test-drb September 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

220 participants
406 discussions

by listmailgoeshere＠gmail.com

On 9/29/07, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > How cool is this domain name? > > http://ami.ga/ It's not quite as cool as this one: http://atari.st ;) Ed.

17 years, 3 months

80s video game markets...

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Random mutterings... I was just thinking earlier how huge the UK computer game market was in the 80s - and yet most of the titles were produced by UK people for the UK market, and presumably never exported elsewhere. Other countries presumably followed the same pattern - and there must be games which were huge in one country and relatively unheard of anywhere else. Which sort-of raised the question of whether anyone's ever tried to 'map' the 80s video game industry by popularity in each country? Like I said, random mutterings. I'm just curious what was going on elsewhere while us UK lot were playing Frak, Manic Miner, Repton, Monty Mole etc... :-)

17 years, 3 months

Epson QX-10 Emulator

by cclist＠sydex.com

Has anyone tried Toshiya Takeda's Epson QX-10 emulator at http://www1.interq.or.jp/~t-takeda/top.html ? >From what I can gather, one needs at least the boot rom image to get the thing to run. Anyone know where I can get one? Cheers, Chuck

17 years, 3 months

Who was putting together the TSX+ archive?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Is this already in the archive, or would it be useful? Lyle Bickley was putting together the software archive unfortunately, he's no longer subscribed here. The TSX docs are under pdf/dec/pdp11/tsxPlus and I have some manuals scanned from Feb 84.

17 years, 3 months

"Chuck" question

by cclist＠sydex.com

A friend forwarded this message to me and I agreed to post it. Please note that she's an archivist and not a collector: "I tried posting this elsewhere but other than one reply that some schools have old computers around, nobody's come up with a good explanation. So I thought I'd try Archives List in the hopes that somebody who either attended Stanford University or works there might be able to say if the reference is some sort of in-joke. The show is Chuck on which premiered on NBC this week and the question is: Why would a character who's 27 years old say he'd developed a video game on a TRS80 when he attended Stanford? Assuming a normal progress through school, Chuck attended college between 1997 and 2002 or perhaps a few years earlier if he was a child prodigy (of which there is no evidence in the pilot.) Would he have been able to to find a Trash-80 there and use it to design a video game? TRS-80's were first manufactured before he was born and production ended by the time he entered kindergarten. Although the Model 100 laptop enjoyed some popularity - especially with reporters - until the 1990's, surviving TRS-80's were antiques by the time the character was in high school. I've checked various message boards, etc. but haven't found a mention of this - just lots of comparisons to Jake 2.0 and a fairly even mix of pans and praise for the show. Judy Turner Whitefish Bay, WI"

17 years, 3 months

VSII/GPX joy (and minor annoyance)

by Arno_1983＠gmx.de

(Hah...Just in time to join in when vax-ownership is asked!) Hello folks, my very first DEC computer has arrived - a VAXstation II/GPX in a BA123 enclosure from Jos Dreesen, which I just brought home from Switzerland last weekend with the help of my parents. Thanks again! The original configuration of the system was: Slot AB CD 1 ----KA630-A CPU---- 2 ----some memory---- 3 ----more memory---- 4 -DELQA- ..empty.. 5 -RQDX3- ..empty.. 6 ----QDSS 4-plane--- 7 ----QDSS 4-plane--- 8 ----QDSS base------ 9-12 .......empty....... 13 ..empty.. -RQ Dist- As to mass storage, there is a RX33 floppy drive in the vertical bay and the system has one HDD frontpanel insert installed. It came with a dead (possibly revivable) RD53, but a fellow collector also gave me a supposedly functional one. I assume the backplane is the original 4x Q/CD, 8x Q/Q thing that belongs in a BA123 as indicated by the lettering in the cardcage. To my understanding, this means the grant chain was broken in slot 5 (after the RQDX3) because there's no board in its CD half. I rearranged the cards so that the RQDX3 now resides in 4AB, the QDSS base board is in 5AD and the DELQA in 8CD (I hope I did get that serpentine configuration right). After correcting an issue with the cardcage fan (which turned out to be just the connector inside the fan tray plugged in backwards!), I hooked up a crufty old laptop as a terminal but didn't get any output as the selftest always got stuck at "A", which corresponds to a keyboard/pointing device problem. This is supposedly normal since I have the VCB02 video option installed but nothing plugged into it. (I have yet to get myself a DEC keyboard, mouse and the BC18Z splitter box cable; at the same time, I'll be looking for a TK drive with controller and any other stuff I can cram in there.) I can get into console I/O mode (chevron prompt) by sending a Break from the terminal but it's a bit annoying that I don't get to see the CPU version banner and the test countdown that way. Shorting pins 8 and 9 on the serial console connector didn't make any difference either (I have read it will cause some VAXstations to use that as console instead of the graphics display) - bit of a bummer considering that any humble SPARCstation who realizes they haven't got a keyboard attached will start using the serial console. I have read the KA630 User's Guide, especially the meaning of the BBU RAM contents, and it doesn't look as if there is anything short of hacking the POST code and burning a new PROM that could be done about it, but if I have overlooked something, I'm all ears. Other than that, I'm off now looking for a MOP server and some netbootable OS image, perhaps NetBSD, for a start... Yours sincerely Arno Kletzander, DEC neophyte ;) -- Arno Kletzander Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen www.iser.uni-erlangen.de Ist Ihr Browser Vista-kompatibel? Jetzt die neuesten Browser-Versionen downloaden: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/browser

17 years, 3 months

gEDA symbols

by doc＠mdrconsult.com

I'm fiddling around with the gEDA suite, and I'm finding that nearly none of the chips I want to use - MC6809[E], NEC 675, some 74LSxxx chips - have symbols in the gschem libraries. I have the 6809E and 765 parts done, but there are several smaller parts to go. After thinking about it, I seem to remember that this came up a few months ago, and that somebody (Dave?) either had an extensive private symbol library or knew of an online repository. Anyhow, I thought I'd ask before I invent anymore wheels. Anyone have pointers to "obsolete" and arcane part descriptions for gschem? Doc

17 years, 3 months

Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

> I have a DEC 4000 (Futurebus+, 1 CPU installed approx 384MB RAM, > IIRC), and a "no-name" AXPpci33. My DEC 4000 came with one 5.25" SCSI > drive and 3 3.5" SCSI drives, with OSF/1 or similar on one disk, and > OpenVMS on another. DEC 4000/AS8000 have interested me for a while- were there any other commercially available general-purpose computers using the Futurebus+? I know that most AS8ks probably don't have the Futurebus+ adaptor, but it is available. Pity they are so big. > I bought the AXPpci33 as a bare board, but the > DEC 4000 came from Uni Surplus and used to be known as "Oscar", the > machine that ran the card catalog for the library system at The Ohio > State University. "Card Catalog" - ILS (Integrated Library System) please! They do so much more than simple cataloging now. I realized how much of a computer snob I was this week- my school system is considering replacing their current ILS (Dynix Scholar, circa 1988 interface) with either Follett or DynixSirsi. I have a hard time taking Follett seriously because it's Windows-NT only.

17 years, 3 months

EPROM deaths...

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Is there any kind of common failure mode for EPROMs? I've just had a couple which are refusing to erase - I'm getting repeating patterns of bits which refuse to clear (i.e. go high) under the eraser. Normally they seem to erase in ten minutes, twenty at the most - these pair have had 30 so far. Just wondering whether to keep baking 'em or just toss them because they're junk... (I've managed to find what I did with my nice eraser - but it'll still only erase a couple of chips at once) cheers Jules

17 years, 3 months

Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen

by compoobah＠valleyimplants.com

> > Subject: Anyone collect Dec/Compaq Alphaservers or VAXen? > From: "Dan Snyder" <ddsnyder at zoominternet.net> > Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:32:23 -0400 > To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > > To all, > > I have monitored the postings and know of a few collectors of VAXen, > all types it seems. The > PDP family is popular too. What about Alphaservers? some are by > classic definition at least > 10 years old such as the 1000/1000A and 1200 series. Alphastations > definitely qualify like the > 200/250/255/500 series. I collect most of the Alpha family as I use > them frequently. I have a 3000/300X, AS1000A 5/333, VX42 Multia, EB164-based-system, and an AlphaServer 2100 4/275RM that's probably going to be parted out (too big, I have no racks, and periodically I have to open it up and tap on the CBUS-I/O backplane connection). If anyone's interested . . . Alphas are nice machines, fast, interesting, and SRM is nice and pretty standard, so no more "what's the console support on this model?" moments. Bad side - WNT and the NT-only models. Half-flash can make for some fun times, too, but the only machine I have with half-flash is the EB164. The one I've had the most problems with is probably the VX42 - for some reason, when the PROMs are loaded with the OVMS-capable SRM and the battery dies, it will not come back up until the PROMS are re-flashed to the old Multia firmware and updated again. This took some figuring out... I have a brace of VAXen, too (one 3100/76 and one 4000/200), both of which are run off of serial (there really isn't much of a reason to have graphics on a VAX anyway). My biggest surprise was the fact that the 4k (SOC, 5VUPS) is often as responsive as the 3100/76 (Rigel, 7.6 VUPS). I wouldn't advise a Qbus-based machine for a first-timer, since disks are hard to come by (fortunately Boeing had a HSD-05 in their $5 bin that I was able to hack up into the BA430 chassis. For some reason the disks don't register sometimes at first power-on- perhaps I need to wire in a reset button for the HSD- I'm not sure there). > OpenVMS > and Digital Unix are the OS of choice. > Naturally :-) .

17 years, 3 months

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test-drb September 2007