January 2007 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

TRS-80 stuff available in Stockton CA for pickup

by yakowenk＠yahoo.com

Hey, all, I've got mail from some guy with a bit of TRS-80 stuff available for pickup: 3 TRS-80 computers, a TRS-80 5 Meg Disk System, manuals, flopppies, etc. If you can rescue it, let me know. I'll forward replies to him. He's in Stockton CA, and I've told him we can probably arrange a pick-up and save him the hassle of shipping. BTW, I've been slacking on this for about two weeks now, so I'll have to double-check that the items are still available. But I wanted to send this to the list now, rather than checking with him first and running the risk of falling into procrastination-land again... Cheers, Bill. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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Use of HCL to dissolve severe corrosion from NiCad or Alkaline Batteries or oxidation

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

can you buy it in powder form? You mean you all apply hcl to a circuit board??? Aint there a less caustic substance for the job? --- cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote: > Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 7 Jan 2007 at 10:12, Lyle Bickley wrote: > > > >> 1. I've only been able to buy gallon sized containers of the 30% HCL (Muriatic > >> Acid). That is very unwieldily to handle. A polyethelene containter with a > >> small "spout" (available at drugstores) is an easy solution. Just be careful > >> when transferring the acid from the gallon container to the poly container - > >> use a poly funnel - HCL is "nasty" stuff. > > > > Another caution--DO NOT STORE THE CONTAINER IN YOUR WORKSHOP OR > > WHEREVER YOU KEEP YOUR EQUIPMENT! Muriatic acid is hydrogen chloride > > gas dissolved in water and tends to "fume". Which means that if the > > cap on the container is slightly loose or the container is cracked, > > you'll be in for an eventual surprise. > > > > I kept a gallon of muriatic stored in my workshop and thought the cap > > was screwed on tightly (it wasn't). After about 2 weeks, I noted > > that all of my cast-iron shop equpment was coated with a fine > > dappling of rust. My HCl is now stored in a weatherproof container > > out-of-doors. I can't imagine what such fumes might do to the > > innards of a disk drive. > > > > For a somewhat tamer substitute, one might try sulfamic acid--a > > powder dissolved in water and normally used for cleaning masonry (as > > is muriatic acid). You can often find it at stores that deal in > > ceramic tile supplies. > > You can store hydrochloric acid dilute without worrying about it fuming. > > Peace... Sridhar __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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My second Mac

by cclist＠sydex.com

I picked up another Mac yesterday--a beige 300 Mhz G3 with 256MB, and a 15 GB hard disk. It's also got a USB adapter plugged into one of the PCI slots. It's running OS 9.something. Set me back $20. Were Zip drives a standard part of these things? On a side-by-side with a Win2K P1 225MHz system with the same amount of memory, I think the WIndoze box has snappier response and has better video. For you Mac addicts, what do you think should be my next step in getting the most out of this box? I don't care for the Mac monitor that came with it--has anyone tried hooking up a fixed-frequency SOG workstation monitor to it? I've got a nice HP/Sony model that might be a candidate. Cheers, Chuck

19 years, 4 months

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garbled display

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

it only helps if youre going to swing by and unseat the 80186 from its bizarre cage. I aint touching one ever again. But thanks all the same Roger :) __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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laptops and 5.25 inch floppy drives?

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

no actually. I should have specified no older then a 486. For creating/dumping images and whatnot. Some early lt floppies were just slender versions of dt units __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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garbled display

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

actually rows and columns of blocks of ascii chars, some blinking. To which Im greeted upon switching on a Tandy 2000. Typically what does this indicate? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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laptops and 5.25 inch floppy drives?

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

not seemingly likely w/the current crop of usb units, but would it be possible to get a 5.25 to work in say an older lt w/an integral 3.5? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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Use of HCL to dissolve severe corrosion from NiCad or Alkaline Batteries or oxidation

by lbickley＠bickleywest.com

In response to an offlist question, here's a bit more info on HCL use: 1. I've only been able to buy gallon sized containers of the 30% HCL (Muriatic Acid). That is very unwieldily to handle. A polyethelene containter with a small "spout" (available at drugstores) is an easy solution. Just be careful when transferring the acid from the gallon container to the poly container - use a poly funnel - HCL is "nasty" stuff. 2. Use as little acid as possible on a board/module/motherboard. Before applying the acid I look over the board - and discover the corroded/oxidized components and apply the acid directly to the components. The acid will flow to other, non-oxidized components, but it won't hurt them. A toothbrush can be used to scrub stubborn corrosion - but I've found it is rarely needed. 3. After applying the acid, rinse it off as soon as the "fizzling" stops. Use plenty of cold water to eliminate all traces of the acid. Then use a final rinse of distilled water. 4. I avoid putting acid on adjustable, semi-sealed components, such as potentiometers, variable capacitors, enclosed switches, etc. If they are badly corroded - replace them. 5. I use a hair dryer set at medium-heat/high-speed to dry the board and under chips, etc. Drying will also eliminate any traces of residual acid that may have been left behind. (HCL turns to a gas when it "drys out"). Cheers, Lyle -- Lyle Bickley Bickley Consulting West Inc. Mountain View, CA http://bickleywest.com "Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"

19 years, 4 months

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From another list: 4D-series (POWER & Professional) SGI gear

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

Can't remember if I sent this- found it on a different list and I can forward mail > EDIT Jan,7: No one's interested into old stuff anymore? If no one > claims them they will go in the trash real soon! It'd be a shame... If > you're not interested in taking them all there's loads of perfectly > working boards, IP7s, IO4s with plenty of SCSI, GTX graphic set, power > supplies, backplanes, skins, etc, etc. Anyway let me know. > > > Hi all, > > I have a few older Silicon Graphics systems up for grabs if anyone is > interested. There's three 4D Predator racks, a deskside 4D/70GT and a > Challenge XL. All the machines are complete except for the Challenge > which is missing the CPU and memory boards. Except for that everything > is there. They also come with a few boxes of parts, cables, keyboards > and such. A 17" SGI monitor is also part of the lot. > > Pictures here: > http://web.newsguy.com/AlexPhotos/sgi.html > > Everything is free if you take them as is. If you only want boards or > other parts, I'll charge a small fee for the packaging material and > for my time. > The machines are located in Montreal, Canada. Looks like the Challenge might not have processor boards, but the other systems seem to. The 4D/70 is a Twin Tower

19 years, 4 months

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My second Mac

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

the stark reality is Im not all that confident using the term dongle. I think they may have been called that, but Im not sure :(. Some had dials by the way. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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2.5GB bigfoot drives on dovebid

by legalize＠xmission.com

Wasn't there some discussion recently looking for < 10 GB drives? There's a bunch of 2.5GB drives on dovebid right now... -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

19 years, 4 months

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not quite on topic but, classic analogue satellite tv decoding boxes

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Hold on!!! I have a use for FM analogue Sat RX's.. We use them for amateur television (a branch of Amateur Radio) I'll take any you have and if they have manual tuning so much the better!! Rod Smallwood Email rodsmallwood at btconnect.com -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jules Richardson Sent: 06 January 2007 00:01 To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: not quite on topic but, classic analogue satellite tv decoding boxes Witchy wrote: > Hello folks, > > I've got a pair of old UK SKY TV boxen (1997 era) that are pretty > useless as analogue SKY TV was switched off in 2001; can the hardware > be used for anything else or is it pretty much paperweight material? Paperweight, I would have thought - I've never heard of them being able to do anything 'clever' (unlike, say, some of Acorn's set top boxes which do resemble a computer closely enough to fire up a web browser on, talk to a few very specific hardware add-ons etc.). I doubt there's even many useful components that can be salvaged as it'll likely all be surface mount stuff and big shiny screened silver boxes inside. cheers Jules

19 years, 4 months

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Sun plastics

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

try something less potent. Testors, 2 part epoxy, gorilla glue, Goop... --- cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org <compoobah at valleyimplants.com> wrote: > Has anyone had success fixing the plastic "alloy" that Sun uses in > their cases? > > MEK and cyanoacrylate turn it into a mushy grainy mess. > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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Free stuff near Seattle WA

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

More may come up, but here's the list for now 1x DEC DSSI tri-link connector 12-39921-02 Used to connect DSSI busses to beasties like HSD controllers. 1x either a Sun SPARCstation 5/110 256MB or a Tatung COMPstation 20 (SPARCstation 20 clone) 1x SM40, 128MB RAM.

19 years, 4 months

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Upcoming Scrounge, Southern Cal.

by kyrrin＠bluefeathertech.com

This is being posted to: TekScopes, HP, TestGear, and CCTech lists. Fellow techies, I'm going to have a day or so of opportunity to do some serious scrounging in the southern California region, specifically around Anaheim and vicinity, coming up in May of this year. Being that I haven't been near the area since 1993, I could really use some pointers on who's who in the electronic surplus arena that would be worth a look. My primary interests are in test gear (usually RF and telecommunications, but I keep an open mind), specialized hand tools for connector crimping (both mil-spec and commercial), and "legacy" telephone equipment from the Bell System/Western Electric heyday. So... Let the suggestions fly! ;-) Thanks much. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner & Head Hardware Heavy, Blue Feather Technologies -- http://www.bluefeathertech.com kyrrin (at) bluefeathertech do/t c=o=m "If Salvador Dali had owned a computer, would it have been equipped with surreal ports?"

19 years, 4 months

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House cleaning! Everything must go!

by derschjo＠msu.edu

Ok, not _everything_ but rather an incredible simulation! I've managed to amass quite a bit of vintage-ish computer hardware that I haven't got much use for any longer -- I figure that someone out there can make better use of this stuff than I currently am. All of this stuff is free, unless otherwise noted -- I just want this stuff _gone_. At the moment I realllly prefer local pick-up (in the Seattle area) since I don't have a lot of time to be shipping stuff out. Unless otherwise noted, the items are in working condition (or were the last time I used them). A lot of these are listed sans RAM/hard disk/keyboard -- I have a lot of extra parts lying around and if you need one I'm happy to throw it in for you, if I have suitable spares. Some of these I don't remember all of the details of offhand (just did a quick perusal of my inventory), so if you have specific questions or need clarification, let me know and I'll figure it out for ya... And of course, since this stuff is free, you get what you pay for -- I've tried to do my best to be honest about the state of the below junk, but I haven't used some of it in years so I make no guarantees. Thanks! Josh The items are as follows: Computers: - Apple Network Server 700/200. 200Mhz 603 PPC, 128mb of ram, CD-ROM, tape drive, and a number of empty drive trays. Notable as the only Apple computer made after the original Mac that doesn't run MacOS. Makes a great Linux/NetBSD machine, or if you have a copy of AIX 4.1 for it... - SGI Octane, 200Mhz R10k, 512mb ram, no hard disk (or tray, unfortunately...). Cabinet is slightly scuffed in front. - SGI Indigo2, 250Mhz R4400, Solid Impact video, unknown RAM (fully populated). No hard disk (or trays... sigh...) - 2x Sun Sparcstation 10, framebuffer, 40Mhz CPU, sans RAM & hard disk. - Sun Ultra 5, 266Mhz UltraSparc. - Sun Ultra 1, Creator 3D video. - Sun SparcServer 670MP. 4x40Mhz, 64mb RAM (huge, good for an anchor, ballast, scrap iron, or if you have a lot of Sun VME boards...). CD-ROM, 2.0gb hard disk w/SunOS 4.1.4 installed. Missing rear cover, and missing wheels on bottom, which makes it fun to move. - 2x HP Apollo 715/75 -- not working, no ram, no hard disk, missing 1 CPU in one of them. Listing this just in case someone needs parts... - HP Apollo 735, 24mb ram (I think...), no hard disk. - HP Apollo 700, no hard disk. - Zenith luggable PC (no idea on the model, the label sticker on the back is unreadable). 2x5.25" floppy, 8088, 640k ram (all you'll ever need.) Missing keyboard, but takes standard XT keyboard. - Intergraph TD-310. Dual PPro-200Mhz, no RAM. - Sony "ViewSystem" VIW-5000. Is it a 286 PC? Is it a Laserdisc player? No, it's both! I have no idea what this was intended to be used for, but it sure is weird. And large. And free! - Apple G3 "All-In-One". 233Mhz G3, built in 15" CRT, no hard disk. Will run OS X 10.3, with some trickery. - Apple Powermac 8100/80av. Ugly as sin, but has 233Mhz G3 upgrade in PDS slot, which evens that out a bit. - PowerComputing PowerBase 200. - Unknown portable X-Terminal w/plasma display. No power supply or peripherals. I have no idea if it works. - Network Computing Devices X-Terminal. Misc parts: - Big box of 386, 486, and Pentium motherboards & expansion cards (serial/parallel/ide combo cards, video, etc...). Most have CPUs, and ignoring the inevitable CMOS battery failures, should still work fine. - Mac IIfx motherboard, sans RAM and ROM simm. Works, but ROM simm is missing. Monitors: - Intergraph Intervue 20". Multi-frequency (not multisync), works at standard VGA frequencies, higher resolutions are at specific frequencies only, and are somewhat oddball. If you have a Matrox video card, their "Powerdesk" drivers have special support for this monitor, which makes using it under Windows quite easy. Works fine under X with specialized timings. - Radius Portrait/15 Pivot. 15", portrait/landscape. Neat. - Mag 17" monitor. Works OK most of the time, but screen sometimes randomly changes width. A fun weekend project for someone! Printers & Peripherals: - HP Laserjet II. Non-working, but probably easy to fix (has trouble pulling paper out of the tray, otherwise works fine last time I tried it). Needs new toner cartridge. - TRS-80 DMP-120 printer, unknown condition, but seems complete. - HP PaintJet. Very early inkjet printer. Worked the last time I used it, no idea if you can still buy ink for it... - Kodak Photo CD burner (external SCSI box). This is a standard 2x CD-R drive, as far as I know... Other, sort of OT, but sort of computer related: - Sony LDP-1000A Laserdisc player (hey, it has an RS-232 port on the back!) - Pioneer LD-V4200 Laserdisc player (also w/RS-232 port)

19 years, 4 months

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RL02 parts, controllers, etc.

by useddec＠gmail.com

I have 3 or 4 RL02 drives I am parting out. I also have Q-bus, Unibus, and > PDP8 controllers. If you have any interest, please contact me off list. Thanks, Paul

19 years, 4 months

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HP2000 & terminal fun

by josefcub＠gmail.com

Bob, On 1/6/07, Bob Brown <bbrown at harpercollege.edu> wrote: > I'm not fortunate enough to have any real hp-2000 class hardware to > play with, but this evening I hooked an old ADM3A that I picked up a > while back (on someone's curb) to my linux pc which runs vmware, > which runs windows-NT which runs SIMH which runs my emulated HP2000 > (mickey.ath.cx).... > That sounds like the arrangement I usually have, to run things. ;-) But you do know you can compile and/or run SIMH on Linux directly, without the slowdown of Windows NT and VMWare in the middle, right? If your distribution doesn't support compilation easily, I'm sure someone on the list would compile it for you if need be. :) > So, while I don't have the back-end hardware, I can sit at a nice > classic terminal, running at 9600 baud (I may step it down to 300 > baud just for memories), and play with my emulated hp. Sounds like loads of fun! I did the same thing, albeit with a Wyse terminal and a SIMH emulated VAX, until I'd gotten a real VAXstation bootstrapped using the same emulator. :-) Josef -- "I laugh because I dare not cry. This is a crazy world and the only way to enjoy it is to treat it as a joke." -- Hilda "Sharpie" Burroughs, "The Number of the Beast" by Robert A. Heinlein

19 years, 4 months

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my second Mac

by spectre＠floodgap.com

> One thing I didn't expect is the involved model and OS requirements > for various bits of software. I thought that the idea was that one > didn't have to engage in the upgrading game on a Mac like PC people > do. From what I've seen thus far, if anything, the Mac world seems > to be almost worse in that respect. I assume by this you're referring to the particular constraints of running a particular OS on a particular hardware configuration. Just to put it into perspective, the first beige G3 was introduced in 1997, but the Public Beta was not released until 2000 and OS X 10.0 not until 2001. The hardware issues that affected OS X didn't become apparent, then, for several years. These were originally OS 8 machines, after all. -- --------------------------------- personal: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/ --- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Honk if you're illiterate! -------------------------------------------------

19 years, 4 months

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Ebay: HP 82045A Thermal Paper

by billy.d.tucker＠smithbarney.com

I am interersted in buying some thermal paper for a Hewlett Packard printer. Can you give me any help? My email at home is btu68 at aol.com. Billy T. -------------------------------------------------------------- Reminder: E-mail sent through the Internet is not secure. Do not use e-mail to send us confidential information such as credit card numbers, changes of address, PIN numbers, passwords, or other important information. Do not e-mail orders to buy or sell securities, transfer funds, or send time sensitive instructions. We will not accept such orders or instructions. This e-mail is not an official trade confirmation for transactions executed for your account. Your e-mail message is not private in that it is subject to review by the Firm, its officers, agents and employees. --------------------------------------------------------------

19 years, 4 months

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2nd mac

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

regarding the monitor issue, been there done that. If the G3 uses the same sense-pin scenario as earlier macs. then a dongle and a bnc cable will put u in biz __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

1
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Pr1me boxes

by jwest＠ezwind.net

I'm taking a straw poll here.... how many folks are interested in obtaining a Prime 50-series computer (in general, not a specific model) for their collection? I'm not really wanting to count anyone who thinks "yeah, I'd take one if it showed up on my doorstep for free". I'm more interested in a rough count of people who want one enough to actually drive a ways, or pay shipping plus "token" amount, etc. Someone who would seriously pursue one if it became available to them. If you meet that criteria, let me know! Jay

19 years, 4 months

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My second Mac

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

...and Macs only put out video as theyre set to, at the cable-vid card junction. Youll need a doohicky to initialize it 2 a proper vid mode 4 such a display. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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My second Mac

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

...and Macs only put out video as theyre set to, at the cable-vid card junction. Youll need a doohicky to initialize it 2 a proper vid mode 4 such a display. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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My second Mac

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

ugh and here I was thinking someone sent him a fat Mac. WS monitors work readily with even the oldest Mac IIs w/an appropriate card. Never did it with a G3 but. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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the market is about to drop out on the Cat

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

there's currently 10 on eBay right now. 9 of which are >from the previous seller (the one that banged out at $1,926). Is the guy dopey? How could he reasonably expect to get that money for each when he dumps them all on the market at once??? I would think it would make the most sense to spread them out. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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ebay - mindset in los angeles area p/u only

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

I aint got the link handy, but its searcheable. At about a buck still I think. The catch - either the monitor or the unit is defective. Currently still a valu __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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Onyx/Challenge skins wanted

by legalize＠xmission.com

My two new Onyx machines are almost naked! One has a top, side and front skin. The other has a top skin only. So, I am looking for skins for the box so that I can make them pretty. The Challenge/L machines use the same enclosure, so the skins from those can be used. Can anyone help me out? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

19 years, 4 months

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TTL 7400's Available

by technobug＠comcast.net

Cleaning out things and came across 40+ tubes (24/tube) of TTL 5400 Quad Nand Gates (Mil version of the 7400). Free for postage. Here's your chance to build your computer from scratch :oD CRC

19 years, 4 months

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Outbound Laptop; Was: Mac OS vintage

by trag＠io.com

>Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 13:43:12 -0500 >From: Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> >Jeff Walther wrote: >> >>Additionally, the Outbound Laptop is an interesting beast in that it >>uses 2.5" IDE hard drives. This is the first Macintosh to use an >>IDE device by many many years. I don't think any Apple Mac used >>them until the Quadra 630 and its performa and LC cousins. > >Perhaps true, but there were macs with 3.5" st-506 drives long before >that. There may have been Apple machines with ST-506s but unless my memory is much worse than I hope, there was never a Macintosh with an ST-506. Unless you're thinking of the "Macintosh Hard Disk 20"? But looking through old emails, that has a Rodime Model 552 drive inside with a mysterious 26 pin interface, not an ST-506. >Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 14:26:08 -0800 >From: "Billy Pettit" <Billy.Pettit at wdc.com> >I'm not familiar with the Outbound Laptop. What was the model number? Outbound was a company. So they were producing non-Apple Macintoshes by scavenging Apple ROMs from Apple machines. The model number in this case is the Laptop Model 125. A very cool machine with four SIMM sockets devoted to a "silicon disk"--that is a dedicated RAM Disk. You could install up to 16MB in there--at least. I have not tried 16 MB SIMMs yet. The keyboard was detachable and had an IR interface. It also had a trackbar ("isopoint") at the bottom of the keyboard. A ?-bus (not PS2, not ADB that other one used on PCs (required an ISA card) with a round connector) mouse could be plugged into the keyboard if one preferred a mouse. Additionally, using the optional SCSI adapter, the Laptop could be "docked" as an accessible SCSI device on any Macintosh with a SCSI interface. >I do know that I was supporting Apple at Quantum in early 1994 and qualified >an IDE 2.5 inch drive for their laptops. The Laptop 125 was around as early as February 1990. I'm not certain exactly when it was first released. It pred-dates the Powerbooks. So, e.g. the cool SCSI docking feature was available on an Outbound, long before it was a feature on the PowerBooks. Jeff Walther

19 years, 4 months

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Wire Rope ROMs (Was: back to the AGC, was Re: TTL 7400's Available)

by rickb＠bensene.com

Brent Hilpert wrote: > > .... I'm familiar with > core-rope ROM (or at least one version of it) from attempting > to make a reader to dump the contents of a Wang calc > microcode ROM, but the AGC version sounds like the > address-decoding/word-selection is done differently (..need a > diagram). Speaking of Wang Calculator ROM's, I've recently built a fixture that I'm successfully able to read Wang 700-series ROMs with. It's unfortunately a non-automatic system...toggle switches and TIL-311 HEX displays (can automate it later), and am in the (slow) process of dumping a known good Wang 720C ROM. The ROM strobe signal timing is very tight on the 700-series ROM...off even a little bit on the timing (pulse width), and the readout gets real inconsistent. Also trying to write a microcode execution engine in Perl to run the code, but there are lots of interesting timing considerations that require deep digging into the schematics (which is something that I have little patience for...basically, I'm not very good at it) in terms of the timing of all of the register transfers in the machine. On the surface, it looks simple, just a basic 10-phase non-overlapping clock (shift register), but there's a lot of combinatorial logic that derives a lot of weird timing from the basic clock phases. So far, my attempts to execute the code I've extracted so far lead to execution of illegal instructions (all zero ROM locations), or infinte loops, and the code execution doesn't seem to make much sense. There are also some microcode instructions that aren't documented, and having to dig through schematics to figure out what they do. Wang is also famous for purposefully putting errors into published schematics to throw off competitors who would use such schematics to reverse-engineer how the machines work. So, some of my problem could be that the schematics are not necessarily an accurate representation of the actual logic. Still some tinkering to do. Still, I'm very sure that the fixture to read the ROMs is working perfectly. All ROM locations return consistent results, and other than the emulator running into all zero ROM content (there are quite a few "unused" locations in the ROM), all of the instructions decoded thus far are "valid" in terms of the allowed values of the various microcode fields. The Wang 700, 500, and 600-series machines all used this style of ROM, so, in theory, the reader (other than hardware pinout variations and subtle microcode field diffrences) should be able to be tweeked to read the 500 or 600-series ROMs without too much work. The main goal of this is to be able to capture the microcode images for as many of the Wang calculators that use this type of ROM as possible, as this technology is really unweildly to troubleshoot and repair (and I have some ROMs that are known bad that I want to try to be able to fix), and also because the genius of Harold Koplow (now deceased) is buried in that microcode. I want to preserve as much of it as I can (and maybe figure out how he made these machines do what they do) as a legacy to him. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Web Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

19 years, 4 months

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questions about Sphere-1 micro? email me.

by legalize＠xmission.com

The Sphere-1 micro, the first personal computer, was created and built here in Utah. The creator, Mike Wise, died from complications of diabetes in December of 2004. However, one of his long-time business associates Arnold Grundvig of A-Systems is still around. <http://www.a-systems.net/company.htm> I talked with Arnold on the phone and he says that Mike regaled him with many stories over the years about the Sphere and so-on. I was interested in interviewing Mike for a short peice about that early piece of Utah computing history. Arnold has agreed to be interviewed for such a purpose instead. So if any of you have questions about the Sphere or that period of microcomputing history, please email them to me off-list and I will collect them together with my own questions, conduct an interview and post the transcript. If any of you know any "old timers" that are getting on in years, it might be a good idea to conduct a recorded interview (don't rely on notes! record it!) to capture some of the "oral history" that will be lost when they pass on. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

19 years, 4 months

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Keyboard question

by sdc695＠yahoo.com

While not exactly computer directly related, since the silly box does have a computer in it, I'd thought I'd ask here. I've got an old TV Character generator, a Laird CG7000 to be exact. It has a nice standard 5 pin DIN connector on the front panel for its "keyboard". Now to me this looks just like a standard AT type keyboard, but alas it does nothing unless I beat on the keys then something might show up. Would anyone know what type of keyboard they use for this silly thing. It is a bit old, and I suspect it might be an XT (not an AT) keyboard (which are different). I'm going to attempt to trace out the connections to figure it out, but if someone on the list has a clue, it would be helpful to me. Not wanting to clog things up further, a response off list if probably the best. Thanks. -- Tom Watson tsw at johana.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

19 years, 4 months

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Missing Bits

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 17:48:11 -0800 From: "Billy Pettit" <Billy.Pettit at wdc.com> Subject: Missing Bits -------------Original Message: <snip> Recently, I've been trying to write up some of those experiences and found that I have almost nothing on a lot of the companies. <snip> And one that is driving me crazy, a company that supplied Ada systems to the military. Was first based in Mt. View, then moved to San Jose into one of the old Amdahl buildings. I can visualize the people and systems but can't remember the name. Getting old sucks. I'd love to hear about anyone's experience with any of these companies and especially if any documents or hardware survived. And I'm especially interested in ARIX. It was a very unusual company, and obliquely mentioned in the 6 part TV series on Silicon Valley. Billy -----------Reply: I worked with an Arix system years ago, and I think at least one person up here in Ontario has one; I sent him whatever Arix documentation I had left a while ago. Dave Dunfield might know better if they're still around and who has them now. mike

19 years, 4 months

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Arix (was Rational)

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Al Kossow wrote: Did you mean Arete? We have one, and it ran a version of Unix called Arix. ------------------------------ Billy wrote: My memory is that the first few times I visited them, the company name was Arix. That was changed to Ar?te after some of the notoriety caught up with them. I'd love to meet somebody who worked at the location on Zanker road. There were things happening there that are unique in the industry. Does anybody on this list remember the room painted black? Billy

19 years, 4 months

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Stuff to give away UK

by williams.dan＠gmail.com

I have some more stuff to get rid of now. There are: 3 Vaxstations Some Amstrad CPC's Manuals I don't have equipment for : Tektronix 475 oscilloscope calibration and diagram supplement la120 letter printer programmer ref guide tektronix 475 oscilloscope service manual beckmen industrial circuitmate 9020 osilloscope operaters manual x3 cosser instruments model 3122 oscilloscope operating manual cosser instruments model 3100 oscilloscope operating manual cosser instruments model 3102 oscilloscope operating manual some vt100's with no keyboards Lots of sparcstation IPC's Apart from the manuals anything not picked up will have to be skipped. Stuff not so free. I would like some cash for, anything sensible will be accepted. Would also accept storeage of other items for a year or two ;) vax 4000/500 with external 10x external drives (all with scsi->dssi convertors) (in half rack) vax 4000/705A with external 5x dssi drives. (In standard case) Dual head octane with 1gb memory. vaxstation 4000/90. The stuff is located in Soho at the moment. It could move to Kent if not picked up soon. Thanks Dan

19 years, 4 months

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govliq messages

by legalize＠xmission.com

Govliquidation.com doesn't exactly have the best descriptions, pictures, or search engine, but it does have lots of interesting stuff popping up there from time-to-time. Because its such a pain to find things on there, when I stumble across something that someone here might find interesting, I post a note with the lot link. Does anyone find this useful? Does anyone find this annoying? If its more annoying than useful, I'll stop giving y'all a heads up on these items. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

19 years, 4 months

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not quite on topic but, classic analogue satellite tv decoding boxes

by witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk

Hello folks, I've got a pair of old UK SKY TV boxen (1997 era) that are pretty useless as analogue SKY TV was switched off in 2001; can the hardware be used for anything else or is it pretty much paperweight material? Ta, -- adrian/witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection?

19 years, 4 months

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Purposefully fudged schematics

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Chuck Guzis wrote: To be certain, some errors/additions are deliberate; Rand McNally generally sprikles a few non-existent landmarks in their maps; Google satellite maps have "watermarks" that can be very confusing. I spied what looked to be clearing on some of my forested land and hiked to the very spot and found--trees, just like everywhere else. It took some conferring with a USGS employee to discover that what I thought was a clearing was a rather subtle watermark (viewed in just the right way, you can make out a "Go". Cheers, Chuck ------------------------------------- Billy wrote: It also happens closer to home in our mutual field. In the 1970's, CDC was working hard on Russian alliances. They had to prove that Russian technology was as advanced as the products CDC wanted to ship. (The old DoD guideline.) So they bought some Russian 8080's and tested them. Everything was going good until they decapped the chip. Inside, under a microscope, they found an image of Mickey Mouse's head in the metal layer. Of course, put there by Intel engineers to spot copy cat reverse engineering. The Russians hadn't caught up in technology; they had bought masks under the table and made complete ripoffs. I know other IC vendors use similiar tricks to identify their IP. One I have seen is an entire section of circuitry that has no outputs - like the old famous write only logic. And it has been faithfully copied by several Asian suppliers. Billy

19 years, 4 months

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D-shell connector age?

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Anyone know where D-shell connectors first appeared on equipment? Interesting thread going on in a local group at the moment about why SCART [1] sockets are so horrible and nasty (prone to breaking pins, difficult to line up, prone to falling out etc.) and why something better, like a D-shell connector, wasn't chosen instead. Thing is, SCART was apparently first used in consumer A/V equipment in 1977, which probably means it was thought up in the mid-70's. Edge connectors and/or circular DIN connectors were probably more common on computer equipment of that time, but were D-shell types around by then too? [1] For the non-Europeans, SCART is common on all A/V equipment in Europe and provides component RGB (as well as composite) interconnect between devices, along with stereo audio channels, sync lines, remote device standby control etc. cheers Jules

19 years, 4 months

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DECmate I program loading via serial port

by legalize＠xmission.com

According to the docs, by sending a special escape sequence you can download a program into the DECmate I over the serial terminal line. Has anyone done this? I have a DECmate I with no floppy drives although it has the interface card for the drives. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

19 years, 4 months

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Intergraph / Clipper / HLH Orion

by legalize＠xmission.com

Does anyone have a machine with an Clipper RISC cpu in it? Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergraph_Clipper> says that only two companies ever used the Clipper (from Fairchild) were Intergraph and High Level Hardware. HLH I never heard of before; Intergraph I know of because they're big in CAD and GIS markets. Ah, WikiP says that HLF was UK firm that made the Orion. Anyone got one? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

19 years, 4 months

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GBC System 9 computer

by kelly＠catcorner.org

Just rescued one of these units from Craig's List. It's waiting for me a a friends house in Richmond, VA. Anyone know much about these? I think they're just a rebadged Northstar Advantage. It has a bunch of software and a manual or two. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information on these on the web. I did see the information at Dave Dunfield's site, and the disk archive there. Any manuals that have been scanned? I didn't see the Advantage line at bitsavers. Thanks for any help, Kelly

19 years, 4 months

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Purposefully fudged schematics

by bpritts＠pritts.com

A long time ago I was involved with licensing databases (of new and used car price books-- e.g. Edmunds, Kelley Blue Book, etc.) They had the custom of salting the data with a few deliberate errors so that in the event of an infringement suit, they could prove that their data had been copied by the infringer, rather than independently created. I can't say whether the same purpose applies to schematics, but it just might be. Brad To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <459D59AD.3087.22DE923 at cclist.sydex.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII To be certain, some errors/additions are deliberate; Rand McNally generally sprikles a few non-existent landmarks in their maps; Google satellite maps have "watermarks" that can be very confusing. I spied what looked to be clearing on some of my forested land and hiked to the very spot and found--trees, just like everywhere else. It took some conferring with a USGS employee to discover that what I thought was a clearing was a rather subtle watermark (viewed in just the right way, you can make out a "Go".

19 years, 4 months

3
2
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Text-based UI...

by bpope＠wordstock.com

Since when is a text-based UI a bad thing?!! http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/05/0025241 Cheers, Bryan

19 years, 4 months

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Prime "Toons" hardware

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Dan's message about his Prime made me go glance at the Prime FAQ, and I noticed these few lines: * Prime had operational prototypes of the entire Toons system running in the lab when it was cancelled. * After the meeting to announce the closing of Prime, engineers returned to the lab and continued working on booting Primos on the Toons system. They were successful. The Toons hardware was the next generation, in development when Prime went under; I hadn't realised that it was essentially operational though. Does a complete example was ever rescued and now exists either in a museum or in private hands? cheers Jules

19 years, 4 months

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Intergraph / Clipper / HLH Orion

by aek＠bitsavers.org

There were two Orions in the Computer Science machine room when I went to York, and I know where both went -- to a collector just along the road from me. -- Did either still have the original 2901 based processor? Apparently most HLH machines were upgraded to Clippers CPUs

19 years, 4 months

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Purposefully fudged schematics

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

I have seen a TV program on the one they built. It was beautifully made in brass and steel and what's more it worked! The program said he did not finish it because he simply ran out of money! Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of John Honniball Sent: 04 January 2007 21:15 To: On-Topic Posts Only Subject: Re: Purposefully fudged schematics woodelf wrote: > To get back on topic about babbage's drawings, from what I read it was > mechnical design that could not be produced with 18th century > mechanical enginering. I thought the Science Museum rebuild showed that it could be built with 19th century engineering? They deliberately didn't make it any more accurate than Babbage could have, and they only found a couple of minor difficulties. One was that it was too hard to turn the handle, so they geared it down. Surely something that, if Babbage had finished the Difference Engine, he'd have done himself? -- John Honniball coredump at gifford.co.uk

19 years, 4 months

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OT: Missing quotes in message replies

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>I'm seeing a few messages where the text being replied to isn't quoted >(anything from Al and Billy Pettit it seems, but there have been one or >two others) other than a separating line beneath old and new text We're both using the web interface to the list to quickly scan the msgs then doing cut/paste to compose replies. The big problem with doing this is it loses the thread info in the mail header so they don't thread.

19 years, 4 months

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22 rolls of paper tape @ govliq

by aek＠bitsavers.org

the most interesting thing was it says who made it http://web.govliquidation.com/auction/haystack? nsn=7530001806260&eventId=2687&lotNumber=3209 http://www.arlon.com/ecp/duralon.asp sounds like pretty fancy stuff, paper,plastic,paper composite tape

19 years, 4 months

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test-drb January 2007