I have an Atari 800xl and a couple of 1050 disk drives. I also have
two copies of the M.U.L.E. game on disk. Unfortunately, I can't get
either to boot on the 800xl. I suspect that these are older games that
were written for the 400/800 and may need the "translator disk" that
allowed the 800xl to run games written for the older machines. Does
anyone know where I could obtain a copy of this translator disk?
Thanks!
David Betz
I have a fine old Stag PPZ modular EPROM programmer:
http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/inst.htm#PPZ
It takes plug-in EPROM (model Zm2000) and PAL (Zm2200) modules, called
Z-modules by Stag. I've recently acquired a new module, Zm3000, which
looks like a more recent EPROM module. The chips in the Zm3000 are
date coded in 1993, whereas the Zm2000 is nearer 1988. The PPZ main
unit contains a 6809 CPU and a small CRT display.
Does anyone know anything about this system? What about other Z-module
types? In particular, should the Zm3000 work with the PPZ, because I
currently get an error message "Incorrect Mainframe"?
Thanks in advance for any clues! (Virtually all I get from Google is a
link back to my own web page!)
--
John Honniball
coredump(a)gifford.co.uk
Yesterday my girlfriend and I returned from a hastily-scheduled road
trip to Maryland; we went to see a friend who is gravely ill. While we
were in town, we took the opportunity to visit a few other people.
Another friend up there is preparing to move, and he dropped a few
things in my lap since I was there with a mostly-empty car.
The first was a Data General Aviion AV300 workstation. This is one
of the few machines built around the Motorola 88K CPU. It came with its
original keyboard, mouse, monitor, and a full set of DG-UX manuals. I
don't yet know if it's functional, but according to my friend it was
running a few years ago.
The second is something I'm REALLY excited about. We went to his
garage and he pointed me at two dusty card-cages full of boards, and
told me that he picked them up from a college loading dock twenty years
ago, and that he had no idea of what they were, but there were core
memory boards in them. Oh, and there's this lights-and-switches front
panel that goes with them. (!)
Upon getting them home and digging around, it appears to be a nearly
complete Microdata 1600 CPU. I have the two backplanes with card cages
and boards, and the front panel, along with some cables. I lack the
power supply, but I can build one of those...with that, I think I have
enough to resurrect the basic CPU.
Neat stuff!
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
Anyone here have the speech module for an IBM PC Convertible
they want to get rid of?
I just got one of these laptops & was hoping to score one.
David M. Vohs
Digital Archaeologist & Computer Historian
Computer Collection:
"Triumph": Commodore 64, 1802, 1541, Indus GT, FDD-1, GeoRAM 512, MPS-801.
"Leela": Original Apple Macintosh, Imagewriter II.
"Delorean": TI-99/4A, TI Speech Synthesizer.
"Spectrum": Tandy Color Computer III.
"Monolith": Apple Macintosh Portable.
"Boombox": Sharp PC-7000.
"Butterfly": Tandy 200, PDD-2.
"Shapeshifter": Epson QX-10, Comrex HDD, Titan graphics/MS-DOS board.
"Scout": Otrona Attache.
(prospective) "Pioneer": Apple LISA II.
"TMA-1": Atari Portfolio, Memory Expander +
"Centaur": Commodore Amiga 2000.
"Neon": Zenith Minisport.
I rescued one of these ancient Bernoulli boxes today. It uses the large
(8") cartridges at 20MB each, and it has two slots for the cartridges.
Other than for hearing some of the folklore about the drives, I don't
know much about it. I'd like to see it run and be usable, but I need
some help.
- Is it SCSI? If so, what's the pinout on the back? It has a 37 pin
female connector that I'm not familiar with if it is SCSI.
- Where is the head mechanism? Is it fairly robust and protected if
there are no cartridges inserted? This one has no major dents, but it
has not been babied either. I don't want to waste time on it if it's
just going to be a heartache. (I have enough of that already.)
- Cartridges look like they are on eBay. They are cheap enough for me
to experiment with.
- Is there anything I should know about these beasts before I attempt
powering on and working with it?
Thanks,
Mike
Date: Tue, 25 May 2010 19:50:02 -0400
From: William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Anyone off to VCF-UK
>> And I'm telling you that in all my VCF experience, including as the *
>> organizer * of four very successful editions, I've found that people
>> (attendees and exhibitors alike) go because they relish the community
>> aspects. ?Sure it's fun to show off your exhibit, but most people get the
>> most kicks from meeting their fellow collectors, etc.
>Like any show - computers, cars, dogs, model trains, stamps, sex toys
>- always far more social than stuff-oriented.
>Sure, the "stuff" is important, but I would bet you could hold a very
>good VCF with *nobody* bringing *any* machines.
>Just make sure you get enough pizzas and beer.
--
>Will
-------------------
Of course many people go to this sort of thing for the social aspect and
hang out on here for the same reason, but why are some people on here so
deeply offended when someone like Tony says that he wouldn't care to spend
time and money just to have some pizza and beer, especially considering the
way he's been treated here by some of the folks he'd be eating and drinking
with. Frankly, although I'm sure that most people on here are nice folks,
there's only a handful with whom I think I'd have much in common and would
spend time and money to hang out with and listen to if there weren't
something else that interested me (especially since I don't drink beer or
eat pizza).
Having read some of these comments and especially the sentiment that unless
you're a "celebrity" who cares what you have to contribute, I'm thinking the
same as Tony, namely why am I wasting my time here? I've got friends who
share my interests and there aren't any ignorant jerks like Evan among them
nor do they tell me to fuck off; maybe it really is time to rent a dumpster
and just toss in those Cromemcos, Vector Graphics, PETs, AIM65s and the
25-odd boxes of manuals and documentation that are taking up space just in
case someone might want or need something one day; with a couple of
exceptions they certainly aren't any use to me.
Something to think about for sure; I may end up actually thanking Evan one
day for finally showing me the light.
I just bought a Data I/O 29B with an Unipak 2B from Epay. Everything seems
okay BUT the pinout cartridge ( the little module that plugs in the end of
the 2B ) is missing. I suspect that all it has is some kind of simple
interlock like two pins tied together to tell the Data I/O the cartridge is
there ( probably so you can't run the unit with that HAZARDOUS 20 volts on
the open connector. Anybody know how to get around this or fake it ? The
unit won't do squat without it.... Have not been able to find a schematic
of the 2B or the pinout cartridge. Thanks.
Best regards, Steven
On 10/19/10, Mike van Bokhoven <mike at fenz.net> wrote:
> Hi Terry,
>
> Welcome to the list, from another NZ classic-cmper. Whereabouts in NZ are
> you located?
Hi, Terry,
I'm curious, too. I've spent about six months of the past 15 years in
NZ, mostly in Christchurch, with trips to Wellington, Auckland, and
Hamilton.
> I also enjoy getting dead machines going; my current challenge is finding
> RAM for a Sega SC3000H. I was hoping someone might have some spare MCM4517s
> for sale (from memory, hopefully that number's right),
Those are just +5V-only 16Kx1 DRAMs, right? The pinout is the same as
the 4164 except for pin 9 (NC on a MCM4517, A7 on a 4164).
Could you use a 4164 instead? (it might require a pull-up or
pull-down on pin 9 so it doesn't float). Those are rather abundant
and still available from a number of sources.
-ethan
Manx is an online catalog of computer documentation.
The new manx is up for beta testing here: <http://manx.classiccmp.org>
Paul Williams created manx as a series of perl scripts and a database
of online computer manuals. Paul has graciously provided us with a
copy of the data from the database from which I reverse engineered a
compatible implementation in PHP. Later, Paul provided me with the
perl scripts which I used as a referene for finishing off the PHP
implementation.
The new manx is an open source project hosted at <http://manx.codeplex.com>.
Please use the issue tracker on codeplex to report any problems you
find with this new manx. You can also browse the existing issues in
the tracker to see the planned enhancements. The main planned
enhancement to come is supporting users and roles to allow community
contributions to the database so that new additions don't have to go
through a single person.
Thanks to Paul Williams for providing the database dumps and scripts
and Jay West for hosting the finished application.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>