test-drb June 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

224 participants
486 discussions

New pcb design for S-100 prototype board available

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: New pcb design for S-100 prototype board available > From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> > Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:38:18 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >> Grant Stockly wrote: >> >> > Someone built one of my Altair replica PCBs and went to great lengths to >> > make sure the date code on the ICs was older than 1975. They also >> > sourced the old brown cylindrical resistors. > >I've been known to do that, but for much more trivial examples - when >I built my 1976-design Elf, I did the best I could on chips (my CPU >and memory were of the period, but I have not yet tracked down a 74L00 >for the clock divider circuit), but I was happy to have a bin of ;) L00? I bet I have a few that are pre ELF. >vintage brown cylindrical resistors for the pullups. I had to >compromise on the regulator - the oldest one I could find in my junk >bin was an LM340T. I have a shopping bag of those resistor, really! the LM340 was period and valid but, I have 7805s that are date coded 7951 (last week of '79). Somewhere I came across a few baggies of them as they are handy. I also have 1uS 2102s, 5101 and other old ram. >Obviously, the computer doesn't care, but I wanted something that >would have looked as if I had made it when I first got into computers >as a kid. A complete indulgence to nostalgia. :) they dont care. I tend to build new hardware using that old stuff as I've had it for that reason, that is to build with. > >-ethan

17 years, 1 month

B&C Microsystems 1409 Prom Burner

by mmcarmo＠adelphia.net

Hi John, I just purchased a B&C Microsystems 1409 Programmer. Do you have the manual? If so, I'd appreciate a copy. Sincerely, David

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

NorthStar Advantage "Graphics CP/M"?

by legalize＠xmission.com

What is it? I didn't know the Northstar's had graphics capabilities. Ebay items # 140125262346 140125261472 -- "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, 1 month

who invented IDE? (Chuck Guzis)

by CaptnZilog＠aol.com

>In the beginning it was *interesting* working with different vendor >implementations of ATA. For example, Maxtor, initially swapped the >order of the words in the "total number of sectors" field in the >IDENTIFY command return. I remember back when 386's were over our "capital expense" limit ($1000) at work, we would piece together 386's for the engineers to get them the best machines. We were buying Conner 80MB drives at the time, so we built this guy a machine with a Conner-80MB in it, and a few months later he was running low on space and wanted another drive, so we bought *another* (same model) Conner-80MB. No matter what I tried, they would not work together either way around as master/slave. Looking at the model#, one was "rev-A" and one was "rev-B". We wound up throwing a Maxtor 80MB in with it - with *either* Conner drive and a Maxtor, it worked fine. Found it quite humorous that two drives from the same manufacturer wouldn't work together, but both worked fine with a competitors drive. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.

17 years, 1 month

N* Advantage Tech manuak scanned

by dave06a＠dunfield.com

For any North Star Advantage owners... I have scanned the complete NorthStar Advantage Technical manual and posted it to my site (look under the North Star Advantage listing). This is a BIG book, and a very large (30M PDF) scan. It contains full technical descriptions, schematics etc. for the North Star Advantage computer. Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html

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

Repairing the damage.

by rick＠rickmurphy.net

At 04:23 PM 6/3/2007, Rod Smallwood wrote: > >Your server (the VAX 4000-200) does have to be running DECnet. Er no it >doesn't and isn't. I attended a 1976 DEC engineering meeting where this >was discussed. It just my personal memory has a long access time. >Download and run was around long before Decnet was thought of. I'm not sure why I'm responding to this troll, but I can't resist. The server must be running a MOP listener. That's the protocol that the client uses when you boot the ethernet device. MOP is a DECnet protocol. For many versions of VMS, the way you get a MOP listener is to install DECnet. For VMS 7.0 and later, there's a separate MOP listener that provides just that part of DECnet. >There's no Decnet or any other normal network involved. Crap. You MUST have a network to run a Local Area VAXcluster. You know, a *Local Area Network*? LAVC booting uses DECnet to boot. You can't make any of this work without a LAN, without DECnet. I suppose you'll keep flailing around hoping that something will work, blaming others for your mistakes. Enjoy yourself. >I am also >beginning to suspect that the whole cluster thing is another GRH (Giant >Red Herring) Huh? Nope, if you followed the very detailed directions you've been given, you could diskless boot the server. You could then try to get a disk set up and booted. Not a red herring at all. >Whats actually happening is an old diagnostic tool is being >used to download and run a program on a remote system to exclude the >disk drives from the test. LANCP is not an "old diagnostic tool" it's actually fairly recent. Using CLUSTER_CONFIG as you're supposed to will use it to set up the client download. Did you try that? Probably not. -Rick

17 years, 1 month

11/04 or 11/34 PSU free for collection (UK)

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

I'm having a bit of a clear-out, in order to make enough room to work in :-) The first item I've found that I don't want is the power supply from an 11/04 or 11/34, DEC part no. 70-13323-00. This is the big black box that goes on the back of the BA11 enclosure, and includes the two fans, the cables, etc, but not the power regulator bricks (it has space for four). It was in working order last time I checked. It's very heavy, so pickup from York only (unless you really want to spend a fortune on carriage). -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

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

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test-drb June 2007