test-drb March 2012

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

189 participants
239 discussions

by lproven＠gmail.com

@DeltaNC: If anyone would like a ZX81, a Rubberkey or a Plus let me know. I have one of each and they're getting skipped otherwise. Untested, no PSUs. @DeltaNC: Reading an old Spectrum instruction manual, specifically about loading software. You "App Store" kids don't know how good you have it! That's https://twitter.com/#!/DeltaNC if you don't speak Tweet. Anyone interested? I think they're in Glasgow. -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

12 years, 7 months

KryoFlux power rail (was: Re: Discferret broken?)

by cb＠kryoflux.com

> > Though I was not specifically responding to the concerns over KryoFlux, > I would refer not to the input protection response, but this one: "and > there's lack of protection overall, especially in the power supply.". Like ZoomFloppy KryoFlux does not need external power at all. It is a bus-powered device. However, we added the option to feed in external power (just in case). There are two options for this power rail: protected (the user feeds 7-9 volts via the low voltagee connector or +12 via the molex, both are exactly regulated to +5V for the +5V rail and secured with a diode) or unprotected. Users are advised not to use the unprotected rail (needs changing a jumper) unless they know what they are doing. >> > I would really like to avoid the impression something is broken. It's >> > not, it's working. > I think it would be helpful to address the power supply protection > concern. Rightly or otherwise, prospective customers could conjecture > that this might impact or damage their precious disk drive mechanisms or > electronics. As I said... it's bus powered. And protected with voltage regulators and diodes. How much can you do with 500mA and +5V? I don't see any risk for the drive attached. Of course you can always be more protective, but at what cost? If you look a popular electronics you will find that there are some things you simply rely on. Like the correct voltage coming out of the USB port, a switching PSU or the correct polarity of a PSU. I found a friend's SNES dead because it simply has no protection diode. He'd attached a replacement PSU and soldered the connector himself? Wrong polarity. Oops. I am not saying that completely leaving that out was a wise idea, but it works for them. I am pretty satisfied with what we have. In other words? an airbag is fine. Putting the whole car in some kind of styrofoam makes driving a hassle. > > I took my position from > "http://forum.kryoflux.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3#p1230. At least with > ZoomFloppy, people expect to both image and write disks with the > product. From the FAQ, I see that DTC will not write file back to disk, > but Analyzer can. If the FAQ is wrong, I based my concern on invalid > information. Thanks for pointing this out. DTC has evolved and, by now, also supports writing of IPF and ADF back to disk. More to come. You would need the Analyser to create IPF files as this is beyond the capabilities of DTC. IPFs are not the result of a conversion process, instead it's an auto scripting feature that will, for most disks, describe the mastering data. The rest needs manual adjustments. > I do have to handle feedback and questions for such a product, and I > understand it's a pain at times. However, since your tool images more > obscure formats and drive mechanisms, I struggle with the idea that > there are a huge number of uninterested folks who want the tool but > aren't savvy enough to learn it. This is, admittedly, a very elite > group in this space. Well? we do support so many systems by now? without doing anything, I have a dozen of tickets popping up. Every day? As I said before, this is something very special and it was never meant to be for "mass-consumption". That does not mean we don't give people access. There's actually people out there using it. > I think your "does not demand a response" itself is a response. When > people "google" for this thread, they'll no doubt find this response. I > can't carry the ball further here, I have no horse in this race. I > think simply responding to it puts the focus back on others. Thanks for asking.

12 years, 7 months

IBM, DEC and a backache

by silent700＠gmail.com

So once again I heed the call of classiccmp in distress and once again the mini-truck was packed to the brim and riding low. We cleaned out a storeroom of a small college last weekend and finally got everything unloaded last night - everything that would fit, that is. Had to leave some TRS-80s behind (always painful) but fortunately they were scooped up later the same night by another local collector. Here's my haul: https://picasaweb.google.com/102190732096693814506/March1Haul The incomplete inventory: - 5x IBM RT systems: 3x 6150 towers, 2x 6151 desktops - some variances in name and badging amongst all these which will have to be explored - 6x IBM RT monitors: 4x 5081 "Megapel" displays, 2x 6154 "Advanced Color Graphics Display" (I don't know which, if any, of the RTs have the necessary Megapel card) - 2x IBM 6157 Streaming Tape drives, one apparently NIB - IBM 8228 Token Ring MAU, NIB - IBM RT 8-port serial cards and break-out boxes, some boxed - DEC half-rack - DEC PDP 11/23 Plus system to be inventoried soon - quick check shows 11/73 CPU upgrade and Emulex SCSI card - Emulex PE02 Medley drive - Boxed DEC VT220 terminal (not sure if it's unused or not) - Boxed DEC LK201 terminal keyboard - IBM RT keyboards, not enough for all these systems - Various IBM RT docs, some in box - Various ISA cards to be ID'd later I already owned an RT desktop (6151 of some sort) and a small monochrome display which, if I went downstairs to check, would probably turn out to be a 5151, so I'm marginally familiar with RT stuff. But now that this load has appeared, more opportunities are opened...especially when it comes to graphics. It will take some weeks to ID all this stuff and figure out what's what, but I'd love to see the "Megapel" system in action. There are a few disks in the documentation box but I don't believe there is an OS. Anyone know if there are images out there? I think these things use regular PC floppy drives so hopefully the disk format is writable with the tools out there. Or, did the OS come on tape instead? If I read the right FAQ, RTs used ESDI drives. Imaging these drives will be a priority. I have an ISA ESDI controller (somewhere) that I could possibly put into a Linux box. I have no idea what filesystem early AIX used or if there is a way to mount it in another Unix. If the RTs work (or at least one does,) I could dump to tape or some other removable media instead. Despite the size of this haul....no mice. And of course, like the keyboards, IBM RT mice are proprietary, or at least the connectors are. I'll have to check the FAQs and such out there to see if anyone has adapted a PS/2 mouse to it. If these did have the graphics boards, I'd expect to have seen mice with them. But thanks to their size and relative uselessness, those mice were probably the first things to get tossed out :( Now on to the PDP...haven't dug into the cards inside yet but I do see an Emulex SCSI board, so that is automatic win. Can anyone ID the PE02 drive? I can't tell if that's 1/4" tape or what? Google isn't helpful. Taking on that half-rack is the reason for my post for the free SA600 rack (no takers yet on that, btw.) Despite what the realtor told me, the basement is a finite space. I am trying to find more info on what these machines did. I was told the PDP was used for students learning Pascal. Stuffed into its case was a printout with instructions on booting it into UNIX, so that's probably what it ran. The RTs did some sort of administration task at the college, so I am expecting to find AIX on them rather than AOS, the "Academic Operating System" that was used on some RTs in educational settings. I've found the RT FAQ and pcrt.info (which looks like a spam site) so far....any other RT experts or resources will be appreciated. With some luck and work, VCFMW's on-site server may be running AIX 1.x this year ;) -- jht

12 years, 7 months

Free DEC SA600 Rack - Illinois

by silent700＠gmail.com

Thanks to the recent adoption of yet-another-DEC-halfrack, a DEC SA600 rack needs to go. Here are some pics: https://picasaweb.google.com/102190732096693814506/DECSA600Rack The cable frame and the SDI cables on it are no longer here. It's a bit of an odd rack, having held the massive RA90 hard drives in its previous life. I believe once those brackets are removed, normal rack holes remain, but I can't be certain. As seen in the pics, I cleaned it of most of its rust and it looks pretty good. Purists will want to repaint it. Local pickup only in the NW Chicago suburbs. It's about 5' high and weighs a lot more than it looks like it should. Be prepared for a battle getting it up the stairs. -j

12 years, 7 months

Minor ImageDisk update has been posted

by dave12＠dunfield.com

Just an FYI : I've posted a minor ImageDisk update to my site (It's been a while!) Nothing major: - Added IMDA (ImageDisk Analyze) utility to examine a .IMD image and suggest drive types and settings that can be used to write it (a lot of people seem to have trouble with this) - Added a couple of batch file to automate presetting a .IMD comment from a text file, and extracting/editing/replacing the .IMD comment. - Enhance DMK2IMD to detect and provide a work-around for images with bad address marks apparently produced by some emulators. - Update .IMD file format specification to provide for representing disks with non-standard sector sizes or mixed sector sizes within a track. - Minor documentation and help files updates. I've also posted a raw binary floppy image (suitable for XDISK, Winimage etc.) to create a 1.44M bootable ImageDisk floppy that: - Has USB mass-storage and CD/CVD support. - Allows you to set a RAMdisk size when it boots, and runs from the RAMdisk after boot - so you can boot from a floppy and then read/write images to and from the RAMdisk (and USB mass storage). - Has tools to move files to/from the RAMdisk via: Network** (FTP, TFTP, DDLINK) Serial or LPT (DDLINK, XMODEM) **Over 100 network drivers are on the disk. - Can be used for a bootable CD/DVD. This might be useful to anyone who doesn't want to dedicate a DOS partition. -- dave12 (at) Dave Dunfield dunfield Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com (dot) com Classic computers: http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/

12 years, 7 months

The Sprow MiniB

by lproven＠gmail.com

I'd not met this before. Apologies if it's general knowledge. A small single-board recreation of an Acorn BBC Micro model B. http://www.sprow.co.uk/bbc/minib.htm -- Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lproven at hotmail.com ? Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884

12 years, 7 months

re Olivetti made the first ever PC, in 1962, Audit 5

by dave.thearchivist＠gmail.com

Has anyone got /seen an Olivetti Audit 5 I assume its just a later version of the 101 I have the magnetic cards from one that was used locally in a clothes shop Dave Caroline

12 years, 7 months

Cosmac Elf on breadboard

by jonas＠otter.se

> Hi > It is not true that the joint has to be mechanically sound before > soldering. > It really depends on the amount of stress you expect the joint > to withstand. > If you are soldering 30 ga. wire wrap wire, tack soldering > will last for a hunderd years if no one yanks on it. > I've done many projects with tack soldering and never had > one fail. > What do you think surfice mount is? > Dwight Point taken, at least partially :-) My information is from an old book about reliable production methods for electronic hardware. Surface mount wasn't invented when it was written. The bit about the joint being mechanically sound refers to wires soldered to tags, lugs etc, where strain or vibration could cause the solder joint to break if the wire wasn't mechanically fastened before it was soldered. For devices built for use in vehicles or industrial environments I think the argument is valid, for office environments probably less so. Also, I am under the impression that heavier surface mount items would be glued down as well as soldered? Obviously, whether the solder will hold or not depends on the weight of the item being soldered and the stresses the device is subjected to. I recently bought a signal generator off the 'net which arrived non-working, because a large (about 2 cm diameter by 10 cm high) electrolytic capacitor had broken loose at one of the solder joints. It was only held by the solder joints. Another problem I have seen, which relates to surface mount devices, is that the instrument cluster on my car (a 1996 BMW) goes dead every now and then, only to come alive again after a moment. A number of people have reported that this appears to be due to bad solder joints on the PCB, which has a number of surface mount devices. /Jonas

12 years, 7 months

EDN 4th Annual Microprocessor Directory, Nov 1977

by chrise＠pobox.com

I've been going through folders, files, listings and other things I received from the estate of a local OP who passed away several years ago. He had saved this EDN article from the November 20, 1977 issue titled "EDN's Fourth Annual Microprocessor Directory". I scanned it including the ads because it's kinda fun to see what was selling back then. You can see a little about the GI CP-1600 which was recently discussed on this list too. https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6A73VHTVh23eWdNRUxHRkVUbXlDZHBRMGJRbmRkdw Chris -- Chris Elmquist

12 years, 7 months

Discferret broken?

by cb＠kryoflux.com

Hey Tony, > > VIrtually every open-sourc program (includign all those under the GPL) > come with the statement that they are _NOT_ supported. You can't expect > soembody to work for you for nothing. You have the soruce code, fx it > yourself! > Good idea. What do you do when you are unable to write or modify a program? We deliver something that works, out of the box. It's for the 95% that don't know how to program and the 95% of the 5% left that have no idea about fluxes, disk coding or what pre-compensation means. No need to fix it, it's working! Since 2010, and we're constantly adding features. > I have been pleasanylu supprised by the support I get from open-source > software authors, but I don't exxpect them to do work for me for nothing. > I might e0-mail them a comment and/or a change I've made to do something > I want to do, Or I might ask them 'what is going one here' so that I can > fixx the problem. I always seem to get a helpful reply. You would also get a helpful reply from us. We really like to help. We have over 600 users out there. Look how much negative feedback there is on the forums. Forums are usually littered with complaints as people tend to only write something when things are bad. > > >> board. I can't look into the future, but you would still be able to=20 >> access the data ingested because the formats are documented. What I can=20 >> say is that we don't have plans to let it fade into oblivion, so my=20 > > So say 99% of other ahrdware and softwre mnufacutrers about their > products. Doesn't mean it doens't happen. ?does not mean it has to happen. > > I disagree. If there is a claer technicla point, as here, I feel a > developer or a simialr product is perhaps the best to raise it. > So it does not feel strange to you that the only person that ever complained about this is he who must not be named? > > To use your analony. If I fvisited your home I would not comment on your > style of deoor, your furniture, ro anythign like that. But if I saw > somethign that I considered to be dangerous to you, your family, or > others, I certianly would comment. If I saw you had some exxpensive > objects and that your door lock was a really cheap and simple one that > anyone could open with a paperclip I'd tell you about that too. You bet I > would. > No, you come to my place and give everyone around the impression that the food I serve is bad. I politely ask you to stop, you refuse, you get thrown out. Days later, everyone is still fine, the food was delicious and everyone enjoyed the evening very much, except for your visit. > It would appear from your comments that the only sort of message you > allow on your facebook page is one in favour of your product. That means > the page is essentially worthless .I want a see a balanced set of > comments. If soemthign is poorly doen, Iwant to know about it. I would > agree that a comment like 'This product is crap' helps nobody. An > explainatio of whay a particualr chip is a poor choice does. > So prove me wrong: there are more than 600 units in circulation, some are used every day for dozens of disks. Some have read tenths of thousands of disks. It is working fine. Did you ever think about that parts were chosen for a reason? Why would I change my design because a competitor thinks I should? > I've been on many forums and mailing lists over the years. I feel the > only things that should get you thrown off are inciitng crimes (and > racism, homophobia, etc) and posting wildily off-topic mesages. Not > positing reasonaed criticism of the device under discussion. Here I am. We have nothing to hide. I still tidy up the Facebook page from time to time. >> >>> 2) Is there any truth to the comments about a 'conflict of interests' i= >> f >>> somebody wants to devleop both for your device and the Diskferret? >> >> Suggestions like that (the original statement, not your question here)=20 >> would you get thrown out of my house for sure. Why would any large, big,=20 > > I fdeel that this attitudew is good for your bottom line now, but is not > godo for data preservation in general, and it's not good for the classic > computing hobby. A lot more gets done when inforation ant techniques arwe > shared. Yes, you don't maek the profit, but more data is preserved. Which > is more important? Data can be preserved - that's what the unit was made for. You get the STREAM data, that's your disk. You mess up preservation and the fact how we market our device. These are different things. Visit our site http://www.softpres.org We have lots of information to share. Our technology is based on this information. It's all free and we share it. Since 2001. Enjoy.

12 years, 7 months

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test-drb March 2012