test-drb April 2008

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

196 participants
307 discussions

by RodSmallwood＠mail.ediconsulting.co.uk

I have recently restored a VAXStation 3100. The 200Mb drive was replaced by a 1.05Gb (that's the biggest boot drive size) I made up a cable to connect a colour monitor to the 15Way plug on the 3100. Switch on and it ran the diagnostics and gave the familiar three chevron prompt. T 75 reformats the drive. (takes forever) I used the second drive position to connect a RRD-42 CD drive and booted >from my VAX -VMS hobbyists disk. I then loaded VAX-VMS 7.3. So far so good. It works just fine. Now for my ultimate goal; load and run DECWindows. I ran the install as per the manual (that's a book that tells you everything you don't need to know and nothing that you do). It completed. I then ran the IVP as per instructions. Its at this point that the book is a bit ambiguous. its not clear how to tell if the system is a work station or a server and how to start up DECWindows from a VMS $ prompt in either case. If anybody has installed and run DECWindows on a 3100 under VMS 7.3 I'd be very pleased hear how they did it from the point where DECWindows was installed. Rod Smallwood

16 years, 3 months

IBM-9000 Computer System

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

I'm trying to find one of these systems and so far I am having absolutely no luck at all. Aside from some info and a few photos on the Old-Computers.com website I can't find anything else relavent to this system and so far I can't find anyone who has even heard of the things let alone seen one. Has anyone here ever seen or used one and does anyone here even own one? I want to use one to replace my unreliable VT510 serial terminal as well as try out the IEEE-488 port. Oh yeah, here is a link to that info on the system. http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1 <http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=623> &c=623 John.

16 years, 3 months

AT&T/Olivetti terminal? PC? what is it?

by legalize＠xmission.com

Ebay # 130215811399 It looks like it has a motherboard and a single card plugged into it, but I don't know if its really a terminal or not... -- "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/>

16 years, 3 months

Chess

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2008 17:08:17 -0700 (PDT) > From: Chris M > any thoughts on vintage chess games? I used one back in the early 70s that was pretty decent with a nice display. But you needed a CDC 6000-series system to run it; it was a real cycle hog, IIRC. Wonder if anyone bothered to preserve the game? It was by-and-large written in CDC FORTRAN. It originally had its own PP display driver (CHD); later versions used the programmable "T"(on SCOPE 3.3, anyway) DSD screen. Cheers, Chuck

16 years, 3 months

Sirius1/Victor 9000

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:45:02 -0400 > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > Is any of the stuff typical of such publications available online > someplace? I used to get those, years ago, but never kept any of them. > Some of the occasional bits might be nice to have, though. (As in, it > ain't worth me chasing it down but if you happen to have links handy... > :-) EDN is online only back to about 1996 or so. Electronic Design keeps much less online, perhaps a year or two. IEEE Computer keeps the whole shebang online--you need to be an IEEE CS member to access the content however. Some of the old 1970s-vintage stuff is a lot of fun to read--and is often a way to research a now-forgotten product or company. Nothing like reading about things when they were happening; not at all like relying on (ahem) some gray-haired guy's faulty memory of events. Cheers, Chuck

16 years, 3 months

are there any 68000 multi-cpu systems out there?

by cclist＠sydex.com

From: der Mouse: > Were they 68000s, though? All the ones double-fault-fix machines I > know of were, I think, using 68010s. The early Apollo systems were, I believe. I recall talking to one of the "guys behind the table" at Wescon when the 68000 came out. He said that the most commonly asked question by customers concerned using the large addressing space and fault mechainsm on the 68K for virtual memory--and that he was getting tired of saying that it couldn't be done. It was certainly one of the first questions out of my mouth. Although it was kind of a kludge, he was proved wrong if one used two of the beasts. Does anyone remember the speculation that the feature size of the 68K was getting close to the limit of IC fabrication technology? It was, what, 3 micron? Cheers, Chuck

16 years, 3 months

Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

by ray＠arachelian.com

http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers… From an anonymous source close to the company, I've found myself in possession of the "Infocom Drive" ? a complete backup of Infocom's shared network drive from 1989. This is one of the most amazing archives I've ever seen, a treasure chest documenting the rise and fall of the legendary interactive fiction game company. Among the assets included: design documents, email archives, employee phone numbers, sales figures, internal meeting notes, corporate newsletters, and the source code and game files for every released /and unreleased/ game Infocom made. For obvious reasons, I can't share the whole Infocom Drive. But I /have to/ share some of the best parts. It's just /too good/. <snip> There are downloads of the Milliways game at the bottom of the web page, right before the comments. You'll need a Z-Machine interpreter to play them, as usual.

16 years, 3 months

Sirius1/Victor 9000 - has anyone ever seen one working?

by cclist＠sydex.com

Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:44:06 -0700 From: Al Kossow > Has anyone ever documented what the encoding and disk format is on > these floppies? I was approached several years ago to decode a pile of Victor 9000 diskettes and got as far as deciphering the GCR. The customer then decided to abandon the project, so I never got any farther than that. I think that I still have the samples I worked with in my collection. GCR wasn't terribly unusual in the 70s. Commodore was definitely not the first to use it on disk drives, in spite of what some may claim (it may have been Sperry/ISS). ISTR that one of the rags (EDN, perhaps) had a great article at the time on exactly how the whole Victor disk thing worked. I never bothered to keep a copy of it, unfortunately. I never liked Victor as a company. Early on, they made it a point to file suit for trademark infringement against any US electronics operation with the name "Victor", including, IIRC, an appliance store owner who had been using the name for 20 years. It was a bullying tactic that I found distasteful. I remember that the sign on their building was quite visible as you drove on highway 17 through Scotts Valley. Cheers, Chuck

16 years, 3 months

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test-drb April 2008