test-drb January 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

238 participants
538 discussions

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Some of you here might know this :) I've got a system here where I need to make it think that there's a monitor plugged into its VGA port even when there isn't (long story). Plugging a real CRT into the port even when that CRT is switched off and unplugged from the AC supply works, so there's obviously some way of doing it. Measuring the CRT above (switched off, unplugged from AC, and unplugged from the device) with respect to the VGA connector's shield gives me the following readings: pin sig value 1 R 76ohm 2 G 76ohm 3 B 76ohm 4 NC GND 5 GND GND 6 GND GND 7 GND GND 8 GND GND 9 NC infinite resistance 10 GND GND 11 NC GND 12 DDC DAT 8.1Kohm (initially 7.6Kohm, rose at first then steadied) 13 HSYNC 4.6Kohm 14 VSYNC 4.7Kohm 15 DDC CLK 8.1Kohm (initially 7.6Kohm, rose at first then steadied) Any suggestions? Do I just need 76ohm resistors to ground on the RGB lines (and possibly 4.7Kohm resistors to ground on HSYNC and VSYNC)? Or is there likely something more subtle going on that I need to incorporate into my "fake" connector? (Given that VGA supplies no DC out, it can't be anything too complex!) cheers Jules

19 years, 1 month

Does anyone know what this from Coax Bank Server

by techboy＠all2ez.net

http://cgi.ebay.com/Multiprocessor-Motorolla-68000-Coax-Bank-Server-Fa stbus_W0QQitemZ280072362339QQihZ018QQcategoryZ4193QQssPageNameZWDVWQQr dZ1QQcmdZViewItem All the info is in the listing, what I need to know is what was this before it became a set of boards? Thanx Ryan $4.95/mo. National Dialup, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, 5mb personal web space. 5x faster dialup for only $9.95/mo. No contracts, No fees, No Kidding! See http://www.All2Easy.net for more details!

19 years, 1 month

My 386 laptop HD is dead. The solution: an IDE to CF adapter

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Brad Parker wrote: Heh. I remember someone asking me (at work) if a 3.5" ST-506 drive would work in zero G. I ask where it was installed and they said a KC-135 :-) Apparently someone wanted to use one in the "vomit comet"... and apparently it worked (at least they never complained that it didn't) I don't know how high those where pressurized, but I'd guess around 8000ft. No doubt the old drives didn't need as much air density; the flying height was not that low. I have no idea how air pressure affects the boundary layer over the surface - I assume less density translates to less drag and then to a lower flight. -brad ---------------------------------------- Cold is not nice to disk drives. More than flying height, the mechanical parts become stiffer and don't flex correctly. Bearings becomse stiff and generate vibration. Seals shrink. A lot of work is being done on self heating. This will be needed when drives go into cell phones in the near future. The drive uses the electronics to get to a certain temperature before loading the heads off the ramp. Air pressure does affect the boundary layer, especially at high RPM. There comes a point where it goes negative and sucks the heads down. The testing I saw showed this somewhere around 18-20K RPM. For drives on the market today, flying height is controlled and compensates for altitude. As for cell phones and hard drives, yes, I know that Flash is getting cheaper and is in a surplus situation right now. And with 4 level cells coming along, the cost per bit is going down. But hard drives will still be used in cell phones, because those devices have exploding storage requirements, thanks to new features. Look at Apple's iPhone, with all the bells and whistles. And only 8GB of storage. They've sold millions of iPods with 20, 30, 40, and 60GB of storage. Those users will demand more storage as they use the iPhone. Cell phones do now and will in the future use hard drives. Cold is one of the biggest unsolved problems. Shock is looking so-so with free fall sensors. Power cosumption is the biggest detractor. But a hybrid with a big cache could solve that. Billy

19 years, 1 month

My 386 laptop HD is dead. The solution: an IDE to CF adapter

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

Jim Leonard wrote: Yep! There are only two drawbacks to microdrives: - Slower than real flash - Can't use 6000+ feet above sea level (lack of air pressure can make the drive go wonky or, rarely, break it) -- Jim Leonard --------------------------- I have to strongly dispute this; The IBM (later Hitachi) MicroDrive was rated at 10K feet. I did competitive testing on it and the Seagate 1" drive and both had no problems at 10K feet. In fact both + the WD 1" drive work fine well past 10K feet. Come to that, Maxtor, Miniscribe, IBM and DEC built drives in Colorado well above 6000 feet. Apple used to have a factory at Fountain (6400 feet). So this simply isn't true. The biggest customer of the MicroDrive - Apple iPods - work great on the ski slopes. They also work great in Reno at 7000+ feet. I can personally vouch for this and I'm certain others on the list can too. They also work fine on airplanes, which are pressurized at 8000 feet. I have never heard of a drive breaking because of altitude. Rarely, you get a head gimbals or suspension problem that doesn't like 9000+ feet. But that is a defective drive, not the rule. All drive vendors and many OEM buyers do extensive testing to ensure this. And all heads are testing for flying height before being installed in a drive. Finally, today's drives utilize Dynamic Flying Height technology which uses a heating element in the head to maintain constant controlled flying height. Altitude is not a problem with any drive on the market today. Billy

19 years, 1 month

Wayback machine disappointment

by witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk

Hi folks, Whilst shrinking in embarrassment at my own website efforts going back to the mid 90s I thought I'd look at www.digital.com for a bit of nostalgia, only to be told that the site is blocked and isn't available. Anyone know why? Wayback machine: http://www.archive.org/web/web.php -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

19 years, 1 month

Component level repair

by aek＠bitsavers.org

>> Bus transceiver chips for Q-bus and Unibus > The answer is 7406. For a very small value of "Q-bus and Unibus" Read the Unibus Handbook for the reasons why.

19 years, 1 month

My 386 laptop HD is dead. The solution: an IDE to CF adapter

by zmerch-cctalk＠30below.com

Rumor has it that 9000 VAX may have mentioned these words: >On 1/18/07, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote: >> >>9000 VAX wrote: >> > After one hour of surfing the internet, I finally bought 4 IDE-CF >>adapters >> > (laptop and desktop versions, $2 each). One for the laptop, one for the >> > pentium PC linux router, one for the 386 desktop. >> > >> > Just want to share the experience with you so you do not need to waste >> > the 1 >> > hour as I did. >> >>Where did you find the IDE-CF adapters? I'm in need of a few myself. > > > From that biggest on-line bazaar that many list members are bashing now for >its lastest BS. Ah yes... but if anyone actually *wanted* to support a Classic Computer company, you could buy them here: http://www.cloud9tech.com/ Not the cheapest, but hey - they're great guys and can be found over on the maltedmedia.com CoCo list. At the same time, you could pick up an IDE interface for your CoCo that has a built-in CF socket right on it... ;-) Laterz, Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate." SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein zmerch at 30below.com |

19 years, 1 month

MITS (Altair) Computer Notes are online

by swtpc6800＠comcast.net

Most of the issues of MITS Computer Notes are online at STARTUP: Albuquerque and the Personal Computer Revolution. (The Paul Allen funded gallery at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science.) http://www.startupgallery.org/gallery/computernotes.php You can read articles by Ed Roberts, David Bunnell, Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Here is Bill Gates complaining about not being able to make any money on software. http://www.startupgallery.org/gallery/notesViewer.php?ii=76_2&p=3 Here is a bug list for BASIC http://www.startupgallery.org/gallery/notesViewer.php?ii=75_12&p=19 These are high quality scans and a valuable source of computer history. Michael Holley

19 years, 1 month

Selling Intel 8096/196 Emulators,

by a_j_giusti＠yahoo.com

I found your post while searching for an ICE-196PC. Have you sold this item yet? If not, can you answer a few questions? Specifically, does the emulator have a flex cable going from the PC board to the processor pod? Is it gold, with silkscreen 456583-001 (or -002) TEK INTEL? If so, I would be interested. Please let me know your asking price. Regards, Andrew. ____________________________________________________________________________________ The fish are biting. Get more visitors on your site using Yahoo! Search Marketing. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/arp/sponsoredsearch_v2.php

19 years, 1 month

FW: Component level repair

by useddec＠gmail.com

> > > > I have thousands of DEC boards, including DZ11's, here if any one needs > them for replacements or parts. Thanks, Paul Anderson In article <e1d20d630701241825v79ce0844h46abf02c3c40596 at mail.gmail.com>, > "William Donzelli" <wdonzelli at gmail.com> writes: > > > Maintaining old DEC stuff would indeed be a niche, so I can understand > > that. However, someof the things I said still apply. For example, when > > a DZ11 goes bad, do you actually fix the board (I assume, of course, > > that you use DZ11s)?. It does not really make sense to, from a > > business perspective, since good ones are common as dirt and quite > > available. > > Just don't scrap the DZ11s, make them available to people who want to > scrounge bus transceiver chips from them. > > Bus transceiver chips for Q-bus and Unibus are *not* common as dirt > and more than a few of us have scratched our heads on how to create > new compatible circuits. Meanwhile, the scroungers taught me that > it might be easier to scrounge the bus transceiver chips off of dead > or readily available boards. > -- > "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, 1 month

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test-drb January 2007