test-drb December 2013

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

158 participants
140 discussions

by RichA＠LivingComputerMuseum.org

I'm currently pulling the CIS-local code out of DECWAR in aid of installing it on the DECsystem-1070 (KI-10 #587) running at the museum. It would be very helpful to (1) talk to someone who programmed in Macro-10 on the CIS systems, or (2) at least find someone with UUO and programming environment manuals. (I don't see either CIS or CompuServe on Bitsavers, but I may be missing something.) Does anyone reading CCtech/CCtalk want to confess to having experience in these matters? Privately or publicly? Thanks, Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/

10 years, 11 months

Clear out of various computer detritus (Surrey,UK)

by toby＠pdp11.co.uk

Hi, I've decided to have a clear out to raise some funds for the school club I run teaching 7-11 year olds computer programming, electrics and engineering. So here is what I have looking for a new home: - Lots of micro-vaxes (pizza box style) - Lots of microVax chassis (mostly unpopulated with cards) - Various Apple IIs and Apple II peripherals - Various terminals - SMD drives - BBC micros, Spectrums and ZX81s - Atari 2600's (woodies, darth vaders and jr's) - IBM PC/XTs - Misc PDP-11 parts (a few QBUS chassis, RX50s, TU58s, TK50s, QBUS cards, UNIBUS cards, PDP-11/44, RD,RF,RZ series hard drives) - Lots of other assorted items If anyone is interested in anything or would like to visit and dig through the stash get in contact. All the best, Toby

10 years, 11 months

RFC Ethernet Bus Interface V1

by aek＠bitsavers.org

Here is a first draft. Anything wrong/missing architecturally? Ethernet Bus Interface Board 2013-12-21 aek +--------------+ | 4Mx16 BBSRAM | +------+ | AS6C1616 | | | +------+-------+ LEDs - + ARM | | SD -- + uCtl | JTAG +------+-------+ USB -- + +-----------+ | -> Simulated Peripheral Registers ENET - + +-----------+ FPGA | Bus Monitor / Adr Mapper SER?-- | | ARM intf | | Bus Master Controler +------+ +------+-------+ | +------+-------+ | | | 5v<->3.3v | | Bus Buffers | +--------------+ The entire address space of the host is maintained in the SRAM ARM performs DMA by placing the data to be transfered where it will appear on the host. If the local memory is the system memory, we're done, just clean up the DMA registers. If not the FPGA does DMA to synchronize local memory with core. 3 cycle data break side effects will have to be investigated. Does any driver watch the value of ADR,WC in memory while a DMA is occurring? Bus transactions are snooped to maintain consistency on the PDP-8 where some core memory is on the Omnibus. This may work OK on small 11's, too but won't be the right thing to do on an 11/70 where memory transactions occur that are invisible to the Unibus. It should be possible to simulate all the front panel functions of an Omnibus machine and to capture all of the state in real time for all of the major registers from watching Omnibus transactions. It is also possible to adapt the board to be a dedicated bus analyzer or soft front panel or peripheral/ memory exerciser for any supported bus architecture. All registers and supported peripherals are obviously soft. The configuration is stored on the SD, along with the FPGA bitstream. Everything should be reconfigurable through transactions across the Ethernet by updating files on the SD card. Battery-backed SRAM was chosen over FRAM because of cost. I'm not sure if a local serial interface would be that useful other than for debugging messages. There are a small number of LEDs hung off of a STP08DP05 Small local SPI NOVRAM for configuration/bitstream storage? SD hot-swap? Larger local storage? Is performance an issue on Omnibus/Qbus/Unibus CPUs? They are slow enough busses that they'll saturate in the couple MB/sec range. Write-through track caching in SRAM? Block mode on QBus .. and on and on Ethernet Peripheral Controller This is the mirror of the Bus Interface Board. It provides block-level data that the Bus Interface sends into the computer. In its simplest form, there is no hardware at all, it is just a simulation running on a computer on the network. The second simplest is hardware that understands the Ethernet peripheral command protocol but has a simple enough interface to the physical device that no FPGA is required. It may also not need any local storage. The most complicated could look like the Bus Interface Board, with local SRAM and FPGA. A Diskferret-like forensic disk interface would be an example of this.

10 years, 11 months

Need DEC BC80J-20 cable

by charlesmorris800＠centurytel.net

I'm looking for a BC80J-20 cable... that's the one that goes from the RL controller card to the first drive, with a 40 pin header on one end and that big quick-release connector on the other end. (I am tired of failures and damage to the rigged ribbon cable/IDC header I've been using, and now that I'm chasing a fault in my two- RL02 system, I can't swap drives without taking the cover off to get to the header connectors inside). thanks Charles

10 years, 11 months

Possibly dumbest ebay ad ever...

by evan＠snarc.net

Someone put an Apple sticker on a briefcase. Asking price: $6,000. http://tinyurl.com/n8aw6gl

10 years, 11 months

IBM 5120

by webmaster＠supervinx.com

Hi! It's mandatory to connect the printer? Trying to access the internal drives leads in 013 error (Device not attached), both for D80 and D40. I've not opened it yet. The drives spin, I can hear the noise inserting a disk. Thanks!

10 years, 11 months

Intel MDS 225 system being auctioned by Chicago Transit Authority

by colin.d.howell＠gmail.com

(I'm not subscribed to the list, but I'm passing this along because I thought it would be of interest to list members.) The Chicago Transit Authority is auctioning off a whole load of miscellaneous stuff (including a couple of rail cars!). One of the items being auctioned is what appears to be an Intel MDS 225 "Blue Box" (4 MHz 8085A system) complete with an MDS 720 disk expansion unit and some sort of Control Data hard disk. The specific lot is here: http://ricklevin.nextlot.com/public/lot/15005194?section=photos No idea whether any of the hardware is functional. Bids for the whole lot currently stand at $60. Auction for this lot ends December 18th (Wednesday), 11:10 AM local time (Central Standard Time). More info on the auction can be found via the link above. General news story on the auction: http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20131212/downtown/cta-selling-bus-signs-trai… Colin Howell

10 years, 11 months

VT-180 (Robin) EPROM images?

by ajp166＠bellatlantic.net

> >Subject: VT-180 (Robin) EPROM images? > From: "Robert Armstrong" <bob at jfcl.com> > Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:23:04 -0800 > To: <cctech at classiccmp.org> > > Does anybody have images of the v2.1 Z-80 firmware for the VT-180 (aka >Robin) ? At least, I think 2.1 was the last version ever released. They >should be DEC part numbers 23-017E3-00 and 23-021E3-00. > >Thanks, >Bob Armstrong I have enough of them laying around I could supply the actual roms. I've never imaged them as It's easier to replace the code outright. Curious why are you looking for them? Allison

10 years, 11 months

Replacing Ribbon Cable in a DSSI Cabinet Kit

by robert.jarratt＠ntlworld.com

I have managed to break one of the wires in the ribbon cable of the DSSI cabinet kit in my BA213 MicroVAX 3400. It looks like it would be fairly easy to replace with any 50-way ribbon cable with a male connector and multiple female connectors. The only problem is the connector to the front panel, the ribbon is split into two at the external connector and goes into two separate halves of the back of the connector. Is it possible to open up the back of the connector without damaging it? The alternative would be either to find a replacement cable (anyone have one?) or try to repair the broken wire Regards Rob

10 years, 11 months

Commodore SuperPET history and HOSTCM

by rob＠bitscience.ca

Over the last year or so, I've been researching the history of the Commodore SuperPET. I've just pushed a couple of things that I've been working on out to my website, and I thought people here might find them interesting. First is a narrative about how the SuperPET came to be, and how work on academic software at the University of Waterloo culminated in a collaboration with Commodore. Much of the information stems from new research which I conducted in the UW Archives this past summer. It also traces the origin and fate of the MICROWAT, a precursor hardware design that had a great deal of influence on the SuperPET. The whole thing can be found here: How the SuperPET came to be Second, I've written a timeline that documents significant events in the birth, life and decline of the SuperPET. That's here: The Commodore SuperPET: a timeline Third, one of the more interesting -- and mostly undocumented -- features of the SuperPET was its built-in ability to be a client to a remote fileserver; this relied on an RPC-like facility called HOSTCM that used the serial line as a transport. I have reverse engineered the protocol, and written a program that acts as a HOSTCM fileserver for the SuperPET. It runs on a variety of modern machines, including Mac OS X, FreeBSD and Linux. Among other things, this means that you can use a SuperPET without an attached diskette drive, and that you can move disk images, files and programs between the SuperPET and modern machines without specialized hardware. You can find the program here: HOSTCM and the protocol documentation here: The HOSTCM protocol Finally, I've written a couple of utilities that are useful for manipulating archived Commodore disk images for use with my HOSTCM implementation. That can be found here: Utilities for HOSTCM Oh, and there are some good pictures, too. If anyone has comments or questions, please let me know. Cheers, Rob Ferguson

10 years, 11 months

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test-drb December 2013