test-drb July 2009

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

181 participants
245 discussions

by gkraft＠mac.com

Dear Bill Miller Phd, Hi, my name is Gordon Kraft, I am also a old timer from the computer industry, during my days at Microform Data Systems, I was Mgr. Software Development. We used the Microdata 1600 as a "Index Controller" for Microforms Document Storage Retrieval products. I am doing some research on the 70's and saw you posts about Basic Four. I am looking for a list of Apps that were available on the Basic Four platform back in the day... and any literature you may still have about the productline... Or any info links for me to review... Thank you, Gordon Kraft http://www.linkedin.com/in/gkraft

15 years, 5 months

wanted: FP6120

by rescue＠hawkmountain.net

I've tried posting this several times to the Spare Time Gizmos yahoo group... and for some reason it doesn't seem to be happening... I just tried again and I'll see if it works this time... but in the meantime, thought I'd try here too.... I missed out on the last run of FP6120 kits.... I stopped following the group for a while... just long enough for them to become available and then sell out :-(. If anyone bought an extra or two and would be willing to part with one, please contact me. Thanks, -- Curt

15 years, 5 months

Xerox 860 IPS

by leaknoil＠comcast.net

I apologize in advance if you received this twice. I got an error message the first attempt and I am reposting it. I just picked up an old and neglected Xerox 860 IPS system. It came with a mess of spare boards, most marked bad, and a box of original Xerox disks. Problem is I can't get it to boot any of them. Is there someone on this list that could send me a known good one so, I have a place to start from ? I don't really care what it boots as long as it boots to something on yours. I've done all the customary re-seating of everything and swapping boards around but, the boot result is the same. Even with all the boards swapped out with spares. Everything is pretty clean inside. No leaking caps or frayed wires. Connectors all look good. I've read a couple entries on various pages claiming this was not really a computer but, a word processor that ran a custom OS. Mine came with original Xerox labeled CP/M disks along with COBOL, Visicalc, dBase, and Wordstar so, someone had to be using this as a more general purpose cp/m box. It also came with a Xerox Word Processing system disk that attempts to boot as well. It loads for awhile then just stops and does nothing further. The CP/M one boots for a bit then prints C to the screen like perhaps it is printing out the CP/M banner and dying after the letter C. the front display just read 0000 which I think means no errors. I have no idea if the keyboard works. Appreciate any thoughts. Thanks.

15 years, 5 months

C64 sound problems

by dbetz＠xlisper.com

I just inherited a Commodore 64, 1541 disk drive, some joysticks and various other related stuff. I've tried the C64 and 1541 by attempting to boot a couple of games that came with the package and it seems that the computer and drive work okay. The games come up and display their start screen. My problem is that the sound doesn't seem to work. The games came up silent when I suspect that they have some sort of music associated with their start screens and a simple Basic program that I typed in to test the sound also fails to produce any output. I know that the SID chips in these machines are prone to failure but I was wondering if there were any other likely causes of a lack of sound. The main reason I was interested in this machine was to play around with the SID so it will be very disappointing to find that it is bad. Is there anything other than a dead SID that can cause sound problems on a C64? Thanks David

15 years, 5 months

Wanted: OS/2 version of Virtual PC

by lproven＠gmail.com

2009/7/23 Mark Tapley <mtapley at swri.edu>: > A friend of mine worked for Connectix, and I contacted him about this. His > response was: > > At 0:53 -0700 7/21/09, John Chang wrote: >> >> Sorry, Mark. ?I do not know where to get a copy. ?Connectix Virtual PC ran >> on >> the Mac only, and it emulated MS DOS and Windows. ?I do not think that >> Insignia >> Solutions SoftPC and SoftWindows ran on OS/2. ?OS/2 like Windows NT is >> supposed >> to run its own emulation mode for DOS and legacy Windows applications. ?I >> suspect that the poster really wants to run OS/2 on Virtual PC, SoftPC, or >> SoftWindows. ?I do not think that any of the emulators will do that. > > He wanted me to add the caveat that he is not 100% sure of his answer. > > I hope this is helpful! I'm afraid that's almost completely incorrect. It's true up to the late 1990s some time, but the result is an entirely misleading and inaccurate answer. The Mac VirtualPC product (released around 1997 or so) was ported to Windows and released in about 2001. It went through a couple of versions and was very well-received, partly as it was significantly cheaper than VMware Workstation and partly because it was simpler to set-up and use. Here's a review of it I wrote back in 2002: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/33972/connectix-virtual-pc-for-windows-5.html Because I was possibly the only journalist to ask Connectix about things like running Ring 0 code inside an emulator, which their press people were totally unequipped to answer, they flew Connectix founder and chief scientist Jon Garber over to London to talk with me and explain exactly how the product worked. VirtualPC was followed by VirtualServer, a server virtualisation product based on the same code, but with added support for features like direct control of a host SCSI adaptor by the OS in a VM. This aroused the interest of Microsoft, which was jealous of VMware's success, and Microsoft bought Connectix in about 2003. It discarded all the products except VirtualPC, which was maintained and sold for the Mac, VirtualPC for Windows, which is given away for free, and VirtualServer, which became the basis for the HyperV hypervisor in Windows Server 2008. However, HyperV requires Intel or AMD virtualisation instructions and no longer uses Connectix' software virtualisation. In 2002 or so Innotek GmbH ported VirtualPC 5 from Windows to OS/2: http://www.bityard.com/science-technology/Innotek/Connectix-Virtual-PC This is what the OP is looking for. There seems to be an eval version here: http://www.os2site.com/sw/apps/virtual/index.html Whether it's possible to use that & keep it running, I don't know. -- 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, 5 months

Goodbye Compuserve

by ray＠arachelian.com

I only got to use this service a few times back in my younger days, and even then, only with the demo accounts, and that at 300 baud (yes, baud, not just BPS.) I really couldn't afford their insane prices, but from what I saw back in the day, it was a huge, vast place with lots of goodies. http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/03/compuserve-shuts-dow.html http://www.basexblog.com/2009/07/03/compuserve-requiem/

15 years, 5 months

40 yrs of Lunar Lander - the other anniversary

by ragooman＠comcast.net

40 yrs of Lunar Lander - the other anniversary http://technologizer.com/2009/07/19/lunar-lander/ ?Lexington High School had a PDP-8,? Storer recalls. ?It had 8 Teletypes, a small hard drive, and 12KB of main memory, where 8KB was used by the system and 4KB time shared by the users.? Storer wrote his new program, ?Lunar Landing Game,? in FOCAL, a programming language for the PDP-8 that was similar in some ways to BASIC (both were introductory languages known for their ease of use). His simulation was simple, yet powerful: underneath lay a realistic set of equations Storer believes his father may have taught him. =Dan -- [ = http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ]

15 years, 5 months

Wanted: OS/2 version of Virtual PC

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:59:06 -0400, Jim Scheef wrote: >From: Jim Scheef <scheefj at netscape.net> >Subject: Wanted: OS/2 version of Virtual PC > >Several years ago there was a company called Connectix that made what is >now Microsoft Virtual PC. I would very much like to obtain a copy of the >version that ran on OS/2. This is needed for my networking project so I >can play with OS/2 LAN Manager running in emulation. > >An ISO of the CD would be fine but I would be willing to pay modestly >for a complete package with any manuals, etc. > >Please reply off list. > >Thanks, >Jim A friend of mine worked for Connectix, and I contacted him about this. His response was: At 0:53 -0700 7/21/09, John Chang wrote: >Sorry, Mark. I do not know where to get a copy. Connectix Virtual PC ran on >the Mac only, and it emulated MS DOS and Windows. I do not think >that Insignia >Solutions SoftPC and SoftWindows ran on OS/2. OS/2 like Windows NT >is supposed >to run its own emulation mode for DOS and legacy Windows applications. I >suspect that the poster really wants to run OS/2 on Virtual PC, SoftPC, or >SoftWindows. I do not think that any of the emulators will do that. He wanted me to add the caveat that he is not 100% sure of his answer. I hope this is helpful! -- - Mark 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.

15 years, 5 months

Lunar Lander source...

by wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net

Hi, Does anybody have a Z80 or 8080 source listing for a good raster graphic implementation of Lunar Lander? I'm going to be demoing my Cromemco loaded IMSAI at VCF East in September and while spacewar and tank war are fun, they require two players. I'd like a single player, relatively short (time wise) game and I think Lander is just what I'm after. Looking at my schedule, I'm not going to have time to write one from scratch but I should be able to port a good implementation to the Dazzler/D+7A. Tetris would be a second choice but a good player can tie up a tetris game for a long time. On a related note, does anybody have the source for Crush, Crumble and Chomp? Clearly, not for the show but I really enjoyed that game, back in the day. I had the PC BASIC source and I ported it to the Sanyo MBC550. I gave the Sanyo away before I started collecting and, as far as I can tell, CCC went with it. Thanks, Bill Sudbrink

15 years, 5 months

Do not call them PCMCIA Cards (was "An interesting eBay find ....)

by ian_primus＠yahoo.com

--- On Wed, 7/15/09, Barry Watzman <Watzman at neo.rr.com> wrote: > The correct name for what you are > [incorrectly] calling a "PCMCIA Card" is a > "PC Card". PCMCIA is the name of the organization > that owns the trademarks > and they changed the name of the CARDS from "PCMCIA cards" > to "PC Cards" > more than a decade ago (early 1990's), but people just > won't let go. And here I always thought that PCMCIA stood for "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms"... -Ian

15 years, 5 months

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test-drb July 2009