test-drb February 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

208 participants
390 discussions

by wmaddox＠pacbell.net

There's what appears to be a very nice Olivetti Programma 101 up on eBay, with a little over a day to go and no bids. It's in the Netherlands. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8801280590&sspagename=AD… The Programma 101 was a very advanced programmable calculator, introduced in 1965. Discrete transistors, delay-line memory, magnetic card I/O. I've exchanged a little bit of email with the seller. He says its been in storage for a long time, and a couple of rubber belts inside have turned gooey, but looks to be complete and in otherwise good shape. If you want a little bit of discrete-transistor goodness, I doubt you can find it in any smaller package than this (Ok, so a 9100A/B has both discrete transistors *and* core memory, but the Programma 101 was earlier.) I don't have any relation to the seller, I just decided that I wasn't going to bid on this, so I'd make sure the list saw the listing -- this is a very desirable machine and I figure someone, maybe one of the UK folks, would go for it. --Bill

17 years, 2 months

Re-finding more items as I open boxes

by DAW＠yalepress3.unipress.yale.edu

> ---------- > From: John R. Keys Jr. > Reply To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 2:54 PM > To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org > Subject: Re-finding more items as I open boxes > > Found the following while unpacking in the warehouse: <<<<<clipped>>>>>> > Took some other goodies home to play with like the 20th Annv. MAC,... > --- 20th Anniversary Mac? You booger... I may have to grab it when you're not looking. ;-) --- David A Woyciesjes --- C & IS Support Specialist --- Yale University Press --- mailto:david.woyciesjes@yale.edu --- (203) 432-0953 --- ICQ # - 90581 Mac OS X 10.1.2 - Darwin Kernel Version 5.2: Fri Dec 7 21:39:35 PST 2001 Running since 01/22/2002 without a crash

17 years, 3 months

Apple Disk ][ X-Ray

by grant＠stockly.com

This is my attempt at an "art" x-ray. This image includes the entire range of densities. If I were to penetrate the motor I would blow through the plastic. This is a high resolution x-ray. Zoom into the front label and see if you can read the embossed name plates... What COLOR is this actual drive? The answer is in there! ; ) http://www.stockly.com/images2/061231-Disk_II_Drive-120kv6ma15msDG35SFD.jpg This shot was taken with the drive elevated at an angle by foam so that you would get a 3d feeling and not a flat picture. Let me know if its cool. I may x-ray an entire computer next... : ) Grant

17 years, 6 months

The Univac III (in trailer) is back

by ssj152＠charter.net

Well, the Univac III is back: UNIVAC III Computer (In Storage since 1975), eBay auction Item # 2733726990. This time the starting price is $7,500 and the buy-it-now is $11,000. The URL is: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2733726990&category=1247 OK, somebody, jump right on it! :-) (Not me, I'm into LITTLE computers like PDP-11's and VAXen, with an occasional side dish of 6502 or 8085) Stuart Johnson

17 years, 7 months

Turbodos on a Horizon 8/16 system

by frustum＠pacbell.net

This email is short on questions; just a vintage computer putzing report. I do have one question of opinion at the end. I've had a northstar horizon 8/16 system for a year and a half now, but I was able to finally get everything together and a bit of time to get it running. The 8/16 is a normal horizon (in the aluminum cabinet, not wooden), with a beefier power supply. There may be some other mechanical differences, such as many more punchouts in the back. The purpose of the system is to host multiple CPUs running in a S-100 backplane, each with its own local memory, using the Z80 down on the motherboard to act as a server for the shared resources. As the 8/16 name implies, you can have 8b (z80) or 16b (8086) CPUs, or a mix of them. Mine has two Z80 cards, each with 64KB DRAM, in addition to the Z80 on the motherboard and 64KB DRAM that is uses on the S-100 BUS. The box has a single 5.25" floppy and a 30 MB Rodime hard drive (ST506 type interface). The way things are set up in the horizon, you can't boot directly off the hard drive; the usual procedure is to boot the floppy, and the floppy contains a bootstrap to load the OS from the hard disk. I first booted into HDOS from floppy, the hard disk version of NSDOS. It has both non-destructive and destructive disk tests. "LI" shows that there is no meaningful HDOS file system on the drive. Next, I ran only the non-destructive test since one goal is to see what is on the hard disk. HDOS, like NSDOS, has a command for reading arbitrary absolute sectors from the floppy, but it isn't supported on the hard drive -- instead you can load sectors relative to a named file, which doesn't help me here. Next I booted turbodos from floppy. "DIR" shows no meaningful file system on either of the two partitions on the drive. Finally, I'm at an impasse. I assume that this system had *something* on the drive, although I suppose a previous owner did a FORMAT on the drive before passing the system on. It would be easiest for me to just format the drive and install either HDOS, or more likely, TurboDos and get on with it. If I had more time I'd look into finding a mechanism to read the hard drive sector by sector and make a copy, but the reality is I have more projects than I have time for, so this seems unlikely. Does anybody who has read this far have an idea what to do next? Format and reinstall? Write my own driver to dump the disk first? Find an old PC with a controller card that could interface to the drive?

17 years, 8 months

Is MSX on topic?

by cclist＠sydex.com

On 22 Jan 2007 at 16:49, Fred Cisin wrote: > The AT started in 1984. Some areas (both geographic, and social) > immediately went for it, and some put it off as long as they could, since > the IBM/MICROS~1 software didn't provide any real incentive to upgrade > other than high density drives and a little faster; > until Windoze 3.1 and OS/2. More than a little faster, at least to my recollection. Something like 3 times as fast. 16 bit disk I/O and a CPU with nearly 4 times the transistor count of the 8088. A lot of folks who bought the original 6 MHz PC AT discovered overclocking. While you could find 8 and 9 MHz 8088/8086 systems, neither came close to a 6 MHz AT in terms of performance. And if you were adventuresome and clocked that PC AT at 12 or (I've heard it was done) 20 MHz, the gains were breathtaking--and you had a convenient place to cook lunch. One thing that IBM did that really toasted me back then was messing up on the 8237 DMA controller hookup such that memory-to-memory DMA didn't work. It could have made the whole business of extended memory use a lot simpler. Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 8 months

Xebec Winchester controller

by aek＠bitsavers.org

What I have are the docs for the MSC-9305 ST506-GPIB interface which used the Xebec module. At one point it looked like the commands were compatible. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/msc/MSC-9305_ST506-GPIB_1980.pdf

17 years, 9 months

OT Re: Is this true?? (TI & watches)

by marvin＠rain.org

> From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > I can remember seeing at least one project for a crystal-controlled > timing source using tubes (I think it used push-pull 6F6's in the > output stage) to run an ordinary synchronous-motor wall clock. This > would probably be during the 1940s or 50s. > > Does anyone remember that the oldest of said wall clocks required the > owner to start the motor manually by spinning a little knurled shaft > located on the back? I seem to recall a rumor where the power companies were offering to replace at no charge those clocks that needed to be mamually started (before my time.) The reason had something to do with using power that didn't register on the power meter. Anyone here know if this is fact or fiction?

17 years, 9 months

msc hpib disc on eBay

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170084570047 similar to what I just posted the manual for.

17 years, 9 months

I am now Annoyed [Re: Old oscilloscope help: ideas sought]

by mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA

Some of you may reacll that, back in July, I wrote about an oscilloscope whose power transformer failed in service. Well, today I was going through my tuit collection and found some round ones. I've now clipped the transformer free of the circuit and removed it. I then applied an ohmmeter to the transformer, now that it's free of the machine, which gave me good guesses at what winding is what. Then I got out the current-limiting light bulb rig and hooked the primary up (well, half the primary; it has a split primary, for 115/230 mains switching). Then I measured the primary voltage and the voltages on various interesting windings. Based on all of this, I think I have a good guess what's what: - Input mains: four wires, two windings, which are connected in parallel for 115V operation and series for 230V operation. - 5VAC filament winding for B+ rectifier tube. - ~800VAC CT (400-0-400) winding which is rectified for B+. (With 26V on the 115V-nominal mains primary, this measured 176V, or ~778V when running normally.) - Filament winding for one HV rectifier tube. - Filament winding for the other HV rectifier tube. - HV supply winding. - 6.3VAC CT winding to run the heaters for most tubes. (There are some 12V-heater tubes, but they all have centre-tapped heaters.) - There is one more wire unaccounted for. On opening the transformer case, I find it is a case ground. The HV supply winding appears to be fried. I didn't bother with all the filament windings (though I did measure the heater winding, which appeared to be intact); the B+ supply winding seemed intact, but the HV supply winding showed ~2V instead of the 200-300V I would expect with ~25V on the primary. So now I'm thinking of finding a half-dozen different transformers to run the six different pieces off of.... /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

17 years, 9 months

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test-drb February 2007