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.
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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
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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
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 :)
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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
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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?
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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?
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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"
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
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.
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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
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.
>
>
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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.
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?"
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)
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
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
> 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/ ---
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-- Honk if you're illiterate! -------------------------------------------------
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.
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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
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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
...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.
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...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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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?
--
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<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
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
>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
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
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.
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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
__________________________________________________
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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
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
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
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/>
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?
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
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
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/>
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/>
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
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".
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
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
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
>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.