test-drb December 2013

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

158 participants
140 discussions

by bearnold＠outlook.com

I think I'm missing something. For the sake of differentiating between, I'm going lump the Altair's, SWTPC, etc. into the Microcomputer group, Apple II's Atari's etc. in Home Computers, and IBM PC and compatibles in IBM PC group. I have a question. Why did microcomputers die off? I've been thinking about that this morning and I seem to be missing something. To my experience, the microcomputers started to really fade out around the time home computers got big. But to me these are two different market segments with some, but not a whole lot of overlap. Had the microcomputer market hit saturation by that time? That's the only thing I can come up with. But then what sustained business until the IBM PC steamroller came along? I guess it was mostly the unglamorous and unreported on microcomputers, as I don't think the Apple II got /that/ deep into businesses (other home computers had next to no penetration). Ah, hmm, maybe I am over generalizing the microcomputer group. Maybe it should actually be split into two, the hobbyist micros and the business micros? While they tended to use the same machines, the focus was different I think. That would tend to agree with my supposition above that the hobbyist micro market hit saturation, and the business micro market quietly chugged along until steamrolled. And that would imply that the home computer group had next to no impact on either of the microcomputer groups. Or am I missing a piece, or two, to this puzzle? Thanks, Brad

10 years, 4 months

Merry Newtonsday

by ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk

Merry Newtonsday, or if you prefer, Christmas, Midwinter, Winter Solstice, Yule,... to all members of this list and their families. -tony

10 years, 4 months

Experience and capabilities of Burroughs Michigan Laboratories, SAGE/BUIC/MORE!

by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com

My old SAGE/BUIC Buddy email me off list list your email found good book in the stacks "Experience and capabilities of Burroughs Michigan Laboratories, Inc., Ann Arbor laboratory." Ed Sharpe - _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org)

10 years, 4 months

RFC Ethernet Bus Interface V1

by jgevaryahu＠gmail.com

On 22 Dec 2013 Al Kossow wrote: > I'm feeling the same way this morning trying to get a Catweasel to work in Linux. > It's just special that they stole someone else's PCI ID for the MK IV board. I'm not sure they stole it so much as randomly made up a pci uid/vid pair, which happened later to be used for that isdn card. Or its possible that the pci interface chip on the cw mkiv was a large overstock of china-bought chips which had been masked for the card. I have no idea. It can be worked around by forbidding load of the module for the isdn card in linux. -- Jonathan Gevaryahu jgevaryahu at gmail.com jgevaryahu at hotmail.com

10 years, 4 months

A Short History of Computers in the Movies: Panel Lights, Spinning Tapes, and Lab Coats

by christian_liendo＠yahoo.com

Ok article http://blog.smartbear.com/geek/a-short-history-of-computers-in-the-movies-p…

10 years, 4 months

Alphaserver 1000 diagnosis?

by dseagrav＠lunar-tokyo.net

(I think I asked this once before, but I can't remember the result and I can't find the thread in the archive) I have an Alphaserver 1000 that I would like to resurrect. It periodically hangs or reboots. When it reboots the error is usually "Machine check while in palcode". When it hangs, the hang is so severe the halt button does not work. Either way, it always happens within 20 minutes of booting. I ran all of the diagnostics you get by moving the CPU card jumper (cache memory tests, RAM tests) and they run for an hour or so with no error. (I am assuming the diagnostic halts on error instead of just looping again, is that correct?) During the course of these I moved the jumper to the wrong place and wiped out SRM, so I had to reload SRM from floppy using the failsafe loader. That worked. The SRM diagnostics will also run for as long as I want without error. Does anyone have any idea what's wrong here or is there some kind of XXDP-like thing I can run that will better test the machine?

10 years, 4 months

Commodore Pet Video. Take 2

by terry＠webweavers.co.nz

More video revision madness. My Commodore PET, now in high definition. http://youtu.be/bBJNSX_DKvo Terry (Tez)

10 years, 4 months

installing 2.11BSD on a pdp11/53

by Mark＠Misty.com

Hi, I've been making progress with my pdp11/53 project. Once I figured out how to get into Emulex F.R.D. mode from ODT, I was able to configure, format, and test my QD01 connected MFM hard drive. I'd like to try installing 2.11BSD. Although I've got a TK50 drive and controller, I don't have any tapes, or anything else here that can write to them. I have a Quantum DLT8000 SCSI drive, and an Emulex UC07 scsi controller. I was able to set the UC07 as the first TMSCP controller, and F.R.D on the UC07 reports the DLT8000 drive, and tests writing and reading to tapes loaded in the drive with no errors. 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. It seems silly trying to install an OS on a 70MB MFM drive from an 80GB DLT tape, but that's what I've got to work with so far, and my UC07 can't do TMSCP and MSCP at once, so no SCSI disks if I'm installing >from SCSI tape. Back on the 11/53, if I try to "BOOT MU0", the DLT tape spins for a few seconds encouragingly, but then I get: KDJ11-D/S E.03 Media not bootable Should I be able to boot the 2.11BSD boot block on an 11/53 from a TMSCP connected SCSI tape drive? The BSD setup.ps file includes bootstrap monitor examples for TM and TS tape drives. Do I need to use one of these instead of the normal 11/53 bootstrap ROM? Or, maybe there is something about block sizes and writing the tapes from Sun Solaris SPARC dd that means they aren't compatible? Alternate paths I could take might be installing 2.11BSD using VTserver, or maybe using PUTR or an emulator to set up OS directly onto a SCSI hard drive or zip drive for use on the 11/53, but I liked the idea of doing it with tape if I can figure out how. I have successfully booted the 11/53 >from an RT11 RX33 floppy I created with PUTR, for what it's worth. Mark -- Mark G. Thomas (Mark at Misty.com)

10 years, 4 months

Heath H-11 (was Re: Why did microcomputers die off?)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 2:53 PM, steve shumaker <shumaker at att.net> wrote: > FWIW, an un-built H11 in original carton with several extra cards just > went for a single bid of $500 on EPAY over the weekend :( Wow! That sounds cheap. I have a built-up one that was hacked half-to-death by its first owner, a former boss of mine (he turned it into a hex-wide and made his own CD-interconnect for an RLV11) with at least one unsoldered serial card (no need to solder it since I have real DEC cards and they have standard, not Heath, pinouts to connect to the outside world). As an H-11 it works just fine even after I undid its previous "expansion", but I've never gotten the H-27 to boot on it (it works with an RXV21 and RX02 or with an RLV12 (now) and RL02). -ethan

10 years, 4 months

MC68000 MOVMEM.A fast memory copy

by nw＠retrocomputingtasmania.com

On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 6:04 AM, Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk> wrote: > If you had contrived the hardware design to have suitable incomplete decoding, > you could have exploited the movem hack that copies 56 bytes in 72 cycles, > which would give you north of 5MB/s on a 7.09MHz CPU. Thanks for the reminder, here is a reference for the curious, although this one does 48-bytes per loop cycle: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/comp.sys.amiga.programmer/LpdAw8SZcdY…

10 years, 4 months

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test-drb December 2013