Kind folks,
I'm pretty sure that some here restore and use vintage computers at
least in part in order to be able to play vintage computer games, which
is the only thing that makes this post on topic at all. After a bit of
research on the web, I find that I'm at least 5 or 6 years behind the
times based on some forum discussions of something I just became aware
of just yesterday! What triggered all this was that our daughter showed
up at the house with this little game controller which she says was
bought at WalMart for about USD $20.00. It says "namco" on the front,
"PLUG it in & PLAY TV GAMES" on the back. Says 6VDC on the back too, so
probably 4 AA batteries. It came with batteries, and I haven't opened
it up to explore the insides at all - yet. On the bottom next to the
list of games are copyright dates from 1960 to 1983, the best I can
tell. There is also a copyright notice on the bottom dated 2004 for
JAKKS Pacific, Inc. and a reference to www.jakkstvgames.com.
This little gadget has a joystick, a few pushbutton switches, and
composite video and a sound output. It allows one to play vintage Ms.
Pac-Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Mappy, and Xavious by connecting it to a
standard TV's video and audio inputs. I mention this here because I
just thought it was really cool to be able to play these vintage games,
and some might be in the same uninformed group with me. :-) FWIW, my
daughter says there are a number of other similar units with different
games, and the web seems to confirm this.
Wanting to see if the web site is WOT approved, I googled
jakkstvgames.com and it seems to only be referred to by other web sites.
I finally got brave and typed it in to the Firefox URL entry and was
rewarded with "403 Forbidden" and "You don't have permission to access /
on this server." Sounds pretty scary to me.
BTW, I have absolutely no connection with this company - whatever it is
- Jakks Pacific? It says it is made in China, of course. The thing is
plastic, but seems to be remarkably well made for something that only
costs 20 bucks. Of course the possibility of hacking it for other
purposes never crossed my mind. ;-)
Later,
Charlie C.
I have a 5V Apple III that won't boot and could use some troubleshooting
advice. When I power it up, the LED at CR7 on the motherboard and the
keyboard lamp both light up and I get a brief flash on the internal
floppy light and nothing else. No video or activity of any kind. When
I hit CTRL-RESET, I do get the expected clicks from the internal
speaker, so I know there's some life there.
I've swapped out the floppy drive and cables, and the power supply with
known good units, and reseated all the socketed ICs and get the same
results.
There are no expansion cards or other peripherals attached to the machine.
Can anyone suggest a starting point for tracking this down?
Thanks.
- Mike
---------------Original Message:
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:38:46 -0700
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Subject: Re: speeding up computers (was Re: Terminals...)
>XPLite gets a big <shrug> from me. It fronts XP's control panel's
>add/remove Windows components and settings, deletes update rollback
>and temp files mostly. All of which can be accomplished manually.
>What I wish it would do: Automate moving key files to other
>partitions and prune the registry of unnecessary entries.
>--Chuck
---------------Reply:
Some good tips here:
http://technical-issues-tips.blogspot.com/2007/08/tips-reduce-size-of-windo…
Back up first and use at your own risk of course.
m
Dennis writes:
> Stumbled across a reference to what looks like two old DEC products -
> QS-HG1A9-NZ PRIME TO VAX TAPE UTILITIES
> QS-HG0A9-NZ PRIME TO VAX CONV UTILITIES
> while poking at MANX. I would very much like to find documentation
> and/or the actual software. Anyone have further info?
Nearby DEC part numbers seem to fall under QS-HFKA9-NZ
"Migration Assistance Service". E.g.
QS-HFKA9-NZ MIGRATION ASSISTANCE SERVICE
QS-HFLA9-NZ SYSTEM/36 MIGRATION UTILITIES
QS-HFMA9-NZ CDC/FORTRAN CONVERSION FILTER
QS-HFNA9-NZ CDC/FORTRAN CONVERSION TOOL
QS-HFPA9-NZ DG/COBOL CONVERSION FILTER
QS-HFQA9-NZ HP/FORTRAN CONVERSION FILTER
QS-HFRA9-NZ HP/BASIC CONVERSION FILTER
QS-HFSA9-NZ HP VPLUS DECFORMS CONV FILTER
QS-HFTA9-NZ HP IMAGE TO RDB CONV FILTER
QS-HFUA9-NZ HP IMAGE TO RMS CONV FILTER
QS-HFVA9-NZ HP/3000 TO VAX/VMS CONV UTILT
QS-HFWA9-NZ WPP-WANG COBOL CONV FILTER
QS-HFXA9-NZ WDE WANG DOCUM CONV TOOL
QS-HFYA9-NZ VSTAPE WANG DOCUM CONV TOOL
QS-HG0A9-NZ PRIME TO VAX CONV UTILITIES
QS-HG1A9-NZ PRIME TO VAX TAPE UTILITIES
QS-HG2A9-NZ PDP-11 BASIC CONV FILTER
QS-HG3A9-NZ PDP-11 MACRO CONV FILTER
QS-HG4A9-NZ HP/COBOL CONV FILTER
It seems extremely likely that these were tools developed as
part of migration assistance services, but companies have
always struggled with the line between a "product" and a "service"
so it wouldn't be surprising to see in-house tools get turned into
products with part numbers etc.
Tim.
--------------Original Message:
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 18:02:45 -0400
From: Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com>
Subject: Re: speeding up computers (was Re: Terminals...)
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Message-ID: <4C72F005.9060602 at neurotica.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
On 8/23/10 5:55 PM, Doc Shipley wrote:
>> Microsoft is not the only company whose design policies are predicated
>> on an assumption of Moore's law. But it is one of the most obvious.
>
> It's very odd to me that Apple's OS X needs at least as much CPU, RAM,
> and disk as current Windows, but nobody beats on it for being bloated.
It's not slow. =)
-Dave
---------
Well, you did show remarkable restraint up to this point...
;-)
m
Stumbled across a reference to what looks like two old DEC products -
QS-HG1A9-NZ PRIME TO VAX TAPE UTILITIES
QS-HG0A9-NZ PRIME TO VAX CONV UTILITIES
while poking at MANX. I would very much like to find documentation
and/or the actual software. Anyone have further info?
De
Folks,
First off, apologies to those who've asked me about the DSSI drive
sleds etc I mentioned a while back, fret not, I still have them.
Reason for the above not happening - my landlord wants his house back.
This is a problem because I really fell on my feet when I found this
place and managed to squirrel away my entire collection. 3.5 years
later this town is home, my girlfriend is here, my friends are here so
I don't want to up sticks and move the whole lot again. Also there's
now no way I can afford a house with this much garage space.
So. As much as it pains me I have to come to the realisation that I'll
never actively use 90% of my DEC stuff, my CBM PET stuff, IBM PC
compatibles or the 'middling' Apple stuff like LCs, Mac IIs, Quadras
etc
I haven't extensively catalogued anything for years, but given that I
only have a month and a bit it's time to get my skates on.
I'm guessing nobody will be interested in my SUN and Cisco kit, or
Research Machines early PCs.
Over the weekend I'll catalogue the big DEC and Apple stuff and post it here.
Any advice or offers of collecting stuff from me gratefully received.
I can ship big things from work on receipt of money, even on pallets.
Cheers,
--
adrian/witchy
Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest home?computer collection?
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk
Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
> On 8/11/10 11:21 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
>>> >> Of course, shipping for, say a hundred VT520s is significantly higher than for those modern replacements - even when you add in the (now LCD) screen. Oh that's right, you can just go down to Best Buy (which rarely is) to buy the screens....
>> >
>> > I doubt shipping costs would be so much of an issue - VT520s, if they
>> > are anything like VT420s, are not very heavy. If company X needs
>> > several hundred dumb terminals spread around in their system, I bet
>> > they would have enough of their own shipping going on, and the VTs
>> > could hang on the sides of the trucks for free.
>> >
>>> >> That's not to say I don't have a personal preference for the originals - I have mostly VT420s at home, and we're refurbishing a bunch of VT100s and VT52s here at work. -- Ian
>> >
>> > OK, I will say it - VT420s suck.
>
> What don't you like about VT420s? They're my favorite of the line,
> followed closely by VT320 then VT220. I don't like VT520s at all.
I like the VT5xx series, just as I like all other VT-terminals. However,
I've had problems with power supplies of VT320, and VT340 terminals, and
have had problems with the displays going weak on VT420 terminals.
In a way, I think the VT525 is pretty optimal. External screen with VGA
connection, so I can use any PC screen, including flat screens. The fact
that the VT5xx terminals use a PC keyboard connection sucks some, but I
can live with that, since I atleast have proper DEC layout keyboards
anyway. And color, in addition to that. The only thing missing is ReGIS
and SIXBIT graphics.
But, to make a comment on the original topic here - I don't really think
that new VT terminals are more expensive than buying a PC. Yes, the
initial cost is larger, but I definitely expect a VT520 to last way
longer than a PC, and buying two or three PCs, and additionally to have
to service, update, install, and work on the machines will make them
cost way more than a new VT520 within just a year or two.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
So I picked up both a MicroVAX 2000 with 120mb MFM drive and MMJ terminal
adapter and a VAXstation 2000 with 40mb ST-251, keyboard, mouse, and some
little breakout box for the latter two.
Both systems power up and the drives don't make any nasty noises (though
both are blank so they won't be booting anything until I get VMS on them)
but in both cases I have no way to communicate with them. The MicroVAX I
can't talk to simply because I lack an MMJ cable but the more interesting
VAXstation with it's 4-bit framebuffer simply because I don't see how on
earth you connect up a monitor to it. The keyboard and mouse break out box
connect to the monitor port but the box itself has no connections for a
monitor to be plugged in.
How did this work and what types of monitor were compatible? I might have
access to a VR201 if I want to pay shipping from MA to western canada.
