test-drb December 2008

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

209 participants
286 discussions

by legalize＠xmission.com

Does anyone know the model number for a keyboard that goes with an Apollo DN10000? There's a sticker on the back side of the keyboard with a model number like 014555-001. Thanks! -- "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/>

15 years, 5 months

[Sorta/Probably OT] Gmail "Terminal" theme

by eric940＠gmail.com

For those Gmail users out there: Click "Settings" / "Themes" and choose the _Terminal_ theme. It gives you a (kind of) cool terminal looking theme within a web browser when logged in to you Gmail. I know: many purists out there use Pine, Elm, and the like... but there are a few that need to use browsers when reading email for whatever reason (myself included) on occasion. I just enjoy seeing the green font/black background scenario on my monitor whenever possible :-) OK, back to Topic related issues.

15 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.

15 years, 5 months

Tragedy in our hobby: Jay West ....

by evan＠snarc.net

Hi all, Every few months Jay gets busy at work and disappears. That's been a regular cycle for several years, so personally I don't get too worried. However, I did start to wonder recently because he's been gone for longer than usual. Personally I last spoke with him at VCF West in 2007. Christian wrote >>> where is Jay? I've tried to contact him via email but haven't got any response yet. His last post to this list was at the end of May. Ethan aded >>> I'm guessing, though, that nobody has heard from Jay himself in quite some time now. Sridhard noted >>> I hope he's ok. So I decided to pick up the phone today even though Jay usually doesn't answer his phone, preferring email. Alas, I'm very sorry to report this tragic news to the list .... .... "Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated." Jay had a very sturdy laugh (for a supposed cadaver) when I mentioned sending an email with the "tragedy" subject line. :-) He's just busy at work. As usual. - Evan

15 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

15 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

15 years, 5 months

Omnibus core memory compatibility?

by hachti＠hachti.de

Hi folks, I have the following stuff: G104 X/Y drivers G227 Sense/Inhibit G619A 4K core stack The 4K stack is broken and lost forever. But I have a spare G646C "4K or 8" Stack sitting around. I *think* it has 8K. Does anyone know if I could use that stack with the rest of the package, using only 4K of the memory? Does anyone have schematics for the 8K core system? In my documentation I have only information about the 4K system. On Doug Jones' module list, there are mentioned 4K and 8K sense/inhibit boards. And there are mentioned X/Y driver boards, without 4K or 8K written on them. I would like to know how DEC expanded the core. Doubling X or Y lines would be the easiest. But why should that result in different sense/inhibit circuitry? The sense/inhibit connections look quite similar on both of my stacks... Or does everything change? Thanks for clarification :-) And if someone has a spare 4K stack, please contact me! The same for 8K sense/inhibit and X/Y drivers. Best wishes, Philipp :-)

15 years, 5 months

Micros I

by nico＠farumdata.dk

Hello all While doing a "minor" clean-up, I found "A guide to the construction and use of the Micros I", first revision, juni 1978. The company was located in Twickenham, Middlesex It contains full diagrams, BIOS listning, parts list, character generator details, etc. Anyone interested, or should I bin it ? Nico

15 years, 5 months

The drift of a knowledge-based societ to a gadget-value-based society.

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> I think the clever society is getting burned down as we know it Clever is now content, not the tool. Computers and other electronic devices, and the communications infrastructure are a given. The invention now is what can be done with this hardware, which is now generally too complicated to build yourself, and as a result has just moved up a level. Even software tools are now pretty much taken for granted. You just program to fill in holes in the already existing tool space. This shift pretty much defines what I see coming out of people fresh out of college now, and most things dot-com and forward.

15 years, 5 months

Reading an MFM hard drive with a floppy disc analyser

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> Aside: I'm not sure if it's beneficial having a number of buffers and > reading/writing multiple head data in parallel? This came up in one of the threads about the topic of either simulating Massbus or HP 790x disk, I think. The problem was the controller timed out if the head-head switching time wasn't fast enough.

15 years, 5 months

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test-drb December 2008