test-drb August 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

221 participants
459 discussions

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

What about a VVCF = Virtual Vintage Computer Festival? Via a Website to webcams at list members locations. If around they can show off their collection to one or more visitors. Lectures no problem. Demo's Yup. No need to drag equipment around the country. Precious/heavy kit does not get damaged. Fully International Zero cost. The only downside is the loss of the social aspect. Rod Smallwood (The DecCollector) -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tim Walls Sent: 06 August 2007 15:04 To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Re: UK VCF? Pete Turnbull said: > On 05/08/2007 21:10, Tony Duell wrote: >>> Hire a genny. >> >> How stable is the frequency of such a unit? Remember many larger disk >> drives have their spindle speed set by mains freqeucy. > > To say nothing of the fact that the output is often nothing like a > sine wave, and many devices don't take kindly to that. Thanks to Yorkshire Electricity Distribution Ltd. being bloody useless, I am considerably more intimate with my building's generator than I was a few short weeks ago, so this is a subject close to my heart! Anyway, the long and the short is that gennys certainly can produce reliable power - more reliable than YEDL, anyway. Our unit is an Iveco 6l 4-stroke diseasel driving a MarelliMotori genset, generating 150Kva of 440v 3phase. Output voltage and frequency are programmable, and frequency stability calibration is documented in the manual. Modern gennies would be more than capable of doing the job, and should be readily available for short-term lease. You'd be surprised how quiet and clean-running they are as well. Fuel isn't cheap though; IIRC running it at ~75% load it uses something in the order of 200 litres/day of diesel; it should be OK to use red diesel in a genny I think (for non-UKers - red diesel is diesel on which fuel tax hasn't been paid,) but you're still looking at a fair old cost. Oh, and to answer the original question - I'm up noorf in Yorkshire, although I'd actually prefer such an event to be in London. I'd be interested in going if it does happen, anyway. Cheers, Tim. PS. Word of advice - check the fuel controller pump relay. Nothing more annoying than being woken up at 3am because a poxy 5 quid relay has stuck and caused the header tank to run dry. Voice of bitter experience there ;-). (On the bright side, if that does happen I can now show you how to hand-prime a dry diesel engine :^).) -- Tim Walls at home in Leeds EMail & MSN: tim.walls at snowgoons.com

16 years, 11 months

UK VCF or equivalent

by sellam＠vintagetech.com

See, this is one part of the reasons why I don't actively follow the list: Patrick Finnegan said: > > Indeed. I view Sellam's attitude as a response to all of the people > > who recently were saying, in effect, "Screw your copyright, I'm using > > your name anyway!" > > It'd be nice if Sellam could at least figure out how to say this in a > non-"I'm going to ruin your life for doing something that's not nice" > sort of way. And this is from a friend even!! :/ First of all, how would I be ruining someone's life by running an event parallel to someone trying to steal my international brand name? I'm not threatening to burn down their house and kill their pets, for fuck's sake. I'm not even threatening to sue! I'm offering a rather democratic way to resolve the issue: go to the fake "VCF" or the real VCF, and see which one you prefer. I'm willing to bet that most people would choose the real VCF, and the fake "VCF" would suffer. The question is, does anyone really want to take the gamble? It would be easier to just come up with your own damn name. As others previously have pointed out, this is a brand identity I have developed over the course of 10 long years. I'm not going to let anyone use it unless I approve. I'd be an idiot to allow otherwise. If someone produced a cola and started selling it as "Pepsi", would you have sympathies with Pepsi or the person egregiously stealing the brand name? Anti-capitalist lefties aside, I have a pretty good idea that the legal system would side with Pepsi (the real one). Would you go to MacWorld run by Apple, or "MacWorld" run by a guy named Abdullah? And would you criticize Apple for suing the hell out of Abdullah for infringing on their trademark? Pat, you know the deal. You produce the VCF Midwest under an ad hoc license. Why should I let someone else just take it and run with it as they wish? I certainly wouldn't give you that type of leeway. Nor anyone else for that matter. Are UK nerds just anti-ownership in general, or only because I'm the one raising a beef over the prospect of someone stealing my brand identity? Unreal. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

16 years, 11 months

newbie building a scratch-built computer

by classiccmp＠memory-alpha.org.uk

Hi, >> Please note that I've got a couple of programmers as >>well as an eraser--and a big pile of EPROMs. I use them. >>But I don't find it particularly convenient. > > Fair enough. :-) I've been dealing with them for a long time >(as you have) and it's just second nature to me; I don't really >notice the inconvenience. It's what you're used to. I spent some 6 years using EPROMs for development and never considered it an inconvenience (tine consuming, but necessary). Then I used an EPROM emulator.... TTFN - Pete.

16 years, 11 months

newbie building a scratch-built computer

by classiccmp＠memory-alpha.org.uk

Hi, >>....and it won't work in anything newer than an XT. :-( > > Why is that a disdvantage _on this list_? Surely original >IBM PC/XT machines are not hard to find (are they?) and >they're certainly repairable... I've got a couple buried somewhere here (an XT and at least one XT-286). The "disadvantage" to me is that I simply don't want to keep an old DOS machine like that going purely to burn the odd EPROM/PAL. Plus, I want to be able to burn EPROMs directly from this machine, the one I do my development work (such that it is at the moment) on, not mess about transferring the files to another machine....hency the reason I really should overhaul my "S3". But I do take your point. :-) TTFN - Pete.

16 years, 11 months

Fun with TK50's

by ian_primus＠yahoo.com

Well, in my adventures with this MicroVax II and it's associated TK50, I have learned a few things about these critters: TK50 Facts: A TK50 drive has phillips head screw-heads on both reels (underneath, through hole in board for supply/cartridge reel, and in the center of the take up reel on the top). This allows you to manually rewind a tape that's jammed in the drive. When you rewind a tape that's been stuck in the drive for who-knows-how-many years, it won't necessarily load the next time. Some portions of the tape were wrapped unevenly and dragging inside the cartridge (you can feel it, pusing in on the reel from beneath the cartridge). It's possible to manually wind the entire tape out of the cartridge in order to fix this, using only a phillips head screwdriver. And provided you cleaned the drive, it'll even rewind when power it back up. Said cartridge won't actually hold data again, however. (Can anyone say shoeshine?) Tape cartridge design hasn't changed much. DLT III tapes look almost identical, and would fit if it wasn't for a plastic tab on the left of the tape. Tape cartridges are so identical, in fact, that you can disassemble your dud TK50, and move the bottom part of the shell over to a DLT III cartridge, allowing you to insert it into a TK50 drive. As clever as this seems, it doesn't work at all. Not that I really expected it to, TK50's are 350 orsted, DLT III's are like 1540 orsted. The media is very, very different. I just wanted to see what would happen. In case you're curious, such a tape will thead up, load, then give an error. The tape won't properly rewind and unload either, you have to do it manually. You't think that the designers would have thought of this, and implemented some system of preventing you >from inserting a DLT III tape into a TK50 drive. Like a plastic tab or something. Oh, wait... A TK50 cartridge makes a rather thick, but serviceable, coaster. Just in case anyone else wanted to know :) -Ian

16 years, 11 months

Need a copy of Memorite for a Vector 4

by cclist＠sydex.com

Anyone got one? The executable file is fine, or even a diskette image containing it. I'm not sure which version of Memowrite the Vector 4 used, so I'm sorry I can't be more specific. Thanks, Chuck

16 years, 11 months

Commodore PET 2001 Photo, 1-18-77

by billdeg＠degnanco.com

Doing a little research.. What date was the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in 1977? Are there any published photos from this event? I have a photo of the prototype Commodore PET 2001 from the Jan 18-20 1977 Gametronics convention proceedings. http://vintagecomputer.net/commodore/gametronics-77/Gametronics_1977_PET-20… ...Is that Chuck Peddle in the photo? ...Is this the oldest known photo of a PET? More photos: http://vintagecomputer.net/commodore/gametronics-77/ I am trying to determine whether Gametronics came before or after the Winter CES in Jan 1977. The web does not seem to have the answer, maybe someone on this list was actually there... Bill D

16 years, 11 months

UK VCF?

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

First a simple question, how many readers of this list are in the UK? If Bletchley Park might be able to do a VCF in two or three years time, maybe we could do something much simpler in the mean time, without using the VCF name. Just a get together of anyone in the UK with an interest in old computers and hopefully a few who would want to exhibit theirs. Who would be interested and about how much space, if any would they want? I guess we would need to double that up to allow for aisles etc. Then we'll know the size of venues to look for. By the way, I was really thrown by the mention of the planet Venus, it took me a while to work out it was a typo for venues :-) Then there's the question of vehicle parking. How many and are we talking only cars and small vans or big vans and articulated lorries? Roger, who is planning a 1300 sq ft extension to his computer room, and who lives on a farm in Kent. Probably too small and not central enough, but who knows.

16 years, 11 months

[personal] cctalk Digest, Vol 48, Issue 20, Message 16

by mike＠brickfieldspark.org

> Message: 16 > Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 07:45:42 -0700 > From: "Rick Bensene" <rickb at bensene.com> > Subject: RE: Looking for manual for IME 86s desktop calculator > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" I've just had a calculator that looks very similar to the IME 86 shipped over from Europe. It was made by Tesla Bratislava located in Bratislava, Slovakia, formely in Czechoslovakia. Apparently they copied other designs for their products, from the layout it is obviousley 3 register based and has core memory storage. I am in the process of reconditioning the unit to get it working, keyboard was completley seized (fixed that), transcribing the layout back to a circuit, cleaning it up, power supply is missing though. If anybody knows of any info of this or the IMS machine or similar machines please let me know. Can post photos of the unit. Many thanks. Mike Hatch Web - www.brickfieldspark.org E-mail - mike at brickfieldspark.org Urban Wildlife ring - www.brickfieldspark.org/uwringhome.htm >> My dad's had an IME 86s calculator in his office for years, >> He's interested in finding a copy of the manual for it -- > A wonderful machine, with a great design. The Italians managed to > package a lot of machine into a relatively small footprint for the time. > Very nice mechanical design and electronic elegance. > > There's a lot of history relating to the IME calculators, particularly > the IME 84 (IME's first electronic calculator) and future calculator > industry developments. > > I haven't come across a manual for one of these machines yet, and have > been looking for a long time. > > I know well how these machines operate. If you have any questions on > how to operate it, drop me an off-list Email. > > > Rick Bensene > r-i-c-k-b-at-b-e-n-s-e-n-e.c-o-m (delete dashes, and replace "at" with > the obvious character) > The Old Calculator Museum > http://oldcalculatormuseum.com > >

16 years, 11 months

Commodore 64 power jack?

by adamg＠pobox.com

Ensor wrote: [regarding mini-DIN connectors] > I hate those connectors with a passion, they're so small that they're almost > impossible to solder up. And half the time you spend so long trying to > solder to the pins that you end up melting the buggers....gah! :-( IIRC, if the connector you're working on is plugged into a mating socket while you're soldering it, it tends to retain its shape better. -- Adam

16 years, 11 months

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test-drb August 2007