test-drb September 2009

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

163 participants
196 discussions

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Al Kossow wrote: > > I annouced a few months ago that the agreement had been signed. > > I'm attaching a pdf. If the attachement gets eaten, i'll put it > on bitsavers under http://bitsavers.org/bits/HP/ > Looks like the message was eaten. The pdf is on bitsavers for you to take a look at. CHM hasn't issued a press release about it since we're still doing things like trying to convert the interleaf formatted manuals to pdfs and are organizing what we have. What HP actually donated was materal from about the last 10 years of the product's life (RTE-A, mostly). The earlier code is coming from other holdings.

15 years, 2 months

Classic computers endangered!

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

I read an article today in 'New Scientist' entitled 'Innovation: Classic computers on the danger list' with Tom Simonite writing: "Pretty much every adult alive today has seen computers change the world, but we are doing precious little to celebrate the influence of the computers and software that created our society." Indeed! Are we failing to preserve the earliest part of microcomputing history? Will classiccmp.org discuss early ucomputers in 5 yrs., 10 yrs.?

15 years, 2 months

IMP system software

by sethm＠loomcom.com

I think I asked about this several years ago, but I thought I might try my luck again. Is anyone aware of any surviving ARPAnet IMP System Software, in any form? -Seth

15 years, 2 months

manx is dead?

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://vt100.net/manx/

15 years, 2 months

Bletchley Park earns first ever lottery grant • The Register

by woyciesjes＠sbcglobal.net

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/29/bletchley_park_lottery_grant/ -- --- Dave Woyciesjes --- ICQ# 905818 --- AIM - woyciesjes --- CompTIA A+ Certified IT Tech - http://certification.comptia.org/ --- HDI Certified Support Center Analyst - http://www.ThinkHDI.com/ "From there to here, From here to there, Funny things are everywhere." --- Dr. Seuss

15 years, 2 months

PCjr NMI and 8253 Timer interactions

by mbbrutman-cctalk＠brutman.com

I recently wrote a ping utility for my DOS TCP/IP stack, and I wasn't satisfied with the 55ms resolution of the BIOS timer tick. I used the 'delay' function in the Turbo C runtime which gives me a processor loop that delays with 1ms granularity. I figured that I could call that and poll for the ping reply, and the number of calls would be the ping latency in ms. Testing of delay in a controlled environment shows that at least on my PCjr, it is off by 15%. My V20 processor might be part of the problem, although I'm not going to fix it. So I decided to dabble with the 8253 a bit. What a nightmare .. First, some observations on the 8253: - Mode 3 on the 8253 is not suitable for reading because of the way it counts down twice before triggering an interrupt. If you just latch and read the count you can't tell if you are on the first pass or the second pass before the interrupt. That's not good for timing. - Mode 2 counts down and generates an interrupt in a sane way, but generates a different pulse to the 8259 interrupt controller so I'd rather not use it. The BIOS initializes with Mode 3, and that is what I am sticking with. I decided to make timer 0 tick at a faster rate (64x faster), and in my interrupt handler I call the original interrupt handler at the appropriate rate to avoid speeding up the system clock. This works fine, even on the PCjr. Except for one case ... On the PCjr, if I touch the keyboard the machine screeches. And not its normal polite 'Go away I'm busy beep' either. The keyboard on this machine is wired to NMI instead of IRQ1, so it has higher priority than timer 0. The NMI interrupt is used to read the keyboard serial data stream and it uses timer 1 of the 8253 to record when the first bit is received. Timer 1 isn't used elsewhere, so that is fine. If there is an error in the serial data it sounds the system beeper, so timer 2 can get altered at any time making timer 2 unusable. Any keypress causes the screeching. First, I can't figure out why the NMI handler is having a problem deserializing the keyboard even if timer 0 is running fast. All interrupts are disabled, so this should be business as usual. Yet any keypress causes it to go nuts. Any ideas? (As a side effect the timings reported by ping start to look bad - the NMI is definitely taking up precious time.) Second, the machine becomes unstable. I don't care about getting bad timings because of keypresses, but this is far worse .. If I disable the NMI interrupt everything is perfect - but then you can't hit Ctrl-Break to stop pinging. (Yes, I have Ctrl-Break captured, and it works if I don't mess with timer 0 at all.) I don't want to have to shut off the keyboard entirely if there is a possibility of figuring out why the NMI is causing problems with a fast timer 0. Ideas? Thanks in advance, Mike

15 years, 2 months

Some new pictures...

by hachti＠hachti.de

Hi folks, I recently tried out a service called "Picasa"... There you can now see some pictures of some stuff I've been in contact with the last few months. The people in Kiel have a giant collection of hardware. Their task is to compile a much smaller collection for a permanent exhibition. So much stuff had to go. And there's still more to go. The pictures are not up to date as their hall's layout changes every few weeks because of planning processes. I assume that most of the smaller items will have to go. Some of the stuff (i.e. masses!) that has not yet found a new home, will probably be subject to further negotiation, a flea market (auction?) in Kiel, and many eBay auctions. So now, look and see: http://picasaweb.google.com/iraeus/AFewImpressionsFromKiel With kind regards, Philipp :-)

15 years, 2 months

Fairlight CMI

by silvercreekvalley＠yahoo.com

Being a vintage computer and synthesiser fan, I'd love to get a Fairlight CMI for restoration/care/actual use so if anyone has any Fairlight CMI model they would like to either sell or trade let me know. Can be EU or US. Cheers Ian

15 years, 2 months

DEC paint: textures

by mross666＠hotmail.com

I'm currently restoring a pdp-15: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033045&id=1528659644&l=5d2b00be93 This one will need a fair bit of cosmetic restoration; there's enough surface rust on some of the panels to make a respray a good idea. Question: does anyone have any idea how to reproduce the rough / textured / 'spattered' appearance that DEC gave their cabinet paintwork? How was it done in the factory? See the last image in the album to see what I mean. Thanks! Mike http://www.corestore.org _________________________________________________________________ Bing? brings you maps, menus, and reviews organized in one place. Try it now. http://www.bing.com/search?q=restaurants&form=MLOGEN&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TEXT…

15 years, 2 months

Compaq Portable III HDDs

by thomas.gardner＠sbcglobal.net

Hi: I'm a newbie to the group and a long time volunteer at the Computer History Museum, Mt View CA. We'd like to know the models of Conner HDDs shipped in the Compaq Portable IIIs. The Conner model numbers should have the form of CP340, CP341, CP342, CP3102, etc. The following is a list of the known capacity and Compaq PNs for the Conner HDDs shipped by Compaq: Portable III Hard Drives Size Type Inter-leave Integrated Min ROM Spare Part No 20MB 2 1:01 Y K Not known 20MB 2 3:01 Y K 107357-001 40MB 17 3:01 Y K 110358-001 40MB3 224 1:01 Y R.2 Not known 40MB3 43 1:01 Y F 114106-001 84MB3 27 1:01 Y K Not known 100MB3 45 1:01 Y K 142365-0011 120MB3,5 45 1:01 Y K 161832-0012 1 Except Europe. 2 Europe only. 3 Requires MS-DOS 3.2 or later. 4 Drive type 17 if ROM earlier than R.2 is used. 5 Formats to 100 MB. Extracted from http://oldcomputers.net/compaqiii.pdf and other sources Just the Conner model number would be good, but I would appreciate as much information as u can provide, such as the corresponding Compaq part number (if marked), a photo of the Conner technical data plate, and some information on the date of manufacture of the drive and system (such as photos of pcbs showing date lot codes). Tom Gardner

15 years, 2 months

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test-drb September 2009