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
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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.
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
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
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
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
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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
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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
> 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
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.
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