test-drb June 2009

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

233 participants
404 discussions

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

This is a perfect example of why I never throw anything away... a couple of months ago I found a nice Craig (Bowmar) 8-digit calculator at an antique mall for $3. No charger, so of course it didn't work. Finally got around to disassembling it - the six AA nicads had leaked grossly but fortunately did little damage to the board above it. Powered it up from a bench supply and promptly discovered that one segment of one digit wouldn't light... not much good in a calculator since 8 and 9 looked the same :( But - I looked in my "LED drawer" and there was a little PCB with eight MAN-3A displays mounted on it. I remember buying that out of my pocket money at Radio Shack (couldn't have been Poly Paks because it works) when I was about 12. And that was thirty-five years ago... It was the same overall size as the one-piece (bare LEDs with bonding wires beneath a glued-on red lens) display PCB that was in there. And a battery and resistor showed that it had the same common-cathode matrix, and even the same number of connections! I unsoldered the old display and double-checked that the one digit's segment was indeed bad - put in the new display, powered back up and it worked 100% :) I even had two three-packs of AA nicads bought at Marden's (an odd-lots store in Maine) several years ago because they were on sale... so I installed them in the base, screwed everything back together, the calculator is now working perfectly! So that's why I never throw anything away. Who'd have thought that an LED display stick I bought over 30 years ago would find a home in an early 70's calculator... in 2009. Of course now I have yet another vintage four-function calculator I don't need, but it still feels good to fix something that would otherwise have ended up in the trash.

15 years, 7 months

Altos 686

by spedraja＠ono.com

Hello. I have one Altos 686 with Xenix 3.2 in working state. I should like to install on it one C compiler and eventually the Ryan-McFarland Cobol for this platform if available. I remember something about IMD image disks available in some place in the Internet but I don't remember where. All help is welcome Kind Regards Sergio

15 years, 7 months

SRP aids unit testing

by legalize＠xmission.com

I've been retrofitting tests onto legacy code at work as I make some changes to it. (So what's new?) The code has classes that are not really following the singlre responsibility principle. The other day I extracted a class to separate out a responsibility. Once I did that, I could more easily fit tests for that single responsibility onto the newly extracted class. When a class does too many things, its really hard to write tests for it, because you have to configure the universe in order to setup the initial conditions for the test. With a single responsibility the amount of setup is much less and the setup is directly relevant to the test you're trying to write. -- "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

cctalkDigest, June 4, 2009, History of the Microcomputer

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

>From June 4, 2009, cctalkDigest, Vol. 70, Issue 12, Message 27: "Question on, A Historical Research Guide to the Microcomputer, 2nd Edition." Thanks Christian for mentioning my book. It's a Canadian perspective on what is essentially an American invention though a Canadian played an important role in the birth of the microcomputer! The highly electronized tool, albeit one >from bygone days, we use on a daily basis - I use the Coleco ADAM, has a fascinating history. Murray McCullough

15 years, 7 months

Mounting one Xenix Altos 686 disk img under Linux or Unix virtual system

by spedraja＠ono.com

Hello. As a continuation of the Altos 686 previous messages, I should like to know if someone could have one Linux or Unix system (or virtual appliance that which could be used under one simulator) with the kernel support for SysV and Xenix filesystems active. The objective would be to mount one raw image of the Altos 686 Xenix diskettes and access its contents. Regards Sergio

15 years, 7 months

Classic mac fun (and some questions)

by brianlanning＠gmail.com

So I got around to hooking some things up and seeing what works. I have a quadra 700 with system 7.6 on it. I also had a 7 bay scsi enclosure lying around, a couple scsi hard drives, and a slot loading dvd drive. My goal here is first to get the quadra on the network so I can share files with it. Also, I'd like to be able to read CDs or DVDs from the quadra. Once one of those is successful, I plan to use ADT to transfer a prodos or apple 3.3 dos disk image to an apple 2gs over a serial cable, then create a bootable floppy for my 2e. :-P lol. It's looking like a fun project. I should note that I have zero floppy disks for the mac or apple 2e/2gs. So this is sort of a fun boot-strapping project to see if I can get there from here. Much to my surprise, the quadra 700 detected the two scsi hard drives and dvd drive. The quadra already had some scsi utilities and each of the drives show up. One of them has a mount button, but it refuses to mount a CD in the DVD drive. No surprise there I guess. Any idea how I can get the machine to mount a CD or DVD? I might have a termination problem. I have this black centronics thingy with the apple logo on it. It sort of looks like a terminator, but you can plug another centronics cable into the back of it, so I'm doubting it's a terminator. Networking doesn't seem to work. I get a light on the hub, but it doesn't seem interested in letting me get to the network. The machine has Timbuktu installed, but the open menu option is ghosted out. The info menu option works, but nothing is listed on the networking tab. I found this link: http://www.atpm.com/network/files/file_sharing.htm The menu options they talk about are missing. I have some applescript menu options somewhere else that talk about turning on file sharing, but they don't work either. I'm thinking I might need to reinstall the system software at some point. Any tips on how I can get this machine on the network? I suspect the floppy drive is bad. I put a new HD floppy in the drive. It detects it as a 1.4meg floppy disk, but formatting doesn't work. It claims the disk is bad. I have another drive in the IIfx that I might try swapping in to see if I can get the floppy drive working. I copied a dos file to the floppy as a test to see if I could get the mac to read it. No luck. It wants to format the disk. Any ideas on how I can be able to share floppies between the PC and mac? I know the mac drives are a little odd. fun stuff.

15 years, 7 months

"Cheap" Kaypro II, Baltimore, Maryland

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

Deborah Becker has a Kaypro II, contact her (not me) if interested! She would like a few dollars, make an offer. Printer and books included. Location is actually Catonsville 21228 Her email is: comemy69 at aol.com

15 years, 7 months

PDP 11/73 on the Internet

by dm561＠torfree.net

Date: Sat, 06 Jun 2009 22:57:23 -0700 From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> Subject: Re: PDP 11/73 on the Internet >Try doing your program development on a keypunch, with a 407 for 80- >80 listing. >Get off my lawn... >Chuck ------ You were lucky! We had to punch the cards with a Wright Line one-character-at-a-time manual punch and read our "listings" off the top of the cards... ;-) I gave up on my lawn long ago... m

15 years, 7 months

More vintage hardware still alive and kickin'

by dm561＠torfree.net

---------------Original Message: From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> Subject: Re: More vintage hardware still alive and kickin' To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Message-ID: <4A2A780F.19281.1ADC248A at cclist.sydex.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII >On 6 Jun 2009 at 20:47, Andrew Burton wrote: >> I'm just curious... how many cards would a machine like that sort >> through in a day, or a week? That counter has 6 digits and it sorted >> ~90 cards in less than 10 seconds. >Well, an 083 will feed about 1000 cards/minute and a good operator >can keep it running all day. How many cards could be sorted, >depends, of course, on the number of colums being sorted (one pass >per column, plus fumble and jam time... >--Chuck ------------Reply: Oh yeah! A jam would really cut into your production, especially if the sense switches didn't shut it down quickly or at all; the cards would crumple and pile up pretty quickly. And of course since you were handling stacks of 4000+ cards sooner or later you inevitably dropped one, sending them literally sailing around the room; digging them out from under all the other machines really made your day... Fond memories of my days as a junior operator... m

15 years, 7 months

loading disk image on PDP-11

by iamvirtual＠gmail.com

> Date: Sat, 6 Jun 2009 22:13:45 -0600 > Subject: loading disk image on PDP-11 > From: iamvirtual at gmail.com > To: cctech at classiccmp.org > > I am finally ready to load a disk image onto a RK05 disk for my > PDP-11/10. I have RK05 disk images for RSTS-11 (my goal). > > What is the easiest way to load the disk image onto a RK05 cartridge? > > I was thinking of using vtserver to transfer the image over a serial > line, but the 'copy' program is not compatible with my PDP-11/05 (it > uses the 'mul' and 'div' instructions which is not available on my > PDP-11/10). > > Here is what I have available: > PDP-11/10 with 32kw core memory > serial connection (max 2400 baud) > RK05 (non-bootable cartridge but does load properly) > external dual TU58 DecTapeII drive > > Many thanks for any information. I am really looking for a nudge in > the right direction. ;-) > > --barrym Henk Gooijen henk.gooijen at hotmail.com wrote: > >Have a peek at http://www.fpns.net/willy/pdp11/tu58-emu.htm > >- Henk How would one go about installing a RSTS-11 disk image onto the RK05 using the TU-58 (assuming there is a bootstrap!) ? Thanks. --barrym

15 years, 7 months

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test-drb June 2009