Sorry about that... I read "New York" and assumed New York, and
that's correct...
From: Edwina Williams <Wmsedw at aol.com>
Subject: Re: Old Computer to recycle
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:13:46 -0500
To: John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com>
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Sorry, I should have included this information. I am in New York
City, in the Inwood neighborhood, which is near (north of) the George
Washington bridge in Manhattan. Because I am near the bridge, I am
also convenient to New Jersey.
Also, I have a car and sometimes go to the Kingston, New York area,
so I could take the computer there to meet up with someone.
Thank you,
Edwina
i suppose it had to happen sometime...
The cartride harddisk drive in my Lilith has died, it is unable to find tracks anymore.
Headmovement is of course controlled by the only ASIC, thus pure unobtainium, that is inside the machine.
So : anyone has a spare unit ?
( yes i know, winning the lottary is more likely)
Failing that i will be finally forced to write new microcode and kludge in an IDE disk....
Jos Dreesen
> William Blair wrote:
> >
> > Beautiful works of engineering art that look like
> they're new out of the box.
>
> Indeed, which is one reason it can be so difficult to see
> the stuff scrapped.
>
> Obviously, I can't claim any contribution to the beauty-of-the-
> engineering-art aspect for these items ... and I don't want to
> admit to how many OCD hours went into making them look
> new-out-of-the-box.
Great job on that front. Wouldn't HP like to have such gems to display, at least in a glass case in a lobby somewhere? If I had a museum (and it would definitely hold items like those), I'd take them in a heartbeat.
>
>
> My until-very-recently-working Amdek Color-I RGB Monitor (November 1983)
has
> given up the ghost. It was working perfectly the last time I powered it
up, but
> now it doesn't turn on.
><snip>
>
> I know that poking around CRTs has given a lot of electronics hobbyists a
good,
> non-lethal education. I'm hoping to follow in those footsteps.
>
> -Seth
>
Seth,
I have also had my share of the closer to lethal education as well :-)
Bill
That's "really rare", not "eBay rare". My employer was supposed
to get its funding last week and give me a huge cash bonus for
putting up with month-to-month "survival wages" for the past year,
but instead, they've hit a legal snag and now they can't make
payroll. I've gone from merrily making up shopping lists to abject
financial terror over the course of a day. With my emergency cash
buffer long since gone (see "survival wages" above), I am in serious
short-term trouble.
So it is with a heavy heart that I must consider parting with a
few things that are dear and precious to me. Two things in
particular are items that might bring in enough money to help my
immediate situation.
First, I have a set of original DEC OS/8 TU56 distribution tapes.
I emphasize, these are *original*, nearly pristine, DEC-labeled
distribution tapes. I've had these for nearly thirty years. 'Nuff
said.
Second, I have an Atomichron. Yes, a real one, a National Company
model NC-1001. One of the very few left in existence. If you don't
know what this is, you probably won't be interested, but in a
nutshell it's the first commercially-produced atomic resonance
frequency standard ("atomic clock"), built in 1956. As far as I've
found in my research there are three of these left of the
approximately fifty that were built between 1956 and 1960. I've
written a short research paper describing this instrument and its
history, including photos; I can provide copies of it upon request.
I'm open to negotiation on pricing, but neither will go cheaply.
If there's someone here who is interested in either of these fairly
rare items, please contact me ASAP. I'm planning to put one or both
of them on eBay within the next day or so.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
On Tuesday December 15th, Rod Smallwood wrote:
4. I have already done it but I used a windows internet modem simulator.
I have loads of VAX's I wonder if it's possible to do Telnet in,
serial
RS232 with modem emulation (Assert DCD when connected) out on a VAX.
I had both the Lantronix and Xyplex terminal servers (mentioned
earlier) working as follows:
I linked them to the serial ports of a communication multiplexor on a
PDP-11.
When someone TELNET'ed in to the IP address of the terminal server,
they were automatically connected round-robin style to the next
available serial port.
This raised one of the signal lines high, which the operating system
detected,
and responded with the login prompt.
Likewise, when the user logged out, their TELNET session disconnected
automatically.
T
> Speaking of digital tube equipment, while I'm not ready to get rid of this
> stuff myself just yet, I'd like to ask whether others (the nearer the better)
> might have any interest in tube-based digital frequency counters and such;
> e.g:
> http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/edte/HP521C/index.html
> http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/edte/HP524B/index.html
> http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/edte/HP524C/index.html
>
> No, they're not computers (unless one really wants to stretch the definition),
> they are boat anchors and of limited to no practical use, but they are
> manageable (barely) examples of vacuum-tube-based digital equipment.
Beautiful works of engineering art that look like they're new out of the box.
From: "Alexandre Souza - Listas" <pu1bzz.listas at gmail.com>
> Maybe if someone comes up with the protocol (or some reference for
> the original mouse, like...schematics :oD) I can help in doing
> something like a PS-2 converter :)
A rather neat trick I learned for (sometimes) finding schematics of such
stuff is to look at the FCC ID number on the mouse. With that, you can
do a lookup on one of the FCC databases, and you will find things like
manuals, schematics, drawings, etc.
A quick Google search (and a redirect) brought up the search engine:
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/fccid/
The best program is .... Adobe Acrobat (real, full version Acrobat; not the
free "Acrobat Reader". Acrobat is an incredibly rich and powerful tool for
doing EVERYTHING related to PDF files. It's far more powerful than most
people have any idea. Unfortunately, it's expensive. But it can do what
you want, and more.
Scanning: Generally, scan at 300 dpi, in Grayscale (256 shades of
white-to-black). [Obviously, this is for monochrome documents]. There is
no reason to use 600 dpi unless the document is very unusual, it will only
make the file 4x larger and, in most cases, no better. JPEG is ok, but keep
the compression light. Your file size should be a few hundred thousand
bytes (up to approaching a megabyte) per page, although this depends on the
document. This works for both text only and documents with [black and
white] photos. [you MAY want to use 600 dpi on pages with halftone
(dithered dot) photos to get rid of moir?]. Do not use "black and white"
(e.g. 1 bit per pixel; every pixel either white or black) even for "black
and white" documents. Grayscale always produces a MUCH better result. I
know it's counter-intuitive when the document is just black text, but it's
true.
There are ways to get Acrobat cheaply. The best way is through educational
channels. Students at participating institutions can get current version
PROFESSIONAL editions ($449 list) [OUCH !!] for anywhere from $55 to $110.
Another approach is to buy an OLD, full version copy of Acrobat used on
E-Bay so that you qualify for the "upgrade" editions of the latest (or
later) versions ($99 to $199 instead of .... $449).
Speaking of educational discounts, Students can buy a copy of Windows 7
PROFESSIONAL for $30. I won't go into other student deals (I teach part
time at a local school), but the software deals available to students are so
good (Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of software (Microsoft,
Adobe, Corel, AutoCad, etc. available at like up to 90% off) that it can
easily pay to take one course just to become a "qualifying student" and be
able to buy this stuff.
Barry Watzman
Watzman at neo.rr.com
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:15:30 +0000
From: Philip Pemberton <classiccmp at philpem.me.uk>
Subject: Manual scanning: TIFF-to-PDF software with greyscale support?
Hi guys,
I'm after a program that can convert TIFF files into PDFs. I've seen
Eric Smith's "Tumble" app, which works great... but only for B&W TIFFs.
While I can use Imagemagick to convert the images to B&W, that defeats
the point: there are photos on the scanned pages, and I'd rather like to
keep them as photos, not black splodges.
Also, has anyone come up with a "best practice guide" for manual
scanning? At the moment I'm scanning like this:
B&W text only: 600dpi, black and white, threshold=50%.
Text + photos: 600dpi, greyscale, then despeckle and scale down to
300dpi.
Obviously if there are better ways (in terms of quality and/or speed)
I'd like to know before I scan a ton of testgear manuals...
Also, does anyone know of an app that can take the PDF file, OCR it and
then insert the text as a background layer while leaving the image
alone? I'm pretty sure Acrobat can do this, but like most Adobe
software, the price tag is somewhat... eye-watering. "If you have to ask
how much it costs, you can't afford it."
Thanks,
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk
