test-drb September 2007

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

220 participants
406 discussions

by healyzh＠aracnet.com

How well has TI-99/4A software on floppies been preserved? We just received a very large donation. As part of the donation is what appears to be a complete TI-99/4A system complete with the expansion box, and a couple other expansions. There is documentation for at least some of the hardware and software. At this time I've no idea how much TI software is in there, as the TI floppies are mixed in with hundreds if not thousands of floppies. I know the 5 1/4 floppies include TI, C64/128, Apple ][, and PC floppies. There are 8" Tandy, and possibly IBM Displaywriter floppies, tons of 3.5" floppies, and at least one 3" Amstrad floppy. There is obvious commercial software for the TI on floppy (including a boxed Infocom game), as well as what appears to be a lot of floppies from what I suspect was a TI club (these might not be TI floppies). I thought I had a lot of floppies until I saw this pile. Zane -- | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | | healyzh at aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast | | MONK::HEALYZH (DECnet) | Classic Computer Collector | +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |

17 years, 3 months

calcomp 8" drive motors available

by oldcpu2＠rogerwilco.org

Chuck wrote: > On 26 Sep 2007 at 17:13, Richard wrote: > > > > > > In article <000f01c8008d$38c89f80$6400a8c0 at BILLING>, > > > "Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org> writes: > > > > >> > > > Two drive motors from Calcomp 8" floppy drives are available. >> > > > > > > Calcomp made floppies?!?! I thought they just made plotters! > > Nope--my first drives were Calcomp 104's. Miserable things. I > believe they were also the stock drive for the Imsai 8080 floppy box. I just finished resurrecting an old PDP-11/03, racked in some old-timer, 1950s-style radio gear cabinet that looks like it came right out of an old NWS monitoring station. Anyway, the system has two RX01 subsystems. As I disassembled everything for thorough cleaning, I, like Richard, was a little surprised to see that one drive of each RX01 pair was really a CalComp drive. In both cases the mate was a DEC branded drive. The construction of CalComp and the mated DEC drives are essentially identical, with only a few minor changes to some of the plastic parts. I wonder if the CalComp line was actually acquired by DEC (or vice-versa?). These RX01s both date from 1978. - Jared

17 years, 3 months

Duplicate list messages?

by julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk

Is anyone else seeing duplicate messages every once in a while? I got two from Jay (about the IBM terminal) spaced 55 minutes apart but with otherwise identical content. I think there was a pair like this yesterday from someone, and two or three pairs last week. Looking at the headers of these latest two, there are differences in timing, and one of them references 'billy.ezwind.net' in connection with some Spam-Assassin lines, whereas the other doesn't. Yeah, I know this is really an off-list admin thing - I was just curious whether others had seen it happen too. (Jay, if it's useful and might be something happening at your end, I can try and save any more I see like this and see if there's any pattern to which ones it happens with... prod me off-list if needs be) cheers Jules

17 years, 3 months

8-bitters and multi-whatever

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8-bitters and multi-whatever > From: "Roy J. Tellason" <rtellason at verizon.net> > Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:24:01 -0400 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On Sunday 09 September 2007 16:04, Allison wrote: >> >A while back I *almost* got a hold of one of those "z80 network in a box" >> >systems, it wasn't S-100 but something else I can't recall, I think >> > that's the one I have the book on, but I never did snag it. >> >> Multibus, very nice bus and expensive cards. I have a few multibus cards. >> Intel used it in their MDS800 and a few otehrs as well. > >I remember seeing that in some sales literature and it always did strike me as >being more spendy than I wanted or could afford to get into. :-) It cost more because it was industrial strength, larger boards, regulated power and so on. >> >Unfortunately instead of RS232 Televideo has something else going there >> >(RS422?), not easy to interface too, and they distribute their "network" >> >out amongst what other Televideo boxes you have, which in my case is >> > none. I guess with an S-100-based system you could always add more cards, >> > and somehow or other make it work. >> > >> >And speaking of the networking aspect of it, do any of you guys know how >> > they did it? I recall one time getting a glimpse of some system or other >> > that was S-100 but also had a set of connectors at thet op of each card, >> > which is what they used for their inter-processor linking rather than >> > trying to push it through the bus. The reason for this is not apparent >> > to me. >> >> Many ways to do it, using a commmon port or a pool of common memory for >> in box networking and serial ports as well. There were also ARCnet, pre >> Ethernet and even Ethernet. > >I know of ARCnet, went to a short seminar on that once at a trade show, and >in fact even have a couple of ISA cards around here someplace, though I >don't forsee me ever using them. ARCnet and most of the 'nets were in the price range of a hard disk then. Also the whole idea of networking was new. For example in 1982 the two largest networks I knew of were DEC (internal) and Dupont(internal) and they were around 50 nodes! There were a few simple schemes but excluding myself how many hobbiests back then had two or more systems? >> >I've also seen some "CP/M networking" stuff referred to that was supposed >> > to work through serial ports, which pretty many machines had, althogh >> > they appeared in at least one case to be using diodes to wire-OR RS232 >> > signals, which doesn't strike me as too terribly robust. And what >> > software support there was for this wasn't real apparent. >> >> That was a poor mans networking. Basically the serial ports were used as >> CD/CSMA bus and there was some protocal like Ethernet but slower and could >> use the usually common async chips. I have such a net going for my CP/M >> crates and all. > >What does that take on the software side of things? Not a whole lot, CPnet could be used but it was easy enough to use plain vanilla CP/M2.2 and add your own BIOS drivers for "networked functions". defineatly home grown. >> >I dunno, I've just got this fascination for assorted 8-bit parts talking >> > to each other through some smallish number of wires, I guess it's easier >> > to deal with than some of the big iron you guys handle regularly, which >> > I can't afford to go get never mind housing. And I've seen multiple >> > processors used in stuff already, as in some musical equipment that >> > passed "event information" from one chip to the next with only a couple >> > of pins, or the daisywheel printer that had _four_ 804x procesors in it >> > for different functions. >> >> This is not a new thing. > >Nope. It's just my particular fascination these days. And probably a lot >easier to deal with than lots of big iron. :-) > >> >TurboDOS is neat, and has some good design aspects in it, but there's >> > too much legacy stuff in there for being able to run CP/M software, >> > stuff I'd leave out if it were me and too much emphasis on the same old >> > Console / Printer / Disk Drives in the system, as opposed to something >> > different or unique. I found the same thing to be the case when I looked >> > at FORTH, too much of the usual stuff, and that was supposed to have >> > been used in some control applications? I must've missed something >> > there... >> >> ???? Whats the question or point? > >Just that I'd like to see some stuff that isn't oriented that way. You have a >SBC, you obviously need some way to talk to it, but the standard "console" >stuff gets a little old, I probably don't want to hook a printer up to it, >and may not even want a disk drive of any sort, depending on what I wanna do >with it. I'm up for exploring some alternative approaches to doing things. >Unfortunately the embedded stuff that's out there doesn't satisfy too often, >the design being too specific to the app, source code not available, etc. >I'm thinking that it should be possible to have some sort of a more >generalized framework to hang things on, and then you could optimize it for >specific uses, or expand it in different directions. Even from the earliest >days "personal" computers all seemed to take pretty much the same approach to >things... Well by hook or by grook the average PC still has a serial port, some have two or atleast a USB port for a USB to serial. It's not that hard to write software to use that serial as a access from the SBC for things like a remote printer or disk and people have and are doing it. It's not "networking" in the full blown sense but none of the IO of a SBC is required to direct connection to a printer or terminal (ignoring rom based stuff). >I realized in other messaging a while back that it's been well over a year >since I fired up a soldering iron, and this is a bad thing. :-) And even >then, it was a matter of scrapping stuff, not building anything new and >interesting. I need to get out of that particular rut and get back to it, >or there's no point to all those parts I've been scrounging for decades. >Maybe one of these days I will... When you do tell us about it. Seems these days I get to maybe one of the major computer construction based projects maybe two per year. But I split my time between RF projects and digital projects. Allison > >-- >Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and >ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can >be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" >- >Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James >M Dakin

17 years, 3 months

PDP-11/10

by jwest＠ezwind.net

PDP-11/10 available. Please contact me off-list if interested. Jay

17 years, 3 months

IBM 3279 Terminal

by paul0926＠comcast.net

I just acquired an old IBM 3279 mainframe terminal. I used one of these back in the early '80s. Anyone know of any kits or technology or techniques to hook this up to something useful (perhaps an RS-232 or S100 interface or PCI interface) or is this just a boat anchor (I don't happen to have an old IBM mainframe handy)? Paul

17 years, 3 months

US imports (was: Re: Old mini computer (B80))

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

How about 'museum pieces on loan for exhibition.' Rod Smallwood -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jules Richardson Sent: 25 September 2007 23:08 To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: US imports (was: Re: Old mini computer (B80)) jim s wrote: > If you are bringing in something made in the USA then locate the "Made > in USA" badges and show them to any interested customs agents. There > are no duties on US made goods. If the unit was not primarily > assembled in the US then show them a reciept showing how much you paid > for it, and the age, and I doubt there would be any duty on it. Hmm, I can see I'm going to have fun if I try to bring 10-15 UK machines in (which are all 80s or older, but receipts? - haha!) Unless of course it's different because it's stuff I've owned for years (just not kept in the US) rather than items I've just acquired. Maybe "personal belongings" is a different case... I need to give a few shipping companies a prod I suppose and see what their experiences are.

17 years, 3 months

decent used laptops

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 17:40:16 -0700 (PDT) From: David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> Subject: Re: decent used laptops On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, Jim Leonard wrote: > Zane H. Healy wrote: > > $800 for a T40p or T42. > > You can get entirely new laptops for $800 so I'm not sure I'd recommend > that course of action. Yes, I love my T41, but I wouldn't consider it > worth $800. After three years, the battery is shot and the battery is > $130 right there. That brings me to the question of "do you buy a new battery or a new laptop?". My T42's batter is starting to get just a wee bit old. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu ---------------------------------------------- Reply: If you're up for rebuilding the battery, there are lots of places that'll sell you replacement cells; should be able to get away with half the cost or a little more. Sometimes only one or two cells are bad, although the rest do usually follow unless the bad ones were reverse-charged or just duds. m

17 years, 3 months

Spares for IP11

by gtq57＠dial.pipex.com

Hello, Do you still have any IP11/IP300 modules or know where I can get some. Regards, Bill Rowan.

17 years, 3 months

calcomp 8" drive motors available

by jwest＠classiccmp.org

Two drive motors from Calcomp 8" floppy drives are available. If interested please email off-list. Jay

17 years, 3 months

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test-drb September 2007