My PDP-11 is so lonely out here in Las Vegas,
it has been sneaking out of the house at night.
I've had to drag it out of at least two casinos already.
I knew I should have never compiled that blackjack program. ;-(
Am I the only classic computer enthusiast left in San Diego?
Since Will Rose decamped for England, and Don Maslin died, and Bill Bailey died last year, it seems that there is no one here who shares my/our interests. It's all Windoze (oh, I wish OS/2 had made it!) and Linux. No aspersion cast on either (well, even though I write for both, you get my feeling from my spelling of the former) - but there is no one here who has the slightest interest in anything before y2k! Local groups consider "technical" playing with the latest piece of hardware from Fry's.
Just wondering if there are any lurkers here who are in a similar situation, and would like to resurrect my old Dina-SIG in the form of talking, playing with, experimenting with classic computers. Maybe developing new ideas (Bill Bailey and I, before he died, were working on concepts for biological computers)....
If so, drop me a line. Don't mean to sound needy - but it's lonely down here. San Diego was a major epicenter of the development of the S-100 CP/M computer. We're all getting older but it can't be that of 3 million people I'm the only one left?!?
Vern Wright
It so happens that a man in Boulder, CO has one, possibly two DEC H960
racks with Kennedy 9000 1/2 inch tape units. The racks look to be in
very nice condition, no sides, but have the plain DEC purple/magenta
headers on the tops, also in nice condition. The Kennedys are mounted
in these racks, but could come out. One Kennedy is troubled, the other
is believed to work.
I am in Boulder today and tomorrow, and can deliver these to the Bay
Area in CA during the first week of May (3 thru 7).
I think he would like $100 for each rack, and probably something very
much less for the tape units. Nothing is bundled - buy one or both
racks, and/or buy one or both tape units.
Any interested people should not dawdle on this - please let me know
tonight, or at latest early tomorrow. There might be some bargaining
room on price - or maybe not. Regardless, I might need something for
hauling this stuff, to pay for gas.
--
Will
----- Original Message -----
From: Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se>
Date: Thursday, April 23, 2009 4:48 am
Subject: Re: pdp11/70 front panel frame
> Paul Anderson <useddec at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think I have a few front panels left, including the RDC, but
> not sure of the frames. Are they the same as an 11/40 or 11/45?
>
> I don't think so. It's been very long since I played with an
> 11/40, but
> the 11/40 and 11/45 have way fewer switches than the 11/70, and
> the
> frame lines up with the switches on the 11/70.
> Can't remember for sure the exact details of the 11/40 I played
> with,
> but it must have had some kind of filler on the panel, to get to
> the edges.
>
> If I remember right, the RDC panel reused the 11/70 panel frame,
> by the way.
>
[...]
You remember right. I was a computer operator on an 11/70 in the late 70's. When the DEC service technician came by to switch out the standard front panel and replace it with the remote console, only the panel was replaced, not the frame.
Should have kept it. It was pristine...
Michel Adam
Paul Anderson <useddec at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think I have a few front panels left, including the RDC, but not sure of the frames. Are they the same as an 11/40 or 11/45?
I don't think so. It's been very long since I played with an 11/40, but
the 11/40 and 11/45 have way fewer switches than the 11/70, and the
frame lines up with the switches on the 11/70.
Can't remember for sure the exact details of the 11/40 I played with,
but it must have had some kind of filler on the panel, to get to the edges.
If I remember right, the RDC panel reused the 11/70 panel frame, by the way.
By the way, I could kill whoever broke an 11/70 just to have a panel.
And that panel on ePay looks really clean (but that's just me, and I
don't like ePay at all anyway).
Johnny
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 6:39 PM, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>wrote:
>> >
>> > Does anyone here know where I could obtain a front panel frame for a
>> > pdp11/70?
>> >
>> > --
>> > 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?
>> >
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
Well, while I'm waiting for various things to arrive to aid my
resuscitation of my 11/40, I'm back to working on my IMSAI 8080.
The front panel does not work quite right with the combination of CPU
and RAM I have in the machine, so I've been debugging various things and
have made some decent progress. Now Examine and Examine Next work
properly. Deposit/Deposit Next, however, do not.
Reading through the CPA manual I got from
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/imsai/cpa.pdf, there's a modification
that needs to be done to get the front panel to work with non-IMSAI RAM
cards -- this has not been done to my front panel.
Seems that that might be at least part of the problem. But step 3 (see
pg 26, for those following along at home) refers to Fig 2, referencing
points A & B. Figure 2 is not in the PDF. There is a schematic on page
28 outlining the change, but it's unreadable.
Anyone have a copy of Fig 2 they can share?
Thanks!
Josh
Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 1:36 PM, F.J. Kraan <fjkraan at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>> Just recently I was able to read my MiniMINC (a PDT-150) floppies with an 8"
>> drive connected to an AHA1542B (capable of single density) with Dave
>> Dunfields ImageDisk.
>>
>
> Good to know. I have at least one 1542B running around, and an old
> DOS box I can use to stuff it all into.
>
> What 8" floppy did you use? I think I have a Tandon one (TM848?) I
> can borrow from a non-DEC Qbus box.
>
The drive is a NEC 1165, very flexible. It allowed me to write to a disk
with only the wrong index hole, so the MiniMINC wouldn't see it. Writing
RT-11 V3b to the right disk it booted . So writing with this setup is
also possible. The 5 1/4" to 8" interface can the one from Dave Dunfield
or the CP/M faq.
I will try it with a Catweasel one day, but the current setup seems more
common, and a MiniMINC doesn't do RX02 anyhow :-).
Would posting an URL with the images of the disks be ok?
Fred Jan