Is anyone else chronically failing to see their own messages show up on
the list? For several months now, I've only been seeing other folks'
responses to my messages and never the messages themselves.
Sent several notes to Jay West, but never saw a response. If this is
expected behavior, can someone advise?
Steve
--
For those who are playing with it, Classilla 9.0.4 (a Mozilla-based browser
for classic Mac OS systems) is now available. Marginally on topic.
www.classilla.org
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- FORTUNE: The moon is in Venus' house. This will make no difference. --------
> I also found this: http://www.pdp8.net/tu56/tu56.shtml
> in which Dave G. describes a successful use of the CM2182 (14V,
> 80ma) bulb in this application.
>
I just replaced one of them again last week so I had taken a picture of
the indicator disassembled.
It is now up at
http://www.pdp8online.com/tu56/pics/p1000839.shtml?small
If your TU56 -15V input is high you may run this bulb above its rated
voltage shortening its life.
Hello Al,
hello everybody!
I assume that physical storage capacity limitations are a well known
problem to lots of people on this list.
I further assume that many of you know situations where they "take
everything", "find everything", "buy everything", "rescue everything",
or alike. It starts with some information about <anything interesting>
sitting <somewhere> at the cost of <price>. The variables differ
greatly. In many cases you will cry out "Cool! Don't throw anything
away! I'll take all of it!". Of course, all available bits and pieces
are at least worth a look. But...
This posting is about the "unwanted documentation" you often get with
stuff you acquire. I would like to start a discussion on this as I don't
always know what to do with it. A clean concept could probably help me
and others to maximize preservation of valuable historic information
with respect to use of individual storage capacities.
The following are three example cases from my "collection career":
1. Honeywell H316
I bought the H316 from someone in Switzerland, on eBay. It came quite
complete, with all docs. And some vague oral information about the
former application. And a lot of binders documenting the original system
the machine was used in. Everything specially made for the application
(controlling flight monitor displays in an airport). Everything in
Italian. And no actual piece of it left. Still have them.
2. pdp8/l rescue, a few years ago
I found my three pdp8/l computers rusting in a garage, not far from
here. They were part of an "Olympia Multiplex-80" system used in a bank
(someone added one of my pictures of one of the machines to the
wikipedia article about pdp8). There were two Ampex 7 track tape drives.
And some interfaces to the rest of the Multiplex-80 system. And
documentation for much of it. The tape drives were gone too far, so I
threw them away (no, there was no realistic chance to restore them: It
would have been a complete rebuild! They consisted of rust, rust, and
rust). The controllers were also gone very far. So I kept only some
pieces of those. Documentation for the tape drive and the whole system
is still there.
3. Some Honeywell
This last example is not finished yet. And it is the reason for writing
this posting.
Yesterday I drove up to Denmark. There I met a guy who had sitting
around some Honeywell and associated gear that he did not want anymore.
What I got were two Level 6 computers and an Ampex Megastore solid state
disk for the H316. One megabyte of core memory... That alone was enough
to take the trip.
And there are two large boxes with paper. I looked throug them, most of
them seems to be Accuray (the guy and stuff came from there)
documentation for some kind of industrial control system (paper mill,
I've been told). Tons of Accuray X16 software listings. Some original
Honeywell stuff. Accuray documentation for Accuray software.
And docs for a hard disk (fixed head?) disk drive that doesn't exist
anymore. All in all, the paper directly related to the stuff that
dropped in is less than 25% of the lot.
I currently have all of it. Some sitting here upstairs, some in the car,
and some in the staircase (the house door is open, it's getting cold).
Documentation belonging to collected hardware or software will always be
kept. This doesn't need to be discussed.
But the rest.... I call it the "other papers".
What the hell should one do with this kind of stuff?
The "other papers" fall into one of at least three categories:
a) Documents generated in equipment's lifetime, closely related to the
actual object they come with. Like Service logs, communication with the
manufacturer (offers, invoices etc.), personal notes, memory dumps of
something that has been used with the system.
b) Documentation for stuff and devices (i.e. products) I don't have
(anymore/not yet)
c) Documentation for individual applications like a paper mill or the
airport information system that don't exist anymore.
d) Category a stuff that belongs to stuff that did not came with it and
which can safely be assumed to have been scrapped long time ago
My current practice is to keep category a documents for historic value.
They usually don't take much space and are fun to read. Sometimes useful
as well.
Category b documents are kept if they belong to something I want to have
or where I can imagine that I could get it in the future (examples:
pdp8/i, straight-8, Honeywell DDP-516).
I don't see a reason to keep category c and d documents. I already threw
away some of those when they were simply photocopies of (assumed to be)
available or completely boring manuals. And I already feel bad about
that... So I am drowning in stuff that I don't really want to keep but
something holds me from just discarding it. At one point I thought about
bulk-scanning those before discarding. That would save the information -
and my space. But I currently cannot afford a scanner that can do the
job in hours/days instead of months.
Al Kossow is doing a great job with bitsavers. I appreciate the approach
to share vintage documentation and software in the way he does. I also
added a few bits and docs I rescued and scanned.
Most stuff on bitsavers is copyrighted in some way. For much of it, the
copyright owner can be assumed as not being interested in enforcing the
copyright because the information has lost its market value long time
ago - or the company simply doesn't exist anymore.
But what about stuff marked as confidential? I've got some Honeywell
Level 6 manuals (some of them seem to be on bitsavers already), most of
them are marked as confidential. Some of them have written
"confidential" on every single page... Is it ok to simply publish that
stuff?
And what about category c documents? Shouldn't they be silently
discarded? That would be the "correct" handling as one cannot be sure if
parts of the described system are still somewhere in production use. The
circumstances under which those docs go their way to collectors' hands
are usually of a more or less obscure and inofficial nature...
I like to read your opinions on that. Or proposals. I'd very much
appreciate a vital discussion.
Best wishes,
Philipp
Has anyone here tried to disguise a 19-inch rack as some sort of
unobtrusive piece of furniture? I'm pondering making a bench or
sideboard-like thing to compactly conceal computer equipment.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
I'm struggling trying to create an accurate telnet client with ANSI
emulation. The basic codes are easy enough and well documented, but
there are a lot of obscure codes to do things like 'set terminal mode'
to 'vertical editing mode' which I can't find good descriptions for.
I can't even figure out if a pure ANSI terminal supports wrapping to the
next line when you hit the edge of the screen, or if that is controlled
by an escape sequence. To further confuse things, a lot of people lump
the DEC terminals in with discussions of ANSI terminals, and although
they are close they are not the same. DEC extended a lot of things.
I've been googling, reading source code, and experimenting. It's slow
and painful.
Does anybody have a good reference they would recommend?
Thanks,
Mike
Another topic....
I got that Ampex "Megastore 316". It's a ramdisk for the Honeywell H316.
Connects via IO but and optionally DMC (kind of data break). Is from the
early 80s and contains to times half a megabyte of core memory. Quite a
mass...
I have some schematics, but not all I would need. Currently it's working
a bit - reading only every second word - but that looks good so far. I
had to make my own cables. Perhaps I did something wrong...?
Played a bit with the controller's microcode. Found no reason why it
skis addresses. There must be something wrong with the bus. I have two
controllers and two core modules - swapping doesn't change anything..
Does anyone on the list have experience, docs or other information to share?
Kind Regards,
Philipp :-)
Jochen Kunz <jkunz at unixag-kl.fh-kl.de> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:55:30 -0000
> "Rod Smallwood" <rodsmallwood at btconnect.com> wrote:
>
>
>> > Are there any DEC 10's running elsewhere?
>>
> At least a vew years ago the Lule? Academic Computer Society (Computer
> Society at Lule? University of Technology) used to have a runable
> DECsystem 2065. There was a nice galery featuring many interresting
> machines (VAX 8850, Norsk Data, ...). But the website has been WiKified
> (puke) and now the galery is gone.
>
Hmm. As far as I know, LUDD only have/had a DEC-2020. No -2065 around there.
But the largest collection of PDP-10 machines in the world for a long
time used to be at Stacken, at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
in Sweden. That, in combination with Peter Lothbergs collection.
Stacken have had to get rid of most of their stuff, I think, but Peter
still has his, and maybe more.
Lots of machines from the US were "exported" to Stacken...
I know that Peter still have atleast one KI-10 SMP machine (with alteast
two cpus) in storage. And that one is runnable. He have KLs as well, and
other stuff.
Stacken used to have a KA-10 running, and several KL and KS machines as
well.
I think I've written about this before, but it seems that either is
noone seeing my mails, or noone remembers them, or possible noone wants
to believe them.
Don't know which...
Anyway, not that I think you could get Peter to work on restoring a
KI-10 unless you have lots of money, but I bet he'd be able to to it in
close to no time, without much help. Heck, I know he modified his KI-10
machines to have some extra instruction needed for his modified version
of TOPS-10 back in the 80s.
If there is anyone in the world who knows PDP-10 machines, it is Peter.
It's just that if you haven't been around for a long time, you probably
might not know about him.
Johnny
Does anyone here have any spare Model M keys? I'm looking for the
right-hand shift key.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
Hi, All,
I'm trying to help a friend out with a role-playing game prop, and I
have a memory of some tool from a number of years back that can accept
a set of scripted menu items and responses and build an MS-DOS BAT
script that will "implement" the menu structure.
For example - you'd start off with a top level menu with, say, 4
items. Typing 1-4 would take you to one of four sub-menus, etc.,
until the end "nodes" are reached. The end-nodes could be a launching
point for a DOS program (optional), or just a page of informational
text.
Does this sort of menu generator script ring any bells with anyone?
I've googled for three days and have found all sorts of tutorials for
how to craft scripted menus (for DOS and UNIX), and I could easily
write my own set of menus from scratch in any number of system script
languages; the end user in this particular case is not a programmer,
so I'm trying to find something that will let him write the
informational text for the end-nodes and the menu items to lead to
them, but have a tool auto-generate the structure around it.
Thanks for any pointers, suggestions or keywords to help my search.
-ethan
