test-drb June 2012

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

193 participants
237 discussions

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

> From:?Ola Hughson <f.helyanvy at gmail.com> > Date:?Tue, 19 Jun 2012 00:57:56 +0200 > Subject:?Re: looking for Apollo systems and parts, and to interface w/other Apollo groupies > Funny, because having an Apollo workstation is on my wishlist ;) > http://ola.earfolds.com/computers/ > > -- > Ola Hughson There is a bunch of Apollo equipment at the Rhode Island Computer Museum. You should visit, inventory it, and see what it will take to get some of it running. -- Michael Thompson

12 years, 1 month

Top posting (was: Re: utterly free Machine Language for the Commie 64, 128, ...)

by dm561＠torfree.net

----- Original Message: Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 22:26:36 -0400 (EDT) From: Mouse <mouse at Rodents-Montreal.ORG> >> Top posting has pretty much been the norm since at least the mid 90s > Not here. Nor anywhere else I hang out. > Nor, given the arrogance and rudeness it exhibits, anywhere I'd want to > hang out. ----- Reply: ROFL! Precious irony; was it intentional? The only arrogance and rudeness I see in all this is from you and others arrogantly telling people how they must write and rudely denigrating and insulting anyone with a different opinion, while wasting everyone's time and bandwidth with your inane posts. If Jay wants to make and enforce such a rule, fine; your opinion doesn't interest me. I notice that none of you brave champions of the ancient Usenet traditions had the courtesy to change the subject line, a far more serious 'crime' than top-posting IMO as it forces the rest of us to wade through your posts on the remote chance that one of you actually had something relevant to contribute. I also notice that probably around 10-20% or so of the *useful* posts here are usually top-posted, but since they are from 'regulars' like Andrew, Dan, etc. they don't merit your censure; apparently that's only for relative newcomers? And FWIW, other than in places like this with its focus on the old and venerable ways, I also find top posting the norm 'out there', and far more efficient than every time having to wade again through text I've already read or written before, looking for the reply; I'm relieved that I won't encounter you in any of those venues. m

12 years, 1 month

Load Testing PDP11 Power Supplies

by jaquinn2001＠gmail.com

I am making progress testing the power supply for my 11/04 (BA11-K chassis) and so far have worked through the power control box, transformer, fans and the 15VDC regulator/Power Line monitor but have one question for the group.... I am seeing in tolerance output voltages from the 15VDC regulator but I haven't loaded tested it. Is this something I should do or if the unloaded outputs are within tolerance then it is safe to use (once the other regulators are done)? No real technical info but a description of progress so far on http://www.quicktrip.co.nz/jaqblog for those interested in a few pictures. I am about the start on the H744 5VDC regulators. Regards Andrew

12 years, 1 month

Found: paper tape for "L8/9" computer ... unknown computer

by ss＠allegro.com

hi, I found a box of paper tape software for an unknown computer (possibly a "L8" or "L8/9"?) ... and it's looking for a home (cost of mailing): The box is 8" by 8" by 1", with about 10 rolls of punched paper tape of various roll size. If anyone can suggest what computer it's from, I'm curious! Box has a lot of writing on it: ----- front: L8/9 FIRMWARES FOR SALESMEN NOTE THIS IS A MASTER TAPE AND IS NOT TO BE CUT UP! THE BOSS ---- back: Contains: 2 - 2170-003-24 PPT INPUT ADDON 2 - 2170-004-24 PPT OUTPUT ADDON 2 - 2180-029-030 MEM ALLOCATOR 2 - 2180-022-01 MMR MEM DUMP 2 - 2180-005-02 SL3 PPT DUMP 2 - 2180-012-02 SL3 PPT DUMP 2 - 2170-010-26 DATA HANDLING ADD-ON 2 - 2180-006-02 PAPER TAPE READER LOAD 2 - 2100-001-28 L82 BASIC INTER. 2 - 2100-003-28 L86 BASIC INTER. 2 - 2100-004-28 L9 BASIC INTER. ...and about 20 more items. Stan

12 years, 1 month

Synchronous Modem Eliminators

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

Hi, All, I've been discussing 1980s and 1990s IBM gear with a list member via PM, and the need for modem eliminators has come up as a topic. I have worked with a variety of older Black Box units back in the days when I used Bisync comms every day, but looking around now, I see no EIA/RS-232 units for sale on eBay and other places - it's all V.35 (at multi-megabit speeds for CSU/DSU) and RS-422 and RS-530 (RS-422 on a DB25). 25 years ago, it was common to want to attach sync devices between 1200 and 56Kbps via RS-232 but not so much any more. It's not hard to make a Sync Modem Eliminator - in its simplest form, it's going to look at lot like an async null modem cable/box, but with active clocking (normally generated by the DCE) on pins 15 and 17 on both DB25s. There used to be a lot of baud rate generator chips, but for a small range of speeds, a properly-sized crystal on a 4060 clock/counter chip, perhaps a D-flip-flop used as a divide-by-2 (to square up the waveform and to shift which baud rate is "missing" because one stage of the 4060 chain is not brought out to a pin), and a 1488 to drive the clock to the DTE hardware. Where it starts to get complicated is that commercial RS-232 SMEs also had options to strap carrier detect and RTS/CTS, optional CTS turnaround delays and more. There were lots of jumpers and configuration often took some experimentation for a new set of devices. My question is, for those reading this that still use sync serial, is it "worth" designing and sharing a simple SME that might not have all the bells and whistles and user-configurable options, or is it "worth" just keeping the design very simple (3 chips plus a multi-voltage PSU, or multiple chips and a single-voltage PSU) and acknowledging that it will only work for 80% of the cases out there? It is, of course, easier to purchase than build, and there were once large quantities of the "right device", but I think as comms speeds have risen, not that many of these low-speed devices have survived, and certainly nobody is attempting to empty a warehouse of them at the moment. It's also entirely possible that the demand for synchronous serial comms over RS-232 lines is so small that the entire roster of interested parties would fit on a very short bus, so please chime in if you still use sync serial below 64kbps for anything. I'm curious to know who does and what devices they have. -ethan

12 years, 1 month

Wanted: Original Kaypro 16 floppies

by FJGJR1＠aol.com

Post on the _www.vintage-computer.com_ (http://www.vintage-computer.com) site - that may be better & do a search for others who have posted on this topic. Good luck ! Frank In a message dated 6/18/2012 9:55:21 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, james at slor.net writes: Thought I'd try one more time. Anyone? -----Original Message----- From: James [mailto:james at slor.net] Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 12:41 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Wanted: Original Kaypro 16 floppies I've been looking for an original floppy disk set for my Kaypro 16 (not 16/2 or any others) for a while now. Anyone on this list have a set to part with? Or, worst case, anyone have a set they could copy/image for me? Thanks! James

12 years, 1 month

Nova 4 memory problems (was Re: Nova-4 / Eclipse S/120 power connector)

by iamcamiel＠gmail.com

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 7:58 PM, Camiel Vanderhoeven <iamcamiel at gmail.com> wrote: > So, it looks like the memory chip that controls bit 10 for addresses > ending in 01 (binary) is at fault here. I'm going to do some wire > tracing to find out which chip this might be... Did my wire tracing, came up with the following picture of the board (use a fixed-width font to view): +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | 15 14 bit 1 0 | | +u+ +u+ ................................. +u+ +u+ | | | | | | | | | | | | 0xxxx00 | | | | | | | | | | +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ | | | | +u+ +u+ +u+ +u+ | | | | | | | | | | | | 1xxxx00 | | | | | | | | | | +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ | | | | : : | | : : | | word : : | | : : | | : : | | | | +u+ +u+ +u+ +u+ | | | | | | | | | | | | 0xxxx11 | | | | | | | | | | +-+ +-+ +-+ +-+ | | | | +u+ +u+ +u+ +u+ | | | | | | | | | | | | 1xxxx11 | | | | | | | | | | +-+ +-+ ................................. +-+ +-+ | | | | | | | +-+ +---+ +-+ +-------------------------+ +-------------------------+ So at least I can now trace an error bit to a chip. However, I must have damaged something in the process (believe me, I've been careful), because for all addresses ending in xxxx10, the data reads back as 000000 now. I hooked up my logic analyzer, and found that data dis written to the memory chips in this row correctly. The data read from these chips is also correct. The data is then fed to a few 74153 4-to-1 MUXes. I checked the selection inputs to the MUXes, and these are wrong for row 2. Now I need to see where those inputs came from... To be continued... Camiel.

12 years, 1 month

emulated linux/bsd motorola 68k system?

by brad＠heeltoe.com

> Subject: Re: emulated linux/bsd motorola 68k system? > From: Al Kossow <aek at bitsavers.org> > Date: Mon, June 18, 2012 10:33 am > To: cctalk at classiccmp.org, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> > > >> Anyone know of a working emulator for a Motorola 68K system that works > >> well enough to install either linux/bsd in? > > Brad Parker's version of the MIT Sun simulator may be able to boot BSD. The sun2/sun3 simulator (tme) should boot netbsd out of the box. http://people.csail.mit.edu/fredette/tme/ I have mods which will allow it boot early sun os version (sunos 2.0, 3.2 & 3.5). Everything works except the ethernet on 3.5 - I need to fix that. http://www.heeltoe.com/index.php?n=Retro.Sun2 (I miss my old sun-2 :-) The code is pretty dense but also pretty complete. The sun-2 is 68010 based. As I recall the sun-3 is 68020 based. I can't remember if there were any 68030 based sun's. -brad

12 years, 1 month

Nova-4 / Eclipse S/120 power connector

by iamcamiel＠gmail.com

Hi Bruce, I think I found the memory problem: On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 7:07 PM, Bruce <Bruce at wild-hare.com> wrote: > I'm confused. ?The VC (Virtual Console) works okay when you hit the reset > button, but when the computer is powered on you do not get the > > OK > !000000 > ! > > indication? ?(...per Chapter 5, Computer Self-Test, page 23) Correct. On power on I only get an "O". VC does not respond at that point. Once I hit the reset button, I do get O000000 ! The VC then responds as expected. If I remove the memory board, the behavior is exactly the same, except that every memory address reads back as 177777 of course. Accumulators with and without memory board: without - 177777 125252 076000 000701 with - 127252 125252 076041 000701 This lead me to suspect that the memory at word 41 was incorrect. Memory locations 0 - 40 were 052525, 41, 45, 51 were 127252, 42 and up (except those with the lowest bits being 01) were 125252. So, it looks like the entire memory is written with 125252 (1010101010101010) first, then each word is first read, then written with 052525 (0101010101010101). Sure enough, when I wrote 125252 to word 41, it looked fine, but when I wrote 052525 to word 1, it changed word 41 to 127252! So, it looks like the memory chip that controls bit 10 for addresses ending in 01 (binary) is at fault here. I'm going to do some wire tracing to find out which chip this might be... > The part numbers (005-xxxxxx-yy) are important when trying to determine the > exact computer configuration as the same board may have different part > numbers depending upon what chips are stuff onto the board (i.e. memory > boards). ?If no 005 part number exists anywhere on the board the board > artwork 107-xxxxxx-yy number may be used in extreme situations. ?I do not > know of a 107 to 005 cross reference table but I could look at various > in-house boards if needed. Like I wrote, the CPU and Memory board only have part of the label left, it looks like the actual part numbers have carefully been clipped off. All that remains are the "E" numbers, which I presume are a serial number. The numbers on the boards themselves read: CPU: 10700094903/0 07 (last 07 is printed, rest of the number is copper) Mem: 10700081303/03 (entire number copper) > Also, the S/140, Nova 4/S, Nova 4/X could interchange boards (CPU and > memory), so this system might not be a "true" Nova 4 - Eclipse boards could > be used rather than Nova boards if a Field Engineering guy didn't have the > "correct" parts. ?Nova/Eclipse CPU boards could be interchanged if the four > (4) PROM "personality" chips were swapped. Could that be the reason the part numbers have been removed? Although I don't think it's likely; all the PROM chips are soldered on (no sockets), so swapping wouldn't be all that easy. Plus, the soldering on the PROM chips looks like it's untouched. There are a few other areas of the main board that do show evidence of repairs; the following parts seem to have been replaced at some point (with approx. board locations): - One of the IDM2901A bit slices has been replaced with an AM2901BDC @ AE11 - 74S241 @ X13 - 74LS38 @ E45 - 4 75451 drivers around E22 Thanks, Camiel.

12 years, 1 month

C64 temporary PSU

by jules.richardson99＠gmail.com

Has anyone (probably!) hacked together a PSU for a C64 using a PC PSU? How close do the AC lines have to be to a 9V sine wave? I've got someone offering me an unknown-condition C64/1541/1702 which is missing its PSU (and possibly the cable between the drive and computer), so if I do bite I'd be looking to do a quick hack just to see how operational everything is before I go trying to find a genuine PSU from somewhere. TBH, I'm not sure what my options are for getting software onto disk, either - it's not clear whether the current owner has any media at all (I get the impression that they've just unearthed the machine in storage, but various bits that they once had have gone missing over the years). A quick google seems to suggest that there are ways and means though, given that I'd have a 1541 (if it works ;) cheers Jules

12 years, 1 month

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test-drb June 2012