always some wear. If the button wasn't replaced when it wore, the charge wasn't bled off and sooner or later, took out a head and usually the preamp. Maintenance schedules always included cleaning and inspecting the springs. Very quickly, other schemes can into use that alleviated the need for the discharge spring. The most practical was a ferrofludic seal on the top of the bearings. The design goal was a path of around 10K ohm to ground. That would bleed off the charge but not put a spike on the ground. Tony is right about bearings not being that good of a path. But ferrofludic seals were excellent and the resistance could be controlled. They came in about the time of the transition from 14 inch to 8 inch drives. So some 14 inch drives didn't need a static discharge spring, but most did. I only saw one 8 inch drive with a discharge spring. After that, the ferrofludic seal was standard. I would never ever bend a spring away from the spindle. Too many bad experiences. The noise was a necessary pain. You can ease it by moving the spring slightly, so a different part of the button is touching. All the designs I know have oblong holes on the spring, so you can tweak the adjustment. It's unfathomable to me why an OEM would tell its customers to bend the spring away from the spindle. Billy

18 years, 9 months

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test-drb February 2006