test-drb June 2012

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

193 participants
237 discussions

Tek Magnolia (Was: 1970s microprocessor magazine articles)

by rickb＠bensene.com

> > ranging from the amazing Magnolia Smalltalk Workstation from 1976-ish, > > Really? That date is extremely hard to believe. > > Adele Goldberg wrote in "The Smalltalk-80 System Release Process" (in > _Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice_, June 1983) that the first > release of Smalltalk to licensees (Apple, DEC, HP, and Tektronix) did not occur > until February 17, 1981, with updated releases on July 24, > 1981 and November 18, 1981. "Implementing the Smalltalk-80 System: The > Tektronix Experience" by Paul L. McCullough, copyright 1982 and printed in > the same book, describes the initial bringup at Tektronix. It doesn't give a > date for the start of the effort, but after describing the initial bringup, states > "About this time, we received the second virtual image from Xerox Palo Alto > Research Center (PARC)." This suggests that they received the first and > second images at times consistent with the release dates in the Goldberg > paper. > > Didn't Magnolia use the Motorola MC68000 microprocessor? Motorola didn't > announce that until September 1979, and while it's certainly possible that > Motorola provided Tektronix with preliminary data on it prior to that, > Motorola didn't have working silicon until late 1979. > > Allen Wirfs-Brock's resume describes how he was involved in the Tektronix > review of the draft Smalltalk-80 books in 1980-1981, and that review occurred > before Xerox released the image. I think that my memory has failed me. I think it was more like sometime in the early 1980's, now that I think more about it. Magnolia used a 68000 CPU (two of them, I think...because I believe it supported demand paging, which the 68000 didn't support directly), which didn't exist in '76. Smalltalk existed, but the Smalltalk-76 release would have been a major pain to port to the 68000. Also, the machine used a Micropolis 8" hard disk (1200-series) that didn't come around until sometime in mid-'78 or so. So, though my memory tells me that I saw this machine running in a lab before I went to work at Tektronix in June of '77, my mind has to be suffering from wetware bitrot - something I'm becoming more and more familiar with as the years go by :-( In any case, the sad part is that it appears at least from a historical standpoint that a lot of information about Magnolia (along with other Tektronix forays into computer systems) are being lost to time. Rick Bensene

12 years, 1 month

defective DEC RZ58-E

by cctech＠beyondthepale.ie

> >I have here an 1,3Gbyte DEC Drive, 5,35 Inch full heigth. (Seems to have >the old CDC WREN Mechanics) >It looks, that the drive electronics are toast. It don't spin up >the BLDC motor and it blocks the SCSI Bus where the drive is connected. > I had similar problems with two RZ55 drives in VAX2000 size boxes. They blinked the activity LED several times at power on but didn't spin up. I thought the were counting out a fault code. The bus issue turned out to be a bad cable and the reason they didn't spin up was because they weren't supposed to spin up until commanded to by the host. (Just before trying them, I'd tried a different disk that is supposed to spin up at power up but didn't due to a power supply failure so I was in the wrong frame of mind for disks that don't spin up automatically. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!) Regards, Peter Coghlan.

12 years, 1 month

early internet telephony devices

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

I have this little box that would let you make calls on the internet, from the mid to later 90s. I think there was a cd, but I can't locate it at the moment. It's an extremely crude device internally, there isn't even a perfboard IIRC, but rather a few discrete components soldered together w/wires. I didn't analyze it, and it's been years since I looked at it, so I'm guessing it's basically just a demodulator. ?Is this interesting? If so please discuss. Incidentally is this worth mondo big bucks on ePay? I see nothing like it. It's an unknown brand. But so am I. And likely you too.

12 years, 1 month

Corroded terminal removal?

by cctech＠beyondthepale.ie

> >Anyone have tips on removing corroded battery terminals from a >PCB? > If there is enough of it left, file or drill the existing solder to expose shiney clean areas. Then apply new solder to it. Hopefully the whole lot will then melt together and can be sucked away with a desoldering pump. While adding more solder might feel like the worst thing to do to unsolder something, it really does help. Regards, Peter Coghlan.

12 years, 1 month

Byte Magazines For Sale

by billdeg＠degnanco.com

I set up a page to sell of spare Byte magazine copies. The page has directions, will ship worldwide. http://www.degnanco.net/contact_byte.cfm Bill vintagecomputer.net

12 years, 1 month

Felsenstein lecture in NJ - July 1

by evan＠snarc.net

Everyone, Lee Felsenstein is giving a talk, signing autographs, etc. at the InfoAge Science Center (2201 Marconi Rd., Wall, NJ, 07719) on Sunday, July 1. at approx. 10:30am. Unfortunately he couldn't be here for VCF East 8.0 last month. But this is the next best thing! Lee is very friendly and looks forward to meeting many of his fans. I assume all cctalk'ers know who Lee is ... but just in case .... Lee is famous for his work at the Homebrew Computer Club, Community Memory, Processor Technology, and of course Osborne. He was even part of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement. There's a $10 "strongly suggested" donation per person for our museum.

12 years, 1 month

OS9 (for 6809) communication (was: Re: Line length ...)

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 17:01 -0500 5/23/12, ARD wrote: >OS9 is so modular that there would be no problem in writing the device >manager and device drivers for a netwoek drvice. I think ethernet would >have had far to high a data rate, but there are plenty of slower >alternatices. Sorry for delayed response, vacation intervened. http://www.cloud9tech.com/ (no affiliation, other than as a highly satisfied customer) does market DriveWire for the CoCo3 running NitrOS-9. I have not (yet) used it, but they claim 115,200 bps on a CoCo3. There is a corresponding server that runs on the (Windows/Mac OS X/Linux) other end of the serial wire, and they claim TCP/IP and several dependent services (telnet, MIDI streaming to the server). So Tony's suggestion more or less already exists, with the assumption that you don't mind a modern-ish PC acting as an external ethernet <-> serial adaptor. -- - Mark 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.

12 years, 1 month

anyone need an oscillscope?

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

uh I might be having issues with it. I may have more opportunity to investigate over the weekend. Maybe Im doing something wrong. The voltage display in the upper left corner disappeared, as did the trace. Sorry. Stay tuned

12 years, 1 month

anyone need an oscillscope?

by rampaginggreenhulk＠yahoo.com

Tektronix 5440 + 2 additional plugins. 60mhz I think. Analog. More info upon request. No probe. 50$. NJ 07731. I use USPS. God bless the US postal service!

12 years, 1 month

S-100 board PCBs remaining

by LYNCHAJ＠yahoo.com

Hi There have been several requests recently as to what S-100 boards I still have on hand I have remaining: one S-100 Z80 CPU board PCB three S-100 6502 CPU board PCBs twelve S-100 Serial IO board PCBs They are $20 each plus $3 shipping in the US or $6 elsewhere. Please send a PayPal to LYNCHAJ at YAHOO.COM Thanks and have a nice day! Andrew Lynch PS the S-100 IDE V2 board PCBs are gone. The next PCB reorders will be the S-100 ZFDC (intelligent floppy controller) board PCBs, then the S-100 4MB SRAM board PCB, and the S-100 backplane PCBs in that order.

12 years, 1 month

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test-drb June 2012