test-drb August 2006

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

216 participants
517 discussions

Help in SoCal with an Apple I or IBM PC?

by classiccmp＠vintage-computer.com

>From my inbox: --- I'm writing from Weekend America, a nationally syndicated public radio program based in Los Angeles. http://weekendamerica.org We're looking into a story about the 25th anniversary of the IBM PC as well as the 30th anniversary of the Apple I. We'd like to get in contact with someone in the Southern California area who actually owns a 1981 IBM PC or a 1976 Apple I. We'd appreciate any help you can offer. Thank you. Connie Wong Production Intern Weekend America (213) 621-3547 cwongNOSPAM at NOSPAMmarketplace.org --- If anyone does end up helping Connie out please let me know how it went! :) Erik Klein www.vintage-computer.com www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum The Vintage Computer Forums

19 years, 1 month

Macs and PCs vs workstations

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

I'll give you Suns, I wasn't thinking clearly. They started going downhill about 1998. HP-9000s are very good, also, but some of the bus architectures are starting to show their age. real IBM stuff is always nice, their big iron concepts seem to percolate down to the midrange RS6ks, and it shows. I managed to crash my Indigo2 once - don't try doing a bunch of things on the machine while patching the software. Nuff said. O2s low end. Should have been dropped in '99. Can't tell you how Octane would work with many disks on both controllers, since the onboard SCSI and network interface (as well as other OBIO) share the same PCI bus behind the XIO Bridge. On the Macs: PIDE is horrible for doing more than one thing at once. Period. NCQ SATA is much better, but still not up to the same level as SCSI or derivitives (FC et al). Reliability suffers, too. G5 is a good design, the 970FX is a good processor and the system layout is close to crossbar. I wish I had one. Unfortunately, that line is being discontinued and I don't think Intel has crossbar in anything lower than Xeon.] Not sure where the hang is in Mac SysX. It's somewhere in the Apple proprietary layers (Finder, Quartz...) Happens to me fairly often. I am well aware that Itanium II is pretty good. I believe I recall, though, that the sequence was Itanium1 (Intel's design) -> Last ship for VAX was 2000, last VAX-VMS was 7.3-1. Itanium II (HP bails them out). What will happen next? HP is getting out of processor design . .

19 years, 1 month

PERQ POSSIBLY AVAILABLE

by michaelgreen42＠comcast.net

I found a guy local that has a PERQ system for sale. Not much interest in it for me but thought one of you guys might be into it. He wants $200.

19 years, 1 month

Gooey tape rollers - how widespread is this problem ?

by Jason.Armistead＠otis.com

Hi I've got a bunch of old equipment that I'm trying to cull the backup tapes for, namely a MicroVAX 2000 with a TK50 tape drive, and a few QIC drives off various PC, Sun and HP systems. The boxes and boxes of tapes need to be culled, and transferring stuff to CD-R / DVD-R, or simply ditching tapes which are redundant is what I'm looking at doing. I've noticed a few recent postings about tape rollers turning to mush if they haven't been used for a while. How widespread is this problem ? Does it affect all brands of tape drives, or are certain tape technologies worse off. I can never recall having any problems with our TK50 drive from the VAX - it was always reliable, but it's been stored for a few years now. As for the QIC drives, they were "inherited" and I've never really used them, so their history is unknown. How old do the tape drives have to be before this problem appears ? It is related purely to age, or does usage play a factor ? TIA Jason

19 years, 1 month

token ring fiber transciever

by alexeyt＠freeshell.org

I've got an ODS 836 DB-9 to fiber token ring transciever. I don't know if it works since I've only got one, no power supply for it, and no fiber. It takes a 12V DC power supply, 2 female pin sockets side by side in an ~5mm round male insulator all inside a ~8mm round recess, apparently held in by friction alone (I have never seen this kind of connector elsewhere). It's in a 5" x 2" x .75" possibly watertight machined steel housing (there's a rubber gasket between the 2 halves). If anyone wants it, it's free to a good home. I'm in College Park, MD 20740. Alexey

19 years, 1 month

Numonics graphics tablet protocol?

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Longest of long shots... :-) I don't suppose anyone has any documentation on the 'packed binary' format that Numonics used to use for their graphics tablets, do they? (Specifically a model 2206 A3 serial tablet, current somewhere around 1990 I suspect) I managed to guess DIP switch settings and serial line settings to a point that I can get useful ASCII data out of the tablet (coordinates and button info) - but if I could interpret the packed binary stream hopefully it'd make the tablet seem a lot more responsive... cheers Jules -- A. Because it destroys the natural flow of conversation. Q. What's wrong with top posting ?

19 years, 1 month

Available: Procom CDT14-T8X-ETP

by miller.blair＠gmail.com

All, Figured I'd repost this with a bit more information, in case someone missed it, or one of the new members is interested. I've got a Procom CDT14-T8X-ETP networked CD-ROM tower, in pristine working condition, that I've no use for. It has 14 8x SCSI CD-ROM drives that are interfaced through a single twisted pair network card. It measures roughly 15" wide X 20" deep X 17" high and weighs roughly 40-50 pounds. Finally, according to the manual, it'll run under Windows NT or Netware (thus far, I've found no way of getting it running under Linux, or I'd think about using it to host music CD's via a Slim Devices Squeezebox or something similar). Not exactly *classic*, but old enough that it's -- as far as I can tell -- not worth selling on eBay. I thought the case, which is up on casters, would be cool for a project of some sort, but I honestly can't think of anything to do with it. If anyone's interested, they're welcome to it. First come, first serve -- just email me (miller.blair at gmail.com) saying that you want it and when you'll be able to pick it up (I live in Vermontville, MI). Comes with the CD-ROM tower itself, all 14 8X SCSI CD-ROM drives, manual, software, and even the key for the doors. You'll just need to supply two standard power cords. The case has no dents, dings, scratches -- just a couple of very minor scuff marks. If need be, I also might be willing to drop it off... Thanks, Blair

19 years, 1 month

Scouting mission

by jbmcb1＠gmail.com

So I went back to the University of Michigan property disposition after a two year hiatus, and they actually have a few interesting things... A BIG SGI IRIS, I think it was a 3000, but it looked even larger than pictures I've seen of those. A giant Compaq ProLiant, I'd say P3 vintage, with a dozen PCI slots, sitting on top of a huge disk array. The whole thing was about five feet tall. A bunch of Dell and Compaq disk arrays, housing mostly Seagate U160 drives, so maybe 18GB X 8? A Digital StorageWorks tape backup autoloader cabinet. A bunch of IBM tape and CD-ROM drives, of RISCSystem/6000 vintage. A few Sun Ultra 1's and Ultra 60's. A lonely and beaten-up IBM 3151 terminal, probably from a library. The prices were somewhat reasonable for most of this stuff, which was surprising given their method of checking eBay for appropriate pricing. Boxes of early PCI cards, including some nice Yamaha and Ensoniq audio cards, and various off-brand SCSI cards. They had a big shipment of interesting Pro A/V equipment, I picked up a Panasonic world-standard VCR (PAL/Secam/etc...) and a nice Tascam tape deck. They had some Sony Umatic tape stuff as well. Someone was walking out with a pallet of cool stuff, I recognized a few Rane parametric EQ's and a Tascam pro DAT deck. Very tempting were two big, lab-grade ionizing lasers, complete with power supplies/cooling units. Always wanted one of those... Good hunting!

19 years, 1 month

Gooey tape rollers - how widespread is this problem ?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> How widespread is this problem ? > How old do the tape drives have to be before this problem appears ? The drive rollers on QIC drives are the most troublesome. Most of the DC300 drives I have are bad. All of the Apple Tape Backup 40's I've ever run into are bad. Most HP DC100 drives are bad. Same for all of the pre-QIC DC300 drives used in Tektronix 405x's, DEI drives in Onyx systems, TI drives, etc. etc. Pretty much all of the drives from before 1985 are bad. No one was thinking about trying to use these things 20+ years after they were shipped. 1/4" cartridge drives are common enough that there are still maybe one in ten that have good rollers. Wangtek is more difficult to repair than Archive, since Archive kept the same roller design for 10+ years, so you can still find later drives that can be cannibalized to fix old ones. It should be possible to use rubber tubing of the right diameter and gasket cement to fix the HP drives. Brad Parker gave me a 1 foot piece of rubber tubing that is the right diameter for TU58 rollers. TK50s have problems with the tapes going sticky. Because of the way the carts are built, I've not found a way to safely dehydrate the tape binder. I have hundreds of DC300 carts that I'm trying to go through that all exhibit some degree of stickiness. Because of how thin this tape is, I'm a bit nervous to use the same dehydration oven I've built for processing 1/2" tape http://www.bitsavers.org/tools/oven

19 years, 1 month

VAXen RULE! (WAS Microkernels)

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: VAXen RULE! (WAS Microkernels) > From: Kevin Handy <kth at srv.net> > Date: Tue, 08 Aug 2006 09:21:31 -0600 > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >Allison wrote: > >>>Subject: Re: VAXen RULE! (WAS Microkernels) >>> From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> >>> Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:40:34 -0400 >>> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >>> >>>Scott Quinn wrote: >>> >>> >>>>On the positive side, what is the most perfect computer architecture + implementation people have come across here? >>>>Tell us why, especially if it's something like PERQ or Acorn RISC/pc that is not common outside of a limited geographic area. >>>> >>>> >>>I really dig z/Arch. Extreme CISCy goodness. MMMmmmMMMmmmMMM. >>> >>>Extreme pleasure in writing assembler. >>> >>>Peace... Sridhar >>> >>> >> >>Vax is good but PDP-11 is it's foundation and of the 16bitters it's a very >>nice cpu. >> >>Allison >> >> >The best processor is going to be different based on the person >you are talking to. Everyone has their own idea as to what >features are important, and fond old memories of working on >an ancient (wasn't then) OS tend to sway their decision. If you >go back to one of those old systems, you often think to yourself >"did I really put up with all this crap?" Yes! Often looking back it was the tools rather than the CPU that were "crap". >If you just want to play around with a lot of different CPU >architectures to see what they were like, the 'simh' series of >emulators might be a place to start. Most of them are sturdy >enough to run a real OS, and they have the ability to work >at the instruction level. Includes a simple assembler/ >disassembler for each CPU. > >Lets you play with a lot of hardware before deciding you want >to spend actual money on them. Having the opportunity to play with everything DEC from PDP-8 through Alpha and having working PDP-8F, PDP11 (11/03, 11/23, 1173) and MicroVAXen of all sorts a sim is unsatisfying. Going from PDP-8 and PDP-10 to the 8008 was real culture shock (what instruction set?). Having done the whole 8080, 8085, z80, 808x thing makes me appreciate the word orthogonal. The comprehensive list of micros worked with even includes those never discussed here (those nasty little 4bitters). and yes I do like the VAX. From the CISIC view I really like the PDP-11 as it's simple but all there. From a minimalist view the PDP-8 is about as reduced as one can get though the 1802 is pretty inspired in that area.. I still smile when someone says My cpu is better than yours. After all it just might be for something. ;) Allison

19 years, 1 month

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test-drb August 2006