test-drb May 2013

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

213 participants
253 discussions

My Epson TF-20 booting (but not on YouTube)

by fjkraan＠xs4all.nl

In a bid for the least impressive boot sequence, here the Epson TF-20: http://fjkraan.home.xs4all.nl/comp/tf20/TF-20boot.avi Why they gave the thing 64 kByte and not a proper firmware will probably always be a mystery. Once booted, 280 kByte of the remaining diskspace could be used by the HX-20, PX-8 or PX-4. Fred Jan

11 years, 2 months

My Epson QX-10 on YouTube

by terry＠webweavers.co.nz

A nice example of Japanese 8-bit technology. The Epson QX-10 http://youtu.be/Oz1BIIaeF44 (I managed to get most of what I'd recorded off my broken camera..whew!) Terry (Tez)

11 years, 2 months

My Epson QX-10 on YouTube

by fjkraan＠xs4all.nl

> Yes, they're wonderful little things, but I do worry about how robust they > might be (and how easy it is to obtain* spares should one die in some > horrible way). I am tempted to disconnect them and run the data cable - > via a socket in one of the expansion bay positions - to a pair of external The Epson SD-321 are probably as robust as normal disk drives, as there are less mechanical parts. The only problem I have seen with them is that the grease gets sticky, so you can either not get your floppy in or get it out again. But there is an exellent technical manual describing disassembly and re-assembly. Fred Jan

11 years, 2 months

Generic old-systems use (was: Re: Old UNIX Systems)

by mtapley＠swri.edu

At 15:41 -0500 5/30/13, <Erik> wrote: >Hi there! Interesting to read, what others do with their >vintage machines ... and for what reasons ;-) 1a) NeXT 040 cube, backup Mathematica platform for when our department license server won't serve my daily-driver PowerBook G4 (is that machine itself on-topic? This list gets long if so) a license. Things run slower, by a factor of about 100, but they still generally run. Because: I own machine and Mathematica license, so am pretty sure no upgrade/license server issue is going to stop me calculating. As long as my laptop is on the 'net somewhere, I can VPN to the NeXT and get numbers back over the terminal interface (or retrieve plots via sftp). Newer hardware for backup Mathematica is not hard, new license is expensive. 1b) as above, running distributed.net. See http://stats.distributed.net/misc/platformlist.php?project_id=8&view=tco Pretty sure all the M68k/NeXTStep work units are mine (however I'm not territorial, somebody else with a cube or 'station is welcome to help me put those MIPS/OpenBSD guys in the rear-view mirror...) Because: machine is always on (see above), might as well put those CPU cycles to use. No power-save mode like on my laptops. 2) Powerbook 3400, drives an HP flat-bed scanner (which is SCSI interface) and plays games. Because: Scanner quality rocks, don't want to buy new scanner, no SCSI interface on any new machine I own (and not sure about drivers if there were). Don't want to buy new scanner; new scanner linearity probably is not as good anyway. 3) (?) LaserJet 4M+, only working printer at home. Because: per-page cost is very low, print quality is fine for everything we need at home. House wired for ethernet, so no problem with connectivity; even laptops speak 802.11 to DSL hub which puts packets on ethernet to the printer. Printer is paid for and even a "cheap" new printer will chew through toner faster than I like. 4) iMac G3, secondary web-surfing machine at home If wife or kids are on the iMac flat-screen, I can still do my banking/book club/check weather radar on TenFourFox (THANK YOU, Cameron! 10-4-Fox-ROX!) http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/ 5...n) Education/Nostalgia machines *Finally* beginning to understand machine language, thanks to the TRS-80 Color Computer's 6809. Want to learn VMS/(Alpha/VAX) to see what a real OS looks like. Love the dual-architecture Rainbow. etc. etc. etc. But I suspect this isn't the "use" you were looking for... -- - 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.

11 years, 2 months

Old UNIX Systems

by Arno_1983＠gmx.de

mc68010 <mc68010 at gmail.com> wrote: >> On 05/29/2013 09:14 PM, Andrew Hoerter wrote: >>> I still have this crazy notion of someday acquiring an Ultra >>> Enterprise 3x00 or 4x00 to run at home for real work, though. >> > > Careful what you wish for. I have played with those over the years at > home and they draw about 6 amps doing nothing and more when they are. > The wheel on the power meter goes into warp drive when you turn one of > those on. I can't imagine leaving one on 24/7 if I was paying the power > bill. Ah, good to know... These are "115V amps" however, aren't they?? (Yep, I know I'm talking absolute nonsense physically, but you get what I mean...) I have both a E3000 and a E4000, as well as a couple of U450s. These are my largest systems right now, with a HP 9000 K100 (PA-RISC) as a close follower and a HP LH6000 NetServer (dual x86) coming next. For the record, none of these is in active duty with me right now. The E3000 (equipped with the "Creator3D" UPA-capable I/O board no less!) blew the switcher transistor in its PPS1 (peripheral power supply) with a loud bang when I last tried to power it up, burned out two inrush limiter resistors and tripped the circuit breaker. The supply is optional, so I think I could still run the system (with not too many SCA disks in it) right now. I remember doing a test install of Solaris on my SparcSERVER 1000 (two processor boards w/ one processor each) in my upstairs bedroom at home and being already quite impressed by the amount of heat that put out. The K100 has two impressive-looking radial fans in the bottom and I'm curious for their noise alone when I'll be powering up that system! So long, Arno

11 years, 2 months

[cctalk] Re: Old UNIX Systems

by tshoppa＠wmata.com

>>> ? Wimp. ;)???I ran a fully-configured >>> E3500 for years.? It really wasn't that bad. >> >> Raised my electric bill by over $200 a month. It draws nearly 15A >> continuous in that configuration. I ran it for quite a while, but >> eventually had to relegate it to occasional backup service, powering it >> on only when I needed it. > Inquiring minds want to know: What does one _need_ a beast like that for? > :-)) There was a time in the mid-late-90's where a farm of Sun E4000 or Sun E3500's were the mark of an up-and-coming dot-com (you know, 64-bit and all, a big deal for someone who didn't have an Alpha VMScluster on their desk earlier in the decade), and a E10000 (especially being recently ex-Cray) was the mark of a huge dot-com. From where I sat it seemed to be some kind of unattainable entry ticket, although I'm sure folks who were elsewhere in the dot com boom felt different :-) Tim.

11 years, 2 months

Old UNIX Systems

by amh＠POBOX.COM

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 8:04 PM, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: > I've been working on getting shelving installed in our Garage, and as a > result, I've been digging back to some systems that have been buried. > Right now I'm moving a bunch of Sun hardware and it hit me. What good are > old UNIX systems? I'm curious, what are people using things like Sparc 2's > through 20's for? Until relatively recently, my home DSL gateway was a SPARCstation LX. Not too noisy, and a very convenient form factor. Particularly with multiple heads, older SPARCs could still be useful as X terminals (the Solaris X server just works, whereas configuring X on random PC hardware can be frustrating even in these modern times). Also, if you're writing code where portability is important, it doesn't hurt to have on hand machines with "weird" (relative to x86) CPU architectures for testing. (of course, there's always emulators) But to be honest, I keep mine primarily out of sentimental value, and not for a practical purpose. I still have this crazy notion of someday acquiring an Ultra Enterprise 3x00 or 4x00 to run at home for real work, though.

11 years, 2 months

Old battery-backed RAM/Clock chips (was Re: Old UNIX Systems)

by ethan.dicks＠gmail.com

On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 6:06 PM, Dave <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com> wrote: > On 30/05/2013 20:55, Ethan Dicks wrote: >>> hack the small bead of sealing epoxy at one end of the battery... > > I have fixed on in an Atari but this is different. It doesn't look like > there is small bead. It looks like the whole thing has been potted in > Epoxy.... The common-in-PCs DS1287 (or its successor DS12887) is entirely encased. The MKT02 and MKT08, etc, used in Sun equipment has an epoxy-covered "bridge" at the nose and tail of the IC body that conceals the connections to the crystal and the battery up in the epoxy block on top. It's on the order of 1mm x 2mm and is shiny black, not matte black. -ethan

11 years, 2 months

cctech Digest, Vol 117, Issue 54

by michael.99.thompson＠gmail.com

From: Alan Perry <aperry at snowmoose.com> > Date: Thu, 30 May 2013 11:01:59 -0700 > Subject: Still looking for a home - RA81 parts > I (still) have parts from a DEC RA81 HDD that I took apart years ago that > I would like to get rid of. I posted them here a while ago, but figured > that I would try again since I am trying to clear out space in the garage > for a car project. > > I am primarily concerned with finding a home for the two larger parts. > > 1. The HDD minus the HDA. It is 28" x 18" x 10" and is fairly heavy. It > has all of the boards. It is everything except the platters and heads. I > imagine that, if you powered it up and hooked a tty to the serial port, you > run diagnostics on it. Though, without a HDA, not many tests would pass. > > 2. An empty HDA. This is the aluminum housing that the platters and head > assemblies once occupied. > > Located on Bainbridge Island, across from Seattle. Probably too big/heavy > to ship. > > alan > > Is the optical sensor still on the bottom of the HDA? The RICM has a bunch of RA81 drives that don't generate the pulses from the spindle sensor.

11 years, 2 months

Supporting System Collections -- Media, File Systems, Booting

by pbirkel＠gmail.com

Have any of you with "machine farm collections" set up any sort of file-system-server to manage disk images, "serve" disk images, or direct-boot across your collections? For example, see this moribund thread: http://www.pdp11.co.uk/blog/2008/11/17/building-reliably-modern-storage/ ----- Building reliable modern storage For many years I?ve been pondering the problem of how to provide a reliable long term storage solution for my PDP-11 and PDP-8 machines. Whilst I have plenty of period drives which are still operational it is apparent that in the long term it is unlikely to be possible to keep them all running. It also a sad fact that many more CPUs are being saved from the scrapheap than drives leading to a lot of collectors having a CPU unit but no storage to boot them from. I?m therefore kicking off a pet project to build a versatile solution using modern hardware to provide a long term storage solution for our machines. The key objectives of this project will be as follows: - Provide a reliable solution that as far as possible is not tied to any technology that is likely to become obsolete in the next 10 years - Ease of installation and operation. - Provide adequate storage capacity for all of the common PDP-11 operating systems - Make as much use as possible of pre-existing efforts to crack this problem My initial plan is to develop this solution in two phases: 1. Would involve a server running SIMH, a TU58 emulator, vtserver and an RX01/02 emulator. The server would operate under Linux operating system (Centos4) and would have a web based interface for managing the various components. Installation would be via a yum based repository allowing users to install and update the setup on their system from a simple set of commands. 2. Much more ambitious, but where I think we should ultimately reach will be to develop custom Unibus/Qbus/Omnibus controller cards for interfacing directly to the bus. This will allow us to provide a solution with a good level of performance without any requirements for pre-existing controllers (such as RX11s). -----

11 years, 2 months

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test-drb May 2013