November 2009 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

> On the other hand, it isn't impossible to find used red packs. > CLEAN packs may be more difficult, though. One thing that I fear is that the knowledge to *properly* clean a pack is going away. There is (was?) a place near Boston that would do it, and I am sure Farris can as well, but I know of no others. It would be nice to document how packs are cleaned, so we can do this in the future. Speaking of Farris - is someone keeping an eye on them? Some day they are going to call it quits, and they have quite the pile to be saved. -- Will

15 years, 7 months

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Straight-8 cabinet

by wdonzelli＠gmail.com

Well, now that it looks like the Dallas mystery cabinet is ID'd as possibly for a PDP-7, this started me thinking. Kicking around here is what I think it one of the extruded aluminum handles for a Straight-8 - one of the long ones that goes up the front door. It is (I think) the right shape, right length, and has decals MA thru MF inside. Does anyone need this for a restoration? Give me a sob story and shipping money and you can have it. -- Will

15 years, 7 months

1
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DEC CR10 card reader info?

by hachti＠hachti.de

Hi, does anyone have information (docs) on the DEC CR10 card reader? It has a Soroban "Desk Top Card Reader", type "ERD" inside. I could rescue that machine. But it's not that small. So I would like to know if anybody thinks I could use this with another computer than a PDP10 (without using too much modern interfacing). If anybody else is interested in the machine, let me know. It's located in northern Germany. Best wishes, Philipp -- http://www.hachti.de

15 years, 7 months

1
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Straight-8 Rack available

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 11/28/09, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > At 4:46 PM +0100 11/28/09, Pontus wrote: >>Not mine, not affiliated, but I think a serious collector should pick >>this up! >> >>http://dallas.craigslist.org/ftw/ele/1484014610.html > > I agree, racks like that are surely rare enough to warrant a rescue! > If I were local, I'd go for it! And for something 40+ years old, my definition of local is somewhat expanded... unfortunately, Texas is still a bit far from Ohio. If that were in Indiana or even Missouri, I'd definitely try to pick it up. Looking at the rack, since a Straight-8 has huge backplanes that fill the top of the rack, there are no upper doors - I'm wondering if that's an -8/S cabinet. -ethan

15 years, 7 months

5
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Straight-8 Rack available

by pontus＠update.uu.se

Hi. Not mine, not affiliated, but I think a serious collector should pick this up! http://dallas.craigslist.org/ftw/ele/1484014610.html Cheers, Pontus.

15 years, 7 months

5
6
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FS: NeXT Cube

by bdwheele＠indiana.edu

I'm selling a NeXT Cube I got in a palette of stuff. I've already got a turbo color slab so I really don't need a cube :) I'm located in Bloomington, IN and I'm not going to ship this! NeXT Cube N1000A P/N: 2115 S/N: ABA0003988 * 68040 @ 25MHz * 64M RAM * Floppy * Broken 5.25 FH HD. Spins up then down. I'll supply a 2G HH Drive * Non-ADB Keyboard * Non-ADB Mouse -- damaged. It looks like someone let it sit in glue or a solvent. The ball still rolls, but I can't open it to check to see if the rollers work. * Monochrome monitor. Readable, but like all monitors of that vintage its a bit faded. I'm asking $150 Brian

15 years, 7 months

1
0
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IBM PC 5150 power supply?

by fjk＠eircom.net

I'm looking for a IBM PC/ XT power supply for European voltages, 220 -240 V at 50Hz. I have three part numbers but can't find specs for them: 5150438 5150439 6323357

15 years, 7 months

4
5
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Mostly Q-Bus Parts

by useddec＠gmail.com

Going through boxes during my move in back in process. This is the first partial list of surplus boards available. $10 shipping for any amount within the US, overseas: please contact me. If interested in these or items something not on this list, please contact me off list. Feel free to respond with any comments or ?'s. M3107 DHQ11 $30 M7090 COMM $35 M7504 DEQNA $35 M7513 RD/RX EXP $30 M7546 TK50 $25 M7559 TQK70 $50 M7651 DRV11WA $75 N7940 DLV11 $20 M7944 MSV11B $25 M7946 RXV11 $45 M7949 LAV11 $30 M8044 MSV11/D $25..5/$100.00 The above boards are untested,but have a 30 day swap warranty 54-13009-03 VT100 basic video board $50 54-14185-01 VT101 (I think) video board $50 These were tested several years ago, and I might test them again, but will also have a 30 day warranty. Many Thanks, Paul

15 years, 7 months

1
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OT: Counterfeit ICs

by cclist＠sydex.com

For any of you who were temped to order through one of the Chinese outfits advertising rare and obsolete ICs on the web, here's a story of a guy who had the nerve to sell them to the Pentagon: http://www.edn.com/article/CA6709025.html Cheers, Chuck

15 years, 7 months

1
0
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RM Nimbus 186 info request....

by afra＠aurigae.demon.co.uk

Hi, On the offchance that someone here may be able to help me...... I'm looking for any low-level technical information about the RM Nimbus 80186 based machine. Specifically I'm looking for details of bios calls, and hardware addresses, bus pinouts etc. If anyone has a copy of "The Nimbus Advanced Programmers Refference Guide" that they would be willing to part with, that would be most helpfull. Cheers. Phill. -- Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general eccentric ! "You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.

15 years, 7 months

2
1
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Summagraphics Bit Pad One GPIB protocol documentation?

by derschjo＠mail.msu.edu

I'm working on supporting GPIB tablet support for PERQemu (right now it only supports the 3-button Kriz tablet). Anyone have documentation for the protocol used by the GPIB variant of the Summagraphics Bit Pad One? I've found documentation covering the Bit Pad Two (http://www.calcomp.com/files/Bit%20Pad%202%20Tech%20Ref.pdf) , which appears to be RS-232 only. I'm sure the protocols are similar, anyone know for sure? Thanks, Josh

15 years, 7 months

3
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VT78/MR78/OS78 (was Re: Vintage Computer Forum)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 11/25/09, allison <ajp166 at verizon.net> wrote: >> >> I should probably make a post there about my new-to-me VT78. It >> checks out so far, but I don't have a copy of OS/78 to do anything >> "fun" on it yet. I was hoping someone here would respond to my query >> about what's out there for the MR78 >> > The MR78 was only used for the booter. Right. It's just a bunch of ROMs and clock chips pretending to be a PR8E-like papertape reader. > I believe there were at least two booters, RX01, RX02. I've found reference for those as well as a mention of a diagnostic ROM set. I would like to be able to put together a box with 4x or 8x the normal ROM, use modern ROMs and burn all known booters rather than hack on my one-and-only MR78. Fortunately, it hangs off of a DB25, so it should be trivial to redesign and build in the same space. > OS/78 you need to find it on the net, then copy to RX01 > formatted 8" floppy. I've seen OS/278 from the DECUS collection. I must not be looking into the right places for OS/78. Writing the RX01 floppy is no big deal - with what I have sitting around the house, the shortest path is probably to throw an RXV11 or RXV12 into a Qbus box and use vtserver to move the disk image. The second shortest path would be to get around to assembling a 34-to-50-pin cable and using an old PC to write the image. Fortunately, I have multiple 8" drives and several boxes of still-in-the-shrinkwrap 8" disks, most (but not all) already formatted in IBM 3740 format. -ethan

15 years, 7 months

6
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VT78/MR78/OS78 (was Re: Vintage Computer Forum)

by djg＠pdp8online.com

> Never played with COS. I have one COS DECtape for the -8/e + TD8E. I > think I booted it 25 years ago and didn't know how to make it do > anything and put it back on the shelf. > Manuals are here. Probably still not that exciting. http://www.pdp8online.com/pdp8cgi/query_docs/query.pl?Search=cos >> The closest source I know of is OS78 V4 which was for the DECmate I >> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-8/os8/ > >I could use that for my DECmate I anyway. > I made a disk using that source and some others. They are in RX02 mode. http://www.pdp8online.com/images/images/os8/DECmate_I.shtml I haven't seen any original DECmate I disk images around.

15 years, 7 months

1
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VT78/MR78/OS78 (was Re: Vintage Computer Forum)

by djg＠pdp8online.com

>After years of looking, thanks to a tip from this list, > Did it wander further? My postings were to pdp8lovers and alt.sys.pdp8 >Are there any ROM dumps of the MR-78 anywhere? > Not that I know of. I have a MR78-BD on mine. The print set doesn't list what that version does. I probably can dump it if its different from yours. >I've seen OS/278 from the DECUS collection. I must not be looking >into the right places for OS/78. > OS78 images of the disks that came with my VT78 are here http://www.pdp8online.com/images/images/os8.shtml The R command not working is probably the set OS8/VT78 stuff they added. Also WPS78 here http://www.pdp8online.com/ftp/images/wps/ And COS for the VT78 http://www.pdp8online.com/ftp/images/cos/ The closest source I know of is OS78 V4 which was for the DECmate I http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/history/pdp-8/os8/ Enjoy your new toy.

15 years, 7 months

2
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Fwd: [Croydon-Freecycle] Offer: OLD Apple Mac, CR0

by lproven＠gmail.com

Machine is in Croydon, Surrey, England, FWIW. - LP ----------------------------------------------------------------- From: queenofcroydon <queenofcroydon at yahoo.co.uk> Date: Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 1:19 PM Subject: [Croydon-Freecycle] Offer: OLD Apple Mac, CR0 To: Croydon-Freecycle at yahoogroups.com Hi All, I have a Macintosh Performa 600 Series with CD-ROM Complete with Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse and external zip drive. I found a picture on "PC-Museum" http://pc-museum.com/gallery/rcm-035.jpg I know that this machine is from the technical perspective kind of if medieval. But maybe there is a MAC-fan out there somewhere, who likes this one. It is fully functional, comes with most of the manuals. Please let me know if you would like to have it - will just go as a bundle! Maike ------------------------------------ -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419 AOL/AIM/iChat/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? LiveJournal/Twitter: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508

15 years, 7 months

1
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Emulex Q bus SCSI board

by mark.kahrs＠gmail.com

Does anyone have any info on this board? It's an S-box board with number QS1010402. Uses Emulex custom LSI all over the place.

15 years, 7 months

2
1
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DEC VT100 character generator

by pete＠dunnington.plus.com

Several months ago, someone was looking for an image of the 23-018E2 character generator ROM for a VT100. A generous reader has given me an image, which I've uploaded to my website at http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/DECROMs/ Better late than never, I hope! -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

15 years, 7 months

3
2
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Ten Year Rule

by brianlanning＠gmail.com

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > IBM had one or two *INTERESTING* PC desktop designs I've seen that would be > nearing 10 years old. A few others have as well, but I'm honestly not sure > anything that was built to run MS Windows will really ever be on-topic, that > would include modern Macs. > So it sounds to me like the rule is, "anything that doesn't run windows, either because of insufficient power or design." lol Although some of the 486 or greater single board computer/passive backplane thingies could easily run windows. So maybe we need an exemption for anything that has a design that isn't a classic PC. And if we exclude modern macs, does that exclusion include the Cube and Mac Mini? I want both of those machines eventually. What about that goofy mac that looks like a half-dome with an LCD monitor sticking out? That's certainly interesting. Was that one intel or did it slip out before the conversion? And which version of windows was it that ran on the dec alpha? brian

15 years, 7 months

16
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Cleaning packs

by thomas.gardner＠sbcglobal.net

> Message: 26 > Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:18:13 +0000 (GMT) > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > Subject: Re: Cleaning packs > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org > Message-ID: <m1NDPFl-000J3yC at p850ug1> > Content-Type: text/plain > > > > > > > On Nov 24, 2009, at 1:08 PM, geoffrey oltmans wrote: > > > > > Dumb question (perhaps), but do the relative positions of the disk > > > platters in the pack matter on these systems? I suppose it might for > > > interleaving purposes for data already recorded. > > > > I would suspect yes but never having cleaned multi-platter packs, I'd > > only do that on packs that I don't care about the data (ie I'm going > > to format the pack as soon as it's "clean"). If I care about the data > > that *might* be on them I probably wouldn't disassemble (ie de-stack) > > the pack. > > I would be very careful about dismantling the pack for another reason. > Often there is no automatic centring of the platters. If you seprate > them, you will have to centre them up. On the (crashed) 5-platter pack I > dismantled about 25 years ago (for interest), there were holes throuch > the top and bottom hparts of the hub through which you put long rods to > keep the platters and spacers _approximately_ cententerd. But then, I > think, you have to put the hu on the drive spindle (or a similar spindle > in a test rig) nd use a dial gauge to position the platters so there's > no run-out when you rotate the stack by hand. Given that moving one > platter is likely to slightly move all the others, this is a long and > tedious job. > > -tony I would not clean any pack that had a lubricated disk surface. The good news is I am pretty sure that lubrication was introduced with the IBM 3340 (Winchester) so the 2315, 2316, 3336, 3336-11, SMD and their DEC equivalents (RP0x, etc) were not lubricated. I don't know anything about the later uniquely DEC packs but I expect they used high load heads and were not lubricated. As I recall we cleaned non-lubricated disk packs with a tongue depressor, a non shedding wipe (Kim Wipe) and isopropyl alcohol (medical grade). You want to make sure there is no residue! If you don't care about the data you can disassemble and reassemble disk packs that do not use a track following servo systems, that is 2316 and 2x2316 types. You do not have to center them up! If you are real careful you can disassemble and reassemble a servo type disk pack so long as you are very, very careful not to move (or replace) the disk containing the servo pattern! This applies to the 3330 and SMD type of disk packs. A while ago, I was surprised to find out that several "recovery" houses were doing this routinely and claiming to recover data on the original disks still in the pack!. If you do move the servo disk, as witnessed by repeatable runout in the servo system, I am told that some skilled folks can actually center them up by careful instrumentation, measurement and gentle tapping of the servo disk in a not fully tightened assembly. Tom

15 years, 7 months

2
1
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Neat find: Maxx Steele Robot

by newsound＠tds.net

would you be willing to sell your Maxx Steele Robot?

15 years, 7 months

1
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external bus adapter

by aek＠bitsavers.org

just ran across this http://www.arstech.com/cat--ssi2.html if you want to run ISA/PCMCIA/PCI cards off of a laptop OS X support was interesting.

15 years, 7 months

1
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Tek t2xx mainframe with 7D01 plugin : still worthwhile ?

by jdr_use＠bluewin.ch

Is it worthwhile to rescue a Tek 7xxx scope system with a 7d01 logic analyzer plugin ? It looks nice, but after reading the manual the usefullness seems limited.... jos

15 years, 7 months

5
4
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Epson HPIL interface

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

I am trying to find something to put my latest E-bay purchase in. Note I am not saying that I am trying to find somewhere to put it, I have that problem whne I uy a complete computer system. This is just one PCB about 5" * 4" Let me start with some backgrounf information. Everybody rememebrs the Epson dot-matrix printes of the 1980s, things like the MX80, FX80 and so on. They had a standard Centronics interface on a 36 pin Blue Ribbon connector. What is less well knwon is that these printers have an 2*13 socket on the main PCB. 25 pins are used ,the other is a locating hey. This conenctor carries most of the Centronics signals, power lines, and a few others. It was designed for optional inteface PCBs, there is a blanking plate in the top case to allow access to a connector on such a PCB. For example, Epson made a couple of different serial interface PCBs. One was a bit-banger -- if a particular pin (P/S-) on the connector is pulled lwo, then data line D8 becomes a bit-banged serial input and the other 7 data lines are used to set the serial interface parameters. The other was a serail-parallel converter using a microcontroller with buffer memory. It jhad a parallel inteface to the printer. Now HP sold a couple of printers called the HP82905 and HP82906. These were based on Epson models -- in fact they _were_ Epson printers with different firmware to handle the HP command set. They were fitted with an Epson HPIB interface card as standard. But there was also a fairly rare HPIL interace card, made by HP. And that is what I have just bought. It's a PCB 82905-60001. It contains 2 chips, a 1LB3 (HPIL interface) and MK3870 (mask-programmed microcontorller) with the obvious support components. Since it just uses the stnadarsd parallel interface to the rwst of the printer, it should work in any Epson printer with that connector, no matter what firmeare is present (at least for printing text). After getting in on E-bay, but before it arrived, I remembered I had the Epson HPIB card somewhere. I could even rememebr were. I dug it out, and found it was missing a jackpost from the HPIB connector. 2 hours later, I had one fitted. No, it didn't take me that amount of time to find one, I just graed some brass ron and turned one. FWIW, the screw thread on the connecto that it screws into is 4-40 UNC, an odd choice (USA HPIB jackposts have a 6-32 thread on that end, and the Japanese normally use metric threads, so I would have expected either 6-32 UNC or M3 here). This board contains 16 TTL chips so should be triival to repair if it needs it. Anyway, the problem is that I am short of Epson printers. I have one. I thought it would be triivial to find such devices, but alas not. So questions 1) Does anyobody know which Epson models have this internal connector and which therefore could be used with the interfaces 2) Anyone know for sure what models the HP82905 and 82906 are based on? 3) Anyone in the London (England) area got any such printes that they want to sell cheaply? I suspect shipping them would be rather expensive, hense the 'London area' criterion. Obviously the HP models would be fine too, as would IBM5152 grapghics printers (the TechRef shows the connector I am talking about). Thanks in advance -tony

15 years, 7 months

3
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HPEMU

by spedraja＠ono.com

Just curious... What happened with this project ? There is a *broken* link in www.hp1000.org pointing to www.classiccmp.org Regards Sergio

15 years, 7 months

2
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Odds and Ends questions

by brain＠jbrain.com

1. I have a need for a DE9 female connector without the metal housing, something like (http://www.robotshop.ca/Images/small/en/parallax-basic-stamp-1-serial-adapt…). I need quite a few of them, so I'd rather not buy DE-9s and rip off the shielded housing manually. Anyone have ideas? 2. Anyone on list have any experience with MAX 7032A Altera CPLDs? I'm working on a VIC-20 MIDI interface for a friend in Toronto, and I'd love to use a small CPLD to make it more cost effective to produce the MIDI cart. I've found TQFP 7032A units for $.31/piece, but I've never done CPLD. I want to learn, and thought if I at least knew someone could help me though the first few bits (and help with the programming cable, etc., it'd be much easier. 3. I'm making the journey to Toronto for the World of Commodore 2009 show Dec 5. I'd love to meet list members in the area, and there'll be some vintage CBM stuff present, if you're into that sort of machine. 4. Anyone have a source for 28AWG 2 conductor twisted wire? 5. If so, do they make it in 3 conductor? Those who care about the CBM machines on-list have no doubt heard all of this, and I don't want to be accused of spamming, but I thought I'd point out I ran a batch of MOS 6540 adapter PCBs, and I have created a small FLASH replacement for the 2364 and 23128/23256 DIP ROMs. Some of those might be of use on other 80's era machines. Jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X) brain at jbrain.com Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com

15 years, 7 months

9
18
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Power Macs and PC Compatibility Cards

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

I have a 500 series card (don't remember which, I'd have to pull it out and look) with a manual. No cable or software. It was a pull from a batch of 7200's we won at auction years ago. ? If anyone would like it, make me an offer off-list. ? Also, I have a couple of 7200's that are available for free, if someone lives in the Philadelphia area and wants to pick one/both up. I also have a 7200 logic board that is a pull from one of the units I upgraded with a 7300 board, if someone wants a spare. I might even have more than one. ? I also have a Mac 512k Shell with tube and logic board, but nothing else if someone wants that to make a Macquarium out of, or to complete into a working unit. ? I'm moving in two months, and I'd like to get rid of some excess stuff. But, not to a landfill. ? Al

15 years, 7 months

1
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Ten Year Rule

by trag＠io.com

> > Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:44:57 +0000 (GMT) > From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > I would really hate it if this list became a mostly old PC (or Mac) list. > IMHO there are better places to discuss such machines (no, I don't know > hwere said places are). The two best places for discussion of old Macs are probably the Low End Mac (lowendmac.com) lists (includes "Vintage Macs" (68K) and "1st-PowerMacs" (NuBus PPC)) which are now hosted on Google, and the 68K Macintosh Liberation Army Forum at 68kmla.net. Applefritter.com is also nice but does not get as much traffic as 68kmla.net. This list is probably as good as anywhere these days for Apple Network Server information, because Cameron K. is here, unless he knows of an active forum for them. The last one I knew about is long gone. Not so many years ago the best place for Mac stuff was the comp.sys.mac.* hierarchy. Sigh. And you could buy and sell stuff in comp.sys.mac.wanted without paying Ebay fees... Jeff Walther

15 years, 7 months

2
1
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Ten Year Rule

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:02:57 -0600 From: "Michael B. Brutman" <mbbrutman-cctalk at brutman.com> Subject: Re: Ten Year Rule Pontus Pihlgren wrote: >> Well, without the newbs the community will slowly die away. I like to >> see young people getting interested in what I'm interested in. Let them >> talk about their "vintage" Pentium and hope they discover the cool stuff >> in the "Minis and Mainframes" section. <snip> >> I'm in both and I also visit http://forums.nekochan.net/ for my daily >> dose of SGI. >> >> Kind regards, >> Pontus. >Hi Pontus, >We need the newbs, and we need to be gentle to them. But newbs can get >annoying when they just babble endlessly and refuse to do basic >research. The good news is that we can try to moderate or filter a lot >of that out. <snip> >Regards, >Mike --------------------- ...and moderators can be annoying when they're patronizing and condescending and think that people who think P1s are antiques are a "problem" on a forum like Erik's which is mostly about exactly that, folks helping each other restoring and modifying their old Intel boxes (but also more esoteric stuff, in case I'm giving the wrong impression). Meanwhile, here we can spend a week discussing and reading about arcane camera stuff, but woe to anyone who might mention Windows 3.1... And now of course we have to have the tedious "what is vintage" discussion yet once again... has this been a problem? Have we been overwhelmed with Vista questions? Did someone use the word 'anal'...? m

15 years, 7 months

4
3
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isa 486 computer-on-a-board type things

by PeksaDO＠cardiff.ac.uk

I have a HM (Hotel Microsystems) Server with an eight slot backplane and can choose from a selection of '386' and '486' computer-on-a-board cards that I have. I also have one 'IBM Blue Lighting' card. Six of the other slots are filled with Sundance ISA transputer cards (5 are 20MHz, 8Mb, 1 is 20MHz, 4Mb - I'm still half-looking (not in any real hurry) for 32 1Mbit memory chips to fully populate the final card). In their day, they were the system of choice at Cardiff University for a few years, and they came as a very small desktop with a three (or was it four?) slot backplane, or as the server. The server I have was the 'demonstration' model sent for evaluation. The side panels are perspex. It looks really nice with all those full length transputer cards in there, blinking away. Doug.

15 years, 7 months

1
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DEC VT100 character generator

by jzg22＠drexel.edu

------------------------------ Message: 20 Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:50:31 +0000 From: Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> Subject: DEC VT100 character generator To: ClassicCmp <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4B0B11B7.4020304 at dunnington.plus.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Several months ago, someone was looking for an image of the 23-018E2 character generator ROM for a VT100. A generous reader has given me an image, which I've uploaded to my website at http://www.dunnington.u-net.com/public/DECROMs/ Better late than never, I hope! -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York ------------------------------ Pete, That matches the rom I typed from the vt100 tech manual datasheet for MESS. Are you sure someone dumped it from a real chip and didn't just submit the rom I typed up (which is now floating around the 'net)? The rom is marked as a 'bad dump' in MESS, because I was almost sure the typed one is very slightly wrong due to the fact that the sum16 of the one I typed does not end with "00", which seems to have been standard DEC practice for roms at the time. Hence I was hoping someone with a working or scrap vt1xx series board would dump the real thing. The trouble with most people dumping the original chip seems to be that: A. it is soldered to the vt1xx board B. it has uninverted CE (I think...) and a few other pinout oddities (see schematic on bitsavers) P.S. the second optional character rom (only selectable if you have an AVO board installed, or a VT102/VT131 which has AVO builtin), labeled 23-094e2 is also not dumped. This one, fortunately, is socketed on systems which have it, and I believe has a normal pinout. I think it contains european characters and formatting/word processing characters. It might also contain some or all of the technical font used on the later vt3xx+ systems as shown here: http://vt100.net/charsets/technical.html P.P.S. the main cpu roms from a vt1xx with the word processing romset installed are also not dumped. I have no idea what the numbering on these is though. Two of the CE pins alternate in binary form for the chips to allow them to be 'self decoding' and inserted in the four sockets in any order! cute, but makes dumping them a bit harder. -- Jonathan Gevaryahu jgevaryahu(@t)hotmail(d0t)com jzg22(@t)drexel(d0t)edu

15 years, 7 months

3
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cctalk Digest, Vol 75, Issue 39

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

>My expeirience is that if you have a drive with a correctly-aligned >positioner/head assemly, you can remove it as an assembly, and put it >back in _the same drive_ and it will still be alighed. But if you move >positioenrs between drives you have to do a realignment. In my case unfortunately that would not be the case as the best I can find are two other units in unknown condition from a completely different set of drives. >The alignment procedure is not hard if oyu have the alignment pack. You >also need a 'scope (but just aout any 'scope will do) and a way of moving >the heads to a particular cylinder and selecting head 0 or head 1. I had >no prolems using a PDP11 + the appropriate controller for this, just >togging values int oteh controller registers from the PDP11's font panel. >If you use a PDP9/e, I think you have to write a trivial program for this. I can easily get hold of a scope but a calibration pack is a different story. >THe disk packs are different between the PDP8 and PDP11 systems. They're >hard-sectored (by notches in a metal ring on the disk hub), PDP11 packs >are 12-sectory, PDP8 packs are 16 sector. The former are _much_ easier to >find. I think if I could find the rest of the system I might also find the packs as well. Since this was a local and very little known recycling job only a few businesses in town and university staff drop stuff off. I really wish I knew dropped this off but alas, no records are kept on who drops off what. My best bet is either the hospital or it came from someplace in the university. Where exactly I have no idea.

15 years, 7 months

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YATYD (Was: Ten Year Rule)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 11/24/09, Fred Cisin <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote: > On Tue, 24 Nov 2009, Kirn Gill wrote: >> I was thinking recently, and I know that the general threshold for >> discussion on this list is ten years, but is that enough? Guideline, not threshold. There are countless exceptions on both sides. >> As it stands, given the rule of a minimum of ten years, most early >> Pentium III PeeCees are listworthy for discussion. Guideline, not threshold. >> In just two more years time, the world's most popular computer operating >> system (as of the time of this email's writing) would be perfectly valid >> to discuss, even as "on-topic". 2001 to 2011 is ten years, isn't it? > > NEVER! > There are better places for THAT discussion. Indeed. The results of one of the many recurrent discussions of "The 10 Year Rule" is that it really comes down to "interesting machines are in, mainstream machines are out". The list of what falls in and what is still out, changes from year to year, but a rule of thumb is that there are plenty of places to go to ask for help fixing your Windows PC, and this is not the place for it. At one time, when MS-DOS was still in common use all over the planet, this was not the place to talk about those sorts of machines. I would suggest that now, DOS knowledge has become esoteric (the slide starting with the release of Windows 95, one could argue), and that discussion of boxes running MS-DOS could be on-topic. I would still suggest that Windows 98 and newer are quite off-topic and will be for a large number of years into the future (meaning greater-than-the-quantity-10). Windows 95 is kinda on the fence to me since there's a disconnect with Win98-and-later. Practically speaking, if you are fiddling with Windows 95 at this point, it's because you want to experience how things were 14 years ago. Windows 98, though, I would argue, is new enough that it's still a "modern" experience. If you wanted to discuss the Pentium FDIV bug and which chips were affected, I'd think that was on-topic. If you wanted to discuss what Windows drivers are needed for that very same machine, I'd say that's off-topic. Same hardware, different sides of the line. "Ten Years" isn't (and hasn't been for a while) the be-all-end-all criterion. -ethan

15 years, 7 months

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Siemens stuff in Kiel

by hachti＠hachti.de

Hi folks, there are some Siemens items in Kiel. Free for pickup. Will go to scrap if nobody wants them. The first two pictures: http://pdp8.hachti.de/gallery/endangered_stuff There's also a big printer (one TON!!) in another room. That unit's future will be the scrapyard as well if nobody is interested in it. Best wishes, Philipp -- http://www.hachti.de

15 years, 7 months

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Got two RK05's, looking for a PDP-8 or 11

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

>Maybe someone with a spare drive that could be dismantled and someone >who could create the specific hardware to write analogically the pack, >could create a machine for creating alignment packs?! :o) > > It was done before with 5 1/4 disk drives... :oD Hmm, I was under the impression that the alignment packs had everything hard-coded as to ensure the alignment went okay. John.

15 years, 7 months

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Non-fake Apple 1 on ebay

by evan＠snarc.net

320447681957 ... Speaking of crazy prices ...

15 years, 7 months

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isa 486 computer-on-a-board type things

by brianlanning＠gmail.com

Hi Everyone. I have no idea what these things are called. They show up on ebay all the time and look like entire 486 machines on a full-length 16-bit isa card. I'm assuming these are designed to be plugged into a passive back plane. I've always wanted to tinker with a computer of this design, but I haven't had any exposure to them. Is there anything I should look for or avoid before trying to buy one of these boards? Thanks. brian

15 years, 7 months

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Water damage

by ript＠disasterarea.net

Hi all, First post here. Long story short, I recently rescued a friend of mine's Commodore equipment after he'd suffered a fire in his apartment. None of it caught on fire but some copped a direct hit from a fire hose and was sitting there for 4 days while I went through the bureaucracy of gaining access to the place (he's in hospital at the moment but will recover, for the record). While this gear isn't particularly uncommon (although the Amiga stuff might be quite expensive to replace), I'd like to rescue it for him even if it's just for morale purposes. Anyway, rusty RF shields have leaked rusty water all over the PCBs and I really don't know how to deal with it. So far, I've used dry cotton buds/q-tips to clean off anything visible, but I'd like to know what people recommend for cleaning the boards properly. I was thinking isopropyl alcohol - I've previously used it for leaked caps, but I'm all out right now. Is methylated spirits a bad substitution? Speaking of leaked caps, it looks like the water has caused a lot of caps to leak as well - I've never seen leaking caps in the act, it's always been dry "after the event" type damage. If there's anything worth noting about this, that'd be great to know too. Thanks for any advice! Cheers, Dave.

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Got two RK05's, looking for a PDP-8 or 11

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

>If the head/voice coil assemblies have been removed you'll have to go >through the entire alignment procedure which requires a special >alignment pack. You'll also want to make sure that all of the dreaded >"DEC foam" has been removed and replaced or you're heads and packs >won't last long. You'll also want to look at the filters and make >sure they're in good shape and replace them (if you can find them). >However, bad filters will also kill the heads and packs. > >If the head/voice coil assemblies have been removed how do you know >that the drives are working? I noticed that foam almost immediately, I cleaned up the majority but I'll probably go over the thing with a scraper and the air compressor. I got the same nasty foam in my SGI Crimson. Well at the very least the drive powers up with no nasty smells or noises or the fault lamp and I can get the spindle motor to spin up >They're one of the standard DEC lamps. I don't recall off the top of >my head what the equivalent lamp # is but they (or a reasonable >facsimile) are readily available. Awesome, that might be a bit better as well. >For an omnibus PDP-8 you need an RK-8E controller that goes in the >omnibus chassis. The "hard" part is finding the cable that goes from >the RK-8E and the drive. For a PDP-11 (unibus) you need an RK-11D >controller. It is actually a 4 board set in it's own backplane that >goes in the CPU chassis. There is also an RK-11C for unibus but that >controller is of the "old style" that has 40 or so flip chips in a >rack width backplane and is mounted outside of the CPU chassis in a >rack (requires a separate power supply) that connects to the CPU with >unibus cables. Hmm, that might be a bit of a problem as I never see spare flip chips or anything unless they are on ebay for funky prices. >If you're not looking for a "blinken" lights machine, you're best bet >would probably be an 11/34 system. I have several that are "spares" >but right now I'm swamped and haven't been able to spend any time on >classic computer stuff. > >TTFN - Guy Well right now I'll go for pretty much anything. I guess a 34 or similar is a good starter system and on some distant day I'll switch to say an 8/e. John

15 years, 7 months

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Looking for some floppy disc analysis tools

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, Before I start writing a data decoder of my own (for the disc analyser), I'd rather like to at least make sure the hardware is spitting out sane data. Does anyone know of a tool along the lines of cw2dmk that can accept timing-data input from a file instead of using (e.g.) a Catweasel? I was going to do the hardware tests with cw2dmk, but I don't fancy my chances at figuring out how the ~2500 lines of code fits together, and how to patch in read-from-file support... (Apologies if cw2dmk actually /can/ do this; the manpage explains how to change the output file name, Catweasel port and such, but not how to make cw2dmk read transition timing data from a file) Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

15 years, 7 months

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I: VINTAGE: BIGBOARD 1 & SWP DSDD ADAPTER

by elazzerini＠interfree.it

Hi at all, it past much time during i collected all useful info on this my old board putting all on my website http://elazzerini.interfree.it <http://elazzerini.interfree.it/> I hope to can make my board alive soon. A friend given to me all its 32 x 4116 DRAM chips after to have checked all of them. I buyed on ebay the SWP Double side double density adapter http://elazzerini.interfree.it/Foto560.jpg and i here to ask: is there anyone who could indicate where or how to gain the firmware for the bigboard 1 to can make this adapter working or just to gain its 27 original manual? Thanks for any kind of useful suggestion and please sorry for my not perfect English. Enrico Lazzerini - Pisa - Italy

15 years, 7 months

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Got two RK05's, looking for a PDP-8 or 11

by ball.of.john＠gmail.com

I managed to locate two nicely working RK05J drives (though the voice coil/head assemblies were removed but I'm trying to get two more from another guy but damn, those things apparently weigh 80 pounds alone! Think of the shipping costs! D:) and now I'm really intent on finding either a PDP-8 or PDP-11 Omnibus system I can run them with. I have been trying my local Craigslist (as well as others but the listings kept on getting flagged) but it's a ghost town and I got leads at a place called FreeGeek in Vancouver but they have never seen a PDP come in through their doors, ever. I'm running out of places to search and ideas on how to bring my searching for a PDP to the attention of people who have systems they no longer need or are willing to part with theirs. I saw alt.sys.pdp8 and alt.sys.pdp11 but they are both rather empty so I don't know if a yell for help would be heard there. Any help or offers would be appreciated very much. Also, most of the bulbs on the front panels of the drives have burnt out. Are these just regular 12v bulbs? I saw someone replaced the lights in their drives with LEDs and that would be a bit nicer as LEDs would never have to be replaced again. Also, I received only the drives. I saw several flip chips in the thing and a single empty slot. I'm assuming that the flip chips are the controller and the empty slot contained a board which gave you a ribbon cable connection to the omnibus backplane in the PDP or are the chips in the drives "fridge logic" and I'm missing the controllers? Thanks.

15 years, 7 months

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Hard-sector discs -- how many sectors?

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, I'm just putting the finishing touches on my disc reader hardware. At this point the disc stepping works (under the control of the FPGA -- you set the step rate and tell it how many steps to move and in which direction), and I can access the acquisition RAM on the PC (both read and write). So the next step before adding the acquisition module is to make the thing detect start and stop events. Frankly if you're reading formats that are index-synchronised (read: IBM PC), then it makes more sense to read index-to-index than it does to read from $HEAD_POSITION to some other random place on the disc. Most folks who have been following this project will know that it has three ways of starting or stopping an acquisition: - Index Synchronised. Waits for one or more index pulses. - MFM Synchronised. Waits for a given MFM sync word to pass under the head. - HSTMD. Hard Sector Track Mark Detector. Looks for an index pulse halfway between two other index pulses, then triggers on the index pulse after that. For example... I I I I I I ... | | X +--trigger here (X = the track index mark, + = the trigger point) Each of these trigger modes can be used in conjunction with a "delayed capture" mode -- basically, it waits for N events before triggering. That is to say, you can program it to trigger on index pulses, with a count of (say) 3, and it'll wait for 3 index pulses before triggering. This could be useful for any number of things -- reading hard-sectored discs, waiting for a few rotations before trying to read the disc, and probably a few other things I haven't thought of yet. I'll probably have the HSTMD detector wait for a track-mark, then count index pulses, which would allow single sectors on hard-sectored discs to be read with very little effort. This seems more useful to me than just counting track-marks. The thing is, I have a limited number of bits available in the registers (and an equally, if not more limited number of registers). So what I want to know is... how high does the event counter need to go? Specifically, how many sectors can you actually get on a hard-sectored disc? I know 10- and 16-sector discs were (are?) available, but were any larger sizes (e.g. 20 or 30 sectors) ever made? Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

15 years, 7 months

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Great haul!

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

Today I became the proud owner of: - Northstar Horizon w/ 2x 5.25" built-in drives + mucho software Haven't had a chance to pop the cover and inventory the boards. - Sony SMC-70 w/ 3 boxes of binders and software A nice little CP/M system with built-in 3.5" diskette drives - Morrow 8" external hard drive This looks to be an MFM interface, or at least it has a 34-pin + 20-pin header on the rear panel. Anyone familiar with it? And the strangest one of all: - OSM "Zeus" I'm told this was a multi-user business computer from the early 80s, but the person who gave it to me had no documentation or other information on it. Oh, and about 40 boxes of 8" SS/SD NOS diskettes still sealed in plastic and about 10-20 boxes of 8" SS/SD hard-sectored diskettes, most still sealed. I'm not sure I really need all the diskettes and may offer them for the price of shipping - stay tuned. Also, 4-5 large shelf bins full of 8" application master diskettes and the entire CPM-UG collection. This will all take a while to go through. Steve --

15 years, 7 months

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Free DEC VT-180 "Robin"

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

I need to clear some room and would like to give away this system to anyone who wants to drive to Burlington, VT and pick it up: - VT-180 main unit in reasonably clean condition (has DEC logo dust cover and has been covered while in storage. - Keyboard also with DEC logo cover in pristine physical condition - (2) Dual 5.25" external floppy drives - Large box full of system masters, application software and all docs. - All cables for connection of drives to system unit. Caveat: I was given this unit about 8 years ago as what was claimed to be a working system and have never powered it up. Nor am I planning to now. If not claimed by the end of the year, it's going (with a heavy heart) to the local electronics recycler. Steve --

15 years, 7 months

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Disc analyser status update -- it works!

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Quick status update before I go to bed... The analyser is now reading discs. All the buffer data seems valid, and the nifty "so simple I can't believe I didn't think of it first" counter-rollover algorithm proposed by Peter Coghlan seems to work really nicely too. I've dumped track zero from a DOS 1.4MB floppy and (after a quick bit of histogram analysis) it looks like valid MFM data. I'm seeing a big spike at ~2us, a second, smaller, spike at ~3us, and a third, even smaller spike at ~4us. The last spike is only just noticeable on a linear graph scale -- probably due to the large number of 2us "hits" (39,000 in a 90,000 sample acquisition). On a log scale it's a lot more visible. I haven't tried decoding the data yet, but that's next on the list. Writing isn't implemented yet (I need to do a partial-rewrite and redesign of the disc writer state machine) but I'm quite happy with how this has turned out thus far. I'd post screenshots, but console apps don't tend to make very interesting screenshots... (I'd also cross-post this to VCforum, but I'm too tired to remember my password) Cheers, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

15 years, 7 months

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Disc analyser status update -- it works!

by philpem＠philpem.me.uk

Quick status update before I go to bed... The analyser is now reading discs. All the buffer data seems valid, and the nifty "so simple I can't believe I didn't think of it first" counter-rollover algorithm proposed by Peter Coghlan seems to work really nicely too. I've dumped track zero from a DOS 1.4MB floppy and (after a quick bit of histogram analysis) it looks like valid MFM data. I'm seeing a big spike at ~2us, a second, smaller, spike at ~3us, and a third, even smaller spike at ~4us. The last spike is only just noticeable on a linear graph scale -- probably due to the large number of 2us "hits" (39,000 in a 90,000 sample acquisition). On a log scale it's a lot more visible. I haven't tried decoding the data yet, but that's next on the list. Writing isn't implemented yet (I need to do a partial-rewrite and redesign of the disc writer state machine) but I'm quite happy with how this has turned out thus far. I'd post screenshots, but console apps don't tend to make very interesting screenshots... (I'd also cross-post this to VCforum, but I'm too tired to remember my password) Cheers, -- Phil. philpem at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

15 years, 7 months

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6502 trivia (was Re: Non-fake Apple 1 on ebay)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 11/20/09, Brian Lanning <brianlanning at gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:16 AM, Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> wrote: > >> Chuck Peddle told me a couple of months ago that the 6502 was never >> intended to be a general-purpose microprocessor, it was designed to >> be a replacement for hard-wired logic. Well it certainly exceeded those expectations! >> They had a die size target to hit to get to the price point they wanted >> and pulled out things they thought were unnecessary for its use in that >> market. Interesting way to build it - start with a processor... discard things until it fits in a few mm^2... profit! >> In particular, the length of the registers. I had always wondered why they >> built a microprocessor with an 8 bit stack pointer, when the previous 6800 >> design had 16. The first two processors I worked with were the 1802 and the 6502. I do remember the wee stack size was occasionally a problem. It would have been nice to have been able to at least put it somewhere other than $0100, but they probably didn't have enough room for spare transistors to even do that. As a little-brother to the 6800, it still does a pretty good job. I remember wishing for 16-bit registers, but in effect, zero-page is a wad of slow 16-bit registers. > lol Who needs multiply and divide operations anyway? When I used to write commercial games, we used to go to great lengths to calculate screen addresses, etc., with tables and hard-coded multiple routines (times3, times9, done with shifts and adds) since brute-force multiple wasn't an option. > Great info, I never knew that. Interesting to hear the history on it. -ethan

15 years, 7 months

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Cromemco Z-2 and IMSAI 8080 at Purdue

by cclist＠sydex.com

Someone over at VCF is worried that these will hit the dumpster. I think that's unlikely, but it might be worth looking into. http://vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?p=120672 --Chuck

15 years, 7 months

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IC DEC8881

by hachti＠hachti.de

Hi folks, I don't know if it's a fact of certain interest... I found a DEC M841 Omnibus printer interface with a Fairchild "F 7429DC" additionally stamped "DEC8881". As I think the DEC8881 is considered one of the harder to find chips, this could be interesting. I know that many of the DECxxx ICs are pin compatible to standard 74 TTL or Signetics 82 TTL devices so this could be found out by reading the TI data book as well. But I've heard of signal quality, speed and other selection issues making those a DECxxx IC. Perhaps that's a legend? Or at least partially? Best wishes, Philipp :-) p.S.: Here's a picture: http://pdp8.hachti.de?gallery/misc

15 years, 7 months

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Indianapolis

by rogpugh＠mac.com

Hi to all across the pond. Are there any places/stores of interest to our hobby in Indianapolis, or is it a bit of a black hole? I am on a business trip there next week from the UK anything worth seeing?? Roger

15 years, 7 months

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test-drb November 2009