test-drb April 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

257 participants
560 discussions

by rborsuk＠colourfull.com

Does anyone remember how to unlock a Macintosh OS 8 Harddrive? I've got a Quadra 800 I'm working on but the harddrive is locked and doesn't allow for read or writes. (Aside from formatting) Thanks Rob Robert Borsuk irisworld at mac.com -- (\__/) (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

17 years, 9 months

Unlock Macintosh Harddrive

by irisworld＠mac.com

17 years, 9 months

floppy media failure

by dkelvey＠hotmail.com

>From: "Dave Dunfield" <dave06a at dunfield.com> > > >Thinking about it some more, the > > loading of the head against the surface on both sides is almost >certainly > > critical, so this wouldn't work :( > >I've often wondered if one could make up a drive with less head pressure, >possibly using some additional electronics to clean up the signal - I've >had a few systems come in where people wanted the data recovered, and >they've been suffering from the "circular rings of death". Never explored >the idea further. Hi If you spin it fast enough, you could us a hard disk head. You might need a way to keep it flat such as a porous surface with a vacuum. Or maybe float it like the bernulli ( sp? ) drives did. You couldn't run it that fast in the envelope. Dwight > >Regarding Als idea of reading the disk backward - It would be a fairly >simply matter to make up a version of ImageDisk which reads from the >inside out. > >Dave > _________________________________________________________________ Mortgage refinance is Hot. *Terms. Get a 5.375%* fix rate. Check savings https://www2.nextag.com/goto.jsp?product=100000035&url=%2fst.jsp&tm=y&searc…

17 years, 9 months

World's first computer on ebay!

by classiccmp＠memory-alpha.org.uk

Hi, >> It will drive a 3.5" floppy as b:, wondering if it >>can do it as the a: drive also. >> > > No reason why not. The disk interface is pretty standard. It's >the normal 34 pin conenctor, signals as you'd expect them.... I'm pretty certain I've seen more than one Einstein with the "A:" drive replaced by a 3.5" unit (and definitely one with two 3.5" drives). In fact, if I recall correctly, we had an Einstein in which the "A:" drive had been replaced with a 3.5" unit (for compatability with Spectrum disc units) at the software company I was working at in 1986; our "fearless leader" (and yes that was meant to be sarcastic) used his Einstein to cross-assemble code for the Spectrum. TTFN - Pete.

17 years, 9 months

Dreaming of a lean installation method [was Re: *nix on

by adamg＠pobox.com

>> This is an easy problem to solve. Resist the temptation to bundle >> non-OS software with the OS. > >That doesn't really solve anything; all it does is shift the debates to >the question of what counts as part of the OS. > >For exmaple, I consider a C compiler part of the OS. Others will >doubtless disagree. Some would consider perl part of the OS; I don't. For something like a C compiler, or, say, a web browser or a mail reader, it's easy enough to leave that out and let the user install one if he wants it. But a developer can say, "if I put Perl in the base installation, then I can write some of the package management tools, etc, in Perl". The same argument also applies to regex libraries, etc, that the basic system software can end up depending on. I'm not sure that there's anything wrong with this thinking, it just happens to be a slippery slope that can eventually leave you needing 4 terabytes to get to a shell prompt. -- Adam

17 years, 9 months

Dreaming of a lean installation method [was Re: *nix on"classic"systems]

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: Dreaming of a lean installation method [was Re: *nix on"classic"systems] > From: Sean Conner <spc at conman.org> > Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:26:58 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >It was thus said that the Great Angel Martin Alganza once stated: >> >> Here it's when it (finally) comes my idea... I've been trying to get >> some modern Unix variant on my 486 notebook (no CD, PCMCIA NIC) for >> quite some time now hithout enough (to my likings) success. It's got >> 16MB RAM, but, for some reason, it recognises only 12. And, of course, >> 12MB is not enough to run any modern installer. I've ended up running a >> Linux distribution called Small Linux on it, but again, it's an old, >> poorly maintained distribution running an old Linux kernel. My first stab at a server was using a 486DX/66 with 16mb though it did have a NIC. the distro I used was slackware V2 something. It fit in 120mb with space to spare and ran decently. I also had it on a 486slc/25 with 8mb but a 360mb disk with only the usual difficulties (less than steller installers back then). What made the task resonable for both was CDrom drive. I did it once with floppies (75 of them!!!) and that was painful. Since I stopped messing with linux at caldara OpenlinuxV2.3 version level I can't say what the latest distros are like but those older ones fit an amazingly small machines if you took the custom path and didn't install more than the needed packages. I got tired of all the versions and the ever expanding size of the system required to just (barely) run it. Allison > > You could do what I did to install Linux on a 4MB RAM 120M harddrive >laptop computer---find a Linux distro that will boot (I used Tom's Root Boot >disk and even then it barely ran). The steps I ran through went something >like this: > > On the target computer, I could run a shell, fdisk, mkfs and dd. > That was enough to get started. > > Run fdisk. On the machine I was working on, two partitions: 112M > and 8M. Format the 8M as a filesystem and mount it. > > On a full Linux system, get some needed tools like tar, dd to a > floppy. Move to target system, and dd tar off to 8M partition. So > likewise with some other tools. > > On full system, I created a 112M file, and mounted it. Formatted > it, and put kernel, init, and a small /bin. unmount it. tar > the file and dd to floppy. > > On target tar xzcf /dev/fd0 | dd of=/dev/hda1 > > reboot target. Once rebooted, reformat 8M for swap and enable it. > > Keep using the floppy to get stuff over. > > Took a few hours, but I got it done. > > -spc (Wasn't the hardest install I did though ... )

17 years, 9 months

PC-MOS?

by cclist＠sydex.com

I was looking for something else and ran across a two-binder set of something called "PC-MOS" by The Software Link, circa 1992. I opened the shrinkwrap on the nstallation manual and the thing looks like it's a multi-user version of MS-DOS, talking to terminals. I appear to have a 5 user version. Anyone familiar with this animal? The version is 4.2. Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 9 months

TRS-80 "Eight Meg Disk System" questions...

by sdc695＠yahoo.com

In previous messages, Josh Dersch <derschjo at msu.edu> said: > Hi all -- > > Recently picked up a TRS-80 "Eight Meg Disk System" (model 26-4151) and > the associated interface board, with the intent of hooking this up to my > TRS-80 Model 16. > On further investigation, it appears that the 26-4151 is a Secondary > drive, which makes me curious as to whether this effort is going to be > ultimately fruitless. So, without further ado, here's the questions I have: > > 1. Is it possible to get this secondary drive working as a primary, or > am I up a creek without having a primary drive (or extra magic hardware > in the drive I have.) > 2. If I can work around #1, I need to know the pinouts of the drive and > the controller board since I do not have a cable to connect the two. > The controller has a 50-pin edge connector and the drive has three > connectors -- 2 50-pin (labeled "Control") and one 20-pin (labeled "Data"). > a. And as a follow on to #2, where would you suggest getting the > parts and tools necessary to build the aforementioned cable? I've never > constructed such a cable, and I'll have need to do so again in the > future (need to assemble some long-ish ESDI cables for my PDP 11/73...) > > Thanks for any suggestions, > Josh Josh... The "secondary" drive is an 8 inch hard drive. It is VERY similar to the 5.25 MFM drives we have all used on various machines, but there are a couple of differences: 1) The 'control' connector is 50 pins, not 34. This is the 'common' connector that is connected to every drive. 2) The 'data' connector (both are 20 pins) uses positive and negative voltages (a 10 volt swing) for the differential data. Some drives even decode the clock >from the data stream, or use the clock to generate the data stream used on the drive. 3) The 8 inch drives use +24 volts, +5 volts, and -5 volts, and some drives use line voltage (120v/220v, etc.) for the motor drive. 4) The rotational speed of the disk is 3000 RPM, whereas the 5.25 drive is 3600 rpm. This means that the data rate for MFM is lower for the 8 inch drive (usually the crystal is 8.666 MHz, not 10 MHz for the same rotational bit density). That being the case, adapters can be made, if you can re-clock the drive controller. Now back to the TRS-80 problem at hand. The box you have is just a container for the drive proper. I doubt that much more is inside the box than the drive and a power supply. The controller is in the "primary" drive box, and is similar in function to a PC's controller at the register level (both were designed by Western Digital). I don't remember if the TRS-80 used 256 byte sectors, or 512 (what the PC uses) byte sectors. It needed an interface board that plugged in the backplane of the Model 16. I built up a "primary" disk box myself using the controller that works with the 5.25 inch drives, using my own 5.25 inch drives. The controller was limited to no more than 8 heads due to the way it was designed (they hadn't made XT2190's yet!). It worked OK. Later on in the Model 16/6000 time span, they built up a single board that plugged into the backplane of the TRS-80 Model 16 (6000) that was the full controller. By that time the only drives being produced were 5.25 inch ones, so that conformed to that interface (34 Pin control, 20 Pin data). It is interesting to note that the drives used by Radio Shack had another "feature" in that they connected a "drive selected" line on the Data connector. This was used so that they didn't need to worry about where they were plugged in. If the connector was "selected" (had the true signal), it had the data. If you get a controller this may need to be taken into account. Other than that, you have a "nice box". Good luck. -- Tom Watson tsw at johana.com ____________________________________________________________________________________ Finding fabulous fares is fun. Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains. http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097

17 years, 9 months

*nix on "classic" systems

by dm561＠torfree.net

Since we're still pontificating: There's another aspect of the pros & cons of GUIs that I find particularly frustrating: trying to write instruction manuals or doing phone support when you have no idea or control over what the user's desktop looks like, which menu bars, buttons, shortcuts etc. are enabled or disabled, where they are, etc. Give me a "Press Control and Home; now Control, shift and end; now Control and C" over a "Do you have a menu bar on the top of the window you're in? The one that has the word EDIT in it? yes? Good; click on the word edit and then click on the word select. Did the window change colour? Good; now click on that word edit again, and this time click on the word copy..." any day... Particularly relevant right now since I just got off the phone after spending about 5 minutes walking a user through a problem with a fairly complex 150+ module menu-driven DOS program and then more than an hour taking them through a fairly simple routine Excel spreadsheet operation. m

17 years, 9 months

Kaypro 10 TurboROM & KayPLUS rom problems

by redodd＠comcast.net

Hello all, I have a Kaypro 10 that works pretty good. The hard drive is a Seagate ST212 10meg that is getting very noisy and gives read errors now and then. I have been playing with the Advent TurboROM and KayPLUS rom upgrades with no luck. All testing that I have done with both roms has been with the original ST212, an ST251, an ST277 and a Mitsubishi MR535, all with the same bad results. I have verified the eproms many times so they match the images that I've downloaded from the net. I got the KayPLUS rom from here: http://www.microcodeconsulting.com/z80/kayplus.htm and I've gotten the turbo rom from 3 sources that all match what you see here: ftp://ftp.mrynet.com/pub/os/Kaypro/Private-Images/TROM34/ When I use the KayPLUS rom with the prescribed boot disk etc. as per instructions, the machine boots but doesn't seem to see the hard drive. The led on the hd never even blinks. If I run HDCNFG.COM to setup the hard drive, the machine hangs. Another person has verified this also. So my first question is: Has anyone gotten this rom to work? When I put the TurboROM in, I get some very different results. The screen has the initial Turbo welcome screen and the machine hangs there. The led on the hard drive is always on. The floppy never tries to boot. If I disconnect the data & signal cables from the hard drive, it boots from the floppy after 25 seconds just like the manual says. If I disconnect the 49 pin cable from J9 (the hard drive connector) on the motherboard, the machine boots almost instantly. It seems to be looking at the hd but doesn't like what it sees. Other people have said that this copy of the rom works. So my second question is: Has anyone else run into this problem or what can be done to fix this? Her's a link to some pictures of the mess. http://home.comcast.net/~redodd/turbo.zip Thanks a lot. Ralph

17 years, 9 months

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test-drb April 2007