test-drb March 2010

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

182 participants
231 discussions

Early apple employees Dick and Cliff Huston selling off collection

by jlobocki＠gmail.com

Ok, Im gonna go get some powerball tickets and cross my fingers! I like the two newton prototypes that look like an early attempt at creating an iPad, this stuff should be in a real museum, not up for sale in my opinion. It would be interesting for a piece on how some creations are created in prototype some 10-20 years before their time. Another good example, look at how long SGI has put stereographic 3D glasses ports on their computers, and have had the capabilities, but now it is finally hitting the consumer TV market. On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 11:37 PM, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > At 11:18 PM -0400 3/16/10, Dave McGuire wrote: > >> On Mar 17, 2010, at 12:04 AM, Zane H. Healy wrote: >> >>> I see a couple items there that I'd be interested in, but no way am I >>> spending that kind of money on anything like that! >>> >> >> I've never seen the general attitude of classiccmp summed up so >> succinctly. ;) >> > > There was a time when I would have considered bidding on at least one of > the items. Now I'm trying to do a massive shrink of my own collection, and > the money I used to spend on Classic Computers is now targeted for more > realistic things. > > The disturbing thing is, while I'm trying to get rid of most of my > collection I'm in the middle of my biggest (and best) Commodore haul ever. > It is free, and slowly being delivered from out of state. Oh, well, I said > I was keeping a lot of the Commodore stuff. :-) > > Zane > > > > -- > | Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | > | healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | > | | Classic Computer Collector | > +----------------------------------+----------------------------+ > | Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, | > | PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. | > | http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/<http://www.aracnet.com/%7Ehealyzh/> | >

14 years, 9 months

Yamaha V9958?

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

Thanks for the tip... figures I wouldn't try eBay for that. ;) I was actually wanting one as an upgrade for my Coleco ADAM. I had installed a TIM board with the 9938 in one back in the day, and wrote some initialization software for it. Was thinking about building my own board to do the same again. -----REPLY---- Hi! The Coleco ADAM is a Z80 computer right? If you are up to some experimenting the other related item at the N8VEM that might be interesting to you is the PropIO. Using a shim socket, the PropIO can be interfaced to the Z80 CPU socket. Then with proper software support it can provide PS/2 keyboard, VGA, and microSD for your computer. Assuming of course the ADAM design is compatible. Basically if the ADAM can access an IO port it should work fine but the best way to be sure is to check the schematic. One of the N8VEM builders has done some experimenting on a Kaypro and a SpectraVideo 728 with the Z80 shim socket to PropIO and it worked fine in both cases. It might be a neat expansion option for you if you are interested. I am looking for some hardware experimenters to test the system out on some various Z80 computers. I am not aware of anything like it for the ADAM but don't follow it too closely either. If you are interested (or anyone else) please let me know. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch PS, the PropIO shim socket approach *should* work for any of the N8VEM expansion boards so if you are interested in expanding your Z80 computer or adding peripherals to your Z80 home brew computer this might be helpful to you since you won't need to reinvent it. It could add simple interfaces such as IDE/FDC (DiskIO) or Zilog Peripherals (CTC, DART, dual PIO) as well as the PropIO.

14 years, 9 months

Booting a VAXstation

by js＠cimmeri.com

> Subject: > Booting a VAXstation > From: > Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> > Date: > Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:20:19 +0000 > To: > "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> > > To: > "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org> > > > I have a VAXstation 3100 model 38 I bought on eBay for the princely > sum of ?0.99. Sadly it came without disks and I have no wide-SCSI > disks of <1GB. Hi, Liam. First thing to do is find yourself a copy of the manual for the machine as you can do a bunch of stuff with it just from built in diagnostics.. I seem to recall them being out on the web.. possibly here: http://deathrow.vistech.net/~cvisors/DEC94MDS/ I know Antonio Carlini had a site with lots of nice docs too.. but my link is dead. Also check out older posts where people were in the same boat.. such as: http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctech/2004-December/036556.html My machine came with a TZ30 drive, an RD54 CD, and hard disk all internally... mine's the M48..same as yours but with bigger case. You might need a special cable for the external SCSI.. as its got a funny connector on the computer end. I found one on ebay. For hard drives, I found that I had to experiment with different ones.. not all would work (even if under 1gb). Most did, however. Enjoy, John Singleton

14 years, 9 months

Yamaha V9958?

by lynchaj＠yahoo.com

> -----Original Message----- > From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org > [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of geoffrey oltmans > Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 10:50 AM > To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts > Subject: Yamaha V9958? > > Does anyone know where you can order one of these (AKA MSX-Video?). > Barring that, its earlier cousin the 9938 would be good also. [AJL>] Hi! On the N8VEM project we are getting ready to release a TMS9918/AY-3-8910 Sprite Color Graphic and Sound (SCGS) board. The board is basically done and awaiting the PCB trace route optimization to complete before ordering manufactured PCBs. There are also plans for a follow on V9938 board. V9958 has "issues" that make it less desirable than the V9938 IMO especially since it cannot generate composite video. It can generate RGB video though and has some enhanced scrolling ability. None of these chips can generate VGA compatible video though so be fore warned. http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=Color%2520Graphic s%2520and%2520Sound http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=SCGS As always, constructive comments welcome; send flames and pointless criticisms to /dev/null We've had some luck procuring the chips from leemoom611 on eBay. I've bought several chips now (TMS9918, TMS99118, V9938, V9958) without issue. Seems like a decent guy but I can't say much other than it worked for me. I have no business connections with him other than a satisfied customer. You are welcome to join us on the N8VEM project if you are interested in a TMS9918 or V9938/V9958 home brew computer project or whatever you'd like to do. Regardless, I wish you the best of luck with your project. Please keep us (me?) posted on your progress. Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch

14 years, 9 months

Caffeine and hacking (was Re: Soldering)

by roger.holmes＠microspot.co.uk

On 16 Mar 2010, at 03:10, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > > Message: 14 > Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:44:49 -0000 > From: "Andrew Burton" <aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk> > Subject: Re: Caffeine and hacking (was Re: Soldering) > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Message-ID: <005201cac490$8be1db90$f0fdf93e at user8459cef6fa> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Teo Zenios" <teoz at neo.rr.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 10:25 PM > Subject: Re: Caffeine and hacking (was Re: Soldering) > > >> I gave up drinking cola with caffeine and now mostly drink 7-up with >> artificial sweeteners (you end up getting a sweet tooth late in the day). >> >> I used to guzzle mountain dew in the morning when I worked and I found if > I >> didn't my mind would be a little cloudy until I did so I gave it up. >> >> Yes, you do lose a bunch of weight when switching to diet pop, but you > gain >> it back slowly when you get a craving for sweets (you body doesn'y like to >> be fooled by fake sweetener). > > > You can say that again (the bit in brackets in the last sentence). If I > drink Diet Cola it makes me sick, as in regurgitating what I ate recently. > So I stay well away from diet drinks... but I have a few other allergies too > (hayfever, asthma, eczema and certain plastics cause irration to my skin > after contact for 5-10 minutes). I suppose I should count myself lucky that > I'm not allergic to sunlight. I'm very sorry to hear that. Two things you might like to consider. Is the Diet Coke in a plastic botttle, and if so is the plasticiser getting into the drink? Of course if you have the same reaction to it in a glass bottle then thats not it. Is it the Aspartame sweetener? Its nasty stuff, affects the pancreas, particularly for diabetics and some experts even think the 'diabetes epidemic' is caused by it. My 87 year old mother had type one diabetes (controlled with tablets). They told her to cut down her sugar intake, so I started to go through what I buy online every week and found lower sugar versions. Coke -> Diet Coke and Robinsons Orange -> No Added Sugar Robinsons Orange etc. Soon her daily sugar measurements were off the scale, the gauge only reads up to about 25 beyond that it just says high. The medics gradually increased her tablets, switched to injecting insulin, saying now it was type 2 diabetes, the dosage went up to 74 units per day. Then one of the 'carers' (who was not medically trained) told me some of her other clients had cut out Diet Coke and become much better. I was sceptical so asked one of the nurses and though she did not want to say so on the record she suggested I cut down my mothers consumption of Aspartame. I've been doing that though some things like orange squash all seem to have it in. Now the medics are gradually reducing her insulin and frequently have to give her chocolate in the morning to get her sugar level UP to four so that they can give her her insulin without causing her to have a fit when they administer it. Try googling Aspartame Diabetes for what one doctor says about it. On the original topic, when I programmed in microcode assembler then assembler and Coral66 then Pascal I drank Ribena : result all my molars have huge fillings which might cause a blip in the mercury price when they need to be replaced :-) Now I program in C++ and have switched to Rose's lime. Of course outside work its bitter ale, either Shepherd Neame Masterbrew or when I'm in London Courage Directors. I can see the site of the old Fremlin's brewery out of my office window, thats the beer from which the word gremlin derive's its name. When I'm finding logic faults on my ICT1301 mainframe its cloudy lemonade and McVities Digestives (plain ones, not chocolate ones) to make up for skipping lunch.

14 years, 9 months

Old Equipment for sale, PDP8 and S100, with manuals

by 1metalguru＠gmail.com

Hi Guys: Just thought I would drop a line and let everyone know that I have some old computer equipment for sale (might even be free to a good home) as listed below: 1. PDP8A system, with programming front panel. Comes with PDP8/A Field Drawings Manual, and I believe it has an A/D peripheral. 2. Somewhere, (I haven't seen them for years) I have a pretty extensive library of PDP8/I manuals on Microfiche. This includes the 32K Disk Subsystem, Hi Speed Paper Tape reader, PDP8/I Math enhancement, Dectape System, etc. Used to have the paper copies, but they were too bulky so I paid to have them put on Microfiche (which was quite pricey as I recall). If anyone is interested, I'll try to come up with more info, including a complete list of the manuals on fiche, and a list of the boards installed in the 8/A. I also have some old modems, including one from an ASR33 TTY, and a 1200 Baud commercial modem from the early 80's. In addition, I have a couple of old S-100 System enclosures with backplanes and power supplies, along with a whole box of S-100 boards including 8085 CPU, memory, A/D, comm cards, and various I/O. Even some manuals to go with... My name is Darrell, and you can contact me at 1MetalGuru(at)gmail.com

14 years, 9 months

Booting a VAXstation

by pcoghlan+cctech＠vms.eurokom.ie

> >But practically, what this means is: No Money. Ergo, I can't afford to >buy any new bits. The reason I got this machine was its extreme >cheapness! (Under a pound - for Colonial types, that's about a buck >sixty.) > With any luck it may be possible to scrounge an RZ26 for a similar price to the machine. > >Well, what size of disk would I want? I may have some 500MB units >knocking around, possibly bigger. The problem now is finding ones >/small/ enough, not big enough! > I've managed to crowbar a bootable subset of VMS 5.5-2 into 70MB. It was so long ago I don't remember if this included any Decwindows functionality. More recent versions with more fluff will probably need more. 500MB would certainly be worth a try though. Alternatively, use a disk larger than 1GB and hope for the best. You won't have lost anything if it doesn't work. When doing the install, just install the critical items first, with the hope of having everything that is accessed by the firmware ROMs for boot appear below the 1GB mark. Opt not to have a dumpfile. The biggest problem will probably making sure to get the index file (which is used to locate all the other files on the disk) below the 1GB mark. As far as I recall, VMS places the index file in the middle of the disk by default but this can be overridden when the disk is initialised. The only question is whether this option is available when doing an install from scratch. > >Is there any incantation I can type at the firmware monitor to tell me >if it "sees" a device as a CD-ROM? Or is being seen as a CD no >guarantee? > SHOW DEVICE at the >>> should list the devices on the SCSI bus. I don't think it will tell you if the sector size is correct though. The only way to be sure is to try it. As far as I know, CDs containing a bootable and usable version of VAX/VMS were not produced although they were for Alpha/VMS. A VAX would normally boot the standalone backup program from a CD to do a VMS installation rather than booting directly into VMS from the CD. > >I don't wish to question authority, as it were, but the internal >cables are 104 pin (If I'm counting them correctly) and the external >SCSI port on the back is 72-pin mini-D. That *looks* like wide SCSI to >me! If it's not, then what kind of cabling is it? The ordinary >narrow-SCSI stuff I knew from back in the '80s and '90s was 50-way >ribbon cables with 50-pin IDC connectors internally and either 50-pin >Centronics or D25 connectors externally. > The external SCSI connectors on a 3100 are rather strange. They are a narrow SCSI bus presented on a male 68pin connector. It is definately not wide SCSI even though it looks like it. To use it, the first thing you will need is a cable with a female 68pin connector on one end and a 50 pin centronics type connector (or something else reasonable) on the other. Are there connectors for internal SCSI disks? They should be normal 50pin IDC types. > >Yes, but how do I *tell*, that's the question! > I just picked up an IBM labelled CD drive off the floor. It has a jumper at the back labelled "SECTOR SIZE". It's a fair bet that the two sizes available are 512 and 2048. If you find a drive with a sector size jumper, it will probably do. > >When you say "a small-ish drive", what counts as "small" for VMS? Or >rather, what sort of drive should I be looking for to /not/ have to >muck around when installing it? > 1GB is more than adequate to install VAX/VMS. I remember 3100's used to often come with an RZ23 which I think was 109MB. This was generally regarded as too small to install a useful system on. I would have a go on anything bigger than 200MB. Not having to muck about probably involves spending a little to get an appropriate disk. On the other hand, having to muck about a bit may will give you the experience you are looking for. I'd suggest giving it a go with whatever you have. > >My hope is to get the machine booting into DECwindows. I don't plan to >use it as a server, more as sort of glorified X-terminal if anything. > Recent versions of Decwindows are disk and memory hogs, especially on VAX. It is likely that it will be very slow. It may be wiser to concentrate on terminal based access initially at least. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

14 years, 9 months

VAX stuff

by jack.rubin＠ameritech.net

This stuff is too new and too big for me - located in Illinois (as per bid site). Note that Craters & Frieghters service is available. Jack ----- Forwarded Message ----- To: "Jack Rubin" <jrubin at spertus.edu> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 3:09:20 PM Subject: RE: old DEC gear Hi We have a couple of items forsale on ibid. A Vax 6620 and a TU81 tapedrive current price $1.00 each Here is the link http://ibid.illinois.gov is is under the electronics section.

14 years, 9 months

VAX stuff

by jrubin＠spertus.edu

14 years, 9 months

Booting a VAXstation

by pcoghlan+cctech＠vms.eurokom.ie

> >> As far as I know you can't boot a traditional VAX from a disk of >> <1GB... but could I put the core of VMS on a small slow narrow SCSI >> disk, like an >> 80MB or something, and put most of it on the only Wide SCSI disk I >> have, a 10GB...? > > You can use a sub-1GB disk to boot from, yes. Booting is, as I >understand it, the only restriction. > Booting is not the only restriction. As far as I know, the same low level drivers in the ROM that are used for booting are also used for writing crashdumps. The problem is that short (6byte?) SCSI commands are used and the addresses wrap back to zero when trying to address parts of the disk beyond the 1.0something GB point. This means that if a dumpfile is located further out than that point on a large disk that VMS has otherwise successfully been installed on, it is possible to end up getting the lower part of the disk overwritten by a crashdump if the system should crash. It is possible to install a minimal VMS configuration on a small disk and access data on a disk larger than 1GB. However, it is difficult to use the larger disk to expand the VMS system as DEC software often wants to be installed on the system disk, ie the one that booted the system. The difficulties can sometimes be overcome but it may take an experienced VMS hacker to do this. I think the best idea is to get something like an RZ26 disk which is around 1GB and use that. It is also possible to boot the 3100 remotely >from another VMS system but this is probably not an option here. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

14 years, 9 months

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test-drb March 2010