test-drb April 2011

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

184 participants
276 discussions

Quantum leap in disk storage discovered!

by a50mhzham＠gmail.com

Way off topic, sorry, just couldn't resist. News from our fellow IT industry workers in Russia: The chinese have invented a disk drive that allows you to write an infinite amount of data to it! Discovered by a Russian engineer. Be sure to click the 2nd picture for a close-up look at this amazing new technology. http://blog.jitbit.com/2011/04/chinese-magic-drive.html 298 . [Literature] The secret to success as a short story writer is to find the guy who built Kuttner's (and later Silverberg's) water-cooled typewriter :) --Ahasuerus NEW: a50mhzham at gmail.com ? N9QQB (amateur radio) "HEY YOU" (loud shouting) ? Second Tops (Set Dancing) ? FIND ME ON FACEBOOK 43? 7' 17.2" N by 88? 6' 28.9" W ? Elevation 815' ? Grid Square EN53wc LAN/Telecom Analyst ? Open-source Dude ? Musician ? Registered Linux User 385531

13 years, 8 months

Advice on Lisa 2 restoration

by snhirsch＠gmail.com

Hi, I have two Lisa 2s in my possession that both exhibit serious corrision >from battery leakage. One is simply bad, the other is about the worst such situation I've ever laid eyes on. I was able to remove the battery packs to halt the degradation, but before I make a bad situation worse I thought I'd ask for some advice on how to proceed. I'm also trying to work out what the units might be worth. The deal with the seller is that I'm free to evaluate their condition and attempt to get one working unit out of the two. Assuming a nominally functional Lisa 2 with functional 10MB ProFile and fair cosmetic condition, what do folks think is a fair price for that unit (the owner wants whatever is left back, functioning or not)? Prices on eBay are really all over the map, so that's not of much help. Steve --

13 years, 8 months

US manufacturing (was OT: Incandescent lamps get a reprieve, possiblly)

by shoppa＠trailing-edge.com

>>> I can't find anyone in the US that actually MAKES, not sells USB cables, >>> all the companies source them in from China, so I buy those direct. > >> Unfortunately it seems most of the UK manufacturing companies have gone >> bust, and the few who are left aren't really interested in small-scale >> work unless you're willing to pay well over the market rate... > Same here. The once-mighty American manufacturing industry is all >but dead. It's pretty sad. Now China owns our asses. As to USB connectors.... I'm 99% sure that Keystone and Switchcraft are still made in the USA. A wide variety of more industrial (not so much consumer) plugs and jacks are still made in the USA by other respected names, too. Tim.

13 years, 8 months

RT-11 / RX-01 issues ... "almost" boots ...

by mcsele＠niagaracollege.ca

I am restoring a PDP-11/34 and am currently adding an RX-01 drive to it in order to boot RT-11. I have already located a copy of RT-11 on an LSI-11 system and have made a bootable RX-01 floppy (an M7946 was installed on the LSI-11 to do this). This disk was tested on the LSI-11 system by asserting BHALT, entering a bootstrap via ODT, and booting from the disk (which was, at the time, the only device): it boots properly and runs RT-11 version 5.04SJ as expected. An M7846 RX-11 controller was installed in SPC slot 9 of the 11/34, the bootstrap loaded at 1000 via the front panel (and verified), and a boot attempted. When STARTed at 1000, the RUN light comes on, the RX-01 head engages (as evident from the solenoid), and you can hear the heads advancing a track or two then it stops: the "SR DISP" led and the RUN led go out, and the display reads "005134". Examining the bootstrap area (1000) shows the bootstrap was replaced by data. Does anyone know what the "005134" code means? I search through RT-11 docs and can't find anything on error codes or such and I'm hoping this will help with the debugging. Thanks! Professor Mark Csele, P.Eng. Niagara College, Canada 300 Woodlawn Rd., L-23 Welland, ON, L3C 7L3 (905) 735-2211 x.7629 E-Mail: mcsele at niagarac.on.ca URL: http://technology.niagarac.on.ca/people/mcsele Author of "Fundamentals of Light Sources and Lasers", Wiley, 2004

13 years, 8 months

DEC docs and machines available, Suffolk, UK

by witchy＠binarydinosaurs.co.uk

Folks, Please see this email from Chris Bailey and reply directly to him if interested. There's some really nice stuff in this collection of largely docs and maintenance spares, but also some VAXstations, cables (mostly serial BC03M/BC22D and thinwire), diagnostic floppies, VAX TU58s, a microfiche reader with quite a few fiches, and entire box of spare LS74 type chips, a bag of what looks like drive belts, rack kits for BA35x shelves, 2 BA23 backplanes, 3 boxes of 115v fans etc. I can go back and hold things for a while for interested parties but I have limited space myself these days :/ Some pix: (all between 300-600kb jpg) http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul01.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul02.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul03.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul04.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul05.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul06.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul07.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul08.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul09.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul10.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul11.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul12.jpg http://f0p.co.uk/DEChaul13.jpg There's a cutoff date of 21st April since Chris doesn't live where the kit currently is, also there's more VAX docs and probably other spares up in the loft of the house that haven't been discovered yet. Note I've already picked up the Pro350s (well, 2 Pro350s and one VAX Console) because I don't have one and I know someone else who is looking for one. Cheers, and please help save this collection! -- Adrian/Witchy Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator Www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UK's biggest private home computer collection? Message from chris bailey (chr15bailey at yahoo.co.uk) on April 7th, 2011 at 01:27PM (BST). Hi, Im emailing you to see if you are interested in a load of vintage Digital Equipment Corporation computers etc. My dad has now passed away, but he was a DEC engineer for 20+years. He amassesd a whole load of DEC computers bits when he retired. We are now clearing out the garage but are not sure what to do with all this computer stuff, and just thought we'd see if anyone wants any of it before throwing it out. Here is a brief list of whats in the garage. TZ85 BA350 MA (X3) VAXSTATION 3100 (X2) VS42A-SN (X2) DEC PRO 350 (X3) LN08-A3-SN (LAZER PRINTER) RZ55-F3 (X2) TK50Z-63 HZ821-00 (dismantled state) V3201 (small monitor) VR297D3 (Big monitor) SC01-E (microfiche reader + inc microfiches) MICROVAX II (large) There are numerous boxes of manuals,disks, cables,circuit boards etc. A quick reply would be appreciated if you would like to have any of this, otherwise it will go to the tip. We live not far from Ipswich (Martlesham Heath) in Suffolk. Regards. Chris Bailey. ------ End of Forwarded Message

13 years, 8 months

Advice on Lisa 2 restoration

by jonas＠otter.se

> I would claim that you're uch better audio designer from actually > designing soemthing (even thoguh you had transistors fly across the > room) > than you would have been if you'd never had a go. Definitely. I did go on to design and build a preamp and power amp that worked quite well, and didn't blow up. > Perhaps I'd metter not mention the time I had a pair of EL34s with > the > anode glowing bright orange/yellow. Of coruse I had managed to short > out > the grid bias supply... I suppose they still worked after a fashion afterwards? If that had happened to a transistor (except possibly a 2N3055) I wouldn't have expected it to work afterwards. > Never made _that_ mistake again. The beat learning experiences are the mistakes one makes. /Jonas

13 years, 8 months

Advice on Lisa 2 restoration

by jonas＠otter.se

> A good degreaser, but not so tender on plastics. > > In the old days, I'd just use some carbon tet. Argh, I was wrong. Perchloroethylene is allowed here and used for dry cleaning, although there is a bill to ban it from the opposition in the Swedish Parliament. Trichloroethylene OTOH has been banned since the 90s. *That* smells nice too ;-) There used to be a washing device for car parts at Volvo which used hot trichloroethylene which you sprayed on the part to be cleaned. Amazing how fast it removed all traces of grease, underseal etc from a part from the front suspension of my parents' Volvo 544... The sand blasting thingy alongside took care of all the rust in short order. /Jonas

13 years, 8 months

Advice on Lisa 2 restoration

by jonas＠otter.se

> . . . and my Nikonos came with a small tube of silicone lubricant to > put > on the O-ring that keeps the lens mount watertight. That's interesting. Could I be misinformed? OTOH glass is silicon to a great extent, so the idea that silicones should bond with glass doesn't sound unlikely. /Jonas

13 years, 8 months

Advice on Lisa 2 restoration

by jonas＠otter.se

> [1] One of the cats who chooses to live with me. Explanation of the > neam > on request :-) "Mew-on" ? Training a cat sounds like a futile exercise, unless the cat actually wants to learn whatever you are trying to teach it. I would have thought that cats would much rather learn how to teleport into birds' nests, or how to get someone to make a machine to replicate mice. > > I am conviced that there's a spacetime warp in my workshop. Things > just > vanish. I was reparing an Epson dot matrix printer and I dropped a > plastic bush fromthe apepr feed mechanism. It bounced on the floor > and There are spacetime warps everywhere, in everybody's workshops. And ask anybody with a washing machine whether they always find both socks of every pair. Either washing machines are designed to eat socks or else there is a spacetime warp in every washing machine. Have you read "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" by Douglas Adams? If not, I can recommend it. More down-to-earth, I have read that putting a ladies' nylon stocking over the end of the vacuum cleaner tube and vacuuming the workshop is a good way to find small parts that have escaped. /Jonas

13 years, 8 months

Lisa Test 3.0?

by terry.stewart296a＠gmail.com

Steve. This dead spot problem is exactly the same problem Tony and i have been grappling with for the past couple of months! Check past posts on thiz forum. Despite lots of tests, replacements and disassemblies we never got to the bottom of it. In the end i sourced a replacement drive. On 6/04/2011 11:14 AM, "Steven Hirsch" <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote: On Tue, 5 Apr 2011, Mr Ian Primus wrote: > --- On Tue, 4/5/11, Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote: > >> Several questions: >> >> - I th... The diskette drive was throwing a lot of read errors and making a lot of friction noise. On a hunch, I moved the pressure-pad tension spring to a lower setting (closer to the pivot). Then, I put in the MacWorks diskette. It chunked away for a while, emitted a beep and spat it out. The Macintosh "insert diskette" icon was on screen :-). Put in the Mac System diskette and it loaded to the desktop. Turns out that LisaTest 3.0 will NOT run in 512k, which might be a good data point for others in the this situation down the road. I found an AST RamStack 1M board in the other machine and put that in the second memory slot. ListTest booted without a problem and is busy testing memory as this is written. One serious issue with the diskette drive: It has one or more "dead" spots in its rotation. If it stops at such a point it fails to spin up again at the next access. When it spits the diskette out with an error, I give the spindle a small push with a screwdriver, reinsert and it picks up from that point. Hopefully folks have some sage advice for dealing with dead spots? It's not related to the excess pressure on the head - it doesn't even try to spin. There's absolutely no sound or activity. Steve --

13 years, 8 months

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test-drb April 2011