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
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.
> 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
> 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
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
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.
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
On the Exabyte ftp site, one can find several EPROM images for the
8200 tape drive. They're the files ending in .HEX in the
pub/firmware/8mm directory on ftp.exabyte.com. Looks like one servo
board PROM image and three firmware PROM images.
It's probably a good idea to grab the contents of the exabyte ftp
site if you have any of these drives. You never know when these
things will suddenly go away. Does anyone have any electronic docs
for the Tandberg QIC-24 drives?
Cheers,
Chuck
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:03:31 +0100 (BST)
From: (Tony Duell)
> No HP calculator ever had a vacuum fluorescent display. And no HP
> calculator eeer used nixie tubes.
No, but a few TI desktop models did, including one that did
hexadecimal math that we used. Personally, I'd love to find one of
those in working condition--I could use it today, to supplement my HP
16C, but I suspect they're rarer than hens' teeth.
Cheers,
Chuck