test-drb August 2013

test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

174 participants
181 discussions

Microvitec monitor woes (Acorn Archimedes)

by binarydinosaurs＠gmail.com

Folks, I've got a 1995 vintage Microvitec here, model 14VC2KLS2X, that seems to have a PSU problem. Once warmed up it randomly goes off and suffers vertical collapse, occasionally horizontal hold craps out as well. Simple fix? All the capacitors look ok, ie not bulging. I know there's Microvitec experts here :) Cheers, -- adrian/witchy Owner of Binary Dinosaurs, the UK's biggest home computer collection? www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk

10 years, 9 months

Pdp11 Ethernet cards

by bqt＠update.uu.se

On 2013-08-01 19:00, David Riley<fraveydank at gmail.com> wrote: > > On Jul 24, 2013, at 6:55 PM, Roe Peterson<roe at liveblockauctions.com> wrote: > >> >I'm looking to equip my unibus pdp11/34a and qbus 11/83 with Ethernet cards. I have no experience with old DEC network hardware, and I need advice. >> > >> >On the qbus side, what is the difference between a DELNA and DEQNA? Is one superior? Is there a better alternative? > Do you mean DELQA instead of DELNA? The DELQA was the later Qbus Ethernet > board that I'm aware of. It's what I have; it has a 10 MHz 68000 on board, > which should be plenty for handling heavy Ethernet load. The older DEQNA > (which, if I'm not mistaken, is essentially a Qbus version of the DEUNA) > has power consumption/heat dissipation issues and some lockup issues as > mentioned before. The DELQA is generally backwards-compatible with the > DEQNA for most software, though it has a jumper setting which purports to > make it 100% backwards-compatible for less tolerant software (all DEC OSes > supposedly support DELQA in its normal backwards-compatible mode). He is most likely talking about the DELQA, yes. And to clarify a couple of things: For Unibus you have: DEUNA - PDP-11-based ethernet controller. 2 cards. DELUA - 68K-based ethernet controller. 1 card. For Qbus: DEQNA - Discrete logic microcode engine. 1 card. DELQA - 68K based ethernet controller. 1 card. The Unibus controllers are software compatible. The Qbus controllers are software compatible. However, the Unibus and Qbus controllers have totally different programming models, and are not compatible at all. There is not the slightest bit of relationship between them. Anyone thinking that a DEQNA is just a Qbus version of a DEUNA is just plain wrong. And the same goes for the DELQA compared to the DELUA. They are not even close. The DELQA can operate either in DEQNA compatible mode (controlled by a switch) or in DELQA mode, which is different, but not very much so. There was also a late modification to the DELQA, called the DELQA-Plus, or DELQA-YM, which had some extra enhancements to it. > DELQAs usually aren't that hard to find on eBay, and if you're lucky, they > come with a cab kit (which isn't that hard to make, since it's a pretty > straightforward AUI cable with a fuse). DEQNA cab kits should work fine > with a DELQA. I have definitely used DEQNA cab kits on DELQAs, and I think I have used things the other way around as well. Someone mentioned that there is a 1 wire difference, which I think is correct. Not significant enough to affect functionality. > As far as I can tell, the DELUA is the Unibus equivalent to the DELQA. In > general, if you swap a U for a Q in the name, that's what you're looking > for (which is why if there's something called a DELNA, I don't know what > it is, but the only picture purporting to be on I can see on Google looks > an awful lot like a DELQA to me). Right, apart from the fact that there is not really anything "equivalent" about them. >> >As for unibus, any advice at all would be great. If it matters, my 11/34a has both cache and floating point, 128kw memory, but I don't know if there are any operating systems with tcp/ip that will run on it. > As mentioned above, AFAIK, Unibus has DEUNA and DELUA, of which the latter > is the preferred model. No idea how hard it is to come across that. For > TCP/IP, I know Johnny Bilquist has a stack for RSX-11M+, but that won't > run on 128kW of RAM. TCP/IP is a bit of a tall order for a PDP-11, but > DECNET isn't, and Linux still works more or less fine with it. TCP/IP isn't really such a big problem either. It's not worse than DECnet. However, for various reasons I have chosed to write it explicitly only for M+. There is a commercial TCP/IP that works on 11M as well, and that is TCPware. Linux DECnet do not work well at all with RSX DECnet, in my experience. :-( > Speaking of: can anyone guide me as to how I should go about installing > DECNET on RSX-11M (not plus) 4.6? I'm having a hard time figuring out > which (if any) of the available images online will work for that version. > The tape images seem a bit hard to come by, and I've periodically scoured > Google looking for anything. Part of the problem is that I'm not as > familiar with the DECNET versioning system relative to the RSX one, so I > don't know what's compatible with what. Isn't the manuals around? Anyway, it's much more of a headache than under 11M. You need to create various regions for DECnet to live in, and you need to figure the sizes of these. Fiddly, but not really that hard if you know what you are doing and/or have the documentation. Johnny

10 years, 9 months

Boat Anchor (could be any thread recently, aren't all the machines here supposed to be boat anchor candidates)

by jws＠jwsss.com

I subscribe to a group which is interested in PBY aircraft and related topics. I had to laugh when someone posted that they had acquired a boat anchor. Difference is on that group they guy actually had a 1700's boat anchor and not a tube oscilloscope or other test equipment or minicomputer. Arguably the 5160 thread is discussing a boat anchor. Jim

10 years, 9 months

Passing of P. Hume

by c.murray.mccullough＠gmail.com

I would like to acknowledge the passing of Prof. Pat Hume. He was a pioneering programmer in Canada working on TRANSCODE(before most programming languages came along) and published/co-authored several early books on programming for high school and university students. He was also a popular host of the CBCs "The Nature of Things" a pioneering TV science program. Happy programming/computing. Murray--

10 years, 9 months

looking for TML Pascal for MPW IIGS

by retrogear510＠gmail.com

I am using Mac OS 9 to run the MPW IIGS environment to assemble some old source code. I have problems when it comes to Pascal code. I see in other source that it specifically requires TML Pascal. The version I think I need is TML Pascal for MPW IIGS 1.0. This is not TML for the Mac or Apple IIGS. Googling reveals others have searched for it which resulted in dead-ends. This software may be extinct but I thought I'd ask if anyone has a copy? Larry

10 years, 9 months

Reverse engineering flamefest, was: HP 9830A always turns, on with blank display

by jonas＠otter.se

On Mon, 29 Jul 2013 10:38:42 -0700, Brent Hilpert <hilpert at cs.ubc.ca> wrote: > I'd say I've been pretty fair to Tony, but I'm not about to patronise > him. There are plenty of people on the list who do that. It's > tiresome watching people such as yourself make excuses for him and > "cut him slack" and then proceed to beat up on the individual who was > trying to be reasonable about it and was actually the 'aggrieved > party'. Knowing the list, I predicted that would happen, although not > from you. > > And as I also said (it gets tiresome having to repeat oneself) near > the beginning of this mess, it's all been a nuisance. I'd like to get > back to useful work. This whole thing started when Tony asked why you REd whatever machine it was, when he had already done so, and there is a lot of other equipment that needs reverse engineering. That set you off on a rant about mistakes Tony had made, how many machines you had REd etc etc. If you had just counted to 10 before replying, and instead asked Tony what he meant, the whole thing could have been kept to a civil level. Instead it all degenerated into some kind of pissing contest. You did actually come across as feeling threatened, not as being reasonable. You made yourself the aggrieved party by your knee-jerk reaction. Unless Tony writes one thing and means something completely different, if you read his responses, it does rather look as if you have misunderstood him and gone off the deep end. I'm sorry, but you started this fight yourself. /Jonas

10 years, 9 months

Pdp11 Ethernet cards

by roe＠liveblockauctions.com

I'm looking to equip my unibus pdp11/34a and qbus 11/83 with Ethernet cards. I have no experience with old DEC network hardware, and I need advice. On the qbus side, what is the difference between a DELNA and DEQNA? Is one superior? Is there a better alternative? As for unibus, any advice at all would be great. If it matters, my 11/34a has both cache and floating point, 128kw memory, but I don't know if there are any operating systems with tcp/ip that will run on it. Thanks for any thoughts.

10 years, 9 months

16kb variant of the IBM 5150 - Bell & Howell

by swtpc6800＠comcast.net

The original Apple II case could be easily open by students and was not suitable for school use. (It may not have had the proper UL approval.) The dark Bell & Howell Apple II case was locked down and somewhat student proof. Bell & Howell also knew how to sell projectors and other audio visual equipment to schools everywhere. This is how Apple fortuitously stumbled into the education market. Michael Holley -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Alexandre Souza Sent: Wednesday, July 31, 2013 8:24 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: 16kb variant of the IBM 5150 > Dealing with Board Of Education types required some cunning. > One popular machine had som much difficulty selling to those types, > that they made a BLACK model, with latch instead of Velcro lid, > attached power cord, and sold through the primary projector supplier. > That way, a teacher running up against "policies regarding computer > purchase" could slip it past the budget committees as "AV equipment". Just looks like Brazil! :oD And I don't have a Bell & Howell (or something like that, I just don't remember) black apple :(

10 years, 9 months

Soviet PDP-11 clones

by mark.kahrs＠gmail.com

The online data sheet was for a 1806 which doesn't appear to be sold on epay. That being said, it looks like the pinout for the 1801 is simple enough. http://www.tiffe.de/Robotron/Bausteinuebersicht/K180x/1801vm1.jpg The web directory has DejaVu schematics and the like, have a look: http://www.tiffe.de/Robotron/Bausteinuebersicht/K180x/

10 years, 9 months

Reverse engineering flamefest, was: HP 9830A always turns, on with blank display

by jonas＠otter.se

OnSun, 28 Jul 2013 12:37:52 -0500, "MikeS" <dm561 at torfree.net> wrote: >> >Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 09:25:44 +0200 >> >From: Jonas Otter<jonas at otter.se> >> > >> >How about y'all stopping flogging this by now very dead horse? >> > >> >If you don't want to fight via private email, then please don't do it in >> >public either. You are only showing the rest of the world how rude you >> >can be and how clever you think you are. >> > >> >I am not addressing this to anyone in particular, because I do not want >> >to get involved, only to get you to stop making d**ks of yourselves in >> >public. >> > >> >By all means say what is wrong or right in someone's schematic, but >> >please keep the personal attacks out of it. >> > >> >/Jonas >> > > ----- Reply: > > +1 Agreed! > > OK, Tony seems to push the buttons of a few people on here who don't get his > particular brand of humour/irony and are also not willing to consider his > circumstances and cut him any slack, but IMO this particular personal attack > is almost completely unjustified. I'm actually quite surprised since it > seems out of character for my left-coast fellow Canuck, for whom I've always > had a great deal of respect until this childish rant/personal attack; I hope > he's OK... > > m > Some of us have personalities which are special in one way or another, which is to be expected in a hobby like this one. I think it is important to allow other people the benefit of the doubt. If someone says something that one at first takes personally, one can always ask politely what they meant, as it is quite likely that one has misunderstood what the other person meant. Tony in particular, apart from his British humour, I believe is very uncompromising about doing what he thinks is right, for which I think he deserves respect, and even if one disagrees with his idea of what is right, one has to accept that that is the way he is, just as we expect to be accepted the way we are. /Jonas

10 years, 9 months

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test-drb August 2013