test-drb February 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

208 participants
390 discussions

by evan＠snarc.net

Hi all, I'm looking for a Panasonic FH-2000, Panasonic HC-2000, or Nixdorf PC-05. If anybody here has one, then please contact me off-list if you're willing to sell or trade it. Thanks! - Evan

17 years, 10 months

Humpty Dumpty

by legalize＠xmission.com

Any ideas on how I would go about putting this humpty dumpty back together again? Its a Visual 500 terminal, and its significant because a) in two years of monitoring ebay I haven't seen any other Visual Technology terminals offered b) it has graphics capability (Tektronix 4010 emulation) <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-1.jpg> <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-2.jpg> <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-3.jpg> <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-4.jpg> <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-5.jpg> <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-6.jpg> <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-7.jpg> <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-8.jpg> <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/vintage/images/damaged/visual-9.jpg> This thing was so poorly packed that even the spacing posts in the keyboard were sheared off. The circuit boards don't appear damaged and amazingly the tube doesn't appear damaged, but obviously the case is pretty heavily smashed. The ebay seller accused me of trying to rip them off by claiming damage and then made a big stink about me giving them negative feedback. I think there was *one* inflated pillow style spacer on the top of the unit when I opened it. They also tried to claim that UPS packed it, which seems like utter bullshit. I've been thinking that I might be able to glue enough of the pieces of the case back together to get something stable enough to have the electronics working again. (I've never attempted to power it on and man, was I pissed when I opened up this box!) I suppose it would be prohibitively expensive to try and recast a new plastic enclosure for it... -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 10 months

New DEC museum entry :D

by witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk

Hi folks, It always pleases me to bring some new DEC stuff into Binary Dinosaurs, but it's even better when it's in good condition and still working nicely :) Tonight I drove a grand total of 62 miles to *edit* bollocks, while I was typing this the machine I was going to crow about nuked the power to my house :) Aaaaaanyhoo, it's a Professional 380 with RD52 and RX50 coupled to a nice VR241 for display purposes, running P/OS 2.2. Or at least it was until the power gave out. To be fair it hadn't been powered up for a few years so I really should've taken it into work and started it up on the 'doesn't matter if it blows' mains but hey ho. No magic smoke so I wonder what's up with it..... It came with an LA210, LVP16 plotter, several boxes of Pro manuals and loads of P/OS disks and software distros. In a word: nice. Unless it's going to keep nuking my mains :) -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection?

17 years, 10 months

The Lightning Empiricist: Analog Computers in the real world

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

I just re-discovered (after decades since I last saw it) a remarkable newsletter/journal/marketing tool titled "The Lightning Empiricist". If you Google for it you will find stuff from 55 years ago (some of it through/via the Computer History Museum). Good stuff. Highly recommended. Tim.

17 years, 10 months

plotters again

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

Inspired by all that talk of plotters last week, I lugged the box containing the HP9872A upstairs and opened it for the first time in 6 years. A few repairs later, an evening in a comfy chair with the manuals (it's nice to have manuals for a change), and some doodling on the 9815 calculator which drives it, and the plotter is zip'in and zoom'in about. Yup, it's pretty neat, esp. with the built-in character generation with scaling. The weak point in this scenario however, is the torture of programming the 9815 and problems with the tape cartridges and drive of the 9815. Those cartridges and drive may have been OK in the day, but today with the gooey wheel issue and failing elastic bands in the cartridges they're nothing one wants to rely on. Given that the plotter uses HP-GL as the control language, I began to think along the same lines as Chuck wrote about a day ago: building a simple parallel interface to the plotter HP-IB port that does just the data transfer (minus all the HP-IB device selection, etc. functions) to connect it up to a more flexible/modern source/controller machine. That's just a thought at the moment so there's no immediate need, but I'm wondering if there are any HP-GL plot files (or collection thereof) out there which would then be available to simply throw down the line at the plotter to draw cute stuff and exercise the plotter. I'm not really thinking of programs or graphics software packages that generate HP-GL, as that would require particular hardware/systems to execute on. Rather: just straight ASCII-text HP-GL files that were previously generated or hand-coded, sort of in the same spirit as 'ASCII-art' was produced.

17 years, 10 months

cctalk Digest, Vol 42, Issue 73

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 20:42:15 +0000 (GMT) From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) Subject: Re: New DEC museum entry :D (not the breaker sub-thread) >Does the word 'wonmdering' have any meaning to oyu? Who is this oyu? I can't speak for him/her/it, but not to me. Or is this Zen or some deep philosophical question for us to ponder? m

17 years, 10 months

Watch out for Alexandra Carter (resolved)

by vp＠drexel.edu

I feel bad for starting this thread, because the machine arrived today. The postage stamp indicated that it had been posted on February 16 (more than ten days ago -- so I was making all this fuss when the machine was already on its way). Having said that, Ms Carter is really mad. If she had simply given me the date she posted the package instead of filing the non-payment report I wouldn't have blown my top. Anyway, thanks to everybody for their support and helpful suggestions. **vp

17 years, 10 months

New "D" drive -- WD Caviar

by dm561＠torfree.net

--------------Original Message: Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 22:28:26 -0800 From: Hollandia at ccountry.net Subject: Re: New "D" drive -- WD Caviar To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Message-ID: <200702260628.l1Q6SOoZ011678 at mailproxy1.ccountry.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mr. DePermentier, I apologize for not mentioning this originally. The only jumper settings possible on the "C" drive are Device 0, Device 1 and Cable Select. Sorry for the omission. Kurt >Hi why don't you set the C: drive to Master and the D: drive to Slave. > >Al DePermentier > > --------------Reply: Nitpicking: Primary and/or Secondary Device (Drive) 0 and 1 are in fact the correct unambiguous names for the drives (although you will also see them referred to as Disk 1 and 2, e.g. in Fdisk, so maybe first & second would be even better). Two drives with single partitions will _usually_ be labelled as C: and D:, but if there are partitions or an unusual configuration C: and D: could refer to either drive, the same drive, or even neither one (unlikely in your case). To sum up: If you have a secondary IDE port that's not in use, use it for the second drive, jumpered as master, and leave the "C:" drive as is. If there are two drive connectors on the cable, use the one at the end. If you only have one port available or the BIOS only supports two drives, (and you have a 2-drive cable) it depends on whether you really have a CS cable (unlikely, but you can tell by looking for one of the wires (pin 28) being cut, or the corresponding insert missing from one of the connectors). If yes, set the new drive to CS, plug it into the unused connector, and it _should_ work. If not, i.e. you have a standard cable where all pins are connected, set the "C:" drive to Device 0 and the new drive to slave; in this case it doesn't matter which connectors you plug into which drive. mike

17 years, 10 months

New "D" drive -- WD Caviar

by dm561＠torfree.net

---------------Original Messages: Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 10:53:33 -0500 From: Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org> Subject: Re: New "D" drive -- WD Caviar On Monday 26 February 2007 01:29, M H Stein wrote: > 1) Actually, according to WD it's a 10-pin drive, but CS is still pins > 1&2. However, I doubt that an old 486 would recognize CS, even with an > 80-conductor cable; the existing one probably works because it's > treated as a master with a 40-conductor cable. The host has nothing to do with cable select working. It only really depends on the drive and the cable. That's why it's called "cable select" and not "host select". One drive gets set to master, and the other to slave, based on their cable position. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org --------------Reply: You're right, of course; as long as the MB grounds pin 28 CS should work with a CS cable (mind you, this is a Packard-Bell, so anything's possible ;-). But since this is a 486 and the drive is not the original, it's quite likely that it has a normal non-CS cable; for a single drive jumpering CS or Master would work equally well, but a slave drive would require moving the main drive jumper and configuring as dual Master/Slave. I've certainly never seen a 486 with a CS cable as standard equipment (or even a stock 40-pin CS cable for that matter, although they're easy to make). Then again, this _is_ a P-B... Still best to use two IDE ports with both drives master (or CS) if possible. mike

17 years, 10 months

8-bit WD IDE adapter + CF?

by doc＠mdrconsult.com

The penny finally dropped. A few days ago someone mentioned that a CF-IDE adapter worked with an 8-bit controller. I think. Something about compact flash and 8-bit anyway. Does that mean I can replace the dead IDE drive on a WDAT-140 or -150controller with compact flash? Doc

17 years, 10 months

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test-drb February 2007