> Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:30:23 -0500
> From: Jules Richardson
> Sigh.. no. I had it in my head that one of the OMTI 5300 / 5400 boards
> would do it - I checked though and they *are* QIC-02, but the interface is
> only SASI, not SCSI :-(
Or "brain dead" SCSI, in the case of the 7400. Sigh. I'm not
turning up anything on the web on QIC-02-to-SCSI bridges.
> Hazy memory says that one vendor did do a QIC-02 - QIC-36 bridge, but
> including one of those *and* a suitable SCSI bridge in whatever you're
> doing might be a bit silly.
I think the QIC-bridges go the other way. I've got a Wangtek QIC-36-
to-QIC-02 bridge board (QIC-36 is the "basic stupid" interface, while
QIC-02 is the "intelligent buffered" interface).
> It does seem there were a few QIC-02 ISA tape controllers around, though -
> so you'd think that someone must have done a SCSI bridge!
That's mostly because there's nothing much on a QIC-02 ISA tape
controller; just address-decoding logic and DMA and IRQ handshake;
think something on the level of your basic IDE controller. The
smarts are in the drive.
Ah, well. Time to look for a nice SCSI QIC drive. Personally, I
like Tandberg over Wangtek. Anyone have any other preferences?
Cheers,
Chuck
I saw some conversation going by in here recently about Exabyte drives, only
the numbers don't sound anything like what I have, which is marked "Model:
HH CTS". There are all sorts of other numbers on there, for various aspects
of it.
There are two of them, and this was a part of a whole IBM SSA system that
I've been dealing with bits of here. Pushing open the little door I see
something that sure looks like a helical-scan head, though somewhat smaller
than the one normally seen in a VCR.
I'm told that these hold 20G on a tape. The guy I got 'em from unfortunately
doesn't have any tapes to go along with them. One of those tapes would back
up pretty much of what I have on my LAN here, or whole machines, as they
sit. I'm guessing that the interface I'll be looking at after I take it off
of the current mounting plate will be SCSI-wide, like the CD drives and some
of the other stuff I have with it.
Does anybody have any tapes that will work on these, or can any of you guys
point me toward where I could get a hold of some without getting into crazy
expense? I'd sure like to make some backups with one of these units.
Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-)
--
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
Dear Ken,
I ran across your name while searching on the term "Tektronix Bubble Memory
Cassette". I am looking for a Tektronix part number 020-1310-00, which is a
Bubble Memory module for a Tektronix 370 curve tracer.
Since it seems like you did something with Bubble Memory in a previous life,
I am wondering if you know what's inside this "cassette" or where I might be
able to find one?
Best regards,
William Benner
Hi
I doubt there is 39+13$ worth of gold on these boards.
There have been a few items that were close. There was
a pile of wire wrap pins. I figured that if the pins had 15 uinch
of gold, one could cover shipping and still make about $2 on
the deal. Most boards are to sparse to pay for shipping.
Card edge connectors at least have about 20-50 cents worth
of old. Scrappers rarely see that a board may have value as
the original board.
I had a neighbor once that was a scrapper. He had a pile
of boards with one 80C187 on each of them. He'd crunched most down to
dust before I'd seen them. Just one chip was worth more
than the pile of dust he'd made.
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:14:24 -0400
> From: tiggerlasv at aim.com
> Subject: VT100 board horrors !
>
>
>
> Check out e-bay 280220921661 . . .
>
> VT100 logic boards, that someone decided to cut the card-edge
> connectors off of. . .
>
> *Sigh*
>
>
>
>
> T
_________________________________________________________________
Spell a grand slam in this game where word skill meets World Series. Get in the game.
http://club.live.com/word_slugger.aspx?icid=word_slugger_wlhm_admod_april08
Hi,
In reading /searching the net for a manual for CMD CQD 440 / 443, I come
quite close in an old writing of yours...
You write something about the HTML version of this manual also. If that
contains any more information than the text-file, (picturers/schetces
and locations of the various connectors/switches for instance), would it
be to much to ask for an E-mail?
All my best,
G?ran ?hling
I'm looking for a data sheet on the 82706 Intel VGA Controller. Does
anyone know where I could get this? Sometimes data for a chipset is
buried within a larger data book. Any ideas?
If you don't know why I would want this... ; )
I've seen that chip on some 8bit ISA VGA cards. Unicorn Electronics
sells them for $19.99, so its a plan!
Grant
Thought this might be of some interest in here... :-)
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: [Electronics_101] Digiencabulator
Date: Wednesday 23 April 2008 13:21
From: "Bob Hyland" <E101 at afterhoursit.com>
To: Electronics_101 at yahoogroups.com
FOLKS!
In case anyone missed the recent announcement (on or about April
1st), Parallax has been working (in secret) on building a digital
version of the original GE Turbo-Encabulator. Nuts & Volts magazine
recently ran an article on the effort -- thereby breaking the veil of
secrecy!
I contacted N&V and obtained permission to post a link to the article
that is hosted on their site:
http://www.nutsvolts.com/media-files/905/042008-PersonalRobotics.pdf
Their only request was that I post the link to the article instead of
sending the article to people. So, if (and when) anyone passes along
the article, please send the link and not the physical PDF file.
Enjoy!
Bob H.
(moderator Electronics_101)
P.S. Does anyone have the specifications handy for the original, 1962
version of the Turb-Encabulator? The best copy I could find is here:
http://www.floobydust.com/turbo-encabulator/ge_turbo-encabulator.pdf
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--
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
>Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:04:29 -0700 (PDT)
>From: David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>
>On Sat, 12 Apr 2008, Jeff Walther wrote:
>> Now, it really shouldn't be that hard to whip something up with an
>> FPGA and either some fastish SRAM or an open core DDR2 controller and
>> one DDR2 memory chip.
>How far did you get with this project? I'd love to see something that
>just does greyscale. That and smaller modern parts would allow a lot more
>to be crammed into that PDS slot.
I would say I'm still in the conceptual stage. I've examined the Is
and the Os in the documentation and I pretty much know what I want to
build, with a few choices still remaining (e.g. SRAM vs. DDR2).
But I'm stymied by the details and by the fact that when I started
this I was unemployed and had time, although my motivation was low
due to the associated emotional challenges. Now I am wonderfully
employed, and very happy, but have very little spare time.
I've read through "Designing Cards and Drivers for the Macintosh"
(IIRC) but I need to go through in more detail and draw a diagram of
the ROM structure. But it seems to me that some of what I need to
know is in Inside Macintosh and extracting those tidbits is difficult
(for me). Also, some of the information I want to examine is
contained in Pascal coding examples, and I don't know Pascal. It
will be easy enough to pick up, but it's another step back from the
actual project.
Of course, all of the Apple documentation assumes that the audience
is already an expert at building the component they want to build and
only needs the Apple specifics, and I've never designed a video card.
I haven't found any kind of book about it anywhere. I picked up
whatshisnames book about the video typewriter and the follow up book,
but it doesn't seem quite applicable to this application.
So I'm in one of those situations where I need bits of information in
order to truly understand other bits of information. But I don't
know in what order I really need the bits in order to make them
comprehensible. Worse, I don't actually know which piece will be in
which resource. So I need to find all the pieces of information,
fail to understand them as I find them, but identify them, then after
they've all been found, reorder them and go back, this time in
logical sequence and put it all together. Maybe if I was smarter,
one pass would be enough...
I'm somewhere late in the finding all the pieces without
understanding them yet stage, paused just before doing a quick learn
of Pascal so I can examine/understand the examples in Inside
Macintosh. But I still lack a resource on the finer points of video
card design. I understand the basic fucntion, but there are always
details which clever people have worked out, which a latecomer like
me can greatly benefit from.
For example, the various schemes to avoid drawing the top half of the
screen and then using changed data for the bottom half of the screen.
I'm familiar with the simple expedient of having two screen buffers.
But I understand that there are more elegant solutions in use,
otherwise video cards would need twice as much VRAM. Is it really
all about tracking updates as they come in and only allowing ones
which are earlier in the buffer than the current draw point, and
delaying the others until the drawing point passes? If so, one
would either hold up the host system, or need an additional buffer
for the delayed changes. Yes? No?
As far as cramming a lot more into the PDS slot with smaller
components... Yes, the thing holding folks back is the time and
skill to code, not the available technology. Taken to its logical
conclusion, we would take a moderate sized FPGA, emulate the 68030
and FPU on board, put a fast memory interface on the FPGA, add a USB2
chipset and fast ethernet I/O, plus an ATA interface and video
outputs, then just use the SE/30 board as an I/O peripheral and home
to the Apple ROM, with the built-in 9" screen as one display and a
connector for a large color display if desired.
Alternatively, use a Coldfire MCU, patch the unimplemented 68030
instructions with the exception handler (there's a library at
Freescale for this) and then copy the basic design of the Daystar CPU
upgrades which already worked out how to put a faster 68030 into the
PDS slot. With a little more work patching the firmware, one could
use a Coldfire with built in USB and ethernet, but that's a lot more
software work. One also loses the FPU functionality, and if your
code calls many of the unimplemented instructions it could be pretty
slow.
But all those projects are dauntingly large.
For now, I'd like a video card. Later, an ATA interface. Maybe
USB after that, but frankly, without a more skilled programmer's
help, I don't think I will be able/willing to write USB drivers.
Eventually, it could all go on one card.
Jeff Walther
