test-drb May 2008

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

199 participants
350 discussions

hey, have old computer stuff for sale, have to make some room here

by lgburbage＠woh.rr.com

I have a friend who is interested in an original Wico Command joystick for the Atari 800. Do you have one or access to one? Gary Burbage

15 years, 11 months

NeXT MO Dump Offer

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 12:00 -0500 4/28/08, Gavin wrote: >I have successfully repaired a NeXT MO drive and it is remarkably >reliable... Care to post details? I have two MO drives, both of which are (I think) non-functional... -- - Mark, 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.

15 years, 11 months

LF: Information on "WordWizard" under NorthStar system

by dave06a＠dunfield.com

Hi Guys, I've been asked to try and recover documents from some Hard Sectored NorthStar diskettes - I'm told they were created with Advantage hardware. I've succesfully made images of the disks using my NST utility (So I know the disks are readable) ... however neither CP/M nor N* GDOS recognizes the disks - all I get it "garbage" when attempting to list the directory. Examining the data on the disk, they do not appear to contain a recognizable directory block. The all do however contain the string "WordWizard 1.2.0 JUN 16 1983P" at the same offset near the beginning of the disk. I'm guessing that "WordWizard" is a word processing package which maintains it's own disk structure, not using OS files. So - I'm looking for information: - Does anyone know what OS WordWizard ran under? - Does anyone have a copy of WordWizard for N* systems? - Any info about the disk structure used by this program? Thanks, Dave -- dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com com Collector of vintage computing equipment: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html

15 years, 11 months

manual wanted for Scion Microangelo MA520, palette card

by eric＠brouhaha.com

The MA520 was a redesign of the MA512, using 64K DRAMs and 2732 EPROMs. It also fixed the problem that the MA512 consumed a block of 16 I/O ports even though it only actually used two. (That was awful if you wanted to use four or eight of the things for color.) I found a scan of the MA512 manual, but nothing on either the MA520 or the palette card. Does anyone have them? AutoCAD-80 apparently supported the Microangelo cards: http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/chapter2_14.html Does anyone still have a copy of that, or any other interesting software that uses the Microangelo? Thanks, Eric

15 years, 11 months

free: Tektronix Microlab I with complete docs

by hardware＠ees1s0.engr.ccny.cuny.edu

People, I recently bought a Tektronix Microlab I on eBay. It was sold as is, and in fact does not work. If anybody wants to take a stab at fixing it, you can have it. It is some kind of combination trainer/emulator. It has RS-232 and audio in/out to be used by the monitor program for loading programs into RAM. It looks like a microprocessor trainer: hex keypad, LED display, buttons for stepping through and starting and stopping the program. It can support a variety of different processors via personality cards. The card that is in there is for the TI TMS9900. Good luck finding other personality cards. They definitely were produced. When it is powered up, it shows different things on the LED and never responds to user input. I have made no effort at further diagnosis. Who knows, it might just be a power supply problem (linear, I think). It comes with complete documentation on microfiche including schematics. If somebody is interested in fixing it, it's free. -kurt

15 years, 11 months

MicroPdp-11 RQDX1 boot problem

by julianskidmore＠yahoo.com

Hi folks, I refitted the power supply and put the pdp-11 back together. However when I try to boot the pdp-11 from the hard drive it throws up an error 20 on the console, which says there's a controller error. I can't see what the problem is, though something's not quite right. The RQDX1's diagnostics pass on startup - it shows a sequence of leds, and after several seconds they all go off. The pdp-11 startup tests seem to be OK. My ribbon cables between the pdp-11 appear to be connected correctly. The RD52 drive light pops on briefly on boot (as I would expect if it initially spins up), but oddly I don't see a light popping on on the RX-50 drive (though I seem to remember it did). Any thoughts? -cheers from julz @P ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

15 years, 11 months

MicroPdp-11 H7864 power supply question.

by julianskidmore＠yahoo.com

Well, I can answer my own post this time! The J11 connector merely fits onto one of the fans. Thankfully I figured that out before I connected it all up and powered it on! -cheers from julz @P ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

15 years, 11 months

Cartifile

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

Hi All, I have an Unibus interface card for something called 'CARTRIFILE 20/40' >from Tri-data. I googled it, but very litte info is to be found. Can someone tell me more about it? It is a quad slot board with a connector on one side. Thanks, Ed

15 years, 11 months

tape drives

by cclist＠sydex.com

> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 14:20:17 -0400 > From: "Roy J. Tellason" > 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. Most Exabyte drives have model numbers of the form 8xxx, from 8000 to 8900, then the "Mammoth" models. The basic early 8200 will hold about 2.1G on a standard 8mm tape. Later models require different tapes to take advantage of larger capacities. Quality of the drives are all over the place, from the built-like-a- brick-outhouse 8200 and 8500 to the cheap-hunk-of-plastic 8700. > 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. I suspect that that's 20G "compressed", which is the equivalent of "Chinese electric motor horsepower", i.e. extremely optimistic. > Think I can get 'em going under linux? :-) Sure--just be certain that the SCSI "flavor" matches what you've got on your controller. The general idea is that any SCSI tape drive that supports the standard command set will work with Linux--and probably many other platforms. It's been too long since I did "anybody's SCSI tape backup" software, but the only gotchas are packages that use nonstandard behavior such as read-after-write or strange varieities of tapemarks. Heck, even the command set for auto-changers is standard, being applicable to a little magazine that sits in your tape drive to a bunch of robots crusing racks of 1/2" reel-to-reel tapes. At least in theory, you can use anything from a 1/2" reel-to- reel drive to a DLT without changing software. Most SCSI tape drives feature read-after-write verification, which puts them way above the garden variety consumer "floppy tapes", most of which were garbage, IMOHO. While not as good as DLT, 8mm is head-and-shoulders above 4mm DAT as concerns reliability. The bottom of the barrel, IMOHO, was the Datasonix Pereos 2.5mm format. Cheers, Chuck

15 years, 11 months

Sun 3/80 keyboard issue

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

I'm in the process of bringing a Sun 3/80 back to life. First - incredibly - the NVRAM on the 3/80 was still functional - ie there is life in the battery after - what -15+ years? Hard to believe, but as far as I can tell the settings are all correct. I'm however short on various items and wondered if anyone had any of these:- I'd like to get an original Sun PS2 to Sun type 4/5 keyboard converter these had the part number 370-2068. I've tried Belkin F1D082 and other more recent adapters with the 3/80 but none work. A borrowed Sun adapter did work though. I dont know what the difference is, but I suspect the Sun 3/80 is expecting the type 4 keyboard only. Secondly, I'd like to find a colour framebuffer for this machine, unfortunately they are not easy to find as the 3/80 had its own unique layout for the sockets, etc. Its somewhat hard to find part numbers for 3/80 colour framebuffers, most are the mono 501-1402 board, so I guess anything other than that might be colour. One known board is the 501-1443 cg4 colour card. I'd be happy to pay say up to $150 for one of those, or if you prefer I can exchange for my spare 3/80, your choice. Anyway - any help appreciated. Thanks Ian. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ

15 years, 11 months

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test-drb May 2008