test-drb February 2012

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

158 participants
158 discussions

by ddsnyder＠zoominternet.net

Piotr, I had problems with my KA694 system at first, I reseated all the cards including the power supply and problems went away. Dan On Wed 02/29/12 8:42 AM , VCOMP vcomp99 at gmail.com sent: Dan, On 02/26/2012 05:46 PM, Daniel Snyder wrote: > Piotr, > > Found the KA694 maintenance manual. Looks as though powerup tests must > finish > to the console prompt in order to perform a firmware upgrade. What > number do > the tests freeze at? > > Below is a normal powerup sequence: > > KA694-A V2.4, VMB 2.15 > Performing normal system tests. > 70..69..68..67..66..65..64..63..62..61..60..59..58..57..56..55.. > 54..53..52..51..50..49..48..47..46..45..44..43..42..41..40..39.. > 38..37..36..35..34..33..32..31..30..29..28..27..26..25..24..23.. > 22..21..20..19..18..17..16..15..14..13..12..11..10..09..08..07.. > 06..05..04..03.. > Tests completed. > Loading system software. > (BOOT/R5:0 DIA0) > > I have looked on Google for the firmware file, did not find it. > Maybe try the comp.sys.dec or comp.os.vms newgroups for > answers. I even looked in some old Condists for the file. > Someone who came from DEC field service may be able > to provide a solution. > > Dan Thank you for your help and hints - I'll try to ask at c.s.d. and c.o.v. As for the boot problems - during startup, system tests are stoping in different stage - sometimes I see first two lines, sometimes I see nothing except 'Performing normal system test' and sometimes it hangs after all tests complete... It's very strange, and the firmware is my first suspect. Unfortunately, I don't have spare CPU card so I can't verify what is the real problem... Regards, Piotr

12 years, 2 months

KA694 FEPROM

by vcomp99＠gmail.com

Hi All For some time now, I'm a happy owner of a VAX 4000-705 system. Unfortunately, it came with corrupted firmware, and I don't have replacement KA694... In 'KA694 CPU System Maintenance' I found information that there were FEPROM updates distributed (AFAIK it was called Firmware Update Utility). Can someone on this list point me to a source for that? Or at least the firmware image alone? TIA, Piotr

12 years, 2 months

FREE: Old BYTE magazines - some de-spined

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

I have been scanning and OCRing BYTE magazines, and so far have a stack two feet tall of magazines which have been de-spined with a large paper cutter. Dates are from 1978 to 1987 - not all issues are present. They are free to anyone who wants to pick-up or pay shipping. They are in southern California, Orange County, 92656 I have half as many which have NOT been de-spined, and are intact - someone else has already scanned those issues, so I won't cut up mine, but will still give them away - nothing earlier than 1980 though. Steve.

12 years, 2 months

ATTN: Nerds UK and Down Under: Television Program about, 1980s Hackers

by jonas＠otter.se

On Fri, 17 Feb 2012 22:17:17 +0000 (GMT), ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell) wrote: > A few comments... > > 1) I can find nothing to suggest that this has anythign to do with the > UK. The televisoin company is not a UK one (AFAIK), and while is at least > one small village in England called Melbourne, I cna't beleive it had > much of a hacker./cracker community. They are based in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. They must mean Melbourne, Australia. /Jonas

12 years, 2 months

Discferret broken?

by cb＠kryoflux.com

Hi Johannes, I can assure you there has never been a problem like this with KryoFlux. Our devs work in software engineering for large companies (e.g. console hardware and games, chances are you already own a device that has code made by one of us) and are trained to the latest standards. Even dumps made with the very first public beta are valid in regard to data integrity and there is no need to redump anything. There are hundreds of units out in the field, some at large institutes and libraries, where they are being used daily. It's a device made by preservationists for preservationists. For the record: KryoFlux' counters are 32 bits wide. This is no hardware limitation, it was just chosen as sufficient, but we could as well move to 64 if needed. I would recommend our forums at http://forum.kryoflux.com/ which should give you an impression about user satisfaction. We recently added ADF writing, with more formats to follow. Best, Chris Am 27.02.2012 19:00, schrieb cctalk-request at classiccmp.org: > Has anyone heard of problems with Kyroflux?

12 years, 2 months

Slowest-seeking floppy or hard drive ever made?

by alhartman＠yahoo.com

I remember taking a copy of NewDos 2.1+ , and an issue of 80-Micro to my local Radio Shack and using their Model I to apply zaps to the OS to speed up the boot and step speed. The store manager thought I was crazy, but it worked great! There were also zaps for TRS-DOS 1.3 which I applied to a copy of that, and made copies for the store. They gave out the faster TRS-DOS to all their disk drive sales as a way to enhance the sale. By that time, the drives were all Tandon TM-100's and could easily handle 12ms stepping. I think I also applied the 40 track patch as well. Al Hartman From: Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> On 02/26/2012 01:56 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: > One of the things that I remember about Apparat (slightly before that)? > was that NewDOS (was it only in NewDos80, or all the way back to? > APRDOS?) gave the user the capability to set the step time, to be able? > to take advantage of the 5ms step time of the Tandon, etc. drives,? > rather than have to always step everything at 40ms to be able to? > handle the original SA400 (the original drive shipped with TRS80).? IIRC, NEWDOS/80 allowed the step rate to be changed on a per-drive basis? using the PDRIVE command. In fact, you could change an amazing number of? parameters for the drive or the filesystem format using that command. I don't think NEWDOS had such a command, though there might have been? ZAPs (patches) to change the step rate globally.|

12 years, 2 months

Old Murata databook

by dan＠decodesystems.com

Hello, Does anyone have access to a Murata databook from the 1998 - 2004 time frame? I'm looking for a datasheet for a particular part and have not been able to find anything online. Please contact me off-list. Thanks! Cheers, Dan dan at decodesystems.com

12 years, 2 months

Slowest-seeking floppy or hard drive ever made?

by tom94022＠comcast.net

I don't know what was the slowest, but I suspect u can get by with what was the slowest defacto industry standard as default and not worry about anyone who was faster. As I recall Shugart dominated the 8 and 5? inch FDs and they were not buffered. So your step rates from their specs are SA800 ? 8 msec SA400 ? 40 msec SA400L ? 20 msec I believe most of the 3? did use buffered seek and I would get the Sony spec, not the first Sony but the one that complied with the MIC standard cartridge spec. Sony may have adopted the Shugart spec, which was: SA300 Unbuffered ? 6 msec SA300 Buffered ? 50 usec minimum period; 1 usec minimum pulse width The SA1000 8-inch HDD from a secondary source apparently can accept buffered pulses at a 1.0 u sec min spacing. The ST506 OEM manual is at Bitsavers; it was unbuffered only at 3 msec minimum period, 10 usec minimum pulse width. (there was a hidden internal second pulse generated at 2.8 msec) The ST412 specification [Apr 82] was one Seagate buffered mode implementation that most everyone had to follow ST412 Unbuffered ? 3 msec ST412 Buffered ? 25 usec minimum period; 200 usec maximum period, 2.0 usec minimum pulse width Microprocessor utilization on the ST412 adds the capability of capturing and storing up to 305 step pulses. The controller may burst pulses to the 412 and they will be accepted until 1) time after last pulse exceeds 200 usec or 2) 305 step pulses are received. At the occurrence of either of these conditions, the ST 412 microprocessor will stop accepting step pulses from the controller and will begin issuing them to the stepper motor. Depending on the length of seek, the microprocessor will select the optimum algorithm. Any pulses issued at a rate between 200 usec and 3 msec may be lost. Note the subsequent ST212 (Apr 84) has a buffered spec of 5 usec min, 500 usec max with a 2 usec min pulse width. So I would set my defaults Unbuffered FDD seek ? 40 msec Buffered FDD seek ? not supported Unbuffered HDD seek ? 6 msec Buffered HDD Seek ? 25 usec period with a 2 usec pulse Good luck Tom > From: classiccmp at philpem.me.uk > > Hi guys, > > Does anyone know what the typical range of floppy and ST506/ST412 drive > track-to-track seek rates is? > > I'm finding myself having to modify the seek logic in the DiscFerret to > accommodate the Seagate ST-277R RLL drive, which requires that > buffered-seek pulses be spaced between 8 and 200 microseconds apart. Any > more than that and it assumes you're doing a 'slow' seek at 10ms per > step. > > At the moment the DiscFerret's step rates are set up in 250us intervals, > with an 8-bit divider register. Seek rates can be between 250 > microseconds and 64 milliseconds in this configuration. > > Feeding the ST277R the 250us step pulses... really screws it up. The > drive deasserts READY and SEEK-COMPLETE and seems to freeze up > completely. Hardly unexpected... > > If I change the seek clock to 125us, I get a minimum of 125us and a > maximum of 32ms using the same divider. > > Is 32ms likely to be enough for even the slowest drives? > > Out of curiosity, does anyone know what the slowest-seeking floppy drive > or MFM/RLL hard drive ever made was, and what its track-to-track seek > rate was? > > Thanks, > -- > Phil. > classiccmp at philpem.me.uk > http://www.philpem.me.uk/

12 years, 2 months

Slowest-seeking floppy or hard drive ever made?

by classiccmp＠philpem.me.uk

Hi guys, Does anyone know what the typical range of floppy and ST506/ST412 drive track-to-track seek rates is? I'm finding myself having to modify the seek logic in the DiscFerret to accommodate the Seagate ST-277R RLL drive, which requires that buffered-seek pulses be spaced between 8 and 200 microseconds apart. Any more than that and it assumes you're doing a 'slow' seek at 10ms per step. At the moment the DiscFerret's step rates are set up in 250us intervals, with an 8-bit divider register. Seek rates can be between 250 microseconds and 64 milliseconds in this configuration. Feeding the ST277R the 250us step pulses... really screws it up. The drive deasserts READY and SEEK-COMPLETE and seems to freeze up completely. Hardly unexpected... If I change the seek clock to 125us, I get a minimum of 125us and a maximum of 32ms using the same divider. Is 32ms likely to be enough for even the slowest drives? Out of curiosity, does anyone know what the slowest-seeking floppy drive or MFM/RLL hard drive ever made was, and what its track-to-track seek rate was? Thanks, -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/

12 years, 2 months

UK versus US monitor question

by cctech＠beyondthepale.ie

> > > > > It used to be the case that TVs synced to the mains > > > frequency but I don't > > > > > > Was it? > > > > A long time ago... > > OK, I am sceptical. What do you mean by a 'long time ago'? > > Unti lthe coming of the National Grid, different areas would be supplied > with mains at slightly differnet frequencies (even assuming it was > supposed to be nominally 50Hz), and therre would eb no phase relationship > at all. So usign that for any form of TV synchronisation is a non-starter. > > So that really limits us to post-WW2 TVs. The oldest book of schematics I > have is dated 1953, but it contains models going back to 1948. Not one > attempts to derrive the vertical sync signal from the mains as far as I > can see. > > I'm not sure why I'm getting into this, seeing as I know little about it. However... Perhaps studio sync sources were derived from mains power at one time purely as a method of picking a reference to use so that there would be minimal picture roll when transmission output is switched between different sources? Maybe this was found to be counterproductive when large changes in load caused momentarty variations in frequency even though the electricity producers worked to average these out in the longer term? (I don't have any guesses as to what might have been used for a line sync source.) If a three phase grid system is in use with individual receivers normally connected to single phase supplies derived from it and having no choice as to which phase they ended up getting powered by, it would seem to be rather more difficult to attempt to use the power supply waveform as a sync source for reception than to use the sync pulses present in the transmission. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

12 years, 2 months

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test-drb February 2012