test-drb February 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

208 participants
390 discussions

by grant＠stockly.com

>Did anyone make S-100 SCSI? One could roll ones own, but that's a >different level of expense. The 5380, 3 resistor packs, a '138, couple latches, and about 10 square inches of an S-100 breadboard card. Grant

17 years, 6 months

Heath ET-3400 Trainer Simulator SW

by ntp71＠ptd.net

do you have a copy of the trainer.zip file please need much neal

17 years, 6 months

IBM Thermal Printer 5181001

by dbethke＠sbcglobal.net

I wonder if you still have the printer and what is the price? Dennis Howell Mountain Retreat Fonda and Dennis Bethke PO Box 731 277 Luring Pines Drive Angwin, CA 94508 Phone 707 965-3057 FAX?? 707 965-2835 dennisbethke at msn.com www.vrbo.com/21031 www.winecountrymall.biz ?

17 years, 6 months

Tower of Nerd

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> The ultimate Altair needs to run Linux. Like a fish needs a bicycle? http://techdigest.tv/pcmaclinux.jpg

17 years, 6 months

FS: PDP-11/24

by charlesmorris＠hughes.net

I have too many projects (including my 8/A and 11/23+) and not enough time, and don't want to keep my 11/24 sitting until the mice build nests in it. It seems to be alive (comes up to ODT on the console port) but I haven't tested it otherwise. 1 M7133 KDF11-UA 11/24 CPU with line clock and 2 SLU 1 M7134 KT-24 Unibus map, extension to 22 bits 1 M8743 (ECC RAM, either 512 Kb or 1 Mbyte) 2 M8722 (ECC Memory either 128 Kb or 256 Kb each) 1 M8188 FPF11 floating point processor 1 M7762 RL11 disk controller RL01/02 1 M7258 LP11 printer controller 1 DSD A2130-6 disk controller 4 M7819 DZ11-A eight RS232 ports each 1 M920 Unibus connector 1 M7297 RH11 MASSBUS Parity Control 1 M7296 RH11 MASSBUS Control & Status Registers 1 M7295 RH11A MASSBUS Bus Controller 1 M7294 RH11 MASSBUS Data Buffer and Control 3 M5904 RH11 MASSBUS Control Transceivers 1 M9300 Unibus terminator 1 M9312 Bootstrap Terminator Looking for a good home, please make a reasonable offer. Shipping may be expensive (that chassis/power supply is *heavy*). Can email pics. I'm in south central Missouri, zip 65775. thanks Charles

17 years, 6 months

Tektronix terminals [was: Re: Re: Humpty Dumpty]

by rickb＠bensene.com

>>> There also was a 'write through' mode, >>> again, not sure if it was a hack, or part of the production terminals, >>> that would (within the limitations of the RS-232 port) could do simple >>> dynamic (non-stored) vector graphics. >>It is also on the 4010. The 4010 and the 4014 have a card cage into >>which you can insert your own cards. >I have a 4010 and didn't see any mention of this in the manual. Do you >know if it took special cards? I know that the 4010 did not provide write-through in "stock" form. There were only two aspects of the 4010 that did write-through. One was the "crosshairs" that would be drawn on the screen when the "GIN" (Graphic In) escape sequence was received. When put into GIN mode, write-through X&Y crosshairs would appear, and two thumbwheels could be used to position the intersection of the crosshairs anywhere on the screen, then any key could be pressed to send the coordinates, and the key pressed, back to the host system. The other was a write-through vertical line that scanned left-to-right when the optional dry-silver paper hardcopy unit was connected to the 4010. The write-thru line would "scan" the screen, and areas of the screen that had stored points/vectors would cause voltage variations in a sense circuit, which would cause a special CRT in the hardcopy unit to duplicate the screen contents as dry-silver paper would pass by the CRT. Then, the paper was passed through a heater (HOT!) that would develop the latent image in the silver, and fix it. There very well could have been options or hacks that provided the ability to draw write-through vectors. I do know that there was a PDP/11 DMA parallel option that was available for the 4010 that allowed much higher speed operation than offered by the serial port, but there were handshaking considerations that had to be taken into account, because the PDP/11 could easily outpace the ability of the 4010 to keep up. I do know that there were write current adjustments which you could fiddle with which would turn down the energy of the beam enough that it wouldn't cause storage. But then, the 4010 was write-through ONLY. It became really difficult to read text on the screen, as it would have to be continuously refreshed. Through the serial port, there just wasn't enough speed to be able to refresh a whole screen's worth of text fast enough to be readable. I believe that the statement that was made that the 4014 (a large-screen [19" diagonal, IIRC) version of the 4010, with faster vector draw rates, and more features) is correct. I think that the 4014 did have a programmable write-through mode but I recall that it was an option, and didn't come standard. I remember talking to someone in the CRT fab building (Tek built all of their own DVST and oscilloscope tubes for many years -- the building no longer exists on the campus though..it was demolished quite a number of years ago) who was involved with the design of the DVST tube for the 4014. It was a major challenge. It was a large screen for the time, and major challenges involved in structural stability, along with the difficulties of fabricating the complex structures that made the storage tube possible. Tek's DVST terminals were mainstays of graphics display technology for quite some time. It was much less expensive than the vector systems made by folks like Sanders and others. I remember a CAD system in the basement of building 50 that was PDP-8-based, made by a company that I can't remember, unfortunately. The company OEM'd Tek's storage tubes for the displays on the machine. The system was used for circuit board layout. It didn't do routing or anything like that...it only allowed a layout to be "drawn", and then turned into a photoplotter tape that would generate the negative artwork for the board. The storage tubes on this system definitely operated in write-through mode most of the time, and were capable of having quite a few vectors on the screen at once without too much flicker. I spent quite a bit of spare time down there watching the artists (in those days, circuit board layout folks were truly artists) designing the various layers of Tek's famous multi-layer circuit boards used in their oscilloscopes and other instrumentation. The PDP-8 was a transistorized PDP 8 (not a straight-8 but one of the later ones before they started using ICs), and had a couple of RK05 drives, along with a full rack that was filled with the display subsystem electronics. Tek later made a machine called the 4081. It used a similar DVST tube as the used on the 4014 terminal. It was a computer workstaiton based on an Interdata 8/16 CPU that Tektronix OEM'd from Interdata. The machine had a Tek-designed custom display-list processor, and could do some pretty fancy write-through graphics, along with storage graphics. It was fast enough that even a reasonable amount of vector text could be painted on the screen in write-through mode. Storage and write-through could be mixed. The machine used what I believe were OEM'd from Diablo, similar to RK05-F's, with one fixed platter, and one removable platter. The machine also had a cartridge tape drive that could be used to "IPL" the system. I spent a lot of time writing Pascal and machine-level code on this machine. There were some really fun games that were written for this machine. There was a disk operating system (I can't remember the name) that was kind of OS/8-like, with similar commands, and user-perceived filesystem structure. I wonder if any of these machines are still around an in operation. After the 4081, the move to raster graphics had gathered speed. Tek did a lot of research internally on raster graphics. There was an absolutely groundbreaking machine called the Magnolia (never marketed) that had some kind of bit-slice processor, a highly capable bit-slice raster BLIT graphics engine. The machine had a Micropolis 40MB 8" hard disk in the base of the "terminal", and ran a Tek-developed window-based multiprocessing (Unix-like) operating system, with the development environment being Smalltalk. It had a monochrome display, but could do gray-scale, which made shading, etc. possible. The biggest problem with the design was that with the hard disk in the base, users tended to kick and bump their feet on the bottom of the pedestal, which would cause shocks to the hard disk, and cause head crashes. Those old drives were pretty sensitive. The sad part of the whole thing was that Tektronix never pursued these machines as a product - the machine never made it past prototype stage. I believe that Xerox Parc had their early machines (Star, etc.) out already, which the Tek machines were clearly patterned after, but Tektronix' graphics expertise would have made these machines into tremendous standalone graphics workstations long before they became mainstream. An example of one of many of Tektronix' missed market opportunities. I ended up getting a number of those Micropolis 40MB drives (brand new in the box, for something like $20) used in Magnolia from the Tek Country Store (another whole article could be written on this wonderful place) much later, and built a custom interface for a homebrew 6800-based computer that I'd built, and wrote drivers for the FLEX operating system to talk to the drive. The drives ran quite hot, were extremely noisy, and had essentially a simple parallel interface. It was pretty cool having a computer system at home that had a whopping 40MB of hard disk space when everyone was running Apple II's and the likes with floppies. As always, a long diatribe that somewhat wanders off-topic, but it is all definitely within the context of the list. Rick Bensene The Old Calculator Web Museum http://oldcalculatormuseum.com

17 years, 6 months

Speaking of terminals - a Morrow Designs/Lear Siegler ADM20 dropped on me today

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> > it. Didn't see anything on bitsavers, but I did find this... tech docs on the mdt20 are up now under http://bitsavers.org/pdf/morrow/mdt20

17 years, 6 months

Recent Ohio Scientific lot on ebay...

by wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net

Well, old age is starting to catch up with me... While sitting and waiting for the lot (item #170077516683) to get a little closer to its end time last night, I fell asleep in front of the computer and didn't bid. I'm not familiar with the ebay ID of the winner, if you are on this list, I'll pay what you bid for copies of the documentation that was "hinted at" in the lot listing. To everyone else, sorry for the interruption. Bill Sudbrink -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.411 / Virus Database: 268.17.33/678 - Release Date: 2/9/2007

17 years, 6 months

Sixel graphics (was: Humpty Dumpty)

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Sixel graphics (was: Humpty Dumpty) > From: Richard <legalize at xmission.com> > Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 01:40:18 -0700 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > >In article <0JD500346VGN4EW3 at vms040.mailsrvcs.net>, > Allison <ajp166 at bellatlantic.net> writes: > >> Error! VT100 had sixel graphics as did VT220, 320 and 340 added color, >> VT1200 as full graphics (xterm). > >Sorry, but I just don't think this is correct. I meant Regis graphics, Sixel is a printer graphics protocal (As in LA75, LA100 and others). >VT100 docs (user guide and technical guide, both on bitsavers) do not >mention sixel graphics at all. Paul Shuford's site has some >discussion of what "sixel graphics" means and apparently different >people use the term loosely to describe different things. > >The VT125 had ReGIS graphics capability, but this is not a VT100. Totally incorrect as the Vt125 is a VT100 + the VT125 graphics plane. So a VT125 is a vt100 but a VT100 is not a VT125 holds. >The VT220 Programmer Reference Manual also does not mention sixel >graphics, but you can download a font glyph definition and presumably >with the right custom font you could display some sort of image, but >its not "sixel graphics". > >The VT320, like the VT200 series, also had user-definable character >sets. You can "fake" some graphics this way like you can with the >VT220. See <http://vt100.net/dec/vt320/soft_characters>. > >I know all these DEC terminal models can become confusing, but trust >me, I have been paying attention to which models support graphics. ><http://vt100.net/vt_history> gives these models as supporting >graphics: IT was VT105 I'd meant not the base VT100. > VT55: primitive graphics capability > VT105: VT100 + VT55 graphics capability > <http://home.arcor.de/magnos/ccg/vt105/VT105.html> > VT125: Graphics produced as a separate display from the text. > (I am not sure what this means; a separate monitor > required?) It means the display was a two plane one for characters and one for grpahics and they are displayed on the same tube. External monitor is required for color though. My Vt125 and VT185 have this. > VT240: B&W ReGIS graphics > VT241: Color ReGIS graphics > VT330: B&W ReGIS graphics > VT340: Color ReGIS graphics Read further the manual. Works fine on mine. I prefer the DEC tubes as Real Terminals(tm) rather than PCs running a poor emulation. I have used all of them in place AKA in the terminal and printers engineering (in a former engineering life) group makes it harder to remember all of them. It's also a problem as I have a few one off firmware versions that were not produced. Allison

17 years, 6 months

Origins of "ansi" color codes

by palazzol＠comcast.net

Hello, Some old PC terminal emulators emulate "ansi" color. They use a total of 16 colors, which are really 8 colors with light/dark (bold/normal) versions. The color modes are triggered by escape sequences. The actual colors used in various emulators vary quite a bit. I am interested in knowing which terminal actually originated these colors (vt241? vt3xx series?). Ideally, I'd love to see a color spec, or schematics of how the terminal actually generated the colors, to try to get the most accurate representation possible of the colors. Thanks for any help, Frank

17 years, 6 months

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test-drb February 2007