test-drb July 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

189 participants
323 discussions

by silent700＠gmail.com

A recent basement re-arrange has left me with no room for a rack cabinet I wasn't using that much anyway. I hate to get rid of it, because I'll want one again someday, but for now it's got to go. It's beige/brown color, unknown manufacturer. About 6' high with sides but no front or back doors. It does *not* have the standard front-mounting 19" screw rails except for a movable section of about 18" which bolts into side-facing rails. I think these adapters can be purchased online. What it does have is 9 sets (2 aluminum, the rest heavy steel) of "L" brackets that run the depth of the rack and mount anywhere on the inward-facing screw holes. The steel ones are very strong and could hold a rackmount server, 9-track drive or other heavy items. The rack is large but pretty light; I moved it down to the basement myself. It has no wheels but I've built a wheel-dolly for it. I'm asking $150 for it, or trade for something cool (and smaller!) I was going to put it on ebay as pickup-only, but thought I'd offer it here first. Obviously it would be for pick-up (Palatine, IL, NW of Chicago) only here as well. -j

17 years, 5 months

Drum vs. Core

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

On 6 Jul, 2007, at 18:07, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > From: "Andy Holt" <andyh at andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk> > >>>> > Back to the original post, does anyone know if there is a difference > between the "operators Exec for a 1900" and the executive used by > engineers and recorded on 7 track mag tape? Would this be of any use? > <<< > > Does that imply that you - or someone you know has such a tape??? Whilst working on my 1301, I was chatting to a friend who was an ICT/ ICL field engineer and later manager into the Fujitsu years. I told him that all copies of 1900 executive have been lost and he said that he might have a copy tucked away but that, if he had it at all it was on 7 track tape and we don't have a deck to read it, but maybe someone somewhere has a way of reading a tape which has not been touched for many years. I will let you know if he finds it, but don't hold your breath, like me he has a lot of buildings and does not go in some of them for long periods. With the 1301 we have a copy of 'Initial Orders' on the drum, a numeric dump of a slightly different version from another machine and also (dyleine?) copies of the original manuscript. Its only two drum bands (so less than 800 instructions), but it is the nearest thing to an operating system that the 1301 had. The 1302 Exec has not survived, nor even details of all the extra instructions in the machine, we know everything about a few, sketchy details from sales literature for others and there are probably a few we know nothing about. A recent documentary series "The Trap, What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom" had clips of old footage, and in one there was a chap with a book open at a page showing what I immediately recognised as a 1300 instruction summary, the only coloured page in the 1300 programming manual. On freeze framing it and comparing with the 1300/1301 version, I see the arrangement is quite a bit different, and I think it must be a 1302 manual, but of course the image resolution, even on the original 16mm film would probably not allow it to be read, and certainly not off the video now on YouTube. > > anyhow, to answer the question - "it all depends" > > I've only limited knowledge of the Engineers test programs tho' I > think I > have some notes somewhere. > So some of what follows may not be precisely correct. > > Most test programs were normally run under operators exec and were > stored on > a normal program library tape > (these were tapes with a search program (#TAPE) at the start and > the rest of > the programs in any order following.) > > The engineers (raw machine) test tape would have started with a > minimal > exec-mode bootstrappable search program at the > start (really only a program loader - not a full exec). This would > have been > followed by the exec-mode test programs which > were presumably in a bootstrap format. Our engineers usually ran > such basic > test programs from paper tape - this may have been > because that process relied on less of the system being operational > that the > process of finding and loading one from MT. Well, when and if he finds it, maybe what's written on the spool will give us a clue to if its any use or not. > > Of course, as always!, the system faults that one remembers were not > detected by the test programs ... > (On the 1905E one time odd things happened with the Limit register > - that > took some locating; > On the Honeywell dual-processor, one of the two processors started > giving > some wrong results in floating-point - > and as it was (almost) SMP this had effectively random results that > took > some locating) We've had some weird ones with Flossie too. We found a fault three weeks ago, all the read-modify-write instructions were randomly causing a subsequent instruction to fail, about once a minute. This is just long enough to get from the console to the oscilloscope, so you start a program and it seems like the machine is being a bitch and waiting for you to NEARLY get to find out what is wrong, but not quite letting you do it. At the heart of the machine is a shift register which is supposed to have exactly one '1' in it at all times. The duration of the instruction is controlled by how far along the register the '1' gets. With two of us working on the fault, I was probing various signals and eventually we traced the fault to the shift register when my friend shouted over that the fault had seemed to have disappeared. I found that the impedence/resistance of the scope probe on one of 25 pins on one of 4000 cards seemed to make the fault disappear (and reappear when removed). We think we were getting two '1's in the shift register, but anyway, we changed that PCB and all has been well since. Roger.

17 years, 5 months

A little levity: "computerized FRPG"

by us21090＠yahoo.com

Zane, A few months ago, I came across Flying Buffalo ( http://www.flyingbuffalo.com ), an old PBM company founded in 1970 that is still running. I contacted the owner who still had records of my account from 30 years ago! He says I have 95 cents left in my account, though I didn't ask if that was in 1976 dollars. Kinda pulling this back on-topic, when I played back in the late 1970's, every 2-weeks or so I would receive the new game status on yellow teletype paper! He says, ( http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/history.htm ) they first rented time on a CDC 3300, then later bought a Raytheon 704 minicomputer- over $30,000 total. "Sigh. And it only had 4K of memory!". From there they bought a Poly 88 computer kit, a North Star Horizon and then IBM clones. He also told of a letter from "The Avalon Hill Game Company saying they weren't going to print my ad for "computer moderated pbm" in the classified ads of "The General" (a wargaming magazine) until I sent them a letter of permission from whoever owned the computer that I was using(!)". He also ran into trouble with the zoning inspector: "if you wanted to have a home business, you couldn't have anything that a normal person wouldn't have in their home, and normal people didn't have a computer in their living room." Today he's still using older methods for game play (snail mail, email, fax) but says using the web for entering game play is the next step. Scott ----- Original Message ---- From: Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, July 4, 2007 9:51:15 PM Subject: Re: A little levity: "computerized FRPG" ... These sound more like the old PBM strategy games rather than a RPG. I think you'd send in your move for the turn, as would everyone else, and then you'd get the results back. ... I've no idea the state of such games, I suspect they're all dead. How many people are going to spend a few dollars per turn, with what was probably a couple week, at least, turn around. This would actually be an interesting area of study from both the gaming standpoint, and the classic computer standpoint. I'd love to see some of the software that was used to control these games, however, I'd guess that most were written by the person running the game, and most of the software has been lost. I do know that many gamers play online, either via email, or other solutions. ... Zane ____________________________________________________________________________________ Pinpoint customers who are looking for what you sell. http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/

17 years, 5 months

Symmetric 375

by rescue＠hawkmountain.net

I've aquired one of these... I found a great archive of information at: http://www.berklix.org/symmetric/ However the ftp link to the software archive is no good. There doesn't seem to be a way to contact this person other than by an international call. Anyone know Julian Stacey or have a copy of the Symmetric 375 software ? Haven't tried to boot the unit yet... it does have a hard drive. So... any other Symmetric 375 owners out there ? -- Curt

17 years, 5 months

CBM 8032 w/8050 dual floppy & Visicalc (Terre Haute, IN)

by legalize＠xmission.com

Ebay # 320135111531 Opening bid is $0.99, local pickup only. It would be a good deal for someone who's close by -- the guy won't ship it due to weight. -- "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, 5 months

HP150 and other stuff in Dallas/FW area

by g＠kurico.com

From a Craigslist ad (I am not affiliated with the seller, all correspondence should go to the sellers email): http://austin.craigslist.org/sys/367449526.html Body of the ad: I have several old i486 systems, drives, monitors,Keyboards, mouse, modems, ethernet and other cards, vintage software, and guides for mac, apple, basic, etc... Also search user KRLMFL on Ebay for other vintage computers and books! Have 1984 HP 150 touchscreen stack computer system! Looking for anything specific? I have loads of stuff, all from '93 and beyond... Raybob13 at windstream.net

17 years, 5 months

Drum vs. Core

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

On 3 Jul, 2007, at 23:35, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> >>> I probably have enough to make a very close approximation on a FPGA, >>> but there doesn't seem to be a survivng operators Exec for a 1900, >>> only George 3 stuff. >> >> Oh, from which I presume there are no surviving 1900s? > > There looks to be one at the Science Museum's Wroughton facility > (and a 1500) > - trouble is it's hard to judge from the asset listing how complete > it/they > are. And of course, even if they are complete, how many years of > effort it > would take to make operational. And of course, what software they > have even > assuming the hardware could be made to run. :-( I should of course said operational 1900s. Nice to know the hardware is around anyway. I never came across a 1500, though there is a description of one in the programming notices folder I got with my 1301. I understand they were ICL badged RCA machines and that RCA and ICL used the same 'standard' interface so presumably 1302, 1500 series, 1900 series and modified 1301s could all use the same peripherals, if they had suitable driving software of course. Back to the original post, does anyone know if there is a difference between the "operators Exec for a 1900" and the executive used by engineers and recorded on 7 track mag tape? Would this be of any use? Roger.

17 years, 5 months

Urgent action - rescue needed, Manchester England.

by robert＠irrelevant.com

Hi all. anybody near Manchester want to take a risk? My ex-wife has posted on the local freecycle list a "pile of electronic gubbins". Unfortunately we're not speaking, and she's not going to let me within a mile of the place. But from the posting, a message passed by a friend, and reading between the lines, it looks like it's going to be everything I ended up leaving behind when I left, about 8 years ago (and which I'd subsequently been told had been disposed of). It therefore /may/ include: complete act sirius 1 and external hard disc apricot xen and external isa expansion chassis microfive 8088 based multi-user system amstrad pc512 in bits SUN 600Mb external scsi drive (was huge!) composite colour monitor plus the usual pc junk, but probably nothing under 10 years old! and it may incude none of those... she's insistant on an all-or-nothing pickup as she's moving, and knows nothing of whats there and cant describe it. However if anybody is nearby and fancies taking a chance on getting some classic kit, let me know and I'll pass on contact details. I don't know how much interest she'll get from the freecycle list direct so best be quick... Rob

17 years, 5 months

Nice - SCSI to IDE converter (eBay Australia)

by trag＠io.com

>Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 10:02:19 -0700 (PDT) >From: Chris M <chrism3667 at yahoo.com> >Subject: Nice - SCSI to IDE converter (eBay Australia) >http://cgi.ebay.com/SCSI-to-IDE-converter_W0QQitemZ170126238112QQihZ007QQca… > >are these hard to come by (or make even!). Seems like >a darned handy thing to have around. They are fairly easy to get, but the list price on the ones with which I am familiar is in the neighborhood of $70. It kind of guts the economy of putting affordable IDE devices on your SCSI chain. Acard makes a variety of adapters, with the variation being different flavors of SCSI. The narrow ultra-SCSI adapter is the AEC-7220U. If you visit Acard's website you will find that their price on it is $69, but I think they ship from Taiwan or some such. It is better to find the US distributers and buy from them (if you're in the USA). IIRC the USA distributers are getlaptop.com and microlandusa.com. Newegg sells some Acard products, but I don't know if they carry the SCSI to IDE adapters. The Acard models have (?) extended LBA support or whatever it is called when disks larger than 137 GB are supported. It might be kind of funny to put a 500 GB IDE drive ($90 w/ free shipping at Frys.com; Seagate 5yr warranty) on some machine from the late 80's with an unenhanced SCSI port. How long would it take to write the whole disk at 3 MB/s? Jeff Walther

17 years, 5 months

unibus geeking; udisk update

by brad＠heeltoe.com

[keywords: unibus, pdp-11, disk controller emulation] If anyone has an interest in low level unibus, I scanned in some screen shots from my simple HP1650 and updated my udisk page. Nothing exotic, just basic register reads, npr & br5. http://www.heeltoe.com/retro/udisk/index.html I finally put the async cpld aside and started debugging the simple synchronous state machine. The sync version works much better and is (as you'd expect) much faster. I have some more debugging to do but basic register i/o and dma work well and the cpu can now easily keep up. I hope to prove out the prototype this summer and do a spin modulo work load. (last week all 3 of my 'real jobs' stalled simultaneously - woo hoo! this week i have a pcb board stuck in customs in boston, so my fun work is getting a time slot or two :-) -brad

17 years, 5 months

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test-drb July 2007