test-drb August 2009

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

148 participants
169 discussions

by msokolov＠ivan.Harhan.ORG

Back in 1998 (actually more like from summer 1997 until summer 1998, i.e., the 1997-98 school year), before I started Quasijarus Project, I was searching the World high and low for a copy of the 4.3BSD tape set. That was before PUPS got its momentum with getting the $100 "Ancient UNIX" license deal from SCO, and more importantly, getting people interested in preserving and working with Original UNIX, and at that time the entire world was basically in a conspiracy of anathema against original Bell/Berkeley UNIX, everyone just wanted it to stay buried in its grave and not come up. Getting a copy of the 4.3BSD tape set seemed next to impossible. www.berkeley.edu was shockingly silent about the fact that Berkeley UNIX aka BSD, UC Berkeley's greatest accomplishment in all of its history, ever existed, much less saying how to order a tape. Finally I found a phone number and a couple of E-mail addresses for some office at UCB that was apparently kept for sending out tapes after CSRG itself was gutted. The office was basically a voice mailbox and a couple of E-mail addresses, with the two people who were actually supposed to get those E-mail and voice messages being away somewhere in San Francisco and taking a few weeks to answer inquiries. Finally they got back to me and told me to send a check for $2400 for 4.4BSD and $1000 for 4.3BSD. Ouch! And of course some murky business about licenses. At that time, however, I attended Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) and had a semi-staff relationship with their computer science department. I realised that the university must have had a UNIX source license from back in The Days, and most probably had the actual 4.3BSD tapes at some point as well, especially given that the old-timers told me that they were indeed running 11/780s before. But again the conspiracy of anathema was working: everyone had completely forgotten about it, and no one on the entire campus even knew that the university had a UNIX source license (and old-timers confirmed that indeed there was one). When spring 1998 came around, PUPS was making its debut with the $100 license deal from SCO. I didn't care so much about license stuff, but it meant a resurgence of interest in Original UNIX and a community of people involved with it, something that was completely lacking only a few months prior. I wanted access to the PUPS archive, and I wanted to use the university's license rather than fork over $100 for a personal one. The only issue was *finding* that license. Then I got a bright idea: since the license agreement was between CWRU and AT&T, there must have been copies of it on both sides. If CWRU had chosen to forget about the license they once paid big money for, how about if I dig up a copy of the license agreement from AT&T side? So I asked SCO's Dion Johnson about it, and lo and behold, a few days later a copy of CWRU's original UNIX license agreement shows up in my box in the computer science department mail room! Warren Toomey got another copy and soon I got an overseas fax from him with passwords for his PUPS Archive! Whoo-hoo! But I still needed 4.3BSD. It wasn't in Warren's archive since they were still PDP-only at that time, and me holding a copy of my school's AT&T UNIX license agreement didn't help convince anyone I knew who might have had 4.3BSD tapes to share them with me. In late 1997 I got myself an office at CWRU, it was the CES department's computer junkyard room. I was quite happy, a room full of classic computers was the best office I could get. It was actually two rooms, 411 and 412. Only 411 was accessible from the hallway, the entrance to 412 was inside 411. Both rooms were filled with classic computer gear, but 411 was a little less full and actually had some room for a desk and was usable as an office. 412, on the other hand, was *completely* filled with classic computer gear (mostly Sun 3) and it was difficult for a person to make it through to the end of the room. At the very end of room 412 (the end opposite the entrance door from 411) there was something that looked like a plastic curtain or plastic window blinds. The architecture of that building was really intriguing, the kind one finds only on good old university campuses, and I couldn't really tell if there was supposed to be a window there or not. I just never gave it much thought, and it was too difficult to climb over all that Sun 3 gear in the way to see exactly what it was. On a shelf in room 411 there were some magtape reels, and I thought that if they ever had 4.3BSD tapes, they ought to be there. But I looked through all the tapes I could see and 4.3BSD wasn't there. Bummer. Then one day in summer 1998 I came to work in the morning, went up the stairs to my beloved Computer Engineering and Science department 4th floor, went to the end of the hallway to my office, and got in. I turned on the lights and per my usual habit, peeked all over the room to make sure all the fun classic computers were still there. And lo and behold, at the very end of room 412, where I previously saw those plastic curtains or window blinds or whatever, I now saw two racks full of magtapes! It turned out that the plastic "curtains" were actually vertically sliding doors (kinda like garage doors) of two huge magtape cabinets! Another staff member must have had a need to get some old magtape and didn't close the cabinet after he was done. With trembling hands, I raced there and started looking through all the tapes. And sure enough, in a few minutes I found all 3 tapes of the 4.3BSD 1600 BPI distribution. I spent pretty much the whole year prior to that moment searching the World high and low for 4.3BSD tapes when they were sitting the whole time in my own office! Now that's a "Duh!" moment. MS

15 years, 11 months

Atari and Commodore stuff

by dbetz＠xlisper.com

I have a bunch of Atari and Commodore stuff that needs to find a new home. I'd love it if someone would come and pick this up in Bedford, NH. If that doesn't work, I may be willing to ship some/all of it if the buyer pays the shipping. If possible, I'd like all of the Atari stuff to go in one batch and all of the Commodore stuff in one batch (or everything in one batch). I'm offering this stuff for free although if you have any old calculators or hand-held computers that you'd like to trade that would be even better! Thanks! David Atari stuff 2 Atari 1050 disk drives with power supplies and SIO cables 1 Atari 850 interface with power supply and SIO cable 6 SIO cables 1 Atari Logo cartridge and manuals 1 Atari Editor/Assembler cartridge and manual 1 pair of Atari paddle controllers 1 Atari controller extension cable / Y adapter 2 RF switch boxes 1 Atari PAG-1200 power supply, 9VDC 1A 2 Atari CO-14319 power supplies, 9VAC 15.3VA 1 Atari 1010 Owner's Guide 1 Atari Basketball cartridge CXL4004 1 Atari Music Composer cartridge CXL4007 1 Spinnaker Adventure Creator cartridge Commodore stuff 1 Commodore 1541 disk drive with power and data cables 2 Suncom Tac5 joysticks 1 Aprospand 4 slot extender 1 Cardkey numeric keypad with a missing keycap (the multiply key) 1 Cardco centronics parallel interface with cables

16 years

SunBlade 2000 vs SunBlade 2500 vs Ultra 45

by rescue＠hawkmountain.net

Might be pushing 'classic' a bit.... as the 'oldest' of these three is only 7 years old.... so... if these aren't 'classic' enough yet... please forgive me :-) So.... which one is best in your opinion ? The 2000 takes UltraSparc III, 8MB cache (at 200mhz bus), the 2500 and U45 use UltraSparc IIIi, 1MB cache on chip (but how are the cycles to it ?) Beyond that, memory tech differs... 2000 takes ?, the 2500 takes ECC DDR266, and the U45 ECC DDR333. The 2000 and 2500 do SCSI, while the U45 does SAS/SATA. But beyond that, how is reliability, how is USIII vs USIIIi performance ? The 2000 will do vertical UPA, right ? (I have some C3D cards from U60) The 2500 looks like fastest slot is 64 bit 66mhz 3.3V PCI (so what Sun GFX cards go in there?). And the U45 has PCI-X and PCIe x16. (I assume graphics there is usually via the PCIe x16, right ? Looking for 'best' desktop Sparc.... assume it would be one of these three, no ? Thanks, -- Curt

16 years

Paging Jay West

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

I have sent a number of e-mails to Jay without a response. Has anyone been in touch with Jay as recently as the last week or two? Jerome Fine

16 years

Performance analysis for DOS apps?

by mbbrutman-cctalk＠brutman.com

I have been performance tuning my TCP/IP stack mostly by looking at the code and making educated guesses as to what needs to be fixed. I have just wasted a day rewriting the IP checksum routine in assembler for a few tenths of a percent improvement and I'm not terribly happy. :-) Is there a sampling profiler available that will periodically record the program counter and give me a histogram of what it finds when it is done? I'm thinking of something like oprofile on Linux. If it does not run in pure DOS but requires an emulation environment, that is ok too. I just don't know what any of the options are. Thanks, Mike

16 years

Looking for measured power consumption of some old DEC minicomputers

by jgkoomey＠gmail.com

Hello all, I'm doing an analysis of trends in the energy efficiency of computation over time (for details, see the first report listed at http://www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/ecotech) . I'm using standardized performance measure from previous work by Bill Nordhaus at Yale, and then attaching measured power use to the machines for which Bill estimated performance. I got measured power data for the DEC PDP-1, PDP-4, and PDP-8 from Gordon Bell (now at Microsoft, who worked on these machines back in the day) but am seeking measured power use for some of the other machines listed below. I understand that some of these machines may not be unitary and so power measurements are more complicated. I'm interested in the sum of power consumption for the CPU, memory, and hard drives for typical configuration of the machines listed below. Ideally, this power measurement would be taken when the machine is running full bore, but I'll take what I can get. Does anyone have any measured power use handy? Thanks, Jon Koomey Power use Watts 1960 Digital PDP-1 2160 From Gordon Bell 1962 DEC PDP-4 1125 From Gordon Bell 1965 DEC PDP-8 780 From Gordon Bell 1968 DEC PDP-10 (KA10) 1971 DEC PDP-11/20 1972 DEC PDP-11/05 (11/10) 1972 DEC PDP-11/45 1972 DEC PDP-10 (KI10) 1973 DEC PDP-11/40 1975 DEC PDP-11/03 (LSI-11) 1975 DEC PDP-11/04 1975 DEC PDP-11/70 1975 DEC PDP-10 (KL10/DEC2060) 1976 DEC PDP-11/34 1976 DEC PDP-11/55 1977 DEC PDP-11/60 1978 DEC PDP-11/34C 1978 Digital VAX 780 1979 DEC VAX 11/780 1983 DEC VAX 11/730 1983 Digital VAX 750 1985 DEC VAX 11/750 1985 DEC VAX 11/780 1986 DEC VAX 8550 1987 DEC VAX 8350 1990 DEC VAX 6000-210 1990 DEC VAX 6000-460 1993 DEC 7000-610 1994 DEC 10000-610 1997 DEC 8400/5/350 x6 __________________________________ Jonathan G. Koomey, Ph.D. Project Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Consulting Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University

16 years

What PSU for Apple //e Platinum?

by silent700＠gmail.com

I recently picked up the "Platinum" version of the Apple //e (the white one with the numeric keypad.) It appears to have a dead power supply. I see a number of PSUs on ebay and parts sites that are listed as "Apple //" compatible. Does anyone know if the Platinum used a different PSU than the other //e models? Also, did the //e use a different one vs. the //+ ? -- jht

16 years

Ongoing PDP11/34a resurrection attempts - stuck SACK?

by jplist2008＠kiwigeek.com

Greetings all; In my continued efforts to try and get my 11/34a functioning I decided to set up my logic analyser and trap ALL of the 56 Unibus signal lines to see if I could spot anything that was being held asserted when it shouldn't. For reference, my 11/34a is set up like: 1 M8266 -------------------------------------------| 2 M8265 -------------------------------------------| 3 M9301 YJ-----| FLIPCHIP 4 M7856---------------------------| 5 National Semiconductor Memory Board--------------| 6 G7232---------| 7 G7232---------| 8 G7232---------| 9 M9302--------| G7232---------| I only have the basic front-console, so not the lovely button-filled operators console. All the NPR jumpers are in place. All voltages check out. The symptoms are: Unit powers on, RUN light comes on and then quickly goes out. When the BOOT/INIT switch is toggled, again, RUN light on, then out. Clearly the unit is HALTing on something, but I can't work out what and nothing seems to appear on the console. When I analyse the bus the unit follows what, from the Unibus design manual, appears to be a standard start-up procedure. - All signals float (obviously) - All signals cleared, DCLO/ACLO/INIT asserted - 773000 is placed on the Address lines (as configured in the bootstrap) - DCLO negates - ACLO negates - INIT negates, and then immediately: - Address lines are cleared - SACK is asserted I find no mention of SACK being asserted in the Unibus manual in its start-up section. Furthermore, as my understanding goes, SACK should only be asserted when a bus master has accepted a grant and is beginning a transaction cycle. There is NO activity on the request/grant lines, so nothing should be allowed to become bus master, so I think this SACK signal should not be happening. Can anyone with more understanding than me (which, you know, is pretty much everyone else who owns a PDP11) confirm I'm not completely off-base here? I have two M7856s and have switched between them, so if it's the 7856 that's holding SACK, then both of mine are doing it. Elsewise... I think the only thing that could be "sticking" is the processor boards, as the memory card shouldn't be able to assert SACK since it can't become a bus master. If this guess is correct... I'm not really sure how to begin debugging what on the processor board is getting glued. Time to break out those schematics? My thanks to all for your thoughts; - JP

16 years

Need to find a home for a Vax 11/750...

by oldcpu＠rogerwilco.org

Curt @ Atari Museum, on Fri Aug 28 17:41:05 CDT 2009, said: > The 11/750 comes with the TU58 tapes, you understand that, right? I'm > not piece-mealing this out. Yes, that was clear, I just was suggesting that IF those tapes are diagnostics, I'd be interested in an image of them, and would be willing to help image them and then return the originals to the new owner...no problem. Sorry for the confusion. Enjoy it Ian! -- Jared

16 years

Looking for specs on power diode SI309701

by ragooman＠comcast.net

I'm h oping somebody might have specs for this old diode SI309701 There's a 7814 datecode on there. As far as the PIV and the forward current. I'm trying to cross reference this for another circuit board. thanks =Dan

16 years

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test-drb August 2009