test-drb October 2012

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

196 participants
268 discussions

by tpresence＠hotmail.com

I have been trying to get a microvax II fully functional over the last few weeks and I seem to have a roadblock. The system used to boot and allow logins, but now after connecting a VCB-02 cable to display, keyboard and mouse, it has become more and more unreliable. It may be possible that some assistance I got from a colleague might have helped to cause this situation, but I think its unlikely. When the system was booting properly, it wouldn't bring up decwindows even when the display, kb, and mouse were attached to the bulkhead cable (bc18z). I was asked to check the WINDOW_SYSTEM variable within sysgen to determine if the current value was anything other than 1. In this case it was 2. He asked me to change the value to 1, and then to write it to current and active, then complete an autoconfigure all. I don't feel this is a factor, because when I boot into conversational mode and set the WINDOW_SYSTEM variable to 0 the system still faults when I perform a @sys$system:startup. In conversational mode, when I launch the startup.com script, the kernel panics as it does when it boots in normal mode. I was hoping to edit the startup.com script (or move it to a safe location and place a partial startup script in its place), but I'm not sure what parts I need to have. If I dont run the startup script, I can't run anal/crash because of protection issues. At first when connected to a display the system would kernel panic during boot. It would boot WITHOUT the display being connected, however, so I continued using it without the display. Unfortunately, now it appears to panic every boot, and I can't get to a prompt to run any diagnostics such as anal/crash. No user based changes were made to the system between boots. The real brain teaser is that it doesn't always crash during the same process load, I have been trying to get a microvax II fully functional over the last few weeks and I seem to have a roadblock. The system used to boot and allow logins, but now after connecting a VCB-02 cable to display, keyboard and mouse, it has become more and more unreliable. The real brain teaser is that it doesn't always crash during the same process load, sometimes its OPCOM, sometimes its STARTUP, sometimes its DECW$STARTUP as it is below. Anyone have any insight on how to proceed? I'm not a very experienced user. A crash example is below: KA630-A.V1.3 Performing normal system tests. 7..6..5..4..3.. Tests completed. >>> boot 2..1..0.. VAX/VMS Version V5.2 Major version id = 1 Minor version id = 0 $! Copyright (c) 1989 Digital Equipment Corporation. All rights reserved. The VAX/VMS system is now executing the system startup procedure. **** FATAL BUG CHECK, VERSION = V5.2 MACHINECHK, Machine check while in kernel mode CRASH CPU: 00 PRIMARY CPU: 00 ACTIVE/AVAILABLE CPU MASKS: 00000001/00000001 CURRENT PROCESS = DECW$STARTUP REGISTER DUMP R0 = 00000000 R1 = 7FF38058 R2 = 00000000 R3 = 00000268 R4 = 00000000 R5 = 00000000 R6 = 00004152 R7 = 00000001 R8 = 0000026C R9 = 00003FDC R10= 000042DC R11= 00006CF0 AP = 7FF380FC FP = 7FF380C0 SP = 803AF1E0 PC = 8028D977 PSL= 04DF0008 KERNEL/INTERRUPT/BOOT STACK 803AF1E8 0000000C 803AF1EC 00000082 803AF1F0 7FF38058 803AF1F4 02000002 803AF1F8 00001534 803AF1FC 03C00001 LOADED IMAGES [SYSMSG]SYSMSG.EXE 800E0600 8010A400 [SYS$LDR]SYSLDR_DYN.EXE 80195200 80196C00 [SYS$LDR]DDIF$RMS_EXTENSION.EXE 80197000 80198200 [SYS$LDR]RECOVERY_UNIT_SERVICES.EXE 80198200 80198E00 [SYS$LDR]RMS.EXE 8010A400 80130200 SYS$NETWORK_SERVICES.EXE 80130C00 80130E00 SYS$TRANSACTION_SERVICES.EXE 80131400 80131600 CPULOA.EXE 80131C00 80133200 LMF$GROUP_TABLE.EXE 80133C00 80134600 SYSLICENSE.EXE 80134A00 80136000 SYSGETSYI.EXE 80136600 80137C00 SYSDEVICE.EXE 80138000 80139600 MESSAGE_ROUTINES.EXE 80139C00 8013C800 EXCEPTION.EXE 8014CC00 80155400 LOGICAL_NAMES.EXE 80155C00 80157600 SECURITY.EXE 80157C00 80159400 LOCKING.EXE 80159A00 8015C200 PAGE_MANAGEMENT.EXE 8015C800 80164800 WORKING_SET_MANAGEMENT.EXE 80165000 80169600 IMAGE_MANAGEMENT.EXE 8016A000 8016CA00 EVENT_FLAGS_AND_ASTS.EXE 8016D000 8016E400 IO_ROUTINES.EXE 8016EA00 80175C00 PROCESS_MANAGEMENT.EXE 80176200 8017E800 ERRORLOG.EXE 8018BC00 8018C600 PRIMITIVE_IO.EXE 8018CC00 8018DC00 SYSTEM_SYNCHRONIZATION_UNI.EXE 8018E000 8018F600 SYSTEM_PRIMITIVES.EXE 8018FC00 80193000 **** STARTING MEMORY DUMP.... ERROR WRITING 127 BLOCK(S), STARTING AT VBN 5471 - STATUS = 00000054

12 years, 2 months

It lives!

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

> Guess what computer I brought back from the dead? > http://raspberry-python.blogspot.com/2012/10/it-lives-hint-1.html > I'm thinking somebody on this list has used one and will recognize it. > Just a simple screenshot to start with... It's Applesoft, but says "PRESS RESET" at the top, so.... an Apple II (not plus) with Applesoft language card? Or upgraded with Applesoft ROMs? Personally I like Integer Basic :-) Tim.

12 years, 2 months

C.B. Falconer 1931-2012

by dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu

Reposted from comp.os.cpm by Charles Richmond I am sorry to report that C.B. "Chuck" Falconer has passed away. He used to be a regular in alt.folklore.computers, comp.os.cpm, and comp.lang.c. He had a long and involved history with computers and programming. He was born in Switzerland on September 13, 1931 and passed away in Damariscotta, Maine on June 4, 2012. I'm sure most everyone here remembers him and his posts to Usenet. One of his many accomplishments was writing an article for an early Dr. Dobbs magazine on implementing floating point on the Intel 8080 microprocessor. His resent resume and the downloadable files from a recent web page of his... can be found at You can a recent resume of his at the ClassicCmp website: http://tinyurl.com/8fudn4o His obituary is at: http://tinyurl.com/8ahongj -- 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?

12 years, 2 months

Epson QX-10 question

by fjkraan＠xs4all.nl

> you put in a disk, you get a cursor, but that`s it. Puter won`t give > disk back. Do I have to take it apart? The SD-321 drives have a lock mechanism that should release the disk when the button is in the 'out' position. But it doesn't as the old grease keeps the lock in place. I have observed this with both the QX10 and the TF-20 which both use the 1/3 height SD-321 disk drives. So far I managed to get my disks back by prying the lock upwards (or was it downwards?) with my fingers (not very pleasant work). Everytime I plan to fix the drive by replacing the gunked grease, but so far it didn't happen. Greetings & success, Fred Jan

12 years, 2 months

Blue screen of Basic

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

and not playing Traveller? ------------------------------ On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 7:37 PM PDT Zane H. Healy wrote: >At 5:44 PM -0400 10/24/12, Sridhar Ayengar wrote: >>Zane H. Healy wrote: >>I've always preferred the following. The key part is how I end line 10 >>with the spaces and the semicolon. >> >>10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD "; >>20 GOTO 10 >> >>The first program I ever wrote in BASIC was (drumroll, please): >> >>10 GOTO 10 >> >>Peace... Sridhar > >LOL! Well I guess it has the advantage of being 'bug free'. :-) I >find myself tempted to turn on my Commodore 64 and try it. > >BTW, I'm quite happy to report that as part of the project to redo my >darkroom, I've set my Commodore 64 back up (yes, in the darkroom >area). In fact part of the time I was supposed to be working on the >Darkroom last Saturday I was actually playing a game on the C64. :-) > >Zane > > > >-- >| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator | >| healyzh at aracnet.com | OpenVMS Enthusiast | >| | Photographer | >+----------------------------------+----------------------------+ >| My flickr Photostream | >| http://www.flickr.com/photos/33848088 at N03/ | >| My Photography Website | >| http://www.zanesphotography.com | >

12 years, 2 months

Nasa Technical Report - An operating system for the LINC computer

by spedraja＠ono.com

Searching in the NASA Technical Reports Server I've located this document: An operating system for the LINC computer Url: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19660006438_1966006438… It appears to contain the source code of a BLINK compiler. Regards Sergio

12 years, 2 months

QBUS/UNIBUS transceivers (again)

by fraveydank＠gmail.com

Hey all, Since I'm stuck in a hotel for the IEEE LCN conference, I had nothing better to do than look up lots and lots of datasheets in search for an ideal driver/receiver pair for modern DEC bus circuits. Warning: below is a lengthy missive. Ignore it if the subject line doesn't turn you on (so to speak). The driver is generally the easy part; there are quite a few FETs out there that ought to do the job acceptably. You need a total (driver + receiver) capacitance of 9.35 pf, which is generally the tallest order, but it's easy enough to limit the slew rate of the pulldown by putting a series resistor in line with the gate. I believe Peter Wallace recommended the FDV301N, which seems as good as any; put one for the driver and one at the source as a gate for a group of them, and you should have a pretty effective transceiver. It might take a bit of space, and you'll eat a lot in assembly if you're not doing it yourself, but as Dave McGuire pointed out, if your main logic is contained in a micro and/or CPLD/FPGA, you're going to have plenty of space. And for SOT-23 packages, you can probably get close enough to the density of the original (quad-gate) DIP devices. The FDV301N claims a Coss of 6 pf, though I haven't done my homework to think about how the other parasitics affect the input capacitance. The receiver is a little harder. In the National (now re-branded by TI, which is hilarious considering the part was obsolete and long out of production by the time TI acquired them) app note on the DS3662, they indicate that they essentially just did the obvious thing and used a comparator for the input. Doing so with discrete comparators is possible, but generally costly in terms of both money and board space, and I've found parametric searches of comparators to be a bit tricky, depending on where you look. At least looking through what Digi-Key offers (and they're pretty much the best parametric search I know), there are few quad units fast enough which don't break the bank. The MAX9108 is a good candidate, though (quad gate for $4, or $2 in quantity 100, which you'd certainly be looking at for more than one or two units). It's a TSSOP-14 package, which isn't exactly tiny, but it's smaller than a DIP in most respects. It has a dual-element cousin, the MAX9107, which comes in a SOT23-8 package; I believe you could achieve higher density that way, though you'd end up spending more per gate. The input bias current is in the sub-uA range, but there's no input capacitance listed, which bothers me a bit. The outputs are TTL-compatible, which is generally compatible with 3.3v logic as well; it has a typical Voh of slightly more than 3.3v, but at 100uA source current, which is well within the handling range of the built- in protection diodes of most FPGAs (and it's close enough that it probably wouldn't trip them). Another good candidate is the NE521, which has some very nice logical gating inputs (which would save some external components if you're using bidirectional lines on the FPGA side). It's also a dual part, but unfortunately only available as small as SOIC-14, which doesn't provide for a lot of density (it is available in DIP, though, which should make some people happy). Its propagation delay is 12 ns instead of the MAX910x's 25, though both are still comfortably below the 32 required for DEC buses. Bias current is a max of 40 uA over temperature range (DEC max for the receiver unit load is 80 uA). It also does not provide an input capacitance; I suppose it's common with comparators? This one is also not as cheap per gate; even in quantity 100, it's still almost $4 each ($2 per gate), which probably offsets the convenience of having the enables built in to the part for most people (especially considering the larger package size). In any case, the solution doesn't seem as infeasible as I previously thought. Anyone want to go in on a few test boards together to split the costs? It seems like it would be prudent to make a few short (2 inches, maybe) dual-width boards to test input and output capacitance/waveforms before we try making whole boards, and if someone has a UNIBUS machine they're willing (and able) to test out on, that would be handy since I definitely do not. Also, are there major flaws in the above analysis? Am I totally smoking crack? The app note I referenced is here: http://www.ti.com/lit/an/snla139/snla139.pdf There's another interesting related one here: http://www.ti.com/lit/an/snla134/snla134.pdf - Dave

12 years, 2 months

Looking for Roland LAPC-I & Creative CT1320C

by skaye2005＠gmail.com

I'm a newbie here so I apologize in advance if I am not doing this right! Anyways, I am a collector of vintage soundcards and I'm looking for a Creative Sound Blaster CT1320A or CT1320C as well as a Roland LAPC-I ISA sound card. Thanks!! Steve On 10/25/2012 2:30 AM, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote: > Send cctalk mailing list submissions to > cctalk at classiccmp.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://www.classiccmp.org/mailman/listinfo/cctalk > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > cctalk-request at classiccmp.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > cctalk-owner at classiccmp.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of cctalk digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Blue screen of Basic (Zane H. Healy) > 2. Re: VMS newbie with sick VAXstation (mc68010) > 3. Re: Superbrain schematics (Anthony Wallach) > 4. Re: pdp 14/30 chassis on ebay (Jochen Kunz) > 5. Re: Another Apple 1 for sale? (barythrin at gmail.com) > 6. Re: Blue screen of Basic (Sridhar Ayengar) > 7. Re: Surplus DE9F to 8P8C adapters available (Philip Pemberton) > 8. Re: PERQ monitor problem (was HP 9845 power supply > diagnostics) (Tony Duell) > 9. Re: Blue screen of Basic (Chris Tofu) > 10. Re: Surplus DE9F to 8P8C adapters available (Pete Turnbull) > 11. Re: Surplus DE9F to 8P8C adapters available (Tothwolf) > 12. Re: Blue screen of Basic (Francois Dion) > 13. Re: Blue screen of Basic (Zane H. Healy) > 14. QBUS/UNIBUS transceivers (again) (David Riley) > 15. Re: Blue screen of Basic (Chris Tofu) > 16. Re: QBUS/UNIBUS transceivers (again) (Dave McGuire) > 17. Re: QBUS/UNIBUS transceivers (again) (Guy Sotomayor) > 18. Re: QBUS/UNIBUS transceivers (again) (Dave McGuire) > 19. Re: Another Apple 1 for sale? (mc68010) > 20. Microvax II won't boot, hardware error? (Kevin Reynolds) > 21. Re: This is a VT180 right ? (Dave McGuire) > 22. Re: Surplus DE9F to 8P8C adapters available (Pete Turnbull) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:35:09 -0700 > From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> > To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" > <cctalk at classiccmp.org> > Subject: Re: Blue screen of Basic > Message-ID: <p0624081accadd679caef(a)[192.168.1.199]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed" > > I've always preferred the following. The key > part is how I end line 10 with the spaces and the > semicolon. > > 10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD "; > 20 GOTO 10 > > Zane > > > > At 10:56 AM -0400 10/24/12, Francois Dion wrote: >> On the last guessing thread (it lives! about the >> CES apple clone), William said: >> "Make it PRINT "HELLO" and then GOTO 10 for me >> one more time, won't you please?" >> >> And the C64 fans were also left in want, so I present to you the Blue >> Screen Of Basic: >> >> http://raspberry-python.blogspot.com/2012/10/blue-screen-of-basic.html >> >> I'm sure quite a few people already know what it is... The follow up >> post wont be a clue but simply a detailed post on this modern retro >> computer. >> >> >> Fran?ois >> >> -- >> solarisdesktop.blogspot.com - raspberry-python.blogspot.com >

12 years, 2 months

An 80386 CPU S-100 Board

by monahan＠vitasoft.org

In case you missed it on one of the web postings I would like to mention that Andrew Lynch and I have just completed a prototype of a new 80386 Master/Slave CPU S-100 bus board. This exciting board is capable of reaching up to12MHz in an S-100 system with an active terminated bus. This is an ongoing project. It utilizes the 16 bit mode of the 80386 to address the 16MG of RAM the S-100 bus is capable of addressing. A second daughter board system with an overhead ribbon cable connector is planned to for daughter board(s) to enlarge the RAM space up to the 4GB the CPU is capable of addressing (using high density static and DRAM chips). If you would like to read about this board please look here:- http://s100computers.com/My%20System%20Pages/80386%20Board/80386%20CPU%20Boa rd.htm It is too early to accept "orders" for this board, but if you would like to be kept in the loop as this board evolves keep an eye on the above page. John Monahan Ph.D e-mail: <mailto:monahan at vitasoft.org> monahan at vitasoft.org Text: <mailto:monahan at txt.att.net> monahan at txt.att.net

12 years, 2 months

Another Apple 1 for sale?

by david＠classiccomputing.com

> Did I miss something or is there another Apple 1 for sale > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2221860/Rare-working-Apple-1… Yep, and this one works, so maybe it will sell, considering the last one >from Christie's did not - http://www.classiccomputing.com/CC/Blog/Entries/2012/10/9_Another_Apple_1_A… This German auction house is seriously marketing the auction too. There's video of the machine working and they put an ascii graphic of Woz on the little monitor! http://www.breker.com/english/index.htm Best, David Greelish - Computer Historian, Author, Speaker, Blogger & Podcaster - Founder of the Atlanta Historical Computing Society Producer of the Vintage Computer Festival Southeast 1.0 - 2/9/13 http://about.me/davidgreelish

12 years, 2 months

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test-drb October 2012