test-drb January 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

238 participants
538 discussions

Jules Richardson wrote on "Digital Archaeology of the Microcomputer, 1974-1994

by Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com

William Donzelli wrote: Yes, I realize when...no, never mind...I think some of you guys were born with grumpy old man syndrome fully in place. -- Will --------------------------------------------- Can't speak for the others, but I worked hard to earn my right to be a curmudgeon. After 45 years of dealing with all the bullshit in this field, I relish my chance to be cynical and know-it-all. Let the kids be nice - I'm gong to have fun. Billy

17 years, 11 months

NOS librascope heads for rpc4000

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1247&item=2500753548… these appear to be for the RPC4000

17 years, 11 months

Ebay idiocy

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> My two items of low-denomination currency, anyway. Which goes to everyone EXCEPT Sellam, since he DOESN'T READ THE LIST! I sent email to Jay asking that Sellam be banned from posting. I suggest others do as well.

17 years, 11 months

Unrealistic price?

by cclist＠sydex.com

$148,995 starting bid for a 32GB AS/400 memory. http://auctions.yahoo.com/i:IBM%203017%2032GB%20CHIP:216674201 Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 11 months

VAX Assembly question

by spc＠conman.org

I'm currently perusing _Computer Programming and Architecture: The VAX-11_ by Levy and Eckhouse and I come across the description of the CALLG and CALLS instructions. They go on to describe the stack frame created by the CALL* instruction: Condition handler (initially 0) <- FP SPA | S | 0 | MASK | PSW | 0 FP + 4 Saved AP etc ... Saved FP Saved PC Saved R0 . . . Saved R11 My question is about the condition handler. In the text, it's described as: A longword condition handler address. Here, the calling routine may store the address of an error-handling routine to be called if an exceptional error condition arises in the procedure. This is the only section (as far as I can tell) where this is described, and I'm curious as to how exactly it worked. It appears that while the CPU may set this location to 0, its purpose isn't really dictated by the hardware, but it a convention used by VMS. But then (as I was typing this), I was struct by this bit: ... the calling routine may store ... Huh? How? The calling routine either does a: argsize: .long 0 arg1: .long 0 arg2: .long 0 arg3: .long 0 arg4: .long 0 movl #4,argsize ; use fixed memory movl filehandle,arg1 ; for the arguments moval somememory,arg2 movl #0,arg3 movl #4096,arg4 callg argsize,dump_memory or pushl #4096 ; use the stack pushl #0 ; for the arguments pushal somememory pushl filehandle calls #4,dump_memory (forgive if my assembly isn't quite right, I'm going from the book rather quickly here). How can the calling code set the condition handler? The CPU creates the stack frame (as diagrammed above), not the calling routine. Am I missing something? -spc (Really curious about this ... )

17 years, 11 months

Sellam

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

Since there have been many people asking about Sellam's posts: In the past he was a very active poster, and he has the collection and documents to be able to give very detailed answers. If I recall correctly, the major reason that he withdrew from the list was because he became a father and had very little spare time. Perhaps when his children require less time he'll come back. This is not to be read as an endorsement of his post, writing style, hairdo, or method of eating asparagus- just as an answer to the Sellam FAQ.

17 years, 11 months

VCM, was Re: Ebay idiocy

by marvin＠rain.org

> From: "Michael B. Brutman" <mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com> > > I like VCM a lot. I've been browsing it for over a year. It's always > fun to speculate on what Marvin is holding onto based on what he has > listed. :-) That is *really* hard to do since I generally list things as I find them ... and there is a lot to find :). > Sadly, I haven't found anything I want to purchase. My particular weak > spot (the PCjr) doesn't show up there. Yet :). > If I were to unload something, VCM is the first place I'm going to go. > I'd rather sell to a group of like-minded individuals first. If it > doesn't sell there after a reasonably long period of time, then I would > consider eBay. One of the things I tried to do was to put enough stuff there that others would also start to list. And I do have another motive as well ... if something doesn't sell on VCM, depending on what it is, I already have the listing done to port it over to Ebay. It is unfortunately a fact of life that stuff will sell better on Ebay. It is also a *very* unfortunate fact of life that I either need to buy this house or move. VCM will not provide enough money to do that, and the reality is that Ebay will. But I still try and list somewhat uncommon items on VCM that are unlikely to generate ebay bids. > As for Sellam, > > I've never met the guy. I've heard a lot. :-) What I like about Sellam and a lot of other people here is that they *DO* rather than just talk. VCF started out as a thought here, but he was the one that took it and ran with it to create VCF. And ditto for Jay when ClassicCmp needed a new site. Jay didn't just say woe is us, but took the ball and ran. And with his hosting other classic computer related websites, all I can say is that I greatly respect the man ... and I've never met him :). And look at Al with what he has done with Bitsavers, and Erik, and Curt, and ... The amount of knowledge available on this listserver and what is being done is truly incredible. I've met quite a few people on this listserver, and at times it is fun to just talk and listen. It would be nice if everyone would just get along and not jump on every annoyance that comes along.

17 years, 11 months

Scrap equipment and fraud (was Re: Digital archaeology of the microcomputer, 1974-1994)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 1/18/07, Billy Pettit <Billy.Pettit at wdc.com> wrote: > Ethan Dicks wrote: > It's not just manufacturers (who are trying to comply with various > regulations on scrapping equipment and taxes)... When I was at Lucent > in Columbus, they started drilling through the HDAs of discarded > drives, not to protect against data theft from a working drive, but > against employee harvesting of the scrap bins. > > There is another reason for this. Warranty fraud has become a 7 digit > problem for most OEM manufacturers. Get a good stock of scrap products, > take parts off a good product, replace them with the bad parts and send the > good product in for repair.... I did not witness this, but I heard at a DECUS that some time in the late 1980s, DEC had a different kind of scrap problem - they would scrap numerous things at the factory, load them into bins and sell them to gold scrappers. The problem came with a gold scrapper started selling bits and pieces (like MicroVAX CPU and memory boards) to other parties which would end up in the 3rd-party resale stream and end up in customers' hands. The damage was two-fold... 1) reputation, and 2) the IRS discovering that "scrapped" items were being bought and sold. The solution, I heard, was to get a chipper that could reduce boards, racks, etc., into postage-stamp-sized chunks before handing the waste over to the salvage companies. I understand that the first guys to get a bin of metal and PCB chips rather than boards and boxes they could cherry pick, were a bit surprised. OTOH, one of my co-workers from Software Results took a pile of boards >from the scrap bin and drilled and mounted them to make a 1.5m-tall PCB Xmas tree (the solder mask was green). The bean counters were initially upset until the drilled holes were pointed out to them - clearly the boards had been damaged sufficiently that nobody was going to be mistaking them for usable product. -ethan

17 years, 11 months

Ebay idiocy

by dm561＠torfree.net

>Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 13:09:21 -0500 >From: "Evan Koblentz" <evan at snarc.net> >Subject: RE: Ebay idiocy >Sellam knows he's, shall we say, a "direct" communicator. That's why I like >the dude. :) Anyway, the fact remains that his auction site DOES address >all of the stuff we hate about ebay -- and if it's doesn't in some case, he >will quickly fix it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interesting that you, who took offense when someone used the word "Jew" for its phonetic value without, as far as I can see, in any way casting aspersions on people of that faith, likes what you call "direct" communication, i.e. using the "F" word six times in 13 paragraphs without any consideration of whether that might offend some of the 2000 or so readers of this list, not to mention what it says about this list to someone stumbling across it through the Web. If he'd just reminded us that VCM was there and asked us for more support, fine; I'd probably have clicked on it right away and bookmarked it. As it was, however, I found his message quite offensive, FWIW. I assumed that his comment about the IPO was meant tongue-in-cheek (as he pointed out to me in a similarly "directly" worded, ("F"'ing) off-list reply), but I suspect that if he really did give eBay a run for its money and someone offered him a bag full of money (not so ridiculous these days), he just might say yes. Nevertheless, if he were truly as altruistic as you say, why is he ranting at us so forcefully for, essentially, not generating enough traffic for him to be able to justify charging for his service? I imagine that Jay and the moderators donate far more time gratis running this list than VCM demands of Sellam... Not that I see anything wrong with it, but perhaps it is relevant that he does make money from renting out equipment, sourcing obscure items, etc. I doubt that he will be able to address the stuff we grudgingly like about eBay: the wider selection of available items (and price range) for buyers, and the vastly larger number of potential buyers for the sellers; blaming us for that is pretty silly. Maybe good will isn't worth what it once was, but I don't think ranting at and offending potential customers has quite made it on the list of successful business tactics yet. m

17 years, 11 months

Burroughs S40?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Al, would you like it to add to the > library? absolutely! I can forward my adr if you need it.

17 years, 11 months

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test-drb January 2007