test-drb December 2013

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

158 participants
140 discussions

by chrise＠pobox.com

I recently "saved" a small pile of VT220 and VT100 terminals from a barn in western WI. They were grubby and have various issues but I am enjoying cleaning them up and making a few good ones from some bad ones. One of the VT220 is a very new vintage unit. Circa-1987, with some components with date codes 1990. It has a totally different logic board than earlier models I've worked on-- this one having a large PLCC package in the center of the board which I assume is a custom device integrating the video controller and much of the support logic since there are considerably fewer parts on this board than the older ones. Still an 8031 CPU though. This unit also has a totally different video monitor circuit than the older ones and my problem lies somewhere on that board-- I am getting a very dim image even though the CRT itself appears to be in very good shape with no burn-in and otherwise crisp display. I think I've got a high-voltage problem but without schematics to match this board, it's kind of a crap shoot to start debugging. So, wondering if anyone has newer schematics or technical reference for the VT220 than we find out on bitsavers? The bitsavers docs are circa- 1983 so I am looking for something 1987 or later when it appears they did a considerable redesign of the guts of this terminal. Chris -- Chris Elmquist

10 years, 4 months

FREE: Commodore C64, C128, Amiga systems available in Orange County, CA

by tosteve＠yahoo.com

I've come across a small pile of old Commodore stuff. I don't really want to ship any of it at this time, as I don't have any boxes or other packing material, and it takes lots of time and effort. But I will eventually if I have to, or if you throw enough money at me. Operational status currently unknown. I will power-up the Amigas on Tuesday, Pick-up or local delivery (92656). Not for resale: 1. C64, C128 2. Amiga 500, 1000, 2000, 3000. The 500, 2000, 3000 have hard drives, but no other expansion cards. 3. Miscellaneous floppy drives, Commodore monitors. 4. No C64/128 software, but over 100 Amiga floppy disks.

10 years, 4 months

Plugging (ohh shameless me): HP 85B on ebay

by hp-fix＠xs4all.nl

I've put a HP-85B with a QIC40 modified tape drive on ebay. It starts with 1,- so everybody has the a fair chance. If you win tell me you're a list member and I'll put some extra's in .. Item is placed in the Netherlands, item number 370957485834. -Rik

10 years, 4 months

Free: Pinnacle Systems Prizm Video Workstations

by pye＠mactec.com.au

I saved two of these Pinnacle Prizm Video Workstations (they are a special FX and 3D add-on for the Pinnacle workstation from around 1994) from being scrapped a while back, basically to see what they were. I haven't had any luck finding the matching video workstation locally, and they're big and heavy, so I want to get rid of them. Free pickup in Brisbane, Australia. If there's no takers for the complete units I'm happy to ship parts/boards for cost, but keep in mind these are PAL machines not NTSC. Chris..

10 years, 4 months

Looking for: Schematic / Parts list for Thinker Toys Discus/2D drive power supply board

by derschjo＠gmail.com

Hi all -- I'm working on restoring a pair of Thinker Toys Discus/2D disk drives (8" drive enclosure with power supply, a-la: http://collections.museumca.org/?q=collection-item/20043152). I have the complete manuals for the controller, but I can't find anything on the drive enclosure itself; mine have suffered a fair amount of corrosion and rust (fortunately limited to the power supplies, the drives themselves are fine) and I'm trying to identify the voltage regulators the power supply uses but they're so far gone the markings are worn away. Anyone have a schematic for this? Bitsavers has the schematic for the original Discus, but not the /2D. Thanks in advance, - Josh

10 years, 4 months

BSD 4.3 on a uVAXII

by jon＠jonworld.com

All, I've been wrestling to get BSD 4.3 Quasijarus installed on my uVAX2. This is what I'm doing... 1) Booting over the network to NetSBD over NetRoot 2) Used NetBSD to partition and format the disks 3) Used the 'restore' command to extract the 'dump''d root 4) Used tar to extract the proper usr (and other) directories 5) Edited the local disk's fstab ... where I'm getting hung up is bootblocks. What boot blocks do I write to my drive and how? I have an Emulex controller (MSCP emulator) with a SCSI disk attached. The disk shows up as SCSI ID 1, and dua1 from the prom. It shows up as /dev/ra0 in NetBSD. I can mount/unmount the drive, etc. I tried the NetBSD 'installboot' with 'raboot' as the bootblock and it doesn't work with the output below... >>> b dua1 2..1..0.. ?06 HLT INST PC = 00100529 Not sure what's going on. Any ideas? -- -Jon Jonathan Katz, Indianapolis, IN.

10 years, 4 months

My Panasonic JD-850M on YouTube

by terry＠webweavers.co.nz

I was so impressed by my recently acquired 1982 CP/M-based Panasonic JD-850M business computer, I had to add it to my YouTube video collection. http://youtu.be/9GUDsYdF23A Terry (Tez)

10 years, 4 months

CRT cataract removal

by lists＠loomcom.com

Hi everyone, I just successfully repaired the CRT on my ADM-3a, which was suffering very badly from "CRT cataracts". Here's a before and after picture: http://www.loomcom.com/junk/adm3a_lens_removal.jpg On the left, you can see the CRT removed from the ADM-3a and supported in a cardboard box for repair. I've already cut through and partially removed the sealing tape that went around the edge of the CRT and the lens. The cataracts are clearly visible, they were extremely bad. The adhesive between the CRT and the lens had broken down significantly and partially liquified, leaking through the sealing tape. On the right, you can see the CRT after removing the lens and peeling up the sheet of adhesive under it with the aid of a razor blade. I used a heat gun in concentric circles over the face of the CRT, the technique shown in this series of videos on YouTube (not mine): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l1EoMmmOcQ I just wanted to confirm that this technique works well. I have not yet finished cleaning the lens and CRT, but after that's done I will apply double-sided tape, re-attach the lens, and seal it with packing tape, as shown in the videos. DISCLAIMER: If you do this, you are doing it at your own risk. I wore safety glasses, gloves, and a long-sleeve shirt. There is significant risk of CRT implosion. -Seth

10 years, 4 months

installing 2.11BSD on a pdp11/53

by ak6dn＠mindspring.com

The 'dd' usage I provided has nothing to do with tape images, only copying raw disk images. Personally after a bit of actual usage of the 11/44 to do builds and patching in situ, I gave up. Just too slow. So I went back to an emulated 11/44 in SIMH and did all the patching and sysgens there. Is is at least 10X-20X faster doing all the work on a PC and copying the completed disk images over to the 11/44 at the end. -----Original Message----- >From: Mark G Thomas <Mark at misty.com> >Sent: Nov 30, 2013 3:01 PM >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >Subject: Re: installing 2.11BSD on a pdp11/53 > >Hi, > >> Am 30.11.13 18:23, schrieb Mark G Thomas: >> >I followed the 2.11BSD setup.ps and HOWTO file instructions to create >> >a tape with dd, using a Sun Solaris SPARC server connected to the DLT8000. > >On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 08:04:12PM +0100, Jochen Kunz wrote: >> You need to use maketape.c to get the right block structure. >> Jochen > >I used maketape.c instead of the dd instructions, and that worked perfectly. > >Thanks everyone for the help! > >Mark > >-- >Mark G. Thomas (Mark at Misty.com)

10 years, 4 months

installing 2.11BSD on a pdp11/53

by ak6dn＠mindspring.com

The process I outlined is purely for disk image manipulation, it has nothing to do with tape images or usage. The UC17/18 Emulex controllers I have maintain the per disk configuration info in a separate NVRAM on the card. They don't store any info on the disk itself. -----Original Message----- >From: Holm Tiffe <holm at freibergnet.de> >Sent: Nov 30, 2013 4:10 PM >To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> >Subject: Re: installing 2.11BSD on a pdp11/53 > >Don North wrote: > >> If you can get a SCSI card for a PC, or a unix system with SCSI disk >> interface, you are golden. >> >> Here is what I did to get 2.11BSD over to my 11/44 with an Emulex UC18 SCSI >> controller: >> >> (1) Use SIMH to configure/build a working 2.11BSD system from scratch >> tapes, if you desire. >> >> (2) Or you can get pre-built 2.11BSD image from here: >> http://www.ak6dn.dyndns.org/PDP-11/2.11BSD/ >> or other locations on the net as well. The image I built is current >> thru the latest patches. >> >> (3) Mount the SCSI disk on which you will be installing the 2.11BSD image >> on your PC/linux box. Use 'dd' to blast the whole image (from (2)) to the >> disk. >> >> (4) Dismount the SCSI disk from your PC/unix box, carry it over to your >> PDP-11, install it, and boot it up. >> >> Any way you can do a byte-for-byte copy of the SIMH .dsk file to your >> target SCSI drive should probably work. >> >> Don >> >> >May be this works wit an CQD220 Controller, but I don't think that this >will work with an Emulex UC07. >The Emulex can partition the disk in some slices, the information where the >partitions are, is somwhere on the disk. > >I wrote out Tapes with SIMH to a Unix file and converted those files with >the containing Block length information to a real tape (on some qarter Inch >Tapes with an Tandberg drive [525 MB and up, the smaller Tapes don't >support variable block lenghts]). Done this on FreeBSD. > >This way I've created install tapes for 2.11 BSD, RT11, RSX11 and >XXDP. > >Regards, > >Holm >-- > Technik Service u. Handel Tiffe, www.tsht.de, Holm Tiffe, > Freiberger Stra?e 42, 09600 Obersch?na, USt-Id: DE253710583 > www.tsht.de, info at tsht.de, Fax +49 3731 74200, Mobil: 0172 8790 741 >

10 years, 4 months

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test-drb December 2013