test-drb January 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

238 participants
538 discussions

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

OK, go to Ebay and look at item #29007747962. A nice machine, centainly. I can not help but think this machine was once Jim Willing's - or he has started selling things off. Does anyone know anything about the seller guardianrob453? If he is in touch with Jim Willing, I centainly need to talk to him. -- Will

18 years, 3 months

Looking for OS/278 to boot up a DECmate I

by djg＠pdp8.net

>the "easiest" way to get OS/278 to a DECmate I >is by copying a boot floppy and putting it in the mail. Can anyone on >the list assist me with this? > I can make them and send them. I have most of the bits for a DECmate I but not enough to be functional. I did make these images for people but never heard back if they worked ok. http://www.pdp8.net/images/images/os8/DECmate_I.shtml They are also RX02 format which is what their machines seemed to be set up for. Is yours set for RX02? I can put these on floppies or if you know of a known good RX01/RX02 image for a DECmate I can use it. >One of my goals, BTW, is to snarfle off images of my PDP-8 >RX01 and RX02 disks for preservation and sharing. I have a few boxes >of disks from the 1978-1985 timeframe, up to the time I stopped using >a PDP-8 on a daily/weekly basis. > If your doing that the disks will be free. If you don't have a program to dump I have one at ftp://ftp.pdp8.net/software/dumprest/ which can dump RX01 and RX02 over the serial port. The code will need to be modified to use the serial port on the DECmate. Kermit source should show that. Mine makes image useable by SIMH which is the same format they are on my website. David Gesswein http://www.pdp8.net/ -- Run an old computer with blinkenlights Have any PDP-8 stuff you're willing to part with?

18 years, 3 months

Are there M4 9914 9-track tape driver users on the list?

by glen.slick＠gmail.com

I acquired a couple of M4 9914 9-track tapes drives a while ago and finally got around to trying to do something useful with them. Never having used one before the first thing I did was just see if it would mount a tape ok. The first brand new tape I tried was sucked into the take-up reel ok and wound a few turns, then sucked all of the way back out, then the drive tried again before giving up with a N T U (No Take Up) error. I then tried a second brand new tape from a different vendor and got the same results. Then I went back into the garage and hefted (it's a workout) the second 9914 drive into my work area and tried both tapes on the second drive with the same result. Then I tried manually threading a tape onto the take-up reel while the drive was powered off and making sure that winding the take-up reel caused the supply reel to turn, then powered on the drive and got the same N T U error again. I looked in the manual and it said something about the N T U error occurring due to a lack of tach pulses. Then I looked at the tape path for what might be the tach sensor and guessed it was probably a metal roller near the take-up reel. I used a marker to put a dot on the top of the reel and noticed that it wasn't rotating when the tape was moving past it. I tried rotating this roller by hand and I could feel detents while rotating it and I assume it is attached to some type of rotary encoder. Now to the point posting this here, my questions are does anyone know if this roller/encoder needs any lubrication? If so, how? It felt somewhat stiff when I first tried rotating it and got a little easier to rotate the more I kept at it. And secondly, this roller did have a thin rubber coating which had turned to goo. I cleaned the goo off of the roller. If anyone else has seen this on a 9914 drive (I assume so, it was goo on both of mine) did they do anything about it? Is there a good way to re-rubber this roller? After cleaning the goo off of the tach roller and getting it to rotate a little more freely I did see it rotate when the tape was moving past it (wasn't sure if it would without the rubber) and now the 9914 will mount a tape most of the time. -Glen

18 years, 3 months

Foonly

by phil＠ultimate.com

Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote: > ... has anyone written an emulator for a VS60? > would it be hard? Doug Gwyn took my crappy VT11 simulation and extended it to within episilon of passing all the VS60 diagnostics. For a start see: http://www.ultimate.com/phil/xy/ Which shows screen shots of PDP-1 "munching squares" and "spacewar" on a simulated "Type 30" display, one of PDP-11 Lunar Lander... Sources are available thru my CVS server, tho I can't be sure I have checked in Doug's very latest (the vt11.c file in CVS is dated October 2005). We never managed to get it integrated into SIMH distributions, and I don't know off hand the last version of SIMH it did build with. The "display.tar.gz" on the web page is from October 2003(!), and I see there is a source kit named at http://www.ultimate.com/phil/xy/kit2.zip from February 2004. I did a rather "basic" (or "crude" to be less generous) graphics adaptation layer for X11 (polled) and Win32 (starts a seperate thread for message handling). John Dundas contributed an implementation of it for "Carbon" under OSX. There have been several other attempts to add graphics of various sorts to SIMH, including VAXstation style raster display support. John (Dundas) went on to build do PDP-11 front pannel blinklights und switches for SIMH, looks like it's available at: http://dundas-mac.caltech.edu/~dundas/retro/simh/index.html Which says it includes Doug's and my work (in V0.9 or later). But, back to the original topic, I think SUDS needs a PDP-10 (TOPS-20?) system behind it to do the real work. I used to pass the PDP-10 hardware design lab on the way to the Cafeteria at MR-1 (DEC Marlboro(ugh) building one, before the great three letterization that made it into MRO-1). I loved the "rose" program I saw sometimes on the displays, but I don't remember what it looked like anymore... Anyone have the code, or remember what it did? phil

18 years, 3 months

VS60's

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Umm, and how rare are VS60s these days? Essentially unobtainium. They were expensive and rare 25 years ago. You'd have better luck finding a VT11 or GT40. At least I KNOW people who have those. I've never known anyone in the 30+ years of dealing with DEC stuff who had a VS60. I've been chasing a copy of SUDS for a while. It existed at Stanford, MIT, and DEC. XKL still uses it. The DEC version will probably be somewhere on the DEC LCG tapes. There are bits of it on the ITS tapes that have been released. I'm sure it's on the ones that haven't.

18 years, 3 months

HP tape drive PCBs

by dm561＠torfree.net

Cleaning out more junk; found some HP boards, probably >from a tape drive; anybody want 'em for parts? Condition unknown, one marked defective: 07970-62140 series 1144 07970-60020 series 1047 07970-60040 C-1024-42 07970-61021 B-1037-42 mike

18 years, 3 months

Foonly

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Where did the name "Foonly" come from? google "FOO NLI"

18 years, 3 months

MCA RAID card, Vaxstation, Sun SCSI boxes: free to a good London home

by david＠cantrell.org.uk

I'm having a clear-out of a load of old stuff that I'm no longer using (or in some cases acquired and never used). Of interest to this list: * MCA SCSI RAID card, Mylex DAC960M, known working about four years ago. no driver disks, no box, no anti-static bag, no cables, no nothing. * VAXstation 3100, not powered on since I acquired it. external SCSI cable. * miscellaneous Sun external SCSI boxes which might even have working disks in 'em. All free to good homes. New owner to collect in south London, or I can deliver the MCA card in central London. I won't ship anything. If you want any of it, please contact me by private email. Anything not gone by the end of the month will be thrown away. And somewhat off-topic, if anyone knows where I can get a DVI-to-SCART converter so I can attach a Mac Mini to a TV, do please let me know. -- David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david fdisk format reinstall, doo-dah, doo-dah; fdisk format reinstall, it's the Windows way

18 years, 3 months

PDP-11/70 in Yates Center, KS

by bqt＠softjar.se

ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: >>> "William Donzelli" <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote: >>> > Jim Willing was one of the pioneers in this computer collecting hobby >>> > (I apply pioneers to those of us that were doing this seriously over >>> > ten years ago - before this list, and before there even was a hobby). >>> >>> Cool! I'm a pioneer, having collected these things for close to 25 years. > > Even longer than me. I started in May 1986 (yes, it'll soon be 21 years > of computer collecting here ;-)) Started playing with a PDP-11/40 in 1982 or 1983 in a computer club at that time. We also had some other very odd hardware that we tried to get working and had fun with. No software, but we had a few peripherials, so we had to write our own monitor just using the front panel. And of course we had all the drawings for the machine. And we were always trying to get someone to donate more stuff to us. And of course, my school at the time used a PDP-11/70, and at nights I was hanging out at the nearby university, where they had a whole bunch of DEC-10 machines on which I could get guest accounts. By 1986 I got my first two PDP-8 systems home. Almost wish I was back in those days. So much fun. And some really odd hardware was still around and possible to get your hands on... I wonder what happened to the VT05 terminals that we managed to get, and that I hacked to get rid of the margin bell... :-) >>> Well, I'm not sure I would call it collecting in the normal sense of the >>> word. I want to keep these machines running, useable, and in use. > > Just like me again. I keep on saying at HPCC that I am not an HP > calculator collector. Yes, I have old HP calculators (handhelds and > desktops), but I use them. I keep them operational, I do program them, I > do use them for calculators. And I don't try to obtain every cosmetic > version (that is, with differnt position of the serial number label, > etc), but I am interested in at least seeing versions with substantially > different internals (like the 2 very different logic boards that were used in the HP80 financial calculator). Still have my HP-41 around, and it's still my all time favourite. I must admit I have collcted some odd hardware for it over the years that I don't really use much though... But it's a rather hacked CX with modules built into it, and some nice stuff around. :-) > No, I am not intersted in having machines on the shelf in original > condition. I want to be able to sue them, investigate them, and so on. We think alike. :-) Johnny

18 years, 3 months

Looking for Intel SDK-51/MCS-51 System Design Kit User's Guide / Assembly Manual / Monitor Listing

by glen.slick＠gmail.com

Does anyone have hard copies or scans of these Intel SDK-51/MCS-51 manuals? 121588-002 SDK-51/MCS-51 System Design Kit User's Guide 121589-002 SDK-51 MCS-51 System Design Kit Assembly Manual 121590-003 SDK-51 Monitor Listing Manual

18 years, 3 months

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test-drb January 2007