Here's a variation of the pdp 11/70 with a chocolate-brown and white color
scheme: http://661.org/images/csis1170.jpg
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:01:41 -0700, leaknoil <leaknoil at gmail.com> wrote:
> I hate thinking anything in the defense department is running on a
> vaxstation 4000 still but, it's the government after all.
On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 22:13:53 -0400, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
> Besides, remember how procedure-oriented the US Gov't is. It's the
> world's best refuge for people who are incapable of independent thought,
> because there are rule books and procedure books for EVERYTHING. If
> said book says "thou shall run this on a VAX4000-96", even if a good old
> 3100-M38 would do the job just fine at about $20.00, you'll sign the P.O.
There are a lot of reasons that old equipment is (re)purchased by the Government, especially the Department of Defense. Most of the equipment in question is not sitting on someone's desk running a spread sheet, but is generally part of production equipment - especially test equipment. A production line is shut down and the contractor is allowed to close down and disperse the line. A then an action or foreign customer comes along and the contractor is called upon to reopen the line, generally on a short leash.
At that point the contractor can purchase new equipment (cheap), re-engineer and program the line (not so cheap and generally not quick), and re-certify the new line (not cheap and definitely not timely). This of course requires re-engineering and building the certification stations. Or the contractor can scrounge around and rebuild the line as originally constituted. The equipment isn't inexpensive for what it is, but the line is reconstituted by a bunch of techs in a fairly short time. The engineering and software is done and the unit stands certified as built.
A good number of years ago Hughes Aircrash shut down the TOW missile line and after storing the production equipment for a number of years was allowed to auction off the obsolete equipment. One of the many messes that we seem to be continually caught up in used up a goodly number to the missiles that were laying around and Hughes was asked to make more. They had a team of people running around buying up the old equipment wherever they could. An acquaintance got several times the new price for a HP 2115 that he had stored.
I chatted with an engineer and questioned the wisdom of buying and using old equipment. They had a bonus riding on getting production going in a fairly short period and the cost of going that route was a very, very small fraction of re-engineer the line.
The moral here is that paying $3k for an old VAX might in fact be saving $300k...
-> CRC
Well I bought a HP 9845B from a German seller, the m**** putted the whole
thing in a box with some airbags.
And of cause (TONY DON'T READ THIS) the monitor came loose of the case and
destroyed the monitor posts ;-)
Sh** why can't they pack classic computers in a decent way.
I'm getting very disappointed in epray, every time I find a nice bargain the
destroy it by shipping it the wrong way.
-Rik
On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:53:47 -0500, you wrote:
>> http://www.update.uu.se/~pontus/slask/front_paneler/
>
>Hey, there's one of mine on there!
>
>I didn't own the UCC 8/L when that photo was taken, but I have owned it for
>a few years now. Last time I checked, it worked, at least most of the time :-).
Not only is that Vince's PDP-8/L, it is the very same one I sold
to him (and it did "work when last turned on") :)
... and that is my picture (which I took with my Sony Mavica
digital camera back in 2003!) You can see my Tek 190A signal
generator and other odds and ends, sitting on the workbench my dad
built for me in 1977. You're welcome to use the pic, of course :)
-Charles
You all know what I meant by the vacuum 'leaking out' of a CRT, right
:-). Perhaps this analogy will help to explain why I said it.
We all know that the mobile charge carriers in most materials are
electrons with a -ve charge.
Now, suppose I take a metal sphere and charge it positively (as is done in
electrostatic experiments). In time it will discharge, it's common to say
'the charge -- the positive charge -- leaked away'.
But what actually happens, of course is that when I charged the object I
removed some of the electrons from it, leaving it with a net positive
charge, And the leackage that allowed it to discharge actually allowed
electrons to flow onto the metal sphere. So in this case, the 'charging'
means I removed some electrons from it, the 'leakage' allows them to return.
When a CRT is evacuated, the gas molecules are removed from the inside,
leaving a vacuum. When it leaks, air goes back in, returnign it to the
natural state. By analogy with the electorstatic experiment, it doesn't
seem so crazy to say the 'vacuum leaked out'.
-tony
On 2 Nov 2011, at 18:00, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
I am summing up some answers here. I hope you are comfortable with this.
> I'm pleased to see the project opening up (release of library source,
> etc). I was a bit uncomfortable with what I perceived to be a proprietary
> approach earlier on.
We always promised and we keep our promises.
> What would really be the clincher for me is the ability to take a sector
> image of the various machines, e.g. an Apple ProDOS or DOS 3.3 "*.po"
> image and write it to a diskette. I get the impression that it currently
> has the ability to read flux transitions and extract such sector images,
> but nothing mentions the capability of re-creating a track image and
> writing them out to media.
There are several image files for some platforms, we usually support one major as there usually are other tools to convert between these.
Speaking of MFM: It's used by so many platforms that we do one generic MFM dump, which can then be further processed, e.g. by adding a header for some emulator.
> I have an interest in archiving, but I'm also an avid tinkerer with old
> hardware and often need to generate "real" diskettes from a sector image.
>
> Some of the machines I would need to do this for:
>
> Northstar hard-sector
> Amiga 5.25 and 3.5
> C64 (GCR)
> Apple 2 and 3 (GCR)
> Intel MDS system (M2FM)
> ...
>
> etc.
>
> I have technical means for all of the above now, but they are inconvenient
> and/or require dragging out and setting up something particular to that
> one operation. "One stop" shopping would be great.
>
> If the unit is capable of doing this, please advise?
I think this and the quotes below originate all from the very same misunderstanding. KryoFlux _CAN_ be used to read data that can be transformed into IPFs. It's a feature, but you aren't locked to it. Like you can use your scanner to scan something, then load it in Acrobat and do a PDF. You can chose to use whatever imaging application you like, you are not forced to convert to PDF. In this case you could as well chose to convert the image file to PDF with a third party product. It's the same here. We made our STREAM format fully documented and open as well, so you can convert to whatever format you like. Take a look into the development section on our forums, there are third party apps that process and convert data.
Looking at the formats above... DTC supports, among many others, Amiga, C64 and Apple out of the box for reading.
Writing is _at the moment_ limited to IPF because we wanted to to the most challenging part first. We will be adding more sector formats to the write engine in the near future. It's fully expandable and it was made to be easily expandable.
> Thanks for pointing that out. They are welcome to use whatever
> business/IP model they wish, but this one bothers me enough that I would
> avoid the device.
Again, I think this refers to IPF. You are not locked into this format, but I don't think it's grossly unfair to ask those that want to use it on a professional basis to pay for it. To be honest, I haven't seen anything that compares to it, and I feel there won't be anything like it soon, if at all. It's not that I don't wish there should not be, I just don't think there are many engineers out there that can design such thing. I did not invent or program it, so I think I am allowed to say this. I would also like to point out that there aren't many willing to dedicate their time to developing tools for floppy disks as the niche is very small.
> And what prevents them from "archiving" anything you send them?
This question is SPS (Software Preservation Society) related. The project's scope is about preserving computer art, which usually means games. SPS shares these files with contributors that send in the same dump (e.g. you sent a damaged dump, lateron an undamaged one comes in... you would be given access). SPS also share games preserved with archives, libraries and museums. These assets were released into the commercial marketplace. It therefore makes sense to share between institutions, because you don't have to re-analyze something if you have a good preservation asset (unless it's a different version of course). A global collaboration makes sense and was the idea of the project.
You could of course submit data as part of an assignment where SPS would be working specifically for you. This only answers your question if you would be willing to trust a contractor.
> My feelings exactly. I can't imagine any professional archive taking this group seriously, and it is
> completely opposite of CHM's policy of preserving and making available any information on underlying
> media formats that we find.
We do share information, about formats and things. Just look at our site or simply feel free to ask if it's missing. The Emulator II format we reversed was not only put into KryoFlux, but it was also put into HxC for emulation. Afaik it always was free, is free, so the decoder is right there available as open source.
I posted the link to the WIRED article, and I would invite you to e.g. speak to the British Library and find out and get first hand information about our work for them. I can name you some other archives if you like, but would prefer to do this via regular email as I can't just post client information here.
> I sent them mail saying "I would want documentatino on how to talk to
> the hardware, because your GUI will not be suitable for me" (any UI
> that's suitable to most of pretty much any market has an excellent
> chance of being somewhere between unpleasant and unsable for me).
I replied to this mail, twice. At least I tried. The first came back because you blacklisted our ISPs mailserver. I have no control over it, I don't know who and if someone uses it to spam. Anyway. I switched to my private email on my own machine and server. It was blocked again because your system tries to retrieve a whois record from the denic. As it seems, they either don't provide it there or not at all (they are the registry for Germany, so what can I do about it?) - so again my reply was blocked. I got tired and put it to rest.
My reply, in short, was that the board has all standard components. There is no firmware flashed to the board, it's uploaded from the host software. If you ever used a 1541 with custom software... it's a bit like that. So all you need is take the ATMEL SDK and write your own code. There is nothing stopping you from using your own software with the board. I could say "why not use our firmware", but that would be a binary again and you said you don't run precompiled software.
The complete schematics are supplied with the software download and you can do with them whatever you like as long as you don't sell it (schematics or boards). I think this is a fair limitation.
One last, personal thing: There were some replies with "them" or "they". It feels a bit odd, like talking about someone in third-person when he's in the room. I follow the digest, so you can address me. I am not asking anyone to share my opinion or to spare me, so keep it coming. Thanks.
On the subject of hardware, I'd like to pass along a link that
details my efforts to clone three PALs--the AT&T 6300 video display
card HAL10L8; the Soundblaster 2.0 upgrade PAL16L8 and the Trantor
T130B SCSI controller ROM address PAL16L8.
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/entry.php?314-Cloning-a-PAL-
HAL-%28Part-1%29
I don't know if I'd stick with SSI TTL for the "brute forcer", but it
worked well enough. I'd probably just use a cheap microcontroller if
I were starting afresh.
This appears to be a valid approach for pure combinatorial PALs and
HALs. Registered devices are a different matter entirely.
--Chuck
