test-drb July 2010

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

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213 discussions

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Coherent 3.1.0...

by mdavidson1963＠gmail.com

Woo-hoo! Just bought a copy (sealed, apparently) of Coherent 3.1.0 on EBay! That made my day... Mark

14 years, 4 months

Serial interfaces

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 7/20/10, Rob Jarratt <robert.jarratt at ntlworld.com> wrote: > >> With a serial port, you can turn an old machine with two serial >> interfaces into a snooper... > > RS-232 is such a pain, I just had some problems recently. I had never > thought of using my PC as a way of snooping serial traffic. I have two > serial ports on my machine. Does anyone know of any good software to do > this? I could always write it myself, but it would be nice if there was > already something there. Here are several: http://freshmeat.net/projects/linuxserialsniffer/ http://freshmeat.net/projects/serlook/ http://www.serialmon.com/ http://www.gumbley.me.uk/scope.html Some of these use one port and a special sniffer cable, some use two ports. There are other sniffers out there, I'm sure, but these were the ones that took less than two minutes to find. I haven't used any of them, so I can't recommend one vs another. I have commercial-grade gear for this (HP4951), but with all the options out there, you should be able to find a PC-based one that does what you need. -ethan

14 years, 4 months

M51976FP pinout?

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

I am looking for a pinout or datasheet for a chip labelled M51976FP. It appears to be made by Mitsubishi, it's a SMPSU controller in a 20 pin SOIC package. I have the data on the M51977, which is similar (I think), but some pins are clearly different. Looking on datasheetarchiver and digchip didn't find anything. And a google search (as ever) found plenty of people who sould sell me 100000 of them, but nothing else). [It's uised in a PSU modile in an HP tape drive that I am working on, so it does have som relevance to classic computers0. Thanks in advance for any help -tony

14 years, 4 months

Lot of PDP-11/84 on ebay in Boston

by kelly＠catcorner.org

> [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Patrick Finnegan > Sent: Sunday, July 25, 2010 10:43 PM > Subject: Re: Lot of PDP-11/84 on ebay in Boston > > > > I would expect no more than $5/lb (probably less) for that > era of board > or about $5 or less per board in scrap value. The rest of > the chassis, > maybe $5 in value without spending a lot in labor to separate > the metals > out. In North West New Jersey scrap high density circuit boards are $0.70 per pound. Steel is about $200 per ton.

14 years, 4 months

Pronouncing acronyms (was Re: DEC acronyms)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On 7/30/10, Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: >> One of my "hobbies" (some >> might call it an obsession) is figuring a way to pronounce any given >> acronym as a word.... > > :-) > > I've been know to refer to the 5150 as the 'I-Bum Puck' :-). The first > 'I' is short --'e' not 'eye' as I pronounce it... Here, I've heard "Ih-bem Peck" (same 'i' sound you describe), but it was usually used in a less-than-flattering context. The most gratuitous example of this I can recall is the Sesame Street character Big Bird attempting to pronounce the 26-letter Western alphabet as a single word ("ab-cer-def-gee-jeckle-mernop-kur-stoov-wik-siz" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC%E2%80%93DEF%E2%80%93GHI) -ethan

14 years, 4 months

ANN: liblpfk (IBM LPFK driver library), tumble-0.33-philpem1

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, A few of you might remember the IBM LPFK bulk-order a couple of years back, and the ensuing chaos of figuring out the control protocol (which was eventually resolved when Michael Brutman found some old IBM protocol docs which covered the LPFK). I figure I've been sitting on the code for long enough: it's time to make a proper release! Anyone who wants to have a play with this is welcome to do so: the code is on my website, under "Code :: liblpfk", or if you'd prefer a direct link: http://www.philpem.me.uk/code/liblpfk/ I've also uploaded my fork of Eric Smith's "tumble" utility, a TIFF-to-PDF converter. I found a couple of bugs (which haven't been fixed seven months later) and figured it was a shame not to share the patches. After all, it is open-source :) URL for that is http://www.philpem.me.uk/code/ -- click "Tumble". At some point I'll give this a separate page instead of just linking to the version-control repository, and may well document the control file format (which IIRC isn't documented at the moment). Somewhat offtopic, but I've also released a driver for one of the Brother P-touch label printers. I needed labels for my spare parts boxes and really didn't feel like making them with a Dymo gun when I had a perfectly good stock database (which is next on the 'stuff to release' list) which I could use as a data source for said labels. Work smarter not harder and all that ;) These were written for Linux, but should work decently well on BSD too. Forget running them on Windows unless you want to port the serial-line (liblpfk) and/or usb-lp (libptouch) stuff across... I didn't (this be a Linux-only ship, yarrr!) Comments, criticism and so on should be sent to the address below. Sensible patches are, as always, gratefully received 8^) FYI: I'm working on getting a copyright release from university for the DiscFerret software. At the moment most of the Department of Computer Science is on holiday so this is proving somewhat difficult... PCB design is still ongoing, though a lack of funds means it might be a while before I get prototype PCBs made. I'm hoping to release the firmware, microcode and decoder engine under the GPL or LGPL, and the hardware access library will most likely be distributed under a "BSD-with-attribution" type license (I forget, is that 3-clause or 4-clause?). Either way, it'll be GPL-compatible (for obvious reasons!) and commercial-use-allowed. Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

14 years, 4 months

retr0brite not so right?

by spectre＠floodgap.com

This appeared on the cbm-hackers list today. Anyone have a thought on it? Addresses redacted. ----- Forwarded message from William Levak ----- Subject: re: Anyone know what type of plastic Commodore computers are manufactured from? I have looked at the retr0brite website, and gone throgh all the information there. It is my opinion that this procedure has not been adequately tested, and there is a possibility that this procedure may cause long term damage to the plastic. I am a chemist and have some experience testing resins. The retr0brite information mentions a white "bloom" on the plastic from over treatment. This condition is permanent. It also represents chemical damage to the plastic. A common procedure to determine the chemical resistance of polymers, is to put various reactive chemicals on the surface and determine whether, and how much time it takes for noticeable chemical damage to occur. This usually shows up as a white "bloom", but this is not the only damage. Polymers can also suffer damage that is not visible, but causes the polymer to lose its strength and prematurely "age". The retr0brite information says that you should be careful not to over use the chemicals so that the white "bloom" does not occur. But this does not necessarily mean that chemical damage has not occured. If it takes x amount of time to create the white "bloom", then using it for half that time probably means that half the damage has occured. Whether the damage is visible is not the real question here. It would take aging tests to determine whether the plastic is damaged from the retr0brite procedure. I do not see any indication that retr0brite treated plastics have been subjected to aging tests. -------- Original Message -------- >> From: "Stingray" >> Sent: Friday, July 23, 2010 10:37 PM >> Subject: Anyone know what type of plastic Commodore computers are > manufactured from? >> >> Anyone know specifically what plastic the C64 and C64C are manufactured > from? >> >> I have been wondering how to stop plastic Commodore gear from fading. >> I found a really good link on this (also explains why some of the keys >> on your C64C are faded and some aren't). >> http://www.vintagecomputing.co...chives/189 [ this was truncated in the original message for some reason ] >> >> Does anyone have any of their own tips on maintaining plastic >> Commodore equipment? >> >> Regards, >> Stingray >> Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list ----- End of forwarded message from William Levak ----- -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- We shoulda bought a squirrel. -- "Rat Race" --------------------------------

14 years, 4 months

yet another pdp-11 in fpga

by W.F.J.Mueller＠gsi.de

Walter F.J. Mueller <W.F.J.Mueller at gsi.de> wrote on 21 Jun 2010 21:02:18 +0200 > I'm in the middle of homogenizing some internal interfaces and of some > code cleanup, also the backend handler needs a re-write in C++ (currently > perl). When that's done I'll make the whole package (VHDL sources, test > benches, backend) available on 'OpenCores'. The PDP-11/70 core is now available at OpenCores, see http://opencores.org/project,w11 The documentation is admittedly still rudimentary. The backend handler is still in perl. This and many other things on the TODO list for the future. Walter

14 years, 4 months

Looking for Tektronix 4051 programs...

by clay＠ArcherServices.com

I have been fortunate in acquiring and restoring a Tek 4051 recently. I had used one of these back in '77 to '82 and I still have some documentation, and I found other manuals on bitsavers.org but have not located any software. Do you know of any source on-line? I found references on this site (Feb. 2009) from other users talking about building an archive of software for the 4051. I have keyed in a few short programs to test the vector graphics, but it would be nice to have the original standard pack tape programs. Even printouts would be helpful. I recall when I last used a 4051 back in the early '80's we had the ability to dump & load programs using the serial port, and the ability to un-secret the programs. If I can find this information again I would be glad to provide it to help build a software library for this fantastic system. Thanks, C. Archer

14 years, 4 months

S100 omninet driver

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

I seem to recall some talk about omninet. I found a disk labeled "S100 Omninet drivers for CP/M 2.2". -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu

14 years, 4 months

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test-drb July 2010