test-drb September 2006

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

200 participants
374 discussions

by marvin＠rain.org

Tomorrow (Sunday) is the monthly Livermore swapmeet, and I'll again be going up there to drop stuff off. I'll have a spot there to get rid of jun^h^h^h stuff and will be in a white Dodge van this time. If you've bought stuff on VCM and will be there, let me know (if you haven't already) and we'll both save the bother and expense of shipping :).

17 years, 8 months

age cutoff

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

I'm not entirely sure of the best way to phrase it. But for what it's worth, I personally think the cutoff for OS's should be win95, exclusive. In other words, win95, 98, 98SE, NT, 2000, and XP are off-topic. However, Windows up to 3.x, and Windows for workgroups are on-topic. You really must separate hardware from software. The above is my feelings for software. For hardware, I think 386 and 486 architecture is on-topic. Pentium 4 certainly isn't on-topic. But what about P1,2,3? I don't know. If the discussion is just the hardware, I certianly don't think there's a problem with talk of P1 and 2 anyways. Unfortunately, the above comes across as being windows bigoted. It most certainly isn't. My criteria is more what I posted on the list a year ago. It's kinda like... when I tell non-computer people what kind of computers I'm interested in. I usually tell them "systems with blinking lights" because that's the EASY way to say it. In fact, it has nothing to do with blinking lights. It just so happens that most of the systems I want HAPPEN (unrelated) to have blinking lights. So, the above looks like I'm anti-windows, that's not the case. But it is the outward result of other criteria. Which is also why I don't favor a specific list of systems/environments. I'd rather "teach a man to fish", than give him a list of what varieties of fish there are. So I'd rather come up with a rule that can be applied by anyone to get a reasonable determination. That may be impossible, I'm open to ideas. One list thing.... as a note about my future thoughts - I firmly believe that whatever the final "rule" is, it will eventually have to be changed. Again, that's why I don't like a "hardware list". What is off-topic today may well be on-topic tomorrow. So the rule will have to be changed in the future, OR, it will have to be defined in such a way that its application is sound for future systems. Please take the above as just my own personal thoughts, and not some edict >from the list admin :) Jay

17 years, 8 months

OCR software

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> HP developed an OCR engine called Tesseract that is supposed to be > pretty good. They released it to the open-source world, and Google has > picked it up and started working on it. classiccmp list member James Markevitch has been working on an OCR program as well, optimized for column formated input, like listings. I was just talking to Doron Swade (the person responsible for the Difference Engine at the British Science Museum) and he is interested in OCR of mathematical tables (also column-oriented like listings).

17 years, 8 months

Pentium for Non-PC (Was Statement & apology (was Re: 10 year whine fest)

by ken＠seefried.com

From: "Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org> Sean wrote.... > > I seem to recall a supercomputer made by Intel that used Pentiums. I > > forget the name though, but it was quite a behemoth of a machine from what > > little I recall (many CPUs). >Wasn't that "The Connection Machine"? Nope. Connection Machines were made by Thinking Machines, Inc., and they don't use Pentiums. They use gobs (up to something like 16k) of proprietary processors. The ASCI Red supercomputer built by Intel used PPros; see http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/aries/course/notes/ascii_red.pdf. I think the compute nodes were pretty off-the-shelf SMP PPro designs, so some might consider it off-topic.

17 years, 8 months

Calculators on desktops (was Re: Octal)

by technobug＠comcast.net

On Fri, 1 Sep 2006 23:45:47 -0400 (EDT), der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> wrote: >>> I have never seen a hex number with a decimal point anyway... > > Nor will you; as Fred already pointed out, it's a hexadecimal point. > That aside, they do exist, though they're rare. While practically > everything these days uses IEEE floating-point, which is binary-based, > there have been machines with floating-point arithmetic that worked in > other bases, like octal or hex. For them, speaking of the "decimal" > point in a number printed in hex notation makes perfect sense. In the embedded world, the use of fixed point arithmetic is rampant. If you use a fixed point DSP, the use of pointed hexadecimal makes life infinitely easier than having to continually convert between decimal and hex. The issues of underflow/overflow are immediately obvious. The last time I checked, those little buggers outnumber the number of IEEE floating-point PCs of all flavors ever made. >> As quick exercises, 1) what is the binary fraction for PI? By way of trusty Mathematica: Pi to 1000 decimal places converted to base 2: In[1]:= BaseForm[N[Pi,1000],2] Out[1]//BaseForm= " 11.001001000011111101101010100010001000010110100011000010001101001100010 01\ 100011001100010100010111000000011011100000111001101000100101001000000100 100111\ 000001000100010100110011111001100011101000000001000001011101111101010011 000111\ 011000100111001101100100010010100010100101000001000011110011000111000110 100000\ 001001101110111101111100101010001100110110011110011010011101001000011000 110110\ 011000000101011000010100110110111110010010111110001010000110111010011111 110000\ 100110101011011010110110101010001110000100100010111100100100001011011010 101110\ 110011000100101111001111110110001101111010001001100010000101110100110100 110001\ 101111110110101101011000010111111111101011100101101101111010000000110101 101111\ 110110111101110001110000110101111111011010110101000100110011111101001011 010111\ 010011111001001000001000101111100010010110001111111100110010010010010100 001100\ 110010100011110110011100100010110110011110111000010000000000111110010111 000101\ 000010110001110111111000001011001100011011010010010000011011000011100010 101011\ 101001110011010011010010001011000111111101010001111110100100100110011110 101111\ 110000011011001010101110100100011110111001010001110101101100101100001110 001100\ 010111100110101011000100000100001010101001010111011100111101101010100101 001000\ 001110111000010010110100101100110110101100111000011000011010101001110010 010101\ 011110010011000000001001111000101110100011011000000100011001010000110000 010000\ 101111100001100101001000001011110010001100010111000110110110011100011101 111100\ 011100111100111011100101100000110000000111010000110000000111001101100100 111100\ 000111010001011101100000001111010001010001111101101011100010101011101111 100000\ 110111101001100010100101100100111011110001010111100101111110110100101010 101100\ 000010111000110000011100110010101010010010111110011101010100101010110101 011100\ 101000101011101001000100110000110001001100011111010000001010001000000010 101011\ 100101000111001011010100010101010101011000100001011011010110100110011000 101110\ 000110100000100010100000111101000110011101010000101010100100001101010111 101111\ 100011100101110100110010011101100111110111000010100000100010110001101101 111101\ 111000010101000101011101010011100010101011101011101000001100000110001111 101101\ 100111001011100001111100001011010011011100001111001001100011110101011111 101011\ 010111010001100110110110000100100110011110101110001111010001100100101001 110000\ 001001010001001010110000110011101110011101110001111010010001001100001101 011010\ 010111011100110101111110001001011111111101000000110110110011000101000001 000011\ 001001101100001110110000000100111001100111110110010000110101001100100010 100100\ 001111100101011000110000001011101111011001000000000110010111011111000010 001011\ 101010111011110100110000101011101011011000111011100001001100010001100000 010111\ 010110110010100011011100010000010001110001001001111101000000111010011100 101101\ 010110011000101000011110110110101101111111100111000001111110100010000100 011100\ 100101110000010110100010010000010101001001000010000100000000001000110100 111001\ 000111100000100101010011110000111111001101101011110001000011100011001101 000010\ 000101111011011101001011011001001101001100111000011001001110001100001101 010111\ 101001110001000111100000110101001010001101000001101001011011000010101000 010111\ 101101000100101100000111110100111001010001010101101010001001100111010001 101101\ 110111011110000101101101100000100110111101000111100"\_2\) CRC

17 years, 8 months

Reviving VAXstation 3100-m38, was Imaging DEC uVAX MFM drives

by oldcpu＠rogerwilco.org

Paul Thompson wrote: >I have a mips ultrix machine so my console doesn't work the same, but google around some. It >would be BOOT/R5:00000001 DKAxxx or something similar. I have a boot manual around >somewhere if google isn't forthcoming. I used your suggested boot command, but still got the same experience with the hang after the failed chdir's. I did try a whole sequence of things, though, based on your model: I eventually found a combination that worked: BOOT/R5:00000002 DKA300. I tried /R2:00000001, /R3:00000001, and /R4:00000001, which don't work, before hitting on this. Later, while doing some more scanning of my looks-pretty-complete ULTRIX docset, I learned that the correct command for single-user boot is: BOOT/R2 DKAxxx. BOOT/R3 DKAxxx is the multi-user boot string. I found this in the _Guide to System Shutdown and Startup_ section. > /etc/fstab would probably be the spot to get rid of the nfs mounts, > once single user mode is accomplished. I'll double check the /etc/fstab and modify it perhaps. In the end, though, looks like this system was setup with an extremely minimalist install of ULTRIX. There are a few commands in /bin, but almost every other useful tool is a slink to something on /usr, which itself is an NFS mount to some unknown box, long gone to me. I think I'll just install NetBSD (if I can get a larger drive!), use it as a MOP server to revive the other uVAXen, and finally get their disks imaged, which was the original goal. Of course, I do have a couple of Debian boxes that could serve the MOP stuff, but I'll still need to figure out what image I can use, probably a NetBSD. The only real trouble is that one or two of the other VAXen don't have ethernet installed. I do have a spare DEQNA, so I'll try that. Well, off to the lab! > > I have a 5400 with a R215F and a DECstation 5000/260. > I can provide some help with those for sure. > > Super! I'll no doubt lean on you extensively when I get to that system. Gotta get these VAXen imaged first, then I'll work on that system. With it's DSSI drives, it should be interesting to get them imaged. Given that there's not a xBSD port for this system, I can only hope that there is a working ULTRIX set up on it. Thanks. Jared

17 years, 8 months

Ontopic vs offtopic (WAS Re: Modern CP/M machine classic?)

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

OK guys, I've been trying to stay out of this thread but I'm getting tired of it. It seems to be generally accepted that emulations and reimplementations of classic architectures are on topic. Can we please stop asking about everyone's pet implementation or remake? I'm sorry about creating noise with the pickle thread - let's get over it.

17 years, 8 months

looking for Darwin USIIi module (pushing OT)

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

O.K. - this is pushing it alot, but I'd rather buy from someone I know than an e-bay unknown. I'm looking for an UltraSPARC IIi module for Sun Darwin boards (Ultra 5/10), 333MHz or 360MHz. Thought someone might have upgraded and have one in their junk box. $9+ shipping for 333, perhaps more for a 360? Scott

17 years, 8 months

QIC 80 drive needed

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

Bear writes: >On Aug 31, 2006, at 1:58 PM, Brad Parker wrote: > >>I think I still have them somewhere. It was a/ux 1.0, however, so >>it's >>not very interesting. > >I think you'd find there to be more than a few folks on this list who >would find it quite interesting, myself included. Yes, and wouldn't you know it, I passed up a bunch of Spocks (IIx Macs) a few months ago because I didn't know what I'd do with them. Arrgh.

17 years, 8 months

Octal

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Tony Duell wrote: You only need the digits 0-7. At one time there was considerable resistance to using letters as digits, a second-hand book I bought last week thinkks it's most unsatisfactory to do this. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Billy: This brings up a question I had for the group. In the early '60's, hex was not very popular. And it hadn't become a standard to use A-F. I worked on one hex machine that used lower case i,j,k,l,m,n and another that used upper case U, V, W, X, Y, and Z. Does anyone remember using any other notations? There must have been many more. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Tony Duell wrote: Word lengths tend not to be multiples of 3 bits. This means, for example you can't easily split 16 bit word into bytes, or combine 2 bytes into a word when you write them in Octal. In hex it's trivial. There were various split octal notations where you convert each part separately, but they get confusing fast. But basically it's just another way of writing numbers which is useful sometiimes (particularly if 'you're misisng 2 fingers' as Tom Lehrer put it. -tony ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- Billy: I took a C class many years back where the instructor started out with the statement that all computers use word sizes that are multiples of 8 bits. I couldn't help laughing. After class, I explained to her why and described the G-15, RPC-4000, etc. I feel a little that way now on the discussion of octal - how soon we forget. I want to mention to Tony that I've worked on computers for 40+ years that were multiples of 3. And at one time, they were the biggest and the fastest in the world. The CDC 1604, and 3400, 3600, and 3800 were 48 bits. The 924, 3100, 3200, 3300, and 3500 were 24 bits. The 140, 160, 160-A and 8090 were 12 bits. (The 160-G was 13 bits, but every family has one. Besides it was still an octal machine.) And of course, all the 6600 and 7600 machines were 60 bits. For 20 years, these machines dominated the large computer market place. All of these systems were octal oriented. Hex was never brought up in polite company. Then there's the DEC systems of 12 and 18 bits. And many others (3x bit) among the "7 Dwarves". Octal was widely used for the first two generations of computing. Hex is a Johnny-come-lately, with the prime populizar being the IBM 360. I've often wondered why dentists didn't use octal/hex to number teeth? 32 for a complete set, divided into 4 quadrants of 8. Billy

17 years, 8 months

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test-drb September 2006