> I'm a bit annoyed at the latest request that I falsely put
> a value of $25 on a customs form. At least he's asking
> before he bids. Would someone in Europe please comment on
> customs duties and lying on forms?
I've had $giantUScorp expect me to lie to Customs officials
about my purpose to enter Canada. They wanted to avoid
paying a $200 work visa. I told them they can pay it or they
can get someone else to do the job. I doubt $giantUScorp was
going to bail me out of a foreign jail, hire a lawyer to get
me undone and pay me for all my wages during that time.
So whilst the GNU project was announced in 1983 I've heard many examples
being cited of the source to software being shared prior to this, E.g.
IBM's VM up to vN.N. And indeed recall reading somewhere that up until a
certain point in time the source to most if not all software was
available. As vendors made their money from hardware sales and you were
unlikely to be able to buy a clone or build a machine yourself, and so
safe-guarding source code was not a major concern.
Does anyone know if the history of closed/unavailable vs. open/available
source is documented anywhere? Ideally in a book or journal that can be
properly referenced.
Regards,
Andrew
----------------
Andrew Back
a at smokebelch.org
Thanks to TonyM, I have a replacement power supply that works and I now
have the Otrona mostly running. (I do intend to repair the original
power supply -- I found what looks to be a bad transistor and I've
ordered a replacement (can't find it at the local shop.)).
The Otrona almost works properly, it just won't boot from floppy. I
need a bit of help debugging the floppy controller. Thus far I've
verified that the following are good:
- The drives themselves and the disks I'm trying to boot from (hooked
the drives up to my PC and used ImageDisk to dump the disk contents
successfully)
- The drive cable
- The NEC 765 controller (was originally bad! replaced with a known-good
765 from an old PC floppy controller and this improved things somewhat.)
Symptoms are: Drive spins up, seeks to track 0 but won't boot; running
the ROM diagnostics (thanks to Bob for a scan of the service manual!)
helps narrow down things a bit:
- The "Format" diagnostic runs, which means the heads load, the drive
seeks, and enough is working so that the Otrona thinks it's formatting.
I've tried reading the resultant diskette using ImageDisk and it chokes
on it, so I'm not sure it's formatting correctly.
- Reading or Writing a sector on a known good, CP/M formatted floppy
fails. The error code returned (4004) indicates a missing Sector ID.
There aren't a lot of chips involved in the floppy controller (about 12
or 13) so I'm hoping this shouldn't be too hard to track down. Any
suggestions on where to start? (Schematic at
http://oldcomputers.net/Attache_Schematics.pdf on page 6). Would it
make sense to start investigating the chips leading back from the /RD
DATA pin?
Thanks as always,
Josh
>
> >Thanks for the replies, all, especially Tony Duell who had it
> >spot-on:
Alas I've seen it dar too many times...
> >
> >>This normally means there's a short in the keyboard matrix, as if one =
> key=20
> >>is stuck down.
> >>
> >>What I would do is open up the keyboard casing (there are 2 screws =
> under=20
> >>the plastic posts/feet) and remove the internals.=20
> >(snip)
> >>Connect the PCB to the terminal with the normal cable and power up. =
> Most=20
> >>likely the LEDs will go through the normal sequence and there'll be no=20
> >>error message, which shows the fault is in the keyboard itself.
> >
> >The LED's do indeed cycle when the isolated PCB is hooked up, and
> >eventually "VT220 OK" appears on the screen. So now I either have
So the electronics is almsot certainly working.
> >to find the shorted key (it's pretty dirty in there so blowing
> >with compressed air might help) or just get another keyboard. I
If uou are really keen, you could try to find the shorted key. I have a
pinout of the keyboard tails, it's a 17*8 matrix :
J1 :
N/C
Row 5
Row 7
N/C
LockLED/
Col 2
Col 3
N/C
Col 4
Col 1
Col 5
N/C
J2
N/C
Col 6
COl 7
Col 8
Col 0
Col 9
HoldLED/
Row 4
Col 10
Col 11
Con 12
LED+
J3
WaitLED/
Col 13
Row 0
Col 14
Col 15
Col 16
Row 1
Row 2
Col 17
Row 3
Row 6
ComposeLED/
If you're not sure what end the pins are numbered from, the 'Row' lines
go, in order to port 0 of the 8051 microcontroller, the column lines come
>from the outputs of the '145 chips E2 (cols 0-9( and E3 (10-17)
What you need to do is check each Row connection to each Column
connection with an ohhmeter. See if you van find one that's low
resistance. When you do, let me know the row and column and I can tell
you which key that is.
You might then be lucky in that removing the key and lifting the leaf
spring away from the membrant might cure it. But alas it rarely does.
> >won't try and wash it after reading the warnings here.
> >
> >BTW I see one on ebag right now (190254818657) but it's a
> >"VT220-Style" unit, made by another manufacturer. Think it'd work
> >with a real VT220?
I doubt it. Many manufactuered copied the keyboard layout and design but
not the interface.
I thought LK201s were not that hard to find.
-tony
Tony Duell wrote:
> the card. As soon as I spotted this was implemented with 2114s [1]s, I
> knew what to do. I replaced them, and put the card back in, not
>
I heard before that 2114 are considered unreliable. Is there an overview
of brands that are not reliable? I have a computer in repair, a DAI,
8080 CPU with special stack RAM implemented with 2114s, so that could be
the problem. But it would be nice to be more sure before soldering them
out.
An image of the suspect RAM is here:
http://electrickery.xs4all.nl/tmp/2114s.jpg.
Greetings,
Fred Jan
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I don't suppose anyone on this list has a DEC AXP 3000/800 motherboard
and/or I/O board kicking around? I have had one of these for a while but
it has a problem with one or other boards. If I can't get a spare I
can't justify keeping it and will have to ditch it. I'd rather not,
obviously.
Regards, Mark.
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(This is a resend - I never got my original message back so I suppose it got stuck in that list server hiccup a few months ago...)
Hello everybody,
we recently acquired a HP NetServer 4/33 LE (later upgraded to 100 MHz) for the University computer museum and are trying to get it going now. This involves some configuration changes for which one needs a configurator disk - the one we got with it is flaky (reads unreliably). We did download the Netserver LE ECU (EISA configuration utility) disk images from HP's website but when the changes are made, the program complains that the actual system board ID differs from the one in the configuration file and does not save the new configuration to the CMOS.
Clearing the CMOS via DIP switch did not improve the situation. We finally got the original disk to boot once but got the same message. A BIOS update/reflash is not possible because the update utility wants Video BIOS shadowing enabled, which would - you guessed it - be done by means of the configuration utility.
Am I doing something wrong here, do I have the wrong disk image or is our mainboard toast?
As usual, thanks in advance...
Arno Kletzander
--
Arno Kletzander
Student Assistant // Studentische Hilfskraft
Informatik Sammlung Erlangen
www.iser.uni-erlangen.de
Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer
Hi,
I have a blog called "Vintage Technology Collector" (http://vintagetech.org)
and working on an article called "buying/selling vintage technology". I
have bought several vintage personal computers and device over the years,
and one of the best and most reliable sources of this equipment is eBay. I
am wanting to find out if anyone has any better places for buying/selling
vintage electronics.
Thanks,
Jason
Hi,
I have this Data General Nova 1220 sitting here which seems in good shape.
But I don't have the front panel key, which is in the "lock" position.
The PDP11 keys I have do not work :(
Any hint ?
Thank you !
--
Stephane
Paris, France.
