test-drb May 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

235 participants
483 discussions

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 5/6/07, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > At 11:08 PM -0400 5/6/07, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: > >I'm actually looking for a monitor for my //c+, if anyone comes > >across one they don't want for themselves. > > The LCD or the CRT? The CRT's used to be semi-easy to come by, the > LCD is another of those things I've never seen. I've seen (and bought) the CRTs at Dayton, but that was a few years back. I did see one LCD once, but it was on display, not for sale. :-( -ethan

17 years, 2 months

That horrible computer foam

by ian_primus＠yahoo.com

As I have been collecting computers, I have noticed that some pieces of equipment like printers and the like, contain a lot of this awful foam stuff, most likely for noise deadening. Time has caused this foam to break down and turn to gunk, or at least a soft, squshy material that does not spring back. It also crumbles. IBM foam seems to be the worst, along with the foam used on Zenith PC's, turning into a tarry goo. On the CDC drives I just picked up, the entire inside of them is covered in this foam, some of it is starting to come off, or has stuck to cables and such inside. A couple smaller chunks of it literally fell off one part of the cover, the glue only holding the particular particles of the foam to which it was attached, and the rest of the foam falling away. What is the best thing to do about this, especially in something as sensitive as a disk drive? Should I remove it? What's the best method? Is there something I can use to replace it? Also, for instance, inside the cover of the PDP-11/84, there is a thin slab of foam that has turned to crud. I plan on removing this entirely - vacuuming away what I can and cleaning the rest off with something - what will dissolve this? I know that trying to get the gunk >from IBM foam off your hands is nearly impossible. Any ideas? Thanks! -Ian

17 years, 2 months

wonderful assembly language book

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-COMPUTER-BOOK-LOT-Unix- Programming-IBM-PC-6_W0QQitemZ140114169493QQihZ004QQ categoryZ378QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem part of a lot. The edition I learnt assembler on was blue, this one is red. Not sure if they're different editions (the 1st would be ideal), but this one is probably early enough to be as useful. A tried and true text IMHO. I had tried others, but they all stunk by comparison. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Get your own web address. Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL

17 years, 2 months

Mentec

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Well that's interesting... It would seem that as long as Mentec choose to ignore non-commercial use you can do (within reason) what you like. I did say pdp preserver as opposed to RT, RSX or RSTS preserver. However I must admit to having worked in digital SWS and to having been part of the VMS marketing group I do have an interest in the software side. DEC were quite keen on educational computing and that's how they would have viewed a hobbyist program. As HP now effectivly own what was DEC I assume the agreement is now between them and Mentec. It seems that many efforts to set up a hobbyist (or collectors program) have come to nought due to Mentec seeing no profit in the arrangement. Needless to say as a DEC hardware collector a simulator is of no interest to me. Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jerome H. Fine Sent: 06 May 2007 03:48 To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Mentec >Rod Smallwood wrote: >Hi All > I'm a bit confused about this Mentec issue. They bought up the >rights to the pdp-11 line and even produced some new boards. Now they >seem to have abandoned the whole thing. I can only find one web site >that could be theirs but it is very up market corporate image stuff. No >mention of pdp anything. > > Jerome Fine replies: First of all, please remember I am ONLY interested in RT-11. And while I have had contact with and used a bit of RSX-11 and a very extensive amount of RSTS/E, I was never responsible of a system which ran RSX-11 or RSTS/E. Which is the primary reason that I never became proficient enough to maintain either an RSX-11 or a RSTS/E system. On the other hand, I may now know RT-11 as well as some of the top RT-11 developers knew RT-11 during the 1980s. As for why Mentec no longer actively supports any of the PDP-11 systems, I venture to guess that it is no longer profitable. >As I am in the middle of restoring some pdp-11/94's the issue around >how >RT11 and RSX could be made available is of much interest. If they have >not sold the rights and are not pursuing the business perhaps they >could help us poor pdp preservers. > Mentec has helped the poor PDP-11 preservers. Unfortunately, it is not obvious since the help is more in not causing those poor PDP-11 preservers any difficulties as opposed to being proactive by making the operating systems generally available such as Borland products are at present. Also an example is the VMS hobby program which Mentec does not have. In addition, as others have mentioned in their replies, it seems very doubtful that Mentec really did "totally own" the PDP-11 operating systems. Unfortunately, it seems highly probable that the terms of the agreement between Mentec and DEC required the parties to maintain confidentiality since I can't see why those terms have never been publicly disclosed - unless those terms were so detrimental to the users that neither party wanted to admit the mistakes in the lack of a PDP-11 hobby program in the face of the VMS hobby license program. But what did happen did, what did not happen did not - the stories and interpretations that many of us make up about what happened are probably 90% fiction and are no longer even important. BUT, Mentec did make older versions of the operating systems available for legal non-commercial use under what was at the time a DEC owned emulator. It certainly seemed questionable at the time and it may be even more questionable at present, but Mentec has chosen to make no challenge to the use of those older versions of the operating systems under the current name of that DEC emulator which has evolved to become SIMH. In addition, Mentec also seems to be ignoring the legal requirement for a transfer of any operating system license to the new owner of any old PDP-11 hardware so long as, at least as far I can interpret, the new owner is non-commercial. Certainly there have been numerous discussions on classiccmp (one is going on right now about a single RL02 system) over PDP-11 use of the RT-11 operating system (i.e. NOT under SIMH) and I can't remember any recent protests from Mentec in this regard. Any finally, while the RSX-11 and RSTS/E operating systems are much more tightly controlled and not very easily available, almost 10 years ago, Megan Gentry, a former RT-11 developer, put a zip file of V05.03 of RT-11 up for general download with the explicit permission of the individuals who had to provide that permission. V05.03 of RT-11 is the last binary distribution allowed under the DEC emulator and by inference under SIMH. There is also a CD version (an ISO file) which contains as many as possible of the RT-11 binary versions as could reasonably be found for all of V05.03 of RT-11 and prior. Any for those individuals who are legally licensed to run the latest version of RT-11, V05.07 released in October of 1998 or just under 9 years ago, there is also a CD containing the rest of the RT-11 binary distributions. The latter CD was requested by a university who was legally licensed to use and already had a copy of V05.07 of RT-11 and was legally entitled to a backup of all of the RT-11 binary distributions. So - I don't really think that there are any "poor pdp preservers" as far as RT-11 is concerned. In point of fact, I have personally found ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST in the last 5 years in: (a) Preserving RT-11, (b) Fixing any bugs in RT-11 (c) Making any enhancements in RT-11 Of course, for individuals in the know, most of them already have sufficiently preserved what they want of RT-11. On the other hand, even though I have made a number of vital bug fixes to RT-11 (for problems that crash RT-11) along with other minor problems as well as some extensive enhancements, I have yet to find anyone who is even interested in a Y3K for RT-11, let alone someone who would be interested in participating. Of course, Y3K may already have been done, the enhancements that I have already completed may have been duplicated along with many other enhancements and the bugs fixed as well and distributed to the users of RT-11. Perhaps I just don't know that it has all occurred without a word of it reaching my eyes and ears. But, as a result, I have place (a), (b) and (c) into a lower priority and focused on attempting something even less useful, i.e. confirming the value of pi(10^18) using a sieve program running under RT-11 with a view to attempting to determine pi(10^24). When I find that it will take a million years to finish the calculations for pi(10^24) with current computers, I may shift back to (a), (b) and (c) if I can't find something even less useful than knowing the value for pi(10^24). On the other hand, if anyone is really interested, drop me a line. If anyone really knows why Mentec does not have a hobby program for PDP-11 operating systems, let us know. Just don't complain about RT-11 and Mentec since nothing that Mentec seems to be doing at present interferes with "poor pdp preservers" as far as RT-11 is concerned. In 16 more years, which will be 25 years after V05.07 of RT-11 was released, I very seriously doubt that Mentec will care if every hobby user who wants a copy of V05.07 of RT-11 is using it on real DEC hardware, let alone if there is a running emulator on what goes for a PC in the year 2023 when I will be 84 years old if I am still kicking. As for commercial sites still running RT-11, if they don't already have the Y2K compliant V05.07 of RT-11, then I very much doubt that they will require V05.07 in the year 2023. And if those commercial sites are managing with the current bugs in RT-11 9 years after V05.07 was released, well ... Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.

17 years, 2 months

ICP N75 substitute

by cclist＠sydex.com

I found the problem with my PCW8256--it's an open "IC protector", part ICP-N75. Rated at 2.7A. Am I safe in replacing it with a far- easier-to-find-here-in-the-USA 3A picofuse? "IC protectors" must be an across-the-pond thing--I've never seen one of these before-- what are they, other than a fuse? Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 2 months

10base-2 to 10base-t media convertor?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 5/6/07, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > Personally I wouldn't be willing to risk an Amiga NIC with such an > attempt, I get the impression that they're fairly uncommon. They are somewhat uncommon, but I think you could do it with a daughter-card socket extension for the LANCE chip - plug the board into the socket and the chip into the board, and take 10baseT off of the new board. -ethan

17 years, 2 months

10base-2 to 10base-t media convertor?

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 5/6/07, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > At 5:18 AM +0100 5/6/07, Rod Smallwood wrote: > >Get a cheap hub that has both 10/100baseT and BNC. Mine is a Dynamode > >DM-809STP. I use it to convert the BNC output from my VAX to 100BaseT on > >my network. > > How common are 10/100BaseT Hubs with a BNC connection? I know I've > never seen one. Any hub I've seen with a BNC connection has been > limited to 10Mbit. The only ones I've seen, are 10Mbit only as well. I have one I use with 1 x 10base2, 8 x 10baseT, and 1 x AUI that I've slapped a 10baseFL transceiver onto. > The original posters problem just happens to be half the reason I > even care about 10Base2, my Amiga 3000's NIC only has a BNC > connection, I also have this problem with my DECserver 90L+. Though > I'm not using either at the moment. I'm in the same boat - Amigas with 10base2 only. Pretty much anything else I have that does networking has 10base2 _and_ an AUI at least. In my experience, it's much easier to find an old 10baseT hub with a 10base2 port or an AUI (to which you add a 10base2 transceiver) than a 10base2 to 10baseT media converter, but the media converter will be smaller if you can track one down. -ethan

17 years, 2 months

Upgrading my HP9816

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

I've just upgraded my HP9816 (aka HP9000/216) to have 1M RAM on the processor board,. In case anyone else has one of these machines, and wants to do the upgrade, here's how I did it. -tony Upgrading an HP9816 to 1M RAM on the processor board ---------------------------------------------------- These instructions assume you're starting with a 256K processor board, that is one with 32 4164 DRAMs fitted. Firslty remove the processor board. To do this, disconnect all cables >from the rear of the 9816, then remove the DIO slot cover plate (or a DIO board witu an external connector). Remove any DIO boards in the slots -- memory voards will need to have their addresses chaged after this modification. Release the 2 quarter-turn fasteners on the rear of the machine and free the top cover from the clips under the back edge of the machine. Slide the cover rearwards, lift it off, and unplug the fan cable >from the monitor PCB. Pull the processor board -- at the very bottom of the machine -- rearwards, unclip the earth wire fromthe faston tab on the RS232 connector. Slide the processor board all the way out. Now to upgrade the RAM. Desolder all 32 DRAMs from the board. These are in 2 rows at the very front edge. Leave the clock oscillator can, reset-circuit transsitor array, and resistor pack in place. Clear out the pads for U122 (to the right of the rear row of DRAMs) and R47 (leftmost resistor in the block of 3 resisotrs to the left of the ROMs) At this stage both of those locations should be empty. Fit 32 41256 (256K*1) DRAMs in place of the 64K ones that were just removed. Fit a 74F158 at U122 and a 33 Ohm resistor at R47 Cut J11 and J12 (in front of the DIP switch array). Cut J8 1-2 and link 2-3 (this likn is in fornt of U34, near the ROMs). Turn off all sections of SW3 (frontmost DIP switch). Sections 5-7 _must_ be off or the RMA will be diabled, sections 1-4 set the address of the RAM. It's simplest to have them all off, which makes the processor board RAM appear at the top of the memory map, then to address all other boards following the HP instructions, regarding the processor board RAM as a 1M board set to '0'. Refit the processor board, conencting the ground wire. Plug in the mains cable and power up. The screen should report a little under 1M free. If all appeears to be working, switch the unit off, unplug the mains cable, and refit the covers, DIO board(s) and cables.

17 years, 2 months

Freecycle stash of Apples found.

by evan＠snarc.net

Keep the straight II. You can pick up the later models anytime, but the original II is increasingly rare.

17 years, 2 months

10base-2 to 10base-t media convertor?

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

Get a cheap hub that has both 10/100baseT and BNC. Mine is a Dynamode DM-809STP. I use it to convert the BNC output from my VAX to 100BaseT on my network. Regards Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of stuart birchall Sent: 05 May 2007 13:43 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: 10base-2 to 10base-t media convertor? Hi, can anyone in the UK help out - i'm after a bnc to utp connector to attach my amiga to our utp ethernet network. thanks, stu

17 years, 2 months

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test-drb May 2007