December 2011 - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

by RichA＠vulcan.com

From: Josh Dersch Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 9:08 PM > I just wish UNIX man pages were as well written and as > all-encompassing as the online documentation available on my > Lisp machine. Basically three or four feet worth of the > printed manual set available at a keypress (or mouse click) > or two, thoroughly indexed and cross-referenced, viewable > directly at the command prompt (even while in the middle of > typing a command -- invaluable when you've forgotten how > something works halfway through) from within the editor, or > inside the Document Examiner, with hypertext, formatting, > diagrams, etc... a lovely system and well ahead of its time. Yes, the Lisp Machines were, like the TOPS-20 operating system, "a great improvement on [their] successors." Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer Vulcan, Inc. 505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900 Seattle, WA 98104 mailto:RichA at vulcan.com mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

13 years, 6 months

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BBC News - Apple founding papers sold at auction for nearly $1.6m

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

BBC News - Apple founding papers sold at auction for nearly $1.6m Apple's founding papers have been sold at auction for $1,594,500 (?1.03m). Sotheby's had estimated the three typed partnership agreements would sell for between $100,000 and $150,000. _http://bbc.in/rJJ3q5_ (http://bbc.in/rJJ3q5) Source: _http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16170953_ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16170953) See if people are clicking on this link: _http://bbc.in/rJJ3q5+_ (http://bbc.in/rJJ3q5+) Try the _bitly.com_ (http://bitly.com/) sidebar to see who is talking about a page on the web: _http://bitly.com/pages/sidebar_ (http://bitly.com/pages/sidebar) Thanks, Ed Sharpe, Archivist for SMECC See the Museum's Web Site at _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org)

13 years, 6 months

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CPU Wars card game

by pontus＠update.uu.se

Hi all I just found this little card game which looks kind of neat: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/harrymylo/cpu-wars-volume-10-the-card-g… Quite x86 centric, I think the J11 would fit pretty nicely in there. What CPU would you add? /P

13 years, 6 months

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cctalk Digest, Vol 100, Issue 34

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

Ok, I dug up the schematic. This is for the Video Only. You'll have to get a copy of the Coco Schematics to find out where to tap the audio (Probably at the input to the RF Modulator, but I don' t know what you'd have to do to make it sound good)... http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/8801/23fa5940.gif (The "New Board" mentioned in the GIF means the Coco 2 logic board) Here is a link to a repository that has the service manuals: http://goyim.dyndns.org:8080/coco/Documents/Manuals/Hardware/ That's the best I can do now, as my Cocos are on a top shelf I can't reach anymore and can't pull one down to look at the installed adapter. Hope this helps. Al

13 years, 6 months

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last call for AT & T 7300 UNIX PC docs

by chrism3667＠yahoo.com

big box but cheap via media mail. Philip expressed interest in the tech manual. I'll joyfully send it to him if he still wants it. Let me know Phillip. I'll just chuck the rest I guess. Have the Wordstar manual/s too, but no disks.

13 years, 6 months

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TV -> D-Sub converter possible?

by vintagecoder＠aol.com

Thanks. Sounds pretty gruesome.

13 years, 6 months

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Looking for NeXT cables

by mokuba＠gmail.com

Looking for NeXT mono cables (DB19 -> DB19 ) and Y cables (13W3 -> 13W3 and DB-19) as well as NeXT Mice (broken or working). Anyone got any for sale or swap? -- Gary G. Sparkes Jr. KB3HAG

13 years, 6 months

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IBM something, what is it ?

by jdr_use＠bluewin.ch

The collective wisdom of this list should have no problem identifying this ?c ftp://jdreesen.dyndns.org/ftp/ibm_something.jpg Jos

13 years, 6 months

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Unix handles file extensions "very poorly"? - Re: Mac/Mac, Programming/Cocoa/HyperTalk Books free - Melbourne

by alanp＠snowmoose.com

On 12/12/11 11:40 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: > Microsoft (Patterson) lifted THAT directly from CP/M. It is Paterson, not Patterson. alan

13 years, 6 months

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russian PDP-11 like K1801BM2 CPU Startup reading w/o address?

by jonas＠otter.se

>> > In my experience, "solderless breadboard" is the usual term, at >> least >> > if you're talking about the things I suspect you are. >> Occasionally a >> > brand name gets used to refer to them. >> >> That's what I've always heard them called. I know they're generally >> considered terrible, but I've had lots of luck with them for >> low-speed >> projects (especially power supplies for tube amps; I've got one >> that's >> covered with capacitor juice from various electrolytics exploding >> and >> has some melted-out holes resulting from diodes installed backwards >> but >> still manages to work just fine). > > They're probaly fine if used within their limitations. That is that > stray > capacitance doesn't matter too much (and be warned it can matter even > when the system appears to be low-speed) and if the odd poor > connection > won't cause too many problems. > > That said, I don't think they save much tiem. The time taken to form > component leads to fit into one of these breadboards, or to strip a > piece > of isulated wire to go in, is not much less than soldering the > components > to stripboard (assuming your iron is already hot). And doing the > latter > will at least eliminate poor conenctions. > > -tony Around 1980-1981 I was working for Volvo Cars. At one time I was given the task of evaluating the optimum location for a knock sensor. I had an engine fitted with a number of knock sensors in various locations on a dynamometer test bench, and a device connected to the ignition which allowed me to advance the ignition from TDC in increments of a few degrees. This thing was provided as an official test device from a large US manufacturer, I have forgotten which one - RCA? GE? GM? It was built with CMOS 4000-series ICs IIRC, and constructed on - solderless plugboard... Changing the amount of ignition advance was done by moving a wire between different holes in the plugboard. Using this kind of thing in an engine test cell, with an engine running under heavy load close by and me standing next to it, struck me as rather shaky to say the least. Especially as a bad connection, or plugging the wire in the wrong hole, could make the engine produce "interesting" noises. Had something serious happened to the engine there might well have suddenly been large parts of metal flying around and plenty of hot oil and water spraying about. It did actually work OK though. /Jonas

13 years, 6 months

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TV -> D-Sub converter possible?

by vintagecoder＠aol.com

I don't know, I don't have a TV. ------Original Message------ From: John Foust Sender: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org To: cctalk at classiccmp.org ReplyTo: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: TV -> D-Sub converter possible? Sent: 13 Dec 2011 14:11 At 06:04 AM 12/13/2011, vintagecoder at aol.com wrote: >Hmmm, will any old CRT monitor work? I might be pursuaded to see if I can >scrounge one of those even though finding a home for it would be a problem. Oh, no, this thread has so much miscommunication in it, we have to keep it going. I assume you're not in the USA? So when you buy the average LCD TV in Europe, does it not include the same threaded "F" connector for an RF input, that would be able to tune this "channel 3" (61.25 MHz)? - John

13 years, 6 months

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Craigslist Wang - Seattle, WA

by glen.slick＠gmail.com

Can anyone id this Wang system? Looks like maybe a box on a desk with another box in the desk with maybe an 8" floppy? http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/sys/2746923849.html Also, a Tek 4051 system and accessories asking $550. (No connection to this listing other than it being local to me.)

13 years, 6 months

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Follow up on the PDT 11/150 recent posting

by jgessling＠yahoo.com

I got the picture scanned in that triggered my previous post so I include the link for your enjoyment. http://uaskies.blogspot.com/2011/12/pdt-11150-and-kids.html Regards, Jim

13 years, 6 months

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Unix handles file extensions "very poorly"?

by brian＠quarterbyte.com

For the "very poorly" category, I'd like to nominate the DOS & Windows command line globbing semantics, where ? matches one character OR NOTHING. Likewise, ?? matches zero, one or two characters. And ??? matches zero, one, two or three characters. So, del *.? will not delete just "file.a", it will delete "file" as well. This sort of sets the gold standard for poor behavior. Even Microsoft is at odds with itself about what ? means. In the Windows world, the command shell doesn't expand wildcards. Applications have to do it for themselves. The Visual Studio C runtime library globbing routine incorrectly states that '?' matches "exactly one char". So even some of their own developers aren't aware of this. Brian

13 years, 6 months

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Seeking HP Vectra models for purchase

by sellam＠vintagetech.com

Hello folks. I need any one of the following models of HP Vectras: - HP Vectra VL2 4/33se - HP Vectra VL2 4/66 - HP Vectra M2 4/50 - HP Vectra VL2 4/50 - HP Vectra VL2 4/50 CD - HP Vectra XM2 4/66i Bonus points (in increasing value) if: 1. They are original (i.e. no upgrades) 2. Complete 3. Have original OS and software installation 4. Come with original software install disks, manuals and paperwork. If you have any one of these models, please contact me ASAP. I am looking to purchase them. Thanks! -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]

13 years, 6 months

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Unix handles file extensions "very poorly"? - Re: Mac/Mac Programming/Cocoa/HyperTalk Books free - Melbourne

by jfoust＠threedee.com

At 01:43 PM 12/12/2011, Liam Proven wrote: >Perhaps it's just me, but I really quite /liked/ the VMS system: >name.extension;version. Saved my bacon a few times, did file >versioning. Given how cheap disk space is now, I'm saddened it's not >made a comeback. It's Time Machine in OS X, it's "previous versions" in Windows 7. - John

13 years, 6 months

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TV -> D-Sub converter possible?

by vintagecoder＠aol.com

Oh, I'll have to look at my junk pile. I seem to remember getting a TV card along with a few boxes of misc parts when I bought a desktop a few years ago. I had no use for it at the time. Maybe I will. Thanks. ------Original Message------ From: Cameron Kaiser Sender: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org To: cctalk at classiccmp.org ReplyTo: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: TV -> D-Sub converter possible? Sent: 12 Dec 2011 18:30 > > Or you can get a TV card for a PC for under $20. Most of them work > > nicely with Linux and all of them work with Windows, though the actual > > viewing applications get a bit ugly. > > I meant to ask about this since I have no idea what it is, I thought it > would be used for receiving over-the-air TV signals. Are you saying they > have input jacks that would work with old computers that had TV output > connections? Yes. Many (even most) of them have composite inputs, and some even have S-video inputs. I used an Aurora Fuse card for this in my MDD until I got a FireWire Canopus ADVC-300. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Everything is permissible, but not everything is expedient. -- 1 Cor 6:12 --

13 years, 6 months

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The National Museum of Computing enjoys tablet resurrection of BBC Domesday Proj

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

The National Museum of Computing enjoys tablet resurrection of BBC Domesday Project | Culture24 In 1986, to mark the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book, the BBC launched the Domesday Project, a then-pioneering campaign where the public could submit pictures and insights on their local area which were then etched onto immortal laserdiscs. High costs and technological advances meant the project was never fully realised in spite of its futuristic ambitions, but last April BBC Learning resurrected the project by making the archives accessible online. _http://bit.ly/tA7ueH_ (http://bit.ly/tA7ueH) Thanks, Ed Sharpe, Archivist for SMECC See the Museum's Web Site at _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org/)

13 years, 6 months

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Apollo Domain/OS programming?

by legalize＠xmission.com

I was reviewing the Domain System Call Reference on bitsavers <http://bitsavers.org/pdf/apollo/007196-01_Domain_System_Call_Reference_Jan8…> and was browsing the PAD (Display Manager) section. Has anyone here done any GUI programming on Domain/OS? I'd like to understand the programming model better. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

13 years, 6 months

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HP 1000 boards on epay (I think)

by mark.kahrs＠gmail.com

These are not listed as such, so I'm taking a guess: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Agilent-13197-60001-1K-WCS-Board-Assembly-/16069… http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Agilent-12897-60004-DCPC-Board-Assembly-/1606970… http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Agilent-12892-60003-Memory-Protector-Board-Assem… http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Agilent-02102-60001-Memory-Controller-board-Asse…

13 years, 6 months

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TV -> D-Sub converter possible?

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

Somewhere I have the schematic to tap the input of the RF modulator to drive a Composite Monitor. Several of my Cocos have these. But, newer flat screen TVs may not be able to accept this signal. You are probably going to find it easier and cheaper to get an old Color TV on Freecycle to use with the Coco than to adapt it to RGB or DVI. Al > From: "Vintage Coder" <vintagecoder at aol.com> > > I have an old COCO II somewhere but I don't have a television. What are you guys who have similar old systems doing for a display? > Is there a device to convert the TV out from those computers to D-Sub or dare to dream, DVI?? What do you call such a converter? Thanks.?

13 years, 6 months

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OT: offset printing?

by mcguire＠neurotica.com

Hey folks. Can anyone recommend a good book (that I can find used via abebooks etc) that'll teach me the ins & outs of small-scale (i.e., sheet-fed) offset printing? Old is fine. (I'm exploring old presses) -Dave -- Dave McGuire New Kensington, PA

13 years, 6 months

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Computer Graphics Museum Sprawl 3

by legalize＠xmission.com

<http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/cgm/sprawl3/index.html> Detail view: - Nuclear Data ND600 terminal Moved into shelving: - Beehive - Lear Siegler - Hazeltine - Heathkit - Televideo - CDC - Wang - Teleray - Volker-Craig - Terak - Basic Four - Data General - NCR - plus random items to fill holes -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

13 years, 6 months

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OT (Sort of): Programming algorithm for PALCE devices

by cclist＠sydex.com

Pardon if you've heard this before, but... I'm looking for the programming algorithm for Lattice/AMD/Cypress old PALCE devices. I've got a bucketload of them (mostly PLCC) and I'd like to do something with them or trash them, if no luck in the programming department. I've found algorithms for the PEEL devices as well as NS type plain GALs, but nothing on the PALCEs. I know that programming info is usually supplied to OEMs under a NDA, but the technology has passed through a sufficient number of hands that it's hard to believe that nobody has any information. Note, unless it's very cheap (i.e. it costs less than thowing the PALCEs out) I'm not interested in another programmer, but I'm not opposed to tinkering a bit. Thanks for whatever help, --Chuck

13 years, 6 months

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DT2768-I Diagnostic Program and Manual

by jhfinedp3k＠compsys.to

I need a copy of the diagnostic program for a Qbus Data Translation board: DT2768-I The program that I need runs under RT-11. If there are other versions, it may be possible to use a different operating system, so please let me know if you have a non-RT-11 version. I believe it is an Analog to Digital Adapter, but I am not sure. However, the module number is definitely DT2768-I. Can anyone help or suggest where it can be found. I checked bitsavers on both the bit and pdf sections, but there was nothing there. Jerome Fine

13 years, 6 months

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Word Perfect 5.1 Documents?

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

Word 5.1 for the Mac runs fine under Executor (http://www.ardi.com). In fact, Executor came about as a way to run Word and Excel on NeXT systems, and was ported to Windows, DOS, and Linux. Executor was how I ran Word for Mac on my PC until Word for Windows eventually caught up. I also used the MagicSac on my Atari-ST with an Epson MX-80 and EPStart (to print with) to use Word on my ST. Later I got a program whose name I forget (Printworks for the Mac - Laser Version?) that was a driver for popular Laser and Dot Matrix Printers that came with a special Apple Serial to Parallel printer cable. I have a Spectre-128 GCR now (I also have ARDI's Transporter One to read Mac GCR disks), but haven't booted my ST in ages. It has a 2.5gb RAM upgrade by AERCO that has stopped working, and I lost the documentation for it, so I can't figure out the jumper settings. Someday, I hope to find them or find someone who has it... Or even more unlikely, run into one of the principles of AERCO. I remember that WordPerfect for the Mac 3.5 ran fine under Classic on MacOS X. Here's a webpage about it:?http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/wpdos/macintosh.html Hope some of this is helpful... Al

13 years, 6 months

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Alpha, VAX available in Sweden

by Arno_1983＠gmx.de

Pontus <pontus at update.uu.se> wrote: > Hi. > > I'm afraid that I have been unable to get a hold of the owners and by > now it is probably to late. Too bad. I know some DEC-heads from N Germany and I had hoped one of them would have made for the stuff. > I can comfort you with that there was nothing terribly unusual there. Anything DEC is too scarce to lose in a world dominated by PeeCees! I had hoped for e.g. a Radiator VAX (BA23 ?VAX) to complement my VSII/GPX and perhaps some tower style Alpha hardware. Also original DEC terminals. Another time, perhaps... So long and thanks for the heads-up, Arno Kletzander -- Empfehlen Sie GMX DSL Ihren Freunden und Bekannten und wir belohnen Sie mit bis zu 50,- Euro! https://freundschaftswerbung.gmx.de

13 years, 6 months

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Oscilloscope vector display driver...

by cclist＠sydex.com

On 8 Dec 2011 at 19:47, Bill Sudbrink wrote: > I'm thinking of building a "somewhat vintage" two-channel DAC board, > intended to drive an oscilloscope as a vector display. Well, if you want "vintage" (and I assume you do) there was at least one such project in an old issue of Byte or Kilobaud (IIRC). Given that typical period (I'm assuming vintage all the way) o- scope's linearity is none too wonderful, you might get away with a single 8255 PPI (or similar parallel chip) and a simple R-2R "ladder" DAC. You can't get much cheaper than that. --Chuck

13 years, 6 months

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Unisys "Micro A"

by dfaultersack＠cox.net

Hi, Noticed an old posting. Just have to say that this was NOT an emulator. It was a real hardware Burroughs mainframe. Regards, David Faultersack Micro-A Engineer

13 years, 6 months

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semi-ot: FPGA memory arbitration methods

by keithvz＠verizon.net

I'm designing a video scan converter to connect my classic Amiga to a new LCD. For the journey, not the destination. Don't want to buy one off the shelf, etc. I need to both read and write to my single-port freeware altera memory controller simultaneously(ok, not exactly at the same time) . I'm converting from 320x200 to 640x400, doing simple pixel doubling. 12-bit color, 4-bits per color, padded to 16-bit for ease of handling within the FPGA. Write side into the memory from amiga->my converter: 1 byte every 70ns. Read side to go from memory->LCD: 1 byte every 20ns. Memory is 8mb, 133mhz access, 16 bits wide, wishbone memory controller has fixed burst size of 2. What are some common ways of doing arbitration? Time slots with buffering between writes? How would this be implemented? Two-port memory controller (I can't find a free, working, easy to use Altera one) Some type of synchronization method? Semaphore/Mutex concepts? My existing setup detects horizontal sync pulse, and reads the entire line from DRAM -> block ram. Since I'm pixel doubling, I only need to read one input line for every two output lines, so I can potentially relax my READ times accordingly. Any advice or recommended references would be appreciated. My efforts are being blogged at http://techtravels.org/?page_id=463 Thanks Keith

13 years, 6 months

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Fwd: Desk-fax interest ?

by hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca

Just forwarding this to the list in case there might be some interest here. These are old 1950s-era fax machines, not 1990s. Apparently they are similar to the ones I present here (which is why he contacted me): http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~hilpert/e/deskfax/index.html They are located in Northern Ireland. Begin forwarded message: > From: "cliff.corderoy" <cliff.corderoy at btinternet.com> > Date: 2011 November 24 5:46:14 AM PST (CA) > To: <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> > Subject: Desk-fax interest ? > > Hello Brent, > I have three Creed Desk-fax machines in my garage and wish to > let them go. Is there any interest in these machines ? > As they are so heavy the transport cost perhaps are higher > than their value ! > regards, > Cliff. ?ham radio callsign Gi4CZW. > 028 66329494.

13 years, 6 months

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Unisys "Micro A"

by dfaultersack＠cox.net

Hi, Noticed a very old request about the Micro-A. Still interested? Regards, David Faultersack Micro-A Engineer

13 years, 6 months

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IBM something, what is it ?

by fjkraan＠xs4all.nl

On 2011-12-10 19:00, cctech-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Re: IBM something, what is it ? A programming device for some kind of IBM network. You put the floppy into the device only about half way for it to boot and then then you can configure the network with the hand-held terminal part. I have seen one working, but without the appropriate network. Fred Jan

13 years, 6 months

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Any documentation / schematics for STEbus interfaces

by rwhyre+cctalk＠picrad.com

This 1980s-era bus supported multiple CPUs, and 20 bits of address space. It was also known as IEEE-1000 (until that standard was withdrawn), and used the DIN 41612 connector common to VMEbus systems of that time. I'm trying to find details on interface circuits, schematics for old boards, etc.

13 years, 6 months

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Oscilloscope vector display driver...

by aek＠bitsavers.org

On 12/8/11 5:27 PM, Bill Sudbrink wrote: > too expensive typical here. glad to see your time is worthless.

13 years, 6 months

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Docbook for Altair Manuals

by aaronvaldes＠rogers.com

Hello I was just messing around with Docbook to make some documentation. I was also in search of Paul Allen's documentation from his Altair Basic days. Is it alright if I take the content from the manuals on your site and put them in the Docbook format? Aaron

13 years, 6 months

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Alpha, VAX available in Sweden

by Arno_1983＠gmx.de

Hi, does anyone consider going for these already? I can offer a home for (also just some of) that stuff in southern Germany if nobody else does, but unfortunately I can not assist with collecting and shipping right now. Anybody able to do a store&forward please contact me. Expenses within reason will be covered. Save The VAXen (...and their ilk)! Yours sincerely, Arno. -----Original Message:----- Subject: Alpha, VAX available in Sweden Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:50:56 +0100 From: Pontus <pontus at update.uu.se> Reply-To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org> To: cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Hi If you live close to Gothenburg and can act within a few days I know of some medium sized alpha and small vax machines available for pickup. VT100 and VT520 terminals also. Contact me offlist. Regards, Pontus. Arno Kletzander ...sent from HTC Magician PDA

13 years, 6 months

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Oscilloscope vector display driver...

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

> > Hi All, > > I'm thinking of building a "somewhat vintage" two-channel DAC board, > intended to drive an oscilloscope as a vector display. I'm just considering > parts now, unless someone has a really good design already set to build. > By "somewhat vintage" what I mean is that I don't want to just drop in > a modern "super chip" that will have ten (or more) times the power of the > intended host computer which, by the way, is an SWTPc 6800. I figure the > board will have some 8-bit processor on it. I'm leaning towards a Z-80. > It will have an EPROM, some scratch static RAM, some glue logic to manage > the communication with the SS-30 bus... and this is where I get fuzzy... a > 1Kx8 dual ported static RAM and two DACs. These last two elements (the > dual ported SRAM and the DACs) are where I don't have any experience. A > little googling has led me to the IDT7130 for the dual ported SRAM and the > DAC0830 for the DACs. Does anybody in cctalk land have experience with > either or both of these chips? I have a source for the DAC0830, but I don't > have a source for the IDT7130 yet. The basic idea of the design is for the > 6800 to write a vertex list into the dual ported SRAM which the Z-80 then > reads and pushes to the DACs. I'm hoping I can just hang these chips off of > the Z-80 address and data busses like the RAM and EPROM but I need to do > some more reading of the spec sheets. > > Any help greatly appreciated, OK, some thoughts... You first need to decide how you're going to produce the vectors It's obviously importnat that not only do the 2 DAC output voltages get to the right values (that is, the vector ends i nthe right place), but also that they get there along a 'straight line' from where they were. There are 2 basic ways of doing this, the older one (which has a lower transistor count, but is a right pain to get working) is to do it in the analogue circuirty, that is the DACs 'jump' to the new valuse, the analogue circuitry then genreates the appropariate ramnps to mvoe the beam), the other is to do it digitally, calcualting stairsteps along the vector, moving the DAC ouptus one step at a time, and using analogue circuitry to smooth the result. Unless there are good reasons not to, I would recomend the latter approach. You can porduce the stairsteps eitehr using simple logic ICs (take a look at things like the DEC VT11 system) or using a microprocessor. The latter is probably easier. Jaut about any processor would be fine, I see no reason not to use a Z80 Somethign to be acaefule of is the relative speed of drawing differnt length vectotrs. If the beam moves more slowly on some lines than on otehrs, the former will appaer brighter on the screen.Try to keep drawing speed constant. There are then 2 other parts to the project. The first is the DACs themselves. I think you want more than 8 birs of resulution -- 12 bits would seem to be sensibe (12 bit DACs are not that expensive now). Try to get double-buffered DACs, which allow you to load the input regsters from the processor and then later transfer that registers's contents to the DAC iteself. The advantage of that is the processor can output the 4 values (high and low parts of X and Y) and then update both dacs simultaneously. Without that, you might get little glitches on the display. The otehr part is communication to the host. You have suggested dual-port RAM, which is certianly oen way to do it. I would suggest looking at FIFO buffers (each side cna write to a FIFO which si read by the other side. Of even just a pair of ports with handshake flags. SOemthing like this : '374 ----------- 8 | | 8 Data Bus 1 ---/------| D Q |--------/--------Data Bus 2 | | | Clk OE | ----------- | o WrStb/------+--------+ | | +--+-----------+----RdStb/ | | | | o | | --------- +--|\ | | R | | >o---- Ready Flag | +5V--|D Q|o-----------|/ | | | '00 +-------|> | | | --------- E.g part of '74 The ready flag shoud lbe readable by an input port on each processor. The ideea is the processor 1 can write to the '374 latch, when it does so, it sets the D-type at the bottom, maingign the ready flag line go high. Processor 2 can detect this, it will then read from the '374, clearing the D-type and briinging the ready flag low again. Processor 1 can monitor the flag line too to see when processor 2 has read the data. The NAND means that the ready flag will remain high while proecessor 2 is reading (and thus asserting the reset line to the D-type) so proecessor 1 doesn't try to writ at this thime (when it couldn't set the D-type). Take a look at the hP120 schematics to see how a pair of Z80z can communicate using this sort of circuitry. -tony

13 years, 6 months

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Mac/Mac Programming/Cocoa/HyperTalk Books free -, Melbourne

by jonas＠otter.se

The bigi difference being that unix wildcards are complicated for a reason - -tjhey let you do poweful things. Predicitve text just gets in the way! In any case, you don't_have_ to use wildcards in unix (you can always type the neames explicitly). On the other hand, I've not found a way to avoid this darn predictive text. -tony Options -> Dictionary -> Dictionary off should do the trick /Jonas

13 years, 6 months

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Word Perfect 5.1 Documents?

by brian＠quarterbyte.com

I wrote this note yesterday, but replied to cctalk-request by mistake. (The listserv engine wasn't impressed, by the way). ... If you're using the built-in import or export filters provided with Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, or whatever, for your own documents, check over the results *very carefully* on a computer that does not have the old word processor installed. For documents anything more complex than a grocery list, the conversion tools provided with document processing programs are not quite what you'd hope for. One bit of advice I have is, if you want to convert old documents, do it now. As each new edition of Word or Corel Office comes out, tools for converting the oldest formats either disappear, or they stop working and the vendors aren't doing the QA to know this. (The current version of Quattro Pro crashes trying to open many spreadsheets in the old .WB2 and .WB3 formats, for instance). People in this group may have intermediate, older software versions lying around, but most folks don't. My experience is that both import and export tools do a decent job of getting raw text in and out. Formatting, styling, graphics, equations, cross references and outline numbering schemes? Not so much. But this is where the investment in a document lies. Text is cheap. One way of converting legacy formats is to have printed pages retyped in China or India at under a dollar a page. (This is a real industry.) But formatting is really expensive. Complex documents with drawings, math or tables can cost a business $25 to 100 a page, or more, to have reworked by skilled clerical or technical staff. Word's import filters are *horrible*. The result *might* look ok at first, but it goes downhill fast one you start editing or try to apply a consistent stylesheet. Their treatment of equations and graphics is downright dangerous. The filter that extracts WordPerfect's WPG graphics only converts the basic [0,x] character set for text that appears in labels in graphics. Characters in the other sets turn into spaces. I saw a drawing that used the "1/2" symbol in a label that read something along the lines of "IMPORTANT: TIGHTEN THIS NUT TO 2 1/2 FOOT POUNDS" come out "IMPORTANT: TIGHTEN THIS NUT TO 2 FOOT POUNDS." The equation importer is no better. "grad" (nabla, the upside-down triangle) and "Delta" both come out as an uppercase Delta. Some other symbols are dropped entirely. Many equations simply don't convert at all. This has been the state of the filters since at least Office 97. Microsoft has made no corrections. OpenOffice? I've found it crashy, especially when trying to export or import. Small documents, OK. Big, complex documents, no. Export tools are typically worse than import tools. Vendors aren't really motivated to provide a good tool that you can use to escape from their product line. You can usually get away with *publishing* to another format, but you usually won't get a maintainable *source* document. (By maintainable, I mean a document with cross-references intact, outline numbering organized the way the new environment's native numbering system works, typography governed by a single consistent style sheet, and so on). My experience with exporting things from WordPerfect is that equations are not editable, or are not converted at all. Graphics exported to any vector format (e.g. WMF) still use the proprietary WordPerfect fonts, so again, symbols beyond basic ASCII are a big problem. Once you move the exported document to a system that doesn't have WordPerfect installed, symbols disappear from the graphics. PDFs with embedded fonts get around this, but, PDFs are really bad format for documents that have to be maintained. (A couple of years ago we lost a bid to do a conversion for a major US oil company. They decided to convert a huge archive of refinery operating manuals in-house on the cheap, by making PDFs and then converting the PDFs to Word. They will be losing all automatic cross references and numbering. After a few future edits, "Before opening this valve, see the critical warnings in step 3.32.4 on page 147" will be pointing to the wrong comments on the wrong page because these numbers are now just literal text. Management didn't seem to be at all concerned about this. If I lived next to a refinery on the Gulf Coast, I'd move.) There are a lot of other details that get lost in translation by the native tools that won't matter as much to an individual, but do matter a lot to organizations that have thousands of documents to maintain. My business is there, so I've written converters from scratch. Keeps me employed! Brian =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- _| _| _| Brian Knittel _| _| _| Quarterbyte Systems, Inc. _| _| _| Tel: 1-510-559-7930 _| _| _| http://www.quarterbyte.com

13 years, 6 months

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Wanted: TI 733 KSR/ASR acoustic coupler or cover plate

by legalize＠xmission.com

Hi, If you take a look at this photo you'll notice an acoustic coupler attached to a mounting plate on the right hand side: <http://user.xmission.com/~legalize/tmp/TI_733_KSR.jpg> I'm looking for either the cover plate for this opening, or the acoustic coupler for this opening. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

13 years, 6 months

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Nuclear Data/Lilith board photos

by legalize＠xmission.com

<http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/cgm/boards/> Also a Lilith/Eve board in there. Jos, is this a board you've already done? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 version available for download <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com/the-direct3d-graphics-pipeline/> Legalize Adulthood! <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

13 years, 6 months

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Looking for: "STP Connector Card" for a VT103

by derschjo＠mail.msu.edu

This is a long shot -- anyone have a spare "STP Connector Card" for a VT103? This is a small paddle board that plugs into the main VT100 circuit board (on the J3 slot). Basically it re-routes the external serial port internally in order to allow it to connect to the VT-103's internal PDP-11. It's a completely passive device and I have the schematic, PCB layout, and pinouts so it's not looking like it would be too difficult to just build one, but I figured I'd ask before I went through the effort. (And for those interested, I'm finally doing something fun with the VT-103 I got a few years ago. I've upgraded the backplane to 22 bits, and I've installed a QED 993 board (a 3rd-party 11/93 clone with 4mb memory onboard). Now I just need to work out the SLU connections for the terminal itself (hence the STP connector) and work out some storage... maybe I'll just borrow the SCSI card from my MicroVAX...) Thanks as always, Josh

13 years, 6 months

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Oscilloscope vector display driver...

by dougcoward＠hotmail.com

Chuck said: > Well, if you want "vintage" (and I assume you do) there was at least > one such project in an old issue of Byte or Kilobaud (IIRC). Wow, that takes me back. I built one back in late 1984 on a board to fit into the expansion port of the C64. I believe it was Byte and I believe the project was originally for the Apple II. AFAIR The board had 16 buffers on the address lines feeding two precision resistor networks. One network for the lower 8 address lines connected to the oscilloscope X input. The other network for the upper 8 address lines fed the Y input. Giving you a 256 x 256 vector display of where the processor was accessing memory. I had a paying job to break software protection on some C64 games. And this help alot to determine which parts of memory where pieces of code were being stored. For a while I toyed with the idea of writing a vector verse of Tic-Tac-Toe by programatically putting jmp code pieces out in memory and jump from piece to piece in a loop create the graphics on the oscilloscope. --Doug Coward Poulsbo, WA The new home of the Analog Museum and History Center is http://www.cowardstereoview.com/analog

13 years, 6 months

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Oscilloscope vector display driver...

by geneb＠deltasoft.com

On Thu, 8 Dec 2011, Bill Sudbrink wrote: > Al Kossow wrote: >> On 12/8/11 5:27 PM, Bill Sudbrink wrote: >>> too expensive >> >> typical here. >> >> glad to see your time is worthless. > > Quite the contrary, I enjoy designing and constructing digital > electronics. I consider it a pleasant use of my time. Bill, are you planning on something similar to the ZVG or something more complex? I'm going to need an X/Y driver myself here pretty soon. (I also need to find a good 4" round vector tube...) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

13 years, 6 months

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rj45 -> wireless ->rjr5 ?

by rdawson16＠hotmail.com

On the off chance somebody here has done this: I have 2 wireless routers, one connects to cable and I have an internet connection. Its a wifi too. I want to pick up that wireless signal with another router, locate it in the other part of the house to connect a wired ethernet device. its as if I want a wireless adapter, but not having an output that is usb, but a ethernet jack. Is this possible? Its to avoid running a long cat 5 cable thru the house. Randy

13 years, 6 months

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Oscilloscope vector display driver...

by aek＠bitsavers.org

On 12/8/11 4:47 PM, Bill Sudbrink wrote: > Hi All, > > I'm thinking of building a "somewhat vintage" two-channel DAC board, > intended to drive an oscilloscope as a vector display. I'm just considering > parts now, unless someone has a really good design already set to build. > http://www.zektor.com/zvg/

13 years, 6 months

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Oscilloscope vector display driver...

by wh.sudbrink＠verizon.net

Hi All, I'm thinking of building a "somewhat vintage" two-channel DAC board, intended to drive an oscilloscope as a vector display. I'm just considering parts now, unless someone has a really good design already set to build. By "somewhat vintage" what I mean is that I don't want to just drop in a modern "super chip" that will have ten (or more) times the power of the intended host computer which, by the way, is an SWTPc 6800. I figure the board will have some 8-bit processor on it. I'm leaning towards a Z-80. It will have an EPROM, some scratch static RAM, some glue logic to manage the communication with the SS-30 bus... and this is where I get fuzzy... a 1Kx8 dual ported static RAM and two DACs. These last two elements (the dual ported SRAM and the DACs) are where I don't have any experience. A little googling has led me to the IDT7130 for the dual ported SRAM and the DAC0830 for the DACs. Does anybody in cctalk land have experience with either or both of these chips? I have a source for the DAC0830, but I don't have a source for the IDT7130 yet. The basic idea of the design is for the 6800 to write a vertex list into the dual ported SRAM which the Z-80 then reads and pushes to the DACs. I'm hoping I can just hang these chips off of the Z-80 address and data busses like the RAM and EPROM but I need to do some more reading of the spec sheets. Any help greatly appreciated, Bill S.

13 years, 6 months

1
0
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Unibug ROM for TI TM990/189 University Board

by eric＠brouhaha.com

Does anyone have the "Unibug" ROM that was supplied with the TI TM990/189 University Board? This was an educational and evaluation board for the TMS9980 microprocessor, an 8-bit-bus version of the TMS9900. It's not hard to find images of the "University BASIC" ROMs on the net. Those ROMs replaced the Unibug ROM. Thanks, Eric

13 years, 6 months

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Word Perfect 5.1 Documents?

by brian＠quarterbyte.com

vintagecoder at aol.com wrote: > I didn't know there was any non-magical way to convert Bookmanager > to PDF. Are you saying you can do that? I can work with DCF and Bookmaster _source_ documents, not compiled binary Bookmanager, unfortunately. > I certainly am, since I have and have access to a bunch of > Bookmanager doc that is worthless on PCs although I love it on > mainframes. The comments I wrote yesterday (and posted to cctalk-request by mistake) are about the import and export filters provided with Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice etc, not about DCF/Bookmaster, which really live in another world. I'll post those comments shortly. Bookmaster is pretty great, and it converts to DITA XML in a rather straightforward way, which is no surprise since the latter is a direct descendent of the former. 1978: :note text='Warning'. Don't run with scissors. :enote. 2011: <note type='warning'> Don't run with scissors. </note> DCF (which is the IBM branch of the RUNOFF family tree, upon which Bookmaster is based) is another story. In the hands of documentation folks, it was a markup format. In the hands of engineers, it was a programming language. When engineers wrote documentation, it was a hairy mess. I've untangled some "interesting" DCF documents. Brian

13 years, 6 months

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test-drb December 2011