test-drb April 2010

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

172 participants
242 discussions

by dm561＠torfree.net

-----------------Original Message: Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 17:33:57 -0700 From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> Subject: Re: Use mini CDR for equipment info? On 11 Apr 2010 at 14:40, Dave McGuire wrote: > I can't speak to the reliability of mini CDRs, but I can say that > it seems like a whole lot less trouble to have a directory structure > on a file server that's navigable by manufacturer and model number. > I maintain about 26GB of documentation that way. I don't keep > drivers or control software in there, but I could. Doing it the CDR > way seems to me like it'd be more trouble than it's worth. > > Just a thought, no offense intended of course. None taken. I find myself repeating things I've done 20 or more years ago, forgetting that I've even done them--so locating the information on a file server or in a paper file doesn't even occur to me. Then there's the awful feeling you get when you find out that you've already done something. But a CD-R stuck inside a cabinet might give me a clue. It's sort of like the situation a friend describes to me. He says "Old age is great--I keep making new friends that I've known for 50 years..." --Chuck -----------------------Reply: Oh, how I can identify with that... the other advantage is that you can watch the same movies over and over and they're always new. Re your docs: why not the best of both worlds, a label/postit/paper inside the equipment with a reminder that you've been there before and a pointer to where the machine-readable stuff can be found on your server? m

14 years, 8 months

Wanted: CompuPro System Support 1 card

by billdeg＠degnanco.com

WTB: CompuPro System Support 1 card, working or not. Contact me off list, thanks. Bill USA

14 years, 8 months

Desoldering Chips, was Re: Can someone, > confirm this chip equivalence?

by marvin＠west.net

From: Joachim Thiemann > Bummer. I'm not good at desoldering chips without potential damage > to the board. Joe. The easiest way to not damage the board is to cut the leads to the chip, and then use a solder sucker to remove the solder in the hole along with the remnants of the chip leads. Hopefully if one or more of the leads is soldered to the ground plane, those pads used thermal isolation to separate them from the ground plane.

14 years, 8 months

National Semiconductor memory module for PDP-11

by steve＠cosam.org

Hi all, I'm looking for details on a 4MByte QBus memory module made my National Semiconductor. It doesn't have an NSxxx model number anywhere on it, but is simply labeled 980110014-211. I've managed to work out what many of the jumpers do, but a lot of them go straight into a couple of PALs which I'd rather not need to reverse engineer. A manual of some description would be nice although, failing that, even a summary of the jumpers' functions would be great. Even a photo of a similar module with a description of how it's set up would help at this stage. The main thing I need right now is how to configure the range of addresses the module will respond to. It works fine on one machine which has some memory on the CPU board, but another won't boot saying that there's no memory at address zero. Cheers, -- Steve Maddison http://www.cosam.org/

14 years, 8 months

eBay Disaster

by unibus＠gmail.com

> From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) > I haev found it's impossible to predict the prices that things will sell... As a seller I look at the number of watchers: - 0-9 likely to go for the starting price - 10-15 likely to be one serious bidder, price tends to dribble up from the starting price. - 15+ war likely to be declared between multiple serious bidders and the price can go ballistic. A complete, untested PDP-11/10 system (eventually found my variac but too late to fire up the system) sold for ~$100 from a $0.99 starting price. In Australia just some of the parts and PCBs for a 1974 Electronics Australia EDUC-8 microcomputer (contemporary of the MARK-8) has attracted a bid at the $100 starting price while another auction for PCBs and some parts for a reproduction MARK-8 has not attracted a bid. All can be explained by the size and composition of the market. In Australia there are only a very limited number of people in my city who have an interest in a PDP-11, the MARK-8 is obscure and relatively unknown as Radio-Electronics magazine had limited market penetration, while Electronics Australia's EDUC-8 project would have been seen by Australian professionals and enthusiasts >from that era. So these auction prices are currently related to demand. I'm in Australia and there can be category mismatches between the eBay.au site and the rest of the world. So that what you an auction you think should list into an equivalent category on eBay.com appears to just disappear and searches will fail unless your buyers are searching only at the top eBay level. Most eBay.com buyers appear to be unaware of this limitation on searches. Then there is the opposite of an eBay disaster where the object is just to find homes for stuff. On eBay you don't have to wait for the end of a 7 day auction to sell something. When trying to find a home for something oddball like a core memory system from a PDP-11/20 I'd be happy to accept a $0.99 starting price bid from anybody who expresses the least interest. End result is a happy buyer and you get the cost of the eBay listing fee covered. Does surprise people who don't know this option of eBay, plus this can upset people who expect to snipe an auction.

14 years, 8 months

VAXstation 4000 VLC Power Supply

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

I have a faulty power supply in one of my VAXstation 4000 VLCs (clicks on and off more than once a second). My worry is that I might have damaged it by overloading it because I know it is not that powerful. I suspect I could have overloaded it by putting in a disk that draws too much power (could that do this kind of permanent damage?). Does anyone have any guidance on what limit I should apply to the power a hard disk uses when considering what disks to put in these machines? Regards Rob

14 years, 8 months

CompuPro format/copy utilities

by rich.cini＠verizon.net

All -- Does anyone have the source to the CompuPro Disk 1 format and copy utilities? If they?re buried in a manual somewhere, I can?t find it. Any pointers appreciated. Thanks! Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.altair32.com http://www.classiccmp.org/cini

14 years, 8 months

Interesting N* software

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

One of the diskettes given to me has what looks to be support for running the Morrow DJ controller under N*DOS. Here's the equivalent of a README: 10!"LIST THIS PROGRAM" 20STOP 30 THIS SOFTWARE HAS A TIMING CONSTANT SET FOR 40 A Z80 N* HORIZON. 50 IF YOU HAVE A DIFFERENT SYSTEM THEN YOU 60 WILL NEED TO CALIBRATE THE TIMING CONSTANT. 70 PROCEED AS FOLLOWS\ 80 1.COPY THE DOSCHG DISKETTE 90 2.POWER DOWN AND HOOKUP 8 INCH DRIVES AND CONTROLLER 100 3.BOOTUP YOUR OLD N* DOS 110 4.PUT COPY OF DOSCHG IN DRIVE 1 120 5.PUT AN 8INCH DISKETTE IN DRIVE 4 130 6. LF BASIC 2D00 140 7. JP 6519 150 8. SF BASIC 2D00 160 9. NOW BOOT THE DOSCHG 170 THE ABOVE PROCEDURE TIMES THE 8 INCH INDEX HOLE 180 IN THE DISKETTE FOR 1 REVOLUTION OF THE DISK 190 AND PLACES THE COUNT INTO THE SOFTWARE. 200THE NEW TIME CONSTANT IS AT 64E5 64E6 210FOR REL 5 8DIGIT BASIC. 220 DOSCHG IS NOT DESIGNED TO RUN UNDER THE TIMESHARE PROGRAMS 230THE TIMESHARE PROGRAMS INCLUDE THE 8 INCH DRIVERS. 240 AT THE END OF BASIC. THESE ROUTINES ARE USED 250 YOU MAY REPLACE THE DOS 260 ON THE DISK WITH ONE OF YOUR OWN BUT REMEMBER 270 TO USE RELEASE 5 DOS ONLY. 280 THE FILE BASIC IS 58 BLOCKS LONG BUT 290 AFTER BOOTUP BASIC ENDS AT 65CAH AND IS 56.7 BLOCKS LONG 300 THE OLD VERSION OF THIS SOFTWARE USED 3 BLOCKS IN 310 MORROW'S CONTROLLER RAM. REV 4 OF HIS BOARD WILL 320 NOT ALWAYS WORK WITH A PROGRAM IN THE CONTROLLER RAM 330 THE SOLUTION WAS TO MOVE THAT SOFTWARE TO THE END OF BASIC 340 YOU CAN USE THE MONITOR TO TEST THE CONTROLLER RAM 350 BY TM E400-E7FF 0 360 THE PROGRAM GCOPY COPIES 8 INCH TO 8 INCH DISKS COMPLETELY 370 THE DISK MUST HAVE THE SAME DENSITY AND NUMBER OF SIDES. 380 THE DENSITY IS SET BY THE PROGRAM 8INT. 8INT IS USED 390 TO INITIALIZE 8 INCH DISKS. 400 THE PROGRAM COPY IS USED TO COPY BY FILE FROM/TO ANY DISK. 410 LOAD AND RUN BASIC AS A PREREQUISITE TO RUNNING 8INT,COPY OR, 420 GCOPY. YOU MUST THEN GO BASIC, BYE, GO 8INT,COPY OR,GCOPY AND THEN 430 GOBASIC. 440 PGM1 IS USED ANYTIME YOU MAKE CHANGES TO BASIC AND 450 WANT TO SAVE BASIC ON THE DISK. THERE IS A JMP AT 2D00 460 WHICH MUST BE REWRITTEN BEFORE SAVING DOSCHG BASIC. 470 THE BASIC IS SET FOR 32K STARTING AT 2000. Here's a directory listing: DOS 4 12 D 0 BASIC 10 58 D 1 2D00 CF 39 6 D 1 2D00 CD 42 4 D 1 2D00 8INT 44 4 D 1 2D00 GCOPY 46 2 D 1 2D00 COPY 47 6 D 1 2D00 PGM1 50 8 D 2 INFO 54 8 D 2 CONTROL 58 4 D 2 TEST 60 4 D 2 TEST1 62 4 D 2 Does this ring any bells? Steve --

14 years, 8 months

Intel MCS-8 cards on Erik's VC Forum

by cclist＠sydex.com

There's a fellow who's run across a few (8080 CPU, RAM, EPROM) cards for the MCS-8, if anyone's interested. http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?20071-Odd- Intel-S-100-Cards Chuck

14 years, 8 months

N* Lives!

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

Thanks to Dave Dunfield's fine work, I have my Horizon system up and running! One thing still puzzles, me though: Is it possible to create and boot SD diskettes on a DD system? When I boot at DD and bring up NST, it cheerfully writes a SD diskette from an image. However, that image will not boot. Should this work? Next hurdle is getting the Morrow Disk Jockey 8" controller hooked in. Some of the diskettes I received with the unit (none of which boot) have Basic and ASM programs that look like they're intended as support for the DJ controller. Without documentation, this is going to take a bit of experimentation, I think. Steve --

14 years, 8 months

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test-drb April 2010