Jochen Kunz <jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> wrote:
> "Arno Kletzander" <Arno_1983 at gmx.de> wrote:
> > As I don't have a TGX/TGX+ in any of my easily accessible machines,
>
> Arno, this is quite easy to fix. I'll snail mail you one or two
> GX/TGX/TGX+ later this week. :-)
To Jochen, der Mouse and anybody else eager to help out:
Thanks a bunch, but please, don't bother to! If you have Sun stuff to shed, I'll happily discuss that in private mail, but it's not immediately needed.
I apologize that my message was a bit prone to misunderstand, but I actually meant to say that I *know* I have one of those things buried somewhere in my clutter and my interest is not sufficient at that stage to make me dig for it. If at all possible, I'd like to make do with the onboard cg3 of the SPARCclassic anyway. No, I've got no idea why people always think I'm into pain...
So long,
Arno.
--
Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer
I stumbled on "Inside the EISA Computers" by Tony Dowden (ISBN
0-201-52397-3) and AT&T's "SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface)
Definition" book, both circa 1987. If anyone has any interest in these,
you can have them for the cost of media mail shipping. The SCSI book is
incredibly detailed.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
All:
I have a working Northstar Horizon that I might be looking to sell to
make room for other things. I forget the exact configuration, but it has
somewhere between 32k and 48k of RAM and a dual-floppy drive system. I know
I have a bunch of disks for it (including blanks, maybe 30 or so), and I
think I may even have a version of CP/M for it. The body is in fine shape
but the wood top is original and in just OK condition. I planned on making a
new cover but I never got to it.
How much would something like this go for?
Rich
--
Rich Cini
Collector of Classic Computers
Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator
http://www.altair32.comhttp://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp
> Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2008 08:50:57 -0600
> From: "Michael B. Brutman" <mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com>
> I'm confused about this whole thread. I really thought that there was
> another entire OS/2 operating system (not from IBM) that people were
> talking about.
Sure--and OS X is the 10th version of that system. ;)
I'm thinking that there's probably some confusion over the labeling
with this PDP-11 thingie, whatever it is. There would be no good
reason to produce an -11 version of OS/2 at the time as the platform
was obsolete (or at least obsolescent). My guess is that's someone's
OS, but not IBM nor M$. I used DOS on an S/360, but it doesn't
resemble anything called "DOS" nowadays (there was also an S/360 TOS;
Sytos called their product for the PC a "Tape Operating System",
which I found to be very confusing, as it required DOS to run).
I do recall (more vividly than I care to, as it still makes my blood
boil) one aspect of the OS/2-NT charade. Microsoft solicited and
accepted pre-release subscriptions (about $3K each) from OS/2
developers for the "new" OS/2 that was going to be released Real Soon
Now. After they had everyone's money, M$ turned around and said that
they weren't going to do OS/2, but rather Something Better and that
they would be supplying that instead (NT 3.1). IIRC, they nearly had
a lynch mob headed toward Redmond screaming for BillG's corpse. M$
did relent and refunded the advance payment to those who screamed
loudest. Doubtless, quite a number of people got stuck with a dog of
an operating system that they didn't ask for an didn't want. I
don't think NT really caught on until about 3.51.
One thing that I had to hand IBM was that their developer's
documentation was superb for OS/2. The same could not be said for
Windows 3.0. I still have both on my bookshelf. In those pre-CD
days, you could estimate the quality of the documentation simply by
putting the boxes of developer's material on the bathroom scale.
I don't know about Vista, but 2K and XP still host the OS/2 subsystem
as well as HPFS. I've got a couple of 16-bit OS/2 applications that
I still use on 2K.
Cheers,
Chuck
> Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 09:25:44 +0100
> From: "Nico de Jong" <nico at farumdata.dk>
> I have a WP 4.3. Would that be useful?
I honestly don't know--it might be and I'd be willing to try to see
if it will import older versions. If I can convert to WP 4.x, I can
take it from there.
Thanks!
Chuck
> Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 02:31:02 -0500
> From: "John Floren" <slawmaster at gmail.com>
> It's best if you can work under a microscope; we had binocular
> microscopes that were perfect under low magnifications.
I long ago took a tip from my dentist and use a binocular loupe. Not
cheap, but you can move your head and not the work. Some even have
built-in light sources (mine doesn't).
> Next, I'd take my rather fine-tipped soldering iron, get a blob of
> solder on the tip, and quickly swipe it down the pins along one side.
> Inspection would reveal that almost all the pins now had very nice fills
> and very few were bridged.
Ah, the web sources seem to say "use the biggest tip you've got to
hold the most solder". I'll try the next one with a fine tip.
Thanks,
Chuck
Hi,
winter holidays left me with too much time at my hands and I'm currently trying out some more arcane (or is that "sick"?) stuff with my Sun workstations. According to the Sun Framebuffer FAQ, the TGX/TGX+ framebuffer is quite universally programmable - some OBP Forth magic allows you to select one of several possible dot clock frequencies, adjust front porch/sync/back porch widths in multiples of pixel duration and so on.
(Before anyone asks, this is all just idle experimental proof-of-concept stuff and not intended to work with any off-the-shelf software. If all goes extremely well, it might turn into a sort of SPARC-based videogame console somewhere in time, as I'm looking for TV rate RGB output.)
As I don't have a TGX/TGX+ in any of my easily accessible machines, I'd like to know just how "versatile" other framebuffers (mainly the cg3 built into the SPARCclassic) are in this respect.
I've already extracted some of the corresponding FCode(attributes and words from /iommu/sbus/cgthree) but it doesn't give me much of an idea where to start yet. Has anybody been involved with that stuff far enough to tell me - or just give me some pointers towards figuring out - which lever does what?
Btw, I do have a datasheet of the RAMDAC but could not find any useable information on the LSI L1A4946 chip which obviously, amongst other things, has to generate the video timing. If necessary, I'd even consider replacing the video clock crystal - SPARCclassics are abundant enough here.
Thanks in Advance,
Arno
--
Psssst! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger geh?rt?
Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger?did=10
Found during cleanup.
1 Microvax maintenance CDrom, contains the diagnostic software.
Complete in caddy and grey storage case.
(Dec partno AG-PCUSE-RE)
I would like to have $15 for it.
>
> Found during cleanup.
>
> 1 Microvax maintenance CDrom, contains the diagnostic software.
> Complete in caddy and grey storage case.
> (Dec partno AG-PCUSE-RE)
>
> I would like to have $15 for it.
>
>
I found a few more things which are related to the cdrom,
a diagnostics manual and a set (11) of 5.25 floppies in plastic
case.
All 3 items together for $25 + postage.
I've got some document files from 1984 that were created on a PC.
Although I'm not certain about the program used to create them, they
certainly look internally like Word Perfect (256 bytes of 00, a few
binary bits and then a block of FFs, followed by text blocks). My
conversion packages (RDocX and WordPort) only go back to WP 4.1 and
while they accept the files as Word Perfect, don't convert them
properly.
Does anyone have a suitable vintage copy of WP for DOS that might
handle these things?
Thanks,
Chuck
