test-drb November 2008

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

181 participants
235 discussions

by derschjo＠msu.edu

Hey all -- Got myself an HP 7980S 9-track drive (always wanted a 9-track drive...) and accidentally mangled my one and only 9-track tape just after the BOT marker (not sure what caused it, maybe the drive needs a bit of adjustment...). So I have two questions: Where can I find a reasonable replacement for the marker, and where does it go? I see the sense foil on the part of the tape that got mangled, but I don't know what side of the tape it was originally on... Thanks! Josh P.S. The magical tape autoloading thing this drive does is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time :).

16 years, 9 months

vintage ads

by legalize＠xmission.com

<http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/What-the-Ad.aspx> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 1 month

Wanted: VAX Ultrix 3.0C

by hoelscher-kirchbrak＠freenet.de

Hi, I haven't got ULTRIX/VAX V3.0C, but: V2.0 V3.1 (disk image only) V4.2 V4.4 V4.5 I'd like to have the missing versions, too. More ULTRIX-Manuals would be VERY interesting as well. (I scanned the ones at bitsavers.com) What type of VAX do you want to run ULTRIX on? Regards, Ulli

17 years, 1 month

Zilog System 8000

by lehmann＠ans-netz.de

Hi, I was able to acquire 4 Zilog S8000 boards lately. - S8000 Central Processing Unit - S8000 Winchester Disk Controller - S8000 Cartridge Tape Controller - S8000 ECC Controller I'm trying to get my hands on the Case and the 1MB memory card, but I was wondering if someone has still pieces of the S8000 at hand? What about tape images of ZEUS? I mean - when I'm getting the minimum required hardware sooner or later - without an installation tape I'm a bit lost - right? ;) I've tried to put all the information I was able to found about the S8000 together at http://pofo.de/S8000/ I've scanned the boards I got and put all the EPROM images online. COPYRIGHT, ZILOG, INC. 1980 S8000 Monitor 1.2 - Press START to Load System ;) -- Oliver Lehmann http://www.pofo.de/ http://wishlist.ans-netz.de/

17 years, 1 month

HP IIISi: "50 SERVICE"

by mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA

I was printing on my IIISi tonight and, between jobs, it switched from working normally to displaying "50 SERVICE" (with the "50" flashing) and not accepting print jobs. Power cycling doesn't help. I've done a little poking around, but haven't managed to find a service manual for the silly thing. Bitsavers has only one file under hp/printers/, and that one doesn't cover the IIISi. Google finds another file which covers a few III printers, but not the IIISi. Anyone have the manual, or at least have some idea what "50 SERVICE" means I need to do? (What is it with this week and hardware? I'm beginning to feel as though any hardware I try to use this week breaks.) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

17 years, 3 months

PDX surplus stores was: Great day at Tek

by innfoclassics＠gmail.com

> I assume he means the "Tek Country Store" which has operated in various > locations since at least the early 70's. Last I heard it is somewhere on > the Beaverton Tek Campus (is that the only one left?), and is only open once > a month. I for one would love to know the current info on it. It is the Tektronix surplus store, generally selling surplus of what they use not what they make. Sounds like I have to go back also. I used to enjoy the store, the wait before the door opens, the polite run and exploring the stuff. A quick google search brought up this on the Portland robotics web site. Tektronix Country Store Beaverton Campus Building 38 Loading Dock (East side of building). 503-627-6769 Public Hours: 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month from 2-4pm www.tek.com/ir/bv_map.html People start lining up before opening to get the best stuff (including the commercial surplus store owners). Now including Tek equipment for sale, too! When I did it I was one of those commercial surplus store owners..........And they mention test equipment has been added. Another store on the Robotics list is: SurplusGizmos 5797 NW Cornelius Pass Road Hillsboro Oregon 97124 Warehouse: 503-439-1249 Mobile: 503-345-9187 Hours: Wednesday and Friday 11am to 6pm Saturday 11am to 5pm surplusgizmos.com Surplus stuff with an online store. Anyone been there? I have yet to make it. Paxton -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA

17 years, 3 months

offer - OS/2 for the PDP-11

by dgahling＠hotmail.com

Yes, you read that correctly. I have in my possession a TK-50 tape for the PDP-11 system which contains none other than OS/2 operating system. Many people have claimed this never existed. But I have the tape! I had done a directory dump of it and can supply it. One other person who's checked the directory listing has said it is authentic. I'm not sure what to do with it, and I believe IBM made OS/2 open source, so technically it should be "free" of it's chains maybe someone can turn it into something useful, or just run it and have the most unique PDP on the planet, I don't know... whatever :) anyhow, it's a really weird bit of computing history, and I'd hate for it to be lost. it should be in a museum :) Dan. _________________________________________________________________ Use fowl language with Chicktionary. Click here to start playing! http://puzzles.sympatico.msn.ca/chicktionary/index.html?icid=htmlsig

17 years, 3 months

anyone scans/PDFs of the DEC (VMS) "grey wall" ?

by evan＠snarc.net

>>> with DEC being gone, etc? Gone? Not quite. HP owns all the rights. But HP in my experience is a very friendly company to historians and hobbyists.

17 years, 3 months

Morrow documentation

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Anything on the "Decision I" S100 system would be nice. http://bitsavers.org/pdf/morrow/decision http://bitsavers.org/pdf/morrow/cbios

17 years, 4 months

8-bit ISA ethernet cards

by pat＠computer-refuge.org

A few weeks ago, some people in here were talking about putting network cards in IBM PCs or XTs or something... As it happens, I ran across a box of 3com 3c503 network cards (AUI and 10BaseT ports, 8 bit ISA card). If anyone wants one, lemme know, I'm asking $5+shipping, and I'll have the box with me at Dayton if you want to harass me about them, then. Pat -- Purdue University ITAP/RCAC --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/ The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org

17 years, 4 months

Wanted: PDP-11 MUMPS Software & Manuals

by hoelscher-kirchbrak＠freenet.de

Hi, I'm looking for Software & Manuals for any of the MUMPS implementations for the PDP-11, e.g. MUMPS-11, DSM-11 or M/11+. Can anybody help? Regards, Ulli

17 years, 5 months

Arcade games

by philip＠axeside.co.uk

Just curious... There's a shop in Coalville, I'm not sure what it sells (maybe it sells games consoles; maybe it's an amusement arcade; maybe both). In the window this weekend were two machines that caught my eye: an original Space Invaders machine from 1978, priced at 895 pounds; and a pinball machine from 1979 (branded "Gottlieb") for an almost-as-unreasonable 495 pounds. (I think at current exchange rates that's about $1300 and $700 US) As I was walking home, failing to hum the Space Invaders song, I wondered what sort of an active market is there for such machines? The prices looked high enough that they must be aiming at serious collectors, or possibly innkeepers who want to create a retro-seventies atmosphere. So do people here know about the classic arcade game market? Are my neighbours of a couple of blocks away being overoptimistic with their prices? Philip. PS What I remember from the period was the many, many attempts to write Invaders-style games in BASIC on the PET and other home computers. And my friend Matthew, after we'd borrowed a Sinclair ZX81 and experimented for a week or two, shutting himself away and writing a quite good one for that machine in machine code - I helped with the BASIC shell that built the initial screen display. And wiring a phone earpiece to the PET user port to hear the sound effects on the Commodore invaders program. And so on... PPS has anyone preserved the Space Invaders song? I sincerely hope not.

17 years, 5 months

sometimes you win, and sometrimes...

by jos.mar＠bluewin.ch

..you loose, like today, when I found out that on the, literally, 7581 files I transferred between the Lilith and my Linux box, each last byte has been corrupted..... Sigh... Either the Linux or the Lilith Kermit must have had a bug. Small wonder the emulated Modula compiler hat problems. Jos

17 years, 5 months

Plug-n-Play for vintage machines?

by brain＠jbrain.com

I'm considering designing some cartridges for the CBM line of computers, but I'd prefer to skip masses of jumper blocks and move to a soft-config option. I know, some of you love jumpers, but for carts, it's more important to offer flexible options so that the SW can reconfigure carts on load. I have no issues with adding a small uC to a cart to do the heavy lifting, but I'm struggling with a way to communicate with the uC from the CBM machine. In the past, people have added config registers to a IO space, but that introduces its own issues (how to hide the registers, what about conflicts, etc.) Ideally, I'd like to use an approach that: * works via the existing address/chip select/data lines of the cart ports * will handle multiple equipped carts on the same port (port expanders) * uses as few lines as possible to communicate with the host machine * will not affect non-equipped cartridges * not require major amount of horsepower from the uC side. I thought using and SPI/I2C-like approach using an address line or two and a data line to communicate with the cartridges. But, that approach requires something to "unlock" the config system and lock it again. Any alternative ideas? Is there any prior work in this area I should re-use? -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com

17 years, 5 months

Problems with VAX 11/750 console

by fireflyst＠earthlink.net

Hi all, I'm trying again to get my 11/750 running. It turns on, power lights are green, machine comes up halted with the dim error light as it should. THe problem I am having is, I get no console...I get an echo back of the characters I type, but nothing else. Doing a BREAK command or a Ctrl-P does nothing. The closest thing I can find to this problem is in the 11/50 FAQ, found here: http://www.vaxarchive.org/hw/750faq.html Here is what the FAQ states: "Help! My machine isn't listening to the console! Symptoms: machine starts up normally and prints the successful microverify double percent and the console prompt, but ignores console input. This may be because the RS232 line receiver on the console port has given up the ghost. I've had to replace the one on mine twice. Note that it isn't a good idea to leave the console terminal switched on if the machine is switched off -- the line receiver chip doesn't like this and tends to fail eventually. To replace the line receiver: a) Locate and remove the L0004 UBI module. b) Hold the UBI component-side up with the edge connectors down the RHS. c) Locate E53, a 1489, at the right-hand side of the board, near the top of the second edge connector. This is the only 1489 on the board. d) Replace E53. I strongly recommend using a socket for the replacement. " Now, this does not sound similar to my problem. I have indeed verified that all the jumpers on the backplane are in the right place, and so are the connectors. The jumper is set to 300 baud, and that is indeed the only setting I get a clean echo back without garbage on. Any suggestions? I'm out of ideas at this point. Julian

17 years, 5 months

Hard disk material

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

> I have no idea about the material, but I can tell you about one application method you may not have considered. I have mentioned it here before but maybe you have joined the list recently. Similar drums were made by ICT/ICL from 1962 to 1965 for the 1300 series, and probably for the 1200 series drum based computers in the 50s. They too had fixed heads with set screw adjustment, which was carried out by monitoring the pressure of compressed air blown through a venturi in each head while moving an Allen screw. The 1300 drums were 12000 48bit word capacity, driven by a 3/4 horsepower motor geared up to 5240rpm at the drum spindle for lower access times. After many experiments they found they could not beat the human hand applying a magnetisable compound like a potter making a pot. Sounds very low tech but apparently it works, and I have drums which have not been touched since manufacture and they still work 46 years on. Of course for you, low tech could be a bonus as it means low cost. Maybe your local educational establishment has a skilled potter who could do a great job for a reasonable price, or just for interest. > The drum is quite low density, and does not have air bearing heads. > The head heights are actually adjustable with a bunch of set screws. > The heads themselves are also pretty big. This is a late 1950s drum, > not a 1970s era hard disk - there is a world of difference. I would > bet the heads ride a few thousands above the surface. > > The whole assembly is in a very rigid cast chassis, driven by a > relatively low-frills AC motor, apparently. > > My thinking is that the drum could be recoated (this is assuming it is > indeed shot), and using the rigid cast chassis, ground down to a > smooth surface with a custom made tool. This is much like a "poor mans > wheel lathe" used on railroad wheels. As long as the bearings are > still pretty tight, there should be very little wobble between the > drum and chassis. With each head being adjustable for height, much > inaccuracy across the drum becomes fairly unimportant. Inaccuracy > around the drum is more of an issue, but I suspect it will not be too > bad if the correct tool material and magnetic coating is used, and the > drum ground down gently. I will ask my real machinist friends about > the tooling, as I doubt I (or any of us) could make it.

17 years, 5 months

AT&T 7300/3B1's (was: Re: Who is vintagecomputermuseum?)

by micheladam＠theedge.ca

Does anyone know of a 'bridge' converter that would allow a scsi disk to interface to an MFM controller? Michel Adam ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> Date: Wednesday, November 19, 2008 8:38 am Subject: Re: AT&T 7300/3B1's (was: Re: Who is vintagecomputermuseum?) > On Aug 18, 2008, at 10:26 AM, Mark Tapley wrote: > > I'll hunt for mice. I don't think I kept a spare, but if I did, > > I'll let you know. > > [old message referring to 3B1 mice, I couldn't find mine] > > I found my 3B1 mice. I hope to get the machine running soon, > but > I seem to have a shortage of functional MFM drives. Ugh. > > -Dave > > -- > Dave McGuire > Port Charlotte, FL > > >

17 years, 5 months

Australian ex-DEC Director has large museum in his home

by legalize＠xmission.com

Slideshow: <http://tinyurl.com/6f7kte> -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

17 years, 5 months

Hard disk material

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

It looks like sometime in the future I may need to rebuild a damaged magnetic drum. It has some scratches that may be too deep. As a brainstorm, I am wondering about recoating the surface. If I use refined iron oxide, what would I use as a fixer (glue)? What was typically used on early hard disk platters and drums? -- Will

17 years, 5 months

Hard disk material

by wbblair3＠yahoo.com

> (My brain wants to say it was "how to build a working digital > computer", but I could be wrong there). I wonder if anyone ever > actually built one that worked? :-) Your brain is not leading you astray. That's the book. Here's the PDF version: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/paperClipComputer/HowToBuildAWorkingDigitalCom…

17 years, 5 months

problem with listserv?

by chrise＠pobox.com

Hmm... I've sent a number of things to this list which have not ever shown up here. Curious if I can actually really post to the list...?? I also see that postings from others show up about 5 to 6 days after they post them. For example, yesterday 11/29, I received gobs of postings dated 11/24. There will be many days of silence and then all of a sudden I'll get a bunch of them all at once, that many days behind. cje -- Chris Elmquist mailto:chrise at pobox.com

17 years, 5 months

Sun people and keyboards

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Does anyone here have pull with Sun Microsystems or know someone who does? I'm trying to get the right person jazzed up about the idea of a Type 7 keyboard built like a Model M. I've already emailed clickykeyboards.com about it and they'll do the engineering and design work for about $27k. A Type 7 sells brand new for around $50. I'm sure people would be more than willing to pay twice as much for a "Type 7m". -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

17 years, 5 months

Minimal CP-M SBC design

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

________________________________ Hi, all, I was staring at an SBC I have here with a 6MHz Z-80, some ROM, some RAM, and a 26-pin off-board bus for some Z80-PIO boards (this thing was built as a multi-parallel-printer switcher). I've been musing about what it would take to boot CP/M up on this. For user I/O, I was planning on a console serial port and a terminal/terminal emulator. I have IM6402s on hand, but I'd be interested in hearing if certain other chips are preferred, based on what BIOS code is floating around out there. I also have a 16550, but I don't think I have any Z80-SIO chips handy. For mass storage, I was planning on either Compact Flash or an SD card. I think I've seen both as I googled around for modern SBCs. Any of the media I have lying around is plenty large enough (I even have some 4MB CFs and a 2.5MB full-sized PCMCIA flash card on hand). I am a little unclear, though, about how traditional CP/M systems were set up for ROM and RAM. Was it common to use a "shadow ROM" in low mem at reset, then have the BIOS live at the top of memory? How did 64K RAM CP/M machines handle the BIOS? Did they temporarily ghost the ROM on top of RAM until some bit of code could read ROM and write RAM then bank out the ROM? Since I think I "need" at least 48K of RAM, I was planning on a pair of 62256s. I could easily do 56K of RAM low and 8K of ROM high, I think, unless there's some other arrangement that's obvious to try for a simple design. I've never tried writing a BIOS for a CP/M machine, but my understanding is that things are modular enough that once you know what I/O chips you have and at what I/O addresses, for a straightforward, non-clever design, the coding is equally straightforward and non-clever (but please feel free to enlighten me if otherwise). Thanks for any tips, especially from anyone on the list who has ever rolled their own CP/M machine. -ethan -- Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 4-May-2008 at 19:40 Z South Pole Station PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -74.2 F (-59.0 C) Windchill -105.4 F (-76.4 C) APO AP 96598 Wind 7.4 kts Grid 77 Barometer 691.6 mb (10194 ft) Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov <http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk> http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html -----REPLY----- Hi Ethan, Funny you should mention the subject, I am working on a very similar project. Last year, I made a completely home brew Z80 computer with prototype boards. It is a fun project and you can definitely build your own CP/M computer from scratch. It really is not that hard. This year, I am remaking the design using manufactured PCBs. I recently got my first batch of prototype PCBs and have been building up and testing them. So far, I have gotten the CPU, ROM, RAM, UART, and most of the glue logic working and tested. It is not complete yet as I still need to wring out much of the hardware and have not even started on the PPI or RTC. However, last year I was able to boot the previous system into its monitor and even boot CP/M. CP/M used a 32K ROM drive for drive A:, a 448K RAM drive for drive B:. I implemented an IDE port and a hard disk for drive C:. Those all worked pretty good. I built but never tested a floppy drive interface. The whole system is pretty simple, uses plain 74LSxxx chips, no programmable parts (except the EPROM) or hard to get parts. No SMT or funky technologies, just plain through hole DIP chips. I have all the software and am presently going through the library reinstalling it on the new system. So far, I have most of the easy stuff working. I do have the RAMless monitor working and next will be the regular monitor. Finally it will be the CP/M system and the RTC software. Anyway, if your interested, I am keeping a small Google group of files and photos at: http://groups.google.com/group/n8vem Thanks! Andrew Lynch

17 years, 5 months

IDE <-> MFM

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> What is the minimum satisfactory sampling rate if one wanted to emulate an ST-412 > interface and have it RLL (2,7)-capable? 2x, assuming you regenerate the clock. With a digital DLL, the incoming clock would be on the order of 8x the maximum incoming frequency. The bitstream is not variable frequency. You can think of what is needed as the inverse of the read recovery circuit on the drive controller. The tricky part is generating the recirculating bit stream that you send as read data back from the simulated drive. It is expecting the data that it just wrote to be in the data read back on the next revolution. And you need one of these bitstreams for each head.

17 years, 5 months

SCSI identify command

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Actually, it's not clear to me if any of the > bridges supported that command. I don't know of any MFM/RLL controllers that supported scsi inquire. ESDI was the first 5" drive interface to support geometry inquiry which is needed to make inquiry work w/o the host specifying the drive geometry to the bridge board.

17 years, 5 months

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test-drb November 2008