test-drb February 2009

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

196 participants
309 discussions

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> It continued to do this for > several reboots, but after running unattended for a few hours the hard > disk was again unreachable They took this opportunity to completely back up the contents of the disk, right?

15 years, 7 months

TS-11 tapedrive controller cards available

by quapla＠xs4all.nl

Hello All, I have available a set of controller cards from the internal backplane of a Dec TS-11 tapedrive. Contact me off list if interested. Ed --

15 years, 7 months

contact at cray-cyber.org or cyber1.org?

by legalize＠xmission.com

I've sent requests to join their mailing lists, which never get approved. I've tried to contact the owners directly, but never get a response. I suspect my email is being dumped into a spam folder. (I've been on the net so long and my email address has been so prominent, that spammers have often used my email address as the forged From address on their spam; as a result I've been placed on a bunch of filters and its hopeless to try and get removed from them, since they don't notify you that you've been put on a filter list.) Does anyone have any successful contact with these sites? <http://www.cray-cyber.org/general/start.php> <http://www.cyber1.org/> I've been trying to get in touch with them to get my PLATO terminals up and running. Thanks! -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

15 years, 7 months

Sun 3/80 colour card?

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Looking for a colour card for a Sun 3/80 if anyone has one spare? Will pay or trade. Part numbers are 501-1443 or 501-1505 Thanks Ian.

15 years, 7 months

washing floppies

by aek＠bitsavers.org

> On a related subject, have there ever been any non-contact (i.e. > flying head) tape drives brought to market? It looks like IBM filed a bunch of patents in the 70's on flying head helical tape http://www.google.com/patents?id=BZ4vAAAAEBAJ

15 years, 7 months

Archiving 8" RT-11 floppies to CD-ROM?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

Read the headers, It's 8" floppies and likely RX02. For that you must have a PDP11 (maybe uVAX) and RX02. David, I have an 11 with RX02. I can copy them to RX50 or RX33 that can be read on PCs. Allison > >Subject: RE: Archiving 8" RT-11 floppies to CD-ROM? > From: Ian King <IanK at vulcan.com> > Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:57:30 -0800 > To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >I've developed a procedure for this. It's a bit roundabout but it uses easily available tools. > >Tools needed: >- PDP-11 running RT-11, with an extra serial line (SLUx) >- DOS PC with a serial port >- PUTR program from John Wilson >- TU58 emulator, which I found through Will Kranz' website > >At a high level the process looks like this: > >Install TU58 per its README file. Copy the contents of the floppy onto the emulated TU58 using the COPY/DEVICE command in RT-11. Some versions will gripe at you about the fact that the floppy may be bigger than the tape. RT-11 v4 seems perfectly happy with that, and the TU58 program doesn't care. :-) IIRC there are prompts from RT-11 v5, but you can provide answers that will direct it to do the full copy anyway. > >Use PUTR to copy from that tape image onto... whatever you want! PUTR will let you manipulate the individual files and copy them into DOS directories if you so choose. By using COPY/DEVICE, you can preserve "bootability" of bootable disks, as well. > >I've used the reverse of this process to create physical floppies from disk images as well as to restore floppies after disk failures. Of course, if you want to burn either the images or the individual files onto a CDROM, you'll have to have the files on a machine that supports that device, has burner software, etc. But at that point, they're just files in a DOS filesystem. > >Cheers -- Ian > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk- >> bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jan-Benedict Glaw >> Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 11:37 AM >> To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts >> Subject: Re: Archiving 8" RT-11 floppies to CD-ROM? >> >> On Tue, 2009-02-24 13:14:06 -0500, David Betz <dbetz at xlisper.com> >> wrote: >> > I have a friend who has a number (10-20) of 8" RT-11 floppies he >> wants >> > to archive to CD-ROM or some other modern media. Is there anyone in >> > the Boston area (he lives in Medway) who could help with this? I >> > believe these are RX01 media since I think they were created on a >> > PDT-11/150 that I gave away to someone a few years ago. Can anyone >> > here help? What would the fee be for such a service? >> >> I obviously cannot help, but it would be nice if, once it is done, >> describe the procedure for others. >> >> Backup is one thing, restoring the image another. A third thing would >> be to use that image on some simulator... >> >> MfG, JBG >> >> -- >> Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw at lug-owl.de +49-172- >> 7608481 >> Signature of: >> http://perl.plover.com/Questions.html >> the second : >

15 years, 7 months

Why do the OOP Seller's use RFQ?

by shoppa＠trailing-edge.com

On Tuesday 24 February 2009, Jeff Walther wrote: > And how is it more profitable to them to let this stuff sit in > (costly) storage somewhere, rather than selling fifty pieces to > someone who could use them? IMHO: They do not have them sitting in storage. What they have is a small hand-run chip-labeling machine and a bunch of random chips. They grind off the original part numbers and label them to whatever you wanted to buy. And they have a website with a bunch of part numbers culled from various databases. Google "counterfeit chips" and "counterfeit transistors". Tim.

15 years, 7 months

Powering up a 20-year old MicroVAX II (BA23/123 cables)

by tiggerlasv＠aim.com

On Monday, February 23rd, Charles H Dickman wrote: >> Robert Jarratt wrote: >> The harness in my system does not seem to match any of the descriptions I >> have seen so far. The wires are not equal in length, but it is not a ribbon >> cable with IDC connectors either. The connectors are black rather than >> white. The harness wires do not seem discoloured, but I believe that this >> particular system may have only had light use in its day. I have a picture >> of the harness but I am not sure if the rules of this list allow >> attachments. >> > The key point of your description is that the wires are not equal in > length. This COULD be a bad thing. On the BA23, the backplane and power supply connectors are at right-angles to each other, so the 5-volt (red) wires are shorter than the 12-volt (yellow) wires, as well as most of the grounds (black). The same is true on the BA123. As you can see in the ASCII art below, the 12v interconnect wires end up being longer than the 5V wires. This is normal. I have a side-by-side photo of the old style cables, as well as the FCO, however I don't have a convenient place to post it. If anyone wants it for reference, let me know. | 1 | 2 | V | | G | n | d | | 5 | V 5 V G n d 1 2 V _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ T

15 years, 7 months

Nicolet 660

by slawmaster＠gmail.com

Hi everyone A kind list member in my area has offered me a Nicolet 660 computer free if I can haul it off, so I'm hoping to see if anyone else has any information about it. Luckily all the documentation seems to still be there so it's not a total mystery machine, but Google doesn't really offer any info on it. The Nicolet is a hip-high (3'?) cabinet that acts like a mini rack (units slide in and out on rails). The disk unit sits on top and has two SCSI 3.5" floppy drives and an SMD hard disk. Under that is the CPU unit, which has (as I recall) a start/stop button, a program1 button, a program2 button, and a power switch. There is a VGA monitor and an AT keyboard to go with it, both Nicolet branded. The OS is called NICOS and apparently is FORTH-based. It also includes floppies for FORTRAN, PASCAL, and BASIC. There is also a lot of software for data collection and processing, as this was once hooked up to lab equipment. Apparently the hard drive has died. Is it easy to get replacement SMD disks, or are there adapters that would let me plug in a SCSI drive or something more common? This seems to be a very unique piece of equipment that I would like to try to get working. Thanks! John Floren -- "I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey." -- Ted Dziuba

15 years, 7 months

8088 vs. 80c88

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: Re: 8088 vs. 80c88 > From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> > Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:58:23 -0800 > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > >On 22 Feb 2009 at 22:17, Allison wrote: > >> Your kidding tight? ;) >> >> JRT pascal was fairly buggy itself and it was till arond V3 that it stopped being >> noticalbly so. > >Buggy or not, the V20 wouldn't run it. Rich Naro verified the bug >and published a MicroNote on it. And JRT was comparatively popular >for the time. It boils down to the V20 not being able to run a >commercially available 8080 product because of a fault in the CPU. That may be true, bought it too but found it buggy on both 8085 and Z80 too. Why did I buy it, $29.95 and I even got a copy, some didn't! However using a buggy suite to prove a bug is weak even if it got lucky. That it had bugs, can't argue that. They could have just as easily given it the base uCOM78 instruction set instead. But how many V20s were bought to run 8080 rather than as a faster varient of the 8088? >Suppose a customer used an application written and deployed with JRT >Pascal. What do we tell him? "JRT Pascal--ho, ho, ha, you must be >kidding...." > >Nope, serious business. Who knows what other product could have used >the same coding technique? That's a regression testing issue. Generally getting functional code out of it was at best luck till later versions. >In a way, this was deja vu of a much earlier problem with the NEC >version of the 8080, where NEC left the carry bit unaffected after a >boolean operation, where Intel reset it. Considering that many 8080 >programs cleared the carry bit with something like "ORA A", do you >think that CP/M would have run with the old NEC chip? Yep, I as working for NEC then. What's also forgotton is Intel changed the spec to match there part as it was deemed fine that way. Since NEC was ground up from spec, oops. They also fixed it and copied many other subtle timing bugs as well. Sometimes you get it wrong and other times you don't. In the industry the number of second source flubs are legion.. remember the 8251,2651, and friends. FYI at the time CP/M did run with the old chip. Allison > >--Chuck

15 years, 7 months

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test-drb February 2009