test-drb May 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

235 participants
483 discussions

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

a media organization in south florida (palm beach, broward, miami-dade counties, cities such as West palm beach, delray, boca, fort lauderdale, hollywood, miami, etc.) is looking for people who collect vintage/classic/old computers regarding an article on that topic they are working on. If anyone is interested in this, please contact me off-list as soon as possible for details. Best regards, Jay West

16 years, 11 months

HP-IL sighting!

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

HP-IL interfaces turn up in the oddest places. This sound level meter on eBay looks to have an HP-IL interface, shown in the pics: http://shorterlink.org/2335 -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

17 years

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, 1 month

Local (NY) PDP guy needed

by rcini＠optonline.net

All: I got an unusual phone call this evening from a doctor on Long Island who is doing theoretical biological research that, he hopes, will have a commercial application. Without going into much detail (because it was like drinking from a fire hose and I can?t remember it all), basically he is looking to emulate some biological processes in software. He believes that the ?instructions? that code for the biological processes are based on 6-bit instructions (or multiples thereof), so he?s looking for someone with that kind of architectural background. A PDP-8 has 12-bit instructions and I think the PDP-9 and 15 used 18-bit words. I?m not knowledgeable about any of the other minicomputer architectures to guess word size, but anything that?s a low multiple of 6-bits should work for his purposes. If anyone?s willing to have a conversation with this person, please contact me off list and I?ll pass on his contact information. Thanks. Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp

17 years, 1 month

early IDE card on eBay

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/IDE-Controller-for-Hard-Drive-KS-4-16-Bit-ISA-1989_W0QQ… Anyone have one of these they'd like to sell? I ain't paying $50 though. Funny "Joe" seems to think generic Taiwanese stuff should command that kind of value. And he has a lot of it up for bidding, all priced in a similar outrageous fashion. ____________________________________________________________________________________Ready for the edge of your seat? Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. http://tv.yahoo.com/

17 years, 1 month

more eBay stuff

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rare-MultiBus-Network-Board_W0QQitemZ200112940595QQihZ0… otay. What type of network are we talking here? http://cgi.ebay.com/Manx-Aztec-C-8086-to-C6502-C65c02-cross-compiler-RARE_W… pretty cool i must say... http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Intel-Multi-bus-Monitor-Module-Board-1975_W0QQi… ok, where's the plug go? Or is that it in the upper right hand corner? Or is that a switch? Or neither? http://cgi.ebay.com/Rare-IBM-PC-Assembler-Language-and-Programming_W0QQitem… LOL LOL LOL http://cgi.ebay.com/Nearly-complete-set-of-200-Byte-Magazines_W0QQitemZ3301… my back hurts just thinking about picking all that up... ____________________________________________________________________________________ Now that's room service! Choose from over 150,000 hotels in 45,000 destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your fit. http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097

17 years, 1 month

digital camera capabilities

by tim.walls＠snowgoons.com

Tony Duell wrote... > The right way to get better depth of field for oblique shots is to tilt > the lens (!). > [...] > The problem is that no digital camera has a tilting front. In the interests of completeness, I should say that this isn't strictly speaking true. Canon make EOS mount tilt/shift lenses, which will work on any of their digital SLRs (three of them, 24, 45 and 90mm IIRC.) In fact, their APS-C sensor DSLRs are in many ways ideal - the smaller-than-35mm sensor size means you're unlikely to see any vignetting even at extreme ends of the available movements. (For the uninitiated, a lens intended for tilt/shift, such as the TS-E lenses or anything made for a technical/view camera, needs to project an image circle significantly larger than the imaging plane (film/sensor), to allow for moving the projected image around as you move the lens. The extreme ends of the movements on the tilt/shift FD mount lens I use on my film camera are marked in red - this indicates you're going to start seeing vignetting if you tilt/shift this far because the image circle no longer covers the whole film area. Because most (not all) digital SLRs use smaller APS size sensors (~25mm longest edge IIRC rather than ~36) this is less of a problem.) That said, the Canon TS-E lenses are considered 'speciality' lenses and priced accordingly; unless you're going to make a living out of architectural photography not really a serious recommendation. My recommendation for a cheap digital starter kit for doing what you want would be the bottom of the range Canon digtal SLR (EOS 400D in Europe, 'Digital Rebel XTi' I think in USA - identical camera, but US market apparently demands a 'cool' name like 'Rebel'.) Buy it body-only, and buy the Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens as well. The EF-S is a beautiful lens at a very reasonable price; top-notch quality, the effective focal length given the smaller sensor in a DSLR is around 90mm, which is pretty reasonable for what you're looking to do, and most importantly it can do true 1:1 macro for when you want the photos of individual chips on that motherboard. It's also compatible with the Canon ringlight flash if you find yourself doing a lot of macro. The only caveat is that being an EF-S, it's not compatible with full-frame DSLRs or film SLRs (EF-S lenses take advantage of the smaller sensor & mirror size in DSLRs to extend the optics further back into the camera; if you could mount them on a film cam (which you can't, the mount prevents it,) the back of the lens would smash the mirror. Oh, that reminds me, in a conversation a while ago possible sources of weak acid solutions were being pondered. I meant to mention then, but it didn't seem worth an entire post - photographic stop bath is a weak acid solution, and readily available (in the UK, your high street Jessops still stocks most photographic chemistry, for the timebeing at least.) 'Normal' stop bath is acetic acid based I believe, you can also buy odourless (or more accurately 'less obnoxious odour') stop bath which is usually citric acid based. Cheers, Tim -- Tim Walls at home in Leeds EMail & MSN: tim.walls at snowgoons.com

17 years, 1 month

Properly "classic" digital cameras (and imaging) (was Re: enough already (was: digital camera capabilities))

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 5/30/07, Gordon JC Pearce <gordon at gjcp.net> wrote: > I have a digital camera that is now (and in fact, as of last friday) 10 > years old ;-) Mine is quite safely "over the line" - my first digital camera was a QuickTake 150 http://manuals.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Manuals/cameras/0306677Qck… I picked it up at the Dayton Computerfest (same place as the Hamfest, but was in March or August of each year until they stopped having it a little while back). I first encountered one in 1995/1996, then bought one for myself for a whopping $35 a few years later when I had the chance. All I'm missing is the closeup lens. > The image quality is *definitely* not as good as an SLR, or even a > pointy clicky Instamatic. Great for grainy lo-fi shots though. With 1MB of fixed, on-board, Flash ROM, and no media socket, the QT150 holds 16 pictures in "bad" mode, or 32 pictures in "worse" mode. It's always 640x480, which, by itself, isn't the worst thing in the world. The problem is the amount of lossy compression it needs to fit 16 pictures into 1MB translates to "a lot". The other significant problem I see with this camera is that because Apple bundled some 3rd-party software with it, they never made the software available for download. The pictures are "QuickTime Compressed PICTs", meaning that the outer wrapper is a standard Mac PICT file, but the payload can only be untangled by an Apple QT library (I tried many unsuccessful workarounds). If you don't have the QT150 install disks, I don't know that you can load any other package to gain them. OTOH, once you have loaded that library, all apps on the machine (Photoshop, ImageViewer...) can manipulate the pictures. I'd hold this camera up as an example of a) an evolutionary dead-end, and b) the fact that Apple wasn't always spot-on-the-mark. In its era, it was a passable camera - one button to take a picture (no manual settings beyond a timer or compression factor), but all the other offerings of the day, and even Apple's QuickTake 200 (a rebadged Fuji DS-7 if my research is correct) had removable storage, allowing one to effectively ignore memory limitations to the extent of one's budget. Being a fixed-focus camera, it's terrible for close-in shots. Your choices are to position the object a few feet away so that it's in focus (and perhaps too small to be clear), or to snap on a fixed magnifier lens and squint through the eyepiece to attempt to focus closer in. At the place I first encountered the QuickTake 150, we never could get sharp pictures with the close-up lens. I used the QuickTake 150 more than any other digital camera from 1995 through 2003 (when I upgraded to a DSLR). If you ever get the chance to play with one, I can recommend it, but only to see how far digital cameras have come in the past 10 years (it was discontinued in 1997). The horrible lossy compression makes it nearly unusable for any sort of "busy" subject matter. -ethan

17 years, 1 month

3.5" Altair CP/M

by grant＠stockly.com

At 04:45 PM 5/15/2007, you wrote: >On 5/15/07, Grant Stockly <grant at stockly.com> wrote: >>I have a tarbell floppy controller card that has been rewired to access >>3.5" disks using a standard PC 3.5" disk drive. I have 3 disks that the >>Altair can boot off of and read, but my windows computer can't do anything >>with them. I've tried rawread.exe and diskinfo.exe and they both choke on >>the disk. I assumed that if a disk could be written with the standard 3.5" >>disk drive on the tarbell card then it should also be read on the same >>drive connected to a modern IBM compatible. > >Are you using a 1771 based SD Tarbell card, or a 1791/1793 based DD >Tarbell card? That might make a difference. Its an MDL-1011D with an FD1771-B01. What's the deal with this chip? Is it formatting the the disk as 360k? I can scan the modification sheet and card if anyone is interested. I'd really love to make a disk image of the disk to share with people. I might have to write a bootstrap program that reads from the serial port and writes to a disk. Grant

17 years, 1 month

Sun, HP "scrap" (???)

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/100-lbs-SCRAP-MEMORY-FOR-GOLD- RECOVERY-RAM-1982-SUN_W0QQitemZ260121427754QQihZ01 6QQcategoryZ1247QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem A bit steep, but it's 100 lbs. worth! ____________________________________________________________________________________Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545469

17 years, 1 month

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test-drb May 2007