A few weeks ago, CHM received a donation of the entire floppy
collection of the First Osborne Group (FOG). It is literally
thousands of 5" floppies, and I am trying to get a feeling for
what of the collection has already been archived. I believe
NODE51 has the CPM portion on line, but FOG morphed into a general
users group including support for the DOS world through the 80's.
It will be a LOT of work to read the collection, so I'm trying
to get a feeling for how to prioritize what's there.
I am currently fooling about with some HP9000/200 series machines,
specifically an HP9816 and an HP9817.
The serial ports of these machines are on 50 pin microribbon connectors
(like SCSI connectors (!)). They're RS232 levels (1488 anmd 1489 interface
chips). I believe the HP98626 RS232 interface card for these machines has
the same connector. Needless to say I need to make up adapter cables to
DB25 connectors.
I assume HP sold said cables at one point, but I can't find the wirelists
in any of the obvious manuals on hpmuseum.net (OK, if it's hidden is,
say, a printer manual, I'll not have spotted it, but I've read just about
every manual for the machines, the interface cards, and the BASIC).
I have pinouts for the microribbon connector, so I can work out where
most of the wires should go, but there are a few signals that seem to be
non-standard (they're driven by I/O port lines inside the machine so what
they actually do is software-determined. They're probably not important,
but in the interests of compatability I'd like to wire them as HP would
have wired them
So does anyone have :
1) Wirelists of the original HP cables. I assume there was one going to a
DB25-P (male), wires as a DTQ, that would be the most useful to me, but
_any_ would be a start
2) The original cables that they can 'buzz out' and produce a wirelist
from.
3) A 'spare' cable thet they can sell
Thanks in advance for any help
-tony
I just picked-up an IBM 5110 in Las Vegas. It cost me
a few hundred, but a nice system (no printer).
Unfortunately, I had the leave the giant floppy drive
chassis there - too big for the car - I think it
weighs around 150 lbs.
I will drive out there again in a few weeks (with a
bigger vehicle) to bring it back to southern
California.
Steve.
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> I see there are source code listings as PDF files there too.
> How common is this on bitsavers?
If I have code as paper listings, I'll put them under pdf
Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 09:03:28 -0400
From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Offtopic? ESR's Jargon File
> >> http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html
> >
> > Is anyone else seeing broken UTF-8 characters on the Jargon File? I'm
> > using Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Ubuntu Feisty.
And Firefox 1.5.0.10 (Centos 4.4).
So I doubt we are imagining it; the question is, does it look good
under _any_ browser?
-ethan
--------------
FWIW, they look fine in Explorer if I select UTF-8 and local pages stay
that way, but any new page reverts to Western ISO.
m
Is there any way (besides taking it apart) to find out if my Macintosh 128 is
original or if it has been modified/upgraded? It works just fine and has the
original Picasso disks and plastic box with it. Thanks!
Hi,
I am looking for a datasheet for the N8202N or equivalent.
It would have been described in "Digital 8000 series TTL/MSl".
It was apparently manufactured by Signetics and equivalents
seem to have been available from Motorola and others.
I have the pinout for the device. What I'm looking for is
whether the clock is edge or level sensitive, which edge or
level, and maybe something about setup and hold times, etc.
(This is to help design replacements for some hard-to-find
old DEC gear.)
Thanks!
Vince
Hi,
>....But USB has been flaky and an incompatibility nightmare. (The
>latter being exactly what hardware makers want, of course, because
>it sells *new* hardware.)
Amen to that.
The biggest problem I've had, outside of (the *VAST* majority of) USB
drivers which were so buggy as to cause my machine to BSOD as soon as I
tried to use the device, is that every time you change/upgrade your OS you
need to wait for the hardware manufacturer to release updated drivers....in
most cases I've seen these "updated" drivers provide just the bare minimum
of functionality in order to "persuade" you to buy a newer device.
HP are a prime example, the 64-bit drivers for my printer/scanner/copier
only allow the use of the unit as a printer....and a monochrome, text only
one at that! :-(
> And, quite aside from that, SCSI is far more backwards-compatible....
>....SCSI goes back to the '80s - and, what's more, it's *compatible* all
>the way back to the '80s....
Quite. The only compatibility problems I've ever had with SCSI were caused
by a couple of 5.25" full height hard drives which refuse to work if
*ANYTHING* else is connected to the SCSI bus at the same time (one is a
Siemens drive, the other a Fujitsu - I still have them, LOL).
Other than that I've always found SCSI to be quite wonderful.... :-)
TTFN - Pete.
>
>Subject: Re: DEC Pro380 disk drives
> From: Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com>
> Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 17:56:02 +0100
> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
>
>On 08/05/2007 15:53, Roger Ivie wrote:
>> On Mon, 7 May 2007, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
>>> Can the drives be formatted on a VAXstation 2000 and moved to a PRO ?
>>> (like you can do from a VS2000 to a PDP-11 (with RQDX3 ?))
>>
>> I doubt it.
>>
>> Folks have been talking about formatting on an RQDX1. The RQDX1 uses a
>> different format than that used by the RQDX2 and the VS2000. You can't
>> format a disk on an RQDX1 and use it in an RQDX2.
>>
>> The RQDX2 was built around a single-chip disk controller, SMC's HDC9224.
>> The same controller was used in the VS2000. The RQDX1 had a hand-crafted
>> disk controller that used a slightly different format. Among other
>> things, an RQDX1 can stuff 18 sectors on a track whereas the RQDX2,
>> VS2000, and PCs for that matter can only do 17.
>
>That's incorrect; I suspect you're thinking of the RQDX3. The RQDX2 is
>just a modified RQDX1, and it definitely uses the same controller. They
>both put 18 sectors per track, and use the same format. You can take a
>disk formatted on an RQDX1 and connect it to an RQDX2, though in some
>cases the RQDX2 will alter some values on the disk and then it won't be
>recognised properly if you move it back to the RQDX1 (depending on the
>level of firmware on the two controllers).
>
>The RQDX3 definitely *is* different, and you have to reformat hard
>drives for that (and AFAIR *that's* the same format as VS2000).
Pete You have it correct 100%.
The RQDX1/2 are the same board and mostly interchageable depending on
firmware rev. It's a Quad width board.
RQDX3 is a smaller board (dual VS quad) and is fully compatable format
wise with VS2000.
Allison
>--
>
>Pete Peter Turnbull
> Network Manager
> University of York
