test-drb October 2010

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

175 participants
274 discussions

by john_a_s2004＠hotmail.com

Hi, I have finally made an adapter to read the 2564 ROM from my Microwriter on my EPROM programmer (which can only read the 2764). There were about 5 pins to rewire, I'll write some notes later on the differences. I've upload the ROM image to: http://www.vintagecomputers.btinternet.co.uk/mw4/mw4.zip The file looks OK, but there are a lot of FF bytes on the ROM, which hopefully implies that the whole 8K bytes weren't needed rather than the ROM is faulty. Hopefully Tony can compare this with his ROM and come back with any further tips or questions. If anyone else has a fully working MW4 please make contact. I haven't tried to disassemble the ROM yet (thanks Phil for the link to DASMx), maybe one day. Regards, John ================================================================== John S john_a_s2004 at hotmail.com Wed Sep 8 15:40:20 CDT 2010 >> I recently obtained a Microwriter with an LCD display. >> >> Else it may be faulty >> I found Tony's post from 2009 asking for a 'good' EPROM image maybe >> mine is failing in a similar way. Tony wrote: > FWIW, I am still stuck... I am pretty sure the Firmware EPROM in mine is > corrupted, some 'chords' do not produce the characters I would expect My one can generate all the letters, numbers and punctuation marks so fingers crossed the EPROM is OK. > IIRC, the EPROM is a 25C64 (which is slightly different to the more common > 27C64). If you have a programmer capable of reading out that device, it > would be interesting to compare the ROM in mine with it. OK, I'll try and read the EPROM. This might take me some time, but I am keen to do it as there is very little technical stuff about the MW4 on line. I might try and disassemble the code too (but I don't think IDA has a 1802 option!) Regards, John

13 years, 7 months

Compaq luggable, what next?

by rdawson16＠hotmail.com

I got this gem for $25 today. What would you guys recomend next: ISA ide card for storage, recomendations? Ethernet to get it on line, and what stripped down browser would work? I remember flight simulator was pretty good with the 600x400? graphics Autocad 2.6 too, I dont know yet if I have the math chip installed How could I go wrong for $25? They have another one if anybody wants it (Surplusgizmos.com) Randy

13 years, 7 months

EPAY DEC Qbus Z-80

by holger.veit＠iais.fraunhofer.de

Am 08.10.2010 17:28, schrieb Holger Veit: > Am 08.10.2010 16:20, schrieb Christian Corti: >> On Fri, 8 Oct 2010, Alexander Voropay wrote: >>> JFYI: I have one non-DEC Q-Bus card, a tape controller with Z80 CPU >> >> I have several non-DEC Q-Bus cards with MC68000 and a non-DEC Q-Bus >> machine with MC68020 ;-)) >> >> Christian > > PCS Cadmus, right? > > Regards > Holger

13 years, 7 months

Looking for IBM 5250 TwinAx terminal in Australia

by nigel.d.williams＠gmail.com

Cloning JPs request but I'm seeking Twinax terminals in Australia please. Having acquired a clutch of AS/400s, my only true IBM 3197 twinax terminal is dead. If anyone knows the trick about how to open the video section of an IBM 3197 I would be interested in knowing. I removed the two self-thread screws from the bottom which seems to release part of the case but something still holds the top, presumably needs some leverage to unlock. Aside: I was intrigued to see that the logic of the IBM 3197 is powered by an Intel 8088.

13 years, 7 months

capacitor aging claim

by legalize＠xmission.com

On alt.sys.pdp11 it was recently claimed: > Lack of use speeds up deterioration of things like capacitors > (especially electrolytics). Now I know that capacitors tend to the component most likely to fail on a piece of vintage equipment, but this is the first time I recall seeing it claimed that lack of use accelerates deterioriation of capacitors. Comments? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

13 years, 7 months

P112 project scrubbed

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I'm sorry, but the effort to make a new run of P112 kits has been scrubbed. I was unable to get more than 12 kits presold when I needed at least 35 to go forward and get the boards made. Since I'm so far behind 35, I decided to start the refunds now. Those of you who preordered should be seeing the refunds roll in over the next week as funds get transferred from my bank account to Paypal. This won't be the last of the P112. I hope to be able to do a run a few months after I land a new job. Hopefully I'll have the money to finance the project without the need to take preorders. Thanks for all your faith in me and interest in this project. -- 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?

13 years, 7 months

Looking for IBM 5250 TwinAx terminal...

by jplist2008＠kiwigeek.com

Anyone in the US (preferably close to Iowa, but I suspect that's wishful thinking) got a 5250 that they might be able to spare? I now have the space to work on bringing my System/34 to working order and it didn't come with a terminal. While I'm at it, anyone particularly familiar with the /34 that would be willing to lend me their ear now and then as I'm working on it? Thanks; - JP

13 years, 7 months

Repairing Debian on an Alpha 433au

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

The 433au I have came with an instance of Debian which has DECnet installed on it, I am not sure what version of Debian it is. After a power outage the superblock on DKA200 was corrupted. I managed to install another instance of Debian (3.1r0) on DK0 and run e2fsck -p on the DKA200 disk to fix it. However when I try to boot the original Debian instance it says it can't find /dev/sdb3. In the new instance of Debian I can mount the sdb3 disk without issue. Below is the output on the console when it fails to boot. There is a message about the driver sd needing to be updated, but this was a working system so I am not convinced that is the problem. Can anyone offer any insight as to why this will still not boot? Thanks Rob aboot: loading uncompressed vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-alpha-generic... aboot: loading compressed vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-alpha-generic... aboot: zero-filling 854608 bytes at 0xfffffc000167c980 aboot: loading initrd (1421885 bytes/1388 blocks) at 0xfffffc0013d70000 aboot: starting kernel vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-alpha-generic with arguments ro root=/d ev/sdb3 console=ttyS0,9600n1 [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu [ 0.000000] Linux version 2.6.26-1-alpha-generic (Debian 2.6.26-13) (waldi at de bian.org) (gcc version 4.1.3 20080704 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.2-24)) #1 Sat Jan 10 17:21:47 UTC 2009 [ 0.000000] Booting GENERIC on Miata using machine vector Miata from SRM [ 0.000000] Major Options: MAGIC_SYSRQ [ 0.000000] Command line: ro root=/dev/sdb3 console=ttyS0,9600n1 [ 0.000000] memcluster 0, usage 1, start 0, end 236 [ 0.000000] memcluster 1, usage 0, start 236, end 40959 [ 0.000000] memcluster 2, usage 1, start 40959, end 40960 [ 0.000000] freeing pages 236:2048 [ 0.000000] freeing pages 2985:40959 [ 0.000000] reserving pages 2985:2986 [ 0.000000] Initial ramdisk at: 0xfffffc0013d70000 (1421885 bytes) [ 0.000000] pci: cia revision 1 (pyxis) [ 0.000000] Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on. Total pag es: 40679 [ 0.000000] Kernel command line: ro root=/dev/sdb3 console=ttyS0,9600n1 [ 0.000000] PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 11, 16384 bytes) [ 0.000000] HWRPB cycle frequency bogus. Estimated 433127999 Hz [ 0.000000] Using epoch = 2000 [4194001.855599] Console: colour VGA+ 80x25 [4194001.855599] console [ttyS0] enabled [4194003.204231] Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 524288 bytes) [4194003.294075] Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 262144 bytes) [4194003.414192] Memory: 313552k/327672k available (2158k kernel code, 11952k re served, 3313k data, 304k init) [4194003.551887] Security Framework initialized [4194003.603645] Capability LSM initialized [4194003.650520] Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 [4194003.707161] Initializing cgroup subsys ns [4194003.757942] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct [4194003.813606] Initializing cgroup subsys devices [4194003.877082] net_namespace: 1208 bytes [4194003.924934] NET: Registered protocol family 16 [4194003.983528] EISA bus registered [4194004.024543] pci: passed tb register update test [4194004.081184] pci: passed sg loopback i/o read test [4194004.139778] pci: passed pte write cache snoop test [4194004.199348] pci: failed valid tag invalid pte reload test (mcheck; workarou nd available) [4194004.298957] pci: passed pci machine check test [4194004.353645] pci: tbia workaround enabled [4194004.403449] pci: enabling save/restore of SRM state [4194004.468879] PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:14.0 [4194004.515754] IO window: 8000-8fff [4194004.557746] MEM window: 0x09000000-0x090fffff [4194004.614387] PREFETCH window: 0x0000000009100000-0x00000000091fffff [4194004.701301] Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay [4194004.785285] NET: Registered protocol family 2 [4194004.850715] IP route cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 32768 bytes) [4194004.937629] TCP established hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 262144 byt es) [4194005.027473] TCP bind hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 131072 bytes) [4194005.109504] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384) [4194005.190558] TCP reno registered [4194005.233527] NET: Registered protocol family 1 [4194005.289191] checking if image is initramfs... it is [4194006.371222] Freeing initrd memory: 1388k freed [4194006.430792] VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.1 [4194006.479620] Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 8192 bytes) [4194006.560675] msgmni has been set to 615 [4194006.608526] Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 253) [4194006.699347] io scheduler noop registered [4194006.748175] io scheduler anticipatory registered [4194006.805792] io scheduler deadline registered [4194006.859503] io scheduler cfq registered (default) [4194006.918097] isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards... [4194007.324346] isapnp: No Plug & Play device found [4194007.417120] Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharin g enabled [4194007.512823] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A [4194007.588018] serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A [4194007.684698] brd: module loaded [4194007.731573] serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1 [4194007.793096] serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12 [4194007.858526] mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice [4194007.924932] EISA: Probing bus 0 at eisa.0 [4194007.974737] atkbd.c: keyboard reset failed on isa0060/serio0 [4194008.047979] TCP cubic registered [4194008.088994] NET: Registered protocol family 17 [4194008.145635] registered taskstats version 1 [4194008.197393] drivers/rtc/hctosys.c: unable to open rtc device (rtc0) [4194008.275518] Freeing unused kernel memory: 304k freed [4194008.352666] atkbd.c: keyboard reset failed on isa0060/serio1 [4194008.698369] SCSI subsystem initialized [4194008.765752] qla1280: QLA1040 found on PCI bus 1, dev 9 [4194009.400517] scsi(0:0): Resetting SCSI BUS [4194012.454227] scsi0 : QLogic QLA1040 PCI to SCSI Host Adapter [4194012.454227] Firmware version: 7.65.06, Driver version 3.26 [4194012.625125] Driver 'sd' needs updating - please use bus_type methods [4194012.704226] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access COMPAQ ST32550W 6415 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 /bin/cat: [4194012.818484] scsi(0:0:0:0): Sync: period 10, offset 12, Wide, Tagg ed queuing: depth 31 /sys/block/sdb/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 1 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 2 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 4 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/dev to show up [4194018.073364] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 4110000 512-byte hardware sectors (2104 MB) [4194018.160278] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off [4194018.223755] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, s upports DPO and FUA [4194018.332153] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 4110000 512-byte hardware sectors (2104 MB) [4194018.419067] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off [4194018.482544] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, s upports DPO and FUA [4194018.588012] sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 [4194018.657348] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 8 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 16 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/dev: No such file or directory Device /sys/block/sdb/dev seems to be down. /bin/mknod: missing operand after `b' Special files require major and minor device numbers. Try `/bin/mknod --help' for more information. /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 1 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 2 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 4 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 8 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev: No such file or directory Waiting 16 seconds for /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev to show up /bin/cat: /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev: No such file or directory Device /sys/block/sdb/sdb3/dev seems to be down. /bin/mknod[4194075.827241] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! : missing operand after `b' Special files require major and minor device numbers. Try `/bin/mknod --help' for more information. mount: special device /dev/sdb3 does not exist Switching root ... /usr/lib/yaird/exec/run_init: current directory on the same filesystem as the ro ot: Success

13 years, 7 months

An interesting development in vintage system emulators

by lproven＠gmail.com

I (re-)discovered a remarkable tool last week, which absorbed a day and a bit. Even if you're not interested in the ZX Spectrum, I think it's worth a look. It's called BASin. There's no good homepage for it, alas. The current "official" one is here but it contains little content: http://sites.google.com/site/pauldunn/ There's also a blog: http://zxdunny.wordpress.com/ You can download it here (although v14c is not a very current version): http://www.worldofspectrum.org/emulators.html The latest stable version I've been able to find mention of is 14d - you can see a record of its deletion in the site activity page of the GooglePages site. I've not managed to find a download of it, though. There was an experimental build, 15.6, which I found a download of somewhere - just the binary, no installer or other resources. Past the EXE on top of the EXE of an installed copy of 14c and it works, though. A little more (obsolete) info: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.sinclair/msg/4eeb4ffc8725beec?pli=1 Essentially, it's a Spectrum emulator for Windows, reworked so that the display and the BASIC editor are 2 separate windows. One is a proper native Sinclair display, with attribute clash and all the other horrors that make Speccy fans nostalgic. The other is a Windows window, in which you get a 128K Spectrum-style editor - typed keywords rather than arcane keystrokes to enter keywords in a single keypress, but with modern Windows niceties: cut & paste, a ruler, a syntax helper, bracket matching, error messages as dialogue boxes with verbose text, line-by-line execution tracing, variable checkpoints, etc. etc. You can set the speed of the emulator, so you need not wait hours to see what a real 3.5MHz Spectrum would do - you can run stuff at an emulated 55MHz (on my PC) to see if it works, then slow it down to real speed to see what genuine hardware would do. The Help file contains the entire Sinclair manual turned into a modern hyperlinked Help system, along with program help. You can zoom the display, change the fonts used in the editor and so on. Files can be loaded and saved into the native Windows filesystem using the menus, but the emulator can still handle cassette-tape images and so on. It is a really pleasant environment to work in: you get the pleasure of working in the old environment, but also the facilities of Windows. It may not encompass all the very best of both worlds, but it is the closest I've ever seen. I really like the way it merges the fun of playing around with an emulated 1980s 8-bit environment with the luxuries of a modern GUI OS. Trying to write code with an emulated Spectrum brings back many of the horrors of working on those machines for real - lousy editors, tiny screens, poor file-storage, instability, slowness, etc. It strikes me that there's no need for this concept to be limited to the Spectrum, although that happens to be my favourite 8-bit machine & the one I'm far and away most familiar with. It would be an interesting way for emulators of almost any vintage system to develop - separating display and code editor, enhancing the editor with modern native-OS facilities while keeping the classic execution and display environment. It might be a little less applicable to text-only terminal-based OSs, but not exclusively so, I think. I'd love to see such an environment for a whole load of the old graphics-oriented 8-bit home computers of the 1980s, though. I'm sure some people would consider it heresy to pollute a classic platform with modernities, but it strikes me as a really productive blending. I'm going to try to resurrect some of my unfinished Speccy projects that were just too painful to try to finish on the original machine. By the way, although it's a Windows 32-bit binary, it runs fine on Windows 7 64-bit, under XP in VirtualBox on Linux, and stably if a bit slowly under WINE on 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04. -- Liam Proven ? Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven 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 AIM/Yahoo/Skype: liamproven ? MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? ICQ: 73187508

13 years, 7 months

US Library of Congress: Copyright is Destroying Historic Audio

by aek＠bitsavers.org

http://www.osnews.com/story/23888/US_Library_of_Congress_Copyright_Is_Destr…

13 years, 7 months

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test-drb October 2010