Steve asks:
> With my limited exposure to the DEC/PDP stuff, this looks strange...
> Z-80 chips on a QBus card? Is it noteworthy? worth bidding on?
> unusual? just plain junk? What would it work with/in /on?
> item no 250693741192
These were circa early 80's and this board was 4 CP/M systems.
I think there were single and double boards too.
There were some bizarre hooks between the CP/M BIOS and the Unibus
(usually VAX/VMS... but there may have been others) filesystems
that I never really grokked. The relationship to VMS printers was
more straightforward. But yeah, you need some specialized
drivers etc. probably not updated since VMS 3.x to use this.
We had these in the 80's and the secretaries would connect to
the VAX, then connect to the embedded CP/M system, and edit
files using CP/M word processor, then print to printers on the VAX.
Pretty convoluted. Later on the same secretaries used an emulated IBM PC inside the VAX.
Tim.
Hello
Does anyone have a serviceable IBM 5022 disk drive unit, or perhaps have technical documentation on this drive that they would be prepared to scan and email?
I have a single-platter disk pack (written in 1974) that I'd like to read. I believe it was written by a System/7.
Am based in UK and US (MN).
Thanks
Robin
With my limited exposure to the DEC/PDP stuff, this looks strange...
Z-80 chips on a QBus card? Is it noteworthy? worth bidding on?
unusual? just plain junk? What would it work with/in /on?
item no 250693741192
steve
Dear Vintage-Computer experts,
over the last year I "lost" two Tadpole/RDI UltraBook
notebooks. These are Ultra Sparc based machines available
in various configurations.
Both machines refuse to boot, i.e. they pass all tests
and print the right messages, but after initializing the
memory they fail to load the kernel (boot disk) or
do not send any network messages (boot net).
I noticed, that there appear strange strings in the
environment variables for hardware-revision for example
and further investigation shows that the NVRAM (DS1643)
must have lost a part of its content which are filled with
e.g. 55 hexadecimal now.
My question is, whether someone out there has got such an
UltraBook up and running and is willing to read out the
NVRAM and send me the contents. The machine has not to be
opened to do this since the contents can be listed via the
OpenBoot firmware. As most of the bytes should contain 00
it would for example be sufficient to take some low resolution
photographs of the hex dump pages containing non-zero bytes and
I'd be happy to type them into a hex editor myself...
I'd post step by step instructions how the NVRAM's contents
can be displayed...
Best regards,
Erik.
P.S. The two UltraBooks are of the following type:
U20-14-9-512P, Part No MU20014PCI36, Serial U20/1040,
Serial ID 8527455. This one has got THREE hard drives.
U200-14-3-128P, Part No MU20014PCI36, Serial U20-1253,
Serial ID8526256 with two hard drive bays and one for
the battery.
25MHz 680LC40, 36MB RAM, MacOS 8.1. TV and Ethernet cards.
Because to my astounded delight, I just got ?50 for mine, from a chap
who found me via eBay.
The auction he was originally interested in, for an LC475, ended for
just ?8. But then, that chap only wants the hard disk drive...
--
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
Some days ago I was asking about a source for an IS50 OPIC optical sensor
used in the shaft encoder of my Olivetti Sparkjet printer. And it appears
this device is unobtainium
In an earlier message tonigth I mentioned I had recently bought a cheap
PS/2 mouse, and that it is now very dead.
These 2 events are connected...
The reason I boguth a cheap mouse is that it was optomechancial, rather
than optical. And the reason it was PS/2 is that that was the cheapest one
I could find. The salesdroid in Maplin thought I was craxy when I daid I
didn't care what the interface was. On the other hamd, trying to ecplain
classic computing to him was going to take too long, so I simply said that
PS/2 was what I wanted...
And of coruse the reason I wanted an optomechancial mouse is that it
contains a pair of dual phototranssitor sensors to sense the motion of
the encoder wheels.
Of ocurse I took the mouse apart. It was very cheaply made, with the
slotted disks and spindles moulded in one piece, then clipped into
'bearings' moudlded in the base of the mouse. Ouch. But I didn't care
about that. I soon desoldered the sensorts which appear to be dual
phototransistors with a common collector connection. And the pitch of the
slots in the mouse's encoder disks was very close to that in the disk in
my Sparkjet printer.
Next job was to carefully remove and dismantle the encoder in the
Sparkjet. I desoldered the OPIC, which shed a couple of pins in the
process, but I cared more about the PCB. I also removed the dual
resistor assockated with the OPIC> I then fitted one of the mouse sensors
in place of it, common collector to the +5V tack. And with a little cut
and muper, I routed the 2 emitter connections to pads that had held the
dual resistor. I carefully ressembled the sensor and fitted 10k
resisotrs in placeof the dual resistor assembly. That would do as an
emitter load for testing. Turning the spindle produced a change in
voltage, but it was close to +5V all the time. Dropping the resistors
would help, in the end I foudn that 470 ohms (yes, that low) was ideal. I
added a 74LS14 schmitt trigger IC on a bit of stripboard to clean up the
signals, conneted the outputs to the pins on the connector to the
printer's main board and gave it a try.
Using the logicDart I could get a display of the wavefortms, and by
adjusting the encoder PCB position I got a pretty good pair of quadrature
signals. Doing the self-test on the printer got the carriage jiggling
about is it should do (the printer was dismantled so that there was no
platten, HV generartor, carriage rails, stc, so I couldn't see if it was
preinting anything, but I coudlsee the montion of the carriage drive).
Alas evey so often it would miscount and the carriage would jump in position.
Much gabbing of signals with the LogicDart later, I spotted the odd
glitch in one of the output waveforms. No idea what was causing it, but a
1nF camacitor in parallel with the 470R resistor on each phototransitor
cleared it up. And cleaered up the posiiton problem
Now 'all' I have to do is align the carriage rails properly. Iv'e
refitted the rest of the printer mechansim, and it does print, but it
fades out after few lines, to recover only wne I clean the end of the
ink cartridge. I suspect the spark is flying in slightly the wrong
direction and putting carbon ('ink') on the end of the cartridge, causing
HV leakage.
So, the replacement for the IS501 consisted of the sensor from a cheap
mouse and a 74LS14, a couple of R's and a couple of C's from my junk box...
-tony
Hey folks,
This is a question about a piece I have in my personal collection: a Sparcstation SS240 Voyager. It's a sun4m architecture luggable workstation with an LCD screen. The whole thing fits into a large shoulder bag - large enough it wouldn't be accepted for carryon luggage. It's cute, and it runs (after I replaced the NVRAM chip).
When I got it, the machine had been set up with NetBSD, but being the masochistic sort I am I wanted to restore it to its original software. It just so happens I had Solaris 2.6 and gave it a crack. Solaris starts up just fine, but the device won't go into CDE, claiming that it can't find the framebuffer driver.
Looking at the firmware, I see that it identifies a device called bwthree. Solaris 2.6 has a driver for bwtwo, but I've been unable to find a bwthree anywhere. (Google gives me pages and pages of "BW3," refusing to believe I want what I typed. Sometimes software is too helpful.)
The original documentation for the Voyager describes custom install media - which presumably includes this driver. Does anyone happen to have such a CDROM? Can you confirm for me that there is in fact a driver so named? And if you have a running Voyager, is that what's in your /platform/kernel/drv directory?
Otherwise, I guess I could just run NetBSD, but it's just not as fun. :) Thanks - Ian
I am posting this on behalf of Carl - see below:
--------------------------------------
Carl W. Thurston writes:
I have about 1500 cubic feet of classic computer systems, peripherals, manuals, software, and parts for sale.
Nearly every Apple, Atari, Amiga, Compaq, Commodore, to mention a few.
Some notable models like: Calcomp Terrac, DEC Rainbow, Kaypro, Osborne 1, IBM PC luggable, Zenith luggable,etc.
Lots of NOS parts, service manuals, and Diagnostics.
Would like to sell entire collection (was part of a Technology Museum), contact me about particulars or questions.
See big list here:
http://popbottlecaps.com/temp/accession.html
Contact:
Carl W. Thurston
Western Technical College
La Crosse, WI 54601
ThurstonC at westerntc.edu
--------------------------------------
I now have a HP LaserJet IIp Plus printer, (initially free, and I got
it working at a cost about equal to buying a good used one, but that's
another story)...
anyhow, I am trying to find the "Optional Lower Cassette" that holds
250 sheets of paper and fits underneath the printer (instead of
feeding them 20-30 at a time through the front door). No luck in the
usual places.
Does anyone have a "parts" IIp from which I can buy the cassette &
paper tray?
thanks
Charles
