> I don't have the working binaries yet
Would it be possible to find out if the program images are from the paper
tapes that are up at http://bitsavers.org/bits/Cromemco/paperTapes/
It has been claimed that the tapes there were read incorrectly and
Since I didn't know the format, I have no way to verify them.
Alright, so, I finally was able to get good readings at the backplane as
far as votages go. My AC voltage is exactly 28 volts going into all
units requesting. The -15v line is fine, it must just be the bulb
that's burnt out on the regulator. So, as far as I can tell, my power
supply is working just as it should.
So now I move up to the backplane.I plugged in the memory and a DL11-W
and put a tester on the RS232 lines - I get nothing coming from the
DL11-W. The front panel reads all zeros when powered on, the Run light
and DC lights are on.
Here is my current backplane config:
1 M8266-----M8266-------M8266-------M8266-------M8266-------M8266
2 M8265-----M8265-------M8265-------M8265-------M8265-------M8265
3 M7891-----M7891-------M7891-------M7891-------M7891-------M7891
4 M9301-----M9301 M7859-------M7859-------M7859-------M7859
5 EMPTY EMPTY M7856-------M7856-------M7856-------M7856
6 EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY G727 EMPTY
7 EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY G727 EMPTY
8 EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY EMPTY G727 EMPTY
9 M9302-----M9302 EMPTY EMPTY G727 EMPTY
Can anyone make sense of this?
Thanks
Julian
Here it is direct from the boss's hand...
item 1
Microcom ISPorte, 48 port analog modem rackmount system
includes:
one chassis that is loaded with twelve quad modem cards (4 modems per card) (35 pounds)
one spare, new empty chassis (21 pounds)
one spare, new power supply (7 pounds)
the quad modem cards have 4 RJ45 RS-232 DTE ports and 4 analog RJ11 ports.
item 2
Computone Inteliserver. 64 port terminal server (25 pounds)
includes paper documentation and console cable
this unit is a rackmount chassis that contains
CPU card with one 10BT Ethernet, and one RS-232 console port on the CPU card.
4 serial port cards with 16 serial ports on each card total of 64 ports
the interface on the serial ports is RJ45. A standard straight patch cable can be connected between the Microcom DTE port and the Computone Serial port (that is how we used it in a dialup ISP application)
The Intelliserver can take modem calls and provide the dialup user with a menu of service choices (telnet to this host, telnet to that host) or in our case we used it to run dialup PPP sessions
the unit could be used for dump terminal applications as well. this example is just how we used it.
Item 3
one ISA Comtrol 16 port RockPort serial card. Comes in original boxes w/ paper documentation.
No technical support is included, all items are as-is, if you want to know if it is worth the shipping, look up UPS ground from 97850 to your zip code and add $10 for us to box it up and get it sent. We can ship after your check is sent to us and it clears the bank. If you are sure you want the items, call Jeff at 541-963-2625 and we can arrange all the details.
Thanks.
Jeff Crews
Eastern Oregon Net, Inc.
808 Adams Av, La Grande Oregon 97850
main office: 541-962-7873 ext 11 or 800-785-7873 ext 11
direct 541-963-2625, fax 503-907-6704, email jeff at eoni.comhttp://home.eoni.com
I asked this a year ago, and I think another time two years ago: Does
anyone have any access to any sort of i432 binaries whatsoever?
The i432 was Intel's brilliantly-designed, massively-multiway,
object-oriented CPU from the late seventies and early eighties. It was
a tremendously powerful, forward-looking design, but it was slower than
molasses. At the same clock speed, an i432 was 1/4th the speed and 10x
the cost of an 80286.
I've got "enough" documentation on the thing to potentially write an
emulator, but it's all a gedankenexperiment until I can get ahold of at
least a snippet of actual i432 executables. I've long since given up on
ever finding hardware; only a few systems ever made it into customer
hands, and most of those were rather low-spec. Any tape dump of any
kind containing i432 object code would be the closest I'll ever get!
The slow demise of SGI and probably Sun got me to thinking about another
one-time Silicon Valley high-flyer, Tandem and its not-very-shy Texan CEO
Jimmy Treybig. (I know that Compaq bought Tandem, but I don't count the
modern systems as being truly "Tandem").
Does anyone here collect Tandem (or even Stratus) gear? Just curious.
Cheers,
Chuck
Anyone have an F50 to sell?
Looking for the 332mhz box, Houston area a plus.
Would also consider trading my R-390a for the
aforementioned F50. This is a very nice
Collins/Motorola unit.
Thanks,
Nick O.
Has this been covered before? I have added a lot to my collection of Radio Shack manuals over the winter. It is now warm weather here on the east coast and that means lots of humidity.
What are the reccomendations for humidity levels for long term storage of paper products. I have the dehumidifiers running and have it down to about 45%, but they're struggling to keep up. My basement is about 110 meters square and 2.2 meters high.
Thanks,
Kelly
Someone in south-central US has "alot" of 1977 era RT-11 manuals available.
I was going to direct them Al's way, but wanted to see if Jerome or someone
dealing with older versions of RT-11 ressussitation may have a dire need
(after which, they'd need to send them to Al).
Contact me off-list.
Jay West
On 6/7/06, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:
> Thanks for all the replies, Multiwire was indeed the name I had forgotten.
> Rather easy to forget... it's not a very unique name, there being lots of things
> that could fittingly take on that name.
The COMBOARD for VAXBI was a Multiwire board, "Unilayer", technically,
but the same technology - they took our gerber map and created two
custom "decals" of the wire nest, then bonded them down to a 10-layer!
0.1"-center perfboard with only the VAXBI corner done in copper traces
(per DEC's VAXBI spec). The advantage was that the VAXBI corner
layout was exactly to DEC's spec, and the rest of the board was to our
spec, without the tooling costs of setting up and machining a 10-layer
PCB. We worked out the math of the costs of Unilayer and full PCB
production, and the setup-costs for 10-layer were so high that even
though Unilayer was somewhat expensive, we saved money on the initial
order of boards.
Another cost savings was ECOs in a rev 0/rev A board... it can be
tough to make a fix where the problem is on an inner layer (bad enough
with 6-layer). We did end up making one cut and one jump on the
Unilayer board, but were confident that a later board would have had
no wires.
Had there been enough demand for a second order, we had contemplated
going the full PCB route, but the by the early 1990s (when we finally
got our license to manufacture VAXBI boards), the market had moved on.
I still have a VAXBI COMBOARD in the 8300 in my basement - it runs
HASP and 3780 (we never had enough customer demand to port SNA to it),
and if I can think of something else to do with it, I might someday
redo the firmware and device driver. It is, in essence, a
really-smart dual serial port (10Mhz 68010, 512K to 2MB of local RAM,
1 x Z8530 SIO), and the PCB is rather full, so even trying to hack it
into, say, a SCSI card, would be difficult.
Still, it was fascinating to open the box and see a large board coated
with nests of fine wires... we _did_ inspect every single joint. We
found one failure on one board, but not the bonding of the wires to
the board - one pin insert was missing, leaving an IC pin hanging in
free space. Stole one from the edge of the board from an unoccupied
position and the board worked perfectly after that.
-ethan
That goes back a ways! I don't remember the name of the machine, but it was a
patented process by IIRC PhotoCircuits based in NY. I had the opportunity to see
one of the machines run at one of their plants while working on another machine,
and it was pretty impressive. I'm not sure it was a cost effective solution for
double sided PCBs, but back then, it was certainly an alternative for multilayer
boards.
> From: Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca>
> There was another technique for making circuit boards in the 70s: a
> programmed/automated machine moved over the initially bare board and laid down
> a fine wire from a spool to form the circuits. I think the wire stuck to the
> board initially and the board was later lacquered or coated with something to
> seal/hold the wires better. I forgot how the wire traces were terminated
> around IC pin locations, probably a pressure weld.
>
> I think the economics were such that it was too slow for large production
> runs, but was suitable for prototypes and small production runs of larger,
> more-complex boards. Last example I saw was a disk-controller for a TI-990
> mini circa 1980.
>
> Anybody remember the name for the technique?
>
