test-drb October 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

228 participants
467 discussions

Boeing Surplus Closing... for the better...........

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

So it isn't ideal- how's running everything through "a few ebay sellers" and resellers going to improve matters? The Tek terminals will still go to the scrapper, the Grey Walls will still go to the recycle bin (with the binders this time), and nobody else will even have a shot. I work in education, and I provide computer support for a nonprofit, and both groups get stuff at Boeing Surplus (though usually not classic computers- that's my department, and Boeing is a valuable asset, at little cost to Boeing. If you take away the surplus store (providing it covers expenses) you're removing an asset to the community and replacing it with people who are interested in maximizing profits, period. What's the likely change in how they handle 'classic' equipment? Not much.

17 years, 2 months

Kind of vintage - Selling my C-one Computer

by rborsuk＠colourfull.com

Hi All, I've put my C-one computer on eBay if anyones interested. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=300157914171 I know the computer isn't vintage but the stuff it runs, is. Thanks Rob Rob Borsuk email: rborsuk at colourfull.com Colourfull Creations Web: http://www.colourfull.com

17 years, 2 months

MSCP controllers

by bqt＠softjar.se

(Sortof starting a new thread) There have been a discussion about the ineffectiveness of MSCP recently, especially compared to a dumb controller interface. To make a few comments on this; yes the MSCP controller is much more intelligent. But noone have yet talked about what this means. The overhead for playing with the MSCP controller is way much more than for a simple, and stupid controller. However, there is also a big speed gain in some situations. Jerome Fines observations are correct. Under a single-user system such as RT-11 (especially of the software acts in a naive way) much of the advantages of MSCP is lost. The fact that it can deal with large disks (or disks with different sizes) can hardle be called "intelligent". That's really primitive. Things that the MSCP protocol do handle, however, and where the HD: driver will suffer and loose, is when we get into more advanced stuff. The MSCP controller can have many I/O requests outstanding at the same time. Once one operation is completed, it can immediately start the next one. You actually have a zero setup time with MSCP. So if you're doing several I/O operations in sequence, a good driver, in combination with a good program, will be able to get more performance out of the MSCP controller than the HD: driver, which each new operation can only be programmed once the previous operation is completed. The MSCP controller can also complete several I/O requests with just one interrupt. No need for one interrupt for each I/O operation that completes. The MSCP controller can also reorder I/O operations for better efficiency. If you have three requests, jumping back and forth over the disk, it makes sense to actually do the two operations on one end, before doing the operation at the other end. This can be implemented in software by the HD: controller, but then we now have more software that must run before each I/O request is issued. The MSCP controller handles bad block replacement without the involvement of the software. It always present a disk without bad blocks. In real life, all disks have bad blocks, so somewhere this always needs to be handled. Now, if you have a simulated PDP-11, the disk is actually a file on that OS, so the underlaying OS will handle bad blocks for you, so it isn't necceasry for the PDP-11 controller to do this anymore, but MSCP was designed for raw disks, not emulated systems. Dealing with bad blocks on the HD: driver would cost a lot. The MSCP controller can do I/O to several disks in parallel. In real life, controllers like the HD: driver pretends to talk to exists as well. One problem with these are that if you have several disks, you can only do I/O to one disk at a time. Some of these controllers could allow you to do seeks on other disks while I/O was performed on one disk. However, things started getting complicated with this. The MSCP controller have pretty advanced error detection and handling. Including extensive reports to the software on problems. Now, those things are why it's more intelligent. And more intelligent means it also takes more software to talk to it. :-) MSCP is really like serial SCSI (or serial ATA), only done 20 years earlier. Johnny -- Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus || on a psychedelic trip email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol

17 years, 2 months

[Fwd: PDP8 im Ebay]

by gerold.pauler＠gmx.net

Got an email today, that you can get a complete pdp8/f on ebay. It is located in Germany. Does not mention how much memory it got but seams to be complete with paper tape reader and an atari 140ST as console. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320166292810 I don't have any connection to the seller. And I don't have any more free space for another pdp8 of this era. - Gerold

17 years, 2 months

Apple ][ (clone) disk booting

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Morning, What's the normal procedure to boot a floppy from an Apple ][? I'm just taking a look at my Mitac [1] clone (with a view to selling it) and got curious as to whether it'd boot a standard Apple DOS system disk. If powered up with a drive connected the spindle motor starts and it'll step the drive head back to track 0 - but nothing more. On the one hand, it's entirely possible that the machine isn't a close enough clone to work with standard Apple DOS (that wouldn't surprise me at all, in fact) - but on the other, maybe I'm just missing some standard key combination to magically boot from the drive... (whilst I've got an Apple ///, I've never used an Apple ][ in my life) I can hit CTRL-reset and the machine will drop to BASIC; is there a normal way of booting (or at least bringing up a dir) a floppy from BASIC on a genuine ][? [1] Quite an impressive machine. Has some flavour of far-east legends on the key fronts, as well as regular ASCII (we had a discussion about it on here once, but there were conflicting opinions on what language it actually was). Built-in disk controller, joystick port, tape, TV modulator, 80-column card. There's a little backplane which can be plugged into the machine's expansion port and gives you five Apple ][ card slots, too. cheers Jules

17 years, 2 months

New DSDD 5.25" floppies?

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 12:22:46 -0700 From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> Subject: Re: New DSDD 5.25" floppies? >At 3:07 PM -0400 10/4/07, Patrick Finnegan wrote: >>But I think that the OP was talking about floppy disks, else they would >>have surely said "floppy drives"... >I was, I know no one is making new C-1541 drives. Though I'm looking >into building a 1541-III drive... > Zane --------------------------------- It just so happens that a member of the local (Toronto) CBM list is getting rid of 6 1541s and he also has several hundred 5 1/4 floppies; I can put you in touch if you're interested (and he still has them and is willing to ship). If he isn't on this list anyway... mike

17 years, 2 months

TI 990 architecture

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: TI 990 architecture > From: Cameron Kaiser <spectre at floodgap.com> > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:57:08 -0700 (PDT) > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > >> If I remember right, the architecure of the ti chip >> it used a pointer to ram as the internal registers. That would really >> bog down on byte wide bus. > >But then chips like the 9995 do very well on a 8-bit data bus. IMHO the >bigger problems with the 9900 implementation in the 99/4A were the external >scratch pad (made internal for the 9995) and the presence of GROMs, >requiring their own interpretation step and murderously slow serial access. > >Compare this to a system like the Tomy Tutor, which has a 9995 on an 8-bit >bus too, but is significantly faster than the 99/4A despite being clocked >slightly slower (10.7MHz oscillator instead of the 99/4A's 12MHz one). Actually My 99/4a has the 10.7 and the actual CPU is clocked off the slower division of that. The clocks you note were used for the video timing. However, the 9985 was a far nwer chip that the 9900 and was clocked internally faster. Allison

17 years, 2 months

these RTL or what?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: these RTL or what? > From: "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net> > Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:01:29 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >I ran across some data in the pile of what I've been collecting, and there's >some stuff there apparently by Signetics (?) referring to what they're >calling "Utilogic II" -- is this stuff RTL or what? It doesn't say. Dates >are in the late 1960s, and it looks like it, but I figured I'd ask in >here... There are many early families of saturated logic RTL is the oldest, DTL and it's kin "utilogic" where the intermediate sorta TTL like and later TTL( H,LS,S,F,AS,C,HC,HCT flavors). In the middle of all that was ECL (also about three or four generations) a fast non saturating logic. What amazing is when people say "60s" you must do so with care as 1960 was basically germainium transistors but by 1964 silicon transistors are about and ICs were already appearing. Most integrated circuit logic was post '65 and even then from that point speeds went from about 3mhz to 30mhz and RTL was replaced by TTL by 1970. The evoloutionary scale was very steep from the mid 50s to the mid 70s. That 20 years window we went from computers with tubes to microprocessors, delays lines or other serial storage to semiconductor RAM. Allison

17 years, 2 months

Sale of the CoCo lounge

by glenvdb＠hotmail.com

Hello, and good day everyone, Please exscuse the interruption, I am on the Yahoo and Multimedia lists, but It was suggested that I post this information here also. My Name is Glen VanDenBiggelaar, and for the last 3 years, I have run the website www.thecocolounge.com. Due to space and time considerations, I am selling the site, and all the stock and my personal CoCo collection and leaving the hobby. I was close to a deal with anther buyer, but he backed out at the last moment due to shipping problems. I have for sale, my site (domain and all files etc) and 30 boxes of CoCo "stuff" for the on-line store. A lot of the stuff is common hardware (i.e. at least 8 - 10 CoCo 2's etc) but I have some Proto-type experimental stuff also. I don't have a complete list, but I can get a general list off hand. Before you ask, there is only 1 512k CoCo3 and 1 White CoCo 1 and no MPI's or cm8 monitors (sold all of that lot last year) I have at least 5 full high Floppy drives and a lot of "Non-working DD's for parts or repair. I also have the list of box dimensions for shipping on request. I am ask $1000 dollars for all of it (reduced from $5000). The terms are simple : In order to not get accused of shipping gouging, you must make arrangements on your end for shipping. I live up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5M-0K6. The last buyer was an hour out of Buffalo, in Canada, And he was quoted $600 for shipping -which was too much for his budget. The payment will be made through Western Union Money Transfer (as paypal won't actually let me cash Money) and this transaction has to be completed ASAP or I am getting rid of it all at the end of the month. If you have any question, please feel free to e-mail, but I will not tear this lot down, as it is all ready for shipping and the boxes are sealed. You must take it all. _thank you for your time -Glen

17 years, 2 months

Setting up a VAXstation

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

> On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:42:30 -0400 > Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote: > >> It takes longer than that for my iron to warm up. > Wrong iron. => Metcal. > -- > > > tsch??, > Jochen > So THAT'S why my soldering jobs look so bad. Works great for tinning boards, though :-).

17 years, 2 months

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test-drb October 2007