test-drb December 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

215 participants
420 discussions

Probably OT - eBay object - what the devil is it?

by jplist2007＠kiwigeek.com

What on Earth is this? 110206772756 I'm guessing its OT because of the SMD devices in the centre ring, but it is weird enough I'm willing to risk Jay's wrath to find out what it is. Thanks all; - JP

17 years, 6 months

small misc. parts available...

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

MSD let their main line sewer backup, 10 feet downhill on the street from my house. So... all my upstreet neighbors sewage wound up in my basement. The servepro people are here removing everything from my basement (any of you that have seen my basement know what THAT is like)... and starting their cleaning process. Not much of the collection has been affected... the notable items that were sitting in 5 inches of raw waste were a HP 2100S cpu, Microdata Reflex disc drive, HP D series box, RL01 drive, a couple 7900A drives... I think that's the major items affected. Not sure how they plan to disinfect the wire wrap backplane on the 2100, may be a loss :\ Anyways... the reason I'm posting this... Since the cleaners are bringing in a dumpster to remove unsalvageable stuff, they kindly agreed to take away stuff that has been taking space here that I was going to get rid of... like DEC corp cabs, some lowboy some full height, one stuffed with RA81's (all dead), etc. I am going to have these carted off. I will post to the list specific items as they go out the back door (to sit for a day before the dumpster truck comes). I will not save whole racks, but if there is any specific rack hardware or bits that someone wants me to strip off, I will do so. Right now - Out went a mid-height dec corp cab that used to house an 11/44. It used to have an RA81? drive in it, so it's one of those extra deep corp cabs. Does anyone need those hex sided metal posts that stick like 7 inches out from the rack, or that large bracket at the bottom where you hook up those round (power sequencing?) cables (4 pin, screw on). More as it becomes available... Jay

17 years, 6 months

a place for OT

by rtellason＠verizon.net

I just want to mention again that there's a place where some of you guys could take what's OT here and chat it up if you like, a yahoo group I started for things that don't quite fit anywhere else: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roys-tech-chat/ Feel free to stop on by if you like. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

17 years, 6 months

Obscure PC operating systems and apps [was Re: got this old peecee...]

by lproven＠gmail.com

On 06/12/2007, Roy J. Tellason <rtellason at verizon.net> wrote: > On Thursday 06 December 2007 12:53, Chuck Guzis wrote: > > On 6 Dec 2007 at 1:52, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > > > I'd originally planned to put OS/2 in this box. Now I'm lots less > > > enthused about that OS than I was at one time, so I dunno what I'm gonna > > > do with it. Thoughts on this? Depends what you want to do, or be able to do, with it, obviously! Do you want a GUI OS? Do you want Internet access? Do you want productivity apps? It's a bit low-spec for a modern Linux distro. You could try some low-end distros, like DamnSmallLinux, Puppy, or VectorLinux. I've also heard good comments of SaxenOS & Crux on low-end PCs, but I've not tried them myself yet. It would run NetBSD pretty nicely, but then, the same is probably true of some toasters. One that might suit it quite well would be Minix 3. Never played with that yet myself. It might run BeOS, especially with a 5x86 chip in there. BeOS Max is a good, freely-available BeOS distro. Mainly intended for Pentium-class systems, though. FreeDOS or DR-DOS plus OpenGEM would run very well; indeed, it's quite high-spec for that. For a more modern, but commercial, DOS GUI, there's Geos, AKA GeoWorks, now known as Breadbox Ensemble. Again, it costs, but you can assemble a fairly complete little system from various free demos and things that have been put out there. http://www.breadbox.com/ (I think others have suggested something akin to Concurrent DOS. IMS' Real32 was the last supported descendant of that, I think, but it's primarily a multiuser thing so not of great interest on a standalone box - it just looks like MS-DOS.) Or just plain old DOS, together with DesqView, or, if you want something cool and exotic, DesqView/X. That might be both fun and quite productive couple with some of the last-generation, high-end DOS apps, like MS Word 5.5 (available free >from MS and so downloadable, as they gave it away rather than issue Y2K patches for Word for DOS.) I'd like to try WordPerfect 6.0 for DOS, which had a full GUI, but I've been looking for a copy for years with no joy. It was unusably slow at the time, but on a more recent PC like a fast 486, it should fly along. There was also a full-GUI graphical spreadsheet version of one of the major spreadsheets, but I don't remember details now. I think it might have been Borland Quattro or QuattroPro 5 or so for DOS. If you can get a supported TCP/IP stack running on DOS, there *are* some DOS web browsers, such as Arachne and Lineo's WebSpyder. I'm not sure about email programs, though. Bung in a SCSI card and a couple of old SCSI disks, make it into a NetWare server? There was a freely-available 2-user version of Netware 4.1, and that can be patched up to date with free service packs, making it fully W2K compliant and so on. If you want to try a modern, networking-enabled OS/2, there's Serenity's eComStation. Expensive, though. There's a free demo live CD, but it's not installable. If you fancy something unusual, which IME doesn't work well in VMs on modern PCs, you could try the DEC-like TSX-32, which is sort of aesthetically appropriate - it's a sort of PDP-like OS for the PC. http://www.sandh.com/tsx32.htm Also on a DEC theme, there's FreeVMS, but I don't think they have any downloads yet. http://www.freevms.org/ Somewhere lost in a cupboard I have an ancient 386 notebook PC, whose 80MB hard disk has DOS (DR-DOS 7 with QEMM) coupled to a choice of about 4 GUIs, a range of productivity apps, and also dual-boots with Pygmy Linux giving me TCP/IP through a parallel port Ethernet adaptor and thus very basic Web access with Links. All this in 80MB and it's about one-third full. I think it has WordPerfect 5.1, Word 5.5, a spreadsheet of some kind, plus a selection of DesqView, OpenGEM, ViewMAX and GeoWorks Ensemble. It was a real nostalgia-fest putting it together. It has the Microsoft free DOS network stack, too, with TCP/IP, but it can't actually talk to any modern Windows machine. Just don't ask me to get it to print... -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508

17 years, 6 months

Yet another VT-100 emulator

by cclist＠sydex.com

> From: "Dave Dunfield" <dave06a at dunfield.com> > As far as I know there are no **STANDARD** PC text video modes that give > 132 columns. What was *standard* for the time of these cards? Herc graphics certainly weren't "standard" when they came out. I've not checked, but I have a couple of Everex MicroEnhancer EGA boards with a boatload of additional modes--and one of those might well be a 132- character one. (If anyone is really curious, I can check). > Yes, at 720 dots, you can do a 5 point wide font for 132 columns on a > Herc., but I don't have Hercules (or any MDA) cards in any of the system > that I actually use on a regular basis (POLL: How many here are using Herc > cards in systems they would want to use as a VT100) - I'm also not sure I > could achieve all of the attributes (Can you blink graphics on a Herc? - I > suppose you could do it in software, but the only MDA machines I have here > are XT class which would make for "interesting effects" :-) I think I also > mentioned that I wasn't quite ready to do a bitmapped version of the > terminal yet. I agree that it would be nice to do eventually, as I could > support double-width/height characters as well... Ever worked with a Hercules Graphics Plus? It can blink, as well as support 12-bit character width and software fonts--all in text mode. There was a also mode setting to use 8-dot wide, rather than 9-dot wide characters. Double-width was certainly possible in test mode. Perhaps a scheme to use the extended character set to display 132 characters could be worked out, but I hated the 132 character display on most terminals, even the 14-inch ones as being too grainy and hard to read for my weak eyes. Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 6 months

The 2N2/256-BSCP [was: Homebrew Drum Computer]

by cclist＠sydex.com

> From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> > I'd love to find a huge stash of a few thousand new-old-stock tunnel > diodes. :-( You'll kindly observe that I had the good taste not to also mention Shockley diodes, which, to the best of my knowledge, are really unobtainium. American Microsemiconductor still offers a selection of tunnel (Esaki) diodes, for as cheap as $9 the each. http://store.americanmicrosemiconductor.com/diodes-tunnel-diodes.html I suspect a clue to the high prices is the "JAN" labeling on some of the parts (i.e. military and aerospace application). I have a copy of the GE tunnel diode handbook around here somewhere (as well as about a dozen or so NOS diodes in my hellbox) that shows all manner of logic circuits constructed with the little beasts. I've never even breadboarded any of them, but the power requirements look very modest. OTOH, I've never seen a book detailing logic circuits with Shockley diodes, though I imagine it's certainly possible. Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 6 months

digital camera capabilities

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

On Dec 19, 2007, at 6:07 PM, Roy J. Tellason wrote: > And in reading about the various IBM boxes, only one word comes to > mind: "Baroque"! I wouldn't say that- although I admit that on first looking at even the RS/6000 (and later hearing about the AS/400 and S/3XX) was "weird". IBMs are just a different mindset than DECs. A way of looking at it is that IBM moved "downmarket" and DEC moved "upmarket" (similar thing with most of the computers we see: they started out at the lower end, and then later on the manufacturers decided to put together a big machine for certain customers (PDP-10, SGI PowerSeries, Sun E10k, VAX 9000 ...) IBM also had a paradigm early, and those tend to stick.

17 years, 6 months

The 2N2/256-BSCP [was: Homebrew Drum Computer]

by cclist＠sydex.com

> From: Robert Nansel <bnansel at bigpond.net.au> > 1) To build a complete functional computer, including memory, using > no more than 256 2N2222-ish transistors (plus scads of diodes, resistors, > etc.). > > 2) Use no ICs or other parts that wouldn't have been available to > hobbyists ca. 1965. Well, if you put no limit on the number of diodes (just 3 terminal devices), you can go a heckuva long way using tunnel diodes or even diacs. Or you could use magnetic core logic, using transistors only as I/O terminals and clock drivers. Either of those would certainly satisfy the 1965 aspect. Or is the restriction on "negative resistance devices"? Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 6 months

Stride 460 restoration video posted to YouTube

by daviderhart＠oldzonian.com

>On 21/12/2007, Charles Fox <cfox1 at cogeco.ca> wrote: >> A beautiful job both on the computer and the video. The >> music fitted in with the action, and I liked the pans and zooms. A >> computer doesn't move around much, so what else can you do? It's not >> like shooting "dancing with the stars". > >:?) > >Well, that's certainly true! > >I'm improvising here, but I'd like to have seen some details of how it >was reassembled, for instance - what new or refurbished parts were put >in. A time-lapse of the strip-down and reassembly would have worked >well, showing it being torn apart then rebuilt in 30sec or so. Seeing >what sorts of connectors it has, if special cables were made up, >showing the button being pressed for the 1st power-on, things like >that? > >Just some ideas... > Great ideas. I think I have a much better plan for the next restoration project. I was working backwards in this project. Taking what I had available, pictures, video clips, etc. and making a video. Next time I think a plan would be helpful. ;-) I'm thinking about doing a take-apart/put-back-together series of videos for the Sage II (half-height/full-height), Sage IV and Stride 440 and 460. Might be worth capturing for future 'restorations'. david. >-- >Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven >Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com >Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 >AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com >Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508 >

17 years, 6 months

The 2N2/256-BSCP [was: Homebrew Drum Computer]

by bnansel＠bigpond.net.au

Thu Dec 20, 2007 at 14:50 Tony Duell said: > > ... > > > > 1) To build a complete functional computer, including memory, > > Are things like core-on-a-rope ROM allowrd? Yes. Encouraged, even. > > > using no more than 256 2N2222-ish transistors (plus scads of diodes, > > resistors, etc.). > > Do all transsitors have to be of the same flavour, or could I use TUNs > and TUPs? I'd never encountered the TUN & TUP TLAs before, so I looked them up: Transistor, Universal NPN/PNP. Neat! And any TUN or TUP will do, provided a device of comparable spec was reasonably available to hobbyists in the mid sixties. For my first efforts, at least, I'll be using the PN2222 in modern TO-92 plastic packages. I'm not sure when the TO-92 package was introduced, but there were definitely plastic package transistors available then. SOTs are right out, though :) > I think I'd start by reading the schematics of the HP9100. It contains > more transistors than that, but it's still amazingly simple. > > Anyway, the flip-flops in that machine were JKs, using 4 transistors > each. ... I'll check that out. Thanks. > > 2) Use no ICs or other parts that wouldn't have been available > > to hobbyists ca. 1965. > > So that preumably means a multi-layer-PCB acting as an > inductively-coupled ROM is out. Rats! I recall seeing a few two-layer boards in hobbyist electronics magazines from the '60s. Certainly you can make multilayer boards out of single-side boards, as long as you don't need to make many connections to the inner layers. > > 3) Must be transportable in the boot of a mid-size sedan (i.e. > > Totally OT, but I find 'boot of a sedan' a somewhat odd expession. > 'Trunk > of a sedan' or 'boot of a saloon car' would seem more natural. Maybe it's an Australian thing. Being an ex-pat Yank in Oz, saying "boot" instead of "trunk" still doesn't come naturally to me, even after more than a year here. Saloon car, though, sounds like a sure way to get a drunk driving ticket :) -Bobby

17 years, 6 months

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test-drb December 2007